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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 AU SMH: Iraq dossier author to head British MI6 - 
2 AFP: Iran heading 'in right direction' on nuclear cooperation - IAEA
3 US: Las Vegas SUN: House Condemns Iran's Nuclear Program
4 China Daily: Korean nuclear topic centre of discussions 
5 Asia Times: Part 3: Iran, North Korea and proliferation
6 Asia Times: Reeling, hungry, N Korea heads to nuke talks
7 Asia Times: Seoul's new political landscape, implications for US
8 US: PulseTC.com: Government above the law? Military Seeks Environmen
9 AFP: IAEA chief says frustration in Middle East is worrying
10 Hi Pakistan: Nuclear controls tightened     --> 
11 Expatica: Dutchman linked to N-bomb mastermind faces court
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
12 UK The Times: State keeps the right to bar British Energy sale
13 Bellona: Chernobyl reactor needs new cover 
14 Bellona: European Union calls for Armenian NPP closure
15 US: Brattleboro Reformer: NRC yields on VY review
16 US: Lexington Herald-Leader: ATOMIC FLIGHT
17 US: TheChamplainChannel: Vermont Yankee To Undergo 700 Hours Of Insp
18 Economist.com: Nuclear power: Out of Chernobyl's shadow
19 Economist.com: Research: Nuclear power
20 Reuters: Bulgarian energy sector sell-offs and investments
21 US: PRN: AREVA to Supply Fuel to TVA's Sequoyah Nuclear Power Plants
22 US: PRN: In Its Fiftieth Year, Nuclear Society Forecasts Golden Oppo
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
23 [du-list] Brussells Tribunal audio, DU news and Young Peace
24 US: [DU-WATCH] Plutonium Files: How the US secretly fed
25 BBC: Call to end nuclear subs
26 US: PIR: BUSH SILENT ON MARSHALLS COMPENSATION REQUEST - 
27 Las Vegas SUN: Ukraine Police Seize Radioactive Material
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
28 Las Vegas RJ: NRC criticized for failing to involve public in Yucca 
29 Las Vegas RJ: TRANSPORTATION PROGRAM: Yucca waste shipments to dwarf
30 Las Vegas RJ: Arguments for, against rail line made 
31 Bellona: BNFL launches nuclear clean-up business
32 Evening Times: Clyde base may be chosen for nuclear dump 
33 US: Las Vegas SUN: NRC undecided on cask tests
34 Las Vegas SUN: Rural residents resigned to Yucca route
35 RGJ: Caliente gets Yucca visit from Energy Department
36 US: The State: Senate kills Barnwell waste deal
37 US: Sun News: Nuclear waste deal dies in Senate
38 US: Charleston.Net: Bill to raise funds through landfill waste dies 
39 US: WIStv: Columbia, SC: Federal bill would allow radioactive waste 
40 KRNV: Nevada claims NRC too cozy with DOE on Yucca Mountain plan
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
41 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Nuclear waste changes sought at Hanford 
42 Tri-City Herald: Legislators attempt to block bill OK'ing waste rede
43 Tri-City Herald: Vit plant cost estimates increase
44 AP Wire: South Carolina research center to become 13th national labo
45 U.S. Newswire: Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to Make 
46 Austin Chronicle: UT's Eyes on Los Alamos
47 PRN: After Criticism, U.S. Energy Dept. Opts to Keep Idaho 
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
48 Google News Alert - nuclear
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 AU SMH: Iraq dossier author to head British MI6 - 

World - www.smh.com.au
 
 May 7, 2004 - 8:27AM
 
The author of the British intelligence dossier on Iraqi weapons 
that laid a now-disputed case for war has been chosen to head 
Britain's foreign intelligence agency MI6. 

Opposition politicians said John Scarlett should not have been 
appointed while a government inquiry is investigating why 
intelligence reports were wrong in saying Iraq had the fearsome 
chemical and biological weapons and the nuclear weapons program 
that were cited as a cause for war. 

But British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Scarlett was chosen on 
merit. 

"He is someone who is a fine public servant who has served 
Conservative and Labour governments over many, many years ... and 
I think it's very unfortunate if [the appointment] becomes a 
matter of political comment in any way," Blair said at a news 
conference with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski. 

But Michael Howard, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, 
said Scarlett, as chairman of the government's Joint Intelligence 
Committee, was a key figure in an apparent intelligence failure 
that is now the subject of a government investigation. 
Advertisement Advertisement 

"John Scarlett is clearly at the heart of the investigation which 
is currently being carried out. In my view the appointment of 
John Scarlett at this time is inappropriate," Howard said. 

Scarlett was a major figure in the judicial inquiry into the 
death of weapons scientist David Kelly. 

He testified that he, and not Blair's aides, had had the final 
say on the dossier on Iraqi weapons, published in September 2002. 

The dossier said Iraq had an active program of making and 
deploying chemical and biological weapons, and had sought to buy 
uranium in Africa for a nuclear weapons program. Coalition forces 
in Iraq have found no evidence to back those claims. 

Kelly killed himself after he was publicly identified as the 
source of a BBC story that had quoted him anonymously as saying 
officials exaggerated evidence about Iraq's alleged arsenal to 
justify war. 

Scarlett supported the testimony of Blair and his aides, who 
denied pressuring the intelligence committee to strengthen the 
dossier's claims. Lord Hutton, the judge in the highly charged 
case, ruled that the BBC was wrong to report that officials 
knowingly manipulated evidence. 

"In view of the evidence at the Hutton inquiry, this appointment 
can only be described as highly controversial," said Menzies 
Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Liberal 
Democrat party. 

Scarlett graduated from Oxford University in 1970 and worked at 
MI6 until leaving for the Joint Intelligence Committee post in 
2001. He speaks Russian and has served in Paris, Moscow and 
Nairobi, Kenya. 

His testimony at the Hutton inquiry made him the first head of 
that committee to become widely known to the public. 

Scarlett succeeds Sir Richard Dearlove, who is leaving MI6 to 
become master of Pembroke College at Cambridge University. 

MI6, or the Secret Intelligence Service, has some 2,000 
employees. Scarlett will be only the fourth director to be 
publicly identified; their predecessors were known as "C," in 
tribute to Captain Mansfield Cumming, who founded the service in 
1911. 

Blair's office said that Scarlett would follow MI6 practice in 
the future by not giving interviews, making public appearances or 
providing on-the-record comment. 

Copyright © 2004. The Sydney Morning Herald. 				 				 				 
*****************************************************************
 2 AFP: Iran heading 'in right direction' on nuclear cooperation - IAEA

[http://www.spacewar.com/] 

PARIS (AFP) May 06, 2004

 Iran is making progress towards full cooperation with the 
international nuclear watchdog IAEA, its head Mohamed ElBaradei 
said Thursday, but warned the world would not wait forever for 
results.

"Overall I think we are moving in the right direction," the IAEA 
director general told a French parliamentary hearing during a 
visit to Paris.

"But Iran also has to understand that the world is not going to 
wait forever for them to come clean," ElBaradei said. "There is 
also the credibility of the verification, and people are getting 
a bit impatient."

Iran reiterated Wednesday that it would stick to its commitments 
to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 
over its nuclear program, to ensure that it was not harboring a 
covert weapons program.

With IAEA inspectors due to report on Tehran's activities by the 
end of May, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, speaking in Berlin on 
Wednesday, pledged: "We will fulfill our commitments on the 
nuclear program."

ElBaradei said cooperation had improved since October, when Iran 
gave the IAEA what it said was a complete declaration of its 
nuclear activities, but the dossier was later found to have 
significant omissions.

He also recalled Tehran's suspension of inspections in March 
"after a resolution by our board of governors which they did not 
like."

The IAEA resolution condemned Iran for failing to report crucial 
technologies such as designs for sophisticated centrifuges that 
can produce weapons-grade uranium.

"Iran's political situation is very complex," ElBaradei noted. 
"There are the hardliners, the moderates, those who would like to 
see cooperation with the West and those who are not necessarily 
keen on that."

Tehran vigorously denies US and Israeli charges that it is 
seeking nuclear weapons, and is pressing for its dossier to be 
taken off the top of the IAEA's agenda during the June meeting -- 
something that most diplomats say is highly unlikely.

ElBaradei was to meet later Thursday with French Foreign Minister 
Michel Barnier.

Barnier's predecessor Dominique de Villepin was one of a trio of 
EU foreign ministers who last year negotiated an agreement with 
Tehran under which Iran would allow a tougher IAEA probe to 
ensure it was not developing weapons.

In return, they dangled a carrot of peaceful nuclear assistance.

  WAR.WIRE
*****************************************************************
 3 Las Vegas SUN: House Condemns Iran's Nuclear Program
 
 By JIM ABRAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House on Thursday accused Iran of
"continuing deceptions and falsehoods" involving development of
nuclear weapons and said that Europe, Japan and Russia should
cut commercial and energy ties until Iran permanently end such
activities. 

Among the few dissenters in the 376-3 vote was Democratic
presidential contender Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who said
the nonbinding resolution endorsed the administration's doctrine
of preventive war. 

The resolution states that despite Iran's promises to the
International Atomic Energy Agency to end uranium enrichment and
reprocessing activities, "it is abundantly clear that Iran
remains committed to a nuclear weapons program." 

Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., said Iran "has engaged in a systematic
campaign of deception and manipulation to hide its true
intentions and keep its large scale nuclear efforts a secret." 

The resolution said that Iran's Natanz fuel enrichment facility
could, when completed, produce enough highly enriched uranium
for as many as 25 to 40 nuclear weapons a year. 

It says that until Iran verifies it has ended its weapons
program, the European Union should break off trade talks, Japan
should not proceed with the development of Iran's Azadegan oil
field and Russia should not conclude a nuclear fuel supply
agreement for an Iranian reactor. 

Kucinich objected to language in the resolution that calls upon
parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear
Weapons, including the United States, "to use all appropriate
means to deter, dissuade and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons." 

He said that was similar to the words of past congressional
resolutions that the Bush administration used in justifying its
decision to go to war against Iraq. 

Burton disagreed, saying the resolution supported IAEA and U.N.
efforts to assure Iran was not advancing a nuclear weapons
program and did not amount to a tacit endorsement of regime
change. 

Joining Kucinich in voting against the bill were Reps. John
Conyers, D-Mich., and Ron Paul, R-Texas. Fourteen Democrats
voted present. 

--- 

On the Net: 

Information on the measure, H.Con. Res. 398, can be found at
http://thomas.loc.gov/ [http://thomas.loc.gov/] 

-- 



*****************************************************************
 4 China Daily: Korean nuclear topic centre of discussions 

 Updated: 2004-05-06 10:07 

China confirmed yesterday it will host working-level discussions 
on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue on May 12 with an eye 
towards the next round of six-party talks. 

After the last round, members decided to convene again before the 
end of June 2004. 

"The fundamental goal (of the working group meeting) is to make 
preparations for the third round of (six-party) talks based on 
the consensus reached at the end of the second round," said 
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan during yesterday's 
regular news conference. 

The announcement came shortly after a visit to China last week by 
Kim Jong-il, chairman of the National Defence Commission of the 
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and US Vice- 
President Dick Cheney's visit earlier. 

Kong praised Kim Jong-il for helping facilitate the meeting. 

"Kim Jong-il expressed willingness to participate in the 
six-party talks and achieve the final goal of the 
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,", Kong said. 

A statement published by the official KCNA news agency said that 
DPRK will attend the working group talks. 

The lower-level talks are expected to focus on details rather 
than some principles. 

"At working group talks, participants should have in-depth talks 
to seek ways of defusing tensions over the nuclear issue," Kong 
told reporters, adding that the meeting is open-ended. 

The working group meeting was agreed during the second round of 
six-party talks in February. 

Two rounds of six-party talks - which included the DPRK, the 
United States, China, Republic of Korea (ROK), Russia and Japan - 
were held in Beijing in August 2003 and the latest in February 
this year. 

Ning Fukui, Beijing's special envoy for Korean Peninsula affairs, 
will head the Chinese team at the working group meeting. 

Ning called for a "flexible" approach toward the nuclear 
stand-off after arriving in ROK for a two-day visit. 

Ning has also kicked off a visit to Japan and the United States. 

"We hope the participants will be more flexible and take a 
realistic approach so that progress can be made," Ning said. 

The nuclear standoff erupted in October 2002 after US officials 
claimed Pyongyang had admitted to reviving a programme to produce 
atomic weapons. 

Economic aid is key in Pyongyang demands for its freezing and 
then dismantling its nuclear programmes while Washington has said 
a freeze is not enough. Washington has asked the DPRK to first 
dismantle "all" its nuclear programmes. 

China maintains that the goal is to secure a promise from the 
DPRK to freeze all of its nuclear activities and accept 
inspections as the first step towards the final goal of a 
nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. Meanwhile the other parties 
concerned should respond to the needs of the DPRK. 

China says that providing energy support to the DPRK is one of 
the responses. 

chinadaily.com.cn

*****************************************************************
 5 Asia Times: Part 3: Iran, North Korea and proliferation

[http://www.atimes.com/

By Ritt Goldstein 

Part 1: US neo-cons and war
Part 2: Preemption and an arms race with itself 

In early February, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons 
program, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, admitted that he was instrumental 
in the sale of nuclear weapons technology to Iran and Libya. 
America's top arms control official, John Bolton, outlined that 
the Pakistani network sold "technology for enriching uranium as 
well as warhead designs to Iran, North Korea and Libya", 
according to the San Francisco Chronicle. And concerns exist that 
the warhead blueprints may have gone considerably further. 

Notably, the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports that 
Pakistani nuclear weapons cooperation with North Korea 
"accelerated in the 1990s". But in an amazing example of Bush 
administration spin, Bolton described the February revelations of 
the Pakistani operation as "a great intelligence success", 
arguing that the incident represented "an enormous victory", the 
Chronicle reported. And while the Bush administration has 
accepted Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's 
assertions that Khan acted independently, a Washington coverup is 
widely understood. 

US security and defense expert John Pike of Global Security 
observed for Asia Times Online: "Pakistan has been an extremely 
good partner to the US in the war on terrorism, because the US, 
to include the president of the US, has been prepared to lie 
publicly about their nuclear proliferation activities ... it was 
an established government [of Pakistan] policy." 

A CRS report from March 11 notes that one account of events 
"states generals Musharraf, [Jehangir] Karamat and [Abdul ] 
Waheed knew of aid to North Korea when they were chiefs of the 
army staff". And two former Pakistani prime ministers' political 
parties have expressed concerns that Khan - who was immediately 
granted a pardon on his "confession" - is merely a handy 
scapegoat. 

The CRS notes that Pakistan and North Korea have had a long 
cooperation on missile technology. CRS also questions whether a 
1996 Pakistani foreign-currency crisis led the government to swap 
nuclear weapons technology, doing so in lieu of missile payments 
then allegedly due to Pyongyang. Moreover, while North Korea has 
never tested a nuclear device, the CRS cites "some reports" that 
in 1998 Pakistan tested a plutonium bomb for them. 

Pike also spoke to this issue, noting that the detonation in 
question took place far from the site of Pakistan's first nuclear 
test, and that "sniffer planes" detected plutonium traces - the 
material North Korean weapons are said to use - and not the 
uranium with which Pakistani weapons are built. But cutting to 
what many perceive as the heart of such nuclear efforts, Pike 
noted: "Historically, states which have felt existential threats, 
states which feel they have a well-founded fear of regime change, 
have wanted to get the bomb." And the reasons for this are widely 
acknowledged. 

US nuclear weapons and policy expert Joseph Cirincione, director 
for non-proliferation with the Carnegie Endowment for 
International Peace, told Asia Times Online: "Nuclear weapons are 
the only weapons in the world that could deter the US." 
Highlighting the validity of Cirincione's assertion, nuclear hawk 
C Paul Robinson, director of the US nuclear weapons complex of 
Sandia National Laboratories, told the National Journal: "Some 
people draw the lesson that the United States can be deterred by 
nuclear weapons, but not by chemical or biological ones. I can't 
argue with that conclusion." 

In the same August 2003 National Journal interview, Robinson also 
said: "I disagree with people who infer that the NPT [nuclear 
non-proliferation treaty] is a real arms control treaty. It's 
not." By contrast, numerous US figures, including former 
president Jimmy Carter, are on record as both strongly endorsing 
the NPT and expressing strong concern regarding its future. 

Between the US's "pressures" on one hand, and its treaty 
abrogation and avoidance on the other, administration critics 
believe the international structures which have limited nuclear 
proliferation are effectively being pulled apart. 

In a now established pattern highlighting the Bush 
administration's commitment to its treaty obligations, it appears 
to have rescinded the NPT's so-called "negative assurance" to 
non-nuclear states, a guarantee that they would never face 
nuclear attack as long as they continued to renounce nuclear 
weaponry. And with Washington's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) 
initiating the pursuit of new nuclear weapons, the US has clearly 
violated article six of the accord - its treaty obligation to 
continually move towards nuclear disarmament. 

As early as 2001, the Observer from Britain christened 
international acts in this genre as "Big dog diplomacy". But the 
"big dog" has even been chewing up things at home. 

Notably, in a reflection of the reasons underpinning the 
dangerously destabilizing erosion of US international 
credibility, the administration appears to have both 
substantively misled Congress and violated domestic legislation, 
with a recent CRS update even citing it for this. 

But prior to the CRS findings, a sharply critical January letter 
to the agency responsible for nuclear weapons research and 
production - the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) 
- by the chairman and ranking member of the House of 
Representatives sub-committee overseeing their efforts - the 
sub-committee on energy and water development - charged that a 
drive to "charge forward with unrestricted efforts on advanced 
nuclear weapons concepts" is ongoing, despite Congressional 
limitations. 

The NNSA's "bunker-busting" mini-nuke project, "RNEP", then 
spawned subsequent and very considerable CRS attention, with a 
April 9 CRS update highlighting quite wide Congressional 
concerns. "For many members [of Congress], the five-year cost of 
RNEP as presented in the FY2005 budget document came as a 
surprise not only in the amount, but also in what appeared to be 
an intent contrary to legislation," the CRS wrote. Demonstrating 
the Congress' level of reservation, in addition to House members, 
both Republican and Democratic senators' concerns were quoted by 
CRS. 

In addressing his reservations with energy secretary Spencer 
Abraham, CRS quoted Senator Ted Kennedy as charging: "... you're 
rushing ahead with the nuclear weapons, including mini-nukes and 
the nuclear bunker busters. I'll give you a chance to be able to 
explain how this program [RNEP], which was $45 million two years 
ago is now up to almost $.5 billion." Other legislators voiced 
equally strong reservations, particularly regarding the manner in 
which the administration has pursued the nuclear "flexibility" 
advocated by the NPR. 

As the BBC reported in August 2003, bunker-busting bombs "would 
fit well with President George W Bush's preference for a 
preemptive strike capability". But the price of such programs 
includes considerably more than dollars. 

Numerous international security experts have warned of the 
potential for a new and global nuclear arms race. The Carnegie 
Endowment's Cirincione warned that if "the most powerful military 
nation in the world says it needs nuclear weapons for its 
national security, why don't other countries". He warned that not 
only America's "enemies", but its friends would be prompted to 
enter the nuclear race. 

Emphasizing such concerns, Brazil recently made international 
headlines for refusing International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 
inspectors access to a new facility for uranium enrichment. 
Notably, during his successful campaign for office, Brazil's 
widely respected and much acclaimed president, Luiz Inacio Lula 
da Silva, pointedly noted: "If someone asks me to disarm and keep 
a slingshot while he comes at me with a cannon, what good does 
that do?" And while Brazil is not currently suspected of having a 
weapons program, the implications of the Bush administration's 
nuclear posture appear profound. 

