***************************************************************** 03/30/05 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 13.72 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Xinhua: US urges Iran to cooperate with IAEA 2 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Says Iran Nuclear Tour a Media Stunt NUCLEAR REACTORS 3 US: More bad news for Exelon: "Peach Report Card"; Hope Creek shuts 4 US: [CMEP] Groups Oppose Big Energy Buy-out 5 [NYTr] Ukraine Thanks Cuba for Post-Chernobyl Medical Help 6 US: NRC: NRC Finds Emergency Plan Violation at Perry Nuclear Plant t 7 US: NRC: NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards to Meet April 8 Daily Yomiuri: Govt 'partly to blame' for fatal N-accident 9 US: News Journal: Leaky pipe idles Hope Creek reactor 10 HSE: Statement of incidents at Nuclear Installations 11 ITAR-TASS: Power reactor stopped for maintenance jobs at Zheleznogor 12 US: monticello times: Xcel, NMC file for license renewal of nuclear 13 US: Vermont Guardian: NRC recalled to Montpelier to explain VY safet 14 US: PRN: Beaver Valley Power Station Meets Objectives in NRC Annual 15 The Telegraph - Calcutta Jamshedpur: Team on nuclear recce 16 CBC Manitoba: Chornobyl kids to visit Manitoba 17 Moscow Times: Cuba Thanked for Its Chernobyl Care NUCLEAR SECURITY 18 fence around N America? Straightgoods.com 19 [NYTr] A Con Job by Pakistan's Pal, George Bush 20 US: [NYTr] We can't afford to be indifferent to nuclear expansion 21 US: San Luis Obispo Tribune: What's the NRC hiding? 22 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: N.K. Nuclear Exports Would Be Last Straw: 23 UPI: Walker's World: U.S. to make India a world power - 24 IAEA: Nuclear Terrorism: Identifying and Combating the Risks 25 Slate: The Wings of a Hawk - Why is Bush selling F-16s to Pakistan? 26 Guardian Unlimited: India spurns US arms 27 Guardian Unlimited: Facts, Figures About Nuke Weapons Threat 28 Pakistan Times Op-Ed: Iran’s Nuclear Saga 29 SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nuclear Test Debate: How Bush Learned To Love the Bo 30 Guardian Unlimited: Iraq WMD report to lay blame on CIA NUCLEAR SAFETY 31 US: [NukeNet] NPP Spent Fuel Classified report & NAS Vs. NRC Views 32 [du-list] ING disinvests (partly) from controversial weapons 33 US: deseret news: Hurry study, CDC tells U. 34 Mainichi Interactive: Gov't urged to clarify its responsibility for 35 Bellona: Sweden grants Russia 6 million dollars for nuclear safety 36 US: Las Vegas SUN: CDC halts funding of fallout study 37 US: Spectrum: Funding halted for fallout study 38 US: Spectrum: Downwinders are being sold out again 39 ITAR-TASS: Russian govt urged to tighten border radiation control 40 US: Jeffrey St. Clair: Downwinders be Damned 41 HN: More than 18,000 children from Chernobyl treated in Cuba over la NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 42 GovExec: Panel to probe alleged false documents on Yucca Mountain 43 US: Bradenton Herald: Contamination measure passes 44 US: AP Wire: Decision on converting nuclear weapons material for TVA 45 US: Fredericksburg: Nuclear 'waste'? No, little is 'wasted' in nucle 46 deseret news: Utah needs to oppose Yucca, Matheson says 47 US: GreenvilleOnline.com: Duke says rods safe, despite report challe 48 Las Vegas RJ: Yucca e-mails forwardedto congressional panel 49 Las Vegas SUN: Panel examining e-mails that suggest Yucca data falsi 50 US: Platts: ASLB to hear oral arguments for appeal in PFS case 51 Inyo Register: Could doctored docs spell end for Yucca project? 52 Inyo Register: Yucca alive & well 53 US: bizjournals: West Valley Demonstration Project contract extended 54 Cumbria Online: SELLAFIELD RADIATION LEAK PROBE PEACE 55 Guardian Unlimited: Poll: No Nation Should Have Nuke Weapons 56 AU ABC: Australia to lead nuclear test ban efforts. US DEPT. OF ENERGY 57 ABQjournal: Lockheed Martin Rejoins Lab Contest 58 Tri-City Herald: 2007 budget could jump 59 lamonitor.com: Lockheed re-enters the arena for LANL contract 60 Albuquerque Tribune: Lockheed to bid on Los Alamos ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Xinhua: US urges Iran to cooperate with IAEA www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2005-03-31 06:49:26 WASHINGTON, March 30 (Xinhuanet) -- The US State Department on Wednesday urged Iran to demonstrate its seriousness in nuclear talks with the European Union on its suspected nuclear weapons program. "If Iran were really serious about demonstrating transparency in its nuclear program, it should answer all of the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA)'s outstanding questions. "If Iran were really serious about allaying the concerns of the international community, they would stop denying IAEA full and unrestricted access to suspicious sites," deputy spokesman of the department Adam Ereli said at a news briefing. Ereli called on Iran allow key nuclear officials to be interviewed by the IAEA and to come clean about its centrifuge program to enrich uranium as well as past efforts to extract plutonium as potential nuclear fuel. The spokesman insisted that Washington and the EU-3, namely France, Germany and Britain, "remain united in the view that only a full cessation and dismantling of Iran's sensitive nuclear fuel cycle pursuits can provide the kind of confidence we're looking for that Iran has abandoned its nuclear weapons program." The latest round of EU-Iran talks ended in Vienna last week with no signs of movement. The two sides decided to continue the talks in coming days. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 2 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Says Iran Nuclear Tour a Media Stunt From the Associated Press [UP] Wednesday March 30, 2005 11:16 PM By WILLIAM C. MANN Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Iran is showboating for the media rather than doing what is necessary to end a nuclear standoff with the United States and Europe, a State Department spokesman said Wednesday. It was a ``staged media event'' that fell far short of genuine openness about a nuclear program, which the United States suspects is dedicated to making weapons, Adam Ereli said. Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, led the tour on Wednesday of the underground facility at Natanz. Ereli said the Iranians should be answering questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency about what the work going on at Natanz and elsewhere in the country. ``If Iran were really serious about allaying the concerns of the international community, they would stop denying IAEA full and unrestricted access to suspicious sites like the Parchin high-explosive facility,'' he said at a department briefing. ``They would tell the truth about their Lavasan facility before they bulldozed it to the ground. They would talk openly or answer openly questions about past plutonium separation experiments,'' he said. The United States says Iran may be testing high-explosive components for nuclear weapons, using an inert core of depleted uranium at Parchin as a dry run for a bomb that would use fissile material. Lavasan is a suburb north of Tehran, Iran's capital, where outside experts say equipment was shipped to a suspected nuclear plant that could be put to either military or civilian use. Iran insists its nuclear program is for generation of electricity only. During the tour of the Natanz site, journalists were denied access to the plant's string of centrifuges, the core of the process of enriching radioactive material, which can produce fuel for either power generation or weapons. Only recently has President Bush agreed to give inspections by U.N. experts a chance. A lack of results, however, could mean efforts to pass legislation in the U.N. Security Council to punish Iran. Britain, France and Germany are in talks with the Iranians in hopes of persuading Tehran to scrap its uranium enrichment program. ``We're on the same page with the Europeans in terms of where we want these talks to lead, and what we hope these talks will achieve,'' Ereli said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 3 More bad news for Exelon: "Peach Report Card"; Hope Creek shuts Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 14:38:06 -0800 EVENS , The York Dispatch March 30, 2005 Attendees seemed more in the dark last night after a 90-minute session aimed at shedding light on Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station's performance last year. Exelon and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials didn't exactly wow the crowd of about 40 with a slide show highlighting corporate progress, touting a 25 percent reduction in radioactive exposure to employees and diagramming federal "matrixes" and "cornerstone" safety guidelines. One attendee asked why the commission couldn't just grade performances A to F, drop bureaucraticese and spell out problems that affect the public. The bottom line: The NRC found that Peach Bottom improved in 2004 with two shutdowns of its Unit 2 reactor compared to three in 2003. Five shutdowns in Unit 2 over two years is a lot when compared to the national average of less than one shutdown annually at the country's 103 commercial plants, said Eric Epstein of Three Mile Island Alert, a Harrisburg-based nonprofit citizens' organization. The NRC said the shutdowns, called "scrams," were low-level safety risks but noteworthy nonetheless. Want better procedures: Federal officials also warned the plant, operated by Exelon Corp., that its procedure in finding and reporting causes for shutdowns needs improvement. "They said our focus regarding inspections was too narrow," said Robert Braun, Exelon's site vice president at Peach Bottom. "We'll apply what they told us, which was to broaden our investigation." Braun said that the shutdowns pose no threat to the public but only affect the company's bottom line. He further touted adherence to safety guidelines saying the plant was taking a "proactive approach." That tack, he said, would help plant workers discover problems such as the cause of a Unit 2 shutdown in July 2003. A piece of broken fan belt that had been lost "a number of years ago" entered a cooling system and caused the shutdown. The debris wasn't found when the belt broke, but "years later it came back to haunt the plant," Braun said. "We continue to improve our existing processes," he added. Epstein questions numbers: Epstein asked corporate and federal officials how many workers were employed at Peach Bottom, whether they had decreased in the past five years and if so, would that affect plant performance and the reduction in radiation exposure. NRC Chief of Projects Branch 4 Mohamed Shanbaky said the plant was in federal compliance with the number of employees needed for high-profile jobs such as reactor operators. Shanbaky further said the NRC doesn't focus on the overall number of employees but rather whether federal rules are obeyed and safety regulations adhered to. "This meeting was the NRC's assessment for 2004," said April Schlipp, Exelon spokeswoman, who added that there have been no staffing changes since the 2003 assessment. "We've been able to improve for the past two years; that's really the most relevant here." Beth Birchall, a Lancaster County resident, sat in the back of the Peach Bottom Inn banquet room shaking her head. "They seemed prepared," she said. "But there wasn't a lot of information." The NRC has scheduled quarterly, team and regional inspections of the plant in 2005. -- Reach Kathy Stevens at 505-5437 or kstevens@yorkdispatch.com . AP New Jersey: Another radioactive steam leak shuts down Hope Creek plant Newsday.com Tuesday, Mar 29, 2005, 11:22 PM EST NEW YORK NOW: By LINDA A. JOHNSON Associated Press Writer TRENTON, N.J. -- Operators of the Hope Creek nuclear power plant are investigating why a weld inside a containment building failed, causing a radioactive steam leak that led to the problem-plagued plant's latest shutdown. The slow leak began sometime in February, just weeks after the nuclear reactor went back online Jan. 26. That followed a 3{-month shutdown due to a more-serious steam leak elsewhere in the plant, Chic Cannon, spokesman for plant operator PSEG Nuclear, said Tuesday. The latest problem caused the plant to be shut down Sunday night, but could be diagnosed and fixed, and the plant restarted, within a few weeks, Cannon said. "This was a very slight leak," he said. "It's a large industrial facility, so you're going to have things like this." Cannon said no radioactivity was released outside the plant and no workers were harmed in either of the steam leaks, which he said were unrelated. The latest leak was noticed in February inside the containment building, and the leak's volume had been increasing slowly to a maximum of about three quarts of water per minute. Late Sunday night, plant workers cut the reactor back to 5 percent power, entered the primary containment building in protective suits and determined steam was leaking from a short, rarely used pipe welded at right angles to another pipe going to the reactor coolant system, Cannon said. Workers later removed insulation around the pipe joint and began trying to determine what caused the weld's flaw. Cannon said the pipes were installed at least 20 years ago, before the plant came online in 1986. He said workers now are checking other pipe welds with similar configurations. The Hope Creek plant is one of three nuclear reactors, along with Salem 1 and 2, operated by PSEG Nuclear at a complex in Lower Alloways Creek Township in Salem County along the Delaware River. One of the nation's largest nuclear generating stations, the plants together provide electricity to more than half of PSEG's 2 million New Jersey customers. Diane Screnci, spokeswoman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the agency last August put all three plants under additional oversight indefinitely, requiring more frequent and more stringent inspections. "We expect the plants to find and fix problems" promptly, she said. "Our inspections the past few years have noted issues with that." NRC reports on the plants over the past year cite "numerous indications of weaknesses in corrective actions and management efforts to establish an environment where employees are consistently willing to raise safety concerns." "We found examples of unresolved conflict and poor communication between management and staff, as well as underlying staff and management frustration with poor equipment reliability," state the reports. Watchdog group Unplug Salem has said all three plants should be shut down, arguing that repeated, relatively small problems indicate inadequate maintenance. The group wants a vibrating recirculation pump at Hope Creek replaced as soon as possible, but NRC has agreed to let PSEG wait until the plant's next refueling, scheduled for spring 2006. 3 Cannon and Screnci both said the current shutdown won't affect those plans. "We feel this leak is probably caused by the vibrations from the circulation combo," Unplug Salem director Norm Cohen said. "If I was running the corporation, I would want to replace the shaft now and not risk having an accident." Last Thursday, Salem 1 reported a piping system leak that exceeded NRC limits. It allowed a small amount of water from the reactor coolant system to cross over a valve that wasn't tightly closed and into an adjoining pipe. That was quickly fixed by tightening the valve, Cannon said. Newark-based Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. is merging with Chicago-based Exelon Corp., which owns the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Ocean County and co-owns the Salem I and II plants with PSEG. The merger would make the new company the biggest U.S. operator of nuclear power plants. 4 ***************************************************************** 4 [CMEP] Groups Oppose Big Energy Buy-out Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 18:01:47 -0600 (CST) [This press release was issued on Monday.] *** P R E S S R E L E A S E *** March 28, 2005 Consumer Groups Move to Intervene in Exelon's Proposed Buy-Out of PSEG Call on NJBPU and FERC to Decide in the Public Interest TRENTON, NJ -- Today, New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG), NJ Citizen Action and Public Citizen -- a coalition of consumer advocacy organizations -- announced their submission of intervention filings in Chicago-based Exelon's proposed buyout of Newark-based Public Service and Gas (PSEG). After reviewing Exelon's filing, the groups fear the buy-out will diminish energy competition further in the region and substantially limit state regulatory authority, leading to higher rates and worse reliability and safety. The consumer groups called on state regulators to commit to using a 'positive benefit' standard in making its decision on whether or not to approve the proposed acquisition. They also want a BPU commitment to holding public hearing statewide to allow ratepayers to voice their concerns. "New Jersey ratepayers should not be for sale to the highest bidder. We're counting on the NJBPU to reject this buy-out request if no consumer benefits can be demonstrated," said Suzanne Leta, NJPIRG Energy Associate. PSEG is New Jersey's last state-based energy company. The BPU has already allowed out-of-state energy companies -- FirstEnergy, PEPCO and Consolidated Edison -- to buy out the rest of the state's energy market. The Exelon buy-out of PSEG is even riskier to ratepayers than in the past because it will create the largest, most powerful energy company in the nation. If the acquisition is approved, Exelon will own additional generating plants, primarily in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Exelon would also have the largest power marketing business in the United States. This concentration of generating assets and marketing power within the regional wholesale electricity market will lead to higher prices across the board for consumers. And, acquisition of PSEG by out-of-state holding company will severely limit the ability of New Jersey regulators to protect consumers. Ratepayers will also bear the costs associated with the proposed buy-out. According to PSEG's most recent 10-K annual report filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), PSEG and Exelon expect to incur $70 million in transaction fees. In addition to these fees, the report estimates that integration costs are approximately $700 million over a period of four years, with approximately $400 million being incurred in the first year. "Exelon's buy-out bid offers no evidence that this merger is in the public's interest," said Ev Liebman, NJCA Program Director. "Synergies for CEO's do not translate into positive benefits for the millions of ratepayers who could end up footing the bill," she added. The groups also noted that FERC may have violated federal open government laws when it held a series of private meetings with top Exelon and PSEG executives just prior to the companies' filing for permission to merge. The groups ask that FERC commissioners and company executives provide sworn statements for the public record, detailing what was discussed during the secret meetings. "Consumer groups call on FERC to block the Exelon-PSEG merger because it will result in higher prices and poorer service," said Tyson Slocum, research director of Public Citizen's energy program. "Deregulated energy markets are already uncompetitive. This merger will make a bad situation even worse for consumers." NJPIRG, Public Citizen, and NJ Citizen Action documented, among other things, that: Exelon's study of how the proposed buyout will effect competition is fatally flawed because it relies on an analyst hired by the company. This reliance on industry-supplied analysts stands in stark contrast to the independent investigations provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. The regional electricity grid is already uncompetitive, so the buyout is likely to result in increased market power, allowing the new company to price-gouge consumers. Exelon's mitigation plan is inadequate because it ignores their energy trading activities. As we have seen with recently released Enron tapes, companies can just as easily control power prices through energy trading than by actually owning power plants. Exelon's reliability record is poor compared to that of PSEG, and the track record of recent multi-state mergers shows that electric reliability suffers. Ratepayers will bear the costs associated with the acquisition. There is no guarantee that any savings will go to ratepayers. No short-term fix, such as a rate freeze or rate credit will solve the long-term, systemic problems inherent in this buyout. The BPU's regulatory authority over PSEG would be effectively dismantled. PSEG, currently exempt from federal regulations because it is state-based, will instead be regulated by the federal Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUCHA). As a result, the NJBPU, a state agency most understanding of the needs of New Jersey residents, will loose its regulatory oversight of PSEG to a federal agency. Exelon has consistently put profits before safety in their nuclear plant operations. If the buyout is approved, Exelon will have full ownership and control over additional plants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, putting the safety and security of millions of nearby residents at risk. The BPU and FERC have regulatory jurisdiction to block the proposed buy-out on the grounds that it would be of no benefit to the public. Several states have rejected similar energy acquisition proposals; earlier this month, the Oregon Public Utility Commission unanimously denied an application by Texas Pacific Group to buy Portland General Electric and in December, the Arizona Corporation Commission rejected a proposed takeover of Tucson Electric by an out-of-state consortium. If either the BPU or FERC decides Exelon's proposal is not in the public interest, the buyout will be effectively stonewalled. "While shareholders and corporate executives exercise stock options, it's not clear that ratepayers will get anything out of this deal except vulnerability to higher electricity bills, decreased quality of service, and less protection from New Jersey regulators. When it comes to meeting the needs of New Jersey's consumers, bigger has nothing to do with being better. BPU President Jeanne Fox and our federal officials should put the interests of New Jersey residents first when deciding whether or not to approve Exelon's proposal," concluded Leta. To read joint comments on the proposed Exelon-PSEG merger, go to this URL: http://www.citizen.org/documents/Exelon-PSEG.pdf ### NJPIRG is a statewide, non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organization with 25,000 citizen members. For the past thirty-three years, NJPIRG has advocated for clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy for New Jersey's consumers. New Jersey Citizen Action is the state's largest independent citizen watchdog coalition representing 60,000 family members and more than 100 affiliated labor, tenant, senior citizen, faith-based, environmental, and community organizations. Public Citizen is a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer rights organization based in Washington, DCwith 17,034 individual members in Illinois, New Jerseyand Pennsylvania. Public Citizen's Energy Program does extensive work at the federal and state levels to promote energy policies that best protect consumers. ********** To SUBSCRIBE to the CMEP ListServ, visit https://www.citizen.org/email/enteremail.cfm If you would like to be removed from the CMEP ListServ, send an email to listserv@listserver.citizen.org with the words "unsubscribe CMEP" in the message. Questions about the CMEP ListServ can be directed to CMEP-request@LISTSERVER.CITIZEN.ORG. To learn more about this and other Public Citizen Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program campaigns, visit our website at http://www.citizen.org/cmep/ -Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program ***************************************************************** 5 [NYTr] Ukraine Thanks Cuba for Post-Chernobyl Medical Help Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:44:44 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Agencia Cubana de Noticias (AIN) http://www.ain.cubaweb.cu Ukraine Thanks Cuba for Post-Chernobyl Medical Assistance Havana, March 30 (AIN) Since the Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred in 1986, more than 18,000 child-victims have been provided assistance in Cuba, said the Ukraine's health minister in expressing sincere thanks to President Fidel Castro and the Cuban people. At a celebration marking the 15th anniversary of the medical assistance program serving those affected youth, Nykola Efremovish Polischuk pointed out that Cuba was one of the few countries which offered aid. During the event at Havana's National Theater on Tuesday, a traditional Ukrainian jewel representing friendship was awarded to the Cuban president by that European country's representatives, who also gave Cuban Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer an award in recognition of the assistance offered by the island to the young Chernobyl victims. Balaguer pointed out that solidarity with the children makes the Cuban people more internationalist and human, especially the island's Jose Marti Childrens Organization which donated one of the finest resort facilities on the island: Tarara, located east of Havana. The Cuban health minister added that - despite the collapse of the socialist community, Washington's blockade and the difficult economic situation confronting the island - Cuba has persevered with this humane initiative. Cuban President Fidel Castro welcomed the first groups of Ukrainian children in 1990. These kids have benefited from the island's scientific advances, such as vaccines against hepatitis B, transference factor, recombinant interferon, and other medications. Under this health program, 329 patients with haematological diseases and 123 with leukemia were treated, as well as six bone marrow transplants, two kidney transplants and fourteen cardiovascular surgeries. The program has also included general medical attention and nursing, dentistry, psychological counseling and comprehensive rehabilitation. The Chernobyl catastrophe, brought on by the explosion of a nuclear power plant, killed between 8,000 to 10,000 people, while another 500,000 are susceptible to various cancers over the next ten years, many of them living far from the site of the accident. * Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 6 NRC: NRC Finds Emergency Plan Violation at Perry Nuclear Plant to Be of Low to Moderate Safety Significance News Release - Region III - 2005-01 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region III No. III-05-010 March 30, 2005 CONTACT: Jan Strasma (630) 829-9663 Viktoria Mitlyng (630) 829-9662 E-mail: opa3@nrc.gov [opa3@nrc.gov] The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has issued its final determination that an emergency plan violation on July 20, 2004, at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant was of low to moderate safety significance. The plant, operated by FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company, is in Perry, Ohio. NRC inspectors found that the Perry plant staff did not perform an emergency radiation dose assessment within 15 minutes as required when a radiation monitor in the plants ventilation system indicated an increased level of airborne radioactivity. Other plant radiation monitors were stable and showed normal levels of radioactivity. The plant staff subsequently determined that the elevated level reported by the ventilation system monitor was erroneous, caused by an equipment malfunction. Because the malfunction was not immediately detected, the plant staff appropriately declared an Alert under its emergency plan. This is the second of four emergency classifications in increasing severity. The Perry emergency plan requires that the staff perform a computer-based radiation dose assessment within 15 minutes in order to determine if a higher emergency classification is necessary. The dose assessment was not performed for 2 hours and 40 minutes. The NRC staff has determined that the violation of the