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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 Rice Misleads Again on Iraq's Nuclear Program
2 [NYTr] WMD: "There Are and There Were"
3 US: UPI: Rice adamant Iraq had weapons before war -
4 US: E&P: From Beginning, Knight Ridder Was Right on Iraq Nukes
5 US: Las Vegas SUN: Rice Defends Comments on Iraq Nuke Threat
6 AFP: Iran refuses to surrender nuclear fuel technology
7 Korea Herald: 'Seoul has never pursued nuclear weapons'
8 Korea Times : Seoul to Seek Summit With Pyongyang - Chung
9 Korea Times: Roh Rebuffs Claim on Nuclear Experiment for Military Pu
10 US: M.I.T.'s Expert Says Missile Defense Is A Fraud
11 US: Connection.org: Bob Woodward's Take
12 US: The Independent Institute: War Lies Are Piling Up:
13 US: Daily Herald: How free trips get the ear of Congress
14 US: OpEdNews.com: Fried Rice, Yet Again
15 US: Bush: Nuclear intelligence commission
16 Hundreds Of Thousands Of Nuclear Weapons In 60 Countries Coming?
17 US: SF Chronicle: Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons
18 Daily Times: N-black market dismantled
NUCLEAR REACTORS
19 US: [NukeNet] WashPost on new reactors at North Anna
20 US: A No-Flight Zone for Indian Point & Reactors Throughout USA?
21 iafrica.com: sa news Much foreign interest in SA nuke reactor
22 US: NRC: NRC Staff Seeks Public Comment on Draft Report That Finds A
23 US: NRC: University of Pittsburgh Environmental Assessment and Final
24 CBC - New Brunswick: Group favours renewable energy over nuclear
25 US: NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting
26 SA Business Day: Pebble bed must still go to cabinet - Mpahlwa
27 US: Waco Tribune: Nethaway: Don't fear nuclear power
NUCLEAR SAFETY
28 US: [du-list] Pantex nuclear workers
29 US: [du-list] NRC Advisory
30 [du-list] the war's littlest victim
31 [du-list] Media report mentions battlefield scrap metal
32 US: Popular Science: For that Healthy Glow, Drink Radiation! -
33 US: Idaho Statesman: Downwinders deserve straight answers from Craig
34 PBN: Guam to be home port for three nuclear subs -
35 US: amarillo.com: Remembering A Life: Cancer strikes husband, father
36 US: Paducah Sun: Congress faces deadline on sick worker proposal pay
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
37 US: [shundahaialerts] Planning for Skull Valley this weekend
38 Korea Herald: China says N.K. tried to enrich uranium: report
39 Haaretz: Ramat Hasharon closes polluted water well
40 US: Waste News: Military, Calif. officials agree on procedure to pri
41 Belfast Telegraph: Nuclear waste warning
42 Platts: BNFL nuclear supercompactor being dismantled
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
43 Tri-City Herald: Tri-Cities to celebrate B Reactor's 60th anniversar
44 Tri-City Herald: Opinions Uranium shavings show strengths, weaknesse
45 lamonitor.com: LANL bid plan revealed
OTHER NUCLEAR
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 Rice Misleads Again on Iraq's Nuclear Program
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 13:41:11 -0500 (CDT)
===============================
THE DAILY MIS-LEAD
< www.Misleader.org >
===============================
RICE MISLEADS AGAIN ON IRAQ'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM
The New York Times revealed yesterday that top administration
officials grossly mislead the public about Iraq's supposed
nuclear weapons program.[1] The government's top nuclear
scientists said that the aluminum tubes Iraq had acquired were
"too heavy, too narrow and too long" for use in creating nuclear
weapons.[2] They were perfectly suited, however, for use in
Iraq's existing legal rockets.[3] Meanwhile, National Security
Advisor Condoleezza Rice went on CNN before the invasion of Iraq
and said the tubes "are only really suited for nuclear weapons
programs."[4]
In October 2003, David Kay - the administration's handpicked
weapons inspector - concluded, "We have not uncovered evidence
that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build
nuclear weapons or produce fissile material."[5] Stunningly,
appearing on talk shows yesterday morning, Rice continued to
insist that Iraq may have been pursuing nuclear weapons and that
the aluminum tubes may have been involved in that process. On
ABC's "This Week" Rice said, "As I understand it, people are
still debati ng this."[6] David Albright, the president of the
Institute for Science and International Security, said Rice "is
being disingenuous, and just departing from any effort to find
the truth."[7]
Sources:
1. "How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence," New
York Times, 10/03/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1435098&l=60466 .
2. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1435098&l=60466 .
3. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1435098&l=60466 .
4. "Ritter Meets With Iraqi Leaders," CNN, 9/08/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1435098&l=60467.
5. "Statement by David Kay ," CIA, 10/02/03,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1435098&l=60468.
6. "Rice: Iraqi nuclear plans unclear," MSNBC, 10/03/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1435098&l=60469.
7. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1435098&l=60469 .
Visit www.Misleader.org for more about Bush Administration
distortion.
Subscribe to the Daily Mislead! Go to http://www.misleader.org and enter
*****************************************************************
2 [NYTr] WMD: "There Are and There Were"
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 13:59:37 -0500 (CDT)
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
sent by Walter Lippmann (cubanews)
Juventud Rebelde Digital (Havana) - Oct 3, 2004
http://www.jrebelde.cu/2004/octubre-diciembre/oct-3/there-are.html
WMD: There Are and There Were
By Juana Carrasco Martmn
One can easily be connected to the other. The headline in The
Chicago Sun Times read: Looking for WMD? Thats easy enough, there
are eight million chemical weapons stockpiled. They were not
found in Iraq, but they are being warehoused in igloo-like
concrete structures in the state of Oregon, USA. They are a
permanent fixture in the Panamanian rain forest since the US
bases were installed in that country and are also maintained in
storage facilities in Australia in quantities far greater than
the amount Bush claimed was in Iraq in order to justify the
invasion. These types of deadly weapons can also be found a scant
four miles from the White House.
Reuters, meanwhile, wrote that Nguyen Van Quy, one of the three
Vietnamese who are suing the manufacturers of Agent Orange, the
defoliant that the US aggressors used during the Viet Nam war,
survives with death knocking at his door. The former North
Vietnamese sergeant major gets weaker everyday as a result of a
liver tumor caused by the dioxin he was contaminated by.
There are more than eight million chemical weapons being kept in
the world, and they threaten not only those that may in one war
or another be labeled as the enemy but also the communities that,
sometimes without knowing it, are endangered by harboring
deposits of Sarin and VX nerve gas, or other nerve agents
prolifically produced by US laboratories.
Nonetheless, chemical terrorism is usually referred to only as a
threat that could come from some deranged warlord, ignoring the
fact that the well-organized and mighty US Army is the holder of
the largest stock of chemical weapons and hasnt hesitated to use
them.
Quy and the other Vietnamese plaintiffs are living examples that
these weapons existed and were used, and they are denouncing
Agent Oranges effects on their children. These substances were
manufactured by Dow Chemical and Monsanto corporations. They are
the same consortiums whose herbicides are still being used
against cocaine fields in Latin America, contaminating vast
extensions of farmland in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.
Another 30 companies are named in the case brought by the
Vietnamese, which is scheduled for a hearing in a New York court
in December.
In an effort to deprive the Vietnamese fighters of food and the
shelter of the jungle, the US forces used chemicals that
contaminated the soil and the water. The aftereffects of this
chemical warfare continue to be felt today. In Viet Nam there are
more than three million victims of the 20 million gallons of
herbicides that were sprayed between 1962 and 1971, including
Agent Orange, which contains dioxin, believed to be responsible
for several types of cancer. Nightmarish birth defects are common
in Viet Nam and have yielded babies without eyes or arms, others
with two heads and many with vital organ dysfunctions.
But the Vietnamese adversaries were not the only victims. As if a
punishment from hell, US war veterans have also suffered from the
effect of the chemicals. In 1984, Dow Chemical and Monsanto were
forced to pay $180 million to US soldiers, who had ironically
become their own collateral damage.
Weapons there were, and there are...
* Search the NYTr Archives at:
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3 UPI: Rice adamant Iraq had weapons before war -
(United Press International)
October 04, 2004
Washington, DC, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- U.S. national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice says she remains convinced Iraq wanted to
acquire nuclear weapons before last year's invasion.
Before the invasion, Rice and various security officials claimed
Iraq had acquired thousands of aluminum tubes destined for use in
a nuclear weapons program.
However, a report published Sunday in the New York Times said
the administration did not fully disclose the assessment of some
nuclear experts, who concluded the tubes in question were not
ideally suited for nuclear arms, and were more likely intended
for rocket production.
In response, Rice acknowledged in a CNN interview there had been
debate within the intelligence community on the aluminum tubes.
"The fact of the matter is, the president made this decision
based on a body of evidence, not just on aluminum tubes, and on
the key judgment of his intelligence organization that this was a
program of a reconstitution of the nuclear program," said Rice.
UPI Perspectives]
*****************************************************************
4 E&P: From Beginning, Knight Ridder Was Right on Iraq Nukes
Editor & Publisher
By E&P Staff
Published: October 04, 2004 3:00 PM EDT
NEW YORK In Sunday's 10,000-word New York Times probe of how the
Bush administration misled the public on evidence of Iraq's
prewar nuclear capabilites, the newspaper also described, in
brief, how the Times itself had mishandled much of the same
evidence. (See E&P story
[http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp
?vnu_content_id=1000652417] .)
The self-criticism in the Sunday Times report focused mainly on a
period in the late summer and early fall of 2002 when an internal
split developed among officials and experts on whether those
now-famous "aluminum tubes" could be used in making nuclear
weapons. The Times story admitted that the newspaper had played
down, buried or, at times, ignored that debate.
It is interesting to read, therefore, the text of an October 4,
2002, story by Jonathan Landay of Knight Ridder's Washington
bureau, who was consistently more skeptical of official claims
than most of his colleagues in the press during the prewar
period. His article, titled, "CIA report reveals analysts' split
over extent of Iraqi nuclear threat," follows.
* * *
WASHINGTON -- The CIA released a new report Friday on Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction that added little to earlier
appraisals but exposed a sharp dispute among U.S. intelligence
experts over Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program.
The dispute centers on thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes
that Iraq allegedly has tried to purchase from foreign suppliers.
According to the CIA report, most intelligence experts believe
the tubes were to be made into casings for centrifuges that could
be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
But the CIA report notes that some intelligence analysts
disagree, arguing that the tubes probably were intended to make
conventional weapons, the report said.
Despite the conflicting opinions, President Bush has publicly
asserted that the tubes were intended for use in making a nuclear
weapon. Speaking on Sept. 12 to the United Nations General
Assembly, Bush flatly said the tubes were to be "used to enrich
uranium for a nuclear weapon."
A White House report released in conjunction with Bush's speech
repeated that unconditional assertion. "Iraq has sought to buy
thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which officials
believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich
uranium," the report said.
That speech and report marked the start of Bush's aggressive
effort to drum up support in Congress and the United Nations for
military action if Saddam continued to defy U.N. efforts to
discover and destroy his weapons of mass destruction.
Several senior administration and intelligence officials, all of
whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity, charged that the
decision to publicize one analysis of the aluminum tubes and
ignore the contrary one is typical of the way the administration
has been handling intelligence about Iraq.
The White House and the Pentagon, these officials said, are
pressuring intelligence analysts to highlight information that
supports Bush's Iraq policy and suppress information and analysis
that might undercut congressional, public or international
support for war.
Some U.S. intelligence and military experts dispute the
administration's suggestion that Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction pose an imminent threat to the United States. One
senior military official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
said the threat has not increased appreciably beyond what it was
when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Iraq does have considerable experience with high-speed
centrifuges. U.N. inspectors discovered after the 1991 Persian
Gulf War that Iraqi scientists, with illicit assistance from
German experts, had succeeded in constructing large networks of
centrifuges for enriching uranium.
But the administration's assertions about the aluminum tubes
provoked considerable debate among nuclear weapons experts. One
who reviewed a government analysis of the tubes said he did not
believe they were intended for use in Iraq's clandestine nuclear
weapons program.
"From what I've seen, this is not conclusive evidence," said the
expert, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. He said that
the tubes were not suitable for manufacturing into high-speed
enrichment centrifuges because their diameters were too small and
the aluminum they were made from was too hard. "It seems to me
that the tubes are clearly dual-use, and therefore you cannot
conclude they were for uranium enrichment," he said.
David Albright, a physicist and former U.N. weapons inspector,
disputed the CIA's assertion that a majority of analysts believe
the tubes were intended to help make nuclear weapons.
Albright, the director of the Institute for Science and
International Security, a non-partisan think tank, said he has
been told that scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory in California and other U.S. nuclear weapons
facilities disagreed with that assessment but have been ordered
not to say anything. He quoted one scientist as saying that "the
administration can say what it wants and we are expected to
remain silent."
The publication of the CIA report came as the Bush administration
continued pressing its efforts to win resolutions from the Senate
and the U.N. Security Council authorizing military force.
Iraq denies having any weapons of mass destruction.
E&P Staff
Copyright 2004 Editor & Publisher
*****************************************************************
5 Las Vegas SUN: Rice Defends Comments on Iraq Nuke Threat
By JENNIFER C. KERR ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) -
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sunday defended
her characterization of Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities in
the months before the Iraq invasion, even as a published report
said government experts had cast doubt at the time.
In the run-up to the March 2003 war, Rice said in a television
interview in 2002 that the Iraqi president was trying to obtain
high-strength aluminum tubes to rebuild his nuclear weapons
program. The tubes, she said, were "only really suited for
nuclear weapons programs."
On Sunday, Rice acknowledged she was aware of a debate within
the U.S. intelligence community about whether the tubes were
intended for nuclear weapons. "I knew that there was a dispute.
I actually didn't really know the nature of the dispute," Rice
told ABC's "This Week."
"The intelligence community assessment as a whole was that these
(tubes) were likely and certainly suitable for, and likely for,
his nuclear weapons program," Rice said. She said the director
of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, believed that the tubes
were for centrifuge parts.
"When you are faced with an assessment that Saddam Hussein is
reconstituting his nuclear weapons program, that he has by the
end of the decade the probability of having a nuclear weapon ...
the tendency is always not to want to underestimate these
programs," Rice said.
But two years later, Rice insisted she has no regrets about how
the administration portrayed what it believed was a dangerous
threat posed by Saddam.
"I stand by to this day the correctness of the decision to take
seriously an intelligence assessment that Saddam Hussein would
likely have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade" if action
wasn't taken.
"We were all unhappy that the intelligence was not as good as we
had thought that it was. But the essential judgment was
absolutely right. Saddam Hussein was a threat," she said.
Later, in an interview on CNN's "Late Edition," Rice said, "If
you underestimate the nuclear threat of a tyrant, you make a
really big mistake."
A New York Times story Sunday quoted four CIA officials and a
senior administration official as saying that Rice's staff had
been told in 2001 that Energy Department experts believed the
tubes were probably intended for small artillery rockets - and
not nuclear weapons.
Rice said she learned of objections by the Energy Department
only after making her 2002 comments.
During the CNN interview in 2002, Rice said the tubes were "only
really suited for nuclear weapons programs." In bolstering the
administration's argument of the threat the nation faced, she
said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry seized on the latest
debate over flawed prewar intelligence as more evidence that the
Bush administration misled the country into invading Iraq.
"These are questions the president must face, these are the
questions that a president has to answer fully to the American
people and to the troops," Kerry told a town hall meeting in
Ohio on Sunday.
Kerry foreign policy adviser and former U.N. Ambassador Richard
Holbrooke told "This Week," "What the Times article is saying is
that the top nuclear experts in the country said those aluminum
tubes were not for nuclear weapons, and that this was suppressed
by the administration, particularly Vice President Cheney."
--
*****************************************************************
6 AFP: Iran refuses to surrender nuclear fuel technology
Reuters | AFP | Sky News | Photos
Monday October 4, 12:11 AM
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran said it has already acquired the sensitive
technology to produce its own nuclear fuel and that it would be
"irrational" to agree to surrender such a capability in exchange
for supplies from overseas. Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid
Reza Asefi was reacting to US Democratic presidential candidate
John Kerry, who has suggested providing Iran with nuclear fuel
to generate electricity if the country agreed to give up its
controversial work on the nuclear fuel cycle. "One should not
put one's fate in the hands of others. It would irrational,"
Asefi said.
"We have the technology and there is no need for us to beg from
others. This suggestion is good for countries that do not have
this technology, but we do not need their generosity and help,"
he added.
In a debate with US President George W. Bush, Kerry said the
United States should have joined a British-French-German
initiative aimed at getting Iran to agree to stop work linked to
the enrichment of uranium. Fuel cycle work for peaceful purposes
is permitted under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of
which Iran is a signatory, but the process can also be used to
produce the core of an atomic bomb.
But Asefi repeated the clerical regime's assertion that Iran
needs to be self-sufficient when it comes to fuelling its atomic
energy programme. "What guarantees are there? Will they supply us
one day, and then if they want to, stop supplying us another
day?" he asked.
