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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 Guardian Unlimited: Saddam's Illicit Trade No Secret to U.S.
2 Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED: Whitewashing Iran - The 
3 EUbusiness: Iran to resume nuclear talks with EU under new cloud of 
4 Xinhua: Iran says future nuclear activities up to negotiations with 
5 Xinhua: Iran, Russia working out technical details of Bushehr plant 
6 Yahoo!: Iran warns it will quit nuclear talks with EU if no
7 Guardian Unlimited: Iran, EU to Begin Nuclear Talks
8 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Japan develops plan in case of Korean conflic
9 YWS: N. Korea Reiterates Call for Seoul to Explain its Nuke Experime
10 Guardian Unlimited: Experts rebel over US stance on N Korea
11 US: NAPF's Krieger: Missile Defense makes US vulnerable 
12 US: [NukeNet] letter from Delaware Senators and Congressmen to NRC
13 US: [NukeNet] Vote in online poll to prevent Cook nuclear plant in
14 US: [NYTr] CIA Officer Suing over WMD Lies & Retaliation
15 US: PBN: New England Council, energy and utilities, N.E. Council, en
16 US: WorldNetDaily: N.Y. Times interviews nuke czar
17 [progchat_action] FOCUS | U.S. Caught Spying on U.N. Nuclear
18 [NYTr] IAEA Chief's Phone Tapped
19 [NYTr] NSA, CIA Phone Taps Part of Attempt to Unseat ElBaradei
20 terror for gain
21 The Hindu: Indo-Pak. talks on Nuclear-Conventional CBMs to start on 
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
22 US: North County Times: Shutter the nuclear nightmare on I-5 
23 US: toledoblade.com: DAVIS-BESSE NUCLEAR PLANT
24 Xinhua: Guangdong's fourth nuke plant in pipeline   
25 US: Lompoc Record: PGE wins Diablo Canyon Nuke Plant dry cask transp
26 Japan Times: Site of nuclear accident opened to tours
27 US: WAVY: Dominion's Surry Station Likely To Get Fuel Storage Permit
28 Business Gazette: NEW NUCLEAR AGENCY FACES ILLEGAL SUBSIDY PROBE
29 US: WVEC.com: Robotic ROSA probes deep inside Surry Nuclear Power St
30 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Officials set rules for NRC meeting
31 US: Journal Gazette: Dont let lawmakers fall for latest power-plant
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
32 US: Las Vegas RJ: EPA asked to oversee cleanup 
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
33 US: The Herald: MOX test fuels fears of terrorism 
34 US: SF Chronicle: State is open to radioactive terror attack, critic
35 Independent: Nuclear 'white elephant' eyes a profit 
36 US: Salt Lake Tribune: N-dump consortium contends storage would not 
37 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Mullen: Envirocare airs a hot, new TV ad 
38 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Offer: Old mines as nuke dump 
39 US: Daily Press: Dominion's Surry station likely to get fuel storage
40 US: Bradenton Herald: Tallevast beryllium test group may widen
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
41 Las Vegas RJ: Bush pulls surprise with Energy Department choice 
42 Tri-City Herald: BPA debt savings better spent on transmission 
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
43 Space.com: NASA is reviewing a list of alternative fission-powered 
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 Guardian Unlimited: Saddam's Illicit Trade No Secret to U.S.
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

        Sunday December 12, 2004 3:31 AM

AP Photo WX102 

By KEN GUGGENHEIM 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Saddam Hussein was dead broke, the result of
U.N. penalties. Or so it was thought. 

So where did the Iraqi president find the money to pursue
missile technology from North Korea, air defense systems from
Belarus and other prohibited military equipment? 

The CIA's top weapons inspector in Iraq said Saddam carried out
much of that trade with proceeds from illegal oil sales to
Syria, one of three Iraqi neighbors that bought oil from Baghdad
in defiance of the United Nations. 

Trade with Syria, Jordan and Turkey was the biggest source of
illicit funds for Saddam, more so than the much-maligned U.N.
oil-for-food program, according to investigations of Saddam's
finances. 

Though considered smuggling, most of the trade took place with
the knowledge - and sometimes the tacit consent - of the United
States and other nations. 

With Republican-led congressional committees investigating
allegations of oil-for-food corruption, some Democrats are
pressing for answers about why the United States did little to
stop the smuggling. The issue is part of a series of broader
questions these lawmakers have about what U.S. officials knew
about Saddam's overall illicit finances. 

``I am determined to see to it that our own government's
failures and oversights or mistaken judgments and decisions
should also be exposed,'' said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif. 

Some Republicans are promising to hold hearings on the matter
next year. 

``I believe the smuggling issue is huge,'' said GOP Rep.
Christopher Shays of Connecticut, chairman of the House
Government Reform subcommittee on national security. 

During the dozen years between the two Iraq wars, Saddam's oil
sales were supposed to be limited to those permitted under the
U.N. oil-for-food program. From 1996 to 2003, the $60 billion
program allowed Iraq to sell oil and use proceeds to buy food,
medicine and other necessities. 

That program has come under scrutiny because of allegations that
Saddam received kickbacks and bribed U.N. and foreign government
officials. Besides the congressional inquiries, U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed former Federal
Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to head an investigation. 

The report by CIA weapons inspector Charles Duelfer found that
oil-for-food corruption generated $1.7 billion for Saddam. It
said illegal oil contracts generated about $8 billion: $4.4
billion with Jordan, $2.8 billion with Syria and $710 million
with Turkey. A short-lived agreement with Egypt generated $33
million. Overall, Saddam had $10.9 billion in illicit revenue
from 1990 to 2003, Duelfer said. 

The Senate Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee,
using a different methodology, came up with a $21.3 billion
overall estimate, including $13.7 billion from oil smuggling.
The panel did not break that figure down by nation and it
includes some smuggling related to the oil-for-food program. 

Lawmakers frequently lump together estimates of Saddam's illicit
income from smuggling and from the oil-for-food program, blaming
the United Nations for the full $21.3 billion. Critics of the
United Nations say a surge in smuggling was made possible by the
general lawlessness caused by oil-for-food corruption. 

But Democrats say Annan cannot be held accountable for smuggling
that they say the United States condoned. 

``When three-quarters of the money ... is something that we
specifically acquiesced in, it just sort of highlights how wrong
it is to put it at Kofi Annan's doorstep,'' said Sen. Carl
Levin, D-Mich. 

Former State Department officials said the United States had
little choice but to allow some of these sales to Iraq's
neighbors. 

Jordan was desperate after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The U.N.
penalties against Iraq had cost Jordan a major trading partner.
Iraq owed Jordan money, but could not repay without selling oil.
Jordan needed oil, but could not import from other producers,
angry that Jordan supported Iraq in the war. 

``We realized that the Jordanian economy and the Jordanian state
would collapse'' if it didn't get access to oil, said David
Mack, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs
at the time. 

The United Nations formally acknowledged Jordan's oil dealings
with Iraq in May 1991, without approving or disapproving of it.
Because of that, some people question whether the trade can be
considered illicit. 

``It was not authorized, but nobody objected,'' said James A.
Placke, a Middle East and oil policy analyst and a former U.S.
diplomat. 

Turkey, which had trade agreements with Iraq from 2000-03, also
said it was hurt because of the U.N. penalties. 

Turkey had an important role in containing Saddam: Its Incirlik
air base was used by U.S. military planes that patrolled a
no-fly zone over northern Iraq. 

``With Turkey, it was plain illegal. It was smuggling, but
everybody just said, `Oh well, geez, it was too hard to try to
do anything about that,''' Mack said. 

The shipments to Jordan and Turkey were not concealed. Trucks
carrying oil were frequently seen entering those countries from
Iraq. The Clinton and Bush administrations annually issued
waivers that allowed the two countries to continue receiving
U.S. aid despite their violations of the Iraq penalties. 

Syria was another matter. 

Allen Keiswetter, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near
Eastern Affairs in 2000-01, said U.S. officials were aware that
Syria was buying oil from Iraq through a pipeline. 

``We objected to it mightily and often, but there did not seem
any good way to stop it short of military action,'' he said. 

In a February 2001 visit to Damascus, Secretary of State Colin
Powell believed he had secured a commitment from Syria to put
the pipeline under U.N. scrutiny. But that never happened. 

Syria's oil purchase agreements with Iraq lasted from 2000 to
2003. Iraq's proceeds were deposited in bank accounts in Syria
and Saddam used those funds to buy conventional weapons and
items that could be used for civilian or military purposes,
Duelfer's report said. During this period, Syria was the main
source of illegal exports to Iraq. 

More than with Jordan or Turkey, Duelfer tied the proceeds from
the Syria-Iraq trade agreement to Iraq's illegal weapons trade
with various countries. Those countries included: 

-Belarus, described as the largest supplier of high-technology
conventional weapons to Iraq from 2001-03. Products included
radar technology and air defense systems. Belarus received
nearly $114 million in payments from Iraq. 

-North Korea, which signed $10 million of contracts for
missile-related projects and other military equipment. 

-Bulgaria, which used the Iraq-Syria agreement to sell Iraq
machine tools that could be used for military or civilian
purposes. 

Because Duelfer found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -
President Bush's main justification for the Iraq war - there was
no suggestion that oil proceeds paid for unconventional weapons. 

But Duelfer has argued that Saddam's ability to subvert the U.N.
penalties probably meant the embargo eventually would collapse,
giving Saddam an opportunity to pursue chemical, biological or
nuclear weapons. 

Saddam took heart from the U.S. failure to stop the oil trade
with Syria, Duelfer wrote. 

``Baghdad could read this turn of events only as growing
momentum of its strategy to undermine sanctions with the goal of
an ultimate collapse,'' the report said. 
  
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
 2 Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED: Whitewashing Iran - The 

December 12, 2004
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 
In just the latest move that calls into question the seriousness 
of its efforts to learn the truth about Iran's nuclear weapons 
program, the International Atomic Energy Agency apparently 
withheld information suggesting that Iran had attempted to 
purchase large quantitities of dual-use material (items with 
civilian and military uses) which can be used to detonate an 
atomic weapon. 

     Reuters reported that diplomats from the United States and 
unnamed countries are unhappy with IAEA Director-General Mohammed 
ElBaradei, who they claim removed information about Iran's 
suspected purchase of beryllium from a report to the agency's 
governing board that was issued in September. According to the 
news agency, a "non-U.S. diplomat" said that information about 
Iran's work with beryllium was included in an early draft of the 
IAEA report on inspections in Iran, but was taken out of the 
final report after Tehran objected. The information was also 
omitted from a report issued last month by the IAEA Board of 
Governors. 
		
That same IAEA board rejected U.S. efforts to have Iran's 
behavior referred to the U.N. Security Council for action, opting 
instead for a weak alternative plan devised by Britain, France 
and Germany requiring that Iran freeze part of its nuclear 
program. This plan devised by the EU 3 specifies that the Iranian 
freeze is "non-binding" and "voluntary." In other words, Iran 
faces no meaningful penalties for ignoring the freeze whenever it 
chooses. 

    In response to the Reuters story, the IAEA suggests the 
information about Iran's efforts to obtain beryllium was omitted 
because it was a technical detail and had not been proven. But 
that's not the way IAEA reports to the Board of Governors are 
supposed to work. The reports are supposed to be a full 
accounting of all the things that agency is investigating about a 
country's nuclear program at a given time. If a particular charge 
has not been proven, the IAEA is supposed to say that  not leave 
the information out. The decision to omit the beryllium data 
entirely smacks of an effort to conceal something. 

    What exactly might the beryllium data excised by Mr. 
ElBaradei be? No one can say for sure. But some of the 
information on the public record is indeed troubling. 
Publications such as the London Sunday Telegraph and Jane's 
International Defense Review reported that, in 1994, the United 
States prevented Tehran from purchasing beryllium in Kazakhstan. 
After the CIA learned that Iranian agents had visited a 
processing plant there, U.S. agents reportedly purchased the 
entire inventory. The beryllium  enough to produce 20 nuclear 
warheads  was transferred to the United States to be modified 
for nonmilitary uses. There have been subsequent published 
reports suggesting that Tehran continues to try to obtain 
beryllium. 

    Since it was forced to begin dealing with the issue last 
June, the IAEA has to its credit issued a series of reports 
showing that Iran has been cheating and concealing its nuclear 
program from public view for nearly 20 years. Our central 
criticism of Mr. ElBaradei had been his unwillingness to be 
sufficiently vigorous in holding Iran accountable for malevolent 
behavior that has been publicly documented. If it turns out that 
he has been withholding relevant information about Iran from the 
IAEA board, it raises troubling new questions about Mr. 
ElBaradei's leadership. 
    
Copyright 2004 News World Communications, Inc. 		   	 
*****************************************************************
 3 EUbusiness: Iran to resume nuclear talks with EU under new cloud of suspicion
 
www.eubusiness.com

Iran goes into crucial nuclear talks with the EU Monday under a
new cloud of suspicion that it is bent on developing an atomic
bomb, after diplomats said it was conducting secret high-energy
neutron experiments that could have a dual use. 

The diplomats told AFP there was concern since the experiments
are allegedly taking place under military supervision, in a
country which claims its nuclear program is a strictly civilian
peaceful endeavor. 

Iran and the European Union are to meet Monday in Brussels to
discuss a long-term deal in which Iran would get peaceful
nuclear technology, trade benefits and regional security help in
return for suspending uranium enrichment, the key part of the
nuclear fuel cycle. 

The meeting comes as the UN International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) is trying to look into claims from the United States and
the main exiled Iranian opposition group that Iran is hiding
nuclear weapons development at military facilities. 

The experiments mentioned by the diplomats, carried out with a
neutron generator, are thought to be taking place at an alleged
base of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards. 

They involve the sort of dual-use technology which the
Vienna-based IAEA has its eye on but has trouble investigating
since it can have civilian as well as military applications. 

But a diplomat with close links to intelligence sources said
"the combination of the existence of a neutron initiator in a
secret facility run by the Revolutionary Guard, making high- and
not low-energy neutron experiments is a sufficient good
indicator to a suspected military program." 

The experiments may involve beryllium metal, a strategically
sensitive item which the IAEA discussed in a report in November
on Iran. 

A second diplomat cited open-literature reports by Iranian
nuclear scientists about work with high-energy neutrons and
beryllium in universities in Birmingham, England and in Ferdowsi
University in Mashhad, northeast Iran. 

The experiments could be a link in alleged weapons activities,
involving beryllium and another sensitive metal, polonium. 

Iranian officials insist that their their work with polonium is
intended to make nuclear batteries, a technology the United
States uses in deep-space probes. 

But polonium combined with beryllium can be the trigger for an
atomic bomb while beryllium can be used to make the reflector
around the core of highly enriched uranium that captures
neutrons in order to kick off the actual uranium nuclear
explosion. 

According to the first diplomat, the neutron experiments are
being conducted at a Revolutionary Guard base on the outskirts
of Tehran "in a neutron generator in an isolated underground
building." 

The base is near the Malek Ashtar Technology University where a
team of "six senior nuclear scientists and several research
assistants" do calculations from the data, the diplomat said. 

The diplomat said "fast (high-energy) neutron experiments,
involving 14 million electron volts, which are not slowed down
by moderators and are performed in a classified facility, are
designed for nuclear fission processes, that is nuclear bomb
systems." 

An expert close to the IAEA said the watchdog agency was
conscious of this work and was measuring it against a scale it
has of determining whether to investigate the matter. 

The expert said the high-energy neutron experiments can have
three applications: to study research reactors which also can
use beryllium shields, to study fusion or to develop energy
reflectors for atomic bombs. 

But the IAEA is limited in its investigations of alleged weapons
work since its mandate under the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) is to guarantee that a country has declared all its
nuclear material, diplomats said. 

The IAEA, for instance, wants to visit the Parchin military
testing site, where US officials say the Iranians may be
"dry-testing" atomic bombs using inert uranium. 

But the IAEA cannot insist on this since it has no evidence
there is nuclear material at Parchin and the agency is asking
for the visit as a "transparency" gesture of good faith on the
part of Iran. 

This is true of most military sites since Iran claims its
nuclear program is strictly civilian. 

Tehran last month agreed to suspend its sensitive nuclear fuel
work as part of a deal with Britain, France and Germany, which
staved off moves within the IAEA led by the United States to
refer Iran to the UN Security Council for eventual sanctions for
its failure to comply with the watchdog. 
Text and Picture Copyright © 2004 AFP. All other copyright ©
2004 EUbusiness Ltd. All rights reserved. This material is
intended solely for personal use. Any other reproduction,
publication or redistribution of this material without the
written agreement of the copyright owner is strictly forbidden
and any breach of copyright will be considered actionable. 
[ title=] mind you that "European " Turkey plans not one but
four nuclear plants! 
Posted by kombo at 11-12-2004 07:06 PM good luck!     Log in

 EUbusiness © Copyright EUbusiness Ltd 2004. Privacy Statement |
*****************************************************************
 4 Xinhua: Iran says future nuclear activities up to negotiations with EU

  www.xinhuanet.com
    
  www.chinaview.cn 2004-12-12 20:31:10   

   TEHRAN, Dec. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran said Sunday that its
future nuclear activities would depend on the upcoming
negotiations with the European Union (EU), the official IRNA
news agency reported. 

   "Iran and the three European countries (Britain, France and
Germany) are going to set the framework for Iran's future
nuclear activities during the talks in Brussels on Monday,"
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi was quoted as
saying. 

   Asefi said working groups consisting of members from both
sides of Iran and the EU would be formed by next week and
practical steps would be taken to resolve the remaining issues
after the Brussels meeting. 

   Hassan Rowhani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security
Council and head of the Iranian delegation, left for Brussels
earlier Sunday. 

   The upcoming negotiations will focus on the implementation of
the Paris Agreement reached between Tehran and the EU on Nov. 7. 

   Under the agreement, the European trio promised a wholesale
of offers on trade and nuclear technology in return for Iran's
comprehensive suspension of uranium activities. 

   Iran carried out the suspension on Nov. 22 accordingly, and
the International Atomic Energy Agency on Nov. 29 decided not to
refer Iran's case to the UN Security Council and urged Iran and
the EU to implement the Paris agreement. 

   The United States accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons
while Tehran categorically rejects the accusation, saying its
nuclear research is completely peaceful.  Enditem   

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 5 Xinhua: Iran, Russia working out technical details of Bushehr plant - official   

  www.xinhuanet.com
    
  www.chinaview.cn 2004-12-12 01:34:38   
  
   TEHRAN, Dec. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran and Russia are working out 
technical details of an agreement to bring the joint-constructed 
Bushehr nuclear power plant on line in 2006, the official IRNA 
news agency reported on Saturday. 

   Visiting Russian Federation Council Chairman Sergei Mironov, 
who arrived in Iran earlier in the day for a two-day visit, was 
quoted as saying that Iran has the right to peaceful nuclear 
technology in the framework of the nuclear Non-Proliferation 
Treaty. 

   Bushehr plant, Iran's first nuclear power plant, is being 
built with Russia's aid in a Persian Gulf island in the southern 
province of Bushehr. 

   The United States has pressured Moscow to abandon the project 
with the accusation that Tehran is developing nuclear weapons. 

   In order to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons with 
spent fuel, Russia conditions delivery of nuclear fuel to Iran on 
an agreement signed between the two sides assuring all spent fuel 
would be returned to Russia. 

   The repeated failures in reaching the agreement have delayed 
the operation of the Bushehr nuclear plant. 

   On Aug. 22, Iran said that the plant would become operational 
in October 2006, a year delayed against the schedule. 