As regards Russia, executive director Daryl Kimball of the 
Washington-based Arms Control Association told Asia Times Online 
that "the US-Russian arms reduction process has, for all intents 
and purposes, halted". And a recent article in Izvestia quoted 
the deputy chief of the Russian general staff, Colonel General 
Yuri Baluyevsky, as warning: "We will be compelled to modify the 
development of our own strategic nuclear forces depending on 
Washington's plans." 

Cirincione saw the administration's plans in terms of expanding 
militarism, saying: "They place their faith in maximizing US 
military strength, not in establishing international law or 
international norms", noting this was despite US interests lying 
in the firm establishment of both. Spain's new premier, Jose Luis 
Rodriguez Zapatero, had previously emphasized the same point, 
saying: "Terrorism is combated by the state of law ... That's 
what I think Europe and the international community have to 
debate." But some experts believe another kind of debate may be 
on the administration's agenda. 

On April 6, the Wall Street Journal editorialized: "If warnings 
to Tehran from Washington don't impress them, perhaps some cruise 
missiles aimed at the Busheir nuclear site will." Concerns that 
Iran may have acquired the plans for a nuclear device appear to 
provide the true rationale behind such headlines, particularly as 
Iran is building a large uranium enrichment plant before it has 
reactors which could utilize that plant's nuclear fuel. 

IAEA inspectors are reported to have questioned this sequence. 
And speculation exists that a US or Israeli strike on Iranian 
nuclear-related targets is possible in an effort to delay Iran's 
potential acquisition of sufficient fissile material for a 
weapon's construction. But Global Security's Pike noted that the 
difficulty in striking the most significant extent of any 
clandestine program would make such an effort ill advised. And 
the substantive political implications also argue against such a 
precipitous move; yet, some analysts have expressed concern. 

Though a number of observers believe Iran may well be in the 
process of going nuclear, the majority believe any Iranian weapon 
would be for defensive purposes. "Clearly Iran's motivation is 
not to obliterate Israel, but to limit the ability of the US, or 
any foreign power, from coercing them," nuclear expert 
Christopher Paine of the Natural Resources Defense Council told 
Asia Times Online. But even defensive weapons could have 
implications. 

Saudi Arabia is said to have helped fund Pakistan's nuclear 
program through discounts on its oil shipments. And according to 
Pike, "probably every even-numbered Pakistani bomb has a little 
sticker on it saying 'property of Saudi Arabia'," with the less 
than jocular implication being that should Iran go nuclear, the 
Saudis would do so simultaneously, long-standing differences 
between the two states spawning the move. Pike pointedly 
mentioned that Egypt would then want to join "the club", and a 
deadly regional nuclear arms race would be on. Pike noted that a 
similar situation exists in Asia, with North Korean weapons 
providing the seeds for an equally disturbing scenario there. 

While it is widely acknowledged that US "pressures" have 
precipitated the current global volatility, many observers look 
to the November US elections, hoping for American "regime change" 
as the best avenue for renewed world stability. 

Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist 
based in Stockholm. His work has appeared in broadsheets such as 
Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, Spain's El Mundo and Denmark's 
Politiken, as well as with the Inter Press Service (IPS), a 
global news agency. 

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 6 Asia Times: Reeling, hungry, N Korea heads to nuke talks

[http://www.atimes.com/

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - A deadly train explosion in North Korea two weeks ago - 
and North Korea's uncharacteristic request for aid - have come to 
be regarded as a moment to gauge hints of possible change and 
openness in the tightly controlled, secretive country. Most 
observers doubt that it signifies anything of major political or 
diplomatic import. 

Reeling from the April 22 train disaster and suffering an acute 
food shortage, North Korea heads to Beijing May 12 for 
working-level talks on ending its nuclear weapons programs. Some 
see its tentative openness in seeking disaster aid as a possible 
good omen, but others say it only shows that Pyongyang is 
desperate for help. They note that Pyongyang immediately rejected 
doctors, nurses, medicine and reconstruction engineers from South 
Korea. Other South Korean aid had to be transported the long, 
slow way, by sea, and not over land. 

After the disaster, Pyongyang agreed to attend working-level 
talks on its nuclear program, are a prelude to the major 
six-party talks to be held before June. They include North Korea 
and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. 

Still, an United Nations official who was among the few 
foreigners permitted to visit the site of the railway disaster 
said he saw signs of limited openness that had often been 
regarded as unthinkable under the regime of President Kim 
Jong-il. 

These signs included the freedom to walk around the disaster site 
unimpeded and take photographs. In addition, Anthony Banbury, 
head of the Asia office of the World Food Program (WFP), had 
access to the hospitals where the victims of the train blast were 
treated. 

"We had access to walk around where we wanted to and take 
pictures," Banbury told journalists this week at the Foreign 
Correspondents' Club of Thailand. "The director of the hospital 
offered to brief us. He let us see the conditions of the 
patients." 

"This was a bit unusual, because we had complete access to the 
patients," he added. "The doctors said that 60 percent of the 
patients in one hospital were children." 

The photographs that accompanied Banbury's account showed just 
how badly the children were hurt by North Korea's worst train 
disaster. There were images of children with burned faces, 
bandaged eyes and heads wrapped in gauze. 

Most of them came from two schools located near the point where 
the train explosion took place in the town of Ryongchon, near the 
border with China. The two schools were damaged beyond repair, 
said the WFP official. 

That scale of destruction was the case with other nearby 
buildings, too. "The houses nearby were flattened," Banbury said. 
"At the blast site there was a large crater big enough for four 
city buses." 

The train disaster left over 150 people dead, including 76 
children, while 1,300 people were injured, according to the North 
Korean government. 

According to a UN statement from North Korea, the damage to 
property included 1,850 homes, many large buildings, schools and 
offices that, in all, "represent up to 40 percent of the area of 
the township". 

North Korean officials said the explosion occurred when electric 
wires came into contact with explosive contents, including 
ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, in train carriages. 

The initial reaction following the devastation was predictable. 
Pyongyang was tight-lipped. The local media hardly breathed a 
word for the first two days. 

Then, the North Korean regime took the unusual step of 
acknowledging that an accident had taken place and appealed for 
international assistance. The local media, too, broke new ground 
by announcing the Ryongchon disaster, but with its own 
face-saving twist. 

The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), for instance, 
brought up the event by writing about the heroism of some women 
who sacrificed their lives when they tried to save portraits of 
Kim and his late father, Kim Il-sung. 

But even this would not have happened a few years ago, when the 
government preferred to keep news of such disasters "more 
isolated", said Banbury. "They had no choice but to report the 
information because UN agencies were going back and forth from 
the site." 

Such was not the case in 2000 when information about a train 
accident south of Pyongyang, which resulted in several deaths and 
injuries, was suppressed. A similar cover-up took place during 
the early part of a far more devastating crisis - the famine in 
the 1990s that, according to some estimates, killed between half 
a million to 3 million North Koreans. 

According to Koreans based in Thailand, the assistance that North 
Korea has received since it went public with the April disaster 
goes against the grain of self-reliance or juche that Pyongyang 
has always upheld as a state principle. 

"Self-reliance has been important for national pride in North 
Korea," Mira Kim, vice president of the Korean Association in 
Thailand, told IPS. "It must be humiliating for the government to 
open its doors and accept assistance." 

Among the countries pouring aid into the country are China, 
Russia and South Korea. 

"It is also possible that they may have started to accept the 
reality that they cannot be self-reliant and isolated any more," 
added Mira Kim. "But this should not be interpreted as the 
beginnings of dramatic change." 

Senior South Korean journalist In Young-kim is also not ready to 
declare that Pyongyang's uncharacteristic behavior following the 
train disaster is an indicator of change in one of Asia's most 
oppressive countries. 

"What happened after the train disaster does not amount to a 
shift in policy," Kim, Asia correspondent for the Korean 
Broadcasting System, told IPS. "It was very rare, because there 
are little signs elsewhere to suggest a shift." 

The more open attitude by the Kim regime over the disaster is a 
case of a government that is "desperate for help", he said. 
"Nothing else." 

In North Korea, which was established as an independent 
communist-ruled country in 1948, human rights violations have 
been rampant and food shortages continue to be acute. According 
to WFP, the UN food assistance agency, malnutrition is widespread 
among the country's 23 million population. "Almost 41 percent of 
children under five years suffer from chronic malnutrition," said 
Banbury. 

Meantime, the WFP in Brussels appealed for international 
assistance for North Korea, IPS reported. "We need a further $150 
million to solve the food crisis there," John Aylieff, WFP 
Brussels representative, said. "We expect the food funding that 
we've got now to last until June, but after that we do not know 
what will happen." 

In January, the WFP, the food aid arm of the United Nations, 
appealed for $171 million to fund the food shortage in North 
Korea, "but we have so far only received $21 million," Aylieff 
said. WFP says North Korea has been producing more food in recent 
years and nutrition has improved somewhat, but "there is still 
not enough to feed its population of around 23 million," Aylieff 
said. About 9 percent of the children are "acutely malnourished" 
and 21 percent are classified as "underweight", but the WFP says 
the food crisis is unnoticed as the international community 
focuses on the nuclear weapons crisis. 

Still, the likelihood of the government easing its grip on power 
to help its youngest citizens - victims of the disaster or of 
malnutrition in general - appears remote, given that state 
priorities include building missiles, keeping its army strong, 
pursuing its nuclear program and promoting public devotion 
towards the country's reclusive leader, Kim. 

This week, the North Korean leader made his first public 
appearance since the train blast, according to KCNA. But there 
was little to suggest that a whiff of change was in the air: 
there was no mention of what the Dear Leader, as he is known, had 
to say about the disaster. 

(Inter Press Service) 													   												 												
 													  
May 7, 2004                                                                                                                     
*****************************************************************
 7 Asia Times: Seoul's new political landscape, implications for US

[http://www.atimes.com

By David Scofield 

The stunning electoral victory of the party allied with impeached 
President Roh Moo-hyun - known for advocating a pro-Korea policy 
somewhat independent of United States - has generated discussion 
throughout South Korean political circles about the future of the 
Seoul-Washington alliance, the increasing economic and diplomatic 
importance of China, and relations with North Korea. 

The Uri Party, also known as Our Open Party (OOP), won a majority 
(152 seats in the 299-seat National Assembly) in elections on 
April 15, upsetting the old-guard parties that had spearheaded 
Roh's impeachment on March 12 on grounds of campaign-funding 
violations and incompetence. His case is now before the 
Constitutional Court, which is expected to rule as early as next 
week. His reinstatement is considered likely. 

President Roh had been trying to develop a more independent 
foreign policy that took US concerns into consideration, 
especially concerning defense, but was not dictated by 
Washington. Polls in South Korea also show that most people 
consider Washington more of a threat than Pyongyang. These 
developments have duly alarmed South Korea's old guard and caused 
some disquiet in Washington. The ascendancy and assembly majority 
of the OOP mean those shifts and attitudes are likely to 
continue. 

A recent editorial by former vice foreign minister Kim 
Hang-gyeong, now a professor of international relations at 
Gyeongnam University, outlines the new thinking, and economic 
constraints on independence from Washington: "According to a 
survey question handed out to Uri Party (OOP) general-election 
victors asking them which country should receive the most 
diplomatic and trade consideration from Korea in the future, 63 
percent answered 'China', while only 26 percent answered 'the 
United States'. This thinking on the part of lawmakers who will 
exercise much influence on our foreign policy must be read as 
meaning that in the future, China will receive more importance 
than the United States." 

Funding independence a too-costly proposition Kim also 
acknowledged that while independence is desirable, the funds to 
pay for it are not available. "Firstly, strategic independence is 
premised on independent defense, but we are unable to pay the 
economic and political costs to do this. In particular, arming 
oneself with nuclear weapons - a key point in independent defense 
- is something impossible for us when we look at the situation 
around us." 

So there will be no divorce from the Americans, though many 
Koreans hope for distancing, and Washington has agreed to shift 
its troops and dependents out of the big Yongsan base in Seoul in 
a few years and relocate them to other bases in the country. The 
US maintains about 37,000 troops in South Korea, and a roughly 
equal number of dependants, contractors and others connected to 
the US military. It is not known whether some troops will be 
transferred out of Korea entirely. 

This Thursday and Friday in Washington, meanwhile, South Korea 
and the US have been holding their eighth round of talks on the 
future of the alliance and on moving the Yongsan garrison out of 
Seoul, where its presence is deeply resented. The South Korean 
government has agreed to pay the high cost of the move but has 
appeared to be delaying for financial reasons. Another round of 
talks could be held next month in Seoul. 

Against the backdrop of President Roh's independent-tilting 
foreign policy platform, the oft-quoted raison d'etre for the 
50-year-old US alliance is that South Korea cannot "afford" to 
defend itself from far larger and more powerful regional powers. 
But in reality, the only immediate threat to South Korea comes 
from the country it has pledged to prop up - North Korea. 

South Korea enjoys inherent natural defenses from outside attack. 
It's an extremely mountainous peninsula and, arguably, the most 
ethnically homogenous nation on Earth, ensuring no ethnic 
beachhead for an invading power. The nation's "oneness" means it 
is next to impossible for anyone but North Korea to plant seeds 
of dissent within South Korea in a bid to weaken the nation's 
cohesion and mettle. 

South Korea, as the world's 12th-largest economy, can easily 
afford to develop its own indigenous, independent defense, free 
of physical military alliances, in spite of popular rhetoric 
among international-relations specialists in Korea. The real 
impediment to Korea establishing an independent form of defense 
is not economics - it currently spends less than 3 percent of its 
gross domestic product (GDP) on defense - but politics, as the 
nation's elected officials balk at the political costs of 
defending Korea on their own. 

Rapprochement South Korea's rapprochement strategy is based on 
the principle of good cop, bad cop, with the United States Forces 
in Korea (USFK) playing the perennial bad cop. The South Korean 
government strongly encourages the notion, both within Korea and 
beyond, that North Korea is not the threat it once was. To this 
end, the central government has softened official depictions of 
North Korea in the nation's school curriculum; the "Dear Leader" 
Kim Jong-il is no longer depicted as a horned devil, but now 
enjoys the title of "leader" of North Korea. 

On university campuses, few professors are brave enough to buck 
this trend toward tolerance and describe North Korea as 
belligerent and bent on the forced communization of its southern 
neighbor. And within all government literature and policies, the 
description of North Korea as South Korea's "main enemy" - as it 
has been described in previous Defense Ministry white papers - 
has been removed, expunged. Today the concept of "partner", not 
"foe", is ever present, and this is reflected in and reinforced 
by the national media. 

The further allocation of national resources to defense is at 
odds with with national rhetoric about the benign brother to the 
north. How can the central government justify moving money out of 
already chronically underfunded departments such as welfare, 
health care and education, when the people are told decisively 
and often that the North is not so much a threat as a poor, 
misunderstood sibling? 

Independent defense If South Korea were to develop defenses 
independent of the United States, the increase in force structure 
would not only be counter to the theme of rapprochement with 
Pyongyang, but would, ironically, leave North Korea demanding the 
opposite - a stronger South Korean military presence. A reduction 
in South Korean military assets along the Demilitarized Zone 
(DMZ) would unilaterally de-escalate the 50-year status quo in 
the region, in effect undermining the justification for Kim's 
dynastic rule. The constant "threat" of invasion and the paranoia 
that accompanies this brutally enforced national perception of 
imminent siege are what define the North Korean state. Removing 
this factor would undermine much of the nation's military-first 
philosophy, to say nothing of its effects on unification. 

When the United States announced that duties in the Joint 
Security Area and along the DMZ would be handed over to the South 
Korean military this October, the North Koreans retorted - 
apparently oblivious to the irony - that the US "attempts not to 
fulfill its duties" as prescribed in the Armistice Agreement at 
the "end" of the Korean War. Apparently the primary "duty" of the 
US, from Pyongyang's point of view, has been to provide the 
continued threat of invasion that the Dear Leader and his clique 
so desperately need to justify their draconian rule. 
Demilitarization and unification would literally invite 50 years 
of lost economic, social and political development to come 
crashing over the border, demonstrating in no uncertain terms to 
the victimized populace of North Korea just how badly they have 
been duped. 

In South Korea, all but the most dedicated believers in "one 
country" have palpitations at the thought of the economic costs 
of unifying with North Korea. The discussion of unification 
invariably centers on the German example of reunifying East and 
West Germany at enormous cost and how that unification model is 
still costing a far richer country than South Korea enormous sums 
over a decade since the Berlin Wall came down. 

Unification, as many analysts have come to discover, actually 
runs counter to political agendas in both Koreas. 

The 'cost' of stability The presence of the USFK and the 
maintenance of the US-South Korea alliance have had further 
benefits too, as they ensure the perception of stability in South 
Korea. This has helped maintain the country's sovereign credit 
rating, and encouraged fixed foreign investment that would 
normally be unthinkable in a country still technically in a state 
of war. The risk premium, whether reflected in expected 
investment returns or in sovereign credit and debt ratings, is 
artificially reduced through the physical presence of US forces 
in South Korea. An independent defense system would require the 
development of a professional army capable of maintaining the 
perception of stability and security presently enabled by the 
USFK. This would require changes not only in national budget 
allocation, but also in the mindset of the people. 

The Republic of Korea lacks not only the political fortitude to 
allocate sufficient funds for genuine self-defense, but it also 
seems to lack the human capital necessary to create the sort of 
defense structure a country like South Korea requires. A former 
Seoul official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that 
South Koreans view army service with disdain, as evidenced by the 
number of prominent families and politicians who use their 
influence and money to exempt their sons from obligatory national 
service. Unlike other countries, which make a great display of 
their military heritage, there is little of this in South Korea. 
A career in the military does not carry with it, even among the 
officer class, any promise of an elevated social position - 
crucial in status-conscious Korea. 

Exacerbating the social perception of the military is its 
reputation for corruption, its indifference to safety, and the 
dangerous state of disrepair of its facilities and equipment. 
This correspondent, who lives just up the road from an infantry 
base near the DMZ, can personally attest to the dismal state of 
military preparedness. The transport trucks are old and 
dilapidated, frequently out of service and left by the side of 
the road. The base itself appears to have been constructed in the 
immediate postwar period; the buildings are of cinder block with 
corrugated-steel roofs. South Korea is investing great sums in 
certain limited but high-profile military platforms, including 
advanced US F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft, and has ambitious 
plans to construct by 2012 a naval fleet of six 4,200-ton 
destroyers, three 7,000-ton destroyers and state-of-the-art 
submarines, all with the most advanced US Aegis combat systems 
and stealth technology. The defense budget, however, does not 
appear to cover the most basic needs of the rank-and-file 
soldier's equipment or living quarters. 

A nearby forest, used for nighttime training, is littered with 
heaps of used meal packets, emblazoned with the words "Battle 
Meal" - equivalent to US MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). The package 
expiry dates ranged from May-July 2003 - they were consumed last 
month, in April 2004. 

South Korea can afford an independent defense posture. It is a 
rich nation with billions of dollars at its disposal. It has new 
and now largely empty World Cup soccer stadiums, high-speed rail 
systems, and a seemingly endless supply of credit for firms that 
muddle along in the red for years. The primary impediments to 
peninsular and regional peace are the nation's leadership and its 
less-than-balanced politics of rapprochement with North Korea, 
which focus primarily on mitigating the symptoms of the Korean 
Cold War without formulating policies that address the Pyongyang 
personalities who have a vested interest in prolonging the 
conflict. 

