***************************************************************** 04/03/05 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 13.75 ***************************************************************** 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 US: Albuquerque Tribune: Richardson, Domenici light up debate on ene 2 US: New York Times: Op-Ed Columnist: Curveball the Goofball 3 US: New York Times Opinions > Weschester: The Nuclear Option 4 Taipei Times: Senior intelligence officer sues the CIA 5 Indiadaily.com: Endless cheap alternate energy from under ocean NUCLEAR REACTORS 6 Bellona: Status Report: RTGs still an underestimated foe in 7 Bellona: Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators 8 US: Register-Guard: In search of alternatives: Leave nuclear power o 9 US: Business Gazette: Plant generates more than power NUCLEAR SECURITY 10 US: [NYTr] How CIA Doubts on WMD Were Buried 11 [NYTr] Pakistan Says Israel, India Spy on Its Nuclear Sites 12 US: Fwd: [GLODEM] NUCLEAR WEAPONS POSE AN UNACCEPTABLE TRHEAT TO 13 WMD Report Collection 14 [EMMAS] 'Dead Wrong' - or Outright Deception? 15 The Times of India: 'Pak N-experts close to al-Qaeda'- 16 US: Sun News: Duke counters report on security of spent nuclear fuel 17 HindustanTimes.com: India, Pak, Israel must renounce nukes to join N 18 US: New York Times: A Fierce Debate on Atom Bombs From Cold War 19 US: Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Intelligence Failures: Wrong or dead 20 US: JS Online: Editorial: Botched U.S. intelligence 21 US: York Daily Record: SECURITY: Nuke plant drill planned - 22 LA TIMES: Nuclear Terror Pact Advances 23 Pakistani Newspaper: Pak best ally in terror fight - US 24 ZNet: Iraq | WMD Commission -- Yet Another Intelligence Failure 25 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Envoy Dismisses Last N. Korea Demand 26 Guardian Unlimited: N Korea Wants Japan Out of Nuclear Talks 27 US: Herald: US nuclear attack report blocked over security fears NUCLEAR SAFETY 28 US: [DU-WATCH] Fayettevile Rally audio and photos available 29 US: San Francisco Bay View: Don’t drink the water 30 US: Indiana Star: AP: Radiation error at South Bend hospital reveale 31 US: PE.com: 'Health goal' for perchlorate will remain 32 VHeadline.com: Venezuelan police hunt missing killer capsules of rad 33 US: L.A. Daily News: Water limit passes test NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 34 Radwaste: Yucca Mt. "Scientists" Fabricated Data 35 More On Yucca Fraud 36 New York Times: E-Mails Reveal Fraud in Nuclear Site Study 37 Guardian Unlimited: Clean-up fears fuel nuclear fallout 38 US: Deseret News: American West isn't a toilet for dumping nuclear 39 Las Vegas RJ: E-mails say scientists fabricated quality assurance on 40 Las Vegas RJ: (Yucca) E-MAIL EXCERPTS 41 Las Vegas RJ: WEEK IN REVIEW: Collection of 90 e-mails details Yucca 42 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca Scientists Investigated Over E-Mails 43 Sunday Herald: Fears over plans to dump nuclear waste in Scotland 44 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: 'Make up more stuff ' 45 RGJ: E-mail shows Yucca data could be false 46 RGJ: As Yucca project stalls, Utah nuke waste dump hits fast track 47 Salt Lake Tribune: Reid: Yucca should be junked 48 Salt Lake Tribune: Bennett not hot on Yucca now 49 US: KCI: National Academies Select KU Professor for Radioactive Wast 50 Scotsman.com: UK should bury nuclear waste in deep rocks, experts sa 51 US: Deseret news: Nevadan says Utah may bar nuclear waste 52 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca e-mails called damning PEACE 53 albawaba.com: Washington urges Israel to renounce nuclear weapons 54 Japan Times: Nuclear foes want Rokkasho, Monju on U.N. nonproliferat 55 Political Affairs Magazine Japan: Anti-nuclear Petition Gains Worldw 56 US: AFSC: Stop Funding for New Nuclear Weapons US DEPT. OF ENERGY 57 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Second suspected leaky tank is emptied 58 Las Vegas RJ: Defense spending up 35 percent in state in three years 59 ABQjournal: LANL Competition Shifts 60 ABQjournal: LANL Deal May Add To Cleanup Cost 61 Tri-City Herald: Bechtel announces vit plant layoffs 62 Paducah Sun: DOE gives another extension on cleanup firm at Paducah ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Albuquerque Tribune: Richardson, Domenici light up debate on energy By James W. Brosnan Scripps Howard News Service April 2, 2005 WASHINGTON - Gov. Bill Richardson has told the National Wildlife Federation that the energy bill in Congress should be defeated, drawing a sharp retort from its major author, Sen. Pete Domenici, about the governor "mouthing off." "It is a bad bill. It is a bill that says America is going to get out of its energy dependence by drilling, drilling and drilling, production, production, production," Richardson said Friday. He was secretary of energy in the Clinton administration. "It is short on conservation. It is short on energy efficiency. It is short on investing in new technology for solar, wind and biomass." Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican, responded angrily that he's still negotiating a bipartisan bill with Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat, so there's nothing for Richardson to criticize yet. The draft bill is under discussion in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "I truly believe the governor would be better served, one, if he knew what he was talking about," Domenici told The Tribune. "And secondly, if he'd be constructive instead of giving speeches about things he couldn't possibly know about." After his speech, Richardson said he understands Domenici is trying to make the bill better. But, Richardson said, he would vote no if he were still a member of Congress, because there are too many subsidies for oil and gas production and nuclear power. "A bad bill is worse than no bill," Richardson said. Domenici said there will be few incentives for oil and gas production in the bill and that the subsidies for nuclear power will be no greater than those for renewable energy. Bingaman, the ranking Democrat on the Energy Committee, ducked around the controversy, saying, "America needs an energy bill that strikes a balance between increasing supplies and encouraging conservation." Bingaman said in a statement: "I'm encouraged that the Senate this year is returning to the tradition of developing energy legislation based on consensus and bipartisanship. Senator Domenici and I both agree that the sooner we get on with the task of moving forward on the items that are most needed in energy policy and most realistic in terms of passing both houses, the better off our country will be." Domenici and Richardson are emphasizing different energy strategies. "The future is renewable energy," Richardson said Friday. He has made a commitment with other Western governors to produce 20 percent of their energy from solar, wind or biomass and proposed creating wind turbine stations in New Mexico to sell power to energy-starved states. On Friday, New Mexico State Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons and Padoma Wind Power of California announced a deal to erect 120 large wind turbines in Roosevelt County to generate 120 megawatts of electricity. Xcel Energy has agreed to buy the power for its 106,000 customers in eastern New Mexico, Lyons said. But Domenici emphasizes a new generation of nuclear power plants. He mocked the idea that wind power could be a major part of the solution in a speech to the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce on Thursday. "Some politicians will tell you that we need to build windmills and solar farms. I used to think those proposals were simply a way to duck the serious issues," Domenici said, according to a text of the speech released by his office. Domenici said it would take 1,000 windmills covering 10 square miles to produce the 1,500 megawatts generated by a modern nuclear or coal power plant. Even with companies building windmills as fast as possible, the forecast is that by 2025 wind power will produce only 3.7 percent of the nation's electricity, said Domenici. Nonetheless, he supports incentives for wind power, Domenici said Friday. The National Wildlife Federation billed Richardson's speech as that of a possible candidate for president in 2008. In a question-and-answer session after the speech, Gerald Meral of Inverness, Calif., suggested that a governor from the "southern belt" with a Latino background would be a good candidate. "Absolutely," said Richardson with a laugh. He was quick to say his focus is on his re-election next year. "I'm very happy being governor, but beyond 2006, who knows?" said Richardson. "Who knows what will happen?" Richardson told the group that the battle over drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge is not over in Congress. He then compared it to the administration's plan to open the Otero Mesa in New Mexico to oil and gas drilling. "I proposed limited drilling, but no, the BLM and the Bush administration said we've got to drill everywhere," Richardson said. Richardson also criticized the Bush administration's lack of a response to rising gasoline prices. Richardson said he was almost "lynched" when oil rose to $30 a barrel when he was energy secretary; now it's $55 a barrel. He said Bush should personally "jawbone" oil-producing countries to increase production. He also agreed with a suggestion from Bingaman to the administration that it suspend purchasing more oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, especially because of the high prices the government is paying. The Associated Press contributed to this story. ***************************************************************** 2 New York Times: Op-Ed Columnist: Curveball the Goofball By MAUREEN DOWD Published: April 3, 2005 Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times [W] ASHINGTON I had an editor once whose wife was in the Audubon Society. There were a lot of articles about birds in that newspaper. I had an editor once who loved fishing. There were a lot of articles about fish in that newspaper. Organizations organically respond to please the boss. Bosses naturally surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear. When King Lear's favorite daughter spoke frankly to him, and refused to fawn like her sisters, she was instantly banished. Insincerity pays. It is absurd to have yet another investigation into the chuckleheaded assessments on Saddam's phantom W.M.D. that intentionally skirts how the $40 billion-a-year intelligence was molded and manufactured to fit the ideological schemes of those running the White House and Pentagon. As the commission's co-chairman, Laurence Silberman, put it: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policy makers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry." Huh? That's like an investigation into steroids in baseball that looks only at the drug companies, not the players who muscled up. We don't need a 14-month inquiry producing 601 pages at a cost of $10 million to tell us the data on arms in Iraq was flawed. We know that. When we got over there, we didn't find any. This is the fourth exhaustive investigation that has not answered the basic question: How did the White House and Pentagon spin the information and why has no one gotten in trouble for it? If your kid lied and hid stuff from you to do something he thought would be great, then wouldn't admit it and blamed someone else, he'd be punished - even if his adventure worked out all right for him. When the "values" president and his aides do it, they're rewarded. Condoleezza Rice was promoted to secretary of state. Stephen Hadley, Condi's old deputy, was promoted to national security adviser. Bob Joseph, a national security aide who helped shovel the uranium hooey into the State of the Union address, is becoming an under secretary of state. Paul Wolfowitz, who painted the takeover of Iraq as such a cakewalk that our troops went in without the proper armor or backup, will run the World Bank. George Tenet, who ran the C.I.A. when Al Qaeda attacked and when Saddam's mushroom cloud gained credibility, got the Medal of Freedom. Then the president appoints a compliant Democrat and a complicit conservative judge to head an inquiry set up to let the president off the hook. Please, no more pantomime investigations. We all know what happened. Dick Cheney and the neocons had a fever to sack Saddam. Mr. Cheney and Rummy persuaded W., "the Man," that it was the manly thing to do. Everybody feigned a 9/11 connection. Ahmad Chalabi conned his neocon pals, thinking he could run Iraq if he gave the Bush administration the smoking gun it needed to sell the war. Suddenly Curveball appeared, the relative of an aide to Mr. Chalabi, to become the lone C.I.A. source with the news that Iraq was cooking up biological agents in mobile facilities hidden from arms inspectors and Western spies. Curveball's obviously sketchy assertions ended up in Mr. Tenet's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and Colin Powell's U.N. speech in February 2003, laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq. Curveball's information was used to justify the war even though it was clear Curveball was a goofball. As the commission report notes, a Defense Department employee at the C.I.A. met with him and "was concerned by Curveball's apparent 'hangover' during their meeting" and suspicious that Curveball spoke excellent English, even though the Foreign Service had told U.S. intelligence officials that Curveball did not speak English. By early 2001, the C.I.A. was receiving messages from our Foreign Service, reporting that Curveball was "out of control" and off the radar. A foreign intelligence service also warned the C.I.A. in April 2002 that it had "doubts about Curveball's reliability" and that elements of the tippling tipster's behavior "strike us as typical of individuals we would normally assess as fabricators." But Curveball's crazy assertions had traction because they were what the White House wanted to hear. The report warns the president to watch out for the "headstrong" intelligence agencies. If only the commission had concerned itself with headstrong officials at a higher level. Then its 601 pages would be worth reading. E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com Thomas L. Friedman is on vacation. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | ***************************************************************** 3 New York Times Opinions > Weschester: The Nuclear Option Published: April 3, 2005 [T] ime will tell, to use an old editorial dodge, whether Josh Rattner is a prophet or just a noodge. Mr. Rattner pulled a driver from a burning gasoline truck last year, risking his life and earning an invitation to a "Heroes Breakfast" at the Hilton Rye Town last week. But when it came time to smile and accept his plaque, he pulled a Marlon Brando and refused it, saying he could not allow himself to be a public relations tool of one of the day's corporate sponsors, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which owns the Indian Point power plant. Mr. Rattner says Indian Point is a menace that should be shut down. Mr. Rattner, an electrical contractor from Irvington, thus fired an early shot in what promises to be a long and ferocious struggle over the relicensing of Indian Point, the Hudson Valley's vital energy resource or nuclear nightmare - take your pick - in Buchanan, about 35 miles north of Times Square. Already the environmentalists are out in force, firing away with news conferences and op-eds and calling in reinforcements from the hundreds of politicians and dozens of town and village boards that have called for the plant to be decommissioned. Besides traditional anxieties about meltdown, radioactive waste and the nuclear industry's wobbly economics, the enemies of Indian Point have a new trump card to play - the fear of terrorism - now that 9/11 has jolted people into taking long-shot possibilities seriously. Supporters of nuclear power have a trump card of their own: global warming, which looms as the environmental crisis of our age. This has prompted more than a few people in the green camp to argue that fossil fuel, not radiation, is the clear and present danger, and to embrace nuclear plants as a proven, readily available way to reduce carbon emissions and save the planet. This page has been largely agnostic about nuclear power in general and Indian Point in particular, though it has expressed serious reservations about security at the plant, which is badly placed in a densely populated region, where a mass evacuation in an emergency would be extremely difficult. We have called for greater fortifications and a competent security force at Indian Point, but have seen no immediate reason to shut it down. We hope the coming clashes will clarify what the region's residents think about whether to embrace or reject nuclear power along the Hudson. We hope further that this grappling will lay the groundwork for a much broader debate - the kind of national discussion the Bush administration should be leading but is not, given that its energy policies amount to little more than an unwavering fixation on the maximal extraction and consumption of fossil fuels from anywhere and everywhere. It may seem early in Westchester -Indian Point's reactor licenses are not up for renewal until 2013. But Indian Point is one of the biggest nuclear controversies around, aside from the long struggle over burying waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and thus is a prime opportunity to sort out our energy priorities, reassess our seemingly boundless appetite for cheap power and weigh our tolerance for risk - not just in the region, but across the nation. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home| ***************************************************************** 4 Taipei Times: Senior intelligence officer sues the CIA www.taipeitimes.com AFP , WASHINGTON Friday, Dec 10, 2004,Page 7 "Their official dogma was contradicted by his reporting and they did not want to hear it." Roy Krieger, attorney A sacked CIA official is suing the agency for allegedly retaliating against him for refusing to falsify his reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to support the White House's pre-war position, The Washington Post said yesterday. Described as a senior CIA official who was sacked in August "for unspecified reasons," the plaintiff's lawsuit appears to be the first public instance of a CIA official charging that he was pressured to produce intelligence to support the US government's pre-war contention that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were a grave threat to US and international security. "Their official dogma was contradicted by his reporting and they did not want to hear it," said Roy Krieger, the officer's attorney. CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher told the daily she could not comment on the lawsuit, adding: "The notion that CIA managers order officers to falsify reports is flat wrong. Our mission is to call it like we see it and report the facts." Krieger wrote a letter requesting a meeting with CIA Director Porter Goss due to "the serious nature of the allegations in this case, including deliberately misleading the president on intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction," said the daily quoting from the letter. The US overthrew the Iraqi dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in April last year, but has found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq since then. The US government has acnowledged some of its pre-war intelligence may have been faulty. The plaintiff, whose identity is blacked out in the lawsuit as well as any reference to Iraq, is of Middle Eastern descent, worked 23 years in the CIA, much of them in covert operations to collect intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, said the daily. The lawsuit was filed in a US District Court in Washington on Friday and made public Wednesday after it was screened by a judge, said The Washington Post, which obtained a copy. It alleges that the CIA investigated alleged sexual and financial improprieties by the plaintiff "for the sole purpose of discrediting him and retaliating against him for questioning the integrity of the WMD reporting ... and for refusing to falsify his intelligence reporting to support the politically mandated conclusion" of matters that are redacted in the lawsuit. The document states that in 2002 the plaitiff was "thwarted by CIA superiors" from reporting routine intelligence from a contact of his and that later he was approached by a senior officer "who insisted that Plaintiff falsify his reporting." When the plaintiff refused, the lawsuit said, the CIA's Counterproliferation Division ordered that he "remove himself from any further `handling'" of the contact, referred elsewhere in the document as "a highly respected human asset." Last year, the lawsuit goes on to say, the CIA officer learned of the investigations against him and that he was refused a promotion "because of pressure from the DDO [Deputy Director of Operations] James Pavitt." In September last year, the plaintiff was placed on administrative leave without explanation and in August he was sacked also "for unspecified reasons." The lawsuit requests that the plaintiff be restored to his former position in the CIA and received compensatory damages and legal fees. This story has been viewed 1439 times. Copyright © 1999-2005 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 5 Indiadaily.com: Endless cheap alternate energy from under ocean Earth’s Mantle and below startmyad@indiadaily.com Staff Reporter Apr. 3, 2005 The quest is on for the source of ultimate alternative fuels for the human civilization, as we perceive that fossil fuels are being exhausted. Scientists and engineers are busy finding that alternative fuel. The future human civilization needs a huge amount of energy. The conventional alternatives are solar, hydrogen, wind, and nuclear and biologically generated synthetic fuel. But all these alternatives have limitation. As in Hydrogen, if you have to spend energy to create energy, it is not an alternative. The solar and wind energy are not concentrated enough. So the researchers looked at alternatives. Soon they realized the amount of energy that is used to move tectonic plates or volcanoes, can feed our civilization for thousands of years. If the energy below earth’s crust can be tapped, it can provide that magic word that we are waiting to hear for years – “cheap unlimited energy forever”. The earths crust is thinner in certain areas under the ocean. Earth’s mantle is less than 30 to 40 miles deep from the oceanic crust in these areas. Below the crust lies the upper mantle, which is soft and hot. As you travel below you see softer semi rigid mantle and then the liquid outer core. The lower parts of earth’s crust and the upper mantle have enough energy to feed the energy needs of human civilization for many years. Engineers are busy in trying to tap this energy. Once this energy is tapped and converted to electricity, the problem of fuel will be solved. Factories, cars – you name it – all can run with electricity. The problem lies in the fact that we cannot drill any further than five miles in earth’s crust. The drill bits deform due to the heat. The upper mantle 50 miles below the earth’s crust has a temperature 870 degree Celsius. That temperature is more than enough to generate unending superheated steam. That can create endless amount of electricity in a turbine driven generator. That electricity can be brought to the earth’s crust and used as cheap endless alternate energy. Today, natural gas, coal, diesel or nuclear energy is used to heat the water to generate superheated steam and that runs a turbine to generate electricity. If the energy below the earths crust in the mantle can be tapped, it will provide unlimited energy. It is a material engineering issue. We need materials that can withstand high temperature and still possess the hardness and tensile characteristics. Engineers are busy modeling these super synthetic materials using complex computer models. Some prototypes are being tested. Synthetic materials will allow running super heated steam driven turbines near the earth’s mantle that will generate unlimited cheap electricity to feed the human civilization for thousands of years to come. Copyright © 2003-2005, Indiadaily.com. All Rights Reserved. Web www.indiadaily.com ***************************************************************** 6 Bellona: Status Report: RTGs still an underestimated foe in securing loose nukes in Russia A low profile joint US-Russian meeting on the subject of bilaterally dismantling Russia’s dilapidated and largely untended Radioactive Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs)—long viewed by both countries as fertile hunting ground for potential “dirty bomb” nuclear terrorists—was held for a small group of specialists, and passed almost completely unnoticed by the Russian public. An RTG under a helicopter transportation. NRPA/Office of the County Governor of Finnmark Rashid Alimov, Charles Digges, 2005-04-02 00:28 Bellona Web has meanwhile published an update to its 2003 working paper “Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators.” The joint effort to dismantle Russia’s estimated 1000 RTGs falls under the common goals of the Group of Eight industrialised nations’ Global Partnership programme to lock down Russia’s proliferation hazards entirely over the next eight years. The US Department of Energy (DOE) got on board with the RTG dismantlement effort along the Eastern part of Russia’s Northern Shipping Route in 2004, to the tune of some $40m. American support has already jump-started the building of a site for interim storage garnered from decommissioned RTGS in the Russian far east—the DalRAO site near Vilyuchnisnk created in 2000 to handle radioactive waste from Russia’s rusted out Pacific Fleet submarines. It is something of a mystery, therefore, as to why the March 14th to 15th conference, held at the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was kept under such wraps, as US-Russian non-proliferation efforts are usually the stuff of big press in Russia. Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators Bellona's updated working paper: all most recent incidents involving RTGs in one table, new international efforts and plans for RTGs decommissioning. The conference dealt with several accidents in dismantling RTGs—the most recent of which occurred in Northeast Russia where the DOE is concentrating its funding. The incident, which occurred in September, was only recently made public by Russian nuclear authorities. The conference also publicised the unacceptably high incidence of theft of precious metals and vandalism of RTGs, leading to the abandonment of the highly active nuclear sources that power them. Furthermore, the conference raised the question about how strictly governmental regulations on removing RTGs are being observed, especially now that foreign money is funding much of the activity. It also posed hard questions to donor governments—especially the US government— about how well their money was being handled, even though no ties have been established foreign funding and mishandled RTG dismantlement procedures. In mid-February, a similar seminar on RTGs decommissioning was held in Oslo, organized by the Contact Expert Group of the International Atomic Energy Agency. At this conference—which was similarly closed—Deputy Head of Russia’s Federal Agency for Atomic Energy (Rosatom) Sergei Antipov announced that Russia, with long-standing help from Norway, and new-found support from the United States, has decommissioned some 200 of 920 operable RTGs, according to Rosatom’s official web site. More than a hundred of those are simply unaccounted for. By Russian nuclear regulatory accounts, the bulk of these devices, located along Russia’s Arctic and Pacific coasts, have not been visited by the relevant maintenance authorities for years. Most of these batteries by admission of Russian nuclear officials, are untended, falling apart and have long surpassed their engineered life-spans—a point underscored by Antipov in Oslo. Hardly any of the devices are protected by fences or even signs indicating radiation hazards. Meanwhile, as evidenced by two incidents in Norwest Russia in 2003, the unguarded devices are pillaged by metal scavengers for the valuable metals used to protect the radioactive batteries. International help In Oslo, Antipov stumped for a united structure and system in Russia that would coordinate the decommissioning of RTGS—something akin to Rosatom’s Master Plan for nuclear clean-up in Russia’s Northwest. Antipov said that different organisations from different countries try to make contact with Russian authorities to help in the RTG dismantlement effort, but have no idea where to start, causing confusion and delays. Rosatom, Antipov said in Oslo, was now working on the blueprints for such a structure, but insisted that all activities must be overseen by Rosatom. In addition to the DalRAO site, Rosatom officials insisted in Oslo that RTG dismantlement sites be created in the far east to avoid the financial and proliferation strain of bringing the to Moscow for dismantlement at the Institute for Technological Physics and Automatisation, and the further shipment of their strontium cores to Russia’s Mayak facility in the southern Urals. According to Antipov when he spoke in Oslo, the DOE promised to examine the possibility of funding the construction building a special dismantlement chamber at the DalRAO site. Norway will clean up more RTGs At the Russian-Norwegian meeting, Russian and Norway signed an agreement to dismantle the remaining 110 nuclear powered lighthouses in the Murmansk and Arkangelsk regions of Russia by 2009—with the total elimination of all Russian RTGs by 2012—replacing them with renewable energy sources, and to transport the radioactive waste to Mayak. At an estimated $30,000 to $35,000 per RTG unit dismantled, the effort can be estimated to carry a price tag of more than $3.5m, though no official figures have been released. Old polar station at the New Siberia island. Arctic Coastal Dynamics project Most recent accident only publicised months after the fact The most recent known RTG accident occurred when two RTGs were being dismantled on September 10th 2004, but no information was released about it until four months later, even though substantial gamma radiation was measured above the accident site. The two RTG’s—Nos. 4 and 5 of the “Efir-MA” model produced in 1982—were being transported from the “New Siberia” island lighthouse off the Northeastern arctic coast of Siberia. They were suspended from a helicopter by cables for transport to the Russian polar station at Bunge. When the helicopter ran into heavy weather the crew was forced to jettison the two RTGs from a height of 50 meters on the tundra at Zemlya Bunge island, 112 kilometres from another Russian polar station, Sannikova. They have not yet been recovered. Questions have been raised as to whether any of the newly-found US funding financed this misadventure. Bryan Wilkes, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration for the DOE—which manages the DOE’s nuclear remediation efforts—said in a recent interview with Bellona Web that he was unaware of the September mishap, adding that the DOE had tighter controls over how its money was spent and the criteria that govern that spending. "If something like that had happened with any funding from the DOE we most likely would have heard about it,” said Wilkes by telephone from Washington. “We don't just contract out to the lowest bidder. We want to make sure that each project is fulfilled in a safe manner, which is why we examine environmental impact studies before the project is carried out.” The question of whose funding goes were, and how it is spent, is especially pertinent on the European front after an environmental assessment blunder by Norway in 2003 when the country dismantled two Victor 2 class submarines. Just prior to when the EUR10m dollar deal was inked, a derelict submarine called the K-159 sank in heavy weather with 800 kilograms of highly enriched uranium and 9 crew members on board while it was being towed to a dismantlement point. No foreign funding was involved in the K-159 accident. But Bellona investigations later revealed that the two submarines whose dismantlement Norway was financing had been towed to their respective dismantlement points in the same slipshod manner as the K-159. The revelation released an uproar in the Norwegian government and a broad reassessment of its donation policies toward Russian nuclear remediation. Zemlya Bunge island: Sandy shore of the higher terrace near the former polar station Bunge. Arctic Coastal Dynamics project Radioactive Contamination from the RTGs Both RTGs were the legal responsibility of the Russian Transportation Ministry’s State Hydrographic Facility. According to information eventually released by Russia’s Federal Service for Energy, Technology and Atomic Oversight (FSETAN in its Russian abbreviation), the impact compromised the RTGs’ external radiation shielding. At a height of 10 meters above the impact site at Zemlya Bunge island, the intensity of gamma radiation was measured at 4 milliSieverts per hour. Visible radioactive pollution on the RTG casing was not detected. No radioactive pollution of the surrounding was observed and no one was exposed to radiation, according to FSETAN. Still, a scenario in which strontium-90 from these RTG's cores could leak into the environment became imminent after experts in July 2004 confirmed a leak at an RTG located on Cape Navarin in Chukotka. The leak was chalked up by the experts to “an unknown inner thermo-physical process.” Earlier theories indicated that destruction of the capsule and resulting leaks were impossible, provided no powerful explosives or industrial equipment were used. To read about these and other incidents, see Bellona's newly updated working paper “Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators.” The Commission for Incident Investigation has initiated work on verifying the exact location and condition of the RTGs. According to Sergei Lukovnikov, acting representative of the Northern European interregional territorial district of FSETAN, the spot were the RTGs crashed to the ground will only be accessible, due to weather conditions, in the summer, perhaps as late as July. Nuclear safety record in tatters after accident Had it not been for this incident, Northern Russia’s annual incident statistics in would have been headed for satisfactory marks from regulators. But the Northern European regional FSETAN report for 2004 notes that “the condition of radiation security at facilities of national production under observation are evaluated as being satisfactory and, on the whole, meet the demands of rules and norms [… ]The exception is the Hydrographic Facility, whose activities resulted in deterioration of radiological situation of the environment.” The accident was a result of violations by Hydrographic Facility of the Conditions for Licensing, which are spelled out in FSETAN’s regulation CE-04-209-1482, issued August 19th 2004. According to Lukovnikov, those conditions stipulate that every phase of dismantlement be supported by corresponding documentation and approved by FSETAN. Following the violation of FSETAN’s licensing conditions, authorities issued a September 22nd protocol on administrative violations and submitted it for evaluation by the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region Arbitration Court. Representatives of the Hydrographic Facility failed twice to appear in court and could not prove or disprove that they had received a summons the hearings. The court fined the Hydrographic Facility $1000 (30,000 rubles). The Hydrographic Facility appealed this decision to the Northwest Regional Court of Arbitration saying they had never received their summons, and the case will likely be a retrial with legal representatives of the Hydrographic Facility in attendance. If they are not able to prove that they never received their first summons, the original court ruling will likely stand. Former Hydrographic Facility Director Yevgeny Klyuev (now deputy director) and Current Director Victor Medvedev. FSETAN’s position "The Hydrographic Facility needed to produce technical documentation including proof of secure transportation and how it would be realized, " said Lukovnikov in an interview with Bellona Web. “Only the first phase, initial site investigation, had been approved.” Lukovnikov added that skirting these demands led to “the inadequate transportation of RTGs and the accident. There were no transport containers. Transport took place violating norms and rules.” Several other RTGs have already been removed this year, but under the conditions spelled out by FSETAN’s regulations. Hydrographic Facility Director Victor Medvedev had scant comment on the incident when Bellona Web finally reached him after two weeks of phone calls. “I have no comment,” he said, but then went on to add impatiently that he didn’t “understand, why any article should written about the fallen RTGs or about the Arbitration court. All of that has nothing to do with the environment. A lot of people are calling me.” He then demanded, in violation of Russian mass-media legislation, that Bellona web show him its article, after which he would decide “whether it’s worth commenting on.” Russian journalists are guarded from having to demonstrate need for requested commentary by article 39 of Russia’s law on mass media. So how well is the Hydrographic Facility Handling its responsibilities? The Hydrographic Facility’s deputy director, Yevgeny Klyuev, was equally reluctant to speak on the issue, initially referred all questions back to Medvedev. But he did point out that the facility safely removed 15 RTG from the Yakutiya region in far Northeastern Siberia in the Summer 2004 and transported them to Atomflot in Murmansk. From there, they were taken to Moscow for salvage by the Federal Science Research Institute of Technical Physics and Automatisation. For the whole of last year, Klyuev said that “sixty nine RTGs were removed from various municipalities throughout Russia for salvage and dismantling. Plans are underway to salvage another 50 RTGs in 2005.” Another source within FSETAN, who asked that his name not be used, supported the Hydrographic Facility’s position and cited lack of funding as the principle cause of the September mishap. Overall, the source said, the Hydrographic Facility, despite its unfamiliar mandate within the government, has a good record with decommissioning RTGs for last year. Rashid Alimov reported from St. Petersburg and Charles Digges reported from Oslo. 2005-04-02 Northern Fleet incidents Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 7 Bellona: Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators Bellona’s working paper UPDATED April, 2005. To read the previous version of November, 2003, Rashid Alimov, 2005-04-02 00:16 There are approximately 1,000 Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) in Russia, most of which are used as power sources for lighthouses and navigation beacons. All Russian RTGs have long exhausted their 10-year engineered life spans and are in dire need of dismantlement. The urgency of this task is underscored by the recent incidents with these potentially dangerous radioactivity sources. In 1992, Bellona released a working paper on 132 lighthouses scattered along the shoreline of Northwest Russia, which were all powered by RTGs. One of them, in fact, was located just a few dozen metres from the Norwegian border.1 Bellona has warned that radioactive incidents involving these RTGs are possible, both because of the decrepit state of these old lighthouses and because the of premeditated theft of radioactive strontium 90, or strontium-90, that is contained in RTGs. Russia’s RTGs used beyond their operational limits have been waiting to be sent to a repository for decades. Some of them have become the prey of non-ferrous metal hunters, who crave a quick buck for RTGs’ metal, regardless of the risk of radioactive contamination. Most Russian RTGs are completely unprotected against potential thieves or intruders, and lack even minimal security measures like fences or even radioactive hazard signs. Nuclear inspectors visit these sites as seldom as once every six months, and some RTGs have not been checked for more than a decade. The biggest danger coming from these unprotected RTGs is their availability to terrorists, who can use the radioactive materials contained in them to make so-called "dirty bombs" —bombs that are triggered by standard explosives, but disperse radioactivity. The damage from such an explosion could surpass by many times that from a conventional bomb, with the ground zero area—potentially dozens of kilometres depending on the power of the explosives dispersing the radiation—remaining radioactively contaminated for years to come. A retired radioisotope generator is checked before transportation. Office of County Governor of Finnmark 1.What RTGs Are An RTG tranforms thermal energy from decay of radioactive material into electricity. They have a steady output voltage of 7 to 30 volts and the power capacity of up to 80 watts. The most frequent application for RTGs is as power sources for navigation beacons and lighthouses2. RTGs are also used as power sources in radio beacons and weather stations. The core of an RTG is a thermal energy source based on the radionuclide strontium 90—also known as radioisotope heat source 90 (RHS-90). An RHS-90 is a sealed radiation source in which the fuel composition, usually in the form of ceramic titanate of strontium-90 (SrTiO3), is sealed hermetically and two-fold into a capsule using argon welding. Several RTGs use strontium-90 in the form of strontium borosilicate glass3. The capsule is protected against external impact by the thick shell of the RTG, which consists of stainless steel, aluminium and lead. The biological protection shield is configured in such a way that radiation levels do not exceed 2 mSv/h on the devices,’ and 0.1 mSv/h at a distance of one meter. The strontium-90 radioactive half-life is 29.1 years. At the time of their production, RHS-90s contain from 1,100 TBq to 6,700 TBq of strontium-90, which is a strong beta-emitter. The level of gamma radiation reaches 4 to 8 Sv/h at a distance of 0.5 meters from the RHS-90, and 1 to 2 Sv/h at a distance of one meter.4Together with the energy from strontium-90 radioactive decay, its beta-emitting daughter radioisotope, Yttrium-90 (90Y is a radioactive by-product of strontium-90 decay and has a half-life of 64 hrs), also produces heat energy from its radioactive decay. It takes no less than 900 years before RHSs reach a safe radioactivity level. According to the Russian’s independent nuclear watchdog—known until March 2004 as Gosatomnadzor, or GAN— "the existing system of RTG management does not allow for providing adequate security to these installations, so the situation they are in can be classified as 'an emergency manifested in the unattended storage of dangerous [radioactivity] sources.' This is why these generators need to be evacuated urgently."5 According to the website run by the Moscow-based All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics and Automatisation, or VNIITFA—the developers of RTGs—radionuclide power installations with high energy capacity operate on plutonium 238, or 238Pu, as their fuel.6 However, using RHSs based on 238Pu—though this design boasts of certain technical lifespan advantages—also demands significant financial input. Thus, in the past 15 years, VNIITFA has ceased producing such RTGs for Russian consumers for on-the-ground use. The United States government also built RTGs; some were used to power spacecraft, but at least 10 of the devices were installed at remote military listening posts in Alaska in the 1960s and '70s. After a brush fire threatened one of the devices in 1992, the Air Force began replacing them with diesel-powered generators.7 According to IAEA classification, RTGs are 1 class — meaning they are among the strongest radiation emmiters. 8 Table 1. Specifications of the RHS-90. Dimensions of the cylinder 10 by 10 centimetres Weight 5 kilograms Capacity 240 watts Concentration of strontium 90 1,500 TBq, or 40,000 curies Temperature on the surface, centigrade 300-400 degrees Exposition dose rate at the distance of 0,02 to 0,5 metres 28-10 Sv/h 2. RTG Safety RTG developers argue that even if an RHS-90 makes it out into the surrounding environment due to an accident or theft from its RTG, the heat source will still remain intact unless forceful means are used to remove it. "It may have made more sense to bury [RTGs] in the ground, so that nobody could find them or stumble upon them. But they were mostly installed some 30 years ago, when nobody bothered to think of any threat of terrorism—besides, the RTGs were not made 'vandal-proof,'" said Minatom's deputy minister Alexander Agapov in September 2003. Minatom, through Agapov, also acknowledges the "existence of unattended RTGs." According to Agapov, "the reason for that is that organisations responsible for the operation of RTGs are unwilling to pay for their shutdown and removal," he said. "It's the same problem as with the new states that were formed on the territory of the USSR after its break-up: 'Take away all the bad things, we get to keep all the good things.'"9 At the same time, according to VNIITFA director Kuzelyov, "there is no problem [...] of radioactive contamination of the environment surrounding the RTGs."10 But even while saying that, Kuzelyov admitted that indeed, "most RTG locations do not meet the requirements specified in existing regulatory documents, which is well-known to the management of RTG operators.11 [...] There is, in effect, the problem of the RTGs' vulnerability to terrorists, whose aim is to purposefully use the radioactive materials contained in an RTG."12 Strontium leakage into the environment According to specialists from the Russian Ministry of Transportation's State Hydrographic Service (SHS), "the principal radioactive risk only comes from the sources of ionising radiation based on strontium 90 [...] in RHS-90s." The SHS claims that an RHS-90 taken outside of its capsule will present a serious danger on the local level, but that radioactive contamination of the environment would be impossible. The service asserts that nothing of the kind has ever happened and that their own tests have confirmed an RHS-90 would remain intact even if blown up.13 In 2003 VNIITFA claimed that "up until now there have been no cases involving the destruction of the hermetic sealing of an RHS-90, although there have been a number of serious emergency situations involving RTGs."14 But representatives of what was then GAN and of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), while commenting on the known incidents involving RTGs, have several times that an RHS capsule could be destroyed by natural forces (see below). But an inspection in July 2004 registered leakage into the environment of strontium-90 from a RTG of IEU-1 type, situated at Navarin Cape in the Bering district of the Chukotka Autonomous region. The Federal Service of Nuclear Oversight — as GAN was renamed in March 2004 — claims in a report, that "it accounts for destruction of the radiation protection block, heat protection block, container housing and nests [for strontium pellets]"15. (more on the Navarin Cape RTG see below, Incidents involving RTGs). About 1,000 RTGs are located on the territory of the Russian Federation. Alexander Agapov, head of the safety and emergency situations department of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, or Minatom, in 2003 estimated the figure at 998 installations16. In March, 2005 Rosatom —the new body created in 2004 with functions of the former Minatom— officially claimed, that "about 720 RTGs" are still in operation, and about 200 RTGs have been decommissioned recently with the international support17. Other Commonwealth of Independent States, or CIS, countries operate approximately 30 RTGs. In all, the USSR reportedly produced around 1,500 RTGs18. The operation period of all types of RTGs is 10 years. Today, all Russia's RTGs—without exception—have reached the end of their engineering life spans and must be disposed of 19. 