   The two sides on Oct. 10 announced that an agreement on return 
of spent fuel from the nuclear power plant to Russia has come to 
the final stage. 

   However, the repeated delays of the project had angered the 
Islamic Republic, which voiced its suspension that Russia could 
be trying to use the project as a bargaining chip in its 
political horse-trading with the US. 

   A senior Iranian official recently sent a veiled warning to 
Russia, making it clear that the Iranians would judge the 
Russians by their performance in Bushehr, IRNA said. Enditem    

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 6 Yahoo!: Iran warns it will quit nuclear talks with EU if no
progress made 

  Sunday December 12, 09:40 AM 

 TEHRAN (AFX) - Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani
warned today that the country will abandon key talks with the
European Union on its nuclear programme if it becomes clear that
no progress is being made.

 The talks, set to begin in Brussels tomorrow, are aimed at
building on Iran's agreement to suspend sensitive uranium
enrichment activities that have sparked fears the clerical
regime is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

 The two sides will be hammering out a long-term accord that
includes 'objective guarantees' Iran will not develop the bomb
and a package of trade, technology and security incentives.

 'We will continue the negotiations for as long as they are
progressing,' Rowhani told the official news agency IRNA before
leaving for the Brussels talks.

 'If at any point that our negotiations are not progressing, we
will stop them. The end of these three months of negotiations
will indicate to us which point we have reached,' added the
cleric, who heads Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

 Iran has pledged to maintain its nuclear fuel cycle freeze for
the duration of the negotiations.

 On Monday, Rowhani is to meet the British, French and German
foreign ministers in a steering committee conference on the
sidelines of an EU ministerial gathering.

 aet-sas/sjw/rc 
  
 Copyright © 2004 AFP AFX. All rights reserved. Republication or
*****************************************************************
 7 Guardian Unlimited: Iran, EU to Begin Nuclear Talks
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Sunday December 12, 2004 2:46 AM

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran and the European Union will begin
comprehensive talks on Tehran's nuclear activities next week,
official media reported Saturday. 

Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, will meet foreign
ministers of Britain, France, Germany and EU foreign policy
chief Javier Solana in a joint session. The timing of that
meeting was not clear. 

``I think there would be a good chance to achieve progress in
the talks if we manage to come up with the necessary
guarantees,'' senior Iranian negotiator, Siours Nasseri, told
state radio. 

Last month, Iran reached an agreement with the three European
nations to suspend its nuclear enrichment and related activities
while negotiating a long-term settlement with the EU on its
nuclear program. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency is monitoring the
suspension. 

The United States believes Iran has a secret program to build
nuclear weapons and has been lobbying to refer Iran to the U.N.
Security Council, which could impose sanctions. President Bush
has labeled Iran part of an ``axis of evil'' with North Korea
and prewar Iraq. 

Iran has denied the allegations, saying its program is meant to
generate electricity. 

Iran hopes - through negotiations with the EU - to obtain
European nuclear technology and economic aid. The Europeans have
pushed Iran to declare a permanent halt to uranium enrichment,
but Iran repeatedly has refused to comply. 

Under the agreement with the three European nations, Iran is
committed to providing objective guarantees that its nuclear
program is exclusively for peaceful purposes. The European side
is to provide firm guarantees on nuclear, technological and
economic cooperation.	 

      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
 8 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Japan develops plan in case of Korean conflict
 
December 13, 2004 KST 14:49 

  December 13, 2004 ¤Ñ As part of a new military doctrine, Tokyo
has defined its role in the event of a conflict on the Korean
Peninsula, saying Japanese forces would undertake the evacuation
of civilians and conduct search and rescue missions for downed
U.S. and South Korea pilots.

 The Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese daily, reported Sunday the
details of the doctrine called "Operational Plan 5055." 
The daily reported that in 2002 the United States and Japan
reached an agreement on the plan. 

Under the plan, another chief task of the Japanese military
would be to secure military bases and ports used by U.S. forces
for deployment or logistics purposes. 

Japan's Navy would safeguard a sea route from the Korean
Peninsula to Japan in order to keep a supply line open. Japan's
Maritime Self Defense Force would patrol coastal areas adjacent
to nuclear facilities in anticipation of possible North Korean
commando attacks. 

Experts say that the plan and recently announced defense
measures that flow out of a once-a-decade defense review reflect
Japan's shift in focus from defending Japan from a possible
Russian invasion to guarding the country from possible North
Korean or Chinese threats. 

While troop positions are now aimed at deterring a Russian
landing, about 10 brigades are expected to be deployed near the
capital to prepare for potential commando attacks on key
government facilities. 

"The plan is natural," said a South Korean officer of the
Defense Ministry. "North Korean commandos are expected to
operate deeply behind enemy lines in order to disrupt supply
lines and disable command structures. Because Japan is serving
as a base for U.S. forces it's only logical for North Korean
commandos to strike Japan if it comes to it, and this plan is a
countermeasure."

 According to Military Balance, a journal published by Oxford
University's International Institute for Strategic Studies,
North Korean Special Forces number 100,000, one of the largest
such military units in the world. 

by Yae Young-june, Brian Lee africanu@joongang.co.kr>   

Copyright by Joins.com, Inc. Terms of Use |
*****************************************************************
 9 YWS: N. Korea Reiterates Call for Seoul to Explain its Nuke Experiments

YONHAPNEWS WORLD SERVICE::ENGLISH NEWS
 
  2004/12/12 15:02 KST   

 SEOUL, Dec. 12 (Yonhap) -- North Korea renewed its call on South 
Korea to come clean on its past nuclear experiments Sunday, 
saying inter-Korean relations will not improve without a full 
explanation.

 North Korea's main newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, claimed the 
nuclear experiments are a crime that should be fully accounted 
for and urged Seoul to stop what it called Seoul's drive to 
develop nuclear weapons.







           


*****************************************************************
 10 Guardian Unlimited: Experts rebel over US stance on N Korea
 
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Saturday December 11, 2004
The Guardian 		
 		
A group of senior US policymakers has called on the Bush 
administration to change its stance towards North Korea, with its 
chairman accusing the White House of "distorting" intelligence 
about Pyongyang's uranium weapons programme just as it 
exaggerated claims about Iraq. 

The Task Force on Korean Policy, which includes former US chiefs 
of staff and ambassadors to Seoul, said the administration's 
obsession with the unproven uranium programme had held up 
negotiations, scuppered the old nuclear inspection regime and 
allowed Pyongyang to press ahead with the development of 
plutonium weapons, which represent a far more immediate and 
substantiated threat. 

The unusually public rebellion by Washington's top advisory body 
on Korean affairs is likely to have been prompted by concerns 
that hawks in the White House will try to use the second Bush 
administration to resolve the issue by force now that Colin 
Powell - the main advocate for restraint - has said he will stand 
down from the post of secretary of state. 

Since last year, six-nation talks on the future of the peninsula 
have failed to make any progress, largely because the US has 
insisted that no deal can be reached until North Korea promises 
to scrap its uranium programme. Pyongyang has consistently denied 
such a programme exists. 

"Greater recognition should be given to the urgency of the threat 
posed by North Korea's possession of significant quantities of 
weapons-usable plutonium that could be transferred to third 
parties," news agencies quoted the report as saying. 

"The group urges the adoption of a more ambitious, sharply 
focused strategy designed to achieve the complete removal of all 
of this plutonium from North Korea in the first phase of 
denuclearisation." 

The current nuclear stand-off started in October 2002 when US 
officials returned from a trip to Pyongyang claiming a senior 
North Korean diplomat, Kang Sok Ju, had admitted the existence of 
a covert uranium programme. 

North Korea denied this and the South Korean government expressed 
doubts about the US's interpretation of events. 

But the US claims were enough to disrupt a year of otherwise 
surprisingly good relations between Pyongyang and its neighbours. 
They also killed the "Agreed Framework" - the nuclear freeze put 
in place by the Clinton administration and condemned by 
neo-conservatives in the Bush administration. 

Washington and its allies halted supplies of oil and North Korea 
responded by kicking out nuclear inspectors. 

Selig Harrison, chairman of the Task Force on Korean Policy, said 
this was a deliberate ploy by the US to regain the initiative in 
north-east Asia. "Relying on sketchy data, the Bush 
administration presented a worst-case scenario as an 
incontrovertible truth and distorted its intelligence on North 
Korea (much as it did on Iraq)," he writes in next month's 
Foreign Affairs journal. 

The intelligence on North Korea's supposed uranium programme has 
not been made public, but the evidence has been shown to at least 
three countries - South Korea, Japan and China. It is not known 
whether British officials have seen the documents, but the UK 
Foreign Office has supported the accusations. 

While the US has focused on uranium and the removal of Kim 
Jong-il, North Korea has made no secret of building up its 
plutonium deterrent. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN nuclear 
watchdog, said he was certain North Korea had converted enough 
fuel for four to six nuclear bombs.
 	
[UP] 

      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
 11 NAPF's Krieger: Missile Defense makes US vulnerable 
 
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 18:47:50 -0800 (PST)

 
Interceptor spurs pros, cons 
By Janene Scully/Associate Editor

The missile-defense system about to take root at
Vandenberg Air Force Base has both its foes and fans. 

By year's end, the Pentagon plans to have two
interceptors for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense
segment installed at Vandenberg. The interceptors
installed in underground silos will join six already
in place at Fort Greely, Alaska. Vandenberg's first
was lowered into place Friday. 

"The threat of ballistic missile attack has not
diminished," Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, Missile
Defense Agency director, said last summer during a
conference in Berlin, Germany. 

"If anything, tomorrow's world will be more dangerous
than today's. I say that because, despite the
counter-proliferation successes we're having in places
like Libya, weapons of mass destruction, along with
the spread of missile technologies and associated
expertise, continue to pose grave threats." 

David Krieger, executive director of the Nuclear Age
Peace Foundation, said there are number of reasons to
oppose missile defense. 

"The most important one in my mind is that putting
missile defenses into play encourages other countries
to develop stronger offensive systems which promotes a
reinstatement of the nuclear arms race," Krieger said.


Russian leaders announced recently they're testing new
missile systems. China too is increasing its offensive
weapon capabilities in response to a U.S. missile
defense systems, he said. 

"For me, that is the most important issue. I think
it's also an issue of prudence that you don't
necessarily race ahead and deploy a system which you
don't know will work." Krieger said. 

He and others contend that missile defense goes
against legal and moral responsibilities of the United
States to play a leadership role in efforts to achieve
global nuclear disarmament, which would make the world
safer. 

"Missile defenses have a low probability of actually
working, and they also face a largely nonexistent
threat," Krieger said. "Rather than spend the tens of
billion dollars that we are now spending on missile
defenses we should be putting those funds into
countering the potential for terrorist attacks against
the United States, which really is a threat to the
security of our people." 

Tom Karako, editor of missilethreat. 

com, which is a project of the conservative Claremont
Institute think tank, disagrees. 

"Missile defense is an absolutely critical part of a
national defense strategy given the current world
situation, given the proliferation of nuclear and
other weapons of mass destruction," Karako said. "It
would be very wrong to view this as a distraction from
the war on terror, rather than as something that's
very complimentary." 

"National missile defense is one of the most important
national security issues. It's not receiving as much
attention or as much seriousness as it should," Karako
said. 

Today's system was designed during the Clinton
Administration, which also is when some of the early
testing took place. 

Because Ground-based Midcourse Defense segment only
targets missiles well on their way to targets, Karako
said his group supports the "layered" approach to
develop systems that can 

China and Russia continue to expand and modernize
strategic missiles. 

Critics charge that a missile-defense system wouldn't
have defended against the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks or a "suitcase" bomb. 

"I think that's a very wrong-handed approach to this,"
Karako said, adding that a suitcase dirty bomb would
pale in comparison to the casualties and destruction
of an air-burst nuclear weapon. 

"We're a very wealthy nation and we should be pursuing
our national security on every front," Karako said. 

Missile-defense foes include a listing of 45 retired
generals and admirals. On the list is retired Air
Force Lt. Gen. Arlen D. Jameson, who was assigned at
Vandenberg Air Force Base in missile-related units
multiple time during his career. 

"To meet this deployment deadline, the Pentagon has
waived the operational testing requirements that are
essential to determining whether or not this highly
complex system of systems is effective and suitable,
the Defense Department's Director of Operational Test
and Evaluation stated on March 11, 2004," the letter
says. 

A General Accounting Office report contended that only
two of 10 critical technologies of the GMD system
components "were verified as workable" by
developmental testing. 

Although they can't shoot down incoming missiles, the
United States already has orbiting satellites that can
spot a ballistic missile launch. 

"It is, therefore, highly unlikely that any state
would dare to attack the U.S. or allow a terrorist to
do so from its territory with a missile armed with a
weapon of mass destruction, thereby risking
annihilation from a devastating U.S. retaliatory
strike," the letter says. 

* Associate Editor Janene Scully can be reached at
739-2214 or bye-mail at janscully@pulitzer.net. 

Dec. 11, 2004 


=====
www.justdissent.org 
Just Dissent Bill, called "Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Protection Act" was passed by the California State Senate, but vetoed by then governor Gray Davis. The bill recognized dissent's role in creating a better society, and therefore sought to greatly shorten sentences of those who commit civil dissent of our government; in doing so, follow a higher law.


*****************************************************************
 12 [NukeNet] letter from Delaware Senators and Congressmen to NRC
 
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 18:35:32 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
United States Congress
Washington, D.C.  20510

December 9, 2004



The Honorable Nils J. Diaz
Chairman
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Office of Public Affairs
Washington, DC 20555

Dear Chairman Diaz,

Thank you for arranging the briefing that took place recently between our
staffs and Nuclear Regulatory Commission personnel.  We appreciate your
responsiveness in keeping us informed of your ongoing investigation into
operations at the Hope Creek nuclear power plant.  During that meeting, as
well as subsequent discussions with both the NRC and PSEG, the operator of
Hope Creek, issues were raised that continue to be of concern to us and we
believe need to be addressed before operations resume at Hope Creek.

Commission staff has informed us that a primary focus of its special
investigation into the October 10, 2004 steam pipe rupture is the
condition of a valve associated with the failed pipe.  NRCâ€™s preliminary
findings indicate that the reactor operators at Hope Creek were aware that
the valve was malfunctioning several days prior to the pipe failure.  The
operators requested an opinion from company engineers on whether or not
the malfunctioning valve could unduly stress the associated pipe. The
engineering team did not foresee the conditions which ultimately led to
the pipe failure, and thus did not advise the operators to take
preventative action.  We feel this raises very serious concerns regarding
analytical procedures being used to guide the operators when abnormal
conditions arise.  It also raises questions about the NRCâ€™s oversight role
as it relates to ensuring that corrective actions are completed at the
plant.

The NRC has also confirmed that it is investigating the status of the Hope
Creek â€œBâ€ recirculation pump, which has exhibited a higher than average
degree of vibration.  PSEG has announced its intention to replace this
pump at the next refueling outage, which is likely to occur 18 months
after this current outage.  NRC informed our staffs that the operation of
this pump is not considered part of the safety system at Hope Creek.
Specifically, the safety system would not be compromised if the pump was
shut down and no longer moved cooling water through the pipes.  However,
we understand that if the pumpâ€™s housing were to fail and allow cooling
water to be released, that would be considered a safety system failure.
The difference between what is and is not a safety system is difficult to
understand.  The safety consequences of a pump failure need to be clearly
and concisely explained to afford not only us, but the public the
opportunity to understand the ramifications of delaying the replacement of
the recirculation pump.

Page 2



In addition, we understand that the NRC will conduct a public exit meeting
with PSEG at the conclusion of the special investigation and prior to the
restart of the Hope Creek reactor.  At this meeting, both PSEG and the NRC
will present findings of their investigations into the steam leak and the
â€œBâ€ recirculation pump.  PSEG will also report on initiatives it has
undertaken to resolve outstanding issues related to these investigations.
After the NRC and PSEG discussions conclude, the public will be invited to
ask questions and make comments.  Much of the information released at the
exit meeting will be presented or available for the first time.  Given the
likely importance and complexity of this information, we believe it is
important for interested parties, including the public, to have sufficient
time to review the information before the restart of the Hope Creek plant,
to review the findings of the investigation, and to raise additional
questions and concerns should they arise.  We urge you to make such a
review possible.	

Finally, it is our understanding that PSEG has not been asked by the NRC
to cease operations of the Salem or Hope Creek reactors, and does not
require formal permission from the NRC to resume operation of a reactor
after a refueling outage like the one currently occurring at Hope Creek.
However, it is also our understanding that the NRC retains the authority
to order a reactorâ€™s operator to cease reactor operations if the NRC
determines that the reactor is not meeting certain standards and
expectations.  We fully expect that the NRC will continue to closely
monitor the repairs, refueling, and restart activities at Hope Creek and
insure the safety of the plant, its workers and its neighbors.			

The safe operations of our nuclear power plants is and should be of utmost
importance to all of us.  We appreciate the importance you have placed on
the investigations at Hope Creek and look forward to continuing our
discussions as new information becomes available.

Sincerely,



Joseph R. Biden, Jr.		Thomas R. Carper		Michael N. Castle
United States Senator		United States Senator		Member of Congress




-- 
Coalition for Peace and Justice
UNPLUG Salem Campaign; 321 Barr Ave, Linwood
NJ 08221; 609-601-8583; cell 609-742-0982
ncohen12@comcast.net; www.unplugsalem.org


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 13 [NukeNet] Vote in online poll to prevent Cook nuclear plant in
 
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 18:35:47 -0800

 
<x-flowed>

Pasted in below is an article from the St. Joe (Michigan) 
Herald-Palladiumre: an 11 group/4 state environmental coalitions opposition 
to American Electric Powers attempt to get a 20 year license extension for 
its twin reactors at the Cook Nuclear Plant in s.w. Michigan.



Also, that same newspapers (Saturday 12/11/04) on-line "Question of the 
Day" is: Should the Cook  Nuclear Plant be relicensed for another 20 
years?" So far (at 2:15 pm in the afternoon) the results are over 75% "yes" 
and less than 25% "no."  Obviously a slamming by plant employees and 
ignorant populace; if you read this in time (i.e. through Saturday night), 
go to their website and vote "no" and share this with other folks to make 
our voice heard! After all, a meltdown at Cook would impact the whole 
continent and planet, so no matter how far away you live, youre still 
downwind. Take part in the poll and urge others too as well! The 
poll  question will change to another subject Sunday AM.



Heres the website: <http://heraldpalladium.com/>http://heraldpalladium.com/



---Kevin Kamps, NIRS, 202.328.0002 ext. 14



Should the federal government extend the operating life of the Cook nuclear 
power plant?

Top of Form

Yes, keep it open

image0041.jpg75.8%

No, shut it down

image0051.jpg24.2%


Total Votes: 277
Your Vote: No, shut it down



Friday, December 10, 2004





image006.gif

Environmentalists line up against Cook nuclear plant relicensing

By JIM DALGLEISH / H-P City Editor

BRIDGMAN -- A coalition of regional and national environmental groups is 
joining forces in trying to block efforts to extend D.C. Cook nuclear power 
plant's federal operating license.

The groups claim Cook's owner, American Electric Power, has failed to 
address safety flaws in the Lake Township plant. Specifically, the group 
stated in a news release that Cook's Unit 2 containment structure does not 
have adequate concrete and steel reinforcement.
"We fear that no substantial repairs to this 'soft spot' have ever been 
done," said Gary Karch of Niles, spokesman for one the groups, Don't Waste 
Michigan. "AEP simply grouted the deep hole in containment instead of using 
concrete and rebar, risking a breach of containment and release of 
radioactivity in a serious accident."

