***************************************************************** 05/03/05 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 13.101 ***************************************************************** 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 Guardian Unlimited: Myers: Iraq, Afghan Wars Strain Military 2 [NYTr] World Leaders Cool to US Demands on Iran Nuke Pgm 3 Guardian Unlimited: Iran to resume 'some nuclear activities' 4 RIA Novosti: IRAN THREATENS TO RESUME URANIUM-ENRICHMENT OPERATIONS 5 BBC: Iran slams US over nuclear stance 6 ISIS: Iran Proposal to the EU Falls Far Short of an Acceptable Agree 7 ITAR-TASS: Iran intends to continue cooperation with IAEA 8 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL] Review of the NPT 9 RIA Novosti: RUSSIAN MP: NORTH KOREA IS NOT BLUFFING SAYING IT HAS N 10 Korea Times: Seoul Denies Report on NK Nuke Test 11 ITAR-TASS: IAEA chief calls on NKorea to return to negotiating table 12 ITAR-TASS: US ready for direct contacts with N Korea if 6-party talk 13 Guardian Unlimited: S. Korea Says It Has No Intel on Nuke Test 14 US: [DU-WATCH] Horror of DU not limited to Iraq 15 US: Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear double standards 16 US: TomPaine.com: Imagine Enron With Nukes 17 [NYTr] Outdated nuclear treaty a threat to all, warns Annan 18 [NukeNet] Abolition Of Article IV Of NPT Crucial To N-Weapons 19 [southnews] Deadlock looms over nuclear arms treaty 20 Daily Yomiuri: Japan needs realistic NPT plan 21 Daily Yomiuri: Support swells for IAEA's Additional Protocol 22 Daily Yomiuri: Rice cautious over expanding UNSC 23 Interfax: Russia to fund IAEA project 24 RIA Novosti: HOW CLOSE HAVE AMERICAN INSPECTORS COME TO RUSSIA'S NUC 25 Independent: Brown refuses to back Blair's nuclear programme 26 Independent: Outdated nuclear treaty is a threat to us all, warns An 27 Guardian Unlimited: Global Nuclear Meeting Opens NUCLEAR REACTORS 28 US: York Dispatch: TMI is set for a test 29 UK The Times: Political silence on nuclear energy is indefensible 30 Daily Yomiuri: Govt may concede ITER site to France 31 Daily Yomiuri: PLANNING NATIONAL STRATEGIES--Resources and energy 32 US: NRC: News Release - Region I - 2005-026 - NRC to Discuss 2004 33 Bellona: Protest against postponing unit no. 5 construction at Kursk 34 US: NRC: NRC Finds No Significant Environmental Impacts from Extende 35 Platts: OPG focus to be on developing hydro, refurbishing nukes - Du 36 US: NRC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company; Joseph M. Farley Nuclea 37 US: NRC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company; Vogtle Electric Generat 38 US: Advocate: Millstone 3 back on line after two-week shutdown 39 US: NRC: Sunshine Act; Meetings 40 St. Petersburg Times: The utility's president also says nuclear powe 41 US: Daily Sentinel: Bellefonte study may be released this month NUCLEAR SECURITY 42 [NYTr] Minister Demands USA Allow Verification Nuke Inspections 43 [NYTr] N.Korea Could Hold Nuke Test in June: Russian 44 US: [NYTr] US Called Unprepared for Nuclear Terrorism 45 UPI OpEd on Nuke Terrorism 46 Guardian Unlimited: Study: Few Nuke Detection Systems at Ports 47 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear options 48 RIA Novosti - Opinion &analysis - THREAT OF NUCLEAR TERRORISM IS REA 49 BBC: Fears over 50 NewsFromRussia.Com: North Korea could hold nuclear test in June, 51 allAfrica.com: South Africa: Nuke-Scare Site May Be Closed Down NUCLEAR SAFETY 52 [DU-WATCH] UK Military Gets Impunity for Radioactive 53 US: [RADFOOD] Victory in Milford! 54 US: AP Wire: Jacksonville port installs radiation monitors 55 Bellona: IAEA expert group meeting on nuclear service ships to be he 56 BBC: SA probes nuclear illness claims 57 Platts: Areva agrees to help build DUF6 plant in Siberia for Tenex 58 US: Great Falls Tribune: Nuclear fallout report offers little encour NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 59 US: Bradenton Herald: Tallevast bill sails through House, awaits Sen 60 US: Independent: Shirley will ink uranium mining ban; President to s 61 US: AU ABC: Uranium exploration increases 62 US: Cincinnati Enquirer: Ship Fernald waste safely away 63 Xinhua: No plan on restarting uranium enrichment: Iran 64 US: NRC: Request to Amend a License for the Export of Radioactive Wa 65 US: DallasNews.com: Know Before We Glow: Nuclear waste site invites 66 News & Star: Sellafield union chief calls for new nuclear power plan PEACE 67 FCNL: North Korea--The Threat of Nuclear War is NOT the Answer! 68 US: Livermore Watchdogs at UN to Support NPT, Urge Disarmament 69 [NYTr] Germany Pressured to Free Itself of US Nuke Weapons 70 Annan Urges City Leaders To Work With Global Partners To Help Eradic 71 [NukeNet] Hiroshima Mayor Calls on All Countries "Including 72 t r u t h o u t - Germany: 'Get US Nukes off Our Soil' 73 New York Times: Editorial Observer: Godzilla vs. the Giant 74 Daily Yomiuri: Multilateral N-arms cuts eyed 75 Interfax: Gorbachev concerned about nonproliferation 76 BBC: Annan urges anti-nuclear effort 77 Xinhua: China appeals for progress in promoting NPT goals 78 Xinhua: China opposes any form of nuclear proliferation 79 Korea Times: Nuke Resolution Crucial for Future Peace Treaty 80 Aljazeera: Pakistan not signing the NPT treaty - 81 US: Sierra Club: Proliferation Article 82 IEER: Kashmir, Nuclear Weapons and Peace by Adm. Ramdas US DEPT. OF ENERGY 83 Tri-City Herald: CH2M Hill Hanford to study health 84 Inspector General report: Development/Implementation of Energy 85 TheDenverChannel.com: Random Soil Tests Scrapped At Rocky Flats ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Guardian Unlimited: Myers: Iraq, Afghan Wars Strain Military From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday May 3, 2005 11:16 PM AP Photo BAG103 By JOHN J. LUMPKIN Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. military may not be able to win any new wars as quickly as planned because the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have strained its manpower and resources, the nation's top military officer told Congress in a classified report. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the U.S. military as in a period of increased risk, according to a senior defense official, who described the report Tuesday on the condition of anonymity. ``We will prevail,'' Myers said when asked about the report. ``The timelines (to winning a new war) may have to be extended and we may have to use additional resources, but that doesn't matter because we're going to be successful in the end.'' Myers predicted the risk would go down in a year or two, the official said. Myers provided the report to Congress on Monday. Still, the report says the U.S. military is able to win any conflict it becomes involved in, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. ``We are at war and that level of operations does have some impact on troops,'' White House spokesman Trent Duffy said. ``But the president continues to be confident, as well as his military commanders, that we can meet any threat decisively.'' The military's reorganization toward Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's vision of a lean, agile force, should reduce what increased risk it is facing, Whitman said. Among the most likely conflicts the Pentagon foresees in the near term are with North Korea and Iran, the two remaining members of President Bush's ``axis of evil.'' The Bush administration accuses both of having ambitions to become a nuclear power; North Korea has already claimed it has nuclear weapons. The U.S. military has timelines in place for defeating its potential adversaries, given enough soldiers, tanks, aircraft and warships to do the job. But with so much of those resources tied up fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, those timelines could slip, Myers said, according to the defense official. About 138,000 American troops are in Iraq, according to U.S. Central Command. Another 18,000 are in Afghanistan. Military officials have given no precise estimate when they will be able to significantly draw down the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, but some generals have suggested it could come next year if Iraqi security forces continue to improve in quality and grow in numbers. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 2 [NYTr] World Leaders Cool to US Demands on Iran Nuke Pgm Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 12:51:56 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit News from Russia - May 3, 2005 http://newsfromrussia.com/world/2005/05/03/59532.html Nuclear disarmament treaty: World Leaders Cool to US Demands on Iran 08:12 2005-05-03 The Bush administration said Monday that Iran was trying to build atomic weapons in secret and suggested the international community should respond by taking away Tehran's right to nuclear energy technology. Other world leaders attending a nuclear conference seemed to dismiss the U.S. call for punitive measures. Instead, they spoke of incentives and negotiations as a way of encouraging the Islamic republic to give up worrisome aspects of its energy program that could be diverted for weapons work. The Bush administration went into the conference hoping to increase pressure on Iran, but its speech highlighted the differences between the United States and its allies over how best to handle emerging nuclear issues, reports the Washington Post. According to Xinhuanet, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has challenged world leaders to breathe life into a key nuclear disarmament treaty. Annan opened a month-long conference on the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in New York on Monday. The UN chief called on the have-nots to renounce potential bomb technology. And he also urged former Cold War rivals to slash their nuclear arsenals. Annan urged the non-weapons states to renounce potential bomb technology, in return for civilian nuclear help. Annan said, "A first step must be to expedite agreement to create incentives for states to voluntarily forgo the development of fuel-cycle facilities." And to nuclear powers, he has this to say, "An important step would be for the former Cold War rivals to commit themselves - irreversibly - to further cuts in their arsenals, so that warheads number in the hundreds, not the thousands. " At the last meeting in 2000, the nuclear powers committed to what they called "13 practical steps" toward disarmament, but critics complain the United States - by rejecting the nuclear test-ban treaty, for example - has come up short. NR * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 3 Guardian Unlimited: Iran to resume 'some nuclear activities' Staff and agencies Tuesday May 3, 2005 Iran today said it would resume some nuclear activities, raising the possibility that the country would be brought before the UN security council on the grounds of nuclear proliferation. Last November, Tehran agreed to suspend all nuclear activities while negotiations about its nuclear ambitions continued with Britain, France and Germany. The Iranian government insists its nuclear programme is entirely related to power generation, but the US claims it is planning to build nuclear weapons. Britain, France and Germany have warned Tehran that they would back US calls for Iran to be brought before the UN security council if the country resumed sensitive nuclear work. That could result in the imposition of sanctions. "We will resume some nuclear activities," the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, told reporters. "What activities [will be resumed] or when is still under study. It will be announced in the future." The announcement came during a conference on nuclear proliferation in New York on yesterday, and prompted Mohamed El-Baradei, the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, to urge Iran not to "take a unilateral decision to initiate any activities that are currently suspended". Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Hasan Rowhani, last week said Tehran expected to restart some uranium reprocessing activities at its uranium conversion facility in Isfahan within a week. However, he added that the Islamic republic was unlikely to resume actual uranium enrichment, which involves injecting uranium gas into centrifuges, at its uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. "The discussion now is not about resuming uranium enrichment but about carrying out some activities. [Actual] uranium enrichment will remain the last option after all other options have been exhausted," Mr Asefi said. He did not elaborate further. Iranian and European negotiators have been trying to come to an arrangement that ultimately would defuse the nuclear crisis. Those talks have been progressing slowly, amid Iranian warnings that they were in danger of collapsing. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 4 RIA Novosti: IRAN THREATENS TO RESUME URANIUM-ENRICHMENT OPERATIONS TEHRAN, May 3 (RIA Novosti) - Iran will announce the partial resumption of uranium-enrichment operations within the next few days. "The complete resumption of uranium-enrichment operations is not the order of the day; however, these operations will be partially resumed. We will announce the circumstances for launching such activity in the future," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi told journalists. In his words, Iran does not want to contradict the spirit of the 2004 Paris accords that were reached between Iran and the European Troika (Britain, France and Germany). The Europeans must also abide by their commitments, Assefi said. "Iran and the European Troika have launched a new stage of their negotiating process, and we believe that the European Union will soon be satisfied with the peaceful component of Iranian nuclear programs," Assefi said. Hasan Rowhani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, recently said that the Islamic Republic of Iran would resume some preliminary operations at the Isfahan nuclear center this week. At the same time, the Natanz uranium-enrichment center will not resume its work. Rowhani also said he was dissatisfied with the EU's striving to delay the negotiating process as regards Iranian nuclear programs. Yet another round of Iran-EU talks ended in London April 29, producing no results. Iran and other countries, parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, also signed an agreement on IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) guarantees to non-nuclear countries' nuclear programs. Iran which had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 has been an IAEA member since 1958. According to treaty provisions, IAEA experts can inspect all officially registered nuclear facilities. However, such inspections will become possible only when nuclear materials appear there. Iran is still building its secret facilities, which allegedly lack nuclear materials. Iran joined the additional protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty under IAEA pressure in early 2004. The additional protocol allows IAEA experts to inspect just about any nuclear facility without any prior notice. They can obtain any samples and conduct any kind of research. Moreover, the additional protocol covers facilities that do not have any nuclear materials at all. ***************************************************************** 5 BBC: Iran slams US over nuclear stance Last Updated: Tuesday, 3 May, 2005 [Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi speaks at a UN conference on nuclear non-proliferation] Kharrazi was uncompromising in his speech at the UN Iran has escalated its war of words with the US over Tehran's nuclear programme, calling Washington's arsenal a major threat to global peace. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi demanded assurances that the US would not launch a nuclear strike on Iran. And he rejected a call from President George Bush for non-nuclear nations to be denied access to nuclear technology. The US fears Iran is trying to build nuclear arms. Iran says its nuclear programme is for civilian use only. Mr Kharrazi told a UN conference it was unacceptable for an "exclusive club" of nations to deny nuclear technology to others "under the pretext of non-proliferation". Estimates on global arsenals Iran has indicated it will soon resume some nuclear activities, but will stop short of full-blown uranium enrichment. European talks Foreign ministry spokesman Reza Asefi said Iran would maintain its freeze on enrichment - suspended since November - as long as talks on its nuclear programme continued with Germany, France and the UK. Iran is determined to purs all legal areas of nuclear technology including enrichment [ src=] Kamal Kharrazi, Iranian foreign minister German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer earlier warned that any resumption of nuclear activities would spell the end of negotiations, in which the Europeans hope to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear research. He said restarting the programme could lead to referral to the UN Security Council - something for which the US has long lobbied. But Mr Kharrazi told the conference in New York that Iran was determined to resume uranium enrichment at some stage. "Iran for its part is determined to pursue all legal areas of nuclear technology including enrichment exclusively for peaceful purposes," he said. GLOBAL NUCLEAR POWERS Signed the NPT: US Russia, UK, France, China Declared or known: India, Pakistan, Israel Suspicions over: North Korea, Iran Formerly had programmes: Algeria, Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Libya, Romania, South Africa, Ukraine Global nuclear powers NPT explained Iran has long insisted that its suspension of uranium enrichment is voluntary and temporary. The UN is holding a month-long conference reviewing the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which is aimed at reducing the threat from nuclear arms. Three senior Iranian officials have now said that some enrichment activities will begin soon at the uranium conversion plant outside the city of Isfahan. They have said it is unlikely they will resume actual enrichment - injecting uranium gas into centrifuges - but the BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says this distinction will be lost on the rest of the world. Our correspondent says it is not clear whether this is just brinkmanship from Iran to try to secure more concessions from Europe, or a serious threat aimed at ending the nuclear negotiations. The NPT is reviewed every five years, with delegates from all 187 signatory states participating in the conference. ESTIMATED NUCLEAR WARHEADS, STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL [Map showing declared, suspected and potential nuclear nations] *The US is also said to have some 3,000 warheads in reserve, while Russia has about 11,000 in non-operational stockpiles Israel declines to confirm it has nuclear weapons North Korea claims it has nuclear arms but no details are available Iran is accused by the US of ambitions to build nuclear arms ***************************************************************** 6 ISIS: Iran Proposal to the EU Falls Far Short of an Acceptable Agreement Institute for Science and International Security May 3, 2005 The agreement tabled by Iran in its negotiations with the European Union (EU) falls far short of a permanent suspension of the gas centrifuge program, and would allow Iran to move significantly closer to a large uranium enrichment capability. In their proposal, Iran offers a deal that involves installing 3,000 gas centrifuges at Natanz, which would give Iran a significant uranium enrichment capability. Because the installation of 3,000 centrifuges is far too large for the pilot plant, it would likely involve installing gas centrifuges in the large underground cascade halls for the first time. Subsequent phases of the proposed deal would involve the commissioning of the 3,000 centrifuges and the installation and commissioning of thousands more centrifuges at the underground site. For a newly annotated image of the Natanz site showing the location of the underground cascade halls, click here. Iran has pledged that the installed centrifuges would be solely dedicated to making low enriched uranium (LEU) for nuclear reactor fuel. The 3,000 centrifuges would be sufficient to produce about 2-3 tonnes of LEU per year, but this is far less than the 25 tonnes of LEU that will be required annually for the nuclear power reactor under construction at Bushehr. LEU cannot be used directly to make nuclear weapons, however Iran could decide in the future to use these same centrifuges to quickly make highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear weapons. As long as international safeguards are in place, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would know if such an increase in enrichment level occurs but would not be able to prevent it. The 3,000 centrifuges would be able to produce enough HEU for about 2-3 nuclear weapons per year. The 3,000 proposed centrifuges are identical to the number of machines in a "block" of the underground enrichment plant designed to hold 50,000 centrifuges. A block is a predetermined module which is designed to be the basic unit of the full-scale fuel enrichment plant. If Iran is able to operate one complete block of centrifuges, they would gain the expertise in centrifuge installation and operation that they have not yet been able to acquire, and which is a necessary hurdle to overcome in order to operate the complete, 50,000 machine uranium enrichment plant that Iran plans to complete. This offer from Iran would also mean that Iran would have to resume operations at the uranium conversion facility to produce uranium hexafluoride (UF6), the feed material that flows through the centrifuges in the enrichment process. The deal proposed by Iran is not adequate to end the threat posed by the Iranian uranium enrichment program. The fundamental goal of the negotiations between the EU and Iran remains the permanent suspension of Iran's uranium enrichment program, while facilitating Iran's access to nuclear power and a guaranteed fuel supply. Iran must understand that the likely alternative to reaching agreement is for the issue to be referred to the UN Security Council. Given Iran's past violations of its IAEA safeguards agreements, and strong suspicions that it seeks nuclear weapons, the European Union negotiators are right to pursue a better deal than the one offered by Iran. ***************************************************************** 7 ITAR-TASS: Iran intends to continue cooperation with IAEA 03.05.2005, 05.23 TEHERAN, May 3 (Itar-Tass) - Iran intends to continue cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said on Tuesday Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi at a meeting with IAEA director-general Mohammed ElBaradei. According to the Iranian IRNA news agency, the meeting was held on the sidelines of the review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, now in progress at the UN headquarters. According to the Iranian minister, cooperation with the IAEA will help “to remove persisting uncertainty” with respect to the Iranian nuclear programme. Kharrazi emphasized the importance of the conference which opened at the UN headquarters on Monday. “We hope that this forum will take serious and unbiased moves to protect legitimate rights of member countries to the Treaty,” he noted. Iran insists on its right to conduct nuclear explorations for peaceful purposes. Teheran invariably stressed that the Iranian nuclear programme does not put forth military tasks and is solely of peaceful character. Over the past two and half years, IAEA inspectors regularly made inspections at Iranian nuclear projects, spending at them over 900 days. They have got no proof of activities on developing nuclear weapons during these inspections. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 8 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL] Review of the NPT Of all the complexities of international politics, the nuclear monopoly by the five powers as institutionalized by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is perhaps the hardest thing to explain to our children. The United States, the former Soviet Union, Britain, France and China which had "manufactured and exploded a nuclear explosive device prior to Jan. 1, 1967" were given the permanent status of a "nuclear-weapon state" and all the rest of the countries in the world were permanently banned from receiving or manufacturing any nuclear explosive device under the NPT, which took force in 1970. World nations are reviewing the NPT at the United Nations after a five-year interval, but the absurd structure will not be questioned in the month-long session. North Korea and Iran, the former for its announced possession of nuclear weapons and the latter for its suspected nuclear weapons development program, are the focus of the 2005 conference, and not much attention will be given to the nearly non-existent moves of the nuclear powers toward scrapping their own nuclear arms. Article 6 of the NPT requires each party to pursue "negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament." Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States and Russia have taken steps to reduce Cold War stockpiles of nuclear weapons but these efforts have visibly slowed in recent years, especially after the 9/11 attacks. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, while preparing for the NPT conference in March, said the nuclear powers "must do more" to reduce their arsenals in an open, irreversible way. There is no immediate response to this call and the U.N. chief himself would not have expected any in the present world engrossed in anti-terrorism and nonproliferation to "rogue states." At the previous 2000 conference, the "consensus final document" committed the five nuclear states - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China, which also happen to be the permanent members of the Security Council - to take 13 "practical steps" toward disarmament. In the current meeting, many non-nuclear states will point out the failure of the Bush administration to meet the commitment over the past five-year period. The U.S. delegation insists that the conference should primarily tackle the issues of North Korea and Iran, rather than global nuclear disarmament. The conflicting opinions on conference priorities even deterred a full agenda until this week. As for the Bush administration, now being frustrated by the apparent failure of its efforts to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program through a multilateral process in cooperation with regional powers, must be seeking to use the U.N. conference as another chance to apply pressure on Pyongyang. It has added importance as the United States plans to refer North Korea to the Security Council for possible quarantine and other sanctions. As we look back, the NPT, a product of superpower politics in the 1960s, may be said to have successfully prevented spreading nuclear weapons to 20 to 30 states that had nuclear ambitions. But it failed to keep India, Pakistan and probably Israel from possessing atomic weapons and deter North Korea, Iran, Libya and several other countries from seeking to have the capability. The 11-article treaty, along with its safeguards protocol, is a useful instrument for arms control but it will remain a defective pact, morally and practically, as long as the five "nuclear-weapon states" fail to do their part to rid the world of the most terrible weapons. 2005.05.04 ***************************************************************** 9 RIA Novosti: RUSSIAN MP: NORTH KOREA IS NOT BLUFFING SAYING IT HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS MOSCOW, May 3 (RIA Novosti) - A senior Russian parliamentarian is positive that North Korea will conduct the tests of a "nuclear device" this June. The countries that are party to talks on Korea's nuclear program have come to "a critical point." On February 10, North Korea announced it had produced a nuclear weapon. "Thereby, it declared itself a nuclear state," Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the international affairs committee of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, said on Tuesday ahead of his visit to Pyongyang. Kosachev denied facts that prove North Korea would conduct nuclear tests soon. Kosachev said Russia urged the resumption of six-party talks on Korea's nuclear program, which were launched in Beijing in August 2003, but came to a deadlock after three rounds over differences between North Korea and the United States. Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan are the other parties to the dialogue. Unlike the U.S., Russia "is prepared to support North Korea's peaceful nuclear energy program that would be implemented under strict international control," said Kosachev. The U.S., he recalled, on the contrary was opposed to any, even peaceful, nuclear programs for the country. Kosachev said attempts to exert pressure on North Korea were counterproductive. He described the U.S.' proposal to submit "the North Korean file" for consideration at the UN Security Council as a last resort measure to be followed by imposing sanctions. "This policy with respect to North Korea will not bring the result we want," he said. It can "drive North Korea out of the negotiating process for good." Kosachev said when in Pyongyang that the State Duma delegation would discuss issues related to the development of the North's nuclear programs. "Under the circumstances it is extremely important to get North Korea engaged in the six-party talks again," said Kosachev. The MP said that was crucial for North Korea's relations with its neighbors, regional stability, and global security. © 2005 "RIAN Novosti" ***************************************************************** 10 Korea Times: Seoul Denies Report on NK Nuke Test Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Nation By Jung Sung-ki Staff Reporter The government on Tuesday dismissed reports that the United States alerted Seoul to intelligence it had indicating North Korea was preparing to conduct an underground nuclear test in the northeastern region of the communist country. ``We¡¯ve received no such intelligence from the U.S. government, nor have we seen any signs of preparation for a nuclear test,¡¯¡¯ Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung told reporters before attending a weekly Cabinet meeting at Chong Wa Dae. Yoon¡¯s remarks came after a local daily, Chosun Ilbo, reported that Washington had informed Seoul that the U.S. intelligence authorities recently detected signs that Pyongyang was preparing for an underground nuclear test in Kilju County, North Hamkyong Province. The report is the latest among a series of media reports at home and abroad that the Stalinist regime was preparing to embark on nuclear tests within its own territory. Refuting the report, ministry spokesman Shin Hyun-don said, ``the government has yet to see any signs that the North is preparing for an imminent nuclear test.¡¯¡¯ Shin said the Seoul government has received intelligence that an excavation work was being conducted in Kilju County in the late 1990s and has tried to see what the purpose of the work is since then, in cooperation with the U.S. ``The purpose North Korea¡¯s excavation work has not been confirmed. It is hasty to conclude that it is a move for a nuclear test,¡¯¡¯ the spokesman said. On the eve of a United Nation conference on nuclear nonproliferation in New York, North Korea launched a short-range missile into the East Sea last Sunday. However, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan downplayed the military significance of the test. ``The missile that North Korea recently fired is nothing like one that can carry a nuclear weapon,¡¯¡¯ Song Min-soon, assistant minister of foreign affairs and trade, said Monday. North Korea has intermittently tested short-range missiles off its east coast, including one in February 2003. gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr 05-03-2005 17:37 ***************************************************************** 11 ITAR-TASS: IAEA chief calls on NKorea to return to negotiating table. 