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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 [southnews] US nukes in Europe targetting  Iran?
2 [NYTr] Strike Iran and Risk Huge Backlash, Blix Warns US
3 [NYTr] Iran Asserts Its Right to Nulear Technology
4 AFP: Khatami warns US of 'burning hell' as Iran marks Islamic revolu
5 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Vows Not to Abandon Nuclear Progress
6 [NYTr] N Korea Suspends Participation in 6-Party Talks
7 [NYTr] N. Korea Announces It Has Nuclear Weapons
8 Annan Calls On Dpr Of Korea's Partners To Bring It Back To Nuclear T
9 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Korean's discovery: From wood to rock 
10 BBC: N Korea suspends nuclear talks
11 Guardian Unlimited: N. Korea Announces It Has Nuclear Weapons
12 Guardian Unlimited: World Urges N. Korea Back to Nuclear Talks
13 [NYTr] Public Doubts Terror Threat after No WMDs Found 
14 US: [shundahaialerts] nuclear abolition action and strategy
15 [du-list] 2/9 Nuke Watch: US Aims to Oust UN Nuke Official
16 US: Kennebec Journal: Oppose Bush's energy proposal 
17 US: Tri-Valley Herald: Millions spent on useless warheads 
18 US: TomPaine.com: No Nukes!
19 [NYTr] US Still Trying to Oust UN Nuclear Official
20 Manila Times: OPINION: US nuclear strategy calls for outsourcing str
21 ITAR-TASS: Nuclear safety to dominate US-Russia summit agenda - Luga
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
22 US: [NukeNet] Press Release TMIA: NRC delaying Regulations for
23 US: [NukeNet] South Texas nuke shut b/c of leak
24 US: [NukeNet] Spotsylvania County, VA Opposes New Reactor Process
25 US: [NukeNet] Nuclear Reactors Vulnerable to Cyber Attack
26 US: NRC: Staff to Meet with Entergy Operations, Inc. to Discuss Arka
27 Guardian Unlimited: Rice Aims to Defuse N. Korea Nuclear Issue
28 US: NRC: NRC Officials to Meet with Pennsylvania Hospital to Discuss
29 US: NRC: NRC Testifies on Energy Policy Act of 2003 Before Congressi
30 Bellona: Chernobyl NPP is dangerous again 
31 US: toledoblade.com: FirstEnergy promises environmental report
32 US: NRC: NRC Issues Draft Safety Evaluation for Clinton Early Site P
33 US: toledoblade.com: Nuclear plant restarts after 3-week shutdown
34 FT.com: Atomic power station breaches 'desperately worrying'
35 US: YDR: Group questions NRC enforcement - 
36 US: San Antonio Express-News: Water leak shuts down S. Texas nuclear
37 US: PRN: FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company's Davis-Besse Station
38 Sofia Morning News: Bulgarians Unite Efforts with Greenpeace against
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
39 Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets
40 US: Rocky Mountain News: Hospital gets contract to test DOE workers
41 US: Guardian Unlimited: Lost Halliburton Nuclear Material Found
42 US: News-Leader.com: Nuclear workers recount climbing material, illn
43 US: Washington Times: Radiation antidote to be readily available -
44 US: STLtoday: Panel recommends payments for Mallinckrodt workers
45 US: Radio Iowa: New test site for former Ames lab workers
46 US: NRC: Hydro Resources, Inc.; Notice of Reconstitution
47 US: Hawk Eye: Panel expedites plant claims 
48 US: Hawk Eye: IAAP claims history at a glance 
49 US: Paducah Sun: Labor officials set meetings for nuclear workers 
50 US: AU ABC: Beryllium coverage prompts Govt to contact veterans. 
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
51 Las Vegas Mercury: Backstory: A new screwing from the screw-up 
52 Las Vegas RJ: Loux says nuclear repository 'limping along' toward de
53 Las Vegas RJ: Official: Yucca not dead, just delayed 
54 Las Vegas RJ: DOE chief vows Yucca Mountain push 
55 US: Herald: Navy nuclear waste dump plan is put on hold   
56 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: New title, same clout
57 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca board says shield concerns may slow licensing
58 Las Vegas SUN: Lawmakers press Bodman on Yucca
59 FT.com: BNFL agrees deal with US to stem heavy losses
60 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Lawmakers OK bill to ban B and C waste 
61 US: Waste News: Military training area in Puerto Rico added to Super
62 Times-News: Debate ensues over Yucca Mountain progress ... 
63 US: IPS: RIGHTS-US: Nuke Waste Project Divides Native Tribe
64 US: Deseret news: House votes to ban importing of B, C wastes
65 US: Upper Cape Codder: Reprocessing site cleanup is dirty, costly bu
66 Whitehaven News: BNFL’S RIVALS TO BE PRIVATISED 
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
67 Albuquerque Tribune: UT System, Sandia Lab's 5-year deal includes a 
68 AP Wire: Construction delayed for nuclear fuel plant at SRS
69 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Project to 'glassify' Hanford waste begi
70 ABQjournal: LANL Auditor Claims Retaliation 
71 ABQjournal: LANL Sees Budget Hike; Sandia Funds Drop
72 lamonitor.com: Former LANL official critical of lab director 
73 lamonitor.com: Whistleblower claims quality assurance failures 
74 NPR : DOE Urged to Encourage New Nuclear Power Plants
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
75 [du-list] DU in the news 11th Feb.  05
76 Tewksbury Advocate: Radioactive 'beads' to be created at Upton Drive
*****************************************************************
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 [southnews] US nukes in Europe targetting  Iran?
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 13:25:20 -0600 (CST)

 
..senior military official in Europe would not discuss which countries 
or targets the weapons could be used against, but military officials in 
the past have left open the possibility, however remote, of using 
nuclear arms against targets in so-called rogue nations, including Iran 
and Syria

Up to 480 U.S. Nuclear Arms in Europe, Private Study Says

By ERIC SCHMITT

The New York Times : February 9, 2005

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - The United States still keeps as many as 480 
nuclear weapons at air bases across Europe, more than twice what 
independent military analysts previously estimated, according to a new 
study that says the weapons' presence is hurting efforts to curb nuclear 
proliferation worldwide.

Military officials insisted that the size of the nuclear stockpile in 
Europe, while classified, was smaller than that. But they acknowledged 
that it still existed to deter terrorists or nations that could threaten 
America or its allies with unconventional weapons. The officials also 
say the stockpile's presence and its long-term fate have caused 
simmering tensions among senior NATO political and military officials.

The report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group 
here that advocates arms control and monitors nuclear trends, says 
short-range nuclear weapons are stored under American control and 
regulated by secret military agreements at eight bases in Germany, 
Britain, Italy, Belgium, Turkey and the Netherlands. The bombs are kept 
under tight security at sites reinforced against attack.

American and allied air forces regularly rehearse nuclear bombing 
missions at training ranges in Europe in the case a war calls for 
striking nuclear, chemical or biological weapons sites or command posts 
in countries that threaten to use unconventional arms, the report 
states. Military officials confirmed that the training continued as part 
of prudent military contingency planning.

The findings in the 102-page report, "U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe," 
come as NATO defense ministers, including Defense Secretary Donald H. 
Rumsfeld, prepare to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Nice, France. An 
advance copy of the report was provided to The New York Times by the 
research council.

One topic of discussion is likely to be nuclear proliferation, including 
Iran's nuclear program, Pentagon and NATO officials said.

Capt. Curry W. Graham, a spokesman for the military's European Command, 
said the United States still maintained a sizable nuclear arsenal in 
Europe to support NATO's strategic deterrence mission to "maintain peace 
and stability in the region." Pentagon policy prohibits the disclosure 
of the amount or location of American nuclear weapons.

But a senior military official in Europe said in response to the 
report's findings that the number of American nuclear weapons there was 
now "around 200," and had been "significantly reduced" in recent years.

The author of the research council report, Hans M. Kristensen, a nuclear 
arms specialist and consultant for the organization, acknowledged that 
he did not have the most recent data but said his conclusions were based 
on recently declassified documents, commercial satellite imagery and 
other documents. He added that classified documents he obtained as 
recently as last year showed the nuclear stockpile to be roughly what 
his new study estimates.

A former senior American officer in Europe said the report's accounting 
of weapons was "in the ballpark." And a NATO briefing in June 2004 
showed the nuclear stockpile in Europe had not changed in more than a 
decade, suggesting any reductions had taken place quite recently.

A study the council did in 1998 estimated the number of nuclear weapons 
in Europe at about 150.

The senior military official in Europe would not discuss which countries 
or targets the weapons could be used against, but military officials in 
the past have left open the possibility, however remote, of using 
nuclear arms against targets in so-called rogue nations, including Iran 
and Syria, if they threatened to use unconventional weapons.

"Militarily, you can't rule out something like a biological threat, so 
this capability has not been taken off the table," the retired senior 
American officer said.

There is no proposal to reduce the American nuclear arsenal in Europe, 
officials said, but the issue has caused strain among the alliance's 
political and military leaders. "Some allies and U.S. military see a lot 
of value in going to zero," the senior military official in Europe said. 
"That said, some allies and U.S. military see value in at least keeping 
some capability."

Gen. James L. Jones, the head of the European Command and the top NATO 
commander, has privately told associates that he favors eliminating the 
American nuclear stockpile in Europe, but has met resistance from some 
NATO political leaders. The alliance's Nuclear Planning Group is to meet 
Feb. 17, but it is unclear if the issue will come up then.

Spokesmen at the embassies of several European nations here declined to 
comment, citing their policy of not discussing American nuclear weapons 
on their soil.

At the height of the cold war in the early 1970's, the United States had 
about 7,300 short-range nuclear weapons in Europe to be used as a last 
resort against a huge ground attack by the numerically superior Soviet 
military, the report said.

Arms control agreements in the 1980's began to reduce that number, and 
after the collapse of the Soviet Union, President George H. W. Bush 
announced in September 1991 that the United States would withdraw all 
tactical ground-launched and naval nuclear weapons worldwide.

About 1,400 air-delivered nuclear bombs were still left behind, the 
report says, but that number continued to dwindle over the next decade. 
The remaining weapons in Europe are B61 bombs, which can be dropped from 
fighter planes and are typically less powerful than long-range nuclear 
weapons fired from silos or submarines, the report said.

The research council's report challenges the rationale for keeping 
short-range nuclear weapons in Europe when the United States has 
thousands of long-range missiles that could hit any target in a matter 
of minutes.

Unlike the situation during the cold war, American aircraft are not kept 
on alert to deploy at a moment's notice. Still, with the United States 
straining to meet many of its conventional missions in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, the report asserts that eliminating weapons to be dropped 
by Air Force F-15's and F-16's could free up fighter-bombers for those 
missions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/09/politics/09nukes.html

__________________

Rumsfeld supports bombs to target Iran sites

February 3, 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Rumsfeld-supports-bombs-to-target-Iran-sites/2005/02/02/1107228771907.html?oneclick=true

The Pentagon wants to revive a controversial program to
build nuclear warheads capable of penetrating hardened
underground targets such as Iran's covert nuclear facilities.

A leaked memo from the US Defence Secretary, Donald
Rumsfeld, to the Energy Department proposed funding for the
scheme to begin next year. "You can count on my support for
your efforts to revitalise the nuclear-weapons
infrastructure and to complete the RNEP [robust nuclear
earth penetrator] study," Mr Rumsfeld wrote in a memo seen
by the Washington Post.

An official from the Energy Department said on Monday that
$US10.3 million ($13.3 million) to restart that study is
expected to be included in the Bush Administration's budget,
which is to be released next week.

The memo leak seems certain to trigger a major row with
Congress, which eliminated the scheme from the budget last year.

That decision was made at the behest of Republican
legislators angered by estimates suggesting the program
would cost more than $US500 million. The Bush Administration
has long emphasised the scheme is merely a question of
research and that Congress would have to approve the
production of such weapons.
AdvertisementAdvertisement

Democrats also were outraged, arguing that programs to
improve nuclear weapons made their use more likely and
undermined efforts by the US to halt the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction in other countries.

The Arms Control Association, a pressure group that has
opposed the bunker-buster scheme, said: "The Administration
is missing a key opportunity to make good on the
congressional decision last year ... it sends the wrong
signal to the international community on the US approach on
non-proliferation."

Opponents of the proposed new weapon have argued that
sealing off underground facilities could be done as well
with smart, precision-guided conventional weapons, a
position supported in 2003 by Admiral James Ellis, then head
of the US Strategic Command.

The US military has been studying bunker-busting weapons
with renewed vigour since the September 11 attacks. Osama
bin Laden is believed to favour underground caves as a
hiding place and used the Tora Bora network in the mountains
of Afghanistan when he fled US-led forces in late 2001.

. North Korea has reprocessed 8000 spent fuel rods into
weapons-grade plutonium - potentially enough material to
produce six atomic weapons - and appears to have exported
nuclear material to Libya, the US informed its Asian allies,
Japan, South Korea and China.

The nuclear material that North Korea may have exported to
Libya was uranium hexafluoride which can be enriched into
weapons-grade material if it is fed into nuclear centrifuges.

The Telegraph, London; The Washington Post and The New York
Times

_____________________________________________________

Strike against Iran will have huge political costs

By Khalid Hasan Pakistan Daily Times, February 3, 2005

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_3-2-2005_pg7_60

WASHINGTON: A US or Israeli military strike against Iran
without UN authorisation would entail huge political costs
and be seen as an act of aggression.

According to a short study by George Perkovich of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, such a strike
would be less likely to cause Egypt and Saudi Arabia to seek
nuclear weapons than would allowing Iran to acquire such
weapons. It would be seen as an act of aggression in
violation of the enforcement processes envisioned, but
ill-defined, in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Writes Perkovich, "Iran would consider itself free from all
restraints to develop nuclear weapons, and much of the
developing world would endorse this view. The treaty-based
non-proliferation regime would crumble. Other states -
perhaps Egypt and Saudi Arabia - could then withdraw from
the treaty with few repercussions and legally hedge their
nuclear bets. This would leave Israel and the United States
with the prospect of having to contemplate military action
against still more Islamic states, and with a major rise in
terrorism as a form of asymmetrical resistance to what would
be perceived as US and/or Israeli aggression."

According to him if Iran acquires the capability to produce
weapon-usable uranium or plutonium it will be too
dangerously close to having weapons. But can Israel live
with an Iran that operates nuclear power reactors with fuel
supplied by and returned to Russia?

"Here there are differences, but the general impression is
that Israelis can accommodate Iran's nationalistic
determination to generate nuclear electricity under
stringent international arrangements. If Iran refuses to
accept such an arrangement and instead moves to produce
highly enriched uranium and/or to separate plutonium,
Israelis believe military action should be taken -
preferably by the United States," writes Perkovich.

The Carnegie expert is of the view that military strikes
would not end the threat. The United States and Israel
believe Iran has still-hidden nuclear facilities that
presumably would not be destroyed. He believes that Iran,
Hezbollah, and other organisations would respond with
attacks on Israel, US forces in Iraq, and perhaps elsewhere.
Military strikes would intensify rather than relax Iranian
nationalism. "In short, there is no viable military option
to durably negate Iran's capacity to produce nuclear weapons
or to create a new government in Iran that would renounce
acquisition of capabilities to enrich uranium and separate
plutonium," he argues.

Perkovich quotes an Israeli official who told him, "If you
conclude that you absolutely cannot live with something,
then you have to act. The consequences may be horrible, but
they will come later. The consequences of not acting are
intolerable immediately, so you have to act and live another
day to deal with what comes next."

In Perkovich's opinion, that is why Israel has tried to
strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime even as it
has maintained its undeclared nuclear arsenal as a deterrent
of last resort. "The Arab states also have supported the
non-proliferation regime even as they denounce Israel's
nuclear status. They do so because they, even more than the
United States, need a rule-based, enforceable regime to
prevent proliferation. Middle Eastern states now experience
insecurity from neighbours with chemical and perhaps
biological weapons, but the threat would grow vastly more
difficult if existing constraints on nuclear programs were
obliterated."

According to the analysis, Sunni Arab governments worry that
a nuclear Iran would dominate the region and embolden
resurgent Shia political forces in Iraq and other Gulf states.

Because the nuclear non-proliferation regime is helpful
despite its flaws, neither the United States nor Israel can
afford to abandon diplomatic efforts to confine Iran to
peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

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 2 [NYTr] Strike Iran and Risk Huge Backlash, Blix Warns US
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:52:13 -0600 (CST)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
IPS via Info Clearing House - Feb 8, 2005
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info//article8010.htm

Strike Iran and Risk Huge Backlash, Blix Warns US

by Sonny Inbaraj

02/08/05 "IPS" -- BANGKOK - As Iran and the European Union go into 
talks in Geneva Tuesday on Tehran's nuclear program, former U.N. 
chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said the possibility of the United 
States attacking the Middle Eastern country, at this juncture, 
seemed remote.

But he warned that if a U.S. military strike against Iran's nuclear 
facilities were to take place, Washington could face a huge Iranian 
nationalist backlash.

" I think the restraining element in this must be that the United 
States must know if they launch an attack, there (possibly) could be 
(a nuclear) retaliation," said Blix.

"There is uncertainty. They (the U.S.) may not know that the 
Iranians might be hiding some (nuclear weapons) prototype somewhere. 
They (the Iranians) have the designs and they have the technology," 
he told journalists late Monday at the Foreign Correspondents Club, 
here, in a program organized by the Vienna-based International Peace 
Foundation.

"The public of Iran is divided with regard to the theocracy - a 
great many people in Iran are sick and tired of it and would like to 
see a liberalization of the regime," said Blix. "But the moment 
the U.S. goes strong on them, there would be a patriotic attitude - 
there will be a nationalist backlash."

Added Blix: "There is already a considerable negative attitude 
towards the U.S. in the Middle East. This could make things worse."

New U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday said that a 
military strike against Iran was "simply not on the agenda at this 
point," but her boss President George W. Bush has not ruled out 
military strike as an option.

The EU, led in the talks by Britain, France and Germany, is calling 
on Iran to totally dismantle its nuclear fuel program but Iran 
insists that it has the right, in accordance with international 
treaties, to work on the nuclear fuel cycle.

Iran is currently suspending all uranium enrichment-related 
activities to fulfill its part of a deal clinched in November with 
the European trio, the so-called EU3, for talks aimed at giving the 
Islamic Republic trade, security and technology bonuses.

The meeting in Geneva will be the third round of talks since they 
began in December in Brussels.

Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a country is 
allowed, under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency 
(IAEA), to enrich uranium to a level needed for nuclear power. Most 
however do not. They get fuel from others.

The key problem is that the same technology can also be used to 
enrich uranium further in order to make nuclear weapons.

Iran says that it needs to develop nuclear power despite its oil 
because it wants diversity. It also wants to enrich its own fuel 
because it says it cannot trust others.

"It's conceivable that the United States is sitting on the 
sidelines and leaving it to the Europeans to negotiate," said Blix.

"I think the Europeans have been on the right track and as I said I 
cannot guarantee that the Iranians are not just temporizing - there 
could be something building up. You have to be skeptical in this 
business," revealed the former weapons inspector.

According to Blix, there will be pressure from the Arab nations on 
Iran not to take the path of developing nuclear weapons.

"The Arab world does not want Iran to move on (in the nuclear 
weapons direction) because they know if Tehran does, the chances of 
Israel moving away from nuclear weapons will be much less. If the 
Iranians are moving on, for sure the Israelis will continue on their 
path," he stressed.

According to the Arab TV news network 'Al-Jazeera', Blix is "the 
man the United States loves to hate".

Even before he was appointed in 2000 to the task of verifying Iraq's 
compliance with disarmament promises made after the 1991 Gulf War, 
Washington was already plunging the knife into his candidacy.

U.S. hawks opposed his appointment saying his failure to turn up 
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in his previous stint as head of 
the IAEA between 1981-1997 proved he had been outwitted by the Iraqis.

 From then on the relationship has been frosty.

Blix stayed on as head of the United Nations Monitoring, 
Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) till the end of 
June 2003.

"We have to keep our feet on the ground. Are WMDs the greatest 
threat to the world?" asked Blix.

"We have nuclear threats which are less at this point in time than 
it used be to when the world had the doctrine of 'Mutually Assured 
Destruction' or MAD - where the United States and the former Soviet 
Union could have erased each other during the Cold War," he pointed 
out.

"If you ask someone in Africa, they would say the greatest threat 
to them is HIV/AIDS," he continued. "If you ask me I'd say the 
threat to the global environment is more dangerous than the threat 
posed by WMDs."

Copyright ) 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service
       
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 3 [NYTr] Iran Asserts Its Right to Nulear Technology
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:51:55 -0600 (CST)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
BBC - Feb 10, 2005
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4252019.stm

Iran 'will stick to nuclear plan'

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has said Tehran will never give 
up nuclear technology, as international pressure on his government 
continues to mount.

He warned of "massive" consequences if Iran was treated unfairly.

Mr Khatami said again that the nuclear programme was peaceful and 
needed to produce power, rejecting US suspicions that it is a cover 
for weapons.

EU powers want Tehran to end uranium enrichment - a key part of 
nuclear arms production - permanently.

"We give our guarantee that we will not produce nuclear weapons 
because we're against them and do not believe they are a source of 
power," Mr Khatami told foreign ambassadors in Tehran.

"But we will not give up peaceful nuclear technology," he added.

In the face of international pressure, the Iranian government has 
called for large numbers of its supporters to go out onto the 
streets on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic 
revolution.

'Our clear right'

In Washington, President George W Bush said a nuclear-armed Iran 
would be "a very destabilising force in the world" and urged the 
West to work together to stop such an outcome.
The message was reinforced by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice 
during a tour of Europe this week.

She said Washington had no deadline to refer the issue to the United 
Nations Security Council for possible sanctions, adding that 
diplomacy had to be given every chance to work.

While talks with Germany, France and Britain continue in Geneva, 
Iran has suspended uranium enrichment, which can be used to make 
weapons-grade fuel.

But in his speech Mr Khatami said that enrichment was "our clear 
right" and that Iran had suspended it only "to show our goodwill".

He added: "If we feel others are not meeting their promises, under 
no circumstances would we be committed to continue fulfilling ours.

"And we will adopt a new policy, the consequences of which are 
massive and would be the responsibility of those who broke their 
commitments."

The European countries would like to use a package of incentives to 
induce Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, but Tehran has said it 
is disappointed with what is on offer so far.

It says it can only continue talks for a matter of months, not years.

Enriched uranium can be used to produce nuclear power, but the 
technology behind it can also be used to develop weapons-grade 
nuclear material.
       
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 4 AFP: Khatami warns US of 'burning hell' as Iran marks Islamic revolution - 

Thursday February 10, 06:07 PM

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami warned that any 
invader would be met by a "burning hell" as tens of thousands of 
people braved blizzards to join rallies for the anniversary of 
the 1979 Islamic revolution. "All the people of Iran are united 
against any attack and any threats," Khatami told a rally in the 
snow-bound capital. "Any invader will find Iran to be a burning 
hell for them." 

As the clerical regime marked the 26th anniversary of the 
revolution that ousted the US-backed shah, Iranians were urged to 
turn out en masse in cities across the country and give a show of 
unity in the face of mounting international pressure over its 
nuclear programme. Tens of thousands gathered around Azadi square 
in central Tehran despite the fierce cold and snow to hear 
Khatami step up the rhetoric in the escalating war of words 
between Iran and the United States. 

Washington has hinted at military action against Tehran, accusing 
the regime of seeking to develop nuclear weapons. "These threats 
you hear nowadays are just part of the psychological war and the 
consequence of their failures," Khatami said. 

State media urged residents of the capital to "come out of their 
houses and respond to US threats", saying medical services and 
warm food and drinks were available to anyone suffering from the 
cold. After close to a week of record snowfall, Tehran and much 
of the north has been virtually paralysed -- making it virtually 
impossible for many people to find transport to take them to the 
town centre for the annual anti-American demonstrations. But 
regime loyalists were out in force, parading effigies of US 
President George W. Bush and his new Secretary of State 
Condoleezza Rice. One Bush effigy carried the sign "mentally 
handicapped", while a life-sized Rice doll carried the text "I've 
been left up on the shelf" -- a reference to her status as an 
unmarried woman. Also paraded was a white donkey with the Stars 
and Stripes painted on its side, as people wandered around 
chanting "Death to America" and enjoying the occasional snowball 
fight. According to powerful former president and top cleric 
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the strong turnout "in this snow and 
cold should send a message to America." And the head of Iran's 
Revolutionary Guards Corps, General Yahya Rahim Safavi, said the 
revolution 26 years ago and the ouster of US-backed shah Reza 
Pahlavi "is a model for all nations that want to get rid of the 
United States and take back their independence." The United 
States, vilified here as the Great Satan, accuses Iran of trying 
to obtain nuclear weapons under cover of developing civilian 
atomic energy and has not excluded a military option. 
Representatives of the EU and Iran were to meet for a new round 
of talks in Geneva on Thursday, with diplomats saying the 
Europeans would "read the riot act" to the Iranians and warn them 
not to violate an agreed nuclear fuel freeze. The meeting comes 
the day after Rice warned that the European Union was not being 
tough enough with Iran. "The Iranians just need to know that the 
free world is working together to send a very clear message: 
Don't develop a nuclear weapon," the US President said. The 
European Union's "big three" -- Britain, France and Germany -- 
are trying to secure guarantees that Tehran will not seek nuclear 
weapons. In exchange the Europeans are offering a package of 
incentives. Iran agreed in November to suspend its fuel cycle 
work, but the EU trio want Tehran to totally dismantle its 
uranium enrichment programme to ensure that it cannot make 
weapons-grade material. But Iran counters that it has the right, 
under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to work on the 
nuclear fuel cycle -- something critics see as Iran exploiting a 
dangerous loophole in the treaty. According to an official 
statement released for the rally, "the Iranian people will not 
step back even a little bit from their legitimate right to 
produce and use peaceful nuclear energy, and they reject any sly 
blackmailing to deprive Iranian people of this right." But quoted 
by the official news agency IRNA, foreign ministry spokesman 
Hamid Reza Asefi did pledge Iran had "peaceful objectives and 
will exhaust all diplomatic capabilities and capacities to 
negotiate with other countries," 
   
         Copyright © 2005 AFP AFP. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 5 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Vows Not to Abandon Nuclear Progress
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Thursday February 10, 2005 11:16 AM

AP Photo NY193 

By NASSER KARIMI 

Associated Press Writer 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - President Mohammad Khatami vowed that no
Iranian government would ever abandon the progress that the
country has made in developing peaceful nuclear technology. 

The comment did not augur well for negotiations with the big
three European powers who are currently trying to persuade Iran
to cease permanently the enrichment of uranium. 

Khatami warned that if the talks with Britain, France and
Germany fail, his government will not be bound by its
undertaking to suspend enrichment. 

``If other parties (to the negotiations) are not committed to
their promises, we will not be committed to our promises at
all,'' Khatami told a meeting of foreign diplomats in Tehran on
Wednesday. The Europeans have promised Iran economic and
technological aid in return for cooperation on the nuclear
issue. 

Uranium enriched to low levels can be used for fuel for nuclear
power stations. Enriched to high levels it is used for atomic
bombs. Iran says it seeks enriched uranium only for power
stations, but the United States believes it wants to build
nuclear weapons. 

``Neither my government, nor any other (Iranian) government can
give a convincing reply to people (who seek our) giving up
peaceful nuclear technology,'' said Khatami, whose second and
final presidential term ends later this year. 

``Iran has achieved nuclear technology without the help of
others, and it will never give up its right (to use it) under
illegitimate pressure from others,'' Khatami said. 

Khatami drew attention to opinion polls that show most Iranians
want the country to continue with its nuclear development. 

The nuclear program is perhaps the only issue that all sides of
the political spectrum agree on in Iran. The program is a point
of national pride. 

Khatami reiterated that Iran would never make nuclear weapons.
He said the country was a signatory to the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty and had reaffirmed its commitment to the
peaceful use of nuclear power in November. 

The United States says it supports the European negotiations
with Iran, but U.S. officials say privately they expect them to
fail. The United States has long wanted the International Atomic
Energy Agency to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which
has the power to impose sanctions on the country. 

Earlier Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told
Fox News Paris that if the Iranians ``are unwilling to take the
deal, really, that the Europeans are giving ... then the
Security Council referral looms.'' 

President Bush has refused to rule out an attack on Iran's
nuclear facilities.	 
  
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 6 [NYTr] N Korea Suspends Participation in 6-Party Talks
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 22:37:31 -0600 (CST)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Prensa Latina, Havana
http://www.plenglish.com

North Korea Suspends Participation in Talks

Pyongyang, Feb 10 (Prensa Latina) North Korea suspended its 
participation in the six-way talks about the conflict in Korea because 
of the constant hostile policy of the United States. 

"The suspension will last until we see there is a justification to 
participate in the dialogue and the favorable conditions and atmosphere 
to achieve positive results," says a Foreign Ministry statement.

The ministry says there is no reason for North Korea to participate 
in a new round of talks after the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza 
Rice, said Pyongyang is the ""outpost of tyranny".

The statement says the United States government has tried to oust the 
North Korean government with threats. But Pyongyang took measures to 
increase its nuclear weapons to protect its political system, freedom 
and democracy.

Despite US denials of its intention to attack North Korea, the Asian 
government will not restart disarmament talks to give a solution to the 
crisis, but its final goal is to disarm the Korean peninsula.

China has hosted three rounds of dialogue with the participation of 
North Korea, the US, South Korea, Russia, Japan and China and they have 
not yet found a solution to the conflict.

sus/ima/car/mf
       
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 7 [NYTr] N. Korea Announces It Has Nuclear Weapons
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:52:13 -0600 (CST)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
AP via The Guardian - Feb 10, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4791042,00.html

N. Korea Announces It Has Nuclear Weapons

By SANG-HUN CHOE
Associated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea on Thursday announced for the 
first time that it has nuclear arms and rejected moves to restart 
disarmament talks anytime soon, saying it needs the weapons as 
protection against an increasingly hostile United States.

The communist state's pronouncement dramatically raised the stakes 
in the two-year-old nuclear confrontation and posed a grave 
challenge to President Bush, who started his second term with a vow 
to end North Korea's nuclear program through six-nation talks.

``We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the 
Bush administration's ever more undisguised policy to isolate and 
stifle the (North)," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a 
statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The claim could not be independently verified. North Korea expelled 
the last U.N. nuclear monitors in late 2002 and has never tested a 
nuclear bomb, although international officials have long suspected 
it has one or two nuclear bombs and enough fuel for several more.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said North Korea should return 
to disarmament talks and avoid a path toward further international 
isolation. She said the world ``has given them a way out and we hope 
they will take that way out."

``The North Koreans have been told by the president of the United 
States that the United States has no intention of attacking or 
invading North Korea," Rice told a news conference in Luxembourg. 
``There is a path for the North Koreans that would put them in a 
more reasonable relationship with the rest of the world."

