***************************************************************** 10/10/04 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 12.242 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 [NYTr] Non-existent Weapons Could Blow Up Bush 2 [EMMAS] Scott Ritter and Hans Blixt: If you had seen what I 3 [NYTr] WMD: Ritter on Duelfer 4 WorldNetDaily: Here's to the WMD truth-tellers 5 UK: Independent: Hans Blix: If you had seen what I have seen 6 Japan Times: Almost all wrong on Iraq 7 Guardian Unlimited: Blair faces Iraq grilling from MPs 8 UK Independent: Blix accuses Blair as Labour MPs turn up heat over W 9 AFP: US would have invaded Iraq, even knowing Saddam had no weapons- 10 KR: Iran, Russia poised to close deal on Iran's first nuclear power 11 AFP: Russia against referral of Iran to UN Security Council 12 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Nuclear mediation offered by Pugwash 13 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Seoul was blind to nuclear crisis 14 Japan Times: Koizumi wary over placing sanctions on North Korea 15 Korea Times: IAEA Chief Doubts S. Korean Nuclear Weapons Plans 16 AFP: ASEM calls for resumption of North Korea nuclear talks 17 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Korean Relations Undermined by NK Nuclear 18 US: AxisofLogic/ U.S. Military 19 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Opinion: Bush's policies are making us ill 20 US: Times: 'Bush was Utterly Incoherent'_Zogby on poll fudging 21 Daily Yomiuri: ElBaradei: IAEA still key to nonproliferation 22 Bellona: Finland to decide on underwater atomic energy export from R 23 IAEA: IAEA Chief ElBaradei Calls for Stronger Global Security Framew 24 IAEA: IAEA 48th General Conference - Resolutions & Decisions 25 Scotsman.com: Blair and Bush 'Clinging to Straws' to Justify War NUCLEAR REACTORS 26 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Energy secretary pitches Westinghouse to Ch 27 US: APP.COM: Oyster Creek plant an issue in Lacey race 28 Japan Times: Kepco finishes nuclear plant checks 29 moscowtimes: Gazprom Moves Into Nuclear Power Sector NUCLEAR SAFETY 30 Sunday Herald: Concern over safety shortfall uncovered at Scots nucl 31 US: Rocky Mountain News: Congress backs ill Flats workers 32 US: Buffalo News: House widens N-compensation 33 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Opinion: Sen. Bennett's position on nuclear t 34 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Downwinder fund patched 35 [du-list] Uranium in the Wind 36 US: Seattle Times: Program improved for ill nuclear workers 37 Seattle Times: Plutonium: Is it really in safe hands? NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 38 UK The Times: Expert fears Scots cancer timebomb 39 Daily Yomiuri: Reprocessing N-fuel costlier than burying it 40 US: deseret news: Gathering opposes nuclear waste storage 41 Las Vegas RJ: Yucca ruling's appeal rejected 42 Las Vegas SUN: Moving deadly cargo 43 RGJ: Emergency funds sought for fight against Yucca 44 US: The State: Nuclear waste can stay in S.C. 45 Salt Lake Tribune: Opinion: Nevada vs. Utah 46 US: Salt Lake Tribune: N-waste protesters rally at Skull Valley 47 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Goshute group to hold weekend nuke protest 48 UK Independent: American plutonium arrives in France 49 US: CST: Enviromental groups bring protest over nuclear storage to S NUCLEAR WEAPONS US DEPT. OF ENERGY 50 Tri-City Herald: Transuranic waste removal discussed 51 chillicothe gazette: USEC license approved for further review 52 amarillo.com: BWXT Pantex contract under review 53 Paducah Sun: Whistle-blower lawsuits against DOE will go on 54 Charleston.Net: SRS waste issue may be resolved 55 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Measure would step up waste cleanup at H 56 KLTV: Contractor official says Pantex deal could be extended 57 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Don't be fooled -- voting yes means more OTHER NUCLEAR 58 [du-list] DU Photo Exhibit in New Paltz 59 SF Chronicle: Nuclear is the right word, not atomic ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 [NYTr] Non-existent Weapons Could Blow Up Bush Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 12:46:02 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Sydney Morning Herald - Oct 9, 2004 Non-existent weapons could blow up Bush By Marian Wilkinson Herald Correspondent in Washington The new CIA report on Iraq's absent weapons of mass destruction has dropped like a bombshell into the election campaign on the eve of the second presidential debate. The report is forcing President George Bush to explain once again why he rushed to war before United Nations weapons inspectors could determine if there was evidence to support the claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Buried in the report is a remarkable exchange between Saddam and his inner circle. According to interrogations with Iraqi officials, in September 2002 Saddam met his advisers to discuss Mr Bush's tough speech to the UN General Assembly, threatening a US-led invasion if Iraq did not give up its illegal arms. Saddam is reported to have looked at his ministers and asked: "What can they discover when we have nothing?" But Mr Bush was so adamant, even Saddam's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, began to wonder whether his leader had some hidden weapons. "I knew a lot, but wondered why Bush believed that we had these weapons", he told his US interrogators. He "could not understand why the United States would challenge Iraq in such stark and threatening terms, unless it had irrefutable evidence". The findings by the CIA's chief weapons adviser, Charles Duelfer, that Iraq had not had any stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction for probably at least a decade is another serious blow to Mr Bush's credibility in the final weeks of the campaign. He and the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, have been scrambling to put the best face on the devastating report. Mr Bush was forced to acknowledge that "much of the accumulated body of 12 years of our intelligence and that of our allies was wrong". But he insisted he was right to go to war because the report showed Saddam intended to restart his weapons program if UN sanctions against him were lifted. "He retained the knowledge, the material, the means and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction and he could have passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies," Mr Bush said. Mr Bush's rival for the presidency, John Kerry, was scathing. "The President of the United States and the Vice-President of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq," he told reporters. Mr Bush had "aggrandised and fictionalised" Saddam and taken the focus off the real enemy after September 11, Osama bin Laden. Soon after Senator Kerry spoke, news broke of the terrorist attacks in Egypt aimed at Israeli holidaymakers. The suspected suicide bombings come days after bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called on militants to begin resistance against US-led coalition forces and Israel before they "invade Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen and Algeria". In Baghdad, too, insurgency attacks in the so-called secure green zone hit the Sheraton Hotel, which houses scores of Western journalists and contractors. The escalating violence in Iraq was already eroding Mr Bush's standing in the polls. This week, the polls showed Senator Kerry running level with the President, a turnaround that has stunned the Bush campaign. Today, Sydney time, Senator Kerry is hoping to turn up the pressure on Mr Bush when the two rivals met for their second debate in St Louis, Missouri. Mr Bush has sought to portray Senator Kerry as a weak, vacillating candidate who will adopt "a strategy of retreat" in Iraq and the war on terrorism. Yet the Duelfer report destroys claims that Iraq was a looming danger. Not only did Saddam have no weapons of mass destruction, but interrogations of Iraqi officials and access to the regime's archives have produced no evidence that he had any significant dealings with al-Qaeda. The report says Saddam's chemical and biological weapons program throughout the 1980s was directed against those he saw as his main enemies: Iran, rebellious Shiite tribes in the south and, to a lesser extent, Israel. There are, indeed, transcripts of taped discussions between Saddam and his commanders on the use of chemical weapons to put down the Shiites in 1991. There are fragmentary oral accounts of Saddam wanting to re-build his weapons of mass destruction programs after sanctions had been lifted, but there are no plans in writing. The report notes that when Saddam was asked by a US interrogator why he did not use chemical and biological weapons against American or allied soldiers during the 1991 Gulf War, he replied, "Do you think we are mad? What would the world have thought of us? We would have completely discredited those who had supported us." On March 17, 2003, on the eve of the invasion, Mr Bush told the nation: "The danger is clear: using chemical, biological, or one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfil their stated ambitions and kills thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other". That day, Mr Bush staked his presidency on the war in Iraq. Now, after the loss of 1064 US military lives, plus billions of dollars, on the war to disarm Saddam of weapons he did not have, this election is increasingly becoming a referendum on that decision. * Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 2 [EMMAS] Scott Ritter and Hans Blixt: If you had seen what I Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 22:08:33 -0500 (CDT) Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 22:07:13 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <200410110207.i9B27Dj4032910@admin.people-link.com> From: moderator@portside.org Reply-To: portside@portside.org Scott Ritter and Hans Blixt: If you had seen what I have seen. == 1. Scott Ritter: If you had seen what I have seen The inspection process was rigged to create uncertainty over WMD to bolster the US and UK's case for war 10 October 2004 The Independant UK http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=570477 It appears that the last vestiges of perceived legitimacy regarding the decision of President George Bush and Tony Blair to invade Iraq have been eliminated with the release this week of the Iraq Survey Group's final report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The report's author, Charles Duelfer, underscored the finality of what the world had come to accept in the 18 months since the invasion of Iraq - that there were no stockpiles of WMD, or programmes to produce WMD. Despite public statements made before the war by Bush, Blair and officials and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic to the contrary, the ISG report concludes that all of Iraq's WMD stockpiles had been destroyed in 1991, and WMD programmes and facilities dismantled by 1996. Duelfer's report does speak of Saddam Hussein's "intent" to acquire WMD once economic sanctions were lifted and UN inspections ended (although this conclusion is acknowledged to be derived from fragmentary and speculative sources). This judgement has been seized by Bush and Blair as they scramble to re-justify their respective decisions to wage war. "The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the UN oil-for-food programme to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said. "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons programme once the world looked away." Blair, for his part, has apologised for relying on faulty intelligence, but not for his decision to go to war. The mantra from both camps remains that the world is a safer place with Saddam behind bars. But is it? When one examines the reality of the situation on the ground in Iraq today, it seems hard to draw any conclusion that postulates a scenario built around the notion of an improved environment of stability and security. Indeed, many Iraqis hold that life under Saddam was a better option than the life they are facing under an increasingly violent and destabilising US-led occupation. The ultimate condemnation of the failure and futility of the US-UK effort in Iraq is that if Saddam were released from his prison cell and participated in the elections scheduled for next January, there is a good chance he would emerge as the popular choice. But while democratic freedom of expression was a desired outcome of the decision to remove Saddam from power, the crux of the pre-war arguments and the ones being reconfigured by those in favour of the invasion centre on the need to improve international peace and security. Has Saddam's removal accomplished this? To answer this question, you have to postulate a world today that includes an Iraq led by Saddam. How this world would deal with him would be determined by decisions made by the US, Britain and the international community in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. One of the key historical questions being asked is what if Hans Blix (who gives his own view, right) had been given the three additional months he had requested in order to complete his programme of inspection? Two issues arise from this scenario: would Blix have been able to assemble enough data to ascertain conclusively, in as definitive a fashion as the Duelfer ISG report, a finding that Saddam's Iraq was free of WMD, and thus posed no immediate threat; and would the main supporters of military engagement with Iraq, the US and Britain, have been willing to accept such a finding? The answer to the first point is that Blix and his team of inspectors were saddled with a complicated list of "cluster issues", ironically assembled by Duelfer during his tenure as head of the UN weapons inspectors, that would have needed to be rectified for any finding of compliance to be made. These "clusters" postulated the need for Iraq to prove the negative, something that is virtually impossible to do. We now know that Iraq's WMD were destroyed in 1991. The problem wasn't the weapons, but verification of Iraq's declarations. The standards of verification set by Duelfer-Blix were impossible for Iraq to meet, thus making closure on the "cluster" issues also an unattainable goal. This situation answers the second point as well. Since the inspection process was pre-programmed to fail, there would be no way the US or the UK would accept any finding of compliance from the UN weapons inspectors. The inspection process was rigged to create uncertainty regarding Iraq's WMD, which was used by the US and the UK to bolster their case for war. It appears that there was no way short of war to create an environment where a finding of Iraq's compliance with its obligation to disarm could be embraced by the US and British governments. The main reason for this was that the issue wasn't WMD per se, but Saddam. The true goal wasn't disarmament, but regime change. This, of course, clashed with the principles of international law set forth in the Security Council resolutions, voted on by the US and UK, and to which Saddam was ostensibly held to account. Economic sanctions, put in place by the UN in 1990 after Saddam's invasion of Iraq and continued in 1991, linked to Saddam's obligation to disarm, were designed to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council's requirements. Saddam did disarm, but since two members of that Security Council - the US and the UK - were implementing unilateral policies of regime change as opposed to disarmament, this compliance could never be recognised. Sadly, when one speaks of threats to international peace and security, history will show that it was the US and Britain that consistently operated outside the spirit and letter of international law in their approach towards dealing with Saddam. This blatant disregard for international law on the part of the world's two greatest democracies serves as the foundation of any analysis of the question: would the world be better off with or without Saddam in power? To buy into the notion that the world is better off without Saddam, one would have to conclude that the framework of international law that held the world together since the end of the Second World War - the UN Charter - is antiquated and no longer viable in a post-9/11 world. Tragically, we can see the fallacy of that argument unfold on a daily basis, as the horrific ramifications of American and British unilateralism unfold across the globe. If there ever was a case to be made for a unified standard of law governing the interaction of nations, it is in how we as a global community prosecute the war on terror. Those who embrace unilateral pre-emptive strikes in the name of democracy and freedom have produced results that pervert the concept of democracy while bringing about the horrific tyranny of fear and oppression at the hands of those who posture as liberators. If Saddam were in power today, it would only have been because the US and Britain had altered course and joined the global community in recognising the pre-eminence of international law, and the necessity of all nations to operate in accordance with that law. The irony is that had the US and Britain taken this path, and an unrepentant Saddam chosen to defy the international community by acting on the intent he is alleged to have harboured, then he would have been removed from power by a true international coalition united in its legitimate defence of international law. But this is not the case. Saddam is gone, and the world is far worse for it - not because his regime posed no threat, perceived or otherwise, but because the threat to international peace and security resulting from the decisions made by Bush and Blair to invade Iraq in violation of international law make any threat emanating from an Iraq ruled by Saddam pale in comparison. Scott Ritter is a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq (1991-1998) and the author of 'Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America', published by Context Books === 2. Hans Blix: If you had seen what I have seen Hans Blix Will President Bush apply the lessons from Iraq to Iran, Libya and North Korea? 10 October 2004 Independant UK http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=570476 With their report last week, the inspectors appointed by the Bush administration to search Iraq for weapons of mass destruction have had to acknowledge that the reality on the ground was totally different from the virtual reality that had been spun. Both Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, and David Kay, his predecessor, were hawks who favoured the Iraq war. But while they try to give the administration some straws to cling to, they are professionals. After inspecting many sites, examining the voluminous documentation that has become available and interviewing many individuals, including Saddam Hussein and others in detention, they admit that the spin, to which they themselves had gladly contributed, was wrong. Duelfer seems to contradict some points made by Kay in his interim report, which were seized upon by governments. For example, Kay said his group had discovered dozens of "weapons of mass destruction-related programme activities". He pointed to a vial of botulinum found in a scientist's refrigerator, and said his group had found a number of secret underground labs that would have been suitable for chemical and biological programmes. Duelfer does not see anything significant in these finds. More important, Duelfer believes that Iraq destroyed its WMD in the summer of 1991, and finds nothing to document any programmes after that time. Far from confirming Tony Blair's reported reading that Saddam "had every intention of reviving his WMD programmes", the report suggests Saddam gave his officials the impression that he was interested in resuming programmes "if sanctions were lifted". This is the new straw to which the governments concerned have begun to cling. When might the sanctions have been lifted? Duelfer does not tell us, but in support of his view that the war was justified, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he doubted sanctions were "sustainable". He implied that they might lapse some time in the future - after which Saddam could revive his WMD programmes with impunity. Asked whether sanctions were not at least sustainable during some more months of inspection, Duelfer - evidently fearing damage to the administration that appointed him - said he could not answer. He might have added that even if economic sanctions were lifted or watered down in the future, nothing suggests that the Security Council would relax its ban on Iraq acquiring WMD. Indeed, binding resolutions foresaw a "reinforced system of monitoring and verification" without any fixed end. Even if economic sanctions were to have been lifted, any "breakout" by Saddam would have caused loud alarm bells to ring. Duelfer's report confirms that the combination of UN sanctions and inspection, plus external pressures - including the "no-fly zones" - had kept Saddam contained. As I wrote in my book Disarming Iraq, the world succeeded in disarming Saddam without knowing it. Saddam's first political aim, according to the report, was to get rid of the sanctions. That is why, we are told, he eliminated the WMD and WMD programmes, probably in 1991. Duelfer concludes, as I have done, that Saddam deliberately allowed the impression to exist that WMD were still there - to look bigger and more dangerous than he was. Like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Duelfer's group sees not a trace of revival of a nuclear programme. On the contrary, he says Iraq was further away from a nuclear weapon in 2003 than it was in 1991. It had not used the period between 1999 and 2002, when there were no inspections, for any revival. Thus, while George Bush has been maintaining that Saddam was a "growing threat" he was a diminishing danger to his neighbours and the world. Bush has been stressing that Saddam hated the US. However, Duelfer says that Saddam's interest in WMD seems to have been driven by concerns about Iran and Israel. Duelfer underlines the vital importance of having inspectors on the ground - hardly surprising, considering that most of the correct information available to US and British intelligence came from UN and IAEA inspectors, and that most of the things they got wrong were the results of their own work and contacts with Iraqis in exile. Can one hope that this will be remembered in future cases when supervision and verification will be needed, for example, in Iran, Libya and North Korea? I am not against intelligence. It is indispensable, not least in face of terrorist groups. When it comes to identifying the production or existence of WMD, assistance from intelligence to international inspection authorities can be helpful. Intelligence has sources that the inspectors do not have, but the inspectors have the right to be on the ground and to request information. Moreover, they are independent of governments. In foreign affairs, as in medicine, successful operations require correct diagnoses. Hans Blix is chairman of the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction and former head of the UN weapons inspectors _______________________________________________________ portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a news, discussion and debate service of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It aims to provide varied material of interest to people on the left. ################################################################# " Social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass." Emma Goldman To SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE to the emmasdance list send email to with the message subscribe/unsubscribe emmasdance. [No subject is needed.] "If I can not dance, I want no part in your revolution." Emma Goldman ################################################################# ***************************************************************** 3 [NYTr] WMD: Ritter on Duelfer Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2004 15:58:40 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit WMD - Ritter on Duelfer by Peter Bell October 9, 2004 I normally read the Guardian (UK) offline. So when I see a good piece, like Scott Ritter's excellent discussion of the Duelfer report, I go to the Guardian website and search for it, so I can get the live URL and full text. Today I did a search that turns out to be breathtakingly interesting. If you visit www.guardian.co.uk and in their search box type Ritter and Duelfer what you'll find is a chronicle of US actions taken against Iraq reaching back to 1999. In '99, the Guardian reported that Ritter had learned about and Duelfer hushed up the CIA use of UNSCOM as cover. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,315451,00.html In 2002, we find Duelfer arguing the case for killing Iraqi civilians on the grounds that the Iraqis - well, read it for yourself: '"The biological issue is the biggest issue and the least understood," Mr Duelfer says. "[Saddam] has mobile labs, which have the capacity to produce stuff in large quantities, and he's continuing to build weapons."' 'Mr Duelfer described as "very credible" an Iraqi defector named Adnan al-Haideri who fled Iraq last year. Mr al-Haideri, a civil engineer, claimed that he had worked on renovations to secret weapons of mass destruction facilities concealed in private villas, wells and under the Saddam Hussein hospital in Baghdad.' http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,667589,00.html This is the sort of garbage being peddled as fact by Chemical Judy Miller at the Times without a word of explanation as to who found him credible. She should rot in jail as an accessory before the fact in the murder of thousands of Iraqis. She'd probably like being incarcerated by the newly sovereign Iraqi state she fought to support. Surely, they'd give her the Martha Stewart treatment, right? It's really not surprising that Duelfer's report tries hard to claim Hussein was still a Bad, Bad man. What's more worrisome is that I haven't seen the now permanently embedded press in the US explaining the back story on Duelfer. As Ritter points out, in the end, the best assessment of Iraq's programs came - as demanded by the US - from the Iraqis, before the war, in compliance with US demands. It would likely be instructive now for a reporter to be leaked a copy and compare it, side by side, with the Duelfer report's conclusions. The Guardian - Oct 9, 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1323424,00.html The source Duelfer didn't quote The head of the Iraq Survey Group knows regime change was the aim by Scott Ritter The Guardian During this week of American election debates, Charles Duelfer, the former deputy executive chairman of the UN weapons inspectors and current head of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, delivered to Congress his much-anticipated report on Iraq's WMD capabilities. Among his controversial conclusions is that, contrary to pre-war assertions by both the George Bush administration and Tony Blair's government, Iraq had neither stockpiles of WMD nor dedicated programmes for the manufacture of WMD. Duelfer's report did note that Iraq maintained so-called "dual-use" facilities (those with legitimate civilian and/or military functions, but which could be configured for proscribed use), but his ISG has found no evidence that any such conversion had taken place. One would expect the ISG's conclusions to take the wind out of the sails of those who repeat the mantra that Iraq was a grave and growing threat. But Duelfer has provided a convenient escape from such criticism, by concluding that Saddam Hussein in fact fully intended to convert his "dual use" factories into WMD production facilities once UN weapons inspectors left. In one fell swoop, Duelfer has provided the ideal cover for the justification of the war. Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, was quick to note that Saddam was, according to the ISG report, "a gathering threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction". The UK foreign secretary, Jack Straw, commenting on the report from Baghdad, was likewise quick to jump on the notion of intent. "Where this report breaks new ground," Straw said, "is by producing extensive new evidence showing that Saddam did indeed pose a threat to the international community ... The world is a safer place without him." There are, however, several problems with this finding - first and foremost the notion of legality, especially in light of UN secretary general Kofi Annan's comments that the US-led invasion of Iraq represented a violation of the UN charter and international law. Bush and Blair have argued that because the Iraqi government had failed to comply with previous security council resolutions regarding Iraq's obligation to disarm, the right of enforcing these resolutions is implicit. Duelfer's report slams the door on that line of thinking, since it is now clear that Iraq had in fact disarmed in compliance with security council resolutions. One of the tragic ironies of the decision to invade Iraq is that the Iraqi WMD declaration required by security council resolution 1441, submitted by Iraq in December 2002, and summarily rejected by Bush and Blair as repackaged falsehoods, now stands as the most accurate compilation of data yet assembled regarding Iraq's WMD programmes (more so than even Duelfer's ISG report, which contains much unsubstantiated speculation). Saddam Hussein has yet to be contradicted on a single point of substantive fact. Iraq had disarmed; no one wanted to accept that conclusion. Charles Duelfer has to date provided no documentation to back up his assertion regarding Saddam's "intent". Nor has he produced any confession from Saddam Hussein or any senior Iraqi official regarding the same. What has been offered is a compilation of hearsay and conjecture linked to unnamed sources whose identities remain shrouded in secrecy. There is one source I am certain will not be quoted in Duelfer's report - a former officer in Saddam Hussein's intelligence service, who was interviewed by the ISG repeatedly in the summer of 2003. Given the ongoing violence in Iraq today, this officer, who is well known to me, has asked that his name not be published. From 1992 until 2003, he headed a branch of Iraqi intelligence responsible for monitoring the work of the UN weapons inspectors. His office intercepted their communications, and recruited spies among their ranks in Baghdad, Bahrain, New York and elsewhere. The mission of this intelligence unit was to discern the true intent of the UN weapons inspectors. Conventional thinking would hold that this was being done so that Iraq might better hide its WMD stockpiles. The Iraqi officer has long denied this, stating that instead his job was to find out why the UN refused to accept the Iraqi version of events, and to determine if the UN weapons inspectors were operating inside Iraq for purposes other than the disarmament. This officer claims to have intercepted conversations between Charles Duelfer, during the time he served as deputy executive chairman of the UN inspection teams, and senior US government officials, in New York and Baghdad, where a US agenda (supported by the British) for removing Saddam Hussein was discussed. I can confirm that such discussions frequently took place. According to this officer, after 1995 UN weapons inspectors were blocked by Iraq only when their actions were determined by the Iraqi government to represent a direct threat to the president of Iraq, a reality the intercepted Duelfer conversations and ongoing CIA efforts to mount a coup d'etat would seem to underscore. Duelfer is not an unbiased observer in this matter. For this reason alone, his ISG report must not be allowed to hide its findings behind a wall of secrecy. Far from showing the intent of Saddam Hussein to keep WMD, I believe a full review of all material relevant to the ISG's report will instead portray a dictator whose only desire was to retain his hold on power in the face of a US government which intended to do anything, including violate international law, to prevent this. The US Congress and British parliament should insist on a full declassification of the ISG report, as well as the sources used to compile it. During this critical time in both our nations' histories, with the war in Iraq playing such a central role in the selection of America's next president as well as the political future of Britain's prime minister, the American and British people deserve to know the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about the casus belli that collectively got us into the ongoing quagmire that is Iraq today. [Scott Ritter was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 and is the author of Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America.] (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 * Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 4 WorldNetDaily: Here's to the WMD truth-tellers SATURDAY OCTOBER 9 2004 [Supercritical Thoughts] [Gordon Prather] Posted: October 9, 2004 Well, Special Adviser to the Director of Central Intelligence Charles Duelfer has just sung his "swan song" to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Although their names weren't mentioned, Duelfer's song essentially constitutes long overdue homage to (a) Hans Blix, former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, (b) Scott Ritter, former chief inspector of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq, and (c) Gen. Hussein Kamal, former czar of Saddam's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. You see, in order to obtain a Gulf War cease-fire in 1991, Iraq had unconditionally accepted UNSCR-687, which required Iraq's full cooperation in the destruction, removal or rendering harmless – under UNSCOM supervision – of: (a) All chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities; (b) All ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometers and related major parts, and repair and production facilities; Iraq also unconditionally accepted UNSCR-707, which required Iraq's full cooperation in the destruction, removal or rendering harmless – under IAEA supervision – of: (c) all nuclear-weapons-usable materials, all potentially related subsystems or components and all potentially related research, development, support and manufacturing facilities. To insure Iraqi's "full cooperation," the Security Council imposed economic sanctions, effectively requiring all Iraqi foreign trade – export and import – to be conducted through a U.N. agency. Duelfer's principal findings are these: (a) Frantic to get the U.N. sanctions lifted, Iraq had "essentially destroyed'' all illicit weapons – as well as most weapons-useable materials and precursors – by the end of 1991. (b) By 1996, "nothing remained," not even a production capability. (c) Saddam never attempted to reconstruct any of those capabilities. Surprise, surprise? Not to Bush or Cheney, and maybe not to Kerry. You see, back in 1995, Gen. Kamal – Saddam's son-in-law – had defected to Jordan, carrying with him thousands of Iraqi WMD program documents. Kamal was extensively debriefed by UNSCOM, IAEA and CIA weenies. Kamal claimed that Iraqis had destroyed immediately after the Gulf War all remaining chem-bio agents and weapons they had produced for the Iran-Iraq War. The IAEA had discovered and destroyed what remained of the unsuccessful Iraqi nuke program. According to Kamal, "nothing remained." By 1997, the U.N. inspectors were able to report – confidentially – to the Security Council that Kamal had indeed told the truth. Oh, there were some "bookkeeping" inconsistencies. The amounts of chem-bio materials the Iraqis claimed to have made didn't always equal the amounts they could prove they had destroyed. But, by 1997, the shelf life – and, hence, the effectiveness – of those chem-bio agents would have long since past. Hallelujah! Iraq was effectively WMD-free! Whereupon, several members of the Security Council proposed that the "sanctions" imposed on Iraq in 1991 be lifted. President Clinton wouldn't allow it. Rationale? Well, the UNSC resolutions didn't require Iraq to be WMD-free. They merely required Iraq's "complete cooperation" with U.N. inspectors. Clinton argued that the Iraqis weren't providing "complete cooperation." So, on Aug. 14, 1998, Congress resolved "that the government of Iraq is in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations, and therefore the president is urged to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations". Then, on Oct. 31, 1998, Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which declared, "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein governtment to replace that regime." Armed with that "authority," Clinton attempted – from 20,000 feet – to remove Saddam from power at year end. As the bombing of Saddam's palaces was an obvious attempt to assassinate him, Saddam ceased "cooperating" with the UNSCOM inspectors, who had fled Iraq on the eve of the attempt. Then, in November 2002, President Bush got the Security Council to pass UNSCR-1441, which afforded Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council." Bush claimed he had "slam-dunk" intelligence that Saddam had been reconstructing his nuke and chem-bio programs. However, once back in Iraq, the U.N. inspectors reported – right up till the eve of the invasion – that they were receiving "complete cooperation" from the Iraqis. Furthermore, they could find no "indication" that there had been any attempts to reconstruct Iraq's WMD programs or facilities since 1991. Now, a thousand combat-deaths later, Duelfer is singing the same tune. Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. [gprather@worldnetdaily.com] | GO TO GORDON PRATHER'S ARCHIVE © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. ***************************************************************** 5 UK: Independent: Hans Blix: If you had seen what I have seen Home [http://www.independent.co.uk/] > Argument > Commentators Hans Blix Will President Bush apply the lessons from Iraq to Iran, Libya and North Korea? 