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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 Las Vegas SUN: Senate Panel to Release Iraq Report
2 UK Independent: CIA attacked for 'gross exaggeration' of Saddam's WM
3 AFP: PM renounces any Iraqi ambitions to get the bomb
4 [progchat_action] Rice, China's Jiang Discuss N.Korea Nuclear
5 Korea Herald: Looking for a deal, North Korea may rethink nuclear
6 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL]Terms of second summit   
7 Japan Times: Rice, Koizumi mull North Korea issues
8 US: Las Vegas Mercury: Democracy in Peril 
9 US: Las Vegas RJ: WESTERN SHOSHONE: Law frees funds for Indian lands
10 US: Capitol Hill Blue: Cheney Faces Criminal Indictments; Other
11 US: Jim Gibbons: Western Shoshone Claims Bill Becomes Law
12 Las Vegas SUN: Israel May Discuss Nuclear-Free Zone
13 New York Times: Europe Puts More Limits on Bailouts of Companies
14 US: ABQjournal: Flaws Seen in Sub-Launched Nuclear Warhead 
15 BBC: 'Hope' for nuclear-free Mid-East 
16 BBC: India's ever-increasing defence budget 
17 AFP: UN nuclear chief fails to swing Israel round to atomic openness
18 Xinhuanet: IAEA persuades Israel to support NPT   
19 Japan Times: Rising doubts about NATO
20 AU ABC: US, Israel deflect nuclear watchdog. 
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
21 US: NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting
22 BBC: Workers cut French power supplies 
23 Bnn: EU May Finance Bulgaria’s Second Nuclear Plant Project - Offici
24 Globe and Mail: Nuclear reactors will supply Ontario's power, provin
25 Toronto Star: $900 million to start reactor
26 US: TheBostonChannel: Nuke Plant Labor Fight Raising Security Concer
27 Japan Times: Electric power body sat on data
28 Japan Times: Atomic commission buried cost estimates
29 Scotsman.com: First Nuclear Reactor Decommissioned
30 US: Cape Cod Times: Pilgrim expansion called unlikely 
31 US: Cape Cod Times: Pilgrim workers seek shutdown 
32 US: TheDay.com: Citizens Deserve Open Hearing On Nuke Issue
33 US: TheDay.com: Peters' Dominion Deal Sends Wrong Message
34 US: NRC: Exelon Generation Company, LLC, Dresden Nuclear Power Stati
35 US: BostonHerald: Workers want their nuclear strike to take out Pilg
36 Sofia Morning News: Bulgaria "Major Energy Provider"
37 Whitehaven News: N-PLANT GETS NEW BOSS 
38 US: NRC: In the Matter of Rochester Gas and Electric Corporation (R.
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
39 US: 6th Anniversary Of Dr Bertell's Signed, Notorized Statement Of J
40 AFP: Spain not planning action against British nuclear submarine in 
41 US: WCAX: Department of Public Service official resigns
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
42 NEWS.com.au: Howard wary on N-dump plan 
43 Las Vegas SUN: NRC names hearing officers for DOE Yucca Mountain fil
44 Las Vegas RJ: STEVE SEBELIUS: More politics on Yucca 
45 Las Vegas RJ: Appointee to hear database disputes 
46 Interfax: British delegation visits nuclear waste site in Russia
47 BBC: Still no fix on nuclear waste 
48 Las Vegas SUN: Nevada's anti-Yucca attorneys gearing up for
49 US: chillicothe gazette: Issues rise with nuke waste removal costs -
50 C&EN: DOE Releases Flood Of Yucca Mountain Data
51 Pahrump Valley Times: False federal assurance 
52 NRC: NRC Names Pre-License Application Presiding Officer to Resolve 
53 AU ABC: SA heartened by nuke dump reconsideration 
54 Whitehaven News: RAF JETS TOO FAR AWAY TO SAVE US 
55 Pahrump Valley Times: YUCCA MOUNTAIN DOE database criticized 
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
56 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Two states to sue for U.S. review of Han
57 Tri-City Herald: Waste being retrieved from third tank 
58 ACA: Abraham Announces Nuclear Initiative
59 Oak Ridger: Legality of Iraqi uranium transfer debated 							 					
60 Oak Ridger: American Ecology site sold 							 							 							
61 lamonitor.com: Panel reviews cleanup progress 
62 PISJ: Hatch Act infraction at INEEL investigated
63 Daily Texan Viewpoint: UT and Los Alamos- A shared silence - 
64 DOE: whom it is not feasible to estimate their radiation dose, and o
65 DOE: DOE/NSF Nuclear Science Advisory Committee
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
66 [DU-WATCH] Animated Timeline Of Nuclear Activities In The US
67 [du-list] DU in the news - July 9th 04
68 Las Vegas Mercury: The ultimate public-private partnership 
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 Las Vegas SUN: Senate Panel to Release Iraq Report

 By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER
 ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Senate report on intelligence failures
leading up to the invasion of Iraq, to be released Friday, will
conclude that analysts were not pressured to change their views
to support arguments for the attack, congressional and other
officials said. 

But some intelligence analysts did tell the committee they felt
a need to emphasize one piece of evidence over another - a form
of pressure, several Democratic lawmakers will point out in an
"alternative view," according to a Democratic congressional
aide. 

Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee
have said their report on prewar intelligence is a tough
critique of the intelligence agencies' performance. Significant
blame will be laid on the CIA for flawed estimates on Iraq. 

One U.S. official familiar with the report said it does not
charge the agency with losing objectivity but accuses its
analytic side of not being rigorous or careful in its
intelligence assessments. 

The Democratic congressional aide, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said some lawmakers think a hawkish atmosphere
encouraging an Iraq invasion contributed to an environment of
pressure that analysts operated in. While analysts told the
committee they didn't literally feel pressured, some said that
they felt they needed to emphasize certain information, the aide
said. 

Several Democrats plan to offer this opinion in one of at least
a half dozen "alternative views" that will be attached to the
report that spans roughly 500 pages. Earlier this week, West
Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the
committee, said, "The pressure was overwhelming." 

That runs counter to an impassioned defense in February from
outgoing CIA Director George Tenet. "No one told us what to say
or how to say it," he said in a speech at Georgetown University. 

Officials familiar with the report say the yearlong review
examines the intelligence community's objectivity and
reasonableness as it formed various estimates on Iraq, including
the government's purported mobile weapons labs, chemical and
biological weapons, nuclear program and unmanned aerial
vehicles. 

Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., who is also a
member of the Intelligence Committee, has encouraged restraint
in drawing final conclusions until the work of the Iraq Survey
Group, hunting for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction,
is complete. 

Friday's report is the first of two phases. Democrats wanted to
see the investigation immediately consider other issues,
including how senior Bush administration officials may have
misrepresented the analysis provided by the nation's
intelligence apparatus to make the case for war. 

On Thursday, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a committee member,
released a portion of a July 1 memorandum from Tenet that said
the intelligence community was "increasingly skeptical" that a
meeting between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi
intelligence officials occurred in Prague in April 2001, as Vice
President Dick Cheney asserted before the Iraq invasion. Tenet
said the single-source reporting of the information had been
questioned and Iraqi intelligence officials had denied having
met Atta. 

The report comes as President Bush is deciding what to do with
an opening in his administration for a permanent CIA director to
replace Tenet, who officially resigns Sunday. Tenet's deputy,
John McLaughlin, will then take over. 

While it was initially expected that Bush would keep McLaughlin
in place through the November election, senior administration
officials have indicated Bush wants to find a permanent
replacement sooner. Bush said this week he has made no decision. 

The Intelligence Committee and its staff interviewed hundreds of
people, including Tenet. Tenet has publicly asserted his
analysts never said there was an "imminent threat" from Iraq. 

McLaughlin said last month in remarks to a Business Executives
for National Security forum: "What shortcomings there were - and
there were shortcomings - were the result of specific, discrete
problems that we understand and are well on our way to
addressing or have already addressed." 

The committee's report had been expected to be released last
year, but was delayed for months over disputes including
internal committee debates about the review's scope and the
CIA's initial proposal to classify roughly 40 percent of the
report, citing national security. 

"The redactions were an insult," said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.,
a committee member. 

After negotiations, just under 20 percent will be held back from
the public. 

--- 

AP Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid contributed to this report. 

-- 



*****************************************************************
 2 UK Independent: CIA attacked for 'gross exaggeration' of Saddam's WMD 
threat in official US report
 
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
 
08 July 2004
 
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
 
08 July 2004

The CIA was braced yesterday for a fiercely critical 
Congressional report expected to place primary blame on the 
agency for the pre-war intelligence debacle over Iraq's 
still-unfound weapons of mass destruction. 

The preliminary report, by the Senate Committee on Intelligence, 
is to be published today or tomorrow. Its central charge is that 
the CIA grossly exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, 
ignoring the paucity of its own findings on Iraqi's WMD 
capabilities. 

Indeed, knowledge that a public savaging was on the way may have 
been the final straw persuading George Tenet to resign last month 
after a seven-year stint as CIA director marked by as string of 
major intelligence failures, most notably the failure to prevent 
the 9/11 attacks and to find Iraq's alleged chemical, biological 
and nuclear weapon programmes. 

The Senate report is said to fault the CIA in three main areas: 
its disregard for claims by relatives of Iraqi scientists that 
Saddam had abandoned his WMD ambitions, a reliance on bogus 
information from defectors, and its insistence that aluminium 
tubes bound for Iraq and seized in 2001, were proof that Saddam 
was reconstituting his nuclear programme. 

The New York Times said relatives of the scientists repeatedly 
told the CIA that the WMD programmes had been scrapped, but the 
agency failed to report this to President George Bush as he 
travelled the country warning of the deadly threat posed by 
Baghdad. 

How and where the CIA made contact with the relatives is unclear. 
But from 2000 on they are said to have told the agency the 
programmes had been dropped. The CIA did not believe them, a 
spokesman telling the paper "no useful information" had been 
collected. 

Defectors also duped the CIA, which continued to believe one 
Iraqi claiming knowledge of Saddam's biological weapons, even 
after it had been warned by the Defence Intelligence Agency at 
the Pentagon that he was almost certainly peddling false 
information. 

Other defectors were provided by Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the 
Iraqi National Congress who is in disgrace with the Bush 
administration because the INC had fed false information that 
exaggerated the WMD threat. Finally, the CIA is portrayed as the 
main promoter of aluminium tubes as evidence. It said such pipes 
were intended for centrifuges to enrich uranium for use in Iraqi 
nuclear weapons. 

In fact, experts at both the US atomic laboratories and in the 
State Department's own intelligence bureau were highly doubtful 
that the tubes were of sufficient quality for centrifuges. But 
the CIA prevailed. 

Overruling his in-house specialists, the Secretary of State, 
Colin Powell, went to the United Nations in February 2003 to make 
his now-infamous presentation about Saddam's presumed weapons, 
basing his nuclear programme case on the aluminium tubes. 

The Senate report may, however, have one unexpected consequence: 
an early nomination by President Bush of a director to replace Mr 
Tenet. It had been assumed that the White House would delay its 
choice until after the election, to avoid confirmation hearings 
at which the WMD fiasco would be revisited at the height of the 
presidential election campaign. 

But those fears seem to have receded, not least because the 
report largely exonerates the present White House of the charge 
that it hyped the Iraq threat, pinning the blame instead on an 
agency headed by a man who was appointed by President Bill 
Clinton in 1997. 

Another argument gaining ground is that it would be dangerous to 
leave the CIA with a weakened leadership when US intelligence 
specialists are openly fearful of further terrorist attacks. John 
McLaughlin, the deputy director who takes over as a caretaker 
when Mr Tenet formally steps down at the weekend, is also seen as 
part of a discredited old guard. James Pavitt, the deputy 
director in charge of clandestine operations, is also retiring. 

Mr Tenet's reputation also suffered a grievous blow with his 
pre-war assurance to President Bush, reported in Plan of Attack, 
the 2004 book by the journalist Bob Woodward, that the CIA had 
"slam-dunk" proof Saddam still possessed WMD. 

The agency, and by extension Mr Tenet, are accused of doing a 
poor job of gathering evidence about Iraq's alleged illicit 
weapons, and of wrongly evaluating what little they did have. 

The leading candidate for the job is probably Porter Goss, the 
Florida congressman who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, 
and served in the CIA's operations directorate from 1962 to 1971. 
Others include President Ronald Reagan's former navy secretary, 
John Lehman, and Richard Armitage, now Deputy Secretary of State.                


UK Independent Ltd.

*****************************************************************
 3 AFP: PM renounces any Iraqi ambitions to get the bomb

WAR.WIRE<br> [http://www.spacewar.com/]

BAGHDAD (AFP) Jul 08, 2004

 Prime Minister Iyad Allawi renounced Iraq's nuclear ambitions 
Thursday after deposed president Saddam Hussein's regime tried 
for years to get the bomb.

Allawi's declaration followed an announcement by the US 
government Wednesday it had shipped out 1.7 tonnes of enriched 
uranium and other radioactive materials from Iraq last month that 
could have been used in a so-called "dirty" bomb or a nuclear 
weapons programme.

"Iraq has no intention and no will to resume these programs in 
the future, these materials which are potential weapons of mass 
murder are not welcome in our country and their production is 
unacceptable," Allawi said.

"The Iraqi government will no longer spend the riches of its 
nation on these destructive and illegal weapons, we are now at a 
time when we are devoted to improving the welfare of our nation 
and re-join the international markets through direct partnership 
with all nations."

The removal of the radioactive materials came ahead of the June 
28 handover of power from the US-led coalition of occupying 
powers to Iraq's interim government.

The operation, which took place last month, involved 20 US 
nuclear experts from the US Energy Department's secret 
laboratories as well as an undisclosed number of US troops.

Working at Iraq's former al-Tuwaitha nuclear complex, the team 
packaged the low-enriched uranium and roughly 1,000 other highly 
radioactive devices, loaded them on a military plane and hauled 
them to the United States on June 

The enriched uranium will be stored temporarily at an undisclosed 
Department of Energy facility, while the devices will be further 
examined at a US government laboratory, officials said.

Tuwaitha, southeast of Baghdad, played a key role in an Iraqi 
drive to illicitly build nuclear weapons prior to the 1991 Gulf 
War.

It was dismantled in the early 1990s under UN ceasefire 
resolutions ordering Iraq to abandon its quest for weapons of 
mass destruction.

But Saddam's refusal to provide full disclosure on weapons of 
mass destruction to UN arms inspectors resulted in 13 years of 
trade sanctions and served as the catalyst for the US-led spring 
2003 US invasion that toppled his regime.

Although enriched uranium has been found in the country, US arms 
inspectors have failed to turn up evidence of an active nuclear 
or chemical or biological weapons programme in the final years of 
Saddam's reign.

  WAR.WIRE
*****************************************************************
 4 [progchat_action] Rice, China's Jiang Discuss N.Korea Nuclear
 
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 16:24:34 -0500 (CDT)

 
Rice, China's Jiang Discuss N.Korea Nuclear Issue

Thu Jul 8, 8:29 AM ET
By Benjamin Kang Lim

BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice  
discussed the urgent issue of North Korea 's nuclear ambitions with 
China's military chief Jiang Zemin in Beijing Thursday, but her host 
showed more interest in Taiwan.

The United States, North and South Korea , Russia, Japan and host China 
have held three rounds of inconclusive talks on how to resolve the 
nuclear crisis in North Korea, which Washington has branded part of an 
"axis of evil" along with Iran and pre-war Iraq .

Rice and Jiang "discussed the need for North Korea to give up its 
nuclear ambitions," said a senior U.S. administration official on her 
delegation. He declined to give further details.

North Korea viewed the outcome of the last round of six-way talks in 
June as broadly positive, but said a U.S. proposal showed there was 
little new on offer to resolve the crisis.

The United States offered security guarantees and South Korean aid in 
return for North Korea agreeing to dismantle its nuclear programs, 
including a uranium enrichment scheme the North denies it has.

Rice flew to Beijing from Tokyo, where she met Japanese Prime Minister 
Junichiro Koizumi Wednesday and vowed to pursue a diplomatic solution to 
the standoff with North Korea, which may already have built one or two 
nuclear bombs.

"For the United States, the nuclear issue is an urgent one, and we are 
focusing on how to get the North to give up its nuclear programs," Rice 
was quoted as telling Koizumi.

But Jiang appeared more interested in Taiwan.

Jiang told Rice China will "not sit back and watch and do nothing if the 
Taiwan authorities cling obstinately to their push for Taiwan 
independence and if foreign forces meddle and support" the island, 
Chinese state television reported.

"The Taiwan issue is the most important and the most sensitive key issue 
in Sino-U.S. relations," Jiang said.

"China's sovereign and territorial integrity are paramount," he was 
quoted as saying. "We will never tolerate Taiwan independence."

*"SERIOUSLY CONCERNED AND UNHAPPY"*

"The Chinese people are seriously concerned and unhappy with the sale of 
advanced weapons to Taiwan," Jiang said. Television made no mention of 
the North Korean nuclear crisis.

Beijing has vowed to attack the self-ruled island if it formally 
declares statehood. The two have been rivals since their split at the 
end of a civil war in 1949.

Rice reaffirmed President Bush 's commitment to the "one China" policy, 
the official said. Beijing switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei 
to Beijing in 1979, but remains the island's main arms supplier and 
trading partner.

She repeated Bush's opposition to any unilateral steps to change the 
status quo and non-support for Taiwan independence, said the official, 
who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Rice reiterated Bush's commitment to U.S. obligations under the Taiwan 
Relations Act to arm the island and maintain a sufficient self-defense 
capability against a Chinese attack.

Nonetheless, U.S.-China ties were good and strong.

"The relationship is very good, very strong," the official said. "We are 
here to keep that relationship moving forward...a sign of the 
president's deep commitment to the region."

Earlier in the day, Chinese Foreign Ministry  spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue 
said Taiwan was the key to stable Sino-U.S. ties.

"Whether or not Sino-U.S. relations can maintain sustainable stability 
depends, to a large extent, on whether the Taiwan question can be solved 
properly," Zhang said.

China hoped Washington would approach Sino-U.S. relations from a 
strategic, long-term perspective, Zhang said.

Sino-U.S. ties have matured over the past quarter century, with trade 
booming and the two cooperating in several diplomatic areas, including 
the North Korea crisis and in the war on terror.

But tension has never been far beneath the surface, especially when 
Taiwan is involved.

Since Taiwan held a presidential election and a referendum in March, 
China has repeatedly called on the United States to stand by its 
commitment to the "one China" policy and refrain from sending the wrong 
signals to Taiwan independence seekers.

Rice will meet Chinese President and Communist Party chief Hu Jintao 
Friday before flying to Seoul.

-- 
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http://tinyurl.com/3ym5w

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"In a time of universal deceit,
telling the truth is a revolutionary act." -George Orwell
*****************************************************************
 5 Korea Herald: Looking for a deal, North Korea may rethink nuclear
options   
 
2004.07.09
 
By Yoo Ho-yeol
      
Considering the difficulties and pessimistic expectations of the 
last 20 months on the North Korean nuclear standoff, the third 
round of six-party talks in Beijing at the end of June seemed to 
achieve some progress on specific elements. 

For the first time, the United States offered North Korea some 
incentives in exchange for freezing its nuclear weapons 
development program on the way to fully dismantling it. The talks 
also showed signs of a better U.S. understanding of Pyongyang and 
a desire on both sides to want to deal seriously on an equal 
basis. 

Pyongyang repeated its demands but in a more serious way by 
disclosing one of its goals is to get at least 2 million 
kilowatts of energy. North Korea also said it would frmesh eeze 
all nuclear development programd in Yeongbyeon and could go to 
dismantlement as the final objective. As noted in the chairman's 
statement at the end of the talks in Beijing, all participants 
agreed to resume the next round of talks in three months and 
retuned home with some optimistic expectations.

 However, Washington and Pyongyang are not ready or likely to 
resume negotiations very soon because both seemed satisfied for 
the time being with assessing each other's ways and attitudes of 
dialogues and getting information. Mistrust and hostility still 
remains, even if at a low key.

 Without any concrete evidence or even knowing if North Korea has 
yet reached any conclusions, Pyongyang seems to be seriously 
considering new policy directions or options when it does agree 
to dismantle its nuclear weapons development program. So far, it 
has regarded its nuclear program as a sure deterrent against U.S. 
aggression and threats on the Korean Peninsula. 

Recent developments on the peninsula might lead Kim Jong-il to 
review his policy positions on the nuclear weapons program. 
Anti-American sentiment or increasing self-reliance among South 
Koreans, particularly the young generation with sympathetic 
support from some members of the ruling Uri Party, might help Kim 
regain confidence of his regime's survival without depending on 
such dangerous deterrents like nuclear bombs. 

The cutback of U.S. troops on the peninsula could be regarded as 
a signal of a weakening of U.S. commitment to the defense of the 
South, although Washington plans on updating its weaponry even as 
it repositions its forces. With new markets for its WMD products 
harder to find since the war on terrorism intensified, it is 
difficult to see Kim Jong-il taking the risk of confronting the 
international community by transferring nuclear materials to a 
third country or any terrorist groups. 

It is thus reasonable to assume he will eventually abandon his 
nuclear options and concentrate on making a deal with the United 
States to help rebuild the North's economy, long in dire need of 
assistance and investment from outside. Pyongyang seems to 
realize it is time to send a message that it is more serious 
about negotiations than being in the nuclear club.

 The Bush administration is likely to learn to understand North 
Korea more by showing some flexibility at the talks. The 
principle of CVID - complete, verifiable and irreversible 
dismantlement - can still be the main and final goal for the 
resolution of the nuclear standoff but the U.S. delegates 
refrained from repeating it at the talks, confining their 
reminders of the principle to private and unofficial discussions. 
The proposal of a three month freeze might not be based upon any 
serious and scientific reasons, but there was no doubt about its 
implications: a change in the U.S. attitude and approach, 
cajoling the unique and strange regime in North Korea.

 Despite optimistic views regarding the prospects of the next 
round of six-party talks, the U.S. presidential election in 
November will be a turning point for both Washington and 
Pyongyang. A Bush administration in a second term would be more 
flexible to negotiate with Pyongyang because Kim Jong-il cannot 
wait for another four years. On the other hand, if a Democratic 
administration led by John Kerry comes into power, it would have 
a hard time resolving the standoff despite a pledge of a policy 
of engagement because North Korea would try to maximize its 
interests by pushing the new U.S. government into a corner, as it 
did against the Clinton administration when it came into office 
for its first four years in 1993.

 The South Korean government led by President Roh Moo-hyun has 
played a constructive role in trying to progress the six-party 
talks in the name of peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia by 
promising to play a central role, with the help of other 
neighboring countries, in providing economic compensation if 
Pyongyang freezes its nuclear program. But such efforts to 
initiate economic assistance could result in another failure like 
that during the first nuclear crisis on the peninsula in 1993-4. 
Seoul was an outsider then to the direct negotiations between 
Washington and Pyongyang but has had to carry a heavy burden - 70 
percent - in the $6 billion light water reactor project to 
provide power to the North. Considering Pyongyang's new demands 
of huge economic compensations, Seoul could have a bill of around 
$1 billion a year.

 After the November U.S. election, if the United States and North 
Korea agree to resolve the nuclear standoff by a deal between 
"freezing" or "dismantlement" and "compensation," the HEU (Highly 
Enriched Uranium) program should be the major issue in 
negotiations. If North Korea has such a program in a secret 
attempt to keep its nuclear deterrent, it would confirm Pyongyang 
violated the Geneva Framework. It would therefore not be 
necessary for the United States and the other KEDO member 
countries - South Korea, Japan and the European Union - to 
fulfill their commitment to complete the LWR, with a capacity of 
2 million kilowatts of electricity which Pyongyang mentioned at 
the talks. If the United States and North Korea agree to 
dismantle the North's nuclear program without resolving the 
dispute on the HEU program, then both Washington and Pyongyang 
would be winners and Seoul the terrible loser, regardless of its 
excuse for making peace on the peninsula. 

Therefore, the Roh government should realize the complexity of 
the situation and the attendant issues and readjust its position 
at the six-party talks from a benevolent mediator to a serious 
negotiating partner and to consider the benefits and costs of any 
deal. Prior to being elected president, Roh once said that 
progress in inter-Korean relations is the most important thing. 
But time and history tell us that inter-Korean relations are 
among a number of important issues related to the nuclear 
standoff and we have to take into account the much broader and 
long-term interests of the South Korean people. From the context 
of rapid changes in this region, where all the countries try to 
maximize their own national interests, the revolving nuclear 
issue cannot be an exception.

*****************************************************************
 6 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL]Terms of second summit   
 
2004.07.09
 
By Yoo Ho-yeol
        
Amid the growing speculation that the second inter-Korean summit 
is approaching, the Uri Party has reportedly admitted that 
efforts are underway through various channels to push for a visit 
by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. This is a remarkable 
turnaround in the official position of the ruling circle, given 
its earlier denial of any plans for a meeting between leaders of 
the two Koreas in the foreseeable future. 

There has indeed been a subtle, but significant, shift in the 
administration's stance concerning the nuclear factor in 
arranging a summit. President Roh Moo-hyun has repeatedly 
emphasized that the nuclear dispute is a major hurdle in summit 
diplomacy on the peninsula and that it would not be desirable for 
the two leaders to meet before the nuclear dispute was resolved. 
As a presidential candidate, however, he had said that he might 
visit Pyongyang to meet the North Korean leader if his conditions 
were met.