3. Use, Ownership and Licensing RTGs in Russia are owned by the Ministry of Defence, the Transportation Ministry, and the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring, known by the Russian acronym of Rosgidromet. The Transportation Ministry has jurisdiction over approximately 380 RTGs, with the SHS responsible for their monitoring and accounting. The Defence Ministry owns 535 RTGs, including 415 RTGs run by the Main Directorate for Navigation and Oceanology. Russian nuclear regulators fully control only those RTGs owned by the Transportation Ministry. Following the governmental decree 1007 issued September 4, 1999, and directive D-3 of the Defence Ministry, they grants licenses and maintain oversight of the Defence Ministry RTGs, since they are considered as nuclear installations that do not pertain to military use.But actually control in the military areas is executed by the military nuclear regulatory bodies, and nuclear regulators of the GAN (FSAN or Federal Service of Nuclear Oversight since March 2004) often don't actually have access to the military RTGs. The SHS says it is sufficient to conduct regular inspections of the RTGs located along the shipping lanes of the Northern Sea Route—from several times down to one time a year—to maintain the installations and radioactivity levels on their surfaces and in surrounding areas.20 Nonetheless, Russian nuclear regulators criticizes SHS sluggishness in withdraw from operation RTGs wich exceeded their life-term. Still, the questions of storing RTGs, their physical and radiation safety, and the safety of people near them haven’t been solved21. Nuclear regulators points out that in this situation hydrographic services of the Transportation Ministry and Defence Ministry are in violationg of article 34 of the Law “on the Use of Nuclear Energy,” which says organisations operating RTGs must have the material and financial to operate the nuclear objects. According to GAN, “in the structural branches of SHS there is a lack of qualified specialists for timely inspections and maintenance of RTGs”.22 According to official reports by the Russian State Committee for the Protection of the Environment, "the existing system of RTG management is in contradiction with the provisions of the federal laws 'On the Use of Atomic Energy' and 'On the Radiation Safety of the Population,' because no physical security or safety has been ensured to these installations. At the time when these RTGs were placed at their locations, no consideration was made regarding the probability of damaging impact effected on them by natural and anthropogenic factors. Due to the inefficient practice of RTG accounting and control performed by the operators of these installations, certain RTGs may be 'lost' or 'abandoned.' In effect, the sites where RTGs are located can safely be regarded as temporary storage places for highly radioactive waste" 23... "Especially alarming are the potentially negative consequences of losing control over RTGs operating under the jurisdiction of the SHS and the Ministry of Defence."24 4. Types of RTGs The Transportation Ministry some 380 RTGs of the Beta-M, Efir-MA, Gorn and Gong type along the Northern sea route. These are but four of the 10 RTG types based on heat sources like the RHS-90 developed by the All Russian Scientific Reasearch Institute of Technical Physics and Automation (VNIITFA) between 1960 and 1980 (see table below). Table 2. Types and main characteristics of RTGs of the Soviet design25 RHS heat capacity, watts RHS initial nominal activity, kilocuries RTG electric capacity, watts RTG output voltage, volts RTG mass, kilograms Year of start of mass production Efir-MA 720 111 30 35 1250 1976 IEU-1 2200 49 80 24 2500 1976 IEU-2 580 89 14 6 600 1977 Beta-M 230 35 10 560 1978 Gong 315 49 18 14 600 1983 Gorn 1100 170 60 7 (14) 1050 (3 RHS-90) 1983 IEU-2M 690 106 20 14 600 1985 Senostav 1870 288 1250 1989 IEU-1M 2200 (3300) 340 (510) 120 (180) 28 2 (3) x 1050 1990 RTGs differ by parameters which vary according to their voltage output, output power capacity, mass, size and other characteristics. Beta-M type RTGs—one of the first designs, developed in the late 1960s—have been used most frequently. In 2003 around 700 RTGs of this type were in operation. However, the joints in the carcasses of Beta-M RTGs are not welded, and, as the past 10 years experience shows, such RTGs can be easily dismantled right where they stand with the help of nothing more than common fitting tools, like crowbars and hammers26. No new RTGs have been developed in the last 15 years. 5. Accounting for RTGs Orders for new RTGs came principally from the Defence Ministry, the Transportation Ministry, the State Committee for Hydrometeorology—the Soviet predecessor of Rosgidromet—and the former Ministry of Geology, now part of the Natural Resources Ministry. All the Soviet RTGs were designed in Moscow by the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics and Automatisation, or VNIITFA. The Institute also developed corresponding design documentation, which was then handed over to the plant that would produce the RTGs. Mass-scale production of RTGs in the USSR was the responsibility of a plant called Baltiyets, in the city of Narva in the former Soviet republic of Estonia. In the early 1990s, the plant underwent major changes, including re-specialisation, and stopped producing RTGs. Now called Balti EES, the company confirmed to a Bellona inquiry that it has no information on the precise locations of those RTGs that it did produce. However, Balti EES' representatives said that the company's experts have since the early 1990s taken part in replacing RTGs with other energy sources at Estonian lighthouses. Putting RTGs into operation was in the 1960s the responsibility of a now-defunct specialised organisation within the Ministry of Medium-Level Machine Engineering (Minsredmash) its which later became Minatom and, more recently Rosatom. RTGs were also put into operation by the organisations that were to operate them. Where They are and What Condition They are in Despite lacking documentation, it is known that 80 percent of all RTGs are concentrated along Northern Sea Route. They were delivered to hydrographic military units of the Defence Ministry, as well as civilian hydrographic bases scattered along the Northern Sea Route. Considering the current dismal situation with RTG accounting in Russia, several years ago VNIITFA took upon itself the task of collecting information on RTGs that operate both in Russia and other former republics of the Former Soviet Union (FSU). The institute's data point to the same fact: All RTGs located in Russia have completed their projected operation terms and urgently need to be delivered to the Russian nuclear industry’s specialized sites for dismantlement. As per the agreement with the Transportation Ministry, VNIITFA annually sends specialists to inspect RTGs at their operation sites. In 2001 and 2002, such inspections were carried out at 104 RTG locations run by the ministry. Far East The unsatisfactory condition of Russia's RTGs has also become a focal point for Russia’s nuclear regulators, who specifically addressed the problem of RTGs operating in Russia's Far East in a 2003 report from the former GAN27. In 2004, GAN stated that the most ‘unfortunate’ organizations, operating RTGs with serious safety violations, are the Tiksinskaya, Providenskaya and Pevekskaya hydrographic bases of the SHS. Regulators reported that “condition of physical protection of RTGs is extremely low. Inspections of RTGs are carried out rarely and mostly not far from the bases themselves; several RTGs haven’t been inspected more than for 10 years due to lack of qualified specialists." Sometimes RTGs are simply lost: an inspection in August-September 2003 failed to find an RTG of the Beta-M type N57 at the “Kuvekvyn” lighthouse in Chukotka; inspectors officially claimed, the RTG either sank in the sand during a heavy storm, or was stolen by unknown criminals.28 In the Far East, according to various accounts, around 40 lighthouses powered by RTGs are scattered along the shoreline of the Sakhalin Island, and 30 on the Kuril Islands. The Far Eastern region of Chukotka, according to official data, has 150 RTGs. Many of them are long neglected, such as the RTGs in the Bay of Shelting and on Cape Yevreinov29. They belong to the regional Kolyma Hydrometeorological Service, but were abandoned after the monitoring service practically ceased to exist in the region. Of these RTGs, 58 are of the Beta-M type, 13 of the Efir type, eight of the Gorn structure and six of the Gong 30. The republic of Sakha-Yakutia has on its territory approximately 75 RTGs.31 Table 3. Abandoned RTGs in the Chukotka Autonomous District32 Shalaurov Island Radiation levels exceed those considered the accepted norm by 30 times. The RTG is abandoned and unmonitored. Nutevgi Cape The RTG has undergone severe external damage. The generator was installed with no regard to the dangerous influence of natural forces, in close proximity to thermokarst depression. Additional damage may have been done to the RTG in March 1983, during a transportation accident that the management specialists put under wraps. Okhotnichy Cape The RTG was lost in the sands due to tides, as it was installed in immediate proximity to the inshore area. The accident was caused by the management team's incompetence. The RTG is still kept on the site in violation of the law.td> Serdtse-Kamen Cape The RTG was installed 3 metres away from the edge of a 100-metre-deep precipice. A crack in the ground can be traced throughout the site, causing the risk that the RTG may be caught in a landslide together with big masses of rock. The installation was performed with no regard to the influence of natural elements, in this case, marine abrasion. The RTG is kept onsite in violation of the law. Nuneangan Island External radiation levels exceed accepted limits by 5 times. The cause of the abnormal radiation levels is a design defect. The RTG is untransportable by routine methods. Chaplin Cape The lower part of the RTG's carcass lacks a plug, radiation levels exceed the accepted norm by 25 times. The RTG is located on the territory of a military base. The emergency condition of the RTG is caused by the defective design of this type of generators. The abnormal radiation levels were also kept under wraps by the maintenance team. Chekkul Island Radiation levels surpass the accepted limits by 35 percent at the distance of one metre from the RTG's surface. Shalaurova Izba Island Radiation levels surpass the accepted limits by 80 percent at the distance of one metre from the RTG's surface. Table 4. RTGs in states of emergency in Yakutia, the Tiksi Hydrographic Base33 Kondratiev Cape Due to gradual decay of the shore-slope rock, two Gong type RTGs sank down to a 20-metre-depth inside a thick layer of permafrost, which has been steadily thawing. Makar Cape The dose exposure levels of the Efir type RTG exceed the accepted norm by 10 times due to malfunction of the biological protection shield. Of the generators operated by the Tiksi Hydrographic Base, 15 more RTGs have been established as surplus and subject to removal. The Arctic coast The generators located on the islands in the Laptev Sea, on the East Siberian and Arctic shores of the Anabar, Bulun, Ust-Yana and Nizhnekolymsk Regions, are all the responsibility of the Khatanga, Tiksi and Kolyma Hydrographic Bases, as well as the Pevek buoy inspection team. But this responsibility is mostly on paper. The operation of these North Sea Route RTGs meet no radiation standards. In fact, authorities have effectively lost control over 25 of these generators34. The Siberian Territorial District owns more than 100 RTGs, the bulk of which are concentrated on the Taimyr Peninsula. In 2003 another 153 RTGs were scattered along the shorelines of the Barents and White Seas, of which 17 were located in the Kandalaksha Gulf, now a part of them has been decommissioned (see RTGs and International Efforts below). According to VNIITFA director Nikolai Kuzelyov, "100 percent of RTGs located along the shore of the Baltic Sea undergo yearly inspections. At the same time, we have to admit that no RTG inspections have been conducted by VNIITFA specialists on the Arctic shores of the Chukotka region because no such contracts have been signed." 35 A dilapidated RTG in Chukotka: strontium-90 leaked into the environment According to an August 16th 2003 report by GAN's branch of the Far Eastern Interregional Territorial District, the monitoring commission, while inspecting RTGs located on the Arctic shore of the Chukotka Autonomous District, found one RTG in a state of utter dilapidation, on the Cape of Navarin in the Bering region. The level of the so-called exposition dose on the surface of the generator was as high as 15 R/h. The commission also concluded that a release of radioactive substances into the surrounding environment may have taken place.36 The commission found out, that the RTG "self-destroyed as a result of some, not specified yet, inner impact". That was stated in a letter 04-05\1603, sent by VNIITFA director Nikolay Kuzelyov and Ministry of Defence representative A.Kunakov to the Minatom. In July 2004 a second inspection of the RTG at the Cape of Navarin was carried out. The check-up showed, that radiation situation had worsened, gamma radiation had rose to 87 R/h, but the main observation was that strontium-90 began to leak into the environment (earlier VNIITFA experts stated that leakage of strontium-90 and destruction of the RHS-90 capsule, unless strong explosives were used, were impossible). There is an assumption that this RTG was run over with a land rover by deer farmers of a brigade that was staying at Navarin in 1999. The heat exchange was violated, and RTG warmed up inside to 800 degrees Celsius. Metal plates, securing from radiation, cracked. In 2003, the RTG was covered with a concrete slab, but still the radiation exceeds the norms. Deer farmers continue tending herds on Navarin — the southern-most cape of Chukotka. Animals, as well as people, come close to the dilapidated RTG, despite radiation warning placards. The nuclear regulators' (FSAN) report for 2004 states, "technical condition of the RTG and dynamics of thermo-physical processes in the RTG makes its complete [self]destruction possible", while these "thermo-physical processes" are still "unknown"37. The Ministry of Defence is still considering the possibility of removing and decommission this RTG in the summer of 2005. An RTG under a helicopter transportation. NRPA/Office of the County Governor of Finnmark 6. Incidents involving RTGs On November 12th 2003, the Hydrographic Service of the Northern Fleet found a ravaged Beta-M RTG location in the Bay of Oleniya—which is part of the Kola Bay—on the northern shore, across from the entrance to the Yekaterininskaya Harbour and near the naval town of Polyarny. The team was conducting one of its scheduled examinations of navigational equipment when it found the RTG in ruins and all of its components missing, including the depleted uranium protection shield. The radioisotope heat source—a strontium capsule—was found sunk in about three meters of water near the shore. On November 13th 2003, the same inspection team found a completely dismantled RTG of the same Beta-M type, used to provide electricity to the navigation mark No 437, located on the Island of Yuzhny Goryachinsky in the Kola Bay, across from the now non-existent settlement of Goryachiye Ruchy, also close to Polyarny. As in the previous case, the RTG was destroyed from top to bottom, and all of its components stolen, including the depleted uranium protection shield. The generator's RHS was found on the ground near the shoreline in the northern part of the island. The incident was classified as a radioactive accident38. The Federal Security Service (FSB)—Russia’s successor to the KGB’s counterintelligence service—and the police have begun a search for the alleged thieves and the stolen RTG components that may turn up at metal scrap recycling sites. The exact date when the two RTGs were vandalised has still not been established. It is quite likely that the last time any check occurred was no later than the spring of 2003. According to Bellona's information about the incidents, the area where the RTGs had been operating—and where the strontium capsules were found nearby lying unattended—is not a restricted access territory and is open for any passer-by. Consequently, any stranded visitor may have been exposed to lethal radiation doses for significant periods of time. On March 12th 2003—the same day that Minister of Atomic Energy Alexander Rumyantsev was expressing concerns about security of nuclear materials during a speech at a conference in Vienna, Austria (see below)—military personnel at the Leningrad Naval Base discovered a vandalised lighthouse near Kurgolovo, a settlement on the shore of the Baltic Sea, on the Cape of Pihlisaar on the Kurgalsky Peninsula39. The thieves, attracted by the apparently simple prospect of looting some non-ferrous metals, stole around 500 kilograms of stainless steel, aluminium and lead. As for the radioactive power element, they threw it out into the frozen sea some 200 meters away from the lighthouse. The "hot" strontium capsule melted the ice and went down to the sea floor. But even though the ice covering the spot where the RHS sank was one meter thick, the gamma radiation exposure dose rate directly above the sunken unit reached over 0,3 Sv/h40. A similar incident had occurred in the Leningrad region in 1999. An identical lighthouse was found completely destroyed, and its radioactive power element discarded at a bus station in the city of Kingisepp, 50 kilometres away from the crime scene. Three people who the police established were the perpetrators died from radiation poisoning. Just as it was four years later, the task of liquidating that radiation accident was commissioned to Radon41. The village of Kurgolovo, where the March 2003 accident occurred, is in the Kingisepp region, near the Estonian and Finnish borders. This area is recognised as a wetland of international importance and was in 2000 granted the status of a nature reserve by the governor of the Leningrad region. As such, it is entitled to protection of its are flora and fauna, as well as special control over a shoal area of the gulf, which is part of the reserve and a site of fish spawning for fishermen. It is also a habitat for the grey seal and the ringed seal, a site of breeding colonies and is also a migratory stopover for rare waterfowl and shore birds. At the time the reserve was established, the region's administration was also developing "ecological tourism" in the area—a system of special paths and routes for nature lovers42. However, the two radioactive incidents caused by the negligent loss of dangerous radiating power elements raise significant doubts about the prospect of flourishing tourist business in the area. In May 2001, three radioisotope power sources were stolen from lighthouses of Russia’s Defence Ministry on an island in the White Sea, in the area of the Kandalaksha nature reserve in the Murmansk region. This reserve is one of Russia's known centres of ecological tourism. Two looters of non-ferrous metals received severe doses of radiation. The "hot" RTGs were recovered and sent to VNIITFA in June 2001. From there, they were transported to the Urals chemical combine Mayak. The bill for all these works was footed by the government of the Norwegian province of Finnmark under an agreement with the administration of the Murmansk region as part of a bilateral programme, which envisions decommissioning of RTGs at Russian lighthouses and replacing the radioactive devices with solar batteries. In 1987, an IEU-1 type 2.5-tonne RTG was dumped in the sea while being lifted and towed by helicopter of the Far Eastern Administration of Civil Aviation to Cape Nizky in the Okha region on the eastern coast of Sakhalin. The order for the transportation was put by the Defence Ministry's military unit No. 13148. The pilots explained that the unusually windy weather was rocking the helicopter so violently that they had no other option but to dispatch the load and dump it into the sea to avoid a crash landing. In August 1997, another IEU-1 type RTG fell from a helicopter into the sea in the Cape of Maria area of the northern part of Sakhalin in the Smirnykh region. The generator sank 200 to 400 meters off the coast in 25 to 30 meters of water. According to military officials, the cause of the accident was the disengagement of the lock of the sling load system due to human error. A search operation, which found one of the RTGs (which fell into the Sea of Okhotsk in 1997), was undertaken only in 2004 — it was planned that the RTG would be lifted no earlier than summer 200543. No expedition to find the other RTG was carried out. Both RTGs are still lying on the sea bottom. So far, samples of the sea water in these areas have not shown increased levels of strontium-90, but it should be noted that the marine environment is a chemically active medium, and the factor of several atmosphere of water pressure adds to the risk of the RTGs' destruction. According to Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA), the worst scenario may lead to a leakage of 500 MBq of strontium-90 daily; nonetheless, NRPA doesn't consider the risk of strontium-90 moving further up the food chain from the bottom-dwelling microorganisms to algae to fish and finally to human beings to be serious for humans44. The probability of a strontium-90 leak is confirmed both by GAN officials45 and experts from the IAEA46. The expected probability rose after a July 2004 strontium leak into the environment was registered at the dilapidated RTG at the Cape of Navarin in Chukotka (see above). VNIITFA experts also participated in the elimination of an emergency caused by unauthorised dismantling of six Beta-M type RTGs in Kazakhstan, in that country's Priozersk region 47. Further field, in 1998, a two-year-old girl, residing in of the village of Vankarem in Chukotka, died of leukaemia, while another two children were hospitalised on suspicion of the same diagnosis. According to the Sakhalin-based newspaper Svobodny Sakhalin, the illnesses were caused by radiation exposure from an "orphaned" RTG, discarded not far from the village. However, the diagnosis and the cause of the illness were never officially confirmed48. The health situation of Vladimir Svyatets—the lighthouse keeper of the navigation maintenance station Plastun on the Cape of Yakubovsky in the Primorsky region—has likewise not yet been officially confirmed. In March 2000, a damaged RTG from another navigation station—in the Olgino district of the Pacific Fleet's hydrographical service—was left by Svyatets' house, near the lighthouse. The radiation emitted by the damaged RTG was far beyond the accepted norms. As a result of severe radiation doses, Svyatets allegedly suffers from chronic radiation sickness—a diagnosis he received from civilian doctors. However, the doctors' statements are being disputed by Russia's Pacific naval command and by military doctors of the Pacific Fleet.49 Serious incidents involving the RTGs are shown in the table below. Table 5. Accidents involving RTGs in the USSR, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States 1978 Pulkovo Airport, Leningrad A spent RTG was transported without a radiation-safe transportation cask.50 March 1983 Cape Nutevgi, Chukotka Autonomous District An RTG suffered severe damage in a traffic accident while en route to its installation site. The accident was kept under wraps by the management team, but the damage was in 1997 uncovered by an inspection commission, which included experts from GAN. 1987 Cape Nizky, Sakhalin region An IEU-1 type 2.5-tonne RTG was dropped in the Sea of Okhotsk during transportation by helicopter. The RTG, which belongs to the Defence Ministry, has still not been recovered from the sea floor. 1997 Dushanbe, Tajikistan An increase in background gamma radiation levels was registered on the premises of Tajikgidromet, the Tajik analogue of Rosgidromet, in the centre of the capital. Three RTGs that had been used well beyond their safe operational periods were stored at a coal storage yard. Due to Tajikistan's problematic relationship with Russia, the RTGs were never sent to VNIITFA and fell victim to unknown scavengers. 51 August 1997 Cape of Maria, Sakhalin region Another IEU-1 RTG was dropped in the Sea of Okhotsk during helicopter transportation. As in the first accident, the RTG, which belongs to the Defence Ministry, has never been recovered from the sea floor, where it lies at a mere depth of 25 to 30 meters of water. A search operation, which found this RTG was undertaken only in 2004 — it was planned that the RTG would be lifted no earlier than summer 2005. July 1998 Port of Korsakov, Sakhalin region A dismantled RTG was found at a metal scrap recycling site. The stolen generator belonged to the Defence Ministry. 1999 Leningrad region. An RTG was found ravaged by non-ferrous metal looters. The RHS core was found emitting 1000 R/h of radiation at a bus stop in the town of Kingisepp. It was recovered by a Radon radioactive materials disposal team. 2000 Cape Malaya Baranikha, Chukotka Autonomous District Access to this RTG, which is located close to a settlement, is unrestricted. In 2000, radiation background levels were found to exceed the accepted norm by several times. The RTG still has not been evacuated due to financial difficulties. May 2001 Kandalaksha Bay, Murmansk region Three radioisotope sources were stolen from lighthouses located in the area. All the three RHSs were found and sent to Moscow by VNIITFA specialists. February 2002 West Georgia Three shepherds from the village of Lia in the Tsalendzhikha region were exposed to high radiation doses after they stumbed upon a number of RTGs in a nearby forest. Shortly after the accident an IAEA commission established that, during the Soviet time, eight nuclear-powered generators altogether were delivered to Georgia from the RTG producer Baltiyets. March 2003 Cape Pihlissar, near Kurgolovo, Leningrad region An RTG was ravaged by non-ferrous metal scavengers. The RHS, emitting 1000 R/h, was found in 200 metres from the lighthouse, sunk in the shoals of the Baltic Sea. It was removed by an expert team from Radon. September 2003 Golets Island in the White Sea Northern Fleet service personnel discovered a theft of metal from biological protection at a nuclear powered lighthouse on the small island of Golets. The door inside the lighthouse had been forced. The lighthouse contained a particularly powerful RTG with six RHS-90s, which weren’t taken.52 November 2003 Kola Bay: Oleniya Bay and Yuzhny Goryachinsky Island Two RTGs, which are the property of the Northern Fleet, were ravaged by non-ferrous metal thieves. The RHS-90s were found nearby, on sunken in shallow water, the other on shore. March 2004 Valentin village, Lazovsky region of Primorsky Krai An RTG, owned by the Pacific Fleet, was found dismantled by non-ferrous metal thieves. RHS-90 was found nearby.53 July 2004 Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk Region Three RTGs found at the territory of military unit 40919. According to the unit commander, these RTGs were left by another military unit, previously based at this site. The Krasnoyarsk branch of GAN reported radiation doses at a distance of one meter from the RTG exceeds natural background by 155 times. Rather than solving the problem within the Ministry of Defence, the military unit, in which RTGs were found, sent a letter to ‘Kvant’ radiation technics company in Krasnoyarsk, asking them to remove RTGs for disposal.54 July 2004 Cape of Navarin, Chukotka AR A second inspection of the RTG at the Cape of Navarin showed, that strontium-90 began to leak from the RHS-90 as a result of an"unknown thermo-physical processes". This fact refutes a VNIITFA claim, that destruction of the RHS-90 capsule and leakage of strontium into the environment is impossible. There is an assumption, that this RTG was run over with a landrover by deer farmers of a brigade, which was staying at Navarin in 1999. Dynamics of thermo-physical processes in the RTG makes possible its complete self-destruction. Gamma-radiation level are about 87 R/h. September 2004 Island Zemlya Bunge, Novosiberian islands, Yakutia Two RTGs—Nos. 4 and 5 of the “Efir-MA” model produced in 1982—were being transported from the “New Siberia” island lighthouse off the Northeastern arctic coast of Siberia. The RTGs were suspended from a helicopter by cables for transport to the Russian polar station at Bunge. When the helicopter ran into heavy weather the crew was forced to jettison the two RTGs from a height of 50 meters on the tundra at on Zemlya Bunge island, 112 kilometres from another Russian polar station, Sannikova. According to the nuclear regulators, the impact compromised the RTGs’ external radiation shielding. At a height of 10 meters above the impact site, the intensity of gamma radiation was measured at 4 milliSieverts per hour. The cause of the incident is a breach by the owner of RTGs (the State Hydrographic Service of the Ministry of transportation) of the rules of transportation (RTGs were transported without special outer transportation casks, required by IAEA). 55The RTGs could be lifted from tundra no earlier than summer 2005. 7. The threat of terrorism The US Defence Department-run Cooperative Threat Reduction, or CTR, programme, which was launched in 1991 considers Russian RTGs a threat of proliferation of radioactive materials that could be used in a dirty bomb by potential terrorists. CTR is also known as the Nunn-Lugar programme after its creators, Indiana Senator Richard Lugar and former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn. Senator Lugar's website states that "the Russian government does not have an accurate accounting as to where all the generators are located." Accordingly, says the website of Senator Lugar, who is also Chairman of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee "we must find these units, secure them and remove the dangerous materials."56 On March 12th 2003, at an IAEA conference entitled "Security of Radioactive Sources" in Vienna, Minatom head Rumyantsev admitted to the problem. According to Rumyantsev—whose speech was quoted on the IAEA website—among aggravating circumstances are "the [increasing] threat posed by [various] terrorist organisations in the world, the disintegration of former Soviet territory that led to the loss of control over [these radioactive] sources, and in some cases to the loss of [radioactive] sources as such." As an example, Rumyantsev cited incidents of "unsanctioned opening of RTGs by [residents] of Kazakhstan and Georgia [in order] to obtain non-ferrous metals. For some, the dose that they have been exposed to turned out to be too high." Rumyantsev also concluded that after the break-up of the USSR, the integral system of government control that used to oversee the installation and transportation of radioactive and nuclear materials had to be recreated anew in separate independent states, which caused an unprecedented wave of previously rare criminal offences, including those involving radioactive sources, reports the IAEA website. 57 According to the closing statement at the Vienna meeting made by the IAEA, "high-risk radioactive sources that are not under secure and regulated control, including so-called 'orphan' sources, raise serious security and safety concerns. Effective national infrastructures for the safe and secure management of vulnerable and dangerous radioactive sources are essential for ensuring the long-term security and control of such sources."58 The threat of terrorism was also discussed at the IAEA Contact Expert Group workshop in Oslo in February, 2005 and in Moscow, at a conference held by the Russian Academy of Sciences in March 2005. 8. RTGs and International Efforts The Norwegian Office of the Finnmark County Governor runs a project to decommission RTGs owned by the Russian Northern Fleet, and to replace many of them with solar panels. These RTGs have long surpassed their engineered life span and are thus considered a radioactive hazards. At first, five RTGs were replaced with Norwegian solar panels under two agreements between Finnmark and the Murmansk Region, signed in 1996 and 1998. The decommissioning stipulates the following stages: RTGs are transported to Murmansk to RTP Atomflot for an interim storage, then to the Izotop enterprise in Moscow, dealing with railway transportations of radioactive loads, and then to VNIITFA, where they are dismantled in a special chamber, after that RHS-90 elements are sent in special casks to Mayak in Chelyabinsk region. The first solar panel was installed in July 1997 at Bolshoi Ainov Island nature reserve at a cost of $35,400 59. Under the 1998 agreement, another two RTGs were replaced with solar panels in 1999 and 2000. The last, in 2002, was installed at the Laush Lighthouse on the Rybachy Peninsula. The radioactive sources from the RTGs are sent to Mayak for storage. In August, 2002, US Congressional representatives and Bellona gathered and discussed the prospects of solar powered lighthouses in Norway near the Russian border. Prior to this gathering, Bellona had raised concern about nuclear powered lighthouses in Russia 60. In further cooperation between Finnmark and Murmank, the two regions agreed to decommission 15 more RTGs—12 that are in normal working order and the three that were vandalized for scrap early in 2004. In June 2002, a $200,000 agreement was signed between the regions to decommission yet another 10 RTGs. On April 8th 2003, the governors of Finnmark and the Murmansk region signed two new contracts, one more for RTG decommissioning, and the second for testing Russian-made solar panels. The agreement covering the decommissioning includes another 20 RTGs and will cost $600,000. The agreement for testing Russian-made solar panels will cost $36,000. The panels will be produced in Krasnodar at the Saturn plant, owned by the Russian Federal Space Agency61. The Russian panels will be tested on a lighthouse in Murmansk and one in Finnmark. By September 2004, 45 RTGs had been decommissioned in the Murmansk region in this joint effort, with a plan to bring that to a total of of 60 by the end of 2004—34 of them refitted with solar batteries. 62Some $3.5 million have been allocated to the project by the Norwegian Government and the Country of Finnmark thus far, but how much the programme will cost in the future is difficult to estimate as it is highly dependent on other potential donor nations. 63 In August 2004, the NRPA completed its independent report on Russian RTGs decommissioning, examining different ways of securing them.64 At a Russian-Norwegian meeting in February 2005, the sides agreed to complete decommissioning of the 110 RTGs (containing about 150 RHS-90's, as one RTG may contain more than one RHS-90) remaining in Murmansk and Archangelsk regions by 2009. U.S. efforts After September 11, 2001, U.S. officials recognized Russian RTGs as proliferation threat of radioactive materials that could be used in a dirty bomb by potential terrorists. In September 2003, Minatom signed a technical agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for dismantling and decommissioning of several RTGs65 under the aegis of the DOE’s Radiological Dispersal Device Programme. According to the agreement, up to 100 RHS-90 from the RTGs per year will be vitrified at the Mayak Chemical Combine. Furthermore, all the transportation plans have been laid, and financial resources promised. Meanwhile, in 2000-2003, VNIITFA decommissioned only about 100 retired RTGs of various types 66 so the DOE agreement will boost that figure. In 2004, in Russia 69 RTGs of the Ministry of Transportation were taken from different sites to interim storage, and in 2005 it is planned to decommission about 50 RTGs of the Ministry of Transportation. Rosatom planes to decommission all RTGs (from the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Defence as well) by 2012. The DOE's budget for radiological dispersal devices, which are most readily prepared from material housed in RTGs, was $36 million for FY 2004 and the request for the FY 2005 is $25 million67. Decommissioning of RTGs owned by Ministry of Transportation started in August 2004, in the framework of the DOE program. Still, even after the programme began, Yevgeny Kluev, deputy general director of State Hydrographic Service stated in an interview with Bellona Web in September 2004, that “there is still no policy of RTGs decommissioning: decommissioned are only the RTGs in the worst condition.” Additional information on the programme was not forthcoming from the DOE. In negotiations with American and German colleagues, Minatom mentiones a variant, according to which the contents of RTGs would be stored in regional “Radon” dump-sites. For example, a plan is under discussion to build a long-term storage for RTGs in the Siberian region in a territory of one or several “Radon” facilities to forgo long transportation of RTGs to Moscow and then further south to Mayak.68 But Radon combines are designed only for handling low- and medium-level radioactive waste, while RTGs pertain to high-level waste. In March 2005 Rosatom claimed, the DOE promised to consider a question of assisting Russia with building a RTG dismantling facility at DalRAO near the nuclear submarine base in Vilyuchinsk, Kamchatka (in order not to send RTGs to Moscow and back — Rosatom is still planned to bury RHS-90's as vitrified radioactive waste at Mayak). Meanwhile, building of an interim storage facility for RTGs taken from different sites in Russia's Far East has been already started at DalRAO with DOE funds. 69 The average cost for decommissioning an RTG hovers between $30,000 and $40,000, according to available figures. However, some RTGs in far flung regions like Chukotka in the far Northeast of Russia can cost as much as $120,000 to decommission70. 9. Endnotes 1. Bellona Working Paper N5:92, Thomas Nilsen,. "Nuclear Powered Lighthouses," Oslo, 1992. 2. Information granted to the author in reply to an official inquiry to VNIITFA in June 2003. 3. Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority. Strålevern Rapport 2005:4. Assessment of environmental, health and safety consequences of decommissioning radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs) in Northwest Russia. Østerås, Norway 2005 http://www.nrpa.no/dokumentarkiv/StralevernRapport4_05.pdf 4. M.I.Rylov, M.N.Tikhonov. Problemy radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti...//Atomnaya strategiya, St Petersburg, N1(6) June 2003, p. 32. (In Russian). 5. Report on the activities of GAN in the field of nuclear and radiation safety in 1998. Moscow, 1999, p. 72. (In Russian) See also M.I.Rylov, M.N.Tikhonov. Problemy radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti...//Atomnaya strategiya, St Petersburg, N1(6) June 2003. P. 32. (In Russian). 6. http://www.vniitfa.ru/_Products/RadioNuclIst/RadioNuclIst.htm(In Russian). 7. Joby Warrick. Makings of a 'Dirty Bomb'. Radioactive Devices Left by Soviets Could Attract Terrorists.// Washington Post. March 18, 2002; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=articlecontentI d=A42294-2002Mar17notFound=true 8. Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. Halvor Kippe, Steinar Høibråten. Security Concerns Regarding RTGs. Oslo, 2005 9. Agapov's statements are quoted as a reply to the author's question about RTG decommissioning at a Minatom conference in St Petersburg, September 1, 2003. 10. N.R.Kuzelyov. A review of "Problemy radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti..."//Atomnaya strategiya, St Petersburg, N1(6) June 2003, p. 33 (In Russian). 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Y.V. Klyuyev [head of the SHS of the Transportation Ministry in 2000]. Prodolzhayem razgovor...// Yakutia, Yakutsk, No. 59, April 1st 2000 (In Russian). 14. Information granted to the author in reply to an official inquiry to VNIITFA. 15. Federal Service of Nuclear Oversight of Russian Federation. The annual report on radiation safety (2004) http://www.gan.ru/org_struktura/upravleniya/4upr/spravka_2004.htm (In Russian). See also: Mikhail Gorbunov. "Chernuyu smert'" uvidyat v litso.//Russkiy kur'er. 27 october 2004.http://eco-pravda.km.ru/nute/rk27o4.htm (In Russian). 16. Agapov's statements are a reply to the author's question about RTG decommissioning at a Minatom conference in St Petersburg, September 1st 2003. 17. Sergei Antipov: "V rabote s RITEGami glavnaya zapoved'...":href=http://www.minatom.ru/News/Main/view?id=15774id Channel=72 04 March 2005 18. M.I.Rylov, M.N.Tikhonov,. Problemy radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti...//Atomnaya strategiya, St Petersburg, N1(6) June 2003, p. 32. (In Russian). 19. Information confirmed in reply to the author's official inquiry to VNIITFA. 20. Y.V. Klyuyev [head of the SHS of the Transportation Ministry], Prodolzhayem razgovor...// Yakutia, Yakutsk, No. 59, April 1st 2000 (In Russian). 21. Report of the Northern-European interregional territorial district on nuclear and radiation safety for the 1st half of 2004 http://www.gan.ru/mto/semto/nedd_otchet-1.2004.htm 22. Report of the Far-Eastern interregional territorial district on nuclear and radiation safety for the 1st half of 2004 http://www.gan.ru/mto/dvmto/otchet_1_2004.htm 23. The Russian Ministy of Natural Resources. The State Report of 1999. href=http://www.ecocom.ru/Gosdoklad99/Part1-7.htm (In Russian). 24. The Russian Ministy of Natural Resources. The State Report of 1998. http://www.wdcb.ru/mining/obzor/Doc_1998/Part1-7.htm(In Russian). 25. Information partly taken from: A.M.Agapov, G.A. Novikov, Radiologichesky terrorism... http://www.informatom.ru/rus/safe/vena/Vena.asp (In Russian), and M.I.Rylov, M.N.Tikhonov. Problemy radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti...//Atomnaya strategiya, St. Petersburg, N1(6) June 200,. p. 32. (In Russian). 26. Information granted to the author in reply to an official inquiry to VNIITFA. 27. A report on the activities of GAN’s branch of the Far Eastern Interregional Territorial District in the field of nuclear and radiation safety regulation at the sites of application of atomic energy, first half of 2003 http://www.gan.ru/mto/dvmto/otchet_1_2003.htm (In Russian). 28. Report of the Far-Eastern interregional territorial district on nuclear and radiation safety for the 1st half of 2004 http://www.gan.ru/mto/dvmto/otchet_1_2004.htm; See also: A report on the activities of GAN’s branch of the Far Eastern Interregional Territorial District in the field of nuclear and radiation safety regulation at the sites of application of atomic energy, second half of 2003 http://www.gan.ru/mto/dvmto/otchet_2_2003.htm. 29. The Russian Ministy of Natural Resources. The State Report of 1997. http://web.archive.org/web/20020223084209/http://www.ecocom.ru/ar hiv/ecocom/Gosdoklad/Section29.htm(In Russian). 30. M.I.Rylov, M.N.Tikhonov. Problemy radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti...//Atomnaya strategiya, St. Petersburg, N1(6) June 2003, p. 32 (In Russian). 31. Government of Sakha Republic (Yakutia), the Ministry for the Protection of the Environment. The State Report "On the state of the environment and activities in the field of nature preservation in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in 2001," Yakutsk, 2002, www.sterh.sakha.ru/gosdoklas2001/zakl.htm(In Russian). 32. Information of the environmental NGO Kaira-Club, Chukotka region, http://web.archive.org/web/20040210090957/http://www.kaira.seu.ru /kv/kv0902p2.htm (In Russian), see also: M.I.Rylov, M.N.Tikhonov. Problemy radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti...//Atomnaya strategiya, St. Petersburg, N1(6) June 2003, p. 32 (In Russian). Report on the activities of GAN… 1997. Moscow, 1998, p. 72 (In Russian). 33. Information on the violations of licencing terms and the violations of laws, federal norms and regulations in the use of atomic energy, information on the actions taken against the violators, third quarter of 2002 http://web.archive.org/web/20021024163030/http://www.gan.ru/dvmto /nlic-3.2002.htm(In Russian). 34. Government of Sakha Republic (Yakutia), the Ministry for the Protection of the Environment. The State Report "On the state of the environment and activities in the field of nature preservation in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in 2001," Yakutsk, 2002, http://www.sterh.sakha.ru/gosdoklas2001/zakl.htm(In Russian). 35. N.R.Kuzelyov. A review of “Problemy radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti...”//Atomnaya strategiya, St. Petersburg, N1(6) June 2003, p. 33 (In Russian). 36. Mikhail Gorbunov. "Chernuyu smert'" uvidyat v litso.//Russkiy kur'er. 27 october 2004. http://eco-pravda.km.ru/nute/rk27o4.htm (In Russian) 37. Federal Service of Nuclear Oversight of Russian Federation. The annual report on radiation safety (2004)http://www.gan.ru/org_struktura/upravleniya/4upr/spravka_20 04.htm (In Russian). See also: Official web-site of the Chukotka Autonomous Region. 100 mln rublei vydeleno... 22 september 2004 http://www.chukotka.org/news/?id=iA19AB59B (In Russian) 38. The Murmansk Regional Administration, Press release of 17.11.2003 No. 386 (In Russian). See also: Igor Kudrik, Rashid Alimov, Charles Digges. Two strontium powered lighthouses vandalised on the Kola Peninsula. http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet /incidents/31767.html 39. Cape of Pihlisaar: 59°47'N 28°10'E. 40. GAN Statement http://www.gan.ru/4upr_spravka_2_2003.htm (In Russian). 41. The author's interview with head of Radon Alexander Ignatov, April 2003; press release of the NGO Zelyony Mir, “Radioaktivnaya bomba dlya Baltiki” http://www.greenworld.org.ru/rus/proj/danger/radon/rad01.htm#A (In Russian). Boris Karpov. Po tolstomu l'du. //Nevskoe Vremya, St. Petersburg, March 22, 2003, nevskoevremya.spb.ru/cgi-bin/pl/nv.pl?art=142016251 (In Russian). 42. Decree issued by the governor of the Leningrad region No. 309-pg of June 20th 2000, http://web.archive.org/web/20040226025255/http://www.lenobl.ru/ma in2.php3?section=government4_32 (In Russian). 43. Radioisotopnaya ustanovka budet podnyata so dna... // Deita.Ru information agency, http://www.deita.ru/index.php?news_view,28476 31 october 2004. 44. Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority. Strålevern Rapport 2005:4. Assessment of environmental, health and safety consequences of decommissioning radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs) in Northwest Russia. Østerås, Norway 2005. Page 22. http://www.nrpa.no/dokumentarkiv/StralevernRapport4_05.pdf 45. GAN Statement http://www.gan.ru/dvmto/stat2.htm (In Russian). 46. Inventory of accidents and losses at sea involving radioactive material. IAEA-TECDOC-1242, IAEA, Vienna. 2001. 47. Information granted to the author in reply to an official inquiry to VNIITFA. 48. Marina Plechikova. Sakhalin i Kurily mogut...//Svobodny Sakhalin, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, No. 51(781), December 19th 2002 (In Russian). 49. See, for example, Anna Seleznyova. Radiatsionnaya lovushka...// Ekologiya i Pravo, No. 7, June 2003, P. 18 ( http://www.ecopravo.info); also see: Yevgeni Izyurov. Khronika luchevoi bolezni. //Vladivostok, N1330, 26th March 2003 ( http://www.vladnews.ru/magazin.php?id=11=9509_magazin=1330). (In Russian). 50. V.V.Dovgusha, M.N.Tikhonov, Radiatsionnaya obstanovka na Severo-Zapade Rossii. St Petersburg, 2000 (In Russian). 51. Radiatsiya v tsentre Dushanbe. //"Azia Plus", Dushanbe, April 2002 http://ecoasia.ecolink.ru/data/2002.HTM/000147.HTM (In Russian). 52. Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority. Stralevern info. 2004:07. ISSN 0806-895X • 25 March 2004. Also comments from NRPA’s Ingar Amundsen to Bellona Web. 53. Yevgenia Yurchenko. Polchasa – i trup // Zolotoy rog, Vladivostok, N21, March,18 2004, http://www.zrpress.ru/2004/021/p031.htm 54. Siberian branch of Federal Nuclear Regulatory Service. Svedeniya o faktah… v iyule 2004 goda. http://www.gan.ru/mto/smto/smto/narush-7.2004.htm 55. Svedeniya o narusheniyakh usloviy litsenziy... v IV kvartale 2004 goda. http://www.gan.ru/mto/semto/nedd/nlic-4.2004.htm; see also. Spravka o rabote Severo-Evropeiskogo mezhregional'nogo territorialnogo okruga... za 2004 god. http://www.gan.ru/mto/semto/nedd_otchet-2004.htm; See also: R.Alimov, C.Digges. Status Report: RTGs still an underestimated foe in securing loose nukes in Russia//http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy/northe rn_fleet/incidents/37566.html April, 2005. 56. http://web.archive.org/web/20030423022347/http://lugar.senate.gov /nunnlugar.htm 57. Report by Minister of Atomic Energy Alexander Rumyantsev at the IAEA conference "Security of Radioactive Sources," Vienna, Austria. March 11th 2003, http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Focus/RadSources/statement_ru s.pdf 58. IAEA conference "Security of Radioactive Sources," Vienna, Austria. March 11th 2003. Findings of the Chair, http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Focus/RadSources/PDF/findings .pdf 59. The Murmansk Regional Administration. Statement on the international cooperation of November 22d 2000, http://www.murman.ru/ecology/comitet/report99/part7_5.html(In Russian). 60. Thomas Nilsen. Nuclear Lighthouses to be Replaced. //Bellona Web http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/nuke-weapons/nonpro liferation/28067.html, Oslo, Febrary 2d 2003. 61. Pyotr Bolychev. Bolshe kron...// Murmansky Vestnik. Murmansk. April 12th 2003 (In Russian). 62. Correspondence between Bellona and Ingar Amundsen of the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, September 23, 2004. 63. Ibid. 64. Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority. Strålevern Rapport 2005:4. Assessment of environmental, health and safety consequences of decommissioning radioisotope thermal generators (RTGs) in Northwest Russia. Østerås, Norway 2005 href=http://www.nrpa.no/dokumentarkiv/StralevernRapport4_05.pdf 65. A statements by deputy minister of Minatom Alexander Agapov in a reply to the author's question about RTG decommissioning at a Minatom conference in St Petersburg, September 1st 2003. 66. Information granted to the author in reply to an official inquiry to VNIITFA. 67. DOE budget information supplied by William Hoehn, III, director of the Washington Office of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, in correspondence with Bellona, September, 17, 2004. 68. An answer by the head of Siberian interregional district of the Federal Federal Nuclear Regulatory Service Vladimir Prilepskikh and his deputy Sergei Chernov to the author on his question on the situations with RTGs in the district, 17.09.2004 69. Sergei Antipov: "V rabote s RITEGami glavnaya zapoved'...": http://www.minatom.ru/News/Main/view?id=15774idChannel=72 04 March 2005 70. Yakutia. 38 iz 75 radioizotopnykh generatorov podlezhat utilizatsii. Regnum News Agency, January 20th 2003 12:04 (In Russian). See also: N.R.Kuzelyov. A review of "Problemy radiatsionnoi bezopasnosti..."