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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 AFP: Iran asks EU and Russia to respect its enrichment right - 
2 AFP: Iran to set up secret nuclear faculty: intelligence source
3 Chosun Ilbo: The Assessments and Evidence Before Bush -
4 Guardian Unlimited: Rice: N. Korea Must Stop Stalling on Nukes
5 Guardian Unlimited: Rice Seeks China's Help on N. Korea Talks
6 US: Las Vegas SUN: Transfer of material to Nevada Test Site delayed
7 US: WorldNetDaily: Nuts to Bush
8 US: Tri-Valley Herald: Livermore's 'bunker buster' a line in the pol
9 US: Boston.com: Give nukes a chance
10 US: csmonitor.com: Nuclear logic | 
11 Arutz Sheva: Bush Says He’s Serious About Stopping Tehran’s Nuclear 
12 Guardian Unlimited: Rice: European Nations Must Not Arm China
13 Independent: Nuclear clean-up body slammed for being too 'soft' on c
14 Edmonton Journal: Uranium prospects glow
15 Guardian Unlimited: Annan Lays Out Sweeping Changes to U.N.
16 Guardian Unlimited: Key Proposals for Changes to the U.N.
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
17 US: chillicothe gazette: A-plant records hard to get to - 
18 canadaeast.com: Ottawa 'anxious' to help with Point Lepreau
19 US: toledoblade.com: U.S. levies $1.1 billion pollution settlement a
20 US: Times Argus: NRC says Vt. Yankee doing OK despite problems
21 AFP: Taiwan defies safety warnings and installs reactor at nuclear p
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
22 PRAVDA.Ru: Soviet nuclear torpedoes are resting at Italian coasts -
23 News & Star: Radiation exposure sparks n-plant probe
24 US: Bennington Banner: Author tells Cambridge students about nuclear
25 Herald Sun: Aussies to hunt uranium hazard 
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
26 Apparant Lies By USGS Re Yucca Mt. Might Kill Entire Project
27 More On Scientist May Have Falsified Yucca Papers, Climate Change & 
28 Sunday Times: Louth cancer increase ‘is not linked to Sellafield’ - 
29 Deseret News: Nuke waste should stay put 
30 US: SignOnSanDiego.com: Energy official to decide fate of toxic pile
31 Las Vegas SUN: Columnist Jeff German: Yucca lies coming to the surfa
32 US: deseretnews: Utah trying all angles to bar PFS 
33 Las Vegas SUN: Where I Stand -- Brian Greenspun: The truth about Yuc
34 RGJ: Experts unsure if Yucca hurt by revelations
35 Spectrum: Yucca scandal shows lunacy
36 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Uranium mill may get second chance 
37 US: Salt Lake Tribune: State regulators probe possible leak in a
38 Salt Lake Tribune: Your Week: Yucca faces a delay 
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
39 ABQjournal: LANL Flap Could Cost $367 Million 
40 Oakland Tribune: Livermore plutonium work stalled
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
41 [DU-WATCH] DU-related news stories to share
42 ABQjournal: N.M. Rich With Nuclear and Space History 
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 AFP: Iran asks EU and Russia to respect its enrichment right - 

Saturday March 19, 04:36 PM

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran has asked the European Union and Russia to
respect its right to enrich uranium, an activity the EU is
trying to convince Iran to give up to ensure it is not producing
nuclear weapons. "We hope these countries will be honestly
committed to what they have said and respect Iran's right to
have a fuel cycle and practically prove that in the steering
committee meeting on March 24," said foreign ministry spokesman
Hamid Reza Asefi in a statement Saturday. 

Asefi was reacting to Friday declarations in Paris during a 
summit of French and Russian presidents Jaques Chirac and 
Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder and Spanish 
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. "No country should 
be deprived of peaceful nuclear technology," Asefi said. 

Iran "has repeatedly announced it is not seeking mass destruction 
weapons and its peaceful nuclear activities are totally for 
non-military purposes," he asserted. 

Britain, France and Germany have been negotiating for the EU with 
Iran since December to secure "objective guarantees" that the 
regime will not use its atomic energy programme to acquire 
nuclear weapons. Ideally, the European Union would like Iran 
permanently to give up uranium enrichment, which makes what can 
be fuel for civilian nuclear reactors but also the explosive core 
of atomic bombs. 

In exchange, the three European governments are offering Iran a 
package of trade, security and technology incentives. Iran 
insists it does not even consider abandoning enrichment to be on 
the table in the talks, despite its having temporarily suspended 
enrichment as a confidence-building measure. 

A new round of negotiations is due to start in Paris on 
Wednesday. A steering committee has to evaluate work done since 
December and decide how negotiations can go on. Schroeder and 
Chirac said on Friday they saw "no contradiction" between 
Europeans' efforts and Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran. 

Russia is currently building Iran's first nuclear plant in 
Bushehr and is to provide it with enriched uranium. "Russia ships 
fuel and takes it back. The fuel is not processed, nor is it 
enriched and cannot be enriched in Iran," Schroeder said at a 
press conference following the summit.     

Copyright © 2005 AFP AFP. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 2 AFP: Iran to set up secret nuclear faculty: intelligence source

Monday March 21, 05:55 AM 

VIENNA (AFP) - Iran is to establish a secret nuclear engineering
faculty within a year to provide engineers for what the United
States claims is a covert project to develop atomic weapons, a
Western intelligence source told AFP. 

"This is a very significant step towards training an Iranian
nuclear cadre," the source, who asked not to be named, said in a
recent interview. 

The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported in London Sunday that
Iran has approved a secret nuclear research center to train
scientists in atomic technology. 

Iranian officials, questioned by AFP recently, have so far
declined to comment on this matter. 

"The declared purpose for establishing the faculty is to create
a source of skilled and professional manpower to promote Iran's
military nuclear project, whose activity is increasing," the
source told AFP. 

"By setting up this installation, the Iranians are trying to
make sure they have trained people whom the West doesn't even
know about," the source said. 

The allegation comes despite growing pressure on Iran from the
United States and the European Union to guarantee that it will
not use its atomic energy programme to acquire nuclear weapons. 

Washington claims Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons
but says its nuclear programme is a peaceful project to generate
electricity for civilian use. 

"The Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) has received
approval from the regime for the ministry of education to
establish a secret faculty of applied nuclear engineering and
materials engineering," the source said. 

"The faculty will concentrate only on nuclear topics and will
build and train a new generation of engineers, who will be able
to immediately work on highly secret projects as soon as they
complete their studies." 

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), said earlier this month that the IAEA has
not found weapons work in Iran after two years of investigations
but that "the jury is still out" on whether the Islamic
Republic's nuclear intentions are peaceful. 

The IAEA has discovered that Iran hid sensitive atomic
activities for almost two decades until the agency investigation
began. 

AFP's source said Iran would seek to protect the faculty from
IAEA scrutiny. 

"Since it is new the faculty will be compartmentalised and
undeclared. It will not be under IAEA inspection," the source
said. 

"In practice the faculty is to be set up within a year. It will
operate as a branch of one of the leading universities in Iran
in nuclear science and its activity will be mainly classified." 

At present most Iranian students are required to travel abroad
for advanced studies in nuclear technology, where they can be
monitored by Western intelligence agencies, the sources said. 

"Anyone abroad, someone is writing his name down, that this is
an Iranian nuclear scientist," the source said. 

The source said Iran does not have enough nuclear engineers for
a programme which is seeking to mine uranium, convert it into a
gas that can be processed and finally make enriched uranium. 

Enriched uranium can be fuel for civilian nuclear reactors but
also in highly refined form the explosive core of atom bombs. 

The source said "universities in Iran, including the classified
military universities" focus "mainly on theoretical nuclear
education and only touch on the applied aspect of nuclear
science." 

The secret faculty would "operate as a branch of one of the
leading universities in Iran" such as Sharif University of
Technology or the University of Tehran, the source said. 

"It will be situated on the site of the AEOI in Tehran since its
activity will be mainly classified," the source said. 

   Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
*****************************************************************
 3 Chosun Ilbo: The Assessments and Evidence Before Bush -
 
: 2005.03.20 19:19 58' / ¼öÁ¤ : 2005.03.20 19:26 39' 

The recent mission to South Korea, Japan, and China by Michael
Green, Director for Asia at the U.S. National Security Council,
seems to be another of the many attempts by the Bush
Administration since January 2004 to convince the South Korean
and Chinese governments that the Administration is correct in
claiming that North Korea has a secret nuclear weapons program
based on uranium enrichment. The Bush Administration has
encountered a wall of skepticism in Seoul, Beijing, and Moscow
toward its claim. The issue is crucial. The six party talks have
no prospect of settling the North Korean nuclear question if the
uranium enrichment issue is not resolved satisfactorily. 

The R.O.K. Foreign Ministry has supported the U.S. claim.
Elsewhere, South Korean skepticism is widespread. In Washington,
I have heard these doubts expressed by a number of younger South
Korean scholars and experts. They have related that R.O.K.
Government officials tell them that they have seen ¡°no
convincing evidence¡± that North Korea has a secret uranium
enrichment program. 

There seems to be several reasons for the widespread South
Korean skepticism. Strong supporters of South Korea¡¯s
conciliation policy toward North Korea are inclined to believe
Pyongyang¡¯s denials of a uranium enrichment program. U.S.
intelligence failures in Iraq bring forth doubts about the
accuracy of U.S. intelligence findings on this issue. The
criticism that Bush Administration officials exaggerated the
threat from Iraq contributes to a deep suspicion among South
Koreans that the Bush Administration fabricated the claim as
part of its strategy to isolate North Korea and bring about
¡°regime change¡±: a suspicion that North Korean propaganda has
exploited effectively. 

The issue of Iraq intelligence and how the Bush Administration
used it has created a particular credibility problem for the
Administration in convincing other governments and informed
opinion of the validity of the U.S. claim. But any objective
judgment of the U.S. claim should take into account the fact
that the evidence and assessments of a secret North Korean
uranium enrichment go well beyond the Bush Administration. 

U.S. intelligence information on the uranium enrichment program
and Pakistan¡¯s involvement in it arose in the Clinton
Administration after 1998. Clinton Administration officials were
convinced by 2000 that North Korea had such a program. In their
recent book, Going Critical: the First North Korean Nuclear
Crisis, former Clinton Administration officials, Joel Witt,
Daniel Poneman, and Robert Gallucci (who negotiated the 1994
North Korean-U.S. Agreed Framework) said this: ¡°By the late
1990s, the U.S. government observed the North Korean pursuit of
a significant uranium-enrichment program and, as noted earlier,
was moving to deal with this and other issues (such as ballistic
missiles) when time ran out on the Clinton administration.¡± 

The U.S. Department of Energy produced an assessment of the
North Korean program in early 1999. The Energy Department report
described North Korean attempts to purchase uranium enrichment
technology in Japan and concluded (according to press accounts)
that North Korea ¡°is in the early stages of a uranium
enrichment capability¡± and ¡°Pakistan may well have lent some
level of assistance on uranium enrichment.¡± A subsequent C.I.A.
report noted North Korean attempts in 1999 to procure nuclear
technology overseas; and the Washington Post (February 1, 2003)
quoted a ¡°former senior official in the Clinton
Administration¡± that the classified section of the report
asserted that the procurements indicated an ¡°experimental or
research and development¡± program of uranium enrichment. Karl
Inderfurth, another top Clinton Administration official, later
disclosed that President Clinton raised on three occasions with
Pakistani leaders between 1998 and 2000 the U.S. assessment that
Pakistan was supplying North Korea with uranium enrichment
components and technology. In his certification statement to
Congress regarding the Agreed Framework on February 24, 2000,
President Clinton inserted a statement that he would not certify
that ¡°North Korea is not seeking to develop or acquire the
capability to enrich uranium.¡± 

There are also assessments from non-U.S. sources simultaneous
with or earlier than those of the Clinton Administration. Of
special importance are the Russian intelligence assessments of
the 1993. Reports in two Japanese journals and the Russian
newspaper, Izvestia, quoted from two Russian intelligence
documents, an October 1993 Defense Ministry report entitled
¡°The Russian Federation¡¯s Military Policy in the Asia and
Pacific Region Under the New Military-Political Conditions¡± and
a 1993 report of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service on
¡°Weapons of Mass Destruction in the World.¡± Both Russian
assessments asserted that North Korea had an active uranium
enrichment program. The press reports quoted Russian
intelligence officials that a key source of this information was
the ex-Soviet nuclear scientists who were working in North
Korea. Today, the Russian assessments correspond with
information reportedly from Pakistan¡¯s A.Q. Khan in March 2004
that Pakistani-North Korean cooperation on uranium enrichment
began around 1991. 

High level North Korean defectors have testified that they knew
of a secret uranium program in the 1990s. Hwang Jang-yop stated
in July 2003 that he was told of the program in 1996 by Jon
Byung-ho, a top North Korean national security official.
Finally, South Korean government officials were suspicious long
before President Bush took office. One such Foreign
Affairs-Trade Ministry official was cited by The Korea Times of
July 20, 1999 as describing ¡°some clues¡± that North Korea and
Pakistan were engaging in ¡°a technological swap¡± of Pakistani
nuclear technology for North Korean missile technology. 

To conclude: it is invalid to surmise a ¡°conspiracy theory¡±
that the Bush Administration fabricated the U.S. claim. The Bush
Administration would strengthen the U.S. claim if it made public
some of its intelligence information, especially commercial
information on North Korean procurement of uranium enrichment
components from other countries. Nevertheless, it is crucial to
the prospects of the six party talks for South Koreans, Chinese,
and Russians to open their minds in assessing the credibility of
the U.S. claim. 

*****************************************************************
 4 Guardian Unlimited: Rice: N. Korea Must Stop Stalling on Nukes
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday March 19, 2005 11:31 AM

AP Photo SEL803 

By ANNE GEARAN 

AP Diplomatic Writer 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
said an international coalition remains committed to negotiating
an end to North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but warned
Saturday that North Korea cannot stall forever. 

Rice also appealed to China, communist North Korea's closest
ally, to use its leverage to bring North Korea back to
disarmament talks. 

``We are committed to diplomacy, but I think it goes without
saying that no one is going to be prepared to allow the North
Koreans to just go down a road that threatens everyone,'' Rice
said. 

``We have been very careful to have people choose their own
diplomatic paths and their own mix of incentives and leverage to
deal with the North Korean problem,'' she said. 

Rice spoke from Tokyo before flying to South Korea, which is
still technically at war with the North five decades after
active fighting ended in the Korean War. 

In South Korea, Rice became the most senior American official to
tour a semisecret command center for U.S. and South Korean
troops that would be the battle headquarters for a fight with
Pyongyang. 

``I know that you face a close-in threat every day,'' Rice told
the troops at Command Post Tango, an acronym that stands for
Theater Air Naval Ground Operations. 

Rice's visit, which coincided with a twice-yearly war exercise
with thousands of American and South Korean troops, also marked
the first time reporters and cameras were allowed into the
bunker, built into a mountain south of Seoul. 

North Korea denounced the exercises as a rehearsal for a
U.S.-led pre-emptive attack on the isolated state. 

``The Republic of Korea, a great democracy now, faces a threat
across the divide of a state that is not democratic, that is not
free, and that does not have the best interests of its people at
heart,'' Rice said. 

The North Koreans have not responded to a U.S.-backed
peacemaking proposal. Pyongyang has complained that Rice
unfairly labeled the country an ``outpost of tyranny'' earlier
this year, and demanded an apology. 

North Korea has said it wants nuclear weapons as a defense
against a potential attack from U.S. and South Korean forces.
President Bush has said the United States has no intention of
attacking North Korea, a message Rice has repeated often during
a weeklong tour of Asia. 

The United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea and China began a
joint diplomatic effort with North Korea aimed at persuading the
country to give up its nuclear program. 

But those six-nation talks, hosted by China, have been stalled
since September, when the North Koreans pulled out and refused
to return to discussions. North Korea announced last month it
has already built a nuclear weapon. 

Rice and other U.S. officials are working to keep the coalition
intact. 

Answering questions from the audience after a speech Saturday,
Rice said she knows there is some international frustration with
the slow pace of North Korean talks. But she said the six-party
discussions remain the best option. She rejected a suggestion
that the United States might make more progress if it dealt with
North Korea one-on-one. 

``We bring different incentives, different leverage to North
Korea, each of us. ... I would be first to admit it is not easy
to deal with North Korea,'' Rice said. 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 5 Guardian Unlimited: Rice Seeks China's Help on N. Korea Talks
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Sunday March 20, 2005 6:01 PM

AP Photo SEL104 

By ANNE GEARAN 

AP Diplomatic Writer 

BEIJING (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday
sought further help from China in getting North Korea back to
nuclear disarmament talks and aired U.S. concerns about
Beijing's bellicose rhetoric on Taiwan. 

As part of a two-day visit to the Chinese capital, Rice took
time to attend a Palm Sunday church service at one of the city's
few state-sanctioned churches. Although Rice has said the United
States is not satisfied with the extent of religious freedom in
communist China, she did not make that point explicit on Sunday. 

China was the final stop on a weeklong tour of Asian capitals
for Rice, and it was the most delicate for America's new chief
diplomat. President Bush's second-term pledge to carry
democratic ideals around the globe has met with suspicion in
China, where government control remains a strong and constant
fact of daily life. 

The United States is cooperating with China on several fronts,
including six-nation talks over North Korea's nuclear program.
But Washington has complaints about China's record on human
rights, its treatment of dissidents and the rampant piracy of
movies, books and other intellectual software. 

``There is a lot we can do that is constructive with China, but
of course we have our differences,'' Rice said before flying
from South Korea to China. 

Rice also suggested that European governments would be acting
irresponsibly if they sold sophisticated weaponry to China that
might one day be used against U.S. forces in the Pacific. 

``It is the United States, not Europe, that is defending the
Pacific,'' Rice said, adding that South Korea and Japan are
contributing resources to keep the Asia-Pacific region stable. 

The European Union soon may lift an arms embargo on China that
was imposed after the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters
in Tiananmen Square. 

Lifting the embargo would allow sale of technology and weapons
that China badly wants to modernize its military. China recently
has gone on a military spending spree that Rice said concerns
the United States. 

China passed a law this month codifying its intention to use
military force against Taiwan should the island declare formal
independence. Under its complicated policy on China and Taiwan,
The United States is obligated to defend Taiwan against an
attack from the mainland. 

In Washington, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Richard
Myers, said, ``Clearly it's not in anybody's interest to settle
this by force.'' 

The United States wants China to use its leverage on North
Korea, but Washington's leverage over China is limited. Rice
pressed the North Korean nuclear issue in a meeting with Chinese
President Hu Jintao, a State Department official said. 

The United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea and China began a
joint diplomatic effort with North Korea last year aimed at
persuading the North to give up its nuclear program. 

But those talks, hosted by China, stalled in September. The
North Koreans pulled out, has refused to return to the
discussions and announced last month that it has built at least
one nuclear weapon. 

A Bush administration official said Rice had preliminary
discussions this past week about a fallback position if the
six-way talks fail. 

``During the trip there was some understanding among others that
this can't go on forever,'' although there is no deadline for
declaring the talks dead, said the official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity. 

The United States has proposed incentives that include potential
help with North Korea's energy crunch if the North abandons up a
weapons program. 

On her trip, Rice has tried not to provoke the volatile North
Korean government. She has offered repeated assurances that the
United States has no intention of attacking and that Washington
recognizes that North Korea is a sovereign state. 

Yet the secretary also toured a mountainside bunker that would
be the headquarters should war break out between South Korea and
North Korea. The United States has nearly 33,000 troops in South
Korea to defend against an attack from the North. 

``Make no mistake about it, I don't think North Korea poses a
threat to South Korea today,'' Myers, the Joint Chiefs chairman,
told NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' 

``They know that if they were to start any conflict on that
peninsula, that would be the end of their regime,'' Myers said.
``They would lose. And they know that, and we're very confident
about that.'' 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 6 Las Vegas SUN: Transfer of material to Nevada Test Site delayed

March 19, 2005 
 
ASSOCIATED PRESS 

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Additional shipments of weapons-grade nuclear
materials from New Mexico to the Nevada Test Site have been
delayed until the end of the year. 

The delay was caused by last summer's shutdown of Los Alamos
National Laboratory, said Linton Brooks, chief of the National
Nuclear Security Administration. 

"We will have half the material in Nevada by the end of the
year," Brooks told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on
oversight and investigations during a hearing Friday in
Washington, D.C. 

NNSA began shipping nuclear materials in September to the site's
underground Device Assembly Facility, which is considered far
more secure than the current storage location at Los Alamos. 

The lab was virtually shut down last July after reports surfaced
that two classified computer disks had disappeared. An
investigation later determined they never existed. But some of
the lab's normal activities did not resume until February. 

As a result, more shipments that had been scheduled for
September of this year will be postponed until mid-November,
Brooks said. 

"The rest of the material will be moved ... to another location
in Los Alamos temporarily, and then will be moved to Nevada over
the next couple of years," Brooks said. 

Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project
On Government Oversight, accused Los Alamos officials of
purposefully creating the delay and said nuclear material from
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco also
should be transferred to the underground Nevada facility. 

"Removing all special nuclear materials from these facilities
eliminates security vulnerabilities at those facilities while
dramatically decreasing security costs," Brian said. "An
underground facility would be much harder to penetrate and would
serve as a greater deterrent to terrorists." 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 7 WorldNetDaily: Nuts to Bush
 
  SATURDAY MARCH 19 2005           
        
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com 

Last November, France, Germany and the United Kingdom – as
agents for the European Union – began negotiations with Iran on
"a mutually acceptable long-term arrangement" that would a)
provide "objective guarantees" to the EU that Iran's nuclear
program was exclusively for peaceful purposes," b) guarantee
future EU-Iranian nuclear, technological and economic
"cooperation" as well as c) provide "firm commitments" by the EU
to Iran "on security issues." 

The Bush-Cheney administration has badly mischaracterized these
negotiations as an attempt by the EU to get the Iranians "to
live up to their international obligations." 

The EU is more likely attempting to head-off the Iranians
concluding a mutually acceptable long-term arrangement with
Russia and/or China. 

Now, the key to preventing nuke proliferation is the
international control of the acquisition and chemical/physical
transformation of certain "nuclear" materials. In return for a
promise not to acquire or seek to acquire nuclear weapons, the
Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons recognizes the
"inalienable right" of all signatories to acquire and transform
those materials, subject to oversight by the International
Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards regime. 

The EU-Iran negotiating agreement also specifically recognizes
that right. 

When the IAEA's inspectors detect possible or actual
non-compliance with a Safeguards Agreement – or with the NPT,
itself – the director general reports that to the Board. The
Board can then decide – by a two-thirds majority – whether or
not to refer the director general's reports to the U.N. Security
Council for possible action. 

How was Iran to "provide objective guarantees" to the EU? By
signing – as Iran did more than a year ago – and adhering to an
Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement, vastly
expanding the IAEA capabilities to provide such guarantees. 

But it is obvious that meaningful EU-Iran economic cooperation
will not be possible unless the threat of economic sanctions
imposed by the U.S. on EU companies that do business with Iran
is lifted. 

And, of course, the EU cannot provide firm commitments that
Iranian nuclear facilities will not be attacked by the U.S. or
Israel. However, the Russians and/or Chinese could make such an
attack extremely unlikely, especially if the facilities in Iran
are effectively co-owned and operated by the Russians and/or
Chinese 

At his news conference Wednesday, Bush was asked this "softball"
question by a media sycophant: 

The Iranians have dismissed the European incentive as
insignificant. Should more incentives be offered? How long do
they [Iranians] have until you take their case to the Security
Council? 

While not answering the basic question, Bush made a lot of
incorrect and/or intentionally misleading statements to the
effect that Iran had long kept hidden from the IAEA a
uranium-enrichment program, which he implied was a violation of
the NPT. 

But, Iran has not yet begun to enrich uranium. Hence, they were
under no obligation to report that program to the IAEA.
Furthermore, in the event Iran was ever discovered to actually
be in violation of the NPT, it would be up to the IAEA Board –
not Bush – to refer the matter to the Security Council. 

As best the IAEA can determine, Iran is living up to its
international obligations, including its voluntary suspension of
uranium-enrichment activity, which is serving as a
"confidence-building" measure for the EU-Iran negotiations. 

Since Bush didn't answer it, the reporter repeated the question
– "And how do long do you wait? When do you go to the Security
Council?" 

To which Bush responded: 

"The understanding is, we go to the Security Council if they
[Iranians] reject the offer." 

What offer? 

Apparently, it was Bush's offer to the Europeans to lift a
decade-long "blackball" of Iran's membership in the World Trade
Organization and to waive sanctions on European firms that
provide Iran with spare parts for commercial aircraft, in return
for a promise – if the negotiations fail to satisfy Bush – by
the French and the British to support Bush's contention before
the Security Council that Iran's safeguarded nuclear programs
constitute a "threat" to Mideast peace. 

The negotiations will almost certainly fail to satisfy Bush. 

Iran has repeatedly proclaimed that any long-term EU-Iran
agreement must recognize – at a minimum – Iran's inalienable
right to enrich uranium. 

Hence, the Iranians dismissed Bush's "offer" which was
explicitly conditional on their permanently suspending all
uranium-enrichment and fuel reprocessing activities. 

Sirus Naseri, an Iranian negotiating with the EU, wondered
aloud: "Would the United States be prepared to give up its own
nuclear fuel production against a cargo of pistachios delivered
in truckloads?" 

Besides exporting zillions of barrels of oil, Iran also exports
nuts.
 
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy
implementing official for national security-related technical
matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and
Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office
of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr.
Prather also served as legislative assistant for national
security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking
member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate
Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had
earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National
Laboratory in New Mexico. 

[WorldNetDaily.com] 

webmaster@worldnetdaily.com
--> news@worldnetdaily.com--> Contact WND
*****************************************************************
 8 Tri-Valley Herald: Livermore's 'bunker buster' a line in the political sand for Bush policy
 
Article Last Updated: 03/20/2005 09:49:04 AM                              
                   
  By Ian Hoffman - STAFF WRITER   

IT'S A WEAPON like California itself: Big, rugged, controversial, 
a bringer of earthquakes and fire. People prefer the acronym RNEP 
to its name. 

