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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 Las Vegas SUN: Kay Criticizes Bush, Blair on Iraq Intel
2 Guardian Unlimited: Like Jeeves, this Butler's first language is Eup
3 Guardian Unlimited: Clinton reopens book on Iraqi bid to buy 
4 The Observer: How intelligence was bent to one will and purpose
5 BBC: Blair 'in dark' over Iraq report 
6 BBC: Iraq intelligence: New questions? 
7 Sunday Herald: Safety fears as nuclear Britaingoes top secret - 
8 Las Vegas SUN: Iraq Uranium Claim Gets Some Support
9 US: WorldNetDaily: Tenet's dereliction of duty
10 US: baltimoresun.com: Two reports, same conclusion 
11 Guardian Unlimited Politics: A question of judgment
12 UK Independent: How a dedicated civil servant may change everything
13 UK Independent: How judge was misinformed about Iraq's WMD threat
14 UK Independent: No 10 admits Hutton cover-up
15 UK Independent: Downing Street forced into the open on discredited s
16 UK Independent: Attorney General warned Blair on legality of war
17 UK Independent: critics to put the questions that still remain, even
18 WorldNetDaily: Israel 'ready' to strike Iran
19 US: Berkshire Eagle Editorials: Courting disaster
20 US: Admiral Rickover's Admission That The Facts Would Destroy The Nu
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
21 US: [NukeNet] PG&E loses 3 nuclear fuel rods
22 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Trio asks for probe of NRC
23 NEWS.com.au: N-plant future in doubt 
24 US: Tri-City Herald: BPA to sell only hydro, nuclear power 
25 US: SF Chronicle: EUREKA: Officials hope nuclear rods are in pool
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
26 [du-list] ICBUW News | The Balkan Syndrome: Another Italian
27 YLE-INTERNET: Some Finnish Mushrooms Too Radioactive
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
28 NEWS.com.au: Why Howard dumped the dump 
29 The Australian: PM refuses to name N-dump sites 
30 Las Vegas RJ: LETTERS: Through the looking glass on Yucca 
31 US: Las Vegas RJ: Nebraska fights rulingon nuclear waste dump 
32 BBC: Crystal options for nuclear waste 
33 Las Vegas SUN: Brian Greenspun: Change can happen
34 US: Tri-City Herald: State plans suit to bar waste shipments 
35 NewsFromRussia.Com Russia, Iran to consider nuclear waste return
36 US: KCRG.com: Hills Water Problems Go Unsolved                      
37 SF Chronicle: Yucca Mountain's troubled history
38 US: OA Online: Andrews nuke site may take other states’ waste
39 US: OA Online: Waste Control Specialists handles all kinds of items
40 AU ABC: CSIRO says its nuclear waste poses no threat » 
41 AU ABC: Nuclear waste shouldnt be stored in NT
42 AU ABC: Indigenous group to celebrate waste dump decision » 
43 WCAX.com: Yucca woes raise new questions about Yankee waste
44 US: Oakland Tribune: Bill would fund water cleanup 
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
45 Daily Camera: Demolition of Flats plant a hopeful sign
46 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: State seeks halt to shipments of radioac
47 Seattle Times: State seeks to expand Hanford suit
48 Las Vegas SUN: Nuke Security Chief Visits Los Alamos Lab
49 Seattle Times: Hanford's vapors may pose health risk
50 SF Chronicle: Crisis of confidence at Los Alamos
51 Guardian Unlimited: History Meets Trouble at Los Alamos Lab
52 GSN: DOE Official Seeks to Clarify Bush Nuclear Program
53 Charleston.Net: SRS, energy officials to talk about waste 
54 Paducah Sun: Reaping the benefits 
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
55 Google News Alert - nuclear
56 Google News Alert - nuclear
57 SS: Volatile fuel prices send FPL to ridgelines and plains for power
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 1 Las Vegas SUN: Kay Criticizes Bush, Blair on Iraq Intel

Today: July 18, 2004 at 12:32:20 PDT 

 By BETH GARDINER ASSOCIATED PRESS 

LONDON (AP) - President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony
Blair should have realized before going to war that intelligence
on Iraqi weapons was weak and did not indicate Saddam Hussein
posed a danger to the West, America's former chief weapons
inspector in Iraq said Sunday. 

David Kay resigned from the CIA in January and his conclusion
then that Iraq did not have stockpiles of forbidden weapons
caused serious problems for both Bush and Blair, undercutting
their main justification for war. 

He told Britain's ITV network that Bush and Blair "should have
been able to tell before the war that the evidence did not exist
for drawing the conclusion that Iraq presented a clear, present
and imminent threat on the basis of existing weapons of mass
destruction." 

"That was not something that required a war," he said. 

He said the leaders may not have been sufficiently critical of
intelligence on Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction. 

"WMD was only one and I think in their mind, not really the most
important one," he said. "And so the doubts about the evidence
on weapons of mass destruction was not as serious to them as it
seemed to be to the rest of the world." 

Kay said two recent reports on intelligence failures in Iraq
showed that American and British information-gathering and
analyzing systems were "broken." 

"I think they are a scathing indictment," he said of the reports
from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and a British
commission headed by former senior civil servant Lord Butler. 

Butler's report, published Wednesday, said Iraq had no
stockpiles of useable chemical or biological weapons before the
war and British intelligence to the contrary had been drawn in
part from "seriously flawed" or "unreliable" sources. 

He absolved Blair's government of deliberately distorting the
evidence and did not blame any individuals for the failure. But
he said the government had pushed its case to the limits of
available intelligence and solidified analysts' hedged,
tentative assessments of Iraqi arms into definite statements. 

The U.S. report agreed that intelligence on Iraq was flawed and
placed much of the blame on the CIA, which it accused of
succumbing to "group think" and interpreting all evidence
according to its presumption that Iraq had banned weapons. 

Kay said analysts were facing pressure to support the belief
that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. 

"Anything that showed Iraq didn't have weapons of mass
destruction had a much higher gate to pass because if it were
true, all of U.S. policy towards Iraq would have fallen
asunder," he said in the interview. 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 2 Guardian Unlimited: Like Jeeves, this Butler's first language is Euphemism
 
Matthew Norman Saturday July 17, 2004 The Guardian            
 		
If the ancient saw that you can judge a man by his enemies is 
correct, the reverse should be just as reliable. And so to 
Thursday's edition of Mr Tony Blair's greatest tabloid chum for 
its typically rigorous appraisal of the Butler report.

"Two things are now beyond dispute," began the Sun's editorial. 
"The prime minister did not lie to the nation before the war on 
Iraq. And the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein." 
The second part may be ignored as a pointless statement of the 
bleeding obvious, and far beyond Lord Butler's remit anyway.

But what of the first? Given that Rupert Murdoch, perpetual 
puppet master of British policy on Europe, regards Mr Blair as 
his most useful idiot, and that Rebekah Wade is a regular 
Chequers weekender, it is tempting to dismiss this sycophancy 
with the same contempt.

It is a temptation worth resisting, though, because the Sun is 
not alone in giving Mr Blair the benefit of minuscule doubt on 
any issue pertaining to his honesty. Most papers, this one 
included, have done so almost from the day New Labour came to 
power. From Bernie Ecclestone's million via Lakshmi Mittal all 
the way to the £500,000 splurged on those Bristol flats 
apparently without his knowledge, the PM has fallen back on the 
classic old lag's last defence. Yes, there were 700 DVD players 
in the garage, and yes, I must accept that they were hooky. But 
hand on heart, yer honour, and may I be struck down if it ain't 
the God's honest, I haven't a clue how they got there in the 
first place.

In a court of law, a titter goes up from the jury and the judge 
adds six months to the sentence. In the court of media opinion, 
however, it works every time. It is as if the media were one 
giant Jewish mother and Mr Blair her lovably roguish first-born. 
Every time he's caught lying, leader columns in even the less 
adoring newspapers carry the ritual disclaimer: he may have made 
mistakes and he may have been naive... but the one thing you 
cannot question is the prime minister's integrity.

Well, at the risk of committing a breach of form, I think you can 
and I think you must. And I think that this is precisely what 
Lord Butler, in his deliciously opaque way, has done.

Fatiguing as all the "What the Butler saw" headlines have become, 
perhaps it's worth fleshing the pun out by summoning the most 
celebrated butler in English literature. Pedants will point out 
that Reginald Jeeves was merely a gentleman's gentleman, but he 
remains a useful role model as we seek to penetrate his 
lordship's intent.

When Jeeves told Bertie Wooster that the white smoking jacket he 
bought in Monte Carlo was "perhaps a trifle bold for London, 
sir", he meant that it was an abomination that would cauterise 
the retina at 20 paces. And when he advised Bertie that a 
brainwave to rescue Bingo Little's latest romance was "perhaps a 
touch ill-advised", this translates to "total bloody lunacy". 

Thanks to his own long career in service, English is now Lord 
Butler's second tongue. His first is the heavily inflected 
Whitehall dialect known as Euphemism, and in this he is 
devastating. When he says, for instance, that intelligence about 
WMD was "fading" as war approached, he accuses the PM of 
suppressing the gravest doubts as savagely as his exquisite 
politesse permits. When he says that "more weight was placed on 
the intelligence than it could bear", he means that Mr Blair and 
his gang of flamsters conflated weak hearsay evidence to a 
disgraceful degree. And when he accepts that Mr Blair was 
influenced by George Bush rather than the intelligence, he 
accuses him of abrogating his duties to this country to 
ingratiate himself with another. 

Forget the conclusions that on a literal reading absolve everyone 
of an iota of blame. Or rather, don't forget them, but imagine 
the mischievous grin on Lord Butler's face as he wrote them, 
anticipating how easily they would be translated by those with 
even an A-level in Euphemism. For so far from being a whitewash, 
this was a more lacerating assault on Tony Blair than anyone 
could have anticipated. 

In an ideal world, we would pump Butler full of whatever new 
truth serum the CIA developed under poor old George Tenet, whose 
career could not resist the earthier language of Washington. Then 
he would tell us plainly what he thinks of the prime minister and 
his gruesome cabal of unelected sofa-hoggers for turning the 
heavily qualified and luminescently diffident offerings of MI6 
into the kind of apocalypse-speak that slots so neatly into Mr 
Murdoch's Sun.

Whether he could answer the most vexing question, I'm not so 
sure. But then who can really claim to know why Tony Blair was so 
desperate to drag a reluctant Britain into this demented war. My 
own theory, for what little it's worth, will be familiar to 
readers of the Guardian Diary, but I reprise it all the same. 
Tony Blair's entire public life has been devoted to winning the 
admiration of the crowd. Exhibitionist toddler, king of the 
Fettes drama club and lead singer in a college band, he left the 
branch of the law that supplies an audience for the 
ultra-histrionic world of party politics. 

Always, always, always, there has to be a stage. And what greater 
stage could there ever be, what greater chance to feed an 
addiction for self-dramatisation, than marching alongside the 
leader of the free world in what he would have us believe is a 
fight for the very survival of western democracy? 

This may strike you as thin, crude and painfully simplistic. Yet 
if there's a more credible explanation for the rush to war when 
already weak intelligence is "fading" I've yet to hear it. 

Given his grasp of semantic nuance, it's sad Lord Butler will 
never go before a Newsnight camera to explain the precise 
difference between, on the one hand, lying, and, on the other, 
distorting the facts (or the non-facts) to persuade the 
ill-informed of what any sane person with access to the evidence 
knew to be wildly misleading. 

And so it is left to those who are not bilingual to use the rude 
four-letter English word that dare not speak its name on the lips 
of our ineffably civil servants. If only the leader writers had 
done so over Ecclestone, and called Tony Blair a liar, perhaps 
this calamity might have been avoided. After all, when a man is 
continually punished for telling whoppers by having his honesty 
celebrated in more trustworthy newspapers than the Sun, how could 
he not come to believe that he can get away with murder? Or if 
not murder, then, to dip into the English/Euphemism dictionary 
once more, with a monumental amount of needless collateral 
damage? 

comment@guardian.co.uk
	
[UP] 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
 3 Guardian Unlimited: Clinton reopens book on Iraqi bid to buy 
uranium in Africa
 
[UP] 

Michael White, political editor
Monday July 19, 2004
 		
Tony Blair's ally and former US president Bill Clinton yesterday 
reopened the sensitive issue of Saddam Hussein's attempts to buy 
uranium in Africa. 

Speaking on BBC1's Breakfast with Frost, Mr Clinton, who is 
promoting his memoirs, said there was "no evidence" the CIA had 
ever told George Bush about the claim. 

Though it has not been stated in the four official inquiries into 
British intelligence, London's source for its claims about Iraqi 
efforts to buy uranium - widely repeated in the US until 
discredited - almost certainly came from French intelligence. 

France has much influence in Niger, the west African state in 
which Iraq allegedly tried to buy the so-called "yellow cake". 

A convention between intelligence services allows a provider of 
data shared with an ally to control further dissemination. 
British sources say that Paris, in this instance, refused further 
dissemination, even when the US basis for a similar claim proved 
to come from crudely forged documents. 

The Butler report said "there was some evidence that by 2002 an 
agreement for a sale had been reached", and that statements in 
the UK government's dossier and by the prime minister to the 
commons about Iraqi attempts to buy such ore "were well-founded". 

Mr Clinton told Sir David Frost: "Let me just say one other 
thing. Now this doesn't apply to the UK, it applies to America. 
There is no evidence that the CIA told the president or the White 
House that Saddam Hussein had gotten uranium yellow cake from 
Niger, or was close to having a nuclear weapon, a representation 
that was made. 

"Now the intelligence in the UK may have told Prime Minister 
Blair but the evidence is to the contrary in America. And there 
is no evidence that the CIA ever said that Saddam Hussein was 
tied to al-Qaida and could have had anything to do with September 
11 directly or indirectly," he said. 

The implication of his remarks was that untrustworthy sources had 
briefed the White House and other agencies. 

The moral, he said, was not to blame the CIA or other agencies 
for things they had not done or got wrong. 
	
[UP] 

      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
 4 The Observer: How intelligence was bent to one will and purpose
 
[Guardian Unlimited] 
     		 		 
[UP] 

Focus: Blair after Butler 
		
Anthony Sampson assesses the faults of Scarlett and Campbell over 
Iraq and says both were acting for one man - the Prime Minister          
 		
Sunday July 18, 2004
The Observer 		
 		
It may seem surprising that the intelligence community, after the 
devastating criticisms in Lord Butler's report, should be 
relieved by its findings. 

But the explanation becomes clear from an analysis of the report, 
and from intelligence sources. For they show clearly that the 
blame can be shifted, in each case, to the very top - to the 
Prime Minister. 

John Scarlett 

There is no doubt from the report about the shortcomings of John 
Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligent Committee at the 
time, now promoted to be head of MI6. For it was Scarlett, who 
acknowledged 'ownership' of the discredited dossier which was 
used to justify the war, who was prepared to make significant 
changes, against all the traditions of the integrity of the JIC. 

Many senior mandarins believe there is a strong case for Scarlett 
to resign his new post in MI6, including the outspoken Dame 
Pauline Nevile-Jones, a previous chair of the JIC. Butler's 
specific request that Scarlett should not resign - with the 
mandarin's instinct to defend colleagues - only attracted 
attention to his vulnerability, and was certainly not at 
Scarlett's request. 

But Scarlett will remain in his job, unlike his CIA opposite 
number George Tenet; because there is no doubt who was exerting 
the pressure. It was the Prime Minister, who cannot now easily 
ask for his resignation. 

Alastair Campbell 

The man most directly responsible for the distortions of the 
dossier was Alastair Campbell - whom Butler mentions only once - 
who defied the traditional constraints about the handling of 
intelligence. 

He described Scarlett as his 'mate', and had a close relationship 
with him. But we know from the evidence supplied by Lord Hutton 
how he brought the techniques of the tabloid editor into the 
presentation of a crucial document which would help determine 
whether Britain went to war. Any journalist could recognise, in 
the emails between Campbell and Scarlett, a strong resemblance to 
the process in tabloid journalism by which a careful reporter is 
persuaded by superiors to 'firm up' copy, to turn it into a 
scoop. But in a crucial official document, such a degradation of 
careful information was shockingly irresponsible and dangerous. 
It was surprising that Butler did not condemn this importing of 
tabloid techniques into the dossier which he analysed so 
carefully. 

The extent of Campbell's influence was much clearer in the 
subsequent 'dodgy' dossier which received much less attention, 
and which contained a whole section written by Campbell's unit, 
including the notorious plagiarised thesis plucked from the 
internet, and doctored to strengthen the case - all presented as 
an intelligence document. It was, as Jack Straw later admitted, a 
'complete Horlicks' but was conveniently forgotten in the 
subsequent row about the first dossier. 

So how was Campbell allowed to wield such extraordinary power in 
Whitehall, as an ex-tabloid journalist with little experience of 
intelligence? Because the Government had asked for a special 
Order in Council, to enable him to give orders to civil servants. 
It was a much disputed precedent eventually approved by the 
Secretary of the Cabinet - who was then Sir Robin Butler, now 
Lord Butler. 

But Campbell was largely exonerated from serious blame for 
misleading parliament, for there was no doubt who he was 
representing: he was intervening directly on behalf of the Prime 
Minister. 

Tony Blair

It is now much clearer that it was the Prime Minister himself who 
had initiated all the main steps which led to the war. It was not 
the intelligence services which persuaded him, but he who needed 
them to justify the war. 

Butler makes quite clear that when Blair was pressing for 
stronger action against Saddam in the spring of 2002, the move 
'was not based on any new development in the current intelligence 
picture on Iraq'. And he spells out that 'there was no recent 
intelligence that would itself have given rise to a conclusion 
that Iraq was of more immediate concern than the activities of 
some other countries'. 

MI6 had been worried about Saddam developing WMDs ever since he 
invaded Kuwait: Iraq's neighbouring countries were fearful that 
he would acquire nuclear and chemical weaponry to replace his 
weakened army, and Mossad, the Israeli secret service, was always 
warning of the dangers of Saddam. But MI6, with good reason, was 
more seriously worried about nuclear weapons in Iran or North 
Korea. 

It remains an unsolved mystery as to why Blair, who had no 
personal experience of the Middle East, became so convinced about 
the immediate danger of Saddam, and so determined on war, against 
much advice from diplomats as well as military and political 
colleagues. 

It was not just his desire to please Bush, strong though that 
was. Blair has described how when he first met Bush in early 
2001, months before 11 September, it was he who warned Bush about 
the twin dangers of WMDs and terrorism. When Blair visited Bush 
on his Texas ranch in April 2002 some diplomats believe that he 
was actually stiffening Bush's resolve to go to war, if the UN 
route failed. 

Yet none of the documents quoted by Butler or Hutton reflect that 
same urgency about Iraq. Instead they show that Number 10 was 
always making the running, encouraging the JIC to provide 
judgments which went (as Butler says) to 'the outer limits of the 
intelligence available'. The crucial dossier was carefully 
redrafted to satisfy the Prime Minister; and when a precious 
piece of evidence about the 45-minute weapon was later withdrawn 
(as we learnt last week) he was not even informed. 

Butler, with a mandarin's instinct, naturally avoids any direct 
criticism of his former master. But his trenchant criticisms 
about the current style of government - the informal 
decision-making by a small circle, the bypassing of the Cabinet 
Secretary, the neglect of cabinet committees - all point to the 
one man who was responsible for those changes. 

And however serious the shortcomings of the intelligence chiefs, 
they cannot be expected to take the ultimate blame for a war 
which, as we can now see more clearly after decoding the Butler 
Report, was brought about by a Prime Minister who was determined 
to overrule his colleagues. 

The WMDs, about which Blair was so confident, may yet exist, 
buried in the desert. Many intelligence officials now look to the 
new Iraqi government to continue the search, with more ruthless 
interrogation and better sources than their own. But their 
discovery will not contradict the fact that Blair went to war on 
the basis of evidence which was manipulated, and proved false. 

· Anthony Sampson's 'Who Runs This Place?' is published by John 
Murray.
 	
 	
        The Butler report 14.07.2004: Lord Butler's key findings 
Download the full report (pdf, 1MB)

Special reports The Butler report The Hutton report Politics and 
Iraq Iraq: the war and its aftermath

Explained 12.07.2004: Q: The Butler report

Hutton report Full coverage of the Hutton inquiry and report Read 
the Hutton report (pdf, 2MB)

Intelligence and security committee report Download the MPs' 
published report (pdf) 11.09.2003: ISC report: key quotes

Foreign affairs committee report 07.07.2003: Conclusions and 
recommendations Read the MPs' report in full (pdf)

The government dossiers The government's September dossier on 
Iraqi WMD (pdf) The government's February dossier on Iraqi WMD 
(pdf)

[UP] 

      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
 5 BBC: Blair 'in dark' over Iraq report 
 
  Last Updated: Friday, 16 July, 2004
 
[Tony Blair]                            
Mr Blair has said he accepts Lord Butler's findings                                                               

Tony Blair did not know a key piece of Iraq intelligence had been 
discredited when he gave evidence to last year's Hutton inquiry, 
Downing Street says. 

MI6's decision to withdraw the intelligence was made before 
August 2003's Hutton inquiry, according to Wednesday's Butler 
Report. 

But Mr Blair had not known this when he gave evidence to the 
inquiry, Downing Street said. 

The first he heard of it was "as a result of the Butler inquiry". 

'Extra assurances'

The intelligence report, described as being from a "new source on 
trial", on alleged Iraqi production of chemical and biological 
weapons was received in mid-September 2002 - too late to be 
included in the Joint Intelligence Committee's assessment. 

Iraq remains a predomina concern. It would be a strange democracy 
if it did not Charles Kennedy Timeline: Hunt for WMD          

But according to Lord Butler it gave extra assurances to those 
drafting the government's September 2002 dossier that production 
of WMD was taking place. 

The source "had a major effect on the certainty of statements in 
the government's dossier of September 2002 that Iraq possessed 
and was producing chemical and biological weapons. (This report 
was subsequently withdrawn.)," the Butler report says. 

A second intelligence report, from the same source, about the 
production of a particular chemical agent, was also received 
later in September 2002. 

'Important' 

Both reports were withdrawn by MI6 on 17 July 2003, weeks before 
the Hutton inquiry - with this withdrawal made known to the 
Foreign Office and Joint Intelligence Committee. 

"We note therefore that the two reports from this source 
including one that was important in the closing stages of 
production of the government's September dossier must now be 
treated as unsafe," the Butler report says. 

Mr Blair was not aware the intelligence had been discredited at 
the time of the Hutton inquiry, Downing Street said. 

The prime minister's official spokesman said Mr Blair only became 
aware it was unsafe "as a result of the Butler inquiry". 

He said the piece of intelligence in question "was only one 
issue" and was "not relevant" to the Hutton inquiry, which was 
focused on the death of Dr David Kelly and the separate claim 
that Iraq could launch WMD within 45 minutes. 

It would have been "improper" to talk about it publicly as 
intelligence sources had not been "validated", he added. 

By-elections 

Earlier, Health Secretary John Reid said the government's "good 
faith" had been established by four inquiries - and there was no 
need for another one. 

But Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy said the latest revelations 
showed the need for a further inquiry into the political 
decisions that led to war. 

"Unless you have a proper public inquiry ...which can call 
political players to proper account, you will not satisfy public 
opinion," Mr Kennedy told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, 

The Liberal Democrats' by-election success in Leicester South 
reflected that people were still concerned about the Iraq war, he 
says. 

"Iraq remains a predominant concern. It would be a strange 
democracy if it did not," he said. 

Mr Kennedy said he would be asking the Prime Minister Tony Blair 
in the House of Commons next week about the claims that 
information was withheld from the Hutton Inquiry. 

Dr Reid rejected calls for further inquiries into the Iraq war as 
"hunting for someone to blame". 

But Eric Illsley, a Labour MP on the foreign affairs committee, 
said that the withdrawal of the intelligence - and the 
uncertainties about the dossier - should have been made public. 

"Anyone reading the dossier today would still think it was a 
relevant document and all the information in it was secure 
intelligence gathered at the time," Mr Illsey told BBC Radio 4's 
World at One. 
*****************************************************************
 6 BBC: Iraq intelligence: New questions? 
 
  Last Updated: Friday, 16 July, 2004
 
Analysis By Sean Coughlan and Brian Wheeler BBC News Online   

The government is under fire over claims it failed to inform last 
year's Hutton inquiry that key Iraq weapons intelligence was 
flawed. 

[Butler]                                

Lord Butler's report has sparked fresh questions about the Iraq 
dossier                                                                

Downing Street says the piece of intelligence in question fell 
outside Lord Hutton's remit. 

And - in any case - Tony Blair did not know it had been 
discredited when he gave evidence - even though MI6 had taken 
what is regarded as the unusual step of withdrawing the 
intelligence as "unreliable". 

Mr Blair only learned that detail more recently "as a result of 
the Butler inquiry", the prime minister's official spokesman 
said. 

The revelations - which emerged after journalists pored over 
Butler's findings - have added to pressure for a further inquiry 
into the political decisions that led up to war. 

So how much do we know about the piece of intelligence that has 
sparked this latest row? 

'Major effect' 

The first thing to point out is that it has nothing to do with 
the now infamous claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass 
destruction within 45 minutes. 

It was, rather, concerned with Iraq's alleged production of 
chemical and biological agents. 

Nevertheless, Lord Butler said the information had a "major 
effect" on the government's September 2002 dossier on Iraq's 
weapons of mass destruction (WMD). 

It was certainly believed at the time of writing. 

But on 17 July 2003 - less than a month before the start of Lord 
Hutton's inquiry - MI6 withdrew the intelligence as its source 
was no longer considered reliable. 

'Major effect' 

[Butler report]                                 
The Butler report says the false intelligence appear to confirm 
suspicions about Iraq                                                            

How much do we know about the source? 

In the run up to the September dossier, Lord Butler says, several 
sources, which were later proved to be reliable, were providing 
information about Iraq's weapons - and these established sources 
tended to "present a less worrying view". 

[This] had a major effect the certainty of statements in the 
government's dossier of September 2002 The Butler report on the 
impact of intelligence that later was found discredited           

But between the production of the joint intelligence committee's 
(JIC) assessment of the threat from Iraq - and the publication of 
the government's public dossier another source - described as 
being "on trial" - emerged. 

Butler says the impact of this new source was to "provide 
significant assurance to those drafting the government's dossier 
that active, current production of chemical and biological agent 
was taking place". 

Information from this source "had a major effect on the certainty 
of statements in the government's dossier of September 2002 that 
Iraq possessed and was producing chemical and biological 
weapons," Butler says. 

'Discredited' 

But after the war, doubts were cast on the accuracy of this 
source - and by July 2003, the Butler report says that the 
"sourcing chain had been discredited". As a consequence, two 
intelligence reports from this source were withdrawn. 

We believe that it would be rash person who asserted ... that 
evidence of Iraqi possession of stocks of biological and chemical 
agents ... will never be found Butler report           

A few weeks later, on Monday, 11 August 2003, the Hutton Inquiry 
began taking evidence - including from Tony Blair. 

But the prime minister's spokesman says that when Mr Blair gave 
his evidence in August he was unaware that intelligence which had 
influenced the Iraq dossier had subsequently been discredited. 

The prime minister was not aware of the withdrawal of faulty 
intelligence until it had been highlighted by the Butler Report, 
said his official spokesman. 

But the spokesman added that this piece of false intelligence had 
only been "one part of the picture on chemical and biological 
weapons production". 

