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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 [NYTr] Iran Parliament Urges Peaceful Use of Nukes
2 [Dilip Hiro] The Iranian Nuclear Issue in a Global Context.
3 Bush-Bolton Plan to Bomb Bushehr
4 [NYTr] Israel "Warns" Iran on Nuke Plant
5 RIA Novosti: IRANIAN PARLIAMENT APPROVED LAW ON PEACEFUL NUCLEAR TEC
6 BBC: Iran bill urges more nuclear work
7 Xinhua: Iran rules out compromise on nuclear right   
8 Scotsman.com: Showdown over Iran's nuclear plans
9 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Parliament Passes Nuclear Energy Bill
10 Mehr News: Iran says it is giving EU the last chance in nuclear talk
11 Mehr News: Iran-EU talks cannot continue without resumption of some
12 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Lawmakers OK Peaceful Nuclear Power
13 AFP: Iran preparing for nuclear talks with EU foreign ministers - re
14 Korea Herald: `No evidence N.K. planning nuclear test'   
15 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Two Koreas to Talk Fertilizer, Nukes at K
16 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: No Future for Peninsula If North Has Nuke
17 BBC: N Korea to open talks with South
18 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: U.S. Considers 5-Way Talks
19 Xinhua: US envoy to push nuclear talks   
20 Xinhua: Inter-Korean dialogue to be resumed Monday   
21 Xinhua: US warns DPRK against conducting nuclear test   
22 Zaobao.com: Six-party talks unlikely to be revived
23 Japan Times: How the U.S. courts a diplomatic fiasco
24 Guardian Unlimited: North Korea Distrustful of U.S. Overture
25 Korea Times: Efforts for 6-Party Talks Picking Up Steam 
26 Korea Times: Annan Stresses 6-Party Talks for NK Nuke Deadlock 
27 Korea Times: Resuming Inter-Korean Dialogue 
28 US: Apocalypse Soon: Bush's Nuclear Madness (by Robert McNamara)
29 US: Oakland Tribune: Support continues to erode for penetrating nucl
30 US: Paducah Sun: Editorial: Old Alternative
31 [DU-WATCH] US sale of 600 DU bunker busters to Israel
32 The Hindu: ``Bill will not constrict nuclear programme'' 
33 WorldNetDaily: Bush-Blair's nutty U.N. referral
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
34 US: [NukeNet] INPO downgrades Hope Creek's rating]
35 Helen Caldicott Re NPPs Not As Cure To Global Warming, More
36 US: The State: Bush plans for MOX plant at SRS
37 US: Cincinnati Post: At Duke, nuclear is in the mix
38 Korea Times: Korea Introduces Competitive Nuclear Technology at ICAP
39 Korea Times: Korea Seeks Exports of Nuclear Power Plant 
40 US: St. Cloud Times: Briefly: Nuclear commission to discuss Monticel
41 US: New York Times: Old Foes Soften to New Reactors
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
42 TIMES OF INDIA: US ready to carry out N-strike- The Times of India
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
43 [DU-WATCH] Iconoclast articles on DU
44 [DU-WATCH] Iraq: Soaring birth deformities & child cancer rates
45 US: Seattle Times: Doctors check health of A-bomb survivors
46 US: Tri-City Herald: Jury to decide first downwinder case 
47 US: kgw.com: After two days of closing arguments, jury gets case 
48 US: Hudson Valley News: Depleted uranium victims plead for understan
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
49 [du-list] Close nuclear leak plant for good, says Sellafield
50 US: [NukeNet] Utah EnviroCare Dump Rejects Maine Yankee waste
51 US: Bradenton Herald: Just a thought . . .
52 US: Bradenton Herald: Tallevast residents rally for support
53 Business Gazette: THORP MAY BE SHUT FOR MONTHS AFTER LEAK 
54 Sunday Herald: Revealed: the safety failures at Dounreay - 
55 US: Tri-City Herald: DOE gets OK to ship wastes to Hanford 
56 US: Courier Journal: If not coal, what then?
57 Independent: Waste warning over plans to expand UK's nuclear power 
58 Guardian Unlimited: Close nuclear leak plant for good, says Sellafie
59 Sunday Times: Revealed: list of sites to take nuclear waste - 
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
60 Seattle Times: Hanford required to take limited waste, judge rules
61 lamonitor.com: Texas antes $1.2M for lab 
62 North Jersey Media Group: Nearby, atomic test sites 
*****************************************************************
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 [NYTr] Iran Parliament Urges Peaceful Use of Nukes
 
Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 17:17:42 -0500 (CDT)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Prensa Latina, Havana
http://www.plenglish.com

Iran Parliament Urges Peaceful Nuclear Use

Tehran, May 15 (Prensa Latina) Iranian predominantly-conservative 
parliament approved a bill Sunday calling for "peaceful use" of nuclear 
energy, including uranium enrichment.

The legislation comes up at a delicate time, when Iran is announcing 
it is planning to resume uranium reprocessing activities for its power 
nuclear plant and the European Union is threatening to take Iran to the 
UN Security Council for possible sanctions if it does.

"The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran is required to 
pursue, within the framework of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ... 
to enable the country to make peaceful use of nuclear energy, including 
the cycle of nuclear fuel," the legislation says.

It was approved by 188 out of 205 deputies who attended Sunday4s 
parliamentary session.

Iran says it will not give up its right under Nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium, but it is prepared to offer 
guarantees that its nuclear program will not be diverted toward weapons.

The US accused Tehran of using its civilian nuclear program as a 
cover to build nuclear weapons. Tehran has denied the charges, saying 
its nuclear program has the only objective of generating electricity, 
not producing weapons.

Iran agreed to suspend current uranium enrichment at its Natanz 
uranium enrichment plant in 2003, to avoid referral to the UN Security 
Council for possible sanctions.

mh/iom
       
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 2 [Dilip Hiro] The Iranian Nuclear Issue in a Global Context.
 
Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 14:55:35 -0500 (CDT)

 
     Published on Friday, May 13, 2005 by TomDispatch.com

     The Iranian Nuclear Issue in a Global Context

     	by 

	Dilip Hiro

      With the Iranians threatening to resume some nuclear activities
in the near future, their European Union (EU) interlocutors are
threatening to break off their six-month long negotiations to resolve
the nuclear issue diplomatically. They have called an emergency
meeting of the 35 member Board of Governors of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna at which they are likely to join
the United States in recommending that the Iranian situation be
referred to the United Nations Security Council.
      But they are unlikely to get their way. The Europeans --
represented in the negotiations by the troika of Britain, France, and
Germany -- claim that before the latest round of talks, starting in
mid-November, Tehran promised to freeze "all uranium
enrichment-related activities." What the Iranians have, in fact, done
is not to start the actual enrichment of uranium hexafluoride (UF6
gas), but to convert uranium yellow cake into a precursor for UF6.
According to a non-European diplomat in Vienna, the non-aligned
governors of the IAEA Board will accept the Iranian argument that this
is uranium-conversion work and not uranium-enrichment work.

      The emerging crisis is the result of a stalemate between Iran
and the EU troika. The Europeans are aiming to get Tehran to cease all
uranium-related activity permanently and depend instead exclusively on
imports of low-enriched fissile material produced by the Europeans for
Iran's civilian nuclear program. This is totally unacceptable to the
Iranians.

      On May 3, addressing the UN conference to review the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi
hinted at the real reason for the devolving Iranian nuclear situation.
He spoke of the demands being made on Iran as "arbitrary and
self-serving criteria and thresholds regarding proliferation-proof and
proliferation-prone technologies" which violate "the spirit and letter
of the NPT and destroy the balance between the rights and obligations
in the Treaty."

      At the core of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is Article IV. It
gives any signatory "an inalienable right to develop, research,
produce, and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes," and to acquire
technology to this effect from fellow-signatories. In practical terms,
removing Article IV from the NPT -- as some in the Unites States have
proposed -- would mean terminating the right of the signatory to "the
nuclear fuel cycle."

      Fueling What?

      This nuclear fuel cycle consists of mining uranium ore,
processing it into uranium oxide (yellow cake), transforming yellow
cake first into uranium tetrafluoride (UF4) gas and then into uranium
hexafluoride (UF6) gas, followed by the enrichment of UF6 to varying
degrees of purity for the lighter U235 isotopes: 3.5-4% for use in
nuclear power reactors; 10-20% for research reactors; and 90%-plus
pure for use in the building of nuclear weapons.

      After the fuel rods in a nuclear power plant have yielded their
energy, transforming water into steam to run electricity generating
turbines, they are called "spent rods." They can then be reprocessed
with the aim of extracting from them plutonium (Pu239 or Pu241), which
can be used as yet more fissile material. Nuclear fuel thus produces
both electric power and more nuclear fuel, and is therefore in
principle a renewable source of energy.

      "The termination of the fuel cycle activities demanded of Iran
[by the EU] means you have killed off the nuclear NPT," said Hassan
Rouhani, Iran's chief negotiator with the EU troika and secretary of
the country's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC). "If you take
out Article IV, all developing countries will step out of the Treaty."

      This is not a fanciful scenario. Just before the UN conference
of 188 countries opened in New York on May 2 to review the
Non-Proliferation Treaty, the non-nuclear weapons signatories to the
NPT met in Mexico City under the auspices of the New Agenda Coalition
(NAC).

      Seven foreign ministers from Asian, African, European and South
American countries that do not have nuclear weapons summarized the
NAC's stance in the International Herald Tribune in the following
fashion: 'When the nuclear NPT came into force 35 years ago, the
central bargain was that non-nuclear-weapons states like us would
renounce their right to develop nuclear weapons while retaining the
inalienable right to undertake research into nuclear energy and to
produce and use it for peaceful purposes. while the five declared
nuclear-weapon states reduced and then eliminated their nuclear
weapons [Article VI]."

      By now, it has become crystal clear that this bargain has not
been -- and will not be -- kept. The New Agenda Coalition criticized
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for spending all its
time and energy monitoring and enforcing compliance by
non-nuclear-weapon countries suspected of wanting to develop such
weapons, while overlooking the obvious -- that the nuclear powers have
not implemented the commitments they made at the NPT review
conferences of 1995 and 2000 .

      For instance, in 2000 the U.S. government pledged to ratify the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty but has not done so yet and shows no
signs that it will. It also promised to sign a verifiable accord to
end the production of new fissile material for nuclear weapons but has
failed to do so. To make matters worse, the Bush administration has
been trying for two years to get Congressional authorization to fund
research on a new generation of nuclear weapons including small yield
mini-nukes and nuclear bunker busters. It has also mandated nuclear
labs in the U.S. to come up with ways of upgrading the present nuclear
arsenal by making it more robust and longer lasting.

      U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker carefully
pointed out to the NPT review conference that the Bush
administration's Moscow Treaty with Russia in 2002 required sharp
reductions in the number of operationally deployed nuclear warheads it
retained by 2012. What he failed to say was that these warheads would
be mothballed, not destroyed, and that the bilateral treaty lacks
verification procedures.

      The New Agenda Coalition representatives also brought up another
sore point for non-nuclear NPT signatories. They highlighted the 2000
NPT review conference where nuclear-weapon countries once again
formulated an "unequivocal" undertaking to completely eliminate their
nuclear arsenals. "This goal is all the more important in a world in
which terrorists seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction," they
wrote. "The nuclear-weapons states should acknowledge that disarmament
and non-proliferation [are] mutually reinforcing processes: What does
not exist cannot proliferate."

      In contrast, the three western nuclear-weapon counties (the
United States, Britain and France) are primarily interested in closing
what they see as loopholes in the NPT which, in their view, can be
exploited by non-nuclear-weapon states to fabricate nuclear arms --
especially, of course, "the inalienable right" to acquire dual-use
technology which could then be deployed for civilian or military ends.
For example, centrifuges used for enriching uranium to 3.5-4 % purity
for nuclear-power plants or 10-20% purity for research reactors can
also be harnessed to produce 90%-plus pure uranium for weapons.

      Iranian Moves

      In the case of Iran, its leaders have publicly offered the EU
troika "objective guarantees" regarding the peaceful intentions of its
uranium-enrichment program (to be monitored by the IAEA). Washington,
on the other hand, insists that Tehran is using the NPT as a cover to
go to the brink of nuclear weapons production; that it intends to
withdraw from the NPT at a time of its own choosing (just as North
Korea did) and then assemble a nuclear weapon within weeks. By so
doing, Iran would break the nuclear weapons monopoly Israel has
enjoyed in the Middle East since 1968. Both the Bush administration
and Israel are determined to maintain this monopoly.

      Washington also argues that Tehran has forfeited any rights
under the Treaty by misleading the IAEA over the nature of its
uranium-enrichment program. Iran does not accept this assessment nor
have the remaining 34 members of the IAEA's board of governors.

      Iran attributes its cat-and-mouse behavior in the past to the
economic sanctions applied against it by the Europeans and the
Americans which deprived it of access to civilian nuclear technology
to which it is entitled as a signatory to the NPT.

      These days, however, Iranian leaders are learning that
transparency has its virtues. Following the publication in the March
13 Sunday Times of a leak from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's
office regarding his country's possible plans to raid Iran's uranium
enrichment facility at Natanz, President Muhammad Khatami escorted a
party of 30 local and foreign journalists to the underground facility.

      That dispelled some of the fear-filled mystique about the place
created by the story Israeli officials had planted. Among the
structures the visiting journalists saw was a huge empty hall meant
for the installation of thousands of centrifuges at some future date.
A few weeks later, Iran broke another taboo. It took Elahe Mohtasham,
a representative of the London-based International Institute of
Strategic Studies, on a day-long visit to the Uranium Conversion
Facility in Isfahan.

      In a long report she published in the Sunday Times on May 1, she
described not just the equipment and buildings she saw, but also her
conversations in Persian with scientists and other officials at the
site. The facility, completed in March 1998, is visited by the IAEA
every three or four weeks. It was there that, in March 2004, the
Iranians converted yellow cake into uranium hexafluoride gas UF6 for
the first time. Iran thus became the tenth country in the world to do
so -- the five members of the initial nuclear club, the U.S., Russia,
Britain, France, and China; and later, Israel, India, Pakistan, and Brazil.

      Within three months, the Isfahan facility had produced 45 kg of
UF6. By October, its stock of UF6 rose to 3,000 kg. The scientists and
technicians, including women, had also managed to transform UF6 gas
into liquid. It was then, with Iran entering talks with the EU Troika,
that all such activity was suspended. When asked whether they would be
able to produce enough UF6 to feed the prospective 50,000 centrifuges
at Natanz, 90 miles to the north-east, the scientists replied, "Yes."

      According to the IAEA, between April and October 2004, the
number of centrifuge rotors in Iran rose from 1,140 to 1,274. And
Rouhani revealed that the government had built and assembled all those
centrifuges in a year and several months. Later, he stated that the
reports of protective tunnels and underground facilities being built
by Iran for its nuclear facilities "might be true."

      The scientists at the Isfahan uranium conversion plant were
familiar with the Sunday Times story about Israeli plans to attack
Iran's nuclear facilities. They told Mohtasham that they had no
protection against military attack and that the tunnels were actually
very narrow, just enough for two people to squeeze through. They
believed, however, that any attack by the U.S. or Israel would
destabilize the whole region and, at that point, Iran would probably
withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and start a genuine
nuclear-weapons program.

      The European negotiators seem aware of the dire consequences of
military arracks on Iran by Israel or the United States. Until now,
they seemingly wanted to keep the talks simmering along, hoping that a
pragmatic winner in the presidential election on June 17 could open
the way for accommodation on the issue. "Pragmatic" is their code word
for Ali Akbar Hashemi Rasfanjani, a wily politician who, along with
Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei, is now the only surviving member of the
top leadership that was instrumental in bringing about the Islamic
revolution in 1979.

      The Iranians do not seem unduly worried that the emergency
meeting of the IAEA governors will postpone the discussion of the
Europeans' complaint to their regular quarterly meeting, due to take
place just a few days before the Iranian presidential election. Even
if the issue is referred to the UN Security Council, there is a very
strong chance that China and Russia will veto any resolution imposing
sanctions on Iran. Overall, The Iranians feel that this issue, if
pushed into the international arena, will cause a global divide
between the developing world and the Western world. It may be that
they are overestimating, but there is no doubt that this is an issue
of paramount importance in international affairs.

      Dilip Hiro is the author of The Essential Middle East: A
Comprehensive Guide and The Iranian Labyrinth: Journeys Through
Theocratic Iran and Its Furies (Nation Books)

      A printed version of this article is available in The Middle
East International, no. 750.

----------

------------
*****************************************************************
 3 Bush-Bolton Plan to Bomb Bushehr
 
Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 06:25:28 -0500 (CDT)

 
http://wanniski.com/showarticle.asp?articleid=4359

May 14, 2005

The Bush-Bolton Plan to Bomb Bushehr

The Bush-Bolton Plan to Bomb Bushehr

Memo To: Republican Senators
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: With Tony Blair's Support

Buried down in today's New York Times report on President Bush reaffirming
his
unqualified support for John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador is the reason why
almost
all of you are ready to vote for his confirmation.

"Republicans are hoping to shame Democrats into a quick vote on Mr. Bolton.
They
argue that he needs to be in place by June so that the United States will
have
the latitude it needs to press its concerns about Iran's suspected nuclear
weapons program before the Security Council."Why the big rush? My reliable
sources tell me it is because there is a timetable that makes it urgent for
Bolton to be ready for action in June in order to cripple the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as part of the plan to bomb the Iranian
nuclear-power plant at Bushehr. That's because Bushehr, under construction
with
Russian supervision, will soon be ready to receive the Russian fissile
material
enabling it to produce power. In 1981, remember Republican Senators, Israel
bombed the Osiraq nuclear power plant near Baghdad just before it was to be
fueled by its French contractors. Once fueled, bombing is out of the question
because of the radiation that would be emitted, with clouds traveling who
knows
 where.

Of course you must know by now that at the time the Israelis blew up Osiraq,
the
situation was quite different. We were in the midst of the Cold War, the
United
States was supporting Iraq in its war against Iran, and the Russians were
supporting Iran. So when the billion-dollar Osiraq plant went up in smoke
(with
the help of the neo-cons who were already occupying the Pentagon in that
first
year of the Reagan administration), there was no reaction from Russia because
the Israelis were essentially bombing us!! We also know by now that Iraq did
not
have a nuclear weapons program at the time, but only began its (unsuccessful)
clandestine effort after Osiraq.

The same is now true of Iran. If a month or two from now you are advised by
President Bush that it is necessary to take out Bushehr to prevent Iran from
acquiring nuclear weapons, you would have to wonder if the neo-cons and their
Likud allies in Tel Aviv aren't simply threatening World War III on a faulty
premise. Wouldn't you. The situation now is quite different, with Bushehr a
Russian project in Iran.

On a recent, quite incredible FoxNews special, Lieut. General Thomas
McInerney
said we are already moving aircraft carriers into positions from which we
could
strike. He was then asked: "If you had to put a percentage on it, the chances
that the US will eventually have to take military actions against Iran, what
would you put it at?" to which McInerney replied casually: "Well, I would put
one percent of using ground forces, boots on the ground in Iran, I would put
up
50 percent on a blockade and I would put up fifty to sixty percent on
precision
air strikes on their nuclear development sites." He also observed casually
that
Iran wouldn't dare take on the United States. Perhaps the 60 million Iranians
would greet our bombers with garlands and sweets. Do you see what I mean?
FoxNews, as you may know, is commonly known as "The War Channel," for similar
work it did in promoting the war against Iraq.