Iran is under threat of being hauled before the UN Security
Council amid widespread suspicions it is seeking the "option" to
develop nuclear weapons. The country says it only wants to
generate electricity. In a resolution passed on September 18, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which oversees the
NPT, called on Iran to halt its uranium enrichment-related
activities amid its ongoing investigations.
Iran suspended enrichment itself last year, but has continued to
advance on other parts of the fuel cycle -- including the
conversion of yellowcake (uranium oxide) to produce the feed gas
for centrifuges -- and insists on its right to resume enrichment
at any time. Asefi repeated that "we have no taken a decision
yet" on resuming enrichment, but cautioned the IAEA against
putting too much pressure on Iran and provoking the country's
powerful hardliners.
Iran's parliament, controlled by conservatives, has begun putting
together a bill forcing the reformist government to buck the IAEA
demand and resume enrichment -- a step certain to place Iran on a
collision with the UN's nuclear watchdog. And a senior MP said a
huge majority of deputies were supportive of such a step. "The
plan to oblige the government to resume enrichment has the
support of 238 deputies" in the 290-member house, Allaeddin
Borujerdi, head of the Majlis foreign policy and national
security commission, told reporters.
He said an eventual bill on the issue "would be certain of having
a large majority" of deputies voting for it. The conservative MP
said that his commission would begin discussing the move,
entitled "the bill to oblige the government to develop civilian
nuclear technology", on Tuesday. "Today the parliament showed its
strength," asserted Borujerdi, who was speaking after deputies
overwhelmingly voted in favour of impeaching reformist Transport
Minister Ahmad Khorram.
Copyright © 2004 AFP. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
7 Korea Herald: 'Seoul has never pursued nuclear weapons'
Roh tells India newspaper
2004.10.05
NEW DELHI South Korea has never pursued any nuclear weapons
development for military purposes and this no-nuke policy will
remain unchanged, President Roh Moo-hyun said here Monday.
¡°Our country has supported international efforts to prevent
nuclear proliferation as a signatory country of the
Nonproliferation Treaty,¡± Roh said in an interview with the
Times of India, according to a report by Yonhap News Agency.
South Korea recently admitted that it had conducted a
plutonium-based nuclear experiment more than 20 years ago, and a
uranium-enrichment experiment in 2000. It says the experiments
were purely research but it has acknowledged it should have
informed the International Atomic Energy Agency.
President Roh arrived here yesterday to make a three-day visit
to India aimed at expanding economic, political and cultural
ties, and to sign agreements on extradition and judicial
cooperation.
President Roh Moo-hyun and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
will discuss strengthening bilateral relations when they hold
summit talks today, officials in Seoul said.
Roh¡¯s visit to New Delhi is the first leg of a nine-day trip
that will also take him to Vietnam and to a biennial summit of
Asian and European leaders in Hanoi.
In India, a key focus for the President will be on helping South
Korean firms make further inroads into the big Indian market,
Roh¡¯s aides said.
Roh will ask the Indian government to support the participation
of South Korean companies in road, port and other infrastructure
projects, the officials said. He also will ask that New Delhi
back the establishment of an Indian information-technology center
in South Korea, and pursue other areas of economic cooperation,
they said.
¡°The visit is expected to further strengthen the growing
bilateral political and economic relations,¡± an official
statement said.
Rapidly modernizing India is a market with enormous potential
for Korea.
With a current population of more than 1 billion, it is expected
to grow to more than 1.6 billion people by 2050, overtaking China
as the world¡¯s most populous country.
In terms of purchasing power, India already is the
fourth-biggest market for South Korean firms, after the United
States, China and Japan. South Korea is the fifth-largest foreign
investor in India, with investment from 1991-2004 exceeding $657
million. The countries¡¯ two-way trade was about $4 billion in
2003, according to Korean figures. Seoul is India¡¯s 11th largest
trading partner.
In the first major Indian investment in South Korea, Tata Motors
of India in March acquired South Korea¡¯s Daewoo Commercial
Vehicle Limited for $102 million.
Korean goods have become household names in India, especially
Korean automobiles and electronics products.
The major Indian exports to Korea include cotton yarn, fabrics,
primary and semi-finished iron and steel, ores and minerals,
petroleum products, drugs and pharmaceuticals.
Roh also plans to meet with Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam,
Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, External Affairs Minister
Natwar Singh, and Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress
party before leaving India tomorrow.
Roh will then fly to Hanoi for the two-day summit of the Asia
Europe Meeting which begins Friday.
Prior to the official opening of the ASEM, Roh will attend a
presummit meeting of Asian leaders Thursday to discuss
cooperation at the ASEM.
The ASEM will include three summit sessions during which
participants are to discuss the North Korean nuclear issue,
terrorism and other international political issues; globalization
and economic partnership between Asia and Europe; as well as
information technology and cultural diversity.
At the end of the sessions, the Asian and European leaders will
likely adopt statements to express their consensus on various
issues.
On the sidelines of the ASEM, Roh will have one-on-one meetings
with the leaders of Germany and the European Union to discuss the
North Korean nuclear issue and bilateral economic issues.
Compiled from wire services
*****************************************************************
8 Korea Times : Seoul to Seek Summit With Pyongyang - Chung
Hankooki.com > The Korea Times
By Yoo Dong-ho Staff Reporter
South Korea will push for an inter-Korean summit to resolve the
prolonged standoff over North Korea's nuclear ambitions,
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said Monday.
On the first day of the National Assembly's 20-day audit session,
Chung said he would make efforts to bring about a second
inter-Korean meeting to break the current deadlock in bilateral
ties.
``We will employ every means available to hold the talks at an
appropriate time in a well-ordered manner,'' Chung said in
response to a question by ruling Uri Party lawmaker Im Jong-seok.
``Our position is firm that inter-Korean dialogue must resume at
the earliest date and this protracted cooling-period in bilateral
relations is good for neither South nor North Korea.''
However, he added that no concrete steps are currently being
taken to arrange a summit. Chung doubles as chairman of the
standing committee of the National Security Council, which
oversees the nation's security and foreign policies.
Rumors have circulated recently that the South is pushing to hold
a meeting between President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il within this year. But Roh dismissed the possibility
in July, saying the time is not ripe for such a step.
In a related development at the inspection session, a
high-ranking government official said Seoul is in close
consultation with Pyongyang to open two cross-border railways in
eastern and western sections of the heavily fortified border on a
trial basis within this month.
Inter-Korean relations hit a snag when South Korea airlifted 468
North Koreans to Seoul from a Southeast Asian country in late
July, the largest such defection ever.
Relations chilled further following revelations that South Korean
scientists conducted two unauthorized laboratory experiments with
nuclear materials, one in 1982 and another in 2000.
In the largest audit ever, 457 government agencies will come
under inspection by the 14 standing committees of the National
Assembly this month.
yoodh@koreatimes.co.kr 10-04-2004 17:04
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, center, takes an oath
before he is grilled by lawmakers about inter-Korean affairs at
the Government Complex in central Seoul, Monday. / Korea Times
*****************************************************************
9 Korea Times: Roh Rebuffs Claim on Nuclear Experiment for Military Purpose
Hankooki.com > The Korea Times
By Shim Jae-yun Korea Times Correspondent
NEW DELHI - President Roh Moo-hyun on Monday said South Korea has
never attempted a nuclear experiment to utilize it for military
purpose in the past.
``As a signatory of the NPT, the Republic of Korea has always
supported international non-proliferation endeavors and complied
with its relevant responsibilities,¡¯¡¯ Roh said during an
interview with The Times of India, a leading English daily of
this nation.
``Recently Korea announced the four principles regarding a
peaceful utilization of nuclear power. Through them, we made it
clear we have never pursued any nuclear development for military
purposes and there will be no changes whatsoever in this
policy,¡¯¡¯ he said.
Roh is making a state visit here and is set to have a summit
meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today to
discuss issues of mutual concern including ways of speeding up
bilateral trade and investment ties and the standoff over North
Korean nuclear weapons program.
He is set to attend the Asia Europe Meeting to be held from Oct.
7 in Hanoi, Vietnam before embarking on a state visit to Vietnam
from Oct. 11.
Roh also said he will propose the signing of free trade agreement
(FTA) between Seoul and New Delhi in his meeting with premier
Singh.
``I believe it is time for the two nations to proactively pursue
the FTA to support the bilateral economic exchanges and setup of
such a pact will be help for both nations as they have a mutually
compensating economic structure,¡¯¡¯ he said.
``To begin with, we will seek to buttress activities of the
Korea-India Joint Trade Committee on Investment Promotion in a
bid to vitalize bilateral trade and investment,¡¯¡¯ Roh added.
Regarding the question whether Seoul is ready to support India
in its bid to gain a permanent seat in the UN Security Council,
Roh said, ``The UN needs to be reshaped in a way that will help
enhance its democratic character. Reform of the Security Council
is under discussion at the UN.¡¯¡¯
``I think it is better to review the membership after the
overall direction of reform has been determined,¡¯¡¯ he said.
Seoul and New Deli are set to sign agreements for exception of
visas for diplomats, government officials and business leaders to
expand exchanges of personnel.
jayshim@koreatimes.co.kr 10-04-2004 22:36
President Roh Moo-hyun, second from left, and first lady Kwon
Yang-suk, third from left, are escorted by an Indian government
official upon arrival at Indira Ghandi International Airport in
New Delhi, Monday. / Yonhap
*****************************************************************
10 M.I.T.'s Expert Says Missile Defense Is A Fraud
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 01:22:55 -0400
Postol's concerns are echoed by a group of 49
retired American generals and
admirals. In March, the officers wrote Bush
recommending the billions of
dollars to be spent on missile defence should be
redirected to combating
nuclear terrorism, the most pressing threat facing
the U.S. today.
Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd
ICIS-Institute for Cooperation in Space
Email: alw@peaceinspace.com
CAMPAIGN: http://www.peaceinspace.org
__________
Missile defence shield is a fraud, so it must be
about the money
Posted by: space on http://pej.org Sunday, October
03, 2004 - 11:17 PM
It sure sounds like it is about the
military-industrial establishment
leveraging some profit out of a culture of fear.
Whether or not this
technology works is irrelevant to the momentum
behind this. As quoted in
this CanWest News article a top scientist who
blew the whistle on the
earlier failures of the Patriot missile states,
"The U.S. missile defence
shield is so technically unsound, it will never be
capable of protecting
North America from attack, ... "
-- Space & Technology Editor
Defence shield 'a fraud'
Can be easily defeated, scientist says. Liberal
government is reportedly
on verge of consenting to multibillion-dollar
system
DAVID PUGLIESE
CanWest News Service
http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/soundoff/story.html?id=e5cdeb
c6-c088-4f3e-adcf-8635631b34bd
Thursday, September 30, 2004
The U.S. missile defence shield is so technically
unsound, it will never be
capable of protecting North America from attack,
said a top scientist who
blew the whistle on the earlier failures of the
Patriot missile.
Theodore Postol, a former science adviser to the
U.S. chief of naval
operations, said the missile defence shield the
Martin government is
considering joining is totally unproved and faces
so many technical hurdles
that to claim it can protect the continent from
attack is "scientific fraud."
Postol, a professor of science, technology and
national security at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said one
of the main problems with
the shield is it is incapable of distinguishing
between a real warhead and
the decoys that would be carried by an incoming
missile.
"This is one of the biggest engineering jokes in
the history of humankind.
It's a fake," said Postol, who is in Ottawa today
to meet with MPs and will
be giving a public lecture on missile defence
tomorrow.
During the first Persian Gulf War, he blew the
whistle on military claims
that the Patriot missile destroyed almost all of
the Iraqi Scud rockets
fired during the war. The Pentagon launched an
investigation into whether
the scientist had violated national security, but
Postol was later
vindicated by several U.S. government studies that
noted the Patriot was
successful less than 10 per cent of the time.
Postol has conducted a similar analysis on the
U.S. missile defence
shield, which will use ground-based interceptor
rockets to shoot down
incoming warheads. U.S. President George W. Bush
has made missile defence
one of his administration's priorities and he is
expected to declare the
system ready to go in the coming months.
The Liberal government is reportedly on the verge
of signing on to the
multibillion-dollar system and Prime Minister Paul
Martin and Defence
Minister Bill Graham are among the strong
supporters in the party of the
plan. Other Liberal MPs, however, have voiced
concerns the shield will not
work and will pave the way for weapons in space.
Postol warns the shield can be easily defeated by
standard decoys that
would be carried by an incoming missile. In that
case, the missile would
release dozens of mylar balloons that would
confuse the sensors on the
shield's interceptor. Any nation capable of
building a missile that could
hit North America would have the technology to
outfit it with decoys, he
noted.
Also, the shield's interceptor "kill vehicle" has
never been tested with
the rockets that are to carry it to its target.
The limited number of tests
that have been carried out on the shield's
interceptors have been scripted
to the point where the system has been fed the
co-ordinates of the incoming
warhead it is expected to hit. Even then, some of
those tests have been
failures, Postol noted.
Missile defence agency officials in the U.S.,
however, have expressed
confidence the shield will work. The Bush
administration has argued even a
rudimentary system is better than nothing.
Government officials and Canadian Forces officers
have warned Canada cannot
afford not to take part in the missile shield.
They have voiced concerns
the U.S. could retaliate politically or proceed
with security matters on
their own, cutting Canada out of decisions on
continental security.
But Postol said in terms of North American
security, the U.S. needs Canada
as many of the key air defence radars that protect
the continent are
located on Canadian territory.
"The United States needs Canada just as much or
more than Canada needs the
United States in these matters," he said. "The
Canadians have a lot of
leverage if they choose to use it."
The missile shield is designed to counter a
small-scale attack by countries
such as North Korea or Iran, as well as accidental
missile launches by
Russia and China.
But Postol said it is unlikely North Korea can
build a nuclear-tipped
missile capable of reaching North America. More
worrisome is the
possibility the North Koreans could place a crude
nuclear weapon aboard a
ship and sail it into a U.S. port, he noted.
Postol suggested instead of spending billions of
dollars on the missile
shield, the U.S. should shore up its continental
security.
Postol's concerns are echoed by a group of 49
retired American generals and
admirals. In March, the officers wrote Bush
recommending the billions of
dollars to be spent on missile defence should be
redirected to combating
nuclear terrorism, the most pressing threat facing
the U.S. today.
Ottawa Citizen
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2004
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o
Alan Rycroft, Sunshine Communications
250.592.8307 Canada
Box 8307, Victoria, BC, V8W 3R9
rycroft@SunshineCommunications.ca
http://SunshineCommunications.ca
*****************************************************************
11 Connection.org: Bob Woodward's Take
[http://www.wbur.org]
» The Supreme Court is back in session and your rights as
a property owner are at stake. Some homeowners are being forced
to sell their property to private developers simply to boost
municipal tax revenues. We discuss the balance between private
property and public use.
Aired: 10/4/2004
Try as they might, people in the Bush administration just can't
seem to shake those questions about the way they used
intelligence to justify going to Iraq. Now, there are new
allegations that the administration misrepresented evidence in
building its case for Iraq's nuclear capabilities.
Veteran journalist Bob Woodward knows a bit about political
campaigns and misdeeds. He's the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter
who made his name with the Watergate story. His latest book,
"Plan of Attack," goes deep inside the Bush White House and its
decision to invade Iraq.
Hear a conversation with Bob Woodward about the war in Iraq, the
election campaign, and the search for truth in politics.
[http://realserver.bu.edu:8080/ramgen/w/b/wbur/connection/audio/2
004/10/con_1004a.rm]
Bob Woodward, assistant managing editor, Washington Post.
© Copyright 2004. Trustees of [http://www.bu.edu] and
[http://www.wbur.org] . [rss 0.91]
*****************************************************************
12 The Independent Institute: War Lies Are Piling Up:
The Independent Institute 100 Swan Way Oakland, CA 94621-1428
510-632-1366 Phone 510-568-6040 Fax
October 4, 2004 Ivan Eland
Even though a mound of evidence keeps accumulating that the Bush
administration exaggerated the threat to fulfill its obsession to
invade Iraq, administration officials keep standing by—in
Goebbels-like repetition of the “big lie”—the need for war.
Despite virtually admitting that she was disingenuous about
Iraq’s nuclear threat, Condoleeza Rice, President Bush’s national
security advisor, in an October 3, 2004 interview with ABC
television, again defended the administration’s decision to
remove Saddam Hussein’s regime. In a prior September 8, 2002
interview with CNN, Ms. Rice stated flatly that aluminum tubes
purchased by Iraq were “only really suited for nuclear weapons
programs.” Then she made the threat even more vivid by concluding
that, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” The
only problem is that two anonymous administration officials told
the New York Times that Ms. Rice knew that Iraq’s potential use
for the tubes was in hot dispute within the U.S. government at
the time of the CNN interview. Caught red-handed, Ms. Rice, in
the ABC appearance, acknowledged that she knew of the
disagreement at the time of the CNN interview but claimed that
she didn’t know “the nature of the dispute” then. Yet months
before the interview, the government’s top nuclear experts in the
Energy Department, who believed that the tubes were the wrong
size to be used to make nuclear weapons, conveyed this
information to Ms. Rice’s staff.