plants emergency plan procedures constitutes a white finding, one of low to moderate safety significance. The NRC has a color-coded system for assessing safety significance, ranging from green for findings of very low safety significance through white, yellow, and red. We recognize that the actual safety significance of this event was low since it was caused by a faulty radiation monitor and not by an actual increase in radiation level, said James Caldwell, NRC Regional Administrator. However, following emergency procedures is important to safety. Determining the correct emergency classification assures that the plant has the staff and resources ready to respond to a problem. White findings normally result in additional NRC inspections and meetings with the utility. Based on the white finding, the NRC issued a Notice of Violation to FirstEnergy for its failure to follow emergency plan procedures. The company is required to respond to the Notice of Violation within 30 days, describing its corrective actions and steps it is taking to prevent a recurrence of the violation. The letter notifying FirstEnergy of the white finding will be available from the NRCs Region III Office of Public Affairs or in the NRCs online document library at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/web-based.html use accession number ML050890076 to locate the document. Last revised Wednesday, March 30, 2005 ***************************************************************** 7 NRC: NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards to Meet April 7-9 in Rockville, Maryland News Release - 2005-05 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 05-057 March 30, 2005 The Nuclear Regulatory Commissions Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards will hold a public meeting April 7-9 in Rockville, Md., where, among other items, members will meet with the NRC Commissioners to discuss several regulatory and technical issues. Committee members will also discuss the final safety evaluation report on the license renewal application for the Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Plant in Alabama, the NRCs program for analyzing significant events and standardized models for analyzing plant risk. The meeting will run from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday. All sessions will be held in Room T-2B3 of the agencys Two White Flint North building at 11545 Rockville Pike, except the meeting with the NRC Commissioners, which will take place from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Thursday in the Commissioners Conference Room in One White Flint North. A complete agenda is available on the NRCs Web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/acrs/agenda/2005/. Last revised Wednesday, March 30, 2005 ***************************************************************** 8 Daily Yomiuri: Govt 'partly to blame' for fatal N-accident The Yomiuri Shimbun An accident investigation committee of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Wednesday the government was partly responsible for a fatal accident at Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in Mihamacho, Fukui Prefecture, in August. The committee, chaired by Yasuhide Asada, an engineering adviser of the Thermal and Nuclear Power Engineering Society, said in the final report, "One of the causes was that the government had left standards governing pipe wall thickness up to each electric power company." The final report was submitted Wednesday to Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Shoichi Nakagawa. The agency is affiliated with the ministry. The accident at the Kansai Electric Power Co. plant occurred on Aug. 9, when a pipe in the secondary cooling water circulation system of the No. 3 reactor burst. Superheated steam erupted from the ruptured pipe. Although the steam was not radioactive, five workers performing a routine safety check died of burns and six others were injured in the incident. Separately from the committee, the Fukui prefectural police are investigating the accident and may bring charges of professional negligence resulting in death and injury. The committee's interim report released in September did not contain any hint of government responsibility. The final report pointed out that U.S. authorities had strengthened regulations on water circulation pipes--overriding objections from power companies-- after a similar steam blowout in 1986 at Surry Nuclear Station in Virginia. "Compared with the (U.S.) case, responses in Japan leave much to be regretted," the final report said, urging that regulations on nuclear power plants be improved. The report added, "It is also important to take measures centering on software, such as organizational management and maintenance systems," as regulations had placed disproportionate emphasis on hardware, including checks on safety in equipment design. The report urged that safety regulations be thoroughly complied with all nuclear power-related companies, as safety regulations on software have been toughened in the wake of a criticality incident in 1999 and Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s concealment of troubles that surfaced in 2002. The final report concluded the direct cause of the accident was the failure to check the thickness of the pipe wall--which had been reduced by corrosion and erosion--over the years, because the ruptured part was not included in a maintenance check list. The check list was drawn up by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. in 1990. Though the rupture occurred in a section of pipe where a reduction in the wall thickness would naturally occur, both KEPCO and MHI failed to properly reevaluate the check list. Maintenance of the water circulation pipes was performed by MHI until 1996 and taken over by Osaka-based Nihon Arm Co., a KEPCO subsidiary. The agency initially decided not to pursue Nihon Arm's responsibility, saying the company had just followed instructions from KEPCO. But the Nuclear Safety Commission pointed out that Nihon Arm's failure to correctly recognize the problem was also one of the causes of the accident. Reflecting this, the final report said, "Nihon Arm's system to guarantee the quality of its service also had a point to be improved." Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 9 News Journal: Leaky pipe idles Hope Creek reactor www.delawareonline.com By MIKE CHALMERS / The News Journal 03/30/2005 The Hope Creek nuclear plant has been shut down while workers search for the cause of a leaky pipe that has been releasing a small but growing amount of radioactive steam since February, officials said Tuesday. The steam did not escape the 1,100-megawatt reactor system or pose a danger to workers at Hope Creek, said Chic Cannon, spokesman for PSEG Nuclear, which owns the plant. It is one of three nuclear plants on Artificial Island in the Delaware River opposite Augustine Beach. Officials have not determined whether the leaky pipe is related to the chronic vibration of a nearby water pump, which has been the subject of intense scrutiny by federal regulators and critics recently. Inspectors from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission are monitoring the search, spokeswoman Diane Screnci said. "What you want to know is why you had a leak here," Screnci said. "They need to determine what the root cause of this is." The problem could be diagnosed and fixed, and the plant restarted, within a few weeks, Cannon said. Cannon said the utility had been tracking the water leak since February. Federal rules require the plant to allow unidentified leakage of no more than 5 gallons of water a minute, he said. Workers had measured the leak at a half gallon to almost three quarts a minute, he said. "Even though it's slight, it's increasing," Cannon said. Over the weekend, officials decided to reduce the plant's power output to just 5 percent of its capacity so workers could search for the leak in the plant's dry well, which is just outside the nuclear reactor, he said. There, workers found steam escaping from a broken weld in a seldom-used pipe that is about a foot long and about 4 inches in diameter. The pipe is connected to a 28-inch-diameter pipe that is part of the plant's cooling system, he said. Cannon said the pipes were installed at least 20 years ago, before the plant came on line in 1986. The larger pipe is connected several feet away to the vibrating pump. The 20-foot-high pump, capable of moving more than 100 million pounds of radioactive water an hour, has a shaft that vibrates when the plant is running at full capacity. Plant critics worry the pump could fail and cause a massive leak of cooling water. PSEG Nuclear officials insist the pump is safe and will operate safely until the plant is shut down for a complete refueling and overhaul, set for mid-2006. The plant shut down in October after an accident, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission earlier this year allowed it to restart while vibration levels are monitored. "We don't know if it's related to the pump vibrations in any way," Cannon said. "We have to wait for the root-cause analysis to figure that out." Once workers determine why the pipe began leaking, they will repair it and examine similar pipes throughout the plant to see if the problem exists elsewhere, Cannon said. They will also look for ways to prevent future leaks, he said. The three plants - Hope Creek, Salem I and Salem II - provide electricity to more than half of PSEG's 2 million New Jersey customers. Contact Mike Chalmers at 324-2790 or mchalmers@delawareonline.com. [mchalmers@delawareonline.com] ***************************************************************** 10 HSE: Statement of incidents at Nuclear Installations HSE Press Release: E041:05 24 March 2005 A statement on incidents at nuclear installations in Britain which meet Ministerial reporting criteria is reported to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Secretary of State for Scotland and is published every quarter by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). For the period 1 October 31 December 2004 there were no incidents at any of the nuclear licensed installations that met the reporting criteria. Notes to Editors 1. The arrangements for reporting nuclear incidents were announced to Parliament by the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Energy on 30 April 1987 (Hansard col. 203-204). A minor modification to arrangements for reporting incidents was announced in HSE press notice E108:93 of 30 June 1993. 2. Normally each incident mentioned in HSE's Quarterly Incident Statements will already have been made public by the licensee or site operator either through a press statement or by inclusion in the newsletter for the site concerned. Statement of Nuclear Incidents at Nuclear Installations: Fourth Quarter 2004 - single copies of each free from the Information Centre, Nuclear Safety Directorate, HSE, Room 004, St Peters House, Stanley Precinct, Bootle L20 3LZ. Public enquiries : Nuclear Safety Directorate Information Centre 0151 951 4103 Press Enquiries : Journalists only : Mark Wheeler 020 7717 6905 ***************************************************************** 11 ITAR-TASS: Power reactor stopped for maintenance jobs at Zheleznogorsk 30.03.2005, 14.48 KRANSOYARSK, March 30 (Itar-Tass) - Reactor specialists of the Zheleznogorsk Mining and Chemistry Complex, which is near Krasnoyarsk, stopped its ADE-2 reactor on Wednesday “to recharge it with nuclear fuel and to carry out some jobs to enhance the dependability and safety of this underground atomic station”, Itar-Tass was explained at the complex. “The stopping of the ADE-2 power reactor proceeded normally and without any emergencies,” complex officials noted. The last ADE-2 reactor has been used for the past forty years as an underground atomic station and is the main source of heat and electricity for the town of Zheleznogorsk, which has a population of one hundred thousand people. Heat will be supplied to the town by means of the complex’s boilers during the period of preventive maintenance. Reactor experts of the complex are doing all the jobs linked with the stopping of the reactor and recharging it with nuclear fuel, are rendering all the necessary technical services. Specialists are planning to get the reactor running at full capacity again within ten days from now. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 12 monticello times: Xcel, NMC file for license renewal of nuclear plant [http://www.monticellotimes.com] Wednesday, March 30, 2005 Eric O'Link News Editor Nuclear Management Company, at the direction of Xcel Energy, officially submitted an application Thursday to extend the operating license of Monticello’s nuclear power plant. The application, filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), requests renewal of Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant’s operating license. The current 40-year license for the 600-megawatt plant expires in 2010. Xcel is requesting a 20-year extension, to 2030. Xcel spokeswoman Mary Sandok told the Times Friday that the filing was originally planned for the end of March. “It’s actually a little bit early,” she said. Minneapolis-based Xcel announced plans in September to seek an operating license extension at the plant. The company has said it believes both of its Minnesota nuclear power plants, Monticello and Prairie Island in Red Wing, are vital to a cost-effective, low-emissions future for electricity generation in Minnesota. Xcel plans to file for license renewal at Prairie Island for a later date. The licenses for that plant’s two reactors expire in 2013 and 2014. Hudson-based Nuclear Management Company operates both plants for Xcel. Sandok said the license renewal application is a 2,000-page document. It is available for download from Xcel’s Web site, www.xcelenergy.com. “It includes some analyses and reviews that are necessary to demonstrate that the plant can be operated safely for another 20 years,” she said. The NRC will review the application, Sandok said, a process expected to take about 20 months and include several public meetings. The first, an overview meeting, is scheduled for late April. “The NRC also will be doing site audits and inspections over the next 12-15 months,” Sandok said. “It’s expected that there will be a decision by 2007.” In a separate process from the license renewal application, Xcel filed a request with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission in January for additional spent fuel storage on the plant site. The plant’s refueling pool adjacent to the reactor is nearly filled with spent fuel rods. Whether or not the plant’s operating license is extended to 2030, Xcel has said that dry cask storage in an onsite concrete bunker will be a necessity at the plant. A similar storage facility has been in use at Prairie Island since 1995. A public meeting is scheduled in Monticello Monday regarding the spent fuel storage. The Minnesota Environmental Quality Board will prepare an environmental impact statement on the project and is seeking public comment on its draft scoping document for environmental review. The Environmental Quality Board will host an open house Monday in the Monticello Community Center beginning at 2 p.m. That open house will include an information meeting at 7 p.m. by Xcel Energy and board staff. A local representative of the NRC is also scheduled to be present. The meeting will be followed by a period for open public comment. The period for public comment on the draft scoping document ends April 13. Xcel expects a final decision on the dry cask storage in 2006. Copyright 2005, Monticello Times ***************************************************************** 13 Vermont Guardian: NRC recalled to Montpelier to explain VY safety assessment By Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian Posted March 30, 2005 MONTPELIER Vermonts utility watchdog has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to return to Montpelier to again explain how a federal inspection of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant meets the states requirements for approval of a 20 percent power increase. In a March 18 letter to NRC Chairman Nils Diaz, Vermont's quasi-judicial Public Service Board stated: In order to better understand the findings made by the NRC in its review of Vermont Yankees uprate, and also the status of the NRCs review of that petition, the board respectfully requests a meeting with the NRC. NRC Region I spokeswoman Diane Screnci said the agency has received the boards letter and will consider the request. The letter, signed by Public Service Board members David Coen and John Burke and outgoing chairman Michael Dworkin, said the Department of Public Service has taken the same position, and recently suggested that we ask the NRC to come to Vermont for another conference in this docket similar to one that occurred on June 28, 2004. That was the date of a meeting between Vermont officials and a trio of high-level NRC officials who came to Montpelier to detail the agencys new engineering review program, which was piloted at Vermont Yankee two months later. In its March 2004 conditional approval of the Vermont Yankee request, the Public Service Board called for an independent engineering assessment to verify that the 32-year-old reactor could sustain the additional operational stress of an uprate. The boards demand came in the wake of a series of problems at the Vernon reactor, including cracks in the steam dryer, missing pieces of highly radioactive fuel rods, and a fire on the electrical side of the plant. The NRC assessment would be independent in the same sense as the independent safety assessment at Maine Yankee, i.e., it should be performed by experts independent of any recent or significant regulatory oversight responsibility related to Vermont Yankee, the board wrote to the NRC in March 2004. The board also asked the NRC to perform for a vertical slice review of two safety-related systems and two non-safety systems affected by the uprate, a review the board estimated would take four experts about four weeks to perform. In August and September, the NRC dispatched three NRC staff engineers and two independent contractors, who spent 900 man hours examining 45 components of the reactor. In their report, released in December, the team said they found eight problems of low safety significance. Overall, we found that all components were operable, and would have been operable under power uprate conditions as well, NRC inspection team leader Jeff Jacobson stated at a Dec. 16 public meeting in Brattleboro. Critics countered that eight problems constitutes almost a 20 percent failure rate, and said a more in-depth study would have revealed even more problems. The inspection reviewed less than 1 percent of the plants safety-significant components, said the New England Coalition, the Brattleboro-based citizens group that has been granted intervenor status in the uprate case before both the state and the NRC, which must also approve the application. Common sense would indicate that if examination of 1 percent of the plant yields eight violations, examination of the other 99 percent would uncover hundreds of others. NRC officials at the December meeting said they believed the states safety inspection criteria had been met. However, the states nuclear engineer, William Sherman, reminded them that the state docket remained open. Wednesday, Mar. 30, 2005 ©2004-2005 Vermont Guardian | info@vermontguardian.com [info@vermontguardian.com] Visit us: www.vermontguardian.com ***************************************************************** 14 PRN: Beaver Valley Power Station Meets Objectives in NRC Annual Performance Assessment PR Newswire [http://www.prnewswire.com/] [http://www.firstenergycorp.com] March 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) said today that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), in its annual assessment of the Beaver Valley Power Station, found that the Shippingport, Pa., plant operated safely and fully met all of the NRC's performance objectives for 2004. Members of the NRC discussed the station's performance at a public meeting on Wednesday, March 30, at the plant. During the 12-month period ending December 31, 2004, Beaver Valley was rated "green" on all indicators used by the NRC to measure performance in such areas as nuclear and industrial safety, emergency preparedness, and plant operation. Green is the highest of four color-coded safety ratings, followed by white, yellow, and red. During the period of time covered in the assessment: - Beaver Valley personnel were in the midst of working more than 2 million hours without a lost-time injury. - Unit 2 operated safely and reliably during a record run of more than 530 consecutive days on-line, with an availability factor of 100 percent. - Unit 1 completed a safe and successful refueling that included an inspection of the reactor vessel head and under-vessel, both of which were found to be in good condition. Unit 1 was available 92.4 percent of the time, including the time out for refueling. The record run of Unit 2 will end with its scheduled refueling that begins in early April. In addition to replacing fuel, plant personnel will enhance plant equipment and inspect the reactor vessel head and under-vessel. "We view the NRC's assessment as further recognition for the improvements we continue to make at Beaver Valley and our emphasis on safe, reliable operation," said Bill Pearce, FENOC vice president at Beaver Valley. "I am also proud of the commitment and hard work by our employees and their drive to keep improving performance at the plant." Beaver Valley is owned by the Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp., and is operated by FirstEnergy's FENOC subsidiary. FirstEnergy is a registered public utility holding company. SOURCE FirstEnergy Corp. Web Site: http://www.firstenergycorp.com [http://www.firstenergycorp.com] ***************************************************************** 15 The Telegraph - Calcutta Jamshedpur: Team on nuclear recce Thursday, March 31, 2005 OUR CORRESPONDENT Jamshedpur, March 30: A three-member expert team from Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCI) will visit East Singhbhum on April 11 to ascertain the feasibility of the proposed uranium-based nuclear power generation project in the district. Sources at the East Singhbhum district administration said the team would visit the proposed sites at Ghurabandha, Dhalbhumgarh and the Rakha mines area. The administration has earmarked about 600 acres each at these places for the project. Deputy commissioner Sunil Kumar Burnwal said the objective of the team's visit is to collect the required data for the project to take off. They would primarily seek data on the availability of raw materials and to prepare a feasibility status report of power generation and transmission and transportation of uranium to the nuclear plant. “The NPCI officials were demanding the basic technical data. But the figures were not readily available with the district administration. So, we have asked them to send a team of experts to assess things at the ground level. The district administration would provide them with every possible help while preparing the report,” Burnwal told The Telegraph. Charting out the details of the three-member NPCI team, Burnwal said it would be headed by the executive director of the corporation. Earlier, according to the directives of NPCI, the East Singhbhum district administration had shortlisted the three sites in Ghatshila subdivision for the project and had sent details of these sites to NPCI. Recently, chief minister Arjun Munda had expressed unhappiness with the NPCI, over their apparent lack of interest in setting up power projects in the state even after frequent perusals. Official sources said Munda had even sent a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking his intervention into the matter. In the letter, Munda reminded Singh that the uranium being used in the 12 nuclear power reactors across the country comes from Jadugora in East Singhbhum. NPCI, under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), is controlled directly by the Prime Minister. Burnwal echoed Munda’s sentiments and said East Singhbhum would be a suitable place where the Uranium based nuclear power plant could come up. Besides, he mentioned that the Rs 500 crore proposed project would generate immense employment opportunities in the region. Also, the available radioactive mineral resource could be used effectively and in a cost-saving manner, added Burnwal. Charting out the details about the three member NPCI team, Burnwal said that it would be headed by the executive director of the corporation. Copyright © 2005 The Telegraph. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 CBC Manitoba: Chornobyl kids to visit Manitoba [http://www.cbc.ca/] Last Updated Mar 30 2005 11:55 AM CST [http://www.cbc.ca/news/credit.html] WINNIPEG – Sick children from near the Chornobyl disaster site will still visit Manitoba this summer, despite a threat from the Belarusian president to ban travel by the kids. Alexander Lukashenko objects to his country's children being "contaminated by consumerism" in the west. He reportedly issued a ban in November against sick children leaving Belarus for recuperative holidays. Local officials have been assured the ban applies only during the country's school year. Four children are expected to come to Manitoba in June as part of the Children of Chornobyl project. The children will stay with host families for five weeks. It's a healthy respite from Chornobyl region on the Ukraine-Belarus border, where a nuclear reactor exploded in 1986, contaminating the water and air. Denise Joss, spokesperson for the project, says the visits provide tremendous health benefits. "We've been told and shown research that as little as four weeks away from the contamination helps to improve their immune system levels and it basically gives them the strength and energy and the few extra pounds to get them through the next school year." Joss speculates Lukashenko may feel threatened by programs such as the Children of Chornobyl, because it shows the children what life is like in a democracy. Lukashenko is one of eastern Europe's last hard-line rulers. with files from the Canadian Press Copyright © CBC 2005 ***************************************************************** 17 Moscow Times: Cuba Thanked for Its Chernobyl Care Thursday, March 31, 2005. Issue 3136. Page 5. HAVANA -- Cuba has treated 18,153 child victims of radiation fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, Ukrainian Health Minister Nykola Polischuk said Tuesday. For 15 years, children from Chernobyl have traveled to Cuba to be treated free of charge by Cuban doctors at the beach resort of Tarara, on the eastern outskirts of Havana. The pale, sometimes bald, strikingly beautiful children can often be seen playing joyfully on the beach and splashing in the warm Caribbean. They have been treated for cancers, kidney and thyroid ailments, digestive and nervous disorders, and the loss of hair and skin pigmentation. "At a difficult moment for the people of Ukraine, Cuba was one of the first to extend a helping hand with health care for the children," Polischuk said at a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of the Cuban program. © Copyright 2005 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 18 fence around N America? Straightgoods.com Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 19:50:09 -0600 (CST) from: http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature5.cfm?REF=153 Security vs safety New "security perimeter" will not protect Canada from US domination, depredations. Dateline: Monday, March 28, 2005 by John McMurtry The North American Summit has come and gone, but the deep questions remain unasked. The relentlessly pushed "big idea" of continental integration of economies, defence, and borders under effective US control has been dutifully excluded even in international press conferences with heads of state from the US, Canada and Mexico. Repeated reports and demands for the "big idea" have been rising to crescendo for a year, but who makes the historical connections? Remember the last time a "security perimeter" was big news? It was the name of the wall built around central Quebec City in 2001 for the transnational corporate trade negotiations of the "Summit of the Americas". The cause was to "protect security" of national sovereignties including Canada's. Not much has changed except the size and permanence of the fence being planned -- this time around North America.... whole article at: http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature5.cfm?REF=153 Penney Kome, author and journalist http://penneykome.ca Editor, Straight Goods, http://straightgoods.com ***************************************************************** 19 [NYTr] A Con Job by Pakistan's Pal, George Bush Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 19:59:08 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Ed Pearl L.A. Times - Mar 29, 2005 http://www.latimes.com A Con Job by Pakistan's Pal, George Bush by Robert Scheer Trying to follow the U.S. policy on the proliferation of nuclear weapons is like watching a three-card monte game on a city street corner. Except the stakes are higher. The announcement Friday that the United States is authorizing the sale to Pakistan of F-16 fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear warheads - and thereby escalating the region's nuclear arms race - is the latest example of how the most important issue on the planet is being bungled by the Bush administration. Consider this dizzying series of Bush II-era actions: We have thrown away thousands of Iraqi and American lives and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars after crying wolf on Iraq's long-defunct nuclear weapons program and now expect the world to believe similar scary stories about neighboring Iran. We have cozied up to Pakistan for more than three years as it freely allowed the operation of the most extravagantly irresponsible nuclear arms bazaar the world has ever seen. We sabotaged negotiations with North Korea by telling allies that Pyongyang had supplied nuclear material to Libya, even though the Bush administration knew that the country of origin of those shipments was our "ally," Pakistan. Now, Lockheed Martin has been saved from closing its F-16 production line by the White House decision to lift the arms embargo on Pakistan and allow the sale. The decision, which ends a 1990 embargo put in place by the president's father in reprisal for Pakistan's development of a nuclear arsenal, is especially odd at a time when we are berating European nations for considering lifting their arms embargo on China. The White House says the F-16s are a reward to Islamabad for its help in disrupting terrorism networks, despite a decade of Pakistan's strong support of Al Qaeda and the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Yet Pakistan's ruling generals could be excused for believing that Washington is not seriously concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. How else to explain invading a country - Iraq - that didn't possess nukes, didn't sell nuclear technology to unstable nations and didn't maintain an unholy alliance with Al Qaeda - and then turning around and giving the plum prizes of U.S. military ingenuity to the country that did? Even as the Bush administration continues to confront Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, Islamabad has admitted that Pakistani nuclear weapons trafficker Abdul Qadeer Khan - the father of his nation's nuclear bomb - provided Iran with the centrifuges essential to such a program. Further, new evidence reveals that Khan marketed to Iran and Libya not only the materials needed for a nuclear bomb but the engineering competence to actually make one. Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf insists Khan was running his nuclear smuggling operation under the radar of the military government that brought Musharraf to power. And although this is a highly implausible claim given the reach of the military's power and the scope of the operation, the White House has found it convenient to buy it hook, line and sinker - all the better to remarket Pakistan to the American people as a war-on-terrorism ally. While Pakistan was receiving such heaping helpings of benefit of the doubt, North Korea became the Bush administration's scapegoat for the rapid nuclear proliferation happening on its watch, according to the Washington Post. "In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya," wrote the Post. "But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction." Sources told the paper that "Pakistan's role as both the buyer and the seller [of uranium hexafluoride] was concealed to cover up the part played by Washington's partner." One result of the United States shortsightedly pulling this fast one has been the collapse of multilateral nonproliferation talks with Pyongyang. Yet in the long term, the cost is much greater: a dramatic erosion of trust in U.S. statements on nuclear proliferation. >From Iraq to Iran, North Korea to Pakistan, the Bush administration has pulled so many con jobs that it is difficult for anybody to take it seriously. Unfortunately, though, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is as serious as it gets. * Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 20 [NYTr] We can't afford to be indifferent to nuclear expansion Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 19:58:35 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit The Irish Times, Wed, Mar 30, 05 http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2005/0330/686308727OPCARTER.html We can't afford to be indifferent to nuclear expansion The United States is the major culprit in the erosion of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. by Jimmy Carter Renewal talks for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are scheduled for May, yet the United States and other nuclear powers seem indifferent to its fate. This is remarkable, considering the addition of Iran and North Korea as states that either possess or seek nuclear weapons programmes. A recent United Nations report warned starkly: "We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation." A group of "middle states" has a simple goal: "To exert leverage on the nuclear powers to take some minimum steps to save the non-proliferation treaty in 2005."Last year this coalition of nuclear-capable states - including Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and eight Nato members - voted for a new agenda resolution calling for implementing NPT commitments already made. Tragically, the United States, Britain and France voted against this resolution. So far the preparatory committee for the forthcoming NPT talks has failed even to achieve an agenda because of the deep divisions between nuclear powers that refuse to meet their own disarmament commitments and the non-nuclear movement, whose demands include honouring these pledges and considering the Israeli arsenal. Until recently all American presidents since Dwight Eisenhower had striven to restrict and reduce nuclear arsenals, some more than others. So far as I know, there are no present efforts by any of the nuclear powers to accomplish these crucial goals. The United States is the major culprit in this erosion of the NPT. While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including anti-ballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating "bunker buster" and perhaps some new "small" bombs. They also have abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. Some corrective actions are obvious: The United States [the only country ever to use nuclear weapons] needs to address remaining nuclear issues with Russia, demanding the same standards of transparency and verification of past arms control agreements and dismantling and disposal of decommissioned weapons. With massive arsenals still on hair-trigger alert status, a global holocaust is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the Cold War. We could address perhaps the world's greatest proliferation threat by fully securing Russia's stockpiles. While all nuclear weapons states should agree to non-first-use, the United States, as the sole superpower, should take the lead on this issue. Nato needs to de-emphasise the role of its nuclear weapons and consider an end to their deployment in western Europe. Despite its eastward expansion, Nato is keeping the same stockpiles and policies as when the Iron Curtain divided the continent. The comprehensive test ban treaty should be honoured, but the United States is moving in the opposite direction. The administration's 2005 budget refers for the first time to a list of test scenarios, and other nations are waiting to take the same action. The United States should support a fissile materials treaty to prevent the creation and transport of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Curtail US development of the infeasible missile defence shield, which is wasting huge resources, while breaking our commitment to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty without a working substitute. Act on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, an increasing source of instability in that region. Iran has repeatedly hidden its intentions to enrich uranium while claiming that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only. This explanation has been given before, by India, Pakistan and North Korea, and has led to weapons programmes in all three states. Iran must be called to account and held to its promises under the NPT. At the same time, we fail to acknowledge how Israel's nuclear status entices Iran, Syria, Egypt and other states to join the community of nuclear weapons states. Additional Reporting : Los Angeles Times, Washington Post ) The Irish Times ) Los Angeles Times * Search the NYTr Archives at: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ To subscribe or unsubscribe or change your settings via the web, visit: http://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 21 San Luis Obispo Tribune: What's the NRC hiding? | 03/30/2005 | Editorial Opinion of The Tribune The Tribune We noted a couple weeks ago in an editorial on open government that unwarranted secrecy only serves to fuel public suspicion. That concern was reinforced this week when we learned that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission slapped secrecy all over a National Academy of Sciences' report that says nuclear plant spent fuel pools are soft targets for terrorists. How can you not wonder why the government didn't want us to know about that report? Did the government think that the scientists were simply wrong? Or did the government think we couldn't handle the truth? Was the government afraid that anti-nuke protesters would now seem more credible? We don't know because the report was kept under wraps. The NRC's dismal record for releasing information casts continued suspicion on nuclear power. Suspicion that, on the whole, we believe is unwarranted, particularly when it comes to the Diablo plant. Why? Diablo is one of the most recent plants to come online and has the reputation of being one of the best built in the nation. Its safety record over the years is virtually unblemished. Now, as to the substance of the scientists' concerns, let's review the situation: Yucca Mountain, the proposed Nevada repository for nationwide nuclear waste, is looking more and more like a multibillion-dollar boondoggle that may never come online. That means that nuclear plants such as Diablo will be storing radioactive spent fuel onsite longer than originally anticipated -- perhaps indefinitely. Toward that end, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to put additional racks in Diablo's spent fuel pools until its dry cask storage operation gets underway in 2007. As part of its design, Diablo's spent pools are below ground and lined with concrete and steel, unlike some older nuke plants that have pools above ground. This means that it would be more difficult to empty Diablo's spent fuel pool water and thus create a radiation-laced fire. Nonetheless, the National Academy of Sciences sees storage pools as targets and said so in a report it sent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last summer. It said public safety would be better served by having spent fuel transferred out of pools and into dry casks as soon as possible. Is Diablo lumped into the group of nuclear plants that should transfer spent fuel from pool to cask as soon as possible? We don't know. Neither the original classified report -- which was commissioned after 9/11 by Congress -- nor a stripped-down, declassified version were released to the public because of NRC security concerns. As one of only two California counties to have an operational nuclear power plant, area residents have a stake in Diablo's safety. In that light, we ask: Is the NRC denying the public access to the report because of legitimate security concerns or because it contains embarrassing criticism of the NRC? If it released a detailed rebuttal to Congress in unclassified form, it can't be security concerns, so it must be the latter. Why hide anything? Let the sun shine in. Let the debates over the scientists' positions be full and vigorous. The people generally get to the right solution -- when they have all the information. ***************************************************************** 22 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: N.K. Nuclear Exports Would Be Last Straw: Ex-Negotiator Updated Mar.30,2005 19:32 KST figure in the Geneva Accords of 1994, said Wednesday if North Korea exported nuclear materials abroad, it could be the last straw prompting the U.S. to attack the country. Gallucci, now dean of Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C., in a press conference in Seoul stressed that the U.S. and North Korea needed to get down to sincere negotiations fast. Criticizing Washington's current line, he repeatedly urged bilateral talks between Washington and Pyongyang. He said the six-party talks were a useful tool to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, but the format mustn't become a barrier to direct talks between the U.S. and North Korea. Gallucci said the U.S. and South Korea needed to resolve tensions over North Korea policy and try to understand one another. Koreans needed to understand that Americans who experienced the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks could not tolerate North Korea exporting nuclear materials abroad, while Americans needed to show consideration for Korean fears of a war on the Korean Peninsula, he said. The Clinton administration's North Korea point man added he opposed attacks 12 years ago when he was involved in the negotiations for the Geneva Accords and still opposes them. He added the U.S. must not use force even if that means bilateral talks with the North. Gallucci said the U.S. did not release confidential minutes from the Geneva Accords, which include U.S. demands to Pyongyang, at North Korea's request. He declined to give details of the minutes, which he said were reported to the U.S. Congress. (englishnews@chosun.com ) ***************************************************************** 23 UPI: Walker's World: U.S. to make India a world power - (United Press International) March 30, 2005 Washington, DC, Mar. 29 (UPI) -- The global war on terrorism, the invasion of Iraq and the sonorous espousal of democracy for all have just been relegated to their subordinate place in the strategic priorities of the Bush administration. Its real legacy was announced last Friday, in a low-key briefing at the State Department that explained in some detail the historic decision that has been made. It is now the policy, or perhaps that should be rephrased as the Grand Strategy of the United States, "to help India become a major world power in the 21st century. We understand fully the implications, including military implications, of that statement." There is really no precedent for this in the 230 years of American diplomacy. This was never said to China, nor to Japan, nor to post-Soviet Russia. The Bush administration's National Security Strategy paper published in September, 2002, had said that the United States would not permit the emergence of any hostile strategic peer competitor, which means that India is now deemed in the White House to be fundamentally and permanently friendly, a status granted hitherto only to the British. The implications of this are enormous. The first is that the United States now considers that the 21st century is going to be defined by the struggle for mastery in Asia, that China must not be allowed to win that status by default, and so India must be built up to provide an essential balance. India, of course, is a democracy, unlike China. Indians, at least the fast-growing proportion of educated ones, speak English. India is also a country that has been attacked by Islamic terrorism, that feels itself menaced by missile technology that came from North Korea and by the prospect of nuclear weapons designed by Pakistan's A. Q. Khan falling into the hands of Islamic extremists. India, like the United States, is not a country that can face with equanimity the prospect of an Asia and western Pacific that is dominated by China. India, like the United States, suspects that very real rivalries with China for secure energy supplies are likely to develop over the coming decades. And so perhaps it makes sense for the two great English-speaking democracies to become close allies. They have so much in common. This American decision to act as India's midwife to world power has been done quite deliberately. The State Department briefing said that the U.S.-India relationship had already been defined as a strategic partnership, but there was now a need to go further. "This year the administration made a judgment that the next steps and strategic partnership, though very important, wasn't broad enough to really encompass the kind of things we needed to do to take this relationship where it needed to go, and so the president and the secretary (of State, Condoleezza Rice) developed the outline for a decisively broader strategic relationship. "Secretary Rice presented that outline last week to Prime Minister (Manmohan) Singh," the assembled journalists were then told. The reaction in India among the policy-making and national security elite has been close to ecstatic, with just one note of caution. Did this American statement really mean what it said, some wonder? Or was it just a seductive promise to reconcile New Delhi to the U.S. decision to sell more F-16 warplanes to Pakistan, the essential ally in the war on terrorism and the endlessly frustrating hunt for Osama bin Laden? (Not only some Indians thought this way; one British diplomat with experience of India has asked himself the same question.) So far, all the signs are that the Americans are genuine. India's Prime Minister Singh is being invited to Washington in July, with President Bush returning the compliment in the fall, and the two men will work on the new three-track plan to cement their new relationship. "First, strategic dialogue," explained the State Department briefer. "The strategic dialogue will include global issues, the kinds of issues you would discuss with a world power. Regional security issues, things like the tsunami situation or Nepal. And India's defense requirements, high-tech cooperation, expanding the current High Technology Cooperation Group and manufacturing licenses, even working towards U.S.-India defense co-production." This means that the United States is willing to sell India not just F-16 fighter-bombers, like Pakistan, but the more capable F-18s, and possibly even more modern equipment, including missile defense systems. Again, from Friday's briefing: "The U.S. is ready to discuss even more fundamental issues of defense transformation with India, including transformative systems in areas such as command and control, early warning and missile defense. Some of these items may not be as glamorous as combat aircraft, but I think for those of you who follow defense issues you'll appreciate the significance". Second, the United States wants India to join "an energy dialogue that would include civil, nuclear and nuclear safety issues. Keep building the next steps in strategic partnership process that's already underway and establish a working group on space. India is very much a player in the issue of space launch vehicles, satellites and so on". Third, comes the "Economic dialogue. We have had an economic dialogue. Frankly, it needs to get a little more juice. So the economic dialogue is going to be revitalized with the discussion of energy, trade, commerce, environment and finance. Al Hubbard, Treasury Secretary Snow and Transportation Secretary Mineta are all going to go to India this year". We have yet to hear the Chinese reaction. But with the Europeans backing away from lifting their arms embargo, and with the Americans tightening their alliance with the Japanese, and the U.S. Navy planning to home port some of its Pacific fleet in Guam close to Chinese waters (rather than Pearl Harbor or San Diego), and now the new alliance with India, some of the more excitable generals in Beijing might be forgiven for feeling just a little encircled. The 21st century is shaping up to be an interesting time. ***************************************************************** 24 IAEA: Nuclear Terrorism: Identifying and Combating the Risks 16 March 2005 | London, UK by IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei Security strategies, for many centuries, have been based on boundaries: the strategic placement of cities and borders to take advantage of natural barriers; defences that relied on walls, trenches and armadas; and the use of ethnic, religious or other groupings to distinguish friend from foe. In the 20th Century, the advent of airplanes, submarines and ballistic missiles began to undermine this approach to security — by enabling the remote delivery of destruction on a scale previously not envisioned. But the change that has altered the international security landscape the most drastically is, in fact, globalization. The global community has become interdependent, with the constant movement of people, ideas and goods. Many aspects of modern life — communication, the global marketplace and, most recently, the rise in international terrorism — clearly indicate that our understanding of and approaches to national and international security must be adjusted, in keeping with new realities. Nuclear Security and the Protection Against Nuclear Terrorism The security of nuclear and other radioactive material and associated technologies has taken on heightened significance in recent years. The IAEA has been active in the field of nuclear security for many years, but as you are all aware, the events of September 2001 propelled the rapid and dramatic re-evaluation of the risks of terrorism in all its forms — whether related to the security of urban centres, industrial complexes, harbours, oil refineries, air and rail travel, or activities involving nuclear and radiological material. Terrorist attacks since that time, in Spain, Indonesia, the Russian Federation and elsewhere, have continued to keep these concerns in the forefront of our collective consciousness. For those of us in the nuclear field, it has become obvious that our work to strengthen nuclear security is both vital and urgent — and that we must not wait for a ´watershed´ nuclear security event to provide the needed security upgrades. International cooperation has become the hallmark of these security efforts. While nuclear security is and should remain a national responsibility, some countries still lack the programmes and the resources to respond properly to the threat of nuclear and radiological terrorism. For these countries, international cooperation is essential to help them strengthen their national capacities. International cooperation is also essential to our efforts to build regional and global networks for combating transnational threats. Understanding the Risks The IAEA has categorized four potential nuclear security risks: the theft of a nuclear weapon; the acquisition of nuclear materials for the construction of nuclear explosive devices; the malicious use of radioactive sources — including in so-called "dirty bombs"; and the radiological hazards caused by an attack on, or sabotage of, a facility or a transport vehicle. These risks are real and current, but they are not all the same. While the probability of a nuclear explosive device being acquired and used by terrorists is relatively small, it cannot be dismissed, and the consequences would be devastating. On the other hand, a dirty bomb would likely have far less impact in terms of human life, but the relative accessibility of radiological sources make it more likely that such an event could occur. Some experts share the view of the Director General of the United Kingdom Security Service, who said in August 2003: "It will only be a matter of time before a crude version of a [chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear] attack is launched at a major Western city." To date, the IAEA´s own database on illicit trafficking has recorded, since 1993, over 650 confirmed incidents of trafficking in nuclear or other radioactive material. Last year alone, nearly 100 such incidents occurred, 11 of which involved nuclear material. While the majority of trafficking incidents do not involve nuclear material, and while most of the radioactive materials involved are of limited radiological concern, the number of incidents shows that the measures to control and secure nuclear and other radioactive materials need to be improved. But effective and credible approaches to nuclear security are essential not only for detecting and responding to illicit trafficking, but also for the protection of nuclear power plants, research reactors, accelerators, and the array of nuclear and other radioactive materials that support these and other nuclear applications. To optimize the effectiveness of these efforts, it is important to prioritize — to focus on those facilities and activities where the risk is greatest — and to maintain a balance between security needs and the many benefits of peaceful applications of nuclear technology. For example, the recent increase in the denial of shipments of radioactive material by commercial carriers, while driven by perceived security concerns, can be a matter of equally significant humanitarian concern — particularly when such shipments involve radionuclides intended for use in life-saving medical applications. While we should be committed to ensuring the security of nuclear and other radioactive materials globally, we should seek solutions that will equally ensure the continued delivery of the benefits that these materials and related applications provide. IAEA Nuclear Security Plan of Activities The IAEA´s nuclear security plan is founded on measures to guard against thefts of nuclear and other radioactive material and to protect related facilities against malicious acts. Our work has three main points of focus: prevention, detection and response. Our first objective is to assist States in preventing any illicit or non-peaceful use of nuclear or other radioactive materials — including acts of terrorism. This requires: effective physical protection of these materials in use, storage and transport; protection of related nuclear facilities; and strong State systems for accounting for and control of nuclear material. The IAEA has been providing a range of international advisory service missions, training workshops and technical guidance documents — on nuclear security, physical protection, ´design basis threat´ assessments, and nuclear material accounting, to assist States in implementing these preventive measures. A preventive focus has also been given to securing vulnerable nuclear and other radioactive material. Working with Russia and the USA, we are in the process of implementing seven contracts to dismantle and transport a number of disused vulnerable sources to more secure locations. Over 20 000 curies of sealed sources from Bolivia, Côte d´Ivoire, Haiti, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Malaysia, Panama, Sudan and Thailand have been