Previously, North Korea had reportedly told U.S. negotiators in 
private talks that it had nuclear weapons and might test one of 
them. The North's U.N. envoy said last year that the country had 
``weaponized" plutonium from its pool of 8,000 nuclear spent fuel 
rods. Those rods contained enough plutonium for several bombs.

But Thursday's statement was North Korea's first public 
acknowledgment that it has nuclear weapons.

North Korea's ``nuclear weapons will remain (a) nuclear deterrent 
for self-defense under any circumstances," the ministry said. It 
said Washington's alleged attempt to topple the North's regime 
``compels us to take a measure to bolster its nuclear weapons 
arsenal in order to protect the ideology, system, freedom and 
democracy chosen by its people."

Since 2003, the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and 
Russia have held three rounds of talks in Beijing aimed at 
persuading the North to abandon nuclear weapons development in 
return for economic and diplomatic rewards. No significant progress 
has been made.

A fourth round scheduled for last September was canceled when North 
Korea refused to attend, citing what it called a ``hostile" U.S. 
policy.

South Korea said Thursday the North's decision to stay away from 
talks was ``seriously regrettable." Foreign Ministry spokesman Lee 
Kyu-hyung said ``we again declare our stance that we will never 
tolerate North Korea possessing nuclear weapons."

In recent weeks, hopes had risen that North Korea might return to 
the six-nation talks, especially after Bush refrained from any 
direct criticism of North Korea when he started his second term last 
month.

On Thursday, North Korea said it decided not to rejoin such talks 
any time soon after studying Bush's inaugural and State of the Union 
speeches and after Rice labeled North Korea one of the ``outposts of 
tyranny."

``We have wanted the six-party talks but we are compelled to suspend 
our participation in the talks for an indefinite period till we have 
recognized that there is justification for us to attend the talks 
and there are ample conditions and atmosphere to expect positive 
results from the talks," the ministry said.

Still, North Korea said it retained its ``principled stand to solve 
the issue through dialogue and negotiations and its ultimate goal to 
denuclearize the Korean Peninsula remain unchanged."

Such a comment has widely been interpreted as North Korea's 
negotiating tactic to get more economic and diplomatic concessions 
from the United States before joining any crucial talks.

In Vienna, a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency 
said that ``North Korea remains our single highest priority."

``We know they have raw materials to build nuclear weapons. We also 
know that they have a delivery system and they've expressed their 
intentions to have a nuclear arsenal," spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.

In Japan, the top government spokesman said he wanted to confirm the 
North's intentions.

``They have used this sort of phrasing every so often. They didn't 
say anything particularly new," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki 
Hosoda told a regular news conference.

For months, North Korea has lashed out at what it calls U.S. 
attempts to demolish the regime of leader Kim Jong Il and meddle in 
the human rights situation in the North. Washington has said it 
wants to resolve the nuclear talks through dialogue.

In his Jan. 20 inaugural speech, Bush vowed that his new 
administration would not shrink from ``the great objective of ending 
tyranny" around the globe.

In his State of the Union address earlier this month, Bush only 
mentioned North Korea once, saying Washington was ``working closely 
with governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon its 
nuclear ambitions."

Bush's tone was in stark contrast to three years ago, when he 
branded North Korea part of an ``axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq, 
raising hopes of a positive response from North Korea.

The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials 
accused North Korea of running a secret uranium-enrichment program 
in violation of international treaties. Washington and its allies 
cut off free fuel oil shipments for the impoverished country under a 
1994 deal with the United States.

North Korea retaliated by quitting the Nuclear Nonproliferation 
Treaty in early 2003 and restarting its plutonium-based nuclear 
weapons program, which had been frozen under the 1994 agreement.

                          ***

AP via The Guardia - Feb 10, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4791086,00.html

Rice Aims to Defuse N. Korea Nuclear Issue

By ANNE GEARAN
AP Diplomatic Writer

LUXEMBOURG (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday 
that North Korea should return to disarmament talks and avoid a path 
toward further international isolation. ``The world has given them a 
way out and we hope they will take that way out," she said.

Rice's comments came after North Korea stated explicitly that it has 
nuclear weapons and said that it needs them as protection against an 
increasingly hostile United States.

``The North Koreans have been told by the president of the United 
States that the United States has no intention of attacking or 
invading North Korea," Rice said during a news conference here with 
European Union leaders.

``There is a path for the North Koreans that would put them in a 
more reasonable relationship with the rest of the world," she said, 
referring to an international disarmament effort that includes the 
United States.

Giving up nuclear weapons would offer hope for a better life to that 
country's people, Rice said. North Korea is desperately poor, and 
people are fleeing the country to avoid starvation.

The North Korean statement may be a bluff meant to put the United 
States back on its heels before the regime finally does return to 
the disarmament table. North Korea told a visiting U.S. 
congressional delegation last month that it would return to those 
six-nation talks.

Asked to analyze the thinking in Pyongyang, Rice was almost dismissive.

``I'm not sure anyone ever gets very far by trying to second-guess 
the motivation of the North Korean regime," she said.

Rice said the United States isn't treating North Korea differently 
from Iran, another nation in President Bush's famous rhetorical axis 
of evil.

``The message is clear: give up these aspirations for nuclear 
weapons and you know life can be different," Rice said. She also 
said that is the same message that Libya understood in renouncing 
its own nuclear ambitions.

Unlike Iran, North Korea had not been a frequent topic during Rice's 
breakneck tour of eight European countries and Israel over the past 
week. She also visited the West Bank and the Vatican.

Rice used the trip to reach out to Europe, and Europe reached back.

It is too soon to measure success, but Rice seemed pleased as she 
neared the end of the breakneck tour.

The trip, Rice's first as the top U.S. diplomat, engaged European 
leaders, intellectuals and curious citizens. Interest in her 
itinerary grew steadily as she made a case for a fresh start after 
rancor over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Iran's nuclear 
development program was a topic for most of Rice's meetings with 
European politicians.

``It's been a really great conversation," she said Wednesday in 
Brussels, Belgium. ``I feel very good about what we've done here and 
the conversation that we've had."

Rice's trip was concluding Thursday in Luxembourg, which currently 
holds the rotating European Union presidency, with meetings to lay 
groundwork for the Feb. 22 EU-U.S. summit in Brussels with Bush.

The 2003 Iraq war divided the United States and longtime allies, and 
U.S. policies there continue to be widely unpopular even among 
Europeans whose governments, such as Italy and Poland, sent 
significant numbers of troops to Iraq.

``The times are different now than they were a year ago or two years 
ago when we did have our differences, not with everyone, but with a 
number of states," Rice said in Belgium. ``While we still had 
common interests and common values I don't think we had a common 
agenda for a while on what was really before us, at least in regards 
to Iraq."

The success of elections in Iraqited States and its allies common 
purpose, Rice said.

Several countries committed to help train Iraqi forces and 
participate in an upcoming NATO training mission after lunch with 
Rice and NATO Secretary-General Japp de Hoop Scheffer.

``I have to say that it is the best discussion of Iraq that we have 
had as an alliance since the Saddam Hussein regime fell, and, in 
fact, well before that, because it was clearly a unified alliance," 
Rice said.

Rice's tour included France and Germany, two of the United States' 
strongest critics on Iraq, and two of six nations that have refused 
to participate in a postwar NATO force there. She also visited 
Britain, Italy and Poland, all allies in Iraq, and Turkey on the 
European portion of her trip.
       
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 8 Annan Calls On Dpr Of Korea's Partners To Bring It Back To Nuclear Talks
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:00:59 -0500

 
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ANNAN CALLS ON DPR OF KOREA'S PARTNERS TO BRING IT BACK TO NUCLEAR 
TALKS
New York, Feb 10 2005  2:00PM
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on the partners 
of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to bring 
the country back to the negotiating table as quickly as possible 
following its announcement that it had pulled out indefinitely 
from six-party talks on its nuclear weapons programme.

"I hope it's not a definitive position because quite a lot of the 
other countries involved in the six-party talks and my own envoy 
(Maurice Strong),who has been visiting North Korea and the region, 
believe that that is the route to go and they are hopeful that 
it will yield results," Mr. Annan told a <"http://www.un.org/apps/sg/offthecuff.asp?nid=686">press 
encounter in London.

"I expect that with efforts by the other countries involved, North 
Korea could be brought back to the table. And so, I would urge 
them to engage North Korea and bring them back to the table and for 
the talks to resume as quickly as possible," he added of the so-called 
Beijing process between the DPRK, the Republic of Korea, 
China, Japan, the Russian Federation and the United States.

The six nations have been engaged in talks since DPRK announced in 
late 2002 that it planned to "lift the freeze" on its nuclear activities 
and that it was pulling out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation 
Treaty (<"http://www.un.org/Depts/dda/WMD/treaty/">NPT). Today 
it announced for the first time that it possessed nuclear weapons.

The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (<"http://www.iaea.org/">IAEA) 
has said that it believes the DPRK 
has the capacity to build nuclear weapons, but it expressed the hope 
that a settlement of the issue can be resolved through negotiations. 
The Agency says its ultimate goal would be the resumption 
of inspections in that country that ended with its withdrawal from 
the NPT.

Mr. Annan, in London to deliver a speech on his vision of UN reform 
and the threats of terrorism and poverty facing the world, earlier 
met with British Prime Minister Blair, who called the Secretary-General 
a man who, in a tough time, has handled himself with 
great distinction and wisdom and has been "a tremendous unifier."

They discussed the results of the Iraq elections and the transitional 
process currently underway, UN reform, Afghanistan and developments 
in Africa.

Mr. Annan later had a working lunch with British Foreign Secretary 
Jack Straw. Asked at the news conference about Iran, the Secretary-General 
said he was very encouraged by discussions taking place 
between Iran and three European countries - France, Germany and 
the United Kingdom - on Tehran's nuclear programme.

"I think it is a very healthy sign, and dialogue is the way to go," 
he declared. "I hope everyone involved will take it seriously 
and achieve the right results and I think it can be achieved if everyone 
gets to the table with an open mind and the determination 
to find a solution."

Mr. Annan later met with Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown 
and the Secretary of State for International Development Hilary 
Benn, with whom he discussed the recent decision by the Group of 
Seven industrialized countries to forgive the debts of African nations. 
They also touched on financing for development, including 
involvement by the private sector.
 2005-02-10 00:00:00.000 

________________

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 9 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: Korean's discovery: From wood to rock 

February 11, 2005 KST 12:54 (GMT+9) 

February 11, 2005 ¤Ñ When the American naturalist John Muir 
saw northern Arizona's prehistoric petrified forest in 1906, he 
was moved to call it "a kaleidoscope fashioned by God's hand." 

These days, Yongsoon Shin, a U.S.-based Korean research 
scientist, is also extolling the virtues of trees that have 
turned into rocks ¡ª such as their usefulness in sopping up 
radioactive waste. Unromantic, perhaps, but you couldn't call it 
blasphemy; Mr. Shin petrified this wood himself. 

The fossilized logs John Muir wrote about date from the 
Triassic Period, approximately 200 to 250 million years ago. 
They began as conifers that were washed away and buried in mud 
and volcanic ash. Over the eons, these ingredients reacted to 
replace the decomposing wood cells with silica ¡ª the 
crystalline compound whose various forms include quartz and sand 
¡ª while maintaining the cellular structure of the original wood.

By contrast, Mr. Shin's petrified wood was created in five 
days. At the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest 
National Laboratory in Washington state, a team led by Mr. Shin 
cut one-centimeter cubes from two-by-fours of pine and poplar 
wood, soaked them in acid and put them in a silica solution. 
After drying, they were baked in argon gas heated to 1,400 
degrees centigrade (2,550 degrees Fahrenheit); once cool, they 
formed exact mineral replicas of the wood's cellular structure. 

This breakthrough was published in the Jan. 17 issue of the 
scientific journal Advanced Materials. Its possible benefits are 
many, and perhaps the most important can be contemplated by 
shifting one's gaze just a few miles north of Mr. Shin's 
laboratory ¡ª to Hanford Nuclear Reservation, known as one of 
the most badly contaminated places in the world. With its 
contaminated groundwater, radioactive flora and millions of 
gallons of toxic industrial sewage so close by, Mr. Shin 
acknowledges that the goal of nuclear waste separation was never 
far from his team's minds. Mr. Shin's lab-petrified wood is 
porous enough to absorb, and thereby filter, radioactive or 
toxic nuclei from contaminated substances. What's more, unlike 
the petrified wood found in nature, it's strong enough to do so 
without falling apart. 

And considering that only a few small clusters of naturally 
petrified wood exist around the world, Mr. Shin's synthetic 
version has another decisive advantage: "We can make lots of 
it," the scientist says. "We have control." 

"Science leads you to new places," Mr. Shin, 39, says of the 
discipline that's given him a life compass. A native of Jecheon, 
North Chungcheong province, he attended Chungbuk National 
University before receiving his master's degree in organic 
chemistry from prestigious Pohang University of Science and 
Technology in 1990. 
Even then, Mr. Shin says, "I wanted to challenge myself in a 
different area," academically and geographically. He was curious 
about materials chemistry, an interdisciplinary field, but had 
already committed to organic chemistry in Korean academia, a 
rigid world that didn't encourage lateral movement ("back then," 
he qualifies). 

Undeterred, "I just picked a professor," Mr. Shin recalls in 
his characteristic simple-as-that manner. His chosen mentor was 
Craig Barnes, a leading researcher in organometallic chemistry 
and transition metal-based catalysis at the University of 
Tennessee at Knoxville. At age 29, Mr. Shin left for Knoxville , 
where in 1999 he obtained his doctorate in materials chemistry. 

The same proactive spirit brought him to the Pacific Northwest 
National Laboratory, where his chosen mentor was Jun Liu, a 
respected name in the field of separation. "I didn't even know 
where the PNNL was; I'd only heard of what Jun was doing," says 
Mr. Shin. "I called him up anyway and said, ¡®I want to come do 
my post-doc with you.'" "Come tomorrow," he remembers Mr. Liu 
telling him. 

The PNNL, in Richland, Washington, is one of nine multiprogram 
Department of Energy labs in the United States. After two 
postdoctoral years, Shin was hired as a senior research 
scientist in 2001, and has lived in Richland since with his wife 
and two young daughters. Though he keeps in touch with Korea's 
scientific community - Seoul National University chemical 
engineer Hyeon Tae-ghwan is his best friend - Mr. Shin plans to 
stay in the United States for the foreseeable future. 

He has published 40 papers to date. True to his 
cross-disciplinary curiosity, he submitted a proposal to the 
Department of Energy in 2001 seeking to combine nanostructural 
development with biological structures; this led to his 
petrifaction project, in which crystal particles had to be 
controlled at the molecular level to maintain the shape of the 
wood. 
Most of the publicity surrounding Mr. Shin's 
laboratory-petrified wood has emphasized the feat of duplicating 
the work of eons in five days. But he's quick to point out that 
what's really groundbreaking about the procedure is how the end 
product differs from nature's. 

"Almost all naturally petrified wood is silica," says Mr. Shin, 
"and so in 2001, when we began this project, we tried to copy 
the process with silica as it occurs in nature." 
But the scientists soon discovered the limits of their creation 
¡ªnamely, that it kept falling apart. "It lacked stability 
because silica is amorphous - too soft," Shin explains. 

The answer was to use not just silica, but silica which, in the 
heat of the argon oven, bonded to the carbon from the wood's 
cellulose to form silicon carbide, a ceramic compound Mr. Shin 
describes as "diamond-strong." The result, he says, is as spongy 
as wood, but at the same time as hard as metal. 

Mr. Shin hopes to take his petrifaction experiment further and 
explore other biological templates for making metal carbides. 
For example, he says, he's interested in finding a way to make 
"functional" carbon from the black ashes produced in the burning 
of wood. "No, no," he says resolutely, "we're certainly not 
finished with this project."	 

by Kim Sun-jung smkim@joongang.co.kr> 

Copyright by Joins.com, Inc. Terms of Use | 
*****************************************************************
 10 BBC: N Korea suspends nuclear talks
 
  Last Updated: Thursday, 10 February, 2005
 
[Yongbyon nuclear plant (file photo)]                           

North Korea is believed to have built a handful of nuclear 
weapons                    
			   		
North Korea will stay away from talks on its nuclear programme 
for an "indefinite period", according to the nation's foreign 
ministry. 

Pyongyang said there was no point in the talks since the US had 
termed North Korea an "outpost of tyranny". 

The North also repeated a claim to have built nuclear weapons for 
self-defence. 

But US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the communist 
state would only deepen its international isolation if it pulled 
out of the talks. 

"The world has given them a way out and we hope they will take 
that way out," she said at a news conference with European Union 
leaders. 

Washington and Pyongyang have been locked in a diplomatic 
standoff since October 2002, when the US accused North Korea of 
operating an illegal uranium programme. 

Since then three rounds of talks have been held - including 
China, Japan, Russia and South Korea - but little progress has 
been made. 

The North Korean foreign ministry's statement, which was reported 
by state news agency KCNA, said: "We have wanted the six-party 
talks but we are compelled to suspend our participation... for an 
indefinite period". 

There is no justification f us to participate in the six-party 
talks again, given that the Bush administration termed [us] an 
'outpost of tyranny'                 [ src=] North Korean 
statement Statement in full               

It added that Pyongyang had "manufactured nukes for self-defence" 
and would take "a measure to bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal" 
in order to "protect its ideology, system, freedom and 
democracy". 

This is North Korea's most explicit public assertion that it 
possesses nuclear weapons. Senior members of the regime have 
privately spoken about its nuclear capability on several 
occasions in the past. 

US and other intelligence agencies believe the North could 
already have built a small number of weapons, variously estimated 
at between two and ten. 

US 'antagonism' 

North Korea's anger appears to be directed at several keynote 
speeches made by US President George Bush and other senior 
members of his administration as they started their new terms in 
office. 

"The second-term Bush administration's intention to antagonise 
the DPRK (North Korea) and isolate and stifle it at any cost has 
become quite clear," the statement said, citing the president's 
inaugural address and his State of the Union speech. 

Condoleezza Rice's description of the isolated nation as an 
"outpost of tyranny" was also singled out for criticism. 

US RHETORIC ON NORTH                    

19 Jan: Condoleezza Ric refers to North as an "outpost of tyranny"      
20 Jan: No mention in George Bush's inauguration speech, though 
US goal was to "end tyranny in our world"   
2 Feb: Mr Bush's State of the Union address says US working with 
governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon nuclear 
ambitions 'Outposts of tyranny'           

"There is no justification for us to participate in the six-party 
talks again, given that the Bush administration termed the DPRK, 
a dialogue partner, an 'outpost of tyranny'," the statement said. 

Some observers had hoped that Mr Bush's State of the Union speech 
would actually increase the chance of the stalled nuclear talks 
going ahead, because the president refrained from direct 
criticism of North Korea. 

In a past speech, in 2002, he famously described Iraq, Iran and 
North Korea as part of an "axis of evil". 

In Thursday's statement, Pyongyang also had strong words to say 
about Japan, which it described as "persistently pursuing its 
hostile policy toward the DPRK, toeing the US line". 

It accused Tokyo of trying to prevent normalised relations by 
making false claims over the "abduction issue" - an ongoing row 
about missing Japanese nationals which North Korea admits to 
having kidnapped in the 1970s and 80s. 

Pyongyang claims the issue has now been "settled". 

Just hours before North Korea's statement was released, John 
Bolton, the US undersecretary of state for arms control and 
international security, said that Washington believed Pyongyang 
was still continuing to produce nuclear weapons. 

"To whatever extent the North Koreans are proceeding with their 
programme, and we believe they are, the absence of progress in 
six-party talks means they are making further progress toward 
their increased capability," Mr Bolton told reporters during a 
visit to Tokyo. 

"Time is not on our side," he added. 		 	 		 	 



*****************************************************************
 11 Guardian Unlimited: N. Korea Announces It Has Nuclear Weapons
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Thursday February 10, 2005 12:31 PM

AP Photo TOK204 

By SANG-HUN CHOE 

Associated Press Writer 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea on Thursday announced for
the first time that it has nuclear arms and rejected moves to
restart disarmament talks anytime soon, saying it needs the
weapons as protection against an increasingly hostile United
States. 

The communist state's pronouncement dramatically raised the
stakes in the two-year-old nuclear confrontation and posed a
grave challenge to President Bush, who started his second term
with a vow to end North Korea's nuclear program through
six-nation talks. 

``We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with
the Bush administration's ever more undisguised policy to
isolate and stifle the (North),'' the North Korean Foreign
Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean
Central News Agency. 

The claim could not be independently verified. North Korea
expelled the last U.N. nuclear monitors in late 2002 and has
never tested a nuclear bomb, although international officials
have long suspected it has one or two nuclear bombs and enough
fuel for several more. 

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington would
consult allies before responding. 

``I think we just have to first look at the statement and then
we need to talk with our allies,'' Rice told Dutch RTL
television while on a trip through Europe. 

``The North Koreans have no reason to believe that anyone wants
to attack them,'' she added. ``They have been told they can have
multilateral security assurances if they will make the important
decision to give up their nuclear weapons program. So there is
really no reason for this, but we will examine where we go
next.'' 

Previously, North Korea had reportedly told U.S. negotiators in
private talks that it had nuclear weapons and might test one of
them. The North's U.N. envoy said last year that the country had
``weaponized'' plutonium from its pool of 8,000 nuclear spent
fuel rods. Those rods contained enough plutonium for several
bombs. 

But Thursday's statement was North Korea's first public
acknowledgment that it has nuclear weapons. 

North Korea's ``nuclear weapons will remain (a) nuclear
deterrent for self-defense under any circumstances,'' the
ministry said. It said Washington's alleged attempt to topple
the North's regime ``compels us to take a measure to bolster its
nuclear weapons arsenal in order to protect the ideology,
system, freedom and democracy chosen by its people.'' 

Since 2003, the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and
Russia have held three rounds of talks in Beijing aimed at
persuading the North to abandon nuclear weapons development in
return for economic and diplomatic rewards. No significant
progress has been made. 

A fourth round scheduled for last September was canceled when
North Korea refused to attend, citing what it called a
``hostile'' U.S. policy. 

South Korea said Thursday the North's decision to stay away from
talks was ``seriously regrettable.'' Foreign Ministry spokesman
Lee Kyu-hyung said ``we again declare our stance that we will
never tolerate North Korea possessing nuclear weapons.'' 

In recent weeks, hopes had risen that North Korea might return
to the six-nation talks, especially after Bush refrained from
any direct criticism of North Korea when he started his second
term last month. 

On Thursday, North Korea said it decided not to rejoin such
talks any time soon after studying Bush's inaugural and State of
the Union speeches and after Rice labeled North Korea one of the
``outposts of tyranny.'' 

``We have wanted the six-party talks but we are compelled to
suspend our participation in the talks for an indefinite period
till we have recognized that there is justification for us to
attend the talks and there are ample conditions and atmosphere
to expect positive results from the talks,'' the ministry said. 

Still, North Korea said it retained its ``principled stand to
solve the issue through dialogue and negotiations and its
ultimate goal to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula remain
unchanged.'' 

Such a comment has widely been interpreted as North Korea's
negotiating tactic to get more economic and diplomatic
concessions from the United States before joining any crucial
talks. 

In Vienna, a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy
Agency said that ``North Korea remains our single highest
priority.'' 

``We know they have raw materials to build nuclear weapons. We
also know that they have a delivery system and they've expressed
their intentions to have a nuclear arsenal,'' spokesman Mark
Gwozdecky said. 

In Japan, the top government spokesman said he wanted to confirm
the North's intentions. 

``They have used this sort of phrasing every so often. They
didn't say anything particularly new,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary
Hiroyuki Hosoda told a regular news conference. 

For months, North Korea has lashed out at what it calls U.S.
attempts to demolish the regime of leader Kim Jong Il and meddle
in the human rights situation in the North. Washington has said
it wants to resolve the nuclear talks through dialogue. 

In his Jan. 20 inaugural speech, Bush vowed that his new
administration would not shrink from ``the great objective of
ending tyranny'' around the globe. 

In his State of the Union address earlier this month, Bush only
mentioned North Korea once, saying Washington was ``working
closely with governments in Asia to convince North Korea to
abandon its nuclear ambitions.'' 

Bush's tone was in stark contrast to three years ago, when he
branded North Korea part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iran and
Iraq, raising hopes of a positive response from North Korea. 

The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials
accused North Korea of running a secret uranium-enrichment
program in violation of international treaties. Washington and
its allies cut off free fuel oil shipments for the impoverished
country under a 1994 deal with the United States. 

North Korea retaliated by quitting the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty in early 2003 and restarting its plutonium-based nuclear
weapons program, which had been frozen under the 1994 agreement.
	 
  
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 12 Guardian Unlimited: World Urges N. Korea Back to Nuclear Talks
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Thursday February 10, 2005 10:46 AM

AP Photo TOK203 

By JOSEPH COLEMAN 

Associated Press Writer 

TOKYO (AP) - North Korea's statement Thursday that it had
nuclear weapons and would boycott talks on its atomic programs
was seen as a possible negotiating gambit, and governments urged
it to return to the bargaining table. 

Japan, one of the six nations that have met three times since
2003 to try to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear
ambitions, said it was not immediately alarmed, since the aim of
the announcement was unclear. 

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said Washington would
examine the statement and consult with allies, but added that
North Korea had no reason to believe it needs nuclear weapons to
defend itself against the United States. 

``The president of the United States said in South Korea that
the United States has no intention to attack North Korea,'' she
told RTL TV of the Netherlands. ``They have been told they can
have multilateral security assurances if they will make the
important decision to give up their nuclear weapons program.'' 

``So there is really no reason for this, but we will examine
where we go next,'' Rice added, urging the North Koreans to
reconsider and come back to the negotiating table. 

North Korea announced for the first time through its state-run
media that it has nuclear weapons, and rejected moves to restart
disarmament talks any time soon, saying it needs the armaments
as protection against an increasingly hostile United States. 

North Korea had reportedly told U.S. negotiators in private
talks that it had nuclear weapons and might test one of them,
but this was its first public acknowledgment that it has them. 

The statement was met with alarm in the streets of Tokyo - well
within range of North Korean missiles. 

``It's scary. I'm from Ishikawa prefecture (state), which is
closest to North Korea and where they say a missile would land
if they fired one,'' said Hideko Hashimoto, 61. ``I always
thought it was scary.'' 

Some blamed the widening of the rift between North Korea and the
United States on missteps by both sides. 

``Pyongyang's moves and Washington's excessively harsh stance
have thwarted attempts to reach a compromise,'' Konstantin
Kosachev, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia's
lower house of parliament, was quoted as saying by the Interfax
news agency. 

Vasily Mikheyev of the Russian Academy of Sciences told the
ITAR-Tass news agency that North Korea appeared to be posturing
as a way of pressing for concessions from the United States and
others as a prelude to re-entering negotiations. 

``Pyongyang's move to suspend its participation in the six-way
talks is intended to raise demands to partners in talks,''
Mikheyev was quoted as saying. 

He also voiced skepticism about North Korea's claim to have
nuclear weapons. 

``This claim hasn't been proven yet,'' he said. ``North Korea
hasn't conducted nuclear tests yet, which are necessary for
building weapons.'' 

The announcement came as Washington's top arms control official,
U.S. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, warned in Tokyo
that North Korea's willingness to sell nuclear weapons
ingredients to other nations posed a global threat. 

``Given North Korea's propensity to proliferate ... there's
little doubt that if they had weapons or technology or
components of a nuclear weapons program, that they would be
prepared to sell those to a willing buyer,'' he said. 

U.S. intelligence agencies and government scientists have strong
evidence that North Korea sold processed uranium to Libya,
apparently to assist its nuclear weapons development, an
administration official said earlier this week. 

The United States and Japan have urged North Korea to return to
the stalled nuclear talks, which have been hosted by Beijing. 

``It would be better if we resumed talks soon,'' Japanese Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi said. ``Just as we have until now, we
will cooperate with the other countries toward this end.''	 
  
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 13 [NYTr] Public Doubts Terror Threat after No WMDs Found 
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:49:11 -0600 (CST)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by Simon McGuinness

("More than 1,000 criminal offences have been created - one every three
days - since Labour formed a government in 1997 [in Britain]".  If Cuba
had done the same it would be broadcast all around the globe as evidence
of a draconian dictatorship, why is Blair not considered a dictator?
ANSWER: because he supports the US president. - SMcG)

The Independent - 09 February 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=609211

WMD absence 'makes public doubt terror threat'

By Nigel Morris and Marie Woolf

The failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has
undermined [UK] government attempts to convince the public of the
terrorist threat to Britain, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said
yesterday.

As he raised the prospect of judge-only trials of terrorism suspects, he
told MPs that deadly attacks had been thwarted and anyone who believed
this country was immune from al-Qa'ida was living in a "dream world".
But he conceded: "Events around the weapons of mass destruction issue in
Iraq have led to a scepticism about the quality of intelligence on
important matters.

"I don't think that is fair. But there's no doubt that the great range
of issues around that have given rise to scepticism and doubt, in its
genuine sense, not necessarily disbelief, about what we can and cannot
believe about security assessments."

Mr Clarke signalled that the Government was preparing to counter public
complacency by highlighting the terrorist organisations plotting
outrages in this country. "Those who say there is no threat are living
in a dream world in which there's no reality," he told the Commons Home
Affairs Select Committee.

The Home Secretary defended his controversial plans to bring in "control
orders", which could see British terrorist suspects put under house
arrest without a trial. He said it was "very unlikely" that more than
100 people would be detained at home under his plans.

But he hinted at flexibility over his refusal to permit surveillance
material in terrorism prosecutions, a decision that has put him at odds
with senior police officers and much of the legal profession.

Mr Clarke, who said he was considering fresh anti-terror legislation,
even signalled support for trials of suspects being conducted by
security-cleared judges, rather than being considered by juries. He said
he was not "an absolute fan" of the adversarial system of justice, but
he conceded that such a change to the legal system would be "immense and
would require a massive, massive shift".

Charles Kennedy yesterday accused ministers of exploiting the "climate
of fear" which followed the attacks of 11 September 2001 to introduce a
raft of "authoritarian" measures.

Launching a manifesto to protect civil liberties, the Liberal Democrat
leader said the Government was becoming "more presidential, less
transparent and less accountable to Parliament and to the people". He
said the Government had rushed in a raft of "bad laws" and called for
more safeguards to protect personal freedom. As well as the house arrest
plan, Mr Kennedy singled out plans for a national identity card. He
said: "These authoritarian measures demonstrate that the balance this
government is seeking to achieve has tipped too far."

Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said Labour and
the Tories were deliberately ignoring "the language of tolerance".

More than 1,000 criminal offences have been created - one every three
days - since Labour formed a government in 1997. 
       