David Scofield, former lecturer at the Graduate Institute of 
Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, is currently conducting 
post-graduate research at the School of East Asian Studies, 
University of Sheffield.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. 

*****************************************************************
 8 PulseTC.com: Government above the law? Military Seeks Environmental,
Health Exemptions

 Pulse of the Twin Cities - Locally Grown Alternative Newspaper

Wednesday 05 May @ 16:24:34 [News] by Joel Creswell

The Defense Department wants to shirk laws governing air 
pollution, toxic waste and Superfund cleanups at thousands of 
military ranges across the country, but opponents warn that the 
proposals before Congress threaten the health of neighbors in 
Minnesota and across the country. Congress will likely vote on 
the Bush administration's proposal for exemptions in May. 


Minnesota has two Department of Defense toxic Superfund sites
that need to be cleaned up: the Naval Industrial Reserve
Ordnance Plant in Fridley, and the Twin Cities Army Ammunition
Plant (TCAAP) in Arden Hills. But the 126 military operational
ranges in Minnesota could also be exempted from environmental
laws. 

"Bottom line, these exemptions would mean that toxic waste in
Minnesota will not get cleaned up," said Katherine Blauvelt,
Minnesota Representative for the National Environmental Trust.
"Innocent men, women and children may be exposed to toxic
contamination, and meanwhile communities are left with the cost
of cleanup," she stated. 

This year, the Bush Administration's Defense Department is
asking for exemptions to the Clean Air Act, the Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and Superfund. The proposed
health and environmental exemptions would affect over 8,000
operational ranges across the country, covering more than 24
million acres of land. Many of these ranges are contaminated or
have toxic hazards. 

DoD asked for similar exemptions last year, but Congress turned
them down. Congress did grant the Defense Department exemptions
from the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species
Act. 

Contamination Knows no Boundaries 

View of the Naval Industrial Reserve Ordnance Plant Superfund
site [left] in Fridley.

 Groundwater and drinking water contamination is the chief
concern for residents of Fridley, due to the Naval Industrial
Reserve Ordnance Plant Superfund site, located in Anoka County
just 700 feet from the Mississippi River, where the U.S. Navy
and its contractors have produced advanced weapons systems since
1940. 

The Environmental Protection Agency placed this site on the
Superfund Cleanup National Priority List after regulators found
the toxic chemical trichloroethylene (TCE), which causes nervous
system and liver and kidney damage, in local groundwater wells
and in the city of Minneapolis drinking water treatment plant
intake, which is located approximately 1,500 feet downstream
from the site in the Mississippi River. The EPA later learned
that groundwater contaminated primarily with TCE was flowing
into the Mississippi River at 37 parts per million -- more than
seven times the levels set by the Safe Drinking Water Act. More
than 200,000 people live within three miles of the site, and an
estimated 29,000 people obtain drinking water from public wells
within three miles of the site. 

John Haukass, Public Works Administrator for the city of
Fridley, says cleanup operations at NIROP are well underway.
"They [DoD] have to get it to a point where it is considered
cleaned up," stated Mr. Haukass. "They are pumping groundwater,
pulling some of the trichloroethylene back up. There is no set
date to stop pumping. They need to keep going until it is done,"
he stated. 

But the proposed exemptions may open the door to the military
backtracking on its commitment to clean up contamination. The
exemptions may mean that contamination like the TCE found in the
Mississippi River could not be cleaned up at its source - the
Naval base. In act, all military munitions - including chemical
and depleted uranium weapons - and the contamination they cause
would be exempted from regulation under the law that governs how
disposal is handled. Polluting munitions would be allowed to lie
on or in the ground where they can leak into the environment and
possibly endanger an installation's residents and the
surrounding community. 

Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch recently joined 38 other
State Attorney Generals in opposition to the exemptions, stating
in a letter to the Armed Services Committees, “As chief
enforcers of our respective environmental laws, we think that
these amendments would significantly impair our ability to
protect the health of our citizens and their environment." The
Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, the National Audubon
Society and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control
Officials are a few of the groups on record opposing the
exemptions. 

The number of communities that could be affected is staggering.
According to the Military Toxics Project, nationwide, 25 million
acres of land on closed, transferred and transferring ranges are
contaminated with unexploded ordnance, chemical munitions, toxic
explosive compounds, toxic propellants and heavy metals like
lead. 

A Solution In Search of A Problem? 

In a hearing before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee,
Raymond DuBois, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for
Installations and Environment, said, "[The exemptions] remain
essential to military readiness and range sustainment and are as
important this year as they were last year -- maybe more so." 

But in a December 2003 meeting with officials from several
western states, Department of Defense officials acknowledged
that there has never been an instance in which any of these laws
have impacted military readiness and that preempting state
authority was “not a matter of readiness, but of control.” 

"Our military has served us well without being exempt from
health or environmental laws," said Katherine Blauvelt, from the
National Environmental Trust. "If it's not affecting training or
readiness, why shouldn't they have to clean up their toxic
messes like everyone else?" she stated. 

The General Accounting Office said in a 2002 report that it
found little evidence to support the Bush administration's
claims that environmental laws hamper military training. And
last year Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie
Todd Whitman said she couldn't recall any training missions
scrapped or delayed due to environmental regulations. Current
law already allows case-by-case exemptions and permits the
President to waive environmental rules in specific situations
when national security is at stake. 

It is now up to Congress to decide whether to accept or reject
the proposed blanket exemptions. 

Lois Rem, City Councilwoman from Arden Hills, says that “the
Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant, a Superfund site in Ramsey
County, is being cleaned up to protect the water supply and the
communities nearby.” 

“If the government discontinues cleanup funding now, we will
lose not only the promised completed cleanup, but we may lose
progress already made as contamination is left to sit or to
spread. The Army and its contractors locally are making good
progress to finish TCAAP cleanup. We can't let Washington put a
stop to it now."   

Copyright © Pulse of the Twin Cities and Hosting Ave LLC
[http://hostingave.net] 
This site is powered by GNU GPL
[http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html] code 	 	 	 
*****************************************************************
 9 AFP: IAEA chief says frustration in Middle East is worrying

[http://www.spacewar.com/]

PARIS (AFP) May 06, 2004

 International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei on 
Thursday expressed concern about the high level of frustration in 
the Middle East, which he attributed to a perceived "security 
imbalance".

"I was struck by the amount of frustration, cynicism that exists 
in the region as the result of what they perceive as the security 
imbalance," ElBaradei told the French National Assembly's foreign 
affairs committee.

"Here is Israel sitting on a nuclear capability and all of them 
are asked not only to adopt the line with regard to 
non-proliferation, but even to accept additional obligations," he 
added.

"That sense of insecurity, frustration, they refer to it as 
'double standards', permeates the Middle East," warned the head 
of the UN nuclear watchdog agency, who is due to visit Israel in 
the coming months.

"That is worrying. I realize that we really need to do something 
about that," he added.

ElBaradei was due to meet later Thursday with French Foreign 
Minister Michel Barnier for talks on "ways to reinforce the 
nuclear non-proliferation regime," according to ministry 
spokesman Herve Ladsous.

ElBaradei is expected to visit the Jewish state -- which is 
widely believed to have nuclear weapons but has refused to sign 
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- in July, Israel's 
ambassador to the IAEA said.

  WAR.WIRE
*****************************************************************
 10 Hi Pakistan: Nuclear controls tightened     --> 
 
May 07 2004     
 
ISLAMABAD - Besides banning wheat export, the Federal
Cabinet Wednesday moved to tighten controls on the export of
nuclear weapons technology. 

The cabinet meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah
Khan Jamali here, approved a draft bill for export controls on
material, equipment and technologies related to nuclear,
chemical or biological weapons and their delivery systems, an
official statement said.

The bill, which now goes to Parliament, provides imprisonment of
up to 14 years, a maximum fine of Rs 5 million or both for
offenders. 

‘The draft bill manifests Pakistan’s strong commitment to the
prevention of proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons
and missiles capable of delivering such weapons,’ the official
statement said. 

The move followed a UN Security Council resolution last week
aimed at keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of
terrorists and black market traders. 

The cabinet, issuing strict directives to Interior Ministry and
provinces, completely banned export of wheat in view of its
recent crisis and ordered the relevant departments to ensure
implementation in order to check the commodity’s smuggling
specially from the western borders.

As Punjab has already announced not to lift ban on
inter-provincial wheat movement, the federal cabinet decided to
ensure flour provision to all the four provinces without any
interruption, and at the same time curb wheat smuggling
“thoroughly and comprehensively,” to achieve the targets of
wheat procurement.

“The atta requirements of the provinces will be fully met while
ongoing procurement drive will continue to achieve targets in
order to build up and further stabilise the country’s wheat
reserves,” an official announcement said. “The requirements of
the people of Pakistan take precedence over every other
consideration.”

The prime minister directed the federal and the provincial
agencies to safeguard the interests of the small growers by
eliminating the role of the middlemen who thrive on the
compelling exigencies of the farmers.

The cabinet approved a pesticides policy to improve the outcome
of the agriculture sector. Bulk import of pesticides should be
checked at the port so that quality pesticides are available to
the farmers for use to enhance the yield of their produce.

It asked the Federal Ministry of Food and Agricultural to ensure
the endorsement through the provincial and district governments
for making quality pesticides available to the growers at their
doorsteps.

The cabinet approved the summary of the Ministry of Women
Development, Social Welfare and Special Education, regarding the
provision of facilities for the disable in public buildings,
parks and public places keeping in view their special
requirements and thus make their life easy in the society.

It approved the agreement between Pakistan and Spain for the
avoidance of double taxation and prevention of fiscal evasion
with respect to taxes and income. The cabinet also approved
Pakistan’s accession to the treaty of Amity and Cooperation in
South East Asia. 

Expressing deepest sorrow and grief over tragic death of three
Chinese engineers at Gwadar, the Prime Minister Jamali told the
cabinet members that he condoled the tragedy with Chinese Prime
Minister and the victims’ families. “I have directed the
provincial government to spare no effort in apprehending
criminals for awarding severe punishment.”

The federal cabinet also appreciated the Chinese leadership who
assured that the development of the Deep Sea Port at Gwadar will
not suffer a slightest set back despite the heinous crime of
anti-state elements. 					     							 				 				   				 				

Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 11 Expatica: Dutchman linked to N-bomb mastermind faces court

6 May 2004 

AMSTERDAM — Dutch businessman Henk Slebos — an associate of the 
father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan — is to 
appear in court in Haarlem on 13 May on charges relating to the 
illegal export of chemicals. 

Prosecutors claim the 20kg of chemicals — allegedly shipped to 
Pakistan from 1999 to 2002 — could be used in several ways, 
including in the making of mustard gas or ball bearings. 

The Dutch role in shady nuclear deals

Another man and two companies are also being prosecuted, news 
agency ANP has reported. It is not clear if this case has any 
connection with Qadeer Khan who led the team of scientists which 
developed and tested Pakistan's first nuclear bomb in 1998. 

Last February Khan admitted leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, 
North Korea and Libya. 

Khan and Slebos were in university together in the Netherlands, 
and have been in contact with each other since then, Dutch 
newspaper NRC has claimed. 

The Dutch secret service AIVD confirmed it is investigating how 
Dutch technology from the Urenco consortium — based in the 
eastern Dutch city of Almelo — was passed onto Libya, Iran and 
North Korea in the 1970s. 

Khan worked with a Dutch company called Physics Dynamic Research 
Laboratory (FDO) from 1972-75. The company conducted research for 
Urenco, which was set up by the British, Dutch and German 
governments to provide equipment to enrich uranium. 

India detonated its first nuclear device in 1974 and it is widely 
assumed that part of the Pakistan project to develop its own bomb 
is based on the academic knowledge Khan gleaned in the 
Netherlands. 

[Copyright Expatica News 2004] Subject: Dutch news  
*****************************************************************
 12 UK The Times: State keeps the right to bar British Energy sale
 
May 06, 2004                   
 
By Angela Jameson, Industrial Correspondent
		   		 		
PATRICIA HEWITT yesterday took steps to prevent British Energy’s 
nuclear power generators falling into the hands of terrorists. 

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has retained the 
right to prevent the company from selling its power stations 
without the permission of the Government, despite relinquishing 
key powers over other energy companies. 

The Minister also kept the power to prevent a single investor 
from taking control of British Energy, currently worth just £74.4 
million, without government consent. 

Ms Hewitt indicated that the provision is intended to prevent a 
terrorist group gaining control of British Energy’s nuclear power 
stations, rather than blocking a sale to a foreign-owned utility 
or venture capital group. 

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said: “The remaining 
restrictions over BE will also be amended to ensure that UK 
government consent to a new owner can only be refused on the 
grounds of national security.” 

The steps to protect British Energy were taken at the same time 
as special shares in five other energy companies were redeemed. 

Shares in National Grid Transco, the gas and electricity network 
operator, Viridian Group, the Northern Ireland electricity group, 
and Phoenix Natural Gas, Northern Ireland’s gas company, will all 
be redeemed. At the same time, the Scottish Executive will redeem 
special shares in ScottishPower and Scottish &Southern Energy. 

The decision to redeem the special shares follows a judgment by 
the European Court of Justice a year ago. The judgment ruled that 
the special share held by the UK Government in British Airports 
Authority was contrary to the principles of free movement of 
capital. Special shares were put in place at privatisation and 
gave the Government a variety of rights in each company. 

After a review of the DTI’s special shares, it was considered 
appropriate to redeem the remaining energy company shares, a 
spokesman for the DTI said. The shares are only notional and have 
no value in the marketplace. 

To show that it is complying with the spirit of the European 
Commission’s judgment, the DTI has given up some of its rights 
over British Energy. These included the right to appoint its 
chairman and the right to prevent it moving its headquarters from 
Scotland. 

The Government’s modification to the British Energy special share 
will remain in place for the foreseeable future. A spokesman 
denied that the restrictions could be lifted after BE’s 
restructuring is given the go-ahead by the European Commission, 
expected in July. 

“This is to ensure that the British Government retains the right 
to vet the eventual owner of British Energy, in the interests of 
national security,” the spokesman said. 

Following yesterday’s move, the Government will continue to hold 
19 special shares in other companies that fall under the 
jurisdiction of the Department for Transport and the Ministry of 
Defence. 

DFT is reviewing redeeming its shares in LCR and Eurostar but has 
no details on its other holdings. The MoD was unable to comment.                        

							   	 	
Copyright The Times - timesonline.co.uk
*****************************************************************
 13 Bellona: Chernobyl reactor needs new cover 

Ukraine is seeking offers to build a replacement concrete
container for a wrecked Chernobyl nuclear reactor. 

2004-05-06 13:11

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development issued an
invitation for tenders for the so-called New Safe Confinement
(NSC) in March. 

The new shelter, an arch-shaped structure, will be assembled in
a safe area near Unit 4 and then slid across the old shelter,
which was built in 1986 to cover the destroyed reactor. This
method aims to minimise radiation exposure for workers on the
site. With a height of 100 meters and a span of 250 meters, the
arch will be big enough to house the Statue of Liberty. It is
designed to provide a solid containment for the remnants of the
reactor for at least 100 years, and will be fitted with
equipment to undertake works which may become necessary in
future, such as deconstruction of parts of the old shelter.
Completion is scheduled for 2008. 

The tender follows talks between Hans Blix, chairman of the
Chernobyl Shelter Fund Donor Assembly, and Ukrainian President
Leonid Kuchma in Kiev last week. The meeting, attended by
ambassadors of various donor countries and representatives of
the EBRD, was held to discuss some of the challenges in the
implementation of the shelter plan. The shelter plan is financed
through the EBRD-managed Chernobyl Shelter Fund. Twenty-eight
donor governments have until now pledged more than €700 million
to the fund, and a G7-led initiative is underway to raise
additional funds required to complete the programme. 

The programme also includes stabilisation of the existing
shelter, an integrated monitoring system to survey the radiation
situation, structural stability and seismic events, as well as
substantial investments in waste management, site
infrastructure, health, safety and radiation protection. The
reactor was then encased in a concrete sarcophagus, but there
have been fears it has been crumbling under the impact of
radiation.

  Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] ,
President: Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no] 
Information: info@bellona.no [info@bellona.no] , Technical
contact: webmaster@bellona.no [webmaster@bellona.no] 
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62  * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
 14 Bellona: European Union calls for Armenian NPP closure
 
The European Union could allocate 100m euro to shut down Armenian 
nuclear power plant and establish alternative sources of energy 
after the concrete date of the plant’s closure is established. 

2004-05-06 13:22

The chief of the delegation of EU in Armenia and Georgia Mr. 
Torben Kholtse made this statement, Novosti reported. However, 
the Armenian administration believes the nuclear plant should 
operate until the alternative energy sources of the appropriate 
capacity are at place. 

The Armenian minister of finance and economics Vardan Khachatryan 
told journalists that the country works on establishing 
alternative energy sources in case the nuclear plant is closed. 
It is required about 1 billion euro to complete the works. The 
international donor organisations and other countries could 
allocate the money. The minister believes the gas pipeline from 
Iran to Armenia could become an alternative source of energy for 
Armenia. The construction of the pipeline should be launched 
already this year. 

The Armenian nuclear plant operates one Soviet-design reactor 
VVER-440 and generates from 30 to 40 percent of all energy in 
Armenia. 
  
Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] , President: 
Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no] Information: info@bellona.no 
[info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no 
[webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 
38 38 62  * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway Menu 
*****************************************************************
 15 Brattleboro Reformer: NRC yields on VY review

   [http://www.reformer.com/]   
                                                                                                                          
May 06, 2004 Brattleboro, VT                                                                                 
 			 								 					
By CAROLYN LORIÉ Reformer Staff

BRATTLEBORO -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced on 
Wednesday that it will conduct an independent engineering 
assessment of Vermont Yankee as requested by the Public Service 
Board.

 The response comes almost two months after the board's order, 
making an NRC engineering assessment a condition of the 
certificate of public good for the plant's proposed 20 percent 
"uprate."

 According to the NRC letter, written by Commissioner Nils Diaz 
and addressed to Public Service Board Chairman Michael Dworkin, 
the NRC "has been developing a new engineering inspection program 
which [they] intend to pilot at selected plants ... and concluded 
it is appropriate to conduct this engineering inspection at 
Vermont Yankee."

 Neil Sheehan, NRC spokesman for region one, said that the 
development of the pilot program was not connected to the board's 
request or to recent events at Vermont Yankee that increased 
public scrutiny of the NRC oversight process. 

Since the board's order, Vermont Yankee has been in the 
spotlight, both locally and nationally, after plant officials 
disclosed that two highly radioactive segments of fuel rods were 
missing from the spent fuel pool.

 The missing fuel prompted local, state and federal government 
officials to intensify their demand that the NRC act on the 
board's request.

 "We have been aggressive in our efforts to convince the NRC that 
a comprehensive assessment of Vermont Yankee is necessary," Gov. 
James Douglas said in a written statement issued after the NRC's 
announcement. "They must assure the people of Vermont, with 
certainty, that this facility is operating safely."

 U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy and James Jeffords, who have written to 
the NRC several times regarding the uprate review process, the 
board's request and the missing fuel, released a joint statement 
applauding Wednesday's announcement.

 "This is a positive step toward ensuring that Vermonters get a 
thorough, independent review of the plant. It shows that the NRC 
recognizes the need to go beyond its normal review process, 
especially given the recent problems at the plant," said the 
senators.

 Not all reaction to the NRC announcement was laudatory.

