***************************************************************** 09/09/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.216 ***************************************************************** 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 Guardian Unlimited: New blow to Blair over Iraq 2 Las Vegas SUN: G-8 Officials to Discuss Iran Nuke Tension 3 Korea Herald: Seoul admits 1980s nuclear experiment 4 JoongAng Daily: Official admits plutonium was produced in '82 5 BBC: Seoul faces fallout from disclosures 6 Japan Times: North Korea's ticking time bomb 7 Japan Times: Seoul is not the proliferator 8 AFP: Britain begins 'long haul' to make North Korea open up on nukes 9 ABC: South Korea admits to history of nuclear testing. 10 US: Nuclear Agency Illegally Hid Information From the Public 11 US: Las Vegas Mercury: Editor's Note: Where the wild things are 12 US: Las Vegas Mercury: Democracy in Peril 13 The Daily Texan - Opinion: Firing Line - 14 UN Atomic Agency Seeks To Tackle Shortage In New Generation Of Nucle 15 Guardian Unlimited: Hydrogen seen as car fuel of the future 16 news24: WMD probe deepens 17 News24 WMD: Co-workers shocked 18 iafrica.com WMD arrests: Two to appear in court 19 United Press International: S. Africa cuts deal with nuclear smuggle 20 Washington Times: Nuke smuggler ready to 'tell all' 21 Interfax: IAEA report on Iran positive - Russian foreign minister 22 allAfrica.com: South Africa: Nuke Suspects in Court Today 23 Xinhuanet: Sustainable energy achievable, but not easy 24 Japan Times: Restricted Japanese devices found in Libya nuclear faci 25 IAEA: Managing Knowledge in Nuclear Fields 26 csmonitor.com: Loose nukes, Russian instability | 27 AU ABC: Independent Ranger audit to begin Monday. 28 US: Orlando Weekly News: 29 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear charges dropped NUCLEAR REACTORS 30 US: [PUBCIT_PRESS] NRC illegally hid info from public 31 US: NRC: NRC Unveils New Emergency Preparedness and Incident Respons 32 Guardian Unlimited: EC backs off nuclear shutdown 33 US: NRC: Regulatory Guide: Issuance, Availability, Workshop 34 JoongAng Daily: Korea nuclear facilities' growth slowing 35 US: NRC: Requirements for Steam Generator Tube Inspections 36 US: JOURNAL NEWS: Indian Point advocates criticize film about reacto 37 BBC World Service | Nuclear Know How 38 Japan Times: More nuclear reactor flaws found 39 US: HBO: Documentaries - Indian Point 40 National Post: Province considers reactor restart 41 ThisisLondon: British Energy liabilities bombshell NUCLEAR SAFETY 42 JoongAng Daily: [EDITORIALS]Prudence on the nuclear issue 43 US: Las Vegas RJ: Radiation expert: Risk from low dose reduced 44 US: Las Vegas SUN: EPA won't appeal radiation standard 45 US: NRC: Notice of License Termination and Release of Molycorp's Pro 46 AFP: South Africa charges two Germans with nuclear materials smuggli 47 Janes: The radiological threat widens 48 US: UCS: New Study Predicts Up to 44,000 Prompt Fatalities and 518,0 49 The Whitehaven News: BIG WORRY OVER LITTLE THINGS (emergency plannin 50 US: Deseretnews.com: Bennett aide says nuclear test ads unneeded NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 51 US: Spectrum: Senate should dump funds for new nukes - Opinion - 52 Las Vegas RJ: Gibbons softens Yucca retaliation claim 53 Las Vegas RJ: Nevada files Yucca lawsuit 54 Interfax: Sweden to help Russia dispose of radioactive wastes on Kol 55 Las Vegas SUN: Letter: Kerry is Nevada's friend on dump 56 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Bush should listen to his own promise 57 Las Vegas SUN: Kerry expected to visit LV next week 58 US: Platts: EC adopts weaker nuke waste, safety proposals 59 RGJ: State files suit over nuke railroad 60 US: heraldtribune.com: Phosphate strikes again 61 KLAS: Yucca Mountain Lawsuit - New Allegations 62 The Whitehaven News: BNFL BIDS TO AVOID US LOSSES 63 The Whitehaven News: EC TO PROSECUTE OVER SELLAFIELD POND NUCLEAR WEAPONS 64 IPS-English DISARMAMENT: Eight-Year Stalemate US DEPT. OF ENERGY 65 Tri-City Herald: Nuclear watchdog blasts DOE 66 The Daily Texan: Los Alamos resumes less-risky sectors - 67 lamonitor.com: Public concerned about clean up schedules 68 Knox College News: Inside 'A' Bomb Factory - OTHER NUCLEAR ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Guardian Unlimited: New blow to Blair over Iraq Report concludes no WMD as PM completes reshuffle Michael White, Patrick Wintour and Kevin Maguire Friday September 10, 2004 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] Tony Blair will be confronted with a fresh challenge over Iraq within the next two weeks when the long-awaited final report of the Iraq Survey Group concludes there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country at the time of the US-UK invasion. The Guardian has learned that the team of weapons inspectors sent in by Washington and London at the end of the war to comb Iraq will find that though the threat of Saddam Hussein was real, there were no stockpiles. The absence of banned weapons has long been suspected, but the finality of the report's conclusion, together with its timing on the eve of the Labour party conference in Brighton, will be controversial. It may encourage Labour critics who want a show of repentance from Mr Blair and a promise of no more pre-emptive wars to be more vocal. The prime minister had hoped to focus the conference on domestic issues. The news of the latest Iraq threat to Mr Blair's political leadership came as he completed a reshuffle designed to shore up his embattled premiership. Alan Milburn, the new policy supremo, attended the week's cabinet and urged his colleagues to "pull together". Although it has been obvious since last year that the Iraq Survey Group was unlikely to unearth anything, its final verdict is an embarrassment to President Bush and Mr Blair. Before the invasion, both governments claimed Saddam had a covert programme to produce chemical and biological weapons, to manufacture ballistic missiles and had renewed its search for a nuclear bomb. Mr Blair did, however, soften his stance in July, telling MPs: "I have to accept that we have not found them and that we may not find them." The prime minister also faces other looming difficulties which could further rock his political stability through the autumn. They include: · Hunting. The latest compromise - a total ban but preceded by a two-year delay - was designed in part to assuage Labour backbenchers worried about government drift. But critics of the hunting bill have been incensed by the timeframe and are threatening to tear the legislation apart. Since the pro-hunting peers are also determined to wreck the compromise, No 10 may be back to square one. · TUC conference. Mr Blair faces persistent resentment and a potentially hostile reception from the TUC next week when he speaks in Brighton. The leader of the Transport and General Workers' Union today launches an attack on "politicians squabbling like ferrets in a sack" and warns that a fragile truce between government and unions would be shattered if manifesto promises are broken. In today's Guardian, Tony Woodley, the union's general secretary, warns the prime minister that the reform package agreed at July's party policy forum meeting in Warwick is an inviolable base line. "It is one of the unfortunate weaknesses in the way 'new Labour' does its business that whenever unity appears to be breaking out in the party, division and discord is stirred up again," he writes. Five days of clashes at the top of government have left critics of the prime minister inside the party emboldened. Some prominent backbench figures say if the prime minister makes one more serious misjudgment, they will trigger a challenge to his leadership. In the short term, Mr Blair's hand has been strengthened by a reshuffle that saw the return of his key ally, Mr Milburn, the former health secretary, to run the coming election campaign in place of Gordon Brown. Yesterday the prime minister went further when he plucked the 36-year-old highflyer Ruth Kelly from the chancellor's Treasury team to be Mr Milburn's deputy. Touring the TV and radio studios, Mr Milburn dismissed suggestions that Mr Brown is being sidelined as "complete nonsense". It did not disguise bitterness in the Brown camp over the apparent reduction of his election campaign role. "When I hear people saying that somebody who is such a towering figure as Gordon - who has played such a big part in this government and its achievements - isn't going to have a key role in this general election campaign, that is cloud-cuckoo land," Mr Milburn insisted. The return of Mr Milburn has undoubtedly upset the chancellor's camp, though one official played this down yesterday. "If Gordon is being excluded and is not playing the same role as in the last two big victories, we will shrug our shoulders and get on with the job," he said. Ten junior posts swapped hands yesterday without a sacking. Douglas Alexander, a Brown protege who gave up the honorific title Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to Mr Milburn, also lost his Cabinet Office job working on policy to Ms Kelly.He takes Mike O'Brien's trade brief at the Foreign Office while Stephen Timms moves back to the Treasury in Ms Kelly's old job, financial secretary, and Mr O'Brien gets Mr Timms' post of energy minister. Related articles 09.09.2004: Milburn toughs it out - and wins role at centre of party 09.09.2004: 'Big Mac' McCartney sees off threat to job 09.09.2004: Ex-postman Johnson's £100bn delivery 09.09.2004: Patrick Wintour: Street fighter will need his skills to keep party united 09.09.2004: Michael White: Blair-Brown political marriage is not over yet 09.09.2004: Labour's ideological divide Ask Aristotle Tony Blair [http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/0,,-463.html] Alan Milburn [http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/0,,-3623.html] Alan Johnson [http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/0,,-2733.html] Political Alerts Get the day's top headlines straight to your mobile Sign up for the Backbencher Our free weekly insider's guide to Westminster What do you think? Email your comments for publication to politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk [ politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk] Special reports Labour party Labour conference 2004 Useful links Labour party site [http://www.labour.org.uk/] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Printable version | Send it to a friend | Save story Daily sections _______________________ UK news International Politics Business Sport Comment Analysis Leaders Letters Editor G2 Obituaries Reviews Arts Diary Women TV and Radio Corrections Weekly sections _______________________ Mon – Media Mon – Office hours Tue – Education Tue – Wheels Tue – Law Tue – Health Wed – Society Wed – Parents Thu – Consumer Thu – Online Thu – Life Fri – Friday Review Fri – Style Sat – Travel Sat – Saturday Review Sat – Weekend Sat – Jobs and Money [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** 2 Las Vegas SUN: G-8 Officials to Discuss Iran Nuke Tension By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS ASSOCIATED PRESS GENEVA (AP) - With pressure building to curb Iran's nuclear program, disarmament officials from major nations began meetings Thursday that the United States says will focus on Tehran in the campaign to stop the spread of atomic weapons. The Group of Eight session came as threats mount to haul Iran before the U.N. Security Council unless it renounces uranium enrichment, which the United States and other countries say will lead to nuclear weapons. The discussions will give the officials a chance to sort out differences over the approach to next week's meeting of the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, which could trigger action by the Security Council. U.S. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton was hosting the Geneva session with his counterparts from Russia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. The United States wants the IAEA to declare Iran in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a move that could lead to action by the 15-nation Security Council, which could impose sanctions. European countries have urged less precipitate action. Secretary of State Colin Powell has demanded that Iran renounce uranium enrichment, which the United States regards as a step toward the development of nuclear weapons. Highly enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons. Iran insists it only is interested in nuclear power, which can be created with lower levels of enrichment. The Geneva gathering is a follow-up to an agreement reached at the G-8 summit meeting in Sea Island, Ga., in June. U.S. officials said the meetings were being held about once a month in different locations. The summit countries agreed to address proliferation problems and expand export controls worldwide, working "together to address the threat posed by" North Korea and Iran. Developments on the Korean peninsula also make that region a prime topic for discussion at the Geneva meeting. The United States has been trying to negotiate an end to North Korea's nuclear weapons program. But North Korea has said that recent South Korean disclosures could lead to a "nuclear arms race" in Northeast Asia. South Korea said last week that it conducted a secret uranium-enrichment experiment in 2000, and said Thursday that it extracted a tiny amount of plutonium in a nuclear experiment in 1982. The U.S. ally acknowledged "differences" with the IAEA over its activities. The U.N. agency is charged with verifying compliance with the nonproliferation treaty, which permits only peaceful uses of the atom. -- ***************************************************************** 3 Korea Herald: Seoul admits 1980s nuclear experiment 2004.09.10 By Choi Soung-ah and combined wire services N. Korea warns of arms race By Choi Soung-ah and combined wire services The government yesterday admitted conducting a plutonium-based nuclear experiment in the early 1980s, adding fuel to suspicions over its nuclear ambitions a week after acknowledging uranium enrichment tests. The plutonium experiment was carried out at a "TRIGA-type" research reactor that used to be in Gongneung-dong, northern Seoul, a high Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. Plutonium and enriched uranium are the two main types of fissile material used in nuclear weapons. North Korea responded Wednesday to the uranium-enrichment experiments by warning of a "nuclear arms race" in Northeast Asia. The United States, with South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, has been trying to negotiate an end to North Korea's nuclear weapons program. The talks are due to resume this month, the North's latest comments about the South do not augur favorably for a resumption, apart from the fact that it is difficult to see any nuclear accord before the U.S. presidential in November. The government last week admitted a one-time academic experiment in Daejeon in 2000 which led to production of 0.2 gram of enriched uranium. That admission touched off speculation that the experiment might have been part of an established uranium enrichment program or even a nuclear arms program. South Korea has categorically denied those suspicions, saying it was purely academic activity that had nothing to do with nuclear weapons and that the enriched uranium was far below weapons-grade. South Korea tried to develop nuclear weapons in the 1970s, but scrapped the program under pressure from the United States. The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute used to be based in Gonneung-dong before moving in 1984 to Daejeon, 160 kilometers south of Seoul. Two reactors remain at the Seoul research facility remain, but are too outdated to used nowadays, according to sources. (bluelle@heraldm.com) 2004.09.10 ***************************************************************** 4 JoongAng Daily: Official admits plutonium was produced in '82 September 10, 2004 KST 14:54 (GMT+9) Seoul found itself on the defensive again yesterday after it was forced to admit that Korean scientists had conducted small-scale, experimental spent nuclear fuel reprocessing in the early 1980s to extract plutonium, the second public disclosure of suspect nuclear tinkering in a week. The government's Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute extracted a "miniscule amount" of plutonium, said Kim Young-shik, the Ministry of Science and Technology's director general for nuclear energy. He said that the International Atomic Energy Agency had detected signs of reprocessing work in South Korea and in 1998 asked Seoul to explain what was going on. At the time, Seoul responded, Mr. Kim said, that it could find no information among its data on past research activity that would explain the matter. The IAEA renewed its inquiry in 2003, he continued, "and our new investigation showed the extraction of plutonium." He said the amount produced in 1982 was measured in "milligrams," but said his ministry had no other details. Chang In-soon, head of the research institute, said he was a junior scientist there at the time of the experiment. "A team of five or six scientists did the work, and the supervisors of the experiment all died long ago," he said. The Foreign Ministry later said that about 2.5 kilograms of spent fuel rods were used to extract the plutonium. According to officials here, the research equipment used has been dismantled since the time of the experiment. The work was conducted in a research reactor in Gongneung-dong in northern Seoul; that reactor is still there, but is being dismantled now. The impetus for the questions to Seoul by the international nuclear watchdog were based on an inspection of the reactor that showed traces of earlier plutonium extraction work. Science and Technology Ministry officials said Seoul told the UN nuclear watchdog agency about the 1982 work in September 1983, but that the report was false in one critical respect. All nations with nuclear technology or plants are required to keep accurate records of the status of nuclear material it possesses, and the report to the UN agency in 1983 said that it had used 2.5 kilograms of new nuclear fuel, a very different substance than spent fuel, which contains significant amounts of plutonium as a waste product of nuclear reactions. "Back then, we made reports about the status of nuclear materials by hand, one by one," Mr. Kim of the Science Ministry said. "We believe that an error in writing may have taken place." The Science Ministry focused today on explaining the circumstances surrounding the 22-year-old test, but the Foreign Ministry was more concerned about the repercussions that it feared from the new revelations. "We believe that the plutonium was extracted to study its chemical characteristics for academic purposes," said Song Yung-wan of the ministry, and downplayed the significance of the test. "This issue has not been submitted as an official agenda for the upcoming IAEA board meeting, and the report of the board meeting is unlikely to mention it," he said. China and Japan reacted sensitively to the fresh news of South Korea's nuclear activity. Japanese media and Tokyo officials said Seoul's explanation was implausible. Beijing's Foreign Ministry called on Seoul to cooperate fully with the UN agency. Last week, Seoul admitted that the same institute enriched a small amount of uranium in 2000, a test that the international nuclear agency is now reviewing for compliance with international rules. by Park Bang-ju, Ser Myo-ja myoja@joongang.co.kr> 2004.09.09 ***************************************************************** 5 BBC: Seoul faces fallout from disclosures Last Updated: Thursday, 9 September, 2004 By Charles Scanlon BBC correspondent in Seoul [South Korean workers dismantle the facilities of an experiment reactor at a former research centre in Seoul Friday, Sept. 9, 2004.] Seoul says only miniscule amounts of nuclear material were produced It came in the form of a diplomatic hand grenade from Washington, just as South Korea was struggling to contain the damage from its earlier admission of secret nuclear research. A US official was quoted as saying that Seoul had experimented with plutonium in addition to the uranium tests already disclosed. Both materials can be used to make a nuclear bomb. The Science Ministry in Seoul confirmed at a hastily-arranged news conference that scientists had secretly reprocessed plutonium in the early 80s. "No records have been left to tell the exact amount of plutonium produced, but we presume a miniscule amount of plutonium may have been extracted," said Kim Young-shik, director-general for nuclear safety. He said that South Korea was abiding by all its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. [08/09/2004 Associated Press South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon gestures during a briefing at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2004] South Korean FM Ban Ki-moon says Seoul is co-operating with the IAEA That is not a view shared by analysts and diplomats, who say there have been at least two clear violations of the nuclear safeguards agreement. "Taken together this looks like a pattern," said a Vienna-based diplomat who declined to be identified. South Korea stunned the region on 2 September when it revealed that scientists conducted secret tests to enrich a small amount of uranium in 2000. It says the experiments were not authorised by the government and were conducted by a small group of scientists out of academic curiosity. "The experiment had nothing to do with our nuclear programme," said Dr Chang In-soon, the president of the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, who gave the go- ahead for the tests. He said the equipment was dismantled immediately after the research - but conceded that it could have taken several months. Regional reaction Key questions remain about the enrichment level of the uranium and how long the project continued. "It's a question of confidence and trust," said the diplomat in Vienna, "Iran changed its story and undermined confidence, and now South Korea is going down the same road." In its first public comments, North Korea warned of a nuclear arms race in north-east Asia. A North Korean diplomat at the United Nations also accused the US of double standards. Washington accuses North Korea of conducting a secret uranium programme in addition to its much better known plant at Yongbyon, that can produce plutonium for atomic bombs. The US said South Korea should not have conducted the tests but praised it for co-operating with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Japan has taken a stronger public position. "It was inappropriate," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda, who called for strict inspections. "We must not allow this to lead to development of nuclear weapons," he said. Diplomats in the region are now braced for damaging repercussions. South Korea has been at the forefront of efforts, with the United States, to persuade North Korea to abandon its weapons programme, which analysts suspect may include up to six bombs. Seoul has a lot of explaining to do to regain the trust of the outside world in its often repeated commitment to a nuclear free Korean peninsula. It will be even harder to convince the North that its best interests lie in giving up its own nuclear ambitions. ***************************************************************** 6 Japan Times: North Korea's ticking time bomb Wednesday, September 8, 2004 EDITORIAL Many North Koreans continue to escape from their impoverished and repressive country. Last week, 29 escapees took refuge at a Japanese school in Beijing. Shortly afterward, they were taken to the Japanese Embassy for identification and questioning before being transferred to a third country. The South Korean government expressed its willingness to accept all of them. This is the third time that North Koreans have sought asylum at a Japanese facility in China. In May 2002, five people entered the Consulate General in Shenyang; in February 2003, four others took refuge at the Beijing school. The latest group of 29 -- 11 men, 15 women and three children -- is the largest yet to seek protection at any diplomatic mission or foreign school in the country. Reports show that the exodus from North Korea has accelerated since 2000, when those who entered South Korea via China and other countries numbered 583. The number jumped to 1,140 in 2001 and to 1,281 in 2002. The figure for this year is believed certain to hit a new record. Case-by-case numbers of asylum-seekers have also increased markedly, as illustrated by the latest incident. Also notable is the diversification of escape routes. In earlier years, most escapees went to South Korea from China. Now, however, more and more go first to Southeast Asian countries from China -- a trend that appears to reflect a tightened crackdown by Chinese authorities. In late July, about 460 people, divided into two groups, left Vietnam for South Korea. It is unknown how many North Korean escapees are living in China. Estimates range widely from several tens of thousands to about 300,000. Thus far South Korea has accepted about 5,000. The country is reportedly building facilities to accommodate many more. According to Unification Minister Chung Dong Young, roughly 10,000 North Koreans will likely enter the country in the next several years. North Korea has only itself to blame for the exodus. The country was hit hard by famine beginning in the mid-1990s -- largely the result of economic policy failures -- and by severe floods in rural regions. An untold number of people have died from hunger, and more than a million are said to still face starvation. International food aid is found very much wanting. The World Food Program, a U.N. affiliate, said in July that 6.5 million North Koreans needed assistance, but that only about 1.8 million, including pregnant women and babies, could be reached because aid had been drastically cut due to fund shortages. Earlier this year, Japan provided 125,000 tons of food, including rice, as the first batch of humanitarian aid that it had committed to North Korea. According to the WFP representative in Pyongyang, that amount is sufficient to feed about 6.5 million people. Reportedly the food situation in North Korea has improved somewhat, yet many people continue to flee the country. This suggests that a large part of the population -- particularly those on the fringes of North Korean society -- still suffer from chronic hunger. In the view of a former U.S. State Department official for North Korean affairs, however, the problem with food aid is not quantitative but systemic -- that is, an inefficient distribution system. The official, who visited North Korea last month, pointed out that much of the aid provided does not get to the people who really need it. Two years ago, Pyongyang launched a string of economic reforms to introduce market transactions, albeit on a limited scale. As a result, prices went up but wages did not rise as much. It is said that the economy is still limping along and that the masses continue to have difficulty eking out a living. Improving the lot of ordinary North Koreans should be the top priority of the North Korean leadership, yet Pyongyang keeps spending inordinate amounts of money on its programs to develop nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. In defiance of international opinion, it is playing a dangerous game of nuclear brinkmanship. So far, North Korean responses to the escapee crisis have been not only cosmetic but also misguided. Authorities have not taken any fundamental action to stem the tide; they have tightened border controls, blaming South Korea and other countries for encouraging defections. It seems certain that the number of escapees will increase until North Korea works out drastic remedies. The fundamental solution is to improve the well-being of its people. Pyongyang should know that endless streams of distressed people fleeing abroad represent a time bomb ticking in its midst. The Japan Times: Sept. 8, 2004 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 7 Japan Times: Seoul is not the proliferator Thursday, September 9, 2004 By TOM PLATE LOS ANGELES -- Fundamentally, as they tend to say in particle physics, the big brouhaha over the secret South Korean uranium-enrichment experiment is an absurdity. After all, the amount of fissionable material produced at the national laboratory -- as currently reported -- was trivial: The weapons-grade production was about as big time as a paper airplane requesting 747-landing rights at Kimpo Airport. The whole