The Butler report also repeatedly highlights the difficulties 
faced by the intelligence services and the government in drawing 
firm conclusions from shifting and fragmented pieces of 
information. 

The Butler report says that although intelligence was "correctly 
reported" in the JIC assessment, by the time it had been 
"translated" into the September 2002 dossier the limitations of 
that intelligence were no longer clear. 

This apparent certainty "may have left readers with the 
impression that there was fuller and firmer intelligence behind 
the judgements than was the case". 

It also says there is still no final conclusion about what 
weaponry Iraq had before the war - with the report saying it 
would be a "premature to reach conclusions about Iraq's 
prohibited weapons". 

"We believe that it would be a rash person who asserted at this 
stage that evidence of Iraqi possession of stocks of biological 
and chemical agents, or even of banned missiles, does not exist 
or will never be found." 

*****************************************************************
 7 Sunday Herald: Safety fears as nuclear Britaingoes top secret - 

  Governments anti-terror crackdown on public information will 
lead to cover-up and abuse, say environmentalists By Rob Edwards, 
Environment Editor 
 
 An imminent crackdown on public information about nuclear plants 
could enable dangers and mistakes to be covered up, environmental 
groups have warned.

The governments Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS) is about 
to issue guidance on the secrecy with which it wants to shroud 
nuclear facilities, shipments and waste in order to reduce the 
risk of terrorism. A copy of its guidance has been obtained by 
the Sunday Herald.

If the guidance is followed, the public will be given far less 
information about nuclear projects in the future. It defines 53 
out of 74 categories of nuclear information as not releasable.

Planning applications for nuclear plants should contain only the 
minimum information required by law, it says . 

That means objectors will be deprived of the information they 
need to make an effective challenge to nuclear developments, 
environmentalists say. They argue that this could make it easier 
for the nuclear industry to push through controversial projects. 

Details of the safety cases drawn up for nuclear facilities 
should be kept under wraps, the guidance insists. This includes 
details of the potential hazards of radiation releases and the 
strengths and weaknesses of the systems meant to contain and 
control nuclear material.

The OCNS also says that the location, quantity and form of 
nuclear material in the civil programme should be confidential, 
as should the exact locations where spent fuel from nuclear power 
stations is stored. The margins of error on the amounts of 
plutonium and uranium unaccounted for are not releasable.

 There are four major nuclear sites in Scotland that will be 
covered by the guidance. They are Dounreay in Caithness, 
Hunterston in North Ayrshire Torness in East Lothian, and the 
defunct reactors at Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway.

The need for security can be abused to cover up mistakes and 
prevent emergency planners and local authorities obtaining the 
information they need in the event of an accident, said Pete 
Roche, a consultant to Greenpeace.

The nuclear industry presents society with a massive dilemma, he 
said. Everyone recognises the need to prevent sensitive 
information falling into the wrong hands, but we need an open and 
transparent debate. Clearly nuclear power is not compatible with 
an open and democratic society.

Andrew Puddephat, who chairs the transparency panel set up by the 
nuclear waste agency, Nirex, hoped that the guidance would 
generate a debate about freedom of information in the nuclear 
industry. He said: Historically the industry has been secretive 
and this has cost it a lot of public trust and legitimacy. This 
will have to be looked at in the context of ensuring maximum 
transparency.

The OCNS, based at Harwell in Oxfordshire, is part of the 
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). It regulates security in 
the civil nuclear programme, and last year vetted 12,000 
employees in an attempt to ensure that they werent going to help 
terrorists.

Its 26-page guidance, entitled Finding A Balance, is soon to be 
published on the DTI website. The guidance is necessary, it says, 
to help, if possible, lessen the ease with which those with 
malevolent intent can obtain the information they need.

It adds: If nuclear material were to be stolen or sabotaged  the 
potential consequences could be extremely grave. Nuclear 
material, its transport, and the processes in which it is used 
for civil purposes  principally power generation  need to be well 
protected.

The OCNS stresses that its document only provides guidance, and 
has no force in law. Nor does it intend to withhold information 
about material unaccounted for solely on the grounds it would 
cause embarrassment to the companies.

Friends of the Earth Scotland, however, said that in the past the 
nuclear industrys safety information had often been questionable. 
New proposals for nuclear facilities must be subjected to 
rigorous public scrutiny, said chief executive Duncan McLaren. 
This would be impractical with the limited information that would 
be released under this guidance .

McLaren also said that the security concerns about nuclear power 
underlined that it had no place in a sustainable energy future. 
Renewables would be better for the environment, jobs and security 
, he said. Whoever heard of terrorists planning to fly a plane 
into a wind farm.

The DTI declined to comment on the guidance . We cant comment on 
something weve not seen, a spokeswoman said. 18 July 2004 

  © newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved   
*****************************************************************
 8 Las Vegas SUN: Iraq Uranium Claim Gets Some Support

Today: July 18, 2004 at 15:17:20 PDT 

 By KEN GUGGENHEIM ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON (AP) - 

It was one of the first signs that the intelligence used to go
to war in Iraq was wrong: White House repudiation of 16 words in
last year's State of the Union speech that had suggested Saddam
Hussein tried to buy uranium in Africa. 

Yet even as two recent reports sharply criticized prewar
intelligence, they also suggested President Bush's claim may not
have been totally off-base. 

A British report concluded that Bush's statement and a similar
one by Prime Minister Tony Blair were "well-founded." In his
speech, Bush had attributed the uranium claim to the British
government. 

A Senate Intelligence Committee report found inadequate evidence
that deposed Iraqi President Saddam had been rebuilding his
nuclear weapons program. It cited various reports, however, that
Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. Thus, although Bush cited
only British evidence that was determined to have been
inconclusive, other intelligence files clearly contained other
inconclusive evidence of the truth of the claim. 

The committee chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, said he believed last
year that the White House was correct in repudiating the uranium
claim. "Now I don't know whether it's accurate or not. That's
the whole question," Roberts, R-Kan., said in an interview. 

The White House's repudiation came after The New York Times
published an op-ed column by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson,
who was sent by the CIA to Niger to determine if Iraq had been
acquiring uranium. Wilson said it was unlikely any uranium
transaction had taken place and the administration appeared to
have been manipulating the intelligence. 

Republicans said Wilson was trying to boost John Kerry's
presidential campaign and looked to discredit him and his
mission. 

Columnist Robert Novak, citing two unidentified Bush
administration officials, wrote that Wilson's wife, CIA officer
Valerie Plame, had recommended Wilson for the trip. That has led
to a criminal investigation into the leak of Plame's identity. 

The Senate report challenges Wilson's denial that his wife had a
role in the selection and questions his account of the
intelligence available at the time of his trip. It also said
that his trip, rather than discrediting the Iraq-Niger link,
actually bolstered the views of some analysts who suspected
Saddam was seeking uranium. 

In an addendum to the report, Roberts and two other Republicans
accused Wilson of providing "inaccurate, unsubstantiated and
misleading" information. In a letter to committee leaders
Thursday, Wilson said a thorough reading of the report supports
his public comments. 

He told CNN's "Late Edition" he wants committee members to
reinterview a CIA officer whose testimony, Wilson said, had
muddled the record about his mission. 

Earlier Sunday, the CIA's acting director, John E. McLaughlin,
told "Fox News Sunday," "I think there's some debate about what
his report said or didn't say. I just don't want to take a
position on it." 

Bush, in his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003, used
the uranium intelligence to help make the case that Saddam was
pursuing nuclear weapons. "The British government has learned
that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of
uranium from Africa," he said. 

That claim came under scrutiny after the International Atomic
Energy Agency determined that documents purportedly showing Iraq
buying uranium from Niger were fake. After Wilson's op-ed
appeared, the White House said including the 16 words in the
State of the Union was a mistake because the assertion was not
well enough corroborated to merit mention in a State of the
Union speech. The British have maintain consistently that their
intelligence was not based on the forged documents. 

But the Senate committee disclosed other intelligence suggesting
that Iraq was pursuing uranium. 

The committee cited separate reports received from foreign
intelligence services on Oct. 15, 2001, and Feb. 5, 2002, and
March 25, 2002. The State Department doubted the accuracy of the
reports, but the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency had more
confidence in them. 

Though Wilson reported to U.S. officials there was "nothing to
the story" that Niger sold uranium to Iraq, the CIA and DIA were
intrigued by one element of his trip. Wilson had said a former
prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Mayaki, mentioned a visit from
an Iraqi delegation in 1999 that expressed interest in expanding
commercial ties with Niger, the world's third largest producer
of mined uranium. Mayaki believed this meant they were
interested in buying uranium. 

The British inquiry said it was generally accepted that Iraqi
officials visited Niger in 1999, and there was intelligence from
several sources that the visit was to acquire uranium. "Since
uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports,
the intelligence was credible," the report said. 

The Senate committee also described various reports about Iraqi
attempts to buy uranium from French, British and unidentified
foreign governments. 

But how much credibility these reports had was not clear. The
Senate committee criticized the CIA for "inconsistent and at
times contradictory" reports to policy-makers on the uranium
issue. 

An internal CIA memo from June 17, 2003, said, "We no longer
believe there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that
Iraq pursued uranium from abroad." 

But beyond internal correspondence, "to date, the intelligence
community has not published an assessment to clarify or correct
its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase
uranium from Africa," the Senate committee said. 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 9 WorldNetDaily: Tenet's dereliction of duty
 
  SATURDAY JULY 17 2004           
                            
Tenet's dereliction of duty
 
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has concluded that 
the "key assessments" in the National Intelligence Estimate– 
which was the basis for the Congressional Joint Resolution to 
Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq– 
were "not supported by the underlying intelligence." 

Hence, the committee has essentially accused Director of Central 
Intelligence George Tenet with "misleading Congress." 

But the committee has implicitly accused Tenet of committing a 
far more serious crime – dereliction of duty. 

You see, it's the DCI's duty to keep the president and Congress 
fully informed about threats to our national security. And as the 
committee documents on page after page, Tenet made no attempt to 
correct that October 2002 NIE – despite rapidly accumulating 
evidence that it was fatally flawed – in the months immediately 
preceding Gulf War II. 

Members of Congress say that if they had known then – meaning in 
October 2002 – what they now know, they would never have voted 
for the resolution. 

But, the critical thing is not what Congress knew when it voted 
for the resolution. It's what Congress knew – or ought to have 
known – when it was called upon to accept or reject Bush&#39;s 
Determinationof March 18, 2003, that Saddam Hussien posed an 
immediate threat to our national security and had to be 
eliminated that very day. 

As the select committee notes, there is some excuse for some 
assessments in that NIE being wrong. After all, until 1999, their 
assessments had been – necessarily – largely based upon reports 
by the U.N. inspectors on the ground in Iraq. But in December 
1998, the U.N. inspectors had been recalled and as of October 
2002, had not returned. 

But even back then, DCI Tenet had allowed President Clinton to 
publicly question the accuracy of the U.N. reports on which U.S. 
assessments were based. 

By mid-1998, the U.N. Special Commission had verified that the 
"intelligence" provided UNSCOM, IAEA, CIA and MI6 in 1995 by 
Iraqi defector Gen. Hussein Kamel was correct. Kamel had been in 
charge of all Iraqi WMD programs, and his orders – in the 
immediate aftermath of the Gulf War – that all WMD programs be 
discontinued and all WMD and associated materials be destroyed, 
had been obeyed. 

Of course, you soccer moms knew nothing of Kamel's "intelligence" 
until the eve of Gulf War II. But Tenet had known all along and 
it was his duty to have kept the president and the select 
committee fully informed. 

By mid-1998, on the basis of UNSCOM and IAEA reports, the 
majority on the U.N. Security Council judged Iraq to have 
complied with the disarmament resolutions and wanted to lift the 
sanctions imposed in 1991. But Clinton wouldn't allow it. He 
would never allow sanctions to be lifted so long as Saddam 
Hussein was in power. 

So, in December 1998 – to the horror of most members of the 
Security Council –Clinton launched a pre-emptive strike against 
Saddam's presidential palaces. His rationale? Tenet's assessment 
that WMD must be beneath them, since the U.N. inspectors had not 
been allowed to search there. 

Of course, they weren't there or anywhere else. But for a while – 
thanks to Tenet – Clinton thought he had killed Saddam – which 
was, of course, his true objective. 

Now, fast forward to Dec. 21, 2002, to a meeting in President 
Bush's office wherein DCI Tenet was to present the WMD "case" 
against Saddam. 

By then, the U.N. chembio inspectors under Hans Blix and the nuke 
inspectors under Mohamed ElBaradei had been on the ground in Iraq 
for almost a month, had checked out virtually every site at the 
top of the CIA-supplied WMD-suspect list, and had already made 
their first report to the Security Council on what they had 
found. 

Nothing. 

So after Tenet's "case" – which hardly depended on the by-now 
discredited October NIE – was made for immediately attacking Iraq 
and removing Saddam Hussein, it is hardly surprising that 
President Bush reportedly asked Tenet "Is this the best we've 
got?" 

That's when Tenet told Bush not to worry; it was a "slam-dunk 
case." 

As the select committee notes, Blix and ElBaradei continued to 
make report after report, right up to the eve of Gulf War II, 
casting doubt on – or outright refuting – virtually every 
assessment in the October NIE. 

So did DCI Tenet do his duty? 

Did he rush up to Capitol Hill to retract the thoroughly 
discredited October NIE, assessment by assessment? Did he set 
Congress straight? 

No. 

Result of Tenet's dereliction of duty? 

Gulf War II.
 

Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy 
implementing official for national security-related technical 
matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and 
Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office 
of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. 
Prather also served as legislative assistant for national 
security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking 
member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate 
Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had 
earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence 
Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National 
Laboratory in New Mexico. 

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. 
--> news@worldnetdaily.com--> Contact WND
*****************************************************************
 10 baltimoresun.com: Two reports, same conclusion 

  Opinion > op/ed Two reports, same conclusion 	Spying: U.S.,
British reports on pre-war intelligence failures strike
different tones in making a similarly critical finding. 

The Economist   Originally published July 18, 2004               

Saddam Hussein's supposed active pursuit of chemical, biological 
and nuclear "weapons of mass destruction" was the main 
justification that President George Bush and the British prime 
minister, Tony Blair, gave for launching the invasion of Iraq 
last year. However, when America's then-chief weapons inspector 
in Iraq, David Kay, gave his interim report to Congress this 
year, he had to admit that months of post-war searching had 
turned up precious little evidence of such weapons programs. The 
American intelligence reports claiming they did exist were 
"almost all wrong," he admitted. By implication, so were the 
similar claims made by British intelligence. Bush and, in turn, 
Blair were thus forced to launch separate inquiries into where 
their spies went wrong. 

On Wednesday, five days after its American equivalent, the 
British inquiry, led by Lord Butler, a former senior civil 
servant, announced its findings. Both inquiries reached 
essentially the same conclusion: Spy chiefs' reports, on which 
the case for war was based, had reached unjustifiably strong 
conclusions and failed to admit that these were based on shaky 
evidence. This means that the two intelligence dossiers presented 
to the American and British people by their leaders, just before 
the war, exaggerated the likelihood that Hussein's regime was a 
serious threat to the West. 

However, there were notable differences in the tone of the two 
inquiries' reports. The American report, written by a bipartisan 
committee of senators, was scathing. A few weeks before its 
publication, George Tenet, the director of the Central 
Intelligence Agency, announced his resignation, for "personal 
reasons." By contrast, Lord Butler's report, in characteristic 
British civil-service fashion, went out of its way to insist that 
no individuals could be blamed for the misleading contents of the 
now-notorious "September dossier," as its failings were 
"collective." Lord Butler specifically recommended that the 
government reject any calls for the resignation of John Scarlett. 
As the chairman of Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), 
Scarlett was the dossier's lead author. He has since been 
appointed director of the Secret Intelligence Service (familiarly 
known as MI6). 

Lord Butler was not asked to look at how politicians and their 
advisers used the reports provided by the intelligence agencies - 
the U.S. Senate inquiry, by contrast, will go on to look into 
this question. 

However, both inquiries have said they found no evidence that spy 
chiefs had been pressured to produce assessments that suited 
policy decisions their political masters had already taken. 

No direct pressure perhaps, but as the Butler report noted, the 
Blair government's desire for a dossier that supported its policy 
on Iraq "put a strain" on the JIC as it tried to uphold "normal 
standards of neutral and objective assessment." Furthermore, the 
Butler inquiry's assertion that spymasters had not been under 
political pressure is undermined by its failure to question 
Alastair Campbell, Blair's former chief spin-doctor. An earlier 
official inquiry, by Lord Hutton - into how one of the September 
dossier's main assertions had led to the suicide of David Kelly, 
a British expert on Iraqi weapons - had expressed concerns about 
the closeness of the working relationship between Campbell and 
Scarlett. 

The British dossier's most controversial assertion was that 
Hussein had biological and chemical weapons that could be 
deployed within 45 minutes. At the time, the Blair government did 
little to discourage the widespread assumption that this meant 
long-range weapons could reach British targets, such as the 
military base on Cyprus. However, the Butler inquiry (like an 
earlier inquiry by a parliamentary committee) said the dossier 
ought not to have included the 45-minute claim without making it 
clear that intelligence chiefs thought it referred to 
short-range, battlefield weapons - or at least it should have 
admitted that it was unclear what sort of weapons it referred to. 

In general, the British and American inquiries criticized their 
countries' intelligence chiefs for omitting the strong caveats 
and doubts they ought to have attached to their assertions, 
especially in the dossiers. Another example of this was the 
aluminum tubes that Hussein had been seeking, supposedly to make 
centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. The Butler 
inquiry criticizes the British dossier for failing to admit that 
the tubes would have had to be substantially re-engineered to 
make them suitable for centrifuges. The Senate inquiry criticized 
the CIA for implying in the public version of its dossier that 
the tubes probably were for making bomb materials, whereas in a 
second, secret version of the dossier shown to congressmen, it 
admitted that the Department of Energy had concluded they 
probably were not. 

The two inquiries reiterate some of the weaknesses of 
intelligence-gathering that have become widely recognized since 
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in America. The CIA, MI6 and other 
agencies had a poor reading of threats because they had too few 
firsthand sources in the region. Those sources they did have were 
not properly confirmed. Because both British and American 
intelligence were found to have underestimated Hussein's weapons 
programs in the run-up to the first Persian Gulf war in the early 
1990s, they might have overcompensated for this by overstating 
the evidence this time around. 

The latest inquiries - which will be followed in the next few 
days by a separate inquiry report on the intelligence failures 
relating to the Sept. 11 attacks - will give opponents of Bush 
and Blair plenty of ammunition. The failure to find illegal 
weapons programs in Iraq has helped undermine Bush's reputation, 
and he faces a struggle to get himself re-elected in November. 
Blair, who will probably face the voters' verdict next year, is 
also weakened; last week there was renewed speculation that he 
has been thinking of stepping down. However, their political 
opponents are not in such a strong position to attack: Sen. John 
Kerry, Bush's Democratic challenger, read the more detailed, 
classified version of the CIA dossier (or could have) and still 
backed the war. Michael Howard, the leader of Britain's main 
opposition Conservative Party, also supported the war. 

Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican chairman of America's 
version of the Butler inquiry, said he did not know if Congress 
would have let the war go ahead if it had known what is now known 
about the quality of the intelligence. If the British dossier had 
been more frank, Blair might also have been unable to convince 
Parliament and the British public of the case for war. 

Who knows, the fabled illegal arms might turn up. A senior 
official in the new Iraqi government suggested this week that 
materials for making such weapons might have been shifted into 
neighboring countries. Meanwhile, American inspectors continue to 
search for them in Iraq, which Lord Butler noted is a very large 
country, with "lots of sand" in which to hide things. 

  baltimoresun.com > op/ed    back to top  
by The Baltimore Sun. 
*****************************************************************
 11 Guardian Unlimited Politics: A question of judgment
 
PM admits graves claim 'untrue'

Focus: Blair after Butler 
		
Few still believe that Tony Blair lied to the Commons and to the 
country about Saddam Hussein's WMD, but Thursday's by-election 
results suggest that he is not yet out of the woods with the 
voters                 
 		
Gaby Hinsliff and Martin Bright Sunday July 18, 2004 The Observer            
 		
For the master of understatement, it was a suitable entrance. As 
cameramen jostled on the Westminster pavement for a glimpse of 
the limo bearing the former Cabinet Secretary last Wednesday 
lunchtime, a man in a beige raincoat hopped off the number 24 bus 
and slipped unnoticed past them. Lord Butler of Brockwell had 
arrived. 

Initially, he had wanted to unveil his report beneath a blown-up 
photograph depicting an Iraqi fighter aircraft buried in the 
desert sand - a graphic reminder of all that Saddam has tried to 
hide. 

But in the end, Butler decided to settle for a backdrop of plain 
blue curtain as he rattled through the crucial points of his 
196-page report on the use of intelligence in the run-up to war. 
There was no immediate evidence showing Iraq to be a greater risk 
than other countries, Butler explained. Three key sources 
underpinning the infamous September dossier were unreliable, 
flawed or just plain wrong. There was a 'serious weakness' in the 
way in which raw intelligence had been stripped of vital 
uncertainties and caveats before being put to the public. But - 
to the relief of officials tuning in live on television in 
Downing Street - there was no evidence of 'deliberate distortion' 
or 'culpable negligence'. 

With the bones of four exhaustive inquiries now picked clean, the 
wildest charges - that Tony Blair always knew Saddam had no 
weapons of mass destruction, and was just in it for the oil or to 
please George Bush - no longer stick. 

'Tony takes the view that this is not going to draw a line under 
Iraq,' says one friend. 'But I think it is beginning to draw a 
line under the sense that this was deliberate fabrication.' 

The lack of a 'silver bullet' - allied to a grudging by-election 
verdict from voters the next day, in Birmingham Hodge Hill if not 
in Leicester South, that they have not abandoned Labour quite yet 
- has also calmed hostilities between the Blair and Brown camps, 
which have been inflamed by a fortnight during which Blair's 
leadership hung in the balance. 'It feels like something has 
worked its way out of the system,' says one senior Downing Street 
source. 

But the small print of the report makes clear that all roads 
still lead to the man who this Wednesday marks the watershed of 
10 years as leader of the Labour Party. 

When the Attorney-General advised that invading Iraq would be 
legal, but only with hard evidence that Saddam had continued to 
the last to obstruct the UN, it was Blair who judged the evidence 
was there. It was Blair who told the Commons last September that 
it was 'beyond doubt' that Saddam had continued to produce 
chemical and biological weapons. And it was Blair's final call 
that British troops should go to war last March. No wonder the 
word he used 15 times at the Dispatch Box last Wednesday was 
'judgment'. 

Over the past fortnight, the Prime Minister has cleared the decks 
for the next election with a screeching U-turn on Iraq, 
abandoning both his insistence that WMD will be found and that 
the picture painted by intelligence of the threat from Saddam was 
'extensive, detailed and authoritative', as he had claimed in 
September 2002. What remains, he will argue, is a question of 
judgment. 

Even patchy and inconclusive intelligence, he maintains, posed an 
awful choice: do nothing - like George Bush, facing equally 
patchy forecasts in 2001 of a possible al-Qaeda attack - and 
perhaps unleash a tragedy. Or do something, and maybe get it 
wrong. 

The difference between him and Labour critics, Blair insisted 
last week, is a 'genuine difference of judgment', not a 
reflection on either's integrity: he had 'never had to make a 
harder judgment' than that of going to war. 

Yet questions remain, encapsulated in one elegant paragraph in 
Butler's first chapter. Intelligence, it argues, deals in both 
'secrets and mysteries': that which is hidden, but potentially 
knowable - such as an enemy's arsenal - and that which can never 
be known, such as 'what a leader truly believes, or what his 
reaction would be in certain circumstances'. 

Downing Street has few secrets left: we know roughly what papers 
passed over Blair's desk. But its mysteries remain. What did he, 
at heart, truly fear from Saddam? And if Blair's judgment call 
over Iraq did jeopardise both his and Labour's future, how would 
Blair - and his all-powerful Chancellor react? 

Clare Short's hands were clasped as if in prayer as she strained 
to catch Blair's words at the Dispatch Box last Wednesday. Behind 
her, twirling his spectacles thoughtfully, sat Peter Mandelson. 
Separated by only a few feet, they were worlds apart. 

To uber-Blairites, it is obvious what Gordon Brown's supporters 
have been praying for: a crisis big enough - generated by Butler, 
or by Thursday's by-elections - to force Blair out. No wonder he 
rushed so awkwardly over his damaging admission to the House that 
the intelligence 'was indeed less certain and less well founded 
than was stated'. 'He wasn't comfortable with it,' says one 
senior backbencher who knows him well. 

Blair confessed that he had 'searched his conscience' as it 
became clear that Saddam probably did not possess stockpiles of 
banned weapons, concluding that the war was still justified. He 
was not the only one. 'I couldn't sleep,' admitted one firmly 
pro-war Cabinet Minister last week, asked if he had struggled 
with his conscience over Iraq. 

'I would have been very worried if we hadn't, frankly,' says a 
second, equally convinced the war was right. 'And I kept coming 
back to it, regularly.' A third admits to deep thought before 
voting for war, but to 'no qualms' since. 

In fact, a private argument has raged in Downing Street since at 
least early June over how to handle the glaring absence of WMD. 
Backbenchers and the media were demanding an apology: but Blair 
scented a trap. 'His view was that, as soon as he did that, he 
was finished,' says one close ally. 'All the people saying 
"they'll forgive you for it" [if you apologise] would have done 
for him.' 

And once Blair had decided not to dump the blame on the 
intelligence services, he had no choice but to accept full 
responsibility himself. His nervousness about doing so partly 
reflects the paranoia between the Blair and Brown camps. 

Blairites grumble that the relationship is worse than ever: 
Brownites counter that tensions are being invented to smear their 
man. 'We're always getting the blame for this stuff and it's not 
us,' complains one friend. 

The flames were fuelled by the Chancellor's extraordinary warning 
two weeks ago - following rumours of a forthcoming memoir by the 
Prime Minister's ex-economics adviser, Derek Scott - that attacks 
on the Treasury 'would not be tolerated'. Scott retorted that 
Brown was behaving 'like the Mafia'. 

But ever since, it has been Blairites fanning the fire, 
culminating in last Saturday's suggestion that three Cabinet 
Ministers - John Reid, Tessa Jowell and Charles Clarke - had had 
to persuade Blair out of resigning last month. 

Then suspicions mounted. When Doug Henderson, a Newcastle MP and 
long-time Brown ally, was seen deep in conversation with the 
maverick GMB union leader, Kevin Curran, conspiracy theorists 
leapt to one conclusion: Curran's recent declaration that the 
union would no longer bankroll Labour, only sympathetic MPs, was 
being 'orchestrated deliberately', as one aide puts it. 

Henderson, the union's parliamentary organiser, dismisses that as 
'complete rubbish'. But when Brown made an unscheduled, 
last-minute appearance at last week's TUC conference on 
manufacturing, alarm bells rang in Downing Street. With unions 
itching for a fight with Blair at the party's annual National 
Policy Forum this weekend, over controversial policies on choice 
and education opposed by Brown, was the Chancellor stirring? 

'He is trying to position himself closer to the unions than he is 
to reform,' complains one senior Blair aide. 

