***************************************************************** 04/10/05 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 13.81 ***************************************************************** 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 Daily Times: ‘Iran will never give up uranium enrichment’ 2 US: Oakland Tribune: Bush retreats on building new nuclear weapons NUCLEAR REACTORS 3 US: NY TIMES Says Nuke Plants Are Green, DON'T Add To Global Warming 4 US: JS Online: Nuclear power must be a part of the energy equation 5 US: JS Online: Natural gas dependence makes us vulnerable 6 Green Left Weekly: Global warming: Nuclear power no solution 7 US: Berkshire Eagle: Yankee Rowe site demolition may end by fall 8 Daily Times: ‘Pakistan’s nuclear plants are environment friendly’ 9 Pakistan Times: Pakistan's Nuclear-power programme to be expanded 10 Sofia Morning News: British Nuclear Group Expands Business in East E 11 Sofia Morning News: EUR 550 M to Compensate Bulgarian N-Plant Closed NUCLEAR SECURITY 12 Intelligence officials say Iraq claims were untrue 13 US: Guardian Unlimited: US nuclear warhead plan under fire 14 US: North County Times: Our nuclear terrorist target 15 BBC: Mock terror attack to test plans 16 US: Jackson Hole Star-Tribune: Russians inspect Wyoming missiles 17 US: APP.COM: Time to bolster nuclear security 18 Guardian Unlimited: Scholar: N. Korea Won't Dismantle Weapons 19 Xinhua: Iran optimist about upcoming nuclear talks with EU 20 Daily Times: VIEW: Defeating North Korea’s nuclear blackmail 21 Daily Times: Nuclear group arrives in Islamabad 22 LA Times: Indictment Points to Arms Danger 23 GEO Pakistan News: Nuclear Suppliers Group arriving Pakistan tomorro 24 The Times of India: Pak N-ring: Here and everywhere- 25 The Times of India: Dr Nuke and his network- NUCLEAR SAFETY 26 ABQjournal: Hiroshima Survivor Delivers Anti-Nuke Message NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 27 US: Deseret News: Utah Demos may see wishes realized in April 19 28 Seattle Times: 3 scientists won't testify about Yucca documents 29 Las Vegas RJ: YUCCA MOUNTAIN: E-mail investigation hits snag 30 US: deseretnews.com: Leavitt won't have to testify at trial of Goshu 31 Bellona: Zheleznogorsk Chemical Combine received first shipment of s 32 CANOE: Thousands protest nuclear fuel-reprocessing plant 33 washingtonpost.com: Toxic E-Mails 34 Rutland Herald: Newspaper guilty of bias by omission (Yucca) 35 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Leavitt need not testify at Goshute leader's 36 US: Salt Lake Tribune: DOE wants to move area's N-waste pile 37 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Facility won't ask to expand N-dump 38 Salt Lake Tribune - Opinion: Whack-a-Mole 39 US: Salt Lake Tribune MOAB MILL TAILINGS: Benefit to Utah flows 40 US: Boston Globe: Demolition on scheduled, but spent fuel to remain 41 Fiji Times Online: Anger over nuke waste - PEACE 42 US: SF Chron: Oppenheimer always knew he would pay for his discovery US DEPT. OF ENERGY 43 [progchat_action] Depleted uranium: A death sentence here and 44 Sun News: Budget cuts endanger Savannah River lab 45 The New Mexican: Think tank forms at Los Alamos 46 AP Wire: Budget cuts threaten Savannah River Ecology Lab ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Daily Times: ‘Iran will never give up uranium enrichment’ | Monday, April 11, 2005 * Reza Asefi says Tehran hopeful about the outcome of EU talks TEHRAN: Iran will not abandon uranium enrichment, despite its negotiations with the European Union on its nuclear programme, a senior official said on Sunday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Iran would never renounce its right to carry out the process, but was hopeful about the outcome of the talks with Europe. Britain, France and Germany, representing the European Union, have been trying to persuade Tehran to scrap all parts of its atomic fuel cycle, particularly uranium enrichment that can be used to make atomic bombs as well as fuel for power plants. Asefi said uranium enrichment was Iran’s legitimate right, reiterating comments made almost daily by Iranian officials. “Iran will never give up its (uranium) enrichment activities,” Asefi told a weekly news conference. Washington, which suspects Iran of using civilian atomic power as cover for a weapons programme, backs the talks but wants Iran to give up its disputed nuclear activities. Iran, which insists its atomic ambitions are entirely peaceful, has agreed to suspend uranium enrichment while the talks with the EU continue but insists the freeze is temporary. “Iran’s uranium enrichment suspension is only for a short period of time,” Asefi said. “It will be until reaching an agreement with the EU.” The European Union says that if Iran resumes enrichment, it will support a US plan to refer Tehran to the UN Security Council, which could impose economic sanctions. Officials from Britain, France, Germany and Iran are to meet later this month to continue the talks. Asefi said Iran was hopeful about the next meeting, saying: “The prospect of the talks is more positive than before.” “We hope to reach a clear solution at the next meeting on April 19,” Asefi said. He denied reports of Iran purchasing 12 cruise missiles from Ukraine. The Financial Times newspaper last month quoted Ukraine’s prosecutor-general as saying that 18 X-55 cruise missiles, were exported in 2001 to Iran and China. It said none were exported with the nuclear warheads they were designed to carry. “The government, the foreign and other ministries have not made such a deal with Ukraine,” Asefi said. reuters Daily Times - All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 2 Oakland Tribune: Bush retreats on building new nuclear weapons Inside Bay Area - Article Last Updated: 04/09/2005 04:00:40 AM Feds, lab officials instead push idea of designing replacements for older vintage bombs By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER In substantial retreat from the president's first-term policies, Bush administration officials say they have given up pursuing entirely new nuclear weapons for at least the immediate future, saying support isn't strong enough in Congress and the military. Weapons authorities in the government and its three weapons design labs in New Mexico and California still hope for a fresh era of inventing new H-bombs and warheads. But despite report after report from the Bush administration arguing the need for such new weapons, federal and lab officials say no clear political momentum has developed. Instead, prompted by a powerful Republican appropriations chairman, they're pushing the idea of designing replacements for the 1970s and'80s vintage weapons in the current U.S. arsenal, without ever conducting a full explosive nuclear test. Along the way, weapons officials acknowledge, the redesigns could deliver some of the new or improved capabilities that the administration wants, such as low-yield weapons and earth penetrators, an outcome that one senior federal weapons executive calls "fortuitous." Unlike their counterparts in the Soviet Union, U.S. scientists crafted Cold War bombs and warheads to deliver the greatest explosive power for the least size and weight, to pack as many as possible into the nose of missiles. Making such "highly optimized" weapons demanded exotic, expensive materials and methods of manufacture, some difficult to replicate under current environmental regulations. According to federal and lab weapons officials, a new Reliable Replacement Warhead program endorsed by Congress in November would revamp today's weapons, making them less efficient but more resistant to aging and less expensive to make. Arms-control and disarmament advocates are wary that the new weapons-design program is a pretext for devising the kinds of wholly new bombs and warheads repeatedly sought in administration policy statements and internal advisory reports. The administration is strongly pushing for building a new weapons factory to make the plutonium fission cores at the heart of every H-bomb, and not solely for the existing arsenal but for any future design. "It sounds like an attempt to dress up a new weapons program in nice clothing," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. "I'm skeptical about their intentions and where this program could be 10 or 15 years from now." Everet Beckner, deputy chief of weapons for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, said Congress appears solidly behind the ideas that the United States should be "a nuclear power second to none" and needs a "sizable" nuclear arsenal. "The consensus falls apart when you ask what that means," Beckner said in a recent interview. "Does it mean you make changes? Does it mean you add things?" The administration's Nuclear Posture Review called in December 2001 for low-yield nuclear weapons, for nuclear earth penetrators, for nuclear "agent defeat" weapons to destroy chemical and biological munitions and possibly other weapons designs tailored for a specific blend of radiation, blast and heat. For two years, Congress went along. Lawmakers scrapped a 10-year-old prohibition on researching low-yield weapons and approved funds for exploring new weapons designs. But faced with resistance from Democrats and Ohio Republican David Hobson, chair-man of the House Energy and Water appropriations committee, administration officials realized they didn't have solid voting majorities for entirely new classes of nuclear weapons, especially those that might require nuclear testing to prove the designs before manufacturing and fielding. In contrast to the Nuclear Posture Review and recommendations of the Defense Science Board as recently as February 2004, NNSA chief Linton Brooks told a Senate armed services subcommittee Monday that U.S. nuclear-weapons scientists are not designing for new military capabilities. Rather he made a pitch for future weapons-manufacturing infrastructure and for the one weapon that the administration still is seeking, the modification of an existing H-bomb that would encase its thermonuclear explosive in a heavier, more rugged case to pierce rock and attack underground targets. Rather than produce new weapons that would require nuclear testing, Brooks and Beckner say the reliable warhead program should stave off the need for nuclear tests. Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com. The Oakland Tribune| © 2005 ANG Newspapers ***************************************************************** 3 NY TIMES Says Nuke Plants Are Green, DON'T Add To Global Warming Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 18:38:34 -0400 Nicholas Kristof of the NYTimes wrote: > But for now, nuclear power is the only source that doesn't contribute to global warming For those of you that may want to contact Mr. Kristof to rebut his line that NPPs don't add to global warming he can be reached at: E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com And via phone at: 212-556-1234. Dr. Helen Caldicott's article from several months ago rebutting this line appears below Mr. Kristof's article. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/09/opinion/09kristof.html?hp OP-ED COLUMNIST Nukes Are Green By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: April 9, 2005 ARTICLE TOOLS Printer-Friendly Format Most E-Mailed Articles MORE COLUMNS Nicholas D. Kristof WEB JOURNAL KRISTOF Responds READERS' OPINIONS Forum: Join a Discussion on Nicholas D. Kristof's Columns 1. Op-Ed Contributor: One Hundred Years of Uncertainty 2. Op-Ed Contributor: Our Near-Death Experience 3. The Man Date 4. Op-Ed Columnist: Nukes Are Green 5. Op-Ed Columnist: Reining In the G.O.P.'s Parade Go to Complete List f there was one thing that used to be crystal clear to any environmentalist, it was that nuclear energy was the deadliest threat this planet faced. That's why Dick Gregory pledged at a huge anti-nuke demonstration in 1979 that he would eat no solid food until all nuclear plants in the U.S. were shut down. Mr. Gregory may be getting hungry. But it's time for the rest of us to drop that hostility to nuclear power. It's increasingly clear that the biggest environmental threat we face is actually global warming, and that leads to a corollary: nuclear energy is green. Nuclear power, in contrast with other sources, produces no greenhouse gases. So President Bush's overall environmental policy gives me the shivers, but he's right to push ahead for nuclear energy. There haven't been any successful orders for new nuclear plants since 1973, but several proposals for new plants are now moving ahead - and that's good for the world we live in. Global energy demand will rise 60 percent over the next 25 years, according to the International Energy Agency, and nuclear power is the cleanest and best bet to fill that gap. Solar power is a disappointment, still accounting for only about one-fifth of 1 percent of the nation's electricity and costing about five times as much as other sources. Wind is promising, for its costs have fallen 80 percent, but it suffers from one big problem: wind doesn't blow all the time. It's difficult to rely upon a source that comes and goes. In contrast, nuclear energy already makes up 20 percent of America's power, not to mention 75 percent of France's. A sensible energy plan must encourage conservation - far more than Mr. Bush's plans do - and promote things like hybrid vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells. But for now, nuclear power is the only source that doesn't contribute to global warming and that can quickly become a mainstay of the grid. Is it safe? No, not entirely. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl demonstrated that, and there are also risks from terrorist attacks. Then again, the world now has a half-century of experience with nuclear power plants, 440 of them around the world, and they have proved safer so far than the alternatives. America's biggest power source is now coal, which kills about 25,000 people a year through soot in the air. To put it another way, nuclear energy seems much safer than our dependency on coal, which kills more than 60 people every day. Moreover, nuclear technology has become far safer over the years. The future may belong to pebble-bed reactors, a new design that promises to be both highly efficient and incapable of a meltdown. Radioactive wastes are a challenge. But burdening future generations with nuclear wastes in deep shafts is probably more reasonable than burdening them with a warmer world in which Manhattan is submerged under 20 feet of water. Right now, the only significant source of electricity in the U.S. that does not involve carbon emissions is hydropower. But salmon runs have declined so much that we should be ripping out dams, not adding more. What killed nuclear power in the past was cold economics. Major studies at M.I.T. and elsewhere show that nuclear power is still a bit more expensive than new coal or natural gas plants, but in the same ballpark if fossil fuel prices rise. And if a $200-per-ton tax was imposed on carbon emissions, nuclear energy would become cheaper than coal from new plants. So it's time to welcome nuclear energy as green (though not to subsidize it with direct handouts, as the nuclear industry would like). Indeed, some environmentalists are already climbing onboard. For example, the National Commission on Energy Policy, a privately financed effort involving environmentalists, academics and industry representatives, issued a report in December that favors new nuclear plants. One of the most eloquent advocates of nuclear energy is James Lovelock, the British scientist who created the Gaia hypothesis, which holds that Earth is, in effect, a self-regulating organism. "I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy," Mr. Lovelock wrote last year, adding: "Every year that we continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendents. ... Only one immediately available source does not cause global warming, and that is nuclear energy." E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com Dr. Helen Caldicott wrote: Dear Friends of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, We are thrilled to announce that an op-ed written by Dr. Helen Caldicott was published in the Baltimore Sun today. The piece, entitled "Nuclear power still a deadly proposition," is printed in its entirety below. In the opinion piece, Helen debunks the myths that nuclear power is "clean and green" and raises the real environmental concerns behind the current use of nuclear power and behind the new interest in nuclear power for the future. This article highlights just a few of the reasons that we are holding our fall symposium, titled, Nuclear Power and Children's Health, in Chicago on October 15th and 16th. We hope that you will join us for this important meeting. For registration information, go to http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/conferences.cfm. Enjoy reading the article and, when you are done, please pass it on to other people like you who are interested in learning more about nuclear power and the important work of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute. By sharing this article and Helen's work, you are helping create a consensus for a nuclear-free future. Thanks for your continued support! -The NPRI team (Helen, Julie, Megan, Regina, Rupali, Jessica, and Crystal) Nuclear power still a deadly proposition By Helen Caldicott Originally published August 17, 2004 in The Baltimore Sun WHILE VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney is actively promoting nuclear power as a significant plank in his energy plan, he claims that nuclear power is "a safe, clean and very plentiful energy source." The Nuclear Energy Institute, the policy organization of the nuclear energy and technologies industries, is currently running an energetic campaign for the revivification of nuclear power. Ubiquitous TV and radio ads carry the admonition that "Kids today are part of the most energy-intensive generation in history. They demand lots of clean electricity. And they deserve clean air." Also, a consortium of 10 U.S. utilities has requested funding from the federal government for the construction of new reactors based on a European design, and they hope to receive government approval by 2010. This is a major policy change since no new nuclear reactors have been ordered in the United States since 1974. Nevertheless, the claims of the Mr. Cheney and the nuclear industry are false. According to data from the U.S. Energy Department (DOE), the production of nuclear power significantly contributes both to global warming and ozone depletion. The enrichment of uranium fuel for nuclear power uses 93 percent of the refrigerant chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gas made annually in the United States. The global production of CFC is banned under the Montreal Protocol because it is a potent destroyer of ozone in the stratosphere, which protects us from the carcinogenic effects of solar ultraviolet light. The ozone layer is now so thin that the population in Australia is currently experiencing one of the highest incidences of skin cancer in the world. CFC compounds are also potent global warming agents 10,000 to 20,000 times more efficient heat trappers than carbon dioxide, which itself is responsible for 50 percent of the global warming phenomenon. But nuclear power also contributes significantly to global carbon dioxide production. Huge quantities of fossil fuel are expended for the "front end" of the nuclear fuel cycle -- to mine, mill and enrich the uranium fuel and to construct the massive nuclear reactor buildings and their cooling towers. Uranium enrichment is a particularly energy intensive process which uses electricity generated from huge coal-fired plants. Estimates of carbon dioxide production related to nuclear power are available from DOE for the "front end" of the nuclear fuel cycle, but prospective estimates for the "back end" of the cycle have yet to be calculated. Tens of thousands of tons of intensely hot radioactive fuel rods must continuously be cooled for decades in large pools of circulating water and these rods must then be carefully transported by road and rail and isolated from the environment in remote storage facilities in the United States. The radioactive reactor building must also be decommissioned after 40 years of operation, taken apart by remote control and similarly transported long distances and stored. Fully 95 percent of U.S. high level waste -- waste that is intensely radioactive -- has been generated by nuclear power thus far. This nuclear waste must then be guarded, protected and isolated from the environment for tens of thousands of years -- a physical and scientific impossibility. Biologically dangerous radioactive elements such as strontium 90, cesium 137 and plutonium will seep and leak into the water tables and become very concentrated in food chains for the rest of time, inevitably increasing the incidence of childhood cancer, genetic diseases and congenital malformations for this and future generations. Conclusion: Nuclear power is neither clean, green nor safe. It is the most biologically dangerous method to boil water to generate steam for the production of electricity. Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician, is president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and author of The New Nuclear Danger, George Bush's Military Industrial Complex (The New Press). She lives near Sydney, Australia. ***************************************************************** 4 JS Online: Nuclear power must be a part of the energy equation EDITORIALS : By THEODORE J. ILTIS Posted: April 9, 2005 When British author and environmental scientist James Lovelock announced his support for nuclear power last summer, he was heavily criticized in environmental circles in the West as a sellout to the nuclear industry. That kind of charge is patently absurd, and it becomes all the more ridiculous now that two other prominent British environmentalists have begun advocating more use of nuclear power. The two are former Anglican Bishop Hugh Montefiore, a longtime trustee of Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore. They have left the two hard-line environmental groups and are criticizing both groups for continuing to oppose nuclear power, despite its unmatched environmental advantages. As Moore points out, "Nuclear energy is the only non-greenhouse gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand." Now, Great Britain is backing away from planned phase-outs of nuclear power plants, as are other European countries. Finland is building a new nuclear power plant to avoid the environmental problems of adding more coal or gas generation, and France has announced a new nuclear power station to help it meet growing electricity demand. The reason? As British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently said, nuclear power belongs on the energy agenda "if you are serious about the issue of climate change." Here in the United States, the environmental movement continues to reject nuclear power, even as a growing number of scientists cite its importance and urge environmental groups to look at it again. In a recent statement, John Holdren, professor of environmental policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and co-chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy, said efforts to stop the increase in greenhouse-gas emissions will require the use of all clean energy sources - hydro, solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear power. "Given the risks of climate change that face all of the low-carbon and no-carbon supply options, it would be imprudent in the extreme not to try to keep the nuclear option open," he said. Although there have been no orders for new U.S. nuclear power plants in many years, nuclear power hasn't gone away. It generates about three-quarters of all emission-free electricity in the U.S. In 2003, it prevented the production of more than 700 million tons of carbon dioxide. That is roughly the amount of carbon dioxide produced by all of the automobiles on American roads. The nuclear industry itself has changed for the better. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident 25 years ago, it established a culture of safety that continues to this day. Years ago, unplanned shutdowns at some nuclear plants were commonplace, but today they are rare. The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, a highly respected organization that monitors all U.S. nuclear power plants, says that in five of the past six years, there hasn't been a single unplanned automatic reactor shutdown - a key safety indicator - at any U.S. nuclear plant. As a result of improved management, the 103 U.S. nuclear plants generate significantly more electricity than they did in the past. Last year, they operated at an average capacity factor of 90%, compared to 60% in 1980. That increase in efficiency is the equivalent of adding 40 large nuclear plants to the electricity grid without having to construct any new units. Since a new nuclear plant is expected to cost as much as $2 billion, that's a huge savings. As for nuclear waste, despite fallacious public perceptions, it must be said that spent fuel can be, has been and is being safely handled, transported and stored. Indeed, it can be and may be recycled in the future if need be. The Yucca Mountain site is an excellent choice for storage; it should not be delayed by Nevada politics and the not-in-my-backyard syndrome. The differences between national environmental groups and the electric power industry are not to be denied. Nevertheless, this is the first time in many years that we see a situation in which nuclear power is not rejected out of hand; it is getting a second look. It will take decades to wean us off fossil fuels while the world continues to require vast amounts of electricity. It's OK to talk about, dream about and research new alternative technologies, but what is the best way to start tackling the issue now? Nuclear power. Theodore J. Iltis of Madison had a 37-year technical and managerial career in the pioneering development of nuclear power and electric energy for the U.S. government and the utility industry. From the April 10, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Copyright 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 5 JS Online: Natural gas dependence makes us vulnerable Last Updated: April 9, 2005 A common theme at Energy Symposium 2005 in Milwaukee Friday was nervousness about an over-reliance on natural gas as a fuel for generating power. Most of the generation added in the state over the last 10 years has been fueled by gas. That lack of diversity has experts uptight. They don't like a lot of things about that fuel, even though it is more friendly to the environment than coal and, arguably, nuclear. Here are the disadvantages they cite: • Volatile prices have spiked to as high as $12 per thousand cubic feet from an average of about $7. Liquid natural gas brought in from other countries could bring down the average price, but that doesn't help now. • Wisconsin has only two major pipelines coming into the southern part of the state and one running up to Green Bay. So the transmission availability is limited. • Natural gas is subject to accidents or attacks that could cause a major interruption in our power supply. And it can't be stored as easily as coal or nuclear fuel. • The life of natural gas wells in the U.S. has declined sharply. Even though more wells are being drilled, each one is producing less gas. • Gas markets are fully deregulated. There is no price control by utilities or government. Those prices pass straight through to consumers. Of course, the debate over new coal burning techniques vs. natural gas is heated, as the Wisconsin Supreme Court prepares to rule on the proposed coal-fired plants in Oak Creek. Opponents would rather have natural gas for the environmental advantages, despite its economic disadvantages. Hedging our bets Utility managers like a mixture of fuels because it is hard to have a crystal ball clear enough to discern where prices and supplies of fuel are going in the future. A blend of fuels hedges the state's bets. The elephant in the room at the symposium was nuclear power, which almost nobody commented on. One industry analyst said he expected investors to propose building a nuclear power plant somewhere in the nation during 2005. A bill has been introduced in Madison to pull the moratorium off nuclear plants as a way to start the necessary dialogue to consider nuclear as a fuel source. Experts talk about how much the safety of nuclear plants has increased over the last 30 years from when Wisconsin's two operating nuclear plants were built. The national debate over disposal of spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is still in gridlock after more than a decade of indecision. So that remains an impediment to nuclear power. On a recent trip to Bavaria by Wisconsin government and business leaders, it was learned that Bavaria is buying a great share of its power from French nuclear plants. Rates going up From the point of view of a business that consumes electricity, the over-reliance on natural gas is a serious problem in the short term. Utilities have cited the rising costs of natural gas in requesting rate increases. Natural gas has tripled since 1998. Some predictions see it doubling by 2020. In an era of withering global competition, Wisconsin businesses - especially manufacturers - are trying to get control over every piece of their cost structure. So it is disquieting to learn that little relief can be expected from the sharp increases in utility rates. John Torinus is chief executive officer of Serigraph Inc. of West Bend. Contact him at torcolumn@serigraph.com. Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on April 10, 2005. Copyright 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 Green Left Weekly: Global warming: Nuclear power no solution www.greenleft.org.au Jim Green Have the nuclear industry and its supporters suddenly gained an environmental consciousness? While they're not planning to close their dangerous, polluting reactors nor begin dealing responsibly with their legacy of toxic radioactive wastes, they are now professing deep concern about climate change — and argue that nuclear power is the only solution. Even environmentalists are turning to nuclear power, we're told. It's not true — you could count them on one hand — but the nuclear boosters and the mainstream media aren't letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Proponents of nuclear power downplay or ignore altogether the problems that would be exacerbated by an expansion of nuclear power globally or the introduction of nuclear power into Australia — including nuclear weapons proliferation, radioactive waste, and the risk of catastrophic accidents. Nuclear weapons proliferation. The “peaceful” nuclear power and research sectors have produced enough fissile material to build over 110,000 nuclear weapons. Australian uranium has resulted in the production of more than 60 tonnes of plutonium, sufficient to produce about 6000 nuclear weapons. Supposedly “peaceful” nuclear facilities can be — and have been — used in various ways for weapons research and production. Of the 60 countries which have built nuclear power or research reactors, about 25 are known to have used their “peaceful” nuclear facilities for covert weapons research and/or production — a strike rate of about 40%. Israel, India, Pakistan, South Africa and possibly North Korea have succeeded in producing nuclear weapons under cover of a “peaceful” nuclear program (details at <http://www.mapw.org.au/nuclear-reactors/02green.html>) . Claims that the international safeguards system prevents misuse of “peaceful” nuclear facilities and materials are grossly overstated. Recent statements from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency and US President George Bush about the need to limit the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology, and to establish multinational control over sensitive nuclear facilities, amount to an acknowledgement of the fundamental flaws of the international safeguards system. Retired Australian diplomat Professor Richard Broinowski notes in his 2003 book Fact or Fission? The Truth About Australia's Nuclear Ambitions that accounting for Australian uranium exports is “tenuous, and subject to distortion or abuse”. Radioactive waste Not a single repository exists for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste, which is produced at an annual rate of about 10,000 tonnes in nuclear power reactors worldwide. Technologies exist to encapsulate or immobilise radionuclides to a greater or lesser degree, but encapsulated radioactive waste still represents a potential public health and environmental threat that will last for millennia. The prospects for transmutation — using neutrons or charged particle beams to convert longer-lived radionuclides into shorter-lived radionuclides or stable isotopes — are grim for a number of reasons. Reprocessing spent reactor fuel is polluting, and most of the uranium and plutonium arising from reprocessing is simply stockpiled with no plans for its use. Separation of plutonium from spent fuel poses a major proliferation risk — many tonnes of plutonium are stockpiled, and a typical 1000 megawatt electric (MWe) reactor produces about 300 kilograms of plutonium each year, enough to produce about 30 nuclear weapons. Accidents The more reactors, the more accidents. The more accidents, the more likely significant off-site releases of radioactivity. The “new generation of passively safe reactors” face various obstacles, such as not being new or passively safe! For example, so-called pebble-bed reactor technology is a variation on the theme of high temperature reactors, which have been investigated by many countries, abandoned in most, and successful in none. In addition to the perennial problems of plant malfunction and human error, terrorism looms large as a threat to nuclear plants and everyone working and living in their vicinity. Nuclear power proponents deny the likelihood that the 1986 Chernobyl disaster has killed thousands and will kill thousands more. They do this by hiding behind the complexities of epidemiological studies and using those complexities to obfuscate. However, using the standard risk estimates applied the world over, the likely toll from Chernobyl will be some tens of thousands of deaths. A non-solution The world's 440 operating power reactors, with about 364,000 MWe of total capacity, produce about 16% of the world's electricity. Coal, gas and oil account for four times that amount — about 64%. So to replace fossil fuel generated electricity with nuclear power would require a five-fold increase in the number of reactors, from 440 to about 2200. The cost of the additional 1760 reactors would be several trillion dollars. The 2200 reactors would produce enough plutonium each year to build roughly 60,000 nuclear weapons. The annual production of high-level radioactive waste in the form of spent fuel would increase to about 50,000 tonnes — to be safely and securely stored in those repositories that don't exist. But what of the benefits of closing all those fossil fuel fired plants? Electricity generation is responsible for only a modest percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions — as low as 9% by some accounts. In broad terms the replacement of all fossil fuel fired electricity plants with nuclear power would be unlikely to reduce global greenhouse emissions by more than 5-10% — not even close to the 60% reduction required to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. It is theoretically possible that nuclear power could be used not only for electricity production but also for other purposes such as producing hydrogen for transportation. However, that would just make the task all the more impractical and all the more alarming in terms of proliferation risks and radioactive waste production. According to John Busby, about 200 nuclear reactors would be required in Australia alone to produce both electricity and hydrogen for transportation (<http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3039> ;). In Australia, building nuclear reactors would not only be irresponsible and impractical as a means of addressing climate change, it would also be illegal because the Howard government outlawed the construction of nuclear power reactors in the 1998 Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act. Interestingly, the government made nuclear power illegal with little or no prompting from environmental and anti-nuclear groups. Even if a future government attempted to push ahead with construction of nuclear power reactors, the public opposition would be immense. The only serious proposal to build a nuclear power plant in Australia — at Jervis Bay in NSW in the late 1960s — was defeated by public and political opposition. The Jervis Bay project was driven by then-Coalition PM John Gorton, who later admitted that the intention was not only to produce electricity but also to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Claims that nuclear power is “greenhouse free” are nonsense. Substantial greenhouse gas generation occurs across the nuclear fuel cycle. Nonetheless, fossil fuel derived electricity is considerably more greenhouse intensive — for the moment. Emissions per unit energy from nuclear power are about one third of those from large gas-fired electricity plants. However, this comparative benefit of nuclear power is substantially eroded, and eventually negated altogether, as higher-grade uranium ores are depleted and lower-grade ores are mined. Most of the Earth's uranium is found in very poor grade ores. That trend would of course be hastened in a scenario in which nuclear power replaces large numbers of fossil fuel fired electricity plants. (For discussion on the economic and energy costs associated with declining ore grades, see the detailed study at <http://www.oprit.rug.nl/deenen>.) Even at the current rate of consumption, low-cost uranium reserves will be exhausted in about 50 years according to John Carlson from the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office, the disgraceful nuclear regulatory agency which acts more like a pro-nuclear PR agency. At this point in the argument, nuclear boosters such as Carlson pull out their trump card — the wondrous plutonium economy in which fast breeder reactors produce more plutonium fuel than they consume — and nuclear power may yet be too cheap to meter! However, most plutonium breeder R programs have been abandoned because of technical, economic and safety problems. In any case, the weapons proliferation risks of a plutonium economy are totally unacceptable. Nuclear fusion also poses proliferation risks, and faces seemingly insurmountable technical and economic problems. Renewable energy Renewable energy sources typically generate considerably less greenhouse emissions per unit energy than nuclear power and, of course, energy efficiency is a clear winner when comparing greenhouse gas abatement costs. According to the US Critical Mass Energy Project, every dollar invested in energy efficiency is up to seven times more effective in reducing carbon dioxide emissions than nuclear power. Last year the Clean Energy Future Group — which comprises renewable energy companies and the Worldwide Fund for Nature — produced a comprehensive paper called “A Clean Energy Future for Australia” that details how major greenhouse gas emissions reductions can be achieved (<http://www.wwf.org.au/News_and_information/Features/featur e10.php>). The Clean Energy study found that Australia can meet its energy needs from various commercially proven fuels and technologies while cutting greenhouse emissions by 50% by 2040. Focussing on stationary energy sources, because of their large contribution to greenhouse emissions in Australia, the Clean Energy study envisages the following energy mix by 2040: + natural gas provides 30% (including cogeneration of electricity and heat) of Australia's electricity demand; + biomass from agriculture and plantation forestry residues provides 26%; + wind energy provides 20%; + photovoltaic and solar thermal systems provide 5%; + hydroelectricity provides 7%; and + coal (9%) and petroleum (1%) continue to play a minor role in electricity generation. A range of other benefits would flow from the Clean Energy report's recommendations, including rural employment growth, growth in exports, reductions in household and business operating costs, and benefits to the environment and public health through the reduction not only of greenhouse gases but also other pollutants. A report by the Australia Institute maps out a realistic plan to achieve a 60% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector (including transport) by 2050 (<http://www.tai.org.au/WhatsNew_Files/WhatsNew/DP48sum.pdf& #062;). Many similar reports have been produced overseas. The extent to which renewable energy sources can replace fossil fuels and nuclear power depends to a significant extent on investment in research and development programs. The Howard government provides fossil fuel industries with $9 billion in subsidies annually, according to a 2003 report from the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures. By contrast, the Howard government: + Closed the Energy Research and Development Corporation in 1997-98. The ERDC had invested almost $100 million in 350 energy innovation ventures since it was created in 1990. The government then reneged on a commitment to meet existing ERDC funding commitments. + Withdrew funding from the Co-operative Research Centre for Renewable Energy in December 2002. + Introduced the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target but set the target at a measly 2% (closer to 1% when non-renewable interlopers and creative accounting are factored in). + Appointed a Rio Tinto employee as the government's chief scientist. + Allowed fossil fuel companies to buy their way onto the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics panel dealing with climate change issues. Small wonder that the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported in 2004 that the proportion of Australia's overall energy consumption from renewable resources declined in the 10 years 1991-2001 from 6% to 5.7%. Further reading on the greenhouse/nuclear debate: + WISE/NIRS, 2005, "A back door comeback: Nuclear energy as a solution for climate change?", Nuclear Monitor #621 ɮ, <http://www.antenna.nl/wise>. + Mycle Schneider (WISE Paris), April 2000, “Climate Change and Nuclear Power”, published by World Wide Fund for Nature, .) + Friends of the Earth (UK), “Nuclear power and climate change”, <http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/nuclear_power_clima te.pdf>. From Green Left Weekly, April 13, 2005. Authorised by K. Miller, 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale, NSW ***************************************************************** 7 Berkshire Eagle: Yankee Rowe site demolition may end by fall April 10, 2005 Pittsfield, MA By Christopher Marcisz Berkshire Eagle Staff ROWE -- Demolition of most structures at the old Yankee Rowe nuclear power plant is set to finish on schedule by this fall, company officials report. But because there is no federal nuclear waste dump, roughly 1,700 tons of spent fuel will remain on site for the foreseeable future under tight security. The proposed federal nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., was thrown into doubt last week after it was revealed that two federal officials may have fabricated data on the project. Officials gave an update on progress in closing the plant -- which operated from 1960 to 1992 -- at a meeting of the Yankee Rowe Community Advisory Board on Wednesday night. "We're on schedule to complete it when we thought we would," Yankee Atomic Electric Co. spokeswoman Kelley Smith said. The final part of the above-ground structure should be demolished next week. Subsurface demolition, including the removal of pipes, will be complete