"When you spell it out the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator it's
scary," said a federal nuclear weapons official. Designed to
strike fear in foreign leaders, it is an Hbomb stowed inside a
steel javelin made long and heavy to plunge at more than Mach 3
into solid rock and, in theory, deliver regime change or
disarmament in a few crippling explosions. 

The RNEP would be targeted on the world's most impregnable
fortresses, deep underground. The Defense Department says rogue
nations and potential U.S. adversaries are buying advanced
tunneling machines and have dug at least 1,400 hardened, deep
sanctuaries to hide instruments of power from U.S. spy
satellites and bombs.

 These underground chambers are suspected chemicalweapons
factories and depots, missile assembly tunnels, political and
military command centers carved into solid granite mountains and
linked to hundreds of missile silos  the stuff of James Bond
movies and Tom Clancy novels. But even RNEP critics acknowledge
they are real.

 Rep. Ellen Tauscher, DAlamo, calls them a looming threat.
What Ive seen, suffice it to say that the risks are growing.
We have state actors that are digging in, she said. North
Korea, the most obvious, has not been shy about exploiting this
secretion method to hide what theyre doing.

 To threaten those mountain tunnels and bunkers, the Bush
administration wants a thermonuclear penetrator in the megaton
class. Nuclear strategists want to use a phenomenon seen in
nuclear tests called coupling: embed a nuclear weapon in the
ground and it will produce roughly 20 times the destructive,
seismic shock as a weapon detonated on the surface. The ground
shocks would crush underground facilities hundreds of meters
down or wrench them rapidly side to side, so nothing inside
could survive, with somewhat less damage at the surface.

 In confidential interviews, scientists say the bomb wont
penetrate far, less than 10 meters in concrete, more in softer
rock, much less in granite. But 				 				 					 					 					 				
				 				 					 					 				 deep digging is not necessary to
deliver the bombs punch  if it survives the punishment.

 The Hbomb inside would be jarred by abrupt deceleration, making
it suddenly weigh a few hundred thousand pounds, then rocked
backwards with just as much force. Then it must detonate without
failure. The last part is crucial: No one wants to leave an
unused U.S. nuclear weapon lying around in a rogue nation.

 For two years, 20 Bay Area scientists and engineers worked on
ways to make that bomb survive and work reliably, without any
nuclear testing, as the Bush administrations most lethal hammer
for destroying the leaders and weapons of adversary nations when
they hide underground.

 The scientists at Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national
laboratories think theyve got an answer  a long, heavy bomb
case and a slightly tougher warhead that they want to test. One
senior designer considers the experimental bomb, weighing at
least 5,000 pounds with internal bulkheads to make it stiffer
and at least 15 feet long to be fantastically robust. They
want to hurl a mockup into a 30foot thick concrete block in New
Mexico and, after excavating scientific data recorded inside,
see how well the bomb survives.

 Scientists are betting it would. But they wont give odds on
whether the RNEP will survive its encounter this year with
Congress, where political resistance to the penetrator has grown
in each of the past three years. For Democrats and Republicans,
proponents and opponents, Livermores bomb is a line in the
sand, a vestige of a muscular nuclearweapons policy advanced in
the Bush administrations first term.

 That policy, the brainchild of mostly Reaganera defense and
nuclearstrategy thinkers who gathered at a conservative
Washington think tank, called for new nuclear weapons, new
nuclearweapons plants and new nuclear missions, augmented by
conventional forces and missile defenses. Americas existing
arsenal of 10,600 nuclear weapons was at risk of becoming a
paper tiger, they suggested, a kind of bluff that rogue leaders
might call even if a more heavily armed Soviet Union didnt for
40 years of the Cold War.

 				 				 					 					 					 				   				 				 					 					 				
We dont want opponents such as North Korea to think they have
sanctuary, out of the reach of the U.S. threat, National
Institute for Public Policy president Keith Payne said last week
at the Heritage Foundation. Payne led a 19992000 study of U.S.
nuclear weapons that would become a blueprint for the Bush
administrations nuclear policy and be criticized for lowering
the barriers to using nuclear weapons.

 President Bush installed Payne and similar thinkers at the
Pentagon, the National Security Council and the U.S. Department
of Energy. Their ideas about nuclear weapons became policy.

 Former Lawrence Livermore director Michael May and physicist
Roger Speed, a former Livermore weapons analyst, argue in the
most recent edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
that history has proven both ideas false.

 Speed suspects RNEP comes from U.S. Strategic Command thinking
during the Cold War that every strategic target must be hit.

 Its confusing targeting with deterrence, he said. Even
during the Cold War, we couldnt kill all of the Soviet command
posts, we couldnt kill all of the missile silos. Yet the
Soviets were deterred.

 Likewise, May and Speed say it is illogical to believe that
other nations that already feel threatened by the United States
will stop pursuing new weapons and underground facilities
because of a new weapon in the U.S. arsenal.

 I think people are pretty well deterred in the sense that they
do not want to provoke the United States into war.

 Theyre worried the United States will provoke itself into
war, said May, a professor at Stanfords Center for
International Security and Arms Control.

 In fact, the administrations nuclear policy has atrophied
since its introduction, squeezed by technical setbacks, tight
budgets and growing political opposition.

 Last fall, a powerful Republican appropriations committee
chairman, Ohio Republican David Hobson, gutted the presidents
2005 budget of money for new weapons design and for the RNEP.

 The RNEP design teams were just months away from their first
experiment.

 Under pressure from Congress, 				 				 					 				 				 				
					 					 				 plans for a massive bomb factory keep shrinking
in size, and the administration has put off decisions on siting
for at least another year.

 Whats left for 2006 is RNEP  and the rare chance of a
vigorous congressional debate on the role of nuclear weapons now
that the Cold War is over. On RNEP alone, it has taken three
years for Congress and the administration to separate facts from
fiction.

 In those years, RNEP became a mythology: Its a lowyield
weapon. It is capable of digging 300 meters into rock for lethal
but contained blows of little collateral damage. It is capable
of destroying weapons of mass destruction deep underground. It
will lower a presidents inhibitions about using a nuclear
weapon in war. It will force a resumption of nuclear testing. It
would start an arms race.

 Each statement contains a kernel of truth, but all are largely
false, unproven or unknowable.

 The RNEP would contain the most powerful explosive in the
deployed U.S. arsenal. Lawrence Livermore weapons scientists
designed the B83 explosive in the mid1970s as an allpurpose,
highyield strategic bomb. Its toughest mission was cratering
large ground structures, such as military runways in the Soviet
Union, requiring American pilots to deliver it fast and low,
under the radar.

 It detonates with an explosive yield estimated by
nongovernmental experts at the equivalent of 1.2 million tons of
TNT.

 However, the B83 also is adjustable to at least two lower
yields, and the administration has asked RNEP scientists to
preserve them if possible. All of them are likely to send a
cloud of radioactive fallout into the air, as one senior
administration official recently acknowledged when pressed by
Rep. Tauscher, who has led House opposition to the RNEP. Unless
a novel bomb casing made of what one scientist calls a Nirvana
alloy, the bomb never will penetrate more than a few tens of
meters.

 The key thing is not penetrating to great depth but getting it
to hold together and to stick, said one senior weapons official.

 According to people knowledgeable about the project, it may
never penetrate the hardest rock or be effective against
facilities deep inside 				 				 					 					 					 				   				
				 					 					 				 that rock.

 Mountainous North Korea is riven by hundreds of such tunnels.
The Russians have a tunneled facility inside a quartz mountain
called Yamantau.

 But for orchestrating a nuclear war, nothing compares to
Kosvinsky Mountain, the Russian equivalent to the United States
Cheyenne Mountain. It is believed impervious to multiple, direct
nuclear strikes. If detectors arrayed around Moscow pick up
nuclear detonations, the Kosvinsky system without human
intervention would relay launch codes to Russian nuclear missile
silos.

 If RNEP works in the hardest rock, its value as a threat is
closely related to U.S. intelligence on the exact location of
underground facilities, their structure and whether at a given
moment they are occupied by foreign leaders or weapons of mass
destruction.

 The utility of these weapons has to be very marginal. For
North Korea, it might add something if they knew we could
destroy their facilities. But they know we cant know where
everything is, said Stanfords May, the former Livermore
director. I cant think of a condition with the present set of
adversaries and U.S. capabilities where there would be such a
target where it would be decisive for you in war.

 Deep underground stores of weapons of mass destruction are
tougher. In a soontobe released report, the governments chief
independent technical advisers at the National Academy of
Sciences finds that nuclear blast and radiation are effective at
destroying chemical and biological warfare agents. But in many
cases, the bomb would have to detonate in the middle of the
underground storage room, or risk blasting the live agent to the
surface with radioactive fallout.

 If successful, RNEPs critics say, the United States will have
lost moral authority to persuade other nations to forego weapons
that are the only major threat to U.S. military superiority.
Proponents of new weapons say exercising restraint is naive.
North Korea and Iran launched weapons programs while the United
States wasnt designing new weapons.

 But physicist Steve Fetter thinks U.S. nuclear restraint is
worth trying. Im not talking about North 				 				 					 					
					 				   				 				 					 					 				 Korea.

 They want nuclear weapons, said Fetter, a publicpolicy
professor at the University of Maryland. Im talking about
everyone else who would have to sign up for the program. You
have people in India, Pakistan, even France who favor
cooperation with the United States in nonproliferation. If we
did take substantial steps to modify our nuclear policies, this
would strengthen the hand of those people and they would win the
day.

 Staff writer Ian Hoffman can be reached at
Tri-Valley Herald All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
 9 Boston.com: Give nukes a chance
 
Boston Globe

  [Left: Pakistan's Ghauri missile, shown being tested in May
2002, has a range of 900 miles and can carry nuclear warheads.
Right: A March 2002 satellite image shows the Yongbyon nuclear
facility in North Korea. North Korea announced in February that
it had manufactured nuclear weapons to protect itself against a
US attack.]     Left: Pakistan's Ghauri missile, shown being
tested in May 2002, has a range of 900 miles and can carry
nuclear warheads. Right: A March 2002 satellite image shows the
Yongbyon nuclear facility in North Korea. North Korea announced
in February that it had manufactured nuclear weapons to protect
itself against a US attack. (AP Photo / Defense Ministry; AFP/
Getty Images Photo)  

Can the spread of nuclear weapons make us safer?
 
By Drake Bennett  |  March 20, 2005 

KENNETH N. WALTZ, adjunct professor of political science at
Columbia University, doesn't like the phrase ''nuclear
proliferation.'' ''The term proliferation' is a great
misnomer,'' he said in a recent interview. ''It refers to things
that spread like wildfire. But we've had nuclear military
capabilities extant in the world for 50 years and now, even
counting North Korea, we only have nine nuclear countries.''

Strictly speaking, then, Waltz is as against the proliferation
of nuclear weapons as the next sane human being. After all, he
argues, ''most countries don't need them.'' But the eventual
acquisition of nuclear weapons by those few countries that see
fit to pursue them, that he's for. As he sees it, nuclear
weapons prevent wars. 

''The only thing a country can do with nuclear weapons is use
them for a deterrent,'' Waltz told me. ''And that makes for
internal stability, that makes for peace, and that makes for
cautious behavior.'' 

Especially in a unipolar world, argues Waltz, the possession of
nuclear deterrents by smaller nations can check the disruptive
ambitions of a reckless superpower. As a result, in words Waltz
wrote 10 years ago and has been reiterating ever since, ''The
gradual spread of nuclear weapons is more to be welcomed than
feared.'' 

Waltz is not a crank. He is not a member of an apocalyptic death
cult. He is perhaps the leading living theorist of the foreign
policy realists, a school that sees world politics as an
unending, amoral contest between states driven by the will to
power. His 1959 book, ''Man, the State, and War,'' remains one
of the most influential 20th-century works on international
relations. 

In recent weeks, however, the spread of nuclear weapons has
taken on what might appear to be a wildfire-like quality. North
Korea has just declared itself a nuclear power. Iran is in
negotiations with the United States and Europe over what is
widely suspected to be a secret weapons program of its own. Each
could kick off a regional arms race. And North Korea in the past
has sold nuclear technology to Libya and Pakistan, while Iran
sponsors Hezbollah and Hamas. As the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty, the backbone of nonproliferation efforts for the past 35
years, comes up for review this May, there's an increasing sense
that it is failing. In such a context, Waltz's argument may seem
a Panglossian rationalization of the inevitable. 

Still, although heads of state, legislators, intelligence
officials, and opinion columnists are nearly united in their
deep concern over the world's nuclearization, the scholars who
spend their time thinking about the issue are in fact deeply
divided over the consequences of the spread of nuclear weapons,
even to so-called ''states of concern'' like Iran and North
Korea. Few among Waltz's colleagues share his unwavering
confidence in the pacifying power of nuclear weapons. But plenty
among them see at least some merit in the picture he paints. In
part, the disagreement between Waltz and his critics is over the
meaning and value of nuclear deterrence in a post-Cold War
world. But it's also an argument over the motives that drive
some countries to pursue nuclear weapons and others to want to
keep the nuclear genie to themselves.

Waltz spells out his theory most thoroughly in the 1995 book 
''The Spread of Nuclear Weapons,'' co-written with the Stanford 
political scientist Scott D. Sagan in the form of an extended 
debate. Updated and republished two years ago to take into 
account the nuclearization of India and Pakistan, it contains the 
same arguments Waltz makes today in interviews. Put simply, a war 
between nuclear powers cannot be decisively won without the risk 
of total destruction. Since the risk of escalation in any 
conflict is so high, nuclear states grow cautious. ''If states 
can score only small gains because large ones risk retaliation,'' 
Waltz writes, ''they have little incentive to fight.'' When 
fighting does break out, it is likely to be a localized proxy 
conflict like the Korean War instead of, say, a Soviet invasion 
of Western Europe. Nuclear weapons, he adds, even blunt the urge 
for territorial expansion, since they contribute far more to a 
country's security than any geographical buffer could.

Even Graham Allison, a dean and professor at Harvard's Kennedy 
School of Government and one of the country's most visible 
nonproliferation crusaders, concedes some of Waltz's argument. 
''There's something known in the literature as a crystal ball 
effect,''' Allison says. ''With a nuclear war, probably most of 
the people living in the capital are going to be killed, 
including the leader and his family, so it brings it home. You 
have a positive effect, and you can certainly see that in the 
India-Pakistan relationship'' since both countries acquired their 
nuclear arsenals.

Yet Allison-whose latest book, the widely noted ''Nuclear 
Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe,'' was published 
last August-dismisses Waltz's larger linkage between 
proliferation and security as ''perverse, but nonetheless 
interesting.'' In particular, Allison argues, the time period 
just after a country goes nuclear-in the case of North Korea, the 
present moment-is the most dangerous. This is partly because 
nascent nuclear nations don't have the best command and control 
systems for their weapons. More troubling is that historically, 
in every so-called nuclear ''conflict dyad''-US/USSR, USSR/China, 
India/Pakistan-the first of the two to go nuclear came close to 
launching a preemptive attack to profit from its nuclear 
advantage. And the precarious hold on power of the government in 
a nuclear nation like Pakistan only adds to the volatile mix.

Even today's long-established nuclear powers, Allison points out, 
may owe their continued survival as much to luck as logic. John 
F. Kennedy himself put the chance of nuclear war during the Cuban 
Missile Crisis at one in three-odds, Allison notes, that are 
twice as high as those in Russian Roulette.

To share Waltz's faith in the pacifying effects of proliferation, 
says David Goldfischer of Denver University's Graduate School of 
International affairs, is to subscribe to a sort of ''nuclear 
theology.'' (Goldfischer is himself a proponent of what he calls 
Mutual Defense Emphasis-a proposed treaty regime in which nuclear 
arsenals would be sharply reduced and mutually acceptable missile 
defenses installed by opposing nuclear powers.) Waltz, 
Goldfischer charges, ''is utterly convinced that there's a 
rational core in every brain similar to his own, which will act 
somehow at the critical moment, and that no one will be able to 
reach a leadership position in any society who will make the 
potentially suicidal decision to launch when a massive 
retaliation is a certainty.'' And that doesn't begin to account 
for the possibility of an accidental launch or an attack by an Al 
Qaeda operative whose effective statelessness and hunger for 
martyrdom make him undeterrable. 

John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of 
Chicago and another preeminent realist thinker, describes himself 
as closer to Waltz than to Allison on the issue. Mearsheimer 
agrees with Waltz, for example, that nuclear states, no matter 
how ''rogue,'' are unlikely to give their weapons to terrorists. 
Whatever its sympathies, Mearsheimer argues, ''Iran is highly 
unlikely to give nuclear weapons to terrorists, in large part 
because they would be putting weapons into the hands of people 
who they ultimately did not control, and there's a reasonably 
good chance that they would get Iran incinerated'' if the weapon 
was traced back to the regime in Tehran.

''Any country that gave [nuclear weapons] to terrorists who would 
use them against the US,'' Mearsheimer adds, ''would disappear 
from the face of the earth.''

The problem of ''loose nukes''-in particular, Russia's inability 
in the years since the Cold War to keep track of all its nuclear 
materials-shows that even a country's strong interest in 
maintaining control of its nuclear weapons is no guarantee that 
some won't fall into the wrong hands, raising the threat of 
nuclear terrorism. Nevertheless, thinkers like Waltz and 
Mearsheimer, with their dogged focus on the calculus of national 
advantage and interest, raise a question that tends to get lost 
in much of the news coverage of proliferation: Do nuclear states 
like the United States oppose proliferation simply out of concern 
for their citizens' safety, or is there something more strategic 
at work?

In Waltz's formulation, nations acquire nuclear weapons not to 
menace their neighbors but to protect themselves. And to the 
governments of North Korea and Iran, the primary threat is the 
United States. ''If you were making decisions for North Korea or 
Iran,'' Waltz asks, ''wouldn't you be deadly determined to get 
nuclear weapons, given American capability and American policy?''

Seen this way, the near-term proliferation threat is less to our 
homeland-neither North Korea or Iran, for example, has the 
missile technology to deliver a warhead to the continental 
US-than to our ability to project power and shape world affairs. 
The United States, in other words, worries as much about being 
deterred as being attacked.

''The truth is that countries that have nuclear weapons will be 
off-limits,'' says Mearsheimer, ''which is why [those countries] 
want them.''

The more nuclear nations, then, the less leverage America has. 
According to political scientist Robert Jervis, Waltz's colleague 
at Columbia, ''We can't threaten to invade them. We even will 
have less ability to launch really heavy covert operations.'' 
Even our allies, should they go nuclear, will start to distance 
themselves, Jervis predicts. ''If proliferation were to spread to 
Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia-they will obviously still 
need us, but not as much, and it reduces our leverage in that way 
as well.''

By this logic, one option for the United States would be to play 
down the importance of nuclear weapons. As Jervis notes, 
Washington's deep and vocal concern over proliferation only 
enhances the perceived value of such weapons. ''But we have 
overwhelming conventional superiority,'' says Jervis, ''and we'd 
be much better off if [nuclear weapons] were abolished. We should 
be saying they're not such a big deal. What has France gotten 
from its nuclear weapons?''

Ultimately, however, no amount of military might allows a country 
to wish away the Bomb. Whether or not nuclear weapons make the 
world a more dangerous place, they certainly make it a more 
humbling one, and their spread only narrows the options of the 
world's sole superpower.

Drake Bennett is the staff writer for Ideas. Email 
drbennett@globe.com. 

c Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.

*****************************************************************
 10 csmonitor.com: Nuclear logic | 

 Commentary > Opinion 
from the March 21, 2005 edition 	

 By Larry Seaquist 

GIG HARBOR, WASH.  Were it possible to hold a referendum, the
citizens of the world probably would vote nuclear weapons off
the globe. But to our continuing peril, the forces of history
now swing in the other direction, in part because a well-meaning
American campaign against nuclear proliferation is dragging
nuclear weapons back into mainstream politics. 

For most people, nuclear weapons fall into a category of devices
so horrendously destructive that they must not be used. By
consensus and treaty, the international community has tried to
dig a moral moat around nuclear weapons, hoping to make the idea
of detonating a device so repugnant that even the most loutish
of leaders could not think of ordering a nuclear attack. This
no-detonations standard has propelled a nonproliferation
strategy. Since the weapons ought not be used, they mustn't be
acquired. Pending complete abolition, those already in the club
are enjoined to ensure that the capability does not leak out
into less steady hands.	 	 	

But the practice was never as clean as the principle. Nukes took
a central role in the cold war. In the peculiar logic of nuclear
strategy, the tens of thousands of weapons deployed on each side
balanced the terror enough to see the superpower confrontation
through to its peaceful end. 

Unfortunately, one cold-war lesson - that living with nuclear
weapons on hair-trigger alert is extremely dangerous - was
overshadowed by another: that mere possession confers clout.
Nuclear wannabes learned one doesn't actually have to blow
anything up to "use" a nuclear weapon. Indeed, today, one may
not even need to have a weapon. It may be possible to collect
the benefits of nuclear stature with a virtual bomb constructed
solely of rhetoric and chutzpah. 

In the cold war, both sides spent enormous sums to build and
brandish the credible threat of real nuclear systems. Bypassing
that old-fashioned hassle and expense, North Korea made some
nuclear fuel rods disappear, announced that they had converted
them to a handful of bombs - a claim that their warren of
underground hide sites makes impossible to check - and now
insists on negotiating peer-to-peer with America. 

Saddam Hussein was probably the first to figure this out. Seeing
that the US, the UN, and others believed he was well on his way
to major nuclear capability and that he was rogue enough to use
it, Hussein may have decided 10 years ago to forgo building and
hiding the infrastructure of a costly bomb-making industry. If
the US president and the British prime minister insisted he was
a nuclear giant, so be it. He could parade that stature to cow
his people and impress his neighbors for free. 

Osama bin Laden seems to be playing another version of the
nuclear wordsmanship game. Over the years he has repeatedly
trumpeted his intent to acquire the capability, underscoring to
the Muslim world his claim to global leadership, perhaps also
inflaming his jihadist troops with the idea that nuclear fires
would purify an apostate world. But make no mistake, bin Laden
and the other claimants to nuclear stature are more than
pretenders. With persistence, they will eventually end up
possessers of the real thing. 

Where do these developments leave our goal of no detonations and
our strategy of nonproliferation? In tatters. 

Consider the storm of invective directed at the Iranians. Having
raised suspicions by its secrecy, Iran is accused not of having
a bomb or of making one, but of building electric generation
plants whose reactors, if misused, might furnish bomb-making
material. Future Iranian decisions, not capability today, are at
the core of the contretemps. 

How is our relentless jawboning influencing that decision?
Journalists on scene report that the US campaign is solidifying
Iranian public opinion behind the radical mullahs who, no doubt,
do covet the bomb. 

Is there an alternative path? As a general principle,
nonproliferation campaigns ought to be conducted in ways that
devalue nuclear weapons. In the Iranian case, that campaign
would focus on encouraging the Iranian people to turn their
country in a more responsible direction, to see that a
nonnuclear choice is the mark of a truly great people. 

A grand strategy of denuclearization would move nuclear threats
off the front page. We'll all be safer when the global debate
features responsible leadership more than bare (nuclear) knuckle
brawls. 

A change of course requires more than just new White House
speechwriters. No single action could have a greater impact on
nuclear wannabes than a unilateral US declaration that it was
taking its own huge arsenal of nuclear weapons off their
hair-trigger alert. What's good for the goose.... 

" Larry Seaquist is a former Pentagon strategist and US Navy
captain who commanded nuclear-capable warships. 	 
Special Offer: Subscribe to the Monitor and get 32 issues FREE

  www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2005 The Christian Science
Monitor. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 11 Arutz Sheva: Bush Says He’s Serious About Stopping Tehran’s Nuclear Program         

Israel National News
             
11:25 Mar 20, '05 / 9 Adar 5765

(IsraelNN.com) US President George W. Bush told Iran that 
Washington is serious about stopping Tehran from getting a 
nuclear weapon, but he stressed that the current Bush 
Administration is more accepting of cooperating with Europe and 
exhausting diplomatic means before considering any military 
option.
 
“There is a lot of diplomacy on this issue and that is why I was 
so pleased to be able to participate with our friends France, 
Britain and Germany to say to the Iranians, ‘We speak with common 
voice and we share suspicions because of your past behavior. The 
best way to ensure that you do not develop a nuclear weapon is 
for you to have no highly enriched uranium or plutonium program 
that could lead to a weapon.’”
 
Bush was speaking to Israel Radio.
 
Published: 10:36 March 20, 2005
 	
All rights reserved IsraelNationalNews © Arutz Sheva Israel 
Broadcasting Network webmaster@israelnationalnews.com

*****************************************************************
 12 Guardian Unlimited: Rice: European Nations Must Not Arm China
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 
 	 
	Sunday March 20, 2005 1:16 PM

AP Photo XED102 

By ANNE GEARAN 

AP Diplomatic Writer 

BEIJING (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested
Sunday that European governments are irresponsible if they sell
sophisticated weaponry to China that might one day be used
against U.S. forces in the Pacific. 

``It is the United States, not Europe, that is defending the
Pacific,'' Rice said. She spoke in Seoul, the penultimate stop
on her weeklong tour of Asia. 

South Korea, Japan and the United States are all Pacific powers
and all contribute resources to keep the Asia-Pacific region
stable, Rice said. 

The European Union may soon lift an arms embargo on China that
was imposed after the deadly 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy
protesters in Tiananmen Square. Lifting the embargo would allow
sale of technology and weapons that China badly wants to
modernize its creaky military. China has recently gone on a
military spending spree that Rice said concerns the United
States. 

``The European Union should do nothing to contribute,'' to the
possibility that Chinese forces might turn European technology
on Americans, Rice said after meetings with the South Korean
president and foreign minister. 

Rice has earlier said that China's recent statements about a
possible invasion of Taiwan should give the Europeans pause.
China passed a law this month codifying its intention to use
military force against Taiwan should the island declare formal
independence. 

Rice said she would raise U.S. objections to the Taiwan
development with Chinese officials in two days of talks, along
with long-standing concerns over Chinese human rights practices
and violations of intellectual property rights. 

Rice will also ask China for more help to persuade communist
North Korea to return to international nuclear disarmament
talks. 

Soon after arriving in Beijing, Rice attended the evening Palm
Sunday service at Gangwashi Christian Church. The assistant
pastor welcomed the secretary to the service. She did not speak. 

The Pyongyang government of Kim Jong Il announced last month
what the United States has long suspected: It has already built
at least one nuclear weapon. 