The 11 groups, based in four states and Washington, D.C., further reported 
that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has lowered by "a notch" Cook's Unit 
2 safety rating because AEP departed from standard industry operating 
procedures for controlling reactor core temperature drops during shutdowns.

The groups say Cook instead relies on a backup system as the prime way to 
properly cool the Unit 2 reactor.

Cook is seeking a 20-year license extension. NRC staff has been reviewing 
the license application and an environmental impact statement. The public 
comment period for the license ended Wednesday.

Cook spokesman Bill Schalk said plant officials expect the NRC to make its 
decision the middle of next year. He said he's confident the issues raised 
by the 11 groups will not hold up the extension.

Speaking to the two operations issues raised by the groups, Schalk said the 
NRC accepted as proper the repairs to Unit 2's containment structure - 
though Schalk said one NRC engineer did file a dissent within the agency.

"But that was resolved within the agency," Schalk said Thursday. "There is 
no soft spot. All our containment buildings meet the regulatory requirements."

He disagreed with the groups' contention that the Unit 2 cooling system is 
a backup.

"It's the way the plant was designed," he said. "We're not the only plant 
that does this. It's our standard operating procedure."

The groups also cited waste storage problems in asking the NRC to reject 
AEP's application for a 20-year license extension.

Nearly 1,100 tons of nuclear waste are now stored on site. The figure could 
nearly double in 20 years, the groups reported.

Schalk said waste storage is not germane to the operating license application.

The license application, two years in the making, was filed with the NRC in 
2003, Schalk said. The application is in the form of a CD-ROM, which 
contains the equivalent of 1,400 pages.

The groups opposing the renewal are:

Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical 
Contamination, Citizens Resistance at Fermi II, Clean Water Action of 
Michigan, Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, Don't Waste Michigan, 
Nuclear Energy Information Service, Nuclear Information and Resource 
Service, Ohio Citizen Action, Toledo Safe Energy Coalition and West 
Michigan Environmental Action Council.





Bottom of Form








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 14 [NYTr] CIA Officer Suing over WMD Lies & Retaliation
 
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 14:15:20 -0600 (CST)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by Simon McGuinness

BBC - Dec 10, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4086361.stm

CIA sued over WMD 'falsification'
 
A former CIA officer is suing his employers for retaliating against him
for his alleged refusal to falsify reports on weapons of mass
destruction. 

In a complaint published on Wednesday, the unnamed operative said he was
warned by a colleague that management wanted to "get him" for his
actions. 

His reports were "contrary to official dogma", the document says. 

The subject of the reporting has been blacked out, but correspondents
say the complaint clearly refers to Iraq. 

The CIA has refused to comment on the lawsuit, but spokeswoman Anya
Guilsher told the Washington Post newspaper that the idea that officers
were ordered to falsify reports was "flat wrong". 

'Sham' 

The plaintiff maintains that he had attempted to report intelligence on
weapons of mass destruction in 2001 and 2002, but was thwarted by his
superiors who then insisted on his falsifying his reports. 

When he refused to do this, investigations were allegedly made against
him into allegations that he had sex with a female informer and stole
money used to pay informers. 

The plaintiff said in the complaint that both investigations were "a
sham, initiated for the sole purpose of discrediting him and retaliating
against him". 

The operative was sacked in August 2004 for "unspecific reasons", but is
seeking the restoration of his salary, job and promotions denied to him,
as well as compensation. 

The plaintiff's lawyer, Roy Krieger, has requested a meeting with CIA
Director Porter Goss, or another representative, to discuss the
allegations in this case, "including deliberately misleading the
president on intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction". 

) BBC MMIV
       
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*****************************************************************
 15 PBN: New England Council, energy and utilities, N.E. Council, energy legislation

 [Providence Business News] Skip navigation 

[Providence Business News] Monday, December 13, 2004 

N.E. Council outlines energy concerns for next year

 By Bridget Botelho, Staff Writer

 Group foreshadows possible legislation

 The New England Council’s Energy and Environment Commission’s
2005 agenda includes studying the use of liquefied natural gas,
regional greenhouse gas initiatives, electricity, the Low-Income
Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and nuclear waste
disposal.

 The New England Council is an alliance of businesses, academic
and health institutions and public and private organizations
throughout New England that follows and influences policies
affecting the region.

 The council expects energy legislation to be one of the top
priorities of the 109th Congress, since Congress concluded the
last session without passing national energy legislation. 

Electricity needs

 The need for reliable electricity continues to be of concern to
the NEC. The need was underscored by the biggest blackout in
U.S. history when 50 million people in the Northeast lost
electricity on Aug. 14, 2003. 

“There are congested areas in New England where lots of people
and businesses are that strain resources. We have to find an
effective way to get electricity to people reliably and at an
affordable rate,” said Deirdre Savage, executive director of
public policy for the NEC.

 ISO-New England, which monitors electricity grids throughout
the region, reports that Rhode Island is “in fairly good shape”
with electricity usage due to its proximity to new generation in
southeastern Massachusetts, but the state does not have enough
of its own generation as consumption is expected to increase by
1.5 percent to 2 percent each year.

 Resource constraints in southwestern Connecticut, Connecticut,
Greater Boston and northwestern Vermont are cause for regional
reliability concerns. Projects to address these constraints are
in various stages of development, siting or construction. 

If another blackout were to occur in New England, it would
likely originate in southwestern Connecticut, said ISO-NE
spokeswoman Ellen Foley.

 There are approximately 250 planned or proposed regulated
transmission projects throughout the region, with investment in
these projects estimated at $3 billion over the next 10 years –
but many residents are concerned over where. 

“There is a lot of ‘not in my back yard’ sentiment. People don’t
love having transmission lines nearby and there is a definite
fear of LNG,” Savage said.

 ‘LNG essential to region’

 The NEC and Polestar Communications are putting together a
proposal to develop a white paper on the liquefied natural gas
supply in New England. The council’s goal is to make the case
both qualitatively and quantitatively that “LNG is essential to
the region and additional supplies are needed to meet energy
needs in all sectors.” 

“There is a lot of misinformation about LNG, but it is needed
for the region for reliable and efficient fuel,” Savage said. 

Low-income assistance

 The council will start working early in 2005 for an increase to
the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program base funding level
for fiscal year 2006.

 In 2004, the NEC wrote to the congressional delegation to
increase the base formula funding for LIHEAP to $3.4 billion,
the same amount that was proposed in the energy bill. LIHEAP was
only funded at $1.9 billion for fiscal year 2005 with $300
million in emergency funding.

 “These funds are not a handout and Congress has not fully
funded the program in over a decade or forward-funded it,”
Savage said. “We are happy to have more funding but may need
more.”

 LIHEAP is a federal grant program that provides states with
funds to operate home energy assistance programs for low-income
households.

 U.S. Sen. Jack Reed has been a voice for LIHEAP funding, and
last year secured a $100 million increase for LIHEAP.

 An estimated 4.5 million households received energy assistance
through the program last year. 

A Greenhouse Model

 The council is involved in drafting a regional greenhouse gas
initiative model rule and a multi-state cap and trade program to
limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

 The draft model rule is expected to be completed this spring
and would have to be adopted by each state to be implemented. 

The greenhouse gas initiative is a cooperative effort by nine
Northeast and mid-Atlantic states. 

“In New England we are already more advanced with our
initiatives than most of the country, so drafting this is just
the next step,” said Savage.

 The program may be extended to include other sources of
greenhouse gas byproducts other than carbon dioxide in the
future.

 Nuclear Waste safety

 The NEC lobbied members of Congress, drafted letters and met
with staff over the past year on the need to fully fund the
Yucca Mountain program to keep it on the schedule of receiving
materials in 2010. 

The U.S. Department of Energy began studying Yucca Mountain,
Nev., in 1978 to determine whether it would be suitable for the
country’s first long-term geologic repository for spent nuclear
fuel and radioactive waste from national defense programs and
nuclear power generation. 

The materials are currently stored at 131 sites around the
country.

 In 2002, President Bush signed House Joint Resolution 87,
allowing the Department of Energy to take the next step in
establishing a safe repository in which to store nuclear waste,
but Congress cut funding for the Yucca Mountain program by $303
million in fiscal year 2005 when it passed the omnibus
appropriations bill before Thanksgiving, possibly delaying the
opening of Yucca Mountain by several years, the NEC reports.



Published 12/11/2004
Issue 19-35

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 16 WorldNetDaily: N.Y. Times interviews nuke czar
 
  SATURDAY DECEMBER 11 2004           
                            
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com 

David Sanger – a New York Times reporter – has actually visited 
the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and interviewed 
its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. Sanger's resulting 
report – entitled "When a Virtual Bomb May Be Better Than the 
Real Thing" – appeared last Sunday. 

Until now, Sanger and other media sycophants have been 
uncritically accepting neo-con misinformation about nuclear 
programs – past and present – in Iraq, Iran and North Korea. 


The neo-cons had President Bush say this about Iraq, Iran and 
North Korea in his 2002 State of the Union Address: 

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis 
of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking 
weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and 
growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, 
giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack 
our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of 
these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic. 

We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait 
on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril 
draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not 
permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the 
world's most destructive weapons. 

Nine months later, Bush went to Congress seeking "specific 
statutory authorization" to invade Iraq. He based his request 
upon a highly classified National Intelligence Estimate that 
supposedly "proved" Saddam was reconstructing his nuke and 
chem-bio weapons programs, with the intention of supplying those 
weapons to Islamic terrorists for use against us. 

That NIE turned out to be a neo-con "con job." Nevertheless: 

The president is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United 
States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order 
to defend the national security of the United States against the 
continuing threat posed by Iraq. 

But there was a catch. 

Before resorting to force, Bush had to satisfy Congress that 
"reliance on peaceful means alone will not adequately protect the 
national security of the United States." 

That meant Bush had to give U.N. inspectors an opportunity to do 
a go-anywhere see-anything search of Iraq to see if a resort to 
force was necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein. 

By mid-March of 2003, the U.N. inspectors had reported back to 
the Security Council that Saddam had made no attempt to 
reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction programs since 1991 
and had effectively been disarmed since at least 1998. 

Hence, it must have been absolutely stupefying to Iran and North 
Korea when Dubya "determined" on March 19 that no "further 
diplomatic or other peaceful means will adequately protect the 
national security of the United States from the continuing threat 
posed by Iraq." 

And invaded Iraq the next day. 

Bush had unilaterally abrogated – just after he went to Congress 
to ask for authority to invade Iraq – the so-called Agreed 
Framework – verified by the IAEA – wherein North Korea "froze" 
all nuclear reactors and related facilities. 

So, North Korea had withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation 
Treaty, ejected IAEA personnel and restarted its 
plutonium-producing nuclear reactor. Immediately after Bush 
invaded Iraq, North Korea announced it was chemically recovering 
the weapon-grade plutonium already produced. Enough for five or 
six nukes, according to U.S. "intelligence" estimates. 

Now, there can be no question that ElBaradei was right about 
Iraq. But what about Iran? 

Well, after more than 20 months of go-anywhere see-anything 
searching, ElBaradei has found no "indication" that Iran has – or 
ever had – a nuclear-weapons program. 

But the neo-cons claim that Iran's having the capability to 
enrich uranium is tantamount to Iran's having nukes. That's 
nonsense, of course. Iran's having the capability to enrich 
uranium is not even tantamount to having the capability to 
produce the essentially pure uranium-235 required to make a nuke. 

And even if Iran did have the capability and had somehow managed 
to secretly produce a few hundred pounds of uranium-235, that 
wouldn't be tantamount to actually having nukes, either – 
especially implosion-type nukes. 

However, it has been widely reported that ElBaradei told Sanger 
that having the capability was tantamount. ElBaradei didn't. 

When asked whether or not he thought North Korea had actually 
made five or six nukes with their weapons-grade plutonium, 
ElBaradei asked, "What's the difference?" What ElBaradei meant 
was that, in his opinion, there is very little difference in the 
deterrent value of real nukes and "virtual" nukes. 

He's wrong about that, of course. So are the neo-cons.
 
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy 
implementing official for national security-related technical 
matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and 
Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office 
of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. 
Prather also served as legislative assistant for national 
security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking 
member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate 
Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had 
earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence 
Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National 
Laboratory in New Mexico. 

[WorldNetDaily.com] 

*****************************************************************
 17 [progchat_action] FOCUS | U.S. Caught Spying on U.N. Nuclear
 
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 13:20:59 -0600 (CST)

 
FOCUS | U.S. Caught Spying on U.N. Nuclear Chief
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121304Z.shtml

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 18 [NYTr] IAEA Chief's Phone Tapped
 
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 15:04:17 -0600 (CST)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by mart

[Actually El Baradie did not just, as this Washington Post article states,
"question U.S. 'intelligence' on Iraq" -- rather he totally exposed it as an
outright lie and a fraud and he showed, unequivocally, that Iraq did not
have either nuclear weapons or a program to develop them. Now with the Bush
regime beating its war drums at its next target, Iran, they don't want their
lies about Iran's nuclear activities exposed. -mart]

The Washington Post - Dec 12, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57928-2004Dec11.html

IAEA Leader's Phone Tapped

U.S. Pores Over Transcripts to Try to Oust Nuclear Chief

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration has dozens of intercepts of Mohamed ElBaradei's
phone calls with Iranian diplomats and is scrutinizing them in search of
ammunition to oust him as director general of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, according to three U.S. government officials.

But the diplomatic offensive will not be easy. The administration has failed
to come up with a candidate willing to oppose El Baradei, who has run the
agency since 1997, and there is disagreement among some senior officials
over how hard to push for his removal, and what the diplomatic costs of a
public campaign against him could be.

Although eavesdropping, even on allies, is considered a well-worn tool of
national security and diplomacy, the efforts against El Baradei demonstrate
the lengths some within the administration are willing to go to replace a
top international diplomat who questioned U.S. intelligence on Iraq and is
now taking a cautious approach on Iran.

The intercepted calls have not produced any evidence of nefarious conduct by
ElBaradei, according to three officials who have read them. But some within
the administration believe they show ElBaradei lacks impartiality because he
tried to help Iran navigate a diplomatic crisis over its nuclear programs.
Others argue the transcripts demonstrate nothing more than standard
telephone diplomacy.

"Some people think he sounds way too soft on the Iranians, but that's about
it," said one official with access to the intercepts.

In Vienna, where the IAEA has its headquarters, officials said they were not
surprised about the eavesdropping.

"We've always assumed that this kind of thing goes on," IAEA spokesman Mark
Gwozdecky said. "We wish it were otherwise, but we know the reality."

The IAEA, often called the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, coordinates
nuclear safety around the world and monitors materials that could be
diverted for weapons use. It has played pivotal investigative roles in four
major crises in recent years: Iran, Iraq, North Korea and the nuclear black
market run by one of Pakistan's top scientists.

Each issue has produced some tension between the agency and the White House,
and this is not the first time that El Baradei or other U.N. officials have
been the targets of a spy campaign. Three weeks before the invasion of Iraq
in March 2003, the Observer newspaper in Britain published a secret
directive from the National Security Agency ordering increased eavesdropping
on U.N. diplomats.

Earlier this year, Clare Short, who served in British Prime Minister Tony
Blair's cabinet, said British spies had eavesdropped on U.N. Secretary
General Kofi Annan's calls during that period and that she had read
transcripts of the intercepts.

The NSA, which is responsible for collecting and decoding electronic
communications for the U.S. government, had no information to provide on the
El Baradei intercepts. The CIA refused to comment.

ElBaradei, 62, an Egyptian diplomat who taught international law at New York
University, is well-respected inside the United Nations, and many of the
countries that sit on the IAEA board have asked him to stay for a third term
beginning next summer.

To block that, Washington would need to persuade a little more than
one-third of the IAEA's 35-member board to vote against his reappointment.
But even some of the administration's closest friends, including Britain,
appear to be reluctant to join a fight they believe is motivated by a desire
to pay back El Baradei over Iraq. Without clear support and no candidate,
the White House began searching for material to strengthen its argument that
ElBaradei should be retired, according to several senior policymakers who
would discuss strategy only on the condition of anonymity.

The officials said anonymous accusations against El Baradei made by U.S.
officials in recent weeks are part of an orchestrated campaign. Some U.S.
officials accused ElBaradei of purposely concealing damning details of
Iran's program from the IAEA board. But they have offered no evidence of a
coverup.

"The plan is to keep the spotlight on ElBaradei and raise the heat," another
U.S. official said.

But another official said there is disagreement within the administration,
chiefly between Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John R. Bolton, who
aides say is eager to see ElBaradei go, and outgoing Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell, over whether it would be worth diverting diplomatic capital
that could be better spent on lobbying the board to get tougher with Iran.

In September, Powell said ElBaradei should step aside, citing a term limit
policy adopted several years ago in Geneva by the top 10 contributors to
international organizations.

"We think the Geneva rule is a good rule: two terms," Powell told Agence
France-Presse. "It's not been followed in the past on many occasions, more
often than not, but we still think it's a good, useful rule." Powell said he
discussed it personally with ElBaradei, who decided he would stay on if the
board wanted him.

"However this effort is justified by the administration, the assumption
internationally will be that the United States was blackballing ElBaradei
because of Iraq and Iran," said Robert Einhorn, who was assistant secretary
of state for nonproliferation until 2001.

Several months ago, the State Department began canvassing potential
candidates, including Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, two
Japanese diplomats, two South Korean officials and a Brazilian disarmament
expert.

But the South Koreans and Brazil's Sergio Duarte are now considered to be
problematic candidates because both countries are under IAEA investigation
for suspect nuclear work. Downer, who is not willing to challenge El
Baradei, still remains the administration's top choice. The deadline for
submitting alternative candidates is Dec. 31.

"Our original strategy was to get Alex Downer to throw his hat in the ring,
but we couldn't," one U.S
 policymaker said. "Anyone in politics will tell you that you can't beat
somebody with nobody, but we're going to try to disprove that."

That strategy worked once before when the administration orchestrated the
2002 removal of Jose M. Bustani, who ran the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a U.N. organization based in The
Hague. Bustani drew the administration's ire when he tried to involve his
organization in the search for suspected chemical weapons in Iraq.

The administration canvassed the organization's board and then forced a
narrow vote for his ouster. A successor was found three months later, and
there was little diplomatic fallout from the administration's maneuver,
mostly because the OPCW has a fairly low profile and its members wanted to
avoid being drawn into the diplomatic row leading up to the Iraq war.

But John S. Wolf, who was assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation
until June, said such action comes at a cost and makes it harder for the
United States to keep the world's attention focused on pressing threats.

"The net result of campaigns that others saw as spiteful was that even where
the U.S. had quite legitimate and proven concerns, the atmosphere had been
so soured that it wasn't possible to recoup," Wolf said.

Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister who now heads a
high-level panel on U.N. reform, said that ElBaradei has been excellent in
his job and that Washington would be making a mistake to challenge him:

"If they think they can get anyone who could have better handled the complex
and difficult issues surrounding North Korea, Iran and other controversies,
they are not understanding the world right now."
       
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 19 [NYTr] NSA, CIA Phone Taps Part of Attempt to Unseat ElBaradei
 
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 22:53:06 -0600 (CST)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by Simon McGuinness

The Independent - Dec 13, 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=592531

US agents use phone taps in bid to unseat ElBaradei

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

The US is tapping the phone of Mohamed ElBaradei, hoping to gather
information that would help Washington remove him as head of the UN
nuclear watchdog, and hasten an all-out effort to force Iran to give up
its nuclear weapons ambitions.

The State Department, the CIA and the NSA, the secretive agency that
does electronic surveillance and eavesdropping, all declined to comment
yesterday on the report in The Washington Post.