 The latest stance of the administration seems to be that 
South-North summit talks may contribute to securing a 
breakthrough in the nuclear impasse. The Blue House has 
apparently come to believe that progress in cross-border 
relations can have a positive influence on the North Korean 
nuclear problem, which indicates that an inter-Korean summit 
meeting can take place as a process toward the nuclear solution, 
rather than as a result of it.

 There seem to have been two key factors behind such a change in 
the perception of the president and the ruling camp. The third 
round of the six-nation nuclear conference in Beijing had a 
substantial outcome in that both the United States and North 
Korea expressed their intentions to make major concessions, even 
though the detailed process ahead seems arduous. Domestically, 
the opposition has notably eased its diehard anti-communist 
prejudices and skepticism about inter-Korean reconciliation.

 A special commission for inter-Korean relations, which will be 
set up soon in the National Assembly, is a good omen for 
inter-party consensus for cross-border harmony and contacts. On 
the strength of the thawing mood in the opposition, the Uri Party 
further plans to launch the South-North parliamentary conference 
in the hope of holding the inaugural session around Aug. 15, the 
anniversary of national liberation. A second inter-Korean summit 
will likely be a primary topic at the prospective meeting.

 All this appears to augur well for better relations between the 
two Koreas. Most significant, the domestic political environment 
has considerably changed in favor of inter-Korean cooperation. 
President Roh may not have to go through the trouble experienced 
by former president Kim Dae-jung, who had to negotiate secretly 
with Pyongyang for his historic summit in 2000. Kim is still 
suffering from the fallout from his unilateral approach to the 
North and the illegal money transfer.

 Despite all these positive notes, however, there still remains 
the question whether Kim Jong-il is equally enthusiastic about 
holding a second summit at this time. In this regard, President 
Roh and his policy advisors need to be transparent in the process 
of organizing a visit by the North Korean leader, if they are not 
to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. They must guard 
against the temptation to exploit inter-Korean affairs to divert 
public attention from domestic policy failures. 

The North's reclusive leader would definitely benefit from an 
early trip to the South. Despite the predictably hypersensitive 
reaction from the public here, we believe that Kim Jong-il should 
make good his promise, specified in the South-North Joint 
Declaration of June 15, 2000, as soon as possible. And he must 
undoubtedly be aware that the South Korean public expects him to 
clear up his position regarding a number of unresolved issues, 
including his nuclear threat.

2004.07.09
[http://www.heraldcampus.co.kr/Premium/]           
*****************************************************************
 7 Japan Times: Rice, Koizumi mull North Korea issues

  Thursday, July 8, 2004   

 Staff report

 Visiting U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and 
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi discussed issues ranging from 
North Korea's nuclear program to Iraq during their meeting 
Wednesday, Japanese officials said.

 Rice noted that Pyongyang's nuclear development is an "imminent" 
issue for Washington, adding that the key to the matter is how to 
persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, according to 
an official who briefed reporters.

 Koizumi responded by saying that Japan, the United States and 
South Korea need to be tenacious in persuading North Korea to 
abandon its atomic program through the six-nation framework, 
which also includes China and Russia, the official said.

 Rice expressed gratitude over Japan's dispatch of Self-Defense 
Forces troops to Iraq and its financial contributions toward 
rebuilding the country.

 She also thanked Tokyo for its efforts in trying to dispel 
discord among members of the international community and for 
forging unity with regard to Iraq's reconstruction, the official 
said.

 The Japan Times: July 8, 2004 (C) All rights reserved 

*****************************************************************
 8 Las Vegas Mercury: Democracy in Peril 

Thursday, Jul 8, 2004, 09:58:40 PM 

By Steve Sebelius 

PAY TO PLAY: Nothing better characterizes the Republican ethos 
of the George W. Bush era than its desire to socialize costs 
while privatizing profits. 

When it comes to buying prescription drugs, Republicans refused 
to allow Medicare to negotiate better prices with its huge 
buy-in-bulk negotiating power. Instead, seniors were treated to 
a prescription drug card that gives them a discount while 
maintaining big profits for drug makers. 

Nuclear power companies need to get rid of the waste that's 
slowly been accumulating at power plants around the country, in 
order to continue to operate. The Bush administration proceeded 
to act with all deliberate speed to authorize the Yucca Mountain 
repository, despite the fact that millions will be put at risk 
from nuclear waste shipments over several decades. 

And what was the invasion and occupation of Iraq--a nation that 
did not attack the United States--if not the use of America's 
taxpayer-financed military might to secure a country that would 
then be rebuilt by private firms, reaping private profits? 

So it should be no surprise that the Bushies hate taxes to pay 
for roads, when there's money to be made by somebody on those 
"free"ways. 

Traffic has apparently gotten so bad across the country that 
fully 56 percent of people tell the Associated Press that they'd 
be willing to pay higher taxes, assuming that the roads would 
actually get better. To that, the president says no way, 
promising to break in his veto pen if a highway tax bill reaches 
his desk. 
Although abuses are legend and waste occurs daily, the way 
taxation is supposed to work is this: We all pay a little to the 
government, which is supposed to use the money to fund things 
that benefit us all. We all benefit from a strong national 
defense, from police and courts, from an educated populace and, 
yes, from roads. They enable us to get to work, where we make a 
living from which to pay those taxes in the first place. 

Instead, says Mary Peters, the head of the Federal Highway 
Administration, why not try other alternatives, such as toll 
roads for those--in the words of the AP story--who are "willing 
to pay." 

Better make that "able to pay." 

Make no mistake, toll roads are great. I've used a privately 
run toll road in my native Orange County on many occasions, and 
I gladly part with about $4 to skip miles of crowded asphalt. 
But that doesn't mean all the roads should be that way. 

Under the Bush scheme, we'd all save on taxes, and those who 
are "willing to pay" could cruise by in BMWs and Bentlys in 
their price-adjusted toll lanes while the rest of us count the 
spare change we've saved by avoiding a couple extra cents at the 
pumps. It's quite literally a society of haves and have-nots on 
Bush's roadways. 

The concept of taxation isn't always bad, although the 
president can't seem to understand that. Perhaps we should tell 
him it's one of the things that allows all those drug companies, 
oil companies and energy companies to make so much money, and 
their executives to give so generously to his campaign. 

Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury, 2001 - 2004 
*****************************************************************
 9 Las Vegas RJ: WESTERN SHOSHONE: Law frees funds for Indian lands 
 
Thursday, July 08, 2004
 
Some vow to reject share of 1979 settlement for $145 million By

SAMANTHA YOUNG
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
 
WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Wednesday enacted a law clearing
the way for Western Shoshone Indians to receive thousands of
dollars apiece in compensation for tribal land taken away since
the 1800s.
 
 Some Western Shoshone immediately vowed not to accept any
money, saying the government swindled the tribe out of 60
million acres across four states that no compensation can heal.
 
 "I'm not going to sell my dignity, my spirituality, my culture.
No way," said Carrie Dann, a rancher from Crescent Valley.
 
 She is a leader among self-described "traditional" tribal
members who opposed a financial settlement.
 
 A bill Bush signed into law unlocks $145 million in settlement
funds that have been accumulating interest in a federal trust
fund since 1979.
 
 Individual payments would depend on how many Indians qualify
for the settlement, with estimates ranging from $15,000 to
$30,000 per person.
 
 Most Western Shoshone are expected to accept the payments,
according to some tribal leaders.
 
 "This is what our people want, what they have been striving for
a long time," said Ely Shoshone chairwoman Diana Buchner. "It's
going to be closure for a lot of people."
 
 Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
could not say how long it will take tribal members to collect
their checks following a lengthy process to form official tribal
rolls and determine eligibility.
 
 "It's not going to happen overnight," Darling said. "It's going
to take a while."
 
 Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.,
sponsored the settlement bill. They issued statements saying its
enactment brings to an end years of delay in distributing
settlement funds.
 
 But opponents contend Western Shoshone were shortchanged
billions of dollars, both in land prices and mineral rights.
 
 Congress allocated $26.1 million to the Western Shoshone in
1979 at the direction of the Indian Claims Commission, which had
concluded the tribes should be compensated for land and
resources lost because of "gradual encroachment." The tribes
were given an 1872 price for their land and minerals, about 15
cents an acre.
 
 Dann said tribal factions will continue to pursue title to more
than 60 million acres of traditional Western Shoshone land in
Nevada, California, Utah and Idaho. A lawsuit is ongoing in U.S.
District Court in Washington, D.C. 
Western Shoshone National Council chief Raymond Yowell and Yomba
Shoshone chairman Jerril Johns said they also will refuse to
take settlement funds.
 
 Yowell said the new law is illegitimate because Congress relied
on a straw poll of Western Shoshone that has yet to be certified
by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
 
 "What this bill does is give them an out," Yowell said of the
U.S. government. "Now they can say that they paid the Shoshone
for their land. I can not be a part of it."
 
 New Mexico attorney Tom Leubben, who represents the Yomba
tribe, questioned whether Congress had superseded its authority
in dividing Western Shoshone funds among individual Indians.
 
 "I think there's a legal issue which is whether Congress has
the constitutional right to individualize Western Shoshone
assets without Western Shoshone tribal concurrence and liquidate
the Shoshone land base and distribute its assets," Leubben said.
 
 Yomba chairman Johns could not say whether his tribe would
pursue legal recourse.
 
 "That's up to the council," he said.
 
 Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said the fund would be divided
among Western Shoshone who qualify and choose to accept the
payment.
 
 Now that Bush has signed the bill, 10 days after the Senate
approved the measure, Interior Secretary Gale Norton is charged
with establishing a roll of eligible Western Shoshone.
 
 Individual Indians who are at least one quarter Western
Shoshone, a U.S. citizen and living as of Wednesday are eligible
for a part of the $145 million pot. Any Indians who have
received another tribal settlement would not qualify.
 
 Darling said as many as 10,000 Western Shoshone could qualify
for the settlement.
 
 By law, the agency will consult with Western Shoshone in
developing regulations governing the distribution. The
regulations also will be submitted for public comment, she said.
 
 Reid and Gibbons have maintained the settlement will not
prevent tribes from pursuing separate land claims, a point some
Western Shoshone have disputed.
 
 Reid said in a statement he is working with tribes in Nevada to
"support housing, agricultural, and economic development
initiatives."
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 10 Capitol Hill Blue: Cheney Faces Criminal Indictments; Other
       Illegal Actions Raise Warning Flags at White House
 
Last Updated: Jul 8th, 2004 - 06:32:55 
 
  Bush Leagues 

 By TERESA HAMPTON
Editor, Capitol Hill Blue

Vice President Dick Cheney faces criminal indictments for illegal 
activities while CEO of energy giant Halliburton and also 
illegally intervened to secure a $7 billion no-bid contract for 
his former employer after his election to office, an analysis by 
the White House counsel’s office concludes. 

The Vice President is currently under investigation by French 
authorities for bribery, money laundering and misuse of corporate 
assets while at Halliburton and also faces a U.S. Securities & 
Exchange Commission probe of a $180 million "slush fund" that may 
have been used to pay bribes.

Although the White House Counsel analysis is not available to the 
public because of the secrecy of “attorney-client privilege,” it 
has generated speculation among senior White House aides who 
suggest the Vice President should step down as President George 
W. Bush’s running mate for the November Presidential elections. 
Such talk has increased in GOP circles lately with former New 
York Senator Alfonse D'Amato Wednesday calling on Bush to dump 
Cheney. 

  Vice President Cheney   

Those who have read the analysis say it presents a “devastating” 
case against the Vice President and concludes Cheney has violated 
both the “spirit and intent” of federal laws on conflict of 
interest. 

Even worse, Cheney faces indictment by a French court on charges 
of bribery, money laundering and misuse of corporate assets 
because of fraud associated with the construction of a $6 billion 
petrochemical plant built by Halliburton in Nigeria in 
partnership with Technip, one of France’s largest petrochemical 
engineering companies. 

Cheney is under investigation by Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke, one 
of France’s famous investigating magistrates. Ruymbeke is a 
legend in legal circles because of his investigation into French 
campaign scandals in the 1990s, resulting in multiple indictments 
and convictions of top officials. 

Because of Ruymbeke’s work on the case, the U.S. Securities and 
Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into a $180 
million “slush fund” that the French judge says was used to pay 
bribes. 

London Lawyer Jeffrey Tesler, a consultant to Halliburton, 
admitted under oath in May that he made payments from the fund to 
Albert “Jack” Stanley, president of Halliburton subsidiary 
Kellogg, Brown & Root and a longtime friend and associate of 
Cheney.  The payments, Tesler said, were personally approved by 
Cheney, who headed Halliburton at the time. 

Although Cheney left his position at Halliburton before becoming 
Vice President, his financial disclosure statements show he 
continues to receive dividends from stock as well as deferred 
compensation from the company. 

At least $5 million in payments to Stanley from the fund were 
wired to a secret numbered bank account in Zurich which Judge 
Ruymbeke discovered belonged to the KBR President. Tesler also 
testified he paid another $350,000 to another KBR executive, 
William Chaudran, through another secret bank account on the isle 
of Jersey. 

Cheney served as CEO of Halliburton from 1995 until 2000 and 
approved the Nigerian contract in 1999. Halliburton publicly 
announced on June 18 it was “severing all ties” with Stanley, 
admitting he had received “improper personal benefits” while 
serving as President of KBR. Sources within Halliburton say the 
company’s internal investigation clearly implicates Vice 
President Cheney but acknowledge the investigation will remain 
sealed in light of the company’s $7 billion sweetheart contract 
with the Pentagon for work in Iraq. 

French Judge Ruymbeke, however, is said to be offering Stanley a 
deal if he implicates Cheney and sources within the French legal 
system say the judge has more than enough to indict the Vice 
President on charges of bribery, money laundering and misuse of 
corporate assets. 

The assessment of the White House counsel’s office agrees that 
Cheney faces “serious legal implications” from the pending French 
indictments and add that the Vice President’s illegal and 
unethical lobbying on behalf of Halliburton for the no-bid 
contract “raises additional questions.” 

Cheney, however, is standing firm and recently told Senator 
Patrick Leahy of Vermont to “fuck off” when the Senator 
questioned him on the Halliburton matters. 

According to White House sources, President George W. Bush 
laughed the matter off at a recent cabinet meeting. 

“Fuck ‘em all,” Bush said. 

The President’s bravado, however, is not shared by worried White 
House aides. Some point to the last vice president to step down 
because of fraud and corruption – Spiro T. Agnew, who served 
under President Richard M. Nixon, another Republican forced to 
leave office because of scandal. © Copyright 2004 by Capitol Hill 
*****************************************************************
 11 Jim Gibbons: Western Shoshone Claims Bill Becomes Law
           
President Signs Gibbons/Reid Bill into Law

7/7/2004

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Congressman Jim Gibbons (R-NV) and Senator 
Harry Reid (D-NV), who jointly shepherded the Western Shoshone 
Claims Distribution Act through Congress, applauded its signature 
into law today by President George W. Bush. The bill, now law, 
settles long-standing claims by the Western Shoshone Indian Tribe 
by distributing approximately $145 million in principle and 
interest to over 6,000 eligible tribal members. 

“Signing this bill into law today finally ends the delays in the 
distribution of funds that were awarded by the Indian Claims 
Commission over 25 years ago and ensures the Western Shoshone 
will receive the funds due to them,” stated Gibbons. 

"For years, members of the Western Shoshone tribe have been 
asking us to pass this legislation," Senator Reid said. "Today, 
their efforts and hopes have become a reality. The millions of 
dollars in the trust fund belongs to the Western Shoshone and now 
the money can finally be distributed. We will continue to work 
with the Western Shoshone nation to do what we can as a 
congressional delegation to support housing, agricultural, and 
economic development initiatives that will benefit today's tribal 
population." 



Specifically, the bill provides for per capita payments from the 
largest fund, estimated at approximately $145 million to over 
6,000 eligible Western Shoshone tribal members. It also ensures 
that future generations of Western Shoshone will be able to enjoy 
the benefit of the distribution in perpetuity by setting aside 
the two smaller funds, approximately $1.5 million, in a 
tribally-controlled educational trust fund. Individual members of 
the Western Shoshone will be able to apply for grant money for 
education and other needs within limits set by a tribal-appointed 
committee of tribal members. In addition, the bill contains a 
provision to alleviate the concerns of the Tribe regarding 
existing treaty rights and to affirm the right of the tribe, 
band, or member to pursue other rights guaranteed under the law. 



The claims settlement stems from the work of the Indian Claims 
Commission, established in 1946 to compensate Indians for lands 
ceded to the United States. The commission determined that 
Western Shoshone lands had been taken through “gradual 
encroachment” during the settlement of the West, and awarded the 
tribe over $26 million in compensation. Since the original award 
in 1977, the total funds have accrued interest and have grown to 
over $145 million. 


For more information, contact: Amy Spanbauer Press Secretary 
Congressman Jim Gibbons Phone: 202-225-6155 FAX: 202-225-5679 
URL:  [http://wwwc.house.gov/gibbons/press_contact.asp] 
*****************************************************************
 12 Las Vegas SUN: Israel May Discuss Nuclear-Free Zone

 By GEORGE JAHN ASSOCIATED PRESS 

JERUSALEM (AP) - 

The head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said he won an
endorsement Thursday from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to work
for a nuclear-free Middle East. But the pledge appeared vague
and weakened by a continued Israeli refusal to confirm its
atomic capacities. 

Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei said he was pleased by Sharon's
response to the goal of a region free of nuclear arms, but was
careful to emphasize the Israeli leader was talking about a
"vision" and not a concrete plan. 

"The prime minister affirmed to me that Israeli policy continues
to be that in the context of peace in the Middle East, Israel
will be looking forward to the establishment of a
nuclear-weapons free zone in the Middle East," ElBaradei said
after a meeting with Sharon. "I hope we can translate these
visions into concrete steps." 

Israeli officials stressed that arms-control talks are far off,
linking them to progress in the "road map" an internationally-
backed peace plan that has been stalled since its inception a
year ago. 

Nonetheless ElBaradei, director-general of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, said he was pleased by Sharon's comments. 

"That's the first time I hear that from the prime minister of
Israel," he said. "It's not a new policy, but affirming that
policy at the level of prime minister I thought to be quite a
welcome development." 

ElBaradei's three-day visit to Israel was overshadowed by the
country's long-standing taboo on discussing its nuclear
capabilities. Israel is believed to be the only country in the
Middle East to have nuclear missiles ready to be launched. 

In the face of overwhelming evidence, ElBaradei would have
welcomed at least tacit acknowledgment that Israel has such arms
or the means to make them, as a step toward his quest of
restarting talks on ridding the region of such weapons. 

But Israel did not budge from its stance of neither confirming
nor denying it has nuclear arms. It says the policy is the best
way to keep Islamic foes from attacking it while denying them
the rationale for also seeking such weapons. 

"Israel has no reason to change its policy which has served it
well," said a senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of
anonymity. 

In an interview published in Thursday's Haaretz newspaper,
ElBaradei said the growing threat of nuclear proliferation has
put a new premium on regional security arrangements. 

During his visit, he said Israel repeatedly raised concerns
about archrival Iran's own nuclear ambitions. 

Officials who attended an airport meeting between Foreign
Minister Silvan Shalom and ElBaradei before his return to Vienna
said Shalom urged international action on Iran that goes beyond
agency inspections and controls. Shalom suggested Tehran be
hauled before the U.N. Security Council for what he said was an
attempt to make nuclear arms in violation of the
Nonproliferation Treaty, said the officials, who demanded
anonymity. 

By keeping silent on its nuclear capacities, Israel hopes to
avoid international controls and criticism of the kind that
Iran, which has accepted the treaty, is facing for allegedly
violating it. 

ElBaradei's agency is probing nearly two decades of suspect
nuclear activities in Iran that the United States, Israel and
others say reflect attempts to make such weapons. 

Tehran insists it only wants nuclear energy to generate power,
but several IAEA reports over the past year have suggested the
Islamic republic has not fully cooperated with agency
inspectors. 

Evidence that Israel has nuclear arms is overwhelming, much of
it based on details and pictures leaked in 1986 by Israeli
nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, as well as research and
statements made by Israeli leaders. 

Experts say it may already have as many as 300 warheads as well
as the capability of building more quickly. 


*****************************************************************
 13 New York Times: Europe Puts More Limits on Bailouts of Companies
 
[http://www.nytimes.com/]     [The New York Times Business]  
          
 By PAUL MELLER

Published: July 8, 2004

[B] RUSSELS, July 7 - As the European Commission gave its final 
blessing to aid granted by France to its troubled industrial 
giant Alstom, the European competition regulator introduced new 
rules on state bailouts Wednesday intended to at least try to 
curb interventionist zeal among its member states.

The new rules, which take effect in October, have been 
interpreted by some as a rebuke to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of 
Germany and President Jacques Chirac of France, who in May issued 
a statement calling for European governments to foster "the 
industrial champions that Europe needs" to compete with big 
American companies.

The new guidelines essentially close a loophole in the current 
state-aid laws by outlawing short-term rescue packages to 
companies that have received state aid during the last 10 years; 
the current law prohibits long-term aid to companies that have 
received help in the previous decade, but it does allow 
short-term rescue aid. In addition, the guidelines permit the 
commission to force a government to break up any national 
monopoly as punishment for granting illegal state aid to the 
company.

The guidelines will also require companies to contribute to the 
cost of their own restructuring. Large companies will have to pay 
half the cost, either by selling assets or raising the money on 
the financial markets, the commission said in a statement. Small 
companies will be required to finance only around a quarter of 
their own restructuring.

The new guidelines focus on large companies that benefit from 
state intervention because they usually have larger market 
shares. "State support in their favor affects competition and 
trade more significantly," said Mario Monti, the European 
competition commissioner, in a statement on Wednesday.

Mr. Monti negotiated a settlement of the Alstom rescue with 
France's finance minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, last month. The deal 
they reached hands over half of the roughly 7 billion euro ($8.6 
billion) restructuring cost to banks, mainly in France. It also 
gives the French state four years to find a suitable industrial 
partner for Alstom, one of the world's biggest makers of gas 
turbines and high-speed trains.

The Alstom case, which was reaching a critical point as a draft 
of the new rules was being prepared at the beginning of this 
year, helped bring about the new guidelines, said Eric Morgan de 
Rivery, a partner in the Paris and Brussels offices of the Jones 
Day law firm. 

Announcing the guidelines on the same day that it formally 
approved the aid to Alstom was not a coincidence, Mr. Morgan de 
Rivery said. Although the guidelines will not alter the Alstom 
package, their publication Wednesday was meant to send a clear 
signal to national governments that state intervention on behalf 
of struggling companies will no longer be tolerated, he said.

"The commission is getting rid of a loophole in Europe's state 
aid rules that France, in particular, has taken advantage of 
several times in recent years," Mr. Morgan de Rivery said.

At present, national governments are not permitted to grant 
restructuring aid to a company more than once in a decade, but 
they can provide short-term rescue aid within 10 years of handing 
a company a full restructuring package. The new guidelines close 
the short-term loophole.

"They give the commission less leeway in interpreting the rules," 
Mr. Morgan de Rivery said.

In the 1990's, the French government took advantage of this 
loophole by bailing out Air France and the part-state-owned bank, 
Crédit Lyonnais, on several occasions.

More recently, the French computer maker Bull has benefited from 
some short-term state aid to avert bankruptcy. At the end of last 
year, the commission took France to the European Court of Justice 
for failing to demand payment from Bull of a 450 million euro 
bridge loan.

France is not alone in taking advantage of the opaque state-aid 
rules. In 2002, Britain bailed out British Energy, its nuclear 
energy company, and Germany plowed millions of euros into the 
German mobile phone services company, MobilCom.

With the new guidelines in place, the commission will be able to 
tell national governments that "its tolerance of state-aid abuse 
is not as wide as before," Mr. Morgan de Rivery said. 

"The guidelines are a safeguard against the sort of industrial 
policy that leads to noncompetitive forms of bailout," said 
Tilman Lueder, Mr. Monti's spokesman on state-aid issues.

In a recent interview, Mr. Monti said he was surprised by the 
Schröder-Chirac statement on industrial champions, but added that 
the reality is that the union's state-aid policy restricts wanton 
state intervention.

"The realities of Europe step in the way of the ideas of Europe," 
he said.

         Copyright 2004  [http://www.nytco.com/]  | 
*****************************************************************
 14 ABQjournal: Flaws Seen in Sub-Launched Nuclear Warhead 

Thursday, July 8, 2004 

Albuquerque Journal--> John Fleck--> By John Fleck 
[jfleck@abqJournal.com] 
Copyright © 2004 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer 

Some U.S. nuclear weapons experts have quietly questioned 
whether the backbone of the U.S. nuclear arsenal suffers from a 
fundamental design flaw. 

If the problem is real, it has "national security 
implications for the United States," Everet Beckner, deputy 
chief of the National Nuclear Security Administration's nuclear 
weapons program, wrote in a letter in the fall. 

U.S. nuclear weapons experts convened a top-secret meeting 
in Los Alamos in March to debate the question of whether the W76 
submarine-launched warhead will work as it was designed. 

Beckner and others willing to speak on the record about the 
issue say they remain confident the weapon is sound. 

Beckner said the review begun at the March meeting has not 
been completed, with a report due to be co-authored by one of 
the weapons lab insiders who thinks the warhead has a problem. 

The effect of the potential problem remains classified. 
Available unclassified information suggests the problem, if 
real, would cause the warhead to explode with less than its 
designed yield. If true, that would appear to reduce its ability 
to do the job for which it was designed— destroying hardened 
enemy missile silos. 