Yet friends of the Chancellor insist that he is only trying to 
help: he rose at dawn last Wednesday to visit both by-elections, 
and was still back in the Commons in time for the Butler debate, 
to prove his loyalty. And despite fierce private battles over 
settlements for defence, crime and immigration in last Monday's 
spending review, Brown himself played it impeccably straight. 

Either way, Blair's inner circle insists that the wobbling is 
finished. 'It's over,' claims one Cabinet Minister flatly. 
Another predicts a 'calmer period' ahead: there was no universal 
clamour for Blair's head, despite Butler and the grim by-election 
results. 

Blairites have been quick to put their gloss on last Thursday's 
polls to wavering MPs, arguing that the results suggest that 
Brown - as a more left-wing leader, untarnished by the war - 
would not help marginal MPs to keep their seats. In Birmingham, 
they argue, a New Labourite IT entrepreneur who fought a 
right-wing campaign on crime and asylum narrowly won; in 
Leicester South, an anti-war councillor, who fought an 
old-fashioned contest on service cuts, lost. 

'Running a pretty hard New Labour campaign with a New Labour 
candidate delivered, when the other one didn't,' says one ally 
bluntly. Blairites are coming out fighting. 

David Blunkett's black labrador, Sadie, wriggles hopefully across 
the carpet at his feet, looking for his attention. Even she, it 
seems, can tell when the Home Secretary is in the mood to tickle 
a few tummies. 

'What I felt when I went to Hodge Hill was just how neglected 
people felt in terms of whether they could command any response 
at all [from the police and other institutions],' he tells The 
Observer. Muslim voters are furious over Iraq, but, among 
Labour's bedrock white, working-class supporters, the issues are 
crime, vandalism, graffiti and asylum. Unsurprisingly, Blunkett 
was the only minister awarded extra funds on Monday for the 
pre-election year. This week he will spend some of it on tackling 
crime. 

It won't help what one London MP calls 'the Hampstead core vote' 
- liberals clamouring for more on gay rights and fewer asylum 
crackdowns - but Blunkett argues that he must deliver the red 
meat, to give himself space for their pet causes. In a 
threatening world, voters who feel insecure will only respond 
more angrily to racial, ethnic and social change, he argues: 'I 
have got to get that right, to be able to open up some of the 
other avenues that allow progressive politics to flourish.' 

The Tories, too, report that public order, not the war, dominated 
the by-elections. The new malaise is about the politics of 
insecurity at home, not just abroad. 

Last spring, Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, launched the 
first of a series of private focus groups, inviting constituents 
in to talk about their hopes and fears - with a promise just to 
listen. 

The 'Just Listening' exercise has since involved 15 MPs and 
dozens of sessions across the country, from young mothers to 
pensioners. The overwhelming theme, says Jowell, is safety: 

'They said things like, "I want to be able to open the windows in 
summer, or get on the train and go and see my grandchildren". 

'And there is great concern about the extent to which, for young 
people, mugging or robbery is almost taken for granted: it's the 
new bullying.' 

Trust is threatened, she argues, not so much by Iraq as by 
frustration over hospitals and schools and the perceived failure 
of politicians to listen: 'There is frustration about the speed 
of delivery. People want change more quickly.' The question for 
Blair now is whether they want him to drive it. 

One crumb of comfort for Downing Street from Thursday's grim 
results is that they were worse for Michael Howard, whose party 
was forced into third place both times. 

The Tories will respond with a summer blitz on policy. But with 
no time left radically to tweak the manifesto before the next 
election, some MPs fear the message, rather than the messenger, 
is to blame for their flatlining. 

'That campaign was as good as we can manage in terms of sheer 
effort, and still we came third,' says one frontbencher. 'The 
worry is that we have got to carry on doing what we have been 
doing now - even if it doesn't work.' 

Such talk not only encourages Liberal Democrat leader Charles 
Kennedy, who is now planning raids on Labour seats in cities 
across the north next year, but also calms Labour nerves. The 
real risk of an anti-Blair coup by MPs, says one Downing Street 
aide, came after last month's local elections: 'They could have 
said, "Tony is broken after the war and we need to replace him". 
But they didn't.' 

Yet not everyone has given up. Exactly 10 years ago, Peter 
Kilfoyle was organising Blair's leadership campaign: now, he is 
relentlessly attacking the legality of the war. Backbencher 
Geraldine Smith, who voted for the war and is no Brownite, this 
weekend called for Blair to resign 'with dignity'. 

On Tuesday, opposition parties will return to the attack, 
questioning what the Prime Minister knew, and when, about the 
withdrawal of key intelligence underpinning the September 
dossier. There are rumbles of discontent within the intelligence 
community about what one insider describes as a 'greywash' of a 
report. 

Later this summer, the Iraq Survey Group will issue its final 
report on the hunt for banned weapons: while the Butler team 
insists that it would be 'rash' to say that stockpiles of weapons 
of mass destruction will never be found, there is little hope of 
good news. 

And yesterday Pat Roberts, chairman of the US Senate inquiry into 
the failures of American intelligence, arrived in London to meet 
intelligence officials as he probes the political decisions made 
by the White House, which could again prove embarrassing for 
Blair. 

Nor is the era of intelligence-based warfare, which has just been 
exposed as so fraught with risks, necessarily over. 'The threats 
to our future security are likely to come from groups or networks 
whose intentions and capabilities can be understood only through 
secret intelligence,' says Sir Paul Lever, a former chairman of 
the Joint Intelligence Committee and now director of the Royal 
United Services Institute. 

None the less, Blair hopes not to dwell on Iraq this week. A 
blizzard of five-year plans - suggesting planning for the long 
term, not a quick exit - will be followed on Wednesday by the 
launch of new policy ideas and a defiant speech to the National 
Policy Forum, making clear there is no backing down. 

Recuperating this weekend at Chequers, it seems Blair still has 
the knack of drawing on his reserves just when he most needs them 
for a fight. 'He's just brilliant when he's up against it,' said 
one loyalist minister. 

But he has been up against it too often for comfort lately. As 
Butler admits in his report: 'We do not pretend ours can be the 
last word' on Iraq. Blair must hope that, on that at least, 
Butler is mistaken.

Remember those other reasons for going to war?

The legal case The end of the Gulf war was dependent on UN 
resolution 687, which obliged Iraq to disarm. The Iraq war was 
authorised under resolution 1441, which found Iraq to be in 
material breach of that earlier resolution, even though it had 
largely disarmed. What procurement efforts did continue were 
minor. 

The humanitarian case Stated that Saddam had to be stopped 
because of the lethal persecution of Kurds and Shia. It relied on 
parallels with the intervention in Kosovo, which was undertaken 
for humanitarian grounds and without a UN resolution. 

The transatlantic case Argued that the White House would have 
gone to war in Iraq anyway, and at least by being on side we 
could try to get the US to go down the UN route, lessen the 
impact of crude military tactics and ensure some postwar 
planning. It insisted that for America to go alone was not in 
Britain's long-term interests. 

The credibility case Argued that Iraq's successful defiance of UN 
resolutions encouraged other proliferators. 

The 9/11 case Subscribed to by MI6 and others. Argued that 9/11 
had lowered the tolerance threshold of rogue regimes. Posited the 
risk of al-Qaeda getting its hands on WMD. Ignored the fact that 
Saddam was unlikely to hand over WMD to a group that regarded his 
regime as apostate. 
	
 	
[UP] 

      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
 12 UK Independent: How a dedicated civil servant may change everything

Brian Jones: 

 
17 July 2004

If James Dingemans, counsel for the Hutton inquiry into the 
circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly, had put the 
question more directly I would have found myself unable to 
answer. Instead he asked: "If a member of your staff had given 
this sort of information to journalists about the discussions 
that had taken place in your branch relating to concerns about 
the dossier, what would your reaction have been to that?" 

I paused for what seemed like an age as I realised my answer 
would reveal something of what I thought of David's action. 
Eventually I gave my answer: "I would have thought they were 
acting well beyond the bounds of what they should have been 
doing. I would have been very disappointed and very annoyed." I 
have not returned to this matter again until today. 

In the early summer of 2003 it never crossed my mind it was David 
who was telling the BBC that there had been serious misgivings in 
the intelligence community about the September dossier on Iraq's 
WMD. Even after Hutton it is still difficult to understand why he 
did so. Having supported the dossier and military action and not 
commented on our views before the war, why did he choose to do so 
afterwards? What was the purpose? 

I wondered at first whether, after the failure to find WMD in 
Iraq, David might have wanted to associate himself more directly 
with our concerns. After all, he never did believe that it was 
likely that large stockpiles would be found. He also knew full 
well that large stockpiles of biological weapons were not 
necessary to provide an offensive capability. There was no 
obvious personal motive for him to reveal this information 
anonymously or "off the record" to a few BBC journalists. 

Perhaps he saw then what I had seen at the outset - a danger the 
intelligence analysts would be unjustly blamed for providing 
flawed advice when they had been much more cautious all along. He 
knew they would find it difficult to make their case openly 
because of the constraints upon them - a fact clearly and 
ironically reflected in my answer to Mr Dingemans. So David may 
have decided to use the access to the media his job as a UN 
weapons inspector had given him. 

I believe it was a deliberate act. He was too experienced of both 
the press and the secret world for it to have been a momentary 
lapse. He felt passionately about the work that had come to 
dominate his life and I know he recognised the importance of 
intelligence to it. We will never know for sure why he spoke to 
Susan Watts, Andrew Gilligan and Gavin Hewitt, but my preference 
is to believe this is why he did it. 

I doubt that he quite realised the political storm his revelation 
could cause. He was more attuned to the politics of the United 
Nations than Whitehall. He could not know that the charge he made 
would be exaggerated by its interpreter and that BBC bias would 
become the smokescreen to conceal, at least temporarily, the real 
problem - the absence of chemical and biological weapons in 
postwar Iraq. When his name emerged and was so hastily added to 
the conflagration he made the sort of mistakes any of us might 
make when placed under unreasonable pressure. 

The absence of confidants in his immediate working circle, which 
were a consequence of his unique, multi-hatted, high-powered, 
international job and his apparently introverted nature, together 
with MoD's frugal, hands-off approach to man management appears 
to have left him nowhere to turn. 

There is no doubt that David's tragic death led to unprecedented 
and detailed revelations about the machinery of government, the 
intelligence process and the way in which civil servants are 
managed. It has shown through Lord Butler's review how mistakes 
were made and serious flaws in the system have been identified. I 
realise now that my response to Mr Dingemans' question, if 
transferred to David Kelly, will appear to be unforgiving. 

I am glad I said nothing further until now. I am hopeful that the 
last act of a dedicated civil servant will prove to have been the 
catalyst for improvements that will benefit the security of the 
nation. 

Dr Brian Jones is a former head of the nuclear, chemical and 
biological branch of the Defence Intelligence Staff                


UK Independent Ltd.

Brian Jones: How a dedicated civil servant may change everything
 
17 July 2004
*****************************************************************
 13 UK Independent: How judge was misinformed about Iraq's WMD threat
 
By Kim Sengupta
 
17 July 2004

In Autumn 2002 the dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
- the clinching argument which Tony Blair believed would swing a
deeply sceptical public behind the war - was just weeks away.
There had been draft after draft, with copious suggestions on
"presentation" from Downing Street. 

But there was one serious worry nagging away at MI6. There was a
lack of hard evidence that Iraq had an active chemical and
biological weapons programme. 

One source, believed to be a high-ranking Baath party member,
had supplied some information about such a capability. But it
was, he readily admitted, chatter he had picked up from his
"high-level" contacts in Baghdad, and thus hearsay. 

Then came the break. An Iraqi source, not an exile who was full
of fanciful tales, but a general who sat at Saddam Hussein's
table, came forward with claims of an ongoing chemical and
biological programme. 

What is more, the man, although new as an agent, had already
supplied information, albeit of much lower value, which was
deemed to be credible. 

However, the informant had revealed that he was getting his
material about chemical and biological weapons from another man,
and this man had links with the exile groups that MI6 had been
so cautious about. The case officer duly noted the problem, and
Lord Butler acknowledged that a caveat had been included in the
intelligence docket. 

This new information underpinned another sensational allegation
that Iraq could launch chemical and biological weapons hitting
British bases in Cyprus within 45 minutes of an order to deploy
them. 

Such was the sense of excitement within MI6 that Sir Richard
Dearlove, the head of the service, personally visited Downing
Street to tell the Prime Minister and Sir David Manning, his
foreign affairs adviser, about the new source. This visit was a
break from protocol. The intelligence should have been
channelled through the Joint Intelligence Committee. Sir Richard
told Mr Blair and Sir David that the new source was "potentially
important" but also pointed out that he "remained unproven ...
on trial". 

Twelve days after the meeting, the Iraq weapons dossier was
published and Mr Blair declared in the foreword that the
document was "extensive, detailed and authoritative", and
declared that intelligence had "established beyond doubt" that
the Iraqi regime was continuing to produce WMD. 

That is where it rested until MI6 agents went out to Iraq after
the fall of Baghdad. From the end of April onwards they
interrogated prisoners and interviewed their informants. They
tracked down and spoke to the man said to have supplied Sir
Richard's prize source with the chemical and biological
programmes details. He flatly denied saying any such thing. 

This was passed on to MI6 in London by the end of June last
year. By the second week of July, it is believed, MI6 had
informed the JIC, chaired by John Scarlett, that it was
withdrawing that intelligence. The normal practice is that all
those who had received the original intelligence, now proved to
be untrustworthy, should be informed at the earliest
opportunity. This included the Prime Minister. 

The Hutton inquiry began on 11 August. Giving evidence, the
Prime Minister, Mr Scarlett and Sir Richard all failed to
mention the withdrawal of intelligence and saidagents in Iraq
were believed to be reliable. 

Yesterday, Downing Street insisted that the first time Mr Blair
knew about the discredited intelligence was when he saw the
Butler report. And the reason Mr Scarlett had not mentioned it,
giving evidence two months after MI6 had withdrawn the
intelligence, was that "the validation process was still
ongoing". 	           


UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 14 UK Independent: No 10 admits Hutton cover-up
 
By Colin Brown, Kim Sengupta and Andrew Grice
 
17 July 2004

Downing Street admitted yesterday that MI6 embarked on an 
unprecedented cover-up after it withdrew intelligence supporting 
the Government's dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass 
destruction because it was unreliable. 

In an astonishing admission after the disclosure of the cover-up 
in yesterday's Independent, Tony Blair's official spokesman said 
MI6 decided not to tell the Hutton inquiry - set up to 
investigate the death of the government scientist David Kelly - 
that crucial intelligence on Saddam's chemical and biological 
weapons was unsound. The security services, he said, felt it was 
"too sensitive'' to be made public. The head of MI6, Sir Richard 
Dearlove, also decided not to tell Mr Blair. The Prime Minister's 
spokesman said Mr Blair only became aware of the withdrawal of 
the intelligence as a result of the inquiry by Lord Butler of 
Brockwell, which was delivered three days ago. 

Senior sources close to last year's Hutton inquiry said they were 
unaware that crucial intelligence had been withdrawn, and had 
this been known, a number of government witnesses would have 
faced questions about the matter. The sources insisted that the 
fact that intelligence had been withdrawn by MI6 was not revealed 
to Lord Hutton either orally or in written evidence. 

After the death of Dr Kelly, Mr Blair asked Lord Hutton to 
conduct an inquiry. Mr Blair's official spokesman said on 21 July 
last year: "The important point is that we have said that he will 
have whatever papers and people he needs." 

The inquiry began on 11 August. Giving evidence, the Prime 
Minister, Sir Richard Dearlove and John Scarlett, the head of the 
Joint Intelligence Committee, all failed to mention the 
withdrawal of intelligence. All three insisted that intelligence 
from agents in Iraq was believed to be reliable. 

Downing Street insisted yesterday that the first time Mr Blair 
knew about the discredited intelligence was in the Butler report. 
And the reason Mr Scarlett had not mentioned it, when giving 
evidence two months after MI6 had withdrawn the intelligence, was 
that "the validation process was still ongoing". 

Senior MPs said Downing Street's comments had all the hallmarks 
of a damage limitation exercise. Had Mr Blair known, he would 
face fresh allegations of misleading Parliament on Tuesday when 
he opens a debate on the Butler report. 

Downing Street gave three reasons for not telling the Hutton 
inquiry: it was not relevant to the investigation into Dr Kelly's 
death; it was only one element in the chemical and biological 
weapons "picture"; and, because validation of the intelligence 
and its source was continuing, it was too sensitive to make 
public. "Lord Hutton was not misled. He saw everything that was 
relevant to his picture," said Mr Blair's spokesman. 

Two parliamentary committees were also kept in the dark and last 
night there was a backlash as MPs claimed they had been misled. 
The Prime Minister's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) 
will meet next week to decide whether to hold a fresh inquiry 
into the disclosures in the Butler report. 

A senior member of the ISC said: "We were not told about this. We 
were shown some of the evidence. I think it is a real issue of 
concern that the SIS [Intelligence and Security Committee] have 
done this without telling us." Lord King, a former chairman of 
the ISC, said: "It was for Lord Hutton to decide whether it was 
not relevant. " 

The intelligence services also failed to tell the Commons Foreign 
Affairs Committee, which investigated the death of DrKelly, that 
it had "withdrawn'' the crucial intelligence. 

The decision to withdraw the intelligence was taken in July, last 
year, the same month that Mr Blair was forced to call the Hutton 
inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly, 
who was named as the source for reports that the dossier had been 
"sexed up'' by Downing Street. 

Exactly a year ago, Dr Kelly went for his fateful walk in the 
woods. Mr Blair is finding it impossible to draw a line under the 
events that his death set in train.                    


UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 15 UK Independent: Downing Street forced into the open on discredited spies
 
By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
 
17 July 2004

Twenty four hours of Government bluster ended yesterday when
Downing Street admitted it had failed to reveal that crucial
intelligence underpinning the dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction had been discredited. 

Downing Street was forced to issue a defence of its decision not
to reveal to Lord Hutton and the Intelligence and Security
Committee (ISC) that information which helped Tony Blair claim
that Saddam Hussein was a "serious and current threat" had been
withdrawn by MI6. 

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said it would have been
"improper" to reveal that a piece of intelligence had been
withdrawn because it was "still being investigated as a
sensitive operational matter" at the time of Lord Hutton's
inquiry. He said Mr Blair only learnt of the development as a
result of Lord Butler's report. 

He said wider questions of intelligence were outside the remit
of the Hutton inquiry and that the information was still being
validated at the time. 

The comments came after the Government spent a day refusing to
discuss the details of the report, sticking to its insistence
that Mr Blair had been cleared of acting in bad faith. 

But No 10's line shifted significantly after a close reading of
the Butler report showed that neither Lord Hutton nor the ISC
were told that the controversial intelligence had been
withdrawn. 

Downing Street faced renewed questions after the Health
Secretary, John Reid, who is regarded as the Prime Minister's
"Mr Reliable", faced a mauling over the issue on BBC Radio 4
yesterday. 

Pressed repeatedly to explain why ministers had not admitted
that key intelligence had been withdrawn, Mr Reid told the Today
programme: "I have no idea whether any of these people were even
informed of this allegation you are making. You are asking me a
question I can't answer. 

"I know that Butler on the question of good faith and putting
information into the public domain misleadingly has confirmed
for the fourth time that the Government acted in good faith,
that the intelligence services acted in good faith." 

He accused the BBC of "prejudiced opinion", claiming the
corporation had ignored Lord Butler's most important findings
because of an obsession with identifying scapegoats. He said:
"You are not actually interested in addressing the problems of
intelligence but in hunting for somebody to blame." 

The Government bluster had started when questions about the
discredited intelligence from Iraq surfaced on Thursday morning
at the regular briefing for political correspondents. Tom Kelly,
the Prime Minister's official spokesman, said he was not going
to be drawn into the detail of the Butler inquiry. 

Pressed on the issue, he said: "He [Mr Blair] continues to
believe that the central reasons he had put forward for going to
war remain as valid today as they had been at the time. 

"Our belief that Saddam Hussein had been a threat had been
validated by Lord Butler's report, which had found that the
Prime Minister had acted in good faith." 

Five hours later, No 10 was still expressing bafflement at the
story and was refusing to be drawn on the details. 

The Government's discomfort was also in evidence when the
Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, the most senior minister to break
cover during the day, faced pointed questions over MI6's
withdrawal of the intelligence at a lunch for political
journalists. 

Mr Straw was wrong-footed by the questions, and accused
journalists of "over egging" the claim. He said: "The dossier
did not depend on one single piece of intelligence. Our
judgements depended on the context, which included the last
Unscom [United Nations weapons inspector's] reports." 

By yesterday morning, however, the story had gathered pace after
The Independent's front page revealed that both Lord Hutton and
the ISC had been misled. 

REID AT BAY 

Extract from the 'Today' Programme yesterday 

Carolyn Quinn: "Why wasn't the fact that evidence which was used
in the dossier - has now been withdrawn in July last year - and
when the Hutton inquiry took place in August, the Prime
Minister, Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, John Scarlett, Sir
Richard Dearlove all had the chance of doing exactly what you
are saying..." 

Dr John Reid, Health Secretary: "Carolyn, Carolyn..." 

CQ: "And saying we now realise that this evidence has been
discredited and we want to inform you now?" 

JR: "Carolyn, I have no idea whether any of those people were
even informed of this allegation that you are making. I have no
idea. Incidentally, nor do you..." 

CQ: "But the intelligence services..." 

JR: "Nor do you have any idea....." 

CQ: "Well, we do. The Butler report. The Butler report says that
John Scarlett knew". 	           


UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 16 UK Independent: Attorney General warned Blair on legality of war
 
By Severin Carrell and Andy McSmith
 
18 July 2004

Tony Blair was warned before the Iraq war by the Attorney
General, Lord Goldsmith, that a UN court could rule Britain's
invasion unlawful, The Independent on Sunday has learnt. 

The warning was in Lord Goldsmith's so far undisclosed legal
opinion from 7 March last year, less than two weeks before the
conflict began. Fearing that the International Court of Justice
could rule it was illegal to go to war without the express
authority of the UN Security Council, the Attorney General put
senior barristers and international legal experts on standby to
help to prepare the Government's defence if needed, legal
sources said. 

As Mr Blair prepares for Tuesday's parliamentary debate on the
Butler inquiry, the revelation will intensify pressure on him to
publish all Lord Goldsmith's legal advice leading up to the war. 

Michael Howard, the Tory leader, is expected to join the chorus
of those saying that John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint
Intelligence Committee, should be denied promotion to the job of
the next head of MI6. But the Conservatives plan to concentrate
their fire on Tony Blair. 

Today, Mr Howard even suggested that if he had known then what
the Butler report has since revealed about the preparations for
war, he might have led his band of Tory MPs to vote against it.
Interviewed by The Sunday Times he said: "It is difficult for
someone, knowing everything that we know now, to have voted for
that resolution." 

Senior international legal experts have accused the Government
of invading Iraq illegally, because it failed to get Security
Council authority and there was no immediate threat to UK
security. The former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a
QC, said: "I think there's a case to answer. I think it's hugely
difficult to argue that when the Security Council refuses to
pass a resolution you can simply unilaterally use a previous
resolution as a case for going to war." 

Charles Kennedy, the Lib Dem leader, will press Mr Blair on why
the Hutton inquiry was not told that intelligence on Iraq's
chemical and biological weapons had been withdrawn by M16 prior
to the decision to go to war, because it was unreliable. 

An indication of the strength of public feeling came from the
Leicester South by-election last week. The Lib Dems won what was
previously a safe Labour seat, and a candidate for the anti-war
fringe group Respect took more than 3,700 votes. 

The Butler report's revelations about the discrediting of WMD
intelligence have been seized upon by international legal
experts, led by Professor Philippe Sands of University College,
London. The report also showed for the first time that Mr Blair
had ignored the fact that UN inspectors could find no evidence
of an active weapons programme in Iraq - despite legal advice
that "incontrovertible" evidence was needed before an invasion. 

The Government insists that the Attorney General is bound by
rules of lawyer-client confidentiality, and that publication
would undermine his freedom to give frank opinions to ministers.
However, the barrister Michael Mansfield said civil service
rules clearly allowed ministers to publish legal advice. 

Sir Menzies Campbell QC, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, said
Lord Goldsmith's opinions went "to the very heart of the
decision to take military action. The rule that the Attorney
General's advice should not be published was conceived in the
public interest. On this issue, the public interest in
disclosure over-rides any other consideration". 	           


UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 17 UK Independent: critics to put the questions that still remain, even after four
inquiries, about his decision to go to war. Raymond Whitaker
reports
 
18 July 2004
       

On 12 September 2002, the head of the Secret Intelligence
Service, Sir Richard Dearlove, travelled from his post-modern
headquarters at Vauxhall Cross on the south bank of the Thames,
known derisively to MI5 across the river as "Legoland", to see
Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street. 

Sir Richard had a crucial piece of intelligence from a new
source in Iraq which he wanted the Prime Minister to know about
straight away. Downing Street, the intelligence services and
half of Whitehall were working furiously to complete the
Government's dossier on Saddam Hussein's presumed weapons of
mass destruction, but there was disquiet among many of the
experts about the lack of recent evidence. 

Earlier that year an assessment from the Joint Intelligence
Committee (JIC), the most important clearing-house for secret
information, had lamented that intelligence on Iraq's WMD was
"sporadic and patchy". As late as 21 August the JIC was saying:
"We ... know little about Iraq's CBW [chemical and biological
weapons] work since late 1998." That was when United Nations
weapons inspectors, many of whom were reporting to Western
intelligence, had been pulled out of Iraq. 

But Sir Richard's service, more commonly known as MI6, had been
making strenuous efforts to find out more, calling on all its
sources in Iraq. One, a Baath Party member who had proved
reliable on other subjects in the past, passed on information
about CBW production and stocks, but stressed it was
second-hand. Another said he had been told some battlefield
munitions could be armed with CB agents in 20 to 45 minutes, but
again could not vouch for the details himself. 

This was enough for the JIC to "harden up" previous assessments
that Iraq had "probably" continued producing chemical and
biological agents after 1998. On 9 September it said "recent
intelligence indicates" that "production of chemical and
biological weapons is taking place". Uneasiness remained,
however: to seasoned readers of JIC documents, the word
"indicates" demonstrated the information was not of top quality,
and the deadline for publication of the dossier was looming. A
JIC staffer sent round an email on 11 September, saying: "This
is ... a last (!) call for any items of intelligence that
agencies think can and should be included." 

At Vauxhall Cross, however, there was much excitement over a new
informant who had come forward early in September. He was a
senior military officer believed to be close to Saddam himself,
The Independent on Sunday has been told, and he said he knew at
first hand that Iraq was not only producing chemical and
biological poisons, but also had stepped up output, building
further facilities throughout the country. This was the
information with which "C" - the traditional designation for the
head of MI6 - had hastened round to Downing Street. 

Sir Richard had mentioned the report two days earlier to the
Prime Minister's foreign affairs adviser, Sir David Manning. Now
he took Mr Blair through each of MI6's main sources on Iraq,
including the "new source on trial". According to last week's
report by the Butler inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, the MI6
chief "told us that he had underlined to the Prime Minister the
potential importance of the new source and what SIS understood
his access to be; but also said that the case was developmental
and that the source remained unproven. 

"Nevertheless, it may be that, in the context of the intense
interest at that moment in the status of Iraq's prohibited
weapons programmes, and in particular continuing work on the
dossier, this concurrence of events caused more weight to be
given to this unvalidated new source than would normally have
been the case." 