                                *
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*****************************************************************
 14 [shundahaialerts] nuclear abolition action and strategy
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 15:21:19 -0800

 
<x-flowed>

*Please Forward this message to your lists to encourage people to attend 
these important events*

February 10, 2005

Invitation to nuclear abolition action and strategy meeting- March 
25th-27th, 2005

Dear friends,

You are cordially invited to participate in a public demonstration and 
non-violent direct action at the Mercury gate of the Nevada Test Site. This 
will take place on Friday, March 25th, 2005. Following this day of action 
Shundahai Network is calling for two days of nuclear abolition strategy 
meetings at the Poo Ha Bah Indigenous Healing Center in Tecopa CA. Tecopa 
is located approximately 80 miles Southwest of the Nevada Test Site.

You are specifically being contacted at the request of Corbin Harney, the 
Board of Directors and staff of the Shundahai Network.

FAITH AND ACTION
Friday, March 25th- This day marks the end of a weeklong walk from Las 
Vegas to the Mercury entrance of the Test Site. The walk is being organized 
by the Nevada Desert Experience and other affiliated faith-based 
groups.  This event is being organized in commemoration of Good Friday, in 
the Christian tradition, and will culminate in public ceremonies and 
non-violent direct actions at the Mercury gate. This is an opportunity for 
people and communities of faith, and for all people, to pray for peace, 
justice, and nuclear disarmament. Shundahai Network supports this action 
and encourages your participation.

STRATEGIZE FOR NUCLEAR ABOLITION-
Saturday, March 26th and Sunday, March 27th Over the two days following 
Friday's actions, the Shundahai Network invites you to participate in a 
nuclear abolition strategy meeting at the Poo Ha Bah Center for Indigenous 
Healing in Tecopa CA, approximately 80 miles west of the Test Site. The 
purpose of this meeting is to prepare a coordinated strategy leading up to 
events in August and October 2005.

August 6th -9th commemorates the 60 years since the bombing of Hiroshima 
and Nagasaki. Events at the Nevada Test Site are being planned for these 
days to honor all victims of the nuclear chain. Shundahai Network has the 
logistical and programming capacity to help make these events a success. We 
need your help and invite your participation.

October 7th-10th commemorates Indigenous Peoples' Day and honors over five 
centuries of Indigenous resistance to desecration of our Earth Mother since 
the dawn of European colonization and settlement of the western hemisphere. 
Specifically, we will plan events in honor of Newe Sogobia, the Newe- 
Western Shoshone territory recognized by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. 
The Nevada Test Site is located near the geographic center of this land, 
and the Shundahai Network recognizes Western Shoshone authority over this 
area.

Check our website often for updates about these events.

We look forward to hearing from you. Please Contact our office for any reason.

P.S. We apologize for cross postings. Also if you have requested that you 
be removed from this list please forgive this message. We are still trying 
to figure out how to remove people. Your name will be removed as soon as 
possible, in the meantime we have to get this information out.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SHUNDAHAI NETWORK--Dedicated to Breaking the Nuclear Chain

Shundahai is a Newe (Western Shoshone) word meaning  "Peace and Harmony 
with all Creation"

Shundahai Network
PO Box 1115
Salt Lake City, UT 84110
Office: 801.533.0128
Fax: 801.533.0129


mailto:Shundahai@shundahai.org
http://www.Shundahai.org

========================================================
It's in our back yard... it's in our front yard. This nuclear contamination 
is shortening all life. We are going to have to unite as a people and say 
no more! We, the people, are going to have to put our thoughts together to 
save our planet here. We only have One Water...One Air...One Mother Earth."

Corbin Harney -Newe (Western Shoshone) Spiritual leader, Founder & Chairman 
of the Board of The Shundahai Network

|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<>|<
Shundahai Network Action Alerts
You have received this e-mail because you either signed up on the Shundahai 
Network list, or are considered someone who is interested in these types of 
issues.
If you would like to be removed from this list, please send an e-mail to 
nationaloutreach@shundahai.org with the word "Remove" in the subject line.
IF you were forwarded this email by a friend and would like to sign up to 
this list to receive monthly updates please reply to 
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*****************************************************************
 15 [du-list] 2/9 Nuke Watch: US Aims to Oust UN Nuke Official
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 15:20:45 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
Nuke Watch
Project of Peace No War  Network
February 9, 2005
URL: _www.PeaceNoWar.net_ (http://www.peacenowar.net/)
US Aims to Oust UN Nuke Official
By GEORGE JAHN
.c The Associated Press

VIENNA, Austria  (AP) - The United States is lobbying allies in a bid to oust
the head of the  U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, perhaps as early as the end of
the month,  diplomats and officials told The Associated Press on  Wednesday.

Anticipating that present European diplomatic efforts on Iran  will fail, the
diplomats and officials also told AP that Washington plans to  increase
pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program when the International  Atomic 
Energy
Agency meets Feb. 28.

In Tehran, Iranian President Mohammad  Khatami told foreign diplomats that no
Iranian government would ever abandon the  progress the country has made in
developing peaceful nuclear  technology.

Washington, which accuses Iran of making nuclear weapons and  wants it
brought before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions,  considers 
IAEA
head Mohammed ElBaradei too soft on the Tehran  leadership.

No U.S. comment was available on Washington's strategy for  the upcoming IAEA
board of governors meeting.

But several diplomats and  government officials from IAEA member countries
dismissed recent reports that  the United States had given up attempts to 
unseat
ElBaradei because of lack of  support from other countries.

``They've been lobbying, and close friends  have given them a good
reception,'' said one of the officials familiar with the  issue, who, like 
the others,
spoke on condition of anonymity.

Another  said Undersecretary of State John Bolton and other senior State
Department  officials ``were still lobbying the capitals, telling them it's 
the
way to  go.''

With Elbaradei's agency spearheading international attempts to  squelch
nuclear proliferation, the head of the IAEA is a key position for Bush
administration officials. They want someone who shares their views of 
which  country
represents a nuclear threat and what to do about it.

ElBaradei  has challenged those views - first over prewar Iraq and then Iran,
both labeled  part of an ``axis of evil,'' along with North Korea, by
President  Bush.

He first disputed U.S. assertions that Saddam Hussein had an active  nuclear
weapons program - claims that remain unproven. He then refused to  endorse
arguments by Washington that nuclear activities Iran claims are meant  only to
generate power are actually part of a clandestine weapons  program.

A direct U.S. move to oust ElBaradei failed late last year - the  Americans
were unable to find anyone to challenge him for a third term by the  Dec. 31
deadline, shortly after calling on him to step down with his second term
completed.

It remains unclear whether Washington could muster the 12  votes needed among
the 35-nation IAEA board for a vote of non-confidence in  ElBaradei.

Ahead of the Feb. 28 meeting, the majority is either in favor  of a third
term for the IAEA head or appears to be undecided. Reflecting  sentiment among
the latter, one diplomat said his country ``had full  confidence'' in 
ElBaradei
but still shared the U.S. view that no U.N. agency  head should serve past two
terms.

The contacts appeared to be restricted  to the high level, with Vienna-based
diplomats saying the U.S. mission in Vienna  pointedly refuses to discuss the
issue.

In a related issue, the United  States will try to redirect international
focus on Iran's nuclear activities  back to the IAEA by pushing for 
creation of a
special agency committee that  would deal with ``problem countries,'' a
diplomat said.

For the first  time in more than two years, ElBaradei is not producing a
written report on Iran  for the upcoming board meeting.

While investigations continue into past  and present suspicions about Iran's
nuclear program, agency officials say that  no major revelations meriting the
need for a written report have surfaced this  time around.

But American officials suggest the lack of a written report  is the latest
reflection of the IAEA's failure to be tough on Iran's 
nuclear  transgressions,
which, they say merit referral of Tehran's dossier to the U.N.  Security
Council.

The U.S. push to create a special committee, first  proposed last year by
Bush, appears driven by the feeling that talks between  Iran and Germany, 
France
and Britain will fail.

Those three countries are  trying to persuade Iran to agree to either scrap
its plans to enrich uranium or  extend its present short-term suspension to a
freeze lasting for at least  several years.

While the United States publicly supports the talks,  officials privately say
they expect them to fail, leading to renewed enrichment  activities - which
can produce the fissile core of nuclear missiles - and a  fresh need for the
IAEA board to consider Security Council  referral.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested as much  Wednesday, telling Fox
News that if the Iranians ``are unwilling to take the  deal, really, that the
Europeans are giving ... then the Security Council  referral looms.''

The Europeans have promised Iran economic and  technological aid in return
for cooperation on the nuclear issue.

On  Wednesday, the Iranian president warned that if the talks fail, his
government  will not be bound by its undertaking to suspend enrichment.

``If other  parties (to the negotiations) are not committed to their
promises, we will not  be committed to our promises at all,'' Khatami said.

On the Net:  www.iaea.org

02/09/05 21:32 EST

=============================================================
Peace, No War
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 16 Kennebec Journal: Oppose Bush's energy proposal 

In his State of the Union address, President Bush presented his
vision for our energy future. He calls for the following: more
nuclear power, more air pollution, more tainted water, more
dependence on foreign oil and fewer jobs here in the United
States. The president advocates the creation of more "safe"
nuclear power plants. --> 

[Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel] 

  Thursday, February 10, 2005 


Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.          
  
In his State of the Union address, President Bush presented his
vision for our energy future. He calls for the following: more
nuclear power, more air pollution, more tainted water, more
dependence on foreign oil and fewer jobs here in the United
States. The president advocates the creation of more "safe"
nuclear power plants. 

However, there is an innate danger within nuclear power -- the
radioactive byproduct. This byproduct can easily be used by our
enemies to create mass devastation. Furthermore, this chemical
will remain deadly for 10,000 years. To date, the government's
best idea is to put the material in containers that will rot out
after 100 or so years and place those containers near a fault
line in a hollowed-out mountain. 

The Bush plan also advocates more fossil-fuel-burning power
plants. These plants produce the deadly chemical mercury, which
is known to lead to neurological problems in people exposed to
it. How do you get exposed? Well, if you eat swordfish, bluefish
or some other fish, you are already exposed to low levels. 

We cannot let the Bush plan pass. We cannot support a plan that
will create jobs in Saudi Arabia but not in Sabattus. We should
let our senators know that they must stand with us against the
Bush plan. 

Brian Farrell

South Portland

brian.farrell@maine.edu   

  Copyright © Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.  
*****************************************************************
 17 Tri-Valley Herald: Millions spent on useless warheads 
 
Article Last Updated: 02/10/2005 10:58:02 AM       

U.S. continues to maintain 400 inactive nuclear weapons 

  By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER   
  	   
  As the president and his cabinet secretaries talk of tough
budget decisions and axing programs that do not fulfill
essential priorities, the U.S. Energy Department is giving one
of its largest proportional increases to maintaining 400 nuclear
warheads that are effectively useless. 

In the late 1970s, when Lawrence Livermore lab and
Sandia-California scientists designed the W84, it was the
Cadillac of the U.S. arsenal. 

They put in every bell and whistle of the day, from the latest
cryptologic locks to fire-resistant high explosives and
plutonium core to a self-disabling system responding to remote
commands and a selectable yield, dialable from a fifth of a
kiloton to 150 kilotons of TNT. 

It remains the safest weapon in the U.S. arsenal. 

But for 14 years, the military hasnt had — or planned to build —
a missile to carry the W84 warhead. All 500 of its carrier
missiles, a ground-launched form of the Tomahawk cruise missile
called the Gryphon, were destroyed in the name of arms control,
as Russian officials watched. Likewise, American officials
witnessed the destruction of six kinds of Russian medium-range
missiles. 

It was an historic moment. Before presidents Ronald   Reagan and
Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
Treaty in 1987, nuclear powers never had agreed to eliminate an
entire class of nuclear weapons. 

A portion of the U.S.-Soviet arms race was over. 

But the W84 remains stockpiled as an inactive warhead. For a few
years, the military and civilian weapons officials considered
using the W84 as a replacement for another nuclear
cruise-missile warhead, the W80. But it never happened. 

Four hundred of the warheads sit in a heavily guarded
underground bunker at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque,
N.M. Their tanks of tritium have been removed. The Energy and
Defense departments generally have spent less than $2 million
dollars a year checking in on them. 

Yet in the last two years, the Bush administration has doubled
its spending to keep up the W84s, to $4.4 million for 2006. 

The thing hasnt been deployed for over a decade, and Ive
wondered what they thought they were going to do with it, said
Robert S. Norris, a senior weapons analyst and expert on the
U.S. nuclear arsenal at the Natural Resources Defense Council. 

Last June, the administration announced plans to cut the arsenal
  almost in half, almost entirely from the weapons held in
reserve or inactive status, by 2012. Norris believes all of the
W84s will be scrapped, leaving the reason for increasing its
maintenance unclear. 

If they have some other plans for it, we should know about it,
and it would be quite alarming, Norris said. 

But weapons officials confirmed there are no plans for the W84.
The Pentagon pays virtually nothing out of its budget for its
upkeep but has insisted that the Energy Department maintain it. 

The Energy Department says the extra money in 2006 is for
addressing   a backlog of safety assessments that scientists and
engineers were supposed to perform in past years on the warhead
but didnt. 

Tri-Valley Herald All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
 18 TomPaine.com: No Nukes!
              
Opinion]

Patrick C. Doherty 
												
February 10, 2005

While politicians are scrambling to address Iraq and Social
Security, the nuclear power industry and the Bush administration
are charging ahead with a dangerous plan. Patrick Doherty looks
at the false promises of nuclear energy and the massive economic
opportunity we'll lose if Bush has his way. 

Patrick C. Doherty is senior editor at TomPaine.com. Previously,
he spent a decade working on conflict and economic development
in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans and the Caucasus. His
column, Quo Vadis, focuses on America's big picture: where we
are, where we're going, and how to get there. 

Bushs second term will include many historic decisions, but
none may be more detrimental for long-term American
prosperityand go as quietly unnoticedthan a large-scale
federal commitment to nuclear power. 

The nuclear industry has launched a concerted campaign that, if
successful, would allow the two halves of the energy
industryoilmen and power companiesto preserve their market
dominance. Thats dangerous. Preserving the energy status quo
will cripple any chance that America will escape from our
debt-ridden consumer economy. For America to both grasp the
emerging vision of a more equitable and prosperous innovation
economy and achieve true energy independence, this nuclear
assault must be stopped. 

The new year saw the launch of a well-orchestrated,
multi-pronged campaign calling for America to end its dependence
on oil through massive federal investments in nuclear energy. On
Jan. 1, the American Enterprise Institute published an article
ominously entitled,&#8220;The Solution,&#8221; by William
Tucker. In the February issue of <em>Wired</em> Magazine ,
Global Business Network president Peter Schwartz echoed the same
argument, but geared toward that magazines more libertarian and
tech-savvy readers. 

Then, last week, President Bush singled out nuclear energy in
his State of the Union speech. This week, he increased the
budget for the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste
repository in Nevada and requested a 50 percent increase over
last years budget for advanced nuclear power research. But most
tellingly, Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici is out
selling his new book: A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling The
Promise of Nuclear Energy . 

The argument Tucker and Schwartz use is radical for
conservatives but commonplace within liberal and centrist
circles. They state that Americas dependence on oil in an
increasingly tight market with supplies in unstable regions
makes our nation massively insecure. In addition, they remind us
that nuclear power is climate friendly, as it releases no carbon
into the atmosphere. Therefore, to satisfy the dual imperatives
for energy security and climate change mitigation, we must make
America independent of oil for transportation and carbon-laden
coal for electricity. 

Incredibly, in the three months since our elections, the
mainstream debate in energy policy has shifted from whether
security and climate change were even worth considering to full
acceptance of the dual threat and laying out proposals to deal
with it. 

Nuclear Industrys Power Grab 

But in shifting the lines of the nations energy debate, the
nuclear industry is also trying to obscure its real objectives.
Since the 2004 campaign, energy security and climate change have
produced policy options that talk about how much oil consumption
would be eliminated and by when. In the 2004 campaign, John
Kerry adopted the labor- and environment-led Apollo Alliances
17 percent reduction in oil consumption by 2020at the time, a
more liberal stance. In December, previously uncommitted
centrists (from both parties) have embraced the bi-partisan,
National Commission on Energy Policy agenda calling for 15
percent reductions in oil consumption by 2025. In late 2004, the
Rocky Mountain Institute mapped a path to reduce oil consumption
by 76 percent by 2025 and 100 percent shortly thereafterusing
proven technology to increase energy efficiency and shift to
renewable energy sources. 

Nuclear power advocates are avoiding the transparent and
market-friendly X percent reductions by Y date formula to hide
the weakened position of their industry. The reason is simple.
They cannot promise any reductions for at least a decade,
perhaps longer. Nuclear power in the United States has been on
the verge of collapse since the accident at Three Mile Island
killed new construction. With aging reactors needing retirement,
in the current regulatory environment the nuclear industry will
soon have to shut down its heavily subsidized and privately
lucrative power plants. Any new reactors built in the next 10
years would merely replace aging reactors, doing nothing to
reduce our oil dependence. In essence, the industry is merely
fighting to preserve its 20 percent share of the domestic
electricity market. 

To do that, the industry is employing a cynical
bait-and-switch campaign. Industry advocates are promising the
safety, cost and oil-replacing potential of
generation-after-next pebble-bed reactors, but these designs
still need years of research and development. In the meantime,
the nuclear industry is working with its congressional allies,
like Sen. Domenici, to lift the restrictions on and deliver the
subsidies for less-competitive, more expensive 1980s-era nuclear
designs to merely replace 30 and 40-year old reactors. These
subsidies will cost the taxpayer $8 billion. Its all smoke and
mirrors. 

In reality, we wont see pebble-bed reactors replacing oil for
20 yearswhich may be the Bush administrations goal. Oil
companies are making record profits from high oil prices right
nowprofits that are possible only so long as America sees oil
as a commodity worth fighting for. That requires continued
dependence. Yet those companies also recognize that Asian
economic growth will, within 20 years, drive oil prices through
the roof, making alternatives unavoidable. It all adds up to a
well orchestrated hand off from one powerful industry to
another. Markets be damned. 

Denying An Innovation Economy 

This preservation of the status quo denies America the
opportunity of a century: A chance to build an innovation
economy that delivers not only energy independence but a
booming era of growthgrowth in large part made possible by
transforming our energy infrastructure. 

Economists and business leaders are increasingly talking about
the next economic boom being based on innovation, on the
application of knowledge to solve problems and deliver
higher-quality services and products. To the extent that America
can exploit our scientific and technological advantage to
produce the energy and resource efficient products and services
the developing world needs, we will be able to dig our way out
of the insecurity, indebtedness and inequity that defines
todays consumer economy. 

The outlines of that &#8220;innovation economy&#8221; are
emerging slowly, but distinctly. Information technology is
driving revolutions in biotech, nanotech and materials science.
Combining those technological innovations with innovations in
the housing market known as &#8216;smart growth&#8217; ending
sprawl by integrating efficient transportation and healthier
communitiesAmerica is poised to enter a new economic boom
period. 

That innovation economy requires clean, reliable, flexible and
efficient energy. Clean, to mitigate climate change and improve
public health. Reliable, to power the high-technology industries
and services that require high-quality, uninterrupted power.
Flexible, to accommodate the innovations in land use and
transportation and the advances in efficiency that make turbines
smaller and smaller. And efficient, to reduce overall cost and
environmental impact. 

Nuclear Cant Deliver 

Nuclear power cant deliver on these requirements. When the
current system was designed, clean, reliable, flexible and
efficient were not priorities. Oil was plentiful, carbon
emissions were a non-issue, and our technology was rudimentary
and dirty. As our economy grew, we increased scale, not
efficiency. The simple truth is the system weve got is getting
older and more fragile. Crises like Californias rolling
brownouts and the big northeastern blackout are only going to
become more commonplace. 

Nuclear power does nothing to fix this fractured system. In
fact, it would only reinforce this inefficient system by
creating a new generation of massive plants located far from the
customers they serve. Consumers would have little choice and the
industry would have government over a barrel. 

There are better answers. Technology and design advances have
opened up a new way to organize our energy grid that encourages
high-quality energy and healthy markets. Right now, small
natural gas turbines combined with better grid design can
capture much of the wasted energy by distributing clean
generating capacity closer to consumers. Instead of putting one
massive power plant tens of miles from the customers and taking
five years to build, distributed micro-turbine power plants of
any size can drop in incremental capacity onto the grid where
its needed when its needed. Since theyre affordable, they
eliminate the need for market-corrupting and deficit-worsening
subsidies. 

The resulting vision is quite elegant. Build a new building or
housing development, and you can put a clean new power source
with it. And its not only dependent on natural gas. Wind
turbines already allow rural communities to buy a town-sized
wind farm and make money when they sell excess power back to the
grid. As solar cells become more efficient, middle-class homes
and urban rooftops could be generatingand sellingtheir own
electricity. If that were to happen, big centralized plants
couldnt compete with a network of distributed power generators.
David will have killed Goliath. 

The nuclear industry wants to abort that vision of a clean,
efficient and distributed energy future before it is born. With
the help of George Bush and Pete Domenici, they might just
succeed.
 										[ border=]    									 								
TomPaine.com.]    										  [ /]    									 									
 										  [ /]    									 									
*****************************************************************
 19 [NYTr] US Still Trying to Oust UN Nuclear Official
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 14:52:11 -0600 (CST)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
AP via The Guardian - Feb 9, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4789723,00.html

U.S. Aims to Oust U.N. Nuke Official

By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press Writer

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The United States is lobbying allies in a bid 
to oust the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, perhaps as 
early as the end of the month, diplomats and officials told The 
Associated Press on Wednesday.

Anticipating that present European diplomatic efforts on Iran will 
fail, the diplomats and officials also told AP that Washington plans 
to increase pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program when the 
International Atomic Energy Agency meets Feb. 28.

In Tehran, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami told foreign diplomats 
that no Iranian government would ever abandon the progress the 
country has made in developing peaceful nuclear technology.

Washington, which accuses Iran of making nuclear weapons and wants 
it brought before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, 
considers IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei too soft on the Tehran 
leadership.

No U.S. comment was available on Washington's strategy for the 
upcoming IAEA board of governors meeting.

But several diplomats and government officials from IAEA member 
countries dismissed recent reports that the United States had given 
up attempts to unseat ElBaradei because of lack of support from 
other countries.

``They've been lobbying, and close friends have given them a good 
reception," said one of the officials familiar with the issue, who, 
like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity.

Another said Undersecretary of State John Bolton and other senior 
State Department officials ``were still lobbying the capitals, 
telling them it's the way to go."

With Elbaradei's agency spearheading international attempts to 
squelch nuclear proliferation, the head of the IAEA is a key 
position for Bush administration officials. They want someone who 
shares their views of which country represents a nuclear threat and 
what to do about it.

ElBaradei has challenged those views - first over prewar Iraq and 
then Iran, both labeled part of an ``axis of evil," along with 
North Korea, by President Bush.

He first disputed U.S. assertions that Saddam Hussein had an active 
nuclear weapons program - claims that remain unproven. He then 
refused to endorse arguments by Washington that nuclear activities 
Iran claims are meant only to generate power are actually part of a 
clandestine weapons program.

A direct U.S. move to oust ElBaradei failed late last year - the 
Americans were unable to find anyone to challenge him for a third 
term by the Dec. 31 deadline, shortly after calling on him to step 
down with his second term completed.

It remains unclear whether Washington could muster the 12 votes 
needed among the 35-nation IAEA board for a vote of non-confidence 
in ElBaradei.

Ahead of the Feb. 28 meeting, the majority is either in favor of a 
third term for the IAEA head or appears to be undecided. Reflecting 
sentiment among the latter, one diplomat said his country ``had full 
confidence" in ElBaradei but still shared the U.S. view that no 
U.N. agency head should serve past two terms.

The contacts appeared to be restricted to the high level, with 
Vienna-based diplomats saying the U.S. mission in Vienna pointedly 
refuses to discuss the issue.

In a related issue, the United States will try to redirect 
international focus on Iran's nuclear activities back to the IAEA by 
pushing for creation of a special agency committee that would deal 
with ``problem countries," a diplomat said.

For the first time in more than two years, ElBaradei is not 
producing a written report on Iran for the upcoming board meeting.

While investigations continue into past and present suspicions about 
Iran's nuclear program, agency officials say that no major 
revelations meriting the need for a written report have surfaced 
this time around.

But American officials suggest the lack of a written report is the 
latest reflection of the IAEA's failure to be tough on Iran's 
nuclear transgressions, which, they say merit referral of Tehran's 
dossier to the U.N. Security Council.

The U.S. push to create a special committee, first proposed last 
year by Bush, appears driven by the feeling that talks between Iran 
and Germany, France and Britain will fail.

Those three countries are trying to persuade Iran to agree to either 
scrap its plans to enrich uranium or extend its present short-term 
suspension to a freeze lasting for at least several years.

While the United States publicly supports the talks, officials 
privately say they expect them to fail, leading to renewed 
enrichment activities - which can produce the fissile core of 
nuclear missiles - and a fresh need for the IAEA board to consider 
Security Council referral.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested as much Wednesday, 
telling Fox News that if the Iranians ``are unwilling to take the 
deal, really, that the Europeans are giving ... then the Security 
Council referral looms."

The Europeans have promised Iran economic and technological aid in 
return for cooperation on the nuclear issue.

On Wednesday, the Iranian president warned that if the talks fail, 
his government will not be bound by its undertaking to suspend 
enrichment.

``If other parties (to the negotiations) are not committed to their 
promises, we will not be committed to our promises at all," Khatami 
said.

On the Net: http://www.iaea.org

       
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 20 Manila Times: OPINION: US nuclear strategy calls for outsourcing strikes
– analysts 
	
Friday, February 11, 2005   
      
By Maxim Kniazkov, Agence France-Presse  

Washington, D.C.: US nuclear strategy calls for outsourcing
nuclear strikes, in case of a major conflict in Europe, to NATO
allies that do not have such weapons, in what experts view as an
attempt to skirt international law, according to an
authoritative report made public here. 

The study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national
security and environmental think-tank, is based mainly on
declassified official documents and provides a detailed analysis
of the US nuclear arsenal in Europe as well as of doctrines
justifying its presence there more than a decade after the end
of the Cold War. 

But for the first time, the document revealed Wednesday a
specific number of nuclear warheads which, under US and NATO war
plans, will be transferred to US non-nuclear allies to be
delivered to targets by their warplanes. 

If war were to break out in Europe, as many as 180 nuclear bombs
would be earmarked for delivery by the air forces of Belgium,
the Netherlands, Turkey, Germany and Italy, the report said. 

The weapons are part of a 480-warhead nuclear arsenal the United
States kept in Europe in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991. 

The arsenal, according to the study, is being kept at eight air
force bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey
and Britain. 

Plans call for the remaining 300 weapons to stay in US hands and
to be delivered by US F-15s and F-16s fighter jets, the report
said. 

The arrangement, the council insists, “skirts international law”
because the Nonproliferation Treaty prohibits a nuclear state
from transferring nuclear weapons to a nonweapon state, and
prohibits a non-nuclear state from receiving such weapons. 

The research organization dismisses the argument that if war
breaks out, the Nonproliferation Treaty would no longer apply. 

It argues that preparations for delivering the 180 nuclear bombs
are taking place in peacetime, and “equipping non-nuclear
countries with the means to conduct nuclear warfare is
inconsistent with today’s international efforts to dissuade
other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons.” 

“If China deployed nuclear bombs in North Korea, equipped North
Korean aircraft with mechanical and electronic devices to
deliver the weapons, and trained North Korean pilots to draw up
nuclear strike plans, there would be hell to pay, and rightly
so,” said Hans Kristensen, the author of the report. “Yet that
is precisely what the United States is doing in Europe.” 

The Defense Department declined to comment on the report, citing
its longstanding policy of not publicly discussing deployments
of nuclear weapons. 

The report also sheds light on a secret 1994 US Air Force
document that lists 15 nuclear bombing ranges scattered all over
Europe, including one in Suippes, France, despite the fact that
France is not part of NATO’s nuclear command structure. 

Moreover, it lists one such training range in the North African
nation of Tunisia that is not a member of Western military
alliance at all. 

“It is unclear whether Tunisia knows that Ben Ghilouf is for
nuclear training,” the study said. 

According to the report, the start of President George W. Bush’s
first term in office was marked by a quiet withdrawal of US
nuclear weapons from Greece, a full-fledged NATO ally. 

In April 2001, US Air Force headquarters in Europe issued a
secret order to move 20 nuclear bombs out of Araxos Air Base in
Greece to an unknown destination. 

The decision may have been prompted by a refusal by the Greek
government to modernize its fleet of warplanes earmarked for
carrying these weapons, the document suggested. 

“Greece’s decision is also important because it represents the
first case where nuclear weapons have been completely removed
from a burden-sharing NATO country,” the report said.   
        
	 Copyright (c) 2001 The Manila Times | Terms of Service
 The Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.     
*****************************************************************
 21 ITAR-TASS: Nuclear safety to dominate US-Russia summit agenda - Lugar

10.02.2005, 08.41

WASHINGTON, February 10 (Itar-Tass) - Nuclear safety and
non-proliferation matters must figure prominently on the agenda
of the forthcoming meeting between Presidents George W. Bush of
the United States and Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation
later this month, US Senator Richard Lugar, Chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has told Itar-Tass. 

Senator Lugar is the co-sponsor of the well-known Nunn-Lugar
programme, which envisions assistance to ex-Soviet republics in
eliminating nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The US
spends about 450 million dollars on the programme every year. 

Mr. Lugar declared in favour of Russia's and US taking steps to
settle differences that hinder the implementation of joint
programmes to reduce the stocks of fissionable materials fit to
develop nuclear weapons. 

Senator Lugar spoke of the issue of the legal responsibility of
the sides as one of such problems that hinders, in particular,
the implementation of the inter-governmental agreement on the
reprocessing of the surplus amounts of weapons-grade plutonium. 

The essence of differences between Moscow and Washington comes
to the following: The US would like to exonerate its
specialists, who work in Russia on joint programmes, of any
responsibility in the event of an emergency, including sabotage
or subversion. 

Mr. Lugar said the US would also like to exempt its specialists,
who work in Russia, from the payment of Russia's taxes. To work
out agreements on these issues, Senator Lugar remarked, would be
of importance not only to the US but also to the EU and G-7
members, who participate in the Ten Plus Ten by Ten programme. 

Under the programme, which was adopted in Kananaskis (Canada) in
2002, the US, on the one hand, and the EU, Canada, and Japan, on
the other, are to allocate 10,000 million dollars each in the
course of ten years in assistance to Russia in its efforts to
maintain nuclear safety and eliminate weapons of mass
destruction. 

In the opinion of Mr. Lugar, by the time the two Presidents meet
at summit in Slovakia, both sides must make maximum efforts to
settle contentious issues. This appeal is addressed both to the
executive and legislative branches of power. He said that, for
his part, he had initiated a bill in Congress. The bill would
help remove a number of obstacles to the implementation of the
Nunn-Lugar programme. 

The Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee is
convinced that the settlement of the existing differences would
enable the Presidents of the US and Russia to tackle
non-proliferation problems with still greater effectiveness. 

© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
 22 [NukeNet] Press Release TMIA: NRC delaying Regulations for
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 15:21:17 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)

THREE MILE ISLAND ALERT

For Immediate Release                          Contact

February 10, 2005                                   Scott Portzline 717 
232-8863

                                                                   Eric 
Epstein 717 541-1101





NRC Stalling Nuclear Plant Entrance Guards Requirements

Harrisburg PA

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission continues its irresponsible and 
unreasonable

delay in protecting nuclear plant entrances. There are currently no permanent

requirements covering locked and guarded entrances at our nation's power 
reactors.

"In a race between the NRC and a glacier, bet on the glacier," said Three 
Mile Island

Alert's security consultant Scott Portzline.



"It could be 2007 before permanent requirement s for entrance guards are 
enforced. The

NRC needed 11 years to implement the security improvements we recommended 
to them

in 1993. The guard towers, vehicle barriers and increased guard forces 
added last year

were all viewed as necessities by our group following the 1993 Three Mile 
Island

intrusion and World Trade Center bombing."



On September 12, 2001, Three Mile Island Alert filed a "Petition for 
Rulemaking" with

the NRC which would require armed guards at plant entrances. For nearly 
four and a half

years, the NRC has misled the group about its deliberations on the 
petition. When

requesting status updates, the NRC perpetually stated that a decision on 
the petition

would be made within three to six months.



Now, the NRC has informed TMIA three months after the fact, that it will 
consider

TMIA's petition by February 2006. Even with the timeline, the Commissioners 
can table

the matter for additional study. Furthermore, the NRC is known for giving 
licensees

extended timeframes for meeting their regulatory obligations.



"Without regulations for entrances, a bus load of terrorists could drive 
onto plant property

and the licensee could argue that they are not required to stop intruders 
at the entrance,"

said Portzline. "That sounds crazy, but that's what happened in 1993 after 
the Three Mile

Island vehicle intrusion. The president of the company testified to 
Congress that security

had not been breached even though a car crashed right through the Turbine 
Building!"

In 1993, Portzline presented video tape to the NRC showing how a plant could be

attacked from the air and water.



"We did not petition the NRC to require defenses for these attacks because 
we suspected

the NRC would drag its feet if our request became too complex. So we decided to

petition for the simplest improve ment that we believed could not be 
rejected by the

regulators. But this slow motion delay is regrettably beyond all rational, 
" Portzline said.

                                                                 -- #30 --





Chronology



February 7, 1993: Three Mile Island declares the highest level of emergency 
since the accident

when an intruder is loose in the plant. A 31 year old man dr ives a station 
wagon into the then

guarded entrance at TMI, crashes through the protected area fence and then 
through a roll-up

door. The car stops 63 feet inside the turbine building. He was not 
apprehended until 4 hours

later.



February 26, 1993: The World Trade Center is bombed. These terrorists 
trained only 30 miles

from Three Mile Island where they practiced a night-time mock assault on an 
electrical power

substation. They were associated with Ramsey Yousef and ultimately Al 
Qaeda. Four day after

the bombing, they threatened to attack nuclear facilities with 150 suicide 
soldiers.

Early 2001: TMI's owners remove the guard post at the entrance.



July 2001: TMI Alert researches and drafts its Petition for Rulemaking. The 
group acts in

response to the removal of the entrance guards and the wide open entrance.



September 10, 2001: TMI Alert begins sending press packets announcing the 
petition



September 11, 2001: When the attacks occur, guards at Three Mile Island 
could not close the

entrance because there was no electricity to power the gate shut.



September 12, 2001: TMI Alert files the petition as previously scheduled



November 16, 2004: The NRC issues a memo to the Commissioners explaining 
the timeline for

security considerations.



February 8, 2005: The NRC informs TMI Alert that the petition will be 
considered by February

2006.



Petition for Rulemaking on file:

http://ruleforum.llnl.gov/cgi-bin/downloader/TMI_PRM_lib/994-0002.htm?st=petitions-a

Further info and video:

http://www.tmia.com/security/noguards.html

NRC security timeline memo:

http://www.tmia.com/security/NRCmemo.pdf


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 23 [NukeNet] South Texas nuke shut b/c of leak
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 15:20:47 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)

http://yahoo.reuters.com/financeQuoteCompanyNewsArticle.jhtml?duid=mtfh81712_2005-02-09_22-57-03_n09404051_newsml


South Texas nuclear unit shut after leak found
Wed Feb 9, 2005 05:57 PM ET

HOUSTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - The South Texas Project said on Wednesday it
was shutting down its 1,250 megawatt unit two nuclear power reactor
after a small leak was discovered.
The leak was found after monitoring equipment in the plant detected
elevated radioactivity levels, according to Edward Conaway, spokesman
for the plant.

That radiation remained within the plant's containment area and did not
pose a threat to the public or the plant's employees, he said.

He declined to comment on when the unit was expected to restart.

The leak, totalling about one hundredth of a gallon of water per
minute, was found in a safety injection line, Conaway said, which was
typically used during emergency shutdowns.

The unit is one of two nuclear reactors at the plant, owned by Texas
Genco LP, City Public Service of San Antonio, AEP Texas Central Co.
(AEP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , and Austin Energy.

The other unit was in a "coast down" mode to shut it down for
previously planned maintenance, Conaway said.

The plant's Unit 1 had been shut in 2003 after tiny cracks were found
in instrumentation tubes beneath the reactor.

The STP plant, which began commercial operation in 1988, is one of 69
pressurized water reactors active in the United States. A total of 103
nuclear units are in operation across the country, providing about 10
percent of the nation's power supply.

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 24 [NukeNet] Spotsylvania County, VA Opposes New Reactor Process
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 15:21:07 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)

great news from the campaign in Virginia to stop Dominion's pursuit of
an Early Site Permit to build two new reactors at North Anna.

Brendan Hoffman
Organizer, Nuclear Energy & Waste
Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program
Public Citizen
p: 202.454.5130
f: 202.547.7392
bhoffman@citizen.org
www.citizen.org/cmep

===================================

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SPOTSYLVANIA SUPERVISORS DECLARE DISPLEASURE WITH THE SUMMARY DRAFT
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT FOR AN EARLY SITE PERMIT (ESP) FOR
EXPANSION OF THE NORTH ANNA POWER STATION; SUPERVISORS ALSO OBJECT TO
THE ESP PROCESS


Spotsylvania, VA ­ February 9, 2005 -- On February 8 the Board of
Supervisors approved a resolution declaring the Board's displeasure with
the summary draft environmental impact statement for an early site
permit (ESP) for expansion of the North Anna Power Station.  Through the
resolution, the Board also stated objection to the ESP process.

Dominion Nuclear North Anna L.L.C. (Dominion) submitted an application
to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last September for an early
site permit allowing the siting of one or more additional nuclear power
facilities at the North Anna Station.  NRC began the environmental
review process and then published a draft impact statement for an early
site permit.  The draft notes that the power station is already the
largest water user in the region.  Further, it says that additional
facilities would increase power station water consumption, and might
potentially lower the water level in Lake Anna, even if temporarily.  At
the same time, projected area growth and increased water demands could
result in increased water conflicts.

These conclusions fail to fully consider future community water needs,
ignoring changes in the surrounding communities brought by unprecedented
residential growth even during the application process.  The summary
draft does not fully consider how lowering the lake level would impact
the many citizens living on and visiting Lake Anna.  Consequently, the
Board felt compelled to approve the resolution.  The resolution language
expresses displeasure with the summary draft environmental impact
statement for an early site permit, appealing to regulatory authorities
to reconsider it. The resolution also urges consideration of area growth
and changes in the surrounding and downstream localities as part of the
process of siting additional North Anna power facilities.   Finally, the
resolution states that NRC must give due consideration to reasonably
anticipated growth and future community needs throughout this process.

NRC plans to hold a public hearing on February 17, 2005 from 7:00 p.m.
until 10:00 p.m., at Louisa County Middle School, 1009 Davis Highway in
Mineral, Virginia.  The draft Environmental Impact Statement can be
viewed on the Internet at
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1811.
For additional information from NRC, please call 1-800-368-5642,
extension 1154.
	

For further information:  http://www.spotsylvania.va.us
Contact                       :  Kathy Smith, Public Information
Officer
                                        ksmith@spotsylvania.va.us
Phone                         :  540-582-7055 x 239 or 540-455-8988

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 25 [NukeNet] Nuclear Reactors Vulnerable to Cyber Attack
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 15:21:28 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)


http://www.securityfocus.com/news/10353

Feds aim to tighten nuclear cyber security [...with voluntary standards -Mike]

By <mailto:klp@securityfocus.com>Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Jan 25 2005 
5:47PM

Federal regulators are proposing to add computer security standards to 
their criteria for installing new computerized safety systems in nuclear 
power plants.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) quietly launched a public 
comment period late last month on a proposed 
<http://ruleforum.llnl.gov/cgi-bin/downloader/rg_lib/123-0184.pdf>15-page 
update to its regulatory guide "Criteria for Use of Computers in Safety 
Systems of Nuclear Power Plants." The 
<http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/reg-guides/power-reactors/active/01-152/>current 
version, written in 1996, is three pages long and makes no mention of 
security.

The replacement would expand existing safety and reliability requirements 
for digital safety system, and infuse security requirements into every 
stage of a system's lifecycle, from drawing board to retirement.

Last year the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 
warned of growing international concern about the potential for cyber 
attacks against nuclear facilities, and said it was finalizing new security 
guidelines of its own. No successful targeted attacks against plants have 
been publicly reported, but in 2003 the Slammer worm 
<http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6767>penetrated a private computer 
network at Ohio's idled Davis-Besse nuclear plant and disabled a safety 
monitoring system for nearly five hours. The worm entered the plant network 
through an interconnected contractor's network, bypassing Davis-Besse's 
firewall.

The NRC draft advises against such interconnections. It also advises plant 
operators to consider the effect of each new system on the plant's cyber 
security, and to develop response plans to deal with computer incidents. 
Vendors are told how to reduce the risk of saboteurs planting backdoors and 
logic bombs in safety system software during the development phase.

"I really liked the notion of making people aware that they need to address 
security throughout the process of developing new software and systems, and 
not just as a test at the end," says Chris Wysopal, a Boston-based computer 
security researcher with the Symantec Corporation. (Symantec publishes 
SecurityFocus ). "They talked about that going all the way back to the 
requirement phase, which I thought was good"

But for all its breadth, adherence to the new guidelines would be strictly 
voluntary for operators of the 103 nuclear reactors already running in the 
U.S. -- a detail that irks some security experts. In filed comments, Joe 
Weiss, a control systems cyber security consultant at KEMA, Inc., argued 
the regulatory guide shouldn't be limited to plant safety systems, and that 
existing plants should be required to comply.

"There have been numerous cases of control system cyber security impacts 
including several in commercial nuclear plants," Weiss wrote. "Many nuclear 
plants have connected their plant networks to corporate networks making 
them potentially vulnerable to cyber intrusions."

Wysopal, who reviewed the draft at SecurityFocus' request, agrees that it 
could use more juice. "It's kind of sad," he says. "I see that people have 
all these great notions of how we can build software and systems more 
securely, but it's always voluntary."

The NRC is accepting public comments on the new guide until February 11th.

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 26 NRC: Staff to Meet with Entergy Operations, Inc. to Discuss Arkansas Nuclear One, Unit 2
License Renewal Inspection

News Release - Region IV - 2005 - 
 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 

Office of Public Affairs, Region IV
  No. IV-05-005           February 10, 2005   
  CONTACT:     Victor Dricks
Phone: 817-860-8128
     E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov  
  


Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials will meet with
representatives of Entergy Operations, Inc. on Thursday, Feb.
17, in Russellville, Ark., to discuss the results of the agencys
third inspection of the Arkansas Nuclear One license renewal
program for Unit 2. 

The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. in Room 347 of the Generation
Support Building, at the plant site located at the junction of
Hwy. 64A and Hwy. 333 South, in Russellville. It will be open to
public observation and NRC officials will be available prior to
the close of the meeting to answer questions from the public. A
report on the inspection will be issued approximately 45 days
after the meeting and will be available to the public. NRC held
a public meeting in December on the results of its first two
inspections of the license renewal program for Unit 2. 

The inspections are a key part of NRCs review process to verify
that licensees have programs in place to identify and manage the
effects of aging on the plants systems, structures and
components during the 20 additional years of operation prior to
a final decision on license renewal applications, said NRC
Region IV administrator Bruce S. Mallett. 

The NRC received the license renewal application for Unit 2 on
Oct. 15, 2003. If approved, it would extend the operating
license for Unit 2 to July 17, 2038. The NRC has already
approved an extension of the operating license for Unit 1 until
May 20, 2034.   



  


 	Last revised Thursday, February 10, 2005 	   
*****************************************************************
 27 Guardian Unlimited: Rice Aims to Defuse N. Korea Nuclear Issue
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Thursday February 10, 2005 1:16 PM

AP Photo YL121 

By ANNE GEARAN 

AP Diplomatic Writer 

LUXEMBOURG (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said
Thursday that North Korea should return to disarmament talks and
avoid a path toward further international isolation. ``The world
has given them a way out and we hope they will take that way
out,'' she said. 

Rice's comments came after North Korea stated explicitly that it
has nuclear weapons and said that it needs them as protection
against an increasingly hostile United States. 

``The North Koreans have been told by the president of the
United States that the United States has no intention of
attacking or invading North Korea,'' Rice said during a news
conference here with European Union leaders. 

``There is a path for the North Koreans that would put them in a
more reasonable relationship with the rest of the world,'' she
said, referring to an international disarmament effort that
includes the United States. 

Giving up nuclear weapons would offer hope for a better life to
that country's people, Rice said. North Korea is desperately
poor, and people are fleeing the country to avoid starvation. 

The North Korean statement may be a bluff meant to put the
United States back on its heels before the regime finally does
return to the disarmament table. North Korea told a visiting
U.S. congressional delegation last month that it would return to
those six-nation talks. 

Asked to analyze the thinking in Pyongyang, Rice was almost
dismissive. 

``I'm not sure anyone ever gets very far by trying to
second-guess the motivation of the North Korean regime,'' she
said. 

Rice said the United States isn't treating North Korea
differently from Iran, another nation in President Bush's famous
rhetorical axis of evil. 

``The message is clear: give up these aspirations for nuclear
weapons and you know life can be different,'' Rice said. She
also said that is the same message that Libya understood in
renouncing its own nuclear ambitions. 

Unlike Iran, North Korea had not been a frequent topic during
Rice's breakneck tour of eight European countries and Israel
over the past week. She also visited the West Bank and the
Vatican. 

Rice used the trip to reach out to Europe, and Europe reached
back. 

It is too soon to measure success, but Rice seemed pleased as
she neared the end of the breakneck tour. 

The trip, Rice's first as the top U.S. diplomat, engaged
European leaders, intellectuals and curious citizens. Interest
in her itinerary grew steadily as she made a case for a fresh
start after rancor over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Iran's
nuclear development program was a topic for most of Rice's
meetings with European politicians. 

``It's been a really great conversation,'' she said Wednesday in
Brussels, Belgium. ``I feel very good about what we've done here
and the conversation that we've had.'' 

Rice's trip was concluding Thursday in Luxembourg, which
currently holds the rotating European Union presidency, with
meetings to lay groundwork for the Feb. 22 EU-U.S. summit in
Brussels with Bush. 

The 2003 Iraq war divided the United States and longtime allies,
and U.S. policies there continue to be widely unpopular even
among Europeans whose governments, such as Italy and Poland,
sent significant numbers of troops to Iraq. 

``The times are different now than they were a year ago or two
years ago when we did have our differences, not with everyone,
but with a number of states,'' Rice said in Belgium. ``While we
still had common interests and common values I don't think we
had a common agenda for a while on what was really before us, at
least in regards to Iraq.'' 

The success of elections in Iraqited States and its allies
common purpose, Rice said. 

Several countries committed to help train Iraqi forces and
participate in an upcoming NATO training mission after lunch
with Rice and NATO Secretary-General Japp de Hoop Scheffer. 

``I have to say that it is the best discussion of Iraq that we
have had as an alliance since the Saddam Hussein regime fell,
and, in fact, well before that, because it was clearly a unified
alliance,'' Rice said. 

Rice's tour included France and Germany, two of the United
States' strongest critics on Iraq, and two of six nations that
have refused to participate in a postwar NATO force there. She
also visited Britain, Italy and Poland, all allies in Iraq, and
Turkey on the European portion of her trip. 
  
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 28 NRC: NRC Officials to Meet with Pennsylvania Hospital to Discuss Oversight of Radiation
Safety Program

News Release - Region I - 2005-00 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY 
COMMISSION 

Office of Public Affairs, Region I No. I-05-007                          
February 10, 2005 CONTACT:     Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil 
A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331                     E-mail: 
opa1@nrc.gov  
  

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials will meet with officials 
of Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center on Wednesday, February 
16, to discuss oversight of the radiation safety program at the 
Pottsville, Pa., facility. 

During an NRC inspection at Good Samaritan in November, 12 
apparent violations were identified and are being considered for 
escalated enforcement by the NRC. NRC inspectors observed that 
the hospital does not actively oversee its brachytherapy program 
and has relied on a single authorized user and a consultant to 
ensure the program is in compliance with NRC regulations. In a 
letter sent to the hospital forwarding the inspection report, 
George Pangburn, Director of the Region I Division of Nuclear 
Materials Safety, said the apparent violations indicated an 
inadequate control of the hospitals brachytherapy program. 
(Brachytherapy is a radiation therapy in which radioactive 
material - seeds - are placed in the body to treat a variety of 
cancers and other diseases.) The apparent violations did not 
cause danger to the public or patients. 

The meeting, called a predecisional enforcement conference, will 
begin at 1:00 p.m., in the Public Meeting Room at the NRC Region 
I Office, 475 Allendale Road in King of Prussia. During the 
conference, the licensee will be given the opportunity to address 
the apparent violations. The public is invited to observe the 
meeting, and NRC officials will be available at the conclusion of 
the meeting to answer any questions. 

The decision to hold a predecisional enforcement conference does 
not mean that a determination has been made that violations have 
occurred or that enforcement action will be taken. The purpose is 
to discuss the apparent violations, causes and safety 
significance, to provide the licensee with an opportunity to 
point out any errors in the NRC inspection report and to enable 
the company to outline its corrective actions. 

No decision on the apparent violations or any contemplated 
enforcement action, such as a civil penalty, will be made at the 
conference. Those decisions will be made by NRC officials at a 
later time. 

If issued, the enforcement action will be available online in the 
NRCs electronic reading room at: 
www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/regulatory/enforcement/current.html#materi 
als. The details of the apparent violation are described in an 
NRC letter to the facility, which can be accessed online at: 
www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/web-based.html by entering accession 
number ML050280105 as a search term.   

Last revised Thursday, February 10, 2005           
*****************************************************************
 29 NRC: NRC Testifies on Energy Policy Act of 2003 Before Congressional Committee
 
News Release - 2005-02
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION   
  Office of Public Affairs     Telephone: 301/415-8200   
  Washington, DC 20555-0001     E-mail: opa@nrc.gov  
  No. 05-026     February 10, 2005   
  

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes enacting
nuclear-related provisions of H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act of
2003, would be a significant step forward for the protection of
public health and safety and the common defense and security, a
top agency official told the House Committee on Energy and
Commerce today. 

Some of the provisions in the bill are the most important
nuclear security proposals related to commercial nuclear
activities that have been placed before Congress, said Luis
Reyes, the NRCs Executive Director for Operations. This
legislation would also assist NRC in evaluating license
applications for new nuclear facilities. 

Reyes went on to outline significant actions the NRC has taken
since the 2001 terrorist attacks to improve security at the
facilities it regulates. He described increased physical
security at nuclear power plants requiring, among other
measures, stricter site access controls and enhanced mock
adversary force exercises, as well as enhanced communication
with the intelligence community and improved coordination with
federal, state and local organizations responsible for
protecting the nations critical infrastructure. 

Reyes strongly supported a specific section of H.R. 6 for
containing provisions that would allow the NRC to authorize
guards at nuclear power plants to have and use more powerful
weapons against violent attacks, and would criminalize certain
activities such as bringing dangerous weapons into and
sabotaging the construction of nuclear facilities. Reyes also
pointed out provisions the NRC considers superfluous because the
commission has already addressed them or because the provisions
dont promise greater security than already achieved. 

The commission would welcome the prompt enactment of many H.R. 6
provisions that relate to commercial use of radioactive material
since they would assist the NRC in its efforts to further ensure
the adequate protection of public health and safety, and the
common defense and security, Reyes said. 

The written testimony will be available at
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/congress-docs/congr
ess-testimony/2005/. For additional information on the
enhancements to nuclear safety since 9/11, go to
http://www.nrc.gov.   



  


 	Last revised Thursday, February 10, 2005 	   
*****************************************************************
 30 Bellona: Chernobyl NPP is dangerous again 

A French company, which won the tender for radioactive storage
facility construction made significant failures during
construction what made the operation of the facility almost
impossible. 

2005-02-10 16:19

The Russian daily Trud reported on January 25 that the reactor
storage pools at the Chernobyl plant are filled up with spent
nuclear fuel rods what makes the plant even more dangerous.
Another threat at the Chernobyl is the sarcophagus constructed
around exploded unit no.4 as it can collapse any day. The beams
B1, B2, and the roof, which were mounted in the extreme
conditions, are hardly stable, as they were put on the half
destroyed base by the crane operators-stalkers when radiation
levels were extremely high. 
There is no activity on erection of the wall, which could stop
the gradual falling of the sarcophagus towards town Pripyat. 

The Chernobyl plant director Alexander Smyshlayev explained the
situation by the lack of specialists who could dismantle the
equipment at the plant. “Out of 3,700 people only a few
specialists could do that” he said, Trud reported. The Chernobyl
plant again makes a great potential threat. 
  
  Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge
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
*****************************************************************
 31 toledoblade.com: FirstEnergy promises environmental report
 
Thursday, February 10, 2005 

AKRON - FirstEnergy Corp., which owns the coal-fired Bay Shore
power plant in Oregon and the Davis-Besse nuclear plant off
State Rt. 2 in Ottawa County, said it plans to give its
shareholders an in-depth report by Dec. 1 about its' operations'
effect on the environment.

Ellen Raines, a spokesman for the utility, said it was not
immediately clear how the report would differ from other company
materials produced to date. But she confirmed that the study was
prompted by concerns from the Presbyterian Church and the
Marianist Province of the United States, both of which own
company stock.

FirstEnergy is one of the nation's largest utilities, with its
energy portfolio being primarily coal and nuclear facilities in
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

Ms. Raines said the report probably will point out that
FirstEnergy's emissions from coal plants are mitigated by its
investment in nuclear, which produces 40 percent of the
utility's electricity.

By comparison, about 20 percent of electricity nationwide is
generated by nuclear plants.

© 2005 The Blade. The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., 

Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 
*****************************************************************
 32 NRC: NRC Issues Draft Safety Evaluation for Clinton Early Site Permit Application
 
News Release - 2005-02
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION   
  Office of Public Affairs     Telephone: 301/415-8200   
  Washington, DC 20555-0001     E-mail: opa@nrc.gov  
  No. 05-027     February 10, 2005   
  


The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has issued a draft
safety evaluation report (SER) for an Early Site Permit (ESP)
for the Clinton site, about six miles east of Clinton, Ill. 

The ESP process allows an applicant to address site-related
issues, such as environmental impacts, for possible future
construction and operation of a nuclear power plant at the site.
The Clinton application was filed Sept. 25, 2003, by Exelon
Generation Company, LLC. If approved, the permit would give
Exelon up to 20 years to decide whether to build one or more
nuclear plants on the site and to file an application with the
NRC for approval to begin construction. 

NRC staff expect to finalize the safety evaluation later this
year, including an ongoing review of Exelons performance-based
methodology regarding earthquake effects. A supplement to the
draft SER, summarizing the staffs review of seismic issues, is
expected by May 31. At that time, the staff will also finalize
the schedule for issuing a final SER. 

Along with the SER, the staff must complete an Environmental
Impact Statement, the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards
must issue a report on the ESP application, and the Atomic
Safety and Licensing Board Panel must conclude its hearing on
the matter before the Commission can reach a final decision on
issuing the ESP. The NRC expects to finish this process by the
end of summer 2006. 

The 300-page draft SER contains the agency's review of the
Clinton ESP application. The NRC staff is reviewing information
on: 

 site seismology, geology, meteorology and hydrology;
  risks from potential accidents resulting from operation of a
nuclear plant at the site;
  the sites ability to support adequate physical security for a
nuclear plant; and
  proposed major features of the emergency plan Exelon would
implement if a reactor is eventually built at the site. 

Exelon will have 14 days to review the draft SER for proprietary
information. The report will then be available electronically
for public inspection in the NRC Public Document Room, 11555
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md. It will also be available on the
NRCs Web site at:
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-licensing/esp/clinton.html. In
addition, the Vespasian Warner Public Library in Clinton has
agreed to make the draft SER available for public inspection.   



  


 	Last revised Thursday, February 10, 2005 	   
*****************************************************************
 33 toledoblade.com: Nuclear plant restarts after 3-week shutdown
 
Thursday, February 10, 2005 


Article published Thursday, February 10, 2005
 
DAVIS-BESSE
 
By TOM HENRY BLADE STAFF WRITER
 

OAK HARBOR, Ohio - Davis-Besse is in the early stages of restart. 
The nuclear plant had been shut down three weeks for scheduled 
maintenance.

It should be back at full power by the end of the week, Richard 
Wilkins, a FirstEnergy Corp. spokesman, said yesterday.

The utility began heating up the Ottawa County nuclear plant's 
reactor Monday night. It is performing a slow, conservative 
restart to avoid straining pump seals and other pieces of 
equipment that underwent maintenance during the outage, Mr. 
Wilkins said.

"We're going at it methodically," he said.

The scheduled outage began Jan. 17. Few surprises were revealed 
beyond some unexpected ice damage to the interior of the plant's 
cooling tower, the hourglass-shaped structure used to help 
circulate nonradioactive cooling water to and from the plant's 
steam condenser.

The extent of ice damage has not been calculated. But several 
days of mild weather that preceded yesterday's snow melted enough 
ice for workers to get inside the cooling tower and repair many 
of the damaged baffles.

That will keep plant efficiency from being affected during peak 
usage this summer, Mr. Wilkins said.

The latest outage was the first time FirstEnergy employees and 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors were able to see how the 
reactor fared since the massive unit's current head was brought 
in from a mothballed facility in Midland, Mich., in 2002 and 
retrofitted for Davis-Besse.

There were no signs of significant reactor acid leakage, either 
on the device's lid or from its bottom, according to Victoria 
Mitlyng, an NRC spokesman.

"They're fine for restart," she said.

The NRC inspection team's preliminary findings likely will be 
discussed at the agency's next oversight panel meeting, scheduled 
from 2 to 5 p.m. Feb. 22 at the Davis-Besse administration 
building.

Davis-Besse was the nation's first nuclear plant to have a 
reactor head become so dangerously thinned by corrosion that it 
nearly ruptured. The plant was allowed back into operation 11 
months ago, ending a two-year outage prompted by what senior NRC 
officials have described as the industry's greatest safety lapse 
since the Three Mile Island Unit 2 partial meltdown in 1979.

Davis-Besse and another area nuclear plant, Fermi II, are both 
along the Lake Erie shoreline, each about 30 miles from Toledo.

A report filed with Michigan's Public Services Commission said 
Detroit Edison lost $15.4 million as a result of Fermi II's 
unexpected Jan. 24 shutdown. That outage was prompted by a 
nonradioactive leak of water used to cool equipment other than 
the reactor.

Fermi II, located in northern Monroe County, encountered an 
$800,000 repair bill. Detroit Edison, the plant's owner-operator, 
had to buy $14.6 million in replacement power to meet customer 
energy needs while the nuclear plant was idle, the report said.

The leak eventually was attributed to a gasket on one of the 
plant's 14 air cooling units. All 14 units have been inspected.

A sealant common to the faulty unit and four others has been 
replaced. The plant encountered a couple of minor complications 
during restart but has been at full power since 9 a.m. Tuesday, 
Detroit Edison has said.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com or 419-724-6079.

© 2005 The Blade. The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., 
Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 

  


*****************************************************************
 34 FT.com: Atomic power station breaches 'desperately worrying'
 
By Jean Eaglesham, Political Correspondent 
Published: February 10 2005 02:00 | 

Last updated: February 10 2005 02:00

Unauthorised access to a nuclear power station and the theft of 
sensitive information were among 45 security breaches reported to 
the nuclear security watchdog last year, according to figures 
obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The scale of the reported incidents will raise concerns about
the potential for terrorist attacks or thefts from nuclear
stations such as Sellafield. The government reviewed and
strengthened security controls following the September 11
attacks. But the newly released figures suggest human error is
still leading to potentially serious breaches.

Patrick Mercer, the Conservative spokesman on homeland security,
desc- ribed the statistics as "desperately worrying". He said
the figures showed the need for the government to educate the
public about the threats and to better co-ordinate its own
response to a potential attack.

The security breaches were logged by the Office for Civil
Nuclear Security, which regulates security at 23 civil atomic
power stations and other sites. It also regulates the transport
of nuclear materials within the UK.

Eight of the incidents reported to the watchdog were classified
as "failure of security leading to unacceptable or undesirable
con- sequences", although the regulator said none of the
breaches involved the theft of nuclear material or sabotage. All
of the eight were attributed to human error.

In one of the more serious cases, a "genuine error by two
visitors" resulted in them gaining unauthorised and unescorted
access to a site. Another incident led to "sensitive company
doc-uments" being found and handed in by a member of the public.

In three cases, a failure by staff to comply with security rules
led to restricted information being sent on the internet. Six
other incidents involved theft, including lap-top computers
taken from a company office when guards failed to respond to an
alarm. Items stolen from cars included a CD containing
restricted information.

Thwarted attempts to bypass security measures reported to the
regulator included two people using forged company-headed
notepaper to try to gain entry to a railway yard and a delivery
driver using a colleague's pass.

The Department of Trade and Industry, which has responsibility
for the security watchdog, said yesterday the government had
"undiminished confidence in the security regime at civil nuclear
sites, which is continually reviewed".  
  
© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2005. "FT"
and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times.
Privacy policy| Terms| Advertising| Corporate  
*****************************************************************
 35 YDR: Group questions NRC enforcement - 

York Daily Record

[ydr.com]                                       

TMI pulled two control room crews following a failed simulator
test. 