Los Alamos National Laboratory officials concurred in 
Beckner's assessment that there is no evidence of a problem. 
"The laboratory is very confident in the performance of the Los 
Alamos-designed W76," said lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold. 

There are currently an estimated 2,300 W76s in the U.S. 
nuclear arsenal, more than any other nuclear weapon. The warhead 
is carried aboard submarine-launched missiles. Independent 
experts say it was designed to have a yield equivalent to 
approximately 100,000 tons of TNT— about seven times more 
powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. 

The debate surrounds testing of the W76 conducted in the 
1970s, when the warhead was being designed. According to several 
unclassified sources, the explosive yield of at least one test 
was not what the designers expected. 

The debate nearly three decades later is over whether that 
test reflects an underlying problem with the weapon's basic 
design— "original weaknesses of the system," as Beckner put it 
in a February memo— or whether it merely was an engineering 
problem that was fixed and later tested successfully. 

Past reviews of the test data did not find any problems. In 
the mid-1990s, a panel of independent nuclear weapons experts 
with access to classified test data concluded the W76 was fine. 

In addition, a review in the early 1990s done for Congress 
by a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory nuclear weapons 
designer found no problem with the W76. 

After the problem test, a change was made to the weapon, 
and a second test was conducted, said Bob Peurifoy, a retired 
Sandia National Laboratories weapons expert who participated in 
the mid-'90s evaluation of the U.S. test data. In the later test 
blast, code-named "Baseball" and conducted beneath the Nevada 
desert in 1981, the W76 "worked just fine," Peurifoy said. 

"There was a device-yield test during development that, 
because of some engineering oversight, did not deliver the 
expected yield," Peurifoy said in a recent telephone interview 
from his home in Texas. "That was corrected." 

Peurifoy blamed the resumed debate on an effort within the 
U.S. nuclear weapons complex to find a pretext to resume U.S. 
nuclear weapons tests. 

"The assertion of some is that we have to continue to 
test," said Peurifoy, a staunch opponent of testing. 

The United States has not conducted an underground nuclear 
weapons test since 1992. Continued adherence to a test ban is a 
primary goal of the arms control community. 

Among the questions to be discussed at the March meeting, 
according to a preliminary list of agenda items obtained by the 
Journal, was the question of whether the weapons labs had been 
planning a test to deal with the W76 question that was canceled 
by the 1992 moratorium. 

[Get Copyright Clearance] Copyright 2004 Albuquerque 
*****************************************************************
 15 BBC: 'Hope' for nuclear-free Mid-East 
 
  Last Updated: Thursday, 8 July, 2004
 
[IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei]                                 

ElBaradei says nuclear weapons have no place in the Middle East                                                                

The head of UN's nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said he 
has seen a "glimmer of hope" for a nuclear-free Middle East. 

After meeting Ariel Sharon, he said the Israeli prime minister 
had for the first time talked about the establishment of a 
nuclear-free zone. 

Mr ElBaradei quoted Mr Sharon as saying that this could only be 
achieved once there was peace in the region. 

This was not a change of policy, he said, but it was a new form 
of words. 

"The prime minister this morning affirmed to me that Israel's 
policy [is] that in the context of peace, establishment of peace 
in the Middle East, Israel will be looking for establishment of a 
nuclear-free zone in the Middle East," Mr ElBaradei said. 

BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says the UN official 
is keen to convince the Israelis that the best way to avoid 
further nuclear proliferation in the region is for all 
governments to join in a collective ban on nuclear weapons. 

But the uncertainty surrounding Iran's nuclear ambitions will 
only serve to confirm the Israeli government's long-held view 
that a nuclear deterrent is essential to guarantee Israel's 
long-term security. 

'Biggest threat' 

Mr Sharon was expected to raise the subject of Iran's nuclear 
programme at the meeting. 

[Dimona plant in Israel - a satellite phot from 1971] Israel's 
nuclear programme              

Unlike Iran - which denies it is trying to make nuclear bombs - 
Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which 
means the International Atomic Energy Agency does not have the 
power to inspect Israeli nuclear facilities. 

The Israelis say that will not change as long as they feel 
threatened by countries in the Middle East. 

Officials have told Mr ElBaradei their main concern is Iran's 
alleged efforts to make nuclear bombs - something they say 
threatens their existence. 

Mr ElBaradei has been telling Israel that Iran and Arab states 
see Israel as the main threat - an unaccountable nuclear power 
that gets special treatment. 

He says the perceived security imbalance is wearing down the 
legitimacy of the non-proliferation regime. 

Sophisticated deterrent 

Israel refuses to say whether it has nuclear weapons, although it 
is thought to have up to 200 warheads. 

Mr Sharon has already said he has no intention of changing 
Israel's policy of "strategic ambiguity". 

Our correspondent says that when compared with India and 
Pakistan, other states which have recently developed nuclear 
arms, Israel's deterrent is probably the most sophisticated. 

It can be delivered by long-range ballistic missiles or advanced 
war planes, he says. 





*****************************************************************
 16 BBC: India's ever-increasing defence budget 
 
  Last Updated: Thursday, 8 July, 2004
 
By Alastair Lawson BBC News Online South Asia desk   

[BAE Hawk]                              

India is buying 66 Hawk jets from the UK                                                              

India's new government is committed to improving the lot of the 
country's poor. It is also engaged in peace talks with rival 
Pakistan. So why, in its first budget, has it announced it will 
increase military spending by almost 18% in the coming financial 
year? 

On closer analysis the decision of Finance Minister P Chidambaram 
to increase defence spending so much is not so surprising. 

An inflation rate of around six per cent, a decline in value of 
the Indian rupee and defence deals inherited from the previous 
government are all factors that Mr Chidambaram had to bear in 
mind. 

"In real terms this increase is not as large as it may sound to 
the outside world," defence analyst Rahul Bedi told BBC News 
Online. 

"Although the Indian economy may be growing at a healthy rate, 
the impact of inflation and the drop in value of the rupee mean 
that the increases only amount to an actual increase in spending 
of between six to seven per cent." 

Daunting bills 

The list of defence deals agreed by the previous government also 
means that Mr Chidambaram's hands are tied. He cannot renege on 
them without having to pay hefty financial penalties. 

That list is extensive and involves heavy spending by all three 
services. 

[Warships] All three military services have big bills in the 
offing                                                             

The Indian air force has agreed to buy 126 Mirage jest from 
France - worth $30m each - as well as 66 Hawk trainer fighter 
jets from the UK. 

The navy has agreed to buy the Russian aircraft carrier, the 
Admiral Gorshkov, for a nominal fee. 

But it requires a $670m refit and will eventually have between 18 
to 20 Mig 29 fighters which will cost in excess of one billion 
dollars. 

The navy has also agreed to buy six submarines from France at a 
cost of $700m. 

The army faces an equally daunting set of bills. It wants to 
standardise its artillery capability and is currently at an 
advanced state of negotiations with South Africa, Israel and 
Sweden. 

The whole process will involve the purchase of between 1,200 to 
1,500 howitzers and the final bill is expected to be in the 
region of three billion dollars. 

"For many of these deals, a down payment has to be made," says 
Rahul Bedi. "It is almost as if the Congress government is having 
to pay death duties left to it by the outgoing coalition." 

[Indian troops in action]                               

The army wants a new artillery system costing millions of dollars                                                            

Mr Bedi says that India's already stretched defence purse strings 
are likely to be under further pressure because of the huge costs 
in maintaining its nuclear weapons capability and because of an 
agreement made recently with Israel to buy an "Eye in the Sky" 
early warning system, the Phalcon. 

While India's spiralling defence budget may raise eyebrows around 
the world, domestically the government is on firmer ground. 

"The Congress led government is eager to display its resoluteness 
in defending the state and keep the influential armed forces 
happy," says the BBC's South Asia defence analyst Mahmud Ali. 

"It may also have wanted to counter allegations made by 
right-wing parties that it would 'go soft' on national security 
affairs." 
*****************************************************************
 17 AFP: UN nuclear chief fails to swing Israel round to atomic openness

WAR.WIRE<br> [http://www.spacewar.com/]

JERUSALEM (AFP) Jul 08, 2004

 UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei made little progress in 
Israel on his hopes for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, 
but analysts saw his visit more as a calculated balancing act 
amid his agency's investigation of the Jewish state's archfoe 
Iran.

ElBaradei "wanted to show he hadn't forgotten the other issues in 
the Middle East," while his International Atomic Energy Agency 
probes US and Israeli charges that Iran is hiding a nuclear 
weapons program, Avner Cohen, a US-based analyst who is currently 
in Jerusalem, told AFP.

Jon Wolfsthal of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for 
International Peace had told AFP as ElBaradei's visit began 
Tuesday that the IAEA chief has "been talking a lot about Iran 
and now he has to work the other side."

He described the mission as a "political balancing" act to 
convince the Arab world that the IAEA is fair.

The Israelis, who refuse to say whether or not they have nuclear 
weapons, "want to show they have friendly relations with the 
agency," Cohen said.

The result is that "it was ceremonial" for ElBaradei to meet with 
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Thursday, Cohen said. "I 
don't think there was any substance."

Sharon said he is open to discussions on ridding the Middle East 
of nuclear weapons as part of future peace talks, ElBaradei said 
Thursday.

Israel had previously said it would not discuss security issues, 
such as a nuclear-weapons-free zone, until there was a 
comprehensive peace settlement.

It was not clear how much Sharon's statement Thursday represented 
a change in policy since the premier set no timeframe for Israel 
to back off on its refusal to discuss security issues while it 
faces continuing attacks by Palestinian militant groups and 
hostility from Iran.

The Middle East peace process remains stalled amid persistent 
violence.

Most foreign experts believe Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear 
warheads, although it has stuck for the past 40 years to a policy 
of "strategic ambiguity" of neither confirming nor denying its 
arsenal.

ElBaradei had come to Israel urging the Jewish state to "clarify" 
whether it has nuclear weapons and to join the nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treatywhich his agency oversees.

But Israel held fast to its refusal to sign up.

Gerald Steinberg, from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 
said there was "no foundation for a change" in Israeli nuclear 
policy.

He told AFP that "the threat to Israel has not diminished much in 
the past five decades and hatred of Israel in the Arab and Muslim 
worlds remains intense."

He said Israel was particularly worried about Iran, a subject 
which officials here brought up repeatedly with ElBaradei.

Steinberg said Israel's giving up its "nuclear insurance policy 
... would actually make the region more unstable" and that Israel 
would not accept a trade-off "linking Iran's illegal nuclear 
program with pressure on Israel to abandon its deterrent."

He added that a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East "however 
distant, will become essentially unfeasible if Iran crosses the 
point of no return in its development of nuclear weapons."


  WAR.WIRE
  
*****************************************************************
 18 Xinhuanet: IAEA persuades Israel to support NPT   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2004-07-08 14:01:07   

    BEIJING, July 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Visiting IAEA Director General 
Mohamed El-Baradei is hoping Israel will sign an additional 
document to the Treaty and promise to make public any possible 
nulcear exports. 

    He says he could not force Israel to change its vague policy 
that the country doesn't confirm or deny the possession of 
nuclear weapons. CRIENGLISH.com reported Thursday. 

    El-Baradei arrived in Israel on Tuesday for a three-day 
visit. He will tour nuclear facilities and hold talks on Israel's 
nuclear programme. 

    
    
  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
 Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is
prohibited.   


*****************************************************************
 19 Japan Times: Rising doubts about NATO

  Thursday, July 8, 2004   

 By DAVID HOWELL

 LONDON -- The June 28-29 summit meeting of the North Atlantic 
Treaty Organization in Istanbul was a sour affair. The so-called 
allies within NATO could not agree on how to help with 
reconstruction in Iraq and ended up merely offering to do some 
training of Iraqi personnel, but not much more.

 Bad feelings intensified when U.S. President George W. Bush 
chose the occasion to urge the European Union to speed up their 
admittance of Turkey to the club -- an issue on which the French, 
in particular, have grave doubts. French President Jacques Chirac 
promptly told Bush and the Americans to mind their own business.

 But the unhappy gathering gave rise to an even more fundamental 
question, namely, whether NATO itself has a future. With the Cold 
War long since won, with Russia now considered a security partner 
and most of the former Communist satellites now on the Western 
side, and with the main threats to global security arising far 
outside the European theater, an increasing number of voices -- 
both sides of the Atlantic -- are asking "Why do we need NATO at 
all?"

 Up to now the conventional answer to such questions has been 
that America has all the military muscle, all the satellite 
networks, the heavy air transport, the technological wizardry and 
so on to make it a necessary player in any but the most minor 
policing operations. At the same time there has been the 
sentimental element left over from World War II -- that the 
Atlantic partnership must at all costs be maintained.

 But suddenly people in Europe are querying whether the vast 
American defense machine is really the right or best instrument 
to ensure European security and meet the new and subtle threats 
of the global terrorist age.

 Why, it is asked, does European security need this heavy 
American kit? And is U.S. intelligence and satellite-based 
information worth having after the disastrous performance of the 
intelligence agencies in recent years and months? Has not the 
time come to challenge the key assumption of Europeans ever since 
1945 -- that in the last resort their security will be protected 
by American power and dominance. In other words, will everyone 
always be safe and cozy under the mighty American nuclear 
umbrella?

 This questioning goes far beyond the familiar differences about 
the invasion of Iraq. It raises fundamental issues about the 
nature of today's security threats, about policing the world and 
how it should be done and by whom. As this debate develops 
further it is going to place the British, in particular, in a 
profound quandary.

 Of all the European powers Britain has been in security terms 
far the closest to the United States for the past 50 years and 
has placed the greatest reliance on the NATO structure under 
American leadership.

 It is of course true that the British have their own nuclear 
deterrent, as do the French. But there is a major difference. The 
French force de frappe may be expensive and dated, but it is 
truly French based. The British Trident system depends on 
American technology, as will any replacement. A break with the 
U.S., or a re-alignment from semi-dependence on the Americans 
would require Britain either to move toward its own 
nuclear-weapons capability or drop out of the nuclear weapons 
league altogether.

 Is that so unthinkable? Amid current world conditions, the 
British are highly unlikely to want to give up their nuclear 
power status altogether, but it does seem odd that when so many 
nations round the world have acquired nuclear weapons, for better 
or worse, (China, India, Pakistan, Israel for example) on their 
own, Britain, now said to be Europe's richest country, should 
still lean so heavily on its American nuclear linkages.

 In a way the dilemma is analogous to that facing Japan, although 
the two countries start from different positions. But in both 
cases the underlying new question is how far to rely on the U.S., 
and will remaining under the American wing in fact provide the 
security against modern threats that a democratic and open 
society needs.

 Or must both countries now depend much more on their own 
resources to protect their national safety and interests, and on 
close alliances with friendly nations in their neighborhood?

 Optimists may think these awkward questions can be ducked for 
many years to come. But if the Europeans are concluding that the 
mighty protection of the U.S. is no longer all that desirable and 
effective, and if the Americans are concluding that they would 
rather not continue shouldering the burden of Europe's defense 
and security, then the whole game changes. The U.S. remains a 
friend and ally, of course, but no longer the kingpin, either in 
NATO or anywhere else.

 How curious it is that just when the U.S. seemed to have become 
the world's ultimate and only superpower, with comparisons being 
made with the imperial might and reach of Rome, it should 
suddenly be seen by the rest of the world as not half so high and 
mighty and not necessarily always the best protector to have. But 
then history is full of huge ironies, and we may now be 
witnessing one of them.

 David Howell is a former British Cabinet minister and former 
chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He is now a 
member of the House of Lords. 

The Japan Times: July 8, 2004 (C) All rights reserved 

*****************************************************************
 20 AU ABC: US, Israel deflect nuclear watchdog. 

07/07/2004. ABC News Online
 	
"Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online">
[http://www.abc.net.au/]     

The United States and Israel have highlighted Iran's alleged
nuclear weapons program as the UN's atomic energy agency moved
to probe Tel Aviv's nuclear strength. 

"Iran is the country that have announced that one missile toward
Israel will destroy the Jewish state. So we should be concerned
about the Iranians' efforts to develop nuclear weapons," Israel
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told reporters after holding
talks with US Secretary of State Colin Powell. 

He said that Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the
Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who
arrived in Tel Aviv to persuade the Government to reveal its
nuclear secrets, should instead step up his probe on Iran's
nuclear weapons program. 

Mr Shalom charged that Iran, regarded as the Jewish state's
number one enemy, was trying to develop "a new missile that will
include Berlin, London and Paris, and the southern part of
Russia in its range". 

"So if we would have to do something with ElBaradei, is to ask
him to continue with his efforts to push the Iranians to put an
end to its effort to develop a nuclear weapon," Mr Shalom said. 

ElBaradei is expected to hold talks with Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon, but Mr Sharon had earlier indicated that Israel's policy
of refusing to confirm or deny that it has nuclear weapons would
continue. 

Most foreign experts believe that Israel possesses a nuclear
arsenal, comprising around 200 warheads, although it has stuck
to a policy of "ambiguity" for the last 40 years. 

Mr Powell, speaking alongside Mr Shalom, said the Bush
administration had been pointing out Iran's nuclear weapon
capability to the international community for the last
three-and-a-half years. 

He noted that European foreign ministers had made trips to Iran
to convince it to give up its nuclear arms program but without
much success "even though they have received some commitments
which have been unfulfilled". 

"So the United States will continue to press in every way that
we can, use all of the diplomatic and other resources at our
disposal, to make sure the international community stands
unified behind the effort to stop Iran from pursuing nuclear
weapons development, or worse, acquiring a nuclear weapon," Mr
Powell said. 

Under an understanding with the United States dating back to
1969, Israel has committed itself to abstain from any comment on
its nuclear potential and not carry out nuclear tests. 

In return, Washington does not pressure Israel to adhere to the
Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would oblige its nuclear
facilities to submit to international supervision by the IAEA. 

Experts have said that Mr ElBaradei's mission was more of a
political gesture to convince Arab states the IAEA is as
concerned about Israel as it is about Iran, being investigated
on suspicions of harbouring a secret atomic weapons program. 
--AFP 

© 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation 
*****************************************************************
 21 NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting
 
                        FR Doc 04-15591 
[Federal Register: July 8, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 130)] 
[Notices] [Page 41311] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr08jy04-105]                         
 
Agency Holding The Meeting: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Date: Weeks of July 5, 12, 19, 26, August 2, 9, 2004.
 
Place: Commissioners' Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, 
Rockville, Maryland.
 
Status: Public and closed.
 
Matters To Be Considered: Week of July 5, 2004 Wednesday, July 7, 
2004 1:55 p.m.--Affirmation Session (Public meeting) (If needed) 
Week of July 12, 2004--Tentative Tuesday, July 13, 2004 2:15 
p.m.--Discussion of Security Issues (Closed--Ex. 1) Wednesday, 
July 14, 2004 1:15 p.m.--Affirmation Session (Public Meeting) (If 
needed) Week of July 19, 2004--Tentative Wednesday, July 21, 2004 
9:30 a.m.--Meeting with Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste 
(ACNW) (Public Meeting) (Contact: John Larkins, 301-415-7360) 
This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address: 
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving 
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] Week of July 26, 
2004--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled for the Week of 
July 26, 2004.
 
Week of August 2, 2004--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled 
for the Week of August 2, 2004.
 
Week of August 9, 2004--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled 
for the Week of August 9, 2004.
 
*The schedule for Commission meetings is subject to change on 
short notice. To verify the status of meetings call 
(recording)--(301) 415- 1292. Contact person for more 
information: Dave Gamberoni, (301) 415- 1651.
 
* * * * * ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: By a vote of 3-0 on June 30, 
the Commission determined pursuant to U.S.C. 552b(e) and Sec.  
9.107(a) of the Commission's rules that ``Discussion of Security 
Issues (Closed--Ex. 1)'' be held June 30, and on less than one 
week's notice to the public.
 
* * * * * The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the 
Internet at: 
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving 
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-makin 
g/schedule.html*] * * * * The NRC provides reasonable 
accommodation to individuals with disabilities where appropriate. 
If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in these 
public meetings, or need this meeting notice or the transcript or 
other information from the public meetings in another format 
(e.g., braille, large print), please notify the NRC's Disability 
Program Coordinator, August Spector, at 301-415-7080, TDD: 
301-415- 2100, or by e-mail at  [aks@nrc.gov] . Determinations on 
requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a 
case-by-case basis.
 
* * * * * This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred 
subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like 
to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the 
Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301-415-1969). In addition, 
distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is 
available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission 
meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic 
message to  [dkw@nrc.gov] . Dated: July 1, 2004.
 
R. Michelle Schroll, Office of the Secretary.
 
[FR Doc. 04-15591 Filed 7-6-04; 9:51 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M

 
*****************************************************************
 22 BBC: Workers cut French power supplies 
 
  Last Updated: Thursday, 8 July, 2004
 
[French strikers]                               

Power workers plan to continue their strike action                                                             

French power workers have cut around 3% of state-owned energy 
group Electricite de France's (EdF) generation capacity, 
according to union leaders. 

The action is timed to coincide with a vote by the French Senate 
to transform Edf and its sister firm Gaz de France (GdF) into 
limited liability companies. 

Unions believe the move will eventually lead to the privatisation 
of the firms. 

The CGT union said the cuts, which amount to 2,700 megawatts of 
power, would continue until 9pm (1900 GMT). 

CGT spokesman Maurice Marion said nuclear production at EdF's 
power stations in Cattenom, Blayais and Chinon had been affected 
by the cuts. 

Shut downs 

Meanwhile, workers are planning to demonstrate outside the Senate 
- which is France's upper house of parliament - later on 
Thursday. 

Unions believe plans to change the status of EdF and GdF would 
eventually lead to widespread redundancies, as well as the 
erosion of worker benefits, retirement rights and job security. 

EdF workers achieved their biggest output cuts on 15 June, when 
they shut down around 15% of the company's generation capacity. 

Previous strikes have seen energy supplies cut to Spain, the 
Eiffel Tower and the homes of senior French politicians, 
including the country home of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre 
Raffarin. 

Workers have also pledged to continue their so-called Robin Hood 
operations, which include reconnecting the homes of customers who 
have not paid their bills and supplying hospitals, charities and 
social security buildings with power for free. 

The most recent wave of strikes, at the beginning of July, marked 
the official opening up of the electricity and gas market across 
the European Union, which will see EdF and GdF face increased 
competition. 

Analysts believe EdF's bottom line has already been badly hit by 
the cuts in production. 



*****************************************************************
 23 Bnn: EU May Finance Bulgaria’s Second Nuclear Plant Project - Official

Bulgarian news network -
                                                                                                                                                                                                
['www.bgnewsnet.com / Bulgarian News network' ]                                         
  					 				   							
15:05 - 08.07.2004

SOFIA (bnn)- The European Union may back financially Bulgaria’s 
effort to build a second nuclear power plant if the country puts 
forward a good business plan and a project matching the bloc’s 
safety standards, an official said Thursday.

Commissioner Loyola de Palacio, the European Union chief official 
in charge of transport and energy, made her remarks Thursday 
while touring the construction site of the plant near the Danube 
port of Belene, 250 kilometers (156 miles) northeast of Sofia.
 
The project was mothballed for lack of cash and opposition by 
environmentalists back in 1990, but the government has recently 
resumed it to compensate closures of four aging reactors at the 
Kozlodui nuclear power plant, which it has agreed to shut down 
under EU pressure.
 
"It is up to the Bulgarian government to decide whether Bulgaria 
will have a second nuclear plant," de Palacio said. "If a 
decision is taken to complete the construction it must meet 
safety requirements and match the EU standards."
 
De Palacio didn’t say how big possible EU aid for the project 
could be.
 
The EU has already pledged to grant a total of EUR550 million 
(US$676.5 million) to help Bulgaria close the four Kozlodui 
units, which lack safety encasement.
 
Previous governments have invested over US$1 billion to build the 
fundament of Belene in the late 1980s. According to experts it 
would take between US$1.2 billion and US$2.8 billion to complete 
the plant. /bnn/  
    
Copyright © 2002-2004 bnn
*****************************************************************
 24 Globe and Mail: Nuclear reactors will supply Ontario's power, province says   
 	 		 		 		 		 				 				 				 				 			 
   [http://www.globeandmail.com]

By RICHARD MACKIE Thursday, July 8, 2004 - Page A6 

Ontario's Liberal government yesterday committed the province to 
the controversial policy of relying on nuclear reactors to 
provide the bulk of its electricity for the foreseeable future.

Energy Minister Dwight Duncan formally announced that the 
government-owned Ontario Power Generation Inc. will go ahead with 
the $900-million refurbishment of a nuclear reactor at Pickering, 
east of Toronto. 

"Ontario faces a looming electricity supply gap," he said at 
Queen's Park. 

"The return to service of [the Unit 1 reactor] is the shortest 
lead-time major-supply project available in Ontario, and is 
crucial to ensure a clean, diverse and reliable electricity 
supply in coming years." 

Jake Epp, a former federal energy minister who is now chairman of 
OPG, said a realistic solution is needed. "The lights have to 
stay on," he said. 

The government will decide whether to rebuild two remaining 
nuclear units at the Pickering A plant after it receives a report 
on the status of the Unit 1 project in October, Mr. Duncan said. 

But both he and Mr. Epp argued that Ontario has to rely on 
nuclear plants for electricity because the alternatives are too 
costly. 

There are only a few, small opportunities to boost supplies of 
energy created by water, Mr. Epp said. 