Translated from Lord Butler's mandarinese, the impact of this
dramatic report was clear. Although it was not included in the
dossier, launched on 24 September 2002, and was considered so
sensitive that it was shown to only a handful of top figures, it
was by far the most important of a tiny number of scraps of
information which backed up the confident assertion in the
dossier that "Iraq has continued to produce chemical and
biological agents." 

A week beforehand, Downing Street's chief of staff, Jonathan
Powell, complained in an email about a previous draft of the
dossier: "The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let
alone an imminent threat, from Saddam ... We will need to make
it clear in launching the document that we do not have evidence
that he is an imminent threat." But in the foreword to the
published dossier, written for Mr Blair by Alastair Campbell,
Downing Street's former director of communications, and approved
by the JIC chairman, John Scarlett, who claimed "ownership" of
the dossier, the Prime Minister warns that the threat from Iraq
is "current and serious". 

"What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond
doubt," Mr Blair goes on, "is that Saddam has continued to
produce chemical and biological weapons ..." And the title of
the dossier became "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction", in
contrast to "programme for WMD", as in previous drafts. 

Virtually the only authority for any of these statements was the
report from the "new source on trial". It was far more important
than the 45-minute claim, which appeared four times in the
dossier, and which became the casus belli between Downing Street
and the BBC last year. The weapons scientist David Kelly
committed suicide a year ago this weekend after being "outed" as
the source for BBC reports that the 45-minute claim was
unreliable, and should not have been included in the dossier. 

Last week Lord Butler revealed that both the "45 minutes"
information and the intelligence from the "new source" had been
withdrawn last July, before the Hutton inquiry into Dr Kelly's
death, setting off a row over whether Lord Hutton should have
been told. Downing Street said the Prime Minister only found out
from the Butler report. But the IoS has learned that MI6
discovered the untrustworthiness of its new source a lot
earlier. 

The week after the dossier was published, the Iraqi military
officer was back in touch. If his first report had been just
what the British authorities had wanted to hear, his second -
the content of which is undisclosed - seemed "too good to be
true", in the words of one source. What was more, he announced
for the first time that his information was not first-hand. The
realisation began to dawn that he was as unreliable as MI6's
other main source; it is even possible that he was planting
disinformation. Be that as it may, the Butler committee found
that three of MI6's five main sources on Iraq's CBW had been
discredited. The two still considered accurate were painting a
far less alarming picture. 

Mr Blair's defenders have insisted, as he did to Lord Hutton,
that the dossier was never intended to make the case for war on
Iraq - although Mr Campbell called it "one of the most important
pieces of work developed during the entire build-up to the
conflict" - and claim that four inquiries have now cleared the
Prime Minister of lying about Saddam's WMD to take us to war.
What the Butler report clearly shows, however, is that on at
least one occasion he was told that the intelligence was
tenuous, and that he could have asked searching questions of his
spy chiefs if he had wanted to. 

In October 2002, Congress gave President George Bush authority
for war. The following month the UN Security Council demanded
that Iraq give a full declaration of its WMD and let the weapons
inspectors return. Yet when Iraq produced its declaration on 7
December, the JIC gave it only cursory attention, circulating an
initial assessment which was never followed up. 

If this did not indicate that the tide for war had become
unstoppable, it could have been inferred from the fact that
neither the Government nor the intelligence agencies thought it
necessary to reappraise their views on Iraq's WMD after the UN
inspectors repeatedly followed up MI6 and CIA leads and drew a
blank. 

Butler found this omission "surprising". Others might say it
demonstrated a wilful refusal to seek the truth. 

On Tuesday Mr Blair will open the Commons debate on the Butler
report, hoping that once it is over and MPs join the rest of the
country on holiday, the arguments over Iraq will cease.
Government supporters have been seeking for some time to portray
the Iraq issue as "boring", and, with power having nominally
been handed over in Baghdad to an indigenous administration,
they may succeed, barring some new and startling development. 

This week could be the last chance for Mr Blair's critics to
seek answers to their questions. Why did he not examine the
intelligence more critically? Why has it taken him until now to
admit that there might be the slightest flaw in the Government's
WMD case? Does he feel he has anything to apologise for? And - a
question no inquiry has ever been asked to examine - when did he
promise President Bush that Britain would go to war at his side? 

In the view of many, the elegantly written and unfailingly
polite Butler report, while assigning "collective
responsibility" and blaming no one, cemented the impression that
Tony Blair decided on war first and sought the justification
later. But nobody expects him to admit that, not even to
himself. 	           


UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 18 WorldNetDaily: Israel 'ready' to strike Iran
                                    
  SUNDAY JULY 18 2004           
        
 If Russia supplies Islamic state with rods for enriching uranium
 
By Aaron Klein © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com 

Israel has conducted military exercises for a pre-emptive strike 
against several of Iran's nuclear power facilities and is ready 
to attack if Russia supplies Iran with rods for enriching 
uranium, Israeli officials told reporters. 

An Israeli defense source in Tel Aviv told the London Sunday 
Times, which first published the story, that "Israel will on no 
account permit Iranian reactors – especially the one being built 
in Bushehr with Russian help – to go critical." 

The source was also quoted as saying that any strike on Iran's 
reactors would probably be carried out by long-range F-15I jets, 
flying over Turkey, with simultaneous operations by commandos on 
the ground. 
  
F-15I jets in Israeli arsenal (photo: Israeli-Weapons.com)   

Russia is expected to deliver the enriching rods, currently being 
stored at a Russian port, late next year after a dispute over 
financial terms is resolved. 

"If the worst comes to the worst and international efforts fail," 
the source said, "we are very confident we'll be able to demolish 
the ayatollah's nuclear aspirations in one go." 

The source explained that any strike could be accompanied by an 
attack on other Iranian targets, including a facility at Natanz, 
where the Iranians have attempted to enrich uranium, and a plant 
at Arak, which International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors 
suspect of nuclear activity. 

The Sunday Times also quoted a senior U.S. official warning of a 
pre-emptive Israeli strike if Russia continues cooperating with 
the Iranians. He said Washington was unlikely to block Israeli 
attacks against Iran. 

The paper quoted a classified document on the Iranian threat 
which was presented to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon earlier this 
year and which the paper claims to have seen. The document, 
entitled "The Strategic Future of Israel," was first reported by 
Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, a premium, published by 
WorldNetDaily. 

G2 quotes the report, which was drafted by four of Israel's 
senior defense experts, as saying "All enemy targets should be 
selected with the view that their destruction would promptly 
force the enemy to cease all nuclear/biological/chemical 
exchanges with Israel." 

The report also called on Israel to develop a multilayered 
ballistic missile defense system and described Iran as a "suicide 
nation," recommending "targeted killings" of members of the 
country's elite, including its leading nuclear scientists. 

Iran signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and has obligated 
itself to random inspections supervised by the IAEA. But the 
treaty allows Iran to produce nuclear material as long as it can 
plausibly claim the production is for "peaceful purposes." 

Experts warn that Iran can build the infrastructure needed to 
make nuclear weapons, telling inspectors they need the material 
for "energy and nuclear medicine research," and then kick out the 
inspectors, renounce the treaty and quickly assemble a nuclear 
arsenal, as did North Korea, which is now said to have ten 
nuclear warheads. 

Under the Iranian deal with Moscow, waste produced at the Bushehr 
plant containing plutonium that could be used in bomb-making 
would be shipped back to Russia for storage, but the material 
must first be cooled, providing Iran with what Washington fears 
could be up to two years in which to extract the plutonium. 

The paper quotes Israeli sources as saying that a quarter ton of 
plutonium could be produced each a year if Bushehr is fully 
functional, enough for 20 bombs. 

The Sunday Times reports Israeli sources fear a pre-emptive 
strike against Iranian nuclear facilities could provoke "a 
ferocious response," which could involve Lebanese-based rocket 
attacks on northern Israel or terrorist attacks against Jewish 
and Israeli targets abroad. 

Aaron Klein is WorldNetDaily's special Middle East
correspondent, whose past interview subjects have included
Yasser Arafat, Ehud Barak, Shlomo Ben Ami and leaders of the
Taliban. 

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. 
webmaster@worldnetdaily.com
*****************************************************************
 19 Berkshire Eagle Editorials: Courting disaster
 
July 18, 2004 Pittsfield, MA                                                                          
 			 								 					
 The next president of the United States, George W. Bush or John 
Kerry, will likely appoint two or more Supreme Court justices and 
dozens of federal district and appellate-court judges, shaping 
the law in the United States for decades to come. The frightening 
prospect that Mr. Bush could well be the man to select those 
judges was underlined earlier this month when the Senate 
confirmed, 51 to 46, Bush nominee J. Leon Holmes to a federal 
district judgeship in Arkansas. Mr. Holmes is the man who wrote 
in 1997 -- not 1697 -- that in marriage "the woman is to place 
herself under the authority of the man." He said the Bible told 
him so. 

Mr. Holmes -- now Judge Holmes -- has also declared abortion the 
moral equivalent of the Holocaust. He has inveighed against 
federally enforced school desegregation and campaigned for school 
prayer. Something over 20 years ago, he opined that rape victims 
become pregnant "as often as it snows in Miami." Mr. Holmes' 
Senate supporters argued that there ought to be a statute of 
limitations on dumb, offensive remarks, and said anyway Mr. 
Holmes later had second thoughts about that one. Vermont Democrat 
Patrick Leahy, leading the fruitless fight to stop the Holmes 
nomination, pointed out that 20,000 rape victims become pregnant 
each year, and none of the Holmes enthusiasts challenged the 
figure.

 Judicial decisions make huge differences in the lives of 
millions of people. The right of reproductive freedom in American 
hangs by a thread. The basic right of access to the courts by 
war-on-terror "detainees" was upheld this year 6 to 3 by the 
Supreme Court. Age and illness may lead two of those six justices 
to retire soon. Campaign-finance reform was upheld by the court 
this year 5 to 4. Another 5 to 4 ruling on Internet pornography 
barely struck down a federal law that would have inhibited the 
distribution of all manner of non-pornographic material.

 Federal courts have halted some of the most atrocious 
anti-environmental moves by the Bush administration. Just this 
month, a federal court in West Virginia, voided a bizarre Army 
Corps of Engineers rule that gives "pre-clearance" -- i.e., do it 
now, ask permission later -- for Appalachian coal-mining 
companies to dynamite the tops off mountains and shove some of 
the refuse into local streams. On July 9, the District of 
Columbia Federal Appeals Court ordered the Energy Department to 
halt work on a nuclear-waste depository at Yucca Mountain, 
Nevada, because under the administration's plan the public would 
be protected from radiation leaks for just 10,000 years, not the 
300,000 years recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. 
Luckily for posterity, the courts are looking ahead -- although 
the Republican Congress may now re-write the law that made this 
farsightedness possible.

 What's most chilling of all is the openness with which Bush 
officials and supporters declare their eagerness to trash 75 
years of jurisprudence on civil rights and liberties, 
reproductive rights, free speech, separation of church and state, 
and environmental regulations. Should they succeed, the United 
States of America will be a very different country, one that most 
Americans will barely recognize when the full effect of what has 
happened begins to hit them.                                
 		   			 		   	 	
       Copyright ©1999-2004 New England Newspapers, Inc., 
*****************************************************************
 20 Admiral Rickover's Admission That The Facts Would Destroy The Nuclear Power Industry
 
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 02:23:37 -0400

 

  Today, Sunday July 18, 2004 is the eighteenth
anniversary of the signed, notorized statement
below by Jane Rickover, daughter-in-law of Admiral
Hyman Rickover. For more on the ongoing cover up
see the bottom of this post:

   http://www.mothersalert.org/rickover.html

Admiral Rickover's Statement

The following statement was signed by Jane
Rickover, daughter-in-law of Admiral Hyman
Rickover, "father" of the nuclear navy. It was
notorized by William Lamson July 18, 1986. Jane
Rickover has verified the authenticity of the
document and the events described in it.


--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------

"In May, 1983, my father-in-law, Admiral Hyman G.
Rickover, told me that at the time of the Three
Mile Island nuclear reactor accident, a full
report was commissioned by by President Jimmy
Carter. He [my father-in-law] said that the
report, if published in its entirety, would have
destroyed the civilian nuclear power industry
because the accident at Three Mile Island was
infinitely more dangerous than was ever made
public. he told me that he had used his enormous
personal influence with President Carter to
persuade him to publish the report only in a
highly "diluted" form. The President himself had
originally wished the full report to be made
public.

In November, 1985, my father-in-law told me that
he had come to deeply regret his action in
persuading President Carter to suppress the most
alarming aspects of that report.


[Signed]  Jane Rickover

Jane Rickover appeared before me and swore as to
the truth of the
above statement.

Dated at Toronto this 18th day of July A.D.  1986

[Signed]  William F. Lamson

William F. Lamson  Q.C.
Notary Public for the Province of
Ontario



  For more on the ongoing coverup see:
http://www.mothersalert.org/bertell.html AND

    http://www.mothersalert.org/blanche.html


*****************************************************************
 21 [NukeNet] PG&E loses 3 nuclear fuel rods
 
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 13:13:13 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/9178007.htm?1c

PG&E loses 3 nuclear fuel rods

BUT COMPANY SAYS THERE IS NO DANGER TO THE PUBLIC

By the Mercury News


PG&E said Friday it is trying to sort out conflicting records on the
whereabouts of three foot-and-a-half-long nuclear fuel rods at its
Humboldt Bay Power Plant.

The plant's small, 65-megawatt nuclear reactor, which opened in
1963, ceased operations in 1976, but highly radioactive spent fuel
rods are still stored in pools at the site. Others were shipped out
of state for reprocessing during the reactor's operation.

PG&E officials believe the three missing rods have either been in
the plant's storage pools all along, or were safely transported
decades ago to reprocessing centers in Ohio or New York. In any
case, they say there is no danger to the public.

``The fuel rod segments remain in the used fuel pool, or were
shipped off-site to an appropriate, controlled facility,'' said Greg
Rueger, senior vice president for generation and Chief Nuclear
Officer for the utility. ``However, we must ensure we have accurate
records, and that entails a meticulous search of the pool itself, to
confirm the location of these three used fuel segments.''

Pacific Gas & Electric discovered the problem while preparing the
plant for decommissioning by 2015. Records showed the rods were to
be shipped off for analysis to the Battelle Laboratory in Columbus,
Ohio in September 1968, but also indicated the shipment was canceled.

Those 1968 records conflict with the plant's current used fuel
inventory, which does not show the rods being located at the
Humboldt plant. Documentation indicates that the entire fuel
assembly was shipped for reprocessing to a facility in West Valley,
New York, on Aug. 6, 1969.

PG&E officials said the rods could not have been stolen. A thief
would have to encase the rods in a steel-and-lead container weighing
nearly a ton to evade a security system of radiation detectors and
avoid fatal exposure.



_______________________________________________________________________
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Change your settings at:
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*****************************************************************
 22 Brattleboro Reformer: Trio asks for probe of NRC
 
July 18, 2004 Brattleboro, VT                                                                                 
 			 								 					
By CAROLYN LORIÉ 
Reformer Staff

BRATTLEBORO -- Vermont's congressional delegation has asked the 
General Accounting Office -- the investigative arm of Congress -- 
to look into the missing fuel at Vermont Yankee and the oversight 
role of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

 In a letter dated July 15, Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., Sen. 
Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., wrote that 
the search for the missing fuel "raises serious questions about 
whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting 
appropriate oversight of nuclear materials at the individual 
nuclear power plants and whether the federal government should 
change its nuclear materials management policies." 

On April 21, officials at Vermont Yankee announced that two 
segments of fuel -- one 9 inches long, the other about 17 inches, 
both about the diameter of a pencil -- were missing from the 
spent fuel pool. The discovery was made when the NRC resident 
inspector, David Pelton, ordered the canister that was believed 
to house them opened. The container was empty.

 The spent fuel pool was searched with a video camera and, 
according to a May 27 e-mail from a Vermont Yankee spokesman, all 
the canisters in the pool were examined.

 Late last week, however, officials at the plant announced that 
they had been notified by General Electric, which manufactures 
the fuel used at Vermont Yankee, that the pool should contain a 
cylinder sent to them in 1979. This is when the two segments were 
said to have separated from the rest of the fuel assembly.

 The container was opened earlier this week and two segments were 
found inside.

 While relief was expressed that the fuel had been accounted for, 
the episode raised questions about Vermont Yankee's record 
keeping, as well as the oversight provided by the NRC.

 "Though the missing fuel at Vermont Yankee has been located, we 
are concerned that the loss of nuclear material at the Yankee 
facility in our state is the second such loss at a Northeastern 
power plant in five years, the other being the loss of spent fuel 
at the Millstone facility in Connecticut," reads the 
congressional letter.

 The fuel at Millstone, lost in 2000, was never found. Raymond 
Shadis, technical advisor for the nuclear power watchdog group 
the New England Coalition, applauded the writing of the letter.

 "I think that Vermont has an extraordinary congressional team," 
he said from his home in Maine. "They have really demonstrated 
that they care about their constituency and about this particular 
issue."

 Shadis said that the letter was "in concert" with the 
coalition's petition to have the NRC certify Vermont Yankee's 
spent fuel inventory.

 Vermont Yankee officials would not say whether there were other 
containers in the pool that had not been searched.

 According to Diane Screnci, NRC officials did not view all of 
the videotape of the pool search as the agency planned to do a 
special investigation after Vermont Yankee had completed its 
search. This is still the NRC's plan.

 The congressional letter asks that the General Accounting Office 
specifically investigate the following issues:

 -- historical changes in NRC nuclear materials management;

 -- trends in the nuclear industry that may suggest the need for 
additional oversight;

 -- options for strengthening nuclear materials accounting.

 Leahy, Jeffords and Sanders also ask the GAO "to provide 
Congress with a range of options for improvements to the 
system...."

 While Shadis was laudatory of Vermont's congressional 
delegation, he was critical of Vermont Yankee's handling of the 
missing fuel and the information plant officials have provided to 
the public.

 "We've got a dearth of real information and we have a surplus of 
bombastic pronouncement," said Shadis, adding that the finding of 
the fuel does not signify the end of the issue.

 "It ain't over by a long shot," he said.

       Copyright ©1999-2004 New England Newspapers, Inc., a 
*****************************************************************
 23 NEWS.com.au: N-plant future in doubt 

(July 18, 2004)

By Jim Dickins

THE replacement nuclear reactor now nearing completion at 
Sydney's Lucas Heights could become a $335.3 million white 
elephant in the wake of the Federal Government's decision to can 
its planned waste dump last week.

A spokesman for the independent watchdog that regulates Lucas 
Heights, said the reactor would not get the go-ahead until a 
permanent waste repository was finalised. 

The ruling throws the reactor's carefully planned commissioning 
schedule into doubt and threatens to leave it idle until a 
decision is made. 

The new facility has been designed to be safer and more efficient 
than its predecessor, producing nuclear medicines of better 
quality and in greater quantities. 

It was also intended to expand Australia's research effort in the 
fields of health, agriculture, manufacturing, minerals, energy 
and the environment. 

The Federal Government abandoned plans for a secure, low-level 
waste repository at Woomera in the South Australian desert, 
citing staunch opposition and legal challenges from South 
Australia's State Government.                           

The Sunday Telegraph
 				 							 				 					 						 						
Copyright 2004 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT+10).                            
*****************************************************************
 24 Tri-City Herald: BPA to sell only hydro, nuclear power 

This story was published Thursday, July 15th, 2004 

By Chris Mulick Herald Olympia bureau 

The Bonneville Power Administration in the future will sell only 
power that is generated by Northwest federal dams and the 
commercial nuclear power plant north of Richland, according to an 
agency draft strategy. 

The plan has been largely applauded in the region -- except by 
backers of wind farms and other environmentally friendly power 
stations. 

The cool reception from "green power" interests is because the 
dams continue to generate power cheaply. But the 3,000 megawatts 
of extra power Bonneville has had to buy from the wholesale power 
market to meet its contractual commitments has inflated rates for 
everyone since 2001. 

Under the long-term plan now being circulated, Bonneville 
customers would be on their own to find power supplies after all 
the cheap federal power is divided. 

"That's a significant move," BPA Vice President Paul Norman told 
the Northwest Power and Conservation Council on Wednesday in 
Spokane. 

Utilities wanting Bonneville to buy additional power off the 
wholesale market for them would bear the entire cost. Such 
additional purchases today are blended in with the rest of the 
BPA system that everyone pays for. 

There has long been utility opposition to Bonneville bringing new 
power plants into its power portfolio. Memories of the failed 
Washington Public Power Supply System nuclear construction 
campaign of the 1970s and 1980s and the abandoned Tenaska power 
project near Tacoma in the 1990s have not faded. 

"Given the track record of Bonneville, we don't believe they 
ought to be out acquiring resources," said Benton REA Manager 
Chuck Dawsey. 

"Bonneville is a power marketer. That's where their expertise 
lies," said Franklin PUD Manager Jean Ryckman. "They need to 
stick to what they do best." 

In recent years, Bonneville's only interest in participating in 
new power plants has been in wind farms. But it canceled plans to 
blend new wind projects into its power mix after its rates 
swelled. 

Instead, Bonneville now will focus on making it easier for others 
to invest in wind projects, Norman said. For example, the agency 
no longer charges a transmission penalty to wind farms because 
the amount of power they generate can't be predicted precisely. 

The green-leaning Northwest Energy Coalition criticized the plan 
for not setting concrete or enforceable goals that guarantee new 
environmentally-friendly power plants will get built or new 
conservation targets will be met. 

© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 25 SF Chronicle: EUREKA: Officials hope nuclear rods are in pool
 
Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer        Saturday, July
17, 2004

PG Co. officials are seeking three missing radioactive portions 
of a used nuclear fuel rod from the long-defunct Humboldt Bay 
nuclear power reactor near Eureka. 

Each fragment -- 18 inches long and about a half-inch thick -- 
contains used uranium fuel inside a stainless-steel cladding, 
Pacific Gas and Electric officials said in a statement Friday. 

For now, utility officials' working hypothesis is that the rod 
fragments will eventually be found somewhere inside the cluttered 
reactor pool at the plant. Still, while "very confident" that all 
will turn out well in the end, they can't yet totally rule out an 
unsettling possibility -- that at some time over the last third 
of a century, the rods somehow left the plant for points 
uncertain. 

PG analysts noticed "the first indication of a discrepancy" in 
their records on June 23, the statement says. Since July 7, they 
have used robotic arms to search for the rod fragments inside the 
reactor pool. 

It's a slow search, because the pool is a watery jungle of metal 
and radioactive leftovers. The pool is 22 feet wide, 28 feet 
long, and up to 36 feet deep; it contains 390 "fuel assemblies," 
each of which is a bundle of a few dozen multiple used fuel rods. 

The seventh commercial nuclear reactor to be operated in the 
United States, the 65-megawatt Humboldt Bay reactor generated 
energy for consumers along the Northern California coast and 
points inland from 1963 to 1976. Afterward the reactor was shut 
down, but the used nuclear fuel is still stored in the pool. 

On Friday, PG spokesman John Nelson said the utility was "very 
confident" the three rod fragments would eventually be found in 
the pool, perhaps within a few weeks. 

The reason for their optimism is that searchers this week found 
fragments of the original, 7-foot-long fuel rod -- from which the 
three 18-inch pieces were taken -- in the pool. That verified old 
records that indicated the original section was placed inside the 
pool after the three segments had been excised. 

Hence, Nelson said, utility officials are confident that the 
three shorter rod segments -- which were originally destined to 
be shipped to an Ohio laboratory for analysis, but probably were 
never sent -- will also turn up in the pool, sooner or later. 

E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com. 

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ
*****************************************************************
 26 [du-list] ICBUW News | The Balkan Syndrome: Another Italian
 
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 13:13:14 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW)
http://www.bandepleteduraniumweapons.org

ICBUW News, 17 July 2004

The Balkan Syndrome: Another Italian Soldier Died

On July 13th, yet another Italian veteran of the wars in the Balkans died of
cancer. According to the RAI, Italy's national television station, Luca Sepe
is "the 27th Italian victim of depleted uranium", used in bombings over the
Balkans.

See:
http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=135


M.H.J. van den Berg

Public Relations Co-ordinator
International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons
www.bandepleteduranium.org

e-mail: info@bandepleteduranium.org





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 27 YLE-INTERNET: Some Finnish Mushrooms Too Radioactive

YLEnews
 
  17.07.2004, 14.28  
   Some mushrooms growing in Finland exceed radioactivity levels 
permitted by EU norms. Levels vary considerably from place to 
place, writes the newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet.     [Image:YLE24]
  
  Trumper shaped chanterelle, penny bun bolet and chanterelle are 
types of mushroom where excessive levels have been detected. 

Tests on bolet and chanterelle showed radiation levels exceeding 
800 becquerells. EU recommendations, which came into force a year 
ago, stipulate a level of 600 bec. per kilogram. 

Large levels of radiation in mushrooms have been detected in 
Central Finland, the eastern part of Uusimaa and in Ostrabothnia. 
Other areas where radioactive mushrooms have been found are, for 
instance, to the south and west of Jyväskylä and east of Vaasa. 

Officials say mushrooms in around 150 municipalties exceed the 
permitted radiation levels. 

Rinsing mushrooms in water reduces radiation in mushrooms. 
Soaking them in boiling hot water and then tipping the water away 
can reduce radiation levels by up to 80% 

This year's mushroom crop is expected to be large. 

YLE24
    
*****************************************************************
 28 NEWS.com.au: Why Howard dumped the dump 

(July 17, 2004)

By PAUL STARICK and LEANNE CRAIG
 				 				 
IT took less than 48 hours for the political reversal which 
spared South Australia a nuclear dump.

On Monday morning, federal Cabinet ministers arrived in Canberra 
for an important meeting.

 Prime Minister John Howard had signalled the week before that 
the Government would decide the future of plans for a waste dump 
near Woomera.

 This was the last item on Cabinet's agenda and there was robust 
debate.

 The Government had to deal with a Federal Court ruling that the 
Government's land acquisition process for the dump site had been 
flawed. 

The clock was ticking, because an appeal to the High Court had to 
be lodged by Thursday next week.

 Legal advice was 50-50 on the prospects of success and any 
appeal might take months. On Monday, the only official comment 
was that Cabinet had concluded without making a decision.

 But Government sources revealed some of SA's contingent of four 
Cabinet ministers had ditched their long-term support for the 
dump and were now arguing the plans be abandoned.

 Ministers from outside SA were not convinced and did not want a 
political headache in their state.

 One idea was to force the states to store their own waste and 
create a dump exclusively for federal use.

 Later that night and early on Tuesday, two of Prime Minister 
John Howard's closest confidantes started arguing the case to 
him.

 Finance Minister Nick Minchin, who had spearheaded the case for 
a dump in SA, and Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer were 
arguing the electoral risk would be too great to keep pursuing 
the dump.

 Almost exactly a year ago, Mr Howard had accused the State 
Government of "pathetically parochial argument" and "jingoism" 
for trying to stop the dump.

 Political reality had forced him to reconsider the Federal 
Government's hardline stance. Adelaide has five marginal seats, 
three of them Liberal-held, which could decide the outcome of 
this year's election. The dramatic shift in the Government's 
thinking started during Mr Howard's visit to Adelaide last week.