By SEAN ADKINS Daily Record/Sunday News Thursday, February 10,
2005 

A nonprofit environmental group has argued that the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission should have handed down a stiffer penalty 
for two Three Mile Island Unit 1 control room operator crews that 
failed simulator tests designed to evaluate how licensed workers 
would respond to multiple plant emergencies

        The commission penalized the plant with a green, or 
base-level, violation for the event that occurred last February.

        David A. Lochbaum, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned 
Scientists, said the commission cited the failures as a low 
safety threat, based on the fact that the event occurred during a 
test and not in an actual emergency.

        The Union of Concerned Scientists is a Washington, 
D.C.-based nonprofit environmental group.

        The violation, Lochbaum said, should have been bumped 
from green to white — an infraction that requires additional NRC 
oversight.

        "It's inconsistent to conduct training under realistic 
events and not grade as if it was a realistic event," Lochbaum 
said. "When you have two crews failing, it's more than just one 
person having a bad day."

        Last February, AmerGen Energy pulled two Three Mile 
Island Unit 1 control room crews from duty following the failed 
simulator exam.

        Along with the control room crews, two of five TMI 
control room supervisors individually failed the simulator tests.

        The plant ordered a third supervisor to be retrained 
"based on his weak performance on the dynamic simulator portion 
of his exam," according to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
inspection report.

        Five of six crew members from one control room operator 
team did not pass individual simulator scenario exams.

        In December, the National Nuclear Accrediting Board 
discovered similar concerns at TMI when it put TMI's control room 
operator training program on probation.

        Failures by both control room crews last February led to 
an NRC-issued green violation — an infraction of very low safety 
significance that requires no additional NRC oversight.

        "Specifically, the finding reflected potential 
shortcomings responding to actual abnormal or emergency 
conditions," according to NRC's report.

        The NRC handed down a second base-level non-cited 
violation in regard to the simulator's exam schedule. The exam 
used repeated scenarios from week to week across all crews, so 
some operators who tested late in the cycle had the potential to 
know in advance what the simulated emergency might involve.

        Despite the potential for some operators to cheat on the 
exam, the results of the tests did not indicate any advance 
knowledge of specific scenarios, according to the NRC's report.

        AmerGen officials cautioned operators not to discuss the 
specifics of the exam with other crews.

 	In response to the NRC's findings, AmerGen changed its testing
schedule so that similar exam scenarios are not viewed by later
crews, said Ralph DeSantis, a spokesman for AmerGen.

 	"We are always upgrading the simulator to ensure that it
replicates what happens in the plant," he said.

 	Last February, TMI's annual simulator exercise found that two
out of eight control room crews did not demonstrate the skills
to correctly respond to abnormal plant conditions. The
commission requires all licensed operators to pass annual
operating tests.

 	DeSantis said TMI does agree with the NRC's green violation
finding in regard to the two crews that failed simulator test.

 	"Failing any one of the four or five critical steps in a
scenario means that they fail the whole test," he said. "It's
not entirely uncommon for crews to fail simulator tests."

 	Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the NRC, said the failure of
scenario tests are not common, but have occurred at other plants.

 	"Some of the exercises are extremely complex," he said. "They
have to deal with a number of worst-case scenarios while still
deciding what pumps to turn on and what valves do you close."

 	The main goal of the exercise is to ensure the reactor's core
stays covered and cool, Sheehan said.

 	During the annual simulator test, control room crews face
emergency scenarios that involve simulated multiple equipment
failures designed to challenge the full knowledge of the
operators, DeSantis said.

 	"What would our critics say if no one ever failed an exam?,"
he said. "Our critics would say that the exams are too easy."

 	Crews that fail the simulator exam are pulled from their jobs,
retrained and retested.

 	The two TMI crews that flunked the annual review labored
through a week-long intensive retraining regimen focused on how
to correctly respond to the failed scenario, DeSantis said.

 	The two crews did pass their follow-up simulator test, which
involved a new set of challenging scenarios, he said.

 	All the operators from the two crews have returned to their
posts, DeSantis said.

 	Regardless of TMI's efforts, Lochbaum said the NRC should have
issued a white finding. "The first step toward fixing a problem
is admitting that it's there," Lochbaum said. "They know it's
there now and they will fix it."

 Reach Sean Adkins at 771-2047 or sadkins@ydr.com.

Copyright © York Daily Record 2005 122 S. George St., P.O. Box 
15122 York, PA 17405, (717) 771-2000
*****************************************************************
 36 San Antonio Express-News: Water leak shuts down S. Texas nuclear reactor 

  [San Antonio's Home Page From The Express-News and KENS 5]     

"MySA.com">

Web Posted: 02/10/2005 12:00 AM CST 

BAY CITY  A reactor at the South Texas Project nuclear facility
was being shut down Wednesday after the discovery of a small
water leak in its coolant system. 

Officials at the nuclear plant, about 100 miles southwest of
Houston, said there was no release of radiation and no danger to
the public. 

City Public Service reached a deal last year to purchase another
300 megawatts of power from the plant, giving the utility 40
percent of the output there. 

Sensitive instruments used to monitor for leaks indicated
earlier this week there might be a problem with Unit 2, said
Mark McBurnett, manager of nuclear safety assurance at the
facility. 

McBurnett said the leak is releasing the superheated water,
which actually comes out in the form of steam, at a rate of 1/10
gallon per minute. 

"We are following normal procedures to address this issue," he
said. "Once the unit is shut down and cooled down, we will
determine the cause and take corrective action." 

The shut down process is expected to be completed by noon today. 

McBurnett said he could not estimate how long the unit would be
out of service. However, the fix should be fairly
straightforward, he said. 

The repairs should be easier than the ones associated with a
leak in Unit 1 found in April 2003, McBurnett said. 

Unit 1 was idled for several months in 2003 after an inspection
detected a tiny deposit containing boric acid  described as
about half the size of an aspirin  on the bottom of the
containment area of the reactor vessel. 

The availability of electricity won't be a concern because the
state has plenty of reserve power, McBurnett said.   			     			
  				
MySanAntonio.com Express-News                     
KENS 5          
Portions © 2005 KENS 5 and the San Antonio Express-News.
All rights reserved.                                     
*****************************************************************
 37 PRN: FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company's Davis-Besse Station 

ALT="http://www.firstenergycorp.com" 

Feb. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- FirstEnergy Nuclear 
Operating Company 

(FENOC) announced today that the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power 
Station resumed generating electricity last night (February 9) 
after a scheduled outage to inspect major equipment and conduct 
routine maintenance. 

As of 8 a.m., the plant was operating at 40-percent power and is 
expected to reach 100 percent by Friday. 

"Overall, we found the plant's equipment and systems to be in 
excellent operating condition and ready to support continued safe 
and reliable operation," said Davis-Besse Vice President Mark 
Bezilla. 

Inspections found no significant issues with two Reactor Coolant 
Pumps, the Reactor Head and bottom of the Reactor Vessel, or the 
Reactor Coolant System. Plant personnel also made repairs to the 
Cooling Tower to assure the continued efficiency of that system. 

Also, the inspection of more than 30,000 tubes in the plant's two 
Steam Generators found no major issues, with only 83 of the tubes 
requiring some repair work. The repairs are not expected to 
impact plant operations. 

Davis-Besse operated safely and reliably in 2004 after it was 
returned to service in March, following an extended shutdown. The 
plant's capability factor was about 98 percent for the nine 
months it operated in 2004, compared with the industry top 
quartile average of 90.2 percent for the year. Davis- Besse's 
total generation of 5.7 million megawatt-hours of electricity 
contributed to FENOC's fleet record output in 2004 of 29.9 
million megawatt- hours. 

FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company is a subsidiary of the 
Akron, Ohio- based FirstEnergy Corp., a registered public utility 
holding company. 

Forward-Looking Statement: This news release includes 
forward-looking statements based on information currently 
available to management. Such statements are subject to certain 
risks and uncertainties. These statements typically contain, but 
are not limited to, the terms "anticipate", "potential", 
"expect", "believe", "estimate" and similar words. Actual results 
may differ materially due to the speed and nature of increased 
competition and deregulation in the electric utility industry, 
economic or weather conditions affecting future sales and 
margins, changes in markets for energy services, changing energy 
and commodity market prices, replacement power costs being higher 
than anticipated or inadequately hedged, maintenance costs being 
higher than anticipated, legislative and regulatory changes 
(including revised environmental requirements), adverse 
regulatory or legal decisions and the outcome of governmental 
investigations (including revocation of necessary licenses or 
operating permits), availability and cost of capital, the 
continuing availability and operation of generating units, the 
inability to accomplish or realize anticipated benefits of 
strategic goals, the ability to improve electric commodity 
margins and to experience growth in the distribution business, 
the ability to access the public securities markets, further 
investigation into the causes of the August 14, 2003 regional 
power outages and the outcome, cost and other effects of present 
and potential legal and administrative proceedings and claims 
related to those outages, the final outcome in the proceeding 
related to FirstEnergy's Application for a Rate Stabilization 
Plan in Ohio, the risks and other factors discussed from time to 
time in FirstEnergy's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, 
including its annual report on Form 10-K (as amended) for the 
year ended December 31, 2003, and its Form 10-Q for the quarter 
ended September 30, 2004, and other similar factors. FirstEnergy 
expressly disclaims any current intention to update any 
forward-looking statements contained in this document as a result 
of new information, future events, or otherwise. 

SOURCE FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company 

Web Site: http://www.firstenergycorp.com 

"PR Newswire for Journalists" border="0"> 
*****************************************************************
 38 Sofia Morning News: Bulgarians Unite Efforts with Greenpeace against Belene Nuke
 	 	 	 	 	 	
www.novinite.com                                                      

[Sofia News Agency]                                                           

  People in Novi Han protesting against the expansion of a 
nuclear deport located near their village. They have now united 
efforts with the Greenpeace organization against the construction 
of Bulgaria’s second nuke in Belene. Photo by bTV  

Politics: 10 February 2005, Thursday.

Bulgarians from the small city of Novi Han and representatives of 
the Greenpeace organization discussed the consequences of the 
country's nuclear power policy and its plans for expansion of a 
nuclear depot near the city.
 
Jan Haverkamp, activist of the international environmental 
organization, underlined that the international organization is 
backing the people from Novi Han, who are urging for reforms in 
Bulgaria's nuclear power policy. 

The people from Novi Han, located some 20 km away of capital 
Sofia, are opposing the expansion of the nuclear depot near their 
city. The depot, first constructed some 40 year ago is now full 
and the government is planning its expansion.The people have 
joined Greenpeace's demands for Bulgaria to stop the produce of 
nuclear power. 

The international organization filed claim against Government's 
decision for the building of Belene, Bulgaria's second nuclear 
power plant.
 
Bulgaria has revived a controversial plan to build a second 
nuclear power plant on the Danube River, announced on June 9, a 
decade after it was dropped amid protests from environmentalists. 

In the late 1980s Bulgaria spent USD 1.3 B on infrastructure and 
foundations at the Danube-located Belene for a 1,000- MW reactor, 
supplied by then Czechoslovakia. It would cost another USD 2 B to 
complete the project by 2010, according to energy ministry's 
estimates.[ width=] 

  novinite.com  Forum  Google  Tourism  Business  MobileBulgaria

 All Rights Reserved © Novinite Ltd., 2001-2005 - Copyright

Bulgaria news Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency -
www.sofianewsagency.com) is unique with being a real time news
provider in English that informs its readers about the latest
Bulgarian news. The editorial staff also publishes a daily
*****************************************************************
 39 Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets
 
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 21:55:47 -0600 (CST)

 
http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml

Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets
A death sentence here and abroad

by Leuren Moret

At an April press conference, a group of New York Army National
Guard vets raised their hands when asked if they have health problems.
The soldiers, all from the 442nd Military Police Company, are
complaining of headaches and fatigue after what they think is
exposure to depleted uranium during their recent tour in Iraq.
Photo: www.american freepress.net

Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in
foreign policy. - Henry Kissinger, quoted in Kiss the Boys Goodbye:
How the United States Betrayed Its Own POWs in Vietnam

Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating large
regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally
the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S.
has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which,
like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons
of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central
Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation.

And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of
Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that
Gulf-era veterans now on medical disability since 1991 number
518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same
14-year period.

This week the American Free Press dropped a dirty bomb on the
Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one
unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies.
That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed
malignancies in just 16 months.

Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted uranium
(DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and scientists
working on this issue, that DU is the definitive cause of Gulf War
Syndrome. Vaccines are not known to cause cancer. One of the first
published researchers on Gulf War Syndrome, who also served in 1991
in Iraq, Dr. Andras Kornyi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno
from the Department of Defenses Deployment Health Support Directorate,
that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals, pesticides,
bioagents or other suspect causes this time to confuse the issue.

This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up perpetrated
by the Pentagon and three presidential administrations ever since
DU was first used in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years
after the introduction of DU on the battlefield in 1991, the long-term
effects have revealed that DU is a death sentence and very nasty
stuff.

Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s
reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical
chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly
involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid
malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as spectacular  and a
matter of concern.

This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on
biological systems - radiation, chemical and particulate  the
particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant
one immediately after exposure and targets the Master Code in the
DNA. This is bad news, but it explains why DU causes a myriad of
diseases which are difficult to define.

In simple words, DU trashes the body. When asked if the main purpose
for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Fulk was
more specific: I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing
lots of people.

Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be
expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This
phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating
civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999
and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time
in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple
malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and
is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure.

Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf
War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War
I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent
medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means
that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now
have medical problems.

The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing
by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans
Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more
disabled vets now than even after World War II.

They brought it home

Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields,
but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally
contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. Tragically,
some women in their 20s and 30s who were sexual partners of exposed
soldiers developed endometriosis and were forced to have hysterectomies
because of health problems.

In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who
had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their
post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born
with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and
blood diseases. In some veterans families now, the only normal or
healthy members of the family are the children born before the war.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that they do not keep
records of birth defects occurring in families of veterans.

How did they hide it?

Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully tested.
The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943 declassified
document from the Manhattan Project.

Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed
poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan Project
by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerrys father
served at a high level in the Manhattan Project and was a CIA agent.

Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which recommended
developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive trash of the
atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time, it was known
that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from the air, from
land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very fine radioactive
dust which would penetrate all protective clothing, any gas mask
or filter or the skin. By contaminating the lungs and blood, it
could kill or cause illness very quickly.

They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant, which
could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies
and agricultural land with the radioactive dust.

The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968, and
DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under U.S.
supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs.

The Phalanx weapons system, using DU, was tested on the USS Bigelow
out of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1977, and DU weapons have
been sold by the U.S. to 29 countries.

Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from
1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges
and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are contaminated
with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment.

Women living around these facilities have reported increases in
endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and
cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons
tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges
around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of the fastest growing
leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past decade. The military
denies that DU is the cause.

The medical profession has been active in the cover-up - just as
they were in hiding the effects from the American public - of low
level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants.
A medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by
the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started,
to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for
mental problems only.

Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning
soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about
the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened
with jail.

Reporters have also been prevented access to more than 14,000
medically evacuated soldiers flown nightly since the 2003 war in
C-150s from Germany who are brought to Walter Reed Hospital near
Washington, D.C.

Dr. Robert Gould, former president of the Bay Area chapter of
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has contacted three
medical doctors since February 2004, after I had been invited to
speak about DU. Dr. Katharine Thomasson, president of the Oregon
chapter of the PSR, informed me that Dr. Gould had contacted her
and tried to convince her to cancel her invitation for me to speak
about DU at Portland State University on April 12. Although I was
able to do a presentation, Dr. Thomasson told me I could only talk
about DU in Oregon and nothing overseas  nothing political.

Dr. Gould also contacted and discouraged Dr. Ross Wilcox in Toronto,
Canada, from inviting me to speak to Physicians for Global Survival
(PGS), the Canadian equivalent of PSR, several months later. When
that didnt work, he contacted Dr. Allan Connoly, the Canadian
national president of PGS, who was able to cancel my invitation and
nearly succeeded in preventing Dr. Wilcox, his own member, from
showing photos and presenting details on civilians suffering from
DU exposure and cancer provided to him by doctors in southern Iraq.

Dr. Janette Sherman, a former and long-standing member of PSR,
reported that she finally quit some time after being invited to
lunch by a new PSR executive administrator. After the woman had
pumped Dr. Sherman for information all through lunch about her
position on key issues, the woman informed Dr. Sherman that her
last job had been with the CIA.

How was the truth about DU hidden from military personnel serving
in successive DU wars? Before his tragic death, Sen. Paul Wellstone
informed Joyce Riley, R.N., B.S.N., executive director of the
American Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95 percent of Gulf War
veterans had been recycled out of the military by 1995. Any of those
continuing in military service were isolated from each other,
preventing critical information being transferred to new troops.
The next DU war had already been planned, and those planning it
wanted no skunk at the garden party.

The US has a dirty (DU) little (CIA) secret

A new book just published at the American Free Press by Michael
Collins Piper, The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How
Americas Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated
the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global
Empire, details the early plans for a war against the Arab world
by Henry Kissinger and the neo-cons in the late 1960s and early
1970s. That just happens to coincide with getting the DU show on
the road and the oil crisis in the Middle East, which caused concern
not only to President Nixon. The British had been plotting and
scheming for control of the oil in Iraq for decades since first
using poison gas on the Iraqis and Kurds in 1912.

The book details the creation of the neo-cons by their godfather
and Trotsky lover Irving Kristol, who pushed for a war against
terrorism long before 9/11 and was lavishly funded for years by the
CIA. His son, William Kristol, is one of the most influential men
in the United States.

Both are public relations men for the Israeli lobbys neo-conservative
network, with strong ties to Rupert Murdoch. Kissinger also has
ties to this network and the Carlyle Group, who, one could say,
have facilitated these omnicidal wars beginning from the time former
President Bush took office. It would be easy to say that we are
recycling World Wars I and II, with the same faces.

When I asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Capt. John McCarthy,
who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use DU to destroy the
genetic code and genetic future of large populations of Arabs and
Moslems in the Middle East and Central Asia - just coincidentally
the areas where most of the worlds oil deposits are located - he
replied: It has all the handprints of Henry Kissinger.

In Zbignew Brzezinskis book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy
and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, the map of the Eurasian chessboard
includes four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. The South
region corresponds precisely to the regions now contaminated
permanently with radiation from U.S. bombs, missiles and bullets
made with thousands of tons of DU.

A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons
of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The
U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of
400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed, and 10 times the
amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric
testing!

No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the Middle
East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry Kissinger
said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill from Agent Orange,
Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used for foreign
policy.

Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women
with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will
be carried around the world and deposited in our environments just
as the smog of war from the 1991 Gulf War was found in deposits in
South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii.

In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press
release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020.
What else do they know that they arent telling us? I know that
depleted uranium is a death sentence  for all of us. We will all
die in silent ways.

To learn more

Sources used in this story that readers are encouraged to consult:

American Free Press four-part series on DU by
Christopher Bollyn:

Part I: "Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime
Against Iraq, Humanity,"
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/depleted_uranium.html

Part II: "Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD: MD Says
Depleted Uranium Definitively
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/cancer_epidemic_.html

Part III: "DU Syndrome Stricken Vets Denied Care:
Pentagon Hides DU Dangers to Deny Medical Care to
Vets",
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/du_syndrome.html

Part IV: "Pentagon Brass Suppresses Truth About Toxic
Weapons: Poisonous Uranium Munitions Threaten World",
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/pentagon_brass.html

August 2004 World Affairs Journal. Leuren Moret:
"Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,"
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm

August 2004 Coastal Post Online. Carol Sterrit: "Marin
Depleted Uranium Resolution Heats Up - GI's Will Come
Home To A Slow Death,"
http://www.coastalpost.com/04/08/01.htm

World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg,
Germany, October 16-19, 2004:
http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/speakers.htm

International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan.
Written opinion of Judge Niloufer Baghwat:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Afghanistan-Criminal-Tribunal10mar04.htm

"Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Nuclear War"
by Akira Tashiro, foreword by Leuren Moret,
http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/index_e.html

Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who has worked around the world on
radiation issues, educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments
and Congress and other officials. She became a whistleblower in
1991 at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab after experiencing major
science fraud on the Yucca Mountain Project. An environmental
commissioner in the City of Berkeley, she can be reached at
leurenmoret@yahoo.com.

San Francisco Bay View
National Black Newspaper
4917 Third Street
San Francisco California 94124
Phone: (415) 671-0789
Fax: (415) 671-0316
Email:
editor@sfbayview.com
*****************************************************************
 40 Rocky Mountain News: Hospital gets contract to test DOE workers

By Rachel Brand, Rocky Mountain News
February 10, 2005

National Jewish Medical Center will share in a five-year, $4
million- a-year contract to screen thousands of former
Department of Energy workers. 

The hospital and Tennessee- based Oak Ridge Associated
Universities have been charged with interviewing and testing
workers from five DOE sites previously excluded from worker
testing programs. 

 "Unfortunately, these workers are at potentially high risk for
a number of lung diseases," said Dr. Lee Newman, a lead
investigator for National Jewish. He cited chronic beryllium
disease, asbestosis, radiation injury and cancer as possible
consequences of their work exposure. 

The contract award comes on the heels of a Bush administration
announcement on Tuesday of the expansion of the medical
screening program to former DOE workers at 12 sites nationwide,
nearly doubling the number of people involved. 

The plan would allow an estimated 25,000 more workers to get
free, one-time tests that could help them seek early treatment
for work-related illnesses such as respiratory diseases, hearing
loss, bladder cancer and damage to the liver and kidneys. 

After screening, individuals receive a letter describing their
results. Some may qualify for disability. 

At the same time, the DOE is collecting statistics on the number
of people screened, tests given and the incidence of diseases at
each site. 

The new program, starting in June, is aimed at workers from
Fermi Lab in Illinois; the Kansas City Plant in Missouri; the
Pinellas Plant in Florida; the Argonne National Laboratory in
Illinois; and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New
Jersey. 

They can get tested at one of 10,000 facilities nationwide or
through their personal physician. 

Both National Jewish and Oak Ridge Associated Universities have
been screening former Rocky Flats workers for asbestos, hearing
loss, liver damage and radiation exposure since 1999.  

SITE MAP PHOTO REPRINTS CORRECTIONS    2005 © The E.W. Scripps
Co.
*****************************************************************
 41 Guardian Unlimited: Lost Halliburton Nuclear Material Found
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 
 	 
Friday February 11, 2005 1:01 AM

By LOLITA C. BALDOR 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Halliburton Co. shipment of radioactive
material that landed in New York in October was lost en route to
Texas, and was not found until Wednesday, when it turned up in
Boston. 

The material - two sources of the element americium, used in oil
well exploration - was found intact at a freight facility after
an intense search by federal authorities. The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission said it was not alerted to the missing shipment until
Tuesday. 

Both the NRC and Halliburton officials said Thursday that the
public never was in danger. 

The americium was being shipped from Russia to Houston,
Halliburton said in a report filed with the NRC. On Thursday,
the company blamed the shipper - Greeneville, Tenn.-based
Forward Air - for losing track of the material and failing to
tell Halliburton it had been misplaced. 

A spokesman for Forward Air did not return calls for comment. 

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the agency was not told about
the missing material until Tuesday. Depending on the material,
government rules require notification either immediately or
within 30 days. 

``The focus through today was on trying to find the material,''
Sheehan said. ``We're going to be pressing them on why the
notification was not more timely.'' 

Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said the shipping company
improperly labeled the material and sent it to the wrong
location. She said Halliburton contacted the shipper ``multiple
times'' about the package and was told repeatedly it was en
route to Houston. 

She said Halliburton was told in late December that the material
had been shipped to Texas, but after more calls, the shipping
company acknowledged Tuesday it could not find it. Halliburton
then immediately notified the NRC, she said, and a review of
surveillance tapes enabled authorities to locate the shipment in
Boston. 

Hall said the material was encased in a double-walled stainless
steel cylinder that was locked in a steel transport container
designed to protect workers. 

``All of this was found intact, and we have no information that
leads us to believe that the public or environment were in
danger,'' Hall said. 

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a frequent critic of the NRC, said
the incident highlights inadequate security measures covering
radioactive materials. The americium has the potential to
permanently injure a person who fails to handle it properly, he
said. 

Markey said the lag time in reporting the disappearance of
dangerous materials leaves open the possibility they could fall
into the hands of terrorists without the government's knowledge. 

``This is a shocking demonstration of the inadequacies of our
current tracking system,'' said Markey, adding that the NRC must
immediately improve its system of tracking radioactive material. 

The NRC report indicates the material was trucked to
Massachusetts after a Boston label was inadvertently placed on
the package at the freight company's Newark, N.J., facility. 

Markey said he will introduce legislation next week requiring
the NRC to put a full tracking system in place. The NRC has said
it will take several years for a system to be completed. 

--- 

On the Net: 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 42 News-Leader.com: Nuclear workers recount climbing material, illnesses
   
Published Thursday, February 10, 2005     

Two days of hearings deal with the results of employment at Cold 
War-era facilities.

On the Web 

NIOSH Office of Compensation Analysis and Support:
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ ocas/ 

Department of Energy: http://www.energy.gov/ 

By Jim Salter Associated Press

 © 2005, Springfield News-Leader

--> St. Louis — Robert Anderson's nightmare began in the 1980s, 
when he read the obituary of a colleague at a southeastern Iowa 
plant that made nuclear weapons.

A few years later, Anderson developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the 
same cancer that killed his colleague. Soon, two other co-workers 
at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant developed the same disease.

"The common ground was we all worked at the plant at the same 
time," Anderson said.

He recalled often climbing hazardous materials, then wearing his 
clothing home. One of his daughters later developed thyroid 
cancer that he blamed on exposure.

Anderson's story was among many cited Wednesday during the final 
day of hearings on the health of Cold War-era workers. The 
hearings were conducted by a board advising the National 
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The first two days dealt with concerns of workers for 
Mallinckrodt Chemical Co.'s downtown St. Louis plant; Wednesday's 
hearing focused on health issues arising from the plant in 
Middletown, Iowa.

The board recommended waiver of the need for dose reconstruction 
for the Iowa workers, a move that would eliminate an often-time 
consuming process. If the secretary of Health and Human Services 
concurs, many ill workers will be eligible for expedited $150,000 
payments. For those who died of one of nearly two dozen cancers 
tied to radiation exposure, their survivors will be eligible for 
the money.

The board on Tuesday agreed to the same expedited payments for 
afflicted Mallinckrodt workers and their survivors.

Workers at Mallinckrodt processed uranium for the government. The 
Iowa workers dealt with uranium and several other materials now 
known as hazardous as they made atomic weapons.

"No one ever told us of the danger we were going to face," said 
Pauline Graham, 71, of Fort Madison, Iowa, often gasping for 
breath due to a respiratory ailment she blames on working at the 
plant.

She started at the plant the same day in 1951 as her sister, 
Nola, who was 25 when she died in 1956 of illnesses Graham blamed 
on radiation exposure.

Speakers recalled workers turning yellow or black, afflicted by 
neurological problems or cancer. Many said they were instructed 
never to tell anyone — even doctors — where they worked due to 
security concerns. Some said they were threatened with prison if 
they did. Some died never even telling their children what they 
did for a living.

In a letter to the advisory board, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, noted 
that "not one worker with cancer has received any compensation."

Congress set up a program in 2000 giving special exemption that 
allowed for faster payment of claims to workers at nuclear plants 
in Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alaska, but workers at 
lesser-known plants such as those in St. Louis and Iowa were left 
out. Thousands of workers nationwide have not been able to 
collect from the government, and fewer than 50 claims filed by 
Iowa weapons workers have been paid.

Nuclear bomb components were tested and warheads were assembled 
and disassembled at the Iowa plant. The expedited payments are 
for those who worked there from March 1949 until the plant closed 
in 1975. NIOSH has said there was no radiation exposure from June 
1947 to May 1948. NIOSH is still investigating if there was 
exposure from May 1948 to March 1949.

Under the federal compensation program, doctors must investigate 
each claim, review work histories, plant records and monitoring 
data to determine if an employee's exposure merits approval.

But workers at both the St. Louis and Iowa plants have had 
trouble supporting their claims because records were lost. Board 
members said the lack of information made accurate dose 
reconstruction difficult.

Mallinckrodt's St. Louis nuclear production facilities employed 
about 3,500 people who were exposed to large doses of radiation, 
according to Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo, who testified before the board 
Monday.

*****************************************************************
 43 Washington Times: Radiation antidote to be readily available -

Nation/Politics - February 10, 2005
				 	 			
  February 10, 2005			   

By Jennifer Harper

A simple vitamin pill soon may be part of the American military 
arsenal. 

    The Defense Department has joined forces with Humanetics, a 
Minneapolis-based nutritional-supplement manufacturer, to refine 
an over-the-counter, anti-radiation pill that may be ready by 
year's end, one source said Tuesday. 

    Described as a "radioprotective drug," the mystery pill is 
meant to be a practical, cheap antidote for millions in the event 
of nuclear attack. 

    "The chances of military or civilian personnel being exposed 
to dirty bombs or improvised nuclear devices have risen 
dramatically," said Mark H. Whitnall, director of the Radiation 
Casualty Management Team at the Armed Forces Radiobiology 
Research Institute in Bethesda. 
		
In the past, radiation victims have been treated with substances 
that bind to radioactive materials so they can pass safely out of 
the body  "potassium iodide, Prussian blue, calcium DTPA and 
zinc DTPA," Mr. Whitnall said. 

    "Humanetics has a portfolio of four nutritional supplements 
which have shown beneficial effects on the immune system, and in 
some cases, have shown promise as anti-radiation drugs in 
preclinical research," he said. 

    "These drugs can also be developed as injectable prescription 
drugs. Because of their proven low toxicity, low cost and 
stability at environmental temperatures, these agents are 
attractive as candidates for stockpiling for military or civilian 
use," Mr. Whitnall said. "Two of these compounds are already 
available for sale as dietary supplements." 

    He did not identify the compounds. 

    Eager entrepreneurs already offer so-called anti-radiation 
preparations. Nuke Protect and Rad Block are marketed right 
alongside the bee pollen and super-vitamins familiar to fans of 
alternative medicine. 

    Nuke Protect consists primarily of potassium iodide, 
recommended by the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers 
for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug 
Administration (FDA) and other federal agencies as a "blocking 
agent" to protect the human thyroid gland, which rapidly absorbs 
ionized radiation. 

    Nuke Protect also contains selenium yeast, spice extracts and 
"wild Pacific kelp," according to Smart Bomb, an online herbs and 
supplements seller. 

    This is not a new phenomenon. Various researchers have touted 
dark-green vegetables, bone meal, pectin, sunflower seeds and 
vitamins C and B-6 as anti-radiation "protective foods and 
supplements" since the 1970s. 

    "There are different types of radiation depending on whether 
it's a nuclear bomb, power-plant accident, a dirty bomb," said 
Troy Jones, president of North Carolina-based Nuke Pills, which 
distributes three FDA-approved potassium iodide supplements. 