But the recent hubbub about Ms. Rice’s dissembling obscures
bigger whoppers told by an even higher-level official-Vice
President Dick Cheney. At the beginning of the Bush
administration in 2001, the U.S. intelligence community reached a
consensus that Iraq’s nuclear program had been eviscerated by
international inspections and sanctions and had not been
restarted. This official opinion was not changed until Oct. 2,
2002—little more than a week before the Senate vote on going to
war—with the release of a new National Intelligence Estimate on
Iraq demanded by Senate Democrats. (Even then the new estimate,
concluding that Iraq was again actively pursuing nuclear weapons,
depended principally on the questionable evidence that aluminum
tubes were being used for that purpose and the now discredited
allegation that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from the African
nation of Niger.) Yet before this new estimate was released, Vice
President Cheney, in a major speech to the Veterans of Foreign
Wars on August 26, 2002 and during two TV interviews (in March
2002 and the same day Ms. Rice made her CNN appearance), declared
flatly that Iraq had reconstituted its quest to acquire nuclear
weapons. Thus, the intelligence assessment didn’t support the
vice president’s assertions at the time he made them and
seemingly was later changed to conform to them.
Of course, the world now knows Cheney’s and Rice’s bald
assertions were nonsense, as the administration’s own State
Department argued. More remarkably, on January 27, 2003, a couple
of months before the invasion started, the International Atomic
Energy Agency—which provided the nuclear inspectors that Saddam
Hussein permitted to enter Iraq in order to avoid war—discovered
no evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program and
determined that the aluminum tubes were probably being used for
the purpose that Iraq had stated.
According to the Times, that same January, White House officials
helping to draft Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech before
the United Nations, justifying the invasion, sent word to the
intelligence community that evidence of the Iraqi nuclear threat
was weak. One often hears about policy improperly dictating
intelligence—when facts should really drive policy—but such
blatant and egregious conduct by high administration officials is
still quite shocking.
For the administration, the nuclear issue was paramount for
justifying the war because chemical and biological weapons are
not really “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD). Technical hurdles
to converting chemical and biological agents into weapons and
successfully employing them make it challenging to achieve the
goal of inflicting mass casualties using them. Also,
historically, bombing with conventional ordnance has killed more
people than chemical attacks, in part because of the limited area
that can be covered with a single chemical weapon.
Of course, the “WMD” rationale, including the nuclear threat, was
just that—a dubious justification for the invasion rather than
the actual reason for it. If it had been the actual reason for
war, the U.S. military would have immediately secured Iraq’s
“WMD” facilities after invading. That was not done.
Thus, the administration lied about why it went to war in the
first place and then about the evidence to support the phony
justification. Mothers teach their children that liars eventually
get caught because one lie requires others to hide the first. In
the future, Bush administration officials should pay heed to
mom’s astute advice.
Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace
&Liberty at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California, and
author of the books The Empire Has No Clothes, and Putting
“Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.
Copyright 2004 The Independent Institute - Web Services
*****************************************************************
13 Daily Herald: How free trips get the ear of Congress
[http://www.dailyherald.com]
Monday, October 04, 2004
By Stephen Baxterand Justin D. Fox Medill News Service
WASHINGTON - Criss-crossing the globe for speeches, conferences
and fact-finding missions, members of Congress and their families
have taken nearly $14.4 million worth of trips in the last 4¨
years - with private interests picking up the tab.
An analysis of congressional trips by Medill News Service in
partnership with American Public Media's Marketplace program and
American RadioWorks found that private interests spent
$14,388,672 since Jan. 1, 2000, to send House and Senate members
on 4,851 trips.
The academic groups, think tanks and corporate sponsors say the
trips allow lawmakers to learn valuable information without
spending taxpayer money. But critics say sponsors are buying
special access to lawmakers, often in congenial surroundings.
While some members took privately funded trips to make speeches
in places like Pittsburgh and Peoria, others went on fact-finding
jaunts to Aspen, Colo., or spent $3,000 on meals at a five-day
conference in Barcelona, Spain.
The most popular destination was Florida, with 558 trips,
followed by California with 386 and New York with 354. West
Virginia, home to the luxurious Greenbrier resort in White
Sulphur Springs, was the fourth-most popular destination with 223
trips.
Many of the 159 sponsored trips to Nevada - the fifth-most common
destination - mixed tours of the proposed nuclear waste disposal
site at Yucca Mountain with the lure of Las Vegas.
While domestic destinations dominated the list of travel hot
spots, Israel, Mexico, Italy, the United Kingdom and Cuba also
made the top 20 most-visited list.
In all, senators took 1,071 trips, House members 3,781.
The House and Senate allow the trips if they are part of official
duties and if lawmakers disclose where they went, the amount
spent and the sponsor. Senate rules limit domestic trips to three
days and international trips to seven days, excluding travel
time.
Disclosure forms often are filed late or are incomplete, and the
only place to find them is in House and Senate office buildings.
Sen. John Breaux, a Democrat from Louisiana, traveled the most at
others' expense, taking 56 trips costing more than $158,000. On
average, Breaux accepted a free trip a month, every month, over
the period analyzed.
A spokeswoman said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat from
Connecticut, makes travel decisions based on whether trips
pertain to issues of interest to him and his Senate committees.
Lieberman, the Democratic candidate for vice president in 2000,
is one of the most frugal lawmakers, listing three dozen trips
totaling less than $500.
Bill Nell of the Aspen Institute, an international relations
think tank that sponsored 488 trips, said sending lawmakers on
trips helps them better understand issues.
"If we discuss China, Latin America, or Russia, for example," he
said, "it is much more meaningful to do it in the country we're
studying with people from that country."
The Aspen Institute topped the list of money spent by sponsors at
more than $2.5 million. Second place went to the Ripon
Educational Fund, a program of the Ripon Society. It doled out
more than $600,000 to pay for 59 trips. Spending about $575,000
on 70 trips, the American Israel Education Foundation came in
third.
Opinions on privately sponsored trips range from enthusiasm and
skepticism to outright disapproval. While some lawmakers and
sponsors say the trips promote understanding, some government
watchdog groups say they give sponsors disproportionate influence
on Capitol Hill.
"Typically these trips help educate members of Congress only
about one side of an issue. As such, sometimes they're worse than
not traveling at all," said Gary Ruskin of the Congressional
Accountability Project said.
Danielle Brian, director of the non-partisan Project on
Government Oversight, is also skeptical.
"It's for the most part only wealthy institutions that can do
this. So in itself there is definitely a skewed leaning toward
powerful special interests versus the average citizen," she said.
"At some level, Congress doesn't have all the resources to go on
all the trips it could. So I don't say they're blanket wrong. But
if the company sponsoring the trip has a financial interest,
that's where I draw the line."
Others do not draw that same line.
In June 2003, Angelina S. Howard, executive vice president of the
Nuclear Energy Institute, wrote an opinion column in The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution that included praise for Republican Sen.
Saxby Chambliss of Georgia for supporting new nuclear power
plants - a key proposal in the pending energy bill.
Two months later, the Nuclear Energy Institute, an association of
nuclear energy companies, sent Chambliss on an $18,911
fact-finding mission to Italy - the fourth-most expensive Senate
trip since Jan. 1, 2000.
Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said
Chambliss' trip to Italy included visits with Italian energy
ministry officials and a tour of the Ansaldo-Camozzi Nuclear and
Special Components facility, where steam generators for nuclear
reactors are made.
Kerekes said the purpose of that trip was "to help advance their
understanding of what's involved (in Italy) and understand that
... there's no domestic industry to protect here in the United
States with tariffs on these components (steam generators)."
Chambliss' office did not return repeated phone calls.
Over the years, efforts have been made to tighten congressional
rules related to privately sponsored trips and make the
information more easily available to the public. But all have
become stuck in the gears of the political machine.
In 1998, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, a Democrat from Indiana,
introduced a resolution that would have required any House member
taking a trip to submit a report on how the travel was related to
official House business, including findings and recommendations
as well as a detailed itinerary of all meetings, interviews,
inspection tours and other official functions.
Hamilton also wanted to require the disclosure forms and reports
be posted on the Internet, but his resolution never got to the
floor of the Republican-controlled House.
Currently, members need only name the sponsor, destination and
purpose of the trip and a list of transportation, lodging, meal
and other costs. Far from being searchable on the Internet, these
reports can be seen only in the House Cannon office building.
Similarly, Senate travel forms are found only in the Senate Hart
building.
Steven Weiss of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan
watchdog group that examined congressional travel in 1998, said
people are no more aware of privately sponsored trips today than
they were six years ago.
"I think the public is still largely unaware of the fact that
special interests can pay for members (of Congress) to travel for
supposed educational purposes," Weiss said, adding that making
records available online could bring this issue to the public's
attention.
While Weiss noted that not all trips are paid for by groups with
legislative agendas, Ruskin said it is important for citizens to
examine lawmakers' privately sponsored trips "to find out what
there is to be learned about members' ethics and their propensity
for accepting graft and reasonable facsimiles of graft."
[http://www.dailyherald.com/info/copyright.asp] Daily Herald,
*****************************************************************
14 OpEdNews.com: Fried Rice, Yet Again
By Anthony Wade
I did a piece several months ago called Fried Rice, discussing
the absurd statement by Condoleezza Rice that George Bush would
one day be considered in the same breath as the largest
diplomatic figures of the last 100 years, including Franklin
Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. She was apparently inhaling
again as she took to the talk circuit today.
Taking the “we don’t do mistakes” cue from her boss, Rice
portrayed today that the pre-invasion comments she made about
Saddam’s nuclear capabilities as being accurate and defended the
slaughter that ensued. In case you do not remember during the
frantic run-up to the war, Bush sent out everyone to scare us
into thinking that Saddam had all sorts of WMD. Rice was charged
with selling us the nuclear side of it.
Her most famous line was “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a
mushroom cloud”. Mixed in with that fear-mongering tactic was
some false intelligence. It was asserted that Saddam had
recently bought some high-strength aluminum tubing which were,
"only really suited for nuclear weapons programs", according to
Rice. What she was not telling us however was that there were
other rationale for the tubes that were in fact more plausible
and in fact that the tubes had already been discredited as being
useless for nuclear weapons. When asked about it today she said,
"I knew that there was a dispute. I actually didn't really know
the nature of the dispute".
Well, allow me to clarify for you Condi. The aluminum tubes
were alleged by Condi, at the behest of Bush, to be used for the
enrichment of uranium, a critical step toward building a nuclear
weapon. Unfortunately for them, aluminum is not a material
conducive for enriching uranium. When you combine that with the
fact that the dimensions were wrong and Saddam sought no other
materials which would be needed for such a venture, many
logically concluded that they were purchased for 81mm artillery
rockets Hussein said they were for.
Of course all of this was known at the time because it was the
opinion of the intelligence community that the tubes were NOT
related to any nuclear aspirations. Of course the troubling thing
for me is how our National Security Advisor did not know this?
Compounding the problem with not knowing, Dr. Rice felt the
prudent thing to do would be to spread the possibility of a
“mushroom cloud” to the American people. This is the same
National Security Advisor who “could not have imagined terrorists
flying planes into buildings even though she had been briefed
about just that.
Continuing in her talk show soiree today, Rice said, "I stand by
to this day the correctness of the decision to take seriously an
intelligence assessment that Saddam Hussein would likely have a
nuclear weapon by the end of the decade". Well, that’s sweet
Condi, but asinine. Not only would Saddam not have had a nuclear
weapon, it appears he would not have had any weapons at all. I do
not understand where the humility in this administration resides.
We have found nothing in Iraq but death.
The reasons for the war have been proven to be false and even if
you want to ignore the culpability of the administration for
cooking false intelligence, they should at least have the decency
to say, “oops, my bad”, at this point.
Instead we have people like Rice touring the Sunday morning talk
shows to hype up discredited claims and defend the indefensible.
Let’s see what else she had to say: "We were all unhappy that
the intelligence was not as good as we had thought that it was.
But the essential judgment was absolutely right. Saddam Hussein
was a threat".
No offense, but I could care less if Rice is “unhappy”. The
disingenuousness of this statement is staggering. What Dr. Rice
is saying is that regardless of the truth, the judgment is
correct. That is so abundantly stupid we should launch an
investigation into her academic credentials. Also, the
intelligence was good; it said the tubes were NOT for usage in
nuclear weaponry. The issue is why the administration chose to
lie about it and say that they were for the enrichment of uranium
when they knew that aluminum is not suitable for that purpose.
"If you underestimate the nuclear threat of a tyrant, you make a
really big mistake." Hmm, I would proffer that when you lie to
start a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and over
1000 American kids, you make a really, really, really big
mistake, or a colossal error in judgment, if you will.
I might also ask how this statement is consistent with Bush
ignoring North Korea and Iran while they reconstituted their
nuclear capabilities. The bottom line is that this
administration has no credibility left. It is devoid of substance
and has lied so many times that it is a reflex action at this
point, not a conscious decision.
The New York Times has quoted four CIA officials and a senior
administration official as saying that Rice's staff had been told
in 2001 that Energy Department experts believed the tubes were
probably intended for small artillery rockets — and not nuclear
weapons. Dr. Rice’s response to that today was that she learned
of objections by the Energy Department only after making her 2002
comments.
Are we supposed to buy that? A year before making the mushroom
cloud threats, her office was informed that the very tubes she
was going to pimp as proof for nuclear potential were not usable
for nuclear purposes. For a year, no one mentions it to her. Then
she goes to the American people and puts visions of mushroom
clouds in their heads by using these tubes as her proof. If this
is not enough, two more years later she has the unadulterated
nerve to defend the entire process. If it was not so frightening
and pathetic it would be laughable. People get fired for such
stupidity out here in the real world. In the land of the Bush
Cabal, they get oil tankers named after themselves.
Anthony Wade is co-administrator of www.ibtp.org
[http://www.ibtp.org/] , a website devoted to educating the
populace to the ongoing lies of President George W. Bush and
seeking his removal from office. He is a 37-year-old independent
writer from New York with political commentary articles seen on
multiple websites. A Christian progressive and professional
counselor, Mr. Wade believes that you can have faith and hold
elected officials accountable for lies and excess.
Anthony Wade’s Archive:
http://www.opednews.com/archiveswadeanthony.htm
[http://www.opednews.com/archiveswadeanthony.htm]
[takebacktheus@yahoo.com]
*****************************************************************
15 Bush: Nuclear intelligence commission
FR Doc 04-22218
[Federal Register: October 4, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 191)]
[Notices] [Page 59227] From the Federal Register Online via GPO
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr04oc04-64]
------ EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
Office of Administration; Notice of Meeting of the Commission on
the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding
Weapons of Mass Destruction ACTION: Notice.
SUMMARY: The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the
United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction
(``Commission'') will meet in closed session on Wednesday,
October 20, 2004, and Thursday, October 21, 2004, in its offices
in Arlington, Virginia.
Executive Order 13328 established the Commission for the
purpose of assessing whether the Intelligence Community is
sufficiently authorized, organized, equipped, trained, and
resourced to identify and warn in a timely manner of, and to
support the United States Government's efforts to respond to, the
development of Weapons of Mass Destruction, related means of
delivery, and other related threats of the 21st Century. This
meeting will consist of briefings and discussions involving
classified matters of national security, including classified
briefings from representatives of agencies within the
Intelligence Community; Commission discussions based upon the
content of classified intelligence documents the Commission has
received from agencies within the Intelligence Community; and
presentations concerning the United States' intelligence
capabilities that are based upon classified information. While
the Commission does not concede that it is subject to the
requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), 5
United States Code Appendix 2, it has been determined that the
October 20-21 meeting would fall within the scope of exceptions
(c)(1) and (c)(9)(B) of the Sunshine Act, 5 United States Code,
Sections 552b(c)(1) & (c)(9)(B), and thus could be closed to the
public if FACA did apply to the Commission.
DATES: Wednesday, October 20, 2004 (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and
Thursday, October 21, 2004 (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.). ADDRESSES: Members
of the public who wish to submit a written statement to the
Commission are invited to do so by facsimile at (703) 414-1203,
or by mail at the following address: Commission on the
Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons
of Mass Destruction, Washington, DC 20503. Comments also may be
sent to the Commission by e-mail at comments@wmd.gov
[comments@wmd.gov] . FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Brett C.
Gerry, Associate General Counsel, Commission on the Intelligence
Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass
Destruction, by facsimile, or by telephone at (703) 414-1200.
Victor E. Bernson, Jr. Executive Office of the President, Office
of Administration, General Counsel. [FR Doc. 04-22218 Filed
10-1-04; 8:45 am]
*****************************************************************
16 Hundreds Of Thousands Of Nuclear Weapons In 60 Countries Coming?
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 14:06:21 -0400
``At the end of 2003, there were more than 3,700
metric tons of plutonium and highly enriched
uranium -- uranium enriched to 20 percent or
uranium-235 -- enough for hundreds of thousands of
nuclear weapons, in about 60 countries,'' Albright
and Kimberly Kramer wrote in an article to be
published in the next issue of the Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists [ http://www.thebulletin.org ].