10 October 2004 With their report last week, the inspectors appointed by the Bush administration to search Iraq for weapons of mass destruction have had to acknowledge that the reality on the ground was totally different from the virtual reality that had been spun. Both Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, and David Kay, his predecessor, were hawks who favoured the Iraq war. But while they try to give the administration some straws to cling to, they are professionals. After inspecting many sites, examining the voluminous documentation that has become available and interviewing many individuals, including Saddam Hussein and others in detention, they admit that the spin, to which they themselves had gladly contributed, was wrong. Duelfer seems to contradict some points made by Kay in his interim report, which were seized upon by governments. For example, Kay said his group had discovered dozens of "weapons of mass destruction-related programme activities". He pointed to a vial of botulinum found in a scientist's refrigerator, and said his group had found a number of secret underground labs that would have been suitable for chemical and biological programmes. Duelfer does not see anything significant in these finds. More important, Duelfer believes that Iraq destroyed its WMD in the summer of 1991, and finds nothing to document any programmes after that time. Far from confirming Tony Blair's reported reading that Saddam "had every intention of reviving his WMD programmes", the report suggests Saddam gave his officials the impression that he was interested in resuming programmes "if sanctions were lifted". This is the new straw to which the governments concerned have begun to cling. When might the sanctions have been lifted? Duelfer does not tell us, but in support of his view that the war was justified, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he doubted sanctions were "sustainable". He implied that they might lapse some time in the future - after which Saddam could revive his WMD programmes with impunity. Asked whether sanctions were not at least sustainable during some more months of inspection, Duelfer - evidently fearing damage to the administration that appointed him - said he could not answer. He might have added that even if economic sanctions were lifted or watered down in the future, nothing suggests that the Security Council would relax its ban on Iraq acquiring WMD. Indeed, binding resolutions foresaw a "reinforced system of monitoring and verification" without any fixed end. Even if economic sanctions were to have been lifted, any "breakout" by Saddam would have caused loud alarm bells to ring. Duelfer's report confirms that the combination of UN sanctions and inspection, plus external pressures - including the "no-fly zones" - had kept Saddam contained. As I wrote in my book Disarming Iraq, the world succeeded in disarming Saddam without knowing it. Saddam's first political aim, according to the report, was to get rid of the sanctions. That is why, we are told, he eliminated the WMD and WMD programmes, probably in 1991. Duelfer concludes, as I have done, that Saddam deliberately allowed the impression to exist that WMD were still there - to look bigger and more dangerous than he was. Like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Duelfer's group sees not a trace of revival of a nuclear programme. On the contrary, he says Iraq was further away from a nuclear weapon in 2003 than it was in 1991. It had not used the period between 1999 and 2002, when there were no inspections, for any revival. Thus, while George Bush has been maintaining that Saddam was a "growing threat" he was a diminishing danger to his neighbours and the world. Bush has been stressing that Saddam hated the US. However, Duelfer says that Saddam's interest in WMD seems to have been driven by concerns about Iran and Israel. Duelfer underlines the vital importance of having inspectors on the ground - hardly surprising, considering that most of the correct information available to US and British intelligence came from UN and IAEA inspectors, and that most of the things they got wrong were the results of their own work and contacts with Iraqis in exile. Can one hope that this will be remembered in future cases when supervision and verification will be needed, for example, in Iran, Libya and North Korea? I am not against intelligence. It is indispensable, not least in face of terrorist groups. When it comes to identifying the production or existence of WMD, assistance from intelligence to international inspection authorities can be helpful. Intelligence has sources that the inspectors do not have, but the inspectors have the right to be on the ground and to request information. Moreover, they are independent of governments. In foreign affairs, as in medicine, successful operations require correct diagnoses. Hans Blix is chairman of the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction and former head of the UN weapons inspectors ©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 6 Japan Times: Almost all wrong on Iraq Monday, October 11, 2004 EDITORIAL Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. While he certainly harbored ambitions to get them, the Iraqi programs to build them had decayed to become mere wisps of what they once were. That is the conclusion of the final report, released last week, of the chief U.S. weapons hunter, Mr. Charles Duelfer. His conclusions are a powerful indictment against the U.S. case for invading Iraq, although Bush administration officials and supporters continue to insist that the U.S.-led war was both necessary and beneficial. Mr. Duelfer's report also provides comfort for supporters of the United Nations: U.N. sanctions helped dismantle Iraq's WMD programs, and the U.N. inspection regime also gave an accurate assessment of those programs. Mr. Duelfer heads the Iraq Survey Group, which was put together after the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 to provide a complete and accurate assessment of Iraq's WMD programs. It comprised more than 1,000 intelligence, military and support personnel, and has had access to senior Iraqi officials (including Hussein himself) and former Iraqi scientists, 40 million pages of documents and classified intelligence. "We were almost all wrong" on Iraq, Mr. Duelfer told the U.S. Senate last week. Baghdad's nuclear weapons program was destroyed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and never restarted. Stocks of chemical and biological weapons also were destroyed under U.N. pressure, and production never resumed. The biological program was abandoned in 1995. Only the long-range missile program continued, but it was hobbled by the U.N. inspections regime. Moreover, Mr. Duelfer said, Hussein "had no formal written strategy or plan to revive WMD" after sanctions were lifted. Mr. Duelfer concludes that the U.S. also failed to read the intentions of Hussein. The former dictator wanted WMD not to attack the U.S. or to link up with terrorists, but to deter enemies closer to home, such as Iran and Israel, and to build up his image in the region. The report says Hussein felt that WMD stocks had saved his regime several times. He apparently still harbored dreams of resuming his previous relationship with the U.S. -- when Washington and Baghdad worked together to combat Islamic radicalism in the Middle East. Mr. Duelfer's report says there was no evidence that Iraq had sought to buy uranium abroad after 1991, that the aluminum tubes seized in 2001 and presented as evidence of a clandestine nuclear program were instead intended for missiles, and that Baghdad never produced the mobile biological labs that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell highlighted in his presentation to the U.N. to justify the war. Despite this avalanche of revelations, U.S. President George W. Bush continues to insist the war was justified. Speaking after the release of the report, Mr. Bush told campaign supporters, "There was a risk, a real risk, that Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks. In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take." Japan's government agrees. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Tokyo was not backing off its earlier support for the war. Iraq posed a threat: It had been developing WMD previously and whether it had abandoned those programs was not clear. Mr. Hosoda blamed Iraq for not complying with calls from the international community to provide proof that it had no WMD. Mr. Duelfer does provide a damning indictment of the U.N. oil-for-food program, arguing that Hussein manipulated the program to avoid sanctions, to reward friends and allies, and to lay the groundwork for votes that would eventually dismantle the program. Allegations of bribes could be explosive and have the potential to further poison international sentiment, making international cooperation even more difficult. As the report makes clear, international cooperation is essential. There is no escaping the conclusion that, for all its limitations, the U.N. inspection program did its job. Despite the lack of cooperation with the U.S., U.N. sanctions scared Iraq to the extent that it felt obliged to dismantle and abandon WMD programs. And Baghdad was not able to resume them. Nor should we forget that the U.N. assessment of Iraq's WMD program was on target. Hussein may have been a threat, but it is increasingly clear that he was not the "imminent danger" that justified a preemptive invasion and war. The Duelfer report is now the definitive judgment on the Iraq WMD programs, although finger-pointing will continue, especially amid the U.S. presidential campaign. Far more important is to ensure that these mistakes don't happen again, that the U.N. is strengthened and that the international community regains the ability to do as it did before the Iraq war -- work together to combat a real danger. The Japan Times: Oct. 11, 2004 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 7 Guardian Unlimited: Blair faces Iraq grilling from MPs [UP] Sarah Hall and Rory McCarthy in Baghdad Monday October 11, 2004 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] Tony Blair will today face sharp questioning when he meets his MPs and peers for the first time since the Iraq Survey Group's finding that Saddam Hussein destroyed his weapons of mass destruction long before the war. Anti-war MPs are predicting "high levels of anger" when the prime minister addresses them for the first time since July at a private meeting of the parliamentary Labour party. At the last meeting, Iraq was barely addressed but with the ISG's findings and the death of British hostage Ken Bigley, the mood among some backbenchers has hardened. "The ISG report just proves everything we've been saying," said Alice Mahon, the MP for Halifax, one of the war's most outspoken critics. The foreign secretary, Jack Straw - in Luxembourg today at a meeting of European foreign ministers - is due to make a wide-ranging statement in the Commons tomorrow on Iraq, the security situation and, it is understood, the death of Mr Bigley. That will allow MPs to voice some criticism, but anti-war backbenchers will today call for a "long overdue" two-day debate. The angry mood comes as Downing Street confirmed that Mr Blair hopes to reward those at the "sharp end" of the Iraq conflict in a special Iraq honours list. According to a leaked Whitehall memo, the prime minister is planning to honour civil servants among 50 non-military officials recommended for knighthoods, OBEs, MBEs and other awards. Anti-war MPs are likely to be further inflamed by yesterday's suicide car bombings in Baghdad that killed up to 18 people. Responsibility for the attacks was claimed by Tawhid and Jihad, the same group that murdered Mr Bigley last Thursday. The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, warned American troops in Iraq yesterday that they were engaged in a "test of wills" with the insurgents. He told US marines at the Asad air base in western Iraq, not far from towns like Falluja and Ramadi which are the toughest insurgent strongholds in the country: "They are hoping to cause members of the coalition to decide that the pain and the ugliness and the difficulty of the task is simply too great." Mr Rumsfeld warned that the violence in Iraq was only likely to worsen in the months before the elections scheduled for January. But he suggested that after those elections the administration could begin to reduce the number of US troops in Iraq. Mr Blair's Iraq awards, to be considered by the main honours committee, are expected to be announced in the new year honour's list. Among the mandarins understood to have been singled out are Sir David Omand, the national security coordinator responsible for overseeing the intelligence services, and Jane Marriott, who was at the centre of the government's assessments about Saddam's arsenal as head of the Foreign Office's nuclear proliferation department. Their inclusion led to an attack by the shadow home secretary, David Davis, who said: "While there may be worthy folk who have done work in Iraq, the idea of rewarding civil servants for a policy that has failed on this scale is hard to understand." But a Downing Street spokesman said: "The prime minister has made clear these are exceptional cir cumstances and it is important that this is recognised in some form." Peter Kilfoyle, the former defence minister and the Bigley family's MP, will today table an early day motion noting that the ISG's findings are "exhaustive" and "conclusive". It calls on the government "to recognise that the UK was led into war on a false premise". Yesterday, he revived his attack on the prime minister's failure, in his party conference speech, to offer a full apology. "He hasn't apologised. It was a clever ruse to give that impression but it certainly wasn't an apology." Yesterday's Baghdad bombings came shortly after 7am. One was near the oil ministry and the police academy in Baghdad. At least 17 people were killed, including seven women. A second suicide bomber attacked a US military convoy in eastern Baghdad around the same time. A soldier was injured and later died. Two Iraqi civilians were also hurt. In a rare sign of progress, a militia loyal to the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr agreed at the weekend to a ceasefire in Sadr City, the eastern slums of Baghdad. From today the militia said it would start handing in heavy weaponry at police stations across the district, with the agreement that the US would halt military operations against the fighters. Similar agreements have been reached several times since the militia first staged a series of revolts across southern Iraq in April but each time the fighting has restarted. Under the latest agreement the militia is to be given five days to hand in their weapons. In return the Iraqi government has pledged $500m (about £280m) to rebuild the Sadr City area, one of the poorest parts of Baghdad. The agreement is part of a larger campaign to tackle insurgent strongholds that have developed across Iraq. The US took back the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, in an operation last week and now US marines are leading an operation south of the capital around Latifiya, Mr Bigley was being held. Al-Jazeera television station said last night it had received a statement from a group calling itself the Abu Bakr al-Seddiq Battalions, saying it had released 10 Turkish hostages held for over a month after their Turkish employer said it would leave Iraq. Special report Iraq Chronology Iraq timeline: Feb 1 2004 - present [http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/page/0,12438,1151021,00.html] Iraq timeline: July 16 1979 - Jan 31 2004 [http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/page/0,12438,793802,00.html] Useful links Provisional authority: rebuilding Iraq [http://www.rebuilding-iraq.net/] Iraqi-American chamber of commerce [http://www.i-acci.org/main.shtml] cnn.com: David Kay's evidence to US Senate committee [http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/28/kay.transcript/] [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 ***************************************************************** 8 UK Independent: Blix accuses Blair as Labour MPs turn up heat over WMD By Andy McSmith, Political Editor and Francis Elliott 10 October 2004 Tony Blair will face an angry Commons this week as MPs absorb the 1,000-page report from the Iraq Survey Group, which spent 18 months in a vain search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The Prime Minister faces the prospect of an emergency debate on Iraq as his opponents step up the pressure on him to make an unqualified apology. Hans Blix, the former UN chief weapons inspector, said the report was further evidence "that the reality on the ground was totally different from the virtual reality that had been spun". Writing today in The Independent on Sunday, Mr Blix said the report was all the more damning because its main author, Charles Duelfer, was a pro-war "hawk" appointed by the CIA. His words were echoed by the former UN inspector Scott Ritter, also writing in the IoS, who claimed that "the last vestiges of perceived legitimacy regarding the decision of US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to invade Iraq have been eliminated". The Prime Minister can expect fierce questions about the report when he addresses a private meeting of Labour MPs and peers in the Commons tomorrow. Peter Kilfoyle, a former defence minister, is to table a motiondemanding that the Prime Minister issue a full apology for claiming before the war that Iraq's weaponry posed a current threat. One former Labour minister, who backed the decision to go to war, said: "I don't think the line is sustainable any more, when there has been an error on that scale, and people have been killed - and nothing happens. Somebody has to accept the consequences." Downing Street displayed its nervousness over how the ISG report will affect backbench opinion by sending every Labour MP a briefing note from No 10 putting the best possible gloss on the document. Leadership hopes that a resurgent Conservative party would help unite Labour were dashed last night, however, as polls suggested that Michael Howard has, if anything, lost support in recent weeks. Iraq brought sharp exchanges in the second US presidential debate between Mr Bush and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry. "The President didn't find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so he's turned his campaign into a weapon of mass deception," Senator Kerry said in St Louis. Mr Bush retorted: "They're trying to say, 'Did you make a mistake going into Iraq?' And the answer is, 'Absolutely not.' It was the right decision." In Britain, political arguments over the Iraq war were suspended yesterday out of respect for the murdered hostage Ken Bigley. Mr Bush and Mr Blair are expected to derive some comfort, however, from the decisive election victory yesterday of the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, whose Labor opponents had promised to withdraw the country's troops from Iraq by the end of the year if they won. However, Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary during the 1990-91 Gulf War, told the IoS: "The case given for war having evaporated, it has now been relegated to a hypothesis of a future threat. This is a different thing from the real and growing threat we were told about before the war, and it is not grounds for attacking a sovereign country." UK Independent Ltd. ***************************************************************** 9 AFP: US would have invaded Iraq, even knowing Saddam had no weapons- Rice [http://www.spacewar.com/] [http://www.spacewar.com/] WASHINGTON (AFP) Oct 10, 2004 US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sunday defiantly defended the invasion of Iraq, saying the United States would have taken the same decision even if Washington had known that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. "He was someone who had an insatiable appetite for weapons of mass destruction. He had the means, he had the intent, he had the money to do it," Rice told the "Fox News Sunday" television program. "You were never going to break the link between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. "And now we know that, had we waited, he would have gotten out of the sanctions, he would have undermined them by both trying to pay off people on the Security Council and doing what he could to keep his expertise in place," Rice said. Rice's latest defense of the war came after the top US weapons inspector in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, released a 1,000-page report that found Saddam had destroyed most of his chemical and biological weapons after his 1991 Gulf War defeat and that his nuclear program had "progressively decayed." But Rice stuck to the administration's description of Saddam's Iraq as a "grave and gathering threat," even as Duelfer's report undermined the White House's chief rationale for the war. "Because we invaded the country, because we were able to interview the scientists and get the documents that Saddam Hussein refused to get to the United Nations, we now know that he did not have those stockpiles," she said. "What we learned in the Duelfer report what that there was another kind of grave and growing threat, and ... that he was undermining the sanctions," she said. "He was keeping in place the expertise. He was keeping in place some of the materials. He intended that, when the world looked the other way, when sanctions were lifted -- and he was actively undermining them, they were eroding -- he intended to rebuild his weapons of mass destruction programs." "It was time to take care of this threat. You were never going to break the link between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. It was only a matter of time," she said. All rights reserved. © 2004 [http://www.afp.com/] . Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, ***************************************************************** 10 KR: Iran, Russia poised to close deal on Iran's first nuclear power plant Knight Ridder Washington Bureau | 10/10/2004 | [krw-webmaster@krwashington.com] By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson Knight Ridder Newspapers TEHRAN, Iran - Russia and Iran are on the verge of closing an $800 million deal to start up Iran's first nuclear power plant, the countries' foreign ministers announced Sunday. Such a deal would be a major blow to U.S.-led efforts to derail Iran's nuclear program, which many suspect is intended at least in part to make nuclear weapons. Iranian leaders deny any atomic ambitions, although Iranian scientists are developing technology that could be used to make highly enriched uranium for weapons. At a joint news conference in the Iranian capital, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he and his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharrazi, ironed out their differences over providing fuel for Iran's first reactor near the southern port city of Bushehr. The two also discussed international concerns over Iran's nuclear program and ballistic missile technology. "We talked about some kind of commitment that this (missile technology) will not lead to other things," Lavrov said in Russian. He didn't elaborate. The Bush administration has repeatedly pressured Russia to abandon the deal with Iran, which has ties to Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups and is believed to be harboring some members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Lavrov, however, dismissed U.S. efforts to take the case against Iran to the United Nations Security Council if Tehran fails to curb some elements of its nuclear program. He said such efforts aren't "constructive." But Lavrov refused to say whether Russia would use its veto power to block any U.N. attempt to sanction Iran. "We would be expecting the cooperation between Iran and the agency to continue," he said. "To start thinking of some scenarios, which I don't believe are constructive, is premature to put it mildly, and maybe even counterproductive." Iran faces a Nov. 25 deadline from the International Atomic Energy Agency to agree to widen its suspension of uranium enrichment. That includes making centrifuges, converting yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride gas to fuel nuclear reactors and constructing a heavy water reactor. Iran has refused to comply, and Kharrazi reiterated his country's stance on Sunday. But he left the door open to more intensive international inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, saying the Islamic Republic was "ready to adopt the kind of mechanisms to prove that it will not go down the path to nuclear weapons." Uranium enrichment and other fuel cycle work are allowed for peaceful purposes under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran, which is a signatory to the treaty, insists that it will use nuclear power only to meet growing domestic energy needs and free its huge oil and gas reserves for export. While Lavrov said it was "in Iran's and everyone's interest" to suspend enrichment activities, he saw "no link" between that and helping Iran build its first nuclear plant and providing fuel for it. The contract had been held up for several months amid disputes over money and returning radioactive spent fuel. On Sunday, Lavrov said the deal would be signed "in the near future." At this stage, any remaining issues are "technical, not political, between our atomic agency and Russia's atomic agency," Kharrazi said. Iranian authorities had planned to start operations at the Bushehr plant by mid-2004, providing 1,000 megawatts of power, enough to supply 1 million homes. ***************************************************************** 11 AFP: Russia against referral of Iran to UN Security Council [http://www.spacewar.com/] TEHRAN (AFP) Oct 10, 2004 Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said here Sunday that Moscow was opposed to seeing Iran referred to the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme. "To start thinking of any scenario which is not constructive to our point of view is premature and could be counter-productive," Lavrov said at a joint news conference with his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharazi. "We will be expecting the cooperation between Iran and the IAEA to continue," Lavrov added. He was responding to a question over whether Russia would use its veto power at the Security Council if Iran was referred to the body by the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). On September 18, the IAEA board called on Iran to "immediately" widen a suspension of enrichment to include all uranium enrichment-related activities. Iran has so far refused to do so and is facing a November 25 deadline. It risks being referred to the Security Council, something the United States -- which accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons -- has been pushing for. While Lavrov said it was "in Iran's and everybody's interest to suspend enrichment" activities, he gave no sign that Russia was willing to back away from a deal to build the Islamic republic's first nuclear plant and provide it with fuel. On the provision of nuclear fuel, a deal that has been held up for several months amid a dispute over pricing and the return of spent fuel, Lavrov said he now expected a contract would be signed "in the near future". And he said he saw "no linkage" between the deal and the November 25 deadline set by the IAEA. For his part, Kharazi reiterated the regimes refusal to give up its work on the nuclear fuel cycle, but added Iran was "ready to accept all mechanisms to give proof that there is no deviation of the Iranian nuclear programme." All rights reserved. © 2004 Agence France-Presse [http://www.afp.com/] . Sections of the information displayed on ***************************************************************** 12 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Nuclear mediation offered by Pugwash [http://joongangdaily.joins.com] October 11, 2004 KST 13:14 (GMT+9) The 54th General Assembly of the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs ended Saturday with the adoption of the Seoul Declaration, where members expressed concern over the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The conference brought more than 150 scientists, NGO officials, and public figures from 65 countries to discuss disarmament. The members called for participating nations to start the fourth round of six-party talks aimed at resolving the North Korea nuclear issue. The conference also offered to play a mediating role in solving the nuclear crisis on the peninsula, without giving specific details. Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, addressed the conference and said Seoul officials were dealing with South Korea's undeclared nuclear experiments of 1982 and 2000 transparently. 2004.10.10 [http://joongangdaily.joins.com/faq.html] Copyright by Joins.com, Inc. Terms of Use | ***************************************************************** 13 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Seoul was blind to nuclear crisis [http://joongangdaily.joins.com] 1st in a series Recent interviews with government officials reveal that the South Korean government was reluctant to acknowledge the severity of North Korea's renewed efforts to develop nuclear weapons when the United States provided intelligence in 2002. Even before the visit to North Korea by James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. officials had communicated on several occasions the importance of the issue. On Sept. 12, 2002, at a meeting at the Korean Defense Ministry between General Leon LaPorte, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, and then-Defense Minister Lee Jun, General LaPorte said North Korea was trying to produce and store highly-enriched uranium and the situation was so grave that the United States might change its policy direction toward the North. The minister acknowledged there was a problem, but said a scheduled ceremony for an inter-Korean railroad project would go ahead. Two days later, at the UN in New York, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told Choi Sung-hong, the then-foreign minister, a similar story. Mr. Powell said intelligence indicated a huge problem brewing regarding North Korea's highly-enriched uranium. Minister Choi said talks with North Korea should continue. On Sept. 25, President Bush told President Kim Dae-jung that a high-ranking U.S. official would be sent to North Korea. "At the time, nothing was mentioned about North Korea's highly-enriched uranium, and we thought the call was positive," said a high-ranking official. On Oct. 2, at the Blue House, Mr. Kelly met President Kim and government officials to explain the purpose of his upcoming visit to North Korea. What he said was shocking enough to rock the basic guidelines that had served U.S.-North Korean and inter-Korean relationships. He also revealed that North Korea was trying a new way to use highly-enriched uranium to develop weapons. "We had wrongly read the situation," said a government official. Signs of trouble from Washington had come as early as August: John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, had alerted Foreign Minister Choi and Defense Minister Lee to North Korea's renewed efforts to build a nuclear arsenal using highly-enriched uranium. It was around this time that the news coming from Pyeongyang was enhancing the Kim administration's view that the sunshine policy was bearing some fruit. North Korea had announced measures to improve its economy (July 1), while Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro had just announced his scheduled visit to North Korea (Sept. 17), and Shinuiju was named a special economic zone (Sept. 19). The view in Seoul was that the visit to North Korea by the special envoy would improve relations. "We considered the reports by the United States as plain information. Humans tend to ignore unwanted information," said an official. by Oh Byeong-sang africanu@joongang.co.kr> 2004.10.10 ***************************************************************** 14 Japan Times: Koizumi wary over placing sanctions on North Korea October 10, 2004 HANOI (Kyodo) Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi reiterated caution Saturday about Tokyo imposing economic sanctions on North Korea and called for continued efforts to resolve nuclear, abduction and other bilateral issues through dialogue. [News photo] Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi speaks at a news conference Saturday in Hanoi after a summit of the Asia-Europe Meeting. In a news conference to wrap up his work at the summit of the Asia-Europe Meeting, Koizumi also urged Myanmar to make greater strides toward democracy. He said he hopes to meet with a Chinese leader next month and that ASEM members will support Japan's bid for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat. "Calls for economic sanctions (on North Korea) are strong in Japan, but we also have to consider if economic sanctions are effective," Koizumi said. "I would like to work with patience to get North Korea to respond sincerely" to pending issues. The Myanmar issue overshadowed the three-day summit as it was made a member of ASEM. Koizumi said he does not believe that refusing Myanmar admission would have helped promote democracy there. "I understand the concern that the democratization has been insufficient, but I doubt if excluding Myanmar will lead to its democratization," Koizumi said. "Japan has limited its assistance to humanitarian purposes and will continue to urge Myanmar to strive to democratize," he said. "I think the representative of Myanmar took seriously the other nations' concerns expressed in this ASEM." On China, Koizumi said, "I'm looking forward to attending a Japan-China summit." The Japan Times: Oct. 10, 2004 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 15 Korea Times: IAEA Chief Doubts S. Korean Nuclear Weapons Plans Hankooki.com > The Korea Times By Ryu Jin Staff Reporter Chief U.N. nuclear inspector said that South Korea‘―s past nuclear-related tests did not appear to be part of a weapons program, describing it as ``simply two scientific experiments on a small scale,‘―‘― according to a U.S. news report on Saturday. ``I don‘―t think we have seen any intentions to develop nuclear weapons (by South Korea),‘―‘― Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agnecy (IAEA), told reporters in Tokyo, The Washington Post reported on Saturday. ``What we have seen are experiments that have to do with the separation of plutonium and making uranium. These experiments by themselves are not illegal,‘―‘― said the IAEA chief, who flew to Tokyo on Wednesday after staying in Seoul for four days. But ElBaradei suggested that the work, conducted by unauthorized scientists in 1982 and 2000 and disclosed by the South Korean government last month, should have been reported to the IAEA earlier. South Korea‘―s failure to report it promptly, some experts say, could constitute a violation of international law. Seoul has acknowledged that some scientists carried out two one-off experiments to enrich uranium in 2000 and to extract plutonium in 1982, which are both two key materials needed to build atomic bombs. South Korean officials have maintained that the work was purely scientific in nature and not linked to any weapons development program. In a contributing article to the U.S. daily in the same edition, Seoul‘―s Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Ban Ki-moon said it was regrettable that ``there seems to be widespread misunderstanding and speculation about the transparency‘―‘― of his nation‘―s peaceful nuclear activities. ``We need to look at these issues in perspective. The Republic of Korea has the sixth-largest civilian nuclear industry in the world, with 19 nuclear power plants in operation,‘―‘― he said. ``Most other countries with our level of demand for nuclear energy produce nuclear fuel for their own use by enriching uranium or reprocessing spent fuel. But, despite the compelling economic need to reduce our dependence on imported nuclear fuel, South Korea has maintained a policy of voluntarily abstaining from enrichment and reprocessing.