03.05.2005, 03.29 UNITED NATIONS, May 3 (Itar-Tass) - Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohammed ElBaradei called on North Korea to return to the negotiating table on the North Korean nuclear problem. Speaking in an interview with reporters on Monday on the sidelines of the review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which opened at the UN headquarters, he emphasized that “the sooner the sides return to the negotiating table, the better”. The six-party talks with the participation of the two Koreas, Russia, China, the US and Japan were suspended nearly a year ago over Pyongyang’s refusal to continue the dialogue. The aim of the negotiations is to find a way out of the situation which developed after North Korea’s withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty two years ago. At the same time, ElBaradei called on Teheran not to resume work on enriching uranium after the collapse of the negotiations with the EU on the Iranian nuclear programme. “I’d like to hope that Iranians will not take a one-sided decision on a start of any kind of activities which have been suspended now,” the IAEA head said. Delegations of 188 member countries to the treaty intend to discuss ways of strengthening the treaty which came into force 35 years ago and is regarded one of the most effective international legal instruments, aimed at barring proliferation of nuclear weapons as well as materials and technologies, connected with them. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 12 ITAR-TASS: US ready for direct contacts with N Korea if 6-party talks resume 03.05.2005, 11.19 SEOUL, May 3 (Itar-Tass) - The United States is holding an open door for direct contacts with North Korea if Pyongyang resumes participation in the six-party talks on its nuclear problem settlement by peaceful methods, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill said in an interview published by the Hankyoreh newspaper on Tuesday. Hill heads the American delegation at the six-nation talks. As long as North Korea adheres to the negotiating process official Washington will display flexibility in relations with the country, Hill stressed. According to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, the United States is open for any forms of contacts with the North within the framework of the six-sided dialogue, both private meetings and official consultations. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, store in any medium (including in any other websites), ***************************************************************** 13 Guardian Unlimited: S. Korea Says It Has No Intel on Nuke Test From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday May 3, 2005 5:31 AM SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea on Tuesday denied a report that U.S. intelligence officials told Seoul that North Korea might be preparing for a nuclear test. South Korea's mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo reported Tuesday that U.S. satellite photos showed the frequent movement of trucks and the placement of cranes and other equipment in the North Korean town of Gilju. Based on an analysis of the satellite photos and other intelligence, U.S. authorities concluded that North Korea might be preparing for an underground nuclear test and notified South Korean officials, the report said, citing an unidentified government source. However, South Korea's Defense Ministry on Tuesday denied receiving any such analysis from U.S. officials. South Korea detected signs that North Korea was digging tunnels in Gilju in the late 1990s, but there is no evidence suggesting that Pyongyang was preparing for a nuclear test there, an official at the Defense Ministry said. Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesman Army Lt. Col. Joseph Yoswa said Monday he had received no information on a possible atomic bomb trial. Some U.S. media reported last month that Pyongyang might be preparing for its first nuclear test, but the Chosun Ilbo report was the first to give a specific location. Fears that North Korea is advancing its nuclear weapons program have risen since South Korean officials recently said Pyongyang shut down a nuclear reactor, possibly to harvest more weapons-grade plutonium. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 14 [DU-WATCH] Horror of DU not limited to Iraq Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 23:39:06 -0500 (CDT) Horror Of Depleted Uranium Not Limited To Iraq By James Denver http://www.coastalpost.com/05/04/09.htm "I'm horrified. The people out there - the Iraqis, the media and the troops - risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It's going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car." The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr. Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk, talking about the best-kept secret of this war: the fact that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world. For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic an d mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that-whipped up by sandstorms and carried on trade winds - there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate-including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects - killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime agains t humanity which may,! in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time. These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate - including Britain. Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used. A Dirty Tyson 'Depleted' uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For 'depleted' sounds weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is dirt cheap, toxic, waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production. However, uranium is one of earth's heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson's punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease, spontaneously catching fire as it does so, and burning people alive. 'Crispy critters' is what US servicemen call those unfortunate enough to be close. And, when John Pilger encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote: "The children's skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. I vomited." (Daily Mirror) The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released when it burns can kill just as surely, but far more terribly. They can even be so tiny they pass through a gas mask, making protection against them impossible. Yet, small is not beautiful. For these invisible killers indiscriminately attack men, women, children and even babies in the womb-and do the gravest harm of all to children and unborn babies. A Terrible Legacy Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have increased by 2-6 times, and 3-12 times as many children have developed cancer and leukaemia since 1991. Moreover, a report published in The Lancet in 1998 said that as many as 500 children a day are dying from these sequels to war and sanctions and that the death rate for Iraqi children under 5 years of age increased from 23 per 1000 in 1989 to 166 per thousand in 1993. Overall, cases of lymphoblastic leukemia more than quadrupled with other cancers also increasing 'at an alarming rate'. In men, lung, bladder, bronchus, skin, and stomach cancers showed the highest increase. In women, the highest increases were in breast and bladder cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.1 On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991, the UK Atomic Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defense a special report on the potential damage to health and the environment. It said that it could cause half a million additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years. In that war the authorities only admitted to using 320 tons of DU-although the Dutch charity LAKA estimates the true figure is closer to 800 tons. Many times that may have been spread across Iraq by this year's war. The devastating damage all this DU will do to the health and fertility of the people of Iraq now, and for generations to come, is beyond imagining. The radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years killing millions of every age for centuries to come. This is a crime against humanity which may rank with the worst atrocities of all time. We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried babies. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU contaminated their world. But it is suggested that troops who were only exposed to DU for the brief period of the war were still excreting uranium in their semen 8 years later and some had 100 times the so-called 'safe limit' of uranium in their urine. The lack of government interest in the plight of veterans of the 1991 war is reflected in a lack of academic research on the impac t of DU but informal research has found a high incidence of birth defects in their children and that the wives of men who served in Iraq have three times more miscarriages than the wives of servicemen who did not go there. Since DU darkened the land Iraq has seen birth defects which would break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors where their eyes should be, or with a single eye-like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific. Doctors report that many women no longer say 'Is it a girl or a boy?' but simply, 'Is it normal, doctor?' Moreover this terrible legacy will not end. The genes of their parents may have been damaged for ever, and the damaging DU dust is ever-present. Blue on Blue What the governments of America and Britain have done to the people of Iraq they have also done to their own soldiers, in both wars. And they have done it knowingly. For the battlefields have been thick with DU and soldiers have had to enter areas heavily contaminated by bombing. Moreover, their bodies have not only been assaulted by DU but also by a vaccination regime which violated normal protocols, experimental vaccines, nerve agent pills, and organophosphate pesticides in their tents. Yet, though the hazards of DU were known, British and American troops were not warned of its dangers. Nor were they given thorough medical checks on their return-even though identifying it quickly might have made it possible to remove some of it from their body. Then, when a growing number became seriously ill, and should have been sent to top experts in radiation damage and neurotoxins, many were sent to a psychiatrist. Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war are now invalided out with ailments officially attributed to service in Iraq-that's 1 in 3. In contrast, the British government's failure to fully assess the health of returning troops, or to monitor their health, means no one even knows how many have died or become gravely ill since their return. However, Gulf veterans' associations say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit men and women who saw active service, at least 572 have died prematurely since c oming home and 5000 may be ill. An alarming number are thought to have taken their own lives, unable to bear the torment of the innumerable ailments which have combined to take away their career, their sexuality, their ability to have normal children, and even their ability to breathe or walk normally. As one veteran puts it, they are 'on DU death row, waiting to die'. Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses are strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For example, soldiers have also fathered children without eyes. And, in a group of eight servicemen whose babies lack eyes seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust. They too have fathered children with stunted arms, and rare abnormalities classically associated with radiation damage. They too seem prone to cancer and leukemia. Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the Balkans, where DU was also used. Indeed their leukemia rate has been so high that several EU governments have protested at the use of DU. The Vital Evidence Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly claimed that as it emits only 'low level' radiation DU is harmless. Award-winning scientist, Dr. Rosalie Bertell who has led UN medical commissions, has studied 'low-level' radiation for 30 years. 2 She has found that uranium oxide particles have more than enough power to harm cells, and describes their pulses of radiation as hitting surrounding cells 'like flashes of lightning' again and again in a single second.2 Like many scientists worldwide who have studied this type of radiation, she has found that such 'lightning strikes' can damage DNA and cause cell mutations which lead to cancer. Moreover, these particles can be taken up by body fluids and travel through the body, damaging more than one organ. To compound all that, Dr. Bertell has found that this particular type of radiation can cause the body's communication systems to break down, leading to malfunctions in many vital organs of the body and to many medical problems. A striking fact, since many veterans of the first Gulf war suffer from innumerable, seemingly unrelated, ailments. In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor of Experimental Haematology at Dundee University, and others, have shown two ways in which such radiation can do far more damage than has been thought. The first is that a cell which seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations several cell generations later. (And mutations are at the root of cancer and birth defects.) This 'radiation-induced genomic instability' is compounded by 'the bystander effect' by which cells mutate in unison with others which have been damaged by radiation-rather as birds swoop and turn in unison. Put together, these two mechanisms can greatly increase the damage done by a single source of radiation, such as a DU particle. Moreover, it is now clear that there are marked genetic differences in the way individuals respond to radiation-with some being far more likely to develop cancer than others. So the fact that some veterans of the first Gulf war seem relatively unharm! ed by their exposure to DU in no way proves that DU did not damage others. The Price of Truth That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, and the research findings of such experts, have been ignored may be no accident. A US report, leaked in late 1995, allegedly says, 'The potential for health effects from DU exposure is real; however it must be viewed in perspective... the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive.'3 Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq and at least a quarter of a million UK and US troops seriously ill, huge disability claims might be made not only against the governments of Britain and America if the harm done by DU were acknowledged. There might also be huge claims against companies making DU weapons and some of their directors are said to be extremely close to the White House. How close they are to Downing Street is a matter for speculation, but arms sales makes a considerable c ontribution to British trade. So the massive whitewashing of DU over the past 12 years, and the way that governments have failed to test returning troops, seemed to disbelieve them, and washed their hands of them, may be purely to save money. The possibility that financial considerations have led the governments of Britain and America to cynically avoid taking responsibility for the harm they have done not only to the people of Iraq but to their own troops may seem outlandish. Yet DU weapons weren't used by the other side and no other explanation fits the evidence. For, in the days before Britain and America first used DU in war its hazards were no secret.4 One American study in 1990 said DU was 'linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and to] chemical toxicity-causing kidney damage'. While another openly warned that exposure to these particles under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neuro-cognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.5 A Culture of Denial In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned DU weapons for illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed them as 'weapons of mass destruction' 'incompatible with international humanitarian and human rights law'. Since then, following leukemia in European peacekeeping troops in the Balkans and Afghanistan (where DU was also used), the EU has twice called for DU weapons to be banned. Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped up their denials of the harm from this radioactive dust as more and more troops from the first Gulf war and from action and peacekeeping in the Balkans and Afghanistan have become seriously ill. This is no coincidence. In 1997, while citing experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washingto n was quoted as saying, 'The [US government's] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body.' He concluded, 'uranium does cause cancer, uranium does cause mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with the irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the fact that human life is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium, then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice to the truth, diss! ervice to God and to all generations who follow.' Not what the authorities wanted to hear and his research was suddenly blocked. During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the authorities have abolished military hospitals, where there could have been specialized research on the effects of DU and where expertise in treating DU victims could have built up. And, not content with the insult of suggesting the gravely disabling symptoms of Gulf veterans are imaginary they have refused full pensions to many. For, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the current House of Commons briefing paper on DU hazards says 'it is judged that any radiation effects from possible exposures are extremely unlikely to be a contributory factor to the illnesses currently being experienced by some Gulf war veterans.' Note how over a quarter of a million sick and dying US and UK vets are called 'some'. The Way Ahead Britain and America not only used DU in this year's Iraq war, they dramatically increased its use-from a minimum of 320 tons in the previous war to at minimum of 1500 tons in this one. And this time the use of DU wasn't limited to anti-tank weapons-as it had largely been in the previous Gulf war-but was extended to the guided missiles, large bunker busters and big 2000-pound bombs used in Iraq's cities. This means that Iraq's cities have been blanketed in lethal particles-any one of which can cause cance r or deform a child. In addition, the use of DU in huge bombs which throw the deadly particles higher and wider in huge plumes of smoke means that billions of deadly particles have been carried high into the air-again and again and again as the bombs rained down-ready to be swept worldwide by the winds. The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive decontamination in Iraq. That could only scratch the surface. For decontamination is hugely expensive and, though it may reduce the risks in some of the worst areas, it cannot fully remove them. For DU is too widespread on land and water. How do you clean up every nook and cranny of a city the size of Baghdad? How can they decontaminate a whole country in which microscopic particles, which cannot be detected with a normal geiger counter, are spread from border to border? And how can they clean up all the countries downwind of Iraq-and, indeed, the world? So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this crime against humanity. The first is to provide the best possible medical care for the people of Iraq, for our returning troops and for those who served in the last Gulf war and, through that, minimize their suffering. The second is to relegate war, and the production and sale of weapons, to the scrap heap of history-along with slavery and genocide. Then, and only then, will this crime against humanity be expunged, and the tragic deaths from this wa r truly bring freedom to the people of Iraq, and of the world. References 1. The Lancet volume 351, issue 9103, 28 February 1998. 2. Rosalie Bertell's book Planet Earth the Latest Weapon of War was reviewed in Caduceus issue 51, page 28. 3. www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1. htm#TAB L_Research Report Summaries 4. www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.01/020117moret.htm The secret official memorandum to Brigadier General L.R.Groves from Drs Conant, Compton and Urey of War Department Manhattan district dated October 1943 is available at the website www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-Gen-Groves21feb03.htm 5. www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_iitab11.htm#tab L_research report summaries ........................................................................................ Further information The Low Level Radiation Campaign hopes to be able to arrange a limited number of private urine tests for those returning from the latest Gulf war. It can be contacted at: The Knoll, Montpelier Park, Llandrindod Wells, LD1 5LW. 01597 824771. Web: www.llrc.org James Denver writes and broadcasts internationally on science and technology. ***************************************************************** 15 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear double standards Simon Tisdall Wednesday May 4, 2005 The Guardian Many damaging accusations have been levelled at John Bolton, President George Bush's controversial nominee as US ambassador to the UN. But perhaps the most serious is that Mr Bolton, as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security since 200, bungled efforts to dissuade North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. Mr Bolton helped to scrap the Clinton administration's 1994 "agreed framework" that froze North Korea's weapons-related plutonium reprocessing programme. The framework was imperfect - but nothing remotely adequate replaced it. In 2002, President Bush denounced North Korea as part of the "axis of evil". In 2003, Pyongyang withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and traded insults with Mr Bolton. In February, it declared itself a nuclear weapons state. And at the weekend, on the eve of the treaty review conference in New York, North Korea said stalled regional talks were effectively dead. The Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency conceded last week that North Korea probably now has nuclear-armed missiles capable of hitting US soil. This signal policy failure risks being repeated in Iran, with which Mr Bolton has also refused to deal directly. Western countries suspect Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons. It says it is interested only in generating nuclear-powered electricity. Unlike Pyongyang, Tehran still belongs to the treaty and has signed the "additional protocol" allowing intrusive UN inspections. But as the conference met this week, EU-led efforts to persuade Iran to suspend uranium enrichment were on the verge of breakdown. Such problems go to the heart of the conundrum facing the 188-country conference. The treaty's article IV says state parties have the "inalienable right to develop ... nuclear energy for peaceful purposes" and to acquire technology to this end. But post-9/11, the US and its allies, newly alarmed about proliferation, want to curb the availability of such technology, starting with the nuclear fuel cycle. Mr Bush proposed last year to "cap" the number of states possessing fuel enrichment capabilities. The International Atomic Energy Agency has suggested a five-year moratorium on new facilities in return for guaranteed fuel supplies for certified users. But as the independent British-American Security Information Council points out: "There is no international consensus on how to deal with the problem." "The big loophole in the treaty is legal acquisition [of dual-use technology]," a British official said. "We want to try and address it as much as possible, but it's fiendishly difficult." Such pessimism appears well-founded. Non-weapons states accuse nuclear powers of double standards. They say the curbs are biased and the "13 steps" agreed at the last review in 2000 have not been honoured. The steps included the promise of a "diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies [and] the engagement as soon as possible of all nuclear-weapons states in the process, leading to the total elimination of their nuclear weapons", as stipulated by the treaty. The Bush administration's weapons modernisation and development plans, and its overall disdain for arms treaties, are said to undermine the treaty. So, too, is Britain's refusal to relinquish theoretical "first use" of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear armed state. The west's de facto acceptance of states that have developed nuclear weapons - notably Israel, Pakistan and India - has also weakened potential collective action. North Korea's accelerating nuclear activities are linked by some analysts to Iraq. Pyongyang surmised that if Saddam Hussein really had possessed the bomb, the US would not have dared to attack him. Iran may have reached a similar conclusion. "By holding open their own options, the weapons states contribute to a permissive climate that underscores the limits of non-proliferation," said Rebecca Johnson, editor of Disarmament Diplomacy. "Nuclear weapons are viewed as the currency necessary for being taken seriously by the United States." She said those states wishing to retain their enrichment and reprocessing capacity while denying facilities to others must ask themselves how serious they are about the need to prevent proliferation. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 16 TomPaine.com: Imagine Enron With Nukes Public Citizen  just field an amicus brief with the Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. "The brief states that FERC illegally deregulated the electric rates under its jurisdiction, allowing the market to set rates, when only Congress can deregulate rates." The result was an overcharging of consumers billions of dollars. If you recall who actually designed and executed that market manipulation, it was Enron. Who was the primary advocate for deregulation? Enron. Now combine that disastrous reality with the Bush administration's calls for new nuclear power generation capacity. I've written why it's a bad idea before. This morning, we posted an NYT storythat said while there is certainly more interest on the part of nuclear power advocates and from the White House, utiities are, in some cases, five years from making a decisionand then construction would take another six years. In the meantime, we'll have another energy war, a collapsed domestic economy or both. The answer is not to build more centralized power generators. That's a 100-year-old design. The answer is to build energy-independent buildings. New microgenerators are capable of being driven by natural gas, wind or solarup to and beyond 100 percent of that building's energy needs. The idea is is called distributed generation. You place the energy generator closer to the load: the service you're operating. The closer the generation, the lower the transmission lossesone of the main sources of inefficiency. By forcing building designers to incorporate the cost of energy generation into their designs, rather than externalizing it as an "operating cost," buildings become more efficient. And by having the private sector build their own power generation as it needs it, the rest of us don't get stuck with a dirty, expensive and long-term set of subsidies. Continuing to build centralized power generators is just asking for more monopoly pricing and market manipulation. Of course, looking at the Enron experience, that's exactly what these folks want. Here's a good brief on distributed generation from the previous Department of Energy. --Patrick Doherty | Monday 6:08 PM TomPaine.com.] [ /] ***************************************************************** 17 [NYTr] Outdated nuclear treaty a threat to all, warns Annan Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 12:52:03 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Simon McGuinness The Independent - 03 May 2005 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=635171 Outdated nuclear treaty is a threat to us all, warns Annan By Rupert Cornwell in Washington Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, warned yesterday that the cornerstone international treaty curbing the spread of nuclear weapons was in urgent need of repair, if it was to keep pace with globalisation and the advance of atomic technology. Mr Annan delivered his bleak warning as delegates from more than 180 countries began a conference at the UN in a bid to strengthen the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The month-long review comes at a time of rising tensions, spurred by North Korea's suspected development of a nuclear weapon, and Iran's apparent pursuit of such arms. Warning of a possible nuclear calamity in a major city, he said that in an interconnected world, "a threat to one is a threat to all, and we all share responsibility for each other's security." The plain fact was "that the regime has not kept pace with the march of technology and globalisation, and developments of many kinds in recent years have placed it under great stress." Mr Annan said that all countries, nuclear and non-nuclear powers, had to play their part. Russia and the US - accounting for more than 90 per cent of the estimated 17,000 nuclear warheads in the world - should cut their arsenals "so that warheads number in the hundreds, not in the thousands". For Iran, engaged in delicate ands fitful negotiations with the EU to freeze its uranium enrichment programme, Mr Annan had the message that it should "not insist" on manufacturing nuclear fuel domestically, but acquire it from multilaterally controlled agencies. All countries, he said, must work "towards a world of reduced nuclear threat." But his words may fall on deaf ears. The conference began without an agreed agenda, while Iran and the US were on a collision course, as Tehran prepared to reject demands to dismantle its nuclear power programme, arguing its purposes were peaceful. In a speech scheduled for today, Kamal Kharrazi, Iran's foreign minister, is likely to raise the diplomatic temperature further by arguing that his country is perfectly entitled to such technology. He may also accuse the US of not doing enough to reduce the threat, by failing to ratify a comprehensive test ban treaty, and exploring the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons. The US is demanding that Iran place its programme under international control. If not, Washington says it will seek sanctions against Iran at the UN or elsewhere. In the meantime, the US is spearheading an effort to plug a glaring loophole in the NPT, whereby a signatory country is allowed to build nuclear fuel facilities but can then opt out of the treaty with impunity as it takes the crucial step further and produces weapons grade material. That, broadly, was the course followed by North Korea - now believed be close to conducting its first underground nuclear test - when it pulled out of the NPT in 2003. Washington and its European allies suspect Iran, still a signatory, plans to do the same. Many non-nuclear countries accuse the US and other traditional nuclear powers - Britain, Russia, France and China - of hypocrisy by not reducing their arsenals. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 18 [NukeNet] Abolition Of Article IV Of NPT Crucial To N-Weapons Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 15:28:11 -0700 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) NPT Treaty [& Other Treaties]: http://www.cornnet.nl/~akmalten/docs.html By Karl Grossman: The key problem concerning the effort to abolish nuclear weapons is that it does not go far enough. The only true way to end the threat of nuclear weapons spreading throughout this world is to also put a stop to nuclear power. Radical? Yes, but consider the even more radical alternative: a world in which scores of nations can construct nuclear weaponry because they possess nuclear power technology. There are major parts of the earth - Africa, South America, the South Pacific, and others - that have now been designated nuclear-free zones. I submit that if we are really to have a world free of the horrific threat of nuclear weapons and their use, our long-term goal need be the designation of this entire planet as a nuclear-free zone - no nuclear weapons, no nuclear power (the other side of the same coin). Radical? Yes, but consider the alternative - trying to keep using carrots and sticks, juggling on the road to inevitable nuclear disaster. That may or may not occur this decade or next but sooner or later, as nuclear power continues to spread, it will. A nuclear-free world is the only way, I believe, that humanity will be free of the dark specter of nuclear warfare. Some will say putting the atomic genie back into the bottle is impossible. I say anything people have done, other people can undo. Especially if the reason is good. And the prospect of massive loss of life from nuclear destruction is the best of reasons. "All nuclear fission technologies both use and produce fissionable materials that are or can be concentrated," Amory and Hunter Lovins wrote in their seminal book, Energy/War: Breaking the Nuclear Link. "Unavoidably latent in those technologies, therefore, is a potential for nuclear violence and coercion which may be exploited by governments, factions"­and this they wrote in 1980 decades before 9/11­or "terrorist groups." "Little strategic material is needed to make a weapon of mass destruction," they went on. "A Nagasaki-yield bomb can be made from a few kilograms of plutonium, a piece the size of a tennis ball." "A large power reactor," they noted, "annually produces, and an experimental critical assembly may contain, hundreds of kilograms of plutonium; a large fast breeder reactor would contain thousands of kilograms; a large reprocessing plant may separate tens of thousands." Civilian nuclear power technology, they stated, provides the way to make nuclear weapons - furnishing the materiel and trained personnel. Indeed, that's how India got The Bomb in 1974. Canada supplied a reactor for "peaceful purposes" and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission trained Indian engineers. And lo and behold, India had nuclear weapons. "Separation of plutonium from spent fuel preceded and facilitated the British, French and Indian decisions to build bombs," write Amory and Hunter Lovins. "Nuclear power," they noted, "provided the essential expeditor, and in many cases the necessary cover." The myth of the "Peaceful Atom" is just that. Important to any dream of creating a nuclear-free world is the elimination of the International Atomic Energy Agency - the global nuclear-pusher. The IAEA was formed as a result of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower's 1953 "Atoms for Peace" speech before the UN General Assembly. Eisenhower proposed the creation of an international agency to promote civilian applications of atomic energy and, somehow at the same time, control the use of fissionable material - a dual role paralleling that of the then U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. In 1974, the AEC was abolished after the U.S. Congress concluded that, in theory and practice, it was in conflict of interest. Its mission was so involved with promoting nuclear energy that it was no monitor, Congress decided. But the IAEA - in the AEC's image - remains with us. The IAEA's mandate: "To accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world" and, somehow at the same time, "establish and administer safeguards against the diversion of military purposes of nuclear materials intended for use in civil nuclear programs; and to establish or adopt health and safety standards." From its outset, the IAEA has been run by atomic zealots. Its first director general was Sterling Cole who as a U.S. congressman was an original member and then chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, as extreme in its promotion of nuclear technology as the AEC­and also ultimately eliminated by Congress. Later, Hans Blix became IAEA director general - after, his official IAEA biography stresses, he led the move against the effort to close nuclear power plants in his native Sweden. Blix was outspoken in insisting nuclear technology be spread throughout the world - calling for "resolute response by government, acting individually or together as in the [IAE] Agency." Blix's long-time second-in command: Morris Rosen - formerly of the AEC and before that the nuclear division of General Electric. After the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, Rosen rendered this sage advice: "There is very little doubt that nuclear power is a rather benign industrial enterprise and we may have to expect catastrophic accidents from time to time." Rosen is currently the IAEA's coordinator for environmental matters. As for the current IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, he too, is a great nuclear booster. "There is clearly a sense of rising expectations for nuclear power," he told a gathering in Paris last month organized by the IAEA and entitled "International Conference on Nuclear Power for the 2lst Century." And the IAEA has been doing everything it can to fuel those expectations - scandalously downplaying the public health consequences of nuclear accidents including the Chernobyl tragedy, promoting all sorts of technology atomic and, with its nearly $300 million budget, encouraging the spread of nuclear power machinery around the globe. Selma Brackman's War & Peace Foundation has wisely proposed that the IAEA be replaced with a World Sustainable Energy Agency. Individual governments and the UN can - and must - implement the wide use of non-lethal, renewable, safe energy technologies available now as an alternative to deadly, unnecessary nuclear power. Meanwhile, real nuclear non-proliferation, as Amory and Hunter Lovins stated, requires "civil denuclearization"­as daunting as that may be. Even Admiral Hyman Rickover, the "father" of the U.S. nuclear navy and manager of the construction of the first commercial nuclear plant in the world, in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in the end came to the conclusion that the world must - in his words - "outlaw nuclear reactors." Rickover in a farewell address told a committee of Congress in 1982: "I'll be philosophical. Until about two billion years ago, it was impossible to have any life on earth: that is, there was so much radiation on earth you couldn't have any life - fish or anything. Gradually, about two billion years ago, the amount of radiation on this planet and probably in the entire system reduced and made it possible for some for some form of life to begin." "Now," Rickover went on, "when we go back to using nuclear power, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible.Every time you produce radiation, you produce something that has life, in some cases for billions of years, and I think there the human race is going to wreck itself, and it's far more important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it." As for nuclear weaponry, the "lesson of history," said the retiring admiral, is that in war nations "will use" whatever weaponry they have. Nuclear power can give any nation nuclear weaponry. By moving forward with a commitment and goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and nuclear power, humanity can be spared the threat of nuclear war. Anything else would be, unfortunately, incomplete and inadequate in the long run. The U.S., which uncorked this lethal technology, should serve as a model and lead in eliminating the twin scourges. An impossible dream? No, considering the probable nightmare otherwise as the continued spread of nuclear power causes the proliferation of nuclear weaponry - and its use inevitably by "governments, factions, terrorist groups." *** Karl Grossman is professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury and coordinator of the college's Media & Communications Program. A special concentration for decades has been nuclear technology. Among the six books Grossman has authored are: Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed To Know About Nuclear Power; The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat To Our Planet; Power Crazy; and Weapons in Space. He has given presentations around the world. Grossman also has long been active in television. He narrated and wrote the award-winning documentaries The Push To Revive Nuclear Power; Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens; and Three Mile Island Revisited, all produced by EnviroVideo. For the past 14 years, he has hosted Enviro Close-Up, an interview program aired through North America on the DISH satellite network (Channel 9415), on cable and commercial TV and now video-streamed on the Internet, too. His magazine and newspaper articles have appeared in numerous publications. Grossman is a charter member of the Commission on Disarmament Education, Conflict Resolution and Peace of the International Association of University Presidents and the United Nations. He is a member of the boards of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service-World Information Service on Energy and the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. He can be reached by e-mail at kgrossman@hamptons.com. His home address is: Box 1680, Sag Harbor, New York, 11963. His telephone number is (631) 725-2858. Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ ***************************************************************** 19 [southnews] Deadlock looms over nuclear arms treaty Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 10:38:17 -0500 (CDT) The rift between nuclear and non-nuclear states, and between the US and Iran in particular, is so serious that a final agenda had still not been agreed on the eve of the month-long conference in New York, despite frantic shuttle diplomacy by its Brazilian chairman, Sergio de Queiroz Duarte Deadlock looms over nuclear arms treaty 02 May 2005 08:45 The global spread of nuclear weapons is at stake on Monday as delegates from 190 countries convene in an attempt to salvage the 1970 non-proliferation treaty, but the chances of success look dim. The rift between nuclear and non-nuclear states, and between the US and Iran in particular, is so serious that a final agenda had still not been agreed on the eve of the month-long conference in New York, despite frantic shuttle diplomacy by its Brazilian chairman, Sergio de Queiroz Duarte. "If we could get out of this conference without a major blow-up we would be doing well," said Matt Martin, a deputy director of the British American Security Information Council, a transatlantic thinktank. Both sides agree the NPT is outdated, but they differ sharply on how it could be strengthened. The US, with support from Britain and France, wants stricter controls on the transfer of nuclear technology. The non-nuclear states, which met separately in Mexico City last week to agree a common position, argue more emphasis should be put on banning the development of new weapons by the existing nuclear powers. And there is disagreement on the NPT's third pillar: the clauses guaranteeing non-nuclear states access to "peaceful" nuclear power technology if they forgo nuclear arsenals. "The politics of the conference make it clear the treaty cannot continue and cannot be strengthened unless all three legs of the bargain can be preserved," said Daryl Kimball, head of the independent Arms Control Association. Iran believes the NPT's nuclear power clauses give it the right to enrich its own uranium or produce plutonium as long as it is -- as Tehran insists -- intended for peaceful use. The US says Iran is abusing its rights by using the NPT as a cover to go to the brink of weapons production with the intention of withdrawing abruptly from the treaty at a time of its choosing and assembling weapons within weeks. Such a strategy has already been pursued by North Korea. The US will also claim Tehran has forfeited any rights it might have as an NPT signatory by misleading the International Atomic Energy Agency over the extent of its uranium enrichment programme. Britain, France and Germany, which have been pursuing talks aimed at providing Iran with incentives to give up its uranium enrichment programme, are concerned the NPT conference will turn into a shouting match between the US and Iran and destabilise their precarious negotiations. Tehran said on Friday the talks had made so little progress, it might end its temporary uranium enrichment suspension. In an effort to find a compromise, the head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has proposed a deal in which states forswearing uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing programmes would be supplied fissile material for civilian reactors by the current members of the nuclear club. But the compromise looks dead on arrival. The one thing the US and Iran agree on is that it would disrupt their nuclear power industries, and they have the support of Japan and France. At their Mexico City meeting, delegates complained that the IAEA spent its time monitoring compliance by the non-nuclear states, while the nuclear powers had failed to live up to the commitments they made the last two NPT reviews, in 1995 and 2000. The Bush administration has been trying for two years to persuade Congress to fund research on a new generation of weapons, including small-yield "mini-nukes" and nuclear "bunker-busters". Britain too has raised the possibility of replacing its Trident missiles. The US signed a bilateral arms control treaty with Russia in 2002, aimed at sharply reducing the number of operationally deployed warheads by 2012. But the weapons do not have to be destroyed, only mothballed, and there are no verification procedures. The Bush administration has also signalled it has no intention of joining the comprehensive test ban treaty, or signing a verifiable accord ending the production of new fissile material intended for nuclear weapons. Both were pledges it made in 2000. "If one state begins to reject commitments it made at past review conferences, other states may start to reject prior commitments. The non-proliferation treaty will quickly erode," Kimball said. "If the states do not take serious action on a number of key fronts in the next five years, it is likely the treaty will not be able to withstand these challenges and we will see additional states withdraw from the NPT. The crisis is not quite here but it's fast approaching." Objectives of the pact * The Treaty on the non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons came into force in 1970. Its objectives are to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament. * A total of 187 countries, including the five declared nuclear-weapon states - the US, Russia, Britain, France and China - have joined. * Israel, India and Pakistan remain outside the treaty. * North Korea joined the treaty in 1985, but in January 2003 announced its intention to withdraw. * The operation of the treaty is reviewed every five years. Source: UN/US department of state - Guardian Unlimited ) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ____________________________________ Bunker-busting nukes could devastate civilians * 12:10 28 April 2005 * NewScientist.com news service * Jeff Hecht Nuclear bunker busters could destroy enemy hideouts hundreds of metres underground but, if the target is in an urban area, a strike could lead to more than a million civilian deaths, warns a report from the US National Research Council (NRC) issued on Wednesday. "Using an earth-penetrating weapon to destroy a target 250 meters deep - the typical depth for most underground facilities - potentially could kill a devastatingly large number of people," said John Ahearne, chair of the report committee. The report is unlikely resolve the heated debate over the Bush administrations plans to develop a new Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator - a weapon hardened to penetrate deep into the ground. Its conclusions echo the claims of administration officials who say the bombs are needed to destroy deeply buried military control centres, labs and stores. But it also supports the contentions of critics who warn they could cause heavy civilian deaths. And the report fails to address two crucial criticisms - that developing new nuclear bunker-busters would encourage the resumption of nuclear testing and lower the threshold for use of nuclear weapons. The US nuclear arsenal already has one earth-penetrating weapon - the B61-11 bomb - but it cannot penetrate solid rock. Pentagon planners want a weapon that can penetrate several metres of rock. That would allow it to target the more than 100 potential-enemy complexes, identified by US intelligence, and built 100 to 400 metres underground. In 2003, Congress asked the NRC to study the potential health and environmental impact of the new weapon. Destructive forces Subsurface explosions transfers energy into the ground far more efficiently than surface blasts. The NRC panel concluded that detonating a nuclear bomb just a few metres below the surface increases its power to destroy underground targets by a factor of 15 to 25 over a surface explosion. Most of that advantage comes from penetrating just 3 metres into the ground. Once this depth is obtained, a 300-kiloton earth penetrator could destroy a target buried 200 m deep, while a 1-megaton weapon would be needed for a target 300 m underground. The problem is that earth penetrators cannot plunge deeply enough into the ground to fully contain the effects of a nuclear blast, so casualties would be "for all practical purposes, equal to [those] from a surface burst of the same weapon yield, the report suggests. That means surface casualties could be high. Urban areas And half of the 2000 strategic hardened or buried targets identified by the Pentagon are in urban areas, where the panel estimate death tolls would range "from thousands to more than a million, depending primarily on the weapon yield". Nor would nuclear weapons be able to destroy chemical or biological agents in buried labs - unless the bomb was detonated inside the buried chamber, the panel concluded. That being the case, a non-nuclear "thermobaric" bomb - using fuel-air explosives - might be just as effective at destroying the agents if detonated inside the chamber. And a nuclear bomb would probably kill more people than any chemical agents released from a destroyed underground factory, says the report, though that might not be true for biological weapons. "Release of as little as 0.1 kilograms of anthrax spores" would kill as many people as a 3-kiloton nuclear earth penetrator, the panel concluded. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7318 The archives of South News can be found at http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/southnews/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: southnews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 20 Daily Yomiuri: Japan needs realistic NPT plan Masahiko Asada / Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty faces new challenges as international nuclear security has changed rapidly since the dawn of the 21st century following the dramatic upheavals brought about by the end of the Cold War. But challenges to the NPT are not unusual. India, Pakistan and Israel have persistently challenged the treaty from the outside as three nuclear-armed countries that have refused to join the NPT. The treaty has also faced challenges from within, including the discovery in 1991 that Iraq had secretly attempted to develop nuclear weapons and a dispute in 1995 over extension of the NPT. The challenges of the 1990s were overcome primarily by strengthening the NPT framework. Negotiations about the extension of the treaty transformed it from an agreement with an uncertain future to an open-ended treaty with a solid foundation. The scope of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which investigates illegitimate nuclear weapons development, was greatly improved by a 1997 supplementary protocol to the NPT that gave it the authority to carry out a broad range of inspections of suspected nuclear facilities. But challenges facing the NPT now are different and cannot be solved by simply strengthening the framework. The first of the 21st-century challenges was North Korea's withdrawal from the NPT in 2003, freeing itself of all obligations of the treaty. No amount of improvement to the NPT framework will influence a country that has withdrawn from the treaty. The second challenge comes from the suspected development of nuclear capability by Iran. Suspicion has grown stronger since it was discovered Iran was engaged in uranium enrichment--a precursor to the manufacture of nuclear weapons. But the NPT does not prohibit the enrichment of uranium, so long as it is for peaceful purposes, giving rise to fears that Iran may insist its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and withdraw from the NPT when it reaches the weapons manufacturing stage. It is no exaggeration to say the NPT faces a crisis but a number of proposals about how the international community can respond have been made. An expansion of signatories to the supplementary protocol has been proposed to deal with illegitimate nuclear development programs. In an attempt to deal with nuclear programs that are claimed to be for peaceful purposes, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has proposed a freeze on construction of new facilities and bringing existing uranium enrichment and plutonium extraction facilities under international control. The proposals will be discussed at an international NPT conference that began Tuesday in New York. Since 1994, Japan has led the way on resolutions for "the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons" and for "a path to the total elimination of nuclear weapons" at the U.N. General Assembly. The measures sought by the resolutions at the United Nations are vital, but the immediate problem is the crisis the NPT finds itself in now. The key debate in the international community is shifting from nonproliferation versus nuclear disarmament to nonproliferation versus peaceful utilization of nuclear energy. For Japan, which depends on nuclear power for a large portion of energy production, the time has come to step beyond its conventional position of only urging nuclear disarmament measures that are not directly related to its national interest. What action should Japan take to prevent further nuclear proliferation without a negative effect on its own nuclear activities? Japan should emphasize that its nuclear activities are transparent enough to be endorsed by the IAEA, while making realistic and practical proposals. Asada is a professor of international law at Kyoto University. He is also a member of an experts panel on international affairs of the Atomic Energy Commission. Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 21 Daily Yomiuri: Support swells for IAEA's Additional Protocol Yutaka Ishiguro / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent In a move notable in connection with the 2005 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference that has just begun in New York, an increasing number of countries favor making it obligatory for all nations to adopt the 1997 International Atomic Energy Agency's Additional Protocol to strengthen its inspection and monitoring capabilities. In his speech on the first day of the monthlong NPT review meeting Monday, Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura placed special emphasis on the significance of the Additional Protocol as a means of enhancing the IAEA's nuclear verification activities. The IAEA adopted a model Additional Protocol in May 1997, the signing and ratification of which is voluntary and up to the discretion of NPT signatory countries. In his address, Machimura stressed that any transfer of nuclear technology and related materials from one country to another should be banned without the latter's commitment to abide by the Additional Protocol. Under the protocol, the IAEA, in addition to carrying out nuclear safeguard activities at facilities declared by a country subject to inspections, is entitled to access on short notice all facilities--both declared and undeclared--to ascertain the truth of that country's declaration of the absence of clandestine nuclear material and activities. The protocol, if adopted by an NPT member state, makes it obligatory for the country to accept the IAEA's expanded mandate for effecting a wide range of no-notice monitoring and environmental analysis activities to substantiate inconsistencies, if any, in its nuclear declarations. It is therefore considered highly effective in preventing a country from using nuclear technologies and material, after obtaining them for peaceful purposes, for military use, as well as holding in check illicit nuclear deals. The model Additional Protocol was adopted on May 15, 1997, after secret nuclear weapons programs in Iraq and North Korea highlighted weaknesses in conventional IAEA safeguards. The two countries successfully circumvented IAEA safeguards by confining its inspection and monitoring activities to facilities or materials explicitly declared by each state in its safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Japan and other countries in favor of expanding IAEA's authority have demanded that acceptance of the Additional Protocol be included in obligations for all countries except the five nuclear powers--Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States--to limit the use of nuclear technologies to peaceful purposes as stipulated in Article III of the NPT. In addition, Japan, New Zealand and the European Union have proposed that exporting nuclear materials and related products be contingent on adoption of the Additional Protocol by the importing party. U.S. President George W. Bush proposed in February 2004 that countries that have not adopted the protocol be banned from importing nuclear materials and related goods and technologies from member states of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The NSG is a voluntary grouping of 44 countries, including Japan, that implement export regulations of nuclear materials and related products to prevent their diversion by importing countries for manufacturing atomic bombs. The group's regulation list covers matters directly linked with nuclear programs, such as reactors and enriched uranium, but also high-tech electrical appliances usable for a wide range of purposes. The recent rise in moves to strengthen IAEA activities appears to be in line with Bush's initiative. Calls for facilitating adoption of the Additional Protocol by as many countries as possible were referred to in a final document at the previous NPT review conference in 2000. However, only 55 countries out of the NPT's 188 member states have become signatories to the protocol. === Developing countries skeptical Many developing countries intent on nuclear activities have been wary of joining the Additional Protocol framework, as shown by the fact that more than 10 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Malaysia and Syria, have not ratified the protocol despite signing it. Their reluctance to ratify the protocol is believed to stem from fears that their right to use peaceful nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment equipment to produce fuel for nuclear power plants, could be eroded. A typical example of this is Malaysia, a Nonaligned Movement leader. Egypt argues it is unreasonable to adopt the protocol because it would constrain its nuclear activities while failing to address the problem of Israel, which is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons. Brazil, which chairs the May 2 to 27 NPT review forum, also has been adamantly opposed to the idea of making exports of nuclear material and related products contingent on adoption of the protocol. Brazil, an NSG member state, is intent on pursuing its uranium enrichment project. Like many other developing countries with nuclear activities, Brazil is believed to be concerned that the Additional Protocol might hinder its nuclear program since Brazil must continue to import necessary materials from other countries to make the project successful. Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 22 Daily Yomiuri: Rice cautious over expanding UNSC / Backs U.N. reform but calls for more discussions during talks with Machimura Yuji Anai / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice agreed Monday to pursue reform of the United Nations, but Rice remained cautious about Japan's proposal for expanding permanent membership of the U.N. Security Council. Rice, in her response to Machimura's report that Japan and three other nations plan to submit a resolution calling for an expanded Security Council, said the United States and Japan should thoroughly discuss the issue, according to Japanese officials. The resolution to be submitted in June to the U.N. General Assembly by the so-called G-4--Japan, Brazil, Germany and India--proposes creating six more permanent seats on the Security Council. Two of the six new seats would go to Asian nations, two would be for African countries and one each for Europe and Latin America, according to the resolution, which nevertheless would not nominate any particular countries as candidates for the envisioned seats. Rice, in her discussion with Machimura, expressed a "desire to see broad reform in the United Nations," U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. Meanwhile, Machimura praised a recent U.S. announcement not to stick rigidly to requiring a unanimous decision by member states for U.N. reform. The announcement, intended to speed up the reform process, came at an informal session of the General Assembly in late April. On the issue of North Korea's nuclear development, Machimura and Rice agreed to continue their efforts to bring Pyongyang back to six-way talks as early as possible with no conditions attached. They also agreed that China, which traditionally has held some sway over North Korea, should play a more active role in bringing Pyongyang back to the talks. Machimura and Rice, however, acknowledged that "other options" might be necessary if Pyongyang continued to refuse to attend the talks, according to Japanese officials. "Other options" most likely include bringing the case to the Security Council. Touching on Japan's ban on U.S. beef imports, Rice urged Japan's food safety authorities to swiftly work toward lifting the ban. Machimura and Rice also agreed to invite Australia to participate in trilateral strategic dialogue with Japan and the United States. === PM favors majority vote for UNSC reform Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent AMSTERDAM--Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Monday he thought it was not n ecessary to stick rigidly to a broad consensus on the expansion of the U.N. S ecurity Council in order to decide on the type of reform by the U.N. summit m eeting in September. "A reform based on consensus is desirable, but countries have different o pinions and situations, and a unanimous decision may be difficult," Koizumi s aid at a press conference at an Amsterdam hotel Monday night. " We've discussedt he issue enough. I doubt if we could reach consensus by extending the time f rame to make a decision to resolve the differences. I hope the United Nations w ill come up with a conclusion by the summit meeting in September." By saying he favored deciding the U.N. expansion by a majority vote, Koizumi s howed his strong commitment to Japan's bid for permanent membership for the S ecurity Council. Some countries, including China, are reluctant to expand permanent membership o f the council, and they are pushing for a decision based on consensus. Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 23 Interfax: Russia to fund IAEA project Updated: May 3 2005 9:23PM (MSK) Ðóññêàÿ âåðñèÿ MOSCOW. May 3 (Interfax) - Russia is to make 26 million rubles available to support the International Atomic Energy Agency's project on innovative nuclear reactors and fuel cycles. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov has instructed the Federal Atomic Energy Agency to transfer this sum to IAEA, the government press service told the press on Tuesday. This money will be taken from the federal budget resources, reserved for financing international cooperation. In addition, 4.2 million rubles will be put into Russian research programs under this project and spent on Russian representatives' participation in the governing committee. © 1991-2005 Interfax All rights reserved News and other data on this web site are provided for information purposes only, and are not intended for republication or redistribution. Republication or redistribution ***************************************************************** 24 RIA Novosti: HOW CLOSE HAVE AMERICAN INSPECTORS COME TO RUSSIA'S NUCLEAR SITES? Opinion &analysis MOSCOW- (RIA Novosti commentator Tatyana Sinitsyna). U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during her recent trip to Moscow that the Americans had secured better access to Russia's nuclear facilities, which was hardly music to Russian ears. Nor did her "explanation" that she did not link the inspections with the issue of sovereignty go unnoticed. Rice, at the very least, timed her comments poorly: a country that paid 27 million lives for its independence 60 years ago does not deserve to have its sovereignty discussed on the eve of Victory Day. How close have American inspectors come to Russian nuclear sites? In short, they have not got beyond the perimeters of these sites. The most sensitive spheres of the nuclear industry have always been closed and not merely to foreigners, as only a limited number of Russian specialists have access to these spheres. The external or physical protection of nuclear sites is a different matter, as Russia maintains cooperation with the U.S., as well as with Germany, Britain and France, under agreements on the registration and control of the physical protection of nuclear materials (02.10.99). Vladimir Kuchinov, the head of the Department for International and Foreign Trade Cooperation at the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power, says, "Under this document America helps us financially and technically to improve the protection of our institutes, organizations, and enterprises, including closed nuclear cities. This assistance is the most important and successful component of the agreement." According to the Agency, hundreds of American specialists visit Russian nuclear installations every year. But they obviously do not simply arrive and go where they want. They do not have access to sensitive facilities, where there are new elements and technologies. They can only visit the outer and inner perimeters but cannot go inside. Moreover, sensitive facilities are not even part of this cooperation. They are fully controlled by the Russian specialists. The Agreement covers 24 nuclear-dangerous installations and 6 non-nuclear sites. Depots are also included and not only those where weapons-grade plutonium is stored, but also those which house waste from decommissioned nuclear submarines and spent fuel from nuclear power plants. Although Russia needs U.S. assistance, this does not mean that its nuclear installations are poorly protected. This was emphasized in a joint statement made by Vladimir Putin and George Bush in Bratislava. They agreed that the level of the physical protection of nuclear sites in Russia and the U.S. corresponded to modern standards. Both presidents pointed out that the physical protection of nuclear sites should be permanently improved just like any other technology given new challenges and threats. And Russian-American cooperation continues moving in this direction. The Americans have already provided hundreds of millions of dollars to improve the physical protection of Russia's nuclear facilities. This gesture is not prompted just by the desire to help Russia in the moment of need. The U.S. prefers to pay rather than see Russian nuclear arsenals go without proper servicing and control because of a lack of money and the brain drain. It is only natural that they want to see how the money is spent. Is there a new fence around a nuclear depot? Are there monitors at the entrance gate? Are the control posts well equipped? Any agreement has a clause on verifications and inspections. The American experts cross the ocean to carry them out. The Agency for Nuclear Power has reported that all visits to Russian nuclear sites are strictly regulated: there are procedures for the presentation of documents, lists of visitors are agreed upon in advance, and even the duration of trips is specified. The financial crisis that hit Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union forced it to cooperate with the Americans. "Now that the Russian economy is regaining strength, this cooperation is gradually acquiring a different dimension," said Kuchinov. "We are using less aid and counting more on equal cooperation." The U.S. is not going to finance Russia forever. After all, it is the American taxpayer's money. ***************************************************************** 25 Independent: Brown refuses to back Blair's nuclear programme By Colin Brown and Andrew Grice 03 May 2005 Gordon Brown has refused to commit himself to supporting Tony Blair's plans to renew Britain's Trident nuclear weapons system. Mr Brown appeared to duck the issue on Channel Four News when he was challenged about yesterday's report in The Independent that Mr Blair had agreed in principle to replace the Trident system. The Prime Minister confirmed yesterday that he wants Britain to retain its independent nuclear deterrent when the Trident submarine fleet reaches the end of its natural life. Asked whether it was right to replace it, Mr Brown said: "Well, as Tony Blair says a decision has not been made. We have to look at the facts and the figures first." His reply will encourage some of his supporters, who want him to secure the leadership, but seriously question the need for a replacement for Trident. Mr Brown added: "The issue in the world is not whether the existing powers cease to be nuclear - I don't think that is expected of us - I think the issue is whether we can prevent proliferation." The Independent learned the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) would not challenge claims in a court case that Mr Blair's plans to replace Trident with a new nuclear deterrent would breach the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). In documents relating to the prosecution of five anti-nuclear protesters who broke into a defence establishment, the CPS also says it will not contest expert views that the extension for 10 years of the mutual co-operation deal between Britain and the US, known as the mutual defence agreement, would breach the NPT. The legal papers make it clear that the Crown does not accept the claims are correct, but has agreed not to contest the fact that some experts hold these view. The Crown's acceptance that there is expert opinion against the Government came in papers delivered to Joss Garman, 19, one of the five CND protesters who in April, last year, broke into Northwood, the Ministry of Defence headquarters in north-west London. ©2005 Independent News &Media (UK) Ltd. ***************************************************************** 26 Independent: Outdated nuclear treaty is a threat to us all, warns Annan www.independent.co.uk By Rupert Cornwell in Washington 03 May 2005 Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, warned yesterday that the cornerstone international treaty curbing the spread of nuclear weapons was in urgent need of repair, if it was to keep pace with globalisation and the advance of atomic technology. Mr Annan delivered his bleak warning as delegates from more than 180 countries began a conference at the UN in a bid to strengthen the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The month-long review comes at a time of rising tensions, spurred by North Korea's suspected development of a nuclear weapon, and Iran's apparent pursuit of such arms. Warning of a possible nuclear calamity in a major city, he said that in an interconnected world, "a threat to one is a threat to all, and we all share responsibility for each other's security." The plain fact was "that the regime has not kept pace with the march of technology and globalisation, and developments of many kinds in recent years have placed it under great stress." Mr Annan said that all countries, nuclear and non-nuclear powers, had to play their part. Russia and the US ­ accounting for more than 90 per cent of the estimated 17,000 nuclear warheads in the world ­ should cut their arsenals "so that warheads number in the hundreds, not in the thousands". For Iran, engaged in delicate ands fitful negotiations with the EU to freeze its uranium enrichment programme, Mr Annan had the message that it should "not insist" on manufacturing nuclear fuel domestically, but acquire it from multilaterally controlled agencies. All countries, he said, must work "towards a world of reduced nuclear threat." But his words may fall on deaf ears. The conference began without an agreed agenda, while Iran and the US were on a collision course, as Tehran prepared to reject demands to dismantle its nuclear power programme, arguing its purposes were peaceful. In a speech scheduled for today, Kamal Kharrazi, Iran's foreign minister, is likely to raise the diplomatic temperature further by arguing that his country is perfectly entitled to such technology. He may also accuse the US of not doing enough to reduce the threat, by failing to ratify a comprehensive test ban treaty, and exploring the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons. The US is demanding that Iran place its programme under international control. If not, Washington says it will seek sanctions against Iran at the UN or elsewhere. In the meantime, the US is spearheading an effort to plug a glaring loophole in the NPT, whereby a signatory country is allowed to build nuclear fuel facilities but can then opt out of the treaty with impunity as it takes the crucial step further and produces weapons grade material. That, broadly, was the course followed by North Korea ­ now believed be close to conducting its first underground nuclear test ­ when it pulled out of the NPT in 2003. Washington and its European allies suspect Iran, still a signatory, plans to do the same. Many non-nuclear countries accuse the US and other traditional nuclear powers ­ Britain, Russia, France and China ­ of hypocrisy by not reducing their arsenals. ©2005 Independent News &Media (UK) Ltd. ***************************************************************** 27 Guardian Unlimited: Global Nuclear Meeting Opens From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday May 3, 2005 7:01 AM AP Photo NYFF201 By CHARLES J. HANLEY AP Special Correspondent UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The voice was soft, calm, familiar. But the scenario Kofi Annan sketched out was chilling. A nuclear bomb goes off in a great city. Chaos ensues, and a frightened world asks, ``Was this an act of terrorism? Was it an act of aggression by a state? Was it an accident?'' Tens or hundreds of thousands would be dead, the U.N. chief said, and questions, implications and dread would consume world leaders. Treaties might collapse, trade and economies totter, human rights and freedoms come under threat. And statesmen would ask: ``How did it come to this?'' It was Monday's arresting opening to a monthlong conference reviewing the workings of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, at a moment of rising nuclear tensions in the world, on a day when speakers called for concessions from many sides - Iran, North Korea, America, Russia - to move toward a world free of the nuclear threat. ``Ultimately, the only way to guarantee that they will never be used is for our world to be free of such weapons,'' Annan said, and he then urged the United States and Russia to slash their nuclear arsenals irreversibly to just hundreds of warheads. But U.S. delegation chief Stephen G. Rademaker made clear the concessions Washington was most interested in would come from Iran, accused by the Americans of using the cover of a nuclear-power program to plan the building of weapons. ``The treaty is facing the most serious challenge in its history,'' the assistant secretary of state told delegates from more than 180 nations. ``We must confront this challenge.'' Because of such differing priorities, treaty members were unable to agree on a complete agenda before the sessions began. Organizers hope to have agreement before the nuts-and-bolts work of committees begins next week. Under the 35-year-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), states without nuclear arms pledge not to pursue them, in exchange for a commitment by five nuclear powers - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - to move toward nuclear disarmament. Three other nuclear states - Israel, India and Pakistan - remain outside the treaty. The NPT is reviewed every five years at conferences whose consensus positions give valuable political support to nonproliferation initiatives. At the 2000 meeting, the nuclear powers committed to ``13 practical steps'' toward disarmament, but critics complain the Bush administration - by rejecting the nuclear test-ban treaty, for example - has come up short. ``We are greatly disappointed'' by ``unsatisfactory progress'' toward disarmament by the big powers, said New Zealand's Marian Hobbs, speaking for a coalition of disarmament-minded states. Malaysia's foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, representing the 116-nation Non-Aligned Movement, complained that ``the nuclear weapons states continue to believe in the relevance of nuclear weapons,'' contrary to the spirit of the NPT. Rademaker said, however, the Bush administration is ``proud to have played a leading role in reducing nuclear arsenals,'' via the 2002 Moscow Treaty, for example, under which the United States and Russia are to cut back deployed warheads by two-thirds, to between 1,700 and 2,200 each, by 2012. That agreement has been criticized for not requiring destruction of excess warheads taken off deployment, or providing a transparent timetable and open verification of reductions. Rademaker sought to focus attention instead on Iran, saying, ``We dare not look the other way.'' The Iran question hinges on the NPT's Article IV, which guarantees nonweapons states the right to peaceful nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment equipment to produce fuel for nuclear power plants. That same technology, with further enrichment, can produce material for nuclear bombs. Tehran denies that is the purpose of its long-secret uranium-enrichment program, but in his keynote address Annan said states like Iran ``must not insist'' on possessing such sensitive technology. Following Annan to the U.N. podium, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, renewed his call for a moratorium on new fuel-cycle facilities while international controls are negotiated. ElBaradei has proposed putting nuclear fuel production under multilateral control by regional or international bodies. Rademaker reaffirmed President Bush's proposal for an outright ban on nuclear fuel technology, except in the United States and a dozen other countries that have it. The Tehran government is negotiating on and off with Germany, France and Britain about shutting down its enrichment operations in return for economic incentives. North Korea pulled out of the NPT in 2003 and said in February it has already built nuclear weapons. But the review conference is not expected to focus heavily on this first NPT defector, in order not to complicate efforts, via now-suspended six-party talks, to draw Pyongyang back into the treaty fold. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 28 York Dispatch: TMI is set for a test www.yorkdispatch.com May 03, 2005 Exercise measures York's preparedness By CARL LINDQUIST The York Dispatch Federal officials today will assess the responses of the state, counties and municipalities within 10 miles of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the event of an emergency at the facility. The test will include York County and 14 of its municipalities and is the focus of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's weeklong "Radiological Emergency Preparedness Exercise." The operation also includes the assessment of evacuation centers and schools surrounding the facility in the Susquehanna River off Goldsboro. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will evaluate the plant itself, which announced this week that it plans on extending its license for 20 years beyond its current April 19, 2014, expiration date. Relicensing is primarily based on the safety of the plant itself, so the results of this preparedness test will not play a role in that process, according to the NRC. However, any problems or deficiencies found either with local agencies' or the plant's response to the test will be addressed in a report to be made public by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission within approxi mately 120 days Preliminary findings will be announced during a public briefing at noon Friday at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel on E. Park Drive in Harrisburg. "We're there to evaluate and to look and see how things go," said Niki Edwards, public information officer for Region 3 of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the organization evaluating local agencies during the biennial test. "We don't anticipate finding anything wrong." The agency will assess the emergency response plans of those involved, as well as how well they are implemented. Goes through Pleasant Acres: For York County, the response includes coordinating services such as fire, public works, and transportation through its emergency management office at the Pleasant Acres complex in Springettsbury Township. During an emergency, the office becomes the county's emergency operations center. Among other duties, personnel help evacuate those in danger and elaborate on state-issued emergency alerts by providing the press with county-specific information. "We're constantly reviewing and revising plans," said Bernadette Lauer, the county's public information and training officer, adding, "If there were a real emergency, the most important thing to do is stay tuned to the radio for the additional information so they know what's going on. The phone book is a good starting point for evacuation routes." But the public generally won't be able to tell today's test -- which local officials say will likely begin sometime after 5 p.m. -- is even going on. Although those nearby the plant may see unusual activity and hear plant page announcements, the typical 3-5 minute siren that would accompany a real emergency won't be used. The sound is used to alert residents to tune in to the radio or television to listen to announcements. React as if real: But, for emergency responders, the test might as well be real, according to John Moramarco, emergency management coordinator for the Northeastern Municipalities' Emergency Management Agency. The collaborative combines emergency services for East Manchester Township and Manchester and Mount Wolf boroughs. "The scenario is kind of the same thing each time," Moramarco said of his experience with the test. "Each time it starts out as a minor affair and goes to the point of evacuation." After getting a call from the county, workers at the agency's operations center get in touch with necessary people, including the mayors of the two boroughs, borough council members and the township supervisors. Both the council members and township supervisors are needed to approve any financial decisions. Then the center staff starts contacting the necessary agencies within its area, and if the problem progresses into an evacuation, they prepare and initiate a mock event. Not only does the operation prepare the agency for a problem at TMI, Moramarco said, but for other emergencies such as hurricanes and tornadoes. "It's a pretty comprehensive operation," he said. "It's quite thorough." -- Reach Carl Lindquist at 505-5432 or . ©2005 by The York Dispatch Publishing Co., LLC ***************************************************************** 29 UK The Times: Political silence on nuclear energy is indefensible May 04, 2005 Hot air There is little in the Labour Party manifesto to remind voters of Tony Blair’s conviction that Britain’s destiny is to set an example to the world on global warming. There is remarkably little said about the matter at all, given the apocalyptic view that the Prime Minister apparently takes of the impact of climate change. There are two reasons for this unwonted reticence. The first is embarrassment. Having pledged to curb UK carbon emissions by 20 per cent of the 1990 rate in 2020, and 60 per cent within a generation — cuts far steeper than the Kyoto Protocol requires — emissions have been rising, not falling, for the past two years. There are few lamer passages in the manifesto than the statement that “our review of progress this summer will show us how to get back on track”. The second reason is the reluctance to grasp the nuclear nettle. Labour is determined to get through this election without saying where it stands on building new nuclear power stations — one of the “greenest” energy sour-ces in climate change terms, but a dirty word with green lobbies worried about waste and potential “meltdown”. Officially, Labour stands where it did in the 2003 White Paper: ill-disposed toward nuclear power and enthusiastic about serried phalanxes of windmills, rolling miles of biomass crops and “high standards of energy efficiency”. But even if renewable energy sources are able to provide 20 per cent of Britain’s electricity by 2020, as hoped, they would merely be making up a loss of around 20 per cent in electricity supply that will be inevitable if no new nuclear reactors are built. Nuclear energy furnishes nearly a quarter of Britain’s electricity today, but most of its 12 nuclear stations are due to be decommissioned before 2020. Science has not yet found a way to make harmless the nuclear waste whose potency lasts for centuries, not a four-year election cycle. But the new generation of pressurised water reactors produces less than a tenth of the waste created by Britain’s existing power stations. We have been living with nuclear waste for 50 years: continuing reliance on nuclear energy would add relatively little to the burden, and continuing research will surely lessen that burden. Safety-conscious countries such as Finland are commissioning new reactors and storing waste deep underground. Yet the UK continues to dither even about waste disposal, so that much of our waste sits in tanks around the country where it is more vulnerable to leaks or terrorist attack. Engineering advances also mean that fears of reactor meltdown are misplaced. A Chernobyl-style leak would apparently be impossible in the new generation of reactors, which can shut down without extra water. The nuclear option should not be an excuse for ignoring energy efficiency or renewables. But in balancing the risks of nuclear power against the possible risks of climate change, the nuclear option does fill a yawning gap. The problems posed by nuclear power are more political than scientific. Tim Yeo, the Conservative spokesman, has had the courage to say that, if elected, his party would take a decision on new nuclear stations within a year. If the industry could meet concerns about costs and waste disposal, building would proceeed. This is not only a wise stance: it treats voters like adults. And once the ballots have been counted, politicians will themselves have to act like adults on this question. Copyright The Times - timesonline.co.uk ***************************************************************** 30 Daily Yomiuri: Govt may concede ITER site to France The Yomiuri Shimbun The government may be prepared to accept the building of the planned International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in another country providing Japan wins construction work and jobs, government sources said. The government policy taken Tuesday is the result of recent unofficial negotiations with the European Union, which also is seeking to host the ITER. As a result, it is now highly likely that the reactor will be built in Cadarache, France, rather than at Japan's proposed site in Rokkashomura, Aomori Prefecture. The government hopes to finish negotiating with the prefecture and the countries concerned and to reach a formal agreement next month, the sources said. The ITER is an experimental facility of thermonuclear fusion, at which nuclear fusion reactions that occur on the sun are produced by fusing the nucleus of heavy hydrogen and tritium at more than 100 million C. As a result of the reactions, energy is produced that can be retained at the facility. It is said that the energy produced from 1 gram of fuel in the facility is equivalent to that of 8 tons of oil. The fuel--heavy hydrogen--can be extracted from seawater, which is an inexhaustible resource. If put into practical use, the technology has the potential of drastically changing the energy market, which is currently dependent on the politically unstable Middle East. The project participants are Japan, China, the EU, Russia, South Korea and the United States. The total project cost is expected to be about 1.3 trillion yen. Under the original plan, construction of an experimental reactor for the project was scheduled to begin this year, and the reactor was planned to start operations in 2015. But the project has been stalled due to debate over the reactor's location, with Japan, South Korea and the United States backing Rokkashomura and China, the EU and Russia supporting Cadarache. In June 2003, Japan and the EU, which have been bidding to host the facility, began negotiations over the roles of the facility's host country and the rest of the participating countries. In September, Japan presented a proposal that was beneficial to the non-hosting countries, such as them being able to win orders for 20 percent of the ITER construction work by bearing 10 percent of the cost. On April 12, EU Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik also presented similar conditions as the Japanese proposal during ministerial-level talks between Japan and the EU in Tokyo, according to a senior official of the Education, Science and Technology Ministry. This has accelerated mutual concessions on both sides. Tetsuhisa Shirakawa, the ministry's deputy minister, is currently in Europe to confirm the agreement made during the April meeting. Japan and the EU will then work together on making a document stating the role of the ITER's host and non-hosting countries before calling for ministerial-level talks among all six countries involved, which have not been held since December 2003, to formally decide the ITER construction site. "So far, negotiations are going in the direction that an agreement between Japan and the EU should be reached this month," the sources said, acknowledging that the negotiations are in their final phase. On Monday, it was confirmed during a regular summit meeting between Japan and the EU held in Luxenbourg that both parties should aim at reaching an agreement over the ITER's host country as soon as possible. "We agreed that we should cooperate with each other so that we can reach an agreement over the issue as soon as possible," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said after the meeting. Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 31 Daily Yomiuri: PLANNING NATIONAL STRATEGIES--Resources and energy / Nuclear power back in favor as energy source The Yomiuri Shimbun This is the 13th installment in a series of articles in the "Planning National Strategies" series that considers the situation and problems concerning natural resources and energy. Minoru Kubo, public relations manager of the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC), visited China in late March to take his first look at a Chinese experimental fast-breeder reactor, which was being constructed in a Beijing suburb. Fan Zhong, vice president of the Beijing Institute of Nuclear Engineering, explained to Kubo about the experimental reactor. Fang proudly told Kubo of his high hopes for a fast-breeder reactor, saying: "We want to build [a fast-breeder reactor] before the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. We want to tell the world that electricity [used in the Games] has been generated by the fast-breeder reactor. That's our goal." JNC is a public corporation supervised by the Education, Science and Technology Ministry. Fang also said China wanted to increase nuclear power generation by more than fivefold by 2020. At present, most Chinese reactors are light-water reactors, but the country intends to introduce large-sized fast-breeder reactors in 2030. By the middle of this century, China hopes to generate five times as much electricity as Japan does today solely through nuclear power plants. Fang and the young Chinese engineers Kubo met in Beijing enthusiastically told him about those prospects. "They were brimming with confidence that they were supporting China's development. They were so starry-eyed that they reminded me of Hyuma Hoshi, the hero of "Kyojin no Hoshi," (a cartoon series about a struggling baseball player that became highly popular between the 1960s and early '70s)" Kubo said. As the global scramble for resources has intensified, the phenomenon that can be referred to as "return to nuclear power" has become more conspicuous. According to some forecasts, China will need another 27 nuclear power plants with a capacity of about 1 million kilowatts by 2020. China is seeking the development of four nuclear power plants, in addition to the swift construction of fast-breeder reactors. In the U.S. National Energy Policy released in May 2001, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush announced a plan to resume construction of nuclear power plants, which had been suspended since the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in 1979. Japan, which stresses nuclear energy as a key power source, has been promoting a nuclear fuel cycle policy since 1956. Nuclear power plants in Japan all use light-water reactors, whose fuel is natural uranium that has been enriched to increase the rate of uranium 235 to 3 percent to 5 percent. Natural uranium contains only about 0.7 percent of uranium 235, which is fissionable, while the remainder is mostly uranium 238, which is not. Burning nuclear fuel in a light-water reactor produces spent nuclear fuel that contains plutonium, which also fissions. The whole process of reprocessing the spent nuclear fuel, recovering uranium and plutonium from the fuel and reusing it is called the nuclear fuel cycle. There are two ways to complete the cycle: the process used in Japan's plutonium-thermal program and the use of a fast-breeder reactor. The former involves the use of the plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel in a light-water reactor. MOX fuel is produced by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. On the other hand, when nuclear fuels are burned in a fast-breeder reactor, in which neutrons fly around at a high speed, uranium 238, which is not fissionable, absorbs the neutrons and is transformed into plutonium. The process can produce more nuclear fuel than it spends, and is often referred to as a "dream energy." But there are many technical problems yet to be solved, so some analysts expect the practical application of the reactors is unlikely to happen until about 2050. All natural uranium used in Japan is imported from overseas. If spent nuclear fuel can be recycled, however, then nuclear waste that is piling up here could be transformed into nuclear fuel and Japan would no longer be dependent on other countries for energy sources. The 1995 sodium leak at the Monju prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, forced the suspension of the nuclear fuel cycle program for a decade. The prototype fast-breeder is a reactor one step closer to practical application than an experimental fast-breeder. The leakage itself was not very serious-- there was no risk of exposure to radioactivity or any radioactive leakage, and the accident was graded second-lowest on the International Atomic Energy Agency's eight-level risk scale for nuclear power-related accidents. But the authorities' clumsy handling of matters after the accident inflamed distrust in the local community. After the Monju accident, the government shifted the focus of its nuclear fuel cycle policy to promotion of the plutonium-thermal project, even though the method used in the project is less fuel efficient than a fast-breeder reactor. However, the government was rocked last spring by another incident that could seriously affect its nuclear fuel cycle policy. Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 32 NRC: News Release - Region I - 2005-026 - NRC to Discuss 2004 Performance Assessment for Indian Point Nuclear Power Plants U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 www.nrc.gov No. I-05-026 DATE CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with representatives of Entergy Nuclear Northeast on Tuesday, May 10, to discuss the agencys annual assessment of safety performance at the Indian Point 2 and 3 nuclear power plants. The period of performance to be discussed is Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2004. Entergy operates the plants, located in Buchanan, N.Y. The meeting, which will be open to the public for observation, is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. at Crystal Bay on the Hudson Charles Point Marina, 5 John Walsh Blvd., Peekskill, N.Y. Before the session is adjourned, NRC staff will be available to answer questions from the public on the plants safety performance, as well as the agencys role in ensuring safe operation of the facility. Starting at 7 p.m., NRC staff will conduct a separate question-and-answer period. This session will begin with a brief discussion regarding the agencys process for reviewing license renewal applications. Nuclear plant security requirements will also be discussed. To date, Entergy has not submitted a license renewal application for either of the Indian Point plants. The current operating licenses for Indian Point 2 and 3 will not expire until Sept. 28, 2013 and Dec. 15, 2015, respectively. However, in response to requests from some local officials, the NRC has agreed to discuss at a public meeting how such an application, if filed, would be reviewed. With regard to the annual assessment meeting, NRC Region I Administrator Samuel J. Collins said the agency continually reviews the performance of the Indian Point plants and the nations other commercial nuclear power facilities. This meeting will provide an opportunity for a discussion of our annual assessment of safety performance with the company and with local officials and residents who live near the plant. Our goal is to explain the NRC oversight process and make as much information as possible available to the public regarding our regulation of these facilities. Overall, the Indian Point plants operated safely during the period. The NRC uses color-coded inspection findings and performance indicators to assess nuclear power plant performance. The colors start with green and then increase to white, yellow or red, commensurate with the safety significance of the issues involved. During 2004, all of the inspection findings and performance indicators for the Indian Point plants were determined to be green. Therefore, the plants will receive a baseline level of inspections during the upcoming assessment period. In the NRCs 2004 mid-year assessment for the Indian Point plants, the agency discussed the continuation of a substantive cross-cutting issue in the area of problem identification and resolution. A cross-cutting issue is one that affects several different areas of performance. Based on a team inspection of the plants problem identification and resolution program in September 2004, the NRC determined that Entergy is taking steps to improve performance in that area. Nevertheless, the inspection also found inconsistency in the programs implementation, including 10 related green, or very low safety significance, inspection findings for Indian Point 2 last year. As a result, the cross-cutting issue will remain open for Indian Point 2. Further evaluations will be conducted during NRC follow-up inspections. Although Indian Point 2 had an open white inspection finding at the beginning of 2004 for a degraded control room fire barrier, that finding was closed out in the first quarter of last year based on the results of NRC supplemental inspections of the issue done in June 2003 and December 2003. Routine inspections are performed by four NRC resident inspectors assigned to the plants and by inspection specialists from the Region I Office in King of Prussia, Pa., and the agencys headquarters in Rockville, Md. Among the areas of plant operations to be inspected this year are radiological safety, emergency preparedness and problem identification and resolution. A letter sent from the NRC Region I Office to plant officials addresses the performance of the plant during the period and will serve as the basis for the meeting discussion. It is available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/inpt_2004q4.pdf [PDF Icon] . The notice and slides for the annual assessment meeting are available in the NRCs Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) under accession numbers ML051090564 and ML051100011, respectively. ADAMS is accessible via the agencys web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Help in using ADAMS is available by contacting the NRCs Public Document Room at 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737 or by e-mail at PDR@nrc.gov. Current performance information for Indian Point 2 is available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/IP2/ip2_chart.html. Current performance information for Indian Point 3 is available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/IP3/ip3_chart.html. Privacy Policy | Site Disclaimer Last revised Tuesday, May 03, 2005 ***************************************************************** 33 Bellona: Protest against postponing unit no. 5 construction at Kursk NPP Five thousand people took part in the protest against postponing unit no. 5 construction at Kursk NPP in Kurchatov city in the end of March. 2005-05-03 18:55 The Russian Federal Nuclear Agency corrected its investment program concerning construction of unit no. 5 at the Kursk NPP what led to a new postponement. The new plan stipulates to finish the construction not before 2014, ITAR-TASS reported. The participants of the protest said ”by that time the construction site will become a scrap heap and 60 billion roubles (about $2 billion) already spent on the unit no.5 construction, will be dug in the ground, while the four current units will exceed their lifetime”. The lack of substitute of the units capacities at the Kursk NPP will lead to electricity generation underruns needed by the Central Federal region, said the plant’s deputy director Yury Ivanov. The construction of the fifth unit began back in the middle of 80s. The unit’s launch was postponed many times, first to 2000, then to 2007, and now to 2014. 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 ***************************************************************** 34 NRC: NRC Finds No Significant Environmental Impacts from Extended Operation of Cook Nuclear Plant, Units 1 and 2 News Release - 2005-07 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: No. 05-075 May 3, 2005 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its final environmental impact statement on the proposed renewal of the operating licenses for the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant, Units 1 and 2. The report contains the NRCs finding that there are no environmental impacts that would preclude license renewal for an additional 20 years of operation. The Cook plant is located in Berrien County, about 55 miles east of Chicago, Ill. The current operating licenses expire on October 25, 2014, for Unit 1 and December 23, 2017, for Unit 2. Indiana Michigan Power Co. Inc. (I&M), the licensee, submitted an application for renewal of both licenses on Oct. 31, 2003. As part of its environmental review of the application, the NRC held public meetings near the plant to discuss the scope of the review and the draft version of the environmental impact statement. Comments were received from members of the public, local officials and representatives of state and federal agencies. The Donald C. Cook Final Environmental Impact Statement is available on the NRCs Web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1437 /supplement20/index.html. Copies are also available for inspection at the NRCs Public Document Room at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md.; the Bridgman Public Library, 4460 Lake Street, Bridgman, Mich. and the Maud Preston Palenske Memorial Library, 500 Market Street, St. Joseph, Mich. Last revised Tuesday, May 03, 2005 ***************************************************************** 35 Platts: OPG focus to be on developing hydro, refurbishing nukes - Duncan + Ontario Power Generation's focus is to be on the development of hydro-electric generation capacity and on refurbishing its remaining idled nuclear plants, the province's Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said Monday. Duncan, describing for the first time the future role of OPG in the province's electric industry, said the government has "asked OPG to concentrate on maximizing Ontario's large hydroelectric opportunities, by upgrading its existing facilities and exploring new sites, especially in the northern reaches of the province, which hold thousands of megawatts of untapped hydroelectric potential." Duncan said OPG's mandate will "not include exploring wind power or other forms of non-hydro renewable energy." Coal-fired plant "is something that our government has been very clear is not part of OPG's future mandate," he said, adding that OPG has shut down its 1,140-MW Lakeview coal station within the past week and that "very soon" the government "will be announcing our plan to replace the remaining four coal-fired stations" with cleaner energy sources. This story was originally published in Platts Electricity Alert http://www.electricityalert.platts.com Philadelphia (Platts)--2May2005 Copyright © 2005 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 36 NRC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company; Joseph M. Farley Nuclear FR Doc E5-2107 [Federal Register: May 3, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 84)] [Notices] [Page 22927] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr03my05-104] [[Page 22927]] Power Plant, Units 1 and 2; Exemption 1.0 Background The Southern Nuclear Operating Company (SNC or the licensee) is the holder of Facility Operating License Nos. NPF-2 and NPF-8 that authorizes operation of Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Power Plant (FNP), Units 1 and 2. The license provides, among other things, that the facility is subject to all rules, regulations, and orders of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC, the Commission) now or hereafter in effect. The facility consists of two pressurized-water reactors located in Houston County, Alabama. 2.0 Request/Action Section IV.F.2.b and c of Appendix E, to Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 50 requires the licensee at each site to conduct an exercise of its onsite emergency plan and of its offsite emergency plans biennially with full participation by each offsite authority having a role under the plan. During such biennial full participation exercises, the NRC evaluates onsite and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) evaluates offsite emergency preparedness activities, including interaction with the various State and local emergency management agencies (EMA). SNC successfully conducted a full-participation exercise at FNP during the week of August 21, 2002. The licensee had scheduled a full participation plume exposure pathway exercise for August 18, 2004, however, due to Hurricane Charley, Alabama EMA and FEMA were unable to support the exercise. Under the current regulations, the licensee would have had until December 31, 2004, to complete their next full-participation exercise. The licensee will conduct a Federally observed full-participation emergency exercise August 24-25, 2005. Future full-participation exercises will be scheduled biennially from the year 2004. By letter dated December 13, 2004, the licensee requested an exemption from Section IV.F.2.e of Appendix E to 10 CFR part 50 regarding the full participation by each offsite authority having a role under the plan. The NRC staff determined that the requirements of Section IV.F.2.e are not applicable to the circumstances of the licensee's request and, accordingly, no exemption from those requirements is being granted. However, the NRC staff has determined that the requirements of Appendix E to 10 CFR part 50, Sections IV.F.2.b and 2.c are applicable to the circumstances of the licensee's request and that an exemption from those requirements is appropriate. 3.0 Discussion The Commission, pursuant to 10 CFR 50.12(a)(1), may grant exemptions from the requirements of 10 CFR part 50 that are authorized by law, will not present an undue risk to public health and safety, and are consistent with the common defense and security. The Commission, however, pursuant to 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2), will not consider granting an exemption unless special circumstances are present. Under 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2)(ii), special circumstances are present when application of the regulation in the particular circumstances would not serve the underlying purpose of the rule or is not necessary to achieve the underlying purpose of the rule. Under 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2)(v), special circumstances are present whenever the exemption would provide only temporary relief from the applicable regulation and the licensee or applicant has made good faith efforts to comply with the regulation. The underlying purpose for conducting a biennial full-participation exercise is to ensure that emergency organization personnel are familiar with their duties and to test the adequacy of emergency plans. In order to accommodate the scheduling of full participation exercises, the NRC has allowed licensees to schedule the exercises at any time during the calendar biennium. Conducting the FNP full-participation exercise in calendar year 2005 places the exercise past the previously scheduled biennial calender year of 2004. Since the last full-participation exercise conducted at FNP on August 21, 2002, FNP has conducted two annual, Full Scale Plume Phase exercises on August 27, 2003, and July 28, 2004. In addition, the licensee conducted an offhour/unannounced exercise on September 23, 2003. Six other drills were also conducted. The NRC staff considers the intent of this requirement is met by having conducted these series of exercises and drills. The NRC staff considers that these measures are adequate to maintain an acceptable level of emergency preparedness during this period, satisfying the underlying purpose of the rule. Therefore, the special circumstances of 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2)(ii) are satisfied. Only temporary relief from the regulation is provided by the requested exemption since FNP will resume their normal biennial exercise schedule in 2006. The licensee has made a good faith effort to comply with the regulation. The exemption is being sought by the licensee in response to a request by Alabama EMA and FEMA to postpone the exercise. Alabama EMA and FEMA were unable to support the original schedule for the exercise due to a series of severe weather events. FEMA stated that they support the newly scheduled August 24-25, 2005, exercise in a letter to the licensee dated October 21, 2004. The NRC staff, having considered the schedule and resource issues with those agencies that participate in and evaluate the offsite portion of the full-participation exercises, concludes that the licensee made a good faith effort to meet the requirements of the regulation. The NRC staff, therefore, concludes that the exemption request meets the special circumstances of 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2)(v) and should be granted. 4.0 Conclusion Accordingly, the Commission has determined that, pursuant to 10 CFR 50.12(a), the exemption is authorized by law, will not present an undue risk to the public health and safety, and is consistent with the common defense and security. Also, special circumstances are present. Therefore, the Commission hereby grants SNC an exemption from the requirements of 10 CFR part 50, Appendix E, Section IV.F.2.b and c for FNP, Units 1 and 2. Pursuant to 10 CFR 51.32, the Commission has determined that the granting of this exemption will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment (70 FR 19107). This exemption is effective upon issuance. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 13th day of April 2005. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Ledyard B. Marsh, Director, Division of Licensing Project Management, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. E5-2107 Filed 5-2-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 37 NRC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company; Vogtle Electric Generating FR Doc E5-2109 [Federal Register: May 3, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 84)] [Notices] [Page 22928-22929] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr03my05-105] [[Page 22928]] Plant, Units 1 and 2; Exemption 1.0 Background The Southern Nuclear Operating Company (SNC or the licensee) is the holder of Facility Operating License Nos. NPF-68 and NPF-81 that authorizes operation of Vogtle Electric Generating Plant (VEGP), Units 1 and 2. The license provides, among other things, that the facility is subject to all rules, regulations, and orders of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC, the Commission) now or hereafter in effect. The facility consists of two pressurized-water reactors located in Burke County, Georgia. 2.0 Request/Action Section IV.F.2.b and c of Appendix E, to Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 50 requires the licensee at each site to conduct an exercise of its onsite emergency plans and offsite emergency plans biennially with full participation by each offsite authority having a role under the plan. During such biennial full participation exercises, the NRC evaluates onsite and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) evaluates offsite emergency preparedness activities, including interaction with it's various State and local emergency management agencies. SNC's previously scheduled full-participation exercise at VEGP was successfully conducted during the week of June 12, 2002. The licensee had scheduled a full-participation exercise for September 2004, however, FEMA requested that the exercise be postponed to enable the Georgia Emergency Management Agency to respond to multiple hurricanes. FEMA subsequently consulted with the States of Georgia and South Carolina, and in a letter to the Georgia Emergency Management Agency dated November 23, 2004, FEMA approved rescheduling the full-participation exercise to February 2005. Under the current regulations, the licensee would have had until December 31, 2004, to complete it's next full-participation exercise. By letter dated December 10, 2004, the licensee requested an exemption from Section IV.F.2.e of Appendix E to 10 CFR part 50 regarding the requirement to conduct a biennial full-participation exercise. The NRC staff determined that the requirements of Section IV.F.2.e are not applicable to the circumstances of the licensee's request and, accordingly, no exemption from those requirements is being granted. However, the NRC staff has determined that the requirements of Appendix E to 10 CFR part 50, Sections IV.F.2.b and 2.c are applicable to the circumstances of the licensee's request and that an exemption from those requirements is appropriate. 3.0 Discussion The Commission, pursuant to 10 CFR 50.12(a)(1), may grant exemptions from the requirements of 10 CFR part 50 that are authorized by law, will not present an undue risk to public health and safety, and are consistent with the common defense and security. The Commission, however, pursuant to 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2), will not consider granting an exemption unless special circumstances are present. Under 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2)(ii), special circumstances are present when application of the regulation in the particular circumstances would not serve the underlying purpose of the rule or is not necessary to achieve the underlying purpose of the rule. Under 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2)(v), special circumstances are present whenever the exemption would provide only temporary relief from the applicable regulation and the licensee or applicant has made good faith efforts to comply with the regulation. The underlying purpose for conducting a biennial full-participation exercise is to ensure that emergency organization personnel are familiar with their duties and to test the adequacy of emergency plans. In order to accommodate scheduling of a full participation exercise, the NRC has allowed licensees to schedule the exercises at any time during the calendar biennium. Conducting the VEGP full-participation exercise in calendar year 2005 as proposed places the exercise past the previously scheduled biennial calender year of 2004. Since the last full-participation exercise conducted at VEGP, Units 1 and 2 on June 12, 2002, VEGP conducted two annual Full Scale Plume Phase exercises on November 5, 2003, and June 30, 2004, and an off- hour/unannounced exercise on November 8, 2004. Six other emergency plan drills have also been conducted since June 2002. The NRC staff considers that the intent of this requirement is met by having conducted these series of exercises and drills. The NRC staff considers that these measures are adequate to maintain an acceptable level of emergency preparedness during this period, satisfying the underlying purpose of the rule. Therefore, the special circumstances of 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2)(ii) are satisfied. The licensee also stated in its letter dated December 10, 2004, that only temporary relief from the regulation is requested for the exemption, since VEGP will resume its normal biennial exercise cycle in 2006. The NRC staff also found that the licensee made a good faith effort to comply with the regulation by originally scheduling the full participation exercise within the calendar biennium, in accordance with the regulation. The exemption is being sought by the licensee in response to a request by FEMA to reschedule the exercise. As documented in FEMA letter dated November 23, 2004, the Georgia Emergency Management Agency was unable to support the original schedule for the exercise due to a series of severe weather events that impacted its available resources. FEMA, in consultation with the States of Georgia and South Carolina, proposed a rescheduled date for the exercise that is beyond that allowed by the regulations. The NRC staff, having considered the schedule and resource issues associated with those agencies that participate in and evaluate the offsite portion of full-participation exercises, concludes that the licensee made a good faith effort to meet the requirements of the regulation. The NRC staff, therefore, concludes that the exemption request meets the special circumstances of 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2)(v) and should be granted. 4.0 Conclusion Accordingly, the Commission has determined that, pursuant to 10 CFR 50.12(a), the exemption is authorized by law, will not present an undue risk to the public health and safety, and is consistent with the common defense and security. Also, special circumstances are present. Therefore, the Commission hereby grants SNC an exemption from the requirements of 10 CFR part 50, Appendix E, Section IV.F.2.b and c for VEGP, Units 1 and 2. Pursuant to 10 CFR 51.32, the Commission has determined that the granting of this exemption will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment (70 FR 19108). This exemption is effective upon issuance. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 13th day of April 2005. [[Page 22929]] For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Ledyard B. Marsh, Director, Division of Licensing Project Management, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. E5-2109 Filed 5-2-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 38 Advocate: Millstone 3 back on line after two-week shutdown Associated Press Published May 3 2005 WATERFORD, Conn. -- The Millstone 3 nuclear reactor, a major source of energy for the region, is operating again after a faulty circuit board triggered an alert that forced a two-week shutdown. Dominion, the owner of the nuclear power complex on the Waterford coast of Long Island Sound, restarted Millstone 3 on Sunday, company spokesman Peter Hyde said. The reactor generates 1,150 megawatts of electricity a day, enough to power up to 1,000 homes. Millstone 3 was shut down on April 17 when its system indicated a break in a steam line, Dominion officials said. An investigation later indicated that a faulty circuit board tripped the alert. The shutdown caused the release of non-radioactive steam into the air, which prompted concern among local residents. Millstone officials said there were no health risks to the public. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is investigating the incident, gave Dominion authority to restart the power plant last week. The Millstone complex did not produce any electricity during the shutdown. Millstone 1 is being decommissioned and Millstone 2 is shut down temporarily for refueling. There was a problem in the restart of Millstone 3, however. The plant went to 100 percent power on Sunday, but operators had to cut back the power because a plant indicator falsely showed misalignment of a control rod, Hyde said. Hyde said the indicator card was replaced and the reactor was gradually being restored to full power. The unit was up to 67 percent of its full capacity Monday, he said. Information: The Hartford Courant, http://www.courant.com. Copyright © 2005, The Associated Press Dear friends and colleagues: FYI -- Below is Tri-Valley CAREs' advisory on our participation in the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference -- the who, what, when, where, and, especially, WHY. Read on... --Marylia Kelley Press Advisory: for immediate release LIVERMORE NUCLEAR "WATCHDOGS" TRAVEL TO THE UNITED NATIONS TO SUPPORT NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY REVIEW CONFERENCE; WILL BRIEF KEY INTERNATIONAL DELEGATIONS, URGE U.S. COMPLIANCE WITH NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT OBLIGATION Local Activists Also Join May 1 Rally in Central Park for Nuclear Disarmament Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), the local organization that "watchdogs" the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will send key staff and technical experts to the United Nations to participate in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, which will take place in New York from May 2-27. Tri-Valley CAREs is a UN-accredited non-governmental organization. The Tri-Valley CAREs team will meet with delegates from more than a dozen countries to discuss measures to strengthen compliance with the NPT, including the disarmament obligation of the United States and other signatory nuclear weapons states under the Treaty's Article VI. "The NPT is the most universal treaty of its kind, signed by nearly 190 countries. It commits the nuclear weapons states to eliminate their arsenals. In return the non-nuclear armed states agree not to acquire such weapons," explained Loulena Miles, Tri-Valley CAREs' Staff Attorney. "The U.S. is flaunting its NPT obligation by seeking to develop new nuclear bunker-busting bombs and other new and modified nuclear weapons at Livermore Lab," Miles continued. "This, in turn, weakens the basic foundation of the non-proliferation regime." "It's hypocritical for the U.S. to insist that other nations not develop nuclear weapons while spending billions to modernize and upgrade its nuclear arsenal," charged Tara Dorabji, Outreach Director for Tri-Valley CAREs. "If we want to foster a strong global nonproliferation regime and prevent others from acquiring nuclear weapons, we need to stop developing new nuclear bombs ourselves." Dorabji added, "the U.S. cannot effectively insist on nuclear abstinence from a barstool." Tri-Valley CAREs will share a recently released report with the NPT delegations. Titled, "America's One-Nation Arms Race: An Analysis of the Department of Energy's Fiscal Year 2006 Budget Request for Nuclear Weapons Activities," the report documents a decade long upsurge in funding for nuclear weapons that supports a vast research and manufacturing enterprise focused on upgrading existing U.S. nuclear weapons and designing new ones. The report is written by Dr. Robert Civiak, a physicist and former Budget Examiner at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). His responsibilities at OMB included oversight of the DOE nuclear weapons programs. "The current and proposed U.S. nuclear weapons budget directly contradicts the Administration's efforts to convince potential nuclear weapons proliferators that there is nothing to be gained from developing nuclear weapons," said Dr. Civiak. "Our goal is to help other countries hold the U.S. government's feet to the fire to achieve disarmament," commented Inga Olson, Tri-Valley CAREs' Program Director. "Ultimately, the NPT offers us the prospect of genuine security; that is, a world free of the threat of nuclear annihilation. If it falters, we will all become less safe." The Tri-Valley CAREs team will bring information to delegates on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a new bomb slated to be developed at Livermore Lab, and which, if built, would burrow into the ground before detonation. The group will also highlight U.S. plans to double the plutonium limit at Livermore Lab to 3,080 pounds. With the increase, Livermore Lab plans to develop new technologies to cast plutonium pits. These technologies are to be used in a new plutonium bomb factory, called the Modern Pit Facility, that will include the capability to manufacture more than 250 new pits per year, including new-design pits for nuclear weapons. Plutonium pits are the cores of modern day nuclear weapons. While in New York, on the eve of the opening of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review conference, several members of the Tri-Valley CAREs team will participate in a major rally to support the NPT. The May 1 " No Nukes! No War!" demonstration will march by the United Nations and culminate in a rally in Central Park . On May 1, Tri-Valley CAREs will join many voices from around the world calling for global nuclear disarmament, the withdrawal of the U.S. military from Iraq, and greater support for the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Thousands of people are traveling from Japan, including survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 60 years ago. Dozens of mayors from around the world, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are expected to join the demonstration. Multi-national delegations are attending from 5 different continents. Coordinators from every region within the U.S. have organized trains, buses and car caravans for the many U.S. based groups that will attend the event. Interviews with Tri-Valley CAREs staff and independent experts are available. Additional information online at: http://www.trivalleycares.org, http://www.abolitionnow.org/may1.html, and http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=2788 -- 30 -- On May 1st Tri-Valley CAREs will also sponsor a vigil at Lizzie Fountain in downtown Livermore (corner of First Street and Livermore Avenue) from 5 PM - 6 PM. With songs, signs, banners and candles, Tri-Valley residents will show their support for the rule of law, the Non-Proliferation Treaty and global nuclear disarmament. Further, the vigil will show solidarity with our members -- and the Mayor of Pleasanton -- who will be in New York as we gather locally. Call Marylia or Gayle at (925) 443-7148 for more information. Marylia Kelley Executive Director Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) 2582 Old First Street Livermore, CA USA 94551 - is our web site address. Please visit us there! (925) 443-7148 - is our phone (925) 443-0177 - is our fax ***************************************************************** 69 [NYTr] Germany Pressured to Free Itself of US Nuke Weapons Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 12:51:35 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit People's Daily News (China) - May 3, 2005 http://english1.peopledaily.com.cn/200505/03/eng20050503_183635.html Germany under pressure to be free of US nuclear weapons The German government has been under mounting pressure from inside to urge the United States to pull out its nuclear weapons from country. Among a total of about 480 nuclear weapons in Europe, some 150 are stationed on German soil. In an interview with daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau, Gert Weisskirchen, foreign affairs spokesman for the ruling Social Democrats (SPD) demanded the withdrawal of the US nuclear weapons from Germany. The German government's peace politics is unbelievable "so long as the government does not separate itself from the nuclear weapons in Germany," Weisskirchen said. US nuclear weapons in Germany were "a relic of the Cold War," said SPD's ruling partner Green party chief Claudia Roth at another newspaper interview on Monday. The opposition FDP leader Guido Westerwelle on Monday moved a step further by urging Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to propose the withdrawal of the US nuclear weapons in Germany at a conference in New York on reviewing the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Westerwelle said the nuclear weapons had become superfluous since the end of the Cold War. The 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Nuclear NPT met on Monday at the UN headquarters in New York. At the conference, which will be held from May 2 to 27, 2005, states will examine the implementation of the treaty's provisions since 2000. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 70 Annan Urges City Leaders To Work With Global Partners To Help Eradicate Nuclear Weapons Date: Tue, 3 May 2005 17:00:45 -0400 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.3 (2005-04-27) on pascal.ctyme.com X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-16.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FROM_ORG, SPF_HELO_PASS,SP_HAM_SUPER,SUBJ_ALL_CAPS,WHITE_PHRASE autolearn=ham version=3.0.3 X-Spam-filter-host: pascal.ctyme.com - http://www.junkemailfilter.com ANNAN URGES CITY LEADERS TO WORK WITH GLOBAL PARTNERS TO HELP ERADICATE NUCLEAR WEAPONS New York, May 3 2005 5:00PM United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today <"http://www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=1434">urged a gathering of mayors from around the globe to press ahead with their valuable work – building bridges of international cooperation at the community level – to help revitalize the long-term vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Revitalizing that vision “is the only way to guarantee that these terrible weapons will never be used again,” Mr. Annan said in remarks to a conference of mayors at UN Headquarters in New York. The visit by the “Mayors for Peace,” who are in town to promote their vision of a global ban on nuclear weapons by 2020, coincides with the opening of the 2005 Review Conference of State Parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (<"http://disarmament.un.org:8080/wmd/npt/">NPT). The group is composed of cities around the world – led by city leaders from Hiroshima and Nagasaki – who have formally united against nuclear weapons. The non-governmental organization (NGO) is now supported by 554 cities in 107 countries and regions, endorsing the 1982 Programme to Promote Solidarity of Cities toward the Total Abolition of Nuclear Weapons. “Your work is very important to us here at the United Nations,” Mr. Annan said. “This UN is a meeting place of national governments, but it also needs the ideas and enthusiasm of local communities around the world.” Welcoming a number of “Hibakusa” – living witnesses to the horrors wrought by the atomic bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 – the Secretary-General urged the mayors to press ahead with their work, even in the face of what might seem to be insurmountable obstacles. If the world’s NPT obligations – ensuring nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy – were to be revitalized, action would be required on all fronts. “Your efforts, of course, are a part of something bigger – the struggle for a freer, fairer and safer world,” Mr. Annan said. At a press conference earlier Tuesday, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, President of Mayors for Peace, said the interim goal of the so-called “2020 Vision Campaign” was to have a universal nuclear weapons convention prepared by 2010, for consideration by the next NPT review meeting. He said he hoped the discussions over the next few days would be the beginning of a constructive exchange between the custodians of the NPT and the mayors, citizens and NGOs of the world. Mayor Kazunaga Itoh of Nagasaki said that in the 60 years since the horrific attacks on his home city and Hiroshima, many nuclear weapons had no doubt been produced but not one had been used. That was perhaps because the countries that have or those that would like to have such weapons realized what a devastating thing they could be. He added, however, that six decades after the event, one could still identify cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. Calling for the eradication of all nuclear weapons, he said that the effects of the bombs were such that even today, the long-term after-effects were still being felt. 2005-05-03 00:00:00.000 ________________ For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news To change your profile or unsubscribe go to: http://www.un.org/news/dh/latest/subscribe.shtml ***************************************************************** 71 [NukeNet] Hiroshima Mayor Calls on All Countries "Including Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 15:28:09 -0700 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) TODAY'S DEMOCRACY NOW!: * Hiroshima Mayor Calls on All Countries "Including U.S." to Abolish Nuclear Weapons * A large anti-nuclear rally in New York calls for global nuclear disarmament ahead of a United Nations meeting to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. We speak with the mayor of Hiroshima - where 60 years ago the U.S. dropped one of two atomic bombs. Listen/Watch/Read http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/02/1348206 _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 72 t r u t h o u t - Germany: 'Get US Nukes off Our Soil' Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 15:29:12 -0700 Germany Pressures US over Nuke Removal Agence-France Presse Tuesday 03 May 2005 Germany is using a meeting to review the effectiveness of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on Monday to urge the United States to remove its nuclear missiles from German soil. Germany will take the opportunity of a meeting in New York on Monday on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to officially increase pressure on the United States to remove its Cold War-era nuclear weapons from German soil. The meeting of some 190 nations, convened to address how seriously the world's fight against the spread of atomic weapons has been imperiled since the NPT went into effect in 1970, will give Germany the chance to directly air its concerns over the 150 or so land-based US nuclear weapons still deployed on German soil. "The nuclear weapons still housed in Germany are a relic from the Cold War," said leader of the Green Party Claudia Roth in Monday's Berliner Zeitung newspaper. "There is no need for them to be there. They should be removed and destroyed." She added that while nuclear states continued to hesitate in disarmament issues, the NPT would be weakened further. Roth was not alone in calling for the missiles to go. Social Democrat Gert Weisskirchen from the German foreign ministry and Liberal Democrat leader Guido Westerwelle echoed the call for the missiles, mostly based at the Rammstein and Büchel air bases, to be removed. The removal of the missiles would "add credibility and strengthen negotiations with other countries," Westerwelle said. German politicians join in call for nuke removal Last week, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder called for progress to be made on strengthening disarmament measures -- but an opposition demand that the US pull its nuclear weapons from Germany fell on deaf ears. Ahead of Monday's five-yearly review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder called Thursday for progress on strengthening disarmament measures. "We have two expectations from the talks," Schröder said in reference to the NPT conference. "The first is that we reinforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as it is now and we need to put all our efforts into that," he said. "The second is that there is a credible disarmament mechanism and we hope we will see movement from countries on this point." Continued purpose of missiles in question But the opposition Liberal Democrats (FDP), with backing from the Green Party, went further and called for an immediate withdrawal of the US nuclear weapons from Germany -- a surprise move from a party generally known for its staunchly pro-American stance. "It's time to reconsider whether their presence still serves a relevant purpose," Liberal Democrat MP Werner Hoyer told German weekly Der Spiegel. Harking back to the days of the Iron Curtain, most of the 480 US nuclear weapons stored in Europe are located in Germany, strategically closest to Eastern Europe. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer will be attending the NPT meeting on behalf of Germany and politicians are urging him to make an official case for the removal of missiles will fall to him. The call, however, is likely to go unheeded as Washington has more pressing concerns as the dual crises in North Korea and Iran worsen and threaten to undermine the treaty further. Rogue states offering new threats The treaty seems increasingly flawed if not outright ineffective ahead of the conference at the United Nations. Since the treaty was signed, the world has faced a new era of "rogue" states, international nuclear smuggling rings, and trans-national terrorist groups seeking weapons of mass destruction. "The world has changed but the regime has not changed with it," the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in a recent study. Events over the past few days have shown how critical the situation is. The United States reported that a short-range missile was fired early Sunday from the east coast of North Korea. It flew about 100 kilometers (62 miles) until it fell into the Sea of Japan, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told CNN. North Korea ups the stakes with missile test US State Department spokesman Kurtis Coope said: "We have long been concerned about North Korea's missile program and activities and urge North Korea to continue its moratorium on ballistic missile tests." North Korea shocked the world in August 1998 by firing a long-range missile over Japan that landed in the Pacific Ocean. On Thursday, US Defense Intelligence Agency director Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby told US lawmakers that North Korea is believed capable of arming a long-range missile that could each the United States with a nuclear warhead. North Korea is currently free of international surveillance of its nuclear activities. It kicked out International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors in December 2002, withdrew from the NPT the following month and now claims to have made atomic bombs. Iran complains of EU ineffectiveness in talks Iran is showing the strains in the non-proliferation treaty in another way as the United States claims the Islamic Republic is secretly developing atomic weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear power program that is under IAEA safeguards. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Sunday dismissed Washington's concerns over Tehran's nuclear program, the day after Iran said it was unhappy with the progress of nuclear negotiations with Britain, France and Germany, and warned it may resume uranium conversion activities in defiance of a November agreement. The European Union, backed by the United States, wants Iran to halt all nuclear fuel cycle activities. In return, the EU is offering in talks that began in December a package of trade, security and technology incentives. Iran has said repeatedly that its current enrichment suspension is temporary and voluntary, as it insists on its right under the NPT to conduct nuclear activities for peaceful purposes. ------- Jump to today's TO Features: Today's TO Features -------------- William Rivers Pitt | Stand Up Next to a Mountain Bush Team 'Fails to Protect US from Nuclear Terror' F-18 Pilot Killed in Iraq, Second Plane Missing UK, US Defy Nuclear Moratorium Iraq Bugs Blair, Many Voters Still Undecided Democrats Sue over Indiana Voter ID Law Jim Wallis | On Social Security, Honor Your Father and Mother Cancer Epidemic - Symptom of an Unsustainable Society FOCUS | Germany: 'Get US Nukes Off Our Soil' Army Recruits Man Fresh from Psychiatric Ward Report: US Military Effectiveness Seriously Impaired -------------- Will Pitt: FYI t r u t h o u t Home (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) "Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links. 4339d4.jpg Print This Story4339df.jpg4339e9.jpg E-mail This Story4339f4.jpg 4339ff.jpg | t r u t h o u t | FYI | issues | environment | labor | women | health | voter rights | multimedia | donate | contact | subscribe | Attachment Converted: 4339d4.jpg: 00000001,32597f16,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 4339df.jpg: 00000001,32597f17,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 4339e9.jpg: 00000001,32597f18,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 4339f4.jpg: 00000001,32597f19,00000000,00000000 Attachment Converted: 4339ff.jpg: 00000001,32597f1a,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 73 New York Times: Editorial Observer: Godzilla vs. the Giant Scissors: Cutting the Antiwar Heart Out of a Classic By BRENT STAPLES Published: May 1, 2005 [F] ilm directors who once stood helpless while studios recut their movies can now console themselves with "directors' cuts" put out on DVD. This option was not available to the influential Japanese director Ishiro Honda, whose 1954 classic "Godzilla" - known in Japan as "Gojira" - made a household name of the towering reptile who stomped a miniature Tokyo into the ground while raking the landscape with his fiery thermonuclear breath. A fire-breathing reptile is pretty much the same in any language. But the butchered version of the film that swept the world after release in the United States was stripped of the political subtext - and the anti-American, antinuclear messages - that had saturated the original. The uncut version of the film is due out on home video early next year, and should push serious Godzilla fans to rethink the 50-year evolution of the series. It should also show them that they were hoodwinked by the denatured Americanized version that dominated many of their childhoods in the late 20th century. At the same time, Godzilla fans are on the edge of their seats about a new film that should be released in the United States soon. The original "Gojira" was never intended as a conventional monster-on-the-loose movie. Nor did it resemble the farcical rubber-suit wrestling matches or the domesticated movies (with Godzilla cast as a mammoth household pet) that the series degenerated into during the 1960's and 70's. As the historian William Tsutsui reminded us in last year's cult classic, "Godzilla on My Mind," the 1954 movie was a dark, poetic production that dealt openly with Japanese misgivings about the nuclear menace, environmental degradation and the traumatic experience associated with World War II. The nuclear annihilations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still fresh in mind when the famous Toho Company embarked on the "Gojira" project in 1954. But Japanese fear of nuclear catastrophe was given fresh impetus in the spring of that year, when the United States detonated a huge hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll in the central Pacific. Japanese fishermen aboard a trawler were exposed to nuclear fallout. Japanese consumers panicked and declined to eat fish after irradiated tuna was found to have slipped into the nation's food supply. In the film, the H-bomb blast awakens and irradiates a dinosaur that has somehow escaped extinction. The reptile strides ashore and begins his trademark devastation of the Tokyo landscape. The nuclear antecedents were not at all lost on Honda, a World War II veteran who passed through the bombed-out city of Hiroshima and witnessed the damage firsthand. Honda later said that he envisioned the fiery breath of Godzilla as a way of "making radiation visible," and of showing the world that nuclear power could never be tamed. He also told an interviewer: "Believe it or not, we naïvely hoped that the end of Godzilla was going to coincide with the end of nuclear testing." That was clearly a tall order for a monster movie. But Honda's message never had a chance because most of the world never received it. The American company that bought the rights to distribute the film in this country cut a large chunk from Honda's original film and rearranged the plot. The biggest change involved splicing in Raymond Burr, who played an American reporter chronicling the devastation for the press. Dialogue that dealt heavily with human suffering, the morality of all-out war - and the temptation to play God with weapons of mass destruction - was left on the American cutting room floor. The exclusion of the antinuclear theme in the American version is hardly surprising. Hollywood had little stomach for anti-American rhetoric during the McCarthyite 1950's. But the American production of "Godzilla" that starred Matthew Broderick a half-century later showed that Hollywood did not understand the monster, either. The sleek, animated "American" Godzilla somehow managed to be less scary than the Japanese actor in the latex suit. Part of the problem is that the American Godzilla relied on stealth and cunning instead of the brute force displayed by the original. Some fans felt like walking out when the American Godzilla, confronted by a military threat, turned and ran. The essence of Godzilla is that he keeps stomping relentlessly forward, no matter what you throw his way. It is fitting, then, that the American Godzilla is K.O.'ed by the real thing in the 28th and perhaps final installment, "Godzilla Final Wars," which should make it into general release in America sometime soon. It's also fitting that the original Godzilla movie, which was dismembered a half-century ago in America, is finally being shown in its full and uncut form. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home| ***************************************************************** 74 Daily Yomiuri: Multilateral N-arms cuts eyed Ryuichi Otsuka and Yutaka Ishiguro Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondents Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura on Monday called for drastic arms reductions by "all nuclear powers" while drawing the world's attention to the threat posed by North Korea's nuclear program. In his opening address to the U.N. conference held to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Machimura also stressed the need for an early implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He also urged more countries to sign up to the International Atomic Energy Agency's safeguard protocol that requires inspections of nuclear facilities. Machimura disclosed a comprehensive plan to strengthen the NPT regime under the title "21 Measures for the 21st Century," which would oblige countries seeking to acquiring nuclear technology or resources to sign the IAEA protocol. The 21-point proposal includes creating a scheme for the return or disposal of nuclear-related materials of countries that leave the NPT. The document also urges the conference to call for drastic arms reduction by all existing nuclear powers. By saying "all" nuclear powers, the Japanese proposal is believed to be aimed particularly at China, which in recent years has modernized its nuclear weapons while asserting it would only cut its nuclear arms after a drastic reduction by the United States and Russia. On the threat of nuclear development by North Korea, which announced its withdrawal from the NPT regime in 2003, the Japanese proposal asks all the participating countries in the conference to take the threat seriously and unite to express either "grave concern" or "great regret" over Pyongyang's nuclear programs. Machimura, who earlier in the day agreed with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to urge North Korea to return to the six-party talks immediately, with no conditions, asked the countries in the U.N. conference to join the effort to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions. "[North Korea's nuclear programs] pose a serious challenge to the international nonproliferation regime and a direct threat to the peace and stability of Northeast Asia, including Japan," Machimura told the audience of representatives from about 190 countries. North Korea, on the eve of the U.N. conference's opening, was reported to have test-launched a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan. Japan, in proposing the 21-point measures, the first such comprehensive proposals the country has made in the NPT review conference, the first of which took place in 1970, hopes it will serve as a broad basis of discussion for the conference. A sharp division is anticipated in this seventh NPT review conference between the United States and its allies, which stress nonproliferation as the most urgent issue and others that consider nuclear arms reduction by the major nuclear powers as the priority for the NPT regime. In connection with the Japanese proposal, the United States opposes the early implementation of the CTBT, and it is unclear whether the 21-point proposal will help bridge the conflicting views over which issue the conference should focus on. Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 75 Interfax: Gorbachev concerned about nonproliferation Updated: May 3 2005 9:23PM (MSK) Ðóññêàÿ âåðñèÿ May 3 2005 6:46PM MOSCOW. May 3 (Interfax) - Ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said he is concerned about the situation in the area of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. "The treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons was actively discussed even before the 7th conference of its participants, which is currently taking place in New York. The treaty has played an important role. At the same time, we need to follow the way of toughening the provisions of this treaty," Gorbachev told Interfax on Tuesday commenting on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's proposal that the treaty be revised. © 1991-2005 Interfax All rights reserved News and other data on this web site are provided for information purposes only, and are not intended for republication or redistribution. Republication or redistribution of Interfax content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Interfax. ***************************************************************** 76 BBC: Annan urges anti-nuclear effort Last Updated: Tuesday, 3 May, 2005 [North Korean spent nuclear fuel rods in Yongbyon] Many participants see open access to nuclear energy as a loophole UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called on world leaders to reinforce their commitment to a treaty aimed at reducing the threat from nuclear arms. "We all bear a heavy responsibility to build an efficient, effective, and equitable system that reduces nuclear threats," he told a UN meeting. He also called upon former Cold War rivals Russia and the US to reduce their current nuclear arsenals. Mr Annan was addressing a conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The treaty, signed in 1970, was designed to stop the spread of weapons, achieve nuclear disarmament and promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Click here for estimates on global arsenals It is reviewed every five years, with delegates from all 187 signatory states participating in the month-long conference at the UN's headquarters in New York. 'Under great stress' Warning of the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe, Mr Annan said that "in our interconnected world, a threat to one is a threat to all, and we all share responsibility for each other's security". "The plain fact is that the regime has not kept pace with the march of technology and globalisation, and developments of many kinds in recent years have placed it under great stress." GLOBAL NUCLEAR POWERS Signed the NPT: US Russia, UK, France, China Declared or known: India, Pakistan, Israel Suspicions over: North Korea, Iran Formerly had programmes: Algeria, Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Libya, Romania, South Africa, Ukraine NPT explained Annan speech: Full text While countries such as Iran should be given the chance to reap the benefits of nuclear fuel, they must resist the temptation to pursue weapons programmes, the UN chief said. Meanwhile, International Atomic Energy Authority head Mohamed ElBaradei urged Iran and the EU to keep talks on Tehran's nuclear programme alive. "I would hope that the Iranians will not take any unilateral decisions to initiate any activities that now are currently suspended. I think that any future move has to be agreed between both parties," he said. And, in an apparent attack on Iran and North Korea, the head of the US delegation said some states "continue to use the pretext of a peaceful nuclear programme to pursue the goal of developing nuclear weapons". "We must confront this challenge in order to ensure that the treaty remains relevant," Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker said. The issue of "dual use" equipment - technology which can be used to make both nuclear energy for peaceful purposes as well as bombs - is expected to feature prominently at the conference. Many participants see the open access to the nuclear fuel cycle, and hence bomb fuel, as a loophole in the treaty that needs to be addressed. For their part, many non-nuclear states criticise the failure of the five original nuclear powers - the US, Britain, France, China and Russia - to abandon nuclear weapons. The non-nuclear nations say they are frustrated with the Bush administration's policies including the rejection of the nuclear test ban treaty, withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty and the development of new nuclear weapons. The three other nuclear powers - India, Pakistan and Israel - have not signed the treaty. Mr Annan himself emphasised that the only way to guarantee that no nuclear catastrophe takes place is to ensure that the world is free of such weapons. "If we are truly committed to a nuclear weapon-free world, we must move beyond rhetorical flourish and political posturing, and start to think seriously how to get there," he said. ESTIMATED NUCLEAR WARHEADS, STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL [Map showing declared, suspected and potential nuclear nations] *The US is also said to have some 3,000 warheads in reserve, while Russia has about 11,000 in non-operational stockpiles Israel declines to confirm it has nuclear weapons North Korea claims it has nuclear arms but no details are available Iran is accused by the US of ambitions to build nuclear arms ***************************************************************** 77 Xinhua: China appeals for progress in promoting NPT goals www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-04 05:23:05 Related: China opposes any form of nuclear proliferation China supports peaceful solution of international nuclear issue [The three goals of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) must be promoted in a comprehensive and balance manner, said Zhang Yan, Head of the Chinese Delegation to 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), on Tuesday. ] The three goals of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) must be promoted in a comprehensive and balance manner, said Zhang Yan, Head of the Chinese Delegation to 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), on Tuesday. (Photo: Xinhua) [Zhang stressed that China, as a State Party to the NPT, has always faithfully observed its obligations and committed to the three objectives of the treaty, and preserving and strengthening its universality, effectiveness and authority. ] (Photo: Xinhua) UNITED NATIONS, May 3 (Xinhuanet) -- The three goals of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) must be promoted in a comprehensive and balance manner, said Zhang Yan, Head of the Chinese Delegation to 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), on Tuesday. "In light of the latest developments, challenges and problems in international security, it is urgent for the international community to take more pragmatic and concrete steps to preserve and strengthen the universality, effectiveness and authority of the NPT," Zhang said in the general debate at the 2005 NPT Review Conference at the UN headquarters in New York. "To achieve this, the three goals of NPT, namely nuclear disarmament, nuclear non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy, must be promoted in a comprehensive and balance manner," he stressed, adding that the three goals are interlinked and inseparable. Zhang stressed that this conference is expected to make progress in promoting the three goals of the Treaty. "China has always advocated that all nuclear-weapon states should explicitly commit themselves to destroying nuclear weapons in a complete and thorough manner; lowering the role of nuclear weapons in national security policy," he said. Meanwhile, he pointed out that China opposes proliferation of nuclear weapons in any form, calls upon all those outside the NPT to join as non-nuclear-weapon states, and is in favor of continued efforts to enhance and improve the existing nuclear non-proliferation regime in accordance with new developments. Zhang said the aims of nuclear non-proliferation must be achieved through an integrated approach addressing both the symptoms and root causes. According to him, the international community should create favorable international and regional security conditions conducive to non-proliferation, solve the prominent nuclear proliferation and other related issues through political and diplomatic means within the current international legal framework, and strengthen and improve the existing non-proliferation regime in light of the overall non-proliferation situation and the global economic, scientific and technological developments. "The relation between non-proliferation and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy should be put in correct perspective and properly dealt with," Zhang said. "The rights of non-nuclear-weapon states to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, under the IAEA safeguards shall be respected and preserved." Zhang stressed that China, as a State Party to the NPT, has always faithfully observed its obligations and committed to the three objectives of the treaty, and preserving and strengthening its universality, effectiveness and authority. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 78 Xinhua: China opposes any form of nuclear proliferation www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-04 06:01:55 UNITED NATIONS, May 3 (Xinhuanet) -- China has opposed the proliferation of nuclear weapons in any form, said Zhang Yan, Head of the Chinese Delegation to 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), on Tuesday. "As a developing country, China needs both an international and peripheral environment of long-term peace and stability," Zhang said in the general debate at the 2005 NPT Review Conference at the UN headquarters in New York. "The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery benefits neither world peace and stability nor China's own security." He pointed out that China strictly observes its obligations under the NPT in non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, and has opposed the proliferation of nuclear weapons in any form and actively participated in international efforts in this regard. "It is the firm policy of the Chinese government to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons," he stressed, adding that China published in December 2003 its first white paper on nonproliferation entitled China's Non-Proliferation Policy and Measures, giving a comprehensive account of China's non-proliferation policies and measures. "The Chinese Government has established a complete legal system on export control including that in the nuclear area," Zhang noted." China has widely adopted export controls consistent with international practice, including exporters' registration system, licensing system, end-user and end-use certificates, list control method." "The guidelines and scope of China's export control are basically identical to the international norms," he added. Meanwhile, Zhang also said China is further improving its regulations and laws, applying the catch-all principle, and making the acceptance of IAEA full-scope safeguards by importing country as condition for nuclear export. "The Chinese Government has adopted a series of measures, such as publicizing relevant policies and regulations, conducting outreach activities, to ensure effective implementation of related regulations and laws," he said. Zhang stressed that China joined the Nuclear Suppliers Group in June 2004, thus has joined all international treaties and multilateral mechanism in the area of nuclear non-proliferation. "China is the first nuclear-weapon state that has completed domestic legal procedures necessary for the entry into force of the Protocol Additional," he emphasized. Zhang said China actively participates in and promotes the construction, development and perfection of the multilateral nuclear non-proliferation regimes. "We have participated in the consultations to amend the Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, and made great efforts to facilitate the amendment process," he said. "China is also actively engaged in bilateral and multilateral exchanges and cooperation on non-proliferation, supports and implements strictly Security Council Resolution 1540." Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 79 Korea Times: Nuke Resolution Crucial for Future Peace Treaty Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Nation By Ryu Jin Staff Reporter South Korea should build a peace regime by replacing the 1953 armistice agreement with a peace treaty and a resolution of the regional standoff over North Korea's nuclear problem will be a part of the process, Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo said Tuesday. In a congratulatory speech to an academic seminar hosted by the Institute for Far Eastern Studies of Kyungnam University, he reiterated that the North should return to the negotiation table without any conditions, citing what he called a positive message from the United States. Rhee was referring to a comment by Christopher Hill, chief U.S. negotiator, in his recent interview with a local daily, Hankyoreh. He hinted at flexibility over ``bilateral dialogue'' once the North decides to return to the six-party talks on its nuclear arms programs. After liberation in 1945 from Japanese colonialism, Korea was divided into two different systems _ under the tutelage of the U.S. in the South and the Soviet Union in the North. A fratricidal war ended in 1953 but, without a peace treaty, they still remain technically at war. Former President Kim Dae-jung's ``sunshine policy'' of engaging the reclusive North has gradually improved inter-Korean relations in recent years, but North Korea's renewed nuclear ambition has cast dark clouds over the Korean Peninsula since the late 2002. Rhee stressed the nuclear crisis must be reversed into a chance to build lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula, adding it cannot throw off the yoke of the unstable armistice system unless the two Koreas take the initiative in resolving the nuclear issue. ``The establishment of peace is also indispensable for the divided Koreas to enter the phase of federation, a transitional stage of reunification,'' he said. ``One thing to keep in mind is that this process should be pursued on a gradual basis considering the change of North Korea, progress in the inter-Korean relations and the general situations surrounding the peninsula.'' A lot of Korea expert and scholars had in-depth discussions and sometimes heated debate in yesterday's seminar, entitled ``Building a Peaceful Regime on the Korean Peninsula.'' Park Young-ho, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute of National Unification, said, although the Koreas should be the most important actors in the peace-building process, support from those surrounding powers _ the U.S., China, Japan and Russia _ are also inevitable. ``Most of all, the four neighboring powers as well as the two Koreas should not see their national interests threatened in the course of converting the ceasefire agreement into a peace treaty,'' he said. Lee Dae-woo of the Sejong Institute in Seoul also laid emphasis on the need for a ``good or right mediator'' such as the United States, China, the United Nations or the European Union, which he said would enable the establishment of a peace regime without a military clash. ``In this course, security assurances should also be provided for North Korea,'' he said. Yun Deok-min, a professor at the state-funded Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS) in southern Seoul, who gave a presentation for a roundtable on the North Korean nuclear issue, suggested Seoul manage the situation stably since the North is likely to make its position only in the last stage. ``The two key factors of a peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue is a firm policy line not to tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea and a creative and bold approach to end the dispute,'' he said. jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr 05-03-2005 17:32 ***************************************************************** 80 Aljazeera: Pakistan not signing the NPT treaty - Aljazeera.com 5/3/2005 6:30:00 PM GMT Pakistan conveyed its stand to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi during his visit last week Pakistan has repeated on Monday its refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Foreign Office spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani said that Pakistan’s nuclear capability was indispensable for the country’s security. Pakistan conveyed its stand to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi during his visit last week, the spokesman said, adding that Koizumi was satisfied with the steps taken by Islamabad for the purpose. Following Pakistan's nuclear tests in the Chagai hills in 1998, Japan imposed sanctions and stopped yen loans to Islamabad, except for aid purpose. But during Koizumi's visit last week, Japan resumed the loans and gave Pakistan a 16.4 billion yen worth loan. According to Jilani, Pakistan hasn’t changed its position on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, which had to be resolved in accordance with the wishes of Kashmiris. Jilani also said that the UN Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan was monitoring the situation on the Line of Control under a mandate by the Security Council. He stressed the importance of the presence of the group till the dispute is solved. And on Siachen issue, the spokesman said it should be resolved in accordance with the 1989 agreement signed by the defence secretaries of both countries. During President Musharraf’s latest visit to India, both countries agreed that to hold talks on Siachen on the 25th and 26th and on Sir Creek on 27th and 28th of this month, Jilani said. Asked about the Baglihar dam, Jilani said the World Bank had proposed a team of experts which Pakistan and India were reviewing. “A response has to go to the World Bank by the 9th of this month and in case of disagreement between the two countries on the names, the same exercise would be repeated,” he said. And about India's military exercises that is scheduled to be held in Jallundhar, Jilani said Pakistan had no concerns if they were carried out within the parameters of the 1991 agreement between both countries. Copyright 2005 Al Jazeera Publishing Limited ***************************************************************** 81 Sierra Club: Proliferation Article page 1 - Sierra Magazine, May/June 2005 - "My little town is welcoming a company that possess the very technology that terrorists want.". [Sierra Magazine] Dangerous Liaisons Tell Some Friends! By Marilyn Berlin Snell "The biggest threat facing this country is weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist network." George W. Bush, presidential debate, September 30, 2004 [Echo Bay Mines aided the New People's Army, pictured here.] Echo Bay Mines aided the New People's Army (NPA), pictured here. The NPA was labeled a terrorist group by the State Department in 1996. --> Three decades ago, a brilliant young Pakistani metallurgist named Abdul Qadeer Khan managed to steal highly classified nuclear secrets while working in Amsterdam. It was a theft that would first shake Pakistan's Chagai Hills test site, and ultimately the rest of the planet. Working for a firm that contracted with Urenco, a Dutch-German-British company that provides uranium-enrichment services to nuclear power plants, Khan had access to Urenco's secret blueprints and manuals. He learned how to enrich uranium in centrifuges to make fuel for nuclear power plants but also for weapons. He took what he learned back to Pakistan, enriched uranium at the Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories, and helped his country build its first nuclear bomb. Last year, Khan confessed to selling his nuclear know-how not only to Pakistan but also to North Korea, Libya, and Iran. The New York Times called his handiwork "the largest illicit nuclear proliferation network in history." Khan and the global nuclear black market he spawned are directly responsible for the current standoff over Iran's plans to build a centrifuge uranium-enrichment plant. The United States has charged that the facility, based on Urenco blueprints, is not for peaceful purposes but for building nuclear warheads. Now Pakistan has put Khan under house arrest, but the company that allowed the world's worst nuclear-security leaks is prospering. U.S. energy companies have invited Urenco to build the same type of uranium-enrichment plant in New Mexico that Iran wants, using a technology so dangerous that the United Nations has proposed a worldwide five-year ban on it so that better safeguards can be implemented. Nonetheless, powerful politicians and company executives are pushing for approval of the United States' first centrifuge uranium-enrichment plant, while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - the agency responsible for licensing such facilities - is ignoring both Urenco's past and the UN's concerns about the technology's future. The plant's boosters are perilously out of step with a world fundamentally different from the one that existed when the NRC was created from the Atomic Energy Commission 30 years ago. Like cold war-era schoolchildren crouching under their desks for a duck-and-cover drill, believing that somehow a little wood and metal would protect them in a nuclear attack, they are relying on a licensing process that ignores the grave reality of 21st-century threats. When the first atomic bomb was detonated at New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range in 1945, there was a blinding burst of light followed by a deep growling roar as the explosion mushroomed skyward. The genie loosed that humid July morning - "a great new force to be used for good or for evil," Brigadier General Thomas Farrell, of the Manhattan Project, called it - has since circled the globe, with the development of nuclear power succeeding nuclear weapons. In addition to the United States, there are now six other documented nuclear states: Russia, China, France, United Kingdom, India, and Pakistan. North Korea's status is uncertain, and Israel is thought to have nuclear weapons but has not admitted it. Several other nations, including Iran, are feared to possess the technology to build nuclear bombs. (Before the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq was also a threat, as was Libya, until it handed over its technology to the United States last year.) Terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda have called the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction a "religious duty." Though the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has helped reduce nuclear arsenals and the further spread of nuclear weapons, it is today being tested as never before. One problem with Iran's proposed enrichment facility is that, unlike the older, gaseous-diffusion technology to enrich uranium, centrifuge plants can be much smaller and use much less energy, making them harder to detect. Centrifuge plants, of which there are only a handful worldwide, can also be easily and covertly retooled to produce weapons-grade uranium, the key component in nuclear warheads. Once you have the centrifuge equipment in place, says Ivan Oelrich, an expert on proliferation for the Federation of American Scientists, all you have to do is "adjust the piping of the centrifuges" to further enrich fuel-grade, which contains 3 to 5 percent of the uranium isotope 235, into bomb-grade, which is 90 percent U-235. The "dual use" potential for centrifuge uranium-enrichment facilities is the basis for a 1983 call by the prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for a worldwide, permanent ban on centrifuge technology. But the technology continues to be attractive to the nuclear power industry. The two gaseous-diffusion plants operating in the United States use massive amounts of electricity. With the much more efficient centrifuge technology, costs of nuclear-reactor fuel production could come down exponentially. If price and efficiency were the only factors, centrifuge uranium-enrichment would be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, according to Matthew Bunn of Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, it's also "the technology of choice for the determined nuclear cheater and people with few scruples." In 2001, A. Q. Khan was interviewed at his home in Islamabad for John Friedman's 2002 documentary Stealing the Fire. He spoke calmly about his role as the "father" of Pakistan's bomb, defending his thievery as a necessary means to protect his country. The interview is chilling - all the more so because the nuclear secrets Khan stole are unrecoverable. "Today, people including President Bush say that the Khan network is finished," Friedman told me. But they don't understand that Khan set up an ongoing procurement system. "The technology is out there, and as long as there are buyers, there are sellers." Of course New Mexico isn't Iran or North Korea. Presumably safeguards will be in place that would make U.S. technology less vulnerable. But plans and materials could still be stolen, as they were in Amsterdam. Moreover, if "responsible" nuclear states like the United States insist on using centrifuges to enrich uranium for their nuclear power plants, why shouldn't Brazil - which reportedly got the technology from the West German branch of Urenco in the 1970s, in violation of the NPT - or Iran, or any other aspiring nuclear state? If centrifuges become the technology of choice for nuclear-reactor fuel, it will be impossible to prevent the technology's spread. The $1.2 billion New Mexico project is proposed by Louisiana Energy Services, a consortium made up of Westinghouse, Entergy, Exelon, Duke Energy, and Urenco, the latter of which owns a 70 percent share and possesses the classified information necessary to build the plant. LES vice president Rod Krich, "on loan" from Exelon, claims that the facility poses no proliferation threat. "We have agreed to IAEA safety inspections," he says, referring to the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. "And we have designed the plant so that it's impossible to enrich the uranium to weapons- grade." The plant could be retooled to produce highly enriched uranium, of course, but that's not what its critics are worried about. The problem is that no one knows whether the 21st-century Urenco has plugged its security leaks. "[Urenco's] technology was stolen a long time ago and a lot has changed since then," says Bruce Moran, an NRC staffer who monitors international nuclear safety. When asked to explain exactly what Urenco had done to ensure that its classified nuclear secrets were secure, a Urenco spokesperson told me that since the New Mexico plant will be an "LES enrichment facility," I would need to speak with LES (even though, according to an LES spokesperson, the centrifuges will be assembled on-site by Urenco security-cleared contractors). I then asked LES vice president Marshall Cohen what had changed since A. Q. Khan's day to close security loopholes. Cohen didn't know offhand but repeatedly assured me, in calls, by e-mail, and in person, his company would provide an answer. It never did. The UN's proposed five-year moratorium on the construction of centrifuge uranium-enrichment facilities is an effort to stop the threat of what a UN commission has called a "cascade of proliferation." The idea has been praised from quarters as unlikely as the conservative National Review magazine, never a fan of the UN. "It buys the world time to reevaluate the effectiveness of the current set of nuclear rules," wrote Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in the January issue. Given the European leaks that unleashed the nuclear genie in Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea, Sokolski emphasized that all states, not just "trouble states like Iran," should honor the moratorium. Louisiana Energy Services has tried and failed twice before to build a uranium centrifuge facility in the United States. Low-income communities, first in Louisiana and then in Tennessee, needed the jobs but not the radioactive waste or airborne toxics produced by the facility, and ran the consortium out of town. The third try may be the charm. In Hobbs, New Mexico, a boom/bust oil town of 28,000, the public is noticeably absent from February public hearings before the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel, which will recommend whether to license the LES plant. City officials are solidly behind the idea, and local residents are desperate for new jobs. "Very few people have gone to these public hearings," says Rose Gardner. "They trust our leaders to make the right decisions." Gardner, 46, owns Desert Rose Flowers and Gifts in the tiny town of Eunice, 20 miles from Hobbs and 5 miles from the proposed site. On the first day of the weeklong hearings, she and retired Hobbs businessman Lee Cheney are the only members of the audience not associated with either the media or LES. Skeptical neighbor Rose Gardner. Each morning of the hearings, Gardner makes the trek from Eunice to Hobbs, shuttering her flower shop the week before Valentine's Day, her busiest season. "When I heard about the plant, I went to the LES office and asked for more information. They treated me like an imbecile. That was a mistake." Gardner has a soft voice and a powerful Tex-Mex accent. She's more soccer mom than rabble-rouser, but in 2004, when she began getting bits and pieces of news about the company that wanted to come to Eunice, something didn't sit right. When she couldn't get the information from LES, she went online. "I typed 'uranium enrichment,'" she says. "That's when my education began." The drive between Eunice and Hobbs is flat and empty but for scrub mesquite, pump jacks, and gas storage tanks. The air is often thick with hydrogen sulfide, released when methane is pumped out of the wells. "It's why we're called the armpit of New Mexico," Gardner says with a crooked smile. "It smells like rotten eggs." Her father was a roustabout in the oilfields that encircle Eunice. Born and raised there, Gardner was a pumper for a while with Conoco and married a boy who had lived so close to her growing up that she "could throw a stick at him anytime I wanted to." She and her husband raised two daughters. The Gardners and the other 2,700 residents of Eunice are bookended by Dynegy natural-gas processing plants on the north and south sides of town. At the town's center flies a massive American flag; it could easily envelop the average Eunice home. Gas flares in the hazy distance lend a sci-fi aura of a ruined future. Yet Gardner loves where she lives. "It's all I know," she says. Gardner went to her city council representatives and politely suggested they show up and get an education at the Hobbs hearings. Her husband, a city council member himself, has frequently been subjected to her chastisements about getting involved; she's on a mission and family members aren't exempt. "Proverbs 25:15 says patient persuasion can break down the strongest resistance and can even convince rulers," she says. ***************************************************************** 82 IEER: Kashmir, Nuclear Weapons and Peace by Adm. Ramdas by Admiral L. Ramdas1 March 22, 2005 "Three fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world will disappear, if we step into the shoes of the adversaries and understand their standpoint" --Mahatma Gandhi Having been through two and a half wars against Pakistan, and nothing to show for it, except lost friends, widows and orphaned children on both sides of the fence; the futility of wars as a means to resolve issues became increasingly clear. The reason for this failure is because a political issue needs a political solution and not a military one. Every meeting and every kind of interaction that I have had with people in both countries over the past eleven years has reinforced this demand. It is a given that the context understanding of security issues is a socio-political one. But in turn it is now well recognized that insecurity also makes development difficult and at times impossible. The insecurity in Kashmir, which in turn is linked both to socio-economic difficulties in that region and distorted development and nuclear insecurities South Asia is a case in point. It is, moreover, a case that is connected to global security in a vital way both because of its connections to the questions of nuclear weapons and of the context of terrorism in the region. Nuclear Weapons in South Asia The decision to conduct nuclear tests at Pokhran on May 11, 1998, by the newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government introduced a whole new dynamic in the already complex and confused situation prevailing between India and Pakistan. As was expected Pakistan also grabbed the opportunity to conduct its own nuclear tests at Chagai hills on May 28, 1998. Seen purely from a military point of view, by giving Pakistan this opportunity and excuse to test and prove out its nuclear arsenal, India enabled Pakistan to neutralize the conventional military superiority that India had always enjoyed until then. India and Pakistan have visited the edge of the nuclear precipice twice since that time - once when Pakistan, emboldened by its nuclear arsenal, launched its Operation in the Kargil sector of Kashmir, in April 1999. The second time was when an act terrorism at India's Parliament in December 2001 and other events led to an escalation of tensions between India and Pakistan. On both occasions, the good offices of the United States were needed to pull back India and Pakistan from the edge of nuclear tragedy. Over the past three years, these difficult experiences have gradually begun to create an understanding that the Kashmir imbroglio could lead both countries to utter disaster and ruin. As nuclear weapons states, India and Pakistan are recognizing that any ideas that they may have had of settling issues, and especially the Kashmir issue, by military means is out of the question. There has been progress in at least beginning to address the Kashmir issue through negotiations. Some background on the Kashmir question is useful in understanding how the issue is now being address and the potential for moving to resolve it. The Kashmir Imbroglio This extremely complex issue needs to be discussed with a full understanding of its genesis and after. For that reason the main headings that we shall address are: a. Genesis. b. Geographical and other statistics. c. The main players namely India, Pakistan and the people of Jammu and Kashmir. d. Sign posts for Peace - a possible way ahead. a. Genesis The Historical Backdrop British India was divided into India and Pakistan in 1947 as a part of the decolonization process. The eastern wing of Pakistan emerged as the new nation called Bangladesh in 1971. It was not the first time that the world witnessed the creation of new nation states and boundaries by the victors of wars or Imperial forces. The creation of Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Israel, and various nations in Africa, are other examples of this strategy. The greatest tragedy was that the deciding feature of this division was based on religion. It is to be noted that except for those who shifted within the provinces of Punjab and Bengal, only one in every twelve Muslims from the rest of India chose to go to Pakistan. This explains why today India is the second largest Muslim country in the world after Indonesia. At the time of partition of the country the rulers of nearly five hundred odd princely states which were directly under the British, were advised to join either India or Pakistan, keeping in mind proximity, the demographic profile and other factors. Most states were integrated into either India or Pakistan. However there were a couple of states which had a problem. Hyderabad (Deccan), which was ruled by a Muslim Nizam had mainly a very large Hindu population, but geographically it was completely surrounded by India. Likewise the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J) had a Hindu Maharajah, but majority of its people were Muslims except that unlike Hyderabad (Deccan), both India and Pakistan had contiguous borders with it. Whilst both these states sat on the fence for quite a while before opting for India or Pakistan, the issue of Hyderabad was settled by a short and swift police action that resulted in Hyderabad's merger with India. Jammu and Kashmir was attacked by a large number of tribesmen supported by regular Pakistani troops in 1947/48 whilst the Maharajah sat on the fence. When Pakistani regulars and tribesmen were within gunshot of Srinagar the capital of J. the Maharajah sought India's assistance in exchange for acceding to India. An extract from Mr. V.P Menon's book, Integration of Indian States, who was the Secretary in the Ministry of States, and who was mainly responsible in assisting the Home Minister Mr. Vallabhai Patel for the reunification of the princely states at the time, would be useful at this stage. (p 457/458). On return from an air dash made to Srinagar, on October 26, 1947, Mr. Menon writes ….and immediately on my arrival in Delhi I went straight to a meeting of the Defence Committee. I reported my impressions of the situation and pointed out the supreme necessity of saving Kashmir from the raiders. Lord Mountbatten said that it would be improper to move Indian troops to what was at the moment an independent country, as Kashmir had not yet decided to accede to either India or Pakistan. If it were true that the Maharajah was now anxious to accede to India, then Jammu and Kashmir would become part of Indian territory. This was the only basis on which Indian troops could be sent to the rescue of the State from further pillaging by aggressors. He further expressed the strong opinion that, in view of the composition of the population, accession should be conditional on the will of the people being ascertained by a plebiscite after the raiders had been driven out of the State and law and order had been restored. This was readily agreed to by Nehru and other ministers. Soon after the meeting of the Defence Committee I flew to Jammu accompanied by Mahajan…….the Maharajah was asleep; he had left Srinagar the previous evening and had been driving all night, I woke him up and told him what had happened at the Defence Committee meeting. He was ready to accede at once. He then composed a letter to the Governor General describing the pitiable plight of the State and reiterating his request for military help. He further informed the Governor- General that it was his intention to set up an interim government at once and to ask Sheikh Abdulla to carry the responsibilities in this emergency with Mehr Chand Mahajan as his Prime Minister. He concluded by saying that if the State was to be saved, immediate assistance must be available at Srinagar. He also signed the Instrument of Accession. With the Instrument of Accession and the Maharajah's letter I flew back at once to Delhi……………… In the early hours of the morning of 27 October over a hundred civilian aircraft and RIAF planes were mobilized to fly troops, equipment and supplies to Srinagar. ………….Nehru in a broadcast speech on Nov 2, 1947 said "the struggle in Kashmir was the struggle of the people of Kashmir under popular leadership against the invader. He declared his