in June. Debris stored on site from the construction in the late 1950s will be removed in August. This fall, Smith said, the company will do some grading work and will plant trees and grass. She said Yankee Atomic is currently in talks with the town of Rowe on an arrangement in which the company would continue to own the 1,800-acre site, but would lease most of it to the town for recreational use. A 90-acre patch will remain the interim home of 16 "dry cask" storage units containing spent nuclear fuel. The casks contain 533 fuel assemblies -- bundles of hollow steel rods that contain ceramic-coated pellets of highly refined uranium. Throughout the plant's lifetime, about 800 fuel assemblies were used. In the late 1960s and early 1970s they were sent to be "reprocessed" into recycled nuclear fuel, a process that stopped in the U.S. in the late 1970s but continues in other parts of the world. "There's currently no other place to send the spent fuel," Smith said. "It requires a national repository, and none exists currently." Planning for the Yucca Mountain site hit a snag in recent weeks when e-mails surfaced from the late 1990s suggesting that two U.S. Geologic Survey scientists may have falsified some data on the project. The federal Department of Energy is investigating the matter. The Yucca Mountain project has been frequently delayed, and is fiercely opposed by Nevada residents and politicians. The best estimate of the earliest the repository could open is 2012. Until then, a group of utilities has begun to consider temporary storage sites -- such as one at a Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation in Utah. Smith said Yankee Atomic is not part of that group, but is keeping the temporary option on the table. "We're watching the status of any such projects," she said. "It's something we would consider." Meanwhile, Yankee Atomic, which is owned by a consortium of New England utilities, is part of a lawsuit against the federal government to recover some of the costs of keeping the fuel, after the government failed to meet its contractual obligation to take possession of the fuel. Copyright ©1999-2005 New England Newspapers, Inc., ***************************************************************** 8 Daily Times: ‘Pakistan’s nuclear plants are environment friendly’ | Monday, April 11, 2005 ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s nuclear power plants are environment-friendly and safer than other power plants in the world, said Javed Iqleem, Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) member, on Sunday. Pakistan with the help of China will set up a third nuclear power plant in Chashma and the project, with a gross production capacity of 340 mega watt (MW), will jointly be built with the coordination of China National Nuclear Corporation at the cost of Rs 52 billion, he added. He said Pakistan had only two nuclear power plants, Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP) and Chashma Nuclear Power Plant Unit-1, and had planned to increase its capacity to 8,800 MW at the end of 2030. “The world uses coal generally to produce electricity through nuclear power plants, but Pakistan uses 48.5 percent gas with other components to generate electricity from its nuclear plants,” he said. online Home | National Daily Times - All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 9 Pakistan Times: Pakistan's Nuclear-power programme to be expanded [Pakistan Times (PakistanTimes.net | DailyPakistanTimes.com)] Pakistan Times Federal Bureau Report CHASHMA: Pakistan Friday embarked upon a long[Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (FILE PHOTO)] -term plan of installing a capacity of 8,800 MW power generation from atomic energy by 2030 with breaking the ground for over 300 MW Chashma Nuclear Power Plant Unit-II. Not only that the government is all out to build more nuclear reactors for electricity generation, Chinese being the vendor of CHASHNUPP units, are more than willing to continue supporting Pakistan even beyond the completion of the Chashma-II [C-2]. Dr Ashfaq Ahmad Khan, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister along with Wang Shoujun, Vice President of China National Nuclear Corporation [CNNC], broke the ground for C-2 project, adjacent to CHASHNUPP-I of approximately the same capacity. Chashma unit one [C-1] is operational at 325 MW since 2000 at 95 per cent capacity utilization as a symbol of lasting friendship between China and Pakistan. The C-2 is to be completed and connected to the national power grid by 2011 with an estimated cost of Rs 51.046 billion including the mark-up to be accumulated by the completion time. It would be the third nuclear power generating facility after KANUPP at Karachi and C-1. The site of the C-2 is adjacent to the C-1. The two operational nuclear reactors are being operated by the scientists and engineers of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission under the power generation licenses of the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority. The nuclear power plants in Pakistan are working under the safeguards and regular monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog on nuclear technology. As Pakistan has achieved self-reliance in development of nuclear fuel, the IAEA keeps a close eye on power generating nuclear reactors. The UN Watchdog Officials of the PAEC say that the IAEA inspectors visit after every three months while their camera eyes are open on us 24-hour. The senior officials of the PAEC told a media team the other day that the Commission after the 1976 withdrawal of Canadian Support from KANUPP up to 1991 when the Chinese came in for C-1, had been through a precarious conditions. Till date, they said, Pakistan was denied of any support other than that of Chinese while the IAEA advise comes up to the extent of safety but categorically denied for performance of the reactors. Sino-Pak cooperation Dr Ashfaq and Foreign Secretary Riaz Muhammad Khan both stated while addressing the ground-breaking ceremony on the site of C-2 that the road of Pakistan’s endeavour to develop nuclear energy for peaceful use as well as that of Sino-Pak cooperation was not ending at the C-2. Dr Ashfaq said that the C-1 was the first ever export of a nuclear reactor by China over a decade ago, “but we reached the point of C-2 ground-breaking following the successful completion of C-1. Earlier, the Foreign Secretary made an announcement in so many words that “C-2, in my view, is just a beginning of expansion of Sino-Pak ties in peace-purposes nuclear field, and economic development after the achievement of time-tested political friendship of the two countries.” The Foreign Secretary who was in China as Ambassador of Pakistan on his previous posting, foresaw tremendous potential of Pak-China cooperation in the nuclear development for peaceful purposes under the umbrella of the Treaty of Friendship, and Cooperation recently signed by the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao this week at Islamabad. Besides vice president of the CNNC, Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Zhang Chunxiang, Chairman Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority Jamshed A Hashmir, Javed Iqleem Member Power PAEC, Sulman Bashir Pakistani Ambassador in China were also present at the ground-breaking ceremony. More Plants Pakistan will construct more nuclear power plants after Chashma Nuclear Power Plant Unit -2 (CHASHNUPP-2) for its peaceful purposes, as it has abundant expertise, manpower and reliable friends for cooperation in this regard. “Pakistan has now more dependable workforce and friends and our nuclear power programme is poised for expansion in order to meet the higher needs of accelerated economic development of the country,” said Dr. Ashfaq Ahmed. Referring to Shahrah-e-Dosti, a road at Chashma site named to signify Pak-China friendship, Dr. Ashfaq Ahmed said this road has no end point, and symbolizes the ever growing cooperation between the two countries in peaceful usage of nuclear energy. Welcome Address Earlier, in his welcome address, Chairman PAEC Parvez Butt said Pakistan has demonstrated its capability to operate nuclear power plants efficiently and safely for the last 34 years. The Chairman said President General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz have provided their fullest support for the development of strong base for producing nuclear electricity as per requirement of the country. The success of PAEC has been because of its people, work culture and systems which ensured a continued marched forward of its programme despite embargoes, Mr. Butt added. The Chairman said Pakistan’s nuclear power plants are under International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] under the safeguard and it maintains a close liaison with IAEA, World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), Candu Operators Group (COG) and PNRA. Perspective He informed there is resurgence of nuclear power in the world due to global warming and soaring oil prices and Pakistan nuclear electricity programme will be expanded as per local and global conditions. Representing Chinese government, Vice President of China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), Wang Shoujun said Pak-China friendship has been steady and fruitful to the mutual benefits of their people and it will continue to grow in all areas including nuclear power. He said success of CHASHNUPP-1 which is the fruit of hard work of engineers and scientists of both the countries has paved the way for 340 MW CHASSNUP-2 and many others in future. Member Power PAEC, Javed Iqleem said the expertise and knowledge obtained from Chashma-1 and Chashma-2 will be our chief asset for embarking upon an ambitious nuclear power production programme. Recounting the achievements of Pakistani scientists and engineers in nuclear power generation, he said, after the completion of 30 years design life of KANUPP, PAEC has renovated it to extend its useful life for another 15 years. Chairman PNRA, Jamshed Hashmi, who himself is a veteran of nuclear power put on record the efforts of Chairman PAEC Parvez Butt for his contribution to indigenous solutions of the problems faced by Pakistan’s nuclear power programme. Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan, a key figure in supporting C-1 and C-2 assistance said China’s support to Pakistan is a permanent feature of our policy and congratulated PAEC for CHASHNUPP-3 in advance at the ground-breaking of CHASNUPP-2.Ï www.PakistanTimes.net | www.DailyPakistanTimes.com ***************************************************************** 10 Sofia Morning News: British Nuclear Group Expands Business in East Europe www.novinite.com Sofia News Agency Business: 10 April 2005, Sunday. British Nuclear Group has signalled its intentions to significantly expand its business operations in Eastern Europe. The specialist nuclear decommissioning and clean-up company is planning to establish an office in Prague, which will serve as a point of commercial focus for the region, and in particular the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Russia and Bulgaria. The company has been working as a consultant to the Project management Group with Bulgaria's Kozlodyu nuclear power plant. "Our Project Services business is already active in Eastern Europe, often working in successful partnership with local contractors, and this is a model we wish to develop as we significantly increase our operations in this part of the world," British Nuclear Group CEO Lawrie Haynes said.[ width=] All Rights Reserved © Novinite Ltd., 2001-2005 - Copyright Bulgaria news Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency - www.sofianewsagency.com) is unique with being a real time news provider in English that informs its readers about the latest Bulgarian news. The editorial staff also publishes a daily ***************************************************************** 11 Sofia Morning News: EUR 550 M to Compensate Bulgarian N-Plant Closedown Sofia News Agency Politics: 9 April 2005, Saturday. The European Union (EU) will allot EUR 550 M to compensate the closedown of Bulgaria's Kozloduy nuclear power plant, a state official said Saturday. Kozloduy's work should be halted by 2007 in order for Bulgaria to be accepted into the EU. Many local experts fear that the move would be a major holdback for the Bulgarian economy. But according to Energy Minister Miroslav Sevlievski, closing the Kozloduy plant would not bring Bulgaria's energy producing to an end. The minister recalled that building a new nuclear power plant in the town of Belene was about to begin. The project was greenlighted by the Bulgarian Cabinet earlier this week. The next step will be the opening of an international tender for a supplier and constructor. It is expected to be launched within a month, officials said on April 7.[ width=] Click here to receive realtime news about this topic in the future. novinite.com Forum Google Tourism Business MobileBulgaria All Rights Reserved © Novinite Ltd., 2001-2005 - Copyright Bulgaria news Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency - www.sofianewsagency.com) is unique with being a real time news provider in English that informs its readers about the latest Bulgarian news. The editorial staff also publishes a daily ***************************************************************** 12 Intelligence officials say Iraq claims were untrue Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 14:52:43 -0500 (CDT) The Independent - 08 April 2005 http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=627362 Intelligence officials say Iraq claims were untrue By Kim Sengupta The intelligence officials who produced Tony Blair's Iraq weapons dossier - the justification for war - have admitted that some of the main claims made in it were untrue. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which produced the dossier under its chairman John Scarlett, was forced to carry out a review after the failure to find Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction after the occupation,. The committee admits that a whole array of allegations - from Iraq's supposed chemical, biological and nuclear capabilites to its ballistic missiles -- were either "wrong" or "unsubstantiated". The JIC review, carried out in December 2004, was revealed by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, which oversees the work of the intelligence agencies, in its annual report. The MPs said: "We are concerned at the amount of intelligence on Iraqi WMD that has now had to be withdrawn ..." The Intelligence and Security Committee says the JIC reviewed the dossier after MI6 began to backtrack on its Iraq intelligence and the Iraq Survey Group - which had been sent in after the war - failed to find WMD. In the September 2002 dossier, the JIC assessment was that " Iraq is pursuing a nuclear weapons programme ... " This, it now concludes, was "wrong in that Iraq was not pursuing a nuclear weapons programme ..." On chemical weapons, the JIC maintained in September 2002, that "Iraq may retain some stocks of chemical agents ... Iraq could produce significant quantities of mustard gas within weeks, significant quantities of Sarin and VX gases within months, and in the case of VX may already have done so." It now says: "Although a capability to produce some agents probably existed, this judgement has not been substantiated." On biological weapons, the JIC judged: " Iraq currently has available, either from pre-Gulf War, or more recent production, a number of biological agents ... Iraq could produce more of these biological agents within days." It now admits: "The ISG found that Iraq had dual-use facilities which could have allowed biological weapon production to resume, but not within the timeframes judged by the JIC, and found no evidence production had been activated." On ballistics, the JIC had said in the dossier: "Iraq retains up to 20 al-Hussein ballistic missiles". It now says "This has not been substantiated." However, a second claim made at the time that "Iraq has authorised its scientists to develop missiles in excess of the 150km [United Nations Security Council] limit" had been "partially substantiated". The JIC also says it was wrong about Saddam's supposed intentions. In September 2002, it judged: "Saddam ... might use chemical or biological weapons ... against coalition forces, neighbouring states and his own people. Israel could be his first target." The review now says the "reporting which informed this judgement was subsequently withdrawn''. The ISC also raises questions about who in the Government knew MI6 had withdrawn one of its most incendiary claims - that Saddam could hit British bases in Cyprus with weapons within 45 minutes - by last summer. ***************************************************************** 13 Guardian Unlimited: US nuclear warhead plan under fire Julian Borger in Washington Saturday April 9, 2005 The Guardian Democrats and American arms control groups warned yesterday that a new Bush administration scheme to replace ageing nuclear warheads could be used as a cover for the eventual construction of a "black arsenal" of new weapons. The plan, known as the reliable replacement warhead programme (RRW), was unveiled this week by Linton Brooks, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Instead of maintaining the old stockpile by monitoring the warheads and replacing occasional spare parts, RRW would entail the design, production and deployment of a new generation of warheads. These would not require testing, and therefore would not break the US moratorium on nuclear tests. Mr Brooks said the new warheads would be used in existing cold war era weapons. The construction of a warhead production facility would also maintain the expertise and infrastructure for the US to respond flexibly to new threats. "We need to maintain the capability to respond to potential future requirements," he said. Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat and one of the party's leading voices on military issues, alleged that the administration was using the scheme as a cover for developing a range of "smaller and more usable" weapons which were blocked last year by Congress. "This administration doesn't take no for an answer," Ms Tauscher told The Guardian. "But every time we erect a fence they jump it." Congress blocked development funds for the proposed robust nuclear earth penetrator, a "bunker-buster" for destroying enemy stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction or underground command posts. The legislature also stopped the advanced concepts initiative, a broad-ranging research programme for developing a new generation of weapons. Opponents said both projects would undermine global counter-proliferation efforts and could eventually tempt policymakers to use a new generation of smaller weapons in a crisis. Greg Mello, the head of the watchdog organisation the Los Alamos Study Group, said the RRW plan could have the same impact because it enabled the nuclear laboratories to custom-build small numbers of a range of warheads. He said: "It raises the spectre of a separate arsenal - a black arsenal beyond public oversight. "This is a way to perpetuate the nuclear weapons complex in its full panoply of capabilities and to allow the US nuclear stockpile to evolve for new missions under the guise of so-called reliability problems," Mr Mello went on. "It is not compatible with US and other efforts to counter proliferation and it sends the wrong message around the world." Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for Mr Brooks said that the RRW plan was being misinterpreted. "The last new weapon in the stockpile is 20 years old," Mr Wilkes said. "If there is a problem with a component, you might have an entire class of weapons that goes bad. What we need is a way to replace some of those components. We are not talking about new weapons of new designs." Mr Brooks argued that the RRW programme would lead to a reduction in the US arsenal rather than its expansion. He said the new warheads would be so reliable they would not need testing, and would not require the current large reserve of warheads on standby in case of malfunctions in the existing plutonium weapons. "Establishing a responsive nuclear infrastructure will provide opportunities for additional stockpile reductions because we can rely less on the stockpile and more on infrastructure," Mr Brooks said. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 14 North County Times: Our nuclear terrorist target - North San Diego and Southwest Riverside + Archives Last modified Saturday, April 9, 2005 3:57 PM PDT By: North County Times - Editorial Our View: A panel of world-class scientists said last week that in the post 9-11 world, San Onofre and the nation's other 102 nuclear power plants may not be as safe as once thought. They are nervous about the tons of highly radioactive, spent fuel that sits at the bottom of cooling ponds next to the generators. If a terrorist somehow drained those giant pools or jostled the used fuel rods so that they settled too close to each other, the resulting fire and meltdown could spew radiation for many miles, potentially depopulating vast tracts of San Diego, Orange, Riverside and Los Angeles Counties. Think Chernobyl, only much bigger, and imagine the panicked and permanent evacuation of perhaps millions of people. The risk may be infinitesimally small. After all, the ponds at San Onofre were built to withstand major earthquakes. And analysts hired by Southern California Edison Co., the operator and majority owner of the facility, say that the structures protecting the reactors and cooling ponds can withstand a crashing jetliner, the type of attack that felled the World Trade Center's twin towers. But if they are wrong, the consequences of a successful terrorist strike are horrific beyond measure for Southern California. Federal officials must immediately take the advice of these nuclear experts, who were assembled by the National Academy of Sciences. In a mostly secret, 130-page report, the scientists called for a plant-by-plant investigation of vulnerability, consequences and specific risks of each fuel-storage pond. What's more, the investigation must be conducted by a panel of experts who are independent of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the utility industry. This assessment is just too important to leave to the industry and its long-time overseer. Edison and its main partner, San Diego Gas &Electric Co., may be ordered to speed up their expensive program to remove fuel from the ponds and seal it in dry casks made of steel and concrete. The utilities have collected billions of dollars in "decommissioning" costs (about 50 cents a month on a typical household's bill), so the money is available. The possibility that on-site storage may represent a heightened risk must add urgency to the federal government's efforts to create a permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The scientists also said that nuclear plant operators may have to install secondary cooling systems to spray water on the fuel to hedge against an attack of a failure of primary systems. These ideas and more must be studied, and that effort must begin immediately. After all, this nation is at war. And one of the world's most tempting terrorist targets sits just north of Oceanside in the northwest corner of Camp Pendleton, its hulking concrete structures hiding tons of the most dangerous materials ever produced by human ingenuity. It's easy to imagine that our enemies would relish a successful strike on North County's famous Marine base, sowing chaos from the San Diego Zoo to Disneyland to Hollywood and inland to the world's richest agricultural valleys. For more than three decades, our community has traded the risk of nuclear catastrophe ---- deemed extremely small by the federal government ---- for an energy source that doesn't pollute the air, doesn't consume fossil fuels, and that by itself produces 20 percent of Southern California's electricity. Now, with the nation waging a global war on terrorism, the balance of risk versus reward may have fundamentally tilted. webmaster@nctimes.com © 1997-2005 North County Times - Lee Enterprises editor@nctimes.com ***************************************************************** 15 BBC: Mock terror attack to test plans Last Updated: Saturday, 9 April, 2005 Emergency services from across the East Midlands will be testing their readiness for dealing with major terrorist attack on Sunday. The day-long exercise in Northampton will be based on a theoretical "dirty bomb" attack. It will be rehearsing how to deal with a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incident. The operation will test how well the police, fire and ambulance services work with each other. Emergency services from Derbyshire and Leicestershire will be joining the exercise, organised by Northamptonshire County Council's emergency planning team. Staff at Northampton General Hospital will be also be testing its procedures. Northamptonshire fire divisional officer Ian Watson said while there was no specific threat to the area, it paid to be prepared for any kind of situation. The attack will be simulated at Northampton Saints' rugby ground. ***************************************************************** 16 Jackson Hole Star-Tribune: Russians inspect Wyoming missiles Jackson, Wyoming - Sunday, April 10, 2005 CHEYENNE (AP) -- As part of efforts to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, a delegation of senior Russian military officers and experts on nuclear security visited F.E. Warren Air Force Base. The base maintains and supervises 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles in underground silos scattered throughout southeastern Wyoming, northeastern Colorado and western Nebraska. Friday's visit was "fully in keeping" with the decision by President Bush and Russian President Putin at their Feb. 24 meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia, to expand and deepen cooperation on nuclear security, said Maj. Gen. Frank G. Klotz, Commander of 20th Air Force. "The U.S. and Russia have pledged to share 'best practices' with the goal of enhancing the security of nuclear facilities in both countries and around the world," he said in a release Saturday. The Russian visitors were in the United States for a meeting of the Joint Coordinating Group, which is the primary organization that plans and implements the U.S. Department of Energy's program of nuclear nonproliferation assistance with Russian armed forces, Warren officials said. While on base, the Russian delegation toured several facilities and observed the procedures for protecting those facilities against terrorist attack. They also visited the base hospital for discussions of an Air Force program to ensure that individuals who work with or guard nuclear weapons meet rigorous standards for physical and mental health. "Security at F.E. Warren Air Force Base and the other two intercontinental ballistic missile bases in Air Force Space Command has been and remains very capable and highly effective," Klotz said. "However, security must be constantly reviewed and improved to stay ahead of evolving terrorist threats and tactics, and to take full advantage of the latest developments in security technology." A joint statement issued by Bush and Putin on Feb. 24 read in part, "The United States and Russia will continue our cooperation on security upgrades of nuclear facilities and develop a plan of work through and beyond 2008 on joint projects. "Recognizing that the terrorist threat is both long-term and constantly evolving, in 2008 our countries will assess the joint projects and identify avenues for future cooperation consistent with our increased attention to the security culture in both countries." U.S. Air Force Space Command will host additional Russian experts at F.E. Warren in the near future "to further advance bilateral cooperation on this critically important task," Klotz said. Friday's visit was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Officials from that agency, as well as the Department of Defense, accompanied the Russian delegation. The Joint Coordinating Group was formed in 1998 to aid efforts to secure nuclear weapons and materials. The group meets twice each year. The most recent meeting just concluded at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M. Copyright © 2005 by the Casper Star-Tribune published by Lee ***************************************************************** 17 APP.COM: Time to bolster nuclear security Asbury Park Press 04/9/05 Despite a concerted effort by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to block its disclosure, the National Academy of Sciences this week released a declassified report concluding that spent-fuel storage pools at the nation's nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attacks. By now that shouldn't come as much of a surprise to people living near the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey. The reactor's design makes its spent-fuel pool particularly susceptible to an airborne attack. The pool, which contains tons of radioactive rods, is located high inside the reactor building and is protected by thin roofs and walls that could be easily penetrated by an aircraft. The report said attacks on spent-fuel pools with civilian aircraft "remain a credible threat." And it concluded that if terrorists succeeded in partially draining water from the pool used to cool the spent-fuel rods, an intense fire likely would release large amounts of radioactivity. Just how large would depend on many variables. One of the report's most important recommendations was that separate assessments be done of each of the nation's more than 100 nuclear power plants. The report, much of which was classified, made several other recommendations on ways to better protect nuclear plants from catastrophic events. Some of the recommendations aren't new. Unfortunately, they have been dismissed by the NRC and the nuclear power industry as unnecessary. New Jersey's congressional delegation must make certain that the academy's recommendations are heeded. Acting Gov. Codey and Bradley M. Campbell, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, also must lobby for increased security. On Thursday, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., said he would co-sponsor an amendment to President Bush's energy bill calling for enactment of the academy's recommendations. Rep. H. James Saxton, R-N.J., whose district includes Lacey, must work with his colleagues to get the amendment passed. The Oyster Creek plant poses a distinct threat to the health and safety of hundreds of thousands of people. It's time for officials in this state and Washington to wake up to that fact. And to act. Copyright © 1997-2005 Asbury Park Press. ***************************************************************** 18 Guardian Unlimited: Scholar: N. Korea Won't Dismantle Weapons From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday April 9, 2005 8:46 PM By JOE McDONALD Associated Press Writer BEIJING (AP) - North Korea says it won't even discuss dismantling its nuclear weapons until Washington has normalized relations, a U.S. scholar who visited the North said Saturday. The new demand for formal relations is a victory for North Korean hard-liners and adds another complication to stalled talks on North Korea's nuclear program, according to Selig Harrison, a Washington-based researcher. He said it reflects frustration at a lack of results from contacts with Washington and fears of a U.S. attack. ``The chance to negotiate is gone,'' Harrison said. ``They told me that they are not prepared to discuss dismantling their nuclear weapons until their relations with the United States, economic and diplomatic, have been normalized.'' North Korean officials also said they will not return to the six-nation talks organized by China until Washington apologizes for listing the North among the world's ``outposts of tyranny,'' he said. The North declared in February that it had nuclear weapons, though outsiders have seen no proof. Three rounds of talks on demands for the North to give up its nuclear ambitions have produced no settlement. Participants, which also include South Korea, Japan and Russia, missed a September target for holding a new round when the North refused to take part. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested last month that the North could face sanctions if talks fail. Harrison said despite such pressure, North Korean officials rejected a proposal under discussion in earlier talks to give up their nuclear program in stages in exchange for aid. China and South Korea supported that plan, though Washington has refused to provide any aid until after the North's program is completely dismantled. Washington says it does not object to others providing aid in advance so long as Pyongyang has committed to that goal. Harrison said he met this week with Kim Yong Nam, head of North Korea's legislature; Vice Foreign Ministry Kang Sok Ju; and Kim Gye Gwan, the North's envoy to the nuclear talks. He said he did not meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Harrison has visited the North nine times since 1972. He is director of the Asia Project of the Center for International Policy and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, two Washington think tanks. ``The body language and my entire experience there this time made me more prepared to believe that they have some operational weapons,'' he said. The dispute erupted in late 2002 when the United States said the North admitted having a nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement that gave the impoverished country energy aid. Diplomats say the North hoped the 1994 agreement would lead to normal relations with Washington. In exchange for giving up nuclear development, Pyongyang has demanded aid and a treaty committing the United States not to use force against the North, its enemy in the 1950-53 Korean War. The Bush administration has refused to sign such a treaty but says it would promise not to invade. Forming diplomatic relations could require Washington to sign a ``treaty of friendship'' with Pyongyang - the sort of commitment that the North wants. China, the North's main aid donor, has tried without success to prod Pyongyang back into talks. Analysts say Beijing might not be using its full leverage against the North, hoping instead for a U.S. concession that would bring Pyongyang back willingly. Kang, the North's vice foreign minister, visited Beijing last week but no agreements were announced. Harrison said Kang would not discuss his meetings with Chinese officials. The North Korean leaders said the most that Pyongyang was willing to offer before Washington agrees to diplomatic relations is to freeze its nuclear weapons development at current levels, Harrison said. That includes a reactor at Yongbyon that experts say could produce plutonium for weapons. The North Koreans are preparing to unload fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor during the next two months, adding to the urgency of resuming talks, Harrison said. ``They will have more plutonium unless there is a freeze,'' he said. Harrison said during his visit, a senior North Korean general warned against Washington trying to impose an embargo, saying it would trigger retaliation by Pyongyang. ``That would be the beginning of a war and we would have the right to attack the U.S., including the U.S. mainland,'' Harrison quoted Gen. Ri Chan Bok, the North's commander on its heavily armed frontier with South Korea, as saying. Harrison said North Korean officials were insisting on the formal commitment to peace out of concern that President Bush was pursuing a ``regime change'' in the North, just like he did in Iraq. ``They really do feel threatened,'' Harrison said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 19 Xinhua: Iran optimist about upcoming nuclear talks with EU www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2005-04-10 19:18:47 TEHRAN, April 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran on Sunday voiced optimism about the next round of nuclear negotiations with the European Union (EU) on April 19, the official IRNA news agency reported. "The prospects of the negotiations are more positive than the past and we hope we will take an unreserved positive step in the next meeting," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi was quoted as saying. Asefi said Iran expects the two sides to "reach a tangible outcome on giving definite guarantees" in the next round of negotiations. "Today, almost a majority of the European countries have recognized Iran's right to have peaceful nuclear technology and the only issue is definite guarantees on which we will reach a conclusion in the next negotiations," he said. The spokesman however refused to disclose details of a plan offered by Iran as part of the country's proposal to reach breakthrough in the standoff, but reiterated Tehran's determination to produce nuclear fuel by its own. "Any plan offered by Iran is based on the principle that we never give up uranium enrichment and that the suspension of enrichment is temporary and voluntary," Asefi said. Since Iran suspended its highly sensitive uranium enrichment activities on Nov. 22, 2004, Tehran and the EU have held five rounds of negotiations which were stalled with the discrepancy overthe so-called objective guarantees of the peaceful nature of Tehran's nuclear program. The EU insisted that Iran could provide the objective guarantees only by permanently halting its work on building nuclear fuel cycles, including the activities related to uranium enrichment.For its part, Iran rejected the demand, saying it will not give up its legal rights. The United States has accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons secretly, a charge denied by Tehran and termed as politically motivated. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 20 Daily Times: VIEW: Defeating North Korea’s nuclear blackmail —Hideaki Kaneda | Monday, April 11, 2005 Japan’s policy towards North Korea should continue to emphasise solidifying ties with the US and strengthening cooperation with China, South Korea, and Russia, making every effort to promote early resumption of the six-party talks. But dialogue cannot be an end in itself. Progress will be impossible if North Korea is allowed to turn its mere participation in talks into a bargaining chip North Korea’s announcement that it possesses nuclear weapons has fuelled a diplomatic frenzy. To persuade North Korea to return to the six-party talks — with China, Japan, the US, Russia, and South Korea — on defusing the nuclear threat on the Korean peninsula, Japan, the US, and South Korea have now offered to expand the scope of the talks to allow North Korea to raise any issue that concerns it. This could be a grave mistake. The talks ground to a halt in June 2004, when the North Koreans pulled out, citing the allegedly hostile policies of the US and Japanese governments. Now they claim to have manufactured nuclear weapons for self-defence. Although there had been several unofficial statements by Kim Jong-Il’s regime admitting that North Korea possesses nuclear arsenal, the announcement was the first official confirmation. What lay behind the declaration was the regime’s recognition that a second-term Bush administration would not soften its demand for a complete repudiation of its nuclear programme, but would instead continue to pursue policies aimed at isolating and stifling North Korea. The same goes for Japan, whose stance on the abduction of its citizens by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s was also cited by the Kim regime last June as a reason for walking out of the six-party talks. With this in mind, the North Koreans’ motives in playing the nuclear trump card are clear, and the timing couldn’t have seemed more advantageous for them: force the Americans into making concessions while the situation in Iraq leaves the US with no room for manoeuvre, and undercut the rising call in Japan for economic sanctions against North Korea over the abduction issue. Thus, whereas North Korea’s announcement of its nuclear capability strongly condemned Japan and the US, it did not mention China, Russia, and South Korea, which had been more conciliatory during the six-party talks. Indeed, in withdrawing from the six-party talks, North Korea did not completely abandon the possibility of resolving the nuclear standoff through dialogue. Rather, North Korea’s aim was to postpone the six-party talks as long as possible in order to force direct bilateral negotiations with the US, in which it would presumably extract energy assistance and other aid while demanding a security guarantee for “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-Il. America didn’t budge on bilateral negotiations, and its response to North Korea’s recent announcement that it possesses nuclear weapons likewise emphasised the need to revive the six-party talks. Japan adopted a similar stance. Like Japan, the Bush administration’s relatively moderate stance toward North Korea has changed since the talks broke down last year. The US seems to be tightening its diplomatic encirclement of North Korea with a view to shifting the nuclear discussion to the UN Security Council. Moreover, the Japan-US Security Consultative Committee brought together the countries’ foreign and defence ministers in Washington in February to discuss common strategic objectives related to the reformation of US forward forces. This includes US forces in Japan, which will focus on responding to North Korean nuclear and ballistic-missile threats, as well as new threats posed by international terrorism and China’s military build-up. Remaining in step with each other on security issues is essential if Japan and the US are to maintain a firm alliance to ensure the stability of the Asia-Pacific region. The Japanese government has also been searching for effective measures to respond to North Korea’s consistently insincere attitude on regional and bilateral issues, including the abduction cases. Militarily, Japan revised its law on the Self-Defence Forces to establish procedures for ballistic missile defence, with a strong focus on North Korea. The decision, coming at the cabinet’s regular meeting on February 15, was not intended to coincide with Kim Jong-Il’s 63rd birthday the following day. But it did show that Japan’s government, having long suspected that North Korea already possessed nuclear weapons, would not be intimidated into a fundamental policy change by confirmation of the threat. The revision establishes the future direction of Japan’s military posture by delegating greater authority to the commanders of the Self-Defence Forces to initiate defensive actions against immediate threats. According to South Korean news reports, in addition to its existing mid-range Nodong missiles, North Korea has improved its Scud missiles, extending their range to reach Japan’s main islands. If North Korea is, indeed, continuing to develop not only its nuclear arsenal, but also various types of ballistic missiles, in defiance of international commitments, it is truly a rogue state. As for the nuclear issue, Japan’s policy towards North Korea should continue to emphasise solidifying ties with the US and strengthening cooperation with China, South Korea, and Russia, making every effort to promote early resumption of the six-party talks. But dialogue with the Kim regime cannot be an end in itself. Negotiation is necessary, and it must be sufficient, but progress will be impossible if North Korea is allowed to turn its mere participation in the six-party talks into a bargaining chip. —DT-PS Hideaki Kaneda, retired vice admiral of Japan’s Self Defence Forces, is currently director of the Okazaki Institute Daily Times - All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 21 Daily Times: Nuclear group arrives in Islamabad | Monday, April 11, 2005 ISLAMABAD: A Global Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) delegation arrived here on Sunday for negotiations