‘―‘― ``South Korea‘―s determination not to pursue any nuclear programs other than for the peaceful use of nuclear energy remains unequivocal and should never be doubted,‘―‘― Ban stressed. The IAEA investigation has so far consisted of two inspections, with at least one more planned before a team of experts submits a report on its findings to the 35-member IAEA board next month. jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr 10-10-2004 16:52 ***************************************************************** 16 AFP: ASEM calls for resumption of North Korea nuclear talks [http://www.spacewar.com/] HANOI (AFP) Oct 09, 2004 European and Asian leaders Saturday pressed for the immediate resumption of six-party talks aimed at ending the nuclear impasse on the Korean peninsula. "The leaders expressed their strong support for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula through a peaceful solution and the six-party talks process, and urged the earliest resumption of talks," a joint statement said at the conclusion of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) here. "They encouraged the parties to continue to take coordinated steps to address the nuclear issue and address all related concerns," it said. Since the issue erupted in October 2002, three rounds of six-party talks, which include the United States, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and China, have proved inconclusive. The crisis began when Washington accused Pyongyang of operating an enriched uranium program in violation of a 1994 nuclear freeze accord. North Korean troops backed by Chinese forces fought against South Korean and US-led UN forces during the 1950-1953 Korean War that ended in stalemate. US troops have since been stationed in South Korea under a mutual defense pact. All rights reserved. © 2004 Agence France-Presse [http://www.afp.com/] . Sections of the information displayed on ***************************************************************** 17 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Korean Relations Undermined by NK Nuclear Program Updated Oct.10,2004 19:18 KST NGO and international peace advocate Pugwash announced in a statement at the 57th Seoul conference that North Korea's withdrawal from the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003 has created a great danger that should be resolved through multilateral talks and cooperation. The Pugwash statement said that the drive to establish friendly relations between the two Koreas has been undermined after the North started its nuclear weapons program. It also said that without efforts to abrogate atomic weapons, the whole world could face catastrophic disaster and that the U.S. is venturing the threat of war or the use of pre-emptive strikes to stop other nations from producing atomic weapons. (Lee Ha-won, may2@chosun.com ) ***************************************************************** 18 AxisofLogic/ U.S. Military src="http://www.axisoflogic.com/ Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium. Weapons of Mass Destruction Found in Iraq By WALTER A. DAVIS Oct 10, 2004, 07:50 I. Laugh In Brings You the News: Jake Gittes: "Why do you need it? You've got enough money." Noah Cross: "The future, Mr. Gittes. The future." Chinatown The US CODE, TITLE 50,CHAPTER 40 Sec. 2302 defines a Weapon of Mass Destruction as follows: "The term 'weapon of mass destruction" means any weapon or device that is intended, or has the capability, to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through the release, dissemination, or impact of (A) toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors, (B) a disease organism, or (C) radiation or radioactivity." Depleted uranium (DU) is a waste product of the uranium enrichment process that fuels both our nuclear weapons and civilian nuclear power programs. In fact, over 99% of the uranium enrichment process results in this waste product, which has a half life of 4.5 billion years. DU is both a toxic heavy metal and a radiological poison. The U.S. currently has over 10 million tons of DU. As we all know, the disposal of nuclear waste is one of the unintended consequences or blowback of the development of nuclear power. A solution to the problem of DU has, however, been found. DU is now used in virtually every weapon employed by the U.S. in Iraq (and in Afghanistan and in Kosovo). To cite the most conspicuous example: every penetrator rod in the shell shot from an Abrams tank contains 10 pounds of DU. DU is selected for weapons for three reasons: it's cheap (was made available to arms manufacturers free of charge and is easy to develop); it's heavy, 1.7 times the density of lead and thus most effective at killing because it penetrates anything it hits; it's pyrophoric, igniting and burning on contact with air and breaking up on contact with its target into extremely small particles of radioactive dust dispersed into the atmosphere. The result: permanent contamination of air, water, and soil. [1] DU was first used by the U.S. in Desert Storm. The amount used was between 315-350 tons. Five times as much was used during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Over a third of the U.S. soldiers who served in the first Gulf War are now permanently disabled. VA reports indicate 27,571 U.S. soldiers already disabled from the current war and occupation.. The Department of Energy and the Department of Defense of course continue to deny that DU has any harmful effects. A U.N. sub-commission on Human Rights has ruled that DU, which fits the definition of a "dirty bomb," is an illegal weapon. [2] Huge chunks of radioactive debris full of DU now litter the cities and countryside of Iraq. Fine radioactive dust permeates the entire country. The problem of clean-up is insoluble. The entire ecosystem of Iraq is permanently contaminated. The Iraq people are the new hibakusha. Their fate, like that of the "survivors" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is a condition of death-in-life. The long term health effects of DU on the Iraqui people (and on our own troops) are incalculable. There is no mask or protective clothing that can be devised to prevent radioactive dust from entering the lungs or penetrating the skin. Moreover, DU targets the DNA and the Master Code (histone), altering the genetic future of exposed populations. Because it is the perfect weapon for delivering nanoparticles of poison, radiation, and nano-pollution directly into living cells, DU is the perfect weapon for extinguishing entire populations. The Iraqi's are not alone. Vast regions of the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans have been permanently contaminated with radioactive dust and debris [3] These facts are worth bearing in mind the next time we are told what has now become a bipartisan article of faith: the Iraqi people are better off with Saddam Hussein gone. Or as Bill Maher put it on his show of Sept. 24th "Eventually they're better off." A footnote to the above, the shape of things to come. Recently a takeover was engineered transferring the no bid University of California management contract (of 61 years duration) for the US nuclear weapons program at the nuclear weapons labs at Berkeley, Livermore, and Los Alamos to the University of Texas where the Carlyle Group ( an investment conglomerate that specializes in Defense Developments and whose members include George H.W. and George W. Bush, James Baker, the bin laden family and John Major) will assume control over it. A ramping up of the nuclear weapons program is now underway with funding at the highest level ever-even higher than during the Cold War. These developments are the first yield of the top secret meeting of 150 top U.S. officials and military contractors (chaired reportedly by Dick Cheney) held at the U.S. Strategic Command Center in Nebraska on Aug. 6th 2003 as an official commemoration of the 58th Anniversary of Hiroshima and to plan the weaponry of the nuclear future. [4] We need a new term to describe our actions in Iraq. Genocide is inadequate. Thus: Ecocide [from Gr oikos, house; and ­cide, the destruction of] Ecology has two referents. It refers to the branch of biology that deals with the relations between living organisms and their environment; and the branch of sociology that deals with relations among human groups with reference to material resources and the consequent social and cultural patterns. The destruction of both is the goal of Ecocide. Ecocide is the deliberate production of a condition of permanent radiological, biological, and chemical contamination whereby death comes to inhabit an entire ecosystem. A condition of ecocide exists when life itself and all possibilities of its renewal are being systematically destroyed in an identifiable geographical area, which is also defined in terms of specifiable racial and religious characteristics. As is now known, the cumulative result of such actions may bring about this condition for the entire planet. The condition of homo sacer as described by Giorgio Agamben. [5] The European Council on Radiation Risk, for example, calculated the damage to human health of low level radiation thusfar released into the atmosphere from nuclear weapons testing to be 61,600,000 deaths by cancer alone. Moreover, in our wars since 1991 the U.S. has now released in terms of global atmospheric pollution the equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki Bombs. [6] II. Appointment in Samarra "-the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event-in the living act, the undoubted deed-there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask." Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick Does the situation described above offer us an intimation of what Sigmund Freud had in mind when he spoke of a pure culture of thanatos, the death drive? It's always a good idea when seeking an explanation of the human motives behind actions to stick with the empirical. With stated intentions and official rationales. Otherwise we give ourselves over to psychobabble. Despite official denial by the Department of Defense that DU is harmful, a series of explanations have been put in place to account for the development and use of DU weapons. DU is cost effective, militarily efficient, and turns to productive use a waste product we'd otherwise have to dispose of at great cost. With motives and intentions thus circumscribed the decision to use DU in weaponry need not raise the spectre of anything dark in the psyche. It's all a matter of pragmatic efficiency with a little capitalist profit motive thrown in for good measure. There's only one thing wrong with this explanation. It leaves out the basis for the calculus. There's every reason to use DU and no reason not to use it if, and only if, one rationale informs all decisions. How to maximize death, regardless of consequences or alternatives. Introduce any countervailing motives and the entire chain of decisions is blocked by questions of conscience. Conscious, stated intentions then reveal themselves as functions of something else that has been conveniently rendered unconscious. What looks like a purely pragmatic matter involving nothing disordered in the psyche now reveals the opposite: the fact that thanatos so inhabits the system and everyone in it that its hegemony and the absence of anything opposed to it "goes without saying." It has become what Wittgenstein called a "form of life." [7] So deeply rooted is the force of thanatos in us that it operates automatically, habitually, and of necessity. It has become a collective unconscious. And as such is no longer accessible to those whose intentions conceal and reveal it. The reason for sticking with the empirical is now clear. Alethia. There is something insane in the empirical. It is what the historian must uncover. Before we ask ourselves how this situation came to pass we need to ask another question. For it's easy to claim we don't know about such things because the media refuses to tell us about it. There's another reason for our ignorance, however, and it's the one we need to learn about. I refer to the possibility that we choose our ignorance because otherwise we'd lose the system of guarantees on which we depend for our identity and our understanding of history. As Barbara Bush put it in telling Diane Sawyer why she doesn't watch the news: "Why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose. Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" [8] It would be easy to deride Mrs. Bush, to congratulate oneself on not sharing her attitude. What I hope to show , however, is that on an essential level, one that is determinant in the last instance, we are in full agreement with her and delude ourselves as long as we think otherwise. III. The Fatality of Guarantees "The purpose of thought is to eliminate the contingent." Hegel Three weeks ago my mother died. At the end of her funeral the priest left us with these words as a final reminder of what had been said repeatedly in a variety of ways for the past two days: "We who leave here in sorrow know that we will one day be reunited with her in joy." My concern here is not with the truth or falsity of this preposterous belief, but with its psychological function as a guarantee that offers human beings a way to deprive death of its finality. And of the terror that prospect entails. The function of guarantees is to enable human beings to bear events and contingencies that would otherwise be too traumatic. There is much that we can face apparently only when we can deny it through the working of what we'll soon see is an entire system of guarantees. Such perhaps is one accurate estimation of what it means to be a human being, to remain a child of one's needs and desires disguising that fact in the form of ideas and concepts. The primary purpose of religion, philosophy, and culture is to provide conceptual, psychological, and emotional guarantees so that traumatic events become part of a larger framework that assures the realization of our hopes and dreams. Most people simply find life unlivable without such supports. Through the ministry of the guarantees we overcome or banish thoughts and feelings that we are convinced would deprive life of meaning, plunging us into despair. Experience accordingly becomes the movement from and to the affirmation of the guarantees through their imposition on events. The main line of Western philosophy can most profitably be seen as a series of efforts to provide a ground for the guarantees. That effort achieves one of its culminations in Hegel who defined the purpose of philosophy as the elimination of the contingent. As father of the philosophy of history, he offered that new discipline a single goal: to show that the rational is real and the real rational; that history is the story of progress, liberty, the realization of a universal humanity. Or, to put it in vulgar terms, democracy and civilization are on the march and will soon sweep the entire Middle East. In order to triumph over the contingencies of existence-- doubt about oneself, one's place in the world, and one's final end -- many guarantees are needed. Moreover, they must form a system of reinforcing beliefs such that if one guarantee is threatened other guarantees come in to fill the breach. Thereby the function of the system as a whole is assured, the triumph of the guarantees over the central contingencies of existence. Within the system of guarantees one guarantee is superordinate. The belief that human nature is basically good. Animal rationale. We are endowed with an ahistorical essence that cannot be lost. Evil is an aberration. Consequently there is always reason for hope and the belief that no matter how bad things get we'll always find a way to recover everything that the guarantees assure. What follows is a brief and by no means exhaustive description of the basic system of guarantees. One need not believe all of it for the system to hold. Guarantees are superfluous. If they collapse at one point, their hold becomes even stronger at another. That is one reason why the death of God gave birth to so many secular religions. The way to read what follows accordingly is for each reader to locate the guarantees that have the greatest hold over them. They identify what controls one's response to traumatic events. Or, to put it in other terms, they identify what one must overcome in oneself in order to know the ontological force of existence, contingency, and history. Perhaps one only begins to know, to think, and to respond appropriately to events once one has eradicated the entire system of guarantees. Here then a list of some of the central planks in that edifice. Religious: a loving creator with a redemptive purpose assures us of the triumph of goodness and the rewards of eternal life. Philosophic: rationality gives meaning, direction, and pragmatic efficiency to the human mind and all the purposeful activities in which we engage. Scientific: science is the fulfillment of reason and through its development we will harness nature to our needs. That guarantee gives birth to another: the technological imperative, which teaches us that all technological developments are good. In any case, the die is cast since all technological problems require for their solution the development of new technologies. [9] Historical: History is the story of progress, of the development of those universal values through which eventually the real becomes rational and the rational real. Through that long march all contingencies are eventually overcome. A Political corollary: the democratic ideal as realized in the United States is an ultimate good; globally its benefits should be extended to all humanity. Economic: capitalism, which is nothing but the economic realization of human nature, is the global principle that will bring the greatest good to all. Therefore, any actions required to advance it are both necessary and good. The deepest guarantees, of course, address us on a far more personal level. Psychological: We have an identity, a self, that is strong and once attained can never be lost. Trauma is but the occasion for its recovery. We are not haunted by anything dark or disordered in our psyche, nor do our actions derive from such forces. The intentions we give offer a full account of our actions, and thus the term and limit of our responsibility. Emotional: The innermost need of human beings is to feel good about themselves. Whatever threatens that feeling must be exorcised. Health, normalcy, and productivity depend on avoiding negative feelings. Hope and optimism are not only healthy attitudes, they are requirements of our nature. Biologically wired. We cannot remain for long in trauma. Recovery, moreover, must restore our faith in the guarantees and our hopes for the future. The need for hope is the capstone of the entire system of guarantees. Yet it too apparently has a history. Today over 10 million of our children are on prescription drugs to prevent depression and anxiety. Informed of this fact by Bill Maher, the French actress Julie Delphy spoke the spontaneous wisdom of an archaic culture: "Don't they know that depression is a good thing; that it's something you have to go through in order to grow?" Not anymore. The key to understanding the power of the guarantees is to understand the fears that they exorcise. Thanks to religion death, suffering, and evil are deprived of their power. Through the attainment of reason all other forms of consciousness and their objects are put in their place. Poetic knowing is deprived both of its legitimacy and its terror. Science, as fulfillment of reason, assures us of domination over nature. What Heidegger termed technoscientific rationality becomes the measure of the real. [10] Belief in historical progress banishes the recurrent suspicion that history may be unmoored or may be moving to the darkest of ends. The condition is thereby set that makes it impossible for us to experience traumatic events such as 9-11 except as occasions to take whatever actions are needed to reaffirm our goodness and restore our guarantees. It is in the personal order, however, that the guarantees do their deepest work. Psychologically, belief in the self or self-identity exorcises the most frightening contingency: that there is a void at the center of the American psyche with panic anxiety and its corollary, compulsive consumption, the proof of a desperate non-identity. That spectre brings us before the greatest fear: that our psyche, not our conscious, deliberative intentions, is the author of our actions, an author who will readily do anything in order to feel safe, secure, and righteous. All of our emotional needs then stand forth under the rule of a single necessity: the need to feel good about oneself at whatever cost and to sustain hope by banishing anything that would trouble us. Resolution, catharsis (i.e., the discharge of painful tensions or awareness), and renewal emerge as the needs that bind us with an iron necessity to the guarantees and all that they make it impossible for us to know. It is easy to deprecate Bush and, apparently, to hold onto the idea that he's a temporary aberration. But the problem goes deeper. To revive a battle cry from the 60's, insofar as one is wedded to any one of the guarantees one is part of the problem and not of the solution. For the grandest function of the system of guarantees, as a whole and in each one of its parts, is to blind us to history. [11] And so to take up again the question stated previously, how did the situation now being created in Iraq come about? The next three sections constitute an attempt to answer that question by tracing a repressed history. IV. The Nuclear Unconscious "he begins to expand, an uncontainable lighthero and horror, engineer and Ariadne consumed, molten inside the light of himself, the mad exploding of himself." Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow To recapitulate a historical fact that took over 50 years to rescue from myth: the United States did not bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki "to end the war and save countless lives." It did so for four reasons (and in the knowledge that a defeated Japan was pursuing terms of surrender through several diplomatic channels): (1)to avenge Pearl Harbor, (2) to justify the amount of money spent developing the Bomb, (3) to create a laboratory whereby our scientific, medical, and military personnel could study its effects, and (4) to impress the Russians ­and the world-with this opening salvo of the Cold War. In short, Hiroshima was the first act of global terrorism. That story couldn't be told, however, and still encounters strenuous resistance from most Americans, because it exposes too many of the guarantees we want to have about our Nation and its actions in history. [12] Those actions also gave birth to another myth and another history. The story of the development of "the peaceful atom." No sooner were the tidings of the Nuclear Age broadcast to a terrified world than we heard promises of a nuclear Utopia. Through those promises a collective fantasy was created about the assurances that the peaceful atom gave us about the future. Entire cities would have all their energy needs met for the cost of a nickel. Etc. Now fifty years later we find that we can't get rid of the stockpiles of nuclear waste we've created. We find that nuclear technology is the least cost effective and most environmentally destructive source of energy ever developed. What it provides -less that 20% of our electrical energy ­comes at a cost of trillions of dollars and at the expense of the safe and clean technologies (wind, solar) that we must soon develop if there is to be a future. What we now know is that nuclear power was a mistake from the start and should have been aborted in its inception. Also that the cost in lives to those living near or downwind of our reactors now well exceeds the combined loss of life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[13] But to know these things we'd also have to come to know that the peaceful atom was always a fantasy, created after the fact for motives that have nothing to do with official proclamations. Robert Oppenheimer made two prescient observations. "The use of the Bomb was implicit in its invention." "We [the scientists] did the devil's work." His error was the belief that by calling on the guarantees it would be possible to reverse the process we thereby set loose. Thus the humanistic reflections that preoccupied his final years, one of the clearest examples of the effort to reassert essentialistic ahistorical guarantees as a way of cleansing his own and our collective hands of history. What Oppenheimer thereby hoped to exorcise was the spectre that there are certain actions that are irreversible and that give history a totally new direction, permitting no return to the way things once were. Perhaps there are events in history that mark fundamental turning points in which the human psyche with no essential, ahistorical nature to protect it makes a quantum leap into a new way of being. In doing so it embraces a logic that will propel it to move in new, unseen, and unwanted directions. Oppenheimer offers us a picture of the Los Alamos scientists that exposes the official ideology of science. He and his colleagues know what their discoveries will lead to but dissemble that knowledge. Hiding it from their consciousness they thereby, as Freud teaches, empower it. The rush to the Bomb that seized them fulfilled a desire that has little to do with value free objective inquiry. Devil's work is of a different order and draws on something else in the psyche. Here briefly is one way to constitute its meaning. In inventing the Bomb the scientists of Alamogordo realized the two sublime motives that have informed the history of science: the effort to know the secrets of nature and to harness them to our will so that its power will become an extension of our power to overcome any and all limitations, moral as well as physical. [14] (The belated effort of Leo Szilard and others to draw up a petition banning the use of the Bomb and Oppenheimer's reminder that doing so overstepped their role as scientists is merely the comedy of a reaction formation, the effort to restore the a priori cleanliness of hands that are already dirty, the nostalgic attempt to arrest a historical process that has already broken free of them, and of Oppenheimer too as Edward Teller would soon reveal.) Once the Bomb was used the consequences of devil's work announced themselves. Nuclear fear became condition general in the United States, producing for the first time a collective national psyche. What we did to the other we could expect in return. Projection and denial assumed command over both consciousness and policy. Globally. The only way to make ourselves safe from ourselves was through the production of more nuclear weapons. Like Macbeth we had to repeat our deed, increasing its scope each time, as if somehow this would undo the original error. Teller's Hydrogen bomb promises omnipotence to a quest for power fueled by the engines of guilt and fear. The whole world became a prisoner to the logic of Mutual Assured Destruction. Bush's recent actions in Iraq merely ratify once again the basic truth: the only way to prevent U.S. aggression is to develop one's own nuclear arsenal. M.A.D. offers the only certitude, security, and "peace of mind" that is now possible. A psychotic peace. Devil's work thereby evolves the condition inaugurated by the thanatos that the Bomb released in the psyche. Death has cut itself loose from anything that could restrain it. What began as a fantasy of unlimited power ends in the assurance of total annihilation. While we've resisted this knowledge there is another knowledge fatally tied to it that we've resisted with even greater fervor. Namely, the true story of "the peaceful atom." As a continuation of the same thanatopic process under the guise of a prolonged search for a felix culpaFor expiation and redemption. To expel any lingering (unconscious) guilt over having dropped the Bomb. How else but by finding in the atom a new guarantee. Which would enable us to claim that everything we did from the start stemmed from good motives and served finally to bring about a greater good. Technoscientific rationality as secular theodicy. The peaceful atom as Messianic historiography. Our faith in this new faith, like our rush to the Bomb, could not be questioned. And the two primary dogmas of this faith gave birth to a historical process that could not be halted since any negative results could only lead to a further investment in the process: (1) Technoscientific rationality, the new logos which will finally reveal the truth of everything, always produces good results in the end. All we have to do is develop the appropriate technology. (2) Moreover, we must do so. Technological development is the only thing that can save us. All technical problems require new technological developments for their solution. Like the rush to the Bomb there is no way to halt or question the technological imperative no matter how troubling the results nor how great the ensuing technological problems they pose; i.e., how to contain or clean up the vast amount of nuclear waste and the radiation that now poisons the atmosphere. Having committed ourselves to "the peaceful atom" in order to deny and repress guilt we found ourselves wed to the development of civilian nuclear power because it fulfilled both a psychological necessity and what had become a technological imperative. Like the logic of nuclear weaponry leading of necessity to M.A.D., the peaceful atom was wedded to a logic that could not prevent the development of the situation we now face. We've been promised the benefits of the peaceful atom for over 50 years. Since 1945 Dr. Strangelove has operated simultaneously on two fronts. The results are now in. The production of what we now see as massive piles of shit we have no place to dump or bury. (And try sometime devising a warning sign that can be immediately deciphered 4.5 billion years from now.) Such is the nature of "devil's work." Every step you take to try to get out of it only leads you deeper into it. Hegel found in "the cunning of reason" a way to redeem any and every historical situation: all evils are but apparent; even the darkest events serve the course of progress. 1945 inaugurates a different logic, calling for an antithetical understanding. That history lets loose consequences that cannot be controlled, consequences both for a psyche that finds itself fatally wedded to its actions with no way to return to the way it was, the guarantees it had, before those actions; and in the destructive results produced by the subsequent actions ( both military and peaceful nuclear technologies) taken to make that agent safe from its own destructiveness and the terrors its actions have unleashed or to expiate those actions by somehow turning the entire process to a good end. There was no way to forsee or prevent the situation that pursuit of the peaceful atom would create because belief in it derived from the same grandiosity that fueled the Bomb. Its task was in fact even more grandiose. Utopian and Messianic. Otherwise the unthinkable: history would have to be conceived in a radically different way. But that idea is even more terrifying than the magnitude of the nuclear pollution that now confronts us because it reveals that nothing protects us from history and the irreversible changes that certain events bring about. There are, in short, no guarantees. Nothing in the conceptual, psychological, or emotional orders that we can call on to deliver us. We face instead a different task: we must deracinate the entire system of guarantees because it is what stands between us, a correct understanding of our situation and, of perhaps greater importance, how we must learn to feel in the face of it. Einstein said the bomb changed everything except the way we think. That task still beckons. The development traced above offers us a way to understand the Nuclear Unconscious in its movement from 1945 to the present. As a history defined by what I call the Macbeth principle. To live with the guilt of a deed one repeats that deed until one is no longer troubled by it; or what amounts to the same thing, until nothing other than it exists. A world ruled by Thanatos. Within the psyche that development produces the necessary inner transformation. Through increasingly more rebarbative actions one progressively eviscerates the voice of conscience. Eventually it becomes so thin that it's transformed into its opposite: the fanatical voice of fundamentalism proclaiming its rectitude. We are ready for a tour of Bush's Amerika. V. The Fantasmatic Becomes the Real "The rational is real and the real rational." Hegel Here is one way to describe Amerikan foreign policy since 9-11. Fully formed fantasies of democracy sweeping the Middle East dance like sugar-plums in the neo-con imaginary awaiting the opportunity for their projection. 9-11, however, upped the ante. As return of the repressed, a terrifying case of the chickens coming home to roost, it raised the spectre of Hiroshima. A new exorcism was needed. Projection and denial were once again called on to provide the only possible psychological response. By appropriating ground-zero (the term used to identify the epicenter of the Bomb's detonation point in Hiroshima) as a symbol of what had happened to us we became fantasmatically the innocent victims of an unmotivated and unprecedented terror. Bush's "they hate us because they're jealous of our freedom." Our duty is clear: we must rid the world of evil. The trauma of 9-11 has thus become the only thing that it could be: the occasion for unleashing destructive rage toward any object deemed the target of our wrath. Preemptive unilateralism is psychologically necessary to the fantasmatic demand. Grandiose action as the only means of restoration. Reality be damned. Thus, the unleashing of a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD), Depleted Uranium (DU) on a country, people, race, and religion that deserves that fate for being the non-cause of 9-11. The need to proclaim the fantasy over against any correction by reality has become peremptory. We know that the Iraqi people (and then the entire Middle East) will embrace us for setting them free; and surface evidence to the contrary we see new signs of progress toward that goal each day. And such is the need to delude ourselves that we can't wait to crow. Bush on the Abraham Lincoln, the first President ever to appear publicly in military uniform, imitating Bill Pullman in Independence Day, proclaiming mission accomplished. Only our hold on Iraq deteriorates more every day. None of the things the fantasy assured happen. Two things necessarily happen, however, providing a new confirmation of Engel's Law. (1) The shelling of Iraq with DU increases, contaminating the entire infrastructure with chemical and radiation poisoning. Ecocide becomes official policy. (2) The fantasms become more fervent in their affirmation the more they prove false to reality. Bush proclaims "Democracy is on the march." Quantity has, as Engels argued, become quality bringing about a fundamental psychological change. Before Iraq neo-con fantasy was a dream that longed for projection in the belief that it could be realized in reality. It is now a delusion sustained only by denying reality. The fantasmatic has become a psychosis. There is accordingly no way it can be referred to or corrected by reality. Only one solution is now possible: reality must be eradicated. The conditions of psychotic certitude have been met. One willingly destroys the infra and eco structure of an entire country in order to sustain the fantasy that one will be embraced as a liberator for doing so. Because psychotic certitude has been attained, otherness cannot exist. Any challenge to Belief activates what has now become an underlying paranoia. Failure of reality to conform to fantasy can only be the product of conspiracy. Patriot Acts become necessary as a way to hypnotize oneself by systematically seeking out and eliminating any and all signs of dissent from the fantasy. It must become omniscient and omnipotent. Consequently, everything must become hyperreal in a blind rush to the global realization of the entire fantasmatic system because with the onset of psychosis the mad know, in the evanescence of a consciousness they cannot sustain, the actual function that the entire body of fantasms have played from the beginning. They are the ways one flees the void within, the catastrophic condition into which one would plunge should they ever collapse. Such is the inner state of those who throw themselves into the Lord , into absolute belief systems, in order to deliver themselves from themselves. The final solution has been reached in the inner condition of the paranoid psychotic: the necessity of continued, increased explosions in order to avoid a psychological implosion. We are now in a position to describe the Amerikan psyche-a void defined by a panic anxiety that can only be relieved by conversion to an absolute faith: Jesus for Bush and Ashcroft, Leo Strauss for neo-con ideologues; Kapital for Dick Cheney. Because the faith offers total salvation its reach must be global. That's what Technoscientific Rationality is: the obliteration of any logic other than its development and thereby a progressive estrangement from any other way of relating to Being. That's what capitalism is: the abolition of any moral restraint preventing the imposition on people of whatever conditions will maximize profits. After all, people are nothing but consumers consuming. And it's what Christian fundamentalism Amerikan style is: the need to establish an allegory in which one is Good and thus empowered in an apocalyptic effort to rid the world of Evil. By turning Iraq into a vast thanatopolis all three imperatives achieve simultaneous fulfillment. Karl Marx, at a far more innocent time in history, saw the task of philosophy as one of extracting the rational kernel from the mystical shell of Hegelianism. That kernel was the proletariat and the materialist understanding of History the new guarantee. Living at a later stage of things, shorn of all guarantees, we face a far different task: to extract the psychotic kernel from the fantasmatic shell. And thereby to see its objective correlative. For the fantasmatic process traced above has a mundane corollary. Converting DU into WMDs that we could deploy all over Iraq fulfilled another fantasy dear to the dream logic that informs capitalism. DU is pure waste. Shit, if you will. And like surplus production and the falling rate of profit it keeps piling up with no way to get rid of it. It's one thing when we only killed the poor bastards who had the bad luck to live downward of our reactors or the black inner city children to whom we shipped radioactively contaminated milk.[15] But now things are out of hand. We've got over 10 million tons of this useless crap. Eventually it'll seep into everything turning even our paradisiacal estates into nuclear cesspools. Unless we can find a way to really shit it out of our system. Any solution, however, must derive from the logic that informs the system--and fulfill the unconscious needs that fuel it. And then Voila! in answer to our prayers one day we see a way to turn our shit to gold. Nothing is ever lost. The deepest article of capitalist faith is fulfilled. There were no bad unintended consequences from our lengthy romance with the atom. We've found our own cunning of reason. Even our shit can be redeemed once we've developed the appropriate technology. With its discovery we seized a way to turn our waste to profit while fulfilling an even deeper need: to take a dump on everything that impedes the progress of global capitalism. Iraq is perfect. After all, the oil is the only thing there that has value. The rest of that landscape is nothing but a toilet; by relieving ourselves on it we get the true macho pleasure that comes from a good shit: the feeling that we're releasing all of our toxic matter on the Other-in this case those people of color committed to a religion that Samuel Huntington and others remind us stands unalterably opposed to the forward looking logic of modernism. The clash of civilizations and the making of world order requires no less than the shit storm that now rages all over Iraq. The maximization of death under the reign of thanatos finds in Iraq one of its ghostliest embodiments. War in the 20th century witnessed the progressive erosion of all distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, military and civilian targets. Inflicting the greatest possible physical and psychological damage to "the enemy" became the object of military strategy. [16] Hiroshima was the first realization of that logic as a pure and unrestrained expression of thanatos as global terror. Iraq now serves to advance that logic in a new, and qualitatively different, way. Thanks to DU death is again released from all restrictions and extended over time in a way promises to bring about its omnipresence through its silent, unseen, inner working on all that lives. Death is everywhere now: in the air they breath, the food they eat, the water they drink, the shards radiating up at them from the DU debris that litters their cities, the sperm they transmit in the act of love, the cancers and birth defects, the violence to the DNA, in all the leukemias of body and of soul that will turn Iraq into one vast Thanatopolis, the city of the future, an oidos where all that lives will come to bear Death as its sole meaning, the visible and invisible sign that is present everywhere. VI A Billet for Dubya Living inside the System is like riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide." Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow Here, then, is a picture of our true historical situation, what we'd know if we looked at our world without the guarantees. (That antithesis to the picture drawn in section III that forever destroys all possibilities of synthesis.) The categorical imperative of the historian is to know the horror of a situation by getting at the madness behind it. One name for that madness is Nuclearism. A proper definition of it is now possible: nuclearism is the assertion of the right to unlimited power over nature through the overcoming of anything in the psyche that would question or resist that assertion. To put it concretely, there is no peaceful atom and there never was. Nuclearism has only one logic, implicit in it from the beginning. Ecocide. Another name for the madness is Capitalism. It too is wedded to a deadly imperative: the extinction of everything in the human being that opposes the logic of acquisition and consumption. The ideal condition it seeks is one where there is nothing but consumers consuming. Everything else must be purged from the psyche. When a belief becomes dominant in American psychological circles one can be sure of one thing: that belief refers to something that no longer exists. Such is the case today with self, subject, identity, and the ego. The same goes for the countless guarantees that are invented to support that belief: as in the current emphasis on attachment theory to provide the guarantee of healthy, normal development, the perfect theory of mothering for the age of child beauty pageants.