Is Iran this kind of threat to anyone? As far as I can tell, ladies and
gentlemen of the GOP Senate, the answer is "absolutely not," at least as long
as
they remain members in good standing of the NPT, which means they will permit
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect intrusively and
constantly, as they have been doing. It has been the mission of John Bolton
and
his underling, Stephen Rademaker, to "reform" the United Nations in a way
that
dissolves the NPT and the need for the IAEA, not only to pave the way for the
bombing of Bushehr, but also to get out from under the NPT provisions that
require all the nuclear-weapon powers to make progress toward making the world
a
nuclear-free zone.

If you wish to really understand what's going on, instead of getting briefed
by
the same people who briefed you prior to the invasion of Iraq, please read
Dr.
Gordon Prather's commentaries on the crisis just around the corner. First, on
WorldNetDaily.com, he writes Strengthen the NPT -- Or Else, in which he walks
us
through the misinformation that Bolton, Rademaker and the neo-cons have been
spreading on Iran's alleged violations of its treaty obligations. Dr.
Prather,
who by the way came to Washington under the patronage of Sen. Pete Domenici,
Republican of New Mexico, and is no left-wing liberal, also penned a second
column today for antiwar.com, Bush-Blairs Nutty U.N. Proposal, which you have
to
read to realize how "nutty" it is.

There is also today on the antiwar.com website today an overview of this
looming
crisis that I highly recommend, as it was highly recommended to me by Dr.
Prather, The Iran Crisis in Global Context. If you and your staffs do take my
suggestions seriously and go to these links, I think you may have greater
doubts
about the Bolton nomination than you have now. If you have any doubts about
Dr.
Prather, check with your colleague, Senator Domenici, who was instrumental
back
in getting Prather an appointment as the Army's chief scientist during the
Reagan administration.

This isn't too much to ask, is it? For good measure, I'd hope those of you
who
are reading this memo to the GOP Senators and are among their constituents
would
urge them to take a second look before they send Bolton to the United
Nations.
His mission is not to clean up the so-called "Oil-for-Food Scandal" or
promote
UNICEF gift cards. It is to bomb the nuclear facilities in Iraq after
undermining the work of IAEA and the need for the NPT.
*****************************************************************
 4 [NYTr] Israel "Warns" Iran on Nuke Plant
 
Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 15:58:00 -0500 (CDT)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by mart

Itar-Tass - May 12, 2005
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=2027131&PageNum=0

Russian specialists to train Iranian engineers at nuke plant
 
NOVOVORONEZH (Voronezh region)- Engineers from the Iranian Bushehr nuclear
power plant will undergo training at the plant under the supervision of
Russian specialists, the head of the Novovoronezh training center of the
state-run atomic energy concern Rosenergoatom told Itar-Tass on Thursday.

"After theoretical studies in Novovoronezh, 20 Russian teachers will go to
Iran to continue training Iranian engineers directly at the site of the
future power plant," Alexander Ivanchenko said.

He said about 700 engineers from Iran have undergone training in
Novovoronezh, and the last group is expected to arrive here shortly. 
Simultaneously, Iranian specialists will begin practical studies in Bushehr.

"There is no doubt that they will brilliantly cope with that task, as they
did during theoretical studies," Ivanchenko believes.  So far, Iranian
engineers have got only the highest marks for their studies, he added.

The concern's Novovoronezh center is the only establishment in Russia where
specialists learn how to work at WWR-1000 reactors. Studying there apart
from Russian and Iranian specialists are engineers from China, India and
Bulgaria, where nuclear power stations have been or are being constructed
with Russian assistance.

                     ***

Agence France-Presse - May 12, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050512191312.yo6llnbs.html

Israel chief of staff warns Iran over nuclear 'threat'
  
[" 'It is a vital matter for Israel. This is a threat not only against our
country but against the entire free world,' added Mofaz. Israeli aircraft
attacked and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear installation at Osirak, outside
Baghdad, in 1981." ]

JERUSALEM - The Israeli chief of staff issued 
a veiled warning Thursday against Iran over its 
pursuit of a controversial nuclear programme, 
army radio reported.

"Israel has always found the means to respond to threats...I hope that
pressure being put on Iran will be effective," General Moshe Yaalon was
quoted as saying when asked about the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.

A top Iranian nuclear official announced earlier Thursday that Tehran could
soon announce a resumption of a "noticeable part" of uranium conversion
work, part of the process used to produce nuclear fuel for power generation
or the explosive core of an atomic bomb.....

But Iran, insisting on its "right" [quotes in original] to possess nuclear
technology for peaceful purposes, warned that the mounting pressure could
undermine its commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - the
cornerstone of the global effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

Israeli arch-enemy Iran has always denied that it is pursuing a nuclear
weapons programme.

Yaalon's declaration came the same day as Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan
Shalom said Iran would be able to produce a nuclear bomb in "six to nine
months time".

It came a day after Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said he doubted that talks
between Iran and the European Union would stop Tehran from developing
nuclear weapons.

"I do not think the dialogue taken on by the European troika can halt Iran's
course towards atomic weapons," Mofaz said.

What would stop the Iranians, he said, would be for the UN Security Council
to impose sanctions on Tehran and implement "precise and detailed checks" of
Iranian nuclear installations.

As the world's only superpower, the United States had a duty to see the
matter brought before the Security Council, Mofaz continued, saying Israel
was sharing intelligence with Washington and other governments over Iran.

"It is a vital matter for Israel. This is a threat not only against our
country but against the entire free world," added Mofaz.

Israeli aircraft attacked and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear installation at
Osirak, outside Baghdad, in 1981.

On March 22, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israel had no intention of
launching a strike against Iranian nuclear installations.

Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato
       
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 5 RIA Novosti: IRANIAN PARLIAMENT APPROVED LAW ON PEACEFUL NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY
 
TEHRAN, May 15 (RIA Novosti's Nikolai Terekhov) - The Iranian 
parliament (Majles, or the Consultative Assembly) has ratified 
the bill on peaceful nuclear technology.

 "The document endorses a full-cycle nuclear technology and 
envisages 20-MW nuclear power plants," a spokesman for the 
Iranian legislature told RIA Novosti on Sunday. 

The document ratified by the parliament has not yet become law; 
it needs a rubber stamp of the Supervisory Board and of the 
Advisability Board, the bodies in charge of checking whether the 
bill is in line with the constitution and state interests.





                © 2005 "RIA Novosti"   




*****************************************************************
 6 BBC: Iran bill urges more nuclear work
 
Last Updated: Sunday, 15 May, 2005
 
[Iranian President Mohammad Khatami (right) at Isfahan Uranium 
Conversion Facility, 30 March 2005]                             
The next round of talks could be the last chance to find a 
solution
			 			   		
The Iranian parliament has passed a motion urging the government 
to resume its nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment 
for "peaceful use". 

The move was approved by 188 out of 205 deputies on Sunday. 

Nonetheless, Iranian officials say France, Germany and the UK 
will be given a "last chance" in talks to be held before the fuel 
cycle is resumed. 

The European Union has threatened to back a US call for UN 
sanctions if Iran resumes the programme. 

"Time is running fast," said an Iranian foreign ministry 
spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi. 

"What will happen in the upcoming days will be the last chance 
for the Europeans." 

Sanctions threat 

He said a meeting could soon take place between the foreign 
ministers of the three European countries and Iran's top 
negotiator, Hassan Rohani. 

Mr Asefi also said that many foreign governments, including South 
Africa and Malaysia, had put pressure to hold a last round of 
talks before resuming the programme. 

Iran has been offered subsidies and technical support in return 
for giving up its uranium enrichment activities, which the West 
fears might be used also for military purposes. 

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is obliged to take action to obtain 
peaceful nuclear technology including provision of the fuel cycle 
for generating 20,000 megawatts of electricity," the motion said. 

Iran says it is its right to enrich uranium, but is ready to 
offer guarantees that its nuclear programme will be exclusively 
for civilian purposes. 

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has already warned that should 
Iran breach the agreement with the EU and resume its programme, 
it would back the US in referring Iran to the UN Security 
Council. 

Also France and Germany have said any violation of the November 
2004 agreement would have "consequences" for Iran. 

		 	 		 	 	 



*****************************************************************
 7 Xinhua: Iran rules out compromise on nuclear right   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-16 01:57:06   

    TEHRAN, May 15 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran's chief nuclear
negotiator Hassan Rowhani said Sunday that Iran is ready to
continue negotiations with the European Union (EU) but will not
compromise on its legitimate nuclear rights, the official IRNA
news agency reported. 

    Rowhani reiterated Iran was determined to resume part of
enrichment-related activities as the nuclear talks came to a
standstill. 

    "Iran's decision to resume activities in uranium conversion
facility still holds," he said. "We are willing to hold
negotiations, but we cannot negotiate under the present
conditions." 

    Iran suspended its uranium enrichment activities last
November to pave the way for talks with the EU trio Britain,
France and Germany on its disputed nuclear program. 

    However, Iran refused to permanently freeze the uranium
enrichment in the following talks, insisting it will never give
up its legitimate rights on peaceful nuclear technology. 

    Instead, Tehran proposed to keep limited enrichment uranium
activities under supervision of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), a suggestion turned down by the EU. 

    Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi warned
the EU on Sunday that the next round of negotiators between the
two sides will be the last chance to save the stalled nuclear
talks. 

    "Iran has decided to negotiate with the European trio for
one more time upon their request, and the upcoming meeting will
be their last chance," he told a weekly news briefing. 

    Iran's parliament, angry at EU for dragging out
negotiations, passed a bill on Sunday to press the government to
resume uranium enrichment activities. 

    Washington and the EU have threatened to refer Iran's case
to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions if Iran
restarts enrichment-related work. 

    The EU shared Washington's suspicions that Iran's uranium
enrichment program could be used to make nuclear weapons. 

    Tehran claims its nuclear program is intended only for
producing fuel for power plant. Enditem   

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 8 Scotsman.com: Showdown over Iran's nuclear plans
 
Sun 15 May 2005   			 			

IAN MATHER 
DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT 

HIS nickname is Kusheh, which in Persian means both "beardless"
and "shark", an accurate description of his smooth features and
ruthless reputation. 

If the political omens prove right Hashemi Rafsanjani will
become the new president of Iran after next month’s election,
nominations for which closed last night. 

Rafsanjani is a Hojatoleslam cleric, which means ‘proof of
Islam’ and is a title given to middle-ranking Shia holy men.
He is a giant among the vast majority of more than 250
candidates, who include no-hopers such as a Saddam Hussein
look-alike who wants to be a film star, a man who dresses as
Osama bin Laden, a diplomat from the Shah era and a number of
women, even though they are not allowed by law to stand. 

But Iran’s wiliest negotiator and most experienced manipulator
will need all his skills if he is to steer his country through a
looming showdown with the US over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. 

Last week Iran announced that it was resuming activities linked
to the enrichment of uranium which it had agreed with the EU to
suspend last November, taking it a step closer to acquiring the
capability to produce its own nuclear weapons. 

Though the crisis between Iran and the West has been building
for months, if not years, its impending climax is connected with
the presidential elections in the view of some analysts. 

With the majority of the population disillusioned with political
and economic reforms, the nuclear issue is popular and could
also help Rafsanjani, who is already the leading
behind-the-scenes manipulator of the Iranian political agenda. 

Francois Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic
Research in Paris, said: "The nuclear issue is one of the few
things that makes the regime popular. Being hard line on nuclear
affairs is an easy way to acquire popularity." 

Political analysts say that Rafsanjani, whose allies are leading
the nuclear negotiations with the EU, stands to benefit from an
escalation in international tensions. His aides portray him as
an experienced crisis-solver and deal-maker who could resolve
the stand-off. 

Certainly he is by far the most experienced candidate. A
self-made multimillionaire with ties to everything from
pistachio exports to heavy industry, Rafsanjani was a founding
father of the revolution that ousted the Shah in 1979. Since
then he has never been far from the centre of power, and has
already been president twice. 

He also has a long, if stormy, relationship with Iran’s
Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and can address him
almost as an equal. 

Opinion polls show the 70-year-old cleric commands 43% support,
more than all other the candidates combined. 

Even so the ruling clerics see the elections as a chance to
consolidate their grip on power, and Rafsanjani’s rivals
include a number of close Khamenei loyalists. The strongest
challenger to Rafsanjani is Iran’s former police chief,
Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guards pilot who
keeps his hand in by flying as co-pilot on a domestic passenger
airline every 10 days. 

Hard-liners are backing Ali Larijani, security adviser to the
supreme leader, as their candidate. However, their vote will be
split, a problem also facing the reformists. 

The Guardians’ Council, an unelected ultra-conservative
bastion, now has five days to approve or reject candidates,
according to their faithfulness to the revolution and Islam. 

In 2004 it rejected 2,000 candidates, almost all of them
reformists. 

Rafsanjani recently said western pressure on Iran to permanently
freeze its nuclear enrichment activities was unjust and must be
rejected. 

"The Americans need a tangible enemy they can parade before
other countries," he said. "Now Britain has joined them. It’s
nothing new. Britain often acts as America’s lapdog." 

Yet he also promised to "build international confidence" by
fostering links with the West and "meet the challenge of a young
society" by addressing unemployment, poverty, gender inequality
and greater economic liberalisation. 

Whether his balancing act will work this time remains to be
seen.             

2005 Scotsman.com 
*****************************************************************
 9 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Parliament Passes Nuclear Energy Bill
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Sunday May 15, 2005 11:46 AM

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI 

Associated Press Writer 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's conservative-dominated parliament on
Sunday approved a bill pressuring the government to pursue
``peaceful use'' of nuclear energy, including uranium
enrichment. The bill doesn't force the government to immediately
resume uranium enrichment but it brings greater pressure on it
not to give up its controversial nuclear program. 

The legislation comes at a delicate time, with Iran announcing
that it's planning to resume uranium reprocessing activities and
the European Union threatening to take Iran to the U.N. Security
Council for possible sanctions if it does. 

``The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran is required to
pursue, within the framework of the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty ... to enable the country to make peaceful use of nuclear
energy, including the cycle of nuclear fuel,'' the legislation
said. 

The legislation was approved by 188 out of 205 deputies who
attended Sunday's parliamentary session. 

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters
Sunday that Iran has decided to give negotiations with the
Europeans a ``last chance'' before it resumes uranium
reprocessing activities at Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility
in central Iran. 

Iran and the Europeans, according to the spokesman, were
considering convening a meeting between the foreign ministers of
Britain, France and Germany and Iran's top nuclear negotiator
Hasan Rowhani to try and defuse the looming crisis. 

``Time is passing fast,'' Asefi told a news conference. ``What
will happen in the upcoming days will be the last chance for
Europeans.'' 

Asefi said Iran has postponed the resumption of uranium
reprocessing at the request of many governments around the
world, including European Union member states, to give dialogue
a last chance to succeed. He, however, insisted that Tehran will
eventually resume nuclear work with or without agreement with
the Europeans. 

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he would support
referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council if it breaches its
nuclear obligations, sending a strong warning after Tehran
threatened to restart a program that officials fear could
produce a nuclear bomb. 

France, Britain and Germany, acting on behalf of the 25-nation
European Union, want Tehran to abandon its enrichment activities
in exchange for economic aid, technical support and backing for
Iran's efforts to join mainstream international organizations. 

Iran says it won't give up its right under Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium, but is prepared to
offer guarantees that its nuclear program won't be diverted
toward weapons. 

The U.S. accused Tehran of using its civilian nuclear program as
a cover to build nuclear weapons. Tehran has denied the charges,
saying its nuclear program is geared merely to generate
electricity, not producing weapons. 

To avoid referral to the U.N. Security Council for possible
sanctions, Iran agreed to suspend actual uranium enrichment at
its Natanz uranium enrichment plant in 2003. 	 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 10 Mehr News: Iran says it is giving EU the last chance in nuclear talks              
                

MehrNews.com - 

TEHRAN, May 15 (MNA) – Iran announced on Sunday that it is 
giving the European Union the last chance to acknowledge Iran’s 
legal right to master a full nuclear fuel cycle program.                                                                                                                                                                  
 											  
“This is the last chance to Europe and we will not forgo our
rights,� foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a
regular news briefing. 
  
The spokesman added Iran is quite determined to restart part of
its nuclear program and the EU should not doubt it. 
  
Asefi also said there is no legal basis to refer Iran to the
United Nations Security Council. 
  
“The threat of Security Council is an “old� an
“ineffective� instrument which Iran has no fear of; and it
is Europe and the U.S. which will suffer greatly,� Asefi
argued. 
  
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain have
written a letter to Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Hassan
Rowhani demanding a high level meeting to discuss Iran’s
nuclear program. 
  
The letter came as Tehran announced that it plans to restart
part of its nuclear program which it has temporarily suspended
to negotiate with Europe. 
  
  
MS/SA 
  
                  © 2003 Mehr News Agency                       
*****************************************************************
 11 Mehr News: Iran-EU talks cannot continue without resumption of some
nuclear activities                
           
     MehrNews.com - 

2005/05/15  
											  [ src=]  													Print version   [ src=] 
Supreme National Security Council said here on Sunday that Iran 
has made a firm decision to resume some of its nuclear 
activities.                                                                                                                                                             
 											  
“We cannot continue nuclear negotiations with Europe without 
resuming some of our nuclear activities,� Hassan Rowhani told 
the Mehr News Agency. 
  
On the European Union’s recent request to hold talks on 
Iran’s nuclear issue, Rowhani said that the British, German, 
and French foreign ministers had asked him in a letter to delay 
the resumption of nuclear activities in Iran and made a proposal 
for a meeting with him in Europe to discuss the matter. 
  
Besides the three EU countries, Russia, through its foreign 
minister, some Non-Aligned Movement countries, Japan, and even 
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan have also asked the 
Islamic Republic to delay the resumption of nuclear activities 
until Iran and the EU reach a mutually agreeable solution, he 
added. 
  
“The Europeans’ request is to continue talks over the next 
few days or in the next week, and we are currently studying this 
proposal. 
  
“Of course, we approve of talks in principle and can even agree 
to delay resumption of activities for several days on condition 
that Europe takes a serious and independent approach in order to 
reach a mutual understanding. 
  
“We have always preferred to reach an agreement before 
restarting activities, but if an agreement is not made, we will 
stand firmly on our decision and will certainly resume some of 
our nuclear activities,� Rowhani stressed.  
  
The SNSC secretary noted that no decision has yet been made on 
the location and date of the talks. 
  
On the preparatory activities currently underway at the Isfahan 
Uranium Conversion Facility, Rowhani said, “We have asked the 
UCF to make the necessary preparations for restarting activities 
as soon as the order is issued. 
  
“But, we will automatically delay the resumption of work until 
talks are held with the European ministers, probably next 
week.� 
  
Asked about his views on the bill on mastering the complete 
nuclear fuel cycle which was ratified by the Majlis on Sunday, 
Rowhani said that the parliament is acting in line with the 
national will. 
  
The country’s citizens and officials both insist on the Islamic 
Republic’s legal rights, and Iran is determined to obtain these 
rights, he added. 
  
“This is a sensitive and international matter, and we have 
always tried to convince the world and Iranians th at we have 
taken peaceful approaches. 
  
“We are not attempting to worry any country, and we do not want 
to see any of our friends concerned about our nuclear activities. 
  
“This is why we have been negotiating with Europe for the past 
one and a half years, the top nuclear official said. 
  
“Since Europe has now asked us to delay the resumption of 
nuclear activities, we did not refuse their proposal so that 
people would know we are not acting obstinately and that our 
activities are within the framework of law. 
  