Albright and Kramer are not optimistic: ``Civil
plutonium stocks are not expected to decrease in
the next 15 years.''
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-arms.html
Global Stocks of Nuke Bomb Material Growing -
Survey
By REUTERS
Published: October 3, 2004
Filed at 8:32 a.m. ET
VIENNA (Reuters) - The world's stockpiles of
plutonium and highly enriched uranium useable in
atomic weapons are growing, despite increasing
fears about the security of nuclear materials, a
U.S. based think-tank says in a new report.
The estimates of civilian and military stocks of
plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) --
information treated by most governments as
classified -- were prepared by the Institute for
Science and International Security (ISIS), run by
former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright.
Advertisement
``At the end of 2003, there were more than 3,700
metric tons of plutonium and highly enriched
uranium -- uranium enriched to 20 percent or
uranium-235 -- enough for hundreds of thousands of
nuclear weapons, in about 60 countries,'' Albright
and Kimberly Kramer wrote in an article to be
published in the next issue of the Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists.
Most of the weapons-useable material is in Russia,
followed by the United States.
In response to intelligence reports that
terrorists are interested in acquiring nuclear
weapons, the United States and Russia are working
with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) to recover and secure all U.S. and Russian
bomb-grade material spread across the globe.
Other states with some plutonium or HEU include
the other declared nuclear powers -- Britain,
France and China -- as well as Belgium, Italy,
Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland and former nuclear power South Africa,
ISIS says.
North Korea, which withdrew from the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) last year, had some
15 to 39 kg of plutonium and two to nine nuclear
weapons at the end of 2003, according to a table
in the article.
The article says that military plutonium stocks
are also growing in Israel, Pakistan and India --
countries known to possess nuclear weapons but
which have not signed the NPT and are therefore
not subject to IAEA safeguards.
The fact that states outside the NPT continue to
make bomb material highlights the need for ``an
international ban on the production of fissile
material for nuclear weapons,'' it says.
Albright and Kramer are not optimistic: ``Civil
plutonium stocks are not expected to decrease in
the next 15 years.''
WORRIES ABOUT SECURITY
It takes around 10 kg of plutonium-239 or 16-25 kg
of HEU enriched to around 90 percent uranium-235
(U-235) to fuel a weapon. ISIS estimates that at
the end of 2003 there was a total of 1,855 tonnes
of plutonium and 1,900 tonnes of HEU globally.
Most of the plutonium was in civilian hands, while
the HEU was mostly in military stocks.
Some of the weapons-useable nuclear material
produced around the world is disposed of, but the
total amount keeps growing, Albright and Kramer
say in their article, an advance copy of which was
provided to Reuters.
``This is worrisome not only because the world has
yet to come up with an accepted method of
plutonium disposition but also from a security
standpoint -- how safe is that plutonium and
HEU?''
Coastal countries like Ireland, New Zealand and
Peru complain about the security of transporting
nuclear materials through their territorial
waters. These countries say that dangerous
shipments of fissile or highly radioactive
materials are often moved through their waters
without their knowledge.
The environmental pressure group Greenpeace says
on its Web site that 140 kg of plutonium -- enough
for at least 14 weapons -- is now en route to
France, where it is to be converted into nuclear
reactor MOX fuel.
*****************************************************************
17 SF Chronicle: Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons
Program was touted publicly, then came official gag order
[kdavidson@sfchronicle.com] Monday, October 4, 2004
The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars
investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter,
the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons.
The most powerful potential energy source presently thought to be
available to humanity, antimatter is a term normally heard in
science-fiction films and TV shows, whose heroes fly
"antimatter-powered spaceships" and do battle with "antimatter
guns."
But antimatter itself isn't fiction; it actually exists and has
been intensively studied by physicists since the 1930s. In a
sense, matter and antimatter are the yin and yang of reality:
Every type of subatomic particle has its antimatter counterpart.
But when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each
other in an immense burst of energy.
During the Cold War, the Air Force funded numerous scientific
studies of the basic physics of antimatter. With the knowledge
gained, some Air Force insiders are beginning to think seriously
about potential military uses -- for example, antimatter bombs
small enough to hold in one's hand, and antimatter engines for
24/7 surveillance aircraft.
More cataclysmic possible uses include a new generation of super
weapons -- either pure antimatter bombs or antimatter-triggered
nuclear weapons; the former wouldn't emit radioactive fallout.
Another possibility is antimatter- powered "electromagnetic
pulse" weapons that could fry an enemy's electric power grid and
communications networks, leaving him literally in the dark and
unable to operate his society and armed forces.
Following an initial inquiry from The Chronicle this summer, the
Air Force forbade its employees from publicly discussing the
antimatter research program. Still, details on the program appear
in numerous Air Force documents distributed over the Internet
prior to the ban.
These include an outline of a March 2004 speech by an Air Force
official who, in effect, spilled the beans about the Air Force's
high hopes for antimatter weapons. On March 24, Kenneth Edwards,
director of the "revolutionary munitions" team at the Munitions
Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida was keynote
speaker at the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
conference in Arlington, Va.
In that talk, Edwards discussed the potential uses of a type of
antimatter called positrons.
Physicists have known about positrons or "antielectrons" since
the early 1930s, when Caltech scientist Carl Anderson discovered
a positron flying through a detector in his laboratory. That
discovery, and the later discovery of "antiprotons" by Berkeley
scientists in the 1950s, upheld a 1920s theory of antimatter
proposed by physicist Paul Dirac.
In 1929, Dirac suggested that the building blocks of atoms --
electrons (negatively charged particles) and protons (positively
charged particles) -- have antimatter counterparts: antielectrons
and antiprotons. One fundamental difference between matter and
antimatter is that their subatomic building blocks carry opposite
electric charges. Thus, while an ordinary electron is negatively
charged, an antielectron is positively charged (hence the term
positrons, which means "positive electrons"); and while an
ordinary proton is positively charged, an antiproton is negative.
The real excitement, though, is this: If electrons or protons
collide with their antimatter counterparts, they annihilate each
other. In so doing, they unleash more energy than any other known
energy source, even thermonuclear bombs.
The energy from colliding positrons and antielectrons "is 10
billion times ... that of high explosive," Edwards explained in
his March speech. Moreover, 1 gram of antimatter, about 1/25th of
an ounce, would equal "23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy."
Thus "positron energy conversion," as he called it, would be a
"revolutionary energy source" of interest to those who wage war.
It almost defies belief, the amount of explosive force available
in a speck of antimatter -- even a speck that is too small to
see. For example: One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as
much energy as 37.8 kilograms (83 pounds) of TNT, according to
Edwards' March speech. A simple calculation, then, shows that
about 50-millionths of a gram could generate a blast equal to the
explosion (roughly 4,000 pounds of TNT, according to the FBI) at
the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Unlike regular nuclear bombs, positron bombs wouldn't eject
plumes of radioactive debris. When large numbers of positrons and
antielectrons collide, the primary product is an invisible but
extremely dangerous burst of gamma radiation. Thus, in principle,
a positron bomb could be a step toward one of the military's
dreams from the early Cold War: a so-called "clean" superbomb
that could kill large numbers of soldiers without ejecting
radioactive contaminants over the countryside.
A copy of Edwards' speech onNIAC's Web site emphasizes this
advantage of positron weapons in bright red letters: "No Nuclear
Residue."
But talk of "clean" superbombs worries critics. " 'Clean' nuclear
weapons are more dangerous than dirty ones because they are more
likely to be used," said an e-mail from science historian George
Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.,
author of "Project Orion," a 2002 study on a Cold War-era attempt
to design a nuclear spaceship. Still, Dyson adds, antimatter
weapons are "a long, long way off."
Why so far off? One reason is that at present, there's no fast
way to mass produce large amounts of antimatter from particle
accelerators. With present techniques, the price tag for
100-billionths of a gram of antimatter would be $6 billion,
according to an estimate by scientists at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center and elsewhere, who hope to launch antimatter-fueled
spaceships.
Another problem is the terribly unruly behavior of positrons
whenever physicists try to corral them into a special container.
Inside these containers, known as Penning traps, magnetic fields
prevent the antiparticles from contacting the material wall of
the container -- lest they annihilate on contact. Unfortunately,
because like-charged particles repel each other, the positrons
push each other apart and quickly squirt out of the trap.
If positrons can't be stored for long periods, they're as useless
to the military as an armored personnel carrier without a gas
tank. So Edwards is funding investigations of ways to make
positrons last longer in storage.
Edwards' point man in that effort is Gerald Smith, former
chairman of physics and Antimatter Project leader at Pennsylvania
State University. Smith now operates a small firm, Positronics
Research LLC, in Santa Fe, N.M. So far, the Air Force has given
Smith and his colleagues $3.7 million for positron research,
Smith told The Chronicle in August.
Smith is looking to store positrons in a quasi-stable form called
positronium. A positronium "atom" (as physicists dub it) consists
of an electron and antielectron, orbiting each other. Normally
these two particles would quickly collide and self-annihilate
within a fraction of a second -- but by manipulating electrical
and magnetic fields in their vicinity, Smith hopes to make
positronium atoms last much longer.
Smith's storage effort is the "world's first attempt to store
large quantities of positronium atoms in a laboratory
experiment," Edwards noted in his March speech. "If successful,
this approach will open the door to storing militarily
significant quantities of positronium atoms."
Officials at Eglin Air Force Base initially agreed
enthusiastically to try to arrange an interview with Edwards.
"We're all very excited about this technology," spokesman Rex
Swenson at Eglin's Munitions Directorate told The Chronicle in
late July. But Swenson backed out in August after he was
overruled by higher officials in the Air Force and Pentagon.
Reached by phone in late September, Edwards repeatedly declined
to be interviewed. His superiors gave him "strict instructions
not to give any interviews personally. I'm sorry about that --
this (antimatter) project is sort of my grandchild. ...
"(But) I agree with them (that) we're just not at the point where
we need to be doing any public interviews."
Air Force spokesman Douglas Karas at the Pentagon also declined
to comment last week.
In the meantime, the Air Force has been investigating the
possibility of making use of a powerful positron-generating
accelerator under development at Washington State University in
Pullman, Wash. One goal: to see if positrons generated by the
accelerator can be stored for long periods inside a new type of
"antimatter trap" proposed by scientists, including Washington
State physicist Kelvin Lynn, head of the school's Center for
Materials Research.
A new generation of military explosives is worth developing, and
antimatter might fill the bill, Lynn told The Chronicle: "If we
spend another $10 billion (using ordinary chemical techniques),
we're going to get better high explosives, but the gains are
incremental because we're getting near the theoretical limits of
chemical energy."
Besides, Lynn is enthusiastic about antimatter because he
believes it could propel futuristic space rockets.
"I think," he said, "we need to get off this planet, because I'm
afraid we're going to destroy it."
E-mail Keay Davidson at [kdavidson@sfchronicle.com] .
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ
*****************************************************************
18 Daily Times: N-black market dismantled
October 05, 2004
Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and India are exploring options for the
peaceful resolution of the longstanding Jammu and Kashmir
dispute, said Foreign Office Spokesman Masood Khan on Monday.
“For the first time, during their New York meeting, President
Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh crossed the
barrier and talked about possible options on Jammu and Kashmir.
There is work in progress and there is will on both sides to move
toward a resolution of the issue,” said Mr Khan at his weekly
press briefing.
The two leaders agreed to explore possible options for a peaceful
negotiated settlement of the dispute, he said. Describing it as a
step forward, he said the two countries would go into these
options in due course.
Mr Khan denied that Pakistan had abandoned its principled
position on Jammu and Kashmir. He also emphasised that Pakistan
has not changed its policy on the United Nations Security Council
resolutions on Kashmir, which call for a resolution of the
dispute in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people.
However, he pointed out that Pakistan and India had been unable
to make any headway on the Kashmir issue for the last 56 years.
To make headway, he said, both sides had to go beyond their
stated positions and demonstrate flexibility.
Mr Khan said there should be a solution of the Kashmir issue in
accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people and which was
acceptable to Pakistan and India. Replying to questions about the
Pakistan-India dialogue process, the spokesman said the two
countries had a full calendar of meetings for the last quarter of
this year.
Foreign secretaries from both countries will meet in December,
preceded by several meetings on trade, defence and security,
maritime security, narcotics, and nuclear and conventional
confidence building measures.
About Siachin, he said, the defence secretaries of Pakistan and
India agreed during their last meeting on disengagement and
redeployment. Defence experts will meet soon to hold further
discussions. Mr Khan said Pakistan and Germany would have
wide-ranging talks to strengthen trade, economic and investment
cooperation during Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s two-day visit
to Islamabad on October 10 and 11.
He said the German leader would discuss bilateral, regional and
international issues with President Pervez Musharraf and Prime
Minister Shaukat Aziz. The German chancellor will be accompanied
by 15 top businessmen and there will be a business forum in
Islamabad during his visit.
The spokesman said the two sides could also discuss the expansion
of the UN Security Council.
Mr Khan said the British defence secretary was also arriving in
Islamabad today (Tuesday) for talks on various issues with
Pakistani leaders.
He said Pakistan was a responsible nuclear weapons state and
would continue to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) and the international community to eliminate
nuclear proliferation. However, he said Pakistan would not allow
IAEA access to its scientists. He told a questioner that UN envoy
to Iraq Ahsraf Jehangir Qazi visited Pakistan and did not make
any request for Pakistani troops to Iraq.
He said Pakistan supported the electoral process in Afghanistan
because it could bring about peace, security and stability for
that country. He said Pakistan was also cooperating to register
Afghan refugees in Pakistan as voters. He said more than 550,000
voters had been registered in Pakistan.
Mr Khan said Pakistan has said it would not allow any country
including the US to question Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, claiming that
the ‘Nuclear Black Marketing Network’ in the country had been
wiped out, Online adds.
He said Pakistan had dismantled the nuclear black marketing
network in the country and the government was ready to continue
to cooperate with International Atomic Energy Agency in this
respect in future. However, the IAEA or any one else would not be
given access to Dr AQ Khan or other nuclear scientists. He said
the US had not asked Pakistan to hand over Dr Khan or any other
nuclear scientist to it. “We will not hand them over to the US,”
he added. Home | Main
N-black market dismantled Dr Khan has taken his medicine,
says Rice At least four militants killed in Waziristan ISI
briefing: Terrorists working in splinter groups, says Musharraf
Hoon making surprise visit to Pakistan, India 45 killed in Iraq
attacks New York | Walking tall
Daily Times - All Rights Reserved Site developed and hosted by
WorldCALL Internet Solutions [http://www.wcis.com.pk]
*****************************************************************
19 [NukeNet] WashPost on new reactors at North Anna
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 14:42:46 -0700
Proposed Doubling of Nuclear Plant Arouses Opposition
By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 3, 2004; Page C05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2904-2004Oct2.html
Twenty-five years after a power company last got permission to build a
nuclear reactor in this country, Dominion has signaled its interest in
doubling the size of its North Anna power plant, 80 miles south of
Washington, with two new reactors.
The company has filed an initial application -- called an "early site
permit" -- to build two more reactors at its plant on Lake Anna. It is a
preliminary step in a complex process that, if followed, would take more
than a decade and cost millions of dollars. And it has attracted
attention from anti-nuclear activists and some local residents.
Federal energy officials predict that electricity needs will rise
nearly 40 percent by 2020, and Dominion, which provides 17 percent of
Virginia's electricity, says expanding the North Anna facility would
help meet the demands of a ballooning Washington area population. North
Anna powers 450,000 homes. Doubling its size would feed an additional
400,000, the company says.
Currently, Virginia gets 35 percent of its power from nuclear sources,
and Maryland gets 28 percent, compared with the national average of 24
percent. As America's appetite for electricity expands, the Bush
administration is looking to the nuclear industry to help meet the
demand by adding the equivalent of 50 new reactors to the country's 103
by 2020.
But Dominion's intentions, however preliminary, have spawned
opposition.
Anti-nuclear activists have descended on the Lake Anna area since the
company filed a preliminary permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission last fall, visiting fairs, diners and convenience stores to
speak out against the expansion. A group based in Charlottesville has
sprung up, calling itself the People's Alliance for Clean Energy, and a
conference on the expansion at the Lake Anna plant was scheduled for
this weekend at the University of Virginia.
In the recreation-minded community that has grown around the lake,
there has been reaction of a different sort.
Bill Borduin, a retiree from New Jersey who chairs a local committee on
the possible expansion, said residents worry that two more reactors,
which would need to be cooled by Lake Anna water, would mean a drop in
water levels, leaving boats beached and docks high and dry. Some are
concerned that the water used to cool the reactors would be so warm when
it reenters the lake that it would raise lake temperature levels too
high for comfortable swimming.
"Also, I bet it would create an enormous amount of humidity," Borduin
said.
The local civic association also has questioned how the water
temperature and levels might affect fish.
Such leisure-oriented concerns should not be surprising. Most of the
people who live around Lake Anna, which straddles Spotsylvania, Orange
and Louisa counties, moved there to be near the 13,000-acre lake,
created in 1971 to cool water for the nuclear power plant, located in
Louisa County.