//Atomnaya strategiya, St. Petersburg, N1(6) June 2003, p. 33 (In Russian). Publisher: , President: Information: , Technical contact: Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 8 Register-Guard: In search of alternatives: Leave nuclear power out of the solution to the energy crisis - Eugene, Oregon, USA April 3, 2005 By John Reynolds For The Register-Guard George Will promotes nuclear energy in his March 28 Register-Guard column. He spends more time offering a faintly patronizing history of Nevada than in supporting a nuclear waste dump there, and no time at all supporting his statement that "the U.S. should generate much more than one-fifth of its electricity currently produced by nuclear power." Far from Will's assertion, the U.S. should phase out nuclear power as soon as possible. Instead, the country needs a wholehearted commitment to renewable energy sources, including solar and wind. Nuclear power plant waste must be shipped and then guarded for more than 300,000 years, as has been recently determined in federal courts. In the United States, nuclear waste sits in pools at each nuclear plant - including a guarded pool at the shut-down Trojan plant on the banks of the Columbia River. If the nation ever manages to build that central waste depository under Nevada's Yucca Mountain that Will supports, deadly waste will then be shipped through our cities and farms, giving terrorists a new, slow-moving target. In the few countries where nuclear reprocessing occurs, with its enormous requirement for energy, shipments also become targets. The last Japan-to-France waste transfer attracted worldwide objections. The threat of global warming has revived talk of an increased role for nuclear power, because it produces so few gases that contribute to global warming. Some advocates even describe nuclear power as "renewable." Given the obvious environmental and political disadvantages of fossil fuels, is nuclear a better choice? I believe the answer is clearly no. Nuclear power is renewable only if we accept the plutonium option involving breeder reactors. I can scarcely imagine a worse choice, combining the most severe nuclear-proliferation threats with an increase of hundreds of thousands of years of threat from nuclear waste. Plutonium is the terrorist's gold. It has a half-life of more than 200,000 years. It should not be under discussion as an answer to our energy supply. Nuclear power brings with it the extraction of uranium with pollution from mine tailings. It requires enormous amounts of energy in the enrichment process, subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, before it can be used as fuel. Nuclear plants demand extraordinary security because they are such extraordinary targets. Those advocating nuclear power point to the pebble-bed reactor as a less complex, safer, easier model for the future. We certainly should insist on an improved reactor design as one condition before discussing nuclear power. But another condition must be a vast improvement in waste storage. In the December issue of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni magazine Technology Review, Matthew Wald explores our options for dealing with nuclear waste. The gist of this lengthy article is: "We don't know how to safely store it forever. Let's leave the solution to a generation that will." In other words, stop generating more of this stuff. We are not dealing adequately with the nuclear waste we already have. While we phase out nuclear power, we must act quickly and forcefully to advance renewable energy. Opponents are those who would lose control of worldwide energy supply - those who now have their hands so profitably on the valves. Their arguments against renewable energy are predictable. They include: "Solar, wind and biomass cannot possibly supply the world's needs." This is patently false. Our daily solar and wind resources are many times greater than our daily energy use. Renewable energy must supply these needs when nonrenewable fuels are depleted. The faster we increase our energy efficiency in cars, homes, businesses and industries, the sooner renewable energy can meet our needs. "Who wants our farms and forests covered with solar collectors and wind turbines?" No one does, of course. With photovoltaic arrays on most roofs and turbines in the windiest stretches of land, as well as offshore, we can protect our forests while increasing the incomes of farmers and ranchers who work right around the turbines that pay them welcome royalties. A study released on March 1 by the Energy Foundation found that rooftop space is not a constraining factor for solar development. Residential and commercial rooftop space in the U.S. could accommodate up to 710,000 megawatts of solar electric power (if all rooftops were fully utilized, taking into account proper orientation of buildings, shading from trees, rooftop ventilation equipment, and other solar access factors). The total electricity-generating capacity in the U.S. today is about 950,000 megawatts. We must proceed quickly to develop renewable energy resources, because: Solar and wind are labor-intensive in manufacture and installation, contributing to local economies. They can be installed almost anywhere, thus are not limited to a few places worldwide. Once installed, solar and wind have zero fuel costs, contributing to local economies money that formerly went to pay far higher utility bills. Solar and wind are inherently terror-resistant because they are widely distributed rather than concentrated. Which is a more vulnerable target: one nuclear plant whose rupture would lead to a massive radiation release, or 700 wind turbines spread over 1,000 acres in Eastern Oregon? Solar energy, in particular, offers some blackout protection, because it can be so easily integrated in the building it serves. My solar water heater, for example, has a photovoltaic-driven pump. When I experience a loss of electricity from the Eugene Water &Electric Board, the sun can still warm my water. Solar and wind, once in operation, contribute almost no pollution or other environmental damage. Bird kills by wind turbines are an unfortunate exception, and turbine locations away from flyways are a way to reduce, but not eliminate, this threat. This is a huge reduction in pollution from the chain of extraction, shipping, refining, combustion or fission, and waste disposal associated with nonrenewable fuels. But the most important reason to advocate rapid renewable energy development is its contribution to world peace. Solar, wind, and biomass resources are spread across the Earth, not concentrated in a few Middle Eastern countries. Indeed, the poorest countries get the best year-round solar resources - those nearer the equator, including Africa and South America. By definition, nonrenewable energy sources are finite. They are an inherited energy bank account that draws no interest, being steadily depleted. Renewable sources, by contrast, are a steady, widely dispersed source of energy income, forever. They are our energy future, and with our support, that future can be very close at hand. Meanwhile, we can use some of our inherited fossil fuels to build the hardware for our renewable energy future. >Copyright 2005 The Register-Guard ***************************************************************** 9 Business Gazette: Plant generates more than power The Business Gazette DCMilitary.com by Kevin Conron Staff Writer Apr. 1, 2005 Photo courtesy of Constellation Energy These turbines are powered by one of the two nuclear reactors at Calvert Cliffs in Lusby. Calvert Cliffs' refueling pumps $1.2M into region In just 21 days an estimated $1.2 million flowed into the Southern Maryland economy, the result of last month's refueling of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Lusby. The money was spent largely in lodging, food and entertainment by 850 temporary workers. But the plant, the only nuclear-powered facility in Maryland and owned by Constellation Energy, plays a much larger role in Southern Maryland. It has an annual payroll of $70 million and employs 1,000 people who live in Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's counties. Local and state taxes paid by Constellation total $15 million, making it the biggest taxpayer in the smallest county in Maryland when measured in area. It is the second biggest employer in Calvert, trailing only the public school system, according to the Calvert County Department of Economic Development. Lloyd Harrison, chairman of the board of directors of the Calvert County Chamber of Commerce, understands Calvert Cliffs' role. "The plant is a very important contributor to the economy overall, not only in Calvert but Southern Maryland as a whole,'' Harrison said. "When these people are staying in hotels or eating at restaurants you can't overestimate the importance of the plant to the economy.'' Over the course of 21 days, one of the shortest outages for the type of reactors used at Calvert Cliffs, Constellation Energy said in a press release, spent uranium fuel assemblies were removed from Unit Two and new 1,400-pound assemblies were installed. The old fuel was placed in a pool of water for storage. Temporary workers are given four days of safety classes before the refueling starts, said George Vanderheyden, vice president of Calvert Cliffs. Even then, accidents sometimes happen. One worker dropped a piece of metal on his leg, requiring 15 stitches. Another slipped, fell and pulled a hamstring muscle. Management concluded the worker's shoe soles were bare. Not bad, Vanderhayden said, considering the refueling took 140,000 man-hours to complete. "One of our philosophies is we believe every accident is preventable.'' Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the last annual report on safety issues at Calvert Cliffs didn't show any problems. "In general, they are meeting our expectations,'' Sheehan said, "but that doesn't mean they are flawless.'' The refueling cost $24 million. Of that, $12 million was to hire temporary workers, half of whom live in the region. The others travel the nation's nuclear plant refueling circuit. Their skills run the gamut from boilermakers and pipefitters to carpenters and laborers. Other work included inspecting the cooling system to the reactor. Danita Boonchaisri with the Calvert economic development office sees other opportunities for county businesses. She said packets of information on local events and places to stay and eat could be assembled for temporary workers. "We want to be good hosts,'' Boonchaisri said. There is a lot of overtime work available, Vanderheyden said, but the utility mandates workers take at least one day a week off "and a lot of the supplemental workforce goes to pubs and movies,'' he said. The chamber's Harrison is impressed with Constellation's approach to the region. "They are very good corporate citizens, both as stewards of the environment and supporters of the local economy.'' ***************************************************************** 10 [NYTr] How CIA Doubts on WMD Were Buried Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 18:36:24 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit The Washington Post - 1 April 2005 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17211-2005Mar31.html Doubts on Weapons Were Dismissed By Dafna Linzer and Barton Gellman As former secretary of state Colin L. Powell worked into the night in a New York hotel room, on the eve of his February 2003 presentation to the U.N. Security Council, CIA officers sent urgent e-mails and cables describing grave doubts about a key charge he was going to make. On the telephone that night, a senior intelligence officer warned then-CIA Director George J. Tenet that he lacked confidence in the principal source of the assertion that Saddam Hussein's scientists were developing deadly agents in mobile laboratories. "Mr. Tenet replied with words to the effect of 'yeah, yeah' and that he was 'exhausted,' " according to testimony quoted yesterday in the report of President Bush's commission on the intelligence failures leading up to his decision to invade Iraq in March 2003. Tenet told the commission he did not recall that part of the conversation. He relayed no such concerns to Powell, who made the germ- warfare charge a centerpiece of his presentation the next day. That was one among many examples -- cited over 692 pages in the report -- of fruitless dissent on the accuracy of claims against Iraq. Up until the days before U.S. troops entered Iraqi territory that March, the intelligence community was inundated with evidence that undermined virtually all charges it had made against Iraq, the report said. In scores of additional cases involving the country's alleged nuclear and chemical programs and its delivery systems, the commission described a kind of echo chamber in which plausible hypotheses hardened into firm assertions of fact, eventually becoming immune to evidence. Leading analysts accepted at face value data supporting the existence of illegal weapons, the commission said, and discounted counter-evidence as skillful Iraqi deception. The commission's anatomy of failure on Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program is a case in point. It begins in early 2001, as Bush took office, when the CIA got its first report that Iraq was trying to buy black-market aluminum tubes. The agency swiftly concluded, after intercepting a sample in April of that year, that Iraq intended the tubes to be used in centrifuges that would enrich uranium for the core of a nuclear weapon. The CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) never budged from that analysis, the report said. In the following 18 months, WINPAC analysts won a fierce bureaucratic battle against dissenters from other agencies who said the tubes -- roughly three feet long and three inches in diameter -- were the wrong size, shape and material for plausible use in centrifuges. The tubes became the principal evidence for a "key judgment" in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which said Iraq had "reconstituted" a nuclear weapons program and could build a bomb before the end of the decade. To support its assertions about the aluminum tubes, the CIA made a series of arguments that the nation's leading centrifuge physicists described repeatedly as technically garbled, improbable or unambiguously false, the report said. One WINPAC analyst -- identified previously in The Washington Post as "Joe," with his surname withheld at the CIA's request -- responded by bypassing the Energy Department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the nation's only major center of expertise on nuclear centrifuge technology. Joe commissioned a contractor to conduct tests of his own design, then rejected the contractor's results when they did not meet his expectations. Yesterday's report said the CIA also created a panel of experts to rival the Oak Ridge team. Those experts concluded, based on "a stack of documents provided by the CIA," that the tubes were meant for centrifuges. The CIA refused to convene the government's authoritative forum for resolving technical disputes about nuclear weapons. The Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee proposed twice, in the spring and summer of 2002, to assess all the evidence. The CIA's front office replied, according to yesterday's report, "that CIA was not ready to discuss its position." The same summer, then-deputy CIA director John E. McLaughlin brought talking points to a meeting of Bush's national security cabinet, asserting that the tubes were "destined for a gas centrifuge program" and that their procurement showed "clear intent to produce weapons-capable fissile material." The next month, the CIA sent policymakers a report calling the tubes "compelling evidence that Iraq has renewed its gas centrifuge uranium enrichment program." Within weeks of the tubes' interception, the report said, Energy Department experts told the CIA that they matched precisely the materials and dimensions of an Italian-made rocket called the Medusa, a standard NATO munition. They also pointed out that Iraq was building copies of the Medusa and declared a stockpile of identical tubes to U.N. inspectors in 1996. The CIA asked the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center for an analysis of the tubes but withheld the information about the Medusa and the 1996 discovery. The Army analysts said, among other things, that no known rocket used that particular aluminum alloy -- disregarding not only the Medusa but also the U.S.-built Hydra rocket. "The intercepted tubes were not only well-suited, but were in fact a precise fit, for Iraq's conventional rockets," the commission said yesterday, but "certain agencies were more wedded to the analytical position that the tubes were destined for a nuclear program." Even the Energy Department did not hold fast to its analysis. Although it dissented on the tubes, it went along with the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in concluding that Iraq had resumed a nuclear weapons program, based on arguments the commission called insubstantial and illogical. One analyst told the commission, "DOE didn't want to come out before the war and say [Iraq] wasn't reconstituting." Another key piece of evidence came from an Iraqi defector who told the DIA that Iraq had built a secret new nuclear facility. U.S. intelligence could not verify the report, or locate the alleged facility, which did not exist. After the war, the CIA concluded that the defector was "directed" in his claims by the Iraqi National Congress, led by then-exile Ahmed Chalabi. To this day, however, the DIA has not withdrawn the defector's reporting from national databases, the report showed. Nor has the DIA withdrawn assessments provided by defectors such as "Curveball," whose tales of mobile laboratories in which scientists cooked up biological weapons were pure fabrication, according to the commission. Concerns over Curveball had been floating around the CIA for more than three years by the time Powell shared his claims with the world. No CIA officer even met Curveball before the war, although on the night before Powell's presentation, a defense intelligence officer wrote an e-mail to colleagues noting that in his meeting with the defector, Curveball appeared "hung over" and unreliable. "These views were expressed to CIA leadership," the commissioners wrote, including to McLaughlin and his assistant. But they were also watered down as they moved up within the intelligence community, and were never shared with outsiders. "We found no evidence that the doubts were conveyed by CIA leadership to policymakers in general -- or Secretary Powell in particular." In fact, the more Curveball's credibility came into question, the more his allegations were used to bolster the case for war, the report said. Even after Powell's now-famous presentation in the chamber of the U.N. Security Council, the CIA tried to find out more information about Curveball, whose stories had been relayed to the Pentagon through German intelligence. Five days after Powell's presentation, the CIA sent an e-mail to a senior defense intelligence official seeking more information about the defector. What followed, in the commission's account, highlights the terrible working relationships within the intelligence community, the lack of interest in getting the truth about Curveball and the ease with which the DIA discarded concerns about the case against Iraq. The defense intelligence division chief who received the CIA e-mail forwarded it to a subordinate in an e-mail that was inadvertently copied back to the sender. In it, the division chief expressed shock at the CIA's suggestion that Curveball might be unreliable. The "CIA is up to their old tricks" and did not "have a clue" about how the source had been handled, the division chief wrote in excerpts quoted in the commission's report. Only in March 2004, one year after the invasion of Iraq, did the CIA confront Curveball over his prewar claims. * 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 ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 11 [NYTr] Pakistan Says Israel, India Spy on Its Nuclear Sites Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 06:27:13 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Pakistan Says India and Israel Spy on Its Nuclear Sites Islamabad, April 1 (Prensa Latina) Pakistan's Ministry of the Interior has decided to increase security around the country's nuclear sites due to suspicions of Indian and Israeli spying, the Daily Times reported. According to the Pakistani ministry, Indian and Israeli intelligence agencies had trained 25 Afghans in Kabul and sent them to Pakistan to glean information about its nuclear facilities. In response, the ministry warned the provincial authorities to be extra vigilant. The ministry directed provincial governments to be on the alert for suspicious Afghans and send regular updates on their measures in this regard, the report added. The release also said another group of Afghans were being trained in Kabul, adding that two Afghans, identified as Hazrat Ali and Haji Zahir, were sent to Pakistan to recruit spies. ir/ajs/mf * 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 ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 12 Fwd: [GLODEM] NUCLEAR WEAPONS POSE AN UNACCEPTABLE TRHEAT TO Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 23:15:19 -0600 (CST) Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 04:23:12 +0900 (JST) From: Hanayo Ozaki Subject: [GLODEM] NUCLEAR WEAPONS POSE AN UNACCEPTABLE TRHEAT TO OUR EXISTENCE GLOBAL DEMILITARIZATION March 14, 2005 Dear friends, we hope you will take a moment to help urge political leaders of the nuclear weapons states to disable all the nuclear weapons in the world. ************************************************************** *****Please send the following or a similar letter, email, fax or phone message to the President of the United States each month. Also please send copies to the Heads of State of the other nuclear weapons nations, whose addresses are listed at the end. If you work with a peace, environmental or religious organization: In your next bulletin or correspondence with your members, please urge them also to send these messages each month. You are welcome to share this message with anyone else who may be willing to help. ************************************************************** *****NUCLEAR WEAPONS POSE AN UNACCEPTABLE THREAT TO OUR EXISTENCE President George W. Bush The White House Washington, DC 20500, USA tel +1-202-456-1111, fax +1-202-456-2461 email president@whitehouse.gov Cc: Vladimir Putin, President, Russia Tony Blair, Prime Minister, Britain (Fax +44-207-925-0918) Jacques Chirac, President, France Hu Jintao, President, China Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister, Israel (Fax +972-2-664-838) Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister, India Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan Dear Mr. President, As Mr. Josei Toda, the second president of Soka Gakkai International, stated, "Nuclear weapons pose an unacceptable threat to humanity's collective right to exist." Please call a meeting of the heads of all nuclear weapons states to reach agreement on the abolition of all nuclear weapons before it is too late. Sincerely, [Your name, post address & country] ************************************************************** *****OTHER ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE: 1) Write also to your national and local representatives. 2) Write by hand (a list of mailing addresses is attached below). 3) Reformulate as a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. 4) Invite others to subscribe to this list. 5) Inform us of what you have done, and make other suggestions. ************************************************************** *****Addresses of the heads of other nuclear weapons states: President Vladimir Putin Office of the Government Krasnopresenskaya 2 Moscow, RUSSIA tel +7-095-925-3581, fax +7-095-205-4219 email rusun@undp.org Prime Minister Tony Blair Prime Minister's Office 10 Downing Street London, SW 1A 2 AA, BRITAIN tel +44-171-270-3000 fax +44(207)925-0918 website www.number-10.gov.uk President Jacques Chirac Office du President, Palais De L'Elysee 55-57 rue du Faubourg St. Honore 75008 Paris, FRANCE tel +33-1-4292-8100, Fax +33-1-4742-2465 email fraun@undp.org President Hu Jintao Office of the Premier 225 Chaoyangmennei Dajie, Dongsi Beijing, P. R. CHINA email chnun@undp.org Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Office of the Prime Minister 3 Rehov Kaplan, Hakirya Jerusalem 91007, ISRAEL tel +972-2-705555, fax +972-2-664838 Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh Prime Minister's Office South Block New Delhi 110011, INDIA tel +91-11-3013040, fax +91-11-3016857 email indun@undp.org Gen. Pervez Musharraf Office of the President Islamabad, PAKISTAN telex 5742 email pakistan@undp.org ************************************************************** *****Best regards, Sue & Marvin Clark, Co-directors, Global Demilitarization 42 Maple Avenue, Troy, NY 12180, USA Hanayo Ozaki, Hiroshima Administrative Board Members: Oscar Arias, Nobel Peace Laureate, honorary member Jonathan Schell, Author Mary Evelyn Jegen, SND, Pax Christi International Bill Price, Director, World Peacemakers Bill Hartung, Author Dietrich Fischer, Author Organizations are for identification only Emailings since July 1996 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Search /RENEGADE/ for articles that mention nukes - http://fornits.com/renegade/peaars.cgi?keywords=NUKES&increment=weeks&many=52 [only articles for the last one year will be indexed] /RENEGADE/ Search - GO TO: http://fornits.com/renegade/peaars.cgi? and just type in your topic. For differing results you may uncheck "article" and search on just "subject," etc. /RENEGADE/ also has "time-frame" in the search, so you can tailor your results that way, too. ----- -- Peace! *STRIDER* Sector Air Raid Warden at /RENEGADE/ Home: http://fornits.com/renegade/ DEDICATED TO SPIRIT, TRUTH, PEACE, JUSTICE, AND FREEDOM Articles posted in the last 10 days: http://fornits.com/renegade/peaars.cgi?search=Search&increment=days&many=10 Blog: http://striders-renegade.blogspot.com/ Bay_Area_Activist list ---- Membership by invitation only - moderated / archives for members only Contact bay_area_activist-owner@yahoogroups.com to request membership. EF! list --------------- earthfirstalert - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/earthfirstalert List-Subscribe: usenet: news:misc.activism.progressive e-mail: mailto:strider@fornits.com strider@fornits.com No War! No Nukes! Impeach! SOS! WHEN SPIDERS UNITE, THEY CAN TIE DOWN A LION -- Ethiopian Proverb ***************************************************************** 13 WMD Report Collection Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 10:25:41 -0600 (CST) http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Americas&month=April2005&file=World_News200504029151.xml Intelligence dead wrong on Iraq WMD: Panel Web posted at: 4/2/2005 9:15:1 Source ::: AFP President George W Bush meeting with members of his national security team to discuss the findings of the Commission on the Intelligence Capablities of the United States regarding weapons of mass destruction, at the White House on Thursday. WASHINGTON: US intelligence agencies were dead wrong in their pre-war assessments of Iraqs weapons programmes and still know dangerously little about nuclear programmes in Iran and North Korea, a US presidential commission said on Thursday. After a year-long inquiry, the panel warned in a scathing report that the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, based on accusations that turned out to be false, had done damage to US credibility that will take years to undo. We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraqs weapons of mass destruction, the commission said. We simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude. The panel warned that US intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of Iran and North Korea both locked in nuclear disputes with the United States may be disturbingly shaky. A chapter on the subject was classified. US President George W Bush welcomed the report and said he had directed his homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend, to review the 600-page document over the next 90 days and take concrete action on its recommendations. The central conclusion is one that I share: Americas intelligence community needs fundamental change to enable us to successfully confront the threats of the 21st century, he said in remarks at the White House. The panel called for bolstering the powers of the newly created director of national intelligence former US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte awaits confirmation to that post as part of creating more centralised management and integrating what it described as a loose grouping of independence agencies. But they warned that Negroponte faced an uphill battle in his dealings with headstrong agencies like the Pentagon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). To win the war on terror, we will correct what needs to be fixed, Bush said with the commissions co-chairman, former federal judge Laurence Silberman and ex-senator Charles Robb, at his side. In a separate letter, Silberman and Robb criticized the pace and scope of overhauls at the FBI and CIA and warned that those agencies would resist reform efforts by the national intelligence director. The report took the US intelligence community severely to task for a series of shortcomings it said led to the false conclusion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, justifying the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Analysts stuck to assumptions about Iraq developed after the 1991 Gulf War, as well as data collection problems and the failure to tell policymakers just how little hard intelligence they really had. What little evidence they did have, which was inconsistent, was tortured into those presumptions, Silberman told reporters. The commission report said it found no evidence that political pressures had warped US intelligence findings on Iraq, but steered clear of whether the Bush administration had exaggerated the intelligence to sell the war. At the same time, the panel said that flaws that crippled analysis of Iraq are still all too common and warned that US intelligence on countries like Iran and North Korea lacks critical information. The bad news is that we still know disturbingly little about the weapons programs and even less about the intentions of many of our most dangerous adversaries, the commission said. Across the board, the intelligence community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the worlds most dangerous actors. In some cases, it knows less now than it did five or 10 years ago, it said. +++++ http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-04-01-voa6.cfm Presidential Commission Blasts US Intelligence Shortcomings By Robert Raffaele Washington DC 01 April 2005 A U.S. presidential commission says America's spy agencies were "dead wrong" in most of their pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The panel released its report Thursday - nearly one year after President Bush formed it to study the United States' pre-war intelligence failures in Iraq. In a declassified version of its nearly 700-page report, the panel called pre-war assessments that Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, a "major intelligence failure." Those assessments were the centerpiece of the Bush administration's initial argument for the Iraq invasion. The report was presented to President Bush Thursday, who told reporters he agreed with its central conclusion: America's intelligence community needs fundamental change. "The President and his national security team must have intelligence that is timely, and intelligence that is accurate," says President Bush. On the subject of Iraq, commissioners placed much of the blame on what they call the intelligence community's "inability to collect good information about Iraq's W-M-D programs." Commission co-chair Judge Lawrence Silberman says analysts had little concrete information about the weapons Saddam Hussien possessed. He says they made assumptions, based on that information, about what Saddam might do. "And although it was perfectly reasonable for them to speculate or to assume, what the intelligence community should have done is said 'Look, we don't have - - very little evidence of this, we really don't know. And that would have been justifiable," says Judge Silberman. However, the panel said it had NO proof that agencies distorted evidence to bolster the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq. The panel said the U.S. needs an intelligence community that is "truly integrated," with a greater sense of imagination and willingness to take risks. Co-chairman and former U.S. Senator Charles Robb. We recognize that the United States took a hit. The community recognizes it. Everyone that we've talked to recognizes it. But we simply can't punt at that point. We're trying to put a constructive pathway, if you will, to restoring that confidence," says Senator Robb. Among its recommendations, the report called on President Bush to give John Negroponte, the new Director of National Intelligence, broader powers for overseeing the nation's 15 spy agencies. It also called for sweeping changes at the FBI - including combining the bureau's counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office. The report, however, praised spy agencies for their role in leading Libya to renounce its weapons programs, and exposing the nuclear proliferation network of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan. Judge Silberman and Senator Robb say members of the panel will brief the U.S. House and Senate intelligence committees about the report +++++ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/politics/01intel.html April 1, 2005 Bush Panel Finds Big Flaws Remain in U.S. Spy Efforts By SCOTT SHANE and DAVID E. SANGER ASHINGTON, March 31 - In a scorching assessment of chronic dysfunction inside American intelligence agencies, a presidential commission told President Bush on Thursday that the underlying causes of the failure to have understood Iraq's weapons programs "are still all too common." It also warned that the United States "knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors." In the bluntly worded, 601-page report, the nine-member commission flatly stated that harm done to American credibility because of the Iraq failure would take "years to undo." It also warned of specific new vulnerabilities, especially in understanding the spread of biological weapons programs. Even before John D. Negroponte begins his confirmation hearings as the first director of national intelligence, it urges him to undertake a radical reorganization of many of the nation's 15 intelligence agencies to end for good the long-running turf wars that have divided them. It also calls on him to encourage a culture that challenges assumptions before they turn into accepted wisdom, as they did about Iraq in the prelude to the American-led invasion. The commission, headed by Judge Laurence H. Silberman and former Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia, noted acidly that despite several previous investigations lambasting deep flaws in the intelligence services, they have "an almost perfect record of resisting external recommendations." In its opening letter to Mr. Bush, it called the spy agencies "headstrong," and in a clear reference to Mr. Negroponte, it warned: "Sooner or later, they will try to run around - or over - the D.N.I. Then, only your determined backing will convince them that we cannot return to the old ways." The breadth and detail of the indictment, written in vivid, colloquial language rare in Washington, went beyond previous critiques. The report was particularly blistering about the low quality of the "President's Daily Brief," the morning intelligence review that once was deemed the gold standard of American intelligence. Mr. Bush had resisted turning over such briefing documents to the 9/11 commission that reported its findings last year. He did provide them to this panel, which operated under a far greater cloak of secrecy. Without revealing details of the briefs on Iraq, this commission concluded that the briefs were even "more alarmist and less nuanced" than the far more detailed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons. The panel concluded that the intelligence estimate, intended to be the government's most authoritative analysis of the Iraqi threat, was "dead wrong." Mr. Bush met with the full commission for more than an hour Thursday morning, and emerged to declare that "we will correct what needs to be fixed, and build on what the commission calls solid intelligence successes." He was referring to a case study singled out by the commission that praised the intelligence agencies' discovery of Libya's nuclear program, in large part by piercing the nuclear black market network run by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Two months after a ship bearing nuclear centrifuge parts to Tripoli was intercepted on the high seas, Libya agreed to dismantle its nuclear program. But the commission, formally called the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, described that success as a rarity that intelligence agencies are "not well-postured to replicate." "They're still, in some respects, fighting the last war," Mr. Robb said, noting how many times outside studies have called for the intelligence agencies to adapt to a very different world of threats, and how steadfastly they have resisted change. Though much of the report concentrates on how the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other corners of the intelligence world exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq before the American-led invasion, Mr. Bush took a very different view of its main message. He put his emphasis on the opposite problem: the hazard of missing or underestimating threats "in a dangerous new century." "Our collection and analysis of intelligence will never be perfect, but in an age where our margin for error is getting smaller, in an age in which we are at war, the consequences of underestimating a threat could be tens of thousands of innocent lives," Mr. Bush said. "And my administration will continue to make intelligence reforms that will allow us to identify threats before they fully emerge so we can take effective action to protect the American people." The president, however, never discussed how the overestimation of Iraq's threat contributed to his decision to go to war, and the commission - citing the mandate he gave it more than a year ago, when the White House feared that the issue could affect the election - never delved into that issue. George J. Tenet, who was director of central intelligence from 1997 until last summer, released a statement on Thursday defending his record. "I wish the commission had spent more time reflecting on how far the intelligence community has come in rebuilding American intelligence," he wrote. Mr. Tenet said that by the late 1990's, budget cuts had left the agencies "nearly in Chapter 11." He added that "we put in place a deliberate program to rebuild capabilities and recruit a modern work force," changes that were still in progress when the Iraq assessment was undertaken. Deleted from the commission's public report were 91 additional pages that appear in a classified version, mostly a discussion of the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, and of covert operations. According to officials who have reviewed the commission's 11 specific findings about those two nations, which Judge Silberman and Mr. Robb declined to discuss even in general terms, the classified version includes a review of the parallel pitfalls that could affect judgments of how many nuclear weapons North Korea has built, or how long it will be until Iran can manufacture its own uranium weapons. The nature of intelligence about Iraq differed greatly from what is known about the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea. But when asked whether the current assessments of those two countries suffer from the same problem the commission said had plagued the Iraq analysis - an assumption that because a country is caught buying illicit goods, it knows how to assemble them - Mr. Robb would say only, "We found systemic problems throughout the community." But Judge Silberman interjected, saying those problems did not necessarily affect assessments of Iran and North Korea. Like the Senate Intelligence Committee report issued last year, this report documented sweeping failures of intelligence collection and analysis, debilitating turf battles, multiple agencies doing the same work, lagging technology and meager ranks of human spies. But it did so in much more vivid terms. The C.I. A. and the National Security Agency "may be sleek and omniscient in the movies, but in real life they and other intelligence agencies are vast government bureaucracies," it said, "prone to develop self-reinforcing, risk-averse cultures that take outside advice badly." As a central remedy, the commission prescribes the integration of the scattered agencies under the strong control of the new national intelligence director, Mr. Negroponte, a longtime diplomat who most recently served as ambassador to Iraq and to the United Nations. Under the director, "mission managers" would each be responsible for coordinating intelligence from all agencies on a certain target, which might be a country or a type of weapon. Mr. Bush assigned his homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend, to oversee the carrying out of the commission's recommendations. Ms. Townsend said she had already met with cabinet members and asked them to identify recommendations that could be adopted immediately, others that required review and "a small handful" that would require new legislation. Among the commission's 74 recommendations are the creation of a nongovernment research body to play permanent devil's advocate, challenging the agencies' assessments, and of a National Intelligence University to improve the training of analysts and spies. The commission proposes the creation of a National Counterproliferation Center of fewer than 100 people to manage and coordinate intelligence on the threat of weapons proliferation, especially from private networks like Dr. Khan's. It would join the National Counterterrorism Center as coordinating bodies under the director of national intelligence. Other ideas are likely to face stiff resistance from the agencies. Saying the Central Intelligence Agency's existing clandestine service is unlikely to overcome a history of poor performance, the report recommends creating a new Human Intelligence Directorate within C.I.A. to build a better spy service. It also urges major reshuffling of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. At the heart of the report is the dispiriting, though increasingly familiar, account of the failure on Iraqi weapons. The intelligence service was "crippled by its inability to collect meaningful intelligence on Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs," it said, and fell back on "old assumptions" based on Saddam Hussein's past behavior that he must be aggressively building an unconventional arsenal. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi weapons produced in 2002 took the assumptions "and swathed them in the mystique of intelligence, providing secret information that seemed to support them but was in fact nearly worthless, if not misleading," the commission said. The commission provides a strange sort of exoneration for the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmad Chalabi, the onetime Pentagon favorite who was accused of fueling the drive to war by providing false information about Mr. Hussein's arsenals to American officials and the news media. Quoting a C.I.A. investigation conducted after the war, it said "I.N.C.-related sources had a minimal impact" on the administration's assessments. But it also calls two sources in the I.N.C. "fabricators." On one of the most delicate questions raised by the Iraqi intelligence failure, the report said "the analysts who worked the Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments." But the commission added a caveat. Apparently referring to repeated statements from Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top policy makers suggesting that Mr. Hussein had illicit weapons stockpiles, the report said, "It is hard to deny that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom." The report said the intelligence agencies were behind the technological curve in crucial areas, notably biotechnology, and woefully ignorant of important cultural issues. During the cold war, the agencies had impressive expertise on Soviet society and ideology, the report noted, but it said, "No equivalent talent pool exists today for the study of Islamic extremism." While C.I.A. gets the most attention, the eavesdroppers of National Security Agency also get a very critical look. While writing in vague terms to avoid compromising sources, the commission said Mr. Hussein's government was able to foil many of N.S.A.'s eavesdropping attempts. Technological changes in telecommunications have put major sources of intelligence out of reach of N.S.A.'s signals intelligence, the technical term for eavesdropping, it said, adding, "Regaining signals intelligence, access must be a top priority." The commission takes a strong stand against leaks to the news media of classified intelligence information, which it says have "cost the American people hundreds of millions of dollars, and done grave harm to national security." It proposed that an inspector general working for the director of national intelligence be assigned to investigate all leaks and deter them by firing or prosecuting identified leakers. In a brief note on interrogations, the commission said that captured detainees provided one source of critical intelligence and added that it had had been assured that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales personally approves interrogation techniques that go beyond methods that are openly published, apparently referring to publicly known military interrogation guidelines. The report adds, "Where special practices are allowed in extraordinary cases of dire emergency, those procedures should require permission from sufficiently high-level officials to ensure compliance with overall guidelines." Reaction to the report was generally positive. Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, praised the commission but said its recommendations could still languish without strong support from the president, Congress and Mr. Negroponte. "There's about a six-month window before turf battles and the inertia of Washington will sink this," she said. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Co +++++ http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=679&ncid=742&e=18&u=/usatoday/20050401/cm_usatoday/whatthereportdidntsay Op/Ed - USATODAY.com What the report didn't say... Fri Apr 1, 2005 Sometimes the most intriguing news is found in what's left unsaid. That was certainly true Thursday, as a presidential commission issued a blistering, if unsurprising, indictment of U.S. intelligence-gathering in the months leading up to war in Iraq. The commission found, as others had, that the nation's spy agencies were "dead wrong" about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. It cited a panoply of failures - from a lack of spies in the right places to the agencies' tendency to squash dissenting views. The report describes how the agencies, unwilling to admit that they lacked hard facts, instead relied on worthless information, bad assumptions and a key source who was lying. Many of the same weaknesses persist today. The agencies "know disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors," the commission found. On a practical level, those findings may help deter any backsliding on changes already underway to unify the nation's splintered intelligence system. Those reforms were driven by an equally scathing report issued by the 9/11 Commission last August. More interesting, though, is what's missing from this new report. The report didn't attempt to connect the intelligence failures to the fateful decision they encouraged: to go to war on what proved to be false grounds. If the report is taken at face value, this was all the fault of the spy agencies' blundering. The bipartisan commission found no evidence that intelligence judgments were changed because of political pressure. The commission chairs, senior federal Judge Laurence Silberman and former Virginia senator Charles Robb, reiterated that finding on Thursday. But in a few telling paragraphs among more than 600 pages, the panel allowed that some analysts were influenced by the conventional wisdom, which said Saddam Hussein was hiding an arsenal, and "the sense that challenges to it - or even refusals to find its confirmation - would not be welcome." Little wonder. In the months before the war, Vice President Cheney said there was "no doubt" Saddam was amassing weapons. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that even "a trained ape" knew it was true. President Bush repeatedly made the case not just that war in Iraq was necessary, but that it was urgent. That is not a climate that would lead anyone to conclude that facts still needed to be discerned. And it is one that needs change, beginning at the intelligence agencies. Even 9/11 and the deaths of more 1,500 U.S. troops in Iraq haven't budged them from bad habits, particularly refusals to share information and encourage differing views, the commission said. The nation's new intelligence czar will need to knock heads. For the political leadership, the task is simpler. They need only leave room for facts to get in the way of their conclusions - and use war only as a last resort. +++++ http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18833-2005Apr1?language=printer washingtonpost.com Who Gets Held to Account? By Dan Fromkin Special to washingtonpost.com Friday, April 1, 2005; 12:59 PM Anyone who's ever worked in a hierarchical organization knows all about groupthink. People down the food chain feel a nearly palpable pressure to please the people at the top of the food chain -- without anyone necessarily saying a word. It's typically a function of which behaviors get rewarded and which get punished. Who gets access? Who gets frozen out? Who is held to account for what? Who gets promoted -- and who gets pushed aside? Groupthink is the villain at the heart of the latest intelligence report to hit the president's desk -- this one from his hand-picked panel of experts, and this one on its face giving the White House a complete pass. But some of today's analyses and opinion pieces are suggesting that maybe the report should also be read as an indictment of an administration that has let groupthink run amok. Analyses Todd S. Purdum writes in the New York Times: "It found no evidence that intelligence had been politically twisted to suit preconceptions about Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, and made no formal judgments about how top policy makers had used that intelligence to justify war. Yet in its own way, the presidential commission on intelligence left little doubt that President Bush and his top aides had gotten what they wanted, not what they needed, when they were told that Saddam Hussein had a threatening arsenal of illicit weapons. . . . "[T]he latest and presumably the last official review of such questions leaves unresolved what may be the biggest question of all: Who was accountable, and will they ever be held to account for letting what amounted to mere assumptions 'harden into presumptions,' as Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of the commission, put it. . . . "But already some people have been judged, albeit it indirect ways, while others have been rewarded, even promoted. Some who foresaw potential disaster were punished or pushed aside, while the president and vice president were given new terms." The Washington Post's Dana Priest fielded questions in a Live Online yesterday. "St. Marys, Ga.: Who, if anyone, is going to be held accountable for being 'Dead Wrong?' It seems no one has been held accountable in the past few years . . . but 'Dead Wrong' is pretty strong language and I hope it is not ignored. "Dana Priest: Well, President Bush gave George Tenet the Medal of Freedom. And the voters gave President Bush another term. SecDef Rumsfeld is in perfect standing with the president. His deputy is moving on to head the World Bank. The head of the other large intel agency, the National Security Agency (does eavesdropping) is becoming Negroponte's deputy. That leaves only the worker bees. . . . "Boston, Mass.: Does the administration itself bear any responsibility for the failure of its intelligence agencies? "Dana Priest: The CIA and its director work for the president. The president is responsible for hiring and firing that person, for holding that person and his agency responsible, for making sure, ultimately, that the agencies are working properly, spending more effectively and serving him -- and the American people -- the way it is supposed to. Was Nixon responsible for the operations of Attorney General John Mitchell? Were Johnson and Kennedy responsible, in any way, for the excesses of J. Edgar Hoover? Does Johnson bear any responsibility for McNamara's Vietnam vision? What about Bush I? What's his responsibility over a CIA that missed the collapse of the Soviet Union? Should Clinton bare a burden for the intel world's failure to see the imminent threat from Osama bin Laden? Does Bush have responsibility for his advisors so misjudging 'post-war' Iraq? You get my drift. It's your call and you bet historians will be writing about that subject for years to come." Dafna Linzer and Barton Gellman write in The Washington Post that it's not like no one spoke up. "Up until the days before U.S. troops entered Iraqi territory that March, the intelligence community was inundated with evidence that undermined virtually all charges it had made against Iraq, the report said." It's just that they weren't heard. "In scores of additional cases involving the country's alleged nuclear and chemical programs and its delivery systems, the commission described a kind of echo chamber in which plausible hypotheses hardened into firm assertions of fact, eventually becoming immune to evidence." Mark Silva writes in the Chicago Tribune: "Bush has long refused to assign specific blame for intelligence failures to himself or top aides. What is not clear is whether Americans will accept this in the face of this latest, unusually scathing report." But Silva says Bush has a tried and true way of dealing with these things. "Confronting two large-scale intelligence failures during his tenure, the Sept. 11 attacks and the misreading of Saddam Hussein's arsenal, President Bush has largely escaped voters' wrath by convincing the public he is a man of action who is moving quickly to tackle any problems. "Bush took this tack again Thursday." The First Customer Is Always Right Here is the full transcript of President Bush's statement upon receipt of the report yesterday, followed by statements from the co-chairmen. Bush then left, but the co-chairman stuck around to take questions. You can read all about the members of the commission on my About the Commission page. And here is the report itself. There was only one part of the report that explicitly criticized White House procedures, but it as a telling one: The commission called for a rethinking of the intelligence reports Bush gets that are known as the presidential daily briefing. Walter Pincus and Peter Baker write in Washington Post: "Leading up to the Iraq war, the panel found, the briefings were 'disastrously one-sided' and 'more alarmist and less nuanced' than longer studies, such as the National Intelligence Estimates. The daily briefings never cast doubt on prior information provided to Bush and thus 'seemed to be "selling" intelligence in order to keep its customers, or at least the First Customer, interested.' " Editorials and Opinions New York Times editorial: "The panel said timidly that 'it is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom.' But it utterly ignored the way President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team, and Condoleezza Rice, as national security adviser, created that environment by deciding what the facts were and saying so, repeatedly." Los Angeles Times editorial: "Even if the intelligence was not manipulated, there will always be a tendency on the part of individuals (not to mention bureaucracies) to try to divine what outcome bosses want and tailor their facts accordingly, leaving out some inconvenient truths. That's bad in private industry and deadly in time of war, and the commission doesn't quite address this behavioral problem." As for the report's insistence that there was no politicization of intelligence (see my column yesterday) the Times editorial said: "Somehow the panel must have missed the intelligence agents who told reporters for The Times on several prewar occasions that they thought their product was being politicized and that they were pushed to provide evidence to support the Bush administration's claims that Iraq was a threat." Wall Street Journal editorial: "[T]the report blows apart the myth that intelligence provided by Iraqi politician and former exile Ahmed Chalabi suckered the U.S. into going to war." USA Today editorial: "In the months before the war, Vice President Cheney said there was 'no doubt' Saddam was amassing weapons. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that even 'a trained ape' knew it was true. President Bush repeatedly made the case not just that war in Iraq was necessary, but that it was urgent. "That is not a climate that would lead anyone to conclude that facts still needed to be discerned." Rich Lowry in the National Review Online: "The commission studying the intelligence failures that produced disastrously flawed estimates of Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities has finally produced its report, and it's devastating. Not just for U.S. intelligence, which is portrayed as hapless and bungling, but for Bush critics who have vested so much in the argument that Bush officials pressured intelligence agencies to support the case for war." David Ignatius in The Washington Post: "If there's one thing that has become clear in the history of U.S. intelligence over the past 50 years it is that the CIA is not in fact a rogue agency. It is shaped, often to a fault, by the priorities and pet projects of whoever is in the White House. Intelligence supports policy, but it doesn't make it." Derrick Z. Jackson in the Boston Globe: "Perhaps no political pressure was necessary because everyone in the intelligence community knew what Bush wanted to hear and there were few people willing to risk their careers to expose weak evidence. This obvious possibility did not seem to be prominent in the commission's inquiry." More Coverage Pincus and Baker write: "The report depicted an intelligence apparatus plagued by turf battles, wedded to old assumptions and mired in unimaginative thinking. "Yet while unstinting in its appraisal of intelligence agencies, the panel that Bush appointed under pressure in February 2004 said it was 'not authorized' to explore the question of how the commander in chief used the faulty information to make perhaps the most critical decision of his presidency. As he accepted the report yesterday, Bush offered no thoughts about relying on flawed intelligence to launch a war and took no questions from reporters. . . . "Some Democrats complained that the commission effectively ducked the central issue of how Bush decided to go to war in Iraq to eliminate weapons that were not there." Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post: "Silberman and co-chairman Charles S. Robb flanked a beaming Bush as if they were bodyguards -- and in a sense, they were. . . . "The commission report is plenty tough, but it directs its fire at the intelligence professionals -- the same ones already beaten up by the Sept. 11 commission and congressional reports -- and gives the political figures a pass." Tom Raum writes for the Associated Press: "The latest intelligence-failure report to land on President Bush's desk raises serious questions about his policy of pre-emptive action against potential foes. How can he order such strikes if he doesn't have solid information?" Dana Priest writes in The Washington Post: "The commission explicitly warned President Bush that he should expect intelligence agencies to attempt to undermine the authority of the new director of national intelligence. 'They are some of the government's most headstrong agencies,' the commission wrote Bush. 'Sooner or later, they will try to run around -- or over -- the DNI. Then, only your determined backing will convince them that we cannot return to the old ways.'" She quotes from the report: " 'Analysts must be pressed to explain how much they don't know; the collection agencies must be pressed to explain why they don't have better information on key topics . . . no important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternative might also be true." Bob Drogin and Greg Miller write in the Los Angeles Times: "The report puts new pressure on Bush, who has held office during two of the worst intelligence fiascos in modern U.S. history and who has struggled, along with Congress, to reform the sprawling, $40-billion-a-year intelligence system." NBC News's David Gregory reported: "The U.S. went to war in Iraq claiming Saddam Hussein threatened America with weapons of mass destruction. The president's hand-picked commission concluded today, the intelligence behind that decision was quote, 'worthless', 'misleading', 'dead wrong'. This morning, however, the president sidestepped any personal responsibility." When Gregory had Silberman and Robb to himself, he asked them again the question he tried to get them to answer during their public briefing: "Does the president of the United States bear ultimate responsibility for bad intelligence on his watch?" Robb says: "The commander in chief is responsible for everything that happens on his or her watch." Enter Townsend Bush ordered White House homeland security adviser Frances Townsend to take point on enacting the commission's recommendations. "You will begin to see action in a matter of weeks," she said. She briefly took questions at yesterday's press briefing: "Q It's been three-and-a-half years since the September 11th attacks, when the President first issued the call for the intelligence agencies to reform themselves to meet the threats of the 21st century. Here we have another report saying that they haven't done that. . . . What's the problem? . . . "MS. TOWNSEND: Well, in fairness, I think the commission, when you look at the whole report -- I grant you, it's a large document -- when you look at the whole report, even the commission acknowledges we've enjoyed some successes, particularly in the counterterrorism area. . . . I think you have seen some progress. . . . There are still some hiccups. It's not perfect yet. We need to constantly work to refine that. . . . "Q But the report would suggest that it's far more than a few hiccups. It's more like a massive case of gastroenteritis here that you're trying to deal with. (Laughter.) "MS. TOWNSEND: Well, look, there is no -- "Q With an additional case of diverticulitis on top of that. (Laughter.) "MS. TOWNSEND: No question, more needs to be done, and it will require the attention of the DNI." The Bubble and the Denver Three Some more voices today talking about Bush's Bubble and the "Denver Three" -- the three audience members at a public Bush event in Denver on March 21, allegedly evicted because of a bumper sticker on their car. (See Wednesday's column for more.) Washington Post op-ed columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. writes: "And so you wonder why a president who sells himself as a tough, confident bring-'em-on type of guy seems so anxious about facing average citizens who disagree with him. Why does he insist on being surrounded, always, by people who tell him that he's right and great and wonderful?" Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) released a statement: "The president seems to only want to hear voices that agree with his position on Social Security; that is a dwindling number of Americans." And Rep. Bob Beauprez (R-Colo.) said on a radio show: "This kind of stuff should never really happen. At least as I understand it, these folks showed up -- they've got every right to be there. There was a pro-Bush leaning crowd but by no means at all, my understanding, a 100 percent pro-Bush crowd. And unless they did something wrong there's no reason why they should be yanked out of there and escorted through the door." Today's Calendar The president and first lady talk about America's youth at the Paul Public Charter School in Washington today. Social Security Watch Mike Allen writes in The Washington Post: "House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has acknowledged that President Bush's call for completion of a Social Security bill this year could be unrealistic and that the legislation might have to wait until 2006. "The president's aides immediately responded by saying Bush is committed to winning passage this year. The White House and Republican congressional leaders have said repeatedly that the proposed restructuring of the retirement system is doomed if it does not pass this year, because it will be even more difficult to get Democratic support in 2006, a midterm election year." Alan Elsner writes for Reuters: "President Bush's domestic agenda has hit roadblocks on two major fronts, leading some political analysts to conclude his administration is succumbing to the traditional 'second-term blues.' " William M. Welch and Richard Benedetto write in USA Today: "Halfway through his administration's '60 Stops in 60 Days' national sales pitch for overhauling Social Security, President Bush hasn't sold his plan to create private investment accounts." Glen Johnson writes for the Associated Press: "Out on the hustings, President Bush likes to make a case for allowing younger workers to invest some of their Social Security taxes by citing the example of the Thrift Savings Plan, private investment accounts available to members of Congress and other federal employees. . . . "What Bush fails to mention is that his accounts differ from Thrift Savings Plan accounts in a key way: They would be carved out of the Social Security taxes nongovernment workers pay. By contrast, federal employees get their accounts in addition to a traditional Social Security benefit check." Heidi Przybyla writes for Bloomberg: "President George W. Bush began his battle for private Social Security accounts by targeting vulnerable Democrats. Now Democrats are turning the tables, using similar tactics to pressure Republican lawmakers." Steven Greenhouse writes in the New York Times: "The nation's labor unions stepped up their campaign yesterday to stop President Bush's Social Security plan, staging demonstrations in New York, Washington, San Francisco and 70 other cities." Life and Death Here's what Bush had to say after Terri Schiavo died yesterday: "Today millions of Americans are saddened by the death of Terri Schiavo. Laura and I extend our condolences to Terri Schiavo's families. I appreciate the example of grace and dignity they have displayed at a difficult time. I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life, where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others. The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life." Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post: "Republicans say the Schiavo case has mobilized their conservative base for the struggles over judicial nominations and a likely Supreme Court vacancy this summer. . . . "Democrats, backed by public opinion polls, say the conservatives overreached and that the GOP now appears to be a captive of the religious right." Ronald Brownstein writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Conservative lawmakers' denunciations of the courts on Thursday signaled that Terri Schiavo's death was likely to escalate the war between the parties over President Bush's judicial nominations." Karl Rove Watch Charles S. Johnson writes in the Helena (Mont.) Independent Record: "Top presidential adviser Karl Rove praised President Bush as 'one of history's most consequential presidents' and touted Bush's plan to restructure Social Security as critical for the nation's younger and future workers. . . . "On the international front, Bush is 'one of history's great liberators,' Rove said, while on the domestic side, the president has the chance to be 'one of history's great reformers.' " ) 2005 washingtonpost.com +++++ http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20050331-052034-5427r Analysis: Bush and Intel reform By Richard Tomkins UPI White House Correspondent Published 3/31/2005 6:08 PM WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) -- Faulty administration claims on Iraq's pre-war WMD capabilities and intentions reappeared at the White House Thursday when a presidential commission gave President George W. Bush its official findings on intelligence failures leading up to the conflict, which has cost more than 1,500 U.S. lives. The commission -- headed by Republican Lawrence Silberman, a former judge, and former U.S. Sen. Chuck Robb, D-Va. -- called information indicating Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction the most public and damaging intelligence failures in recent U.S. history. The failure was blamed on analytical shortcomings, intelligence agencies that "collected precious little intelligence" of worth and a failure to communicate effectively with policymakers. With the criticism came 74 specific recommendations for intelligence reform regarding arms proliferation, which Bush promised to follow up. "I asked these distinguished individuals to give me an unvarnished look at our intelligence community, and they have delivered," Bush said. "The central conclusion is one that I share: America's intelligence community needs fundamental change to enable us to successfully confront the threats of the 21st century. "The commission report delivers a sharp critique of the way intelligence has been collected and analyzed against some of the most difficult intelligence targets, especially Iraq. To win the war on terror, we will correct what needs to be fixed and build on what the commission calls solid intelligence successes." The report from the commission, appointed by Bush last year, could prove awkward for the president. Although many intelligence reforms have been instituted by the White House and Congress, its surfacing highlights again a flawed march to war at a time Bush is emphasizing the march of democracy in the Middle East that the ouster of Saddam has helped bring about. "The commission has found no evidence of 'politicization' of the intelligence community's assessments concerning Iraq's reported WMD programs," its report said, but critics of the conflict could again raise the issue of undue influence, which the administration denies, to hammer the president. "It (the report) apparently fails to review an equally important aspect of our national security policymaking process -- how policymakers use the intelligence they are provided," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a news release. "I believe it is essential that we hold both the intelligence agencies and senior policymakers accountable for their actions." Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, told United Press International the Senate minority leader "is still disappointed the president did not ask the commission to examine whether policymakers shaped intelligence and how intelligence was used to sell administration policy." The Democratic National Committee took its own shot: "Today, the President's Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction revealed that 'technical intelligence was able to provide very little in the way of conclusive intelligence about Iraq's purported WMD programs.' Given that the pre-war evidence was 'dead wrong,' will President Bush come clean about the case he made for war? "The American people, particularly our servicemen and women, deserve a commander in chief who won't pass the buck," said DNC spokesman Josh Earnest. "President Bush has seriously damaged the integrity of the office of the president. He failed to be truthful with our allies, the Congress and the American people, and it's time for him to come clean." Saddam's suspected stocks of chemical and biological weapons, which he possessed at the start of the first Gulf War, together with his suspected intent on a nuclear capability, was a prime motivator given for the U.S.-led invasion. But no weapons caches were found after the war. Reports from inspectors indicated Saddam did not possess the WMD U.S. and other intelligence agencies assumed he had. Intelligence was wrong, and Saddam's bluff and baffle actions further clouded the issue, even with some of his own commanders. The report on intelligence community failures on Iraq's WMD also comes as the administration is at loggerheads with North Korea and Iran over their suspected nuclear ambitions. The commission dealt with the issue of the two countries, but the chapter appears only in the classified version of the report, which has not been released to the public. Neither Robb nor Silberman would comment on their findings in regard to intelligence about Iran and North Korea. The United States believes North Korea is pursuing nuclear weapons, and may already possess some in violation of an agreement with Washington and in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the Pyongyang regime signed but has since withdrawn from. Iran claims it is only pursuing nuclear energy. Bush announced Fran Townsend, his homeland security adviser, would lead a 90-day process group to study each of the 77 reform recommendations and their implementation. "By the end of the 90-day process, obviously, we'll need to identify what we expect only to be a handful, a small handful of things that may need new legislation, and then we obviously plan to work with the commission and with Congress on those provisions," Townsend said at a White House briefing. As with some recommendations from previous panels, including the 9/11 commission, Bush would be expected to implement by executive order those not needing legislative action. Some of the recommendations include changes to the way information is gathered and treated, and setting up of a new intelligence center for weapons proliferation. Peter Brookes, an intelligence expert at the Heritage Foundation, said changing the institutional culture and methodology of intelligence agencies, even with the new recommendations and a strong commitment from the administration, would be a slow process. "It's extremely challenging but it has to be done," he said. "This is something that is going to take awhile and it's going to take strong leadership and some enlightened leaders." Although the public appearance of the report may be awkward for Bush at the moment, Brookes believes work by the commissions is vital. "The importance of the report is that it is a sort of status check (on reform). And it gives some ideas to the new director of national intelligence when he is confirmed. "There may be some redundancy in the new report but I don't think it hurts to have fresh eyes. We have to get out of the situation where we lack imagination." Bush Thursday used the opportunity of the release to urge Congress to confirm John Negroponte as the director of national intelligence, a position created as a result of intelligence reform legislation last year to oversee intelligence gathering efforts of the 15 government agencies involved in intelligence collection and analysis. Bush has pushed intelligence reform since the al-Qaida attacks on the United States in 2001. Some recommendations in the 9/11 commission report were implemented by regulatory action or executive order before the report even came out. -- (Please send comments to nationaldesk@upi.com.) Copyright ) 2001-2005 United Press International +++++ http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-03-30-voa56.cfm Powell: US Pre-War Rhetoric Sometimes 'Too Loud,' 'Too Direct' By VOA News 30 March 2005 Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says the Bush administration's rhetoric was sometimes "too loud" and "too direct" in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Mr. Powell, who left his post in January, told the German weekly magazine Stern that remarks like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's characterization of some European countries opposed to the war as "Old Europe" did not help build confidence. The former secretary of state expressed anger that some of the information he presented to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was wrong. He said he received it from intelligence agencies, and he insisted he did not know, at the time, it was wrong. The alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction was one of the Bush administration's leading arguments for the war. But no such weapons have been found. Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters. +++++ http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ucru/20050323/cm_ucru/buckuptheworldhatesusmorethanever&e=17&ncid=742 Op/Ed - Ted Rall BUCK UP, THE WORLD HATES US MORE THAN EVER Tue Mar 22, 2005 By Ted Rall Why the Left Was Right After All NEW YORK--Liberals have their faults, but no one can accuse them of being pigheaded. Two years after left-of-Bush Americans marched against the invasion of Iraq and a year after the Administration admitted it had lied about Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda, the sprouting of a few protodemocratic weeds in the microscopically-cracked cement of Arab dictatorship has prompted them to wonder whether the neoconservatives maybe did the right thing after all by going into Iraq. "[Bush] may have had it right," NPR's Daniel Schorr writes in the Christian Science Monitor. Even Harry Reid, the Democrats' fiery-as-these-things-go leader in the Senate, is swooning over the image of flag-waving Lebanese demanding a Syrian withdrawal: "Any breakthrough we get there, whether it is in Lebanon or Egypt, is a step in the right direction and I support the president in that regard." As far as I'm concerned, Bush deserves to be impeached for lying to his employers--us--about Iraq's WMDs. He should face prosecution at a war crimes tribunal for the murder of the 100,000-plus Iraqis he ordered killed by U.S. troops. He deserves life in prison for ordering the torture, and allowing the murder under torture, of countless innocent Afghans and Iraqis. Nothing, not even if the Iraq war sparked the transformation of the entire Muslim world into peaceful and prosperous Athenian-style democracies, could retroactively justify such murderous perfidy. I'm not convinced a Riyadh spring is about to bloom. It will take a lot more than male-only Saudi municipal elections held in half the country, in which six of the seven winners were illegally promoted by the kingdom's extremist Wahabbi religious establishment. Take courage, wobbly self-doubters! Even taking recent events into account, your "no blood for oil" signs will come in handy during the America-hating years ahead. Never mind the dead, the lies or the cash, say the connies. As Britain's John Maples, originally a Bush supporter of the Iraq war, wrote: "The real reason for the war, at least in the U.S., was to create a reasonably democratic, free market Iraq to act as both a beacon and a rebuke to other countries in the region." The Project for a New American Century, the neocon think tank that started Cheney, Rumsfeld & Co. along the charred road to American Empire, stated in 1997 that U.S foreign policy leaders should strive "to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests [around the world]." Iraq was the first big test of their approach. It may be premature to judge Bush's frat pack by their own standards but it's also fair. They've already declared victory. Ross Terrill, whose editor at The Weekly Standard signed the 1997 PNAC statement of purpose, writes: "Success in Iraq, Bush's victory on November 2, Arafat's demise, and the ongoing appeal of economic and political freedom to ordinary folk, all triggered political changes across the globe that lessen the need for massive U.S. military intervention again soon." Bush's current foreign policy report card is a mixed bag: a B in Phys Ed and a string of Ds and Fs in more important, heavily weighted subjects. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has eased somewhat, largely thanks to an event that had nothing to do with Bush, Arafat's death and replacement with Mahmoud Abbas. But even the Palestinian Authority's own polls show that fewer than half of Palestinians accept recent elections as legitimate, while 84 percent of the population say they live without safety or security in their daily lives. Basic issues, such as Israeli colonies on Arab land, remain unresolved. Peace with Israel? Not in the near future. Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarek, 76, has finally agreed to allow candidates to run against him for the presidency, but his most formidable challenger, Ayman Nour, was rotting in prison until January. He's now under virtual house arrest, which makes campaigning a tad inconvenient. Even the deployment of government goons against pro-Nour demonstrators hasn't reduced the flow of U.S. foreign aid (Egypt comes in second after Israel) or Egyptian anti-Americanism. "[Egyptian-American] relations are going through a seriously bad patch," a diplomat tells the UK Telegraph. Libya has agreed to suspend its nuclear program and Syria is being pressured to pull its troops out of Lebanon, but neither move--both in strategic backwaters--significantly affects the economic or security prospects of American interests. On to the big subjects: Iran has long sought improved relations with the U.S. It is a rare opportunity to form a friendship with an oil-rich, politically influential regional player. North Korea, on the other hand, poses our biggest challenge: a nuclear capable state, led by a paranoid and isolated autocrat who has threatened to incinerate the West Coast. Bush's charm offensive has been so badly botched that he has been reduced to promising that he has no immediate plans to invade Iran. "I hear all these rumors about military attacks, and it's just not the truth," he says. But the U.S. is better poised to invade Iran than North Korea (and oil adds to the motivation). Bush has also failed to reassure North Korea. "We have taken a serious measure by increasing nuclear arms in preparation for any invasions by enemies," the North Korean regime said March 22. So long, Seattle. Even the stirrings of electioneering in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the Muslim world cold. Both contests, held amid pervasive fraud, violence and corruption in active war zones where millions are too afraid to venture outdoors, are interpreted as ersatz democracy imposed upon puppet regimes created by a hostile occupation force. And the stooges are disorganized. Iraq's fractious parties haven't been able to form a government; Afghanistan's elections have been delayed until the fall owing to the continuing war with the Taliban. A BBC poll taken in Turkey, a staunch American ally and the model secular state in the Islamic world, finds that 82 percent of Turks consider the United States under George W. Bush to be the greatest threat to world peace. Is this a world "favorable to American principles and interests"? Clapping your hands is fun, but it doesn't change jack. //////\\\\\\ "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." -- John Kenneth Galbraith __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Personals - Better first dates. More second dates. http://personals.yahoo.com ***************************************************************** 14 [EMMAS] 'Dead Wrong' - or Outright Deception? Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 02:26:41 -0600 (CST) http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5423 April 1, 2005 'Dead Wrong' - or Outright Deception? Iraqi WMD: someone threw us a curveball by Justin Raimondo So many investigations, so little time that's a major problem these days for anyone intent on keeping up with the various scandals that plague this administration's foreign policy. There's the recently-released 500-page-plus report [.pdf] on how we were bamboozled into believing that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction," which concluded that the intelligence community was "dead wrong" about everything. A study commissioned by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disses the Pentagon for failing to plan for the aftermath of the invasion, averring that the question of how to stabilize and rebuild Iraq was "addressed only very generally." The Rand Corp., which conducted the survey of U.S. postwar reconstruction efforts, concluded that "no planning was done to ensure the security of the Iraqi people." None, zero, nada. We have the "Fitzgerald report" [.pdf] issued by the United Nations on the assassination of Rafik Hariri, which was trumpeted as conclusive proof that Syria was behind the Lebanese leader's death at least, if you don't read beyond the headlines, and cherry-pick only what fits this theory from the actual text. However, the Fitzgerald report was overshadowed by another UN report, one detailing the shenanigans that went on in the UN's "oil for food" program, in which Kofi Annan's son loomed large. Again, the headlines were misleading: Annan was not "cleared," but merely excused. Oddly, his "Hell no!" response to calls for him to step down as secretary general was fully supported by the supposedly anti-UN Bush administration. More about that later. Finally, we have the news that the investigation into the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, is reaching a crossroads, with charges about to be filed. The investigation, which has been going on for at least two years, has all kinds of implications, political as well as criminal. It may well provide us with important clues about the mystery of how American foreign policy is created and conducted. That is enough to keep anyone busy for the next couple of weeks, at least, but if we take an overview of all these reports, a pattern begins to develop, a narrative with disturbing implications: all these reports, either explicitly or by implication, document efforts to manipulate and utilize American foreign policy as an instrument of something other than the national interest. The WMD report is about as damning as it is possible to get, short of an indictment in a court of law: "dead wrong" is damned strong, especially given the typically understated language of these sorts of documents. The WMD commission concluded that the U.S. government failed completely in assessing Iraq's alleged biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs. These errors, they aver, "Were not the result of simple bad luck, or a once-in-a-lifetime 'perfect storm,' as some would have it. Rather, they were the product of poor intelligence collection, an analytical process that was driven by assumptions and inferences rather than data, inadequate validation and vetting of dubious intelligence sources, and numerous other breakdowns in the various processes that Intelligence Community professionals collectively describe as intelligence 'tradecraft.' In many ways, the Intelligence Community simply did not do the job that it exists to do." Oh, but don't worry, this administration didn't embark on a campaign of deliberate deception it only looks that way. According the commission: "After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. What the intelligence professionals told you about Saddam Hussein's programs was what they believed. They were simply wrong." It wasn't a cabal, as some have claimed, that lied us into war: they just failed in every possible way to do their job. It was a bad case of "tunnel vision." The policymakers and intelligence professionals who confidently told us we would find WMD after we "liberated" Iraq were sincerely deluded, rather than consciously deceptive. The commissioners tell us this upfront, in the first few paragraphs of their report, but what follows undermines this conclusion. For example, the report goes into the Bizarro World story of "Curveball," an alleged Iraqi "defector" provided by Ahmed Chalabi's Iraq National Congress (INC) whose claims were the basis for Colin Powell's accusations raised in the UN that Saddam had mobile biological weaponry ready to deploy. Before we look at what the WMD commission has to say about Curveball, however, it's instructive to place it in the context of what we already know. Assuming that such weapons existed, the U.S. sent Scott Ritter and a deputy to Chalabi to help them find what they knew was there. As the Los Angeles Timesreported: "'Chalabi outlined what he could do for us,' Ritter recalled. 'His intelligence guy outlined their sources and said he had people inside the government. They told us they had the run of Iraq. Just tell them what we needed. So we outlined the gaps in our understanding of the Iraqi program, including the mobile bioweapons labs. Basically, we gave them a shopping list.' "'They began feeding us information,' Ritter said. 'We got hand-drawn maps, handwritten statements and other stuff flowing in. At first blush, it looked good. But nothing panned out. Most of it just regurgitated what we'd given them. And the data that was new never checked out.'" Curveball appeared in Germany some time in 1998, claiming to have been the manager of a secret biological weapons program initiated by the Iraqis. His story was chock full of details, including the layout of the office where he had supposedly worked, the names on the doors, and the methods used by the Iraqis to hide the facility. He also provided Western intelligence agencies with the names of his fellow team members, including the aide in charge of renting his unit's cars. Curveball's account came complete with diagrams of the equipment used to create and maintain the biological warfare unit: tanks, compressors, pumps, and the exact modifications performed on the trucks that would transport WMD to the battlefield. All very convincing, to those already inclined to believe it. There was just one problem: none of it was true. Furthermore, a couple of details that should have alerted U.S. officials that Curveball's moniker was an exercise in some rather heavy-handed irony were studiously ignored. He was, to begin with, the brother of one of Chalabi's top lieutenants. He was also an alcoholic. Worse, we did not have direct access to him: the one American who had ever met him had already warned that he was, at best, unreliable. The response to these concerns came from the deputy director of the CIA's Iraqi weapons of mass destruction task force in the form of an e-mail message dated Feb. 4, 2003: "As I said last night, let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about." How did Curveball manage to pitch us such a load of malarkey and get it past the intelligence community's defenses, undetected and unchallenged? Well, it seems its veracity was challenged, according to the WMD report: "With respect to Curveball the primary source of our intelligence on Iraq's BW program the Defense HUMINT Service disclaimed any responsibility for validating the asset, arguing that credibility determinations were for analysts and that the collectors were merely 'conduits' for the reporting. "This abdication of operational responsibility represented a serious failure in tradecraft. "Although lack of direct physical access to the source made vetting and validating Curveball more difficult, it did not make it impossible. While Defense HUMINT neglected its validation responsibilities, elements of the CIA's D[irectorate of] O[perations] understood the necessity of validating Curveball's information and made efforts to do so; indeed, they found indications that caused them to have doubts about Curveball's reliability. The system nonetheless 'broke down' because of analysts' strong conviction about the truth of Curveball's information and because the DO's concerns were not heard outside the DO." [emphasis in original] The system did not just break down all by itself: somebody sabotaged it, and that is pretty clearly the "analysts" who fed on the lies concocted by Chalabi & Co. The INC was being actively promoted by the neoconservatives within and around this administration. Chalabi's enablers and protectors were concentrated primarily in the office of the vice president and the various neocon thinktanks that provided the Pentagon with scores of contractors and "consultants." When Chalabi was exposed as an Iranian agent, and his headquarters in Iraq was raided by U.S. authorities, American Enterprise Institute Vice President Danielle Pletka, Michael "Faster, Please" Ledeen, and a whole delegation of outraged neocons marched in a group to the Pentagon to protest this "persecution." Chalabi, who had always been their Che Guevara, became their Mumia Abu Jamal. They're still defending him, even as the lurid details of his extravagant falsehoods come to light. As Laura Rozen succinctly put it: "It is almost dizzying to witness how utterly this guy fabricates, to apprehend what a black hole of lies he is. But it is even more staggering to think how for 12 years, U.S. intelligence and, under this administration, the very highest levels of the U.S. government, were played by this guy. And just perhaps, played by whoever was running him." This characterization applies not just to Chalabi, but to those who promoted him, put him on the government payroll, and uncritically accepted the phony intelligence he and his comrades generated. "A black hole of lies" pretty much sums up the intelligence-gathering and analytical units that fed the White House, Congress, and the American people a steady diet of untruths. The WMD report doesn't go into great detail, because the facts are being kept from us to a large extent. As Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, put it to Tim Russert on Meet the Press last summer: "Let me tell you something else. Curveball and all of that information that is in our report, much of it is redacted. I can't really tell you some of the more specific details that would make your eyebrows even raise higher." Later on in the program, a clue as to what Roberts was talking about was put out there by Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.), who also sits on the Senate committee: "We did not do the handling of intelligence," Rockefeller averred, "the use of intelligence, the misuse of intelligence. None of that did we do. Pat said that starting as of this very day well, I'm sorry, we've done a little bit of work on Douglas" and that provoked an interesting exchange: "SEN. ROBERTS: No, no, no. We've been working on this since February, Jay. "ROCKEFELLER: A little bit of work on Douglas Feith. But the work we "ROBERTS: We "ROCKEFELLER: Let me finish. The work "ROBERTS: I know, but we tried to have him up, and you won't have him up. "ROCKEFELLER: No, I've asked you to have him up again. He's been up once. Let's not get into that. "RUSSERT: Now, the Defense Department has written a letter saying that you unfairly charged him with unlawful conduct when there is none. "ROCKEFELLER: Well, let's find out if there is. I mean, there's always the question whether or not that he was running a secret intelligence operation that bypassed the entire intelligence community, and the law says you've got to inform the intelligence community of anything that you're doing. Was he doing it or not? I don't know." This arcane bit of dialogue refers to the key role played by Feith, DoD deputy director for policy, in doing an end-run around the mainline intelligence agencies the CIA, the DIA, the Air Force intelligence unit, and others by creating a special unit known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP). This unit was created by Paul Wolfowitz (now on his way to the World Bank) and its head, one Abram Shulsky, was directly under Feith. As reported by Seymour Hersh, Julian Borger, and Karen Kwiatkowski a former Pentagon analyst who worked in close proximity to this secretive agency the OSP manufactured the case for going to war with Iraq by "stovepiping" (as Hersh put it) raw intelligence straight from the INC's lie factory to the very top of the intelligence-consuming food chain. Curveball's fallacies massaged and validated by the OSP wound up on the president's desk via the Office of the Vice President, where Scooter Libby and his minions pumped Chalabi's oily prevarications directly into the intelligence pipeline that led to the White House. The defenses against disinformation that normally operate were ineffective because the neocons created a parallel intelligence-gathering operation and packed the joint with their pet analysts such as one Larry Franklin, recently accused of passing sensitive documents and other intelligence to AIPAC, which then passed them on to the Israeli embassy. The AIPAC investigation is the key to all this: what is involved here is nothing less than the extensive penetration of the Defense Department by agents of a foreign power with a very specific agenda. Chalabi, as we have seen, was in the pay of the Iranians, but this doesn't settle the question trenchantly raised by Laura Rozen: who was running him? The Franklin affair points away from Tehran and toward Tel Aviv. As Borger pointed out in the Guardian: "The OSP forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorize. 'None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels,' said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith's authority without having to fill in the usual forms. "The Israeli influence was revealed most clearly by a story floated by unnamed senior U.S. officials in the American press, suggesting the reason that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq was that they had been smuggled into Syria. Intelligence sources say that the story came from the office of the Israeli prime minister." The all-pervasive nature of this Israeli involvement is attested to by former Pentagon analyst Kwiatkowski, who saw it up close: "In early winter, an incident occurred that was seared into my memory. A co-worker and I were suddenly directed to go down to the Mall entrance to pick up some Israeli generals. Post-9/11 rules required one escort for every three visitors, and there were six or seven of them waiting. The Navy lieutenant commander and I hustled down. Before we could apologize for the delay, the leader of the pack surged ahead, his colleagues in close formation, leaving us to double-time behind the group as they sped to Undersecretary Feith's office on the fourth floor. Two thoughts crossed our minds: are we following close enough to get credit for escorting them, and do they really know where they are going? We did get credit, and they did know. Once in Feith's waiting room, the leader continued at speed to Feith's closed door. An alert secretary saw this coming and had leapt from her desk to block the door. 'Mr. Feith has a visitor. It will only be a few more minutes.' The leader craned his neck to look around the secretary's head as he demanded, 'Who is in there with him?' "This minor crisis of curiosity past, I noticed the security sign-in roster. Our habit, up until a few weeks before this incident, was not to sign in senior visitors like ambassadors. But about once a year, the security inspectors send out a warning letter that they were coming to inspect records. As a result, sign-in rosters were laid out, visible and used. I asked the secretary, 'Do you want these guys to sign in?' She raised her hands, both palms toward me, and waved frantically as she shook her head. 