“We are also ready to try any other approach meant to build 
confidence.� 
  
On his meeting with the chairman of the Belgian Parliament’s 
foreign policy committee earlier on Sunday, Rowhani said that 
they had discussed Iran’s problems with the EU, the basis of 
Iran’s decision to restart some of its nuclear activities, and 
the Iran-EU talks set for next week. 
  
HL/HG End 
  
MNA   										 										
 											     										 										
© 2003 Mehr News Agency                       
*****************************************************************
 12 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Lawmakers OK Peaceful Nuclear Power
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 
 	 
Sunday May 15, 2005 11:16 PM

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI 

Associated Press Writer 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian lawmakers instructed the government
Sunday to develop a nuclear fuel cycle, which would include
resuming the process of enriching uranium - a prospect that has
drawn criticism from the United States and Europe because it
could be used in developing atomic weapons. 

The vote came as a spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry said it
was giving Europe a ``last chance'' in nuclear talks. 

Iran suspended enrichment of uranium six months ago under
international pressure led by the United States, which accuses
Tehran of trying to make nuclear weapons. Iran maintains its
program is peaceful and only aimed at generating electricity. 

The European Union has threatened to take Iran to the U.N.
Security Council for possible sanctions if it again starts
uranium reprocessing. Enriched uranium is useful in the
generation of electricity, which is permitted under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, but it also can be turned into nuclear
weapons. 

The bill approved Sunday by 188 of the 205 deputies attending
the parliamentary session doesn't force the government to
immediately resume uranium enrichment but pressures it not to
give up its nuclear program, including uranium enrichment. 

The legislation was viewed as strengthening the government's
hand in negotiations with European Union representatives,
allowing it to demonstrate domestic pressure to pursue its
nuclear program as talks have deadlocked. 

``We are entering injury time,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman
Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters later in the day. 

He said the government will give Europeans a ``last chance'' in
negotiations to avert a nuclear crisis before it resumes uranium
reprocessing activities. 

``The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran is required to
pursue, within the framework of the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty, peaceful use of nuclear energy, including the cycle of
nuclear fuel,'' said the legislation, adopted in a session
broadcast live on state-run Tehran radio. 

The Guardian Council, a hard-line body vetting legislation, is
widely expected to approve the legislation, making it law. 

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said last week that he would
support referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council if it
breaches its nuclear obligations. 

France, Britain and Germany, acting on behalf of the 25-nation
European Union, want Tehran to abandon its enrichment activities
in exchange for economic aid, technical support and backing for
Iran's efforts to join the World Trade Organization. 

Iran suspended uranium-enrichment activities as a gesture of
good faith in November. Tehran says it won't give up its right
under the treaty to such activities but is prepared to offer
guarantees that its nuclear program won't be diverted toward
weapons. 

Later Sunday, Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hasan Rowhani said
Iran would resume its nuclear activities if no agreement is
reached. 

``We have always preferred to resume work under an agreement but
if we don't reach agreement, we will implement our decision and
will definitely restart our activities,'' he told state-run
television. 	 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 13 AFP: Iran preparing for nuclear talks with EU foreign ministers - report

Sunday May 15, 06:13 AM 

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran is preparing for direct talks with the
foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany after backing
away from a move to immediately resume sensitive nuclear
activities, a senior official was quoted as saying. 

Top nuclear official Hossein Moussavian, speaking to Iran's Mehr
news agency, said such a meeting could take place in Europe
within the next 10 days. 

"Both sides are preparing the ground for such a meeting. If all
the arrangements are worked out, probably it is going to be held
in Europe in the middle of the next week," he was quoted as
saying. 

"The aim is to find a successful solution that is satisfactory
for both parties," he added. 


On Friday Iran backed away from kick-starting uranium conversion
work, a move that would have violated an agreement with the
three European Union nations. 

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhnai had been warned in
a letter Thursday that such a step would have "consequences" --
namely the referral of Iran's file to the board of the
International Atomic Energy Agency and then the UN Security
Council. 

The letter also proposed a four-way high-level meeting in the
near future, diplomats said. 

Uranium conversion involves turning mined uranium "yellowcake"
into uranium tetrafluoride (UF4) and then into uranium
hexafluoride (UF6), a feed gas for centrifuges that carry out
the highly sensitive enrichment process. 

Iran says it wants to master the enrichment process to produce
fuel for reactors. But the technology could also be diverted to
make the explosive core of a bomb. 

                                 
   Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
*****************************************************************
 14 Korea Herald: `No evidence N.K. planning nuclear test'   
        
Intelligence chief says U.S., South Korea closely
monitoring Gilju tunnels for years

 The nation's top intelligence chief said yesterday Seoul and
Washington have been closely following North Korea's
construction of underground tunnels in a northeastern region of
Gilju County for years but there's no evidence of nuclear test
plans.

 "There is no evidence yet on whether (North Korea) has set out
for a nuclear test," National Intelligence Service Director Ko
Young-koo said at a luncheon meeting with the National
Assembly's intelligence committee members, 

Ko denied recent reports there had been activities such as
digging a special tunnel and construction of a reviewing stand,
which might indicate the possibility of a test.

 "We have been closely monitoring (the region) and there have
not been any signs that indicate this," Ko was quoted as saying
by Uri Party lawmaker Im Jong-in. He said the monitoring had
been in place since since the late 199os.

 Amid teetering hopes of an early resumption of the six-party
talks, North Korea announced earlier this week it had completed
withdrawing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods from its Yongbyon
nuclear plant. 

Ko said the government views the announcement as an attempt by
Pyongyang to add pressure on Washington to change its "hostile"
position by showcasing that its nuclear weapons are no bluff.

 The six-party talks, involving the two Koreas, the United
States, China, Japan and Russia, have been stalemated by a North
Korean boycott since the last round in June.

 The other members of the six-party talks have been coalescing
efforts to get North Korea back to the negotiation table, and
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill arrived in
Seoul yesterday for a four-day visit that will include talks
with Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon and his nuclear negotiations
counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon.

 The former U.S. ambassador, whose family is still here until
the end of the school term, visited South Korea barely a week
ago as part of his first tour around the key member countries
involved in the six-party talks.

 Song himself has just returned from a brief trip to Washington.

 Moves to deal with the North Korean standoff are expected to
accelerate with Hill's talks here and coming summit meetings.

 Hill will meet Song for an hour-long discussion Monday and then
call on Ban. Song and Hill will also meet next week at a ASEAN
meeting in Laos.

 Working-level talks between South Korea, China, Japan and
Russia are expected to continue, and Chinese President Hu Jintao
is believed to be firming up plans for a trip to Pyongyang,
Beijing's closest ally.

 Next month, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is slated to
meet U.S. President George Bush in Washington and Japanese Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Seoul.

 Roh held separate summits earlier this week with Hu and Russian
President Valdimir Putin while attending Moscow celebrations of
the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

 Japan is considering five-party talks to apply further
diplomatic pressure on North Korea if Pyongyang persists in its
boycott of the six-party negotiations, Foreign Minister Nobutaka
Machimura said yesterday.

 A Japanese Foreign Ministry official, speaking to reporters in
Tokyo on condition of anonymity, said that the five countries -
Japan, South Korea, Russia, the United States and China - had
not yet agreed on whether to hold such a meeting.

 "It's not that we have reached a consensus yet, but we are
considering various ideas," the official paraphrased Machimura
as telling reporters.

 In Washington, the Bush administration pledged Thursday to step
up its efforts to stem human rights abuses in North Korea and
said it would soon name a special envoy to deal with the issue.

 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a Senate
appropriations committee that more attention must be paid to the
worrisome rights record of a regime whose nuclear weapons
program has dominated headlines.

 "We've identified a special envoy for North Korean human
rights. There should be an announcement of that very soon," she
said.

 "We do need to shine more of a spotlight on the human rights
issues in North Korea," she said. "And we're working with
homeland security and with others about what we might be able to
do on North Korean refugees."

 The post of U.S. special envoy was mandated in the North Korean
Human Rights Act signed by President Bush nearly seven months
ago.

 Republican Senator Sam Brownback, sponsor of the legislation,
said, "There is probably no greater humanitarian crisis on the
Earth today than in North Korea." he cited estimates that 10
percent of the population had died from starvation or
deprivation in the past decade.

 On the nuclear front, the United States had little new to say
after North Korea reported Wednesday it had unloaded 8,000 spent
fuel rods from its Yongbyon reactor and planned to reprocess
them to make bombs.

 Rice reiterated her appeal to Pyongyang to avoid isolating
itself and rejoin the six-party talks.

 At the United Nations, Brazilian diplomat Sergio de Queiroz
Duarte, president of a month-long conference reviewing the 1968
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, said Thursday that delegates
have decided not to take a decision on whether North Korea is in
or out of the treaty.

 The U.S. television network ABC has sent a team of four
journalists into North Korea to report on the communist state's
efforts for its own market-based economic reforms, a government
official said in Seoul.

 State-run KBS television reported the journalists were planning
to interview North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and are expected to
spearhead a documentary about North Korea's market-based reforms
after July 2002.

By Lee Joo-hee and news reports

2005.05.14
 
*****************************************************************
 15 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Two Koreas to Talk Fertilizer, Nukes at Kaesong Meet
 
  Home> National/Politics    Updated May.15,2005 21:24 KST   
 
Don't Get Bogged Down in Fertilizer 
  
Talks between the two Koreas at the vice-ministerial level to be
held on Monday and Tuesday in Kaesong, North Korea will be the
first between the authorities of the two neighbors in 10 months.
The talks are the result of a telephone message from North
Korea¡¯s Senior Cabinet Councilor Kwon Ho-Ung, the head of the
country¡¯s delegation for ministerial-level talks, to South
Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young on Saturday. 

¡°Let us open talks out of a cherished desire to quickly
normalize the intra-Korean relationship,¡± the message said.
Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo will head the South
Korean delegation, while his Northern counterpart will be Kim
Man-gil, a deputy director at the North¡¯s Committee for the
Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland. 

A high-ranking government official said Sunday the talks would
focus on normalizing the relationship, on the nuclear dispute
and on humanitarian aid like fertilizer. North Korea asked for
an unprecedented 500,000 tons of fertilizer earlier this year.
¡°We place importance on the fertilizer request as a
humanitarian issue,¡± a high-ranking government official said,
indicating Seoul has effectively made up its mind to give the
fertilizer to Pyongyang. The South has been providing the North
with 200,000-300,000 tons of fertilizer a year. North Korea may
also bring up rice aid. 

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said the talks would also
help resolve the nuclear dispute, while a high-ranking official
said, ¡°North Korea is also probably not merely thinking of
resolving the fertilizer issue.¡± 

It remains to be seen how Pyongyang will react to Seoul¡¯s
attempt to make the Kaesong meet a stepping-stone toward the
resumption of intra-Korean ministerial-level talks and stalled
six-party nuclear disarmament talks. 

A government official said North Korea was evidently avoiding
extreme choices after it announced it has nuclear weapons and
shut down a nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, ostensibly to process
the spent fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium. ¡°In the end,
the North may fully return to the six-party talks,¡± the
official said. ¡°But it¡¯s also possible that it could ratchet
up tensions by provoking a number of crises.¡± 

Meanwhile, Japan¡¯s Asahi Shimbun daily reported Saturday an
official with the U.S. State Department¡¯s Asia Pacific Bureau
met with North Korea¡¯s UN deputy ambassador Han Sang-ryol last
week and discussed resumption of the six-party talks. This was
the first time the U.S. has used the ¡°New York channel¡± since
special envoy Joseph DeTrani met with North Korea¡¯s UN
delegation in December. 

(Ahn Yong-gyun, agon@chosun.com ) 

*****************************************************************
 16 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: No Future for Peninsula If North Has Nukes: Park
 
  Home> National/Politics    Updated May.15,2005 22:38 KST   
 
Grand National Party chairwoman Park Geun-hye said Sunday there
would be no future for the two Koreas if North Korea realizes
its nuclear ambitions. 

¡°It¡¯s important now to convince the North that it can gain
nothing with nuclear weapons,¡± Park told the Chosun Ilbo. ¡°We
have to send people to North Korea that can help resolve the
issue of trust with the North.¡± Asked if she herself was ready
to act in that role, she said, ¡°The government wouldn¡¯t make
me a special envoy... But I would serve in whatever capacity if
it helps resolve the nuclear dispute.¡± 

Park said the North would be miscalculating if it pursued its
nuclear arms program as a way of ensuring the safety of the
regime. ¡°The former Soviet Union had tons of nuclear weapons,
but did that guarantee its system?¡± she said. Park said as long
as the North has nuclear weapons, ¡°full-scale exchanges between
North and South Korea would be impossible. Neither North nor
South Korea would have a future. You need to be firm when it¡¯s
time to be firm.¡± 

Park said she would visit China around May 23 to discuss the
matter with Chinese leaders. 

(Hong Seok-jun, udo@chosun.com ) 

*****************************************************************
 17 BBC: N Korea to open talks with South
 
Last Updated: Saturday, 14 May, 2005
 
[Satellite image of North Korea's Yongbyon Nuclear Centre - 
archive picture]                               

North Korea says it has taken 8,000 rods from its Yongbyon 
reactor                                                            

North and South Korea are to hold talks next week after a 
10-month suspension. 

The North proposed the resumption, it said, "to put relations 
between the two Koreas on a normal track". 

Seoul accepted on Saturday, saying it wanted to discuss North 
Korea's nuclear programme, as well as relations between the two 
countries. 

The meetings, expected to begin on Monday, come as the world 
mounts pressure on Pyongyang to rejoin multi-party nuclear talks. 

On Friday, Japan proposed resuming the international talks, 
suspended since September, even if North Korea refuses to attend. 

The US and South Korea this week condemned Pyongyang's statement 
that it had successfully removed fuel rods from a nuclear reactor 
at Yongbyon. The rods can be treated to produce plutonium for use 
in nuclear weapons. 

There have also been reports that the communist state may be 
preparing a nuclear test. 

New hopes 

South Korean Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-Jo said there 
were hopes that this week's bilateral talks would lead to wider 
discussions. 

"We hope that the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue will help 
facilitate the efforts to reopen the six-party talks," he said. 

Pyongyang usually refuses to discuss its nuclear programme in 
talks with the South, demanding bilateral talks with the US 
instead. 

But the US declines to deal with North Korea directly, insisting 
negotiations are carried out through the six-party talks. 

Pyongyang has asked the South for hundreds of thousands of tonnes 
of fertilizer in aid, though the South has said official talks 
must resume first. 

The US and Japan have been hinting in recent weeks at more 
coercive measures against Pyongyang, but China and South Korea 
oppose sanctions and say more diplomacy is needed.                                                       



*****************************************************************
 18 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: U.S. Considers 5-Way Talks
 
  Home> National/Politics    Updated May.15,2005 18:05 KST   
 
Korean nuclear impasse, as the six-way nuclear disarmament talks
remain stalled. One method suggested is excluding the communist
country from the dialogue. 

The U.S. State Department continued to urge North Korea back to
the dialogue table. In a press briefing, Spokesman Richard
Boucher said Washington will consider Japan's suggestion that if
North Korea did not return to the negotiating table, talks
should restart with five nations without the North, the five
countries being South Korea, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia. 

But he said including North Korea is the best way. "Obviously,
as North Korea continues to stay away from the talks, people are
looking at what the other steps are that we can take. I think we
all continue to believe firmly that the best way to solve this
problem is through six-party talks and we're looking for North
Korea to come back serious to deal with the issues and to
eliminate the nuclear weapon program." 

Meanwhile, at the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan
also said dialogue is essential to ease the nuclear crisis. 

"On the North Koreans, the only thing is to try very hard, to
keep pressing to get the six-party talks back and I hope that
will be successful because that is the only game in town, as it
were." 

The six-way talks have been stalled since last June and nuclear
tension has flared up since February when North Korea claimed it
possessed nuclear weapons. 

Arirang TV 

*****************************************************************
 19 Xinhua: US envoy to push nuclear talks   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-14 15:14:10   

    BEIJING, May 14 -- A senior US envoy has urged North Korea
to return to the nuclear talks. 


    A senior US envoy has urged North Korea to return to the
nuclear talks, saying the US has no intention to attack North
Korea and is ready to hold dialogues within the framework of the
six-party talks. 

    U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill made the
remarks after arriving in Seoul to begin a four-day visit to
South Korea. 

    Hill will later meet with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban
Ki-moon and other officials for talks on resolving the nuclear
issue on the Korean peninsula. 

    Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the
six-party talks are the best way to solve the Korean Peninsula
nuclear issue. 

    (Source: CRIENGLISH.com)   

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 20 Xinhua: Inter-Korean dialogue to be resumed Monday   

  www.xinhuanet.com
    
  www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-14 19:41:07   

    SEOUL, May 14 (Xinhuanet) -- South Korea and the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) will hold dialogue next Monday
to discuss the nuclear issue on the peninsular and ways to get
inter-Korean relations back on track, reported Yonhap on
Saturday. 

    In announcing the resumption of the inter-Korean dialogue
that has been suspended since last summer, Vice Unification
Minister Rhee Bong-jo said he hopes the inter-Korean dialogue
will help resolve the deadlocked six-party talks on the nuclear
issue. 

    In a news briefing, Rhee said he will discuss ways to get
back on track stalled inter-Korean relations and convey the
position ofthe South Korea on the nuclear issue. 

    Also to be discussed are the resumption of meetings between
officials from the two Koreas' Red Cross organizations so as to
allow for family reunions for those separated by the nation's
division, he said. 

    South Korea will also make efforts to use the dialogue to
revive aggravated inter-Korean relations, Rhee said, noting it
will be the first inter-Korean dialogue in 10 months. Enditem   

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 21 Xinhua: US warns DPRK against conducting nuclear test   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-16 04:01:39   

    WASHINGTON, May 15 (Xinhuanet) -- US national security
adviser Stephen Hadley warned the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea (DPRK) on Sunday against possibly conducting a nuclear
test, saying such an act could prompt the United States and its
allies to take new punitive steps. 

    "We've seen some evidence that says that they may be
preparing for a nuclear test. We have talked to our allies about
that. Obviously that would be a serious step," Hadley said in an
interview with the "Fox News Sunday." 

    "If there is a nuclear test, obviously that will be a
defiance by North Korea of every member of the six-party talks,
including China. And we think at that point we will have to have
a serious conversation about other steps we can take," Hadley
said. 

    Hadley said the United States is still committed to the
six-party talks aimed at realizing the denuclearization of the
Korean peninsula. 

    "The six-party talks continues to be the right forum,
bringing together all those with leverage and influence on North
Korea and a common commitment that there will not be a nuclear
North Korea," Hadley said. 

    US media has reported that White House and Pentagon
officials are closely monitoring a recent stream of satellite
photographs of the DPRK that appear to show rapid, extensive
preparations for a nuclear weapons test. 

    China has hosted three rounds of the six-party talks in
Beijing.Enditem   

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 22 Zaobao.com: Six-party talks unlikely to be revived
 
2005-05-14  

¡´ By Charles F. Hawkins

The six-party talks are dead. Top officials in Beijing and 
Washington haven't said so publicly, but privately there is 
growing consensus that the stalled negotiations to end 
Pyongyang's nuclear proliferation are moribund and are unlikely 
to be revived.

        With the benefit of almost two years of hindsight, one 
may argue that the talks were destined to fail from the very 
beginning. But that's a bit of a stretch.

        China, for its part, made a serious effort to bring North 
Korea to heel. For a time this was successful, but not any 
longer. In the end, much to the consternation of Beijing's 
leaders, Kim Jong-Il proved intractable and uncooperative. 
Leaders in Washington feel the same frustration.