In addition to $10 million in annual tax revenue for the county, the
plant provides 900 jobs, making Dominion the largest employer in Louisa
County.
Fitzgerald A. Barnes, chairman of the Louisa County Board of
Supervisors, said he has not gotten a single phone call about Dominion's
application.
"Not nay or yea," he said. "People here worry about working and trying
to raise their families."
Anti-nuclear activists bemoan the lack of local passion about North
Anna.
Abhaya Thiele, a volunteer with the People's Alliance, said it was
"disheartening" to see how few people from the Louisa area have come to
public hearings. She said officials are not pressing Dominion enough on
its proposal and nuclear safety in general. "Democracy has been
thwarted," she said.
Richard Zuercher, Dominion's spokesman on nuclear issues, em
phasized
that the steps the company has taken are very preliminary.
"We haven't committed to build anything at North Anna," Zuercher said.
"From our standpoint, we're a forward-thinking company, and our
customers expect us to be looking out for their energy needs in the
future."
The process of adding nuclear power capacity is long and costly. Since
1979, when the industry was thrust into chaos after an accident at Three
Mile Island melted the core of a Pennsylvania reactor, the procedure for
obtaining permits for new facilities has been overhauled. Officials say
the entire power industry is watching closely as Dominion and two other
companies -- in Illinois and Mississippi -- start down the regulatory
road.
If Dominion decides to pursue the project, it would take 10 years to
complete it at the speediest pace: six years minimum to get the
construction permits and operating license and four years to build,
Zuercher said.
New technologies have sent the cost of new reactors skyward. Separate
from the millions invested in the permitting process, reactors cost
about $1.5 billion apiece. In the 1970s, the two now at North Anna cost
$1.3 billion together.
The federal government is offering financial help to Dominion as it
navigates the long permitting process. The Energy Department is
investing $5 million to help Dominion through this first step, the quest
for a preliminary permit that banks the government's approval for 20
years. The company also has asked for $250 million in federal money to
help get the required construction and operating permits. Action on that
request probably will not come until after the November election,
federal and Dominion officials predict.
Dominion's characterization of its permit application as "preliminary"
is no comfort for opponents of nuclear power.
"Our biggest concern is this is going forward and no one has considered
if it's a good or bad thing," said Brendan Hoffman, with the national
group Public Citizen, which has raised concerns about nuclear accidents
and questions about how nuclear waste would be handled.
Spotsylvania, Va., resident Aviv Goldsmith, 45, who developed small
power plants before he retired, is advising Virginia opponents. Among
his concerns is the proximity to Washington of what could be a
relatively large concentration of reactors at a single plant, especially
at a time when concern about terrorism is high.
"Why would we want more nuclear material so close to the heart of the
government of this country?" he asked.
As part of the permitting process, several groups petitioned the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, complaining about a number of issues
regarding nuclear waste disposal, the amount of water available for
cooling at Lake Anna and the environmental impact of the new reactors on
rockfish and other aquatic life in Lake Anna and the watershed of the
North Anna River. The commission agreed that environmental issues need a
closer look, but it dismissed seven of the nine issues raised by the
petition.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
_______________________________________________________________________
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20 A No-Flight Zone for Indian Point & Reactors Throughout USA?
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 01:11:16 -0400
Can anyone address the writer's points re time, mileage and the
potential closing of air ports nationally with all the economic
and personal ramifications involved?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/opinion/opinionspecial/l03indian.html
A No-Flight Zone for Indian Point?
Published: October 3, 2004
To the Editor:
While the issues of the Indian Point nuclear power plant raised
by Rory Kennedy ("A Target on the Hudson," Op-Ed, Sept. 5)
certainly warrant close review, and the impact on our region of
virtually any mishap there would be one of great harm, the first
suggestion she makes - a no-flight zone - is a red herring.
Prohibited airspace at Indian Point, say a five-mile ring, would
do only two things. First, it would, to a degree, disable flight
patterns in the region, particularly to Westchester County
Airport (and conceivably make flight patterns more concentrated
to the south and east of the airport), not to mention create
consequential delays in peak periods and bad weather. In part,
this is because a key bad-weather arrival route, its path
dictated by the alignment of the primary runway, crosses the
region east of (but not over) Indian Point.
Second, if prohibited airspace went in only at Indian Point, it
would raise the question of why such zones are not installed at
the 103 other plants around the nation. Doing so would create a
patchwork of aerial roadblocks that could inhibit air
transportation and close airports nationally.
Of most consequence, however, is that such a prohibited area
would be useless, because a jet entering such airspace with the
intent of an attack would be, in relatively few seconds, upon its
target. If somebody in government wants to establish, say, a
30-mile zone that closes several airports, has missiles ready 24
hours a day, and where any airplane or airliner entering that
zone is immediately shot out of the sky, including airplanes that
end up there inadvertently through navigation error or equipment
malfunction, then let him or her propose such a Draconian
solution.
Berl Brechner Croton-on-Hudson The writer is a director of the
Westchester Aviation Association.
*****************************************************************
21 iafrica.com: sa news Much foreign interest in SA nuke reactor
[http://iafrica.com/news]
CAPE TOWN
Posted Mon, 04 Oct 2004
Foreign interest in South Africa's plans to develop a small,
safe, clean and cheap nuclear pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR)
is high, says Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin.
"There are constant requests for information from different
governments, utilities and research institutions on the PBMR
technology," he said in a written reply, tabled on Monday, to a
parliamentary question.
On the recent withdrawal of United States gas and electricity
utility Exelon from the project, he said PBMR (Pty) Ltd would
replace this investor, and the shares would not be taken up by an
existing one.
"The present investors in the PBMR are Eskom, the Industrial
Development Corporation, and British Nuclear Fuels."
On the total development costs of the PBMR to date, and the
projected total costs, Erwin said: "Given that there are other
shareholders involved, and the project is in a fund-raising
exercise, this information is confidential and cannot be
divulged."
Last year, the department of environmental affairs and tourism
gave the project a qualified thumbs-up, following a three-year
environmental impact assessment.
Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk is currently
considering appeals against this decision, a process he is
expected to complete before the end of this year.
The next stage of the PBMR project will involve building a
demonstration module at Koeberg in the Western Cape, as well as
an associated fuel plant at Pelindaba, near Pretoria.
Going ahead with these will be subject to the SA National
Nuclear Regulator issuing a construction licence, and the
approval of Cabinet.
Copyright © 2002 iafrica.com, a division of Metropolis*.
Reproduction without permission is prohibited. All rights
*****************************************************************
22 NRC: NRC Staff Seeks Public Comment on Draft Report That Finds ANO-2 License Renewal
Environmentally Acceptable
News Release - Region IV - 2004-04 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY
COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs, Region IV No. IV-04-041
October 4, 2004 CONTACT: Victor Dricks Phone: 817-860-8128
E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov [opa4@nrc.gov]
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has reached the
preliminary conclusion that there are no environmental impacts
that would preclude the renewal of the operating license for
Arkansas Nuclear One, Unit 2 (ANO-2), in Russellville, Ark.
The information is contained in a draft environmental impact
statement on the proposed license renewal. The statement is open
for public comment until November 24, and will also be the
subject of a public meeting October 21, in Russellville.
The NRC has been reviewing the application for renewal of the
ANO-2 operating license since Entergy Operations, Inc., which
operates the plant, filed it in October 2003. Under NRC
regulations, the original operating license for a nuclear power
plant is issued for up to 40 years. The license may be renewed
for up to an additional 20 years if NRC requirements are met.
The current operating license for ANO-2 will expire July 17,
2018.
The possible environmental effects of an additional 20 years of
nuclear plant operation are described in the NRCs Generic
Environmental Impact Statement, or GEIS (NUREG-1437). The NRC
issues a site-specific supplement to the GEIS on each plant
requesting license renewal to address the potential
environmental impacts. Issues specific to ANO-2 are addressed in
Supplement 19, which will be issued in draft form in September.
The NRC staffs preliminary recommendation is that the
Commission determined that the adverse environmental impacts of
license renewal for ANO-2 are not so great that preserving the
option of license renewal for energy-planning decision makers
would be unreasonable.
On Thursday, October 21, the NRC staff will hold a public
meeting to obtain comments on the draft supplement to the GEIS.
The meeting will be held at the Holiday Inn, 2407 N. Arkansas
Avenue in Russellville, from 7 to 10 p.m. The NRC staff will
host a informal discussion at 6 p.m. NRC staff will be available
to answer questions and provide additional information about the
license renewal process during the informal session, but no
comments or written statements on the draft supplement will be
accepted at that time. The meeting will include a discussion by
the NRC staff and its contractors on the contents of the draft
supplement to the GEIS.
For planning purposes, interested parties are encouraged to
pre-register by contacting Thomas Kenyon at 1-800- 368-5642,
extension 1120, or by e-mail at ANOEIS@nrc.gov [ANOEIS@nrc.gov]
no later than October 15. Interested parties may also register
to speak before the start of the meeting. Time for comments may
be limited to accommodate all speakers.
Written comments on the draft supplement to the GEIS will also
be considered by the NRC staff. Comments should be submitted
either by mail to the Chief, Rules and Directives Branch,
Division of Administrative Services, Mail Stop T-6 D 59, U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, or by
e-mail to ANOEIS@nrc.gov [ANOEIS@nrc.gov] .
The draft supplement to the GEIS, along with other related
documents, is available for public inspection in the NRC Public
Document Room at NRC headquarters, One White Flint North, 11555
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md.; or electronically on the
Internet at
www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1437/supple
ment19/ or the NRC Public Electronic Reading Room at
www.nrc.gov/reading-rm.html. Assistance in using the electronic
reading room is available by calling the NRC Public Document
Room at (301) 415-4737. In addition, the Ross Pendergraft
Library at Arkansas Tech University, 305 West Q Street,
Russellville, Ark., has agreed to make the draft supplement to
the GEIS available for public inspection.
At the conclusion of the public comment period on November 24
the NRC staff will consider and address the comments provided
and issue a final supplement to the GEIS. That supplement will
contain a recommendation regarding the environmental
acceptability of the proposed license renewal.
Last revised Monday, October 04, 2004
*****************************************************************
23 NRC: University of Pittsburgh Environmental Assessment and Final
FR Doc 04-22197
[Federal Register: October 4, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 191)]
[Notices] [Page 59278] From the Federal Register Online via GPO
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr04oc04-113]
Finding of No Significant Impact for Exemption From 10 CFR
35.615(F)(3) The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is
authorizing the University of Pittsburgh, License No.
37-00245-09, an exemption to 10 CFR 35.615(f)(3), to permit the
licensee to have a qualified neurosurgeon physically present in
place of an Authorized User (AU) during the use of its gamma
stereotactic radiosurgery (GSR) units.
Environmental Assessment Identification of the Proposed Action
The University of Pittsburgh has a NRC license (License No.
37- 00245-09) which authorizes the medical use of three GSR
units.
The licensee has requested, in a letter dated April 9, 2004, that
NRC grant a exemption to 10 CFR 35.615(f)(3), which requires an
AU and Authorized Medical Physicist (AMP) to be physically
present throughout all patients treatments with a GSR unit.
Need for the Proposed Action The licensee has three GSR units
located in the same wing of the hospital. Because of its
expanding patient workload, the licensee states that there will
be times when it will need to be able to perform simultaneous
treatments with the GSR units. The licensee is requesting an
exemption to 10 CFR 35.615(f)(3) to allow the use of a qualified
neurosurgeon, instead of an AU, to be present throughout patients
treatments involving the GSR units, in addition to the presence
of the AMP. The AU will be immediately available to respond to an
emergency at any of the units.
The exemption is needed so that University of Pittsburgh can
continue to provide optimum medical treatment to its patients.
The exemption would allow the University of Pittsburgh to perform
simultaneous treatments with the GSR units. The exemption would
allow better participation of the AU in dose treatment planning
and patient set-up, without requiring the addition of a second
AU. In evaluating the licensee's performance conforming to the
current requirements in 10 CFR 35.615(f)(3), NRC inspections
since April 2000 have not identified any violations nor medical
events associated with the use of the GSR units.
Environmental Impacts of the Proposed Action The gamma
stereotactic radiosurgery sources are sealed sources and no
material will be released to the environment. All the sources are
contained within the unit, as verified by periodic spot checks
performed by the licensee. The proposed action does not increase
public radiation exposure. There will be no impact on the
environment as a result of the proposed action.
Alternatives to the Proposed Action As required by Section
102(2)(E) of NEPA (42 USC 4322(2)(E)), a possible alternative to
the final action has been considered.
The alternative is to deny the exemption request, which would
require the licensee to have at least two AUs and two AMPs
physically present when simultaneous treatments are conducted at
the licensed facility, which would significantly increase the
cost of patient care. The alternative option would not produce a
gain in protecting the human environment, and it would negatively
impact the licensee's provision of medical care to it patients.
Alternative Use of Resources No alternative use of resources was
considered because of the reasons stated above.
Agencies and Persons Consulted The Advisory Committee on the
Medical Uses of Isotopes (ACMUI) has been consulted to evaluate
this exemption request. ACMUI's recommendation has been
considered in responding to the licensee's request.
Identification of Source Used Letters from the University of
Pittsburgh, to NRC, Region I, dated April 9, 2004, and June 3,
2004.
Finding of No Significant Impact Based on the above environmental
assesment, the Commission has concluded that the proposed action
will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human
environment. Accordingly, NRC has determined that a Finding of No
Significant Impact is appropriate and preparation of an
environmental impact statement is not warranted.
The licensee's letters are available for inspection, and/or
copying for a fee, in the NRC Region I, Public Document Room, 475
Allendale Road, King of Prussia, PA 19406. The documents are
available electronically for public inspection from the Publicly
Available Records (PARS) component of NRC's Documents Access and
Management System (ADAMS), accession numbers ML041190282 and
ML041620397, respectively. ADAMS is accessible from the NRC Web
site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html]
.
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 24th day of September, 2004.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commissinon.
Sandra Wastler, Section Chief, Material Safety and Inspection
Branch, Division of Industrial and Medical Nuclear Safety, Office
of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.
[FR Doc. 04-22197 Filed 10-1-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M
*****************************************************************
24 CBC - New Brunswick: Group favours renewable energy over nuclear
[http://cbc.ca/onair/]
WebPosted Oct 4 2004 02:21 PM ADT
MONCTON — A newly formed Atlantic Energy Coalition is calling
on the New Brunswick government to decommission the Point
Lepreau nuclear reactor.
The coalition is made up of environmental groups from across
Atlantic Canada.
David Coon, policy director, Conservation Council of New
Brunswick says the Lord government should retire Lepreau and
invest in renewable sources of energy like wind, natural gas and
tidal projects.
Coon says that would spread jobs across the province.
"Moving toward more renewables will provide development across
this province on an equitable basis in a much fairer way where
there will be jobs, there'll be economic opportunities, new
businesses spring up in every county of this province, not just
concentrated in a few areas, not like we've seen in the past."
The energy coalition says convincing the government to scrap
plans for a $1.4 billion refit for Point Lepreau will be its
main priority.
Copyright © CBC 2004
*****************************************************************
25 NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting
FR Doc 04-22308
[Federal Register: October 4, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 191)]
[Notices] [Page 59278-59279] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr04oc04-114]
AGENCY HOLDING THE MEETING: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
DATE: Week of October 4, 2004.
PLACE: Commissioner's Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike,
Rockville, Maryland.
STATUS: Public and Closed.
ADDITIONAL MATTER TO BE CONSIDERED: Week of October 4, 2004
Thursday, October 7, 2004 9:25 a.m. Affirmation Session (Public
Meeting)(Tentative) a. State of Alaska Department of
Transportation and Public Facilities (Confirmatory Order
Modifying License); appeals of LBP-04-16 by NRC Staff and
Licensee (Tentative) b. Private Fuel Storage (Independent Spent
Fuel Storage Installation) Docket No. 72-22-ISFSI (Tentative) c.
USEC, Inc. (Tentative) d. Citizen's Awareness Network's (CAN)
Motion to Dismiss the Yankee Rowe License Termination Proceeding
or to Re-Notice It (Tentative) e. Duke Energy Corp. (Catawba
Nuclear Station, Units 1 and 2); Licensing Board's certification
of its ruling on ``need to know'' during discovery (Tentative) f.
Final Rulemaking to Add New Section 10 CFR 50.69, ``Risk-
Informed Categorization and Treatment of Structures, Systems, and
Components for Nuclear Power
[[Page 59279]] Reactors'' (Tentative) The schedule for Commission
meetings is subject to change on short notice. To verify the
status of meetings call (recording)--(301) 415- 1292. Contact
person for more information: Dave Gamberoni, (301) 415- 1651.
The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the Internet
at: http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-making/schedule.html
[http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving
FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-makin
g/schedule.html] . The NRC provides reasonable accommodation to
individuals with disabilities where appropriate. If you need a
reasonable accommodation to participate in these public meetings,
or need this meeting notice or the transcript or other
information from the public meetings in another format (e.g.
braille, large print), please notify the NRC's Disability Program
Coordinator, August Spector, at 301-415-7080, TDD; 301-4152100,
or by e-mail at aks@nrc.gov [aks@nrc.gov] . Determinations on
requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a
case-by-case basis.
