***************************************************************** 06/27/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.152 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 FT: Intelligence backs claim Iraq tried to buy uranium 2 FT: Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war' 3 AFP: Iran's new parliament to push for renewed uranium enrichment - 4 AFP: Iran dismisses yet more nuclear criticism as 'not very importan 5 Las Vegas SUN: Germany Criticizes Iran Nuke Announcement 6 AFP: Iran, Europeans to hold talks this week on nuclear issue 7 BBC: UN concern at Iran nuclear move 8 CNEWS - World: Iran may resume building uranium centrifuges 9 AFP: Iran says making a park, denies US claim that concealing nuclea 10 Xinhuanet: Iran says to fully cooperate with IAEA 11 ITAR-TASS: Pyongyang denies accusations of nuclear cooperation with 12 AFP: Rumsfeld rebukes Iran over nuclear program, terrorism links 13 AFP: UN nuclear chief urges Iran to reverse nuclear move 14 Mehr News Agency: To West's Illegal Demands = MP 15 Mehr News Agency: Resume Uranium Enrichment: MP 16 AFP: UN nuclear agency chief praises US for North Korea offer 17 Las Vegas SUN: Talks on N. Korea Nukes End 18 Guardian Unlimited: Next N. Korean Nuke Talks Set for Sept. 19 JoongAng Daily: Nuclear talks conclude with modest advances 20 Interfax: IAEA head says N. Korea must re-sign Nonproliferation Trea 21 Pravda.RU North Korea: No nuclear freeze without US compensation 22 Xinhuanet: Russia hails results of six-party talks 23 Xinhuanet: Goal of denuclearization irreversible - Chinese diplomat 24 Japan Times: North Korea's likely arsenal 25 AFP: US negotiator Kelly arrives in Japan after North Korea nuclear 26 KoreaTimes : Six Nations to Resime Nuke Talks in September 27 ITAR-TASS: Russia favours stage-by-stage movement to nuke-free Korea 28 ITAR-TASS: N Korea talks short of mutual confidence -- China delegat 29 Pravda.RU: Moscow does not deny Pyongyang right to develop 30 US: Las Vegas SUN: Ex-Georgia senator rallies Nevada veterans to 31 US: Las Vegas SUN: Door opens to new nuclear future 32 US: asahi.com: VOX POPULI, VOX DEI/Einstein tells us the real purpos 33 STUFF: Syria says UN nuclear inspectors welcome 34 Interfax: IAEA head arrives in Moscow 35 BBC: UN asks Israel to go nuclear-free 36 AFP: UN nuclear chief says Israel should "clarify" its atomic progra 37 IAEA: IAEA Work Commended at Non-Proliferation Conference 38 ITAR-TASS: Putin points to great chances of nuclear innovative techn 39 IAEA: From Obninsk Beyond: Nuclear Power Conference Looks to Future NUCLEAR REACTORS 40 US: Berkshire Eagle: Groups press for answers on Yankee Rowe plans 41 US: Brattleboro Reformer: NRC to explain review to Vt. board 42 AFP: UN atomic agency holds conference on nuclear energy, continues 43 BBC: UN predicts rapid nuclear growth 44 AFP: Putin calls for greater international cooperation in nuclear 45 US: San Luis Obispo Tribune: State fights new NRC rules 46 US: JOURNAL NEWS: Indian Point sirens alarm critics 47 IAEA: In Focus: Nuclear Energy - The Changing Future of Nuclear Powe 48 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Coalition names four new trustees 49 UK Independent: Nuclear power 'can't stop climate change' 50 Channel news asia: UN agency touts peaceful use of nuclear energy 51 Scotsman.com News: Nuclear energy is embraced by Asia 52 Reuters: Despite fears, nuclear power industry growing -UN 53 ITAR-TASS: Nuclear power plants produce about 16% of overall energy 54 US: SouthofBoston.com: Mississippi nuke leads to Plymouth 55 AU ABC: More nuclear energy needed to raise living standards NUCLEAR SAFETY 56 US: [FOODIRRADIATIONCA] Senate Health Comm. hearing on AB 1988 on 57 US: [DU-WATCH] Navy calls for DU weapons proposals 58 US: [RADFOOD] Child Nutrition Victory!! 59 Guardian Unlimited: Butler inquiry targets Niger uranium claim 60 US: SF Chronicle: Plutonium fuel sparked controversy over safety 61 US: WIStv.com Columbia, SC: DHEC distributes pills in case of nuclea 62 US: Scoop: US DU More Deadly Than Gas 63 US: Corvallis Gazette-Times: Incinerator nearly ready to begin destr 64 US: Cape Cod Times: Unfriendly fire NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 65 US: Guardian Unlimited: Ohio Threatens Lawsuit to Stop Nuke Waste 66 Las Vegas RJ: LETTER: Surreal spin on Yucca 67 Las Vegas RJ: House energy bill sets low mark for Yucca funding 68 Interfax: Russia backs proposal for intl nuclear waste storage cente 69 BBC: Radioactive dump forced 70 Las Vegas SUN: Bush plays us for state full of fools 71 Las Vegas SUN: Columnist Jon Ralston: State GOP is inept on Yucca 72 Las Vegas SUN: Letter: 10th Amendment precludes dump 73 chillicothe gazette: $289 million for Piketon enrichment plant in bi 74 RGJ: House cuts funding for Yucca Mountain 75 US: Bradenton Herald: Tallevast homeowners told hook-ups are free 76 Nevada Appeal: House OKs $131 million for Yucca 77 ITAR-TASS: IAEA head to discuss spent nuke fuel center in Russia 78 PR: Berkley Introduces Bill For On-Site Storage of Nuclear Waste 79 KLAS: House Votes to Limit DOE Funding for Yucca 80 PR: Berkley Leads Effort To Keep House Yucca Funding at Record Low NUCLEAR WEAPONS 81 Taipei Times: Taiwan standing firm on opposition to nuclear weapons 82 US: American Daily: The Wigwam That Kept Nobody Safe - Tom Segel 83 US: Bellona: US Senator Ted Kennedy slams Bush on non-proliferation 84 SF Chronicle: Fear returns to Russia / Peanut butter and sushi give US DEPT. OF ENERGY 85 L.A. Daily News: Congress OKs more work at Santa Susana laboratory 86 Tri-City Herald: House approves Hanford cleanup money 87 NMBW: New Mexico Tech, Los Alamos lab to share resources - 88 Charleston.Net: Opinion: Editorials Proceed with SRS tank cleanup 89 Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio would sue over Fernald 90 Columbian Opinion - In Our View: Dare We Ask? OTHER NUCLEAR 91 Google News Alert - nuclear 92 Google News Alert - nuclear ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 FT: Intelligence backs claim Iraq tried to buy uranium By Mark Huband in Rome Published: June 27 2004 21:56 | Last Updated: June 27 2004 Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the US-led invasion, senior European intelligence officials have told the Financial Times. Intelligence officers learned between 1999 and 2001 that uranium smugglers planned to sell illicitly mined Nigerien uranium ore, or refined ore called yellow cake, to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq. These claims support the assertion made in the British government dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme in September 2002 that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from an African country, confirmed later as Niger. George W. Bush, US president, referred to the issue in his State of the Union address in January 2003. The claim that the illicit export of uranium was under discussion was widely dismissed when letters referring to the sales - apparently sent by a Nigerien official to a senior official in Saddam Hussein's regime - were proved by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be forgeries. This embarrassed the US and led the administration to reverse its earlier claim. But European intelligence officials have for the first time confirmed that information provided by human intelligence sources during an operation mounted in Europe and Africa produced sufficient evidence for them to believe that Niger was the centre of a clandestine international trade in uranium. Officials said the fake documents, which emerged in October 2002 and have been traced to an Italian with a record for extortion and deception, added little to the picture gathered from human intelligence and were only given weight by the Bush administration. According to a senior counter-proliferation official, meetings between Niger officials and would-be buyers from the five countries were held in several European countries, including Italy. Intelligence officers were convinced that the uranium would be smuggled from abandoned mines in Niger, thereby circumventing official export controls. "The sources were trustworthy. There were several sources, and they were reliable sources," an official involved in the European intelligence gathering operation said. The UK government used the details in its Iraq weapons dossier, which it used to justify war with Iraq after concluding that it corresponded with other information it possessed, including evidence gathered by GCHQ, the UK eavesdropping centre, of a visit to Niger by an Iraqi official. However, the European investigation suggested that it was the smugglers who were actively looking for markets, though it was unclear how far the deals had progressed and whether deliveries of uranium were made. xref Niger uranium trade, Page 8 © Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2004. "FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times. Privacy ***************************************************************** 2 FT: Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war' By Mark Huband Published: June 27 2004 21:56 | Last Updated: June 27 2004 When thieves stole a steel watch and two bottles of perfume from Niger's embassy on Via Antonio Baiamonti in Rome at the end of December 2000, they left behind many questions about their intentions. The identity of the thieves has not been established. But one theory is that they planned to steal headed notepaper and official stamps that would allow the forging of documents for the illicit sale of uranium from Niger's vast mines. The break-in is one of the murkier elements surrounding the claim - made by the US and UK governments in the lead-up to the Iraq war - that Iraq sought to buy uranium illicitly from Niger. The British government has said repeatedly it stands by intelligence it gathered and used in its controversial September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes. It still claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger. But the US intelligence community, officials and politicians, are publicly sceptical, and the public differences between the two allies on the issue have obscured the evidence that lies behind the UK claim. Until now, the only evidence of Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger had turned out to be a forgery. In October 2002, documents were handed to the US embassy in Rome that appeared to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials. When the US State Department later passed the documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, they were found to be fake. US officials have subsequently distanced themselves from the entire notion that Iraq was seeking buy uranium from Niger. However, European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq. These intelligence officials now say the forged documents appear to have been part of a "scam", and the actual intelligence showing discussion of uranium supply has been ignored. The fake documents were handed to an Italian journalist working for the Italian magazine Panorama by a businessman in October 2002. According to a senior official with detailed knowledge of the case, this businessman had been dismissed from the Italian armed forces for dishonourable conduct 25 years earlier. The journalist - Elisabetta Burba - reported in a Panorama article that she suspected the documents were forgeries and handed them to officials at the US embassy in Rome. The businessman, referred to by a pseudonym in the Panorama article, had previously tried to sell the documents to several intelligence services, according to a western intelligence officer. It was later established that he had a record of extortion and deception and had been convicted by a Rome court in 1985 and later arrested at least twice. The suspected forger's real name is known to the FT, but cannot be used because of legal constraints. He did not return telephone calls yesterday, and is understood to be planning to reveal selected aspects of his story to a US television channel. The FT has now learnt that three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq. This intelligence provided clues about plans by Libya and Iran to develop their undeclared nuclear programmes. Niger officials were also discussing sales to North Korea and China of uranium ore or the "yellow cake" refined from it: the raw materials that can be progressively enriched to make nuclear bombs. The raw intelligence on the negotiations included indications that Libya was investing in Niger's uranium industry to prop it up at a time when demand had fallen, and that sales to Iraq were just a part of the clandestine export plan. These secret exports would allow countries with undeclared nuclear programmes to build up uranium stockpiles. One nuclear counter-proliferation expert told the FT: "If I am going to make a bomb, I am not going to use the uranium that I have declared. I am going to use what I acquire clandestinely, if I am going to keep the programme hidden." This may have been the method being used by Libya before it agreed last December to abandon its secret nuclear programme. According to the IAEA, there are 2,600 tonnes of refined uranium ore - "yellow cake" - in Libya. However, less than 1,500 tonnes of it is accounted for in Niger records, even though Niger was Libya's main supplier. Information gathered in 1999-2001 suggested that the uranium sold illicitly would be extracted from mines in Niger that had been abandoned as uneconomic by the two French-owned mining companies - Cominak and Somair, both of which are owned by the mining giant Cogema - operating in Niger. "Mines can be abandoned by Cogema when they become unproductive. This doesn't mean that people near the mines can't keep on extracting," a senior European counter-proliferation official said. He added that there was no evidence the companies were aware of the plans for illicit mining. When the intelligence gathered in 1999-2001 was thrown into the diplomatic maelstrom that preceded the US-led invasion of Iraq, it took on new significance. Several services contributed to the picture. The Italians, looking for corroboration but lacking the global reach of the CIA or the UK intelligence service MI6, passed information to the US in 2001 and to the UK in 2002. The UK eavesdropping centre GCHQ had intercepted communications suggesting Iraq was seeking clandestine uranium supplies, as had the French intelligence service. The Italian intelligence was not incorporated in detail into the assessments of the CIA, which seeks to use such information only when it is gathered from its own sources rather than as a result of liaison with foreign intelligence services. But five months after receiving it, the US sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to assess the credibility of separate US intelligence information that suggested Iraq had approached Niger. Mr Wilson was critical of the Bush administration's use of secret intelligence, and has since charged that the White House sought to intimidate him by leaking the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent. But Mr Wilson also stated in his account of the visit that Mohamed Sayeed al-Sahaf, Iraq's former information minister, was identified to him by a Niger official as having sought to discuss trade with Niger. As Niger's other main export is goats, some intelligence officials have surmised uranium was what Mr Sahaf was referring to. © Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2004. "FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times. Privacy ***************************************************************** 3 AFP: Iran's new parliament to push for renewed uranium enrichment - conservatives TEHRAN (AFP) Jun 27, 2004 A senior member of Iran's conservative-held parliament said Sunday the assembly would push for the Islamic republic to resume the enrichment of uranium in defiance of international demands. "We will definitely support the resumption of uranium enrichment and we will oblige the government to do so," the new head of the Majlis national security and foreign affairs commission, Alaeddin Borujerdi, told the student news agency ISNA. The official accused Iran's previous parliament, dominated by reformists but ousted in February's disputed elections, of bowing too easily to Western demands over Iran's nuclear programme. "Fortunately, with the political change in parliament things have changed. Be aware that the seventh parliament will be different from the sixth," he asserted. Iran agreed last October to halt the highly sensitive activity of enriching uranium -- used for both making nuclear fuel for reactors and bombs depending on the level of purity -- following international pressure for it to come clean on its suspect nuclear activities. The suspension was one of several "confidence-building" measures to which Iran agreed pending the completion of an ongoing IAEA probe, even though enriching uranium is permitted under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). However many hardliners here have demanded Iran end the suspension, accusing the IAEA of bowing to pressure from the United States -- which accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons -- by dragging out its probe and slapping the Islamic republic with constant criticism. New MPs have also threatened not to ratify Iran's signature of an additional protocol to the NPT that allows tougher UN inspections. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 4 AFP: Iran dismisses yet more nuclear criticism as 'not very important' TEHRAN (AFP) Jun 27, 2004 Iran on Sunday shrugged off yet more international criticism over its nuclear programme, refusing to bow to demands it reconsider resuming the production of centrifuges for the highly sensitive process of enriching uranium. "Nothing very important has happened," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters, trying to play down fresh alarm over an atomic energy programme which the United States sees as a cover for weapons development. The United States and the European Union Saturday called on Iran to go back on its decision to resume the construction of centrifuges, announced by Tehran in retaliation for fresh criticism from the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A halt on centrifuge work had been one of several "confidence-building" measures to which Iran agreed pending the completion of an IAEA probe. But Asefi insisted that while Iran would go ahead with making centrifuges as of June 29, it was still sticking to its pledge to suspend the enrichment of uranium. And officials also announced that Iran and the EU's "big three" - Britain, France and Germany -- would be holding new talks this week. "We had agreed with the three Europeans to have cooperation with Iran. We said in the Tehran declaration that we would suspend enrichment, and we will stick to this," Asefi said, referring to a deal made last October. Asefi and Hassan Rowhani -- Iran's top national security official and nuclear negotiator -- said more talks with the Europeans would take place in the coming days. Iran's Al-Alam television said they would begin on Tuesday at the experts level before moving on to meetings at the ministerial level. But on centrifuge construction, Rowhani and Asefi gave no sign that Iran would back down. The latest "bitterness" shown by the EU and United States was "not very important", the former said. And Asefi said Iran's defiant position was merely a response to a failure by the EU three to meet their side of another deal in which they had pledged to help remove the Iran dossier from the top of the IAEA agenda. Instead, the three had this month sponsored a resolution that sharply criticised the level of Iranian cooperation. Diplomats, however, gave a completely different account of what the two sides had agreed upon, saying London, Paris and Berlin had set clear conditions. These were that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had to be satisfied by Iran's level of cooperation, and there needed to be no new revelations uncovered by IAEA inspectors -- neither of which has been met. Despite this, Asefi claimed it was the "Europeans who did not meet their side of the agreement". He even said this was "shocking" for the Islamic republic, blaming familiar arch-enemy the United States. "The United States is making a psychological war against Iran. We cannot forget that the US went to war againt Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction but has not found any," he said. "We will not give up our right to peaceful nuclear technology," he added. Uranium enriched to various degrees is used both for power generation and nuclear weapons. Enrichment is permitted under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but the IAEA -- the body that overseas the pact -- insists Iran can only resume such work once a full probe is complete. But Asefi said that component building would only be carried out under IAEA supervision. "If we had any different intentions we would not have written a very transparent letter announcing our intention," he insisted. "Our policy with the IAEA has not changed. What has changed is our obligations to the EU. The coming and going of inspectors is routine and we welcome it," Asefi said. Rowhani also again sought to allay fear THAT Iran could follow the example of North Korea and pull out of the NPT. He told the new conservative-held parliament that the regime "had decided to respect the NPT, the safeguards clause and the additional protocol" allowing tougher inspections. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 5 Las Vegas SUN: Germany Criticizes Iran Nuke Announcement June 25, 2004 ASSOCIATED PRESS BERLIN (AP) - Germany criticized Iranian plans to resume building parts for centrifuges used in the uranium enrichment process, saying Friday it would coordinate its next steps with France and Britain. On Thursday, a senior U.S. official said Tehran had sent a diplomatic note to France, Germany and Britain saying it would resume the work, backing off an earlier promise. The centrifuges are used to make the enriched uranium that can be used as nuclear reactor fuel or in making bombs. "We are disappointed about the announcement that they would resume production, for which there was no reason from our perspective," the German Foreign Ministry said. Officials would not comment on the note that John Bolton, the U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control, said was sent to Berlin, Paris and London. The United States accuses Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, while Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed only at producing energy. The International Atomic Energy Agency this month rebuked Iran in a European-drafted resolution for not cooperating enough in the investigation into its nuclear program. Hasan Rowhani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, has said the three European nations promised to work toward closing Iran's nuclear dossier by June if Iran stopped making centrifuges. Iran stopped building centrifuges in April and accused Europeans of reneging on their promise. It has said it is no longer committed to its promise. -- ***************************************************************** 6 AFP: Iran, Europeans to hold talks this week on nuclear issue TEHRAN (AFP) Jun 27, 2004 Iran and the big-three European Union states are to hold new talks this week in the wake of Iran's decision to resume making parts for centifuges used to enrich uranium, officials said Sunday. Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said the talks with Britain, France and Germany -- which last year brokered Iran's cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog -- would take place "in the coming days". "The Islamic republic will have discussions with the Europeans this week." top national security official and nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA. "We are ready for dialogue and we accept the invitation from the three Europeans," he was also quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA. Iranian television said the talks would begin on Tuesday at the experts level, and then move on to meetings at the ministerial level. Details on the content or aim of the discussions were not given. The United States and the European Union Saturday called on Iran to go back on its decision to resume the construction of centrifuges, announced by Tehran in retaliation to a critical resolution passed this month at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A halt on centrifuge work had been one of several "confidence-building" measures Iran agreed to while the UN nuclear watchdog investigated allegations the country is seekign to develop nuclear weapons. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 7 BBC: UN concern at Iran nuclear move Last Updated: Saturday, 26 June, 2004 [Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant] Iran opened up to inspections after international pressure The UN's nuclear chief has joined Washington and the EU in urging Iran not to resume production of centrifuge parts used in uranium enrichment. "I hope Iran will go back to full suspension," International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed El-Baradei said en route to Moscow. On Tuesday Iran told the IAEA in a letter that it intends to resume centrifuge activities. Iran is permitted to make centrifuges for peaceful nuclear energy. Broken promises But centrifuges can also be used to purify uranium to make it usable as fuel for weapons. Tehran had promised Germany, France and Britain in February it would discontinue making the centrifuges. "It does not involve the enrichment of material, nonetheless I think it would be good for Iran to go back [to a suspension]," Mr El-Baradei said. The US and European Union on Saturday called on Iran to "rethink its decision". The BBC's Bethany Bell in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, says Tehran's move is being seen in western circles as a setback, amid suspicions that it is trying to develop a nuclear weapons programme. Generating electricity Last week, Tehran reacted angrily after the IAEA passed a resolution which "deplored" the fact that "Iran's co-operation has not been as full, timely and proactive as it should have been". The IAEA expressed serious concern that important information about Iran's P2 centrifuges, which can be used to produce bomb-grade uranium, had been incomplete and unclear. Senior figures in the Iranian government say Iran is no longer bound by its commitments to the three EU nations, because, as they see it, the countries broke a pledge to help wrap up the IAEA investigation - an inquiry now set to continue for a few months at least. Tehran rejects US allegations that its nuclear programme is being used to make weapons and says it is solely for generating electricity. ***************************************************************** 8 CNEWS - World: Iran may resume building uranium centrifuges June 27, 2004 By ALI AKBAR DAREINI © 2004, CANOE, a division of Netgraphe Inc. All ***************************************************************** 9 AFP: Iran says making a park, denies US claim that concealing nuclear site TEHRAN (AFP) Jun 27, 2004 Iran confirmed Sunday it had razed a site in a suburb of Tehran, but insisted it was to make a park and not to cover up nuclear weapons activities as the United States has alleged. "The municipality wanted to make a park, but there was a dispute with the defence ministry," top national security official Hassan Rowhani was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA. "The land belonged to the municipality" and the building was demolished, Rowhani insisted, adding that "we have nothing to hide." Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi also asserted that civilian officials were merely taking land back from the military -- which has established bases in much of the capital, including on some of its most valuable real estate. But on June 17, the United States accused Iran of razing nuclear sites to hide banned nuclear activity. "It's deplorable but not surprising that Iran's deception has gone to the extent of bulldozing entire sites to prevent the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) from discovering evidence of its nuclear weapons program," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. "I can't give you any independent information, but commercial satellite photography shows the complete dismantling and the razing of a facility at Lavizan Shiyan," he said. His comments came after ABC television published two photographs, apparently of the site, taken by commercial satellites about 12 months ago and in March 2004, showing the buildings were gone and the top soil replaced. Iranian officials dismissed the allegations, and said inspectors from the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, were welcome to visit. "The United States is making a psychological war against Iran. We cannot forget that the US went to war against Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction but has not found any," Asefi said. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 10 Xinhuanet: Iran says to fully cooperate with IAEA www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2004-06-27 21:19:43 TEHRAN, June 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran on Sunday stressed that it would continue full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in order to prove the "strictly peaceful" nature of its nuclear program, the official IRNA news agency reported. "The IAEA can continue its inspections; we will also fully cooperate with the agency since we know that such cooperation will benefit the Islamic Republic," Hassan Rowhani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, was quoted as saying. "The inspections will prove that the Islamic Republic's activities are strictly peaceful," Rowhani said, expressing his confidence that Iran's nuclear file "will inevitably be withdrawn from the IAEA agenda sooner or later." He also reiterated Tehran's commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Earlier in the day, he announced that Iran was ready to hold comprehensive negotiations with representatives of France, Germany and Britain in Tehran this week. Rowhani, however, insisted on the country's decision to resume manufacture and assembly of centrifuge components from next Tuesday. Rowhani posed the repeated rationalization by claiming that the three European countries failed to fulfill their commitments. Meanwhile, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi echoed Rowhani when he announced that Iran would resume centrifuges building on Tuesday but was to keep the suspension of uranium enrichment. "Our policy regarding the IAEA has not changed ... what has caused a change is the Europeans' failure to fulfill their pledges," Asefi said. Asefi stressed that Iran would resume the construction and assembly of centrifuge parts under the IAEA regulations and the supervision of the agency as well as the three European countries. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 11 ITAR-TASS: Pyongyang denies accusations of nuclear cooperation with Iran [ITAR-TASS News Agency of Russia] 26.06.2004, 18.23 PYONGYANG, June 26 (Itar-Tass) - Pyongyang has refuted some Japanese media reports that North Korea in engaged in nuclear cooperation with Iran. A commentary which the North Korean Central News Agency published on Saturday also denies reports by a Japanese newspaper that a delegation of Iranian scientists is staying in North Korea with an aim to carry out joint tests of detonators for nuclear bombs. The agency said that North Korea didn’t have any nuclear cooperation agreements with Iran and accused the newspaper of an attempt to slander on North Korea and spoil its international image. It also criticized the newspaper for appeasing to Washington’s hostile policy towards Pyongyang. The North Korean Central News Agency claims that the United States has prepared the media report on joint tests of detonators with an aim to increase international pressure on North Korea and disrupt a peaceful settlement of the nuclear crisis in the Korean peninsula. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 12 AFP: Rumsfeld rebukes Iran over nuclear program, terrorism links LONDON (AFP) Jun 27, 2004 US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Sunday rounded on Iran for its decision to resume work towards uranium enrichment and for "spreading terrorism" in the Middle East. "You have a country that is ruled by a handful of clerics, that is repressing the Iranian people, that is causing harm in Afghanistan, causing harm in Iraq and is actively working with Hezbollah and Syria to spread terrorism down through Lebanon to Israel," he told BBC television from Istanbul where he will attend a NATO summit this week. "It is a government that has been not telling the truth about its role in nuclear development. "It is a country that has been harbouring senior Al-Qaeda leadership for some time. "Most recently, we have seen them resisting the UN processes that they have previously seemed to have agreed to, but obviously are not adhering to." Tehran said Sunday it would resume construction of centrifuges for uranium enrichment but continue to suspend enrichment itself, a key step in making what can be bomb-grade uranium. The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), passed a resolution on June 18 rebuking Tehran for failing to come clean about its nuclear program. A halt on centrifuge work had been one of several "confidence-building" measures to which Iran agreed pending the completion of an IAEA probe. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 13 AFP: UN nuclear chief urges Iran to reverse nuclear move MOSCOW (AFP) Jun 27, 2004 UN atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei on Sunday urged Iran to abandon a decision to resume work towards uranium enrichment as a week-long conference on peaceful uses of nuclear power opened in Moscow. "I hope that Iran will go back to a comprehensive suspension as they have committed to us before. I would hope that this is not a major reversal," he told reporters after meeting Russian atomic energy agency chief Alexander Rumyantsev. Tehran said Sunday it would resume construction of centrifuges for uranium enrichment but continue to suspend enrichment itself, a key step in making what can be bomb-grade uranium. Iran had said in a letter to ElBaradei, as well as Britain, France and Germany, last week that it would resume the "manufacturing of centrifuge components and assembly and testing of centrifuges as of June 29," next Tuesday, according to a copy of the letter obtained by AFP. Iran claims the so-called Euro-3 broke an agreement made in February to have the IAEA close in June its investigation of Iran's nuclear program, in return for the suspension of all enrichment-related activities. This suspension was part of confidence-building measures which Iran has been urged to take while the IAEA investigates US charges that the Islamic Republic is secretly developing nuclear weapons. The 35-nation board of the IAEA passed a resolution on June 18 rebuking Tehran for failing to come clean about its nuclear program, deploring the level of Iranian cooperation and calling for the 15-month-old investigation into Iran's nuclear activities to be wrapped up within a few months. ElBaradei later opened an IAEA nuclear power conference commemorating a half-century since the Obninsk power reactor (120 kilometres/70 miles south of Moscow) became the world's first to produce electricity for a national grid. It also marks the 50th anniversary of the UN General Assembly resolution calling for international cooperation in developing the peaceful uses for nuclear energy. "The factors that will shape the future of nuclear power are relatively evident and we should take action...to enhance the prospects that nuclear energy remains a viable source of safe, secure and environmentally benign energy," ElBaradei said. In particular, he mentioned the need to improve technology to keep reactors safe. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will meet ElBaradei Monday, praised nuclear power as an engine of economic growth in a message to the conference. "Today, atomic energy is an expanding sector which actively promotes social and economic development in many states," Putin said according to a statement released by the Kremlin. Nuclear expert Alan McDonald told reporters at IAEA headquarters in Vienna last week that atomic energy definitely had a future, despite concerns brought on by the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents in the United States in 1979 and and in Ukraine in 1986. Environmentalists condemn the use of nuclear energy for power, citing the danger of radiation from accidents and the problems of disposing of highly radioactive spent fuel. But nuclear power use is growing in Asia while it continues to play a role in Western power supplies. Another theme at the conference will be nuclear terrorism. The United States had at IAEA headquarters in Vienna in May unveiled a 450-million-dollar plan to try to prevent nuclear materials stored around the world from falling into the hands of terrorists who could use them to make a "dirty" bomb or even a full-fledged atomic device. The US plan includes working with Russia "to repatriate all Russian-origin fresh HEU (highly enriched uranium) (nuclear) fuel by the end" of 2005, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham had told the IAEA in May. Daniil Kobyakov, from the PIR think tank in Moscow, told AFP: "Nuclear terrorism is a great concern here, and there is also concern about nuclear materials in Russia itself." Russia has been under US pressure to halt construction of Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor until the IAEA is fully satisfied that Tehran is not hiding its potential nuclear weapons ambition, or using the project to develop an atomic bomb. Russia has vowed however to maintain the Bushehr project. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 14 Mehr News Agency: To West's Illegal Demands = MP Tehran:12:01,2004/06/28 TEHRAN, June 26 (MNA) –- Majlis Presiding Board member Hamid-Reza Hajbaba’i said here Wednesday that Iran should not pay attention to the illegal demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Europe in clearing up misunderstandings regarding Iranian civil nuclear activities. Hajbaba’i added that if Europe and the IAEA continue their illegal demands, the Majlis will definitely adopt a firmer diplomatic position, Mehr News Agency reported. The MP noted that Europe’s fraudulent stance towards the IAEA Board of Governors’ recent meeting indicates that the European Union big three (Germany, France, and Britain) ignored their commitments toward Iran, favoring the U.S. for their own interests. He added that the distrust begotten by the EU’s attitude should not result in more diplomatic passivity from Iran toward Europe. The member of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission stated that Mohamad ElBaradei’s report on Iranian nuclear program was influenced by US-Europe political pressure. In such an unfriendly climate, Iran should focus on clearing up misunderstandings within a legal framework to prevent its nuclear dossier from becoming politicized. The Majlis must respond to recent events in line with national interests, maintaining Iranian sovereignty. The probable consequences of the Iranian response to Western pressures regarding its civil nuclear program, Hajbaba’i reasoned, would not be heavier than the price the nation paid during 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. The Islamic Republic of Iran will resist any movement that hinders Iranian progress, he added. FK/DWN/IS END MNA ***************************************************************** 15 Mehr News Agency: Resume Uranium Enrichment: MP Tehran:12:01,2004/06/28 (MNA) -- Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Chairman Ala’ddin Borujerdi said on Saturday that Iran must promptly resume uranium enrichment under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “We should resume enrichment as soon as possible because the remaining issues (between Iran and the IAEA) can be resolved though dialogue,” Borujerdi told the Mehr News Agency. Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Secretary Hasan Rowhani, Iran’s main negotiator on nuclear issues, recently sent a letter to the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Germany and to IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei announcing the end of Iran’s commitment to suspend construction of centrifuges. In the letter, Rowhani explained that according to the February Brussels meeting the European Union promised to make efforts to close Iran’s nuclear dossier at the IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna and Iran in exchange promised to suspend the construction of centrifuges; however, Iran cannot keep these promises since the EU reneged on its promise and instead cosponsored a resolution which downplayed Iran’s full cooperation with the UN nuclear agency. Pointing to Iran’s confidence-building measures, such as the implementation of the additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the presentation of a full report on its nuclear activities to the IAEA, and the voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment, Borujerdi said the EU big three (France, Britain, and Germany) either could not or did not want to observe their commitments to Tehran and so it is understandable for Iran to scrap the Tehran Declaration commitments. In a deal between Iran and the EU big three in October 2003 known as the Tehran Declaration, Iran agreed to voluntarily suspend uranium enrichment and sign the additional protocol to the NPT and the EU in response agreed to recognize Iran’s right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and to facilitate the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran. Borujerdi said that in his recent negotiations with the British ambassador to Tehran and an advisor to the French prime minister, he conveyed the position of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission to them, according to which Iran sees no reason to continue the suspension of its uranium enrichment activities in light of these countries’ acknowledgment that Iran has the inalienable right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. On the presentation of the letter, Borujerdi said, “This was the most natural and logical response by Tehran to an attempt by the EU to keep Iran’s nuclear dossier open at the Board of Governors and to the fact that it reneged on the Brussels commitments. “We expect the International Atomic Energy Agency director general to look at it (the letter) in a logical and legal way without being influenced by U.S. pressure so that Iran-IAEA cooperation can take its natural course.” MS/HG End MNA ***************************************************************** 16 AFP: UN nuclear agency chief praises US for North Korea offer MOSCOW (AFP) Jun 26, 2004 The head of the United Nations atomic agency Saturday praised the Bush adminstration's first offer to North Korea on its nuclear program as "a step in the right direction". The United States has offered to give Pyongyang aid and security guarantees and to ease its political and economic isolation in return for North Korean undertaking a step-by-step dismantling of its plutonium and uranium weapons programs. The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, said the proposal made by Washington at six-nation talks in Beijing had been reported to him as "a more generous offer" designed to "get some positive reaction from North Korea". "I think this is a step in the right direction," ElBaradei told reporters on a flight from Vienna to Moscow for a conference on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The US offer to North Korea was the first since President George W. Bush was elected in 2000. Talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions, overshadowed by rumblings in the Stalinist state about testing a bomb, ended Saturday with agreement to meet again by September and only marginal progress. ElBaradei said: "North Korea has to also understand it has to make a firm commitment to abandon any weapons program and accept full verification" of its nuclear activities. He said IAEA inspectors, who were kicked out of North Korea last year, wanted to go back and that he had put out feelers "through different channels" to himself visit North Korea. "If we go back inspections have to be comprehensive, credible inspections," ElBaradei said. That included Pyongyang signing an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that allowed IAEA experts wider access to suspected nuclear facilities at shorter notice. ElBaradei said in Washington in March that IAEA inspectors had been handicapped, before they were forced to leave North Korea, by a 1994 framework agreement that "gave us the right to do just partial inspections in the Pyongyang area without looking anywhere else". "Obviously we need a robust system whereby we can go on short notice, can do environmental sampling ... can do all it takes to make sure that we are not being cheated," ElBaradei said. North Korea withdrew from the NPT in January 2003 and expelled IAEA inspectors who were verifying the country's compliance with the treaty. North Korea and the United States have been at loggerheads since Washington accused the Stalinist state in October 2002 of having a program to enrich uranium. North Korea boasts openly of its plutonium-producing programme at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of Pyongyang, but publicly denies carrying out any uranium enrichment activities. Pyongyang has sought security guarantees and economic aid in return for denuclearization while Washington has insisted that a verifiable dismantling of the Stalinist state's nuclear program come first. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 17 Las Vegas SUN: Talks on N. Korea Nukes End June 26, 2004 By BARRY SCHWEID ASSOCIATED PRESS BEIJING (AP) - Six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions ended Saturday with envoys promising to discuss the "first steps for denuclearization" of the North before meeting again by the end of September. The United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia agreed to hold low-level discussions as soon as possible to define the North's initial moves toward disarmament, how they would be monitored and what kind of aid the country could expect in return. During the four-day talks in Beijing, North Korea offered to give up its nuclear program in exchange for fuel aid, an end to U.S. economic sanctions and removal from the American list of nations that sponsor terrorism. "We plan to not only freeze these facilities but also to dismantle them when (appropriate) conditions are created," the North said in a statement. But the negotiators may still be far apart on how much the North must do to become eligible for the fuel aid and other benefits it is seeking, including security guarantees from Washington. China canceled a closing ceremony for the meeting, and delegates issued a "chairman's statement" rather than a joint statement - signals the talks may have ended in discord. "There is still a serious lack of mutual trust among the parties," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at a news conference. He said there were still a "a number of differences and even opposing ideas." The two-page chairman's statement said "the parties agreed in principle to hold the fourth round of the six-party talks in Beijing by the end of September, 2004." It said lower-level discussions would be held "at the earliest possible date to define the scope, duration and verification as well as corresponding measures for first steps for denuclearization." Diplomats use the phrase "corresponding measures" to mean concessions to the North. Earlier Friday, the State Department had to disavow an assertion by a U.S. official that North Korea had threatened during the negotiations to test a nuclear weapon unless the United States accepted its conditions for a freeze. Two previous rounds of six-nation talks, held at a walled government guesthouse in Beijing, produced no major progress on the stated goal of North Korea's negotiating partners: a nuclear weapon-free Korean Peninsula. "There have been no breakthroughs," a senior U.S. official who declined to be named told reporters Friday. "The process is moving along, but we're not ready to declare success." But a State Department spokesman in Washington was more upbeat, saying negotiators were exchanging proposals to take back to their leaders. "The parties have been earnest in exploring the various proposals put forward," spokesman Adam Ereli said. "We expect this process to continue, following the closing of the talks." The dispute flared in late 2002 after Washington said North Korea admitted having a covert nuclear program, in violation of a 1994 agreement under which the energy-starved North received oil and other aid. The United States made an offer this week of energy and a security guarantee in exchange for scrapping the program. Japan and South Korea have offered fuel oil. North Korea said its freeze offer covers all its nuclear weapons programs and included a pledge not to make or test weapons, or to transfer them to others. That might have been a response to Washington's insistence that any settlement cover what it alleges is a covert uranium-based program as well as the North's acknowledged plutonium-based program. The North insisted some energy aid come from Washington, suggesting that other conditions might be postponed if that took place. "If the United States ... substantially participates in energy assistance, we clearly stated that we are willing to show flexibility concerning our demands on taking us off the list of terrorism sponsors and economic sanctions and blockade," the statement said. Also Saturday, Japan's Kyodo News agency reported that U.S. Defense Department officials told Japanese counterparts that North Korea may have test-launched a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan earlier in the week, ahead of the talks. Japan has not independently confirmed the information, Kyodo News said. In Washington, Pentagon officials could not immediately confirm the report. In Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that "North Korea has the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes," so long as it cooperates with the International Atomic Energy Agency and rejoins the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the news agency ITAR-Tass reported. North Korea withdrew from the treaty in January 2003. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday urged China to prevail upon the North not to test a nuclear weapon. "The Chinese are playing a very important role here," Annan said at a news conference. "And I hope they will be able to dissuade the North Koreans, if they are not bluffing, not to go in that direction." -- ***************************************************************** 18 Guardian Unlimited: Next N. Korean Nuke Talks Set for Sept. From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday June 26, 2004 4:16 AM BEIJING (AP) - Envoys to six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear dispute said Saturday they would hold a new round of talks by the end of September, and will have diplomats meet before then to discuss the ``first steps for denuclearization'' of the North. The announcement came in a statement issued at the end of four days of talks in Beijing on Washington's demand for the North to give up its nuclear weapons development. The talks involved the two Koreas, the United States, host China, Japan and Russia. ``The parties agreed in principle to hold the fourth round of the six-party talks in Beijing by the end of September, 2004,'' said the two-page statement. ``The parties authorize the working group to convene at the earliest possible date to define the scope, duration and verification as well as corresponding measures for first steps for denuclearization and ... make recommendations to the fourth round of the talks.'' ``Corresponding measures'' is the term used by diplomats to refer to aid for the North in exchange for abandoning its nuclear program. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** 19 JoongAng Daily: Nuclear talks conclude with modest advances June 28, 2004 KST 16:14 (GMT+9) BEIJING ˇŞ The administration's reaction to the conclusion of another round of talks on the North Korean nuclear issues was muted, as senior officials concentrated on the domestic turbulence triggered by the death of a Korean hostage in Iraq. The third round of six-party talks ended with the issuance of a vaguely worded statement by the chairman of the talks, Wang Yi, the vice foreign minister of China, the host for the discussions. The statement said the participants ˇŞ the two Koreas, Russia, China, Japan and the United States ˇŞ stressed the need for "first steps" toward the elimination of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula. Although the phrase "first steps" was not further defined, it is widely interpreted as referring to a freeze by North Korea of its nuclear programs. The participants said they had also agreed to convene another round of the talks by the end of September and that working-level talks would be convened "at the earliest possible date" to try to pin down the details of those first steps. North Korea has demanded compensation for a freeze; the United States wants a complete end to all North Korean nuclear programs, but reportedly offered a carefully hedged list of incentives to North Korea during the talks as an inducement to take the first step of freezing its nuclear work. In a press conference Saturday, Mr. Wang, China's delegation head, said the talks were "peaceful in atmosphere," but also said, "There is still a serious lack of mutual trust," among the parties, particularly the United States and North Korea. Echoing that sentiment, South Korea's chief delegate, Lee Soo-hyuck, said, "Specifically, the United States, South Korea and North Korea showed big discrepancies over the scope, verification method, and corresponding measures." He added, "This shows that the future of the talks does not appear smooth, and we must be prepared for serious confrontations and must make extra efforts to overcome them." Delegates from Russia and Japan agreed. Russia's chief delegate, Alexander Alexeyev, said he was "very satisfied" with the positive results even if the differences outweighed the agreed points. He predicted a "complex" set of negotiations. Japan's Mitoji Yabunaka said, "This is the first step, the beginning. From now we begin the work on concrete measures." Given that lack of mutual trust, those concrete measures will be difficult to negotiate. The North has demanded energy and other aid for a freeze, and has said it would not stop work on what it says are civilian, peaceful nuclear programs. It has also demanded that the United States join in providing energy aid, but U.S. officials rejected that demand and said they would address "concerns about security and sanctions." Another contentious issue is the enriched uranium program that Washington insists North Korea is conducting. Pyeongyang, backed partially by Beijing, denies the existence of any such program. by Choi Jie-ho jieho@joongang.co.kr> 2004.06.27 | Dictionary [ border=] --> [ border=] " " Sample Request (»ůÇĂ˝ĹĂ») " How to the read IHT-JAD (±¸µ¶Ľö±â) Sponsor : About Us | Contact Us | Site Map Copyright by Joins.com, Inc. Terms of Use | Copyright Policy | Privacy Policy | Unauthorized collection of e-mail addresses disapproved All materials contained on this site are protected by Korean copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior consent of Joins.com ***************************************************************** 20 Interfax: IAEA head says N. Korea must re-sign Nonproliferation Treaty Interfax.com Jun 26 2004 7:05PM MOSCOW. June 26 (Interfax) - International concerns over North Korea's nuclear programs can only be dispelled after Pyongyang resigns the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog argued on Saturday. Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told Interfax upon arriving for a visit to Moscow that he thought North Korea would resign the accord. North Korea is promising to scrap its nuclear programs on certain conditions. ElBaradei said in his interview with Interfax that it was the IAEA that would then monitor the dismantling of the programs. Speaking about Iraq, he said he did not believe there have been any attempts in that country today to resume nuclear projects. But he insisted that the IAEA keep monitoring Iraq to prevent any such resumption particularly since the situation in that country is quite unstable. He also confirmed that no proof had been found that Iraq was developing any nuclear weapons either before or after the U.S.-led war against the Saddam regime. © 1991-2004 Interfax ***************************************************************** 21 Pravda.RU North Korea: No nuclear freeze without US compensation [PRAVDA.RU] Last update:06/28/2004 11:20 MSK 15:15 2004-06-26 The USA and North Korea have emerged from four days of nuclear crisis talks as far apart as ever, with Washington insisting Pyongyang disclose its uranium enrichment programme. The communist North denies the existence of such a programme, the issue that triggered the crisis 20 months ago and led to three rounds of inconclusive six-nation talks in Beijing. The third round closed with a bland agreement to meet again before the end of September and a pledge to take the first steps to resolve the crisis "as soon as possible". Working-level talks would be held in late July, Russia's envoy to the talks said on Saturday. China's chief negotiator, Wang Yi, said the main gap was between the United States and North Korea. "There are serious differences between the two sides over the uranium enrichment programme," Wang told a news conference after the talks closed. "We hope that this question, together with other issues, will be clarified and resolved in future talks." Pravda.Ru about North Korea and Nuclear Weapons: Nuke can be tested in North Korea: threat of NK authorities North Korea: Nuclear Madness as a method of Force Diplomacy A Nuclear North Korea to Arrive Soon North Korea Declares Intention Not to Produce Nuclear Weapons The parties had agreed that a freeze of the North's nuclear activities should be a first step, he said. According Reuters, North Korea stressed its readiness to freeze plutonium-based nuclear facilities but adamantly refused to accept the U.S. demand that it admit to having a uranium enrichment programme, used for making bombs, a diplomatic source in Beijing said. North Korea also rejected proposals by the United States and Japan to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts to inspect its nuclear facilities for verification. The source said Pyongyang had demanded a "different form of inspection". U.S. OVERTURE North Korea pulled out of international agreements on non-proliferation and threw out IAEA inspectors just weeks after the crisis erupted in October 2002, when U.S. officials said Pyongyang had admitted to a clandestine nuclear programme. It also reactivated its mothballed atomic plant at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang. The discussions in Beijing were buoyed at the outset by the first detailed U.S. proposal to end the crisis. It offered Pyongyang security guarantees and South Korean aid in return for North Korea agreeing to fully dismantle its nuclear programmes. The U.S. overture was its first serious, detailed proposal since President George W. Bush took office and labelled the reclusive North as part of an "axis of evil" alongside Iran and pre-war Iraq. Analysts described the talks as having made modest progress, mainly because the United States appeared more flexible. "That both the United States and North Korea are calling the proposals 'constructive' is something," said Noriyuki Suzuki, chief analyst at Radiopress News Agency in Tokyo. "But North Korea mainly wants to resolve things that can be seen with the eyes, like the Yongbyon plant, while the United States is more interested in things such as the North's uranium programme. So there's still a gap," Suzuki said. Talks were overshadowed by North Korea's warning that hawks in Pyongyang might push for a nuclear test if no headway was made at the talks between the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China. The North's comments about a nuclear test, made in a meeting of more than two hours on Thursday between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and North Korean negotiators in Beijing, resembled previous warnings, U.S. officials said. Copyright ©1999 by "Pravda.RU". When reproducing our materials ***************************************************************** 22 Xinhuanet: Russia hails results of six-party talks www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2004-06-26 00:03:29 ˇˇMOSCOW, June 26 (Xinhuanet) -- The Russian government said Saturday that it was satisfied with the outcome of the third roundof six-party talks on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. The third round of six-party talks, involving China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the United States, South Korea, Russia and Japan ended on Saturday in Beijing, capital of China, with all parties agreeing to work for the realization of the ultimate goal of the Peninsula's denuclearization. "Russia is satisfied with the results of the recent meeting, which produced specific proposals for making the Korean Peninsula a nuclear-free zone," the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. The DPRK's "moves to freeze its nuclear programs in exchange for measures to be taken by the other countries involved in the talks should become the first step in this process," the statementsaid. The ministry also hoped that relevant parties would reach common goals on the basis of the already agreed-on principles and approaches. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 Xinhuanet: Goal of denuclearization irreversible - Chinese diplomat www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2004-06-26 13:02:30 BEIJING, June 26 (Xinhuanet) -- With the extensive support from the governments and peoples of the six nations, as well as from the international community, the goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula is irreversible, nor is the process of peace talks or the historical trend on the peninsula toward peace and stability, said Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Wang Yi here Saturday. Wang, also head of the Chinese delegation to the just-concluded six-party talks on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, made the remarks at a press conference. This round of talks is convened at a time when the peace talks entered the critical phase, and as the host nation China is happy for the progress achieved, Wang said, adding the hard-won progresshas not only consolidated the achievements made so far, but paved the way for future talks, and deserves cherish. He said this round of talks is featured with calm atmosphere, substantial contents and in-depth discussions. It is positive and pragmatic and reflects the spirits of mutual respect, equality andconsultations. While putting forward their own solution proposals,the parties also showed respect for each other's plans. For example, Wang said, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) side said it would carefully study the all-round settlement proposal raised by the United States, and the US side also promised to carefully look into the DPRK scheme. Besides, the US side held that there are elements in common between the DPRK and its own proposals, which will become the important basis on which the talks can further proceed until an eventual solution to the problems. "Meanwhile, we know clearly that the nuclear issue is highly complicated and there is still a serious lack of mutual trust between relevant sides. The basis of the talks is not solid enough,and there are still a number of differences and even opposing ideas on the scope and means of denuclearization, on nuclear freeze and corresponding measures," Wang said. He said as the substantial discussions proceed further, new difficulties will inevitably crop up. "We have been fully aware ofthat," he said. Wang promised that China will continue to actively mediate with an objective and fair stance and work for the peace, security and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula and the region. Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 24 Japan Times: North Korea's likely arsenal Sunday, June 27, 2004 THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF By GLYN FORD NORTH KOREA'S WEAPONS PROGRAMMES: A Net Assessment, by International Institute for Strategic Studies staff. Palgrave Macmillan, 80pp., 2004, $90 (paper). To America's hard men of the right, North Korea harbors a full and fearsome array of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, and the willingness to sell them to any passing "ne're do well" terrorist. On the shores of forecasting, views have begun to soften as the claim that North Korea within 12 months will be able to produce nuclear-tipped missiles that can hit Britain remains unverified. "North Korea's Weapons Programmes" sets the record straight on North Korea's likely arsenal. In 1994, North Korea had a functioning 5-megawatt graphite moderated nuclear reactor and another 50-MW reactor close to completion, both capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton made a deal to mothball both in exchange for a series of political and economic promises including annual delivery of 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil (HFO) until two 500-MW proliferation-resistant light water reactors (LWR) were completed in 2003 by a U.S.-South Korea-Japan and EU Consortium. As far as many in the United States were concerned, the deal was designed to provide time for the "failed regime" to collapse, but North Korea refused to act out this U.S.-ordained role and stubbornly survived. When Japanese-North Korean relations seemed to be improving, the Bush administration sabotaged the rapprochement by claiming that North Korea had a secret highly enriched uranium (HEU) program that could produce nuclear weapons. Then it cut off the only part of the 1994 promises that were kept, the HFO deliveries, and terminated the LWR program. North Korea took its only option: reopening its nuclear reactor and reprocessing the stored fuel rods. The crisis on the Korean Peninsula and the threats of U.S. military intervention. This book gives a realistic picture. First, North Korea at best has plutonium for a maximum of six to 12 weapons, none of which has been tested. No significant further plutonium will be available until after 2010. Second, this study and more recent information from Pakistan and elsewhere indicate that North Korea almost certainly has blueprints for HEU weapons, but does not have the specialized material, let alone the components, for an HEU program. Nor does it have the independent power stations capable of delivering the constant steady supply of electricity necessary for operating thousands of gas centrifuges. On the missile front, based on a joint Chinese-North Korean program initiated in 1975 (East Wind 61), North Korea has several hundred Hwasong and Nodong missiles capable of hitting South Korea (with the latter capable of striking Japan) and the Taepodong series of missiles. Yet the Hwasong is too small to carry a nuclear weapon, and the Nodong would struggle to cope with the heavier and larger HEU bomb. Back in 1998, North Korea attempted to launch the satellite Kwangmyongsong using the long-range Taepodong missile, but the Taepodong platform's third stage failed to ignite properly. Even if adapted for military use, the Taepodong's extended range doesn't cover the U.S., and the payload is way too low to carry nuclear weapons. No further testing of the Taepodong has taken place following the country's self-imposed moratorium at the EU Troika's request in 1999. This assessment concludes that there almost certainly are battlefield chemical weapons in some quantity but that North Korea probably has not produced biological weapons, although it is capable of doing so. North Korea's WMD program is to be deplored, but it must be seen in perspective. The country is outspent and outgunned by South Korea, whose military budget is four times that of North Korea. The military budget of the U.S. -- North Korea's main threat -- is 40 times greater and rising. North Korea also has little incentive to export "terror." The consequences would likely be terminal. The risk is only worth taking for billions, and even al-Qaeda doesn't have the money. If anyone is going to sell to "terrorists," it's likely to be a private-sector initiative in the former Soviet Union. The International Institute for Strategic Studies has made it clear that there is time to negotiate a comprehensive solution: one that will provide a commitment to nonaggression from the U.S., an international commitment to humanitarian aid and development assistance in exchange for North Korea's ending its nuclear-weapons program and committing to join the international community. Glyn Ford is a member of the European Parliament for the Southwest of England and a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defense Policy. The Japan Times: June 27, 2004 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 25 AFP: US negotiator Kelly arrives in Japan after North Korea nuclear talks TOKYO (AFP) Jun 27, 2004 The United States' top negotiator with North Korea, James Kelly, arrived in Tokyo Sunday after six-nation talks on Pyongyang's weapons drive wrapped up in Beijing a day earlier. The US State Department's top Asia hand is to hold talks with Japanese officials before departing Wednesday back to Washington, a US embassy spokeswoman said. He will meet his Japanese counterpart in the six-way dialogue, Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau director general Mitoji Yabunaka, during his stay, a Japanese foreign ministry spokesman said. At the six-way talks -- which brought together China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and the United States -- Kelly tabled Washington's first offer to denuclearize North Korea since President George W. Bush was elected. It called for a step-by-step dismantling of North Korea's plutonium and uranium weapons programs in return for energy and other aid and security guarantees and easing of its political and economic isolation. Tokyo offered to join China, South Korea and Russia in giving fuel to the North in exchange for a freeze on its nuclear programmes, despite its ban on full-scale economic aid to the impoverished Stalinist state. North Korea has agreed to study the proposal. The nations agreed to hold a next round of talks in Beijing before the end of September and resume working-group meetings as soon as possible. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 26 KoreaTimes : Six Nations to Resime Nuke Talks in September Hankooki.com > Korea Times By Ryu Jin Korea Times Correspondent BEIJING - Negotiators in the six-party nuclear talks agreed in principle the first step toward de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula should be taken as soon as possible, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a statement. The third round of multilateral talks ended inconclusively here on Saturday, but with an agreement to resume discussions by the end of September in Beijing, according to the eight-point ChairmanˇŻs Statement. South and North Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China made some progress by having ``constructive, pragmatic and substantiveˇŻˇŻ discussions, said Wang, who led the Chinese delegation to the talks. ``All the relevant parties offered proposals and plans for a solution to the nuclear issue,ˇŻˇŻ he told a media briefing after the four-day event ended in the morning. North Korea expressed its willingness to give up all nuclear weapons programs in a transparent way and said it would accept inspection for the proposed nuclear freeze, Wang added. South KoreaˇŻs chief negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck, praised the U.S. and North Korea for coming up with proposals, which he said contain ``very concrete and practical details.ˇŻˇŻ ``This round of talks is meaningful in that substantial discussions began in earnest based on these proposals,ˇŻˇŻ Lee told reporters in a separate press conference. ``The six-party talks are gathering pace.ˇŻˇŻ He said the just-ended talks were the most sincere and candid of the three so far, adding there were in-depth discussions on the ``freeze-for-compensationˇŻˇŻ measures. Lee, however, admitted that big differences remain between the U.S. and the North over the scope of a nuclear freeze, its verification and other related measures. ``The way ahead wonˇŻt be completely smooth,ˇŻˇŻ Lee said. ``We must brace ourselves for serious confrontation and more effort will be needed to overcome this.ˇŻˇŻ In the ChairmanˇŻs Statement, Wang said the six parties authorized the working group to convene at the earliest possible date to ``define the scope, duration and verification as well as corresponding measures.ˇŻˇŻ Despite the positive evaluation by Seoul and Beijing officials, U.S. delegates cited ``no breakthroughˇŻˇŻ in the third round of talks, bracing themselves for a long road ahead. However, Washington did say the overall atmosphere of the six-party talks was ``constructiveˇŻˇŻ and expected the multilateral dialogue formula to be maintained. ``We would characterize the overall atmosphere of the talks as constructive. The parties have been earnest in exploring the various proposals put forward,ˇŻˇŻ State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said at a news briefing. jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr 06-27-2004 17:18 ***************************************************************** 27 ITAR-TASS: Russia favours stage-by-stage movement to nuke-free Korea [ITAR-TASS News Agency of Russia] 26.06.2004, 11.44 BEIJING, June 26 (Itar-Tass) -- The Russian delegation’s main proposals at the third round of the six-party talks on the North Korea nuclear problem consisted of convincing the partners that stage-by-stage movement was needed to the common aim -- denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, Russian ambassador at large Alexander Alexeyev told a press conference on Saturday after the talks. Another task was to help the partners, first of all North Korea and the United States, focus efforts on the elements of their approaches where unequivocal coincidence was found during the third round to be a basis for a concluding statement of the talk chairman and for ensuring the positive results, the diplomat said. According to Alexeyev, the Russian delegation is satisfied with the positive results of the third round of the talks in Beijing. “We can say our hopes have come true," he said. It became possible largely because all the parties expressed readiness to focus attention on common aspects of their positions, the diplomat noted. At the same time the delegations did not close the eyes to the existing disagreements. This frame of mind and China's professional, knowledgeable chairmanship led to the positive result, Alexeyev stressed. The parties have agreed to begin state-by-stage movement to the common aim -- denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula. The first stage will be convocation of a meeting of the working group in the near future with an agenda set by the six parties. The experts are instructed to discuss such specific issues as a list of facilities to be frozen and methods and a character to check the process. At the same time, a volume of response compensations for North Korea will be also under discussion. The fourth round of the six-nation talks is expected to approve results of the working group's meetings and outline steps to final settlement of the nuclear problem, the Russian diplomat said. "At the same time, we realise that there are more unsettled issues at the current stage than those agreed on," Alexeyev said. But nevertheless the third round ended in positive results, he noted. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 28 ITAR-TASS: N Korea talks short of mutual confidence -- China delegation head [ITAR-TASS News Agency of Russia] 26.06.2004, 10.01 BEIJING, June 26 (Itar-Tass) -- Korean peninsula denuclearisation is a difficult problem, and there is still serious shortage of mutual confidence among the participants in the six-nation talks in Beijing, the Chinese delegation’s head Deputy Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a press conference, commenting on the results of the third round of the discussions. There are a number of disagreements and even opposite views on scope of denuclearisation and size of compensation for Pyongyang, he said. The meeting results are formalised in a statement of the talk chairman. One of the main results is an agreement to hold the next round until late September. The working group on fourth round preparations is instructed to make more precise the issues on scopes, duration, checking and measures to compensate for the first step on the way to complete elimination of North Korea's nuclear programmes. Wang noted that new difficulties could emerge, but the six-party talks were an irreversible process. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 29 Pravda.RU: Moscow does not deny Pyongyang right to develop peaceful nuclear programme Russia believes it is not legal to demand that North Korea should close down all of its nuclear programmes 2004-06-26 Russia believes it is not legal to demand that North Korea should close down all of its nuclear programmes. Russian Ambassador at Large Alexander Alekseyev, who led the Russian delegation to the six-party talks on the North Korea nuclear crisis which ended in Beijing on Saturday, said this at a news conference in Beijing. Demands to end North Korea's nuclear activities run counter to international law and the country's sovereign right, according to Mr. Alekseye v. The diplomat believes there is no need to ban peaceful nuclear research, although it must be under control. The United States advanced a plan of the complete dismantling of all of North Korea's nuclear facilities at the third round of talks in Beijing. North Korea is prepared to discuss freezing its nuclear facilities or even dismantling them on condition the USA end its anti-North Korean policy and compensate its energy losses in whatever form. http://english.pravda.ru/">Pravda.RU ***************************************************************** 30 Las Vegas SUN: Ex-Georgia senator rallies Nevada veterans to Democrat's cause ASSOCIATED PRESS LAS VEGAS (AP) - The fight for Nevada's five electoral votes will be waged this week among those who know a thing or two about real battles. Vietnam veteran and former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland will campaign in Reno, Las Vegas and Boulder City for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry later this week in an all-out blitz for the veteran vote. Cleland, a triple amputee and one of the more visible Kerry surrogates, has a clear message: "George Bush is giving veterans a raw deal, and John Kerry is the real deal." In a phone interview from his Georgia home, Cleland said Bush has cut funding for Veterans Administration hospitals and has increased the co-pay in VA hospitals. "Veterans should vote for John Kerry because, number one, he's a great American, and number two, he has bled and almost died for this country," Cleland told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "He is one of them." Cleland will begin his Silver State tour Friday morning with a news conference in Reno before coming to Las Vegas for a media event. He will take part in the 56th Annual Boulder City Damboree on Saturday morning, parading with Nevada Veterans for Kerry. Cleland says that Bush administration officials and surrogates have questioned Kerry's military service, which he calls "the height of hypocrisy." Cleland is still smarting from his 2003 defeat to Republican Saxby Chambliss and still lashes out about the way the race played out. Chambliss ran a television ad that began with images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and then stated that Cleland had voted against President Bush's homeland security bill. Cleland supported a Democratic version of the same bill. Cleland also has been criticized by conservative columnist Ann Coulter, who denounced him as not being a war hero. Cleland lost his right arm and both legs in a grenade accident in Vietnam. He also received the Silver Star for gallantry in action for his service in a battle at Khe Sanh. Bush campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said the campaign "has never questioned John Kerry's patriotism." "This election will be about where the next president takes our country, and John Kerry has demonstrated throughout his 19 years in the U.S. Senate a fundamental misunderstanding of national security issues," Schmitt said. Schmitt also said Bush has been responsive to veterans, allowing the VA to enroll 2.5 million more veterans for health care services. She said outpatient visits increased from 44 million to 54 million and that 194 new community-based clinics have opened that are available to veterans. Cleland said Southern Nevada's quickly growing veteran population will understand the difference between the two candidates, just as the average Nevadan can understand the difference between Bush and Kerry on Yucca Mountain. Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal -- ***************************************************************** 31 Las Vegas SUN: Door opens to new nuclear future June 25, 2004 Move of giant Atlas to Test Site may lead to research in fusion energy By Molly Ball LAS VEGAS SUN A machine that performs nuclear physics experiments -- the most powerful device of its kind in the world -- has been moved to the Nevada Test Site and will be unveiled Monday. The machine, which is called Atlas and looks like a giant trampoline, works by shooting a massive electrical shockwave into a tuna-can-sized piece of metal, vaporizing it. The effect of the shock wave on the material is similar to that of a nuclear explosion. "In the absence of underground nuclear testing, these experiments give scientists the data they need that tells us that the weapons that remain in the U.S. stockpile are safe and still work the way they were designed to," Test Site spokesman Darwin Morgan said. University of Nevada academic researchers also hope to use Atlas for nuclear fusion experiments. The government declared a moratorium on nuclear weapons tests in 1992. Meanwhile, America's nuclear weapons have continued to age, and scientists must ensure they are still safe and usable without actually detonating them. "We've got nuclear weapons that have been sitting at various facilities for 20 years," Morgan said. "What's going on inside them as they sit there? What's happening to the pieces and parts that are subject to the radioactive field? What's happening to the plutonium?" Over time, plutonium oxidizes and decays according to its fixed half-life. Morgan compared the situation to a car that's been sitting in a garage for decades. You have to make sure it still runs, but you can't start it up -- so you find ways to test the battery, the ignition, the tires and so on. In the case of Atlas, the actual parts of the car aren't being tested. Instead, it's like testing sample parts to learn more about how starting the car affects them. "The surrogate materials mimic a lot of the same characteristics you see in the real stuff when it's in that stage of transitioning from solid to fluid," Morgan said. Atlas was built at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico during a five-year period for a cost of about $48 million. After only about a year and a half of operation and just 16 experiments, workers began disassembling it to move it to Nevada for a cost of $20.7 million. Atlas costs about $6 million a year to maintain and will perform $9 million worth of experiments next year. Morgan said those figures are a fraction of the cost of other nuclear testing devices. The move of Atlas was mandated by Congress as part of the 2001 budget, Bob Reinovsky of Los Alamos said. The Energy Department decided that scientific work was not divided evenly among the country's major nuclear research labs: Los Alamos; Sandia, also in New Mexico; and Lawrence Livermore in California. "Averaged over its life, our estimates are that it would be as economical or even more economical to operate at the Test Site," even counting the cost of moving Atlas, Reinovsky said. That's because of Test Site resources -- such as workers for Bechtel Nevada, the private contractor that manages parts of the site -- that Atlas can share with other programs, he said. Atlas will also be shared with researchers. Two years ago, physicist Richard Siemon left Los Alamos for the University of Nevada, Reno, largely because he wanted to be near Atlas and use it in his work. "This has been a gleam in my eye for many years," Siemon said. Siemon plans next year to start his experiments, which he believes will eventually lead to a method of nuclear fusion for energy-generating purposes. Currently, nuclear energy is produced through fission, the splitting of atoms. Fusion, the combining of atoms, also produces massive amounts of energy -- it is the way the sun and other stars work -- but it is difficult to control and expensive to create. Proponents say fusion produces waste that is less toxic and less concentrated than that from fission. But scientists have not yet found a way to bring fusion to the "break even" point, meaning it would cost less to create the reaction than the value of the energy the reaction gave off. This is largely because the materials involved must be heated to 100 million degrees (Kelvin or Celsius -- "What's the difference?," he joked). But Siemon thinks he might have found a way. "Our experiment would be to see if we can use the electrical power generated by Atlas to heat a nuclear material to thermonuclear conditions," he said. If Siemon's method works, it would essentially be an upstart "end run" around others' more expensive efforts. Several countries are currently collaborating on a $5 billion project that began in 1992, for example. Siemon has a four-year, $1 million grant from the Energy Department's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences to conduct one of the preliminary experiments toward his goal. A few University of Nevada, Las Vegas, scientists are also looking at using Atlas, although none has yet designed a formal experiment. With the moving of Atlas, the Test Site becomes the location of the preponderance of America's most impressive physics tests. Three of the four "major high-physics platforms" in the country are now in Nevada, Morgan said: Atlas; the JASPER gas gun; and facilities for subcritical tests, which bring plutonium to the brink of fission without causing a nuclear chain reaction. The fourth is the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore. The concentration of equipment at the Test Site marks its transformation from the days it hosted full-scale bomb tests, Los Alamos' Reinovsky said. "There is a change in the scope of the kind of scientific activities at the Test Site," he said -- "adding above-ground lab activities to what was really a field test environment." ***************************************************************** 32 asahi.com: VOX POPULI, VOX DEI/Einstein tells us the real purpose of science [asahi.com] The American physicist Linus Pauling, who died in 1994 at age 93, won the Nobel prizes for chemistry and peace. According to ``Ainshutain wa Kataru'' (Einstein speaks, published by Otsuki Shoten), Albert Einstein once wrote to Pauling, ``I have made one mistake in my life.'' That mistake was his signing of a pre-World War II letter to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1939, recommending that an atomic bomb be developed. Einstein had been driven by a sense of urgency, fearing the consequences of Nazi Germany developing a nuclear bomb ahead of the United States. Still, to later admit that his earlier thinking was a mistake took grave moral courage. Recent advances in scientific technology have created more situations that require scientists and laymen alike to decide whether or not to allow scientific research that is medically feasible. A bioethics subcommittee of the Council of Science and Technology Policy under the Cabinet Office on Wednesday approved research for the production of cloned human embryos. The panel says, however, that the project must be limited only to basic research and will remain frozen until thorough controls have been put in place to prevent the creation of cloned humans. Because cloned human embryos can help minimize adverse reactions in cell and organ transplants, they promise great advances in regenerative medicine. Considerable research is being conducted in the United States and other countries. On the other hand, many people automatically associate the government panel's decision with the inevitable birth of cloned humans down the road. Einstein cautioned us that all technological advancements must be motivated first and foremost by concern for human beings and their fate-what scientists create must be a blessing, not a curse. He urged all scientists to always bear this in mind, even when deeply immersed in their charts and formulae. --The Asahi Shimbun, June 25(IHT/Asahi: June 26,2004) (06/26) ***************************************************************** 33 STUFF: Syria says UN nuclear inspectors welcome New Zealand's leading news and information website 27 June 2004 MOSCOW: Syria has told the UN nuclear watchdog that its inspectors are welcome to come and verify the nature of its atomic activities, the agency's chief said yesterday. "The Syrians told me they would be happy if we go and verify whatever we need to verify," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohammed ElBaradei told reporters during a flight to Moscow for a four-day official visit. "But we haven't gotten any piece of information on why we should be concerned about Syria." Last week, diplomats told Reuters that the IAEA considered Damascus a top candidate for being the fourth customer of the nuclear black market that supplied uranium enrichment technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. But ElBaradei said no country had provided any hard evidence that would implicate Syria as a customer in the black market set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic weapons programme. "This is something I read in the paper. Nobody came to us with any information (about Syria)," ElBaradei said. The IAEA, along with governments and intelligence agencies, has been investigating the details of Khan's network so that it can be dismantled. The results of the investigation are classified. Syria, which has called for the creation of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, has denied any interest in nuclear weapons. Last month, diplomats and nuclear experts said that an experimental high-tech intelligence technique developed by the United States had detected what appear to be operating uranium-enrichment centrifuges in Syria. Diplomats said the centrifuges, which spin at supersonic speeds to purify uranium for use as fuel for power plants or weapons, could only have come from Khan's network. But some US officials - as well as ElBaradei - are sceptical about the centrifuges. "We don't have super high-tech detectors, and if somebody detected something they'd better come to us. We are the ones who can clarify fact from fiction," ElBaradei said. ***************************************************************** 34 Interfax: IAEA head arrives in Moscow Interfax.com Jun 26 2004 7:05PM MOSCOW. June 26 (Interfax) - International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has arrived in Moscow to attend an international conference on June 27. The Russian Federal Nuclear Power Agency, which succeeded the Nuclear Power Ministry, told Interfax that ElBaradei's agenda for today does not include any meetings. Apart from the Russian Academy of Sciences' international conference on 'Fifty Years of Nuclear Power: Lessons and Goals for the Next Fifty Years,' the IAEA head will meet with senior Federal Nuclear Power Agency officials to discuss progress in the IAEA's international project on innovative nuclear reactors and fuel cycles (INPRO). © 1991-2004 Interfax All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 35 BBC: UN asks Israel to go nuclear-free Last Updated: Sunday, 27 June, 2004 [Mohamed ElBaradei] Mr ElBaradei wants discussions to begin before any peace deals The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, says Israel should start discussions on ridding the Middle East of nuclear weapons. He said such dialogue would help reduce frustration in the region about "what is seen to be a widespread imbalance". Mr ElBaradei is scheduled to travel to Israel next month to discuss making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. He said everyone knew that Israel had a nuclear capability - even if Israel has always refused to admit it. "We need... to rid the Middle East of all weapons of mass destruction," he told reporters on a visit to Russia. "Israel agrees with that, but they say it has to be... after peace agreements. "My proposal is may be we need to start to have a parallel dialogue on security at the same time when we're working on the peace process." 'Ambiguity' Mr ElBaradei said he would like Israel, along with other Middle East countries, to open up nuclear facilities to inspections by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. But he would not be insisting Israel admits to having nuclear weapons, when he visits the country in early July. "I think everybody takes it as a given that Israel has a nuclear capability, if not nuclear weapons," he said. "So whether they would like to come in the open, whether they maintain... ambiguity, it's for them to decide." Israel has a policy of "strategic ambiguity" - neither admitting nor denying it has nuclear weapons - but analysts believe it has more than 100 nuclear weapons. Its Arab neighbours have frequently accused the international community of double standards for requiring them to be free of nuclear weapons while doing little, in their eyes, about Israel. Mr ElBaradei said it was "not sustainable in any region or even globally to have some [people] rely on nuclear weapons and others being told they should not have nuclear weapons". ***************************************************************** 36 AFP: UN nuclear chief says Israel should "clarify" its atomic program MOSCOW (AFP) Jun 27, 2004 UN atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Israel should "clarify" its nuclear activities and sign on to a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, in comments in Moscow ahead of a nuclear power conference Sunday. "I think everybody takes it as a given that Israel has a nuclear capability if not nuclear weapons," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general ElBaradei told reporters upon arriving in Moscow Saturday. He said it was up to Israel to decide whether "to come into the open . . . but I'd like to make sure eventually they subscribe to a nuclear weapons freeze in the Middle East and that we clarify all nuclear activities in Israel and everywhere else." ElBaradei is to travel to Israel July 6-8 on a mandate from the IAEA to work towards creating a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. "As we know Israel is the only country in the Middle East so far as we know that has (nuclear) facilities that are not under international safeguards," ElBaradei said. "So it's part of my mandate to go and talk to Israel to see whether I can get things started somewhat," he said. "I think the message we need at the end of the day is to rid the Middle East of all weapons of mass destruction. Israel agrees with that. They say that has to be in the context of a peace agreement," ElBaradei said. He said there should be a "parallel dialogue on security and... the peace process. I don't think you'll have peace without people understanding what sort of security structure you will have." He said it was "not sustainable in any region or even globally to have some (people) rely on nuclear weapons and others being told they should not have nuclear weapons," a clear reference to the IAEA's cracking down on Iran for suspected nuclear weapons development. Israel, which is believed to have up to 200 nuclear weapons, is a member of the IAEA but not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which the IAEA is mandated to enforce. Israel is thus not a subject of IAEA surveillance and verification. IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said it would be ElBaradei's first trip to Israel in six years and that he would be carrying out his mandate from the 137-member agency "to promote non-proliferation and a nuclear weapon-free zone in the Middle East." ElBaradei will visit Israel after two other critical trips this year -- to Libya, which has disarmed its nuclear weapons programs, and to Iran. ElBaradei's trip also follows the release from prison earlier this year of Israeli nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu. The one-time technician at the Dimona nuclear plant in southern Israel was jailed in 1986 after leaking details of the plant to a British newspaper. Vanunu has become a hero of the anti-nuclear movement and says Israel should rid itself of nuclear weapons and open up Dimona to international inspection. Arab countries that are members of the IAEA have complained that Israel's alleged nuclear weapons program is not being investigated, at a time when countries like Iran are under intense scrutiny from the UN agency. Israel's policy is to "neither deny nor confirm" that it has nuclear weapons. At an IAEA conference in Vienna last September, Arab states had tried and failed to get the UN watchdog to demand that Israel submit to nuclear weapons proliferation safeguards. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 37 IAEA: IAEA Work Commended at Non-Proliferation Conference + [IAEA.ORG :: Atoms for Peace] Conference of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Staff Report 25 June 2004 [Carnegie Conference] The 2004 Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference was held at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center, Washington, D.C. (Credit: CEIP) + Story Resources + IAEA Director General Speech + The IAEA´s work and leadership to help the world curb the spread of nuclear weapons were commended at the 2004 Non-Proliferation Conference of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei was among a distinguished group of keynote speakers addressing nuclear and security issues. "The need for substantive change - to the international security system in general and to the nuclear non-proliferation regime in particular - has become even more obvious and urgent," Dr. ElBaradei said. He outlined proposals for strengthening the global regime, which along with proposals developed by others, he said "should be the focus of a summit on non-proliferation and global security", possibly in 2005 when parties to the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) meet to review the treaty. Among other keynote speakers was Sam Nunn, former US Senator and current Co-Chairman and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. In reviewing the changing non-proliferation landscape, he singled out the IAEA for its leading role. "It would be a mistake to ignore our successes, for they give us guidance and inspiration for the work ahead," he said. "Nearly 60 years have passed without a nuclear attack occurring anywhere in the world, in part because of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director General ElBaradei, after doing so much for so long with so little, are finally beginning to receive the added resources that their performance deserves and the task required. I think they're doing an exceptional job." For more information on the Carnegie Conference, including texts of speeches, visit the . Copyright 2003-2004, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: Disclaimer ***************************************************************** 38 ITAR-TASS: Putin points to great chances of nuclear innovative technologies [ITAR-TASS News Agency of Russia] 27.06.2004, 13.12 MOSCOW, June 27 (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a message of greetings to the International Conference “50 Years of Nuclear Energy: lessons and tasks in the future”, reported the presidential press service. “The nuclear power industry now is a growing economic sector, actively promoting social and economic progress in many states. Its future largely depends on fruitful international cooperation. “It is precisely due to this reason that Russia moved a motion at the Millennium Summit at the U.N. to draft, with IAEA participation, an International Project for the development of the nuclear power industry to be based on innovative technologies which would help to resolve comprehensively problems of power supplies and ecological security,” the message runs. The world had learnt about the dawn of the nuclear energy era 50 years ago from a Tass report of June 27, 1954: a turbo-generator of the world’s first nuclear power station in Obninsk, Kaluga Region, had started generating power from a nuclear reactor. The report pointed out that “the commissioning of the nuclear power station has made the first step in peaceful uses of atomic energy. A commercial power turbine has started operating, for the first time in the world, not by burning coal or any other fuels, but thanks to atomic energy – fission of the nucleus of the uranium atom”. The well-known Russian nuclear authority Nikolai Dolezhal emphasized that “the Obninsk nuclear power station will look for people of rising generations as distant from their time as Polzunov’s steam engine or Mozhaisky’s plane, but they will be always for mankind monuments to science and technology as well as historic landmarks on the way of progress”. Spokesman of the Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy Nikolai Shingarev, speaking in an interview with Tass, said that “the Obninsk atomic power station gave mankind not only ‘atomic’ power, but also basic knowledge for peaceful uses of nuclear energy”. “The pile of the Obninsk station was shut down only in 2002 – after 48 years of accident-free operation. This is a world record for nuclear power plants,” he emphasized. Work is now in progress to put the Obninsk station out of action, which will “also yield priceless experience for the future of the nuclear power industry,” he added. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 39 IAEA: From Obninsk Beyond: Nuclear Power Conference Looks to Future + [IAEA.ORG :: Atoms for Peace] Staff Report 24 June 2004 [Obninsk nuclear power plant] The Obninsk reactor near Moscow was the first to be connected to an electricity grid, providing enough power for 2,000 homes. Today's reactors power about 400,000 homes. (Photo credit: P. Pavlicek/IAEA) + Story Resources In Focus: Nuclear Energy + International Conference on Fifty Years of Nuclear Power - the Next Fifty Years + IAEA Bulletin + IAEA Department of Energy Fifty years ago, at 5:30 pm, 26 June 1954, in the town of Obninsk, near Moscow in the former USSR, the first nuclear power plant was connected to an electricity grid to provide power to residences and businesses. Nuclear energy had crossed the divide from military uses to civilian applications. To mark the milestone, an International Conference on Fifty Years of Nuclear Power - the Next Fifty Years will be held in Obninsk 27 June - 2 July 2004. Nuclear power's past, present and future is on the agenda, as leaders and experts from industry, government and non-governmental organizations alike reflect on lessons learnt over the past five decades, and consider improvements to electricity supply in coming decades. Nuclear generates about 16% of all electricity in the world, a position it has held since nuclear's share of the power market peaked in 1987. The conference is organized by the IAEA and hosted by the Government of the Russian Federation. Some topics to be discussed include: + Operating experience, planned projects and requirements for future nuclear power growth; + Non-electricity developments -- such as using nuclear reactors to produce clean water by desalinating seawater; + Public communication; + Nuclear safety and security developments; + Design and development of advanced nuclear systems; + Nuclear energy and sustainable development; and + Nuclear fuel cycle and waste management. The IAEA will soon be releasing more detailed information on the conference and the changing future of nuclear energy. Please contact the for details. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Nuclear Power Timeline 1939. Nuclear fission discovered. 1942. The world's first nuclear chain reaction takes place in Chicago as part of the wartime Manhattan Project. 1945. The first nuclear weapons test at Alamagordo, New Mexico. 1951. Electricity was first generated from a nuclear reactor, from EBR-I (Experimental Breeder Reactor-I) at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho, USA. EBR-I produced about 100 kilowatts of electricity (kW(e)), enough to power the equipment in the small reactor building. 1954. The Obninsk reactor near Moscow, produces 5000 kW(e) or 5 megawatts (MW(e)), enough to power 2,000 homes. A typical nuclear power plant today is about 1000 MW(e), enough for 400,000 homes. 1970s. Nuclear power grows rapidly. From 1970 to 1975 growth averaged 30% per year, the same as wind power recently (1998-2001). 1987. Nuclear power now generates slightly more than 16% of all electricity in the world. 1980s. Nuclear expansion slows because of environmentalist opposition, high interest rates, energy conservation prompted by the 1973 and 1979 oil shocks, and the accidents at Three Mile Island (1979, USA) and Chernobyl (1986, Ukraine, USSR). The Three Mile Island accident was the first major accident at a civilian nuclear power station. It had no radiological effect on public health but increased opposition to nuclear power, and the large financial loss further discouraged new nuclear investment. The Chernobyl accident was much more severe. The accident broadened opposition to nuclear power and brought the USSR's nuclear expansion to a halt. 2004. Nuclear power's share of global electricity generation holds steady around 16% in the 17 years since 1987. Copyright 2003, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimile (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: Disclaimer ***************************************************************** 40 Berkshire Eagle: Groups press for answers on Yankee Rowe plans Pittsfield, MA Article Published: Saturday, June 26, 2004 - By Susan Bush Special to The Eagle BUCKLAND -- There were many questions but few answers as members of citizens groups grilled officials of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Yankee Atomic Electric Co. during a public hearing Thursday night about a proposed Yankee Rowe nuclear power facility license termination. About 60 people were present during the hearing held at the Mohawk Trail Regional High School. When asked before the hearing began just how much spent fuel is currently stored at the Yankee Rowe site, NRC Yankee Rowe project manager John Hickman said that he did not have specific information at hand. "Relatively speaking, not much," he said, and added that the number of dry-storage casks containing radioactive material on site at Yankee Rowe is about one-quarter of that at the Maine Yankee site. Radioactive material There are about 16 dry-storage casks containing radioactive material at the site, said Kelley Smith, a public information spokeswoman for Yankee. Smith was contacted before the hearing began. The license termination plan is a 263-page, eight-section document; Thursday night's plan overview presentation consisted of a brief slide show that offered little precise information. The full termination document is written in technical language; an acronym identification chart alone contains 58 terms and covers one full page and part of a second page. The Yankee Rowe plant was shut down in February 1992, and a decommissioning process was launched in 1993. The decommissioning is entering its final phase, which includes dismantling on-site buildings, site restoration, and acquiring NRC approval of the license termination plan. According to information posted on the Yankee Rowe Web site, the area is expected to be ready for re-use in 2006. The meeting was moderated by North Adams City Councilor Gailanne Cariddi, who is also a member of the Yankee Citizens Advisory Board. Cariddi said yesterday that Yankee Rowe officials are expected to attend a City Council meeting later this summer to discuss an environmental study of the Yankee site. Hickman, NRC Inspection Program lead inspector John Wray, Eric DeRoyce, a certified health physicist working for Yankee Atomic Electric Co., Greg Babineau, also of Yankee, and NRC official Claudia Craig shared one microphone as they attempted to answer questions and respond to comments during the hearing. Audience members repeatedly called out that they could not hear the officials' responses to questions and comments. William Perlman, a member of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments and the citizens advisory board, questioned the panel about the discovery of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen believed to be a cancer-causing agent, at the Sherman Dam. Perlman said he wants more information about possible tritium groundwater contamination and asked that any problem be defined. Tritium is a radioactive isotope. Citizens Awareness Network member Deb Katz questioned the panel about tritium levels at the site. Katz noted that a spent fuel cooling pool hasn't been removed from the site and that tritium could be lurking in the pools. Katz noted the absence of state officials, such as those with the Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Public Health, and called for a meeting with representatives of all involved agencies in attendance. No information about the on-site dry-cask storage of spent nuclear fuel rods was included in the NRC/Yankee presentation, but that situation was questioned repeatedly by members of the network and the New England Coalition. Both nonprofit grassroots groups are considered watchdog activist organizations that oppose nuclear energy and seek strict accountability standards for cleanup of nuclear pollution. In response to questions about the safety of the dry-casks and a call to keep spent fuel rod cooling pools in place on the site as a back-up spent rod storage option, NRC and Yankee officials stated that the current plan is to remove the pools, known as "wet storage," from the site. According to Hickman, the facility's license cannot terminate and Yankee cannot abdicate responsibility for the site until the spent fuel rods are removed. Speaking prior to the hearing, Hickman said that the 2,200-acre property could be spilt, with the 10-acre industrial site that houses the rods separated from the remaining property. In that event, Yankee would remain licensed for the industrial site until the spent fuel is removed, Hickman said. Focus on termination plan During the hearing, Hickman said that the public hearing focus was the license termination plan, not the storage and removal of the fuel rods. Speaking yesterday from a Washington, D.C. office, NRC public information spokesman Scott Burnell said that the rods will not leave the Yankee Rowe site until a nuclear waste repository planned at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is built and approved. The federal Department of Energy contracted with Yankee Rowe officials to remove the spent fuel and transport was scheduled to begin in 1998. However, the DOE did not start moving the rods and a lawsuit focusing on the failure to remove the rods as agreed was subsequently initiated by Yankee officials. Meanwhile, said Burnell, the DOE is still assembling its license approval application for Yucca Mountain and expects to submit the application by the end of the year. NRC review could take years The NRC must review the application, which could take several years, Burnell said. The best-case scenario would have the repository open and accepting nuclear waste by 2010, but Burnell said that in reality, approving Yucca and moving the radioactive material could take decades. The dry-storage casks endured extreme condition testing and are safe, Burnell said. "Even if there were to be an armed attacker who used an explosive, it would be difficult to crack a cask," Burnell said. Burnell said that if all the Yankee Rowe casks were cracked, the release of radiation would be very low-level. Burnell said that the rods have been "out of use" for 13 years or longer, had spent five years in a cooling pool before being placed in dry storage, and a release would not require a mass evacuation or pose a wide-scale threat to human health. Burnell did say that "some evacuation" and "some cleanup and remediation" might be necessary if a cask were to leak or be cracked open. Speaking before the hearing commenced, Peter Alexander of the coalition disagreed. According to Alexander, videotapes exist that demonstrate how a weapon can break a cask, and when told that state-governed evacuation plans were terminated when Yankee Rowe began decommissioning, Alexander said the move was a "mistake." "You don't have a core meltdown, and it would take a significant event, but if it [a cask] opened, there'd be big problems," he said, although he added that he did not have enough information to articulate what those problems might be. Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency spokesman Peter Judge said yesterday that security measures to protect Yankee Rowe against terrorist attack and other situations are in place. Judge said that security drills involving the National Guard, state police and other forces occur annually. Judge, Cariddi and North Adams Commissioner of Public Safety E. John Morocco all said that they believe there is no longer a need for mass-scale evacuation plans involving Yankee Rowe. berkshireeagle.com Copyright ©1999-2004 New England Newspapers, Inc., a ***************************************************************** 41 Brattleboro Reformer: NRC to explain review to Vt. board Brattleboro, VT Article Published: Saturday, June 26, 2004 - By DAVID GRAM Associated Press MONTPELIER -- The Public Service Board has asked officials of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to explain their plans for investigating a proposed power boost at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. An NRC spokeswoman, Diane Screnci, said Friday that two NRC officials would appear before the board at a conference set for Monday from 9 a.m. to noon. The officials will respond to questions from board members and from parties that have appeared before the board on the proposed power increase. Entergy Nuclear, which bought the now 32-year-old Vernon reactor from a consortium of New England utilities two years ago, has asked to increase the plant's capacity by 20 percent, from its current 540 megawatts to 650. Parties in Public Service Board hearings on the request have included Entergy, the state Department of Public Service, which is responsible for representing consumers before the board, and the nuclear watchdog group New England Coalition. Screnci said Brian Holian, deputy director for reactor projects in the NRC's Northeast region, and William Ruland, an NRC headquarters official who has overseen power capacity increases at nuclear plants around the country, will appear before the board. The Vermont board granted conditional approval for the power boost on March 15. One of the conditions it set was that the NRC would conduct an independent engineering assessment of Vermont Yankee before the plant would be allowed to increase its power output. The NRC described its plans for the independent assessment in a letter sent to the board May 4. But the board has had little to say since then about whether the federal agency's response met the needs it described in its March 15 ruling. The board made clear in a memorandum calling for Monday's session that it still had more questions. "The purpose of the conference is to allow the NRC representatives to describe the regulatory process for reviewing the proposed power uprate ... and the new engineering inspection that the NRC plans to conduct at Vermont Yankee," the board's memo said. Screnci would not comment Friday on what the NRC officials would be likely to say to the three-member Vermont board. The conference comes as a host of issues have arisen at the Vernon plant since the board's conditional approval. In April, about 20 cracks were discovered in a key plant component, the steam dryer. Later the same month, it was discovered that two pieces of highly radioactive spent nuclear pool, thought to have been in a special container at the bottom of the plant's spent fuel storage pool since 1980, were missing. They still have not been found. On June 18, fire struck the area around the plant's transformer, which helps to move electricity from the plant's generator onto the power grid. The plant has remained off-line since then. There has been no indication when the plant will resume operations. The outage is forcing Vermont's retail utilities, including Central Vermont Public Service Corp. and Green Mountain Power Corp., to buy more expensive electricity to replace what they would have bought from Vermont Yankee. Under an agreement last November in which the Department of Public Service said it would support the power boost, Entergy agreed to pay the utilities the difference if an outage caused by the power boost forced them to buy more expensive power elsewhere. Plant spokesman Robert Williams said last week that the transformer near where the fire started was installed less than two years ago, that it was larger than the one it replaced and that it was installed with the power boost in mind. Other equipment in the area near the transformer was upgraded this April in preparation for the power increase. The New England Coalition has asked the board to investigate whether Vermont Yankee should be required to make good on its promise to pay the utilities when an outage related to the power boost forces them to buy more expensive power. Copyright © 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 42 AFP: UN atomic agency holds conference on nuclear energy, continues watching Iran MOSCOW (AFP) Jun 27, 2004 UN atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei was in Moscow Sunday to open a week-long conference on peaceful uses of nuclear power, as he grapples with getting Iran to back off on a decision to resume work towards uranium enrichment. On arriving here Saturday ElBaradei called on Iran to reconsider its decision to abandon a pledge made in February not to build, assemble and test centrifuges. Tehran said Sunday it would resume construction of centrifuges for uranium enrichment but continue to suspend enrichment itself, a key step in making what can be bomb-grade uranium. Iran had said in a letter to ElBaradei, as well as Britain, France and Germany, last week that it would resume the "manufacturing of centrifuge components and assembly and testing of centrifuges as of June 29," next Tuesday, according to a copy of the letter obtained by AFP. Iran claims the so-called Euro-3 broke an agreement made in February to have the IAEA close in June its investigation of Iran's nuclear program, in return for the suspension of all enrichment-related activities. "I hope Iran will go back to full suspension" of uranium enrichment activities, ElBaradei said Saturday. This suspension was part of confidence-building measures which Iran has been urged to take while the IAEA investigates US charges that the Islamic Republic is secretly developing nuclear weapons. The 35-nation board of the IAEA passed a resolution on June 18 rebuking Tehran for failing to come clean about its nuclear program, deploring the level of Iranian cooperation and calling for the 15-month-old investigation into Iran's nuclear activities to be wrapped up within a few months. The IAEA nuclear power conference here will be commemorating "a half-century since the Obninsk power reactor (120 kilometres/70 miles south of Moscow) became the world's first to produce electricity for a national grid and the 50th anniversary of the UN General Assembly resolution calling for international cooperation in developing the peaceful uses for nuclear energy," an IAEA spokesman said. Nuclear expert Alan McDonald told reporters at IAEA headquarters in Vienna last week that atomic energy definitely had a future, despite concerns brought on by the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents in the United States in 1979 and and in Ukraine in 1986. Environmentalists condemn the use of nuclear energy for power, citing the danger of radiation from accidents and the problems of disposing of highly radioactive spent fuel. But nuclear power use is growing in Asia while it continues to play a role in Western power supplies. Besides the economics of years of cheap energy once a plant has been built, the environmental advantage of nuclear energy, provided reactors don't explode and waste doesn't seep into water supplies, is that "nuclear power emits virtually no greenhouse gases," the IAEA said in a report on "Nuclear Power's Changing Future." Another theme at the conference will be nuclear terrorism. The United States had at IAEA headquarters in Vienna in May unveiled a 450-million-dollar plan to try to prevent nuclear materials stored around the world from falling into the hands of terrorists who could use them to make a "dirty" bomb or even a full-fledged atomic device. The US plan includes working with Russia "to repatriate all Russian-origin fresh HEU (highly enriched uranium) (nuclear) fuel by the end" of 2005, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham had told the IAEA in May. Daniil Kobyakov, from the PIR think tank in Moscow, told AFP: "Nuclear terrorism is a great concern here, and there is also concern about nuclear materials in Russia itself." ElBaradei will be meeting in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, atomic energy agency chief Alexander Rumyantsev and Security Council chairman Igor Ivanov. Russia has been under US pressure to halt construction of Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor until the IAEA is fully satisfied that Tehran is not hiding its potential nuclear weapons ambition, or using the project to develop an atomic bomb. Russia has vowed however to maintain the Bushehr project. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 43 BBC: UN predicts rapid nuclear growth Last Updated: Saturday, 26 June, 2004 By Richard Black BBC science correspondent [Nuclear fuel rod] Nuclear fuel may replace coal and gas as a power source The International Atomic Energy Agency has forecast that the use of nuclear energy will increase rapidly in the coming years. In a report released on the eve of a conference in Moscow marking 50 years of commercial nuclear power, the UN's nuclear agency says that more reactors are being built in Asia than anywhere else. Nuclear power now generates about one-sixth of the world's electricity. The IAEA believes this is likely to rise as concerns over fossil fuel use and global warming increase. It forecasts that nuclear reactors will meet a quarter of the world's needs by 2030, with further expansion over the following decades. There are few restrictions carbon emissions so [the nuclear] advantage doesn't translate into any economic benefit Alan MacDonald, IAEA But according to Alan MacDonald, an economic specialist with the IAEA, that is only going to happen if international treaties like the Kyoto Protocol impose financial penalties on technologies which produce large amounts of carbon dioxide. "One of the advantages of nuclear power is it produces virtually no greenhouse gas emissions," he said. "It's about the same as solar and wind and well below natural gas and coal. However, at the moment there are very few restrictions on carbon emissions and so that advantage doesn't translate into any economic benefit on the bottom line for an investor." Asian programmes Asia is adopting nuclear technology more avidly than any other continent. Of the last 31 reactors to come online, 22 are in Asia. [Nuclear power station] Some argue that nuclear power is better for the environment The region is also building 18 of the 27 being constructed around the world. In North America and western Europe, the IAEA says construction of new reactors has "virtually halted" because of environmental concerns, accidents like Chernobyl, and the economic advantages of natural gas. But some countries will exhaust their supplies of gas in the next few decades, and some arms of the environmental movement now advocate nuclear power as a way to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. ***************************************************************** 44 AFP: Putin calls for greater international cooperation in nuclear energy MOSCOW (AFP) Jun 27, 2004 Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday called for greater international cooperation in nuclear energy as a week-long conference on peaceful uses of atomic power opened in Moscow. In a message to the conference, due to be opened by UN atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, the Russian leader praised nuclear power an engine of economic growth. "Today, atomic energy is an expanding sector which actively promotes social and economic development in many states," Putin said according to a statement released by the Kremlin. "I am certain that ideas and initiatives put forward at the conference will deepen dialogue and international partnership in the peaceful use of atomic energy," he added. The IAEA nuclear power conference here will be commemorating a half-century since the Obninsk power reactor (120 kilometres/70 miles south of Moscow) became the world's first to produce electricity for a national grid and the 50th anniversary of the UN General Assembly resolution calling for international cooperation in developing the peaceful uses for nuclear energy. Nuclear expert Alan McDonald told reporters at IAEA headquarters in Vienna last week that atomic energy definitely had a future, despite concerns brought on by the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents in the United States in 1979 and in Ukraine in 1986. Environmentalists condemn the use of nuclear energy for power, citing the danger of radiation from accidents and the problems of disposing of highly radioactive spent fuel. But nuclear power use is growing in Asia while it continues to play a role in Western power supplies. Another theme at the conference will be nuclear terrorism. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 45 San Luis Obispo Tribune: State fights new NRC rules | 06/27/2004 | Critics say guidelines meant to streamline hearings will reduce local oversight of Diablo Canyon David Sneed The Tribune SAN LUIS OBISPO - California has joined four other states in criticizing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a new set of streamlined hearing rules that critics say will significantly reduce local oversight of Diablo Canyon and other commercial nuclear power plants. State attorneys say the new rules, adopted in February, deprive local governments of two of their most powerful legal tools when utilities apply for nuclear power licenses, reducing their ability to cross-examine industry and government witnesses during hearings and to get documents relevant to those hearings. The rules also make it harder for citizen activists to challenge those licenses. But nuclear advocates say the new rules are intended to benefit the public by streamlining hearings and that they are equally limiting for utilities. The states are asking a federal appeals court in Boston to throw out the rules. A hearing is expected in August or September. California has two nuclear power plants that supply nearly 20 percent of the state's electricity. They are Diablo Canyon in San Luis Obispo County and the San Onofre nuclear plant near San Clemente. The new rules govern how hearings are conducted for many of the most vital nuclear power licenses, including building new plants, renewing licenses for existing plants and constructing above-ground storage facilities for highly radioactive waste. Diablo Canyon has no licenses pending before the NRC, but an application to extend by three years the operating license of one of the plant's two reactors is expected as soon as late this year. The new rules would be applicable to any hearings this request might generate. The arguments NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said the old rules encouraged formal, trial-like adjudicatory hearings. But she and nuclear industry advocates say the new rules benefit the public by making hearings more efficient and understandable. "Our position is that the new rules are consistent with federal law and will allow all parties to get at the issues more directly and incisively than under trial-style hearings," said Michael Bauser, a lawyer with the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry advocacy group. Bauser also noted that the new rules cut both ways. Utilities must also do without cross-examination and extensive discovery. "They are equitable across the board, and we think that's fine," Bauser said. But Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said the new procedures severely limit activists and local government officials. "The practical effect is that, with these new procedures, we don't have the ability to discover evidence or cross-examine witnesses unless the presiding officer deems it OK," Dresslar said. "These streamlined rules are a disaster for public participation. They come at a time when a lot of these nuclear plants are getting pretty old, so it's important that states have an opportunity to fully participate in license hearings." The new rules also restrict the amount of time activists and governments have to intervene in an NRC hearing and formally challenge aspects of the pending license. This puts activists, who often have meager budgets and rely on volunteers, at a great disadvantage compared to well-financed utility companies, said Deb Katz, executive director of the Citizens Awareness Network (CAN) in Shelburne Falls, Mass. "The NRC is setting up conditions to make it easier for the (nuclear) industry and basically eliminate the one avenue for the public to object," she said, "and we believe that is the purpose." CAN, a nuclear watchdog group with offices throughout New England, has sued the NRC to overturn the new rules. Lockyer and his counterparts from Connecticut, New York, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin have filed a friend-of-the court brief in support of the CAN lawsuit. The arguments contained in the brief are very similar to those made by Lockyer earlier this year when he and other attorneys general sided with the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace in a separate lawsuit against the NRC. That focused on the agency's refusal to hold public hearings into safety issues surrounding a proposed dry-cask storage facility at Diablo Canyon for highly radioactive spent reactor fuel. In both cases, the states argue that NRC actions diminished public safety because they deprive the agency of valuable local input on how to protect nuclear plants and respond effectively in the case of an accident or attack. They also contend that a lack of local participation erodes confidence in the regulatory process and the nuclear industry. "It is essential that members of the public be given a meaningful opportunity to participate in licensing hearings," the states' brief reads. "Without this opportunity, the public will have little confidence that government decision-makers will address their concerns during the relicensing process." Diablo Canyon owners Pacific Gas and Electric Co. received a license in March to build the dry-cask storage facility for the plant's used but still highly radioactive reactor fuel. The new rules were adopted a month before the dry cask license was issued and were not in effect when the agency deliberated whether to issue the permit. However, if Mothers for Peace activists prevail in their lawsuit, the NRC will be forced to hold hearings and the new rules would be relevant. Activists fear the rules will put them at a disadvantage. "Our reduced ability to participate is a disservice not only to this community but the nation as a whole," said Rochelle Becker, an activist with the San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace. Future license applications Other important licenses are on the horizon for Diablo Canyon which will likely require hearings under the new rules. The utility plans to apply late this year or early next for a three-year extension to the operating license of the plant's Unit 1 reactor. Called a license recapture, small extensions like this are intended to allow plants to recover lost operating time under their current license. In the case of Diablo Canyon, the extension would recover generating time lost when the plant first started up and was operating in low power, said Jeff Lewis, plant spokesman. If granted, the recapture will delay the expiration of the unit's license from September 2021 to November 2024. In that case, both units' licenses would expire within months of each other, Lewis said. However, the big licensing battle over Diablo Canyon will come when the utility applies to renew its operating license. Commercial nuclear plants are initially licensed for 40 years and can apply for a 20-year extension. Diablo Canyon officials say they are studying whether to apply for license renewal but have not made any decision because the current licenses won't expire for another 20 years. "We are still in a position of working on our spent fuel project and replacing the steam generators, so we are focusing our efforts on those issues," Lewis said. However, nuclear industry officials say they expect all operating nuclear plants, including Diablo Canyon, to apply for license renewal, said Mitch Singer, NEI spokesman. Of the nation's 103 operating reactors, 26 have already renewed their licenses, 18 have renewal applications pending and 24 others are expected to apply for renewal within three years. "Nobody has been turned down yet," Singer said. The NRC normally needs two or three years to review a renewal application, but the process begins long before that, Singer said. Utilities often start the process a decade, sometimes 15 years, before their operating licenses expire. This means PG&E could begin preparing its license renewal application in as little as five years. Activists say it is unlikely they can stop such renewals but want the old hearing rules back in order to improve safety. "Sometimes we lose these hearings, but the agency and the utilities do a better job when they are being watched," Katz said. David Sneed covers environmental issues for The Tribune. E-mail story ideas and comments to him at dsneed@thetribunenews.com. ***************************************************************** 46 JOURNAL NEWS: Indian Point sirens alarm critics By LIZ SADLER THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: June 26, 2004) Questions about whether a handful of emergency sirens for the Indian Point power plants will function properly in hot weather have some of the plants' critics steaming. In a June 23 e-mail obtained by CBS 2, The Journal News' media partner, an employee of Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which owns the Buchanan plants, raises concerns that the motors on four sirens might not start if the loads to local power lines are high due to hot weather. The company is investigating solutions, according to the e-mail, which warns of potential problems with two sirens in Westchester, one in Rockland and one in Orange County. Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano, an opponent of Indian Point, was notified of the concerns by Entergy, said Susan Tolchin, his chief adviser. "This was very upsetting to the county executive because there could be an incident, however unlikely, at Indian Point any time," Tolchin said. If some sirens don't sound in the event of a crisis, emergency workers must notify residents by going door to door. This "route alerting" would tie up police officers and first responders, Tolchin said. Jim Steets, an Entergy spokesman, said the company is looking into the report. Steets said the issue first arose after a June 15 test of the plant's 156 sirens, which span Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Orange counties. "Clearly, our first priority is to make sure they work," Steets said. He commended the Entergy employee for expressing his concerns about the sirens. Some areas, including the two Westchester locations mentioned in the e-mail, have more than one siren, Steets said. That means they would not require route alerting, he added. "The sirens should work. That's the bottom line," Steets said. However, it's reasonable to believe that a few of the sirens will fail, requiring some route alerting in some areas, he said. Any route alerting is unacceptable, said Kyle Rabin of the environmental group Riverkeeper. It would put first responders in danger and take them away from other duties, such as traffic control, said Rabin, who directs Riverkeeper's campaign to close Indian Point. "The sirens should be able to function 100 percent," he said. Copyright 2004 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York. Use of this site indicates your agreement to the Terms of Service(updated 12/17/2002) ***************************************************************** 47 IAEA: In Focus: Nuclear Energy - The Changing Future of Nuclear Power + [IAEA.ORG :: Atoms for Peace] Nuclear Power's Changing Future [Changing future of nuclear energy] Electricity from nuclear power plants help light up the world's major cities. (Photo: R. Quevenco/IAEA) See more photos in the photo gallery. + Facts & Figures + Table: Nuclear Power Reactors in Operation and Under Construction in the World [pdf] + Graph: Full energy chain GHG emission from electricity generation [pdf] + Graph: Projected carbon dioxide emissions from developing countries [pdf] + Timeline of Nuclear Power + PRIS - Data on the World's Nuclear Power Plants + Nuclear Profiles by Country + Articles & Stories on Energy [pdf] + [light bulb icon] Power to the People + [light bulb icon] Double or Quits + [light bulb icon] China's Challenging Fast Track + More energy articles from the IAEA Bulletin + Energy stories from IAEA.org + Key Resources + Nuclear Power & Climate Change [pdf] + Nuclear & Sustainable Development [pdf] + IAEA Sustainable Development Statement [pdf] + Radioactive Waste + IAEA Department of Energy + Nuclear Safety Fastest Growth Seen in Asia June 2004 Twenty-two of the last 31 nuclear power plants connected to the world's electricity grid have been built in Asia, driven by the pressures of economic growth, natural resource scarcity, and increasing populations. Of the 27 new plants under construction, 18 are located in Asia. In contrast, construction has virtually halted in Western Europe and North American countries with long-standing nuclear power programmes. More... » Background Information + IAEA Press Release, 26 June 2004 (English) + IAEA Press Release, 26 June 2004 (Russian - pdf) + International Conference on 50 Years of Nuclear Power + Energising the Future : The Power of Innovation, IAEA Bulletin Vol. 46/1 + Video B-roll: Nuclear Power's Changing Future [pdf] + Photo Gallery + For further information: IAEA Nuclear Energy Analyst, Alan McDonald Statements from Obninsk + IAEA Director General's Statement, Obninsk, Russia, June 2004 + President Putin's Statement, Obninsk, Russia, June 2004 Press Articles and Reports The IAEA is not responsible for the content of external web sites. + The Future of Nuclear Power MIT Study, July 2003 + Asia Turns to Nuclear Power, Nuclear Policy Research Institute, June 2004 + China to Import Nuclear Units from Europe Interfax, 18 June 2004 + Advanced Reactor Study in US Announced, US Newswire, May 2004 Copyright 2003, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimile (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: Official.Mail@iaea.org Disclaimer ***************************************************************** 48 Brattleboro Reformer: Coalition names four new trustees Brattleboro, VT Article Published: Saturday, June 26, 2004 - BRATTLEBORO -- Diana Sidebotham, president of the board of trustees of the New England Coalition, announced Friday the addition of four new trustees. The four are: -- Pat Cavanaugh, who works in the development office of Marlboro College; -- Peter Temes, who is president of Antioch New England Graduate School in Keene N.H.; -- Magdaline Volaitis, who is a longtime community activist and sound and motion picture editor; -- Pamela Long, a Realtor for more than 20 years who currently works for the Burlington-based Hearthside Group and is a fifth-generation Vermonter. "Each of them shares the deep concerns and commitment that have driven our 33 years of principled opposition to nuclear plants, processes and pollution," said Sidebotham. When asked his reasons for joining the board of trustees, Temes said that the coalition "is American democracy at its best -- engaged citizens working to make positive change with the future in mind. I'm honored and excited to be able to play a small role in supporting this outstanding work." Temes lives with his wife and three children in Connecticut. Cavanaugh said she will focus on the coalition's financial stability. "I hope that my background in development and fund-raising can lend some practical direction to NEC's fiscal well-being," said Cavanaugh. "New England Coalition is the quintessential 'David' to Entergy's 'Goliath' in terms of financial resources. We trustees must make fundraising our top priority, so that the staff can focus on technical and legislative work." Volaitis, a resident of Westminster, said she joined the board "because of the important work they are doing at the legal and regulatory levels -- the kind of work not usually accessible to most community activists. I hope to help the coalition continue in their heroic effort to give a voice to the people of Vermont in framing energy and nuclear policy in this state." Long said she believed that the coalition "has clearly emerged as a stronger advocate for the general public and our business community than any regulatory body assigned to protect our interests," and that she joined the board "to help raise the necessary funds for them to continue their epic battle to protect the safety and economic well-being of Vermonters and our neighbors to the east and south." New England Coalition is now gearing up to oppose Entergy's 20 percent power boost proposal before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "On the near horizon we will be intervening at the state and federal level in Entergy's plans for extending their operating license and to store radioactive waste outside the reactor building in Vernon," said Executive Director Peter Alexander. Copyright ©1999-2004 New England Newspapers, Inc., ***************************************************************** 49 UK Independent: Nuclear power 'can't stop climate change' By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor 27 June 2004 Nuclear power cannot solve global warming, the international body set up to promote atomic energy admits today. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which exists to spread the peaceful use of the atom, reveals in a new report that it could not grow fast enough over the next decades to slow climate change - even under the most favourable circumstances. The report - published to celebrate yesterday's 50th anniversary of nuclear power - contradicts a recent surge of support for the atom as the answer to global warming. That surge was provoked by an article in The Independent last month by Professor James Lovelock - the creator of the Gaia theory - who said that only a massive expansion of nuclear power as the world's main energy source could prevent climate change overwhelming the globe. Professor Lovelock, a long-time nuclear supporter, wrote: "Civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet." His comments were backed by Sir Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher's former PR chief, and other commentators, but have now been rebutted by the most authoritative organisation on the matter. Unlike fossil fuels, nuclear power emits no carbon dioxide, the main cause of climate change. However, it has long been in decline in the face of rising public opposition and increasing reluctance of governments and utilities to finance its enormous construction costs. No new atomic power station has been ordered in the US for a quarter of a century, and only one is being built in Western Europe - in Finland. Meanwhile, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden have all pledged to phase out existing plants. The IAEA report considers two scenarios. In the first, nuclear energy continues to decline, with no new stations built beyond those already planned. Its share of world electricity - and thus its relative contribution to fighting global warming - drops from its current 16 per cent to 12 per cent by 2030. Surprisingly, it made an even smaller relative contribution to combating climate change under the IAEA's most favourable scenario, seeing nuclear power grow by 70 per cent over the next 25 years. This is because the world would have to be so prosperous to afford the expansions that traditional ways of generating electricity from fossil fuels would have grown even faster. Climate change would doom the planet before nuclear power could save it. Alan McDonald, an IAEA nuclear energy analyst, told The Independent on Sunday last night: "Saying that nuclear power can solve global warming by itself is way over the top." But he added that closing existing nuclear power stations would make tackling climate change harder. UK Independent Ltd. ***************************************************************** 50 Channel news asia: UN agency touts peaceful use of nuclear energy with visit to Moscow Channelnewsasia.com IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei Posted: 27 June 2004 2046 hrs MOSCOW : UN atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei arrived in Moscow to celebrate a half-century of the use of peaceful nuclear energy and to show that it has a future, especially in Asia, according to an IAEA report. International Atomic Energy Agency director general ElBaradei will open here on Sunday a week-long "International Conference on 50 years of nuclear power -- the next 50 years," an IAEA spokesman said. "The event commemorates a half-century since the Obninsk power reactor (120 kilometres/70 miles southwest of Moscow) became the world's first to produce electricity for a national grid (on June 26, 1954) and the 50th anniversary of the UN General Assembly resolution calling for international cooperation in developing the peaceful uses for nuclear energy," the spokesman said. Nuclear expert Alan McDonald told reporters at IAEA headquarters in Vienna last week that atomic energy definitely had a future, despite concerns brought on by the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents in the United States in 1979 and and in Ukraine in 1986. Environmentalists condemn the use of nuclear energy for power, citing the danger of radiation from accidents and the problems of disposing of highly radioactive spent fuel. But nuclear power use is growing in Asia. The IAEA said that "22 of the last 31 nuclear power plants connected to the world's energy grid have been built in Asia, driven by the pressures of economic growth, natural resource scarcity and increasing populations." Of new plants being built, 18 out of 27 are located in Asia "while construction has virtually halted in western European and North American countries with long-standing nuclear power programs." "Only one new power plant is beginning construction in western Europe," it said. Japan and South Korea have started four new nuclear power plants in the past three years, with three more under construction, while China and India have started up nine new nuclear power plants in the last four years and have 10 more under construction, the report said. McDonald said that even in a country like Germany, which is phasing out its power plants, this was being done for economic rather than ecological reasons. "Natural gas is cheaper," he said, noting that most costs from a nuclear power plant are "front-loaded" since due to high costs in building the plants. "The competition with nuclear is natural gas," he said, since these plants cost much less to build, even if nuclear energy is cheaper over the long run. "Oil is not in competition with nuclear" since oil is "primarily used for the transport sector," McDonald said. Besides the economics of years of cheap energy once a plant has been built, the environmental advantage of nuclear energy, provided reactors don't explode and waste doesn't seep into water supplies, is that "nuclear power emits virtually no greenhouse gases," the IAEA said in a report on "Nuclear Power's Changing Future." "Worldwide if the 440 nuclear power plants were shut down and replaced with a proportionate mix of non-nuclear sources, the result would be an increase of 600 million tonnes of carbon per year. "That is approximately twice the total amount that we estimate will be avoided by the Kyoto Protocol in 2010," the report said. Meanwhile, "nuclear is now the cheapest way to produce electricity, just beating coal and well below the cost of electricity generation from natural gas," the report said. It said nuclear waste can be disposed of safely "by deep geological burial in suitable hard rock, salt or clay formations." New nuclear power plants "with shorter construction times and significantly lower capital costs could help promote a new era of nuclear power," said Yuri Sokolov, IAEA deputy director for nuclear energy. A new model is "the European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) design that the energy company TVO in Finland just selected for its new Olkiluoto-3-plant," the report said. The IAEA has made "high" and "low" projections for the future of nuclear energy. If no new plants are built and current ones retire on schedule, "the amount of nuclear electricity generated, in terms of kilowatt hours, would continue to increase until 2020 but would grow more slowly than other electricity sources. "As a result, the nuclear share of world electricity would drop from its present 16 percent to 12 percent in 2030." But if new plants are built, the high projection is that "nuclear power would generate 70 percent more electricity in 2030 than in 2002" even if its percentage of world power output would still decrease since "total electricity generation from all sources would grow much more." - AFP ***************************************************************** 51 Scotsman.com News: Nuclear energy is embraced by Asia Sat 26 Jun 2004 MORE Asian countries are turning to nuclear power to meet their energy needs as Western countries move away from nuclear energy sources. While the construction of nuclear plants in Western Europe and the United States has virtually stopped in recent years, Asian countries are forging ahead, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency said today, ahead of a major conference on the future of nuclear power starting tomorrow in Moscow. Just 16 per cent of global electricity is produced by 442 nuclear power plants, mostly in Western Europe and North America. But nuclear energy is increasingly popular in many Asian countries because they lack access to more traditional sources of fuel, such as coal or gas, IAEA expert Alan McDonald said. "Countries like South Korea and Japan don’t have so many alternatives," he said. Nations where the energy demand is growing fast, or with economies conducive to long-term investments - including several Asian countries - are more likely to opt for nuclear energy, he added. Agency figures say 18 of the 27 nuclear power plants currently under construction are in Asia, as are 27 of the last 31 plants built around the world. None are planned in North America and only one is planned in Europe - in Finland. Safety concerns have led four European governments to phase out nuclear power completely, while others have decided against building more reactors. The Chernobyl accident in Ukraine and Three Mile Island meltdown in the US showed the risks posed by nuclear power plants. Terrorism has added yet another worry. Concern for the environment may see European governments reconsider, Mr McDonald said. Nuclear power may be one of the few alternatives if renewable energy sources are unable to meet future energy demand. • The UK is to give a ÂŁ15 million grant to Russia to help pay for a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, the Government said. Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt, on an official visit to Moscow, said the money will be used to pay for an interim storage facility and 50 storage casts in Murmansk. She said the spent nuclear fuel was a "major nuclear security and environmental concern" for the area. [ border=] ***************************************************************** 52 Reuters: Despite fears, nuclear power industry growing -UN -UN 26 Jun 2004 12:00:07 GMT By Louis Charbonneau MOSCOW, June 26 (Reuters) - Fears that nuclear power means catastrophic accidents and the proliferation of atom bombs have not stopped the nuclear industry from growing, the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday. It was exactly 50 years ago at 5:30 p.m. Moscow time when the Soviet Union put the world's first nuclear power plant on line in a town called Obninsk, not far from Moscow. This was nearly nine years after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, bringing a quick and violent end to the Second World War and ushering in the nuclear age with its mushroom clouds and nightmares of nuclear holocaust. "The more we look to the future, the more we can expect countries to be considering the potential benefits ... expanding nuclear power has to offer for the global environment and for economic growth," IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said before travelling to Moscow for a conference on nuclear power. During his four-day official visit to Russia, ElBaradei will have a series of meetings with high-level Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, to discuss the future of nuclear energy and the problem of arms proliferation. But IAEA officials acknowledge that the 50-year life of nuclear power has hardly been an easy one. Accidents at Ukraine's Chernobyl plant and Three Mile Island in the United States have boosted the world's anti-nuclear "green" lobbies and left atomic energy with a very bad name. The image of nuclear power has also not been helped by the fact that the number of atomic weapons states has nearly doubled since the Non-Proliferation Treaty entered into force in 1970. But despite its bad image, the IAEA says countries are still building power plants and the industry is far from dying. Alan McDonald, an IAEA nuclear analyst, said the reason some countries choose nuclear energy over more traditional energy sources like oil, gas or coal was a lack of resources. "Nuclear power looks good if you have weak alternatives," he said. While North America has an abundance of coal and gas, countries like Japan and South Korea do not, and so choose nuclear energy as the most economically viable energy source. There is another aspect of nuclear energy that could help the industry improve its image -- the fact that generating atomic energy produces almost no "greenhouse" gases, which many countries want to limit to help stem global warming. "New nuclear plants are most attractive where energy demand is growing and alternative resources are scarce, and where energy security and reduced air pollution and greenhouse gases are a priority," ElBaradei said. The agency said that while Europe and North America have virtually stopped building nuclear plants, Asian countries continue to construct them to satisfy their power needs. Of the last 31 nuclear power plants connected to the world's power grid, 22 were built in Asia, the IAEA said. The agency noted that there are 27 plants now under construction around the world and 18 of them are in Asia. Mike Townsley, a nuclear analyst for the environmental campaigning group Greenpeace, said it was irresponsible to build new nuclear power plants since many "civilian power" schemes have fed into military atom bomb programmes. "The problem is nuclear power is still seen as a status symbol," he said, adding: "You only have to look at countries where nuclear programmes have been smokescreens for weapons programmes -- Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq" and others. He also said there were insufficient uranium deposits to fuel nuclear power plants indefinitely, though the IAEA said there are "sizable quantities on all continents". Townsley said it was "a dying industry, but one whose deadly legacy will be with us for hundreds of thousands of years". ***************************************************************** 53 ITAR-TASS: Nuclear power plants produce about 16% of overall energy in Russia, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said [ITAR-TASS News Agency of Russia] 27.06.2004, 18.16 MOSCOW, June 27 (Itar-Tass) -- Nuclear power plants produce about 16% of overall energy in Russia, Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said at an international conference marking the 50th anniversary of the atomic energy industry in Moscow on Sunday. “The rate is 42% in the Russian northwest,” he added. “The atomic energy industry of Russia is stable. Nuclear power plants produce 148.6 billion kilowatt/hours of electricity each year, and the annual growth of the atomic energy industry produce has made 9 billion kilowatt/hours for the past three years.” Russia is actively cooperating with foreign partners in atomic energy, which gives an additional impetus to the industry’s development in Russia and abroad, Fradkov said. He pledged further development of the international cooperation. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 54 SouthofBoston.com: Mississippi nuke leads to Plymouth MPG Newspapers 9 Long Pond Rd. Plymouth, MA 02360 (508) 746-5555 By Gregg Gethard MPG Newspapers PLYMOUTH (June 26) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has required a subsidiary of Entergy to investigate Plymouth as the potential site of a second nuclear power plant. The company wants to construct a new nuclear power plant in Mississippi, not Plymouth. Entergy owns the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth. As part of its application to build in Grand Gulf, Miss., Entergy subsidiary System Energy Resources must also investigate other potential sites to build. In its application it has listed River Bend in Louisiana, Fitzpatrick in upstate New York and Plymouth as potential alternate sites. A spokesman for the NRC said the agency requires companies wishing to build nuclear reactors must look at alternative sites during the early stages of the building process. "They need to take a look at other locations to see what is the most convenient one from an environmental point of view," said an NRC spokesman. "There are no plans to do that," said Entergy spokesman Carl Crawford about whether the company was looking at building another reactor at Pilgrim Station. Crawford then referred all questions to spokesmen located at Pilgrim Station, who did not return phone calls. As part of the application review, an NRC staff scientist plans to come Plymouth July 7 to collect socioeconomic information on the area. "My role is to assist the NRC in preparing the EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) to help determine whether any of the alternative sites is environmentally preferable (and, ultimately, whether any of the alternative sites is obviously superior) to Grand Gulf as the host for a new nuclear reactor," wrote Michael Scott to the Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce on June 23. Scott's phone message said he would be unavailable until next week. The chamber's executive committee voted Friday to facilitate the information collection process. "The chamber has been invited to facilitate a meeting," chamber president Bob Dawson said. "On relatively short notice, the chamber agreed to help, if possible. We do not take a stand on whether a plant should be built here or in Mississippi or anywhere." The July 7 meeting will be with "area community leaders" knowledgeable about the local economy and population. Conversation will revolve around issues pertaining to the effects a new plant would have on housing, other employers and regional economic development. In Scott's letter, he said discussion would focus on the effects of a hypothetical situation where 3,150 construction workers would build the plant over the course of five years and 1,160 employees would be needed to operate the new facility. "We've been advised it's a perfunctory process," Dawson said. "They're obligated by federal rules and regulations to go through this." Two other companies have inquired about building new nuclear facilities. One proposal calls for an additional reactor to be built at a nuclear power site in Virginia. The other calls for an additional reactor to be built at a nuclear site in Illinois. No new nuclear power plants have been ordered since the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979. The last nuclear power plant constructed was finished in 1996 and built in Tennessee. On average, it takes at least 20 years to build a nuclear reactor. Entergy filed its application to build the potential Mississippi site in October of 2003. According to the NRC Web site, it will take up to 36 months before a decision on the project will be made. Last week, the Senate approved $16 billion in loan guarantees that would call for the construction of six new nuclear power plants. Some politicians, including Vice President Dick Cheney, have called for the construction of new power plants as a way to decrease America's dependence on foreign oil. Last week, members of the Utility Workers Union of America Local 369, one of two unions representing employees at Pilgrim Station, voted to strike on July 13 if they could not settle a contract with Entergy. The main issue of contention is the company's decision in 2003 to offer voluntary severance packages to employees as a way to trim payroll. Employees and the company have also failed to reach an agreement regarding health care payments. Because of the strike, along with fears of potential terrorist attacks, local anti-nuclear activists have filed petitions asking the NRC to shut down the plant. Entergy reported $950.4 million in profits on $9.2 billion in revenue last year, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the first quarter of this year, Entergy's nuclear division earned $68.8 million, attributed to increases in wattage outputs from its nuclear plants. A 40-year license to operate Pilgrim ends in 2012. Earlier this year, Entergy decided to halt action on a renewal application that would have extended the lease for another 20 years. Writer Lynn Wohlwend contributed to this story. | MPG Newspapers, 9 Long Pond Rd., Plymouth, MA 02360 Telephone: (508) 746-5555 ***************************************************************** 55 AU ABC: More nuclear energy needed to raise living standards : report. 26/06/2004. ABC News Online The International Atomic Energy Agency says the world will have to produce more nuclear energy if it wants to raise living standards and reduce greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. The warning is contained in a special report published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the world's first nuclear power station. The UN agency estimates that by 2050 atomic plants will produce four times as much energy as today. At present they account for just one sixth of the world's power needs. However, the IAEA report acknowledges that public concerns about nuclear safety, especially over the safe disposal of nuclear waste, could heavily influence the future of the industry. © 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 56 [FOODIRRADIATIONCA] Senate Health Comm. hearing on AB 1988 on Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 23:40:19 -0500 (CDT) AB 1988 is going to the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday, June 30! Today, AB 1988 passed out of the Senate Education Committee and is headed to the Health Committee. This landmark legislation will require irradiated foods to receive school board approval before they can be served, require schools to make available information about irradiated foods to parents, and require irradiated foods to be labeled on school lunch menus. Please call Senators on the Health Committee and urge their support for AB 1988! Visit www.senate.ca.gov to find your Senator. Scroll down for a phone rap. Health Committee Target List Senator Deborah Ortiz, Committee Chair (Sacramento county) 916-445-7807 or send a FREE fax at: http://www.citizen.org/fax/background.cfm?ID=358&source=56 Senator Wes Chesbro (Humboldt, Mendocino, Sonoma, Napa, Lake, and Sonoma Counties) 916-445-3375 or send a FREE FAX at: http://www.citizen.org/fax/background.cfm?ID=356&source=56 Senator Martha Escutia (parts of LA city and county) 916-327-8315 Senator Dean Florez (Fresno, Kern, Kings, and Tulare Counties) 916 445-4641 Sample phone rap: Hi, I am calling to urge Senator _________ to support AB 1988. This bill requires schools boards to approve irradiated foods before schools can serve them, and requires parental disclosure. I believe that parents have the basic right to know and decide what their children are eating at school, especially when it may be something as controversial as irradiated foods. Background In May of 2003, the USDA approved irradiated foods for the National School Lunch Program, which provides free or reduced price meals to needy schoolchildren. This USDA decision was made despite overwhelming opposition from parents, teachers, students, and concerned citizens who oppose serving irradiated food to children. Irradiation exposes food to extremely high doses of ionizing radiation in order to kill bacteria. In the process, nutrients are destroyed and new toxic chemicals are formed. Consumption of irradiated foods has been linked to numerous health problems in humans and animals, including reproductive dysfunction, fatal internal bleeding, and a rare form of cancer. Irradiation perpetuates the filthy and inhumane conditions in factory farms and slaughterhouses, which cause massive amounts of water contamination and degrade air quality. Irradiated foods have been rejected by consumers in the marketplace, and no population has ever consumed irradiated food as a substantive part of their diet. In February, 2004 Assemblywoman Loni Hancock introduced AB 1988. This bill requires school board approval before a school can serve irradiated meat, requires schools to notify parents, label irradiated foods as such, and provide a non-irradiated meal option. To read the bill visit www.leginfo.ca.gov To learn more about irradiated foods and their inclusion in the National School Lunch Program, visit www.safelunch.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tracy Lerman Senior Organizer Public Citizen, California Office 1615 Broadway, 9th Floor Oakland, CA 94612 ph: 510-663-0888 x 103 f: 510-663-8569 tlerman@citizen.org www.citizen.org/california Keep irradiated food out of your child's lunch! Visit www.safelunch.org to find out more. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tracy Lerman Senior Organizer Public Citizen, California Office 1615 Broadway, 9th Floor Oakland, CA 94612 ph: 510-663-0888 x 103 f: 510-663-8569 tlerman@citizen.org www.citizen.org/california Keep irradiated food out of your child's lunch! Visit www.safelunch.org to find out more. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ********** If you do not wish to recieve these emails in the future, please send a email to tlerman@citizen.org with "unsubscribe foodirradiationca" in the subject line. ***************************************************************** 57 [DU-WATCH] Navy calls for DU weapons proposals Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2004 11:30:06 -0500 (CDT) http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_navy_1026syn.html I'm recently back from travels and will be uploading new resources, including audio of presentations on DU from the 5th Annual National Conference on the War Against Iraq, held at Indiana University recently. Best, Charlie 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://www.traprockpeace.org On Jun 11, 2004, at 11:10 AM, Amarie wrote: http://www.nswc.navy.mil/ http://www.nswc.navy.mil/supply/synopsis.htm http://www.nswc.navy.mil/supply/solicita/04r1026/1026syn.htm Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Dahigren Division, Virginia has just closed its call for expressions of interest by weapons' developers for designing and testing DU warheads in a wide variety of warhead technologies: shaped charges, deep earth penetrators, ram- jet boosted kinetic energy penetrators, tactical battlefield and strategic CBW defeat weapons. The designer/builder is expected to develop DU applications in thermonuclear weapons and hyper-velocity rockets (i.e. that means the J-SSCM which I revealed a few months back, covered by Traprock). "The contractor must have a Radioactive Materials License for testing of depleted uranium and have a BASTF license." Testing is comprehensive over all warhead ballistic configurations: "Fragments, projectiles, continuous rods, shaped charge, reactive fragments, and blasts". Testing of 20,000 pound TNT equivalent HE's indicates mini-nuke testing. Probably in LLNL's soon to be build nuclear explosion indoor testing laboratory. The program will test reactive fragments and reactive fragment warheads. "Reactive" is the code word for intermetallic warheads that react explosively and with high and prolonged heat when exposed to water, titanium, and hydrogen". Here we have ample demonstration of the experimentation and advancing development of several generations of uranium ballasted penetration warheads, liquid metal and explosively formed penetration warheads, high explosive-uranium composite warheads, and DU as an integral component to deep earth fissile penetration ram jet boosted warheads. N00178-04-R-1026 A--Weapon Testing Support XDS11 - Highly classified joint warhead testing program Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgrn, VA March 2004 Variants of the HEDP are without doubt uranium rounds: http://www.nswc.navy.mil/supply/solicita/04r1014/1014syn.htm [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Yahoo! Domains - Claim yours for only $14.70 http://us.click.yahoo.com/Z1wmxD/DREIAA/yQLSAA/Sj.0lB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 58 [RADFOOD] Child Nutrition Victory!! Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 23:07:31 -0500 (CDT) It worked!! After all of your calls, faxes, and emails, Congress has passed the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization complete with language on irradiated food in the school lunch program!! The bill was passed by the Senate last night, and this afternoon by the House. The measures on irradiation include: -- the bill requires that irradiated food only be made available at the request of state and local school systems -- it cannot be mandated by USDA; -- the bill states that irradiated food cannot to be subsidized by the federal government (this means that USDA cannot offset the increased costs of irradiated foods to encourage their use): -- the bill requires that state and school food authorities are provided with factual information on irradiation, including notice that irradiation is not a substitute for safe food handling; -- the bill requires irradiated foods distributed to federal meal programs to be labeled as irradiated. (This measure ensures that school food service employees know that the food is irradiated. It does not require the school to pass the labeling on to students.) -- the bill prohibits the co-mingling of irradiated and non-irradiated foods. -- the bill encourages schools using irradiated foods to offer a non-irradiated alternative. Thank you for all of your efforts on this important issue! ------------------ Here is the text of the irradiation provisions: SEC. 118. NOTICE OF IRRADIATED FOOD PRODUCTS. Section 14 of the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (42 U.S.C. 1762a) is amended by adding at the end the following: "(h) Notice of Irradiated Food Products.- "(1) In general.-The Secretary shall develop a policy and establish procedures for the purchase and distribution of irradiated food products in school meals programs under this Act and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (42 U.S.C. 1771 et seq.). "(2) Minimum requirements.-The policy and procedures shall ensure, at a minimum, that- "(A) irradiated food products are made available only at the request of States and school food authorities; "(B) reimbursements to schools for irradiated food products are equal to reimbursements to schools for food products that are not irradiated; "(C) States and school food authorities are provided factual information on the science and evidence regarding irradiation technology, including- "(i) notice that irradiation is not a substitute for safe food handling techniques; and "(ii) any other similar information determined by the Secretary to be necessary to promote food safety in school meals programs; "(D) States and school food authorities are provided model procedures for providing to school food authorities, parents, and students- "(i) factual information on the science and evidence regarding irradiation technology; and "(ii) any other similar information determined by the Secretary to be necessary to promote food safety in school meals; "(E) irradiated food products distributed to the Federal school meals program under this Act and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (42 U.S.C. 1771 et seq.) are labeled with a symbol or other printed notice that- "(i) indicates that the product was irradiated; and "(ii) is prominently displayed in a clear and understandable format on the container; "(F) irradiated food products are not commingled in containers with food products that are not irradiated; and "(G) schools that offer irradiated food products are encouraged to offer alternatives to irradiated food products as part of the meal plan used by the schools.". To read the entire bill, go to: http://agriculture.senate.gov/nutri/WEI04551_LC.pdf ******************** If you would like to be removed from the radfood list, send an email to listserv@listserver.citizen.org with the words "unsubscribe radfood" in the message. If you would like to be added to the radfood list, send an email to listserv@listserver.citizen.org with the words "subscribe radfood" in the message. To learn more about food irradiation, visit our website at http://www.citizen.org/cmep/ Questions about the radfood list can be directed to RADFOOD-request@LISTSERVER.CITIZEN.ORG -Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program ***************************************************************** 59 Guardian Unlimited: Butler inquiry targets Niger uranium claim Antony Barnett, public affairs editor Sunday June 27, 2004 The Observer The man charged with investigating British intelligence failures in the build-up to the Iraq war is focusing on Tony Blair's assertion that Saddam Hussein tried to secure uranium from Niger. The revelation that Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary in charge of the inquiry, is homing in on this issue could cause problems for Blair. The Prime Minister's claim - which formed a key element in his justification for the invasion - was subsequently rejected by the US government, which concluded it was based on forged documents. Blair's controversial Septem ber 2002 dossier stated that Iraq had sought 'significant amounts of uranium from Africa', widely understood to refer to Niger. The Observer has obtained details of a confidential letter sent by Butler to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) earlier this month. He asked Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, for information about meetings between Iraqi officials and the government of Niger, the west African state from which it was claimed Saddam had tried to buy 'yellow cake' uranium ore. In the letter, sent a fortnight ago, Butler refers to ElBaradei's address to the UN Security Council on 7 March, 2003. ElBaradei used the occasion to dismiss claims by the British and US governments, concluding: 'There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.' Butler refers to one specific statement that ElBaradei made during the address: 'Iraq has provided the IAEA with a comprehensive explanation of its relations with Niger, and has described a visit by an Iraqi official to a number of African countries, including Niger, in February 1999, which Iraq thought might have given rise to the reports'. Butler asked ElBaradei for details of the Iraqi explanation, which the IAEA is believed to have now supplied. The US administration has apologised for including the Niger allegation in President Bush's State of the Union address last January, but Blair has always refused to withdraw his claim, insisting that the UK had 'separate intelligence' about Iraq's quest for uranium. In July 2003, Blair told a Commons committee: 'The evidence that we had that the Iraqi government had gone back to try to purchase further amounts of uranium from Niger did not come from these so-called forged documents; they came from separate intelligence.' This additional information was believed to relate to an Iraqi delegation visiting Niger in 1999 and Butler's correspondence with the IAEA now seems to confirm this. Insiders in the nuclear world believe that, if Blair relied on this 1999 meeting to support his claims over the Niger deal, it would be seen as an embarrassing mistake. The Iraqi official who visited the African state in 1999 was Wissam al-Zahawie, who at the time was Iraq's ambassador to the Vatican. It has since emerged that, during the same visit, al-Zahawie also visited three other African countries: Burkina Faso, Benin and Congo-Brazzaville. He has claimed that the sole purpose of these visits was to extend an invitation from Saddam Hussein for their heads of state to visit Baghdad. He said: 'My only mission was to meet the President of Niger and invite him to visit Iraq. The invitation, and the situation in Iraq resulting from the genocidal UN sanctions, were all we talked about. I had no other instructions, and certainly none concerning the purchase of uranium.' Former US diplomat Joseph Wilson, who visited Niger in 2002 on behalf of the CIA to probe a possible uranium link with Iraq, said al-Zahawie's visit was common knowledge. 'It's perfectly reasonable to assume that the Iraqis weren't interested in Niger's millet or sorghum, but it's a real leap of faith to say that, through this visit, Iraq was seeking to purchase significant quantities of uranium from Niger,' Wilson said. 'It's not even circumstantial evidence.' Al-Zahawie's name also appears as a signatory of documents addressed to Niger diplomats in Rome, confirming a deal whereby Iraq would purchase 500 tons of uranium 'yellow cake' ore. These documents have proved to be forgeries and accepted as fakes by Washington and the IAEA. The British government's controversial dossier on Iraqi WMD said the regime 'sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it'. Lynne Jones, a Labour backbencher who, along with fellow Labour MP Llew Smith, submitted a dossier of evidence to the Butler inquiry, has said that there was no longer a shred of evidence to substantiate Blair's claims that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. Email your comments for publication to politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** 60 SF Chronicle: Plutonium fuel sparked controversy over safety David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Sunday, June 27, 2004 Months before the spacecraft Cassini was launched from Cape Canaveral nearly seven years ago, controversy flared across the country over the plutonium fuel that would generate power for the spacecraft's long journey to Saturn. Critics feared the possibility of a nuclear "meltdown" and widespread radioactive contamination of the environment should the nuclear core of the generators fail during launch or explode early in flight, or when Cassini swung past Earth on its looping voyage two years later. Nothing like that occurred, and the miniature power plants, fueled by plutonium dioxide, are now generating 750 watts of power to run the spacecraft's 12 scientific instruments and the radio that is beaming a stream of signals back to Earth. But while Cassini was still standing on its launch pad in 1997, environmentalists and anti-nuclear forces formed a "Stop Cassini Coalition" that held demonstrations in the Bay Area and other cities. Three local members of Congress at the time -- Ron Dellums, D-Oakland; Pete Stark, D-Hayward; and Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma -- urged President Bill Clinton to postpone the launch so independent scientists could review the possibility of using solar power instead. But Cassini is flying so far from the sun -- nearly 900 million miles away -- that it receives only 1 percent of the solar energy that reaches Earth. Scientists had long since determined that solar-powered batteries like those used on missions to nearby planets would have to be so large that the spacecraft could never be launched. The power plants aboard Cassini are called "radioisotope thermoelectric generators," or RTGs. The fuel is plutonium-38, a form of the manmade element whose atoms decay to yield radioactivity but cannot split to explode like plutonium-39, which is used in atomic bombs. The plutonium's radioactive decay produces heat, which is converted to electricity by devices called thermoelectric converters. Cassini has three main RTGs to run its dozen scientific instruments, while 82 similar but much smaller devices each provide a single watt of power to keep the spacecraft's electronics warm against the deep cold of space around Saturn, where temperatures reach more than 200 degrees below zero. The European Space Agency's Huygens probe now riding piggy-back on Cassini, which will reach the surface of Saturn's mysterious moon Titan, is also being warmed and powered by another 35 one-watt RTGs. Altogether, the Cassini's generators can produce a total of 885 watts of electricity. Earlier versions of the plutonium-fueled RTGs were used successfully on the two Voyager spacecraft that flew past Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune on planetary missions that ended in 1989. Similar devices also powered the Galileo mission that ended last year after exploring the neighborhood of Jupiter and its icy moons. Page A - 8 ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ ***************************************************************** 61 WIStv.com Columbia, SC: DHEC distributes pills in case of nuclear accident (Irmo) June 26, 2004 - DHEC was busy Saturday passing out pills that could keep people safe in case of a nuclear accident. The agency distributed more than 10,000 potassium iodide tablets for people who live within a 10-mile radius of the VC Summer Nuclear Station. People picked up their packets at Dutch Fork High School. The pills could reduce the risk of thyroid cancers and other diseases if a nuclear accident occurs at the plant. Residents in Richland, Lexington, Newberry and Fairfield counties are all eligible for the tablets. Posted 6:25pm by All content © Copyright 2000 - 2004 WorldNow and WISTV. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 62 Scoop: US DU More Deadly Than Gas www.scoop.co.nz Monday, 28 June 2004, 11:49 am Column: Frederick Sweet When this war ends, George Bush will have caused the poisoning of hundreds of thousands more humans than he said Saddam Hussein poisoned. Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. You can email your comments to Fred@interventionmag.com In its 110,000 air raids against Iraq, the US A-10 Warthog aircraft launched 940,000 depleted uranium shells, and in the land offensive, its M60, M1 and M1A1 tanks fired a further 4,000 larger caliber also uranium shells. The Bush administration and the Pentagon said, there is no danger to American troops or Iraqi civilians from breathing the uranium oxide dust produced in depleted uranium (DU) weapons explosions. DU is the waste residue made from the uranium enrichment process. This radioactive and toxic substance, 1.7 times as dense as lead, is used to make shells that penetrate steel armor. Last July, two military DU weapons experts Dr Doug Rokke and George A. Parker, veterans of the Gulf War, issued a public warning against using these radioactive weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. [for full text, see: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/01/50000.html ] Rokke had been U.S. Army's DU team health physicist and U.S. Army's DU Project Director. Former British Army Sgt. Parker had been with the 1st Field Laboratory Unit, Biological-Warfare Detection Unit at Porton Down in Great Britain. His job had been management in the Gulf War of troop protection against weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Rokke warned: "Depleted uranium munitions (DU) have been used effectively in combat since 1973. Their destructive capabilities are absolutely superior to any other known munitions that can be fired by tanks, armored vehicles, aircraft, and rifles. In addition the ADAM and PDM, which are land mines, are essentially conventional explosives wrapped in shell containing uranium or a 'dirty bomb.' Although DU munitions are an excellent weapon, they leave a path of death, illness, and environmental contamination. The radiological and chemical toxicity are due to uranium, plutonium, neptunium, and americium isotopes within each DU bullet. We also have all of the inherent contamination from the equipment, terrain, and facilities that were destroyed." "Upon the completion of the ground combat phase of the Gulf war, I was assigned by Headquarters Department of the Army and consequently the U.S. Central Command to clean up the depleted uranium contaminated U.S. equipment and provide initial medical recommendations for all individuals who were or may have been exposed as a consequence of military actions." "Our initial observations of the DU contamination can be summed simply by three words 'OH MY GOD!' Although my mission was limited to U.S. personnel and equipment all affected persons and equipment should have been processed identically. They were not! Although I and U.S. Army physicians assigned to the 3rd U.S. Army Medical Command issued immediate verbal and written medical care recommendations those still have not been complied with for not only all U.S. and coalition military DU casualties but for Iraqi military personnel and especially noncombatants, women and children, who were exposed to DU munitions contamination." "A United States Defense Nuclear Agency memorandum written by LTC Lyle that was sent to our team in Saudi Arabia during March 1990 stated that quote: 'As Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), ground combat units, and civil populations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq come increasingly into contact with DU ordnance, we must prepare to deal with potential problems. Toxic war souvenirs, political furor, and post conflict clean up (host nation agreement) are only some of the issues that must be addressed. Alpha particles (uranium oxide dust) from expended rounds is a health concern but, Beta particles from fragments and intact rounds is a serious health threat, with possible exposure rates of 200 millirads per hour on contact.' end [of] quote." Referring to Dr. Rokke's comments, Sgt. Parker concluded: "I am now aware that armed forces personnel are considered as disposable items. Something to be used abused and then discarded when broken. Further more, when made ill by the use of politically sensitive weapons such as DU they are an expensive embarrassment to be silenced when voicing concerns." "It is my sincere and heart felt belief that until such time as the UK and US governments can properly care for ill and dying veterans of war, they should refrain from deploying members of the armed forces overseas." Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, an opponent of DU weapons use since 1996, again raised his call for a ban on the use of these weapons in 2001. Since then DU weapons conferences, ironically, in Baghdad in 1999 and Gijon, Spain in 2000 had demanded a ban on DU use. "This new outbreak of leukemia among European [NATO] soldiers has reinforced what we said before," said Clark from New York in January 2001. "Is it acceptable by any human standards that we would permit one shell of depleted uranium to be manufactured, to be stored, to be used? No! Stop it now!" According to a May 2003 article in the Christian Science Monitor, the first partial Pentagon disclosure of the amount of DU used in Iraq, a US Central Command spokesman admitted that A-10 Warthog aircraft -- the same planes that shot at the Iraqi planning ministry -- fired 300,000 bullets. The normal combat mix for these 30-mm rounds is five DU bullets to 1 -- a mix that had left about 75 tons of DU in Iraq. A Monitor reporter had seen only one site where US troops had put up handwritten warnings in Arabic for Iraqis to stay away. A 3-foot-long DU warhead from a 120- mm tank shell had been found to produce radiation at more than 1,300 times background levels. Many scientists believe that uranium oxide dust inhaled or ingested by troops in the Gulf War is the cause, or a contributing cause, of the "Gulf-War Syndrome". Of the approximately 697,000 U.S. troops stationed in the Gulf during the war, more than 100,000 veterans are now chronically ill. Cancer rates in southern Iraq have increased dramatically. For example ovarian cancer in Iraqi women of the southern region has fully increased by 16-fold. More recently, Bush's and the Pentagon's reassurances were vigorously challenged by nuclear physicists and physicians at a scientific meeting, the World DU/Uranium Weapons Conference held in Hamburg, Germany during October 2003. New data suggest that orders of magnitude more Americans and Iraqis may have been poisoned by uranium from depleted uranium (DU) weapons explosions than Kurds had been killed by Saddam's gas in 1988. Review in Hamburg of the long term medical effects from DU exposures during the 1990s in Kosovo, Sarajevo, southern Iraq and from American veterans of the Gulf War reveal a frightening reality. Conference scientists criticized as decades obsolete the Pentagon models used for reassuring the public about the long-term effects of inhaling uranium oxide particles from DU weapons. Citing the Pentagon model, the official 2003 Conference Statement concluded: "The knowledge on which this [Pentagon] model is based is faulty and outdated. This is like comparing [someone] sitting in front of a fire with [them] eating a hot coal." According to the Conference, the mobility of the ceramic uranium oxide particles from DU weapons explosions is due to their re-suspension in dry weather. Measuring isotope ratios of U-238 and Pa-234m/Th-234 in water and air measurements by UNEP in Kosovo, Bosnia and Montenegro has showed this. Uranium oxide particles are available for inhalation long after the war is over. Anyone in the general area of their prior use is at risk, several years after their use or contamination. This had been proven by urine measurements in Kosovo in 2001. All of the people sampled showed contamination from DU. This was also shown by urine tests of Gulf War veterans made 10 years after their exposure. After the Gulf War, Iraqi and international epidemiological investigations enabled the environmental pollution due to using this kind of weapon to be associated with the appearance of new, very difficult to diagnose diseases (serious immunodeficiencies, for instance) and the spectacular increase in congenital malformations and cancer. This had been found both in the Iraqi population and also among several thousands of American and British veterans and in their children, a clinical condition now called Gulf War Syndrome. Similar symptoms to those of the Gulf War have been described for a thousand children living in Bosnia where American aviation similarly used DU bombs in 1996, the same as in the NATO intervention against Yugoslavia in 1999. It is estimated that already some 300 tons of radioactive debris from DU weapons had been deposited in target areas during the 2003 Iraq War, affecting over 250,000 Iraqis. By comparison, Saddam Hussein -- who Bush had called an evil murderer -- only gassed about 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in 1988. But by Bush launching his war on Iraq with DU weapons of mass destruction, he multiplied the casualties to the Iraqis, and also to American troops, by factors of hundreds relative to the infamous gassing of the Kurds. Therefore, by the time American troops leave Iraq Bush will very likely have poisoned hundreds of thousands more humans than he had accused Saddam Hussein of poisoning. Agree? Disagree? Suggestions?. Click on "post comment" below and tell us what you think. Copyright (c) Scoop Media ***************************************************************** 63 Corvallis Gazette-Times: Incinerator nearly ready to begin destroying chemical weapons [gazettetimes.com] Last modified Saturday, June 26, 2004 10:39 PM PDT By JEFF BARNARD The Associated Press HERMISTON -- As early as mid-August, munitions handlers hope to go to one of the 80-foot-long concrete bunkers in K Block of the Umatilla Chemical Depot, fire up a forklift, and move to the door two pallets stacked with a total of 30 M55 rockets filled with deadly nerve agent. Outside the bunker, another forklift will load the rockets into a 19,000-pound pressurized containment cylinder on a flatbed truck, which will drive down a short road to a huge building inside the U.S. Army's Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. The rockets will be the first of more than 220,000 munitions containing nerve and mustard agents left over from the Cold War to move through the robotic disassembly line, where they will be punched, drained, chopped and finally burned in special furnaces, disposing of a threat that has sat in the rolling sagebrush of the Columbia Plateau for more than 60 years. "It's time," said Frank Harkenrider, who as mayor of Hermiston from 1990 to 2000 took part in many of the battles fought over the past decade to get to this point. "It's time to say yes to the incinerator." The last remaining yes needed to fire up the furnaces with real nerve and mustard agents is expected to come Aug. 13, when the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission considers the results of three years of testing. Destroying the munitions and shutting down the Umatilla plant is expected to take the next six years -- three years past the initial deadline set by international treaty -- and cost a total of $24 billion. Still, not everyone is eager to get on with it. Karyn Jones, who manages her father's dental office here and grew up downwind of radiation from the Hanford nuclear reservation, has fought the incinerator every step of the way. She and the grassroots organization GASP still have three lawsuits pending, hoping to force the U.S. Army to start over with a chemical neutralization process. "It's a disaster waiting to happen," Jones said. The first of the chemical weapons arrived on five rail cars in August 1962, just two months before the Cuban missile crisis, when the Cold War conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States almost went hot after President John F. Kennedy refused to let the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles on Cuba. A total of 7,300 tons of deadly nerve and mustard agents contained in missiles, artillery rounds, bombs, land mines, sprayers and storage containers came to be stored here in row upon row of concrete bunkers originally built for World War II bombs and ammunition. About 140 have leaked since 1984, increasing pressure to destroy them. President Nixon halted the manufacture of chemical weapons in 1969, and