flap is curious in the extreme. Seoul voluntarily reported the unauthorized experiment to international authorities, and that should be the end of it. But all sorts of unhelpful parties in the region may want to use the errant experiment for their own purposes. North Koreans may say that the clandestine South Korean program puts both Koreas in a plane of moral equivalency. It doesn't: South Korea is a far more transparent society and the North Korean nuclear program is thus far more worrisome. Some Japanese circles may want to point to the Seoul admission as further evidence that the Landing of the Rising Sun needs to get cracking and develop its own nuclear weapons program. That would be the worst development imaginable for peace and security. And China, rightly pushing its six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, may point to the revelation as reason for more urgent diplomacy; but of course nothing substantive will happen until after the results of the American elections. How did the flap start? At the end of the day, the origins of the illicit experiment will probably be traceable to South Korean nuclear scientists who did a bit of toying around in the lab on their own. Such amoral conduct would easily track with that of other scientists elsewhere who tend to take matters into their own hands and act as if they are above the law. Basically, brilliant scientists tend to believe that they are really not like you and me, that a special set of rules governs them and that they can do as they please. It's called the God complex: But this above-the-law attitude creates problems for national governments and new international tensions that need to be smoothed away. The revelation also reminds us that any state that has the steel will to want a nuclear capability (whether subterranean or otherwise) will proceed apace, no matter what anyone else says. Although South Korea appears not to be in that category, there is the question of Iran and Pakistan. It is U.S. policy -- as well as the policy of the other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- to seek to stymie the increase in the number of nuclear powers, on the entirely plausible ground that fewer is better. Then again, as India might put it, it is easier to take this line when one already possesses such weapons than when one is on the outside looking in at the comfy nuclear club luxuriating in its high moral line. The ideal number of nuclear powers would be zero, of course. But until and unless the United States -- along with China, Russia, France and Britain -- agrees to stuff the nuclear genie back in the bottle by advancing nuclear disarmament by leadership example, others will continually be tempted to lust after nuclear potency, too. Even so, the danger the world faces is not so much from direct nuclear exchange between nuclear states that are in control of their militaries as from their mental facilities. As famed theoretical physicist Norman Dombey puts it in the current London Review of Books, "It follows that the international community should focus on the weak link in the nonproliferation regime: that's to say, states that possess nuclear weapons and are not fully in control of their territory or of their citizens." Seen from this analytical perspective, therefore, nothing on the Korean Peninsula -- north or south -- is anything as worrisome as Pakistan, against which, since 9/11, the U.S. has had to snuggle up ally-style. The U.S. -- the first and only nation-state to have used such weapons in combat -- thus is somewhat responsible for developments there, and is also morally culpable for relying on nuclear weapons as a core part of its military arsenal. "We call upon the citizens of the United States to look squarely at the reality of the tragedies that have unfolded in the wake of the atomic bombings 59 years ago," wrote Itcho Itoh, mayor of Nagasaki, in the Nagasaki Peace Declaration last month on the occasion of the 59th anniversary of the atomic destruction of his city. "So long as the world's leading superpower fails to change its posture of dependence on nuclear weapons, it is clear that the tide of nuclear proliferation cannot be stemmed." Nagasaki's mayor is right. This is the bottom line on nuclear proliferation. We need a world free from nuclear weapons; and so we need a re-moralized U.S. to take the lead and bequeath planet Earth a fate free of nuclear holocaust. For some kind of future nuclear tragedy would seem probable in the absence of transcendent American renunciation. UCLA professor Tom Plate, a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, is the founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network. Copyright 2004 Tom Plate The Japan Times: Sept. 9, 2004 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 8 AFP: Britain begins 'long haul' to make North Korea open up on nukes [http://www.spacewar.com/] Britain begins 'long haul' to make North Korea open up on nukes LONDON (AFP) Sep 09, 2004 Britain's first mission to Pyongyang will be the start of a "very long haul" to persuade North Korea to come clean on its nuclear weapons programs, its junior foreign minister for Asia said Thursday. "I am certainly realistic about our expectations," Bill Rammell told reporters in London on the eve of his visit to Pyongyang. "This is the start of a very, very long haul to try to edge North Korea back from complete isolation," he said. Rammell is the first British minister to visit North Korea -- part of US President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" -- amid an international drive to force Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Britain had rejected previous requests to send a minister to North Korea because of its reluctance to discuss both the question of nuclear weapons and human rights, but has since changed tack. Britain first established diplomatic relations with the reclusive Stalinist state in December 2000, in tandem with several other European Union member states. During his mission, Rammell will also raise the issue of human rights abuses in talks with North Korean ministers. He is due to North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun and other senior figures. The crisis over nuclear weapons erupted in October 2002 when the United States accused Pyongyang of operating a secret nuclear programme based on enriched uranium. Several rounds of talks involving North Korea and the United States along with China, Japan, Russia and South Korea have failed to break the deadlock. Britain suspects North Korea has one or two nuclear weapons. Pyongyang has denied running a uranium-based program but has restarted its plutonium program. Rammell said he will ask North Korea to follow the example of Libya, which announced months ago it was abandoning its program for weapons of mass destruction after secret talks with Britain and the United States. He said he will also make clear that economically-troubled North Korea would benefit from international aid and help with energy supplies could follow. "North Korea has a key choice," he said. "It can engage in this process and get rid of what it has got and promise not to develop anything further. Then all sorts of positives can come its way. Isolation is the alternative route." All rights reserved. © 2004 Agence France-Presse ***************************************************************** 9 ABC: South Korea admits to history of nuclear testing. 09/09/2004. ABC News Online [http://www.abc.net.au/] The South Korean Government says its scientists conducted tests on plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear bombs, during the 1980s. Just last week, the country admitted it had run unauthorised tests with enriched uranium four years ago. Government officials say they do not want to develop nuclear bombs, but the revelation of the secret experiments is still embarrassing. It has emerged as South Korea and the United States are trying to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions. North Korea is accusing the US of 'double standards' and warning that the South's nuclear activities could trigger an arms race. [http://www.abc.net.au] © 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 10 Nuclear Agency Illegally Hid Information From the Public Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 17:42:45 -0500 (CDT) Sept. 9, 2004 Nuclear Agency Illegally Hid Information From the Public Court Will Hear Challenge Tomorrow by Public Interest Groups WASHINGTON, D.C. - The government infringed on the public's right to know by violating rulemaking procedures when it revised its security regulations for nuclear power plants without notifying the public or providing an opportunity for public comment, said Public Citizen and the California environmental group San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace today. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear oral arguments tomorrow on a lawsuit brought by the two groups against the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The new regulations, issued on April 29, 2003, revised the "design basis threat" (DBT), the terrorist attack scenario that nuclear plants are required to be able to guard against. The plant operators' preparedness is mainly evaluated through "force-on-force" tests - simulations in which a group of mock attackers attempt to gain access to restricted plant areas. Citing a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a law governing agency rulemaking, the groups are asking the NRC to put the new rules through a public rulemaking process, which would allow an opportunity for the reactor states and the public to comment on what should be in the new rule and require the agency to take those comments into account. "After taking almost a year and a half following the 9/11 terrorist attacks to even consider upgrading the force-on-force security requirements, the NRC rushed the process by bypassing the public altogether," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "This failure is not only contrary to principles of open, democratic government and the NRC's own promises, but ultimately makes plants less secure by limiting the input and ideas received in crafting such important regulations." State governments and the public have played a crucial role in the past in holding the industry and NRC accountable on issues of nuclear safety and security. For instance, the addition of a truck bomb scenario to the DBT in 1995 came mainly as a result of citizen group pressure after the first World Trade Center attack. "State agencies that must respond to terrorist acts, public interest groups, and members of the public would all have had great interest in commenting on many aspects of the new rule, which could have resulted in a stronger regulation," said Rochelle Becker, project manager with Mothers for Peace. "While NRC internal memos now say the NRC intends to conduct public rulemaking in the future, a public rulemaking should have been undertaken from the beginning." Although details of the DBT remain secret for security reasons, some characteristics are publicly known. For instance, the number of mock attackers has increased and the new tests will take place at a given plant at least once every three years, rather than once every eight years. In contrast, the U.S. Department of Energy's sensitive nuclear facilities conduct similar tests annually. The new rule goes into full effect on Oct. 29. Critics of security at nuclear power plants have found significant ammunition lately. In July, the 9/11 Commission stated in its final report that al Qaeda had strongly considered targeting nuclear plants. Nonetheless, the new DBT evidently does not require plants to take effective measures against possible aircraft attacks by terrorists. The NRC also received heavy criticism recently for allowing the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying arm, to hire Wackenhut to perform the new force-on-force tests, given that Wackenhut also holds contracts to guard nearly half the nuclear plants in the country. And in August, the NRC announced its decision to keep secret all information relating to security inspections and tests, such as the new force-on-force tests, and any enforcement actions taken as a result of those findings. The oral arguments will be heard at 9:30 a.m. in the principal courtroom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, located on the fifth floor of the federal courthouse at 333 Constitution Avenue, N.W. ### Please visit our website at www.citizen.org ***************************************************************** 11 Las Vegas Mercury: Editor's Note: Where the wild things are Thursday, Sep 9, 2004, 11:04:44 PM Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury "Any society that feels itself too poor to afford the preservation of wilderness is not worthy of the name civilization."--Edward Abbey In some ways, I'm not a good person to write a passionate defense of the Wilderness Act on its 40th anniversary or to support a bill creating new wilderness areas in Lincoln County. The truth is, I don't get out much anymore--out into the wilderness, that is. I spend most of my time enjoying the creature comforts of the city, working downtown, residing in the suburbs, shopping in the urban mélange and flitting from one air-conditioned building and vehicle to another. One might suppose that a more appropriate advocate would be someone who, if he doesn't exactly live off the land, at least spends his weekends hiking up hillsides and marveling at natural wonders. On the other hand, perhaps I'm an ideal candidate for such a defense. Because if someone like me can appreciate the value of protecting wilderness, perhaps there is hope for the cause. After all, I suspect most Americans live more like me than like the guy who spends his free time venturing beyond the clutches of civilization. What's more, wilderness preservation is of interest not only to those weekend Thoreaus but to someone like me who comes face to face with true wilderness only occasionally. Wilderness preservation is important even if I don't go there all the time. "I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving."--Edward Abbey Wilderness protection is not exactly a popular concept in Nevada. The Silver State was founded by miners, who tear up nature to get at its mineral resources. And during the Cold War, Nevada's wide open spaces became a destination for federal largesse, in the form of nuclear tests and bombing ranges. Nevadans generally supported these programs that gouged and befouled the desert. More recently, Nevada has worshipped the almighty bulldozer, embracing growth and development and forsaking the environment in the process. In short, Nevada never has been a place where the ecologically minded have had a seat at the big table. There are exceptions to every rule. Thanks to the efforts of a few far-sighted politicians, some of Nevada's natural treasures have been protected, such as Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area west of Las Vegas and Great Basin National Park near Ely. But in recent years these kinds of protections have come at a price. For every wilderness protection, there seems to be a parallel measure smoothing the path for development. Those far-sighted politicians know that if they want environmental legislation to pass, they have to satisfy the deep-pocketed miners, ranchers and developers. This is not the worst thing in the world. In fact, to their credit, most wilderness champions in Nevada have come to terms with this compromise approach. They understand that they probably can't get the whole enchilada. They can get something or nothing at all, and they choose something. The Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act of 1998 and the Clark County Conservation of Public Lands and Natural Resources Act of 2002 are prime examples of this yin-yang approach. Under the 1998 act, the developers got what they wanted--lots of land to build on in the Las Vegas area--while the environmentalists got millions of dollars to preserve and protect natural areas. Under the 2002 law, the environmentalists got hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness, while the developers got more urban land to build on. A pending bill would do roughly the same thing in neighboring Lincoln County. It would clear hurdles for development in the rural county, while preserving 770,000 acres of wilderness. The bill has the general support of both sides. The wilderness advocates are particularly upset about one thing: the lack of protection for the Pahranagat Range, which, they say, contains thousands of rock art panels and vital wildlife habitat and is therefore prime territory for wilderness designation. The environmentalists make a reasonable and compelling case for Pahranagat's protection, and perhaps something can be worked out before the bill comes to a final vote. In the meantime, the bill's advocates must contend with the still-beating view that most, if not all public lands should be turned over to the miners, ranchers and developers. Vin Suprynowicz, libertarian columnist for the Review-Journal, gave creative voice to this sentiment recently when he ridiculed the Lincoln County bill's wilderness provisions. Rather than allow the "Green loonies" to create more "human exclusion zones," Suprynowicz says the land would be better used for a "dude ranch and silver mine." Vin, of course, prides himself on not being engaged in the mainstream discussion of things, but his viewpoint is no doubt shared by thousands of Nevadans. This extreme approach, however, fails to put things in perspective. Vin himself notes that wilderness areas in Nevada currently constitute just 2.2 percent of the state's land. If the Lincoln bill passes as is, we're talking, what, 3 percent or 4? This is a very small sacrifice for the forces of commerce who, more often than not, find a clever way to make money off environmental protections. In this age when government is routinely demonized, protecting wilderness is the essence of good government. "God bless America. Let's save some of it."--Edward Abbey --GEOFF SCHUMACHER ----------------------------------------------------------------- Home | 2AM Club Guide | Archive | Contact | Personals Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury, 2001 - 2004 Stephens Media Group ***************************************************************** 12 Las Vegas Mercury: Democracy in Peril Thursday, Sep 9, 2004, 11:04:52 PM Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury Democracy in Peril Bush's campaign has mastered at least one of Sun Tsu's ancient rules of warfare: When you are weak, appear strong. By Steve Sebelius THE WRONG ANSWER: It was the worst kind of rhetorical trap: President Bush was challenging Sen. John Kerry to say whether or not he would have voted to go to war in Iraq, with the benefit of months of hindsight. The right answer was clearly no. How could anyone say they would still support a war to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, a burgeoning nuclear weapons program and links to Al-Qaeda's Sept. 11 attacks when there were no weapons, no nukes and no Sept. 11 links? But Kerry said yes anyway. And when the history of the 2004 presidential election is written, that answer will represent a key chapter, a flubbed opportunity for Kerry to differentiate himself from Bush in a clear and compelling way. Instead, buried under a thicket of his own self-created nuance, Kerry is daily painted as a flip-flopper by an effective, focused Bush-Cheney campaign. And if he's to dig out of that thicket, he's got to start now. All is not lost. But the American people are going to have to wake up to the fact that Bush's campaign has mastered at least one of Sun Tsu's ancient rules of warfare: When you are weak, appear strong. Because on issue after issue, Bush attacks Kerry on subjects where the president's own position is far, far worse than Kerry's. Take the war. Kerry may have had trouble articulating his position on the war, but Bush is the one who took the country to war. One by one, he's seen his prewar justifications fall, the death toll for U.S. soldiers rise and terrorism risks increase. But Bush tries to convince us that Kerry is the worse of the two on war. Consider Yucca Mountain. Bush signed the designation of Yucca as the nation's nuclear waste dump, yet he attacks Kerry for casting votes on both sides of the issue. Are we really to believe Bush's straight talk (boiled down, it says "screw Nevada!") is better than Kerry's ("not on my watch!")? Bush is counting on the fact that Americans appreciate a consistent, straight talker, and that they won't notice the one, glaring defect: You can be utterly consistent and utterly wrong at the same time. If a person makes a mistake and sticks with it, even when he sees the contrary evidence, he's stubborn, not a leader. By contrast, if a person makes a mistake, realizes it and sets a new course, he's not a flip-flopper. He's a person who's learned something. And that should never be considered a bad thing. That's why Kerry should have answered the president by saying no, he would not have gone to war. Because it would have shown he's learned something, and put it into practice. In the end, this nation has much more to fear from Bush, who cannot admit mistakes or change course, even when he's been proven wrong, than from Kerry. But will the senator be able to convince voters of that in the next two months? If he does, it will show he really is able to learn from his mistakes. Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury, 2001 - 2004 Stephens Media Group ***************************************************************** 13 The Daily Texan - Opinion: Firing Line - Advanced Search [http://www.dailytexanonline.com] | 9/9/2004 Good ole American what? Surprise, surprise. Columnist James Burnham ("Iran nuclear program should not be ignored," Sept. 8) wholeheartedly supports Bush's labeling another Middle East country with big oil reserves "evil." Is there any country with lots of oil and brown-skinned natives that Bush and Burnham don't think is evil and in need of some good ole American whup-ass? Is it any surprise Iran wants to develop nuclear technology? As Americans keep driving their behemoth SUVs and invade country after country in search of cheap oil, the value of their own "sea of oil" is only going to rise. Best to switch to nuclear now and keep the oil available for sale on the international market in a few years when its price has really sky-rocketed. Burnham ought to support this plan; it's a simple matter of supply and demand. That's what conservatives are all about, right? Even if Iran is building a technology base that could lead to a nuclear arsenal, Burnham should support it. Nations have a right to defend themselves. Real conservatives believe in that simple concept too. The nuclear-armed United States has invaded nations on both Iran's eastern and western borders and declared its open hostility to Iran itself. Fear-mongering jingos throughout the United States (including Burnham) openly call for the "destabilization" of Iran. The only possible counterbalance to a U.S. invasion of the Iranian oil fields is a nuclear retaliatory capability. Seen in this light, one could argue that a nuclear-armed Iran would have a stabilizing effect on the Middle East. A balance of nuclear terror has kept America and Russia from destroying each other for over 50 years. Of course, a stable Middle East is not what Burnham or Bush are after. Isaac Boxx Aerospace engineering graduate student Be afraid, be very afraid Brian Boyko's attempt at being clever by indirectly equating ignorant people with Republicans aside ("Fear sells in political marketplace," Sept. 8), his column fails more substantially in his premise that Bush is using fear and the threat of further terrorist attacks to further his political agenda. Mr. Boyko states that the current climate of fear is "manufactured," and hence meritless. I would expect Mr. Boyko, as a journalism graduate student, to pay more attention to the news. In the course of only about two weeks, Russia has suffered two commercial airliner attacks resulting in 89 deaths, a subway bombing resulting in nine deaths and most infamously, the hijacking of an elementary school resulting in over 330 dead, most of whom are children. So, despite Boyko's apparent ignorance of the fact that a fellow G8 nation is suffering an ongoing, relentless barrage of terrorist attacks, most Americans realize that terrorists are in fact real, and they are planning another attack on America even as I write this Firing Line. But Boyko's column does succeed in encapsulating what must be a fine "Catch 22" for Democrats this election season. Bush and his administration have been harshly criticized for not doing enough to prevent and warn the American people of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. But now that the American public is being informed when credible intelligence indicates a potential terrorist threat, it is branded fear-mongering. Boyko apparently would prefer to leave his head in the ground, reassuring himself all the while that terrorism is a figment of Bush's (and Russia's) imagination. Todd B. Willis Petroleum engineering senior Don't hate on Boyko Boyko's article was right on the mark. This election is not going to be won by factual and logical statements. I would generalize his observation to the following: The Republicans appeal to emotion, the Democrats to reason. Unfortunately, when it comes to the public, emotion will always win out over reason. This is a sad but true fact that Karl "Darth Vader" Rove has ruthlessly applied. If the Democrats are to be successful in November, they must be equally ruthless, particularly in getting their message out to the voting blocs that stand to lose the most from another Republican term. Srinivas Nedunuri Computer sciences graduate student President Bush don't know much about a science book Ben Hughes' critique ("Bush program ignores environmental science," Sept. 7) of the Bush administration's environmental policies was right on target. Our president never lets science, or the public interest, get in the way of handouts to corporations. And if logging interests weren't at stake, I'm sure Bush would ignore scientific advice just as vociferously in favor of a more Bible-friendly approach to healthy forests. Of course, what kind of science awareness should we expect from a president who has stated publicly that he doesn't believe in evolution? I'm told the existence of gravity is an equally controversial topic at the Bush dinner table. James Scott UT alum and Former Texan columnist Web-Exclusive Firing Lines Earth is doing fine I have a few comments for Benjamin Hughes about his column on Tuesday. I thought the last 11 paragraphs constituted a very well-constructed argument about logging versus controlled burns in overgrown forests. However, the first two paragraphs (the ones that hook you in) had almost nothing to do with this issue. Ben dismisses as deflected blame the claim that it is air and water impurities, not pollution, that are harming the environment. First of all, this doesn't sound like a forest overgrowth issue. Second, I've seen plenty of evidence that suggests this claim is true. Take ozone for example. Cloro-fluoro-carbons are responsible for breaking up ozone. Humans are responsible for releasing about 2 million tons of these particles into the air each year by way of car exhaust or aerosol sprays. However, petroleum seeping up from the ocean floor accounts for 4 trillion tons each year. That means fluctuations in the ozone layer are cyclical. So, yes, in this instance, Mother Nature is responsible for its own "demise." About Bush's "oversimplification" of environmental issues: What do you expect from any politician on any issue? 