        The Bush administration stuck to a principled stance 
throughout: No bilateral negotiations; and complete, verifiable 
and irreversible dismantlement of nuclear weapon production 
capabilities. And all parties except North Korea agreed with it.

        A handful of notable and senior Chinese policy 
researchers agree with the strict approach adopted by the United 
States, although most have offered this opinion privately.      
Publicly Beijing still adheres to the Treaty of Friendship with 
North Korea, signed in 1961. Increasingly, however, this has 
become an albatross around Beijing's neck.

        ¡§I don't think you can be soft with North Korea,¡¨one 
Chinese analyst told me in mid-April. ¡§North Korea takes 
advantage of countries that are soft with it,¡¨he said. His wish 
was for China to take a tougher position against North Korea.

        Another Chinese colleague in Changchun argued¢wagain, 
privately¢wthat China and North Korea were in a virtual state of 
war. ¡§Relations are as bad as they have ever been,¡¨he said 
matter-of-factly, and observed, ¡§We once shared the same blood 
of battle, but it does no good today.¡¨

        Failure is a lonely child, and no one claims 
responsibility, yet there is plenty of finger pointing to assign 
blame. This comes down to one of two extremes. The talks are dead 
because either: One, the five negotiating partners of China, 
United States, Russia, Japan and South Korea could not speak with 
a single voice.¡§Impossible,¡¨declared one Chinese researcher in 
Harbin,¡§each country has its own interests to look after!¡¨Or, 
two, the United States and North Korea were unwilling to make 
concessions or compromise.

        Now is not the time for a post-mortem, however. What 
happens next matters a great deal and must claim the attention of 
all parties.

        We must acknowledge that former US Secretary of State 
Henry Kissinger's warning went unheeded: The process of 
negotiation has become a means of legitimising proliferation 
rather than averting it; and now, after too much time spent 
accomplishing too little, proliferation in North Korea has become 
irreversible.

        Nations in the region, indeed, in the world, must now 
accept that North Korea is a de facto nuclear state.

        This means that the negotiating partners China, United 
States, Russia, Japan and South Korea have incurred an ominous 
and ironic burden. The relatively small problem they could not 
solve in the six-party talks has now become a much larger problem 
that demands resolution. 

        If a collective, multilateral solution cannot be made to 
work, then individual states will develop solutions of their own, 
and these may weigh heavily with unpleasant consequences.

        In any event, it has been argued for some time that 
efforts to curb North Korea's nuclear proliferation did not look 
past the immediate issue to the larger issue of a regional 
security framework. 

        China, United States, Russia, Japan and South Korea must 
step back and reassess the strategic landscape, and this must be 
accomplished in consultation with one another. Failure must be 
acknowledged. So must the fact that war against North Korea is 
not an option.

        Interests and policy options of the five countries must 
be reconciled into a single policy to limit expansion of North 
Korea's nuclear arsenal. 

        Reconciliation of interests and policy options must also 
result in agreement on a unified approach to security interests 
in East Asia, including responsibility and accountability for 
specific actions in the event of crisis. 

        When all the stakeholders reach consensus then it will be 
time to invite North Korea to participate.

        Regardless of Pyongyang's response, at least its 
neighbours will be speaking with one voice this time.

The writer is a senior defence analyst in Washington, D.C. and a 
frequent visitor to Asia. He contributes this article to Lianhe 
Zaobao.

*****************************************************************
 23 Japan Times: How the U.S. courts a diplomatic fiasco

  Saturday, May 14, 2005   

 By TOM PLATE

LOS ANGELES -- The government of North Korea is difficult to
deal with, no matter who you are. Just ask China's leaders.
After all, they are Pyongyang's closest ally and yet they
probably find dealing with leader Kim Jong Il not a whole lot
more fun than their testy cross-strait exchanges with Taiwan's
feisty president.

 An exaggeration? Perhaps, but not categorically so. That's why
Chinese President Hu Jintao is expected, according to recent
reports, to travel to North Korea soon to see if he can sort out
a few issues with his North Korean buddies. Presumably, one
issue will be the North's policy of no longer showing up for the
six-party talks in Beijing, talks that the Chinese government
created, organized and hosted for three whole sessions.

 It would be rather unfriendly of Pyongyang to deflect a very
warm invitation from its only real big-time friend in the world,
would it not?

 At least the Hu government is making an effort and has not yet
been totally embarrassed by North Korea. But the same cannot be
said of the Bush administration. So far, this government -- the
one that opted to invade a Muslim-Arab country but evidently
prefers to negotiate with Stalinists -- has been outmaneuvered
virtually most of the way.

 The result is that North Korea recently test-fired yet another
missile and may have on hand as many as a half dozen or more
nukes. Then again, maybe it doesn't have any nukes at all and
the missile test was just part of its nerve-rattling public
show, as is the mysterious construction site that has caught the
eye of our spy satellites: Is it for a new missile launch or for
an underground nuclear test? The plain truth is that the United
States, its extensive and expensive electronic intelligence
apparatus notwithstanding, simply isn't sure.

 This is why Princeton or Harvard, in its justly famed
public-policy schools, needs to launch a new course for its
students titled something like "How to Take the United States
for a Total Ride." And perhaps the Kim of the North would
volunteer to teach it in the States? That would be something.

 It would also be something if State Department official John R.
Bolton were to attend that course, although the evidence
mounting at the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings
over his suitability to be the next American ambassador to the
United Nations suggests that listening to others isn't exactly
his most prominent character trait.

 Reflecting much of the attitude of the Bush administration
during most of its first four-year term, Bolton apparently makes
up his own mind on major issues without bothering to carefully
weigh available evidence, and tends to seek to silence
subordinates so that he won't have to hear anything in private
he disagrees with or see anything in the public media that he
finds disagreeable. All the while he says whatever the heck he
wants in public.

 Such intemperate unruliness reportedly inspired his betters in
the State Department a few years ago to all but order the
strong-willed Bolton not to make any speeches or give any
testimony unless every single word, phrase and inflection had
received prior approval. In effect, Bolton was being asked to be
a team player.

 But that is also not one of his major strengths -- and this
takes us back to the North Korean standoff. In the summer of
2003, Bolton delivered a speech about this admittedly difficult
country to an audience of mainly South Koreans at the Seoul
Hilton. The address reprised the hoary "evil empire" rhetoric
then in fashion, and it burned not only North Korean ears but
South Korean ones as well. At a time when everyone was searching
for a diplomatic way out of the nuclear impasse, here was a top
State Department official lobbing verbal grenades north.

 It turns out that the contents were quite upsetting to the U.S.
ambassador stationed in South Korea, Thomas Hubbard, one of the
hardest working and thoroughly respected diplomats America has
ever turned out. The otherwise pleasant Hubbard asked Bolton to
tone down his speech, noting that phrases like "tyrannical
dictator" (re: Kim) and "hellish nightmare" (re: the country)
would not exactly help China jump-start the six-party talks by
charming Pyongyang into participation.

 Indeed, the speech did not. And so in its time-honored,
inimitable, utterly alluring manner, the North Korean government
responded to Bolton by calling him "human scum" and complaining
to Beijing that -- you see, boss! -- America will not negotiate
in good faith and indeed was envisioning military action, thus
forcing North Korea to build up its deterrent.

 This was the amateur-hour Bush administration performing at its
worst. Now the world can only hope that China's President Hu
will save the diplomatic day. There is perhaps no more telling
and damning comment regarding American diplomacy on the Korean
Peninsula than the observation that it appears to have left it
all to China to sort out a major mess and save a fragile peace.

 University of California-Los Angeles professor Tom Plate is a
member of the Pacific Council on International Policy and the
director of UCLA's Media Center. Copyright Tom Plate 2005 

The Japan Times: May 14, 2005
*****************************************************************
 24 Guardian Unlimited: North Korea Distrustful of U.S. Overture
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday May 14, 2005 3:46 PM

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea said Saturday that
Washington's reassurances about recognizing its independence
were a trick meant to conceal a U.S. plan to topple the
communist government. 

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier this month that
``the United States, of course, recognizes that North Korea is
sovereign'' - a remark seen as a gesture to coax the North to
return to nuclear disarmament negotiations with five other
nations. 

Rice's ``loudmouthed recognition of the sovereign state and the
like were nothing but a ruse to conceal the U.S. attempt at
bringing down (North Korea's) regime,'' said an unidentified
spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry. 

The spokesman said Rice was either ``ignorant'' or a
``brazen-faced liar'' and criticized a ``U.S. attempt at a
military invasion'' of North Korea, the North's official Korean
Central News Agency reported. 

The communist state declared Feb. 10 that it has nuclear weapons
and would indefinitely boycott the six-nation disarmament talks
- involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and
Russia - until the United States dropped its ``hostile'' policy
toward it. Washington has repeatedly said it has no intention of
invading the North. 

The North's nuclear claim has not been verified, but U.S.
intelligence and other estimates say North Korea has as many as
six atomic weapons. 

The North Korean spokesman also blamed ``U.S. noncompliance''
for the collapse of a 1994 deal between the countries in which
North Korea agreed to stop its nuclear weapons development in
exchange for aid. 

In a separate commentary Saturday in the state-run Minju Joson
newspaper, the North said it would ``steadfastly keep to the
path of its own choice as urgently required by the reality.'' 

``The U.S. would be well-advised to clearly understand the
gravity of the situation and behave itself,'' said the
commentary, carried by KCNA. 

The current standoff was sparked in late 2002 after U.S.
officials accused North Korea of running a secret uranium
enrichment program. 

Also Saturday, the North asked South Korea to participate in
talks next week, which would be a resumption of their dialogue
after a 10-month hiatus, North Korea's news agency said. The
talks would be held Monday and Tuesday in the North Korean
border city of Kaesong. 

Southern officials will tell those from the North of growing
international concern about the nuclear standoff and will urge
Pyongyang to return to the six-nation talks that have been
stalled for nearly a year, officials in the South said. 

Dialogue between the two Koreas was suspended in July after mass
defections to South Korea from the North that Pyongyang labeled
kidnappings. 

``First, there will be discussions on measures to normalize
relations between the South and the North,'' Vice Unification
Minister Rhee Bong-jo told reporters. ``We will also convey our
position on the North Korean nuclear issue.'' 

Rhee will lead the South Korean delegation to the talks in
Kaesong, site of a joint economic zone run by both Koreas.	 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 25 Korea Times: Efforts for 6-Party Talks Picking Up Steam 

Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Nation   

By Ryu Jin Staff Reporter

 Diplomatic efforts to restart the six-party talks on North
Korea¡¯s nuclear issue are picking up speed amid signs that
direct dialogue channels with the reclusive nation could be
utilized as a means to persuade the North to return to the
negotiation table.

 While North Korea agreed to reopen government-level talks with
the South on Saturday, one of its diplomats in New York had a
telephone conversation with a senior U.S. official on the
nuclear issue last week, according to news reports.

 After a 10-month hiatus, the two Koreas are set to hold
bilateral talks on May 16-17 in the North¡¯s city of Kaesong,
which Seoul said it would use to persuade Pyongyang to return to
the six-party talks that have been stalled for almost the same
period of time since last June.

 South Korean officials and experts said, although the
resumption of the inter-Korean talks would not directly mean the
North¡¯s immediate return to the multilateral nuclear talks,
there are hopes it could ``foster better atmosphere¡¯¡¯ to get
the six-party process restarted.

 ``I believe this bilateral talks could create a positive mood
for the nuclear talks,¡¯¡¯ Rhee, who will lead the three-member
South Korean delegation, told reporters in a news conference.

 Chong Wa Dae, the presidential office, attached no less
significance to the news.

 ``It is significant not only because it means the resumption of
inter-Korean dialogue but also because it would be a useful
channel to directly persuade North Korea to come back to the
six-party talks,¡¯¡¯ presidential spokesman Kim Man-soo said.

 Along with the inter-Korean talks, a possible informal contact
in New York between the main antagonists _ the U.S. and North
Korea _ is also drawing attention as a preparation session
before restarting the real negotiations in the six-party talks.

 A senior U.S. State Department official held telephone talks
last week with Han Song-ryol, North Korea¡¯s deputy ambassador
to the United Nations, according to Japan¡¯s Asahi Shimbun
newspaper.

 Quoting unnamed sources, including U.S. government officials in
Washington, the daily said it was the first contact between the
U.S. and North Korea since early December. No details of the
talks were made available, but it followed a State Department
official¡¯s remarks earlier last week.

 ``The New York channel obviously exists and it remains open,
and we¡¯ll use it when we deem it appropriate, as we have in the
past,¡¯¡¯ acting spokesman Tom Casey told a news briefing last
Tuesday.

 Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state and the U.S.
point man on the nuclear issue, will hold talks with his South
Korean counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, today
to discuss strategies to deal with the latest developments on
the Korean Peninsula.

 Hill, who arrived in Seoul last Friday, met Minister of Foreign
Affairs and Trade Ban Ki-moon on Saturday after South Korea
received a telegram on the cross-border talks from the North
earlier in the day. 

jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr 05-15-2005 17:27         
*****************************************************************
 26 Korea Times: Annan Stresses 6-Party Talks for NK Nuke Deadlock 

Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Nation   

NEW YORK (Yonhap) - United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan
on Friday stressed the importance of the six-party talks in
dealing with the North Korean nuclear crisis.

 ``The only thing is to keep pressing to get the six-party talks
back, and I hope that will be successful because that is the
only game in town,¡¯¡¯ Annan told reporters at the UN's
headquarters.

 Annan made the remarks amid the recent disclosures from
Pyongyang that it has finished extracting 8,000 spent fuel rods
from a nuclear plant. 

``We have also tried to get them (North Korea) to realize the
economic gains they would make if they were to comply and to
cooperate with the international community,¡¯¡¯ the UN head said.

 ``I think the long-term economic prospects after they have
resolved this should be a real inducement for them to
cooperate,¡¯¡¯ he added.

 The secretary general also expressed concern for the lagging
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) conference, which,
according to Annan, took two weeks for the members to merely
agree on an agenda.

 Recent developments in North Korea ``indicate the importance of
this conference and the need for member-states to focus on this
NPT conference and try and strengthen it and make progress,¡¯¡¯
Annan said. 

North Korea, at the center of a 31-month nuclear standoff,
withdrew from the NPT in 2003. 
05-15-2005 17:29         
  
*****************************************************************
 27 Korea Times: Resuming Inter-Korean Dialogue 

Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Opinion   

 Expectations High on Breakthrough in Nuclear Impasse   

An abrupt turnaround in the recent chilly relationship between
two Koreas will bring their vice ministers together Monday and
Tuesday. The governmental dialogue for the first time in 10
months was rather unexpected because of escalating tension on
the Korean Peninsula. There have been rumors about the North¡¯s
impending nuclear test, sparking the exchange of verbal attacks
between Seoul and Pyongyang. Excessive expectations may be
premature, but both sides have every reason to wish for the
talks¡¯ success. 

Inter-Korean dialogues have been suspended since last July,
because of the mass defection of North Koreans to the South and
Seoul¡¯s refusal to let South Koreans visit the North on the
10th anniversary of Kim Il-sung¡¯s death. These, however, may be
minor, ostensible reasons. Pyongyang has been getting what it
needs by separating the economy from politics. So it should be
noted the working-group meeting is held in the industrial border
town of Kaesong, and amid increasing possibility for direct
Pyongyang-Washington talks. 

The shrewd communist regime has always sought big rewards of
security assurance, diplomatic recognition and economic aids
from the U.S., while reaping smaller benefits from Seoul for
subsistence. This time, too, Pyongyang¡¯s most urgent need may
be timely fertilizer aids from the South, without which it could
face another disastrous famine. The fifth anniversary of
inter-Korean summit on June 15 may be another burden on
Pyongyang in view of the various commemorative events planned on
private levels. 

As to the nuclear issue, the North may likely avoid serious
discussion with the South. Pyongyang may even seek Seoul¡¯s
support for its position under the expedient slogan of ``joint
stance among Koreans.¡¯¡¯ If and when the North Korean officials
find it useless to test the South by putting it to a dilemma
between diplomatic and humanitarian concerns, they may pay a lip
service to the nuclear problem and go ahead with seeking
realistic gains. But the double-track strategy seems to have far
outlived its efficacy.

 Seoul should make clear it would no longer be deceived by
Pyongyang, either knowingly or not. It needs to refute that the
``national common stance¡¯¡¯ is not just for Pyongyang¡¯s
selfish interests while putting such vital issues as the
security of the whole peninsula at risk. Security concerns can
hardly be bartered with humanitarian aids alone and nothing is
more crucial than the safety of all Koreans. The utmost priority
of the upcoming talks should be on the nuclear crisis. 

Pyongyang criticizes Washington for forestalling the six-way
talks, but escalating nuclear blackmailing will bring no higher
moral grounds on it, either. It should make responsible
commitment on nuclear programs, based on which the two Koreas
can try to restore political, economic and defense dialogues. 
05-15-2005 17:06         
  

*****************************************************************
 28 Apocalypse Soon: Bush's Nuclear Madness (by Robert McNamara)
 
Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 21:05:25 -0500 (CDT)

 
Subject: Apocalypse Soon: Bush's Nuclear Madness (by Robert McNamara)

KEY EXCERPTS FROM ROBERT MCMANARA'S ARTICLE BELOW:

"THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM, ALONGSIDE ITS REFUSAL TO
RATIFY THE CTBT, WILL BE VIEWED, WITH REASON, BY MANY NATIONS AS
EQUIVALENT TO A U.S. BREAK FROM THE TREATY. IT SAYS TO THE NONNUCLEAR
WEAPONS NATIONS, "WE, WITH THE STRONGEST CONVENTIONAL MILITARY FORCE
IN THE WORLD, [STILL] REQUIRE NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN PERPETUITY, BUT YOU,
FACING POTENTIALLY WELL-ARMED OPPONENTS, ARE NEVER TO BE ALLOWED EVEN
ONE NUCLEAR WEAPON."

"IF THE UNITED STATES CONTINUES ITS CURRENT NUCLEAR STANCE, over time,
substantial proliferation of nuclear weapons will almost surely follow.
Some, or all, of such nations as Egypt, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and
Taiwan will very likely initiate nuclear weapons programs, increasing
both the risk of use of the weapons and the diversion of weapons and
fissile materials into the hands of rogue states or terrorists..

"The statement that our [U.S.] nuclear weapons do not target
populations per se was, and remains, totally misleading in the sense
that the so-called collateral damage of large nuclear strikes would
include *tens of millions* of innocent civilian dead."

"[Many past US leaders] felt..that preserving the U.S. option of
launching a first strike was necessary for the sake of keeping the
Soviets at bay. What is shocking is that today, more than a decade
after the end of the Cold War, the basic U.S. nuclear policy is
unchanged. It has not adapted to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Plans and procedures have not been revised to make the United States or
other countries less likely to push the button. At a minimum, we should
remove all strategic nuclear weapons from "hair-trigger" alert, as
others have recommended, including Gen. George Lee Butler.."

" The United States is focused, for understandable reasons, on
persuading North Korea to rejoin the treaty and on negotiating deeper
constraints on Iran's nuclear ambitions. Those states must be
convinced to keep the promises they made when they originally signed
the NPT -- that they would not build nuclear weapons in return for
access to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But the attention of many
nations, including some potential new nuclear weapons states, is also
on the United States. Keeping such large numbers of weapons, and
maintaining them on hair-trigger alert, are potent signs that the
United States is not seriously working toward the elimination of its
arsenal and raises troubling questions as to why any other state should
restrain its nuclear ambitions."

