***************************************************************** 08/22/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.200 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: [NYTr] New Poll: Majority Still Believe Iraq Had WMDs 2 Aljazeera.Net - Aljazeera ban: Iraq silences the messenger 3 US: New York City: CIA Study on Iraq Weapons Is Off Course, Official 4 Australian Financial Review: Iran's $1.1bn nuclear project 5 Persian Journal: Germany Rejects U.S. Claims on Iranian Nuclear Prog 6 AFP: North Korea steps up anti-US tirade 7 Korea Herald: Uncertainty still hangs over six-party talks 8 KoreaTimes: Working-Level Nuke Talks Unlikely in August 9 US: Blethen Maine: Intelligence failures begin with CIA 10 US: WorldNetDaily: Kiddie porn vs. loose nukes 11 Washington Times: New energy for reintegration 12 US: Rocky Mountain News: Opinion Beware Kerry's energy policy 13 TheStar.com: Powerful ideas to help save energy NUCLEAR REACTORS 14 US: Bush Leaves Nuke Plants As Terrorist Targets & Fire Hazards 15 Daily Yomiuri: Govt neglecting duty to protect N-facilities 16 US: Fishing: Plants are being charged with excessive killing of fish 17 AFP: Iran delays entry into service of first reactor until 2006 18 TheStar.com: Pickering backup system to cost OPG $250 million 19 US: The Arizona Republic: U.S. begins 2 probes at Palo Verde 20 Japan Times: MHI used notebooks to keep track of reactor pipes 21 Aljazeera: Iran delays opening its first nuclear reactor - 22 Sunday Times: DTI boss to infuse energy into nuclear project 23 US: UK Independent: Washington accused of ignoring nuclear terror th 24 US: The Facts: Nuclear plant value fallout persists 25 US: Times-Standard: Generating a mystery: the story behind PG's miss 26 Guardian Unlimited: Fatal accidents damage Japan's nuclear dream 27 Guardian Unlimited: Brian Wilson: Face the facts. The future must be NUCLEAR SAFETY 28 Daily Yomiuri: Rescue workers kept in dark about radiation 29 London Free Press: Nuclear materials pose terror risk, expert says 30 US: Bradenton Herald: Proposal may aid Beryllium workers 31 TheStar.com: Missing container raises questions about security 32 US: Boston.com: Drinking-water contaminant tied to blasting NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 33 Las Vegas SUN: Letter: Users must fund nuclear disposal 34 RGJ: DOE says most Yucca questions addressed 35 US: Bradenton Herald: Lockheed finishes Tallevast report 36 US: Arizona Republic: Governor wants inquiry after nuclear packing m 37 Townhall.com: Edwin J. Feulner: Wasting a Good Solution 38 Quad-City Times: Spent fuel rods to move outdoors at Cordova NUCLEAR WEAPONS 39 BBC: Protesters plan Faslane blockade US DEPT. OF ENERGY 40 Technology News: Trends: DOE's Basic Research Gets a Boost 41 SF Chronicle: U.S. scientists say they need an underground lab 42 SF Chronicle: Court ruling expected soon on new lab in Livermore 43 Idaho Statesman: INEEL shipments to N.M. still on hold 44 Times and Democrat: SCSU and SRS: S.C. State's partnership with nati 45 Times and Democrat: SCSU awarded $250,000 min nuclear energy grants 46 amarillo.com: Pantex repairs may be flawed OTHER NUCLEAR 47 Google News Alert - nuclear 48 [progchat_action] FOCUS: Depleted Uranium: Dirty Bombs, Dirty 49 Google News Alert - nuclear 50 ARTICLE SUBMISSION - MORET: A death sentence here and abroad 51 newsleader.com: Senator gets an earful from residents - ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 [NYTr] New Poll: Majority Still Believe Iraq Had WMDs Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 10:18:55 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [Although more than half STILL believe that Iraq had WMDs, and one-third believe there was an Iraq-al Qaeda link, a majority of respondents also say the war was based on false assumptions, has harmed the USA's reputation in the world, and done nothing to promote pedace or security. If the methodology of the survey is sound, the results indicate profound ignorance and confusion abroad in the Land of Free. The good news is that there's a decline in the numbers who believe Bush's lies.-NY Transfer ] Al Jazeera - August 21, 2004 http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AFE04C88-B67D-494C-BE64-5D5B854B025B.htm University of Maryland Poll Shows: Most in US still believe Iraq had WMDs More than half of all Americans continue to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or a programme to develop them before the US invaded last year, a recent poll has revealed. Evidence of such weapons has not been found and a growing number of arms inspectors have criticised pre-war intelligence claims, but 54% of respondents still believed Iraq had the weapons. On 9 July this year, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a blistering report on the investigation into pre-war claims of Iraq's capacity to wage war against its neighbours and develop WMDs. The report stated that the intelligence used to justify the war was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, unwarranted, out-of-date, negligently analysed and misrepresented, thereby exhibiting "a broken corporate culture and poor management". Linked to al-Qaida? Despite the report, the poll indicated that 35% of respondents believed Iraq was either closely linked with al-Qaida before the war and 15% thought it was directly involved in the September 11 attacks on the US. The poll, which was released on Friday by the Programme on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, found the numbers on both questions had dropped in the face of evidence that both pre-war claims might have been false. President George Bush consistently equates the "war on terrorism" with the war in Iraq, but has now replaced his claims that Iraq had WMDs with claims that Iraq had the "capability" of building such weapons. Worsening US image Seven in 10 in the poll said they believed the US went to war in Iraq based on false assumptions. A similar number said the war in Iraq had worsened America's image in the world. A majority, 55%, said they did not think the war in Iraq would result in greater peace and stability in the Middle East. In various polls, people have been evenly split on whether the war in Iraq was the right or wrong thing to do - a sharp drop from a few months ago for those who had thought it was right. The poll of 733 adults was conducted by Knowledge Networks from 5-11 August and has a 3.5% margin of sampling error.-AP * Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 2 Aljazeera.Net - Aljazeera ban: Iraq silences the messenger Friday 20 August 2004, 1:41 Makka Time, Iraqi police closing down the Baghdad bureau on 7 August A majority of those who voted in a recent poll on Aljazeera.net's English website believe that the closure of Aljazeera's Baghdad office was unjustified. Of the 45,023 who responded to the question "Is the decision to close the Aljazeera office in Baghdad justified?", 67% felt the action was unjustified, 28% that it was justified while 5% of the respondents were unsure. Since the interim Iraqi government announced on 7 August 2004 the closure of Aljazeera's Baghdad bureau for an initial period of one month, there have been strong reactions from the media, with some saying that the move only proves that Aljazeera is an independent news organisation. This is not the first time Aljazeera has come under pressure Arab and Western governments. Since its first broadcast, Aljazeera has had to contend with attacks on its integrity from a wide spectrum of critics. Favourite source While Iraqi Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib announced the suspension at a Baghdad news conference, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said, "This is a decision taken by the national security committee to protect the people of Iraq, in the interests of the Iraqi people." The reasons behind the action against Aljazeera actually go deeper than the interim Iraqi Government's accusation that its extensive coverage of captive-taking in Iraq was unacceptable. "I would like to tell Aljazeera that it lost US and Arab governments, but won the hearts and minds of 300 million Arab citizens" Abd Al-Bari Atwan, Editor-in-chief, al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper During the Iraq invasion, both Iraqi Government and US officials expressed dissatisfaction with Aljazeera's coverage and called it biased. As US bombs rained down on Iraqi cities and towns, Aljazeera's coverage of the invasion was simultaneously slammed by Iraqi Government officials, political opponents, Iraqi exiles and the US administration. The station found itself being accused in some quarters of defending Saddam Hussein's government and by others of suppporting the US invasion. Even as US officials were describing Aljazeera's coverage as misleading in their press conferences, the then Iraqi information minister, Muhammad Said al-Sahaf, was threatening the station's staff with serious consequences if they continued their "pro-US reporting". In a memorable incident, the day before the fall of Baghdad al-Sahaf, insisting that Aljazeera was broadcasting news that served US interests, said, "I beg you [Aljazeera], do not play this role." The situation remains unchanged following the occupation of Iraq. US and Iraqi officials have been critical of Aljazeera's performance, accusing it of siding with the Iraqi resistance and inciting violence by broadcasting tapes showing captive-taking in Iraq. Aljazeera has been accused of being both pro- and anti-US However, days before the latest ban on the channel, Aljazeera received threats from Iraqis claiming they represented the resistance and saying that Aljazeera was flattering the US occupation in Iraq. If it continued its pro-US coverage, employees of the Baghdad office would be targeted, the group warned. After Aljazeera's operations in Iraq were suspended, organisations representing press freedom and the rights of journalists roundly condemned the interim Iraqi Government's move. The Iraqi Union of Journalists expressed its deep regret and called for real freedom of speech in the country. The Paris-based Reporters without Borders expressed concerns and demanded "an immediate explanation" from the interim Iraqi government, adding it was "extremely concerned about persistent episodes of censorship in Iraq". 'Illogical censorship' The International Federation of Journalists in Brussels criticised the suspension, saying it was "unacceptable and illogical censorship that casts a shadow over new hopes for a new era of press freedom". Along with the press statements came the condemnations of Arab organisations and journalists. In Beirut, Lebanon, the People's Campaign for the Support of Iraq and Palestine issued a statement urging US citizens to protest against the silencing of independent media. "The battle to defend Aljazeera is a battle to defend values and rights," said the statement. Yemeni political figures and intellectuals agreed that the closure order reconfirmed the weakness of decision makers in Baghdad. Said Thabit, First Deputy of the Yemeni Journalists Union, said the interim Iraqi government proved it was not different from the previous Iraqi government. Abd Al-Malik al-Mikhlafi, general-secretary of the Nasiri Unionist Party, told Aljazeera.net's correspondent in Yemen that the decision was dictated by US Secretary of State Colin Powell. "If US authorities believe in the principle of self-determination, they should practise it — starting now — insisting that the interim Iraqi leaders acting under US auspices do so as well." The Los Angeles Times Daud al-Farhan, Assistant Secretary-General of the Arab Journalists Union in Cairo, said the closure order was a serious breach to the right of people in getting the full picture. "The closure proves that the situation in Iraq is much worse than the world is seeing through media, to the extent that the Iraqi government is willing to cross any red lines to bury the truth," al-Farhan said. Abd Al-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, said the shutdown of Aljazeera's Baghdad office would put an end to those who accused Aljazeera of siding with any specific party. "Accusations [made by the interim Iraqi government] against Aljazeera confirm its credibility and independence. "I would like to tell Aljazeera that it lost US and Arab governments, but won the hearts and minds of 300 million Arab citizens," said Atwan. Global reactions The New York Times commented on 10 August 2004 that the interim Iraqi government's decision was a continuation of a practice that "has stifled democracy in too many neighbouring states". David Usborne wrote in the Independent of London: "It is one of the larger ironies of the post-war period that a conflict launched in the name of freedom should lead to the banning of one of the region's most significant media." The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland said Aljazeera was not perfect and could be lurid and overheated - "some say it sits somewhere between the BBC and the heavily slanted Fox News." "The battle to defend Aljazeera is a battle to defend values and rights" The People's Campaign for the Support of Iraq and Palestine But Aljazeera, he added, is the nearest the Arab world has to an independent media organisation of weight. For its part, the Los Angeles Times, in a 15 August editorial, reminded its readers, in light of the Aljazeera ban, that freedom of expression - notably press freedom - was declared an international human right by the United Nations in 1948. "If US authorities believe in the principle of self-determination, they should practise it — starting now — insisting that the interim Iraqi leaders acting under US auspices do so as well" the paper said. © 2003 Aljazeera.Net Copyright and Terms of ***************************************************************** 3 New York City: CIA Study on Iraq Weapons Is Off Course, Officials Say Newsday.com Monday, Aug 23, 2004, 12:38 AM EDT NEW YORK NOW: From the Los Angeles Times THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ The agency is trying to project what Hussein may have developed had the U.S. not invaded. By Greg Miller Times Staff Writer August 20, 2004 WASHINGTON  Having failed to find banned weapons in Iraq, the CIA is preparing a final report on its search that will speculate on what the deposed regime's capabilities might have looked like years from now if left unchecked, according to congressional and intelligence officials. The CIA plans for the report, due next month, to project as far as 2008 what Iraq might have achieved in its illegal weapons programs if the United States had not invaded the country last year, the officials said. The new direction of the inquiry is seen by some officials as an attempt to obscure the fact that no banned weapons  or even evidence of active programs  have been found, and instead emphasize theories that Iraq may have been planning to revive its programs. The change in focus has angered some intelligence officials and at least one key Democrat in Congress and has brought charges of political motivation. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) protested the decision in a sharply worded letter to acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin last week. Trying to forecast Iraq's weapons capabilities four years into the future would be, "by definition, highly speculative" and "inconsistent with the original mission of the Iraq Survey Group," Harman wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Times. Such an effort would be a significant departure for a survey group whose primary mission when it was established last year was to locate and destroy stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that the CIA and other agencies believed were hidden across Iraq. David Kay, who led the group before resigning in January, said that speculating on Iraq's future capabilities was never part of the team's mission. "Absolutely not," Kay said in a telephone interview Thursday. "We were to search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. No one ever suggested to me in any of the discussions before I took the job, afterward, or even when I left, that [assessing Iraq's future capabilities] was a thing that should have been done." Kay and others also questioned how such an assessment would be possible given the disarray that characterized President Saddam Hussein's government in recent years and external events that had altered the flow of illicit weapons technologies around the world. Kay reported in January that Iraq's programs were dormant before the war. The country was still subject to United Nations sanctions and was facing a new round of inspections. Since then, authorities have cracked down on global weapons markets, most notably by unraveling the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Kay was replaced in January by former U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who is overseeing the production of the survey group's final report. A CIA spokesman declined to say whether the report would attempt to forecast what Iraq's weapons programs might have looked like if there had not been a U.S. invasion. "Charles Duelfer's mission is to search for the truth, and he made clear when he took the job that he was absolutely committed to following the evidence wherever it takes us," CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said. "That is what he's doing, and that is what will be reflected in his report." The failure to find stockpiles of banned weapons has been a source of embarrassment to the CIA, as well as to the Bush administration, which made ridding Hussein of illicit arms the main rationale for a preemptive war against Iraq. For that reason, some officials familiar with the CIA's plans for the final report said they thought it was politically motivated and designed to focus the public's attention on hypothetical future threats. "The case made by the Bush White House was that [Iraq] was an imminent threat that must be dealt with today," said a senior congressional official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Coming out later and saying [Hussein] would have had the weapons in 2006 or 2008 … is basically a way to justify preemption." A U.S. intelligence official denied that political pressure was playing a role in shaping Duelfer's report. "That's nonsense," the official said. The plan to have the report project the potential of Baghdad's weapons programs was disclosed during a classified briefing on Capitol Hill last month by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, the former military commander of the weapons search group, according to congressional officials familiar with the briefing. In her Aug. 13 letter, Harman said that Dayton had "told staff that the report will focus on what the state of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs would have been in 2006 or 2008 had the United States not gone to war with Iraq in 2003." In a media briefing in May describing the formation of the survey group, Dayton said its mission was "the search for and elimination of weapons of mass destruction." Dayton has since moved to another assignment in the Army, and a spokesman said he did not wish to comment. Other sources familiar with the work of the Iraq Survey Group confirmed the change in direction, saying they had learned of it in recent months even before Dayton discussed it at the congressional briefing. Harman's letter asked McLaughlin for his "personal assurances that the focus of [the CIA] report will remain on what the search efforts in Iraq actually yielded and that it will be rooted in hard facts." A spokeswoman for Harman said the congresswoman had not received a CIA response. The U.S. intelligence official said that describing Iraq's future capabilities was "not the focus at all" of the final report and that "the report will not be speculative." But the official declined to say whether such projections would be part of the document, saying he could not comment "on a report that hasn't been completed." Examining Iraq's future capabilities would allow the CIA to emphasize some evidence that suggested Baghdad might have been interested in resurrecting its weapons programs. Duelfer delivered a status report to Congress in March in which he said there was evidence that Iraq had "ongoing research suitable for a capability" to produce chemical or biological agents on short notice. The Tuwaitha agricultural complex south of Baghdad, for example, was doing civilian research but had "equipment suitable" to produce biological agents, he said. Duelfer also said that having failed to locate weapons stocks, he was refocusing the hunt to determine what the Iraqi regime's intentions had been. "We're looking at it from soup to nuts, from the weapons end to the planning end to the intentions end," Duelfer said in March. The survey group found evidence last year that Hussein had launched a crash program to develop ballistic missiles in violation of U.N. restrictions. The search team also collected millions of pages of documents and interviewed hundreds of scientists and other Iraqi officials. Kay was critical of the CIA during Senate testimony this week on intelligence reform proposals, saying, "Iraq was an overwhelming systemic failure of the Central Intelligence Agency." He cited a "broken culture and management" as well as a "breakdown in analytical tradecraft," and said that when he headed the search team he had to deal with analysts who were threatening to quit over jealousies that others were getting larger bonuses. The CIA disputes such criticism. Kay is "knowledgeable about some of Iraq's [weapons] programs, but he now sees himself as qualified to make sweeping judgments on national intelligence," said Mansfield, the CIA spokesman. "We welcome informed, constructive criticism; we could not welcome much of what Kay had to say." Copyright © 2004, The Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 4 Australian Financial Review: Iran's $1.1bn nuclear project August 23 2004 Iran has contracted Russia to build more nuclear power plants, while claiming two European countries have also expressed interest in helping construct similar facilities.--> AP Brushing aside US accusations that it wants to build atomic weapons, Iran said it has contracted Russia to build more nuclear power plants, while claiming two European countries have also expressed interest in helping construct similar facilities. Russia is rebuilding Iran's first nuclear reactor, which was begun by West Germany but interrupted during the 1979 Islamic revolution. Damage caused to the facility in Bushehr, a coastal town in southern Iran, during the 1980-88 war with Iraq also led to its inauguration being postponed from last year to August 2006. Despite the delays and the project's $US800 million ($1.1 billion) cost, Iranian nuclear officials say they want Russia to build more nuclear reactors to help generate greater amounts of electricity. "We have contracts with Russia to build more nuclear reactors. No number has been specified, but definitely our contract with Russia is to build more than one nuclear power plant," Asadollah Sabouri, deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran in charge of nuclear power plants, told reporters. The spokesman for Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency, Nikolai Shingaryov, told The Associated Press by telephone he is unaware of contracts for Russia to help build any reactors other than the one being built now at Bushehr. He said the original agreement signed during the 1990s called for Russia to help build two reactors at Bushehr, and that there have been discussions on the second one, but an actual contract would be needed to begin construction. Sabouri said later Russia will build a second reactor in Bushehr and Iran is studying other sites here for more possible reactors. Most areas in Iran are prone to earthquakes, restricting choices for setting up nuclear facilities. The Iranian official did not say when construction on any new nuclear reactors would begin, said Russia was obligated under a 1992 deal with Iran to build at least more than one nuclear reactor here, adding Tehran has carried out several studies and produced technical reports for the construction of new facilities. Sabouri also revealed that at least two European countries had expressed interest in the projects, but refused to name them. "They have given us documents expressing their readiness to join the projects. We welcome them. My message to the Europeans is that we have to pass the paperwork stage and go for binding contracts as soon as possible," he said. The US accuses Iran of developing a program to make nuclear weapons but Iran has denied the charges, saying it is using nuclear technology to produce electricity, not atomic bombs. Iran's Nuclear Energy Council says the country must produce 7,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear power plants by 2021 to meet Iran's increasing electricity needs. "By 2021, Iran's electricity consumption will reach 56,000 megawatts and we need to have capability to produce 70,000 megawatts of electricity. Some 7,000 megawatts, about 10 per cent, will be met through nuclear power plants," Sabouri said. Sabouri said the German-designed Bushehr plant being repaired and redesigned by Russia should be operational by August 2006. Repairing damage from the eight-year war with neighbouring Iraq, meeting safety regulations and redesigning the reactor has taken longer than expected. "One of the reasons that it took a longer time was our attention to observing all nuclear standards on safety and environment," he added. Sabouri said the Bushehr complex has the capacity to house at least four nuclear reactors. During the Iran-Iraq war, work on a second nuclear reactor in Bushehr was partly completed before it sustained heavy damage during fighting. Sabouri said it was unfeasible to repair and rebuild that facility and Iran planned to construct a new reactor next to it. Another possible site for building new nuclear reactors would be Darkhovein, a city close to the Arvand River in Khuzestan Province, south-western Iran, Sabouri added. Despite US pressure against Iran, Russia has been reluctant to abandon the Bushehr nuclear reactor refit project, which is worth about $US800 million to Moscow. Sabouri said the project's cost would exceed $US1 billion. He said Russia must provide Iran with nuclear fuel by the end of next year at the latest, or the Bushehr plant's inauguration will be delayed. Tehran and Moscow have agreed to return the spent nuclear fuel to Russia. "There is no ambiguity on returning the spent fuel. The Iranian government has already made the decision to return the spent fuel back to Russia. What we haven't agreed on with Russia is the expenses," Sabouri said. Privacy Policy | Conditions of Use | Member Agreement | Copyright ***************************************************************** 5 Persian Journal: Germany Rejects U.S. Claims on Iranian Nuclear Program Iran News Aug 21, 2004, 18:50 The German government denied the statement made by the U.S. that Iran had admitted to Germany, France and Britain that it could build nuclear weapons in three years. "I cannot confirm this," a top German Foreign Ministry official told IRNA in Berlin Friday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, was reacting to Undersecretary of State John Bolton's statements in the U.S. media claiming Iran had informed the three European powers that it could produce weapons-grade uranium within a year and nuclear weapons within three years. A hawkish supporter of U.S. President George W. Bush, Bolton has become the front man for America's psychological warfare with Iran. Tehran has repeatedly stressed that its nuclear program is peaceful and has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to finally close its nuclear case. © Iranian.ws ***************************************************************** 6 AFP: North Korea steps up anti-US tirade SEOUL (AFP) Aug 22, 2004 North Korea stepped up its anti-US tirade Sunday, accusing Washington of planning to deploy an aircraft carrier off the Korean peninsula. The North's ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, claimed US troops in South Korea would be equipped with new missiles capable of destroying underground facilities in the communist state. "What merits a serious attention is that the US Navy is planning to deploy a latest nuclear aircraft carrier flotilla of John Stenis in the waters off the Korean peninsula," it said in reference to the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier. It said the US moves would throw "more obstacles" in the way of six-party talks aimed at ending a stand-off over North Korea's nuclear weapons drive. The accusations came ahead of US-South Korean military drills due to start on Monday. The North insists the annual two-week exercise, called Ulchi Focus Lens, is part of Washington's war preparations to topple the Stalinist regime, while Washington says it is purely defensive. North Korea has expressed scepticism about a new round of six-nation talks, which bring together China, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the United States. The new talks are due in September. But Pyongyang suggested last week it might not even attend a preparatory round of discussions to prepare for the gathering. The nuclear stand-off erupted in October 2002 when the United States accused Pyongyang of operating a secret nuclear program based on enriched uranium. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 7 Korea Herald: Uncertainty still hangs over six-party talks 2004.08.23 (bluelle@heraldm.com) By Choi Soung-ah While most participants at the six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear standoff are more than eager to get the show on the road again, prospects look bleak for a fourth round within a month's time as promised. At the third round in Beijing June 23-26, South and North Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia unanimously agreed to hold another session before the end of September after presenting plans to resolve issue. Since then Pyongyang has mulled over a final date for the meeting, deeming "unrealistic" the proposal from main foe Washington on what the North would get for giving up all its nuclear ambitions. "At the coming talks, North Korea will need to present an answer, or at the least a formal response, on the proposals made to them during the third round," an official at the Foreign Ministry told The Korea Herald. "But they may need more time to decide what that would be." Washington is pushing the "Libya model," calling on Kim Jong-il's regime to make the same "strategic choice" as Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi, whose government scrapped its nuclear program in December in return for a security guarantee and more economic aid from the international community. Pyongyang has adamantly rejected Washington's suggestion. In June, the Bush administration presented a more specific proposal for resolving the nuclear crisis. It offered the North the possibility of energy aid from South Korea and other participating members, security assurances and benefits, including lifting economic sanctions, during a three-month grace period providing Pyongyang promises to disclose and end all its nuclear weapons programs. North Korea's delegation did not immediately respond and indicated it wanted to confer with superiors in the capital, Pyongyang. One senior U.S. official described the proposal as a "repackaging and elaboration of things we have said before" and said it was likely to be rejected by the North Koreans. Other U.S. officials described it as a legitimate effort to flesh out a U.S. plan for ending the stalemate. Some North Korea experts here believe that while Kim Jong-il believes in the need for the six-party talks, he may hold off resuming the fourth round until the U.S. November presidential election. "North Korea may still be waiting for a better deal from the United States by stalling, but it is highly unlikely that the latter will happen," said Professor Kim Sung-han at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security. "They may believe that an acceptable offer is in store for them after the November elections in the United States." But government officials state otherwise. Many Korea watchers here feel Pyongyang won't budge on Washington's proposal as it represents an attempt by the Bush administration to address criticism from its allies as well as domestic critics. The allies have complained that the administration has not been flexible enough in the talks, while critics such as Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry have described U.S. strategy as a failure that has allowed North Korea to produce nuclear materials undisturbed for nearly 22 months. "There won't be big changes to U.S.'s position toward North Korea even after the presidential elections and the North needs to keep momentum the process of the six-party talks by responding to meet soon," an official said. "It would be too risky for North Korea to hold off talks until November." Under the plan, South Korea and possibly other countries could begin providing heavy fuel oil to the North's battered economy immediately if Kim Jong-il promises to dismantle the country's plutonium and uranium arms programs. The idea was floated by South Korea at the last round of talks and was neither rejected nor endorsed by the United States. "Our position is that we want the talks to proceed next month. Any delay pushing the talks to beyond end of September would be a break of a promise made during the third round," another official said. "But if all goes as planned, the working-level meeting may be held in early September. If not, it's possible that the working level talks and the main six-party talks will open back-to-back in late September as it did in the third round." Amid trying to set a date for the meeting, China last week moved Wang Yi from his position as vice foreign minister and Beijing's chief negotiator at the six-party talks, replacing him with its ambassador to Japan Wu Dawei. Wang will reportedly take over Wu's position in Japan while Wu, a former ambassador to Korea, will be in China's seat at the six-party talks. There was no immediate reason for the change. ***************************************************************** 8 KoreaTimes: Working-Level Nuke Talks Unlikely in August Hankooki.com > Korea Times > Nation By Yoo Dong-ho Staff Reporter A senior Foreign Affairs-Trade Ministry official said Sunday a working-level meeting aimed at laying the groundwork for the main six-party nuke talks will not be held this month. ``It seems unlikely that the working group meeting will be convened this month as scheduled,¡¯¡¯ the ministry official said, requesting anonymity. ``The possible postponement of the meeting is feared to hamper a high-level full session slated for next month.¡¯¡¯ South and North Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia were originally expected to hold the preliminary six-party dialogue in the third or fourth week of this month to address technical aspects of North Korea¡¯s prolonged nuclear row. But prospects for the scheduled talks darkened last month immediately after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill focusing on human rights problems in the North. The U.S. recently proposed a four-day meeting session be held in New York, but Pyongyang flatly turned it down, citing Washington¡¯s continuing hostility toward the communist regime, according to diplomatic sources. Pyongyang¡¯s get-tough stance is largely seen as its stereotypical posture, which seeks to push the U.S. into putting forward a concrete dismantlement-for-compensation offer. North Korea earlier rejected a U.S. proposal tabled at the third round of talks giving Pyongyang three months to shut down and seal its nuclear weapons facilities in return for economic and diplomatic rewards and a security guarantee. Chaired by deputy chief negotiators, the working-level meeting¡¯s outcome generally has an influence on the main discussions. So far, the six countries have held three rounds of high-level discussions to try to resolve the dispute over the North¡¯s nuclear weapons programs but have failed to produce significant results. yoodh@koreatimes.co.kr 08-22-2004 18:05 ***************************************************************** 9 Blethen Maine: Intelligence failures begin with CIA While Congress mulls how to reorganize America's intelligence agencies, simmering complaints about the CIA shadow the debate. Sunday, August 22, 2004 WASHINGTON POLITICS: Bart Jansen Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. While Congress mulls how to reorganize America's intelligence agencies, simmering complaints about the CIA shadow the debate. Rather than too many cooks spoiling the broth, the growing concern is that one bad apple spoils the barrel. Lawmakers are grappling with how to better coordinate 15 departments that now gather intelligence, a shake-up prompted by failures before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and in predictions about Iraq's weapons before the war. One problem cited by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, nicknamed the 9/11 commission, was that the CIA nominally keeps tabs on all the agencies without controlling budgets. Information wasn't shared enough. Threads weren't weaved together into a pattern for action. The commission recommended creating a single national intelligence director to command the agencies and control their budgets. Spooks would hear better what each team is working on. The goal is that when priorities change, money could be shifted faster than the glacial five months that William Webster, a former head of the CIA and FBI, said it now takes. The proposal makes sense to specialists on the congressional intelligence committees who have studied the fractured community of cloistered analysts and rival agendas. But members of the armed services committees worry that tinkering with the Pentagon, which now controls 80 percent of the $40 billion a year in intelligence spending, threatens troops in the field. That's the bruising fight Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, will referee as she drafts legislation that attempts to fix the problem. But stuck in the side of this broad dispute is the thorny question about whether it's just the Central Intelligence Agency that's the problem. Simply rearranging agencies won't fix the CIA. POLITICALLY DRIVEN INTELLIGENCE Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a member of the intelligence, armed services and governmental affairs committees, has been an outspoken critic of intelligence failures. His concern is that intelligence is bent to justify political decisions like going to war against Iraq. For example, Levin noted: + A CIA report about Iraq trying to obtain aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons didn't disclose that the Energy Department didn't agree. + A CIA report about Iraq developing unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver biological weapons eliminated a footnote from Air Force intelligence that didn't agree. + A CIA warning that al-Qaida trained with poisons and gases neglected to mention the director's doubts about the reliability of the information. "Independent and objective intelligence is a matter of vital national importance," Levin said. "Policy should not drive intelligence assessments." Examples of CIA missteps are easy to find. Start with former Director George Tenet, who famously characterized Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction as a "slam dunk" while President Bush prepared to attack Iraq. The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a scathing report July 9 that said intelligence exaggerated or misstated Iraq's threat throughout the preparation for war. The 9/11 commission report came out July 22. Tenet left office in July for personal reasons. Problems range from the broad to the specific. Generally, intelligence agencies have refused to share information. Different agencies have incompatible e-mail systems and databases. Specifically, the CIA failed to put Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, on a watch list during the 18 months before the attacks despite suspecting him of being an al-Qaida terrorist. Kristen Breitweiser, a lawyer whose husband Ronald was killed in the World Trade Center, suggested that a single intelligence chief could have braced against the attacks by coordinating reports that al-Qaida members were training in U.S. flight schools, that they were prepared to perform suicide missions, and had credible plans to hijack commercial airliners. She argued that the plan could have warned airline pilots not to permit anyone in the cockpit, told flight attendants to ignore previous protocols for peaceful negotiations with hijackers, reassigned air marshals to domestic flights and placed military jets on shorter alert. "Our intelligence community failed to pick up and act upon the real threat that was presented by al-Qaida," she said. AN OUTDATED COMMAND STRUCTURE Part of the blame rests with how the CIA was set up. The agency was created in 1947, the same year four branches of the Defense Department were consolidated under the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The reorganization that Congress is now contemplating is the most wide-ranging since then. Amy Zegart, a former National Security Council staffer, summed up the problem in the title of her book: "Flawed by Design: the Evolution of the CIA, JCS and NSC." She noted that no president and no Congress has succeeded in reforming the intelligence system despite 40 studies recommending changes. "Problems in national security agencies are extremely hard to fix, even when they are clear, stakes are high and danger is imminent," Zegart told the Senate Intelligence Committee. She said the CIA was deliberately hobbled when it was created so that intelligence units at the defense, justice and state departments would maintain their autonomy. "This is no accident," said Zegart, an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. David Kay, who headed the team that searched for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the war, argued that officials should be held accountable for mistakes rather than being let off the hook under the logic that since "everyone is at fault, therefore no one can be held responsible." "Iraq was an overwhelming systemic failure of the CIA and until this is taken on board and people and organizations are held responsible for this failure, I have real difficulty seeing how more far reaching reforms have any chance of real success," Kay told the Intelligence Committee. If the CIA is the problem, defense officials contend nobody needs to mess with their intelligence agencies including the National Security Agency, which collects and decodes messages, and the National Reconnaissance Office with its satellites. Military officials say they weren't the ones who failed to connect the dots. "I fail to find in the 9/11 report a convincing case that the 9/11 problem stemmed from the failure of the Pentagon agencies to coordinate," Frank Carlucci, a former defense secretary and deputy director of CIA, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "On the contrary, the 'dots' problem seems to be mainly between the CIA and the FBI on the one hand, and law enforcement and intelligence on the other, not with (the Department of Defense)." For their part, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and acting CIA Director John McLaughlin both told the Armed Services Committee that they are cooperating better than ever before. But Rumsfeld acknowledged improvements are still possible. "We are as well connected as we ever have been, but we're probably not as well stitched together as we could or should be," he said. Staff Writer Bart Jansen can be contacted at 202-488-1119 or at: bjansen@pressherald.com Copyright© Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. ***************************************************************** 10 WorldNetDaily: Kiddie porn vs. loose nukes SATURDAY AUGUST 21 2004 © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com When the Warsaw Pact disintegrated in 1989 – and the Soviet Union two years later – most of us heaved a humongous sigh of relief. The Cold War was over! Our "containment" strategy had worked. Now we could begin dismantling thousands of "battlefield" nukes and the scores of overseas bases that had encircled the "Evil Empire." Now we could bring home our soldiers and sailors. That is, we could have, absent the neo-crazies. For the neo-crazies – who had been previously been disguised as Cold Warriors – the time was ripe to advance an American hegemony. To establish a permanent global military presence – by force if necessary – even in countries formerly part of the Evil Empire. The neo-crazies targeted the Persian Gulf, arguing that the U.N. Security Council had already authorized us to invade and occupy Iraq. z "Wrong," said Bush the Elder. The Gulf War mandate was merely to eject Saddam Hussein's "annexation" forces from Kuwait and to restore peace to the region. The neo-crazies had better luck with Bush's successor, Bill Clinton. And with Congress. The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 declared regime change in Iraq to be a U.S. policy goal and called "upon the United Nations to establish an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of indicting, prosecuting, and imprisoning Saddam Hussein." However, the neo-crazies realized that you soccer moms wouldn't support a war of aggression to effect regime change in Iraq unless you could be convinced that Saddam posed a direct and immediate threat to you. So, as part of a campaign to convince you that he was, they launched Operation Desert Fox – Clinton's 1998 bombings of Saddam's palaces. They told you Saddam had hidden a nuke-development program beneath those palaces and that U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 authorized them to use "all necessary means" to destroy it. UNSCR-687 provided no such authority and the real rationale for Operation Desert Fox was to kill Saddam Hussein. Finally, the neo-crazies hit the jackpot. Clinton's successor, Bush the Younger, came into office, determined to invade and occupy Iraq. Congress obliged Bush by passing the . Bush was authorized to invade Iraq if he could convince you soccer-moms that Saddam Hussein actually had nukes and intended to give them to al-Qaida. Of course, congresspersons – including Sen. John Kerry – knew when they voted in 1998 and in 2002 that Saddam's nuke program had been unsuccessful, had been destroyed in 1991 and that no attempts had been made to resuscitate it. Saddam's son-in-law – Gen. Hussein Kamel – in charge of Iraq's nuke and chembio weapons programs, had defected in 1995 and had documented that and the International Atomic Energy Agency Action Team had already verified Kamel's story. Nevertheless, a few months later, Bush invaded Iraq, telling you it was necessary in order to prevent al-Qaida from nuking you with Saddam's nukes. The consequence? Without question, the use of Saddam's non-existent nuke program as a pretense for invading Iraq has vastly increased your chances of being nuked. If for no other reason, North Korea un-froze its "nuclear freeze" and is busily producing nukes for "deterrence" and/or for sale to the highest bidder. Iran may now have decided to follow the North Korean example. The consequence of "liberating" Iraq needn't have been nukes getting loose, perhaps getting into the hands of terrorists. As far as the neo-crazies were concerned, any excuse would have done. If – for example – the polls had showed that you soccer moms would support an invasion of Iraq if hard, convincing evidence could be found that Saddam Hussein was producing kiddie-porn and posting it on the Internet, then the neo-crazies in the White House and in the Pentagon would have "found" such "evidence." If kiddie porn had been the casus belli – rather than nonexistent loose nukes – Bush would still have launched Operation Iraqi Freedom. Congress would still have supported the invasion. Billions of dollars would still have been spent and thousands of U.S. troops would still have been killed or maimed. Of course, Dick Cheney would now be insisting that it didn't really matter that no kiddie-porn had been found in Iraq. Yet. But, the authority and effectiveness of the IAEA to "police" the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would not have been undermined. North Korean weapons-grade plutonium would not have gotten "loose" and your chances of getting nuked in your jammies by terrorists would have been much, much less than they now are. 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. webmaster@worldnetdaily.com ***************************************************************** 11 Washington Times: New energy for reintegration August 22, 2004 Russia's energy exports to East Asia may drive the Eurasian country's reintegration with the region and enhance the security and stability of an area marked by long-standing rivalries and growing energy demands, observers said at a recent conference in Washington. "Energy will drive Russia's role of influence and integration in northeast Asia" after Russia disengaged from the region for more than a decade after the Soviet Union's demise, said John Fetter, president of FSI Energy, a Pennsylvania-based organization specializing in energy and environmental projects. Mr. Fetter made his remarks at a July 22-23 conference on Russia-Asia relations at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In possession of the world's largest natural-gas reserves and eighth-largest oil reserves amidst substantially growing Asian energy demand, Russia could use its energy trade to improve bilateral relations with Asian countries, some scholars say. The building of pipelines crossing through Siberia and Sakhalin Island to China, Japan and the Korean peninsula would bring the region closer together, they say. The industrialized societies of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan lack natural energy resources and heavily depend on foreign oil imports. China, largely self-sufficient in providing for its energy needs until 1993, when it became a net oil importer, replaced Japan last year as the second-largest petroleum consumer, trailing only the United States. China's demand for oil will continue to surge as the country puts millions of new cars on the road, said James Dorian, a Washington-based international energy economist. Mr. Dorian noted that passenger car sales increased 75 percent in 2003. Asian oil demand is predicted to outpace that of Western industrialized nations two- to threefold, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy. Most Asian oil imports come from the Middle East, but the looming crisis in Iraq and terrorism have generated fears of a disruption in oil supply. Diversifying oil sources is a common strategy, and Russia's energy market is an attractive alternative. Pipeline gas would be cheaper than oil imported from the Middle East and would reduce northeast Asia's foreign exchange burdens, some scholars say. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has made energy trade and developing the Russian Far East's economy among the main priorities for his second administration, is deciding whether to construct pipelines connecting the Russian city of Angarsk in eastern Siberia to Daqing, China, where there's an oil pipeline network, and another one to Nakhodka, Japan. Transneft, Russia's state-owned pipeline monopoly, is said to favor the Angarsk-Nakhodka option. Natural gas is expected to be sent to Japan through a proposed pipeline, called Sakhalin I. Gas exports are scheduled to begin in 2008. Japanese companies Mitsubishi and Mitsui are partners with Shell in another project, Sakhalin II, to develop Russia's first liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility. Russia's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 7.3 percent in 2003, with petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas its main exports, according to the EIA, which says it has proven 60 billion barrels of oil reserves. The Russian Far East, remote and largely economically isolated from the rest of the country, has considerable natural resources. However, much of the Russian Far East's vast volumes of untapped gas, condensate and oil reserves lack critical infrastructure and require foreign technology and investment to become profitable. The natural gas industry, in particular, is underdeveloped. For Russia, which hasn't worked out a comprehensive policy for Asia, geopolitics may trump geoeconomics on energy issues. The Turkey-Russia oil pipeline has taught Russia it's risky to depend solely on a country to buy its major exports, said Michael Bradshaw, professor of human geography at the University of Leicester in Britain. Proposed pipelines, such as the Angarsk-Nakhodka option, appeal to Russian leaders because they skirt China and won't make Russian dependent on China, with which it had turbulent times in its relations, as an outlet for its energy sources, Mr. Bradshaw said. Russia and its Asian neighbors lack a solid track record of multilateral cooperation, and the relationship is characterized by "competition and conflicts of interest," Mr. Bradshaw said. Russia likely will opt for bilateral agreements, he said. Though China is Russia's fourth-largest trading partner, Russia's trade relationship with China is the fastest growing among its trade partners. Last year, Sino-Russian trade reached a record high of $15.76 billion, according to China's General Administration of Customs. Russian-Japanese trade reached $5 billion in 2003, an increase of 40 percent. Russian trade with South Korea increased by 27.3 percent to $4.18 billion last year. The possibility that Russia will fail to provide supplies, due in part to the dominance of the Russian government in its energy industries, manifested recently with the controversy over Yukos, a private Russian oil company that the Kremlin accused of tax evasion. In late July, Yukos, the country's largest petroleum producer, was ordered to stop production, causing crude oil prices to jump to record-high levels. Nevertheless, Russia could become a positive player in East Asia, with a potentially more significant role in security than in economics and trade, said Robert Sutter, professor in Asian Studies at Georgetown University. Regional rivalries dampen prospects for East Asian cooperation and create an uncertain security environment, Mr. Sutter said. As a result, nations start "hedging for security," he said. "This pervasive hedging, which I think arises from these uncertain security situations in East Asia, provides, I think, the most important opportunity for Russia in the region," Mr. Sutter said. "They are a power that can be used in this hedging game that's very active in East Asia." The rivalry between China and Japan has evolved from the Japanese military conquest of China and is now accentuated by the rise of China and the relative decline of Japan as economic and political leaders in Asia. China's economic and military modernization plus tensions over Taiwan make the Taiwan Strait a dangerous flash point of military conflict. Japan generally has uneasy relations with its neighbors in East Asia and Southeast Asia, because of a history of Japanese colonialism and militarism, and North Korea's nuclear program has kept other countries on edge. Historic mistrust has been exacerbated by a traditional view among Asian nations that energy resources are scarce, said Joseph Ferguson, director of Northeast Asia Studies at the National Bureau of Asia Research in Seattle. "Very much in Asia, still, you have a mind-set of a zero-sum outcome to things and a mercantilist bent to economic and energy strategy," Mr. Ferguson said. "There's the perception that if we don't get these supplies, someone else is going to get them." Asian governments continue to view energy in strategic terms, and the market plays a significant, though often subordinate, role to resolve energy questions. "There's less of a tendency to rely on markets to help resolve these issues," Mr. Ferguson said. Asian governments are deeply involved in the energy sector. China National Petroleum Corp, a state-owned oil company, dominates energy production, price subsidies, imports and exports. However, Robert Manning, senior counselor of energy, technology and science policy in the U.S. State Department, said he doesn't agree with a zero-sum game to energy. "There's plenty of oil and gas. The only problem is politics. The more oil and gas there is, the more everyone benefits in terms of supply and prices," Mr. Manning said. "There is more to be gained on a cooperative basis." Energy is critical to the economic and industrial development of North Korea and thus constitutes a critical element of South Korea's unification plans, said Mr. Fetter of FSI Energy. Seoul has expressed a desire to reintegrate with North Korea economically and industrially, such as employing low-wage North Korea workers to remain economically competitive with Asian countries, Mr. Fetter said. The geopolitical implications include economic growth, jobs and social stability. A gas industry in North Korea would enable massive employment of North Korean workers, Mr. Fetter said. Mr. Fetter said he believes energy could prove useful in defusing the tensions on the Korean peninsula, especially in light of the North Korean nuclear crisis. "If North Korea is depending on gas and depending on their neighbors for their industrial and economic survival, the likelihood of them being in conflict with their neighbors is hugely diminished," Mr. Fetter said. The Russians want to participate in the Korean energy situation, seeing that a decade of ceasing assistance to Pyongyang has created "a detrimental effect" on North Korea and on Russia's role and influence in the area, Mr. Fetter said. However, the Bush administration opposes pipelines running through North Korea to South Korea. "The Russians are basically saying, 'Whether or not the U.S. is on board, we plan to reintegrate with our neighbors in northeast Asia. It's going to happen,' " Mr. Fetter said. ***************************************************************** 12 Rocky Mountain News: Opinion Beware Kerry's energy policy More supply, lower prices August 22, 2004 When it comes to energy, Sen. John Kerry is staking his White House claim as a defender of consumers who can lower prices for families and businesses and make Americans less dependent on oil from the turbulent Middle East. But his publicly announced proposals would have just the opposite effect. If we've supported President Bush's energy goals in principle, it's because he's at least dealing in realities. His sensible answer to high prices is more supply: promoting greater domestic oil and gas production, and easing regulations, such as those that currently discourage the building of new refineries. But we've also taken him to task for acquiescing to Congress' worst spending impulses. Specifically, last year's $31 billion energy bill, which died a just death because it was packed with handouts for just about every conceivable industry, from oil and nuclear power to clean coal. But none of this means Kerry's major policy proposals come close to being the better deal for either energy security or consumers. To begin with, the United States will never achieve the "energy independence" Kerry so vacuously insists is on the horizon, since it guzzles a quarter of the world's oil but sits on only 3 percent of its proven reserves. Indeed, the Kerry campaign's only solution to address short-term price spikes is to put on hold plans to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which Bush quite rightly aims to lift to 700 million barrels from 665 barrels. Kerry has in fact blocked at every turn the Bush administration's proposal to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - which could produce as much as 16 billion barrels of oil, enough to replace Saudi imports for more than 20 years. Rather, to encourage homegrown alternatives, he is promising to spend more than $30 billion to subsidize carmakers and utilities to convert to cleaner technologies. A plan to impose new fuel-economy standards on cars was softened after the United Auto Workers complained of potential job losses. A bigger blow to consumers is Kerry's approach to electricity. The federal mandate he wants on utilities to produce 20 percent of their electricity from so-called renewable resources by 2020 would result in significant price increases, since renewables are three to 15 times more costly than conventional fossil-fuel-generated power. Like Bush, he supports nuclear power, though unlike the president he is against storage of waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. That means no new plants could be built on Kerry's watch, since Wall Street won't finance more nuclear production without an option for storing waste. On many energy proposals, the candidates agree. They both stress the need for clean-burning coal plants, for which Kerry wants an additional $10 billion in subsidies. Both approve incentives for hybrid vehicles and fuel-cell-powered vehicles that use hydrogen, though none of these would lower energy prices in the long run. While we agree President Bush was far too accepting of last year's pork-laden energy bill, his supply-side solutions are at least the right approach to insulating the U.S. economy from sudden spikes in global energy prices. Kerry's stated agenda on some key issues is increased spending, restricted demand and higher energy prices. The voters can decide for themselves which of these is more consumer friendly. 