10-second sound bytes are what get them elected. It's the only thing that will survive the collective short attention span of the American public. Sad, but true. And don't be too quick to throw around the gloom-and-doom words like "demise." They taint your argument into looking one-sided and extremist. Besides, it looks to me like Earth is doing just fine, anyway. Andrew Conover UT alum Statue vigil overly dramatic A guest columnist ("MLK vandalism in retrospect," Sept. 2) recently claimed that "I had to see [the MLK statue defacement] firsthand to believe that someone had done it ... again." In the following sentences, she reports that the statue was cleaned up before she arrives, but that she nevertheless worked up a good case of outrage over the incident. She seems oblivious to the self-contradiction. Shortly thereafter, a group of the perpetually outraged and their sympathizers formed an all-night vigil to sing songs, pray and otherwise revel in the "Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle," to quote Dennis Miller. Granted, a 24-hour vigil is much more fun than going to class and is a great way to meet other singles who share similar interests. However, real victims (or their families) of horrible acts of real racism do not relive them at the drop of a hat. It's simply too painful to put on display like that. Given the inconsequential act of petty vandalism involved and the inordinate amount of attention being focused on it, we are left with the conclusion that the vigil was of, by and for pseudo-victims. Alan McKendree UT staff ***************************************************************** 14 UN Atomic Agency Seeks To Tackle Shortage In New Generation Of Nuclear Workers Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 12:00:09 -0400 UN ATOMIC AGENCY SEEKS TO TACKLE SHORTAGE IN NEW GENERATION OF NUCLEAR WORKERS New York, Sep 9 2004 12:00PM Seeking to ensure the safe and economic use of nuclear science and technology, the United Nations atomic agency has brought together more than 200 experts, scientists and officials from over 40 countries this week to tackle such issues as the lag in the rise of a new generation to replace the current ageing nuclear workforce. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) International Conference on Nuclear Knowledge Management in Saclay, France, is meeting against a backdrop of recent trends that include falling student enrolment, the risk of losing nuclear knowledge accumulated in the past, and the need to build capacity and share knowledge. The nuclear workforce is ageing with more and more workers approaching retirement age without a corresponding influx of appropriately qualified younger personnel to replace them, the Agency noted. Fewer young people are studying nuclear science, nuclear engineering and related fields at the university level, and a growing number of universities are giving up their nuclear education programmes altogether. In recognition of these and related trends, a number of IAEA advisory committees, as well as the IAEA Board of Governors and General Conference, have called for measures to better identify the nature and scope of the problem, to understand what countries are doing to address it, and to determine what co-operative international actions might be appropriate. In 2002 the <"http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2004/knowledge.html">IAEA decided to systematically address the preservation and promotion of knowledge in the field of nuclear science and technology. "Whether or not nuclear power witnesses an expansion in the coming decades, it is essential that we preserve nuclear scientific and technical competence for the safe operation of existing facilities and applications,” IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei told the agency’s 47th General Conference last year. 2004-09-09 00:00:00.000 ________________ For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news To change your profile or unsubscribe go to: http://www.un.org/news/dh/latest/subscribe.shtml ***************************************************************** 15 Guardian Unlimited: Hydrogen seen as car fuel of the future Gas from nuclear power stations 'will power the world's vehicles' Paul Brown, environment correspondent Friday September 10, 2004 [http://www.guardian.co.uk] Hydrogen produced by nuclear power stations will fuel the world's vehicles by 2050, providing pollution-free transport while combating global warming, the World Nuclear Association was told in London yesterday. A combination of the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions, the prospect of increasingly expensive oil and the estimated growth in the world's vehicle fleet means that only hydrogen can plug the gap, Paul Kruger, of Stanford University in California told delegates. Professor Kruger believes that the hydrogen will be produced by a combination of renewables such as wind and solar power and nuclear stations designed to produce hydrogen with surplus electricity. The conference, attended by the world's main nuclear organisations, had a series of presentations on how nuclear energy will play a vital role in changing the energy market to one which runs on hydrogen rather than oil. While a handful of buses in Britain already run on hydrogen, and BMW has designed a dual petrol/hydrogen engine, the problem was producing enough hydrogen for it to replace oil as the primary vehicle fuel, the conference heard. While many have suggested that surplus wind and solar energy can be used for electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, Prof Kruger floated the idea that nuclear power stations could also be built to provide electric power and hydrogen. Making nuclear power stations slightly larger than necessary would allow surplus electricity to produce hydrogen at very little extra cost. This could be sold to a national network of hydrogen filling stations for fuel cells for cars. The estimated growth in the world fleet of vehicles is from 900m in 2010 to 1,500m by 2050. The trick was to change the fuel from the 360bn gallons of petrol which would be used in 2010 to 260bn kg of hydrogen fuel needed 40 years later. To produce that much hydrogen, electricity production would have to be increased by between 15% and 25% more than that needed merely to keep the lights on, he said. There are 440 nuclear stations operating worldwide, but providing enough electricity and hydrogen to meet the world's needs might need up to 3,500 new nuclear stations. The advantage of hydrogen for fuelling cars is that it is that it recombines with oxygen to produce pure water as the only waste product. The Bush administration is so convinced that dual electricity and hydrogen production is the future that the US department of energy has decided to construct a demonstration nuclear reactor to produce hydrogen in Idaho Falls. Hans Forsstrom, from the European commission, said the EU was also considering the use of high-temperature reactors to produce hydrogen. The process had a "big potential". Klaus Scheuerer, of BMW, said it had already developed a car which could run on hydrogen or petrol. The problem was not the technology but the supply of hydrogen. "The long-term transition to hydrogen as a source of energy is an absolute necessity. Our progress in the development of a hydrogen engine makes us confident that the road to market is a short one." Special reports Car industry in the UK Global recession Recent articles 06.09.2001: British cars get thumbs down 03.09.2001: Industry pleads for delay over EU car law 10.08.2001: Running on empty 08.08.2001: Ford faces £400m loss in UK Useful links [http://www.ford.com/servlet/ecmcs/ford/index.jsp] [http://www.daimlerchrysler.com/] [http://www.gm.com/flash_homepage/] [http://www.cbi.org.uk/home.html] [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** 16 news24: WMD probe deepens 09/09/2004 09:41 - (SA) Johannesburg - Two more men arrested in different South African towns in an international probe into weapons of mass destruction may appear in court on Thursday. This follows the sudden and unexplained withdrawal of charges against another accused in Vanderbijlpark on Wednesday. One of the men was arrested at about 19:00 on Wednesday night on Durban's beachfront and the other in Randburg, Johannesburg, by the police's serious and violent crimes unit, police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer said. Both are in custody. De Beer said she did not know when they would appear in court. They faced charges under the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Act and the Nuclear Energy Act, she said, but did not know the details of the charges. Last week engineering firm director Johan Meyer was arrested at his company Trade Fin Engineering in Vanderbijlpark and was meant to face three charges under the acts relating to a piece of equipment that could be used to enrich uranium. Enriched uranium can be used for the detonation of nuclear bombs, besides having medical applications. Eleven containers containing components of a gas centrifuge and related documents were seized from the factory and transported to Pelindaba, where South Africa's nuclear research facility is located. A centrifuge is used in the process of separating and enriching uranium particles. AQ Khan network International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors currently in the country, and the police would "maintain control over the equipment", according to SA's Council for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Shortly after Meyer's first court appearance on Wednesday, he returned to court and the case against him was withdrawn. His attorney Heinrich Badenhorst would not comment on whether he had agreed to assist with the international investigation, which has been linked to the "AQ Khan network". AQ Khan was once a leading figure in Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme and has since reportedly admitted to selling components to Libya, Iran and North Korea. A Cape Town-based man was arrested in Denver in the USA and a Randburg-based man was recently taken in for questioning in Germany, reportedly in connection with the investigation. When contacted for comment, the Randburg-based man's attorney would not say whether he was one of the people arrested on Wednesday night. Edited by Tisha Steyn ***************************************************************** 17 News24 WMD: Co-workers shocked [http://www.news24.com www.news24.com/ Johannesburg - The two men arrested on charges of breaking laws on weapons of mass destruction and nuclear energy worked at a Randburg engineering company, their colleagues told Sapa on Thursday. One was arrested in Durban and another in Randburg on Wednesday night, said police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer said earlier. "We are shocked," said an employee who asked not to be named. "We just repair vacuum pumps .. it's like taking your car into the workshop for repair." He said police took files and a computer when they searched the premises. A lawyer for one of the men would not comment. Johan Meyer, a director of a Vanderbijlpark engineering firm, was arrested last week under the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act and the Nuclear Energy Act and 11 containers of equipment were removed from his premises. They were taken to a nuclear research facility at Pelindaba, west of Pretoria. The case against Meyer was withdrawn on Wednesday. His lawyer would not comment on whether Meyer was assisting an international investigation into the import and export of nuclear components, but said he would make a statement later on Thursday. Edited by Tisha Steyn ***************************************************************** 18 iafrica.com WMD arrests: Two to appear in court JOHANNESBURG Posted Thu, 09 Sep 2004 The two men arrested on charges of breaking laws on weapons of mass destruction and nuclear energy will appear in the Vanderbijlpark Regional Court on Thursday, police said. One was arrested in Durban and another in Randburg on Wednesday night. They face charges under the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act and the Nuclear Energy Act, police spokeswoman Director Sally de Beer said. They are believed to be from an engineering company in Randburg. When asked why they would appear in the Vanderbijlpark court, De Beer said: "They will appear where the offence was committed." Johan Meyer, a director of a Vanderbijlpark engineering firm, was arrested last week under the acts and 11 containers of equipment were removed from his premises. They were taken to a nuclear research facility at Pelindaba, west of Pretoria. The case against him was withdrawn on Wednesday. His lawyer would not comment on whether Meyer was assisting an international investigation into the import and export of nuclear components, but said he would make a statement later on Thursday. 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Africa cuts deal with nuclear smuggler - September 09, 2004 Pretoria, South Africa, Sep. 9 (UPI) -- South Africa has dropped charges against a man suspected of selling nuclear equipment in exchange for him to tell all, the Washington Times reports. Johan Meyer, 53, was arrested last week at his Tradefin Engineering company in Vanderbijlpark and charged with violating South Africa's weapons proliferation laws. "He's squealing and willing to do a deal to tell us ... all we want to know," a senior South African official told the Times on condition of anonymity. At the time of his arrest, 11 containers of material useful for enriching uranium were carted away from his factory in an industrial town on the Vaal River, 85 miles south of Pretoria, police said. Meyer is believed to have been involved in a secretive South African government program to develop nuclear weapons, which was dismantled under international supervision in 1994. His arrest was part of a worldwide operation that has netted suspects in Germany, Switzerland and the United States. [UPI Perspectives] ***************************************************************** 20 Washington Times: Nuke smuggler ready to 'tell all' - September 09, 2004 PRETORIA  South Africa dropped charges against a factory owner suspected of selling nuclear equipment to rogue states as part of a plea bargain in which the man agreed to "tell all," a senior official said yesterday. "He's squealing and willing to do a deal to tell us, the Americans and the Europeans, all we want to know," a senior South African official told The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity. Johan Meyer, 53, was arrested last week at his Tradefin Engineering company in Vanderbijlpark and charged with violating South Africa's weapons proliferation laws. ***************************************************************** 21 Interfax: IAEA report on Iran positive - Russian foreign minister Updated: Sep 10 2004 6:25AM (MSK) Ðóññêàÿ âåðñèÿ Sep 9 2004 2:19PM MOSCOW. Sept 9 (Interfax) - Moscow believes there has been positive progress on the issue of the Iranian Nuclear program, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, following the release of a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). on Iran. "We have received the report of the IAEA Secretary General and are studying it. The first impression is positive," he said. The report "confirmed further progress in the solution of problems highlighted by the Agency," the minister said. "There are still one or two questions that can be resolved within the next two or three months," he said. Russia's attitude to Iran and the Iranian nuclear program "will be based on objective and professional conclusions of the Agency," he said. He reaffirmed that Russia would continue atomic energy cooperation with Iran. + Beslan attack new dimension of terrorist threat - Putin, Schroeder // Sep 9 2004 9:51PM + Intl Red Cross considering opening office in S. Ossetia // Sep 9 2004 9:45PM + Kvashnin appointed presidential envoy in Siberia // Sep 9 2004 9:37PM + Putin, Schroeder issue statement on anti-terror measures // Sep 9 2004 9:25PM + Russia hopes next round of Korean talks will be held in Sept // Sep 9 2004 8:09PM More news © 1991-2004 Interfax All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 22 allAfrica.com: South Africa: Nuke Suspects in Court Today [http://www.capeargus.co.za] The Publisher's Site Cape Argus (Cape Town) September 9, 2004 Two South African businessmen suspected of being part of a worldwide nuclear smuggling ring will appear in a Johannesburg court later today. One of the men was arrested in Durban and the other in Johannesburg last night. They face charges related to the Nuclear Energy Act and the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act. "I can confirm that two suspects were arrested by the serious violent crimes unit of the South African police," said national police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer. The raids were co-ordinated from the Serious Violent Crimes headquarters in Pretoria. The investigations were moving at a brisk pace, De Beer said. "At this stage we can absolutely not rule out further arrests." Yesterday charges were suddenly dropped against Vanderbijlpark engineer Johan Meyer, who was arrested under the two acts last week. Eleven containers of equipment were removed from his premises and taken to a nuclear research facility near Pretoria. Previous reports linked Meyer to Abdul Qader Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme. It is rumoured he has accepted immunity from prosecution in exchange for turning state's evidence. De Beer said: "Our own investigations are continuing and we are preparing matters for court. For this reason we are not prepared to comment." Make allAfrica.com your home page Copyright © 2004 Cape Argus. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). Click here to contact ***************************************************************** 23 Xinhuanet: Sustainable energy achievable, but not easy www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2004-09-09 18:26:21 SYDNEY, Sept. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- The 19th World Energy Congress wound up its five-day discussions on the key issues facing the world's energy here Thursday, saying that sustainable energy systems people have hoped for are achievable. The congress encouraged all energy options open -- with "no technology should be idolized or demolished" so as to keep sustainable energy systems, a congress communique said. The congress, which themed on sustainability, was held at a time when the energy industry is concerned about the skyrocketing energy prices. "Energy source diversity is the bedrock of a robust system," the congress concluded, referring to both the conventional optionsof coal, oil and gas, nuclear and hydro, and the new renewable energy sources. Nuclear has been one of the hot topics discussed at the congress as European and the US delegates showed increasing interests. A number of European countries and the United States used to virtually suspend their nuclear energy projects during the past decade or so after a number of fatal accidents like the Chernobyl. A German delegate told the congress Thursday that Europe shouldnow need to reconsider it's reluctance to accept nuclear energy again. Apart from energy options, delegates have repeated there is no one-for-all energy reform pattern to guarantee the success of sustainability. "You must take into account the difference in eachcountry's circumstances," said Francois Aillert, chair of study ofWorld Energy Council (WEC). The congress also called for a larger share of global infrastructure investment, saying the energy systems that fail to do so are not sustainable. Delegates said more pragmatic market interventions like subsidies may be needed to make sustainability, but without doing much to affect prices. They also stressed on the need of a reliable electricity supplyand regional integration of energy supply systems to boost supply security. "Supply disruptions -- experienced by many in developing countries on a recurring basis and by North America and Europe in the blackouts of 2003 -- exact a heavy economic penalty, highlighting the importance of ensuring security of supply in an increasingly interdependent global energy system," said the communique. Technological innovation and development is vital to satisfy energy demand while protecting the environment at the same time, delegates agreed, calling for stronger support to research and development. There has been a call for cooperation between developed and developing countries in helping solve the energy poverty problem in developing countries. Aillert said rising power prices and other energy problems could bar about 2 billion people in the world from gaining access to electricity. And a cooperation link between developed and developing countries will have a potential win-win result, he said. In what caught the congress's attention on the last day of the convention, a delegate from Botswana said poor countries have beenneglected in the world's largest energy gathering, pointing out few of the 2,500 delegates are from the poor countries. The triennial congress drew industry leaders, government ministers and researchers from around the world to discuss the keyenergy issues under the auspices of the WEC. The next congress will be held in Rome, Italy, in 2007. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 24 Japan Times: Restricted Japanese devices found in Libya nuclear facility Thursday, September 9, 2004 The government is investigating the discovery of restricted Japanese precision instruments in a nuclear facility in Libya, sources said Wednesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency found the instruments, which can be exported only under strict control, during inspections between December and March that followed the declaration by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to give up all of the country's weapons of mass destruction, they said. The instruments are typically used to precisely measure the size and three-dimensional shape of machinery parts. It is made by a manufacturer based in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, they said. The sources said that Japan's foreign and trade ministries and the National Police Agency have sent a joint investigative team to the United States. The Metropolitan Police Department is also planning to investigate the case because the instruments' export might have violated the foreign exchange law's export control regime, they said. Libya apparently imported the instruments to control centrifuge rotors for enriching uranium for nuclear weapons, they said. IAEA inspectors found the instruments along with other unregulated Japanese products in a wooden box that had a label reading "Made in Japan," they said. Some of the devices have been sent to the U.S., where they have been put under its control to prevent their use in developing nuclear weapons, they said. The Japan Times: Sept. 9, 2004 (C) All rights reserved The Japan Times Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 25 IAEA: Managing Knowledge in Nuclear Fields Staff Report 9 September 2004 [International Conference on Nuclear Knowledge Management] As in any other highly-technical endeavour, better management of nuclear knowledge relies heavily on capacity-building, knowledge sharing, and peer-to-peer networking. (Photo Credit: D. Calma/IAEA) + Story Resources + Conference Web Page [http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Meetings/Announcements.asp?ConfID=1 23] + IAEA Nuclear Knowledge Portal [http://www.iaea.org/inis/aws/index.html] + Nuclear Knowledge Page [http://www.iaea.or.at/km/] + Asian Network [pdf] + IAEA Bulletin Edition + Faces of the Future Feature More than 200 experts, scientists and officials from 40-plus countries are meeting this week in France at the IAEA´s International Conference on Nuclear Knowledge Management. The focus is on strategies, information management and human resource development. Like any highly technical endeavour, the use of nuclear technology relies heavily on the accumulation of knowledge. This includes technical information in the form of scientific research, engineering analysis, design documentation, operational data, maintenance records, regulatory reviews and other documents and data. It also includes knowledge embodied in people — e.g. scientists, engineers and technicians and human resources. In recent years, trends have drawn attention to the need for better management of nuclear knowledge. Depending on region and country, they include an ageing workforce, declining student enrolment figures, the risk of losing nuclear knowledge accumulated in the past, the need for capacity building and transfer of knowledge, and recognition of achieving added value through knowledge sharing and networking. The global conference is organised for the first time by the IAEA and the Government of France through the Commissariat de l´Énergie Atomique (CEA) in cooperation with a number of other international organizations. Sessions run through 10 September at the National Institute of Nuclear Sciences and Technology (INSTN) in Saclay, France. The conference is chaired by Mr. Bernard Bigot - High Commissioner for Nuclear Energy of France. Opening addresses were given by IAEA Deputy Director General for Nuclear Energy Mr. Y.Sokolov, CEA Deputy Administrator General J.P. Le Roux and senior officials from the co-sponsoring organizations and institutes. The Conference is providing a forum for useful policy and technical debate, demonstrating the commitment of the entire nuclear community to maintain and develop the knowledge and skills needed for the 21st century. Sessions opened with presentations on possible strategies for managing nuclear knowledge in governments, industry and academia. Three strategic directions were cited: to preserve the legacy of the nuclear development; to share existing knowledge and assure transfer to next generation; and to create new knowledge. Additionally, leading experts in the field, industrial leaders and governmental officials delivered keynote speeches, highlighting the important role of the IAEA in nuclear knowledge management. Over a very short period, the IAEA has underscored the importance of the issue, as demonstrated by various initiatives, meetings and symposia organised since 2002. Within its activities, the Agency has elevated knowledge management to a central position and has launched or supported a number of important global initiatives in response to the requests of its Member States. They include the Asian Network for Education in Nuclear Technology, Asian Nuclear Safety Network, and World Nuclear University, among others. Moreover, INIS (the International Nuclear Information System) has been praised for its important contribution to nuclear information management worldwide. Copyright 2003-2004, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: Official.Mail@iaea.org [Official.Mail@iaea.org] Disclaimer ***************************************************************** 26 csmonitor.com: Loose nukes, Russian instability | [http://www.csmonitor.com/] Commentary > Daniel Schorr from the September 10, 2004 edition WASHINGTON  One thing that hasn't changed much in Russia since Soviet days is the tendency of high officials to cover up when disaster strikes. So it was with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. So it was with President Vladimir Putin and the loss of the submarine Kursk in 2000. So it was in the first days after the schoolhouse massacre in southern Russia. While Russian television was told to go easy on the grim footage from Beslan, officials were understating the death toll and overstating the effectiveness of the special forces deployed to end the confrontation. When President Putin finally came out of his shell on Saturday to deal with rapidly growing popular anger, he went on television to say, "This crime of the terrorists, inhuman, unprecedented in terms of its cruelty" represents the "direct intervention of international terrorism against Russia." He did not acknowledge that the hostage-takers had demanded an end to the war in Chechnya. It was clearly in Putin's interest to represent the assault as connected with international terrorism rather than a homegrown liberation movement. With his regime as close to destabilization as it has been in his five years in office, Putin was reaching out to the West, and especially the United States, for support in his crisis. In his television speech, Putin alluded to fears abroad of a Russian nuclear threat that "must be removed." The US has reason to worry about an unstable Russia. According to Harvard professor Graham Allison in a new book, "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe," 90 percent of all fissile material outside the US is stored in the former Soviet Union. And, because of its huge supplies, its shaky safeguards, and its extensive corruption, Russia poses the greatest threat of loose nukes. The Nunn-Lugar program designed to help finance the removal of Russian nuclear weapons has not been faring well under the Bush administration. But Bush officials might want to have another look at the danger of Russia's loose nukes in an unstable country. " Daniel Schorr is the senior news analyst at National Public Radio. www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 27 AU ABC: Independent Ranger audit to begin Monday. 