    "But I am not aware of any supplement which could counter all 
the effects. But more power to the new research. America needs to 
address these things," Mr. Jones said, adding that his sales 
remain brisk. 

    "But if this is a dietary supplement rather than a drug and 
the FDA is not involved here, I am not comfortable. Is the 
preparation safe for the public? That's my main consideration," 
he said. 
    
Copyright 2005 News World Communications, Inc. 			 		   	 
*****************************************************************
 44 STLtoday: Panel recommends payments for Mallinckrodt workers

stltoday.com

By Sara Shipley Of the Post-Dispatch

02/10/2005 

Sick, aging nuclear workers in the St. Louis area won an 
important battle this week when a federal advisory panel 
recommended automatic $150,000 payments for certain workers at 
Mallinckrodt Chemical Co. 

The decision, which must be approved by Health and Human Services 
Secretary Mike Leavitt and Congress, marked the first time that 
the special status had been granted to any group since Congress 
created the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation 
program in 2000. The program is supposed to compensate Cold War 
warriors who helped build nuclear bombs, but only a fraction of 
applicants have been paid. 

Worker advocate Denise Brock of Moscow Mills, whose father, 
Christopher Davis, died of lung cancer after working at the site, 
called the decision tremendous news. 

Normally, under the program, workers must go through a tedious 
process of proving that they received enough radiation to cause 
their illness. Brock argued that it would be impossible to 
accurately reconstruct radiation exposure because many 
Mallinckrodt workers were never monitored for radiation exposure, 
or their records were missing or manipulated.
 
        The panel agreed, recommending automatic payments for 
employees who worked at Mallinckrodts downtown facility between 
1942 and 1948 and had one of 22 specific cancers. In order to 
qualify, workers must have been at the downtown site during that 
time period for 250 days, which is considered to be a full work 
year. Survivors also qualify.
 
Before (the process) was so burdensome, Brock said. Now you 
may see people coming foward and filing. 

A second group of employees who worked at the downtown facility 
from 1949 to 1957 will be considered separately, as will 
employees who worked at a facility in Weldon Spring. 

Altogether, Mallinckrodts uranium-processing operations employed 
about 3,500 workers at various sites. It was not clear how many 
of them would qualify for expedited payments. 

        During its meeting in St. Louis this week, the advisory 
panel also recommended special exposure cohort status for 
certain workers at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. The status 
currently applies to workers at only four other nuclear weapon 
sites in Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alaska. 

Larry Elliott, director of the Office of Compensation Analysis 
and Support at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and 
Health, said that the panels recommendation would go next to the 
director of NIOSH, who will make a recommendation to Leavitt. 
Unless Congress objects, the action would become final in 30 
days, he said. 

Patricia Ehlmann of Wright City, who worked with Brock to get the 
payments, said she was gratified by the decision. Her father, 
Everett Powers, worked at Mallinckrodt for 24 years and died of 
multiple myleoma. 

When you watch a loved one die the way my father died, you do 
everything you can because you want to see them smiling at you 
from heaven, she said. 

Reporter Sara Shipley E-mail: sshipley@post-dispatch.com Phone: 
314-340-8215 
  
St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

*****************************************************************
 45 Radio Iowa: New test site for former Ames lab workers

Wednesday, February 09, 2005
 								 				 					 						 					 				 			 			 						 					 		
by Stella Shaffer

The U-S Energy Department will open nine more medical-screening
prgorams for former defense workers. Secondhand victims of
combat, the people who worked at plants making weapons or
ammunition say now they're sick, dying from conditions caused by
the toxic materials they used. A clinic has been serving workers
from the Iowa Ammunition Project west of Burlington, and with
this week's announcement, one of nine additional sites will
offer screenings to former employees of the Ames lab.

Established in the 1940s, the lab helped purify uranium for
early nuclear plants. Assistant energy secretary JOhn Shaw says
while they won't get any treatment, former workers at Ames and
eight other government sites can go in for screening. If the new
clinic informs them they have work-related illness, they can
seek medical care. As for compensation, officials in the
Department of Energy say that's now handled through the
Department of Labor. 

Tel: 515.282.1984; Fax: 515.282.1879;   - ©2004   
								 				 					 						
*****************************************************************
 46 NRC: Hydro Resources, Inc.; Notice of Reconstitution
 
                         FR Doc 05-2565 
[Federal Register: February 10, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 27)] 
[Notices] [Page 7127] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr10fe05-93]                         
 
Pursuant to 10 CFR 2.1207, in the above captioned Hydro 
Resources, Inc. proceeding, Administrative Judge E. Roy Hawkens 
is hereby appointed to serve as Presiding Officer in place of 
Administrative Judge Thomas S. Moore. In accordance with 10 CFR 
2.1203, all correspondence, documents, and other material 
relating to any matter in this proceeding should be served on 
Administrative Judge Hawkens as follows: Administrative Judge E. 
Roy Hawkens, Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel, U.S. 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001.
 
Issued at Rockville, Maryland this, 4th day of February 2005.
 
G. Paul Bollwerk, III, Chief Administrative Judge, Atomic Safety 
and Licensing Board Panel.
 
[FR Doc. 05-2565 Filed 2-9-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 47 Hawk Eye: Panel expedites plant claims 

Thursday, February 10, 2005, Site updated daily at 11 a.m. CST   
  
Former munitions workers who develop cancer won't have the
impossible task of proving exposure — if Congress follows
recommendation. 

By KILEY MILLER
kmiller@thehawkeye.com 

ST. LOUIS — Iowa Army Ammunition Plant nuclear workers are
within a breath of victory. 

A federal review board said Wednesday that government employees
who spent at least a year on Line 1 of the plant from March 1949
to 1974 should be compensated if they develop cancer. 

At the height of the Cold War, Atomic Energy Commission and
Department of Energy employees built, tested and tore apart
nuclear weapons components on Line 1, activities that only came
to light in recent years. 

Members of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health
heard aching stories of pain and loss from wives, children and
grandchildren before voting to recommend energy workers at the
plant get special consideration under a government compensation
program. 

Specifically, the board said Congress should approve a petition
from the workers requesting designation as a special exposure
cohort within the Energy Employees Occupation Illness
Compensation Program, status that would make them automatically
eligible for $150,000 from the government for any of 22 types of
cancer. 

The cohort would include any employee who worked 250 days on
Line 1. Families of deceased workers also would be eligible for
compensation. 

The advisory board's recommendation now goes to Health and Human
Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. Congress will have 30 days to
act on his decision before it becomes final. 

The board members threw around technical, bureaucratic terms —
neutron monitoring, dosimetry data, dose reconstruction. But the
importance of their vote went straight to the hearts of the 20
or so people with ties to the plant who made the trip through
snow and slush to St. Louis. 

"I'm floored," said Marilyn Downing of Fort Madison. "We never
expected this today." 

Downing held a portrait of her grandmother Zelta Stewart as she
addressed the advisory board. 

Stewart worked 24 years on Line 1 loading plutonium into bombs
and then shifting those bombs onto racks. She eventually died of
cancer, as did her five children, none of whom lived to 60. 

"This is just one step in the process," Downing said after the
meeting. 

"It's still up to Congress. 

"But just to hear the board vote favorably, to finally feel like
we had a voice, that is enough to make the whole trip
worthwhile." 

The compensation program works on a process called dose
reconstruction. When energy workers or their family members file
a cancer claim, experts from the National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health slog through medical records and
radiation readings, trying to estimate whether radiation on the
job site could have caused the cancer. 

In essence, the advisory board members want dose reconstruction
thrown out of the equation for the Iowa plant. In taking that
position, they agreed with the workers themselves, who argued in
their petition that records from the plant were insufficient for
a fair reconstruction. Past history supports that position:
Every cancer claim filed by an Iowa worker has been denied to
date. 

Officials from the Office of Compensation and Analysis, the
division of NIOSH in charge of the energy employee program,
acknowledged that the plant workers from March 1949 to 1977 "may
have accumulated substantial doses (of radiation) through
chronic exposure to external sources of radiation." 

Larry Elliott, director of the compensaton program, said his
staff believed enough information did exist for accurate dose
reconstruction, but much of it was class–ified. 

The issue therefore became one of transparency: If the
classified records were available only to NIOSH, how could the
workers argue their claims? 

The advisory board members again agreed with the petitioners, a
position that could establish a precedent for future claims. 

The board did not go all the way, however, excluding energy
employees working from June 1947 to May 1948 from the
recommendation. 

A decision will come later on workers at the plant from May 1948
to March 1949. 

Those small disappointments Wednesday could not dampen the joy
felt by men and women who have struggled to ease the suffering
of IAAP workers and hold the government accountable. 

Laurence Fuortes, a University of Iowa physician directing
health screenings for both nuclear and conventional weapons
workers, presented the scientific arguments in support of the
special exposure cohort. 

After the advisory board vote, he grabbed a cell phone and
dialed his office in Iowa City to tell his co–workers the good
news. 

Aides to Iowa Senators Charles Grassley and Tom Harkin, as well
as Rep. Jim Leach, attended the meeting. One of the aides
grabbed Fuortes and asked him if he wanted to make a comment to
a television reporter. 

"No," the doctor replied. "I feel like I might cry." 

He gave the interview anyway. 

Perhaps no single person felt greater delight Wednesday than
Robert Anderson, a long–time security boss at the plant. 

Back in the late mid 1980s, Anderson was diagnosed with
non–Hodgkin's lymphoma and had his thyroid removed, the same
disease that had killed another former guard three years
earlier. 

Soon Anderson learned of two more coworkers suffering from
lymphoma. 

Here the story jumps to 1997 when Anderson was enrolled at a
science class at Southeastern Community College. Assigned to
write a letter to a legislator about an environmental issue, he
mailed a short note to Harkin, a Democrat, describing the
terrible war cancer was waging on former workers at the plant. 

That letter was like a lone atom sparking a chain reaction. Soon
the government was involved and other workers were coming
forward with their stories. 

Now, the whole issue is on its way to the halls of the nation's
Capitol. It is beyond Anderson's imagination. 

"It seems to have taken on a life of its own," he said. "When I
wrote to Sen. Harkin, there was no money involved. I just wanted
to say I see some trouble here ... 

"The fact that this can make so many people feel good is the
greatest feeling in the world."   
  
The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington, Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 
· 1-800-397-1708 · FAX 319-754-6824 · webmaster@thehawkeye.com
*****************************************************************
 48 Hawk Eye: IAAP claims history at a glance 

Thursday, February 10, 2005, Site updated daily at 11 a.m. CST   
  

Here is a brief look at events leading to an advisory board's
decision Wednesday to expedite disability payments for Iowa Army
Ammunition Plant workers. 

1941 — As war in Europe looms, Iowa Ordnance Plant opens on
19,000 acres in southwest Des Moines County. 

1945 — Plant closes at the end of World War II. 

1947 — Atomic Energy Commission reopens plant with a secret
project: to make nuclear bombs. Assembly of conventional weapons
resumes as well. During the height of the Cold War and during
the Vietnam War, more than 8,000 people were employed at the
Middletown facility. From 1949 to 1951, the Middletown factory
is the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly plant. 

1960s — The AEC routinely tests nuclear weapons components at
IAAP, producing uranium–laden radioactive clouds over the plant,
if not over the surrounding area. 

1973 — Nuclear weapons production is moved to the Pantex nuclear
weapons plant near Amarillo, Texas. The manufacturing of
conventional weapons continues at Middletown. Over the years,
about 100 boxes of records from Iowa — many involving heath data
and weapons technology that remains classified have turned up at
the Texas plant. 

1974 — The AEC's functions are moved to a new agency, the
Nuclear Regulatory Agency under the Department of Energy. 

1980s — Groundwater, streams and soil in and around plant are
found to be contaminated with DDT, TNT, lead and barium
indicating improper disposal of hazardous waste. 

1989 — IAAP is named to the federal Superfund list of worst
toxic waste sites. Clean–up work is expected to be completed by
2010. 

1993 — Congress orders the Department of Energy to screen former
employees of nearly 400 weapons and power plants for health
problems, but IAAP is not included in the list. 

1997 — A former IAAP worker contacts Sen. Tom Harkin, D–Iowa,
about health–related problems believed to have been caused by
chemicals at the plant. 

1999 — Harkin tours the plant, saying he was unaware nuclear
components were manufactured there. An Army official says he
could neither confirm nor deny the information. 

2000 — Harkin and Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson
meet with former employees at Burlington City Hall. 

In addition: 

Depleted uranium and a large deposit of barium is discovered at
the plant, confirming suspicions that the AEC did not clean up
its nuclear weapons operations as well as had been thought. 

The federal government finally discloses that nuclear tests were
conducted at the Middletown facility. 

Congress passes a compensation package for nuclear–weapons
workers across the country. Workers or their survivors can
receive up to $150,000 each if they can show that their ailments
were related to their work. 

2001 — Congress passes legislation expanding the number of
survivors who could receive a federal benefits package created
for former workers, or their survivors, who suffered long–term
illnesses or died from exposure to hazardous materials at the
plant. In addition, Congress approved $1 million for a health
study of non–nuclear workers at the plant. 

In addition: 

Iowa officials ask the Army to conduct a low–level flyover of
the plant to detect possible radioactive contamination that may
have been left behind by the Atomic Energy Commission. 

Previously classified documents note a possible radioactive
"waste stream" and a possible "blue flash" runaway nuclear chain
reaction that may have killed or injured at least two workers. 

The Army pays to connect about 30 homeowners southeast of the
plant to the Rathbun rural water system because of concerns with
groundwater contamination. 

Health researchers from the University of Iowa College of Public
Health come to Middletown to help former workers or their
survivors complete applications for the federal government's
$150,000 compensation package. 

2002 — Army conducts a flyover in a specially equipped
helicopter to search the plant compound for radioactive hazards.
The flyover detects what is believed to be depleted uranium at
storage locations and at a firing site, areas where officials
knew depleted uranium would be found. 

Also: 

Pentagon officials finally admitted nuclear weapons once were
manufactured at the plant. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in St. Louis announces that the
IAAP had been designated a radioactive cleanup site under the
Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program. 

Researchers from the University of Iowa continue their study of
the health of former IAAP plant workers. Thus far, nearly $1
million in injury compensation has been given to seven former
workers in the nuclear program. A total of 1,257 claims
representing 842 workers have been filed. 

2003 — Sen. Charles Grassley, R–Iowa, accuses the Department of
Energy, the agency created from the Atomic Energy Commission, of
"stonewalling" in an attempt to stave off criticism of its
Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.
Grassley notes that fewer than 6 percent of injured workers'
claims have been processed by the DOE. 

To accelerate the processing of compensation claims for sick
nuclear weapons workers, the DOE tells Congress it will need
another $33 million. 

2004 — Worker payment program is moved to the Department of
Labor to speed compensation payments. 

Harkin writes letters to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham seeking information about missing
claims filed by some former IAAP employees under the Energy
Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. It is
feared the claims have been lost. 

2005 — Officials from the National Institute of Occupational
Safety and Health say they are unable to determine the amount of
radiation the weapons workers absorbed on the job without the
release of additional classified documents. A NIOSH advisory
board recommends unanimously to scrap the dose reconstructions
and grant worker petitions.   
  
The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington, Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 
· 1-800-397-1708 · FAX 319-754-6824 · webmaster@thehawkeye.com
*****************************************************************
 49 Paducah Sun: Labor officials set meetings for nuclear workers 

Paducah, Kentucky 

Two town hall meetings next month will focus on the Labor
Department's program to pay sick nuclear workers 

By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8656 

Wednesday, February 09, 2005 

The U.S. Department of Labor will hold town hall meetings from 6
to 9 p.m. March 29 and 30 at the Robert Cherry Civic Center to
discuss a new program to compensate nuclear workers for diseases
related to toxic exposure. 

Jeff Miles, press secretary for U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, said
labor officials informed Whitfield's staff of the meetings,
involving program director Pete Turcic. Similar meetings were
held last month in Oak Ridge, Tenn. 

The March meetings will be the first time Labor Department
officials have visited Paducah since Congress expanded federal
legislation in October to make it easier for nuclear workers to
be compensated for toxin-related diseases. There is a backlog of
about 3,000 such claims at Paducah under a program formerly run
by the U.S. Department of Energy. It will be May before the
Labor Department has rules, procedures and staffing to start
paying on the claims determined to be valid. 

The new program is separate from one in which the Labor
Department pays $150,000 lump-sum benefits for workers with
radiation-induced cancers and chronic beryllium disease. That
program has paid about $175 million to Paducah workers, and
about 1,000 more cases have been referred to the National
Institute of Occupational Safety and Health to determine if
there was a link between exposure and disease. 

The expanded law provides for up to $250,000 for workers exposed
to various toxins. Some of the sickest workers could get as much
as $400,000 under both programs. 

Nuclear workers will meet at 10 a.m. Thursday at the civic
center with scientists from NIOSH and Oak Ridge Associated
Universities to discuss a profile of historic radiation exposure
at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Although the profile was
for radiation exposure only, workers think it should be expanded
to cover work areas and toxins to help speed up claims under the
new compensation program. 

Discussion Thursday will be limited to the profile because the
scientists are not equipped to talk about the claims program,
according to nuclear workers' union officials. Afterward,
workers will be invited to the union hall on Cairo Road to meet
with representatives of the local Labor Department claims office
and an Energy Department-sponsored health screening program. 

Claims may be filed at the Paducah Energy Employees Compensation
Resource Center, 125 Memorial Drive, next to Milner & Orr
Funeral Home off Blandville Road. Phone: 534-0599 or toll-free
866-534-0599. E-mail: paducah.center@eh.doe. 

*****************************************************************
 50 AU ABC: Beryllium coverage prompts Govt to contact veterans. 

10/02/2005. ABC News Online
 	
="Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online">   

Last Update: Thursday, February 10, 2005. 5:11pm (AEDT) 	 
 
The Federal Government has defended its actions in not advising
some former Defence Force members about possible beryllium
exposure. 

Minister for Veterans Affairs De-Anne Kelly says only in rare
cases can exposure to beryllium dust - produced by hydraulic
paint stripping tools - lead to the development of serious
illnesses, such as chronic lung disease.

 Ms Kelly has told Parliament that the department is only now
trying to contact people who might have been affected, because
it has become a public issue. 
"To needlessly cause anxiety for large groups of people by
advising them of exposure when the likelihood of any illness is
rare would simply be unreasonable," she said.

 "However the matter has been raised, people are anxious and we
are moving at great speed to give them accurate information
about their records." 
The Minister has rejected accusations that the department has
done nothing about the issue, saying the first beryllium claim
was dealt with in 1999. 

&copy; 2005 ABC| Privacy Policy

*****************************************************************
 51 Las Vegas Mercury: Backstory: A new screwing from the screw-up 

Thursday, Feb 10, 2005, 08:04:36 PM 

LBJ: Tried to screw Nevada, too. 

By Michael Green 

One of President Bush's plans to cut the monstrous deficit he 
created is to take profits from federal land sold in Nevada. Of 
the $1.6 billion in sales since the 1998 Southern Nevada Public 
Land Management Act, much of it has gone into local park 
projects, environmental protection efforts and education. 

Granting that Bush usually opposes anything to improve our 
quality of life, his new proposal to "screw Nevada" is only the 
latest turning of the screw. 

When the colonists revolted against England, they cried 
taxation without representation. Yet the issue's roots went 
deeper. From the beginnings of colonization, especially in the 
South, those who moved west resented those in the East. 
Westerners felt Easterners ignored or belittled them, and 
certainly didn't want to share power with them. That feeling has 
survived until, oh, what time is it? 

The idea of the West as a colony of the East has been popular 
with many historians--and while they haven't necessarily 
articulated it the same way, many of its residents agree. They 
argue the West has served the East much as the colonies served 
the mother country: supplying resources, but without reaping the 
wealth those resources produced. 

If the West has anything in abundance, it's land. But the feds 
own most of it, and now propose to take the money made from 
selling the land where Westerners live to pay off a deficit 
caused by Easterners (Bush is from Texas. That's east of here, 
geography fans). 

In 1873, just as the Comstock Lode hit its "Big Bonanza"--a 
vein of gold and silver as wide as you are tall--the feds pushed 
through the Mint Act. This demonetized silver, removing it as a 
medium of circulation just when Nevada would provide more silver 
than ever. 

It was part of a federal policy to reduce the currency in 
circulation. But Nevadans claimed a conspiracy of Eastern gold 
buyers and bankers, with their tame politicians, against Nevada. 
For the rest of the 19th century, candidates for the House and 
Senate almost always ran on a platform favoring remonetization 
of silver and claiming victimhood even more than Michael Jackson 
does. 

Sound familiar? Say, like the rhetoric about Yucca Mountain? 
Many critics of this project probably don't realize it, but they 
are walking in footprints originally made more than a century 
ago. 

Back then, Nevada wasn't unique. Other states and territories 
boasted gold, silver and wide-open spaces. But after 1931, only 
Nevada boasted wide-open gambling, creating a problem: the image 
that Nevada had to be worse than other places because it allowed 
gambling, prostitution and other immoral activities to go on in 
the open. This made Nevada different from the 49 other states, 
whose leaders allowed many of the same things but opposed 
legalizing them--doing so would have eliminated the bribery of 
politicians and law enforcement that kept vice in operation. 
As hypocritical as Nevadans can be, we have faced still more 
hypocritical criticism, especially from federal officials. Sen. 
Estes Kefauver attacked the mob, at times justifiably, but 
mainly to aid his political ambitions. J. Edgar Hoover allowed 
illegal wiretaps of casinos, managing to give lawbreakers 
something in common with Martin Luther King. Bobby Kennedy 
targeted Las Vegas casino owners as gangsters--after they worked 
in bootlegging with his dad. 

Picking on Nevada was easy. So, is The Rug really different in 
proposing to take back a few hundred million that Nevada could 
really use, given some of his fellow compassionate conservatives 
whose idea of good policy is to give people refunds for 
registering their cars? 

No, but he's a good politician, and good politicians know how 
to do unto others. So, forgive a suspicion. The Republicans in 
Nevada's congressional delegation are minor cogs on Capitol 
Hill. But Sen. Harry Reid's position as Democratic leader makes 
him one of Bush's highest-profile critics. Could the White House 
be sending a message? 

In the 1950s, President Harry Truman despised Nevada's Sen. Pat 
McCarran, a fellow Democrat, and held up one of his appointments 
to toy with him. In the 1960s, despite his ties to Nevada Sens. 
Alan Bible and Howard Cannon, President Lyndon Johnson 
apparently mulled vetoing the Southern Nevada Water Project to 
punish Nevada's Rep. Walter Baring, whom he hated. 

Does it matter to Bush that Sen. John Ensign, a fellow 
Republican facing re-election, co-sponsored the law he would 
gut? Maybe he figures if Ensign will endorse him after he lied 
about nuclear waste, $700 million will be no big deal. 

Besides, we owe the government. In 1902, Rep. Francis Newlands 
pushed through a reclamation act. His goal was to reclaim 
federal land for irrigation projects, thereby helping the 
Western economy. Selling federal land, he reasoned, would pay 
for dams and canals. Actually, he was wrong. The Newlands Act 
didn't pay for itself. It cost the federal government money, 
just as critics from the East claimed it would. 

But he also was right. It helped the West to grow. For example, 
dams and canals near Fallon turned that area into a major 
alfalfa producer, among other crops. Other dam and irrigation 
projects help build up the Sun Belt and attract population from 
the eastern Rust Belt. He also set the stage for future 
construction. The government kept building bigger dams and 
eventually stuck one in the middle of the Colorado River. 

Perhaps Nevadans would be forgiven right now for suggesting 
that they know a new place for it to be stuck. 

Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury, 2001 - 2005 

	Stephens Media Group 	 
*****************************************************************
 52 Las Vegas RJ: Loux says nuclear repository 'limping along' toward demise 
 
Thursday, February 10, 2005
 

Still, he seeks $4 million over two years to continue state's
legal fight 

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
Bob Loux talks to a reporter Tuesday after testifying to the
Senate Finance Committee in Carson City about the future of the
Yucca Mountain Project.

Photo by K.M. Cannon.
 
CARSON CITY -- The head of the state agency fighting federal
efforts to open a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca
Mountain told legislators Tuesday that the facility faces so
many obstacles it already might be dead.
 
 "The project is limping along," said Bob Loux, executive
director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects. "We believe
the project is dead."
 
 Loux cited the 50 percent reduction in the Energy Department's
latest budget request for the nuclear waste project, 100 miles
northwest of Las Vegas, as evidence that the government lacks
confidence in the project.
 
 The DOE last year said it would need $1.3 billion in the coming
year for costs associated with pushing the project forward. But
now it's asking Congress for only $651 million for the coming
year. The department requested $880 million for the current
fiscal year and got $577 million.
 
 "It looks to us and others that the project may never rekindle
and get started again," Loux said. 
But Allen Benson, DOE spokesman, said that the project was
moving forward and that the license document of 5,000-plus pages
was on schedule to be submitted by the end of the year.
 
 Besides the scientific obstacles the project faces, Loux said
there are regulatory obstacles. They include a Nuclear
Regulatory Commission requirement that all documents related to
the project be made part of an electronic database, and a
federal court ruling that calls for the Environmental Protection
Agency to redraft protection standards and for the NRC to change
its licensing rules.
 
 The Energy Department's top manager for nuclear waste disposal
said Monday that Yucca Mountain will come on line at least two
years later than its planned 2010 opening.
 
 "I don't think anyone really believes 2012, either," Loux said.
 
 "The more they set these deadlines that don't then get met,
there's a real loss of confidence by everyone who oversees the
project," he said.
 
 Still, Loux asked the Legislature for $2 million in state money
for each of the next two years to pay for the state's legal
fight against the project.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 53 Las Vegas RJ: Official: Yucca not dead, just delayed 
 
Thursday, February 10, 2005

Bush administration's Chu talks of 2012 target By KEN RITTER

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A national nuclear waste repository in Nevada has been delayed
but still will be built, the Bush administration official in
charge of the Yucca Mountain project insisted Wednesday.
 
 "At this point, we're hoping 2012," Margaret Chu, director of
the civilian radioactive waste program, said after assuring the
Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board that the Energy Department
remained committed to the nuclear repository.
 
 But with funding uncertain, she conceded that it could take
longer.
 
 "It's very difficult to specify a date with confidence because
it's so budget-dependent," Chu told the panel meeting in Las
Vegas.
 
 Chu denied a Nevada state official's assertion to state
lawmakers Tuesday in Carson City that the project was troubled
and probably dead.
 
 "It's not dead, not at all," Chu said.
 
 Bob Loux, Nevada nuclear projects director, on Wednesday cited
a federal court ruling last summer that threw out a key
Environmental Protection Agency radiation standard on which the
project relied.
 
 He also noted that the Energy Department missed a self-imposed
December 2004 date to submit a license application to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 
President Bush's budget this week cut to $651 million, from
about $1.2 billion, the money budgeted for Yucca Mountain.
 
 Nevertheless, Loux asked state lawmakers to allocate $4 million
to keep up the state's legal fight against the project for the
next two years.
 
 Chu said the Energy Department hopes to have a new EPA
radiation standard when it submits a license application by the
end of 2005.
 
 The department also expects this summer to complete a
requirement that millions of pages of supporting documents be
accessible at an NRC online database.
 
 The Energy Department plans to entomb 77,000 tons of spent
commercial nuclear fuel and highly radioactive military and
industrial waste in tunnels beneath Yucca Mountain, 100 miles
northwest of Las Vegas.
 
 The panel will meet today in the remote Southern Nevada
railroad town of Caliente, which town leaders hope will play a
key role in plans to build a railroad spur to carry nuclear
waste to Yucca Mountain.
 
 "It might help them have a fuller understanding of the lay of
the land," Mayor Kevin Phillips said of the science panel's
visit to his town of 1,014 residents. Phillips says his
community would welcome the jobs, economic development and
emergency response training he expects it would get hosting a
Yucca Mountain railroad transfer station.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 54 Las Vegas RJ: DOE chief vows Yucca Mountain push 
 
Thursday, February 10, 2005
 

New energy secretary tells House committee Bush administration
committed to overcoming hurdles By STEVE TETREAULT 
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU 

Samuel Bodman 

Energy secretary says he will work "very actively" on Yucca
Mountain
 
WASHINGTON -- Pressured by lawmakers, Energy Secretary Samuel
Bodman said Wednesday he plans to take an active role on Yucca
Mountain, a project he said is causing problems for the Energy
Department. 

Bodman said the planned nuclear waste repository is being
delayed, but the Bush administration remains "focused and
committed" to see it completed. 

"The issue of a particular utility's spent fuel is a continuing
aggravation that this department will have to deal with, and we
continue to struggle with the process we must go through in
order to get a place to put the material," Bodman told a House
committee. 

"I find myself in a vise on this, and so we are doing our best
to satisfy everyone," Bodman said. "I have no doubt we will fail
in some respects." 

The project at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas,
was a big topic during Bodman's first appearance on Capitol Hill
since being sworn in as energy secretary on Feb. 1. 
Bodman spoke before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Most of the committee members, Republican and Democrat, favor
nuclear power and the Yucca project to dispose of spent
radioactive fuel stored at commercial reactors. 

"For all the controversy at Yucca Mountain, it doesn't make
sense to keep spent fuel rods scattered all around the country,"
said Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine. 

Chairman Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, questioned the Bush
administration's request of $651 million for 2006 and said it
was not enough. The department earlier projected Yucca Mountain
would need $1 billion or more at this point. 

"I see no study that shows if you spend $500 to $600 million a
year that you will have it ready," Barton said. 

Bodman said the request reflects delays brought on by legal
rulings. 

Bodman said he plans to work "very actively" on Yucca Mountain.
He said he has asked staff how many documents DOE still needs to
post onto an Internet database to satisfy a concern of the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

"I asked those folks when they would be done," Bodman said. "I
didn't get a clear answer, but they did say they were starting
to run out of things they conceivably could put on there." 

Yucca project director Margaret Chu said this week the
repository would slip two years beyond a 2010 target, and other
DOE officials said the delay could be longer. 

More than a half dozen lawmakers urged Bodman to push forward at
Yucca Mountain. 

Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., told Bodman that the Energy Department
has predicted that Yucca Mountain delays would cost $1 billion a
year in government storage costs.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 55 Herald: Navy nuclear waste dump plan is put on hold   
 
Web Issue 2200     February 10 2005      
    
  CATHERINE MACLEOD     February 10 2005   
    
  THE prospect of nuclear waste from de-commissioned submarines
being stored at Coulport on Loch Long appeared to recede last
night.

 Last year, the naval base was earmarked as the only one of 118
coastal sites eligible to store the material from 27 submarines
when they reached the end of their working lives.

 However, in a written statement yesterday, Adam Ingram, the
armed forces minister, said the Ministry of Defence accepted it
should wait for the conclusions of deliberations within the
Committee on Radioactive Waste Management on the options for a
long-term solution for the UK, which is expected next year.