 As he pressed the flesh in four key marginal seats, Mr Howard 
became acutely aware of the resentment in the community over a 
nuclear dump being forced on the state and the potential 
electoral fallout.

 Having declared repeatedly that his government is only eight 
seats from oblivion, Mr Howard needed to shake off the dump as an 
electoral liability.

 But the hardline position was hard to shed.

 On Tuesday morning, Mr Howard was said to be favouring the 
option of forcing states to build their own dumps but not ruling 
out SA as the site for a low-level federal dump. Senator Minchin 
and Mr Downer scrambled furiously behind the scenes.

 Mr Howard had briefings on the issue from his own department, 
then flew to Melbourne for a speech at the opening of Toyota 
Australia's head office. By the early evening, a decision had 
been made to abandon plans for a national repository and to rule 
out SA as the site for dumping federal waste. SA would be spared 
the dump. On Wednesday, Senator Minchin was able to issue an 
"absolute, unqualified, rolled-gold guarantee" plans for a 
repository in SA had been dumped for good.

 The decision capped one of the most protracted and bitter 
political stoushes of the past decade, with warring politicians 
branded everything from Dr Strangelove in reference to 1960s 
anti-nuclear bomb movie starring Peter Sellers to Daffy Duck.

 When SA first became the "preferred area" for the dump in 1998, 
Premier of the day John Olsen made his feelings crystal clear.

 He certainly didn't want it and sent the clear message to his 
federal colleagues.

 "I just don't want it here," he told State Parliament in 
November 1999.

 "I just don't believe within SA we ought to be accepting the 
waste from other locations."

 Then opposition leader Mike Rann said the idea of dumping 
radioactive waste from Sydney's Lucas Heights reactor in the SA 
Outback was an "outrage".

 At the time, Senator Minchin, then federal resources minister, 
said 20,000 South Australians a year benefited from the use of 
medical isotopes produced at Lucas Heights, as did mining and 
horticulture.

 "We must deal with the waste from the fuel rods in 2015 and we 
must locate it somewhere," he said.

 "I can assure the premier and the SA Government that when we 
begin the process of selecting a site, which could be in any one 
of the six states, we will consult fully with the State 
Government and the community."

 With the 2002 State Election looming, Labor pledged to ban low 
and intermediate-level waste dumps in SA if elected.

 By this time, the Olsen Government's stance had softened with 
then Environment Minister Iain Evans asking "isn't it better to 
have low-level waste stored in a purpose-built facility?".

 On becoming Premier in March 2002, Mr Rann immediately moved 
legislation to ban the location of low, medium or high 
radioactive waste facilities in the state.

 But, for many months, the State Government eluded questions over 
where SA's radioactive waste would be stored if the national 
repository went ahead. It ignored federal challenges to 
categorically rule out using the repository and State Liberal 
questions on the cost of building SA's own purpose-built storage. 
Federal Science Minister Peter McGauran said Mr Rann should "stop 
equivocating" and wasting time.

  THE failed bid to set up a nuclear waste dump cost taxpayers 
more than $17.5 million, it has been claimed.

 Labor and independent MPs have calculated the hefty bills from a 
decade of court cases, use of public relations consultants and 
scientists, and government reports compiled to identify land near 
Woomera as the site for the national facility.

 Opponents have branded the cost a waste of taxpayers' money, but 
a spokesman for Finance Minister Nick Minchin – the architect of 
the dump plan – has disputed the figures. "Our advice is that the 
cost is closer to $12 million," he said.

 Labor says an estimated $10 million has been spent on the 
environmental impact statement for the site.

 It has been estimated that $620,000 was spent on public 
relations and marketing consultants to try and win support for 
the dump.

 South Australian Labor Senator Penny Wong said money wasted on 
the dump was a "disgrace".

 "For the cost of the EIS . . . and the use of PR consultants, 
John Howard could have funded 400,000 doctors' consultations," 
she said.                               

The Advertiser
 				 							 				 					 	 						
Copyright 2004 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT+10).                            
*****************************************************************
 29 The Australian: PM refuses to name N-dump sites 

[July 19, 2004]

AAP             

PRIME Minister John Howard today refused to rule out the Northern 
Territory as the future site of the Commonwealth's nuclear waste 
dump.

The Federal Government is searching for a site on Commonwealth 
land for a dump to contain medium and low-level nuclear waste 
produced by federal government sources.

 It told the states last week they must look after their own 
nuclear waste because they had not co-operated in an agreement to 
establish a national repository.

 Last week the Government said it would abandon plans for a low 
level nuclear waste dump near Woomera in northern South Australia 
after the SA government won a Federal Court battle which declared 
invalid the compulsory acquisition of the land.

 Mr Howard today would not disclose the NT sites being 
considered. 

"We have commenced a search, I'm not in a position to say where 
it is going to be because we haven't completed that search," Mr 
Howard told Darwin ABC radio.

 "It could be onshore or offshore.

 "We haven't found a place and I'm not in a position to predict 
where it could be."

 Asked if he could rule out the NT, Mr Howard would only say the 
search was continuing.

 "We are searching for a suitable location on commonwealth land 
on or off shore and I have no idea what that search will 
produce."

 Labor MP Warren Snowdon last week said two NT sites – in the 
Tanami Desert and at Bloods Range near Docker River – had been 
touted as possible sites for a national waste repository in a 
1994 government report. 
		 			 	 	   		 		
  privacy            © The Australian   
*****************************************************************
 30 Las Vegas RJ: LETTERS: Through the looking glass on Yucca 
 
Sunday, July 18, 2004

Democrats yearn to make repository a partisan issue 

To the editor:
 
 At times like this, I sometimes wish (kind of, sort of) that Al
Gore would have successfully managed to steal the 2000
presidential election in Florida. Then he rightfully would be
the one on the receiving end of the never-ending flurry of
criticism on issues such as the Clinton/Gore recession, the net
loss of jobs, the failure to prevent 9-11, and, most recently,
the July 9 federal court decision on Yucca Mountain, reigniting
the state's most fiery political issue and prompting both
Republicans and Democrats to agree on one thing: It will affect
the presidential election in this key battleground state
("Science versus politics: Yucca ruling seen as bad for Bush,"
July 11 Review-Journal).
 
 But those Nevadans who have lived here long enough are no
strangers to the fact that it was a Democratic-controlled
Congress, in the mid 1980s, that paved the legislation marking
Yucca Mountain as the one and only destination to be surveyed as
the national repository for nuclear waste. Once passed, this
bill was signed into law by a Republican president. In its
genesis, this vital piece of legislation -- fondly known to us
Nevadans as the "Screw Nevada Bill" -- was not only a bipartisan
effort, but also made this issue a done deal. Democrats who
herald the court ruling as a blow to Mr. Bush, and Republicans
who concur, totally baffle me and others who know better. As I
recall, George W. Bush wasn't even governor of Texas when all
this went down.
 
 Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas is quoted in the
story as saying, "We need a new administration because if this
comes up again, we can't have the same people who hurt us before
making the decision." If she's correct, then the people of
Nevada should elect neither Bush nor Kerry this November. But
since Ms. Titus and her ilk are implying Yucca Mountain is a
partisan push by Republicans, then I ask her, as I've asked Sen.
Harry Reid and Rep. Shelley Berkley in the past: If your
Democratic colleagues in Washington are such friends to Nevada,
what the hell was done in the first two years of the Clinton
administration, that ran concurrent with a Democratic-controlled
Senate and House?
 
 The reason I can't get a straight answer is because not only
was nothing done to stop Yucca Mountain, but the party in power
-- the Democrats -- had more important, pressing issues to deal
with, such as ramming the largest tax increase in history down
our throats and then attempting to pass their socialist health
care scheme.
 
 Given these facts, is it any wonder the Democrats lost power in
both houses in 1994? Now all of a sudden, in this election year,
with polls showing Bush and Kerry in a dead heat, Democrats want
to be friends to Nevada. Give me a break.
 
 When Sen. Reid, Rep. Berkley and Ms. Titus try to make Yucca
Mountain the issue, I want you to visualize a medical ER team
pulling a long dead body out of the morgue and attempting to
resuscitate life into this corpse. No amount of aid can
resurrect the dead any more than what a Bush or Gore
administration could've ever done to prevent a waste repository
at Yucca Mountain.
 
 When Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, regales us
with words such as, "This fight's not over. We won, but this
doesn't mean the project is dead," I liken this bravado to
Baghdad Bob assuring the Iraqi people that the Americans are not
even close to Baghdad, as U.S. troops and tanks pass him in the
background.
 
 It's time for the people of Nevada to get through the looking
glass on Yucca Mountain. If that is the only issue to justify
removing this current administration, as local and state
Democrats seem to argue, then voters will be casting their
ballots oblivious to real key issues: tax cuts, tax reform, tort
reform, Social Security reform, the war on terrorism, etc. 
I submit that under a Kerry administration these issues, like
Yucca Mountain, will never be dealt with -- or will be handled
in a manner devastating to our reviving economy and national
security.
 
 Let's get smart, my fellow Nevadans. Join me this November and
flush the "johns."
MARK E. WILSON
HENDERSON

To the editor:
 
 Your editorial writers seem to have performed incredible feats
of contortion to avoid naming the biggest culprit in the
continuing Yucca Mountain saga: George W. Bush.
 
 Your July 10 editorial refers to "federal officials," "federal
bureaucrats" and the "federal government" as the bad guys. But
most Nevadans will make the obvious connection between the feds
and their leader, President Bush.
 
 After all, it was candidate Bush who promised in 2000 that
"sound science" would be the determining factor for the
repository. But once ensconced in the White House, President
Bush pushed full-force for Yucca Mountain and continues to do so
to this very day. 
While it's clear that Nevada's Republican leaders are running
away from the truth on this issue, one would hope Nevada's
largest newspaper would call it the right way. It's easy to do:
George W. Bush brought us Yucca Mountain, plain and simple. You
should give discredit when discredit is due.
TERENCE TOLBERT
LAS VEGAS

The writer is Nevada state director of America Coming Together,
a liberal activist group.

To the editor:
 
 On July 9, a federal court told the EPA to fix its
justification for a 10,000-year compliance period for Yucca
Mountain. The EPA made its mistake by disagreeing with the
National Academy of Sciences and saying that we cannot
adequately predict how Yucca Mountain will perform beyond 10,000
years. In fact, the Department of Energy has already shown that
in the next million years the maximum exposure to any people
using groundwater would be less than their natural radiation
exposure. If the compliance period is changed, the DOE can do
more work and calculate how much less.
 
 What the academy also said was that a 10,000-year compliance
time could be acceptable -- but that the EPA must show that
10,000 years is "consistent with its management of risks from
long-lived hazardous non-radioactive materials."
 
 At its legal capacity limit, Yucca replaces electricity
equivalent to mining and burning 5 billion tons of coal -- a
full six years of total U.S. coal consumption. If Yucca were
used only for residual waste from spent-fuel transmutation, this
number could be multiplied by 50. We currently cannot predict
what the effects of mining and burning 5 billion tons of coal
would be in 100 years, much less 10,000. This does not mean that
we believe these effects can't be large and negative, but simply
that our scientific capability to model global warming, acid
drainage from mines and mercury transport in the environment is
inadequate to predict health and environmental impacts over long
time periods.
 
 If future generations decide that Yucca was a mistake, they can
fix it simply by moving the waste. But they will have no similar
simple way to fix problems from the wastes from our current use
of fossil fuel. Thus when the EPA revises its standard, it
should provide a frank comparison between nuclear and fossil
fuel wastes.
PER PETERSON
BERKELEY, CALIF.

The writer is a 1982 graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno,
and chairman of the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the
University of California, Berkeley.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 31 Las Vegas RJ: Nebraska fights rulingon nuclear waste dump 
 
Saturday, July 17, 2004

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 

LINCOLN, Neb. -- Nebraska asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday
to overturn a $151 million judgment against the state for
refusing to host a nuclear waste dump.
 
 Attorney General Jon Bruning was not optimistic that the high
court will agree to hear the case, let alone rule in Nebraska's
favor.
 
 "Look at the track record in this litigation, we haven't won
anything yet," Bruning said. "That's not to say we have no
chance. But let's be realistic: It's a long shot."
 
 U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf of Lincoln ruled in 2002 that
former Nebraska Gov. Ben Nelson, now a U.S. senator, engaged in
a politically motivated plot to keep the regional dump from
being built in Nebraska. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
upheld that ruling in February. 
Nebraska officials argued they refused to license the dump for
low-level waste because of concerns about pollution and a high
water table at the proposed site in the northeast part of the
state.
 
 The dump was to take waste from the Central Interstate
Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact, which consists of Nebraska,
Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.
 
 Nebraska doesn't have the money to pay the judgment because of
an ongoing budget crunch and has been trying to negotiate a
settlement.
 
 The Associated Press reported last week that Gov. Mike Johanns
had approached Texas Gov. Rick Perry about storing nuclear waste
there. Nebraska has offered to pay Texas a flat fee of $25
million to take the waste from the group of five states.
 
 Such a deal would not release Nebraska from the court judgment
unless the five-state group agreed.

 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 32 BBC: Crystal options for nuclear waste 
 
  Last Updated: Sunday, 18 July, 2004
 
By Jo Twist BBC News Online science and technology staff   

[Storage containers for vitrified waste, BNFL] Current storage 
technologies are short-term solutions                   
			   		
Storing radioactive waste in a safe form is one of the biggest 
problems facing the nuclear industry. 

The UK's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has talked about a possible 
renaissance of nuclear power generation as a means to combat 
global warming. 

Many greens are even thinking the unthinkable for the same reason 
- the evils of climate change could weigh more heavily on the 
planet than the nuclear dangers they have traditionally warned 
about. 

But any resurgence would also have to include a long-term 
solution to that waste issue - not just for newly created 
radioactive products but for all the spent fuel rods and 
associated materials that have been kept in storage, in various 
forms, since Britain's Magnox reactor programme began in the 
1950s. 

People won't accept nucle power until you deal with waste... It 
is a problem that lasts for so long, it becomes a moral issue 
Professor Martin Dove, CMI      

Science believes it is moving towards that goal - by finding new 
containment technologies that could lock away even high-level 
radioactive waste for thousands of years. 

Currently, after a period of temporary storage, when the most 
radioactive products have had a chance to decay, high-level waste 
from spent nuclear fuel is encased in a borosilicate glass and 
sealed in stainless steel drums. 

But this is really only a short-term solution because the 
radiation emitted by the waste will slowly attack the integrity 
of the containers. 

Model world 

The emissions jostle the atoms out of their carefully ordered 
arrangement within the storage materials. Eventually, this can 
make the materials swell and crack, allowing highly toxic 
substances to leak out. 

Various research groups are now looking to alternative, ceramic 
materials that can withstand the bombardment much better. 

At the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) in the UK, scientists are 
seeking guidance from the natural world. They have been examining 
how the mineral zircon (ZrSiO4) has managed to contain 
radioactive elements. 

[Computer simulations show radiation damage to zircon, K. 
Trachenko, Cambridge]                                
Computer simulations show radiation damage to zircon (Image: K. 
Trachenko, Cambridge)                     
			   		
"If nature has shown it can store radioactive atoms and that they 
remain intact, then we should be looking at that," the CMI's 
Professor Martin Dove told BBC News Online. 

Zircon is the ore for cubic zirconium, which can be cut and 
polished to make gemstones, like artificial diamonds. 

Professor Dove, an earth scientist at CMI, said his team had 
developed computer simulations to show how the atoms in zircon 
rearranged themselves when they were damaged by radioactive 
emissions. 

They have also done some experimentation to support this - 
although they have been limited because of strict controls on the 
testing of radioactive materials. 

"The simulations suggest that when zircon gets heavily damaged, 
inside it there is crystalline damage, but on the outside it 
looks intact," Professor Dove explained. 

Scaling up 

The simulations track damage over time. The way the atoms sort 
themselves looks rather like ants scattering to form a protective 
ring against an intruder. 

This means that radioactive materials should find it much more 
difficult to escape the crystalline structure than if 
incorporated into a glass. 

[Nuclear fuel handling, BNFL]                           
There are many who believe nuclear has an important future                                                                 

The atoms in zircon will actually spontaneously arrange 
themselves within the damaged area to form a protective shell. 

Using magnetic resonance, the atoms that have moved in response 
to a single radioactive decay can be counted; and X-ray 
diffraction techniques can show the extent of the damage. 

The computer simulations, said Professor Dove, had been made 
possible because of coding work within the project team that 
allowed for the modelling of millions of atoms instead of just a 
few thousand. 

The challenge Professor Dove and his team now face is to prove 
their principle - to fully understand what is going on at the 
atomic level; and then explore similar materials that could be 
produced on a much larger industrial scale. 

For that, they will need to be permitted to do more "real-world" 
experiments. 

"People won't accept nuclear power until you deal with waste," 
said Professor Dove. "It is a problem that lasts for so long; it 
becomes a moral issue. But what we are doing now is setting the 
agenda for the future." 

Maintained access 

The Department of Trade and Industry recently said managing the 
UK's nuclear waste would cost over £47bn in the coming years, and 
the waste has to be held safely for centuries. 

The official regulatory requirement is that any method to house 
waste must withstand environmental changes, even ice ages. 

There are currently over 30 locations holding waste across the 
UK, with Sellafield storing 98% of the country's most hazardous 
materials. 

It currently houses over 60 tonnes of plutonium in a powder form. 

The government's Committee on Radioactive Waste Management 
(CORWM) has been charged with finding a publicly acceptable 
option for storing radioactive by-products, and is set to report 
its recommendations to the government by 2006. 

One of the issues it will have to consider is how recoverable 
plutonium should be in any storage solution, either to prevent it 
from falling into the "wrong hands", or to retrieve it to be used 
again. 

Currently, plutonium is not officially classified as a "waste" 
material, according to Nirex, the UK's nuclear waste agency. 

"Plutonium was going to be used as fuel, but because the 
government has made no decision on that yet, it is being stored 
for potential future use," explained Samantha King, waste 
management research scientist at Nirex. 

"[CORWM] will have to determine what proportion of materials, 
including plutonium, should be managed as waste." 





*****************************************************************
 33 Las Vegas SUN: Brian Greenspun: Change can happen
 
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

 WEEKEND EDITION

 July 17 - 18, 2004

 So much for inevitability.

 I have to admit that I was one of the many Nevadans who held
out little hope that the court system would right the wrongs
that have been perpetrated upon the state of Nevada. First by
the Congress in the 1980s when it singled out our state as the
only place in the country in which high-level radioactive waste
would be buried and, secondly, by President George W. Bush when
he acted against his own word and chose Nevada, against the
weight of scientific evidence, to be the last resting place for
"nucular" waste.

 I was wrong. At least, so far.

 The federal appeals court in Washington gave us a way out of
this mess when it ruled that the Department of Energy failed to
follow the mandate of the Congress when it ignored the advice of
the National Academy of Sciences, which provided its findings to
the Environmental Protection Agency, about the appropriate
length of time needed to keep the waste safe from humans and
other living things.

 The NAS said that high-level nuclear waste had to be contained
for the half-life of the most potent of poisons that would be
buried at Yucca Mountain. That could be hundreds of thousands of
years or, perhaps, a couple of million years. Instead, the DOE
and the EPA, knowing that it would be folly to computer model
anything that far into the future, arbitrarily chose 10,000
years as the goal. And, even though the federal government has
trouble prognosticating or protecting anyone or anything much
more than a few years out, it set about to "manage" the
10,000-year process and, according to many scientists, it has
failed miserably.

 That brings us to today and the question is, "What does Nevada
do to make sure that the 'inevitability' that the pro-nuke dump
forces in this state would have us surrender to does not
happen?" We have just witnessed the impossible, which is an
independent judiciary actually acting independently enough to
tell the federal government that it went too far. Unfortunately,
the court also gave the DOE and its nuclear waste producing
bosses a road map leading straight to Yucca Mountain.

 And don't believe for a second that the Bush administration
isn't already plotting a path around the court's decision so
that it can truck and track that stuff right to our door.
Because that is exactly what they are doing. They can't help
themselves because they are so committed to their friends in the
nuclear power industry that they cannot see the other side,
which is the side of Nevada families who just don't want in our
state, near our kids, over our water and under our skies that
which no other state in the union wants either!

 The good news, though, is that our congressional delegation,
led by Sen. Harry Reid, and our state officials, from Gov. Kenny
Guinn on down, have been right when they have told us that this
thing is not inevitable and that, together, we can do something
to derail this train heading on the wrong track toward Nevada.

 So here's the hard part, at least for some. George Bush has to
go and Harry Reid has to stay. There is no other way to say what
has to happen for Nevada to avoid having to be the nation's
radioactive burial ground. If you believe that it is wrong for
those who make nuclear waste to send it to Nevada for burial
rather than dealing with their own mess. If you believe that
each state's health and safety is as important as every other
state's and that Nevada, just because we are politically weak,
should not be singled out for thousands of years of ill health
and inevitable deaths. If you believe that a tourist economy,
which rises and falls on today's headlines, can ill afford the
kind of international story that says "radioactive spill near
Las Vegas Strip." If you believe that every man, woman and child
should have the same right to health and happiness as e very
other citizen in every other state and that no president, no
Congress and no court should be able to abridge that righ! t. If
you believe all that, and if you believe that as citizens we
have the power to stop the "inevitable," then our course is
clear.

 With Sen. Harry Reid returned to the Senate as either the
second or fourth most-powerful member of that body, he will have
the ability to block almost any attempt by the Department of
Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency or the White House
to change the rules and dash any hopes we might have today of
avoiding our nuclear nightmare.

 Unlike the last go around when every parliamentary maneuver
usually available to a man like Harry Reid was made unavailable
decades earlier, this time they will play on Harry's court with
the rules that Harry Reid knows well. Whether it is stripping
tens and hundreds of millions of dollars from Yucca Mountain
budgets or putting holds on legislation that would hasten Yucca
Mountain's reality, our senior senator knows the ropes. And,
whether it is his ability to trade with his colleagues or
champion causes in return for an "open mind," Harry is a master.
That is the reason why we must return Harry Reid to the Senate.
It is just one reason, to be sure, but a very big one to
everyone who cares about his family, his health and his
livelihood.

 As for President George W. Bush, I know many Nevadans like him
because he has lowered their taxes and chased Saddam Hussein
from power. I like him for that, too. But we cannot be confused
when it comes to a few dollars, more or less, in our pockets
today, and a feeling that all is well when all probably isn't
well and won't be for a long time.

 For if the worst happens, there will be no jobs and no economy
to derive the incomes on which we want to pay fewer taxes. And
no terrorist dictator can do as much damage to Nevada families
as a high-level nuclear waste spill can do on Interstate 15.
And, as far as I can tell, it was President Bush who made the
decision to send the waste to Yucca Mountain. In fact, he was
the only president who could make that decision because the law
required the decision to be made in 2001.

 Now, he could have made a different decision. He could have
said no. Or he could have said, "I need better science. I am not
ready to make a decision. Ask me again when I know more about
the dangers inherent in this high-level stuff."

 He could have -- but he didn't. Instead, he did what most of us
knew he would do and that was whatever his monied friends in the
power industry wanted him to do. And, he will do it again if we
give him the chance. It will be his EPA, his DOE and his
appointees on the Supreme Court who could overrule the decision
just handed down and send that stuff rolling toward us. And
don't think he won't encourage them to do just that. After all,
it is his nature to help his wealthy power company friends at
the expense of the politically helpless out here in Nevada. If
you don't believe me, just remember. He already did it to us
once before. Should we let him do it again? I don't think so.

 If you are as concerned as I am about high-level nuclear waste
rolling through our city, leaking into our water table, fouling
the air we breathe, shutting down our tourist economy and, God
forbid, killing us a few hundred at a time, then your course of
action is clear. You have it within your power to make sure that
the certainty of inevitability does not come to pass. Nevada's
electoral votes could swing this election to President Bush,
just like we did in 2000.

 Or, we can go the other way. That's the way that does not
include Yucca Mountain. Think about your future. Think about
promises broken. Think about 77,000 tons of radioactive waste in
our back yard. Now think about all of that going away. Think!

 
 
*****************************************************************
 34 Tri-City Herald: State plans suit to bar waste shipments 

This story was published Saturday, July 17th, 2004 

By Annette Cary Herald staff writer 

The state of Washington plans to sue the Department of Energy to 
bar shipments of low-level radioactive waste and low-level waste 
mixed with hazardous chemicals from being sent to Hanford. 

The state already has won an injunction in federal court 
temporarily halting transuranic waste, typically waste tainted 
with plutonium or its decay products, from being shipped to 
Hanford. 

State officials announced Friday that they will expand that suit 
to include the low-level and mixed low-level waste that DOE plans 
to ship from other nuclear complexes and bury permanently in 
central Hanford. 

"We're not talking about an insignificant amount of waste," 
Attorney General Christine Greg-oire said in a telephone 
interview. 

The state concluded an environmental study earlier this year that 
looked at how much nuclear waste it should send to Hanford. In a 
record of decision issued June 23, it committed to sending no 
more than 62,000 cubic meters of low-level waste and 20,000 cubic 
meters of mixed low-level waste to Hanford. 

That's about a quarter of those types of waste that DOE needs to 
dispose of throughout its nationwide nuclear complex. Low-level 
waste could include material such as radioactively contaminated 
rubble from old buildings used in nuclear processing. 

"There's nothing to keep them from tripling the amount of waste 
shipments they want to bring to Hanford," Gov. Gary Locke said in 
a prepared statement. However, that would require an amendment to 
the record of decision. 

"We need absolute certainty that the clean up work will be 
completed before we are willing to even consider allowing more 
waste to come into the system," Locke said. 

The state is calling for shipments to be halted until DOE 
addresses the environmental effects of shipping and storing more 
radioactive waste at Hanford. 

It will argue that DOE has not provided a full accounting of the 
basis for selecting Hanford as the disposal site for nuclear 
waste produced elsewhere in the nation. 

"DOE has failed to prove that shipping more waste to Hanford 
won't make the nation's most contaminated site even worse," 
Gregoire said in a prepared statement. "We expect DOE to fully 
comply with environmental safeguards." 

That includes meeting regulatory requirements in the Tri-Party 
Agreement before any waste is added to what Gregoire called "an 
already troubled situation." 

"The federal government cannot be allowed to walk away from 
cleaning up the ground water at Hanford," Gregoire said. 

The state is concerned that the DOE environmental study did not 
do an adequate analysis of the risk posed by ground water 
contamination at Hanford. Production of plutonium at Hanford 
during World War II and the Cold War has left plumes of 
radioactive and chemical contamination beneath the nuclear 
reservation. 

Washington, Oregon and some tribes told DOE they were concerned 
about language in the environmental study that referred to 
groundwater as "irreversibly and irretrievably committed." 

"DOE believes that already-present contamination from past 
practices precludes the beneficial use of groundwater beneath 
portions of the Hanford site for the foreseeable future as a 
matter of protecting public health," DOE said in the record of 
decision that followed. 

But DOE intends to meet its responsibilities for cleanup and is 
not changing existing ground water activities or commitments, 
ac-cording to the record of decision. 

"They have not left us with a definitive answer," Gregoire said. 

The state will challenge in court DOE's decision that some ground 
water is irreversibly contaminated. 

Since the record of decision was issued, Hanford has accepted 109 
drums of mixed low-level waste produced at the Rocky Flats, 
Colo., nuclear site. The drums already had been shipped to 
Richland to be treated by PEcoS, a company with a thermal 
treatment system, and were transferred to Hanford for permanent 
disposal shortly after the record of decision. 