10/09/2004. ABC News Online "Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online"> [http://www.abc.net.au/] [http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200408/r28459_70965.jpg] Audit: The Federal Government has ordered further checks. (ABC Independent Ranger audit to begin Monday The Northern Territory's Ranger Uranium Mine is expected to undergo the first of three independent audits on Monday. The audits were ordered by the Federal Government after two reports into a contamination incident at the mine. The first audit will cover the radiation protection procedures and the water systems at the Ranger site. In March this year, workers at the mine drank or showered in water that was later found to be contaminated with 400 times the legal limit of uranium. Operations at the mine were suspended for several days last week after concerns expressed by the Federal Resources Minister, Ian Macfarlane, in the wake of the reports. He fears a culture of complacency has developed in several areas of the mine's operations. © 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 28 Orlando Weekly News: Censored! No. 4. High Uranium Levels Found in Troops and Civilians [feedback@orlandoweekly.com] Published 09-09-04 No 1. FCC Hearing No 4. see down 3 more articles. FCC Hearing in Monterey In late July more than 600 people showed up in Monterey, Calif., to speak at a Federal Communications Commission hearing on ownership concentration in the news media. The participants were a diverse group, young and old, activists and workers, but they had a single consistent message: The mainstream news media have been doing a deplorable job of covering the day's most important stories. That's no surprise: Consolidation of the media in the hands of a few corporate Goliaths has resulted in fewer people creating more of the content we see, hear and read. One impact has been a narrower range of perspectives. Another is the virtual disappearance of hard-hitting, original, investigative reporting. "Corporate media has abdicated their responsibility to the First Amendment to keep the American electorate informed about important issues in society and instead serves up a pabulum of junk-food news," says Peter Phillips, head of Sonoma State University's Project Censored. Every year researchers at Project Censored pick through volumes of print and broadcast news to see which of the past year's most important stories aren't receiving the kind of attention they deserve. Phillips and his team acknowledge that many of these stories weren't "censored" in the traditional sense of the word: No government agency blocked their publication. And some even appeared – briefly and without follow-up – in mainstream journals. But every one of this year's picks merited prominent placement on the evening news and the dailies' front pages. Instead they went virtually ignored. This list speaks directly to the point FCC critics have raised: Stories that address fundamental issues of wealth concentration and big-business dominance of the political agenda are almost entirely missing from the national debate. From the dramatic increase in wealth inequality in the United States, to the wholesale giveaway of the nation's natural resources, to the Bush administration's attack on corporate and political accountability, events and trends that ought to be dominating the presidential campaign and the national dialogue are missing from the front pages. Here are Project Censored's 10 biggest examples of major stories that have been relegated to the most obscure corners of the media world. NO. 1. WEALTH INEQUALITY THREATENS ECONOMY AND DEMOCRACY As the mainstream news media recite the official line about the nation's supposed economic recovery, a key point has been missing: Wealth inequality in the United States has almost doubled over the past 30 years. In fact, the Federal Reserve Board's most recent "Survey of Consumer Finances" supplement on high-income families shows that in 1998, the richest 1 percent of households owned 38 percent of the nation's wealth. The top 5 percent owned almost 60 percent of the wealth. But that's just part of the problem. "Most Americans believe we take from people at the top to benefit those below," Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter David Cay Johnston said in a BuzzFlash.com interview. But our tax system is actually set up such that "people who make $30,000 to $500,000 ... give relief to those who make millions, or tens and hundreds of millions, of dollars a year." The United States isn't alone: Today, almost one-sixth of the world's population – 940 million people – "already live in squalid, unhealthy areas, mostly without water, sanitation, public services or legal security," John Vidal wrote in the U.K. Guardian. A recent United Nations report predicted that, absent drastic change to reverse "a form of colonialism that is probably more stringent than the original," one in every three people worldwide will live in slums within 30 years. That's a bigger threat to democracy and global stability than Al Qaeda and international terrorism. Sources: "The Wealth Divide" (interview with Edward Wolff), Multinational Monitor, May 2003. "A BuzzFlash Interview, Parts I and II" (with David Cay Johnson), BuzzFlash staff, BuzzFlash.com, March 26 and 29, 2004. "Every Third Person Will Be a Slum Dweller Within 30 Years, UN Agency Warns," John Vidal, Guardian (U.K.), Oct. 4, 2003. "Grotesque Inequality," Robert Weissman, Multinational Monitor, July-August 2003. NO. 2. ASHCROFT VS. HUMAN RIGHTS LAW THAT HOLDS CORPORATIONS ACCOUNTABLE For decades the United States has trained right-wing insurgents and torturers, toppled democratically elected governments and propped up brutal dictatorships abroad – all in the interest of corporate profits. But rarely are the agents of repression ever held accountable for the tens of thousands of deaths and the brutal cycles of poverty, subjugation, environmental destruction and violence they leave in their wake. Indeed, many foreign tyrants go on to enjoy plush retirement right here in the United States. But recently lawyers have found a way to seek at least a modicum of justice for victims. The Alien Tort Claims Act, a 215-year-old law originally passed to prosecute pirates for crimes committed on the high seas, allows noncitizens to sue any individual or corporation present on U.S. soil. Human rights lawyers have pursued 100 cases under the ATCA since 1980. Defendants have included former high-ranking government and military officials from El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, Paraguay, the Philippines (including ex-president Ferdinand Marcos), Indonesia, Bosnia, Ethiopia and elsewhere. And although the law can only be used to pursue monetary damages rather than prison time, it has often resulted in victims being awarded millions of dollars – and in the perpetrators sometimes fleeing the country rather than paying up. Ten years ago victims began using the act to go after corporate profiteers too: It was thanks to the ATCA, for example, that Holocaust survivors were able to seek redress from the Swiss banks and companies that profited from the slave labor of concentration camp internees during World War II. But Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department has set its sights on the act, claiming in a brief last year that the law threatens "important foreign policy interests" associated with the war on terrorism. Yet hardly a word has been written in the mainstream media about the Bush administration's attack on the main legal recourse left in the United States for victims to seek redress for human rights violations carried out abroad. Source: "Ashcroft Goes After 200-Year-Old Human Rights Law," Jim Lobe, OneWorld.net and Asheville Global Report, May 19, 2003. NO. 3. BUSH ADMINISTRATION MANIPULATES SCIENCE AND CENSORS SCIENTISTS Tampering with data that threatens corporate profits is much more widespread under Bush than we've been led to believe. And the Environmental Protection Agency has emerged as one of the administration's primary targets. One of the first White House moves – on the day Bush was inaugurated – was to fire engineer Tony Oppegard, the leader of a federal team investigating a 300-million-gallon slurry spill at a coal-mining site in Kentucky. "Black lava-like toxic sludge containing 60 poisonous chemicals choked and sterilized up to 100 miles of rivers and creeks," environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in The Nation. The EPA dubbed it "the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the Eastern United States." Bush then appointed industry insiders to top EPA posts in charge of mine safety and health. In another case, a week after the EPA released a study to congressional staff about the toxic effects on groundwater of hydraulic fracturing – a process of injecting benzene into the ground to extract oil and gas, used by Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company – the agency revised its findings in response to "industry feedback" to indicate that the practice posed no threat after all. In the days and months following the World Trade Center attack, the EPA released more than a dozen statements claiming the air quality in the surrounding "control zone" was safe – despite evidence that asbestos dust was present in quantities well above the 1 percent safety benchmark. The agency opened up the area to the public a mere week after the attack, allowing Wall Street to reopen and cleanup activities to begin. As a result, 88 percent of rescue workers suffered ear, nose and throat ailments, and 78 percent suffered lung maladies, according to a Mt. Sinai School of Medicine study. Half suffered persistent respiratory problems up to a year later. In November the EPA arranged for Syngenta, the Swiss manufacturer of Atrazine, to take over federal research of its product, the most widely used weed killer in the United States. This occurred despite evidence that high concentrations of Atrazine in groundwater may be responsible for 50-percent-below-normal semen counts in men in U.S. farming communities, is associated with high incidences of prostate cancer and has resulted in grotesque deformities in frogs when present "at one-thirtieth the government's 'safe' three parts per billion level," Kennedy wrote. The administration has also suppressed scientific findings on global warming in a dozen major government studies over the past two years, according to Kennedy. The problem isn't limited to the EPA. In fact, government interference in scientific research has gotten so bad that 60 of the country's top scientists – including 20 Nobel laureates – issued a statement in February citing the ways the Bush administration has distorted scientific data "for partisan political ends" and calling for regulatory action. Sources: "The Junk Science of George W. Bush," Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Nation, March 8, 2004. "Censoring Scientific Information," Censorship News: The National Coalition Against Censorship Newsletter, fall 2003. "Ranking Scientists Warn Bush Science Policy Lacks Integrity," Environmental News Service correspondents, OneWorld.net, Feb. 20, 2004. "Politics and Science in the Bush Administration," Committee on Government Reform – minority staff, office of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, August 2003 (updated Nov. 13, 2003). NO. 4. HIGH URANIUM LEVELS FOUND IN TROOPS AND CIVILIANS Last year Project Censored included the United States' and Great Britain's continued use of depleted-uranium weapons – despite ample evidence of their acute health effects – among its top 10 underreported stories. Almost 10,000 U.S. troops died within 10 years of serving in the first Gulf War, researchers had found. And more than a third of those still alive had filed Gulf War Syndrome-related claims. In study after study, research pointed to the use of depleted uranium in U.S. and British weaponry as the culprit. But authorities concentrated their efforts into obfuscating the problem – downplaying its reach, discrediting scientists and ailing military personnel and erecting a smoke screen around the root causes of the "syndrome." More recently, the Uranium Medical Research Center, an independent group of U.S. and Canadian scientists that has conducted studies of Afghan civilians, found overwhelming evidence that the United States is also using nondepleted uranium in its weapons, which is far more radioactive than depleted uranium. "If the use of NDU indicates experimental application of new nuclear weapons, as the UMRC suggests, then it should alert the public that proliferation of small nuclear weaponry, proposed for some future use, has in fact already begun," Stephanie Hiller wrote in Awakened Woman. At the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan in Tokyo in December, a team of attorneys from Japan, the United States and Germany indicted Bush on a number of war crimes charges – among them the use of depleted-uranium weapons. Leuren Moret, president of Scientists for Indigenous People, testified at the trial and later reported that a U.S. government study conducted on the babies of Gulf War veterans conceived after the soldiers returned home found that a full two-thirds suffered from serious birth defects or illnesses, including being born without eyes or ears, or with missing or malformed organs or limbs. In Iraq, Moret said, the defects are even worse. But those are just some of the images of war we never see on the evening news. Sources: "UMRC's Preliminary Findings From Afghanistan and Operation Enduring Freedom" and "Afghan Field Trip #2 Report: Precision Destruction, Indiscriminate Effects," Tedd Weyman, UMRC Research Team, Uranium Medical Research Center, January 2003. "Scientists Uncover Radioactive Trail in Afghanistan," Stephanie Hiller, Awakened Woman, January 2004. "There Are No Words ... Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs," Bob Nichols, Dissident Voice, March 2004. "Poisoned?," Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, April 2004. "International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan at Tokyo: The People vs. George Bush," Niloufer, Bhagwat J., Information Clearinghouse, March 2004. NO. 5. WHOLESALE GIVEAWAY OF OUR NATURAL RESOURCES Adam Werbach, executive director of the Common Assets Defense Fund and former Sierra Club president, reviewed the Bush administration's environmental policy record and came to a disturbing conclusion: The record is not only bad, it's "akin to an affirmative action program for corporate polluters," he wrote in In These Times. Cheney's infamous, secretive, industry-laden energy task force produced what can be boiled down to two main recommendations, "lower the environmental bar and pay corporations to jump over it," Werbach wrote. For example, Congress has promised $3 billion in tax cuts to mining corporations to help them access natural gas embedded in underground coal deposits in Georgia's Powder River Basin. The Bureau of Land Management has calculated that miners will waste a full 700 million gallons of publicly owned water a year in the process – thereby sucking the region's underground aquifers dry and decimating local farms and wildlife. The Bush administration's Healthy Forests Initiative essentially entails granting logging companies access to old-growth trees – and then subsidizing them for brush clearing. And even the giant sequoias former president Bill Clinton sought to protect, by creating a 327,000-acre national monument in the southern Sierra Nevada just four years ago, are at risk for being logged at a rate of 10 million board-feet of lumber a year – a higher rate than allowed on surrounding national forest lands – in the name of "forest management." All in all, the administration has launched the greatest giveaway of public natural resources in more than a century. Yet few in the mainstream media have bothered to analyze these plans and uncover the lies behind the administration's rhetorical manipulations. Sources: "Liquidation of the Commons," Adam Werbach, In These Times, Nov. 23, 2003. "Giant Sequoias Could Get the Ax," Matt Weiser, High Country News, June 9, 2003. NO. 6. SALE OF ELECTORAL POLITICS The Help America Vote Act required that states submit blueprints for switching to electronic voting systems by Jan. 1, 2004, and implement plans in time for the 2006 elections. Some regions are already using the machines. But those who've bothered to look into the new systems are sending up warning flares. Critics say that if Americans don't want a repeat of the 2000 Florida election fiasco – on a much grander scale – the administration's plans must be halted in their tracks. A switch to electronic voting might seem innocent enough at first – until you look at who's implementing it, and how. Indeed, the transfer represents the privatization of the voting process in the hands of a select few fervent GOP supporters who've insisted on keeping their operating systems and codes a trade secret – meaning they enjoy absolute control over the entire voting process, including ballot counting and oversight. There's no paper trail. One prime example is Diebold, one of the nation's top electronic voting machine manufacturers, whose equipment was responsible for the Florida debacle. Diebold already operates more than 40,000 machines in 37 states across the country. Many of these are in Georgia, which in November became the first state to conduct an election entirely with touch-screen machines. Oddly enough, incumbent Democratic governor Roy Barnes lost to Republican candidate Sonny Perdue, 46 percent to 51 percent – "a swing from as much as 16 percentage points from the last opinion polls," Andrew Gumbel wrote in the U.K. Independent. In the same election, incumbent Democratic senator Max Cleland lost to his Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss, thanks to "a last-minute swing of 9 to 12 points." And in and around Atlanta, 77 memory cards went missing or were otherwise temporarily unaccounted for before the votes they'd registered could be counted. Similar upsets occurred "in Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois and New Hampshire – all in races that had been flagged as key partisan battlegrounds, and all won by the Republican Party," Gumbel continued. "It makes it really hard to show their product has been tampered with if it's a felony to inspect it," Rebecca Mercuri, a voting systems specialist and research fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, told the Independent. The other top two electronic voting machine manufacturers, Sequoia and Election Systems and Software, are equally suspect. Several of their executives have troubling track records of corruption and conflict of interest. All three companies are prominent Republican Party donors. Sources: "Voting Machines Gone Wild," Mark Lewellen-Biddle, In These Times, December 2003. "All the President's Votes?," Andrew Gumbel, Independent (U.K.), Oct. 13, 2003. "Will Bush Backers Manipulate Votes to Deliver G.W. Another Election?," Amy Goodman and the staff of Democracy Now!, Sept. 4, 2003. NO. 7. CONSERVATIVE ORGANIZATION DRIVES JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS Ever since the Reagan administration, the neo-conservatives have pursued an aggressive campaign to stack the federal courts with right-wing judges. Their main vehicle: the Federalist Society of Law and Public Policy, an organization founded in 1982 by a small group of radically conservative law students at the University of Chicago. The effort has been a resounding success. With the help of Republicans in Congress, 85 extra federal judgeships were created under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; 9 were created under Clinton. Now seven out of 12 circuit courts are antiabortion. Seven of the nine Supreme Court justices are Republican appointees – and it's been 11 years since a post has opened up, meaning another right-winger or two could be appointed sometime soon. During Bush Sr.'s tenure, one White House insider boasted that no one who wasn't a Federalist ever received a judicial appointment from the president. One of George W.'s earliest moves in office was to consolidate the Federalist Society's power even further: He "simply eliminated the long-standing role in the evaluation of prospective judges by the resolutely centrist American Bar Association, whose ratings had long kept extremists and incompetents off the bench," Martin Garbus wrote in the American Prospect. "Today the Federalists have more influence in judicial selection than the ABA ever had." The Federalist Society now counts Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and prominent members of the conservative American Enterprise Institute among its leadership. Ashcroft, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Solicitor General Theodore Olson and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez – charged with approving judicial nominations before passing them on to Congress – are all members. The Federalists have consistently in favor of business deregulation, creationist teachings, property rights over the rights of individuals and much of the rest of the right-wing agenda. But one of the principal victims has been the democratic process itself: Remember, it was the Supreme Court that stopped a hand count of 175,000 uncounted (largely Democratic) ballots in Florida, which could have cost Bush the 2000 presidential election. Conservative jurists have interfered with redistricting efforts to reverse the deliberate segregation of African-American and Latino voters and have erected barriers to the participation of third-party candidates in the electoral process. Unless liberals miraculously bring about a radical turnaround in how federal judges – who enjoy lifetime terms – are appointed, one of George W.'s most long-standing legacies may very well be a hard-right judiciary that lasts for decades to come. Sources: "A Hostile Takeover: How the Federalist Society Is Capturing the Federal Courts," Martin Garbus, American Prospect, March 1, 2003. "Courts vs. Citizens," Jamin Raskin, American Prospect, March 1, 2003. NO. 8. SECRETS OF CHENEY'S ENERGY TASK FORCE COME TO LIGHT As the Bush administration continues to protect the iron wall of secrecy it's erected around Cheney's energy task force, at least two documents confirm long-standing suspicions that the administration's foreign policy is being driven by the dictates of the energy industry. When Bush took office in January 2001, he said tackling the country's energy crisis would be a top priority. The United States faced nationwide oil and natural gas shortages, and a series of electrical blackouts were rolling across California. The president established the National Energy Policy Development Group and appointed former Halliburton CEO Cheney as its head. One of the big issues on the table was oil, which accounted for 40 percent of the nation's energy supply and provided fuel for the vast majority of the country's transportation – as well as its expansive war machine. And for the first time in history, the United States had become reliant on foreign imports for more than 50 percent of its oil supply. But rather than lay the groundwork for converting the economy to alternative, renewable sources, the task force's report, later released by Bush as the "National Energy Policy" report in May 2001, promoted a central goal of "mak[ing] energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy." In other words, Cheney's group wanted to find additional sources of oil overseas and ensure U.S. access to that oil – whatever it took. Documents recently obtained from the task force as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch indicate Cheney and his colleagues had their sights on the black gold under the Iraqi desert well before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In July 2003 the Commerce Department turned over records that included "a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and 'Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,'" according to Judicial Watch's press release. The documents were dated March 2001. "The major news media are beginning to pay much closer attention to the links between political turmoil abroad and the economies of oil at home," Michael Klare wrote in Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories. "Still, the media remains reluctant to explain the close link between the energy policies of the Bush Administration and U.S. military strategy." Sources: "Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Feature Map of Iraqi Oilfields," Judicial Watch staff, Judicial Watch, July 17, 2003. "Bush-Cheney Energy Strategy: Procuring the Rest of the World's Oil," Michael Klare, Foreign Policy in Focus, January 2004. NO. 9. WIDOW BRINGS RICO CASE AGAINST U.S. GOVERNMENT FOR 9/11 As the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, completed its first year, Ellen Mariani and her attorney held a press conference on the steps of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to announce her own startling conclusions. Mariani, wife of Louis Neil Mariani, who died when terrorists flew United Airlines Flight 175 into the World Trade Center's south tower, had come to believe top American officials – including Bush, Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others – had foreknowledge of the attacks, purposefully failed to prevent them and had since taken pains to cover up the truth. The administration, she argues in a federal lawsuit, allowed 9/11 to happen so Bush and company could launch their seemingly endless, global "war on terror" for their own personal and financial gain. The suit uses the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act – a law created to go after the Mafia – to charge the nation's leaders with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and wrongful death. Her lawyer, Philip J. Berg, a former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania, filed a 62-page complaint that included 40 pages of evidence. "Compelling evidence ... will be presented in this case through discovery, subpoena power by this Court and testimony at trial," he wrote in a press release sent to 3,000 journalists announcing the lawsuit and a press conference on the court steps that day. The case has the potential to uncover and publicize critical documents and testimony about the Bush administration's handling of the Qaeda threat and its aftermath. But only Fox News showed up to the press conference, and it never ran anything on the topic. Sources: "9/11 Victim's Wife Files RICO Case Against GW Bush," Philip Berg, Scoop ( [http://www.scoop.co.nz/] ), Nov. 26, 2003. "Widow's Bush Treason Suit Vanishes," W. David Kubiak, Scoop, Dec. 3, 2003. NO. 10. NEW NUKE PLANTS: TAXPAYERS SUPPORT, INDUSTRY PROFITS If you thought nuclear energy was dead, think again: The Bush administration's energy bill – yet another product of Cheney's industry-stacked energy task force – provides taxpayer cash for companies that build new nukes. A secretly crafted provision of the bill, released late on a Saturday night in November, offers energy companies as much as $7.5 billion in tax credits to build six nuclear reactors. This is in addition to almost $4 billion set aside for other nuclear energy programs. "Nuclear power already has had 50 years of subsidy totaling over $140 billion," Nuclear Information and Resource Service's Cindy Folkers reported. The administration also removed terrorism protection provisions included in the House version of the bill and reversed a previous ban on the export of enriched uranium. The press has been "woefully silent on the bill's nuclear provisions," Folkers and Michael Mariotte wrote in their update for Project Censored's new book, Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories. And while both Democrats and Republicans managed to defeat the version of the bill NIRS warned about last fall, supporters – particularly Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. – are still trying to push those provisions through, in some cases as riders on other bills. Estimates on the amount of tax credits being considered have since risen to "as much as $15 or even $19 billion." Sources: "Nuclear Energy Would Get $7.5 Billion in Tax Subsidies, U.S. Taxpayers Would Fund Nuclear Monitor Relapse if Energy Bill Passes," Cindy Folkers and Michael Mariotte, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Nov. 17, 2003. "U.S. Senate Passes Pro-Nuclear Energy Bill," Cindy Folkers and Michael Mariotte, WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor, Aug. 22, 2003. ***************************************************************** 29 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear charges dropped Rory Carroll in Johannesburg Thursday September 9, 2004 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] A South African engineer accused of trafficking in nuclear bomb-making equipment for the international black market had the charges dropped yesterday, prompting speculation that he had agreed to cooperate with the prosecution. Johan Meyer, 53, the director of an engineering company in Vanderbijlpark, appeared to be a free man only hours after magistrates adjourned the case. Eleven shipping containers of uranium enrichment materials were seized when his Tradefin Engineering premises were raided. After his arrest Washington and the International Atomic Energy Agency praised South Africa for its action against an alleged supplier to the Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Quadeer Khan, who sold nuclear weapons secrets to other countries. The South African Council for the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction confirmed that the charges had been dropped. Neither the prosecution nor Mr Meyer's lawyer would comment. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** 30 [PUBCIT_PRESS] NRC illegally hid info from public Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 17:05:49 -0500 (CDT) Public Citizen Press Releases Providing the latest information about Public Citizen activities ------------------------------------------- Sept. 9, 2004 Nuclear Agency Illegally Hid Information From the Public Court Will Hear Challenge Tomorrow by Public Interest Groups WASHINGTON, D.C. The government infringed on the publics right to know by violating rulemaking procedures when it revised its security regulations for nuclear power plants without notifying the public or providing an opportunity for public comment, said Public Citizen and the California environmental group San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace today. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear oral arguments tomorrow on a lawsuit brought by the two groups against the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The new regulations, issued on April 29, 2003, revised the design basis threat (DBT), the terrorist attack scenario that nuclear plants are required to be able to guard against. The plant operators preparedness is mainly evaluated through force-on-force tests simulations in which a group of mock attackers attempt to gain access to restricted plant areas. Citing a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a law governing agency rulemaking, the groups are asking the NRC to put the new rules through a public rulemaking process, which would allow an opportunity for the reactor states and the public to comment on what should be in the new rule and require the agency to take those comments into account. After taking almost a year and a half following the 9/11 terrorist attacks to even consider upgrading the force-on-force security requirements, the NRC rushed the process by bypassing the public altogether, said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizens Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. This failure is not only contrary to principles of open, democratic government and the NRCs own promises, but ultimately makes plants less secure by limiting the input and ideas received in crafting such important regulations. State governments and the public have played a crucial role in the past in holding the industry and NRC accountable on issues of nuclear safety and security. For instance, the addition of a truck bomb scenario to the DBT in 1995 came mainly as a result of citizen group pressure after the first World Trade Center attack. State agencies that must respond to terrorist acts, public interest groups, and members of the public would all have had great interest in commenting on many aspects of the new rule, which could have resulted in a stronger regulation, said Rochelle Becker, project manager with Mothers for Peace. While NRC internal memos now say the NRC intends to conduct public rulemaking in the future, a public rulemaking should have been undertaken from the beginning. Although details of the DBT remain secret for security reasons, some characteristics are publicly known. For instance, the number of mock attackers has increased and the new tests will take place at a given plant at least once every three years, rather than once every eight years. In contrast, the U.S. Department of Energys sensitive nuclear facilities conduct similar tests annually. The new rule goes into full effect on Oct. 29. Critics of security at nuclear power plants have found significant ammunition lately. In July, the 9/11 Commission stated in its final report that al Qaeda had strongly considered targeting nuclear plants. Nonetheless, the new DBT evidently does not require plants to take effective measures against possible aircraft attacks by terrorists. The NRC also received heavy criticism recently for allowing the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industrys lobbying arm, to hire Wackenhut to perform the new force-on-force tests, given that Wackenhut also holds contracts to guard nearly half the nuclear plants in the country. And in August, the NRC announced its decision to keep secret all information relating to security inspections and tests, such as the new force-on-force tests, and any enforcement actions taken as a result of those findings. The oral arguments will be heard at 9:30 a.m. in the principal courtroom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, located on the fifth floor of the federal courthouse at 333 Constitution Avenue, N.W. ### ------------------------------------------- To be removed from this list send an email to pcpress@citizen.org with "unsubscribe pubcit_press" in the message. Please visit our website at www.citizen.org ***************************************************************** 31 NRC: NRC Unveils New Emergency Preparedness and Incident Response Web Page News Release - 2004-11 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 04-110 September 9, 2004 The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission unveiled today a new Web page that highlights the agencys emergency preparedness and incident response activities, and makes information easily accessible on such topics as how the public should prepare for, and react to, a radiological emergency. Emergency preparedness and incident response are tightly connected and work together to protect public health and safety, said NRC Chairman Nils J. Diaz. This new Web page helps communicate this integration and our commitment to keep the public well informed of steps they can and should take in the case of a radiological emergency. The new site includes information on evacuation and sheltering, emergency classification, federal, state and local responsibilities during a radiological emergency, and the NRCs enhanced Operations Center. Highlighted on the site is information about nuclear plants response to terrorism, emergency exercises, the use of potassium iodide, response to dirty bombs, and research and test reactor preparedness. The site is located at http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/emerg-preparedness.html. Last revised Thursday, September 09, 2004 ***************************************************************** 32 Guardian Unlimited: EC backs off nuclear shutdown In this section David Gow in Brussels Thursday September 9, 2004 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] The European Union will have to retain the option of building new nuclear power plants for at least the next 50 years, energy commissioner Loyola de Palacio said yesterday. Insisting there was no alternative, she said: "The production of nuclear energy has been increasing. This is the reality and, with the challenge of climate change, the EU cannot avoid nuclear energy for the foreseeable future." Her comments came after the commission watered down draft legislation for binding common rules to enforce nuclear safety and compel members to set deadlines for programmes to store waste and decommission plants. But Britain made plain it would join forces with Germany, Finland and Sweden in blocking the revised proposals at the council of ministers. The "gang of four" have so far killed off the plans, with the UK insisting there is no urgent need for EU intervention. Ms de Palacio said the proposed legislation would bring greater transparency to an industry hidden from public scrutiny. But she admitted the plans no longer contained strict deadlines for storage schemes for high-level radioactive waste, and that the EC had not finished its inquiry into the funding of decommissioning and waste management - critical in Britain, which is seeking approval for its £5bn rescue plan for British Energy. Graphics The Mox ships' journey around the world (pdf) [http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2002/09 /17/nuclear_ship.pdf] Nuclear map of Britain US nuclear map Useful links British Energy [http://www.british-energy.com/] Department of Trade and Industry [http://www.dti.gov.uk/] British Nuclear Fuels Ltd [http://www.bnfl.co.uk/website.nsf/default.htm] Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament [http://www.cnduk.org/] Greenpeace [http://www.greenpeace.org/homepage/] HSE nuclear glossary [http://www.hse.gov.uk/nsd/ilrwglos.htm] UK atomic energy authority [http://www.ukaea.org.uk/] National Radiological Protection Board [http://www.nrpb.org.uk/] Friends of the Earth [http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/dump_nuc lear/index.html] World Nuclear Association [http://www.uilondon.org/] World Nuclear Transport Institute [http://www.wnti.co.uk] [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** 33 NRC: Regulatory Guide: Issuance, Availability, Workshop FR Doc 04-20389 [Federal Register: September 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 174)] [Notices] [Page 54707] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09se04-130] The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued a draft new appendix to a guide in its Regulatory Guide series. This series has been developed to describe and make available to the public such information as methods acceptable to the NRC staff for implementing specific parts of the NRC's regulations, techniques used by the staff in its review of applications for permits and licenses, and data needed by the NRC staff in its review of applications for permits and licenses. The NRC has issued for comment draft Regulatory Guide DG-1138, which is a preliminary draft of the staff's regulatory position on ANSI/ANS 58.21-2003, ``External Events PRA Methodology Standard.'' The staff's position is documented in Appendix C, ``NRC Staff Regulatory Position on ANS External Hazards PRA Standard'' to Regulatory Guide 1.200, ``An Approach for Determining the Technical Adequacy of Probabilistic Risk Assessment Results for Risk-Informed Activities.'' Regulatory Guide 1.200 was issued for trial use in February 2004 and did not contain Appendix C. The NRC staff is only soliciting comments on Appendix C to RG 1.200; Appendix C has not been issued for use. It is the staff's intent to issue a draft Revision 1 to RG 1.200 with Appendix C for public review and comment before issuing Revision 1 to RG 1.200 as final for use in mid-2005. The NRC staff is soliciting comments on draft Appendix C. Comments may be accompanied by relevant information or supporting data. Please mention DG-1138 in the subject line of your comments. Comments on regulatory guides submitted in writing or in electronic form will be made available to the public in their entirety on the NRC rulemaking Web site. Personal information will not be removed from your comments. You may submit comments by any one of the following methods. Mail comments to: Rules and Directives Branch, Office of Administration, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. E-mail comments to: [NRCREP@nrc.gov] . You may also submit comments via the NRC's rulemaking Web site at [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://ruleforum.llnl.gov] . Address questions about our rulemaking Web site to Carol Gallagher (301) 415- 5905; e-mail [CAG@nrc.gov] . Hand deliver comments to: Rules and Directives Branch, Office of Administration, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. on Federal workdays. Fax comments to: Rules and Directives Branch, Office of Administration, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at (301) 415-5144. Requests for information about the draft Appendix C may be directed to Mr. A. Singh at (301) 415-0250; e-mail [axs3@NRC.GOV] . Comments will be most helpful if received by October 29, 2004. Comments received after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but the NRC is able to ensure consideration only for comments received on or before this date. Although a time limit is given for comments on this draft Appendix C, comments and suggestions in connection with items for inclusion in guides currently being developed or improvements in all published guides are encouraged at any time. The NRC intends to conduct a workshop on November 9, 2004, to be held in the auditorium at NRC headquarters, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland, (the agenda will be announced in a future public notice), to discuss and explain the staff's position on the ANS standard, and the staff's response to the public comments received. In the workshop, the staff will discuss each public comment and the basis for the staff's position, and answer questions. Electronic copies of the draft Appendix C and RG 1.200 are available on the NRC's Web site [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov] in the ``Reference Library'' under ``Regulatory Guides''. Electronic copies are also available in NRC's Public Electronic Reading Room (ADAMS System) at the same Web site; draft Appendix C is under ADAMS Accession Number ML042430314. Regulatory guides are available for inspection at the NRC's Public Document Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD; the PDR's mailing address is USNRC PDR, Washington, DC 20555; telephone (301) 415-4737 or (800) 397-4205; fax (301) 415-3548; e-mail [ PDR@NRC.GOV] . Requests for single copies of draft or final guides (which may be reproduced) or for placement on an automatic distribution list for single copies of future draft guides in specific divisions should be made in writing to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555, Attention: Reproduction and Distribution Services Section; or by e-mail to [DISTRIBUTION@NRC.GOV] ; or by fax to (301) 415- 2289. Telephone requests cannot be accommodated. Regulatory guides are not copyrighted, and Commission approval is not required to reproduce them. (5 U.S.C. 552(a)) Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 31st day of August 2004. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Charles E. Ader, Director, Division of Risk Analysis and Applications, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research. [FR Doc. 04-20389 Filed 9-8-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 34 JoongAng Daily: Korea nuclear facilities' growth slowing September 10, 2004 KST 14:54 (GMT+9) Last in a five-part series Nuclear power accounts for 40 percent of the total energy generated in Korea, yet construction of additional nuclear plants and waste facilities is being delayed. Korea's first nuclear power plant began operating in April 1978. Since then, there has been rapid growth in the industry, and Korea now has 19 operating nuclear units. About two new units are constructed every three years. The United States, France and Japan built their nuclear plants mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, after the oil shock. But Korea constructed 15 generators in the 1980s and 1990s. Despite the speedy development, one of the main problems is that the construction of a nuclear waste facility has been protracted. Also, anti-nuclear groups are aggressively protesting further construction of nuclear plants. Because of their opposition, steam, or thermal, power is meeting the increasing demand for electricity. On a global level, there are 434 nuclear reactors currently operating in 31 countries, with 20 more under construction. According to the World Nuclear Association, these units amount to over 360,000 megawatts in total capacity, supplying 16 percent of the world's electricity. Seventeen countries depend on nuclear power for at least a quarter of their electricity. France and Lithuania get around three quarters of their power from nuclear energy, while Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Japan, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia and Ukraine get one third or more. In Europe, Finland is planning the world's largest single nuclear power plant with a capacity of 1.7 million kilowatts. France has 59 operating reactors; a third of the electricity consumed in Paris comes from nuclear power. "We have surplus electricity, which we export to Italy and other European countries," said Christine Andre, a public relations official at a nuclear plant near Paris. In a report released earlier this year, the European Economic and Social Committee, an advisory committee to the European Union, said that it is impossible to imagine an energy source that could replace nuclear energy. Last year, Switzerland held a nationwide vote and decided not to give up on nuclear power development. The country meets 40 percent of its power needs through nuclear energy. In Asia, Japan generates 39 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. By 2010, nuclear power will be meeting over 40 percent of Japan's electricity requirements. China is moving ahead rapidly in building new nuclear power plants, since the country's electricity demand has been growing at over 8 percent annually. "Large amounts of money and time are required to establish energy production facilities and develop technology," said Choi Ki-ryun, an energy economics professor at Ajou University. "Korea has no natural resources and no immediate alternative energy sources. In these circumstances, nuclear energy is an inevitable choice." by Special Reporting Team wohn@joongang.co.kr> 2004.09.09 [http://joongangdaily.joins.com/faq.html] ***************************************************************** 35 NRC: Requirements for Steam Generator Tube Inspections FR Doc 04-20390 [Federal Register: September 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 174)] [Notices] [Page 54706-54707] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09se04-129] AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Notice of issuance. SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued Generic Letter (GL) 2004-01 to all holders of operating licenses for pressurized-water reactors (PWRs) except those who have permanently ceased operations and have certified that fuel has been permanently removed from the reactor vessel. The generic letter: (1) Advises addressees that the NRC's interpretation of the technical specification (TS) requirements in conjunction with 10 CFR Part 50, Appendix B, raises questions as to whether certain licensee steam generator (SG) tube inspection practices ensure compliance with these requirements; (2) Requests that addressees submit a description of the tube inspections performed at their plants, including an assessment of whether these inspections ensure compliance with the TS requirements in conjunction with 10 CFR Part 50, Appendix B; (3) Requests that addressees who conclude they are not in compliance with the SG tube inspection requirements contained in their TS in conjunction with 10 CFR Part 50, Appendix B, propose plans for coming into compliance with these requirements; and (4) Requests that addressees submit a tube structural and leakage integrity safety assessment that addresses any differences between their practices and the NRC's position regarding the requirements of the TS in conjunction with 10 CFR Part 50, Appendix B. A safety assessment should be submitted for all areas of the tube required to be inspected by the TS, where flaws have the potential to exist and inspection techniques capable of detecting these flaws are not being used. This assessment should include an evaluation of whether the inspection practices rely on an acceptance standard different from the TS acceptance standards and whether the technical basis for these inspection practices constitutes a change to the ``method of evaluation'' (as defined in 10 CFR 50.59) for establishing the structural and leakage integrity of the tube-to-tubesheet joint. DATES: The generic letter was issued on August 30, 2004. [[Page 54707]] ADDRESSES: Not applicable. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Paul Klein, NRR, (301) 415-4030; e- mail: pak@nrc.gov [pak@nrc.gov] or Maitri Banerjee, NRR; (301) 415-2277; e-mail: mxb@nrc.gov [mxb@nrc.gov] . SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Generic Letter 2004-01 may be examined and/ or copied for a fee at the NRC's Public Document Room, located at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland, and is accessible electronically from the Agencywide Documents Access and Management Systems (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at the NRC Web site, http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html] . The ADAMS Accession No. for the generic letter ML042370766. If you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing documents located in ADAMS, contact the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) Reference staff at (301) 415-4737 or 1-800-397-4209, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov [pdr@nrc.gov] . For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 1st day of September 2004. Francis M. Costello, Acting Chief, Reactor Operations Branch, Division of Inspection Program Management, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. 04-20390 Filed 9-8-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 36 JOURNAL NEWS: Indian Point advocates criticize film about reactors By ROGER WITHERSPOON THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: September 9, 2004) Supporters of Indian Point yesterday excoriated an upcoming HBO documentary on the nuclear plant as a biased effort that uses "junk science" to raise unnecessary fears about a safe, well-protected energy source. Members of New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance, a coalition of business groups and other boosters, further contended in a telephone news conference that it would be virtually impossible for radiation to escape from the twin Buchanan reactors after a terrorist attack. "The chances of 1,000 people being simultaneously struck by lightning are greater than the chances of any massive release of radiation from Indian Point," asserted Letty Lutzker, a Dobbs Ferry resident and doctor of nuclear medicine who frequently speaks on behalf of the nuclear industry. If any radiation did escape the plant after a terrorist attack, Lutzker said, it would remain "in a small area around Indian Point itself, and the public would not be exposed to more than the background radiation we are exposed to every day." Lutzker acknowledged that she has no data to back up her assertion, but said, "I'm making a point that the chances are so vanishingly small there is no point in worrying about it. It is so unlikely as to be close to impossible." Lutzker's conviction differs from studies by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which state that the release of radiation from either the reactor or the spent fuel pools could cause thousands of deaths hundreds of miles away. The 45-minute film, "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable," deals with the possibly catastrophic aftermath of a successful terrorist attack on the Buchanan reactors. The documentary was made by Rory Kennedy, sister of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the senior attorney at Riverkeeper, the environmental group in the forefront of efforts to close the plant. It airs at 8 p.m. tonight as part of HBO's "America Undercover" series. Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents the industry, said on substance, the movie is "garbage" and represents little more than "a wonderful, collaborative project by a brother and sister." John Basile, a former manager at Indian Point, said if the plant were closed, the region "would cave in needlessly to terrorist fears, and our economy would take a major blow." He said the plant provides 2,000 megawatts of clean power and replacing it with power from fossil fuel plants means "air pollution would be increased by 14 million tons annually. It would devastate our economy and our environment." Send e-mail to [rwithers@thejournalnews.com] [http://www.thejournalnews.com] - Copyright 2004 The Journal News, [http://www.gannett.com/] . ***************************************************************** 37 BBC World Service | Nuclear Know How [Anne Kathrine Kolstad from the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, in Oslo, checks water samples from the Barents Sea, taken near the stricken Russian Nuclear submarine Kursk. Background - The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre on the outskirts of Bombay in India.] Nuclear science: Rewards and risks Nuclear science touches many of the most important aspects of our life. In this four-part series, Susie Emmett reports from hospitals, nuclear power stations and fields to examine the rewards and the risks of using this powerful tool in the 21st Century. Using nuclear tools can be a dangerous business. Susie Emmett also reveals the terrible personal and environmental tragedies that ensue when controls and safeguards fail. She tries to find out how the risks - to people and our planet - are kept to a minimum. Related links: [http://www.iaea.org/] [http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy/nuclear/safety/index_en.htm] Disclaimer: The BBC is not responsible for the content of the external internet sites ***************************************************************** 38 Japan Times: More nuclear reactor flaws found Wednesday, September 8, 2004 FUKUI (Kyodo) The Fukui Prefectural Government said Tuesday it has found larger-than-permitted flaws in 339 of the 10,097 heat transfer tubes for steam generators at a nuclear reactor operated by Kansai Electric Power Co. in Takahama, Fukui Prefecture. These flaws at the No. 4 reactor of the Takahama nuclear power station have had no impact on the environment, prefectural officials claimed. Kepco will cap all the flawed tubes and suspend their use, they said. The 870-mw pressured-water reactor has been undergoing regular checks. The officials attributed the flaws in the tubes to chafing caused by contact with metal fittings that help prevent vibration. The announcement came after police searched another Kepco nuclear power station in the same prefecture Saturday for evidence of professional negligence in connection with a fatal accident in August. The Japan Times: Sept. 8, 2004 (C) All rights reserved The Japan Times Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 39 HBO: Documentaries - Indian Point [http://www.hbo.com] Once touted as a dependable source of cheap, clean energy, nuclear power plants have become flashpoints for debate in the wake of 9/11. Directed and narrated by Rory Kennedy (HBO's "American Hollow" and "A Boy's Life"), this documentary examines the potential for a nuclear disaster in New York City's backyard. Premieres Thursday, September 9th at 8pm ET/PT. Although the plant is 40 years old, its current owner, New Orleans-based Entergy Corporation, maintains that Indian Point is "safe, secure and vital." Read more in the synopsis. Synopsis How safe are we? Give your input on this and other topics related to nuclear power. [ width=] © 2004 Home Box Office, Inc. All Rights ***************************************************************** 40 National Post: Province considers reactor restart Canadian Press September 9, 2004 TORONTO Faced with a looming energy crisis, the Ontario government has opened up discussions with Bruce Power to restart two nuclear reactors, Energy Minister Dwight Duncan announced Wednesday. The move to bring the last two units of the Kincardine, Ont., nuclear facility back online would provide an additional 1,540 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power over a million homes across the province, Duncan said. "That's a lot of electricity," he said. "That would power large cities, and it helps us deal with the looming supply problem we have in the province." The government is now negotiating the price of purchasing power from the privately-operated Bruce Power, which runs the facility. It has hired David Santangeli, a managing director of energy investment firm Energy Fundamentals Group Inc., to help with the negotiations. While