"..human beings are fallible. In conventional war, mistakes cost lives,
sometimes thousands of lives.  However, if mistakes were to affect
decisions relating to the use of nuclear forces, there would be no
learning curve. They would result in the destruction of nations. The
indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons carries
a very high risk of nuclear catastrophe. There is no way to reduce the
risk to acceptable levels, other than to first eliminate the
hair-trigger alert policy and later to eliminate or nearly eliminate
nuclear weapons.

FULL ARTICLE FROM FOREIGNPOLICY.COM FOLLOWS:

Apocalypse Soon
By Robert S. McNamara

Page 1 of 5
May/June 2005

Robert McNamara is worried. He knows how close we've come. His
counsel helped the Kennedy administration avert nuclear catastrophe
during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, he believes the United States
must no longer rely on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. To do
so is immoral, illegal, and dreadfully dangerous.

-------------------

It is time -- well past time, in my view -- for the United States to
cease its Cold War-style reliance on nuclear weapons as a
foreign-policy tool. At the risk of appearing simplistic and
provocative, I would characterize current U.S. nuclear weapons policy
as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous.
The risk of an accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch is unacceptably
high. Far from reducing these risks, the Bush administration has
signaled that it is committed to keeping the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a
mainstay of its military power -- a commitment that is simultaneously
eroding the international norms that have limited the spread of nuclear
weapons and fissile materials for 50 years. Much of the current U.S.
nuclear policy has been in place since before I was secretary of
defense, and it has only grown more dangerous and diplomatically
destructive in the intervening years.

Today, the United States has deployed approximately 4,500 strategic,
offensive nuclear warheads. Russia has roughly 3,800. The strategic
forces of Britain, France, and China are considerably smaller, with
200B400 nuclear weapons in each state's arsenal. The new nuclear
states of Pakistan and India have fewer than 100 weapons each. North
Korea now claims to have developed nuclear weapons, and U.S.
intelligence agencies estimate that Pyongyang has enough fissile
material for 2B8 bombs.

How destructive are these weapons? The average U.S. warhead has a
destructive power 20 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. Of the 8,000
active or operational U.S. warheads, 2,000 are on hair-trigger alert,
ready to be launched on 15 minutes' warning. How are these weapons to
be used? The United States has never endorsed the policy of "no first
use," not during my seven years as secretary or since. We have been
and remain prepared to initiate the use of nuclear weapons -- by the
decision of one person, the president -- against either a nuclear or
nonnuclear enemy whenever we believe it is in our interest to do so.
For decades, U.S. nuclear forces have been sufficiently strong to
absorb a first strike and then inflict "unacceptable" damage on an
opponent. This has been and (so long as we face a nuclear-armed,
potential adversary) must continue to be the foundation of our nuclear
deterrent.

In my time as secretary of defense, the commander of the U.S. Strategic
Air Command (SAC) carried with him a secure telephone, no matter where
he went, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The
telephone of the commander, whose headquarters were in Omaha, Nebraska,
was linked to the underground command post of the North American
Defense Command, deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado, and to the
U.S. president, wherever he happened to be. The president always had at
hand nuclear release codes in the so-called football, a briefcase
carried for the president at all times by a U.S. military officer.

The SAC commander's orders were to answer the telephone by no later
than the end of the third ring. If it rang, and he was informed that a
nuclear attack of enemy ballistic missiles appeared to be under way, he
was allowed 2 to 3 minutes to decide whether the warning was valid
(over the years, the United States has received many false warnings),
and if so, how the United States should respond. He was then given
approximately 10 minutes to determine what to recommend, to locate and
advise the president, permit the president to discuss the situation
with two or three close advisors (presumably the secretary of defense
and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), and to receive the
president's decision and pass it immediately, along with the codes,
to the launch sites. The president essentially had two options: He
could decide to ride out the attack and defer until later any decision
to launch a retaliatory strike. Or, he could order an immediate
retaliatory strike, from a menu of options, thereby launching U.S.
weapons that were targeted on the opponent's military-industrial
assets. Our opponents in Moscow presumably had and have similar
arrangements.

The whole situation seems so bizarre as to be beyond belief. On any
given day, as we go about our business, the president is prepared to
make a decision within 20 minutes that could launch one of the most
devastating weapons in the world. To declare war requires an act of
congress, but to launch a nuclear holocaust requires 20 minutes'
deliberation by the president and his advisors. But that is what we
have lived with for 40 years. With very few changes, this system
remains largely intact, including the "football," the president's
constant companion.

I was able to change some of these dangerous policies and procedures.
My colleagues and I started arms control talks; we installed safeguards
to reduce the risk of unauthorized launches; we added options to the
nuclear war plans so that the president did not have to choose between
an all-or-nothing response, and we eliminated the vulnerable and
provocative nuclear missiles in Turkey. I wish I had done more, but we
were in the midst of the Cold War, and our options were limited.

The United States and our NATO allies faced a strong Soviet and Warsaw
Pact conventional threat. Many of the allies (and some in Washington as
well) felt strongly that preserving the U.S. option of launching a
first strike was necessary for the sake of keeping the Soviets at bay.
What is shocking is that today, more than a decade after the end of the
Cold War, the basic U.S. nuclear policy is unchanged. It has not
adapted to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Plans and procedures have
not been revised to make the United States or other countries less
likely to push the button. At a minimum, we should remove all strategic
nuclear weapons from "hair-trigger" alert, as others have
recommended, including Gen. George Lee Butler, the last commander of
SAC. That simple change would greatly reduce the risk of an accidental
nuclear launch. It would also signal to other states that the United
States is taking steps to end its reliance on nuclear weapons.

We pledged to work in good faith toward the eventual elimination of
nuclear arsenals when we negotiated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) in 1968. In May, diplomats from more than 180 nations are
meeting in New York City to review the NPT and assess whether members
are living up to the agreement. The United States is focused, for
understandable reasons, on persuading North Korea to rejoin the treaty
and on negotiating deeper constraints on Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Those states must be convinced to keep the promises they made when they
originally signed the NPT -- that they would not build nuclear weapons
in return for access to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But the
attention of many nations, including some potential new nuclear weapons
states, is also on the United States. Keeping such large numbers of
weapons, and maintaining them on hair-trigger alert, are potent signs
that the United States is not seriously working toward the elimination
of its arsenal and raises troubling questions as to why any other state
should restrain its nuclear ambitions.

A Preview of the Apocalypse

The destructive power of nuclear weapons is well known, but given the
United States' continued reliance on them, it's worth remembering
the danger they present. A 2000 report by the International Physicians
for the Prevention of Nuclear War describes the likely effects of a
single 1 megaton weapon -- dozens of which are contained in the Russian
and U.S. inventories. At ground zero, the explosion creates a crater
300 feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter. Within one second, the
atmosphere itself ignites into a fireball more than a half-mile in
diameter. The surface of the fireball radiates nearly three times the
light and heat of a comparable area of the surface of the sun,
extinguishing in seconds all life below and radiating outward at the
speed of light, causing instantaneous severe burns to people within one
to three miles. A blast wave of compressed air reaches a distance of
three miles in about 12 seconds, flattening factories and commercial
buildings. Debris carried by winds of 250 mph inflicts lethal injuries
throughout the area. At least 50 percent of people in the area die
immediately, prior to any injuries from radiation or the developing
firestorm.

Of course, our knowledge of these effects is not entirely hypothetical.
Nuclear weapons, with roughly one seventieth of the power of the 1
megaton bomb just described, were twice used by the United States in
August 1945. One atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Around 80,000
people died immediately; approximately 200,000 died eventually. Later,
a similar size bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. On Nov. 7, 1995, the mayor
of Nagasaki recalled his memory of the attack in testimony to the
International Court of Justice:

QUOTE:

    Nagasaki became a city of death where not even the sound of insects
could be heard. After a while, countless men, women and children began
to gather for a drink of water at the banks of nearby Urakami River,
their hair and clothing scorched and their burnt skin hanging off in
sheets like rags. Begging for help they died one after another in the
water or in heaps on the banks.B Four months after the atomic
bombing, 74,000 people were dead, and 75,000 had suffered injuries,
that is, two-thirds of the city population had fallen victim to this
calamity that came upon Nagasaki like a preview of the Apocalypse.

END QUOTE.

Why did so many civilians have to die? Because the civilians, who made
up nearly 100 percent of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were
unfortunately "co-located" with Japanese military and industrial
targets. Their annihilation, though not the objective of those dropping
the bombs, was an inevitable result of the choice of those targets. It
is worth noting that during the Cold War, the United States reportedly
had dozens of nuclear warheads targeted on Moscow alone, because it
contained so many military targets and so much "industrial
capacity."

Presumably, the Soviets similarly targeted many U.S. cities. The
statement that our nuclear weapons do not target populations per se was
and remains totally misleading in the sense that the so-called
collateral damage of large nuclear strikes would include tens of
millions of innocent civilian dead.

This in a nutshell is what nuclear weapons do: They indiscriminately
blast, burn, and irradiate with a speed and finality that are almost
incomprehensible. This is exactly what countries like the United States
and Russia, with nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, continue to
threaten every minute of every day in this new 21st century.

No Way To Win

I have worked on issues relating to U.S. and NATO nuclear strategy and
war plans for more than 40 years. During that time, I have never seen a
piece of paper that outlined a plan for the United States or NATO to
initiate the use of nuclear weapons with any benefit for the United
States or NATO. I have made this statement in front of audiences,
including NATO defense ministers and senior military leaders, many
times. No one has ever refuted it. To launch weapons against a
nuclear-equipped opponent would be suicidal. To do so against a
nonnuclear enemy would be militarily unnecessary, morally repugnant,
and politically indefensible.

I reached these conclusions very soon after becoming secretary of
defense. Although I believe Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon
Johnson shared my view, it was impossible for any of us to make such
statements publicly because they were totally contrary to established
NATO policy. After leaving the Defense Department, I became president
of the World Bank. During my 13-year tenure, from 1968 to 1981, I was
prohibited, as an employee of an international institution, from
commenting publicly on issues of U.S. national security. After my
retirement from the bank, I began to reflect on how I, with seven
years' experience as secretary of defense, might contribute to an
understanding of the issues with which I began my public service
career.

At that time, much was being said and written regarding how the United
States could, and why it should, be able to fight and win a nuclear war
with the Soviets. This view implied, of course, that nuclear weapons
did have military utility; that they could be used in battle with
ultimate gain to whoever had the largest force or used them with the
greatest acumen. Having studied these views, I decided to go public
with some information that I knew would be controversial, but that I
felt was needed to inject reality into these increasingly unreal
discussions about the military utility of nuclear weapons. In articles
and speeches, I criticized the fundamentally flawed assumption that
nuclear weapons could be used in some limited way. There is no way to
effectively contain a nuclear strike -- to keep it from inflicting
enormous destruction on civilian life and property, and there is no
guarantee against unlimited escalation once the first nuclear strike
occurs. We cannot avoid the serious and unacceptable risk of nuclear
war until we recognize these facts and base our military plans and
policies upon this recognition. I hold these views even more strongly
today than I did when I first spoke out against the nuclear dangers our
policies were creating. I know from direct experience that U.S. nuclear
policy today creates unacceptable risks to other nations and to our
own.

What Castro Taught Us

Among the costs of maintaining nuclear weapons is the risk -- to me an
unacceptable risk -- of use of the weapons either by accident or as a
result of misjudgment or miscalculation in times of crisis. The Cuban
Missile Crisis demonstrated that the United States and the Soviet
Union -- and indeed the rest of the world -- came within a hair's
breadth of nuclear disaster in October 1962.

Indeed, according to former Soviet military leaders, at the height of
the crisis, Soviet forces in Cuba possessed 162 nuclear warheads,
including at least 90 tactical warheads. At about the same time, Cuban
President Fidel Castro asked the Soviet ambassador to Cuba to send a
cable to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stating that Castro urged him
to counter a U.S. attack with a nuclear response. Clearly, there was a
high risk that in the face of a U.S. attack, which many in the U.S.
government were prepared to recommend to President Kennedy, the Soviet
forces in Cuba would have decided to use their nuclear weapons rather
than lose them. Only a few years ago did we learn that the four Soviet
submarines trailing the U.S. Naval vessels near Cuba each carried
torpedoes with nuclear warheads. Each of the sub commanders had the
authority to launch his torpedoes. The situation was even more
frightening because, as the lead commander recounted to me, the subs
were out of communication with their Soviet bases, and they continued
their patrols for four days after Khrushchev announced the withdrawal
of the missiles from Cuba.

The lesson, if it had not been clear before, was made so at a
conference on the crisis held in Havana in 1992, when we first began to
learn from former Soviet officials about their preparations for nuclear
war in the event of a U.S. invasion. Near the end of that meeting, I
asked Castro whether he would have recommended that Khrushchev use the
weapons in the face of a U.S. invasion, and if so, how he thought the
United States would respond. "We started from the assumption that if
there was an invasion of Cuba, nuclear war would erupt," Castro
replied. "We were certain of thatB. [W]e would be forced to pay the
price that we would disappear." He continued, "Would I have been
ready to use nuclear weapons? Yes, I would have agreed to the use of
nuclear weapons." And he added, "If Mr. McNamara or Mr. Kennedy had
been in our place, and had their country been invaded, or their country
was going to be occupied B I believe they would have used tactical
nuclear weapons."

I hope that President Kennedy and I would not have behaved as Castro
suggested we would have. His decision would have destroyed his country.
Had we responded in a similar way the damage to the United States would
have been unthinkable. But human beings are fallible. In conventional
war, mistakes cost lives, sometimes thousands of lives. However, if
mistakes were to affect decisions relating to the use of nuclear
forces, there would be no learning curve. They would result in the
destruction of nations. The indefinite combination of human fallibility
and nuclear weapons carries a very high risk of nuclear catastrophe.
There is no way to reduce the risk to acceptable levels, other than to
first eliminate the hair-trigger alert policy and later to eliminate or
nearly eliminate nuclear weapons. The United States should move
immediately to institute these actions, in cooperation with Russia.
That is the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

A Dangerous Obsession

On Nov. 13, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that he had told
Russian President Vladimir Putin that the United States would reduce
"operationally deployed nuclear warheads" from approximately 5,300
to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade. This scaling
back would approach the 1,500 to 2,200 range that Putin had proposed
for Russia. However, the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture
Review, mandated by the U.S. Congress and issued in January 2002,
presents quite a different story. It assumes that strategic offensive
nuclear weapons in much larger numbers than 1,700 to 2,200 will be part
of U.S. military forces for the next several decades. Although the
number of deployed warheads will be reduced to 3,800 in 2007 and to
between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012, the warheads and many of the launch
vehicles taken off deployment will be maintained in a "responsive"
reserve from which they could be moved back to the operationally
deployed force. The Nuclear Posture Review received little attention
from the media. But its emphasis on strategic offensive nuclear weapons
deserves vigorous public scrutiny. Although any proposed reduction is
welcome, it is doubtful that survivors -- if there were any -- of an
exchange of 3,200 warheads (the U.S. and Russian numbers projected for
2012), with a destructive power approximately 65,000 times that of the
Hiroshima bomb, could detect a difference between the effects of such
an exchange and one that would result from the launch of the current
U.S. and Russian forces totaling about 12,000 warheads.

In addition to projecting the deployment of large numbers of strategic
nuclear weapons far into the future, the Bush administration is
planning an extensive and expensive series of programs to sustain and
modernize the existing nuclear force and to begin studies for new
launch vehicles, as well as new warheads for all of the launch
platforms. Some members of the administration have called for new
nuclear weapons that could be used as bunker busters against
underground shelters (such as the shelters Saddam Hussein used in
Baghdad). New production facilities for fissile materials would need to
be built to support the expanded force. The plans provide for
integrating a national ballistic missile defense into the new triad of
offensive weapons to enhance the nation's ability to use its "power
projection forces" by improving our ability to counterattack an
enemy. The Bush administration also announced that it has no intention
to ask congress to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT),
and, though no decision to test has been made, the administration has
ordered the national laboratories to begin research on new nuclear
weapons designs and to prepare the underground test sites in Nevada for
nuclear tests if necessary in the future. Clearly, the Bush
administration assumes that nuclear weapons will be part of U.S.
military forces for at least the next several decades.

Good faith participation in international negotiation on nuclear
disarmament -- including participation in the CTBT -- is a legal and
political obligation of all parties to the NPT that entered into force
in 1970 and was extended indefinitely in 1995. The Bush
administration's nuclear program, alongside its refusal to ratify the
CTBT, will be viewed, with reason, by many nations as equivalent to a
U.S. break from the treaty. It says to the nonnuclear weapons nations,
"We, with the strongest conventional military force in the world,
require nuclear weapons in perpetuity, but you, facing potentially
well-armed opponents, are never to be allowed even one nuclear
weapon."

If the United States continues its current nuclear stance, over time,
substantial proliferation of nuclear weapons will almost surely follow.
Some, or all, of such nations as Egypt, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and
Taiwan will very likely initiate nuclear weapons programs, increasing
both the risk of use of the weapons and the diversion of weapons and
fissile materials into the hands of rogue states or terrorists.
Diplomats and intelligence agencies believe Osama bin Laden has made
several attempts to acquire nuclear weapons or fissile materials. It
has been widely reported that Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, former
director of Pakistan's nuclear reactor complex, met with bin Laden
several times. Were al Qaeda to acquire fissile materials, especially
enriched uranium, its ability to produce nuclear weapons would be
great. The knowledge of how to construct a simple gun-type nuclear
device, like the one we dropped on Hiroshima, is now widespread.
Experts have little doubt that terrorists could construct such a
primitive device if they acquired the requisite enriched uranium
material. Indeed, just last summer, at a meeting of the National
Academy of Sciences, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry said,
"I have never been more fearful of a nuclear detonation than now.B
There is a greater than 50 percent probability of a nuclear strike on
U.S. targets within a decade." I share his fears.

A Moment of Decision

We are at a critical moment in human history -- perhaps not as dramatic
as that of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but a moment no less crucial.
Neither the Bush administration, the congress, the American people, nor
the people of other nations have debated the merits of alternative,
long-range nuclear weapons policies for their countries or the world.
They have not examined the military utility of the weapons; the risk of
inadvertent or accidental use; the moral and legal considerations
relating to the use or threat of use of the weapons; or the impact of
current policies on proliferation. Such debates are long overdue. If
they are held, I believe they will conclude, as have I and an
increasing number of senior military leaders, politicians, and civilian
security experts: We must move promptly toward the elimination -- or
near elimination -- of all nuclear weapons. For many, there is a strong
temptation to cling to the strategies of the past 40 years. But to do
so would be a serious mistake leading to unacceptable risks for all
nations.

Robert S. McNamara was U.S. secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968 and
president of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2829&page=0

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 29 Oakland Tribune: Support continues to erode for penetrating nuclear weapons

Article Last Updated: 05/14/2005 03:44:54 AM                              
                 
House Republicans yank authority and money for bunker-buster 
project
 			 			 			 			 			 			 
  By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER   

In a two-pronged assault Thursday, congressional critics of a 
bunker-busting H-bomb denied permission for the U.S. Energy 
Department to experiment on the weapon and at the same time 
eliminated money for those experiments. 

With the Senate expected to clear the weapon, the House maneuvers 
don't necessarily spell an end for the Robust Nuclear Earth 
Penetrator. 

But the decisions of two Republican-led committees suggest the 
administration is losing support for adding a newly modified bomb 
to the U.S. arsenal. 

"What this says is that support for the Robust Nuclear Earth 
Penetrator continues to erode," said Daryl Kimball, executive 
director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C. "The 
proponents for RNEP will have a more difficult time sustaining a 
program" in the face of opposition from two key committees. 