But officials at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), which Dr ElBaradei leads, said they assumed that such practices
went on. In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq it emerged that
Britain and the US had tapped the phones of Kofi Annan, the UN secretary
seneral, and of Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector.

Dr ElBaradei is a respected and popular figure but has fallen foul of
the administration of President George Bush, first for denouncing fake
documents purporting to show that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy
uranium in Niger, and now over Iran's nuclear programme.

The leader of the campaign to get rid of him is understood to be John
Bolton, the hardline under-secretary of state for arms control, whose
admirers would like to see him promoted to be the deputy to Condoleezza
Rice, the incoming Secretary of State. The eavesdropping is part of an
apparent effort to persuade a blocking minority of the IAEA's 35-member
board to oppose Dr ElBaradei's appointment to a third term when his
current one expires next summer, on the grounds that he has been too
soft on Iran.

The Post report, quoting three unnamed US officials, said that the
intercepts had produced no evidence of improper conduct by Dr ElBaradei
in his efforts to secure a diplomatic solution to Iran's suspected
nuclear programme, or that he has tried to cover up evidence confirming
that Tehran is out to acquire a nuclear weapon.

Outside the US, the general view is that Dr ElBaradei has served the
international community well. Even Britain, one of the three European
countries trying to broker a deal with Iran, is said to be opposed to
his replacement.

Alexander Downer, the Australian Foreign Minister, is Washington's
preferred candidate. But he has let it be known he will not challenge Dr
ElBaradei, according to the Post.

That leaves the Bush administration in a tricky position. If it pursues
what is widely seen as a vendetta, Washington risks provoking another
rift with its allies.

At one level, the ElBaradei affair is a sign of mounting US frustration
over Iran, a founder member of Mr Bush's "axis of evil". But most
analysts believe that no good military option exists against Iran, and
that the US has no alternative but to negotiate.

But the episode also shows the level of anti-UN feeling in parts of the
US administration. "These guys just cannot stand the UN getting in the
way of what they want to do," a US diplomat said of Mr Bolton and his
fellow neo-conservatives.

 Iran acknowledged for the first time yesterday that it has convicted
up to four Iranian nationals of supporting al-Qa'ida. 
       
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 20 terror for gain
 
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 08:39:54 -0600 (CST)

 
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1207-26.htm
http://www.thomhartmann.com

----------------------------------------
Hyping terror for fun, profit--and power
----------------------------------------

by Thom Hartmann . Common Dreams . 7 December 2004

WHAT IF there really was no need for much--or even most--of
the Cold War? What if, in fact, the Cold War had been kept
alive for two decades based on phony WMD threats?

What if, similarly, the War On Terror was largely a scam,
and the administration was hyping it to seem larger-than-
life? What if our "enemy" represented a real but relatively
small threat posed by rogue and criminal groups well outside
the mainstream of Islam? What if that hype was done largely
to enhance the power, electability, and stature of George W.
Bush and Tony Blair?

And what if the world was to discover the most shocking
dimensions of these twin deceits--that the same men
promulgated them, both in the 1970s and today?

It happened.

The myth-shattering event took place in England this
October when the BBC aired a three-hour documentary written
and produced by Adam Curtis, titled "The Power of
Nightmares." If the emails and phone calls many of us in
the US received from friends in the UK--and debate in the
pages of publications like The Guardian are any indicator,
this was a seismic event, one that may have even provoked a
hasty meeting between Blair and Bush a few weeks later.

According to this carefully researched and well-vetted BBC
documentary, Richard Nixon, following in the steps of his
mentor and former boss Dwight D. Eisenhower, believed it
was possible to end the Cold War and eliminate fear from
the national psyche. The nation need no longer be afraid of
communism or the Soviet Union. Nixon worked out a truce
with the Soviets, meeting their demands for safety as well
as the US needs for security, and then announced to
Americans that they need no longer be afraid.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon returned from the Soviet
Union with a treaty worked out by Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, the beginning of a process Kissinger called
"dtente." On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he
said, "Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of
the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we
have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to
reduce the level of fear by reducing the causes of fear--for
our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world."

But Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford's
Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff
(Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans
might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could
Americans be manipulated?

Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort--first
secretly and then openly--to undermine Nixon's treaty for
peace and to rebuild the state of fear and, thus, reinstate
the Cold War.

And these two men--1974 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
and Ford Chief of Staff Dick Cheney--did this by claiming
that the Soviets had secret weapons of mass destruction
that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't
know about, that nobody but them knew about. And, they
said, because of those weapons, the US must redirect
billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead
give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men
would one day work.

"The Soviet Union has been busy," Defense Secretary Rumsfeld
explained to America in 1976. "They've been busy in terms
of their level of effort; they've been busy in terms of the
actual weapons they've been producing; they've been busy in
terms of expanding production rates; they've been busy in
terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce
additional weapons at additional rates; they've been busy in
terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve
the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after
year, they've been demonstrating that they have steadiness
of purpose. They're purposeful about what they're doing."

The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a
"complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union
was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed
their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two
if simply left alone.

But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there
was something nefarious going on, something we should be
very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford
to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul
Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good.

According to Curtis's BBC documentary, Wolfowitz's group,
known as "Team B," came to the conclusion that the Soviets
had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass
destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that
used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was,
thus, undetectable with our current technology.

The BBC's documentarians asked Dr. Anne Cahn of the US Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency during that time, her
thoughts on Rumsfeld's, Cheney's, and Wolfowitz's 1976 story
of the secret Soviet WMDs. Here's a clip from a transcript
of that BBC documentary:

" Dr ANNE CAHN, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency,
1977-80: They couldn't say that the Soviets had acoustic
means of picking up American submarines, because they
couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they have a
nonacoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable.
But there was no evidence that they had a nonacoustic
system. They're saying, 'we can't find evidence that they're
doing it the way that everyone thinks they're doing it, so
they must be doing it a different way. We don't know what
that different way is, but they must be doing it.'

" INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no
evidence.

" CAHN: Even though there was no evidence.

" INTERVIEWER: So they're saying there, that the fact that
the weapon doesn't exist ...

" CAHN: Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It just means
that we haven't found it."

The moderator of the BBC documentary then notes:

" What Team B accused the CIA of missing was a hidden and
sinister reality in the Soviet Union. Not only were there
many secret weapons the CIA hadn't found, but they were
wrong about many of those they could observe, such as the
Soviet air defenses. The CIA were convinced that these were
in a state of collapse, reflecting the growing economic
chaos in the Soviet Union.

" Team B said that this was actually a cunning deception by
the Soviet rgime. The air-defense system worked perfectly.
But the only evidence they produced to prove this was the
official Soviet training manual, which proudly asserted that
their air-defense system was fully integrated and functioned
flawlessly. The CIA accused Team B of moving into a fantasy
world."

Nonetheless, as Melvin Goodman, head of the CIA's Office of
Soviet Affairs, 1976-87, noted in the BBC documentary,

" Rumsfeld won that very intense political battle that was
waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that
battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz,
wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create
a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet
intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a
nuclear war."

Although Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's assertions of powerful new
Soviet WMDs were unproven--they said the lack of proof
proved that undetectable weapons existed--they nonetheless
used their charges to push for dramatic escalations in
military spending to selected defense contractors, a process
that continued through the Reagan administration.

But years and trillions of dollars later, it was proven that
they had been wrong all along, and the CIA had been right.
Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz lied to America in the 1970s
about Soviet WMDs.

Not only do we now know that the Soviets didn't have any new
and impressive WMDs, but we also now know that they were,
in fact, decaying from within, ripe for collapse any time,
regardless of what the US did--just as the CIA (and anybody
who visited Soviet states--as I had--during that time) could
easily predict. The Soviet economic and political system
wasn't working, and their military was disintegrating.

As arms-control expert Cahn noted in the documentary of
those 1970s claims by Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld:

" I would say that all of it was fantasy. I mean, they
looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said, 'This is a
laser beam weapon,' when in fact it was nothing of the
sort. ... And if you go through most of Team B's specific
allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them
one by one, they were all wrong."

" INTERVIEWER: All of them?

" CAHN: All of them.

" INTERVIEWER: Nothing true?

" CAHN: I don't believe anything in [Wolfowitz's 1977] Team
B was really true."

But the neocons said it was true, and organized a group--The
Committee on the Present Danger--to promote their worldview.
The Committee produced documentaries, publications, and
provided guests for national talk shows and news reports.
They worked hard to whip up fear and encourage increases in
defense spending, particularly for sophisticated weapons
systems offered by the defense contractors for whom neocons
would later become lobbyists.

And they succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear in
the United States, and making themselves and their defense
contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the
world.

The Cold War was good for business, and good for the
political power of its advocates, from Rumsfeld to Reagan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

Similarly, according to this documentary, the War On Terror
is the same sort of scam, run for many of the same reasons,
by the same people. And by hyping it--and then invading
Iraq--we may well be bringing into reality terrors and
forces that previously existed only on the margins and with
very little power to harm us.

Curtis's documentary suggests that the War On Terror is just
as much a fiction as were the super-WMDs this same group of
neocons said the Soviets had in the 70s. He suggests we've
done more to create terror than to fight it. That the risk
was really quite minimal (at least until we invaded Iraq)
and the terrorists are--like most terrorist groups--simply
people on the fringes, rather easily dispatched by their own
people. He even points out that Al Qaeda itself was a brand
we invented, later adopted by bin Laden because we'd put so
many millions into creating worldwide name recognition for
it.

Watching "The Power of Nightmares" is like taking the Red
Pill in the movie The Matrix.

It's the story of idealism gone wrong, of ideologies
promoted in the US by Leo Strauss and his followers
(principally Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle), and in the
Muslim world by bin Laden's mentor, Ayman Zawahiri. Both
sought to create a utopian world through world domination;
both believe that the ends justify the means; both are
convinced that "the people" must be frightened into
embracing religion and nationalism for the greater good of
morality and a stable state. Each needs the other in order
to hold power.

Whatever your plans are for tonight or tomorrow, clip three
hours out of them and take the Red Pill. Get a pair of
headphones (the audio is faint), plug them into your
computer, and visit an unofficial archive of the Curtis BBC
documentary at the Information Clearing House website:
http://207.44.245.159/video1037.htm

(The first hour of the program, in a more viewable format,
is also available here:)
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2004/121104powerofnightmares.htm

For those who prefer to read things online, an unofficial
but complete transcript is on this Belgian site:
http://www.acutor.be/silt/index.php?id=573

But be forewarned: you'll never see political reality--and
certainly never hear the words of the Bush or Blair
administrations--the same again.
-- 
Thom Hartmann <thom@thomhartmann.com> is a Project Censored
Award winning, bestselling author and host of a nationally
syndicated daily progressive talk show. His most recent
books are THE LAST HOURS OF ANCIENT SUNLIGHT, UNEQUAL
PROTECTION, WE THE PEOPLE, THE EDISON GENE, and WHAT WOULD
JEFFERSON DO?. #
*****************************************************************
 21 The Hindu: Indo-Pak. talks on Nuclear-Conventional CBMs to start on Dec. 14 

Sunday, December 12, 2004 : 2015 Hrs
 
    International
Islamabad, Dec. 12 (PTI): Defence and foreign office officials
from India and Pakistan will hold three-day talks beginning on
Tuesday on nuclear and conventional confidence building measures
(CBMs) that would include a possible agreement on giving advance
notice to each other before conducting missile tests. 

The meeting would discuss follow-up measures on the
understanding reached between the two countries in the first
round of discussions on the defence related issues held in June
this year. 

An Indian delegation comprising of officials from the Army, Air
Force, Navy and External Affairs Ministry would take part in the
nuclear CBM talks to be held between December 14 and 15,
officials here said. Another set of talks will be held between
two different delegations on the Conventional weapons CBMs from
December 15 and 16. 

Officials said that during the talks on nuclear CBMs the two
sides will discuss a draft agreement on advance notification of
missile tests. The two countries already inform each other
routinely about their missile tests and also periodically update
the list of the locations of nuclear installations, mostly the
civilian nuclear power generation units, to avoid attacks in
case of war. 

In the first round of talks held on the nuclear CBMS in June in
New Delhi, both sides agreed to put in place a dedicated and
secure hotline between their Foreign Secretaries to prevent
misunderstandings and to reduce risks relevant to nuclear
issues. 

During the talks both countries said that their nuclear
capabilities, based on "national security imperatives,"
constituted a "factor for stability." The December 14-15 talks
would focus on follow up measures on the nuclear CBM, officials
here said. 

The talks would focus on nuclear strategic stability, an
agreement on prior notification on ballistic missile tests and
improving communications, they said. 

On the conventional front, this is the first time that the talks
were being held between the two countries. Pakistan proposes
strategic stability regime in the conventional weapons field and
wants inclusion of nuclear missile restraint regime,
conventional balance and conflict resolution. 

"This is the first time that we are holding talks on CBMs on
conventional weapons. The talks were expected to be preliminary
in nature and effort will be made to understand each others
positions," the officials said. 

Copyright © 2004, The Hindu.
*****************************************************************
 22 North County Times: Shutter the nuclear nightmare on I-5 

Saturday, December 11, 2004 9:13 PM PST 

By: RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN - For the North County Times 

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station should be shut down 
permanently. It is brittle, frail, old. Its bones are hardened. 
Its arteries are clogged and stiff. It keeps popping and poofing, 
bursting and spilling, leaking, spraying, steaming, venting, 
dripping, gushing, pouring out poisons into our environment.

The tritium alone released from the nuclear power plant is a 
serious environmental concern. Tritium (half-life: about 12 
years) is readily absorbed by all parts of the human body. It 
does occur naturally, but that is no good reason to increase the 
dose to people. 

In normal daily operation, the facility also releases cesium-137, 
strontium-90, uranium, plutonium (both in a variety of isotopes) 
and hundreds of other radioactive "daughter products" created by 
the nuclear chain reaction. Although the plant owners say these 
legal releases are harmless, many insidious mechanisms for 
biological damage by radioactivity are now well-known in the 
scientific community and undeniable to any unbiased observer. 

In fact, no energy source is as damaging to our biological 
structure as ionizing radiation. One atomic decay inside your 
body can directly destroy 20,000 or more chemical bonds, 
including those that bind your DNA. A single damaged DNA strand 
can lead to fetal deformities or cancer.

Radiation accelerates aging (including in humans). Additionally,
salty air and water destroy most metals.

Right now, San Onofre's steam generators are failing and need to
be replaced (as do Diablo Canyon's). Cost: at least $680 million
for San Onofre, and at least $706 million for Diablo Canyon.

San Onofre's water heaters also all need to be replaced (about
30 per unit). Cost: an additional $7 million for each plant,
plus $30 million or so for the "downtime." Pipes and joints at
the plant have been cracking, and undoubtedly many need to be
replaced ---- there are about 100 miles of pipes at the site.
Last August, a pipe accident at a 27-year-old nuclear plant in
Japan killed five workers. The pipe had eroded to 10 percent of
its original thickness.

In 2002, more than 700 pounds of unnoticed corrosion at
Davis-Besse, a nuke plant in Ohio similar to San Onofre, brought
us, in some ways, nearer to a full-scale meltdown than Three
Mile Island did.

Replacing San Onofre's pipes, and maybe her reactor pressure
vessels ---- both now more than two decades old ---- could cost
ratepayers billions of dollars. Failure to replace critical
parts could result in a meltdown.

Old breakers and transformers have exploded and burned, causing
outages costing more than $140 million. But the 150 or so
identical breakers were not replaced. That's tens of millions of
dollars more work that should be added to the list.

Everything at the facility is suspect ---- including the
record-keeping. The power plant is practically immune from state
and local inspections, even in areas the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission won't inspect because they are not "nuclear" areas!

Even if all these (and many more) problems were fixed, nuclear
power does not actually generate any "net" energy whatsoever,
because of the incredibly energy-intensive processes needed to
mine and refine uranium into fuel, as well as construction
costs, reconstruction costs, and dismantling costs. Add to that
the cost of guarding the hazardous radioactive waste for
thousands of generations. Additional funds could also be needed
to care for the sick and dying that would result from a serious
nuclear accident.

Besides being a financial rat-hole, nuclear power plants are
terrorist targets. Dry casks are especially vulnerable, but dry
cask storage could be stopped at San Onofre if we shut the
facility permanently now.

San Onofre makes money only for its owners, who are practically
given uranium fuel by the federal government, which also
promises to take it away after it has been turned into
radioactive waste (at great profit) by Southern California
Edison. Yucca Mountain shouldn't open, probably never will, and
if it does, it's more than a decade away at best and will take
about 25 years to fill. Meanwhile, new waste accumulates at the
rate of 500 pounds every day at the plant; that waste may not
fit at Yucca Mountain ---- it may need to wait for Yucca
Mountain II! An operating nuclear plant is thousands of times
more vulnerable to terrorism, forces of nature, design flaws or
operator error than one that is shut down. A terrorist with an
armor-plated bulldozer packed into a jacked-up house trailer and
off-loaded at the state park could ruin San Onofre in minutes
and take Southern California with it.

If properly harvested, the sun provides all the energy we need,
through wind, wave, hydro, biomass, and by direct solar power.
Currently, the vast majority of that nearly-free energy spills
into the biosphere, becomes disorganized, and is wasted.

San Onofre's power is replaceable. Our land and our lives are
not.

Carlsbad resident Russell D. Hoffman is an independent
researcher on energy solutions, a computer programmer, and a
small-business owner. He has studied nuclear issues for more
than 30 years and writes a newsletter that is distributed to
nuclear physicists, doctors and activists in more than a dozen
countries. 

© 1997-2004 North County Times -       
*****************************************************************
 23 toledoblade.com: DAVIS-BESSE NUCLEAR PLANT
 
Article published Saturday, December 11, 2004
 
 Criminal case over reactor taking shape
 NRC allegedly was misled about facility's condition
 
By blade staff writer

FirstEnergy Corp. yesterday said its nuclear subsidiary likely 
will be indicted on criminal charges, accused of misleading 
federal regulators about the condition of Davis-Besse's reactor 
head prior to the plant's 2002 shutdown.

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 
FirstEnergy indicated that it received a letter yesterday from 
the U.S. Attorney's Office in Cleveland stating that prosecutors 
assigned to the case believe "it is likely that federal charges 
will be returned against FENOC" by a federal grand jury in 
Cleveland that has been reviewing evidence for more than a year.

FENOC is FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., the utility's nuclear 
subsidiary.

The filing, required under public disclosure laws, was made late 
yesterday afternoon after the stock market closed.

FirstEnergy is the nation's fourth-largest investor-owned 
utility.

"We're going to fully cooperate with the process," said Todd 
Schneider, a spokesman for the utility.

The letter singled out FENOC as a target of the investigation. It 
said the probe includes "alleged false statements made to the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the fall of 2001," the utility 
said.

The allegations of false statements pertain to information 
FirstEnergy provided to the regulatory commission about the 
status of Davis-Besse's reactor head, Mr. Schneider said.

In the spring of 2001, the regulatory commission demanded 
information from all of the nation's 103 nuclear plants after 
learning that reactor-head

nozzles at a South Carolina plant were capable of popping off 
like champagne corks, allowing radioactive steam to form in 
containment structures.

In the fall of 2001, Davis-Besse was the only plant not cleared 
by the NRC of the nozzle-head problem.

FirstEnergy challenged a shutdown order as the NRC prepared to do 
an inspection, the first of its kind in 14 years.

The regulatory commission backed off and allowed FirstEnergy to 
operate Davis-Besse until Feb. 16, 2002 - six weeks longer than 
what the shutdown order would have permitted but six weeks less 
than the company's initial plan to operate the plant until March 
31, 2002.