 A statement released by U.S. Rep. Bernard Sanders commended the 
NRC's decision but said that he "remained concerned that such 
inspections must be extremely thorough and independently 
conducted."

 Joel Barkin, the spokesman for Sanders, said that the 
congressman has been in regular contact with the NRC about the 
inspections of the missing fuel rods and that he intends to 
maintain that level of contact throughout the engineering 
inspection.

 In a similar vein, Rep. Sarah Edwards, P-Brattleboro, said that 
while she was "grateful that the NRC has agreed to do this, there 
are strong implications that this provides a false sense of 
security."

 Edwards added that she was concerned about the effectiveness of 
NRC oversight, referring specifically to a comment made by the 
David Pelton, the agency's on-site inspector at Vermont Yankee.

 According to a transcript provided by nuclear power watchdog 
group New England Coalition of the March 31 NRC public meeting, 
Pelton stated that he and another resident inspector had done a 
"fairly detailed review" of the spent fuel pool.

 He went on to assert that "We validate that we fully understand 
all the inventory and that everything they say is right where it 
belongs."

 Less than a month later, it was Pelton who requested a visual 
inspection of a container in the spent fuel that was supposed to 
contain the two missing fuel segments but was found to be empty.

 While Edwards was critical of the NRC, she praised the role of 
the coalition, which served as an intervenor in the uprate case 
before the public service board and began the call for an 
independent assessment of Vermont Yankee.

 "They really managed to keep the issue in the public eye. As 
intervenors, they brought in a perspective that was not otherwise 
represented," she said. "I can't stress enough how important the 
New England Coalition has been in raising issues of safety around 
the uprate. They've done an amazing job advocating for the 
public."

 In a press release put out by the coalition, executive director 
Peter Alexander said that the NRC decision was a validation of 
the group's work but was less than pleased about the proposed 
review.

 "We are deeply concerned that this inspection does not meet the 
scope and depth of the kind of diagnostic evaluations performed 
at other plants in crisis, such as Millstone, D.C. Cook and Maine 
Yankee," said Alexander.

 The coalition also expressed frustration with the Department of 
Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien and the state nuclear 
engineer Bill Sherman, accusing the two of opposing the 
coalition's call for an independent safety assessment throughout 
the uprate case.

 O'Brien agreed that he and Sherman did not support the call for 
an independent safety assessment, adding that they didn't believe 
that Vermont Yankee warranted such an extensive review. Both, 
however, supported the board's order requesting an independent 
engineering assessment.

 Wednesday's announcement, said O'Brien, reflected the 
"relentless" efforts of state officials.

 "This was a very good group effort by the leadership of 
Vermont," said O'Brien.

 He added the he considered the public service board process of 
allowing intervenors to be a good one and mentioned that the 
testimony of coalition expert witness David Lochbaum was 
especially valuable to the board in making its decision to 
request additional review.

 Vermont Yankee officials did not oppose the board's condition. 
Following the NRC announcement, plant spokesman Rob Williams said 
that the company welcomed the decision.

 "This has been an issue between the regulators and we have been 
following it closely. We're pleased that the NRC has responded 
favorably and the process can move forward," said Williams.

 Sheehan said that the engineering assessment will be done in 
addition to the standard uprate review process and will include 
an additional 700 hours of direct inspection. It is expected to 
begin late this summer. The results will be publicly available 
prior to the NRC's final decision on the uprate, which is 
expected in January 2005.

 When asked why the NRC took nearly two months to respond to the 
Public Service Board, Sheehan said that the commission took the 
request seriously.

 "We wanted to be as judicious and as thorough as possible when 
we considered this request. It was not a decision that we wanted 
to rush into," he said.

*****************************************************************
 16 Lexington Herald-Leader: ATOMIC FLIGHT

| 05/06/2004 | 

Despite fears, nuclear probe gets a green light

 By Robert S. Boyd

 KNIGHT RIDDER WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - To boost future spaceships to distant moons and 
planets, the Bush administration is turning to nuclear power, 
long a no-no for a nation nervous about anything to do with 
radioactivity. 

Despite activists' fears of a nuclear accident, NASA has used 
small atomic generators to power scientific instruments and 
communications systems on at least 25 space missions over the 
last 30 years. Unlike batteries, which run down, or solar panels, 
which don't work well far from the sun, nuclear generators give 
steady, reliable, almost unlimited power. 

Each of the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, has eight 
penny-sized pellets of radioactive plutonium aboard to keep its 
electronic instruments warm during the freezing Martian night. 
The huge Cassini spaceship, which will reach Saturn in June after 
a seven-year voyage, carries 72 pounds of plutonium to produce 
electrical energy. 

To the dismay of some opponents of nuclear projects in space or 
on the ground, NASA has begun work on a far more controversial 
project. 

For the first time, it intends to use a powerful 
nuclear-propulsion system to send a large scientific spaceship, 
traveling as fast as 50,000 mph, on a tour of the ice-covered 
moons of Jupiter, where scientists think they might find evidence 
of life. 

NASA's science chief, Ed Weiler, calls the ship Battlestar 
Galactica, after the science-fiction TV show. 

The proposed spaceship will depend on nuclear fission -- 
splitting uranium atoms -- to propel it to the neighborhood of 
Jupiter, starting sometime after 2011. 

When the atoms are split, they will generate heat that can be 
converted to electricity. The electricity, in turn, would 
accelerate electrically charged hydrogen atoms and speed them out 
the rear of the spaceship, thrusting it forward. 

The multibillion-dollar mission is known as JIMO, short for 
Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. 

It's the first phase of a larger NASA program called Prometheus, 
which is designed to develop nuclear propulsion for a series of 
space missions, including the human expedition to Mars that 
President Bush proposed in January. 

NASA wants to spend $2 billion developing Prometheus over the 
next five years. JIMO's trip to Mars would cost billions more. 
"Our nuclear budget is going up radically," Weiler said. 

JIMO will be "difficult both technically and politically," 
Prometheus director Alan Newhouse acknowledged. Before the space 
reactor can get off the ground, members of Congress will have 
turned over several times and one or two new presidents will have 
been in the White House. Support for putting a nuclear power 
plant in space may not last that long. 

"It depends on who wins the next several presidential elections," 
said John Pike, an expert on space policy and director of 
GlobalSecurity, a non-profit organization in Washington. "Another 
administration might not want it." 

Prometheus officials say a nuclear fission system would give a 
spaceship up to 100 times more thrust than a non-nuclear system 
of similar weight. JIMO could make the trip to Jupiter in 
one-third to half the time of today's vessels, which are launched 
by chemical rockets fueled by hydrogen and oxygen. Using current 
technology, the trip takes about 38 months. 

Furthermore, the current generation of spaceships, once they've 
dropped off their booster rockets, depend on batteries or solar 
power, which have limited capabilities. 

With nuclear propulsion, Newhouse said, "we have power all the 
way. We can go into orbit, slow down, stay there, go back, change 
targets. We have almost unlimited power for instruments. We can 
send back much more data. We have more launch opportunities. We 
don't have to wait for the planets to line up." 

The pro-nuclear enthusiasm of the Bush administration rankles 
activists, who oppose putting atomic devices in space. 

Bruce Gagnon, the coordinator of the Global Network against 
Weapons and Nuclear Power in Brunswick, Maine, is concerned about 
the environmental consequences of an accident. 

"We're told, 'Don't worry; everything is going to be safe,'" he 
said. "But space technology fails on occasion. We've seen enough 
examples, like the Russian 1996 Mars mission that fell back to 
Earth and spread a half-pound of plutonium around. Imagine if 
Columbia (the space shuttle that exploded last year) had a 
nuclear reactor on it." 

NASA officials contend that JIMO will be safe. 

Even if a spaceship carrying uranium or plutonium blew up on the 
ground, or tumbled to Earth like Columbia, officials say there's 
little risk of harm to people. 

Unlike plutonium-239, the stuff of nuclear bombs, plutonium-238, 
the material used in on-board power generators, is "quite 
harmless," said John Hancher, a geochemist at George Washington 
University, in Washington. "It's used in pacemakers and 
navigation beacons. Its particles are stopped by the skin, 
clothing, even a piece of paper."   

*****************************************************************
 17 TheChamplainChannel: Vermont Yankee To Undergo 700 Hours Of Inspection
                                                   
  [TheChamplainChannel.com]     [News]   

Plant Said Last Year No Extra Inspections Would Be Needed

UPDATED: 9:31 pm EDT May 6, 					 					2004

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- After saying all last year that no extra 
inspections were needed, both Vermont Yankee and the Douglas 
administration are now saying they're glad the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission has ordered one before a power boost at the plant.

The NRC said it's going to use what it calls a first-of-its-kind 
protocol to evaluate the safety of the nuclear plant's systems.

Six inspectors will be at the plant for three weeks, doing more 
than 700 hours of inspections, in addition to the 17 teams who 
will be on-site for 4,000 hours to evaluate Yankee's request to 
boost its power output by 20 percent.

The state said pressure from Douglas and Vermont's congressional 
delegation led to the stepped-up federal inspection.

All had raised questions about Yankee after cracks were found in 
a steam dryer.

More eyebrows were raised after the plant realized two pieces of 
a spent fuel rod are missing.

"At the end of the day, what we're really looking to do is 
provide that level of comfort to the public that the facility can 
be operated safely at the higher level of output," said David 
O'Brien, Vermont's public service commissioner.

The New England Coalition is still demanding an "independent 
safety assessment" of the plant.

The NRC hasn't said yet when the inspections will begin.

Copyright 2004 by TheChamplainChannel.com [planews@ibsys.com] .
  

 
*****************************************************************
 18 Economist.com: Nuclear power: Out of Chernobyl's shadow

 May 6th 2004 

Europe's expansion eastward may boost the nuclear power industry

IT IS now 18 years since an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear 
power plant in the Ukraine spewed out radiation, which was then 
carried by the prevailing wind across Europe. Understandably, the 
worst-ever accident dealt a serious blow to Europe's nuclear 
industry. Italy shut down its reactors. Germany and Belgium 
decided to build no new plants. Only France remained 
unapologetically pro-nuclear. 

Now, a fresh dose of nuclear energy has entered Europe from the 
east, carried by the prevailing political wind. Many of the 
countries that joined the European Union (EU) this month rely 
heavily on nuclear power. This is forcing the EU to confront some 
extremely tricky choices about the future role of nuclear 
powerchoices that are now also being explored, if less visibly, 
further afield, including in America. 

The new EU members mostly used nuclear technology of Soviet 
designwhich, with Chernobyl in mind, greatly worried existing EU 
members. Lithuania had to agree to shut down its two nuclear 
reactors as part of its accession deal. Bulgaria, which hopes to 
join the Union later this decade, faces a similar ultimatum. When 
the Czech Republic sought to build a new Soviet reactor (albeit 
of a non-Chernobyl design) at Temelin, Austrian politicians 
threatened to block its EU membership, although they eventually 
backed down. 

So it would not have been surprising if this month's EU 
accessions had marked another big step toward the closure of the 
nuclear industry in Europe. Actually, the opposite may be true. 

Ironically, one reason for this is precisely those safety 
concerns bedevilling eastern reactors. Achieving western safety 
standards at the 18 nuclear plants that have just been added to 
the EU will be a bonanza for western consultants, making them a 
forceful lobby for keeping plants alive. Upgrading existing 
Soviet reactors is nice work for engineering firms. Aker 
Kvaerner, a big Norwegian firm, has just announced a joint 
venture targeting accession countries with Britain's Spescom, 
which specialises in the computer software needed to run nuclear 
plants. In some cases, new western plants may be built, initially 
to replace Soviet ones, but perhaps later to replace filthy 
coal-power generators. The winners will be nuclear builders such 
as Britain's BNFL/Westinghouse and France's Areva (see article). 
Loving nuclear 

Despite Chernobyl, most of the new EU members are not hostile to 
nuclear power. Vladimir Spidla, the Czech prime minister, 
recently visited Finland, which last December approved plans to 
build a new nuclear reactor. Finland may be the only country 
now, gushed Mr Spidla, but soon almost all will join it. With 
such voices now casting votes in Brussels, the EU's anti-nuclear 
stance may soften. 

That important new Finnish reactor highlights a third factor that 
could boost nuclear power within the EU: global warming. Though 
the Kyoto treaty on climate change is in trouble, the EU has made 
its targets legally binding. Green activists hope that renewable 
energy and more efficient energy-use will achieve those targets, 
but not everyone is convinced. Shutting nuclear power stations 
could easily increase the use of gas and coal. Loyola de Palacio, 
the European Commission's top energy official, says that the EU 
can shut down lots of nuclear plants quickly, or it can meet the 
Kyoto targetsbut not both. 

The new EU members must now take greenhouse gases seriously. None 
of them will want to become dependent on gas imports from Russia. 
So they may find nuclear power increasingly attractive. 

But if environmental arguments may increasingly work in nuclear's 
favour, the main obstacle is likely to be costthough, here, too, 
things are not as clear-cut as they once were, and may become 
even less so if oil and gas prices continue to rise. Up to 75% of 
the lifetime costs (excluding decommissioning) of a nuclear plant 
are incurred upfront, compared with around 25% for a gas-fired 
plant. The latest nuclear plants are reckoned to cost 
$1,500-2,000 per kW of installed capacity. A new coal plant costs 
some $1,000 per kW and, at current prices, a gas plant even less. 

Finding investors willing to finance a new nuclear plant is 
formidably hard. The countries keenest on nuclear powerChina, 
France, India and, less so nowadays, Japanhave been ones without 
genuinely competitive power markets. On May 4th, for example, 
China announced a $600m deal to help Pakistan build its second 
nuclear power plant. In such places, central planners and power 
monopolies have triumphed over market economics. 

More than half of the subsidies (in real terms) ever lavished on 
energy by OECD governments have gone to the nuclear industry. 
Energy liberalisation has exposed the scope and scale, and 
sometimes illegality, of these subsidies. The European Commission 
has ordered Electricité de France, Europe's biggest nuclear 
operator, to repay some illegal subsidyan order that EdF is 
fighting. The commission is also challenging the British 
government's bail-out of British Energy, an ailing nuclear 
operator. Meanwhile, in America recent attempts to revive nuclear 
powerGeorge Bush repeated his support for it on May 3rdvia 
production credits and other handouts have (so far) fallen flat 
in Congress. 

Perhaps new legal justifications for subsidy will be found. Some 
boosters argue that nuclear power deserves support for enhancing 
energy securitythough creating lots of new fissile material 
brings its own security risks. Others pin their hopes on carbon 
taxes or other measures linked to climate change, although 
various studies have shown that such a tax would have to be far 
larger than currently envisaged to make nuclear plants 
economically viable. 

Perhaps the best hope is to come up with cheaper designs for 
nuclear plants. Lately, nuclear builders have been making big 
promises about lowering coststhough these have mostly been 
greeted with scepticism. Which brings us back, yet again, to 
Finland. 

A year ago, I'd have said nuclear is not possible in a 
liberalised market because of financing. Now there's Finland! 
says Jean-Marie Chevalier of CERA, an energy consultancy. The 
Finns have come up with a clever way to build a new nuclear 
plant. A coalition of some 60 Finnish companies, including heavy 
power users in the paper and pulp industry, have banded together 
to form a group called TVO. They agreed to buy the power produced 
by the 1,600MW plantthus reducing one important aspect of 
project risk. The TVO partners are also stumping up around 25% of 
the ¬3 billion ($3.6 billion) cost by buying shares and 
underwriting subordinated loans. The rest will be financed by 
commercial debt. TVO says that Areva and Siemens, which will 
build the plant, have accepted demanding targets for both costs 
and deadlinestwo areas where many nuclear projects have gone 
horribly wrong. 

Will they be seeking government handouts? Just consider the 
outraged response from a TVO spokeswoman: Yes, TVO is entirely a 
private sector venture! TVO does not receive money from the 
government. Is anyone in France listening? 
	
PRINT EDITION [ hspace=] Copyright © The Economist Newspaper 
Limited 2004. All rights reserved. Advertising info 
*****************************************************************
 19 Economist.com: Research: Nuclear power

Thursday May 6th 2004                                                                                denotes premium

Nuclear power is a growing source of energy, but a highly 
controversial one. Brazil, which fears electricity shortages, 
wants a large nuclear-power industry. Sweden is divided, and 
Asia's enthusiasm for nuclear power flagged after the financial 
crisis of 1997-8, though Japan is currently working on joint 
plans for an experimental fusion reactor with France. Britain, 
home to both a pro- and an anti-nuclear lobby, is struggling with 
the botched privatisation of its nuclear-power generator, British 
Energy. America seems increasingly doubtful about whether the 
billions of dollars it has spent on nuclear-fusion research will 
ever result in an inexhaustible supply of clean, safe power. 



The safety of the plants is one main concern. Russias decrepit 
nuclear industry threatens the whole world. EU candidate 
countries will be forced to close their most rickety reactors. 
Earthquake-prone Taiwan has its own worries, as does 
accident-prone Japan. Another difficulty is the disposal of 
nuclear waste. No country yet has a permanent waste-disposal 
facility, though Americawhere rising oil and gas prices have 
made nuclear power more attractivewants to build one in the 
Nevada desert. Italy last produced nuclear power in 1987 but is 
still pondering where to store its radioactive waste. Some 
scientists hope that uranium-eating bacteria will help. more 
backgrounders... Linked articles are premium content.

*****************************************************************
 20 Reuters: Bulgarian energy sector sell-offs and investments
         
Thu May 6, 2004 04:53 AM ET                                                             

SOFIA, May 6 (Reuters) - Following are details

Bulgaria's plans for privatisations and investment projects with 
which the country plans to maintain its position as the leading 
exporter of electricity in southeast Europe. 

POWER DISTRIBUTORS 

-- Final bids for the sale of 67-percent stakes in the Balkan 
country's state-owned power distributors, grouped in three 
regional packages, are due on June 25. The energy ministry 
expects bidders to be chosen in July. 

Bulgarian media say the stakes could be worth up to 600 million 
euro ($728.5 million). Italian Enel (ENEI.MI: Quote 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/FullQuote.aspx?ticker=ENEI.MI&ta 
rget=%2fstocks%2fquickinfo%2ffullquote] , Profile 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/CompanyOverview.aspx?ticker=ENEI 
.MI] , Research 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/StockReports.aspx?ticker=ENEI.MI 
] ) , German E.ON (EONG.DE: Quote 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/FullQuote.aspx?ticker=EONG.DE&ta 
rget=%2fstocks%2fquickinfo%2ffullquote] , Profile 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/CompanyOverview.aspx?ticker=EONG 
.DE] , Research 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/StockReports.aspx?ticker=EONG.DE 
] ) , Czech CEZ (CEZPsp.PR: Quote 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/FullQuote.aspx?ticker=CEZPsp.PR& 
target=%2fstocks%2fquickinfo%2ffullquote] , Profile 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/CompanyOverview.aspx?ticker=CEZP 
sp.PR] , Research 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/StockReports.aspx?ticker=CEZPsp. 
PR] ) , Greek PPC (DEHr.AT: Quote 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/FullQuote.aspx?ticker=DEHr.AT&ta 
rget=%2fstocks%2fquickinfo%2ffullquote] , Profile 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/CompanyOverview.aspx?ticker=DEHr 
.AT] , Research 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/StockReports.aspx?ticker=DEHr.AT 
] ) and Austrian EVN (EVNV.VI: Quote 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/FullQuote.aspx?ticker=EVNV.VI&ta 
rget=%2fstocks%2fquickinfo%2ffullquote] , Profile 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/CompanyOverview.aspx?ticker=EVNV 
.VI] , Research 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/StockReports.aspx?ticker=EVNV.VI 
] ) have placed non-binding bids. 