The United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea and China began a
joint diplomatic effort with North Korea last year aimed at
persuading the country to give up its nuclear program. 

But those six-nation talks, hosted by China, stalled in
September, when the North Koreans pulled out and refused to
return to the discussions. 

In Seoul, Rice conducted an unusual press conference with Korean
Internet reporters. The event, meant to highlight the
freewheeling nature of computer communication in an open
democracy, got off to a bad start when American security guards
tackled a peace activist as he shouted to get Rice's attention. 

``Miss Rice, the North Korean people are dying and they are
crying for your help,'' yelled the activist, German physician
and former aid worker Norbert Vollertsen. He held up a poster
that read ``Freedom for North Korea: 50 Years Overdue,'' until a
State Department employee ripped the poster in half. 

As Rice took her seat for the news conference, security officers
literally muffled Vollertsen while wrestling him to the carpeted
floor. He had talked his way into the event before Rice arrived,
but a U.S. Embassy public affairs officer recognized him at the
last moment and demanded he be removed. 

In replies to the Korean journalists, Rice described true
democracy as the ability to ``say what you wish, worship as you
please and educate your children, boys and girls.'' 

In contrast to the closed society of North Korea, Rice said,
``you can come here and think what you want and ask me anything
- the United States secretary of state - and what a wonderful
thing that is.'' 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 13 Independent: Nuclear clean-up body slammed for being too 'soft' on contractors 

independent.co.uk

By Tim Webb 

20 March 2005

The decommissioning body which becomes responsible for £48bn of
Britain's nuclear liabilities on 1 April has been attacked by
MPs for being "soft" towards contractors in not threatening
financial penalties for failure to deliver. 

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has drawn up contracts
that take effect at the start of next month for the lucrative
work of dismantling the UK's nuclear facilities. The main
contractors for the first phase of the process are the UK Atomic
Energy Authority and British Nuclear Group, the clean-up arm of
the state-owned BNFL. 

But MPs are worried that the two contractors will not offer
value for money for the taxpayer, who is footing the bill. 

During a grilling by MPs last week, Dr Ian Roxburgh, the chief
executive of the NDA, admitted there were no penalties in place
if the contractors did not carry out the work as promised. 

If performance was appalling or there were cost overruns, the
contractor would lose its profit on the work and its reputation
would suffer, he said. But its costs would still be met, and
there would be no other penalty. 

Lindsay Hoyle, who is on the Trade and Industry Select
Committee, told The Independent on Sunday: "Everything is an
incentive to deliver but there is no penalty. That is the
biggest worry about the contracts. The NDA's approach is a
little bit soft. If contractors get it wrong, they must know
there will be a problem." 

Another committee member, Sir Robert Smith, said: "Without
penalties built into the contracts, there is a concern whether
the NDA would be able to ensure robust delivery." 

There are also concerns over the relationship between the NDA
and Nirex, the independent nuclear waste regulator. Nirex will
advise the authority on how to package the decommissioned
material, but has yet to sign a contract with it. 

The dispute echoes criticism last week of the public-private
partnership on the London Underground. Infrastructure consortia
Tubelines and Metronet had little incentive to improve
efficiency as the penalties were too weak, said a report by MPs.
	           
©2005 Independent News &Media (UK) Ltd.   
*****************************************************************
 14 Edmonton Journal: Uranium prospects glow

Rich Athabasca Lake deposits believed to extend into Alberta
 
Paul Marck

March 19, 2005
canada.com network
 		 		
Financial News Uranium prospects glow Rich Athabasca Lake
deposits believed to extend into Alberta 

Saturday, March 19, 2005
 
EDMONTON - Overshadowed by the oilsands, is another kind of
energy boom in Alberta. A uranium rush is going on around the
Athabasca Basin, this time on the Alberta side of the valuable
northern mineral reserve straddling the boundary with
Saskatchewan.

"It's an exciting time right now. Nobody has been looking for
uranium (in Alberta) for 25 years," says geologist Randy Turner,
president of Triex Minerals and Diamondex Resources Ltd. of
Vancouver.

Provincial records show a total of 4,500 square kilometres has
been staked for metallic and industrial mineral exploration
across the province, including uranium, since early 2004. The
province cannot quantify how much of that was for uranium, but
it is believed to be the highest level of prospecting not
related to diamond staking for some time.

Uranium exploration is centred around Lake Athabasca, 570 km
northeast of Edmonton, just beyond Fort Chipewyan.

The Alberta foray is the first since the late 1970s and is led
by junior companies. Triex and Roughrider Uranium share in the
Old Fort Bay property hugging the provincial boundary, southwest
of Lake Athabasca. Further sites are staked out by Strathmore
Minerals and CanAlaska Ventures.

Uranium has never been mined on the Alberta side of the
Athabasca Basin, while production in Saskatchewan has continued
unabated since the 1970s. The Athabasca Basin is the world's
largest uranium producing area, holding 30 per cent of known
global deposits. Two resource companies, Cameco and Cogema, mine
and process a total of more than 10,000 tonnes of uranium from
five sites on the Saskatchewan side of the boundary.

Strathmore Minerals Corp., predicts projects in the Athabasca
Basin area will grow to encompass fully half of the world's
production by the end of the decade.

Alberta's unmapped uranium is speculative. But there is little
doubt that the rich Saskatchewan deposits, under and around Lake
Athabasca, also extend into Alberta.

"There's just as much prospecting here as on the eastern side,"
Turner said.

Brad Anderson, executive director of the Alberta Chamber of
Resources, said the uranium rush is a timely addition to
Alberta's traditional oil, gas and coal discoveries.

"It's exciting to see that kind of exploration going on the
Alberta side of the Athabasca Basin," said Anderson.

"Now, what you're seeing is a reflection of the price of
uranium, and the fact that with that basin, there's probably
more to be discovered there," Anderson said. There's great
potential in that basin for more world-class deposits, including
in Alberta."

Uranium prices have climbed from $8 US to $22 US a pound in less
than a year. That in turn sparked interest in Alberta's uranium
potential, which began percolating last June and then took off
in October, Turner says.

In January, Patricia Mohr, Scotiabank's vice-president of
economics, industry and commodity market reports, declared
uranium as her top commodity pick for investors over the next
two years. She predicts a steep rise in the mineral's price
between 2007-2009 to meet growing nuclear energy demand. More... 

There are 425 existing nuclear power plants worldwide and 33 new 
ones currently planned, driving the search for new uranium 
sources.

With most mineral discovery already made at the Cluff Lake, Key 
Lake, McArthur River, McClean Lake and Rabbit Lake sites on the 
eastern Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan, it makes sense that 
producers will look towards Alberta, Anderson said.

Triex (TSXV:TXM) is flush with $4 million in cash and is devoting 
a substantial part of that towards exploration. Current plans 
include a detailed airborne geological survey, to be followed by 
further mapping on the ground.

Turner expects other players to follow suit, quickly.

"I would speculate that by the time the staking race is over, it 
will be like it was in the 1970s."

The handful of prospectors for uranium in the Athabasca basin two 
years ago has risen to about 45 companies, and there could be 
plenty more, Turner says.

Even global uranium giant Cogema, which has extensive uranium 
interests in Saskatchewan, did preliminary exploration in the 
Maybelle River area on the Alberta side in 2002 and 2003.

The amount of claims staking since last year is phenomenal:

Triex and partner Roughrider Uranium have acquired a 220,000-acre 
interest in the Old Fort Bay Property, 50 kilometres from the 
proven Cluff Lake uranium deposit.

Triex and Roughrider also have a 50- per-cent interest in 11,000 
acres situated in the Maybelle River area, with Strathmore 
Minerals Corp.

Strathmore added 52,175 hectares to its Alberta holdings in 
January, bring its total exploration area to nearly 300,000 
hectares, spread north and south of Lake Athabasca on the Alberta 
side.

CanAlaska also added Alberta leases to its substantial Athabasca 
Basin holdings, and now controls a total of 177,600 hectares 
among holdings in both provinces.

Aside from the price of uranium, which some forecasters predict 
will hit $30 to $40 in the next 18 months, discovery technology 
has also advanced well beyond what was available in the 1970s.

One form of deep penetration technology, which scans depths up to 
a kilometre, has only been used since 1997.

Turner says a big find in Alberta will spur more activity, but it 
won't happen overnight.

"It's going to take a number of years to make a discovery. If 
anybody thinks they are going to discover a mine tomorrow -- 
well, it's a 10-to-15-year window."

Turner, a one-time Calgarian and University of Alberta alum, is 
former head of Winspear Resources. In 2000, Winspear was acquired 
in a hostile $308-million takeover by deBeers of its Snap Lake 
diamond find.

Turner says the race for uranium, centred on the Hornby Basin in 
the N.W.T. and the Athabasca Basin, has the same potential that 
diamond discovery did in the 1990s.

pmarck@thejournal.canwest.com
c The Edmonton Journal 2005
*****************************************************************
 15 Guardian Unlimited: Annan Lays Out Sweeping Changes to U.N.
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 
 	 
Sunday March 20, 2005 10:16 PM

By EDITH M. LEDERER 

Associated Press Writer 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on
world leaders Sunday to approve the most sweeping changes to the
United Nations since it was founded 60 years ago, so it can
tackle conflicts and terrorism, fight poverty and put human
rights at the forefront of its work in the 21st century. 

After a year of scandals over corruption in the U.N.
oil-for-food program in Iraq and sex abuse by U.N. peacekeepers
in Congo, Annan's report also sets out plans to make the world
body more efficient, open, and accountable - including
strengthening the independence of the U.N.'s internal watchdog. 

The report to the 191 members of the U.N. General Assembly was
released six months before world leaders meet at U.N.
headquarters for a summit called by Annan. In its introduction,
he urged the leaders to ``act boldly'' and adopt ``the most
far-reaching reforms in the history of the United Nations.'' 

``We will not enjoy development without security, we will not
enjoy security without development, and we will not enjoy either
without respect for human rights,'' Annan said. ``Unless all
these causes are advanced, none will succeed.'' 

One of the major proposals calls for the creation of a Human
Rights Council - possibly as a principal organ of the United
Nations like the Security Council or the General Assembly - to
replace the Geneva-based Commission on Human Rights. It has long
faced criticism for allowing the worst-offending countries to
use their membership to protect each other from condemnation. 

One of the most hotly awaited parts of the report was Annan's
recommendation for changes to the 15-member Security Council,
the most powerful U.N. body now dominated by post-World War II
powers - the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France,
who all have veto power. 

The report calls for an expanded, more representative Security
Council, but Annan did not endorse a specific plan, instead
backing two options proposed in December by a high-level panel.
One would add six new permanent members and the other would
create a new tier of eight semi-permanent members: two each from
Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. 

The Security Council's use of force has also been an issue. It
refused to authorize the U.S.-led war against Iraq and the war
in Kosovo against the forces of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan
Milosevic - decisions which angered some countries. 

The report said the Security Council already has the authority
under the U.N. Charter to use military force, even preventively,
but it needs to work more effectively and use specific criteria
to make its decisions. 

In cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against
humanity, Annan urged all states to accept that there is a
``responsibility to protect'' those being killed which requires
collective action. 

On the issue of combating terrorism, Annan proposed a
comprehensive strategy and backed the definition of terrorism in
the high-level panel's report, saying it should break the
impasse on adoption of a comprehensive convention against
terrorism which should be approved by September 2006. 

The report said the Security Council's decisions on whether to
use force should be guided by a set of clear principles, and it
urged all states to accept that in cases of genocide, ethnic
cleansing, and crimes against humanity, there is a
``responsibility to protect'' which requires collective action. 

Annan proposed a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy, urging
world leaders to unite behind a definition of terrorism and
adopt a comprehensive convention against terrorism by September
2006. He also called for swift adoption of a global treaty
against nuclear terrorism and swift negotiations on a treaty to
halt the spread of the highly enriched uranium and plutonium
needed to make nuclear weapons. 

In the area of development, the secretary-general urged all rich
countries to establish a timetable to reach the goal set 35
years ago of earmarking 0.7 percent of gross national product
for development assistance by 2015, starting with a significant
increase by 2006. The United States currently has one of the
lowest levels - about 0.15 percent. 

At the same time, the report calls on developing countries to
adopt a program by 2006 to cut extreme poverty in half, ensure
primary education for all children, improve health care, and
halt and reverse the AIDS pandemic, all by 2015. 

Mark Malloch Brown, Annan's chief of staff, dismissed media
comments that the report was ``a panicked response'' to the
U.N.'s problems, noting that it is based in part on the
conclusions of two U.N.-commissioned panels on meeting global
security threats and on achieving goals to reduce poverty and
disease adopted at the last U.N. summit in 2000. 

Its release comes ahead of a report by former U.S. Federal
Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, expected later this month, on his
investigation into the activities of Annan and his son, Kojo,
who worked in Africa for a company that had an oil-for-food
contract. Asked why the United Nations did not wait for the
Volcker report's release, Malloch Brown said the reform
proposals were promised to world leaders in March.	 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 16 Guardian Unlimited: Key Proposals for Changes to the U.N.
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Sunday March 20, 2005 11:01 PM

By The Associated Press 

Key proposals for changes to the U.N. in Secretary-General Kofi
Annan's report to world leaders: 

DEVELOPMENT 

- Rich countries should establish a timetable to earmark 0.7
percent of gross national product for development assistance by
2015. 

- Poor countries should adopt a program by 2006 to cut extreme
poverty in half, ensure primary education for all children, and
achieve other U.N. development goals by 2015. 

- Nations must look beyond the 2012 expiration of the Kyoto
Protocol on climate change to stabilize greenhouse gas
emissions. 

SECURITY 

- Nations should approve a convention against terrorism by
September 2006, based on a new definition, as part of a broader
strategy to prevent terrorism. 

- Nations should swiftly adopt a global treaty against nuclear
terrorism. 

- Nations should quickly negotiate a treaty to halt the spread
of the highly enriched uranium and plutonium needed to make
nuclear weapons. 

- Non-nuclear weapon states should be given incentives to
voluntarily forego development of enriched uranium or plutonium
separation facilities along with fuel for their nuclear energy
programs. 

HUMAN RIGHTS 

- Establish a U.N. Human Rights Council, possibly as a standing
U.N. body like the Security Council, to replace the Commission
on Human Rights which has been criticized for a lack of
credibility. 

- Nations should accept the ``responsibility to protect'' and
need for collective action in cases of genocide, ethnic
cleansing, and crimes against humanity. 

- Establish a fund for countries seeking to establish or
strengthen their democracy. 

U.N. RENEWAL 

-Expand the Security Council to make it more representative of
21st-century geopolitical realities. 

-Streamline the U.N. Secretariat. 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 17 chillicothe gazette: A-plant records hard to get to - 

    Saturday, March 19, 2005   

 Security concerns make for trouble finding information

 By Daniel Prazer Gazette Staff Writer 

PIKETON -- The roads inside the boundaries of the Piketon uranium 
enrichment plant used to be public and were a common shortcut for 
folks who live to the east as they drove to U.S. 23. 

But that all changed Sept. 11, 2001. 

Now, there's only one entrance to the plant, and you have to go 
through security to reach the formerly public roads. 

Which makes it tough to get to the Department of Energy's public 
records reading room. 

"We keep the administrative record there, which is when you start 
the process of cleanup, you've got all the documents and 
information that relate to the decision," said Laura Schachter, 
spokeswoman for the DOE's office that oversees the Piketon plant 
and its sister facility in Paducah, Ky. "They keep all of the 
annual reports. There's a lot of historical data down there." 

In order to get to the library, you've got to be a U.S. citizen 
and give your name and Social Security number, Schachter said. 
Seeing the documents isn't contingent upon this information, but 
getting to the building is. 

The library used to be in Waverly, she said, but didn't get 
enough foot traffic to justify the costs involved with 
maintaining a separate facility. Some other nuclear sites have 
their reading rooms off-site, often in connection to a nearby 
university, but right now there are no plans to move the Piketon 
room off-site. 

But Greg Simonton, executive director of the Southern Ohio 
Diversification Initiative, a group tasked with helping to 
influence the plant's future, said he'd like to help make the 
records more accessible. 

"We would like to make that part of a proposal to the department 
to get that off-site so that anybody who wants to access that 
information can," he said. 

"It truly is an important part of an open and honest dialogue." 

The department will soon have a Web site up and running with 
recent documents available, Schachter said. It's going to focus 
on recent documents, working backward, and will include links to 
pertinent documents at other nuclear sites. 

But Simonton said that's not a solution to the need for access. 
Paper copies are more user-friendly. 

"Being online, if you're in California, that's fine, that's a 
whole lot easier than traveling here," he said. "But for the 
general public, many people don't have access to the Internet. 

"The Web should be a part of what they do, but it shouldn't 
replace an open, accessible center here." 

Originally published Saturday, March 19, 2005
 

| | Copyright ©2004 Chillicothe Gazette. All rights 
*****************************************************************
 18 canadaeast.com: Ottawa 'anxious' to help with Point Lepreau

As published on page A1/A7 on March 19, 2005                                            

 N.B. officials buoyed by meeting with federal counterparts
 		 		 		 		 	 	BY RICHARD ROIK
 	Telegraph-Journal
                                                
A senior New Brunswick official says he is "optimistic" the 
federal government will come up with enough extra cash to justify 
refurbishing the aging Point Lepreau nuclear power plant.

Bill Thompson, the province's deputy minister of energy, emerged 
from a meeting with his federal counterparts in Ottawa Friday to 
say the latest round of negotiations had gone "very well."

"People seem very anxious to help," Mr. Thompson said of the 
high-level meeting that also included officials for Native 
Affairs Minister Andy Scott, who is Ottawa's lead minister in New 
Brunswick.

"We had a very good exchange," Mr. Thompson said. "The (federal) 
officials were very open and very understanding.

"There are avenues to be pursued," he added.

Mr. Thompson also confirmed that the two levels of government are 
basing their discussions on the early expectation that it will 
cost between $500 million and $600 million more to refurbish the 
region's only nuclear power plant rather than building a new 
coal-fired generating station.

Mr. Thompson said the gap in the two prices could also widen - or 
narrow - depending upon the assumptions used for calculating the 
various costs.

In the end, he added, any agreement on federal assistance would 
rest with the political leaders in Ottawa and Fredericton.

"We're working at the officials level, but the details will 
ultimately have to work their way up to the decision makers," Mr. 
Thompson said.

The two sides are planning to talk again next week.

Campbell Morrison, press secretary to Mr. Scott, also confirmed 
the meeting went well, and that a number of "options and 
possibilities" were discussed.

"The government of Canada wants to help and be of assistance," 
Mr. Morrison said in a telephone interview.

But he cautioned that there are "no guarantees at this point."

It's widely believed that Ottawa wants to see the Point Lepreau 
refurbishment go ahead to spare Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. from 
the international embarrassment of losing a domestic client.

New Brunswick is also hoping that Ottawa will still find a way to 
accommodate the province's particular needs within the federal 
government's evolving Kyoto plan for reducing greenhouse gas 
emissions.

The question mark is whether an agreement can be reached by the 
April 15 deadline Bruce Power has set for approving its offer to 
be a partner in the project.

Mr. Morrison admitted it's a tight time frame for the federal 
government to meet, and New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord 
insisted this week his government won't rush a decision on the 
Bruce Power proposal that was only presented earlier this month.

"This is a multibillion-dollar decision and I will take the time 
that is necessary," Mr. Lord said.

Reach our reporter tjotta@nb.aibn.com
 		 		 					 								 		 		 		 		 		 		 	   
Copyright © 2005 Brunswick News Inc. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 19 toledoblade.com: U.S. levies $1.1 billion pollution settlement against FirstEnergy
 
Article published Saturday, March 19, 2005
 
 Dirty coal plant violated EPA rules
 
By BLADE STAFF WRITER

FirstEnergy Corp. has agreed to pay the second-largest sum a
utility has ever paid to settle federal Clean Air Act
violations, making it the second-largest civil fine ever imposed
on the utility sector.

The corporation's $1.1 billion settlement, announced yesterday
by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice
Department, is second only to a $1.2 billion settlement the
federal government reached in 2003 with Virginia Electric and
Power Co.

FirstEnergy's settlement also includes an $8.5 million civil
penalty, second only to a $9 million civil penalty that Dynegy
Midwest Generation agreed to pay as part of a deal announced
March 7 in a case that also involved Dynegy's predecessor,
Illinois Power Co.

FirstEnergy owns coal and nuclear power stations in northern
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Its power plants include the
coal-fired Bay Shore plant in Lucas County and the Davis-Besse
nuclear plant in Ottawa County.

The utility's $1.1 billion expenditure will not directly affect
customers in the short term because the Public Utilities
Commission of Ohio has capped prices FirstEnergy can charge. The
cap is part of a rate stabilization plan in effect from 2006
through the end of 2008, said Ellen Raines, a utility spokesman.

FirstEnergy is the only utility in Ohio forbidden by the PUCO
from raising rates to pay for environmental investments, she
said.

The Clean Air Act violations stem from a lawsuit the federal
government filed in 1999 over excessive air pollution from the
W.H. Sammis coal-fired power plant. The plant, north of
Steubenville, Ohio, is operated by FirstEnergy subsidiary Ohio
Edison Co.

Located along the Ohio River near the Ohio-West Virginia border,
the plant is one of the nation's largest producers of
electricity and notorious for spewing contaminants.

In 2003, it was listed as the nation's second-largest emitter of
sulfur dioxide, a lung irritant that can permanently damage the
respiratory system.

Sulfur dioxide also is the driving pollutant behind acid rain, a
form of precipitation that travels for miles and contaminates
rivers, lakes, and forests.

The government said in its lawsuit that FirstEnergy was required
to install the most effective pollution-control equipment on the
market when substantial modifications were made. It said such
changes were mandated under provisions of the Clean Air Act,
called new source review, which treated older coal plants as new
sources of pollution when those plants were significantly
modified or expanded.

The utility contended its continued work at the plant was
maintenance and thus exempt from the law.

The U.S. EPA and the Justice Department described the case as a
landmark for utilities.

The target of the complaint was Ohio Edison, whose service area
includes portions of Erie and Huron counties, including the city
of Sandusky.

New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut were co-plaintiffs and are
among several in the Northeast that have claimed they are unable
to meet Clean Air Act requirements because of migrating
pollutants generated by Ohio coal plants.

The settlement requires a modernization of Sammis and three
other FirstEnergy coal plants - its Burger plant in Ohio's
Belmont County, its Eastlake plant in Eastlake, Ohio, and its
Mansfield plant in Beaver County, Pa.

The U.S. EPA projects the improvements will result in an annual
reduction of 212,000 tons of emissions a year, mostly in sulfur
dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The latter causes smog.

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 
*****************************************************************
 20 Times Argus: NRC says Vt. Yankee doing OK despite problems
 	 	 	 	 
March 19, 2005 

Associated Press   

VERNON — The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant earned good
marks in 2004 despite a year of problems that included
misplacing two pieces of radioactive nuclear fuel, federal
regulators said.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said that Vermont
Yankee's lowest grade came in the area of its emergency alert
system and that low grade would earn the plant additional
inspections this year.

Vermont Yankee had lost track of its system of emergency alert
radios, which is a key component, along with sirens in downtown
Brattleboro, for letting the public know about a plant emergency.

Some members of the public were unhappy with the NRC's grading
system and they didn't think the NRC was being tough enough.

"That system doesn't work, you gave them a pass," said Peter
Alexander, executive director of the New England Coalition. "The
plant should be shut down."Under such a notification system,
people would drive up and down roads with a bullhorn, alerting
people of an emergency. Under federal regulations, all the
residents must be warned within 45 minutes.

Entergy Nuclear faces enforcement action for the lost nuclear
fuel, said Brian Holian, Entergy's deputy director of reactor
projects. He said the missing fuel was taken into consideration
in the plant's overall evaluation.

Other problems at the plant included a spectacular fire caused
by a loose part in an aging electrical system component. The
incident forced the plant to shut down for about a month.

And plant personnel also found cracks in the steam dryer, a key
piece of equipment that has proved problematic in other nuclear
reactors who have undertaken projects to increase power
production, as Vermont Yankee hopes to do.

The pieces of fuel rod were eventually found in a special
container in the bottom of the old fuel pool, where they were
supposed to be. The discovery ended three months of expensive
and embarrassing searching by Entergy officials.

Before the annual assessment meeting, officials from the NRC,
Entergy and the state of Vermont met to discuss recent test
results by state monitors showing that Vermont Yankee had
exceeded state radioactivity limits.
   
© 2005 Times Argus
*****************************************************************
 21 AFP: Taiwan defies safety warnings and installs reactor at nuclear power plant - 

  New Scientist | AFP
 
Sunday March 20, 11:17 AM

KUNGLIAO, Taiwan (AFP) - A core reactor at Taiwan's
controversial fourth nuclear power plant was installed despite
safety warnings from conservationists. After two days' delay,
the reactor was installed at the power plant of the state-run
Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower) in northern coastal town of
Kungliao, a Taipower spokesman said Sunday. 

Taipower Chairman Lin Ching-chi says this would be a "milestone 
development" in the project, which is almost 60 percent completed 
but behind schedule. 

The Japanese-built 1,000-tonne reactor has been on site since 
June 2002, the first of two planned. However, Wu Wen-tung, head 
of a Kungliao group opposing the nuclear power plant, issued a 
stern warning against the project, which he said "could become 
Taiwan's largest nightmare in the future". 

"We've repeatedly called attention to the flaws of the power 
plant -- the civil engineering construction and the rust of the 
reactor. But the government has turned a blind eye to our 
warnings," he said. 

The project has been mired in controversy for years and became a 
campaign point in the 2000 presidential elections which brought 
Chen Shui-bian of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party 
(DPP) to power. In October 2000, the DPP scrapped the partly 
built 5.6 billion US dollar plant without consulting parliament, 
as required by Taiwan's constitution, plunging the island into 
months of political crisis. 

The DPP government opposed nuclear power on grounds of safety and 
difficulty in disposing of the waste, but reinstated the project 
in February 2001. Because of the delay, Taipower is estimated to 
need another 1.3 billion US for the project, with the extra 
spending awaiting parliament's approval. 

The first nuclear reactor had been scheduled to begin operation 
in July 2006 and the second in July 2007, with a total capacity 
of 2,770 megawatts. Since Taiwan's first nuclear plant became 
operational in 1987, nuclear power has generated at least 180,000 
drums of low-radiation waste. Taipower had planned to ship the 
waste to North Korea but was forced to halt the scheme under 
pressure from South Korea and international conservationists.     