"If you want to put a lot of your supply into [natural] gas 
[generating plants], you have to compete on price, the volatility 
of price, and you have to compete with a lot of gas installations 
in North America with a supply of gas which, at best, is holding 
its present level," Mr. Epp said. 

Ontario is phasing out its coal-fired electricity plants as an 
environmental move. 

"Interestingly enough," Mr. Duncan said, "the price of coal has 
gone up dramatically in the last 18 months." 

Mr. Epp forecast that electricity from Unit 1 could be delivered 
for 5 to 5.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Power from Unit 4 costs 
about 7 cents per kwh. 

Ontario consumers now pay 4.7 cents per kwh for the basic supply 
for a home and 5.5 cents for more energy. Prices are expected to 
rise as new generating capacity is built and after the method for 
setting prices is taken out of the government's hands next year. 

The dams that supply hydro power help hold down the overall cost 
by producing power for about 1.5 cents per kwh. The province's 
other nuclear plants have a cost of about 3.8 cents per kwh. 

Each of the Pickering A units can provide 515 megawatts of power 
at any given time. Normal daily demand for electricity peaks at 
about 22,000 megawatts, rising to about 25,000 megawatts on very 
hot or very cold days. 

Nuclear power accounts for about 40 per cent of Ontario's 
electricity-generating capacity, while water provides 23 per 
cent, natural gas supplies 8 per cent and coal contributes 22 per 
cent. The Liberal government is committed to shutting down all 
the coal plants by the end of 2007. 

New Democratic Party MPP Michael Prue attacked the decision to 
rebuild Unit 1 at the Pickering A station after earlier attempts 
produced major cost overruns. "We think that this is just another 
sinkhole. They will be very lucky to come in on budget, very, 
very lucky." 

He noted that when the previous Progressive Conservative 
government set out to refurbish Unit 4 at Pickering A, the cost 
was estimated at $457-million. The final cost was $1.255-billion. 

The four units at Pickering A and four units at the nuclear 
installation on the Bruce Peninsula were shut down 7½ years ago 
because of safety and reliability risks. The plants were built 
more than 25 years ago. 

The four nuclear reactors at Darlington were also costly. They 
were completed in 1992 for $14.4-billion, compared to the 
projected $4-billion price when work was started 12 years 
earlier. 

The Ontario Clean Air Alliance criticized the decision yesterday. 
"Nuclear power is the highest cost and highest risk option to 
phase out Ontario's dirty coal-fired power plants," it said.   

*****************************************************************
 25 Toronto Star: $900 million to start reactor

TheStar.com - 

  Thu. Jul. 8, 2004. | Updated at 09:23 PM  

DICK LOEK/TORONTO STAR FILE                           

The provincial government has decided to spend more money to 
restart Unit 1 of the Pickering A generating station, on which 
$1.6 billion already has been spent.               

Pickering A nuclear budget leaps yet again Energy minister opts 
to forge ahead despite problems

JOHN SPEARS BUSINESS REPORTER

Ontario citizens and electricity users will bankroll the $900 
million project to start up a second reactor at the Pickering A 
nuclear station, Ontario Energy Minister Dwight Duncan announced 
yesterday.

Supporters such as Canadian Nuclear Association president Murray 
Elston praised the move because it will bolster the $1.6 billion 
already spent on Pickering A.

But opponents of the move said it's simply throwing good money 
after bad on a project that is years behind schedule and 
potentially billions over budget.

They pointed out that as recently as this spring, a panel headed 
by former finance minister John Manley estimated the cost of 
restarting a second unit at Pickering A to be $600 million, or 
$300 million less than the new estimate.

But Duncan and Jake Epp, chairman of Ontario Power Generation, 
said this time the company will finally get it right.

"I am convinced that OPG has learned from its past mistakes," Epp 
told a news conference yesterday.

Epp acknowledged the proof of that statement will be in the 
execution.

"What I cannot give the public is credibility," he said. "You all 
know the history of OPG. You all know what's in the past."

Pickering A was taken out of service in 1997, but plans were soon 
in gear to restart it.

The original idea was to restart all four reactors for a maximum 
of $900 million, but the cost was first approved by the board of 
directors at $1.1 billion, with the first unit to restart by the 
end of 2000.

In fact, it took $1.25 billion to restart the first reactor 
alone, and it didn't deliver power until last September.

Duncan said he's decided to forge ahead with the project because 
of the extensive work already performed  half of the money has 
already been spent.

"The return to service of Pickering A, Unit 1, is the shortest 
lead-time major supply project available in Ontario, and is 
crucial to ensure a clean, diverse and reliable electricity 
supply in the coming years," he said.

The reactor is expected to be delivering 515 megawatts of power 
by September, 2005.

The government is under pressure to get more generating capacity 
on stream, partly because Ontario's power system is already 
stretched tight during periods of high demand, and partly because 
the Liberals say they plan to shut down all the province's 
coal-burning generating stations by 2007.

 Duncan and Chicago-based consultants Schiff Hardin, hired to 
help keep the project on track, laid bare some of the blunders 
that plagued Pickering A's earlier stages.

For example, construction work started on Unit 4, the first unit 
to get going, when engineering was only 3 per cent complete, 
while planning and assessing  having a look at the actual state 
of the plant so practical work instructions could be formulated  
was only 8 per cent complete.

The lack of planning inevitably resulted in confusion and meant 
materials couldn't be ordered ahead of time. But Duncan insisted 
it won't happen again.

For the next unit, Unit 1, Duncan said engineering is 100 per 
cent complete. 

Planning and assessing is complete for the first four months  
and 86 per cent complete over-all  and 95 per cent of materials 
are on site.

Duncan promised that this time, the government won't let costs 
and deadlines get out of hand. 

                                
`What I cannot give the public is credibility. You all know the 
history of OPG.' 

Jake Epp, chairman of Ontario Power Generation

OPG released target dates for completion of major stages of the 
project, and Duncan promised that there will be regular, 
published reports on the success in meeting them.

He refused to promise that he will resign if the project runs off 
the rails again.

A decision whether to restart the remaining two units at 
Pickering A will depend on the success of the current effort, he 
said.

Duncan said yesterday's announcement doesn't mean the government 
has decided to build new nuclear reactors in Ontario, as proposed 
by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. 

A long-term plan of how much of the province's power should come 
from the nuclear sector won't be made until the fall, he said.

Elston of the nuclear association acknowledged in an interview 
that the success of the next stage at Pickering A will reflect on 
the nuclear sector as a whole.

"This will demonstrate we can put a good generation project on 
the ground," he said.

Elston praised the decision because it will build on previous 
investments in nuclear generation.

"One big issue for us in Ontario is making sure we conserve as 
much of the capital investment as we already have in our 
generation stock."

Critics of the industry disagreed.

New Democratic Party MPP Michael Prue (Beaches-East York) said 
Pickering A is a "giant sinkhole" and its costs will drive up the 
price of power.

"The money would have been better spent on conservation," Prue 
argued. OPG's record of meeting budget targets is poor and "the 
odds of them making (their targets) this time are remote," he 
said.

Jack Gibbons of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance blasted the 
decision as the Liberals' biggest mistake.

"Nuclear power is the highest cost and highest risk option to 
phase out our dirty coal-fired power plants," Gibbons said.

A less costly alternative that would have delivered as much power 
would be to convert two coal-burning generating units at the 
Nanticoke station to natural gas, he said.

(The clean air alliance received a $3,000 donation from Enbridge 
Gas Distribution this year, which he said is a "minuscule" part 
of its budget. Gibbons said the alliance gets 75 per cent of its 
funding from foundations such as the Toronto Atmospheric Fund.) 

Keith Stewart of the Toronto Environmental Alliance dismissed the 
decision as "throwing good money after bad" when other options 
were available.

He noted that the province recently issued a request for 
proposals from companies that can build renewable generation 
facilities.

The province got expressions of interest for projects totalling 
4,400 megawatts of capacity, but will only be contracting for 300 
megawatts of that, Stewart said.

Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All
*****************************************************************
 26 TheBostonChannel: Nuke Plant Labor Fight Raising Security Concerns

[http://www.ibsys.com/]     

  [TheBostonChannel.com]     [News]   

Union Workers Threatening To Walk Out Next Week

UPDATED: 8:53 a.m. EDT July 8, 2004

BRAINTREE, Mass. -- A threatened strike at the Pilgrim Nuclear 
Plant in Plymouth has raised concerns about security, especially 
during the Democratic National Convention. 

 NewsCenter 5's Sonya Pfeiffer reported that the Utility Workers 
Union of America's Local 369 represents about 400 of the 550 
workers at the plant. If they go on strike next Tuesday when 
their contract expires, nearby residents are worried about the 
plant operator's contingency plan. 

Union representatives and a citizens group are urging federal 
regulators to shut down the plant if the union workers go on 
strike. 

"These folks are highly trained and they have worked at Pilgrim 
for years, so they understand the quirks of 'this old house,' if 
you will," said Mary Lampert of the citizen's group Pilgrim 
Watch. 

In the event of a strike, plant operator Entergy Corp., out of 
New Orleans, has a plan to staff the reactor with 150 non-union 
plant managers and would bring in an additional 150 workers from 
its nine other nuclear plants. Company officials said they will 
be able to operate the reactor safely if union workers walk out 
and so far the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ruled that the 
plans are acceptable. 

An Entergy spokesman said both sides have remained talking at the 
bargaining table and officials are optimistic an agreement can be 
reached. 

"There has been some progress made and we think that there is a 
framework for an agreement and we're hoping that both sides will 
reach a settlement," said David Tarantino of Entergy Corp., which 
took over the plant from Boston Edison in 1999. 

The NRC is reviewing a petition filed by Pilgrim Watch to shut 
down the plant until there is a resolution to the labor dispute. 
The NRC rejected an earlier petition asking that the plant be 
shut down from the Fourth of July through the Democratic National 
Convention. 

The plant started operating in 1972 and produces more 670 
megawatts, enough electricity for about 500,000 homes. 

Copyright 2004 by TheBostonChannel. All rights reserved. This 
*****************************************************************
 27 Japan Times: Electric power body sat on data

  Thursday, July 8, 2004   

 Federation admits concealing cost of burying spent fuel

 The Federation of Electric Power Companies admitted Wednesday 
that it failed to disclose data it compiled in February 1996 on 
the cost of burying spent nuclear fuel.

 The federation estimate shows that the cost of burying spent 
nuclear fuel is about 30 percent lower than recycling it.

 The federation, which consists of 10 power utilities in Japan, 
is under no obligation to publicize such data, but trust in 
nuclear power policy may be eroded due to the failure by the 
government and the power industry group to disclose crucial 
information, critics claim.

 On Monday, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry formally 
admitted that it concealed its own estimate that the cost of 
burying spent nuclear fuel is far lower than recycling it.

 On Tuesday, the government's Atomic Energy Commission said it 
also had covered up cost estimates that contradicted its 
long-term nuclear energy plan based on the recycling of spent 
nuclear fuel.

 According to the federation, the estimate in question was part 
of a case study conducted by a group comprising middle-level 
managers of its member power companies.

 "It was a rough estimate that simply applied case examples 
overseas to the situation in Japan, and could not be called a 
responsible calculation," federation officials said in a 
statement.

 The officials claimed that they found the documents late Tuesday 
when going through storage facilities following media reports on 
the METI concealments.

 The critics claim that these concealments are aimed at avoiding 
public calls for a review of its nuclear fuel recycling policy.

 Kepco scrutinized OSAKA (Kyodo) The government began conducting 
on-site inspections of Kansai Electric Power Co. facilities 
Wednesday, following recent revelations of fabricated data.

 The Kansai Bureau of Economy, Trade and Industry, a regional 
office of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, plans to 
complete the inspections at the utility's 11 facilities in Osaka, 
Hyogo and Wakayama prefectures by July 14, METI officials said.

 METI's regional bureau will decide within two or three months 
whether to punish the the utility by having it halt its power 
generating facilities.

 Kansai Electric, the nation's second-largest power firm, covers 
the Kansai region.

 Kansai Electric said last week that it found 3,659 record 
fabrications from fiscal 2000 to 2003 at its 10 thermal power 
plants and a generation site that provides electricity to Kansai 
airport in Osaka.

 Kansai Electric made the announcement following the discovery of 
fabrications by METI's regional bureau through an on-site 
inspection in April.

 The regional bureau decided to conduct additional inspections, 
as the cases include 87 particularly serious ones, including 
bogus reports of facility safety checks that were never carried 
out and the minutes of meetings that never took place, the 
officials said.

 The Japan Times: July 8, 2004 (C) All rights reserved 
*****************************************************************
 28 Japan Times: Atomic commission buried cost estimates

  Wednesday, July 7, 2004   

 The Atomic Energy Commission had concealed from the public 
estimates made a decade ago showing that burying spent nuclear 
fuel was up to 2.4 times cheaper than recycling it, commission 
members said Tuesday.

 The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry formally admitted 
Monday that it had concealed similar estimates from the public.

 Despite the findings, the commission compiled a long-term 
nuclear energy plan based on the recycling of spent nuclear fuel 
to deal with radioactive waste.

 The commission said the cost projection was made at a section 
meeting in 1994.

 The former Science and Technology Agency, which was working with 
the commission then, came up with the cost projection for burying 
nuclear waste based on estimations that were compiled by the 
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

 The cost projection suggested that recycling would be between 
1.5 times and 2.4 times more expensive than burying it.

 But the final report compiled by the commission did not contain 
the projection.

 It stated only that it was difficult to make strict cost 
comparisons between the two methods.

 Chief faces reprimand Shoichi Nakagawa, minister of economy, 
trade and industry, said Tuesday he will reprimand a former chief 
of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy for suppressing 
data tied to the cost of burying spent nuclear fuel.

 Kazumasa Kusaka, now vice minister of economy, trade and 
industry minister for international affairs, denied the existence 
of the data during a Diet session in March.

 "We take the latest case seriously," Nakagawa told a news 
conference. "We will conduct in-house investigations and report 
the outcome to regain trust in our nuclear power policy."

 The data, drawn up in February 1994 by an advisory committee to 
the agency, estimated that it is far cheaper to bury spent 
nuclear fuel than recycle it. The agency is an affiliate of the 
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

 Critics say the government concealed the information to avoid 
public calls for a review of its nuclear fuel recycling policy.

 The Japan Times: July 7, 2004 (C) All rights reserved 
*****************************************************************
 29 Scotsman.com: First Nuclear Reactor Decommissioned
 
Thu 8 Jul, 2004

By Katherine Haddon, PA News 

Energy Minister Stephen Timms today took part in the 
decommissioning of the first nuclear reactor built in western 
Europe, and inspected the ongoing redevelopment of a former 
nuclear research site.
 
During a visit to the headquarters of the United Kingdom Atomic 
Energy Authority (UKAEA) at Harwell, Oxfordshire, he helped to 
shred the last of more than 13,500 graphite blocks removed from 
the reactor’s core.
 
Known as GLEEP (Graphite Low Energy Experimental Pile), the 
reactor first operated in 1947 and ran continuously until 1990.
 
Demolition work on its outer shell will get underway later this 
month.
 
While at the site, Mr Timms also launched START Oxford, a project 
which will capitalise on the space created by the removal of the 
reactor by building a business centre.
 
Unveiling a plaque to mark the event, Mr Timms said: “With the 
final decommissioning of GLEEP today, we have demonstrated that 
we can deal with the legacy of the past.
 
“I know that UKAEA’s people are dedicated to tackling 
UKAEA’s prime concern, the decommissioning of its sites.�
 
The UKAEA is also involved in decommissioning sites at Dounreay 
in Scotland, Windscale in Cumbria and Winfrith in Dorset.
 
Two reactors have already been taken out of service at Harwell, 
and will be left for around 40 years before they are dismantled. 
		   		   
*****************************************************************
 30 Cape Cod Times: Pilgrim expansion called unlikely 

(July 8, 2004)

Regulators: New reactor seen as potential drain on Plymouth

By KEVIN DENNEHY
 STAFF WRITER

PLYMOUTH - One nuclear power plant in town is enough, Plymouth 
leaders say.

 From a rental housing shortage to bulging schools to concerns 
about terrorist attacks in the post-9/11 world, community leaders 
said yesterday, the town simply couldn't handle another reactor 
in addition to the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.

 Although the subject of an ongoing Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
investigation, the chances that Pilgrim owner Entergy would build 
a second Plymouth plant are extremely unlikely.

 Yet it has stoked real concerns.

 "I don't think the communities of the South Shore would look 
favorably at all on another nuclear (reactor)," said Tom Wallace, 
representing The Pinehills, an upscale golf community, during a 
discussion at the Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce.

 "It would be an absolute hurt to this area, as opposed to a 
help."

 Plant owner Entergy has no plans to build another Plymouth 
plant, but company officials are looking at adding a new reactor 
on the banks of the Mississippi River.

 Federal law requires that, as part of the review process, they 
look at three alternatives. One of the alternatives being studied 
is Plymouth, where the Pilgrim station was built in the early 
1970s and Entergy owns more than 1,600 acres of adjacent land.

 The three-year review includes analysis of the effects on 
safety, emergency preparedness and environmental effects at each 
alternative site.

Gauging impact on town As part of the process, NRC asks community 
leaders to help them gauge the socioeconomic impact.

 According to new data, a second Plymouth plant would attract 
some 3,100 construction jobs over five years, and the permanent 
addition of more than 1,160 new jobs, according to Michael Scott, 
staff scientist for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, an NRC 
contractor.

 Scott, however, asked local business and political leaders to 
predict how that infusion of newcomers would affect their 
community.

 In short, they said, the town has grown too much and too fast to 
handle all those people.

 There just aren't the rental properties to accommodate that many 
people, said Robert Dawson Sr., president of the Plymouth Area 
Chamber of Commerce.

 Town roads can barely handle the traffic now, especially during 
the summer.

 And Plymouth schools are already bulging, Dawson said, with a 
high school that is already obsolete and state funding all but 
dried up.

 "We've had kids (learning) in trailers for 20 years," he told 
the NRC.

A different town Since 1970, Plymouth County has grown 139 
percent, according to county records. That's more than Barnstable 
County, which grew from 96,656 in 1970 to 222,230 in 2000, or 
about 129 percent. 

Planners expect Plymouth County to grow by another 130 percent by 
2025. 

Carl Crawford, manager of nuclear communications for 
Mississippi-based Entergy Nuclear, concedes that the growing 
population in Southeastern Massachusetts is one factor that makes 
it an unattractive site for new construction.

 It would also be difficult to get environmental approval to 
build a plant, especially a nuclear plant, in Massachusetts, he 
said during a telephone interview yesterday.

 On the other hand, he said, there is an ample labor pool in the 
Northeast, and Plymouth provides plenty of cooling water for a 
nuclear plant.

 But now, he added, Entergy has no intention of building another 
plant in Plymouth.

 In fact, the company is seeking only an "early site permit" on 
the plan for Mississippi, which would allow Entergy 20 years to 
apply for an actual construction permit. The company, Crawford 
said, submitted the application to get a head start on a 
permitting process that can take up to 10 years.

 With natural gas prices rising, he said, the nuclear industry is 
healthier than it was in recent years. And there are indications 
that nuclear energy will be an even more efficient alternative in 
years to come, he said.

 "A nuclear unit is the only way we know to produce electricity 
without polluting the air," he said.

 But federal concerns that terrorists have targeted nuclear 
plants should make everyone question whether another reactor 
makes sense, said Mary Lampert of Duxbury, a critic of the 
nuclear industry and founder of Pilgrim Watch, a grass-roots 
coalition that monitors the Plymouth plant.

 As it is, she said, any threat at a nuclear plant elsewhere in 
the world could devastate the Plymouth area economy if only 
because it would infuse fear into the community.

 "It would not be a place people would want to comfortably invest 
in as a place for their children," she said.

 In Plymouth yesterday, NRC officials said there are no 
indications that Entergy has any plans to build another reactor 
in town. Even if they did, they'd have to submit a new 
application, which would trigger a separate three-year study.

 "It sounds like there would be severe impacts," added James 
Wilson, senior project manager for the NRC Office of Nuclear 
Reactor Regulation. "The company would have to consider that."

 (Published: July 8, 2004) [ border=] ['']   

[http://www.capecodonline.com

© 2004 Cape Cod Times. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 31 Cape Cod Times: Pilgrim workers seek shutdown 

(July 8, 2004)

KEVIN DENNEHY
 STAFF WRITER

PLYMOUTH - Workers at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station have asked 
the federal government to shut down the nuclear reactor if they 
go on strike next week.

 The request raises the stakes in a protracted labor dispute 
between management and the union representing reactor operators 
and radiation protection technicians. Local 369 Utility Workers 
Union has petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to halt 
operations if a union contract is not approved by July 13.

 Gary Sullivan, president of Local 369, questioned how senior 
reactor personnel could be replaced with individuals with no 
experience at the Plymouth plant.

 "We think it is imperative that the people turning dials, 
pulling levers, and reading gauges and meters at the nuclear 
plant have experience in these tasks," he said.

 Replacement workers would lack the expertise to run the 
Entergy-owned Plymouth reactor if union workers walk off the job, 
Sullivan said during a morning announcement yesterday. 

Contract negotiations were ongoing yesterday.

 If an agreement is not reached, Entergy officials said they are 
prepared to fill the labor void with management personnel and 
replacement workers from other plants.

 The union includes about 300 of the plant's 580 employees.

 Sullivan said the plan jeopardizes the safety of workers and the 
surrounding community.

 "This proposed workforce-by-committee will not possess either 
the experience or plant-specific knowledge needed to operate 
Pilgrim safely, or in compliance with the Plant's operating 
license," he said.

 David Tarantino, a spokesman for Pilgrim, said the plant has 
developed contingency plans for any emergency, including a 
strike. The plant's operation will not be interrupted, he said. 

"If we thought we couldn't operate the plant safely, we wouldn't 
operate it," he said.

 A citizen watchdog group also raised concerns about safety at 
the plant, particularly with the Democratic National Convention 
later this month raising security concerns.

 Pilgrim Watch filed a petition to shut down the plant during the 
convention, but the request was rejected last week.

 Sullivan said the plant is required to have five staff members 
qualified to serve on a fire brigade on site at all times. Only 
11 members of management have such qualifications, he said, and 
the union that provides security at the plant will not 
participate in the fire brigade as a sign of solidarity. 

Tarantino said the plant will be staffed regularly in the event 
of a strike, either by keeping management on for 12-hour shifts 
or by calling in replacements from other Entergy plants.

 Entergy owns seven other nuclear plants around the country, 
including Yankee Vermont and two in New York. According to its 
Web site, Pilgrim generates about 670 megawatts of energy. By 
comparison the Mirant electric plant in Sandwich generates 1,100 
megawatts, or about 9 percent of New England's annual demand.

 Reactor operators would be replaced by their supervisors, 
Tarantino said. "They have the most experience, they're the ones 
dictating to the union operators what to do."

 NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said the agency was reviewing a 
petition by Pilgrim Watch, but declined to say when the 
commission would decide on its request for a planned shutdown 
order in case of a strike, according to the Associated Press.

 She said the NRC had so far found Entergy's contingency plans 
for responding to a strike acceptable, but was still reviewing 
them.

 Sullivan said gaps remain in the negotiations, including 
differential pay for employees who work nights and weekends, and 
employee health-care benefits.

 "The plant is not as safe when put in the hands of personnel who 
do not have years of Pilgrim-specific experience to draw upon as 
they make minute-to-minute judgments about what needs to be done 
to ensure safe and reliable operation," he said. "The public 
interest demands that the reactor be shutdown if a work stoppage 
occurs."

 (Published: July 8, 2004) [ border=] ['']   

[http://www.capecodonline.com/classified/search/daily/] Copyright 
© 2004 Cape Cod Times. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 32 TheDay.com: Citizens Deserve Open Hearing On Nuke Issue
 		 		 		
Friday, Jul 9, 2004   								   									 										
            
Published on 7/8/2004

Letters To The Editor:

The issue of relicensing the Millstone reactors deserves a public 
hearing. This would allow citizens of the effected area to voice 
concerns and for anyone to hire experts to challenge the 
reasoning of Dominion Nuclear on the issues associated with 
extended operation of an aging nuclear reactor. Without a 
hearing, the only voice heard is that of the profit-driven 
corporation while the people living and working in the effluent 
pathway of the routine and accidental releases of radioactivity 
are silenced. 

It is undeniable that every operating reactor releases radiation 
into the air and water. While the Department Of Environmental 
Protection and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) permit 
releases of radiation and toxic chemicals, it is based on a 
per-release basis. This means they have to dilute their releases 
to be within the guidelines of so much per gallon or so much at a 
time out the stack. This does not address the effects of 
long-term exposure to low levels of radiation.

While the nuclides being released daily have half-lives ranging 
from minutes to decades and longer, biological and environmental 
accumulation of radioactivity is taking place in our bodies, soil 
and water. It is undeniable that cancers and other 
radiation-induced sicknesses are on the rise and many studies 
show an increase of cancers around nuclear reactors.

Every reactor in this country that has requested a license 
extension from the NRC has been granted its request. The least 
the NRC can do is allow an open and meaningful hearing at which 
experts from both sides can be cross-examined with all the valid 
issues being addressed, from the piling of high-level waste and 
terrorism to the daily dispersion of radiation into our 
communities. Shame on the NRC for not granting citizens of this 
state the right to be heard. 

Sal Mangiagli Haddam

The writer is a Citizens Awareness Network board member.  