NUCLEAR POWER 

-- The government has reopened a project to build a second 
nuclear plant at the Danube river town of Belene in a 
joint-venture project with a foreign investor. It expects the 
1,600-2,000 megawatt plant to cost up to $2.0 billion and plans 
to choose a contractor by the end of the year. 

Companies interested in building the plant, which should 
compensate for the shutdown of older Soviet-era reactors at 
Bulgaria's Kozloduy nuclear plant, include French Framatome 
(SOUR.PA: Quote 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/FullQuote.aspx?ticker=SOUR.PA&ta 
rget=%2fstocks%2fquickinfo%2ffullquote] , Profile 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/CompanyOverview.aspx?ticker=SOUR 
.PA] , Research 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/StockReports.aspx?ticker=SOUR.PA 
] ) , U.S. Westinghouse, Czech Skoda (SKOD.PR: Quote 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/FullQuote.aspx?ticker=SKOD.PR&ta 
rget=%2fstocks%2fquickinfo%2ffullquote] , Profile 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/CompanyOverview.aspx?ticker=SKOD 
.PR] , Research 
[http://www.investor.reuters.com/StockReports.aspx?ticker=SKOD.PR 
] ) , Russian Atomstroiexport and Canada's AECL. Kozloduy 
currently accounts for 40 percent of Bulgaria's power production 
capacity. 

The government has said the private contractor will be able to 
take up to 49 percent in the project, but exact specifications 
financing will be hammered out later. 


MARITSA EAST COAL COMPLEX                                  

The Maritsa East lignite coal mining complex in southern 
Bulgaria, which generates 30 percent of Bulgaria's electricity, 
has three coal-fired power plants the government is trying to 
expand, extend the life of and make more environmentally sound.

-- U.S.-based AES Corp. (AES.N: Quote, Profile, Research) in 2001 
has signed a 980 million euro deal for the construction of a 
670-megawatt plant at Maritsa East One. The project has been 
delayed due to lack of financing, and Japan's Mitsui (8031.T: 
Quote, Profile, Research) and Italy's Enel have offered to join 
the project. The energy ministry expects a financial agreement to 
be reached by the end of this year or early next year.

-- Mitsui has signed a 226 million euro deal with Bulgaria in 
2003 to extend the life of the Maritsa East Two plant by 20 years 
and increase its capacity to 700 megawatts by 2007 from its 
current 520 megawatts, but the deal has bogged down over 
financing. The Energy Ministry expects the borrowing obstacles to 
be cleared by July and the project to start by the end of the 
year.

-- Enel and U.S.-based Entergy (ETR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 
signed a 600 million euro deal in 2003 to raise capacity at the 
Maritsa East Three coal fired plant to 900 megawatts from 850 
megawatts and extend its life by 15 years. The project is 
underway and should be completed in 2006.

OTHER COAL-FIRED PLANTS

-- Bulgaria's government said it would open a tender for an 
international adviser on the sale of three thermal power plants 
in the cities of Varna, Bobov Dol and Russe in May. The Energy 
ministry expects the deals to be sealed by the first half of 
2005.

-- Bulgaria is expected to launch the sales of 20 small 
heat-producing utilities through tenders in mid-May. (For story 
"Bulgaria to choose distributor investors by July", please click 
on [L06372906]. For story "Bulgaria aims for joint-venture on 
nuclear plant", please click on [L06388633].)

c Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

*****************************************************************
 21 PRN: AREVA to Supply Fuel to TVA's Sequoyah Nuclear Power Plants 

 [http://www.prnewswire.com/]            


    BETHESDA, Md., May 6 /PRNewswire/ --  Tennessee Valley 
Authority (TVA) has awarded AREVA's joint subsidiary with 
Siemens, Framatome ANP Inc., a contract extension to supply 
additional nuclear fuel reloads for the Sequoyah nuclear power 
plant units 1 and 2 through 2008.

    Each unit will be supplied with two reloads of its Mark-BW 
design fuel assemblies. The group began supplying fuel for 
Sequoyah in 1994. The Sequoyah units are pressurized water 
reactors each rated at 1,160 MWe.

    The Mark-BW design, incorporating advanced M5(TM) cladding, 
is readily optimized to meet individual plant requirements, 
enabling significant cost savings in uranium enrichment, while 
supporting higher burnup and longer, more flexible fuel cycles. 
The Mark-BW fuel line is designed specifically for reactors of 
the Sequoyah design type, which uses 17X17 fuel.

    More than 2,400 Mark-BW fuel assemblies have been supplied to 
U.S. utilities. AREVA supplies fuel to nearly half of the world's 
300 light water reactors, providing close to 40 percent of their 
fuel requirements by volume.

    With manufacturing facilities in over 40 countries and a 
sales network in over 100, AREVA offers its clients technological 
solutions for nuclear energy production and electricity 
transmission and distribution. AREVA also provides interconnect 
systems, principally in the telecommunications, computer and 
automotive markets. The 70,000 AREVA employees are thus committed 
to the major challenges of the 21st century: access to energy for 
everyone, preservation of the planet and responsibility toward 
future generations.

    For more information: http://www.areva.com 
[http://www.areva.com] SOURCE AREVA Web Site: 
http://www.framatone-anp.com [http://www.framatone-anp.com] 
http://www.areva.com

[http://www.prnewswire.com/media/]           



*****************************************************************
 22 PRN: In Its Fiftieth Year, Nuclear Society Forecasts Golden Opportunities 
	 	 	
ALT="http://www.ans.org/meetings/annual"

[http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/127481.html] 

    LA GRANGE PARK, Ill., May 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Celebrating a 
tradition of innovation, attendees will explore the legacy and 
the future of nuclear technologies at the American Nuclear 
Society 2004 Annual Meeting, June 13-17 at the Omni William Penn 
Hotel in Pittsburgh, Penn.

    "ANS Members have met and exceeded the vision of the early 
pioneers who organized our Society," stated ANS President Larry 
Foulke. "With their foresight and commitment, the field will 
continue to demonstrate how nuclear science and technology 
improves the general welfare of our society and increases our 
standard of living."

    The conference theme, "A Golden Anniversary, A Golden 
Opportunity," marks the fiftieth year of efforts by ANS members 
to develop and safely apply nuclear science and technology 
through knowledge exchange, professional development, and 
enhanced public understanding. More than 1,000 people from around 
the world will attend the meeting, which features an embedded 
topical meeting, the 2004 International Congress on Advances in 
Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2004). Participants will address the 
competing demands and growing needs for power, medical, space, 
and food technologies that utilize nuclear science to benefit 
society. Nearly 500 presentations will take place over four days.

    Sunday, June 13th, an Anniversary Banquet commemorates the 
contributions made by ANS members. Susan Eisenhower, Chairman of 
the Eisenhower Institute, will share contemporary perspectives on 
the Atoms for Peace program initiated by her grandfather. John W. 
Simpson, former President of Westinghouse Power Systems, will 
offer his vision for the future of the industry.

    The following morning, technical programs commence with an 
opening plenary session featuring:

     -- Larry E. Craig (United States Senate, R-Idaho)
     -- Nils J. Diaz (Chairman, United States Nuclear Regulatory
Commission)
     -- Admiral Frank L. Bowman (Director, Navel Nuclear
Propulsion Program,
        United States Navy)
     -- Oliver D. Kingsley, Jr. (Chief Operating Officer, Exelon)
     -- Luis E. Echavarri (Director-General, OECD Nuclear Energy
Agency)

    The ANS Annual Meeting and the concurrent ICAPP 2004 topical 
meeting will address a variety of issues including 
decommissioning, education and training, radiation protection, 
regulation, and spent fuel processing.

    The Honorary Meeting Chair is the former President of 
Westinghouse Power Systems and Past ANS President, John W. 
Simpson. Steve Tritch, CEO and President of Westinghouse Electric 
Company, and Gary Leidich, Chief Nuclear Officer and President of 
First Energy Nuclear Operating Company, serve as the meeting's 
General Co-Chairs. The Technical Program Chair is Stephen H. 
Shepherd of Edison International. The complete program of the ANS 
Meeting is available on the ANS website at 
http://www.ans.org/meetings/annual/ 
[http://www.ans.org/meetings/annual/] 

    The American Nuclear Society, established in 1954, is a 
professional organization of scientists and engineers devoted to 
the applications of nuclear science and technology.  Its 10,500 
members come from diverse technical disciplines ranging from 
physics and nuclear safety to operations and power, and from 
across the full spectrum of the national and international 
nuclear enterprise, including government, academia, research 
laboratories and private industry.

         SOURCE American Nuclear Society Web Site: 
http://www.ans.org/meetings/annual 
[http://www.ans.org/meetings/annual] http://www.ans.org 
[http://www.ans.org] Company News On Call: Company News On-Call: 
http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/127481.html 
[http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/127481.html] 
	 		   	 
*****************************************************************
 23 [du-list] Brussells Tribunal audio, DU news and Young Peace
 
Date: Thu, 06 May 2004 14:32:03 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
<http://www.traprockpeace.org/brussells_tribunal.html>http://www.traprockpeace.org/brussells_tribunal.html

* Brussells Tribunal on the Project for the New American Century -

Here Hans Von Sponeck, Sara Flounders and Michel Collon on the building of 
the US empire under the PNAC, with questions by prosecution and defense.

<http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_army_policy.html>http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_army_policy.html

In response to sick US soldiers who have tested positive for 
depleteduranium exposure, US Army reiteratesits inadequate testing policy. 
British soldiers in Iraq, on the other hand,  in Iraq are issued DU warning 
cards, advising them of possible DU exposure, that it poses risks to 
health, and that they may request urine testing. And what about the Iraqis 
exposed to DU over the long term?

Finally some good news -

<http://www.traprockpeace.org/peace_makers_04/>http://www.traprockpeace.org/peace_makers_04/

See wonderful young peace makers 14 honored at 5th Annual Peace Makers 
Award Ceremony



Charles Jenks, attorney at law
President of the Core Group
Traprock Peace Center
103A Keets Road
Deerfield, MA 01342
413-773-1633; Fax 413-773-7507
charles@mtdata.com
<http://traprockpeace.org>http://traprockpeace.org


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Attachment Converted: 689ee.jpg: 00000001,653dcdd4,00000000,00000000
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*****************************************************************
 24 [DU-WATCH] Plutonium Files: How the US secretly fed
 
Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 23:59:00 -0500 (CDT)

 
scroll to the bottom for today's headlines and dem
now's other in-depth stories such as this:

Wednesday, May 5th, 2004
Plutonium Files: How the U.S. Secretly Fed
Radioactivity to Thousands of Americans

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/05/1357230

Denver-based journalist Eileen Welsome reveals how as
a reporter for the tiny Albuquerque Tribune
(circulation 35,000) she uncovered one of the
country's great Cold War secrets: the U.S. government
had knowingly exposed thousands of human Guinea pigs
with radiation poisoning including 18 Americans who
had plutonium injected directly into their
bloodstream. In a Massachusetts school, seventy-three
disabled children were spoon-fed oatmeal laced with
radioactive isotopes.

In an upstate New York hospital, an eighteen-year-old
woman believing she was being treated for a pituitary
disorder, was injected with plutonium.

At a Tennessee clinic, 829 pregnant women were served
"vitamin cocktails" containing radioactive iron, as
part of their regular treatment.

No these are not acts of terrorism by common
criminals.

These are just some of the secret human radiation
experiments that the U.S. government conducted on
unsuspecting Americans for decades as part of its atom
bomb program.

In a gruesome plot that spanned 30 years, doctors and
scientists working with the US atomic weapons program,
exposed thousands of unwilling and unknowing Americans
to radiation poisoning to study its effects.

For years, the experiments by the U.S. government and
the identities of their human guinea pigs were covered
up.

Then after a six-year investigation, investigative
reporter Eileen Welsome uncovered the names of 18
people who were injected with plutonium in the 1940s
without their knowledge by federal government
scientists. In 1993, she published her finding in The
Albuquerque Tribune and later received the Pulitzer
Prize for her work.

Another six years later, Welsome published "The
Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments
in the Cold War." The book gives a detailed account of
the unspeakable scientific trials conducted by the
U.S. government that reduced thousands of American
men, women, and even children to nameless specimens.

    * Eileen Welsome, Pulitzer prize-winning reporter
and author of "The Plutonium Files: America's Secret
Medical Experiments in the Cold War."

Headlines for May 5, 2004

- Pentagon: 25 Prisoners Have Died In U.S. Custody
- State Department Delays Release of Human Rights
Report
- Senators Criticize Pentagon Secrecy Over Iraq Prison
Abuse
- 138,000 Troops To Stay in Iraq until End of 2005
- Disney Blocks Distribution of New Michael Moore Film
- Senate Blocks Overtime Law Changes

--Rep. Maxine Waters Calls on Congress Not To
Recognize New Haitian Government

--U.S. Assassinates Two Shiite Clerics Organizing
Nonviolent Resistance

______________________________________________________________________ 
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 25 BBC: Call to end nuclear subs
 
  Last Updated: Thursday, 6 May, 2004
 
[Nuclear submarine]                             

Space is running out for decommissioned nuclear subs                                                             

The Ministry of Defence is being urged to find a new site for the 
storage of the radioactive parts of Britain's decommissioned 
nuclear submarines. 

The call comes in a report into public opinion of proposals to 
handle the work in Plymouth's Devonport Dockyard. 

The consultation was carried out for the MoD by the University of 
Lancaster into Britain's 27 nuclear powered submarines. 

Eleven are already in storage, four of them afloat at Devonport. 

Population centres 

The consultation asked local people what they thought about the 
work being done at Devonport and three other sites around the UK. 

It found the vast majority of people did not want it done near 
population centres. 

The report recommends that the MoD looks for sites elsewhere for 
the storage, intact and on land, of the reactor compartments once 
they have been cut from the submarines. 

It also says transport of radioactive waste should be minimised 
but that it could be acceptable if it is part of the best option. 

It recommends that no further nuclear powered submarines are 
built until a long-term solution is found and that guarantees are 
given prohibiting the import of decommissioned submarines from 
overseas. 
*****************************************************************
 26 PIR: BUSH SILENT ON MARSHALLS COMPENSATION REQUEST - 

May 3, 2004

PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT 

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
 With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University
of Hawai‘i 

By Giff Johnson 
For Marianas Variety 

MAJURO, Marshall Islands (April 30) — The Bush administration’s
lack of response to a petition from the Marshall Islands for
more nuclear test compensation is "discouraging," Foreign
Minister Gerald Zackios said in an interview Wednesday. 

Despite the delays in gaining Bush administration action, the
Marshall Islands is moving ahead with its lobbying effort with
U.S. congressional staff in an effort to get action on a
petition that has been with the Congress for more than three and
a half years, and with the Bush administration for more than two
years. 

In March 2002, U.S. congressional leaders asked the Bush
administration to review the petition calling for additional
nuclear test compensation before Congress held hearings. 
The Marshall Islands was ground zero for 67 nuclear weapons
tests from 1946 to 1958. 

Although the United States provided $270 million in compensation
in a Compact of Free Association beginning in 1986, Marshall
Islands leaders say that it is woefully inadequate to meet the
real nuclear cleanup, hardship and suffering, and health care
needs of Marshall Islanders. 

The petition is seeking more than $2 billion in additional
compensation. 

"We’re pushing for a speedy resolution to this issue," Zackios
said. 

He said the detailed briefings held over the past several weeks
with key U.S. congressional staff members on both House and
Senate committees is preparing the groundwork for promised
hearings in the Congress. 

It’s been a "slow process" to get the Bush administration to
respond, Zackios said, adding that "it’s discouraging to see the
delay in the administration’s review of the (nuclear test
compensation) petition." 

U.S. State Department officials indicated nearly a year ago that
the report was to be issued within a few weeks. 

But earlier this year, after repeated delays, U.S. officials
said the review would not be released to the U.S. Congress until
after implementation of the amended Compact of Free Association,
a 20-year economic and defense package that was approved
recently by both the U.S. and the Marshall Islands governments. 

It is expected to be fully implemented in the next few days,
according to both U.S. and Marshall Islands officials. 

Marshall Islands Washington, D.C. Embassy official Holly Barker
said the amount of radioactive iodine released by the 67 nuclear
tests in the Marshall Islands was 42 times greater than the
amount released by the atmospheric testing in Nevada and 150
times greater than what was released as a result of the
Chernobyl nuclear accident. 

"The Marshall Islands government is looking for equity in levels
of care, funding, and protection — Marshallese citizens should
receive the same levels of consideration as U.S. citizens,
particularly since the Marshall Islands was a trust territory of
the U.S. government during the weapons testing program," she
said. 

But in contrast to Americans exposed to U.S. nuclear tests in
Nevada, Marshall Islanders have not received full personal
injury compensation because the compensation fund from the U.S.
lacks funds. 

Currently, said Barker, nearly 45 percent of Marshallese
citizens have died without receiving their full awards from the
Nuclear Claims Tribunal due to a lack of funding from the U.S. 
In comparison, "downwinders" in the U.S. — Americans exposed to
nuclear test fallout from the Nevada tests and who experience
certain cancers — receive full funding for their awards within
six weeks, she said. 

May 3, 2004 

Marianas Variety: <i>www.mvariety.com</i>
[http://www.mvariety.com/] 
  
Copyright © 2004 Marianas Variety. All Rights Reserved 
*****************************************************************
 27 Las Vegas SUN: Ukraine Police Seize Radioactive Material
 
 By ALEKSANDAR VASOVIC ASSOCIATED PRESS 

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukrainian security forces seized nearly 375
pounds of a radioactive material seen as a likely ingredient for
a "dirty bomb" and arrested three people, authorities said
Thursday. 

In a joint action, Ukraine's police and state security agents
seized two containers of cesium-137 and arrested three men from
the southern city of Simferopol on the Crimean peninsula, police
spokesman Yuriy Kondratyev told The Associated Press. An
unspecified number of people were detained throughout Ukraine. 

Cesium-137 is considered a likely ingredient for a so-called
"dirty bomb," in which conventional explosives are combined with
radioactive material. 

Cesium-137, a highly radioactive material, is used in
soil-testing gauges in construction and is found in
photoelectric batteries and vacuum valves. It explodes if it
comes into contact with water, and exposure to it can cause
blood diseases, sterility and birth defects. 

Police and state security agents acted on a tip-off that two
buyers from the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, were ready to purchase
cesium at an estimated price of $60,000 per container,
Kondratyev said. Each container seized weighed more than 187
pounds, he said. 

Police declined to detail where the cesium was from or what
roles the three suspects played in the case. 

Western countries and the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy
Agency have repeatedly warned that former Soviet republics,
including Ukraine, have become a traffickers' marketplace for
radioactive materials. 

Earlier this year, Ukrainian authorities arrested a man trying
to take a container of about 1 pound of uranium into neighboring
Hungary. 

Washington has stepped up efforts to assist Ukraine in improving
its border controls to prevent the smuggling of illegal weapons
and materials and technology for weapons of mass destruction. 

-- 



*****************************************************************
 28 Las Vegas RJ: NRC criticized for failing to involve public in Yucca audit 
 
Thursday, May 06, 2004
 
State, local officials say process invites questions about
objectivity By HENRY BREAN
REVIEW-JOURNAL
 
As the Energy Department works to address shortcomings revealed
by an audit of technical reports it is preparing for the Yucca
Mountain Project, state and local officials are criticizing the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the way that audit was
conducted.
 