with Pakistan today (Monday) at the Foreign Office. The global nuclear supplier group will talk with Foreign Office additional secretary Tariq Usman. The delegation, headed by a Swedish nuclear expert, will exchange views with Tariq Usman on matters about the sale and export of nuclear equipment and other issues. Foreign Office spokesman Jalil Abbas Jillani said the talks would expand bilateral relations with the delegation. “Pakistan wants to extend bilateral relations with the nuclear supplier group, which is in our interest,” he added. online Home | National Daily Times - All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 22 LA Times: Indictment Points to Arms Danger [Los Angeles Times - latimes.com] By Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON  A Pakistani military supplier has been indicted in an investigation into a network now suspected of supplying both Pakistan and India with outlawed components for their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile systems, federal authorities disclosed Friday. Humayun A. Khan, 47, of Islamabad was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday, based in part on information provided by a former business associate who has been secretly cooperating with authorities for more than a year. The Justice Department ordered Khan's indictment unsealed Friday, along with the plea agreement signed in November by the associate, Asher Karni of South Africa. Documents in both cases portray a network that has operated longer and more extensively than federal authorities had previously acknowledged. Khan is accused of illegally exporting several shipments of specialized equipment from the United States that can be used to test, develop and detonate nuclear weapons. He did so, the court documents contend, by conspiring with Karni to route the shipments through South Africa to avoid raising suspicion. Khan could not be reached for comment, but he said in a recent telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times that he was innocent of wrongdoing. He acknowledged supplying military parts to Pakistan but said he had never procured items for its nuclear or missile programs in violation of U.S. law. Kenneth L. Wainstein, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, was one of several top federal authorities who described the case as a potentially serious threat to American security. "The United States government will spare no effort to disrupt the illegal trade in technology with nuclear applications," Wainstein said. "As demonstrated by the multi-agency investigative effort in this case, all of our law enforcement components stand ready to take action against those nuclear black-marketeers who would jeopardize global security in pursuit of personal profit." Michael J. Garcia, assistant Homeland Security secretary for immigration and customs enforcement, said the case underscored how "the proliferation of nuclear components is not only a homeland security threat but a global threat." "This case in particular raised serious concerns," said Garcia, a former federal counter-terrorism prosecutor. "The technology involved, the destination of these goods, and the clear efforts to disguise the trail of the shipments raised the stakes even higher." The Times reported in March that authorities traced at least one shipment of specialized oscilloscopes that Khan had ordered from Karni in 2003 to a company directly involved in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. Federal agents have been unable so far to interview Khan, track down some missing items and pursue other leads. If convicted, Khan faces a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison. The documents also allege that a series of transactions occurred between Karni and several purchasers of electronic components who are based in India. Karni's dealings with India appear to date to 2001 or earlier and involve a web of companies in the United States, Israel and South Africa, the court documents show. And, as was the case with Khan in Pakistan, authorities seized e-mails in which Karni and associates in India appeared to discuss how to circumvent U.S. nonproliferation and export-control laws. In one case, Karni hid from a wary U.S. manufacturer of specialty missile components that the ultimate purchaser was the Vikram Sarrabhai Space Center, which was on a U.S. embargo list. The court documents quote him as telling an intermediary, "I did not tell them, of course, [where] it's going." One federal law enforcement official said the case was continuing and that investigators were "looking at dozens of suspects all over the world." If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives. [TMS Reprints] Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 23 GEO Pakistan News: Nuclear Suppliers Group arriving Pakistan tomorrow Geo.tv The group was formed in 1974 after Indian nuclear test to control nuclear arms proliferation. The group experts will hold talks with the Additional Secretary Foreign Affairs Tariq Usman, who is Pakistan foreign ministry’s expert on nuclear affairs. A Swedish nuclear expert will lead the group. Nuclear Suppliers Group provides policy guidelines for nuclear exports to counter the threat of nuclear arms proliferation. Foreign Office spokesman Jalil Abbas Jillani has confirmed the NSG visit to Pakistan. ***************************************************************** 24 The Times of India: Pak N-ring: Here and everywhere- PTI[ SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 2005 12:14:45 AM ] NEW YORK: A Pakistani businessman has been charged by US prosecutors with illegally exporting devices from the country that could be used to develop nuclear weapons while his alleged South African partner has pleaded guilty to arranging illegal export of US-made equipment to Pakistan and India. Asher Karni, an Israeli who lives in South Africa, entered the guilty plea last September and has been cooperating with investigators, federal prosecutors said. But the prosecutors kept the proceeding secret until they unsealed the plea agreement and charges brought against Humayun Khan, an Islamabad businessman with longstanding ties to Pakistan's military. Khan is said to be Karni's partner, the New York Times reported. It said in Karni's plea agreement, he "acknowledged" he was also involved in 2002 in selling sophisticated electronic equipment to government agencies in India, some... Continued...Next >> Copyright © 2005 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 25 The Times of India: Dr Nuke and his network- INDRANI BAGCHI TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 2005 02:02:50 AM ] Briefing journalists in New Delhi last week, US ambassador to India David Mulford admitted that the US investigation into Pakistan's nuclear proliferation network had entered its "second phase". Condoleezza Rice's statements in Islamabad certainly pointed to an interesting shift in the present US policy of alternately acknowledging or ignoring Pakistan's role in creating and running one of the world's deadliest blackmarkets, what IAEA chief Mohammed El Baradei evocatively labelled the nuclear Walmart. Inured to former secretary of state Colin Powell's public "good conduct" certificates to Pakistan  his official take on Pakistan's proliferation activities was, if they say they have shut it, I believe them  it did not take long for Rice's significantly nuanced comments to ring alarm bells in concerned quarters. So if the first phase was confined to shutting up the Khan operation, the second phase promises to be more intrusive  going after the whys and wherefores of the Pakistani nuclear system. Because, for the first time, official attention is focusing not merely on the father of the Pakistani nuclear programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, personally, but on a network with patrons reaching the highest and darkest corners of the Pakistani military establishment. Addressing a press conference with Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri, she said the US was very interested in knowing "what happened" and "how and why it happened". After decades of "off the record" knowledge, the world woke up to extensive nuclear proliferation activities by Pakistan when Libya blew the whistle in 2003. Continued...Next >> Copyright © 2005 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. || ***************************************************************** 26 ABQjournal: Hiroshima Survivor Delivers Anti-Nuke Message the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. Saturday, April 9, 2005 Hiroshima Survivor Delivers Anti-Nuke Message Albuquerque Journal--> By Martin Salazar Journal Staff Writer Horrific images of melted flesh and swollen bodies still haunt Keijiro Matsushima, a 76-year-old who survived the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. "I could see the whole city was burning already. I could feel Hiroshima— my own city— was dying," said Matsushima, one of six members of a Japanese delegation in Santa Fe to lobby city officials to pass a nuclear disarmament resolution. The resolution, introduced by Councilor Miguel Chavez, would put the Santa Fe City Council on record opposing the development of more nuclear weapons and calling for existing ones to be dismantled. It asks the United States to comply with a 1969 treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. The full council is slated to act on the resolution at its Wednesday meeting. At least one member of the governing body, Councilor David Pfeffer, has expressed opposition to the measure, saying that councilors should not be discussing issues of national security when they have local issues to worry about. At a brief news conference by the St. Francis of Assisi statue in front of City Hall on Friday afternoon, Chavez welcomed and exchanged gifts with the delegation from the Hiroshima World Peace Mission. The news conference was organized by the Los Alamos Study Group, an organization working toward nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. "Bienvenidos to the city of Santa Fe," Chavez told the delegates from the Hiroshima World Peace Mission. He said he hoped they could work together in the spirit of peace and reconciliation. Matsushima said he was impressed with the city's efforts on nuclear disarmament. He handed the councilor a bouquet of sunflowers, the international symbol for nuclear disarmament. "I am one of the survivors," Matsushima said. "The purpose of this mission is to transmit our experience on the effects of Hiroshima." A 16-year-old student at the time, Matsushima was sitting in class on the second floor of a two-story building roughly 1.2 miles from where the bomb was dropped. About 15 minutes after class began, he looked out the window and spotted American bombers flying above. Moments later, as Matsushima was redirecting his attention to his textbook, the first atomic bomb exploded. He recalls a blinding flash, his school shaking and windows shattering. "I jumped under the desk, and a huge noise followed," Matsushima said, later adding that the roof had collapsed. Outside, the city was plunged into darkness as a mushroom cloud enveloped it. "I was just crawling around on the floor in blood," he said. But Matsushima sustained only minor cuts from the shattered glass, injuries that paled in comparison to others who, he said, were badly burned, their clothing disintegrated and skin hanging from their bodies. Some people's bodies were "swollen up like pigs. That was the hellish scene throughout the city, Matsushima said. Death was everywhere. By the end of 1945, an estimated 140,000 people had died as a result of the bomb. Matsushima said he was grateful that his mother had already left the city. After making it to where his mother had been staying, he ended up in bed for a week because of a high fever and diarrhea. Matsushima said he only started going out and speaking against nuclear proliferation three or four years ago, after retiring from the junior high where he worked for 40 years. He acknowledged that convincing the world's nuclear powers to give up their weapons will be difficult. But he said he hopes a nuclear weapon is never again used. During this trip, the delegation toured Los Alamos National Laboratory, the atomic bomb's birthplace. "When we went to Los Alamos, I prayed for a while that the spirits of the victims could rest in peace," Matsushima said. Erwin Rivera, one of about a dozen people at the news conference, said that the first atomic bomb victims were the Pajarito homesteaders who were driven off their land at gunpoint. "They're not weapons; they're a crime against humanity," said Robert Johnson. "We can't use them." Chavez isn't the first city official in Santa Fe to take a stand against nuclear weapons. Mayor Larry Delgado in January joined Mayors for Peace, a worldwide anti-nuclear-weapons organization. The Hiroshima World Peace Mission is a project of the Hiroshima International Cultural Foundation and the Chugoku Shimbun Newspaper. Copyright Albuquerque Journal Steve@abqjournal.com ***************************************************************** 27 Deseret News: Utah Demos may see wishes realized in April 19 session [deseretnews.com] Saturday, April 9, 2005 April 19 session By Lisa Riley Roche Deseret Morning News Utah Democrats released their wish list Friday for the upcoming special session of the Legislature — including several items that already have the support of the majority GOP. "These are issues we have been promoting and supporting," House Minority Leader Ralph Becker, D-Salt Lake, said. "This is not something that's new for the Democrats. If anything, we are pleased to see the Republicans may be joining us." It's up to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to set the agenda for the special session, expected to be called for April 19. The governor announced even before the regular session of the Legislature ended March 2 that he'd bring lawmakers back. There's no shortage of requests for the agenda, especially since there is more money available to spend. Not only do the latest Utah State Tax Commission figures show a $68 million surplus, some $9 million extra has turned up in the budget. Even Envirocare is pitching legislation for the special session. The low-level nuclear waste storage site in Tooele County wants to extend its state permit to recently acquired property for insurance reasons, according to a company spokesman. But the spokesman, Mark Walker, said Envirocare has agreed not to actually store waste on the new site without permission from the governor and lawmakers. The soonest they'd ask, Walker said, is during the 2006 Legislature. Envirocare announced the purchase of the 315-acre site in February, at the same the company's new owners said they would withdraw an earlier pursuit of a license to accept higher-level waste, allowing the state to ban it. The only item that Huntsman has committed to for the agenda is the federal No Child Left Behind program. A compromise is being sought to settle concerns the program is an intrusion on states' rights without losing the federal funding associated with it. The governor's spokeswoman, Tammy Kikuchi, said he will likely issue the agenda, or call, for the special session late next week. "The goal is to keep the call relatively short, but everything is still being considered," she said, including the Envirocare request. Company officials met with the governor's staff Friday, Kikuchi said, and proposed the agreement not to store waste on the site "to make it more friendly to what the governor would want. . . . Whether it makes it more palatable to the governor remains to be seen." In a letter to the governor dated Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers said they want three additional education-related bills considered including a $6 million basic skills competency test package and $2.5 million more for the state reading program. But they also listed three bills that already are likely to appear on the agenda because of GOP backing — funding for the Drug Offenders Reform Act known as DORA, a veterans nursing home in Ogden and the Salt Palace Convention Center expansion. Last week, Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, said he was pushing for both DORA and the veterans home to be added to the agenda. And Friday, GOP legislative leaders and the governor appeared to reach a compromise on the Salt Palace. Veterans attending the Democrats' press conference Friday said it doesn't matter which party gets the credit as long as they get a new nursing home to accommodate veterans now on a waiting list for the Salt Lake facility. "We want it done," said Mike Overmeyer, president of the Salt Lake chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America. He called it "a crime" not to take care of the veterans of past wars, especially those who are elderly. Democrats said public education "received relatively poor treatment" from the 2005 Legislature and should be a priority for the additional surplus before more money is spent on roads. Last session, lawmakers deadlocked over DORA and the veterans home and, according to the Democrats, didn't spend enough on public education programs. But plenty of money went to road projects supported by GOP leaders. State board of Education chairman Kim Burningham praised the Democrat's call to secure $6 million to help high school kids pass the Utah Basic Skills Competency Test, the gateway to a high school diploma. Burningham also says the state school board would like to see the $2.5 million go back into helping youngsters read. The money would make whole the Legislature's $15 million reading program investment, for which local school boards have raised taxes as matching funds. But he's reserving judgment on another bill supported by Democrats, which would hold back young elementary students one grade if they are struggling with reading. Contributing: Jennifer Toomer-Cook © 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 28 Seattle Times: 3 scientists won't testify about Yucca documents Saturday, April 9, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m. WASHINGTON  Three scientists involved with e-mails about falsifying documents on the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste dump won't be made available to testify before a congressional panel, the Interior Department said yesterday. The department's U.S. Geological Survey also released a letter from the panel that reveals the scientists' names for the first time. The letter sent yesterday by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., requests the presence of Joe Hevesi, Alan Flint and Lorraine Flint at a Wednesday hearing of the House Government Reform federal work force and agency organization subcommittee. The panel, chaired by Porter, has been investigating the e-mails, written between 1998 and 2000 and made public by the Energy Department last month, that show Yucca Mountain workers discussing concocting facts and keeping two sets of figures, one for themselves and one to show quality-assurance officers. The FBI and the inspectors general at the Interior and Energy departments are investigating the possibility of fraudulent work on the planned nuclear-waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Interior Department cited the investigations in turning down Porter's request. CIA ordered to review Curveball's delivery CIA Director Porter Goss has ordered an internal review to determine why doubts about an informant code-named Curveball, a key source of prewar intelligence on Iraq, were not shared with policymakers, an official said yesterday. Information from Curveball, an Iraqi chemical engineer who provided intelligence on biological weapons, bolstered U.S. claims that prewar Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and helped the Bush administration make its case for the 2003 invasion. A presidential commission reported last week that Curveball's information was bogus and that internal CIA doubts about its veracity never were shared with White House policymakers. ALSO Pollution suit: A coalition of 12 states and several cities asked the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia yesterday to make the Environmental Protection Agency reconsider its decision not to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gases as air pollutants. Punished: Dr. Sean Tunis, accused of falsifying documents showing that he had fulfilled continuing-medical-education requirements, has been placed on administrative leave from his post as Medicare's chief medical officer and director of the Office of Clinical Standards and Quality. Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company ***************************************************************** 29 Las Vegas RJ: YUCCA MOUNTAIN: E-mail investigation hits snag Saturday, April 09, 2005 Porter says House panel working to question three research hydrologists By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jon Porter hit a wall on Friday in trying to question government scientists tied to controversial e-mails that mention falsifying Yucca Mountain documents. The Interior Department said it would not supply three figures in a document investigation to testify at a House subcommittee hearing next Wednesday. Porter, a Nevada Republican who is subcommittee chairman, said he was hoping the witnesses would appear voluntarily, but his staff also "has been working hand in hand with the Department of Justice" to explore other options that could include offers of immunity. Congressional sources said other possible outcomes include interviewing the individuals privately in person or over the telephone. The potential witnesses were identified for the first time as Joe A. Hevesi, Alan L. Flint and Lorraine E. Flint, according to a subcommittee letter released by the USGS. The three are research hydrologists for the U.S. Geological Survey who worked at the Nevada nuclear waste site during the 1990s. The Flints, who are married, and Hevesi presently work for the USGS in Sacramento, Calif. Hevesi has been identified by federal sources as the scientist Energy Department officials asked to return to the Yucca program last month to locate an electronic file related to work he previously conducted. The assignment was scrapped on Wednesday when it became known the invitation was issued even as DOE officials linked the worker to the e-mail investigation. Alan Flint was a supervisor and a senior hydrologist on the Yucca program who contributed research on water infiltration, modeling how fast rainwater might flow through cracks in the mountain to the repository level 1,000 feet below the surface. The speed at which water travels through Yucca Mountain is an important factor in safety calculations of how long it might take radioactive waste casks to corrode and leach deadly particles into groundwater. Phone calls to the scientists at their offices were not returned Friday. An attempt to contact Alan Flint and Lorraine Flint at their home in Davis, Calif., also was not successful. Porter has identified the targeted witnesses as the principal composers of e-mails written between May 1998 and March 2000. In the messages, authors express frustration with stringent quality assurance requirements and discuss using "fudge factors" and making up dates and names in research documentation to satisfy the rules. "If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff," said an e-mail message dated March 30, 2000. Critics of Yucca Mountain charge the e-mails signify deep problems in the program and call into question the science the Energy Department relied upon to recommend the site and begin writing a license application to build a repository there. Gov. Kenny Guinn said Tuesday he planned to seek a meeting with President Bush to press for the project to be scrapped. John Arthur, head of DOE's Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas, said managers are checking work that e-mail authors performed to determine if any was fudged and what impact that might have on the project. Hevesi was an author of an analysis model report on infiltration and climate flow that failed a January 2000 audit, with reviewers noting software and technical deficiencies. Names and other identifying information had been redacted from a cache of e-mails that Porter made public on April 1. The names were made public Friday in a letter released by the USGS in response to a query. The Interior Department said it would not compel the scientists to appear before Congress because of an ongoing investigation being conducted by Interior and Energy department inspectors general and the FBI that could result in criminal charges. "Given the potentially serious implications for the employees involved, the department believes it is inappropriate to require the individuals identified by the subcommittee to testify in a public hearing about the matters under active investigation," the department said in a letter signed by Congressional Affairs Director Matt Eames. Porter said he wanted to ask the witnesses whether higher-ups in the Yucca program were aware of possible document fraud. "We want to give them every opportunity to speak," Porter said. "We want them to talk to us. I believe this is a far bigger problem than just a couple of e-mails. We want to be sure we can get to the top." Subcommittee counsel Chad Bumgard told The Associated Press that subpoenas were a last resort. Porter said he was not prepared to cancel the hearing. "There is not a question of whether we have a hearing. We will have a hearing," Porter said. "It's just a matter of having all the information together at the right time and that we do it properly with the proper timing and the proper information." Review-Journal writer Keith Rogers contributed to this report. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 30 deseretnews.com: Leavitt won't have to testify at trial of Goshute leader [deseretnews.com] Saturday, April 9, 2005 Ex-governor opposed Bear's plan for a nuclear waste site By Angie Welling Deseret Morning News Mike Leavitt will not testify at the upcoming criminal trial of Leon D. Bear, whose controversial plan to bring a nuclear-waste storage facility to tribal lands in the western desert faced perhaps its strongest opposition from the former governor. Goshute tribal leader Leon Bear's criminal trial on theft charges starts April 18 in Salt Lake City. Deseret Morning News archives Attorneys for Bear, the embattled leader of the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, argued Friday that Leavitt's alleged monetary support of tribal members opposed to Bear's plan calls into question the credibility of those slated to testify against the Goshute chairman on charges that he embezzled some $160,000 from the band between December 1998 and March 2003. Through an attorney specifically hired to combat the proposed facility, Leavitt authorized payments of an estimated $500,000 to four attorneys representing a handful of dissident Goshutes, attorney John Sullivan said. "If the state of Utah, via the governor's office, is paying the attorneys' fees of any of the witnesses in this case, that would certainly influence their testimony," Sullivan said. Bear is charged with one count each of theft from Indian tribal organizations and theft concerning programs receiving federal funds and three counts of false statements for allegedly failing to claim his tribal income on his 1999, 2000 and 2001 tax returns. The charges are specific to Bear's actions in various leadership positions within the band, and, Assistant Attorney General Fred Nelson said Friday, have nothing to do with Leavitt's very public opposition to storing nuclear waste on Goshute land. "Gov. Leavitt was governor of the state for 11 years, and there is no question that he opposed the facility," Nelson said, confirming that Leavitt set aside funds to fight the proposed storage facility on a number of fronts, including aiding the dissident Goshutes. "That does not demonstrate, though, a relevance to the particular circumstances here." U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins agreed and quashed a subpoena ordering Leavitt, now President Bush's secretary of Health and Human Services, to appear in court April 18, the first day of a scheduled two-week trial in the case. "I don't see how (Leavitt's) testimony, even assuming it in some fashion follows the lines that you've suggested, would be helpful to these specific counts," Jenkins said. The judge repeatedly cautioned Bear's attorneys to stick to the details of the specific charges, not the larger political issue regarding the waste storage. "We're going to confine ourselves to these charges," Jenkins said. In 1997, Bear signed a lease with Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of utility companies seeking to store nuclear waste temporarily on the reservation pending the construction of a permanent facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The decision divided the tribe, with a strong faction of members opposed to the storage plan and Bear's continued control over the tribe. Outside of court Friday, Bear attorney Joseph Thibodeau suggested that Leavitt, through other state employees and agencies, supported the fracturing of the band by footing the bill for attorneys to act as "strategists" for the dissident Goshutes. Leavitt's thinking, according to Thibodeau, was: "If I can find people who will take (Bear) down, I take the tribe down, I take the project down." According to a March letter from Nelson to Bear's defense team, attorneys and law firms did receive payment from the state "in efforts to oppose the Private Fuel Storage proposal." However, Nelson wrote, no payments were made specifically for "efforts to bring about the recall of Leon Bear as chairman of the band." The letter also notes that payments were made directly to Goshute members, though it does not specify how much or to whom. Some of the witnesses expected to testify against Bear have also been accused of misusing tribal funds. Sammy Blackbear, who has been subpoenaed in the Bear case, pleaded guilty last week to one count of theft from an Indian tribal organization for embezzling at least $1,000 — though federal prosecutors claim it is as much as $25,000 — from the band. Two other Goshutes, Marlinda Moon and Miranda Wash, and tribal attorney Duncan Steadman were charged along with Blackbear and are scheduled to stand trial on the charges in June. Steadman is one of the four lawyers who received state money for his representation of the tribal members. Two additional key witnesses for the federal government in the Bear case, Rex and Mary Allen, reportedly received immunity from prosecution in exchange for their anticipated testimony against Bear. E-mail: awelling@desnews.com © 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 31 Bellona: Zheleznogorsk Chemical Combine received first shipment of spent nuclear fuel this year 21 tonne of the spent nuclear fuel arrived at Zheleznogorsk Chemical Combine from the Novovoronezh NPP. 2005-04-08 18:16 The shipment reportedly went on without incidents. The special police squad guards from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs constantly guarded the train consisting of 7 cars. The Zheleznogorsk Combine specialists accompanied the train and monitored the state of the spent fuel day and night. The unloading operation was carried under water with the help of special equipment and then it was transferred to the sections for the long-term storage. 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 ***************************************************************** 32 CANOE: Thousands protest nuclear fuel-reprocessing plant April 9, 2005 TOKYO (AP) - Nearly 2,000 protesters gathered Saturday to call for shutting down a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in northern Japan that is key to the country's aim of becoming more energy-independent. The rally was organized by Gensuikin, or Japan Congress Against A-and H-Bombs, and several other anti-nuclear groups that have demanded the plant halt tests with depleted uranium aimed at producing a reprocessed nuclear fuel known as mixed oxide, or MOX, needed for a new generation of advanced reactors. Protesters want officials to abandon plans for full-fledged operations scheduled to start in 2006, activist Keiko Kikukawa said in a telephone interview. She estimated that about 1,900 people joined the rally, shouting slogans and attending activists' speeches. "Even if the uranium tests have started, the reprocessing can be stopped. We absolutely won't give up. Stop nuclear reprocessing!" the protesters said in a statement. "We refuse to be contaminated by radiation from nuclear energy," it said, designating April 9 - the day local officials approved the plant - for annual anti-nuclear energy demonstrations. The 2.1-trillion-yen (about $23 billion Cdn) plant at Rokkasho, about 580 kilometres northeast of Tokyo, began tests with the radioactive materials in December last year. The plant's startup has been delayed for years since a radioactive water leak there in 2002 led to protests from area residents and officials. The country's nuclear power industry has been plagued by safety problems and shutdowns in recent years, including a 1999 reprocessing plant accident outside Tokyo that killed two workers and exposed hundreds to radioactivity. Japan's only other plutonium-using reactor has been closed since a 1995 accident. The government's energy policy calls for converting as many as 18 electricity-generating reactors to use MOX, a uranium-plutonium mixture, as a transition to fast-breeder reactors, which also produce more plutonium that can be used as fuel. They would use MOX from the Rokkasho plant. Resource-poor Japan's 52 active nuclear plants supply more than a third of its energy. Tokyo wants to build 11 more reactors, boosting nuclear power to 40.7 per cent of Japan's energy supply by 2010. Columnist PAUL JACKSON Copyright© 2005, Canoe Inc ***************************************************************** 33 washingtonpost.com: Toxic E-Mails Saturday, April 9, 2005; Page A22 MANY MYSTERIES still surround the infamous "Yucca Mountain e-mails," a series of private exchanges among government scientists that recently became the subject of Energy Department and congressional investigations. Taken on their own, the missives seem to confirm environmentalists' and Nevadans' worst fears about the construction of a permanent storage site for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. The still-anonymous U.S. Geological Survey employees wrote to one another about fudging data, about insufficient resources to complete "quality assurance" procedures ("if they really want the stuff they'll have to pay to do it right," said one) and about possible flaws in the work. Worse, the scientists appeared to be under pressure to prove that the site was safe. Their bosses, one wrote, had "now reached a point where they need to have certain items work no matter what." The significance of these particular scientists isn't yet clear. Nor is it yet clear that the work they were doing was important enough to negate the work of many other scientists who have studied the long-term geology of Yucca Mountain for many years. The project they were involved in -- creating computer models of future water infiltration of the site -- ended in 2002, according to the Energy Department, and the work they did has been substantiated by other scientists. But the administration had better take them seriously, making clear just what research is compromised. The e-mails are disturbing on their face and surely will reinvigorate political opposition in Nevada and elsewhere. As long as construction of a permanent storage site is indefinitely delayed, nuclear waste will continue to sit in 139 much less secure sites around the country. The lack of a long-term storage facility also will, and should, prevent the construction of new nuclear plants. Nuclear power, because it does not create greenhouse gases and does not depend on imported fossil fuel, is often spoken of as an energy source for the future. But if the issue of nuclear waste is not given higher priority, nuclear power will certainly become the fuel of the past. Neither the Energy Department nor the White House -- nor, for that matter, the nuclear industry -- will do themselves any favors by ignoring or dismissing the e-mail scandal, or by trying to pretend that it doesn't really affect the politics of the project. © Copyright1996- The Washington Post Company | User ***************************************************************** 34 Rutland Herald: Newspaper guilty of bias by omission (Yucca) April 10, 2005 While I have often taken the editorial page to task on its common practice of omitting certain facts about different issues when it writes editorials, it is forgivable considering the editorial page is merely one man's or woman's opinion. But the news division is another animal altogether. Recently, the Rutland Herald ran a story about the Yucca Mountain waste site, an area in Nevada where much of the country is set to dispose of its nuclear waste. Of course, the story was run by The New York Times, which isn't exactly an unbiased source for news. The article is essentially meant to embarrass the Bush administration's new pick for energy secretary, Samuel Bodman, and by proxy President Bush. Now we hear that Samuel Bodman and the Bush administration have announced $1.2 million in grant money to improve energy efficiency for low-income residents in Vermont. Where was the story in the Rutland Herald? Nowhere! However, if readers were paying attention, last week the pages of the Sunday Rutland Herald and Times Argus were covered with all kinds of stories about Sen. James Jeffords taking credit for federal dollars for building reconstruction in Brattleboro and couldn't help itself in running several stories and Sunday commentaries about how unfairly he's being attacked by Republicans. Do Rutland Herald and Times Argus readers ever wonder why the constant drumbeat of criticism of the president during the election from their editorial, their news division, and the rest of the Vermont delegation to Washington, but you never hear of the stories where the president is doing right by Vermont? Newspapers should print the news and let readers decide, not in the practice of delivering constant unfavorable opinion and news stories to formulate and drive public opinion rather than just report on it. Journalism is supposed to be about reporting the news, not filtering the news to promote an agenda. Kevin W. Blier Director of the Center for American Cultural Renewal and Vermont Renewal Rutland © 2005 Rutland Herald ***************************************************************** 35 Salt Lake Tribune: Leavitt need not testify at Goshute leader's trial Article Last Updated: 04/09/2005 02:04:44 AM Federal charges: A judge rules the case has nothing to do with the ex-governor By Patty Henetz The Salt Lake Tribune Disputed Skull Valley Band of Goshutes tribal leader Leon Bear on Friday lost his bid to compel former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt to testify in Bear's federal tax fraud and embezzlement trial scheduled to begin later this month. U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins threw out Bear's subpoena for Leavitt, saying that the federal charges against Bear had nothing to do with the state or the former governor. At the same time, Jenkins ruled Bear's attorneys will have the right to investigate a broad range of state records they believe may contain evidence helpful to his defense. Bear's attorney John Sullivan argued that Leavitt should testify because he publicly opposed a proposal to store high-level nuclear waste on the Goshute reservation and approved payments to attorneys representing Bear critics who will testify against him in the federal trial. The state's willingness to offer financial help to the witness-critics could bias them, Sullivan said. But Jenkins countered that the critics' motivations for testifying against Bear had nothing to do with the indictments handed up by a federal jury in December 2003, when Bear, 48, was charged with three counts of embezzling $160,952 from tribal programs. He also was charged with three counts of tax fraud. Prosecutors allege Bear reported being unemployed on his personal tax filings but was paid more than $192,316 for tribal business. His trial is scheduled to begin April 18. Bear has been involved in tribal power struggles since striking a deal in 1997 with Private Fuel Storage, a nuclear utility consortium, to build a high-level radioactive waste storage facility on Goshute land. He has denied wrongdoing. Bear's attorney, Joseph Thibodeau, argued that Leavitt's 1999 State of the State speech, in which he vowed to create a "moat" of uncrossable land around the reservation to stop the PFS project, showed a determination to undermine Bear's leadership. Leavitt's willingness to pay legal bills for tribal members who also want to oust Bear showed the state influenced the federal investigation, Thibodeau said. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Stan Olsen, the government's lead prosecutor in the tax and embezzlement case, said it was "nonsense" that his office acted at the state's behest. "This is a federal case," Olsen said. © Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 36 Salt Lake Tribune: DOE wants to move area's N-waste pile Article Last Updated: 04/10/2005 02:01:38 AM Triumph in Moab? Landscape workers from W.D. Yards of Grand Junction, Colo., spray a mixture of grass seed and mulch on the south side of the Atlas tailings pile near Moab. The procedure is aimed at stabilizing the recontoured sides of the pile. (Franklin Seal ) STORY OF THE WEEK: Tailings transfer The U.S. Department of Energy announced Wednesday that it wants to move 12 million tons of radioactive tailings away from the banks of the Colorado River near Moab to another site away from the water source for 25 million people in the West. Though not a final decision, the Energy Department's "preferred alternative" would mean an investment of an estimated $400 million and up to 10 years to clean up and move a 130-acre pile of radioactive soil left from a Cold War-era uranium mine. Besides transporting the tailings to Crescent Junction, 30 miles north of the Moab area, the Energy Department also said it intends to purge the area's groundwater of contaminants. Utah leaders, environmentalists and residents called the decision a triumph for everyone. © Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 37 Salt Lake Tribune: Facility won't ask to expand N-dump Article Last Updated: 04/09/2005 02:04:16 AM Envirocare: Officials of a radioactive waste site will seek the OK to build a rail line By Patty Henetz The Salt Lake Tribune Envirocare of Utah is backing off an attempt to get approval from the Legislature and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. during the upcoming special legislative session to double the size of its low-level radioactive waste disposal facility. Tim Barney, Envirocare senior vice president, said Friday the company will forgo its request to expand waste operations onto a parcel of land adjoining its facility after hearing from members of the public, environmental advocates and various policy-makers. Barney said Envirocare still will try to get a resolution on the April 19-20 special session agenda that would give the business permission to build new waste handling facilities, a rail line and an administration building on part of the 536 acres of land it purchased from Charles Judd - a potential competitor - when the business changed hands two months ago. Waste disposal expansion requests will come later, as needed, Barney said. But the three draft versions of the concurrent resolution the company wants lawmakers to consider include language that presumes Envirocare already has received its legally required approvals from Tooele County and two state regulatory boards to expand its waste disposal operations 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. While the Radiation Control Board is well into its approval process and could grant Envirocare an amended license in time for the resolution to be included on the special session agenda, the Solid and Hazardous Waste Board hasn't even received a request to amend the license. Barney said he expected the state Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel would polish the resolution before it went to lawmakers. Envirocare critic Jason Groenewold, director of the environmental advocacy group Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, or HEAL, questioned the legality of the proposal and said Envirocare is "way too premature" in its push to get its resolution before the Legislature. Groenewold, who has called Envirocare's rail expansion proposal "a Trojan horse" to get the approval to double its waste disposal capacity, met twice this past week with Envirocare Chief Executive Steve Creamer to voice his concerns after reading the first version of the proposed legislation. "We as an organization don't have an issue with [Envirocare's] operational efficiencies, but we absolutely draw the line of expanding the disposal capacity of the dump," Groenewold said. Creamer and two investment firms finalized the purchase of Envirocare on Jan. 31. At that time, he told The Salt Lake Tribune the land purchased from Judd was "junk land" that wouldn't be needed for waste disposal because the facility had 30 years disposal capacity on the 543 acres currently operated as a waste site. Barney says the actual capacity is 17 to 20 years. But Judd, a former Envirocare president who wanted to open his own waste facility on the 536-acre Cedar Mountain property he sold to Envirocare, said Friday that he calculates Envirocare has only two to seven years left on its current land. "I know they are running out of space," he said. Judd made that argument before the Tooele County Commission a year ago, but the commission rejected his proposal, saying there was not enough demand for another facility to take low-level class A waste. This week, however, the commission granted Envirocare's request to expand onto Judd's former property. Barney disputed Judd's calculations. "I just completely disagree. He has a vested interest in making that argument," Barney said. The estimated 20 years waste disposal capability remaining on the original Envirocare property is a conservative reckoning, he said, adding he would "look anyone in the eye and say that's the capacity." But if that's the case, said Groenewold, why is Envirocare pressing the issue now? "I don't know how to interpret all this. I just don't see the urgency and need to go forward," he said. "If there is such a need, that information needs to be presented and understood." Huntsman has until April 17 to decide what to put on the session agenda. © Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 38 Salt Lake Tribune - Opinion: Whack-a-Mole Article Last Updated: 04/09/2005 01:55:47 PM NUCLEAR WASTE STORAGE Hatch belatedly picks up the right hammer The game of nuclear waste Whack-a-Mole¨ continues in Utah and Nevada. No sooner does one ugly little rat get knocked back into its hole than another one pops up somewhere else. At least Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch is brandishing a new hammer. Or a mallet that seemed new when Nevada's Sen. Harry Reid started waving it around a few weeks ago. Reid's weapon is a proposal to abandon the whole idea of a central storage site for the nation's spent nuclear power plant fuel and instead keep the stuff where it has been generated, encased in special casks and placed in federal ownership, while waiting for someone to invent a way to transmogrify the stuff out of existence. Whether Hatch is a recent convert to that approach, which he hedgingly endorsed Monday, or has really, as he claims, been packing that whacker all along, at least he's right to talk about this cudgel now. In Nevada, the game means knocking down the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a site long envisioned as the final resting place for the nation's dangerously deteriorating fuel rods. Utah, meanwhile, has two moles of its own. One is the proposed Public Fuel Storage nuclear waste facility, an above-ground, supposedly temporary, place for the old fuel planned for the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation west of Salt Lake City. The other has long been known as Plan B, a suggestion that if the feds decide that a plan such as Skull Valley is acceptable, Utah ought to counter with a location further from the population centers of the Wasatch Front, a location on state land that would bring the state's schools income from the project. Even though the latter is a Utah mole born-and-bred, and even though it was recently revived by the state's new coordinator of public lands policy, San Juan County Commission Chairman Lynn Stevens, Gov. Jon Huntsman is among many state leaders who continue to see it as a rotten idea. Huntsman and Rep. Jim Matheson are on board. Hatch is coming around and Sen. Bob Bennett and Rep. Chris Cannon are properly becoming more wobbly in their support for Yucca. So the leaders of Nevada and Utah can present the kind of united front that is absolutely necessary if a region with little political pull is going to force the rest of the nation to think this issue through very carefully. © Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 39 Salt Lake Tribune MOAB MILL TAILINGS: Benefit to Utah flows upstream Opinion Article Last Updated: 04/09/2005 02:28:43 AM Far be it from us to look this $400 million gift horse in the mouth. But Utahns justly pleased that the Energy Department has decided it wants to move 12 million tons of radioactive uranium milling leftovers away from the banks of the Colorado River near Moab should not necessarily read it as a sign that the federal government suddenly cares about the ecological future of our state. The leavings of the Cold War uranium mill have been sitting there since 1984, when its owner went bankrupt and left the state and, eventually, the federal government holding the bag. It took a long time for the Energy Department to move, and it only did so after frightening everyone with the thought that the radioactive waste might just be left where it is, buried under a mostly symbolic layer of rocks. Utah officials have long urged that the mine tailings be moved to a more geologically stable site. But concern for Utah, already home of one radioactive waste dump and the proposed site of at least one more, was not enough to convince the feds to deal with the Moab site. Fortunately for us, the Colorado River that runs right by the waste heap's front porch just happens to be the major source of drinking water for up to 30 million people downstream in Arizona, Nevada and politically powerful Southern California. Wednesday's announcement was not only big news in Utah, but also in California, where those officially pleased by the announcement included presidential mentionees Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sen. Diane Feinstein. Reports also indicate that the people down river will see a significant threat to their drinking water removed over the next 10 years in no small part because some other folks in Utah, along with everyone owning a television set, saw homes swept away in recent southwest Utah floods. The fact that officially drought-stricken Utah could see that much water flowing through a river brought home to all involved that the Colorado River could just as easily rise that high, washing away not only the uranium tailings but also tons of other chemical pollutants that are associated with a mill's graveyard. The grave of this mill is only to be moved some 30 miles north, to an unused and, more importantly, arid rock quarry. Out of the reach of the Colorado, but still in Utah. But, even though this good news is good for Utah only because it is also good for California, we'll take it gladly. © Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 40 Boston Globe: Demolition on scheduled, but spent fuel to remain on site Boston.com / News / Local / Mass. / Associated Press April 10, 2005 --> [The Associated Press] ROWE, Mass. -- About 1,700 tons of spent nuclear fuel will remain on the site of the decommissioned Yankee Rowe power plant for the foreseeable future even though demolition of most of the structures are scheduled to be completed on schedule by the fall, company officials say. The spent fuel will be kept on site under tight security while the controversy over a proposed federal nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is resolved. A 90-acre section of the 1,800-acre site in Rowe will remain the home of 16 "dry cask" storage units containing spent nuclear fuel, officials said at a meeting of the Yankee Rowe Community Advisory Board last week. The casks contain 533 fuel assemblies -- bundles of hollow steel rods that contain ceramic-coated pellets of highly refined uranium. "There's currently no other place to send the spent fuel," said Kelley Smith, a spokeswoman for Yankee Atomic Electric Co. "It requires a national repository, and none exists currently." Yankee Rowe was shut down in 1992 after 31 years of operation. The final part of the aboveground structure should be demolished this month, Smith said. Subsurface demolition, including the removal of pipes, will be complete in June. Debris stored on site from the construction in the late 1950s will be removed in August. The company will do some grading work and will plant trees and grass in the fall, she said. Yankee Atomic is in talks with the town of Rowe on an arrangement in which the company would continue to own the 1,800-acre site, but would lease most of it to the town for recreational use, she said. Yankee Atomic, which is owned by a consortium of New England utilities, is part of a lawsuit against the federal government to recover the costs of keeping the fuel on site, after the government failed to meet its contractual obligation to take possession of the fuel and move it to a federal repository. ------ Information from: The Berkshire Eagle, http://www.berkshireeagle.com ***************************************************************** 41 Fiji Times Online: Anger over nuke waste - (Sunday, April 10, 2005) A SHIP carrying radioactive nuclear waste has entered Pacific waters without informing authorities of Pacific nations. Greenpeace and the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre said the British ship, Pacific Sandpiper, laden with nuclear waste was expected to enter and breach Exclusive Economic Zones of Pacific countries in the next couple of days. The ship's cargo consists of five casks holding 124 canisters of highly radioactive nuclear waste. The Pacific Sandpiper left France on February 17 and is expected to reach its destination in Japan on April 20. Director of Environment Epeli Nasome said there had been no notice given to Fiji authorities by the owners of the ship on its path or cargo. "The contents of the ship are so lethal that if a spill occurs it might destroy the marine environment and organisms," Mr Nasome said. He said notice should have been given to Pacific Islanders so that they could have identified routes for the ship to follow. He said this would in effect take the ship away from the islands' EEZs and reduce any danger to their environment in case of accidents. Mr Nasome said if any notice had been given about its arrival, an environment impact assessment would have been conducted by the Pacific Islands to estimate the extent of threats posed by the ship's cargo in case of spills. He said the Pacific Islands did not have the equipment or the skilled personnel to deal with such accidents. Copyright © 2004, Fiji Times Limited. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 42 SF Chron: Oppenheimer always knew he would pay for his discovery of the atomic bomb THE FIRE UNLEASHED [San Francisco Chronicle] Reviewed by Elizabeth Svoboda Sunday, April 10, 2005 [Robert Oppenheimer (left), after receiving the Fermi Priz...] American Prometheus The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin KNOPF; 721 Pages; $35 In the summer of 1979, historian Martin Sherwin paid homage to the scholarly doctrine of sitzfleisch (sitting flesh) by saddling up and riding into the craggy peaks framing ranch Perro Caliente, N.M. Sherwin's quest -- stalking the ghost of Robert Oppenheimer, the fallen-from-grace atomic scientist who had once traversed these same mountains on horseback -- would take him and co-biographer Kai Bird on a bumpier ride than they expected, one spanning decades as well as distances. The fruit of this journey was "American Prometheus," a portrait nuanced and exacting enough to make the authors' quarter-century chase worthwhile. In an age of six-month manuscript deadlines, spending 25 years to research a biography seems outlandish (a sentiment the book's publishers probably shared at some point; Sherwin assured his editor at the outset that the project would take five years at most). But "American Prometheus" is not a biography in the conventional sense of the word. Bird and Sherwin set out to write the definitive history of the "father of the atomic bomb," but found they had bitten off a larger chunk than anticipated. The more they learned about Oppie, the more they glimpsed the ways his prominence in government and subsequent banishment shed light on the uneasy partnership between science and politics in America. By probing each detail of his life, they gleaned new insights into how that partnership evolved during the tense postwar years. This excavation work, much of it unforeseen by the authors themselves, makes the book a standout in two genres: biography and social history. Oppenheimer's early years alone provide sufficient fodder for a full- length manuscript. Growing up in Manhattan, he spoke five languages and drew comparisons to da Vinci for his ability to derive formulas and critique literature with equal facility. After obtaining his doctorate at 22, he published prodigiously, and his contributions to quantum physics, including an observation that electron motions can be assessed separately from those of neutrons, are still considered noteworthy. When government officials chose Oppie to lead the American researchers who developed the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, N.M., in the 1940s, his science- wunderkind identity broadened in ways he could not have imagined. Initially, he insisted to anyone who questioned his mission that not developing a nuclear fission device would mean national suicide. "Many of us thought, 'My God, ... it might end up by blowing up the world.' Some of us brought this up," Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz, a former student, recalled, "and his answer was, 'Look, what if the Nazis get to it first?' " But Bird and Sherwin round out Oppenheimer's wartime persona by acknowledging his early internal conflict. As they tell it, long before the lab's two uranium bombs ("the gadgets" in Los Alamos speak) killed 100,000 Japanese civilians, Oppie was having misgivings. "Those poor little people," he would mutter as he wandered between lab buildings, chomping on his pipe. After the bombs detonated and the Pacific war ended, Oppenheimer seemed on the fast track to fame and influence, whether he liked it or not. Scientific Monthly magazine feted him as a modern Prometheus who had "brought back for man the very thunderbolts of Zeus." In 1947, he was appointed chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission, a political platform he used to lobby for international control of atomic weaponry. Despite the recognition, Oppenheimer's remorse over his wartime role grew, and he began to use his clout to oppose research on hydrogen superbombs. All along, he sensed that, like the protagonist of Henry James' "Beast in the Jungle," he was destined "for something rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen." Multiple beasts would indeed assault Oppie in the years to come, and the authors convincingly bring them to life. As anti-Red sentiment swelled in the early 1950s, Oppenheimer -- who had associated with Communist-sympathizing groups during the Depression -- found himself among the public figures being pilloried, and Bird and Sherwin offer a gimlet-eyed analysis of the motivations of those who vilified him. Then-AEC Commissioner Lewis Strauss, for instance, who had sparred with the erstwhile Los Alamos head over his opposition to H-bomb development, was among the first to intimate Oppenheimer might have passed atomic secrets to the Soviets. At Strauss' behest, Eisenhower suspended the physicist's security clearance in 1953 and ordered a public hearing to assess his loyalty. The resulting drama starred some memorable doubting Thomases, particularly physicist Edward Teller, who, like Strauss, resented Oppenheimer's efforts to halt H-bomb research. Teller testified: "I would like to see the vital interests of this country in hands which I understand better and therefore trust more." Though the hearing turned up no evidence that Oppenheimer had committed espionage, its conclusion was absolute: His security clearance was permanently revoked, barring him from involvement in future atomic research. Bird and Sherwin portray the physicist's demise as the confluence of his youthful flirtations with the left, his colleagues' biases and professional jealousies, and the prevalence of McCarthyist hysteria -- a personal and political perfect storm. Importantly, they balance their Oppenheimer-as-victim assertions with acknowledgement of his failings as a political animal. Brilliant and charming when he chose, Oppie was also quick to anger and dismissive of those he disagreed with, a fateful tendency that made him enemies in high places. The book is at its best exploring how the Oppenheimer verdict signified a broad sea change in the relationship between science and government. Atomic researchers, the new American thinking went, should not also serve as de facto political philosophers, as Oppie had during his postwar heyday. They would continue to impart crucial knowledge to their leaders, but they would no longer be called upon to debate how it should be used. "Even if one's loyalty was unquestioned, challenging the wisdom of America's reliance on a nuclear arsenal was dangerous," the authors conclude. Like Prometheus, who delivered fire to humans against Zeus' wishes and was then chained to the side of a mountain, Oppenheimer invested his entire being in a pursuit he sensed would eventually punish both him and humankind. By the time he confessed regret, however, America's atomic trajectory had already been plotted, and his attempts to change it proved a suicide mission. If Bird and Sherwin's magnum opus leads us to debate the level of control scientists should have over their creations and to decry the kind of witch- hunt mentality that stifles dissent, Oppie's larger-than-life legacy will not have been squandered. San Francisco science writer Elizabeth Svoboda's work has appeared in Discover, Popular Science and other publications. Page B - 1 The San Francisco Chronicle] ***************************************************************** 43 [progchat_action] Depleted uranium: A death sentence here and Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 11:28:35 -0500 (CDT) Depleted uranium: A death sentence here and abroad From AxisofLogic.com U.S. Military Depleted uranium: A death sentence here and abroad By Leuren Moret Apr 4, 2005, 20:02 "Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." - Henry Kissinger, quoted in "Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW's in Vietnam" Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation. And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that "Gulf-era veterans" now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period. The American Free Press dropped a "dirty bomb" on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months. Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted uranium (DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and scientists working on this issue, that DU is the definitive cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Vaccines are not known to cause cancer. One of the first published researchers on Gulf War Syndrome, who also served in 1991 in Iraq, Dr. Andras Korinyi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno from the Department of Defense's Deployment Health Support Directorate, that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals, pesticides, bioagents or other suspect causes this time to confuse the issue. This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up perpetrated by the Pentagon and three presidential administrations ever since DU was first used in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years after the introduction of DU on the battlefield in 1991, the long-term effects have revealed that DU is a death sentence and very nasty stuff. Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as "spectacular ... and a matter of concern." This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on biological systems - radiation, chemical and particulate - the particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant one immediately after exposure and targets the Master Code in the DNA. This is bad news, but it explains why DU causes a myriad of diseases which are difficult to define. In simple words, DU "trashes the body." When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Fulk was more specific: "I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people." Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure. Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems. The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II. They brought it home Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields, but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. Tragically, some women in their 20s and 30s who were sexual partners of exposed soldiers developed endometriosis and were forced to have hysterectomies because of health problems. In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and blood diseases. In some veterans' families now, the only normal or healthy members of the family are the children born before the war. The Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that they do not keep records of birth defects occurring in families of veterans. How did they hide it? Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully tested. The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943 declassified document from the Manhattan Project. Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan Project by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry's father served at a high level in the Manhattan Project and was a CIA agent. Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which recommended developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive trash of the atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time, it was known that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from the air, from land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very fine radioactive dust which would penetrate all protective clothing, any gas mask or filter or the skin. By contaminating the lungs and blood, it could kill or cause illness very quickly. They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant, which could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies and agricultural land with the radioactive dust. The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968, and DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs. The Phalanx weapons system, using DU, was tested on the USS Bigelow out of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1977, and DU weapons have been sold by the U.S. to 29 countries. Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from 1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are contaminated with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment. Women living around these facilities have reported increases in endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past decade. The military denies that DU is the cause. The medical profession has been active in the cover-up - just as they were in hiding the effects from the American public - of low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants. A medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started, to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only. Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail. Reporters have also been prevented access to more than 14,000 medically evacuated soldiers flown nightly since the 2003 war in C-150s from Germany who are brought to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, D.C. Dr. Robert Gould, former president of the Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has contacted three medical doctors since February 2004, after I had been invited to speak about DU. Dr. Katharine Thomasson, president of the Oregon chapter of the PSR, informed me that Dr. Gould had contacted her and tried to convince her to cancel her invitation for me to speak about DU at Portland State University on April 12. Although I was able to do a presentation, Dr. Thomasson told me I could only talk about DU in Oregon "and nothing overseas .. nothing political." Dr. Gould also contacted and discouraged Dr. Ross Wilcox in Toronto, Canada, from inviting me to speak to Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), the Canadian equivalent of PSR, several months later. When that didn't work, he contacted Dr. Allan Connoly, the Canadian national president of PGS, who was able to cancel my invitation and nearly succeeded in preventing Dr. Wilcox, his own member, from showing photos and presenting details on civilians suffering from DU exposure and cancer provided to him by doctors in southern Iraq. Dr. Janette Sherman, a former and long-standing member of PSR, reported that she finally quit some time after being invited to lunch by a new PSR executive administrator. After the woman had pumped Dr. Sherman for information all through lunch about her position on key issues, the woman informed Dr. Sherman that her last job had been with the CIA. How was the truth about DU hidden from military personnel serving in successive DU wars? Before his tragic death, Sen. Paul Wellstone informed Joyce Riley, R.N., B.S.N., executive director of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95 percent of Gulf War veterans had been recycled out of the military by 1995. Any of those continuing in military service were isolated from each other, preventing critical information being transferred to new troops. The "next DU war" had already been planned, and those planning it wanted "no skunk at the garden party." The US has a dirty (DU) little (CIA) secret A new book just published at the American Free Press by Michael Collins Piper, "The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How America's Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire," details the early plans for a war against the Arab world by Henry Kissinger and the neo-cons in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That just happens to coincide with getting the DU "show on the road" and the oil crisis in the Middle East, which caused concern not only to President Nixon. The British had been plotting and scheming for control of the oil in Iraq for decades since first using poison gas on the Iraqis and Kurds in 1912. The book details the creation of the neo-cons by their "godfather" and Trotsky lover Irving Kristol, who pushed for a "war against terrorism" long before 9/11 and was lavishly funded for years by the CIA. His son, William Kristol, is one of the most influential men in the United States. Both are public relations men for the Israeli lobby's neo-conservative network, with strong ties to Rupert Murdoch. Kissinger also has ties to this network and the Carlyle Group, who, one could say, have facilitated these omnicidal wars beginning from the time former President Bush took office. It would be easy to say that we are recycling World Wars I and II, with the same faces. When I asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Capt. John McCarthy, who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use DU to destroy the genetic code and genetic future of large populations of Arabs and Moslems in the Middle East and Central Asia - just coincidentally the areas where most of the world's oil deposits are located - he replied: "It has all the handprints of Henry Kissinger." In Zbignew Brzezinski's book "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives," the map of the Eurasian chessboard includes four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. The "South" region corresponds precisely to the regions now contaminated permanently with radiation from U.S. bombs, missiles and bullets made with thousands of tons of DU. A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed, and 10 times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric testing! No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry Kissinger said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill from Agent Orange, "Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used for foreign policy." Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will be carried around the world and deposited in our environments just as the "smog of war" from the 1991 Gulf War was found in deposits in South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii. In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020. What else do they know that they aren't telling us? I know that depleted uranium is a death sentence ... for all of us. We will all die in silent ways. http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Dep... ***************************************************************** 44 Sun News: Budget cuts endanger Savannah River lab | 04/10/2005 | By Bruce Smith The Associated Press NEW ELLENTON - A steady rain falls though a canopy of pines and oaks as researcher David Scott collects a handful of spadefoot toads from a collection bucket on the edge of Rainbow Bay at the Savannah River Site. Every day for more than a quarter century, researchers such as Scott from the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory have monitored the amphibians moving in and out of the 2½-acre wetland in the longest-running research project of its type in the world. But now federal budget cuts threaten the project, as well as the work conducted a few miles away where scientists in a molecular laboratory map the peromyscus genome - the genetic map of the deer mouse and white-footed mouse that can spread the Hantravirus. Going back virtually to the dawn of the atomic age more than a half century ago, scientists at the lab operated by the University of Georgia have conducted ecological research at the 300-square-mile federal nuclear complex on the Savannah River. In February, the lab was notified the $7.8 million it gets from the Department of Energy will be eliminated this fall, effectively shuttering the lab, which employs 180 people. "In this tight budget environment, we were forced to make difficult priority decisions with regard to scientific research," said Mike Waldron, a department spokesman. "We took a very careful look at the department's scientific priorities and made appropriate decisions based on the resources available." Although additional money from the university and grants round out the lab's almost $11 million budget, there is not enough outside money to keep the lab running, said Carl Strojan, the lab's associate director. "The public would loose a credible source of unbiased information on the health of SRS ecosystems and on the impacts of site operations" if the lab is shuttered, said Paul Bertsch, the lab's director. The ecology lab started in 1951 when lawmakers in Washington wanted an independent assessment of what effects the nuclear facility, then known locally as the bomb plant, might have on the environment. "There is a perception on the public's part that once you walk over this line and go onto the Savannah River Site there is trouble," Strojan said. "In some ways, that is good for us because there is that perception that people still want us doing work here." Scientists at the lab can study what they want and publish in independent journals without government approval, he added. They have published dozens of books and papers about their studies, which provide a long-term analysis of the environment near a nuclear facility. Over the years, they have pursued research in everything including radiological effects, such as ground migration of contaminants, and remediation and restoration. The public might be more familiar with reports on things such as finding a four-legged screech owlet or that some turtles with elevated levels of radiation migrated to a farmer's pond off the site. "Things like that occasionally crop up," Strojan said. "But the major impression we take away is that the ecosystems are healthy, and in part that reflects the way DOE has managed this site." In 1972, the Atomic Energy Commission made the site the nation's first National Environmental Research Park. The designation meant the site became a "protected outdoor laboratory" where long-term research could be conducted about human's effects on the environment. After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union in 1986, the Savannah River Site and the lab were visited by Soviet scientists dealing with the aftermath. "They had never been to the United States, but they knew Par Pond and Pond B because of the research done here, and they knew the people by name," Strojan said. "They had never met them but they had read their papers." Waldron said that the lab is not operated by the Department of Energy and can still get outside grants and funding. During a visit here last month, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman made no promises department money for the lab could be restored. But lawmakers on both sides of the Savannah River have pledged to work to maintain it. A letter to Bodman signed by the U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson of Georgia and U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint of South Carolina said the lab has "a long and distinguished history." It noted a five-year agreement with the Department of Energy calls for it to operate through June 2006 and that $5 million will be needed to keep it running through then to honor the agreement even if next year's budget is cut. Graham has said he will work to get the money to keep the lab going. "We have done our part to balance this budget so I'm not embarrassed to ask for a few million dollars for the lab," he said during the Bodman visit. Isakson also has visited but said the tight budget could be tougher on programs with smaller budgets. About MyrtleBeachOnline.com ***************************************************************** 45 The New Mexican: Think tank forms at Los Alamos April 9, 2005 A group of prominent Los Alamos scientists, in the hopes of shaping national arms control policy, have formed a think tank. Proposing new treaties isn't out of the question for this ambitious mix of physicists and weapons designers. In recent weeks, the Los Alamos Center for International Nuclear Security Studies received its nonprofit organization status and can now begin seeking grants from foundations. "Keeping nukes away from terrorists is the biggest priority for everybody," David Thomson, a retired nuclear physicist and the group's chairman, said in an interview Friday. The group will solicit proposals from the greater Santa Fe and Los Alamos area that could be as complex as the verification of nuclear weapons to something as simple as bringing a guest speaker to New Mexico. The center then will award funding and publish reports. "Although progress has been made in reducing the danger of nuclear weapons through arms reduction and nonproliferation treaties, the worldwide existence of tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, mostly unrestricted and unverified by any treaty, remains as a potentially catastrophic international threat," according to the group's board of directors. "The Los Alamos Center was created to aid the U.S. arms control community in their response to these threats by studying and developing nuclear security solutions based on proposals and activities from the Los Alamos area." The notion isn't new to town. From 1986 to 1994, Los Alamos National Laboratory used discretionary money to run the Center for National Security Studies, a policy study group. It was later replaced with the Center for International Security Affairs. This new effort in Los Alamos -- which is separate from the lab -- pulls together such advisors as former lab director Siegfried Hecker, John Hopkins and Steve Maaranen, all of whom worked on the original Center for National Security Studies. The advisory council, consisting of seven nuclear experts in all, will develop research strategies and evaluate projects. Though the group's focus is nuclear issues, studies into nuclear power generation and new political structures to strengthen international security will be welcomed. As a nonprofit group, the Los Alamos Center has more freedom to take matters further than the national nuclear-weapons laboratory, which can only do what the Department of Energy pays it to do. Whether policy-makers in Washington, D.C., will take notice of the studies remains to be seen. But, Thomson said, in the past, Los Alamos citizens have played a significant role in Washington through New Mexico senators. "We know we can do one thing -- that's inform the public," said Thomson, whose book, A Guide to Nuclear Arms Control Treaties, is used on college campuses. The Los Alamos Center is a companion to the well-established Los Alamos Committee on Arms Control and International Security, which holds public lectures. Call 662-5409 for more information. Copyright 2004 Santa Fe New Mexican ***************************************************************** 46 AP Wire: Budget cuts threaten Savannah River Ecology Lab | 04/09/2005 | BRUCE SMITH Associated Press NEW ELLENTON, S.C. - A steady rain falls though a canopy of pines and oaks as researcher David Scott collects a handful of spadefoot toads from a collection bucket on the edge of Rainbow Bay at the Savannah River Site. Every day for more than a quarter century now, researchers like Scott from the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory have monitored the amphibians moving in and out of the 2 1/2-acre wetland in the longest-running research project of its type in the world. But now federal budget cuts threaten the project, as well as the work conducted a few miles away where scientists in a molecular laboratory map the peromyscus genome - the genetic map of the deer mouse and white-footed mouse that can spread the Hantravirus. Going back virtually to the dawn of the atomic age more than a half century ago, scientists at the lab operated by the University of Georgia have conducted ecological research at the 300-square-mile federal nuclear complex on the Savannah River. But in February, the lab was notified the $7.8 million it gets from the Department of Energy will be eliminated this fall, effectively shuttering the lab, which employs 180 people. "In this tight budget environment, we were forced to make difficult priority decisions with regard to scientific research," said Mike Waldron, a department spokesman. "We took a very careful look at the department's scientific priorities and made appropriate decisions based on the resources available." Although additional money from the university and grants round out the lab's almost $11 million budget, there is not enough outside money to keep the lab running, said Carl Strojan, the lab's associate director. "The public would loose a credible source of unbiased information on the health of SRS ecosystems and on the impacts of site operations" if the lab is shuttered, said Paul Bertsch, the lab's director. The ecology lab started in 1951 when lawmakers in Washington wanted an independent assessment of what impacts the nuclear facility, then known locally as simply the bomb plant, may have on the environment. "There is a perception on the public's part that once you walk over this line and go onto the Savannah River Site there is trouble," Strojan said. "In some ways that is good for us because there is that perception that people still want us doing work here." Scientists at the lab can study what they want and publish in independent journals without government approval, he added. They have published dozens of books and papers about their studies, which provide a long-term analysis of the environment near a nuclear facility. Over the years, they have pursued research in everything from radiological effects, such as ground migration of contaminants, to remediation and restoration. The public may be more familiar with reports on such things as finding a four-legged screech owlet or that some turtles with elevated levels of radiation migrated to a farmer's pond off the site. "Things like that occasionally crop up," Strojan said. "But the major impression we take away is that the ecosystems are healthy and in part that reflects the way DOE has managed this site." In 1972, the old Atomic Energy Commission made the site the nation's first National Environmental Research Park. The designation meant the site became a "protected outdoor laboratory" where long-term research could be conducted about human's effects on the environment. After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union in 1986, the Savannah River Site and the lab were visited by Soviet scientists dealing with the aftermath. "They had never been to the United States but they knew Par Pond and Pond B because of the research done here and they knew the people by name," Strojan recalled. "They had never met them but they had read their papers." Waldron said that the lab is not operated by the Department of Energy and can still get outside grants and funding. During a visit here last month, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman made no promises department money for the lab could be restored. But lawmakers on both sides of the Savannah River have pledged to work to maintain it. A letter to Bodman signed by the U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson of Georgia and U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint of South Carolina said the lab has "a long and distinguished history." It noted a five-year agreement with the Department of Energy calls for the it to operate through June, 2006 and that $5 million will be needed to keep it running through then to honor the agreement even if next year's budget is cut. Graham has said he will work to get the money to keep the lab going. "We have done our part to balance this budget so I'm not embarrassed to ask for a few million dollars for the lab," he said during the Bodman visit. Isakson also has visited but warned the tight budget could be tougher on programs with smaller budgets. Jean Sulc of St. Helena Island, who chairs the Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board, also wrote the Department of Energy. The lab is noted for work "not just on radioactive and industrial pollution, but on all forms of environmental contamination," the letter noted. While the lobbying goes on to save the lab, "I am very optimistic about the outcome," Bertsch said, adding it has had a chance to show its importance to lawmakers, the public and the government. "The fact that the ongoing research and insights derived from the research are based on a 54-year knowledge base of the SRS and its ecosystems is unique," he said. Strojan also is cautiously optimistic. "I think it's very likely we will survive," Strojan added. "I don't think anybody is going to say all your money is back in the budget and continue (just) what you are doing." But "$7 to $8 million is not that much in the grand scheme of things," he added. "Everybody seems to think that what comes out for that $7 or $8 million is worth it." ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************