The legal move to block more waste from entering the state 
precedes a November vote on Initiative 297, which is intended to 
block waste shipments. 

"It shows strong unity for the position that you should not add 
more waste until Hanford is cleaned up," said Gerald Pollet, 
executive director of the watchdog group Heart of America 
Northwest. "Voters will have the chance to put that same standard 
in state law this fall." 

But a spokesman for the Eastern Washington Section of the 
American Nuclear Society questioned the wisdom of the suit. 

"This recent action will further delay and frighten the public 
and prolong the nation's efforts to responsibly manage these 
(nuclear) materials," spokesman Mike Fox said in a prepared 
statement. "It puts Americans on notice that Washington state is 
not a very good contributor to the common good, when we have the 
facilities -- paid for by the same taxpayers -- to do so." 

DOE has planned to ship some low-level nuclear waste to Hanford, 
but waste produced at Hanford with far more radioactivity would 
be shipped to a national repository, likely Yucca Mountain in 
Nevada. Transuranic waste is being shipped to a repository in New 
Mexico. 

"We know the nation faces a problem," Gregoire said. "We are 
willing to do our fair share." 

But the nation's governors and attorneys general should have a 
say in how nuclear waste streams are distributed, she said. 

"We don't want a lawsuit, we want an agreement," she said. 

DOE accused the state of Washington on Friday of attempting to 
hinder cleanup activities through-out the DOE complex. 

"We are disappointed by the threatened legal action announced by 
Washington state," said a prepared statement released by DOE. 
"Our cleanup plans, environmental impact statements and record of 
decision meet every environmental and regulatory requirement. We 
are keeping our cleanup commitments to Washington state and 
meeting the requirements of the Tri-Party Agreement." 

© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 35 NewsFromRussia.Com Russia, Iran to consider nuclear waste return
 
  Pravda.ru:/

 14:56 2004-07-18

 Alexander Rumyantsev, head of the Russian Federal Agency for 
Atomic Energy, and the Iranian Ambassador to Moscow, Gholam Reza 
Shafei, will discuss the possibility of signing a nuclear waste 
storage agreement as they will meet in Moscow Monday, a source in 
the Iranian Embassy has told RIA Novosti. 

The meeting's agenda will be dominated by Rumyantsev's visit to 
Iran in October or November this year and prospects for signing 
an agreement on storage in Russia of nuclear waste from the 
Bushehr plant, built in association with Russian specialists. 

The sides are now considering the commercial side of the 
prospective agreement, expected to be signed during Rumyantsev's 
meeting this fall with Gholam Reza Agazade, Vice President in 
charge of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, the embassy source 
reports. 

Earlier, Rumyantsev told RIA that the agreement was ready for 
signing and only technical appendices remained to be finalized. 
Specifically, the sides are yet to agree on the price to be paid 
by Iran for storage of its nuclear waste, the official said. 
According to him, the price will be set within the range of $600 
to $1,500 per kilogram. Other outstanding issues include the 
transportation of waste to storage sites, he added. 

In reply to a RIA correspondent's question as to whether the 
forthcoming talks will touch upon Russia's possible involvement 
in the construction of a second unit of the Bushehr nuclear power 
plant, Rumyantsev said that the matter was currently being 
considered at the expert level. 

"Of course, Russia has all the necessary potential to undertake 
yet another construction project in Iran, but this issue will 
have to be discussed at the top intergovernmental level," he 
said. 

Germany's Siemens started the construction of a second Bushehr 
reactor a long time ago, but was unable to complete it owing to 
political upheavals in Iran. 

Feasibility studies will now have to be carried out to see if 
Russia should follow through on Siemens' project or rather start 
from scratch on a different site, Rumyantsev said. This will be a 
long process, he added.

© RIAN

  Copyright ©1999 by "Pravda.RU". When reproducing our materials
*****************************************************************
 36 KCRG.com: Hills Water Problems Go Unsolved                        

| KCRG TV9 Your 24 Hour News and Weather Source
          
Sunday, July 18, 2004,                   3:21:22 AM                      
 			
By KCRG-TV9 News Reporter Craig Brown â€“ TV9 Iowa City Newsroom 

Some feelings of frustration and uncertainty filled the Hills 
community center Thursday night. The Environmental Protection 
Agency is back for another round of sampling and water testing. 

Previous tests have shown high levels of perchlorate, a compound 
of chlorine and oxygen, in the water supply. It is often used in 
rocket fuel, and fertilizers. 

Hills residents Miguel and Juanita Garcia can still grab a cup 
and drink from the well water from their faucet, but many people 
can't. The federal government put 24 homes on bottle water due to 
the contamination. 

Juanita Garcia moved to hills two months ago, and like many 
people here, she is concerned about the water coming out of her 
tap. "The water when we moved here, was good but now it is dark 
before it was different it was nice, it tasted good." 

The E.P.A. revealed it found a new high contamination point at 
the southern boundary of the city park and school property. A new 
second highest point is near Stutzman's but the E.P.A. still 
hasn't located a source. 

The E.P.A.'s Craig Smith has called everyone from NASA to the 
University of Iowa to the railroad to see if they know anything 
about something that could be buried underground in hills causing 
the contamination, but he's have had no luck. "We're not 
optimistic about that frankly. We may never find a source here." 

All of this could mean hills may need to provide a permanent 
water supply to its people. Until then, the E.P.A. is going to 
continue to take more samples over the next two weeks. 

Do you have a question or comment about this story? Click here to 
e-mail Craig Brown. 

Copyright CRTV Company 			 	 		 	         

©2004 KCRG / Cedar Rapids TV Co.
*****************************************************************
 37 SF Chronicle: Yucca Mountain's troubled history
 
EDITORIAL   

Sunday, July 18, 2004
  
WHEN A FEDERAL appeals court tossed the future of Yucca Mountain 
into doubt last week, it seemed a logical, fitting step for the 
proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada. After all, haggling, 
political posturing and legal maneuvering have been as much a 
part of the site's tortuous history as its actual construction 
and design. 

Although the sprawling site is located deep in the Nevada desert, 
Yucca Mountain would be better described as a bureaucratic swamp. 
Despite being approved by Congress and pushed along by both the 
Clinton and Bush administrations, the project has been 
effectively buried by partisan politics while the price tag 
continues to soar, now nearing estimates of $60 billion. 

While the need to bury up to 70,000 metric tons of the nation's 
nuclear waste remains a top priority of Energy Secretary Spencer 
Abraham, the Yucca Mountain project was not fully funded in the 
president's budget this year because the administration 
apparently believed that Congress would pass legislation making 
other funds available. Yet that hasn't happened -- and there are 
no signs of urgency that the House and the Senate will pursue 
another course of action. 

A decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit made 
the Yucca Mountain mess considerably more complicated when it 
ruled that the federal government must devise a new construction 
plan to protect the public against radiation releases beyond the 
next 10,000 years. Exactly how long remains a question, though 
the National Academy of Sciences has suggested consideration of a 
period of up to a million years. Such a staggering change, if 
upheld by a higher court, would effectively require a complete 
redesign of the site, which is why the head of Nevada's state 
nuclear project said that Yucca Mountain, for all intents and 
purposes, is "dead.'' 

But the environmental damage posed by not adequately burying the 
country's nuclear waste is so great that Congress needs to find a 
Lazarus-like solution. The failure to open Yucca Mountain would 
leave highly radioactive spent-nuclear-fuel rods in 68 locations 
around the country, facilities that were not designed for 
long-term storage and could pose public-health problems from 
accident-related releases. 

While a large percentage of Nevada voters may not embrace the 
idea of a nuclear-waste repository in their backyard and the 
state's legislators have worked to defeat it, Congress has spent 
nearly two decades debating the issue and still hasn't come up 
with a better alternative. At this point, the best option isn't 
finding another site but funding and properly designing the one 
long ago agreed upon. Yucca Mountain needs to be built and the 
issue certainly shouldn't be decided against the backdrop of 
election-year politics. The country simply can't afford it -- the 
Energy Department has already spent $9 billion on the repository. 

Although the court certainly has muddled the picture, it did at 
least dismiss most of the legal objections for building it, 
including whether the site at Yucca is unconstitutional. Congress 
should take the court's ruling as a chance to shore up the 
facility's design shortcomings and address the scientific 
community's concerns about its long-term safety. If those 
critical questions aren't sufficiently addressed, it could be 
decades before another solution is found for storing the nation's 
nuclear waste. 

[graphical line] 

Page E - 4 

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ
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 38 OA Online: Andrews nuke site may take other states’ waste
 
Sunday, 18 July 2004   

American Online   
  
c /o Odessa American 222 E. 4th Street P.O. Box 2952 Odessa, TX 
79760
 
By Ruth Friedberg Campbell Odessa American
 			
ANDREWS COUNTY — If Waste Control Specialists’ bid to establish a                     
low-level radioactive waste disposal site is approved, Andrews                       
County could become home to not only waste from Texas, but other                   
states as well. 

Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns asked Texas Gov. Rick Perry in April 
if Texas would take waste from Nebraska. Nebraska is part of the                     
Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact, which 
includes Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Boyd County in northeastern Nebraska was selected as the site, 
but the state backed out of having it built there. 

The rest of the compact sued Nebraska and a federal judge ordered 
the state to pay $151 million, according to the Omaha 
World-Herald.                   
                        
Kathy Walt, Perry’s press secretary, said Perry wouldn’t respond 
until he knows more about Nebraska’s proposal. “To say that there 
are talks or negotiations is far overstating the situation at 
this time,” Walt said. “Texas is still probably a decade away 
from having a facility.”
                        
Waste Control Specialists operates a low-level radioactive 
storage facility in western Andrews County and wants to operate a 
disposal facility as well.
                        
Texas lawmakers passed legislation in 2003 enabling a private 
entity to get a license to dispose of low-level radioactive 
waste.
                        
Waste Control General Manager Tom W. Jones III said if the state 
gives its approval for the disposal site in 2007, it would be 
ready to receive waste sometime in 2008.
                        
Proposals are due the last three weeks of July and the deadline 
is Aug. 6. “We’re in the process of putting the license 
application together. We intend to submit it the last part of 
July or the first part of August,” Jones said.
                        
He added that Waste Control is the only company he knows of that 
has applied for a license from TCEQ. Many technical issues have 
to be addressed in the application — about 4 feet of binders. 
Jones said the sate typically assigns a team of people — experts 
in nuclear safety, geology, hydrology and air emissions — to 
review the application.
                        
Waste Control has some in-house expertise, but has also hired                   
outside help. Waste Control is applying for one permit for two 
landfills that would operate side by side. One site would be for 
material from the U.S. Department of Energy and the other would 
be for material from Texas, Vermont and Maine under the 
interstate Waste Compact. Jones said Maine may drop out, however.
                        
Waste Compact material would be mostly medical waste such as 
boots, rubber gloves and suits. Some of the waste would come from 
nuclear plants. Federal waste would be dirt. Low-level 
radioactive waste can be transported by dump truck (with a 
covering) or by railroad.
                        
Waste Control plans to dig an initial concrete-lined hole 1,500 
feet square and 75 feet deep. 
                        
Right below the surface is 800 feet of clay. 
                        
There are also monitor wells around the site and sump pumps that 
pump the water into a holding well when it rains. The pit would 
hold 6 million cubic yards of waste. Only 600,000 cubic yards of 
waste will have high levels of radioactivity.                     

*****************************************************************
 39 OA Online: Waste Control Specialists handles all kinds of items
 
Sunday, 18 July 2004   

American Online   
  
c /o Odessa American 222 E. 4th Street P.O. Box 2952 Odessa, TX 
79760
 
By Ruth Friedberg Campbell Odessa American
 			
ANDREWS COUNTY — From tainted fluorescent light bulbs to “hot”                   
pieces of forklifts, Waste Control Specialists gets a variety of                      
items at its low-level radioactive storage site. 
                        
Waste Control Specialists receives, treats and stores low-level                       
waste, but can’t dispose of it — something it is trying to get                   
approval for from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality,                  
said Tom W. Jones III, general manager.
                        
If Waste Control’s license is approved, the company would be able 
to tart taking waste in 2008. Jones said the company cannot build 
the isposal site until it has a license. 
                        
However, the disposal facility will be designed beforehand.
                        
Jones said construction of the estimated $12 million project 
would ake nine months to a year once contracts are awarded.
                        
The way the disposal site legislation is written, it would 
include ne facility for the interstate Waste Compact, including 
Texas, ermont and Maine. However, Jones said Maine may be 
dropping out.
                        
There would be a second facility for government waste, which 
would ainly include contaminated soil. However, both sites would 
get emolition debris, lab coats, respirators, coveralls and 
gloves, Jones said.
                        
The two sites are in one application, but they have separate 
designs, separate security and will have separate safety and 
health onitoring programs. “We’ll have to keep one set of records 
for the compact site and one set of records for the federal 
site,” Jones said.
                        
The company has been operating for six or seven years on a permit                  
from the U.S. Department of Energy. It employs 94 people, and if 
the disposal facility were added, that figure would rise to 150 
to 200 employees. Jones stressed the safety precautions the 
company takes and said Waste Control celebrated three years 
without a lost time accident on May 10.
                        
Currently, Jones said Waste Control ships waste off for disposal.                       
But the material could be on site for up to two years. “ In some 
cases, the generator of the waste wants us to treat it and                  
return it to them. In other cases, we treat it and send it to                      
Hanford, Wash., the Nevada Test Site or to Envirocare in Utah,”                    
Jones said.
                        
Waste Control can also take waste the Environmental Protection                      
Agency classifies as hazardous waste. “We treat it and we can                      
dispose of it,” Jones said.
                        
Waste the EPA classifies as hazardous contains certain chemicals 
or elements that shouldn’t be released into the environment such 
as lead, cadmium and arsenic. Things that are corrosive or 
reactive that react with water or air and are flammable or toxic 
are considered hazardous by EPA, Jones said.
                        
Some of the waste also came from Gulf Nuclear, formerly of 
Odessa, which made sealed sources to calibrate instruments such 
as medical devices. 
                        
Jones said the company went bankrupt and the EPA cleaned it up. 
That waste is now waiting to be stored at Yucca Mountain, Nev., 
when it opens.
                        
Material Waste Control gets mainly comes from national labs, but 
it also gets material from private companies, research companies 
and a variety of state and federal facilities,” Jones said. “

The majority of the waste seems to be contaminated soil,” Jones 
said.
                        
Most of the waste is received in 55-gallon drums, but there are 
various size containers approved by the U.S. Department of 
Transportation such as intermodals, like the boxcars that come in 
on                      trains, and specialty tankers pulled by 
trucks, Jones said.
                        
For the Department of Energy, Waste Control has 2,200 drums from 
Rocky Flats, a Department of Energy lab just outside of Denver 
that is in the process of being decommissioned, Jones said. “ In 
doing that, they’re trying to dispose of materials from the last                        
30 to 40 years,” he said.
                        
Waste Control also has had a research and development project 
going for a more than a year where waste is turned into glass. 
“We’re proving the feasibility, proving the economics of it,” 
Jones said. If it’s successful, it will be made permanent. “ It 
would be a way to dispose of waste by tying everything up so it 
wouldn’t be able to leach out,” Jones said.
                        

Located right on the border with Lea County, N.M., Waste Control 
has 14,400 acres with 1,340 acres devoted to low-level 
radioactive waste storage.
                        
Jones said the land has unique geology because there is no water 
on it and the clay is close to the surface.
                        
There has been some dispute over whether the site is over the                     
Ogallala Aquifer. Waste Control officials contend it is not.
                        
Since the early 1990s, Jones said, Waste Control has drilled a                       
number of wells and as part of the licensing application to TCEQ 
has had a team of geologists on site.
                        
All agree it does not sit on top of the aquifer. In the case of 
Waste Control, the site sits on 20 to 30 feet of caliche, five 
feet of sand and gravel and 800 feet of clay. “ That’s what makes 
this such a unique site to dispose of waste on,”                      
Jones said.                        

*****************************************************************
 40 AU ABC: CSIRO says its nuclear waste poses no threat » 

ABC Canberra » Local News
 
"Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online">   

Sunday, 18 July 2004 

The CSIRO says radioactive waste from its facilities in Canberra 
poses no threat to the environment or public safety. 

The Federal Government last week abandoned its plan for a nuclear 
waste dump in South Australia, leaving it up to each state and 
territory to dispose of its own waste. 

The CSIRO's research services manager, Tony Agostino, says the 
radioactive material is only low to medium level and is stored at 
a secure location at Black Mountain. 

"The bulk of the material that we use in our day-to-day 
experiments actually sort of decays every fortnight," he said. 

"After a number of months it's basically essentially background 
radiation levels so there's no residual risk associated with that 
material at all." [ more news ] Last Updated: 11:06:00 AM (AEST)                 

  
*****************************************************************
 41 AU ABC: Nuclear waste shouldnt be stored in NT

Insiders - 18/07/2004: 

Australian Broadcasting Corporation 
 
Sharon, who sells hammocks at the Mindil Beach markets in
Darwin, says nuclear waste should not be stored in the Northern
Territory because Territorians do very little to generate the
waste. 

SHARON: My name is Sharon, I sell hammocks at the Mindil Beach
markets in Darwin. 

I heard Dave Tollner on the radio this morning suggesting the
Northern Territory is the site for nuclear waste. 

I was not only amazed, I was outraged and I thought it was quite
surprising given that Dave has such a marginal seat. 

Nuclear waste shouldn't be stored in the Northern Territory
because the Northern Territory does very little to actually
generate this waste, and also because of the problems of
transporting it over our roads to up here and we don't have the
population that actually generates this waste either. 

It should actually be stored closer to the point of where it is
used more, such as New South Wales and Victoria, where they use
it more in the hospitals down there. We are still waiting on
better home birthing facilities up here. 

Dave Tollner should be focusing on issues such as health,
education and provision of services to Aboriginal communities. 
Certainly I think Dave was under-prepared when he did raise this
issue. I don't think it is likely to be a vote-winner for Dave
Tollner. 

I haven't spoken to anyone who is in favour of this. I don't
think we need to be more open-minded about it, I think it is a
straight "no". Home   Archives   About Us   Contact Us <img

&#169;2004 ABC| Privacy Policy
*****************************************************************
 42 AU ABC: Indigenous group to celebrate waste dump decision » 

ABC Eyre » Local News
 
Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online">   

Monday, 19 July 2004 

Celebrations will begin in South Australia's far-north today for 
a group of Aboriginal women who fought the establishment of a 
radioactive waste dump in the region. 

The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta will join other anti-dump campaigners 
at the Arcoona Station site to mark the Federal Government's 
reversal over the dump being established there. 

Elder Emily Austin says it is a huge day for the women. 

"It'll be a victory, I think that's how good it will be...all 
that time we were going up and down fighting and we're tired and 
now everything has all come out really good and we won," she 
said. [ more news ] Last Updated: 7:40:00 AM (ACST)                  

ABC WEST COAST SA HOME 
*****************************************************************
 43 WCAX.com: Yucca woes raise new questions about Yankee waste

July 18, 2004   

MONTPELIER, Vt. -- A recent court decision on plans to bury tons 
of highly radioactive nuclear waste under Nevada's Yucca Mountain 
has lent new urgency to questions about the waste being generated 
at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

Those questions are expected to be front-and-center before 
lawmakers next winter as Vermont Yankee seeks to install a new 
type of spent fuel storage on its Vernon site. They also may be 
an issue in this year's gubernatorial campaign.

In a ruling earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 
District of Columbia said the Department of Energy's promise that 
the waste could be stored safely at Yucca Mountain for 10,000 
years wasn't good enough; it implied that the standard would have 
to be several hundred thousand years.

Meeting the new standard, if it is possible and if Congress can 
muster the votes to try, could require extensive redesign and 
retrofitting at the Yucca Mountain facility. The opening date for 
that project, originally expected to be 1998, more recently had 
been pegged at 2010.

Energy Department officials say they believe they can push ahead 
and meet the 2010 deadline. Yucca critics scoff at that idea. "My 
comment is `good luck.' I don't think this is going to fly in 
anyone's book," said Bob Loux, chief of Nevada's state Agency for 
Reactor Projects.

Robert Williams, spokesman for Vermont Yankee owner Entergy 
Nuclear, said his company is betting with the Energy Department. 
"We do not expect a delay in DOE being able to receive 
commercially generated spent fuel," he said.

Like other reactors, Vermont Yankee has a spent fuel pool, which 
was designed to hold highly radioactive spent fuel assemblies in 
40 feet of water _ temporarily _ until they could be shipped off 
to a permanent disposal site. That temporary arrangement has been 
in place now for 32 years _ the life of the reactor.

In an interview last week, David O'Brien, the commissioner of 
Vermont's Department of Public Service, noted that the spent fuel 
pool at Vermont Yankee, if it continues filling up at its current 
rate, will be out of room before the plant's license expires in 
2012.

Estimates vary as to exactly when the pool will be at capacity. 
But on one point Entergy Nuclear and its critics agree: If the 
plant is allowed to boost its power output by 20 percent _ a 
request recently given conditional approval by the Public Service 
Board and now before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission _ the 
plant will consume more fuel and the pool will be filled up 
sooner.

Entergy already has made known its plans to ask permission to use 
"dry casks" to store spent fuel on a concrete pad outdoors at the 
plant site. The opening salvos in that debate were fired this 
past spring, when Entergy sought _ and the Legislature declined 
to grant _ an exemption from the state law that says lawmakers 
must approve any new nuclear waste storage facility in Vermont.

Allowing dry cask storage at Vermont Yankee would solve three 
problems for Entergy. One is the nearly depleted room in the pool 
if the plant continues running as it is now. A second is the more 
quickly depleted pool space if the plant is allowed to boost its 
power.

The third problem is what to do with the waste that would be 
generated if Entergy gets its longer term wish to continue 
operating Vermont Yankee past the currently scheduled expiration 
of the plant's 40-year license in 2012.

Williams called it his company's "responsibility to move forward 
with dry cask storage permitting so that we can begin to ship as 
soon as DOE is ready to receive it."

O'Brien said, "Whether the plant is uprated or not, there is a 
finite life of the spent fuel pool," O'Brien said. "It (the 
pool's life) terminates before the licensed life terminates. The 
fuel will have to be dealt with. Absent a national repository, 
some sort of dry cask storage will be possibly in play."

Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle, a Democrat who has said he hopes 
to highlight energy issues in his campaign for governor this 
year, said he believes it has been a mistake to consider the 
plant's request for the power boost separately from the dry-cask 
storage question.

"It seems that before we can have any serious discussion about 
expanding the capacity of that plant _ or certainly extending the 
license _ we ought to have a plan for the storage of the nuclear 
waste," Clavelle said in an interview.

State Auditor Elizabeth Ready, a former chairwoman of the Senate 
Natural Resources Committee who participated in debates over the 
disposal of low-level radioactive waste in the early 1990s, was 
emphatic that some solution to the waste issue is needed before 
the plant is allowed to increase its output.

She noted that a 1991 study by an engineering consultant 
recommended against disposing of low-level radioactive waste at 
the Vermont Yankee site because of the high water table and 
likelihood that the material could seep into the adjacent 
Connecticut River.

Williams sought in an interview in May to distinguish between 
permanent low-level waste storage _ as was proposed in the 1990s 
_ and temporary storage of high-level waste.

But Ready and others argued that, as with the spent fuel pool, 
the definition of temporary storage could stretch.

Ready said the recent federal court decision "means there will be 
no federal site. If Entergy is allowed to dispose of its high 
level waste on the banks of the river, it will be there forever. 
I can think of no greater risk to the state of Vermont.

"If the court found that waste cannot be safely stored at a dry 
desert site," Ready added, "how in the world can we even consider 
a wetland in Vernon?"

She predicted that when lawmakers return next winter, "dry cask 
storage will be one of the biggest issues we've seen in a long 
time."

Copyright 
2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not 
  
News From WCAX-TV   

All content © Copyright 2001 - 2004 WorldNow and WCAX. All
Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 44 Oakland Tribune: Bill would fund water cleanup 
 
Article Last Updated: Sunday, July 18, 2004 -
 		   	 	
Proposal to pump $225 million into new technology would involve
local lab 

By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

 Senators and congressmen of two Western states are lining up 
behind a billion-dollar bill directing scientists to work on 
novel ways of cleaning up and reusing finite water supplies to 
sate farms and fast-growing cities. 

Congressional aides familiar with the bill say it would devote as 
much as $225 million a year for five years to work at nine U.S. 
Department of Energy labs. Eight would team with a university and 
tackle uniquely regional water problems. 

Backers say the legislation, if approved, would deliver the first 
major cash infusion in more than 20 years for new water-treatment 
technologies. 

Federal water-treatment research has been flat since the late 
1960s, about $700 million a year, eroded annually by inflation. 

Sen. Pete V. Domenici, R-N.M., whose hometown in Albuquerque 
relies on uncertain groundwater supplies for drinking water and a 
dwindling Rio Grande for irrigated croplands, introduced the bill 
Wednesday on the Senate side. 



Rep. Richard Pombo, a Tracy Republican, will introduce its 
companion in the House. 

The two men's districts both struggle with increasing 
concentrations of trace contaminants from agricultural and 
natural sources, such as selenium in the Central Valley and 
arsenic in the lower Rio Grande Valley. 

They have drawn support from Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California 
and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, two influential Democrats on a 
key Senate committee, and Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Riverside, chairman 
of the House water and power subcommittee that oversees federal 
water rights. 

Sandia National Laboratories, headquartered in Albuquerque, would 
serve as a national center. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory would 
serve as the Pacific regional water lab. 

Sandia has been exploring new desalination technologies, 
including some powered by renewable energy sources and ways of 
disposing of the salt. 

Livermore scientists, drawing in part on precise measurements 
made in past nuclear tests, are expert in fingerprinting water by 
its makeup of different hydrogen isotopes and using the technique 
to trace contaminants. 

They also are designing membranes for water treatment, capable of 
targeting and removing select contaminants. In Southern 
California and the Central Valley, cities are struggling with 
groundwater contamination by nitrates, often from leaking septic 
tanks, and by perchlorate, a common by-product of work on rocket 
fuels, explosives and other pyrotechnics. 

"If you didn't have to remove every single salt and ion, then 
maybe you don't have to use so much energy," said Robin Newmark, 
a geophysicist who heads water and environment research in 
Livermore's energy and environment directorate. 

The bill would encourage scientists to move technologies off 
their lab benches and into experimental trials and commercial 
production. 

"At the lab, the staff is very excited to be working on water, 
It's a compelling societal need and a challenging intellectual 
problem," Newmark said. "I think it's something people feel 
really good about."

 Contact Ian Hoffman at 

©2004 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
*****************************************************************
 45 Daily Camera: Demolition of Flats plant a hopeful sign

Editorials
 		 		
Nuke nightmare fades

July 18, 2004

In a project as large, daunting, slow and dangerous as the 
cleanup of a former nuclear weapons plant, milestones are hard to 
distinguish. But the beginning of the demolition of Rocky Flats' 
Building 771 is one mark worth noting. 

The Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant, eight miles south of 
Boulder, opened in the early 1950s and became an ominous — and, 
locally, omnipresent — symbol of the Cold War. 

The plant fashioned plutonium into hockey-puck-sized spheres, 
which were key components of nuclear "triggers." Each of those 
triggers, which were designed to ignite monstrous thermonuclear 
bombs, was itself a nuclear weapon. A trigger packed 20 kilotons 
of explosive force, five kilotons greater than the first nuclear 
weapon dropped on Japan. 