The shutdown revealed a much bigger problem than potential 
nozzle-head cracks: Davis-Besse's reactor head itself was so 
corroded that it was a mere two-tenths of an inch from blowing 
open. It was the worst corrosion in U.S. nuclear history.

NRC officials eventually labeled it the nation's biggest safety 
lapse since the Three Mile Island Unit 2 meltdown in Pennsylvania 
in 1979, in part because of doubts over whether emergency safety 
systems would have worked once radioactive steam had formed.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D., Cleveland), whose district is downwind 
from Davis-Besse, became so incensed that he tried to get 
FirstEnergy's operating license revoked.

The congressman told The Blade last night that he was pleased by 
the possibility of FENOC being charged criminally. "They haven't 
been telling the truth," he said.

He said the utility's history of mismanagement is one of the 
nation's most underrated stories. "It's all about money in the 
end. It's not about public safety," Mr. Kucinich said.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) and Ohio's U.S. senators, 
Republicans George Voinovich and Mike DeWine, could not be 
reached for comment.

David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear safety 
engineer, called the possibility of criminal charges "a welcome 
announcement, if somewhat late."

Activists hoped for indictments before the plant was allowed to 
resume operation to give area residents more peace of mind. "I'm 
not going to give anyone awards for timeliness, but [the NRC and 
the U.S. Department of Justice apparently] compiled a strong 
case," Mr. Lochbaum said.

Paul Gunter, of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, 
said he hopes indictments go beyond the corporation and will 
include responsible individuals. "Hopefully, the truth will win 
out, and justice will prevail," he said.

Howard Whitcomb, who once worked at Davis-Besse and once was an 
NRC resident inspector at a South Carolina nuclear plant, said 
indictments could have a ripple effect on both the nuclear 
industry and the regulatory commission.

Industry officials "would encourage others to be more forthright 
with the regulators" if the indictments are handed down, Mr. 
Whitcomb, now a Toledo lawyer, said.

"The NRC has to be more sensitive to being duped by what they're 
being told," he added.

"The NRC has to ask those tough questions, and they have to be 
vigilant."

Criminal indictments against nuclear plant operators and 
utilities that own them are uncommon, the NRC has said.

The regulatory commission authorized Davis-Besse to resume 
operation March 8. The plant has operated at full power much of 
the time since then. Its next planned outage for maintenance 
begins in mid-January.

Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com or 419-724-6079.

      © 2004 The Blade. The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior 
St., Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 
*****************************************************************
 24 Xinhua: Guangdong's fourth nuke plant in pipeline   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2004-12-12 11:54:47   

    BEIJING, Dec. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- South China's Guangdong
Province is planning to construct its fourth nuclear power plant
to help ease the power shortage in the nation's prosperous Pearl
River Delta region. 

    The province is now busy selecting a site from four
candidate places in Huilai County and Lufeng City in its eastern
coastal part. 

    The electricity shortage in Guangdong Province this year is
expected to exceed 3 million kilowatt hours or more than 10 per
cent, due to its rapid economic growth. 

    And the situation would last several years in the future in
Guangdong which lacks sufficient coal, crude oil and other
energies to sustain its economic growth. 

    Guangdong has to purchase electricity from bordering Hong
Kong and China's southwestern provinces. 

    A 40-person inspection group consisting of nuclear experts,
designers and government officials have recently reconnoitred
the four places and they will soon decide on the construction
site, according to an executive from Guangdong Nuclear Power Co
Ltd. 

    "All the sites have their advantages," Yu Jiechun, an
executive from Guangdong Nuclear Power Co Ltd, told China
Business Weekly. 

    In addition to their good geographical location, all the
four sites have enough fresh water supplies and enjoy advanced
land and water transportation facilities, said Yu. 

    He believed construction of the new nuclear power plant
would begin before 2010, and will contribute to Guangdong's
rapid economic development. 

    But Yu refused to give more details on the new nuclear power
plant. 

    Meanwhile, Guangdong is speeding up the preparation work for
construction of the country's biggest nuclear power plant in its
coastal city of Yangjiang. 

    The nuclear reactor of the Yangjiang plant will officially
begin construction before 2006, said Yu. 

    The infrastructural facility construction for the project
has already been well under way on the construction site in
Shahuai in Yangdong County. 

    Located in the western coastal area of Guangdong Province,
Yangjiang Nuclear Power Plant will include six generating units. 

    Each has an installed production capacity of 1 million
kilowatts. 

    The first two generating units will be able to start
operating before 2010, while all the six generating units will
come on stream in 15 to 20 years. 

    The project will be able to annually generate electricity of
more than 45 billion kilowatt hours when all the six generating
units start operation. 

    Covering an area of 472,485 square metres, construction of
the nuclear power plant is estimated to cost more than US$8
billion. 

    It is, so far, the largest nuclear power plant on the
Chinese mainland. 

    Guangdong will have an installed nuclear power production
capacity of more than 12 million kilowatts after the Yangjiang
plant starts full commercial operations. 

    Guangdong's nuclear electricity will be able to represent
more than 20 per cent of the province's total. 

    Currently fuel power accounts for the lion's share of
Guangdong's electricity industry while nuclear power accounts
for less than 10 per cent. 

    Yu said the Yangjiang Nuclear Power Plant is of great
significance to Guangdong's economic growth, especially to
economic construction of the western area of the Pearl River
Delta region. 

    And the Yangjiang Nuclear Power Plant will also help
strengthen Guangdong's status as China's biggest nuclear power
industrial production base. 

    By 2012, Guangdong will have an installed production
capacity of nuclear power reaching 8 million kilowatts, becoming
the biggest nuclear production base in China. 

    Guangdong will be able to generate more than 50 per cent of
the country's total nuclear electricity in 2012. 

    The country's other nuclear power production bases include
Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, both in the eastern coastal
areas. 

    Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Zhejiang Province, China's
first nuclear power plant, started operations in 1991. 

    China has planned to have an installed nuclear power
production capacity of more than 36 million kilowatts by 2020. 

    Now Guangdong already has two nuclear plants in operation.
Daya Bay and Ling'ao nuclear power stations have a total
installed capacity of four generating units, with 1 million
kilowatts each. 

    The two power plants that are situated in the eastern part
of the Pearl River Delta started commercial operation in 1994
and 1995 respectively. 

    Most of the equipment and technologies of the Daya Bay and
Ling'ao nuclear power plants, including the nuclear reactors,
were imported from France, one of the world's giants in the
nuclear power industry. 

    The US$4-billion Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant, which has two
900,000-kilowatt generating units, is also one of the largest
Sino-foreign joint ventures on the Chinese mainland. 

    Guangdong Province holds 75 per cent of the stakes while its
partner Hong Kong Nuclear Power Investment Corp Ltd has the
remaining 25 per cent. 

(China Daily)   

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 25 Lompoc Record: PGE wins Diablo Canyon Nuke Plant dry cask transportable storage
 
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 08:08:12 -0800 (PST)

 
The casks will be very transportable to Yucca
Mountain.

Diablo waste storage project appeal denied 
By April Charlton - Staff Writer
www.lompocrecord.com

12/9/04 A controversial plan to store highly toxic
spent radioactive nuclear fuel rods behind Diablo
Canyon Nuclear Power Plant cleared its last regulatory
hurdle Wednesday.

The California Coastal Commission, meeting in San
Francisco, unanimously paved the way for Pacific Gas
and Electric Co. to construct and operate an
above-ground nuclear waste storage facility at Diablo,
located on the coast north of Avila Beach. 

"It was an interesting decision," said Rochelle
Becker, spokeswoman for Mothers for Peace, which along
with the Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club, filed
an appeal of the San Luis Obispo County Planning
Commission's approval of the project.

The appeal was denied by the county Board of
Supervisors and subsequently filed with the Coastal
Commission.

The appeal dealt mainly with safety issues associated
with the project - a potential for terrorist attacks,
unknown seismic risks at the plant and the lack of a
permanent storage facility for spent radioactive fuel
anywhere in the United States.

Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada has yet to come
online and the opening of the facility is still
uncertain.

Becker said the commission agreed it had conflicting
information from seismic experts but chose to side
with PG&E's experts and wouldn't hold off making the
decision until its next meeting.

"It was just amazing," Becker added.

Highly radioactive spent plutonium fuel rods from the
plant will be stored in 16-foot-tall stainless steel
and concrete casks measuring 8 feet across, which will
be on the hillside behind the plant's twin reactors.

Staff writer April Charlton can be reached at
489-4206, Ext. 5016, or acharlton@pulitzer.net.

The dry-cask, spent-fuel storage project consists of
constructing seven flat 7.5-foot-thick concrete pads
that can store up to 140 casks and help extend the
life of the plant for at least another 20 years.

PG&E proposed the dry-cask storage plan because Diablo
will be out of spent fuel storage space by 2006 unless
it reracks the plant's two existing storage pools.

The plant is licensed to operate until 2025, according
to PG&E spokesman Jeff Lewis.

Officials from PG&E couldn't be reached for comment on
the decision. But earlier this week, Lewis said the
dry-cask storage facility at Diablo will be temporary
until the spent-fuel rods can be transferred to a
permanent storage site.

In addition to approving a coastal development permit
for the project, the commission also followed its
staff's recommendation that PG&E has to provide more
public access to the coastline north of the plant.

Staff recommended that PG&E open a three mile-stretch
of the coast north of Diablo because the project will
likely result in a permanent loss of access to the
coastline at the plant site because no permanent
nuclear waste disposal site exists.

Tom Luster, Coastal Commission project manager for the
Diablo project, said the commission gave direction to
PG&E to convene a locally based task force that will
take an inventory of the environmental resources on
the three-mile stretch. The task force will consist of
various agencies, nonprofit organizations and county
residents.

But that's no comfort to Becker and her colleagues.

"Our feeling is that, what if people in Nevada decided
to tell the Department of Energy it's OK to build a
nuclear waste dump in our backyard if we're given
public access to climb Yucca Mountain?" she said. "We
see it as the same analogy. We've been given access to
a nuclear waste site; lucky us."

PG&E plans to start construction next year and have
the project ready for implementation by 2007,
according to Lewis. The spent fuel rods would be moved
from inside the plant to the storage casks over a two-
to three-year period.

Staff writer April Charlton can be reached at
489-4206, Ext. 5016, or acharlton@pulitzer.net. 

=====
www.justdissent.org 
Just Dissent Bill, called "Non-Violent Civil Disobedience 
Protection Act" was passed by the California State Senate, but 
vetoed by then governor Gray Davis. The bill recognized dissent's 
role in creating a better society, and therefore sought to 
greatly shorten sentences of those who commit civil dissent of 
our government; in doing so, follow a higher law.


*****************************************************************
 26 Japan Times: Site of nuclear accident opened to tours

  Sunday, December 12, 2004   

 MITO, Ibaraki Pref. (Kyodo) JCO Co. opened its nuclear fuel 
processing plant in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Saturday to 
local residents for the first time since a fatal accident in 
1999, which killed two workers and exposed more than 660 nearby 
residents to radiation.

 About 160 people have signed up for tours of the facility. JCO 
said it will conduct the tours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day 
through Thursday.

 The Tokai Municipal Government plans to dismantle a processing 
tank and other parts of the facility and store them in drums for 
future restoration.

 The village plans to create a life-size model of the facility 
for a future exhibition using 50 million yen from the national 
government.

 The accident occurred at 10:35 a.m. Sept. 30, 1999, when two JCO 
employees poured too much uranium into a processing tank -- 
bypassing several required steps -- and caused a nuclear fission 
chain reaction.

 The two employees were exposed to massive doses of radiation and 
later died from multiple organ failure.

 The Japan Times: Dec. 12, 2004 (C) All rights reserved 

*****************************************************************
 27 WAVY: Dominion's Surry Station Likely To Get Fuel Storage Permit

   December 12, 2004           

(AP) - Dominion Resources Inc.'s Surry Power Station will likely 
become the first nuclear facility in the nation to have its 
license extended for on-site storage of spent nuclear fuel in 
large steel containers. 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently gave preliminary 
approval to the renewal of Surry's 20-year license to store 
nuclear waste for another 40 years rather than the current 
maximum of 20 years. The agency is also considering permanently 
changing its rules to 40 years -- reflecting the long delay in 
opening the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada. 

The agency said it also has strong faith in the steel storage 
units. "It was really the confidence in the casks," said Dave 
McIntyre, a spokesman for the NRC. 

The NRC noted that when it first started giving 20-year licenses, 
the government expected Yucca to open in 1998. Yucca now is 
projected to open around 2010 and will take deliveries of waste 
through 2048. 

The allocated space in Yucca is only enough to dispose of the 
amount of waste that will exist at the nation's 103 reactors when 
the repository opens in 2011. But much more waste will continue 
to be generated at the Virginia reactors and others nationwide 
beyond 2011. 

Both of the Dominion Resources-owned nuclear sites in Virginia -- 
Surry and North Anna in Mineral -- already have licenses to run 
an extra 20 years. The Surry reactors will run until 2033, which 
is 13 years before the storage license will expire. 

It made sense to extend the storage license beyond the life of 
the reactors to give time for the last rods to cool for five 
years and then get shipped to Yucca, said Rick Zuercher, a 
Dominion spokesman. "The issues don't change from 20 years to 40 
years in terms of safety," he said. 

NRC officials now will negotiate inspection and maintenance 
requirements of the storage area. Surry's extension, which will 
allow Dominion to use the dry casks for storage until 2046, will 
be permanent once the NRC issues the final license with the 
inspection conditions. 

The pending approval comes shortly after an environmental group 
said that, based on current license renewals at nuclear plants, 
Virginia will have the second most leftover waste in the nation 
at its two sites after Yucca is full. 

Some environmental and anti-nuclear groups challenge the safety 
of Dominion's outdoor storage. The activists have criticized the 
government and industry for failing to find adequate space for a 
permanent home for all the waste that is being created daily. 

(Copyright 2004 Associated Press.  All rights reserved.  This 
  
      All content © Copyright 2000 - 2004 WorldNow and WAVY. All
*****************************************************************
 28 Business Gazette: NEW NUCLEAR AGENCY FACES ILLEGAL SUBSIDY PROBE

Published in Times &Star on Friday, December 10th 2004 

AN INVESTIGATION has been launched into the creation of the 
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which will be based in West 
Cumbria.

The Government is planning to transfer £40 billion of liabilities 
from British Nuclear Fuels to the authority to oversee the UK 
clean-up of nuclear sites.

But the European Commission is looking into the legalities of the 
state aid which Whitehall intends to provide the authority.

The NDA, due to be established in April, will also take financial 
responsibility for liabilities at the UK's Atomic Energy 
Authority sites. 

The Government notified the commission 12 months ago of its 
intention but the commission believes that removing BNFLs debts 
could be an illegal state subsidy.

It has said, however, that the transfer of liabilities could be 
allowed if it can be shown there are wider community benefits.

The commission believes an in-depth inquiry is necessary because 
the case is complex and new.

But it means that the Government has been told to set up interim 
funding arrangements to cover the duration of the investigation, 
so the authority can start as planned on April 1. This would not 
involve the transfer of BNFLs debts.

BNFL said it will support the Government during the investigation 
and continue to move forward, as planned, towards the launch of 
the NDA.

*****************************************************************
 29 WVEC.com: Robotic ROSA probes deep inside Surry Nuclear Power Station 

| News for Hampton Roads, Virginia | Local News

01:14 AM EST on Sunday, December 12, 2004 

Associated Press 

SURRY, Va. -- Deep inside the water-filled nuclear reactor, a
robotic inspector poked its sensor-tipped arm into a pipe to
scan for cracks thinner than a human hair. 

Meanwhile, a tiny remote-controlled submarine left its post in
the reactor and rose to the surface, its headlights glowing like
the eyes of a sea creature. In a trailer about 100 feet outside
the reactor building, engineers watched computer screens as they
adjusted the robotic arm, moving it by fractions of an inch and
crunching the streams of data it collected. 

These tools step in for humans in the dangerous environment of a
nuclear reactor, and they find flaws that the human eye could
not. They are among the instruments of the 21st century that
Dominion Resources Inc. uses to run and maintain the 32-year-old
Surry Nuclear Power Station. 

The nuclear power industry has combined human experience and
high technology to reach an era of relative safety 25 years
after the accident at the Three Mile Island plant in
Pennsylvania. 

Dominion prides itself on taking stringent measures to detect
and head off problems and to keep its plants running as
efficiently and competitively as possible. 

Also Online 


About Surry Nuclear Power Station

"If we're not generating electricity, we're not making money,
which is not good business sense," said Richard Zuercher,
spokesman for Dominion's nuclear operations. 

The robot, or ROSA, for "remotely operated service arm," came to
work at Surry's Unit 1 reactor last month during a scheduled
five-week outage of the plant. Every 18 months, routine
maintenance is performed on each of the two reactor units and
spent fuel is replaced. But the ROSA visit was part of an
intense inspection that's done every 10 years to check welds on
the pipes that carry water into and out of the reactor core. 

The core is where the radioactive process of nuclear fission
takes place, heating water to create steam that runs turbines to
generate electricity. Leaks in the pipes that carry that water
could be disastrous. 

The robotic arm used highly precise sensors to find and measure
nearly invisible cracks or signs of corrosion where the massive
pipes are welded to the reactor. 

In the trailer near the reactor, computer screens displayed
various images of the ROSA and the pipe's cross-section to help
the technicians position the robot. 

The ROSA recorded a profile of each weld and sent back its
readings through fiber optic cable. A crack would show up as a
disruption in the image. 

Two technicians from WesDyne International, the subsidiary of
Westinghouse Electric Co. that created the inspection system,
collected the data. One image looked like an asphalt road with a
bump of bright orange down the center where the weld is. 

In the 10 years since the last inspection, WesDyne has tweaked
the system for greater accuracy and detail. It now takes 51/2
days to cover all the welds, down from about 10 days in the
past, said Ron Thomas, project manager of the inspection. "We
can collect a lot more data in a lot less time." The inspection
revealed no immediate issues, Surry officials said, but they
will continue to study the data. 

During the routine reactor shutdowns, which occur at each of the
plant's two units every 18 months, Surry employees take apart
every piece of the power generator and inspect various spots in
the reactor. Operators want to catch warning signs, such as
those hairline cracks. If they catch them early enough, they
could have as much as 20 years to react before any leakage would
have occurred to disrupt the reactor cooling system. 

Dominion, the Richmond parent of electricity utility Dominion
Virginia Power, wants to keep its nuclear plants running 24
hours, seven days a week. Any problem that leads to an
unexpected shutdown can cost the company as much as $100 million
a day to replace the power, said Kenny Sloane, Surry's director
of nuclear operations and maintenance. 

Surry and the company's two other nuclear units at the North
Anna station north of Richmond are among the largest and
most-efficient generators in the state. Surry produces more than
1,600 megawatts of electricity, enough to serve about 400,000
average Virginia homes. 

Surry's reactors opened i 1972 and 1973, each with a 40-year
operating license. They were beset by safety problems for about
15 years, undergoing frequent shutdowns because of weak or
blocked pipes, damaged turbines, water leaks, fires and even
earthquake concerns. Employee sabotage at the plant in 1979
prompted an FBI investigation, and four workers were killed in
an accident at Surry in 1986. 

"We were not an excellent operator in that period," Zuercher
acknowledged. "We learned a lot from those hard times. The
industry as a whole had not evolved to the industry it is today.
It was not efficient." 

Dominion has since boosted the plant's safety record,
instituting a policy for nuclear safety and professionalism in
1989. 