 By failing to involve the public in the audit process, the
commission has invited questions about its ability to
objectively review the repository license application DOE
expects to submit in December, several critics said Wednesday.
 
 Nuclear regulators should be treating DOE as any other
prospective licensee, said Steve Frishman of the state's Agency
for Nuclear Projects. Instead, he said NRC has created the
perception that it is trying to help a "sister federal agency"
fine-tune its application for the repository 100 miles northwest
of Las Vegas.
 
 "Closing these evaluations was about the worst thing you could
have done to hurt your credibility with the public," said Susan
Lynch, who works alongside Frishman for the state's oversight
agency.
 
 The criticism came during the comment portion of a meeting held
between officials from the commission and DOE to discuss the
audit report by an NRC review team released April 13.
 
 Engelbrecht von Tiesenhausen, from the Nuclear Waste Division
of the Clark County Comprehensive Planning Department, said
there is a long history of local officials participating in
audits of DOE's work on Yucca Mountain. He wondered why that
didn't happen this time and asked NRC officials if it was an
anomaly or "a harbinger of things to come." 
"We're committed to openness, we continue to be committed to
openness," said William Reamer, director of NRC's Division of
High Level Waste Repository Safety.
 
 But Frishman called on nuclear regulators to "improve your aura
of objectivity."
 
 "What we don't want," said Charlie Fitzpatrick, attorney for
the Virginia-based law firm hired to represent the state on
nuclear waste issues, "is an uneasy feeling about the
relationship between the two agencies."
 
 Reamer dismissed such criticism.
 
 "It's our role in pre-licensing to be clear about what we
expect (of DOE)," he said, adding that Congress has directed the
NRC to play a "pre-application role" with the Energy Department.
"I think this is a unique situation."
 
 Fred Brown, section chief in charge of NRC's independent
evaluation program, said the audit was not intended to evaluate
DOE's conclusions about the repository's safety and the data
used to support them.
 
 NRC auditors evaluated a sampling of DOE technical documents
during visits to Las Vegas in November, December and January,
and they concluded that some of the documents were unclear or
lacked adequate background necessary for NRC to judge the
repository effort.
 
 Auditors warned that shortcomings could cause licensing delays,
further jeopardizing DOE's goal to open the repository by 2010.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 29 Las Vegas RJ: TRANSPORTATION PROGRAM: Yucca waste shipments to dwarf past 
 
Thursday, May 06, 2004
 

DOE estimates shipping 3,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually
for 24 years By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
 
WASHINGTON -- Over three decades, 2,500 tons of spent nuclear
fuel was shipped in the United States, an amount that would be
eclipsed in only a single year of operations for the Yucca
Mountain Project, an expert science panel was told Wednesday.
 
 Kevin Crowley, director of a study being conducted by National
Academy of Sciences, said research is showing between 1,923 and
2,746 reported cask shipments of nuclear waste were moved by
truck among U.S. sites between 1964 and 1997.
 
 Railroads transported between 279 and 511 cask shipments, he
said.
 
 In terms of tonnage, Crowley said, "the total U.S. experience
is slightly less than what we would expect to see shipped during
one year of a Yucca Mountain transportation program."
 
 Crowley made his presentation to a 16-member expert committee
assembled by the academy. The board is developing
recommendations on how the government might manage an ambitious
campaign to move highly radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel
from 39 states to Nevada.
 
 When it is fully operational, the Energy Department estimates
shipping 3,000 tons of nuclear waste annually for about 24 years
to a repository being planned to hold 77,000 tons of highly
radioactive waste.
 
 The department is forming a blueprint calling for 3,000 to
3,300 railroad shipments from government weapons plants and
commercial nuclear utilities to the Yucca site.
 
 Another 1,000 shipments would travel by truck.
 
 Crowley said that from 1949 to 1998 there were eight incidents
where coolant or other liquid leaked from casks. On 49
occasions, contamination was found on shipping cask surfaces. 
"There have been no reported accidents involving breach of the
casks and a leak of the (waste) contents," he said.
 
 Panel members sought comment on whether the record of shipments
might be a safety indicator for the much larger Yucca Mountain
operations.
 
 Michele Boyd, a legislative representative for the Public
Citizen advocacy group, said the past is not a good predictor.
 
 "Simply extrapolating from past experience, the statistics of
which are disputable, will not be sufficient to ensure that
these shipments will be safe, and certainly will not convince
the public that they are," she said.
 
 Boyd said statistics do not tell the entire story. For example,
she said, from 1986 to 1990 the Energy Department transported
two dozen train shipments of nuclear fuel debris from the Three
Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania to Idaho.
 
 Along the way, she said, DOE violated speed limits and
rush-hour rules through St. Louis. One shipment collided with a
car stalled on the tracks, while another carried inaccurate
placarding.
 
 "These type of errors need to be evaluated in the context of a
massive transportation program involving multiple truck casks
per day or multiple train casks per week over a period of at
least 24 years," she said.
 
 Steve Kraft, waste management director for the Nuclear Energy
Institute, gave a different view. "We believe experience to date
is a valid indicator of the future," he said.
 
 Kraft said nuclear waste cask designs and transportation safety
plans have remained consistent.
 
 "The quality assurance of the cask, the certification of the
cask, the transportation plan, the first responder plan, the
security plan, are shipment-independent," Kraft said. "Each
shipment is the same."
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 30 Las Vegas RJ: Arguments for, against rail line made 
 
Thursday, May 06, 2004
 

Some ranchers oppose DOE waste plan; others say economic
benefits will be reaped By KEITH ROGERS
REVIEW-JOURNAL
 
Rancher Wade Poulsen of Alamo, second from left, asks a question
Wednesday about a proposed rail line that would take nuclear
waste from Caliente to a planned repository at Yucca Mountain.
Looking on from left are Terry Jones of Pioche, Yucca Mountain
Project Mapping Specialist Matt Knop and Jim Case of Cedar City,
Utah.

Photo by K.M. Cannon.

The Caliente Youth Center was the site for Wednesday's public 
meeting on the Energy Department's proposed rail line to 
transport nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

CALIENTE -- The railroad the Department of Energy wants to build 
in this historic train town is causing the biggest stir since 
tracks were first laid here 104 years ago.
 
 The federal government intends to use those tracks by 2010 to 
haul the nation's high-level nuclear waste from Caliente to a 
planned repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las 
Vegas.
 
 More than 110 ranchers, environmentalists, downwinders and 
retirees -- along with a couple of city officials -- converged 
Wednesday on the Caliente Youth Center to give their two cents on 
the proposal. They also came to listen to Energy Department 
officials explain how they would build a 319-mile rail line 
across rugged Lincoln and Nye counties to reach the mountain, 100 
miles northwest of Las Vegas.
 
 Some who came wondered whether it could ever happen. Others, 
like the bevy of ranchers in boots and cowboy hats, said it would 
severely affect their livestock operations, in many cases 
limiting where cattle and sheep roam the open range.
 
 And a few welcomed the idea, saying a new railroad would benefit 
the local economy, providing jobs for Lincoln County's 4,000 
residents. If it's a multiple-use railroad, they reasoned, it 
would offer a way to transport oil, ore, hay and other freight to 
the western edge of the state.
 
 "I think it's great. I just wish these people wouldn't fight 
it," said Ronald Kozak, a retiree from Pioche who wore a cowboy 
hat and a black shirt embroidered with U.S. flags and eagles.
 
 "Why not let Lincoln County reap the benefits of it?" he asked. 
"My question is, why is our governor spending all our money on 
frivolous lawsuits?"
 
 The state is fighting the Yucca Mountain Project in the courts 
and has several lawsuits pending.
 
 Cattleman Wade Poulsen of Alamo had a different perspective. 
Although he's not opposed to using a rail line to transport 
18-foot-long casks of spent nuclear fuel assemblies, the 
41-year-old questioned the Energy Department's logic in selecting 
the mile-wide Caliente rail corridor. That land would be 
withdrawn from certain public uses, potentially affecting grazing 
allotments.
 
 "If that goes through there, that's 50 head of cows gone, and 
that's a big concern," Poulsen said, pointing to a map of the 
rail route.
 
 "I think they ought to go across the test range," he said, 
referring to the Nevada Test Site and Nellis Air Force Range. "I 
don't understand why they take 319 miles to go around it. Look 
how much you can save if you punch right through it."
 
 The Energy Department envisions spending $880 million to 
construct the rail line, a figure that state officials contend 
would be more than doubled given the steep grades the route would 
encounter and the many bridges that must be constructed.
 
 The state's transportation consultant, Robert Halstead, 
estimates that at a minimum, the rail line will cost $3.5 million 
per mile to construct. Air Force officials have said the Energy 
Department's plan to haul three waste casks per train, up to 
three times per week over 24 years, would greatly affect the 
planning and logistics of air combat training activities on the 
range if the railroad were to cross the test range. Those 
protests prompted the Energy Department to design the Caliente 
rail line to skirt the Air Force range.
 
 Some ranchers are upset the Energy Department trotted out its 
plan this week, in three scoping meetings that attracted a 
combined 263 attendees to see maps and displays here and in 
Amargosa Valley and Goldfield.
 
 "Sometimes you feel you get it jammed down your throat," Poulsen 
said.
 
 Ranchers Roger Hatch of Alamo and Rocky Hatch of Hiko fear their 
cattle will have to be moved if the rail line goes through Garden 
Valley.
 
 "I'm not for it. It's going to hurt me," Rocky Hatch said.
 
 While he's not happy with the plan either, Roger Hatch said the 
rail line probably would be built despite his objections.
 
 "I think it's going to go whether you're opposed to it or not," 
he said.
 
 Dorothy Phillips and Dorothy Ray, 80-year-olds from Caliente, 
said a nuclear-waste railroad would only compound their distrust 
for the same government that said fallout from above-ground 
nuclear weapons tests wasn't all that dangerous.
 
 "I wish an earthquake would swallow it up," Ray said of the rail 
corridor plan.
 
 A downwinder, Phillips blames the deaths of her father, sister 
and brother on fallout. The family received $50,000 from the 
government in downwinders compensation.
 
 In a written statement, Ray said, "I want to see the head of the 
DOE and (Mayor) Kevin Phillips and the county commission put on 
their boots and jeans and walk the 319-mile supposed railroad É 
to acquaint themselves with this catastrophe."
 
 Phillips, who backs the Energy Department's plan, provided the 
railroad has multiple uses and would boost the economy, said he's 
not swayed by opponents of it. Even an 11-car train derailment on 
March 27 in nearby Rainbow Canyon failed to deter his faith that 
the project will be safe.
 
 "It's not any more of a concern than anything else," he said, 
noting that trains have derailed over the past century in the 
area and trains still haul hazardous chemicals through his city.
 
 "That derailment wouldn't have included radioactive materials, 
most likely," he said.
 
 The city has revolved around trains ever since the Salt Lake-San 
Pedro-and-Los Angeles tracks were laid in 1900.
 
 Terry Jones, 72, a retired schoolteacher from Pioche, said he's 
skeptical about the Energy Department's rail plan.
 
 "I'm a firm believer that if you're not doing something for 
somebody, you're doing it to them," he said. "It's David versus 
Goliath. We're David and DOE is Goliath, and we don't have a 
slingshot."
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 31 Bellona: BNFL launches nuclear clean-up business
 
British Nuclear Fuels Plc (BNFL) launched a new daughter-company 
called the British Nuclear Group. The Business is intended to 
apply for lucrative decommissioning contracts at different kinds 
of British nuclear sites. 

2004-05-06 11:45

In April next year the British Government intends to establish a 
new Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) in the United Kingdom 
(UK). The body will provide overall management and direction for 
clean up at nuclear sites in the UK. More than 40 nuclear 
reactors have been in operation in the UK, and it is the future 
decommissioning and clean-up work at these sites the NDA will be 
in charge of. 

The NDA is not intended carrying out the clean-up work itself. 
Instead it will place contracts on different site licensees. By 
establishing the British Nuclear Group, BNFL is positioning 
itself to apply for some of these future clean-up contracts. 

More than fifty years of British nuclear programme has left 
behind vast amounts of contaminated buildings, and radioactive 
waste. Now the mess has to be cleaned up. The cost of the nuclear 
legacy is currently estimated at some £ 48 billion in total. This 
figure represents the best estimates based on current knowledge 
and technology. In practice however, there are uncertainties 
about what needs to be done to deal with particular installations 
or waste. Initial estimates put the NDA’s operating cost in the 
range of £25-30 million per year. 

The clean-up programme is expected to take more than 100 years to 
complete, 
  
Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] , President: 
Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no] Information: info@bellona.no 
[info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no 
[webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 
38 38 62  * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway Menu 
*****************************************************************
 32 Evening Times: Clyde base may be chosen for nuclear dump 

A SCOTS submarine base just 25 miles from Glasgow has emerged as 
a front runner in the search for a nuclear dump site. Defence 
chiefs today start deciding where to dump old nuclear reactors 
from the UK's submarine fleet. 

And it has been confirmed that an influential report lists 
Coulport, near Helensburgh, as one of five favoured options. 

Millions of pounds have been spent in recent years developing 
Coulport, which is used as the country's main nuclear armaments 
depot, and there have been major roadworks to improve access. 

Today's report by researchers at Lancaster University outlines 50 
issues for Ministry of Defence officials to consider. By 2040 all 
27 of the current UK nuclear-powered submarines will be out of 
service. 

Apart from Coulport, other possible Scots sites are the 
decommissioned nuclear reactor at Dounreay and, possibly more 
likely, the Rosyth naval base, where rusting nuclear submarines 
are already stored. 

An earlier proposal involving Ardyne Point at Dunoon has been 
withdrawn. 

South of the border, Sellafield and Devonport are the two 
shortlisted locations. 

The proposed sites are all on the coast as the reactor 
compartments are so big they cannot be moved further inland. Each 
weighs 750 tonnes and is the size of two double-decker buses. 

Lancaster researchers carried out a public consultation exercise 
at all five of the shortlisted locations. 

They held public meetings, set up a citizens' panel, and chaired 
workshops with community representatives. 

Internet users were urged to log on to the university's dedicated 
website and take part on online discussion forums. 

The MoD will now study the report and a final decision is due in 
2006. 

There are 11 nuclear submarine hulls stored afloat in the UK, 
seven at Rosyth and four at Plymouth. 

Weekly safety inspections are carried out on the submarine hulls, 
where they are checked for leaks, corrosion and other defects. 

SNP defence spokesman Angus Robertson said: "Scotland has always 
been a nuclear dump for repeated Westminster Governments. 

"Not only do we have more weapons of mass destruction per head 
than any other country in the world, we now appear to be the 
front runner to house dangerous waste. 

"Scotland's future should be as a non-nuclear country." 

But Lord Bach, Minister for Defence Procurement said: "Every 
measure will be taken to guarantee that the storage of waste is 
safe, and they don't pose any risk to local communities and the 
environment. 

"Nobody should be alarmed about this project; it's not about 
dumping nuclear waste." 
*****************************************************************
 33 Las Vegas SUN: NRC undecided on cask tests
 
By Suzanne Struglinski <suzanne@lasvegassun.com 
[suzanne@lasvegassun.com] > SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU

 WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still
deciding what type of tests it will perform on casks that are
intended to be used to ship nuclear waste to Nevada.

 In February, the commission staff asked the commissioners to
evaluate four options combining different train and truck cask
tests. The staff had combed through 2,300 public comments on the
tests and narrowed them down to several categories.

 Larry Camper, the commission's deputy director of the spent
fuel project office, said the staff is waiting for the
commissioners to tell them which tests they prefer so they can
start finalizing details on the tests, including who will pay
for them. The projected cost of the test options ranges from $32
million to $47 million through 2009.

 A decision on the casks is expected in the next few months.

 In February 2003, the commission decided to perform new cask
tests and offered a report outlining a fire and impact test for
casks used to ship nuclear waste via train and truck. The
commission felt new tests would demonstrate the strength of the
casks, which would be used to hold nuclear waste as it travels
from points throughout the country to the Yucca Mountain nuclear
waste storage site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

 The commission staff accepted public comment for 90 days and
conducted four workshops last year to hear about specific
suggestions regarding the testing. The staff collected 1,000
pages of transcripts and 250 comment letters, according to the
commission.

 Michael Mayfield, from NRC's Office of Research, told the
National Academy of Sciences Board on Radioactive Waste
Management Wednesday that the commission does not believe
"testing to failure," that is, finding the cask's breaking
point, is needed.

 Mayfield also said the tests would not involve the potential
effects of acts of terrorism since that could be considered by
another program within the commission.

 The board has an ongoing study specifically looking at the
transportation of radioactive waste.

 Camper said once the commissioners decide which option they
prefer, the staff will start setting the protocols, working on
getting the casks to test, actually doing the tests and
analyzing the outcome -- all by 2009.

 The Energy Department wants to start shipping waste to Yucca by
2010.

 

*****************************************************************
 34 Las Vegas SUN: Rural residents resigned to Yucca route

Today: May 06, 2004 at 11:44:36 PDT 

Rail proposal presented at meeting in Caliente

 By Stephen Curran LAS VEGAS SUN

 CALIENTE -- Some saw an economic windfall for Lincoln County;
others said it opened the door for rural Nevada to become a
dumping ground for other states' nuclear waste.

 But almost all 83 residents who attended an Energy Department
and Bureau of Land Management meeting on Wednesday agreed the
proposed railroad corridor to Yucca Mountain is going to happen.

 The open house-style meeting at the Caliente Youth Center, the
third of its kind sponsored by the two agencies, was designed to
give residents information about the project and get their
opinions.

 The proposed corridor would move 77,000 tons of high-level
nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las
Vegas. If the railroad line is built, most of the waste would go
through Lincoln County, home to about 4,000 residents.

 But few who attended, including retired North Las Vegas police
officer and Pioche resident Ronald Kozak, changed their minds.

 For Kozak, who has lived in Pioche for 12 years, the proposed
319-mile railroad to carry high-level nuclear waste to Yucca
Mountain is not even worth arguing about anymore. Now, he said,
"it's just a matter of working out the details."

 Kozak said he first heard about the proposed nuclear waste dump
at Yucca Mountain more than 15 years ago while working in the
Las Vegas Valley. Even then he saw it as an inevitability, he
said.

 "I think Lincoln County at this point should take advantage of
the economic opportunities (that will come as a result)," Kozak
said. "As far as I can see, it's coming."

 But where Kozak saw economic opportunity, Hiko rancher Rocky
Hatch saw possible financial ruin, as the proposed railroad
would wind through the BLM-owned land where he runs some of his
herd. Wednesday's meeting was his first contact with Energy
Department officials, he said.

 Hatch first learned the railroad would run through his ranch
about two months ago, he said.

 "It goes right through my range," said Hatch, who has permits
to run cattle on thousands of acres of BLM land. "I'm wondering
if it's going to put me out of business. They (Energy Department
officials) never contacted me."

 Losing the land would be especially hard for Hatch, who with
his father, Roger Hatch, has ranched the land since he was a boy.

 "I don't see how it's going to be so good for the county," the
younger Hatch said. "They say it's (going to help) economically,
but it won't help me."

 Retired Las Vegas teacher Leslie Derkovitz, a relative newcomer
to Lincoln County having moved there two years ago, said he had
resigned himself to accepting what he called a "flawed" project.

 Attending the meeting did little to change his views, he said.

 "My opinions were about what they were when I got here,"
Derkovitz said. "I wonder why they try the show and tell. If
someone's doing the right thing they wouldn't need this."

 Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson rejected the sense
that the rail line is inevitable, saying that calling it such
before the environmental study is complete is premature.