Rocky Flats, which eventually grew to 700 buildings on its 
385-acre industrial area, is now within 50 miles of 2.5 million 
residents. So it was something of a relief when in 1989 the feds 
shut the plant down for safety violations. 

The plant never reopened, and the end of the Cold War helped 
change the mission of Rocky Flats — from producing weapons to 
cleaning up and moving out. Cleaning such a facility is no small 
task. As recently as 1995, experts estimated that cleanup would 
cost as much as $36 billion and take as long as 70 years. Now, 
the closure is scheduled to be completed in 2006, and the final 
tab is expected to be less than $7 billion. 

The site, on the high plains overlooking Denver, is supposed to 
become a wildlife preserve. Before that happens, though, a lot 
more contaminated material must be dismantled and hauled off to 
waste-disposal sites around the country. 

Some observers ask whether the site will be clean enough after 
clean-up, and they question the idea of transforming a toxic and 
radioactive industrial facility into public open space. The 
questions are legitimate. So are the government's efforts to 
clean it up and close it down. 

Building 771, which excavators equipped with powerful hydraulic 
claws began pulling down on Thursday, was once dubbed by the feds 
as the "most dangerous building in America." 

When it began operation 51 years ago, Building 771 was one of the 
first major structures at Rocky Flats. In 1957, a fire there 
spread plutonium throughout the building and beyond. Twenty five 
years ago, workers sealed off a contaminated room that was so 
radioactive, instruments couldn't measure it; the vault was 
called the "infinity room." 

During the last nine years of clean-up, employees of contractor 
Kaiser-Hill have removed from this building 240 
plutonium-contaminated "gloveboxes," 251 contaminated tanks 
containing 12,000 liters of contaminated liquids, 11 miles of 
piping that contained 2,500 liters of plutonium-tainted liquids 
and more than 50 kilograms of plutonium waste. 

The "infinity room" was chopped into small pieces and hauled 
away. Now, the "spaghetti" of overhead piping and virtually 
everything else is gone. The concrete edifice remains. 

Building 771 will not disappear overnight. But its demolition 
began in earnest last week. The excavators pulled down metal 
stairways, yanked off external walls and crushed sections of the 
roof. 

Two decades ago, when activists tried to form a line around the 
whole Rocky Flats plant, "encircling" it in the hope of peace and 
disarmament, the dismantling of this place seemed a distant 
dream, if not an outright fantasy. 

The protesters were not Gideon. Their trumpeted cries didn't 
cause the walls to collapse. But it's worth noting that the day 
of Rocky Flats' disappearance is moving inexorably closer. This 
is the significance of last week's demolition.   

      Copyright 2004, The Daily Camera and the E.W. Scripps 
*****************************************************************
 46 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: State seeks halt to shipments of radioactive waste to Hanford
 	 	 	 	 	 
[seattlepi.com]     

Saturday, July 17, 2004 
State seeks halt to shipments of radioactive waste to Hanford
 Federal agency has not complied with laws, attorneys say 

By LISA STIFFLER SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Washington state officials want to halt all shipments of 
radioactive waste to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, they 
announced yesterday. 

Next week, state attorneys will ask a federal judge to expand the 
state's lawsuit against the U.S. Energy Department seeking to 
stop the import of low-level radioactive waste to the Eastern 
Washington cleanup site until the department complies with 
environmental laws. 

They also want the department to completely revisit its decision 
to make Hanford the waste dump for cleanup projects nationwide. 

"DOE has failed to prove that shipping more waste to Hanford 
won't make the nation's most-contaminated site even worse," 
Attorney General Christine Gregoire said in a statement 
yesterday. 

Groundwater contamination is a key concern at the Hanford site, 
which is near the Columbia River outside of Richland. 

A U.S. District Court judge in Spokane will be asked to expand 
the 2003 lawsuit to include low-level and mixed low-level 
radioactive waste, Assistant Attorney General Dave Mears said. 

Mixed low-level waste is radioactive and includes dangerous 
chemicals. Both types of waste would be permanently buried at 
Hanford. 

The original lawsuit challenged only shipments of transuranic 
waste -- a category of particularly long-lived radioactive debris 
including plutonium. This waste would be stored temporarily at 
the site. 

The state will seek an injunction to halt further waste shipments 
until the Energy Department has adequately addressed 
environmental concerns related to storing more radioactive waste 
at Hanford. The judge already banned shipment of the transuranic 
waste while the case is in the courts. 

In the past, the Energy Department has argued that Hanford must 
accept the outside debris because it wants to send some of its 
waste to other sites, as well. 

"We are disappointed by the threatened legal action announced by 
Washington state," the federal agency said in a statement. "Our 
cleanup plans, environmental impact statements and record of 
decision meet every environmental and regulatory requirement." 

Based on the state's concerns, the Energy Department made major 
revisions in its original environmental analyses, reducing the 
amount to be shipped to Hanford to 25 percent of the original 
proposal, ending use of unlined trenches and providing for 
comprehensive groundwater cleanup and monitoring, the statement 
said. 

In addition to the concerns about importing and storing waste, 
state officials said that the underlying decision to bring waste 
to Hanford needs to be re-examined. 

"They need to go back and look at the whole national plan and 
compare the risks at Hanford to the risks at the other sites," 
Mears said. "We don't think they've fully assessed the risks to 
groundwater of adding the waste to the site." 

Since the 1960s, low-level radioactive waste has been sent to 
Hanford from other sites. In June, the department began shipping 
to Hanford radioactive waste mixed with chemicals. 

For 40 years, Hanford made plutonium for the nation's nuclear 
arsenal. Now, it is the nation's most-contaminated nuclear site. 

The state's action was cheered by a Hanford watchdog group 
promoting an initiative to ban shipments until improvements at 
the site are made. 

"Over a million gallons of ... nuclear waste has leaked from 
Hanford's tanks and is spreading towards the Columbia River," 
said Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America 
Northwest and sponsor of Initiative 297. "The federal government 
wants to keep dumping more waste instead of cleaning up." This 
report includes information from The Associated Press. P-I 
reporter Lisa Stiffler can be reached at 206-448-8042 or 
lisastiffler@seattlepi.com.                 


  [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 
98119 (206) 448-8000
 
 Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com
©1996-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
*****************************************************************
 47 Seattle Times: State seeks to expand Hanford suit
               
Saturday, July 17, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.
 			 			 			 			
By John K. Wiley The Associated Press                                            

SPOKANE — Washington state will ask a federal judge to expand its 
lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy, seeking to halt 
new shipments of low-level radioactive waste to the Hanford 
nuclear reservation. 

The DOE has not fully complied with federal environmental laws, 
and the agency should complete the Hanford cleanup before 
bringing in more waste, Gov. Gary Locke and Attorney General 
Christine Gregoire said in a statement yesterday. 

"DOE has failed to prove that shipping more waste to Hanford 
won't make the nation's most contaminated site even worse," 
Gregoire said. 

Groundwater contamination is a key concern. 

State attorneys will ask a U.S. District Court judge next week 
for permission to expand the 2003 lawsuit to include low-level 
and mixed low-level radioactive waste, Assistant Attorney General 
Dave Mears said. 

The original lawsuit challenged only shipments of transuranic 
waste — debris from the making of nuclear weapons. 

The state will seek an injunction to halt further waste shipments 
until the Energy Department has adequately addressed 
environmental concerns related to storing more radioactive waste 
at Hanford. 

The DOE prepared an environmental analysis before authorizing 
low-level waste shipments, Mears said. But the state contends the 
document falls short. 

In June, the DOE began shipping low-level radioactive waste from 
the Rocky Flats nuclear complex in Colorado. 
  
"We are disappointed by the threatened legal action announced by 
Washington state," the federal agency said in a statement. "Our 
cleanup plans, environmental-impact statements and record of 
decision meet every environmental and regulatory requirement." 

Based on the state's concerns, DOE made major revisions in its 
original environmental analyses, reducing the amount to be 
shipped to Hanford to 25 percent of the original proposal, ending 
use of unlined trenches and providing for comprehensive 
groundwater cleanup and monitoring, the statement said. 

For 40 years, Hanford made plutonium for the nation's nuclear 
arsenal. Now it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site 
and its primary mission is cleanup. 

Transuranic waste is defined as plutonium-contaminated gloves, 
rags, tools, dried sludge and other debris from nuclear weapons 
making. Low-level waste has lower radiation levels than 
transuranic waste or spent nuclear fuel and processing waste, and 
includes such materials as building rubble, contaminated dirt, 
tools and clothing. Mixed low-level waste contains hazardous 
chemicals. 

Under DOE's current plan, about 62,000 cubic meters of 
radioactive waste — in addition to 20,000 cubic meters of mixed 
low-level waste, and 15,500 cubic meters of transuranic waste — 
would be shipped to Hanford. 

			

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
*****************************************************************
 48 Las Vegas SUN: Nuke Security Chief Visits Los Alamos Lab

Today: July 18, 2004 at 13:22:20 PDT 
 
ASSOCIATED PRESS 

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - 

The head of the National Nuclear Security Administration visited 
Los Alamos National Laboratory Sunday to oversee the 
investigation into security lapses at the lab. 

Linton Brooks is one of the federal officials inquiring into the 
disappearance of two electronic data storage devices that were 
reported missing at the lab earlier this month. 

Brooks planned no public comment Sunday on the missing devices or 
the investigation, lab spokesman Jim Fallin said. 

"He's here to conduct a very serious first look at the locations 
involved in this most recent security incident," Fallin said. 

Brooks' visit came just two days after the lab's director, Pete 
Nanos, broadened a "stand-down" of most lab activities. The 
University of California, which manages the lab for the 
Department of Energy, had ordered him to halt classified work a 
day earlier. 

Nanos said there will be exceptions to his order, so that 
critical missions and essential national security functions 
continue. 

The stand-down announced Friday is open-ended, with some lab 
departments expected to resume work sooner than others. Nanos 
said officials will review every department's activities and 
recommend that work resume only when all compliance issues have 
been addressed. 

Lab and Energy Department officials have said little about what's 
missing - the Department of Energy calls them computer disks - 
and how they may have disappeared. 

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham ordered Brooks and Deputy Energy 
Secretary Kyle McSlarrow to oversee the inquiry at the lab, which 
was the birthplace of the atomic bomb. McSlarrow is to join 
Brooks Monday. 

--- 

On the Net: 

Los Alamos National Laboratory: www.lanl.gov 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 49 Seattle Times: Hanford's vapors may pose health risk
               
Saturday, July 17, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.
 			 			 			 			
By Hal Bernton Seattle Times staff reporter                                            

  JACKIE JOHNSTON / AP   			

  Unidentified workers at the tank farms on the Hanford nuclear 
reservation enter an area known to have hazardous vapors.               

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reports 
that chemical vapors venting from Hanford waste tanks may pose 
significant health risks, a finding that adds new credence to 
dozens of worker complaints about job-related illness. 

Workers who labor close by the 177 waste tanks at the Eastern 
Washington nuclear complex have cited a wide range of health 
problems, including bloody noses, memory loss, shortness of 
breath, frequent headaches and lung scarring. 

Such illness reports have been met with skepticism by Hanford 
contracting officials, who say that they had no evidence of vapor 
emissions that exceeded federal safety standards. 

Investigators for the National Institute of Occupational Safety 
and Health (NIOSH) said that the contractor — CH2M Hill Hanford 
Group — often failed to monitor vapors until hours after 
worker-exposure incidents, and that health problems cited in 35 
interviews with employees "could be related to their exposures to 
vapors." But the gaps in monitoring made the "true exposure 
potential" difficult to ascertain, the report concluded. 

The NIOSH investigators visited the site in early March after 
receiving a confidential request from tank-farm workers. The 
Seattle office of the Government Accountability Project also has 
investigated worker-safety concerns. 

Some 500 workers are tending to tanks that hold about 53 million 
gallons of high-level radioactive waste along with more than 
1,200 chemicals. And since 2001, workers have been involved in at 
least 70 reported cases of vapor exposure, according to the NIOSH 
report. 

These wastes are the toxic leftovers of the federal effort to 
produce plutonium for nuclear bombs, and are now being 
transferred from leaking single-shelled tanks to more secure 
double-shelled tanks. 

Back in 1995 and 1996, respirators were required to be worn by 
tank-farm workers involved in the transfers. But they were 
discontinued after a risk evaluation by Westinghouse Hanford 
concluded that vapor exposure was under control. 

But NIOSH investigators found that vapor concentrations, during 
transfers, could increase to "sufficiently high concentrations to 
pose a health risk to workers." 

And they recommended that workers be once again equipped at a 
minimum with air-purifying respirators to help protect them from 
the vapors, and urged CH2M Hill to increase "real-time" 
monitoring of workers facing potential exposures. 
 
The NIOSH visit, as well as a separate visit by the Department of 
Energy's inspector general, helped spur new safety measures at 
the tank farm. Currently, all workers must once again wear the 
respirators, and CH2M Hill has stepped up monitoring. CH2M Hill 
also has hired an ombudsman to work with employees with health 
concerns. 

"We've already started taking actions on a lot of the 
recommendations, and a comprehensive corrective action plan is 
being put into place," said Erik Olds, a spokesman for the 
Department of Energy's Office of River Protection, which oversees 
the tank farm. 

Joy Turner, spokeswoman for CH2M Hill Hanford, told The 
Associated Press that the contractor will cooperate with NIOSH. 
The company already has been working on changes based on its own 
review, she said. 

This is not the first time that NIOSH has looked into tank vapors 
at Hanford. In 2000, NIOSH said contractors needed to improve 
collection of worker information, but those recommendations were 
not carried out, the investigators said. 

Many of the workers with health problems now are trying to get 
insurers to pay medical bills for what they say are job-related 
illnesses. 

One of those, Steve Lewis, said yesterday he hopes the new NIOSH 
report will help in what so far has been a losing battle to gain 
compensation for more than $2,000 in medical bills after a 2002 
vapor exposure that he says triggered nosebleeds, headaches and 
other symptoms and "hundreds upon hundreds of hours of stress." 

Lewis said he was pleased with the new policy that requires the 
respirators. But he still is skeptical that the monitoring 
actually is pinpointing the areas venting the most vapors. 

"Right now, they still miss the boat on a lot of things," Lewis 
said. 

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or 

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company
*****************************************************************
 50 SF Chronicle: Crisis of confidence at Los Alamos
 
Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer        
Sunday, July 18, 2004 [San Francisco Chronicle] 

The angry lawmakers and tough-talking investigators descending on 
the New Mexico lab where the atom bomb was born -- and where all 
normal work activity was brought to a halt Friday -- want to know 
what the lab chief asked his staff in a blunt memo: How has the 
Los Alamos National Laboratory gotten itself into "this mess"? 

But another question has particular urgency for the officials at 
the University of California, which manages the remote desert lab 
and two Bay Area labs. Before the eyes of an increasingly 
skeptical U.S. Energy Department, Congress and nation, can Los 
Alamos' weapons wizards get out of the mess -- which involves 
repeated security lapses and alarming accidents -- fast enough 
and convincingly enough to rescue UC's prestigious six-decade tie 
to the lab that made America the world's No. 1 superpower? 

"I don't care how many people I have to fire" in order to knock 
the security- and safety-challenged staff into line, Los Alamos 
chief G. Peter ("Pete") Nanos declared in the Friday memorandum 
to his 12,000 employees. 

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chair of the House Committee on Energy 
and Commerce, said at a Washington hearing Tuesday: "(A) number 
of people are going to have to resign over this, and it's 
possible a number of people may have to go to prison over this. 
... (T)here's probably better security at the . .. public library 
over CDs and videos that are on the Blockbuster top 10 list. " 

Barton's home state's university system is now spending $500,000 
to investigate the feasibility of competing to take away UC's job 
at Los Alamos. And the congressman plans to visit Los Alamos on 
Monday, which is already crawling with outside investigators from 
the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington, 
which oversees the nation's sprawling nuke complex. 

"We're trying to figure out what it is we should have done that 
we haven't done, because we clearly don't have everybody's 
attention," NNSA czar Linton Brooks told Barton's committee 
Tuesday. "I believe there is something about the Los Alamos 
culture that we have not yet beaten into submission." 

Beltway hubbub aside, what is at stake for California? 

Despite on-again, off-again disputes over the morality of the 
state's long association with the nuclear weapons business, UC 
officials claim the power and prestige of the labs have made it 
far easier to attract the world's best and brightest to 
California campuses. 

But the historic glory has been tarnished badly in recent days. 

For the third time in eight months, lab staff members have lost 
computer disks containing information related to national 
security. Late this week, lab officials detailed three recent 
safety violations, including the revelation that on Wednesday, a 
20-year-old intern severely injured her eye while using a laser. 

A new scandal is brewing: In 17 cases, staff violated rules by 
e-mailing classified data on an unclassified network, Danielle 
Brian of the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C., 
said Saturday. Los Alamos spokesman Jim Fallin replied briefly: 
"All incidents related to e-mail and classified information have 
been properly reported to NNSA and properly mitigated so that 
there has been no significant risk to national security." 

The timing of such news couldn't be worse for UC officials. They 
must soon decide whether to compete for a future contract to run 
Los Alamos after the present contract expires in September 2005. 

At their meetings, UC President Robert Dynes and the UC regents 
say they haven't yet decided to compete partly because of the 
cost of the competition - - perhaps $25 million, some estimate -- 
at a time of state budget crisis. 

But while no one will say it on the record, in private, some UC 
officials acknowledge their real fear: that UC is doomed to lose 
such a competition, not only because of Los Alamos staffers' 
bumblings but because of the Bush administration's perceived 
political hostility to California. 

It is no coincidence, these sources claim, that the first 
prominent outside entity to officially express interest in 
competing for the Los Alamos contract is the giant University of 
Texas system, in Bush's home state. They also note that Dale 
Klein, a former University of Texas administrator -- who ran the 
school's failed bid to take over a different national lab -- 
served on a panel advising Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in 
his decision last year about when to open future Los Alamos 
contracts to outside bidders. 

The Los Alamos crisis broke into public view in late 2002. In a 
manner that reminded critics of President Richard Nixon's 
self-destructive firing of his own Watergate prosecutor, 
Archibald Cox, in the early 1970s, Los Alamos officials dismissed 
two former police officers whom the lab had originally hired to 
investigate charges of lost or stolen equipment, credit card 
theft and mismanagement at the lab. The two officers claimed they 
were fired as part of a cover-up. 

The cops were rehired, but this time they reported directly to 
then-UC President Richard Atkinson. Several top Los Alamos 
officials, including director John Browne, were fired or 
reassigned. 

UC struggled to clean up shop by bringing in a new lab boss: 
Nanos, a no- nonsense retired three-star Navy admiral. UC also 
hired S. Robert Foley, another retired admiral, to be the 
university's vice president for laboratory management, with 
direct responsibility for UC's three national labs. Nonetheless, 
Abraham's office began making noises about the possibility of 
opening future contracts to outside bidders. UC responded coolly: 
In January 2003, Atkinson aide Bruce Darling stated that the 
University of California would refuse to compete in any contract 
competition. Rather, he said, "we will graciously and very 
helpfully make that transition" to a different contractor. 

If Darling was bluffing, Abraham wasted little time in calling 
the bluff. The following May, Abraham ordered competitive bidding 
for the next Los Alamos contract. A major reason: UC "bears 
responsibility for the systemic management failures ... that came 
to light in 2002," Abraham said at the time. 

Since then, the UC President -- now Dynes -- and the UC regents 
have publicly waffled on the question of whether they'll compete. 

"The Department of Energy was almost ready to throw us off the 
(Los Alamos) property two years ago," Regent Richard C. Blum 
lamented at the UC regents meeting in San Francisco on Thursday. 
Since then UC officials have struggled hard to clean up the act 
at the lab, and so, Blum added, the latest scandals feel like "a 
stab at your heart." 

And there are no assurances that the scandals are history. 

"Humans," Nanos warned the regents, "can override almost any 
security system we can devise." 

E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com. 

Page A - 3 

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ
*****************************************************************
 51 Guardian Unlimited: History Meets Trouble at Los Alamos Lab
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday July 17, 2004 2:31 AM

AP Photo NMLM801 

By H. JOSEF HEBERT 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Steeped in history going back to the birth of 
the nuclear bomb, the government's Los Alamos National Laboratory 
has been dogged in recent years by one embarrassment after 
another, from credit card fraud and allegations of espionage to 
disappearing files and safety lapses. 

The latest flap: two missing computer disks containing nuclear 
secrets. 

All classified work at the laboratory in the hills of northern 
New Mexico has been ordered stopped as some of the country's 
smartest nuclear weapons scientists and engineers search for the 
missing disks. 

At the Energy Department, senior officials are steaming at what 
they view as yet another security foul-up at the facility where 
61 years ago scientists put together the world's first atomic 
bomb. 

Investigators have been stymied on the whereabouts of the two 
computer disks, known to the scientists as ``classified removable 
electronic media.'' Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the 
disappearance reflects ``a widespread disregard for security'' by 
lab officials. 

``This is absolutely unacceptable,'' he fumed, ordering his top 
deputy, Kyle McSlarrow, to the laboratory to get to the bottom of 
it all. 

Stretched across 43 square miles, the Los Alamos weapons lab 
employs more than 10,700 people, two-thirds of them working for 
the University of California, which has managed the facility 
since it was created as part of the World War II Manhattan 
Project that launched the age of nuclear weapons. 

It's been 18 months since Peter Nanos, a retired vice admiral, 
took over as lab director after a scandal involving lab employees 
using laboratory credit cards to buy personal items including - 
as alleged but still in some dispute - a new Mustang automobile. 

``We are not a bunch of crooks,'' Nanos told lab workers his 
first day on the job. ``The trouble is I can't prove it.'' 

Last week, faced with the latest computer disk flap, Nanos blamed 
``a small number'' of people who cannot follow the rules and who 
again have ``brought disrepute to Los Alamos.'' 

No one has said what is on the disks and it's possible they may 
have been destroyed without anyone bothering with the required 
paperwork. To increase security, the lab has begun a program to 
phase out the use of removable disks from all its classified 
computers. 

But it is far from the first embarrassing incident at the lab. 

The Los Alamos nuclear weapons program was at the center of a 
1999 espionage controversy involving lab scientist Wen Ho Lee. 
Though never charged with espionage, Lee was fired for security 
violations. He pleaded guilty to a felony count of mishandling 
classified information and admitted copying classified files. He 
said he disposed of them on site, but they were never found. 

A year later, two computer hard drives containing nuclear secrets 
disappeared from a guarded vault at Los Alamos only to turn up 
behind a copy machine. The mystery has yet to be solved. 

Last December, an inventory couldn't account for 10 computer 
disks, also used in the nuclear weapons program, prompting - as 
was the case this week - a brief suspension of classified work. 
Another disk was reported missing in May. Lab officials believe 
that in both cases the materials were destroyed with no records 
kept. 

A classified floppy disk reported missing from Sandia National 
Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., was found Friday, but 
officials were tight-lipped about details surrounding that 
incident. The disk was listed as missing during a June 30 
inventory. 

The repeated security flaps as well as the scandal over 
fraudulent use of credit cards prompted the Energy Department 
last year to put its lab management contract up for bid when it 
expires in 2005, possibly ending the University of California's 
61-year involvement. 

``We have a huge number of exceptionally bright people here,'' 
Los Alamos spokesman Kevin Roark said Friday in a telephone 
interview. ``But we still have what appears to be a small number 
of knuckleheads who ruin it for everybody.'' 

But others suggest there are systemic problems at the heart of 
the lab's frequent flirtation with trouble. 

And it doesn't always involved security. 

The credit card fraud scandal in 2002 brought charges of an 
attempted cover-up after the lab fired two investigators it had 
assigned to get to the bottom of the case. One of them eventually 
received a nearly $1 million settlement with the university. 
Auditors found $4.9 million in questionable credit card expenses 
over four years, although lab officials said all but $195,246 had 
been accounted for. 

Twice in four months last year two Los Alamos workers were 
contaminated from exposure to plutonium. The more recent case 
last August prompted a $770,000 fine from the Energy Department. 
But the fine will never have to be paid because by law the 
University of California, as a DOE contractor, is immune from 
such penalties. 

Steve Aftergood, director of the Washington-based Federation of 
American Scientists' project on government secrecy, says a key 
question is whether the security flaps stem from sloppiness or 
willful disregard for the rules. 

``Why would they do such things?'' he wondered, noting that the 
lab is the workplace of some of the country's smartest scientists 
- many of them long involved in highly classified defense work. 

``These are brilliant scientists,'' added Danielle Brian, 
executive director of Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog 
group that has worked closely with whistle-blowers at Los Alamos. 
``They are told daily they are brilliant scientists. That creates 
a hubris ... almost a defiance. ... They believe the work they 
are doing is so important that it supersedes everything else.'' 

In truth, problems are not new at Los Alamos. In 1945, Klaus 
Fuchs, a German-born physicist involved in the Manhattan Project, 
gave the Soviet Union the main elements of the design of the 
atomic bomb. He later admitted the espionage and was sentenced to 
14 years in prison. He was released after nine years and went 
immediately to East Germany. 

^--- 

On the Net: 

Los Alamos National Laboratory: http://www.lanl.gov 

Energy Department: http://www.energy.gov 
  
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
 52 GSN: DOE Official Seeks to Clarify Bush Nuclear Program

Global Security Newswire is produced independently for the
Nuclear Threat Initiative by National Journal Group, Inc. Global
Security Newswire is published Monday thru Friday by 2 pm and is
available exclusively on the NTI website, www.nti.org. 

Friday, July 16, 2004 

By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON  The U.S. Energy Department has no programs or plans 
for studying or developing new low-yield nuclear weapons 
capabilities, a senior official told Global Security Newswire 
this month, echoing complaints by other Bush administration 
officials that the department is being criticized inaccurately 
(see GSN, March 22). 

Officials in numerous forums have insisted this year that a 
misconception has spread that the controversial work is 
occurring, possibly resulting from poorly phrased comments by 
administration officials, poor analysis by nongovernmental 
experts, and inaccurate reporting by the news media.

John Harvey, director of the National Nuclear Security 
Administrations Office of Policy Planning, at the Energy 
Department, reiterated in the interview that there are no formal 
programs under way exploring low-yield nuclear weapons concepts 
or plans for programs.

We have no studies under way, & with regard to modified weapons 
[or] with regard to a new low-yield mini-nukes, he said.

The issue however is not cut and dry. Harvey said that scientists 
at the national nuclear laboratories could be thinking about 
low-yield concepts, that two nuclear initiatives  one proposed 
by the Air Force and a self-directed effort at the Los Alamos 
National Laboratory  could lead to low-yield work, and that the 
government could at any time initiate basic low-yield nuclear 
weapons research.

We dont rule it out. It could happen in the future.  Ill let 
you know when it does, he said.What Is Under Way



The prospect of new low-yield work has been controversial both 
here and abroad, because critics say it suggests that the United 
States is developing less-destructive nuclear weapons 
capabilities that the United States could be more likely to use. 
Such developments, critics say, would undermine efforts to 
discourage global nuclear weapons proliferation.