[17] In its rush to be the mental health wing of the guarantees, contemporary American psychoanalysis has become a primary barrier to the truth. That there is no self in Amerika today, only a void producing panic anxiety in the rush to compulsive consumption in an attempt to fill what progressively becomes empty of everything save one necessity. Malignant envy, the psychological disorder described by Melanie Klein, has become the only motive that remains: the desire not to attain but to destroy anything and everything that excites one's envy. Iago triumphant. Only thanatos matters. The envy that nuclearism projects unto nature, capitalism projects onto all human relations. The whole world must come to gorge itself under the golden arches. No moral restraint, no residual humanity can intrude on the necessity to reduce everything and everyone to the conditions that benefit capitalism. It's no accident that Dick Cheney's dam Lynne's time as Head of the NEH was a watershed of reactionary ideology. The History of the U.S. since 1945 is the antithesis of secular theodicy, an eradication of the entire system of guarantees on which it depends. Events dance to a far different logic, which is present on the surface once we learn to see the psychological roots from which the decisions made there derive. That logic is one of Thanatos in the progression needed for it to become an absolute principle freed of all restrictions and certain of its command over any sources of potential resistance. Which is why the principles expressed overseas must perforce inform actions in the Homeland. The result is an Amerika that can be defined by three interconnected developments: (1) an Apocalyptic christo-fascism wedded (as in Mel Gibson's masterpiece) to sado-masochism as the only pleasure capable of convincing people that they are alive and able to feel deeply; (2) corporate capitalism in control of all political and economic decisions and alternatives so that the system is assured of its own reproduction and extension; (3) a police state through the series of Patriot Acts required to assuring the ruling order that even in the privacy of the home a condition of generalized surveillance will exist and with it the eventual extinction of any trace of otherness or resistance. To use Hegelian language, Thanatos as "Absolute Spirit In and For Itself" has attained the form it requires. In Amerika today the condition Dostoyevsky described in the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor slouches toward its final realization. Miracle, Mystery, and Authority find in Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft the three functionaries needed to create a lasting, impermeable collective psyche. One that offers all subjects deliverance from freedom and anxiety, especially the anxiety that can never be uttered or allowed to enter consciousness-that we exist without any guarantees. Bush or miracle: the allegorization of politics and international relations in order to assure us that we are Good and everything other than us Evil. (The neo-cons offer secular versions of the same faith: western culture opposes Islamic fundamentalism, etc.) Cheney or mystery: capitalism is the ultimate truth of economic reality; whatever we have to do to secure its empire is therefore good and ultimately of benefit to the entire world. Put money in thy purse: the hidden hand is the cunning of reason assuring us of a future of benefit to all. Aschcroft or authority. Surveillance working in all subjects will complete what the Grand Inquisitor called "the happiness of man" in a condition of total obedience. Thereby Abu Ghraib becomes the inner world that defines the mass subjects relation to itself (On the surface, of course, the psychotic need to deny reality continues to take on new forms, each progressively further removed from the possibility of correction. Thus, in the latest effort to affirm that we were right all along even if we were wrong about any WMD being in Iraq, we get the following sequence: we couldn't know then what we know now; "Saddam aspired to making nuclear weapons(Bush/Cheney);" "Once out from under the sanctions, he would have developed them (Powell); "Saddam Hussein is himself a Weapon of Mass Destruction" (Guliani). We now know why were going to Mars: that's where Saddam hid the WMDs.) Sections IV-VI describe a collective psyche. Such a use of psychoanalysis is a far cry from the justly discredited "psychohistory," which I'll indulge briefly here for purposes of an important theoretical contrast. Thus: Bush had a hard-on for Saddam from the day he took office because deposing him would enable Dubya both to avenge and to replace his father. Recall, in this connection, his statement that if we'd had the courage and determination we'd have finished the work we (i.e., his father) began in 1991. Fortinbras replaces Hamlet in Dubya's imaginary. No wonder he couldn't wait to dress himself in borrowed garb, (a miltary uniform such as his father wore as a pilot in WWII) pulled in as tight across the crotch as he could bear, and stride across the decks of the Abraham Lincoln. He finally had a dick and had to trumpet it to the world. And having found it he can't stop shaking it. All of this is of course true, irrelevant-- and pernicious whenever it functions as an ideological blinder to deflect our attention from the real psychological forces that shape history. Bush is but a part of that psyche. At times its farcicalia and village idiot, at others its fundamentalist believer (and new "great communicator") who conveys the tidings to the masses in a way sure to create in them fascination with their own fascization. Bush is convenient as a way to fixate our attention or our rage so that we won't see the puppetmaster Cheney pulling the strings. Nor, of more importance, the part that Bush and what he represents plays in the constitution of the collective psyche I've described. It is that psyche that forms the object of psychoanalytic cultural and political theory. My attempt here has been to offer us a new way to think about the possibility that there is a collective Amerikan psyche ruled by a nuclear Unconscious that has a history that can be described in rigorous psychoanalytic terms. The operation of that psyche is not so much a question of the conscious intentions of particular individuals as of the role that different individuals and institutions play in securing the hegemony of the whole. That whole finds the man or woman it needs at each place it needs them (from Groves and Oppenheimer to Colonel Tibbets, from Cheney and Rice to Private England) because the decision to accept the call when chosen derives from an entire system of choices that each individual has made long before the call comes. The end result in each and all is the hegemony of a way of being in which it is not Reason but Thanatos that directs History. The result is the age we live in. An Age of Terrorism. State Terrorism. Everything else is a reaction. VII. The Principle of Hope " 'Personal density' is directly proportional to temporal bandwith 'Temporal bandwith' is the width of your present, your Now." Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow To know this situation for what it is challenges what is finally the deepest and most fundamental of the guarantees. The principle of Hope. To appropriate Eliot: "After such knowledge, what forgiveness." For it is hard to look on the situation described in this essay without raising the spectre of despair. In view both of the unlikelihood that there is anything that can be done to change the situation and in terms of the amount of pain one must accept in order to sustain this knowledge. What is the purpose of knowing such things if they only produce meaningless suffering? Or, to put it another way, isn't despair the end result of a life shorn of the guarantees? Aren't we finally like the drunks in O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, who know that in order to sustain the illusions that are required to go on living they must decide that Hickey was mad and that all he revealed to them about their lives a product of that madness? It is time to admit what the need for Hope really amounts to. Denial of responsibility for certain situations under the assumption that knowing them correctly would lead to despair. The concept of despair, in short, is no more than a rhetorical ploy to prematurely terminate one's awareness of a situation so that one can cling, in the face of it, to hope and all the other emotional and psychological needs that follow in its train. Despair remains an empty concept. We don't know what it is. And we never will as long as we use the need for Hope to prevent the discovery of our capacity to endure. We will only know what we are capable of when we get rid of hope. Whether despair is what we will find on the other side of it is something we can't know. For all hope really signifies is a testament to our weakness and our fears. Perhaps we are called to something beyond it. What Shakespeare called tragic readiness. For in opening ourselves to the possibility of despair we also open ourselves to the possibility of self-overcoming as well as to a discovery of a praxis that lies on the other side of the many paralyses created by the guarantees. We can't know "what is to be done?" as long as we keep trying to transcend our situation with values and guarantees that we insist must remain a-historical and in service to an essentialistic and a-historical theory of human nature. (For the ethical implications of this idea see below, section IX.) VIII. The Evil of Banality " The man has a branch office in our brain called the ego and its mission is bad shit. We know exactly what they're doing and do nothing about it." Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow As we struggle to develop a concept of evil equal to our situation, Hannah Arendt remains an invaluable source. Not so much for what she said, but for what she failed to say due to the self-imposed limit she placed on her thought. I refer to her life-long avoidance, suspicion, and eschewal of psychoanalytic concepts. Yet in Eichmann Arendt identified a new kind of criminal. One who commits a crime under circumstances where they can't know or feel they're doing wrong. For Arendt that fact does not mitigate Eichmann's guilt. I want now to suggest that it magnifies it. Eichmann served the Reich apparently for no motive other than to advance his career. But the ease with which he went along with everything he was asked to do does not reveal the absence of choice or intention but the true mode of it's presence. Eichmann's service to the final solution was a function of the choices of a lifetime, the choices that eventuated in making him the kind of man he was. It is there that his responsibility lies. Eichmann is responsible, in short, for his psyche. And there is only one relationship he can have to that psyche-guilt. Eichmann is responsible for making himself the kind of man who could become Eichmann. The great and still unconstituted contribution of psychoanalysis to our moral history is the expanded understanding it offers us of our ethical responsibility. It's always pretty to restrict responsibility to conscious intentions. This is the primary way we escape self-knowledge in all our important dealings. We only let ourselves know what we want to know about our motives. In one of his late reflections Freud asserted that we are responsible for our dreams. I take that statement to mean that we are responsible for what our dreams reveal about the desires and disorders that define us and that must therefore become our self-knowledge. Which is another way of saying that we are responsible for our psyche. Our ethical duty is to gain knowledge of it as the author of our actions. The fatal choice one may make one day is not a result of bad luck or simply going with the flow. It's a function of the choices one made long before the fatal one became irresistible. In this as in so much else Eichmann and Tibbets are one, brothers of the architects of Abu Ghraib and their progeny. Adorno said that Hitler gave the world a new moral imperative: so act that Auschwitz will never again be possible. Freud also gave it a new moral imperative: to become responsible for one's unconscious and all the suppressed motives and desires that inform one's "intentions," for it is from one's psyche that one thinks and acts in all one's dealings in the world. Both imperatives are extreme and necessarily connected. That extremity is perhaps the true measure of our historical situation. IX. Final Jeopardy "Nothing can trouble the dominance of the true image." Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus "Is there anything more evil than shooting children in a school yard or flying planes into buildings?" One hears this rhetorical question often today. Getting it firmly implanted in our minds seems to be one of the current ideological functions of the media. A correct response requires careful reflection on the single circumstance that underlies the knee-jerk response. The power of the image. The promise inherent in Technoscientificrationality is deliverance from that reality. Killing for it, like everything else, occurs at a distance. In the inaugural moment: Tibbets in his Enola Gay unable to imagine what he has just done as a human act. "It was all impersonal." [18] And today: in the silent, secret, midnight ways that radiation poisoning works from within, like a deed without a doer, separated in space and time from its absent cause. Perhaps killing at a distance is the far greater evil precisely because it abrogates the image and the human connection between slayer and slain. If I kill another man with my bare hands my deed is immediate to my embodied consciousness. To kill that way you have to feel hate, fear, anguish, remorse, etc. whereas to kill from a distance or invisibly is to render the whole thing impersonal. With the desired result: the ability, for example, of the man who dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima, incinerating 200 to 300,000 people in a second, condemning another 2 to 300,000 to the condition of hibakusha, the walking dead, to boast proudly for over 59 years now that he has never felt a moment of regret or remorse. Tibbets' lack of moral imagination is one with his representative status as precursor. For now it is a thing of trifling and contemptible ease to form policies and take actions that litter a landscape with DU while denying that the stuff has any long term medical or environmental effects. [19] The evil of killing at a distance is that is makes death unreal. Protected from the image, all who participate in the deed are delivered over to a pure and impersonal calculus. (An aside: if we really want to support our troops we must achieve for them a new Bill of Rights. No one should ever be told to use weapons without being given a full knowledge of the long term human and environmental consequence of those weapons. To do otherwise is to deprive our soldiers of the choice that makes them human.) The powers that be learned one lesson from Vietnam. No more images. The mistake was to let us see the carnage, every night, up close, over TV. The news entered our consciousness at the register where genuine change is possible. Where horror is felt. Free of the tyranny of the concept, the hypnotic power of the guarantees. Desert Storm was the corrective: the ninetendo war, a war broadcast to look just like another one of the video games we'd been programmed to love. Prohibition of the image is now a fundamental article of faith of our religion. No images are allowed to come back to us from Iraq II. (Michael Moore's real crime was to give us a brief glimpse at what the mainstream media proscribe.) The abolition of the image is one of the primary conditions of Ecocide. Everything must be rendered abstract, invisible, unreal. No image can be allowed to trouble our sleep, to lacerate our soul. For then we might begin to know that there is indeed an evil far worse than shooting children in schoolyards or flying airplanes into buildings. To move us toward that knowledge let me end with the forbidden, which I must here try to convey solely through the more abstract medium of words since I've not yet gained permission to reproduce a photograph I saw a week ago. It's the picture of an Iraqi baby, a victim of DU, who was born with no nose, mouth, eyes, anus or genitals and with flipper limbs, a common result of radiation exposure in utero. That child's body, full of red open ulcers, is twisted in knots, its ulcerated face contorted in a look of unspeakable suffering. An authentic image of the sacredness of human life. Of the preciousness of every breath. To look at that child is to realize one's duty to mourn it, to give voice to its right to invade our consciousness and expose the evil of those who prate on about the right to life while refusing to let us see what they've reduced life to. Luke, 17:1-2. The image of that child must become the force in our minds that enables us to deracinate all guarantees that would protect us from the reality of that child's situation. Or, to put it another way, every time one chooses catharsis, resolution, and renewal that child is born again, condemned to an unspeakable suffering. That is why its image must embolden us to question the most hallowed of the guarantees, the one I've refrained from discussing until now. In the face of such evil what is to be done? To fight it is one ever justified in resorting to violence? No, we are told, because "if we do so we become just like them." This ethical principle supposedly holds above and beyond any situation we might face. Ever. Because it assures the guarantee that no matter what happens we will never get our hands dirty. History can't intrude on the categorical imperative. Whatever action one takes one must assure oneself of one's ethical purity. Even if that means there is nothing that one can do and after it has been demonstrated that there are no non-violent ways to change the situation. Perhaps we can no longer allow ourselves the luxury of such an ethic. Bush did the moral imagination one favor. His preemptive unilateralism made official what has been clear for so long but denied due to its implications. There is no body to which we can turn for Justice: not the U.N., the World Court, or any other framework of International Law. The U.S. will flaunt its contempt for such bodies whenever it suits its purpose. And thus another mode of peaceful, non-violent praxis is deprived of its guarantee. But then what is to be done? I can't offer an answer. Because I don't have one? Because to do so would be to drive the last nail into the coffin of Hope? Because any answer would only serve to deliver us from the trauma we have perhaps only begun to experience? Because doing so would minimize the psychological terrorism of the essay? Or, for a final hypothetical reason, which I included when delivering an earlier oral version of this essay to a Conference on Depleted Uranium: because to do so would legally open everyone who hears it to the charge of taking part in a conspiracy? Such warnings need not be attached to what we read. Surely we can preserve that guarantee. But of course we can't. Thanks to the Patriot Act the same warning must now accompany the written word. Walter A. Davis is professor emeritus of English at Ohio State University. He is the author of Deracination: Historiocity, Hiroshima and the Tragic Imperative. He can be reached at: davis.65@osu.edu. [davis.65@osu.edu.</i>] ENDNOTES: (1) I've relied on numerous sources for the factual bases of this essay. An extremely useful website is Depleted Uranium Watch. See also: www.umrc.net/contact.asp [http://www.umrc.net/contact.asp] and www.informationclearinghouse.into/article5941.htm. On the nature of depleted uranium see: www.umrc.net/whatIsDU.asp. (2) In connection with this paragraph, see: http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081
804.shtml; [http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml;] (3) In connection with this paragraph, see: http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke [http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke] du 3 ques.html; and traprockpeace.org/chrisbusby08may04.html. Desert Storm was not, however, the first use of DU. DU was used by Israel under U.S. Army supervision in 1973. For purposes of this essay I've bracketed the way events in Iraq relate to the Palestinian problem. (4) On this takeover, see the report by Leuren Moret for The Danish Peace Academy: www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/stealth.htm. [http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/stealth.htm.] For examples of the nuclear weapons planned for development, see: www.Haarp.alaska.edu/haarp; www.dtic.mil/jointvision/jupub2.htm; and www.popsci.com (Defense 2020). Recently 153 million dollars of DU weapons including bunker busters ( or to use official language and thus gain insight into the libidinal bases of the new technologies, Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators) was sold to Israel. The purpose of all these developments is to blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear war. Iraq is the systematic eradication of that distinction, and as such the first shape of things to come. (5) Giorgio Agamben, Homer Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford UP, 1998). (6) See: www.fredsadademiet.dk/library/stealth.htm. [http://www.fredsadademiet.dk/library/stealth.htm.] (7) See Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. For example, #129: "The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something-because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his inquiry do not strike a person at all.-And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful." One purpose of this essay is to show that our responsibility is precisely to see and become aware of such things and to trace the full implications of their historical operation. History deprives us of the luxury of leaving the social, ideological, and communal bases of our thoughts and feelings in the dark, however convenient or natural it is to do so. (8) I ran across this delight quote in Mark Crispin Miller's Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order (Norton, 2004), p.298. (9) Jacques Ellul's great book The Technological Society remains the definitive study of this dilemma. (10) Martin Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology offers a magisterial meditation on the ontological implications of technology. (11) The description and critique of the guarantees offered here is a simplified statement of the argument I develop at length in Deracination: Historicity, Hiroshima, and the Tragic Imperative (SUNY P, 2001). (12) On this see especially the confession of the architect of the myth, McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (Knopf,1992) and Robert J. Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Denial (Putnam, 1995). (13) See, for example, Harvey Wasserman, Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation(Delacorte,1982). (14) Chapters 3 and 4 of Deracination develop an extended psychoanalytic discussion of the idea summarized here. (15) See: http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/stealth.htm.
[http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/library/stealth.htm.] (16) As Richard Rhodes shows in The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon and Schuster, 1986) this was the primary rationale behind General Grove's argument that Kyoto be chosen as the city to receive the first Atomic Bomb. (17) Some of the central texts behind these "developments" in psychoanalysis: Heinz Kohut ,The Restoration of the Self; Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love; Peter Fonagy, Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis; and Stephen Mitchell, Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis. (18) See The Paul Tibbets Story by Paul Tibbets with Claire Stebbins and Harry Franken (Stein and Day, 1978), p.227. (19) The Department of Energy continues to insist that there is no evidence to support the claim that DU is harmful; and of course they've lined up the usual scientists to support the proposition, despite all the evidence that now exists in our returning soldiers, that we simply do not know what DU does. Last time I checked the tobacco industry was still denying a scientific link between smoking and lung cancer. Though false the claim by the Department of Energy is also pernicious, since not knowing what the effects of a weapon will be is a prima facie reason not to use it. That is, what stands forth once one cuts through the defenses and obfuscations is that the 1 of the 4 rationales for Hiroshima not mentioned previously in this essay remains a primary motive. We are still creating laboratories so that our scientific, medical, and military personnel can study the effects of our weapons. If we kill our own in the process, that too has been for a long time a matter of indifference. As Henry Kissinger put it, apropos of Vietnam: "Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. ( See Monika Jensen-Stevenson, Kiss the Boys Goodbye (E.P. Dutton, 1990) Finding out the full range of its destructive powers is now the primary reason for using a weapon. That is why to use any weapon that has not been fully tested in terms of all its possible consequences should be classified as a War Crime. (Of course the powers that be can always claim-and this explanation has already been floated that the source of all the cancers etc. of the Iraqi people stem from Saddam's use of chemical and biological weapons. A result, that is, of the weapons we gave him, a transfer presided over by none other than Donald Rumsfeld.) [On this see: www.newscientist.com [http://www.newscientist.com/] Pynchon vivant. Which leads to a concluding fantasy of how the clean up of Iraq should begin. Each of them-Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Perle, Rove and all the others ­should be given a sack and sent to fill it with chunks of the radioactive debris that now fills Iraq. They should then be required to take that sack home and use it as their pillow. Pleasant dreams. http://www.counterpunch.org/davis10092004.html ***************************************************************** 19 Salt Lake Tribune: Opinion: Bush's policies are making us ill [http://www.sltrib.com] Article Last Updated: 10/09/2004 04:04:46 PM By Brian Moench When choosing our next president, Americans should be as concerned about the environment as they are about terrorism. We have had four years to observe this current president's shocking evisceration of our environmental laws, many of which were enacted with the help of such non-tree-huggers as Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The risk of premature death, injury or illness is far greater from environmental causes than from a terrorist attack. One in three U.S. citizens will get cancer, and this year more than 600,000 will die of it. Eighty percent of cancer is environmentally caused. This means something in the air, water or food you consume triggers most cancers. The frosting on the toxic cake for Utahns is that President Bush wants to resume nuclear testing in Nevada. I guess creating more downwinder victims is just his way of saying thanks to the most Republican state in the country. (Incidentally, underground testing contaminates water supplies and still releases atmospheric radiation). Two family members of mine were recently diagnosed with cancer. That brings the total so far to three in my immediate family, all relatively young, still in the prime of life. For many years I've seen the human cost of environmental degradation in the faces of cancer patients I've helped care for, some as young as 1 year old. Now I'm seeing it on the faces of the people I love the most. And cancer is only one of many environmentally caused life-threatening illnesses. On 9-11 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center. But every month more than 3,000 Americans die premature deaths from air pollution. The Bush administration has weakened or refused to enforce laws designed to protect us from mercury, arsenic, benzene, ozone, lead, acid rain, PCBs, MTBE, perchlorate, atrazine, and superfund sites. The list is almost endless. And now, as if Halliburton hadn't already received enough dirty favors, Bush has allowed Dick Cheney's former company to use the potent carcinogen benzene to fractionate rock formations in drilling for oil. The potential for contamination of acquifers supplying metropolitan and agricultural water should be obvious. Every day our citizens are exposed to 80,000 chemicals, only half of which have ever been tested in humans. If one adds increased carbon dioxide to the survival is also environmental - global warming. A recent Pentagon study concluded that not only is global warming for real but that the chance of a catastrophic climate change within your grandchildren's lifetime is greater than 50 percent. Increasing frequency and severity of weather extremes like hurricanes and drought are global warming consequences. I'm guessing the residents of Florida might be believers by now. Bush has distorted and suppressed government scientific data and fired government scientists who dare to publish research that contradicts his political agenda. So alarmed is the scientific community that 60 of the nation's top scientists including 20 Nobel Prize winners issued this extraordinary public statement in February: "There is strong documentation of a wide-ranging effort to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter to the administration's political agenda. There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented." Scientist Michael Oppenheimer said, "If you believe in a rational universe, in enlightenment, in knowledge, and in a search for truth, this White House is an absolute disaster." To allow wholesale contamination of your air, food, and water as payback for corporate campaign contributions is cruel, outrageous and criminal. It couldn't be more hypocritical coming from someone who claims to be driven by Christian family values. In my family we take Bush's disdain for public health very personally. Every voter in Utah should do the same. --- Dr. Brian Moench is an anesthesiologist at LDS Hospital and former instructor at Harvard Medical School. © Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 20 Times: 'Bush was Utterly Incoherent'_Zogby on poll fudging Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2004 10:10:17 -0500 (CDT) Ra Energy Fdn. Raleigh Myers Worksheet bio http://www.igc.apc.org/raenergy/bio.html Blog http://raenergy.blogspot.com/ "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever." - George Orwell, 1984 http://www.holdthemaccountable2004.com/home.htm FOCUS | New York Times: 'Bush was Utterly Incoherent' http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101004Y.shtml Bush v. Kerry: Full Debate Transcript and Video http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101004X.shtml Mark ash with Zogby telling how the polls are cheated towards GOP Fascists http://win20ca.audiovideoweb.com/ca20win15004/5.090904zogby.wma SING THE VOTE http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/contentPlay/shockwave.jsp?id=this_land&preplay=1&ratingBar=off DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE in song is the first step to a fascism free planet "THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, THIS LAND IS MY LAND, THIS LAND IS MADE FOR YOU AND ME" IMAGINE: WE are children of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; WE ALL have a right to be here START SINGING THE PLANET'S ANTHEM AT ALL EVENTS TO SHOW HOW "WE" HAVE ALREADY VOTED. This would get some air time if we did it at GOP campaign events even in congress this Summer and fall and beyond after all it is the anthem of the Age of Aquarius no. We suggested that "THIS LAND" be the Global Village Planetary anthem at Woodies celebration in San Francisco at the Geary Theater in 1967. It was seconded by three ambassadors and has become the second third fourth etc. anthems to many countries. FOLKSAY(people say) ............ has become Our defacto Global Village Planetary anthem and in essence we voted for citizen empowerment as we sung it. Now let's get it officially on record by singing it everywhere as direct democracy. THE DAWNING OF THE AGE OF AQUARIUS is the reality at hand! The children of the universe, the right to be here generation _ the meek taking their prophetic inheritance out of probate is not a conspiracy. Ra Energy Fdn. Raleigh Myers http://raenergy.igc.org/raenergy.html Worksheet bio http://www.igc.apc.org/raenergy/bio.html Newsgroups beginning in the eighties click on date and web http://groups.google.com/groups?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=%22Ra+Energy+Fdn%2E%22 Call to Action blog http://www.google.com/search?q=Global+Vote+raenergy&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=02Eigc%2Eorg%2Faction%2Ehtml ***************************************************************** 21 Daily Yomiuri: ElBaradei: IAEA still key to nonproliferation Yomiuri Shimbun Shortcomings in the nuclear nonproliferation regime have been well-documented in recent times, but the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog still feels his agency has a crucial role to play in preventing proliferation of nuclear weapons and material. "We have seen that the export control regime has not worked, because we've seen this illicit trafficking of nuclear material and equipment," International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohammad ElBaradei said Friday at the Japan Press Club in Hibiya, Tokyo. "We've seen also that without the additional protocol that gives the IAEA additional authority to inspect, our ability to detect undeclared activities is rather limited." ElBaradei said he hoped for more contact with North Korea to resolve lingering suspicions over its nuclear program. "I think for North Korea to come back into the nonproliferation regime, and for us to be able to resume our verification work there, that opens the way to a comprehensive settlement of North Korean issues," he said. ElBaradei was adamant that recent revelations about South Korean scientists who conducted two nuclear experiments without the consent and reportedly without the knowledge of the Seoul government were not an indication of more sinister intentions. "I don't think we've seen any intention to develop nuclear weapons. These experiments by themselves are not illegal. However, they were conducted without declaring them to the agency, and that's why we have been concerned about that." Despite growing doubt in the international community about Iran's nuclear program, ElBaradei hoped that a looming showdown could be averted. "We're making progress with regard to Iran's compliance with its legal obligations under the safeguard agreement," he said. "I urge Iran to come into full suspension of all enrichment-related activities as requested by the board of governors. I still hope to be able to resolve the Iran question through verification and diplomacy." The findings earlier this week by chief U.S. weapons hunter Charles Duelfer that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and only a decayed nuclear program at the time of the U.S.-led invasion of that country in 2003 backed up a report by the IAEA in March that year. But, ElBaradei said, that was no cause to celebrate. "It's a matter of relief for me to see that our inspections worked before the war to disarm Iraq. It's also a vindication that inspections can work even with a lack of cooperation on the part of the inspected country," he said. "Unfortunately it took a war to prove it, but we proved to be correct. It showed that we were credible, that we were not under any international pressure before the war. The lesson I take from that is that the international community should listen to us more carefully in the future before they take decisions to use coercive action," he said. Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 22 Bellona: Finland to decide on underwater atomic energy export from Russia in 2005 According to Business St Petersburg daily, the Finnish Ministry of Trade and Industry received a declaration of intent from company United Energy Oy concerning installation of underwater cable from Leningrad region to Kotka, Finland. 