This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred
subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like
to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the
Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301-415-1969). In addition,
distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is
available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission
meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic
message to dkw@nrc.gov [dkw@nrc.gov] . Dated: September 29, 2004.
Dave Gamberoni, Office of the Secretary.
[FR Doc. 04-22308 Filed 9-30-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M
*****************************************************************
26 SA Business Day: Pebble bed must still go to cabinet - Mpahlwa
[http://www.businessday.co.za
By Donwald Pressly
Proceeding to the next phase of the pebble bed modular reactor -
the building of a demonstration module at Koeberg and an
associated fuel plant at Pelindaba - was still subject to the
issuing of a construction licence by the South African National
Nuclear Regulator and approval by the South African cabinet, says
Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa.
In reply to a question from Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Ian
Davidson, who asked what the current development status was of
the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) and who the present
investors in the project were, the minister said: "The detailed
feasibility phase which included a three-year environmental
impact assessment (EIA) and public participation process has been
completed.
In 2003, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
issued a positive Record of Decision on the EIA.
"The department found the project was, with some conditions,
acceptable from an environmental impact point of view."
The next phase would also be subject to the approval of the
investors, who were Eskom, the Industrial Development Corporation
and British Nuclear Fuels.
Asked what the total development costs to date were and what the
projected total development costs were, the minister said: "Given
that there are other shareholders involved and the project is
(involved) in a fund-raising exercise, this information is
confidential and cannot be divulged."
Asked whether there had been any international interest in
purchasing the PBMR, he said there were "constant requests for
information from different governments, utilities and research
institutions on the PBMR technology". He provided no further
details.
I-Net Bridge Tuesday 05 October 2004
*****************************************************************
27 Waco Tribune: Nethaway: Don't fear nuclear power
10/1/04
[http://www.wacotrib.com
ROWLAND NETHAWAY Senior editor
Americans need to get over their irrational fear of nuclear
power.
Without nuclear power or a miracle breakthrough in a
cost-effective alternative energy source, Americans can look
forward to a steady erosion in their quality of life.
As everyone knows, the U.S. economy is heavily dependent on oil.
The recent $50 a barrel price marks the fastest growth in demand
since Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution in Iran disrupted the
world's oil supply.
The price of oil will go up and down, but demand for oil has
nowhere to go but up.
Every impoverished, under-developed nation wants to improve the
lives of its citizens, a moral imperative supported by U.S.
foreign policy. The move from under-developed to developed means
greater eneregy demands. There is a direct correlation between a
nation's prosperity and its energy consumption.
With China and India, the world's two most populous nations, on
the road toward becoming economic powerhouses, demand for oil
pushes upwards, escalating the price of gasoline, diesel fuel,
home heating oil and millions of everyday petrochemical
by-products.
The price of oil has nearly doubled since last year. Higher costs
drive up the cost of doing business, which means higher prices
for goods and services while employers cut back on salary
increases and employee benefits. Some companies will send their
employees to the unemployment lines.
The United States needs a comprehensive national energy policy
that includes a heavy emphasis on conservation along with
research and development of alternative energy sources.
----National lack of will to conserve----
Conservation can offer some immediate relief to the demand for
energy, which now is routinely wasted because of a lack of will
to regulate energy efficiency in commercial buildings, private
homes, transportation and other areas.
Research and development of alternative energy is a long shot,
but it should be a national priority in the same way that the
government funds cancer research. Wind, solar, biomass,
geothermal, hydrogen fuel cells and other environmentally
friendly alternative energy sources must be pursued.
All fossil fuels oil, coal and natural gas present
environmental problems because they emit a variety of polluting
combustion by-products that include carbon dioxide, the major
greenhouse gas.
Other fossil-fuel pollutants include nitrogen oxide and sulfur
dioxide. The United States has an abundance of coal, but it is
the most polluting of the fossil fuels.
Nuclear power can produce as much energy as the nation needs.
Electricity from nuclear plants could produce reliable supplies
of hydrogen or other alternative fuels and even produce fresh
water from the oceans.
In addition, nuclear power does not pollute the air with
combustion by-products.
It is estimated that the 438 nuclear power plants in operation in
2000 reduced the emissions of carbon dioxide worldwide by 500
million metric tons. Similarly, nuclear power plants also reduced
or mitigated the increase of millions of tons of nitrogen oxide
and sulfur dioxide.
The problem, of course, is that Americans are afraid of nuclear
power after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
No one was hurt or made ill by the Three Mile Island incident in
1979 near Harrisburg, Pa., when a reactor lost its coolant
causing a partial meltdown of its uranium core.
The 1986 explosion and fire in the graphite core of the Chernobyl
plant in the Ukraine killed at least 31 people and is the worst
nuclear accident in history.
The United States has stopped building nuclear power plants but
still has more than 100 working plants that continue to operate
safely and efficiently.
There are risks, of course, but they are manageable. The day may
be coming when we must choose between lowering our quality of
life, polluting the environment or living with the remote risk
associated with building new nuclear power plants.
Rowland Nethaway's column appears Wednesday and Friday. E-mail:
RNethaway@wacotrib.com
*****************************************************************
28 [du-list] Pantex nuclear workers
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 19:38:03 -0700
Cold War Casualties: Waiting for word
Workers look to Pantex's past for answers to illness, death
By JIM McBRIDE
The Amarillo Globe-News
October 3, 2004
Ted Shutt died waiting - just like he thought he would.
Shutt, a soft-spoken man with a friendly smile, testified in an
Amarillo public hearing four years ago that he retired from his
Pantex job healthy as a horse. But soon afterward, doctors cut a
cancerous lobe from his lung.
In March, the former Pantex worker died after cancer spread
throughout his body and took its deadly toll. Shutt, 68, left
behind a wife, a son, a daughter and two grandchildren.
Two years before his death, Shutt predicted he'd never hear the
Labor Department's decision on whether 20 years of dismantling
and assembling nuclear weapons caused the cancer that finally
killed him.
...
for the entire article, see
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/100304/new_pantex.shtml
COMPANIION STORY:
Scientists look for pieces to radiation puzzle
By JIM McBRIDE The Amarillo Globe-News October 3, 2004
For decades, employee radiation monitoring at the Pantex Plant
and other weapons production sites often was a secondary concern
as workers churned out thousands of nuclear warheads, bombs and
artillery shells.
But in April 2000, then Energy Secretary Bill Richardson reversed
the government's long-standing policy of opposing employees'
claims that work-related exposures to radioactive and toxic
materials were killing or sickening them by the thousands.
"We are moving forward to do the right thing by these workers,"
Richardson said as he announced government plans to begin
compensating sick workers and their survivors. "The men and women
who served our nation in the nuclear weapons industries of World
War II and the Cold War labored under dangerous conditions with
some of the most hazardous materials known to mankind."
...
for the entire article, see
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/100304/new_pieces.shtml
*****************************************************************
29 [du-list] NRC Advisory
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 19:38:01 -0700
NRC: NRC Advisory Committee on Medical Uses of Isotopes To Hold a
Teleconference Oct. 5
News Release - 2004-12 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office
of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC
20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 04-121 September 30,
2004
Medical Uses of Isotopes will hold a public teleconference Oct. 5
from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. to discuss recommendations to add a minimum
number of training hours to the alternative training pathway for
Authorized Nuclear Pharmacist status and Authorized User status.
Any member of the public wishing to participate in the
teleconference must contact Angela McIntosh, at 301-415-5030 or
arm@nrc.gov [arm@nrc.gov] for the phone number and pass code.
The transcript and written comments will be available on the
NRCs Web site, at www.nrc.gov and through the NRC Public
Document Room on or about Nov. 12, 2004. Minutes will be
available on or about Dec. 17, 2004.
*****************************************************************
30 [du-list] the war's littlest victim
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 14:43:29 -0700
New York Daily News 29/9/04
The war's littlest victim
He was exposed to depleted uranium. His daughter may be paying
the price.
Guardsman Gerard Darren Matthew, sent home from Iraq with
mysterious illnesses, holds baby daughter, Victoria, who has
deformed hand. He has tested positive for uranium contamination.
In early September 2003, Army National Guard Spec. Gerard
Darren Matthew was sent home from Iraq, stricken by a sudden
illness.
One side of Matthew's face would swell up each morning. He had
constant migraine headaches, blurred vision, blackouts and a
burning sensation whenever he urinated.
The Army transferred him to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in
Washington for further tests, but doctors there could not explain
what was wrong.
Shortly after his return, his wife, Janice, became pregnant. On
June 29, she gave birth to a baby girl, Victoria Claudette.
The baby was missing three fingers and most of her right hand.
Matthew and his wife believe Victoria's shocking deformity has
something to do with her father's illness and the war -
especially since there is no history of birth defects in either
of their families.
They have seen photos of Iraqi babies born with deformities that
are eerily similar.
In June, Matthew contacted the Daily News and asked us to arrange
independent laboratory screening for his urine. This was after
The News had reported that four of seven soldiers from another
National Guard unit, the 442nd Military Police, had tested
positive for depleted uranium (DU).
The independent test of Matthew's urine found him positive for DU
- low-level radioactive waste produced in nuclear plants during
the enrichment of natural uranium.
Because it is twice as heavy as lead, DU has been used by the
Pentagon since the Persian Gulf War in certain types of
"tank-buster" shells, as well as for armor-plating in Abrams
tanks.
Exposure to radioactivity has been associated in some studies
with birth defects in the children of exposed parents.
"My husband went to Iraq to fight for his country," Janice
Matthew said. "I feel the Army should take responsibility for
what's happened."
The couple first learned of the baby's missing fingers during a
routine sonogram of the fetus last April at Lenox Hill Hospital.
Matthew was a truck driver in Iraq with the 719th transport unit
from Harlem. His unit moved supplies from Army bases in Kuwait to
the front lines and as far as Baghdad. On several occasions, he
says, he carried shot-up tanks and destroyed vehicle parts on his
flat-bed back to Kuwait.
After he learned of his unborn child's deformity, Matthew
immediately asked the Army to test his urine for DU. In April, he
provided a 24-hour urine sample to doctors at Fort Dix, N.J.,
where he was waiting to be deactivated.
In May, the Army granted him a 40% disability pension for his
migraine headaches and for a condition called idiopathic
angioedema - unexplained chronic swelling.
But Matthew never got the results of his Army test for DU. When
he called Fort Dix last week, five months after he was tested, he
was told there was no record of any urine specimen from him.
Thankfully, Matthew did not rely solely on the Army bureaucracy -
he went to The News.
Earlier this year, The News submitted urine samples from
Guardsmen of the 442nd to former Army doctor Asaf Durakovic and
Axel Gerdes, a geologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt,
Germany. The German lab specializes in testing for minute
quantities of uranium, a complicated procedure that costs up to
$1,000 per test.
The lab is one of approximately 50 in the world that can detect
quantities as tiny as fentograms - one part per quadrillionth.
A few months ago, The News submitted a 24-hour urine sample from
Matthew to Gerdes. As a control, we also gave the lab 24-hour
urine samples from two Daily News reporters.
The three specimens were marked only with the letters A, B and C,
so the lab could not know which sample belonged to the soldier.
After analyzing all three, Gerdes reported that only sample A -
Matthew's urine - showed clear signs of DU. It contained a total
uranium concentration that was "4 to 8 times higher" than
specimens B and C, Gerdes reported.
"Those levels indicate pretty definitively that he's been exposed
to the DU," said Leonard Dietz, a retired scientist who invented
one of the instruments for measuring uranium isotopes.
According to Army guidelines, the total uranium concentration
Gerdes found in Matthew is within acceptable standards for most
Americans.
But Gerdes questioned the Army's standards, noting that even
minute levels of DU are cause for concern.
"While the levels of DU in Matthew's urine are low," Gerdes said,
"the DU we see in his urine could be 1,000 times higher in
concentration in the lungs."
DU is not like natural uranium, which occurs in the environment.
Natural uranium can be ingested in food and drink but gets
expelled from the body within 24 hours.
DU-contaminated dust, however, is typically breathed into the
lungs and can remain there for years, emitting constant low-level
radiation.
"I'm upset and confused," Matthew said. "I just want answers. Are
they [the Army] going to take care of my baby?"
We track soldiers' sickness
For the last five months, Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez has
chronicled the plight of soldiers who have returned from Iraq
with mysterious illnesses.
His exclusive groundbreaking investigation began with a
front-page story on April 4 that suggested depleted uranium
contamination was far more widespread than the Pentagon would
admit.
At the request of The News, nine soldiers from a New York Army
National Guard company serving in Iraq were tested for radiation
from depleted uranium shells - and four of the ailing G.I.s
tested positive. The day after Gonzalez's story appeared, Army
officials rushed to test all returning members of the company,
the 442nd Military Police, based in Rockland County. By week's
end, the scandal had reverberated all the way to Albany, as Gov.
Pataki joined the list of politicians calling for the Pentagon to
do a better job of testing and treating sick soldiers returning
from the war. Gonzalez's exposé sparked a huge demand for
testing. By mid-April, 800 G.I.s had given the Army urine
samples, and hundreds more were waiting for appointments. Two
weeks later, the Pentagon claimed that none of the soldiers from
the 442nd had tested positive for depleted uranium. But The News'
experts found significant problems with the testing methods.
*****************************************************************
31 [du-list] Media report mentions battlefield scrap metal
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 14:42:51 -0700
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/ny-woafgh033993396oct03,0,7933463.story?coll=ny-lipolitics-print
Citing flaws in U.S.-led recovery, more Afghans in war-torn
nation turn to the lucrative opium trade
...Other smuggling abounds. On the dirt road through Khakhi,
trucks piled high with timber from Afghanistan's dwindling
forests and scrap metal from its battlefields rumbled recently
toward an illegal border crossing into Pakistan.
By James Rupert, October 3, 2004
*****************************************************************
32 Popular Science: For that Healthy Glow, Drink Radiation! -
In the early 1900s, radioactive water was all the rage. Hard to
believe smart people could fall for such twaddle--right?
A century ago radioactivity was new, exciting and good for you—at
least if you believed the people selling radium pendants for
rheumatism, all-natural radon water for vigor, uranium blankets
for arthritis and thorium-laced medicine for digestion (you don't
even want to know about the radioactive suppositories).
Crazy, huh? Until I ran into the fascinating book Living with
Radiation, the First Hundred Years, self-published by Paul Frame
and William Kolb, I had no idea that radiation was the basis for
a huge quack-medicine industry that lasted for decades and took
in millions.
Today we know that exposing yourself to radiation is a bad idea.
Even when radiation is used to treat cancer, its deadliness is
what does the work, killing cancer cells at a slightly higher
rate than normal cells.
But imagine yourself 100 years ago, before many of the first
researchers studying radioactivity had died of cancer or other
radiation-induced causes. Electricity had been discovered
relatively recently, and it turned out to be perfectly safe in
moderation, so why not radiation?
In fact, early discoveries made plenty of reasonable people think
that radiation could be good for you. Natural hot springs have
been used as health spas for thousands of years; even today,
vacationers flock to their healing (well, maybe) waters. When
scientists went around with radiation detectors, they discovered
that the waters from quite a few well-known hot springs were
radioactive. (Radon gas produced by the decay of thorium and
uranium deep in the earth permeates the water at many natural hot
springs.)
Since no one really knew what made them healthful, the springs'
radioactivity was as good a guess as any. Entrepreneurs started
bottling the water and selling it as "Radon Water." But rivals
soon pointed out a problem: Radon's half-life is just 3.82 days.
By the time the bottle reached the customer, most of the
radiation would be gone.
You might go so far as to say that Radon Water was a rip-off,
which is exactly the pitch the Radium Ore Revigator company used
to sell its "better," "more scientific" product: a watercooler
lined with a serious amount of carnotite, an ore of uranium and
radium that undergoes radioactive decay, yielding radon gas.
Storing any water in this cooler overnight would give you fresh,
potent, invigorating radon water to drink by morning.
Unfortunately for those who used them, Revigators actually
worked. (Today, of course, we run as fast as we can from radon;
ridding basements of it is a big business.)
Many of the radioactive products marketed at the time, such as
uranium blankets, contained radioactive materials, but at such
low levels that they probably did little harm to consumers. But
over time, companies started producing ever more powerful
devices, most of them based on radium, the element with the
strongest marketing appeal. The supremely scary Radiendocrinator
was a 2-inch by 3-inch case that contained paper infused with 250
microcuries of radium, enough to illuminate a fluorescent screen
placed near it. It was meant to be placed over—the very thought
makes me shudder—the endocrine glands.
As the industry developed, it gave birth to the inevitable wave
of fraudulent products—fraudulent in the sense that they did not
emit the high levels of radiation they claimed to. This led to a
couple of the more surreal aspects of the whole episode:
advertisements that positively guaranteed that a company's
products exposed you to the full dose of radiation promised, and
instances of the government shutting down companies selling
perfectly safe phony products instead of the real (deadly) items
they claimed to be offering.