Harvey said there are four nuclear weapons studies under way or 
under consideration:

*         A current study of options for a new or modified 
high-yield weapon called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (see 
GSN, March 10);

*         An NNSA-Air Force study just beginning on modifying a 
cruise missile nuclear weapon to improve its safety, security and 
control;

*         An Air Force request for the National Nuclear Security 
Administration to study using nuclear weapons to destroy chemical 
and biological agents in storage (see GSN, Aug. 11, 2003); and

*         An initiative under way at Los Alamos to explore 
replacing some existing warheads with longer-lasting ones that 
would be less likely to require nuclear testing.

The latter two projects, Harvey said, could someday lead to 
low-yield nuclear weapons work. 

Now the agent-defeat [weapon study] could conceivably be either 
for low or high-yield. We dont know yet.  We havent looked at 
it yet. We dont know what the requirement is, he said.

The Air Force has requested NNSA support for the study, he said, 
but the agency has not agreed yet because we need to further 
clarify what their intent is. 

We will have to establish what the yield should be, and what the 
characteristics should be, if its feasible to employ a nuclear 
weapon to destroy stocks of chemical or biological agents, he 
said. 

The replacement warhead study underway, Harvey said, has not been 
formally requested by the Energy Department, but could someday 
lead to new low- or high-yield weapons to replace existing arms. 
However, it is now not focused on low-yield questions but on 
reliability and replacement work.

Harvey said other unrequested low-yield thinking or studies 
could be under way at all at the national laboratories, but that 
he was personally unaware of such work.

We ask our laboratories to think creatively about nuclear 
weapons and concepts and all this in part to make sure that were 
at the forefront and to understand what the possibilities are 
because we dont want to be fooled by other nations activities. 
&  We dont ask them to request permission for everything that 
they think about, he said.

Harvey said the laboratories keep the agency apprised of their 
work, and NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said the department was 
conducting no low-yield work at all.

I can clarify for you right now, as a spokesman for the 
administrator, that the answer to that is no, right now, he 
said, noting that NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks speaks weekly 
with the lab directors on a conference call.

If they [the laboratories] are, then theyre doing it kind of 
secretly. & We just want the record to be clear, he said. 
Misunderstanding Asserted



Harvey said there is a widely shared impression that the Energy 
Department does have low-yield nuclear weapon development plans 
or programs.

Theres a lot of confusion. When you see the New York Times and 
the Washington Post say were spending $9 million next year to do 
development of low-yield nuclear weapons, Im sorry, that conveys 
an impression, which is simply incorrect. And they dont print 
retractions on this, no matter how much we ask them, he said.

The Washington Post, for instance, last month reported Senate 
authorization for further research on two new nuclear weapons: a 
low-yield mini-nuke and a high-yield bunker buster to destroy 
deep underground facilities.

Global Security Newswire in April reported low-yield work was 
begun this fiscal year (see GSN, April 29).

The presumption has been that such work has or would occur with 
money requested by the administration for Advanced Concepts 
nuclear weapons research and development through the department. 
The administration requested $9 million this year for this fiscal 
2005 (see GSN, June 28).

One roadblock to future work on low-yield nuclear weapons was 
cleared last year at the administrations request, when Congress 
partially repealed a 10-year-old research and development ban 
that had been sponsored by Representatives John Spratt (D-S.C.) 
and Elizabeth Furse (D-Ore.) (see GSN, Nov. 7, 2003).

I think [some in the arms control] community and some in 
Congress have made the mistake of assuming that the repeal of the 
Spratt-Furse ban meant that they were definitely going to be 
doing something with low-yield weapons. And I dont think that 
they ever really said that, said analyst Kathy Crandall of the 
Union of Concerned Scientists.

Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball said 
the blame lies with the administration. 

The extent [to which] there has been some confusion about what 
low-yield concepts they are doing is because they have not been 
specific in their budget requests and public statements, he 
said.

Told of Harveys program descriptions in the interview, he called 
them the most specific they have gotten about what their 
objectives are that I have heard.Apparent Interest



Bush administration interest in lower-yield weapons capabilities 
has been expressed in various ways. Excerpts of the 
administrations 2002 Nuclear Posture Review argued for the 
utility of developing lower yield earth-penetrating weapons, 
which if deeply penetrated would achieve the same damage while 
producing less fallout (by a factor of 10 to 20) than would the 
much larger yield surface burst.

A 1999 planning document prepared by the deputy undersecretary of 
defense for science and technology noted plans to prepare a 
tunnel test bed for 2001 to demonstrate the effectiveness of 
nuclear weapons capabilities in defeating deep structures using 
precise, low-yield attacks by HE [high explosive] simulation. 

A report by the Pentagons Defense Science Board in March argued 
that nuclear weapons with low yields could be useful for striking 
deeply buried and hardened bunkers and destroying chemical and 
biological agent stores while also minimizing collateral damage 
(see GSN, April 29).

The Bush administrations successful effort to repeal the 1993 
Spratt-Furse ban on research and development that could lead to 
the production of a low-yield nuclear weapon also has been seen 
to signal interest in exploring such capabilities. 

NNSA Administrator Brooks last December sent a letter to the 
laboratories urging they take advantage of the bans repeal, 
which provoked bipartisan congressional criticism and a public 
concession from Brooks that the letter was poorly written (see 
GSN, March 22).

Brooks then and has since insisted publicly that the United 
States is conducting no research and development for low-yield 
nuclear weapons, and has no immediate plans to do so. Brooks said 
the repeal was sought because the restrictions had a chilling 
effect on exploring new nuclear concepts (see GSN, May 12).

The public record shows that U.S. officials would like to study 
low-yield concepts, said Hans Kristensen, an analyst at the 
Natural Resources Defense Council. He suspects that denials of 
plans and programs are crafted to be technically accurate but 
misleading about those intentions to avoid criticism at least 
until after this years political season. Theyre just playing 
games with the public. Its like launching a missile and [saying] 
its not a missile attack until it hits the ground. Its lawyer 
talk, he said.

We know [the military has] done that kind of stuff before, like 
in 1993 when they held off on presenting a request to build the 
[high-yield] B-61-11 [warhead] until Congress changed to build a 
better political climate, he said.

NNSA spokesman Wilkes said U.S. officials are not playing a 
cutesy game of wink wink, well Ive got something on my desk 
but & Ill look at that, you know, next year. 

The Arms Control Associations Kimball said critics are losing 
sight of the big picture by focusing on the prospect of low-yield 
nuclear weapons activities. The concern should be about 
development of any new nuclear weapons or capabilities.

I dont care whether it is low-yield or high-yield. & The issue 
is whether the United States needs to, wants to, or is wise to 
develop new nuclear weapons capabilities for whatever purpose, 
he said. About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use 
Guidelines HOME  |  CONTACT US  |  GET INVOLVED  |  SITE MAP © 
Copyright by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this 
section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal 
Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in 
part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited 
without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All 
rights reserved.
 

*****************************************************************
 53 Charleston.Net: SRS, energy officials to talk about waste 

07/18/04

Westinghouse wants to show safety of plan to dispose of Cold War 
leftovers 

Cox News Service 

ATLANTA --Several U.S. Department of Energy officials and 
congressional aides will visit the Savannah River Site in South 
Carolina on Monday to brief reporters on the agency's 
controversial plan to dispose of millions of gallons of nuclear 
waste stored at the site.

 Environmentalists and some politicians have condemned the plan 
because it would leave highly radioactive sludge in dozens of 
underground storage tanks -- some of which have sprung leaks -- 
instead of sending it to a permanent repository in Nevada, as 
required by a 1982 law.

 "We want to show that our plan is safe," said Fran Poda, 
spokeswoman for the Westinghouse Savannah River Co., which runs 
SRS for the Energy Department. 

About 37 million gallons of radioactive waste -- leftovers from 
years of making ingredients for nuclear bombs -- are stored in 49 
underground tanks at SRS. A report last week said some of the 
most recent problems occurred in 2001, when 92 gallons of 
radioactive waste leaked into a containment area. Energy 
Department officials say the government does not know of any 
tanks leaking now.

 Plans call for most of the liquid waste, which constitutes the 
vast majority of the waste volume, to be immobilized by mixing it 
with molten glass and then allowing it to solidify. But the DOE 
plans to leave highly radioactive sludge processed from the waste 
in the tanks, which would be filled with concrete.

 Environmentalists were outraged last year when the DOE proposed 
reclassifying the sludge as low-level waste, effectively allowing 
the material to remain at SRS. The government said the 
reclassification would save $16 billion in cleanup costs and 
hasten the SRS cleanup by 23 years. The Natural Resources Defense 
Council sued the government, and a federal judge ruled that the 
DOE would violate federal law if it reclassified the waste and 
failed to move it. To get around the ruling, Sen. Lindsey Graham 
(R-S.C.), on behalf of the agency, introduced a bill to keep the 
sludge at SRS. A Senate committee then made it part of the 
defense spending bill.

Copyright © 2004, The Post and Courier, All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 54 Paducah Sun: Reaping the benefits 

Paducah, Kentucky

  Sunday, July 18, 2004;Paducah, Kentucky     

With its claims success, the Labor Department awaits word from
Congress on taking over a similar but troubled DOE program. 

By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
 
When Labor Secretary Elaine Chao presented the first check in 
August 2001, she never thought a new program would pay $154 
million in claims over the next three years to sick Paducah 
nuclear workers and their families. 

Because the Paducah Energy Employees Compensation Resource Center 
was the first of 10 nationwide established by federal law, there 
was no way of predicting success. The center has accounted for 9 
percent of the $890 million in compensation and medical benefits 
paid to 11,300 people nationwide. 

"I'm very proud of the Paducah resource center," Chao said. "In 
the last three years, they have been highly successful in helping 
people file claims and addressing the issues involved in 
obtaining medical documentation." 

Chao visited Paducah to present the first check to Clara Harding, 
who testified before Congress in support of the 2000 law. Her 
husband, Joe, died of cancer more than 20 years earlier, claiming 
until his last breath that his illness was caused by work-related 
exposure.

 Sick workers (or eligible survivors) receive $150,000 and have 
future medical costs paid if they have one of 22 specified 
radiation-induced cancers or chronic beryllium disease. The 
Paducah center, which has filed claims on behalf of more than 
5,000 workers or family members, has a broad outreach effort 
through hospitals, doctors and other medical providers; civic 
groups; churches; the media; and labor organizations, notably the 
plant nuclear workers union, known as PACE.

 PACE runs the Department of Energy-funded Worker Health 
Protection Program, which provides free medical screening to 
current and former plant workers, contractors and subcontractors. 
Cancer screening involves a specialized CT scan in a mobile unit 
that makes periodic visits to the union hall on Cairo Road. The 
scan can detect tiny nodules invisible in other tests.

 Many of the 1,500 Paducah plant employees who were compensated 
worked during the Cold War. The plant opened in 1952 to enrich 
uranium for nuclear weaponry, but other secret work involved 
machining nuclear weapons parts. Not until 2000 did the 
government admit that beryllium — a highly toxic but easily 
machinable metal — was used at Paducah. Now the Labor Department 
has paid nearly $6 million in compensation to 62 people with 
chronic beryllium disease, which scars the lungs and can be 
fatal. 

When the claims process began, the Energy Department estimated 
there were 10,000 current or former people on the Paducah plant 
payroll. But that didn't include thousands of others who worked 
for contractors and subcontractors, including those in the 
plant's huge cleanup community. Roughly 29,000 people came from 
across the country to build the plant in the early 1950s.

 Chao said there are many people left to reach and construction 
workers are especially mobile. Aside from the significant local 
efforts, the Labor Department is using a nationwide network of 
one-stop career centers and 536 field offices to get the word 
out, she said.

 "I had some doubts whether we'd be able to do it," Chao said of 
the rigorous efforts to train staff and open the centers in 2001. 
"I'm very proud of the men and women of the Labor Department who 
got this program up and running in a very short time. They've 
done a great job, and I want to commend them." 

While the Labor Department program has been a model of success by 
processing more than 95 percent of its 56,000 claims, a similar 
one under the Department of Energy has not.

 The DOE program, which provides workers' compensation benefits 
to nuclear workers sickened from toxins, has a backlog of 23,000 
claims, including 2,900 from Paducah. Even if a claim is approved 
by a physicians' panel, there is no way to force an insurance 
company or self-insured employer such as Paducah plant operator 
USEC Inc., to pay it.

 Last month, the Senate passed an amendment to the Defense 
Authorization Bill to transfer the troubled DOE program to the 
Labor Department and have it pay the claims. Sponsored by Sen. 
Jim Bunning, R-Southgate, the amendment would speed processing by 
using claims examiners rather than doctors’ panels to determine 
eligibility. Physicians’ panels would be reserved for appeals. 
The Labor Department also would secure toxic-exposure assessments 
at the largest plants to move claims more quickly.

 Similar efforts by Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, have 
stalled in the House. Whitfield and representatives from other 
districts with nuclear plans wrote conference committee members 
July 9, urging them to accept the amendment. The committee works 
out legislative differences between the House and Senate. 

"This framework for reform was recommended by the General 
Accounting Office and will ensure that the medical benefits and 
compensation promised to those made sick working in nuclear 
weapons factories receive what Congress promised in 2000," 
Whitfield wrote. 

Chao declined to say if she favors taking on the DOE program but 
added she will "carry out" whatever Congress requires. "My first 
concern is always to get benefits out to victims and families in 
the fastest way possible," she said.

 The change would be welcomed news to people such as Nathan 
Johnson Jr., 55, of Mounds, Ill., who left the plant totally 
disabled in 1999. He filed a claim that languished with the 
Energy Department until a few weeks ago, when he received notice 
that it had been transferred to the Labor Department.

 "They told me at first that I didn't quality for workers' 
compensation since I was receiving disability," Johnson said. 
"But then they sent it to the Department of Labor, which said I 
did qualify." 

Johnson is among about 900 Paducah workers whose claims have been 
referred to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and 
Health to have it reconstruct workplace exposures to harmful 
substances. After being hired in 1973, Johnson regularly welded 
on machinery containing trichloroethylene, or TCE, a now-banned 
toxic degreaser that is a suspected carcinogen. Johnson said TCE 
was sloppily handled, spilled on roads, poured down building 
drains and dumped into ditches behind the plant machine shop.

 "It would boil away as we welded the equipment, and the fumes 
would come right up our noses," he said. 

Johnson passed out one day while welding. He soon began gagging 
and developed chronic hiccups that make it hard to breathe and 
speak. After an annual plant physical revealed blood in his 
urine, he went to a specialist who had trouble making a 
diagnosis.

 "They don't know what caused my disability," Johnson said. "But 
I know."



Contacts:

Energy Employees Compensation Resource Center, 125 Memorial 
Drive, phone: 534-0599 or toll-free 866-534-0599; e-mail: 
paducah.center@eh.doe.gov.

Worker Health Protection Program, phone: toll-free 888-241-1199; 
Web: www.pace-workerhealth.org. 

*****************************************************************
 55 Google News Alert - nuclear
 
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 18:58:12 -0700 (PDT)

 
TOP US Nuclear Lab Halted After Injury, Security Breaches
Turkish Press - Turkey
WASHINGTON, July 17 (AFP) - A leading US nuclear weapons laboratory ground
to a halt this weekend following major security breaches and an injury
to an intern ...
<http://www.turkishpress.com/turkishpress/news.asp?ID=22450>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.turkishpress.com/turkishpress/news.asp%3FID%3D22450>

SAFETY fears as nuclear Britain goes top secret
Sunday Herald - Glasgow,Scotland,UK
An imminent crackdown on public information about nuclear plants could
enable dangers and mistakes to be covered up, environmental groups have
warned. ...
<http://www.sundayherald.com/43449>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.sundayherald.com/43449>

OFFICIALS to discuss nuclear waste
Atlanta Journal Constitution (subscription) - Atlanta,GA,USA
... Savannah River Site in South Carolina on Monday to brief reporters
on the agency's controversial plan to dispose of millions of gallons of
nuclear waste stored ...
<http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0704/18srs.html>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0704/18srs.html>

OFFICIALS hope nuclear rods are in pool
San Francisco Chronicle - San Francisco,CA,USA
officials are seeking three missing radioactive portions of a used nuclear
fuel rod from the long-defunct Humboldt Bay nuclear power reactor near
Eureka. ...
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/17/BAGP27NBQ91.DTL>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi%3Ff%3D/c/a/2004/07/17/BAGP27NBQ91.DTL>

ISRAEL'S Soreq Nuclear Reactor -- The One They Show To Journalists
Turkish Press - Turkey
SOREQ NUCLEAR FACILITY, Israel, July 18 (AFP) - Soreq is the nuclear facility
Israel is willing to show journalists, unlike the Dimona reactor which
is ...
<http://www.turkishpress.com/turkishpress/news.asp?ID=22453>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.turkishpress.com/turkishpress/news.asp%3FID%3D22453>

HOW to Stop Nuclear Terror
Washington Post - Washington,DC,USA
... While the United States and Russia work to dismantle nuclear arsenals,
terrorists and rogue states are seeking to obtain materials -- from former
Cold War ...
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56503-2004Jul16.html>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&persist=1&num=30&hl=en&client=google&newsclusterurl=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56503-2004Jul16.html>

IRAN firm on nuclear plan says cleric
Gulf Daily News - Manama,Bahrain
TEHRAN: One of Iran's top ruling clerics vowed yesterday that the Islamic
republic will continue to pursue its controversial nuclear programme "at
any cost ...
<http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=87030&Sn=WORL&IssueID=27119>
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NUCLEAR Site Workers Exposed to Vapors
Washington Post - Washington,DC,USA
SPOKANE, Wash., July 16 -- Some workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation
have been exposed to dangerous vapors from tanks that store radioactive
waste, a ...
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56557-2004Jul16.html>
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CSIRO says its nuclear waste poses no threat
ABC Online - Australia
The Federal Government last week abandoned its plan for a nuclear waste
dump in South Australia, leaving it up to each state and territory to
dispose of its ...
<http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200407/s1156376.htm>

IRAN will pay economic price if continues nuclear programmes: US
Sun Network - Chennai,Tamil Nadu,India
Washington, Jul 17 - Maintaining that Iran has not given up the quest to
acquire a nuclear weapon through dual use technology, the US has said
if the country ...
<http://www.sunnetwork.org/news/world/world.asp?id=13409>

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 56 Google News Alert - nuclear
 
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 23:33:54 -0700 (PDT)

 
NUCLEAR security director to run Los Alamos inquiry
WFAA (subscription) - Dallas,TX,USA
LOS ALAMOS, NM – The head of the National Nuclear Security Administration
arrived at Los Alamos National Laboratory on Sunday to oversee the investigation
...
<http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/071904dntexlosalamos.4bf22.html>
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1. Israel Ready to Strike Iran's Nuclear Facilities
NewsMax.com - West Palm Beach,FL,USA
Israel is set to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, fearing that the Islamic
regime will use atomic weapons on the Jewish state. ...
<http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/7/18/213209.shtml>
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NATIONAL Nuclear Security Administration Linton Brooks
KESQ - Palm Desert,CA,USA
Los Alamos-AP -- The head of the National Nuclear Security Administration
is at Los Alamos National Laboratory to oversee the investigation into
security lapses ...
<http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=2054761>
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NUCLEAR reaction
MLive.com - MI,USA
By Jeff Kart. Twenty years after the abandonment of the Midland Nuclear
Plant project, nuclear power is poised for a comeback. Construction ...
<http://www.mlive.com/news/bctimes/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1090145745253040.xml>

NUCLEAR dump defeated
Green Left - Australia
The federal government has been forced to abandon its six-year push to
build a national nuclear waste dump near Woomera in South Australia. ...
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/590/590p5.htm>
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FIRE breaks out at nuclear power station in Fukushima
Mainichi Shimbun - Tokyo,Japan
... Electric Power Co.'s No. 1 nuclear power station on Sunday, burning
for 30 minutes before it was extinguished. Officials at the power ...
<http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040719p2a00m0dm003000c.html>

CRYSTAL options for nuclear waste
BBC News - London,England,UK
By Jo Twist. Storing radioactive waste in a safe form is one of the biggest
problems facing the nuclear industry. The UK's Prime ...
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3896463.stm>

ANALYSIS: Uncover the routes to Pakistan's nukes
Asahi Shimbun - Tokyo,Japan
LONDON-Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto offered a glimpse
into the secret history of her nation's nuclear development race with
India in her ...
<http://www.asahi.com/english/nation/TKY200407190153.html>
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THE Gold of the Nuclear Age: Lost and Stolen Nuclear Materials
Infoshop News - USA
... information from the testing and design facility of the plant, during
the first week in July 2004, as well as other security concerns, the nuclear
plant is ...
<http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/07/18/3285407>

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 57 SS: Volatile fuel prices send FPL to ridgelines and plains for power.

: South Florida Sun-Sentinel
 		 		 			 	 
  [Sun-Sentinel.com]

        By Joseph Mann Business Writer Posted  July 18 2004            
 
Despite burgeoning concern over U.S. dependence on imported 
petroleum and pressure to find new sources of clean, renewable 
energy, wind power has stayed in the background in all but a few 
corners of the country.

Volatile fossil fuel prices, though, have boosted interest in 
wind power, the prices for which are typically locked into 
long-term contracts. And a South Florida company has taken a 
leading role in developing new wind power projects on a national 
scale.

FPL Energy LLC, a unit of Juno Beach-based FPL Group Inc., has 
invested more than $2.7 billion over the last three years to buy 
and develop wind energy projects, making it the country's biggest 
wind powerhouse. But the company faces a key challenge: The 
return rate on its wind investments is linked to a federal tax 
credit, and FPL Energy's planned investments are pegged to 
approval of the credit, which is stalled in Congress.

Wind produces electricity by turning the blades of a turbine 
attached to a generator. A large wind tower can produce up to 1.8 
megawatts, enough energy to power more than 500 households. Some 
land-based turbines are taller than a 20-story building.

With 42 wind farms across the nation and about 6,500 turbines, 
FPL Energy has 2,719 megawatts of wind capacity, or 25 percent of 
its overall generating capacity. It controls 43 percent of the 
country's total 6,300-megawatt capacity.

 "We're seeing increasing customer interest in wind because of 
the higher cost of natural gas and oil in certain places, like 
California and Texas," said Michael O'Sullivan, senior vice 
president of development at FPL Energy. "And other customers view 
wind power as a good economic decision, rather than just a good 
environmental decision." 

The firm's strategy, he added, is to continue growing the wind 
business, investing in 250 megawatts to 500 megawatts of new 
capacity each year.

Higher gas and oil prices have had an impact on wind power 
investments, said Christine Real de Azua, a spokeswoman for 
American Wind Energy Association, a trade group. "More utilities 
in the U.S. are including wind power in their energy portfolios."

 Studies carried out by the California Energy Commission, energy 
researchers and others put the direct cost of new wind power 
projects at between 2.5 and 5 cents per kilowatt/hour, which is 
competitive with new oil and natural gas projects.

In 2003, for example, the California Energy Commission said the 
direct cost of new wind generating facilities was 4.93 cents per 
kilowatt/hour, compared with 5.18 cents per kilowatt/hour for a 
natural gas generating plant.

Inflating expectations

Wind power, used extensively in Western Europe, accounts for less 
than 1 percent of electric power used in the United States. In 
Denmark, by contrast, wind supplies about 20 percent of 
electricity.

U.S. government researchers believe that wind could eventually 
supply about 20 percent of national demand, thanks to new 
technology that has lowered costs and allowed wind to compete 
effectively with other energy sources. The U.S. Department of 
Energy has set a 5 percent goal for wind power by 2020.

Last year, FPL Energy and other companies invested about $2 
billion in U.S. wind power projects, adding enough new capacity 
to provide electricity to nearly 500,000 homes, according to the 
AWEA. Companies planned to make similar outlays this year, the 
group said, but an unresolved tax issue has taken the wind out of 
investors' sails.

The federal government in 1992 set up a production tax credit to 
promote investment in wind power, and the latest extension of the 
credit provision is stuck in Congress. While ongoing projects 
continue to benefit from earlier versions of the credit, any new 
investment this year cannot qualify until an extension is 
approved.

Even without the tax credit, O'Sullivan said, wind power is 
profitable for the company. 

But the credit provides a stronger rate of return, making wind a 
more attractive investment alternative. "There are a lot of new 
investments waiting to happen," Real de Azua said. "But they're 
on hold because of uncertainty about the tax credit." 

O'Sullivan said the credit has bipartisan support, but has been 
bogged down in other election-year legislative battles. He 
predicted it should obtain final approval late this summer or in 
the fall. Once it is approved, FPL Energy plans to develop more 
wind capacity in the United States, including construction of 71 
new turbines in Oklahoma. It is also looking for wind investment 
opportunities in Europe.

Where the wind blows

FPL Energy, with about 1,800 employees, last year reported a $194 
million profit from energy sales. It uses natural gas, wind, 
nuclear energy, oil and hydroelectric power to generate 
electricity. It also buys and sells wholesale energy commodities, 
such as natural gas, oil and electric power.

FPL Group's energy subsidiary got into the wind business as part 
of a diversification plan in 1989 when it bought a 50 percent 
interest in a Kern County, Calif., wind farm. The company later 
bought other wind projects, took over operations and began 
developing its own projects.

Before building a wind farm, FPL Energy collects data on 
potential sites, "usually in the middle of nowhere," O'Sullivan 
said. Data includes regional demand for energy, average wind 
speeds and patterns, land availability, generating potential and 
proximity to electric transmission lines.

Once a site is identified, usually flatlands or a ridge in hilly 
terrain, the company meets with local landowners and community 
representatives to discuss their plans, offering landowners lease 
payments under long-term agreements. Typically, a landowner will 
receive a few thousand dollars per year per tower. 

All the towers on a wind farm are connected to a nearby power 
grid and feed into the system. Since the wind is not always 
blowing, a wind farm's output is only a percentage of its 
potential. A tower capable of generating 1.5 to 1.8 megawatts 
costs between $1.5 million and $1.8 million, and can take from 
three to six months to complete.

FPL Energy has wind farms in 15 states, including California, 
Iowa, Kansas and Minnesota. But it is not planning any wind 
investments in Florida, except for a few turbines to show off the 
concept, O'Sullivan said.

Despite an abundance of windy weather, especially thunderstorms 
and hurricanes in South Florida, the state -- and much of the 
Southeast -- do not offer sustained wind patterns that make large 
wind energy investments feasible.

FPL Energy has built its wind power business by linking up with 
utilities and other wholesale energy purchasers. For example, it 
supplies PPM Energy, a Portland, Ore.-based regional utility that 
sells energy to cities throughout the West. 

Supplying power

FPL Energy built three wind facilities in northern California, 
Wyoming and on the Oregon-Washington border specifically to 
supply PPM, said Jan Johnson, a PPM spokeswoman. "We purchase all 
of their output under long-term contracts and it's fed into our 
system," she added.

"This is a great way to mitigate risk," Johnson said. "FPL 
assumes the project and construction risk and PPM assumes the 
marketing risk."

She observed that fossil fuel prices are "very volatile and 
nobody likes volatility, especially utilities." As a result, wind 
power has become very competitive since a company can lock in a 
price for 10 to 25 years. This, plus the environmental 
attributes, makes wind power more attractive to utilities. 

"What started out as a modest project turned into a nice little 
niche business. But with more than $2 billion invested, it's no 
longer just a niche business," O' Sullivan said. It's a 
significant and profitable piece of our growth strategy."

Joseph Mann can be reached at jmann@sun-sentinel.com or 
954-356-4665.

 Copyright 2004, Sun-Sentinel Co. & South Florida Interactive,
    
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