2004-10-08 17:51 The price-tag of the project is over $200m. The Finnish government will give the final answer to this investment offer not before 2005. The main stockholder of the United Energy Oy is the Russian company Baltenergo, which according to the Chief Counsellor of the Finnish Ministry of Trade and Industry Arto Rajala belongs to the Rosenergoatom concern and the Finnish company Kotkan Energia. The representatives of Kotkan Energia said they would not invest in the project itself but they could provide the infrastructure for the energy reception in Finland and its further transfer to the Scandinavian energy system. The length of the cable is estimated about 150 km. The Finnish bureaucrats are not sure if this project is necessary. Arto Rajala said the biggest concerns are about the capacity of the Finnish energy system, which should additionally consume so much extra energy. It is not clear what consequences this project can cause to the Finnish and Scandinavian energy system as well as environment, Business St Petersburg reports. Publisher: [bellona@bellona.no] , President: [frederic@bellona.no] Information: [info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: [webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 23 IAEA: IAEA Chief ElBaradei Calls for Stronger Global Security Framework + [IAEA.ORG :: Atoms for Peace] Staff Report 7 October 2004 [M. ElBaradei] IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. (Photo credit: D. Calma/IAEA) + Story Resources + IAEA Director General Statement + IAEA Safeguards + IAEA Issues in Focus + Pugwash Organization [http://www.pugwash.org/] IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei spoke of the nuclear threat and the urgent need for countries to seize a window of opportunity for strengthening the world΄s security, in an address 6 October 2004 to the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs in Seoul. "The nuclear genie is out of the box - but it remains, at least at present, at the bidding of its human makers," Dr. ElBaradei said. Addressing the conference of scientists working for nuclear disarmament, Dr. ElBaradei said it was clear that insecurity bred proliferation. "Nuclear weapons will not go away until a proved collective security framework exists to fill the vacuum." The Director General outlined recent lessons learnt about nuclear verification. Among them, that verification and diplomacy, used in conjunction can be effective. "The Iraq experience has demonstrated that inspections - while requiring time and patience - can be effective even when the country under inspection is providing less than active cooperation." A second lesson, Dr. ElBaradei said, was that "we cannot afford not to act in cases of non-compliance." The Director General cited the case of North Korea and the role of the UN Security Council in nuclear cases referred to it. "The Security Council must be able and ready to engage effectively in both preventive diplomacy and enforcement measures, with the tools and methods in place necessary to cope with existing and emerging threats to international peace and security," he said. Pointing the way forward, Dr. ElBaradei spoke of measures to strengthen the existing non-proliferation regime. Among them: + urging all States to bring the additional protocol into force; + tightening and formalizing the controls over the export of nuclear materials and technology; + working towards multilateral control over the sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle - enrichment, reprocessing, and the management and disposal of spent fuel - while guaranteeing the reliability of supply to legitimate would-be users; and + ensuring that States cannot withdraw from the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) without clear consequences, including prompt review and appropriate action by the Security Council. "Each of these measures would be in keeping with a collective security framework that aims simultaneously to curb nuclear proliferation and to achieve nuclear disarmament," Dr. ElBaradei said. See the related links for the full speech. Copyright 2003-2004, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: Official.Mail@iaea.org [Official.Mail@iaea.org] Disclaimer ***************************************************************** 24 IAEA: IAEA 48th General Conference - Resolutions & Decisions + [IAEA.ORG :: Atoms for Peace] Resolutions Adopted by the General Conference + Application by the Republic of Chad for Membership of the Agency [GC(48)/RES/1] (18 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Application by the Togolese Republic for Membership of the Agency [GC(48)/RES/2] (19 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Application by the Islamic Republic of Mauritania for Membership of the Agency [GC(48)/RES/3] (19 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + The Agency΄s Accounts for 2003 [GC(48)/RES/4] (18 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + The Agency΄s Budget for 2004 - Supplementary Appropriation [GC(48)/RES/5] (19 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Regular Budget Appropriations for 2005 [GC(48)/RES/6] (23 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Technical Cooperation Fund Allocation for 2005 [GC(48)/RES/7] (18 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + The Working Capital Fund in 2005 [GC(48)/RES/8] (18 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Scale of Assessment of Members΄ Contributions for 2005 [GC(48)/RES/9] (33 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Measures to Strengthen International Cooperation in Nuclear, Radiation and Transport Safety and Waste Management [GC(48)/RES/10] (65 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Nuclear Security - Measures to Protect against Nuclear Terrorism Progress on Measures to Protect against Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism [GC(48)/RES/11] (27 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Strengthening of the Agency΄s Technical Cooperation Activities [GC(48)/RES/12] (35 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Strengthening the Agency΄s Activities Related to Nuclear Science, Technology and Applications [GC(48)/RES/13] (45 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Strengthening the Effectiveness and Improving the Efficiency of the Safeguards System and Application of the Model Additional Protocol [GC(48)/RES/14] (30 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement between the Agency and the Democratic People΄s Republic of Korea [GC(48)/RES/15] (22 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Application of IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East [GC(48)/RES/16] (22 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish + Examination of Delegates΄ credentials [GC(48)/RES/17] (18 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish Decisions of the General Conference + Israeli Nuclear Capabilities and Threat [GC(48)/DEC/10] (18 kb) »» Arabic :: Chinese :: French :: Russian :: Spanish [GC - Photo Gallery] + GC Resources + Rules & Procedures + GC Archives [http://www.iaea.org/About/Policy/GC/GC47/agenda] [GC - Photo Gallery] --> Copyright 2003-2004, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: Official.Mail@iaea.org [Official.Mail@iaea.org] Disclaimer ***************************************************************** 25 Scotsman.com: Blair and Bush 'Clinging to Straws' to Justify War [http://www.scotsman.com/ Sat 9 Oct 2004 By James Lyons, Political Correspondent, PA News Tony Blair and George Bush were tonight accused of β€œclinging to straws” to justify war by the man charged with finding Iraqi weapons. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq Survey Group, sent in by the coalition, reported this week. The Prime Minister and the United States President seized on author Charles Duelfer’s suggestion that the dictator might have started producing them again if sanctions were lifted. However Hans Blix, who feels his work as head of the hunt for WMD was cut short by the invasion, said: β€œThis is the new straw to which the governments have begun to cling.” Writing in the Independent on Sunday, the former United Nations chief weapons inspector, who wanted more time to complete his work, rejected the suggestion. β€œEven if sanctions were lifted any breakout by Saddam would have caused loud alarm bells to ring,” he writes. β€œDuelfer’s report confirms that the combination of UN sanctions and inspection, plus external pressures including the no-fly zones, had kept Saddam contained.” There was no hint that the Iraqi dictator had attempted to revive his nuclear programme, he continues. β€œIraq was further away from a nuclear weapon in 2003 then it was in 1991,” he says. β€œIt had not used the period between 1999 and 2002, when there were no inspections, for any revival. β€œThus while George Bush has been maintaining that Saddam was a growing threat he was a diminishing danger to his neighbours and the world.” Mr Blix also takes a sideswipe at the intelligence services, pointing out that the report β€œunderlines the importance of having inspectors”. β€œHardly surprising considering that most of the correct information available to US and British intelligence came from UN and IAEA inspectors,” he writes. β€œMost of the things they got wrong were the results of their own work and contacts with Iraqis in exile.” Scott Ritter, a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-8, argues the invasion has made the world a worse place. Life is harder and more dangerous for many Iraqis than it was under the fallen tyrant, he writes in the paper. β€œIf Saddam were released from his prison cell and participated in the elections scheduled for next January there is a good chance he would emerge as the popular choice,” he says. The invasion has also hit global security by undermining the rule of international rule, he says. β€œHistory will show that it was the US and Britain that consistently operated outside the spirit and letter of international law in their approach towards dealing with Saddam.” ***************************************************************** 26 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Energy secretary pitches Westinghouse to Chinese Saturday, October 09, 2004 By Corilyn Shropshire, U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham yesterday said he recently met with Chinese officials to nudge along a possible deal that could land Monroeville-based Westinghouse Electric Co. orders for new plants in that country. Westinghouse last month received final design approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a new generation plant, the AP1000, that the Bush administration has been pushing China to consider as that country gets ready to solicit bids for a new batch of nuclear power plants. The NRC's approval frees Westinghouse to bid for the work. "We feel very confident about having resolved some areas of uncertainty in their minds," Abraham said of his September meeting with the head of China's atomic energy commission. "They didn't really indicate at that time that this process was finished." Confronting global demands to reduce coal-burning emissions and its own need for more energy, China is preparing a call for bids for four more nuclear plants, adding to the 11 already built or under construction in the country. It has said it envisions having as many as 32 nuclear plants in operation by 2020. Westinghouse is among the front-runners for the new pressurized-water nuclear plants, along with France's Areva and the Russian firm AtomStroyExport, China's People's Daily has reported. It is thought that Westinghouse's AP1000s would be ordered in twos and would cost $2.2 billion to $2.7 billion a pair to build, generating some 5,000 jobs in the United States, many of them locally, where the design and engineering would occur and plant control systems would be built. Abraham said he wasn't sure if there would be a revival of demand for nuclear energy in the United States, where no new plant has been ordered since 1978. Promoting the use of nuclear energy is among the initiatives Bush has said he would pursue if re-elected. Abraham was in town to announce grants to further research on alternative energy sources, a development he said is crucial to the nation's energy future. Carnegie Mellon University received $1.4 million to continue development of a robot that travels gas main lines in search of corrosion, while the University of Pittsburgh received $800,000 to further its research on ways to increase the volume of oil extracted from reservoirs. Harmarville-based Media & Process Technology Inc. also was awarded $2.6 million to help find new ways to produce hydrogen and make it cost-competitive with gasoline. Another Pennsylvania firm, Allentown-based Air Products and Chemicals Inc., received $4.6 million to develop a hydrogen carrier for vehicles that can be sold at local filling stations. (Corilyn Shropshire can be reached at cshropshire@post-gazette.com [cshropshire@post-gazette.com] or 412-263-1413.) ©1997-2004 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 27 APP.COM: Oyster Creek plant an issue in Lacey race ASBURY PARK PRESS Published in the Asbury Park Press 10/09/04By NICHOLAS CLUNN MANAHAWKIN BUREAU LACEY -- Out-of-town Democrats who have called for the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant to close when its license expires in five years could persuade two Democrats running for Township Committee to join their cause, said Republican candidate Brian A. Reid. But Democratic candidate Jim LeTellier said he and his running mate, Jeff Henderson, support the plant's plan to renew its operating license, as long as plant owner AmerGen can safely operate the 650-megawatt reactor off Route 9. They have also promised voters they would encourage AmerGen to build a second reactor at the Oyster Creek site. AmerGen spokesman Pete Resler said the company hasn't discussed building a new reactor at Oyster Creek. "Our focus is on the license renewal of the existing plant," he said. Reid said he's skeptical of the Democrats' plan, because leaders in that party outside of Lacey want the plant closed. He suggested that plant critics such as Gov. McGreevey and Brick Mayor Joseph C. Scarpelli could convince Lacey Democrats to reverse course. "The Democratic Party is basically against it," he said. "They want it closed down." AmerGen plans to seek permission next year from the federal government to keep Oyster Creek open for another 20 years after its original operating license expires in 2009. Critics of the plan have said that Oyster Creek, the nation's oldest commercial nuclear plant still in operation, is unsafe and should be closed. A new plant would import more workers, people who would buy meals from Vesuvio Pizzeria and Restaurant, said its owner, Sal DeSimone. Vesuvio is less than a mile from the plant; almost every day, he said, restaurant deliverymen undergo scrutiny from armed plant security guards to bring orders there. "I would rather see a movie theater, something for the people to entertain themselves, but for my business, it would be good," DeSimone said. A second reactor, according to the Democrats, would bring hundreds of high-paying jobs and long-term economic stability to the township. LeTellier criticized the GOP incumbents for not seeking another reactor. Mayor John C. Parker, a Republican seeking re-election, said he would have a better chance of bringing a new reactor to Lacey than the Democrats. He pointed to his involvement in bringing Oyster Creek to town about 35 years ago. There were plans to build a second reactor, Forked River I, at the Oyster Creek site, but officials canned the idea in 1979, following the worst nuclear power plant accident in U.S. history at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Republican leaders, during a conversation with plant officials a few years ago, asked about reviving the idea of a second reactor behind Oyster Creek, but they were told that the Delaware River was a more likely spot than Lacey, Reid said. Nicholas Clunn: (609) 978-4597 or nclunn@app.com the Asbury Park Press ***************************************************************** 28 Japan Times: Kepco finishes nuclear plant checks Saturday, October 9, 2004 FUKUI (Kyodo) Kansai Electric Power Co. told a safety panel in Fukui Prefecture on Friday that it had completed inspections of all its nuclear reactors, shut down following a fatal accident at its Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in August. The panel of safety experts plans to approve the resumption of operations at the Oi nuclear plant's No. 1 reactor and Mihama's No. 1 and No. 2 reactors. The power company said it had finished replacing eroded water pipes at the three reactors, all in Fukui Prefecture. Kepco shut down all of its nuclear reactors for inspections after a badly corroded coolant pipe in the No. 3 reactor in Mihama ruptured in August, spilling out superheated steam that killed four workers and injured seven others, one of whom died later. The Japan Times: Oct. 9, 2004 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 29 moscowtimes: Gazprom Moves Into Nuclear Power Sector themoscowtimes.com Monday, October 11, 2004. Page 5. Reuters The government wants gas monopoly Gazprom to extend its reach into atomic power by taking over the country's sole exporter of nuclear technology, officials and media reports said Friday. The Kremlin is seeking to tighten control over the strategic energy sector through Gazprom. Nuclear firm Atomstroiexport, with an order book of $3 billion, is one of the pillars of the country's nuclear industry. One of its projects, a nuclear reactor in Iran, is a major irritant in Moscow's relations with Washington, which says Tehran can use it to acquire atomic arms. Vedomosti quoted a source close to Atomstroiexport as saying Gazprom subsidiary Gazprombank would soon take over the firm by buying 54 percent of its shares from companies linked to machinery maker OMZ. An OMZ spokesman confirmed it was preparing for the sale but could not name the buyer. He said OMZ itself owned about 20 percent in Atomstroiexport. Gazprom declined to comment. The remainder of the nuclear reactor builder belongs to state companies controlled by the Federal Atomic Energy Agency. Vedomosti said Gazprombank may eventually sell the shares to firms linked to the agency. Gazprom is due to take over state oil firm Rosneft, and has built up stakes in national power group UES and in Moscow utility Mosenergo in its bid to become a fully integrated energy group. A source in the atomic energy agency said the government had been trying to regain OMZ's shares for months. "Our position is that a strategic company like that should belong to the government, and I can confirm that we've been working on that for some time," the source said. Atomstroiexport is also building two nuclear reactors in China and one in India. OMZ's general director, Kakha Bendukidze, is also Georgia's economy minister. Copyright © 2004 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 30 Sunday Herald: Concern over safety shortfall uncovered at Scots nuclear sites - 14 fires and 486 false alarms spark accident fears By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor Safety standards at Britains nuclear weapons bases at Faslane and Coulport on the Clyde are inadequate, according to the Royal Navys internal regulatory body. An investigation by the Sunday Herald has revealed there have been 14 fires and 486 false alarms at the sites over the last year. The probe has uncovered disturbing evidence of safety lapses at the two bases, which are home to Trident submarines and the nuclear warheads they carry. Previously unpublished reports from the Naval Nuclear Regulatory Panel criticise weaknesses and shortfalls in safety procedures. Following a fire in August, the navy has also given details for the first time of all fire alarms since September of last year. There have been four fires and 414 false alarms at Faslane, along with 10 fires and 72 false alarms at Coulport. The revelations have sparked concern among experts and anti-nuclear groups, who fear the bases could suffer a serious nuclear accident. But this has been dismissed by the navy, which insists its safety systems are robust, sensitive and continually improving. There are three or four events a year that have got the adrenaline going, said Tom Ward, the superintendent in charge of Coulport. But the location is not here by accident. We can absorb the consequences of a reactor or weapons incident within Coulport. The Royal Naval Armament Depot at Coulport is one of Britains top security sites, responsible for storing, maintaining and loading the 200 thermonuclear warheads capable of being fired on Trident missiles. Faslane, eight miles away on the Gareloch, is the home port for Trident and other nuclear-powered submarines, and the headquarters of the Royal Navy in Scotland. But the sites are not licensed by the governments Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, so are only subject to limited independent inspection. Instead, safety is overseen by the Royal Navys own Naval Nuclear Regulatory Panel, based in Bristol. The panels three latest reports, covering the period from November 1 last year to July 31 this year, have been released in response to requests from the Sunday Herald. They reveal the panels misgivings about safety at Faslane and Coulport. The naval base has acknowledged that its arrangements and current safety justifications are not consistent with current standards, says one report. The base was planning a site-wide safety improvement programme to address these shortfalls. Another report reveals the arrangements for managing the construction of a new radioactive waste processing facility at Faslane were not considered adequate. An emergency exercise held last November identified the same areas for improvement highlighted in previous exercises. The panel notes weaknesses in the arrangements for undertaking periodic safety reviews and says the base did not have a formally agreed programme for such reviews. It also expresses concern about arrangements for the training, management and deployment of suitably qualified and experienced staff. Inspection revealed a number of weaknesses in the current arrangements compared with good practice, some of which were acknowledged by the naval base and action was in hand to address. The 14 fires in the past year were caused by electrical components overheating, faulty wiring in engines, cigarettes in bins and welding equipment. They were all attended by Faslanes own fire service, and in seven cases Strathclyde Fire Brigade was also called in. Coulports emergency control centre was stood to four times. The majority of the 486 false alarms were caused by dust, insects, power fluctuations or smoke from cigarettes or bonfires. Many were due to faulty equipment, and a few to honest mistakes or malicious acts by workers. According to Dr Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant who has worked at the Aldermaston atomic weapons factory in Berkshire, the biggest risk is nuclear warheads catching fire. This could release tiny particles of plutonium into the atmosphere which would be dangerous if breathed in. Burning plutonium is a menace, he said. One would want to be assured that there is no danger of a fierce fire engulfing the warheads because the environmental consequences would be catastrophic. The Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament claimed safety had got worse because naval operations had been privatised. Safety standards had gone through the floor argued the groups Phill Jones. What is outrageous is the consequences of a major accident involving nuclear weapons at Faslane or Coulport would be far worse and make the west coast of Scotland uninhabitable, he said. The number of fires and false alarms at Faslane and Coulport is much higher than Scottish CND imagined. For there to be that many where all of Britains weapons of mass destruction are kept is criminal. The navy, however, pointed out that Faslane and Coulport were large, complex industrial sites, employing 7000 people and including 2000 bedrooms. The criticisms from the Naval Nuclear Regulatory Panel were a sign that it was doing its job. They are always going to provide constructive criticism. We are, like them, in the business of continual improvement to make the bases as safe as possible, said the navys spokesman, Neil Smith. Most of the fires were pretty minor and all had been contained. Safety is absolutely vital on the bases and because of that we have especially sensitive systems, he explained. He accepted it would be better if there were fewer false alarms. But a certain number of false alarms is useful to keep systems robust and working, he added. 10 October 2004 © newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 31 Rocky Mountain News: Congress backs ill Flats workers Wally Gulden and his wife, Connie, relax with their Shih Tzu, Tinkerbelle, at home in Arvada on Friday. Guilden was diagnosed with lymphoma while working at Rocky Flats 10 years ago. About 1,700 sick former Flats workers have been awaiting compensation. By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News October 9, 2004 Sick nuclear weapons workers from Rocky Flats and other plants scored a victory Friday when Congress voted to overhaul a program that has managed to pay only 31 of them while spending $95 million on paperwork. About 1,700 former Rocky Flats workers are awaiting action. Only one worker sickened while working at the weapons plant outside Denver has been paid. "I'm just ecstatic they could agree on this," said Terrie Barrie of Craig. Her husband, George, came down with 30 ailments after inhaling and ingesting plutonium at Rocky Flats. She has been a leader in the nationwide network of weapons workers and relatives fighting for reform. A House-Senate conference committee decided to change administrators of the program and to provide direct federal funding to pay the workers. The overhaul, contained in the military spending bill, is expected to win final approval and be on the president's desk by Sunday. "The Cold War warriors and heroes at Rocky Flats handled some of the most deadly substances known to man, and, as a result, some incurred cancers and other life-threatening diseases," said Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., a member of the conference committee who helped hammer out the compromise. "They were being tripped up by an endless series of bureaucratic hurdles," Allard said. "They've waited long enough." Congress created the program in 2000 to help atom bomb makers sickened by exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals on the job. The Department of Energy was placed in charge of half of the program. In four years, DOE saw only 31 of its 25,000 applicants paid.To accomplish that, DOE spent $95 million. A federal auditor found DOE improperly hired a computer company to process medical claims. That company, Science & Engineering Associates, now called Apogen, in turn charged the government $35 an hour for mail clerks and $87.84 an hour for nurses that it called "senior management analysts." The auditor found the company never bid on providing such personnel. The reform approved Friday transfers the program from DOE to the Department of Labor, which has years of experience in running workers compensation programs, and already runs the successful half of the program. Officials still must collect records of illness and exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals, and decide if that caused the workers' illnesses. But under the original program, workers merely won the right to fight insurers and employers for workers compensation, often in court. Now, they will be paid by the Department of Labor under a new national formula. Under the sliding scale, a worker with 50 percent impairment would receive $125,000 and would get another $50,000 if he or she was unable to work at 50 percent of pre-illness wages for five years. Ill workers could receive a maximum of $250,000 under this program, and possibly $150,000 under a separate Labor program. "That's exactly what the workers needed. That's just what we've been working for," Terrie Barrie said. "It feels wonderful. I'm so glad it's done." Many of the workers became ill when they were young and have enormous medical bills. Allard said he worked with sponsor Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., to hammer out a compromise between the House and Senate. The bill had bipartisan support but was opposed by the Bush administration, which insisted that the expensive DOE computer program was now working and capable of handling the backlog of applications. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Boulder, long supported the reform, and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, led an investigation into DOE's mismanagement. Among other things, DOE spent $4.8 million on a computer system when its own consultant said a $50,000 version would have done just fine. The same consultant went on for 28 pages about everything the computer company was doing wrong in processing the workers' claims. In contrast, Labor was told to pay $150,000 each to victims of three specified job-caused illnesses, including cancer. In the same four years, Labor has paid $910 million on behalf of 12,000 workers. Sick workers remain worried that the government will refuse to admit they were sickened by the job, because radiation exposure records are missing, sketchy or wrong. "I don't believe until I get paid," said Wally Gulden of Arvada, who at 66 is dying of lymphoma that he blames on exposure to plutonium at Rocky Flats. "I was a Cold War veteran. I don't trust the government any more." Key points of the new program • Workers must prove the illness was caused by exposure to radiation or toxic chemicals while they were working on atom bombs. • Spouses and children who were minors at the time of death can collect $125,000. • Workers permanently impaired by their illnesses will receive $2,500 for every percentage point of impairment, as decided by the Department of Labor. • Benefits under this program are capped at $250,000. • If their ability to work was limited by the ailment, they will receive $10,000 for each year before age 65 in which the illness prevented them from earning 75 percent of their pre-illness wage. • If they earn less than 50 percent of their pre-illness wage, they can collect $15,000 for each such year. • Workers who qualify may also collect the flat $150,000 paid by the Department of the Labor for certain cancers, beryllium disease and silicosis.Source: Senate Offices Of Wayne Allard And Jim Bunning imsea@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5438 ***************************************************************** 32 Buffalo News: House widens N-compensation [http://www.buffalo.com Ex-workers at 5 more area plants to get payments News Washington Bureau 10/9/2004 Congressional negotiators Friday struck a deal to dramatically broaden the number of former nuclear workers eligible for compensation for illnesses resulting from radioactive contamination. Under a bill that passed the House on Friday and is expected to pass the Senate shortly, former workers at five additional Western New York plants will be eligible for payments of up to $150,000 and medical coverage for some cancers. Those plants include Bliss and Laughlin Steel of Buffalo, Linde Ceramics and Ashland Oil, both of the Town of Tonawanda, Simonds Saw and Steel of Lockport and the West Valley Demonstration Project. Congressional staffers estimate that hundreds of additional Western New Yorkers will now be eligible for aid. "Federal compensation for these sick and injured workers is long overdue," said Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport, who worked with Reps. Jack F. Quinn Jr., R-Hamburg, and Thomas M. Reynolds, R-Clarence, to win passage of the proposal. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who led the Senate push for expanded compensation, agreed. "Our atomic weapons program workers are true Cold War heroes, and this amendment will help those workers get the compensation that Congress promised them in 2000," she said. The extension, included in the federal defense authorization bill for 2005, covers people who started work at factories after weapons production stopped, but while contamination remained there. The law previously covered only workers who were at the plants while nuclear work was going on there. Workers at several other local plants also might eventually be eligible for aid. Under the bill, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has until the end of 2006 to update its list of facilities where contamination continued after the end of nuclear production. Plants that could be added to the list include Seaway Industrial Park in the Town of Tonawanda and three Niagara Falls facilities: Hooker Electrochemical, Carborundum and Titanium Alloys. Bethlehem Steel's Lackawanna facility is not included in the expansion because the federal government reversed its initial decision that the plant had significant radiation contamination once weapons work stopped there. The defense authorization bill also includes other provisions that will benefit former nuclear workers in Western New York. For example, it requires the federal government to set deadlines to do "site profiles" of the facilities, which are key to allowing individual claims to be processed. And under a provision authored by Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., a resource center will be set up in Western New York that will help former nuclear workers with their compensation applications. "We have New Yorkers literally dying off as they wait for these payments that were promised to them," Schumer said. "Now they will hopefully get some help filing their claims so they can get the compensation they deserve." That's how Gordon Jellings, a former Simonds Saw employee, feels about it, too. "This has been an uphill fight," he said. e-mmail: jzremski@buffnews.com Copyright 1999 - 2004 - The Buffalo News [http://www.buffalonews.com/copyright.htm] ***************************************************************** 33 Salt Lake Tribune: Opinion: Sen. Bennett's position on nuclear testing untenable [http://www.sltrib.com] Article Last Updated: 10/09/2004 04:03:47 PM Paul Van Dam As Utahns know, the possible resumption of nuclear weapons testing is a critical issue - even a matter of life and death for the hundreds of thousands of people affected by radioactive fallout from testing. Yet, our own elected officials are ignoring the issue and trying to pull the wool over our eyes by asking Utahns to "trust the government" again - even going so far as to accuse us of being ignorant, as U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett did in an Oct. 3 Tribune column ("Nuclear weapons research necessary to maintain national security"). He tried to explain his stance by stating his opposition to both nuclear testing and nuclear ignorance. It would appear that the senator is the one ignorant of history and the facts, as demonstrated by his voting record. Furthermore, his column exhibited a blatant disregard for the suffering endured by countless families and individuals in Utah. From the 1950s to the 1990s, some 900 nuclear tests were conducted, exposing Utahns to radioactive fallout. Sen. Bennett claims only one test leaked after tests were moved underground. This stands in direct contradiction to a report by the Congress' Office of Technology Assessment, which found that 126 underground tests resulted in radioactive material reaching the atmosphere between 1970 and 1988. Examples include the Baneberry and Mighty Oak tests. In 1970, the Baneberry test spewed an enormous cloud of radioactive debris 10,000 feet into the atmosphere. The Mighty Oak test in 1986 released 2,000 times more radiation than the Three Mile Island incident. As a result of this testing, tens of thousands of Utahns were exposed to deadly radiation - radiation that caused unspeakable suffering, disease and death. Shouldn't our elected officials take a strong stand against resuming testing and avoid creating another generation of downwinders? Sen. Bennett's position is as murky as a typical winter inversion in Salt Lake. He voted against the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, voted against a proposed ban on testing in May, and voted for spending millions of dollars to prepare the Nevada Test Site and research new weapons that would require testing. His statement that he is "not willing to disarm America" is nothing more than scare tactics and an obvious attempt to divert attention from his record on this issue. Nobody is talking about disarmament. What I'm talking about is preventing any further tests and keeping Utah's skies free from the clouds of nuclear fallout. As I've spoken with thousands of Utahns in the past year, every one of them was in favor of a testing ban and opposed to funding studies of new weapons that might require testing. In 1981, the First Presidency of the LDS Church issued a statement which reads in part, "We deplore . . . the building of vast arsenals of nuclear weaponry . . . there is already enough weaponry to destroy in large measure our civilization." In light of our present nuclear stockpile, and the risks testing would pose to our citizens, I oppose testing and propose a ban on testing and funding for tests. I urge Sen. Bennett to do the same. --- Paul Van Dam is a former Utah attorney general and the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat held by Sen. Bob Bennett. © Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 34 Salt Lake Tribune: Downwinder fund patched [http://www.sltrib.com] Article Last Updated: 10/09/2004 02:16:38 AM Hatch changes a bill to avoid IOUs to radiation victims By Christopher Smith The Salt Lake Tribune WASHINGTON - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah has pushed through a change in the federal compensation program for victims of nuclear weapons testing fallout that will ease the financial strain on the near-bankrupt trust fund. The move comes as fellow Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett is twisting arms to add money to bail out the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) fund after he voted in favor of a bill last month that rejected the Bush administration's $72 million request to keep it solvent. "We've been fighting to make sure RECA claimants do not receive IOUs because the program ran out of funds," Hatch said Friday as he and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin announced they had inserted language into the 2005 defense spending authorization bill to pay claims by uranium miners, millers and transporters through an Energy Department workers compensation program. "These uranium workers will now receive the same benefits that other atomic weapons program workers receive and RECA has more money to pay downwinders who have suffered from exposure," said Hatch. House and Senate negotiators finished the defense authorization bill at 2 a.m. EDT on Friday and it is expected to pass both chambers and to be signed into law by President Bush. RECA compensation awards to nonfederal employees who excavated, processed or delivered uranium for America's Cold War nuclear weapons program will now be paid out of the fully funded Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act account. That move reduces demand on the overtaxed RECA fund, which pays $50,000 to people who have contracted forms of cancer potentially caused by Cold War era nuclear test fallout. But it doesn't eliminate chances of more shortages. The Bush administration sought to plug this year's expected gap in RECA funding with extra money pulled from the 2005 appropriation to the Commerce, Justice and State departments, but the chairman of the subcommittee in charge of those purse strings, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., refused. "The RECA fund has always been mandatory money that comes out of defense and to have it be discretionary complete surprise," said Bennett. "I have spoken to him and he said he will look at it and see what he can do to put it back in the conference committee." Bennett said Gregg's elimination of the RECA bailout from the Senate version of the spending bill "was not high on our congressional radar" when he and other Western lawmakers voted unanimously Sept. 15 in favor of the Commerce Subcommittee's proposed funding of the agencies. But Bennett's Democratic challenger Paul Van Dam, who has criticized the incumbent's votes in favor of funding research into "bunker buster" nuclear weapons, said Bennett should have been more vigilant for Utah downwinders. "I certainly think a lot more needs to be done for these folks and we should have a much stronger advocate than Senator Bennett in looking out for this program," Van Dam said. "In light of the amount of money being expended on defense, it's just stunning to me that a tiny amount can't be put aside for this deserving program." Bennett said he "will be making every effort next year to rationalize this mess in a way that provides a stable funding source" for the RECA program. And the pot of money he intends to skim some RECA funding from is the nuclear weapons stockpile maintenance program at the Nevada Test Site, the source of the 126 fallout clouds that floated across the American West during the era of above-ground bomb testing. "They should be able to take a haircut in what they are doing now since they are not doing any testing," Bennett said. "If somebody has to tighten their belt to see that the RECA people get what they deserve, these ought to be the people." © Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 35 [du-list] Uranium in the Wind Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 21:48:58 -0700 New Book: "Uranium in the Wind" compiled in 2004 by Ross Wilcock - 350 pages including TOC and Index. - $25.00 (Canadian) - from Pandora Press bookshop@pandorapress.com - www.pandorapress.com Pandora Press, 33 Kent St, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2G 3R2 Open from Tuesday Oct 12th. Ross Wilcock, arwilcock@sympatico.ca ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 36 Seattle Times: Program improved for ill nuclear workers Sunday, October 10, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M. By Nancy Zuckerbrod The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Congressional lawmakers have agreed to dramatically reform a compensation program for sick nuclear-weapons workers and take it out of the hands of the Energy Department, which has been criticized for taking too long to pay the workers. The program is for tens of thousands of people nationwide who helped build Cold War-era bombs or cleaned up waste left behind. Many got sick from harsh toxins and are seeking compensation for disabling illnesses and time off the job. House and Senate negotiators finalized a defense-authorization bill Friday that included an overhaul of the program, which was created by Congress four years ago. The changes include moving it to the Labor Department and requiring the government — not contractors who ran the nuclear sites — to pay the bills. Worker advocates say that's necessary because some deemed eligible for compensation were not getting paid because the contractors are long gone. In other cases, the government could not compel contractors to pay because they are privately insured. "It guarantees a willing payer and will ensure that these claims are processed in a timely manner," said Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., who helped write the changes. "Since the program was created four years ago, not one Kentuckian has been paid the benefits they are owed." Most of those who filed claims worked for contractors at Energy Department facilities in Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington state. The Labor Department will rely on a national formula, rather than state workers' compensation laws, in deciding how much to pay workers for their disabilities and lost wages. The most any worker can receive is $250,000. But the workers can apply for additional help under a separate Labor Department program if they have radiation-related cancer or diseases linked to lung-clogging beryllium and silica. The overhauled program also helps dependent survivors of sick workers. The program's estimated cost is about $1 billion over 10 years. Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company ***************************************************************** 37 Seattle Times: Plutonium: Is it really in safe hands? Sunday, October 10, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M. Close-up By Mark Clayton The Christian Science Monitor CLAUDE PARIS / AP Greenpeace activists display a "Stop Plutonium" banner Thursday on top of the Pont Mirabeau tunnel heading to the Cadarache nuclear plant, southeastern France, where a shipment of U.S. military-grade plutonium will be converted into a commercial fuel. The biggest threat facing the United States — and the world — is the spread of nuclear material to rogue states and terrorists. So say terrorism experts. Both major American presidential candidates concurred in their first televised debate. So why is the United States moving plutonium from military to less secure civilian control? And why, critics ask, is it embarking on research programs that teach other nations how to use plutonium in nuclear-power plants after a quarter-century of opposing such moves? Knowing terrorists are seeking nuclear material, nations have made strides to secure bomb-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU). But they have paid far less attention to an alternative: plutonium. Last week, about 300 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium oxide was shipped from the United States to France for use in nuclear plants. The U.S. shipment, its first overseas, is not only a security threat but also clouds America's nonproliferation message, critics say. Moreover, it focuses attention on plutonium from another source: nuclear-power plants. This "separated" plutonium can be converted into a weapon and poses a threat comparable to HEU, experts say. "The big risk we face with separated plutonium is from theft by terrorists at a factory making reactor fuel — maybe an inside job," said David Albright, a researcher at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington think tank. "You always have to worry about the physical protection of plutonium. Nations always tell you their protection is good. But it may not be enough." Consider: • The world is swimming in plutonium. Although military stockpiles have stabilized, the amount of civilian-held plutonium has doubled in the past 13 years, said a new ISIS report. At the end of 2003, 14 nations' civilian reactors held 235 metric tons of the most dangerous variety in terms of a terrorist threat — separated plutonium. That's enough material to fashion some 40,000 Nagasaki-sized weapons; the amount is growing by five to 10 tons a year. • France annually converts tons of this plutonium to a mixed-oxide or MOX fuel, which is trucked to its nuclear-power plants. Despite its "reactor grade" label, MOX could make an effective bomb — as a U.S. test in 1962 revealed. Even if a weapon "fizzled" because its plutonium was only reactor-grade, it would still yield a one-kiloton explosion that would "rip the heart out of a city," said Leonard Spector, deputy director of the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies. • While it's far simpler to make a bomb from HEU, it's conceivable that terrorists could build a plutonium-based device with expert help, observers say. Just 15 pounds of the material, a baseball-sized chunk, would be enough to wipe out a large portion of a major city. Last month, Kyrgyz security agents arrested a man trying to sell 60 small containers of plutonium. Precautions stressed The United States has carefully protected this onetime shipment of plutonium to France, countered Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy. "There are efforts and procedures in place we're not going to discuss publicly." By developing new technology to reprocess the plutonium in nuclear fuel, the United States can boost its energy independence and reduce the volume of nuclear waste, the Bush administration argues. It contends this could make unnecessary a second nuclear-waste repository beyond Nevada's Yucca Mountain. "It is our hope that this technology will ... provide the benefits of recycling spent fuel without increasing proliferation risks," Kyle McSlarrow, deputy secretary of Energy, told Congress in July. Plutonium is created when uranium fuel is irradiated within a nuclear reactor. Reprocessing extracts the plutonium from spent fuel, which may then be fabricated into more fuel for reactors. Civilian plutonium comes in two basic varieties: the separated plutonium and irradiated plutonium, which is embedded within spent nuclear fuel rods. Ironically, irradiated plutonium is less worrisome because it is so radioactive. Terrorists typically wouldn't be able to handle spent rods without fatal consequences, though it could be used in a dirty bomb. But separated plutonium could be diverted within a plant or stolen en route and readily transformed back into metal plutonium suitable for bombs, nonproliferation experts say. Earlier efforts The arrival in France on Wednesday of U.S. weapons-grade plutonium — destined for fabrication into commercial reactor fuel — highlights these concerns. During the 1960s, it was thought that future shortages of uranium would make it economical to extract plutonium from reactor waste and use it for fuel. Some nations forged ahead — Britain, France, Japan and the Soviet Union among them — despite the higher cost of reprocessing. So did the United States — until India in 1974 conducted a "peaceful nuclear explosion" using a device created with plutonium culled from a research reactor. Recognizing the danger of nuclear proliferation, Presidents Ford and Carter discouraged the use of plutonium as a fuel in civilian reactors. The U.S. government withdrew its support for a "plutonium economy," throttling back America's use of plutonium as reactor fuel. So while the U.S. military has plenty of weapons-grade plutonium, America has refused to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium for civilian use. Therefore, the United States does not have a growing stockpile of civilian plutonium — which some would say is a huge blessing, given the costs involved in disposing of it. Even so, the idea of plutonium for civilian use gained a toehold during the Clinton administration. The United States and Russia in 2000 signed a disarmament treaty to dispose of "excess" military plutonium by following a dual-track approach. Some of the 34 metric tons of military plutonium from each country would be mixed with nuclear waste and put into canisters for burial — while the rest would be made into MOX for use in the United States and Russia. Russia had resisted the burial option, declaring plutonium a valuable resource. In January 2002, the Bush administration dropped the idea, too. Instead, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced all 34 tons of excess U.S. weapons plutonium would be made into MOX for power plants. "The U.S. and Russia have agreed to dispose of 34 tons each of weapons plutonium through the Russians' preferred method of conversion to MOX," said Wilkes, whose agency oversees the joint weapons-to-MOX program. "We need the Russians on board." The U.S. plan calls for France to create a limited amount of reactor fuel from the weapons-grade plutonium and then ship it back to South Carolina's Catawba nuclear plant for a test next spring. After that, the plan is for MOX to be made on U.S. soil at a new $2.2 billion fabrication plant in South Carolina. The facility is to be completed by 2008 by a U.S. subsidiary of Areva, the French company that's supplying the MOX to Catawba. The plan faces some obstacles. Environmentalists have filed suit in a bid to block the use of MOX fuel in the Catawba plant. A bigger obstacle is a dispute between Russia and the United States over who would be liable in case of an accident or terrorist act involving U.S. contractors working in Russia on the new MOX plant there. Absent an agreement, the whole plan will grind to a halt, analysts say. Officially, the United States still discourages other nations from using plutonium-based fuels in civilian reactors. But shipping plutonium to France to make MOX undercuts any U.S. efforts to discourage the likes of Iran and North Korea from reprocessing spent reactor fuel, several experts say. Bad example? Even for disarmament purposes, the use of MOX in U.S. power plants "sets a terrible example for the world" when burying the material is still an alternative, said Paul Leventhal, head of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington. "You don't want to in any way legitimate the use of bomb-grade fuels to generate electricity — because you can do that with low-grade fuels. So why allow it?" In May 2001, the Bush administration's new National Energy Policy emphasized the use of nuclear power to meet energy needs. At the same time, it also endorsed and promoted reconsideration of "advanced reprocessing" of spent reactor fuel. Despite the administration's hopes, such material would not significantly decrease terrorists' ability to use it to make a bomb, critics say. The United States has spearheaded the Generation IV International Forum with some 10 nations to develop new generation nuclear power plants. At least three of the five reactor designs under consideration would use recycled plutonium, said Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist in the global-security program of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The United States has also contracted with South Korea and other nations to work on the International Nuclear Energy Research Initiative, which includes new technologies for recycling plutonium. South Korea revealed last month that in 1982 some of its civilian researchers, without permission, had separated plutonium. The revelation caused an uproar among nonproliferation experts, who worry about civilian programs developing reprocessing expertise that can lead to weapons development. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said the experiments were "of serious concern." Meanwhile, Japan has a new reprocessing plant seeking certification. India wants to expand its reprocessing capacity. China has said it, too, wants to reprocess for civilian purposes. Hard to track The spread of reprocessing technology, combined with the move to use MOX fuel in U.S. reactors, comes at a time when the world is desperate to corral loose nuclear material before terrorists can get it. Plutonium is especially hard to track. When it's being reprocessed or fabricated, it sticks to nearly everything it comes in contact with. Last year, for example, international nuclear inspectors reported that the Tokaimura nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant north of Tokyo could not account for some of its plutonium — enough to make 25 nuclear weapons. Similarly, France's COGEMA Cadarache plant where the United States shipped its excess military plutonium, was found by EURATOM in 2002 to have "an unacceptable amount of material unaccounted for," according to a recent report in Nuclear Fuel, a trade publication. Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company ***************************************************************** 38 UK The Times: Expert fears Scots cancer timebomb October 10, 2004 Paul Lamarra A LEADING nuclear expert has warned that Scotland faces a cancer time-bomb caused by radioactive emissions from Sellafield. Dr Chris Busby, who sits on government and European committees examining radiation risks, claims the nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria is responsible for a wave of toxic plutonium making its way to the Solway coast. Busby claims to have found high levels of radioactivity caused by waste dumped into the Irish Sea from Sellafield. The scientist, who has carried out work on the tidal mud flats in Kirkcudbright Bay, said his research revealed the presence of isotopes of caesium, which also pointed to the presence of plutonium. Tests revealed that the measured dose of radiation in the bay was twice what he had expected. “Low-level radiation is a serious health hazard,” said Busby. “There is no safe limit for plutonium. These particles drift inland and therefore can be inhaled and that represents the risk. I think the levels will peak at double what they are now. The health effects will not be felt for another 10 years. They will continue to rise until 2050.” Busby helped the Irish government to prepare a legal case against Sellafield. He believes it is inevitable that the southwest coast will experience a similar “Sellafield blight” to Ireland’s east coast. “I know of a farmer in Co Louth who cannot sell his produce because of fears that it is contaminated with pollution from Sellafield and of people from Dublin who will not visit the area for fear of contracting cancer,” said Busby. “Sellafield should be closed down immediately and the people compensated by the government for the loss of value on their properties.” Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, has campaigned for the plant to be closed. In 2001 the Irish government took the British government to a United Nations maritime court to block the commissioning of a mixed plutonium uranium-oxide (MOX) plant at Sellafield. Campaigners against radioactive pollution in Galloway have begun cataloguing cancer cases in the area. Alex Ferguson, Tory MSP for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, said Busby’s concerns had to be investigated. “I would be keen for further testing to be carried out because the spectre that Busby is raising is a serious one,” he said. Fears have also been raised that plans to build offshore wind farms in the Solway Firth will disturb radiation on the sea bed. The Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science — a government agency — has calculated that people who spend a lot of time on the Solway beaches or consume large amounts of locally caught fish and shellfish increase their risk of developing cancer by 5%. Busby and his colleague Richard Bramhall — who sat on a government committee examining the effects of low-level radiation — were recently barred from voicing fears that radiation from nuclear installations poses a greater threat than previously thought. British Nuclear Fuels, which runs Sellafield, refused to comment on Busby’s findings. A spokesman said: “People need to understand that as we decommission and clean up Sellafield, by the nature of the physics the more radioactivity we have to discharge — so levels of emissions cannot keep going down for ever.” Copyright The Times - timesonline.co.uk ***************************************************************** 39 Daily Yomiuri: Reprocessing N-fuel costlier than burying it Yomiuri Shimbun Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is up to 1.8 times more expensive than burying it, according to a cost estimate released Thursday by the government's Atomic Energy Commission. The commission, chaired by Shunsuke Kondo, made the estimate public in a report on disposal methods for nuclear fuel from power plants. According to the estimates, the cost of reprocessing spent fuel would be 1.6 yen per kilowatt-hour of output, while the cost of burying spent fuel without reprocessing would be 0.9 yen to 1.1 yen per kilowatt-hour. The commission also said the overall costs to generate the power to recycle the nuclear fuel, among other operations, was expected to cost 5.2 yen per kilowatt-hour, while the power without reprocessing would cost from 4.5 yen to 4.7 yen. Copyright 2004 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 40 deseret news: Gathering opposes nuclear waste storage [deseretnews.com] Sunday, October 10, 2004 By Tiffany Erickson Deseret Morning News SKULL VALLEY, Tooele County — Fighting sandstorms, wind and rain, representatives of environmental groups from Utah and other states gathered this weekend on the Goshute Indian Reservation here to oppose plans to store nuclear waste. Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a corporation that represents eight nuclear utilities, has contracted with the Goshutes to store 40,000 tons of nuclear waste in above ground canisters on the reservation, located about 75 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. But some tribe members and dozens of environmental groups vehemently oppose bringing waste into the state. Margene Bullcreek lives on the reservation and has been one of the leaders opposing the waste storage. She said it is important for the public to know there are tribe members who do oppose it and that it is an issue that has divided the tribe. "PFS is a large corporation targeting our small traditional Native American reservation for its dangerous project, and taking advantage of our sovereignty," Bullcreek said. "Sovereignty isn't selling your heritage to the highest bidder. . . . The dump will threaten our tribe's health, cultural traditions and reservation community life." But on the flip side, storing the waste could spell economic prosperity for the impoverished reservation. Aside from money, Pete Lister, coordinator of the Nuclear Free Great Basin Campaign, said it is also a chance for tribe members to assert their rights as Native Americans to use their lands how they see fit. That view is understandable, Lister said, but the nuclear industry is exploiting that sovereignty and fails to support those who have a spiritual tie to the land. "People say 'We can get rich off this . . . why is Utah against it?' " Bullcreek said. "But it is poisonous and it's going to affect our small reservation, the only small piece of land that is left for us. We welcome the states' contentions to oppose the waste." The site would be a "temporary" storage site inasmuch as the contract is for 20 years with an option for renewal. Utah officials and other groups, who are fighting the proposal, are concerned it will become permanent. "They say it will just be temporary, but there are no plans for an exit strategy, and that should be a red flag for everyone," said Jason Groenewold, director of Healthy Environmental Alliance or Utah (HEAL Utah). "We need to remember and be very clear that once the waste gets here, no one else is going to take it." In March 2003, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied PFS its license to begin construction of the dump, citing a risk of accidents involving F-16 fighter jets that routinely pass over the valley en route to Hill Air Force Base. In May 2003, PFS appealed the decision and offered to reduce the size of the site. But it was turned down due to the process in which the appeal was filed. The proposal remains on the table. "We need to stop the nuclear industry from targeting vulnerable communities — that's what they do," Lister said. "We don't want this impression to be left — whether it's in the press or in public policy — that these communities are just going to roll over. There is in fact solidarity behind them." Lister said events like the Skull Valley gathering are organized to help demonstrate that there is support for people who struggle in these indigenous or vulnerable communities. About 60 people attended the three-day event, including representatives from HEAL Utah, the Goshute and Wind River reservations and environmental groups like the Washington, D.C.-based Public Citizen, Oregon-based Peaceworks and Citizen Alert of Reno, Nev. Saturday's was the second protest gathering in Skull Valley since 2001. E-mail: terickson@desnews.com [terickson@desnews.com] © 2004 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 41 Las Vegas RJ: Yucca ruling's appeal rejected Saturday, October 09, 2004 Options weighedafter court rejected radiation standard By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Addressing a potential problem for President Bush in Nevada, the Justice Department said Friday the government will not ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a ruling that went against the Yucca Mountain Project this summer. Attorneys disclosed the decision in a one-page brief filed late in the day at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The filing aimed to put an end to speculation whether Bush intended to follow through after he said in Las Vegas on Aug. 13 he would allow the courts to set a course for the proposed nuclear waste repository. Nevada Democrats and critics of the Yucca Mountain program pounced on Bush after Tuesday's disclosure that Justice Department officials had told the court in a Sept. 23 document they hadn't decided whether to appeal a July 9 ruling that struck a blow against the program. That decision voided a 10,000 year radiation standard the Environmental Protection Agency had written for the nuclear waste repository. EPA and Energy Department officials have said they will develop new radiation regulations to satisfy the court rather than prolong a legal fight. While the court ruling in July damaged a key portion of the project, it also upheld most other segments in favor of the government. Although officials at the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency were stating there were no plans to take the Yucca Mountain issue to the Supreme Court, Democrats charged the Justice Department quietly was allowing Bush to keep his options open. Two sources confirmed that state Attorney General Brian Sandoval, co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Nevada, telephoned the White House on Wednesday and complained. It could not be learned who took his call. "The word was, 'What's going on here,' " said one source aware of the conversation. "Your underlings aren't on the same page." On Friday, the Justice Department told judges: "We are now in a position to report that the Solicitor General's Office has reached a decision and that the United States does not intend to file a petition" seeking Supreme Court review. An industry association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, has indicated it will file an appeal, but experts have said its chances are diminished if the government doesn't join in. After the Justice Department filed the document, Sandoval issued a statement saying the government's decision not to appeal "is a resonant indicator of the strength of Nevada's legal position on Yucca Mountain." Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said the development put an end to the possibility of a prolonged legal fight. "I hope this decision also puts an end to partisan claims meant to put President Bush in an unfavorable light," Ensign said. "The president has said he would abide by the court's rulings, and he is doing just that." Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said she would not take the Justice Department's announcement at face value. She said the administration still could turn to Congress to overturn the unfavorable ruling. "I'm wary. I'd like to know what the next trick is up their sleeves," Berkley said. "There is still a lot of mischief that can be done." Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 42 Las Vegas SUN: Moving deadly cargo Photos: A Union Pacific freight train | Vic Crumley checks track | Union Pacific conductors look over paperwork October 08, 2004 Safety questions arise over shipping nuclear waste on nation's railroads By Steve Kanigher LAS VEGAS SUN WEEKEND EDITION: October 10, 2004 Buried in the Energy Department's environmental impact statement on Yucca Mountain is a telling admission: "Accidents could occur during the transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste." That is hardly a comforting thought given the catastrophic possibilities of a radioactive release in a densely populated city such as Las Vegas. The Energy Department would prefer to use railroads instead of trucks to ship most of the nation's spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But the department -- which has been accused of ignoring scientific questions related to repackaging of the waste, to the threat of terrorism and to the mountain as a safe storage site -- has yet to answer the following: How reliable is the nation's freight-rail system and how can we be sure that it is safe enough to transport the proposed 77,000 tons of radioactive material from 127 sites in 39 states? The answer is, no one knows for sure because the rail system has yet to be studied in depth as it relates to Yucca Mountain. The Energy Department does not even know the rail routes it would use, let alone the trains and waste storage casks it would use. Among the rail-safety issues that merit attention are: ••• The history of nuclear waste transport by rail and whether it is relevant given the much higher number of shipments that are expected to come to Nevada. ••• The railroad accident records of each state that would be crossed by trains carrying radioactive waste. ••• The risks involved in transporting nuclear waste by rail from Caliente in Lincoln County to Yucca Mountain, a proposed route of 319 miles. ••• The impact deregulation of the railroad industry in 1980 has had on rail safety. ••• The impact of railroad worker fatigue. ••• The ability of federal and state railroad inspectors to keep on top of safety issues. Historical perspective The rail industry and the Energy Department say they believe nuclear waste shipments by rail would be safe based on the success of transports that have occurred nationwide since 1957. Allan Rutter, then-administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, which oversees safety, made that clear in March while testifying before the House Transportation of Nuclear Waste Subcommittee on Railroads. "Rail shipments of spent nuclear fuel have a long and very positive safety history, having been transported safely by rail in the United States for more than 46 years," Rutter testified. "During that time, there has never been a single train accident or incident involving these rail shipments that has resulted in an injury, a death or a release of the material from the packaging." There is dispute about Rutter's claim that there never was a cask leak. According to the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state's Yucca Mountain watchdog, three rail yards at unspecified locations were contaminated by cask leaks in June 1960. And there was a cask leak confined to a rail car at another undisclosed location in December 1963. There have been at least four other train accidents related to nuclear waste transport with no reported radioactive release and four accidents involving trains that were carrying empty decontaminated nuclear waste casks. One was in a North Carolina rail yard in March 1974 when a train with an empty cask was struck by another train that derailed, causing superficial damage to the cask. The most highly publicized incident occurred in March 1987 in St. Louis when a train carrying nuclear waste to Idaho from the damaged Three Mile Island reactor near Middletown, Pa., collided with a stalled vehicle at a railroad crossing. There were no fatalities or radioactive release, but the city's Board of Aldermen cited the collision in a resolution calling for an end to nuclear waste shipments through that city until a permanent solution for nuclear waste is found. The Energy Department estimated there would be eight accidents involving nuclear waste trains between 2010, the projected starting date of shipments to Yucca Mountain, and 2034. The state nuclear projects agency predicted 160 to 390 rail accidents based on possible shipments over a 38-year period. Even if the 24-year schedule is met, the state believes the Energy Department has grossly underestimated the number of accidents that would occur. The reason for the discrepancy is that there have been only about 1,200 rail shipments of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste in this country -- the history the Energy Department relied on heavily to make its prediction. The state argues that there could be at least 14,000 rail shipments to Yucca Mountain. "I used to think rail would be safer and cheaper than trucks, but I am beginning to realize it wouldn't be safer or cheaper," said Bob Halstead, Nevada's lead transportation consultant on nuclear waste. "The public perception is that rail would be safer because the number of shipments would be smaller. But rail casks handle four to six times as much nuclear waste as truck casks, so there is a trade-off when it comes to safety and security from terrorism." Accidents by state The Energy Department has not yet determined which rail routes the nuclear waste would be transported to Nevada. But Federal Railroad Administration data show that the states with the most noncrossing train accidents from 1995 through 2003 -- mishaps that involve mostly derailments or collisions on main rail lines and in rail yards -- are all sure bets to be included because they are on paths to nuclear reactors. Those states are Texas (2,731 accidents), Illinois (2,424), California (1,537), New York (1,151), Pennsylvania (1,059), Ohio (951), Iowa (850), Nebraska (838), Kansas (822), Minnesota (752), Missouri (750) and Louisiana (745). Nevada had 94 noncrossing train accidents from 1995 through 2003. Only seven states had fewer mishaps along main rail lines and in rail yards. Nevada ranks low in this category because it has relatively little freight-train activity compared to other states. Nationwide there were 9,330 train accidents from 1975 through May that damaged cars carrying hazardous material. Of those accidents, 1,653 resulted in spills and 689 forced temporary evacuations. Nevada only accounted for slightly more than three-tenths of 1 percent of those accidents and four-tenths of 1 percent of the spills. But the state is not immune from train mishaps. Nevada's most infamous rail accident involved a passenger train, "The City of San Francisco," which derailed off of a bridge in Eureka County in August 1939. The accident, in which five cars plunged into the Humboldt River, killed 24 people and injured 121. Sabotage was suspected but never proven. From 1975 through May the state had 497 noncrossing train accidents. Thirty-four of those damaged cars holding hazardous material such as chemical compounds and solvents. There were seven spills, although no deaths or injuries resulted. Nevada also had 274 incidents -- 48 in Clark County -- where trains and motor vehicles collided at road crossings. For all train activity combined in Nevada from 1975 through May there were 119 fatalities and 2,742 injuries. Most fatalities were railroad trespassers and motorists involved in train crashes, and most of the injuries were to railroad workers. To Fred Dilger, a traffic consultant to the state's nuclear projects agency, Nevada's past train accidents are "not like anything that could happen in the future." "We're looking at orders of magnitude of difference in terms of the shipment of nuclear waste and other hazardous material," Dilger of Henderson said. "High-level nuclear waste is unlike any other hazardous material because it is unsafe even when it is enclosed. The waste packages do not contain all the radiation because there are gamma rays that escape." The Association of American Railroads, a trade group in Washington, believes its industry is very safe. Nationally there are four rail accidents for every 1 million miles traveled. "Generally speaking, rail is safe and it is the preferred method of shipping most hazardous waste," spokesman Tom White said. "Last year there were only 25 accidents in this country in which any hazardous material was released. That is out of close to 1.8 million freight cars of hazardous material that moved by rail. "I don't think anyone has found a way to make anything accident-proof, but you make it as safe as you possibly can. Our record speaks for itself." Through Nevada Halstead of Portage, Wis., said Nevada is lucky it hasn't already had a major calamity tied to a hazardous-material spill. Nevada has 1,200 miles of rail, all owned by Union Pacific Railroad Co. The state ranks 39th in actual track mileage. Nevada is well behind Texas (10,347 miles), Illinois (7,261) and California (5,908). But portions of the Nevada lines go through densely populated Las Vegas and Reno. In Las Vegas, the rail line cuts through a 30-mile-long urban corridor that also includes nearby petroleum and natural gas pipelines. In 1989 a railroad car in Union Pacific's Las Vegas rail yard overturned and barely missed two petroleum pipelines. "We do have conditions conducive to severe accidents," Halstead said. "The very fact that we have had accidents in the past is a concern because it tells you more severe accidents are possible. It's not the statistical data that concerns me. It's the conditions we have in Nevada." One condition in Nevada is extreme summer heat, which can cause rails to expand. In certain parts of the state, extreme cold temperatures can cause rails to contract. Another condition is Nevada's mountainous terrain, which prompted the state to file another federal lawsuit earlier this month against the Energy Department. Bob Loux, executive director of the state nuclear projects agency, said the federal department exceeded its jurisdiction by proposing in April to build a 319-mile rail route from Caliente to Yucca Mountain. "There are 11 major mountains that would have to be crossed and that would require tunneling and very steep grades," Loux said. Energy's strategy is to have most of the nation's radioactive waste shipped by rail to Caliente, a line that would take at least four years and $880 million to build. Rail experts say the safest waste transports would be on short trains -- possibly only five or six cars in length -- to reduce slack and jerky motions that can occur with longer trains. The railroad industry believes the trains should have no other cargo, be given priority so that other trains on the same tracks would have to move aside and have a security escort. The Federal Railroad Administration, which has a safety compliance plan for nuclear waste transports, also would require railroads to detect rail flaws so that repairs could be made before shipments occurred. And federal inspectors would check each shipment prior to departure and during each crew change. Union Pacific, the nation's largest railroad and largest hauler of chemicals by rail, is not concerned about transporting spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain, spokesman John Bromley said. "We have never had a nuclear waste spill or an accident while transporting nuclear waste so we have an excellent track record," Bromley said. "We will handle it with the greatest of care when it comes our way." But critics say the Caliente route would be unsafe because of steep hairpin curves through the mountains. "It puts a lot more demand on the operators of the train," said Rick Moore, a rail engineering consultant for Nevada's nuclear projects agency from Laramie, Wyo. "You could be going too fast down a grade and then have a tight curve that the train can't handle, and it could jump the tracks. Because of the weight of the train, it could push on the outside rail and that could pull the rails apart." If the casks should be thrown from a train in Nevada, Dilger said it could take five hours for special cranes in Los Angeles or Salt Lake City to arrive at the scene to retrieve them. Critics also say a high volume of nuclear waste could still pass through Las Vegas if the Energy Department chooses southern routes to transport spent nuclear fuel west to California and then back through Nevada. Railroad deregulation To help economically depressed railroads, Congress in 1980 deregulated the industry. This led to profitability, but also promoted consolidation to the point where only four railroad companies, including Union Pacific, control 90 percent of the nation's rail-freight business. Industry representatives say freight-train safety has improved dramatically since deregulation, with a 65 percent decline in train accidents overall and an 86 percent drop in accidents involving hazardous material. The reason given was that railroads began spending profits on safety upgrades. White said railroads spent $10.1 billion on maintenance and safety improvements in 2002, compared to $5.8 billion in 1980. "One thing that happened is that the economic condition of railroads has improved," White said. "They have had more money to spend on tracks and equipment, and things are better maintained than they were 20 years ago." But according to a Labor Department inflation calculator based on the Consumer Price Index, $5.8 billion in 1980 would have translated to $12.6 billion in 2002. The Federal Railroad Administration also reported in 2002 that railroads reduced their research and development programs "despite record traffic levels in the freight-railroad industry and the creation of fewer, larger railroad companies." Deregulation also caused major railroads to reduce the amount of track they use nationally from 165,000 miles to 100,000. The result is heavier traffic along the tracks still in use, which Halstead said increases the chances for train accidents. "The desire of the railroads to maximize profits has led them to do things that have major safety implications, like having 110 cars per train instead of 100 and increasing the payload per train," Halstead said. "The