2004 © The E.W. Scripps Co. Privacy ***************************************************************** 13 TheStar.com: Powerful ideas to help save energy Sun. Aug. 22, 2004. | Updated at 02:20 AM ADAM WETSTEIN The province has decided to let the price of hydro rise and we will be asked to make major changes in our lifestyle. But that might not be necessary Here are some things that can be done with almost no notable change in anyone's lifestyle. For several months, the temperature in Ontario is minus 10C. In Scandinavia, a hose, like those on a high-efficiency furnace, is run to the roof and attached to a fan with a charcoal filter to remove odours and to pump the cool air into coolers and freezers. This means a saving of about 25 to 50 per cent of power consumption for most grocery stores. In the summer, the system is reversed to pump out the heat of the compressors that cool the freezers. A certain oil company, which shall remain nameless, seemed to think that the canopy lights should be on all day. These lights consume 1 1/2 kilowatts each hour, so six extra hours a day times 10 lights equals 90 kilowatts aday. At more than $6 per kilowatt it means an added cost of $540 a day. It could mean the first 9,000 litres of fuel sold is paying just for the lights. Also the outside sign lights should be turned off during the day, something any business should do. Every condominium unit should be outfitted with an electricity meter. The explosion of condo buildings with a central meter has meant that individual owners don't derive any benefit from being energy efficient. The province should first change the building code so new buildings are required to have a meter room and that interval meters are installed. Most apartment buildings face the same problem. The owners of buildings with more than 20 units should be required to install new meters for each unit and the cost of electricity removed from the rent. Utilities would then be the responsibility of the tenant and the power company could ask for the first and last month's bill as a down payment like first and last month's rent is part of the lease. The landlords must be protected by having the work done and paid by the local utility in exchange for an easement for staff of the local hydro provider. Expand deep water-cooling to Windsor and Kingston and Ottawa. The object of reducing electricity usage is not about total consumption but peak consumption. The ability to provide a system of heating and cooling takes a large building off the electricity grid. Using the waters of Lake Ontario to cool the towers of downtown Toronto could be a godsend to the province. There is no reason the same system on a smaller scale can't be built in the lakeside and riverside cities of western and eastern Ontario. It will cost no more and probably a great deal less, than building a nuclear power plant. Give homeowners free computer software to control air conditioners and lights from outside. This technology is common now and most people don't use it because there is no method to adjust the equipment when they forget to turn it on. These simple devices can be attached to any touch-tone phone, allowing the A/C to be turned on, or the temperature to be adjusted. It also allows all lights left on to be turned off. Multiply this by thousands of suburban homes the province is looking at a huge saving. If most of these steps are taken by the province, the need to find emergency power in the next few years will be a lot more remote. Adam Wetstein is a Toronto IT consultant. Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All ***************************************************************** 14 Bush Leaves Nuke Plants As Terrorist Targets & Fire Hazards Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 02:50:43 -0400 http://www.progressive.org/august04/cusac0804.html August 2004 issue Fire Hazard Bush Leaves Nuclear Plants at Risk by Anne-Marie Cusac On June 16, the commission charged with investigating the events of September 11 announced that Al Qaeda's early attack plans had included "unidentified nuclear power plants." You might think the Bush Administration would respond by doing all it could to prevent a terrorist-triggered disaster at these plants. Think again. The Bush Administration is actually relaxing the fire safeguards there. Instead of insisting that the plants have heat-protected mechanical systems in place that will shut down reactors automatically in case of fire, which is the current standard, the Bush Administration would actually let the power companies rely on workers to run through the plants and try to turn off the reactors by hand while parts of the facilities are engulfed in flames. "The result could be catastrophic," says a March 3 letter from Representative Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Representative John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, to Nils J. Diaz, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). "This would assign reactor personnel the duty of rushing directly to the shutdown equipment located throughout the reactor complex to shut down the reactors manually, and would potentially take place in station areas affected by smoke, fire, and radiation and possibly under attack by terrorists." Inside the NRC, the idea of people dodging flames and possibly high radiation areas to try to avert a meltown has raised some eyebrows. In a September 2003 meeting, one member of a panel on reactor fire safety repeatedly pointed out that relying on humans to do work in dangerous conditions and under stress was asking for trouble. It's difficult to prepare operators, said Dana Powers, a member of the Fire Protection Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards. "How do you do that?" he asked. "How do you simulate smoke, light, fire, ringing bells, fire engines, crazy people running around?" So why is the NRC proposing to relax the fire safety standard? Amazingly, because many nuclear power plants have not been abiding by current regulations to put up proven fire barriers. Rather than demanding better fire safeguards or insisting that nuclear power companies at least abide by the current ones, the NRC wants to let them off the hook. It's as if car drivers were regularly going 90 mph, so the government raised the speed limit to 90. "It appears that after discovering that many reactor licensees were out of compliance with the automatic safe-shutdown fire regulations, the commission has decided to gut these regulations rather than force nuclear power plant operators to comply with them," says the Markey and Dingell letter. The NRC made its decision, according to Markey, "at the behest of the nuclear industry." Current regulations require plants to maintain two sets of electrical circuitry that enable the reactor to shut down automatically in an emergency. These cables either must be encased in proven fire-retardant materials or must be separated by a distance of twenty feet with no combustible materials in between. That way, if one electrical system burns up, the plant can turn itself off, even if the fire is so destructive that no staff members are left to do that work. The NRC introduced a proposed rule change on November 26, 2003, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It said that, instead of putting in fire barriers, nuclear plants could rely on personnel to turn the plant off by hand in the event of a fire that threatens the reactor. The rule change may go into effect as early as next spring. The rulemaking started after the NRC met with the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), an industry group, which admitted that many of its members did not have the required safeguards in place. "NEI indicated that the use of unapproved operator manual actions in the event of a fire is pervasive throughout the industry," noted William D. Travers, then the NRC's executive director for operations, in describing the proposed rule to the commissioners. (Procedures for shutting down a reactor by hand are called "operator manual actions.") Faced with resistance from industry, the NRC found itself in a predicament. "A concerted enforcement effort," wrote Travers, "creates a prospect of significant resource expenditure without clear safety benefits." He warned that the NRC could be flooded with requests for exemptions from the rules. Fires are not uncommon at nuclear power plants. "Typical nuclear power plants will have three to four significant fires over their operating lifetime," says a 1990 NRC document. "Fires are a significant contributor to the overall core damage frequency." Fire itself will not blow up a reactor, say critics and industry representatives alike. But if the electrical cabling burns and the pumps that cool the reactor core become disabled, the core could begin to overheat, and the reactor could melt down. Millions of people could then be exposed to radiation. Shearon Harris nuclear power plant sits about twenty-two miles south of Raleigh, North Carolina, in one of the fastest growing population centers in the United States. So I give Progress Energy, the company that runs the plant, a call. "Fire protection is such a mundane issue," says Rick Kimble, manager of general communications for the company. And he suggests that I shouldn't worry about fires at nuclear reactors because the facilities, built of concrete and rebar, are unlikely to burn and are designed to shut down automatically. Nevertheless, he sets up a meeting with me at the plant's visitors center, a common field-trip destination for local school groups. He says I'll be able to see "images of the plant, basics of how the plant works, cutouts showing the amount of concrete and steel rebar." He even recommends a hotel. I tell him I will make a plane reservation now that I have a confirmed meeting with him. But the following week, several days before I am scheduled to fly out, Kimble calls me to say that our meeting is cancelled. No one from the plant will meet with me. And, unlike the school kids, I am not welcome at the Shearon Harris visitors center. Fire prevention, says Kimble, is an industry-wide issue. "We don't think we should be singled out," Kimble explains. Anyhow, he says, "there would not be a catastrophic fire in a nuclear plant." That's because nuclear fuel is not flammable. Even if there was a meltdown, it would be contained, says Kimble. "That's a ludicrous statement," replies David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, when I ask him whether it's true that a catastrophic fire can't happen at a nuclear plant. "Browns Ferry was also made out of concrete and steel." One day in 1975, some workers were checking a seal on the secondary containment building at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama. They accidentally started a fire. The fire "was in the insulating material around the cables. It was in a cable tray," says Craig Beasely, a communications specialist at the plant. The fire began in a part of the plant Beasely calls "the cable spreader room," which he defines as "the place where the cables come together." The fire lasted "about seven hours," says Beasely. Some of the cables that caught fire, he confirms, "did control some cooling" to the reactor core. "Temperatures as high as 1500°F caused damage to more than 1600 cables routed in 117 conduits and twenty-six cable trays," says a draft report by the Sandia and Brookhaven Laboratories. "Of those, 628 cables were safety related, and their damage caused the loss of a significant number of plant safety systems." A 1976 paper by the Union of Concerned Scientists was entitled "Browns Ferry: The Regulatory Failure." Observing that the fire rendered all safety equipment inoperative and that thick smoke, loss of control over the reactor, and "inadequate breathing apparatuses" interfered with the operators' attempts to save the plant, the paper sums up the event in these words: "TVA nuclear engineers stated privately to the authors that a potentially catastrophic radiation release from Browns Ferry was avoided by 'sheer luck.' " Company protests to the contrary, Shearon Harris merits attention. The most recent NRC fire inspection describes more than 100 manual action shutdown procedures that, in case of fire, would send personnel out to turn off the plant and prevent a meltdown. "We've not seen any numbers higher than that," says Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog Project for the D.C.-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service. The NRC's 2002 Triennial Fire Inspection of Shearon Harris describes some of these operator manual actions. One, the NRC says, involves "excessive challenges to operators," including "exposure to smoke that would leak past the door and to the fire brigade who would be opening the door, entering the narrow [15 inches wide] energized electrical cabinet, and using a metal screwdriver inside the cabinet and seven feet above the floor with poor visibility and poor labeling. . . . Operators may not be able to start the auxiliary feedwater pump." Jim Warren, executive director of the Durham-based NC WARN (North Carolina Waste Awareness Reduction Network), characterizes the procedure this way: "Get the step ladder and go up in the closet in the darkness, and hope you don't fry yourself." The inspection noted that one operator "may be required to complete as many as thirty-nine manual actions." The inspection found nine fire safety violations altogether. In a March 2004 presentation the government made at an annual assessment meeting on the Shearon Harris reactor, the NRC described these "fire protection issues" as "potential significant findings." Nevertheless, the NRC inspection did not come down hard on Shearon Harris. "The finding was of very low safety significance because of the low fire initiation frequency," it said. That is, the NRC doesn't think a fire is likely. Kimble says the reactor has dealt with the violations. "We have made corrections, done everything that has been suggested by the NRC," he says. But Warren is not so sure. "Absent any evidence from Progress [Energy], either in person or documented, that they have corrected those problems, I'm left to assume that they're still there," he says. Papers released as part of a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that some fire violations at Shearon Harris have gone on for years, either without correction or with corrections that the NRC later determined were inappropriate. In April, the plant informed the NRC that the fire barriers were missing entirely from cables that power twenty-one valves used to control the flow of cooling water to the reactor core. The plant informed the NRC that it would take two years to fix the problem. The violations date back to 2002. So I keep my plane ticket. I decide to get a look at the cooling tower and a feel for the evacuation zone, the ten-mile radius surrounding Shearon Harris. I drive in a downpour, on an afternoon when tornadoes lift the roofs in nearby towns, to the hotel Kimble suggested. The hotel sits in Apex, a town with the slogan "the peak of good living," though there are no mountains, or even hills, in sight. Warren and I drive around the zone, seeking a view of the reactor. We pull over at Jordan Lake, where we get a glimpse of the tower, its feet in the trees and its head in the clouds. Aesthetically, it's a graceful structure, a triumph of modern design out in the woods. "That cooling tower is over 600-feet tall," says Warren. Jordan Lake is a popular weekend destination for people in the Triangle region. Below the parking lot where we stand is a dam. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers controls the inflow and outflow of water, says Francis Ferrell, a Corps engineer who wanders out to the parking lot to meet us. "We actually have a contingency plan" in case of a nuclear emergency, he says. "We're supposed to go out on the lake and tell people," obtain geiger counters after a rendezvous on Highway 64, and report back measurements. "I think our boss is trying to get that taken out of our job descriptions," he says. "That would be fine with me." We drive to the other side of Shearon Harris to the front entrance, where we get out and walk on the road, stopping short of the "Private Property" signs. But the guards notice us, jump into their truck, and drive up to inform us that we can't stand there, that we need to cross the highway. The guards are armed. When Warren tells them I am a reporter, they tell me to call the PR office. Then they sit in their truck, watching, until we turn the car around and leave. "At least we know they're paying attention," says Warren. A 2003 study put out by Orange County, North Carolina, which is near Shearon Harris, determined that "total evacuation [of the six-county region along the Interstate 40/85 corridor] would take 5.8 days, assuming that all interstate lanes would be directed for outbound traffic." "I reconcile myself that I may lose everything," says Judy Hogan, a writer, teacher, and activist who lives in Moncure, just a few miles from the plant. "For a while, I was keeping my unpublished books on disks in the trunk of my car because that would be my biggest loss." Now that she owns a truck, she keeps the disks in a briefcase in her bedroom. In that room, Hogan also has a tone alert radio, which she says Progress Energy gave to her because she lives within five miles of the plant. The radio, she says, will sound an alarm for bad weather, as well as for nuclear emergencies. In 2003, partly in response to anxieties about terrorism at nuclear power plants, the state of North Carolina made potassium iodide (KI) available to people living near nuclear reactors. Hogan went to the local school to get them. She digs out her foil-wrapped pills (each person gets two) from her purse. Two information sheets accompany the pills. One of these describes potassium iodide as "an over-the-counter medication that can protect one part of the body--the thyroid--if a person is exposed to radioactive iodine released during a nuclear power plant emergency." The sheet says to take one tablet per twenty-four hour period, and it adds an admonitory note: "Remember . . . taking KI is not a substitute for evacuation. Leave the area immediately if you are instructed to do so. Do not take KI unless public health officials tell you to take it." The other sheet is entitled, "Frequently Asked Questions About a Radioactive Emergency." It begins, "Radiation is a form of energy that is present all around us. Different types of radiation exist, some of which have more energy than others." Kimble is right. Fire safety is an industry-wide issue. And Shearon Harris is not the only plant with a long list of violations. For instance, in Hutchinson Island in Florida, a March 2003 Fire Protection Baseline Inspection of the St. Lucie Power Station found that "many local manual operator actions were used in place of the required physical protection of cables for equipment relied on for SSD [safe shutdown] during a fire, without obtaining NRC approval for these deviations from the approved fire protection program. This condition applied to all areas that were inspected." Rachel Scott, nuclear communications manager for Florida Power and Light, says that this inspection "pointed up an industry-wide" practice, where reactors "have been implementing manual actions" against NRC regulations. So, says Scott, the NRC decided "to allow the licensees to substitute manual actions, as long as the manual actions were feasible." The NRC, says Scott, "did determine that the manual actions" at St. Lucie Station "were feasible," meaning "that they could serve safe shutdown." Scott says the plant has not put in fire barriers or separated the cables, but is instead waiting for the new regulation to take effect. At another Florida reactor, this one in Citrus County, a Triennial Fire Protection Baseline Inspection in July 2002 discovered, according to a "Briefing Summary," that not only did the Crystal River plant use "a significant number of local manual actions" instead of automatic shutdown, but that the plant's fire plan neglected to give adequate consideration to some of the practical difficulties of shutting a nuclear power plant down by hand. The omissions included, in the NRC's words: a.. Complexity of the new local manual actions. a.. The number of manual actions and time available for completion. a.. Availability of instruments to detect system/component mal-operations. a.. Human performance under high stress. a.. Effects of products of combustion on operator performance. a.. Available manpower, timing, and feasibility of local manual actions. Mac Harris, communications supervisor for the Crystal River site, which is run by Progress Energy, says that the above problems eventually received a green, non-cited violation. "Green is considered very low safety significance," he says. The Crystal River Plant, he says, "dealt with the identified issues" by making "some revisions in the fire protection plan," a process it completed in May. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service obtained these records, and those from Shearon Harris, through a Freedom of Information Act request. The records of fire safety violations are still coming in, says Gunter. "I'm told that when we're done, the stack will be ten feet tall," he says. "That's how widespread the noncompliances are." A March press release by Markey's office provided "a partial list of reactors that are out of compliance with NRC fire protection regulations." Here are the reactors: Arizona: Palo Verde Units 1,2,3 Arkansas: Arkansas Nuclear One Units 1,2 California: Diablo Canyon Units 1,2 Florida: Crystal River, St. Lucie, Turkey Point 3,4 Louisiana: River Bend Mississippi: Grand Gulf Nebraska: Fort Calhoun New Jersey: Oyster Creek North Carolina: Shearon Harris 1, McGuire Units 1,2 Ohio: Davis-Besse Pennsylvania: Beaver Valley 2 Tennessee: Sequoyah Units 1,2, Watts Bar Texas: Comanche Peak 1,2 At Davis-Besse, the Ohio nuclear reactor with a history of safety troubles that sits twenty-five miles from Toledo, fire protection is a problem. Phil Qualls, an NRC senior fire protection engineer, sent an e-mail to Dennis Kubicki, a former colleague who had worked on a report on safety at Davis-Besse. Qualls said he went over that 1991 report, and that it contains "some pretty outrageous stuff. Things like . . . complete manual actions" instead of the fire barriers required by law, "and a variety of fire protection issues." He warns Kubicki, "your name is on this document. The s___could hit the fan hard and you may hear questions about it (or the s___ may be soft and you never hear about it, too)." The report, which identifies Kubicki as a "principal contributor," declares numerous fire issues at Davis-Besse "acceptable." For instance, previous safety inspectors had expressed concern that a manual action might cause reactor cooling problems because of delays in getting the equipment to work. The report determines that these problems "are not safety significant as long as no unrecoverable plant condition will occur." It defines "unrecoverable plant condition" as "the loss of any shutdown function(s) for such a duration as to ultimately cause the reactor coolant level to fall below the top of the reactor core and lead to a subsequent breach of the fuel cladding." In other words, as long as the reactor does not reach a point where it threatens to melt down, no problem. "It's a big caveat to say, 'as long as no unrecoverable plant condition will occur,' " says Gunter of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "How do they know?" Gunter blames the NRC for what he says is a dangerous regulatory change. The government agency, he says, is "more interested in protecting the financial interest of the industry than in protecting those electrical cables." For its part, the NRC says it is doing all it can to keep the reactors safe. "The prescriptive rules" requiring physical fire barriers "didn't allow for flexibility," says John Hannon, NRC branch chief in the office of nuclear reactor regulation--the part of the NRC that is responsible for fire protection programs. "The rules were so inflexible they [the plants] sometimes had trouble meeting them." So, he says, even from the day the rules were written, the NRC gave out exemptions "for alternative means of shutting the plant down that were safe and reliable. Many of these were operator manual actions." Then, in the 1990s, as the NRC inspected plants to make sure they had adequate fire protections, the commission discovered "a lot of plants were using manual actions and had not come to us for exemptions," Hannon says. So the NRC decided it was "prudent for us to initiate a rule making for that, to codify acceptance criteria to make it clear" what is acceptable. The NRC claims that all of this can be done safely. "We're seeking the health and safety of the public," says Hannon. "We don't want a plant damage event to occur that would cause a radioactive release." The NRC, he says, takes "fires very seriously." And he says the new rule will be an improvement on the status quo. "If we leave it the way it is now, we have plants out there that wouldn't meet the criteria," he says. "Rather than bring the industry into conformance with the code, the NRC brought the code into conformance with the industry," says Gunter. Jerry Brown worked as a consultant to the nuclear industry for twenty-two years, until 1998. .....His specialty was fire and radiation penetration seals, critical safety components to nuclear reactors. To exchange old rules "for new regulations to say that we don't need these redundant shutdown systems is criminal," he says. "You could have a runaway reactor with no ability to shut it down." Brown blames the NRC, which he says has a history of treating "fire safety in such a negligent way." Brown, who says he is "absolutely" concerned about terrorism in connection with fires at a nuclear plant, gives a grim warning. "A nuclear power plant can kill a million people," he says. "There are more fire barriers in a nursing home than in a nuclear power plant. That doesn't make sense to me." -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ Anne-Marie Cusac is Investigative Reporter of The Progressive. Top of Page Subscriber Services Subscribe This Just In Site Map ***************************************************************** 15 Daily Yomiuri: Govt neglecting duty to protect N-facilities Yomiuri Shimbun "It is necessary to bring the protection of nuclear facilities in this country up to levels comparable to those in other nations." This quote comes from a recent report issued by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, an affiliate of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, which details measures currently in place to protect nuclear materials while also discussing what should be done to better achieve that goal. The government's determination in this respect marks a renewed effort to step up this nation's defense of its nuclear facilities from external threats. This country lags behind other nations in protecting nuclear installations, arousing great concerns about their security. Japan must assume it is on the list of international terrorist targets. Threats to this country include North Korea, which has carried out repeated acts of terrorism for years. If bilateral tensions worsened, the reclusive state could strike nuclear facilities in Japan as part of a military attack on this nation. There are 52 nuclear reactors in the nation. Related facilities include experimental reactors, fuel-processing plants and storage sites for spent nuclear fuel. Given this, increasing the protection of domestic nuclear facilities is an urgent task. Since the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, Japan has taken measures to better safeguard its nuclear facilities. Steps include increased efforts by operators of such facilities to patrol their sites on their own. This has been complemented by efforts by the police authorities to patrol nuclear power plants. The Japan Coast Guard has mobilized patrol boats to assist in this endeavor. === IAEA guidelines spell out risk Undoubtedly, full preparedness to contain an attack on nuclear facilities requires a lot more than these measures. The Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material outlines measures to be implemented for the defense of nuclear substances. The international convention, to which Japan is a signatory, presents a set of measures to be taken by member nations in the storage and registering of nuclear material. However, these measures were not designed to cover terrorist attacks or wars. The International Atomic Energy Agency has revised its guidelines for the defense of nuclear facilities four times. The 1999 version of the guidelines calls for thorough measures to protect the confidentiality of relevant information, including penalties against offenders. The guidelines also require IAEA members to set up alarm stations at nuclear facilities, while also cooperating with their police authorities and military in the event of an armed attack. European nations and the United States took measures designed to complement the IAEA guidelines immediately after these principles were announced. The United States conducted an antiterrorism drill in line with recommendations in the guidelines. But the Japanese government has done nothing comparable to these measures. The government's attitude must be criticized as neglectful. Had any domestic nuclear facility been struck by a terrorist attack, the government would have been condemned for its inexcusable neglect. The government must realize it deserves to be censured for not fulfilling its responsibilities. === Reinforced defenses needed The government is belatedly working to revise the Nuclear Reactor Regulation Law. Planned changes in the law would require not only government employees, but also employees of private sector nuclear facilities to maintain the confidentiality of information related to their work, for example. Offenders would be strictly punished. All this is in line with the IAEA guidelines. The government hopes to submit to the next ordinary Diet session a bill to revise the law. By the end of the year, the government also is seeking to draft a set of measures stipulating how to safely shut down nuclear facilities and prevent disasters in the event of a military or terrorist attack. The government must establish a comprehensive framework for the defense of nuclear facilities that will protect the public from any emergency. (From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Aug. 22) Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 16 Fishing: Plants are being charged with excessive killing of fish through cold water intakes Sunday, August 22, 2004 By Deborah Weisberg Power plant discharges on rivers and lakes are hot spots for anglers, but their cool water intakes kill untold numbers of fish. The Environmental Protection Agency has issued the first national standards for reducing fish kills at existing plants, though environmentalists say it lets energy companies off the hook. Six states -- Pennsylvania not among them -- are suing the EPA, claiming it failed to fulfill the Clean Water Act of 30 years ago with regulations issued July 9 and effective Sept. 7. "EPA's issuance of technology standards for existing intakes, albeit 30 years late, should have ended the needless destruction of aquatic life in our nation's waterways," said Alex Matthiessen, Hudson Riverkeeper and executive director of Riverkeeper, Inc., the New York group leading a coalition of states seeking judicial review. "Unfortunately, the agency has illegally rewritten the Clean Water Act to allow industry to avoid upgrading power plants that function as aquatic slaughterhouses." It is hard to know just what the impact on fisheries is, because cool water intakes have been under the radar screen compared to some types of pollution, said Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission aquatics resources chief Leroy Young. "A single fish can spawn tens of thousands of eggs at a time, and a lot of factors influence species survival, from predator-prey relationships to flow events. But any time you have a man-induced impact on top of what nature is doing, you're affecting the ecosystem," Young said. One of the largest power plants on the East Coast, PSEG's Salem nuclear facility in New Jersey -- which takes in 250,000 million gallons of water a day -- acknowledges killing three billion fish a year, but company spokesman Neil Brown said that has "absolutely no impact on the fishery." He said more than 99 percent of the 3 billion were eggs and juvenile fish. Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum, an attorney whose group, Delaware Riverkeepers Network, has battled PSEG for more than a decade, calls the company "the largest predator on the Delaware River," and points to specific species, including shad and stripers, which have perished. PSEG's data is more current than other companies, who haven't had issues with environmentalists or government permitting agencies. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection hasn't required the state's 35 power plants to perform studies in about 25 years, unless specific plants were problematic, said DEP water pollution biologist Tom Barron. But surveys done after implementation of the Clean Water Act of 1972 indicate that intakes can be deadly. The Beaver Valley power plant, when owned by a consortium of companies including Duquesne Light in the 1970s, trapped 39 species of fish, said Young. About 33,000 juvenile and adult fish a year were impinged -- or trapped -- on screens at Philadelphia Electric's Eddystone plant on the estuarial lower Delaware until finer mesh coverings were installed about 10 years ago, he said. The same plant entrained -- or sucked in -- 150 million larval fish in 1977. Allegheny Power's Armstrong plant on the Allegheny River entrained 49 million larval fish in 1978, Young said. The company's environmental specialist, Joe Lapcevic, said he believes the figure was closer to 20,000, and while "there are problems at certain facilities where there's a lot of spawning, at facilities like where we're located you're not going to see the same issues." He points to the river as a thriving fishery. "The argument that rivers are healthier now and have bigger numbers of fish probably means that there are just more fish getting killed," Young said. Power plants on rivers and lakes use water to cool their machinery, taking it in and spitting it out, sometimes at hotter than 110 degrees and dosed with chlorine to minimize bacterial contamination of turbines. Big plants, Young said, can draw in "huge" amounts of water, "as much as half the flow of a river in a day." Unless plants employ closed cycle cooling, which recycles water -- and is the only acceptable technology, said van Rossum -- they are constantly drawing in water. In the process, fish get sucked in, too. "Fish get taken in and cooked, basically," said Young. They also can get pinned and then crushed or suffocated on grates and screens used to strain out logs, beer cans and other debris, although traveling screens with backwash devices can lessen impingement, said Barran. "Pennsylvania has been pretty good," Barran said, given that the EPA has been seen as ambiguous in its guidance for minimizing environmental impact. It took a lawsuit by environmentalists, including van Rossum's group, to force the EPA to set standards around technology and impact in a three-phase ruling, the latest of which deals with large (at least 50 million gallons a day) plants. "This is a new frontier in permitting. It looks at live things in the water, which is more difficult than measuring the chemical concentration of something coming out of a pipe," said EPA environmental biologist Mark Smith. "There's a long way we can go here." The EPA is telling big plants to reduce entrainment by 60 to 90 percent and impingement by 80 to 90 percent, depending on the water they're on. Since fish are attracted by flow, that means reducing the velocity of the water that comes into their pipes to one-half foot per second, or "a sixteenth the speed of a slow walk," said Smith. Power plants are being given flexibility in achieving this, including augmenting lesser technological upgrades with mitigation measures, such as stocking fish or building wetlands. All of which allows plants to avoid using what simply amounts to the best technology available, said van Rossum. "The EPA is saying, 'you can keep killing fish, just do something pretty,'" she said. "But the bottom line is, unless Pennsylvania is requiring closed cycle cooling, they're nowhere on this." Closed cycle cooling doesn't draw water continually, it recycles instead, which means needing to replenish just one to five percent of water a year. Because it reduces volume and velocity, fish kills are reduced by 95 to 99 percent, van Rossum said. Plants can be retrofitted with cooling towers that accomplish that, she said. "In ESNG's case, even if you accept their inflated figures, it would come to $1.10 a month for ratepayers to save 3 billion fish." Her group has joined in the lawsuit seeking a stay of the EPA rule. That rule, if it takes effect as planned, gives companies 3 1/2 years to develop a plan and another five years for implementation. Once baseline fish kill studies are performed, it could take years to measure whether new intake practices are working. Corrections Copyright ©1997-2004 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All ***************************************************************** 17 AFP: Iran delays entry into service of first reactor until 2006 WAR.WIRE TEHRAN (AFP) Aug 22, 2004 Iran's first nuclear reactor, being constructed with Russian help in the Gulf port of Bushehr, will not enter service until 2006, a year later than originally planned, atomic energy officials revealed Sunday. And no agreement has yet been reached with the Russians over the delivery of nuclear fuel, which could delay the project even further. The new commissioning date of October 2006 was marked on a document shown at a press conference by project manager Assadollah Sabouri. He said the process of starting up the reactor would take seven months, giving a start date in the first months of the year and would be totally operational by October of the same year. Sabouri pointed out that Iran had until the end of 2005 to reach an agreement with the Russians over fuel for the plant. "The final date for delivery of the fuel is in the last few months of 2005", otherwise the start-up would be further delayed, he said. "The fuel has to be introduced in February 2006," said head of technical operations Mehran Zia Sheikholeslami, and he admitted: "We are already behind schedule, that's why we are putting pressure on the Russians to speed things up." Neither he nor Sabouri offered any reason for the delays, but delivery of the Russian fuel has been put back as Moscow bowed to pressure from the United States, who believe it could be used for military purposes. Both the US and Israel are convinced that, under cover of producing nuclear power, the Islamic republic is secretly developing an atomic bomb, something Tehran strenuously denies. The IAEA governing body will consider the question of Iranian nuclear power projects at a meeting at its headquarters in Vienna in September. Iran, which has repeatedly claimed its nuclear programme is entirely for civil purposes, believes it has given sufficient assurances and is demanding that the issue be left off the IAEA agenda. However, far from agreeing, the IAEA demanded further cooperation from Iran at its June meeting to provide conclusive proof that it is not secretly developing nuclear weapons. Iran intends to produce its own fuel for the next stage of its nuclear programme after making "important advances" in its production, Sabouri said. "Important advances have been made, it will not be many years before we are in a position to produce our own fuel," he said. Iran's ability to master the uranium enrichment cycle is a cause for concern in the international community and the IAEA has expressed reservations that Iran could use the technology to produce its own bomb. As a gesture of good faith, Iran agreed last year to suspend enriching uranium used for nuclear fuel but has always insisted that it was a temporary measure. "Our programme is very clear," Sabouri said. "For the first stage we have a contract with the Russians for the supply of fuel for 10 years." But he added: "We are counting on the fact that the second phase will use fuel produced by Iran." In addition to the current nuclear plant at Bushehr, Iran plans six other stages of nuclear development, at Bushehr and elsewhere, to arrive at a producion of 7,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020. Sabouri said that if Iran had gone ahead and built a brand new reactor rather than taken up with the Russians where German contractors had left off when they abandoned the project, the plant "would have been up and running two years ago". The plant "will have a life of 35 years" instead of the usual 50, he added, but said Iran was not worried about a possible Israeli attack on Bushehr. "Measures have been taken and will be taken" to protect the plant, he said. WAR.WIRE ***************************************************************** 18 TheStar.com: Pickering backup system to cost OPG $250 million Sun. Aug. 22, 2004. | Updated at 09:05 AM More than double earlier estimate Reactors worse off than expected JOHN SPEARS BUSINESS REPORTER Ontario Power Generation Inc. will have to spend up to $250 million, more than double earlier estimate, to install backup generators at its limping Pickering B nuclear generating station. Inspections have also shown the station's reactors are in worse condition than previously thought, forcing the company to do more inspections and to advance and lengthen planned shutdowns. The news comes in OPG's second-quarter results. They show the company lost $41 million in the three months ended June 30, compared with a profit of $8 million a year earlier. Revenue was $1.349 billion, down from $1.467 billion a year earlier. OPG's earnings are dampened by the fact it must rebate a portion of its revenue to customers because of its market dominance. The rebate totalled $208 million in the latest quarter, compared with $221 million a year earlier. The rebate curbs power prices, but also cuts OPG profits that are supposed to help retire the unfunded debt of $20.2 billion left to taxpayers by the former Ontario Hydro. Far from being paid off, that debt continues to increase. On the bright side, provincially owned OPG benefited during the latest quarter from a 27 per cent increase in output from its low-cost hydro-electric generators compared to last year. Higher output from three nuclear units that have returned to service in the past year, one operated by OPG and two by Bruce Power, also meant that OPG had less output from its high-cost fossil fuel units. Fossil fuel output was cut almost in half. While production costs fell, the benefit was offset by higher pension costs and higher depreciation related to the planned 2007 shutdown of all OPG's coal-fired generating stations. The second quarter had yet more detailed news of problems at the Pickering B nuclear station, whose performance has been overshadowed in recent years by the huge cost overruns of restarting the mothballed Pickering A plant. Last year's blackout showed that Pickering B had inadequate backup power supply to run critical safety, communications and operating equipment. Three months ago, OPG estimated it would have to spend $100 million to install better backup generators. Now, the company says it will have to spend $40 to $50 million immediately to provide temporary backup "while a permanent solution is investigated." That will take several years and cost another $100 to $200 million, for a total of up to $250 million. OPG spokesperson John Earl said technical staff need to study the size, type and configuration of backup units. In addition, OPG says inspections have shown that Pickering B's fuel channels, which contain uranium bundles in the reactor core, are in worse shape than previously thought. That will trigger more inspections, lengthening planned shutdowns. As well, maintenance work planned for 2007 to 2008 and costing $25 million to $50 million will now have to be done from this year through 2006. That will further drag down Pickering B's performance record. The station ran at 62.8 per cent capability in the past three months, little changed from 60.5 per cent a year earlier. It has run at 67.2 per cent over the past six months, compared with 62.2 per cent a year earlier. (The newer Darlington nuclear station, by comparison, has run at better than 80 per cent for the same period.) Longer shutdowns at Pickering B will put more pressure on Ontario's over-all electricity supply. An industry task force warned in January that Ontario could have "insufficient power to meet its peak requirements" by 2006. The news should raise some hard questions about the future of Pickering B, said Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe. "The writing's on the wall for a multibillion-dollar rehabilitation decision on Pickering B coming up forthwith," he said. The station reaches the end of its normal operating life by about 2009, at which point it will require a major overhaul. The latest news raises questions about whether it's worth continuing to spend money on the plant, especially if more unexpected problems crop up, Adams said. Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All ***************************************************************** 19 The Arizona Republic: U.S. begins 2 probes at Palo Verde Recent woes raise concerns on safety Max Jarman Aug. 21, 2004 12:00 AM For the fourth time this year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is sending special investigative teams to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Phoenix to take a closer look at recent events at the plant. Federal regulators said one group will determine whether air recently found trapped in key safety lines posed a significant threat to the plant. Palo Verde concerns Some events that have raised regulatory concerns at Palo Verde this year: JANUARY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials call in Palo Verde managers to discuss concerns raised over allegations of deteriorating relations between management and workers. FEB. 3: Unit 1 is shut down when radioactive water is discovered dripping from a drain line. FEB. 19: Unit 2 is shut down when radioactive water is found leaking from a tube in the unit's steam generator. The NRC launches an investigation. FEB. 29: Unit 3 is shut down because of electrical problems. Later, boron is found on a heater sleeve, indicating a leak of radioactive material. MAY: NRC team sent to Palo Verde to investigate a potential erosion of a "culture of safety" after allegations of management-employee disconnect. JUNE 7: Unit 3 shut down after turbine control fails. JUNE 14: Units 1, 2 and 3 are shut down when a power surge cuts off outside power to the plant. NRC sends a team to investigate. JULY 29: Air is found in a line that provides water for emergency cooling for the plant's three reactor cores. AUG. 20: NRC sends team to Palo Verde to evaluate July 29 waterline issue and follow up on investigation of June 14 outage. The other team will follow up on the investigation of a June 14 power surge in the West Valley that shut down the plant's three reactors. Regulators noted concerns about the way the nuclear plant had shut down and the age of some of the equipment at the Westwing electrical substation, where the surge should have been stopped. Regulators say there has been an unusually high number of problems at Palo Verde this year, but they believe they are unrelated and not indicative of a pattern of neglect or faulty procedures. "If they have questions, we'll answer them," said Jim McDonald, spokesman for plant operator Arizona Public Service Co. "We don't anticipate this being an ongoing problem." Investigators probed a steam generator leak in February, and in May they investigated allegations of erosion of a "culture of safety" because of what was called a disconnect between management and workers. The June 14 incident was one of five unplanned outages at Palo Verde this year that have caught regulators' eyes. Three of the events involved radiation leaks. Anthony Gody, chief of the NRC's Region IV Reactor Safety Division, said Palo Verde has had an unusually high number of problems this year. "These things are supposed to operate pretty reliably," he said. Palo Verde's first two units were completed in 1986 and are approaching middle age. Palo Verde is the nation's largest nuclear power plant and is commissioned for 40 years, although APS will likely seek an extension. The initial investigation of the June incident concluded that the safe shutdown of the plant was "complicated by equipment failures, procedural issues and human performance issues." Victor Dricks, a spokesman in the NRC's Region IV headquarters in Arlington, Texas, said the agency felt the incident needed a "closer look." The second issue to be investigated involves air found inside lines that supply water for emergency cooling of Palo Verde's three nuclear reactor cores. The pipes were dry when inspected July 29, raising concerns that the void could incapacitate the pumps when they were started. APS simply filled the pipes with water after the discovery. The commission said it wanted to independently assess APS' corrective action to determine if it is acceptable for the long term and that there are no generic issues for other nuclear plants. The problem also has been identified at the Waterford Nuclear Power Plant in Louisiana. Palo Verde Manager Dave Smith said the eventual replacement of water with air was because of the way the system was designed. If the NRC concludes that it poses a safety risk, Smith said, APS will take corrective action. He was unsure what that would involve. All three of the plant's reactors are running at full capacity. Meanwhile, Gregg Overbeck, APS senior vice president in charge of Palo Verde, was in Arlington on Friday to answer questions about a 2002 accident that damaged a radioactive fuel assembly being installed at the plant. The accident was not immediately reported to plant managers, and an investigation raised concerns about "willful disregard for procedural requirements." The NRC raised concerns this year about allegations of a disconnect between Palo Verde's management and its employees, which regulators said possibly could lead to an erosion of the plant's culture of safety. Palo Verde led the industry last year with the number of allegations filed by employees with the NRC. The allegations are generally filed with the agency because the employee could not get satisfaction from management or they feared retaliation. The 28 allegations ranged from safety concerns such as the showers and eyewash stations to more generic human resource issues. azcentral.com -The Arizona Republic The Republic | about KPNX-TV | Copyright 2004, azcentral.com. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 20 Japan Times: MHI used notebooks to keep track of reactor pipes Sunday, August 22, 2004 OSAKA (Kyodo) Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. kept track of nuclear inspections in notebooks -- rather than in a computerized database -- when it was first assigned to inspect the nuclear power plant in Mihama, Fukui Prefecture, in 1989, informed sources said Saturday. The coolant water pipe of Mihama's No. 3 reactor -- the cause of Japan's deadliest nuclear accident earlier this month -- was missing from the list of inspection items, the sources said. Mitsubishi Heavy says it is looking into why the pipe was missing from the list, although some experts suspect human error when the list was made. On Aug. 9, four workers were killed and seven others injured when superheated steam burst from a corroded water pipe for the reactor operated by Kansai Electric Power Co. According to Mitsubishi Heavy and other sources, the company kept track of about 6,000 inspection items using notebooks for about six years through 1994, when it computerized the record-keeping system. Mitsubishi Heavy created the notebook-based inspection system in 1989 at the request of Kepco, three years after an accident at the Surrey nuclear power plant in the United States which also involved a ruptured pipe. In 1996, Mitsubishi Heavy handed the notebooks over to Osaka-based Nihon Arm Co., which took over the inspection work, the sources said. Nihon Arm said it computerized the information in the notebooks on its own so it could easily collate drawings of pipes and other parts of the reactors with the list of inspection items. Nihon Arm said one of its veteran engineers discovered that the part of the coolant water pipe involved in the accident was missing from the inspection items while inspecting the power plant in April 2003. Nihon Arm said it notified Kepco of the finding, but the utility said that until the accident it was unaware of the omission. The Japan Times: Aug. 22, 2004 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 21 Aljazeera: Iran delays opening its first nuclear reactor - 8/22/2004 12:00:00 PM GMT Iranian workers walking inside the Bushehr nuclear power plant. Source: Bloomberg.com Iran has delayed the opening of its first nuclear reactor until 2006, one year later than previously planned. Iran’s first nuclear reactor is being built in Bushehr, a coastal town on the Persian Gulf. It is being built with the assistance of Russia. At a press conference in Tehran Sunday, the Atomic Energy Agency announced that Russia will complete construction of the $800 million worth reactor in October, 2006. Iran says that nuclear program is strictly for generating electricity. But Israel and the United States suspect that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, and estimate that they will be ready by 2005. The U.S. has also claimed that Iran has sufficient energy reserves and that nuclear sources of energy are unnecessary in a country with surplus oil reserves such as Iran. Earlier this week Iran had threatened to strike Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor if the Jewish state were to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. A senior commander warned that Iranian missiles could reach Dimona. 'If Israel fires a missile into the Bushehr nuclear power plant, it has to say goodbye forever to its Dimona nuclear facility, where it produces stockpiles nuclear weapons,' said the deputy chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards, Brig.-Gen. Muhammad Baqer Zolqadr, in a statement. Iranian Rear-Admiral Ali Shamakhani said in a separate statement "We will not sit (with arms folded) to wait for what others will do to us,” Shamkhani also warned that Iran would consider itself no longer bound by its commitments to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the event of an attack. "The execution of such threats (to attack Iran's nuclear installations) would mean that our cooperation with the IAEA had led to feeding information about our nuclear facilities to the attacking side, which (in turn) means that we would no longer be bound by any of our obligations" to the nuclear watchdog, he said. A senior Israeli official responded that Israel's government was ready for all eventualities. "We're not seeking war with Iran. But if a real threat materializes, Israel will know how to defend itself," said the official, on condition of anonymity, reflecting long-standing Israeli policy of not talking publicly about matters involving nuclear arms. it seems to me that israel and iran feel jelous from the dramatic democratic progression done in iraq, so they may go and beat each other in order to reach advancement taken olace in iraq. Copyright 2004 AlJazeera Publishing Limited ***************************************************************** 22 Sunday Times: DTI boss to infuse energy into nuclear project Monday, 23 Aug 2004[ border=] Bonny Schoonakker High-powered: Alistair Ruiters has been made PBMR chairman Alistair Ruiters, director-general of the Department of Trade and Industry, has been made chairman of PBMR (Pty) Ltd, which is developing the pebble bed modular reactor. PBMR issued a statement that Ruiters's appointment and that of two senior executives were made "to manage the company through the crucial demonstration and commercialisation phase of the programme" to develop the world's next generation of nuclear-fuelled power stations. Jaco Kriek, head of the Industrial Development Corporation's Mega Projects division, has been seconded to take over from Nic Terblanche as chief executive officer. Terblanche, who was appointed CEO in July last year and is described by PBMR "as a seasoned executive who has been responsible for a number of Eskom's major capital projects" will now become the company's chief operating officer. By late on Friday, Ruiters's office had not responded to requests for comment. But Tom Ferreira, the official spokesman for PBMR, said the appointment "does not imply that he will leave the DTI". Instead, Ruiters's new role should be seen as "a dual thing, more like a directorship". The new chairman's stake in the PBMR project was based largely on the fact that Ruiters, "is quite instrumental" in Eskom's search for a new foreign investor, following the April 2002 withdrawal of US power utility Exelon. For all the promised benefit of developing "fail-safe nuclear reactors", the PBMR project has struggled to find a foreign investor to take over Exelon's 12.5% stake in the company, which it relinquished citing its own internal issues rather than any doubts about the project's feasibility. Terblanche told reporters that the project, which employs 400 engineers and scientists, consumes "a lot more than R50-million a month". "The pilot plant, to be built next to Eskom's Koeberg nuclear reactor near Cape Town, will cost an estimated R10-billion," he said. Eskom owns 30%, the IDC 25% and British Nuclear Fuels Ltd 22.5% . The remaining 10% is to be allocated in an empowerment deal. Earlier this year it was reported that PBMR was focusing its search for a partner on French state-owned nuclear energy company Areva. "There is also interest from groups in Saudi Arabia, China and Turkey," Terblanche was reported as saying at the time. Ferreira said he could "not say much" on any progress being made because Eskom had "not concluded anything yet". The search for a foreign investor was a priority but PBMR preferred to keep control in local hands. and . © Johnnic Publishing 1996-2001. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 UK Independent: Washington accused of ignoring nuclear terror threat mailto:myquestion@independent.co.uk --> By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles 22 August 2004 The Bush administration insists that its top priority is keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists. But in a withering new book, one of America's foremost nuclear weapons experts argues that the White House has been so heedless of the threat that nuclear armageddon in one or more US cities is now "more likely than not" over the next decade. Graham Allison, a former defence official under both Republican and Democratic administrations and now a leading researcher at Harvard, describes the Bush administration as "reckless" for its failure to secure fissile materials around the world and its apparent lack of interest in preventing North Korea and Iran from becoming nuclear powers. In his book Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, Mr Allison lays out a series of measures to minimise the risk that al-Qa'ida or another group could either build or buy a nuclear weapon and then smuggle it into the United States. He demonstrates that the Bush White House, for all its bullish rhetoric, has taken none of them. "No one observing the behaviour of the US government after 9/11 would note any significant changes in activity aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring the world's most destructive technologies," he writes. At the same time, al-Qa'ida is known to have taken steps to obtain nuclear weaponry since 1992, and has publicly stated its ambition to kill four million Americans. "On the current course," Mr Allison concludes, "nuclear terrorism is inevitable." The most likely scenario, according to security experts, is that al-Qa'ida or another group would buy or steal fissile material and then construct its own bomb, using science that has been in the public domain for 30 years. Hence the urgent need to secure the world's relatively restricted stockpiles of that fissile material - either highly enriched uranium or plutonium. However, a programme for securing nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, pioneered by US Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, has been so poorly funded that it will take another 13 years to finish at the current pace. "The incandescent and incontestable fact is that in the two years after 9/11, fewer potential nuclear weapons' worth of highly enriched uranium and plutonium were secured than in the two years before 9/11," Mr Allison told The Independent on Sunday. A further 43 countries have varying amounts of fissile material as by-products of their civilian nuclear power industries, but as things stand the US is only willing to take this off their hands if they pay for the privilege. Mr Allison described the Bush administration's approach to North Korea and Iran as "paralysis" - offering neither carrots nor sticks to prevent those countries becoming full nuclear weapons states. If North Korea developed a full nuclear production line - carrying with it the distinct possibility of selling parts or technology to the highest bidder - it would be "the greatest failure of American diplomacy in all our history". A nuclear North Korea would almost certainly induce Japan and South Korea to develop their own programmes. And the Bush administration is talking about new nuclear tests and the development of so-called "mini-nukes" and atomic bunker-buster bombs. Mr Allison ascribed many of the White House's failures to the war in Iraq, which, he says, has diverted attention and eaten up resources in a country that had neither nuclear weapons nor a nuclear weapons programme. But he also accused the White House of a failure of imagination, an odd combination of denial and fatalism."They don't get that this is a preventable catastrophe," he said. An effective "war on nuclear terrorism", Mr Allison argued, would cost around $5bn (£2.75bn) per year. "In a current budget that devotes more than $500bn to defence and the war in Iraq," he suggested, "a penny of every dollar for what Bush calls 'our highest priority' would not be excessive." UK Independent Ltd. ***************************************************************** 24 The Facts: Nuclear plant value fallout persists thefacts.com Sunday, August 22, 2004 By Elliott Blackburn The Facts Published August 22, 2004 MATAGORDA COUNTY — County officials expect to survive a drop in tax revenue after nuclear plant property values fell $178.6 million this year, but are less confident about the next fiscal year. The budgets of seven taxing districts, including Palacios ISD, the navigation district and the hospital district, are being stretched to handle the decrease in taxable property. County leaders said they were pleased that the 20 percent drop in taxable value was not as bad as previously expected. But officials are gloomier about the prospect of collecting taxes on less than 50 percent of the South Texas Project, a 2,500-megawatt nuclear facility near Wads-worth, beginning next fiscal year. © 2004 The Facts. All rights reserved. Published in Clute, Texas. A Southern Newspaperspublication. ***************************************************************** 25 Times-Standard: Generating a mystery: the story behind PG's missing nuclear fuel Article Last Updated: Sunday, August 22, 2004 - Andrew Bird The Times-Standard KING SALMON -- It was fall of 1968. Steppenwolf's top hit, "Born to be Wild," roared from the radio. The summer's blockbuster movie, "2001, a Space Odyssey," was still captivating theater audiences. Ford introduced the California Special, a high-performance edition of its top-selling Mustang. At Pacific Gas and Electric's 5-year-old nuclear power generating unit at the Humboldt Bay Power Plant south of Eureka, technicians cut three 18-inch-long segments from a spent fuel assembly -- labeled A-49 -- containing enriched uranium oxide. What became of these segments, weighing about 4 pounds total, has evolved into a 36-year-old mystery that has PG's nuclear power officials and representatives from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission bewildered as they search for the radioactive material in the spent fuel pool at a plant next to King Salmon. After an initial search of the pool -- which took more than a month -- was completed this week, the utility announced the segments were not in the most likely places in the pool, and it will conduct a more intense search, lasting several more weeks. "We are bound and determined to find it," PG spokesman Lloyd Coker said on Friday. In 1968, General Electric Co. notified PG and other customers that nuclear fuel it had manufactured -- enriched uranium pellets packed into 84-inch-long, half-inch-diameter rods called "pins" -- might be defective, Coker said. The reason, Coker added, was the "cladding," or casing. These pellets were cased in stainless steel. The industry later switched to zirconium alloy. According to a document PG sent to the NRC detailing its search for the missing fuel, the minutes of an October 1968 Onsite Review Committee meeting state that the segments cut from A-49 -- removed from plant's reactor core in 1965 -- "were placed into a small container in preparation for shipment to Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, for analysis. "The meeting minutes further state that the shipment to Battelle was subsequently canceled," and the segments, still in the shipping container, were returned to the pool. However, the "specific location of this container in the (pool) was not identified," the document says. Fast forward three dozen years. PG is permanently decommissioning Unit No. 3 at King Salmon -- the unit with the nuclear reactor that was shut down in 1976 after it was discovered to be lying atop a fault line. Part of this process involves moving spent fuel and other contaminated material and equipment from the storage pool built in 1963 to a "dry cask storage" unit, consisting of steel containers. When technicians started inventorying the pool, they discovered in late June this year the existence of the segments cut in 1968, but there was no record of them in the pool's inventory records, Coker said. Using a remote-controlled robotics arm with a camera attached, PG technicians, with NRC investigators looking over their shoulders, searched the pool in early July. This pool -- 28 by 22 feet with depths varying 26 to 36 feet, is much like a swimming pool, Coker said. It is lined with two feet of concrete on top of a stainless steel liner, Coker said. The pool is packed with 390 used fuel assemblies along with radioactive material, equipment and tools left from when the nuclear reactor was active, Coker said. The initial search -- a process that must be executed slowly to be thorough, Coker said -- consisted of looking inside four containers where material similar to the missing segments is stored. These consist of two containers that resemble 55 gallon drums and two that resemble crab pots, Coker said. Satisfied the missing segments are not in these containers, technicians are now searching the nooks and crannies of the pool that are more inaccessible, Coker said. These areas include spaces between large pieces of equipment and among the 390 spent rods, Coker said. Meanwhile, other employees are poring over volumes of old records, Coker said. It is possible the segments were shipped to one of three facilities in the 1960s: Battelle in Ohio, General Electric's Vallecitos Nuclear Center in Livermore or Nuclear Fuel Services in West Valley, N.Y. It's also possible, but "highly unlikely," Coker said, the segments were shipped to one of three radioactive waste disposal sites at Beatty, Nev., Richland, Wash., or Barnwell, S.C. There is no chance the segments were stolen, Coker said. An NRC spokeswoman agreed. "To take this material out of the plant would have sent off radiation alarms," said NRC public affairs officer Beth Hayden. The segments would have to be properly encased in containers a potential thief would have no access to, Hayden said, adding that without the containers the radiation would probably kill them. PG is not the only company to lose track of nuclear fuel, Hayden said. A plant in Connecticut has never found several full-size rods discovered missing in the late 1990s, she said. In April this year, a plant in Vermont also discovered some fuel missing, Hayden said, but it turned up last month in the plant's storage pool. News:: Inside North Coast © 2004 Times - Standard ***************************************************************** 26 Guardian Unlimited: Fatal accidents damage Japan's nuclear dream Eric Johnston in Mihama Sunday August 22, 2004 The Observer On the coast of the Japan Sea, two and a half hours by train from Kyoto, is the quiet fishing village of Mihama. Noted for its harbour and beautiful beaches, it draws tourists from all over the country. When told by local television crews that the white buildings on the other side of the harbour house a nuclear power plant, and that an accident there killed four people this month, some holidaymakers decide to pack up and leave. Others shrug it off. As one of the teenage surfers says, it's too beautiful a day to worry. Besides, he says, aren't nuclear power plants extremely safe? Such blind public faith in nuclear power has allowed Japan to embrace the energy source at a time when many nations are reconsidering the wisdom of using it. Japan operates 52 plants around the country, providing roughly a third of the country's electric power. Four more are under construction. While the plants all use conventional uranium, there are plans to burn mixed uranium-plutonium fuel in several, including the one at Mihama. There are also plans to continue with a fast-breeder reactor programme which would use pure plutonium instead of uranium. Inside these reactors, the plutonium multiplies, holding out the prospect that Japan could have its own cheap, renewable energy source, a dream it has held since the late 19th century. But the dream is turning into a nightmare, and opposition to nuclear power is growing. Since 1999 a spate of accidents, scandals and cover-ups have shaken public confidence. In late September 1999, anti-nuclear activists in Japan and England discovered data relating to a shipment of mixed uranium-plutonium fuel manufactured at Sellafield that had been falsified by staff at British Nuclear Fuels. The fuel was to be used in a plant near Mihama and operated by the same utility, Kansai Electric Power Co (Kepco). Despite warnings by Japanese activists that there was something strange about the data, BNFL and Kepco insisted there was nothing to worry about. Only when BNFL admitted the falsification was use of the fuel cancelled. As anti-nuclear activists and Kepco were fighting over the meaning of numbers on a spreadsheet, Japan's worst nuclear accident occurred at Tokaimura, near Tokyo, on 30 September 1999. Two workers at the plant died when they disregarded safety procedures and dumped a large quantity of uranium into a settling basin. The uranium reached critical mass, causing an explosion. Tens of thousands of people in the area were quarantined and checked for radiation. Tokaimura was the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. It was also a turning point for Japan's anti-nuclear movement. Tokaimura, the BNFL scandal and, in 2002, scandals at Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) in which the utility admitted it had covered up structural damage at its nuclear power plants, have led to a loss of public trust. In 1990 a government-sponsored survey on public attitudes to nuclear power showed that 55 per cent favoured the active or cautious development of nuclear power plants, with about 38 per cent against. Just over a decade later, after the Tepco scandal, only 19 per cent of Japanese favoured continued development of nuclear plants, while nearly two-thirds opposed further development or wanted Japan to stop nuclear power generation entirely. 'Public trust in nuclear power is eroding annually and will continue to erode unless the Japanese government and industry changes the way it operates,' said Kyoto-based Aileen Mioko Smith, one of the key activists involved in bringing the BNFL affair to light. One of the main organisations in the battle against nuclear power is the Tokyo-based NGO Citizens' Nuclear Information Centre. Earlier this year, reflecting growing divisions within the Japanese government about the wisdom of nuclear power, the Japan Atomic Energy Commission appointed the centre's co-director, Hideyuki Ban, to a committee planning the country's long-term nuclear energy programme. The anti-nuclear lobby also found unexpected support from members of the ruling Liberal Democratic party known as the Young Turks who, unlike their elders, have no ties to the nuclear power lobby and are fed up with the scandals. Led by Taro Kono, the son of a former foreign minister, they are publicly questioning the need for nuclear power and are calling for a moratorium on certain projects, such as the operation of a plant at Rokkasho, in northern Japan, that is supposed to begin reprocessing spent nuclear fuel in 2006. Towns throughout Japan, hoping for government aid to prop up local economies, have put their names forward as candidates to host nuclear waste facilities. In the past year mayors and a few business officials in half a dozen towns had debated allowing high-level nuclear waste to be buried in their backyards. But, despite the lure of money and jobs, citizens have opposed their efforts. One town unlikely to get a nuclear waste dump is Mihama. While the mayor approved, the government of Mihama's Fukui prefecture has said it will block such facilities, giving residents one less thing to worry about. Graphics The Mox ships' journey around the world (pdf) Nuclear map of Britain US nuclear map Useful links British Energy Department of Trade and Industry British Nuclear Fuels Ltd Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Greenpeace HSE nuclear glossary UK atomic energy authority National Radiological Protection Board Friends of the Earth World Nuclear Association World Nuclear Transport Institute [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** 27 Guardian Unlimited: Brian Wilson: Face the facts. The future must be nuclear Renewables won't deliver. Government must learn to stop worrying and love nuclear power, argues former energy minister Brian Wilson Sunday August 22, 2004 The Observer The case for resuming a nuclear energy programme in the UK is so strong that the time is ripe to take the argument head-on. As the citizens of Cornwall and Perthshire last week surveyed the consequences of climatic mayhem, they might also have been invited to form views on whether it really makes sense to abandon our only existing significant source of carbon-free energy. This is a leap in thinking that distinguished scientists are already taking - from Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the government, to James Lovelock, guru of Gaia and arch-environmentalist. Both started out from an anti-nuclear bias but, on the basis of empirical scientific evidence, arrived at the same conclusion. In the age of global warming, opposition to nuclear power is a cop-out rather than a rational or responsible position. The Labour government has sought to reconcile two positions that are almost certainly irreconcilable. On the one hand, we have signed up for Kyoto and taken a lead in arguing the urgency of the climate change imperative. On the other, we brought into government a generational prejudice against nuclear power that evolved largely on the premise that it is the other side of the coin that is nuclear weapons. Historically, this contention is probably true. There might not have been a civil nuclear industry had it not been a by-product of military investment. But while that is an interesting historical and political fact, it is not a persuasive argument against a present-day assessment of what nuclear power has to offer. If Tony Benn was able to overcome that same ideological barrier almost 40 years ago, when left-wing concern about 'the nuclear threat' was a great deal more intense, then there is no reason for it to daunt anyone today. But the case, now as then, must be argued. It has to be shown that anti-nuclearism in the age of global warming is a deeply conservative position. Ask people whether they are in favour of new nuclear power stations and you will probably get 75 per cent against. But ask them if they think Britain should remain capable of generating enough electricity to meet our national needs, based on indigenous resources, and you will get even more than that in favour. At that point, the read-across to maintaining a substantial nuclear component is not difficult to establish. When we published an Energy White Paper last year, two major objectives were put up in lights. The first was the fundamentally important requirement to ensure security of supply. But the second, reflecting the priorities of the age, was carbon reduction. This led to a huge emphasis being placed on renewables - which I am all in favour of. But renewables, unfortunately, do not deliver the stable base-load that is required to deliver security of supply. For those who oppose nuclear, the familiar alternative position is to urge a far more massive commitment to renewable energy than even the one that the government has offered. At this point, however, there is a vast dichotomy between aspiration and delivery. To meet even the 2010 targets, we have to bring onstream each year a renewables capacity equivalent to the total that already exists. The idea that we can double or treble that outcome is fantasy, particularly in the light of public opposition to wind farms. As things stand, no matter how successful we are in delivering on renewables targets, the outcome in carbon-reduction terms for the next 20 years will only be to cancel out what we are throwing away through the run-down of carbon-free nuclear generation. I firmly believe that, as climate change rises through the league table of political concerns, that approach will become unsustainable. Surely it is better to pre-empt that mood by making the case for nuclear new-build, probably on existing nuclear sites. It is a myth that the world is turning its back on nuclear. A couple of dozen countries are currently planning new nuclear programmes - from the geographically close France to the ideologically liberal Finland, not to mention our G8 partners in Japan and the United States. I recall asking the Finnish energy minister how they had managed to deliver this outcome. She replied: 'Through eight years of honest debate.' Maybe it is time we began a similar, if truncated, process. The most effective argument against a new nuclear programme is that we still do not know what to do with the waste. But beware those who use this issue as a convenient show-stopper and want to make new-build consecutive upon an 'answer' to the question. It has not been beyond the wit of other countries to find publicly acceptable solutions, particularly now that retrievability has been established as being deliverable. In any case, waste is overwhelmingly a legacy issue. The waste produced by a new generation of nuclear stations would be incremental only at the margins. By 2020, most of Britain's electricity will be generated from imported gas. There is no doubt or argument about that. The outstanding issues are those of degree. How dependent do we want to become on imported primary energy sources? How much can renewables realistically be expected to deliver at affordable cost? Sensible answers to these two questions will lead inexorably to the conclusion that the case for nuclear is as strong now as when Tony Benn drove it in the 1960s. We should get on with it. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** 28 Daily Yomiuri: Rescue workers kept in dark about radiation Yomiuri Shimbun Ambulance workers and doctors were not informed about whether the 11 workers killed or injured in a steam pipe blowout at a nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture had been exposed to radiation when they treated the victims. Four workers died and seven others were injured when the blowout occurred at the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant's No. 3 reactor in Mihamacho earlier this month. The failure to inform emergency service workers was revealed at a meeting in Matsuyama of a group studying the provisions for medical treatment in radioactive accidents. Accounts given by participants at the meeting suggest Kansai Electric Power Co. and other parties involved in disaster prevention had communication problems. The workers killed or injured in the blowout were not exposed to radioactivity, since the leak occurred in the secondary cooling system, where nonradioactive superheated, high-pressure coolant is circulated. According to Tatsuji Wada, head of the Mihama Fire Department's rescue team, the ambulance workers were told only that "an accident had occurred outside a radioactivity-controlled area." Wada said there was no information initially whether the victims had been exposed to radioactivity or whether the site of the accident was contaminated with radioactivity. Wada said the ambulance workers were met at the entrance to the nuclear power plant by KEPCO officials and then escorted to the accident site. They then took the victims to hospitals. "Ambulance and hospital workers could have been exposed to radiation, too, if it had been a radioactive leak," Wada said. "KEPCO officials should have provided accurate information." Yoshihiro Sugiura, head of the outpatient department at Tsuruga City Hospital in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, said hospital workers had to measure the radiation levels of eight victims before carrying them out of the ambulances at the hospital. Doctors who treated the nuclear plant workers described a similar situation in writing to the Matsuyama meeting. Hiroyuki Hayashi, a doctor at Fukui Prefectural Hospital's emergency medical care center, said he had no information on the levels of radiation and people's exposure to radioactivity. Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 29 London Free Press: Nuclear materials pose terror risk, expert says TORONTO -- Terrorists would have easy pickings at hundreds of Ontario university labs and businesses with radioactive materials on hand, the Radiation Safety Institute of Canada says. The danger is materials could be placed on subways and in malls to spook the public, Fergal Nolan, chief executive of the Toronto-based institute, told a legislative committee updating Ontario's Emergency Management Act. "You don't need a bomb to create terror and panic," said Nolan, who acknowledged the odds of such a scenario are slim. Nolan said Ontario companies are among the world's biggest manufacturers of radioactive materials for medical use -- chemicals, gases and devices that in the wrong hands, could cause harm. "People need to worry about the accessibility of nuclear materials to the general population." Some materials could find their way into a "dirty bomb" that would send dangerous radioactive particles into the air, Nolan said. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is doing safety audits at 40 universities because "there is a lot of concern," Nolan added. Copyright © The London Free Press 2001,2002,2003 ***************************************************************** 30 Bradenton Herald: Proposal may aid Beryllium workers | 08/21/2004 | New federal proposal, if passed, may help workers with lung cancer collect on their benefit claims DONNA WRIGHT Herald Staff Writer Former Lorel American Beryllium Co. workers who have lung cancer may be covered under a proposed law that would expand the benefits and compensation program for atomic workers. HR 1758 would also help former and current atomic weapons workers who can prove they are sick because of their exposure to toxic materials during their employment collect benefits, if it's passed and signed into law by President Bush. Both reforms are badly needed, say backers of the bill, who include Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Sarasota, and Rep. Jim Davis, D-Tampa, who represent parts of Manatee County in Congress. The reform measure imposes strict deadlines for processing claims, extends coverage to additional diseases, including lung cancer and amends worker compensation rules to make sure direct employees of DOE are paid benefits. The bill also seeks to expand coverage for atomic energy weapons facilities or beryllium vendors beyond the dates for which such facilities were under contract with the DOE. The extension of benefits is based upon the premise that residual contamination created during those contract periods continues to put workers at risk in later years. Harris supports the bill on behalf of former employees of Lorel American Beryllium Co. In a prepared statement released through her Washington, D.C., office Aug. 11, Harris said she "agreed to co-sponsor HR 1758 because she believes that every individual who suffers from cancer as a result of their work at the American Beryllium plant deserves the opportunity to prove their claim." z Harris said she remains committed to investigating every possible federal resource to help the victims of Tallevast recover from the medical and ecological crisis that they continue to endure due to chemical leakage and spills over the years. The Department of Energy contract eligibility period for workers at the American Beryllium plant covers all of 1968 and Jan. 1, 1980, through Dec. 31, 1989, said Theresa Davy, with the Jacksonville regional office of DOE. The extension of benefit period could make hundreds more workers at American Beryllium eligible for up to $150,000 in compensation and medical benefits if they are ill because of their exposure to the toxic metal. Victims speak up Davis, who signed on to the bill on July 9, 2003, said his office has not been contacted by any former workers of American Beryllium Co., but he has heard from workers at the atomic weapons facility in Pinellas County, the only DOE-owned atomic weapons factory in Florida. "These are overdue changes in the program that will treat people more fairly by putting the money into the hands of people who have proven they have been injured," said Davis. "Sick people don't have time to wait." While the Department of Labor has been prompt in processing claims and paying benefits for employees of beryllium vendors, the Department of Energy has been very slow to pay workers' claims at its own facilities. "The Department of Energy's attitude has been abominable," said Richard Miller, vice president of the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog group lobbying Congress on behalf of the workers who helped make nuclear weapons during the Cold War. "DOE has received $95 million to administer the program over the past 2½ years but has paid out only 14 claims to date," Miller said. "These people are slow-walking this compensation program into oblivion." Facilities owned directly by the Energy Department fall under a Part D of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness compensation program. Workers' claims at those facilities are processed through the Department of Energy. Payment of benefits is then made through workers' compensation programs at the state level. Those programs are not standard across the nation and have proved to be obstacles to payment, Miller said. Claims in and out Workers at plants who had DOE contracts, like American Beryllium, file their claims through the Department of Labor and compensation and medical benefits are paid directly through the Labor Department. So far, the DOL has left the DOE in the dust when it comes to processing claims. Of the 57,112 claims received since Aug. 12, the Labor Department has paid more than $874 million in settled claims. The Labor Department has also paid out nearly $40 million in medical bills for eligible workers. The Energy Department, on the other hand, has paid on only 14 claims out of nearly 25,000 filed as of July 30. Those 14 claims paid out a total $221,467.59 to workers or their survivors in Tennessee, Washington, South Carolina and Alaska. The largest claim was paid to a leukemia patient in South Carolina for $108,559.59. The smallest was $31.95 paid to a Tennessee worker with prostate cancer. Of the 499 claims filed by Pinellas workers with the DOE over the past 2½ years, none has been settled. Workers employed at other DOE facilities throughout the nation but who now live in Florida, have filed 845 claims. None of those has been settled. A DOE appropriations bill already approved by the House and awaiting a vote in the Senate would, if passed and signed into law, transfer Part D of the compensation program to the Department of Labor. HR 4200 would also expand compensation coverage beyond the dates of Department of Energy contracts. Expanded compensation The appropriations bill also seeks to expand the compensation program to workers in facilities where there is a high residual contamination of radioactive materials. The measure does not include beryllium. Sen. Bill Nelson supports the amendments to HR 4200, which would reform the compensation program, according to spokesman Bryan Gulley. More than 130 former atomic and nuclear weapon workers filed claims earlier this month when Labor Department representatives visited Bradenton. The majority of claim filers were former employees of former Lorel American Beryllium Co. in Tallevast. Many, like Larry Richmond, a former quality control inspector, suffer from severe respiratory diseases that may be linked to the exposure to beryllium. Richmond, who now lives in St. Petersburg, has already lost half of his right lung and his spleen, and his immune system is compromised. Now 58, Richmond has been on disability since he was forced to quit at age 46 because of chronic breathing problems. Donna Wright health and social services reporter, can be reached at 745-7049 or at dwright@bradentonherald.com. ***************************************************************** 31 TheStar.com: Missing container raises questions about security Sun. Aug. 22, 2004. | Updated at 09:21 PM FROM CANADIAN PRESS HALIFAX  It took three days for Canada's national police force to be told that a suspicious shipping container was missing from a Halifax pier last spring. The theft of the boxcar-size crate in mid-April and the delay in reporting it initially sent shivers through senior ranks of the RCMP, Canada's lead federal agency in the war on terrorism. The delay "was more than enough time" for a potential terrorist to drive the container up to  and possibly over  the U.S. border, said a senior RCMP source, who spoke to The Canadian Press on the condition of anonymity. Compounding the problem, customs officers with the Canada Border Services Agency couldn't say exactly when the huge, metal container was stolen  only that the theft happened some time between April 10 and April 20. The glaring security lapse also came at a time when U.S. security officials were concerned about a possible terrorist attack in the weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention in July. The container has yet to be found. While Canadian authorities are confident the theft was not the work of terrorists, it has nonetheless raised serious concerns, given the fact Ottawa has spent millions of dollars improving and reorganizing port security. On April 21, customs officials discovered the container, which was targeted for inspection and supposed to be under surveillance, was missing. It took the border agency two days to figure out the container was not misplaced. The theft was reported to Halifax Regional Police and a special port security task force on April 23. Another day went by before the RCMP was told. "We found out about it through the back door," the source said. Given the heightened state of security at Canada's ports, "we would have expected (customs) to notify us the moment it was (reported) missing." Senior Mounties were furious because a special task force that included the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency, military police and Halifax Regional Police was set up at the port in 2003 to prevent this kind of oversight. Despite the concerns, authorities do not believe the container carried any weapons of mass destruction, such as a radioactive dirty bomb, and did not pose a national security risk for either Canada or the United States. Though they will not admit it publicly, police sources said they believe the crate was carrying drugs. Authorities refuse to say where the container came from or what shipping line carried it. While confirming there was a significant delay, an RCMP spokesman downplayed the incident and said corrective action has been taken. "Our belief is that there was a simple miscommunication associated with the delay in this matter," said Cpl. Carl Hubley. At a meeting in May involving the RCMP's top federal enforcement officer in Nova Scotia, customs officials and members of the port security team, the need for better co-operation was underlined. "The partners certainly left that meeting with a greater understanding of communication and I think we're headed in the right direction now," said Hubley. Meanwhile, officials with the Canada Border Services Agency said their group was not to blame for the delay because once it was confirmed the container was gone, the matter was promptly reported to the task force. "I think the job was done by the Canada Border Services Agency," said spokeswoman Jennifer Morrison. "As far as sharing information, all of the proper steps were taken." She suggested that once the theft was reported to Halifax police, which has the responsibility of investigating port crimes, it was up to that agency to pass the word along. "I can't comment on how the national ports enforcement team shares their information," said Morrison. "Halifax Regional Police were brought into this. It's their investigation." Morrison conceded that customs officials have drawn lessons from what happened, but she refused to indicate what they were. "Any areas of concern were identified and addressed immediately," she said. The Mounties insisted such a serious security breach should have immediately set off alarm bells at a more senior level than dockside investigators. Sgt. Don Spicer said his senior staff was told about the theft the moment a criminal case file was opened and it's not the responsibility of local police to notify the Mounties about an incident where federal officers were supposedly in the loop. Halifax police have said they have yet to identify any suspects in the theft. Stealing a container is by no means an easy task, given that a crane would have been needed to load it on a truck. Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All ***************************************************************** 32 Boston.com: Drinking-water contaminant tied to blasting The Boston Globe Drinking-water contaminant tied to blasting Boston Globe The weekly blasting at North Street in Westford rattles houses, neighbors say. But until now, no one realized it might affect the town's drinking water. Joyce Pellino Crane August 22, 2004 WESTFORD Drinking-water contaminant tied to blasting The weekly blasting at North Street in Westford rattles houses, neighbors say. But until now, no one realized it might affect the town's drinking water. With one of the town's eight wells closed due to high levels of perchlorate, a contaminant found in explosives, officials may soon introduce regulations and bylaws preventing the chemical's use in explosives. Officials stress that the town's water supply is safe, and that water from the closed well is not being mixed with the rest of the town's drinking water. ''The bottom line is we're basically OK," said Robert Worthley, the town's water-treatment manager. ''We're watching our supply. We're watching our demand. We're managing our resources to best utilize them." On July 16, Water Department officials received test results that showed a perchlorate level of 3.3 parts per billion at the Cote Well in northwest Westford. State guidelines recommend no more than one part per billion, and the well was closed. Department officials were required to notify the public and were advised to monitor ground water near the Stony Brook School, which is near the well. The test results prompted Westford environmental analyst Elaine Major to begin searching for the source of the contaminant. Perchlorate is also found in fertilizers, and athletic fields were recently seeded and organically fertilized at the Stony Brook School. But monitoring tests did not link the contaminant to fertilizer used on the fields. Officials then began testing nearby bodies of water, and the results led them about a half-mile away to North Street. In test results released last week, a detention pool near an abandoned quarry site registered perchlorate at 819 parts per billion. A nearby catch basin showed levels at 40 parts per billion. Blasting in the North Street area has been going on for years. Currently, the blasting is part of construction of an access road to a Highway Department garage. ''It seems to me that blasting may be associated with" the perchlorate levels, said Robert Jefferies, chairman of Westford's Board of Selectmen. ''I've heard that the blasting cap is where the perchlorate is located. If that's true, then [the Department of Environmental Protection] should have put out requirements on blasting." An Aug. 13 visit to the Cote Well by Department of Environmental Protection officials resulted in a plan to begin pumping the well's water to a trench over the next several weeks in the hope the perchlorate disappears or dissipates, Worthley said. If town officials approve the plan, testing on the well's water would probably take place weekly, he added. Under state guidelines, testing of the town's remaining seven wells will occur in early October. Westford's 22,000 residents receive their water from private wells and eight town-owned wells from which water is mixed at two treatment plants in town. In all, the public wells provide 4.6 million gallons of water a day, said Worthley. This summer, consumption has averaged about 2 million gallons per day, leaving an ample cushion, even with the Cote Well shut down. Continued... 2004 The New York Times Company ***************************************************************** 33 Las Vegas SUN: Letter: Users must fund nuclear disposal August 20, 2004 LAS VEGAS SUN WEEKEND EDITION August 21 - 22, 2004 Clarence Lanzrath's letter of Aug. 10, asking where the nuclear waste will go if not here in Nevada, is silly. The people who own and benefit from the production of the waste should deal with it themselves. Instead they want to ship it through state after state to our back yard. People who had nothing to do with the production of the waste are now told we must accept it -- all because the nuclear lobby wants the federal government to take it off their hands. If nuclear plants are such a good idea and so safe, let them keep their waste where they produce it. Let them pay for the storage, not the government. TAMARA THOMPSON ***************************************************************** 34 RGJ: DOE says most Yucca questions addressed RGJ.com ASSOCIATED PRESS 8/20/2004 11:17 pm LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Energy Department has responses for 281 of 293 key technical questions posed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada, department managers said. Officials told NRC managers Thursday in Rockville, Md., that they remain on track to submit a license application in December to open and operate the Yucca Mountain repository. Nevada and its lawyers say the license application process should stop until the Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency set a new radiation standard for the repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. They point to a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling July 9 that a 10,000-year EPA standard violated the law, since the National Academy of Sciences called for a much longer time frame. Margaret Chu, chief of the Yucca Mountain project, told the NRC it was crucial to move forward with licensing to meet the goal of opening the repository in 2010. Joseph Ziegler, director of the office of license application and strategy, said that as of Aug. 11, project scientists had addressed all but 12 key questions posed by the NRC. Energy Department officials say the 10,000-year EPA standard is not officially invalid until appeals end. Parties to the case have until Monday to seek a rehearing, and Congress or other court actions could also leave the standard in place. Budget questions, a pending decision from an NRC administrative court and the possibility of further action on a recent federal appellate court case also could affect the project. Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett Co. Inc.Newspaper. Use ***************************************************************** 35 Bradenton Herald: Lockheed finishes Tallevast report | 08/21/2004 | KEVIN O'HORAN Herald Staff Writer The company responsible for cleaning up acres of contaminated groundwater in Tallevast has finished a report outlining how it plans to find how wide, how deep and how much poison is in the water. Lockheed Martin Corp. leaders submitted the report, part of a written agreement entered into with Florida regulators, as the first step to detailing how the company will clean cancer-causing solvents leaked from the former American Beryllium Co. plant. Crews working for the aerospace giant in January 2001 discovered signs of a leak at the 1600 Tallevast Road plant. Tests since have shown solvent levels in water beneath the plant at nearly 12,000 times state standards, and in nearby wells at up to 500 times code. Lockheed leaders entered into a cleanup consent order July 29 with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, agreeing to submit within 20 days a site assessment plan for how they would define the extent of contamination. DEP leaders, pressed to respond to Hurricane Charley, later extended the deadline by two days, to Friday, a deadline the company met. "We did receive it on time," Mike Zavosky, a spokesman with DEP's Tampa office, said of the assessment plan. DEP officials wouldn't provide details of the plan, and Lockheed's leadership offered little more. "We made recommendations for investigation of soil and groundwater that we want to do," said Meredith Rouse Davis, Lockheed's senior manager of corporate affairs. "The difference between this and the assessments we've already done is this will cover a wider area and put wells in at deeper depths, both on- and off-site." Previous work to define the scope of contamination erred in assessing how far solvents like trichloroethylene had spread from the plant, how deep the poisons had sunk and how much of the material had fouled the water. Per the consent order, the agency will review and comment on Lockheed's latest proposal. Once Lockheed and DEP leaders come to agreement on a plan, the company will have 14 days to begin testing the area. The order further states that Lockheed must complete a report of its findings within 90 days of that final assessment plan, draw up a cleanup plan within 90 days of DEP accepting that report and start cleanup no more than 120 days after DEP clears that. Kevin O'Horan, environmental reporter, can be reached at 745-7037, or at kohoran@bradentonherald.com. ***************************************************************** 36 Arizona Republic: Governor wants inquiry after nuclear packing material leak Mark Shaffer Republic Flagstaff Bureau Aug. 21, 2004 12:00 AM FLAGSTAFF - Gov. Janet Napolitano on Friday called for an investigation of the Department of Energy's nuclear waste shipping procedures after a truck was found to be leaking packing material from a shipment of uranium tetrafluoride near Flagstaff last weekend. A convoy of trucks was en route from Oak Ridge, Tenn., to a disposal site in Nevada along Interstate 40 in northern Arizona on Sunday when the leak occurred. "This event gives me grave concern that, even though no radioactive material was released, there appears to be a systemic weakness in your shipping and packaging procedures," Napolitano wrote in a letter to Department of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Pati Urias, a spokeswoman for Napolitano, said the driver of the leaking truck was called by another driver after the convoy left Winslow and told that something was falling from his low-level nuclear waste load rig. The truck stopped at a rest area 15 miles west of Flagstaff and the westbound lanes of I-40 were closed for 45 minutes as members of the state Department of Public Safety hazardous materials team and Arizona Radiation Regulatory Agency examined the leak, Urias said. In her letter to Abraham, Napolitano described the leaking material as "white, granular solids and a clear-like gel" which were later determined to be the "absorbent overpack material." Napolitano also wrote that she had been told that three other trucks in the five-truck convoy were leaking the same material. The shipment was under contract to Bechtel Jacobs Co. of Tennessee, Napolitano wrote. Tetrafluoride, or green salt, is the second stage in a three-stage process to produce uranium ore, according to the Department of Energy's Web site. Meanwhile, local emergency officials in the Flagstaff area continued to be puzzled as to why they were not notified of the leakage when it happened. The Arizona Republic - Front Page Copyright 2004, azcentral.com. All rights reserved. USA Today| Gannett Co. Inc.| Gannett Foundation| Real Cities Network ***************************************************************** 37 Townhall.com: Edwin J. Feulner: Wasting a Good Solution Townhall.com 214 Massachusetts Ave NE Washington, DC 20002 202-608-6099 Fax 202-544-7330 August 22, 2004 Our country has a problem. And we have a solution. But politics is threatening to interfere. The problem: Tens of thousands of tons of dangerous nuclear waste are stored at more than 125 sites around the nation. The solution: Bury the waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Yucca would become a giant underground repository. It’s designed to contain nuclear waste for 10,000 years -- long enough for it to decay to safe levels. At Yucca, our waste would be stored safely underneath 1,000 feet of solid rock. Now comes the politics. “One of the biggest environmental and security challenges facing Nevadans is the threat that Yucca Mountain will be turned into the nation’s nuclear waste dump,” John Kerry warned during a recent campaign stop in the state. But Kerry and others who want to block Yucca ignore the fact that our nuclear waste has to go somewhere. We can’t simply dump it in the ocean or blast it into space. And we know Yucca Mountain is ideal, because it’s probably the most-studied location in the world. The federal government started investigating whether the site would be suitable for storing nuclear waste back in 1978. Located in a quiet area of Nevada, some 100 miles from the outskirts of Las Vegas, Yucca has all the traits necessary for the long-term storage of radioactive waste. The climate is dry. That means little rain, which might erode the canisters that nuclear waste is stored in. The geology is stable, so it’s unlikely an earthquake would disturb the waste. And the water table at Yucca is contained, so if there’s a leak, it won’t contaminate the water supply anywhere else. Of course, when it comes to storing nuclear waste, most people (understandably) say “not in my backyard.” But right now, the waste is in our backyard. All high-level nuclear waste is the responsibility of the federal government. While we’re dithering over Yucca Mountain, this waste is piling up at temporary sites in almost 40 states. Most of these are near water, and many are in urban or suburban areas. Today, an estimated 161 million people reside within 75 miles of temporarily stored nuclear waste, and each storage site is a potential terrorist target. Contrast that with Yucca Mountain. The federal government owns almost 80 percent of Nevada. Nuclear waste stored there will be far from populated areas. In fact, the site’s nearest neighbor is the Nevada Test Site, which is larger than the state of Rhode Island and is one of the largest restricted-access areas in the United States. That, combined with the fact that Yucca is also surrounded on three sides by Nellis Air Force Base, should help keep the waste safe from potential terrorist attack. Of course, getting the waste to Nevada will pose a challenge. “Under the Yucca Mountain plan,” Kerry warned recently, “more than 50,000 shipments of waste would travel just yards away from homes, hospitals, parks and playgrounds in states across this country.” That’s true, but nuclear waste already is traveling around the country, and the safety record is admirable. In the past 30 years, the government has safely completed more than 2,700 shipments of spent nuclear fuel, and there hasn’t been even a single injury from the release of radioactive materials. With the proper security measures, nuclear waste will be delivered safely to Yucca Mountain. The price of oil is hovering around record highs, and there’s no doubt our country needs to develop alternate sources of energy. Nuclear power is cheap, safe and generates no greenhouse gasses. However, the United States hasn’t opened a new nuclear plant since 1979, partly because we haven’t had any place to put the radioactive waste. But we will -- if we can stop playing politics and get Yucca Mountain open. Dr. Edwin Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation, a Townhall.com member group. ©2004 The Heritage Foundation Contact Edwin J. Feulner | Read Feulner's biography ***************************************************************** 38 Quad-City Times: Spent fuel rods to move outdoors at Cordova Saturday, August 21st, 2004 .Imagine our community 10,000 years from now. One hundred centuries. Ten millennium celebrations..Nothing we see now will remain. The river will have cut a new path..No one plans for outcomes that are 10,000 years away. Yet engineers at the Exelon Corp.’s Quad-Cities nuclear generating station in Cordova are grappling with one.. Exelon’s Brian Maze examines the base layer that will support a four-foot thick concrete pad to store casks of waste from the nuclear plant. View Photo Site Vice President Tim Tulon is overseeing construction of a new area to hold nuclear waste that will remain dangerous for 10,000 years. The meticulous engineering for the Exelon’s planned dry cask storage area intends to provide a safe, temporary home for radioactive fuel rods until they can be moved to a central repository.. Of course, no central repository exists.. Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is caught in the middle of a political and practical dilemma. President Bush says he will proceed with opening the nation’s only permanent nuclear waste dump, regardless of the objections of most Nevadans, their Republican governor, and their three Republican and one Democratic congressmen. John Kerry says he will pull the plug on Yucca Mountain, leaving the 30-year-old dilemma about nuclear waste unresolved. Even if the repository opens, the federal government and states still need to resolve transportation of the waste over U.S. interstates and railroads.. There is no Plan B for long-term nuclear waste storage.. So no one can say for sure if Exelon is building a temporary morgue or a permanent graveyard for nuclear waste.. * * *.Exelon’s Brian Maze is overseeing excavation of a smooth, flat area just slightly smaller than a football field. It is covered with soft, leveled sand. The sand will be covered by fabric. Over that goes a layer of one-inch crushed rock. Then comes a two-foot layer of concrete and soil, topped by another two feet of solid concrete. When finished, this $1.5 million pad — and possibly three more like it — will be able to support up to 48,960 tons of nuclear waste containers.. In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the federal government has an “unconditional obligation” to take the waste off the hands of utilities. In fact, the court ruling said, since the 1950s, the federal government has “owned” the nation’s nuclear waste.. This month, the federal government cut an $80 million check to Exelon, the first payment to settle a lawsuit Exelon filed seeking reimbursement for unforeseen waste storage costs. Exelon is in line to receive $300 million to cover their costs for storing nuclear waste. If the federal government doesn’t open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada by 2010, expect more payments..* * *.Nuclear fuel rods emit no dangerous energy until they are inserted in the reactor and become part of the radioactive reaction. The controlled reactions produce heat and steam which drive generators to create electricity. The Cordova reactors provide enough to power about 1 million households, most in the Chicago area.. Each reactor’s core has 724 rods that are shifted and readjusted to maintain an even dispersal of energy. During refueling every two years, about 280 spent rods are removed and replaced with new ones. The highly radioactive rods glow blue when pulled from the core and placed in an indoor water tank, initially designed as temporary storage.. No one in 1972 anticipated that nuclear waste disposal would be unresolved 30 years later. Today, more than 6,000 radioactive rods fill the tank..Nationally, the waste now totals some 42 metric tons and is located at 131 nuclear plants in 39 states. In addition, untold amounts of nuclear waste are stored in secret at military installations across the nation.. * * *.Regardless of the fate of Yucca Mountain, the Cordova plant site next year will begin amassing 17-foot tall concrete cylinders, called casks, that look like corn silos. The casks will be the final resting place for spent nuclear rods packed into impermeable metal cylinders surrounded by two-foot thick concrete. Each cask weighs 180 tons. Each of the four pads to be constructed will hold 68 casks. That will be 272 casks at $1 million each, fully packed and sealed.. Each cask can withstand a 360 mph wind, equivalent of an F-5 tornado, says Joe Reiss, on-site engineer for Holtec International. The twister that leveled Utica, Ill., was an F-3 tornado. .Reiss is overseeing implementation of the nuclear waste management system called ISFSI. When the project began, the acronym stood for Interim Spent Fuel Storage Installation. Now, documents refer to it as the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation..* * *. The Homeland Security precautions most of us only read about are evident throughout the Cordova plant, where more than $7 million was spent on security this year, mostly on concrete, rock and wire.. The casks will be in the open air behind concrete barricades and a double, razor-wire fence with motion detectors and cameras. Eight guard towers go up this year to surround the entire plant. Each will be staffed round-the-clock— holidays, too— by guards armed with automatic weapons.. For how long? No one knows.. Tulon expects the NRC will authorize the Cordova plant to continue producing power for another 20 years. After that, he seems certain the plant will shut down. Newer ways of generating power from nuclear energy, or perhaps some other source, will make Cordova’s infrastructure obsolete..Tulon seems personally committed to the safe operation of the plant and storage of waste.. “I don’t want to be the one who leaves this as a legacy,” he said..He estimates the casks can safely store the waste for about 100 years.. That leaves about 9,900 years of storage still to be figured out. © 2004, , Davenport, IA A subsidiary ***************************************************************** 39 BBC: Protesters plan Faslane blockade Last Updated: Sunday, 22 August, 2004 [Faslane submarine] Campaigners are calling for peaceful action at Faslane Anti-nuclear protesters are planning a blockade of the Clyde naval base which provides a home to Britain's fleet of Trident nuclear submarines. The mass event at Faslane on Monday is being organised by Trident Ploughshares and Scottish CND. They hope up to 400 people - including politicians and peace activists from Scandinavia, Spain, Belgium and the UK - will take part. Campaigners will attempt to prevent workers from entering the naval base. Faslane has seen a number of protests in recent years against the Trident fleet. More than 100 people were arrested at last year's Big Blockade. 'Futile hunt' Demonstrations will be taking place throughout the day on Monday, with Labour, Green, Socialist and Scottish National Party MSPs among those taking part. Organiser David Mackenzie said: "We are again highlighting the hypocrisy of the UK Government over weapons of mass destruction. "It launched a futile hunt for WMD, costing many thousands of lives in Iraq. Meanwhile, we ourselves have hugely costly and enormously destructive WMD." He said the protest aimed to cause as much disruption as possible and ensure that Trident remained on the political agenda. ***************************************************************** 40 Technology News: Trends: DOE's Basic Research Gets a Boost [TechNewsWorld.com] August 22, 2004 By Dee Ann Divis DOE, through its Office of Science, is the nation's largest supporter of research in the physical sciences such as chemistry and physics. It supports efforts to develop economical fusion power and discover "dark energy" -- the possible key to why the universe is expanding. Free Newsletter Now Available From TechNewsWorld. Tech News Flash is your one-stop source for daily technology news and information, delivered straight to your inbox directly from TechNewsWorld. Keep up with the latest breaking tech news and enjoy insightful analysis from our team of expert writers and reporters. In a year when nearly every government program not tied to national security [Relevant Products/Services from IBM eServer xSeries Systems] is facing budget cuts, the House Appropriations Committee decided to add money to the Department of Energy's budget to boost the nation's investment in basic research. The House added $168.2 million to President request of $3.6 billion for DOE for next year. This might seem small, only a 4.7 percent increase, but White House requests for other science agencies, including [Latest News about NASA] and the , were cut -- in the case of NASA, by a whopping $1.1 billion. DOE, through its Office of Science, is the nation's largest supporter of research in the physical sciences such as chemistry and physics. It supports efforts to develop economical fusion power and discover "dark energy" -- the possible key to why the universe is expanding. DOE funds environmental research, work on nanotechnology, protein research and efforts to build ever more powerful supercomputers. It was DOE that first used its extraordinary computing capability to kick-start the mapping of the human genome. DOE research into tools to study the nature of matter laid the groundwork for non-invasive medical diagnostics such as magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography -- the basis for MRI and PET scans. These are the sorts of discoveries that inspired the House to up the funding. The committee is aware, a congressional staffer said, "that physical sciences formed the foundation for a lot of breakthroughs in other science areas or engineering. (They understand) this is important research and development and that DoE is the place to fund it. ... They said, 'We've got to be sure we get some increase to science here.'" The increase is real, said Tobin Smith, senior federal relations officer for the Association of American Universities. z "It starts to make up ground for what has been several years of flat funding. It does beat inflation," Smith said. The House gave an extra $30 million to support supercomputer [Latest News about supercomputer] research and directed at least $5 million of that be spent on software and applied mathematics. It also added $12 million to fusion research for a total of $276 million. The extra money will ensure that domestic fusion research will not be shortchanged by the United States' decision to contribute to an international fusion research collation. Cold Fusion? "This has nothing to do with cold fusion," said Judy Franz, executive officer of the American Physical Society. "This is very, very hot fusion. This is the kind that physicists believe in and that definitely works. ... I think most people think eventually this will a major source of energy. The question is when and how." Among other "plus ups," Congress added $13 million for nanoscience research and another $13 million-plus for DOE's various laboratories. The labs are a national resource used by agency scientists and non-agency researchers from universities and many other institutions. The new money is not entirely about the projects, however, the staffer revealed. It also is a signal in a fight between the two halves of Congress over nuclear weapons. President Bush asked for more money for nuclear weapons, the staffer explained, and not enough for science, in the view of the House Appropriations Committee. "I think there is sort of a statement here that ... putting the money into science research is more important that putting into nuclear weapons," the staffer said. Weapons Research Unfortunately, the spat over weapons research could delay final passage of an appropriations bill. Key to making any compromise on the weapons issue work will be New Mexico's powerful Republican senator Pete Domenici, the chairman of both the Senate subcommittee on energy and water development and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The