In the past year, both units have been cited by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission for minor safety concerns during regular
inspections. This has kept the plant out of the commission's
best-performance group, but the findings are considered far from
serious, requiring only a slight increase in oversight, said
Roger Hannah, a nuclear commission spokesman. 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted approval to extend
Surry's operating licenses for 20 more years, which means that
with the 10 years left on the original license, the plant's
aging parts must last three more decades. Surry replaces $2
million to $4 million worth of pipes and other components every
year, Sloane said. 

Hannah compared a nuclear station to an old-model car that has
mostly new parts. "You can almost run that car forever," he
said. "That's one of the things they do with nuclear plants." 

All over the Surry plant, signs on walls stress Dominion's need
for safety, responsibility and housekeeping. 

Workers undergo a pain-staking process to protect themselves and
outsiders from radioactivity. Those who enter the "containment"
area of the reactor building must wear radiation monitors called
dosimeters. 

Employees working inside the reactor first must strip out of
regular clothes and change into the aqua-colored "scrubs" that
surgeons wear. Over that, they cover themselves head to toe in
white, lightweight, throwaway jumpsuits and hoods, with double
layers of rubber gloves and boots. 

When they leave the reactor, they carefully remove each outer
layer of clothing, one piece at a time, standing in a specific
spot on the floor, careful not to touch an unexposed foot in an
exposed area. Then, they step into a full-body scanning machine
that detects any radioactive contaminants. 

Each supervisor wears a specific color of shirt, such as red or
green, so employees can readily identify who is making
decisions. Sloane said this started after the Three Mile Island
accident in 1979, when a leakage caused a near meltdown at the
plant and threw the operation into such chaos that no one knew
who was in charge. 

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)  
                                                                
WVEC.com
*****************************************************************
 30 Brattleboro Reformer: Officials set rules for NRC meeting

December 12, 2004 Brattleboro, VT                                                                                 
 			 								 					
By CAROLYN LORIÉ Reformer Staff

BRATTLEBORO -- The last time there was a local public meeting 
with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, more than 500 people 
crowded into the Vernon Elementary School and more or less had it 
out with the NRC staff.

 It was a showdown that some state and local officials don't want 
to see happen again.

 This Thursday, when the NRC presents the results of the 
engineering assessment done at Vermont Yankee and its report on 
the missing fuel, Commissioner David O'Brien of the Public 
Service Department wants to avoid the rancor of the March 31 
meeting.

 "I want something quite different than that. It was raucous and 
confrontational," said O'Brien. "We should be able to do this 
without problems."

 O'Brien is also the chairman of the Vermont State Nuclear 
Advisory Panel, which will be running Thursday's meeting. 

To insure that all goes smoothly, local and state officials 
developed strategies on a number of fronts. They include 
controlling the number of people allowed into Brattleboro Union 
High School, where the meeting will be held, limiting comments 
and questions to three minutes a person and prohibiting signs 
that are posted on sticks.

 According to O'Brien, the NRC agreed to pay for the printing of 
tickets that will be issued at the door. The tickets will allow 
officials to keep track of the number of people entering the 
building.

 Six hundred twenty people can be seated in the auditorium, where 
the meeting will be conducted, and another 440 in the gymnasium. 
Those in the gymnasium will watch the meeting on television 
monitors. They will be allowed to enter the auditorium to ask 
questions or make comments, but will then be required to return 
to their original seats.

 Anyone wishing to address NRC staff or members of VSNAP will put 
their names on a list and speak in turn. Representatives from 
local anti-nuclear groups will be given more than three minutes 
to speak.

 "They represent a whole host of folks, not just themselves," 
explained O'Brien.

 Signs and banners will be permitted, but cannot be attached to 
poles or sticks.

 "What we're trying to prevent is anyone getting injured," said 
Capt. Gene Wrinn of the Brattleboro Police Department.

 Wrinn was one of several local officials who met on Thursday 
morning to discuss how the upcoming meeting would be handled. 
Fire Chief David Emery initiated the meeting, citing safety 
concerns because of the potentially large turnout and the fact 
that the high school is still a construction site.

 "It would be foolish for us to bury our heads," said Emery, 
explaining the need for the planning session.

 School administrators and board members were also worried about 
the impact of such a large and somewhat unpredictable meeting 
being held on the campus. After the March meeting at the Vernon 
Elementary School, there were reports of someone scrawling 
anti-nuclear slogans on student artwork hanging on the wall and 
minor damage done in one of the bathrooms. Those reports, 
however, have been conflicting.

 To protect the school, police will insure that people remain in 
the auditorium or gymnasium. All other parts of the building -- 
though presumably not the restrooms -- will be off limits. In 
order to protect the recently refinished gymnasium floor, it will 
be covered at the expense of the NRC.

 In addition to representatives from the fire and police 
departments, school administrators and board members, Entergy 
engineer David McElwee attended Thursday's planning meeting. He 
was said to have been invited by state nuclear engineer Bill 
Sherman, who did not attend.

 When asked why an Entergy employee was asked to attend a public 
safety meeting, O'Brien said that the company would be playing a 
role on Thursday.

 It is unclear, however, if the company will officially be on the 
agenda.

 Peter Alexander, executive director of the nuclear power 
watchdog group the New England Coalition, expressed frustration 
over Entergy being represented at the safety session, but no one 
from the coalition or any other activist group.

 "The exclusion of the New England Coalition from their planning 
meeting shows a clear and unfortunate bias. For 33 years [the 
coalition] has maintained civil and professional relationships 
with regulatory bodies," said Alexander.

 O'Brien disagreed with that assessment.

 Although he did not name the coalition, he said that some of the 
anti-nuclear groups are responsible for the fears now being 
expressed by local officials.

 "There's been a lot of saber-rattling. I don't know what all 
this rabble-rousing accomplishes," said O'Brien.

 According to Alexander, the intense focus on the safety of 
Thursday's meeting was merely a ruse for distracting people from 
the "legitimate safety concerns" over Entergy's proposed power 
boost.

 As chairman of the state body running the meeting, however, 
O'Brien does have the legal right to set ground rules about 
conduct -- including the banning of signs mounted on sticks or 
poles -- that could be considered disruptive.

 "They have the right to set that limit and see that the business 
of the meeting is accomplished," said Deb Markowitz, Vermont 
Secretary of State. "The purpose of the meeting is not a 
demonstration."

 Despite the concerns about Thursday's meeting, which was 
postponed from an earlier date out of fear about an excessively 
large crowd, O'Brien said it was in the public's interest to hold 
it.

 "We want this meeting to go forward. We think it's important 
that it happens," he said.

 Carolyn Lorie can be reached at clorie@reformer.com.		   	 	
 		   			 		   	 	
       Copyright ©1999-2004 New England Newspapers, Inc., 
*****************************************************************
 31 Journal Gazette: Dont let lawmakers fall for latest power-plant-building binge

| 12/11/2004 | 

By Grant Smith

History is about to repeat itself for Indiana utility
consumers and theyd better get a tight grip on their wallets. 

The states utility industry is again salivating at the thought
of a power-plant-building binge. And as in the past, those who
profit from building power plants are determined to do it with
lots of our money. 

Just as it did in the 1970s with nuclear power and in the 1990s
with merchant power, the industry is claiming that the only way
to meet future demand for electricity is to build new power
plants. Specifically, industry is calling for construction of
four or five new coal power plants in Indiana. 

And just as in binges past, the proposal touts
wave-of-the-future technology. In the 70s, nuclear energy
would be too cheap to meter. In the 90s, merchant plants
would be fired by clean, cheap natural gas. Now its clean
coal that will be the cheap alternative. 

The touted technology has not yet been deployed commercially in
the United States. And the reason is simple: Its too risky. The
merchant power plant binge of the 90s cost investors
$100billion when claims about combined cycle natural gas plants
similar to those now being made about clean coal plants proved
untrue. As a result, Wall Street is simply unwilling to risk
repeating these losses by investing in the latest power plant
spree. 

So the industry is persuading legislators and regulators to
permit regulated utilities to use their monopoly status to
collect huge sums of customer-contributed capital to insulate
investors against the risks inherent in constructing power
plants that should not and would not otherwise be built. 

Indeed, recent filings and announcements show that Indiana
utilities want to invest approximately $7billion in
customer-contributed capital over the next five to eight years,
either to construct new or to reconstruct old coal-fired power
plants. 

This financing strategy leads to the obvious question: Why
should utility customers be forced to pay for power plants that
utility investors will not finance voluntarily? 

There is no good answer to this question. There are
well-documented alternatives to the program of coal plant
construction and reconstruction planned by industry that are
both cheaper for customers and cleaner for the environment.
Dramatic increases in efficiency to reduce customer demand for
energy are clearly warranted by economic and environmental
considerations. 

But there is a bad answer to this question: Industry has the
power and money to sell its unwise and expensive program to
legislators and regulators. Using targeted campaign
contributions and well-orchestrated lobbying and public
relations campaigns, industry is mass marketing clean coal as
an American and Hoosier icon. 

Fortunately, utility customers are also voters to whom
legislators and regulators are ultimately accountable. Acting
together, they can stop the massive waste of their money that
would result from another power plant building binge. 

But to do so, they must send a simple message to their
legislators and regulators: Dont waste our money and
environment by building new power plants. Instead, save our
money and environment by investing in efficiency. And do it now. 

Grant Smith is executive director of the Citizens Action
Coalition. He wrote this for Indiana newspapers.   

*****************************************************************
 32 Las Vegas RJ: EPA asked to oversee cleanup 
 
Saturday, December 11, 2004

Move based partly on concerns about groundwater contamination 

By SCOTT SONNER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

An evaporation pond holds possibly contaminated fluid and
sediment at the former Anaconda copper mine near Yerington.
Below, Penny Bassett takes a radiation reading at the former
mine.

Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
An evaporation pond holds possibly contaminated fluid and
sediment at the former Anaconda copper mine near Yerington.
Below, Penny Bassett takes a radiation reading at the former
mine.

Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
RENO -- Citing growing concerns about health and safety, state
regulators asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on
Friday to assume lead oversight over cleaning up radioactive and
other toxic waste at a huge abandoned copper mine in Northern
Nevada. 

Gov. Kenny Guinn wants EPA to take over regulatory control of
the former Anaconda site at Yerington through a process similar
to a Superfund designation, officials for the Nevada Division of
Environmental Protection told The Associated Press. 

The move, based partly on new concerns about the potential for
groundwater contamination, "is the best way to protect human
health and the environment," Guinn said in a brief statement
Friday. 

"We believe that designating a lead agency will make certain
that the good work and ongoing progress at the site continues,"
he said. 

Until now, the state had opposed changes in a 2002 agreement
that gave state regulators, EPA and the Bureau of Land
Management equal footing in the regulation of Atlantic Richfield
Co.'s clean up of pollution at the site covering nearly six
square miles in the irrigated high desert of Mason Valley, about
55 miles southeast of Reno. 

But additional toxins documented in recent months, including
uranium, and new concerns that the pollution may have seeped
into water tapped by neighboring domestic wells prompted the
request for EPA to replace the "memorandum of understanding"
with a special designation under the Superfund law. 

"It's like a Superfund designation but different. It puts EPA in
charge of the site," NDEP spokeswoman Cindy Petterson said. 

NDEP wants to continue as a coordinating agency in the clean up,
she said. But "the need for a lead agency has been magnified by
all the new data. There are some additional concerns about
groundwater," she said. 

Tests this summer found unusually high levels of radiation in
soil samples at the mine. Earlier groundwater tests showed high
concentrations of uranium in wells on site, up to 200 times the
U.S. drinking water standard. Results of another round of
testing of 100 wells this fall have yet to be made public. 

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and leaders of the Great Basin Mine
Watch are among those who have been pressing the state to allow
EPA to make the mine a Superfund site.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 33 The Herald: MOX test fuels fears of terrorism 

[HeraldOnline]     

Updated: 12/12/04   

Nuclear material puts plant under new scrutiny   
  
By Jason Cato The Herald 

LAKE WYLIE -- A storage pool at the Catawba Nuclear Station may 
soon contain a cache of nuclear material some fear could attract 
attention from terrorists. 

An effort to slash stockpiles of nuclear weapons material in the 
United States and abroad could make York County a higher priority 
target, so say groups opposed to a program to burn weapons-grade 
plutonium in commercial nuclear reactors. 

Duke Energy and proponents of the program vehemently disagree, 
saying reactors like the one at the Catawba plant on Lake Wylie 
are well protected and that such attacks are unlikely. 

With the approval of the test program likely to come early next 
year, Catawba will be the first commercial nuclear plant in the 
United States to use weapons-grade fuel. That's why opponents 
fear it could become an elevated target. Duke officials also had 
considered testing the MOX program at the McGuire Nuclear Station 
on Lake Norman in North Carolina. 

"These facilities make themselves into bigger targets by taking 
on this program that is linked to U.S. nuclear weapons," said Dr. 
Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

The Catawba plant is within miles of Charlotte's banking hub. 
Also, some 60,000 parcels of property in York County -- reaching 
into Rock Hill -- are contained within the plant's 10-mile 
emergency zone, according to York County officials. The plant's 
production places it in the top 10 percent of the 103 U.S. 
nuclear plants. Its two reactors generate enough electricity 
daily to power a city the size of Charlotte, Duke officials said. 

The mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel rods that will be used in the 
plants contain 5 percent plutonium and 95 percent uranium, the 
fuel that is now used at the Duke plant. The fuel rods are being 
made in France. The rods, or assemblies, will be shipped to 
Charleston, then trucked to York County. 

The MOX program is designed to dispose of 34 tons of plutonium 
taken from nuclear weapons by burning it in U.S. nuclear 
reactors. The same will be done in Russia to reduce that 
country's stockpile of nuclear material. 

European nuclear plants have used a mixture of plutonium and 
uranium for decades. However, the test program at Catawba will be 
the first time weapons-grade plutonium is used in MOX fuel by a 
commercial utility company. That, along with the thousands of 
miles of transportation and Duke's request for less stringent 
security measures than normally required by the federal 
government, has drawn opposition from regional, national and 
international watchdog groups. 

"We've been very concerned about the use of weapons-grade 
plutonium material, even in a test," said Janet Zeller, director 
of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, a group that has 
fought Duke's MOX efforts. 

Enough plutonium will be on-site at Catawba to build about a 
dozen bombs like the one dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in August 
1945, Zeller said. About 180 pounds of plutonium will be used at 
the Catawba plant. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki had 13.2 pounds 
of plutonium. 

"This is an enormous draw for terrorists. It's already weapons 
grade and could easily be converted into bombs with information 
on the Internet," Zeller said. "It's too great of a risk for Duke 
to take or for people in the community to accept." 

Five former U.S. nuclear weapons designers concluded "a 
sophisticated terrorist group would be capable of designing and 
building a workable nuclear bomb from stolen plutonium or highly 
enriched uranium, with potential yields in the kiloton range," in 
a study prepared for the Nuclear Control Institute, an 
independent research and advocacy center in Washington, D.C. 

Less than 18 pounds of plutonium or 55 pounds of highly enriched 
uranium are sufficient to make a nuclear bomb, said Lyman of the 
Concerned Scientists group. 

"They (Duke officials) have to prevent terrorists like al-Qaida 
from getting plutonium because they could fashion a crude type 
bomb that could cause great damage," Lyman said. "That's really 
the objective you want to prevent, plutonium from getting into 
the hands of terrorists." 

Protecting plutonium 

Extracting plutonium from the MOX assemblies would be difficult, 
Duke officials say. 

A new MOX assembly has 44 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium mixed 
with uranium. The two could only be separated through a 
technically rigorous process with highly-specialized equipment. 

After being in the reactor for two cycles (which run about 18 
months each), the plutonium will no longer be weapons grade, Duke 
officials said. 

During the three-year test phase, Catawba will have four MOX 
assemblies among the 193 assemblies in the core of Unit 1. MOX 
will account for roughly 2 percent of fuel in that core. 

A full MOX program could be up and running by 2010, Duke 
officials said. At that point, 36 to 40 MOX assemblies will be 
used in the core. Those assemblies will account for 40 percent of 
the plant's output. 

Duke officials acknowledge plutonium could draw increased 
attention, but they maintain the MOX test program will pose no 
significant increase in risks -- in either safety or security. 

"There is a concern someone might want to steal MOX during the 
limited time (few weeks) between the time it's unloaded until 
it's put in the reactor," said Steve Nesbit, Duke Power's MOX 
fuel project manager. 

The 15-foot MOX assemblies weigh 1,500 pounds apiece and look the 
same as uranium-only assemblies now used at the plant, Nesbit 
said. Once they reach Catawba, the four MOX assemblies will be 
stored in the spent fuel pool with hundreds of other visually 
identical uranium assemblies. 

"Catawba already has stringent security measures in place to 
protect the possibility of radiological sabotage by terrorists or 
other groups or individuals," said Nesbit, who added that 
security measures will be adequately increased when the MOX fuel 
arrives and the rods are loaded into the core to protect against 
theft. 

But maybe not to the full measure normally required. 

Duke officials have requested an exemption from certain security 
measures required of Category 1 facilities, the classification 
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission puts on places that have 
weapons-grade nuclear materials on site. The specific measures 
are classified. The Blue Ridge group is fighting Duke over the 
request, with a hearing likely to be scheduled soon. 

Because the MOX assemblies could not be easily stolen (such as 
being placed in a briefcase and carried out of the plant) and 
will be indistinguishable from other assemblies once stored in 
the pool, Duke officials feel the security measures put in place 
after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will keep the fuel 
safe. 

"That's circular reasoning," said Lyman, who also works with the 
Blue Ridge group in its case against Duke. "You can't just say 
because it's in a big fuel assembly the threat doesn't exist. 
They should have to demonstrate that. There are always 
vulnerabilities, and those vulnerabilities can always be 
exploited." 

A national security exercise led by the Center for Strategic and 
International Studies in 2002 found that nuclear plants would 
make less attractive targets to terrorists because of the 
industry's "robust security program." 

The center's president, John Hamre, said that nuclear plants "are 
probably our best-defended targets. There is more security around 
nuclear power plants than anything else we've got. ... One of the 
things that we have clearly found in this exercise is that this 
is an industry that has taken security pretty seriously for quite 
a long time, and its infrastructure, especially against these 
kinds of terrorist threats, is extremely good," according to a 
nuclear plant security document produced by the Nuclear Energy 
Institute. 

Increased safeguards 

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the NRC has increased security at all U.S. 
nuclear plants. Full details have not been disclosed, but the 
changes include guarding against more attackers as well as 
different weaponry and tactics. 

The NRC in February 2002 and again in April 2003 ordered enhanced 
security by the industry. Over the past three years, the industry 
has added about 3,000 officers and upgraded physical barriers. 
The Catawba plant has some 1,100 employees, but Duke officials 
declined to say how many of those work in security. 

The industry has spent an additional $1 billion on security since 
September 2001. Duke has spent more than $8 million for security 
improvements at the Catawba plant, including building a moat that 
would help prevent an attack by a truck bomb, said station 
manager Mike Glover. 

The NRC's security regulations are designed to protect against 
ground attacks from well-trained paramilitary forces armed with 
automatic weapons and explosives. Security plans also must assume 
that the terrorists may be aided by an "insider" who could pass 
along sensitive information. 

The Catawba plant passed a mock ground attack early this year, 
Glover said. Such tests are conducted by the federal government 
at plants once every three years, but Duke officials conduct 
their own test more often. 

Such exercises, however, only account for land assaults and do 
not require tests of air or water assaults. 