         Copyright © 2005 AFP AFP. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 22 PRAVDA.Ru: Soviet nuclear torpedoes are resting at Italian coasts -
 
  03/19/2005 15:36   
  
Exposed secret KGB archives, smuggled out of the Soviet Union,
lead to international scandal 

The story started 13 years ago, when the chairman of the KGB
archive department, Vasili Mitrokhin, escaped to Great Britain.

The intelligence officer took a big file of documents along. The
papers contained secret information about the activity of Soviet
special services from 1918 to 1980. When the officer was working
in the department, he simply copied the files that he found most
interesting. In spite of the fact that Mitrokhin left Russia in
1992, the information that the officer had at his disposal was
disclosed just a short while ago.  

Professor Christopher Andrew published the book titled "The
Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret
History of the KGB" only after Vasili Mitrokhin"s death. The
book particularly tells of the 80-year-old woman Melita Norwood,
who had been handing over British nuclear secrets to the USSR
for 40 years, since 1937. There is also a chapter about another
British spy, John Symonds, a London police officer. Symonds was
seducing female employees of foreign embassies to learn secret
information about diplomatic activities of other countries. 

Needless to say that the publication of the book provoked an
international scandal. A new scandal is gathering steam in
Italy: Soviet nuclear torpedoes are said to have been resting at
the coasts of the Italian peninsula for 35 years. 

The submarine of the Central Intelligence Department and the
maritime intelligence placed more than ten torpedoes on the
bottom of the Gulf of Naples in January of 1970. The operation
was repeated three months later. Italian experts, who studied
the information of Mitrokhin"s archives, say that there are
about 20 nukes resting on the seafloor close to the Italian
coast. The nukes were supposed to be put into action with the
help of satellite communication. 

Perspectives of the new world war do not interest Italians, nor
do they seem to care much about living next to the Soviet nukes
in the ocean. However, the Italian authorities are deeply
concerned about the ecological danger that the nuclear torpedoes
pose to the environment. Guido Bertolaso, the chairman of the
Italian Civil Defense department said that he had passed IAEA"s
report on Soviet torpedoes to the Defense Ministry and competent
services of Italy. It is worth mentioning that the International
Atomic Energy Agency categorized the story about the Soviet
nukes as a potentially dangerous incident from the point of view
of radioactive pollution of the environment. Guido Bertolaso set
out a hope that he would not have to look for the torpedoes. The
Italian official did not specify, though, if he believed in
nuclear torpedoes" existence, or relied on the Russian defense
administration that could settle the delicate problem.   
  
Read the original in Russian: (Translated by: Dmitry Sudakov)
 
Pravda.Ru   
    
  L1999-2002 "PRAVDA.Ru". When reproducing our materials in
*****************************************************************
 23 News & Star: Radiation exposure sparks n-plant probe
             
Published on 19/03/2005 By Pamela McGowan
 
AN investigation is under way after a Sellafield worker was 
exposed to an unusually high dose of radiation.
 
It happened at the Magnox Reprocessing Plant earlier this month 
and was picked up by monitoring equipment. 

The exposure was higher than 10 per cent of the annual maximum 
dose allowed.
 
However, that dose remains well within the yearly limits and has 
not been classed as a serious incident.
 
The exposure was discovered following an abnormal result on a 
personal air sampler – a monitoring device worn by lab staff.
 
The incident has been classed as “below scale� on the 
International Nuclear Event Scale, which measures the seriousness 
of events.
 
Earlier this year radioactive contamination was discovered on the 
Sellafield site, though no workers were affected.
 
A health and safety monitor noticed a white stain on the floor 
inside the solvent treatment plant. A survey showed some low 
level contamination in the low occupancy area.
 
Immediate checks were carried out and it was confirmed that this 
contamination had not spread beyond the room. This was also 
classed as below scale and is still under investigation.
 
A British Nuclear Group spokesman said both incidents had been 
picked up through regular health and safety checks and dealt with 
immediately.
 
*****************************************************************
 24 Bennington Banner: Author tells Cambridge students about nuclear fallout that hit area

March 20, 2005 Bennington, VT                                                                          
                  
By JESSICA YORK 
Staff Writer

CAMBRIDGE, N.Y. -- Some 60 Cambridge Central School high school
science students were given the opportunity Tuesday morning to
delve into the mind behind one of their required-reading
assignments on a topic "a lot worse than Chernobyl," according
to its author.

 "They decided the risk to the American public without
consulting the American public," said author Bill Heller.

 Heller, a sports journalist by trade, authored the 2003 book "A
Good Day Has No Rain" after 17 years of trying to get the story
of how nuclear fallout from a 1950s above-ground atomic bomb
testing rained down over the Capital Region during a freak
thunderstorm and how the harmful details were kept classified
for years. 

The Nevada testing could have been done underground, said
Heller, but the government wanted to simulate war conditions.
The jet stream took over after the explosion, which Heller said
was bigger than planned, carrying nuclear waste across the
country until it was caught up in a storm front over New York
state.

 Students from chemistry and advanced placement environmental
sciences classes gathered in the gym for over an hour and a half
to hear Heller tell of the events of April 25, 1953 - and how it
could still be affecting the area.

 "Could you do a movie, like 'Fahrenheit 911' or 'Supersize
Me'?" a student asked Heller.

 Heller seemed pleased at the idea, saying, "It would be a great
documentary movie. We tend to forget the human side in all of
this. That's a great idea."

 He later added, "It's not an easy read, and a movie would reach
more people."

 What worries Heller the most, he told his youthful audience, is
a fact that he has only recently heard - the government wants to
reopen the original Nevada test site again.

 "Are you doing anything to prevent the reopening of the Nevada
test site?" a student asked Heller.

 "I'm speaking to a group of Cambridge Central School
students...." Heller said.

 Heller, 51, passed the obligation onto his audience, saying
they themselves could write to their members of congress because
"It's your country, too."

 Students asked why no one questioned the fallout at the time
that it happened, and Heller replied that some did, but that "if
you hear it enough times from the government that it's not true,
it's discouraging."

 Heller was inspired to write the book after reading in a
magazine article that Troy had one of the highest fallout rates
in the nation, and speaking with a Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute professor who guided him toward uncovering the story
behind the facts. He described what information he was able to
gather initially as "extremely difficult" to get until some of a
government report on the effects of the bomb testing became
declassified years later during the Clinton era.

 A student asked Heller, "What is the message that you would
hope people would gain from reading the book?"

 "I wanted people to know the truth," Heller told the students.
"Part of the message was that everyone that was put at risk
should have known."

 Heller lives in Albany, and has written 18 books - 17 of which
are sports-related. He currently writes about horses for a
newspaper and national horse magazines. "A Good Day Has No Rain"
is dedicated to RPI professor Herbert Clark, who helped Heller
with the technical difficulties of a topic he knew nothing about
before he began to research it.

 E-mail Jessica York at jyork@benningtonbanner.com.		   	 	
 		   			 		   	 	
Copyright ©1999-2005 New England Newspapers, Inc., 
*****************************************************************
 25 Herald Sun: Aussies to hunt uranium hazard 

[21mar05]

launchTime: 17-03-2005-->                                                                                      

Ian McPhedran

A TEAM of Australian experts will travel to Iraq's Al-Muthanna 
province to find and remove depleted uranium munitions 
potentially hazardous to the 450 Diggers being sent there.

During a live fire exercise yesterday on the second anniversary 
of the Iraq war, task group commander Lt-Col Roger Noble said the 
depleted uranium war waste threat was low, but he was taking no 
chances. 

"There will be an Australian hazardous materials survey done 
right at the beginning," Lt-Col Noble said during the exercise 
involving troops and armoured vehicles from the army's 
Darwin-based 2nd Cavalry Regiment and 5/7 Battalion. 

"A team will come in and identify any potential threat." 

The team, training at Mt Bundey south of Darwin yesterday, will 
go to Iraq sometime next month, and troops are due to be in place 
and operating by mid-May. 

Tonnes of the potentially deadly depleted uranium munitions 
remain in Al-Muthanna province and the British have also 
conducted a survey Australian commanders are using to map the 
threats. 

The Australian troops will be based in the province from early 
May and yesterday was the last day of the final large-scale "live 
fire" rehearsal before the men and 40 armoured vehicles depart 
for southern Iraq. 

Lt-Col Noble and his boss, CO of the 1st Brigade Brigadier John 
Cantwell, said their soldiers were ready. 

They will help protect Japanese engineers and aid workers, and 
train members of the Iraqi security forces. 

Brigadier Cantwell said the departure would be staggered, 
starting with some troops in mid-April followed by vehicles and 
troops by sea and air in the weeks after that. 

He said he was very happy with what he was seeing from the 
soldiers. 

Lt-Col Noble said the Australian Light Armoured Vehicle was the 
best vehicle in Iraq for the job they had to do and, even without 
planned security upgrades, was more than adequate for the job. 

"That is battle-proven in Baghdad where it survived two bombs at 
point-blank range without a penetration," Lt-Col Noble said. 

Vehicles are being fitted with extra protection for the mission. 

He said his men would face several human and environmental 
threats, including the searing heat of the Iraqi desert. 

Lt-Col Noble said the Al-Muthanna Task Group would have support 
from British helicopters, particularly for medical evacuation. 
		 
© Herald and Weekly Times   

*****************************************************************
 26 Apparant Lies By USGS Re Yucca Mt. Might Kill Entire Project
 
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 00:27:04 -0500

 


    In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Harry
Reid, D-Nev., said the development "proves once
again that DOE must cheat and lie in order to make
Yucca Mountain look safe."

  The discovery of the e-mails "really casts the
project in a real bad light. In lieu of the other
problems, it might be the one that pushes it over
the edge to cancellation," said Bob Loux, Nevada
state Nuclear Projects director and Gov. Kenny
Guinn's chief anti-Yucca administrator.


   http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7351


http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/031705EC.shtml

  Documents for Nuclear Waste Project May Have
Been Falsified, Government Says
    By H. Josef Hebert
    The Associated Press
    Thursday 17 March 2005

    Washington - Government employees may have
falsified documents related to the Yucca Mountain
nuclear waste project in Nevada, the Energy
Department said Wednesday. The disclosure could
jeopardize the project's ability to get a federal
permit to operate the dump.

    During preparation for a license application
to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the
department said it found a number of e-mails from
1998 through 2000 in which an employee of the U.S.
Geological Survey "indicated that he had
fabricated documentation of his work."

    Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the
department is investigating what kind of
information was falsified and whether it would
affect the scientific underpinnings of the
project.

    "If in the course of that review any work is
found to be deficient, it will be replaced or
supplemented with analysis and documents that meet
appropriate quality assurance standards," said
Bodman. He said he was "greatly disturbed" by the
development.

    The department said the questionable data
involved computer modeling for water infiltration
and climate at the Yucca site, which is 90 miles
northwest of Las Vegas.

    At a House hearing Wednesday, the official who
recently took over the Yucca program in the Energy
Department indicated that the revelations could
further delay the project.

    "I assure you we will not proceed until we
have rectified these problems," Theodore Garrish
told Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the
House Appropriations subcommittee that controls
the dollars for Yucca Mountain.

    Garrish was not asked to elaborate. After the
hearing, he declined to answer reporters'
questions.

    Hobson said the problem did not appear too
serious and that he did not think it would throw
Yucca Mountain off track.

    "As I understand it this is not a major
impediment and can be corrected very easily,"
Hobson told reporters. "Some people just don't
want to do their job right, so they'll slip it
through rather than doing their job. We don't have
any evidence that somebody directed anybody to do
this."

    Chip Groat, director of the Geological Survey,
said the e-mails "have raised serious questions
about the review process of scientific studies
done six years ago."

    The disclosure follows other setbacks for the
proposed waste dump. The department has delayed
filing its license application to nuclear
regulators and now acknowledges that the planned
completion of the facility by 2010 no longer is
possible. Garrish told the committee Wednesday
that he couldn't provide a new completion date.

    Congress last year refused to provide all the
money sought by the Bush administration for the
project. A federal appeals court rejected the
radiation protection standards established by the
Environmental Protection Agency; the agency is
developing new standards.

    Last month, the official in charge of the
Yucca project resigned, citing personal reasons.

    The discovery of the e-mails "really casts the
project in a real bad light. In lieu of the other
problems, it might be the one that pushes it over
the edge to cancellation," said Bob Loux, Nevada
state Nuclear Projects director and Gov. Kenny
Guinn's chief anti-Yucca administrator.

    Loux said potential water transport - the
issue that some of the questionable work
apparently involved - is critical for the proposed
waste repository.

    Water is "the key mechanism at Yucca Mountain
both in terms of infiltrating into the site and in
terms of letting radioactivity release into the
biosphere," Loux said.

    Word that documents may have been falsified
"certainly calls into question DOE's ability to
submit any kind of a license application in the
near term," Loux said.

    In a statement, Senate Minority Leader Harry
Reid, D-Nev., said the development "proves once
again that DOE must cheat and lie in order to make
Yucca Mountain look safe."

    Bodman said the questionable documents were
part of the papers required by the NRC to verify
the accuracy of earlier work in the project.

    "The fact remains that this country needs a
permanent geological nuclear waste repository, and
the administration will continue to aggressively
pursue that goal," Bodman said. He said that "all
related decisions have been, and will continue to
be, based on sound science."





*****************************************************************
 27 More On Scientist May Have Falsified Yucca Papers, Climate Change & Yucca Mt.
 
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 02:12:59 -0500

 


  The sixth [6th] paragraph below refers to
climate change over a protracted period of time as
being an integral part of Yucca's purported
viability. Please see http://www.heatisonline.org
to see what a complete absurdity this concept is.
The world's leading scientists and climatologists
are constantly surprised as to the devastating
effects of global warming/climate change as it
continues to "kick in."
Samuel W. Bodman, the energy secretary, said in a
statement that the department was reviewing other
material by "identified individuals" to see if
other work was affected.




http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/politics/17yucca.html

Falsified Work Is Suspected at Nuclear Site
By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: March 17, 2005



ASHINGTON, March 16 - Government employees
assigned to predict how water would flow through a
proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada, a
crucial part of estimating how fast the
radioactive material would leak, may have
falsified some of their work, the Energy
Department said on Wednesday.

     Advertisement



One of the employees, who worked for the United
States Geological Survey, wrote multiple e-mail
messages from May 1998 to March 2000 describing
how he had fabricated some records, the department
said. The messages, whose recipients were not
disclosed, came to light recently when contractors
working for the department were preparing to
submit a license application for the project, at
Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Officials are hoping to apply for a license by the
end of this year, but the discovery could delay
that.

The department would not give details on how the
work was fabricated and whether it might have
helped or hindered the project. Nor would the
department give the names of any employees being
investigated or say what might happen to them.

Samuel W. Bodman, the energy secretary, said in a
statement that the department was reviewing other
material by "identified individuals" to see if
other work was affected.

At issue are computer models used to predict water
infiltration and climate over hundreds of
thousands of years. The fabrication was in
descriptions of how the models were prepared, the
department said.

Experts said they were dismayed by the
announcement.

"It certainly sounds important, when you start
talking about falsifying of technical records,"
said B. John Garrick, chairman of the Nuclear
Waste Technical Review Board, an independent panel
chartered by Congress to evaluate progress at
Yucca and other sites.

The rate at which the waste packages decay depends
on the flow of water around them, Dr. Garrick
said, so "that's kind of where the analysis
starts" and "that's a very important part of the
whole modeling process."

"We can't have that kind of stuff going on and
build public confidence in the repository," said
Dr. Garrick, an engineer and expert on applying
risk science to complex technologies.

The government has spent more than $6 billion
looking for a place to bury nuclear waste, most of
that sum to support its contention that Yucca is a
good place to bury wastes from civilian nuclear
power plants and the manufacture of nuclear
weapons. Yucca was supposed to begin accepting
fuel in 1998 but now appears to be at least 10
years from opening.

Because of the delays, which the announcement
seems likely to lengthen, the Energy Department is
facing billions of dollars in damage lawsuits from
utilities that have contracts with the department
to take their wastes in exchange for payments.

A spokeswoman for the department declined to
discuss the importance of the models and said she
could not describe the fabrications. But
opponents, who have already used the court to set
back the project, seized on the announcement.

"It's the heart of the entire project," said
Joseph Egan, a lawyer for the State of Nevada.
"It's whether or not this project can isolate
waste."

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic
leader, said in a statement, "This proves once
again that D.O.E. must cheat and lie in order to
make Yucca Mountain look safe."

Mr. Reid is working on legislation that would
allow spent reactor fuel to stay at the reactors
where it was used, most likely in bulky steel and
concrete casks, for extended periods. Some experts
argue that the wastes would be easier to bury
after about 100 years, by which time they will
generate far less heat.

Another expert, who follows the progress of the
project on behalf of state utility regulators,
said that the falsification might have occurred
years ago and that the project managers had tried
in the last few years to improve quality control.

The expert, Brian J. O'Connell of the National
Association of Utility Regulatory Commissioners,
said, "Good for them for catching this and
announcing it, and the apparent intent to pursue
an investigation which will bring to light
whatever may have been done."

Mr. Bodman, the energy secretary, said: "I am
greatly disturbed by the possibility that any of
the work related to the Yucca Mountain project may
have been falsified. This behavior indicated in
the e-mails is completely unacceptable." He said
the department's inspector general would
investigate.

The Energy Department, which has its roots in the
World War II effort to develop the atomic bomb,
has extensive experience in nuclear projects but
very little with outside regulation. In the case
of Yucca, it must prepare an application to be
reviewed by a sister agency, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, which has strict standards
for quality assurance in documentation.

"The N.R.C. is obsessed with openness and
traceability," Dr. Garrick said, adding that for
the commission to accept materials as evidence
that the repository should be licensed, it would
have to know who had done the work and how.

Twenty years ago, the commission forced the
abandonment of a nuclear reactor on which $1.6
billion had been spent, and which was described as
97 percent complete, because of quality assurance
problems.






http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html

Scientist May Have Falsified Yucca Papers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: March 18, 2005


Filed at 11:54 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- E-mails from a government
hydrologist to his supervisor, copied to several
co-workers, led the Energy Department to believe
that documents on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste
dump might have been falsified, government
officials said.

The documents concerned 6-year-old U.S. Geological
Survey studies of water movement in the planned
Nevada dump. USGS scientists validated Energy
Department conclusions that water seepage was
relatively slow, so radiation would be less likely
to escape.

     Advertisement


Other studies have pointed to faster water
movement. If it turns out there was document
falsification and it casts doubt on USGS'
conclusions, that could undercut the Energy
Department's case for Yucca.

The USGS employees remained on the job Thursday as
government investigators and outside scientists
tried to determine the seriousness of the alleged
falsifications.

``We don't know whether the science was actually
compromised,'' said USGS spokeswoman A.B. Wade.

After a series of setbacks, the government already
has backed off a planned 2010 completion date for
its plan to bury the nation's nuclear waste in the
Nevada desert.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., sent letters to the FBI
and Justice Department asking them to investigate
and seize all Yucca records from government
agencies. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., asked
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to appoint a
third-party agency to investigate.

``It's very clear that the licensing is not going
to be able to go forward in a timely manner,''
Reid said in an interview.

``We'll review their letters and respond
appropriately,'' said Energy Department
spokeswoman Anne Womack.

The potentially falsified documents were
discovered by Bechtel SAIC employees working on
contract for the Energy Department as it prepares
its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission to open the dump. DOE planned to submit
the license application last year but missed that
date and is now aiming for the end of 2005.

While using a sampling process to review several
million e-mails, the contractors came across about
20 suspicious messages between May 1998 and March
2000 from a hydrologist working with a team of 10
or more other scientists on Yucca water studies,
Wade said.

The e-mails were from the hydrologist to his
supervisor, and co-workers were copied. The
e-mails suggested the scientist was falsifying
documents related to the study.

It wasn't clear whether the supervisor or other
co-workers were actively engaged in the exchange,
and the author of the e-mails is the focus of
suspicion, Wade said.

She said a total of about 10 employees were privy
to the e-mails and all but one still worked for
USGS.

^------

On the Net:

Yucca Mountain background:
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ymp/index.shtml




http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/politics/17yucca.html





 The sixth [6th] paragraph below refers to climate
change over a protracted period of time as being
an integral part of Yucca's purported viability.
Please see http://www.heatisonline.org  to see
what a complete absurdity this concept is. The
world's leading scientists and climatologists are
constantly surprised as to the devastating effects
of global warming/climate change as it continues
to "kick in."

Samuel W. Bodman, the energy secretary, said in a
statement that the department was reviewing other
material by "identified individuals" to see if
other work was affected.



Falsified Work Is Suspected at Nuclear Site
By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: March 17, 2005



ASHINGTON, March 16 - Government employees
assigned to predict how water would flow through a
proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada, a
crucial part of estimating how fast the
radioactive material would leak, may have
falsified some of their work, the Energy
Department said on Wednesday.

     Advertisement



One of the employees, who worked for the United
States Geological Survey, wrote multiple e-mail
messages from May 1998 to March 2000 describing
how he had fabricated some records, the department
said. The messages, whose recipients were not
disclosed, came to light recently when contractors
working for the department were preparing to
submit a license application for the project, at
Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Officials are hoping to apply for a license by the
end of this year, but the discovery could delay
that.

The department would not give details on how the
work was fabricated and whether it might have
helped or hindered the project. Nor would the
department give the names of any employees being
investigated or say what might happen to them.

Samuel W. Bodman, the energy secretary, said in a
statement that the department was reviewing other
material by "identified individuals" to see if
other work was affected.

At issue are computer models used to predict water
infiltration and climate over hundreds of
thousands of years. The fabrication was in
descriptions of how the models were prepared, the
department said.

Experts said they were dismayed by the
announcement.

"It certainly sounds important, when you start
talking about falsifying of technical records,"
said B. John Garrick, chairman of the Nuclear
Waste Technical Review Board, an independent panel
chartered by Congress to evaluate progress at
Yucca and other sites.

The rate at which the waste packages decay depends
on the flow of water around them, Dr. Garrick
said, so "that's kind of where the analysis
starts" and "that's a very important part of the
whole modeling process."

"We can't have that kind of stuff going on and
build public confidence in the repository," said
Dr. Garrick, an engineer and expert on applying
risk science to complex technologies.

The government has spent more than $6 billion
looking for a place to bury nuclear waste, most of
that sum to support its contention that Yucca is a
good place to bury wastes from civilian nuclear
power plants and the manufacture of nuclear
weapons. Yucca was supposed to begin accepting
fuel in 1998 but now appears to be at least 10
years from opening.

Because of the delays, which the announcement
seems likely to lengthen, the Energy Department is
facing billions of dollars in damage lawsuits from
utilities that have contracts with the department
to take their wastes in exchange for payments.

A spokeswoman for the department declined to
discuss the importance of the models and said she
could not describe the fabrications. But
opponents, who have already used the court to set
back the project, seized on the announcement.

"It's the heart of the entire project," said
Joseph Egan, a lawyer for the State of Nevada.
"It's whether or not this project can isolate
waste."

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic
leader, said in a statement, "This proves once
again that D.O.E. must cheat and lie in order to
make Yucca Mountain look safe."

Mr. Reid is working on legislation that would
allow spent reactor fuel to stay at the reactors
where it was used, most likely in bulky steel and
concrete casks, for extended periods. Some experts
argue that the wastes would be easier to bury
after about 100 years, by which time they will
generate far less heat.

Another expert, who follows the progress of the
project on behalf of state utility regulators,
said that the falsification might have occurred
years ago and that the project managers had tried
in the last few years to improve quality control.

The expert, Brian J. O'Connell of the National
Association of Utility Regulatory Commissioners,
said, "Good for them for catching this and
announcing it, and the apparent intent to pursue
an investigation which will bring to light
whatever may have been done."

Mr. Bodman, the energy secretary, said: "I am
greatly disturbed by the possibility that any of
the work related to the Yucca Mountain project may
have been falsified. This behavior indicated in
the e-mails is completely unacceptable." He said
the department's inspector general would
investigate.

The Energy Department, which has its roots in the
World War II effort to develop the atomic bomb,
has extensive experience in nuclear projects but
very little with outside regulation. In the case
of Yucca, it must prepare an application to be
reviewed by a sister agency, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, which has strict standards
for quality assurance in documentation.

"The N.R.C. is obsessed with openness and
traceability," Dr. Garrick said, adding that for
the commission to accept materials as evidence
that the repository should be licensed, it would
have to know who had done the work and how.

Twenty years ago, the commission forced the
abandonment of a nuclear reactor on which $1.6
billion had been spent, and which was described as
97 percent complete, because of quality assurance
problems.






http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/19/opinion/19sat3.html

 EDITORIAL

False Data for Yucca Mountain?

Published: March 19, 2005


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hose who believe, as we do, that the best way to
get rid of nuclear waste is to bury it deep
underground have got to be discouraged by the
latest revelation rocking the effort to create a
burial site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Two
federal agencies are investigating whether a
government scientist falsified documents for a
license to build the depository. It is unclear
whether the falsification involves trivial issues
that can easily be rectified or strikes a deeper
blow at the validity of data designed to prove the
site would be safe. Any falsification would throw
yet another cloud over a project that has been
repeatedly staggered by technical problems,
political opposition and adverse court decisions.

The Energy Department said that an employee of the
United States Geological Survey sent multiple
e-mail messages from May 1998 to March 2000
indicating that he fabricated some records
relating to water infiltration and climate at
Yucca. The least damaging possibility is that he
was annoyed because, long after he had completed a
hydrology study, he was asked to supply the dates
on which certain work was performed for quality
assurance documents. Unable to reconstruct the
dates, he made them up. Other e-mail messages
suggest that false claims were made about the
calibration of instruments.

The more troubling possibility is that the
fabrications run deeper, raising questions about
the models or underlying studies, or that they
involve more scientists.

If the falsification turns out to be a relatively
minor issue, the Energy Department needs to press
ahead vigorously to submit a licensing application
to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission so that we
can know, once and for all, whether the Yucca site
will be suitable. But if, alas, the falsification
turns out to be deep and fundamental, the
administration and Congress will need to give
serious thought to two backup alternatives -
leaving spent fuel at the reactor sites where it
is accumulating for many more years or decades, or
moving it to a temporary storage facility above
ground. Neither would be a permanent solution for
disposing of nuclear waste, so the quest for a
burial site at Yucca or elsewhere would have to
continue.



http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/18/518471997.html?"Yucca%20Mountain"

 Today: March 18, 2005 at 10:34:08 PST


Columnist Jeff German: Yucca lies coming to the
surface
Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays,
Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at
german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.