'No, no, no, it is not necessary, not at all.' Her body language told me I had committed a faux pas for even asking the question. My fellow escort and I chatted on the way back to our office about how the generals knew where they were going (most foreign visitors to the five-sided asylum don't) and how the generals didn't have to sign in." Larry Franklin is, or was, an analyst with the Iranian desk at DoD, and reportedly agreed to cooperate with the investigation into his activities, fingering an entire network of operatives and agreeing to make calls to several of them, including Richard Perle, in an effort to gather evidence. Law enforcement officials were confident enough to carry out two rather spectacular raids on AIPAC headquarters in Washington. Now the grand jury is finishing up its deliberations, and two of the AIPAC officials accused of being part of the Israeli spy nest have been put on paid leave. Franklin, it seems, has been "quietly rehired" at the Pentagon, although he's not in his old job and is well away from sensitive material: it's hardto fire government employees yes, even if they stand accused of treason! He has also stopped cooperating with the investigation, and has since engaged the services of a top Washington lawyer, Plato Cacheris, who specializes in spy cases. Why did the U.S., against all the evidence and the dictates of common sense, decide to invade and occupy Iraq and why has it launched a campaign to destabilize the entire Middle East, threatening Iran and Syria and sending shockwaves throughout a volatile region? The cover story that we're responding to the 9/11 attacks never made much sense. After all, what has Iraq got to do with 9/11? As the 9/11 commission concluded, there was no credible connection. How, then, was the invasion in our interest, when it only provided Osama bin Laden and his followers with a fresh wave of recruits worldwide? The answer is: it wasn't. Only two forces in the Middle East stood to benefit from the invasion: al-Qaeda and Israel. Who fed us false information, Chalabi's lies in the guise of "raw intelligence," and so thoroughly penetrated the U.S. government with agents that they were able to shape U.S. policy to fit their agenda? In nabbing Franklin, the feds stumbled on a minor but useful cog in the lie machine, one that leads back to the main mechanism and its power source embedded in the national security bureaucracy. In the Franklin case, we are beginning to see how the same gang that hoodwinked us into making war on Iraq was and is bound and determined to replicate its achievement in the case of Iran. As Rozen, Paul Glastris, and Jonathan Marshall pointed out last September in a must-read piece for The Washington Monthly: "The investigation of Franklin is now shining a bright light on a shadowy struggle within the Bush administration over the direction of U.S. policy toward Iran. In particular, the FBI is looking with renewed interest at an unauthorized back-channel between Iranian dissidents and advisers in Feith's office, which more-senior administration officials first tried in vain to shut down and then later attempted to cover up. "Franklin, along with another colleague from Feith's office, a polyglot Middle East expert named Harold Rhode, were the two officials involved in the back-channel, which involved on-going meetings and contacts with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and other Iranian exiles, dissidents and government officials. Ghorbanifar is a storied figure who played a key role in embroiling the Reagan administration in the Iran-Contra affair. The meetings were both a conduit for intelligence about Iran and Iraq and part of a bitter administration power-struggle pitting officials at DoD who have been pushing for a hard-line policy of 'regime change' in Iran, against other officials at the State Department and the CIA who have been counseling a more cautious approach." If and when the Franklin case finally comes to trial, the courtroom deliberations could shed new light on the question of how and why we were lied into war. It will prove in a court of law what I have long contended: that the only way to understand this shameful episode in the history of American wars is to look at the series of "mistakes" and "miscalculations" as a covert operation carried out by agents of a foreign power. Contra the WMD report, it wasn't "tunnel vision" that led to a monumental "intelligence failure" it was treason. ============== ***NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.*** ============== ################################################################# " Social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass." Emma Goldman To SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE to the emmasdance list send email to with the message subscribe/unsubscribe emmasdance. [No subject is needed.] "If I can not dance, I want no part in your revolution." Emma Goldman ################################################################# ***************************************************************** 15 The Times of India: 'Pak N-experts close to al-Qaeda'- SUNDAY, APRIL 3, 2005 NEW DELHI: Pakistani nuclear scientists A Q Khan and Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood had held meetings with Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders, exchanged letters with militant groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba and attended their gatherings and rallies, a media report said. "When the CIA searched (Sultan Bashiruddin) Mehmood's UTN (Umma Tameere-Nau) office in Kabul, they found large amounts of data on the construction and maintenance of nuclear weapons from the Kahuta laboratories. It also found letters exchanged between the UTN and Islamist extremist organisations including Lashkar-e-Toiba," a report in Pakistani weekly Friday Times said. Mehmood, a close confidante of A Q Khan and a former director of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, was arrested on October 23, 2001, at the headquarters of the UTN which he had set up for "humanitarian work in Afghanistan", it said. Quoting the famed journal Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the article said Khan and Mehmood and other scientists of his organisation "attended Lashkar-e-Toiba gatherings". Khan also appeared in the rallies of the LeT... headed by Hafeez Saeed. The militant outfit, which later changed its name to Jamaat al-Dawaa after being banned, "is alleged to have helped in equipping al-Qaeda with 'dirty' bombs," the article said. Mehmood and Khan were also known to have held meetings with top Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, the paper said. It said Mehmood "may have been a genius, but he was crazy in his religious zeal" and had a firm belief that plutonium enrichment in Pakistan "should not be kept secret and should be passed around to Islamic countries to challenge Israel and the West. He also had expert knowledge of the global nuclear black market". After his arrest, Mehmood had denied he had ever met bin Laden. However, after months of questioning "he admitted to having met Osama, Al Zawhiri and other al-Qaeda members repeatedly, including on the day al-Qaeda struck in New York (9/11)". Copyright © 2005 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 Sun News: Duke counters report on security of spent nuclear fuel Posted on Sat, Apr. 02, 2005 The Associated Press GREENVILLE - Duke Power says nuclear waste at Oconee Nuclear Station and its other nuclear power plants is protected from attack, despite a national report that questions the safety of storing the spent 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." 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. The report, commissioned by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 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. Pettit said the utility follows industry practices in making its nuclear plant structures safe and secure. He said they are well-protected because of the design of the pools, their fortified enclosures, plant security systems and the fact that they are totally or partially below ground level. Pettit said even if the government accepted all of the report's findings, the pools still would 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. Storage of spent fuel from commercial nuclear plants has been an issue for years because of the lack of a permanent national repository. Although Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been designated to hold the waste, the project has been beset with problems and delays. 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. Analysts say the storage issue is one of the concerns brought up in discussions of new nuclear power plants. 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 after the Three Mile Island disaster. Pettit said it was too soon to say whether the report by the National Academy of Sciences would affect any plans for a future plant. ***************************************************************** 17 HindustanTimes.com: India, Pak, Israel must renounce nukes to join NPT - US S Rajagopalan Washington, April 3, 2005|00:27 IST Sticking to its rigid stand, the United States wants the upcoming review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to reaffirm that India, Pakistan and Israel could join the treaty only as non-nuclear weapon states. "Just as South Africa and Ukraine did in the early 1990s, these states would have to forswear nuclear weapons and accept IAEA  safeguards on all nuclear activities to join the treaty," says US Ambassador for Disarmament Jackie Wolcott Sanders. The 35-year-old NPT, a treaty that India regards as discriminatory, comes up for a review every five years. The seventh in the series, to be a month-long affair, gets under way in New York on May 2. Writing in the State Department's Electronic Journal, President George W Bush has hailed the NPT as a key legal barrier to nuclear weapons proliferation. The US, he avers, will carry out its treaty commitments and work to ensure its continuance in the interest of world peace and security. Sanders, however, did not sound optimistic on the prospects of India, Pakistan and Israel joining the treaty by renouncing nuclear weapons. "We recognize that progress toward universal adherence (to NPT) is not likely in the foreseeable future," she noted in a companion piece on strengthening the NPT. Indications are that the US focus at the New York conference will be more on today's threats stemming from non-compliance by signatory nations like North Korea (which eventually quit the NPT in January 2003) and Iran. It will also highlight the global reach of disgraced Pakistani scientist AQ Khan's illicit nuclear procurement network. "Responsible governments cannot allow states to violate their NPT commitments and defy the international community. NPT members must maintain pressure on existing violators and strengthen efforts to deter future non-compliance," said Sanders, who represents the US at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. ***************************************************************** 18 New York Times: A Fierce Debate on Atom Bombs From Cold War Concerns About a Key Nuclear Warhead A dispute has broken out over the military's most abundant nuclear warhead. Published: April 3, 2005 [F] or over two decades, a compact, powerful warhead called the W-76 has been the centerpiece of the nation's nuclear arsenal, carried aboard the fleet of nuclear submarines that prowl the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But in recent months it has become the subject of a fierce debate among experts inside and outside the government over its reliability and its place in the nuclear arsenal. The government is readying a plan to spend more than $2 billion on a routine 10-year overhaul to extend the life of the aging warheads. At the same time, some weapons scientists say the warheads have a fundamental design flaw that could cause them to explode with far less force than intended. Although the government has denied that assertion, officials have disclosed that Washington is nevertheless considering replacing the W-76 altogether. "This is the one we worry about the most," said Everet H. Beckner, who oversees the arsenal as director of defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Some arms-control advocates oppose the 10-year overhaul program, saying it could produce not only refurbishments but also deadly new innovations. They like the replacement option even less, saying it could prompt the government to conduct underground detonations that would undo the global ban on nuclear testing and start a new arms race. Moreover, some argue that nuclear weapons are dinosaurs that have little use in American military strategy and that it makes no real difference if the W-76 is ineffective. "That's why people are so passionate about this," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington. The W-76, developed in the early 1970's for destroying large targets like military bases, now sits packed in clusters of up to eight atop hundreds of missiles in a dozen nuclear submarines. While the exact figures are secret, federal officials and private weapons experts agree that it is the nation's leading weapon by virtue of sheer numbers. The experts say that of 5,000 active warheads in the arsenal, 1,500 are W-76's. Each is meant to be about seven times as powerful as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The W-76's importance is rising as the nation's nuclear force relies more on submarines and less on bombers and land-based missiles. "It's by far the most numerous" warhead, said Hans M. Kristensen, a weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington that monitors nuclear trends. "It's the workhorse in terms of targeting." Several factors lie behind the current worries and repair plans. The W-76 is one of the arsenal's oldest warheads. As warheads age, the risk of internal rusting, material degradation, corrosion, decay and the embrittling of critical parts increases. The overhaul to forestall such decay is scheduled to go from 2007 to 2017. In all, it is expected to cost more than $2 billion, say experts who have analyzed federal budget figures. Questions also surround the weapon's basic design. Four knowledgeable critics, three former scientists and one current one at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which designed the W-76, have recently argued that the weapon is highly unreliable and, if not a complete dud, likely to explode with a force so reduced as to compromise its effectiveness. Federal officials, while denying that, disclosed in interviews that the warhead is being considered for a new program that intends to replace old warheads with more reliable ones. Congress and future administrations would have to approve a replacement for the W-76. Officials would give no estimate for that endeavor's cost or length of time. But they acknowledged that they have carefully weighed the W-76's potential problems and the alternatives for fixing them. "I've spent a lot of personal time on this," said Dr. Beckner, of the National Nuclear Security Administration. The W-76, and its troubles, were born during the cold war, when American bomb makers sought to win the arms race with designs that made nuclear arms lightweight, very powerful and in some cases so small that a dozen or more could fit atop a slender missile. Where most nuclear powers had to make do with weapons that were ponderous if dependable, the W-76 epitomized the American edge. It was a hydrogen warhead - known as thermonuclear because a small atom bomb at its core worked like a match to ignite the hydrogen fuel. Standing shorter than a man, it had undergone an extraordinary degree of miniaturization. "It was the tightest design we had," said one top nuclear scientist who did not want his name used for fear of retaliation for releasing confidential information. . "They crammed in everything with a shoehorn." Tensions ran high, especially for senior designers like Charles C. Cremer, the leader of thermonuclear design at Los Alamos. In 1974, as W-76 plans took shape, Mr. Cremer committed suicide. Richard L. Morse, a physicist at the weapons laboratory who directed advanced concepts for bomb design as well as a separate group devoted to laser fusion, said in an interview that much tension centered on the weapon's so-called radiation case. In usual fashion, it was to be made of uranium, which is nearly twice as heavy as lead. Leaders at Los Alamos wanted the case to be as lightweight as possible, so they envisioned it as extraordinarily thin - in places not much thicker than a beer can (albeit with plastic backing for added strength). Its physical integrity was vital. The case had to hang together for microseconds as the exploding atom bomb generated temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun, forcing it to emit radiation that kindled the thermonuclear fire. If the case deformed significantly or shattered prematurely, the weapon would fail, its thermonuclear fuel unlit. From 1978 to 1987, about 3,400 W-76's rolled off the production line, said Mr. Kristensen, of the defense council. The design was considered so good that Britain made a variant of the W-76 for its submarines. Even with their seeming success, arms designers continued to do underground tests to determine how cases would behave in the first milliseconds after the atomic blast. But in 1992, after the cold war, the United States joined a global moratorium on nuclear tests. It was no longer possible to detonate weapons to check their reliability. In secret, experts and officials say, debate on the W-76 began almost immediately after the test ban; suggestions included an alternative design that would thicken the radiation case and give the new warhead a much longer life. By 1995, the work had become formalized in a joint effort between the Navy and the nation's nuclear weapons complex. As the test ban persisted, American nuclear officials singled out the W-76 as the first warhead to undergo precautionary scrutiny. The program employed teams from Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, its archrival. Usually, the meetings were cordial. But a vocal dissenter emerged. It was Dr. Morse, who had left Los Alamos in 1976 for the University of Arizona but returned in 1996 and aided the W-76 assessment. Dr. Morse specialized in scientific explanations for the complex flows that curl through the extraordinarily hot gases known as plasmas, which lie at the heart of an exploding nuclear weapon. His main goal was to help scientists develop a giant laser that, in lieu of an atomic match, would fire on a tiny radiation case surrounding an even tinier pellet of hydrogen fuel, releasing a burst of nuclear energy. Heat from such miniature hydrogen bombs was envisioned as one day being used to make electricity. But Dr. Morse found that nature had erected tricky barriers to that goal. In particular, he documented how a form of turbulence known as Rayleigh-Taylor instability (named after the physicists Lord Rayleigh and Geoffrey Taylor) could perturb the expanding plasma of the very hot radiation case, forming waves, ripples and whorls that blocked ignition of the thermonuclear fuel. He also found that extremely small variations in the case were responsible for the onset of turbulence, making it hard to eliminate. In 1996, Dr. Morse brought similar analyses to bear on the W-76's thin case, arguing that it would probably fail. He said that for decades, officials had swept the issue under the rug and that Mr. Cremer, the designer, had struggled with the problem. In an interview, Dr. Morse said he was soon "disinvited" from the evaluation and left Los Alamos for Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. But he added that concerns about the W-76 only grew. Dr. Beckner disagreed. He said the joint review found that the W-76 "looks like a pretty good weapon." Even so, the government began preparing for an extensive refurbishment of the warhead in a bid to extend its life by 30 years. The planning started around 2000 and foresaw the installation of new fuses, electronics, batteries, cables, valves and the conventional high explosives that light the atomic match. It also sought to increase the warhead's accuracy and flexibility in targeting. In 2003, amid preparations for the refurbishment, Dr. Morse once again sought to stir debate. He says he felt compelled to do so because of the W-76's rising importance to the nation's nuclear forces. At a secret meeting in March 2004 at Los Alamos, Dr. Morse led four critics who laid out their concerns to lab and federal officials, including Dr. Beckner. Dr. Morse characterized the discussion as acrimonious. "It was a verbal mud-wrestling match," he recalled. The lab and federal officials "would not be candid with us. We told them things they didn't know. It was very, very disappointing." In contrast, Dr. Beckner said the meeting and subsequent analyses left him with "high confidence that this nuclear weapon is a good design, was built properly and will function if required." In early July, news reports in New Mexico began to describe the dispute, and the director of Los Alamos days later scheduled a secret lab symposium to review the "technical challenges" to understanding how radiation cases act in the first microseconds of a nuclear blast, according to a synopsis of the planned meeting. As the number of news reports grew, officials denied that there was any problem with the W-76. They cited a history of detonations of the weapon at the Nevada Test Site. In late November, the dependability issue emerged nationally as Congress approved a small budget item that began a new weapons design effort known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. Its goal is to have weapons scientists design a new generation of nuclear arms that are more reliable and more durable, reversing the cold war trend of making small, lightweight, powerful weapons. If possible, the effort is to proceed without nuclear testing. Dr. Beckner, of the nuclear administration, said the W-76 is a candidate for redesign. The current work to extend the warhead's life, he said, could expand to include more fundamental design changes. "That is not the plan at present, but that could happen," he said, adding that he could not discuss the issue of thickening the radiation case. Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said a thicker, heavier case for the W-76 might force compensating cuts in the weight of the weapon's hydrogen capsule. And that, he added, would reduce the weapon's overall force. Dr. Morse applauded the new federal interest. "What's out there in those boats," he said, "is at best unreliable and probably much worse." Sandra Blakeslee and Kenneth Chang contributed reporting for this article. ***************************************************************** 19 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Intelligence Failures: Wrong or dead wrong [seattlepi.com] [OPINION] Monday, April 4, 2005 SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD The presidential intelligence commission is forcing the country to look at the effectiveness of U.S. spy agencies. We need to start by reviewing some of the primary conclusions about weapons of mass destruction. First, there was the warning that Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear weapons program. Wrong. The metal tubes Iraq wanted -- would-be nuclear centrifuges to enrich uranium -- were probably for ordinary rockets. What about chemical weapons, WMD-armed flying drones or a biological weapon program? Whoops. "Trusted" human sources didn't know what they were talking about. Total it up and the United States was "dead wrong." But intelligence did get one thing right: Saddam had violated international rules and Iraq was working on missiles that exceeded limitations imposed by the United Nations. But in the scheme of things, these missiles were more like gnats than a threat to the United States. What have we learned? And, what do we do now? "Our review has convinced us that the best hope for preventing future failures is dramatic change," the report said. "We need an intelligence community that is truly integrated, far more imaginative and willing to run risks, open to a new generation of Americans and receptive to new technologies." Going forward, the report urges policy-makers to push harder on sources, risk and accuracy. We need skeptical thinking. "No important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the (intelligence) community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternatives might also be true," the report said. The biggest concern, though, is what about the remaining international challenges before the United States? Can we trust any intelligence about Iran? North Korea? Or anywhere in the world? "The bad news is that we still know disturbingly little about the weapons programs and even less about the intentions of many of our most dangerous adversaries," the report said. Imagine the dramatic reform that would be required if the military had failed as badly as our intelligence agencies have. There would be sweeping and swift actions. We could not wait. We're in Iraq now -- so it's not worth re-debating the war -- but would the United States have invested billions of dollars and even more in terms of human life for such a risky enterprise had we known all along that Saddam posed no threat to U.S. national security? If the answer is yes, we'd be dead wrong. Again. On the Web: [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 448-8000 ©1996-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer ***************************************************************** 20 JS Online: Editorial: Botched U.S. intelligence From the Journal Sentinel Posted: April 3, 2005 A nine-member commission headed by Federal Judge Laurence Silberman and former Sen. Charles Robb (D-Va.) has issued a report that contains another bitter indictment of the U.S. intelligence community. It concluded what has been obvious for months, that the CIA and other agencies were "dead wrong" about their prewar estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Far more ominous was the commission's finding that the flaws that led to this colossal misjudgment have still not been corrected. Although the focus of its inquiry was Iraq, the commission warned Thursday that the United States "knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors." The commission did not specifically talk about Iran or North Korea, but these two regimes have been widely reported to be seeking nuclear weapons. If the commission is right, these reports may be unreliable. The commission pulled no punches in its criticism of the CIA and other agencies, but it was thunderously silent about the hugely important question of exactly how and why President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and others presented this bogus intelligence to the American people as part of the attempt to justify the war in Iraq. The commission said this question was not part of its mandate, but the failure to confront it leaves a huge hole in the public's understanding of the events that preceded the war. In dealing with another important issue - the political manipulation of intelligence - the commission reached two different and perhaps even contradictory conclusions. It said intelligence analysts reported that no political pressure was exerted on them to influence their judgments about Iraq. But the commission also said it was "hard to deny" that these analysts "worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom." In fact, it said, these bureaucracies are "prone to develop self-reinforcing, risk-averse cultures that take outside advice badly" and have "an almost perfect record of resisting external recommendations." The commission set forth 74 recommendations, all of which should be considered and some of which will require congressional approval. But shaking up the culture of the intelligence community does not require legislation; it requires leadership from John Negroponte, the veteran U.S. diplomat who has been nominated to be the first director of national intelligence. The commission urged Negroponte to foster a culture that challenges assumptions before they evolve into conventional wisdom. Those efforts ought to be supported, even encouraged, by Bush and the intelligence oversight committees of Congress. But we are still outraged by the lack of direct accountability in these reports. Fingers are pointed, but so far no people are held personally accountable in any substantive manner. Former CIA Director George Tenet resigned last summer but was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Congress ostensibly has oversight over the agencies, but few howls are sent in that direction. And the White House promoted Rice to secretary of state and retained Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, though both were at the center of the administration's now demonstratively wrong spin on weapons of mass destruction and efforts to persuade Americans to go to war in Iraq. Where's that report? From the April 4, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel © Copyright 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 21 York Daily Record: SECURITY: Nuke plant drill planned - [ydr.com] [York Daily Record/Sunday News] Saturday, April 2, 2005 The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency has informed Exelon Generation that the United States Air Force’s Civil Air Patrol will run military exercises over one of its Pennsylvania nuclear power plants. Individual single-engine aircraft will conduct drills over Three Mile Island in Dauphin County, Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station or Limerick nuclear power plant. Copyright © York Daily Record 2005 122 S. George St., P.O. Box 15122 York, PA 17405, (717) 771-2000 ***************************************************************** 22 LA TIMES: Nuclear Terror Pact Advances Los Angeles Times - latimes.com] April 2, 2005 E-mail story Print Most E-Mailed + U.N. General Assembly is expected to endorse the convention targeting rogue groups. By Maggie Farley, Times Staff Writer UNITED NATIONS  After seven years of negotiations, the U.N. on Friday finalized a convention to prevent nuclear terrorism, paving the way for a broader international agreement to fight terrorist groups. The Convention on the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism is meant to stop rogue groups from using nuclear weapons. It criminalizes individuals' possession of radioactive material or devices, requires nations to prosecute or extradite those who threaten others while possessing such materials, and calls for exchanges of information and assistance among governments. The treaty does not, however, prohibit a nation from using nuclear weapons militarily. "Nuclear terrorism is one of the most urgent threats of our time," said Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had made the completion of the treaty one of the goals of his U.N. reform program, which he introduced last month. "Even one such attack could inflict mass casualties and change our world forever. That prospect should compel all of us to do our part to strengthen our common defenses." The General Assembly is expected to endorse the convention and open it for signature in September during a summit of world leaders. It needs ratification by at least 22 members to become law, and would be the 13th such global treaty on terrorism. Annan has called for an umbrella treaty, the Comprehensive Convention on Terrorism, to be finalized in mid-2006. Russia introduced the nuclear terrorism treaty seven years ago to keep "loose nukes" from falling into the hands of terrorist groups. At the time, former national security chief Alexander I. Lebed estimated that there were about 100 suitcase-sized Russian nuclear weapons unaccounted for. Last year alone, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed nearly 100 incidents of trafficking in nuclear and radioactive material, and sounded the alarm after unguarded nuclear facilities in Iraq were looted after the U.S.-led invasion. Although the world's five major nuclear powers  France, Britain, the United States, China and Russia  have pledged to curb the proliferation of the deadly weapons, they have not agreed to eliminate them from their military arsenals. All five countries also are veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. India and Pakistan are known to have tested nuclear weapons. North Korea has stated that it also possesses such weapons, and Israel is widely assumed to be a nuclear power. Though Iran denies it, there are suspicions it is developing nuclear weapons, and Libya agreed last year to give up its nuclear ambitions. Discussions over how to curb the broader problem of terrorism have stumbled over how to define it. Annan defines terrorism as "any action intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do, or abstain from, any act." The proposed definition was not included in the "loose nukes" convention because of objections from Arab countries that it constrained national liberation movements and ignored state-sponsored terrorism. At a recent terrorism conference in Madrid, Annan said that governments must do more to secure and eliminate hazardous material and set up effective export controls. Stronger measures also were needed to uncover and stop money laundering by terrorists, he said, adding that travel and financial sanctions against groups such as Al Qaeda were vital. Nuclear terrorism is no longer science fiction, he said. "I wish it were," he said. "But unfortunately, we live in a world of excess hazardous materials and abundant technological know-how, in which some terrorists clearly state their intention to inflict catastrophic casualties." Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 23 Pakistani Newspaper: Pak best ally in terror fight - US WASHINGTON: (Online)--The United States says Pakistan is its best ally in fight against terrorism and it is doing an important yet commendable job in stopping nuclear weapons from proliferating in the world illegally. Talking to reporters Scott McMillan, the White House spokesman on Sturday, said Washington was working closely with Islamabad to completely dismantle Dr. Khan network involved in illicit spread of nuclear weapons and know-how. He said taking apart the dangerous network from Pakistan was a big victory for both the countries. He said the US was obtaining more information about the illicit network from Pakistan through close cooperation with it. ***************************************************************** 24 ZNet: Iraq | WMD Commission -- Yet Another Intelligence Failure by Rahul Mahajan April 02, 2005 The "Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction" has done reasonably well what it was created to do. Unfortunately, it was created to provide political cover for the Bush administration in the middle of a scandal that dwarfs Watergate, Iran-contra, and even Lewinsky-gate, but that, in contrast to those events, has led to no in-depth investigation, minimal television coverage, and hardly any calls for the heads responsible to roll. Think back to late January 2004 and the preliminary report of the Iraq Survey Group, which concluded that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. This came on top of what was by then a mounting wave of revelations that the Bush administration had repeatedly and deliberately deceived the American public -- and attempted to deceive the world -- about the evidence it claimed to have regarding Iraq's WMD. Post-war, those revelations started with Joseph Wilson's account that, acting for the Bush administration, he had debunked the claims that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger. It included the British government's apology for its "dodgy dossier," in which it plagiarized 12-year-old information from a graduate student's paper and passed it off as current intelligence, and the revelation that Tony Blair's claim that Iraq could deploy its nonexistent chemical and biological weapons in 45 minutes was known to based on a single uncorroborated statement by an untrustworthy defector. It included a comprehensive accounting in the Washington Post showing that Iraq was not and could not have been using its famous aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment. It also included a comprehensive debunking in the Associated Press of virtually every element of Colin Powell's February 5, 2003, presentation to the U.N. Security Council. It even included a description of the role of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their Office of Special Plans in pressuring the CIA, distorting their conclusions, and even setting them aside in order to create the most urgent and compelling justification for war. This wave, and the wave of political discontent with the Bush administration, crested when David Kay's report came out. Yet, within days of its issuance, the administration, with the help of prominent Democrats like Jane Harman on the House Intelligence Committee, had already spun the issue around from administration deception to something called "intelligence failures," shifting blame from the coterie of top officials who had lied us into a war to the intelligence agencies had been pressured to come up with those lies. The creation of this commission was the final step in the process, and helped to head off any chance of a serious investigation into those lies. Instead of impeachment proceedings for Bush, we saw a very skillful bureaucratic maneuver that killed two birds with one stone -- deflection of attention and also an attack on the CIA, seen as an institutional obstacle to implementation of the Cheney-Rumsfeld-neoconservative foreign policy agenda. The check provided by the CIA is a pragmatic, not a moral one, but if heeded might have kept the administration out of embarrassing adventures like support for the military coup attempt in Venezuela and perhaps even out of the more than two-year-long occupation of Iraq. Although the commission was specifically not tasked with considering the administration's use of intelligence, it still went out of its way to opine that political pressure from the administration played no part in the "intelligence failures," because "The analysts who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments." Of course, not only would such an admission be tantamount to saying one didn't do one's job properly, in the current political climate intelligence analysts had to know that they would be punished for any such claim. Similarly, the commission reserves particularly harsh criticism for the way the President's Daily Brief is prepared, characterizing them as "more alarmist and less nuanced" than longer reports like the famously flawed October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (heavily worked over by the Office of Special Plans). Their "attention-grabbing headlines and drumbeat of repetition" supposedly gave top officials the impression that dramatic claims were much better sourced and heavily corroborated than, in fact, they were. The commission is clearly trying to imply that some sort of scaremongering from the intelligence community stampeded the administration into war. And yet, there is no mention of another "attention-grabbing headline" from the August 6, 2001 PDB -- "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in US." To the uninitiated, this might well seem alarming, yet it didn't grab enough attention for Bush to cut short his vacation at Crawford or to bring back other top officials to Washington DC. It's hard to escape the conclusion that the administration got "alarmed" by claims that supported its pre-existing plans, like the invasion of Iraq, but couldn't be bothered by claims that had little to do with an imperial agenda, but, of course, the commission escapes it with ease. Much of what the commission concludes about the shortcomings of the intelligence community is true and recapitulates what thoughtful critics on the inside like Richard Clarke and Michael Scheuer have been saying. In a sense, it is the fault not so much of the commission but of the Bush administration that created it as a diversion and of political figures from across the spectrum who allowed themselves to be diverted. The most alarming thing about the report is that the sections on intelligence regarding Iran and North Korea have been kept classified. The justification given is that there's no reason for the U.S. government to tip its hand to the remaining members of Bush's "axis of evil." But, given the administration's saber-rattling and consideration of regime change attempts in both countries, the public's right to know is a far more compelling consideration. If the slightest move is made toward any military aggression against Iran (the more likely scenario of the two), the first thing we should demand is declassification of those pages. After that, perhaps we can take up that question of impeachment again. Rahul Mahajan is publisher of the blog Empire'>Empire Notes. He has been to occupied Iraq twice and reported from Fallujah during the April 2004 siege. His most recent book is "Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond'>Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond. He can be reached at rahul@empirenotes.org. ***************************************************************** 25 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Envoy Dismisses Last N. Korea Demand From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday April 2, 2005 5:46 AM AP Photo SEL109 By BURT HERMAN Associated Press Writer SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The main U.S. envoy involved with North Korea dismissed Pyongyang's conditions for returning to disarmament talks and called Friday for the communist nation to return to the stalled negotiations. His comments followed a statement by a senior North Korean diplomat who reaffirmed that his nation would abstain from talks until the United States apologizes for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice labeling the North an ``outpost of tyranny.'' The North also said it would convene its rubber-stamp parliament - expected to endorse the boycott of the talks - later this month. In a lecture at Seoul National University, U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Christopher Hill said a statement from North Korea on Thursday ``was not helpful.'' North Korea said it wanted to be treated as an equal at the six-nation disarmament talks, now that it claims to have nuclear weapons. It also urged the United States to verifiably remove all potential nuclear threats in the region. ``Serious problems should not be dealt with ... sarcastic statements,'' said Hill, who has been named U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. Hill urged North Korea to ``stop with these silly press announcements,'' and said they should bring their concerns to the arms talks. In a sign that Pyongyang may stick with its policy of shunning the talks, North Korea's official news agency said that a session of the country's parliament, the Supreme People's Assembly, would meet April 11. The North originally said it would convene the meeting in early March, after its Feb. 10 statement that it had nuclear weapons and would indefinitely boycott the nuclear disarmament talks. A week before the meeting, it postponed the session without explanation. China, the remaining key ally of North Korea, has hosted three rounds of the inconclusive talks since 2003 aimed at convincing the North to abandon its nuclear weapons ambition In addition to other demands over the talks, Pyongyang has said it is waiting for the United States apologize over Rice's ``outpost of tyranny'' remark. Rice has refused to apologize, but during a trip to the region last month she pointedly labeled North Korea a ``sovereign'' country - a comment many saw as an attempt to soften her earlier remark. However, Han Song-ryol, deputy chief of the North's mission to the U.N., said Pyongyang felt Rice's recent comment ``cannot be taken as being equivalent to an apology.'' ``In order to reopen the talks, there should be the right justification and conditions,'' South Korea's Yonhap News Agency quoted Han as saying in a report Friday. ``That is a clear apology from the U.S. for the outpost of tyranny remarks.'' Han said the North's statement Thursday was meant to highlight Pyongyang's view that the latest crisis stems from a perceived U.S. nuclear threat. Washington has said it has withdrawn all nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula. ``It depends on the U.S. whether the six-party talks resume or not,'' he said. ``But, I don't think the U.S. will drop its hostile policy.'' --- Associated Press writer Bo-mi Lim contributed to this report. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 26 Guardian Unlimited: N Korea Wants Japan Out of Nuclear Talks From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday April 2, 2005 8:46 AM By BO-MI LIM Associated Press Writer SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea said Saturday it remains committed to international negotiations on ending its nuclear weapons program, but demanded Japan withdraw from the six-nation talks. The comment came a day after the communist regime repeated that it would stay away from the stalled talks until the United States apologized for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calling North Korea one of the world's ``outposts of tyranny.'' International efforts to resume the negotiations gained urgency after North Korea claimed in February that it has nuclear weapons. The talks, which also involve China, Russia and South Korea, have been suspended since June after three rounds of inconclusive meetings. On Saturday, North Korea said the Japanese government should not be a part of the talks because of what it called Japan's ``cunning and vulgar'' intention to exploit the process for its self-interest. ``Japan's participation in the six-party talks only complicates the problem more and leads to a failure of coming to a resolution,'' the North's state-run Minju Joson newspaper said in a commentary carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency. ``There is no longer any need to include Japan in the six-party talks.'' It wasn't the first time the North put forward such a demand amid recent tensions over North Korea's abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s. North Korea has admitted kidnapping about a dozen Japanese to train its spies and allowed five to return, claiming the rest died. But Japanese leaders believes some abductees could still be alive in the North and have rejected Pyongyang's explanations as not credible. The Pyongyang regime also has blamed the United States for the lack of talks. ``As long as we have not totally given up on the six-party talks, they should be preceded by right conditions and circumstances, in other words, the U.S. dropping of its hostile policy,'' the newspaper commentary said Saturday. On Friday, Han Song-ryol, deputy chief of North Korea's U.N. mission, said his government was waiting for an apology from Rice. He dismissed her recent reference to North Korea as a ``sovereign'' country, saying that ``cannot be taken as being equivalent to an apology.'' In a lecture at Seoul National University, U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Christopher Hill said the North's setting of conditions ``was not helpful.