readiness, when peace and the rule of law had been established, to have a referendum held under some such international auspices as that of the United Nations. The case was taken to the United Nations by the Government of India, that resulted in a ceasefire. The United Nations also directed that Pakistan must vacate all its troops and raiders from areas under its control, and India should do likewise except for retaining the minimum number of troops required for maintaining law and order in the State Except for the creation of the cease fire line which later became the Line of Control after the Simla Agreement in 1972. This line has despite two and a half wars, more or less remained the same. One part to the west and north is under Pakistani control and the eastern part including the valley is in India's control. Pakistan's attempt to integrate the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir by force in 1947, 1965, 1999 (Kargil) failed each time, and this has left the issue unresolved to this day which has been the primary cause for conflicts between the two countries. b. Geographical and other Statistics of Jammu and Kashmir Area: 222,236 square kilometers. This was the situation in 1947. This included Aksai Chin now under Chinese control: Kashmir 10 %, Jammu 14.4%, Frontier Districts 75.6%. Population: 1941 census: 4.02 million, 77% Muslim and 22% Hindu 2001 census Indian side only- 10 million Post Cease Fire Line 1949 - Territory and Population Pakistan Occupied Territory: 37.4 % of area and 28% of the population China : Aksai Chin with 16.9 % area and almost negligible population. It came under Chinese rule in the fifties. In 1963 Pakistan ceded to China another 2.33% land claimed by India. Present Distribution. Area: India 45.62%; Pakistan 35.15 % and China 19.23%. India: Area: Kashmir 15.8%, Jammu 25.9%, Ladakh 58.3% Population: 2001: Indian Side: 10 million. Kashmir 52.4%, Jammu 45.4% and Ladakh 2.2 %. Religious Distribution: Muslims 64.2%, Hindus 32.2% and others 3.6% Regional distribution in terms of religion: Muslims: Kashmir 95%, Jammu 30%, Ladakh 46%. Pakistan: 78,114 sq Kilometers, 83% in Northern areas ( Gilgit, Baltistan and some principalities) whilst 17 % is in (POK) or (AJK). Almost all are Muslims with about 15% being non sunni. c. The Cast - India, Pakistan and the people of Jammu and Kashmir We have already discussed the development and the origins of the Jammu and Kashmir issue. Whilst both India and Pakistan have their own vested interests in securing the valley for their perceived security considerations, they have forgotten the main issue namely, the need for the people of Jammu and Kashmir to have their own say in the matter. All this could have been easily resolved if only Pakistan had started the process as outlined by the U.N. and withdrawn its troops and vacated the areas of Jammu and Kashmir occupied by it. This would have led to the promised plebiscite / referendum which would and should have been achieved by 1950. Alas there has hardly been any progress on this front despite five and a half decades of confrontation and two and a half wars! Pakistan: The strongest point in Pakistan's favor is the fact that the majority of inhabitants in J are all Muslims. However this alone is not strong enough an argument to justify its claim; for today there are more Muslims in India than there are in Pakistan. The secession of East Pakistan, currently the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971 despite its almost 99% Muslim population is a case in point. The security considerations of Pakistan were: a. If the whole of Kashmir including POK were to go to India then it would pose a direct threat to Pakistan's North West Frontier and Pakistani Punjab. On the other hand if Pakistan had the whole of Kashmir it could threaten Indian Punjab. b. From the resource point of view all the three great rivers which were allocated to Pakistan flow through J into Pakistan and therefore of great strategic importance. Pakistan has two other reasons one legal and the other political. Its legal contention is that the accession was invalid for several reasons. Firstly that the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Government had been declared before the accession, secondly the accession was conditional, thirdly it was a violation of the "Standstill Agreement" the state had signed with Pakistan and fourthly that India's dealings with the state from the beginning of Mountbatten's viceroyalty had been one of fraud. The political argument is that a Hindu Maharajah with an overwhelming Muslim population of nearly 77 percent and with a contiguous border with Pakistan had no right to accede to India. There are almost parallel situations in Hyderabad (Deccan) and Junagadh, except that both nations did not have contiguous borders as is the case with Jammu and Kashmir. The last point is that the wishes of the people had not been ascertained by an internationally acceptable method. India: India has often repeated the claim that the whole of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India. India's stand is also based on two issues, one legal the other political. The legal one is that the state of Jammu and Kashmir represented by the Maharajah acceded to the Union of India, and that India, had met the commitment that it had made to get the concurrence of the people to accession, when the state assembly which was duly elected by adult franchise in 1951 gave its assent to the accession. Further the 1957 constitution of J enacted by the State's Constituent Assembly has made it an integral part of India. The Kashmiri People: The unfortunate people of J have been the victims of this cruel drama being enacted by both Pakistan and India for far too long. With Pakistan on one side and India at the other, between them they have turned the Kashmiri people into the Filling in the sandwich! The two countries are still focused on territory and therefore treat it more as a real estate problem rather than a human one. The continuing confrontations between India and Pakistan extending from open wars to Jihad and cross border terrorism have had their toll on Kashmiri life and psyche. Pakistan has tried every trick in the book to secure Kashmir. It has become an obsession with it and having made no progress till now, frustration seems to have set in. The one result is that it whips up passions both within and outside Pakistan. It seems to have realized at last, that the dialogue process may be a strategy worth exploring. India on the other hand, has not been very good about keeping its promises to the people and the Government of J. Starting with the very special status agreed to at the time of accession regarding autonomy in all matters except for foreign affairs, defense, communications and currency, the Indian side has over the years chiseled away most of these guarantees. To add insult to injury the "Lion of Kashmir" and Prime Minister of J, Sheikh Abdullah was kept in custody for a total of almost twenty one years! Sheikh Abdullah, who was the best recognized leader of the Kashmiri people at the time of partition had favored the idea of an autonomous Kashmir within a democratic India. His imprisonment so soon after the accession of Kashmir to India was a sad commentary on India's style of governance and functioning at that time. It also demonstrated a complete lack of understanding and insensitivity to the honor and dignity of an individual, indeed the entire people of Kashmir. Many things have happened since and the State has been fully integrated with India under the Indian Constitution; although mercifully the relevant Article still permitting autonomy to the State has been retained. As a part of the statement issued after the Islamabad summit in 2004, and later, there has been some development in involving the Kashmiri people in a dialogue with the Indian government. However the challenge before all the players is to find a solution that will be a win - win outcome for all. Initiatives for peace were taken despite the setbacks due to the min-war over Kargil in 1999, resulting in the Agra summit between General Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee in June 2001. Then the events of 9/11 and other developments changed the global security picture. The U.S. presence in the region was suddenly much larger. And the role of the region in global security was much heightened as the issue of terrorism took center stage. It was in this context that, despite the dastardly attack by militants on the Indian Parliament in Dec 2001, and the subsequent face off for nearly ten months, including a tense nuclear confrontation in 2002, good sense prevailed. It resulted in the joint statement made in 2004 by both Gen Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee to resume the composite dialogue, and General Musharraf gave the assurance that he will not permit use of any territory under Pakistani control to be used for cross border terrorism. One has had to pick up the strings from where they left off, including linking the Simla Agreement, and that has set the agenda for the composite dialogue that is currently on. It is to the credit of the Congress led coalition government in India that they decided to continue with the policy of peace making keeping in mind the larger interests of the country and region as a whole. A significant impetus has been given to the peace talks by the sustained efforts of civil society groups like the Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), India-Pakistan Soldiers' Initiative for Peace (IPSI) and others who have all these years championed the cause of people to people contact. At first, this strategy was resented in the early years by the governments, but their attitude has changed dramatically since. Indeed they are the ones who are echoing the same slogan these days. This is sweet music to the ears of many of us who have been in this mode for over a decade! Whilst I write, there are no signs or indications for a settlement of the Kashmir question. The Pakistanis are complaining that India is dragging its feet. However a problem which has remained as a part of this region's post independence existence can hardly be expected to be resolved so quickly! Whilst on the subject there was a plan that the author had put forward in an article in the Indian news paper Hindu titled " Sign Posts for peace in South Asia" which will now be discussed here. d. Sign Posts for Peace2 Many attempts have been made to craft out peace between the two warring nations, and to resolve the Kashmir imbroglio. However there have been many formulas and suggestions put forward to solve this riddle by innumerable groups and think tanks, and perhaps one or more or a combination of many plans may well provide the terminal answer. My own view is that the approach must recognize that there are three parties to the issue: Pakistan, India, and the people of Kashmir. For the first time, there are the seeds of hope that that will be recognized sufficiently to allow a solution to develop and mature for all three of them. The elements that would pave the way for resolving these long-festering issues could be as follows, keeping in mind the history of the various agreements that India and Pakistan have signed or almost signed, but have so far failed to implement. The approach also factors in the new and overwhelming reality in South Asia - that the acquiring by India and Pakistan of nuclear arsenals means the threats of conventional and nuclear war are now inextricably linked. If Indian and Pakistani leaders want peace, which is more than the absence of war, resolving the issues of the relationships between the people and in the communities within countries with equality, tolerance and friendship is necessary for a sustained peace. A military solution is not possible. And military temptations must be removed so that the people of the subcontinent, including the people of Kashmir, are not living under a constant nuclear shadow. The nuclear reality means that India and Pakistan must understand the ground reality of a de facto partition of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir by the acceptance of the Line of Control (LoC) as the international border between the two countries. Pakistan has pledged to stop the infiltration into Kashmir permanently. This will require monitoring. India has proposed a joint patrolling of the border. This has not been agreed to by Pakistan. The situation is further complicated by India's `allergy' to any big power/third party interference in the Kashmir question. However, a substantial role is already being played by the United States and others in facilitating a communication between the leadership of the two countries. It is therefore proposed that a force drawn from among the members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) under a mutually agreed leadership could provide the necessary compromise for the monitoring to be established. India and Pakistan are both members of this group. The 2004 meeting of SAARC was productive in terms of being the venue for Indo-Pak discussions on regional security questions. The SAARC force could be provided with technical data gathered by other countries, including the U.S., to better perform its duties. India and Pakistan have already taken some vital steps to showing goodwill. India and begun to reduce its forces along the LoC in Kashmir and Pakistan has made substantial efforts at curbing cross-border infiltration. The first steps towards restoring all communication links including road, rail and air traffic between the two countries, have been taken. Bus serve is to begin between the two sectors of Kashmir and also between Indian Punjab and Pakistani Punjab. Central to any solution to the "Kashmir problem" must be a process of ascertaining the wishes of the people of the entire erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir, keeping in mind the ground realities of the de facto partition of the State. To facilitate the emergence of peace in the region as early as possible, the following process as a via media could be considered: First, Kashmiris on both sides of the border should be given the choice of being the citizens of either India or Pakistan, and, if they want to move from one side to another, be given the opportunity to do so in peace and security. To implement this, both countries should agree to some form of international supervision. This role could be performed by a SAARC monitoring team as proposed earlier. Second, the people displaced from their lands and homes by the current conflict, such as the Kashmiri Pandits, should be allowed to return in peace and security. Third, the border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir should be kept porous to enable Kashmiris on both sides to cross it for personal, family and business reasons without too many hassles. The inauguration of bus service between Srinagar on the Indian-held side and Muzaffarabad on the Pakistan-held side is the first major, if still tentative, step in this direction. Both countries should reaffirm the pledges to negotiate all outstanding issues between them peacefully and not resort to war, proxy or otherwise. This formulation should meet the concerns of the two countries adequately. This means, first of all, a ceasefire along the LoC. Pakistan should agree to a policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, which India has already adopted. This is the equivalent of a nuclear ceasefire. India and Pakistan could tap their best and deepest traditions and not only avert war but make a real peace between themselves. They could verifiably de-alert all nuclear weapons with bilateral or SAARC monitoring and, in that context, invite all other nuclear weapons states to do the same and together take up leadership in the cause of global nuclear disarmament. A conventional ceasefire and stopping of cross border infiltration are necessities to address the Kashmir issue. But they can also provide the basis for a regional nuclear ceasefire that would improve the security of all and possibly provide a catalyst for positive global action at a time when proliferation and disarmament trends have become negative in the main. Only sustained peace can lift the clouds of war and the threat of nuclear incineration of South Asia. At the dawn of the nuclear age, Albert Einstein called on humanity to develop a new way of thinking or perish. Leaders in the West have recklessly failed to heed that warning and remain on the edge of a nuclear abyss, with the U.S. and Russia maintaining between them more than 4,000 nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert, though they claim to be friends and at peace. At a 2002 workshop 'Initiative for Peace - Focus on Kashmir' at the United World College in Singapore, 40 young people from India and Pakistan came together for a week, and agreed on an inspiring Statement of Common Ground. The final paragraph of the statement reads: "We believe that we have the power to make this generation and the generations to come, the best ever in the history of humanity, or the worst. The choice is entirely ours; we have made the choice for a better and peaceful world." This, rather than the perpetual state of quasi-war that the countries are now maintaining, would befit the region that gave the world Badshah Khan and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the most unique freedom movement the world has known. This approach may not sound too palatable especially to Pakistan as it would tantamount to accepting the 'Status Quo', but there is very little room for anything else which is likely to work. The Kashmiris are also likely to accept it, because the return of peace to the valley will benefit their own economy and freedom of action immensely. The funds released by the withdrawal of forces which is inevitable, can be ploughed back for the most urgently needed socio economic development programmes on both sides. Minor adjustments could be made to this plan to arrive at a win - win situation for all. The criticism that can be levied against the plan is that a referendum has not been held. Clearly that has lost almost all meaning as much water has flown under the bridge since 1949. Moreover by providing the space and choice for those Kashmiris who are philosophically and / or ideologically inclined to opt for living in Pakistan controlled Kashmir, the plan does cater for implementing the wishes of the people. The porous border will compensate for the division. Unlike the situation faced by the Indian people as a whole in 1947 at the time of partition where two separate communities and religious sections were involved, which in turn led to mass killings at the time of migration; the mechanism envisaged here is not likely to pose a similar challenge as it involves only Muslims. There may be objection to the partition of J as Indian Kashmir and Pakistani Kashmir. That is precisely what happened to Punjab and Bengal and the people of undivided India were never consulted nor given an option to choose before the creation of the two halves. The decision was arbitrary and the line separating the two countries were drawn by Sir Cyril Radcliff. In this case at least there is and has been a line of sorts dividing the two halves for almost half a century (the CFL and later the LOC). Psychologically therefore, this formulation should be easier for the Kashmiris to digest. In addition the provision for a porous border, permitting easy movement of peoples should also help. The "Ramu Plan" described above has been received fairly well in most quarters. It is only, the Pakistani camp that is a little shy to accept the LOC as the International border. A little more flexibility would be required on the part of Pakistan. yet, given the realities on the ground and the need for economic development as well as the imperatives to remove any incentives or support that could lead to terrorism, Pakistan may finally agree depending on the dialogue process and world opinion, though they would probably want this line/ border, to be pushed somewhat eastward if possible. These are issues that are likely to be discussed in greater detail in the ongoing official dialogue. The Nuclear Overlay Ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed by the United States in August 1945, no explosive nuclear weapons have been deployed in battle. But many innocent civilians all over the world have been exposed to sizeable doses of radiation by either working in Uranium mines, or due to atmospheric fallout after nuclear testing or by just living in the neighborhood of reprocessing plants, or weapons complexes or exposure due to leaks and accidents causing slow death - normally cancer and other health problems. Proliferation, has continued, though it was slowed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Neither India nor Pakistan (nor Israel) are parties to this treaty, which is now under some stress. One direction of stress has come from the proliferation network of Dr A Q Khan of Pakistan. There is real concern all over the world about any other agencies besides Iran, Libya and North Korea to whom the technology transfer may have been effected. Even now this threat still persists and only a full exposure of all the activities Dr AQ Khan will help solve the mystery. We have just seen North Korea pulling out of the NPT and declaring that it has nuclear weapons. In the United States the nuclear establishment continues to press for the development of next generation weapons. The horizontal proliferation threats of more countries going nuclear and of potential nuclear terrorism are linked to the desire of existing nuclear states to hold on to their arsenals. So long as these weapons exist they shall continue to be a grave danger to humankind. A way to their elimination is needed both to remove the grave dangers that existing arsenals pose and also to stave off further proliferation. A series of steps are needed to reduce nuclear dangers in the short term as part of creating a way to eliminating nuclear weapons: + Full accounting of nuclear materials by all nuclear weapons states, whether they parties to the NPT or not; + De-alerting of all nuclear weapons and the creation of a process for the verification of de-alerting. + Direct dialog among the nuclear weapons states to reduce nuclear weapon dangers and to find a way for all nuclear weapons states to find a method that will converge towards the fulfillment of Article VI of the NPT as interpreted by the World Court advisory opinion of 1996, which stated that the nuclear parties to the NPT are obliged to actually achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons. As a practical matter, India, Pakistan and Israel are not going to join the NPT as non-nuclear states and they are not going to be invited to join as nuclear states. Parallel paths to dealerting and a nuclear ceasefire among the non-parties to the NPT and dealerting by weapon-states parties to the NPT could be created by a direct global dialog between the nuclear weapon states. India-Pakistan tensions and wars over Kashmir and their nuclear crises in more recent times have shown in practical terms the dangers of allowing conventional security crises, lack of development, and terrorism/militancy to fester. The dialog and the practical steps towards peace between India and Pakistan, centered on putting the people into contact with each other again and on addressing the Kashmir issue with realism and with respect for the people of Kashmir shine a light in a different direction. With some vision and some patience and practicality, that light might not only illuminate a road to peace between India and Pakistan but also to the elimination of global nuclear arsenals, which the world has lived with for too long. Endnotes: 1. Admiral Ramdas (retired) was Chief of the Indian Navy from 1990 to 1993. This is the summary of a paper prepared as part of the Gandhi Fellows program of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland. 2. Parts of this section are taken or adapted from L. Ramdas, "Signposts for Peace in South Asia," op ed in The Hindu, 18 July 2002. Comments to ieer at ieer.org Takoma Park, Maryland, USA Posted May 1, 2005 ***************************************************************** 83 Tri-City Herald: CH2M Hill Hanford to study health This story was published Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer CH2M Hill Hanford Group plans a study of the medical records of more than 5,000 current and former workers to look for possible long-term health problems that could be linked to exposure to vapors from Hanford's underground waste tanks. The study will look at the medical records of workers who have entered the tank farms even once since 1990. The Hanford contractor assembled a panel of national medical experts in areas such as toxicology and respiratory health last year after state and federal investigations questioned whether enough was known about the vapors to be sure workers had not been harmed. The underground tanks hold 53 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste from the past production of plutonium at Hanford for the nation's nuclear weapons program. Older tanks vent chemicals into the air, particularly when atmospheric conditions change. Some workers who have breathed the vapors have complained of symptoms such as a metallic taste in their mouths, nose bleeds, dizziness and shortness of breath. They've questioned whether the vapors could cause long-term health problems. The main component of the vapors is believed to be ammonia. But the vapors could contain any of more than 1,200 different chemicals, according to the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog group. For some of the chemicals, no standard of safe exposure in industry has been established. For the last year, workers have been using supplied-air respirators in areas of the tank farms where they might otherwise breath vapors. CH2M Hill also has taken steps, such as raising vent stacks, to reduce worker exposure to vapors. CH2M Hill's medical expert team was at Hanford last week to review plans for the health study. "We've been collecting information about workers -- the kinds of jobs they held, how frequently they were around the tank farms and the medical data available to us," said Susan Eberlein, CH2M Hill vice president for environmental science and technology. The data appears to have the quality and completeness required to move forward with the study, said Jack Mandel of Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., who is leading the panel. After the study is started, information could be known in six to nine months, he said. Among the medical information that will be considered are changes in lung function, liver and kidney enzyme tests, indicators of anemia and chest X-rays. At least 40 percent of the workers in the study have history at the tank farms before 1990, Eberlein said. That will give longer medical histories to look for trends that might indicate health effects from vapor exposure. © 2005 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 84 Inspector General report: Development/Implementation of Energy Department's Enterprise Architecture IG takes issue with Energy architecture BY Dibya Sarkar Published on May 2, 2005 The Energy Department has not fully developed and implemented an enterprise architecture to manage its annual $2.5 billion information technology expenditures, according to an inspector generals report. Department officials have not fully defined current and future IT requirements, such as supporting applications and hardware, desired systems and technology standards, the report states. They also havent completed efforts to define data to support business requirements. Furthermore, DOE officials have not developed plans for a transition to a desired architecture. "Such plans are essential for ensuring that future system developments are compatible and are not duplicative," Gregory Friedman, Energys IG, wrote. "For example, the department had not developed a plan for eliminating long-standing problems with duplicative systems across the enterprise." The report also notes that several program offices that tried to develop architecture plans missed important elements and did not fully integrated the plans with departmentwide efforts. For example, the Office of Environmental Management, the National Nuclear Security Administration and Office of Science were all developing separate architectures and could not ensure they would avoid redundancy among cross-cutting information systems. Without improvements, DOE, which has spent $14 million and 10 years on a departmentwide architecture, might not effectively manage IT investments. The results cold be "costly and potentially incompatible and non-integrated systems," the report warns. Since 1998, the IGs office has issued a series of reports showing "more than $155 million in lost cost savings and operational inefficiencies resulting from the lack of an architecture." The report recommends that the chief information officer in coordination with the National Nuclear Security Administrations administrator and program officers: " Modify the enterprise architectures existing policy and guidance to describe its relationship with strategic plans and the capital planning process, among other things. " Develop, approve and implement a program management plan to incorporate cost, scope and schedule for developing program-level and departmentwide architectures. " Include efficiency measures for developing and implementing the architecture into the departments annual performance budget. The report states that DOEs management generally agreed with the report but had issues with certain conclusions. For example, officials said architecture standards were updated and published in each new version of the enterprise architecture and that investments are reviewed annually for compliance with the document. The IGs office performed the audit between October 2003 and March 2005. The report is dated April 21, 2005. Last week, during a presentation with several vendors, Rose Parkes,Energy's CIO, said the department has been working hard to ensure that the enterprise architecture provides a business direction. "How can you decide what to invest in if you dont know where you are and where you want to be?" she asked. She said the department has created an enterprise architecture working group to understand the value of the plan. She said DOE officials havent done a great job of selling it as a business tool and they need to demonstrate its value in program areas. FCW.COM is a product of FCW Media Group. Copyright 2000-2005 101communications. See our Privacy ***************************************************************** 85 TheDenverChannel.com: Random Soil Tests Scrapped At Rocky Flats Kaiser-Hill Says Additional Soil Tests Aren't Needed POSTED: 9:40 am MDT May 3, 2005 The contractor responsible for the cleanup of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant between Golden and Boulder has scrapped plans for random surface-soil sampling. The announcement was made at a Coalition of Local Governments meeting on Monday, the Boulder Daily Camera reported in its Tuesday editions. Kaiser-Hill has a $7 billion contract to clean up Rocky Flats. Last February, the company said it planned to take an additional 100 soil samples between April and July. Jan Walstrom, the deputy project manager for Kaiser-Hill, told officials at Monday's meeting that additional random soil samples aren't needed since the areas have already been sampled and new contamination probably wouldn't be uncovered. The company said it has already conducted thousands of soil samples in the industrial area to make sure that there is no more contamination. It will also conduct airborne scanning by helicopter to search for any radiation hot spots. If any areas are found, ground-based scanning and sampling would be conducted. Copyright 2005 by . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************