Former U.S. Ambassador Mark Erwin warned the governors of South 
Carolina and North Carolina in a 2002 letter that terrorists' 
threats against nuclear plants must be considered a credible 
reality, according to an interview with The Greenville News. 

"Most likely, hundreds of operatives are in America today. They 
are meticulous planners and are patient beyond our 
understanding," wrote Erwin of Charlotte, who was ambassador to 
the African nations of Mauritius, the Seychelles and Comoros from 
1999 to 2001. "And if a terrorist were to be successful and take 
out a nuclear facility, it would make the World Trade Center pale 
in comparison." 

Erwin warned that nuclear power plants "cannot withstand a direct 
hit from even a private jet loaded with explosives," and 
concluded: "Our power plants need the equipment only available to 
our military, including ground-to-air missiles and heavy arms, as 
well as the trained soldiers to operate these weapons properly to 
protect these dangerously vulnerable sites." 

EPRI, a California-based research organization, however, 
maintains that areas of nuclear plants that house reactors and 
used fuel would withstand the impact of a wide-body commercial 
aircraft. Safety systems and reactors were designed to withstand 
the impact of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, 
according to the NRC. 

MOX opponents contend that the issue of whether a reactor could 
withstand such an attack is crucial in that terrorists could be 
as interested in releasing radioactive materials through sabotage 
as they could be in stealing nuclear material. Calculations show 
that some accident scenarios while MOX fuel is being used could 
release up to 14 percent more radioactivity into the environment 
compared to uranium-only fuel, Duke officials said. 

Nuclear fuel on the move 

Two tankers with about 300 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium 
powder -- enough to make 50 atomic bombs, according to the 
international environmental group Greenpeace -- left Charleston 
in September headed to France. By the time MOX assemblies make 
their way to Charleston next spring, the plutonium will have 
traveled more than 11,000 miles. 

From Charleston, the fuel rods will be shipped across the state 
under the watch of the Department of Energy. A spokeswoman with 
the State Law Enforcement Division, which is over Homeland 
Security issues in South Carolina, would not release details of 
the shipment or security plans. 

Tom Clements, a senior advisor to Greenpeace's nuclear campaign, 
followed the shipment of plutonium from Charleston to France and 
called his observations "pretty shocking." 

There were definite holes in security, Clements said. He was able 
to get within 50 feet of a container truck carrying the plutonium 
in France when it pulled into a regular gas station to refuel. He 
said officers were nearby, but no one asked him to move or to 
stop taking photographs. No security officials checked his 
recreational vehicle that was parked about 100 feet away. 

"Somebody would have had a clear shot with a rocket," Clements 
said. 

He expects U.S. security to be better. In France, the plutonium 
was shipped hundreds of miles and the trip took more than 24 
hours. The trip from Charleston to York County will be much 
shorter, and Clements doesn't anticipate a need for refueling. If 
that were necessary, he feels such stops should be made at 
military bases, not commercial businesses. 

"Because the U.S. is bigger offers more secrecy," he said. 
"Security already has an advantage here. But anytime you're 
putting this stuff on the road, there are safety concerns." 

The MOX program opens up more avenues for theft and accidents, 
Clements said. 

"We think first it should be stored in a safe manner and not be 
put back into weapons. We agree on that point," he said. "But we 
feel it should not be used in commercial settings. We should not 
use nuclear bomb material to make energy. It just sends the wrong 
message internationally." 

International implications 

Graham Allison, a Charlotte native and head of the Belfer Center 
for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, also 
said downgrading security requirements could send a bad message 
to the world. 

Duke's has one of the better safety and security records of 
nuclear power plant operators in the country, said Allison, whose 
new book is "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable 
Catastrophe." He doesn't believe the MOX program would jeopardize 
that safety record but is concerned that the company's request 
for less stringent security measures could lead to problems 
internationally. 

"In thinking about this activity, we need not to think about that 
it's just happening here, but that it's happening in other 
countries, including Russia," Allison said. "We should be setting 
the best feasible, sustainable standard." 

Lyman agreed. 

"It sends such a bad message," he said. "It undermines the whole 
purpose of the program, which is to make the world safer." 

Russia would resist any calls to do anything more stringent than 
what the United States does to protect MOX fuel, Lyman said. 

"We should be encouraging Russia to do everything it can to 
protect these materials," Lyman said. "But we can't tell them, 
'Do what we say, not what we do.' That's why this program has 
international implications, and Duke is undermining the entire 
program." 

Allison isn't as convinced as Lyman and others that MOX fuel 
itself would make the Catawba plant an increased target for 
terrorists. 

"However, it raises the head up a little bit to be more visible," 
Allison said. 

Still, he said, the chances of a terrorist group trying to steal 
nuclear material from Catawba are remote. 

Critics of the MOX program agree, but say that makes it no less 
important to be prepared and do all that is possible to protect 
the material. 

"The odds are small, but the impact would be significant," said 
Clements of Greenpeace. 

Jason Cato " 329-4071 

jcato@heraldonline.com 

Cost: $3.6 billion 

Groundbreaking: 1974 

Commercial operation: Unit 1 in 1985, Unit 2 in 1986 

Total site: 391 acres 

Station capacity: 2,258 megawatts 

Typical fuel: uranium dioxide 

Test fuel: Mixed oxide, or MOX 

Source: Duke Power 

Catawba Nuclear Station 

  Copyright © 2004 The Herald, Rock Hill, South Carolina   
*****************************************************************
 34 SF Chronicle: State is open to radioactive terror attack, critics charge 
  Health services office accused of failing to accurately track 
whereabouts of waste products

Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer

Sunday, December 12, 2004
 
The state is vulnerable to acts of radioactive terror because the 
Department of Health Services has failed to obey a 2-year-old 
state law requiring it to create a database to track radioactive 
waste, critics say.

The highest-placed critic of the department's failure to develop 
the computer inventory is the bill's author, state Sen. Sheila 
Kuehl, D-Santa Monica.

"I think it's very dangerous for this (health services) 
administration not to take radioactive waste seriously," Kuehl 
said. "Radioactive waste is being transported through the state 
at night, and police and fire personnel are not being trained on 
what to do if something happens."

The lack of an up-to-date database on who has what radioactive 
materials and where they're stored, Kuehl said, will make law 
enforcement's task all the harder in the event of a dirty-bomb 
attack.

The health department admits it has not created the database 
required by law. However, officials say they have chosen not to 
do so because of a funding shortfall, and their belief that there 
are more pressing priorities.

The resources to create the inventory were to come from a special 
Radiologic Control Fund bankrolled by licensing fees paid by the 
state's thousands of radioactivity users in medicine, industry 
and other enterprises.

"We haven't implemented the program yet," said Kevin Reilly, 
deputy director of prevention services for the Department of 
Health Services. "We don't have adequate revenue (coming) into 
the fund to pay for the whole program" run by the Radiologic 
Health Branch, which is responsible for developing the inventory 
along with its other duties.

Reilly said the fund of about $13 million doesn't cover the 
branch's $18. 3 million worth of mandated responsibilities in 
this fiscal year.

Why the $5 million shortfall?

"Because there hasn't been a fee increase for the regulated 
(radioactivity-user) community," Reilly said. "I think the last 
time (the fee was increased) was maybe 1993."

In theory, the department could use available funds to start 
implementing provisions outlined in Kuehl's SB2065, Reilly said.

But with the state facing large budget deficits, department 
officials have channeled the money into what it considers more 
urgent needs -- for example, inspecting X-ray machines to protect 
patients from being "exposed to X-rays from machines that weren't 
properly calibrated," Reilly said.

The fund covers "the cost of enforcement and implementation of 
programs administered by the department's Radiologic Health 
Branch," said Lea Brooks, the department's chief of public 
information, in a Nov. 22 statement to The Chronicle. "The 
branch's responsibilities include the licensing and inspection of 
approximately 2,100 licensees using radioactive materials and 
more than 65, 000 X-ray machines. The program also certifies more 
than 70,000 health professionals using ionizing radiation sources 
for medical purposes."

Critics don't buy the lack-of-funds excuse. They claim the 
agency's Radiologic Health Branch simply has no interest in 
implementing the law because it is dominated by allies of the 
nuclear power industry, which fought the bill's passage. The law 
was signed by then-Gov. Gray Davis in September 2002.

"It has been over two years since SB2065 was passed, and DHS is 
still making excuses for their failure to implement the law," 
said Philip M. Klasky, co-director of the Bay Area Nuclear Waste 
Coalition, an activist group that helped push 2065 into law. "DHS 
cannot or will not account for the money that was designated to 
be used to establish and maintain the inventory."

The department, Klasky charged, "has no accurate information on 
the generation, storage or transport of LLRW (low-level 
radioactive waste) within California. All other toxic waste 
industries must participate in an inventory system maintained by 
the state. By their own admission, DHS conducts inspections of 
radioactive waste generators every one to five years, hardly an 
accurate snapshot of the volume of nuclear wastes in the state. 
No one, no state regulatory agency, no homeland security agency, 
no law enforcement agency has real-time information on shipments 
of LLRW that could be used for a dirty bomb."

In theory, terrorists could steal radioactive materials from 
poorly guarded facilities, then turn them into dirty bombs by 
attaching them to chemical explosives, the critics warn. Since 
the Sept. 11 attacks, federal authorities have repeatedly warned 
that terrorists could use such "dirty bombs" to spread 
radioactive poisons over large areas.

In a worst-case scenario, a dirty bomb could cause billions of 
dollars in property damage, spark mass panic, and kill unknown 
numbers of people. The potential financial scale of a dirty-bomb 
assault is so great that insurance firms -- even firms well-known 
for their willingness to sell coverage for unusual risks, such as 
Lloyd's of London -- have refused to provide coverage for such 
attacks.

Kuehl's bill specified that the inventory be developed using 
funds from the Radiologic Health Branch's Radiation Control Fund. 
Klasky said that when the bill was passed into law, the fund "had 
in excess of $5 million."

"DHS estimates that the inventory should cost about $1.3 million 
to develop and about $240,000 a year to maintain," Klasky notes. 
"The other bureaucracies we talked to -- the state Office of 
Homeland Security and the California Highway Patrol -- 
acknowledged the problem but refused to do anything about it. 
They just passed the buck back to the DHS in a fruitless cycle of 
ineffectiveness."

Kuehl says she has repeatedly tried to get state officials to 
carry out the terms of the law -- to no avail. Over the last two 
years, she has met with numerous state officials from the health 
agency, the state's Office of Homeland Security and the 
California Highway Patrol -- all of whom would be prime 
responders to a dirty-bomb attack -- in an effort to build the 
inventory.

On Aug. 16, her patience at an end, Kuehl met with the state's 
public health officer, Dr. Richard Jackson, who was appointed by 
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in March. A statement from Kuehl said 
that she "explained to him the many efforts we had made to gain 
implementation of SB2065, and my frustration over the lack of 
results ... (and) asked that he and his staff take the issue 
seriously and get back to me with their plans to implement the 
bill's requirements."

Kuehl hasn't heard from Jackson since, she said. Jackson declined 
The Chronicle's request for an interview, as did Edgar Bailey, 
the head of the Radiologic Health Branch.

Implementation of the bill, she said, "just isn't a priority" for 
the Department of Health Services.

"Apparently, they think they can pick and choose which 
legislation to follow," she said.

But Reilly responded, "The law does require the inventory system 
to be put into place, absolutely. Our intention is (to do so) as 
soon as we can secure some (financial) resources to do so."

How soon might that happen?

"At this point ... I don't really have a time line," he admitted. 
"But as soon as possible."

E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com.

Page A - 12



©2004 San Francisco
*****************************************************************
 35 Independent: Nuclear 'white elephant' eyes a profit 

www.independent.co.uk
    
By Clayton Hirst 12 December 2004

A controversial BNFL nuclear plant at Sellafield, which has cost
taxpayers £473m and been branded a white elephant, is expected
to make its first profit next year, according to confidential
figures. 

The Independent on Sunday has learnt that BNFL is expecting to
generate £45m of income in the 12 months to 31 March 2006 from
the sale of so-called Mox fuel from its Cumbrian facility. 

The projections have been passed to the Government's new Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which will use the money to
help fund the clean-up of Britain's radioactive sites. 

The Mox plant has been dogged with technical problems and,
despite the huge sums of money invested in it, BNFL still has
not managed to complete the assembly of any Mox fuel. 

However, BNFL executives hope to secure the first sale of Mox
fuel to the Swiss power company NOX next year. It is understood
that BNFL has also secured potential orders from German energy
giant E.ON and Swedish utility OKG. 

Tony Blair personally pushed through the go-ahead for the Mox
plant in 2001 against the wishes of his then environment
minister, Michael Mea-cher. The Government has written off the
£475m invested in the plant. Mr Meacher, along with the former
Conservative environment secretary John Gummer, is calling for a
parliamentary inquiry into the Mox plant. 

Mr Gummer said: "We need clear and open information from BNFL to
show that the money they expect to make from Mox is going to be
there." 

The NDA will begin life on 1 April with £2.2bn to spend in its
first year. Around £1bn of this is expected to be used on
cleaning up and operating BNFL's Sellafield facility. The
various Sellafield operations, including Mox fuel generation,
are forecast to produce £860m next year. 

A BNFL spokesman said: "We cannot comment on the Mox figures as
they are commercially confidential." The NDA also refused to
comment. 	           

© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd   
*****************************************************************
 36 Salt Lake Tribune: N-dump consortium contends storage would not be
permanent 

Article Last Updated: 12/11/2004 12:24:15 AM 

Skull Valley: The state contends the hot waste would not be 
accepted later at Yucca Mountain 

By Patty Henetz The Salt Lake Tribune 

There is no reason the federal Energy Department couldn't take 
spent nuclear fuel from the Private Fuel Storage facility 
proposed for the Skull Valley Goshute reservation, the nuclear 
power consortium argued in response to Utah's latest attempt to 
scuttle the facility's license application. 

The state is attempting to reopen hearings before the federal 
Atomic Safety Licensing Board and has asked the board to 
consider evidence that spent fuel stored at PFS, supposedly only 
temporarily, wouldn't be accepted at the planned Yucca Mountain 
waste repository. 

But PFS lawyer Jay Silberg said this week the state has 
failed to make its case. 

"Yucca Mountain is designed to take exactly the kind of fuel 
the state alleges it won't take," he said. 

The state in a "late contention" filed last month focused on 
an Energy Department official's disclosure that the type of 
welded canisters PFS would use to store the spent fuel wouldn't 
meet contract requirements for storage at Yucca Mountain, the 
site in Nevada proposed to hold the nation's spent nuclear fuel. 

The state argued the disclosure meant environmental analyses 
for the PFS facility would have to be redone. The state also 
claimed the dispute in effect threatened to turn PFS into a 
permanent instead of temporary facility. 

The state has until next Friday to respond to PFS. After 
that, the licensing board will consider whether to allow oral 
arguments. 

PFS could get its 20-year license as early as January and 
could by 2007. The facility plans to take 44,000 tons of nuclear 
waste in 4,000 concrete and steel canisters that would sit for up
to 40 years on open-air concrete pads covering about 100 acres 45
miles southwest of Salt Lake City. 

The state's complaint to the licensing board included 
concerns about whether PFS, a limited liability consortium of 
eight utilities, would have sufficient operating revenue or 
commitments from its customers to pay to repack or reship the 
waste. 

Silberg said all the issues raised in the state's latest 
contention previously have been aired. 

Meanwhile, on Wednesday the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
(NRC) granted a 40-year license allowing a nuclear utility to 
keep spent fuel in dry cask storage on site. The license granted 
to the Surry nuclear plant in Virginia was the first of its kind.

The NRC maintains that such facilities can safely store waste 
for at least 100 years. 

© Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 37 Salt Lake Tribune: Mullen: Envirocare airs a hot, new TV ad 

Article Last Updated: 12/12/2004 02:12:22 AM 

It was a little odd Wednesday night to see the closing credits 
for Ted Koppel's "Nightline" roll straight into a shot of former 
Miss America Sharlene Wells Hawkes standing on velvet green turf 
and swinging a golf club. 

"I love to get out on a day like today and work on my swing," 
she said, standing atop the old Vitro radioactive tailings site 
in South Salt Lake. The waste, she explained, was trucked out 
and put safely to rest forever in a sealed site on a 
1-square-mile tract of "arid land in the west desert of Utah." 

That site is owned and managed by Envirocare, and this was a 
30-minute paid infomercial for the business titled "Safe and 
Secure." It has been running on all local TV stations in the 
post-11 p.m. slot for more than three weeks and the company has 
bought time for it through the end of the month. 

"It's just to educate the public," says Envirocare spokesman 
Mark Walker, who helped produce the ad. "We were going to start 
airing it in mid-October, but frankly, Envirocare is a political 
football and we didn't want it to come across we are trying to 
influence politicians." 

The piece is informative, as is a tour of the Tooele County 
facility, which Hawkes invites people to take. 

The point she repeatedly makes is that since 1988, Envirocare 
has safely stored the nation's low-level, "class A" 
radioactive waste - much of it generated from X-rays, MRIs and 
millions of other medical procedures. Plenty of it comes from 
Utah, too, so at least we are taking care of our own. 

Good enough. We know the waste has to go somewhere, and most 
Utahns accept that. 

About halfway through the promo, Hawkes mentions B and 
C-level waste. Only two sites in the nation can accept this 
level of waste, and they will be closed to 39 states in 2008. 
Someone has to take it. But who? Envirocare, Hawkes notes twice, 
is not "currently" licensed to handle hotter waste. 

In any talk of Envirocare, there is makes people queasy: What
if the company, plugging away as it does like a kid pestering a 
parent for a dream Christmas toy, ultimately gets state 
permission to truck in hotter class B and C wastes? This is 
largely the stuff of disassembled nuclear power plants and 
nuclear bomb-making plants from the Cold War, and can be 
thousands of times more radioactive and longer-lived than class A
waste. 

A moratorium on class B and C licensure expires Feb. 15. A 
joint legislative task force recommended in October to keep the 
hotter waste out, but failed to pull the trigger by calling for 
an all-out ban. 

While the state Division of Environmental Quality has 
approved a change in Envirocare's licensing, it can't happen 
unless both legislative houses and the governor approve it. With 
a strongly worded "NO" to DEQ, the incoming governor could put 
an end to this craziness his first 90 days in office. 

This is where we stand. For now. 

"They can call it education, but this ad shows Envirocare is 
gearing up for a huge push in the next two years to win over the 
public," says Jason Groenewold, spokesman for environmental 
group HEAL Utah. "It's a slick attempt to brainwash Utahns." 

So stay awake. Envirocare may be buying up late-night TV, 
but this is no time to drift off to sleep. 

hmullen@sltrib.com 

© Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 38 Salt Lake Tribune: Offer: Old mines as nuke dump 

Article Last Updated: 12/12/2004 10:27:14 AM 

Owners of the Army-contaminated site say they are running out of 
options 

By Dawn House The Salt Lake Tribune 

"There's not much we can do with the land," says Douglas 
Cannon of the property he owns next to Dugway Proving Ground. 
The U.S. Army detonated tons of chemical munitions during World 
War II on and around his land, which contains 86 1/2 mining 
claims. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune) 

The Cannon family inherited 1,400 acres adjacent to Dugway 
Proving Ground containing bombs and deadly chemicals left by 
Army testing, and for nearly a decade their pleas to the 
government to clean up the property have been ignored. 

They say they have come up with a solution, and it will 
probably get some attention. The Cannons want to turn their 
Tooele County mining property into a commercial nuclear waste 
dump. 