 Mr Ingram declared that no further work would be done on
interim storage sites already named, or any sites yet to be
identified, until the committee had made its recommendations to
government. He said they would concentrate meantime on technical
studies assessing various options for dismantling the submarine
hulls and isolating irradiated material.

 Alan Reid, the Argyll and Bute MP, said villagers in Ardentinny
and Strone would be "very happy" at the news.
   
  Copyright © Newsquest (Herald & Times) Limited. All Rights
*****************************************************************
 56 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: New title, same clout

Today: February 10, 2005 at 9:09:51 PST 

 LAS VEGAS SUN

 Earlier this week President Bush announced that Karl Rove was
getting a promotion. Rove, the political adviser whom Bush has
credited as the "architect" of his re-election, will become
deputy chief of staff in the White House. Rove will be
responsible, officially, for coordinating policies involving
domestic issues, economic matters, national security and
homeland security. We say "officially" because the fact is that
in the first term Rove's political influence on policy coming
from the White House was profound. John Dilulio, who resigned in
2001 as coordinator of the president's faith-based initiative
program, said at the time that Rove is "maybe the single most
powerful person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a
political adviser post near the Oval Office."

 Rove was even knee-deep in President Bush's decision on a
nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain -- you remember, the issue
that George W. Bush told Nevadans in 2000 that wouldn't become
political if he was elected president. It was Rove who called
Gov. Kenny Guinn in 2002 to let him know that the Energy
Department would recommend to the president that a nuclear waste
dump be built in Nevada. It is telling that the call came from
Bush's political adviser, not from the president or Bush's
energy secretary, Spencer Abraham. Rove also sat in on the later
briefing that Guinn and Nevada's congressional delegation had
with Bush prior to the president's decision to accept Abraham's
recommendation.

 Term limits prevent another re-election bid by Bush, which
means that Rove can now devote his energy in the White House to
promoting the Republican Party's agenda of making itself the
dominant party in this country for decades to come. The
promotion of Rove is further confirmation that Bush is more
concerned about seeing what partisan gain can be extracted from
issues instead of finding solutions based on their merits. 
 
*****************************************************************
 57 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca board says shield concerns may slow licensing
 
Yucca board says shield concerns may slow licensing
 
By Stephen Curran <stephen.curran@lasvegassun.com> LAS VEGAS SUN

 Concerns over the strength of titanium drip shields that are
intended to keep water from leaking into casks deep inside the
proposed nuclear waste repository may slow the Energy
Department's already delayed licensing process, a Yucca Mountain
oversight board said Wednesday.

 Members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a
committee created by Congress to oversee the Yucca Mountain
project, called for a discussion at its next meeting in April to
address concerns raised by department engineers William Boyle
and Kirk Lachman, who in a design review briefly discussed
possible flaws that could cause the $6 billion drip shields to
corrode.

 Their comments, part of a series of presentations in an all-day
meeting at the Alexis Park Resort in Las Vegas, set off a flurry
of questioning by the board, as many members said the matter
would rear its head as the department prepares to submit another
license application later this year.

 "I think it will affect the license application," board member
George Hornberger said.

 The U.S. Court of Appeals on July 9 threw out the Environmental
Protection Agency's 10,000-year standard, saying it did not
follow the National Academy of Sciences recommendation of
another standard for as many as 300,000 years. The ruling proved
a significant setback for the Energy Department, which is still
working to complete another application by later this year.

 Even then, the department will still face an 18-month
Congressional review of its application before it receives the
final go-ahead, Margaret Chu, the Energy Department's assistant
secretary who oversees the Yucca Mountain project, said.

 The department had initially planned to submit the application
in December 2004.

 Hornberger's comments were the latest criticism of the waste
containers, which became a lightning rod after the review board
in 2003 said a flaw in their design could increase the
likelihood of water corroding the casks.

 The committee is expected to take up the issue again at its
next meeting in April, chairman John Garrick said.

 Chu said the engineers' findings underscored a need for a "more
detailed conversation," but that it was unlikely to affect when
the department submits the new application.

 "I really don't believe it will impact the license application
schedule," Chu said.

 Her statements Wednesday came days after the Energy Department
official said the delays had forced the department to begin
shying away from its earlier predictions that the repository 90
miles northwest of Las Vegas could open by 2010.

 Officials were now aiming for a 2012 opening date, although
that date was not certain, Chu told the committee.

 "It is difficult to specify with some confidence because it's
so budget-dependent," Chu said. "... Building a repository is a
capital project. It takes a lot of money."

 Meanwhile Energy Department budget documents released earlier
this week revealed that the federal agency could begin planning
as soon as next year for the 319-mile rail line that would ship
77,000 tons of nuclear waste from various sites nationwide
through Caliente.

 The Energy Department documents were part of a larger 100-page
plan submitted to Congress outlining the department's plans for
the $651 million it requested for Yucca Mountain.

 The rail line is still contingent on an environmental impact
study expected to outline ecological effects of the rail line.
That study, along with a prototype of a rail car, is expected to
be complete by mid-2006, Chu said. 
 
*****************************************************************
 58 Las Vegas SUN: Lawmakers press Bodman on Yucca

Today: February 10, 2005 at 11:23:16 PST 

By Suzanne Struglinski <suzanne@lasvegassun.com> SUN WASHINGTON 
BUREAU

 WASHINGTON -- House Democrats and Republicans pushed Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman to move forward on the Yucca Mountain
nuclear dump at the department's first budget hearing Wednesday.

 During an almost three-hour meeting, House Energy and Commerce
Committee members repeatedly emphasized opening up the federal
nuclear waste repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las
Vegas.

 At least seven committee members wanted to know what Bodman
would do to fix the numerous problems the nuclear dump faces.
More questions were to submitted to him later as well.

 The first question during the hearing, from Committee Chairman
Joe Barton, D-Texas, was about the project's funding. He said
the department's estimate showed it would be spending $1 billion
on it by this time, but money still sits in the Nuclear Waste
Fund and the department has only requested $651 million for
fiscal year 2006.

 He blamed Congress' inability to tap into the Nuclear Waste
Fund to funnel money to the program directly.

 "Every year we're told we need to solve this problem, but 'not
this year,' " Barton said.

 Without the funding change or an increase in the budget
request, Barton said he saw no way the repository would open by
2010.

 Bodman said the department will come forward with legislation
to remove money put into the Nuclear Waste Fund from
congressional spending limits. The fund is an account set aside
to pay for the repository using fees paid by ratepayers.

 Bodman said the lower budget request only reflects delays
caused by problems with the repository's documents and lack of a
radiation standard "but does not suggest any less enthusiasm" by
the department for the project.

 "I share your enthusiasm about Yucca Mountain and the need for
Yucca Mountain to further the U.S. nuclear industry's future,"
Bodman said. "I am eager to work with the committee to find
long-term solutions to the problem."

 Nevada lawmakers and other Yucca Mountain critics oppose
removing the congressional limits on the Nuclear Waste Fund.
They say it would reduce congressional oversight of the nuclear
dump effort because it would no longer have to compete for
funding like other federal programs.

 The Bush administration strongly supports the repository plan,
despite extreme opposition from Nevada's congressional
delegation and state officials. Nevada has no House members on
this particular panel, but they have testified before it in the
past.

 The committee's top Democrat, Michigan Rep. John Dingell,
reminded Bodman that nuclear utilities are suing the department
because their used fuel has not been moved like it was supposed
to be in 1998. He said every secretary has given the promise to
take the waste fund "off-budget" but he has yet to see it happen.

 Maryland Democrat Albert Wynn pressed Bodman on when the
department will get its documents together to submit to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. By law, the department must get
its documents in six months prior to submitting the license.

 Bodman said he did not have a clear date yet on when the
documents will go.

 "I've only been there seven days," Bodman said.

 He has been told that those working on the project are starting
to run out of documents that need to be included.

 Bodman released the president's budget and made his first
appearance as energy secretary all in his first week on the job. 


 
*****************************************************************
 59 FT.com: BNFL agrees deal with US to stem heavy losses
 
By Andrew Taylor, Utilities Correspondent 
Published: February 10 2005 02:00 | Last updated: February 10
2005 02:00

The US government has agreed a deal to stem losses, expected to 
total about $1bn (Â£500m) for the state-owned British Nuclear 
Fuels, on two fixed-price US nuclear clean-up contracts, Patricia 
Hewitt, trade and industry secretary, said yesterday.

BNFL will receive $500m-$550m, for giving up outstanding claims
on the loss-making contracts. It will also hand over to the US
Department of Energy a nuclear waste treatment plant built by
the group in Idaho.

In return, BNFL will be able to draw a line under its losses,
which are still expected to total $1bn after the deal.

Ms Hewitt told the Commons: "In addition to the immediate cash
receipts, BNFL will eliminate its considerable exposure to
further losses on these contracts while the [US] Department of
Energy will be able to pursue its overall clean-up programme
more effectively."

BNFL, which made a pre-tax loss of Â£303m before exceptional
charges in the 12 months to March 31, 2004, so far has made
provisions totalling $600m against the two US contracts. A
further $200m provision is expected to be charged for the
current financial year.

The group had been criticised for conducting insufficient due
diligence before it accepted a $1bn contract in 1996 to
decontaminate and decommission nuclear facilities at Oak Ridge
in Tennessee and a $300m contract a year later to treat and ship
nuclear waste from Idaho.

BNFL, which has overhauled its senior management since winning
the contracts, complained that the extent of nuclear
contamination had not been disclosed by the US Department of
Energy and the scope of the contracts had changed.

Michael Parker, BNFL's chief executive, said that the company
would continue to pursue clean-up opportunities in the US
although this was more likely to be as a sub-contractor where
there was less "exposure to the long-term financial risks
associated with these historic fixed-price contracts".

The resolution brokered by the British government with the US
Department of Energy was less than the company had sought.

It signals the end of an unfortunate episode for the British
company which is in the process of being reorganised following
the creation of a UK nuclear decommissioning authority.

In April, the state-funded authority will acquire all of the
publicly-owned civil nuclear facilities owned by BNFL and the
Atomic Energy Authority, in return for assuming financial
responsibility for Â£48bn of nuclear clean up costs.

BNFL will be expected to bid against international competitors
to manage and eventually clean up its former sites, including
its controversial Sellafield complex in Cumbria.

The creation of the decommissioning authority will have a
substantial impact on the group's finances.

BNFL estimated that it would have made an underlying pre-tax
profit in 2003-04 of Â£250m on sales of Â£1.22bn if the
decommissioning body had already been operating.

Last year the group established a stand-alone company to bid for
UK and international decommissioning contracts - a world market
it expects to be worth Â£3bn a year.

Mr Parker said that the clean-up skills developed as a result of
its work in the US should help it decommission British nuclear
plants.

Westinghouse, the group's US-based nuclear design and
construction company, will also be run as a separate business.

This will include BNFL's international nuclear fuel
manufacturing operations, which in the UK are based near Preston
in Lancashire. The government has not ruled out selling, or
seeking international partners for the new businesses, but
potential purchasers are most likely to be interested in
Westinghouse.  
  
Â© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2005. "FT"
and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times.
*****************************************************************
 60 Salt Lake Tribune: Lawmakers OK bill to ban B and C waste 

Article Last Updated: 02/10/2005 02:47:04 AM 

Senate Bill 24: The measure now goes to the governor, who has 
publicly endorsed it 

By Matt Canham and Patty Henetz The Salt Lake Tribune 

The House gave final legislative approval Wednesday to ban 
radioactive waste hotter than what already is accepted in Utah - 
but not before one of the bill's sponsors made a half-hearted 
effort to scuttle an outright prohibition. 

Rep. Craig Frank, R-Pleasant Grove, made the case to 
eliminate the possibility of "B and C waste" being stored in 
Utah - and then voted against that ban. 

"I believe the people of our state really do want to ban B 
and C waste," Frank said "But I have come to the realization 
that we don't have all of the facts." 

Frank said he believes more federal study is necessary before 
the Legislature can make an informed vote. He says the risk 
model used in past analysis is antiquated. 

Frank's actions shocked Rep. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George, 
who co-chaired a task force that examined the issue for the past 
two years. 

Urquhart handpicked Frank from that task force to present the 
bill without knowing of Frank's reservations. 

"This is an unruly process at times. That was one of several 
surprises I have received this session," Urquhart said. 

Senate Bill 24 already was approved by senators and now goes 
to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who has publicly endorsed it. The 
measure would stop the state from issuing a permit to accept 
waste hotter than the Class A variety now disposed of at the 
Envirocare facility in Tooele County. Class B and C waste is 
thousands of times more radioactive than Class A, and mostly 
comes from nuclear plants. 

The bill also enhances state regulatory powers over 
commercial radioactive waste facilities and makes changes to the 
way those facilities are taxed. 

Rep. James Ferrin, R-Orem, denounced the ban as shortsighted, 
saying it ignores the possibility of increased revenues for the 
state. He also said the Legislature is hiding behind the issue 
of safety, when the Department of Environmental Quality has 
stated the waste could be stored without any serious threat. 

"Nevada has gambling. Wyoming has oil. Utah has vast open 
spaces with no groundwater problems, perfect for storing this 
natural byproduct of our industrialized society," Ferrin said. 

Urquhart countered by saying the money that would come from 
storing the hotter waste is negligible and the threat is not 
overstated because of the possibility of an accident 
transporting the material. 

The ban passed 57-13. 

Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 61 Waste News: Military training area in Puerto Rico added to Superfund list

[Wastenews.com headlines e-mailed daily] [Win a DVD player]     
  
 Feb. 9 -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has formally 
listed the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Area in Vieques, 
Puerto Rico, on the Superfund National Priorities List of the 
hazardous sites.

 The Feb. 7 listing is the next step in a process that began in 
June 2003 with a request from former Puerto Rico Gov. Sila 
Calderon to list the site for cleanup.

 The training area was impacted by 100 years of military 
operations, mostly by the Navy. Some land and water may be 
contaminated with mercury, lead, copper, magnesium, lithium, 
perchlorate, TNT, napalm, depleted uranium, PCBs, solvents and 
pesticides, according to the EPA.

 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is trying to negotiate a 
memorandum of agreement with the commonwealth for the cleanup of 
another portion of the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Area on 
the island of Culebra. If an agreement is not reached, that 
portion might also be placed on the Superfund list, according to 
the EPA.

 
  Entire contents copyright 2005 by Crain Communications Inc.
*****************************************************************
 62 Times-News: Debate ensues over Yucca Mountain progress ... 

    www.magicvalley.com

    Thursday, February 10, 2005   •   Twin Falls, Idaho   
    

Idaho delegation confident project won't effect INL cleanupThe 
Times-News and 

The Associated Press

BOISE -- Recent wrangling over the status of the high-level
radioactive dump at Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada hasn't
dampened the outlook of Idaho's congressional delegation for
removing the state's nuclear waste.

On Wednesday, Lindsay Nothern, press secretary for Sen. Mike
Crapo, gave assurances that the senator would press for progress
on the Yucca Mountain facility. 

"The senator remains confident about the project," Nothern said. 

Under an agreement between the state and the Department of
Energy, Idaho's high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel is
scheduled to be removed from the cleanup site at the Idaho
National Laboratory by 2035. The waste would head to the Yucca
Mountain site, said Kathleen Trever, the state's oversight
administrator for INL.

"There is no other home for spent nuclear fuel or high-level
waste at this point," Trever said.

On Tuesday, Robert Loux, executive director for the Nevada state
Agency for Nuclear Projects, expressed concern over whether
Yucca Mountain would open at all.

"The project is limping along," Loux told Nevada legislators.
"We believe the project is dead." 

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told lawmakers Wednesday that
while progress on a nuclear waste project in Nevada will be
delayed, the government is "very focused and committed" to
building the facility. Bodman was questioned about the Bush
administration's commitment to the program two days after the
Energy Department said it would ask for only $651 million for
the Yucca Mountain program for the budget year that begins in
October.

Loux noted the request showed a 50 percent decrease in the
department's original $1.3 billion request. 

Department officials have delayed plans to submit a license
application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the project
and acknowledged the new target date for opening the facility --
if it gets an NRC license -- is 2012, two years later than
originally planned. 

The delay shouldn't affect Idaho's shipments, Trever said. The
DOE has an accelerated cleanup date of 2012 for the other waste
at INL. The waste scheduled to be transferred to Yucca Mountain
-- about 270 metric tons of heavy metal of spent nuclear fuel
and 9,230 cubic meters of high-level waste -- isn't included in
that accelerated effort but should be removed by 2035, Trever
said.

Potential problems that could delay programs, Bodman said, are
court rulings that strike down the proposed radiation safety
standards for the site and problems in preparation of the
license application. 

But that "is not to suggest any less enthusiasm for Yucca
Mountain," Bodman told the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Idaho Sens. Crapo and Larry Craig expressed similar sentiments. 

"Senator Craig has been working for a number of years to move
the project forward," said Mike Tracy, a spokesman for Craig.
"There have always been those who have been opposed." 

Bodman said the $651 million requested for the upcoming budget
year for the Yucca project is adequate "given the restrains
under which we are operating."

The project has widespread and bipartisan support on Capitol
Hill. But Congress provided $577 million this budget year, far
less than the $880 million the administration had sought.

Yucca Mountain, a ridge of volcanic rock 90 miles northwest of
Las Vegas, was first considered as a place for the nation's
central repository for high-level nuclear waste 27 years ago.
The government initially promised the industry it would begin
accepting the waste -- building up at power plants around the
country -- for long-term disposal by 1998.

President Bush gave the go-ahead to the project in 2002.
Congress overrode Nevada's objections to the dump and last year
an appeals court rejected Nevada's argument that the federal
government's decision to single out Nevada for the facility was
unconstitutional.

Nothern pointed to the priority the Bush administration has
placed on nuclear energy to cast doubt on speculation that the
project's status is as dire as Loux implied. 

"Nuclear energy has been a priority for this administration,"
Nothern said.

"It's hard to move forward on a nuclear initiative if you don't
have a repository," he said. "Yucca Mountain will remain an
active priority."		  	

Copyright © 2005, Lee Publications Inc.

Magicvalley.com is an on-line division of The Times-News,
published daily at 132 W. Fairfield St.,
Twin Falls, Idaho 83301 by Lee Publications, Inc., a subsidiary
of Lee Enterprises.  
*****************************************************************
 63 IPS: RIGHTS-US: Nuke Waste Project Divides Native Tribe
 
Katherine Stapp                                                                                                                

NEW YORK, Feb 10 (IPS) - The crystalline skies and tranquil, 
smoke-coloured mountains ringing the reservation of Utah's Skull 
Valley Goshute Indian Tribe give little hint of the area's 
troubled history as a dumping ground for chemical and biological 
waste.                                               

Once 20,000 strong, today the Goshute Tribe has dwindled to fewer 
than 500 members. Its Skull Valley Band numbers just 124.

 But after years of isolation, this small group of Native 
Americans is again in the middle of a bitter environmental 
controversy -- how and where to safely dispose of the nation's 
overflowing stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel.

 "The government put us on a little piece of land and now they 
want to store more than half the nation's waste here," said 
Margene Bullcreek, a Goshute activist who lives on the 
reservation. "If it's so safe, why don't they put it in 
Washington next to Congress?"

 The problems started nine years ago, when a consortium of 
nuclear utilities called Private Fuel Storage (PFS) struck a deal 
with the tribe's leadership to relocate 44,000 tonnes of lethal 
spent uranium fuel rods -- nearly 80 percent of the U.S. total -- 
to Skull Valley.

 Initially proposed by the Department of Energy, the plan called 
for waste from nuclear reactors across the country to be shipped 
to Utah by special trains, where it would be stored inside 
20-foot-tall aboveground concrete and steel silos -- making Skull 
Valley the largest off-site, dry cask storage facility on Earth.

 While some in the tribe believe the project will bring needed 
economic development, many others, like Bullcreek, are furious 
and say it is just the latest in a long line of injustices 
committed against Native Americans.

 The U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Grounds, which sits 10 miles 
away, was a long-time testing zone for chemical and biological 
weapons. In 1968, chemical agents escaped and killed 6,000 sheep, 
of which 1,600 were then buried on tribal lands by the 
government.

 Look to the east of Skull Valley and you will find the world's 
largest nerve gas incinerator. To the north is a giant magnesium 
facility, identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as 
the most polluting plant of its kind in the country. To the west 
is a hazardous waste landfill and radioactive waste disposal 
site.

 Since 1981, activists say that 60 reservations have been 
targeted for "temporary" radioactive waste dumps by the federal 
government and nuclear power industry; 59 tribes have fended off 
the dumps. Skull Valley has come closer than any others to 
actually opening a facility.

 Complicating matters further, Leon Bear, the tribe's former 
chairman, has refused to disclose the terms of the contract he 
signed with PFS, including how much money changed hands.

 "Why should the people be the ones left holding the bag when it 
was our corrupt leadership that made all the money?" said 
Bullcreek, who has been fighting to schedule a new tribal 
election. "It's future generations that will be stuck with the 
problem."

 "Our political leadership is in disarray, our sovereignty is in 
jeopardy, and there's so much dishonesty and distrust that the 
PFS project has created. It's just not right for this large 
corporation to come down on a traditional government."

 In theory, Skull Valley would be a temporary resting place until 
the opening of Nevada's underground Yucca Mountain nuclear waste 
storage site in 2010.

 However, Yucca itself has been plagued with problems and delays, 
including objections by the Western Shoshone Indian National 
Council, which claims ownership of Yucca Mountain under an 1863 
treaty. It has also been discovered that the area is sitting on 
an earthquake fault line.

 And there is uncertainty that the type of irradiated waste 
transported by PFS would be acceptable for long-term storage by 
the federal government.

 "We've been concerned about this for years," said Kevin Kamps of 
the Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service, 
which opposes the Skull Valley facility. "They insist the waste 
will go to Yucca, but an Energy Department spokesman in Utah 
already said they would not take it."

 "There is a successful record of resisting these projects, but 
it has torn communities apart," he added. "It's social poison, 
and the situation has become especially messy at Skull Valley."

 PFS insists that the deal is fair, noting that the tribe carried 
out a six-year feasibility study before signing on and that the 
project was approved by a two-thirds vote.

 "We don't get involved in tribal affairs," said Sue Martin, a 
spokesperson for PFS. "But people looking at this from the 
outside seem to have this strange perspective that the tribe 
ought to be unanimous on this, but when is politics ever 
unanimous?"

 "The whole purpose is that it's a stop-gap measure until there 
is a national permanent repository," she said. "The current lease 
is for 25 years with a possible extension. If it wasn't renewed, 
we'd make preparations to move."

 The tribe's dissident faction has a powerful ally in the state 
of Utah, which has been petitioning the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission (NRC) to scuttle the project since 1997.

 Among other issues, state attorneys argue that pilots flying 
training missions out of Hill Air Force Base in northern Utah 
might crash into the storage tanks, which would be just 45 miles 
southwest of the state capital, Salt Lake City.

 "More than 7,000 flights a year would pass directly over the 
valley," Connie Nakahara, an engineer and special assistant to 
Utah's attorney-general, told IPS. "We believe the odds of an 
accident are much greater than one in a million," the threshold 
for filing a safety complaint.

 Besides the potentially catastrophic health effects, state 
experts estimate that an accident could cost as much as 300 
billion dollars to clean up.

 "The spent fuel would have to be transported through 
metropolitan areas, watersheds and other sensitive areas," 
Nakahara said. "About 95 percent of the public opposes this 
project."

 Troubling questions also persist about the integrity of the 
storage casks, which were engineered by a company called Holtec 
International and sold to Exelon, one of the nation's largest 
utilities and a member of PFS.

 In 2000, an Exelon employee, Oscar Shirani, led a six-month 
quality assurance audit of Holtec casks at several manufacturing 
plants. He found numerous violations indicating that casks made 
did not match the licensed design specifications required by the 
NRC.

 When Shirani initiated a stop-work order, his bosses became 
extremely upset, he said, and refused to allow him to return to 
the plants for further inspections. After the 90-day 
whistleblower protection period expired, he was transferred to 
another department, and then terminated in October 2001.

 "I thought the NRC was a watchdog and that they would take care 
of me," Shirani said in a lengthy interview. "But Exelon is 
extremely powerful, and the NRC was in their hands."

 "The bottom line is that the casks' structural integrity is 
unknown," Shirani said. "Once you lose control of the design, you 
don't know where the stresses are. Instead of lasting 100 years, 
they could fail in the first five years. They could shatter like 
glass."

 "Exelon falsified nuclear audit reports for their own benefit, 
they're endangering their own kids," he said. "I've gone through 
all my savings and I can't find another job; no one in the 
industry will even pick up the phone to talk to me. It's the 
struggle of my life to make sure these guys don't get away with 
it."

 About a third of all the high-level nuclear waste storage casks 
in the country were designed by Holtec. And while the NRC says 
the problems have been resolved, some in the agency are not so 
sure.

 "They're all over the country," said Dr. Ross Landsman, an 
inspector with the NRC's Region Three division who has supported 
Shirani. "There was a definite absence of any quality assurance. 
It was turned over to the people in Washington, but I think a lot 
of the issues are still open."

 The NRC is expected to issue a final ruling later this month on 
whether the Skull Valley project will go ahead. Both PFS and the 
state say they would probably appeal an unfavourable decision.

 "They want our land and that's just not right," Bullcreek said. 
"Well, we're not going to let it happen. We're gonna be real 
noisy about this." (END/2005)
 									 	 
Copyright © 2005 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.   
*****************************************************************
 64 Deseret news: House votes to ban importing of B, C wastes
 	 
[deseretnews.com] 
 	
Thursday, February 10, 2005
 	   	 
But co-sponsor of the bill has change of heart, votes against it

By Joe Bauman Deseret Morning News

As expected, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly 
Wednesday to ban importation of Class B and C radioactive wastes, 
ending a yearslong controversy in the Legislature. What was 
unusual is that the bill's co-sponsor, Rep. Craig A. Frank, voted 
against it.

Warning signs hang on fences surrounding hazardous wastes at
Envirocare facility in Clive, Tooele County. 
[''] 
Douglas C. Pizac, Associated Press  

       SB24 was guaranteed to pass, having sailed through the
Senate without a dissenting vote. Leaders of both houses and
both parties supported it. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. had come out
for the ban during a press conference.

       Frank, R-Pleasant Grove, outlined one reason for passing
SB24, when he addressed the House.

       "It is clear that if we ask our people, the people that
we represent, if they would prefer to ban B and C wastes, I
think we would find that they would prefer that action," he said.

       Radioactive material is used to our benefit in medicine
and food preservation, he said.

       He added that the National Academy of Sciences is
wrapping up a study concerning low-level radiation exposure. It
will address risk models that have been in effect for more than
50 years, he said. It may show a potential for hazard — or "we
may find the other extreme, though," Frank said.

       "But if we go back to the people and the voice of the
people, the people that we represent, I think the policy is
clear. . . . We need to stand up and be counted here for the
people of this good state of Utah."

       His unusual position on the matter may stem from changes
in the bill as it worked it way through the Legislature.

       During the House's noon break, Frank said he was asked to
co-sponsor SB24 in the House probably because he was a member of
the joint legislative task force that had studied the issue.

       The task force recommendations were the basis for the
bill, which originally did not contain a ban on B and C. This is
radioactive wastes that are considered low-level but are
"hotter" than the Class A waste presently disposed in Tooele
County by Envirocare of Utah.

       Only after Envirocare's new owners announced the company
would not continue seeking the hotter material, and legislators
and the governor spoke in favor of a ban, was the bill amended
to prohibit importation of B and C.

       Frank, asked to co-sponsor SB24, apparently harbored
concerns about the later version.

       Speaking on the House floor, he pointed out that this is
an important bill, with the most important part the ban on
importing B and C wastes.

       He said a small amount of B and C waste are generated in
the state.

       "As we create this policy for our state . . . all parties
are comfortable with this," he said. Frank urged his colleagues
to "do the politically expeditious thing and to vote for this
bill."

       "My only regret is that we didn't pass it two years ago,
when it was first brought up," said Rep. Kory M. Holdaway,
R-Taylorsville.

       Rep. James A. Ferrin, R-Orem, asked Frank, "Could you
tell me why I should vote to forever ban B and C wastes from the
state of Utah?"

       "I would like to answer that," Frank replied, "but I'm
not sure if I can."

       Responding to Ferrin's queries, he said the task force
did not receive any testimony from the Utah Department of
Environmental Quality indicating the waste couldn't be stored
safely.

       In fact, Frank added, DEQ experts told the group that
"the current practices of disposal in our state guarantees
safety." A ban might cost the state $10 million a year in fees,
he added, replying to another question from Ferrin. That figure
is based on importing a "medium amount" of B and C waste, Frank
said.

       Ferrin said he could not support the bill and charged
proponents of a ban had been trying to scare people. The fees
could be useful, he indicated.

       "I'm not going to do the politically expeditious thing,"
Ferrin said. "I'm going to do the right thing," and vote against
the ban.

       "There are plenty of good reasons to ban this," said Rep.
Stephen H. Urquart, R-St. George, the House majority whip. "Step
one is we represent the people," who don't want the hotter
material brought in.

       Also, he said, the amount of fees that could be generated
through importing B and C is "absolutely minuscule," and Utah
generates almost none of this material.

       After the bill passed 57-13, reporters asked Frank why he
had voted against it. He noted the federal study that was going
on and said radiation is used in medicine all the time.

       "We certainly, from a political and community standpoint,
have taken a very important step toward what we think is a good
policy, and I would suggest that we've done the right thing here
today," Frank said.

       So why did he vote against it?

       "It is a good policy currently, but I think we have some
other concerns to address as this study comes out," he said.

       Asked what he was urging representatives to do in his
summary, Frank said, "I was urging them to seek for more
information and perhaps research the issue a little bit more
themselves."

       Did he want them to vote for or against the bill?

       "That would be up to them," he replied.

       Frank noted that a ban was already in place, and "this is
basically wrapping the ban in another ban."

       Jason Groenewold, director of the Healthy Environmental
Alliance of Utah — who has long battled for the ban — said it
was good to finally see passage. "All we need now is the
governor to sign the bill, which he's indicated he would do," he
said.

E-mail: bau@desnews.com

 © 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company 
*****************************************************************
 65 Upper Cape Codder: Reprocessing site cleanup is dirty, costly business

TownOnline.com - The 

By Craig Salters/ csalters@cnc.com

Thursday, February 10, 2005

If Cape Codders want to know what might have happened had the 
state's Atomic Energy Commission succeeded in its plan to build a 
nuclear "reprocessing" facility on Camp Edwards in the early 
1960s, they might want to take a look at Hanford, Wash.

     Chances are, however, they won't like what they see.

     A facility which can trace its roots to The Manhattan
Project, Hanford used "reprocessing" - a method for extracting
plutonium from nuclear materials - to supply the nation's
military need for more than 40 years. In its wake, the facility
left contaminated soil, unsafe drinking water and radioactive
waste near the shores of the Columbia River, creating a cleanup
problem that will take decades to resolve.