two committees allocate DOE's money and then tells the agency how to spend it. It is worth noting that DOE's Los Alamos and Sandia laboratories, both involved in aspects of nuclear weapons research, are located in New Mexico. Among the other possible, delay-causing factors is a squabble over Yucca Mountain, the nation's planned site for disposal of high-level nuclear waste. Also pending is a Senate debate over restructuring the intelligence community. The fiscal year ends Sept. 30. With the built-in distraction of an election year it is unlikely Congress will complete its work in time to fund the government by Oct. 1, when FY 2005 begins. Pros and Cons There is no reason, however, to fear the government will shut down. All sources agree Congress likely will pass a continuing resolution. For DOE, that has both pros and cons. On the one hand, a continuing resolution likely will just continue funding at this year's levels. This means DOE's Office of Science will not see the extra 4.7 percent for quite a while. On the other hand, explained the staffer, any continuing resolution will likely be a simple bill that just allocates the money, with little instruction on how to spend it. This gives the agency much more latitude than it would normally have to tweak how it spends its money. Correction: In last week's PoliSci column on the rising price of science journals, the title for Pat Thibodeau was incorrect. Thibodeau is the immediate past president of the Medical Library Association and associate dean for Library Services and director of the [Latest News about Duke University] Medical Center Library. © 2004 United Press International. All rights reserved. © 1998-2004 ECT News Network, Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 41 SF Chronicle: U.S. scientists say they need an underground lab / Geologists, physicists have work they can't do elsewhere Carolyn Y. Johnson, Boston Globe Sunday, August 22, 2004 Geologists say they need to go a mile beneath Earth's surface to understand how groundwater flows and look for life that thrives under extreme conditions. Physicists say an underground detector is the best place to learn more about neutrinos, particles that allow the sun to burn and the stars to shine. The National Science Foundation is drafting a plan to build a multidisciplinary underground laboratory in the United States that would foster both types of research. It would be the first of its kind in the world -- a single lab in which physicists grapple with questions about the origins of the universe while geologists in a neighboring cavern attempt to unearth the secrets underfoot. If approved and built, the lab could bring the United States firmly to the forefront of underground research -- regaining leadership it first claimed three decades ago at the Homestake lab in South Dakota. Now, U.S. physicists interested in cutting-edge underground particle research have to travel to places such as Canada or Japan. And underground geologists have nowhere to turn at all. "There isn't a basic, fundamental geology laboratory right now," said David Lambert, program director of the science foundation's division of earth sciences. Most geologists do their work by drilling deep cores of rock, modeling the underground environment on a small scale in their labs, using computers that give only a partial picture of what happens in real stone. Burying a lab beneath thousands of feet of rock provides a protective shield against the cosmic rays that constantly shower down on Earth, interfering with sensitive astrophysics and nuclear detection experiments. And the rock surroundings that are so beneficial to the physics experiments are themselves a source of data for geologists. This summer, the National Science Foundation began a three-stage process for selecting the experiments and the best place to conduct them. The cost is estimated at several hundred million dollars and construction could begin as soon as 2008, although scientists who have already been campaigning for a lab for two decades are well aware there is no guarantee that it will be built at all. U.S. scientists pioneered underground science three decades ago with a buried solar "telescope," a massive tank filled with ordinary dry cleaning fluid that reacted with particles from the sun. Raymond Davis Jr., who led the Homestake lab, shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 2002 for detecting solar neutrinos, infinitesimally small particles that are byproducts of the fusion reactions of the sun and stars. Davis' ground-breaking work at the bottom of a working gold mine was in stark contrast to his surroundings, which were "very wild west," according to physicist Harry Miley of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who has been working underground for the last 20 years. Homestake, which was closed, along with the mine, in 2001, had rough floors, rough walls, dirt, dust, heat and plenty of humidity. "In our case, a single drop of sweat would kill our experiment," Miley said, recalling one of the unexpected experimental difficulties -- perspiration. Since then, labs in Japan and Canada have taken the lead in neutrino research. In a Canadian mine that houses the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, scientists descend and then shower before donning steel-toed boots, a jumper and hair net, a far cry from the rattly elevators (called cages) and dusty environs that Miley and others remember. Japanese scientists, using their underground Kamioka Observatory, have been able to conclude that neutrinos have some mass -- contradicting earlier research -- but an even bigger facility is needed to push their discoveries further. U.S. particle physicists have to leave the country to do their work. "What worries me more than anything else right now is that both the Japanese and the Europeans are moving very, very quickly while we're still struggling to get started," said Wick Haxton, a physics professor at the University of Washington who will propose a site at Icicle Creek in Washington. The science foundation expects to receive about 10 proposals for possible places to put an underground lab, including the Homestake site, a tunnel carved into a mountain in Washington state, and a working iron mine in northern Minnesota. "Let me say first and foremost: I don't care where the lab is; I'm gonna use it," said Miley, echoing the opinions of most scientists in the field. The lab will be an economic boon to the local economy wherever it goes. According to Pete Fuller, a Lead lawyer, a common joke in town is that the average IQ will double if even one Ph.D. scientist moves in. Many researchers also believe the lab -- by generating public interest and attention -- could boost science literacy, with tours and community outreach for the general public, and summer research opportunities for high school and college students who have no access to the sites in Japan and Canada. "You can't really buy everyone a plane ticket to another continent," said Ed Kearns, a physicist from Boston University who commutes to the Kamioka Observatory to do his research. ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ ***************************************************************** 42 SF Chronicle: Court ruling expected soon on new lab in Livermore Chronicle Staff and News Services Report Sunday, August 22, 2004 A court ruling on the opening of a biosafety Level 3 lab at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of dozens being established across the United States, is expected in a few weeks, a lab spokeswoman said. Livermore officials want to open a 1,600-square-foot Level 3 lab where researchers can study deadly agents such as anthrax, botulism and the plague. The lab will allow researchers to study DNA signatures to refine the nation's biodetection capacity, said lab spokeswoman Linda Seaver. However, a local watchdog group, Tri-Valley Citizens Against a Radioactive Environment (Tri-Valley CAREs), and other plaintiffs sued last year to delay the lab opening, demanding that lab officials be required to study the lab's possible impact on the environment and the proliferation of bioweapons. "We believe a certain amount of biodefense work is warranted," said Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs, "but we're convinced the government is proceeding in a willy-nilly fashion in proliferating these labs and the people who know how to manipulate these (biological) agents in a manner that may cause more problems than it solves." District Judge Saundra Armstrong put a temporary stay on work at the facility. Seaver said a ruling is expected in a few weeks. Livermore already has a biosafety Level 2 lab. Elsewhere in Northern California, UC Davis has Level 2 and Level 3 labs, but failed last year in an effort to open the West Coast's first Level 4 lab. UC Davis officials sought federal funding from the National Institutes of Health to open a $150 million to $200 million Level 4 lab, despite opposition from some members of the community, including Davis city officials. The university's Level 2 lab studies influenza and measles virus, HIV and simian immunodeficiency virus; the Level 3 lab works with West Nile virus. Scientists at the Level 4 lab would have analyzed deadly infectious organisms such as anthrax and smallpox. The campus' bid for funding was possibly hurt by an embarrassing incident in February 2003: A 4-pound rhesus macaque monkey vanished from UC Davis' California National Primate Research Center. Officials said the monkey was "disease free" and, later, they concluded it had died inside a drain system. But Davis officials acknowledged at the time that every year, several of the campus' 4,000-plus monkeys manage to escape their outdoor enclosures, although they typically are recaptured within the confines of the primate center. Ultimately, the university lost out in a competition for federal funding for the project. Page A - 4 ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ ***************************************************************** 43 Idaho Statesman: INEEL shipments to N.M. still on hold The Associated Press Edition Date: 08-21-2004 SANTA FE, N.M.  The U.S. Department of Energy has agreed to the demand by New Mexico's environmental secretary to veto the resumption of shipments from Idaho to a federal nuclear waste dump near Carlsbad until the state is satisfied that problems with shipments from Idaho are fixed. The DOE suspended shipments from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in mid-July after workers at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southeastern New Mexico discovered drums of waste that should not have been in the shipment. The drums had been added after a batch readied for shipment had been tested. New Mexico officials said suspect drums had been sent from Idaho since March, and 108 might already be stored in WIPP. "Until the state is satisfied that all the proper actions have been taken to investigate and correct the recent waste analysis failure at INEEL, we cannot allow more waste to be shipped," Environment Secretary Ron Curry said Thursday. The DOE agreed to comply with the state's request, although it's not clear New Mexico has the authority to block the shipments. ***************************************************************** 44 Times and Democrat: SCSU and SRS: S.C. State's partnership with national laboratory grows to 'another level' Westinghouse Savannah River Company President Robert Pedde, South Carolina State University President Andrew Hugine, Jr., and Savannah River National Laboratory Director Dr. G. Todd Wright, from left, join in signing a Memorandum of Understanding between SCSU and SRS Friday. VAN HOPE/T By , T Staff Writer South Carolina State University on Friday strengthened its 15-year partnership with the newly designated Savannah River National Laboratory. A Memorandum of Understanding, signed with fanfare and ceremony, "takes the tradition of collaboration and cooperation ... to another level," said SCSU President Dr. Andrew Hugine Jr. The pact is intended to stimulate joint efforts between the historically black university in Orangeburg and the applied research and development laboratory at the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River Site. "The agreement is significant because it provides outstanding opportunities for enhancement of the academic programs at South Carolina State University," Hugine said. "It also provides the opportunity for research training programs and mentoring programs, for faculty loan programs and for shared equipment and facilities," he added. "It also provides for diversity in the workplace and significant economic development activities for the state of South Carolina, particularly those regions of greatest need," Hugine continued. The pact is intended to stimulate joint efforts to improve science and technology education and research in the areas of nuclear engineering, machine tooling, fabrication techniques, measurement techniques, mechanical and robotics design, environmental sciences, hydrogen fuel-cell technologies for transportation, and transportation delivery systems for nuclear materials throughout South Carolina. The research center's designation as a national laboratory will increase its prestige and allow its scientists to team up more easily with scientists at other national laboratories in research projects. "This designation is long overdue and is well-deserved," Hugine said. "The cutting-edge research and development initiatives that will emanate from this laboratory will have a significant impact on our state and our nation. Now we can compete equally with the Los Alamos and Oak Ridges of this country and the (10) other national laboratories." The research center is part of the Energy Department's Savannah River Site, a key part of the government nuclear weapons complex, situated along the Savannah River that separates South Carolina and Georgia. The Savannah River Plant was created in the 1950s as a research facility for producing plutonium and tritium for nuclear warheads. More recently it has focused on a wide range of applied research from environmental remediation, hydrogen energy technology to counterintelligence and security systems and robotics. S.C. State has been collaborating with Westinghouse since it took over the operation of the Savannah River Plant a decade and a half ago, Hugine said. "A lot has happened in those 15 years," he said. Now "the players are all different, but the commitment of South Carolina State and the commitment of SRS has ... expanded and grown." "Truly if South Carolina State University is to reach unparalleled heights, we must embrace the building blocks ... (of) self-help and partnerships," Hugine said. "Great universities are known by the company they keep. We are on the road to becoming a great university, and this partnership will help us get there," he said. "We're really excited and willing to work to make this journey successful," Hugine said. "The past accomplishments will be pale in comparison to what the future holds. We've only just begun." Sixth District U.S. Rep. James E. Clyburn praised Hugine for his leadership of "an institution I love dearly" and think about daily. "I came to this campus not really knowing what college was all about," Clyburn said. He credits instructors like Ernestine Walker for teaching him "there was a world out there I needed to be in touch with." Clyburn said he had listened for several hours Thursday as Pee Dee leaders talked about the future, without one mention of tobacco, the staple that had driven the region's economy for a century or more. SCSU, too, is not dwelling on the past but is "positioning itself for the future," focusing on technology, education, transportation and energy. "It makes me proud. I know that the future of this state, this institution and this nation is on solid ground." As a congressman and a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Clyburn said he tries "to show my appreciation for this institution ... every opportunity I get," and is pleased when he finds someone "who will listen and respond." Dr. G. Todd Wright is responding. The Savannah River National Laboratory's director says the university and the lab are "a natural match." Robert A. Pedde is responding. The Westinghouse Savannah River Company president and SCSU Board of Visitors member said SCSU has shown "innovation and true leadership." Pres Rahe is responding. The president of Washington Group International's Energy and Environment Business Unit said he was "impressed by (SCSU's) commitment" to "engineering technology excellence." He presented a $10,000 check for the James E. Clyburn Endowment Fund for scholarships to SCSU students. "We value your talented students and staff," Rahe said. "We need the best and the brightest, and you've got them." + T Staff Writer can be reached by e-mail at or by phone at 803-533-5552. The Times and Democrat is published by Lee Publications, Inc., a subsidiary of , Incorporated. Copyright © 2004, The Times and Democrat All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 45 Times and Democrat: SCSU awarded $250,000 min nuclear energy grants By T Staff South Carolina State University in Orangeburg will receive a $250,000 University Partnership and Industry Matching grant, the U.S. Department of Energy announced Friday. The program pairs historically black or Hispanic-serving institutions with institutions offering a nuclear engineering degree to enable more minorities to earn a degree in engineering and become nuclear engineers and scientists. Eleven schools involving five partnerships will receive $660,000, with one new partnership being awarded the latter part of fiscal year 2004. The Department of Energy will award 26 matching grants to universities throughout the country, leveraging public-private contributions through a 50-50 cost-share arrangement that allows funds to be directed to the specific needs of an institution's school of nuclear engineering. This award is among $22 million in awards to 37 universities nationwide to support the development of a new generation of technical specialists who will serve the nation's requirements in areas such as energy, medicine, scientific research, national defense, nonproliferation and environmental protection. Also, the University of South Carolina in Columbia will receive a $72,000 Nuclear Engineering Education Research and Industry Matching grant, the department said. It's one of 47 Nuclear Engineering Education Research grants, awarded to 28 U.S. universities, that will allow professors and students to conduct innovative and state-of-the-art nuclear engineering research. Of the total $5 million to be awarded, approximately $2.7 million is for 26 new awards in fiscal year 2004 and the rest is for 21 continuing awards from prior years. "This year's grants continue an upward trend in support of education that has been a hallmark of this administration," Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said. "The investment we make today in the education of a new generation of nuclear engineers and scientists will pay tremendous dividends in the future of this country." Information on nuclear science and engineering educational initiatives that are sponsored by the DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology is available at www.nuclear.gov. The Times and Democrat is published by Lee Publications, Inc., a subsidiary of , Incorporated. Copyright © 2004, The Times and Democrat All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 46 amarillo.com: Pantex repairs may be flawed 08/22/04 [Amarillo Globe News] By JIM McBRIDE jim.mcbride@amarillo.com The Amarillo Globe-News Pantex Plant repairs aimed at limiting plutonium releases during an accidental, high-explosive blast may be flawed and could require a $20 million safety overhaul, government reports show. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an agency overseeing safety at U.S. nuclear weapons plants, has asked Pantex officials to prepare a detailed report, prioritizing measures to reduce off-site plutonium releases during an accidental explosion. Assembly cells - robust, saucerlike domes of concrete, gravel and steel - house the subterranean workshops where Pantex technicians dismantle, repair or modify warheads in America's atomic arsenal. Dubbed "Gravel Gerties" - after a popular Dick Tracy character - the structures are designed to filter out 99 percent of aerosolized plutonium released during an accidental high-explosive blast. After such an "extremely unlikely" detonation, the cells are supposed to expand, then collapse inward, trapping radioactive debris inside. Several years ago, Pantex safety experts learned that an explosion could spew radioactive materials through the cell's structural cracks and pipe openings instead of filtering them through gravel layers in the cell roof. One theoretical accident scenario continues to stymie Pantex engineers: an explosive blast fails to lift the roof off a Pantex assembly cell, spewing radioactive materials into the atmosphere through cracks and sheared pipes in the facility. Pantex halted nuclear weapons operations in nuclear weapons assembly cells in September after plant officials learned that a 6-year-old work order to repair faulty cell door welds had never been completed. Workers later closed the welds with a commercial sealant and nuclear explosive operations resumed. Since then, contractor BWXT Pantex has recalculated the potential off-site radiological effects of an accidental high-explosive blast, taking into account newly sealed areas around the cells. But a nuclear safety board staffer recently noticed the sealant used to patch incomplete welds near assembly cell doors was peeling away from the doors, according to a July 21 report. Pantex safety specialists had credited the assembly cell door sealant with "dispersal reductions" that would limit or reduce off-site radiological releases during an accident. But the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board now questions the conclusions in BWXT Pantex's accident analysis and says plutonium "dispersal reductions" cited in the analysis are not adequately justified. "The peeling and detaching of the external sealant raises concern as to the ability of the sealant to perform its intended safety-class function on the inside joints of the doors," the board's report says. In an Aug. 6 letter, the safety board challenged the plutonium "dispersal reductions" cited in the Pantex analysis and said an assembly cell accident could exceed federal limits for off-site radiological doses. "The analysis also includes dispersal reductions that result from repairs made to address the incomplete welds. These repairs may not be effective," the letter says. The safety board has asked Pantex to investigate the possibility of using low-temperature welds to seal assembly cell door cracks. Sealing up potential leak spots could cost between $15-20 million, according to government estimates. Joe Papp, BWXT Pantex's system engineering section manager, said Pantex discovered more structural cracks, called "cell pathways," in 2003 during the plant's standard safety review process. "While additional pathways could potentially increase the off-site effects, Pantex continues to remain below the off-site exposure guidelines," Papp said in a response to Globe-News inquiries. "The studies and calculations used to analyze these pathways were conservative and took the most extreme scenarios into account. The structural cracks were filled with sealant." Papp said Pantex now is analyzing the sealant before it completes a thorough report to the safety board. "Pantex is conducting studies of the sealant to determine its effectiveness. Longer-term actions are exploring the possibility of replacing the sealant with welds. BWXT Pantex will provide a detailed report to the defense board once further analysis is complete," Papp said. ***************************************************************** 47 Google News Alert - nuclear Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 15:21:01 -0700 (PDT) IRAN Announces Delays in First Nuclear Reactor Coming on Line Voice of America - Washington,DC,USA Iran says its first nuclear reactor, being built with the help of Russia, will not go on line until October 2006, a year later than planned. ... See all stories on this topic: FATAL accidents damage Japan's nuclear dream Guardian - UK When told by local television crews that the white buildings on the other side of the harbour house a nuclear power plant, and that an accident there killed ... See all stories on this topic: NUCLEAR decision marks 50 years The Republican - Springfield,MA,USA By DAVID A. VALLETTE. ROWE - Fifty years ago a group of New England utility companies got together to go nuclear. They formed the Yankee Atomic Electric Co. ... NUCLEAR plant value fallout persists Brazosport Facts - Clute,TX,USA MATAGORDA COUNTY — County officials expect to survive a drop in tax revenue after nuclear plant property values fell $178.6 million this year, but are less ... FACE the facts. The future must be nuclear Guardian - UK Renewables won't deliver. Government must learn to stop worrying and love nuclear power, argues former energy minister Brian Wilson. ... 6-WAY talks likely to be delayed until early next month Daily Yomiuri - Tokyo,Japan The next round of six-party working-level talks on North Korea's nuclear program, which had been expected in mid-August, will not be held until early next ... See all stories on this topic: CONCERN Over Security At Weapons Site Hartford Courant (subscription) - Hartford,CT,USA By DUNCAN MANSFIELD, Associated Press. OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- Staccato bursts of a machine gun rip through the woods near the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, a warhead ... See all stories on this topic: þ Bushehr nuclear power plant delayed by another year - Iranian ... Kuwait News Agency - Kuwait ... þ. þand differences exist over the costs, the official said. þ. þdelivery of nuclear fuel for the power plant to Iran at the end of 2005. þ. US ups diplomatic heat on Iran Pioneer Press (subscription) - St. Paul,MN,USA Convinced that Iran is covertly speeding toward making nuclear weapons, the Bush administration has begun a diplomatic campaign to sharply increase the ... See all stories on this topic: This daily-once News Alert is brought to you by Google News (BETA)... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Remove this News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts/remove?s=92d1672a1b037a07&hl=en Create another News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en Try Google News: http://news.google.com/ ***************************************************************** 48 [progchat_action] FOCUS: Depleted Uranium: Dirty Bombs, Dirty Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 22:58:00 -0500 (CDT) FOCUS: Depleted Uranium: Dirty Bombs, Dirty Missiles, Dirty Bullets http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/082304W.shtml -- Click to SUBSCRIBE -> mailto:join-three-to@lists.truthout.org Go direct to our HomePage : http://www.truthout.org ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/XgSolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/progchat_action/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: progchat_action-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 49 Google News Alert - nuclear Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 16:33:12 -0700 (PDT) WASHINGTON accused of ignoring nuclear terror threat Independent - London,England,UK ... But in a withering new book, one of America's foremost nuclear weapons experts argues that the White House has been so heedless of the threat that nuclear ... See all stories on this topic: BERLIN rejects US official's claim on Iran's nuclear program Tehran Times - Tehran,Iran ... remarks by US Undersecretary of State John Bolton alleging that Iran had admitted to Germany, France and Britain that it could build nuclear weapons in three ... See all stories on this topic: MISHAP may kill off Japan nuclear plants Al-Jazeera - Qatar The Atomic Energy Commission of Japan has admitted that the 9 August fatal accident at the Mihama nuclear plant in Fukui, central Japan, may force a rethink of ... See all stories on this topic: US nuclear-powered flattop stops in Sasebo Japan Today - Tokyo,Japan SASEBO — The US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier John C Stennis made a port call Saturday at Sasebo port in Nagasaki Prefecture. ... See all stories on this topic: DTI boss to infuse energy into nuclear project Sunday Times - Johannesburg,South Africa ... the company through the crucial demonstration and commercialisation phase of the programme" to develop the world's next generation of nuclear-fuelled power ... See all stories on this topic: REGULATORS to look into recent problems at nuclear power plant KOB-TV - Albuquerque,NM,USA PHOENIX (AP) - The feds are sending special investigative teams from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. ... See all stories on this topic: NUCLEAR materials pose terror risk, expert says London Free Press - London,Ontario,Canada ... could cause harm. "People need to worry about the accessibility of nuclear materials to the general population.". Some materials ... See all stories on this topic: NAM says no limit to peaceful nuclear technology Tehran Times - Tehran,Iran ... states passed a declaration in the South African port city of Durban Thursday, opposing any restriction to the countries’ right to develop nuclear energy for ... See all stories on this topic: TIME To Deal With Iran's Nuclear Ambitions Investor's Business Daily (subscription) - USA Iran: Tehran is warning it might hit the US with a preemptive strike to protect its nuclear facilities. ... The nuclear clock is ticking. ... See all stories on this topic: SCSU awarded $250,000 min nuclear energy grants Orangeburg Times Democrat - Orangeburg,SC,USA ... The program pairs historically black or Hispanic-serving institutions with institutions offering a nuclear engineering degree to enable more minorities to earn ... See all stories on this topic: This daily-once News Alert is brought to you by Google News (BETA)... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Remove this News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts/remove?s=92d1672a1b037a07&hl=en Create another News Alert: http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en Try Google News: http://news.google.com/ ***************************************************************** 50 ARTICLE SUBMISSION - MORET: A death sentence here and abroad Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 06:54:30 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
  