"We don't know what else to do," Louise Cannon said. "The 
Army won't clean it up, no one answers our telephone calls and 
letters, and we can't sell it or lease it. Since it's already 
contaminated, it seems the only thing we can do is to turn it 
into some kind of a waste site." 

Cannon commissioned a feasibility study that showed the 
property is in a stable geological area, under a no-fly zone and 
fenced on three sides by Dugway Proving Ground, a remote and 
secure military installation that conducts chemical and 
biological defense testing. Cannon said she also contacted 
Private Fuel Storage, which is seeking a license to store 40,000 
tons of spent nuclear fuel on the reservation of the Skull 
Valley band of the Goshutes, and Envirocare of Utah, a low-level 
radioactive waste landfill. 

"We are not in favor of these materials coming into Utah or 
onto our property - we want it cleaned up - but as far as we 
know, nobody cares," said Louise's brother, Douglas Cannon, who 
also holds an interest in the property. "How do you get anyone's 
attention when no one will listen?" 

Deer, wild horses, hawks and chukar partridges are scattered 
throughout the valleys, streambeds and ravines that abut Dugway 
Mountain. The property has limestone and quartzite strata and 
high-grade ore, gold, lead and turquoise deposits. Buckhorn 
Canyon was a stop for Pony Express riders. 

The Cannons' problems began near the end of World War II 
when the U.S. Army was looking for ways to fight Japanese 
soldiers entrenched in cave fortifications. The 86 working mines 
on the family's property turned out to be a perfect site to test 
high explosive, incendiary and chemical weapons. 

The Army, in turn, promised in 1945 to "leave the property of 
the owner in as good condition as it is on the date of the 
government's entry," according to court documents. That 
promise was not kept during testing known as Project Sphinx, 
when the Army dropped more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition 
containing incendiary or chemical weapons on the property. 

Incendiary weapons tested butane, gasoline and napalm. Lethal 
chemical-weapons tests included choking agent phosgene, the 
blood agent hydrogen cyanide and the blistering agent mustard. 
The Army also dropped conventional bombs filled with high 
explosives. 

The Cannons sued in 1998 to force the Army to clean up their 
land. But in the fall of 2003, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals 
threw out the case brought by Louise Cannon and another brother, 
Allan Robert Cannon. 

Despite the government's "abysmal failure" to clean up the 
site, the court said, the family filed their suit too late. 

They had not learned of possible problems with their property 
until August 1994 when Louise Cannon attended a Corps of 
Engineers talk about former defense sites. She had picked up 
fact sheets there reporting that land in the general vicinity of 
her property probably was contaminated with hazardous ordnance. 

"The result the law harm to the Cannons' property, which has 
persisted over half a century," said the three-judge panel, which
also noted that statutes of limitations "may permit a rogue to 
escape." 

The Cannons' only remedy, the federal appeals court 
concluded, "is political." 

Charles Miller, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, 
said the cleanup is dependent on what Congress agrees to fund. 

Louise Cannon said she began a letter-writing campaign in 
1995, three years before the family filed their lawsuit. She 
wrote to Utah Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett and 
then-Congressman Jim Hansen. Last spring, she also wrote Rep. 
Rob Bishop, R-Utah. Douglas Cannon said he also wrote to the 
Utah congressional delegation. 

Scott Parker, chief of staff to Bishop, said he knows of no 
letters from the Cannons. 

"We get hundreds of letters and calls each day," Parker said. 
"If they want to contact us, we can talk." 

Hatch's aids said his staff met with the Cannons' attorney 
after the appeals court dismissed their lawsuit, but hasn't 
heard from the family since. Louise Cannon said she wrote 
Hatch's office at that time and was unaware of any meeting 
because she understood her relationship with her attorney had 
ceased when the case was dismissed. 

Bennett's office did not return telephone calls from The 
Tribune on the matter. 

The Cannons say they also appealed to then-Utah Gov. Mike 
Leavitt and again when Leavitt was appointed head of the federal 
Environmental Protection Agency. He also has not responded. 

"We can't even pick up a spent canister on the property," 
said Douglas Cannon. "It's against the law because whatever they 
fired onto our property belongs to the U.S. military." 

The family discussed allowing the property to revert to the 
state by not keeping up tax payments, but they learned that Utah 
officials would charge them for the cleanup. 

State Sen. Ron Allen, D-Stansbury Park, said that although 
his constituents have a history of supporting, working or 
serving in the military, "this is one circumstance that they are 
not on the government's side. The general sentiment in this 
county is that the Army mistreated this family." 

The Cannons are suffering one last indignity, they say. 
Dugway is considering expanding in the Yellow Jacket area, which 
could surround their property, preventing both a waste 
repository or gold, lead and turquoise mining that had produced 
some revenue for the family until the early 1990s. 

The Army has never offered to buy out the Cannons. 

"Our lives have been a nightmare," Louise Cannon said. "We'll 
sell to anyone - including the U.S. Army. That actually would 
make a lot of sense." 

© Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 39 Daily Press: Dominion's Surry station likely to get fuel storage permit 

HAMPTON ROADS, VA.                       

By the Associated Press
 
Published December 11, 2004
	
 SURRY, Va. --   Dominion Resources Inc.'s Surry Power Station 
will likely become the first nuclear facility in the nation to 
have its license extended for on-site storage of spent nuclear 
fuel in large steel containers. 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently gave preliminary 
approval to the renewal of Surry's 20-year license to store 
nuclear waste for another 40 years rather than the current 
maximum of 20 years. The agency is also considering permanently 
changing its rules to 40 years--reflecting the long delay in 
opening the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada. 

The agency said it also has strong faith in the steel storage
units. "It was really the confidence in the casks," said Dave
McIntyre, a spokesman for the NRC. 

The NRC noted that when it first started giving 20-year
licenses, the government expected Yucca to open in 1998. Yucca
now is projected to open around 2010 and will take deliveries of
waste through 2048. 

The allocated space in Yucca is only enough to dispose of the
amount of waste that will exist at the nation's 103 reactors
when the repository opens in 2011. But much more waste will
continue to be generated at the Virginia reactors and others
nationwide beyond 2011. 

Both of the Dominion Resources-owned nuclear sites in Virginia _
Surry and North Anna in Mineral--already have licenses to run an
extra 20 years. The Surry reactors will run until 2033, which is
13 years before the storage license will expire. 

It made sense to extend the storage license beyond the life of
the reactors to give time for the last rods to cool for five
years and then get shipped to Yucca, said Rick Zuercher, a
Dominion spokesman. "The issues don't change from 20 years to 40
years in terms of safety," he said. 

NRC officials now will negotiate inspection and maintenance
requirements of the storage area. Surry's extension, which will
allow Dominion to use the dry casks for storage until 2046, will
be permanent once the NRC issues the final license with the
inspection conditions. 

The pending approval comes shortly after an environmental group
said that, based on current license renewals at nuclear plants,
Virginia will have the second most leftover waste in the nation
at its two sites after Yucca is full. 

Some environmental and anti-nuclear groups challenge the safety
of Dominion's outdoor storage. The activists have criticized the
government and industry for failing to find adequate space for a
permanent home for all the waste that is being created daily. 

Copyright ©2004 The Daily Press   
*****************************************************************
 40 Bradenton Herald: Tallevast beryllium test group may widen

| 12/11/2004 | 

DONNA WRIGHT

 Herald Staff Writer

MANATEE - County staff has upped the ante for free beryllium
blood tests. 

On Tuesday, the county commission will consider a new $60,000
proposal to provide 250 tests for former Loral American
Beryllium Co. workers, their family members and some residents
of Tallevast, the site of the now-defunct plant. 

The original plan commissioners approved Nov. 30 provided
$50,000 to test 200 people with the local health department
adding $4,000 in staff time to run the screening. 

With the blessing of commissioners, testing should begin
Wednesday, said Dr. Gladys Branic, health department director. 

The additional funds allow Branic to test both former workers
and Tallevast residents who may have been exposed to the toxic
dust generated by the plant over the past four decades. 

Branic and her staff are trying to locate American Beryllium Co.
workers who still reside in Manatee County, using an employment
roster provided by former union officials. 

So far they have identified nearly six dozen who would qualify
for the free test. 

Members of FOCUS, a community group representing Tallevast
residents, wants the testing program to include 201 residents
who lived within a quarter mile of the former American Beryllium
Co. plant during the past four decades. 

The American Beryllium Co. former campus is now under
investigation as a hazardous waste site because of toxins and
cancer-causing chemicals that have contaminated the soil,
groundwater and some private wells in Tallevast. 

"Commissioners have made it clear that they want the Tallevast
residents tested and they were willing to allocate the resources
to do that," said Cheri Coryea of the community services
department. 

The increase pleased Laura Ward, FOCUS president. 

"This is all about our health and our peace of mind," said Ward.
"Our fight is for Tallevast, but we want to see that others -
the former workers - are included and that they benefit from the
testing." 

The first round of tests begin Wednesday morning at Mount Tabor
Missionary Baptist Church, 1703 Tallevast Road. Hours will be
announced early next week. 

The first group to be tested includes: 

• Current Manatee County residents who were employed at the
American Beryllium Co. plant in Tallevast between Jan 1, 1961
and Dec. 31, 1996. 

• Family members of those former workers born prior to January
1997 and who resided with those workers in Tallevast during
their period of employment. 

The second round of testing is slated for January and will
include: 

• Family members of former workers who live outside of the
Tallevast area and tested positive in December. Those family
members must have resided in the same households as former
workers during their employment at American Beryllium. 

• Members of the Tallevast community who resided in homes
located within a quarter-mile radius of the former American
Beryllium plant at 1600 Tallevast Road at any time between Jan
1, 1961 and Dec. 31, 1996. 

Participants must pre-register with the health department before
being screened, Branic said. 

Health department staff will draw the blood samples that will be
sent to National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver
for processing under an agreement Branic signed this week. 

Branic said she chose National Jewish because it sets the
standard for beryllium testing among the handful of laboratories
nationwide offering the test. 

The beryllium blood test measures the body's sensitivity to the
toxic metal, the forerunner of beryllium disease, a severe or
even fatal disease that can take up to 30 years to develop. 

Former workers were exposed to the toxic dust when they milled
the exotic metal to make parts for nuclear weapons and missile
guidance systems for the federal government during the Cold War. 

Recent studies have proven that family members have contracted
beryllium disease from the dust workers tracked home. 

Other studies have found beryllium disease among residents who
live near beryllium factories. 

While many testing programs have been established for former
beryllium workers, Manatee County's community screening is a
first in the nation, said Branic. 

Participants will be asked to sign a statement that they
understand that neither the county, the local health department
or the state department of health assumes any responsibility for
additional testing, medical exams, prescriptions, follow-up or
compensation for medical expenses. 

"I'm optimistic," said Branic, "that we are making an important
step in the right direction." • To register and check
eligibility call Manatee County Health Department 748-0747, ext.
1202 

BLOOD TESTS 

cq 

Laura Ward, FOCUS president, 355-9216cq 

Wanda Washington, FOCUS vice president, 351-2969cq   

*****************************************************************
 41 Las Vegas RJ: Bush pulls surprise with Energy Department choice 
 
Saturday, December 11, 2004

By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Samuel Bodman
Nevada leaders largely unfamiliar with Bush nominee
 
WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Friday nominated Samuel Bodman
as a surprise pick to head the Department of Energy.
 
 Bodman, 66, a former corporate chieftain who has worked as the
chief operating officer of two government agencies, is not
well-known within most industries that would be affected by his
decisions at the Energy Department involving oil and gas
exploration, electricity generation, renewable fuels research,
nuclear power, nuclear waste cleanup and disposal and management
of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile.
 
 Bodman, a Chicago native, built a varied resume as a college
professor and a corporate leader before joining the government
in 2001. He was confirmed as deputy secretary -- the No. 2
position -- at the Commerce Department, and currently holds a
similar post at the Treasury Department.
 
 The nominee also was largely unfamiliar to Nevada leaders and
interest groups who monitor Energy Department projects,
including the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository
and the DOE-operated Nevada Test Site.
 
 Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., issued a statement saying that he
spoke with Bodman on Friday and referenced opposition in the
state to the Yucca project.
 
 "I stressed to Dr. Bodman that, while I understand he serves at
the pleasure of a president who supports the project, I hoped he
would take a fresh look at alternatives to the proposed nuclear
waste repository at Yucca Mountain," Reid said. "He agreed to do
so."
 
 Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said he hoped that Bodman, a chemical
engineer, would support more investment in nuclear waste
transmutation and reprocessing, technologies that could reduce
the volume of radioactive spent fuel and possibly relieve
pressure to complete a Nevada repository.
 
 "In addition, my colleagues and I will continue to work with
the new secretary and President Bush on creating a comprehensive
energy policy that once and for all will allow our nation to
become less dependent on foreign sources of energy," Gibbons
said in a prepared statement.
 
 Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said she expects little change.
"It's completely irrelevant who the administration nominates for
any of these Cabinet positions, including energy secretary," she
said. "They are interested in appointing rubber stamps who will
carry out policy, and the policy is to build a (nuclear waste)
repository in Nevada."
 
 But Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said he would not rule out Bodman
making any changes to the Yucca Mountain Project, which faces
critical funding and licensing challenges in Bush's second term.
 
 Besides pursuing nuclear waste disposal, the Energy Department
also manages the test site, which hosts segments of the nuclear
weapons stockpile program, stores low-level nuclear waste
material and conducts counterterrorism training for federal and
community first responders. 
The department also supports research into renewable energy
technologies, which industry officials say benefits companies
looking to exploit Nevada geothermal, solar and wind resources.
 
 There is little in Bodman's resume to indicate how he might
approach nuclear weapons matters, said Christopher Simon, a
political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.
 
 But Simon said Bodman's background in the chemical industry
suggests he might not be enthusiastic supporter of alternative
energy.
 
 "He's a chemical guy, and I don't see him coming out and saying
we have to try a different approach and move forward," Simon
said.
 
 Bodman "is someone who has worked in the trenches and someone
Bush is comfortable with who won't necessarily challenge the
prevailing view," Simon said.
z 
 Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy
Association, said Bodman might surprise people on renewable
energy. He said the chemical industry has been a surprisingly
strong advocate for alternative fuels.
 
 "They would rather see renewables used for electricity and use
natural gas for other purposes," Gawell said. 
In announcing Bodman as his pick, Bush said the nominee's
management skills and scientific background made him suitable to
the job.
 
 "Sam Bodman has shown himself to be a problem solver who knows
how to set goals, and he knows how to reach them," Bush said at
the White House. "He will bring to the Department of Energy a
great talent for management and the precise thinking of an
engineer."
 
 People who have worked with Bodman in Washington have described
him as an agile administrator, skillful at getting people to
work together and fostering a team spirit.
 
 Bodman was recommended for the energy job by Don Evans, the
outgoing Commerce secretary and a close Bush friend.
 
 Before being recruited to serve in the Bush administration,
Bodman was chairman and chief executive officer at Cabot Corp.,
a Boston-based Fortune 300 specialty chemical firm with
manufacturing plants in 25 countries.
 
 He taught chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, leaving in 1970 to join Fidelity Investments,
where he became its president and helped build it into a global
financial services firm. He joined Cabot Corp. in 1987.
 
 Bodman said his background would fit the Energy Department.
"Each of these activities dealt with the financial markets and
the impact of energy and technology on those markets," he said. 
Bodman will face Senate confirmation hearings early next year.
The chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., praised the nominee.
 
 The committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.,
said Bodman "will bring very strong credentials to the
Department of Energy."
 
 The comment suggested that Democrats might not oppose his
confirmation.
 
 
Stephens Washington Bureau writer Samantha Young and the
Associated Press contributed to this story.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
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 42 Tri-City Herald: BPA debt savings better spent on transmission 

This story was published Sunday, December 12th, 2004 

You can't blame Snohomish PUD for asking questions about the
money the region still owes on an overly ambitious plan for
building nuclear reactors. If the debt had been a baby, it would
have graduated from college by now. 

But the public utility's justifiable skepticism shouldn't go so
far as to derail the Bonneville Power Administration's plan to
parlay the old Washington Public Power Supply System's remaining
debt into new transmission lines. 

BPA didn't do itself any favors by drafting the refinancing plan
without involving utilities or the public in the process. The
agency never hid the dealings but still looked like it was
trying to avoid scrutiny. 

Even so, it's myopic to complain that the scheme saddles some
ratepayers with higher energy costs, while offering no direct
benefit. 

The economic fate of everyone in the Northwest depends on
reliable and plentiful supplies of energy. Our interdependence
means that the economic repercussions of any transmission
problems in the regional system won't be isolated to a single
place or class of customers. 

Progress already is being made. The new Grand Coulee-Bell line
began transmitting earlier this month, moving power west from
Spokane -- where the closure of Kaiser Aluminum has left a
surplus -- to the Puget Sound corridor, where it's sorely
needed. 

But BPA's aging infrastructure remains in dire need of updating.
The agency's ability to borrow money for the effort is limited
by Congress, which makes savings from lower interest rates one
of the few options available for completing essential
improvements to the power system. 

The additional delays in reaching the final payment on the WPPSS
bill are bound to stick in the craw of every utility that owes a
share of the bill. 

After all, many young adults struggling to fit the monthly
electric bill into the family budget weren't even born when the
WPPSS disaster unfolded, leaving the debt on unfinished reactors
that will never produce revenue. Those customers will be pushing
middle age before the final bonds are paid off in 2018. 

Still, it's better that they invest now in the system that will
carry them through old age. 

© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
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 43 Space.com: NASA is reviewing a list of alternative fission-powered 
missions contrasted to the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) 
effort, now being eyed for space travel no sooner than 2015

 Stephen Olejarczyk NORMAL aduignan 3 6 2004-12-10T21:36:00Z

2004-12-10T21:39:00Z 1 319 1820 Space Holdings 15 4 2135 11.5703

A special study team has identified six potential candidate 
missions that could be done sooner, have shorter mission 
durations, and would be far less difficult to implement. 
  
JIMO has been touted as the flagship mission for Project 
Prometheus. JIMO would be the space agency’s first mission using 
nuclear electric propulsion. In September, NASA selected Northrop 
Grumman Space Technology as the contractor for the proposed 
Prometheus JIMO spacecraft. 

The Prometheus JIMO mission has been billed as part of an 
ambitious mission to orbit and explore three planet-sized moons 
-- Callisto, Ganymede and Europa -- of Jupiter. The moons may 
have vast oceans beneath their icy surfaces. A nuclear reactor 
would enable the mission. 

JIMO would orbit each icy world to perform extensive 
investigations of their composition, history, and potential for 
sustaining life. 

However, an analysis of alternative mission ideas was completed 
last month at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, 
California. 

The six ideas are: ·         

Technology Demonstration Mission to test fission power system in 
deep space with no specific science goal or destination. 

Lunar Geophysical Orbiter that in extended mission mode could 
serve as a telecom asset for future lunar missions. ·         

Next Generation Mars Telecommunications Station. ·         

Near Earth Object (NEO) Asteroid Mission that would involve 
stopovers at multiple objects, perhaps landing hardware on a NEO 
to assess the ability to modify the trajectory of a celestial 
body. 

Venus Orbiter, more like a Magellan II spacecraft that would 
carry out low altitude runs over the cloudy planet with 
state-of-the-art radar. 

Astrophysics Mission that would use high power levels from a 
fission power source, likely sending collected science 
information at very high data rates. 
  
In addition to these missions, a Europa Orbiter mission for a
2012 launch, using chemical propulsion, would have the spacecraft 
energized by radioisotope power system (RPS) technology. 
  
Further work on fleshing out these candidate ideas will be 
undertaken by the JPL-led study group, looking at variants and 
options for each mission. 

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