Weapons scientists at Lawrence Livermore and Sandia labs in 
California were halted last year from testing a rough design of 
the bomb, intended as a last-resort threat to the hardened 
underground hideaways of foreign adversaries and their weaponry. 

Scientists believe they've designed the world's most rugged 
weapon of mass destruction, capable of plunging the equivalent of 
a million tons of TNT into solid rock and sending seismic shock 
waves 1,000 feet down to crush bunkers and tunnels. They want to 
replace the bomb's nuclear explosive with sensitive instruments 
and sling it with a rocket into a block of concrete to test its 
survival in rock. 

The Bush administration is making its strongest push to date for 
such a bomb, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld making a 
personal pitch to key lawmakers, according to congressional 
aides. 

But the administration's promotion of the nuclear penetrator 
comes as diplomats debating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty 
accuse the United States of not doing enough to reduce its 
reliance on nuclear arms. 

Opponents also gained support from a recent National Academy of 
Sciences study concluding that while the penetrator could destroy 
deep bunkers — assuming they could be targeted accurately — it 
also could kill a million or more people on the surface with its 
blast and radioactive fallout. 

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, and Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C.,
persuaded a House Armed Services subcommittee to take spending
authority on the weapon away from the Energy Department and give
it to the Defense Department, for experiments on generic
bunker-busting weapons, not necessarily nuclear ones. 

"I continue to vehemently oppose using taxpayer dollars to fund
a RNEP weapon that poses tremendous and unpredictable risks,"
Tauscher said in a statement. 				 				 					 					 					 				  
				 				 					 					 				 She said the deal with House
Republicans "stymies the Bush administration's effort to create
new nuclear weapons over the objections of Congress and provides
our military with resources to continue defeating conventional
'bunker busters.'" 

In practice, government officials say, the deal could bar
nuclear bunker-buster experiments at Energy Department
facilities but allow them at military facilities. 

But the Tauscher-Spratt deal marks the first time in three years
that opponents of the weapon have curtailed government authority
to work on it. David Culp, who monitors nuclear-weapons matters
for a Quaker group, the Friends Committee on National
Legislation, said Republicans 				 				 					 					 					 				  
				 				 					 					 				 realized backing for the bomb was
falling apart. 

"So rather than risk having a vote and being defeated on the
floor, they did it themselves," he said. 

© 2005 ANG Newspapers 							 							 							 							 						
*****************************************************************
 30 Paducah Sun: Editorial: Old Alternative
 
Paducah, Kentucky 

Friday, May 13, 2005 

The search for alternative energy sources to replace
pollution-emitting fuels preoccupies environmentalists and their
political allies in Washington. 

But the environmentalists' quest for cleaner air and less
dependence on fossil fuels never leads them to a practical and
proven alternative to pollution-belching coal-fired power
plants: nuclear power. 

The nuclear option is still off the table, more than 25 years
after the accident at Three Mile Island stirred public fears and
prompted activists to launch a crusade against nuclear power. 

Environmentalists continue to tout "renewable" energy sources
such as solar power and wind power. The technology to harness
solar energy and wind power has existed for years, but despite
government efforts to promote these renewable energy sources
they remain a negligible part of the total power market. 

Even pro-business Republicans favor the development of
alternatives to existing power-generating facilities. But most
of their attention seems to be focused on emerging technologies
such as coal gasification, which still hasn't been tried on a
large scale. 

Recently, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., introduced a bill
that would provide $4 billion in construction assistance, loan
guarantees and tax incentives to promote clean-coal technology.
The coal gasification process removes pollutants and, in
environmental terms, provides a far superior alternative to
conventional coal-fired plants. 

Still, environmentalists reject clean-coal power facilities,
arguing that renewable energy sources are a better choice. And
they question why the taxpayers should invest in the technology,
instead of the power companies. 

That's a question market-oriented conservatives should consider.
If a new energy technology is viable, it should attract a
significant amount of private investment. 

But environmentalists aren't interested in protecting taxpayers
or allowing the market to sort out energy alternatives. They
want the government to continue to subsidize impractical
alternatives such as solar power. Ironically, Alexander's
proposal also includes measures to promote solar energy. 

Even scientific specialists who warn of the dangers of global
warming see serious limits to the potential of the current
renewable energy technology. 

An article in The New Yorker magazine describes the work of two
Princeton University professors who are exploring the problem of
how to "stabilize" worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases. 

Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala examined various methods for
reducing emissions, including solar power and wind electricity.
According to the author of the article, Elizabeth Kolbert, the
professors concluded that photovoltaic installations covering an
area the size of Connecticut would be needed to significantly
reduce carbon emissions. 

As for wind power, they estimated it would take at least one
million turbines to produce a "wedge" that helps stabilize
emissions. 

The drawbacks of various energy alternatives should lead both
environmentalists and conservatives to reconsider the original
breakthrough in alternative energy. 

Nuclear plants have been safely generating power all over the
world for the past 50 years. 

The hysteria over Three Mile Island obscured the fact that very
few serious incidents have been reported at U.S. nuclear power
plants. Nuclear plants supply 70 percent of France's power and
about a third of the power used by the Japanese. China plans to
build 20 nuclear plants in the next 15 years. 

One reason nuclear power is a popular option abroad is that it
doesn't release greenhouse gases that are suspected of
contributing to global warming. Nuclear power also is strikingly
efficient. In a column in The Wall Street Journal, Gary Becker,
a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, pointed
out that one kilogram of natural uranium yields 20,000 times as
much energy as a kilogram of coal. 

According to Becker, construction and operating costs for
nuclear facilities have declined sharply since 1980, making them
more competitive with traditional power plants. 

Concerns about nuclear waste simply aren't serious enough to
justify the rejection of this important energy source. France
and other countries recycle nuclear waste, eliminating the need
for storage. But if the U.S. opts for a storage policy, the
proposed Yucca Mountain facility could hold vast quantities of
nuclear waste with only minimal risks of leakage. 

The Three Mile Island accident essentially halted the growth of
the nuclear power industry in the U.S. It's time to remove
regulatory obstacles to the development of this sensible and
safe alternative to pollution-producing energy sources. 

*****************************************************************
 31 [DU-WATCH] US sale of 600 DU bunker busters to Israel
 
Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 13:18:36 -0500 (CDT)

 
"During Putin's visit to Israel in April, the US announced the sale of 
100 additional uranium-coated (read: depleted uranium) bunker busting 
bombs to Israel which will accompany the 500 DU-coated bunker busters 
the US had already sold to them. The US Senate has already authorized 
the use of nuclear bunker-busting bombs in conventional theatres of 
war, because they are deemed to pose no threat to civilians since they 
will explode underground." Also last month, the seemingly tireless 
Donald Rumsfeld visited Baku in Azerbaijan to discuss the deployment of 
US troops along Iran's northwest border. The purpose of that hitherto 
curious manoeuvre is completely transparent."

excerpted from below

fw: from Carol Wolman

The War of Gog & Magog (The Iran War)
http://planetmove.blogspot.com/

Michael Carmichael

According to current reports on the rapidly escalating preparations for 
a US war against Iran, it now appears that the prophecies of the Bible 
are driving President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their inner 
circle of neoconservatives to design a strategic platform for the 
prosecution of the final war for control of Planet Earth. In the Bible, 
this conflict is called The War of Gog & Magog, and the final battle of 
that war is Armageddon. This scenario has been graphically detailed in 
the best-selling Left Behind fantasies authored by the Rev Tim LaHaye, 
a true believer and a devout political supporter of George Bush.

You might well ask, "Who, what and where are Gog and Magog?" According 
to the literature of fundamentalist Christianity as it is peculiarly 
practiced in America, Magog, is the prince of Gog, an area that is 
frequently described as including many of the following nations: Iran, 
Iraq, Syria, Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Chechnya, 
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. While 
accounts of the geography of Gog vary, the consensus is that it 
includes the mass of central Asia, and may involve European nations as 
well who will form an alliance to attack Israel.

While all of this is an amusing Biblical theory, it is now certain that 
the US and its allies, Israel and Turkey, are in a highly advanced 
state of preparation for the launch of an aerial bombardment against 
the region that is now seen to be the strategic keystone of Gog: the 
Islamic Republic of Iran. The exchanges between Bush and Putin during 
yesterday's VE celebrations in Moscow spotlight the fact that the next 
war has a larger dimension to it. In what were the sharpest exchanges 
between an American president and his Russian counterpart since the 
Cold War, it is now clear that the Iranian campaign is designed as part 
of a broader plan to target Russia.

The distinguished Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of 
Ottawa has published a paper detailing the prolific manifestations of 
the rapidly advancing military preparations by the United States, 
Israel, Turkey and NATO that are the unmistakable build-up to an aerial 
attack on Iran. The military preparations are now nearing completion 
for the launch of a bombing campaign, but the political and diplomatic 
machinations have not yet reached fruition. That said, the 
neoconservative diplomatic and political operations are reaching a 
feverish pitch in Bush's Washington.

While conventional wisdom is that Bush's America and Rumsfeld's 
Pentagon already have more than they can deal with in the occupation of 
Iraq, many of their most radical and motivated neoconservative minions 
are working day and night to perfect the game plan and to prepare the 
public for the next phase of their final war for global supremacy. An 
important study of the diplomatic and political operations to launch 
the Iran War is now published in the current issue of GQ, the American 
men's fashion magazine. Authored by Joshua Kurlantzick, the Foreign 
Editor of The New Republic, his paper, The Next War Is Closer Than You 
Think, details the meticulous political build-up to the next phase of 
the neoconservative wars for global domination.

The following is what we know of the current state of play. While 
common sense prevails within a large segment of the intelligence 
community that has steadfastly argued against launching a new phase of 
warfare, rabid hawks highly placed in the neoconservative hierarchy 
have over-ruled the CIA and their counterparts at State. Colin Powell 
and Richard Armitage argued strenuously against an Iranian campaign, 
and that is precisely why they were removed from their posts so 
unceremoniously late last year. While their hasty removals were 
disguised as natural attrition from an administration ending its first 
term, they were engineered due to their direct conflict with the 
unfolding neoconservative agenda which will be defined in religious 
terms in order to build up a progression of higher levels of political 
support among the many Bible-fearing elements of the American 
electorate. Condoleezza Rice, herself a deeply indoctrinated religious 
fundamentalist, wholeheartedly approves of the escalation of the Middle 
Eastern war. She is an expert on the Soviet Union and its survivor, 
Russia, which is the leading candidate for the role of Gog, an 
Apocalyptic prophecy with which she is intimately familiar following 
her childhood in Alabama and her strict fundamentalist upbringing in 
the Bible Belt where the End of Time scenario is taught morning, noon 
and night. Rice's father was a Southern minister and a strict 
constructionist of the fundamental literality of the Bible.

To stem the tide of scathing critiques about plans to attack Iran that 
were pouring out of the CIA, Porter Goss was dispatched to Langley, 
where he was moved into position to silence the critics of the Bush 
White House by enforcing a strict code of political discipline and a 
stern rule of silence. The theoretcial incubation of the War of Gog and 
Magog has been assigned to neoconservative intellectuals including but 
not limited to the following figures: William Kristol, Michael Ledeen 
and John Bolton.

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) is the most powerful 
think-tank in Bush's Washington. Founded by Kristol, PNAC published its 
prescription for full spectrum imperial domination of the globe in 
2000. Calling for military confrontation and political reconstruction 
of the Middle East, PNAC proposes erecting a huge array of US military 
bases to enforce imperial hegemony far into the foreseeable future. The 
neoconservatives have designed a breathtaking strategy that will 
involve the long-range American domination and geopolitical 
restructuring of Planet Earth. The birth of this project has been aimed 
directly at the Middle East, where the repository of the world's 
greatest oil and energy reserves and the situation of many of the 
world's weakest nations combine to present American neoconservativism 
with an attractive set of strategic circumstances.

That these economic and military factors converge with the prevailing 
Apocalyptic ideology of the fundamentalist culture of America should 
not be seen as a mere coincidence. Bush takes it as read that he has 
been anointed by Jesus Christ, his Lord and Saviour, to fulfil biblical 
prophecy, a fact that resonates with many books, papers and sermons as 
well as his own political speeches and posturing in order to attract 
the fundamentalist vote.

In Congress, the archconservative Republican, Senator Rick Santorum, 
has cooperated with the divine inspiration of his Commander-in-Chief. 
Santorum has introduced legislation titled the Iran Freedom & Support 
Act that calls for outright "regime change" in Tehran. Senator Richard 
Lugar's objections to the language of Santorum's Iran Act have 
postponed passage of this landmark legislation for the time being, but 
it is still undergoing incubation, and even its critics predict that it 
is very likely that it will pass both houses of Congress. This 
political reality belies what is truly a pitiful state of incompetence 
of the Democratic Party and its members of Congress. With the majority 
of the nation now believing that the Iraq War was a huge $300 billion 
mistake and climbing, the Democratic members of Congress are lining up 
to support Santorum's disastrous legislation.

Following the passage of a hard line Iran Act, Congress will be in 
position to support much more aggressive military operations against 
Bush's next target. This will involve support for Iranian dissidents, 
but not merely political reformers. Funds will begin to funnel into the 
Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), a paramilitary organization of "freedom 
fighters" or "terrorists" depending on one's geopolitical
perspective. 
These are the same people funded by the US during the Iran-Iraq 
conflict to wage an internecine war against the Islamic Republic. In 
the 1970s, the MEK killed American civilians, and they have been on the 
State Department's pariah list of terrorist organizations since 1997. 
Yet, those facts are mere trifles for neoconservatives, and they will 
not stand in the way of using the MEK to: engineer terrorist atrocities 
in Iran; conduct surveillance for the CIA and to target the forthcoming 
aerial attacks inside of Iran. Kurlantzick revealed that moves will 
soon be made to take the MEK off the official State Department list of 
prohibited terrorist organizations, and it will then be primed for 
covert reactivation.

Against this backdrop, the neoconservatives have written a script 
starring two of the most evocative political figures in Iran. Reza 
Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah of Iran has been totally 
integrated into the neoconservative scenario. He has appeared at some 
of the glittering events sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute 
where he has inspired neoconservatives with their luminous vision of 
the restoration of the Iranian monarchy to the Peacock Throne, a gaudy 
and tortuous piece of furniture that was actually encrusted with 
zillions of diamonds. However, even this splendiferous fantasia pales 
in contrast to the second major figure now integrated into the evolving 
script. Hussein Khomeini, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, has 
cleverly emerged from behind the curtain as the favourite Iranian pawn 
of Michael Ledeen. In an arresting speech delivered to the American 
Enterprise Institute, Hussein Khomeini called for the United States to 
invade Iran in order to effect regime change. After making his 
surprising oracular pronouncement, Khomeini was whisked away back 
behind the curtain by Ledeen who had been hovering Svengali-like by his 
side.

A steady stream of clues continues to appear to confirm suspicions of 
regime change in Iran. Elizabeth Cheney, the Vice President's famous 
daughter, has been installed at Condoleezza Rice's State Department to 
direct the political dimensions of the soon to be forthcoming 
democratization operations in Iran. Dick Cheney speaks incessantly 
about the urgent crisis in Iran due to their potential to manufacture 
nuclear weapons sometime in the foreseeable future even though they 
have pledged not to build WMDs, and the indisputable fact that they 
have signed treaties prohibiting them from doing so.

  In 2003, neoconservatives in the Pentagon including Donald Rumsfeld, 
Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, proposed a national-security 
directive on Iran for the president to sign. This directive mandated 
that the US would launch a multi-pronged campaign to destabilize Tehran 
in order to effect regime change. This original presidential directive 
was never validated, however the neoconservatives have launched a new 
initiative to formalize a, "Get tough with Iran," presidential 
directive which is in draft preparation at this very moment in time.

In January, Seymour Hersh reported that there were American commando 
units already on the ground in Iran. The following month, Scott Ritter 
reported that the US would be able to deploy a bombing campaign against 
Iran by this June - that is in two and a half weeks time. On Capitol 
Hill, neoconservatives are whispering confidently that the US will now 
launch a multifaceted campaign to undermine Tehran, destabilize the 
region and to sabotage specific strategic sites inside Iran. 
Kurlantznick reported that a confidential source who had direct contact 
with Bush confirmed that the president will definitely order the launch 
of an attack against Iran if Tehran remains recalcitrant in the face of 
US demands about its nascent nuclear energy programme.

While it is conventional wisdom to presume that each of Bush's wars are 
tightly confined strategies designed to achieve limited objectives, it 
is now becoming clear that he is working from a grand design of 
biblical proportions - especially to those voters who supported him 
most enthusiastically - the so-called, born-again Christians.

The Prophet Ezekiel warned that Magog, the prince of Gog, would attack 
Israel. The majority of Israel's charismatic Jews believe that Russia 
is the land of Gog. Last month, Vladimir Putin visited Israel where he 
announced that he was selling missiles to Syria and that he would 
continue to support the nuclear industry of Iran. Putin's comments were 
seen as a threat to Israel and her sponsor, the United States. To both 
the Bible Belt practitioners of fundamentalist Christianity and to the 
fundamentalist Hebrews of Israel, there is no longer any doubt 
whatsoever about the identity of Magog. They are equally convinced that 
George Bush is doing the work of "The Lord," in smiting Gog, and its 
leading prince, Magog, is now clearly revealed to the true believers as 
Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia. The pointed remarks of the two 
men yesterday in Moscow have brought the underlying conflict between 
the two nations that is taking shape in the Middle East to the broader 
attention of the public.

During Putin's visit to Israel in April, the US announced the sale of 
100 additional uranium-coated (read: depleted uranium) bunker busting 
bombs to Israel which will accompany the 500 DU-coated bunker busters 
the US had already sold to them. The US Senate has already authorized 
the use of nuclear bunker-busting bombs in conventional theatres of 
war, because they are deemed to pose no threat to civilians since they 
will explode underground. Also last month, the seemingly tireless 
Donald Rumsfeld visited Baku in Azerbaijan to discuss the deployment of 
US troops along Iran's northwest border. The purpose of that hitherto 
curious manoeuvre is completely transparent.

Chossudovsky reports that Israeli Dolphin-class submarines heavily 
armed with US Harpoon missiles that are armed with nuclear warheads 
trained on targets in Iran are now in position. The Israeli submarines 
may be cruising into the Persian Gulf right now. Chossudovsky suggests 
that the US and Israel are planning to introduce nuclear weapons into 
the bombardment of Iran which would be somewhat ironic, since the 
primary rationale for warfare will be that Iran constitutes a potential 
nuclear threat.

Surrounded by a ring of US military bases, Iran is poised to be the 
next phase of a belligerent process that - for fundamentalist Americans 
- is unfolding as the War of Gog and Magog - an unending world war that 
will bring the United States into direct conflict with Russia.

Sources

Joshua Kurlantzick, The Next War is Closer than you think, GQ, June, 
2005.

America's Religious Right - Saints or Subversives?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/050905A.shtml

Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO505A.html

Target Iran: It's a semi-secret joint US-Israel Operation
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/THO311A.html

Scott Ritter Says U.S. Plans June Attack On Iran
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1480148,00.html

Bush offers support to Putin's critics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1480148,00.html

The thorns in Georgia's rose
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1480185,00.html

The Planetary Movement Limited
http://www.planetarymovement.org/

Michael Carmichael
Chairman / The Planetary Movement Limited
64 Kingston Road
Oxford OX2 6RJ
The United Kingdom

Telephone +44 1865 553195

Email mc@cosvam.com

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 32 The Hindu: ``Bill will not constrict nuclear programme'' 

Saturday, May 14, 2005 

Diplomatic Correspondent 

`Country determined to use advanced technology for security'   

NEW DELHI: The passage in Parliament of the Weapons of Mass
Destruction and their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful
Activities) Bill does not "in any manner constrict" India's
nuclear programme — either strategic or civilian. 