1998-2004 The Day Publishing Co.   	 	
*****************************************************************
 33 TheDay.com: Peters' Dominion Deal Sends Wrong Message
 		 		 		
Friday, Jul 9, 2004   								   									 										
            
Published on 7/8/2004

Letters To The Editor:

State Sen. Melodie Peters should not work for Millstone nuclear 
power plant owners and keep her seat in the legislature. 
(Dominion hires Peters to help with Millstone license renewal, 
July 2.)

Her position at Dominion could be seen as payment for services 
rendered when Sen. Peters, as chairwoman of the state energy 
committee, co-wrote the state's energy deregulation law.

Sen. Peter's law included special bail-out provisions for the 
nuclear power plants so that they could stay competitive in the 
electricity-production market. The millions in subsidies still 
are being paid by taxpayers and utility customers. 

Sen. Peters was hired to work with public interest groups to 
help Dominion get its license renewal to run the nuclear-power 
plants for 20 years longer than they originally were 
commissioned. 

In that capacity, will she tell the publicher constituentsnot 
to worry about the documented cancer clusters in the area, the 
die-off of the winter flounder population in Niantic Bay or the 
vulnerability of the nuclear power plants to terrorists? 

It may not be illegal or unethical, but it sure is unseemly to 
pay a state senator to influence the voters and taxpayers of the 
area that it is a good thing to have aging nukes operating in 
their backyard. 

Berta Nelson Willimantic

  
1998-2004 The Day Publishing Co.   	 	
*****************************************************************
 34 NRC: Exelon Generation Company, LLC, Dresden Nuclear Power Station, 
 
                        FR Doc 04-15481 
[Federal Register: July 8, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 130)] 
[Notices] [Page 41311] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr08jy04-104] [[Page 41311]]
 
Units 2 and 3; Notice of Availability of the Final Supplement 17 
to Generic Environmental Impact Statement for the License Renewal 
of Dresden Nuclear Power Station, Units 2 and 3 Notice is hereby 
given that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the 
Commission) has published a final plant-specific supplement to 
the Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS), NUREG-1437, 
regarding the renewal of operating licenses DPR-19 and DPR-25 for 
an additional 20 years of operation at Dresden Nuclear Power 
Station (DNPS).
 
DNPS is located in Goose Lake Township, Grundy County, Illinois, 
adjacent to the Illinois River at the confluence of the Des 
Plaines and Kankakee Rivers. Possible alternatives to the 
proposed action (license renewal) include no action and 
reasonable alternative energy sources.
 
Section 9.3 of the final supplement 17 states: Based on (1) the 
analysis and findings in the GEIS (NRC 1996; 1999); (2) the ER 
[Environmental Report] submitted by Exelon (Exelon 2003b); (3) 
consultation with Federal, State, and local agencies; (4) the 
staff's own independent review; and (5) the staff's consideration 
of the public comments, the recommendation of the staff is that 
the Commission determine that the adverse environmental impacts 
of license renewal for Dresden Units 2 and 3 are not so great 
that preserving the option of license renewal for energy planning 
decision makers would be unreasonable.
 
The final Supplement 17 to the GEIS is available for public 
inspection in the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) located at One 
White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, 
Maryland, or from the Publicly Available Records (PARS) component 
of NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System 
(ADAMS). ADAMS is accessible from the NRC Web site at 
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html 
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving 
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html] 
(the Public Electronic Reading Room). Persons who do not have 
access to ADAMS, or who encounter problems in accessing the 
documents located in ADAMS, should contact the PDR reference 
staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to 
pdr@nrc.gov [pdr@nrc.gov] . In addition, the Morris Area Public 
Library, located at 604 West Liberty Street, Morris, Illinois; 
and the Coal City Public Library District, located at 85 North 
Garfield Street, Coal City, Illinois, have agreed to make the 
final plant-specific supplement to the GEIS available for public 
inspection.
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mr. James H. Wilson, License 
Renewal and Environmental Impacts Program, Division of Regulatory 
Improvement Programs, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
Washington, DC 20555. Mr. Wilson may be contacted at 301-415-1108 
or jhw1@nrc.gov [jhw1@nrc.gov] . Dated in Rockville, Maryland, 
this 29th day of June, 2004.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Pao-Tsin Kuo, Program Director, License Renewal and Environmental 
Impacts Program, Division of Regulatory Improvement Programs, 
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
 
[FR Doc. 04-15481 Filed 7-7-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 35 BostonHerald: Workers want their nuclear strike to take out Pilgrim plant
 
By Jay Fitzgerald

Thursday, July 8, 2004A union squaring off against the owner of 
the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth plans to ask 
federal regulators to shut down the power plant next week if 
hundreds of workers go on strike.

     Gary Sullivan, whose utilities union represents about 400 
workers at the plant, said Pilgrim can't be operated safely 
without skilled union technicians and engineers threatening to 
walk off the job July 13 over a contract dispute.

      A petition citing safety concerns in the event of a strike 
will be submitted tomorrow to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
Sullivan said.

      David Tarantino, a spokesman for New Orleans-based Entergy 
Corp., the plant's owner, expressed confidence that the company 
can safely operate the 680-megawatt Pilgrim with managers and 
other workers if there's a strike.

     But Tarantino also expressed confidence a strike can be 
averted by reaching a contract agreement before the strike 
deadline, which falls less than two weeks before the Democratic 
National Convention in Boston. He said both sides have made 
progress in recent contract negotiations.

      Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the NRC, said the agency has 
already reviewed Entergy's strike contingency plans and found 
them ``acceptable.'' But he said the NRC will closely review the 
union's new concerns once they submit their petition.

     He noted that the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in New Jersey 
remained open last summer during an 11-week strike by workers.

© Copyright by the Boston Herald and Herald Interactive
*****************************************************************
 36 Sofia Morning News: Bulgaria "Major Energy Provider"

[Sofia News Agency]                                                           

novinite.com

Politics: 8 July 2004, Thursday.

Bulgaria will play a major role on the southeastern Europe's 
energy market, according to Loyola de Palacio, EU Commissioner of 
Transport and Energy.
 
De Palacio praised the project for the conrtuction of Bulgaria's 
second nuclear power plant Belene. She also recommended that 
Bulgaria used EBRD and EU assistance for the construction of the 
new plant.
 
The EU Commissioner of Transport and Energy voiced concerns over 
the safety of the Kozloduy nuke.
 
She also praised the work for the improvement of Bulgaria's 
infrastructure.
 
Vice-President of the European Commission - Relations with the 
European Parliament and Commissioner of Transport and Energy 
Loyola de Palacio came to Bulgaria on the special invitation of 
Energy Minister Milko Kovachev.[ width=] 

Click here to receive realtime news about this topic in the 
future. [ width=] your opinion | save | print | send | 

  novinite.com
*****************************************************************
 37 Whitehaven News: N-PLANT GETS NEW BOSS 

SELLAFIELD has a new man in the hot seat.

Brian Watson, who has steered the site through the Mox fuel 
scandal over the last few years, has decided to stand down, 
making way for his deputy Barry Snelson, 53, to take over as the 
new managing director for management services.

Mr Watson has been Head of Sellafield since 1999 and has put in 
more than 30 years on the site.

Says BNFL: “He has steered the site through a difficult period 
and has rebuilt the confidence of the regulators and the local 
community to the point where Sellafield is delivering strong 
operational performances in key areas.”

Mr Watson leaves at the end of the month but will carry on as a 
consultant helping to make BNFL a key supplier to the Nuclear 
Decommissioning Authority which will take over the ownership of 
Sellafield from next April.

At Sellafield for the last five years, the last two as director 
of operations, Barry Snelson has been in BNFL for 25 years, also 
covering the Capenhurst and Springfields plants.. Among his key 
jobs at Sellafield have been improving safety and site security 
following the New York terrorist attack.

Chief executive Lawrie Haynes described Brian Watson “as a rock 
at Sellafield, well respected by everyone in the company and the 
local community. I very much welcome his agreement and commitment 
to continue in an important supporting and advisory role”. 

*****************************************************************
 38 NRC: In the Matter of Rochester Gas and Electric Corporation (R.E. 
 
                        FR Doc 04-15482 
[Federal Register: July 8, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 130)] 
[Notices] [Page 41309-41310] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr08jy04-103]                         
 
Ginna Nuclear Power Plant), Order Approving Transfer of License 
and Conforming Amendment Note: This Order was published on May 
28, 2004, and has been subsequently modified by Order Modifying 
May 28, 2004, Order Approving Transfer of License and Conforming 
Amendment (June 14, 2004, 69 FR 33075).
 
Rochester Gas and Electric Corporation (RG) is the holder of
 
[[Page 41310]] Renewed Facility Operating License No. DPR-18, 
which authorizes the operation of R. E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant 
(Ginna) at steady-state power levels not in excess of 1520 
megawatts thermal. The facility is located on the south shore of 
Lake Ontario, in Wayne County, New York. The license authorizes 
Ginna to possess, use, and operate the facility.
 
By letter dated December 16, 2003, RG and Constellation 
Generation Group, LLC (CGG), acting on behalf of Constellation's 
newly formed indirect subsidiary, R. E. Ginna Nuclear Power 
Plant, LLC, (Ginna LLC), jointly submitted an application to the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requesting approval of the 
transfer of Facility Operating License No. DPR-18 for Ginna from 
RG to Ginna LLC. The licensee, RG, and Ginna LLC also jointly 
requested approval of a conforming amendment to reflect the 
transfer. The application was supplemented by submittals dated 
March 26 and April 30, 2004, from RG and February 27, and April 
30, 2004, from CGG. The application and supplements are 
collectively referred to herein as the application, unless 
otherwise noted.
 
Ginna LLC, a Maryland limited liability company, is an indirect 
wholly owned subsidiary of CGG. According to the application, 
Ginna LLC would assume title to the facility following approval 
of the proposed license transfer. The conforming license 
amendment would remove references to RG from the license and add 
references to Ginna LLC, as appropriate, and make other 
administrative changes to reflect the proposed transfer.
 
RG and CGG requested approval of the transfer of the license and 
a conforming license amendment pursuant to 10 CFR 50.80 and 
50.90. Notice of the requests for approval and an opportunity to 
request a hearing or submit written comments was published in the 
Federal Register on January 22, 2004 (69 FR 3183). The Commission 
received no requests for a hearing and no written comments.
 
Under 10 CFR 50.80, no license, or any right thereunder, shall be 
transferred, directly or indirectly, through transfer of control 
of the license, unless the Commission shall give its consent in 
writing. After reviewing the information submitted in the 
application and other information before the Commission, and 
relying upon the representations and agreements contained in the 
application, the NRC staff has determined that Ginna LLC is 
qualified to be the holder of the license to the extent proposed 
in the application, and that the transfer of the license to Ginna 
LLC is otherwise consistent with applicable provisions of law, 
regulations, and orders issued by the Commission, subject to the 
conditions set forth below. The NRC staff has further found that 
the application for the proposed license amendment complies with 
the standards and requirements of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, 
as amended (the Act), and the Commission's rules and regulations 
set forth in 10 CFR chapter I; the facility will operate in 
conformity with the application, the provisions of the Act, and 
the rules and regulations of the Commission; there is reasonable 
assurance that the activities authorized by the proposed license 
amendment can be conducted without endangering the health and 
safety of the public and that such activities will be conducted 
in compliance with the Commission's regulations; the issuance of 
the proposed license amendment will not be inimical to the common 
defense and security or the health and safety of the public; and 
the issuance of the proposed license amendment will be in 
accordance with 10 CFR part 51 of the Commission's regulations 
and all applicable requirements have been satisfied. The findings 
set forth above are supported by the staff's Safety Evaluation 
dated May 28, 2004.
 
Accordingly, pursuant to sections 161b, 161i, and 184 of the 
Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 2201(b), 
2201(i), and 2234; and 10 CFR 50.80, it is hereby ordered that 
the transfer of the license as described herein to Ginna LLC is 
approved, subject to the following conditions: (1) Before the 
completion of the sale and transfer of Ginna, Ginna LLC shall 
provide the Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation 
satisfactory documentary evidence that Ginna LLC has obtained the 
appropriate amount of insurance required of licensees under 10 
CFR part 140 of the Commission's regulations.
 
(2) On the closing date of the transfer of Ginna, Ginna LLC shall 
obtain from RG a minimum of $201.6 million for decommissioning 
funding assurance for the facility, and ensure the deposit of 
such funds into a decommissioning trust for Ginna established by 
Ginna LLC.
 
(3) Decommissioning Trust.
 
(i) The decommissioning trust agreement must be in a form 
acceptable to the NRC.
 
(ii) Ginna LLC shall take all necessary steps to ensure that the 
decommissioning trust is maintained in accordance with the 
application and the requirements of this Order, and consistent 
with the Safety Evaluation supporting this Order.
 
(4) After receipt of all required regulatory approvals of the 
transfer of Ginna, Ginna LLC shall inform the Director of the 
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation in writing of such receipt 
within 5 business days, and of the closing date of the sale and 
transfer of Ginna no later than 7 business days prior to the date 
of closing. If the transfer of the license is not completed by 
June 1, 2005, this Order shall become null and void, provided, 
however, on written application and for good cause shown, this 
date may, in writing, be extended.
 
It is further ordered that, consistent with 10 CFR 2.1315(b), a 
license amendment that makes changes, as indicated in Enclosure 2 
to the cover letter forwarding this Order, to conform the license 
to reflect the subject license transfer is approved. The 
amendment shall be issued and made effective at the time the 
proposed license transfer is completed.
 
This Order is effective upon issuance.
 
For further details with respect to this Order, see the initial 
application dated December 16, 2003, and supplemental letters 
from RG dated March 26, and April 30, 2004, and from CGG dated 
February 27, and April 30, 2004, and the Safety Evaluation dated 
May 28, 2004, which are available for public inspection at the 
Commission's Public Document Room, located at One White Flint 
North, File Public Area O1F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first 
floor), Rockville, Maryland, and accessible electronically 
through ADAMS Public Electronic Reading Room link at the NRC Web 
site (http://www.nrc.gov 
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving 
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] ). Dated in Rockville, 
Maryland, this 28th day of May 2004.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
J.E. Dyer, Director, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
 
[FR Doc. 04-15482 Filed 7-7-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 39 6th Anniversary Of Dr Bertell's Signed, Notorized Statement Of Jimmy Carter Ongoing Cover Up Of 3 Mile Island   
 
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 02:53:41 -0400

 

  Tomorrow, July 10, 2004 is the sixth anniversary
of Dr. Bertell's signed, notorized statement on
Jimmy Carter's ongoing cover up of the accident at
3 Mile Island:

  http://www.mothersalert.org/bertell.html

  See Nuclear Engineer Of The Year Paul Blanch's
statement confirming this ongoing cover up of the
nuclear accident:
http://www.mothersalert.org/blanche.html
3 MILE ISLAND COVER-UP:
DR. ROSALIE BERTELL'S SIGNED, NOTARIZED STATEMENT


--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------

Dr. Rosalie Bertell is the President of the
International Institute of Concern for Public
Health, and a renowned epidemiologist by
profession. She is also an expert on the health
effects of low level radiation. Dr. Bertell
received the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative
Nobel Peace Prize) in 1986. She can be reached at:
drrbertell@home.com  Phone: 416-260-0575   Below
is Dr. Bertell's signed, notarized statement of
July 10, 1998 concerning the ongoing cover-up of
the Three Mile Island Accident.
--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------

"I feel that former President Jimmy Carter should
come forth with all of the facts surrounding the
Three Mile Island Accident, especially those which
involved the radiation release and the dose to the
public.

This disclosure should, moreover, be in language
which can be easily and correctly  understood by
the public, and not massaged to hide the truth.
After the accident, for example, I found that the
dose officially assigned to the public, was
called: "measured dose to the public from the
accident" - where "measured" meant it only
included the dose after the rate matres were in
place the third day after the accident began;
"accident" meant that the radiation dose received
during the same time period in 1978 when the TMI
reactors were all operating and there was Chinese
nuclear test fallout, could be subtracted.

President Carter was, and continues to be by his
silence, complicit in keeping the true facts of
the Three Mile Island Accident from the American
and world public. While it may have been legally
although not morally, permissible to withhold this
information in 1979 under the guise of national
security needs, now that the Cold War is over it
is no longer credible that the US government
protect the nuclear industry at the cost of the
lives and health of its citizens.

As I, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, President of the
International Institute of Concern for Public
Health, stated in my e-mail to President Carter of
February 10,1998, President carter was and is
involved in the cover up of the Three Mile island
Accident, and in particular the serious health
damage to the people who lived nearby. I was on
the Citizen's Advisory Council to the Blue Ribbon
Panel set up by President Carter to investigate
the TMI accident. The members of this public panel
did not have FBI clearance, with the possible
exception of Dr. Kemmeny who had worked on the
Manhattan Project. The staff, selected from those
who worked for the NRC or DOE, did have such
security clearance, and therefore they were able
to withhold any information they or their
superiors wanted to declare "classified:, from the
Panel. The nuclear weapons program demanded that
workers and the military personnel handle this
radioactive material and the nuclear ordinance,
therefore health effects of radiation could be
classified for national security to prevent
rebellion.

At the first meeting of the Citizen's Advisory
Council to the Kemmeny Commission, I brought up
this potential problem and asked what provisions
had been made for the Commission members to have
security clearance so that they might have full
access to the truth about the accident. Another
Advisory Council Member asked who was in charge of
reactor operations during the accident. These two
questions were never answered, and they were
enough to cause the dissolution of the entire
advisory panel. In fact, Dr. Kemmeny even stated
publicly to the press that we had never been
invited to Washington [although the Commission
paid our air fare and hotel bills]. The Industry
Advisory Council to the Kemmeny Commission
continued to function during the investigation.

The nuclear industry has frustrated the litigation
of all of the serious health claims of the TMI
exposed people, in spite of the Supreme Court's
ruling in 1997 that these claims must be heard.
Lawyers for the nuclear industry are gloating that
they are "invincible" before the Courts. Using
dirty tactics, they have managed to eliminate all
of the expert witnesses which the victims had
engaged to bring their cause before the Court,
subsequently causing the cases to be dismissed for
lack of witnesses. There may be as many as 2,000
people who have not had their grievances heard by
the courts. This dismissal, after the Supreme
Court Ruling, as accomplished through a judge's
ruling, not through the court hearing which the
people had been promised. The people have still,
almost 20 years after the accident, not had their
day in court!

It is my opinion that former President Carter
should come forth and make the truth known so that
the court cases for the victims can be reopened. I
believe that it should also be made a court ruling
that defendants, such as the nuclear industry,
should not be allowed to declare their own
witnesses the official spokespersons for a branch
of knowledge, able to define for the court the
methodologies which they accept and practice as
the only legitimate ones! It was such a ploy that
was used to dismiss the TMI plaintiff's witnesses.
This is blatant violation of justice and of the
human rights of the victims. It is especially
abhorrent in the questions of health effects of
radiation, a field of public health which was
usurped by the nuclear physicists under the
exigencies of potential nuclear war after World
War II. Professional Health Physicists are not
required to have any training in biology, public
health or any medical discipline. Their
methodologies are very limited and unacceptable to
many professionals in the fields of epidemiology,
occupational and public health.

[Signed] Dr. Rosalie Bertell

Notarized by Michele D. Guy, July 10, 1998


--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------

Back to More Information  |  Mothers Alert Home |
Actions | News



*****************************************************************
 40 AFP: Spain not planning action against British nuclear submarine in Gibraltar

+   [http://www.spacewar.com/]

MADRID (AFP) Jul 08, 2004

 Spain said on Thursday it would not take any immediate measures 
against Britain over a controversial visit to Gibraltar by a 
British nuclear submarine.

The government "will evaluate the situation but does not envisage 
for the moment any concrete measures against Gibraltar," Foreign 
Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told a news conference.

Moratinos said London had given assurances that the visit by the 
HMS Tireless, which is due to arrive on Friday, would be "short 
and surrounded by the strictest safety measures" and said he 
hoped it would spend less than a week at the Gibraltar naval 
base.

But he warned: "We will assess what the impact (of the visit) on 
our relations with Great Britain will be if the United Kingdom 
continues not to take into account the requests of a friendly 
country."

Gibraltar, a British colony on a spit of land attached to 
southern Spain, has been an issue of contention between Britain 
and Spain for decades.

The visit by the Tireless to "the Rock" is all the more sensitive 
in that the vessel spent almost a year moored in Gibraltar in 
2000-01 while a fault in the cooling system of its nuclear 
reactor was repaired. Local Spaniards protested fiercely, fearing 
there might be leaks of radioactive substances.

Madrid had tried unsuccessfully to get London to scrap this new 
visit by the nuclear submarine and earlier in the week Moratinos 
had warned Britain the event would have repercussions on 
relations between the two countries.

Moratinos said sending the Tireless was an unfriendly" move which 
displayed "a lack of sensitivity" towards the Spanish people.

The Rock was ceded to Britain by Spain under the 1713 Treaty of 
Utrecht but Madrid has long demanded it be returned.

  WAR.WIRE
*****************************************************************
 41 WCAX: Department of Public Service official resigns
 
  Home WCAX.com   

July 8, 2004   

MONTPELIER, Vt. -- A key state official responsible for mapping 
out Vermont's energy future is leaving his post after just a year 
on the job.

Jonathan Lesser's appointment as planning director in the 
Department of Public Service had drawn fire from some quarters, 
because of his past consulting work for private utilities and 
writings that expressed a dim view of Vermont's energy 
conservation efforts.

Lesser, an economist, said he will return to work as a private 
consultant. He had worked for a consultant for Green Mountain 
Power Corp. in the 1990s and testified before the Public Service 
Board for Entergy Nuclear, which owns Vermont Yankee.

Lesser was the lead author of a draft energy plan that was widely 
criticized last year for being skimpy on details and not 
highlighting renewable energy sources. Lesser said the plan has 
been revised and is now being reviewed by the governor's office. 
He called the criticism unfair.

Lesser said the new draft contains "tremendous amounts of details 
now on renewables."

Lesser's state job called on him to look ahead at Vermont's 
future energy mix. He said the utilities need to plan for 
replacing power from Vermont Yankee, whose license expires in 
2012.

Lesser also noted the plant could be forced to shut down sooner 
if it runs out of room to store radioactive spent fuel and is 
barred from building more storage.

Lesser said renewable energy won't be able to fill the void that 
would be left if Vermont Yankee were to shut down.

"Even if you said, 'Let's go build all the wind we can,' it just 
wouldn't be enough to replace Vermont Yankee, and it's a very 
different kind of power source."

Lesser said some of the slack could be picked up by natural 
gas-fired power plants, but that the price of gas has been going 
up, driving up the costs of that power.

Lesser's boss, Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien, said he 
will take his time to fill the job. He said the state will look 
within state government and in the electric industry for a new 
planning director.

                                                        Copyright 
2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not 
be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.                                     

      Local News From WCAX-TV   

[http://www.worldnow.com]     All content © Copyright 2001 -
2004 WorldNow and WCAX. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 42 NEWS.com.au: Howard wary on N-dump plan 

(July 9, 2004)

PRIME Minister John Howard today refused to commit to deciding 
before the federal election whether a nuclear waste dump would be 
built in South Australia's outback.

Mr Howard, on a three-day visit to Adelaide, said federal Cabinet 
would discuss issues surrounding the nuclear dump at its meeting 
next week. 

But he refused to say whether a decision on the dump would be 
made before or during the looming election campaign. 

"I'm not ruling anything out. What I am doing is saying ... in 
light of the federal court decision, we are going to examine that 
matter," Mr Howard told ABC radio. 

"I'm not going to say anything more than that." 

Last month, the Full Court of the Federal Court scuttled the 
Federal Government's plans to build the dump when it upheld a SA 
government appeal against the compulsory acquisition of the dump 
site, near Woomera in SA's far north. 

The Commonwealth compulsorily acquired the land after learning of 
SA government moves to declare the site a national park, which 
would have precluded the low-level waste repository being built 
there. 

Mr Howard earlier this week said the Cabinet meeting would 
consider whether to launch a High Court appeal in a bid to 
proceed with the dump. 

He today conceded the waste dump was a difficult issue and said 
he understood SA opposition to it. 

"There has to be a low-level waste dump somewhere in Australia 
but nobody wants it," he said. 

"It's one of those very difficult issues because it's inherently 
unpopular. 

"But we did have a scientific investigation (and) we were 
satisfied on the basis of the advice we were given (that the dump 
should be built in SA). 

"The court has made a ruling and we are going to look at the 
matter and we are going to look at it in a measured, calm way. 

"We obviously take into account the concerns that people have 
expressed (but) we obviously have to, in reply, point out those 
concerns will be expressed by Australians wherever you propose 
it."                                                                    

AAP
 				 							 				 					 						 						
Copyright 2004 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT+10).                            
*****************************************************************
 43 Las Vegas SUN: NRC names hearing officers for DOE Yucca Mountain filings

Today: July 08, 2004 at 13:52:13 PDT 

 By KEN RITTER ASSOCIATED PRESS 

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Three members of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board were named
Thursday to handle challenges to Energy Department filings on a
national nuclear waste dump in Nevada. 

G. Paul Bollwerk III, chief of the NRC Atomic Safety and
Licensing Board, designated Thomas Moore as chairman and Alex
Karlin and Alan Rosenthal as hearing officers for Yucca Mountain
pre-licensing disputes. 

Bollwerk had been named Wednesday to oversee Energy Department
compliance with requirements that it publish documents about the
planned repository on an NRC Licensing Support Network. 

"Disputes have already arisen," NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said
Thursday. "They will decide how to handle them." 