conditioned for long term storage or shipped back to the original suppliers. We expect the volume of these and other high priority assistance efforts to increase. The second objective relates to detection — ensuring that we have systems in place that can help countries to identify, at an early stage, illicit activity related to nuclear materials or radioactive sources. To this end, we have been assisting countries from many regions in training customs officials, installing better equipment at border crossings, and ensuring that information on trafficking incidents is shared effectively. The Agency database on illicit trafficking, now with a total of 80 participating countries, has proven helpful in identifying patterns of trafficking activity. Third, we have been working with national governments and international organizations to establish and strengthen programmes to ensure that, in the event that illicit activity occurs — including acts of terrorism involving nuclear material or radioactive sources — the response can be prompt and well coordinated. To date, most such responses have involved helping governments with the recovery of radioactive sources that have been stolen or lost. The bulk of this nuclear security activity has occurred in the past three years. Since September 2001, working in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, we have conducted more than 125 security advisory and evaluation missions, and convened over 100 training courses, workshops and seminars. IAEA Member States and other organizations have been generous in providing financial and in-kind resources to fund the Agency´s security related activities. Since September 2001, the Agency´s Nuclear Security Fund has received over $35 million from a total of 26 countries — as well as from the European Union and the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) — and many countries have provided in-kind support. IAEA Member States from every region have hosted workshops and regional training courses, participated in source recovery missions, provided technical insights on how engineered safety features at nuclear facilities can enhance security against sabotage, and contributed to the development of Agency guidelines and recommendations. Cooperation with Other Organizations and Efforts I find it gratifying that in all three areas of focus — prevention, detection and response — international cooperation has been facilitated by the efforts of international organizations, including those that have cooperated with the IAEA in putting on this conference: Interpol, Europol, the European Commission, OSCE and the World Customs Organization. Clearly, the benefits of IAEA assistance — and the reach of our limited resources — can be maximized by coordinating our activities with other international and regional organizations, as well as through the use of regional partnerships. More than a year ago, the European Council adopted the EU Strategy against the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which includes initiatives focused on keeping nuclear and other radioactive material out of the hands of extremist groups. The Global Threat Reduction Initiative has been working to systematically address each facility around the world that possesses high risk nuclear and radiological materials. And many governments have already responded to UN Security Council resolution 1540, which, inter alia, called on all States to develop and maintain effective border controls and law enforcement efforts to detect and combat illicit trafficking, and to refrain from providing any form of support to non-State actors that attempt to develop, acquire, use or transfer nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or their delivery systems. The Agency stands ready to assist States wishing to strengthen their legislative and technical infrastructures in response to resolution 1540, by providing legal and technical advice, training and peer reviews. Each of these efforts, properly coordinated and carried out, directly supports the overall objective of identifying and combating the risks of nuclear terrorism. Focus of Future Efforts While much progress has been made in the past three years, it is clear that the imperatives that first led to the development of the IAEA´s nuclear security plan have not lost their relevance or urgency. One of the purposes of this conference is to take stock of how far we have come, and I would hope that you would all provide your input on the vulnerabilities that still exist and the priorities for moving forward. The Agency has been conducting a major review of its nuclear security activities, and the main elements of a revised plan of activities are already emerging. One aspect of the new plan is to complete the international corpus of legal instruments, as well as relevant recommendations and guidelines. A key legal instrument is the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM). For a number of years, work has been progressing on a draft amendment to the CPPNM that would strengthen its existing provisions and expand its scope to cover, inter alia: the physical protection of nuclear material used for peaceful purposes, in domestic use, storage and transport; and the physical protection of nuclear material and peaceful nuclear facilities against sabotage. In response to the request by a majority of the States Parties to the Convention, I have convened a diplomatic conference to be held in July to consider and adopt the proposed amendments. In 2003, the IAEA General Conference also endorsed a revised Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources, and last year endorsed the associated guidelines on the import and export of radioactive sources. More than 70 countries have signaled their intent to follow the provisions of this Code. A second aspect of the new plan will be to give greater emphasis to the implementation of these instruments and associated guidelines. The Agency has already been assisting States with concrete action to improve physical protection, upgrade detection and response procedures, and improve human resource capabilities. But the extensive evaluation of the past few years has shown that gaps and unevenness in application remain. We will be giving greater focus to coordinated efforts to identify and plug those gaps, and to work towards universal application of harmonized standards based on these international instruments. The associated upgrades will be dependent on the availability of sufficient funds, provided with the flexibility necessary to be distributed in accordance with Member State needs and capacities. A third point of focus will be to enhance the sustainability of nuclear security programmes in Member States. This will include helping States establish the needed regulatory frameworks, assisting in the implementation of international guidelines, and addressing continued training needs. The Agency has also begun to develop Integrated Nuclear Security Support Plans with individual Member States, as frameworks for helping to address their nuclear security needs over the longer term. Conclusion At the outset of this statement, I emphasized that security strategies could no longer be effective if based solely on the concept of boundaries. And throughout this presentation, you have heard me discussing cooperation, assistance, regional and international networks, and the importance of learning from each other. In effect, what we are discussing is a "security culture" — a mindset that, while providing the impetus for local and regional action, thinks globally and is fully capable of extending across borders. Ultimately, our success will only be as strong as our weakest link. More DG Statements » Copyright 2003-2004, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: [Official.Mail@iaea.org] Disclaimer ***************************************************************** 25 Slate: The Wings of a Hawk - Why is Bush selling F-16s to Pakistan? By Fred Kaplan Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2005, at 4:01 PM PT With his decision last week to sell F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan, President Bush returns to a dangerous game of self-deception that hasn't been seen at this level of risk since Richard Nixon was in the White House. The deal involves a mere couple of dozen F-16s, but it opens up three avenues of great hazard. First, right after President Bush told the Pakistanis that the sale was on, he called the Indians to assure them he would take a well-disposed look at their weapons wish lists to redress the resulting imbalance. The unfolding dynamic is thus predictable: Pakistan orders still more weapons to compensate for India's new purchase; India buys more to match the ante; and on the ratcheting goes, the tinderbox swelling. Second, Bush (pending near-certain congressional approval) is lifting a ban on arms transfers to Pakistan that has been in effect since 1989. The restriction was imposed after intelligence clearly revealed that Pakistan was turning its stockpile of enriched uranium into nuclear bombs. The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act forbade the supply of any weapons to countries that crossed this line. So, President George H.W. Bush issued a stop order, halting production of 43 F-16s earmarked for Pakistan (in addition to 40 already delivered), 17 of them paid for in advance. It is this transaction that Bush's son now seeks to resume—even though Pakistan has not only pushed ahead with nuclear weapons but sold the resulting technology to several tinhorn dictators. Worse still, the latest version of the plane, the F-16C/D—which is the model Pakistan will receive—can carry atomic bombs [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/pakistan/f-16.htm] under its wings. The plane's wiring would have to be modified in order for the bombs to be fused and dropped, but German intelligence agencies reported long ago that the Pakistanis have figured out how to do this. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have said Pakistan needs the F-16s to combat terrorists in the mountains on the Afghan border. But really it wants them to drop bombs on India in case of another India-Pakistan war. (Pakistan already has two types of missiles that can do this; India has nuclear-capable planes and missiles, as well.) On a broader level, Rice [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2015-2005Mar25.ht ml] has justified the sale as a token of U.S. friendship and commitment to Pakistan's security, a reward for its cooperation in the war on terrorism, and an inducement to further progress toward democratic rule. If we ignore Pakistan's request for the planes, Rice has said in interviews, these trends could collapse. There may be something to this argument, but the Pakistanis are more likely lassoing us than vice versa. President Musharraf is promising elections in 2007, but by that time all the weapons he could want will have been delivered—and whatever leverage we once had will have expired. We will then be trapped in a web of our own weaving. Musharraf will put in an order for resupply or perhaps for more sophisticated weapons, and he'll warn Bush that a refusal will be taken as a betrayal of trust, a blow to our fledgling alliance, a prompt to resume nasty ways (if they were ever repudiated to begin with). What's really happening is that the question, "Why should we sell arms to a particular country?" has been replaced by, "Why not?" In the case of Pakistan, there's the further consideration that India is determined to buy 125 new fighter jets to replace its fleet of antiquated Soviet-built MiGs; it's looking at the F-16, but also at French-built Mirages. That being the case, selling F-16s to Pakistan can be rationalized as a step to preserve the balance of power. Besides, if Musharraf doesn't buy the planes from us, he can look to the French or the Chinese. In other words, for all the talking about rewarding friends and maintaining influence, what this really comes down to—what it's always come down to—is money and market share. During the Cold War, the market share was political (if we don't sell planes to Peru, the Russians will); now it's economic (if we don't sell planes to Pakistan, the Chinese will). U.S. arms sales took off as a potent political and economic force in the early 1970s, when three things happened. First, President Nixon, bruised from Vietnam, declared that America would no longer send troops to every ally in crisis but would instead send arms and teams of military advisers. Second, oil prices soared, pumping floods of cash into the coffers of OPEC countries, whose leaders decided to lavish some of it on a gigantic military buildup. In May 1973, to accommodate this new market, Nixon used his executive powers to waive a congressional prohibition against the sale of sophisticated weapons to underdeveloped countries. The third event—underlying the other two—was that America's trade balance showed a net deficit for the first time since 1893. State Department and Pentagon officials started to justify every arms transaction as an act "to strengthen U.S. balance of payments" and create jobs. As a result of these converging factors, annual U.S. arms sales abroad soared from about $1 billion before Nixon signed the waiver to $11 billion by the time he left office amid the Watergate scandal in 1974. Sales figures [http://www.dsca.osd.mil/programs/biz-ops/2003_facts/Facts_Book_2 003_Oct04_FINAL.pdf] have fluttered only slightly, up or down a few billion, ever since. The current arms deal with Pakistan is fueled, in good part, by the fact that executives at Lockheed [http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=1880] Martin have said they'll have to shut down their Fort Worth, Texas, factory unless more F-16 orders come in by October. Pakistan was one of the few prospective customers that drew serious political resistance. In 1976, the Senate passed an amendment, sponsored by John Glenn and Stuart Symington, barring U.S. economic and military assistance to countries that were importing or exporting nuclear-weapons materials. In 1979, Carter invoked the Glenn-Symington amendment to cut off such assistance to Pakistan, which had been caught smuggling nuclear designs. Then the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and Pakistan—with its close ties to the anti-Soviet mujahideen—re-emerged as a potential strategic partner. President Ronald Reagan, who stepped up support of the mujahideen, pushed through an amendment allowing him to resume aid and sales to Pakistan for six years, despite the fact that Pakistan was beginning to enrich uranium. Among the items he let Pakistan buy were F-16 fighter jets. The first planes arrived in January 1983. In 1985, the Senate passed another amendment, sponsored by Larry Pressler, requiring the president to certify annually that Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons before he continued to supply them with weapons or aid. In 1989, as the intelligence became clear that Pakistan had turned the enriched uranium into actual weapons, the first President Bush stopped all orders. In 1995, President Clinton tried to restore some ties to Pakistan, as part of the nascent war on terrorism. He sold the long-undelivered F-16s to other countries and refunded the money—nearly $700 million—to Pakistan. New weapons, though, were still out of the question. Until now. The decision will raise new doubts about President Bush's declared desire to halt the spread of nuclear weapons—and his still more prominent declaration to judge regimes on the basis of their dedication to freedom. Selling Pakistan nuclear-capable fighter jets is an act at odds with both. By potentially setting in motion a new arms race in southern Asia, it also seems at odds with more traditional notions involving the balance of power. Related in Slate Last October, Joshua Kucera went to Pakistan's biggest arms show and concluded that, despite the rhetoric, the weapons we're sending to Islamabad are targeted against India, not the Taliban. In December 1999, Matt Alsdorf explained why India and Pakistan are fighting; four years later, Brendan I. Koerner got to the roots of the Kashmir dispute. Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at . ©2005 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC | User Agreement and Privacy Policy [http://slate.com/id/2111949/] ***************************************************************** 26 Guardian Unlimited: India spurns US arms India has said thanks but to the US offer to sell Delhi its F-16 warplanes. Washington made the gesture in a bid to placate India after George Bush last week broke with 15 years of policy by to sell Pakistan the same high-performance aircraft. Pakistan has been after these F-16s for years and the sale is clearly a reward for President Pervez Musharraf for his support for America's "war on terror". But an in the International Herald Tribune takes the Bush administration to task for its initial decision and then compounding the mistake by offering arms to Delhi. The IHT makes two compelling points. First, the US is wrong to encourage these two nuclear powers, which have already fought three times, to engage in a US-fuelled arms race. Second, selling expensive weapons to Pakistan, an authoritarian state, is hardly the best way to encourage it towards democracy. There is another point to be made. The US has been [http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=2778] the EU - rightfully - not to lift its arms embargo on China. As the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, argued earlier this month, the EU "should do nothing" that alters the military balance of power in Asia through the sale of sophisticated weapons. The EU duly backed off. But, lo and behold, the US a few days later takes a decision that will do just that in south Asia. Meanwhile, India yesterday announced new defence orders from Russia, Germany, Italy, Israel and even Qatar, worth a total of $746m (£396.5m). Anybody but the US, India seemed to be saying. Posted by Mark Tran at March 30, 2005 01:05 PM Guardian Newspapers Limited ***************************************************************** 27 Guardian Unlimited: Facts, Figures About Nuke Weapons Threat From the Associated Press [UP] Wednesday March 30, 2005 8:01 PM By The Associated Press Some facts, figures and observations about the nuclear weapons threat: - There are 25,000 to 30,000 assembled nuclear weapons in the world, more than 90 percent of them in the United States or the countries that made up the Soviet Union, said Matthew Bunn, a researcher at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. - The nuclear threat today is as great as it was during the height of the Cold War, but now the threat comes from many different areas and not one place, according to Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. - Many feared in the 1960s that dozens of countries would develop nuclear weapons, but the number has been limited to a handful because of non-proliferation agreements, said political scientist Dan Reiter of Emory University. - One of the biggest threats from new countries like Iran getting nuclear weapons is that it could erode the network of treaties and agreements preventing nuclear proliferation because neighboring countries would push to get their own, said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. - Over 180 governments will gather at the United Nations in May to review progress on meeting their obligations under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, intended to control the spread of nuclear weapons. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 28 Pakistan Times Op-Ed: Iran’s Nuclear Saga By Fauzia Qureshi IRAN's possible development of nuclear weapons has acquired a central importance in the US foreign policy. The importance of proliferation is enhanced by the potential to reshape the politics and security of an already turbulent and volatile region. There is further consideration to prevent the spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction. If there is a proliferation then who is responsible for it? Do nuclear States like the US oppose proliferation simply out of concern for their citizens’ safety or is there something more strategic at work? But why do countries want nuclear weapons? What will happen if Iran really goes nuclear? Iran has been a party to the NPT(Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty) since 1970, but in 1996 congressional testimony, Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch stated that Iran was actively pursuing an indigenous nuclear weapons capability. In August 2002, the media reported the existence of a pilot uranium enrichment centrifuge plant in Natanz. Two other enrichment facilities were alleged to have begun operations in 2000 near the villages of Lashkar-Abd and Ramandeh, about 40 kilometres west of Tehran. The former site was found by the IAEA to contain an active laser programme that could be used for uranium enrichment. Iran itself, in February 2003 informed the IAEA(International Atomic Energy Agency) director general of work on two enrichment facilities at Natanz, a pilot plant nearing completion and a commercial-scale fuel enrichment plant under construction. Iran stated that more than 100 of the 1,000 planned centrifuge casings had been installed at the pilot plant. The commercial enrichment facility was described as being planned to contain more than 50,000 centrifuges, with installation beginning in early 2005. Iran introduced gaseous uranium hexafluoride into the first centrifuge for testing purposes in June 2003, and in August the same year, a ten-machine small cascade started test operations. In February 2003, the Iranian Government also reported the existence of an enrichment test-bed facility in the Kalaye Electric Company’s workshop. However, it refused to grant permission for environmental sampling at the site, when significant modifications were noted. IAEA inspectors found traces of HEU(Enriched Uranium) at the Natanz plant in June 2003 and in Kalaye workshop in September the same year. Iranian officials stated that these traces had been on the equipment when it was purchased from another country, thus denying the production of HEU at the plants. Evidence collected by the IAEA implicated Pakistan as a supplier along with China, Russia and DPRK(Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). Let’s not forget that Russia has extended close co-operation to Iran in building power nuclear reactors in Bushehr. Another element of the Iranian nuclear programme is a planned heavy-water reactor and its ancillary facilities in Arak, a city close to Isfahan. Iran declared to the IAEA in May 2003 its intention to build a 40 MW heavy-water moderated and cooled, and natural-uranium fuelled, Iran Nuclear Research Reactor(IR-40). Its basic purpose stated is to produce radioisotopes, as well as reactor research development and training. There is also a heavy-water production plant in Khondab, near Arak site. A related facility is Iran’s fuel-manufacturing plant in Isfahan, which will fabricate the fuel elements for IR-40 and perhaps ultimately for the Bushehr nuclear power-plant; whose construction began in 2003. It is interesting to note that heavy-water reactor operates with natural uranium fuel, plutonium can be produced without a uranium enrichment facility. India and Israel based their nuclear weapons programmes on such reactors. A French Government document provided to the Nuclear Suppliers Group(NSG) in May 2003 concluded that Iran was concealing a military programme within its civilian nuclear programme. However, the Iranian Government denied this allegation. The US claims that the Iranian nuclear programme is technologically broad based, includes redundant facilities, and is well dispersed across many different sites. This is particularly advantageous of a centrifuge enrichment-based programme for any country pursuing a covert capability. In contrast to plutonium production reactors, centrifuge facilities can be built as small-scale distributed facilities that are especially difficult to detect. The IAEA of governors in September 2003, set a deadline of October 31st, 2003, for Iran to provide extensive additional information on its nuclear activities and to suspend all further uranium enrichment related activities. Iran in October 2003 promised to freeze all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities, provide full information to the IAEA, and open all requested facilities. It signed the Additional Protocol to NPT in December, the same year, which strengthens IAEA inspection rights. However, the IAEA claimed that Iran’s compliance was characterized by attempts to limit the scope of the agreement and threats to cancel it. Iran announced in June 2004 that it would resume centrifuge production in response to an IAEA resolution critical of its cooperation with the agency. It is also proclaimed by the International Community especially the US that Iran’s missile programme has also received help from China, Russia and DPRK. Additional support has been obtained from companies in Macedonia, Taiwan and Belarus. The Israeli sources have also claimed that a follow-on missiles-for-centrifuges technical exchange barter deal was struck between Pyongyang and Tehran. Under this putative arrangement, the DPRK provided Iran with engines for the Nodong missiles(the precursors of the Iranian Shahab-3 missile) and worked out Shahab-3 manufacturing problems. The Iranians provided assistance with uranium enrichment to DPRK. Time and again, Iran has insisted that it has a burgeoning population of nearly 67 million, which is likely to double in 20 years or so, thus it needs nuclear energy. Gas and oil are non-renewable resources, and, therefore nuclear energy seems a suitable alternative in fields of agriculture, industry, health and mining sectors. However, the US alleges that Iran is rolling in petro-dollars and their oil wealth is financing much more than words. Everyone knows that Iran caricatures the US as the ‘Great Satan’ whereas, the US includes it in the ‘axis of evil’ states. Infact, the US antipathy goes back to the Iranian Revolution and the ‘unfinished business’ of more than two decades of hostile relations. The US has not forgotten the humiliating detention of the American Embassy staff in Iran for 444 days. This episode still rankles deep in the American consciousness. Iranian leaders’ motivations for pursuing nuclear weapons are not easily accessible to outsiders. If the US is concerned about Iran’s behaviour, such as its support for terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, then, Iran too is concerned about its security concerns vis à vis Israel. The US for many years has not only practised its containment policy against Iran but also supported expatriate groups bent on overthrowing the regime in Tehran, including through violent means. Regime change has been a recurrent theme in the US policy as it has been consistently in the policy of Israel. With US military power next door, Iran is insecure as never before. Iran feels that it is Israel that calls the real shots for the US policies in the Middle East. It is in reality the Israeli security-enhancing script that is being enacted by weakening or changing regimes-Iraq, Iran, possibly Saudi Arabia. Infact, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had programmed the invasion of Iran in one big sweep the day after Iraq was crushed. More important to Iran is the matter of power and presence in the Persian Gulf. With the defeat of Iraq and with rising risks of turmoil in Saudi Arabia, is in a better position to compete for pride of place in the Gulf. Of course, Iranian nuclear weapons could be a card to play in a contest for influence.