     According to a Department of Energy Web site detailing both
the ecological disaster and the steps taken to address the
problem, the Hanford cleanup is "a vast, complex and expensive
task - one that has often been called the world's largest
environmental cleanup project."

     "A quarter of our history is cleanup, so far," said Dr.
Michele Stenehjem Gerber, the site's historian whose book, "On
the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Site," is
considered the only comprehensive history of America's first and
foremost defense plutonium production site. "Once we get all the
way, it will be the majority of our history."

     A brief history of the facility shows that, in its heyday
during the Cold War, Hanford made use of several reprocessors as
one step of a multi-step process to create weapons-grade
plutonium. Since the Cape Cod project never came to fruition, it
is not known whether providing the military with plutonium would
have been part of its mission or whether the scale of the
project would have been comparable to the massive size of the
586-square mile Hanford site.

     What is known, however, is that Hanford's reprocessing was
one of the more environmentally damaging aspects of what is now
a Superfund cleanup site.

     "Inherently, it's a messy operation," said Gerber,
explaining that reprocessing involves the use of chemicals to
extract the "plutonium fraction" from spent fuel rods. Those
chemicals, she said, are pumped into storage tanks, some of
which have leaked over the years.

     "Some of our tanks have leaked and that's a bad thing, but
it's true," said Gerber, who noted that not all of the leaks,
which occurred primarily from single-shelled tanks, have reached
the area's water table. That water table, Gerber added, is
between 250 and 300 feet deep in an arid section of Washington
east of the Cascade Mountains, an area that receives about six
inches of rainfall per year.

     Gerber also emphasized that, unlike many other nuclear
facilities constructed or proposed, the Hanford site was not in
the business of providing energy. Its sole purpose, she said,
was making plutonium for weapons.

     Cleanup at the now closed plant has been progressing to the
point where all three areas identified as those of highest risk
- the collection of spent fuel, the collection of plutonium
scraps and the movement of wastes from single-shell to
double-shell tanks - were successfully remediated in 2004.

     Gerber said that those involved with the cleanup have a
personal stake in doing their jobs well. "We live here and have
a great interest in it being clean," she said.


© Copyright of CNC and Herald Interactive Advertising Systems,
 No portion of townonline.com or its content may be reproduced
*****************************************************************
 66 Whitehaven News: BNFL’S RIVALS TO BE PRIVATISED 

WHILE privatising nuclear power here has ended in near financial 
melt-down, the French government is to part-privatise BNFL’s 
rivals, Areva.

The company has just completed a MOX contract with the US, taking 
US weapons grade plutonium and creating four MOX (mixed uranium 
and plutonium oxides) fuel assemblies. These will be delivered 
this spring, on schedule. They will be used to validate the 
performance of MOX fuel in an American nuclear reactor. The 
French government is to partially privatise three major energy 
firms including Areva. When the British privatised its nuclear 
power plants as British Energy the firm had to be rescued from 
bankruptcy by the government and banks.









*****************************************************************
 67 Albuquerque Tribune: UT System, Sandia Lab's 5-year deal includes a review

By Erik Siemers
Tribune Reporter
February 10, 2005

The University of Texas System and Sandia National Laboratories 
this morning announced a new collaboration that includes a 
university review of the lab's science and technology programs. 

The university will open a staffed office at the Albuquerque lab 
and get a position on the lab's board of directors. 

The five-year agreement with Sandia calls for the UT System to 
develop and implement a peer review process for Sandia's science, 
technology and engineering foundation. 

The review is expected to cover the effectiveness of unclassified 
research at several Sandia programs, including research sponsored 
by the U.S. Department of Energy, according to a news release. 

"As a national laboratory, Sandia has been working for many years 
to establish and maintain strategic partnerships with outstanding 
national institutions in academia, industry and the government," 
Sandia president and lab director C. Paul Robinson said this 
morning. "It will allow Sandia to further develop its people and 
enhance its technical abilities to better meet the national 
challenges we face." 

UT would be reimbursed for conducting the review. 

"Our job is to do an independent assessment of their scientific 
research, make sure it's cutting edge, make sure it's up-to-date, 
that it's valid, that the taxpayers are getting their money's 
worth and do that from an independent standpoint," UT System 
Chancellor Mark Yudof told the Associated Press on Wednesday. 

The agreement also calls for joint development and implementation 
of "strategic program areas that enhance" Sandia's broad national 
security missions, the news release stated. 

The agreement also brings an expected increase in collaboration 
between individuals at Sandia and the UT System. 

The UT System will receive a newly designated position on 
Sandia's board of directors that, among other duties, will 
organize and lead technical reviews of the lab's science and 
technology foundations, according to the news release. 

UT System will open an office at Sandia's Albuquerque facilities 
to be staffed by Oct. 1. 

At the same meeting in Austin this morning, the UT System board 
of regents voted not to pursue a bid to manage Los Alamos 
National Laboratories. 

The university system chose the prestige of working with a 
national lab over the management burden of running one, Yudof 
said. 

"There's a reputational advantage to being tied to a national 
laboratory, and in this case we'll be able to be pretty 
openhanded with the public in terms of what we're doing, because 
it's all unclassified research," Yudof said. 

UT officials expressed interest in a contract to manage Los 
Alamos in July. The federal nuclear weapons facility lab has been 
operated by the University of California since it was established 
in 1943. The U.S. Department of Energy opened bidding on the 
contract after a series of security and money management 
problems. 

Yudof said UT System officials had been pursuing relationships 
with both labs simultaneously. 

"We were going along both routes, but they were very different 
propositions," he said. 

A contract with Los Alamos would have required UT System, likely 
along with a partner, to manage the entire workings of the lab 
where much of the nation's weapons research takes place. 

The agreement with Sandia, on the other hand, allows UT System a 
role in management but is "more pure science and technology," 
Yudof said. 

The agreement with Sandia will likely have financial benefits for 
UT. 

"The joint research activities, I think, will lead to additional 
research grants for University of Texas System institutions," 
Yudof said. "That's good because there are new technologies, 
there are new discoveries, and you can attract better faculty to 
your campuses when that's true." 

Juan Sanchez, vice president for research at UT Austin, said 
collaboration with the lab would allow scientists from all 15 UT 
institutions to help tackle national problems including security 
and water and energy sustainability. 

Both UT and Sandia scientists support the agreement to expand 
collaborative efforts, Sanchez said. 

"There are obvious benefits," he said. "Some of them are not 
tangible in the sense that you cannot translate them into 
increased research expenditures for next year, but the long-term 
impact value might very well be that - increased federal research 
expenditures in Texas." 

The UT System has 15 campuses, including nine academic and six 
health institutions, and an annual operating budget of $8.5 
billion. Student enrollment exceeded 182,000 in the 2004 academic 
year, and UT has more than 76,000 employees. 

The Associated Press contributed to this story. 
  
*****************************************************************
 68 AP Wire: Construction delayed for nuclear fuel plant at SRS

| 02/10/2005 | 

Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Construction has been delayed until next year
for a $1.6 billion plant near Aiken that would convert
weapons-grade plutonium into fuel at nuclear power plants, the
Energy Department says. 

The mixed oxide fuel plant is expected to employ more than 1,000
people at the Savannah River Site, a former nuclear weapons
plant, and would be burned by Duke Energy at power plants near
Charlotte, N.C. 

On Wednesday, newly confirmed Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman
blamed the delay on a thorny disagreement between the United
States and Russia. The Russians plan to build a sister plant
that would produce mixed oxide fuel - called MOX - with U.S.
assistance. 

"The liability concerns are a sticking point, and it has caused
a delay in construction. But those liability questions could be
resolved and resolved soon," said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for
the National Nuclear Security Administration, a Department of
Energy agency that oversees the MOX project and other nuclear
weapons programs. 

Despite the construction delay, Wilkes said, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission is expected to issue a pending
construction permit next month. 

President Bush's budget request for the 2006 fiscal year
includes $362.5 million for construction on the project,
officials said. The project received $365 million for the 2005
fiscal year and $360 million for the 2004 fiscal year. 

In letters Monday to Congress, Bodman said the construction
delays "have made it impossible to meet the MOX production
objective by January 2009." 

That will force Energy Department officials to submit a revised
construction and operations schedule to Congress once the
liability issue is resolved. 

Federal law requires that the MOX plant at SRS start producing
the fuel by January 2009 so that surplus plutonium shipped to
South Carolina can be used up by January 2019. Otherwise, DOE
will have to pay a $1 million-a-day fine to South Carolina. 

Bodman's letter comes three years after then-Gov. Jim Hodges
predicted the Department of Energy might leave tons of plutonium
at SRS forever. 

The Democrat sued unsuccessfully to block plutonium shipments
from other federal nuclear weapons complexes to SRS without
ironclad assurances the material eventually would leave SRS. 

Though he lost the suit, Hodges' concerns prompted Congress to
pass a law setting a firm schedule for turning the plutonium
into MOX. 

Bodman said the agency will work to honor its commitments to
South Carolina. 

U.S. Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., said the delay is disappointing,
though not surprising. 

"This delays the best way of keeping weapons-grade plutonium out
of the hands of rogues and terrorists, which is to process it
into fuel and burn it," Spratt said. "For South Carolina, this
means that we are going to be stuck with plutonium in our state
for longer than we were told." 

U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said the government's only option
is "to make sure the Russian program gets up to speed."   

TheState.com
*****************************************************************
 69 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Project to 'glassify' Hanford waste begins
 	 	 	 	 	 
  [seattlepi.com]     

Thursday, February 10, 2005 

 Pilot program will tackle a chunk of nuclear reservation's
leftovers 

By SHANNON DININNY
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

RICHLAND -- Of three Hanford Nuclear Reservation cleanup
projects deemed urgent because of the risk they posed to the
public and the environment, only one remains: treating and
disposing of millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste
stored in underground tanks. 

Last year, workers dealt with two of the projects -- stabilizing
4.4 tons of plutonium and removing spent nuclear fuel from two
leak-prone pools of water just a few hundred yards from the
Columbia River. 

And construction is under way on a nearly $6 billion plant that
will use a process called vitrification to turn some of the tank
waste into glass logs for permanent disposal in a nuclear waste
repository. 

But the plant was never designed to treat all of the waste in
time for the 2028 deadline imposed in the Tri-Party Agreement, a
cleanup pact signed by the state, the U.S. Department of Energy
-- which manages the Hanford site -- and the Environmental
Protection Agency. State and federal officials now hope a pilot
project aimed at treating the remaining waste in a similar
fashion will be successful. 

The technology, called bulk vitrification, will be tested at a
new facility at the Hanford site under a research and
development permit approved by the state Department of Ecology.
If bulk vitrification proves viable, a full-scale production
facility will be built to treat as much as 42 percent of
Hanford's tank waste. 

"This combination of the waste treatment plant and a
supplemental treatment technology is the surest way for DOE to
meet its Tri-Party Agreement commitment," Roy Schepens, manager
of the Energy Department's Office of River Protection, said
yesterday at a ceremony to celebrate the start of the project. 

For 40 years, the Hanford reservation in south-central
Washington made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons
arsenal, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan project to
build the atomic bomb. 

Today, work there centers on a $50 billion to $60 billion
cleanup, to be finished by 2035. That includes cleaning up 53
million gallons of highly radioactive liquid, sludge and
saltcake sitting in 177 underground tanks, less than 10 miles
from the Columbia River. 

The Energy Department estimates that 2 million to 3 million
gallons of high-level waste will be treated by the vitrification
plant. The goal is to divide the remaining 50 million gallons of
less-radioactive waste between the plant and whatever
supplemental technology is chosen. 

That is where bulk vitrification plays a role. Similar to the
vitrification process that is used in the waste treatment plant
now under construction, bulk vitrification turns waste into a
glasslike substance by melting it at a very high temperature
with soil and chemicals for hours. 

The difference is that the melting process occurs inside the
container the waste will be stored in, said Rick Raymond,
director of supplemental treatment for contractor CH2M Hill
Hanford Group.                 

  [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 
98119 (206) 448-8000
 
 Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com
©1996-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
*****************************************************************
 70 ABQjournal: LANL Auditor Claims Retaliation 

the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. 

Thursday, February 10, 2005 

Albuquerque Journal--> By Adam Rankin 
Journal Staff Writer 

A nuclear facility quality assurance auditor contracted by 
Los Alamos National Laboratory filed a claim with the U.S. 
Department of Labor earlier this month alleging that he was 
demoted in retaliation for his reviews critical of lab safety 
and security. 

Donald W. Brown, 59, asserts in his complaint filed Jan. 14 
that despite repeated written and verbal notices "regarding 
dangerous failures in safety and security practices" at LANL, 
his concerns were never adequately addressed. Following his 
reviews, Brown's "duties were severely restricted" to jobs well 
below his ability, according to the complaint. 

Brown— who appeared this week on the "CBS Evening News" to 
report his findings on safety problems at several of LANL's 
highest-risk facilities— is seeking to have his job reinstated 
and compensation for "emotional distress and the deliberate 
infliction of pain and suffering." 

Hired by LANL as a contractor with Butler Services in May 
2003, Brown is also seeking through the complaint to require 
LANL to institute proper quality-assurance programs across the 
laboratory. 

"From day one, I started seeing this was a serious 
problem," Brown said by telephone on Wednesday. "In my career, I 
have never seen anything that would even compare." 

In his complaint, Brown said he found no quality-assurance 
programs to ensure the reliability of the nuclear components in 
the W88 and W76 nuclear warheads and that several of LANL's 
nuclear facilities threaten worker and public safety. 

National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Bryan 
Wilkes challenged Brown's assertions. 

"What makes him a weapons design expert?" Wilkes asked, 
adding that NNSA has found no reliability issues with any of its 
weapons designs. "We are absolutely confident," he said. 

Wilkes also stressed that during LANL's recent shutdown, 
initiated in July following a series of safety and security 
concerns, laboratory and NNSA managers reviewed many of the 
lab's systems in restarting work. 

"We are confident his claims are on old concerns," Wilkes 
said. "He may have had a case a year and a half ago, but this 
shutdown really did a lot to clean up and get things in order 
and take care of necessary safety and security issues." 

LANL spokesman Jim Fallin said the laboratory is addressing 
Brown's situation through two independent reviews. One will 
evaluate the merits of Brown's reviews of LANL's 
quality-assurance programs, while the other will determine 
whether LANL managers retaliated against Brown for his audits. 

"This institution has learned from past mistakes, and it is 
vitally important to us that people understand that we are 
committed to protecting our employees to ensure that they feel 
they can speak up when they have concerns," Fallin said. 

"There is no room for unfair treatment here," he said. 
"Reprisals will absolutely not be tolerated." 

On Oct. 22, 2004, Brown wrote and widely distributed a 
22-page analysis of the failings of LANL's quality-assurance 
program, often suggesting the problems were common across the 
DOE complex. 

He said writing that review and several highly critical 
audits angered LANL managers and forced him to file for 
whistle-blower protection. 

"I had hoped I wouldn't have had to report it at the 
laboratory, but when I started looking at the audits and where 
the problems were with the quality-assurance program, and I 
looked at the consequences of failure ... after many sleepless 
nights I decided I needed to report these problems up the 
chain," he said. 

Copyright Albuquerque Journal 

Steve@abqjournal.com 
*****************************************************************
 71 ABQjournal: LANL Sees Budget Hike; Sandia Funds Drop
 
the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. 

Thursday, February 10, 2005 

Albuquerque Journal--> By Adam Rankin
 Journal Staff Writer

     For the second year in a row, New Mexico's take of the
Department of Energy budget is scheduled to decrease, according
to the 2006 fiscal year funding request made public earlier this
week.
     Across the state's two national laboratories and various
U.S. Energy Department projects, New Mexico is slated to get
$4.1 billion, or about $20 million less than it did for 2005, a
decrease of about 0.5 percent.
     Los Alamos National Laboratory is expected to see a slight
budget increase, but funding for Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque will be cut, according to the proposal.
     "While there are some positive elements to this budget
proposal, overall New Mexico's labs don't fare as well as I
would like them to," Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said in a
statement.
     DOE's statewide funding drop, if Congress meets the
request, is less than the previous year when New Mexico's DOE
projects saw a decrease of $88.1 million from $4.2 billion to
$4.1 billion, a 2.1 percent reduction.
     "This is, without a doubt, one of the tightest budgets I've
ever seen," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., adding in a
statement that the core funding is still adequate: "For our
labs, their basic programs are well-funded."
     Los Alamos National Laboratory is slated for a 1.6 percent
funding increase from $1.8 billion to $1.83 billion, but with
significant cuts in several project areas, including nuclear
waste disposal, a 12 percent cut, and fossil fuel energy
research, a 45 percent cut.
     Also seeing significant cuts at LANL is nuclear weapons
research, which is projected to be down $63.3 million, a 4.5
percent drop from 2005.
     Both LANL and Sandia are expected to see significant cuts
in their advanced simulation and computing campaigns that are
part of the DOE's stockpile stewardship program to ensure the
safety and viability of the nation's nuclear weapons without
testing.
     DOE proposes to cut LANL's computer simulation budget by
$46 million, a 24 percent cut, and decrease Sandia's computer
simulation funds by $48.5 million, or 28 percent.
     "I am concerned about the impacts that these reductions
will have on our ability to carry out the life extension
programs with our nuclear weapons systems that are so critical
to monitoring the safety and reliability of our stockpile,"
Bingaman said.
     The largest proposed budget increases at LANL come by way
of funding for nuclear non-proliferation work, which is
scheduled for a $78.8 million increase, a jump of 56 percent, to
$220 million.
     Domenici said he is pleased with the administration's
emphasis on non-proliferation programs, which will benefit New
Mexico's labs.
     Sandia, however, is projected to see a decrease in funding
for its non-proliferation work from $145 million to $137
million, a drop of about 5.5 percent.
     Overall, Sandia's proposed 2006 budget of approximately
$1.4 billion is $121 million less than in 2005.
     Basic science research at both Sandia and LANL is targeted
for significant cuts in the proposed budget. LANL is facing a
$15 million cut from $70 million in 2005 to $55 million in 2006,
a 21 percent decrease. Sandia's science cuts are less severe but
still pegged at a 12 percent drop from $64.8 million in 2005 to
$57 million for 2006.
     Bingaman said he was pleased with funding increases for
LANL's environmental cleanup projects, which increased overall
about 21 percent to $142 million, up about $25 million. Of that,
about $2.2 million is proposed for short-term cleanup through
2012.
     State Environment Department chief Ron Curry said he
expects LANL to have some spending discretion with its
environmental funding so it can meet the time line and schedule
agreed upon in a recent "fence-to-fence" cleanup consent order
with DOE.
     "That doesn't mean, however, that we will not continue to
be vigilant, making sure cleanup is done on the time schedule
that is set forth," he said.
 
Copyright Albuquerque Journal
 
Steve@abqjournal.com 
*****************************************************************
 72 lamonitor.com: Former LANL official critical of lab director 

The Online News Source for Los Alamos
 
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

The former associate laboratory director for Strategic Research,
who said he was forced to resign during the safety and security
crisis last July, has publicly reproached Los Alamos National
Laboratory Director G. Peter Nanos for mismanagement and failure
of leadership. 
"In a relatively short period of time, a series of critical
management mistakes have started to undo what it took 60 years
to build," said Thomas J. Meyer during a return visit to Los
Alamos Wednesday. "When you look back, the lab shutdown was a
cover up for mismanagement at the top."

Meyer has written an eight-page essay, "What Happened at Los
Alamos," (available on an Internet weblog at
http://lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com), giving his account of
the circumstances surrounding the total suspension of operations
at the lab on July 12 and the implications of that decision for
the lab's future. 

Meyer was the highest ranking laboratory employee disciplined by
laboratory management, which made a point at the time that it
was meting out punishment high and low, without regard to
position. Four others lost their jobs at that time.

Because of his responsibilities in charge of a major directorate
at the lab and as a member of the senior executive team, Meyer
wrote, he could see what was happening at the highest level. 
"I have a perspective on the shutdown that I feel obligated to
share with the larger Los Alamos community," he said.

What he saw as the problem was not the "negative culture" within
the LANL scientific community, which was publicly rebuked and
subjected to a kind of collective punishment and humiliation. 
The laboratory's decision to idle 12,000 employees for more than
seven months, in some cases, was not justified, according to
Meyer, who said there was an alternative.

"At other laboratories, staged stand downs are commonly used to
focus on areas where there is known concern," Meyer wrote. "This
allows limited resources to be brought to bear quickly and
effectively on problem areas with the work force sensitized,
best practices instilled, and training provided."

Meyer defended the safety record of thechemistry division, which
was his responsibility before the laser accident, noting that
management had not supported an effort to hire an Operation
Deputy for the Division, whose job would have been to oversee
the day-to-day operations and safety.

Meyer said Nanos whipsawed the overhead charged to customers
last year, driving prices to uncompetitive levels at first, and
then reducing them in the middle of the year, creating havoc for
many support organizations and new projects, including a
day-to-day safety officer for the chemistry division.

Among other accusations:

+  The University of California has expressed concern that there
is inadequate representation for science in the current senior
management team.


+  Important scientists are gone or leaving the laboratory.


+  Important programs have been lost to other laboratories;
others are threatened.


+  Current recruiting for postdocs is at an all-time low.

Meyer said his departure from the laboratory was handled crudely.

"I never spoke to Nanos, never got anything in writing. There
was nothing, zero," Meyer said. "No exit interview. No pretense
of dealing with this in a sophisticated way."

Meyer said he will be returning to UNC-Chapel Hill as the Arey
Professor of Chemistry. He was on the faculty there for many
years before coming to LANL.

Despite the bleak evaluation of the situation, Meyer saw a
potential rebirth in the lab's future.

"LANL is a sleeping giant, waiting to reassert itself," he
concluded his critique. "A path forward must be found quickly to
provide leadership and a clear vision for the future."

LANL public affairs did not responded to a request for
information by today's publication deadline.   

  © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.   
*****************************************************************
 73 lamonitor.com: Whistleblower claims quality assurance failures 

The Online News Source for Los Alamos
 
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

A quality assurance auditor for a Los Alamos contractor has come
forward as a whistleblower, claiming that he has been punished
for discovering and documenting a dangerous breakdown in quality
assurance programs at LANL. 
Don Brown was hired in May 2003.

According to documents he has distributed through an independent
government watchdog group, including a formal complaint to the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Brown charges
that LANL's nuclear facilities are too unsafe to operate and
that it's modern pit production process has been compromised. 

In a recent interview on CBS Evening News, Brown said, "I
started finding problems that would stop any other nuclear
facility in their tracks."

He said he found as many as 1,000 faulty welds in one nuclear
building. 
"It looks like it was welded with a Hershey Bar," he said.

Contacted in Los Alamos, Brown referred questions to his lawyer,
Tom Carpenter of the Government Accountability Project (GAP). 
Speaking by telephone from Seattle, Carpenter said Brown had
approached GAP last spring, and was advised to go through normal
procedures, and then if he wasn't getting anywhere, to escalate
his concerns.

The response was a stone wall, barely an acknowledgement, and
then he was informed that his job was being reorganized and that
he would have to apply to keep it. He was not selected for an
interview, and has been told that he is expected to resign, GAP
said.

Among his findings was the existence of a score of warehouses,
which Brown claims are "off the books." These warehouses are
full of equipment and supplies and are known as "Graceland." The
warehouses are said to contain material without bar-codes and
serve as a supply depot for nuclear operations at the lab.

Carpenter said that procurement formalities for nuclear supplies
requires very explicit acceptance, inspection and certification.
A formal chain of custody procedure provides assurance that the
pedigree is known.

"When it comes time to put it in, you know the pedigree,"
Carpenter said. "None of it is in place. Graceland is one area,
23 warehouses with supplies that don't exist."

GAP has written to new Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman calling
for a full investigation of the matter under the Price-Anderson
laws.

LANL public affairs had not responded to a request for
information by today's publication deadline.   

  © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.   
*****************************************************************
 74 NPR : DOE Urged to Encourage New Nuclear Power Plants

[Listen to this story...] by David Kestenbaum  	 	 					 						
												 						 						
All Things Considered, February 9, 2005 · Advisers to the
Department of Energy have recommended that the government spend
what could be over $1 billion to help the power industry build
new nuclear power plants. The report has not been released
publicly yet. No nuclear power plant has been ordered and built
in the United States since 1973. 	 						 					 					 	 					 	 
	
Nuclear Power Plant Report




         
Read the executive summary of the report commissioned by the
Energy Department on nuclear power plants:




                         
*****************************************************************
 75 [du-list] DU in the news 11th Feb.  05
 
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 15:21:14 -0800

 
<x-flowed>

New York Times, Wed, 09 Feb 2005 6:52 PM PST
Uranium Enrichment Plant Is Proposed for New Mexico 
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/national/10nuke.html
HOBBS, N.M., Feb. 9 - The uranium enrichment centrifuge plant that gets the 
most attention these days is in Iran, but a larger one, carefully watched 
by the civilian nuclear power industry and its opponents, is taking shape 
here, in the desert just west of the Texas border.


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 76 Tewksbury Advocate: Radioactive 'beads' to be created at Upton Drive lab

TownOnline.com - 

  Photo Gallery  
  
Scientist Tom Wahle performs an experiment on electricity during
the "Techsploration" program at the West Intermediate School in
Wilmington on Friday, Feb. 4. (Photo by Sandra Fletcher)  


By Franklin B. Tucker/ Staff Writer

Thursday, February 10, 2005

When a company proposed to manufacture millions of radioactive 
spheres for a world-wide market, ears perked up at Monday's 
Wilmington Board of Appeal meeting.

     So when representatives of an Australian biotechnology firm
said they wishs to establish a lab on Upton Drive near the North
Andover line to create hundreds of doses of this material a
week, some members wanted one important question answered.

     "It's not going to make the building glow at night?" board
member Edward Loud asked.

     Despite a history of companies contaminating wells and the
aquifer, the board voted to grant a limited victory to Sirtex
Medical, Inc. to begin the process of creating the lab with
hopes of manufacturing gallons of radioactive solution by the
fall.

     While accepting a firm that will be using radioactivity as
part of the manufacturing process in a town struggling under a
cloud of business generated pollution is never an easy one, the
board's decision was assisted by nanotechnology. With material
and products now able to be created on an infinitesimally small
scale, firms no longer require truckloads of chemicals and
radioactive material. Sirtex can meet its expected weekly
world-wide by filling two large soda bottles.

     The location of the new manufacturing site will be three
condominium units consisting of slightly more than 9,000 square
feet at 16 Upton Drive, purchased last spring by Sirtex, a
biotech company founded in 1997.

     In a June 7, 2004 press release announcing the purchase of
Upton Drive, the company said it "will install a purpose build
'Hot Cell'" described by Sirtex as "a containment facility used
for handling radioactive materials" specifically for the
"manufacture [of] SIR-Spheres."

     Sirtex's main product - and currently the only one allowed
in the US - uses a process that attacks tumors just as movie
goers saw depicted in the 1960s sci-fi movie "The Fantastic
Voyage." The SIR-Spheres are radioactive "microspheres," made of
a plastic-like material, that are "beads" about 35 microns in
diameter. A micron is a millionth of a meter, or 1/25,000 of an
inch.

     "It's about a third as thick as a typical strand of hair,"
said Desiree Gray, Sirtex's vice president of marketing and
clinical development. Each dose, placed in five milliliters of
sterile water, includes 20 to 40 million beads.

     The microspheres are injected at a tumor within the liver
via a catheter that has been placed in the groin. Once embedded
into the tumors, Selective Internal Radiation Therapy destroys
the cancer, leaving the surrounding healthy tissue unaffected.

     It will be at the proposed Wilmington facility that the
beads will be "coated" with radioactive Yttrium-90. The plant
will employ between five to 12 people. The company hopes to
begin making 20 doses a week beginning in the final quarter of
this year, with a maximum capacity of 200 doses.

     "What we are talking about is two gallons a week, or six
liters," said Kevin McManus, senior project director of
Burlington-based EBI Consulting..

     "The commissioning of the Wilmington facility increases the
company's manufacturing capacity ... to manufacture SIR-Spheres
for the world market," said the June press release.

     Sirtex needs a US site since SIR-Spheres are currently only
produced in Australia and is shipped three times a week to the
US and Europe. Not only was distance a problem for the company,
so is time. The effective shelf life of the radioactive spheres
is less than three days.

     According to McManus, whose company works with
biotechnology firms, the advantage of being a therapeutic
treatment is that the radioactivity has a brief half life of
only four weeks. Beyond that period, the radioactivity is inert.

     "After 30 days, it cold," said Gray.

     The company has contacted the Federal Drug Administration
and the Massachusetts Radiation Control which must approve the
lab and the work it proposes to do.

     In terms of safety, any radioactive material will be in a
closed-contained lead lined lab that must meet both federal and
state requirements, McManus told the board.. There would be no
direct pipe from the lab to the septic system. Acids and
solvents will also be stored on the site for cleaning and other
uses. All waste from the lab, including clothing, will be
removed by a certified waste disposal firm. Company
representatives has also been in contact with Wilmington Fire
and Police departments to coordinate any worse-case scenario.

     "Even if something happened, the radioactivity will be gone
in just a few weeks," McManus said.

     Currently, Sirtex's SIR-Spheres are only approved by the
FDA to fight liver cancer. Although many cancers are on the
decline, according to the Mayo Clinic, the incidence of primary
- where the malignancy begins - liver cancer in the United
States increased more than 70 percent between 1975 and 1995. The
increase is linked to rising rates of hepatitis B and C
infection, the leading causes of liver cancer. Yet these cancers
are still uncommon in the US.

     However, it is common for cancer to spread to the liver,
known as a secondary cancer, from the colon, lungs, breasts, or
other parts of the body and spread or metastasize to the liver.
The liver is especially vulnerable to invasion by tumor cells
and with the exception of the lymph nodes, is the most common
site of metastasis.

     Because liver cancer is rarely discovered early, the
prognosis is often poor. Gray said that clinical studies have
show that people using Sirtex SIR-Spheres in combination with
chemotherapy can increase a person's life by up to a year or
more. While initial investigations are being done in Asia and
Europe on therapy for breast cancer and other diseases, the FDA
has yet to approve any other

     Early in 2003, Sirtex was the target of a takeover by
Cephalon, a US biotech firm. The bid was initially supported by
Sirtex's founder Bruce Gray - who would have pocketed $100
million if the deal had gone through - but the takeover was
nixed in the final innings when Australia's Cancer Research
Institute, one of the company's largest stockholders, balked.

     While the board was concerned about containment of the
material and any accidental escape of chemicals or radioactive
material, they approved the company building the labs. It would
consider allowing the plant to begin operation only when a
complete risk management and a groundwater plan are produced.

     The board will go over Sirtex's plans again on June 6.

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