The Energy Department certified last week that it met a June 30
deadline to post to an Internet Web site more than 1.2 million
documents on the scientific underpinnings of the project. 

Nevada will challenge that certification before the newly named
panel, contending the Energy Department failed to satisfy its
own procedures and key NRC rules, said Joe Egan, an attorney
handling the state's legal opposition to the Yucca Mountain
project. 

"There are no documents available on the (Licensing Support
Network) as required," Egan said Thursday. "And the vast
majority of documents that we know are relevant and key to this
proceeding are not available on the DOE's own Web site." 

If the Energy Department did not meet the June 30 date, it
wouldn't be eligible to apply by the end of the year for a
repository operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. 

The Energy Department last week said some documents would come
later, and said this week that it was withholding some documents
with confidential information such as Social Security numbers. 

Daniel Graser, the NRC's Licensing Support Network
administrator, asked NRC Chairman Nils Diaz this week how to
handle Energy Department requests to delete information already
posted. 

--- 

On the Net: 

Energy Department Yucca Mountain project:
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov [http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov] 

NRC Licensing Support Network: http://www.lsnnet.gov
[http://www.lsnnet.gov] 

-- 



*****************************************************************
 44 Las Vegas RJ: STEVE SEBELIUS: More politics on Yucca 
 
Thursday, July 08, 2004
 
If I rounded up a bunch of lovable Nevada Democrats and told
them that a vice presidential candidate was coming to town who'd
voted repeatedly to put a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain,
they'd be reaching for the protest signs before I even finished
speaking. 

Of course I was talking about Vice President Dick Cheney, whose
votes as a member of the House of Representatives are a matter
of public record, and whose still-secret energy task force was
clearly guided by donors from Big Energy. Right? 

Not this time: I was really talking about U.S. Sen. John
Edwards, John Kerry's newly picked running mate. Edwards voted
for (and against) temporary storage of nuclear waste in Nevada
back in 2000, and in 2002 voted to override Gov. Kenny Guinn's
veto of the Yucca dump. 

So we'll see the protest signs, right? The ever-popular Yucca
Man will make an appearance at the next sign of Edwards in town?
At the very least, a stern news release from party headquarters? 
Not exactly. 

Instead, Nevada Democrats were making signs to welcome Edwards
to the Silver State, coaxing assurances that he's really not so
pro-dump after all from the candidate and pointing out how
George W. Bush is far, far worse. 

To their credit, Nevada's Democrats didn't employ the lamest,
most pathetic line when it comes to Yucca. Nobody said they've
"agreed to disagree" with Edwards on the issue in the name of
party unity. That's what routinely spills from the lips of Gov.
Kenny Guinn and Attorney General Brian Sandoval, who are in the
unique legal position of both suing Bush's administration over
Yucca while co-chairing his re-election campaign. 

Edwards apparently told U.S. Sen. Harry Reid that he would defer
to ticket-leader Kerry's staunch opposition to Yucca Mountain.
Unlike Edwards, Kerry's voting record is pure. Then again, Kerry
has vowed to stop the Yucca Mountain dump entirely, an
impossible task without at least an act of Congress. 

When former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, another one-time Yucca
supporter, came to town, he was so frightened of the issue he
said he'd "seen the light" and changed his position. Whether
anybody was convinced by the latter-day flip-flop became
irrelevant when he went all Tarzan after coming in third in the
Iowa caucuses. 

Nobody's saying Democrats have to disown Edwards and, by
extension, Kerry because of Edward's history of supporting a
nuclear waste dump. But nobody is saying the party shouldn't
have to take yoga classes to endure the intellectual contortions
necessary to overlook the Yucca votes, either. (Actually, I take
that back; I just said it.) 

But if the party's membership was simply to admit that yes,
Edwards did vote for Yucca, but he's right on all the other
issues we care about -- including education, national security,
the economy and health care -- things would be so much better. 

It would cost them at least some of the moral thunder they
currently deploy whenever a pro-dump Republican swings into town
to raise money. It's hard to bash House Majority Leader Tom
DeLay for being a Yucca supporter when you've got one running
for vice president. 

But that points up something unique about this issue: To Nevada,
it's a litmus test. To the rest of the country, it's a funny
name. Otherwise, why would Kerry have risked alienating
vote-rich Nevada (not) by picking a guy who was wrong on The Big
Issue? 

In other states, Yucca Mountain is seen as a solution to a
problem. Nuclear waste piles up in North Carolina, and Edwards
wants to get rid of it so he can tell his constituents he's done
something. (It's a big lie, of course. Waste will continue to
pile up so long as plants are operating, and many more
constituents will be exposed to danger while the waste is
transported and buried in the Nevada desert.) 

Sure, some Republicans may have baser motives, such as keeping
the nuclear power industry alive and kicking. They do it with
insurance subsidies and by promising to take out the
(radioactive) garbage. But not all Democrats can say they have
clean hands when it comes to propping up Big Energy, either. 
No matter how many fine distinctions we make, however, it's
intellectually dishonest to attack Republicans for supporting
Yucca Mountain and give Democrats a pass when they do the same
thing. 

We can, though, single out Bush for special Yucca bashing,
because he promised to wait until sound science was finished
before deciding to designate Yucca Mountain as the nation's
nuclear dump or not. And then, before "sound science" was
finished, Bush acted anyway. That's a broken promise, and it's
something for which the Bush campaign will have to answer. 

Perhaps the saddest thing is that, for all the bluster, all the
pandering, all the promises and campaigns, it's very likely that
no matter who wins the White House in November, Nevada will
still eventually become home to the nation's nuclear waste. 


Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His
column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach him at 383-0283
or by e-mail at Ssebelius@reviewjournal.com. 


Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 45 Las Vegas RJ: Appointee to hear database disputes 
 
Thursday, July 08, 2004

Yucca Mountain licensing data challenged By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON --A hearing officer was appointed Wednesday to
resolve disputes over a Yucca Mountain Project database
criticized as being incomplete and disorganized since it was
certified last week. 
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission designated G. Paul Bollwerk
III to hear complaints about the Licensing Support Network, an
Internet document bank for the proposed nuclear waste repository.
 
 Bollwerk is chief administrative judge of the agency's Atomic
Safety and Licensing Board Panel.
 
 With the administrative officer in place, attorneys for the
state of Nevada said they plan to file a formal complaint this
week challenging the Energy Department's database certification.
 
 The state plans to argue that repository licensing the DOE
wants to initiate in December should be pushed back until six
months after databank problems are fixed. 
DOE officials certified on June 30 they had made available 1.2
million documents totalling 5.6 million pages. The collection is
to include all the technical background the department has
compiled during studies of the Nevada site.
 
 But NRC officials who manage the electronic network say they
have received only about half the documents. They have halted
indexing materials until Bollwerk can resolve questions about
how the site should be maintained.
 
 DOE documents have yet to be made publicly available at the
licensing Web site (www.lsnnet.gov). The department says it has
posted its materials at a DOE site (www.ocrwm.doe.gov).
 
 Martin Malsch, a former NRC attorney now working for the state
of Nevada, said he expects Bollwerk to set a rapid timetable to
hear database disputes.
 
 "There's a good chance to get this resolved in a month or so,"
Malsch said.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 46 Interfax: British delegation visits nuclear waste site in Russia

Jul 8 2004 6:34PM
 
MURMANSK. July 8 (Interfax-Northwest) - A delegation from the UK
Department of Trade and Industry was permitted to make its first
ever visit to nuclear storage facilities in Andreyev Bay in
northwestern Russia. 

During the visit on July 6-7, it examined the radioactive waste
and spent nuclear fuel storage facilities as well as the
infrastructure of the facilities, leading nuclear safety expert
from the Murmansk regional administration Vladimir Kozlovsky
told Interfax. 

The visit stems from the British government's decision to
allocate five million pounds for projects concerning the removal
of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear submarines in the bay which
experts believe contain more fuel than operating submarines. 
A temporary site for the removed fuel will be built at Britain's
expense. 

The Andreyev Bay is a major Russian Northern Fleet nuclear waste
storage facility containing some 21,000 fuel units and 12,000
squares metes of solid and fuel nuclear wastes with a combined
activity of 1,000 curies.     


© 1991-2004 Interfax
 All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
 47 BBC: Still no fix on nuclear waste 
 
  Last Updated: Thursday, 8 July, 2004
 
By Rob Broomby BBC News correspondent   

[Aerial view of the Sellafield site]                            

Sellafield contains almost all Britain's nuclear waste                                                             

Ninety-eight percent of Britain's most deadly radioactive waste 
is still sitting at the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, much 
of it left over from the early nuclear power and weapons 
programmes.

It hosts well over half of the nation's intermediate level waste 
too, enough to fill over 1,000 double decker buses. It is all 
part of Britain's nuclear waste legacy; a problem which still has 
no solution.

A permanent fix could still be decades away and with the threat 
of terrorism adding to the danger, the problem is pressing. Some 
of the Sellafield waste stores, such as the B30 and the B38, fall 
well short of modern standards. 

On my trip to the site I was prevented from entering the B30 
itself. It is an open pond containing radioactive waste and is so 
dangerous that access is strictly limited. Some areas of the 
facility workers are allowed in for just minutes per day.



Decades of decay

It is an open pond containi radioactive waste ... workers are 
allowed in for just minutes a day             

The B38, which I did see, is a huge concrete tank crammed with 
highly radioactive waste. Much of it is the shavings from old 
Magnox nuclear fuel casings that have been corroding there since 
the 1960s. 

It has been giving off hydrogen ever since and now requires 
constant ventilation.

Byron Smith, head of silo decommissioning at Sellafield, says: 
"The waste does decay over time but we have the technology to 
recover that waste and safely treat it. Hydrogen is potentially 
explosive if you allow enough of it to accumulate."

But he said he was confident the ventilation systems were 
sufficient to deal with the problem. 

The Department of Trade and Industry puts the bill for managing 
Britain's nuclear waste at over £47bn over the coming years. 
After that the waste has to be held safely for centuries.

The government hopes its new Committee on Radioactive Waste 
Management (CORWM) can find a solution the public will accept. It 
has until 2006 to report. 

[Inside the Sellafield plant]                           

The CORWM is reviewing waste disposal                                                                

At this stage even the wildest ideas are still being discussed, 
from disposal in space, which is viewed as very dangerous and 
costly, through to disposal in the ice sheets. The less likely 
options are sure to be eliminated very soon. 

The last plan for a deep nuclear repository, run by Nirex, fell 
apart acrimoniously in 1997. The task now is to avoid 'nimbyism' 
and provide a solution the public will accept. 



Consultation

CORWM chairman Gordon MacKerron says in the past politicians and 
scientists decided what they thought was the best option - and 
then tried to persuade people. He says the committee is now 
consulting people from the very beginning and holding meetings in 
public. 

In a bid to reach a consensus, an unusually broad committee has 
been pulled together, some of whom have opposed each other for 
years. 

One member is Peter Wilkinson, co-founder of Greenpeace and 
Friends of the Earth. Next to him is Mark Dutton, a man involved 
in the design of every nuclear power station in Britain since the 
1960s. "Pete and I get on like a house on fire," Mr Dutton said. 

There's waste there from t end of the last war. It's long overdue 
that we deal with this
		
Chris Murray, waste company Nirex managing director     

For CORWM member Professor Andrew Blowers, the terror attacks of 
11 September 2001 makes safety paramount. "If you go for surface 
storage will that be secure?" he asked. But Mr Mackerron says the 
day-to-day terrorism threat is not their concern. 

While the committee talks, the waste is still sitting at 
Sellafield. At the B30 waste pond, impact protection is 
negligible and a permanent waste facility will not be ready for 
at least another 25 years. 

The main choices now are between surface storage or underground 
disposal, and whether the waste should be dumped for good or 
monitored and open to retrieval by future generations who may 
have better ideas. 

The committee is likely to come under intensive pressure towards 
the end of its deliberations to name possible sites for a waste 
repository, if that is the chosen option. 



Resistance

[Protesters outside the Sellafield site] Sellafield has long been 
targeted by protesters                                                                 

Sellafield remains a likely site because the waste is already 
there, but there are over 30 other locations holding waste across 
the country. Community resistance can be expected at any site 
that was to be chosen. 

The controversial nuclear waste company Nirex is likely to build 
and run the facility. Its managing director, Chris Murray, says 
the current situation is a national disgrace. "There's waste 
there from the end of the last [world] war. It's long overdue 
that we deal with this," he said. 

Nirex is now independent from the nuclear industry. Mr Murray 
says that makes it more objective and means it deserves public 
confidence. 

"People doing this job needed to listen more carefully to local 
communities," he said. But why should local people trust them? 
"They shouldn't trust us, that's one of the lessons. They should 
hold us accountable," he said. 

This is not a pro- or anti-nuclear argument. The waste is already 
there and, for once, all sides are pulling in the same direction. 
But if nuclear power gains a new lease of life, that fragile 
consensus could fall apart. 





*****************************************************************
 48 Las Vegas SUN: Nevada's anti-Yucca attorneys gearing up for
license fight

Today: July 08, 2004 at 9:40:34 PDT 

By Suzanne Struglinski <suzanne@lasvegassun.com 
[suzanne@lasvegassun.com] > SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Nevada attorneys plan to file their complaints
about the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain document database
by the end of the week, now that a person has been appointed to
handle the complaints.

 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday appointed G.
Paul Bollwerk III, chief of the agency's Atomic Safety and
Licensing Board Panel, to serve as the Pre-License Application
Presiding Officer. The officer oversees the commission's License
Support Network, a database of millions of technical documents
on the Yucca Mountain project.

 Bollwerk has been the chief administrative judge on the board
since 1999 and has served on the board since 1991. He was a
lecturer on conducting complex adjudicatory hearings at the
National Judicial College in Reno.

 Attorney Joe Egan, who represents Nevada on Yucca issues, said
the state aims to have the department's claim that it finished a
required step in the Yucca Mountain licensing process thrown out.

 "There is a whole litany of things wrong," Egan said. The state
will spell them out in its contention, he said.

 The department said last week that it "certified" a database of
5.6 million pages of documents related to the Yucca Mountain
nuclear waste storage project by posting them on a Web site it
created.

 Commission rules require the documents to be made public six
months before the department turns in a license application. The
department has yet to send all of the documents to the
commission for the official database that will be used during
the license hearings and is still sorting through documents to
determine if some need to be deleted.

 Egan said the "rogue website" created by the department, which
is up now but was not working last week, and the fact the
department has not given all the materials to the commission are
clear violations of what the rules require.

 "The network is a mess," Egan said.

 The Energy Department would not comment on what may be filed
with the commission but spokesman Joe Davis said via e-mail that
any questions the commission asks the department will be
answered. By the end of the year, the department plans to give
the commission a license application for the Yucca project, 90
miles northwest of Las Vegas, proving it can safely store 77,000
tons of nuclear waste inside the mountain. The technical
documents in the database are there to show how the department
reached its conclusions.

 If the officer determined the certification was not valid, the
department might not be able to file its application by the end
of the year, Egan said.

 Nothing in the document controversy stops from the waste from
coming to Nevada but it could cause a long delay.

 Egan said million of documents are missing and it could take a
while for all of them to be indexed and processed correctly.

 "We are not going to let this go by lightly," he said.

 Egan said this was not a delaying tactic by the state, which
strongly opposes the project. The state's attorneys need to see
the documents to build their arguments for the license hearings,
he said. He said he is "very interested in seeing the
documents," for technical questions, e-mails, what the
department disregarded and other insights as to how it will make
its case to the commission.

 



*****************************************************************
 49 chillicothe gazette: Issues rise with nuke waste removal costs -
 
[http://www.chillicothegazette.com

Thursday, July 8, 2004   

 Experts: Congress must approve more money to decontaminate sites

 By Greg Wright Gannett News Service 

WASHINGTON -- Congress is unlikely to quickly approve more money 
to mop up radioactive and chemical waste around nuclear weapons 
plants in the Midwest and South, leaving nearby residents 
vulnerable to toxins, scientists said Wednesday. 

The General Accounting Office released a report Friday urging 
Congress to pump more money into a federal nuclear waste clean up 
fund. The Uranium Enrichment Contamination and Decommissioning 
Fund will run out of money before plants in Piketon, Ohio; 
Paducah, Ky.; and Oak Ridge, Tenn., are decontaminated, the 
report said. 

"Right now we know there is a fiscal crisis in Congress," said 
Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned 
Scientists. "There does not seem to be a lot of money around for 
properly disposing of nuclear waste." 

Congress created the fund in 1992 to clean up Cold War era plants 
that processed uranium for nuclear weapons and reactors. The 
government and electric utilities that use nuclear fuel put money 
into the pot ranging from $480 million to $518 million a year 
until 2007. 

But this is not enough to clean up radioactive waste and toxic 
chemicals at the three plants that cover thousands of acres, have 
more than 30 million square feet of floor space, and contain 
miles of pipes, the report said. 

By the time plant decontamination is set to end in 2044, cleanup 
costs will exceed the fund by $3.5 billion to $5.7 billion, said 
the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. 

To avoid the budget shortfall, Congress and utilities should 
continue depositing money in the fund until 2010, three years 
longer than originally planned, the GAO said. 

The Bush administration agrees Congress should look at providing 
more money, Energy Department Undersecretary David Garman said. 
But nuclear experts doubt Congress would approve the money soon. 

Lately the administration is more focused on building factories 
to process nuclear fuel for power plants, including the American 
Centrifuge planned for Piketon, Lyman said. President Bush also 
is calling for money to study next-generation nuclear weapons 
such as a device to destroy enemy bunkers deep underground. 

And the cost of decontaminating the plants could come in much 
higher than the GAO estimate, said Richard Miller, a policy 
analyst at the Government Accountability Project. 

"We need to know what the full price tag is before we decide who 
pays what share," Miller said. "Congress should hold hearings." 

Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who represents the area around 
Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, has long supported 
more money for decontamination. But Portman wants the Energy 
Department to do a detailed cost analysis before acting, said his 
spokesman, Kyle Downey. 

Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, who sits on the Energy and Commerce 
Committee, said the Energy Department must come up with a 
detailed plan for cleaning up the plants. 

Lawmakers must get this plan and cost analysis before considering 
more money for the fund, said Strickland, who represents some 
workers at Portsmouth. 



Originally published Thursday, July 8, 2004
 

   [http://www.chillicothegazette.com/index.html] | 
[http://www.chillicothegazette.com/terms.html] (Terms updated 
*****************************************************************
 50 C&EN: DOE Releases Flood Of Yucca Mountain Data
      
July 5, 2004 Vol. 82, Iss. 27                
							   							     							   								
July 8, 2004

Millions of pages released, but it’s still unclear if legally 
required docket complete
                                                                                        
JEFF JOHNSON                                                                                    

Some 5.6 million pages—1.2 million documents—of federal material 
in support of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository are now 
publicly available, the Department of Energy said last week. The 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires this material to be 
publicly available six months before DOE applies to NRC for a 
license to build and operate the high-level radioactive waste 
repository in Nevada. DOE is aiming to have an application ready 
by the end of the year. The documents are to be placed on NRC’s 
Licensing Support Network, a searchable database of all Yucca 
Mountain licensing information.
 											
So far, however, NRC has received 500,000 of the 1.2 million 
documents, and DOE has asked NRC to withhold this information 
from the public until it can determine if all privacy information 
has been deleted, an NRC official says. The official adds that 
NRC cannot index and process more than 150,000 documents a week, 
which will stall input of the material for more than a month. NRC 
is unsure how to address DOE’s request to block release of the 
material and if this will affect the six-month availability 
requirement. These decisions are to be made by a “pre-license 
application officer” who will be appointed by NRC by July 15, the 
NRC spokesperson says. Meanwhile, DOE says the material is 
available at its website, [http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov] DOE 
officials would not comment on whether the database is complete 
at this time
 										   										      									 									
*****************************************************************
 51 Pahrump Valley Times: False federal assurance 
 
July 7, 2004

NEVADA CLAIMS ENERGY DEPARTMENT'S 'CALIENTE CORRIDOR' PRECLUDES
SHIPMENTS 

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada is accusing the Energy Department of 
making false assurances concerning a proposed rail route that 
would carry the nation's radioactive waste across the state for 
burial at Yucca Mountain. 

"The DOE has advertised that the selection of the Caliente 
corridor would essentially eliminate shipment of waste through 
Las Vegas," Bob Loux, state nuclear projects manager, said 
Tuesday. "This doesn't necessarily do that." 

The state opposes the Yucca Mountain Project and last month filed 
a 120-page argument against the shipping plan. The state contends 
660 of 9,646 radioactive shipments to Yucca Mountain would pass 
through Las Vegas. 

The Energy Department has said it plans up to 3,300 railroad 
shipments over 24 years to Yucca Mountain, 50 miles north of 
Pahrump and 20 miles north and east of Amargosa Valley and 
Beatty, respectively. It announced in December it wants to build 
a 319-mile railroad to haul the waste from Caliente, near the 
Utah line, across the state to Yucca Mountain. 

Department spokesman Allen Benson dismissed the state's criticism 
as premature. 

"We've selected no routes," he said. "Therefore all these numbers 
and all their suppositions are in question." 

POW compensation

 The Senate has passed a measure calling for the Defense 
Department to pay U.S. soldiers held as prisoners during the 
first Gulf War if it compensates Iraqis injured in U.S. military 
prisons. 

"This is the fair thing to do," said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the 
sponsor of the measure that passed without opposition Monday. 

It would require the Defense Department to include 17 soldiers 
held as prisoners of war by Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf 
War in any plan to compensate Iraqis injured at the Abu Ghraib 
prison near Baghdad. 

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Jeff Tice of Las Vegas and 16 other 
soldiers were captured and tortured during the first Gulf War in 
1991 in the same prison. 

After the war, the POWs and 37 family members won a $959 million 
judgment from the Iraqi government, but the White House froze the 
assets once the current war began. The judgment later was 
overturned on appeal. 

		 		   	 



For comment or questions, please e-mail 
webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com 
[webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com] Copyright © Pahrump Valley 
Times, 1997 - 2003 
*****************************************************************
 52 NRC: NRC Names Pre-License Application Presiding Officer to Resolve Disputes on Submittal of Yucca
                       Mountain Documents
News Release - 2004-08
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION   
  Office of Public Affairs     Telephone: 301/415-8200   
  Washington, DC 20555-0001     E-mail: opa@nrc.gov
  No. 04-082     July 7, 2004   
  


The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued an order
designating G. Paul Bollwerk III, chief of the agencys Atomic
Safety and Licensing Board Panel, as Pre-License Application
Presiding Officer for Yucca Mountain. The Commission order
expressly authorizes Judge Bollwerk to delegate that authority. 

The Pre-License Application Presiding Officer will be
responsible for resolving any disputes concerning certification
of the electronic availability of documents for a future hearing
on the Department of Energys expected application for a license
for a high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain,
Nevada. 

The Commission is interested in assuring the prompt
availability of information, so we quickly established the
Pre-License Application Presiding Officer to address and resolve
disputes, said NRC Chairman Nils J. Diaz. 

NRC regulations require all potential participants in the
license application hearing process to make their documents
available to other potential participants and the public in
electronic form through the Licensing Support Network website,
http://www.lsnnet.gov [http://www.lsnnet.gov] . The documents
that must be made available on this network consist of the
information that a party, potential party or interested
government participant intends to rely on in the licensing
proceeding for a high-level waste repository, and certain other
relevant information. 

Requiring participants to make pertinent documents available
through the Licensing Support Network for use by the other
participants eliminates the need for the traditional means of
document discovery and will allow potential parties to use some
part of the pre-application period to review documents and
prepare contentions for filing in petitions to intervene in the
hearing. 

NRC regulations require the Department of Energy (DOE) to make
its material available no later than six months before
submitting its license application to the NRC. On June 30, DOE
certified to the NRC the public availability of its documents.   



  


 	Last revised Thursday, July 08, 2004 	   
*****************************************************************
 53 AU ABC: SA heartened by nuke dump reconsideration 

» ABC Eyre » Local News

"Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online">
[http://abc.net.au/]

Thursday, 8 July 2004 

South Australia's Environment Minister John Hill says he is 
heartened the Federal Government may reconsider its plans to 
create a low-level radioactive waste dump in the state. 

Prime Minister John Howard yesterday said the issue would be 
revisited by Federal Cabinet next week. 

After being confronted by anti-dump protesters in Adelaide 
yesterday, Mr Howard conceded the Government's plan for a dump in 
South Australia's outback is unpopular locally. 

Mr Hill says the states should be left to look after their own 
waste. 

"We're quite capable of looking after the small amount of waste 
we have in South Australia and I think each of the other states 
would be as well," he said. 

"The biggest issue for the Commonwealth is what to do with the 
waste from Lucas Heights and it's always been my view that the 
waste that's generated there ought to be stored there, because 
their security systems and their expertise is there to look after 
it indefinitely." [ more news ] Last Updated: 3:54:00 PM (ACST)                  

  
[http://www.abc.net.au/privacy.htm]
*****************************************************************
 54 Whitehaven News: RAF JETS TOO FAR AWAY TO SAVE US 

  [RAF Tornado: Fighter jets ‘could not be scrambled in time to
prevent terrorists from crashing a plane into Sellafield’]   

by david siddall

RAF FIGHTER jets could not be scrambled in time to prevent 
terrorists from crashing a hijacked aeroplane into Sellafield, 
according to an expert analysis due out later this month.

Transatlantic passenger planes forced to divert from their normal 
flight paths across Cumbria would take between four and six 
minutes to reach the plant.