 "Right now nothing exists," Benson said. "We use (comments) to
determine, 'will we or will we not build the railroad?' People
want to know, 'how will this affect me?' We're just listening to
people's feelings. They're being honest."

 The department has issued a decision that says it plans to ship
most of the waste by rail and plans to use the rail line through
Caliente. The department is now in the process of holding public
meetings and will then do an environmental study.

 The Energy Department has estimated the cost of building and
maintaining the rail line from Caliente to Yucca Mountain as
$880 million. The department says the rail line would take
nearly four years to build.

 Bob Halstead, the state's transportation consultant on Yucca
Mountain issues, estimates the total costs of the rail line at
$2.6 billion.

 Lea Rasura-Alfano, coordinator for the Lincoln County Nuclear
Oversight Program, described local opinion as "50-50" for an
against the project, adding that it is her job to field
complaints from ranchers and residents.

 Caliente Mayor Kevin Phillips, a long-time proponent of the
rail line, underscored his position at the meeting, saying that
"in the end this will occur."

 Las Vegas investor Beth Mundo, whose parents live in Caliente,
is already planning for the economic benefits, attending the
meeting only to scope out possible land purchases.

 "I think it's a done deal," Mundo said. "I think the whole area
will see a lot from it." 
               Questions or problems? Click here.
*****************************************************************
 35 RGJ: Caliente gets Yucca visit from Energy Department
 
 [http://www.rgj.com/]

Thursday | May 6, 2004

Reno Gazette-Journal] 
     
ASSOCIATED PRESS

CALIENTE — The Energy Department made a whistle-stop in this tiny 
railroad town Wednesday, outlining plans to build a rail line 
across Nevada to haul the nation’s most radioactive waste to a 
planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

“I don’t like the idea of it, but it’s going to happen, I think,” 
Mike Steele, 65, said.

“Let’s get from it what we can,” the retired Air Force traffic 
controller and Las Vegas school maintenance worker said.

Caliente, 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas, is on a main 
transcontinental Union Pacific Railroad line. The Energy 
Department is considering a site about 10 miles outside town for 
a rail head and switching center for nuclear waste being hauled 
from 39 other states.

The Energy Department hasn’t made public its planned routes for 
getting waste to Nevada but announced last month it wants to 
build the $880 million rail line from Caliente to Yucca Mountain, 
the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas where it intends to bury 
77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel.

The route, dubbed the Caliente corridor, would wind north, 
avoiding Las Vegas and skirting the Nellis Air Force Base bombing 
range and Nevada Test Site.

Energy Department spokes-man Allen Benson said the community 
meeting was called to share information about the proposal with 
Caliente’s 1,058 residents and to set the format for 
environmental studies. Similar meetings are being held around the 
state, but opposition doesn’t run as deep in Caliente as it does 
elsewhere.

“This is going to happen,” Mayor Kevin Phillips said. “It’s 
bigger than Caliente, Lincoln County and the state of Nevada.”

Phillips knows state officials oppose Yucca Mountain and said the 
issue has split his community. But in 11 years as mayor, 
Phillips, 53, said he’s seen young families move away after 
nearby mines closed and the railroad automated.

The jobs the rail line could bring outweighs the risks of an 
accident involving radioactivity, he said.

“I grew up here. All our fathers worked in the mines or for the 
railroad,” Phillips said. “If you’re going to have a 319-mile 
rail line, you have to have a place to maintain it. We do that. 
We’ve done it for more than 100 years. Why not take a 
constructive approach to this?”

Marjorie Detraz, 77, said she thinks Phillips and the City 
Council are selling Caliente a dangerous future.

As a youngster, she watched mushroom clouds from atmospheric 
nuclear weapons tests west of town, and said she can’t bear the 
idea of another generation fearing radioactive fallout.

“They said it’s safe, that they won’t have any accidents,” she 
said.

“They have accidents all the time,” she said. “They don’t care 
about the people out here. It’s all for the money.”

The Bureau of Land Management will participate in five DOE 
sponsored public meetings scheduled in May, including one 
Wednesday in Reno.

 

What: BLM -Department of energy open house on Yucca Mountain 
railways

When: 4 to 8 p.m., May 12

Where: University of Nevada, Reno, Lawlor Events Center, 15th
and Virginia streets, Reno

Contact: (775) 289-1842 	

© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett 
*****************************************************************
 36 The State: Senate kills Barnwell waste deal
 
 05/06/2
 
Lawmakers nix House plan to sell extra space at site, putting
more strain on budget

 The Associated Press

During debate on the states $5.3 billion budget Wednesday, 
senators killed a deal to accept more low-level nuclear waste at 
a Barnwell facility and argued over the need for money and the 
desire to cut taxes. 

Two months ago, the House passed a plan to allow Chem-Nuclear 
Systems Inc., which operates the low-level nuclear waste site, to 
pay the state $6 million to get an additional 100,000 cubic feet 
in storage capacity. 

That space was needed for waste by DuraTek, Chem-Nuclears 
parent, Chem-Nuclear spokeswoman Deborah Ogilvie said. DuraTek 
wanted to divert processed waste destined for a site in a Western 
state to Barnwell, Ogilvie said. 

But Sens. David Thomas, R-Greenville, and Scott Richardson, 
R-Beaufort, said the state was selling the space too cheaply. 
While Chem-Nuclear would pay $6 million, the space is worth at 
least $25 million, Thomas said. The company could resell the 
space and put the rest of it in their pockets. 

Ogilvie said that was not the intention. She said the state 
needed the money and her company needed the space. 

Senate Finance Committee chairman Hugh Leatherman said the loss 
of Barnwell money has been the biggest hole so far put in his 
committees $5.3 billion spending plan. 

But theres a growing hole people arent willing to talk about, 
Richardson said. Legislators are closing their eyes to nearly 
$600 million in IOUs accumulating after four years of raiding 
trust and reserve accounts and a $155 million unpaid bill from an 
unconstitutional state deficit in the 2002 budget year, 
Richardson said. 

Now the state is in a precarious position, with no reserves to 
cover cleanups at the Barnwell nuclear waste facility, employee 
health insurance or major lawsuit settlements against the state, 
Richardson said. 

People are hiding from the fact that we need more revenue, 
Richardson said. 

But tax increases are unlikely in an election year. Efforts to 
raise the states cigarette tax died Tuesday and Wednesday after 
they were ruled out of order. Also failing Wednesday was a 
proposal to raise the states sales tax cap on cars costing more 
than $37,000 to $500 from $300.   

TheStateOnline
*****************************************************************
 37 Sun News: Nuclear waste deal dies in Senate

| 05/06/2004 | 

Expansion killed in budget debate

 By Jim Davenport

 The Associated Press

COLUMBIA - Debate on the state's $5.3 billion budget was a study 
in extremes Thursday, as senators killed a deal to take more 
low-level nuclear waste at a Barnwell facility and argued over 
the need for money and the desire to cut taxes. 

Two months ago, the House passed a plan to allow Chem-Nuclear 
Systems Inc., which operates the low-level nuclear waste site, to 
pay the state $6 million to get an additional 100,000 cubic feet 
in storage capacity. 

That space was needed for waste by DuraTek, Chem-Nuclear's 
parent, Chem-Nuclear spokeswoman Deborah Ogilvie said. DuraTek 
wanted to divert processed waste destined for a site in the 
western region to Barnwell, Ogilvie said. 

But Sens. David Thomas, R-Fountain Inn, and Scott Richardson, 
R-Hilton Head Island, said the state was selling the space too 
cheaply. While Chem-Nuclear would pay $6 million, the space is 
worth at least $25 million, Thomas said. The company could resell 
the space "and put the rest of it in their pockets." 

If the state was going to be in that kind of a deal, it at least 
should profit from it, Thomas said. 

Ogilvie said that was not the intention. She said the state 
needed the money and her company needed the space. 

Gov. Mark Sanford "was not wild about the idea of bringing in 
more waste because the state is having tough budget times," 
Sanford spokesman Will Folks said. "It could lead to reopening 
Barnwell capacity to other waste," Folks said. 

The proposal was killed after Sen. John Courson, R-Columbia, said 
it would allow more waste to come into the state as it tries to 
shake the moniker of being the nation's nuclear dumping ground. 
"This would be absolutely a step backward," Courson said. 

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hugh Leatherman said the loss 
of Barnwell money has been the biggest hole so far put in his 
panel's $5.3 billion spending plan. 

But there's a growing hole people aren't willing to talk about, 
Richardson said. Legislators are closing their eyes to nearly 
$600 million in IOUs accumulating after four years of raiding 
trust and reserve accounts and a $155 million unpaid bill from an 
unconstitutional state deficit in the 2002 budget year, 
Richardson said. 

By raiding trust funds, "all we've done is hide the financial 
condition of this state," Richardson said. 

But tax increases are unlikely in an election year. Efforts to 
raise the state's cigarette tax died Tuesday and Wednesday after 
they were ruled out of order. Also failing Wednesday was a 
proposal to raise the state's sales tax cap on cars costing more 
than $37,000 to $500 from $300.   

*****************************************************************
 38 Charleston.Net: Bill to raise funds through landfill waste dies 
in Senate 

05/06/04
 
BY CLAY BARBOUR 
Of The Post and Courier Staff 

COLUMBIA--The S.C. Senate axed a plan Wednesday that could have 
brought $6 million to state coffers.

 The proposal, a part of the budget passed by the S.C. House of 
Representatives, would have allowed an additional 100,000 cubic 
feet of nuclear waste at the Barnwell County landfill.

 Senators killed the bill, leaving a relatively small hole in the 
budget passed out of the Senate Finance Committee last month.

 It was the first substantive change senators made to the state's 
$16.7 billion budget, $5.3 billion of which is state-controlled 
money.

 "We are still very close to a balanced budget," said Finance 
Committee Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence. "We will have one 
before we are through."

 Leatherman said he was confident senators would find money to 
take the place of the Barnwell funds.

 "I was just not willing to open that facility up to more waste," 
Leatherman said. "My desire would be to see us move toward 
closing it down."

 Last month, the Senate Finance Committee approved a budget that 
would give state employees an across-the-board 3 percent raise, 
fully funds the state Conservation Bank, increase the budget of 
the state Department of Natural Resources and avoid cutting the 
budget of the Department of Corrections.

 Wednesday marked the second day of muted debate in the Senate, a 
departure from last year's three-week battle.

 A budget crunch during an election year seems to have made for a 
less contentious debate.

 Still, senators have clashed over a few proposals, including an 
attempt to float a nonbinding referendum in November.

 The measure, proposed by Sen. David Thomas, R-Greenville, would 
have asked voters whether they support increasing the state's 
sales tax by 2 cents and using that money to reduce or eliminate 
property taxes.

 Thomas has fought unsuccessfully all session for passage of a 
similar measure.

 Critics of the proposal warn that such a plan would cripple 
local municipalities, costing them as much as $800 million over 
the next 10 years.

 Supporters of property tax reform, such as Sen. Bill Branton, 
R-Summerville, and Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Bonneau, said such a 
referendum could give senators a mandate for change next year.

 But Grooms warned: "I don't want to us to get into the habit of 
passing nonbinding referendums. Once you get started, they get 
out of hand."

 The measure was carried over and is expected to be addressed 
during the session today.

 Earlier Wednesday, Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Hilton Head Island, 
unsuccessfully attempted to increase money in state trust funds.

 He said legislators have raided trust accounts to balance the 
budget, in the process ignoring about $600 million the state 
essentially owes itself.

 "All we've done is hide the financial condition of this state," 
Richardson said.

 He said the state is in a dangerous situation, one that will 
have no remedy should an emergency occur.

 Leatherman said the measure would force the state to make up 
about $90 million.

 The measure died.

Clay Barbour covers the Statehouse. Contact him at (803) 799-9051 
or cbarbour@postandcourier.com.         
	 	   	   		
Copyright © 2004, The Post and Courier, All Rights Reserved.
webmaster@postandcourier.com [webmaster@postandcourier.com]                     
*****************************************************************
 39 WIStv: Columbia, SC: Federal bill would allow radioactive waste 
to remain at SRS
  
May 6, 2004       

(Washington-AP) May 6, 2004 - A US Senate committee is 
considering a bill that could allow the government to avoid 
removing highly radioactive sludge from the Savannah River Site 
near Aiken. 

The Energy Department wants to reclassify some of the 90 million 
gallons of radioactive waste in tanks at the Savannah River Site 
and in Idaho and Washington state. That would mean it would not 
have to be shipped to a special high-level waste repository. 

The Energy Department says the residual sludge is too expensive 
to extract. The government says it can be diluted by covering it 
with grout so it can be left in place as less radioactive "low 
level" waste. 

Last year, a federal judge in Idaho said the Energy Department 
plan violates federal law requiring that waste from the 
production of plutonium must be treated as high-level waste. 

posted 7:37am by  [crees@wistv.com]   

   [http://www.worldnow.com]     All content © Copyright 2000 - 
2004 WorldNow and WISTV. All Rights Reserved. For more 
*****************************************************************
 40 KRNV: Nevada claims NRC too cozy with DOE on Yucca Mountain plan

  LAS VEGAS, NV, May 6

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission official is discounting claims 
that the agency is too cozy with the Energy Department to 
objectively review a license application for the Yucca Mountain 
project. 

William Reamer says the NRC has been told by Congress to make it 
clear what it expects in a license application the Energy 
Department plans to submit in December. 

At a meeting in Las Vegas, an official with the Nevada state 
Agency for Nuclear Projects cited a recent NRC report about 
shortcomings in preparations for the license application. He says 
it seems like nuclear regulators were trying to help the Energy 
Department fine-tune the application. 

A lawyer for the state says he's got an uneasy feeling about the 
relationship between the NRC and the DOE. But Reamer calls Yucca 
Mountain "a unique situation." 

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)   

   [http://www.worldnow.com]     All content © Copyright 2001 -
2004 WorldNow and KRNV. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 41 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Nuclear waste changes sought at Hanford and other sites
 	 	 	 	 	 
[seattlepi.com]     


Thursday, May 6, 2004 

 New proposal would allow Energy Dept. to skip cleanup of the
most lethal material 

By CHARLES POPE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

WASHINGTON -- A South Carolina senator, working in concert with 
senior Energy Department officials, has quietly proposed changing 
federal law to allow lethal waste at the Hanford Nuclear 
Reservation and other nuclear weapons plants to remain in 
underground tanks rather than being removed and sent to a more 
secure disposal site. 

The proposal from Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., is included in the 
defense authorization bill. It was heavily shaped -- if not 
written -- by the Energy Department. Jill Lea Sigal, a deputy 
assistant energy secretary, is listed as "author" on the document 
Graham's office submitted with the legislative language. 

The Energy Department did not return several phone calls seeking 
comment on the policy and Sigal's involvement. The department has 
actively been pursuing the change since 2002, saying that it 
needs the power to reclassify waste to accelerate cleanup and 
direct money to deal with the most dangerous waste. Each time, 
however, either Congress or the courts have blocked the 
department, including a federal court ruling last year that 
prohibited the Energy Department from reclassifying waste. 

What the department is trying to do now through legislation 
amounts to the same thing, critics say. 

Whoever wrote the provision, all sides agree it would have 
profound effects on future cleanup at the Energy Department's 
highly contaminated weapons plants. An aide to Graham said his 
measure would accelerate cleanup by removing ambiguity about 
which waste needs to be removed. The Energy Department has argued 
that it should be allowed to leave some residual waste in the 
tanks because the cost of removing it would far outweigh the 
benefits. Cement would be added to the sludge to stabilize it and 
prevent it from leeching into water tables. At Hanford, that 
could leave more than 35 million gallons of highly radioactive 
sludge and salt cake in the ground. 

"Removal of the 'heel' in the tanks is technically difficult, 
very costly, and poses unnecessary risks to worker safety," 
Graham explains in a summary of his proposal. "Removing the last 
1 percent of waste is nearly as expensive as removing the first 
95 percent." 

Critics argue that the change would allow the Energy Department 
alone to define "clean" and would leave states little power to 
challenge the department's decision. 

"It is an enormous change. It turns the Nuclear Waste Policy Act 
on its head," said attorney Geoffrey Fettus, referring to the 
1982 law that dictates how nuclear materials are handled and 
disposed. Fettus, a staff attorney with the Natural Resources 
Defense Council, successfully sued the department last year to 
block the policy. 

"It totally subverts the nuclear waste policy act by essentially 
allowing DOE to exempt itself ... DOE is essentially rewriting 
the law that they had broken. If that is a minor change then it 
would be a minor change to split the state of Washington into two 
states," he said. 



    
    

Graham's approach would potentially allow millions of gallons of 
sludge-like radioactive waste to be reclassified as less 
dangerous low-level waste. 

The Hanford nuclear weapons complex is among the most 
contaminated places on Earth, with large amounts of radioactive, 
chemical and mixed waste that were byproducts of 50 years of 
nuclear weapons production. Cleanup costs are estimated at more 
than $50 billion. 

The Energy Department has been struggling for decades to make 
progress and in 2002 it changed gears, proposing to make cleanup 
both faster and cheaper by leaving some of the waste behind. The 
danger, critics say, is that giving the department the authority 
to reclassify waste would allow it to declare a site fully 
cleaned without removing some of the most dangerous waste. 
Washington state has opposed the change in court and in Congress. 

"Trying to rename high-level nuclear waste doesn't change the 
fact that it is still a dangerous, toxic, radioactive sludge that 
needs to be cleaned up," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. "The 
DOE is just trying to circumvent what the courts have already 
decided, which is that they can't reclassify it and the DOE needs 
to clean it up." 

Cantwell and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote a letter yesterday 
to the committee's chairman, John Warner, R-Va., and ranking 
Democrat, Carl Levin of Michigan, expressing their alarm and 
asking that the provision be stripped from the bill. 

"This amendment would give the Bush administration unilateral 
authority to redefine what constitutes 'cleaned up,' " the letter 
said. "We oppose this language because it would significantly 
alter the way in which DOE is allowed to define 'high-level 
radioactive waste,' and would minimize the role of regulators in 
overseeing decisions regarding this waste's disposal. In short, 
this language would give the administration the authority to turn 
the corroding, underground storage tanks at Hanford -- and 
elsewhere within the DOE complex -- into permanent repositories 
for an indeterminate amount of DOE's nuclear waste inventory. We 
believe this is unacceptable." 

Fettus agreed that the effect on Hanford could be profound. 

"Not only could waste at Hanford be left in tanks, it could be 
the recipient of waste from other facilities," he said. "Hanford 
has a long history of worst-case scenarios being visited upon 
it," Fettus said. "This provision will allow DOE to leave the 
most highly radioactive portion of the most radioactive waste on 
the site beneath a layer of grout." 