locations where there are high probabilities for a serious accident are places where there are high speeds, places where two-way traffic is heavy, places where two trains are close enough for collisions to occur or places where there are deficiencies in infrastructure, such as bridges." The trend also has been to rely on heavier and faster trains. While the standard tank car weighs up to 263,000 pounds, there has been talk that a fully equipped nuclear waste car could weigh as much as 400,000 pounds because of the heavy casks. That has prompted concerns whether the nation's rail beds are strong enough to support heavier trains. Because of rail consolidation, more cargo also passes through urban rail yards, and because of sprawling suburbs, more people live closer to rail lines than ever before, Halstead said. "The real problem is when you have railroads hauling hazardous material in close proximity to heavily populated areas," he said. Worker fatigue After more than 20 years of steady declines in the number of train accidents, hitting a bottom of 2,397 in 1997, the trend has turned upward, with 2,958 accidents recorded last year. Of those accidents, 1,197 were caused by human error, the most since at least 1993. Railroad labor unions believe potential accidents could be avoided if working conditions improved. The United Transportation Union, which represents 46,000 train engineers and conductors, is chagrined that its employees must work longer shifts with less time off because of workforce reductions. The reductions are partly caused by employees who retired early because of changes in railroad pensions regulated by Congress. "We have a lot of crews working 12-hour shifts and then given only 10 hours off," spokesman Frank Wilner of Alexandria, Va., said. "A lot of people are getting only five or six hours of sleep a night. The problem is the railroads don't have enough crews. This has led to a significant reduction in morale and the increased potential for human error." Of Nevada's 497 noncrossing accidents from 1975 through May, which caused $44.4 million in damage to trains and tracks: ••• 193 were caused by equipment problems. The most frequent problems were related to overheated axles. ••• 165 were caused by human error. The most frequent errors were excessive speed when attempting to link cars and improperly aligned rail switches, which are rail-traffic guidance devices. ••• 77 were caused by track problems. Missing or defective rail crossties and broken rails were the leading factors. ••• 62 were caused by other factors. Although three-fourths of those accidents derailed cars, Bromley said Nevada's freight-train system is "very safe." Based on an estimated 50 trains a day -- or 18,250 a year -- that pass through Nevada, the state's eight train accidents last year would have translated to one for every 2,281 trains. Track problems in Nevada and elsewhere have been reduced by improving the quality of metal used in rails and by replacing old wooden crossties with concrete. Bromley characterized most of Union Pacific's accidents as "fender benders in rail yards," although federal statistics show that 65 percent of the train accidents in Nevada since 1975 have occurred on main rail lines. "You will always have accidents as long as people are involved," Bromley said. But some railroad employees don't think the industry shoulders enough blame. Yucca Mountain is a central issue in a lawsuit rail workers filed in November against the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. in federal court in Sioux City, Iowa. The lawsuit alleges that the railroad -- one of two that operate in Nevada -- disregards safety measures to expedite shipments and increase profits. The workers allege that the company doesn't report all accidents and injuries to the government. The lawsuit claims vandals can disturb company rail switches because thousands of keys are in circulation that can open generic locks used to secure the switches. The lawsuit also addresses the Energy Department's intent to contract with Burlington Northern and other railroads to haul nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. "DOE (the Energy Department) is informing the public and state and local government that using these railroads, including BNSF, is safe," the lawsuit stated. "DOE is wrong. It is not safe to move nuclear waste by rail across the BNSF. DOE could not lawfully enter into such contracts if it knew the truth of the unsafe conditions of BNSF operations." Lena Kent, a Burlington Northern spokeswoman, declined comment on the lawsuit. But Kent said her company has complete confidence in the rail system, including the Union Pacific rails it uses in Nevada. "We run a very safe operation and wouldn't do anything to put our crews at risk if we thought it was unsafe," Kent said. "We have no reason to believe the Union Pacific rails are unsafe." A different take came from Harry Zanville, a San Diego attorney who represents the rail workers in the lawsuit. "The concerns they have are systemic and involve all 28 states that Burlington Northern comes through," Zanville said. "If they had a calamitous accident with nuclear waste, a lot of people would get hurt and a lot of property would be damaged. It would be a catastrophe. And there are a lot of things that can produce a catastrophic accident. "We had one incident where the train crew in Iowa was told by management not to inspect the brakes before a train left the rail yard. That train had an accident in a train yard in Denver." Railroad inspections Railroads are responsible for inspecting their own tracks and equipment. Their work is checked by Federal Railroad Administration inspectors and, in Nevada's case, by inspectors employed by the state's Public Utilities Commission. There are about 500 federal and state safety inspectors nationwide. But Halstead said there aren't enough inspectors, resulting in possible under-reporting of accidents. "Part of the problem with railroad accident statistics are the self-reporting requirements," he said. "There is also a lack of precision in the definitions of an accident." From 1995 through mid-August, federal and state railroad inspectors conducted 5,734 inspections in Nevada and found 18,745 instances where federal standards were violated. They found fault in: ••• 15.8 percent of the railroad's operating practices inspected. ••• 12.9 percent of the railroad signals. ••• 11.4 percent of the hazardous materials areas. ••• 6.7 percent of the cars and locomotives. ••• 6.5 percent of the tracks. Hundreds of things can go wrong with trains. As the Federal Railroad Administration reports, a tank car designed to hold chemicals can malfunction without warning because of corrosion, cracks or fatigue. Administration spokesman Warren Flatau said many violations fixed immediately do not result in penalties. "There is a lot of attention placed on human factors, particularly in rail yard settings," Flatau said. "Sometimes we'll do a focused inspection based on accidents that have been reported." As for the violations in Nevada, Flatau said those figures can be misleading because the real measure of safety is the number of accidents. "A defect is the equivalent of a warning," Flatau said. "Now if a train pulls out of a yard and there are no shipping papers to go with it, that's a very serious thing. If there is a gaping hole in a car and something is leaking, that would trigger action." Vic Crumley, one of four PUC rail-safety inspectors, said the defect rates found in Nevada are below what he would consider unsafe. "We haven't really had a problem in this state with damaged rail," Crumley said. "If you look at the 6.5 percent, that's not an alarming defect rate. I'd say it would be a problem if it was 10 percent or higher." The federal government can prosecute railroad employees for willful violations of safety regulations and levy civil penalties. Railroads last year paid nearly $11 million in penalties, including $1.4 million for violations of hazardous material standards. "We take a great amount of care in using limited and finite resources to achieve the goals of the Department of Transportation," Flatau said of inspections. But Zanville is leery. "The Federal Railroad Administration performance has been miserable," Zanville said. "There is a problem with underreporting of accidents and injuries. The government responds only when it has to." Rail postscript The Energy Department declined requests to discuss rail issues. Instead, spokesman Allen Benson referred to documents stating that it intends sometime before 2010 to create a transportation plan that includes the training of railroad workers. Dilger has a theory on why rail safety hasn't been studied in detail. "I believe it is the same reason the DOE has not studied a lot of the safety and security aspects," Dilger said. "They expected that if they got the waste package right, everything else would be OK. They know they can't prevent accidents or keep stupid things from happening on the roadways and railways." Nuclear scientist Edward Bentz of Springfield, Va., who has worked on federal contracts related to nuclear waste transport, was contracted by the Energy Department beginning in the 1980s to study the nation's railroad system. By the mid-1990s money for transportation studies related to Yucca Mountain dried up, and Bentz took his expertise elsewhere. He now studies homeland security issues. Federal transportation funding related to Yucca Mountain, $57 million in 1995, dropped all the way down to $2 million by 2000 before picking back up to $64 million this year. During that time, most of the department's efforts were focused on the packaging of the waste in casks, Bentz said. "Very little money has gone into transportation issues," Bentz said. "And of the transportation money, most of it has gone into the packaging. So most of the qualified people who study transportation issues went elsewhere." When the department issued its environmental impact statement for Yucca Mountain in 2002, the emphasis on transportation was mostly on the amount of radioactivity that could be released in an accident. Nevada and Clark County have requested in vain that the Energy Department study rail safety. "We definitely pointed out to the DOE that examining human error and looking at the entire system for moving the waste was central to understanding its impact," Dilger said. "We want the DOE to do a separate environmental impact statement related to the transportation side of the project. But we never heard back ... on that. "The DOE wants to get this program on. They really believe that the casks are so tough that they don't have to worry too much about accidents." All contents copyright 2004 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 43 RGJ: Emergency funds sought for fight against Yucca ||| Home [http://www.rgj.com/] [online@rgj.com] ASSOCIATED PRESS 10/8/2004 11:28 pm The state Nuclear Projects Office is seeking an emergency appropriation of $1.1 million to continue its fight against the high-level nuclear waste dump that the Bush administration wants to open at Yucca Mountain in Southern Nevada. The request goes before the state Board of Examiners on Tuesday, which also will consider a $650,000 emergency allocation to Attorney General Brian Sandoval’s office for its legal battle against the dump. Bob Loux, who heads the Nuclear Projects Office, said his budget is “tapped out” and the federal Department of Energy intends to apply in December for a building permit. The filing goes to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The state was getting $2.5 million a year from the federal government to help in the battle against Yucca Mountain, but that amount was slashed to $1 million. If the federal government submits its application in December, Loux said his office will have 90 days to review whether it is complete. The $1.1 million will carry the projects office through the end of February, but “we may have to come back for more money,” he said. If the Board of Examiners, chaired by Gov. Kenny Guinn, approves the request, it goes to the Legislative Interim Finance Committee for final action. That panel meets Nov. 17. Sandoval wants the $650,000 to cover outstanding and expected litigation expenditures through February next year. The 2003 Legislature allocated $2 million to the attorney general’s office for legal costs, including hiring outside lawyers, to pursue the court battle against Yucca Mountain. Half the money was spent and the rest reverted to the general treasury. State Budget Director Perry Comeaux said the attorney general’s office could have carried the unused funds over from one year to the next, but didn’t. Sandoval said he thought Interim Finance gave him authority last April to carry the money forward but there was a “misunderstanding.” Sandoval said the $650,000 is needed because the state has sued in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. contending the federal government improperly withheld funds from the state for the nuclear budget. Arguments are set for Jan. 12. Also, he said the Nuclear Energy Institute plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court a ruling that gave the state a partial victory in the waste dump fight. Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 44 The State: Nuclear waste can stay in S.C. 10/09/2 CONGRESS: Also, bill with tobacco buyout provision backed by S.C. farmers could die in U.S. Senate By LAUREN MARKOE Washington Bureau WASHINGTON  High-level nuclear waste once required to be shipped outside of South Carolina soon will be allowed to stay in state, and a tobacco buyout program supported by hundreds of S.C. farmers has hit a snag. These are two of the crucial S.C. issues to be decided in the waning hours of the 108th congressional session, scheduled to draw to a close this weekend. A provision in the $445.6 billion defense-funding bill for fiscal 2005, assured easy passage, will allow residual high-level nuclear waste to be mixed with grout and left in 48 steel drums at the Savannah River Site near Aiken. Currently, all high-level waste must be moved to a repository designed for high-level waste. The U.S. Department of Energy sought the change, as had U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, R-S.C., who represents the district that includes SRS, pushed hard for it in the House. This is a big day for environmental cleanup in South Carolina ... were looking to (clean up SRS) 23 years ahead of schedule and at a cost savings to the taxpayer of almost $16 billion, Graham said in a statement Friday. Environmental groups, citing the dangerous nature of the material and casting doubts about the security of the tanks, had lobbied hard against the change. Legislators from ... South Carolina are jeopardizing the health of their own constituents by allowing the Energy Department to avoid cleaning up millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste in corroding tanks next to drinking water supplies, Geoff Fettus, a lawyer with The National Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. SRS, which produced nuclear weapons during the Cold War, is on the Savannah River. On the tobacco buyout, South Carolina tobacco farmers Friday worried that the program, which passed the House as part of a corporate-tax bill, could die in the Senate. The buyout  which would send as much as $1 billion to South Carolina and allow struggling farmers to leave tobacco farming  had been linked with language that would increase regulations on cigarette manufacturers. But the House, which passed the corporate-tax bill Thursday, had stripped out the proposed cigarette regulations. In response, some senators threatened a filibuster  a parliamentary maneuver that could kill the bill. Larry McKencie, assistant to the president of the South Carolina Farm Bureau, said it would be a shame for the program to die in a filibuster. Weve been hanging out in limbo for so long, he said. Congress is expected to come back for a lame-duck session after the Nov. 2 election. Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or [lmarkoe@krwashington.com] TheStateOnline ***************************************************************** 45 Salt Lake Tribune: Opinion: Nevada vs. Utah [http://www.sltrib.com] Article Last Updated: 10/09/2004 12:01:14 AM Your Sept. 22 editorial on problems at Yucca Mountain being an opportunity for Utah and Nevada to cooperate to end nuclear waste disposal in both states was wishful thinking. You noted that Nevada is “a political swing state,” but you failed to see the consequences for Utah, the furthest thing from a swing state in the nation. Yucca Mountain will never happen because neither party can afford to alienate Nevada's voters, the consequence to the party in power if it comes to fruition. However, both parties can alienate Utah voters with impunity. The Republicans will make Utah the nation's dump, knowing they will still carry Utah in the elections. The Democrats will make Utah the nation's dump because doing so won't make their prospects in Utah any worse than they already are. Moreover, Sens. Hatch and Bennett sealed Utah's fate. When Nevada Sen. Reid sought their help in stopping Yucca Mountain, Hatch and Bennett turned him down. Sen. Reid, one of Senate, will not forget Utah's betrayal of the Western solidarity you seek in your editorial. Nevada will not help Utah. Nevada will work against Utah. Nevada will win. The only way Utah can avoid becoming the nation's dump is to derail the political process now in motion at the national level, and the way to do that is by following Nevada's lead and becoming a swing state, too. Keith Baker Heber City © Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 46 Salt Lake Tribune: N-waste protesters rally at Skull Valley [http://www.sltrib.com] Article Last Updated: 10/10/2004 02:04:42 AM Supported by politicians: Top state officials also oppose storing spent fuel rods at the reservation By Patty Henetz The Salt Lake Tribune Margene Bullcreek is among a few of the Skull Valley Goshute tribe that feels they are being harrased by by tribal proponents of the high-level nuclear waste storage facility planned for the reservation. She's against it. She has been fined $90,000 and has been refused help with getting basic needs like having her septic tank pumped and getting adequate propane heat. (Al Hartmann/The Salt Lake Tribune) SKULL VALLEY - Even if the Nuclear Regulatory Agency licenses a high-level nuclear waste storage facility on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation - and tribal member Margene Bullcreek has her doubts - the facility would face another round of resistance, Bullcreek promised Saturday. At a protest that drew about 35 activists to the reservation 45 miles west of Salt Lake City, Bullcreek, founder of Ohngo Guadadeh Devia Awareness, said the grass-roots group would file a legal challenge to any license granted to Private Fuel Storage (PFS). Given the project's ongoing delay, "I believe the facility won't be coming through," she said. "If it does, Ohngo Guadadeh Devia will appeal." Those attending the protest included members of the Shundahai Network, a group working to keep nuclear waste out of the Great Basin, and HEAL Utah, which works on environmental health-related issues. Jason Groenewold of HEAL Utah said such gatherings have helped stall the project. "People have been dedicated to the effort to keep Utah from becoming a dumping ground," he said, warning that believing the facility would be temporary is futile. "Once the waste gets here, no one else is going to take it," he said. Gov. Olene Walker, whom Bullcreek invited to attend the protest, instead sent a letter of support. "High-level nuclear waste should not be dumped on the reservation or anywhere in Utah," Walker wrote. "It will only create a serious, new risk for the Skull Valley Band." Both major party candidates for governor, Republican Jon Huntsman Jr. and Democrat Scott Matheson Jr., oppose the facility, as do the members of Utah's congressional delegation. No other members of the Goshute tribe attended, though many oppose the PFS proposal, Bullcreek said. She attributed their absence to intertribal disputes. The Skull Valley Band has been locked in a leadership battle since Tribal Chairman Leon Bear in 1997 signed a lease with PFS to allow the company to store up to 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel on Goshute land. The proposal must be approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has been holding meetings on the license. PFS is a consortium of seven electrical utilities whose nuclear power plants are running out of on-site storage for spent fuel rods. Proponents say it would provide temporary storage for some of the nation's deadliest nuclear waste that later would be transported to the permanent facility planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev. The Energy Department has promised to open the Nevada repository by 2010, but many doubt the federal government will be able to meet the deadline. University of Utah chemical engineering professor Bonnie Tyler told the protesters that science is showing Yucca Mountain isn't a viable option to store nuclear materials safely. "The scientific community does not know how to solve the problem," she said. As planned, the facility would be big enough to hold up to 4,000 steel-and-concrete containers of spent fuel - about 10 million rods - on concrete pads sprawling across 100 acres of the Skull Valley Goshute reservation. The waste would be shipped over rail lines, mostly from reactors east of the Mississippi. Utah has no nuclear power plants. As an oncoming cold front whipped thick dust into the open-sided tent across the desert valley from where the casks would sit, Western Shoshone tribal elder Corbin Harney pleaded with the gathering to honor younger generations' need for clean water, air and Earth. "Let's bring this to the attention of the world," Harney said. © Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 47 Salt Lake Tribune: Goshute group to hold weekend nuke protest [http://www.sltrib.com] Article Last Updated: 10/09/2004 01:03:36 AM A Goshute grass-roots organization, Ohngo Guadadeh Devia Awareness, is sponsoring weekend activities for the public to protest proposed storage of high-level nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Indian Reservation in Tooele County. Events today and Sunday begin around 7 a.m. with sunrise prayer ceremonies, and will include talks by tribal elders and activists and a Goshute-led "spirit run" to the proposed Private Fuel Storage waste site. A news conference is planned for 12:30 p.m. today. Other event sponsors include the Shundahai Network, a regional organization working to support campaigns to keep nuclear waste out of the Great Basin, and the environmentalist group HEAL Utah. The protest will be held on the reservation, about 45 miles west of Salt Lake City and approximately 26 miles south from I-80 off Exit 27 to Rowley/Dugway. Signs will direct participants to the protest site. Those attending are asked to register at the time of the event. Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of seven electrical utilities whose nuclear power plants are running out of on-site storage for spent fuel rods, in 1997 signed a lease with members of the Goshute tribe to store up to 44,000 tons of the spent fuel. The proposal has been opposed by the state and must be approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has proposal. Goshute tribal member Margene Bullcreek, chairwoman of Ohngo Guadadeh Devia, is one of the leaders of the anti-PFS movement. The group last month, along with the state, asked to intervene in the NRC's review of the proposal. Proponents say the facility would provide temporary storage for some of the nation's deadliest nuclear waste that later would be transported to the permanent facility planned for Yucca Mountain, Nev. But Congress has reached a stalemate in the fight over funding the Yucca Mountain project, and no action is expected until after the Nov. 2 election. In July, an appeals court found the federal government wasn't following its own rules on Yucca Mountain, further threatening its viability. It is unknown what would become of the PFS proposal if the Yucca Mountain project is scuttled. - Patty Henetz © Copyright 2004, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 48 UK Independent: American plutonium arrives in France By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Correspondent 10 October 2004 Trucks carrying enough weapons-grade plutonium for more than 60 bombs reached southern France late last week, amid claims of security lapses during its 600-mile journey through the country. Greenpeace activists say they got within yards of the world's biggest ever shipment of the plutonium when it stopped for petrol outside Toulouse. The plutonium - from the US nuclear weapons establishment at Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb - was transported to Cadarache in Provence to be made into nuclear fuel, as part of an agreement with Russia to reduce weapons stockpiles. Although a one-off shipment, it is - as reported in last week's Independent on Sunday - the precursor of 68 tons of the material, enough for 15,000 bombs, to be transported at a time when terrorists are actively trying to get hold of it. Security experts fear some of it will inevitably be hijacked. The shipment was carried aboard two British ships each armed only with a 30mm machine-gun and guarded by 13 policemen. The largest shareholder of the owners of the Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail is the nationalised British Nuclear Fuels. It was heavily guarded for its journey through France, which avoided Paris to make a detour via Rennes, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse and Nξmes. Tom Clements, Greenpeace International's nuclear campaigner, said: "We were in total shock at the lack of security in such a public place. If I had been a terrorist I could easily have blown it up." UK Independent Ltd. ***************************************************************** 49 CST: Enviromental groups bring protest over nuclear storage to Skull Valley reservation Casper Star-Tribune [http://www.casperstartribune.net/news] > AP News SKULL VALLEY, Utah (AP) - If the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission lets this tiny reservation enrich itself by storing tons of spent nuclear fuel, environmental groups say they will wage a battle in the courts to overturn the decision. Given the project's many delays, ''I believe the facility won't be coming through,'' said Margene Bullcreek at a gathering of 35 environmental activists at the wind-swept desert valley 45 miles west of Salt Lake City. Bullcreek was the only member of the Skull Valley band of Goshutes to show up Saturday near a spot that would be turned into a way station for spent fuel rods, which might later be moved to a permanent burial ground at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. But she said tribal politics kept away many of the 123 other Goshute members who oppose Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of seven electrical utilities whose nuclear power plants are fast running out of onsite storage for the depleted but radioactive fuel rods. ''They say it will just be temporary, but there are no plans for an exit strategy, and that should be a red flag for everyone,'' said Jason Groenewold, director of Healthy Environmental Alliance of Utah and one of the visitors to the 18,000-acre reservation. ''We need to remember and be very clear that once the waste gets here, no one else is going to take it.'' Outgoing Utah Gov. Olene Walker, who was invited to attend, instead sent a letter of support. ''High-level nuclear waste should not be dumped on the reservation or anywhere in Utah,'' Walker wrote. ''It will only create a serious, new risk for the Skull Valley Band.'' Both major party candidates for governor, Republican Jon Huntsman Jr. and Democrat Scott Matheson Jr., oppose the facility, as do the members of Utah's congressional delegation. Also on hand Saturday, fighting wind-blown sand and rain, was University of Utah chemical engineering professor Bonnie Tyler, who said science is showing Yucca Mountain isn't a viable option to store nuclear materials safely over thousands of years. ''The scientific community does not know how to solve the problem,'' she said. Even though the project would bring millions of dollars to the tribe and members, ''it is poisonous and it's going to affect our small reservation, the only small piece of land that is left for us,'' Bullcreek said. The Skull Valley Band has been locked in a leadership battle since Tribal Chairman Leon Bear signed a lease in 1997 allowing PFS to store up to 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in upright steel-and-concrete casks on Goshute land. The NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is expected to decide early next year whether Skull Valley can safely keep nuclear fuel. The board in March 2003 stalled construction by ruling the chances of a fighter jet from Hill Air Force Base crashing into the storage pad makes the project too risky. It has taken arguments for and against that decision and is weighing other aspects of the project. As planned, the storage pad would hold up to 4,000 casks filled with depleted nuclear fuel - about 10 million rods - across 100 acres of the Skull Valley. The waste would be shipped over rail lines, mostly from reactors east of the Mississippi. Utah has no nuclear power plants. Pete Lister, coordinator of the Nuclear Free Great Basin Campaign, said the nuclear industry was exploiting the Goshute's sovereignty and called on Goshutes to reject the project. AP-WS-10-10-04 1439EDT Breaking News - Hurricane Ivan Breaking news on debates selected from the Associed Press news service. Reload this page to update this list. Bush and Kerry resume their battleground bickering on war and the economy 2004-10-09 12:10:20 Second ***************************************************************** 50 Tri-City Herald: Transuranic waste removal discussed This story was published Friday, October 8th, 2004 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer Hanford workers have dug up about 6,000 55-gallon drums of radioactive waste, but the worst of it is still in the ground. They suspect that the remaining 69,000 drums, or their equivalent in larger containers, may include some too radioactively hot to handle up close. Other drums may have a particular type of plutonium that generates heat. More waste may be in drums buried longer and now severely corroded or in large, old containers that are more difficult to safely move. To help them prepare, nuclear workers and managers from at least five Department of Energy sites that are coping with transuranic radioactive waste gathered in Pasco this week to discuss what's worked and what has not in their programs. Representatives also attended from regulatory agencies, contractors and the deep underground repository near Carlsbad, N.M., where the transuranic waste will be permanently stored. "Every day we encounter unknowns and surprises," from drums with the potential to spontaneously ignite to bottoms that fall out when drums are lifted, said Hanford Richland manager Keith Klein. "The worst thing that can happen is we have to relearn a lesson that has been learned somewhere else." The drums and larger containers hold mostly tools, clothing, lab equipment and other debris contaminated with plutonium at levels high enough for it to be considered transuranic waste. They remain from the Cold War production of plutonium at Hanford for the nation's nuclear weapons program. In 1970 the Atomic Energy Commission ruled transuranic waste must be buried in a a deep geological repository. With no repository open, Hanford workers temporarily buried on site waste that they thought might qualify as transuranic until the repository opened in New Mexico in 1999. Hanford has gotten off to a quick start digging up transuranic waste since a consent agreement was signed in 2003, said Doug Greenwell, director of waste retrieval for Fluor Hanford. Productivity varies widely with conditions, but he credited a laborious preparation process focusing on risk management to keep the project on schedule and workers safe. "You can't imagine all the risks when you open up a site, but you had better try," Greenwell said. Plans were prepared listing the steps to take if workers encountered an exceptionally radioactive drum or a breached drum, for instance. "When it came across the first breached drum, the crew knew what to do," Greenwell said. The system will become increasingly important as crews begin digging up drums for which records are poor or do not exist. The Hanford site also has come up with a system to vent the drums that has worked well, he told workers dealing with transuranic waste at DOE sites in New Mexico, Idaho, South Carolina and Tennessee. Some drums buried without vents may have elevated levels of hydrogen that can lead to a sudden, hot fire. Many drums can be removed to a nearby trailer to have a hole drilled. Some drums were packed so full that there's a danger of a poof of radioactive material being released when they are vented. Those are taken to a hot cell to be vented with a sparkless drill. In addition, Hanford workers have come up with a portable pneumatic punch system and filter to vent drums before they are moved from trenches if the drums are bulging suspiciously when they are uncovered. "We've vented over 1,500 containers," Greenwell said. "There have been no fires, nothing related to deflagration." © 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 51 chillicothe gazette: USEC license approved for further review http://www.chillicothegazette.com/ Saturday, October 9, 2004 By The Gazette staff The United States Enrichment Corp. is one step closer to constructing its new centrifuge plant in Piketon. The company, based in Bethesda, Md., announced Friday the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined the license application it submitted is complete and acceptable for detailed review. The milestone was achieved seven months ahead of a multi-year schedule towards what the company is hoping will be the world's most efficient uranium enrichment technology. The application for a license to construct and operate the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon was submitted Aug. 23. The application seeks a license term of 30 years and authorization to produce enriched uranium up to an assay level of 10 percent. USES is hopeful the commission will be able to complete its review and issue the construction and operating license in approximately 24 months. The plant is scheduled to be operational by the end of the decade. Center to offer free vehicle inspections The Pickaway-Ross Career and Technology Center will offer a free motor vehicle inspection Tuesday and Wednesday. The inspection will be completed by the center's auto mechanics class from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. each day at the Chillicothe Mall next to McDonald's on North Bridge Street. AAA and Auto Zone are co-sponsoring the event that includes a 30-point maintenance inspection. For more information, contact Bon Edwards, auto mechanics instructor at 642-1249. Consumers' counsel appeals gas deal COLUMBUS -- The state's utility watchdog has appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court a May ruling that would allow Columbia Gas of Ohio to keep up to $100 million that could have been credited to customers. The office of the Ohio Consumers' Counsel said the deal will allow Columbia Gas to keep as profit money it raises by selling excess natural-gas and pipeline capacity, instead of passing it on to customers through lower rates. This agreement fails to protect the interests of residential customers, Consumers' Counsel Janine Migden-Ostrander said Friday. Columbia says the deal approved by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio won't take money from consumers and the money will be used to fund a program that lets its customers shop for different suppliers while still having Columbia deliver the gas and perform other services. State worker mows down seedlings PERRYSBURG -- It was a clear-cut error. A state transportation worker mowed down 28,000 seedlings that had been planted as part of a $33,000 tree-planting project. The only thing left behind were signs that read "Do not mow or spray." "Shame on us. We wasted all that effort," Joe Rutherford, spokesman for Ohio Department of Transportation District 2, said Friday. The mixture of oaks, ash, birch, maples and sycamores were planted in 2002 and 2003 at the interchange of Interstate 75 and I-475 near this Toledo suburb. The plantings, coordinated by the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments, required more than 700 volunteer hours. The city, county commissioners and ODOT paid for the seedlings. Rutherford said the seedlings, which were no more than 2 feet tall, were cut down earlier this week by a worker mowing the interchange. He said many of the seedlings were dead and that someone got the idea it would be OK to mow them down. Originally published Saturday, October 9, 2004 ***************************************************************** 52 amarillo.com: BWXT Pantex contract under review 10/09/04 [Amarillo Globe News] Home > News > Local News Pact could be extended without bid process, official says By JIM McBRIDE jim.mcbride@amarillo.com The Amarillo Globe-News The National Nuclear Security Administration could extend contractor BWXT Pantex's contract for up to five years, a Pantex Plant official confirmed Friday. Dan Glenn, director of the Pantex Site Office, said the BWXT Pantex contract extension is under review. "The NNSA is in the process of making the decision of whether to exercise the option to extend the Pantex Plant management and operating contract in increments of up to five years or compete it," Glenn said in a statement Friday. "The decision will be based primarily on the evaluation of BWXT Pantex LLC's past performance." An evaluation team from NNSA Headquarters, the Pantex Site Office and the NNSA Service Center in Albuquerque, N.M., recently completed a performance review of the contractor, Glenn said. The results are being coordinated with NNSA Headquarters, Glenn said. A recommendation will be made on the contract in December, and the final decision is scheduled to be announced early next year, he said. BWXT Pantex was awarded the five-year Pantex contract in 2000 after Day &Zimmerman, parent of former Pantex contractor Mason &Hanger Corp., unsuccessfully challenged the NNSA's bid award. BWXT Pantex assumed the Pantex contract in February 2001. The contractor won high marks for its security operations and earned more than $20 million under its contract for fiscal year 2003, a contractor performance evaluation says. The contractor earned an award fee of $14.6 million and performance-based incentive fees of $5.9 million, achieving an overall rating of 87 percent, according to a performance evaluation report prepared by the National Nuclear Security Administration. In particular, the NNSA praised the contractor's performance in safeguards and security. Tom Reid, prime contract manager for BWXT Pantex, said the contractor has not yet received any notification regarding a possible contract extension from the NNSA. But another BWXT firm, BWXT Y-12 LLC, which runs the NNSA's Oak Ridge Plant in Tennessee, recently was formally notified of the government's preliminary notice of intent to extend that contract. In a Sept. 8 government memo, Y-12 Site Office Manager William J. Brumley said the NNSA is reviewing whether to extend management and operations contracts for three NNSA weapons production plants. The memo did not specify which contracts are being reviewed for contract extension, but management and operations contracts for Pantex, Y-12 and the Kansas City Plant are due to expire next year or in 2006. [http://www.amarillo.com/] ***************************************************************** 53 Paducah Sun: Whistle-blower lawsuits against DOE will go on [http://www.paducahsun.com/] Paducah, Kentucky U.S. District Judge Jospeh McKinley Jr. did dismiss Lockheed Martin Corp. as a defendant in the two suits. Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com [bbartleman@paducahsun.com] 270.575.8651 Wednesday, October 06, 2004 Two whistle-blower lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in Paducah against former operators of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant will be allowed to continue under a ruling by U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley Jr. In a 77-page ruling signed Thursday, McKinley denied motions by Lockheed Martin Energy Systems Inc. and Martin Marietta Energy Systems to dismiss allegations that the companies filed false claims with the U.S. Department of Energy that allowed them to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in undeserved operating and management fees. The firms operated the plant and did cleanup from 1984 until 1997. However, the judge did approve a motion by Lockheed Martin Corp., the parent company of Lockheed Martin Energy Systems and Martin Marietta Energy Systems, that it be dismissed as a defendant. The first suit was filed in June 1999 by current and former plant workers Ronald B. Fowler, Charles F. Deuschle and Garland Jenkins, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Washington-based environmental group. The second suit was filed in February 2000 by former plant worker John Tillson. After investigating the claims for three years, the U.S. Department of Justice found merit in the claims and joined in the suits. McKinley also allowed the two suits to be consolidated, except for a claim made by Tillson that he was fired from his job for earlier attempts to notify the federal government of the false claims allegations. Officials of the two companies have denied they filed false claims. If Lockheed is ordered to repay the fees, the current and former employees could receive up to 25 percent of the proceeds. The rest would go to the federal government and could be used to help pay for cleanup at the plant, where nuclear fuel has been produced for more than 50 years. ***************************************************************** 54 Charleston.Net: SRS waste issue may be resolved 10/09/04 House-Senate deal expected to break impasse BY BO PETERSEN Of The Post and Courier Staff On-site cleanup of more than 30 million gallons of radioactive sludge at the Savannah River Plant is expected to resume under a U.S. House-Senate conference committee provision adopted Friday. The issue had South Carolina's two senators squared off on the Senate floor in May. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham wanted to reclassify the sludge to allow it to be buried in its tanks rather than moved to storage in the West. Democratic Sen. Fritz Hollings called it "an environmental disaster in the offing." The waste is being removed from 51 aging tanks from the federal Cold War-era bomb-making plant near Aiken. It has been earmarked for burial at Yucca Mountain, Nev., but the work has been stalled by a lawsuit over nuclear waste handling. The role of a conference committee, composed of members from both the House and the Senate, is to iron out differences between the two chambers. The bill then is returned to the House and the Senate for their approval, usually a formality, before being sent to the president's desk for his signature. "Congress has placed critical South Carolina and Idaho drinking water sources at risk of radioactive contamination," said the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, in a press release Friday. "Congress is trying to throw out more than two decades of nuclear waste cleanup law, in flagrant disregard of public health. Congress did this behind closed doors, with no debate or public input, attaching it to an unrelated bill designed to support our troops." Graham in a press release called the provision good for the site, the state and the nation. Copyright © 2004, The Post and Courier, All Rights Reserved. webmaster@postandcourier.com [webmaster@postandcourier.com] ***************************************************************** 55 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Measure would step up waste cleanup at Hanford [seattlepi.com] Sunday, October 10, 2004 By GERALD POLLET GUEST COLUMNIST The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is the most contaminated place in North America. More than a million gallons of high-level nuclear waste have leaked from underground tanks and waste is seeping into the Columbia River. Seeps along the river are contaminated at levels more than 1,000 times the drinking water standard. Instead of cleaning up the leaks, the federal Energy Department wants to: + Use Hanford as a national radioactive waste dump. Energy's "preferred alternative" doubles the amount of waste already buried in Hanford landfills. + Rename high-level nuclear waste and leave up to a quarter of all the radioactivity in the tanks. + Never clean up the waste that leaked. + Bring in tens of thousands of truckloads of additional radioactive waste. That doesn't sound like cleanup. Initiative 297 sets the common-sense standard that contamination must be cleaned up before more waste is added. Turning Hanford into a national radioactive waste dump means that at least 23,000 truckloads of radioactive waste will come to Hanford -- up to one truck every five hours, every day for decades. In Western Washington, truckloads of radioactive waste will travel on Interstates 5 and 405 to 90 and over Snoqualmie Pass. Many of the trucks emit radiation. An analysis by Radioactive Waste Management Associates for Heart of America Northwest ("Unnecessary Risks: The Risks of Trucking the Nation's Radioactive Waste to Hanford") found that the proposed truckloads of radioactive waste to Hanford are likely to result in 160 cancers in children and adults along the truck routes and more than 50 fatal cancers in children and adults, even if there is no accident or terrorist attack on the shipments. When homeland security concerns are high, it makes no sense for Energy to truck highly radioactive plutonium waste to Hanford. The equivalent of rolling "dirty bombs," these trucks would be attractive targets for terrorist attack. In a serious accident or terrorist attack on a truck at I-405 and I-90 in Bellevue, the study shows that more than 1,400 families would lose someone due to cancer and more than 300 square miles would have to be evacuated. Who can estimate the length of time to clean it up -- or the devastating economic disruption? Specific provisions of I-297 would: + Prohibit additional truckloads of radioactive waste until current contamination is cleaned up. + Prohibit dumping in unlined soil ditches. + Require cleanup of contaminated soil and groundwater. + Stop the abandonment of high-level nuclear waste in tanks at Hanford + Ensure public, tribal and local government participation in cleanup decisions. Critics erroneously claim I-297 will somehow interfere with Hanford cleanup and bottle up waste at Hanford instead of sending it out of state. Not true. A state's authority to ban incoming waste is available only at contaminated sites. Hanford is contaminated. The deep geological repository where Hanford waste goes is not now, and is not expected to become, contaminated. Critics also claim that states cannot tell the federal government what to do. But Congress gave states the authority to say "no more dumping" in contaminated sites such as Hanford. In fact, that's the standard in the federal Superfund law. The critics' argument is a red herring, a cynical attempt to confuse voters from what is a clear, common sense approach to a decades-old problem. The real threats to Hanford cleanup are the budgets already adopted by the Department of Energy -- budgets that cut Hanford cleanup funding between 2006 and 2011 by nearly $1 billion annually. Those budgets are based on not emptying high-level nuclear waste tanks, not cleaning up leaks and not retrieving plutonium waste dumped before 1970. Without I-297, Energy will abandon those wastes at Hanford and they will never go to geologic repositories. It's time the federal government follows through on promises to clean up Hanford. Initiative 297 prioritizes cleanup. It's only common sense. Vote Yes on I-297. Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, is chair of Yes on I-297: Protect Washington. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 448-8000 Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com [newmedia@seattlepi.com] ©1996-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Terms of Service/Privacy ***************************************************************** 56 KLTV: Contractor official says Pantex deal could be extended KLTV 7 Tyler-Longview-Jacksonville, TX: October 10, 2004 AMARILLO, Texas Government regulators may extend the contract for the Pantex contractor for up to five years without a bid process. That's according to an official at the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility.The contract extension for B-W-X-T Pantex is under review by the National Nuclear Security AdministrationDan Glenn, director of the Pantex Site Office, says a decision on whether to extend the contract will be based primarily on the evaluation of B-W-X-T Pantex L-L-C's past performance. He says an evaluation team recently completed a performance review of the contractor.Glenn says after a recommendation is made on the contract in December, a final decision is scheduled to be announced early next year. B-W-X-T Pantex was awarded the five-year Pantex contract in 2000 after another bidder unsuccessfully challenged to get the contract.B-W-X-T Pantex assumed the Pantex contract in February 2001. Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights [http://www.worldnow.com] All content © Copyright 2001 - 2004 WorldNow and KLTV. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 57 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Don't be fooled -- voting yes means more waste, cost [seattlepi.com] [OPINION] Sunday, October 10, 2004 By DON C. BRUNELL GUEST COLUMNIST At first sight, Initiative 297 seems to make a lot of sense. Who's going to argue the idea of preventing nuclear waste shipments into our state? In reality, it is a very complicated situation. Washington state is home to Hanford, where nuclear materials were produced during World War II and the Cold War. A great deal has been accomplished in cleaning up the site but today, Hanford is home to the largest environmental cleanup project in the United States. No one wants to hamper those efforts. Initiative 297's 13 pages focus on Hanford cleanup activities and seek to prevent additional Department of Energy radioactive waste from being shipped into the state until cleanup is complete. The initiative also allocates funding for public participation for oversight of the cleanup and provides a surcharge, or tax, on money used to clean up Hanford. All of this sounds very sensible, so what's the big deal? + The initiative will result in more waste being left or stored at Hanford than is called for in the current DOE plan. + Passage of the initiative will most certainly delay cleanup. + The initiative will add an extra layer of public involvement in the clean-up process or duplicate the activities of the current Hanford Advisory Board. + Initiative 297 creates a long-term funding source for environmental advocacy groups. In and of itself, this latter point is not negative at all. But in this case, the primary sponsor and creator of I-297 -- Heart of America -- stands to be a primary beneficiary of the proceeds from this tax. Passage of I-297 will lead to a court challenge since the initiative appears to pre-empt the Atomic Energy Act and the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The initiative also raises the question of whether a state can levy a surcharge on the federal government. Others might argue in state court there is more than one issue addressed in the initiative, a prohibition of the state constitution. If I-297 is challenged and the courts uphold it, the state runs a high risk that other states will begin adopting similar laws. Nevada, New Mexico and South Carolina could be the first because sites in their states are designated as federal nuclear waste repositories. Right now, DOE plans to ship more than 90 percent of Hanford's radioactive curies (the unit used for measuring radioactive material) to these sites for permanent storage. Low level and mixed low-level waste equaling about 10 percent of the curies currently at Hanford will remain stored there. The curies scheduled to be shipped into Hanford from other locations represents only about 2 percent of what is at Hanford. The big question is, "What happens to Washington's very radioactive nuclear waste if other states adopt their own I-297's?" The answer is simple: "The waste currently at Hanford stays at Hanford!" The courts could also find I-297 illegal or unconstitutional. A ruling could drain state resources because the Washington attorney general must defend any initiative passed. Also, valuable cleanup time, and more importantly, the momentum for accelerated cleanup will be lost. Congressional funding has increased to $2 billion a year for Hanford cleanup over the past four years. The DOE projects a level budget for the next several years. This funding could very easily change with a protracted court battle and the looming uncertainty of permanent storage of Washington state's most hazardous waste in Nevada and New Mexico. The result could be that Congress or the administration shifts its priorities to the budget deficits, Iraq or elsewhere. The reason: "Why rush cleanup and treatment of waste when permanent storage is uncertain?" The initiative comes across as all that's good with mom, baseball and apple pie. Don't be fooled. Washington voters should not be hoodwinked into believing that passage of I-297 will result in an environmentally cleaner and safer state. What Washingtonians will end up with is more waste, and the most hazardous of waste, remaining in our state. Along with the waste, we'll also end up with increased costs and delays in cleaning up our state's nuclear waste. The Tri-City Industrial Development Council opposes I-297 and strongly urges Washington voters to vote no on I-297 on Nov. 2. Don C. Brunell is president of the Association of Washington Business. Back to top [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 448-8000 Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com [newmedia@seattlepi.com] ©1996-2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer ***************************************************************** 58 [du-list] DU Photo Exhibit in New Paltz Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 21:49:03 -0700 Cosponsors and everybody- be sure to attend. Only on opening night will you receive your free depleted uranium pellets- after all, the government assures us that DU is not harmful. Dear Friends, I hope you will be able to attend the opening of an important and powerful show on Washington's secret nuclear war about depleted uranium (DU) on Oct 9, from 6-9pm. There will be another showing in Saugerties on Oct 22 - please see below for details. I'm also including an interview with two of our returning vets; both are sick and both tested positive for DU poisoning. One also gave birth to a baby with 3 fingers and most of her right hand missing. In parts of Iraq, birth defects are 10 times higher than before the Gulf War (when the US first used DU in weapons). I think the scourge of depleted uranium is the most unreported story of our time. The government has been suppressing information about DU hazards for years, but now the truth is coming out. Three days ago the Daily News did a story on the baby described above called the "War's Littlest Victim". They first reported last April that 4 out of 9 returning vets they tested came up positive for DU poisoning. I hope you'll join me in rising up against this outrage. There will be ways to get involved to ban DU available at both shows. Let's tap into our collective power and put an end to this madness. In Faith, Barbara Art Revealing Truth: The Scourge of Depleted Uranium You are invited on Saturday, October 9, from 6 to 9 pm, to view "Victims of a Different Nuclear War; A Photo Exhibit of US and Iraqi Children". It will open at the Purple Lounge, on the second floor of the Student Union Building at SUNY, New Paltz (Main entrance off S Mannheim). A second showing will be at The Inquiring Mind Bookstore in Saugerties on October 22, from 6:30 to 9pm. The film, "The Invisible War" that documents the hazards of depleted uranium (DU) will be shown that evening at 7pm. This powerful photography show depicts beautiful children in everyday Iraqi life, as well as the ravages of DU, a toxic nuclear waste, denser than lead, used by the Pentagon in armor piercing weaponry. Over 1,000 tons of radioactive DU have been deposited in Iraq from Desert Storm to the current war. Takashi Morizumi, the photographer of the show is with the Global Association for Banning Depleted Uranium Weapons and has been documenting the children of Iraq since 1998. There will be images from Derek Hudson's photo essay "Tiny Victims of Desert Storm". It shows the devastating impact of DU poisoning on the children of Gulf War veterans and originally appeared in Life magazine in 1995. Local photographer Lorna Tychostup will also be exhibiting photos from her recent trips to Iraq. In addition to opening night on October 9, the photography show will be available for viewing at the Purple Lounge from October 5-13, each day from 8:30am to 11:00pm. It will also run at the Inquiring Mind Bookstore in Saugerties from October 19 - 26, Monday through Saturday, from 11:30am to 7:30 pm and Sunday, noon to 6pm. Literature on DU will be available at both venues, including ways you can help to ban its use. Sponsors are SAFE Legacy, Saugerties Committee for Peace and Social Justice, Women in Black of New Paltz, Iraq Humanitarian Travelers Alliance, the Saugerties Democratic Party and 16 other organizations. For further information for the New Paltz show, or if you would like to volunteer with sitting, contact WomeninBlackNP@aol.com, and for Saugerties, contact Angela Morano at sonia823@hotmail.com. > Daughter of Soldier Contaminated with Depleted Uranium in > Iraq Born with Deformities > > Thursday, September 30th, 2004 Democracy Now! > > http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/30/1411222 > > In a major expose in the New York Daily News, Democracy Now! > co-host Juan Gonzalez uncovered the story of how a new-born > baby may have suffered deformities because her father was > exposed to depleted uranium while deployed as a soldier in > Iraq. We are joined in our studio by Guardsman Gerard Darren > Matthew and Sgt. Ray Ramos, one of the first confirmed cases > of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq > conflict. [includes rush transcript] Welcome to Democracy > Now!, I'm Amy Goodman in Albuquerque, New Mexico with Juan > Gonzalez in New York. For the last five months Juan, you > have chronicled the plight of soldiers who have returned > from Iraq with mysterious illnesses. Your exclusive > groundbreaking investigation in April found that depleted > uranium contamination was far more widespread in the > military than the Pentagon would admit. > > Well in a major expose in yesterday's Daily News, Juan you > uncovered the story of how a new-born baby may have suffered > deformities because her father was exposed to depleted > uranium while deployed as a soldier in Iraq. > > Army National Guard Specialist Gerard Darren Matthew tested > positive for uranium contamination after he returned from > Iraq. He suffered constant migraine headaches, blurred > vision, blackouts and a burning sensation whenever he > urinated. Shortly after he returned home, his wife became > pregnant. > > When his daughter, Victoria Claudette, was born on June 29 > she was missing three fingers and most of her right hand. > The family believes the deformities are a result of the > depleted uranium contamination. The Daily News headlined the > story "The War's Littlest Victim." Today, Gerard Darren > Matthew joins us in our studio in New York. Welcome to > Democracy Now! > > We are also joined by Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos who was deployed > in Iraq with the 442nd Military Police. He is among the > first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure > from the current Iraq conflict. > > * Gerard Darren Matthew, Guardsman sent home from Iraq > with mysterious illnesses. He tested positive for uranium > contamination. 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. > > * Ray Ramos, deployed in Iraq with the 442nd Military > Police. He is among the first confirmed cases of inhaled > depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict. > > * Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now! co-host and columnist > with the New York Daily News. His front-page piece in > yesterday's paper is entitled "The war's littlest victim." > > RUSH TRANSCRIPT > > JUAN GONZALEZ: We're joined today by Gerard Darren Matthew. > Welcome to Democracy Now!. > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Thank you, sir. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: Gerard, can you tell me a little bit -- tell > us, the listeners and viewers, a little bit about your > experiences. When did you get to Iraq, what did do you when > you were there, and how did your illnesses develop? > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Well, I was deployed January 15 of > 2003, and I moved out, shipped out, from Fort Dix, April 10, > arrived in country April 11. Stayed over there, came home on > emergency leave in August, and that's when I started > receiving the problems. Initially, I was getting swelling > and burning sensation, but I thought it was attributed to > the heat, being in a high heat environment. As time went on, > going back, I started getting worse. I started getting > swelling in my face, blurred vision, because I'm a truck > driver, and I felt like I saw my face two -- two different > faces. If you put a cross section down the middle of my face > it's like I'm seeing a right-side facial droop coupled with > blurred vision. It was very traumatic because I've never had > any problems before. I'm a very healthy person. I'm a > runner, and to take this and now have a child with a > problem, and getting a result, it's really traumatic. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: What did you do? You said you were a truck > driver but where do you think the exposures might have come > from? > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW:Well, in shipment of exploded > material, where it be tank parts, Humvee parts, you name it, > from Kuwait going north back and forth. That could be > attributed to what I have. Plus, I believe it could be from > things that happened from the prior war that's been hidden, > or mistargeted shrapnel that we inhaled. I mean I really and > truly -- I'm still trying to -- I'm mind-boggled by the > whole thing. > > JUAN GONZALEZ:The military gave you in May a 40% disability > pension. What did they diagnose as what your problems were? > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: They gave me 30% for the migraines. > They call it a -- and they gave me 10% for angioedema, which > is the swelling on my face, which occurs off and on, and for > the last -- since I've gotten this, I think -- I don't know > if it's just my mind playing games, but it seems like every > day under my eye it's swollen for some odd reason. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: And when did you learn that your baby was > going to be born deformed? > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: March 12, at Lenox Hill Hospital, a > doctor by the name of Michael Divon, is one of the best > doctors rated in Newsweek. He found the anomaly and he told > me about it, and they gave me options of having an abortion. > And I figure with the child now being five months, it's like > killing someone. I been over there in Iraq, I didn't kill > anybody, and now I'm going to try to do something to my own > daughter. Eventually, she conceived the baby, and it's > healthy, except for the hand. We don't know if there's going > to be any cognitive issues in the long run, but I mean, you > could -- you should see the hand. It's just -- it's > unbelievable. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: We're also joined by Staff Sergeant Ray > Ramos, who was part of the group of soldiers that we tested > in the Daily News actually earlier this year. Out of nine > soldiers who had returned sick from Iraq, and was stationed > at Fort Dix and the army couldn't tell him what was wrong > with him. Ray was one them actually who was at Walter Reed > medical center. Welcome to Democracy Now!. > > RAY RAMOS: Thank you, Juan. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: You've just recently have gotten out of the > army, finally, I think in July. > > RAY RAMOS: Yes, July 31. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: What did they finally figure out was wrong > with you? > > RAY RAMOS: They gave me a 30% disability, temporary > disability, for my migraine headaches, and they linked it > together with post traumatic stress disorder. The other > illnesses they ruled out. They said they were medically > acceptable, including the depleted uranium exposure. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: Right, and the army conducted several tests > after the Daily News in our testing did find D.U. in your -- > the army claims that their testing did not. In fact, I think > they finally said that there were 77 soldiers that they > tested as a result of the Daily News articles that came out, > and requested testing, and they found no one positive, even > though we found four out of nine that were positive for D.U. > > RAY RAMOS: Yes, they told me my levels were low. They were > too low to even test, pick up the uranium. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, let me ask you this: What was the > reaction when you were still in the army at Walter Reed when > they found out you had gone out for independent testing? Can > you talk a little bit about that? > > RAY RAMOS: Yes. I was actually grilled for about a couple of > hours. I was asked by Colonel Hack, Lieutenant Colonel > Mercer. I was questioned as to why I felt that I was exposed > to depleted uranium. I was asked if I was in any burning > vehicles or I was around any vehicles that had been struck > by uranium rounds. My response to them was that I was not > aware of any exploded ordinance around me, although we had > patrols that had gone out and had expressed that, you know, > they would see things. It wasn't too receptive when they > first started questioning me about it. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: And when they found out you'd gone to the > Daily News? > > RAY RAMOS: Yes. They were very curious. They were like, why > did I go seek independent help? And my answer to them was, > when I asked to -- about the depleted uranium in Fort Dix, I > was told that I didn't have anything to worry about, and > that there was no known testing for depleted uranium. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask Gerard also. You went to the > army in April, and you did submit a urine sample and asked > for it to be tested for D.U. What happened to the army's test? > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: It's so-called unfounded. They don't > know where the specimen is, and I've been contacted since > the article by Walter Reed and they're wanting to have me > redo the test. They'll send the bottles at home and for me > to send it to West Point, but in lieu of the articles that > what has stirred the pot a little bit. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: In other words, they lost your sample, or > they claim that they don't have a record that you ever gave > it back in April? > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Yes, Mr. Gonzalez. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: And now that the article came out, now > they're calling you and saying they want to test you now. > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Yeah, and I think it's kind of late. > If one thing is already stating that I have it, what is the > use of another test? It's still going to state that I have it. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the interesting things obviously is > that there has been a lot of, in New York, quite a few of > the political leaders, Congressman Eliot Engel, Senator > Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer have gotten involved and > actually Senator Clinton got a new bill passed just this > summer requesting systematic testing of all soldiers when > they return from Iraq as well as when they leave, and yet we > have a situation with you where the army has lost a test > that you gave them, a sample that you gave them five months > ago. Senator Clinton issued a statement yesterday saying > that she's still troubled by the failure of the army to be > able to adequately screen troops when they leave, and when > they return from Iraq. So, we'll be continuing to cover this > issue of depleted uranium. The military continues to insist > that no soldiers that they have tested who have returned > from Iraq have tested positive, and yet in the Daily News > now, we have out of 10 soldiers that we've tested -- and I > should add in your test, we actually sent three different > samples to a lab in Germany, two of reporters and one of > Gerard's and we didn't identify any of the three. The two > reporters came back completely negative, only Gerard's came > back positive. > > AMY GOODMAN: Juan, congratulations on once again stellar > work in this investigation. Today -- yesterday in the New > York Daily News when you did this, they went through the > effects of this report. At the request of the news, nine > soldiers from the New York Army National Guard serving in > Iraq tested for radiation from depleted uranium shells. Four > of the ailing G.I.s tested positive. The day after your > 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 Governor 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. > Your expose sparked a huge demand for testing. By mid-April, > 800 G.I.'s had given the army the urine samples and hundreds > more were waiting for appointments. Two weeks later, the > Pentagon claimed that none of soldiers from the 442nd had > tested positive for depleted uranium; but the news experts > found significant problems with the testing methods. > Finally, I wanted to just ask, Gerard Darren Matthew, what > are you demanding now for your daughter? > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Just take care of her. > > AMY GOODMAN: We'll go to that af -- Just to take care of > her; and what has the army said about that? > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: The army is now willing to give her a > test and my wife a test, all of a sudden, and my Tricare > insurance runs out November 2nd, but they're willing to do > whatever it takes in order to help...all of a sudden. > > AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you for being there, > Gerard Darren Matthew, guardsman sent home from Iraq, > suffering from mysterious illness; now his daughter born is > missing three fingers, most of her right hand. Ray Ramos, > deployed in Iraq with the 442nd military police. Thank you > very much for being with us. This is Democracy Now!. We'll > be back in a minute. [break] > > AMY GOODMAN: I'm Amy Goodman, broadcasting from > Alburquerque, New Mexico. Juan Gonzalez is in New York as we > talk about his most recent expose: depleted uranium exposure > of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Juan, this is such an important > report. Our guest, Gerard Darren Matthews, who returned from > Iraq. His wife got pregnant and born was Victoria Claudette, > June 28. The baby is missing three fingers, most of her > right hand. Ray Ramos with us, deployed with the 442nd > military police. What's most stunning about the effect of > the expose, Juan, is that in all of these cases, these men > and their families have not been dealt with until you > pushed. Ray Ramos, Juan was asking you this question before > the break, but can you describe the scene when after the > expose came out in the New York Daily News, you were brought > into this room with -- at Walter Reed where they grilled > you. I mean, how many doctors, military people, were in the > room, and were they accusing you of going outside the > military to do these tests? > > RAY RAMOS: Well, I was in a room with about three military > personnel and a civilian. Basically, the questioning was to > the effect of why I felt I was exposed. I didn't have > anything to worry about unless I was in a burning vehicle > that had just been hit with a uranium round. Who was I, who > did I get the testing from, and how much did it cost me to > get the testing done? Things to that effect. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: As I recall, there was one doctor in the > room, one officer, who you had asked months before for > testing and had turned you down, and you reminded them of > that, that several months back, that was the very doctor > that you had said, "Listen, I'd like to be tested," right? > > RAY RAMOS: Yes. At that time I got the same answer, that I > didn't have anything to worry about, that unless I was, > again, in direct contact with the uranium round, that I > wouldn't be exposed. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: See, and I think this is important to > understand, because the army in the spin that it is giving > this story, Amy, continues to say, "Well, these soldiers > were not in direct contact. They were national guardsmen who > were doing basically support work for the combat troops." > But it's precisely the fact that they were not in combat and > yet many of them are turning up positive that would suggest > that there's a much more widespread problem, especially > among the combat troops who were directly involved. Many of > these men were sleeping in their -- next to burned-out tanks > or, in Darren's case, were transporting these burned-out > tanks to bases in Kuwait. What about those soldiers who were > even more closely involved in combat? The army's testing, > the problem with the testing, according to the experts that > I've consulted in nuclear medicine and in radiation, is that > the army is continually referring when they do testing of > soldiers to the total uranium content that they find in > urine, of natural uranium. If that's not a high level, from > their perspective, they don't even bother to look for > depleted uranium. The experts that I have talked to say that > all of us ingest uranium to one level or another in the food > that we eat or in the water that we drink, but that uranium > gets excreted within 24 hours from the body. However, if you > breathe in depleted uranium and it gets into your lungs, it > does not get excreted as quickly. It can stay in your lungs > for years and emit alpha particles, intense radiation, to a > very, very localized spot within the lung. That can lead to > problems, as well as the toxic effects. Because depleted > uranium has not only radiological effects, it also has toxic > effects as a heavy metal to the kidney and other organs. So > that the military is using the testing procedure just for > natural uranium and is not even using the most sensitive > equipment that could detect smaller parts of depleted > uranium that might be a reflection of -- that the uranium > has settled somewhere else in the body, especially the lungs. > > AMY GOODMAN: Darren, have other people in your unit been > tested? Has everyone so far been tested? > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: I know of only one soldier who has > been tested, and to believe me, he was the one that turned > in his urine sample just before mine. That's why. And they > have the results of him, but they don't have the results of > me, which I find very intriguing. > > JUAN GONZALEZ: And your company was the 719th Transport Company? > > GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Yes, 719 Transport out of Harlem, New > York. > > AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you again very much for > being with us. Gerard Darren Matthews, guardsman returned, > his daughter born without most of her right hand. Ray Ramos, > back from Iraq from the 442nd Military Police. And Juan, > thanks for doing the report. > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 59 SF Chronicle: Nuclear is the right word, not atomic [http://www.sfgate.com/index/] ] LETTERS TO BUSINESS Sunday, October 10, 2004 Editor -- Writing about "Star Wars," Jeff Johnson of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (Letters to Business, Sept. 26) criticizes David Baker's article on development of a missile defense for using "atomic" and "nuclear" interchangeably. Johnson uses "atomic" for nuclear fission and "nuclear" for nuclear fusion. This confusion has historic roots, and should not persist today. An atom has a nucleus surrounded by an electron shell. When the nuclear fission bomb (in which a large nucleus splits, releasing energy and radioactive particles) was developed some 60 years ago, the term "atomic" was used because most people had some idea of what an atom was, but few had heard of uranium, plutonium or the atomic nucleus. Ten years later, the nuclear fusion bomb (in which nucleii of hydrogen fuse, releasing energy but no radioactive particles) was developed. Most people had some idea of what hydrogen was, but few had heard of atomic nuclear fusion. So, it became the "hydrogen bomb." The "hydrogen" (nuclear fusion) bomb actually uses a small nuclear fission bomb within it to provide the heat and pressure needed to start the fusion reaction. This hybrid bomb releases much more energy than the fission bomb alone, and fewer radioactive particles than a fission bomb of the same explosive power. It is relatively "clean." But, it requires much more sophisticated and expensive technology. Few countries have it. The term "atomic" can mean almost anything, and should be discarded in scientific discourse. DR. ROBERT KOCH The San Francisco Chronicle] ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************