...
From Nevada's perspective the Yucca Mountain
Project has been in a "death spiral" since July
when a federal appeals court tossed out the
government's inadequate safety standards for
storing radioactive waste there.

This week, however, we moved a step closer to
putting this multibillion-dollar boondoggle out of
its misery.

And what an irony it is that the Energy
Department, itself, placed the dagger in the
project's heart.

The Energy Department told Congress Wednesday what
Nevada leaders have suspected all along -- that
government scientists may have rigged scientific
research to make it look as though the mountain
was safe.

E-mails from 1998 to 2000 were discovered from
scientists who work for the U.S. Geological
Survey, suggesting that documents were fabricated
to move the much-delayed project along.

This is part of the scientific "evidence" that
President Bush used in 2002 to designate Yucca
Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the
nation's high-level nuclear waste dump.

The stunning revelation sparked internal Energy
and Interior department investigations and drew
harsh words of condemnation from Gov. Kenny Guinn
and Nevada's congressional leaders.

But it also brought smiles to the faces of people
in the trenches in Nevada.

Bob Loux, the state's chief Yucca Mountain
watchdog, told me Thursday he doesn't see any way
the Energy Department can breathe life into the
wounded nuclear waste project now.

"These guys are toast," Loux said. "This speaks to
the heart of the Energy Department's flawed effort
at Yucca Mountain."

Loux believes we are likely to see unprecedented
political fallout from these allegations at a time
when Congress and Yucca Mountain's biggest
supporter, the wealthy nuclear power industry, are
losing patience with the stalled project.

The stage has been set for hearings on Capitol
Hill, new legal challenges from Nevada, more
scrutiny within the Bush administration and maybe
even a criminal probe in the state.

If documents, after all, were falsified by
government scientists working at Yucca Mountain,
that's called fraud -- a crime that falls under
the jurisdiction of Nevada Attorney General Brian
Sandoval.

Not surprisingly, Sandoval, a leading Yucca
Mountain opponent, said he's anxious to get his
hands on those e-mails, which the Energy
Department has been reluctant to make public.

The attorney general has been doing research on
what it would take to conduct a criminal
investigation in Nevada.

Sandoval and the state's congressional leaders
also are pushing for an independent federal
inquiry. And they want U.S. Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales to become involved.

The internal investigation ordered by Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman has no credibility at all,
considering the department's history of deception
and coverups at Yucca Mountain.

For all we know these allegations are just the tip
of the iceberg. The odds are pretty good that
other documents may have been falsified during the
course of this epic battle.

So if we want to find out what happened here, we
have to keep the Energy Department as far away as
possible from the investigation.

It would be nice to finally hear the truth about
Yucca Mountain.



http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/18/518472054.html?"Yucca%20Mountain"


Today: March 18, 2005 at 11:23:01 PST


DOE audit in 2000 uncovered problems, Nevada
lawyers say
By Mary Manning
<manning@lasvegassun.com> and Ed Koch
<koch@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN

The Energy Department may have known as early as
2000 about problems with Yucca Mountain "quality
assurance" documents, lawyers working for Nevada
said.

After combing through documents posted on a Yucca
document database, the lawyers discovered an
Energy Department audit from 2000 that reviewed
Yucca documents from 1997 to 1998. The audits
uncovered problems with U.S. Geological Survey
documentation, said Joe Egan, a lawyer leading
legal efforts against Yucca Mountain.

"The audit reveals a whole litany of errors," Egan
said.

For example, the audit found that USGS officials
claimed that they had calibrated instruments that
did not exist at Yucca, Egan said.

The discovery seemed to conflict with the Energy
Department, which on Wednesday announced that
department officials first discovered alleged
document falsification on March 11.

The department said it had discovered e-mails sent
between 1998 and 2000 by two USGS employees that
indicate the USGS had falsified Yucca Mountain
documents. Those documents were designed to verify
previously completed scientific work at the
planned underground nuclear waste repository.

The e-mails were discovered as part of a massive
Energy Department review of millions of pages of
Yucca documents as it prepares to submit a license
application to build the nuclear waste repository,
Energy Department officials said.

The revelation touched off a firestorm of reaction
from Nevada officials and other longtime Yucca
critics who said the news indicates significant -- 
even potentially fatal -- flaws in the Yucca
program.

But sources with the Interior Department, the
parent agency of USGS, cautioned that
investigations may prove that no actual scientific
work was falsified -- merely the subsequent
documentation of the work.

The Energy Department and Interior Department
directed their inspectors general to investigate.

Egan's legal team is looking to verify the audit
document it discovered and continues to search for
further new evidence of impropriety, he said. It's
not clear if that audit had uncovered the same
USGS e-mails in question this week, he said.

"There's no end to where this could go," Egan
said.

The Energy Department did not respond to requests
for comment.

Meanwhile in letters sent Thursday to Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert
Mueller, Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John
Ensign, R-Nev., asked the Justice Department to
investigate -- and to take action to secure Yucca
records to prevent tampering.

In their letter, Reid and Ensign asked Gonzales
and the FBI to "preserve and protect" any
memoranda, reports, analyses, models, documents,
correspondence, and other information associated
with the Yucca license application.

"In addition, we request that you seek to protect
and preserve any and all archival electronic
messages and all records previously and currently
being reviewed" for the comprehensive Yucca
database known as the Licensing Support Network.

The e-mails "called into question the quality,
validity and integrity of the scientific review
and quality assurance processes associated with
the YMP," the letter said.

Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval, a
Republican, sent his own letter to Gonzales,
asking the Energy Department make the e-mails
public.

Sandoval said that the falsified data discovery
was "deeply disturbing" and he too urged Gonzales
to order the Energy Department to secure the
entire Yucca Mountain database and initiate an
independent probe.

"If the Yucca Mountain database has been
compromised, independent investigators should be
allowed to determine the extent and the severity
of the activity," Sandoval wrote.

Egan said that if Gonzales agrees to seize
records, it would be similar to action taken by
the federal government during an FBI raid at Rocky
Flats, Colo., in the 1980s. A federal grand jury
later investigated claims of falsified
record-keeping at the Energy Department facility
that processed plutonium for nuclear weapons.

There is no indication that there has been
document tampering, Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen
said. The request to preserve documents is
precautionary, she said.

Hafen said Reid's office also is trying to
determine if a whistleblower tipped off the Energy
Department as to where to look for falsified
records.

"We also are in the process of having
representatives from the Departments of the
Interior and Energy come to our offices in the
next couple of weeks" to explain in detail what
happened, Hafen said.

Nevada officials have long said that the issue of
how fast water flows through Yucca Mountain is at
the heart of their argument that Yucca could not
safely isolate waste. Water would corrode metal
waste containers and potentially carry radioactive
material into the environment, Yucca critics say.

Energy Department officials say their studies have
shown that water does not move quickly into the
repository, which is why Yucca critics are so
interested to know exactly what water infiltration
documents were allegedly falsified.

One critical part of the water-flow research was
the discovery of chlorine-36, a radioactive
component of atmospheric atomic bomb tests in the
Pacific Ocean in the 1950s. When Energy Department
scientists discovered traces of it 1,000 feet
inside Yucca Mountain in 1996, the state said it
was evidence that water flowed faster than
expected, said Bob Loux, Nevada's chief watchdog
on the federal project.

Although groups critical of Yucca Mountain
petitioned the Energy Department at that time to
disqualify the site, saying the government's own
guidelines had been violated, the repository
project continued.

"I think the chlorine-36 data is relevant and hope
the Energy Department will look at it," Loux said.

Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of the
environmental watchdog group Citizens Alert, said
that the state deserves a full and independent
review of all Yucca documents.

"I think it puts every single scientific test
under scrutiny," Johnson said. "Am I surprised?
No. In order to take bad science to 'sound'
science, there has to be some lies involved."

The e-mails in question this week were written
between May 1998 and March 2000 and dealt with
documentation of scientific computer modeling of
water flow.

While using a sampling process to review several
million e-mails, Energy Department contractors
discovered about 20 suspicious messages from a
hydrologist working with a team of 10 or more
other scientists on Yucca water studies, USGS
spokeswoman A.B. Wade told the Associated Press.

The e-mails were from a hydrologist to his
supervisor, and co-workers were copied, the AP
reported. The e-mails suggested the scientist was
falsifying documents related to the study.

It wasn't clear whether the supervisor or other
co-workers were actively engaged in the exchange,
and the author of the e-mails is the focus of
suspicion, Wade said. She said about 10 employees
were privy to the e-mails and all but one still
work for USGS.





http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/18/518471681.html?&quot;Yucca%20Mountain&quot;



      Today: March 18, 2005 at 9:28:06 PST

      Editorial: Horrifying disclosure
      LAS VEGAS SUN

      The latest revelation that Yucca Mountain is
a disaster in waiting came after Wednesday's
disclosure -- by the Energy Department, no less -- 
of evidence suggesting that documents in support
of the project's primary safety study may have
been falsified. The evidence is borne out by
e-mails among government scientists. The existence
of the e-mails and the critical nature of their
content were confirmed by Energy Secretary Samuel
Bodman.

      The e-mails, written between May 1998 and
March 2000, focused on the most important study of
Yucca Mountain's capacity to safely act as the
burial site for the nation's high-level nuclear
waste. This was the study by the U.S. Geological
Survey, a branch of the Interior Department, that
concluded water would move extremely slowly
underneath the mountain over thousands of years.
It would move so slowly, the study concluded, that
there would be no danger of corrosion to the metal
casks containing the waste.

      This study was critical, because earlier
studies by the Energy Department itself suggested
that water beneath the mountain would flow in
sufficient quantity to corrode the casks in a
relatively short period of time, say, a hundred
years. In that event, radiation would escape into
the environment, creating an ever-widening and
permanent threat to human life. Of course, if
those studies had been considered conclusive, the
Yucca Mountain project would have been forced to
shut down. Therefore, the Energy Department seized
on the U.S. Geological Survey finding, and used it
to guarantee the safety of Yucca Mountain.

      The e-mails, however, contain evidence that
documentation supporting the U.S. Geological
Survey study might have been falsified. If that
indeed happened, the whole basis for claims that
Yucca Mountain can safely contain nuclear waste is
shattered. This is a horrifying turn of events. At
stake are the lives and health of thousands of
people, and no less than the future of Nevada as a
place to live. The Energy Department spoke only
generally about the e-mails, but we believe it
should release their contents, verbatim,
immediately. It's about time the public had an
insight into the inner workings of the people
responsible for pushing this mad project.

      Investigations are under way by the
inspector generals of both the Energy Department
and the U.S. Geological Survey. In our view, this
is an insufficient response, as both of these
departments are responsible for generating the
data in question and both have a vested interest
in the ultimate opening of Yucca Mountain. At a
minimum, the Government Accountability Office
should be involved. What's really needed, given
the magnitude of this disclosure, is an exhaustive
probe by a special prosecutor, who would be
independent of the government.





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http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/17/518465140.html?&quot;Yucca%20Mountain&quot;

March 17, 2005


U.S. Geological Survey has history of problems at
Yucca
By Mary Manning
<manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN

As word came that government documents may have
been falsified relating to the Yucca Mountain
nuclear waste project, Nevada officials and
scientists recalled similar problems plaguing the
repository effort for years.

"How many times have we actually told them the
books were cooked?" said Bob Loux, Nevada state
Nuclear Projects Agency director.

Energy Department lawyers, preparing for a license
application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
discovered a number of e-mails from 1998 through
2000 in which an employee of the U.S. Geological
Survey "indicated that he had fabricated
documentation of his work," a congressional
committee learned Wednesday.

Robert Craig, the U.S. Geological Survey
representative in Las Vegas for Yucca Mountain,
said that beyond the sender and receiver of the
e-mails received by the congressional committee,
"a few went to other people."

The USGS employees' identities are being kept
confidential while an investigation gets under
way, Craig said.

"Credibility is suspect," he said. "Obviously,
it's a very serious matter."

The discovery strikes at the heart of the state's
argument against building a repository at Yucca
Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, because
of unanswered questions about how fast water flows
through the mountain and how quickly the climate
could shift, Loux said.

"This one may be the one that pushes it over the
edge," said Loux, a repository foe, recalling
criticism leveled against the Yucca Mountain
project by the General Accounting Office and the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the 1980s.

Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission on-site
representative Bill Belke, learning about the
fabrication allegations, said, "Wow. That's a
shock."

Belke said that if Yucca Mountain were a nuclear
reactor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would
bring criminal charges against it for falsifying
data. The NRC has no authority over Yucca at this
time because there is no license before the
commission.

"In any industry, that's a criminal act,
falsifying documents," Belke said.

"It's up to the DOE (Department of Energy) to
prosecute it."

In all his years working in the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission's office overseeing Yucca Mountain,
Belke said he never found any falsified data. He's
been retired for four years. Some Energy
Department data were questioned for not being
verified or validated under Belke's watch, but
"those are two different things" in gravity, he
said.

If the Energy Department can prove it was an
isolated case, the project may survive intact. "If
it's widespread, however, it could be real trouble
for the Energy Department," Belke said.

"I'm shocked at this one," Belke said. "There's
been one screw-up after another. Enough is
enough."

Hydrologist Linda Lehman, a former consultant to
the state for 21 years, said that she doesn't know
whether the latest revelation will halt the
repository, but it hurts support for the project.

"In court, it certainly hurts their credibility,"
Lehman said.

In 1986 the U.S. Geological Survey issued a
stop-work order at Yucca because its scientists
could not provide quality assurance for their
work. Quality assurance sets procedures in place
designed to prevent mistakes and oversights during
scientific investigations.

At that time, one scientist had requested a
specific core sample, but the Energy Department
could not assure the sample. Core samples had been
"thrown in the back of a truck and bounced all
over," Loux said at the time.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also shut down
the U.S. Geological Survey's core library in 1988
until it could assure accuracy in soil cores
collected from the mountain.

In September 1988 the General Accounting Office
issued a report that urged the Energy Department
to stop work at Yucca Mountain once again because
its quality assurance program had not been proven.

Also in September 1988 a group of 17 young U.S.
Geological Survey scientists spoke out about how
the Energy Department ignored essential scientific
studies.

The scientists blamed a lack of autonomy for their
ability to conduct scientific work at the site.
They compared the repository study to the space
shuttle Challenger disaster that killed seven
astronauts.

"We may succeed in making the program comply with
regulations, while being scientifically
indefensible," they wrote.

The hydrologists complained that the Yucca program
was top-heavy with managers.





http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/17/518466199.html?&quot;Yucca%20Mountain&quot;



Yucca data allegedly falsified

Energy Secretary Bodman is 'greatly disturbed' by
situation
By Benjamin Grove
<grove@lasvegassun.com>
SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF

WASHINGTON -- Employees of the U.S. Geological
Survey who were revisiting scientific study on the
key issue of water flow at Yucca Mountain
allegedly falsified research documents, an Energy
Department review of employee e-mails revealed.

Department officials discovered the e-mails as
part of a massive review of millions of program
document pages in preparation for submitting an
application for a license to construct Yucca.

"Multiple" e-mails written between May 1998 and
March 2000 indicate that a U.S. Geological Survey
employee fabricated documentation of his work,
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Wednesday.

The revelation, which triggered two major
investigations, is a devastating blow to the Yucca
program aimed at establishing a national nuclear
waste repository at the desert site, Yucca critics
said. It supports the state's primary scientific
argument against Yucca -- that the repository
could not safely isolate radioactive waste from
the environment, largely because of water flow,
Nevada officials said.

"This is enormous because it is literally the main
artery of the state's dispute with the DOE's
assertion that the repository can contain nuclear
waste for a long period of time," said Joe Egan, a
lawyer leading Nevada's court challenges against
Yucca. "What we have here is an indication that
their own data is wrong. I don't know how it can
get much worse for DOE."

The documentation was part of Yucca's "quality
assurance" program designed to assure the accuracy
of Yucca research. The documents in question
involve computer models of climate and water
infiltration at Yucca, according to the Energy
Department.

The Energy Department found out about the
falsifications on Friday, a department
spokesperson said. The department on Monday
notified the Interior Department, the parent
agency of U.S. Geological Survey, an Interior
spokesperson said.

Energy and Interior officials declined to comment
on how big a setback the false documents could be
for Yucca, or on the reactions of Yucca critics.

But early evidence indicates that the problem was
related solely to documenting scientific work, not
to the work itself, an Interior Department source
said.

It appears that there were two primary people
involved in the e-mailing, but an unknown number
of others received the e-mails, the source said.
It is not clear to what extent managers knew about
the e-mails, the source said.

The two employees are still working for the U.S.
Geological Survey and were still on the job
Wednesday, an Interior spokesperson said. It is
not known if several newly launched investigations
will result in disciplinary action for anyone
involved, the spokesperson said.

Bodman called the falsification "completely
unacceptable" and directed the department's
inspector general to investigate. The department
has already begun reviewing data and documentation
related to the computer modeling, Bodman said. If
that data is found to be flawed it will be
replaced or supplemented with analysis that meets
quality assurance standards, Bodman said.

"We are conducting a thorough review of all work
completed by the identified individuals to ensure
that other work was not affected," Bodman said in
a written statement.

Bodman said he was "greatly disturbed" by the
situation.

"The safe handling and disposal of nuclear waste
and the sound scientific basis for the repository
safety analysis are priorities for this
administration and the Department of Energy,"
Bodman said. "All related decisions have been, and
will continue to be, based on sound science."

Acting Energy Department Yucca director Theodore
Garrish mentioned the allegations briefly at a
House subcommittee hearing on the Yucca budget,
but declined further comment. Garrish said the
fact the department disclosed the issue showed its
"commitment to doing the job right."

The department issued a news release Wednesday
saying it told the Interior Department that the
e-mails raise "serious questions" about the Yucca
document review process.

U.S. Geological Survey officials said the agency
had launched its own internal investigation and
also had handed the matter to its own inspector
general for action.

"Once the facts are known, appropriate actions
will be taken," USGS Director Chip Groat said in a
written statement. "USGS remains committed to
maintaining scientific excellence."

The news brought quick rebuke from Yucca critics,
who have long suspected there has been an
inter-agency coordinated effort to skew data to
present Yucca in a favorable light.

"There has always been this tension in the system
for the Department of Energy to get the results it
thinks is necessary," said Bob Loux, director of
the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency and the state's
top Yucca watchdog.

Yucca critics said the news seemed to strike a
blow to two important facets of the planned
repository: water infiltration research and
overall program quality assurance.

The issue of water flow into and out of the
repository is key to how well the repository will
ultimately isolate the highly radioactive waste
stored permanently inside. Critics say water could
be the most likely pathway for radiation to
ultimately escape the repository.

"This is a foundation of the project, and it's all
based on a lie, potentially," said Michele Boyd,
an analyst with the watchdog group Public Citizen,
which tracks Yucca Mountain.

Yucca critics, including Nevada officials and
their scientists, have long been at odds with
Energy Department Yucca managers over the issue of
water, and how water would interact with the metal
waste containers stored in Yucca tunnels. Nevada
officials say water could seep into the mountain
and that water would speed corrosion of the
containers, perhaps within 100 years.

"This is the heart of the matter as to whether the
storage of nuclear waste could be determined to be
safe just 90 miles from Nevada's largest city, Las
Vegas," Gov. Kenny Guinn said. Guinn said he was
disappointed and outraged, "but hardly surprised."

Energy Department and nuclear industry officials
say water won't travel into the repository to the
extent Nevada officials argue, and that the
containers won't corrode.

In November 1998 anti-Yucca groups petitioned the
Energy Department to disqualify Yucca based on
evidence that water moved relatively quickly
through the repository, in violation of department
"site suitability guidelines."

The groups noted that in 1996 and 1997 the
department had discovered the radioactive isotope
chlorine-36 at unnaturally high levels deep inside
Yucca. The groups said that could only come from
nuclear bomb blasts in the South Pacific in the
1950s and had traveled inside the mountain via
rain in less than 50 years. The department
essentially scrapped its suitability guideline,
said Kevin Kamps, waste specialist with Nuclear
Information and Resource Service.

"If you can't meet the standard, just eliminate
the standard," Kamps said.

The quality assurance program is designed to
verify that Yucca research -- and the
documentation and evidence that supports the
research -- is in proper order. The quality
assurance, or "QA," program is important because
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, charged with
licensing and regulating Yucca, will carefully
review the quality assurance work at Yucca to
determine if the Energy Department has properly
verified its conclusion that Yucca is safe.

The Yucca quality assurance program has previously
come under fire from the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission and the General Accountability Office,
the investigative arm of Congress. Energy
Department officials say improvements have been
made.

"This is just a big, important example of how they
have kept track of data," Boyd said. "It shows
just how badly their program has been managed."

The revelation Wednesday stirs new suspicion about
the QA program, Yucca critics said.

"All of the scientific studies and documentation
related to Yucca Mountain now must be questioned
and re-evaluated," Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said.

Nevada lawmakers in Congress who have long sought
to kill the Yucca program said the new allegations
were highly damaging. News of it was spreading
quickly Wednesday on Capitol Hill, Rep. Jon
Porter, R-Nev., said.

"I was hearing about it in every corner," Porter
said. "One can assume that the Department of
Energy falsified documents because they needed to.
This calls into question the whole project."

Porter, chairman of the House subcommittee on
federal workforce and agency organization, said he
planned to hold a panel hearing April 5 to examine
the allegations.

House Appropriations energy and water development
subcommittee Chairman David Hobson, R-Ohio, a
leading Yucca advocate in the House, said he did
not think the issue was a "major impediment" and
"could be corrected very easily."

"It's not going to be a 'in the heart' type of
thing," Hobson said Wednesday after a Yucca budget
hearing. "It's unfortunate and shouldn't have
happened ... It's just sloppy work."

But Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.,
said Wednesday's news represented evidence that
the Energy Department "lies" to make Yucca look
safe.

"It is abundantly clear that there is no such
thing as 'sound science' at Yucca Mountain, and
I'm disappointed President Bush rushed so quickly
to push the project through and continues to make
it a priority," Reid said.

Reid said Yucca has suffered a number of setbacks
and re-iterated his stance that Yucca would never
open. Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., intend to
push legislation calling on the Energy Department
to manage waste as it sits on-site at nuclear
power plants -- not at Yucca.

"The tide is turning on Yucca Mountain," Reid
said.

Ensign said he spoke to a former Energy Department
undersecretary on Wednesday who said the news was
"very serious" for Yucca. Ensign said Yucca seems
to be continuing to "crumble." The alleged
falsifications could boost the state's legal case
that Yucca can't meet radiation safety standards
recommended by the National Academy of Sciences,
Ensign said.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said she appreciated
Bodman disclosing the information, but intends to
ask for an independent panel review.

"If they continue to scratch the surface they will
find more than a few memos," Berkley said.

In his written statement, Bodman added that the
Bush administration will continue to
"aggressively" continue its effort to establish
the repository.

"We are committed to the safety and protection of
the citizens of Nevada as we pursue the
development of the Yucca Mountain project," Bodman
said.










*****************************************************************
 28 Sunday Times: Louth cancer increase ‘is not linked to Sellafield’ - 

March 20, 2005                         

Jan Battles
 		   		 		
HIGHER rates of cancer have been found in Co Louth but no 
evidence that they are connected to the Sellafield nuclear plant, 
according to a study by the National Cancer Registry, Ireland 
(NCRI). 

The investigation into cancer cases in the county between 1994 
and 2000 has concluded that the higher-than-expected incidence 
was due to factors such as social deprivation and smoking. The 
types of cancers that could be caused by radiation from 
Sellafield, across the Irish Sea in Cumbria, were found to occur 
less frequently than in Ireland as a whole. 

The cancers found in significantly higher numbers were of the
skin, lung and stomach and, to a lesser extent, of the
oesophagus and leukaemia. The only known shared risk factor for
these is smoking, which increases the risk of lung, oesophagus
and possibly stomach cancers. 

“We have looked at the data and we haven’t found anything to
suggest radioactivity is responsible for the cancer pattern,”
said Harry Comber, the NCRI director. “These are not the types
of cancers increased in incidence by radiation.” 

Comber said Sellafield was not a plausible factor “either in
terms of the types of cancer or the areas in which we found the
increased cancer incidence, or indeed the concentrations of
radioactive materials likely to be experienced by people in the
area. They are very, very low compared to the background
radiation level.” 

The areas closest to Sellafield, such as the Cooley peninsula,
had lower incidences of cancer, Comber revealed. “There is no
known relationship anywhere between lung cancer, stomach cancer
and skin cancer and the sort of ionising radiation that comes
from Sellafield,” he said. “It didn’t seem to us that this was
plausible as an explanation at all.” 

If radiation was resulting in cancers in Louth the types
expected would be leukaemia and thyroid cancer in children,
which were not found. 

The report, which was carried out in response to Dail questions
submitted by local deputies, is being sent to doctors and
hospitals in Louth. 

The number of new cancers diagnosed was 7% higher than would
have been expected from the national rate, 8% higher for women
and 6% higher for men. This represents an average of 34 extra
cases each year. 

Almost all of the excess risk of cancer is confined to Drogheda
which has rates significantly above what would be expected; 39%
higher than the national rates for women and 36% higher for men. 

There was a clear relationship between deprivation, population
density and cancer incidence, with rates well above average for
the areas of highest population density and greatest
deprivation. 

Drogheda has “an exceptionally high incidence of non-melanoma
skin cancer”, the study found. Because there was no apparent
reason for this, the authors suggest that the diagnosis rate may
be higher. 

Half of the women with lung cancer in Drogheda, and 42% of those
in Louth, were aged under 65, compared with 27% in Ireland as a
whole. The prevalence of smoking in the North Eastern Health
Board area is second only to that in north Co Dublin. 

Acute leukaemias that can be caused by exposure to infection,
chemicals or radiation, were slightly less frequent in Louth
(29%) compared with Ireland as a whole (34%). 

Fergus O’Dowd, Fine Gael’s spokesman on the environment who
lives in Drogheda, was one of the deputies who posed the
question. 