This would hardly give time for the nearest fighters, which are 
on five-minute standby and stationed in Fife and Yorkshire, to 
leave the ground.

In the wake of the terror attacks in America, some estimates have 
suggested that an attack on a nuclear facility could release 
enough radioactivity to cause long-term cancers among millions of 
people. 

The risk is highlighted by a report on nuclear terrorism due to 
be published in the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and 
Technology later this month. 

The subject is likely to be discussed in the House of Commons, on 
July 12.

The analysis shows that more than 700 airliners pass within 50 
nautical miles of Sellafield, every week, on their way from 
Europe to North America.
 
 --> [http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/webcams/whitehaven1.htm] 

*****************************************************************
 55 Pahrump Valley Times: YUCCA MOUNTAIN DOE database criticized 
 
         July 7, 2004
        
By STEVE TETREAULT PVT WASHINGTON BUREAU 

WASHINGTON - Seventeen environmental organizations on Friday 
called on the Energy Department to withdraw its certification of 
a Yucca Mountain licensing database, claiming the material is 
incomplete and inaccessible to the public.

 Segments of the Internet site (www.lsnnet.gov) that are to 
contain Energy Department documents related to the proposed 
nuclear waste repository remained dark on Friday. 

A spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which 
maintains the site, said those portions might become active on 
Saturday. Administrators were harmonizing computer coding after 
removing 150,000 documents that DOE claimed contained homeland 
security and other privileged information.

 Even when it becomes functional, the database, known as the 
Licensing Support Network, will not contain all the technical 
reports, letters, science studies and emails the Energy 
Department certified this week as part of its Yucca Mountain 
license bid.

 NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said the NRC has received less than 
half the Energy Department's collection, and it will take five or 
six more weeks to index about 700,000 documents that are 
outstanding.

 The environmental groups, which included the Nevada Nuclear 
Waste Task Force, the Nevada Desert Experience and Las 
Vegas-based Citizen Alert, challenged the Energy Department's 
certification of its materials in a letter sent to Energy 
Secretary Spencer Abraham.

 "We request you withdraw your certification until DOE's 
submission of documentary material is actually completed, and the 
submitted materials are thoroughly indexed and posted, and 
entirely readable and accessible on the Licensing Support Network 
website," their letter stated. 

DOE officials had no immediate comment on Friday. 

The DOE certification was issued on the last day of June, keeping 
chances alive for the department to submit a repository license 
application by the end of the year, as it has promised Congress. 
Federal rules say a license bid cannot be filed until six months 
after DOE certifies it has made its documents available. 

Attorneys for the state of Nevada are preparing to challenge the 
certification. They will argue the DOE's licensing bid should be 
put on hold until six months after all questions about the 
database are resolved. 

Federal rules call on the NRC to appoint a pre-license hearing 
officer within 15 days after certification to judge issues 
associated with the license network.

 The licensing support network is drawing attention because it is 
expected to serve as the official depository for all the parties 
that will be involved in NRC legal proceedings to license a Yucca 
Mountain nuclear site, including Nye County.

 Energy Department officials have said they have met legal 
requirements. Although the Licensing Support Network website is 
not ready, DOE said its collection of 1.2 million Yucca Mountain 
documents has been made available on a department website 
(www.ocrwm.doe.gov)

 However, the environmental groups told Abraham on Friday "the 
usefulness of the DOE's database as currently configured is 
severely limited." 

The DOE site is difficult to navigate because documents were not 
yet indexed, some documents were not electronically linked and 
some text documents were in unreadable format, they said. 

A message on the DOE document website said it was "temporarily 
down for maintenance" on Friday. 

For comment or questions, please e-mail 
[webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com] Copyright © Pahrump Valley 
Times, 1997 - 2003 
*****************************************************************
 56 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Two states to sue for U.S. review of Hanford
 	 	 	 	 	 
[seattlepi.com]     

Thursday, July 8, 2004 

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER NEWS SERVICES

YAKIMA -- Washington and Oregon plan to sue the U.S. Department 
of Energy, demanding that the agency begin assessing what harm 40 
years of plutonium production has caused to natural resources at 
the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. 

A letter notifying the Energy Department of the states' intent 
will be filed today, said Elliott Furst, senior counsel for the 
Washington Attorney General's Office. 

"We're not asking for money for damages. It's very focused, 
asking that the court order the Department of Energy to start 
studying what injuries there will be to natural resources," he 
said. 

Kevin Neely, a spokesman for Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers, 
declined to comment until the letter has been filed, but said the 
state has been discouraged by the federal government's position 
and is prepared to take action. 

The Energy Department cannot respond until the letter has been 
received, spokeswoman Colleen Clark said.                 


  [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 
98119 (206) 448-8000
 
 Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com
*****************************************************************
 57 Tri-City Herald: Waste being retrieved from third tank 

This story was published Thursday, July 8th, 2004 

By Chris Mulick, Herald Olympia bureau 

The contractor managing Hanford's tank farms has begun retrieving 
waste from the third of 149 single-shell tanks using a new method 
for retrieving sludgelike materials. 

Under the Tri-Party Agreement -- the legal pact that governs 
Hanford cleanup -- all must be emptied in 14 years. Hanford's 177 
total tanks are home to 53 million gallons of radioactive waste 
generated from plutonium production during its Cold War nuclear 
weapons campaign and represent the reservation's greatest 
environmental challenge. 

Work to empty the first underground tank, C-106, finished in 
December, and CH2M Hill has removed about 90 percent of the waste 
so far in another -- S-112. 

Crews began removing 7,000 gallons of waste from four additional 
tanks in the C-200 series a week ago and are scheduled to finish 
by the end of August. 

The waste material is different than that removed from the first 
two tanks, which either dissolved or was suspended when large 
amounts of water were added using sluicing techniques. That 
method had the potential to multiply the amount of waste several 
times over for any one tank. 

The new system developed in CH2M Hill's test facility in north 
Richland uses a rotating high-powered vacuum nozzle with a 
high-pressure sprayer and is expected to use less than half the 
water the old method did. 

"This system will use considerably less," said Ryan Dodd, CH2M 
Hill's vice president for the project. 

The vacuum then will suck all the waste and added water into a 
second tank, which ultimately will be emptied into a double-shell 
tank for safer keeping until the waste can be treated. 

"It's basically like sticking a high-powered vacuum down into wet 
beach sand," said CH2M Hill spokesman Brad Hasty. 

Using less water not only cuts the amount of waste that needs to 
be treated, but also limits the potential for leaks during the 
removal process, Dodd said. 

But with only two shifts having worked to remove waste using the 
new method, so far it's difficult to say precisely how much water 
will be added. 

"That's still a bit of an unknown," Dodd said. "We're still in 
the early stages." 

Both techniques will be used as the remaining tanks are cleaned 
out, depending on the composition of the waste they hold. 

© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 58 ACA: Abraham Announces Nuclear Initiative

Arms Control Association: Arms Control Today
 
 [wade@armscontrol.org] 

The Department of Energy is making organizational changes and 
boosting funding to better keep global nuclear materials from 
falling into hostile hands, but two key projects with Russia 
remain stalled.
 
On May 26, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced a $450 
million initiative to accelerate existing programs intended to 
end the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) as fuel for research 
reactors and to retrieve all U.S.- and Russian-exported HEU, 
which is one of two fissile materials that can be used to build 
nuclear weapons (plutonium is the other).
 
Formally dubbed the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, the new 
effort also urges stepped-up action to secure other nuclear and 
radiological materials that could be used to make a so-called 
dirty bomb, a conventional explosive mixed with radioactive 
material.
 
While extolling the administration’s record on reducing the 
threat posed by nuclear materials worldwide, Abraham said, “[W]e 
would be fooling ourselves and endangering our citizens to think 
that these past efforts are enough.”
 
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic 
presidential nominee, has charged the Bush administration with 
being too lax in its approach (see page 34).
 
The Global Threat Reduction Initiative
 
In 1978 the United States launched a program to convert research 
reactors to operate with low-enriched uranium (LEU), which is not 
suitable for making nuclear weapons, instead of HEU. But budget 
constraints, the technical complexity of the conversion work, and 
reluctance by some governments to switch types of fuel have 
hampered the program. Only about a third of the 105 research 
reactors slated for conversion have been modified.
 
The new initiative aims essentially to convert a similar number 
within the next five years. It leaves open the question of when 
the last third of the reactors might be converted because an 
appropriate substitute LEU fuel is not yet available for them.
 
Abraham suggested June 14 that the administration’s initiative 
represents the most that can be done. “I know some have implied 
that this work can be done quicker. But the people who make those 
assertions are simply ignoring the realities of science,” he 
stated. Abraham added, “Changing a reactor core is not like 
changing the battery in your car.”
 
The initiative further calls for picking up the pace of a 1996 
program to retrieve about 20,000 kilograms of U.S.-origin 
enriched uranium, including roughly 5,000 kilograms of HEU, that 
have been exported to 41 countries. About 1,100 kilograms of HEU 
have been retrieved to date. 

Acknowledging that the program “has had a long history of not 
performing as well as it should,” Abraham said that would now 
change. “I made it clear…that I want this job done as soon as 
possible,” he declared. The secretary pledged to complete the 
work in a decade.
 
As another part of the initiative, the United States finalized a 
May 27 agreement with Russia to assist Moscow in retrieving some 
4,000 kilograms of HEU it exported to 17 countries. The goal is 
to finish this work by 2010.
 
The United States and Russia first explored repatriating Soviet 
and Russian HEU in the late 1990s. Operations during the Bush 
administration have recovered HEU from sites in Bulgaria, Libya, 
Romania, and Serbia. Prior to that, the United States helped 
remove HEU from Kazakhstan and Georgia. A research reactor in 
Uzbekistan is next in line.
 
Not all U.S.- and Russian-origin HEU is located in countries 
ready to return it. Iran and Pakistan are two notable examples. 
The United States, Russia, and the International Atomic Energy 
Agency are hosting an international conference this fall to 
discuss how to handle these more intractable situations.
 
In addition, the initiative commits the Energy Department to seek 
out any nuclear and radiological materials not covered by 
existing programs. “Once identified, we will secure, remove, 
relocate, or dispose of these materials and equipment in the 
quickest, safest manner possible,” the secretary stated. The 
Energy Department intends to pre-position equipment around the 
world to facilitate such missions.
 
A new office within the Energy Department’s National Nuclear 
Security Administration will manage the initiative.
 
Plutonium Projects Stuck in Neutral
 
Although seeking to speed up its efforts to reduce HEU threats, 
the United States is spinning its wheels when it comes to 
mitigating plutonium dangers. This inaction has upset some U.S. 
lawmakers.
 
At a June 15 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. 
Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) questioned whether Undersecretary of State 
for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton was 
trying hard enough to overcome obstacles holding up a 
U.S.-Russian agreement for both countries to dispose of 34 metric 
tons of plutonium.
 
Urging that the program be jump-started, Domenici, who oversees 
funding for the Energy Department as chairman of the relevant 
subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, argued, “If 
he can’t do it, somebody ought to…be put in his place that will 
do it.” Agreed to in principle in September 1998 and sealed two 
years later, the plutonium deal has been hampered by disagreement 
over accountability for any accidents.
 
“The issue that divides Russia and the United States at this 
point is whether we’re going to get liability protection 
equivalent to that which we’ve operated under for the past 12 
years or whether we’re prepared to accept a lesser liability 
protection,” Bolton explained at the hearing.
 
Bolton’s testimony failed to satisfy Chairman Richard Lugar 
(R-Ind.). “You’ve certainly illuminated the problems…but not 
really the solution,” Lugar remarked. Describing the situation as 
“very, very serious,” Lugar ventured that he and other senators 
might need to meet with the president to discuss the matter.
 
Lugar’s fellow Republican, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman 
Pat Roberts of Kansas, also had concerns with another languishing 
plutonium program with Russia and asked the General Accounting 
Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, to look into it. 
GAO reported in June that the program to shut down Russia’s final 
three plutonium production reactors is troubled.
 
Although Russia pledged in 1994 to cease operating the three 
reactors by 2000, it still has not done so. The deadline passed 
unfulfilled due to differences between Washington and Moscow over 
who should pay to provide nearby towns with the heat and energy 
that would be lost when the reactors shutdown. The Bush 
administration agreed in March 2003 to build one fossil-fuel 
facility and refurbish another to address Russian concerns. 

However, GAO found widespread confusion between U.S. and Russian 
entities—17 total—over managing work on the replacement 
facilities and Russian fears about finding future employment for 
displaced reactor workers. GAO further noted that Energy 
Department officials are worried about Russia’s ultimate 
intentions because it has refused to reduce the amount of 
plutonium the three reactors produce and to add safety features 
in the meantime.
 
The projected date for when the last of the three reactors will 
be shut down has slipped from 2006 to 2011. 

The Arms Control Association is a non-profit, membership-based 
organization. If you find our resources useful, please consider 
joining or making a contribution. Arms Control Today encourages 
reprint of its articles with permission of the Editor.
 
© 2004 Arms Control Association, 1150 Connecticut Avenue, NW, 
Suite 620 Washington, DC 20036 Tel: (202) 463-8270 | Fax: (202) 
463-8273
   


*****************************************************************
 59 Oak Ridger: Legality of Iraqi uranium transfer debated 							 							
 
Story last updated at 12:22 p.m. on July 8, 2004

NNSA REP: 'We are in custody of the material only, and we have 
the permission of the Iraqi government to take this out of the 
country.' 

from staff and wire reports

United Nations nuclear officials were in apparent disagreement 
with Washington over U.S. claims that it had the proper authority 
to transfer highly radioactive material from Iraq last month.

As part of the project, more than 20 experts from the Department 
of Energy's national laboratory complex - including some from Oak 
Ridge - packaged 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium and 
roughly 1,000 highly radioactive sources. Officials said the 
items could be used in so-called "dirty bombs."

The material had been placed under seal by the International 
Atomic Energy Agency at the Tuwaitha nuclear complex, 12 miles 
south of Baghdad. However, Department of Defense officials 
airlifted the material to the United States last month.

"The American authorities just informed us of their intention to 
remove the materials, but they never sought authorization from 
us," said Gustavo Zlauvinen, head of the IAEA's New York office.

Under U.N. resolutions adopted after the 1991 Gulf War, the IAEA 
was authorized to oversee the destruction of Iraq's nuclear 
program and monitor its activities to ensure that the program was 
not revived.

Paul Longsworth, deputy administrator for defense nuclear 
nonproliferation in the National Nuclear Security Administration, 
said Wednesday the United States didn't need IAEA approval for 
the transfer.

"We believe we have the legal authority to do it," he said. "We 
are in custody of the material only, and we have the permission 
of the Iraqi government to take this out of the country."

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, in disclosing the secret 
airlift Tuesday, called it "a major achievement" in efforts to 
"keep potentially dangerous nuclear material out of the hands of 
terrorists."

The airlift ended on June 23, five days before the United States 
transferred sovereignty to Iraq's new interim government.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said in a letter to the 
Security Council circulated Wednesday that Washington informed 
the agency on June 19, 2003, that "due to security concerns" it 
intended to transfer some nuclear material stored at Tuwaitha to 
the United States.

Also, a DOE news release issued on Tuesday stated: "The 
International Atomic Energy Agency was advised in advance of the 
U.S. intentions to remove the nuclear materials. Iraqi officials 
were briefed about the removal of the materials and sources prior 
to evacuation."

However, a U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, 
said there was some concern about the legality of the U.S. 
transfer because the nuclear material belonged to Iraq and was 
under the control and supervision of the IAEA.

Longsworth said the material was now at a facility where it can 
be examined by the IAEA. Officials declined to confirm whether 
any of the material was transported to Oak Ridge. 







*****************************************************************
 60 Oak Ridger: American Ecology site sold 							 							 							
 
Story last updated at 12:22 p.m. on July 8, 2004

By: Paul Parson | Oak Ridger Staff
paul.parson@oakridger.com [paul.parson@oakridger.com] 

A former Oak Ridge low-level radioactive waste processing
facility is off the market, but it's unknown exactly what will
happen to it.

Chip Hyslop, a spokesman for American Ecology Corp., confirmed
Wednesday afternoon that the company sold its facility at 109
Flint Road to Anaheim, Calif.-based Toxco Inc.

Terry Adams, Toxco's president, did not return calls for
comment regarding the fate of the 16-acre, state-licensed
facility. However, a news release noted that the site "provides
Toxco with an excellent location and the infrastructure to
expand their existing business."

Toxco is currently leasing space at the Department of Energy's
Oak Ridge K-25 site. The company's local operation focuses on
the recycling of all types of metals, and its primary customer
is the federal government.

Under the terms of the transaction, Toxco got all of the
facility's land, buildings, equipment and licenses pertaining to
the Flint Road site. Additionally, the company received $1.65
million in cash in exchange for assuming all environmental
obligations, including the costs for future closure and
decommissioning of the facility at the end of its operational
life.

In a press statement, American Ecology President Stephen Romano
said the transaction concluded a two-year-plus effort to "exit
this and other non-core businesses, allowing us to focus on our
core hazardous and radioactive waste treatment and disposal
business." The transaction also relieved $4.6 million worth of
environmental liabilities from American Ecology's balance sheet
and will result in a gain on sale of approximately $1 million.

Boise, Idaho-based American Ecology reportedly acquired the
Flint Road waste processing facility in 1994 and operated the
business through a subsidiary known as American Ecology Recycle
Center Inc. Commercial operations were discontinued in December
2002, followed by reductions in the facility's labor force and
the removal of all customer waste from the facility by July
2003, according to company officials. 







*****************************************************************
 61 lamonitor.com: Panel reviews cleanup progress 

The Online News Source for Los Alamos

[http://www.lac-nm.us]   

ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

A state legislative committee on radioactive and hazardous
materials plied local officials in Los Alamos on Tuesday for
information on the status of the consent agreement between Los
Alamos National Laboratory and the New Mexico Environment
Department. 

LANL's Beverly Ramsey, who leads the lab's Risk Reduction and 
Environmental Stewardship Division, and Joe Vozella, assistant 
manager of facility operations at the Los Alamos Site Office, 
gave a joint presentation.

Vozella, who represented the National Nuclear Security 
Administration in negotiations, said his best guess was the 
public would have its first look at a version of the document by 
the end of this month or early next. 

He said while the consent order is still under negotiation he 
could not divulge everything, but he could give a more general 
status report since the parties had agreed to agree.

The state has compiled a 270-page draft, he said, which has been 
shared with the lab and DOE, who have already sent comments back. 
Those are now being incorporated in the document in preparation 
for a 60-day period of public input. Resolving those comments 
will require another 60 days, and might include "substantive 
changes," he said, which in turn could require more negotiations 
and therefore more time.

Speaking from the audience, Joni Arends, executive director of 
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, gave an example of 
concerns that might be expected during the public comment period. 
She noted that the Hanford Site in Washington State had won DOE's 
promise that no more radioactive waste would be deposited in 
unlined trenches.

"That should be part of this agreement," she said.

Vozella responded that radionucleides were not addressed as a 
part of the consent order. DOE has maintained that federal rather 
than state laws govern issues relating to radioactive materials.

Vozella said earlier that DOE and the University of California, 
which manages the LANL contract, have agreed to share 
radionucleide information with the state of New Mexico.

"We do not have to concur with the state," he said, but added 
radiological issues would be cooperatively addressed.

Under DOE's plan and the consent agreement, hazardous and mixed 
wastes at LANL as well as radioactive waste are all scheduled to 
be cleaned up by 2015.

Ramsey said there were two pieces of good news. One was that the 
lab, the state, and the federal government were all cooperating 
on a workable document. The other was that clean up was not being 
held up by the lengthy process for reaching an agreement.

"We are not waiting for the signatures on the order," she said. 
"We are doing the work. Nothing has stopped."

Rep. John Heaton, D-Eddy, who demonstrated familiarity with Waste 
Isolation Pilot Project issues from his home district, asked 
several questions about the end state condition promised by the 
cleanup plan.

"We can almost measure down to a molecule," he asked, "so how do 
we determine how clean is clean?"

Vozella said that the state standards are related to the 
specified land-use of a given piece of land, whether residential 
or industrial, for example, and that those standards would be 
kept under covenants in the land transfer agreement.

Ramsey said the biggest challenge under the consent order would 
be protection of ground water.

"We need to be proactive about that," she said.

She said the Material Disposal Areas, including 12 large waste 
dumps, and issues of surface water, involving storm water run-off 
from the laboratory would be challenging.

"You don't know how happy I am to hear that the clean up action 
has been set in place, said Sen. Richard Martinez, D-Los Alamos, 
Rio Arriba, Sandoval.

Sen. Mary Jane Garcia, D-Dona Ana, said she had found NMED 
Secretary Ron Curry most responsive for issues in her part of the 
state and thanked the lab and DOE for working with him.

The committee also heard an unclassified presentation on the 
current status of plutonium pit production at the laboratory by 
Jim Ostic, acting project leader for pit production at the lab. 
Accompanying him was Robert Dodge, team leader for waste 
operations.

Ostic told the committee the lab had made four plutonium pits 
this year, triggers for nuclear weapons, and that the goal of the 
lab's provisional manufacturing capability was to produce 10 per 
year by 2007.

Dodge said the waste stream as measured in 55-gallon drums may 
have increased slightly, but that, "The amount of waste is going 
down from what I see on our daily job."

A decision on where to build a new plutonium pit manufacturing 
facility is still on hold by NNSA, awaiting congressional 
approval. Two sites in New Mexico were under consideration under 
DOE's draft environmental impact statement, WIPP and LANL.

The committee also heard a report from Rod Linn on what 
firefighting capabilities could be gained from advances in 
wildfire modeling.

; and Tim DeLong, the new chair of the Northern New Mexico 
Citizens Advisory Board briefed them on that group's role in 
laboratory environmental issues.

After the public hearing the committee toured the new Emergency 
Operations Center.   

  © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.   
*****************************************************************
 62 PISJ: Hatch Act infraction at INEEL investigated

Pocatello Idaho State Journal: 

By Holden Parrish [hparrish@journalnet.com] - Assistant City
Editor 

ARCO - A possible Hatch Act infraction at the Idaho National 
Engineering and Environmental Laboratory has been investigated 
and dismissed. However, action was taken to address the matter in 
hopes of avoiding repeat occurrences, a site spokesman said 
Wednesday.

The complaint centered around a series of forwarded e-mail 
messages that appear to have originated at the federally funded 
facility. The messages contain a series of testimonials 
attributed to U.S. military veterans who served in Vietnam 
alongside or during the same time as Democratic presidential 
candidate John Kerry, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. 
  
The comments were generally not favorable to Kerry. Also, another 
INEEL staffer who received the e-mail forwarded it to other site 
employees with the appended remark, "Let's get this out to as 
many people as we can. This commie, pinko, traitor."

Site management took immediate action in response to the 
complaint. "We sent out a note reminding (site workers) that 
they're not supposed to be using government equipment for 
non-government purposes such as this," said John Walsh, INEEL's 
public affairs specialist. "We're reminding people that this is 
not a proper use of government equipment nor of their time here 
at work."

One of the Hatch Act's provisions prohibits federal employees 
from using government property to promote their political 
beliefs. However, because the original author was an employee 
with Bechtel BWXT Idaho - the private company that manages the 
laboratory - and not directly employed by the U.S. Department of 
Energy, Walsh said the issue is not a Hatch Act violation. 
Nevertheless, he added sending such e-mails is against company 
policy.

"I think people sometimes forget what the rules are, so it's just 
something we need to remind them of," he said. The Hatch Act, 
which Congress passed Aug. 2, 1939, limits the involvement 
federal agencies and employees can have in political campaigns 
and elections. The act has twice been appealed to the Supreme 
Court, failing both times.

Penalties for violating the act include suspension without pay, 
termination and even the elimination of funding for a terminated 
position. 

Copyright © 2004 Pocatello Idaho State Journal
 P O Box 431 Pocatello, ID 83204-0431   
*****************************************************************
 63 Daily Texan Viewpoint: UT and Los Alamos- A shared silence - 

- Opinion
 
Opinion | 7/8/2004 
 
It's hard to visit the University's Microelectronics and Computer 
Technology Corporation building without an attentive reception.

A guard's desk, glowing with surveillance terminals, stands 
between the door and the lobby. Cameras seem to peer from every 
wall and ceiling. Having signed in, a visitor is escorted to his 
or her location. The visitor then must sign out at a second desk 
when leaving a floor. That sheet includes a space for a check 
mark - to indicate whether the visit was classified or not. 

A Daily Texan reporter visited one afternoon in March 2003, and 
military officials had paid a few classified visits already. 

The biodefense researcher whom the Texan was interviewing there 
declined to be photographed inside. The building's interior, he 
said, was designed for security.

Across the highway from the MCC, one can also find plenty of 
cameras, guards and national security classification at the J.J. 
Pickle Research Campus. This complex includes the Applied 
Research Laboratories, heavily funded from military research, 
including a past contract for work on mine warfare.

This is how the University treats a good deal of its federal 
research.

Some supporters of a UT System Los Alamos bid are arguing 
something different. If the System manages the national 
laboratory, they say, students will have more access to 
information about what happens there.

For engineering and physics doctoral candidates with federal 
security clearance, this assertion could be true. For everybody 
else who reads the Texan on the bus from Riverside, it almost 
certainly would be false.

To show why, we offer three examples of secrecy.


Blocking sunshine


"It is the position of UTMB that all records generated by the 
[biosafety committee] are confidential by statute."