Ï www.PakistanTimes.net | www.DailyPakistanTimes.com ***************************************************************** 29 SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nuclear Test Debate: How Bush Learned To Love the Bomb - [SPIEGEL ONLINE] [http://www.spiegel.de/international/] By Leigh Flayton in Mercury, Nevada United States President George W. Bush is talking tough about nukes in Iran and North Korea. But critics say by illegally testing and building nuclear weapons, the U.S. is fueling a new arms race. APA former nuclear testing site north of Las Vegas, Nevada. In a barren stretch of Nevada desert 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas, a large modular tower and a steel crane, once used for testing nuclear bombs, stand in plain view of anyone passing through the area known to the U.S. government as U6c. They are easily detected by satellites orbiting overhead. Later this year, scientists at the Nevada Test Site will use the structures to conduct an experiment called Unicorn, which will help determine whether the site is prepared to resume full-scale nuclear tests if ordered to do so by the president. Unicorn, which works with plutonium and high explosives, will resemble an old-fashioned underground nuclear test from the Cold War era, when bombs were placed in towers aboveground and lowered beneath the surface by custom-built cranes. [http://www.salon.com] This article has been provided by Salon.com as part of a special agreement with SPIEGEL INTERNATIONAL. In return, our colleagues in San Francisco will publish selected articles from Der Spiegel on their Web site at: [http://www.salon.com] In recent weeks, the Bush administration has focused the world's attention on stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons. During his trip to Europe in February, President Bush spoke with urgency about shutting down Iran's nuclear program and securing Russia's aging post-Soviet stockpile. North Korea's declaration last month that it already possesses a handful of nuclear warheads has raised new concerns about tensions in Asia. And most security experts agree that nonproliferation is now critical to stopping the worst nightmare scenario: A terrorist attack on a major city using radioactive material. Nuclear watchdogs in U.S., however, warn that the Bush administration is fueling a new arms race. They contend the government is violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1970 international agreement that states that countries with nuclear weapons must work toward disarmament. The Bush administration, they charge, is pouring money into new nuclear weapons programs and performing nuclear tests, spurring other nations to do the same. The public "is in the dark about the intentions of this administration in terms of nuclear policy," says Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat, who is an active proponent of nuclear disarmament. "I think they would be more than happy to go back to full-scale testing. At a time when weapons of mass destruction are in the forefront of everyone's mind, this administration has not made the security and dismantlement of weapons, nor the retention of know-how by friendly states, a priority." Currently, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs the Nevada Test Site and is overseen by the Department of Energy, assumes the bulk of the nation's nuclear responsibility. Scientists at the Nevada site work in tandem with those at the country's major nuclear labs: Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia. Nevada Test Site spokesman Kevin Rohrer says the security administration, which was established in 2000 on the heels of the Wen Ho Lee debacle (the Los Alamos computer scientist charged with mishandling classified information), is following the decree of the Stockpile Stewardship Program. Established in 1994, the program is designed to ensure the safety and readiness of the nation's aging nukes. The United States possesses about 10,000 nuclear weapons. "Our job is to help make sure that the existing weapons in the stockpile are going to function as designed and remain safe in the stockpile," Rohrer says. The program, he explains, is focused on science and involves only non-nuclear experiments. "We are looking at nuclear material from a physics study perspective: What are the physical material properties of it? What makes plutonium act the way it does, as opposed to studying the phenomena of how do we develop a bomb?" Walter Dekin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's test director in Nevada, says the experiments at the site are harmless. "It's taking that 1968 Mustang that you parked in the garage and you've never been able to start," he says. "You've never done anything to it, other than you lift the hood, you look at it, you change the spark plugs, you change the oil, but you never run the engine. But when you want to, it's going to start and run just the way you said it would." Many of the important tests at the Nevada site, including the one named Unicorn, are called "subcritical experiments." In a "subcrit" experiment, plutonium, the explosive ingredient in a nuclear weapon, is detonated with high explosives so scientists can observe how the materials interact and respond to the blast. The experiments take place in the U1a Complex at the site, an underground laboratory composed of roughly a mile of mined tunnels first excavated during the 1960s. In 1997, "Rebound," the first subcrit, was conducted in a 10-by-15-by-30-foot room. Once the scientists capture the blast data with multibillion-dollar, state-of-the-art supercomputers, they seal the radioactive experiment in layers of concrete 960 feet underground, presumably for all eternity. "Subcritical" refers to the fact that the tests do not reach "criticality"; that is, they don't sustain a nuclear chain reaction, the perpetual explosion of energy that unleashes radioactive destruction. For that reason, subcrits are not banned under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the international agreement that President Clinton signed in 1996. The treaty forbids any nuclear test explosions that cause a chain reaction -- as well as the improvement and development of nuclear weapons. The Clinton administration began conducting subcritical experiments in 1997, five years after President George H.W. Bush placed a moratorium on all nuclear testing. Although opposed to nuclear testing, Clinton authorized the United States to conduct subcrits as a way to appease pro-nuclear Congress members. At the time, Congress had not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and Clinton figured he could bargain for their votes with the tests. In 1999, he urged the Senate to ratify the treaty. "Our experts have concluded that we don't need more tests to keep our own nuclear forces strong," he said. "We stopped testing in 1992, and now we are spending $4.5 billion a year to maintain a reliable nuclear force without testing. Since we don't need nuclear tests, it is strongly in our interest to achieve agreement that can help prevent other countries like India, Pakistan, Russia, China, Iran and others from testing and deploying nuclear weapons." The United States has still not ratified the treaty. And the current activity in the Nevada desert is no aberration of Bush policy: U.S. nuclear labs continue to receive funding -- now approximately $8 billion a year -- for nuclear weapons research, development and testing activities. Among the recent developments is the Nevada Test Site's $100 million Device Assembly Facility, which was designed and built during the days of underground nuclear tests but wasn't functional before the 1992 moratorium. The facility is where plutonium is prepared for use in subcritical experiments, including Unicorn. Another new device is a "pulsed-power" machine called Atlas, which Joe Meachum, an engineer at the Nevada Test Site, calls "the biggest in the world in its class." Atlas, which will pulverize tuna-can-size, non-nuclear materials like aluminum, copper and tin more quickly and powerfully than any mechanism in the world, was built at Los Alamos, dismantled, then moved to Nevada in 2003. Meachum expects to conduct Atlas' first test at its newly built custom facility in April. Whether testing with Atlas will involve nuclear materials remains to be seen, although Donald Bourcier, an engineer at Los Alamos, says it has been discussed. "We're not looking at that right now," Bourcier says, "but there's been talk in the hallways of maybe sometime in the future." Watchdogs charge that these innovations skirt international law. Jackie Cabasso, executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation, a monitor of U.S. nuclear policy, says that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires the United States to end the nuclear arms race at an early date and negotiate the elimination of its nuclear arsenal in good faith. "One could make a very persuasive argument that conducting subcritical tests as part of a broader program to maintain and improve the United States' nuclear weapons capabilities, and train a new generation of nuclear weapons designers, violates Article VI of the treaty," she says. Mark Twain once opined that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. When it comes to nukes, one person's subcritical experiment is another's nuclear test. Bob Peurifoy, an engineer for 39 years at New Mexico's Sandia National Laboratory before retiring in 1991, says that subcrits "are perhaps not necessary but are highly desirable" for maintaining the stockpile. Because they can't reach criticality, he says, "these experiments could be conducted in the open air, except for the fear of spreading plutonium around." To Alice Slater, president of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, which works to rid the world of nuclear weapons, subcrits definitely qualify as nuclear tests. "What they're doing is blowing up plutonium with high-explosive chemicals in tunnels 1,000 feet below the desert floor," she says. "The tunnels are contaminated with the plutonium and chemicals from the explosion -- it's radioactive, even if there isn't a 'critical' mushroom cloud." Critics charge that subcrits drive the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world by provoking countries to keep up with the United States. "Subcritical experiments probably encourage Russia and China to do the same," says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "They don't set the best example." Slater points to the Commission on Disarmament talks in Geneva in 1998, when India protested the United States' conducting of subcrits and threatened not to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The U.S. response amounted to "screw India," says Slater, which prompted India to conduct its own test. That pattern continues today. In November, President Bush's friend and ostensible ally in the war against terrorism, Russian President Vladimir Putin, boasted about his nation's plans for a new kind of nuclear missile. "They will be developments of the kind that other nuclear powers do not and will not have," Putin said at a meeting of the Armed Forces leadership, according to the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass. "We're driving it," Slater says. "We started to do subcriticals, and then Russia started to test them. They do every bad thing we do." In the United States, Cabasso argues that the Bush administration appears to be using the subcrits as "a practice run" in preparation for the resumption of full-scale underground tests. Adds Jay Coghlan, director of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico: "The boys in the nuclear weapons complex have never wanted to let go of testing." He acknowledges that in 2004, President Bush ordered the country's nuclear weapons to be cut from 10,000 to 6,000 during the next decade. "They're plenty prepared to talk about the arsenal going down in numbers, even radically so," Coghlan says. "But there is deep cultural and even personal resistance to letting go of full-scale testing." "What would they have us do?" asks Bourcier, the Los Alamos engineer, of the antinuclear establishment. "Let the stockpiles deteriorate in the bunkers? And if we get attacked, we're defenseless. There are still enemies out there." The Bush administration has vigorously opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, deeming it ineffective and counter to U.S. security interests. Bush officials regularly point back to the imperative of stockpile maintenance -- but the administration's nuclear posture has in fact been much more forward leaning. In September 2002, it announced a "preemptive strike policy" for its National Security Strategy -- including first use of nuclear weapons against the chemical and biological facilities of states deemed to pose a threat to the United States. In February of this year Bush's new energy secretary, Samuel Bodman, remarked, "A near halt in nuclear weapons modernization over the past decade has taken a toll on our ability to be responsive to changing defense needs." And Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has repeatedly pledged his support for "efforts to revitalize the nuclear weapons infrastructure," including completing the "study" of the new class of so-called bunker-buster weapons. So far, Congress has kept the Bush administration's nuclear ambitions in check. In November, it denied the president the $27.6 million he wanted for continued research on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, or "bunker buster" bombs, and refused Bush's $9 million funding request for "Advanced Concepts" -- research on new weapons designs, which Tauscher calls "one of those terms that means nothing but everything." But the president remains undaunted. In the 2006 budget submitted to Congress in January, the administration renewed its request for $8.5 million toward "bunker buster" bombs, part of a $6.6 billion overall price tag for weapons programs. The Pentagon stands to get the most funding, with Bush's requesting an increase in its budget of $19 billion to $419 billion. And, with the passage in December of the Intelligence and Terrorism Prevention Act, Rumsfeld -- a staunch advocate of "bunker busters" -- has greater means to implement the programs of his choice. Some conservative policymakers argue nuclear weapons remain a key deterrent to U.S. enemies, that the strategy that won the Cold War is also necessary -- albeit with a modern makeover -- to winning the war on terrorism. "Without realistic testing ... we are unable to introduce new designs that would be better suited to countering threats posed by countries like Iran and North Korea than the hugely destructive weapons developed more than 20 years ago to counter targets in the Soviet Union," Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, wrote in mid-February in the Washington Times. "If we are to have any hope of preventing proliferation in the future, the United States must maintain a credible nuclear deterrent -- and undertake the associated testing, developmental and industrial actions." But as all the world can see, watchdogs argue, today's enemies are of a different breed. Emerging threats from states like North Korea and Iran bear little resemblance to that of the massively armed Soviet Union of the Cold War. And America's continuing to develop its nuclear arsenal means little when it comes to stopping the Osama bin Ladens of the world -- while a new global arms race undoubtedly will make perilous materials more available to them. "Suicidal terrorists willing to die for their cause," says Global Resource's Slater, "will not be deterred by our weapons." Later this year, the Nevada Test Site will go ahead with the subcrit experiment, Unicorn. (Its exact date, closely guarded, is revealed only 48 hours in advance.) When it's time, the test materials will be lowered from the tower, beneath the earth's surface, and detonated in a hole 624 feet below ground -- as was done with the last full-scale test, "Divider," in 1992. The plutonium will be subjected to a powerful "back surface shock" using chemical high explosives. The detonation will take place out of sight -- but for the world's aspiring nuclear powers, not out of mind. © SPIEGEL ONLINE 2005 All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 30 Guardian Unlimited: Iraq WMD report to lay blame on CIA [UP] Julian Borger in Washington Thursday March 31, 2005 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] A final analysis of the intelligence fiasco over Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction will today focus blame on the CIA and other spy agencies, largely clearing the White House and the Pentagon of allegations that they shaped the intelligence to justify the invasion, according to early accounts of the report. The assessment by a presidential commission on WMD intelligence follows 14 months of mostly secret inquiries in an undisclosed location in Virginia. It reportedly concentrates on mistakes in a multi-agency assessment in October 2002, the national intelligence estimate, which portrayed Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes as a serious threat to the US. A year-long search by the US Iraq survey group later concluded that those programmes had collapsed more than a decade before the invasion. The commission is expected to release a 400-page unclassified version of its report after delivering a complete version to George Bush this morning. According to leaks, the commission found that many of the intelligence shortcomings on Iraq are being repeated on Iran and North Korea. In all three cases, the commission is said to have found that human intelligence - actual spies - are in short supply, and intelligence has relied on satellite pictures, electronic intercepts, the testimony of exiles and guesswork. The Los Angeles Times yesterday quoted officials who had read some of the unclassified report as saying it pointed to "glaring gaps in core US intelligence" about nuclear programmes pursued by Tehran and Pyongyang. According to the Washington Post the report will recommend that, in the light of "group think" over Iraq, dissent and debate should be encouraged among the nation's 15 intelligence agencies. However, there will be relatively little scrutiny of alleged political pressure by senior administration officials to exaggerate the WMD claims. "There's nothing really about shaping the intelligence," said an intelligence source in Washington familiar with the report. A Senate inquiry into political manipulation of intelligence, postponed until after the November elections, now appears to have been quietly dropped by its Republican chairman, Pat Roberts. Ray McGovern, a former CIA official and persistent government critic, said the report was diverting the blame. "I see it as part of the continuing attempt to blame the CIA and other intelligence agencies and divert attention away from the White House and the Pentagon. It's worse than Butler [the inquiry into British intelligence shortcomings], or anything you've had over there." Dick Cheney made several trips to the CIA's Langley headquarters in the months before the war to discuss findings on Iraq's alleged WMD, and the agency's ombudsman told the Senate that analysts had undergone constant "hammering" to come up with a connection between al-Qaida and Saddam. However, none of the CIA employees who testified before the Senate intelligence committee on the issue last year admitted changing their analysis to suit the administration's wishes. Today's report is expected to find that political pressure was not a significant factor, although it will advocate the creation of an ombudsman to hear from analysts who fear their work is being compromised, according to the Washington Post. It will reportedly include criticism of the Defence Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, both under the Pentagon's control. But the burden of blame will fall once more on the CIA. "I'm told it is going to make the CIA look even worse than before," said Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official. As for top administration officials, Mr Goodman said: "It looks like they're going to escape again." Media New York Times [http://nytimes.com] Washington Post [http://washingtonpost.com] CNN [http://cnn.com] Government US government portal [http://www.firstgov.gov/] White House [http://www.whitehouse.gov/] Senate [http://www.senate.gov/] House of Representatives [http://www.house.gov] [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 31 [NukeNet] NPP Spent Fuel Classified report & NAS Vs. NRC Views Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 14:38:08 -0800 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) CRAC-2 Report: http://www.mothersalert.org/crac.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/politics/30nuke.html? Agencies Fight Over Report on Sensitive Atomic Wastes By MATTHEW L. WALD Published: March 30, 2005 ASHINGTON, March 29 - A semisecret debate is raging between the National Academy of Sciences and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the vulnerability of nuclear wastes to terrorist attack and about how secret the debate should be. The academy, under orders from Congress, produced a study last summer about whether the spent-fuel pools at nuclear reactors were vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The pools hold most of the radioactive material ever produced at the reactors, far more than the reactors themselves. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an independent group of scientists published a paper in a Princeton scientific journal asserting that an enemy could drain a pool and set a fire that would be "significantly worse than Chernobyl." Advertisement Have our Top 20 Newsletter delivered to your Inbox each week! The Most "WOW!" Travel Deals on the Internet - here's a sampling: Released MAR 30, 2005 Air New Zealand $650 Fly Roundtrip to New Zealand, Just Announced Vacation Village at Parkway $69 Orlando 1-Bedroom Suite at Half-Price Brian Moore International Tours $369 Ireland in May: Air & 7 Days Car Rental Orbitz $97 & up Fly to Las Vegas over Spring Weekends Atlantis $199 Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island, 40% OFF in May Worry-Free Vacations $69 Jamaica from Dallas (Roundtrip), Over 3 Weekends Click on any deal and check them out today! *Fares listed may not include all taxes, charges and government fees. More information. © 2005 Travelzoo Inc. Academy officials say they have hit a roadblock in releasing their report. By law, the academy, which Congress charters, coordinates the work of academic experts from around the country, and it is supposed to make its findings public. In cases like the nuclear waste one, it is supposed to work with the relevant federal agency to develop a version of its report that has no information that would be useful to terrorists. The academy sent a draft to the regulatory commission in November. But the two have not agreed on what information to release. A commission official said the problem was "aggregation." Although no secret facts appear in the academy version, piecing together the material disclosed would provide useful information. This month, the academy took the unusual step of sending its version to members of Congress, with classified information removed but still including "safety sensitive information." A few days later, the commission sent several lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, a rebuttal to the classified report. A spokesman, Eliot Brenner, said this was not a response to the academy, but because Congress wanted to know what actions the commission would take. According to the commission, the academy panel had "identified some scenarios that are unreasonable." The rebuttal, sent by Nils J. Diaz, chairman of the commission, said using those situations could "lead to a misinterpretation of the actual risk, and this can cause confusion." Some ideas put forward by the academy "lacked a sound technical basis," including having reactor operators move more fuel from the pools to dry casks, said the rebuttal, which was sent to Senator Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who is chairman of a Senate subcommittee on energy and water. Among engineers, those are fighting words. The rebuttal's characterization is "an incomplete and, consequently, less than accurate description of what our classified report had to say," the executive officer of the academy, E. William Colglazier, said in a telephone interview. In separate interviews, two of the scientists who provided peer review of the academy study and an author of the study agreed. All three said they could not talk about what the report said because it remained classified at the insistence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When nuclear fuel is taken out of the reactor, it has to stay in the pool because it generates so much heat. After about five years, it cools enough to be put in a sealed cask of steel and concrete. The casks are filled with inert gas to prevent rust. The fuel warms the gas, which transfers its heat to the exterior of the cask. Nearly half the reactors in the United States use such casks because they have run out of space in their fuel pools and because the government has not accepted the waste for permanent disposal. Building the casks is expensive, and the power plant operators have constructed them only as needed and not fast enough to lower the inventories in the pools. The commission has repeatedly said cask storage and pool storage are equally safe. On March 14, Dr. Diaz told reporters at the National Press Club, "I don't see them as a significant radiological risk." At many plants, the pools are below ground or nearly so, making attacks difficult. But at some reactors, the plants are well above grade. In Mr. Diaz's rebuttal, he refers to a recommendation by the academy that plants be analyzed individually to evaluate their vulnerability and that at some the commission "might determine that earlier movements of spent fuel from pools to dry storage would be prudent." Frank N. von Hippel, a Princeton professor and co-author of the study that brought the issue to prominence, was also brought in as a peer reviewer of the academy study. He said it did not go nearly far enough in urging dry storage. "I found it peculiar that the N.R.C. said they did," Dr. von Hippel said. A declassified version might explain the apparent discrepancy. Mr. Brenner, the commission spokesman, said his agency sent a new draft to the academy on Tuesday. _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 32 [du-list] ING disinvests (partly) from controversial weapons Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 14:38:02 -0800 ING disinvests (partly) from controversial weapons Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 11:23:00 +0200 From: Laka Foundation Press Release Brussels, 24 March 2005 Netwerk Vlaanderen vzw, Belgium ING disinvests (partly) from controversial weapons ING, the largest private financial institution in the Benelux countries, and the 11th largest in the world, has decided to no longer invest in companies producing controversial weapons. The types of weapons excluded by ING are: anti-personnel mines, cluster bombs, depleted uranium weapons, biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Netwerk Vlaanderen, Forum voor Vredesactie, For Mother Earth and Vrede have been campaigning since 2003 for an end to investments of Belgian banks in the arms trade. Their campaign "My Money. Clear Conscience?" has put pressure on ING to make this important step in the direction of a peaceful investment policy. Controversial weapons The weapons systems from which ING is disinvesting are indeed controversial. They make no distinction between military and civilian targets, and their use causes disproportionate suffering. Cluster bombs have been responsible over the past decades for thousands of civilian casualties, often years after the end of the conflict in which they are deployed. They were extensively used in Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Landmines are dirty weapons. Every year there are between 15,000 and 20,000 new victims caused by landmines. In more than 75% of the world, landmines have been declared illegal. Nuclear Weapons are the most destructive weapons ever developed. These weapons of mass destruction continue to threaten the whole world. Despite signing treaties that commit them to disarm, the nuclear powers continue to modernise their arsenals. Uranium weapons have been used in armed conflicts over the last 15 years, despite the fact that they are chemically toxic and radioactive. Even after the end of the conflict in which they are used, they cause serious