“It may well be that people are smoking too much but clearly it
is not Sellafield, I accept that totally,” he said. 

“But that doesn’t mean Sellafield isn’t doing us harm long term
or the potential of an accident there isn’t considerable.” 

Arthur Morgan, the Sinn Fein TD and founding member of the
Cooley Environmental and Health Group that campaigns against
Sellafield and highlights the high incidence of cancer in north
Louth, does not accept the report’s findings. 

“For many years experts told us that smoking was no harm to us
and now it’s banned,” he said. “I’m viewing the whole Sellafield
case in a similar light. I think it will take a significant
period of time for us to be able to prove the difficulties that
Sellafield is causing for people. I’m completely satisfied that
Sellafield is the main reason for such a high incidence of a
variety of cancers in this area.”   	 		

Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 29 Deseret News: Nuke waste should stay put 

[deseretnews.com] 

Saturday, March 19, 2005 

Deseret Morning News editorial 

The Department of Energy's disclosure that 
scientists on the Yucca Mountain project may have falsified 
documents will inevitably delay the opening of the Nevada 
storage facility. But it should not be used as a rationale for 
sending waste to Tooele County. Until the Yucca Mountain mess 
can be sorted out, the waste needs to stay put. 

For starters, Utah doesn't want it. Despite assurances 
that the waste would be stored in Utah on a temporary basis, 
Utahns are well aware that "temporary" means 40 years. Then 
what? Best case scenario, the waste eventually would be moved to 
Yucca Mountain. What if Yucca Mountain is deemed unsuitable for 
permanent storage? Does an above ground storage facility in 
Utah's western desert become the de facto Yucca Mountain? 

In light of new developments, Utah's congressional 
delegation registered its "strong opposition" to the nuclear 
Regulatory Commission granting a license to Private Fuel 
Storage, a consortium of nuclear power plant operators. PFS has 
entered an agreement with the Skull Valley band of the Goshute 
Tribe to store the waste on its reservation in Tooele County. 
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has recommended that the 
NRC grant PFS's license application. 

In a written statement, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, 
described the PFS solution as a "reckless, short-term fix for a 
pressing national problem." 

Hatch is correct on many levels. Storing nuclear waste in 
Utah's western desert — even on a temporary basis — is risky in 
the post-Sept. 11 world. Even if security at the PFS site is 
impenetrable, spent nuclear rods would constantly be en route to 
the site. Can PFS ensure that shipments of this material will 
not invite terrorist attack or theft? At a minimum, such an 
incident would incite widespread panic. Less likely is 
radioactive contamination, but the possibility cannot be ruled 
out completely. 

It is premature to declare Yucca Mountain unsafe or 
unsuitable for a permanent storage site, as some activists 
contend. It is uncertain if more evaluations are necessary or if 
data known to be reliable supports the use of the planned 
facility. But if the federal government believed that the best 
choice for a permanent storage facility was inside of a 
mountain, it defies logic that an above-ground storage site 
could be considered Plan B. 

Until the science of Yucca Mountain can be firmly 
established, the wisest course for all concerned is to continue 
to store the waste where it was generated and take time to 
develop the best long-term solution. 

© 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company 
*****************************************************************
 30 SignOnSanDiego.com: Energy official to decide fate of toxic pile
 
Ruling expected by early summer
 By David Hasemyer
 UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

	 March 20, 2005 

The decision about what to do with a 10 million-ton pile of
toxic waste that sits near the Colorado River at Moab, Utah,
apparently will be made by a career U.S. Department of Energy
official who recently told Congress that the agency is committed
to cleaning up nuclear waste sites. 

"We must not by our inaction allow this legacy to become our
children's, grandchildren's, or our great-grandchildren's
problem. . . . It is for us to solve and for us to complete,"
Paul Golan, the department's acting assistant secretary of
environmental management, wrote in a March 2 letter to the House
Armed Services Committee. 

The 130-acre pile near Moab was created in the 1950s as a waste
site for a mill that processed uranium for atomic weapons and
nuclear reactors. Five governors and a long list of politicians
have asked that it be moved because it's 750 feet from the
Colorado River, which supplies drinking water for more than 20
million people. San Diego County gets two-thirds of its water
from the Colorado. 

Two powerful federal agencies, the Environmental Protection
Agency and the U.S. Department of the Interior, recently called
for the pile to be moved. But the Energy Department is also
considering the option of leaving the pile in place, putting an
impermeable cap over it and lining it with rocks to prevent
erosion. 

By law, the assistant secretary of environmental management 
also known as the cleanup czar  is supposed to decide the
pile's fate. But that job has been vacant since July, and with
no replacement apparently under consideration, the
responsibility will fall to Golan. His ruling is expected by
late spring or early summer. It must then be approved by other
Energy Department officials and lawyers. 

Government studies show that 15,000 gallons of radioactive and
toxic waste leak into the river at the Moab site each day.
Federal officials say the discharge poses no immediate danger to
drinking water because the toxicity is diluted as the river
flows south. But a study commissioned by the state of Utah
warned that if the river valley is hit by a catastrophic flood,
as it has been twice in the past 800 years, the entire pile
could be swept into the river. 

Golan has no direct connection to the Moab site, but he has been
involved in some of the Energy Department's toughest nuclear
cleanups, including the 586-square-mile Hanford plutonium
production complex in Washington state. 

Golan declined a request for an interview about the Moab site,
saying it wouldn't be appropriate to discuss a matter under
consideration. 

But on a visit to the Hanford site in November, Golan said the
country must work together to clean up nuclear sites left over
from the Cold War. 

"We will do it on our watch," he said. 

Bill Hedden, executive director of the environmental group Grand
Canyon Trust and one of the leading advocates of getting the
Moab pile moved, said he hopes Golan is committed to that
position. 

"If he is to really act on that, then he would move this pile of
tailings away from the river," Hedden said. "All of the science
says leaving the tailings in place is leaving a mess for future
generations." 

Back in Washington, D.C., Energy Department staff members have
been summarizing tens of thousands of pages of reports and
studies on the pile generated during the last decade for Golan's
review. Also being included for Golan's assessment are more than
1,000 comments from the public. Energy Department officials say
most of them favor moving the pile. 

Some fear money will be the determining factor in the decision,
especially because the Energy Department is facing an 8.5
percent cut in its environmental cleanup budget. Hedden said
he's concerned dollars will prevail over common sense and
persuasive scientific evidence. 

Energy Department estimates show that capping the pile would
cost $166 million, while moving it would cost $329 million to
$464 million. 

Cost will be part of the decision, but it won't necessarily be
the overriding consideration, said Joe Davis, principal deputy
director of Public Affairs for the Energy Department. 

Hedden and others say the cheaper alternative could be more
expensive in the long run. 

In a Feb. 17 letter to the Energy Department, the Utah
Department of Environmental Quality argued that leaving the pile
in place will mean spending money for hundreds of years to keep
the water clean and, in a worst-case scenario, paying for a
massive cleanup if the pile is washed into the river. 

The Utah letter, which hints at a court battle if the pile isn't
moved, is part of a growing legion of federal agencies,
senators, nearly two dozen congressional representatives and
governors, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, all calling for
the pile to be moved. 

The EPA called the option of leaving it in place
"environmentally unsatisfactory." 

"It is very unlikely the proposed on-site remedy will be able to
provide sufficient long-term pile stability," the EPA said in a
Feb. 18 letter to the Energy Department. 


-----------------------------------------------------------------
Union-Tribune researcher Anne Magill contributed to this report. 

David Hasemyer: (619) 542-4583; david.hasemyer@uniontrib.com 
| Contact the Union-Tribune
 © Copyright 2005 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.   
*****************************************************************
 31 Las Vegas SUN: Columnist Jeff German: Yucca lies coming to the surface 
 
Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and 
Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.comor (702) 
259-4067.

 From Nevada's perspective the Yucca Mountain Project has been
in a "death spiral" since July when a federal appeals court
tossed out the government's inadequate safety standards for
storing radioactive waste there.

 This week, however, we moved a step closer to putting this
multibillion-dollar boondoggle out of its misery.

 And what an irony it is that the Energy Department, itself,
placed the dagger in the project's heart.

 The Energy Department told Congress Wednesday what Nevada
leaders have suspected all along -- that government scientists
may have rigged scientific research to make it look as though
the mountain was safe.

 E-mails from 1998 to 2000 were discovered from scientists who
work for the U.S. Geological Survey, suggesting that documents
were fabricated to move the much-delayed project along.

 This is part of the scientific "evidence" that President Bush
used in 2002 to designate Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of
Las Vegas, as the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump.

 The stunning revelation sparked internal Energy and Interior
department investigations and drew harsh words of condemnation
from Gov. Kenny Guinn and Nevada's congressional leaders.

 But it also brought smiles to the faces of people in the
trenches in Nevada.

 Bob Loux, the state's chief Yucca Mountain watchdog, told me
Thursday he doesn't see any way the Energy Department can
breathe life into the wounded nuclear waste project now.

 "These guys are toast," Loux said. "This speaks to the heart of
the Energy Department's flawed effort at Yucca Mountain."

 Loux believes we are likely to see unprecedented political
fallout from these allegations at a time when Congress and Yucca
Mountain's biggest supporter, the wealthy nuclear power
industry, are losing patience with the stalled project.

 The stage has been set for hearings on Capitol Hill, new legal
challenges from Nevada, more scrutiny within the Bush
administration and maybe even a criminal probe in the state.

 If documents, after all, were falsified by government
scientists working at Yucca Mountain, that's called fraud -- a
crime that falls under the jurisdiction of Nevada Attorney
General Brian Sandoval.

 Not surprisingly, Sandoval, a leading Yucca Mountain opponent,
said he's anxious to get his hands on those e-mails, which the
Energy Department has been reluctant to make public.

 The attorney general has been doing research on what it would
take to conduct a criminal investigation in Nevada.

 Sandoval and the state's congressional leaders also are pushing
for an independent federal inquiry. And they want U.S. Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales to become involved.

 The internal investigation ordered by Energy Secretary Samuel
Bodman has no credibility at all, considering the department's
history of deception and coverups at Yucca Mountain.

 For all we know these allegations are just the tip of the
iceberg. The odds are pretty good that other documents may have
been falsified during the course of this epic battle.

 So if we want to find out what happened here, we have to keep
the Energy Department as far away as possible from the
investigation.

 It would be nice to finally hear the truth about Yucca Mountain.
*****************************************************************
 32 deseretnews: Utah trying all angles to bar PFS 

[deseretnews.com] 

Sunday, March 20, 2005 

By Jerry Spangler Deseret Morning News 

WASHINGTON — Rep. Rob Bishop is fond of saying he still has some 
arrows left in his quiver when it comes to keeping spent nuclear 
fuel out of Tooele County 

Deseret Morning News graphic 

But the collective quiver of the Utah congressional 
delegation is running out of arrows. Even members of the 
delegation — while putting on brave faces and talking tough — 
are starting to quiver nervously at the very real prospect that 
Private Fuel Storage's proposed facility on Goshute tribal lands 
in Skull Valley could actually happen. 

"We are willing to try almost anything at this point" to 
stop PFS, says Bishop, R-Utah, "but our options are limited. We 
are kind of flailing around right now." 

With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission set to rule soon 
on a license, Bishop will reintroduce legislation to declare 
Bureau of Land Management lands around the PFS site as 
wilderness, thereby blocking the construction of a rail spur 
needed to transport the waste to the site. 

But even he says it is a long shot, given Senate rules 
that allow a single member to hold up any legislation. And there 
is little optimism that senators who opposed the bill last year 
have had any change of heart. 

"It might be a little too late for a legislative approach 
anyway," Bishop said. 

"Time is really running short," agreed Rep. Jim Matheson, 
D-Utah. 

And that may be why the delegation, along with Utah Gov. 
Jon Huntsman Jr., have quietly shifted their focus from overt 
legislation to some behind-the-scenes discussions with executive 
branch officials who could be in a position to short-circuit the 
project even if it were granted an NRC license. 

Interior appeal 

The state's best hope might actually lie not on the 
outside chance the NRC would deny a license but with the 
Department of Interior, parent agency for both the BLM and the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

Three arrows remain in that quiver. 

The BLM, headed by Kathleen Clarke, a former Utah 
Department of Natural Resources director, must still approve a 
rail spur across BLM lands. And even if Clarke were required to 
step back from the decision, her influence could be critical. 

And there is quiet optimism that the BIA could simply 
reject the lease agreement between PFS and the Skull Valley Band 
of Goshutes. (The BIA, however, has already granted its 
preliminary approval.) Leadership of the small Utah band not 
only is in dispute, but a flurry of indictments and lawsuits has 
made governance difficult. 

"If the BIA looks at the chaos, there is a reasonable 
expectation that it could say there are legal questions as to 
who is really in charge and reject the lease," Bishop said. 

Interior Secretary Gail Norton must sign off on any 
decision by BLM or BIA. Norton answers to President Bush, and 
Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, both R-Utah, have been 
bringing pressure on the White House to intervene in the matter. 

And there is no question, they say, that the White House 
could do many things on Utah's behalf. 

"Secretary Norton may be our best opportunity to stop 
this from going forward," Matheson said. 

Hollow promises 

The White House could be inclined to repay a political 
favor. 

Hatch and Bennett were both good soldiers when the White 
House went looking for Senate support for Yucca Mountain, the 
proposed Nevada storage site, even though the senators now find 
themselves increasingly isolated from the rest of the Utah 
delegation in that regard. 

To a greater or lesser degree, House members along with 
Huntsman believe the state should have backed Nevada in its 
opposition to all nuclear waste coming to the West. 

Hatch and Bennett say they support permanent waste 
storage deep underground at Yucca Mountain as a solution to the 
nation's stockpile of spent nuclear fuel, which is only going to 
grow larger as the nation turns more and more to nuclear power 
to satisfy exploding energy demands. 

Their support for Yucca Mountain came, in part, as a 
result of two letters, one by then-Energy Secretary Spencer 
Abraham saying no federal money would be spent on the PFS 
project, and the other by some, but not all, members of the 
energy consortium saying they would not pursue Skull Valley so 
long as Yucca Mountain was moving forward. 

Both letters are hollow promises. The Abraham promise 
holds little water because the PFS project is privately funded. 
The PFS letter is open to many interpretations as to what it 
means if Yucca Mountain moves forward. 

The Nevada project has already been delayed two years 
beyond its original planned opening in 2010. 

The Energy Department can't say exactly when Yucca will 
open because it depends on a funding commitment from Congress. 
But Ted Garrish, deputy director of the DOE's Office of Civilian 
Radioactive Waste Management, says Congress would have to commit 
$1 billion next year in order to realize a 2012 opening. 

The president has requested only $651 million in his 
budget, far less than what is needed to keep Yucca Mountain, 
already delayed by lawsuits and regulatory problems, on schedule.

There is a certain sense of irony that the federal 
government, trying to cut budget corners, could end up paying 
billions of dollars in legal settlements if the delays continue. 

The government is already feeling the heat of a federal 
law that requires it to take the waste off the hands of nuclear 
power utilities. Congressional inaction during the 1980s and 
1990s resulted in a flurry of lawsuits against the government by 
the utilities, seeking to force the government to fulfill its 
commitment to take the waste. 

Garrish said the damages imposed by the courts could 
reach $2 billion to $3 billion if the repository opens in 2010, 
and $1 billion more a year after that. 

Utah's attraction 

The uncertainties surrounding Yucca Mountain's opening 
date have made PFS more and more attractive to the utilities 
that are running out of space to store the waste in cooling 
ponds. 

But critics say the industry is perpetuating a myth. Yes, 
the pools are filling, but the utilities all have enough land 
around the power plants to store the fuel rods in dry casks 
similar to the ones being proposed at PFS. 

"And as Gov. Leavitt pointed out, if the dry casks are so 
safe, why not leave them where they are?" said Kevin Kamps, 
nuclear waste specialist with the Nuclear Information and 
Resource Center. "There is unlimited space around the plants." 

The issue is more complicated at eight sites where the 
power plants have closed their doors, leaving in place 2,400 
metric tons of waste waiting for permanent storage. The industry 
spends about $5 million per year just to secure the waste at 
each site, making it a $40 million a year problem, according to 
Mitch Singer, spokesman for the pro-industry Nuclear Energy 
Institute, which does not support PFS. 

And that's not counting the waste from decommissioned 
reactors at other sites that have still-operational reactors at 
the same locale, he noted. 

PFS could be an economic solution, especially if Yucca 
Mountain is delayed years beyond 2012. 

But it is only a solution if Yucca Mountain is indeed 
going to open at all. "The entire premise of PFS is that Yucca 
Mountain will be built," Kamps said. 

The Nevada congressional delegation remains confident 
they can kill Yucca. Unlike Utah, which failed in its attempts 
to challenge PFS in court, Nevada has successfully challenged 
many different aspects of the facility. 

And revelations this past week that a federal employee 
falsified data used in a Yucca Mountain environmental study on 
groundwater could result in a new round of environmental studies 
and lawsuits, further delaying the project. 

"Yucca is not going to be moving forward anytime soon," 
Matheson predicted. 

That could increase the pressure for a temporary site 
like PFS, which would have an NRC license for up to 40 years. 
But if Nevada can stop Yucca Mountain, utilities that banked on 
Yucca Mountain and shipped waste to Skull Valley as a temporary 
measure could then be faced with the costly prospect of 
returning the waste to the power plants when the lease in Utah 
expired. 

Utah's fear is that in such a scenario, the utilities 
would walk away from the waste, saying it is DOE's problem, and 
that PFS would become a de facto permanent storage facility. And 
since the company is a limited liability corporation, Utah would 
have little legal recourse. 

Temporary solutions 

Lost amid the Yucca Mountain debate in the nation's 
capital is the growing chorus of concern — sung by the industry, 
regulators and politicos alike: Yucca Mountain is not going to 
open on schedule, if at all, and that some temporary solution is 
needed to bridge the gap. 

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy 
Committee, is preparing legislation for temporary storage of 
nuclear waste "at a DOE facility," according to one Senate 
staffer. 

It is not clear where that facility would be. One 
possibility is Yucca Mountain, which is a DOE facility. Waste 
casks could be stored outside the deep storage permanent 
repository and then moved inside once it is built. 

Efforts in the 1990s to have temporary storage at Yucca 
Mountain were all defeated in Congress. 

Aside from PFS, any other temporary facility would be 
many years away from being licensed. It took PFS seven years to 
move through the licensing process, giving it a leg up on any 
alternative site. 

That is why there is some talk in the industry that it 
makes sense to "federalize" the PFS facility in Utah, turning it 
into a temporary waste storage facility under DOE's authority. 

Utah House members, along with Huntsman, say the real 
solution to temporary storage is for the NRC to extend the 
licenses for on-site storage at the nuclear power plants for 
another 30 to 40 years to give reprocessing technology a chance 
to catch up. 

One PFS member, a nuclear power giant in the Midwest, 
already has filed for an NRC license to expand and extend its 
on-site storage, leading Utahns to believe the industry could be 
persuaded to leave the waste where it is. 

If the economics of recycling can be worked out over 
time, there is no need for either PFS or Yucca Mountain, Utah 
and Nevada officials agree. 

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate minority leader and a 
leading architect of opposition to Yucca Mountain, has a bill 
calling for on-site storage and turning ownership of the waste 
over to DOE, which would pay for the storage costs. 

Some Utahns are listening closely. 

"We should definitely keep our options open with Harry 
Reid," Bishop said. "His bill is a very viable option." 

And it just might be the last arrow in Utah's quiver. 

© 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company 
*****************************************************************
 33 Las Vegas SUN: Where I Stand -- Brian Greenspun: The truth about Yucca
 
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

 WEEKEND EDITION

 March 19 - 20, 2005

 So much for sound science.

 It looks like even the Department of Energy has to accept the
fact that bad science has finally raised its ugly head high
enough so that it can no longer be hidden among the miles of
underground tunnels, the reams of scientific papers and the
millions of rhetorical words designed to force Yucca Mountain on
an unsuspecting and mostly trusting American public who have
always wanted to believe that their government was on their side.

 Well, now the truth is out. Or, at least, trying to get out
where the light of day will doom Yucca Mountain to the fate it
should have had years ago. The latest revelation from the DOE,
that employees falsified critical scientific documents relating
to the drip, drip, drip of water into and through Yucca Mountain
as far back as six years ago -- a certain disqualifier for dump
status if ever there was one -- has to signal the death knell
for any plans to send the trucks and trains full of deadly
radioactive waste to Nevada.

 There is no question that the DOE, despite protestations of
fairness to the contrary, will try its level best to find a way
around the devastating news that employees of the United States
Geological Survey falsified documents in order to make science
match the desires of the power barons of the nuclear industry.
But the fact remains that e-mails -- those pesky little tracers
back to the scene of most crimes these days -- have given lie to
any semblance of good science being the controlling factor in
President Bush's decision to choose Yucca Mountain for special
radioactive treatment.

 Forgive me for being a skeptic, but it seems to be no
coincidence that the information President Bush continues to
rely upon -- to topple dictators and destroy cities with
high-level radioactive waste -- is faulty to a giant fault. What
is it about this administration that it continues to rely on bad
information? Nevadans, for example, except for former Gov. Bob
List, could have and did tell the federal government that the
science of Yucca Mountain was not only faulty but also
contrived. And the president chose not to listen.

 Why? I believe it was because he was too beholden to the monied
interests who own and run the power companies in this country.
Who cares about Nevada when there are billions of dollars at
stake in their ability to build and operate new nuclear plants
all across the country? The only thing standing between those
executives and their billions was the question of what to do
with the radioactive waste. Hello, Nevada!

 Well, now it can no longer be claimed by the president or
anyone else that the science is sound. In fact, it has been
claimed that the science -- perhaps all the science -- is
faulty, made up and just plain wrong.

 There is a saying in the law that when a witness answers
falsely in a court of law, it is reasonable to assume that all
of his testimony is equally false. False in one, false in all, I
believe is a rough translation from the Latin. Is it any less
applicable in this case when U.S. Geological Survey scientists,
employed by the Department of Energy, admit falsifying their own
scientific studies?

 One of the first questions that comes to mind is why? Why did
they falsify the documents? Could it be because the DOE was
demanding that all scientists prove the case they wanted to
make, not the one that the science supported? Now that would be
a shock, don't you think?

 And, even though the way water moves into and through Yucca
Mountain is a critical determinant of the mountain's ability to
hold the waste safely for 100,000 years or more, there are other
issues that had to be certified as safe in order for the
mountain to pass muster. Were those findings falsified, too?

 I am not very confident that the head of the DOE will act
properly in this case because his boss is so hell-bent on
sending that stuff out our way, and we all know that what the
president wants, the president gets. Why else would otherwise
decent Americans lie about their scientific discoveries if not
to save their jobs by saying what the boss wants to hear rather
than what is?

 But, on the off-chance that he is a responsible public servant,
it doesn't take much more handwriting on the "nukular" wall to
know that Yucca is finally dead, even though many in Congress
and the White House refuse to admit as much. Documents that have
been falsified about the very heart of this matter -- the
science of protecting Americans generations hence -- cannot be
overcome by rhetoric or political "wishifying."

 This is a matter which should get a rise from our good governor
and the GOP members of Nevada's congressional delegation. It
always baffled me why they were just "disappointed" with
President Bush's decision to send the waste to Nevada. Theirs
were the words of politicians, not Nevadans. Maybe now they will
get angry and hold the president to account for the bad science
on which he continues to rely.

 Rep. Jim Gibbons wants to be our next governor. Let him stand
up tall on his soapbox in Washington and rail against our
president if Bush refuses to admit that the science is bad and
that he relied on falsified documents. Let him lead his
colleagues and our president toward the right answer, which is
that Yucca Mountain is a bust and it is time to let 21st century
science find the answer.

 Let our current governor, who when his term is over becomes a
private citizen with grandchildren to protect like everyone
else, stand up to Washington and demand that all documents be
made public so the naive and gullible senators in Washington
will know they have been had.

 And let all those in this state who supported President Bush
for re-election, because they believed he was a man of
integrity, call on our president to exercise that integrity and
scrub the Yucca Mountain mission.

 It is time to let the politicians hear the real sounds of
science. Who will be the first to speak out?

*****************************************************************
 34 RGJ: Experts unsure if Yucca hurt by revelations
 
[Reno Gazette-Journal] Reno, Nevada, USA  775-788-6200                                                
ASSOCIATED PRESS

3/19/2005 12:04 am 

When President Bush gave the go-ahead to store the nation’s
nuclear waste in the Nevada desert, he said the massive
underground project was based on “sound science.”

Revelations this week that some Yucca Mountain research may have
been falsified raised questions on how reliable the scientific
study has been and whether the disclosures will hurt the
underpinnings of the federal plan.

“The perception can’t be anything but damaging,” said B. John
Garrick, chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a
panel of scientists assigned by Congress to review the project.

“But we don’t know what the impact of this is on the science,”
he said Friday. “Unfortunately, the technical evaluation of this
is going to take a little time.”

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman revealed Wednesday that recently
discovered e-mails indicated a U.S. Geological Survey worker
fabricated documentation from 1998 to 2000 about computer
modeling involving water infiltration and climate at the site.

Government officials aren’t releasing the e-mails or identifying
the specific study in question. Bodman said Energy and Interior
department inspectors general were investigating.

Nevada officials, including U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry
Reid, D-Nev., have asked the FBI and Justice Department to
investigate and seize all Yucca records. 

U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., asked Bodman to appoint a
third-party agency to investigate and said “nearly all
scientific findings to date” are in question.

The Department of Energy wants to transport as much as 77,000
tons of highly radioactive waste now stored at nuclear reactors
and other sites around the country and bury it at Yucca Mountain
for tens of thousands of years.

Officials opposing the project in Nevada say they believe the
documentation in question related to a crucial report about how
fast water could penetrate ancient volcanic rock at the
wind-swept mountain in the desert, 90 miles northwest of Las
Vegas.

“This was the key issue in getting Yucca Mountain recommended
(for presidential and congressional approval) because it has to
do with how much water hits the containers, and corrosion,” said
Bob Loux, who heads Nevada’s efforts to stop the project.

Robert Craig, U.S. Geological Survey chief on Yucca Mountain
project, said he’d seen the e-mails in question, and denied that
they referred to that key water penetration report. 

align="right">© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett Co.
Inc.Newspaper.
*****************************************************************
 35 Spectrum: Yucca scandal shows lunacy

Opinion - 

St. George - www.thespectrum.com
 
   Saturday, March 19, 2005   

It's one thing to cook the books for personal financial gain.
It's quite another when data that can have an effect on
thousands of human lives is purposely misleading.