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 27 Herald: US nuclear attack report blocked over security fears Web Issue 2235 April 01 2005 IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent April 01 2005 A study aimed at exploring the risks of terrorist attack on the storage areas of America's nuclear power stations has been blocked because it contains information which might encourage the kind of outrage it was intended to prevent. The US National Academy of Sciences was ordered last year to produce a comprehensive report on the vulnerability of highly radioactive spent-fuel rods stored on reactor sites. The study was commissioned after an independent group of scientists published a paper claiming that an enemy could conceivably drain one of the holding pools and start a fire among the fuel rods which they said would create an environmental disaster "significantly worse than Chernobyl". The initial draft report of the academy investigators was submitted to the government's nuclear regulatory commission last November, but publication has been held up until parts judged security-sensitive can be rewritten or removed. The nuclear body's main objection is that while secret information has already been omitted, anyone with a working knowledge of the nuclear power process could gain crucial intelligence for an attack by piecing together bits and pieces from different sections of the report. Copyright © Newsquest (Herald & Times) Limited. All Rights ***************************************************************** 28 [DU-WATCH] Fayettevile Rally audio and photos available Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 23:17:23 -0600 (CST) Hear and See Dennis Kyne on DU! Stan Goff brought up DU in his talk as well. Best, Charlie http://www.traprockpeace.org/fayetteville_rally_1.html http://www.traprockpeace.org/fayetteville_rally_2.html Hear speakers and performers and see their photos from the Fayetteville rally for peace on March 19th. You'll also find links to 60 photos from the march that preceded the rally, as well as related material and links. A special treat is a video-clip (Quicktime) of an electrifying performance piece by on the injustice of discrimination against gays in the military. We have 4 audio segments (2.5 hours of audio), with photos of most speakers. MP3 audio may be downloaded and used for non-profit replay, such as radio, with attribution to the North Carolina Peace and Justice Coalition for organizing the rally and to Traprock Peace Center for recording/editing. We've also uploaded RealAudio versions for people with dialup connections. You'll hear: Lou Plummer, Military Families Speak Out, Fayetteville, NC (at various points as a primary organizer) Rev Nelson Johnson, Civil Rights Activist, Greensboro, NC Kelly Dougherty, Co-Founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Colorado Thomas Barton, Shop Steward with Local 768, Heath Care Workers, AFSCME David Potorti, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Cary, NC Cindy Sheehan, Co-Founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, California Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, California Stan Goff, Retired Special Forces Master Sergeant, Raleigh, NC Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson, Co-Founders of Military Families Speak Shawn Cunningham, North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC Michael Hoffman, Co-Founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Pennsylvania Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Florida Rann Bar-On, International Solidarity Movement, Durham Ricanstruction, NYC Ed Whitfield, Steering Committee Michael McPhearson, Executive Director, Veterans for Peace Michael Berg, Father of Nick Berg, West Chester, PA Felicia Eaves, Black Voices for Peace, United for Peace and Justice Mendy Knott, NC Performance Poet, Asheville, NC Ajamu Dillahunt, Black Solidarity Against War, Raleigh, NC Kara Hollingsworth, Military Families Speak Out, Fayetteville, NC David Couso, brother of Slain Spanish Journalist Josi Couso Dante Zappala, brother of Army Sgt. Sherwood Baker, with family members. Ruba Nuwayhid, Progressive Student Alliance, UT/Knoxville Camilo Mejia, Iraq Vet, Conscientious Objector, Miami, Florida Kevin and Joyce Lucey, Military Families Speak Out, Massachusetts Dennis Kyne, Gulf War Vet, California Rev, Ralph Baldwin, Vietnam Veteran, Greensboro, NC Diedra Cobb, Conscientious Objector, Virginia Catherine Lutz, Author and Academic, Brown University Stephen Funk, Gulf War II war resister Performance art by Cuntry Kings, a "drag troupe" Chuck Fager, Quaker House, Fayetteville, NC Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange and Code Pink Patricia Roberts, mother of Army Spc. Jamaal Rashard Addison, killed in Iraq Jibril Hough, Islamic Political Party of America, Charlotte, NC Cynthia Brown, Community Activist, Durham, NC Wade Fulmer, Carolina Peace Resource Center, South Carolina Manju Rajendran, Organizers' Gathering and Spring Conference Coordinator Jimmy Massey, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Waynesville, NC See fuller descriptions of the speakers at the North Carolina Peace and Justice website. http://www.ncpeacejustice.org/article.php?id=91 All photographs are copyright 2005 Charles Jenks. Please contact him directly at charles@mtdata.com if you wish to publish any photos. He can make larger size/higher resolution versions available for publication. Related material includes original writings by veterans Dennis Kyne and Ward Reilly: Fayetteville Diary http://www.traprockpeace.org/kyne_fayetteville.html Antiwar Movement Grows at Fort Bragg - http://www.traprockpeace.org/ward_reilly_23mar05.html ### Charles Jenks, attorney at law President of the Core Group Traprock Peace Center 103A Keets Road Deerfield, MA 01342 413-773-5188; Fax 413-773-7507 charles@mtdata.com http://traprockpeace.org ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give the gift of life to a sick child. Support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's 'Thanks & Giving.' http://us.click.yahoo.com/3iazvD/6WnJAA/xGEGAA/Sj.0lB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 29 San Francisco Bay View: Don’t drink the water National Black Newspaper of the Year 3/30/05 by Dennis Kyne From 1946 to 1958, the United States tested atomic and thermonuclear weapons at Bikini in the Marshall Islands. After talking the islanders into leaving their homes, the Navy moved in 240 decommissioned World War II ships and anchored them around the test site to see how they would withstand the bomb blasts. The ships were contaminated with fission products, including strontium 90 and cesium 137, as well as residual plutonium from the bombs. Something had to be done with the ships; these dead vessels that had now been irradiated needed to be cleansed. The Hunters Point Shipyard (HPS) Historical Radiological Assessment (HRA), which is available in San Francisco at the Main Library as well as the Bayview branch library, states very clearly that “the most severely contaminated ships were eventually transferred to HPS for decontamination. Radioactively contaminated marine growth attached to ship hulls was removed with sandblasting.” Fuel contaminated with plutonium and fission products was burned and evaporated into the air, and many materials were welded off and stored or disposed of at the Shipyard. The radioactive sand from the blasting had to be discarded. Questionable standards for capturing contamination existed during this period, and with certainty we can say the radiation didn’t get separated from the water via a true pollution prevention mechanism. Thus it dropped in the bay or flowed out through broken storm drains. The HRA states that the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL), operational at the Shipyard until 1969, was responsible for organizing and shipping other radioactive garbage in addition to the sandblast remains. After housing the local community’s radioactive waste at the Shipyard, it was to be dumped offshore near the Farallon Islands. Along the way, drums containing the waste developed leaks, and whatever records were kept have been lost. Some days the fog wouldn’t let up, and traveling all the way to the Farallon Islands was out of the question. Hidden from witness by the fog, some 55-gallon drums are believed to have been dropped to the bottom of San Francisco Bay. The May 2004 Community Window on the Hunters Point Shipyard states that many land sites still are contaminated by cesium 137 and strontium 90 from bomb testing and still need to be cleaned. This same document also describes the way containers of radioactive materials were used to calibrate radiation detectors and asserts there may have been leaks in large containers. Smaller containers used in field studies would be thrown out with ordinary garbage. “Ordinary garbage” does not normally include radioactive elements. As a matter of fact, none of these elements are ordinary; they are manmade. Here’s the kicker, and an even greater concern if they did dump these barrels into the bay: water isn’t just wet. Water is corrosive. And when it meets metal, it steals the ions and causes rust. If you have a 55-gallon drum eroding from the radiation inside, and the water outside, you have a potentially deadly experiment going on. This is one good reason to stop the Lennar home building project that is slated to break ground soon on Parcel A at the Shipyard. The need for housing does not outweigh the damage to the health of local people should this turf be razed, liberating an incredible amount of toxic dust and exposing arriving community members to a water table that is nothing less than uranium soup. First off, if you move human beings into these new homes and than bulldoze surrounding sites and parcels, the strontium and cesium will be liberated and will expose the residents to death. There is no excuse for selling a community on housing when they will end up in their grave. Government cannot put people in, then clean up the mess later. The entire mess must be cleaned up first. The fact that the mess is there is confirmed by documents available at the library. If all this isn’t sad enough, Rongalup, an atoll where the inhabitants hadn’t been evacuated, became a study group when it was drenched in the same radioactive ash as the naval carcasses. Jonathan Weisgall, the attorney representing the Bikini Islanders, observes with irony that “we had a pretty nice laboratory of exposed people.” The same radioactive ash was brought back to Hunters Point. Carl Sagan, on page 322 of “Cosmos,” explains that “Rongalup residents ended up with strontium concentrated in their bones, and radioactive iodine concentrated in their thyroids. Two thirds of the children, and one third of the adults later developed thyroid abnormalities, growth retardation or malignant tumors.” Not everyone is killed by the flash of a bomb or the meltdown of a reactor or even the fallout. However, the fallout will be around for quite some time as Sagan tells us. Most strontium 90 decays in 96 years and cesium 137 in 100 years. The ships returned to Hunters Point decades ago, but the metal they left behind is still present. Studies conducted on Rongalup can be cross applied to the current situation in Northern California, where we can say without question that contaminated ships returned to Mare Island and Hunters Point. We know that a nuclear ship sank in Mare Island, and we know that a detonation rocked through nine counties at what is now called the Alameda Naval Station, formerly known as Port Chicago. There is no place in the world that has higher rates of breast cancer than these areas. It is absolutely imperative that the Hunters Point community take a hard and deep look at the implications of low level radiation on the human being. If two thirds of the children developed an abnormality or retardation in the Rongalup community, what can we expect in Hunters Point, where people were repeatedly exposed to radiation testing, cleaning and research facilities that were not made public knowledge until long after they had discharged deadly poison all over the soil. It gets worse. Community Window states, “Most sites are contaminated primarily by radio nuclides, ... particularly by cesium 137 and strontium 90 from bomb testing. However, some sites are also contaminated with long-lived radio nuclides such as Ra-226, and so require a very long-term assessment of the potential risk caused by the radioactivity.” It gets worse, because the more we understand how long these elements stick around, and how horrific they are to the human gene pool, the sooner the developer wants to build new homes alongside the toxic dump sites. There is a sense of urgency to get this construction going. The most powerful forces at City Hall are saying we have been waiting around too long. The sense of urgency should be on cleaning the Hunters Point Shipyard, a facility that once collected and analyzed samples of fallout materials from nuclear test sites. Effects of radioactivity on animals were studied at Hunters Point. Mare Island Shipyard was still using berths and drydocks at the Hunters Point Shipyard to repair nuclear powered ships from 1985 to 1989. Surely there are some byproducts in the water table from four years of nuclear fuel being moved around in the area. The Navy didn’t clean up though, and until they clean it up, you cannot put people in the vicinity of a water table contaminated with cesium 137 and strontium 90 and a drydock area that just two decades ago housed nuclear powered ships. It would be lunacy to accept this as responsible civics. The model of civics this employs is the building model. The model of civics that should be employed is the maintenance model. Until this area is maintained and brought to 100 percent clearance of radiation and radioactive particles, not one ditch should be dug. If the leaders of San Francisco choose to dump a housing project onto an area that is exposed to low level radiation, they will be sentencing two thirds of the young children to some form of abnormality based on the short time period covered at Rongalup. Leaders of San Francisco are responsible for the health and welfare of the residents of Hunters Point, both current and future. Responsibility requires these leaders guarantee with certainty that there is no radiation exposure. Anything short of that is negligence. Dennis Kyne is a combat veteran with 15 years in the U.S. Army. He holds a degree in political science cum laude from San Jose State University with an emphasis on nuclear proliferation. Email him at d_kyne@hotmail.com and visit his website, www.denniskyne.com. sfbayview.com San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper 4917 Third Street San Francisco California 94124 Phone: (415) 671-0789 Fax: (415) 671-0316 Email: ***************************************************************** 30 Indiana Star: AP: Radiation error at South Bend hospital revealed Associated Press April 1, 2005 SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is investigating how as many as five women being treated for cervical cancer at the St. Joseph Medical Center last year also received doses of radiation to their legs. The hospital this week reported that "a small sealed capsule containing a radiation source shifted," the NRC said. Three patients later experienced skin ulcerations on their inner thighs, with one suffering a recurrence of her ulcer in January, nearly a year after the initial treatment, the hospital said. The other two patients did not report any skin ulcerations. In a document filed with the NRC, the hospital said it did not believe the radiation will "have any additional adverse effect." Federal officials began investigating the hospital Wednesday to determine whether it violated the agency's safety requirements, said Geoffrey Grant, the agency's deputy regional administrator. "This inspection is one of the NRC's regulatory tools to assure that nuclear materials are used safely for patient care," he said. The hospital issued a statement saying it was "working closely with the patients and physicians involved and the NRC on this matter." Hospital spokesman Mike Stack said today the hospital would have no further comment. The federal agency said it would present its findings to hospital management at a meeting open to the public to be held at a later date. NRC spokesman Jan Strasma told the South Bend Tribune for a story today that the agency also will look into why the hospital did not report the incident until a year after it happened. He said safety regulations require prompt reports of any such incidents. In documents filed with the NRC, medical center officials said they originally thought the unintended exposures involved radiation levels below the level that required NRC notification. Hospital officials said they decided to report the incident after one patient reported a recurrence of the skin ulceration in January. Copyright 2005 IndyStar.com. All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 31 PE.com: 'Health goal' for perchlorate will remain Inland Southern California 6 PARTS PER BILLION: The governor pressed for a review after EPA set the federal level of 24.5 parts. 11:59 PM PST on Friday, April 1, 2005 By DAVID DANELSKI / The Press-Enterprise California officials announced Friday that they are sticking with a "health goal" of 6 parts per billion for the rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate for drinking water -- about one-fourth the amount deemed safe by the Bush administration in February. The health goal is not a binding limit but is generally used by water agencies to determine whether water is safe to provide to consumers. The state Department of Health Services is expected to set a legal limit -- known as a maximum contamination level, or MCL -- for perchlorate in drinking water within the next few months, department spokesman Robert Miller said. California follows Canada and Massachusetts in choosing a more restrictive guideline for perchlorate than the 24.5 parts per billion found to be safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin Corp., believed to be responsible for perchlorate found in some Inland drinking water, said that 6 parts per billion is too restrictive. California officials misinterpreted a health-risk analysis by the National Academy of Sciences panel that had been asked by the Bush administration to review perchlorate research, spokeswoman Gail Rymer said. "Hopefully, the remaining MCL-setting will reflect the science more accurately," Rymer said by phone. But Sujatha Jahagirdar, a clean-water advocate for the Los Angeles-based Environment California, said the state's health goal should be lower, to reflect the discoveries of perchlorate in produce, cows' milk and human breast milk. Jahagirdar said she is particularly concerned about a Texas Tech study released in February that found perchlorate in every sample of breast milk taken from 36 women throughout the nation. "To say that a rocket-fuel chemical was found in the milk of every nursing mother that was tested is not enough to reconsider this public-health decision is appalling," Jahagirdar said. She added that setting the level at 6 parts per billion will curtail efforts to clean perchlorate out of the Colorado River and hundreds of drinking-water wells. However, Pat Corbett, environmental affairs director for Kerr-McGee Corp, said the perchlorate cleanup will continue at the company's former perchlorate factory in Henderson, Nev. Spills and leaks there have allowed hundreds of pounds of perchlorate a day to leach into the Colorado River, a drinking-water source for an estimated 20 million people in Southern California and Arizona. "The public heath goal of 6 doesn't change what we are doing, and I think we are successful at what we are doing," Corbett said. The cleanup has cost Kerr-McGee $110 million. Perchlorate levels are down to 2.5 parts per billion about 11 miles south of Hoover Dam, Corbett said. Lockheed Martin has spent at least $80 million cleaning up groundwater contamination believed to have spread from the company's former rocket factory in Mentone, near Redlands. In 2003, perchlorate in Riverside water ranged as high as 7.2 parts per billion, according to the city's latest water report. Water with higher levels of perchlorate is blended with cleaner supplies to ensure that consumers receive tap water that meets the state's health goal, said David Wright, Riverside's utility director. The city is working with Lockheed Martin to build more treatment capacity, Wright said. George Alexeeff, deputy director of the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, said the 6 parts per billion was based purely on reviews of scientific studies. The state's health goal is lower than the federal EPA's safe level because it takes into account perchlorate exposure from food and assumes that pregnant women drink more liquid than the estimates used by the federal government, Alexeeff said. Pregnant women and their fetuses are most vulnerable to perchlorate toxicity, he said. In sufficient amounts, perchlorate interferes with the thyroid gland's ability to make hormones that regulate brain and nerve development in growing fetuses, infants and children. Perchlorate can inhibit the gland's absorption of iodide, needed to make the hormones. Perchlorate pollution in hundreds of water supplies nationwide is a legacy of Cold War-era military bases, defense-contractors' factories and other industries, as well as some fertilizers. California last year set a health goal of 6 parts per billion, which is less than the levels found in some Inland water supplies. The Schwarzenegger administration required Alexeeff's office to re-evaluate the health goal, taking into account the National Academy of Sciences findings. The Bush administration, trying to settle a dispute between the EPA and the military over how much perchlorate can be safely ingested, asked the National Academy to review research to determine what's safe. A report was issued in January. The military and defense contractors have said for years that as much as 200 parts per billion of perchlorate in water is safe to drink. The EPA in 2002 set a preliminary safe level of 1 part per billion. In February, after reviewing the National Academy of Sciences' analysis, the EPA revised its guideline to 24.5 parts per billion. Canada last month chose to follow California's lead, rather than the EPA's. California's health goal "is based upon a sound and thorough assessment," Paul Duchesne, a Health Canada spokesman, said by telephone. Also last month, Massachusetts announced that the state will not change its advisory level of 1 part per billion, said Robert W. Golledge Jr., commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. Independent research is needed to learn more about the long-term effects of perchlorate on sensitive people, Golledge said, especially because perchlorate has been discovered in food and milk. Millions of people could be ingesting perchlorate without knowing it, he said. "This issue needs greater attention." ***************************************************************** 32 VHeadline.com: Venezuelan police hunt missing killer capsules of radioactive Iridium-192 Sunday, April 03, 2005 Bylined to: David Coleman Venezuelan police have begun an extensive hunt for two killer capsules of radioactive material that went missing last month One of the two capsules of radioactive Iridium-192 -- used in equipment to check oil industry pipes for faults -- went missing March 15 from a barge on Lake Maracaibo. Another went missing March 21 after it is claimed it fell off the back of a workers' truck in Monagas. Iridium-192 emits powerful gamma radiation and is often used in treating prostate cancer and faults in underground industrial pipes. Venezuela's Energy Ministry director of Nuclear Affairs Angel Diaz says "they were lost through negligence ... we're in a state of emergency and looking for them." Authorities say the public should not to open the red and yellow containers which also carry radiation warning signs. Diaz says everyone within a range of at least five meters would be exposed to harmful radiation if the containers were opened. Venezuela's National Guard (GN), Civil Defense and police are also involved in the nationwide hunt. The capsules were encased in protective containers of depleted uranium and are said to be "about the size of a lunchbox." "The health and lives of people around would be at risk ... since they're quite heavy, people might think they have something valuable inside." Venezuela's Civil Defense chief Antonio Rivero is concerned that the capsules might fall into terrorist hands ... "they could be used in a malicious fashion ... someone might try to place these capsules near a person or a place where people were gathered, for terrorist purposes." Photography: Santiago Padilla -- Roy S. Carson, Editor/Publisher Editor@VHeadline.com © 2005 VHeadline.com All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 33 L.A. Daily News: Water limit passes test Article Published: Saturday, April 02, 2005 - Regulators set perchlorate level By Don Thompson, Associated Press SACRAMENTO -- California regulators said Friday that they will keep the state's existing public health goal for a rocket fuel component that can foul drinking water, because it is consistent with a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences. Setting a health goal is the first step toward establishing a limit on the amount of perchlorate allowed in drinking water. The California Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment set the goal a year ago, but reviewed it considering the academy's study released in January. The agency set six parts per billion as the level of perchlorate in drinking water that won't affect health. California's national defense and space industries used perchlorate heavily, mostly as a component of rocket fuel, explosives, fireworks, road flares and air-bag inflation systems. It has been found in drinking water sources around the state, including Colorado River water that serves 15 million customers. Environmental groups say the goal is set too high to prevent health threats, including thyroid disorders, particularly for pregnant women and children. But the hazard assessment office's director, Joan E. Denton, said the science academy's report "provides strong support for the approach that we took in developing our public health goal." The goal also was reviewed by University of California scientists. The academy said the health effects should be gauged using the same 2002 study based on human trials that was used by state regulators. Other findings by the national academy also are consistent with California's review, and nothing conflicted with California's decision, the state office said. The state office also said a new study by three Texas Tech University researchers on perchlorate levels in human breast milk does not justify any revisions in the California decision because it did not track whether the perchlorate came from drinking water. The agency promised to keep monitoring scientific studies and noted it is required by law to update its findings every five years. Based on the health goal, the state Department of Health Services sets a standard for the chemical that is required to be as close to the goal set by the EPA as economically and technically feasible. Perchlorate contamination has shut down hundreds of wells, and the chemical has been found in crops produced in affected areas. Thousands of lawsuits are pending by people claiming that years of drinking contaminated water has caused cancers and other illness. Copyright © 2005 Los Angeles Daily News ***************************************************************** 34 Radwaste: Yucca Mt. "Scientists" Fabricated Data Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 23:29:13 -0600 (CST) http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0402yucca02.html Yucca Mt. e-mails get released Appear to show fabricated data Erica Werner Associated Press Apr. 2, 2005 12:00 AM WASHINGTON - E-mails by several government scientists working on the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste dump project suggest workers were planning to fabricate records and manipulate results to ensure outcomes that would help the project move forward. "I don't have a clue when these programs were installed. So I've made up the dates and names," wrote a U.S. Geological Survey employee in one e-mail released Friday by a congressional committee investigating suspected document falsification on the project. "This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff." In another message the same employee wrote to a colleague: "In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used." QA apparently refers to "quality assurance." The e-mails, written from 1998 to 2000, were in a batch of correspondence released in advance of next week's hearing by the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Work Force and Agency Organization, headed by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev. The Energy and Interior departments revealed the existence of the e-mails March 16, and inspectors general of both departments are investigating. The FBI also is conducting a probe, according to a subcommittee staffer. Yucca Mountain, approved by Congress in 2002, is planned as the nation's underground repository for 77,000 tons of defense waste and used reactor fuel from commercial power plants. The material is supposed to be buried for at least 10,000 years beneath the Nevada desert, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Many Nevadans and some environmentalists say the waste can never be safely stored and the plan puts local residents at risk. There also are concerns among others outside the state that hauling the waste to Nevada puts at risk those along the routes. But the Bush administration, the energy industry and others say a central storage site is needed and would provide better security for tens of thousands of tons of commercial and defense waste now housed at sites in 39 states. The e-mails, dating from the Clinton administration, were circulated among USGS scientists studying how water moves through the planned dumpsite, a key issue in determining whether and how much radiation could escape. Scientists at the USGS validated Energy Department conclusions that water seepage was slow, so radiation would be less likely to escape. Many of the e-mails released appear to involve not initial scientific experiments, but rather attempts to provide documentation of earlier work. Several include admonitions from the writers to "delete this memo after you've read it" or "please destroy this memo." The Energy Department is working to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to run the dump, and must turn over extensive documentation. The e-mails, most of them from USGS field workers in Las Vegas, provide a look at the environment surrounding the project, first considered over 20 years ago. Names and some proper nouns were blacked out by congressional staffers before they were released. The emergence of the e-mails was the latest setback for Yucca Mountain, which has also suffered money shortfalls and an appeals court decision last summer that is forcing a rewrite of radiation-exposure limits for the site. The department's concern about the e-mails is evident in a portion of an internal memo, apparently written around the time the e-mails were discovered, that was also released Friday: "These e-mails may create a substantial vulnerability for the program." An Energy Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the memo or the contents of the e-mails because of the ongoing investigations. ***************************************************************** 35 More On Yucca Fraud Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 22:19:33 -0400 Mothersalert: http://www.mothersalert.org/moreinfo.html http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/apr/02/518542262.html?"yucca%20mountain" April 02, 2005 Editorial: 'Make up more stuff ' LAS VEGAS SUN WEEKEND EDITION April 2 - 3, 2005 On Tuesday a House subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., will hold a hearing into allegations that scientific records involving the Yucca Mountain project were falsified. Last month the Energy Department disclosed the existence of e-mails sent by U.S. Geological Survey employees working on the Yucca Mountain project's quality assurance program, messages that discussed fabricating scientific information about how water moves through the mountain. On Friday the Associated Press disclosed the content of some of the e-mails, which, to put it simply, are chilling. "I don't have a clue when these programs were installed. So I've made up the dates and names," a U.S. Geological Survey employee wrote in one e-mail. "This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff." In yet another e-mail, the AP reported, the same employee wrote to a colleague about what appear to be his sentiments about quality assurance: "In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the one that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used." How damaging the e-mails are to the Yucca Mountain project's credibility -- and its future -- can't be overstated. After all, a federal employee is blithely discussing tampering with scientific work that goes to the very heart of whether Yucca Mountain can safely contain nuclear waste. If, as Nevada officials have contended, water can travel more rapidly through the mountain than the Energy Department asserts, then there is a real likelihood of the water corroding the canisters holding the nuclear waste, enabling the deadly substance to escape. Such a finding would be a show-stopper, resulting in Yucca Mountain being unable to receive a license to operate from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When Yucca Mountain eventually meets its demise, we'd suggest that a fitting epitaph could come from one of the aforementioned e-mails. Our favorite: "If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff." We can't think of a more apt description for the absolute disregard for science at Yucca Mountain. http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/apr/01/518539018.html?"yucca%20mountain" April 01, 2005 Yucca e-mails called damning By Suzanne Struglinski SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., called e-mails on the alleged falsified information on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump "damning" but would not discuss details to avoid compromising ongoing criminal investigations. Porter complained today the Energy and Interior departments have not cooperated in giving his House subcommittee redacted documents so the public could access some information on the most recent Yucca controversy. "My goal was to not interfere with the criminal investigation," Porter said. "They have not complied with my request so we are doing it ourselves." The Energy Department announced its discovery of potential falsified documents on the Yucca Mountain project March 16, based on e-mails written between 1998 and 2000 by a U.S. Geological Survey employee. Porter said the documents indicate a "very serious breach of trust" but would not comment on specific details. The FBI and the inspector generals of both department are investigating the situation. The House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization subcommittee, chaired by Porter, received a set of unredacted e-mails documents this week, which Porter reviewed Thursday night. Redacted document were supposed to be made available at 9 a.m. PST today, but were delayed because Porter's subcommittee attorney had to redact documents themselves. Porter said he is prepare to subpoena any additional document either department does not turn over. There is some overlap between the two departments' documents but each mainly has different information related to the alleged falsification. "Our first priority is the public," Porter said. "I'm prepared to do whatever it takes for the public to have access to this information." He said the redacted documents would contain useful information. Porter will hear from both departments' inspector generals at a hearing Tuesday as well as Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval and other state officials. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who will also testify Tuesday, called on the Energy Department to stop its work on the project's license application as the investigations take place. Meanwhile, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has postponed its hearing focusing on the status of the Yucca project until further notice. Committee spokeswoman Angela Harper said the committee already had a full schedule for the week with a conference on water challenges and moving forward with the Energy Bill. A House panel will begin marking up its version of the bill next week. http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/31/518532895.html?"yucca%20mountain" March 31, 2005 FBI steps into Yucca document investigation By Suzanne Struglinski SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The FBI is examining the documents allegedly falsified by government employees working on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a federal official says. Chad Bungard, deputy staff director and chief counsel at a House Government Reform subcommittee, said he was told from the beginning of the inspector general investigations at the Interior and Energy departments that the FBI would also be involved. The FBI press office would not confirm the agency's involvement or comment on the matter. The inspector general offices at each department also would not comment due to ongoing investigations. Bungard said this will be pursued as a criminal matter until the Justice Department finds otherwise. "That is why we are only giving our redacted information on Friday. We don't want to compromise anything," Bungard said. The House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee, of which Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., is chairman, is to hold a hearing April 5 looking at the department's discovery earlier this month of e-mails sent by U.S. Geological Survey employees that suggest they falsified scientific information on how water moves through the mountain. Water movement is a key issue in determining the proposed repository's safety because it can help radiation move through the mountain and possibly into the groundwater under the mountain. Porter will review the documents today when he returns to Washington. The department handed them over on Tuesday. "My instincts tell me this is the tip of the iceberg," Porter said. The "sound science" argument has been used all along to convince Congress -- and the public -- that the dump plan is safe, but Porter said if the data has been tampered with, it puts the whole project in jeopardy. Porter said that at his hearing he will seek answers to such questions as how long the departments knew about these problems and why changes to data were made. Rep. Shelley Berkely, D-Nev., said that like Porter she suspects the problems unveiled by the Energy Department go beyond what is known right now, which proves arguments for the last two decades that the project should not move forward. She said she believes she knows the motives for the alleged falsification. "When the science didn't match the reality, they used politics to change the science in order to match the reality," she said. She welcomed the FBI's involvement because tampering with scientific data threatens the future health and safety of Nevadans. "That someone or a group of people colluded to falsify the scientific data on which the entire Yucca Mountain project is based is nothing less than criminal and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There is no excuse for it," Berkley said, adding that those responsible should be "put away for a good long time." Jack Finn, spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said Ensign was pleased the FBI was involved, since that is what the senators asked for. Ensign and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller a day after the Energy Department's announcement about the e-mails asking for an investigation and for protection of the documents involved. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., believes the FBI will be an "impartial and unbiased" investigator, said spokeswoman Amy Spanbauer. She said the issue is obviously a serious matter that brings the whole integrity of the project into question. The investigation is the latest stumbling block for Yucca Mountain, which has hit a series of troubles with funding and its planned license application since being approved as the nation's nuclear waste repository. A federal appeals court found that the Environmental Protection Agency did not follow the law when determining how long the mountain should hold radiation, a key scientific standard. The EPA is now reworking the standard. http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/31/518532462.html?"yucca%20mountain" March 31, 2005 Porter calls for punishment of falsifiers of Yucca work By Cy Ryan SUN CAPITAL BUREAU CARSON CITY -- Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said Wednesday that if federal employees did indeed falsify Yucca Mountain nuclear dump documents they should at least be fired and could also be charged criminally. "If Congress has been lied to, Congress will take whatever steps are necessary to make sure they are penalized to the fullest extent of the law," Porter told reporters after addressing a joint session of the Legislature. Any firing would have to be done by the Bush administration, however, he conceded. In his address, Porter noted that as chairman of a subcommittee that has jurisdiction over all federal agencies, he will ensure that a hearing April 5 in Washington seeks the whole truth regarding the allegedly doctored documents involving water seepage studies at Yucca Mountain. The inspector generals in the Energy and Interior departments are already investigating the matter, and the FBI also has reportedly become involved. Porter said his office has secured all of the documents and he will release them Friday in advance of the hearing next Tuesday. He said he expects further revelations will emerge from the documents but he has not had a chance to review them. "We're going to expose any and all improprieties having to do with the documents that members of Congress have based their decision on," he said. "The scientific data that Congress has used is based on faith and trust in these federal agencies. "If in fact those documents are falsified and have impacted the science and the delivery of information to the federal court and to members of Congress, we will take action regarding the falsification of documents." Congress passed a plan to put the nation's nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, based on scientific work done by the government. President Bush signed off on the plan, citing "sound science." Critics of the plan say this is proof that the project isn't based on sound science. In other comments to the Legislature, the second-term congressman from Las Vegas also urged the Legislature to pass all-day kindergarten. "There is no question we need it," he said. He said he knew it was a challenge to find the money for the all-day kindergarten, but he added he is looking for federal grants to help the state. He also told the lawmakers the federal government needs to reduce the unfunded federal mandates on state and local governments. Asked later to name one unfunded federal mandate that has been eliminated, he said there were some, but he could not name them. He said a committee is looking at 150 unfunded mandates for possible elimination. Asked about removing the statue of Sen. Patrick McCarran from the Capitol's National Statuary Hall, Porter said. "That's up to the Nevada Legislature, and if the Legislature thinks it's the right thing to do, we should do it. "The new revelations of the some of the things of his past put into question whether he should remain a statue in statuary hall, but I have confidence in the Legislature," he said. A new biography of McCarran paints him as a vindictive racist who was the man behind Sen. Joe McCarthy's red scare witch hunt . ***************************************************************** 36 New York Times: E-Mails Reveal Fraud in Nuclear Site Study By MATTHEW L. WALD Published: April 2, 2005 [W] ASHINGTON, April 1 - Government employees studying whether Yucca Mountain in Nevada would be a suitable place to bury nuclear waste acknowledged in e-mail messages to each other that they had made up details about how they had done their research in order to appear to meet quality standards, according to some of the messages made public on Friday. Some of the frank exchanges included instructions to erase them. The Energy Department, which is trying to open a waste repository at the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, disclosed the existence of the e-mail messages two weeks ago. On Friday, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Reform released dozens of pages of the messages. One analyst wrote that a computer program had generated data he could not explain, so he withheld it from the quality assurance department, known as QA. "Don't look at the last 4 lines. Those are a mystery," wrote the scientist, who the subcommittee said was an employee of the United States Geological Survey, a part of the Interior Department. "I've deleted the lines from the 'official' QA version of the files." "In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used," he wrote. The message was dated November 1999. B. John Garrick, the chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a group of independent experts established by Congress to monitor the Energy Department, said that it was too soon to draw conclusions but that "it is disturbing to see such loosely framed discussions between scientists." Before releasing the messages, the subcommittee removed the names and titles of the senders and the recipients, and deleted other words that made the full context of some of the messages difficult to ascertain. But the theme was that employees were performing work they did not believe would meet standards set by the quality assurance inspectors, and were sometimes falsifying their work in ways that they believed would satisfy the inspectors. In a message dated April 22, 1999, a scientist wrote that he did some calculations by hand and that the computer program he wrote, presumably to do those calculations, "is not in the system." He wrote that he feared he would be "taken to the cleaners" by the inspectors because his work did not refer to an established procedure laid out in a scientific notebook, and he asked if he should create such a notebook "and back-date the whole thing??" The author of another message noted in January 2000 that he could not document the way certain work was done. "I can start making something up, but then the (deleted) projects will need to go on hold," he wrote. In an e-mail message in March 2000, a government worker wrote that he did not know when software he had used had been installed. "So I've made up the dates and names," he wrote. "If they need more proof I will be happy to make up more stuff, as long as its not a video recording of the software being installed." The chairman of the panel that released the messages, Representative Jon Porter, Republican of Nevada, pointed out that the Energy Department and the White House had repeatedly said that their recommendation of the Yucca Mountain site was based on "sound science." "If the project has been based upon science, and the science is not correct, it puts the whole project in jeopardy," said Mr. Porter, a longtime opponent of Yucca Mountain plan. "I believe these e-mails show science is not driving the project; it's expedience to get the job done." In a well-done scientific investigation, he said, the methods used to derive predictions about crucial factors like water infiltration should be transparent and reproducible. A lawyer who represents the State of Nevada, Joseph Egan, said that after reading the messages, "you can't even say it's wrong; you have to say it's not reliable." "You don't know how badly they've fudged this stuff," Mr. Egan said. Some of the correspondents explicitly discuss problems and say they do not believe that they make any material difference to the ability of the mountain, a volcanic structure on the edge of the Nevada Test Site, to hold the waste for thousands of years. But the issue of quality control is crucial to the Energy Department because to open a repository, it must win the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has scuttled some projects because of quality assurance problems. In one case in the 1980's, the commission forced the owners of a nuclear reactor to abandon their project, after they had spent nearly $2 billion and when the reactor was said to be 98 percent complete, because of questions about whether some welds had been made properly and inspected adequately by qualified inspectors. The subcommittee on the federal work force, which released the e-mail messages, plans to hold a hearing on Yucca Mountain on Tuesday. The witnesses include several prominent opponents, including Gov. Kenny Guinn of Nevada and Senator Harry Reid, also of Nevada, the Democratic leader. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home| ***************************************************************** 37 Guardian Unlimited: Clean-up fears fuel nuclear fallout A new government agency has the job of dismantling our nuclear plants - but it also bears the commercial risk. Oliver Morgan Sunday April 3, 2005 The Observer The sexy talk in the nuclear industry today is about building new power stations. But last week a little-noticed government agency was born that will deal with a much less sexy bit: clearing up after the industry's first half-century of activity. Scattered around the coast of Britain from Sellafield in Cumbria to Sizewell in Suffolk are 20 sites where, ever since the 1940s, the UK has carried out research and operated the civil nuclear programme that today provides some 20 per cent of the UK's electricity. All of the sites include radioactive buildings and facilities that need dismantling. It is the job of the agency - the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority - to oversee this. Article continues At Sizewell and eight other coastal sites there are first-generation Magnox power stations, designed in the 1950s, now owned by British Nuclear Fuels, which are in the process of being decommissioned.These must be dismantled at the end of their lives. At Sellafield, by far the biggest site, there are experimental plants along with a series of Magnox reactors and their reprocessing facilities, and two newer reprocessing units: Thorp, which deals with fuel from the British Energy plants; and the Sellafield Mox Plant (SMP), which has yet to start operating but is intended to reprocess spent fuel into a new and reuseable form known as Mixed Oxide Fuel (Mox). Alongside these are experimental sites such as Harwell and Culham, fuel manufacturing facilities at Springfield and a low-level waste disposal site at Drigg. Dismantling them all will be a long-term task taking, at current estimates, 100 years and costing £48 billion. At its launch on Friday, the NDA took charge of it all, along with its first annual budget, of £2.2bn. But the NDA has been commissioned against a background of unease. Industry experts believe that the principles on which it was conceived have been com promised in the search for ways of keeping the costs down. The argument for an independent agency (then known as the Liabilities Management Authority, or LMA) to supersede British Nuclear Fuels and the UK Atomic Energy Agency in decommissioning their sites was originally put in a 2002 White Paper. There, the government stated: 'The LMA's focus will be squarely on the systematic and progressive reduction of liabilities consistent with safety, security and environmental requirements.' So far so good. There was worry at the time, however, because it was also made clear that the NDA would have to manage the assets it inherited from BNFL, such as operational Magnox stations Thorp and SMP, and the Springfield manufacturing facilities. Experts believed that, if the LMA was at risk from problems at these facilities, its requirement to focus on clean-up consistent with safety, security and the environment could be compromised. The concerns were assuaged by two key points in the White Paper: first, that if there were a conflict between commercial concerns and safe clean-up, it would be resolved in favour of the latter; second, that its funding would be segregated, so that, while it could benefit from commercial surpluses, it would not cover losses, although it was not made clear which branch of government would underwrite them. In other words, its funding (the £2.2bn this year) was not at risk from commercial failure. Fast forward to April 2005. While the NDA describes its funding arrangements as a segregated account, it differs from the proposals set out in the White Paper in a key way: it is at risk from commercial failure at the BNFL facilities for which it now has responsibility. This was made clear by Peter Waller, head of the Department of Trade and Industry's energy industry technology unit, in front of a Commons committee last month. Waller said: 'We can see downside and upside. There could be major failure [at a facility] somewhere and you could suddenly find yourself with a significant loss of income.' Last week a senior NDA official explained: 'In summary, what is happening is that the NDA takes the commercial risk.' But he added: 'The prime responsibility of the NDA is to ensure the clean-up of the nuclear legacy. That is to be achieved cost-effectively but with concern for the environment.' Commercial activities would reduce over time, as the Thorp reprocessing plant winds down and Magnox stations are decommissioned (although SMP, which the NDA will launch this year, could run for a further three decades). In a phrase that is likely to be read with interest at the Treasury - which is widely credited for insisting on the NDA bearing commercial risk - the official continued: 'I am sure if there was a huge shortfall in commercial income there would be discussions between the government and the NDA.' This begs the question: why demand that the NDA bears commercial risk in the first place? But the NDA official added: 'I do not believe the role of the NDA has been compromised.' Others disagree. One senior industry figure and government adviser says: 'The real problem is that absence of a really segregated fund. Instead of separating clean-up from commercial activities - which was the point of creating the LMA out of BNFL in the first place - they have actually combined the two more closely, and now clean-up is more reliant on the commercial results than before.' One reason for this, says the NDA, was the industry regulator's insistence that the running of Sellafield could not be split between commercial and clean-up activities. The importance of commercial operations is made clear in the NDA's budget figures. Of its £2.26bn income, £1.084bn comes from commercial activities, with £503 million coming directly from government and £675m from BNFL's £4bn decommissioning fund. However, of the NDA's £2.1bn expected expenditure, less than half (£967m) goes on decommissioning and clean-up, with £1.142bn going on 'operation of installations and facilities'. An NDA official explained that not all of this related to running commercial operations. Some concerned securing sites in the process of being decommissioned, for example. But he added: 'This is not ideal, when you are spending less money on clean-up than you are on operations. We are expecting a considerable change in this in future.' That is why, he said, running sites was being opened to competition, allowing major engineering groups such as Bechtel and Fluor of the US and Amec of the UK to bid to run Sellafield or any of the other sites under the supervision of the NDA within three years. But well-placed industry sources say that even more influential than regulators' concerns over Sellafield was the fact that the Treasury was unhappy with the White Paper, drafted by a DTI official who was subsequently moved, and insisted on cost controls being built in. Another area where the hand of the Treasury has been detected is the reduction of a planning horizon of five to 10 years to three years - something that has added to MPs' concerns. One industry expert said: 'The reason for 10 years was to establish a plan that would be robust and allow major contractors to understand the scope of the problem. That has now been truncated.' Jean McSorley of Greenpeace adds: 'The original plan was for a visible 10-year funding stream, to give everyone clarity on the future. But the real concern is that, if you have an organisation that does not have this kind of funding security heavily dependent on commercial activities and reprocessing, you could be running into real trouble.' McSorley adds that the elision of commercial and clean-up activities creates a simpler conflict: 'The basic fact is that the NDA will be creating more waste by running the Magnox stations and reprocessing.' But her longer-term concern is that the NDA could act as a vehicle to support the nuclear industry in future. According to Greenpeace, provisions in the Energy Bill setting up the NDA give ministers powers to direct NDA activities. This, contends McSorley, would amount to a future support of new nuclear operators. The NDA denies that it is there to do anything but clean up the nuclear legacy. But if the 'sexy' bit of the nuclear industry gets the green light after the election, one key issue about building new stations will be what to do with the waste. One view is that the costs of waste disposal are small today because they are deeply discounted. But a commercial link has been built in at the start and the NDA could, according to Greenpeace, act as a backstop if operators fail to fully fund their liabilities in future. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 38 Deseret News: American West isn't a toilet for dumping nuclear waste [deseretnews.com] Sunday, April 3, 2005 By Frank Pignanelli &LaVarr Webb With Nevada Sen. Harry Reid in town for LDS Conference and to speak at the Hinkley Institute of Politics (scheduled last Friday, after the deadline for this column), the issue of high-level nuclear waste storage was expected to heat up considerably. Pignanelli: Utahns should be grateful to Private Fuel Storage (PFS) — the waste company pushing hard to store nuclear waste on the Goshute Reservation. Until they stomped into Utah, many of us believed nuclear energy could be a practical partial substitute to fossil fuels, thus decreasing air pollution and dependence on foreign oil. But PFS was kind enough to illuminate this country's nuclear power policy: Eastern and Midwestern residents can enjoy cheap electricity from atomic reactions, and its deadly byproduct can then be dumped in Western desert states. This provincial attitude by PFS is a reflection of the perception by many Americans that the Rocky Mountain area is a giant toilet for their lethal trash. From the moment he was sworn in, Congressman Jim Matheson demonstrated a clear vision of safeguarding our lands. He consistently articulated the best protection Utah had against dumping of nuclear waste was participating in a unified effort with other states (especially Nevada) against such governmental and private activity within their borders. Matheson understood that discarding radioactive refuse in nearby Nevada would make Utah more attractive for the next disposal site. When legislation to allow storage of radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain was proceeding through Congress, the Nevada leaders counted on the support of their brothers and sisters in the other Western states. Matheson correctly expressed concerns that the toxic garbage traveling through Utah toward Yucca is an open invitation to terrorists and locked arms with our neighbors and shouted opposition. Unfortunately, the remainder of the Utah congressional delegation voted to ship the waste to Yucca in the hope this would distract attention away from Utah. The Yucca facility is not large enough to satisfy current disposal needs, and federal officials still believe Utah is the logical choice for 40,000 tons of the noxious sludge. It is understandable our Republican senators and representatives wish to sustain President George W. Bush, but in this matter, geography must trump partisan allegiance. Congressmen Rob Bishop and Chris Cannon are now murmuring in the media that the policy of ignoring Nevada may have been a mistake. With his traditional creativity in parliamentary matters, Bishop has introduced a novel solution of designating land surrounding the Goshute Reservation as wilderness and therefore preventing access. Still upset over rejection, Nevada is not supportive of this clever ploy. Recent comments from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid confirm his frustration as to the little solidarity with Utah on this issue. Other GOP legislators, and the president, do not care that nuclear waste will be dumped in "Red" states. Party loyalty is meaningless when an opportunity exists to bury your poison in somebody else's back yard. To protect our small state, the shrewd political operatives (I mean this as a compliment) who represent us must prioritize regional concerns over party loyalty. Webb: I'm what you would call a classic downwinder. When I was 4 or 5 years old in the mid-1950s, my family lived on a beautiful ranch just outside of Zion National Park in Washington County. It was an idyllic life. But my father recalled feeling the ground shake on many early mornings as he got up to milk the cows. He later read in the newspaper that nuclear weapons were being tested in Nevada. He and my older sisters recalled the actual fallout dust that would spread across our pastures, gardens and orchards. My grandfather would periodically visit us from Salt Lake City and would bring an old Geiger counter to hunt for a uranium mine. He would complain that the background radiation was so high he couldn't tell a uranium vein from the surface rock. We were completely oblivious to any danger. We played year-round outside in the great southwestern climate. We ate cheese and butter and drank raw milk from our cows that grazed on the contaminated grass. We ate tomatoes, beans, spinach, lettuce, mulberries, apples, grapes and peaches straight from the plant or tree, often without washing them. We drank from the clear waters of North Creek. While I was away serving my church in Indonesia, my mother, Eleanor, contracted breast cancer. After years of struggle, up and downs, hope and despair, she died at age 58. At about the time of her death, my father, LaVarr, contracted leukemia. He was a tough guy, and he vastly outlived the doctors' expectations, fighting it with chemotherapy for 20 years. He died at age 79, his last years very difficult. My older sister, Julia, a dedicated schoolteacher contracted cancer and died at age 47, leaving a husband and young family. Another sister, Linda, also a talented teacher and loving mother and wife, suffered the same hard death at age 49. The doctors in all four cases attributed the cancers to the nuclear fallout. I'm really not bitter about any of this. Everyone has hardships in life. Everyone dies some time. Enjoy life while it lasts. My health, and that of my remaining siblings, seems fine, short of me needing to lose 20 pounds. I don't obsess about getting sick. I believe we're a lot smarter today about the dangers of radiation. I believe the federal government is very thorough in its safety requirements. But you might understand why I am opposed to storage of high-level nuclear waste out on the west desert. And why I oppose any form of further nuclear weapons testing in Nevada. For me, as with a lot of other downwinders, it's kinda personal. Republican LaVarr Webb was policy deputy to Gov. Mike Leavitt and Deseret News managing editor. He now is a political consultant and lobbyist. E-mail: lwebb@exoro.com. Democrat Frank Pignanelli is Salt Lake attorney, lobbyist and political adviser. A former candidate for Salt Lake mayor, Pignanelli served 10 years in the Utah House of Representatives, six years as House minority leader. E-mail: frankp@xmission.com. © 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 39 Las Vegas RJ: E-mails say scientists fabricated quality assurance on Yucca Mountain research Saturday, April 02, 2005 REVIEW-JOURNAL Scientists on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project used "fudge factors" and made up dates to fabricate quality assurance of their work in modeling how water would move through the mountain under future climate conditions. Their fabrications and tactics to cover up their shortcomings are told in a 90-page collection of redacted e-mails released Friday by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., whose subcommittee will air the allegations at a hearing Tuesday. Some e-mails from scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, which also appear in Department of Energy files, instruct the reader to "delete this memo after you've read it." One says flatly: "I've made up the dates and names. ... If they need more proof I will be happy to make up more stuff." Another confirms that quality assurance for documenting data was sorely lacking in the models used to determine how much water will seep through the mountain, carrying off radioactive particles as the containers holding 77,000 tons of spent fuel corrode over time. "Wait till they figure out that nothing I've provided them is QA (quality assurance). If they really want the stuff, they'll have to pay to do it right," says an Oct. 29, 1998, message that appeared in both sets of redacted e-mails from the Interior and Energy departments. The e-mails portray a workplace where disgruntled employees felt pressured and rushed. One e-mail indicates two sets of files were used, one to make quality assurance officials "happy" and one that was actually used in the models. The words "fudge" or "fudge factor" appear in a couple of e-mails, including one that states: "Our infiltration model has virtually no infiltration in washes; what infiltration there is in washes is basically put there as a fudge factor. ... I could probably tear apart any of our models. Did somebody say seepage?" The e-mails show how frustrated some scientists were with trying to meet deadlines. "Yes the work is behind schedule but so is everything else because I'm the only one doing this work and I'll be damned if I drop everything else," an employee said in a March 26, 1999, message. "I'd be very happy to just hand the work over to somebody else at this point." The inspectors general for the Department of Energy and the Department of Interior are jointly investigating, along with the FBI, said Mary Kendall, a deputy inspector general at Interior. The Energy Department also is convening a study team to assess the impact on the science that it put forth when Yucca Mountain was recommended as a nuclear waste site in 2002. Because of the investigations, the names of the e-mail authors and the recipients of the messages were redacted by subcommittee lawyers, Porter said. The e-mails weren't redacted when they were turned over to the subcommittee. "We cannot jeopardize the criminal investigation, nor will we," Porter said Friday at his office in Henderson. A summary supplied by the House panel indicated the most provocative messages were exchanged by two U.S. Geological Survey employees. An Interior Department official said March 16 that up to 10 individuals might have had some involvement. Porter said some e-mails circulated to 40 or 50 people. Critics of the project seized the opportunity Friday to say the controversy will have a crippling effect on the government's multibillion-dollar effort to license and build a repository at Yucca Mountain. "I thought at first it might be one or more minor isolated incidents of some fabrication, but it's clear in reading these that it was many more than that," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "It's clear this mountain just isn't going to work," he said. Loux said, "The thing that is clear is that there was so much pressure from management to come up with the right answers that these guys weren't sleeping at night. The pressure must have been so great because they made stuff up." The e-mails were dated between 1998 and 2000, when the Energy Department began a push to piece together its science, including an emphasis on quality assurance. The so-called QA process required science technicians to painstakingly document and justify their work according to rigorous standards. " 'Piss on QA' was pretty much the spirit of the times, because we were holding them accountable to do things right," a project auditor said Friday. "Maybe these people didn't have much budget or time, who knows? Everybody has their reasons for doing things." Porter said his House subcommittee plans to release more internal documents Monday that show agency officials measuring potential damage as they reviewed the e-mail messages when they were discovered several weeks ago. "These e-mails describe deliberate failures to follow quality assurance procedures and irreproducible results related to the infiltration of water into the repository," the subcommittee chairman said in a DOE memo that will be released. "These documents acknowledging the problems are real and that they cannot duplicate those tests is the gut of what the story is," Porter said. He said forthcoming documents suggest that officials at Bechtel-SAIC, the project's managing contractor, might have been aware of the problems last year. The subcommittee has invited Bechtel-SAIC to send a representative to testify at Tuesday's hearing. "This begs for questions on how many people were involved and to what degree was management involved," Porter said. Nevada leaders who have fought the government over Yucca Mountain said the disclosures were a powerful blow to a program reeling from legal setbacks and budget cuts. "It should be obvious to everyone now that Yucca Mountain isn't going anywhere," said Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, who renewed a call for the Energy Department to put the project on hold. Republican Sen. John Ensign said the documents "have finally blown the lid off this fraudulent and ill-conceived project. The e-mails are proof that the only thing necessary at this point is that we get to the truth." Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley said, "If this doesn't put an end to Yucca Mountain, I don't know what could." Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons said he still was reviewing the documents but what he had seen so far was "quite revealing and disturbing." Stephens Washington Bureau writer Samantha Young contributed to this report. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 40 Las Vegas RJ: (Yucca) E-MAIL EXCERPTS Saturday, April 02, 2005 The following excerpts appear in redacted e-mails by Yucca Mountain Project scientists from the Department of Interior and Department of Energy. They deal primarily with QA, or quality assurance, of data used to model future climate conditions to predict how water would move through the mountain. The models are important in determining how much dose the public would receive from water laced with radioactive particles escaping the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Grammar and syntax errors are not corrected. Italics are the Review-Journal's explanations. • Oct. 29, 1998: "Wait till they figure out that nothing I've provided them is QA. If they really want the stuff they'll have to pay to do it right." • Dec. 17, 1998: "Like you've said all along. YMP (Yucca Mountain Project) has now reached a point where they need to have certain items work no matter what and the infiltration maps are on that list. If USGS can't find a way to make it work, Sandia will (but for now they are definitely counting on us to do the job.)" • Dec. 17, 1998: "The bottom line is forget about the money, we need a product or we're screwed and will take the blame. ... This is now CYA (cover your ass) and we had better be good at it. I seem to have let this one slip a little to much in an attempt to cover all our work (and get us the hell out of the long term problem of Yucca Mountain.)" • Dec. 18, 1998: "It was made clear that this will be like the OJ trial, where results are completely thrown out because of minor procedural flaws or personal attacks on credibility. As (redacted) told the lawyer who was there, YMP doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of making this work if that is the approach." • April 22, 1999: "When we go to start QAing the site-scale modeling work, will I get taken to the cleaners because I am not referencing either a tech procedure or a scientific notebook? In other words, would it be cost-effective to create a SN for the site-scale work and back-date the whole thing?? Can't wait to be far-far away from here!" • Nov. 15, 1999: "I've deleted the lines from the `official' QA version of the files. ... In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used." • March 30, 2000: "The programs, of course, are all already installed otherwise the AMR would not exist. I don't have a clue when these programs were installed. So I've made up the dates and names (see red edits below). This is as good as its going to get. If they need more proof I will be happy to make up more stuff, as long as its not a video recording of the software being installed." Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 41 Las Vegas RJ: WEEK IN REVIEW: Collection of 90 e-mails details Yucca deceptions Sunday, April 03, 2005 Scientists working on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project fabricated quality assurance for their work modeling how water would move through the mountain under future climate conditions. A collection of 90 e-mails detailed the scientists' efforts to cover up their shortcomings. The e-mails, which portray a workplace where disgruntled employees felt pressured and rushed, were released Friday by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev. "I've made up the dates and names. ... If they need more proof I will be happy to make up more stuff," one e-mail stated. Another confirmed that quality assurance for documenting how much water will seep through the mountain, carrying off radioactive particles as containers holding spent fuel corrode, was lacking. "Wait till they figure out that nothing I've provided them is QA (quality assurance). If they really want the stuff, they'll have to pay to do it right," stated an Oct. 29, 1998, message. One e-mail indicated two sets of files were used by the scientists: one to make quality assurance officials "happy," another that was actually used in the models. The words "fudge" or "fudge factor" appear in a couple of e-mails, including one that states: "Our infiltration model has virtually no infiltration in washes; what infiltration there is in washes is basically put there as a fudge factor. ... I could probably tear apart any of our models. Did somebody say seepage?" Federal officials are investigating. COMPILED BY PETER O'CONNELL c READ THE FULL STORIES ONLINE AT www.reviewjournal.com/wir Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 42 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca Scientists Investigated Over E-Mails April 01, 2005 By ERICA WERNER ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) - E-mails by several government scientists on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump project suggest workers were planning to fabricate records and manipulate results to ensure outcomes that would help the project move forward. "I don't have a clue when these programs were installed. So I've made up the dates and names," wrote a U.S. Geological Survey employee in one e-mail released Friday by a congressional committee investigating suspected document falsification on the project. "This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff." In another message the same employee wrote to a colleague: "In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used." QA apparently refers to "quality assurance." The e-mails, written from 1998 to 2000, were in a batch of correspondence released in advance of next week's hearing by the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Work Force and Agency Organization, chaired by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev. The Energy and Interior departments revealed the existence of the e-mails March 16, and inspectors general of both departments are investigating. The FBI also is conducting a probe, according to a subcommittee staffer. Yucca Mountain, approved by Congress in 2002, is planned as the nation's underground repository for 77,000 tons of defense waste and used reactor fuel from commercial power plants. The material is supposed to be buried for at least 10,000 years beneath the Nevada desert, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Many Nevadans and some environmentalists say the waste can never be safely stored and the plan puts local residents at risk. There also are concerns among others outside the state that hauling the waste to Nevada puts at risk those along the routes. But the Bush administration, the energy industry and others say a central storage site is needed, and would provide better security for tens of thousands of tons of commercial and defense waste now housed at sites in 39 states. The e-mails, dating from the Clinton administration, were circulated among a team of USGS scientists studying how water moves through the planned dump site, a key issue in determining whether and how much radiation could escape. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey validated Energy Department conclusions that water seepage was relatively slow, so radiation would be less likely to escape. Many of the dozens of pages of e-mails released appear to involve not initial scientific experiments, but rather attempts to provide documentation of work done in the past. Several include admonitions from the writers to "delete this memo after you've read it" or "please destroy this memo." The Energy Department is working to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to run the dump, and must turn over extensive documentation. The e-mails, most of them from geological survey field workers in Las Vegas, provide a window into the environment surrounding the project, first considered over 20 years ago. Names and some proper nouns were blacked out by congressional staffers before they were released. "Science by peer pressure is dangerous but sometime (sic) it is necessary," says one message, by a second scientist at the geological survey. The emergence of the e-mails was the latest setback for Yucca Mountain, which has also suffered money shortfalls and an appeals court decision last summer that is forcing a rewrite of radiation exposure limits for the site. The Energy Department recently abandoned a planned 2010 completion date, and department officials have not given a new date. The department's concern about the e-mails is evident in a portion of an internal memo, apparently written around the time they were discovered, that was also released Friday: "These e-mails may create a substantial vulnerability for the program." An Energy Department spokeswoman declined comment on the memo or the contents of the e-mails because of the continuing investigations. --- On the Net: Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: http://www.ymp.gov State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov -- All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 43 Sunday Herald: Fears over plans to dump nuclear waste in Scotland By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor RADIOACTIVE waste could end up being dumped at 30 nuclear sites in the UK, under plans to be unveiled by government advisers this week. In Scotland this would mean burying large volumes of low-level waste at six places: Hunterston in Ayrshire, Faslane near Helensburgh, Torness in East Lothian, Rosyth in Fife, Dounreay in Caithness and Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway. The plans would see more dangerous waste being disposed of in holes deep underground at one or more geologically suitable sites in the UK. Before that, it could be put in interim storage above or just below the ground. The recommendations are to be published tomorrow by the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), set up by the government in 2003 to try and find a way to deal with the huge variety of waste created by the nuclear power and weapons industries over the last 50 years. According to CoRWMs estimates, there will be a total of 470,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste to get rid of, including plutonium, uranium and high-level fission products. Some of these wastes remain radioactive for just a few years, others for hundreds of thousands of years. This total doesnt include the 18 million cubic metres of soil and concrete thought to be contaminated with low-level radioactivity from leaks and spills at nuclear sites. There are an estimated 81,000 cubic metres of contaminated soil at the Hunterston A reactor site in Ayrshire. CoRWMs proposal is for some of the short-lived waste to be buried in shallow pits on the nuclear sites where it was created. This would avoid the need to transport the waste around the country. It would mean that some radioactive waste would stay put, CoRWs chairman, Gordon MacKerron said. But only if we were sure that the risks to future generations were negligible. For longer-lived waste, CoRWM thinks the best solution is some kind of deep disposal. One option is to put the waste permanently in an underground chamber between 300 metres and two kilometres deep where the surrounding rocks would reduce the risk of leakage. A second option is to put the waste down deep holes from which it could be retrieved if something went wrong. Before either of these options are implemented, waste could also carry on being stored in tanks near the grounds surface for some years. CoRWM is not making any suggestions as to where these deep disposal sites might be. An official shortlist from the 1990s of about a dozen sites many of which are suspected of being in Scotland has been kept secret by the government. In a consultation document to be released tomorrow, CoRWM will for the first time be ruling out 11 ways that have been seriously suggested for disposing of radioactive waste. These include blasting it into space, injecting it into rock, freezing it in polar ice and dumping it at sea. Everyone has played their part in helping us draw up our final shortlist. Now we can start to focus on the best options and see which will work and which wont, said MacKerron. CoRWM has had difficulties drawing up its recommendations because two of its members are suspended pending an investigation being carried out by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The committee has also been attacked by some experts for wasting time trying to establish the obvious. But its role has been defended by UK environment minister, Elliot Morley. The CoRWM programme will ensure that there is a complete decision-making audit trail. We are ultimately talking of solutions that will cost billions of pounds and decades to implement. Taking a little time now to get the decision right represents time and money well spent. CoRWM is aiming to submit its final report to ministers in July 2006. The newly formed government agency which will oversee the £50 billion job of cleaning up Britains nuclear plants, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, came into existence on Friday. 03 April 2005 © newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 44 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: 'Make up more stuff ' April 02, 2005 LAS VEGAS SUN WEEKEND EDITION April 2 - 3, 2005 On Tuesday a House subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., will hold a hearing into allegations that scientific records involving the Yucca Mountain project were falsified. Last month the Energy Department disclosed the existence of e-mails sent by U.S. Geological Survey employees working on the Yucca Mountain project's quality assurance program, messages that discussed fabricating scientific information about how water moves through the mountain. On Friday the Associated Press disclosed the content of some of the e-mails, which, to put it simply, are chilling. "I don't have a clue when these programs were installed. So I've made up the dates and names," a U.S. Geological Survey employee wrote in one e-mail. "This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff." In yet another e-mail, the AP reported, the same employee wrote to a colleague about what appear to be his sentiments about quality assurance: "In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the one that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used." How damaging the e-mails are to the Yucca Mountain project's credibility -- and its future -- can't be overstated. After all, a federal employee is blithely discussing tampering with scientific work that goes to the very heart of whether Yucca Mountain can safely contain nuclear waste. If, as Nevada officials have contended, water can travel more rapidly through the mountain than the Energy Department asserts, then there is a real likelihood of the water corroding the canisters holding the nuclear waste, enabling the deadly substance to escape. Such a finding would be a show-stopper, resulting in Yucca Mountain being unable to receive a license to operate from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. When Yucca Mountain eventually meets its demise, we'd suggest that a fitting epitaph could come from one of the aforementioned e-mails. Our favorite: "If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff." We can't think of a more apt description for the absolute disregard for science at Yucca Mountain. All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 45 RGJ: E-mail shows Yucca data could be false + [Reno Gazette-Journal] [Reno Gazette-Journal] April 03, 2005 Reno, Nevada, USA 775-788-6200 WASHINGTON — A House committee released nearly 100 pages of documents Friday in which government employees talked about falsifying research to try to make sure a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada moved forward. “So I’ve made up the dates and names … this is as good as it’s going to get,” one e-mail message said. “If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff.” Nevada lawmakers quickly jumped on the documents, saying they prove that the science behind plans to build a nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is deeply flawed. “After reviewing the first set of documents, I am appalled at the blatant misconduct by federal employees,” said U.S. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Henderson. The Energy Department announced the false information two weeks ago, but did not release any documents to the public. Investigations are under way by the FBI, the Energy Department and a House Committee on Government Reform subcommittee that Porter chairs. The Energy Department declined to comment on the e-mail because of the agency’s ongoing investigation, said spokeswoman Anne Womack-Kolton. The Yucca Mountain project is meant to hold 77,000 tons of nuclear waste from reactors around the country in a deep underground storage forever. The department won’t predict when Yucca Mountain will open after recently pushing back the date from 2010 to 2012. “It’s premature to say whether or not this investigation will affect the overall timeline of Yucca Mountain,” Womack-Kolton said. The e-mail was sent between 1998 and 2000 among Energy Department and U.S. Geological Survey employees whose names were blacked out. The USGS did not return calls for comment Friday. The e-mail lacks context, making it difficult to know how much of the data was falsified or how significant it is to the project. Other quotes in the e-mail: * “In the end, I keep track of two sets of files, the ones that will keep QA (quality assurance) happy and the ones that were actually used.” * “YMP (Yucca Mountain project) has now reached a point where they need to have certain items work no matter what and the infiltration maps are on that list.” Joe Egan, an attorney working on Nevada’s fight against the Yucca Mountain project, said the e-mail essentially shows that water would infiltrate the nuclear repository, corrode the casks housing the atomic fuel and release radioactive material. “The big picture is that the mountain flunked,” said Egan, who is also a nuclear engineer. “These e-mails have finally blown the lid off this fraudulent and ill-conceived project,” said U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. “I’m stunned by the number of references to deleting and destroying e-mails, fudging information and not telling anyone how something was done.” The e-mail messages are only the latest setback for Yucca Mountain. A federal appeals court ruled last summer that a new radiation safety standard must be set before the Energy Department can file its application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ***************************************************************** 46 RGJ: As Yucca project stalls, Utah nuke waste dump hits fast track + [Reno Gazette-Journal] [Reno Gazette-Journal] April 03, 2005 Reno, Nevada, USA 775-788-6200 [ BORDER=] Special Offers at Doug AbrahmsGannett News Service 4/2/2005 11:15 pm /AP file A pickup passes an anti-nuclear waste sign along Utah 186 leading to the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley, Utah, in this April 18, 2002, file photo. Plans are moving forward to build a privately owned nuclear waste storage site on the reservation, about 50 miles west of Salt Lake City, despite state opposition. WASHINGTON — The fates of proposed nuclear waste dumps in Nevada and Utah are heading in opposite directions. The Yucca Mountain project 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is already years behind schedule. And this week, a House oversight panel will hold a hearing on allegations of falsified scientific data on the project, which could further delay it. Meanwhile, an arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already approved a plan to temporarily store nuclear waste on an Indian reservation about 50 miles west of Salt Lake City. Utah officials will appeal that decision next week, but experts expect the Private Fuel Storage project to win final approval and start operating by 2007. “I am nervous about what’s happening right now,” said U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, R-Utah. “I think once (nuclear waste) gets here, it will be very tough to get rid of.” Two different projects The projects at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians reservation in Utah are vastly different. Yucca Mountain is a federal project designed to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear waste from around the country in deep underground storage forever. The Skull Valley site, which is privately owned, will house about 44,000 tons of atomic reactor rods on a concrete pad above ground and only has a 25-year lease. Many in the industry saw Private Fuel Storage, a project funded by several large utilities, as a way station for nuclear waste between power plants in the East and Yucca Mountain. “That’s always been the concept of this facility,” Private Fuel Storage spokeswoman Sue Martin said. “The utilities could see by the early ’90s that Yucca Mountain wasn’t going to be finished by 1998,” its initial target date. The Utah project was approved in February by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, an arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But it still needs full NRC approval and Bureau of Land Management permission to build a rail spur to the waste site. The Energy Department and industry representatives say Yucca Mountain remains their long-term solution to store nuclear waste despite the investigation into potentially falsified U.S. Geological Survey data and an appeals court ruling that Yucca Mountain’s radiation standards weren’t stringent enough. “Right now, we are moving forward with Yucca Mountain,” said Anne Womack-Kolton, an Energy Department spokeswoman. “We continue to believe that a permanent geologic repository is necessary.” No opening date for Yucca Yucca Mountain was supposed to start receiving spent nuclear fuel for permanent storage in 2010, but Energy Department officials in February pushed that back to 2012 and Womack-Kolton won’t give an official opening date at this time. The project is moving forward, although more slowly than industry officials would like, said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents electric companies. The federal government is obligated to take possession of the nuclear waste produced by atomic reactors, he said. “We fully expect the government to meet its obligation one way or another,” he said. “(Yucca Mountain) is the plan on the table. On that basis, we’re not looking for a Plan B.” However, Nevada officials point to the growing list of court decisions, ballooning costs and, most recently, false documents as evidence that the Yucca Mountain project is falling off the tracks. “Clearly, there’s a growing loss of confidence in Congress as well as the utilities as to whether this thing works out,” said Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, which opposes Yucca Mountain. “Now, it is no longer a question of whether Yucca Mountain will crumble, but when.” Loux together with U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign of Nevada and Gov. Kenny Guinn will testify against the project at a House Government Reform Committee hearing Tuesday on the falsified documents. Utah still fighting dump Utah lawmakers are still pursuing their own avenues to stop the nuclear waste project at Skull Valley. U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, will introduce a bill to convert federal land next to the reservation into a wilderness area to prevent a rail spur from being built. Matheson, the only Utah lawmaker to vote against Yucca Mountain, opposes nuclear waste being shipped to the West. When Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, he said, there were to be sites in the East and West. But in 2005, both sites for a nuclear waste dump are in the West, he said. “It tells you the politics are driving this more than the science perspective,” Matheson said. “I think this was a clear case of the East dumping its waste on the West.” align="right">© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett Co. Inc.Newspaper. ***************************************************************** 47 Salt Lake Tribune: Reid: Yucca should be junked Article Last Updated: 04/02/2005 02:02:54 AM Senator says e-mails reveal fabricated research By Thomas Burr The Salt Lake Tribune U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., speaks before an overflow crowd Friday at the University of Utah in Salt Lake. (Douglas C. Pizac/The Associated Press) U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told a Salt Lake City audience Friday that e-mails exposing fraudulent Yucca Mountain research should scuttle the idea of transporting and storing nuclear waste at the Nevada site. Reid, a Mormon who is in Utah for the LDS Church's General Conference this weekend, said he has always believed there was false information used to justify the Yucca project and the e-mails that surfaced Friday show "that would be the case." The e-mails reveal government scientists were planning to fabricate information when approving a part of the Yucca project. "This is worse than the Enron stuff," Democrat Reid said, noting the messages may show criminal activity. "These are federal employees. We need to have a slower look taken at this. I think they're just really bad." Reid, who spoke at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics, referred to internal messages between scientists who were probing whether storing up to 77,000 tons of nuclear waste would affect groundwater. The Associated Press reported Friday that a U.S. Geological Survey employee wrote in an e-mail released by a congressional committee probing suspected falsification on the project that, "This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff." Besides concerns about the science backing Yucca, Reid said later that Americans will not stand for nuclear waste being transported anywhere because of the dangers of shipping it. "Every one of those trains and trucks are a target for terrorists," Reid said. "I just don't think people are going to allow nuclear waste to be [transported]." Reid said nuclear waste - created for defense reasons or in generating nuclear energy - should stay where it is created and added that Utah's congressional delegation should stand with him to support legislation he plans to introduce, probably this month, to have the government take control of the waste and store it at the reactors. Asked whether he could get Utah's U.S. Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch on board with him, Reid said he wasn't sure. Both Utah senators backed the Yucca project in a 2002 vote. "It's pretty obvious that they could have helped us and they didn't," Reid said, though he noted earlier that "two Utah senators seem to be a little interested now" in blocking waste movement. While the long-delayed and controversial Yucca site is on hold, Utah could end up storing thousands of tons of nuclear waste on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele County. State officials have failed in several attempts to bar storage there. When the discussion turned to religion, Reid said that conservatives do not have a lock on church-going Americans and that more progressive followers should stand up to make their voices heard. He mentioned an edict from the LDS church's leaders that is read before every election declaring that the church does not endorse a political party. "I just wish that members of the church would listen to what they're saying," he said. On another issue, Reid said that the proposal to nudge Utah's state line east so that Utah's Wendover could merge with its Nevada counterpart would never happen. Reid, who has been the top recipient of gambling campaign contributions, has blocked the concept of changing the state line out of concern for the investments the casinos have made in Wendover. "Utah's going to have to keep Wendover," Reid declared. tburr@sltrib.com © Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 48 Salt Lake Tribune: Bennett not hot on Yucca now Article Last Updated: 04/03/2005 01:30:20 AM He may opt for leaving radioactive waste at the reactors By Robert Gehrke The Salt Lake Tribune WASHINGTON - In a gamble to block a proposed nuclear waste storage site 45 miles from Salt Lake City, Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett threw in three years ago with the Bush administration's effort to bury nuclear waste deep inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain. But now, as Yucca's political and scientific problems mount, Bennett, at least, appears to be hedging his bet. He indicated in an interview last week that he might entertain the option of leaving the waste at the reactors that produced it - a step away from the White House and toward closing a divide between the senators and other Utah politicians. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has come out squarely against Yucca and in support of leaving the highly radioactive nuclear material on site at the reactors. Two of the three U.S. House members from Utah have said they oppose Yucca, and Rep. Chris Cannon, who voted to send the waste to Nevada, has changed his stand. And an increasingly vocal cadre of state lawmakers has joined the chorus. They agree that building Yucca Mountain would not kill the proposal by Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of electric companies, to "temporarily" store 44,000 tons of spent nuclear rods on Utah's Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation and would, in the best case scenario, mean thousands of tons of waste would be shipped through the state. "Now people are starting to focus on the fact that, well wait, Yucca Mountain is also a sorry idea. Why haven't we been thinking of something else?" asked state Rep. Steve Urquhart. The St. George Republican says the "straight to Yucca" strategy is driven more by politics than reality, and he predicts a change. "On this one, Hatch is the weather vane and if the political winds are changing, he'll turn," Urquhart said. Hatch is up for re-election next year. The drive toward Yucca Mountain suffered a serious setback last month when it was revealed U.S. Geological Survey scientists may have falsified documents on the suitability of the site. The FBI has launched a criminal investigation, according to The Associated Press. With Yucca Mountain already well over budget and years behind schedule, opponents hope the latest episode dooms the project. A House Government Reform subcommittee will hold a hearing Tuesday on Yucca's safety and viability. Cannon, who voted in 2002 to build Yucca Mountain, now says much has changed and storing the waste at the reactors offers a safe, practical alternative. Continuing the Yucca push could actually make it more likely the fuel would end up in Utah and stay longer, he says. "The more distant [Yucca] appears, the more likely that we will get temporary storage in Utah," he said. "So either we have to have assurances that Yucca is going to work, or we have to be thinking, 'What else are we going to do with it?' " Bennett and Hatch also voted for Yucca in 2002, based on an assurance from the White House that it would make the PFS site unnecessary. They reiterated their support after another meeting with the White House last month. "It's what has to be done under the circumstances and we're going to do everything to help them get there," Hatch said. He remains committed to Yucca Mountain, a spokesman says, but Bennett said Thursday that he could reconsider. "My previous support of Yucca has never been based on the science because the science says to me leave it where it is, but the politics take that off the table," Bennett said. "I am perfectly willing to consider other alternatives if they are politically viable." The politics are prickly. Not only does the nuclear industry and Bush administration back Yucca, but congressional delegations from Eastern, urban areas that rely on nuclear power support it. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and the subcommittee that sets the budget for energy programs, is concerned about the delays and cost of the project, but he remains committed to building the repository and is not considering other options, said his spokeswoman Marnie Funk. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has spent years trying to kill Yucca, will introduce legislation this month that would allow the federal government to assume responsibility for the waste and store it in casks near the reactor sites. He was scheduled to meet privately with Huntsman in Salt Lake City on Saturday and was expected to discuss the issue. "If we have a Yucca Mountain ultimately, well, 90 percent of that garbage is going to go right through our state, and if I don't stand up and try to protect what I think are the best interests of this state, then I'm not adequately and properly serving my constituents," Huntsman said in a news conference last week. The nuclear industry and companies backing the Private Fuel Storage facility say Reid's idea is flawed and would not solve the storage and security problems many reactors are facing. Time may be running out to stop the Goshute facility. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a hearing Tuesday on Utah's challenge to the PFS license. If the NRC grants the license, the state can challenge it in court. The Interior secretary could also stop the facility by vetoing the lease between PFS and the tribe or preventing a rail line across federal land to the reservation. © Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 49 KCI: National Academies Select KU Professor for Radioactive Waste Study - USA Kansas City infoZine - Saturday, April 02, 2005 :: infoZine Staff National Academies Select KU Professor for Radioactive Waste Study The committee's objectives are to review and evaluate the plan to manage the leftover waste at sites in Idaho and Washington state as well as the Savannah River site. Lawrence, Kan. - infoZine - Don Steeples, vice provost for scholarly support and Dean A. McGee distinguished professor of geophysics at the University of Kansas, has been named a member of a committee to examine disposition of residual radioactive waste that may remain in storage tanks at three federal nuclear facilities. The work will be done under the auspices of the National Academies, based in Washington, D.C. Steeples, whose research has included shallow seismic methods for cavity detection, engineering studies and environmental remediation, joins 19 other scholars and experts who are reviewing and evaluating U.S. Department of Energy plans for radioactive waste management. "I'm proud to be working with such a highly esteemed group of individuals," Steeples said. "The work we have been asked to do will be of growing importance in the future, and I look forward to helping to create satisfactory solutions." The U.S. Congress commissioned the National Academy of Sciences waste management study in Section 3146 of the Ronald W. Reagan Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush in October 2004. U.S. Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., secured the $1.5 million needed to fund the study. Spratt has urged the National Academy of Sciences to look at technical, regulatory and environmental issues surrounding a Bush administration plan to leave behind nuclear waste in storage tanks at a Savannah River site in South Carolina. Department of Energy officials plan to pump out most of the waste in the tanks and convert it into glass rods, which would be moved and stored at a proposed facility near Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Officials then plan to seal remaining sludge inside the tanks and leave them in place. The committee's objectives are to review and evaluate the plan to manage the leftover waste at sites in Idaho and Washington state as well as the Savannah River site. The committee is scheduled to issue an interim report in July and a final report in January. Steeples is involved in the development and application of noninvasive geophysical techniques, specifically shallow seismic methods applied to environmental and groundwater problems. He has participated in several National Academies studies, including a study of noninvasive techniques for characterization of the shallow subsurface for environmental and engineering applications. The National Academies' Board of Radioactive Waste Management was established in 1958 to monitor spent fuel, high-level waste from reprocessing, transuranic waste, low-level waste, mixed waste and naturally occurring radioactive materials. The National Academies bring together committees of experts in areas of science and technology to address critical national issues and to advise the federal government and the public. For more information about the National Academies visit www.nationalacademies.org/. For more information about the Board of Radioactive Waste Management visit www7.nationalacademies.org/brwm/. ***************************************************************** 50 Scotsman.com: UK should bury nuclear waste in deep rocks, experts say Monday, 4th April 2005 KEVIN SCHOFIELD Key points • Experts want nuclear waste buried underground not in space or at sea • 470,000 metres³ of waste expected from nuclear plants in next 100 years • Britons live 26 miles from a radioactive waste site on average Key quote "We want to listen to everyone’s thoughts - be they members of the public, environmental groups, local authorities, waste managers or regulators" - Gordon MacKerron, Committee on Radioactive Waste Management chairman Story in full EXPERTS are recommending that the UK’s nuclear waste be buried underground, after dismissing suggestions that it should be blasted into space or dumped at sea. The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management(CORWM), which was set up to advise the government on the best long-term solution to the problem of waste disposal, has also rejected the options of disposing of it in ice sheets, injecting it directly into rock or placing it in indefinite above-ground storage. Options on how to dispose of Britain’s nuclear waste in a way that will keep it safe for hundreds of years are published today. According to CORWM, the UK’s existing nuclear facilities will produce 470,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste - enough to fill the Albert Hall five times - over the next 100 years. A recent study found that on average, people in Britain live about 26 miles away from one of more than 30 radioactive waste sites in the UK, including those associated with power plants and military bases. The first option being proposed by CORWM is deep disposal, which would see the nuclear waste being buried permanently between 300 metres and 2km underground and allowing rocks to act as a protective chamber. CORWM also suggests a system of phased deep disposal, where the waste would be retrievable, the shallow burial of waste with short-lived radioactivity and interim storage above ground or just below the surface. Interested parties and the general public can give their opinions during a consultation processthat lasts until 27 June. Final recommendations will be submitted to the government in July next year. Gordon MacKerron, chairman of the CORWM, said: "We want to listen to everyone’s thoughts - be they members of the public, environmental groups, local authorities, waste managers or regulators. All have played their part in helping us draw up our final shortlist. Now we can start to focus on the best options and see which will work and which won’t." Scotland currently has nuclear power plants at Torness, Hunterston and Chapelcross, while another, Dounreay, has been decommissioned. Submarines with nuclear-weapons capabilities are based at Faslane naval base on the Clyde. It is not yet known whether any of these sites would be used as potential radioactive waste dumps. In the 1980s, attempts by the waste agency Nirex to identity underground sites in the UK were greeted with widespread opposition, forcing the industry and government to abandon the approach. A Scottish Executive spokeswoman called for as many people as possible to take part in the consultation exercise. She said: "The publication of the committee’s shortlist of options provides the opportunity for the public and stakeholders to participate in decisions on waste management. The Executive encourage people to engage with CORWM to ensure that its recommendations to ministers fully reflect public and stakeholder views." Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said he was glad that "crazy" suggestions such as sending nuclear waste into space had been rejected - but voiced concerns about the proposals that remain. He said: "As long as there are options to bury the country’s radioactive legacy underground then groups like Friends of the Earth will have concerns. "Scotland is home to nuclear plants which in addition to producing electricity also emit radioactive pollution and produce highly dangerous solid and liquid wastes." ©2005 Scotsman.com ***************************************************************** 51 Deseret news: Nevadan says Utah may bar nuclear waste [deseretnews.com] Saturday, April 2, 2005 By Lisa Riley Roche Deseret Morning News Utah doesn't have to be the country's next choice for a nuclear dumping ground, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Friday after an appearance at the University of Utah. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., says at the University of Utah the state may be able to use legislation to kill the Skull Valley facility. Douglas C. Pizac, Associated Press "Just because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does something doesn't mean we can't stop it, with legislation," Reid told reporters after spending nearly an hour fielding questions from a standing-room-only audience at the U.'s Hinckley Institute of Politics. But don't expect the powerful Nevada Democrat to introduce a bill halting the Skull Valley temporary storage facility in Tooele County sought by the Goshute tribe. Reid said that's up to Utah's senators. Reid will, however, propose legislation soon that calls for nuclear waste to be stored where it is generated rather than transported to a single site. That would make both Yucca Mountain and Skull Valley obsolete. "I just think people aren't going to allow nuclear waste to be hauled," Reid said. "Look at the Goshute operation. You're not going to wake up one morning and find (the nuclear waste) suddenly there. It's got to get there some way. . . , past people's homes, schoolyards, businesses and churches." Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, both R-Utah, have previously opposed Reid's efforts to keep Nevada's Yucca Mountain from being named the nation's permanent nuclear waste repository. They have called it the best way to block the Skull Valley project, now pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is set to hear an appeal on Wednesday from Utah officials attempting who argue the project is too risky. Because new concerns continue to be raised about the Yucca Mountain site, there is increased fear among opponents of the Skull Valley project that not only will it be approved, it will be turned into a permanent resting place for the nation's nuclear waste. The latest challenge to Yucca Mountain surfaced Friday with a report citing e-mails sent by several government scientists working on the project that indicated records were being fabricated and results manipulated. Reid said the e-mails are "worse than the Enron stuff." The senator cautioned his audience at the Hinckley Institute that "interim means forever" when talking about nuclear waste storage. He told them, as well, that "even the two Utah senators seem a little bit interested now" in his concerns about shipping nuclear waste. Later, Reid told reporters that he considers Hatch and Bennett friends, "but nuclear waste is something we don't talk about. It's pretty obvious. They should have helped us and didn't. So I'm not going to go hat in hand and beg them for a vote." Rep. Jim Matheson, one of several Democratic politicians in the audience, said the Utah delegation needs to work together. "I think (Reid's) saying, 'Look, I don't want it to come into Utah. I'm prepared to stop the transportation.' I guess that's the right approach right now." Like Matheson, Reid also spoke out against resuming nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site. "I don't think we need to do testing as we've done it in the past," Reid said, suggesting computers can check weapons without detonating them. Reid, who is in Utah to attend the annual general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is scheduled to meet Saturday with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. Huntsman, a Republican, opposes forcing the West to store waste generated in other parts of the country. The Nevada senator spoke of his ties to Utah, including attending what is now Southern Utah University and Utah State University. Reid said he and Matheson are examples that it is possible to be both a Democrat and a Mormon. Leaders of the LDS Church make it clear, Reid said, that "they don't take sides on elections. I just wish that members of the church would listen to what they say." That comment received hearty applause from his university audience. Reid said, too, that "members of the leadership of the Mormon church, they have never come to me in my various leadership positions over the years and told me, suggested to me, what I should do on an issue." E-mail: lisa@desnews.com © 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 52 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca e-mails called damning Today: April 01, 2005 at 14:39:53 PST By Suzanne Struglinski SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., called e-mails on the alleged falsified information on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump "damning" but would not discuss details to avoid compromising ongoing criminal investigations. Porter complained today the Energy and Interior departments have not cooperated in giving his House subcommittee redacted documents so the public could access some information on the most recent Yucca controversy. "My goal was to not interfere with the criminal investigation," Porter said. "They have not complied with my request so we are doing it ourselves." The Energy Department announced its discovery of potential falsified documents on the Yucca Mountain project March 16, based on e-mails written between 1998 and 2000 by a U.S. Geological Survey employee. Porter said the documents indicate a "very serious breach of trust" but would not comment on specific details. The FBI and the inspector generals of both department are investigating the situation. The House Federal Workforce and Agency Organization subcommittee, chaired by Porter, received a set of unredacted e-mails documents this week, which Porter reviewed Thursday night. Redacted document were supposed to be made available at 9 a.m. PST today, but were delayed because Porter's subcommittee attorney had to redact documents themselves. Porter said he is prepare to subpoena any additional document either department does not turn over. There is some overlap between the two departments' documents but each mainly has different information related to the alleged falsification. "Our first priority is the public," Porter said. "I'm prepared to do whatever it takes for the public to have access to this information." He said the redacted documents would contain useful information. Porter will hear from both departments' inspector generals at a hearing Tuesday as well as Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval and other state officials. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who will also testify Tuesday, called on the Energy Department to stop its work on the project's license application as the investigations take place. Meanwhile, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has postponed its hearing focusing on the status of the Yucca project until further notice. Committee spokeswoman Angela Harper said the committee already had a full schedule for the week with a conference on water challenges and moving forward with the Energy Bill. A House panel will begin marking up its version of the bill next week. All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 53 albawaba.com: Washington urges Israel to renounce nuclear weapons Posted: 03-04-2005 , 13:38 GMT The US State Department Saturday called upon Israel to forswear nuclear weapons and accept International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards on all nuclear activities, according to a report Sunday in HaAretz daily. [dimona src=] This marks the second time in the last two weeks that officials in the Bush administration are putting the nuclear weapons of Israel, India and Pakistan on a par. The officials called on the three to act like Ukraine and South Africa, which in the last decade renounced their nuclear weapons. The similar phrasing used by the officials refers to Israel's military nuclear capability, as distinct from "nuclear option," which is to be rolled back, although not necessarily in the "foreseeable future." © 2005 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com) ***************************************************************** 54 Japan Times: Nuclear foes want Rokkasho, Monju on U.N. nonproliferation agenda Saturday, April 2, 2005 By ERIC JOHNSTON Staff writer KYOTO -- Japanese and international antinuclear groups plan to use an upcoming United Nations conference on nuclear nonproliferation to push for a moratorium on the Rokkasho atomic fuel reprocessing plant and the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor. "Given the growing stockpiles of plutonium and weapons-usable nuclear fuel around the world, it makes no sense whatsoever for Japan to advocate reprocessing at Rokkasho, which enriches uranium fuel, or the restart of the Monju fast-breeder reactor. These two plants will add to the danger of nuclear proliferation," said Tom Clements of Greenpeace International in Washington at a recent gathering of antinuclear activists in Kyoto. As of March 2004, Japan had around 45 tons of plutonium in storage, including nearly 5.5 tons at nuclear plants and related facilities, and another 39 tons at overseas reprocessing plants -- mainly in England and France. In their campaign to put a stop to both plants, Clements and other members of Greenpeace, along with Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action Kyoto and representatives of Tokyo-based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, plan to be in New York during the May 2-27 U.N. nonproliferation conference. Their plan is to lobby member countries and hold public seminars on Rokkasho and Monju in a bid to get the issue put on the U.N. meeting's agenda. Clements pointed out that, in recent weeks, comments from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations have indicated that both might like to see both Rokkasho and Monju halted. While not mentioning specific countries, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei in early February called for a five-year moratorium on additional facilities for uranium enrichment and plutonium separation. "There is no compelling reason to build more of these facilities. The nuclear industry has more than enough capacity to fuel its power plants and research facilities," ElBaradei said. Then, on March 21, a similar recommendation was made in the secretary general's report to the General Assembly. "While the access of nonnuclear weapon states to the benefits of nuclear technology should not be curtailed, we should focus on creating incentives for states to voluntarily forgo the development of domestic uranium enrichment and plutonium separation facilities, while guaranteeing their supply of the fuel necessary to develop peaceful uses," the report says. Japan claims the Rokkasho reprocessing plant and Monju remain an integral part of the nation's atomic energy program. But commercial operation of the Rokkasho plant, due to have started in summer 2006, was again postponed to May 2007 -- the eighth time its startup has been postponed. "Costs for the Rokkasho plant are now at over 2 trillion yen, making it arguably the most expensive facility in modern world history. Perhaps only the ancient Egyptian pyramids cost more," Clements said. The Fukui governor has given his approval to the remodeling of Monju necessary for its restart. The reactor has been idle since a December 1995 sodium leak accident. However, the Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court ruled in early 2003 that the government's 1983 approval of the Monju project was invalid. The state appealed to the Supreme Court, which is expected to hand down its decision within a few months. Clements noted that, by pushing ahead with Monju, Japan is very much going against international trends. "Breeder reactors in most countries have failed. The breeder-reactor program in the United States is completely dead," he said. Over the past few years, advocates of nuclear power in some countries, including Japan, have used the Kyoto Protocol, which sets targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, as a pretext for building atomic plants, as well as nuclear fuel reprocessing plants. Doing so, they claim, will reduce both the world's dependence on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. But Clements and Greenpeace wonder who is going to pay for the construction of new plants. "Nuclear power plants are extremely expensive to build, and there is the problem of disposal of radioactive waste. I don't see construction of new plants taking place without a huge flow of investment, and the will of most countries to invest tax money in nuclear power plants doesn't seem to be there," he said. The Japan Times: April 2, 2005 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 55 Political Affairs Magazine Japan: Anti-nuclear Petition Gains Worldwide Support By: Akahata Published: 04/02/2005 09:17 International efforts to collect signatures in support of the "Abolition Nuclear Weapons Now!" appeal are gaining momentum in response to the call of the Japan Council against A &H Bombs (Japan Gensuikyo) in preparation for the NPT Review Conference scheduled for May. Anti-nuclear movement leaders and government representatives of non-aligned and New Agenda Coalition countries have signed the petition. In India, peace activists who participated in the 2004 World Conference against A &H Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki translated the petition into their local languages and collected about 10,000 signatures. The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) decided to carry out this signature campaign at its National Coordination Committee meeting in late February. Founded in 1998 in the national movement against the Indian nuclear bomb test, the CNDP is the largest anti-nuclear organization in India. The elimination of nuclear weapons was a major issue at the national anti-war assembly organized by the CNDP late last year. Japan Gensuikyo Standing Director Asato Rieko stressed the need for anti-nuclear and social movements to join forces to increase public awareness of the need for nuclear weapons abolition. She called for efforts to create an equitable and peaceful world and to bring many anti-nuclear signatures to the NPT Review Conference. The assembly confirmed its support for the "Abolition Nuclear Weapons Now!" signature campaign as part of activities to mark the 60th anniversary of atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and action in New York on May 1 in line with the NPT Review Conference. The British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) last fall decided to increase activities calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons on the 60th A-bomb anniversary. Japan Gensuikyo Secretary General Takakusagi Hiroshi gave a commemorative speech at the CND conference. CND representative Kate Hudson expressed hope to work together with Japan Gensuikyo to increase public awareness of the destructive power of nuclear weapons and the increasing danger of such weapons being used. At the World Social Forum held in Brazil in January, Jacqueline Cabasso, U.S. coordinator for the Abolition 2000, carried out the "Abolition Nuclear Weapons Now!" campaign with Gensuikyo representatives. At the World Social Forum 2005, Japanese peace organizations, including Japan Gensuikyo, held a workshop on the abolition of nuclear weapons. Tsuchida Yayoi, Japan Gensuikyo National Executive Board member, spoke about how the anti-nuclear weapons movement is developing in Japan, the only actual atom-bombed country. She also called for making the 60th anniversary of the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki an occasion to make a fresh start towards abolishing nuclear weapons. A "Call to Action of the Anti-War Assembly" adopted during the World Social Forum included proposals for supporting global actions on May 1st, the day before the NPT Conference, to demand the abolition of nuclear weapons and on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with a call for global actions on August 6-9 to say "No more Hiroshimas! No more Nagasakis!" Someone said, "For anti-war forces, it will be a shame not to act to abolish nuclear weapons in the year of the 60th anniversary of the A-bombings." Starting with discussions on economic issues, the World Social Forum united with struggles against the Iraq War, and now it has built international solidarity with the anti-nuclear weapons movement. Also, in the Executive Committee meeting of the World Peace Council held in Cyprus in early March, the major subject of discussion was how to develop activities devoted to the abolition of nuclear weapons in the year of the 60th anniversary of the A-bombings. Thanassis Pafilis, World Peace Council secretary general, proposed to promote a signature-collecting campaign titled, "Abolition Nuclear Weapons, Now!" and called for the success of the World Conference against A and H Bombs scheduled for summer 2005 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A Mexican representative passionately said, "Recalling that the World Peace Council took a lead in collecting 500 million people's signatures throughout the world in the Stockholm Appeal campaign, it is time for us to do something that surpasses our past successes. The key for this will be collecting signatures." U.S. mayors, too An American representative in charge of preparing a parade and a rally in New York during the NPT Review Conference reported that some mayors in the United States issued an appeal calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons, and that conditions to mobilize a wide range of people are now emerging. Delegates from Austria and Portugal said that they are supporting an appeal by the Peace Mayors Council to gain support from municipal heads of their countries. Websites of the Abolition 2000and the CND establish a link to an English site for the "Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, Now!" These moves show that the struggle for nuclear abolition is now stronger than ever. ***************************************************************** 56 AFSC: Stop Funding for New Nuclear Weapons Bush Wants New Nuclear Weapons [atomic bomb weapons of mass destruction] What is your most urgent priority for the American people? Is it to create a new set of nuclear weapons? Here is an alert from the Friends Committee on National Legislation (the Quakers). The Bush administration this year is reviving its proposal for a new generation of "usable" nuclear weapons. Your actions and the efforts of thousands of others helped efforts by Rep. David Hobson (OH) to eliminate funding for these weapons in 2004. Now we need to mobilize again to slam the door shut on these new nuclear weapons before the administration's 2005 proposal gains momentum. In 2004, Congress eliminated the money for new nuclear weapons in the final appropriations bill. The Bush administration has in 2005 once again proposed a new set of nuclear weapons, including a "bunker busting" nuclear bomb that would penetrate the ground before exploding, in order to be maximally destructive. The Energy Department budget request includes $4 million to develop this new nuclear bomb, also known as the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator." Read FCNL's fact sheet on these weapons at The administration is also asking for $4.5 million in the Air Force budget for non-nuclear tests that would evaluate the new nuclear weapon's ability to penetrate into the earth before exploding. While the amount requested at first seems small relative to the overall military budget, spending any funds on the bunker buster keeps alive a program that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars once it moves from research to production. In addition to the cost to the taxpayer, the program undermines U.S. efforts to convince other countries not to develop nuclear weapons. The administration is also asking for $9 million for a second nuclear weapons program: the "Reliable Replacement Warhead." This program, if continued beyond the planning stage, would also result in hundreds of millions of dollars being spent to replace current warheads and could lead to the resumption of nuclear testing. Your efforts and the efforts of thousands of others to successfully eliminate funds for the bunker buster in 2004 shows that the public does not support these weapons. Now we need to mobilize again to slam the door shut on new nuclear weapons. Please contact your representatives. Urge them to call for the elimination of all funding for the bunker buster nuclear weapons from the defense authorization bill and the energy and water appropriations bill that Congress is now drafting. Also, you might thank Congress for eliminating funding for the bunker buster weapons last year. Tell your representatives that new nuclear weapons will not make the world more secure. Developing new nuclear weapons sends a message to the rest of the world that nuclear weapons are usable. This undermines U.S. security. Contacting your members of Congress is easy. You can email or fax your member of Congress for free by going to Once there, you will also find talking points to help you write your letter. It is best to put your message in your own words, since congressional staff often ignore "form letters." ** The Friends Committee on National Legislation says: "We seek a world free of war and the threat of war. We seek a society with equity and justice for all. We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled. We seek an earth restored." Is building a new set of weapons of mass destruction high on your list of priorities for the nation that already has the most such weapons, and is deeply in debt? What do you recommend? Tell your views to The Progress Report: ***************************************************************** 57 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Second suspected leaky tank is emptied [seattlepi.com] Saturday, April 2, 2005 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS RICHLAND -- Radioactive wastes have been removed from a second Hanford Nuclear Reservation underground tank that was suspected to be leaking, Energy Department officials said yesterday. The move came 14 months after the first of 177 underground storage tanks was emptied. Private contractor CH2M-Hill Hanford Group used a promising new method to remove nearly all of the residual sludge, state and federal officials said. Liquid waste was pumped from the tank earlier. "They retrieved more than 99 percent, which is incredibly impressive," said Sheryl Hutchison, state Department of Ecology spokeswoman. Tank C-203 was one of 149 single-walled steel tanks that began holding radioactive wastes in the mid-1940s. Of those single-walled tanks, 67 -- including C-203 -- were believed to have leaked radioactive waste into the ground. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 448-8000 ©1996-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer ***************************************************************** 58 Las Vegas RJ: Defense spending up 35 percent in state in three years Sunday, April 03, 2005 Nevada companies reaped more than $439 million in '04 By SAMANTHA YOUNG STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU A Predator drone circles the Indian Springs Auxiliary Field. The Sparks company that makes landing gear for the drone has boosted revenues by almost 35 percent in the past three years. REVIEW-JOURNAL FILE PHOTO WASHINGTON -- When the Pentagon was ready to buy, Sierra Nevada Corp. was ready to sell. As a result, when the Defense Department began to ratchet up spending to record levels, the Sparks company that makes landing gear for the Predator drone became one of thousands of contractors to profit from the war on terror that commenced after Sept. 11, 2001. The Department of Defense in fiscal 2004 awarded a record $241 billion in contracts, pumping 56 percent more taxpayer dollars into the states compared to 2001 spending. Major defense contract spending in Nevada jumped 35 percent since the war on terrorism began, according to government figures. Nevada companies reaped more than $439 million last year from the Army, Navy and Air Force, and other defense agencies. In fiscal 2001, the Pentagon spent $323 million in the state. Some of the extra spending can be tied directly to military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Other sums reflect ongoing missions and maintenance at installations such as Nellis Air Force Base, the Fallon Naval Air Station and Hawthorne Army Depot, officials said. "It's always good for defense companies when military spending goes up," said Renee Velasco, corporate director of mergers and acquisitions for Sierra Nevada Corp. On a national scale, Nevada ranks only 42nd in defense spending, pocket change compared to California, Virginia, Texas, Maryland and Connecticut, which together collected $90 billion in fiscal 2004 from the Pentagon. Pentagon spending in the state pales beside the amounts the Department of Energy spends each year to support the Nevada Test Site and the ongoing effort to develop a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The DOE spent $879 million last year, most of it given to Bechtel Nevada Inc., the test site management firm, and Bechtel SAIC Co., the management and operations contractor for the Yucca Mountain Project, according to the General Services Administration that tallies contract spending. Defense dollars also don't compare to the economic engine of the gaming industry. According to the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, revenues generated by gaming amounted to $917 million in January alone, double what the Pentagon spent in Nevada for an entire year. The newest Strip resort, Wynn Las Vegas, cost a reported $2.7 billion to build. "We clearly spend over a billion dollars for a new casino so (defense spending) doesn't even add up to one casino," said Keith Schwer, director of the UNLV center. Schwer said defense spending lags because Nevada does not have a manufacturing base to attract the biggest contracts to make weapons systems. "Nevada has not kept up," Schwer said. "We do not have an industrial base so we're not building airplanes, tanks and ships. All those dollars go elsewhere." But at whatever increased level, defense spending creates jobs and pumps revenue into the state economy, analysts said. Nellis Air Force Base is a particular moneymaker. "Having a major installation like Nellis is a guarantee of a revenue stream," said Troy Wade, chairman of the Nevada Alliance for Defense, Energy and Business. "It's residual beyond what's spent directly at the base." At Nellis, upgrades are in the works for base housing and administrative facilities. Contracts offered through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have attracted bidders from California that hire Southern Nevada laborers and craftsmen for the duration of their project, officials from several construction companies said. Straub Construction Inc. of Bonsall, Calif., is building a hotel for visiting airmen, a military vehicle maintenance facility, and a headquarters administration building at Nellis. The Nova Group Inc. of Napa, Calif., is installing a state-of-the-art fuel distribution system for the base's fighter jets. "What we do is outside the realm of the military budget increases," said Jill Miller, Nova Group marketing director. "Our infrastructure improvements support the jets that are flying in and out of bases. We are contributing but not in a direct way." The biggest beneficiary of defense spending hikes is Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, which designs and manufactures landing gear for the Predator, the unmanned aircraft "piloted" from the Air Force auxiliary base at Indian Springs that has played a growing role in overseas conflicts. Though some of the firm's new business can be tied to the war, Velasco attributed the company's growth also to its movement into cutting-edge technology used in classified military operations. As Nevada's top defense contractor, Sierra Nevada has boosted revenues by almost 35 percent in the past three years, officials said. It was awarded $42 million in fiscal 2004, according to government figures. "We do a lot of work that relates to Iraqi Freedom," said Connie Luna, SNC's corporate director of program controls. At the Indian Springs base, 45 miles northwest of Nellis, construction crews have become a fixture as the Air Force seeks to expand its Predator fleet. Last year, Okland Construction Co. of Utah won a $22.5 million contract to build a new squadron hangar to house 16 more Predators. Mike Estrada, spokesman for Nellis Air Force Base, estimated up to $150 million will be spent at Indian Springs on the Predator program over five years. DEFENSE SPENDING IN NEVADA Companies receiving Department of Defense contracts for Nevada projects in fiscal 2004: 1. Sierra Nevada Corp. $42,436,034 2. Day &Zimmermann Group $40,033,948 3. Chugach Alaska Corp. $24,258,183 4. Okland Construction Company Inc. $22,772,715 5. United Technologies Corp $19,873,778 6. Wiser Construction LLC $14,711,027 7. Etreppid Technologies LLC $13,870,327 8. Nova Group Inc. $11,481,912 9. Straub Construction Inc. $10,978,000 10. Hodges Transportation Inc. $10,241,155 Source: Federal Procurement Data Center, General Services Administration ***************************************************************** 59 ABQjournal: LANL Competition Shifts the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. Saturday, April 2, 2005 Albuquerque Journal--> By Adam Ranking Journal Staff Writer The recent announcement that Lockheed Martin is re-entering the competition to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory took the University of Texas, which pulled itself out of the running in February, by surprise. "It is very recent news to us," said University of Texas System spokesman Anthony de Bruyn. "We haven't even had a chance to discuss any other possibilities." De Bruyn said the university's regents don't have formal discussions scheduled on the LANL competition for any of their upcoming meetings. On Tuesday, Lockheed officials, who had bowed out in August, announced the company would enter the competition to manage the LANL contract. A company spokesman said Lockheed changed course after Energy Department officials in February made the competition more fair and doubled the potential management fee from $30 million to $60 million. In a statement issued on Thursday addressing Lockheed's move, the University of Texas System said it "welcomes further discussions and dialogue about ways to build on our contribution to the science and security of our nation and the national laboratories," suggesting that the school will likely reconsider a possible LANL bid. Before withdrawing from the competition last fall, Lockheed Martin was in talks about partnering with the University of California to run Los Alamos and was rumored to be in talks with the University of Texas, as well. After approving $500,000 in spending early in 2004 to prepare for a possible Los Alamos bid, University of Texas regents voted unanimously in February to withdraw from the competition, saying they were unable to find a suitable partner. De Bruyn said that, until University of Texas officials and regents discussed what Lockheed's return means, they are not going to say much. A statement released by the university on Thursday says that Lockheed rightly deserves praise as the current manager of Sandia National Laboratories and highlighted the university's partnerships with the defense contractor. Shortly after the University of Texas withdrew from the LANL competition in February, the university and Sandia announced an extended peer review, education and research agreement, making the Texas school more involved with the Albuquerque-based national laboratory. "We view this agreement between UT System and Sandia as a model of university/industrial partnerships with a national laboratory," the statement reads. In 2002, the University of Texas lost a bid to manage Sandia to Lockheed. Copyright Albuquerque Journal Steve@abqjournal.com ***************************************************************** 60 ABQjournal: LANL Deal May Add To Cleanup Cost the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. Sunday, April 3, 2005 Albuquerque Journal--> The Associated Press LOS ALAMOS— A U.S. Department of Energy official estimates an agreement between Los Alamos National Laboratory and the state Environment Department could add $200 million or more to the cost of cleaning up the lab over 10 years. David Gregory, project director for the DOE, said the estimates are being discussed with officials in Washington, D.C., and that he would make a case with headquarters for additional money. Last month, the DOE and the state agency signed off on a formal agreement for what they termed a "fence-to-fence" cleanup at the nuclear weapons lab. The order requires comprehensive investigation and cleanup of contamination, including disposal areas and contaminated ground water. It sets a cleanup completion date of 2015. "The order imposed extra costs," Gregory said. A requirement for more sampling and drilling of wells, for example, will cost more than the current baseline projection of $680 million over the decade. The baseline carries a certain level of commitment from Congress. The larger scope of the cleanup program is expected to cost an additional $150 million, but the exact amount depends on the remedies chosen. An additional $50 million could be needed to tear down and decontaminate some facilities at one area, Technical Area 21. The job of cleaning up that area will be more difficult if Congress does not agree to clear out those structures. State officials have said cleanup requirements spelled out in the agreement are based on information that past handling, storage, treatment and disposal of hazardous wastes at the lab caused waste to be released into the environment. The order says metals such as arsenic and beryllium have been detected in the soil and sediment at the lab over the years, while organic compounds such dichloroethylene and dichloroethane have turned up in the groundwater. According to the state, more than 1,900 lab sites require corrective action. Los Alamos officials said they had been meeting timetables and using processes required by a draft order issued last year while negotiations were under way on a final agreement. Ken Hargis, who head the lab's environmental restoration project, said the lab is "totally committed to meeting the terms of the order." The order's general requirements were announced a year ago by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Gov. Bill Richardson. It resolved a 16-month deadlock between the state, the lab, the DOE and the University of California, which manages the lab. Copyright Albuquerque Journal Steve@abqjournal.com ***************************************************************** 61 Tri-City Herald: Bechtel announces vit plant layoffs This story was published Saturday, April 2nd, 2005 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer Bechtel National has notified 92 union craft workers, mostly pipefitters, that they are being laid off at the $5.8 billion vitrification plant under construction at Hanford. The layoffs come as construction slowed after a new study indicated design standards might not adequately protect against a powerful earthquake. The Department of Energy contractor also faces a proposed budget cutback for fiscal year 2006. The contractor has told employees that the project will cost more and take longer to finish than previously estimated because of the new seismic design standard. Now the project employs about 1,500 union craft workers and 2,000 engineers, managers and other professionals. Bechtel had planned to cut 800 engineering positions steadily through 2005 before seismic standards became an issue. Now engineers will be needed to look at thousands of calculations made since design work started four years ago and assess what design changes will be needed. New seismic data shows the design standard needs to be strengthened by 38 percent. In some cases, enough conservatism may have been included in the design or construction. But the new design standard will mean some changes such as increasing the number of pipe supports and other equipment needed. The building is being constructed as design work progresses to meet a legal deadline to have the plant built and tested by 2011. The plant is expected to turn much of the 53 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste in Hanford's underground tanks into a stable glass for permanent disposal. The waste was left from 50 years of processing fuel irradiated in Hanford reactors to extract plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. In December, DOE began to slow work because of the suspected need to address earthquake safety. It suspended work on equipment orders for the upper elevations of the two buildings affected by the new seismic information, the Pretreatment Facility and the High-Level Waste Vitrification Facility. Both would handle the most highly radioactive waste. Bechtel also cut most overtime and moved some workers to unaffected buildings under construction for the plant. "The reduction in craft workers reflects a decision to further advance design ahead of construction for the Pretreatment and High-Level Waste Vitrification facilities and to add time for procurement and delivery of commodities, such as piping and pipe hangars, and equipment," Bechtel said in a prepared statement released Friday. Bechtel will continue on its current schedule for construction at the Low-Activity Waste Vitrification Facility, the Analytical Lab and support facilities that are not affected by the design changes. Initially, Bechtel management had said it planned no immediate layoffs because of the seismic issue and hoped to keep construction employment level rather than building to a planned peak later this year. Construction is about 35 percent complete and design is about 70 percent complete. The federal government has proposed cutting spending at the vitrification plant from $690 million to $626 million next year, in part because of the problems caused by the seismic issue. The budget cutback has been criticized by the state Department of Ecology, which sees the seismic issue as a reason to increase spending. Bechtel is working on its annual updated report of cost and schedule projections at the construction project, and little specific information has been released about the financial effects of the new seismic design standard. The Army Corps of Engineers is working on an independent validation of the contractor's numbers. After that report is completed, Bechtel will submit its report to DOE by the end of the month. © 2005 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 62 Paducah Sun: DOE gives another extension on cleanup firm at Paducah Paducah, Kentucky By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com 270.575.8656 Saturday, April 02, 2005 The U.S. Department of Energy has again extended the nuclear cleanup contract of Bechtel Jacobs while the General Accounting Office tries to resolve bid protests that cast doubt on who will succeed the firm. Bechtel Jacobs received notice Friday that its contract has been extended another three months, through August. Company spokesman Greg Cook said no explanation was given. "They could implement transition at any time they're prepared to do that," he said. "The fact that the contract has been extended doesn't necessarily mean we would be doing a full scope of work in August." On Jan. 10, after an 18-month delay, the Energy Department awarded a $303 million environmental contract to North Wind Paducah Cleanup Co. to work at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant through Sept. 30, 2009. Similarly, a $141 million contract was awarded to another cleanup firm to replace Bechtel Jacobs at a closed uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio. Other bidders have filed a total of 11 protests, each with a maximum 100-day review period. Three have been dismissed. During a visit to Washington last month, local economic development leaders told new Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman they were concerned about continued delays that could potentially hurt federal cleanup funding. Bodman responded that he has ordered an internal review of the procurement process that has dragged on more than a year at Paducah. Ken Wheeler, chairman of the Greater Paducah Economic Development Council, said Friday that he was not surprised at another contract extension because the Energy Department had indicated it might take until the end of May to resolve the protests. "I surely would hope this would be the last extension," he said. Bechtel Jacobs employs 160 people and oversees another 390 subcontract workers. North Wind pledged to hire most of those workers. To replace Bechtel Jacobs, the Energy Department asked smaller businesses to bid for separate contracts for plant cleanup and infrastructure work. Swift & Staley, a subsidiary of Paducah's H&G Construction, recently was awarded a $39.9 million, five-year infrastructure contract. That changeover also would be clouded if there are bid protests. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************