health problems for soldiers and civilians. ING adopts a stricter weapon policy ING has decided to implement strict criteria for defence-oriented companies involved in the production, maintenance, or sale of these controversial weapons. ING will no longer finance these companies, and will no longer make its own direct investments in these companies. Indirect investments are still permitted. For example, investors will still be able to purchase investment funds from ING, including shares from these companies. Big companies in the spotlight In a report published in early 2004 - http://www.netwerk-vlaanderen.be/actie/dossierwapensengelsdef.pdf - Netwerk Vlaanderen revealed that AXA, DEXIA, Fortis, ING and KBC all invested in producers of these controversial weapons, including some of the largest arms companies in the world. Companies that Netwerk Vlaanderen believes that ING should disinvest from include ATK, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Singapore Technologies Engineering and General Dynamics. ATK is the most important ammunition supplier for the US army, and is involved in the production of uranium weapons and cluster bombs. Lockheed Martin is the largest arms producer in the world, and produces nuclear weapons and cluster bombs, amongst other weapon systems. This new policy should lead to ING abandoning direct links with some of the largest arms companies in the world. Important step from ING, but still some reservations Netwerk Vlaanderen, Forum voor Vredesactie, For Mother Earth and Vrede applaud the step that ING has made, and hope that the other bank groups will follow this example. After KBC, which last year withdrew from a number of controversial weapon systems, ING is the second bank group to take a clear standpoint on this issue. There are still some important omissions in the policy of ING. Netwerk Vlaanderen and its partners regret that this new policy is not valid for indirect investments made by ING. This means that producers of controversial weapons will not be removed from the investment funds that ING offers to its customers. For the customer that invests in ING funds, nothing has changed. Their money can still be invested in producers of these highly controversial weapon systems. The new policy is clearly a step forward in the development of a peaceful investment policy. ING must now work on making this policy solid, strict and transparent. The organisations that have taken the initiative in the campaign "My money. Clear Conscience?" hope that in the future ING will apply this policy to indirect investments, and other weapon systems. End press release Netwerk Vlaanderen vzw Vooruitgangstraat 333/9 1030 Brussel Tel. +32 (0)2 201 07 70 - Fax. +32 (0)2 201 06 02 http://www.netwerk-vlaanderen.be Press spokesperson: Christophe Scheire e-mail: christophe@netwerk-vlaanderen.be ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> In low income neighborhoods, 84% do not own computers. At Network for Good, help bridge the Digital Divide! http://us.click.yahoo.com/EA3HyD/3MnJAA/79vVAA/FGYolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-list/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 33 deseret news: Hurry study, CDC tells U. [deseretnews.com] Wednesday, March 30, 2005 But scientists say they can't finish fallout data By Joe Bauman Deseret Morning News A spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has defended the CDC's refusal to continue funding a study of possible connections between fallout and thyroid abnormalities among Utahns downwind from the Nevada Test Site. Kathy Harbin, based at the CDC in Atlanta, says researchers can still finish the project by the mandated cutoff date, Aug. 31. Meanwhile, a spokesman for former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, now secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says he is comfortable with the end of funding. The CDC is part of Leavitt's department. However, researchers who have been working on the study for years say they are only about one-third finished with interviews and health examinations. They say they cannot possibly complete the project by September. On March 21, Michael A. McGeehin, director of the CDC's Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects, wrote to Dr. Joseph L. Lyon of the University of Utah, saying the funding would end as of Aug. 31. The study so far has cost $8 million. Lyon said the federal government seemed not to want to see the study's results. Research that Lyon and colleagues performed of the same group in 1994 found 3.4 times the number of thyroid abnormalities that would be expected. The subjects were students who were in grades six through 12 in the Washington County schools in 1965. Residents of the area were exposed to fallout sweeping in from open-air atomic testing at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s and '60s. (The study is also examining an Arizona control group.) The follow-up study is important because health risks may develop slowly in the thyroid and damage may pose a lifelong danger, according to scientists. More than $8 million has been spent on the latest study since its inception in 1998. "In 1998, we started providing funds to the University of Utah for this five-year project," Harbin said. In 2003, the study was extended for a year. The following year, it was continued for an additional year, she said. From the start, CDC has "continually advised" the U. about the study's time-frame and expectations about its completion, she said. "There was a required review by a board of scientific experts right before the funding was awarded in September (2004)," she said. "So in August 2004, Dr. Lyon was advised that this board of scientific experts recommended not funding the project beyond the 2004 funding period." Asked how often the CDC pulls the plug on projects before they are finished, Harbin responded, "We're in the middle of fiscal year 2005. He has funds to complete the study. There are several months left." Lyon said bureaucratic barriers erected by the CDC consumed much of the time for the study, and overhead accounted for a great deal of the cost. Also, the CDC's requirements made for slow going, he said. "CDC made very sure that we were going to do the most thorough exam and interview possible," with four people to do each exam, he said. "That's not a cheap thing to put in the field." The study was designed to check 4,000 people, many of whom had to be tracked down, and that took time. So far, only 1,300 have been studied. Since 2000, he and his colleagues provided the CDC with their projected budgets needed for completion, Lyon said. "We have said very clearly for at least four years, going on five, that this is what it's going to cost to do the study the way you want it done," he said. Stephen C. Alder, who works on the study's statistics, said it's well-confirmed that "it's simply not possible" to finish the study by Aug. 31. "That really surprises me that they (CDC) would say that," he said. "For the funds that we have received, we simply cannot finish the work. We're doing our darnedest to try and do as much with the resources we have. "But there is simply no way to finish the study with the funds that we have, by the end of this funding year." Alder said he talked with the project manager on that topic. "She verified . . . that, in fact, at the beginning of the funding year we had informed CDC that we would be about a third of the way through the examinations by the end of the funding year. "So they were well aware of that." Harbin emphasized there are other studies CDC is supporting that examine people who were exposed to radiation. The fallout study is "just one of the efforts CDC has under way to study the health effects of these exposures," she said. The other investigations she noted were a study of thyroid disease among people who may have been exposed to radioactive iodine from the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington and dose reconstructions involving the Savannah River site in South Carolina, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Hanford site and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. "We expect that all of these studies are going to provide very valuable information on the health effect of past radiation exposure," she said. Kevin Keane, assistant secretary of HHS for public affairs, said Leavitt "obviously cares about this issue (fallout), and it is an issue of concern for him." That is especially the case because of Leavitt's southern Utah roots, he indicated. Keane said the former Utah governor is "comfortable with how the scientists at CDC have decided to proceed." The agency is continuing to study radiation effects from nuclear production facilities, he said. "When this grant and study was supported by the CDC, it was for a five-year time period," Keane said. "That was the agreed-upon time frame, and CDC has twice extended the time frame for a total of seven years and $8 million. "That's a considerable investment," Keane said, adding that it should not be diminished. E-mail: bau@desnews.com [bau@desnews.com] © 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 34 Mainichi Interactive: Gov't urged to clarify its responsibility for fatal nuke plant accident A government committee investigating a fatal accident at a nuclear power plant in 2004 urged the government in its final report to clarify its responsibility for the accident. The committee submitted the report on the accident that occurred at the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant of Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO) in Fukui Prefecture last August to Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Shoichi Nakagawa on Wednesday. The report points out that the government had left the maintenance of the pipes in the secondary system of the plant's No. 3 generator to its operator, while criticizing KEPCO and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., the manufacturer of the plant, for failing to predict that a pipe would rupture. Pipes in a secondary system of a nuclear power plant in the United States ruptured in 1986, prompting the U.S. government to create a framework in which a governmental organization inspects power suppliers' maintenance program. Following the move, KEPCO worked out guidelines for maintaining the secondary systems in its nuclear power generators in 1990. At the time, however, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the predecessor of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, only sought opinions from its nuclear power generation technological adviser. It then decided to leave the maintenance of the secondary systems in nuclear power generators to the discretion of each power supplier. Inspections following the accident at Mihama Nuclear Power Plant have revealed that KEPCO loosely interpreted technical standards to postpone replacing pipes in 78 cases, according to the final report. The report then concluded that KEPCO enforced its guidelines for examining pipes in the secondary systems in an inappropriate manner because the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) had allowed power suppliers to work out their own safety standards. NISA said it will work out common guidelines for power suppliers to enforce safety measures in accordance with the Electric Utility Law revised in December last year. The final report appreciates action plans that KEPCO and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries worked out to prevent a recurrence as they clarify the schedules of the specific actions they intend to take. However, it warns that the action plans will be meaningless unless it is ensured that the measures are enforced in an appropriate manner, and urges the government regulator to regularly inspect KEPCO and Mitsubishi. The fatal accident occurred at Mihama Nuclear Power Plant's No. 3 generator on the afternoon of Aug. 9, last year. A pipe in the generator's secondary system ruptured, allowing the secondary coolant that was about 140 degrees Celsius to leak. Five workers died and six others were injured in the accident. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, March 30, 2005) © 2005 The Mainichi Newspapers Co. ***************************************************************** 35 Bellona: Sweden grants Russia 6 million dollars for nuclear safety The Swedish government has decided to grant nearly $6m during 2005 for nuclear safety cooperation with Russia, Radio Sweden reported. 2005-03-30 18:42 The money will be transferred to Russia through the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate and the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute. The cooperation covers four main areas: reactor safety, waste management, radiation protection and preparedness. Among the projects that will receive financing are a number of security enhancement initiatives at the Kola and Leningrad nuclear power plants. The support also includes a preliminary study for managing radioactive waste, initiatives to facilitate monitoring and control of radioactive discharges and Nordic coordination with Russian authorities in issues of preparedness. Much of the work will take place in consultation with the European Union and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Publisher: Bellona Foundation [bellona@bellona.no] , President: Frederic Hauge [frederic@bellona.no] Information: info@bellona.no [info@bellona.no] , Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no [webmaster@bellona.no] Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 36 Las Vegas SUN: CDC halts funding of fallout study Project examined effects of atomic testing in Nevada SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS SALT LAKE CITY -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has halted funding for a study on the connection between radioactive fallout and thyroid disease among people living downwind of aboveground atomic testing in Nevada during the 1950s and early 1960s. The study, which already had cost $8 million, has rechecked about 1,300 of 4,000 former students who lived in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada, plus a control group of Arizona residents. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that no further funding is available for this study," Michael McGeehin, director of the centers' Division of Environmental Hazards Health Effects, said in a March 21 letter sent to Dr. Joseph L. Lyon, a University of Utah researcher who has been studying the fallout issue for decades. "CDC does not have the resources to extend funding for this study beyond the current budget period." Lyon, who headed the investigation, said he was loath to call it a cover-up, but it seemed the federal government does not want to know about health effects of fallout on American citizens. "That's the only interpretation I can place on it," he said. McGeehin advised Lyon to close out the study by Aug. 31. David Cherry, spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the lack of funding comes from an administration that has discussed new nuclear weapons. Cherry said there is more than an academic aspect to the study. He called it a "preventative medicine element" and said the government should be obligated to check up on affected people. "They should be screened regularly," he said. Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, who as a UNLV political science professor has studied the politics and polices surrounding nuclear weapons testing, said this shows the government "is willing to cut funds because this is a low priority and it might reveal something they don't want to hear. "It's terrible and their (the victims') families are affected," she said. "The federal government is cutting everything and there are not many of these people left. There are not a lot of votes in Utah and those people already voted for this administration." For decades, there has been debate over how the more than 900 atomic tests at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, affected downwind residents in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. Past studies produced conflicting conclusions as to whether the fallout caused increased numbers of cases of particular types of cancer. The first studies began in the 1960s and ended with the federal researchers concluding that fallout had not increased disease among the downwinders. Lyon's studies, beginning in 1977, concluded that fallout did cause increased incidence of cancer downwind. After the trial of a lawsuit filed on behalf of possible victims, a federal judge in Utah concluded that fallout was to blame for some of the illnesses. But his ruling was overturned on appeal on grounds of government immunity. Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990 to provide for payments to downwinders who contracted certain cancers and other serious diseases. In 1993 a new study by Lyon and colleagues found radioactivity from the detonations increased the incidence of thyroid tumors 3.4 times over the expected rate among schoolchildren who were exposed to the highest doses. The latest study was an attempt to re-examine the residents. Some scientists suspect health effects may develop slowly for thyroid disease and that there may be lifelong risk. Lyon said the study is incomplete and analysis has not been carried out yet, so he is hesitant to talk about results. McGeehin said a special emphasis panel -- a board of scientific experts from outside the CDC -- reviewed Lyon's protocol and recommended that the study not be funded beyond the 2004 grant award. "I've been working on this now since 1977," Lyon said. "I'm about ready to retire, and I'm sort of saying, 'I'd like to finish up this thyroid study and get more definitive information.' " ***************************************************************** 37 Spectrum: Funding halted for fallout study , St. George - www.thespectrum.com Wednesday, March 30, 2005 By BRIAN PASSEY bpassey@thespectrum.com ST. GEORGE - In three more years, Dr. Joseph L. Lyon might have known more about the connection between atomic testing in Nevada and thyroid disease. But now that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has halted funding for the program, his life's work may never be complete. Thyroid disease is one of many health problems attributed to radiation exposure by people, often called downwinders, who lived in Southern Utah during the aboveground testing from 1951 to 1961. The CDC recently notified Lyon that the funding for his University of Utah study would not be renewed past September, though he said it will take three years to complete. "(The federal government) essentially declared they have no interest in the adverse effects of nuclear radiation," Lyon alleged. But the CDC said the study was scheduled to be complete by September and has already extended the funding twice, committing more than $8 million to it, said Tom Skinner, a CDC spokesman. "A lot has been learned from this study," Skinner said. "We're committed to evaluating the exposure to radiation." Skinner said the University of Utah study is just one of many radiation studies the CDC is funding around the country, including studies in Washington state, Idaho and New Mexico. St. George resident Jeff Bradshaw, who has thyroid problems, is one of the downwinders who is participating in Lyon's study. He heard about the funding cut Tuesday afternoon. "I'd just say it's another one of (the federal government's) schemes," Bradshaw alleged. "I think they're trying to get away from doing anything for the downwinders because they want to start the testing again." He has been participating in Lyon's various studies for about 20 years. Though Lyon began this particular study in 1998, he has been looking at health problems associated with the downwinders for 27 years. Lyon, like Bradshaw, said he thinks there is more to the funding cut than money. He said a core problem is that the federal government is both the "polluter" and the one trying to find solutions. Lyon said they have only completed examinations on about 1,300 of 4,000 individuals. Ideally, Lyon said the people should be followed throughout their lives. "We've got three more years of hard work to complete the study by," Lyon said. But without the funding, the study will not be completed. "We have to shut down," Lyon said. "We'll have to archive this information." It likely will cost several million to restart the study if funding is ever obtained, Lyon said. The funding cut will not affect the local Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program at Dixie Regional Medical Center because it is not funded by the CDC, said Becky Barlow, project director. The program also operates clinics in Hildale and at Valley View Medical Center in Cedar City. The clinic is basically the screening arm for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, which provides payments to downwinders who contracted certain diseases, Barlow said. Those at the clinic check for cancerous conditions and offer education about the increased risk of cancer among downwinders. "Our clinic does an overall assessment on the whole body," Barlow said. "We look at more than just the thyroid." Barlow said it was a shame that Lyon's program had lost funding because of the amount of information it had gathered on thyroid problems. She said her clinic has referred patients to Lyon's study. "He literally has made that his life," Barlow said. Originally published March 30, 2005 ***************************************************************** 38 Spectrum: Downwinders are being sold out again Editorials St. George - www.thespectrum.com Wednesday, March 30, 2005 That, in essence, is what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is telling people who were schoolchildren in Southern Utah and Eastern Nevada during the nuclear weapons tests of the 1950s and '60s. The CDC has eliminated funding for a research project that was studying the long-term connection of nuclear fallout and thyroid diseases. CDC officials have said that the agency cannot afford the study - which already has cost taxpayers $8 million. In their decision, the officials failed to mention the cost already paid by the people who lived here when the more than 900 atomic tests were detonated over the years. While some argue that there are no increased health risks associated with the nuclear tests, the study appeared to be showing otherwise. Led by Dr. Joseph L. Lyon at the University of Utah, he and colleagues released a study in 1993 that indicated an increased incidence of thyroid tumors among the schoolchildren exposed to the highest doses of radiation - 3.4 times the normal expected rate. Some researchers hypothesize that more people may be impacted because thyroid diseases may develop slowly over the course of decades. With the funding cut, we might not know, once and for all, if that is the case. Since the study began in 1977, about 1,300 of the approximately 4,000 former students have been rechecked to determine if they have been impacted by the fallout. What happens to them now? Utah's lawmakers and public officials have a chance to show if they truly care for their constituents. Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch, as well as Rep. Jim Matheson, must stand up to the CDC and demand that funding be restored. Former Gov. Michael Leavitt - a Southern Utah native - is the new secretary of Health and Human Services. As the CDC's boss, he has the authority to reopen the debate on the study. He has new political clout that should be used to assist those who our government deemed necessary to use as guinea pigs. The U.S. government harmed these people once. It's shameful to see that they are being wronged yet again. Originally published March 30, 2005 ***************************************************************** 39 ITAR-TASS: Russian govt urged to tighten border radiation control 30.03.2005, 15.12 MOSCOW, March 30 (Itar-Tass) - Russian defenders of consumers’ rights have urged the government to fully provide customs houses with radiation control facilities. “We demand, in the first place, the tightening of radiation control over Ukrainian rolled metal, which is often made of the scrap metal coming from the Chernobyl area,” Mikhail Anshakov, chairman of the Public Control Society, which defends the rights of consumers, told Itar-Tass. According to Anshakov, “metal products, which are dangerous for people’s health and for the natural environment, are imported to Russia from Ukraine across the border, which is more than transparent.” Under the rules existing in Russia, only scrap metal is subjected to radiation control, which is not extended to finished products, made of radioactive scrap metal, he continued. In the opinion of Anshakov, one of the reasons for it is “a shortage of radiation control equipment at customs houses. The number of control facilities they have is only 55 to 70 per cent of what they really need.” Anshakov explained that last Monday the Public Control Society brought an action at the Cheryomushki District Court of Moscow, demanding the banning of the import to Russia of metal products, made of Chernobyl scrap metal. Their total amount exceeded 100,000 tons last year alone. Radioactive beams, angle pieces, channels, pipes and reinforcing bars, marketed mostly in Moscow and the Moscow Region, were used in the construction of apartment houses, cultural facilities, entertainment and sports complexes. In the opinion of specialists in nuclear and radiation security, “metal products, made of Chernobyl scrap metal, are potentially dangerous for people’s life and health, as well as for the natural environment.” At present specialists do not know about effective methods of fully removing radioactivity from metal products. According to the information of the Federal Customs Service, Russian customs officers stopped some 300 attempts to illegally transport from Ukraine to Russia the cargoes with radiation higher than the normal level. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 40 Jeffrey St. Clair: Downwinders be Damned [http://www.counterpunch.org/] March 30, 2005 Bush Administration Kills Nuclear Fallout Study By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Just as the Bush administration contemplates ordering up a new generation of nuclear weapons, which may in turn spark a new round of nuclear testing in the high deserts of Nevada, the Center for Disease Control, a federal outpost in Atlanta charged with supervising the nation's physical well-being, pulled the plug on a long-term study into the dire health consequences from nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s on people living in the American southwest. The study, which has been underway for seven years, has been tracking the thyroid conditions of 4,000 former students who lived in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada in 1965, at the height of testing of nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site. The lead researcher, Dr. Joseph L. Lyons, a professor at the University of Utah, was informed via a curtly worded letter on March 21 that funding for the study had been inexplicably yanked. The letter terminating the research in midstream was written by Michael A. McGeehin, director of the CDC's Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects. McGeehin claimed the study was killed because of financial considerations. "The CDC does not have the resources to extend funding for this study beyond the current budget period," McGeehin wrote. "We recommend that you take measures to close out this study by the end of the current budget period, which will occur on August 31, 2005." The Utah Thyroid Disease Study hardly seems like a financial burden on the federal purse. In seven years, the investigation into thyroid cancers linked to radioactive fallout has cost the federal treasury only $8,049,988, roughly the amount the Pentagon spends every two hours in Iraq. Or consider this: from 1990 to 1995, the federal government spent more than $90 million in legal fees to fight off claims from downwinders and workers at nuclear weapons plants over the health consequences of bomb-making and testing. Lyons believes, with good reason, that the study was axed for political reasons. "The only interpretation I can put on it is that the Bush administration doesn't want to know the health effects of fallout on American citizens," Lyons told the Deseret News. The scientist also said it was an extremely rare occurrence for the CDC to pull funding in the middle of a major study. "I've never know it to happen before," says Lyons, who has been researching the links between cancer and fallout since 1977. Located 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the Nevada Test Site, established in 1951, sprawls over 1,500 square miles of desert basin and range country. Between 1951 and 1992, the Pentagon and Department of Energy conducted at least 925 nuclear blasts at the site, more than 100 of the explosions were above ground, open-air tests, which cast a radioactive pall over much of the American West. Even the underground tests vented plumes of radiation. A 1997 study by the National Cancer Institute reported that the fallout from the blasts deposited large amounts of radioactive iodine across the lower-48 states. The report concluded that the contamination was so severe that it may cause as many as 70,000 cases of thyroid cancer alone. By way of comparison, that's 65,000 more casualties than Saddam Hussein is alleged to have caused in his poison gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988. It was Lyons's groundbreaking study in 1979 for the New England Journal of Medicine which proved that radioactive fallout from the open-air nuclear tests in Nevada had lead to increased incidents of cancer in communities downwind of the blasts. A subsequent study demonstrated that those same downwind communities faced an increased likelihood of leukemia deaths. These two reports prompted Congress to finally enact a fallout compensation measure for downwinders. In 1993, Lyons and his colleagues began studying the thyroid conditions of former school children who lived downwind of the blasts. That research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the schoolchildren exposed to the highest levels of radiation were 3.4 times more likely to suffer from thyroid tumors than would be expected. These same students had been monitored by federal researchers until 1970, who, unsurprisingly, claimed not to have found any link between exposure to fallout and thyroid tumors. But Lyons and his colleagues began examining those students as adults and found that 58 of the former downwinders had nodules on their thyroids. Of those, 8 were malignant tumors and 11 were benign tumors. This initial study buttressed the theory held by Lyons and many other scientists that there is a lifetime risk to fallout exposure and that thyroid problems in particular develop very slowly across a span of decades. These results prompted Lyons to apply for funding from the CDC for a larger study that would examine the thyroid conditions of all 4,000 former schoolchildren in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada, who were originally identified in 1965 as being exposed to the most extreme levels of fallout from the blasts. The incidence of thyroid problems in those students was to be compared to a control group in Safford, Arizona. One of the initial problems Lyons ran into was the realization that the radioactive fallout extended farther than he anticipated, meaning that most of the population of Safford had also been exposed to radiation, though in much smaller doses. Fallout has gone global. When it comes to thermonuclear weapons, we all live downwind. By the end of last year, the researchers had tracked down more than 90 percent of the former students, most of whom agreed to be examined for the study. "We've already reported that there's an excess of tumors of the thyroid gland," Lyons said. "And we've got pretty strong indications that there are other disease problems that ought to be looked at." Originally, Lyons planned to have the study completed within five years. But he encountered continual meddling and roadblocks from the CDC that consumed both time and much of the grant money. "The federal government put all kinds of bureaucratic hurdles in our path that were not part of the original agreement," Lyons contends. The agreement called for Lyons research to be overseen by the University of Utah. Then the CDC said that the study needed to be scrutinized by an institutional review board at the CDC, a requirement that delayed the research by two years. Next the CDC informed Lyons that he had to submit the plans for his study to a panel at the National Academy of Sciences, an inquisition that lasted another two years. Then the CDC called for a yet another review of Lyons's methodology by a three-person panel at the Department of Energy. When Lyons and his colleagues finally got out into the field and began to get results, the CDC pulled the plug. "Essentially, they said, 'Tough luck, we don't want your study'," said Lyons. "I've been working on this now since 1977. I'm about to retire and I'd really like to finish up this thyroid study and get some definitive answers." Those answers might prove to be unsettling for the Bush administration as it pursues a new generation of nuclear weapons and grooms the killing grounds of the Nevada Test Site for another go-round of nuclear blasts. People are getting sick and dying the American Southwest and the Bush administration doesn't want them to learn why. Downwinders be damned. For more information on visit: http://www.downwinders.org [http://www.downwinders.org/] Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512585/counterpunchma ga] . This essay is excerpted from his forthcoming book Grand Theft Pentagon [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567513379/counterpunchma ga] , to be published in July by Common Courage Press. ***************************************************************** 41 HN: More than 18,000 children from Chernobyl treated in Cuba over last 15 years Health | canada.com E-mail [healthnews@canada.com] Canadian Press Wednesday, March 30, 2005 HAVANA (AP) - More than 18,000 children with health problems believed linked to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine have received treatment in Cuba over the last 15 years, officials said. Hundreds of those children and their relatives gathered to mark the 15th anniversary of the program, launched in 1991 after the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded and caught fire in 1986. The initial blast and fire caused 31 deaths but the radiation plume that spread from the crippled power plant eventually killed and sickened many more. "For many mothers, Cuba was the only hope," said Svetlana Saslavskaya, whose son showed officials and diplomats attending Tuesday's event how he could stand up from a wheelchair and move slowly after several operations for an unidentified illness. The children receive treatment at a coastal sanatorium at Tarara, east of Havana. Cuba pays for all medical treatment, room and board. The average stay is 2 1/2 months. About 250 children are at the sanatorium at any one time. They live in houses surrounding the medical facility, often with their parents. When the program began, most of the young patients suffered from leukemia, other forms of cancer and cerebral palsy - health problems doctors believe are related to the radiation. But any sick child from the affected region is eligible for the program, regardless of their affliction. © The Canadian Press 2005 Copyright © CanWest Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 42 GovExec: Panel to probe alleged false documents on Yucca Mountain project (3/30/05) By Michael Posner, CongressDaily A House Government Reform subcommittee next Tuesday will examine whether alleged falsified government research documents compromised scientific justification for storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev. House Government Reform Federal Workforce Subcommittee Chairman Jon Porter, R-Nev., has called officials from the U.S. Geological Survey, the Energy and Interior departments, and other federal and Nevada officials to testify about possible fabricated documentation. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee also has scheduled a hearing next Thursday into the status of the long-delayed Yucca Mountain repository. Witnesses have not been set, a committee spokesman said, noting, "It's a good hot topic." Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Pete Domenici, R- N.M., has supported placing the nuclear repository in Nevada. At issue is a March 16 announcement by Energy Secretary Sam Bodman that his department "has learned that certain employees of the U.S. Geological Survey at the Department of the Interior working on the Yucca Mountain project may have falsified documentation of their work." Investigations are under way into e-mails between May 1998 and March 2000 in which a USGS employee indicated he had fabricated information, Bodman said. Porter, an opponent of storing nuclear waste in his state, said alleged false documents deal with a water infiltration study that "is very important because water movement is critical in determining the integrity of the casks that will hold the nuclear waste and the possible spread of radiation from the repository." He said the aim of the hearing is to determine if "the allegations erode the scientific basis for the proposed project." Because of legal disputes and other delays, the project has been on hold since President Bush signed legislation in 2002 authorizing a single storage facility at Yucca Mountain. Spent nuclear fuel and waste from nuclear facilities are now stored more than 100 sites around the country. ***************************************************************** 43 Bradenton Herald: Contamination measure passes | 03/30/2005 | Senate panel The companion bill to Rep. Bill Galvano's contamination notification measure passed unanimously in the Senate Environmental Preservation Committee on Tuesday. The bill, whose Senate sponsor is Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, would require the state Department of Environmental Protection to notify affected residents that contamination has spread to their property within 30 days of receiving the information. Galvano's bill was inspired by complaints by Tallevast community residents, who did not find out that contamination from the former property of the American Beryllium Co. had spread into their neighborhood until three years after the DEP had the information. The next stop for the bill in the Senate is the Governmental Oversight & Productivity Committee. Galvano's House bill will next be heard in the Water & Natural Resources Committee. ***************************************************************** 44 AP Wire: Decision on converting nuclear weapons material for TVA upheld | 03/30/2005 | Associated Press ERWIN, Tenn. - Two administrative judges have upheld a Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff decision allowing Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. to convert surplus weapons-grade uranium into fuel for a Tennessee Valley Authority commercial reactor. "There is simply no basis in the record at hand for a determination on our part that the staff's environmental review failed adequately to consider the possibility of the occurrence of an accident with serious environmental consequences," Judges Alan S. Rosenthal and Richard F. Cole concluded. They dismissed a petition filed by the Sierra Club seeking a full environmental impact statement on the project. The Sierra Club was the only one of several groups that the judges determined had legal standing to challenge the NRC's action. The Sierra Club has 15 days to decide if it will appeal to the NRC. Local chairwoman Linda Modica said it would "exhaust all administrative remedies" before heading to court. The project to "downblend," or dilute, 39 metric tons of highly enriched uranium into low-enriched fuel for TVA, the nation's largest public utility, already is under way and the first shipment has been delivered to TVA's Browns Ferry nuclear station in Alabama. Most of the uranium comes from the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge. NFS spokesman Tony Treadway hailed the judges' ruling as "really good news for Unicoi County, the region and the taxpayers," noting the project has created 100 jobs at NFS and will save the Department of Energy millions of dollars on storage costs and TVA on fuel purchases. The Sierra Club, however, said NFS documents show the project "poses significant environmental hazards that must be studied carefully and reported to the public in an environmental impact statement." Hazards include chemical spills, radioactive gas releases, explosions and uncontrolled chain reactions that could hurt employees and nearby residents, the group said. Treadway said the group "exaggerated their claims far beyond reality." After nine years of reviews by experts and various agencies, he said, "the truth still stands." The project will cause "no significant threat to the public and the environment," he said. ***************************************************************** 45 Fredericksburg: Nuclear 'waste'? No, little is 'wasted' in nuclear energy Wednesday, Mar. 30, 2005 Date published: 3/30/2005 While I realize that the headline of a recent article is flashy and probably inspires a more emotional response from your readers, it is not correct ["North Anna to store more nuclear waste," March 23]. Although used nuclear fuel is not useful at the moment, it is far from being accurately called "waste." If the United States begins reprocessing fuel as does Europe and Japan, 95 percent of the used nuclear fuel is recyclable as fuel for future power plants. Only about 5 percent of it is actually waste. While it is true that this remaining 5 percent is highly radioactive, in about 300 years most of it will be less radioactive than the uranium ore from which it was mined. Contrast this to the real waste emitted by fossil fuels, such as 50,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, 100,000 tons of NOX, and more than 7 million tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide that was not emitted last year because of the use of nuclear power in Virginia. Unlike used nuclear fuel, this waste is not contained. Because nuclear is the only proven power source capable of making a serious dent in the use of fossil fuels for electricity production, perhaps a better title for the article would have been "Virginia to store less fossil fuel waste." Michael Stuart Beaverdam Date published: 3/30/2005 Fredericksburg.com, 605 William Street, Fredericksburg, VA 22401 Comments? Send us Feedback, Phone: 540-368-5055 To contact all other newspaper departments, please call 540-374-5000. Copyright 2005, The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co. of Fredericksburg, Va. ***************************************************************** 46 deseret news: Utah needs to oppose Yucca, Matheson says [deseretnews.com] Wednesday, March 30, 2005 Proximity may make state next target, Matheson says By Laura Hancock Deseret Morning News OREM — Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., incorrectly believe sending nuclear waste to Nevada will keep it out of Utah, says Rep. Jim Matheson said. Jim Matheson And Yucca Mountain's proximity will only prime the Beehive State as a potential waste site in the future, according to Matheson, D-Utah, who spoke Monday at Utah Valley State College. Matheson, who made the comments during a Town Hall-style meeting, said he opposes all forms of nuclear testing. Matheson recently introduced a bill that will make it difficult for the federal government to resume military experiments at the Nevada Test Site, where about 1,000 nuclear tests from 1951-1992 released substances into the air that have been attributed to cancer and deaths of people "downwind" from the location, mostly in Utah and northern Arizona. Matheson's bill will prohibit testing until the government does an environmental-impact statement, he said. The bill also requires radiation-monitoring equipment throughout the United States. Testing is set to resume as soon as President Bush OKs it, Matheson said, but his bill will require a vote from Congress, too. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, has introduced a similar bill in the Senate. "The fight continues, and I will continue to do that as long as it takes. That's sort of my No. 1 issue right now," said Matheson. Utahns face danger to safety and economic development if the eight utilities that make up Private Fuel Storage successfully obtain licensing to store spent nuclear fuel rods on the Goshute lands in Tooele County, Matheson said. The state could intervene by assisting the Goshutes with their economic needs so the tribe would not lease its land to PFS. Matheson hopes Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. will talk with Goshute leaders. Congress could intervene by designating the Bureau of Land Management terrain in the area as wilderness to prohibit moving anything over it, but Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, tried attaching such a measure on a defense bill, and it failed, Matheson said. Interior Secretary Gail Norton could intervene as trustee of the Goshute lands, but Matheson does not have much faith she will act unless directed by the White House. E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com [lhancock@desnews.com] © 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 47 GreenvilleOnline.com: Duke says rods safe, despite report challenging storage The Greenville News 305 S. Main St. PO Box 1688 Greenville, SC 29602 Posted Tuesday, March 29, 2005 - 10:18 pm By Tim Smith and Angelia Davis STAFF WRITERS Duke Power said Tuesday that spent nuclear fuel at Oconee Nuclear Station and their other nuclear power plants is safe and protected from attack, despite a national scientific report challenging the safety of storing the fuel in pools of water. The classified report by the National Academy of Sciences recommends speeding up the transfer of spent nuclear fuel assemblies from pool storage at facilities nationwide to dry storage because of the risks of terrorist attacks. However, officials with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the used radioactive fuel is "better protected than ever." The NRC has classified the report as secret but is working on a summary that can be publicly released. Duke, like all commercial reactor operators, stores much of its used nuclear fuel in pools of water that are designed to remove heat from the decaying rods and provide some radiation protection. It also stores spent fuel in dry storage. Ted Wallenius lives seven miles downstream from the Oconee Nuclear Station, which is about 35 miles from Greenville. He said he and his wife Marcia are more concerned with the secrecy surrounding the report than the possibility of terrorists targeting Oconee's spent fuel pool. "Security interests' are too often invoked these days as an excuse to cover up the mistakes of our politicians," he said. Meredith Oliver, who owns a business in Greenville and lives off Pelham Road, said the thought of a terrorist attack on Oconee concerns her "but at the same time, we need to live our day-to-day lives." The scientific report, commissioned by Congress in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, recommends further studies by the government as well as faster transfer of spent fuel at some sites. Duke spokesman Tim Pettit said the spent rods at Oconee and other Duke nuclear sites are safe. "This fuel has been safely stored at these plants," he said. "It was safely stored prior to 911, and it has a higher margin of safety and security today than it did prior to 911." Pettit said he couldn't speak specifically about the Oconee pool because of security concerns, but he said the utility follows industry practices in making its nuclear plant structures safe and secure. The design of the pools, he said, their fortified enclosures, plant security systems and the fact that they are totally or partially below ground level make them well protected. Pettit said even if the government accepted all of the report's findings, the pools would still be needed for some of the spent fuel because it must cool for three to five years before it can be moved into dry storage. "You couldn't make all of it go away," he said. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said the NRC response seems to suggest that storage of the fuel in dry casks or in pools is the same in terms of risk. He said that's not true. "To believe that spent fuel pools are as safe, especially those that are outside the secondary containment, as dry storage is fantasy land," he said. But Nils Diaz, NRC chairman, assured members of Congress that while his agency agreed with some of the scientists' findings, some of the Academy's scenarios "are unreasonable." "The results of security assessments completed to date clearly show that storage of spent fuel in both spent fuel pools and in dry storage casks provides reasonable assurance that public health and safety, the environment, and the common defense and security will be adequately protected," he wrote. Storage of spent fuel from commercial nuclear plants has been an issue for years because of the lack of a permanent national repository. Although federal officials have designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada to hold the waste, the giant project is still in the permit stage and beset with problems, accusations and opposition by environmentalists. With no national waste site to send the used fuel, commercial operators have filled their pools and dry storage sites with tons of the radioactive assemblies. A Duke spokesman said last year that the Oconee plant had about 1,900 such assemblies in dry storage. The storage issue is one of the concerns of Wall Street in looking at the possibility of new nuclear power plants, analysts say. Duke Power announced last month that it is considering a new nuclear plant in South Carolina or North Carolina, ending a two-decade drought on new reactors that began following the Three Mile Island disaster. Pettit said it was too soon to say whether the NAS report or any other factor would impact any plans for a future plant by Duke. "I think at this point in time it's premature to talk about what the next generation of nuclear plants would be like, design wise," he said. "Certainly there are a number of different options they can take in the design of those plants. It's just a little early to talk about what those would be." Wednesday, March 30 Copyright 2003 The Greenville News [http://greenvilleonline.com/] . Use of this site signifies your ***************************************************************** 48 Las Vegas RJ: Yucca e-mails forwardedto congressional panel Wednesday, March 30, 2005 By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Two federal agencies on Tuesday provided internal e-mail messages to a congressional panel that is preparing to hear testimony on suggestions that Yucca Mountain workers might have falsified documents. The e-mails were turned over at the request of Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., chairman of the House subcommittee on the federal work force and agency organization. The panel has scheduled a Yucca Mountain hearing for April 5. Chad Bungard, the subcommittee's chief counsel, said the Energy and Interior departments released the requested e-mails jointly, and that redacted versions would be made public Friday. Federal officials disclosed on March 16 that a scientist working at Yucca Mountain for the U.S. Geological Survey authored e-mails between 1998 and 2000 suggesting that he may have fabricated documentation about his work. Inspectors for the Energy Department and the Interior Department, which oversees the geological agency, have begun investigating, while DOE is conducting a separate scientific review. Bungard, who was in Las Vegas, said the subcommittee was told the agencies were providing documents in addition to the e-mails, and that more documents might be forthcoming. U.S. Geological Survey scientists were studying how water moves through Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, that is being considered for a high-level nuclear waste repository. Scientists have debated the rate at which water might seep to the repository 1,000 feet below the Yucca Mountain surface. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 49 Las Vegas SUN: Panel examining e-mails that suggest Yucca data falsified Today: March 30, 2005 at 9:33:00 PST By Suzanne Struglinski SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department and Interior Department gave e-mails to a Congressional subcommittee Tuesday in preparation for next week's hearing on alleged falsified scientific information related to the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear dump. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who is chairman of the House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee will conduct a hearing April 5 focusing on the documentation problems now under investigation by both departments. The Energy Department announced earlier this month that it discovered e-mails by U.S. Geological Survey employees that suggest employees falsified scientific data while studying Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the site to serve as the nation's dump for highly radioactive nuclear waste. Chad Bungard, the subcommittee's deputy staff director and chief counsel, confirmed the subcommittee received the e-mails Tuesday as well as some other documents Porter requested. He expects the department will make other documents available soon. "They are just getting into this, too," he said. Bungard, who is in Nevada meeting with Porter's staff, said the e-mails will be made available Friday. Bungard was scheduled to tour Yucca Mountain today. In addition to Porter's hearing, another hearing regarding Yucca Mountain is planned for April 7. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is conducting that one to look at the status of the Yucca Mountain project. A witness list had not been completed for that hearing as of this morning, Domenici's staff said. This hearing was planned before the documentation problem was known. Domenici asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman at a committee hearing March 3 to complete a status report on the project. He told Bodman he may be the Energy Secretary that has to look at other options because the Yucca project is taking too long but did not elaborate on his comment. The Energy Department was supposed to move used nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants in 1998 but the Yucca Mountain now is not expected to begin taking the nuclear waste until 2012 at the earliest. ***************************************************************** 50 Platts: ASLB to hear oral arguments for appeal in PFS case [The McGraw-Hill Companies] + An NRC judicial board has decided to open oral arguments on an appeal of a crucial decision in the Private Fuel Storage LLC (PFS) proceeding. In a memorandum issued today, a three-judge Atomic Safety &Licensing Board (ASLB) directed attorneys for PFS, Utah, and the NRC staff to prepare their presentations in a general manner and refrain from discussing specific information concerning the impact of accidental military jet crashes into PFS' proposed spent fuel storage facility. Utah, which opposes the facility, had asked the ASLB to reconsider its Feb. 24 decision that ruled against the state on the accidental aircraft crash consequences issue. Oral arguments will take place at 1 p.m. April 6 in the ASLB hearing room at NRC's headquarters in Rockville, Md. Washington (Platts)--29Mar2005 Copyright © 2005 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 51 Inyo Register: Could doctored docs spell end for Yucca project? Wednesday, March 30, 2005 DOE investigating whether documents were falsified; if so, more delays likely By Robert Gehrke Salt Lake Tribune WASHINGTON - 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, written between 1998 and 2000, 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 it is found to be flawed, it will be redone or supplemented. Other work by the scientists in question is also being reviewed. "I am greatly disturbed by the possibility that any of the work related to the Yucca Mountain Project may have been falsified," Bodman said. "This behavior indicated in the e-mails is completely unacceptable, and I have referred this matter to the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General for full investigation." 