 The Justice Department has its bloodhounds sniffing around
suspicious reports prepared by U.S. Geological Survey employees
doing the footwork for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump -
where the government wants to hollow out a mountain about 90
miles northwest of Las Vegas, then fill it up with nuclear trash
from reactors and other sites across the country.

 The lunacy level is high when somebody actually considers
boxing up and transporting radioactive materials all the way
across the country. The logistics, security and safety aspects
send shivers of fear down the spines of most humans capable of
the thought process. That would exclude, of course, a great
number of the members of the U.S. Congress and White House
administration toadies who have dug their heels in on this one
and insist on plunging forward, no matter how high the risk or
what objective scientists and the public thinks.

 Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, went into a
rage over the supposedly false reports, saying the "Department
of Energy must cheat and lie to make Yucca Mountain look safe"
and that this is really "about the health and safety of Nevadans
and the American people."

 He has put together a bill that would force the producers of
nuclear waste to store it at their facilities. Unless he can
come up with the goods in the next three years, however, all
he's doing is chipping away at Mt. Everest with an ice pick
because President Bush and like-minded hawks have their talons
sharpened with Nevada as their target. These guys are bent on
not only using the state as a dumping ground, but in re-opening
the Nevada Test Site, where more than 1,000 nukes were exploded
between 1951 and 1992.

 Their ducks are in a row politically and psychologically with a
GOP-controlled Congress and a propaganda machine that keeps
turning out warnings about nuclear threats from North Korea,
Iran or whoever else might not be toeing the Bush line.

 Never mind that this lethal garbage will roll down our highways
and railways, past our homes and be deposited in a hole in the
ground not far from one of the nation's fastest-growing
communities. Never mind that we've already killed as many as
15,000 Americans exposed to radioactive fallout.

 And never mind that the whole case for this thing, we are now
learning, is probably built on a stack of lies.

 Reid's latest bill is dead wrong. Instead, he should write one
suggesting that this nuclear waste should be dumped at a little
ranch near Crawford, Texas, where the landlord can be
responsible for taking care of his own trash.

 After all, it's his mess.

 Contact Senior Writer Ed Kociela at 865-4522, or via e-mail at
ekociela @thespectrum.com. 

Originally published March 19, 2005 

*****************************************************************
 36 Salt Lake Tribune: Uranium mill may get second chance 

Last Updated: 03/19/2005 01:25:04 AM 

Price soars above $21 per pound: Demand for the ore is now far 
outstripping supply 

By Steven Oberbeck The Salt Lake Tribune 

With the price of uranium hitting levels unheard of in 
decades, two Wyoming mining companies hope to profit by 
reopening a Utah uranium ore processing mill shuttered since the 
early 1980s. 

U.S. Energy Corp. and its partner, Crested Corp., this week 
filed a formal request with the state for a license to reopen 
and operate its Shootering Canyon uranium mill about 15 miles 
north of Lake Powell near Ticaboo. 

The Shootering mill is the last and most modern uranium mill 
built in the United States, U.S. Energy spokesman Don Warfield 
said. It is one of only four uranium mills left in the country - 
and only two of those are now operating. 

U.S. Energy, which owns nearby uranium mining acreage, 
expects to eventually mine that property to provide feedstock 
for the mill. The company, however, estimates it could take up 
to two years to secure the necessary permits to reopen the mill, 
which operated only a few months after construction was 
completed in 1982. 

The companies estimate it will cost about $25 million to 
make the mill operational. They hope to arrange financing while 
the license application is processed by the Division of 
Radiation Control, which is part of the Utah Department of 
Environmental Quality. 

"Depending on the quality of the information they submit to 
us about their plans, [securing a permit] can be a fairly short 
or an extremely lengthy process," said Dane Finerfrock, 
director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control. 

Ron Hochstein, president of International Uranium Corp., 
whose White Mesa mill near Blanding is one of only two uranium 
mills now operating, said the economics of uranium have changed 
with global demand for the ore now far outstripping supply. 

Over the past several years, International Uranium has kept 
its mill operating by periodically processing "alternate feeds" 
- or radioactive wastes containing small quantities of uranium. 
Much of that feedstock material comes from the cleanup of old 
nuclear-weapon research and production sites. 

"It allowed us to survive the past seven years," Hochstein 
said. 

Now, though, surging uranium prices are prompting mines such 
as that owned by U.S. Energy to reopen in the West. 

Uranium is selling above $21 per pound. It sold as low as 
$7.50 per pound in 2001. 

The surge is occurring because some are concerned uranium 
supplies for power plants worldwide may be within a decade of 
outstripping existing supplies. 

U.S. Energy's proposal, though, is not without critics. 

"It is just a bad idea to restart a mill to provide more 
fuel for existing nuclear powerhouses," said Sarah Fields, 
chairwoman of the Nuclear Waste Committee of the Utah Sierra 
Club's Glen Canyon Group. "We still don't have a solution to 
the spent fuel problem, and we're still dealing with the waste 
from all the other mills [shut down over the years]." 

Jason Groenewold of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah 
agrees reopening the mill is a bad idea. 

"Those mills leave a lot of toxic substances behind and often 
they have turned into dumps for radioactive waste," he said. 

Uranium mining boomed in Utah after miner Charles Steen in 
1952 struck a deep bed of ore near Moab. 

By 1955, the year the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission 
announced a cooperative program between the federal government 
and the nuclear power industry to develop power plants, there 
were approximately 800 mines operating in the region. 

The industry, though, collapsed in 1962. Where once there 
were 26 processing mills operating in the country, the only one 
operating other than the International Uranium White Mesa mill 
near Blanding is a mill operated by Cotter Corp. in Colorado. 

steve@sltrib.com 

© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 37 Salt Lake Tribune: State regulators probe possible leak in a
shipment of radioactive waste 

Article Last Updated: 03/19/2005 01:25:28 AM 

The Associated Press 

The Utah Department of Environmental Quality is investigating 
a radioactive waste shipment to the Tooele Envirocare facility 
that could have leaked low levels of waste into a rail car. 

About half of the 17 cars in the shipment from the Brookhaven 
National Laboratory in New York arrived at the facility with 
puddles of liquid in the cars. Tim Barney, senior vice president 
of Envirocare of Utah, said only one of the cars was found to 
have some radioactivity in the water, and stressed that it was a 
small amount that posed no threat to the public. 

''There was no exposure, no danger,'' he said. 

Barney said the water was melted snow that had fallen into 
the cars when the waste was being loaded from Brookhaven - not 
leakage from the low-level waste. 

The waste is put into plastic containers and loaded into the 
cars. Then, the cars are covered by a tarp for transport. 

Department of Environmental Quality Director Dianne Nielson 
said the fact that one of the cars contained a radioactive puddle
meant the waste could have somehow leaked, though there are no 
visible tears in the container that held it. 

''They're low concentrations. But any leaks of this sort are 
serious, and we want to make sure that they don't occur,'' 
Nielson said. 

She said the department would be investigating packaging 
procedures at Brookhaven and reviewing the route the waste 
took to Utah to determine if it could have leaked anywhere along 
the way. 

© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 38 Salt Lake Tribune: Your Week: Yucca faces a delay 

Article Last Updated: 03/20/2005 02:40:09 AM 

Scientists studying Yucca Mountain's suitability as a 
permanent nuclear waste repository may have falsified documents, 
raising a new challenge for the much-delayed project and 
questions about whether it could affect proposed temporary 
storage in Utah. 

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Wednesday that Energy 
Department contractors discovered e-mails in which an employee 
with the U.S. Geological Survey "indicated he had fabricated 
documentation of his work." 

Bodman said the department is investigating the data and 
documentation and, if they are found to be flawed, they will 
be redone or supplemented. Other work by the scientists in 
question is being reviewed. 

The Energy Department official in charge of the Yucca program 
told a House committee Wednesday that the issue with the 
documents would, at the least, delay the project. 

The fate of Yucca Mountain has a direct bearing on a proposal 
by Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of electric utilities, to 
temporarily store waste on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian 
reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City on its way to 
the Nevada site. 

© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 39 ABQjournal: LANL Flap Could Cost $367 Million 

the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. 

Saturday, March 19, 2005 

Albuquerque Journal--> By H. Josef Hebert 
The Associated Press 

WASHINGTON— Disruptions caused by last year's security flap 
at the Los Alamos weapons laboratory may have cost as much as 
$367 million because activities were shifted away from the lab's 
normal work, members of Congress were told Friday. 

Lab officials virtually shut down the facility last July 
after reports that two classified computer disks had 
disappeared. An investigation later determined they never 
existed. Some of the normal activities did not resume until last 
month. 

The laboratory also disclosed Friday that the mystery about 
the disks might have been resolved quickly last summer if two 
employees had not falsified an inventory sheet showing the disks 
existed. 

An April "wall-to-wall" inventory shows the two disks, 
assigned to LANL employee John Horne, were recorded in a 
database even though they didn't exist. 

Horne and his supervisor, Todd Kauppila, who was fired as a 
result of the security incident, have said they are scapegoats 
for a human accounting error that wasn't their fault. Horne 
received a reprimand and a 10-day suspension without pay. 

Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Peter Nanos said 
the inventory sheet was signed but no inventory had been taken. 
Two individuals were fired, but when pressed at a House hearing 
about whether they should be criminally prosecuted, Nanos said 
that was not for him to decide. 

During the so-called "stand-down" at the lab, thousands of 
employees were told to stop their normal work and join the 
search for the disks, undergo security training and undertake 
other safety- and security-related activities. Many of the 
workers returned to their normal duties after a month. 

Linton Brooks, the Energy Department's undersecretary for 
nuclear security, told the House Energy and Commerce 
subcommittee on investigations on Friday that the $367 million 
figure "represents an upper limit" estimate of how much the 
security-related suspension may have cost the lab in lost or 
delayed activities. 

The laboratory disagrees, putting the figure at $119 
million. The Energy Department number includes tens of millions 
of dollars in indirect costs that should not be attributed 
specifically to the work stoppage, according to Nanos. 

Whatever the figure, "the costs are significant," said Rep. 
Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., the chairman of the investigations 
subcommittee. 

Several lawmakers questioned why the University of 
California, which manages the Los Alamos lab, shouldn't be 
charged for some of the costs since, they say, the work stoppage 
resulted from security failures related to poor management. 

"The university was hired to do the job and they didn't do 
it," said Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore. He said letting the 
university off the hook was "outrageous." 

But Brooks told the panel that in all likelihood the 
government would absorb the costs because activities related to 
the work suspension were covered by the Energy Department's 
contract with the university. 

Nanos strongly defended the decision to suspend laboratory 
operations as "absolutely the right thing to do" and said the 
cost should not be viewed as lost money. During the stand-down 
more than 3,000 issues were found that raised safety or security 
concerns. 

Nanos said the redirected dollars were an investment in the 
lab because the funds were refocused toward safety, security and 
compliance activities. 

However, if the government were to determine the spending 
was not covered under its contract, the university would lose 
tens of millions of dollars it had expected to receive from the 
government under its contract. 

Earlier this year, the Energy Department penalized the 
university $5.8 million because of the debacle surrounding the 
allegedly lost computer disks and other security and safety 
concerns at Los Alamos. 

On a broader security issue, Brooks told the subcommittee 
that it will not be until fall 2008 that he expects the Energy 
Department's nuclear sites to meet the more stringent security 
levels demanded in a post-Sept. 11 era of heightened terror 
risks. 

The tougher requirements were issued last October and the 
department previously had said implementation would take several 
years. Brooks said facilities where nuclear material is kept 
must submit implementation plans and a list of resource 
requirements to meet the new standards by July. 

"Almost certainly additional resources will be required" to 
meet the new standard, he said, but it's too early to determine 
how costly the security improvements will be. 

While there have been "significant security problems" at 
Los Alamos and some other sites where nuclear materials are 
kept, Brooks told the subcommittee "none of the vital national 
security assets— nuclear weapons, special nuclear material or 
classified material— are at risk anywhere within the nuclear 
weapons complex." 

A watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, 
testified that some facilities such as Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratories in California are unlikely to be able to 
meet the tougher standards and that the nuclear material, 
including plutonium, should be moved to a safer location. 

Livermore officials have said they expect to be able to 
meet the new requirements. 

Journal staff writer Adam Rankin contributed to this report.

Copyright Albuquerque Journal 

Steve@abqjournal.com 
*****************************************************************
 40 Oakland Tribune: Livermore plutonium work stalled
 
Article Last Updated: 03/19/2005 09:39:53 AM                              
			 		
Critics want radioactive metal removed from the lab
 			 			 			 			 			 			 
  By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER   

It will take years and millions of dollars to make Lawrence 
Livermore weapons lab's plutonium facility fully safe by federal 
standards, and a federal oversight agency wants a clear plan for 
safety compliance before the lab resumes weapons work with the 
radioactive metal. 

Federal weapons officials have agreed not to perform routine 
weapons work at Livermore's plutonium facility until they and lab 
managers deliver a detailed assessment of safety deficiencies, as 
well as the cost and time for fixing them. 

That could take months. Government watchdogs and disarmament 
advocates are pressing in the meantime for an end to plutonium 
work at Livermore. Critics of security in the U.S. weapons 
complex say Livermore is an attractive terrorist target. 

The National Nuclear Security Administration spends more than $60 
million a year on security forces, alarm systems and physical 
barriers to protect plutonium and enriched uranium at Livermore, 
mostly at Superblock, the plutonium facility. 

It is a fortress ringed by 60-foot steel mesh, double razor 
wire-tipped fences and a variety of sensor and alarm systems. 
Heavy numbers of security officers patrol with semiautomatic 
rifles and stun grenades. 

They guard enough plutonium and uranium to make dozens of nuclear 
weapons, the nation's largest nonmilitary store of weapons 
materials close to a major metropolitan area. 

But unlike all other nuclear-weapons sites, Livermore security 
forces are not issued heavy weapons such as rocket launchers and 
heavy machine guns, critics say. The reason, they suspect, is the 
surrounding neighborhood and concerns about the liability of 
carrying heavy arms close to homes. 

"This is really unique in the complex, what's happening at 
Livermore," Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on 
Government Oversight, told a House Energy and Commerce 
subcommittee on Friday. "These homes sit only 800 yards from the 
Superblock, which houses most of the lab's plutonium." 

Former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham started a review of 
removing Livermore's plutonium stocks, possibly to the Nevada 
Test Site and a massive, half-buried bunker known as the Device 
Assembly Facility. It boasts special doors and built-in fighting 
positions, with criss-crossing lines of fire, to prevent anyone 
from stealing a nuclear bomb during assembly. 

Las Vegas is an hour's flight from the Bay Area, Brian said, and 
scientists could conduct plutonium research there without great 
inconvenience. 

Lab weapons officials say such a move would hamper their work 
studying the aging of plutonium and maintaining four basic kinds 
of warheads and bombs. Abraham is gone, and his review "has 
stalled completely," Brian said. Instead, the National Nuclear 
Security Administration has proposed doubling the top limit on 
Livermore's plutonium inventory to 1,500 kilograms, or about a 
ton and a half. 

In January, after months of safety criticisms from the Defense 
Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, lab weapons officials stopped 
plutonium work at Superblock and began studying the deficiencies. 
None are considered imminent safety threats. 

"Not even close," said DNFSB chairman John T. Conway. He is 
required by law to recommend a facility shutdown to the president 
if he thinks an imminent threat exists. 

But in February, local officials for the National Nuclear 
Security Administration tentatively approved the lab's proposals 
to resume work using "compensatory measures" while safety 
upgrades are made. Conway requested a report on how well those 
measures will comply with federal regulations on the operation of 
nuclear facilities and on what level of worker risk will remain. 

He insisted on the report before the lab resumes routine weapons 
work. 

NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said federal and lab officials will 
not resume full weapons operations until they deliver the report. 
But his agency reserved the ability to approve certain operations 
with plutonium on a case by case basis. 

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com. 				 				
				 			   		 		 		
The Oakland Tribune| Alameda Times-Star| The Argus| The Daily
© 2005 ANG Newspapers 							 							 							 							 						
*****************************************************************
 41 [DU-WATCH] DU-related news stories to share
 
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 23:22:07 -0600 (CST)

 
"Melissa Sterry of New Haven says she believes that her exposure
to depleted uranium and other substances harmed her health."

- worth reading and passing forward -

Lawmakers want state to track veterans health problems

(Hartford-AP, Mar. 10, 2005 1:25 PM) _ Some state lawmakers want
to better track the health problems of Connecticut veterans.

They've proposed a new health registry for veterans and military
personnel returning from Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. They are
especially interested in soldiers who've been exposed to depleted
uranium, which is used in armor-piercing ammunition by the U.S.
military.

The legislature's veterans committee is also considering a new task
force that would study the health effects of depleted uranium.

Melissa Sterry of New Haven says she believes that her exposure to
depleted uranium and other substances harmed her health. She worked
with an Army unit during Operation Desert Storm cleaning up the
military equipment that was left behind after the war ended.

Since she returned home, Sterry has had three heart attacks, chronic
respiratory problems and headaches, among numerous other problems.
She takes about 30 medications.

Lawmakers are also considering another bill that would require
guarantee returning military personnel get independent testing to
see if their ailments were caused by uranium dust.

After the War Comes Cancer

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1510710,00.html

Iraqi women fear for their children's future

Information collected for a German project investigating the use
of uranium-charged ammunition in Iraq shows that when Iraqi women
fear for their children's health, it is with good reason.

After two wars where oil wells were torched, chemical factories
bombed and radioactive ammunition fired, the first thing Iraqi women
ask when giving birth is not if it is a boy or a girl, but if it
is normal or deformed. The number of cancer cases and children born
with deformities has skyrocketed after the two Gulf Wars.

"Since 1991 the number of children born with birth deformities has
quadrupled," said Dr. Janan Hassan, who runs a children's clinic
at a hospital in Basra in southern Iraq. "The same is the case for
the number of children under 15 who are diagnosed with cancer.
Mostly, it is leukemia. Almost 80 percent of the children die because
we neither have medicine nor the possibility to give them chemotherapy."

Doctors have also recorded an extreme rise in cancer cases among
adults. "In 2004 we diagnosed 25 percent more cancer cases than the
year before and the mortality rate increased eight-fold between
1988 and 1991," said Dr. Jawad al-Ali of the Sadr Hospital in Basra.

Doctors against nuclear war

Hassan and al-Ali are two of 15 Iraqi specialists who have joined
forces with German scientists in a project to research diseases
provoked by acts of war, financed by the German Academic Exchange
Service.

In Iraq, burning oil wells, bombed chemical factories, demolished
production sites for chemical weapons and even the use of radioactive
ammunition are just a few of the things which may have triggered
diseases there.

"As epidemiologists, we are quite sure that other diseases than
cancer and birth deformities also have to be considered," said
project leader Wolfgang Hoffmann from the University of Greifswald.

The scientists involved in the project met through the International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). All have a
special interest in the consequences of using depleted-uranium (DU)
ammunition, the German project's main focus.

British and American uranium bombs

In the two US-led wars on Iraq, missile warheads containing the
depleted uranium-238 were used. While it is only lightly radioactive,
it is an extremely tough waste-product to contain because the uranium
pulverizes and contaminates the whole surrounding area with
radioactivity at the moment of the explosion.

"Naturally, the nations leading the war refuse to acknowldege that
this type of uranium can be harmful. But as an epidemiologist, I
have to say that every bit of radiation can give rise to cancer.
It's just a question if what was fired in this case led to an
increase in the number of cancer cases," said Professor Eberhard
Greiser from the University of Bremen.

As with many of the questions arising from the project so far, there
is no definite answer. But al-Ali tried to give a partial answer.

"In Basra in 1991, the Americans and the British dropped at least
300 tons of this kind of ammunition in one battle. That was the
battle where they destroyed all the tanks of the then Republican
Army. After the war, the population was urged to gather all weapons
and sell them to the government. Also if people had guns or bazookas
or whatever they found in the desert, they were told to bring it
with them," he said.

According to al-Ali's calculations, approximately 750,000 people
in Basra and the surrounding areas were exposed to radiation as a
result.

Finding the evidence

The doctors say the connection between the contamination of hundred
of thousands of people on one side and the rising number of cancer
cases on the other is beyond doubt, but proving it is not easy.

"To prove it, we would have to demonstrate that there was uranium
238 on the patients' clothes or in their body fluid. And besides,
cancer is a multi-causal disease. How would we be able to give 100
percent proof?" al-Ali asked.

Despite the resigned attitudes among many of her colleagues, Hassan
firmly believes that the radioactive missiles used by the Americans
and the British are responsible for the increased incidence of
cancer in Iraq since the early 1990s. She hopes a future independent
Iraqi government will seek compensation from Washington and London.
"We have to demand it. That is the price of the war," she said.

J|rgen Hanefeld (nk)

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12489770-2,00.html

Comments to...

Sigrid Kirk Editor-in-Chief Email: newsroom@NEWS.com.

Australian troops may be exposed to uranium By Luke McIlveen March
09, 2005

Exposure risk ... Aussie troops sent to Iraq may come into contact
with leftover uranium-based munitions THE army is investigating the
possibility that 450 Australian troops bound for Iraq could be
exposed to toxic materials, including uranium.

The troops will be deployed to Al Muthanna province in southern
Iraq, an area suspected of being a dumping ground for depleted
uranium left by US forces in the Gulf War.

An Australian Army reconnaissance team has been in Iraq to investigate
the presence of uranium and other safety threats, and is due to
report back this week.

Defence authorities confirmed they were investigating the uranium
threat to the Diggers, who will be sent to Iraq in May to protect
Japanese military engineers.

"The health and safety of our personnel is the ADF's highest
priority," the Department of Defence said in response to written
questions from the Herald Sun this week.

"The ADF is aware of the issues surrounding the presence of depleted
uranium in Iraq.

"The ADF currently has a reconnaissance team in Iraq that is examining
in detail a range of issues related to the forthcoming deployment.

"Following their assessment, the ADF will take the necessary steps
to ensure that the deployment will be as safe as possible."

Defence Minister Robert Hill told the Senate the army was conducting
"surveys" on contaminated areas to reduce the risk to Diggers.

Senator Hill said he would take advice on whether Australian troops
should be tested for radioactive contamination when they return.

Several of the 1400 Dutch troops the Australian contingent is
replacing have complained to their union after expended uranium
shells were found near their camp.

The long-term effects of the shells have been linked to various
cancers and the mysterious Gulf War syndrome, which plagued thousands
of US marines in the Gulf War when repelling Iraqui troops from
Kuwait.

Sigrid Kirk Editor-in-Chief Email: newsroom@NEWS.com.

----------------------------

WITNESS FOR JUSTICE # 0206 March 7, 2005 TURNING OUR BACKS ON THE
MARSHALL ISLANDS AGAIN By Bernice Powell Jackson Last March 1, I
was in the Marshall Islands, tiny atolls in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean, where we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Bravo test.
On March 1, 1954, the United States dropped a 15-megaton hydrogen
bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
It was one of 67 nuclear weapons tests conducted in the Marshall
Islands by the U.S. between 1946 and 1958.  But while many of the
islanders had been evacuated in previous tests, on March 1 the
people of four tiny atolls were not. In fact, they were not evacuated
until for four days after the massive explosion whose radioactive
cloud spread over an area about the size of New Jersey.

While this story is horrible in and of itself, documents declassified
during the Clinton administration appear to point to the decision
by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to make the Marshall Islanders
into human guinea pigs.  It appears that there was an AEC project,
named Project 4.1, whose purpose was to study the effects of
radioactive fallout on human beings. Despite its public statements
otherwise, it seems that the AEC decided three days after the Bravo
test to make the Marshall Islanders into research subjects.  It is
unclear whether the Marshallese actually received medical treatments
for the exposure to high levels of radiation or whether they just
received tracers which helped researchers know how human beings
were responding, but we do know that they have suffered extraordinarily
high levels of cancer, particularly of the thyroid.  Moreover, the
second and third generations also have high levels of cancer and
immune system diseases. Women and girls who were originally exposed
during the Bravo tests also experienced high levels of stillbirths,
miscarriages and deformities in their babies. "The only thing I
could think of was Nazi Germany," said then U. S. Energy Secretary
Hazel O'Leary upon first learning about these experiments when some
documents were declassified.

With the release of these documents in 1993, the survivors from the
Bravo test petitioned the U.S. government for additional compensation
to help pay for the health care and clean-up needs. Under a compact
signed by the governments of the U.S. and the Marshall Islands in
1983, the U.S. agreed to pay $150 million into a trust fund. Some
additional funds were awarded to specific groups of survivors.  But
while the commission managing the trust fund has awarded over $1
billion in damage claims, less than one percent of that money could
be paid and there are thousands of claims still pending.

Shortly after the beginning of this year, however, the Bush
administration rejected the petition for changed circumstances,
telling the U.S. Congress that it should not award further compensation
to the Marshall Islands. The irony, of course, is that the U.S. is
telling other governments that they must take full responsibility
for their actions, when we refuse to take responsibility for ours.
To make whole the people of the Marshall Islands to treat their
illnesses and clean up their islands would take only a few days of
the funds we are spending in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This year the survivors of Enewetak, Rongelap, Utrik and Bikini
islands sponsored their own commemoration of the Bravo test by
inviting survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown to
share their experiences.  They found that government cover-ups and
misinformation were common to both experiences.

More than half a century after one of our nation's most shameful
actions, we must tell the truth, admit our guilt and pay fully for
our actions. Only if we make amends to the people of the Marshall
Islands can we move forward into the future with integrity and
truth.

(Note: You can contact your Senators concerning the petition for
changed circumstances of the Marshall Islands at 202-225-3121.  Or
contact your congressperson at 202-224-3121).

vSick, wounded U.S. troops held in squalor By Mark Benjamin UPI
Investigations Editor Published 10/17/2003 3:36 PM View printer-friendly
version FORT STEWART, Ga., Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Hundreds of sick and
wounded U.S. soldiers including many who served in the Iraq war are
languishing in hot cement barracks here while they wait -- sometimes
for months -- to see doctors.

The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are
so substandard, and the medical care so poor, that many of them
believe the Army is trying push them out with reduced benefits for
their ailments. One document shown to UPI states that no more doctor
appointments are available from Oct. 14 through Nov. 11 -- Veterans
Day.