For example, the Bailey Radium Laboratories of East Orange, New
Jersey, offered $1,000 to anyone who could prove that its
"Certified Radioactive Water," sold under the brand name
Radithor, did not contain the large amount of radium and thorium
it claimed to. Alas, Radithor was the real thing: No one ever
claimed the prize. But Radithor did claim at least one life, that
of the well-known industrialist, playboy and three-bottle-a-day
Radithor user Eben Byers. Byers's gruesome death in 1932 inspired
the Wall Street Journal headline "The Radium Water Worked Fine
until His Jaw Came Off."
Byers's death also prompted the newly formed FDA to crack down on
radioactive health products, insisting on proof of their safety
and effectiveness. Since they were neither, this had the effect
of putting manufacturers out of business. Although
low-radioactivity devices continued to slip through regulatory
cracks until well into the 1960s, the era of dangerously
radioactive quack cures essentially went to the grave with Eben
Byers.
The radium mania was a crazy little episode in the world of
medicine, but it was not at all out of the ordinary. Pain and
suffering have always helped foster an uncritical market for
remedies and preventatives. Quacks and profiteers are quick to
pick up on the latest discoveries and promote them to the
desperate-for-a-cure market, regardless of how remote the
connection between the discovery and any likely health benefits
might be. Irradiating yourself in the hope of feeling better was
no nuttier than, say, drinking a few teaspoons of plain water as
medicine, which is called homeopathy and is extremely popular
today.
These fads, old and new, tend to make remarkably similar claims,
using the same arguments and marketing methods. Take a look, for
instance, at the following passage, from a 1928 Radium-ore
Revigator brochure, and see if it has a familiar ring:
Is radio-activity dangerous to the health? Most everyone offers
this questions [sic] because it is only natural to regard this as
a drug or medicine. The answer is that radio-activity is not a
medicine or drug, but a natural element of water, and that since
practically all spring and well water that Nature herself gives
for drinking purposes contain this highly effective beneficial
element, it is but common sense to restore it to water that has
lost it just as we restore oxygen to a stuffy room by opening a
window. . . . The United States Government says that the
radio-activity of natural water is never strong enough to be
injurious.
In short, (1) what we're selling is "natural," unlike those
potent medicines your doctor prescribes; (2) maybe you are not
getting enough of this natural substance; and (3) the government
hasn't stopped us (yet). Remember, they're talking about radon
gas.
You could find a paragraph almost identical to this one in any
health food store today. Here's an example taken from the Web
site of a more contemporary product designed to help your, um,
vigor: Is Nymphomax safe?
Because Nymphomax is an all natural nutritional supplement
containing only the finest botanicals, there are no harmful side
effects when taken as directed. Nymphomax is not a pharmaceutical
drug and contains none of the synthetic chemicals found in
prescription medications. It is a safe alternative to
prescription drugs, which can sometimes have serious side
effects. Now, I'm not saying herbal medicines are as harmful as
radiation, simply that promoting them as "all natural" tells you
absolutely nothing about whether they are safe, effective, both
or neither. What matters is what's in the pill, not how it got
there. There may be all kinds of herbal medicines that are safe
and effective—just don't expect the industry, or the government,
to tell you which ones.
Amazingly, current federal law (the Dietary Supplement Health and
Education Act of 1994) specifically orders the FDA to keeps its
hands off virtually all herbal medicines, preventing it from
regulating the claims, ingredients or safety of these
preparations and forbidding it to require the tracking of side
effects and deaths caused by them. And although the FDA banned
ephedra after several high-profile deaths, it will probably take
many more such tragedies before the law is changed to allow the
agency to clamp down on other dangerous products.
Radon Water was harmless because it contained nothing, the
radiation having vanished before it reached customers. Amusingly,
this has an exact analogue in modern homeopathic remedies.
Homeopathy "works" by dilution: Preparations of powerful
substances are diluted, then diluted again and again and again
until there is almost no chance that even a single molecule of
the original substance remains in the final "medicine." These
nostrums are sold to the public at top dollar, labeled with their
original starting-point ingredients just as if they still
contained any of them.
So don't for a minute think that we're all smarter and more
modern than those idiots eating radium 100 years ago: Homeopathy
is a huge industry today, and it is every bit as nutty. Once
people suspend their critical thinking skills and go for hope
over reality, the sky's the limit in silly and dangerous
medicine.
The Wooden Periodic Table Table
• Order a copy of Living With Radiation
Copyright © 2004 Popular Science
*****************************************************************
33 Idaho Statesman: Downwinders deserve straight answers from Craig
10-04-2004
Dan Popkey [dpopkey@idahostatesman.com]
The Idaho Statesman | Edition Date: 10-03-2004
I have bad news for Idaho downwinders: It looks like Sen. Larry
Craig is messing with you.
Craig promised seven years ago to fight for compensation for
injured Idahoans, after a National Cancer Institute study said
they were among the hardest hit by radiation from U.S.
nuclear-bomb tests.
But nothing happened until two months ago, when a public outcry
that began in Gem County revived Craig. With hundreds of Idaho
cancer victims enraged, he pressured the National Academies of
Science to hold a meeting in Boise about expanding the federal
compensation plan for downwinders to Idaho.
Craig blanketed the state with an announcement of his triumph in
landing the Nov. 6 hearing. But he failed to tell us something
else vital: He's not fighting for the money to support the
compensation program.
Now, budget troubles threaten Sen. Mike Crapo's promise to
downwinders at an Emmett town meeting Sept. 11 to expand the
Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include Idaho. RECA
provides "compassionate payments" to downwinders in Utah, Nevada
and Arizona who have cancer presumed to have been caused by bomb
tests in the '50s and '60s.
President Bush asked for $72 million in discretionary spending
for RECA in his 2005 budget. The House approved his request in
July as part of a $40 billion bill funding the departments of
Commerce, Justice and State.
But on Sept. 15, Craig was a member of a unanimous Senate
Appropriations Committee that voted not to include the $72
million. That was the same day I reported the NAS succumbed to
pressure from Craig, Crapo and Reps. Mike Simpson and Butch Otter
and agreed to hold a meeting in Idaho.
The competing bills will be reconciled in a House-Senate
conference committee, likely after the election. Crapo and Sen.
Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the author of RECA, vow to fight for the
money.
I tried to get an explanation from Craig. How could he oppose
Bush's request? Wasn't he the same guy pressing for the meeting
that will draw people to testify in the hope they too might
receive $50,000 and an apology from their government?
I couldn't get an answer.
"Isn't that inconsistent?" I asked in an e-mail to Dan Whiting,
Craig's press secretary. I also asked, "If the Senate won't fully
fund the current program, how can Idahoans have any hope they'll
be included?"
Whiting had this reply when I asked if he would explain Craig's
vote: "No."
Between Wednesday and Friday, I phoned and e-mailed Whiting and
two other Craig staffers, and wrote Craig at his e-mail address.
Nobody called back. I asked the staffers in an e-mail if Whiting
meant it when he said he wouldn't answer my questions. No reply.
Without an explanation from Craig, I'm left to speculate. I doubt
a 24-year veteran of Congress who is trying to convince ill
Idahoans he cares for them overlooked Bush's request. My guess:
Just as he did in 1997, Craig hoped nobody would notice his
indifference.
Whiting asserted in an e-mail that without the $72 million,
payments only will be delayed. But a House report says the
existing RECA Trust Fund "is not sufficient to pay all eligible
claimants." Both the Congressional Budget Office and the Justice
Department "estimate that the money in the Trust Fund will be
insufficient to pay all the claims that are projected to be
approved over the 2003-2011 period," according to a U.S. General
Accounting Office report.
RECA ran out of money in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Claimants were
issued IOUs. Payments were eventually made, but some people died
holding their IOUs, leaving survivors to collect.
Sen. Crapo isn't wavering, said his spokesman, Lindsay Nothern.
He stands by his vow to try to expand RECA to include at least
four Idaho counties, Custer, Gem, Blaine and Lemhi, which led the
nation in exposure to radioactive iodine-131.
"The bottom line is what's going on in Idaho and Utah is keeping
the pressure on nationally," Nothern said. "This is reality.
People can't turn away from this."
But for all Crapo's courage and effort, RECA won't include Idaho
without Craig's help.
Not only is he our most powerful lawmaker, he sits on both
committees with jurisdiction over RECA, Appropriations and
Judiciary.
Rep. Kathy Skippen, the Emmett Republican most responsible for
raising the fallout issue, has spoken to Craig. She said he
voiced concerns about the cost of expanding RECA.
But when Craig sought the Boise hearing, Skippen's spirits rose.
"I'm assuming we're having the meeting because there really is a
possibility that Idaho will be included," she said. "People now
actually have some hope they might be helped. But it's torturous
to put people through this if it's for nothing. That's just not
right."
It's time for Larry Craig to level with Idaho.
If he opposes expanding RECA because we can't afford it, or he
doesn't believe the science, he should tell us. Now. That
disappointment would be easier to bear than giving sick people
false hope their government will finally right a terrible wrong.
[http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/]
*****************************************************************
34 PBN: Guam to be home port for three nuclear subs -
2004-10-04 - Pacific Business News (Honolulu)
A third nuclear-powered submarine will make Guam home in
December, Stars & Stripes reported this weekend. The USS Houston,
currently based at Bremerton, Wash., will arrive at Guam in
mid-December.
U.S. Navy officials said stationing the Houston in Guam means it
can be deployed a lot faster. The USS San Francisco and the USS
City of Corpus Christi already are based there.
Each submarine brings to its home port approximately 150 sailors
and 200 to 300 family members.
Guam and Hawaii are both being considered as the new home port
for a carrier battle group.
© 2004 American City Business Journals Inc.
Related Topics » Navy to deploy submarines from Pearl Harbor
to Guam
[http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2000/07/24/daily29.ht
ml?jst=s_rs_hl] 2000-07-28, Honolulu » Healy completing Pearl
Harbor pier
[http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/1999/04/19/daily6.htm
l?jst=s_rs_hl] 1999-04-20, Honolulu » Government rejects General
Dynamics bid
[http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/1999/04/12/daily8.
html?jst=s_rs_hl] 1999-04-14, Washington » More related topics
*****************************************************************
35 amarillo.com: Remembering A Life: Cancer strikes husband, father
10/04/04
Cold War Casualties
By JIM McBRIDE jim.mcbride@amarillo.com
Happier Times: Doris Collie examines a portrait of herself and
husband Willis, a former Pantex worker who died of cancer. Doris
Collie is seeking compensation from a government program that
pays benefits to sick nuclear weapons workers and their
survivors.
Michael Schumacher/michael.schumacher@amarillo.com
[michael.schumacher@amarillo.com]
Time To Say Goodbye: Willis Collie retired from Pantex in
1991.
Michael Schumacher/michael.schumacher@amarillo.com
[michael.schumacher@amarillo.com]
Read the testimony of the Pantex workers during a June 29 th,
2000 Public Hearing in Amarillo.
Click on the Link to View the TranscriptsPDF Format Only
[http://www.amarillo.com/pantex/]
Willis Marlin Collie and his wife, Doris, were 17 and 16 when
he got down on his knees to propose.
Doris Collie sold her bicycle for $25 to help pay for their
wedding, and they hopped on a bus to Vernon to get hitched.
"He told a little fib. We weren't as old as he said we were,"
she recalls.
In 1959, her husband got hired at Pantex, then the pinnacle of
Amarillo employment. He started as a casting and pressing
operator, then began doing sheet-metal work throughout the plant
and working in secure areas.
One day in 1977, he was working on a roof when an accidental
high-explosive blast ripped through a nearby explosives
machining building, killing three workers. The blast knocked
Willis Collie off the roof he was working on. Only minutes
before, he had been sipping coffee with some of the workers who
died.
Doris Collie said her husband loved working at Pantex and had
many good friends there.
He reluctantly retired in 1991 after 32 years at the plant.
His skills as a handyman kept him busy around the house, a
chronic putterer. He loved woodworking and crafted a huge
dollhouse for his granddaughter.
"Mother depended on Daddy," Janet Jenkins said, glancing at her
mom. "There's wasn't anything he didn't know about. If he didn't
know about it, he'd learn about it."
A few years after he retired, Collie developed an aggressive,
small-cell carcinoma on the back of his neck.
The cancer, a bloody, black mass, quickly spread on Collie's
neck.
Eventually, he could barely turn his head.
Later, a doctor would tell Doris Collie there was little she
could do but make her husband comfortable as the cancer rapidly
grew. He balked at chemotherapy or radiation.
"He'd lost too many friends out there at Pantex," his daughter
said.
"We did it his way," Doris Collie said quietly, her oxygen
concentrator bubbling and humming in the background.
Sunday, Sept. 3:1st Part Series: Cold War Casualties waiting
for word
[http://www.amarillo.com/stories/100304/new_pantex.shtml]
What's Coming Up
+ Tuesday - A family seeks compensation for woman's exposure.
Her husband's was a painful death, but his wife and daughter say
he never complained.
His hands and feet shook sometimes when the pain wracked his
body.
In 1999, Willis Collie died at 71, robbed of his remaining years
by cancer.
"I'm lost, absolutely lost," Doris said. "Lonesome."
Like most Pantex workers, Collie kept his secretive work at
Pantex to himself. A couple of years ago, his wife and daughter
filed paperwork seeking government compensation for weapons
workers.
"Whenever they ask questions, we don't know anything," Janet
said. "Daddy never did go into details."
The family had little to go on and gathered medical records,
some work papers and a couple of radiation monitoring records
dating back to 1989 before Collie retired.
"He got the cancer from out there I'm sure," Jenkins said,
citing the names of several other Pantex co-workers who died of
cancer.
"It seems like they're dragging their feet," Doris Collie said
of the government's compensation program for nuclear weapons
workers.
Dr. Larry Elliott, head of the National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health's Office of Compensation Analysis
and Support, said the agency is working diligently to process
worker claims, using the best technology available.
"We're doing our very best," Elliott said. "We're as
claimant-favorable as we can be; we're bringing the best
available science to bear and trying to provide a decision for
them. I know they are not going to like the decision in some
cases, but we think the decision is accurate."
Doris Collie remains hopeful she will get the government's
payout but still misses her beloved husband of more than 50
years.
"I sure could use it. It took every dime to pay for his medical
costs. I'm down now to nothing," she said.
A Brief History
In 2002, Congress approved a law to compensate nuclear weapons
workers sickened by exposure to radiation, silica or beryllium.
Eligible workers can receive a $150,000 lump sum and medical
expenses.
In some cases, their survivors also are eligible to receive a
government check.
Government officials in the program say they are working as
rapidly as possible to process worker claims.
This is the second installment in a series examining the issue.
Effective Date: 02/18/2004 Revision No. 00 Document No.
ORAUT-TKBS ...About the dose that individual workers received.
[http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/pdfs/tbd/pantex1.pdf]
EEOICP Decision 11585-2002 -- 2002-12-27Decision of the Office
of Workers¹ Compensation Programs (OWCP ... chronic
silicosis
as a result of his employment.
[http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/owcp/eeoicp/Decisions/unp
ubdecisions/11585-2002.htm]
EEOICP Decision 7656-2002 -- 2002-11-18Decision of the Office
of Workers¹ Compensation Programs (OWCP ... chronic
silicosis
as a result of his employment.
[http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/owcp/eeoicp/Decisions/unp
ubdecisions/7656-2002.htm]
Officials explain compensation planWhat about the workers whose
employment histories are sketchy and reports of accidents that
occurred at Pantex weren't included in those documents
[http://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/baecps/news1.html]
[webmaster@amarillo.com]
*****************************************************************
36 Paducah Sun: Congress faces deadline on sick worker proposal payments -
[http://www.paducahsun.com/]
Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com 270.575.8656
Saturday, October 02, 2004
Heading into the weekend, in the final hours of joint
House-Senate conference work, members of the Kentucky
congressional delegation were trying to salvage an amendment to
better compensate nuclear workers sickened from toxic exposure. A
House proposal in conference would have replaced much of Sen. Jim
Bunning's amendment with a series of tiered lump-sum payments
tied to workers' level of impairment as determined by the
Department of Labor. Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers
qualifying for $150,000 lump-sum payments for radiation-induced
cancers would get nothing for toxic exposure unless it exceeded
that amount.
"That would have effectively zeroed-out the lion's share of the
claims at Paducah," said Richard Miller, Washington-based policy
analyst for the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog
group. "This would be taking away something that people already
have, and for the House to put this on the table was a matter of
grave concern."
Miller said the Senate called an emergency meeting late Friday
afternoon, but he was unaware of the outcome. House and Senate
negotiators were trying to work out their differences before
Congress adjourns next week for a lengthy recess. Bunning
expressed cautious optimism that a deal would be reached. "We're
in the final stages of the conference. They're under orders to
close this thing out this weekend," Miller said. "My feeling is
that we're right down to the wire."
Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, issued a statement saying the
House plan was "a far cry" from the Bunning amendment because of
the offsetting-payment provision. He also expressed concern over
the lack of a wage-based benefit for people with long-term
disabilities.