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. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said this delay and earlier problems with Yucca Mountain should make it apparent that the planned facility will never happen and it is time to look at alternatives. "This proves once again that DOE must cheat and lie in order to make Yucca Mountain look safe," Reid said. "We aren't just talking about false documentation on paper, this is about the health and safety of Nevadans and the American people." The extent of the delays remains to be seen, although Yucca's opponents in Nevada said it could prove to be the stake in the heart of the project, which is slated to hold some 154 million pounds of nuclear waste. 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. Yucca Mountain itself is located about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and 15 miles east of Death Valley in Inyo County. "Certainly, if Yucca Mountain is not going to go forward, then why would you ship fuel 2,000 miles across the country to the PFS facility?" asked Utah's Assistant Attorney General Denise Chancellor, who is leading the state's opposition to the Skull Valley site. "The whole premise of PFS is that it's a way station for Yucca and this seems to call that into doubt." Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state's office opposing Yucca Mountain, said at the very least the Energy Department's investigation will make it impossible for the Energy Department to petition for a license for Yucca Mountain in the near future, as had been planned. He added it could upend the whole project. The documents in question dealt with water infiltration into the proposed site, which is central to objections Nevada has been raising. The state has said the site is too porous to contain the nuclear waste indefinitely and groundwater could corrode the waste casks. "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. "We are committed to the safety and protection of the citizens of Nevada as we pursue the development of the Yucca Mountain project." Yucca has already suffered a series of setbacks that have pushed back its earliest opening date until 2012, and Reid says he believes it will never open. He has proposed a plan to have the government take control of the waste and store it in casks at the reactor sites. On Monday, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. met with Bodman and urged the department to explore a similar option. (Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service) ©2005 [pub@inyoregister.com] ***************************************************************** 52 Inyo Register: Yucca alive & well Wednesday, March 30, 2005 Officials say delays haven't nuked proposed repository By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON — Despite critics recently sounding a death knell for Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste repository program is alive and well, the acting Yucca manager told Congress on Thursday. "I believe we are better situated today than we have ever been to move forward with this program," Theodore Garrish, deputy director of the Energy Department's Yucca program, said at a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing. Garrish is standing in as the person in charge of the Yucca Mountain program in the wake of Margaret Chu's resignation from the Yucca director position. In testimony Garrish delivered a rosy portrait of the program, adding that Bush administration support remains strong. "We are poised to make significant progress in the coming years," he said. After the hearing, Garrish acknowledged that two program hurdles made it impossible to say exactly when Yucca might open. That depends on when the Environmental Protection Agency releases a revised radiation standard, and on Congress delivering Yucca budget requests, Garrish said. "I don't know what the end date is because of those two issues," Garrish told reporters. Chu had said the underground repository could be completed by 2012. Garrish called that the "earliest" possible date. Project critics and some insiders have said 2015 or 2017 is more realistic. Garrish said the department still aims to have its application for a license to construct Yucca completed by the end of this year, although the department may not actually submit it to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by then. The planned $57.5 billion program has been beset by delays and budget setbacks since Congress chose the site, located 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and about 15 miles east of Death Valley in Inyo County, as the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump. (Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service) ©2005 The Inyo Register [pub@inyoregister.com] ***************************************************************** 53 bizjournals: West Valley Demonstration Project contract extended - 2005-03-30 Home [http://www.bizjournals.com/] West Valley Nuclear Services Co. has received a contract extension through the end of the year to meet new cleanup goals established by the U.S. Department of Energy for the West Valley Demonstration Project. The extension -- for work valued at $61 million -- was awarded to WVNSCO by the DOE, which is responsible for the project. The site, a former commercial spent-nuclear-fuel reprocessing facility, is owned by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. WVNSCO is a subsidiary of Washington Group International Inc. "This extension is a confirmation of the unique capabilities our people have to safely manage a project like this across its entire life cycle," said E. Preston Rahe, Jr., president of Washington Group's Energy & Environment Business Unit. The extension agreement calls for removal of about 100 trailers that have been used as office and storage facilities, continuing management of low-level radioactive waste (LLW) shipments to disposal facilities in Utah and Nevada and preparations for off-site shipment of approximately 200 containers of LLW and mixed waste - waste containing both radioactive and hazardous components - that have been stored at the site since the mid-1980s. WVNSCO has been the primary management and operations contractor at West Valley since 1981, when it was awarded the original contract to decontaminate the site, located about 35 miles south of Buffalo. © 2005 American City Business Journals Inc. ***************************************************************** 54 Cumbria Online: SELLAFIELD RADIATION LEAK PROBE The English Lake District and Cumbria's favourite website [http://www.cumbrialife.co.uk] Published in News &Star on Wednesday, March 30th 2005 AN INVESTIGATION is underway at Sellafield after a ventilation system allowed contamination to spread between work areas. The classified incident occurred at the Magnox finishing and storage plant on March 15, following a dip in site power. A United Utilities transformer fault caused the ventilation system to trip before the site’s back-up generators could kick in. It was restarted immediately but some radioactive contamination managed to spread into another area. Luckily this area was not permanently manned and no workers were affected. A Sellafield spokeswoman said the area was sealed off immediately and decontaminated. It is now fully operational again. She added that the ventilation system is specially designed to prevent air moving from radioactive areas into other parts of the building. A full investigation is now underway to determine exactly how the contamination spread. The event was classified as an anomaly (Level 0) on the International Nuclear Event Scale. A further probe is also underway after holes appeared in specialised work suits three days earlier. The Windscale suits, which are inflated with air, are worn by workers in contaminated areas. The holes appeared in two separate suits during consecutive shifts in the same working area of the Magnox Reprocessing Plant. The faults were picked up right away and the employees pulled out of the area. Both workers underwent medical checks but no personal contamination occurred. The incident was classed as below scale on the International events . A spokeswoman said holes have occurred occasionally in the past but as the two incidents were so close together, an investigation was launched. She added that it was possibly due to the confined work area and a full risk assessment is now underway. ***************************************************************** 55 Guardian Unlimited: Poll: No Nation Should Have Nuke Weapons From the Associated Press [UP] Wednesday March 30, 2005 8:16 PM By WILL LESTER Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Though the Soviet Union is gone, the nuclear fears that fueled the Cold War haven't disappeared. Most Americans think nuclear weapons are so dangerous that no country should have them, and a majority believe it's likely that terrorists or a nation will use them within five years. The Bush administration repeatedly warns about nuclear weapons and is using diplomacy - and force - to try to limit the threat. Still, North Korea claims it has nuclear weapons now and is making more. Iran is widely believed to be within five years of developing such weapons. And security for the nuclear material scattered across the countries of the old Soviet Union remains a major concern. Lurking in the background is the threat that worries U.S. officials the most - terrorists' desire to acquire nuclear weapons. All that helps explain why 52 percent of Americans think a nuclear attack by one country against another is somewhat or very likely by 2010, according to an AP-Ipsos poll. Fifty-three percent think a nuclear attack by terrorists is at least somewhat likely. Two-thirds of Americans say no nation should have nuclear weapons, including the U.S., and most of the others say no more countries should get them. ``I worry about Pakistan and India,'' said Barbara Smith, who lives in a Philadelphia suburb. ``I don't know what's going to happen with Iran, don't know what's going to happen with North Korea.'' Smith said she wants to see the spread of nuclear weapons stopped. ``It's too dangerous, too many things can go wrong,'' she said. About one-third of those in an ABC News-Washington Post poll in the mid-1980s - when the Cold War was hot - thought there would be a nuclear war in the next few years between the two superpowers. The AP-Ipsos poll found 44 percent of those surveyed said they frequently or occasionally worry about a terrorist attack using nuclear weapons, while 55 percent said they rarely or never do. ``Terrorists are more likely to use a nuclear weapon because they are unpredictable,'' said John Saint of Syracuse, N.Y., who works for a trucking company. Susan Winter of McLean, Va., says her awareness of the nuclear threat doesn't cause her to fret constantly. ``I'm concerned, but I don't worry about it,'' Winter said. ``I'm not a nail biter. I don't lose sleep over it.'' Fears about the use of a nuclear weapon are pretty evenly spread across all age groups. But a generational divide emerges when Americans are asked whether they approve of the United States' decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. Six in 10 Americans 65 and older approve of the use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II, while six in 10 from 18 to 29 disapprove. Albert Kauzmann, a 57-year-old resident of Norcross, Ga., said using the bomb in 1945 ``was the best way they had of ending'' World War II. Overall, 47 percent of those surveyed approved of dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki while 46 percent disapproved, according to the poll of 1,000 conducted by Ipsos-Public Affairs from March 21-23 with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The United States, Britain, Russia, France and China have nuclear weapons, and Pakistan and India have also conducted nuclear tests. Many believe Israel has nuclear weapons, but that country has never acknowledged it. North Korea claimed in February that it had nuclear weapons. The threat from nuclear terrorism is greatest, analysts say, because terrorists with nuclear weapons would feel little or no hesitance about using them. That's why those who monitor nuclear proliferation are so concerned about securing weapons stockpiles and dismantling weapons as quickly as possible. ``We're in the race of our lives,'' said Joe Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, ``and we're not running fast enough.'' ^--- On the Net: Ipsos-Public Affairs - http://www.ap-ipsosresults.com Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 56 AU ABC: Australia to lead nuclear test ban efforts. 30/03/2005. ABC News Online [http://www.abc.net.au/] Australia will lead efforts to bring the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty into force. One hundred and seventy-five countries have signed the treaty, but a total ban on nuclear testing cannot be secured until a number of key states have ratified the agreement. Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says it will be Australia's job to persuade the 11 outstanding nations to join the treaty. Australia will also chair a conference on the nuclear test ban in New York in the United States in September. [http://www.abc.net.au] ***************************************************************** 57 ABQjournal: Lockheed Martin Rejoins Lab Contest the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. Wednesday, March 30, 2005 Albuquerque Journal--> By Adam Rankin Journal Staff Writer Defense contractor Lockheed Martin announced on Tuesday that it is rejoining the competition to run Los Alamos National Laboratory, with its $2 billion nuclear weapons budget, after the Department of Energy made changes to the bidding criteria. Lockheed, which manages Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and Britain's Atomic Weapons Establishment in London, among other government contracts, had previously withdrawn from the competition in early August, citing concerns that a LANL bid would be too expensive. "Our business people said it just wasn't a good business decision," explained Lockheed spokesman Don Carson. At the time, Lockheed was widely viewed as a front-runner to manage or co-manage LANL in a partnership with a large research university. Then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham decided in April 2003 to put the LANL contract up for competitive bid following a series of management failures by the University of California, the lab's current manager. The university's contract to manage LANL expires at the end of September. Carson said Lockheed officials changed their minds about competing for LANL's contract after reviewing changes made to the proposed contract in February by the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration. "Our people look at Los Alamos as one of the national treasures," he said. "Lockheed Martin didn't think the contract was structured to make it successful, they didn't think they could bring in the resources and people enough to make the contract successful," Carson said. "With the new contract they feel that they can." The two primary factors that swayed Lockheed's decision were DOE's move to require a stand-alone pension plan and the creation of a separate corporate entity to directly manage the lab, he said. "Those are the things that made Lockheed Martin go back and look at the contract," Carson said, adding that the changes made the competition more fair and open. DOE and NNSA received numerous comments in December and January from interested bidders concerned that liabilities associated with running the nation's largest nuclear weapons research facility outweighed the benefits. Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, wrote Energy Secretary Sam Bodman in February to say the original contract competition seemed to favor LANL's current manager, the University of California, which has operated the laboratory since 1943. He specifically cited the university's well-funded pension plan, which competitors would have to match, because the pension is "disproportionately generous compared to any other government contract." Hobson wrote that bidders should be given the "financial flexibility to propose the most competitive" benefits packages for their proposal. In response to concerns, DOE lengthened the contract term from five years to seven, increased the potential management fee from a proposed $30 million to $60 million— about seven times the $8 million management fee that the University of California currently receives— and proposed requiring a stand-alone pension plan. DOE and NNSA made the changes to encourage competition after several top bidders backed out, including Lockheed, Battelle Memorial Institute, the University of Texas and Texas A University. Lockheed's Carson said the increase in the management fee was also one of the factors that prompted the company to rejoin the contract competition. Prior to withdrawing from the competition, Lockheed had been in talks with the University of California about forming a partnership to compete for LANL. Carson said the company is once again considering potential partners. Copyright Albuquerque Journal Steve@abqjournal.com ***************************************************************** 58 Tri-City Herald: 2007 budget could jump This story was published Wednesday, March 30th, 2005 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer The Department of Energy is proposing a fiscal year 2007 Hanford budget of nearly $2 billion. That's up from $1.8 billion proposed for 2006, an amount that has regulators concerned about how much cleanup it will buy. And it still is a little below the current annual budget of almost $2.1 billion. The 2007 proposal will be discussed at a public meeting tonight in Richland. The Richland Operations Office, which is responsible for cleanup in the central plateau, cleanup of the Columbia River corridor and overall operation of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, would receive $929 million in the 2007 proposal. That's down from $998 million this year, but up from the $878 million proposed for 2006. "This is the bare minimum of what we are going to request," said Greg Jones of the Richland office. DOE headquarters, which supplied the initial target number from the Office of Management and Budget, recently told the Richland office it can go over the target in some areas. The Office of River Protection, which is responsible for construction of the $5.8 billion vitrification plant and Hanford's huge underground tanks of radioactive waste, would receive $1.049 billion under the 2007 proposal. That's close to the $1.094 billion budget this year and above the proposed 2006 budget of $947 million. However, it's still $93 million short of the money needed for work the office expected to complete in 2007. "Our budget submission to headquarters will request funding consistent with our baseline," said Erik Olds, spokesman for the Office of River Protection. The 2007 budget would restore money for the vitrification plant to $690 million, the amount DOE has said is needed yearly for construction of the plant, which will turn radioactive tank waste into a stable glass form. Money for emptying and stabilizing the waste tanks, which hold 53 million gallons of waste, is set at $338 million for 2007, up from $302 million proposed for 2006 but below the $391 million for this year. The Richland Operations Office may request more money for cleaning up the river corridor in 2007 and to meet new security requirements for weapons-grade plutonium still held at Hanford, Jones said. The 2007 budget includes $201 million for river corridor work, up from $168 million this year. By further increasing spending in 2007, DOE may see efficiencies that save taxpayers money, Jones said. Spending at the K Basins, leak-prone pools of radioactive sludge and water, would drop from $122 million this year to $41 million in 2007 as more work would presumably be completed to empty and remove them. The budget for decommissioning the Plutonium Finishing Plant would drop to $179 million from $224 million this year. The most dramatic drop would come in the budget category for tearing down the huge processing canyons in central Hanford where plutonium was removed from irradiated fuel. That category would drop from $107 million this year to $29 million in 2007. Spending for dismantling Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility would remain steady at about $48 million, although regulators have questioned whether that money could better be spent on more pressing environmental concerns. An effort to dig up waste contaminated with plutonium would get a boost, with spending increasing from $176 million this year to $243 million in 2007. Spending on monitoring and cleaning up plumes of underground radioactive and chemical contamination would increase from $81 million this year to $89 million. The local DOE office won't submit its proposals for the 2007 budget to DOE headquarters for a few weeks. "We're looking for public input," Olds said. The meetings are a chance for the public to tell DOE how it wants money spent at Hanford before the budget process goes behind closed doors for most of the next year. Under the DOE budget process, the proposed budget for two years in the future is revealed in the spring. The following February, the final budget proposal, which can change, is released for congressional consideration. © 2005 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 59 lamonitor.com: Lockheed re-enters the arena for LANL contract The Online News Source for Los Alamos [http://www.lac-nm.us] ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com [roger@lamonitor.com] , Monitor Assistant Editor Lockheed Martin is back in the competition to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory. Don Carson, a Lockheed Martin spokesman said this morning that the giant technology and defense contractor had informed the Department of Energy of the company's renewed interest on Tuesday. He said Lockheed Martin is setting up an office in Albuquerque to develop a proposal. Carson said the latest revisions to the draft Request for Proposal by the Department of Energy had revived Lockheed Martin's interest, particularly the suggestions that a separate corporate entity and a stand-alone pension plan would be required under a new management contract. Lockheed Martin currently manages contracts for Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in New York State. KAPL is a joint Navy-Department of Energy program for building and operating nuclear-powered warships. The return of Lockheed Martin revives the possibility that the University of Texas will become interested in partnering on the LANL contract again. In a statement this morning, UT alluded to its recent collaborative agreement with Lockheed Martin at Sandia National Laboratories and left the door open to other possibilities. "The UT System welcomes further discussions and dialogue about ways to build on our contribution to the science and security of our nation at the national laboratories, consistent with our core competencies of research and education," the UT system said in a prepared statement. The University of California, which has managed the LANL contract since days of the Manhattan Project in 1943, also had discussions with Lockheed Martin about a partnership, before the company decided to withdraw in July. The UC Board of Regents has yet to decide whether to bid, but the university is authorized to prepare a proposal, pending the formal decision. While traveling to Las Cruces this morning, Gov. Bill Richardson responded to the news of Lockheed Martin's renewed interest. "As long as the University of California has the lead and the pension system is changed to adequately reflect the needs of the Los Alamos scientists, I'm fine with an industry partner like Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, or Northrup," he said in a statement. Both DOE-related facilities operated by Lockheed Martin are managed by separate companies with separate boards of directors. "That's the way businesses are run," Carson said. The advantage of the stand-alone pension fund is that it is extricated from an aggregated fund, and thus doesn't have to be an issue anytime a new contractor takes over, he explained. In a March 4 letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, New Mexico's senators said they objected to the stand-alone provision for the pension. "We believe the best way for the SEB to guarantee that employees receive 'substantially equivalent' benefits would be to allow existing employees to remain within the University of California Retirement Plan," the letter said. Responding with statements this morning, the two Senators greeted Lockheed Martin's return. "Lockheed Martin has done an outstanding job managing Sandia National Laboratories. Obviously, it will be a credible contender in the bid for the LANL contract," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, the senior Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "My highest priority is to ensure that LANL, as an institution, and its employees are assured a bright future under a new contract," said Sen. Pete Domenici, the Republican chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "I have great regard for both the University of California and Lockheed Martin, which is doing good work at Sandia." Lockheed's contract to operate SNL was recently extended by one year and it is now set to expire in 2009. DOE expects to issue its final Request for Proposal next month and award the new contract by Oct. 1. A six-month transition period to the successor would mean the new contract would begin by April 1, 2006. © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 60 Albuquerque Tribune: Lockheed to bid on Los Alamos By Peter Barnes / Associated Press March 30, 2005 Lockheed Martin will compete to be the next manager of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The company, which had previously said it would not bid to run the nuclear weapons lab in northern New Mexico, announced Tuesday that changes to the lab's contract make it a better business proposition. "Lockheed Martin is fully committed to doing this," spokesman Don Carson said Tuesday. Employees are preparing a bid to submit to the Department of Energy in the next few months, he said. The University of California has held the contract to operate the lab since it was established in 1943. But a series of security, safety and financial problems in recent years led the DOE to put the management contract up for bid in 2003. The UC Board of Regents hasn't voted on whether to bid for the Los Alamos job but has told staff to prepare as though it will bid. The university recently expressed interest in collaborating with a consortium of New Mexico universities as part of a bid for the contract. Lockheed Martin decided not to bid on the contract in August because its business department said it could not make money on the deal, Carson said. Since then, the Department of Energy made several changes to its request for bid proposals. One change allows the winning bidder to set up a new pension plan, as opposed to using the University of California's. The high cost of the UC plan was one of the reasons Lockheed Martin originally decided not to bid, Carson said. The contract was also changed to require the lab's contractor to establish a separate legal entity to run the lab - a move Carson said would add oversight to lab management that the company found appealing. DOE officials on Tuesday night said they could not comment on Lockheed Martin's decision. UC's contract to run Los Alamos expires in September. Lockheed Martin already operates Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. In December the company was awarded a one-year contract extension to manage Sandia because of its outstanding performance. That contract expires in September 2009. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************