- UT System letter to Attorney General Greg Abbott, July 25, 2003


"Inside the BSL-4 laboratory will be anything but sunshine and 
palms. When the laboratory opens this summer, the deadliest of 
viruses will live within its 10-inch-thick concrete shell, to be 
studied by world-class experts on infectious diseases."

- from the Jan. 23, 2003 issue of The Daily Texan


Biosafety level 4 laboratories are rare enough and dangerous 
enough to put Edward Hammond, of local watchdog group The 
Sunshine Project, on edge. Especially in Texas. When the UT 
Medical Branch in Galveston began to construct one, Hammond was 
curious what might happen inside its walls. 

From a cramped downtown office more fit for a private eye, 
Hammond sent e-mail after e-mail to find out. UTMB, after all, 
had promised Galveston residents it wouldn't perform classified 
research in the new laboratory. Wouldn't that promise imply the 
administration would allow public scrutiny?

Hammond claims to have requested information informally eight 
times, but five of those requests were ignored. He also filed 
five formal open records requests.

UTMB would hardly budge.

It appealed each of Hammond's open records requests to Texas 
Attorney General Greg Abbott (three requests led to partial 
releases of information). In one ruling, Abbott said a state 
health and safety law restricted minutes of a biosafety 
committee. Abbott's office expressed second thoughts after 
learning the interpretation conflicted with National Institutes 
of Health guidelines.

Hammond complained to the NIH. After he asked for the meeting 
minutes again, UTMB finally released them.

In another ruling, over the application for a biodefense grant, 
the attorney general took Hammond's side. The UT System sued; its 
lawsuit remains pending.

Biodefense research is less sensitive than nuclear research. The 
materials Hammond sought certainly weren't classified. Federal 
regulations even specified that the biosafety committee minutes 
be open. 

The hazards of defense research - especially biological or 
nuclear research - mean a laboratory's surrounding community 
ought to know as much as it can about what projects are approved 
and undertaken. But it wouldn't surprise anyone if System 
officials fought mechanisms for public oversight at Los Alamos, 
just as they did in Galveston.


Baiting bin Laden


"I just have to be very careful. I don't think anybody will be 
posting their list. The feds cannot divulge that information 
under the Freedom of Information Act. It's not necessarily just 
UT-Austin that would not like to see this stuff in the 
newspaper."

- Erle Janssen, UT director of environmental health and safety, 
March 25, 2003


UT researchers study anthrax. And ebola. And botulinum toxin. And 
ricin. At times, they keep some such agents on campus, where 
50,000 students walk each day.

But the System had to drop an open records lawsuit before we 
could find that out.

In 2002, the Texan requested a copy of a report to the Centers 
for Disease Control on which "select agents" the University 
possesses. The University denied it. Then, after an unfavorable 
ruling from the attorney general, the System sued his office.

Patricia Ohlendorf, UT vice president for legal affairs, said the 
document exposed a vulnerability to terrorist attacks.

"We feel confident that our position is consistent with our 
obligation to try and ensure a safe campus," Ohlendorf told the 
Texan in a story published March 4, 2003.

But then the CDC changed the amounts of select agents that an 
entity must report. For 2003, the University had to report only 
two agents, rather than the 11 it reported in 2002.

So on March 25, three weeks after Ohlendorf invoked the fear of 
al-Qaida, the University released the list. The lawsuit was 
dropped.

"First, [UT officials] don't want people to be harassed," Erle 
Janssen, UT director of environmental health and safety, told the 
Texan, defending the secrecy and declining to say which 
researchers worked with the select agents. "We don't want 
[researchers] put in danger, their lab put in danger, or 
certainly, their research put in danger." (These remarks were not 
published in the March 27, 2003 story.)

But the University's action conflicted with its stance. Either 
the list was terrorist bait - and therefore should be kept secret 
- or it wasn't. The CDC's decision should not affect a judgment 
of that risk.

It's plausible that the CDC's change in requirements assured UT 
officials the amounts were too small to attract, say, a Hamas 
delegation. But if that were the case, Janssen was silly to spout 
terror-scare rhetoric.

The University poorly assesses the sensitivity of its own 
documents. Given these exaggerations, how could UT officials 
responsibly handle both unclassified and classified federal 
records at Los Alamos?


Download, detonate

"A successful balance between these two needs - security and 
openness - demands clarity in the distinctions between classified 
and unclassified research. We believe it to be essential that 
these distinctions not include poorly defined categories of 
'sensitive but unclassified' information that do not provide 
precise guidelines on what information should be restricted from 
public access."

 - Bruce Alberts, William Wulf and Harvey Fineberg, presidents of 
the National Academies, Oct. 18, 2002



"The fundamental issue as I see it is that either information is 
classified, so that you know up front that it is very 
restricted-access, or it is not."

- Juan Sanchez, UT vice president for research, Nov. 11, 2002


In a lingering irony, one Los Alamos Web page, 
lib-www.lanl.gov/lww/welcome.html, is called "Library Without 
Walls."

It used to be just that. Anyone could access thousands of 
unclassified publications posted on the site, according to the 
Albuquerque Journal. This was before officials began what the 
Federation of American Scientists calls a "purge" of federal Web 
sites after Sept. 11, 2001.

The walls closed in. In December 2001, about 30,000 documents of 
significance to nuclear history were yanked from the Web.

Two site visitors managed to save copies of about 15 percent of 
the lost documents, according to the Journal, and the public can 
still obtain paper copies from a federal information service. 

That these documents are still public information ruins the 
pretext for taking them off-line. A terrorist itching to detonate 
bombs on government property won't get second thoughts from 
holding out for a hard copy of the battle plan. One with enough 
fortitude to attempt overthrowing the government surely can wait 
on U.S. Mail.

Perhaps Los Alamos officials believe the mere online presence of 
plans and technical reports will be enough to lure potential 
terrorists, as open doors may entice burglars. This perspective 
doesn't account for the breadth of information still available to 
anyone. A March 25 RAND Corporation study makes this point well: 



"Lacking critical information on a target could in theory 
discourage an attacker from proceeding with a given attack. In 
practice, however, an opportunistic attacker, such as a terrorist 
group, can exploit diverse information sources (ranging from 
direct observation to publicly available geospatial information) 
to meet critical information needs, while the defender faces the 
challenge of denying the attacker access to all relevant sources 
of information."



Linton Brooks of the National Nuclear Security Administration 
recently blamed two Los Alamos workers' radiation exposures on a 
"deficient safety culture." Perhaps Brooks should observe that 
secrecy, too, is its own culture.

Los Alamos and the System aren't to blame for the 
homeland-security fetish that state and federal governments have 
chased passionately. The blame is theirs when, as Los Alamos did, 
they follow illogical government directives. The blame is theirs 
when, as UT officials did, they buy the hysteria so thoroughly 
that any document is a possible attack plan.

We don't know enough about nuclear science to say whether the UT 
System is a worthy manager for Los Alamos.

But it's clear the System and the national laboratory make a fine 
match in one respect: lousy information policy.             

*****************************************************************
 64 DOE: whom it is not feasible to estimate their radiation dose, and on 
 
                        FR Doc 04-15505 
[Federal Register: July 8, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 130)] 
[Notices] [Page 41267] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr08jy04-73]                         
 
whether there is reasonable likelihood that such radiation doses 
may have endangered the health of members of this class.
 
Background: The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health met 
on May 17, 2004, in closed session to discuss the Proposed 
Independent Government Cost Estimate (IGCE) for the Board's Task 
Order contract and a submitted proposal of work. This contract, 
once awarded, will provide technical support to assist the Board 
in fulfilling its statutory duty to advise the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services regarding the dose reconstruction 
efforts under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness 
Compensation Program Act. A Determination to Close the meeting 
was approved and published, as required by the Federal Advisory 
Committee Act.
 
Summary of the Meeting: Attendance was as follows: Board Members: 
Paul L. Ziemer, Ph.D., Chair Larry J. Elliott, Executive 
Secretary Henry A. Anderson, M.D., Member Roy L. DeHart, M.D., 
M.P.H., Member Richard L. Espinosa, Member Michael H. Gibson, 
Member Mark A. Griffon, Member James M. Melius, M.D., Dr.P.H., 
Member Wanda I. Munn, Member Charles L. Owens, Member Robert W. 
Presley, Member Genevieve S. Roessler, Ph.D., Member NIOSH Staff: 
Martha DiMuzio, Cori Homer, Liz Homoki-Titus, and Jim Neton. Ray 
S. Green, Court Recorder. Summary/Minutes: Dr. Ziemer called to 
order the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health (ABRWH) 
in closed session on May 17, 2004 at 9:05 a.m. The purpose of the 
closed meeting was to discuss the Proposed IGCE for the Board's 
Task Order contract and a submitted proposal of work.
 
General topics discussed: Closed session procedures.
 
IGCE for task proposals of the task order contract.
 
Dr. Paul Ziemer adjourned the closed session of the ABRWH meeting 
at 11:30 a.m. with no further business being conducted by the 
ABRWH.
 
Contact Person for More Information: Larry Elliott, Executive 
Secretary, ABRWH, NIOSH, CDC, 4676 Columbia Parkway, Cincinnati, 
Ohio 45226, telephone (513) 533-6825, fax (513) 533-6826.
 
The Director, Management Analysis and Services Office, has been 
delegated the authority to sign Federal Register notices 
pertaining to announcements of meetings and other committee 
management activities for both CDC and the Agency for Toxic 
Substances and Disease Registry.
 
Dated: July 1, 2004.
 
Alvin Hall, Director, Management Analysis and Services Office, 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
 
[FR Doc. 04-15505 Filed 7-7-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4163-19-P

 
*****************************************************************
 65 DOE: DOE/NSF Nuclear Science Advisory Committee
 
                        FR Doc 04-15522 
[Federal Register: July 8, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 130)] 
[Notices] [Page 41242] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr08jy04-47]                         
 
AGENCY: Department of Energy.
 
ACTION: Notice of open meeting.
 
SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the DOE/NSF Nuclear 
Science Advisory Committee (NSAC). Federal Advisory Committee Act 
(Pub. L. 92- 463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of 
these meetings be announced in the Federal Register.
 
 
DATES: Monday, August 2, 2004; 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
 
ADDRESSES: Doubletree Hotel, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, 
Maryland 20852-1699.
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Brenda L. May, U.S. Department 
of Energy; SC-90/Germantown Building, 1000 Independence Avenue, 
SW., Washington, DC 20585-1290; Telephone: 301-903-0536.
 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of Meeting: To provide advice 
and guidance on a continuing basis to the Department of Energy 
and the National Science Foundation on scientific priorities 
within the field of basic nuclear science research.
 
Tentative Agenda: Agenda will include discussions of the 
following: Monday, August 2, 2004.
 
Perspectives from Department of Energy and National Science 
Foundation.
 
Presentation and Discussion on the Interim Report from the 
Sub-Committee on Education.
 
Presentation and Discussion on the Interim Report from the 
Sub-Committee on Heavy Ion Nuclear Physics.
 
Public Comment (10-minute rule) Public Participation: The meeting 
is open to the public. If you would like to file a written 
statement with the Committee, you may do so either before or 
after the meeting. If you would like to make oral statements 
regarding any of these items on the agenda, you should contact 
Brenda L. May, 301-903-0536 or [Brenda.May@science.doe.gov]  (e- 
mail). You must make your request for an oral statement at least 
5 business days before the meeting. Reasonable provision will be 
made to include the scheduled oral statements on the agenda. The 
Chairperson of the Committee will conduct the meeting to 
facilitate the orderly conduct of business. Public comment will 
follow the 10-minute rule.
 
Minutes: The minutes of the meeting will be available for public 
review and copying within 60 days at the Freedom of Information 
Public Reading Room; Room 1E-190; Forrestal Building; 1000 
Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC., between 9 a.m. and 4 
p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays.
 
Issued at Washington, DC on July 1, 2004.
 
Rachel M. Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee, Management Officer.
 
[FR Doc. 04-15522 Filed 7-7-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 66 [DU-WATCH] Animated Timeline Of Nuclear Activities In The US
 
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 01:43:10 -0500 (CDT)

 
 Animated Timeline Of Nuclear Activities In The US
> 
<http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/poifu/poifu.swf>htt
p://www.an\
imatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/poifu/poifu.swf
> Found through Mark Elsis' Progressive News Links -
> Updated daily!

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 67 [du-list] DU in the news - July 9th 04
 
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 21:54:34 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
UN Didn't OK Uranium Transfer to US
ABC News - USA
... After 1992, roughly 2 tons of natural uranium, or yellow cake, some
low enriched uranium and some depleted uranium was left at Tuwaitha under
IAEA seal and ...
<<http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040707_2166.html>http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040707_2166.html>

WEDNESDAY'S Canadian Briefs
Detroit Free Press - Detroit,MI,USA
... Our whole case hinges on that," Hinzman said following the proceedings.
"If I was going to go shoot depleted uranium rounds at Iraqi children,
or into the ...
<<http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw100675_20040707.htm>http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw100675_20040707.htm>

US deserter seeks refuge in Canada
The Globe and Mail - Canada
... If I was going to go shoot depleted uranium rounds at Iraqi children
or in Iraq ground and raise the cancer rates ... then that ...
<<http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040707.whinz0707/BNStory/National/>http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040707.whinz0707/BNStory/National/>

NEWS & Info Links
ProgressiveTrail.org - McMinnville,OR,USA
... and the Pentagon have launched two nuclear wars in the last three years-and
let us not deceive ourselves, spreading tons of depleted uranium on Afghanistan
...
<<http://progressivetrail.org/articles/040708Nimmo.shtml>http://progressivetrail.org/articles/040708Nimmo.shtml>

GEORGE Person: This is not Saddam RESPONSE
Pravda - Moscow,Russia
... better than the tooth of the serpent,and the lies of his wife Salome,
we have his DNA, and we have his two sons' DNA...it's really a depleted
uranium bullet of ...
<<http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/395/13312_Saddam.html>http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/395/13312_Saddam.html>


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 68 Las Vegas Mercury: The ultimate public-private partnership 

Thursday, Jul 8, 2004, 09:58:30 PM 

Thursday, July 08, 2004 

Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury 

Bigelow, NASA now working together on space hotel 

By George Knapp 

When a tiny, odd-shaped rocket contraption dubbed SpaceShipOne 
floated down to the Mojave Desert last month after a 
62-mile-high jaunt into space, it was a milestone in the 
commercial development of the wild blue yonder. Aviation wizard 
Burt Rutan, the designer of SpaceShipOne, was proud to have 
achieved space flight without accepting any government dollars. 
Las Vegas businessman Bob Bigelow can relate. 

A mere five years ago, Bigelow, owner of the Budget Suites of 
America hotel chain, announced his intention to get into the 
space race. Not many people paid attention, or gave him much of 
a chance. But 16 months from now, Bigelow's first creation is 
scheduled for blast-off into a low orbit above the earth. If it 
works as planned, the development of space will never be the 
same. 

It shouldn't be a surprise that Bigelow received a VIP 
invitation to the debut of SpaceShipOne. He not only knows Burt 
Rutan well, but knows that the future of Bigelow Aerospace may 
be inextricably linked to the success of people like Rutan. 
Rutan and 25 other groups around the world are competing for the 
X Prize, a $10 million award that will go to the first team to 
build a private, reusable spaceship. Assuming that some of these 
spacecraft really do work, they will need someplace to go once 
they get into orbit. That's where Bigelow comes in. 

The NASA turnaround 

Few journalists have been allowed inside the secure confines of 
the 50-acre "space campus" Bigelow Aerospace has built in North 
Las Vegas, and with good reason. Bigelow has long shunned any 
kind of publicity for himself, and since he is investing up to 
$500 million of his personal fortune into the aerospace company, 
he's reluctant to give away too much information to potential 
competitors. It's the same reason his facility is surrounded by 
fences, gates, cameras and an imposing security force made up of 
ex-military types. 

"Now, though, it may be time to talk," Bigelow told the 
Mercury. "NASA thinks so too." 

Bigelow's new relationship with NASA represents a stunning 
turnaround since this newspaper first visited the aerospace 
plant almost two years ago. At that time, Bigelow had little 
good to say about NASA. He accused the government's space agency 
of being an impediment to the commercial development of space, 
and delivered a blistering indictment of NASA's many failures. 
That was then. Now, it appears, NASA has taken many of Bigelow's 
criticisms to heart. 

"Business as usual isn't going to work," said NASA chief Sean 
O'Keefe in early May. O'Keefe told a presidential commission 
that NASA would have to undergo a complete transformation, 
including a cultural makeover, if Americans are ever going to 
achieve a permanent presence in space, including possible 
missions to Mars and the moon. A key part of the new strategy is 
the reliance on private companies to do much of the work, but 
without NASA's typically bloated contracts. 

Bigelow has not only buried the hatchet with the space agency, 
he finds himself in partnership with NASA. Bigelow Aerospace has 
signed three "Space Act Agreements" with NASA. These agreements 
provide for an ongoing exchange of personnel and technology, the 
joint testing of Bigelow projects at NASA facilities, and the 
transfer of NASA patents to Bigelow. 

"NASA has hitched its wagon to us," Bigelow says. "They're here 
every other week now because this is the technology that they 
will depend on in the future." 

Bigelow Aerospace is pursuing what it hopes will become the 
building block of all future space stations, near-Earth outposts 
and long-range missions. It's an inflatable module that is 
likely to become the space habitat of the future. NASA had its 
own inflatable habitat program called Transhab, but the program 
was canceled years ago because of budget problems and technical 
challenges. Bigelow picked up where NASA left off and in just a 
few years has taken the technology far beyond the government's 
original program. 
"If we're going to get to Mars or go back to the moon within our 
lifetimes, it's going to be this technology," said NASA's Glenn 
Miller, assistant director of engineering at Johnson Space 
Center, during a recent visit to Bigelow Aerospace. "In the 
history of the space program, we've always been limited to 
metallic structures and pressurized volumes, which is a problem 
because of the weight. It's not cheap to get it up there. 
Inflatable technology is much lighter and much cheaper. If we 
can get more up there at a cheaper price, we can open up space 
to commercialization and exploration. This is critical to our 
getting back to the moon." 

A hotel in space 

The key to Bigelow's success--or failure--is cost. It's always 
been his intention to bring tight-fisted business principles to 
the aerospace industry, and his inflatable habitat technology 
seems to epitomize that approach. Bigelow told us two years ago 
that if he "only" cuts the cost of space habitat in half, he 
will have failed. His inflatable modules need to achieve a 
quantum leap in cost reduction if they are going to make the 
impact Bigelow fully expects. 

"The technology itself isn't that complicated," Bigelow says. 
"But we've had to reinvent the process. Instead of handing out 
fat contracts to all of the usual suspects, the big contractors, 
we're doing this on our own, looking for the best deals we can 
find. The big contractors have been charging NASA 50 times what 
something costs. They did it because they could get away with 
it. Not us. We haven't accepted a dime of government money." 

To understand just how revolutionary Bigelow's projected cost 
savings might be, consider the International Space Station. By 
2010, this troubled project will have cost a total of $50 
billion, will be 10 years behind schedule and will contain about 
half of the habitable work space that had been planned, around 
550 cubic meters. Just two of Bigelow's planned modules will 
exceed the entire work space of the ISS, but since the modules 
will cost around $100 million apiece, the savings become 
obvious. Two hundred million dollars vs. $50 billion is quite a 
difference, enough of a difference to entice other private 
companies into the new space race. 

"More space at a cheaper price allows companies to do 
large-scale things," NASA's Miller says. "Instead of boxes, you 
get rooms, for experiments, for equipment, for manufacturing. 
The next generation of medicines, the next generation of 
materials and technology could all come from the zero-gravity 
environment. This is where people are going to make a lot of 
money. And that will really accelerate the science and create 
direct benefits for humans on Earth." 

One of Bigelow's stated goals is the development of the first 
space hotel. A hotel in space would mean that Burt Rutan and 
other companies that are working to build reusable spacecraft, 
perhaps as part of a future "space airline," would have 
someplace to take their passengers. (Bigelow and Rutan have 
talked about working together, according to well-placed 
sources.) Bigelow is thus providing his own incentive to all the 
resuable rocket companies to step up the pace. 
While a night at the Bigelow MoonPort would certainly be more 
expensive than, say, a stay at Budget Suites, there is no 
shortage of well-heeled space enthusiasts who would be willing 
to pay big bucks for the adventure of a lifetime. A recent 
survey by an adventure travel agency found at least 10,000 
people who would be willing to shell out $1 million apiece for a 
stay in space. Bigelow figures he can eventually get the cost of 
a space trip to a far more affordable level, in the 
$50,000-$100,000 range, which is about the cost of a really good 
car. 

Bigelow has put a lot of thought into what space tourists would 
do while they're up there--everything from laser light shows on 
the dark side of the moon to phone calls placed to envious 
friends back home, to short space walks. The one attraction he 
doesn't like to talk about is the chance for his guests to get a 
little "space nookie." Since humans are inherently horny, there 
is no question that some space tourists would take the trip just 
so they could join the 62-Mile-High Club. Bigelow acknowledges 
this likelihood, but worries that salacious visions of space sex 
will detract attention from the more serious applications of his 
technology. 

Mars or bust 

Inside the Bigelow Aerospace plant, all sorts of odd 
experiments have played out over the past few years. Several 
times a year, the company puts one of its model modules to the 
ultimate test. Using water and air pressure, engineers stretch 
the modules to their absolute limits, straining them until they 
blow up. Considering the cost of the individual modules, it's 
sort of like driving a Mercedes off a cliff every time they do 
it. 

The engineers still haven't decided what the modules will be 
made of. Whatever the material, it will have to be lightweight 
and very strong. They've already looked at everything from 
traditional sail fabric, like the stuff used on sailing ships, 
to more exotic materials such as metallic glass. Amazingly, 
scientists believe these lighter materials will result in space 
habitats that are even stronger and safer than the metal shells 
that have been used in every spacecraft to date. 

Bigelow and his engineers believe the lightweight habitats they 
are building will provide better protection against dangers such 
as micro-meteorites and cosmic radiation than do current 
metallic hulls. If they are proven correct, it means his 
creations could become the centerpiece of a permanent base on 
the moon. They could also provide workspace and living quarters 
for a manned mission to Mars. The advantage of having crew 
quarters that are less cramped is more than just a matter of 
comfort. 

"You would have a much larger area in which people could 
exercise. More area would allow us to build centrifuges that 
would reduce the effects of zero gravity on the human body," 
says Miller of NASA, who acknowledges that the conquest of 
safety concerns would make missions to Mars or the moon far more 
likely than they are now. 

So when do we go? 

When Bigelow's engineers told him they needed a high-tech valve 
that would serve as a key component of the life support system 
on board the inflatable modules, Bigelow went shopping. American 
aerospace giants were willing to sell him the valve at costs 
that ranged from $300,000 to $1 million. Bigelow found and 
purchased the same valve from a European company. The cost for 
the identical valve? A mere $5,000. 
"This is pretty typical of what's wrong with the American 
aerospace industry and with American companies in general," 
Bigelow says. "Whether it's steel or automobiles or textiles, 
Americans have priced themselves out of the world market. Now 
our dominance in space technology has evaporated as well. We 
don't have a space shuttle or a space plane, and our American 
launchers are simply not affordable for the delivery of any 
large systems." 

Bigelow was able to purchase a life support system from a 
German company. The complete system cost only $1.3 million. If 
he had purchased the same system from American companies, it 
would have cost in the neighborhood of $100 million, he says. It 
isn't hard to understand why European, Chinese and other space 
efforts are now eclipsing those of the United States, why 
commercialization of space has been stymied, and why NASA has 
called for a shakeup in how our nation conducts its space 
business. 
Bigelow isn't wasting any time in getting his gear up there. His 
plant is building 13 models of his Genesis Pathfinder module, 
which is one-third the size of the full-scale Nautilus, the 
model that could become the standard habitat for future space 
programs. The first Genesis model is scheduled for a launch into 
space in November 2005. Bigelow signed a contract with Space X, 
a private rocket company in California. 

A second launch of a Pathfinder is slated for April 2006. For 
that launch, Bigelow signed an agreement with the Russians. The 
company, Kosmotras, plans to use converted Russian SS-18 
missiles (minus their nuclear warheads) to carry payloads into 
space. Kosmotros could carry as many as six Pathfinders into 
space--if Bigelow receives approval from the U.S. State 
Department. 

If everything works as planned, and no unforeseen engineering 
problems are discovered with Pathfinder, the first Genesis 
module will be sent up in late 2008. From there, it's all 
downhill...or is that uphill? 

Bigelow admits that many people thought he was a bit goofy to 
pour his money into a project that is, to put it mildy, a 
longshot. Bigelow himself figures he has only a 50-50 chance of 
ever getting his money back, let alone of making a profit. But 
of course, it is his money, and since his is not a publicly 
traded corporation, the only stockholder he needs to answer to 
is Mrs. Bigelow. So far, she's on board. 

Sometime later this year or early next year, the lid of secrecy 
over Bigelow Aerospace will be lifted for good. The company 
plans to open up its plant for regular tours by local science 
students. When that happens, local residents will begin to 
realize that what is happening at the space campus in North Las 
Vegas could end up changing human history in ways that we can 
barely imagine. 
"We are definitely moving in the same direction and on a 
parallel path with Bob," says NASA's Miller. "He's come a long 
way in a short time and we want to make sure that he succeeds. 
We're building real hardware here and it's destined for space." 

Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury, 2001 - 2004 
    
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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: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
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