Opponents will try to strip the language out of the defense bill 
today when the Senate Armed Services Committee meets. An aide to 
Graham acknowledged the unexpected opposition and said his 
proposal might be changed to limit it to only the Energy 
Department's facility in South Carolina. Contact P-I Washington 
correspondent Charles Pope at 202-263-6461 or 
charliepope@seattlepi.com                 



    HEADLINES       
  
Nuclear waste changes sought at Hanford and other sites Dwindling 
snowpack threatens water supplies, forests Friends and colleagues 
pay tribute to dead Tacoma officer Report warns of threats to 
birds of Washington Talk-radio host Dave Ross pondering Congress 
bid; awaits poll results Parents confront board over water safety 
in Seattle schools Victim's 'world collided' with street gangs in 
White Center shooting Federal help for viaduct sought Three Mount 
Vernon teen girls face charges in assault at dance Metro Transit 
employee charged in bus fatality Seattle health care ranks best 
of a rather poor lot Wildfire risks call for a plan, 
congressional panel is told Even at increased prices, wild salmon 
has become all the rage Spokane teenager's torment is part of 
plea in 'suicide by cop' case Auburn City Council passes 
dangerous-dog law Death of woman found on Squak Mountain is a 
mystery to authorities Tacoma officer accused of sex crimes is 
released Renton man suspected in death of 11-week-old son King 
County Deaths   

  [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 
98119 (206) 448-8000
 Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com [newmedia@seattlepi.com] 
©1996-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Terms of Service/Privacy 
*****************************************************************
 42 Tri-City Herald: Legislators attempt to block bill OK'ing waste redefinition 

This story was published Thursday, May 6th, 2004 

By Les Blumenthal Herald Washington, D.C., bureau 

WASHINGTON -- Washington state's senators sought Wednesday to 
block legislation that would allow the Department of Energy to 
rewrite the definition of high-level nuclear waste and allow 
thousands of gallons of radioactive materials to remain in old 
underground tanks at Hanford and elsewhere. 

Under the legislation, DOE could be allowed to determine how much 
of the waste could remain in the bottom of the tanks, where it 
likely would be mixed with grout rather than removed as 
high-level waste for treatment and disposal. 

Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray urged the Senate 
Armed Services Committee to reject language inserted in the 
Defense Authorization Bill that would allow the department to 
reclassify high-level nuclear waste currently stored at Hanford, 
the Savannah River site in South Carolina and at the Idaho 
National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. 

"In short, this language would give the administration the 
authority to turn corroding, underground storage tanks at Hanford 
into permanent repositories for an indeterminate amount of DOE's 
nuclear waste inventory," the senators said in a letter to the 
chairman and ranking Democrat of the committee. "We believe this 
is unacceptable." 

The department has sought a legislative fix since a federal judge 
in Boise, ruled last summer that DOE's decision to unilaterally 
reclassify the waste as "incidental" violated the Nuclear Waste 
Policy Act. The department also has appealed that decision. 

In an effort to convince Washington, Idaho and South Carolina to 
accept the changes, the department has threatened to withhold 
$350 million in cleanup money. Hanford would lose more than $60 
million if the state doesn't allow DOE authority to redefine 
high-level waste. 

All three states have engaged in negotiations with the 
department, though the talks involving Washington and Idaho have, 
for now, broken off. Washington has opposed any effort to allow 
DOE to reclassify Hanford waste without state regulation. 

Top DOE officials have said if the issue isn't resolved, the cost 
of cleaning up the sites could jump by $50 billion, and it could 
take 10 years to remove the last of the waste and exhume the 
tanks. 

Senate aides said the department helped write the language 
inserted in the Defense Authorization Bill at the request of Sen. 
Lindsay Graham, R-S.C. 

Graham's office said the language only applies to the Savannah 
River site, but Murray and Cantwell aides said that may not be 
the case. Even if it were, they said, it would set a precedent 
that could affect Hanford. 

"We believe that legislation allowing these exemptions would 
inappropriately sidestep the judicial process as an appeal of 
this case is pending," the senators said in their letter. 

"Moreover, the intent of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is clear: 
DOE must clean up its nuclear sites completely while protecting 
public health, including water supplies such as the Columbia 
River in Washington state." 

© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 43 Tri-City Herald: Vit plant cost estimates increase
 
This story was published Thursday, May 6th, 2004 

By Annette Cary Herald staff writer 

The annual preliminary cost estimate for building and testing 
Hanford's vitrification plant is $60 million more than estimated 
a year ago. 

The higher estimate will eat into the cushion budgeted for the 
project for unforeseen costs, but remains below the $5.78 billion 
approved by the Department of Energy for the project. The latest 
preliminary estimate is $5.692 billion. 

The expected increase amounts to less than 1 percent of the 
project's cost. 

However, it would shrink the remaining money for contingency 
expenses to about $88 million with nearly seven years left until 
the project is scheduled to be done. Building started in July 
2002 on what's now the nation's largest federal construction 
project. 

On 65 acres in the center of Hanford a massive plant is being 
built by contractor Bechtel National to turn 53 million gallons 
of waste from the production of plutonium into a more stable form 
for permanent disposal. Now the waste is stored in 177 
underground tanks, many of which have leaked. 

Most of the waste will be vitrified, or immobilized, in glass 
that should remain stable as the waste's radioactivity dissipates 
over hundreds or thousands of years. 

In the annual "estimate at completion" exercise, officials 
attempt to project materials, labor and other costs based on the 
project's evolving design. This year's final estimate should be 
ready by July or August. 

Construction started on the project while the engineering design 
is being done. The plant, which includes more than a dozen 
buildings, is about 25 percent complete and the design is about 
55 percent complete. 

Some of the estimated price increases have come from the 
difficulty of estimating costs before designs have been completed 
and the exact quantity of material, such as piping, is known. In 
addition, the cost of some materials, including the steel needed 
in the plant, has increased. 

Any delay in work also increases project costs. Just the overhead 
costs for the project -- which includes rental of cranes and 
other equipment, management salaries, utilities and renting 
office space -- eats up about $15 million a month. 

"Now we are not behind schedule," said Jim Betts, Bechtel's 
project manager. 

But one of the project's most challenging design elements may 
cause some schedules to slip part way through construction, even 
though the project would still be completed on time, he said. 

The project includes rooms, or black cells, that no human ever 
will enter after radioactive waste begins to be pumped into the 
tanks they hold. Because no maintenance can be done, pulse jet 
mixers with no moving parts have been designed to keep the liquid 
waste mixed. 

They use air-driven pumps to keep the waste at the correct blend 
for treatment and also prevent the buildup of flammable hydrogen 
gas caused by the breakdown of organic materials in the waste. 

"It's critical to get the design right," Betts said. 

The difficulty is in seven of the 41 tanks in which waste must be 
continually mixed, the waste is more like a gelatin than a 
liquid. Using air-driven pumps to keep them mixed is something 
like blowing into a straw to keep ketchup mixed, Betts said. 

"We absolutely have a solution that works, but we're trying to 
optimize the design for ease of operation down the road," said 
John Eschenberg, project manager for the vitrification plant for 
DOE's Office of River Protection. 

Design issues also have caused some delays at the largest of the 
three major treatment buildings at the vitrification plant. Work 
on the Pretreatment Facility is meeting a federal schedule but 
has dropped behind target dates set by Bechtel to make sure the 
deadlines easily are met. 

Wednesday, the walls of a canyon the length of two football 
fields down the center of the building echoed with the clank of 
metal tools on iron and steel and the buzz of power tools. 

Along each side of the canyon are the black cells that will be 
too radioactive for people to enter after processing starts. 

Once completed, the cells will hold tanks and "a maze of 
spaghetti" piping, Betts said. One cell will hold almost 11 miles 
of pipe, most of it 1 inch and 2 inches in diameter. 

Engineers are working on the design for the piping in each cell 
and the order in which pipes should be added to the maze and 
welds made and tested. 

When completed, the building will have a footprint the size of 
four football fields and stand 119 feet tall. Now the canyon 
through the center of the building is about 38 feet high. 

The target schedule for placing the concrete floors and walls in 
the second largest building, the High Level Waste Vitrification 
Facility, also has slipped about eight weeks. But Bechtel plans 
to make up five weeks by midsummer by increased overtime and 
adding 100 to 150 workers to the 200 workers now working a second 
shift. 

Now, most of the 1,200 people working construction on the plant 
are carpenters, laborers for concrete work and iron workers. 
However, the project is starting to use more pipe-fitters and 
electricians. 

While Hanford officials have been preparing the annual projected 
cost report for the vitrification plant, the Army Corps of 
Engineers also has been working on a review of plant costs. 

Congress requested the assessment after the estimated cost of the 
plant approved by DOE increased $1.4 billion to the current $5.78 
billion over a three-year period. That report, with a budgeted 
cost of $1.5 million, is expected to be delivered to Congress on 
Friday. 

© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 44 AP Wire: South Carolina research center to become 13th national laboratory

| 05/06/2004 | 

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Energy Department will designate its Savannah 
River Technology Center in South Carolina as its 13th national 
research laboratory, department and congressional sources said 
Thursday. 

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham plans to make the announcement 
during a visit to the facility near Aiken, S.C., on Friday. 

The center, created in the 1950s as a research facility for 
producing plutonium and tritium for nuclear warheads, more 
recently has focused on a wide range of applied research from 
environmental remediating, hydrogen energy technology to 
counterintelligence and security systems and robotics. 

The designation as a national laboratory will increase the 
facility's prestige and allow its scientists more easily to team 
up with scientists at other national laboratories in research 
projects, officials said. 

The research center is part of the Energy Department's broader 
Savannah River Site, a key part of the government nuclear weapons 
complex, located along the Savannah River that separates South 
Carolina and Georgia.   


*****************************************************************
 45 U.S. Newswire: Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to Make 
Announcement Concerning Savannah River Technical Center
 
 5/5/2004 1:45:00 PM 

To: Assignment Desk and Daybook Editor 

Contact: Christina Kielich, 202-586-5806, James Guisti, 
803-952-7684, both of the U.S. Department of Energy 

News Advisory: 

U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, joined by South Carolina 
Gov. Mark Sanford, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Rep. Gresham Barrett 
and Max Burns, will make an announcement concerning the future of 
the Savannah River Technical Center on Friday, May 7 at 1:30 p.m. 

WHEN: Friday, May 7 at 1:30 p.m. 

WHERE: Savannah River Technical Center -- Savannah River Site; 
Aiken, South Carolina 

Media wishing to cover this event are required to contact James 
Guisti of the Savannah River Site's Public Affairs office at 
803-952-7684 to gain access to the Savannah River Technical 
Center complex. 



 [http://www.usnewswire.com/] 

*****************************************************************
 46 Austin Chronicle: UT's Eyes on Los Alamos

HOME: MAY 7, 2004: NEWS: NAKED CITY

 BY FORREST WILDER 

State Rep. Lon Burnam of Fort Worth speaks out against UT's bid 
for control of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
   
Is the UT System learning to love the bomb? In February, the UT 
Board of Regents announced a possible bid for management of New 
Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory, best known as the 
birthplace of the A-bomb and more recently for a litany of 
security mishaps, production of new nuclear bombs, and research 
into low-yield "mini-nukes." 

For over 60 years the University of California System has managed 
Los Alamos under an arrangement with what is now the U.S. 
Department of Energy. But provoked by what he calls "systemic 
management failure" at Los Alamos that he blames on UC, Secretary 
of Energy Spencer Abraham decided last year to open Los Alamos to 
competitive bidding. Other universities and private defense 
companies can smell blood, and many UT leaders believe the 
university is particularly well positioned to win management of 
Los Alamos, though system officials stress they still do not know 
if they will actually submit a bid. The UT regents have 
authorized spending up to $500,000 "for planning related to a 
potential bid for the Los Alamos contract." By November, they 
will announce whether UT will pursue the bid. The DOE will 
announce the winning bid in late spring 2005. According to UT, 
the entire process could cost up to $6 million. 

UT System Chancellor Mark Yudof has hinted in public statements 
that UT may partner with defense companies to enhance the bid, 
but system officials also note that DOE has yet to indicate what 
criteria it will be using to evaluate contenders. Beyond that, 
details of the proposal have been too few and far between for the 
liking of some students and faculty, as well as state Rep. Lon 
Burnam, D-Fort Worth. "We're calling for some sort of open 
dialogue so dissenting opinion is built into the bidding 
process," said Colin Leyden, Burnam's legislative director. "The 
UC System is polling their faculty on Los Alamos. They are also 
sponsoring a Web site where debate and white papers are posted. 
We haven't seen that happen with the UT System." After meeting 
with UT Regents Chairman Charles Miller, Burnam said that Miller 
was amenable to a more open process. 

The Los Alamos bid does enjoy some support on UT's flagship 
campus from students and faculty who point both to the financial 
rewards to the system – like the $9 million in annual management 
fees now going to California – and the opportunities Los Alamos 
could provide for faculty and graduate student researchers. In an 
editorial in The Daily Texan, outgoing UT Student Government 
President Brian Haley opined that "Through a strategic 
partnership with Los Alamos, the UT System would be able to 
increase its leadership [and bring] enormous prestige to our 
faculty and researchers." 

But opponents of a partnership – particularly members of the 
activist group UT Watch (with which this reporter has worked in 
the past) – argue that, far from bringing prestige to UT, 
management could pose a tremendous liability for the university. 
They cite damning reports from whistle-blowers and watchdog 
groups that Los Alamos has failed to deal with security problems 
and is vulnerable to both internal lapses and outside terrorist 
threats. In the past, they point out, UC has been held 
responsible for security issues that may be impossible for any 
university to resolve. 

Critics also lament the threat to academic freedom Los Alamos 
poses. "Forty percent of Los Alamos' research is classified. This 
seriously undermines the university's main objective to provide 
open research and learning," said Dominique Cambou, a UT-Austin 
physics student and member of a coalition leading opposition to 
Los Alamos. "I feel that the cost and the risk of UT's management 
of Los Alamos vastly outweigh any small benefits to the 
university." 


MORE FROM MAY 7, 2004:
                                                                                                                                
Copyright © 1995-2004 Austin Chronicle Corp. All rights
*****************************************************************
 47 PRN: After Criticism, U.S. Energy Dept. Opts to Keep Idaho 
Nuclear Lab Security In-House 

> [http://www.prnewswire.com/]            [ /]           

"http://www.EyeOnWackenhut.com">

Wackenhut Was Expected to Obtain Subcontract Worth Up to $100 
Million Over 5 Years

    WASHINGTON, May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- After criticism from 
Members of Congress over the bidding process, the U.S. Department 
of Energy (DOE) changed course last Tuesday April 27, and 
announced it would not contract out security services at the 
Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.  The 
lab, near Idaho Falls, Idaho, houses three nuclear reactors.

    In February, the DOE announced it had awarded a no-bid 
contract worth $40 million a year to provide security and other 
services at the Idaho nuclear lab to Alutiiq, LLC, an Alaskan 
corporation with no prior nuclear security experience.  Alutiiq 
was expected to sub-contract the security work to the Wackenhut 
Corporation, the nation's largest supplier of private guards to 
U.S. nuclear facilities.  Wackenhut could have earned as much as 
$100 million over five years under the arrangement.

    The change in plans by DOE came after public criticisms by 
members of the Idaho congressional delegation who felt 
contracting out security was a flawed approach to such a vital 
component of the lab's operation and future.  The lawmakers have 
demanded that the security provider be selected through a 
competitive and public process.

    Federal contracting rules allow Alaskan native-run 
corporations such as Alutiiq to obtain no-bid contracts of 
unlimited size from the federal government.

    The controversial contracting decision at the Idaho lab puts 
a spotlight on the arrangement between Wackenhut and Alutiiq.  
Wackenhut's relationship with Alutiiq has enabled the 
Florida-based security firm to obtain lucrative government 
contracts without going through normal bidding processes. 
Recently, Wackenhut obtained a 49 percent share of Alutiiq's 
contract to provide security at the Ft. Bragg military base in 
North Carolina.

    Since 2001, security problems at nuclear sites guarded by 
Wackenhut have been cited in at least six separate reports issued 
by the DOE Inspector General.

    In March, Wackenhut was found to have cut back on training 
for its guards at four DOE nuclear sites, and in January it was 
revealed that Wackenhut personnel cheated on security drills 
designed to repel a terrorist attack at the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons 
Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

    In April there were calls for hearings in two different 
Congressional committees on Wackenhut's security record at 
nuclear sites, and Wackenhut officials were called to a 
closed-door hearing of the House Energy Subcommittee on Oversight 
and Investigations in March about problems at the Oak Ridge site.

    "Based on this company's record at nuclear sites across the 
country, the Energy Department should conduct a review of 
security at all the nuclear facilities guarded by Wackenhut," 
said Stephen Lerner, Director of the Building Services Division 
of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nation's 
largest union of private security officers.

    Wackenhut has overseen security lapses and tolerated lax 
security measures at multiple nuclear power plants and nuclear 
weapons facilities throughout the U.S., according to a report 
released in April by SEIU.  The report, titled "Homeland 
Insecurity: How the Wackenhut Corporation Is Compromising 
America's Nuclear Security," is available online at

http://www.EyeOnWackenhut.com [http://www.EyeOnWackenhut.com] .

 SOURCE SEIU Web Site: http://www.seiu.org [http://www.seiu.org] 
http://www.EyeOnWackenhut.com [http://www.EyeOnWackenhut.com] 

[http://www.prnewswire.com/media/]    	     
*****************************************************************
 48 Google News Alert - nuclear
 
Date: Thu, 06 May 2004 12:28:42 -0700 (PDT)

 
AFTER Criticism, US Energy Dept. Opts to Keep Idaho Nuclear Lab ... 
PR Newswire (press release) - USA
The lab, near Idaho Falls, Idaho, houses three nuclear reactors. In February,
the DOE announced it had awarded a no-bid contract ...
<http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/05-06-2004/0002168969&EDATE=>

AREVA to Supply Fuel to TVA's Sequoyah Nuclear Power Plants
Yahoo News (press release) - USA
... Valley Authority (TVA) has awarded AREVA's joint subsidiary with Siemens,
Framatome ANP Inc., a contract extension to supply additional nuclear
fuel reloads ...
<http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040506/clth004_1.html>

BNFL launches nuclear clean-up business
Bellona - UK
British Nuclear Fuels Plc (BNFL) launched a new daughter-company called
the British Nuclear Group. The Business is intended to apply ...
<http://www.bellona.no/en/energy/nuclear/sellafield/33726.html>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.bellona.no/en/energy/nuclear/sellafield/33726.html>

NUCLEAR terror threat for EU - Greens
Politics.ie - Ireland
Rolf Ekeus, the former head of the UN weapons' inspectors in Iraq, has
warned that Europe could be a prime target for Nuclear terrorists because
extremists ...
<http://www.politics.ie/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4853>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.politics.ie/modules.php%3Fname%3DNews%26file%3Darticle%26sid%3D4853>

IRAN pursues nuclear fuel, US says
Kansas City Star (subscription) - Kansas City,MO,USA
WASHINGTON — US intelligence has determined that Iran plans to continue
to develop a full nuclear fuel cycle despite pressure from the Bush administration
...
<http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/8598785.htm>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/8598785.htm>

NUCLEAR waste changes sought
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Seattle,WA,USA
... in concert with senior Energy Department officials, has quietly proposed
changing federal law to allow lethal waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation
and ...
<http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/172158_doe06.html>
See all stories on this topic:
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MILITARY simulates nuclear attack on Brussels
EUobserver.com - Belgium
... this week by staff from the European military and their US counterparts
has revealed the extent of destruction that would be caused by a nuclear
bomb in ...
<http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=15500>
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CALL to end nuclear subs storage
BBC News - London,England,UK
The Ministry of Defence is being urged to find a new site for the storage
of the radioactive parts of Britain's decommissioned nuclear submarines.
...
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/3688067.stm>
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CODDLING the Nuclear Weapons Complex
Arms Control Today - USA
At the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), it is as if the
Cold War never ended. Despite the reduced likelihood of ...
<http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_05/Paine.asp>
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NZ opposition silent on pledge to end nuclear ship ban
Radio Australia - Australia
... opposition National Party, Don Brash, has refused to confirm that he
told United States officials he would get rid of New Zealand's ban on
nuclear ships if his ...
<http://www.abc.net.au/ra/newstories/RANewsStories_1102810.htm>
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