"India is determined to utilise advanced technology for its
security," an External Affairs Ministry spokesman told
presspersons. New Delhi was committed to meeting the nation's
developmental requirements and people's needs. 

It was an important piece of legislation in the light of India's
emergence as a "nuclear State". It was an integrated and
over-arching piece of legislation and met India's commitments
under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540 passed
in April 2004. 

To a question, the spokesman said it was a coincidence that the
Bill was passed at a time when the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty was being "reviewed" in New York. 


During Thursday's debate in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh said that for countries such as India to sustain
the reasonably high rate of economic growth that was required to
eradicate poverty, energy could not be allowed to become a
constraint. 

"For us, nuclear energy is an important means to address this
challenge. As such, we intend to maintain and expand our
indigenous nuclear power programme. This would also ease the
strain on conventional energy supplies globally. Since India's
record in non-proliferation is impeccable and acknowledged to be
so internationally, the current restrictions on cooperation in
nuclear power production with India have become anachronistic
and counter-productive," the Prime Minister said.

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of
*****************************************************************
 33 WorldNetDaily: Bush-Blair's nutty U.N. referral

  SATURDAY MAY 14 2005           
        
[Supercritical Thoughts] [Gordon Prather] 
 
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com 

Well, according to Reuters, France-Britain-Germany "warned" Iran
Thursday that they will "break off talks and join Washington in
seeking U.N. Security Council action if Tehran makes good on its
threats to resume atomic work." 

Poodle-dog Blair promptly announced: "We certainly will support
referral to the U.N. Security Council if Iran breeches its
undertakings and obligations." 



What talks? What Iranian threats? What breeches? What Iranian
undertakings? What Iranian obligations? 

Well, the French-Brit-German and Iranian foreign ministers met
in Tehran back in October of 2003, emerging to announce that the
Iranian government had been persuaded to sign an Additional
Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement with the International
Atomic Energy Agency and to immediately commence ratification
procedures. In the meantime, as a "confirmation of its good
intentions," the Iranian Government volunteered to co-operate
with the IAEA in accordance with the Additional Protocol. 

Furthermore, even though Iran had the "inalienable right" – as a
signatory to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
– to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, Iran
announced that – as a further "confidence building measure" – it
would temporarily suspend all uranium enrichment and processing
activities already planned or under way. 

Last November, the French-Brit-German foreign ministers – acting
as agents for the European Union – began "talks" with Iran on "a
mutually acceptable long-term arrangement." 

To build further "confidence," Iran decided to voluntarily
continue its temporary suspension of all enrichment related and
reprocessing activities, to include" 


  + the manufacture and import of gas centrifuges and their
components; 


  + the assembly, installation, testing or operation of gas
centrifuges; 


  + work to undertake any plutonium separation, or to construct
or operate any plutonium separation installation; and 


  + all tests or production at any uranium conversion
installation. 

The IAEA was officially notified of this voluntary suspension
and invited to verify and monitor it. 

The IAEA Board of Governors was officially notified that the
voluntary suspension by Iran was not a legal obligation and
would be sustained only so long as the EU-Iranian talks
continued. 

What did the Europeans hope to gain from these "talks"? 

Essentially, a "normalization" of diplomatic and economic
relations with oil-gas-rich Iran. 

What did Iran hope to gain from these "talks"? 

They, too, wanted "normalization" – the lifting of economic
sanctions and threat of sanctions that have been imposed for
more than 20 years by the U.S. on Russian, Chinese, South
American and European companies that do business with Iran. 

But more than that, Iran wanted tangible "recognition" by the EU
of their "inalienable right" under the NPT to the use of nuclear
energy for peaceful purposes. 

Finally, Iran sought firm guarantees from the EU that Iranian
peaceful "nuclear" activities and facilities would be secure
from attack or destruction. 

So, even though Reuters "reports" that the EU is breaking off
the "talks" because the Iranians have "threatened" to resume –
subject to their IAEA Safeguards Agreement – converting
uranium-tetrafluoride to uranium-hexafluoride, it is more likely
that it is Iran breaking off the talks because the EU has been
unable to overcome U.S. objections to establishing normal
diplomatic and trade relations with Iran, much less providing
the Iranians guarantees against U.S. or Israeli pre-emptive
strikes. 

What happens next? 

Well, the Iranians will probably turn to Russia-China to secure
"tangible" recognition of their inalienable rights, as well as
protection against U.S. or Israeli pre-emptive strikes. 

How about the EU? 

Well, President Bush – who wasn't even a party to the "talks" –
says he's going to take the decision by Iran to resume certain
Safeguarded activities – voluntarily suspended, temporarily – to
the U.N. Security Council. And Poodle-dog Blair says he'll
support that "referral." 

That's nuttier than when Bush-Bolton were demanding earlier this
year that the IAEA Board refer to the U.N. Security Council the
"nuclear weapons program" they claimed Iran was pursuing that
Director General ElBaradei had spent two years searching Iran
for, and could find absolutely no evidence of. 

At least there's a provision in the IAEA statute – reaffirmed at
the 2000 NPT Review Conference – for Bush-Bolton doing that: 

The Conference reaffirms that the IAEA is the competent
authority responsible to verify and assure – in accordance with
the Statute of the IAEA and the IAEA's safeguards system –
compliance with its safeguards agreements with States Parties. … 

States Parties that have concerns regarding non-compliance with
the safeguards agreements of the Treaty by the States Parties
should direct such concerns, along with supporting evidence and
information, to the IAEA to consider, investigate, draw
conclusions and decide on necessary actions in accordance with
its mandate.
 

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

[WorldNetDaily.com] 
*****************************************************************
 34 [NukeNet] INPO downgrades Hope Creek's rating]
 
Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 04:04:14 -0700

 
<x-html>
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<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff">
<br>
<br>
-------- Original Message --------
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <th nowrap="nowrap" align="right" valign="baseline">Subject: </th>
      <td>[NukeNet] INPO downgrades Hope Creek's rating</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th nowrap="nowrap" align="right" valign="baseline">Date: </th>
      <td>Sun, 15 May 2005 10:56:59 -0400</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th nowrap="nowrap" align="right" valign="baseline">From: </th>
      <td>Norm Cohen <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ncohen12@comcast.net">&lt;ncohen12@comcast.net&gt;</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th nowrap="nowrap" align="right" valign="baseline">To: </th>
      <td>Unplug Salem <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:unplugsalem@yahoogroups.com">&lt;unplugsalem@yahoogroups.com&gt;</a>, UnplugSalem
Announce <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:unplugsalem-announce@yahoogroups.com">&lt;unplugsalem-announce@yahoogroups.com&gt;</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th nowrap="nowrap" align="right" valign="baseline">CC: </th>
      <td>nrc_concerns.yahoogroups.com
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:nrc_concerns@yahoogroups.com">&lt;nrc_concerns@yahoogroups.com&gt;</a>, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:nukenet@energyjustice.net">nukenet@energyjustice.net</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:nukenet@energyjustice.net">&lt;nukenet@energyjustice.net&gt;</a>, NukeParanoia
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:nuclearparanoia@yahoogroups.com">&lt;nuclearparanoia@yahoogroups.com&gt;</a>, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:know_nukes@yahoogroups.com">know_nukes@yahoogroups.com</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:know_nukes@yahoogroups.com">&lt;know_nukes@yahoogroups.com&gt;</a>, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:nucnews@yahoogroups.com">nucnews@yahoogroups.com</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:nucnews@yahoogroups.com">&lt;nucnews@yahoogroups.com&gt;</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th nowrap="nowrap" align="right" valign="baseline">References: </th>
      <td><a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:1c0.28a990d4.2fb8203b@aol.com">&lt;1c0.28a990d4.2fb8203b@aol.com&gt;</a></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
<br>
<br>
<pre>NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:nukenet@energyjustice.net">nukenet@energyjustice.net</a>)


</pre>
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------- Forwarded message -------
From: Drkymn@aol.com
To: ncohen12@comcast.net
Subject: May 13, 2005 Press of Atlantic City
Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 23:47:07 EDT

      (http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/index.cfm)
  (http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/circulation/autopay.html)

____________________________________
May 13,  2005

Whistleblower says nuclear industry giving Hope Creek low safety marks



By JEROME MONTES Staff Writer, (856) 794-5115

A  former employee of the Salem Nuclear Generating Station said the nuclear
industry has given that facility's troubled Hope Creek reactor a low mark  
for
safety.

Kymn Harvin, a former organizational manager at the facility,  said  
Thursday
that the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations downgraded Hope  Creek's
operational rating from a 3 to a 4 following an inspection earlier this   
year.

INPO was created by the nuclear and electric utility industry in  1979 in  
the
wake of the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.  Its
mission is to promote broad levels of excellence and safety throughout the
industry, according to INPO spokesman Terry Young.

Each nuclear facility  is periodically assigned a rating between 1 and 5 -
with 1 being the best rating  - based on the plant's level of maintenance,
efficiency, reliability, safety and  other operational measures.

Young refused to comment on Hope Creek's  rating, saying that INPO
evaluations are sealed from the public.

A  spokesman for the Newark-based Public Service Enterprise Group, which  
owns
the  Hope Creek nuclear reactor and two others at the Salem Nuclear
Generating  Station in Salem County, also declined to comment on the  
reactor's latest
rating.

Plants are generally evaluated every 18 to 24 months, but  schedules vary
across the country.

Harvin, who says she was terminated  from the Salem facility in 2003 for
raising safety issues, said INPO must have  uncovered "significant safety  
issues"
to give the facility a 4  rating.

She said one federal official called that rating "awful" and  promised that
the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission would continue to  evaluate  
safety
concerns at the plant.

NRC officials could not be reached  for comment Thursday.

The Salem station is already under heightened NRC  scrutiny due to safety,
equipment and work environment problems, some of which  were brought to  
federal
attention by Harvin after her dismissal.

An NRC  investigation into Harvin's termination determined she was  
dismissed
for  budgetary rather than retaliatory reasons.

Harvin has filed a  whistleblower lawsuit against PSEG in a New Jersey  
court.

Hope Creek has  suffered a series of mishaps over the past eight months,
including shutdowns due  to radioactive steam leaks. Critics of the  
facility have
urged PSEG to replace a  badly vibrating shaft on the reactor's B
recirculation pump, which they say  could lead to a meltdown if not  
attended to

PSEG is in the midst of a  merger with Chicago-based Exelon. If approved,  
the
merger would create the  nation's largest power company and put all four of
New Jersey's nuclear reactors  in the hands of one entity.

To e-mail Jerome Montes at The  Press:

JMontes@pressofac.com



-- 
Coalition for Peace and Justice
UNPLUG Salem Campaign; 321 Barr Ave, Linwood
NJ 08221; 609-601-8583; cell 609-742-0982
ncohen12@comcast.net; http://www.unplugsalem.org
http://www.coalitionforpeaceandjustice.org

"A time comes when silence is betrayal.
Even when pressed by the demands of
inner truth, men do not easily assume
the task of opposing their government's
policy, especially in time of war.
Nor does the human spirit move without
  great difficulty against all the apathy
of conformist thought, within one's own
bosom and in the surrounding world."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

 

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 35 Helen Caldicott Re NPPs Not As Cure To Global Warming, More
 
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 00:27:02 -0400

 


  Below is Helen Caldicott's talk at the NPT on
Nuclear Power with a
recommendation for creating a Sustainable Energy
Agency from Herman Scheer
of Eurosolar.

NGO Presentations to the 2005 NPT Review
Conference

The Medical and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear
Power
Speaker: Helen Caldicott, Nuclear Policy Research
Helen Caldicott Re NPPs Not As Cure To Global Warming, More
 
Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 00:27:02 -0400

 


  Below is Helen Caldicott's talk at the NPT on
Nuclear Power with a
recommendation for creating a Sustainable Energy
Agency from Herman Scheer
of Eurosolar.

NGO Presentations to the 2005 NPT Review
Conference

The Medical and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear
Power
Speaker: Helen Caldicott, Nuclear Policy Research
Institute

The official task of the IAEA since 1957,
enshrined in article IV of the
NPT promotes the peaceful uses of nuclear energy
and the "transfer" of
nuclear technology. Superimposed upon this
official policy is a huge
propaganda push by the nuclear industry promoting
nuclear power as a
panacea for the reduction of global-warming gases.

There are presently 442 nuclear reactors in
operation globally. If, as the
nuclear industry suggests, nuclear power were to
replace fossil fuels on a
large scale, it would be necessary to build 2000
large 1000-megawatt
reactors. Furthermore, to replace all
fossilfuel-generated electricity
today with nuclear power, there is only enough
economically
viable uranium to fuel the reactors for three to
four years.
Belgium, Germany, Spain and Sweden have decided to
phase out their
operating nuclear reactors, while Britain plans 10
new reactors and China
plans 27 by 2020. The US administration has called
for construction of
more than 50 new reactors.

The true economies of the nuclear industry are
never fully analysed -
including costs of uranium enrichment, the massive
liability involved in a
nuclear accident, decommissioning all existing and
new nuclear reactors
and the enormous expense in the transportation and
storage of radioactive
waste for a quarter of a million years.  The
prevailing ethic says that
nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very
different. In the US for
instance, where much of the world's uranium is
enriched, the enrichment
facility at Paducah, Kentucky, requires the
electrical output of two
1000-megawatt coalfired plants, which release
large quantities of carbon
dioxide, the gas responsible for 50% of global
warming. Also, this
enrichment facility and another at Portsmouth,
Ohio, leak from rusty pipes
93% of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted yearly
in the US. The production
and release of CFC gas is now banned
internationally by the Montreal
Protocol because it is mainly responsible for
stratospheric ozone
depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000
to 20,000 times more
potent than carbon dioxide.

The nuclear fuel cycle in all countries uses large
quantities of fossil
fuel at all stages - the mining and milling of
uranium, the construction
of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic
decommissioning of the
intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20
to 40-year operating
lifetime, and transportation and long-term storage
of massive
quantities of radioactive waste. Contrary to the
current propaganda line,
nuclear power is not green and it is certainly not
clean. Nuclear reactors
consistently release millions of curies of
radioactive isotopes
into the air and water each year. These
unregulated sanctioned releases
occur because the industry considers certain
radioactive elements to be
biologically inconsequential. This is not so.
These unregulated releases
include the noble gases krypton, xenon and argon,
which are
fat-soluble and if inhaled by persons living near
a nuclear reactor, are
absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the fatty
tissues of the body,
including the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs,
near the reproductive
organs. These radioactive elements, which emit
high-energy gamma
radiation, can mutate the genes in the eggs and
sperm inducing
genetic disease. Tritium, a radioactive isotope of
hydrogen, is another
biologically significant gas, routinely emitted
from nuclear reactors.
Tritium combines with oxygen creating "tritiated"
water. Tritium which is
a soft energy beta emitter, more mutagenic than
gamma radiation
incorporates directly into the DNA molecule of the
gene and it passes
readily through the skin, lungs and digestive
system where it is
distributed throughout the body. The half life of
tritium is 12.3 years,
giving it a biologically active life of 246 years.

The dire subject of massive quantities of
radioactive waste accruing at
the 442 nuclear reactors across the world is also
rarely, if ever,
addressed by the nuclear industry. Each typical
1000-megawatt nuclear
reactor manufactures 33 tonnes of thermally hot,
intensely radioactive
waste per year. More than 80,000 tonnes of highly
radioactive waste sits
in cooling pools next to the 103 US nuclear power
plants, awaiting
transportation to a storage facility yet to be
found. Much more accrues at
reactor sites in France, Japan Russia and
elsewhere. This dangerous
material is an attractive target for terrorist
sabotage as it traverses
roads, railway and shipping lines of many nations.

The long-term storage of radioactive waste is an
immense insoluble
problem. No country, including the US has a plan
for preventing this toxic
carcinogenic material escaping into the biosphere
and contaminating the
food chain for the rest of time. Furthermore, a
study released recently by
the US National Academy of Sciences shows that the
cooling pools at
nuclear reactors, which store 10 to 30 times more
radioactive
material than that contained in the reactor core,
are subject to
catastrophic attacks by international terrorists,
which could unleash an
inferno and release massive quantities of deadly
radiation --
significantly worse than the radiation released by
Chernobyl.
This vulnerable high-level nuclear waste stored in
the cooling pools at
the 442 global nuclear power plants includes
hundreds of radioactive
elements that have different biological impacts in
the human body, the
most important being cancer and genetic diseases.

The incubation time for cancer is five to 50 years
following exposure to
radiation. Children, old people and
immuno-compromised individuals are
many times more sensitive to the malignant effects
of radiation than other
people. Following are four of the most dangerous
elements made in nuclear
power plants. Iodine 131, which was released at
nuclear accidents at
Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and
Three Mile Island in the
US, is radioactive for twenty three weeks and it
bio-concentrates in leafy
vegetables and milk. When it enters the human body
via the gut and the
lung, it migrates to the thyroid gland in the
neck, where it can later
induce thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2000
children have had their
thyroids removed for thyroid cancer, a situation
never before recorded in
pediatric literature. Strontium 90 lasts for 600
years. As a calcium
analogue, it concentrates in cow and goat milk. It
accumulates in the
human breast during lactation, and in bone, where
it can later
induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia.
Cesium 137, which also
lasts for 600 years, concentrates in the food
chain, particularly
meat. On entering the human body, it locates in
muscle, where it can
induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma.
Plutonium 239, one of
the most dangerous elements known to humans, is so
toxic that
one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. More than
200kg is made annually
in each 1000- megawatt nuclear power plant.
Plutonium is handled like iron
in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver,
where it causes liver
cancer, and in the bone, where it can induce bone
cancer and blood
malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung cancer.
It also
crosses the placenta, where, like the drug
thalidomide, it can cause
severe congenital deformities. Plutonium has a
predisposition for the
testicle, where it can cause testicular cancer and
induce genetic diseases
in future generations. Plutonium lasts for 500,000
years, living on to
induce cancer and genetic diseases in future
generations of plants,
animals and humans.

Plutonium is also the fuel for nuclear weapons -- 
only 5kg is necessary to
make a bomb and each reactor makes more than 200kg
per year. Therefore any
country with a nuclear power plant can
theoretically manufacture 40 bombs
a year.Nuclear power produces a carcinogenic
legacy for all future
generations, it produces global warming gases, and
it is far more
expensive than any other form of electricity
generation, while it triggers
the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

A supplementary protocol to the NPT is needed,
which would permit the
signatory States to fulfil their obligations
stated in Article IV of the
NPT by supplying technical aid in form of
Renewable Energy Technologies.
The supplementary protocol should be the basis for
an International
Renewable Energy Agency that can act as a
counterbalance to the
institutionalized advocates for nuclear energy.
The main provision of the
supplementary protocol to Art IV should be: "The
present Treaty permits
the parties to the Nuclear Non Proliferation
Treaty to replace the
assistance in the peaceful use of nuclear energy
provided for in article
IV with assistance in promoting the use of clean,
sustainable, renewable energy."

Convenors: Helen Caldicott, Herman Scheer, Xanthe
Hall, John Loretz, Alice
Slater


*****************************************************************
 36 The State: Bush plans for MOX plant at SRS
 
 05/15/2
 
By LAUREN MARKOE

 Washington Bureau

President Bush came back from Russia last week with good news
for the Savannah River Site, according to U.S. Secretary of
Energy Samuel Bodman: SRS is a healthy step closer to getting
its long-sought mixed-oxide plant. 