"I have loved the Army. I have served the Army faithfully and I
have done everything the Army has asked me to do," said Sgt. 1st
Class Willie Buckels, a truck master with the 296th Transportation
Company. Buckels served in the Army Reserves for 27 years, including
Operation Iraqi Freedom and the first Gulf War. "Now my whole idea
about the U.S. Army has changed. I am treated like a third-class
citizen."

Since getting back from Iraq in May, Buckels, 52, has been trying
to get doctors to find out why he has intense pain in the side of
his abdomen since doubling over in pain there.

After waiting since May for a diagnosis, Buckels has accepted 20
percent of his benefits for bad knees and is going home to his
family in Mississippi. "They have not found out what my side is
doing yet, but they are still trying," Buckels said.

One month after President Bush greeted soldiers at Fort Stewart --
home of the famed Third Infantry Division -- as heroes on their
return from Iraq, approximately 600 sick or injured members of the
Army Reserves and National Guard are warehoused in rows of spare,
steamy and dark cement barracks in a sandy field, waiting for doctors
to treat their wounds or illnesses.

The Reserve and National Guard soldiers are on what the Army calls
"medical hold," while the Army decides how sick or disabled they
are and what benefits -- if any -- they should get as a result.

Some of the soldiers said they have waited six hours a day for an
appointment without seeing a doctor. Others described waiting weeks
or months without getting a diagnosis or proper treatment.

The soldiers said professional active duty personnel are getting
better treatment while troops who serve in the National Guard or
Army Reserve are left to wallow in medical hold.

"It is not an Army of One. It is the Army of two -- Army and
Reserves," said one soldier who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom,
during which she developed a serious heart condition and strange
skin ailment.

A half-dozen calls by UPI seeking comment from Fort Stewart public
affairs officials and U.S. Forces Command in Atlanta were not
returned.

Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the personnel now
in medical hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those who went, many
described clusters of strange ailments, like heart and lung problems,
among previously healthy troops. They said the Army has tried to
refuse them benefits, claiming the injuries and illnesses were due
to a "pre-existing condition," prior to military service.

Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows of
rectangular, gray, single-story cinder block barracks without
bathrooms or air conditioning. They are dark and sweltering in the
southern Georgia heat and humidity. Around 60 soldiers cram in the
bunk beds in each barrack.

Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches through the
sandy dirt to a communal bathroom, where they have propped office
partitions between otherwise open toilets for privacy. A row of
leaky sinks sits on an opposite wall. The latrine smells of urine
and is full of bugs, because many windows have no screens. Showering
is in a communal, cinder block room. Soldiers say they have to buy
their own toilet paper.

They said the conditions are fine for training, but not for sick
people.

"I think it is disgusting," said one Army Reserve member who went
to Iraq and asked that his name not be used.

That soldier said that after being deployed in March he suffered a
sudden onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has gotten
steadily worse. He shakes uncontrollably.

He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease and it was
a pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was something in the
anthrax shots the Army gave him.

"They say I have Parkinson's, but it is developing too rapidly,"
he said. "I did not have a problem until I got those shots."

First Sgt. Gerry Mosley crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on March 19
with the 296th Transportation Company, hauling fuel while under
fire from the Iraqis as they traveled north alongside combat vehicles.
Mosley said he was healthy before the war; he could run two miles
in 17 minutes at 48 years old.

But he developed a series of symptoms: lung problems and shortness
of breath; vertigo; migraines; and tinnitus. He also thinks the
anthrax vaccine may have hurt him. Mosley also has a torn shoulder
from an injury there.

Mosley says he has never been depressed before, but found himself
looking at shotguns recently and thought about suicide.

Mosley is paying $300 a month to get better housing than the cinder
block barracks. He has a notice from the base that appears to show
that no more doctor appointments are available for reservists from
Oct. 14 until Nov. 11. He said he has never been treated like this
in his 30 years in the Army Reserves.

"Now, I would not go back to war for the Army," Mosley said.

Many soldiers in the hot barracks said regular Army soldiers get
to see doctors, while National Guard and Army Reserve troops wait.

"The active duty guys that are coming in, they get treated first
and they put us on hold," said another soldier who returned from
Iraq six weeks ago with a serious back injury. He has gotten to see
a doctor only two times since he got back, he said.

Another Army Reservist with the 149th Infantry Battalion said he
has had real trouble seeing doctors about his crushed foot he
suffered in Iraq. "There are not enough doctors. They are overcrowded
and they can't perform the surgeries that have to be done," that
soldier said. "Look at these mattresses. It hurts just to sit on
them," he said, gesturing to the bunks. "There are people here who
got back in April but did not get their surgeries until July. It
is putting a lot on these families."

The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up plans to call up more reserves.

In an Oct. 9 speech to National Guard and reserve troops in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, Bush said the soldiers had become part of the backbone
of the military.

"Citizen-soldiers are serving in every front on the war on terror,"
Bush said. "And you're making your state and your country proud."

-0-

Walking Wounded Face Healthcare Disparity

Click Here

Our military has done the United States proud in its performance
in the War on Terror through Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan,
the capturing of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and with the ongoing
stabilization effort in Iraq through Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yet
this 21st century-style voluntary military has been tried and tested
in its numbers for the first time since the 20th century's Vietnam
War.

Disclosure of casualty rates are rarely publicized in the media and
the Pentagon and White House make it clear that they want it that
way. However glowing reports about improvements in medical care,
which has made a significant difference in allowing so many wounded
to get back to the front or to the supply line as deemed necessary
for second and third tours of duty, is widely available. Precisely
because of the improvements in medical care and technology, it has
all but stalled the Pentagon efforts in implementing new plans to
address a mounting shortage of active-duty troops, especially in
light of so many "hot spots" circling the globe.

Afforded by an outstanding showing of numbers of reservists of the
Marines, Air Force, Navy, Army as well National Guard troops, the
military clearly would be deficient of troops in the field in Iraq.
Reservists now account for almost 48% of the total troops serving
in both Afghanistan and Iraq with their deployments remaining up
to 18 months. Unlike active-duty soldiers, reservists face an
uncertain status financially upon their return making it less
possible for them to reenlist. Added to that are those who return
wounded, with many requiring extensive follow-up medical care.

Of those wounded in action or seriously ill during their deploy,
according to reports, up to 98% survive with mortality down some
22% since the 1991 Gulf War. But along with the recovery period for
those who become temporarily or permanently disabled, soldiers face
required bureaucratic red-tape with which the wounded must blindly
deal, and remains problematic predominantly for reservists. While
the Veterans Administration guarantees two years of free healthcare
for returnees from Iraq and Afghanistan, it only applies to active-duty
soldiers.

The General Accounting Office released a study on February 17, 2005,
revealing the pitfalls and the convoluted process required by our
wounded upon returning stateside, further illuminated by reservists
before the House Government Reform Committee. According to the GAO,
the problem originated with the obsolete Active Duty Medical Extension
program, set up in 2000. It was not staffed to accommodate the vast
number of presently mobilized reservists. Not only has there been
an unprecedented influx of continually returning reservists given
the ongoing War on Terror, but many, many wounded who require
aftercare.

However, unlike active-duty soldiers or non-reservist personnel
returning to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Bethesda, MD, wounded
reservists kept in "medical holdover" (which is the limbo status
patients are kept in while awaiting determination of their medical
case or if they will be cleared to resume their duty with their
military unit) often lose salary as well as medical benefits. And
unlike active-duty soldiers, reservists suffer from lack of job
security whether they are disabled or not, as their jobs were in
the private sector when called to serve up to 18 months

During this med-hold period, reservists were automatically removed
from active-duty status, leaving them without military pay and
follow-up care. Although Army officials testified before Congress
that they have resolved the 'automatic removal' process as of July
2004, the GAO reported the program is still inefficient and "in
some respects has worsened problems."

For example, Sgt. 1st Class John Allen, a Special Forces reservist
serving in Afghanistan in 2002 upon returning home wounded in
November 2002, received a "bonus" consisting of a red-tape nightmare.
Testifying before the House Government Reform Committee on 2/17/05,
he stated that while coping with healing from extensive battle
injuries he was dropped repeatedly from active-duty, losing three
months of benefits and almost $12,000.00 in pay. He suffered brain
trauma and injuries to his legs, torso and vision resulting from a
helicopter accident and grenade blast outside Kandahar.

During those periods when Allen's active-duty status was dropped,
he was not paid, had no access to his base, had no medical coverage
for his family and his medical appointments with military doctors
were canceled.

He had to borrow $10,000.00 from a brother to pay bills and in
August 2003 when his wife went into premature labor, was denied
treatment at the military hospital in Fort Bragg, NC, necessitating
intervention from a senior Army commander.

One can argue that this exemplifies but one case, but sadly that
would not be truthful. In fact the seniority of Sgt. Allen probably
helped him some, yet he still had myriad problems in receiving
assistance. Imagine this dilemma faced by a 19-year old reservist
who delivered pizzas prior to serving in Iraq. And while soldiers
in med-hold are primarily considered outpatients, they usually live
on hospital grounds, given the extent of their injuries. But Walter
Reed applies a meal charge for all outpatients, which can get
expensive for a reservist without a paycheck. The Army defends this
practice, claiming only outpatients are charged for meals, without
consideration that processing of med-hold patients can take up to
a year.

Since November 2003, the Army's Human Resources Command processed
16,000 disabled Reserve and Guard members; more than at anytime
since the Vietnam War with close to 4,000 presently being processed.
For many of those reservists, their benefits were extended 30 days
only requiring reapplication every 30 days. Following that 30-day
process many have lost benefits, requiring them to initiate the
process again. The Army claims it does not track the number of
injured or ill reservists suffering from gaps in pay and benefits.

And although the Army has recently begun automatic 179-day extensions
of pay and benefits for returning Reserve and Guard troops, as of
the end of 2004 the Army could not account for how many soldiers
were on medical extensions or how many had even returned to
active-duty.

A good many reservists have been savvy enough to appeal to their
local Congressional representatives for assistance. This should
send a red flag to the Congress that the system is not working and
one or two hearings a year where representatives of the Pentagon
suggest that they are doing a good job, all things considered, in
an effort to ensure their own job status is nothing less than a
travesty. Responses from the Pentagon and the Department of Veteran
Affairs continually repeat that the system is antiquated and not
set up for an onslaught of returning wounded. Given over three years
since deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq it no longer remains an
acceptable answer.

For those troops already dealing with the red-tape nightmare, it
comes too little too late and says little for the way the federal
government has treated our members of the military. The United
States government as well as the present administration basks in
the glory of its military's accomplishments yet appears to curry
little favor for those who have risked their lives, and may no
longer prove "useful" when returning to a life of disability, posing
far greater challenges for them than they had prior to going off
to war.

As the present quotas for reenlistments for both active-duty and
reservists continue to plummet, is it any wonder that the Army as
well as the Marine Corps are now recruiting high school dropouts
and those who have scored poorly on military aptitude tests? Whether
one agrees or not with our military participation in Iraq and
Afghanistan, we owe more to our troops and their families. The
status-quo from our legislators and from our governmental institutions
should no longer remain as an acceptable option. And to reward our
troops with bureaucratic 'friendly fire' upon their return is simply
tantamount to a slap in the face for those who have served our
nation so proudly and so well.

Diane M. Grassi

Printer Friendly Version Email This Story

Telemedicine link joins VA, shelter

By WAYNE QUESENBERRY Wytheville Enterprise Thursday, March 10, 2005

Crossroads Shelter Inc. provided temporary lodging for 28 homeless
veterans last year. The agency expects even more this year, especially
those from the Vietnam era and a few from the Gulf War.

Because of the shelter's outreach program for homeless veterans, a
new service is now available locally. A telemedicine program has
been installed by the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem,
linking it to the shelter in Wytheville.

A videophone in the shelter's substance abuse counseling office
provides homeless veterans with access to healthcare providers at
the Salem operation. It allows a client to obtain on-going follow-up
care and admission when needed.

"Clients in the VA's detox program can use it to follow up with
their substance abuse counselor or a client can be pre-screened
here for the program," noted Louise Bennett, director of Crossroads
Shelter Inc. "Previously, a representative from the Salem office
had to come here and review a person and then take him back to Salem
for treatment."

According to Bennett, the distance, cost and time involved in
traveling to the VA center in Salem often prevents veterans from
following through with necessary care after being hospitalized.
Many of them, she said, don't have a driver's license or a vehicle.

Bennett attributed the telemedicine partnership to the work of Nancy
Hawk, a U.S. Army veteran and the shelter's veterans liaison. The
videophone service, she pointed out, also required 24-hour access
to clients.

"This expands our veterans outreach program. It's a big step up for
our veterans," Hawk commented Wednesday. "The videophone provides
a sense of interaction with a counselor."

The videophone operates through one of the shelter's business
telephone lines. It features a small camera on an attached screen
and connects to a videophone in the Salem office by dialing the
number.

"I didn't do the combat. This is my way of helping the veterans who
did," added Hawk, a veteran with 13 years of service and a rank of
sergeant first class.

She also is second vice commander for American Legion Post 9 in
Wytheville.

According to Hawk, her son James was recently wounded while serving
with the U.S. Army in Iraq.

Crossroads Shelter Inc. is located at 240 Calhoun Street in Wytheville.
It's the only emergency stay shelter on the Interstate 81 corridor
between Bristol and Roanoke that accepts men, women and children.

The shelter's mission is to provide the basic needs for homeless
persons and families through job training, financial counseling,
educational tutoring, employment assistance and affordable housing.

http://www.wythenews.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=SVE/MGArticle/SVE_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031781495371

all items above From: DSNurse@aol.com To: undisclosed-recipients:

Sent: Friday, March 11, 2005 6:40 AM Subject: [GWVM] DU and Conn
State house and good good info to share

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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 42 ABQjournal: N.M. Rich With Nuclear and Space History 

Albuquerque Journal newspaper. 

Sunday, March 20, 2005 

Albuquerque Journal--> By Don Laine 
For the Journal 

The high-tech world of rockets, missiles, planes and 
nuclear weapons has played a major role in the modern history of 
the United States— and much of that history took place here in 
New Mexico. 

Although the development of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos 
and its testing at Trinity Site near Alamogordo are the best 
known, there is plenty more to see in New Mexico, from the Age 
of Flight to the Space Age and beyond. 

You can examine 65-year-old fighter planes, practically 
every type of missile and rocket imaginable, as well as space 
shuttles, space suits, a lunar rover and, of course, moon rocks. 
There is also information on continuing research, from weapons 
to nuclear medicine. 

Especially fascinating is the human side of aerospace and 
nuclear research, from the rocket tests in an isolated valley 
near Roswell in the 1930s, to the secret city of Los Alamos 
during World War II and the site where the first atomic bomb was 
tested. There are tributes to the pioneers of space travel and 
nuclear energy research, and you can even see possible evidence 
that space aliens came calling on New Mexico. 

Several laboratories continue to do important research, and 
White Sands Missile Range, a U.S. Army installation, is a 
back-up landing site for the space shuttle— in March 1982, space 
shuttle Columbia landed at White Sands after heavy rains created 
safety problems at the primary landing site in California's 
Mojave Desert. Today, motorists driving by the missile range, 
between Alamogordo and Las Cruces, might see missile tests, and 
traffic is sometimes stopped for short periods during the tests. 

Here's a look at some of the best places in New Mexico to 
see the state's role in space and nuclear energy research and 
development. 

Albuquerque 

The National Atomic Museum offers an unvarnished look at 
the history of atomic energy, with a large exhibit about the 
creation of the atomic bomb and the first use of the bomb when 
it was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. 

The exhibit doesn't just dish out the pro-nuke line but 
also includes information on the controversies of the times, 
here at home and in Japan. 

The atomic museum also has exhibits on scientists such as 
Madame Marie Curie and Albert Einstein and the history of arms 
control, and it continues the story of atomic power from 
post-World War II to present day, with a look at nuclear 
medicine, such as the development of X-rays. 

A variety of video presentations are given in the museum 
theater. There's a hands-on section for children and a 
well-stocked gift shop with a number of items you aren't likely 
to find anywhere else. 

Los Alamos 

The community of Los Alamos, created by the U.S. government 
in 1943 at the site of an isolated school for boys, was the home 
of the Manhattan Project, the government's top-secret enterprise 
to develop an atomic bomb. 

Sites include the Bradbury Science Museum, operated by Los 
Alamos National Laboratory and containing exhibits on the 
development of the bomb. It also has some fascinating science 
displays based on work done at the lab since World War II, 
including exhibits on some of the lab's current research on the 
human genome and biomagnetism, nuclear weapons and satellites, 
and the problems disposing of excess plutonium. 

The museum has an exhibit on lasers plus displays on 
supercomputers, including the "historic" Cray 1A supercomputer, 
which was state of the art in 1977, plus a number of hands-on 
interactive activities. 

The Los Alamos Historical Museum, while also containing 
information on the development of the atomic bomb, puts its 
emphasis on the human history of Los Alamos and the Manhattan 
Project. 

There are exhibits on area geology, the prehistoric people 
who lived in the area and the Los Alamos Ranch School. However, 
perhaps the most interesting exhibit is "Life in the Secret 
City," which deals with the people who were part of the 
Manhattan Project and what it was like to live and work in a 
top-secret community where you couldn't even tell your family 
what you had done at work that day. 

At the museum you can also pick up a free brochure that 
takes you on a self-guided walking tour of the town. 

Alamogordo area 

On the edge of White Sands Missile Range and home to 
Holloman Air Force Base, Alamogordo has a definite military and 
aerospace atmosphere. Those coming here to learn about the 
history of space research won't be disappointed. 

Among the state's most popular museums, the New Mexico 
Museum of Space History can't be missed— head to the east side 
of town and look for the gleaming gold building and the 
90-foot-tall white rocket. The museum has an abundance of 
displays that trace the history of humanity's efforts to conquer 
space, from early rockets to sophisticated space stations. 

The pioneers of space travel are honored in the 
International Space Hall of Fame, as are the scientists and 
others who helped make space exploration possible. 

There is a history of rocketry display, where you'll see— 
and hear— rocket engines, plus satellites and exhibits detailing 
New Mexico's role in space research. Ride the elevator to the 
fourth floor, then journey slowly downward on sloping ramps that 
lead you past the exhibits, which range from a moon rock to a 
Russian spacesuit to a lunar exploration vehicle. 

A state-of-the-art IMAX theater and planetarium offer a 
variety of movies and programs, and outside is an air and space 
park where you can see a collection of historic missiles, 
rockets and other large space-related items. 

A new outdoor exhibit is the recently restored Daisy Track, 
which was used to study the human body's tolerance of 
gravitational forces and restraint systems, technology that has 
also been used in the seat belts in today's automobiles. 

No matter what your opinions are of nuclear weapons, there 
is no doubt that the development of the atomic bomb and its 
testing at Trinity Site on July 16, 1945, was a significant 
chapter in the history of the world. The site, in a remote spot 
in the desert some 60 miles northwest of Alamogordo, is 
off-limits to the public most of the year, but the military 
allows visitors on two days— the first Saturdays of April and 
October. 

This year the site also will be open on July 16, the 60th 
anniversary of the test. 

There's something both eerie and almost sacred about 
Trinity Site, where a small monument commemorates the event, and 
trinitite— green rock created by the atomic blast— is scattered 
on the ground. 

Nearby, the McDonald House, where the plutonium core of the 
bomb was assembled, can also be visited, and on those two 
Saturdays the military sets up exhibits about the test explosion.

Trinity Site is on the White Sands Missile Range. 
Directions, regulations, times and other information can be 
obtained from the range's public affairs office. 

Las Cruces area 

New Mexico's second largest city, Las Cruces is a good base 
for seeing a variety of air and space craft, from the 1940s to 
today. 

Located on White Sands Missile Range, about 23 miles east 
of Las Cruces, the White Sands Missile Range Museum includes 
Missile Park, an impressive outdoor display of more than 50 
rockets and missiles, including some huge ones, that were tested 
at White Sands. These include the Pershing II and Patriot 
missiles, plus some much older ones. 

Inside, the museum tells the history of the missile range, 
which was established in 1945, but starts a bit earlier, going 
back to prehistoric times when hunter-gatherers roamed the area 
in search of now-extinct mammoths and camel-like animals. 
Exhibits continue through the arrival of Spanish explorers and 
the Apache wars to relatively modern times when the missile 
range was established to test some of the most important weapons 
of the nuclear age plus various rockets used in space 
exploration. 

The history of space exploration is the focus of Space 
Murals Inc. Museum &Gift Shop, which is in the community of 
Organ, about 10 miles east of Las Cruces. The museum is named 
for a large outdoor water tank painted with images of space 
exploration. 

Nearby are a Nike Hercules missile, a memorial to the space 
shuttle Challenger tragedy and a V-2 rocket nose cone and tail. 

Inside, visitors will find a replica of the space station 
Freedom, a variety of air and space artifacts and photos, and 
hands-on exhibits for kids. The gift shop has an extensive 
selection of space-related items. 

About 30 miles southeast of Las Cruces, at the Doña Ana 
County Airport in Santa Teresa, the War Eagles Air Museum takes 
a somewhat different look at flight with about 30 beautifully 
restored airplanes from World War II, the Korean conflict and 
later, and most are in flying condition. There are also exhibits 
on female aviators, plus more than 40 classic automobiles on 
display, including a 1908 Oldsmobile, 1935 Auburn Boattail and a 
1936 Packard. 

Roswell 

Everyone's heard about the purported crash landing of space 
aliens near Roswell in 1947, but what is less known is that 
Roswell played an important role in the development of rockets, 
which have made space travel possible, beginning in 1930. 

To learn about this side of Roswell's personality, stop at 
the Roswell Museum and Art Center, which houses historical items 
relating to space, including the memorabilia of Robert H. 
Goddard, the first person to test liquid rocket fuels and a 
pioneer in the U.S. space program. 

On display are some of Goddard's rockets and a recreation 
of Goddard's workshop. The museum also displays exhibits on the 
area's history, from prehistoric peoples into the 20th century. 

The art center features the works of prominent Southwestern 
artists, such as Peter Hurd (born in Roswell), Henriette Wyeth, 
Georgia O'Keeffe and Andrew Dasburg. Adjacent is the Robert 
Goddard Planetarium, which offers programs for area school 
children. 

Did aliens from outer space crash land near Roswell in 
1947? The International UFO Museum &Research Center takes a 
mostly serious look at that possibility. It presents an enormous 
amount of information— too much to be absorbed in just one 
visit— about the purported UFO crash, as well as about 
mysterious sightings and incidents in other areas. 

In addition it presents information on the government's 
explanations of these events and views from skeptical 
scientists. There's also a lot of fun stuff, such as the 
simulated "alien examination room," alien-related paintings and 
the sculpture of RALF— Roswell Alien Life Form— the museum 
mascot. 

If you go 

WHAT: Bradbury Science Museum 

WHEN: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays 

WHERE: 15th Street and Central Avenue, Los Alamos 

HOW MUCH: Free 

INFORMATION: (505) 667-4444, 

WHAT: International UFO Museum &Research Center 

WHEN: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily 

WHERE: 114 N. Main St., Roswell 

HOW MUCH: Free 

INFORMATION: (800) 822-3545, (505) 625-9495, 

WHAT: Los Alamos Historical Museum 

WHEN: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays and 1-4 p.m. Sundays 
(winter); 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays and 11 a.m.-5 
p.m. Sundays (Daylight Saving Time) 

WHERE: 1921 Juniper St., Los Alamos 

HOW MUCH: Free 

INFORMATION: (505) 662-4493, (505) 662-6272, 

WHAT: National Atomic Museum 

WHEN: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily 

WHERE: 1905 Mountain NW, Albuquerque 

HOW MUCH: $5 adults (ages 18-59), $4 youths (ages 6-17) and 
seniors (age 60 and older), free for children age 5 and younger 

INFORMATION: (505) 245-2137, 

WHAT: New Mexico Museum of Space History 

WHEN: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily 

WHERE: Highway 2001 off Scenic Drive via Indian Wells Road, 
about 2 miles east of White Sands Boulevard 

HOW MUCH: Museum $2.50 adults (ages 13-59), $2 children 
(ages 4-12), $2.25 seniors (age 60 and older) and military 
(active, retired and dependents), free for children age 3 and 
younger; one IMAX movie $6 adults (ages 13-59), $4.50 children 
(ages 4-12), $5.50 seniors (age 60 and older) and military 
(active, retired and dependents), free for children age 3 and 
younger; discounts for additional movies and higher rates for 
evening movies (Fridays and Saturdays only) 

INFORMATION: (877) 333-6589, (505) 437-2840, 

WHAT: Roswell Museum and Art Center 

WHEN: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays, 1-5 p.m. Sundays 

WHERE: Civic Center Plaza, 100 W. 11th St., Roswell 

HOW MUCH: Free 

INFORMATION: (505) 624-6744, 

WHAT: Space Murals Inc. 

WHEN: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 
Sundays 

WHERE: 12450 US Hwy. 70 E., Organ (about 10 miles east of 
Las Cruces) 

HOW MUCH: Free 

INFORMATION: (505) 382-0977; 

WHAT: Trinity Site 

WHEN: First Saturdays in April and October each year; also 
July 16 this year 

WHERE: White Sands Missile Range, about 60 miles northwest 
of Alamogordo 

HOW MUCH: Free 

INFORMATION: (505) 678-1134; (click on Public Affairs, then 
Trinity Site) 

WHAT: War Eagles Air Museum 

WHEN: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays (last entrance 3:30 
p.m.) 

WHERE: Doña Ana County Airport, 8012 Airport Road, Santa 
Teresa (about 30 miles southeast of Las Cruces off I-10, exit 8) 

HOW MUCH: $5 adults, $4 seniors (age 65 and older) and 
military with ID, free for children and students 

INFORMATION: (505) 589-2000; 

WHAT: White Sands Missile Range Museum 

WHEN: 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. 
Saturdays and Sundays 

WHERE: White Sands Missile Range, off US 70/82 (about 23 
miles east of Las Cruces between mile markers 169 and 170) 

HOW MUCH: Free, however visitors are required to show their 
driver's license, vehicle registration, and proof of vehicle 
insurance 

INFORMATION: (505) 678-8824; 

Copyright Albuquerque Journal 
Steve@abqjournal.com 
    
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