"I have met with the House negotiators and will continue to push
for an outcome that is best for the Paducah workers," he said.
Miller said Bunning's staff worked at length this week to try to
salvage Bunning's legislation to eliminate a massive claims
backlog by having the Labor Department pay toxic-exposure claims,
as it does for radiation-induced cancers.
Both Bunning's and the recent House proposal would remove
toxic-exposure claims from the Department of Energy, withwhich
has a backlog of more than 24,000 cases.
The Labor Department program has paid about $900 million —
including $154 million at Paducah — to nuclear workers sickened
from exposure to radiation, beryllium and silicon.
*****************************************************************
37 [shundahaialerts] Planning for Skull Valley this weekend
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 19:38:11 -0700
Hello! To help you plan for your trip out to Skull Valley for the Nuclear
Free Great Basin Fall Gathering, we would like to give you the forcast
expected for this weekend:
Friday Oct. 8th - Sunny - High 76°F - Low 52°F
Sat. Oct. 9th- Partly Cloudy - High 72°F - Low 46°F
Sunday Oct. 10th- Showers - High 64°F - Low 43°F
So it would be best to plan for rain on Sunday, and bring sweaters and
coats for the evenings.
Here is a list of what else you should bring with you to Skull Valley:
Camping Gear (Tents, sleeping bags, pillows, flashlights...etc)
Musical Instruments
Sweat Clothing: Women's attire should be a sundress or long skirt and top
that covers the shoulders. Men wear shorts without shirts. You should also
bring a towel for each person
Drinking water
Your dontated raffle item, can be home-made crafts and art, T-shirts,
gift certificates or whatever you would like to donate. (Optional)
Directions to Skull Valley From Salt Lake City:
Take I-80 West towards Reno, NV - 43 miles
Take Exit number 77- Rowley/Dugway
Turn Left onto the Skull Valley Road - drive 26 miles
Follow signs to gathering location
Thank you all, and we hope to see you this weekend!
In Peace,
The Shundahai Network
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SHUNDAHAI NETWORK--Dedicated to Breaking the Nuclear Chain
Shundahai is a Newe (Western Shoshone) word meaning "Peace and Harmony
with all Creation"
Shundahai Network
PO Box 1115
Salt Lake City, UT 84110
Office: 801.533.0128
Fax: 801.533.0129
mailto:Shundahai@shundahai.org
http://www.Shundahai.org
========================================================
It's in our back yard... it's in our front yard. This nuclear contamination
is shortening all life. We are going to have to unite as a people and say
no more! We, the people, are going to have to put our thoughts together to
save our planet here. We only have One Water...One Air...One Mother Earth."
Corbin Harney -Newe (Western Shoshone) Spiritual leader, Founder & Chairman
of the Board of The Shundahai Network
|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<
Shundahai Network Action Alerts You have received this e-mail
because you either signed up on the Shundahai Network list, or
are considered someone who is interested in these types of
issues.
If you would like to be removed from this list, please send an
e-mail to nationaloutreach@shundahai.org with the word "Remove"
in the subject line. IF you were forwarded this email by a friend
and would like to sign up to this list to receive monthly updates
please reply to nationaloutreach@shundahai.org with "Subscribe
Action Alerts" in the subject heading.
|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<
*****************************************************************
38 Korea Herald: China says N.K. tried to enrich uranium: report
2004.10.05
By Choi Soung-ah
For the first time since the North Korean nuclear standoff began
nearly two years ago, China has confirmed Pyongyang's intention
to conduct uranium enrichment, a Japanese media report says. The
topic has been one of the focal points in the six nation
disarmament talks it hosts that also involve South Korea, the
United States, Japan, and Russia.
According to the report, carried by the Tokyo-based Kyodo News
Agency, China has told fellow participants in the six-party talks
that the North has tried to enrich uranium.
Quoting a source involved with the multilateral dialogue, the
agency reported out of Washington that China "apparently changed
its stance" and informed other members of the talks, including
Japan and South Korea, that it believes the North "at least
attempted to enrich" uranium.
North Korea has consistently denied running a uranium enrichment
program, and China has been skeptical about Washington's claim
that Pyongyang had such a program.
Although Beijing hosts the nuclear talks and has expressed
wishes to see a nuclear-weapons free peninsula, it has been
"sticking by" its neighbor and communist ally, and to date have
been reluctant to accepted the U.S. government's accusations
about the North.
If it is correct that China has changed its position, that could
influence the future direction of the six-party talks, as North
Korea could face more pressure to deal with the issue.
A senior official at South Korea's Foreign Ministry, however,
said Seoul has not been told of any change in stance by Beijing.
Adding that the unverified comments could hinder resumption of
the currently stalled six-party talks, the official asserted that
the momentum of the meetings is still intact.
Some analysts here say that one approach for North Korea may be
to admit it has a low-concentration enriched uranium program for
energy use.
According to the Kyodo report, the agency's source said the
nuclear black market run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former chief
of Pakistan's nuclear program, furnished the North with uranium
hexafluoride, a material used in the uranium enrichment process.
North Korea also is said to have acquired nuclear technology from
Khan, Kyodo said.
A source close to the International Atomic Energy Agency has
said that Khan provided North Korea with a sample centrifuge and
there is sufficient evidence to prove that the North indeed
enriched uranium, Kyodo reported.
China, an ally of Pakistan, may have changed its stance after
receiving information from Islamabad that Khan provided the North
with uranium hexafluoride and a centrifuge.
Back in October, 2002, the United States announced that North
Korea had admitted to senior U.S. officials visiting Pyongyang
that it had a uranium enrichment program, which the U.S. said
violated the 1994 Agreed Framework for curtailing the North's
nuclear program.
Highly enriched uranium with concentrations of more than 80
percent can be used to create nuclear weapons, but
low-concentration enriched uranium is not suitable for making
arms and is often used as fuel at nuclear power plants.
(bluelle@heraldm.com)
*****************************************************************
39 Haaretz: Ramat Hasharon closes polluted water well
Homepage [http://www.haaretz.com]
News Updates Tue., October 05, 2004 Tishrei 20, 5765
By Zafrir Rinat [zafrirr@haaretz.co.il]
Ramat Hasharon Municipality yesterday closed a polluted water
well which had provided water to more than 15,000 of the city's
residents.
A routine test conducted by the city's water commissioner
revealed high levels of ammonium perchlorate, a substance used to
produce rocket fuel.
The pollutant originated from a nearby Israeli Military
Industries factory, where polluted waters are poured into
purification pools. The chemical had probably permeated from
there into the ground water.
Other cases of polluted water were discovered in the past, and
today all pumped water undergoes purification.
The last tests at the Ramat Hasharon site were conducted on
unpurified water, after which the water commissioner decided to
also check purified water for any high levels of ammonium
perchlorate.
Israel's water commissioner has not set a level for the chemical,
which in high concentration can cause damage to the thyroid
gland. The U.S. has a proposed level, but has not yet fixed an
official standard.
[feedback@haaretz.co.il]
By Zafrir Rinat
© Copyright Haaretz. All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
40 Waste News: Military, Calif. officials agree on procedure to prioritize
perchlorate sampling
[Wastenews.com
Oct. 4 -- The Department of Defense and California environmental
officials have finalized a procedure for prioritizing perchlorate
sampling efforts at military sites statewide.
The agreement specifies the role each party will take in
identifying and prioritizing areas on military sites where
perchlorate is likely to have been released in close proximity to
drinking water sources. The agreement if the first of its kind in
the country, according to Defense Department and California
officials.
"This protocol is a crucial step forward to address perchlorate
concerns in California and will serve as a model for interagency
partnering with other states," said Alex Beehler, assistant
deputy under secretary of defense for environment, safety and
occupational health.
Defense Department and state officials will give the highest
priority for sampling to military sites within one mile of a
drinking water source where perchlorate has been detected. The
policy allows the military to focus resources on the sites posing
the most immediate threats to California´s drinking water
supplies, according to Defense Department and California
officials.
An interagency working group developed the protocol over the
past nine months. Members of the working group included
representatives of the Defense Department, the California
Environmental Protection Agency and state and local water boards.
"Our cooperative implementation of the protocol will provide us
the much-needed information to better understand the scope and
magnitude of the impact to our drinking water resources," said
California EPA head Terry Tamminen.
The federal government has not adopted a drinking water standard
for perchlorate, although California recently adopted a public
health goal of 6 parts per billion, and the California Department
of Health Services has begun efforts to adopt a state maximum
contaminant limit.
Perchlorate is used in rocket and missile propellant, munitions,
fireworks, flares, fertilizer, automobile airbags, and
pharmaceuticals. The chemical has been linked to disruption of
thyroid functions in adults and physical, behavioral and mental
development in children.
Entire contents copyright 2004 by Crain Communications Inc.
[webmaster@wastenews.com]
*****************************************************************
41 Belfast Telegraph: Nuclear waste warning
[http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
04 October 2004
South Down SDLP MP Eddie McGrady has warned of the risk to Irish
life if convoys of ships carrying nuclear waste are allowed to
travel through the Irish Sea.
"We have to do something now before a disaster occurs either
through an accident or a terrorist strike. For this reason I am
calling on a total ban on these convoys coming anywhere near the
Irish coast.
"Sadly, previous incidents have proven that groups such as
al-Qaida are prepared to kill on a mass scale. In my opinion,
convoys of ships carrying nuclear waste could be a potential
target.
"Earlier this month the Minority report proved that Sellafield is
a threat to the health of this nation. The EU and the Irish
Government, whose waters are polluted on a daily basis by the
Sellafield Plant, must now act in response to this terrifying
report and ensure the run-down and decommissioning of the
Sellafield Plant," he said.
© 2004 Independent News and Media (NI)
*****************************************************************
42 Platts: BNFL nuclear supercompactor being dismantled
[The McGraw-Hill Companies]
+ The largest nuclear supercompactor in the world is being
dismantled after having crushed its last piece of material from
three DOE gaseous diffusion buildings in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
The $13-million facility operated three years, processing up to
2.3-million pounds of metal a week, BNFL Inc. said yesterday.
It saved the department roughly $100-million in disposal costs,
the company said. BNFL Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of British
Nuclear Fuels plc, and its parent company are discussing the
possible use of the facility in the U.K., so it might be
reassembled there, BNFL Inc. spokesman Colin Jones said.
Copyright © 2004 - Platts, All Rights Reserved
[The McGraw-Hill Companies]
*****************************************************************
43 Tri-City Herald: Tri-Cities to celebrate B Reactor's 60th anniversary
This story was published Monday, October 4th, 2004
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
The Tri-Cities will celebrate its role in the birth of the
nuclear age with a film premiere, tours and a dinner with author
Richard Rhodes on Friday and Saturday.
On Sept. 26, 1944, Hanford workers took the world's first
full-scale nuclear production reactor critical.
B Reactor on the banks of the Columbia River would produce the
plutonium for the first nuclear explosion, the Trinity Test in
New Mexico.
And it would produce the plutonium for the "Fat Man" bomb dropped
on Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945, ending World War II.
The B Reactor will be open for public tours. But if you're not
signed up yet, you're too late. Tours are full, and the waiting
list has been capped at 200 people.
Other events to celebrate the anniversary include:
At 7:30 p.m. Friday, the premiere showing of the documentary
Hanford's Secret Wartime Mission (1942-1945) is planned. The
48-minute film was produced by the Atomic Heritage Foundation,
which sent a professional crew to the Tri-Cities last year to
interview early Hanford workers.
The screening will be at the Battelle auditorium northwest of the
George Washington Way and Battelle Boulevard intersection in
Richland on the Battelle campus.
Seating for the free showing will be on a first-come basis.
However, if there is an overflow crowd for the 7:30 p.m. showing,
organizers will consider showing it again at 8:30 p.m.
Rhodes will speak at celebration dinner at 6 p.m. Saturday at the
Shilo Inn in Richland planned by the B Reactor Museum Association
and the Atomic Heritage Foundation.
Rhodes, one of the nation's authorities on the history of the
Manhattan Project, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The
Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the
Hydrogen Bomb.
Cost is $35 per person. The dinner will include prime rib and
alder-smoked salmon, and the Washington Congressional delegation
has been invited to attend. Tickets are available by calling
943-9000 or at the Columbia River Exhibition of History Science
&Technology museum in Richland, The Bookworm in Kennewick and
Richland, and Yoke's Market in Pasco.
The CREHST museum will have several B Reactor and related Hanford
displays on Saturday. It is at 95 Lee Blvd. Admission is $3.50.
The Richland Community Center, 500 Amon Drive in Howard Amon Park
in Richland, will have free exhibits commemorating the
anniversary displayed from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday.
Rhodes plans to sign books at the event. In addition, Michele
Gerber, author of On the Home Front, and Roy Gephart, author of
Hanford -- A Conversation About Nuclear Waste and Cleanup, will
sign books. Admission is free until 4 p.m., when participants
will need a ticket from any B Reactor anniversary event to attend
a reception.
More information is available at www.b-reactor.org.
© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
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44 Tri-City Herald: Opinions Uranium shavings show strengths, weaknesses
This story was published Monday, October 4th, 2004
Progress in cleaning up leaky barrels containing shavings of
depleted uranium reveals two sides of the Hanford dilemma.
On the plus side, real progress is occurring at the site, making
us all safer as a result. It's why so much of our tax money is
spent there, and it's good to see we're getting something for it.
In all, 786 drums were excavated from 1998 through 2002, and 520
of them contained a nasty mixture of uranium chips and oil.
This mess was found north of the 300 Area in southeast Hanford,
only yards from the Columbia River. The river, of course, is the
fastest path between subterranean Hanford and us.
It was especially dangerous work. Depleted uranium can ignite
spontaneously if exposed to air, which is why oil had been added
to the shavings. The drums had deteriorated to the point that the
oil was leaking into the soil.
But the challenges were overcome, shavings were cleaned of the
contaminated oil, stabilized into solid, cementlike blocks and
packed into 12 boxes, each not much bigger than a coffin.
The boxes now are sitting at Hanford's Environmental Restoration
Disposal Facility, a huge landfill in central Hanford, and soon
should be buried permanently.
That's the good news.
But the circumstances leading to the cleanup illustrate the
challenge of dealing with the Cold War's nuclear legacy. Disposal
practices that seemed reasonable at the time are alarming hazards
today.
Finding the buried shavings was a surprise, although officials
knew something was buried there. Even today, it's not certain
where the shavings came from or why they were produced.
It's doubtful that'll be the last surprise.
One of the most pressing problems in dealing with Hanford's most
dangerous wastes -- 53 million gallons of radioactive and
chemical waste stored in underground tanks -- has been trying to
figure out exactly what's inside them.
That so many uncertainties remain is a sobering thought for the
people charged with cleaning up Hanford, for the taxpayers who'll
pick up the tab and for those of us living closest to the site.
© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
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45 lamonitor.com: LANL bid plan revealed
The Online News Source for Los Alamos
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com [roger@lamonitor.com] ,
Monitor Assistant Editor
The plan anticipates the release of a draft Request for Proposal
by mid-October, followed by a 30-day comment period, before a
final RFP is finished. The department expects to award the
contract by July 1, 2005, in order to facilitate a 90-day
phase-in period for the chosen operator of the laboratory, to
begin Oct. 1, 2005 Notably, the plan provides job and pension
assurances to all University of California personnel employed by
LANL, apart from senior management individuals to be identified.
The employees are to be retained with comparable compensation
packages with maintenance of current terms and conditions. The
pension benefit plan will not be evaluated in the proposals but
rather become a "binding obligation" on the contractor.
Existing labor contracts and business subcontracts would be
recognized by any new manager.
Among other highlights, there will be no pre-proposal or
pre-solicitation conference, but rather the preliminary
communication will be conducted through an NNSA Service Center
web site (www.doeal.gov/LANLContractRecompete/Default.htm)
Potential offerers will be afforded the opportunity to meet
one-on-one with the Source Evaluation Board, which manages the
competition, and with potential partners.
Those entitities and organizations bidding on the contract will
have 60 days to develop their proposals after the final RFP is
finished. The evaluation board will hear oral presentations from
the person proposed by each offerer to be the laboratory director
and other key personnel.
The new contract will have a term of five years, subject to
extension up to 20 years, if certain performance objectives are
met successfully.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the
nuclear complex for DOE, will conduct the procedure through a
source evaluation board, headed by C.S. Tyler Przbylek. The NNSA
Administrator Linton Brooks has been designated as the formal
Source Selection Official charged with making the final decision.
A unique contract clause is proposed to "redefine the
federal-contractor relationship, to transition to industrial
standards and best business practices to capitalize on private
sector expertise and to increase contractor accountability and
efficiencies."
Another new provision, based on a clause in the Sandia National
Laboratories contract will permit the NNSA administrator to seek
the removal of contractor personnel under specified
circumstances.
Because of the hazardous operations to be performed under the
contract, the plan anticipates that the contractor to be chosen
will seek indemnification for a wide variety of activities.
The plan will require an indemnification package, but that will
not be evaluated as part of the proposal.
© 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.
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