From the San Francisco Bay View
August 18, 2004
 
 
 
 
Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets

A death sentence here and abroad

by Leuren Moret

At an April press conference, a group of New York Army National Guard vets raised their hands when asked if they have health problems. The soldiers, all from the 442nd Military Police Company, are complaining of headaches and fatigue after what they think is exposure to depleted uranium during their recent tour in Iraq.
Photo: www.american
freepress.net

“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” - Henry Kissinger, quoted in “Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW’s in Vietnam”

Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation.

And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that “Gulf-era veterans” now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period.

This week the American Free Press dropped a “dirty bomb” on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months.

Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted uranium (DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and scientists working on this issue, that DU is the definitive cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Vaccines are not known to cause cancer. One of the first published researchers on Gulf War Syndrome, who also served in 1991 in Iraq, Dr. Andras Korényi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno from the Department of Defense’s Deployment Health Support Directorate, that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals, pesticides, bioagents or other suspect causes this time to confuse the issue.

This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up perpetrated by the Pentagon and three presidential administrations ever since DU was first used in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years after the introduction of DU on the battlefield in 1991, the long-term effects have revealed that DU is a death sentence and very nasty stuff.

Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as “spectacular … and a matter of concern.”

This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on biological systems - radiation, chemical and particulate – the particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant one immediately after exposure and targets the Master Code in the DNA. This is bad news, but it explains why DU causes a myriad of diseases which are difficult to define.

In simple words, DU “trashes the body.” When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Fulk was more specific: “I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people.”

Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure.

Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems.

The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II.

They brought it home

Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields, but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. Tragically, some women in their 20s and 30s who were sexual partners of exposed soldiers developed endometriosis and were forced to have hysterectomies because of health problems.

In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and blood diseases. In some veterans’ families now, the only normal or healthy members of the family are the children born before the war.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that they do not keep records of birth defects occurring in families of veterans.

How did they hide it?

Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully tested. The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943 declassified document from the Manhattan Project.

Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan Project by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry’s father served at a high level in the Manhattan Project and was a CIA agent.

Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which recommended developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive trash of the atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time, it was known that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from the air, from land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very fine radioactive dust which would penetrate all protective clothing, any gas mask or filter or the skin. By contaminating the lungs and blood, it could kill or cause illness very quickly.

They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant, which could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies and agricultural land with the radioactive dust.

The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968, and DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs.

The Phalanx weapons system, using DU, was tested on the USS Bigelow out of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1977, and DU weapons have been sold by the U.S. to 29 countries.

Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from 1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are contaminated with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment.

Women living around these facilities have reported increases in endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past decade. The military denies that DU is the cause.

The medical profession has been active in the cover-up - just as they were in hiding the effects from the American public - of low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants. A medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started, to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only.

Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail.

Reporters have also been prevented access to more than 14,000 medically evacuated soldiers flown nightly since the 2003 war in C-150s from Germany who are brought to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, D.C.

Dr. Robert Gould, former president of the Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has contacted three medical doctors since February 2004, after I had been invited to speak about DU. Dr. Katharine Thomasson, president of the Oregon chapter of the PSR, informed me that Dr. Gould had contacted her and tried to convince her to cancel her invitation for me to speak about DU at Portland State University on April 12. Although I was able to do a presentation, Dr. Thomasson told me I could only talk about DU in Oregon “and nothing overseas … nothing political.”

Dr. Gould also contacted and discouraged Dr. Ross Wilcox in Toronto, Canada, from inviting me to speak to Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), the Canadian equivalent of PSR, several months later. When that didn’t work, he contacted Dr. Allan Connoly, the Canadian national president of PGS, who was able to cancel my invitation and nearly succeeded in preventing Dr. Wilcox, his own member, from showing photos and presenting details on civilians suffering from DU exposure and cancer provided to him by doctors in southern Iraq.

Dr. Janette Sherman, a former and long-standing member of PSR, reported that she finally quit some time after being invited to lunch by a new PSR executive administrator. After the woman had pumped Dr. Sherman for information all through lunch about her position on key issues, the woman informed Dr. Sherman that her last job had been with the CIA.

How was the truth about DU hidden from military personnel serving in successive DU wars? Before his tragic death, Sen. Paul Wellstone informed Joyce Riley, R.N., B.S.N., executive director of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95 percent of Gulf War veterans had been recycled out of the military by 1995. Any of those continuing in military service were isolated from each other, preventing critical information being transferred to new troops. The “next DU war” had already been planned, and those planning it wanted “no skunk at the garden party.”

The US has a dirty (DU) little (CIA) secret

A new book just published at the American Free Press by Michael Collins Piper, “The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How America’s Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire,” details the early plans for a war against the Arab world by Henry Kissinger and the neo-cons in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That just happens to coincide with getting the DU “show on the road” and the oil crisis in the Middle East, which caused concern not only to President Nixon. The British had been plotting and scheming for control of the oil in Iraq for decades since first using poison gas on the Iraqis and Kurds in 1912.

The book details the creation of the neo-cons by their “godfather” and Trotsky lover Irving Kristol, who pushed for a “war against terrorism” long before 9/11 and was lavishly funded for years by the CIA. His son, William Kristol, is one of the most influential men in the United States.

Both are public relations men for the Israeli lobby’s neo-conservative network, with strong ties to Rupert Murdoch. Kissinger also has ties to this network and the Carlyle Group, who, one could say, have facilitated these omnicidal wars beginning from the time former President Bush took office. It would be easy to say that we are recycling World Wars I and II, with the same faces.

When I asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Capt. John McCarthy, who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use DU to destroy the genetic code and genetic future of large populations of Arabs and Moslems in the Middle East and Central Asia - just coincidentally the areas where most of the world’s oil deposits are located - he replied: “It has all the handprints of Henry Kissinger.”

In Zbignew Brzezinski’s book “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives,” the map of the Eurasian chessboard includes four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. The “South” region corresponds precisely to the regions now contaminated permanently with radiation from U.S. bombs, missiles and bullets made with thousands of tons of DU.

A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed, and 10 times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric testing!

No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry Kissinger said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill from Agent Orange, “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used for foreign policy.”

Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will be carried around the world and deposited in our environments just as the “smog of war” from the 1991 Gulf War was found in deposits in South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii.

In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020. What else do they know that they aren’t telling us? I know that depleted uranium is a death sentence … for all of us. We will all die in silent ways.

To learn more

Sources used in this story that readers are encouraged to consult:

American Free Press four-part series on DU by Christopher Bollyn. Part I: “Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq, Humanity,” www.americanfreepress.net/depleted_uranium.html; Part II: “Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD: MD Says Depleted Uranium Definitively Linked,” www.americanfreepress.net/html/cancer_epidemic_.html

August 2004 World Affairs Journal. Leuren Moret: “Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,” www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

August 2004 Coastal Post Online. Carol Sterrit: “Marin Depleted Uranium Resolution Heats Up – GI’s Will Come Home To A Slow Death,” www.coastalpost.com/04/08/01

World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg, Germany, October 16-19, 2004: www.worlduraniumweaponsconference.de/speakers/speakers.htm

International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan. Written opinion of Judge Niloufer Baghwat: www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-Criminal-Tribunal10mar04.htm

“Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Nuclear War” by Akira Tashiro, foreword by Leuren Moret, www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/index_e.html

Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who has worked around the world on radiation issues, educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments and Congress and other officials. She became a whistleblower in 1991 at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab after experiencing major science fraud on the Yucca Mountain Project. An environmental commissioner in the City of Berkeley, she can be reached at leurenmoret@yahoo.com.

 ***************************************************************** 51 newsleader.com: Senator gets an earful from residents - Saturday, August 21, 2004 By Jonathan D. Jones/staff STAUNTON -- Why does Woodrow Wilson's Pierce Arrow limousine bear the AAA symbol on its grill? Sen. George Allen wants to know. "The reason for the triple A is because he was the first president to be a member," Richard Robertson explains. "So we keep it on there." Sen. Allen learned this after he was given a quick tour of Staunton sitting in the very seat in which Wilson used to ride during his presidency. It was the senator's final public stop on his swing through Waynesboro and Staunton on Friday. But Allen still had several places to visit before his "Listening Tour," which has been traveling the state this week, wrapped up for the day. The listening tours give Allen a chance to get out of Washington, connect with voters and get direct feedback, he said. "It's a pleasure to be out of Washington and to be with common-sense people," Allen said. "It's also good to let people tell you what they think, to your face." Along the tour, which has consisted of a stops at civic group meetings, industrial sites, historical sites, the Rockingham County Fair and luncheons, Allen has had the opportunity to meet with many of those "common-sense" folks. Invariably they want to talk about taxes, the armed forces, energy costs, education and health care, Allen said. During stops at Invista, the P. Buckley Moss Museum, the Woodrow Wilson Birthplace and the Greater Augusta Chamber of Commerce, those same issues came up. In the morning, Allen spoke to teachers at the Moss museum who were finishing up an in-service training program. He told them that he thinks the Standards of Learning program the state implemented when he was governor is working and that the federal rules under No Child Left Behind are hurting local schools. The subgroups, such as special education or limited-English proficiency students, that can cause an entire school to fail under the law are not an accurate measure of the institution, Allen said. "By next year, if this thing isn't changed administratively," Allen told the teachers, "I think we're going to have to do it legislatively." For the teachers, it was good to hear that someone in Washington is listening, said Linda Parslow, a teacher at Craigsville Elementary School. "I agreed with him about No Child Left Behind," Parslow said. "It's unfair we're gauged on the subgroups." "He really seemed in tune with the issue," said Pamela Alexander, a music teacher at North River Elementary School. Having a senator at the training program was a bit of a surprise, Alexander said. Both teachers signed up in May, but only found out a few days ago that Allen would be coming by to make a presentation. At the chamber of commerce luncheon, he turned the talk into a town hall-style forum while answer questions from the audience that ranged from the viability of nuclear energy to his thoughts on the draft. Allen said he was opposed to conscription but thinks the active-duty military needs to be expanded in order to relieve pressure on the reserves. As far as nuclear power, the first step in expanding its use domestically is the finishing of a spent-fuel repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev., Allen said. The trips are also a chance to learn about what's going on in Virginia, from bits of history that Robertson explained to him to new technology, such as a pilot broadband program in Salem that delivers high-speed Internet along power lines and using wireless transmitters near homes. Allen said he thinks the Salem model could help bring high-speed Internet to rural areas where it is often cost-prohibitive for companies to provide the service. After leaving the Wilson museum, where he got a sneak peak at the plans for the presidential library that are to be unveiled next week, Allen made a personal visit and then attended the dedication of a memorial at Crosskeys and the Rockingham County Fair. Originally published Saturday, August 21, 2004 Copyright ©2004 The News Leader. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************