in January Duncan had said the government had no plans to restart Units 1 and 2, mothballed since the mid-1990s, he said Wednesday that Bruce Power has changed his mind. "Bruce Power, at the time, wasn't sure that these reactors could be refurbished," Duncan said. "They believe now they can be." The company has been looking into the costs of restarting them since February, said Duncan Hawthorne, CEO of Bruce Power. "We're looking for a discussion that gives us confidence where we can make the investment this project requires," he said, adding that the company wants to make a reasonable return on the project. The two other reactors that make up the A Unit at the Bruce facility came back online in last October and this past January. Four reactors in the facility's B Unit are also operational. New Democrat leader Howard Hampton was quick to condemn the negotiations, calling it a "quiet" move towards privatizing Ontario power. "Conservatives were doing it openly through the front door, Liberals want to do it quietly through the back door," Hampton said. "But this is all about private power, and very expensive power." He said refurbishing reactors is a costly process that will further drive up consumers' electricity bills. Duncan said unlike the province's previous troubles with its Pickering nuclear plant, Bruce has managed to revamp and restart their reactors on time and within budget. A refurbished Pickering A nuclear station -- expected to be back online sometime next year -- is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Maintenance problems at the Pickering B nuclear plant in August had Duncan scrambling to reassure consumers that the province's five coal-fired energy stations would still be closed. A coal-fired electricity plant west of Toronto is expected to close on schedule by the end of next April. Ontario's four other coal-fired power plants -- in Atikokan, Thunder Bay, Sarnia and Simcoe -- are scheduled to close by the end of 2007. The five coal-fired plants produce about 25 per cent of the province's power. Restarting the reactors could potentially replace over 20 per cent of the province's current coal capacity and related harmful emissions, Duncan said. © The Canadian Press 2004 Copyright © CanWest Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. CanWest Interactive Inc. is an affiliate of CanWest Global ***************************************************************** 41 ThisisLondon: British Energy liabilities bombshell [http://www.thisislondon.co.uk James Quinn, Daily Mail 9 September 2004 COMPLETION of the proposed £5bn restructuring of nuclear generator British Energy moved a step closer last night after it was revealed that the British taxpayer could face liabilities of £3.9bn if the plan fails. Even if the plan does go through, taxpayers will face nuclear liabilities of £1.7bn. The staggering sums, to be disclosed today in a damning House of Commons report, will ensure the Government lobbies hard for the company's January restructuring deadline to be met. Tory MP Edward Leigh, chairman of the Common's Committee for Public Accounts, said the restructuring plan looked to be the only option. He said: 'I think they've got no choice. The only problem is it could well be an open-ended cheque book.' The report will not make happy reading for BE shareholders Polygon and Brandes, which have been calling for a shareholder-led refinancing - which includes a £100m 'olive branch' repayment to the Government. The Government report on BE includes a series of damaging indictments on both the firm's former management team and the Department of Trade and Industry, which is criticised for being 'too hands-off'. Leigh said that in 1996 the Tory Government treated the privatisation as routine and called its lack of awareness of the potential-nuclear liabilities 'a monstrous oversight'. The report's recommendations largely focus on the DTI - although one suggests current chairman Adrian Montague is stripped of his £100,000 restructuring completion bonus. BE is considering the report's recommendations. European Commission clearance for BE's restructuring is only a matter of weeks away. Clearance will be based on the company splitting into three to ensure Government subsidies paid to BE to decommission nuclear power plants are ring-fenced. ***************************************************************** 42 JoongAng Daily: [EDITORIALS]Prudence on the nuclear issue September 10, 2004 KST 14:54 (GMT+9 The spreading sensation over the discovery of 0.2 grams of uranium that was produced by South Korean scientists is very disturbing. Member countries of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, are reportedly displeased. Even the U.S. government, which said previously that the discovery was not much of an issue, is now raising concern. Amid these circumstances, the situation is going more awry as Korea was recently found to have extracted plutonium in 1983. This problem cannot be easily overlooked since our credibility in global society depends on this very issue. Korea has claimed that it would not enrich or reprocess uranium. If we give the impression to other countries that we have been doing so behind their backs, the consequences will be tremendous. We must also keep in mind that it may serve as an obstacle in the six-way talks to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem. To make matters worse, North Korea has stated that it will be difficult to prevent a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia, implying that it will make an issue out of this situation. Therefore the South Korean government must concentrate its diplomatic powers on countries related to the six-party talks such as the United States and Japan, as well as member states of the IAEA. It must take a sincere stance in proving our transparency. In that sense, the government's initial response was poor. At the time, the Science Ministry said that research in laboratories did not violate international laws. Then, the Foreign Ministry took a different stance and said that the extraction of uranium in itself was subject to being reported. This only increased suspicions in countries that already had doubts about us. Our research labs are scanty and the uranium extracted was a petty amount. This must not be portrayed as if Korea is pursuing nuclear weapons tests. Instead, the government should concentrate diplomatic efforts on persuading neighboring countries so that Korea can independently purchase nuclear fuel, since 40 percent of the nation's energy relies on nuclear power. North Korea should also refrain from provoking unnecessary disputes. If North Korea evades the six-way talks, taking this issue of South Korea's uranium enrichment as an excuse, it must bear in mind that circumstances will then turn unfavorable for them. South Korea is open about its nuclear extraction tests, even if they were performed in laboratories on a research level. North Korea, on the other hand, has made large quantities of nuclear materials. North Korea should follow South Korea as an example and allow inspection of its uranium enrichment operations. We urge the press, including the U.S. and Japanese press, to be prudent as well. Speculative reports are of no use in solving nuclear problems involving North Korea. These reports can also produce ill effects that draw Northeast Asian countries into nuclear competition. The press should keep its equanimity in such sensitive issues as this. 2004.09.09 [http://joongangdaily.joins.com/faq.html] ***************************************************************** 43 Las Vegas RJ: Radiation expert: Risk from low dose reduced Thursday, September 09, 2004 Downwinders have less damage than previously thought By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL Tony Brooks, an expert on the biological effects of radiation, discusses fallout studies prior to giving a lecture Wednesday at the Atomic Testing Museum. Photo by John Locher [JLocher@reviewjournal.com] . As a teenager in St. George, Utah, in the 1950s, Tony Brooks developed a thirst for more knowledge about fallout after many of the 100 above-ground nuclear blasts in Nevada showered the region with radioactive particles. "We'd get up in the morning and watch them and we thought that was pretty neat," he said Wednesday several hours before he lectured on the topic at the Atomic Testing Museum on the Desert Research Institute campus. But by the time he graduated from high school in 1956, when the term "downwinders" was evolving, Brooks set his sights on understanding how radiation traveled through the food chain and affected people. "I was very concerned," he said. "The question on my mind was, 'Are there adverse health effects associated with fallout?' " He devoted the first part of his college education to "chasing" fallout, with his late colleague, Bob Pendleton. They found it everywhere in varying degrees and for four years they sampled 50 dairy farms on a monthly basis. Now, after more than four decades of studies, Brooks, 66, said he has realized that low doses of radiation are not as damaging as many scientists previously thought. "We're finding out downwinders probably have less damage than what was earlier predicted," he said. That's because new techniques that enable scientists to look at effects of low doses of radiation on a single cell reveal that the body adjusts by turning on repair mechanisms in surrounding cells. "Basically what we found out is that ... there's no doubt that high doses can cause cancer," he said. "But at low doses ... they're turning on repair processes." Brooks, who holds a doctorate degree in radiation biology, runs a Web site at Washington State University that tracks 70 projects studying the health effects of low radiation doses. Generally, low doses are those that are twice what's allowed for occupational exposures. "It's a very exciting time because we're really starting to unravel how radiation interacts with cells to cause damage and it's not like what we thought," Brooks said. Although many questions remain, he doubts that radiation health standards will be loosened. Similarly, the government's compensation program for downwinders probably should not be extended beyond those with valid claims in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona despite a movement to include Gem County, Idaho, in the $50,000-per-victim compensation program. Part of the reason, he said, is because there is no "fingerprint" or "signature" that can distinguish between cancers caused by fallout or other contaminants. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 44 Las Vegas SUN: EPA won't appeal radiation standard By Benjamin Grove SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The federal government will not appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge a recent legal setback to Yucca Mountain, the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday. The EPA will comply with the ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which on July 9 affirmed a Nevada appeal, the EPA said in a statement. The state had challenged the proposed nuclear waste repository's radiation standard, established by the EPA in 2001. The court ruled that the standard aimed at containing radiation at the site for 10,000 years violated federal law by disregarding far stricter standards recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. Yucca critics had hailed the ruling, which formally takes effect today, as a significant victory that throws the future of the project into question. The EPA accepts that ruling and now "intends to work to develop an appropriate regulatory response that complies with the court opinion," the EPA statement said. EPA spokesman John Millett today declined to discuss whether the EPA will now begin the process of formally setting a new standard. As part of a massive lawsuit, the state of Nevada had challenged Yucca on a long list of issues but prevailed on only one -- the radiation standard. "Because the United States substantially prevailed in the court's decision, it has elected not to seek further court review," the EPA statement said. The court's opinion stated that the EPA's 10,000-year radiation standard disregarded National Academy science, which called for a far stricter standard of several hundred-thousand years, or even as much as a million years. That would be a difficult -- critics say impossible -- standard for the Energy Department to meet. The department manages Yucca and intends to apply for a license to construct the underground nuclear waste dump by the end of the year. It is not clear how the department could ever prove to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that Yucca could meet standards stricter than 10,000 years. The NRC would license and regulate Yucca. "The problem for DOE (the Energy Department) now is: Is that the death of the project?" said Martin Malsch, a lawyer with Egan &Associates, which has led a legal battle against Yucca for Nevada. But there is another option for the Energy Department -- Congress. Pro-Yucca lawmakers could step in to legislate a standard that they believe Yucca could meet. So far, if there is a such a movement afoot in Congress, the players are keeping it quiet. The Energy Department, nuclear industry leaders and pro-Yucca lawmakers do not appear mobilized in any immediate effort. "We are not aware of anyone advancing proposals for legislation," said Sid Smith, spokesman for Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a leading pro-Yucca senator. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a Yucca leader in the House, also does not have immediate plans to introduce radiation standards legislation, a Barton aide said today. The panel has jurisdiction over Yucca issues. A spokesman for Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate committee with jurisdiction over Yucca issues, also said he was not aware of efforts to push a new Yucca standards bill. Lawmakers returned to Washington this week after a month-long break. They set an Oct. 1 target adjournment date and have a number of issues competing for their attention, including spending bills. So there may be little appetite to take up Yucca Mountain legislation before the election, especially given that the project is politically charged in battleground state Nevada. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading nuclear power industry lobby group, is not leading an effort to push legislation, NEI spokesman Mitch Singer said. But he added that NEI is always in communication with Congress about Yucca issues, "including the radiation standard." Meanwhile NEI, which lost its first appeal on the radiation standards issue last week, is mulling a Supreme Court appeal. It's not clear if the Bush administration will throw its weight behind an effort to legislate a radiation standard in Congress. President Bush has not taken a public stand on Congress legislating a new standard. During an August appearance in Nevada, Bush said, "I will allow this process to be appealed to the courts and to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And I will stand by the decision of the courts and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission." Democratic challenger John Kerry has said he would veto any attempt to change the standard in an effort to keep Yucca on track. White House spokesman Ken Lisaius referred questions about the radiation standards to the Energy Department. He said he was not aware of any high-level White House officials working with the department to goad Congress into action. Nevada's lawmakers in Congress likewise have not heard about pro-Yucca lawmakers shopping new Yucca legislation in the Capitol, their aides said. ***************************************************************** 45 NRC: Notice of License Termination and Release of Molycorp's Property FR Doc 04-20391 [Federal Register: September 9, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 174)] [Notices] [Page 54706] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09se04-128] In York, PA for Unrestricted Release AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Notice of license termination and site release for unrestricted use. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Thomas G. McLaughlin, Materials Decommissioning Section, Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection, NRC, Washington, DC 20555; telephone (301) 415-5869; fax (301) 415-5397; or e-mail at tgm@nrc.gov [tgm@nrc.gov] . SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: I. Introduction Pursuant to 10 CFR 2.106, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is providing notice that it is terminating license SMB-1408 for Molycorp, Inc. (Molycorp or Licensee), and releasing the Molycorp property in York, PA, for unrestricted use. The Licensee's request for an amendment to authorize decommissioning of its former rare earth processing facility in York, PA, was previously noticed in the Federal Register on May 13, 1996 (61 FR 22075) with a notice of an opportunity to request a hearing. Molycorp provided a final radiological status survey and performed an on-site and off-site dose analysis to demonstrate the site meets the license termination criteria in Subpart E of 10 CFR part 20. In addition, NRC staff conducted independent measurements of residual contamination remaining at the site. The NRC staff has evaluated the Molycorp request, has reviewed the results of the final radiological survey, has performed confirmatory measurements throughout the site property, and has determined that the site cleanup meets the Site Decommissioning Management Plan criteria as well as the unrestricted release dose criteria in 10 CFR 20.1402. The Commission has concluded that the site is suitable for release for unrestricted use, and has terminated the license for the Molycorp York, PA property. The staff prepared a Safety Evaluation Report (SER) to support the proposed action. II. Further Information In accordance with 10 CFR 2.790 of the NRC's ``Rules of Practice,'' details with respect to this action, including the SER, are available electronically at the NRC's Electronic Reading Room at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html] . From this site, you can access the NRC's Agencywide Document Access and Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and image files of NRC's public documents. The ADAMS accession number for the document ``Release of Molycorp York Pennsylvania Property and Termination of License (License No. SMB- 1408)'' is ADAMS No. ML042310150. If you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing a document located in ADAMS, contact the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) Reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, (301) 415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov [pdr@nrc.gov] . These documents may also be viewed electronically on the public computers located at the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR), O 1 F21, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. The PDR reproduction contractor will copy documents for a fee. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Dated at NRC, Rockville, MD, this 2nd day of September, 2004. Daniel M. Gillen, Deputy Director, Decommissioning Directorate, Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. 04-20391 Filed 9-8-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 46 AFP: South Africa charges two Germans with nuclear materials smuggling [http://www.spacewar.com/] South Africa charges two Germans with nuclear materials smuggling VANDERBIJLPARK, South Africa (AFP) Sep 09, 2004 Two German men Thursday appeared in a South African court on charges related to an international nuclear smuggling ring following their arrest a day ago. Gerhard Wisser, 66, and Daniel Geiges, 65, both living permanently in South Africa, appeared on four counts of contravening the Nuclear Energy Act and a law banning the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Their arrests follow that of a South African businessman over his alleged links to a nuclear smuggling network thought to be linked to Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and aimed at helping Libya develop an atomic weapons programme. The two Germans "unlawfully and intentionally imported, held in transit and exported goods which may contribute to the design, development, production, deployment, maintenance or use of weapons of mass destruction without a permit," the charge sheet said. The three other charges relate to the possession, manufacture and export of equipment for the enrichment of uranium. Last Thursday, South African businessman Johan Meyer, 53, was arrested for his alleged links to a global nuclear smuggling network and charged with possessing sensitive nuclear-related equipment and illegally importing and exporting nuclear material. But the charges were dropped on Wednesday, and the Germans were arrested the same day, fuelling speculation that Meyer had agreed to cooperate with the state in exchange for immunity. The case against the two Germans was postponed in the Vanderbijlpark regional court, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Johannesburg, for a formal bail application on Tuesday. The two men were not asked to plead. All rights reserved. © 2004 Agence France-Presse ***************************************************************** 47 Janes: The radiological threat widens [http://www.janes.com] 09 September 2004 By Andy Oppenheimer Experts have reassessed the threat posed by radiological dispersal devices, or dirty bombs and they conclude that the threat is far greater than previously imagined. Poor international regulation makes it relatively easy for terrorists to acquire radioactive material. Many experts now believe that the terrorist use of radiological dispersal devices (RDDs or ‘dirty bombs’) would not merely constitute a weapon of disruption capable of inflicting economic damage, but that some forms of radiological attack could also kill tens or hundreds of people and sicken hundreds or thousands. This is in marked contrast to earlier assessments that concluded that an RDD would be unlikely to cause death or injury beyond the area immediately destroyed by the high explosives. RDDs are devices using conventional explosives to spread radioactive material over a large area, exposing people to both internal and external radiation doses. Costly clean-up is required and access to buildings and contaminated areas would be denied. The radioactive materials are readily available for medical or commercial use. They include, primarily, cobalt-60, strontium-90, cesium-137, iridium-192, radium-226, plutonium-238, americium-241, and californium-252. Uranium would not be much use in a RDD as, unlike cesium and cobalt isotopes, it has extremely low radioactivity and can only cause injury if ingested or inhaled. Nevertheless, people would probably still be unwilling to enter an area that had been contaminated with uranium or anything else connected with radioactivity. Much depends on the amount and type of radioactive material used. Radioactive isotopes can also be spread widely with or without high explosives. Disruption will always be the result, but casualty levels and an increase in cancer risk are variable. The shorter the half-life - the amount of time it takes for half of the atoms in a given sample to decay - the more intense the radiation. Cesium-137, for example, has a half-life of 30 years. 306 of 1,352 words The full version of this article is accessible through our subscription services. Please refer to the box below for details. © Jane's Information Group. All rights reserved | Terms of ***************************************************************** 48 UCS: New Study Predicts Up to 44,000 Prompt Fatalities and 518,000 Long-Term Deaths from Indian Point Terror Attack [Union of Concerned Scientists] September 8, 2004 New Study Predicts up to 44,000 Prompt Fatalities and 518,000 Long-Term Deaths From Indian Point Terror Attack Large Radiation Release a Major Health Risk for 20 Million in New York Area A study released today finds that the potential health consequences of a successful terrorist attack on the Indian Point nuclear plant could cause as many as 518,000 long-term deaths from cancer and as many as 44,000 near-term deaths from acute radiation poisoning, depending on weather conditions. The study was commissioned by Riverkeeper, a Hudson River-based environmental group. Dr. Edwin Lyman, a senior staff scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, authored the report entitled "Chernobyl-on-the-Hudson?: The Health and Economic Impacts of a Terrorist Attack at the Indian Point Nuclear Plant." Dr. Lyman performed the calculations in the study with the same computer models and methodology used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy to analyze the health and economic impacts of radiological accidents. The study updates a 1982 congressional report based on Sandia National Laboratories' CRAC-2 (Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences) study. CRAC-2 found that a core meltdown and consequent radiological release at one of the two operating Indian Point reactors could cause 50,000 early fatalities from acute radiation syndrome and 14,000 latent fatalities from cancer. Dr. Lyman's report found that the potential for early deaths44,000 casesis comparable to the 1982 CRAC-2 estimate and the peak number of latent cancer fatalities518,000 casesis over 35 times greater than the CRAC-2 estimate, corresponding to a scenario where weather conditions maximize the rain-related fallout of radioactivity over New York City. "The study's findings confirm what Riverkeeper and hundreds of the region's elected officials have said all along: Indian Point poses an unacceptable risk to the 20 million peopleincluding all New York City residentswho live and work in the New York metropolitan area," said Alex Matthiessen, Riverkeeper's executive director. "The time for our elected officials to take their heads out of the sand has passed. Federal and state officials are effectively shielding the nuclear industry from what has become an obvious new reality since 9/11: nuclear plants are sitting ducks and need substantially more security than is currently required - none more than Indian Point which lies just 24 miles up the Hudson from New York City. The time has come for the government to move immediately to impose stringent security measures for Indian Point and begin planning for the plant's early retirement." "The data clearly show that a terrorist attack at Indian Point could have a catastrophic impact on the health of New York City residents, yet the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not require the development of emergency plans to protect this vulnerable population," said Dr. Lyman. "A thorough and honest evaluation of the feasibility and effectiveness of protective actions such as sheltering, evacuation and administration of potassium iodide is badly needed for individuals living far beyond the 10-mile emergency planning zone around Indian Point." The prospect of a terrorist attack at the Indian Point nuclear power plant has been a source of great concern for residents and elected officials of the New York metropolitan area since the al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001particularly since one of the hi-jacked planes flew over Indian Point on its way to NYC. The recently released 9/11 Commission Report revealed that Mohammed Atta, the plot's ringleader who piloted one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center, "considered targeting a nuclear facility he had seen during familiarization flights near New York." Given that the reconnaissance flight paths used by the terrorists included the Hudson River corridor and that the next closest nuclear facility to New York City is over 70 miles away, the plant in question was almost certainly Indian Point. Although the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has recently required marginal security enhancements at Indian Point and other U.S. nuclear power plants, the plants remain highly vulnerable to air and water-based attacks as well as to ground assaults by large and sophisticated terrorist teams with paramilitary training and advanced weaponry. Of special concern is the vulnerability of facilities that contain equipment vital for safe plant operation, yet are insufficiently hardened against attack. The poorly protected spent fuel pools at Indian Point are another source of great risk to the New York area. As alarming as the results of Dr. Lyman's study are, they do not include the consequences of an attack that would damage the spent fuel pools as well as the reactors. Among the report's key findings are: + Up to 44,000 near-term deaths from acute radiation poisoning could occur in the unlikely event of a complete evacuation of the 10-mile radius zone covered by current emergency plans. This number could be even higher for more realistic evacuation scenarios. These deaths could occur among people living as far as 60 miles downwind of Indian Point. + Up to 518,000 people could eventually die from cancer within 50 miles of Indian Point as a result of radiation exposures received within seven days of the attack. + Hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars of economic damages could befall the New York City metropolitan area, leveling a major blow to U.S. and world economic stability. + Millions of survivors could be permanently displaced because of extensive radiological contamination of their property. You can read the full report in our nuclear terrorism section. To set up interviews or for UCS info, contact: LINDA GUNTER Press Secretary 202-223-6133 lgunter@ucsusa.org [lgunter@ucsusa.org]   © Union of Concerned Scientists ***************************************************************** 49 The Whitehaven News: BIG WORRY OVER LITTLE THINGS (emergency planning) I HAD a slight panic attack when I realised that I have yet to receive my government leaflet explaining what to do in an “emergency’’. Just like those terrifying BBC programmes about the aftermath of a nuclear attack, not knowing what to do in the event of a terrorist attack could chill you to the bone. But then again I’m actually very calm faced with enormous problems (you know, if you owe £400,000 you might as well keep on spending). If a terrorist is going to bomb my house, poison the water system or infiltrate the news office, there is absolutely nothing I can do, so why worry? As a normal person it would be very difficult to function if you believed you saw an anthrax bomb in every discarded plastic bag, distrusted everyone who didn’t understand the concept of a “jam-eater’’ and were scared to leave a landing light on in case it caused global warming and the death of 4,000 people in a flood in South-East Asia. It is the tiny mini-crises that really get under my skin. Once a month I do fear for the future of the world run by men who think they are playing a real-life violent computer game, but every day I am tormented by the fact my fridge is leaking, my oven door is falling off and I need to revamp my kitchen. Terrorists taking over the world is such a terrifying prospect that my brain simply switches off, but I can rant and stress for three days if I receive one of those unwanted book-club parcels. One of the worst mini-crises a person can endure is taping the wrong programme off the TV. If, like me, you care not a jot about correctly working the video (yes, I know it is a female thing – women are just bored to death by machines, and have as much interest in them as men have choosing duvet covers), then these mini-crises happen rather frequently. Shaming though it may be, I remember sitting at home with my husband, watching some human catastrophe on the news. “That is terrible,’’ he said. “How many times does this sort of thing have to happen before someone learns their lesson?’’ “I know,’’ I answered. “It is just constant human misery.’’ “I’m not taking about the news,’’ he said, “I’m talking about you taping your Sex and the City repeats over the rugby.’’ JULIE MORGAN ***************************************************************** 50 Deseretnews.com: Bennett aide says nuclear test ads unneeded [deseretnews.com] Thursday, September 9, 2004 An activist group of doctors is running two radio ads asking Utahns to tell Sen. Bob Bennett to vote against spending on a new Bush administration nuclear weapons program. But Bennett, R-Utah, has already introduced legislation aimed at limiting any renewed nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. And Bennett spokeswoman Mary Jane Collipriest says the senator has supported the new "bunker-busting" weapons program because he believes no new nuclear testing will be conducted. "You don't have to set off a nuclear warhead to test it; there are computer simulations" that are adequate, she said. And Bennett's bill will actually ensure that no new above-ground testing goes forward, she added. Physicians For Social Responsibility are running radio ads in Utah and Virginia aimed at U.S. senators it hopes will vote against the so-called "bunker busting" spending in an upcoming vote on an energy and water budget bill. Bennett has said before he supports studying and initial planning for the new weapons program, which Bush says could be used against hardened, deep underground bunkers, such as those used by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Bennett faces former Democratic Utah attorney general Paul Van Dam in November's election. Van Dam opposes the new weapons program, saying, as some other Utah Democrats have, that even studying the issue is a step down the road toward renewing America's underground nuclear testing program, which ended in the early 1992. The 30-second radio ad says Bennett's vote will be key in "a closely divided Senate . . . Tell him to vote no on new nuclear weapons and any return to nuclear tests," it says. A 60-second ad says Bennett's vote could be the difference between "a healthy and serene Utah for our families, or a return to the dangerous days of nuclear blasts." © 2004 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 51 Spectrum: Senate should dump funds for new nukes - Opinion - thespectrum.com [http://www.thespectrum.com/index.html] Thursday, September 9, 2004 IN OUR VIEW As congressional members take a work break from their campaign stumping, a number of important issues await their return to Washington, D.C. Particularly of interest to Southern Utahns is the reconvening of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee. This innocent-sounding group is sitting atop a pile of political dynamite as it discusses a budget that includes a White House request for $96 million to research new nuclear weapons. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, sits on that committee. Bennett recently introduced a bill that would place hurdles in front of a resumption of nuclear testing. He has the opportunity here to cement his desire to prevent nuclear testing from being re-instituted at the Nevada Test Site -- where tests resulted in thousands of deaths from radioactive fallout. The $96 million request is a significant amount, not only in financial investment, but the morality question of placing a whole new generation of Americans under the cloud of nuclear fallout. Bennett's committee meetings, originally scheduled to begin this week but now postponed until later, will play a huge role in determining if the United States wishes to pursue new weapons technology in the form of bunker-buster bombs and mini-nukes. It is illogical to presume that researchers would rely solely on computer modeling techniques, no matter how advanced, to determine the reliability and effectiveness of this new generation of weapons. If they build it, they will test it. There is also reason to believe that, even if these tests are conducted underground, there is still a danger of polluting the air with nuclear waste. We have seen how leakage from storage centers and nuclear dumps has escaped into the atmosphere -- as currently evidenced in some studies by the growing number of Hanford County, Wash., residents who have been diagnosed with cancer as a result of radiation exposure from a government nuclear site in their back yard. We urge Sen. Bennett to follow the lead of Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, who in June removed the requested funding from the House version of the bill. It's not only the fiscally responsible thing to do, it is the moral thing to do. Originally published Thursday, September 9, 2004 Copyright ©2004 The Spectrum. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 52 Las Vegas RJ: Gibbons softens Yucca retaliation claim Thursday, September 09, 2004 By TONY BATT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., on Wednesday said he was only speculating when he raised the idea federal lawmakers might retaliate against Nevada military bases because the state is fighting the Yucca Mountain Project. His remarks, made in Fallon on Monday and reported in the Lahonton Valley News, spurred the Nevada State Democratic Party to accuse Gibbons of going soft on opposition to Yucca Mountain, a charge he denied. Gibbons said he was responding to a reporter's question. "I probably should have answered that I don't know what other lawmakers are thinking," he said. "But I deal with these guys day in and day out, and they know I am adamantly opposed to Yucca Mountain." During a Labor Day event, Gibbons said Nevadans must rally to defend the Fallon Naval Air Station and Nellis Air Force Base, the Hawthorne Army Depot and the Air National Guard Base in Reno even though none are being identified as possible base closing targets. "What particularly worries me is the fact that Congress members from other states who are trying to get the nuclear depository located at Yucca Mountain in Nevada may have a vendetta against Nevada because we are fighting against the depository in our state," Gibbons told the newspaper. Jon Summers, communications director of the Nevada State Democratic Party, said in a statement Tuesday that Gibbons' comments are "another sign" state Republicans are backing off the fight against Yucca Mountain. "Voters have to wonder what Representative Gibbons is trying to do," Summers said. "Is this just another Republican scare tactic being pulled on rural voters? Or is he suggesting Nevada give up the Yucca fight? Either way, it's disturbing, and it's wrong." Gibbons, who is considered a potential candidate for governor in 2006, called the Democratic charge "ludicrous." "I have not changed my opinion on Yucca Mountain since I began my political career in 1988," he said. "I have opposed Yucca Mountain every day during that time, and will not change." Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 53 Las Vegas RJ: Nevada files Yucca lawsuit Thursday, September 09, 2004 State questions issue of Caliente rail plan By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Attorneys for Nevada opened a new front against the Yucca Mountain Project on Wednesday, suing the Energy Department over its plans to ship nuclear waste on a railroad to be built through rural Nevada. DOE failed to perform adequate environmental studies before identifying a preferred 319-mile railroad corridor from Caliente to the Yucca site in Nye County, the state charged in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Additionally, the state contended DOE unlawfully designated itself as the lead federal agency to develop the railroad when such powers reside with another agency, the Surface Transportation Board. That decision shut out independent regulators, the lawsuit said. A third issue in the 19-page filing says the department revived a backup strategy of loading railroad cars with nuclear waste casks designed to be carried by trucks, after initially rejecting the idea as being impractical and the most expensive, and "having the highest estimates of occupational health and public health and safety impacts." "It's uncanny how DOE manages to do precisely the wrong thing," Attorney General Brian Sandoval said. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the state is exposing the Caliente rail line as a "billion dollar boondoggle." An Energy Department spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit, which contains complaints that Nevada officials have raised since DOE began unveiling its Yucca transportation strategy last December. Answering the previous criticism, DOE officials have said their actions are legal and proper. The legal challenge to DOE's transportation plan is the eighth lawsuit the state has pressed against the proposed nuclear repository since the project began taking its current shape in 2001, according to the state's attorneys. Six of the cases were consolidated and heard by the court in January. In July, judges issued opinions on those cases, with the government prevailing on most but losing a key ruling against a radiation benchmark that is causing DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency to re-evaluate repository safety standards and likely form new ones. The EPA said in a statement obtained Wednesday it has no plans to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling on Yucca radiation standards, echoing the position that Energy Department officials have expressed in recent weeks. A Nevada lawsuit filed in March over federal aid for the state to continue monitoring the Yucca program is scheduled to be heard in January. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 54 Interfax: Sweden to help Russia dispose of radioactive wastes on Kola Peninsula Updated: Sep 10 2004 6:25AM (MSK) Ðóññêàÿ âåðñèÿ Sep 9 2004 7:31PM MURMANSK. Sept 9 (Interfax-Northwest) - Sweden will contribute to Russia's efforts aimed at disposing of liquid radioactive wastes on the Kola Peninsula. A contract envisioning a feasibility study of these operations in the Andreyeva Guba radioactive wastes storage facility, which is the largest one on the Kola peninsula, was signed by representatives of the Swedish International Project on Nuclear Safety, the administration of the Murmansk region, and SevRAO officials in Murmansk, SevRAO head Valery Panteleyev told Interfax on Thursday. © 1991-2004 Interfax All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 55 Las Vegas SUN: Letter: Kerry is Nevada's friend on dump Nevada is truly a "battleground" state in this year's presidential election. The most decisive issue is Yucca Mountain. The candidates' positions on this radioactive Nevada issue are crystal clear: President Bush supports the Yucca Mountain dump and Sen. Kerry opposes it. President Bush approved the controversial project two years ago. And it is known that Kerry has consistently opposed Yucca Mountain in recent years and that he voted against the project in 2002. Nearly 300 scientific questions about the Yucca Mountain dump remain unanswered. Yet President Bush took less than a day to review thousands of pages of scientific studies. Sen. Kerry has rightly accused the president of breaking his 2000 campaign promise to Nevada. "When John Kerry is president, there will be no nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Period," he promised. Instead, he said he would leave nuclear waste where it is at sites throughout the country (none of them in Nevada) and instruct the National Academy of Science to determine how the nation should deal with nuclear waste storage. Sounds reasonable to me. JOHN MARCHESE ***************************************************************** 56 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Bush should listen to his own promise LAS VEGAS SUN Campaigning in Las Vegas a month ago, President Bush played up his commitment to science as the determining factor in whether Southern Nevada's Yucca Mountain should open as a permanent burial site for high-level nuclear waste. Bush also told his Las Vegas audience that he will yield to the judgments of the courts. At no time did Bush bring up the previous month's major news about Yucca Mountain, which involved science and the courts. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in July that the Energy Department has been dead wrong about the most important scientific safeguard of all. Relying on a ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department has been constructing Yucca to protect against radiation leaks for 10,000 years. The court, however, ruled that the Energy Department all along has been required to follow a 1995 report by the National Academy of Sciences. This report says the mountain's protection should extend through the time of the waste's peak emission of radiation, which would be in the range of 300,000 years from now. Despite the president's pledge to respect science and the courts, we haven't seen his administration change its policy on Yucca Mountain -- or its construction and radiation standards -- one bit since the decision by the appeals court. It hasn't shown any inclination to work with the National Academy of Sciences. In fact, the Bush administration remains hell bent on opening Yucca Mountain within six years. Margaret Chu, who heads the Yucca Mountain project for the Energy Department, told the Sun that the court decision would have no bearing on the administration's position and that it is "crucial to ... continue to move forward in the licensing phase." More crucial than for the president to keep his word? ***************************************************************** 57 Las Vegas SUN: Kerry expected to visit LV next week By Mary Manning LAS VEGAS SUN Campaign leaders for John Kerry promised a series of visits throughout Nevada next week by the Democratic presidential nominee and his running mate. Vietnam veterans supporting the Democratic hopeful also reacted Wednesday to President Bush's missing military records recovered by the Associated Press, records that show Bush did not fulfill his required duty in the National Guard, putting himself at risk for call up to active duty. Terry Care, state chairman for the Kerry camp, promised a fiery Kerry who will deal with the Bush administration's Iraq war record and the war on terror. "He will be leveling some blistering remarks on the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq," said Care, a Vietnam veteran himself. The Kerry campaign's pending visits include: + Former Sen. Max Cleland, in Reno Friday morning to speak to a rally of local veterans and emergency responders. Cleland, national co-chair of the Kerry-Edwards campaign, then meets at the Fire Fighters Hall Local 1908 in Las Vegas at 7 p.m. Friday. + Vice Presidential nominee Sen. John Edwards, scheduled to speak in Reno on Monday night. The location has not been announced. + Kerry, in Las Vegas on Sept. 16 to speak at the 126th National Guard Association of the United States general conference. + Gen. Ed Baca, also scheduled to appear at the National Guard conference and will campaign for the Kerry-Edwards ticket all over Nevada. Bush campaign officials said President Bush would be addressing the National Guard convention on Tuesday, two days before Kerry's appearance. They declined to give further details. Asked why the Democrats are sweeping through Nevada, Care said, "This was forecast to be a close election." Kerry has promised to stop the Yucca Mountain radioactive waste repository, Care said. "President Bush did dishonorable service to this state," he said of the decision by Bush and Congress to approve the high-level nuclear waste dump in 2003. "People of this state need to know that Nevada matters." Thursday's visit by Kerry will be his fourth in Las Vegas this year. He has not visited northern Nevada, considered more of a Republican stronghold. President Bush visited Reno in June, his second time in the state since being elected. He earlier visited Las Vegas in November, raising $3 million for his re-election bid. Former Rep. Jim Bilbray, co-chairman of the Kerry state steering committee, said that Kerry was leading Bush by one percentage point in Nevada. "This is a dead-even state," Bilbray said. "People should rise up and vote in droves for Kerry." Kerry will keep his promise on stopping Yucca Mountain, Bilbray said. "I guarantee you, he can stop this site," he said. Bilbray also said that Nevada has the highest percentage of active National Guardsmen on duty with more than 60 percent. "They are becoming full-time soldiers," he said. Las Vegas attorney John Hunt said he is an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam and his 22-year-old son, William Harris, is facing another tour of Iraq in the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division. Harris has spent nine months in Fallujah, returning to Las Vegas in May. "I find it almost incredulous that the president says he cannot win the war on terror," Hunt, senior coordinator for veterans supporting Kerry in Nevada, said. "John Kerry stepped up, President Bush stepped out," by joining the Texas National Guard. "Yet he's asking our sons and daughters to return to a war zone that he himself believes we cannot win," Hunt said. With the questions raised over Bush's own National Guard service, Hunt and Vietnam vet Johnathan Abbinett wondered whether the veterans of Operation Freedom and this Iraqi war will have their medals and benefits come under fire at home. A lot of people from privileged backgrounds, such as Kerry, did not use that as an excuse to stay out of Vietnam, Abbinett said. "It's a question of character, and character is important this time," he said. Sun reporter Kirsten Searer contributed to this story. ***************************************************************** 58 Platts: EC adopts weaker nuke waste, safety proposals [The McGraw-Hill Companies] + The European Commission Wednesday adopted a revised version of its contentious package of draft nuclear laws, European Union energy commissioner Loyola de Palacio said. "We hope that with the revised texts we will be able to get unanimity in the council (of member state governments)," she said. De Palacio admitted that the new rules were "less rigid" than earlier versions but said that these had more chance of being accepted. "The main issue is that the rules and standards are mandatory for everyone and that we will have a common system for all member states," said de Palacio. In safety, the new text focuses on the responsibilities of the managers of nuclear facilities as well as the national authorities. On the management and transparency of decommissioning funds--"a key sticking point in the council," de Palacio said--member states now need only submit "sufficient" plans. The EC had wanted a law makeing funds available only when needed. EC adopts weaker nuke waste, safety proposals Brussels (Platts)--8Sep2004 For Advertisers Privacy Notice Terms & Conditions Copyright © 2004 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 59 RGJ: State files suit over nuke railroad ||| [http://www.rgj.com/ State files suit over nuke railroad [online@rgj.com] ASSOCIATED PRESS 9/8/2004 10:28 pm LAS VEGAS — State officials filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Energy Department over its plan to ship radioactive waste across the state to a planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. The case, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, claims the government did not complete required environmental studies before picking a 319-mile rail route dubbed the “Caliente Corridor.” “The whole point of environmental review is to study the impacts before you make the decision, not after,” Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval said. An Energy Department spokesman did not respond to a call seeking comment. The same appeals court in Washington, D.C., threw out a 10,000-year Environmental Protection Agency radiation standard for the repository in a ruling last month. In the new lawsuit, the state claims the Energy Department violated the National Environmental Policy Act, a federal law that requires environmental studies before federal projects are finalized. The department announced in April it planned to build the rail line from Caliente, a small town 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas, across the state to the Yucca Mountain repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. There currently is no rail line to the site the Bush administration and Congress picked in 2002 to entomb spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste now stored in 39 states. The Energy Department hopes to open the Yucca repository in 2010. Project planners held several public meetings earlier this year to determine what to include in a draft environmental study to be completed next year on the Caliente route. Nevada officials, who are fighting the Yucca project, claim that’s too late. They call the rail line expensive, impractical and unsafe. Sandoval noted the department asked the Bureau of Land Management to set aside more than 300,000 acres to study, but said it failed to notify land owners along the route. The state also maintains that developing any railroad line should be overseen by the federal Surface Transportation Board, which oversees rail projects, instead of the Energy Department. In addition, the lawsuit challenges plans to use nuclear waste containment casks designed for truck transport on rail cars. © Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a [http://www.gannett.com] ***************************************************************** 60 heraldtribune.com: Phosphate strikes again Southwest Florida's Information Leader Thursday, September 9, 2004 Toxic spill re-emphasizes need for industry reforms For years, Florida lawmakers have ignored evidence that the disaster- prone phosphate industry is a major threat to our state's environment and budget. More evidence -- roughly 60 million gallons of it -- just poured down a giant hill and into a tributary of Hillsborough Bay and Tampa Bay. On Sunday, heavy rains from Hurricane Frances opened a huge hole in a dike atop a 180-foot-high stack of phosphogypsum, a mildly radioactive byproduct of converting phosphate ore into fertilizer. The stack, near Gibsonton in southwestern Hillsborough County, holds roughly 1 billion gallons of highly acidic water. State environmental officials warned the stack's owner, Cargill Crop Nutrition, early last month that the dike wasn't thick enough to contain the water. But Cargill failed to fix the problem, and Frances opened a 60-foot- wide hole in the dike and sent millions of gallons of untreated toxic water cascading into Archie Creek, which empties into Hillsborough Bay. Officials say the spill poses no risk to human health, but Colleen Castille, head of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, painted a graphic picture of just how acidic the water is. z "If you touch it, it's harmful and you'd get a rash like a bad sunburn," she told one newspaper. "If you ingest it, it's like Drano." The threat to aquatic life isn't so hypothetical. Similar spills in the past have caused massive fish kills. Dead crabs, mullet, snook and vegetation have already been spotted near the spill site. The scene is reminiscent of what officials in Manatee County and Tallahassee feared would happen at an abandoned gyp stack at Piney Point, a defunct fertilizer-processing plant north of Palmetto. State officials say an ongoing and costly cleanup operation there -- including the dumping of toxic water into the Gulf and a nearby harbor -- lowered the water in the stack to safe levels. You'd think the Piney Point fiasco would have opened eyes at Cargill, but apparently not. Among other things, company officials need a primer on what can happen during hurricane season. As outrageous as the Cargill spill is, it's only one small part of a massive environmental crisis facing Florida. As we've pointed out many times before, there are two dozen gypsum stacks and pools of acidic water scattered around Central Florida. They will be with us indefinitely because no safe, marketable use has been found for the material. There are now nearly 1 heraldtribune.com | Advertise With Us | Jobs With Us Serving the Herald-Tribune newspaper and SNN Channel 6 © Sarasota Herald-Tribune. All rights reserved. Initializing : 16ms ***************************************************************** 61 KLAS: Yucca Mountain Lawsuit - New Allegations September 9, 2004 Brian Allen, Reporter (Sep. 8) -- A new lawsuit brings new allegations Wednesday night concerning Yucca Mountain. Attorney General Brian Sandoval is suing the Department of Energy on behalf of the state claiming the DOE doesn't have the authority to make a lot of the decisions needed to push the project forward. The lawsuit strikes at the heart of the project -- questioning what the DOE can and cannot do. "The DOE has an arrogant attitude and has not bothered to take the proper steps to license this project." Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval filed the lawsuit in Washington, claiming the DOE lacks the authority to develop nuclear waste transportation plans for Yucca Mountain, that current plans violate federal environmental laws, and says the DOE didn't consult anyone in Nevada when developing a proposed rail line from Caliente to Yucca Mountain. "I find it offensive that they wouldn't get the input of the Nevadans that are affected the most." This lawsuit also asks the Department of Energy to come up with a specific plan regarding over the road nuclear shipments that may travel through Las Vegas. "The DOE has a history of always doing the wrong thing." Activist Peggy Maze Johnson believes the DOE is keeping the over the road aspect under the table. "People in this state have been put at risk." "That hasn't been adequately addressed and considered." Clark County Comprehensive Planner Irene Navis says another issue is being ignored. "Nobody has insurance protection against a nuclear incident." If a nuclear shipment spills in Las Vegas, our only insurance would be a $10 billion federal clean-up fund. Navis says it would not be enough. Emergency managers agree with her. "The things that seemed impossible are possible. So we have to be prepared to respond to what we once thought was impossible." Carolyn Levering's worst-case scenario involves a spill of the worst kind -- one headed for Yucca Mountain. Eyewitness News contacted Department of Energy officials in Las Vegas for comment on this new lawsuit. They referred us to Joe Davis with the DOE in Washington. Mr. Davis did not return our phone calls. [http://www.worldnow.com] All content © Copyright 2000 - 2004 WorldNow and KLAS. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 62 The Whitehaven News: BNFL BIDS TO AVOID US LOSSES TOP-level talks are due to be held to try and spare BNFL from major losses arising from fixed-price contracts that its US subsidiary signed. Spencer Abraham, the US Energy Secretary, and officials at the UK Department of Trade and Industry are believed to be meeting in London over the next few weeks, with a view to resolving a dispute with the US Department of Energy. At stake is a £280 million likely cost over-run on nuclear decommissioning deals in the States. Both The Times and The Sunday Telegraph reported concerns over the potential hole in BNFL’s finances. A spokesman for BNFL would only say: “Discussions are taking place with the DoE on a government-to-government basis, regarding BNFL’s clean-up contracts in the US. As these are governmental discussions it is not appropriate for BNFL to comment further.” BNFL signed two fixed contracts with the US in 1996. One, worth $912 million (£509 million) was to clean up the DoE’s National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in Idaho, and the other, worth $238 million, was to decontaminate a uranium plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. [http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/subscribe] ***************************************************************** 63 The Whitehaven News: EC TO PROSECUTE OVER SELLAFIELD POND THE murky waters of a radioactive waste pond at Sellafield are the subject of a legal row with the European Commission. They have accused BNFL of failing to draw up an adequate plan to enable inspection of the B30 nuclear fuel ponds. The European Commission is expected to start legal action before the European Court of Justice, claiming that the UK failed to provide proper information about material stored in Sellafield and did not give EU inspectors adequate access to the site. Under the Euratom treaty, the UK is supposed to allow inspection of its nuclear materials, including the hundreds of magnox spent fuel rods corroding in the B30 ponds. BNFL referred questions on the issue to the Department of Trade and Industry. Nick Turton from the DTi said: “We share the commission’s wish to ensure that the process of retrieving waste material from B30 includes appropriate arrangements to ensure nuclear materials can be accounted for and verified by the Commissions Safety Inspectorate.” He declined to be drawn further on why BNFL had been unable to satisfy the requests for inspection of B30. MEANWHILE anti-nuclear campaigners CORE were last week monitoring the departure of an armed BNFL ship leaving Barrow to sail to the USA. CORE claims the ship will be used to ferry plutonium from the USA to France, where the ex-weapons plutonium will be used to make MOX nuclear fuel assemblies. Sellafield’s own MOX facility is still being commissioned. French company Areva issued this statement on Friday: “The Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail, two UK-registered ships dedicated to the transport of nuclear materials, are leaving Barrow today for Charleston (United States). “Their journey is part of a program being implemented by the United States Department Of Energy (USDOE) for the disposition of former weapons plutonium, by using it in a nuclear reactor for generating electricity. “The programme starts with the manufacturing of four nuclear fuel assemblies in France. “In Charleston, the plutonium for these assemblies will be loaded on board, in casks specially designed for the safe and secure transport of plutonium oxide. “The ships will then leave for France, where the plutonium will be fabricated into nuclear fuel at the COGEMA sites of Cadarache and Marcoule. “The shipment, as with all operations in this program, complies with national and international regulations. The shipping company involved has safely transported nuclear material over 4 million nautical miles without a single incident involving the release of radioactivity. “The cargo will be protected by armed guards throughout its journey and the ships are equipped with naval guns.” [http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/photos] ***************************************************************** 64 IPS-English DISARMAMENT: Eight-Year Stalemate Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2004 17:16:18 -0700 ROMAIPS WD IP=20 DISARMAMENT: Eight-Year Stalemate By Gustavo Capdevila GENEVA, Sep 9 (IPS) - The stalemate continues in the Conference on Disarmament (CD), which for the eighth year in a row ended its annual sessions this week without reaching an agreement on a working programme among its 66 member states. The CD works by consensus, which means it cannot undertake new work witho= ut the agreement of all of the member states. The deadlock in the multilateral negotiating body reflects the current imbalance in international relations, in which the United States enjoys immense political and military power. In terms of military arsenals, a wide gap separates the United States fro= m the rest of the countries in the world, which is reflected in the negotiations within the CD, said a Latin American diplomat who asked not = to be named. Patricia Lewis, director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), said the continuing impasse in the CD has to do with t= he expectations surrounding the Nov. 2 presidential elections in the United States. In May, at the third session of the preparatory committee for the 2005 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which wa= s held in New York, the Arab countries were reluctant to grant concessions = to the United States =94on the grounds that if they are changing government = in November, why give anything now,=94 said Lewis. She also noted that the Democratic Party presidential candidate, John Ker= ry, has clearly indicated that if he wins, there will be a change in the U.S. attitude towards the negotiations in the CD. She added, however, that =94= there would have to be a change=94 in Congress, especially the Senate, to get a= ny treaty ratified. The United States holds the key to overcoming the stalemate in the CD, wh= ich is waiting for a decision by Washington to jump-start a process that came= to a standstill in 1996, after the successful debate on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) -- the last document agreed at the Conference. Authorities in the United States must decide whether they support the negotiation of a treaty banning the production of fissile material (plutonium and highly enriched uranium) for nuclear weapons (the Fissile Material Treaty or FMT), although they do not want a regime for verificat= ion of compliance. The U.S. delegate, Jackie Sanders, confounded the CD when she announced o= n Jul. 29 that her government had reached the conclusion that an effective = FMT verification regime was not feasible. Since then, the U.S. delegates have not explained to the CD just how they envision an FMT without a verification regime -- the point that continues= to paralyse talks on the rest of the issues. When the Cold War came to an end, the United States vigorously pushed for the FMT, because like other nations, it shared the concern over where the stocks of fissile materials in the arsenals and laboratories of the countries of the former Soviet Union, which fell apart in 1991, would end up. But after the Sep. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, the United States modified its arms contr= ol policy and began to downplay the importance of verification regimes for international treaties. The Moscow Treaty, which in 2002 required Russia and the United States to reduce their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds by 2012, has no verification regime. The same is true of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, because = the United States blocked agreement on a verification regime in November 2001= =2E Lewis pointed out to IPS that the United States was =94not interested in = the verification of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq=94 -- a reference to = the March 2003 invasion of that country led by Washington, based on the suppo= sed existence of weapons of mass destruction, which have never been found. The head of UNIDIR also believes the United States is no longer even interested in the FMT, which is currently bogging down progress in the CD= =2E =94Another thing that is quite clear from the U.S. approach is that they = --=20 this particular administration -- are not interested in treaties,=94 she argued. Adoption of the FMT would primarily affect countries with nuclear arsenal= s: the five nuclear powers -- China, the United States, France, Britain and Russia -- as well as India, Israel and Pakistan. The rest of the world's countries are controlled by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If the FMT or a similar accord goes into effect, the five nuclear powers would be allowed to keep their weapons, but on the condition that they cu= t off production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons, on which there is already basically a de facto moratorium among the five, Lewis pointed out. But India and Pakistan =94are still producing fissile material for weapon= s,=94 she added. =94So the question is how long it will take for them to build = their stocks.=94 Israel, meanwhile, is a different case, because =94as far as we know it i= s not producing weapons,=94 she added. But if the FMT were to enter into effect= , the verification regime would require it to open up its records on its decades-long nuclear programme. That =94would be very dangerous for Israel. I think this may be one of th= e key points that people are concerned about,=94 said Lewis. =94Israel is very sensitive on this issue because India and Pakistan have declared themselves to have nuclear weapons. Israel has never done that,=94 she noted. The FMT is holding up progress in the CD on an issue that is very costly = for China and Russia: the prevention of an arms race in outer space. Nor has there been progress on the most pressing issues for the non-align= ed countries, like nuclear disarmament and security guarantees for non-nuclear-weapon states. The inertia of the negotiations has hurt the prestige and credibility of = the CD, which does not strictly belong to the U.N. system, but uses the servi= ces of the world body's secretariat in its Geneva headquarters. Critics say the CD acts like =94an exclusive golf club, or like a gentlem= en's club in London or New York,=94 said Lewis. In his closing message to the period of sessions Tuesday, the rotating president of the CD, Burmese delegate U Mya Than, said he believed that i= t is =94the best club in the city=94 because it has =94the best brains=94 r= epresenting the most refined traditions of multilateral diplomacy. But Chilean delegate Juan Martabit acknowledged that an eight-year impass= e has hurt the reputation of the CD, and that =94legitimate questions about= its future=94 have been raised. He also stated that security and peace are not achieved by building up nuclear arsenals. The real threats to peace, said Martabit, are the developing world's lack= of funds to confront poverty and hunger. ***** + Conference on Disarmament (http://disarmament.un.org:8080/cd/) (END/IPS/WD/IP/TRASP-SW/PC/DCL/04) =20 =3D 09091736 ORP009 NNNN ***************************************************************** 65 Tri-City Herald: Nuclear watchdog blasts DOE This story was published Thursday, September 9th, 2004 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer Heart of America Northwest criticized the Department of Energy on Wednesday for failing to have a plan for plutonium-contaminated waste buried before 1970 at the Hanford nuclear reservation. The watchdog group claims the waste holds enough plutonium for more than 50 nuclear weapons. DOE is working on a project work plan for the waste that's legally required to be submitted to the Washington State Department of Ecology before the end of the year, responded DOE spokeswoman Colleen French in Richland. DOE believes the amount of buried waste is far less than Heart of America claims. The waste was produced from 50 years of production of plutonium at Hanford for the nation's nuclear weapons program. At issue for Heart of America is waste buried at Hanford before 1970, when the Atomic Energy Commission ruled that waste contaminated with certain levels of plutonium, or transuranic waste, must be buried in a deep geological repository. With no repository open, Hanford workers began temporarily burying any waste they thought might be transuranic in the 1970s. Work to dig up that waste began in 2003, four years after DOE opened its repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, in New Mexico. Hanford workers have dug up enough post-1970 waste to fill about 6,000 55-gallon drums out of a total of about 75,000 drums full of waste. All the post-1970s waste is required to be removed from the ground by 2010. Heart of America at a Richland news conference said DOE plans to abandon and never clean up the pre-1970s waste, buried when DOE thought the waste would remain at Hanford permanently. Hanford has 18 times as much pre-1970s waste as post-1970s waste, said Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest. That amount also includes soil that has become contaminated with plutonium at liquid or solid waste dumps at Hanford. The pre-1970s waste is enough to nearly fill WIPP with just Hanford waste, although DOE plans to send far more transuranic waste from other nuclear weapons plants to WIPP, Pollet said. He fears that pre-1970s waste will never leave Hanford. All transuranic waste, including pre-1970s waste, will be dug up, processed and sent to WIPP, French countered. DOE believes the amount of pre-1970s waste is far less than Heart of America Northwest claims, but work being done now will provide a better estimate of the volume, French said. Estimates of transuranic waste made across the DOE complex before WIPP was approved were conservative and there should be no problem finding room for all of Hanford's transuranic waste at WIPP, she said. DOE knows where the waste burial grounds are at Hanford that could contain early transuranic waste and to a large extent knows what is in them, she said. Heart of America says it is particularly concerned that the pre-1970s waste poses a greater hazard than the waste buried temporarily at Hanford. Old burial containers have had more time to corrode and leak, contaminating the ground with radioactive and chemical waste, Pollet said. Heart of America has been a primary backer of Initiative 297, which would block nuclear waste from being sent to Hanford until waste generated at Hanford is cleaned up. © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 66 The Daily Texan: Los Alamos resumes less-risky sectors - Top Stories | 9/9/2004 Areas still under security scrutiny yet to reopen By David Kassabian Work at Los Alamos National Laboratory is gradually resuming, but the riskiest and most classified activities are still closed after a summer security scandal prompted a full shutdown, spokeswoman Kathy DeLucas said Wednesday. Linton Brooks, director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, ordered an indefinite suspension of almost all operations at the nuclear weapons facility on July 16, a day after announcing the disappearance of two computer disks containing classified data. One week later, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham halted work at all Department of Energy-owned labs in areas that feature sensitive hardware. Officials at Los Alamos began reopening less sensitive areas of the lab in late July and have been opening divisions one at a time ever since, DeLucas said. "Back in July we said, 'Let's back away from the edge of the cliff and examine what we do, why we do it and how we do it,'" DeLucas said. "Since then, it's basically been a risk assessment." All activities were organized according to risk level after the self-imposed order to shut down and have been activated with the least classified and hazardous opening first. Critical departments, such as emergency response teams and the public affairs office, were not effected by the shutdown, she said. Level one activities, which include mainly office work, began to restart in late July and were all completely operational Aug. 18, DeLucas said. Activities defined as level two, such as work involving heavy construction equipment, classified computing and maintenance operations, are about 25 percent online, DeLucas said. The most dangerous and classified activities, using high explosives, hazardous chemicals or nuclear materials, are all still suspended indefinitely, DeLucas said. DeLucas said it is too early to tell if there are any lasting effects of the most recent security scandal, but lab officials are more aware of what's going on at the facility. The security investigation is ongoing, and 19 lab employees have been suspended because of it, DeLucas said. "We've realized the government and taxpayers are putting in a large investment, and I think we're going to be better than ever when we come out of this," DeLucas said. Los Alamos is owned by the DOE but has been managed by the University of California System since 1943. It was also the site of the development for the first atomic bomb. In April 2003, the DOE put the management of the lab up for bid for the first time in its history. The National Nuclear Safety Administration, a division of the DOE, is expected to ask for management proposals by the end of the year. The University of Texas System has expressed interest in bidding on the contract. The Austin American-Statesman reported in August that the UT System's interest in managing the lab is decreasing, possibly due to the security breaches and the announcement by defense contractor Lockheed Martin to drop out of the bidding. "We have not made any decision to bid on Los Alamos, and have also not made a decision not to," said Randa Safady, vice chancellor for external relations for the UT System. "The alleged security breaches at Los Alamos would factor into anyone's decision. We have to look at all of the issues, and certainly that was a big one." Did You Know? 1943 The University of California is asked to manage the new Los Alamos National Laboratory to build the first atomic bomb. December 1999 Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos employee, was arrested and accused of mishandling classified information. September 2000 Two whistleblowers were fired after alleging employees stole property and abused government credit cards. December 2002 The director of the Los Alamos lab submits his resignation. January 2003 University of California rehires the investigators fired after they alleged theft among employees. January 2003 The inspector general for the Department of Energy issues a report lambasting the UC System for lab mismanagement. April 2003 Department of Energy opens up the management contract to competitive bidding. February 2004 UT System announces its intent to plan for a bid to manage Los Alamos. June 28, 2004 Contract process for management of Los Alamos announced. July 7, 2004 Two computer disks containing classified data are found missing from Los Alamos. July 16, 2004 Los Alamos lab director shuts down virtually all lab operations indefinitely. July 23, 2004 Secretary of Energy orders all DOE-owned labs to halt work involving sensitive hardware pending a review; calls for an investigation of missing disks at Los Alamos. Fall 2004 National Nuclear Safety Administration expected to call for management proposals of Los Alamos. ***************************************************************** 67 lamonitor.com: Public concerned about clean up schedules The Online News Source for Los Alamos [http://www.lac-nm.us] KELLY PEITSMEYER, lacommunity@lamonitor.com [lacommunity@lamonitor.com] , Monitor Staff Writer POJOAQUE - The state will soon have far more control over investigation and clean up of environmental contaminants at Los Alamos National Laboratory - assuming a recently proposed Order of Consent is finalized. James Bearzi, chief of the NMED's Hazardous Waste Bureau, said the Consent Order is necessary because much of the lab's methodology in the past has been substandard. He also emphasized that new regulations will make LANL's job easier in many respects because remedy selection, methods for establishing clean up levels, methods for conducting corrective actions, reporting and scheduling will all be standardized. Bearzi discussed the order, released for public comment Sept. 1, at an open informational meeting Wednesday at the Cities of Gold Hotel here, detailing the provisions before opening up the floor to the audience for questions and comments. Attendees expressed numerous concerns, such as monitoring of radionuclides - which is not covered by the Consent Order - and the proposed continued use of fluids in drilling. They were especially anxious regarding the order's timelines, which set clean up completion goals for 2015. Some members of the public did not trust the state would be able to meet its fast-paced schedules, the proposal itself - a two-and-a-half year endeavor - is already on too slow a course for their taste. Bearzi replied that while schedules were aggressive, he felt confident the goals were within reach. He cited progress at Sandi Laboratory to back up his assertion. Others worried that meeting goals would necessitate increased staff and expense. However, Bearzi said increased manpower and funding would not be needed because the NMED developed the order with existing staff and finances in mind. One audience member asked if Bearzi would be willing to drink presently contaminated water in 2016, one year after the proposed clean up completion. To this, Bearzi responded the goals were worked out under the idea that the clean up processes would be in place and in effect by 2015, not that groundwater would be 100 percent pure by that point. Also, he said it was impossible to predict the course of groundwater right now, but he hoped the Consent Order would help gather knowledge on groundwater and further scientists' chances of calculating its extent and stemming its expansion. Additionally, attendees wondered if stipulated penalties for non-compliance would be taken in a timely manner. Bearzi said he has a commitment from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that fines will be imposed immediately for failure to comply. Although the proposal was only released this month, Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Pete Domenici, the NMED and the U.S. Department of Energy announced agreement on the order in March. Laboratory Director G. Peter Nanos is supportive of the Consent Order in a NMED press release, where he thanks Richardson for "getting the ball rolling" between him and EPA. "I hope that his effort will mark the first step in furthering the relationship between LANL and the state of New Mexico," he says in the release. The order between the New Mexico Environment Department, the DOE and the University of California modifies LANL's existing Research, Conservation and Recovery Act Permit. The Consent Order will govern all corrective actions presently covered by the operating permit, with a few exceptions, including new releases from operating units (waste storage sites), closure and post-closure care of operating units, and implementation of controls and monitoring at sites deemed complete. Furthermore, it differs from a 2002 proposed order in several ways. One, it presumes that contaminants at LANL represent imminent endangerment and doesn't argue a case for it. Two, it lacks specifications for radionuclides and total uranium, with the understanding the state can issue another order if the lab does not voluntarily comply with previously set standards. Three, it adds provisions for dispute resolutions, reservation of rights, stipulated penalties, land transfer, explosive compounds, firing sites and remedy completion dates. And four, it does not impart erosion control or surface water requirements. This major change from the original draft came about because the DOE and the EPA are in the process of negotiating a Federal Facility Compliance Agreement to direct water monitoring. The NMED is taking this step, Bearzi said, because New Mexico is one of the few states without Clean Water Act authority, which the department is making a case for to Richardson right now. Secretary Ron Curry said in the NMED press release that he refuses to sign the Consent Order into effect until the FFCA is complete. The NMED has issued a public comment period to last until 5 p.m. Oct. 1. All relevant handwritten and electronically received comments will be considered and, if a name and address are provided, will be responded to. Send comments to James P. Bearzi, Bureau Chief, Hazardous Waste Bureau, New Mexico Environment Department, 2905 Rodeo Park Drive East, Building 1, Santa Fe, N.M. 87505-6303; or e-mail Bearzi at hazardous_waste_comment@nmenv.state [hazardous_waste_comment@nmenv.state] .nm.us. For a complete copy of the proposed Order of Consent, visit the NMED Website at www.nmenv.state.nm.us/HWB/lanlperm.html. © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 68 Knox College News: Inside 'A' Bomb Factory - Robert Rothe - Knox grad and retired nuclear scientist - discusses the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility on September 20 September 09, 2004 Robert Rothe, a retired nuclear scientist at the U.S. government's Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility, will give a talk "Inside 'A' Bomb Factory: The New-Fangled Neutron, Unexpected Fission, the First Reactor, and Nuclear Criticality Safety," at 4 p.m., Monday, September 20, in room D-108, Umbeck Science-Mathematics Center, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. The lecture is free and open to the public. Rothe, a 1956 Knox College graduate who worked at the Rocky Flats Critical Mass Laboratory from 1964 to 1994, will discuss the discovery of the neutron, early experiments in nuclear fission, and the handling and control of nuclear materials and nuclear reactions. During his 30-year career at Rocky Flats, Rothe conducted more than 1700 "critical assemblies" -- experiments that measure exactly how much radioactive material is required to create a "critical mass," the point at which an atomic reaction occurs. Rothe has contributed to more than 50 scientific papers and reports, and in 1984 received the Best Research Paper Award from the American Nuclear Society. He was also commissioned by the Los Alamos National Laboratory to write a book-length study of the Rocky Flats Critical Mass Laboratory, scheduled for publication in 2005. Rothe, who earned College Honors at Knox in physics and mathematics, received his master's degree at the California Institute of Technology and his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin. He won the world-wide Engineer of the Year award in 1981 from Rockwell International, one of several major corporations for whom he did contract work. Rothe and his wife, Judith, a 1958 Knox graduate, have served for many years as foster parents and have received awards from Boulder County, Colorado, and the City of Denver. He also has taught history and has written articles on model railroading. Contact Peter Bailley news@knox.edu [news@knox.edu] 309 341 7337 ***************************************************************** 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. 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