the Army has budgeted $25 billion to destroy the 31,000-ton national stockpile. To date, more than 9,000 tons have been destroyed. The Army decided in the 1980s to build incinerators at the eight storage sites around the country and one on Johnston Atoll, south of Hawaii. Johnston Atoll has finished incinerating its stockpile. As technology improved and local opposition to incinerators increased, the Army agreed to switch to chemical neutralization at four sites -- Newport, Ind.; Blue Grass, Ky.; Edgewood, Del.; and Pueblo, Colo. Sites in Tooele, Utah; Pine Bluff, Ark.; Anniston, Ala. and Umatilla are going ahead with incineration. Neutralization is not without its problems. Disputes remain over how to dispose of millions of gallons of contaminated wastewater generated by the process. Construction and testing of the Umatilla incinerator had problems, too. Construction workers claiming they were exposed to nerve agent while building the plant in 1999 have won the first round of their lawsuit against the Army. A federal judge ruled the government was negligent in providing emergency response when the workers became mysteriously ill. The Army and Washington Demilitarization Co., which built and operates the incinerator, were fined $185,000 for bypassing safety systems during furnace testing last year. Another $11,000 in fines were levied after an employee left the grounds with a diluted vial of the nerve agent sarin in his pocket. There are four incinerators. Two burn the liquid agent at 2,700 degrees. A deactivation furnace destroys explosives and rocket motors. A metal parts furnace burns off traces of agent from remaining hardware. Exhaust gasses go through an afterburner, then a system of scrubbers and filters before being released into the air. In the control room, supervisor Lance Pappas can watch over the weapons from bunker to furnace. He feels safe for himself, as well as his family in Kennewick, Wash., 35 miles away. "I worked in refineries, and refineries are a whole lot more dangerous than this is," Pappas said. Pappas and everyone else must carry a gas mask and special syringes loaded with antidote in case of a spill. Orange wind socks around the compound show which way the wind is blowing in case gas is released. Weather conditions are constantly monitored to project where a leak may spread. Reader boards on nearby Interstate 84 are ready to warn of an emergency. The containment rooms where the munitions are dismantled, drained and fed into incinerators have walls 30 inches thick in case of an explosion. Sensors and alarms around the plant can detect minute amounts of agent. In case of a spill, workers don protective suits to clean it up. Video monitors keep watch over the plant and grounds. Guards tightly control people entering and leaving. Like the midst of the Cold War, when students around the nation practiced hiding under their desks in case of nuclear attack, the 10,000 students in 28 nearby schools practice assembling in special rooms pressurized to keep out drifting gas in case of a release. Reports from trial burns on the metal parts incinerator -- using simulated chemical agents inside the incinerator instead of real ones -- have yet to be approved. And the facility for processing wastewater from the pollution control system still must be tested. But Dennis Murphey, who oversees the incinerator for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, does not foresee anything that would delay the process. In the little town of Irrigon, just a few miles downwind of the depot, retiree George Horace is not looking forward to the day the furnaces fire up. His father breathed mustard gas in World War I and eventually died of it. "Anybody who gets a whiff of that is dead," Horace said. "If they want to get rid of it, they ought to ship it back to Washington, D.C. They're the only ones making any money off of it." But Jack Baker, owner of Bake's Restaurant and Lounge, agrees with former mayor Harkenrider. "I think it's great it's starting," he said. "The quicker they get rid of it, the safer we will be." Copyright © 2004 • Lee Enterprises Back to Top | Home | News | ***************************************************************** 64 Cape Cod Times: Unfriendly fire (June 27, 2004) Army's new 'green' ammunition, may pose health hazards too By AMANDA LEHMERT STAFF WRITER CAMP EDWARDS - In 1997 when the Environmental Protection Agency called a cease-fire at Camp Edwards, it marked the first time in U.S. military history that training was halted because lead and other chemicals from munitions threatened public health. In 1999 on Camp Edwards, the National Guard received its first 108,000 rounds of tungsten-nylon bullets, which, it was believed, would solve pollution problems posed by the lead-based bullets once used. The tungsten wouldn't break up in soil and seep into groundwater, it was thought. Anxious to make sure similar cease-fire orders were not issued across the country, the National Guard switched to rubber bullets until the Army developed a "green ammunition" - a tungsten-based bullet that was thought to be environmentally friendly because it did not break down in soil. Now, four years later, the tungsten bullets may not be as green as everyone had hoped. And federal health officials are studying whether exposure to large amounts of tungsten causes childhood leukemia. A recently published study found that tungsten can break down in soil just like its lead predecessor. In the Cape's environment, once the tungsten breaks down, water from rain and snow could potentially carry it into the aquifer. The aquifer is the primary source of the Cape's drinking water. It is still too soon to say whether the metal is collecting in the soil on the Upper Cape base ranges. The bullets used there are made of a tungsten-nylon mix and the military has not yet studied how that mixture reacts in different soil conditions. Timeline April 1997: The EPA orders the military to stop firing lead bullets on base. 1999: Tungsten bullet proposed. EPA declines to label it "green." Massachusetts military receives its first shipment. 2001: The CDC probes a spike in childhood leukemia in Nevada. High levels of tungsten and arsenic found in residents' urine. 2003: Manufacturer stops making tungsten bullets after quality issues. Military begins search for another bullet. But the tungsten issue, raised locally by base Environmental Officer Mark Begley, has been a test of the Environmental Management Commission, a group created by state law in 2002 to monitor military activity on the 22,000-acre base to make sure the environment is not damaged. Commission members have not called for a halt in the use of the tungsten ammo but they are looking closely at the new research. "What I see is the process working. Environmental management is always an ongoing process," said commission Chairwoman Virginia Valiela, who is also a Falmouth selectman. "It's necessary to ask probing questions." National Guard officials have already met with the commission to talk about the new information on tungsten bullets and how the Guard plans to manage the firing ranges now. EPA's cease-fire For decades, many Cape residents have been concerned that military munitions polluted the Cape's sole-source aquifer, the top of which is under Camp Edwards' former artillery impact area and firing ranges. To address this concern, then EPA Regional Administrator John DeVillars ordered an end to live firing at the base in April 1997 under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Officials were concerned that toxic residue from artillery and mortar shells or lead bullets could infiltrate the region's drinking water. The bullets National Guardsmen fire at Camp Edwards' ranges enter a berm behind the targets. Military officials are researching range management systems to keep bullet remnants from making their way into the Cape's drinking water supply. (Staff photos by STEVE HEASLIP) Since the cease-fire, the Army has spent about $5 million removing lead bullets fired at 17 of the base's small-arms ranges. Lead was found up to 19 feet deep in some places. And a study of the impact area revealed that perchlorate and toxic chemicals from explosives have made their way into the aquifer. In addition, thousands of soldiers from New England who have trained at the Massachusetts Military Reservation have fired alternative bullets since that order. But military officials contend that firing rubber bullets is an inferior practice because it doesn't give soldiers the same experience as firing lethal, combat-style bullets. At the time, Massachusetts National Guard officials were optimistic about the Army's development of a better "green" bullet. In 1994, the Army had already started to look at alternatives to lead-based ammunition under the green ammunition program. Tungsten, with the highest melting point of any metal, had already been considered as a replacement for larger depleted uranium munitions used by the Navy and for lead bullets in areas where bullet remnants could be deadly to water fowl. Tungsten had virtually no known toxic effects and was considered to be insoluble, or incapable of being dissolved, according to Army research at the time. Beyond the environmental concerns, the key question was whether it was a worthy combat ammo that would allow soldiers to train as they fight. The Army spent $12 million to develop two 5.56 millimeter rounds, one made of a tungsten-tin alloy and a second made of a tungsten-nylon mixture, for the M-16 rifle and the M2-49 machine gun. The bullets each cost about 15 cents more to manufacture, said John Middleton, the technical executive for small-caliber ammunition production at Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center at Picantinny Arsenal, N.J. A political solution? The Army estimated the bullets would cost less over their life cycle when the cleanup costs associated with lead bullets were factored in. The fact that the bullet did not contain lead was a "significant improvement," DeVillars told the National Guard in a letter at the time. But DeVillars also wrote that because information about how the bullet would interact with the environment was lacking, the EPA would not certify it as "green." In a 1999 letter, he urged the Army and the National Guard to review the bullets' environmental effects. Peter Schlesinger, a Bourne resident and a member of the community group that monitors the Army cleanup, said introducing the green bullet was a political solution that came before the science. "The science wasn't in as to whether it was safe," he said. With or without the environmentally friendly label, the new bullets did not violate the EPA's 1997 order, which banned lead ammunition. In 1999, when the first 108,000 rounds were sent to Massachusetts, Army officials were on the verge of a green ammunition revolution, with aspirations to have the bullets in widespread use by 2003. "We were pretty hopeful," said Erik Hangeland, former chief of technology at the Army Environmental Center at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Md. The Upper Cape base was the first of about a half-dozen bases where the new bullets would be fired. More than 286,000 rounds were used by Massachusetts National Guard members last year alone. But the popularity came at a price. The contractor churning out the green rounds had trouble mass producing quality bullets, so the Army stopped production in 2003. Army officials went back to the drawing board in an effort to develop another environmentally friendly ammunition. "It just made sense to go back and reopen the investigation," Middleton said. Dissolving a myth As the Army was having problems producing tungsten bullets, some scientists at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., with the help of Army researchers, were getting unexpected results from experiments on tungsten alloys. In work funded by the military, Christos Christodoulatos and his team studied what happens to tungsten in water solutions and soils with various pH levels, or acidity levels. Their findings, recently published in the Journal of Environmental Forensics, reveal that tungsten and tungsten alloys dissolve in water and soil solutions - at rates that exceed the solubility of lead. The research appears to imply that tungsten bullets may be more polluting than the lead ones. The people involved in the green ammunition program did an extensive literature review and determined tungsten was better than lead based on "the best available scientific information we had on tungsten when we considered it for use," Hangeland said. The 2002-2003 Handbook of Chemistry and Physics also says tungsten is insoluble, said Col. Bill FitzPatrick, of the Environmental and Readiness Center at the Massachusetts Military Reservation. The Stevens Institute team did a second study to determine what happened when tungsten was introduced in soils contaminated by lead. The research, which has not yet been published, used soils from Fort Irwin, Calif., and Fort Dix, N.J. They found when tungsten was introduced at certain concentrations it was possible to make the lead move through soil faster than it did on its own. But tungsten's mobility decreased under acidic conditions. Neither study considered a tungsten-nylon mixture, like the one used by the soldiers training on the Upper Cape base, so it is not yet possible to say if tungsten is leaching into groundwater, local officials point out. Although there are literally hundreds of monitoring wells on the base and the water is regularly tested for metals, the Army and Air Force cleanup programs do not test for tungsten. Possible link to leukemia By mid-2000 the tungsten-nylon bullet was a prevalent ammunition used by soldiers and police officers training at Camp Edwards. At the same time, five children in Churchill County, Nev., were diagnosed with leukemia. Nevada epidemiologists said in a county that size, statistically only one child every five years should come down with the disease. But over the next few years, 16 children would be diagnosed with leukemia. In 2001, Nevada officials called upon the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate what was causing the spike in childhood leukemia. "We did not go there intentionally looking for tungsten at all," said Carol Rubin, chief of CDC's Health Studies branch. Researchers found that the urine samples of children and adults living in Fallon, Nev., contained both arsenic and tungsten in concentrations higher than national averages, but not significantly different than levels found in urine from people who live in similar Nevada towns. In Nevada, tungsten occurs naturally. But it was recently discovered the concentrations of tungsten in the environment there had increased by 50 percent. Scientists are still trying to figure out what caused the increase, and researchers from the University of Arizona at Tucson are starting to study the effects of human exposure to tungsten. In one study, early results showed that tungsten could increase the growth rate of human leukemia cells, said Mark Witten, a research professor from the department of pediatrics. The studies don't prove or disprove that tungsten was the cause of cancer, but the findings prompted the scientists to call for research into tungsten. CDC officials nominated tungsten to be reviewed by the National Institute of Environmental Health for toxicological affects. Hangeland said the Army is evaluating its ammunition inventory to find ways to make it more green. "Tungsten hasn't totally been thrown out with the wash yet," he said. Meanwhile, military researchers are exploring what happens to the tungsten-nylon bullets when they enter the environment. They plan to use soil from several bases where lead bullets have been fired, including soil from the Massachusetts Military Reservation, for more research this summer, FitzPatrick said. Cape concerns While the jury is still out on the tungsten-nylon bullet, Begley, the Upper Cape base's environmental officer, isn't taking any chances. About 4,000 people used the base ranges last year, according the annual report. Aside from the military-issue tungsten-nylon round, some police squads and groups from other government agencies use bullets at the base that may also contain tungsten, Begley said. Base officials do not keep specific statistics about other ammunition used at the base. This month, Begley and FitzPatrick met with the Environmental Management Commission and the Community Advisory Council to discuss the latest information about tungsten. "It's the water. The water is so important," Begley said. "Any training that could possibly impact water, we need to look at very closely." The Science Advisory Council, which provides technical advice to the environmental commission, will discuss tungsten at its quarterly meeting this summer. Environmental officials are aware the Army is researching tungsten. There are, however, no national standards for tungsten so there was little environmental officials could do to prevent the military from using it at the base, according to EPA spokesman Jim Murphy. No matter what happens with tungsten, the Massachusetts National Guard could also adapt range management practices to prevent any substance - lead, tungsten or otherwise - from moving in the soil, FitzPatrick said. "We could perhaps be shooting kryptonite in the future if we have the right capture system," Joe Materia of the Environmental and Readiness Center said. The options include something as complex as concrete bullet traps or as simple as an "eyebrow," a structure that acts as an umbrella to keep rainwater from penetrating earthen berms at the ranges. Costs of the systems vary, and so far the various bullet capture systems have been designed for use with lead bullets, not tungsten-nylon rounds. FitzPatrick said the base may also be used to research new range control technologies. This summer, base officials will review the management practices for each range. (Published: June 27, 2004) [ border=] [''] Contacts: news@capecodonline.com| retailsales@capecodonline.com cape cod online| capeweek| primetime| on cape| cape cod times| classifieds Copyright © 2004 Cape Cod Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 65 Guardian Unlimited: Ohio Threatens Lawsuit to Stop Nuke Waste From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday June 26, 2004 4:31 AM By JOHN NOLAN Associated Press Writer CINCINNATI (AP) - Ohio's attor'ney general said Friday he will sue the U.S. Energy Department if it attempts to remove radioactive waste from a former uranium processing plant without a drawing up a plan to store the waste permanently. The state of Nevada has threatened to sue the Energy Department to block its plan to ship the silo waste by truck from this year through 2006 to the department's Nevada desert site. With that plan in limbo, Ohio officials fear the waste will be removed from the silos only to be temporarily stored elsewhere at the Fernald site, which for almost 40 years processed uranium for the production of nuclear weapons. Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro said his state would object to temporary storage of the waste at Fernald, 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, because it could create environmental and health risks. Under a cleanup plan that environmental regulators reached with the Energy Department years ago, the waste now stored in three concrete silos would be removed for permanent disposal elsewhere, Petro noted in a letter sent Friday to the Energy Department, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Attorney General John Ashcroft. Petro sent his letter to comply with a provision of federal environmental law requiring notice of intent to sue, said his spokeswoman, Michelle Gatchell. The Energy Department has not said it plans to move the waste to another location at Fernald, but department spokesman Joe Davis said officials are trying to stay on schedule, which calls for removal of the waste to begin this month. The Energy Department has promised to give Nevada 45 days notice before shipments begin. That notice hasn't been given yet, Energy Department officials said Friday. Cleanup of the Fernald site is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2006. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** 66 Las Vegas RJ: LETTER: Surreal spin on Yucca Sunday, June 27, 2004 To the editor: I find it ludicrous that the Bush administration would send its political director Karl Rove to Nevada to proclaim that "politics" played no role in the president's selection of Yucca Mountain ("Bush adviser says Yucca decision did not violate pledge," June 13). Despite Mr. Rove's surreal "spin," the truth is that candidate George W. Bush pledged in 2000 that "science" would guide his decision on whether to store high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. A report released shortly thereafter by the nonpartisan General Accounting Office (GAO) identified nearly 300 outstanding scientific and technical issues relating to Yucca Mountain. The Review-Journal called the findings, "A stinging congressional audit," and noted that its authors had urged no recommendation be made on Yucca Mountain until the hundreds of outstanding questions could be resolved. Less than two months later, President Bush brushed aside these warnings and gave Yucca Mountain his blessing. Given the publicity surrounding the GAO's report, and the timing of Mr. Bush's decision, there is no question he approved the dump knowing that the science was shaky and that doubts had been raised about Yucca's ability to keep nuclear waste from polluting the environment. In other words, Mr. Bush said what he needed to in order to win Nevada in 2000, but when the time came for him to honor that promise, he put politics above the safety of Nevada residents and the nation. Mr. Rove asks what we should say to those states with stockpiles of nuclear waste. The answer is to store the waste in dry-cask storage at the sites where it was produced, a solution experts agree will keep the waste safe for the next 100 years. This alternative to Yucca Mountain would provide ample time for science to find real solutions to the nuclear waste problem. Rep. Shelley Berkley WASHINGTON, D.C. The writer, a Democrat, represents Nevada's 1st Congressional District. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 67 Las Vegas RJ: House energy bill sets low mark for Yucca funding Saturday, June 26, 2004 By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The House passed an energy bill Friday containing $131 million for the Yucca Mountain Project, a record low sum that could threaten operations at the planned nuclear waste repository if it is not increased later this year. The spending, in a bill that was approved 370-16, greatly complicates Department of Energy financing for the repository program, congressional and nuclear industry officials said. Usually, DOE counts on House lawmakers to approve more generous sums for Yucca Mountain, which are then attacked in the Senate by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. This year, Reid could find much of his work already done. The Senate is scheduled to begin forming a Yucca Mountain spending bill the week of July 5. Unless senators add money, "This would obviously put a big delay in the mountain. You will be left with a skeleton staff and activities until a time when funding could be restored," said Leslie Barbour, legislative program director at the Nuclear Energy Institute. The Energy Department had requested $880 million, saying the full amount was critical to complete a license application, continue devising a national shipping campaign, study a Nevada railroad corridor and work with utilities to prepare spent fuel for packaging and transport. Instead, Barbour confirmed that the $131 million, the result of what lawmakers said were miscalculations by the White House and failure to get a budget amendment to the House floor, is the least the House has appropriated for Yucca Mountain since Congress designated the Nevada site for repository studies in 1987. The Department of Energy had no comment Friday. A spokesman referred to a letter Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham wrote last month saying that deep cuts would cause layoffs of up to 1,700 workers, shut down most activities and delay "indefinitely" a targeted 2010 repository opening. The Yucca funding was part of a $28 billion bill setting 2005 spending levels for the Energy Department, Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. There was little debate about nuclear waste after House leaders declined late Thursday to allow an amendment that aimed to free up millions of dollars in a special waste fund. Instead, lawmakers who favor the repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas expressed frustration. They said they will try again later to secure more money to keep the project on track to open in 2010. "At some point in the process, this will have to be fixed for the future of this country and the nuclear power industry and, more importantly, for the communities" where waste currently is stored, said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, the energy and water subcommittee chairman. "I am outraged by certain people who put us in this position," Hobson said, referring to officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget who wrote this year's Yucca budget request in a way he said created the shortfall and led lawmakers to scramble for a fix. For Nevada lawmakers who oppose the repository, it was an uncommon break in the House, where pro-nuclear sentiment usually prevails on Yucca matters. "We worked hard, but we have to keep working," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., "There's a long way to go." "Rather than waste one more cent on this dangerous and ill-conceived white elephant, it is time that we put the health and safety of all Americans above the profits of the nuclear industry," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. Congressional and industry officials familiar with the negotiations that scuttled Yucca budget relief said there were deep splits among nuclear power advocates in the House on the size of the bailout, with some pro-nuclear Democrats arguing for even more money. The issue also created divisions between leaders of budgeting and spending committees over whether to adjust accounting rules, a change that would affect congressional budget practices. "Project opponents must be laughing their butts off," a nuclear industry executive said of the warfare within the pro-nuclear ranks. "Harry Reid in his wildest dreams could not have engineered something like this." Sources said House leaders also wanted to help Porter, who is expected to face a tough re-election campaign. "There is concern about Mr. Porter's race, and the leadership took his strong objections into consideration," Barbour said. "I appreciate (Barbour) giving me credit, but it was a team effort," Porter said. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 68 Interfax: Russia backs proposal for intl nuclear waste storage centers Interfax.com Text version Site map Jun 27 2004 5:26PM MOSCOW. June 27 (Interfax) - Russia on Sunday expressed support for a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to establish international centers for the storage and recycling of spent nuclear fuel. "Today Russia is the only country where domestic legislation makes it possible to put this into practice," Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov told an international conference in Moscow called in connection with the 50th anniversary of Russian nuclear power engineering. He called on all IAEA participants to draw lessons from the history of Russia's nuclear power industry and the tragic events it has involved. "We need to pool our efforts in seeking security, environmental safety for the industry, and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons," he said. © 1991-2004 Interfax ***************************************************************** 69 BBC: Radioactive dump forced Last Updated: Saturday, 26 June, 2004 [Quarry protestors] The site has attracted protests by concerned families A dump used for the disposal of radioactive waste is being forced to close. For decades, Rolls-Royce has been using a quarry near Crich in Derbyshire to dispose of hazardous material. The dump is sited near homes and local people mounted a long-running campaign to have it closed. Government ministers have now signed a document from the Environment Agency to stop the tipping - and the waste will be taken to a sealed site in Cumbria. ***************************************************************** 70 Las Vegas SUN: Bush plays us for state full of fools Columnist Jeff German: Columnist Jeff German: Bush plays us for state full of fools Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.comor (702) 259-4067. ••• Now that President Bush's whirlwind week of campaigning in Nevada has passed, there's time to think about how insulted we should feel. We're being played for fools by the president of the United States. Bush stumped in Reno last Friday and never once talked about Yucca Mountain or explained to reporters why he lied to Nevadans four years ago about his intentions to put the high-level nuclear waste dump in our back yard. Vice President Dick Cheney was in Las Vegas on Monday and also never gave reporters a chance to question him about Yucca Mountain, which is 90 miles northwest of the city. But someone within the campaign must have been feeling guilty about snubbing the state's reporters because, once Cheney was safely back in Washington, he decided to do an interview by satellite with KLAS Channel 8 anchor Gary Waddell. Waddell is one of my favorite news anchors, but he blew this assignment. Even though it was in a controlled environment, this was the first chance a Nevada reporter had to question Bush or Cheney on this subject since the president two years ago approved Yucca Mountain. But it ended up doing nothing more than give the Bush campaign additional free exposure here -- at a time when the race against Democratic challenger John Kerry is said to be dead even. Where's Jon Ralston when you need him? Tracey Schmitt, a Bush-Cheney spokeswoman, said the six-minute interview, which Channel 8 billed as an "exclusive," was one of a handful Cheney gave television stations around the country from the comfort of the Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters in the Washington area. Waddell wasted valuable time asking Cheney about the economy, getting the same boring speech the vice president made here on Monday. When Waddell finally got to Yucca Mountain, after setting up the question with talk that politics may have played a role in Bush's decision two years ago, the television anchor asked, "Do you think Yucca Mountain is a good idea? Should it go forward?" If the vice president had said "no," as Kerry did during a campaign visit to Las Vegas last month, Channel 8 indeed would have had an exclusive. But, no small surprise, the vice president didn't say no. Cheney again gave the standard ambiguous response that it was "the right decision" made for the greater good of the country (and the nuclear industry that's so close to Cheney.) He insisted the decision, as the president promised Nevadans four years ago, was based on sound science, but he offered no facts to support that contention. And Waddell didn't bother to press the vice president on that subject. If only Waddell had asked Cheney about concerns raised earlier this year by physicist Paul Craig, a former member of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, the watchdog over the government's plans for disposing of nuclear waste. Craig, who left the board so that he could speak freely about the dangers of Yucca Mountain, said the multibillion-dollar project so far has been based on "bad science," not sound science. The project is so poorly designed, he charged, it could end up leaking radioactive waste and pose monumental health risks for all of us. This is why news organizations here have to stop letting themselves be used by the Bush-Cheney campaign, and it is why we have to stop letting the president of the United States play us for fools. Until he puts a halt to Yucca Mountain, President Bush doesn't deserve our vote in November. ***************************************************************** 71 Las Vegas SUN: Columnist Jon Ralston: State GOP is inept on Yucca June 25, 2004 Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at . WEEKEND EDITION June 26 - 27, 2004 Tell the truth: If you read the words "Yucca Mountain" in the newspaper, your eyes glaze over and you turn the page. Like me, you probably suffer from Yucca Mountain Fatigue Syndrome (YMFS) -- an affliction caused by two decades of endless, overheated rhetoric by pandering politicians and the sense of hopelessness that D.C. developments have engendered. But before you stop reading this column, know that there is a much more important issue related to Yucca Mountain during this presidential race, one that goes to the integrity of the state's GOP leaders and to their abject political incompetence. This comes to mind after the recent visits by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, both choreographed and scripted to avoid even the merest mention of Yucca Mountain. I have been seething in silence about this for some time, but I can no longer bear the banalities from the state's Republican doyens. By not speaking out, local GOP leaders tacitly are condoning what the president has done on the dump. But worse, at a time when the president needs every state he can get, their failure to force some kind of concession out of the mute chief executive is nothing short of political malfeasance. Never has the state had more leverage over an administration than this moment -- when Nevada is one of a dozen and a half battleground states the campaign must have. Why have Gov. Kenny Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval, Reps. Jim Gibbons and Jon Porter and Sen. John Ensign not informed Bush's campaign that their support is conditioned on some sort of reversal on Yucca Mountain? Instead, they are so timid or so inept that they can't even persuade Bush to say anything about the dump when he comes here. And they have approved of the administration sending surrogates -- political guru Karl Rove and campaign chairman Marc Racicot -- who have offered up revisionist history and haughty comments that the Republicans here have let go unchallenged. But at least they got pictures with the president for posterity. Rove repeated the canard that Bush used the proverbial sound science to make his decision, which is contradicted by history. And Racicot had the gall to say that Nevadans are fulfilling our "obligations and duties," as he told the Associated Press. This is the elephant in the room the Republicans are choosing to ignore. Or worse, they secretly believe the dump is inevitable and thus their silence is even more insidious. "YMFS is running rampant in the state," they may have whispered to the Bush campaign, "so just don't address it. We have your back." How much longer can anyone be expected to tolerate this "we agree to disagree" nonsense and the "we're disappointed in the president" blather. It reminds me of the old joke about the question addressed to the 16th president's wife after she and her husband attended the Ford's Theater production of "Our American Cousin" where he was assassinated: "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" As I hear Republican leaders offer their drivel about Ronald Reagan labeling as a friend someone who agrees with you 80 percent of the time, I ask: "Other than the fact that Bush lied to the state, humiliated the governor and its two senators and accelerated Yucca Mountain, how do you like the president?" I know that since the Screw Nevada Bill 17 years ago, the canoodling metaphors have been overused. But permit me to say that these folks are not even playing hard to get and thus are the cheapest whores imaginable. They are giving it away for free -- and at their constituents' expense. The history is so damning. A quick review: Bush ignores Nevada during campaign 2000. When Al Gore gets traction, Bush sends meaningless statement (written for him here) about "sound science" being his lodestar. Bush wins state by four percentage points. A year after he takes office, the president approves the dump -- less than a week after he grants a meaningless audience to Guinn, Ensign and Sen. Harry Reid. Guinn exercises meaningless veto. Congress overrides. Game over. And now, offered a second chance, they are beating around the bush instead of beating on Bush for a concession. Never before have the state's GOP leaders had so much leverage. Nevada is one of a handful of states that could turn the election. I ask again: Why haven't any of those Bush backers conditioned their backing on some substantive action now by the administration? (And, no, I don't mean seeking benefits, which is political suicide. I mean something that would bring the process to a halt for legitimate reasons.) Moral weakness I could accept. But they are simply bad politicians and history will record them as having missed their moment. I know partisans out there will yelp that this is just some pro-Kerry screed. Not so. I actually believe that Kerry's pledge to stop Yucca Mountain is as hollow as Bush's faxed promise in 2000. He offers no specifics, and if he's elected, I don't believe he will lift a finger. Call it YMFS or just cynicism. But that's not the point. Bush can do something and the state folks have the ability to extract something. Instead, they appear to be doing what Racicot said -- fulfilling their obligations and duties. Even if they can't summon the political courage to publicly criticize Bush or get him to say something, anything about Yucca Mountain, Nevada Republican leaders cannot defend their absolute failure to get some kind of quid pro quo on the dump for their support as the president's campaign again takes Nevada for granted. It is at best embarrassing and at worst unconscionable. ***************************************************************** 72 Las Vegas SUN: Letter: 10th Amendment precludes dump June 25, 2004 LAS VEGAS SUN WEEKEND EDITION June 26 - 27, 2004 At least 99.9 percent of Nevadans do not want a nuclear-waste dump at Yucca Mountain or any other place in our state. According to the 10th Amendment, we shouldn't have to accept this dump. It says: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." We, as Nevadans, have the right to stop anything from being put in our state that we feel is harmful and dangerous. Nevada will not be the only state affected. Many others will be at risk because of the transportation involved. People should write letters and make phone calls to our representatives in Washington, and encourage their friends and neighbors to do the same. We need to let Washington know that we object to Yucca Mountain, and we have a constitutional right to do so. JACKIE MACFARLANE ***************************************************************** 73 chillicothe gazette: $289 million for Piketon enrichment plant in bill - www.chillicothegazette.com Saturday, June 26, 2004 The Gazette Staff The energy bill passed Friday by the House contains $289 million for the Piketon uranium enrichment plant. According to information from U.S. Rep. Rob Portman's office, the funds are part of the Energy and Water Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2005. The money will be used for cleanup at the Piketon site, according to Portman's news release, and will allow the Depleted Uranium Hexaflouride waste conversion plant to go ahead as planned. Construction is scheduled to begin on the DUF6 plant next month. The $289 million, the release said, will also allow for the continued cold standby status of the plant and will help smooth the transition to the new American centrifuge program. ***************************************************************** 74 RGJ: House cuts funding for Yucca Mountain - Marilyn Newton/RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL] DUMP: Special materials insulate the walls inside the Yucca Mountain test facility. Doug Abrahms by author RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL 6/26/2004 12:21 am WASHINGTON — Opponents of a plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain won a victory Friday as the House voted to slash next year’s budget for the project. The move could slow down construction of the nuclear waste repository. House members voted to reduce funding for the project to $131 million from last year’s $577 million, a step that could push back the opening date for the high-level nuclear waste dump beyond 2010. “We do consider it a large victory,” said Amy Spanbauer, spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Reno. Gibbons and U.S. Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas, and Jon Porter, R-Henderson, voted against an energy and water spending bill containing the reduced amount for the Yucca Mountain project because they oppose any money for the project. Yucca Mountain is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. “The $131 million in funding for Yucca Mountain included in this bill is a small fraction of what the White House had requested, but we are still not entirely out of the woods,” Berkley said. “I can guarantee you there is no trick in the book that the boosters of Yucca Mountain are not considering in order to try and restore this money.” Some House members vowed to restore the money during negotiations between the House and Senate on the energy and water bill. And Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has floated a plan to add a small surcharge on electric rates of nuclear power users for a year to boost money for Yucca Mountain. “There’s quite a few options available” to restore the funding, said Leslie Barbour, director of legislative programs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents utilities. “Obviously, the next step is to turn to the Senate.” But if the full funding isn’t restored, work on the Yucca Mountain project would be delayed, she said. Energy Department officials said in a statement that it is still early in the budget process and that they plan to work with the House and Senate to boost funding for the Yucca Mountain project in the final energy and water legislation. Bush administration officials are partly to blame for the shortfall in funding for the project. They requested only $131 million because they wanted Congress to vote to let the Energy Department gain direct control over the $14.5 billion in the Nuclear Waste Trust Fund, which utility consumers have been paying into for decades. But Congress didn’t pass such legislation, and the House Republican leadership imposed spending caps that prevented adding substantial money for any project, including Yucca Mountain. “We have to solve this problem — the country has taken a position this is where the repository has to go,” said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio. “At some point in this process … this will have to be fixed for the future of this country and the nuclear power industry.” But Nevada’s Agency of Nuclear Projects, which is working to block the Yucca Mountain project from moving ahead, hopes the project’s funding shortfall will continue. “It would be quite a help to the state’s battle to stop this project,” said planning division administrator Joe Strolin. Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett Co. Inc.Newspaper. Use ***************************************************************** 75 Bradenton Herald: Tallevast homeowners told hook-ups are free Posted on Sat, Jun. 26, 2004 The homes had county water connected after it was found their wells are contaminated DANA SANCHEZ Herald Staff Writer TALLEVAST - Residents of 17 Tallevast homes near the former American Beryllium plant were sent letters by the county Friday telling them to ignore bills they received for county water hook-ups. Tallevast residents were upset and confused when they received $135 bills for security deposits on county water, said Laura Ward, president of Tallevast's community development group, FOCUS. The bills caused anger and confusion among residents, who received earlier assurances they wouldn't have to pay, Ward said. The bills were technically correct, but should not have been sent, said Ernie Padgett, county administrator. "That shouldn't have happened and it's taken care of," Padgett said. Tallevast residents Dolores Williams and her husband, Frank, received a bill. "I wasn't expecting it," said Dolores Williams. "I didn't know whether to pay." Residents were connected to county water last month after solvents, including trichloroethylene, were found at levels above the drinking water standard in area wells. Lockheed Martin, the company responsible for cleaning up pollution at the former American Beryllium plant, agreed to pay the hook-up fees, and is conducting extensive soil and water testing along with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. John Barnott, administrator for utilities customer service, said there was a misunderstanding over who was going to forward the bills to Lockheed. "I told them the bills are going to come and there are going to be charges," Barnott said. Ward said the billing issues are between the county and Lockheed. "We have letters from Lockheed saying they'd pay for temporary and permanent water usage during the time the testing is going on," Ward said. "Somebody wasn't paying attention to what they were doing. We didn't make them put in water. I don't see that we should be responsible." Padgett said he regretted any anxiety the bills might have caused Tallevast residents. "The folks have nothing to worry about relative to the bills," he said. "Bills should be going to the company, not the residents." Barnott told residents Thursday the bills would not be waived, Ward said. "I'm saying they are," Padgett said. "Our employees don't have the authority to say what I'm saying." Dana Sanchez, Herald business reporter, can be reached at or at 745-7080, ext. 4500. ***************************************************************** 76 Nevada Appeal: House OKs $131 million for Yucca June 27, 2004 Associated Press June 26, 2004 WASHINGTON - The House on Friday approved a $28 billion measure financing energy and water programs that provides far less than President Bush proposed for building a nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada. The bill, approved by a 370-16 vote, provides $131 million for continued preparations for the nuclear waste storage site to be built at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Bush proposed $880 million for the project, which the government hopes to complete by 2010. The bill ignored Bush's request to finance $749 million of the sum by taking it from a special nuclear waste fund, which comes from fees electric utilities charge their customers. The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved legislation on Thursday requiring that at least $750 million be taken annually from that fund for work on the Yucca facility. That bill's prospects are uncertain, especially in the Senate, where Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the chamber's No. 2 Democratic leader, opposes the Yucca plan. Nevada's three House members, Republicans Jon Porter and Jim Gibbons and Democrat Shelley Berkley, all voted against the bill Friday. "The $131 million in funding for Yucca Mountain included in this bill is a small fraction of what the White House had requested, but we are still not entirely out of the woods," Berkley said in a statement. "Those who wish to see nuclear waste buried in Nevada are already vowing to use upcoming negotiations between the House and Senate to restore any shortfall in the President's record $880 million request." "We're not happy unless it's zero," said Gibbons spokeswoman Amy Spanbauer. "But we were pleased to see that the House did not entertain the idea of taking the Yucca Mountain project off-budget and removing congressional authority." All contents © Copyright 2004 nevadaappeal.com Nevada Appeal - 580 Mallory Way - Carson City, NV 89701 ***************************************************************** 77 ITAR-TASS: IAEA head to discuss spent nuke fuel center in Russia [ITAR-TASS News Agency of Russia] 27.06.2004, 19.07 MOSCOW, June 27 (Itar-Tass) -- Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei, who is taking part in an international atomic energy conference, will meet with Russian officials next week to discuss the construction of an international center for storing and processing spent nuclear fuel on the Russian territory. A number of countries are already implementing the idea, ElBaradei said at the conference on Sunday. He said that Finland, Sweden and the United States had decided to open such centers. ElBaradei said he was glad that the Russian administration also welcomed the idea. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, store in any medium (including in any other website), distribute, transmit, re-transmit, broadcast, modify or show in ***************************************************************** 78 PR: Berkley Introduces Bill For On-Site Storage of Nuclear Waste Congresswoman Shelley Berkley - Legislation: Press Releases 2003 Would Shift Funding Away From Yucca Mountain, Increase Safety, Reduce Terrorist Risk June 22, 2004 (June 22, 2004 – Washington, D.C.) U.S. Representative Shelley Berkley introduced legislation Tuesday calling for storage of the nation’s high-level nuclear waste at the plants where it is produced and to block further expenditure of taxpayer funds to move ahead with the proposed Yucca Mountain repository. "On-site storage of high-level nuclear waste is already taking place at nuclear power plants across the nation and it represents a safe and reliable alternative to a dump at Yucca Mountain. Experts on all sides of the debate, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, agree that waste can be safely stored at the sites where it was created for the next 100 years or more. My bill would invest resources in securing and expanding these storage facilities,” Berkley said. “This solution will give science the time to develop advanced technological solutions to the nuclear waste problem.” Plans for burying nuclear waste in Nevada call for thousands of shipments across the U.S., increasing the risk of an accident or a terrorist attack involving nuclear waste. “A single accident or terrorist attack involving a shipment of high-level waste could expose those living in the affected area to high levels of radiation and cause millions of dollars in damage to our environment. On-site storage will also stop plans for thousands of shipments of nuclear waste through communities which are home to more than 50 million Americans,” Berkley said. Proponents of Yucca Mountain claim that a central repository will eliminate current nuclear waste storage sites found in dozens of states, an idea that Berkley disputes. “The dirty little secret the nuclear industry doesn’t want the public to know is that even if Yucca Mountain opens, thousands of tons of nuclear waste will continue to remain on-site at plants around the nation, where it must be allowed to cool,” said Berkley. “In other words, as long as nuclear power is being produced, there will always be some amount of nuclear waste stored on-site. Rather than reduce the number of locations where nuclear waste is stored, Yucca Mountain will only add one more to the list.” Recent scientific findings demonstrate that the canisters used in Yucca Mountain will corrode and allow radioactive waste to escape and contaminate nearby water supplies. With the price tag for Yucca expected to climb to $60 billion or more, Berkley is backing on-site storage as the safest and most affordable solution to dealing with the nation’s nuclear waste. “Given the dangers that Yucca Mountain poses to the health and safety of Nevada families, the terrorist threat that decades of waste shipments across the U.S. would unleash and the likelihood of an accident involving nuclear waste, on-site storage remains the only viable option to safely store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.” Highlights of HR 4627 The 21st century science for nuclear waste disposal act of 2004 If passed, the Berkley legislation would allow the Secretary of Energy to tap the existing nuclear waste trust fund to pay for the cost of research, development, and utilization in the United States of risk-decreasing technologies, with an emphasis on technologies that: 1. increase the length of time that nuclear waste can be safely stored; 2. reduce the amount of transportation necessary for nuclear waste; 3. reduce the level of radiation of nuclear waste. The bill would prohibit use of the Nuclear Waste Fund for research, development, or implementation of a central high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel repository. # # # 439 Cannon HOB Washington, DC 20515 Phone - (202) 225-5965 Fax - (202) 225-3119 2340 Paseo Del Prado, Suite D-106 Las Vegas, NV 89102 Phone - (702) 220-9823 Fax - (702) 220-9841 ***************************************************************** 79 KLAS: House Votes to Limit DOE Funding for Yucca June 28, 2004 Reaction is coming in from all over. The House of Representatives voted to severely restrict the budget for the Yucca Mountain Repository. Eyewitness News is still gathering information on what this means to the future of the project. In the short term, it may delay it enough to shut it down. Edward Lawrence, Reporter (June 25) -- The House of Representatives voted to severely restrict the budget for the Yucca Mountain repository. Nevada lawmakers hope to crush the Yucca Mountain Repository project by under funding it. The vote Friday gave the project only $131 million when the Department of Energy asked for about $880 million. This was one battle, but the war still wages on. Representative Jon Porter says, "Forty states want Nevada to be the dump site for Yucca Mountain. What we were able to do as a team today is make sure that the bill that passed was at $131 (million)." House Republicans Porter and Jim Gibbons worked with Democrat Shelley Berkley to restrict the funding. Representative Berkley adds, "This is a self fulfilling prophecy. I don't know how many times we have to tell the Department of Energy that Yucca Mountain is not an appropriate project for this nation." Representative Gibbons said he won't, "...be satisfied until the Yucca budget is zero. This vote makes sure that the Department of Energy doesn't have a blank check." The celebration will be short lived. This vote only restricts the project funding for next year from one utility trust fund. Utility companies pay into that fund through a fee charged to customers. It has $15 billion available. "There are a lot of other avenues that they can find for the funding. That is why we are taking this as a huge win for the battle, but the war continues." says Representative Porter. In fact this vote isn't the final say on this matter. It now goes to the Senate where the budget could be restored. Senator Harry Reid says in a statement, "We are still putting our bill together. Senator Ensign and I are working to stop Pete Domenici's budget ploy. I have every expectation that ultimately Domenici will fail." Senator Domenici represents New Mexico. He's the chairman of the Senate committee that develops Yucca Mountain's budget. Eyewitness News should know what the final version of the bill looks like in a couple of months. If the funding is cut the project is not dead. It just means the Yucca Mountain Repository may not open in 2010, as it is scheduled to do. The Department of Energy said they will lay off 1,700 people if hey don't get the funding. Representative Jon Porter points to our low unemployment rate and says those workers will get other jobs. All content © Copyright 2000 - 2004 WorldNow and KLAS. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 80 PR: Berkley Leads Effort To Keep House Yucca Funding at Record Low Congresswoman Shelley Berkley - Legislation: Press Releases 2003 Late Night Work in Rules Committee Helps Preserve Fair Treatment For Nevadans June 25, 2004 (June 24, 2004 – Washington, D.C.) “The $131 million in funding for Yucca Mountain included in this bill is a small fraction of what the White House had requested, but we are still not entirely out of the woods. Those who wish to see nuclear waste buried in Nevada are already vowing to use upcoming negotiations between the House and Senate to restore any shortfall in the President's record $880 million request for Yucca Mountain,” said Berkley. “I can guarantee you there is no trick in the book that the boosters of Yucca Mountain are not considering in order to try and restore this money.” Earlier this week, Berkley secured the backing of the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee -- Rep. Martin Frost (D-TX) -- to block any attempt to structure the House rule on the energy spending bill to favor allowing nearly $750 million to be added to the Yucca budget. The action by the Rules Committee preserved the right of Berkley and other lawmakers to raise objections against efforts to spend more on dumping nuclear waste in Nevada. “Had it not been for the support of Rep. Frost and the Democratic members of the House Rules Committee, this bill could have easily allowed billions more to be spent on Yucca Mountain and limited Congressional oversight. At the same time, we continue to face an uphill fight against an Administration and Republican leaders in Congress who care more about the profits of the nuclear industry than they do about the scientific uncertainties that surround Yucca Mountain or the threat to the safety of millions of Americans that nuclear waste shipments will create,” said Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV). Although funding for Yucca has been set at $131 million in the House, the U.S. Senate must still pass its version of the energy spending bill. Differences between the two pieces of legislation would then be resolved in a joint House-Senate conference committee. Yucca supporters are eyeing the conference as an opportunity to try and restore the funds eliminated under the House bill.

# # # ***************************************************************** 81 Taipei Times: Taiwan standing firm on opposition to nuclear weapons www.taipeitimes.com By Ko Shu-ling STAFF REPORTER Sunday, Jun 27, 2004,Page 3 Despite North Korea's threat to conduct nuclear weapons tests, Taiwan's stance against nuclear arms remains unchanged, Cabinet Spokesman Chen Chi-mai (łŻ¨äÁÚ) said yesterday. "It has always been the Democratic Progressive Party's policy to establish a nuclear-free homeland and to safeguard regional peace and stability. Our stance has not changed, despite North Korea's nuclear ambitions," Chen said yesterday afternoon. While the problem of North Korea's nuclear ambitions is not expected to be resolved soon, Chen said that the six-nation talks among US, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas should continue. "What concerns us is not whether we would develop our own nuclear programs, but whether our national interest would be sacrificed during the six-way talks," Chen said. As negotiators ended their final day of talks yesterday, US officials admitted that there had been little tangible progress in the four days of meetings. All parties, however, agreed in principle to meet again in September . On Friday, Pyongyang warned that it would carry out a nuclear test if its demands for "aid" were not met. The threat was made in a two-hour meeting between US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and North Korean negotiators. Experts believe that North Korea could have as many as eight nuclear weapons and that it retains the capacity to make many more, increasing the chances that neighboring countries could join in a nuclear arms race. North Korea's threat raised doubts that even minor progress could be achieved at a third round of talks. A BBC World Service broadcast on Friday said that Pyongyang's threat could provoke Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan to re-examine their policies regarding nuclear arms. "Any move by the Pyongyang government to conduct a nuclear test would alter the whole Asian security landscape," the BBC report said. "Other countries like Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan might look again at their non-nuclear status." According to the BBC, Washington's nightmare is not only a nuclear-armed North Korea but also the fear that Pyongyang could transfer nuclear weapons technology to other countries -- or even to terrorist groups. Seeking to break a 20-month deadlock in the North Korean crisis, the six-party negotiations focused on a US offer of conditional aid and security guarantees. The new plan involves immediate rewards for North Korea -- heavy fuel oil from South Korea -- if it agrees to dismantle its weapons program. The plan was presented by US diplomats as a way to test the North's intentions. This story has been viewed 680 times. + Advertising [ height=] Copyright © 1999-2004 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 82 American Daily: The Wigwam That Kept Nobody Safe - Tom Segel By Tom Segel (06/26/2004) When we read the tales of western lore, it is the humble Wigwam, which protected those inside from cold, rain, snow and wind. Inside the Wigwam all were safe. Aboard the U.S.S. Tawasa the scientist tasked with filming the event did not feel safe. He panicked. Seeing a massive tidal wave nearing the ship he dove through the open hatch, breaking two ribs and his shoulder when he landed in the passageway. The shock of the initial explosion smashed into the vessel, breaking pipes, hydraulic lines, and twisting the propeller shaft. The fire pump was torn loose from its retaining straps; a smaller fire pump was torn loose and damaged equipment, including that used for fire control. The ship was tossed about wildly and then was completely submerged by the surge. Slowly floundering to the surface, what was left of a 30,000-foot towline served to hold the ship steady, saving it from complete disaster. The scene, in various forms, was repeated over and over again that afternoon on May 14, 1955. The initial devastation and the horrors of the aftermath were the result of the only deep-water atomic test performed by any nation. The test was conducted 500 miles southwest of San Diego, California and impacted 6,700 military service personnel, 120 civilian scientists and a fleet of 30 vessels. This was Operation Wigwam and it provided no safety for anyone involved. It was only a matter of seconds following the detonation when the ocean seemed to explode. The surface at point zero became a boiling white circle, which spread outward for two miles. Radioactive seawater, spray and mist leaped upward until there was a column of water 3,500 feet high above the surrounding ships. Then a fireball broke the surface and became a two-mile circle of bright light. There were repeated shock waves, which slammed into the circle of ocean craft, assembled for the test. The fleet was tossed and battered. Some were submerged in a tidal surge that reached 800 feet above their main masts. A giant wave 1,200 feet high rolled in the direction of the ships. From that giant wave a spray of atomic mist enveloped every ship and every observer of the blast. The spray was later described in official government reports as an “insidious hazard, which turned into an invisible radioactive aerosol.” The deep-water test was designed to test the vulnerability of submarines to deep-water nuclear weapons and the feasibility of using depth bombs in combat. Used in this test was a B-7 (Mk-90) Betty, a 31 kiloton depth bomb, suspended by a 2,000 foot cable from a barge. The weight of the bomb alone was 8,250 pounds. A six-mile towline connected the fleet tug Tawasa and the barge. Suspended from the bomb line at various depths were three “Squaws” or sub-scale submarine-like pressure hulls each equipped with instruments and cameras. Ships conducting the test were positioned five miles from the barge. Two ships, the USS George Eastman and the USS Granville S. Hall were equipped with shielding and stationed downwind of the blast zone. Nearly all personnel were issued film badges to measure radiation exposure. But, no protective gear was provided. R.J. Ritter was a crewmember on the USS Tawasa and is now a retired marine engineer. His research into Operation Wigwam and its aftermath has been extensive. It was made particularly difficult because everyone involved was required to sing a 25 year non disclosure and secrecy agreement, which if violated would have brought about serious incarceration. He claims that even today, most of the Operation Wigwam survivors are not speaking out about their involvement in the test. According to Ritter, “The planners major concerns were focused on the scientific and military results of the test. Any concerns for the possible hazards facing thousands of men involved first hand and stationed at the blast site, seemed at the time to be secondary in nature. In fact, the Navy was more concerned about their original proposal to stage a much larger operation. But, that event had to be scaled down because of a somewhat restricted budget.” Ritter’s research found that the radiation standards set for the operation allowed exposure ten times the amount of radiation considered, at that time, to be safe for the public. Dosimeters, those film badges, worn by all personnel were subject to unacceptable errors in accuracy and did not even measure ionizing radiation particles, which due to the mist created by the atomic explosion, were ingested and inhaled by those subjected to its fallout. The ionizing radiation has since proven to be the most harmful to personnel, years after exposure. Following the blast there was floating debris scattered over a five-mile radius. Weapons were used to sink anything afloat. That which could not be sunk to the floor of the ocean was taken aboard ships for transfer back to shore. The submarine hulls, surface barges support platforms and other items felt important to the test were selectively retrieved and transported to San Diego. Those Navy personnel with deck duties, crewmembers, boson mates and those with special assignments were sent to their tasks with minimal protection. Divers were sent deep into the radioactive waters. Pilots were ordered to fly into the atomic clouds. They were all exposed to secondary radiation. The complete devastation of Operation Wigwam may never be known. Due to signed secrecy agreements, high security classifications placed on government documents and even the removal of comments from military records showing individual participation in Operation Wigwam, the public remains uninformed. It may never be known how many became very ill, how many had lives of increased suffering or how many died because of the government’s failure to provide radiation protection and even health care to those how participated in the test. As for the scientific evaluations of Operation Wigwam, they have now been released under the Freedom of Information Act. *Scientists revealed that largely because of adverse weather conditions, fully 70 percent of the experiments were failures. *The Wigwam detonation produced sufficient airborne contamination activity to have given radiation doses many times above the tolerance level of those military and civilian personnel exposed to the hot seawater fallout, and to the radioactive contaminated monitoring equipment. *Airborne monitors stationed at San Diego measured a higher level of radioactivity over that city within four days of the blast. The radioactivity ranged from ten to twenty times the normal background levels for the next nine days. *The frightening base surge tidal wave, created by the blast was characterized as an insidious hazard that turned into an invisible radioactive mist lingering for several days. It has now been more than 49 years since Operation Wigwam and it was but one of 1066 United States sponsored atomic detonations participated in by the military personnel of this country. Those participants from all the uniformed services have still not been recognized as casualties of the “Cold War” and the Congress has still not passed legislation to give them unlimited medical assistance in the same manner as we treat all others who were wounded in action. As R.J. Ritter said at the end of his research paper, “The Atomic Veterans also stood in harms way, but unlike the bullet wound that will heal and not effect one’s future health, ionizing radiation is forever, and will continue to break down body processes over a period of 20 to 40 years, after the fact.” So, Operation Wigwam provided safety for none and covered all who participated with a blanket of illness and death. Still, little is done by our government to offer relief. As Ritter concludes, “Time does not favor the side of Atomic Veterans, but only favors the side of the Congress of the United States of America.” Thomas D. Segel is a Texan, now of Harlingen in the deep south Rio Grande Valley. A twice wounded, former combat correspondent, he retired from 26 years of service in the United States Marine Corps. Segel holds eight personal decorations for valor and meritorious service. He also hold the Thomas Jefferson Award for Journalistic Excellence and was named Military Writer of the Year. Design © 2003-2004. Content © 2003-2004 of its respective ***************************************************************** 83 Bellona: US Senator Ted Kennedy slams Bush on non-proliferation and endorses Kerry on nuclear containment News Analysis WASHINGTON—US President George Bush has turned back the clock by a matter of years the US efforts to stem the spread of nuclear weapons and has contributed through his polices toward making the world a more dangerous place, said Massachussetts Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy in an interview at a non proliferation conference in the US capitol. Charles Digges, 2004-06-25 12:23 A member of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, and a long standing anti-Bush liberal, Kennedy called the last four years of nuclear policy under Bush “a constant flirtation with nuclear disaster" that has rejected a "half century of success" in nuclear deterrence and steps toward disarmament. The Bush campaign rejected Kennedy's assertions, calling the senator an "attack dog for Kerry." He also stumped hard for his fellow Massachusetts democratic senator and presidential candidate, John Kerry, who he said would make “preventing nuclear terrorism an absolute priority for himself and for his administration and America’s allies.” A spokesman for the Bush re-election campaign rejected Kennedy's assertions, calling the senator an "attack dog for Kerry." Current non-proliferation efforts insufficient to stop nuclear weapons from falling to terrorists In a surprisingly frank critique of international non-proliferation efforts, a major and influential US think-tank launched a draft report calling for “universal compliance” to strengthen the world-wide nonproliferation drive and recommended that the US and Russia put more effort in to disarming themselves to act as an example for the rest of the world’s nuclear club. CTR presence in a Kerry White House? Kennedy also said that Kerry had pledged to appoint a cabinet level official “whose sole responsibility is to prevent nuclear terrorism and who as direct access to the president. This last plug for Kerry has a special place in the heart of most Cooperative Threat Reduction, or CTR, officials and other nuclear experts interviewed here earlier this week at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s International Non-proliferation conference. According to one threat reduction official, “[a cabinet level official] dealing with CTR issues has been on our wish list for a long time.” “But whether or not this person would have any real authority is a different question,” said the official, who spoke with Bellona Web on the condition of anonymity. “You can move the bureaucratic boxes around, but who is really going to have access to the president?” While Washington threat reduction officials are remaining mum about who they would to see in the White House come November 6th, it is clear that Kerry, along with little help from his more powerful friends, is trying to position himself as the true nuclear non-proliferation candidate against the back ground of Bush’s lacklustre record in this area, arms control and nuclear disarmament officials interviewed at the Carnegie conference agreed. One June 1st, Kerry pledged that, were he elected, he would commit $30 billion to cleaning up Russia’s Cold War legacy within four years—a stretch of a promise given that efforts the efforts of CTR and European nations over the past 12 years have managed to secure only some 37 percent of Russia’s fissile, weapons-grade nuclear material. Nonetheless, Kerry’s sweeping gesture toward intensifying threat reduction efforts have put CTR’s friction with the current administration on the election agenda. In his wider address to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Non-proliferation Conference held here on Monday and Tuesday, Kennedy faulted Bush for "encouraging new arms races, neglecting arms control and ignoring the truly threatening nuclear weapons developments in North Korea and Iran and the loose materials that could be readily available to terrorists." Junk rreaty avoids Russia's real non-proliferation problems With the arrival of US President George W. Bush in 2002 in Moscow cames the declaration by the third American president in a little over a decade that the Cold War is over. The proclamation adds him to a list of five other former and present world leaders — Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, Bill Clinton, and his own father, George H.W. Bush — who have also ended the Cold War since 1991.  Read on » 2002 Moscow Treaty ‘not much of a treaty at all’ Kennedy also highlighted the ineffective and widely ridiculed “Moscow Treaty” of 2002, under which Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin singed a deal to reduce the number of warheads on so-called “hair-trigger” alert to between 1,700 and 2,200 from the US’ current 6,00 and Russia’s 5,500 by the year 2012. In reality, this treaty provides for the reduction of those warheads on hair trigger alert to at most 2,200 while allowing both nations to maintain thousands more warheads in ready status. The treaty three-page treaty also outlined nothing about decommissioning or verification schedules, theoretically making it possible for both sides to amass a total of some 30,000 strategic and tactical nukes prior to 2012. “We must revitalize nuclear arms reductions—the need did not end with the Cold War,” said Kennedy. “The Moscow Treaty must be strengthened by making its 2,200 warhead limit an honest limit, not 2,200 warheads deployed and thousands more at the ready.” “An arms control treaty that doesn’t actually require the parties to destroy weapons—or the missiles and the bombers that deliver them—isn’t much of a treaty at all.” The Iraqi distraction impacts CTR Kennedy said the administration's focus on Iraq—where no weapons of mass destruction, or WMD’s, have been found—and its unwillingness to work with other countries "has been a serious setback for our non-proliferation policy, and may very well have made al Qaeda terrorists even more determined to find a way to make a nuclear attack on America." He called for more spending on the Nunn-Lugar program to purchase insufficiently secured nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union, and for a harder line on Pakistan, whose leading nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, recently admitted selling secrets on the international black market. Kennedy said that this sent a message to the world that "if you're a friend, you will not be punished for trading in nuclear arms. If you're Iraq, we will punish you, whether you really have nuclear arms or not." The Iraq issue has also, according to one threat reduction official, undermined any claim on further bids to secure weapons of mass destruction in Russia, and that the Bush administration’s decision to promulgate the notion that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapons programme—contrary to evidence from American and British intelligence—and found nothing to support that theory, will make it that much harder for US threat reduction efforts in Russia to obtain the European support these efforts need. “You can only cry ‘wolf’ once,” said the official. “Even though Russia does have WMD’s that its want cooperatively to destroy with US help, and everyone knows that, anything Bush says about the terrorist threat posed by Russia’s arsenal will sound like exaggeration.” America’s new nuclear race Kennedy also vowed to continue his fight against the Bush administration's proposals for a new generation of tactical nuclear weapons, so-called bunker busters. He called the administration's plans an impediment to persuading smaller nations to give up their nuclear ambitions, quoting Mohammed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as saying, "there are some who have continued to dangle a cigarette from their mouth and tell everybody else not to smoke." “A mini-nuke is still a nuke. The use of a low yield weapon could still cause a humanitarian, diplomatic, economic and environmental calamity,” said Kennedy. “Our military has no need of these weapons—they’re being developed exclusively for the hawks in the White House and the Pentagon who insist we need nuclear weapons that are more usable. What world are they living in? How can any sane person today possibly want nuclear weapons that are more usable?” The Bush-Cheney response Terry Holt, spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, disputed Kennedy's claim that the administration hasn't worked hard enough to secure loose nuclear materials in a telephone interview. "Senator Kennedy ignores that the Bush administration has fully funded Nunn-Lugar proposals and it also is working with the G-8 nations to come up with proposals to end the spread of nuclear weapons," Holt said. "The Bush administration has put nuclear proliferation front and centre in its relationship with G-8 partners." Holt also accused Kennedy of working in concert with the Kerry campaign, trying to damage Bush by making charges that are too inflammatory to come from the candidate himself. "John Kerry has appointed Ted Kennedy to be his attack dog, and Kerry and Kennedy share a world view that's out of the mainstream of the American people," Holt said. "Neither John Kerry nor Ted Kennedy understands the threat this country faces in the global war on terror. This goes back to the fight against the Soviet Union. Neither Kerry nor Kennedy understood that peace through strength was the way to fight communism." Kennedy, for his part, blasted the Bush administration for abandoning the commitment to nuclear disarmament that he believes reduced the tensions of the Cold War, referring to his brother, President John F. Kennedy's efforts to cut nuclear arms after the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Surviving the brink underscored in my brother's mind the necessity of cooperation, even with the most difficult adversary, so that no American president would ever again be faced with the same impossible dilemma.” Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 84 SF Chronicle: Fear returns to Russia / Peanut butter and sushi give way to a campaign of 'precision terror' Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, June 27, 2004 Moscow -- I was 11 years old when I saw Americans up close for the first time. Their women wore long silver earrings and no makeup. Their men took vitamins and didn't tuck in their T-shirts. They had strange ways, such as keeping their shoes on when they entered our downtown Leningrad apartment. I couldn't figure out why; none of us would ever think of tracking inside on the soles of our sneakers the layers of grime, urine and spilled beer that coated our building's dark, damp stairwell. Maybe in America apartment stairwells were clean. In any event, the unfamiliar scent that wafted out of their suitcases told of strange, foreign treats, such as peanut butter and dental floss. For me, this was the smell of America. My parents did not have to warn me to keep quiet about these visits. Our foreign friends were American psychologists who had come to share the latest ideas and trends about their profession with their Soviet colleagues, such as my dad. In a time before open borders or the Internet, they brought information about the outside world that was otherwise unavailable to us. This was dangerous stuff. Soviet ideologues had for decades banned much of modern psychology, declaring it a bourgeois science. This was 1986, when the Communist government, backed by the feared KGB secret police, still controlled everything that went on in public and much of what went on in people's homes. I was old enough by then to realize that everyone could get in trouble -- serious trouble -- if I mentioned the Americans' visits to my friends, schoolmates or, God forbid, my teachers. The way the Soviet government saw it, any foreigner was a potential spy, and anyone who spoke to foreigners was an accomplice. The KGB monitored all foreigners and kept a particularly close watch on Soviet citizens who interacted with outsiders. At the dawn of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, fear of reprisals still permeated our everyday lives. We played host to my dad's American colleagues as covertly as we could. To get them out of the city, where all of their movements were watched, we would spirit them to our favorite pine forests on the shores of the Gulf of Finland. We had to sneak them illegally past the watchful sentries at the many Soviet military bases that dotted the area and made it a strict no-go zone for Westerners. Our friends had to speak very quietly or not at all so that no one would recognize them as foreigners. Back then, we were so used to living in fear we could not imagine that things would ever change. We never could have pictured the collapse of the all- powerful police state -- and the freedom to travel, read what we want and associate with whomever we want that followed. Now, looking back, I see it is all changing again. Fear has returned to Russia. Russia's creeping transition from a country ruled by fear to a country ruled by fear has been slow. For several years after Russian President Boris Yeltsin, backed by what seemed like millions of supporters, stood on a tank and stared down the Soviet regime in 1991, it seemed that everything was possible as dramatic changes took place across the nation. The post-Soviet government looked to the West to help create a new, democratic Russia, and foreigners could now move freely across the country. Talking to Americans, once forbidden, was now a perfectly normal thing to do. In Obninsk, a small western Russian town, which had been built around the Soviet nuclear industry and had been off-limits to anyone who had not had special access, scientists who had once sworn to shun foreigners now gave tours of nuclear reactors to Western journalists. Suddenly it became possible to talk about the Soviet Union's dirty little secrets -- not just the decades of political repression and misrule that had disfigured society, but also the mismanagement and corruption that continued to undermine the nation. Environmentalists, foreign and Russian, swarmed to the formerly top-secret submarine bases of the Soviet navy's dilapidated Northern Fleet to record the potentially catastrophic handling of nuclear waste. More than 350,000 human rights and humanitarian groups, many of them financed by Western organizations, replaced Communist Party cells as the basis for the country's nascent civil society. Many Russians embraced all things Western, and peanut butter and dental floss appeared in Russian stores. But peanut butter and sushi were an inadequate reward for millions of Russians who ended up benefiting little, if at all, from the momentous changes that brought down the communist police state. Ten years after my first glimpse of Americans, the euphoria of freedom had all but worn off, and post-Soviet Russia was beginning to look like a failed state. In 1996, the army was bogged down in the third year of a war in breakaway Chechnya it would lose, forced in August of that year to pull out by a few thousand lightly armed separatists who exposed the poor fighting capability of the once-feared Red Army. Impoverished soldiers abandoned their posts at military bases and combed through our favorite pine forests near the Gulf of Finland, picking wild mushrooms to supplement their meager diets. A hungry recruit broke into our summer cottage to steal two cans of cured beef. The poverty and deprivation hit even high-security military bases -- unable to pay their electric bills, nuclear weapons facilities had their security features switched off, and bases monitoring the skies for incoming missiles had to shut down their radars. The military was not the only institution that suffered. In St. Petersburg, my hometown, the forensic morgue could not pay for electricity, and the bodies lay on stretchers in hallways, rotting, while the most vicious mob in the city -- the so-called cemetery mafia, run by a crook named Kostya the Grave -- extorted money from grieving relatives of the deceased. Gangland-style assassinations were so commonplace that St. Petersburg earned the nickname "Russia's crime capital" and hosted a popular TV series, "Criminal St. Petersburg." A lot of people bought guns. When I asked a downstairs neighbor in my apartment building to turn down the music because it was waking up my infant son, he pulled a pistol on me. Millions of workers, meanwhile, went months without paychecks. Those of us who had jobs with a regular paycheck felt lucky -- until the summer of 1998, when Russia defaulted on its international debt and the ruble crashed. Overnight, my salary of $400 a month, paid in rubles and enough to make ends meet, turned into $10. A month later, like millions of Russians working for fledgling private companies, I was laid off. Russia's economy eventually recovered, somewhat. But after the crisis of 1998, the country lost faith once and for all in the idea that Westernizing reformers should oversee Russia's post-Soviet transformation. Russians blamed democrats and the West for the country's ills and cried out for security. Millions embraced the ascent to power of Vladimir Putin, a former KGB spy who promised to root out crime and end the separatist rebellion in Chechnya. A decade of grinding poverty had made people forget that nearly all of them had relatives who had suffered at the hands of the Soviet secret police, and Putin's affiliation with the Soviet punitive system that had executed tens of millions concerned few Russians. Instead, the KGB, in the minds of many Russians, had become synonymous with intelligence, loyalty, patriotism and order. But when the secret services take over, they do so on their own terms. After his election as president in 2000, Putin and the former KGB officers who make up the bulk of his administration have taken the Russians' attitude as a blank check for retribution against anyone who digs up things they want to keep secret, from nuclear waste to mass graves of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's victims. In his most recent speech to the nation, Putin publicly admonished his critics, telling Russians that human rights groups worked for "shady" foreign interests. In 1999, liberals wrote a letter Putin, who had become Yeltsin's prime minister at the time, asking him to use his authority to get the charges dropped against Alexander Nikitin, a Russian navy captain who had taken advantage of the new freedoms after the fall of communism to expose the dangers to the environment posed by the "floating Chernobyls," hundreds of aging and poorly maintained nuclear submarines of the Russian navy's Northern Fleet. In 1995, the former KGB had jailed Nikitin on charges of espionage and treason for co-authoring a report on the fleet with Norwegian environmentalists. Not only did Putin ignore the plea of Nikitin's supporters; he told a major Russian newspaper that any environmentalist or journalist could be a foreign spy. I soon learned that Putin's Cold War-like statement concerned me, too. I was covering Nikitin's trial in 1999, and after one session in court I asked the prosecutor to comment on the progress of the case. "If I were you I would be very careful," responded the prosecutor, Alexander Gutsan. "Particularly since you have a little boy." I walked out of the courtroom shivering at the notion that the prosecutor had just threatened my 2-year-old son. That episode spelled out for me that as far as the state was concerned, we reporters were not impartial observers, just doing our job by writing about the case. From their point of view, if we asked questions, we were accomplices to the accused. A St. Petersburg court acquitted Nikitin in 1999, but the secret police, now called the FSB, has moved on to other targets, using prosecution of scientists and journalists as warnings to others that there is no room for whistle-blowers and others who stir up trouble in Putin's Russia. In April, a Moscow court found physicist Igor Sutyagin guilty of spying for the United States and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor. The FSB said Sutyagin, the author of numerous analytical works about Soviet weapons, passed on to the CIA information about Russian nuclear submarine weaponry and missile warning systems. But international human rights groups say Sutyagin is one of a number of innocent victims in a chain of trumped-up cases relying on charges based on laws so secret the defense is not allowed to see them and intended to bring back the paranoid secrecy of the Cold War era. When all falls quiet in the tiny apartment in Obninsk where Sutyagin once lived and worked, his wife, Irina Manannikova, listens to the loud clock in her cramped kitchen tick away the time her husband spends in jail. His bookshelf is still stacked with books in English and Russian he used to research his reports, sources he bought openly in Moscow bookstores in the early 1990s. By the time he was arrested, the FSB charged that these books, like the newspapers and other nonclassified research materials cluttering his desk, contained secret information. FSB investigators made no secret of the fact that the rules for what they considered classified materials had changed, radically. "I asked them, 'What's the difference between having three newspapers on his desk and 10?' " Manannikova recalled. "They told me, 'It's forbidden to have more than three.' " Last week, Russia's Supreme Court reversed a lower court's acquittal of Valentin Danilov, a physicist the FSB accused of selling research data to China, analytical material his colleagues say was gathered exclusively from public sources. A jury had acquitted Danilov in December, but the high court reinstated the criminal case against him. "This is not the Great Terror of the 1930s," said Moscow historian Igor Dolutsky, referring to the Stalinist purges, during which up to 20 million people perished. "This is precision terror: Everybody doesn't go to prison, but the few who do are enough to scare everybody else." Last year, the Russian government banned Dolutsky's high school history textbook after Putin announced that high school history lessons should be less negative and create a sense of pride in Russia's youth. Among the sections Putin's government found offensive in Dolutsky's text: all references to the purges by Soviet secret police. Some who research the purges have understood the message. Leonid Novak, a historian who researches Stalinist mass graves, recently hesitated as I interviewed him about the country's reluctance to address Russia's gruesome past. "You're going to quote me and then the FSB will ban me from their archives," he said. Western journalists, too, have felt the pressure. Charles Digges, a veteran reporter in Russia who is now based in Norway, said he felt like he was being watched during his latest reporting trip to Russia. "It was a little scary," Digges said. "I felt that the people I was talking to -- that somebody was making notes on it all. People would come up and stare, the same person with different nametags every day. It was very, very weird." In the small living room of his Moscow apartment, Dolutsky explained why fear has returned. "The fear is back because the system is back. The system is built on fear, " Dolutsky said. "The totalitarian state is being resurrected." As I listened to him I suddenly caught myself thinking: "It's amazing that he isn't afraid to say things like this." It was a chilling thought. I had not thought like that, I realized, since the Soviet Union -- around the time I first saw Americans up close. E-mail Anna Badkhen at abadkhen@sfchronicle.com Page E - 1 ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ ***************************************************************** 85 L.A. Daily News: Congress OKs more work at Santa Susana laboratory Article Published: Friday, June 25, 2004 - 6:47:22 $19 million for cleanup By Lisa Friedman Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Congress approved $19 million on Friday to continue the cleanup of radioactive contamination at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Funding will go to the Department of Energy to remove radioactive waste from soil at the 2,900-acre site of the former Rocketdyne nuclear research lab in Simi Hills, as well as to demolish old buildings. Community activists who worry the agency's decontamination standards leave behind too much radiation said the funding is adequate only if DOE meets the cleanup criteria of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. "If they clean it to EPA standards, it would be sufficient. But to them, it's always been a matter of saving money, and I think health comes before money," said Santa Susana advocate Barbara Johnson. The Rocketdyne money secured by Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Thousand Oaks, was part of a $28 billion spending bill that also will send millions of dollars to Southern California for recycling, groundwater remediation and dredging programs. The energy and water funding bill is perennially packed with local projects and, as a result, normally is approved by overwhelming margins. This year was no exception, and the House approved it 370-16. The debate was not, however, without controversy. In particular, the California energy crisis of 2001 continued to provoke partisan passion. The House agreed by a voice vote Friday to force the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to disclose all documents related to market manipulation in light of newly released financial documents that show Enron Corp. alone made more than $1.1 billion manipulating West Coast markets between 2000 and 2001. "There are mounds of evidence related to the manipulation of energy in the Pacific Northwest and California between 2000 and 2001. There is so much evidence being withheld," said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, who authored the amendment. But the House Rules Committee, led by Rep. David Dreier, R-Glendora, refused to allow lawmakers to vote on an amendment that would have made it easier for California to obtain billions in energy refunds, and also would have called for a new federal investigation of Enron. Rep. Doug Ose, R-Sacramento, called the proposal "a witch hunt" and said California Democrats should instead work with Republicans to increase power supplies in the state and create stronger markets. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, called the provision mandating FERC make its documents public "a positive step" but added, "I'm disappointed we didn't go further." In addition, the House voted down 151-235 an amendment by Rep. Mary Meehan, D-Mass., and Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, that would have increased funding to a program for cleaning up highly-enriched uranium from 24 sites in the former Soviet Union. The money would have come from weapons activities. Among the bigger-ticket items in the legislation for the Los Angeles region is $9 million for the San Gabriel Basin Restoration Fund, a federal account that Dreier created to pay for perchlorate cleanup projects throughout the region. The basin covers about 160 square miles and is the primary source of drinking water for about 1.4 million people. Perchlorate is a toxic, inorganic chemical used in the production of solid rocket fuel and explosives that has been linked with thyroid damage. It has been detected in at least 350 California wells, the majority of which are in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, secured $350,000 for perchlorate decontamination efforts at the former Whitaker-Bermite defense industrial site in Santa Clarita, where the chemical has led to the closure of five drinking water wells. In addition to perchlorate, the bill includes $400,000 to investigate chloride contamination in the upper Santa Clara River, which flows through the city of Santa Clarita. Other Southern California items in the bill include: $1 million for the Calleguas M ***************************************************************** 86 Tri-City Herald: House approves Hanford cleanup money This story was published Saturday, June 26th, 2004 By Les Blumenthal Herald Washington, D.C., bureau WASHINGTON -- The House approved a massive spending bill Friday that provides full funding for Hanford reservation cleanup in the coming fiscal year and rejects an administration effort to withhold $350 million unless Washington and other states agreed to changes in their nuclear cleanup plans. The $28 billion energy and water development appropriations bill also includes $1.5 million for the Bureau of Reclamation to continue studying increasing water storage in the Yakima River Basin, with a specific focus on the proposed Black Rock Reservoir. Also included in the bill was $9.5 million to help the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland relocate from its current space in Hanford's 300 Area and $8 million for the Volpentest Hazardous Management and Emergency Response Training and Education Center, or HAMMER. Last year, HAMMER received $6 million. The Senate has yet to begin work on its version of the bill. Though the bill doesn't include specific funding levels for Hanford, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said it was in line with the administration's request of $2.19 billion for Hanford. The funding also should be sufficient to meet the Department of Energy's legal responsibilities under the Tri-Party Agreement to clean up the site. "This bill keeps the government's commitment to the people of the Tri-Cities and Washington state on track," Hastings said. The bill also releases $350 million in cleanup funding for Hanford, Savannah River and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory that the administration had wanted to set aside until a legal impasse over the definition of high-level nuclear waste was resolved. Hanford's share of the $350 million amounts to $64.1 million in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. The Energy Department had sought to rewrite the definition of high-level nuclear waste so it wouldn't have to completely remove all the material from underground storage tanks at the three sites. The decision to withhold the money came after a federal judge in Boise ruled that only Congress, not DOE, could change radioactive waste classifications. The department said changing the definition could save more than $85 billion in cleanup costs and speed the cleanup effort at the three sites. The decision to withhold the money was widely seen as an effort by the department to pressure the states of Washington, South Carolina and Idaho into accepting the changes. South Carolina has agreed to the changes as they involve Savannah River. Lawmakers from Washington state have sought to block the South Carolina agreement, saying it could set a precedent. © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 87 NMBW: New Mexico Tech, Los Alamos lab to share resources - 2004-06-25 - New Mexico Business Weekly NMBW Staff The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro will sign a memorandum of understanding with Los Alamos National Laboratory providing a formalized agreement for the two entities to share research and personnel resources. Inking the agreement on June 28 at New Mexico Tech's campus will be university President Daniel Lopez and LANL Associate Director Richard Mah. "This memorandum of understanding provides excellent opportunities for faculty, researchers and students at New Mexico Tech, and scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, to fully develop collaborative efforts in areas of mutually beneficial research and education," Lopez said in a news release. The two entities have worked together in the past on certain projects, but the MOU will be the first written agreement between the two. The areas of common research interests include: astronomy, astrophysics, Earth sciences, materials engineering and energetic materials. Initially, three collaborative programs will be supported by the agreement: a student and postdoctoral scholars program, a university faculty and laboratory staff program and a collaborative research program. Under the agreement, LANL will make some of its personnel available to Tech for guest lectures and workshops, as well as direct some research endeavors with the Socorro-based university. Tech will make some its facilities available to the north central New Mexico, Department of Energy laboratory, such as the Magdalena Ridge Observatory, currently in the planning stages and scheduled to break ground next year, and its Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center that is used for large-scale explosives testing and as a site for first responder and counterterrorism training. "This is another example of successful partnering with New Mexico's universities," said LANL Director G. Peter Nanos. The memorandum of understanding could also lead to further funding for New Mexico Tech as well as more opportunities for its students to obtain jobs with the Energy department's lab, which conducts extensive research in the fields of physics, engineering, chemistry and materials science, among other things. The agreement could also give rise to further strategic partnerships that would be established and directed under a newly formed New Mexico Tech/LANL Joint Science and Technology Laboratory. © 2004 American City Business Journals Inc. ***************************************************************** 88 Charleston.Net: Opinion: Editorials Proceed with SRS tank cleanup 06/27/04 The Department of Energy's recent assurance that 99 percent of radioactive material will be removed from waste tanks at Savannah River Site should encourage Congress to allow the cleanup to proceed. It may fall short of a perfect solution -- the removal of 100 percent -- but it would go a long way toward finally dealing with highly radioactive material that has been stored on site for decades. Under a proposal by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., liquid waste would be removed from the tanks and turned into glass logs, in preparation for shipping them to a permanent waste site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Gov. Mark Sanford and the state Department of Health and Environmental Control support the plan. The governor has noted that, under the existing waste treatment policy, waste could remain in the tanks another 30 years. As proposed by Sen. Graham, the cleanup would leave a relatively small amount of material, resembling a slurry, in the tanks. Because it has proven intractable to treatment in two tanks from which waste already has been removed, the slurry would be encased on site with a concrete grout, poured in and around the tanks. Assistant Energy Secretary Jessie Roberson recently told a Senate committee that the department is confident the remaining waste left in the tanks will qualify as low-level waste once it is diluted with the grout mixture. A spokesman for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control tells us that has been the case with the two tanks already treated at SRS. DHEC views the treatment plan as a way to finally deal with the 37 million gallons of waste in 49 tanks at the former weapons plant. DHEC Deputy Commissioner Robert King describes the existing storage as "the single most potentially hazardous condition to the environment and the people of South Carolina." Under Sen. Graham's proposal, the state would have to agree to cleanup plans for each tank, and maintain oversight of the process. Amendments in both the House and Senate would require a National Academy of Sciences review of DOE's cleanup plan. The Senate amendment has the benefit of allowing DOE to proceed with the preliminaries while an academy review is undertaken. The provision for NAS review should act as a needed circuit breaker if DOE's plans are determined to be inadequate. Sen. Graham's proposal has been criticized because it would allow DOE to leave radioactive waste on site. But based on the cleanup experience of two tanks on site, the level of radioactivity will be greatly diminished and will present a far less hazard in its immobilized state than the millions of gallons of high-level radioactive liquid that have long been stored in the aging tanks. DHEC nuclear waste experts are convinced that the plan will work, and that there are adequate safeguards for the state. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has endorsed the idea, saying that the plan "would protect public health and safety." Sen. Graham points out that it would speed up the cleanup by 23 years and reduce the anticipated expense by some $16 billion. If the National Academy Sciences finds a fatal flaw in the plan, it should have the opportunity to intervene, even under the timetable envisioned by the Senate. Otherwise, the long overdue cleanup of this lingering waste problem should finally commence. Copyright © 2004, The Post and Courier, All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 89 Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio would sue over Fernald Cincinnati.Com Saturday, June 26, 2004 Attorney general fights above-ground storage plan By Dan Horn Enquirer staff writer Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro vowed Friday to sue the U.S. Department of Energy if it tries to remove radioactive waste from silos at Fernald and store it in steel shipping crates at the Crosby Township site. Petro said temporarily storing the waste in the crates would pose an environmental hazard to ground water and the surrounding area. The threat to sue comes after Department of Energy officials in charge of the Fernald nuclear cleanup said they could begin removing waste from the silos by the end of June, even though they are not yet able to send it to a permanent storage facility. Plans to send the waste to a site in Nevada are in limbo because the Nevada attorney general has threatened to block the move, claiming the disposal is illegal and unsafe. Despite that problem, officials at Fernald said they could go ahead with removal anyway and store the waste in sealed crates until a permanent disposal site is found. Petro said such a move would violate an agreement between state and federal officials that requires the waste to be moved from the site as soon as it is removed from the silos. "Ohioans should not be asked to accept this intolerable deviation from the approved plans," Petro said in a statement. "Any storage of the wastes outside the silos creates a risk to Ohioans and their environment." He outlined his concerns in an "intent to sue" letter sent to Fernald officials Friday. The letter gives 60-day notice of a possible lawsuit and is required under federal environmental laws. The waste in the silos is a byproduct of 40 years of work at Fernald, which processed uranium for the production of nuclear weapons. Officials at Fernald said temporarily storing waste from the silos at the site is only an option, not something they have decided to do. A Department of Energy spokesman in Washington, Joe Davis, did not comment directly on Petro's letter but said the department is seeking to "resolve the issues that have been raised." Christopher Jones, director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, said it does not make sense to start the waste removal process until a permanent site for disposal is found. "The integrity of the existing silos should not be compromised until we are sure that the wastes inside will be properly disposed of," Jones said. Copyright1995-2004. The Cincinnati Enquirer, a Gannett Co. ***************************************************************** 90 Columbian Opinion - In Our View: Dare We Ask? www.columbian.com Clark County, Washington Saturday, June 26, 2004 Columbian editorial writers Hanford Nuclear Reservation cleanup ... wilderness and roadless-area designations ... logging and forest fires ... maintenance and staffing at Olympic and other national parks ... salmon restoration versus more hydroelectric power ... preservation of wildlife habitat vs. economic stimulus ... SUV fuel economy. To hear the pollsters tell it, these and other environmental issues won't matter much to the few truly undecided voters in this presidential election. The same is being said of all issues other than the Iraq war and the U.S. economy. If that's accurate, it's a shame. The day President Bush arrived in Spokane last week, The Spokesman-Review newspaper published an editorial headlined: "President Bush, could we ask. ..." Along with Iraq and economic questions, it asked about the Hanford mess, farm subsidies, oil drilling, mileage requirements and the Enron scandal. The editorial concluded: "There's a chance both Bush and John Kerry will be back. They ought to come with some answers." Some pollsters tell us that as few as 4 percent of voters in 17 states including Washington are truly undecided at this point. Others say the undecideds could amount to as much as 20 percent. In any case, the vast majority of voters have made up their minds for either Bush or Kerry. This many voters making up their minds this early is unusual. Knight-Ridder news service reported last month that "nearly three times as many Americans are paying attention to the campaign than four years ago at this stage." In three and a half years, Bush has done little to soften his reputation as no particular friend of environmental concerns when they clash with economic interests of private enterprise or cost to the government. It is a Bush-Cheney administration public relations headache. Last year, GOP strategist Frank Luntz prepared a lengthy memo to guide Republican politicians when they talk about the environment. The League of Conservation Voters got hold of a copy and put it on its Web page. It starts by urging Republicans to "assure your audience that you are committed to 'preserving and protecting' the environment, but that 'it can be done more wisely and effectively.' Absolutely do not raise economic arguments first. Tell them a personal story from your life." It also suggests they use words such as "safer," "cleaner" and "healthier" but avoid terms such as "risk assessment," "cost-benefit analysis, and the other traditional environmental terminology used by industry and corporations." On the other hand, voters who care about the environment but are still undecided in the election (unlike anti-Bush LCV activists), ought not give John Kerry a free ride when listening to him or his ads on the subject. Last week he told a Seattle radio station he plans a summer trip to this state and hopes to go wind surfing in the Columbia River Gorge. But that, like Bush's occasional photo opportunities along some Northwest river, won't negate the need for a close look at his Senate record and new environmental proposals, including, dare we say it, risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis. The Columbian ***************************************************************** 91 Google News Alert - nuclear Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 14:16:19 -0700 (PDT) UN nuclear agency chief praises US for North Korea offer Channel News Asia - Singapore MOSCOW : The head of the United Nations atomic agency praised the Bush adminstration's first offer to North Korea on its nuclear program as "a step in the ... See all stories on this topic: IAEA Marks 50 Years of Civilian Nuclear Power Voice of America - Washington,DC,USA The International Atomic Energy Agency, looking back on half a century of the non-military use of nuclear power, says, with the end of the cold war, the world ... See all stories on this topic: RUSSIAN FM to visit DPRK, ROK over nuclear issue Xinhua - China ... June 26 (Xinhuanet) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is scheduled to visit both two Koreas early next month to discuss the nuclear situation on the ... See all stories on this topic: SYRIA says UN nuclear inspectors welcome Reuters - London,England,UK MOSCOW (Reuters) - Syria has told the UN nuclear watchdog that its inspectors are welcome to come and verify the nature of its atomic activities, the agency's ... See all stories on this topic: IRAN Rebuked Amid Nuclear Fears New York Times - USA Filed at 11:34 am ET SHANNON, Ireland/MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States, the European Union and the UN's nuclear watchdog condemned Iran on Saturday for ... See all stories on this topic: IRAN’S Firm Decision On Nuclear Issue Will Force EU To Act ... Merh News Agency - Tehran,Iran TEHRAN, June 26 (MNA) -- Iran’s firm decision to make use of nuclear energy transparently, which is its inalienable right, will force the European Union to ... See all stories on this topic: MOSCOW does not deny Pyongyang right to develop peaceful nuclear ... Pravda - Moscow,Russia Russia believes it is not legal to demand that North Korea should close down all of its nuclear programmes. Russian Ambassador at ... See all stories on this topic: SENATE preserves nuclear waste move to SRS in bill The State - Columbia,SC,USA ... Lindsey Graham, RS.C., protected a fragile nuclear victory he savored earlier this month. Then, it had been won by the closest of votes. ... BILL Omits Funds for Nuclear Waste Storage Washington Post - Washington,DC,USA A long-standing federal plan to permanently store waste from the nation's commercial nuclear reactors under a Nevada mountain was thrown into question ... See all stories on this topic: EU Parliamentarians: Admit Kashmir as Nuclear Flash Point Pakistan Times - Pakistan ... Earlier, describing Kashmir as nuclear flash point, the EU delegation European Union had stressed that the dispute needed to be resolved by India, Pakistan and ... This daily-once News Alert is brought to you by Google News (BETA)... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Remove this News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts/remove?s=92d1672a1b037a07&hl=en Create another News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en Try Google News: http://news.google.com/ ***************************************************************** 92 Google News Alert - nuclear Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2004 13:18:05 -0700 (PDT) CHINA sees advance in North Korea nuclear talks Financial Times - London,England,UK China praised last week's multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons programme as "constructive, pragmatic and substantive" but warned of continued ... See all stories on this topic: UN nuclear chief urges Iran to reverse nuclear move Channel News Asia - Singapore ... Mohamed ElBaradei urged Iran to abandon a decision to resume work towards uranium enrichment as a week-long conference on peaceful uses of nuclear power opened ... See all stories on this topic: NUCLEAR Industry Still Haunted by Chernobyl - UN Reuters - London,England,UK MOSCOW (Reuters) - The nuclear industry is still struggling to overcome the damage done to its reputation by Chernobyl, even though nuclear power is an ... See all stories on this topic: RUSSIA stresses continuation of nuclear cooperation with Iran Payvand - Iran ... June 26, IRNA -- Head of Russian Atomic Energy Agency Alexander Rumyantsev stressed here Sunday on continuation of cooperation with Iran on nuclear energy. ... See all stories on this topic: NUCLEAR plant East Anglian Daily Times - Suffolk,England,UK By Juliette Maxam. A ROW has broken out after a study into levels of cancer in communities living near a nuclear power station was cancelled. ... See all stories on this topic: PUTIN points to great chances of nuclear innovative technologies ITAR-TASS - Moscow,Russia ... June 27 (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a message of greetings to the International Conference “50 Years of Nuclear Energy: lessons and ... See all stories on this topic: DPRK denies saying of joint nuclear test with Iran China Daily - Beijing,China The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Sunday denied Japanese saying of DPRK-Iran joint test of detonating devices for nuclear bombs and criticized ... See all stories on this topic: RESIDENTS near nuclear plants to get anti-radiation pills Maariv International - Israel ... The pills, known as Logol, will be distributed in Dimona and Yerocham, which are near the Negev Nuclear Research Institute, and to residents of Yavne, near the ... See all stories on this topic: CALIFORNIA joins battle against nuclear panel's streamlined ... San Luis Obispo Tribune - San Luis Obispo,CA,USA California has joined four other states in criticizing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a new set of streamlined hearing rules that critics say will ... See all stories on this topic: This daily-once News Alert is brought to you by Google News (BETA)... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Remove this News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts/remove?s=92d1672a1b037a07&hl=en Create another News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en Try Google News: http://news.google.com/ ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************