With the hearty support of SRS officials, Bush wants to build a
so-called MOX plant at the Aiken nuclear energy campus that
could dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium. The
plan is that a twin plant would be built in Russia with the
shared goal of turning the weapons fuel into a fuel suitable for
commercial power reactors. 

One problem with the plan is that the Americans and Russians
have been haggling for years over the liability of U.S.
companies working on the project in Russia. 

But that stumbling block is nearly removed, according to a
letter sent from Bodman to members of Congress last week. 

Bodman reported Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin made
significant progress in their Moscow meeting and have agreed
on a common approach to resolving their differences soon. 

Bodman goes on to encourage the chairmen of the House and Senate
committees on Armed Services  among other key lawmakers  to
grant the president the full $339 million he has requested for
the SRS MOX plant for fiscal 2006. 

MOX critics  and some in Congress who are unsure about the
programs readiness  are pushing for less than that amount. 

Environmental activists say they worry the MOX program will make
South Carolina more vulnerable to nuclear accidents and
terrorism. 

Tom Clements, a nuclear nonproliferation expert with Greenpeace,
said the U.S. Department of Energy is getting ahead of itself
with this recent letter to Congress. 

Resolution of the liability issue has been coming soon for
quite a while, he said. The reason for this letter is that the
mood in Congress is to cut funding out of the program. 

LEGISLATION WATCH 

Actual title: Health Care Choice Act of 2005 

More fitting title: Who Cares Whether Your State Likes Your
Health Insurance? 

Intent: To allow people to buy health insurance that might
comply with their states regulations. 

Sponsored by: U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; House Speaker Dennis
Hastert, R-Ill.; and U.S. Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz. 

Why do it? Competition can lower costs and make insurance
available to more of the 45 million Americans without health
insurance. 

Will it pass? It didnt in the last session of Congress.
Opponents say states have the right to reject insurance that
doesnt meet their standards. But the White House and Hasterts
support count for something. 

VERBATIM 

He may also ... bring a little Southern charm to the job,
something missing from the blunt, often charmless style of the
New Englander Cellucci.  

 From a recent story in the Toronto Star on S.C. House Speaker
David Wilkins nomination to be ambassador to Canada, and how he
compares with current ambassador Paul Cellucci of Massachusetts 

Nominee for New U.S. Ambassador to Canada Has Visited Just
Once 

 Headline of recent article on the Canadian Press Newswire 

Reach Markoe at (202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@washingtonbureau.com. 
 
TheStateOnline
*****************************************************************
 37 Cincinnati Post: At Duke, nuclear is in the mix
 
By Jon Newberry
Post staff reporter 

Nukes. They're baaaaack!

More than a decade after the multibillion-dollar issue of who
foots the bill for Cincinnati Gas &Electric Co.'s ill-fated
Zimmer nuclear power plant, Cinergy Corp.'s ratepayers and
investors are suddenly faced with the prospect of going nuclear
again.

Duke Energy Corp., which plans to acquire Cincinnati-based
Cinergy, operates seven nuclear reactors at three sites in the
Carolinas. The company said recently it's exploring the
possibility of building a new nuclear plant, something that
hasn't been accomplished in the U.S. in 30 years.

If the proposed merger announced this week becomes reality,
Cinergy shareholders would own a stake in those nuclear plants.
In light of the Zimmer fiasco, Cinergy ratepayers in Cincinnati
and Northern Kentucky might wonder if they'd also be on the hook
for Duke's nukes.

Cinergy customers could conceivably end up paying for Duke's
nuclear facilities, but it's too early to tell how likely that
would be, said Ryan Lippe, a spokesman for the Ohio Consumers'
Counsel, an agency that represents residential utility customers.
"It's possible customers could have exposure, depending on how
it plans to supply power to Ohio," he said.

Lippe pointed out that CG has already said it needs more power
to meet growing demand in Ohio. "There's certainly room in the
rate plan for increases beyond the known increases," he said.

But any additional costs would still have to be approved by
regulators based on prudent business practices and the
least-cost sources of supply, Lippe said.

Cinergy spokeswoman Kathy Meinke said rates for customers of CG
in Ohio and Union Heat, Light &Power Co. in Northern Kentucky
are set by the public utilities commissions in each state, and
the proposed merger doesn't change that.

"If a company merges, you can't just dump expenses into the rate
base," Meinke said. "You have to prove that the expenses that
have been incurred are directly related to the service that's
provided, whether it's electric or gas."

The only way that CG or ULH customers would pay for
nuclear-generated power would be if the utilities needed to buy
additional power on the wholesale market to meet demand, and
buying it from a nuclear supplier was the least-expensive
option. Given the alternative supplies available closer to home,
that's unlikely, she said.

"So the fact that Duke has nuclear is basically irrelevant,"
Meinke said. "It's not a dumping ground. The commission just
wouldn't let that happen."

Andrew Melnykovich, a spokesman for the Kentucky Public Service
Commission, said he couldn't speculate on what Cinergy or ULH
might propose in its expected filings related to the merger.

Electric rates in Kentucky are set through 2006, and the
commission recently approved the transfer of CG's ownership of
three coal-fired plants to ULH.

Although CG and ULH would be owned by Duke after a merger, the
regulated utilities of the post-merger company would continue to
operate as separate entities with their own regulated generation
assets. But Cinergy customers have some reason to be wary of
nuclear power.

Begun in 1969, CG's Zimmer nuclear plant was 95 percent complete
when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission pulled the plug on it in
1983. It was supposed to have cost $240 million, but $1.6
billion had already been sunk into it by then. The companies
eventually decided to convert Zimmer to a coal-fired plant,
which came on line in 1991 at a total cost of more than $3
billion.

Ratepayers picked up part of the tab, and shareholders
ultimately ate the rest.

Duke's seven reactors in North and South Carolina are part of
the regulated assets of its utilities in those states. Duke's
acquisition of Cinergy wouldn't change that, said Pete
Sheffield, Duke's corporate spokesman.

If it's built, Duke's new nuclear plant would also be in the
Carolinas and part of its regulated assets there, Sheffield said.

Cinergy and Duke have wholesale power businesses that own
non-regulated plants, and they expect to integrate those
operations after the merger. But none of those plants are
nuclear, and Duke isn't looking to build any nuclear plants for
the wholesale business, Sheffield said.

While ratepayers would seem to be well-insulated from whatever
financial risks nuclear power might pose, investors are not.
Cinergy shareholders - including former CG shareholders who paid
for Zimmer - will become Duke shareholders as a result of the
merger. So they'll take on whatever risks that entails.

There are currently 103 nuclear reactors operating at 64 sites
in 31 states, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute trade
group. In 2004, nuclear plants generated 20 percent of the
electricity consumed in the United States, about the same
percentage as in 1994. In five of those states, including South
Carolina, the majority of electric power is nuclear.

Ohio has two nuclear plants, the 882-megawatt Davis-Besse plant
outside Toledo, and the 1,235-megawatt Perry plant near
Cleveland. Both are operated by Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp.
They generated 6 percent of the state's electric power in 2003,
while coal supplied 92 percent. Kentucky and Indiana don't have
any nuclear plants.

Nuclear power plants have proven to be good investments for most
companies, said David Burks, a power industry analyst with
Hilliard Lyons in Louisville.

The main concern is, in the event of a problem that forces the
plant to be shut down for an extended period, the operator has
to buy power on the wholesale market to replace it.

"There are many utilities that have not had any significant
problems," Burks said. "In reality, it's not been an issue."

A sharp rise in natural gas prices in recent years - more than
double since the late 1990s - has resurrected the idea of
building nuclear plants, although "for many years, it was
regarded as inconceivable," Burks said.

Now, although it's increasingly viewed as a legitimate
alternative, the high cost of getting approvals and
construction, along with the potential backlash, remain as big
obstacles, he said. 

Publication date: 05-14-2005 
          
[Cincinnati.Com]     

Copyright2005 The Cincinnati Post, an E.W. Scrippsnewspaper.
*****************************************************************
 38 Korea Times: Korea Introduces Competitive Nuclear Technology at ICAPP 

Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Biz/Finance   

By Seo Jee-yeon Staff Reporter

 Korea is hosting the International Congress on Advances in
Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP), an annual event for global experts
in nuclear power, for the first time in Asia on May 15-19, Lee
Joong-jae, president of Korea Hydro &Nuclear Power (KHNP) said. 

``We expect the event will offer a good opportunity not only for
the world to look over the latest issues in nuclear power but
also for Korea to promote its advances in nuclear power plant
construction to the world.¡¯¡¯

 ``The nuclear industry, once declining mainly due to safety
concerns, is reinvigorating as the world looks for alternative
energy sources to replace expensive oil and polluting fossil
fuels amid growing energy demand,¡¯¡¯ Lee, who is also general
chairman of the 2005 ICAPP, said in a written interview with The
Korea Times.

 At present, 30 nations representing two-thirds of humanity use
some 440 nuclear reactors to produce 16 percent of global
electricity.

 ``The dependency rate will rise as in the electricity sector,
where nuclear power continues to contribute greatly, demand is
expected to rise more rapidly than for any other form of
energy,¡¯¡¯ he said. 

According to the World Energy Outlook, electricity demand in the
next two decades is expected to double. 

``By region, the nuclear industry has shown impressive growth in
Asia, while America is pushing ambitious plans for boosting
nuclear power. Some European countries are considering building
more nuclear power plants,¡¯¡¯ he said. 

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), nuclear power usage will increase 2.5 times by the year
2030, growing from the current 16 percent of the world's total
electricity production to 27 percent, and predicts it will
quadruple total output by 2050. 

``These recent developments prove that a worldwide nuclear
renaissance is just around the corner. One of the goals of the
ICAPP in Seoul is to discuss how the world will prepare for the
incoming second boom time of nuclear energy,¡¯¡¯ Lee said. 

As part of preparative efforts for the next era of nuclear
power, the world's nuclear power industries are actively
developing advanced nuclear reactors with innovative technology
that enhance both economic competitiveness and safety.

 During the event, the enhancement of competitiveness for the
current generation of nuclear power plants, including advanced
light water reactors (ALWRs), will be highlighted. 

``The international nuclear community is at a critical juncture.
It demands new breakthroughs in nuclear technologies. In
addition, it is also of utmost importance for all members of the
nuclear community to help each other spread positive growth in
one area to others where it is needed,¡¯¡¯ Lee stressed, adding
the ICAPP will be the right venue to seek cooperation and share
ideas for the development of nuclear energy. 

jyseo@koreatimes.co.kr 05-15-2005 18:34         

KHNP president Lee Joong-jae
   
*****************************************************************
 39 Korea Times: Korea Seeks Exports of Nuclear Power Plant 

Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Biz/Finance   

By Seo Jee-yeon Staff Reporter 

Korea is setting its sights on the overseas nuclear power plant
construction market, armed with its own technology, the Korea
Hydro &Nuclear Power Company (KHNP) said Sunday.

 ``We are ready to export nuclear plants overseas and now
proceed talks with such nations as China, India and Vietnam for
the projects,¡¯¡¯ a KHNP official said. KHNP is an affiliate of
the state-run electricity monopoly Korea Power Engineering
Company (KEPCO). 

The country, ranked sixth in terms of nuclear power output in
the world, has recently sought to penetrate the overseas market
in line with ever-growing global demand for efficient and
eco-friendly nuclear energy worldwide amid the continued hike in
international oil prices and growing concerns over the
environment.

 The costs associated with fossil-fueled power generation make
nuclear power seem very attractive, especially considering the
fact that that eco-friendly renewable energy sources are not
likely to be available on a large scale in the near future. 

Beyond 2015, global demand for nuclear power will grow as the
electricity demand growth is predicted to be around 1 percent a
year from the current level of 5 to 6 percent. 

In addition, the need to replace retiring power plants may
become dominant in the upcoming decades, the KHNP said. 

It expects the advanced light water reactors (ALWRs) will fill
the need of nuclear power until the next generation reactors are
available, simply because nuclear power cannot be disregarded
from a practical point of view, it added.

 Technology Development in Korea 

Since the commercial operation of Kori Unit 1 in April 1978,
Korea has achieved rapid growth in nuclear power, and now has 20
operating nuclear units nationwide, including four heavy water
reactors and 14 Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs). 

Among the 14 PWRs is our flagship design: Korean Standard
Nuclear Power Plant (KSNP), which is a 1,000 MWe PWR. 

Korea¡¯s nuclear power generation in 2003 reached about 130
billion kilowatts per hour, or 40.2 percent of the country's
total electricity generation. 

Korean nuclear plants have a competitive edge in terms of
operating capacity. 

Korean nuclear plants' average capacity factor in 2003 reached a
record high of 94.2 percent. Among our 18 units, 14 units were
above 90 percent and of all those units recorded above 80
percent in capacity factor. 

In addition, the nation has also made advancement in nuclear
energy plant technology. 

In particular, with the development of ALWRs in the world,
beginning in the mid-1980s, Korea has also expended a great deal
of effort to develop an ALWR, and it finally paid off with the
Advanced Power Reactor 1400 standard design. 

The APR1400 is a 1,400 megawatt (MW)-class PWR design with
advanced features for greatly enhanced safety and economics, the
KHNP said. 

For instance, the capability to cope with severe accidents was
significantly improved in the APR1400. 

The plant's layout and systems were also thoroughly optimized
for economic enhancement. As a result, the first APR1400 project
is expected to cost about 10 percent lower per kilowatt of
capacity than the KSNP design _ a significant savings. 

Currently in Korea, the competitiveness of nuclear power
generation is marginal compared to fossil fuel powered
generation. 

Therefore, the introduction of the APR1400 is a positive step
toward maintaining the competitiveness of nuclear power in
Korea. 

The first APR1400 unit will be built at Shin-Kori, adjacent to
the Kori plant: the site where nuclear power was inaugurated in
Korea.

 According to the construction schedule, Shin-Kori Unit 3, the
first APR1400, will be commercialized in 2011. 

The KHNP is confident that the APR1400 will prove the safety and
competitiveness of nuclear power. 

At this moment, several inaugural ALWR construction projects are
concurrently in progress in the world. 

In Finland, the construction of the EPR was announced last year. 

In Japan, two APWR units, Tsruga 3 and 4, are well on their way
to construction. 

Looking at the timeframe up to 2015, it is expected that Korea's
installed nuclear capacity will reach 26,610 MW, resulting in
the overall share of nuclear capacity of around 35 percent.
During this time period, two more APR1400 units will be
constructed, the KHNP said. 

jyseo@koreatimes.co.kr 05-15-2005 18:36         

*****************************************************************
 40 St. Cloud Times: Briefly: Nuclear commission to discuss Monticello plant 

www.sctimes.com

Times staff report

MONTICELLO  Staff from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will 
discuss the agency's 2004 safety assessment of the Monticello 
nuclear power plant at a public meeting Thursday.

The meeting will be at 4 p.m. at the Monticello Community Center, 
505 Walnut St., Suite 4.

The NRC's assessment concluded the Monticello plant, owned by 
Xcel Energy and operated by Nuclear Management Co., operated 
safely during 2004.

NRC staff will be available after the meeting to answer questions 
on the plant's safety and the NRC's role in ensuring safe 
operation.

© 2005 St. Cloud Times. All Rights Reserved                                                     


*****************************************************************
 41 New York Times: Old Foes Soften to New Reactors

Wally McNamee/Corbis

A year after the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant, 
protesters gathered near Harrisburg, Pa.

By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: May 15, 2005

WASHINGTON, May 14 - Several of the nation's most prominent 
environmentalists have gone public with the message that nuclear 
power, long taboo among environmental advocates, should be 
reconsidered as a remedy for global warming.

Their numbers are still small, but they represent growing cracks 
in what had been a virtually solid wall of opposition to nuclear 
power among most mainstream environmental groups. In the past few 
months, articles in publications like Technology Review, 
published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Wired 
magazine have openly espoused nuclear power, angering other 
environmental advocates.

Stewart Brand, a founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and the 
author of "Environmental Heresies," an article in the May issue 
of Technology Review, explained the shift as a direct consequence 
of the growing anxiety about global warming and its links to the 
use of fossil fuel.

"It's not that something new and important and good had happened 
with nuclear, it's that something new and important and bad has 
happened with climate change," Mr. Brand said in an interview.

For many longtime advocates of environmental causes, such talk is 
nothing short of betrayal. Because of safety fears that reached a 
peak during the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and unresolved 
questions of how to dispose of nuclear waste, environmentalists 
have waged unrelenting campaigns against plants from Shoreham on 
Long Island to Diablo Canyon near the California coast.

But as mounting scientific evidence points to a direct connection 
between increasing carbon emissions and climate change, Mr. Brand 
and others have come to see conventional fuels like oil and coal 
as a greater threat.

In his article, Mr. Brand argued, "Everything must be done to 
increase energy efficiency and decarbonize energy production." He 
ran down a list of alternative technologies, like solar and wind 
energy, that emit no heat-trapping gases. "But add them all up," 
he wrote, "and it's just a fraction of enough." His conclusion: 
"The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the 
carbon-dioxide loading is nuclear power."

In recent statements, three top environmental experts - Fred 
Krupp, the executive director of Environmental Defense, and 
Jonathan Lash, the president of the World Resources Institute and 
James Gustave Speth, the dean of Yale's School of Forestry and 
Environmental Studies - have stopped well short of embracing 
nuclear power, but they have emphasized that it is worth trying 
to find solutions to the economic, safety and security, waste 
storage and proliferation issues rather than rejecting the whole 
technology.

These efforts to edge away from the established orthodoxy 
coincide with moves by Senator John McCain, a Republican from 
Arizona, to offer significant financial incentives for the 
development of three new nuclear technologies -each with its own 
corporate backer - as part of a bill he and Senator Joseph I. 
Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, are sponsoring to regulate 
emissions of heat-trapping gases.

"We've got to go to all alternate forms of energy, nuclear 
power," Mr. McCain told Don Imus during an appearance on his 
MSNBC show Friday morning.

The addition to the McCain-Lieberman bill, which is being 
circulated in draft form, would codify a new political bargain. 
Conservatives would support emission controls in return for 
liberal support for a new generation of nuclear power plants, a 
shift that could reshape the existing alignments on these issues.

Details of the proposed new language in the McCain-Lieberman 
bill, some of which were first reported in The Energy Daily, a 
trade publication, were provided by a person who had read a 
draft. He requested anonymity because no final decision on the 
measure has been made.

Those environmentalists who are newly outspoken in favor of 
nuclear power lace their views with qualifiers.

Mr. Krupp of Environmental Defense said in an interview, "There 
are still very serious questions that have not been answered and 
E.D. is not going to be supporting nuclear power until we get 
good answers."

But, he added, "We are taking a fresh look and we want to pursue 
the answers, get the answers, because the global warming problem 
is so serious."

Mr. Speth of Yale, the author of "Red Sky at Morning," a book 
painting global warming as a crisis, said in an interview that if 
there were a national program to control the emission of 
heat-trapping gases, "I think we would want nuclear to be one of 
the technologies that is out there, competing on a level playing 
field with the others."

The changing attitudes are roiling established environmental 
groups and provoking fierce internal arguments in the United 
States and in Europe. In this country, some groups used 
antinuclear campaigns to build membership, financial support and 
often their fundamental identities back in the 1970's, when 
Birkenstocks were new and the folksinger Arlo Guthrie was 
celebrating the antinuclear Clamshell Alliance.

The release of radioactivity at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania 
and the catastrophic explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 brought a 
halt to any thought of expanding nuclear technology in the United 
States.

Now, groups like Greenpeace U.S.A., the Sierra Club, the World 
Wildlife Fund and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group argue 
with one voice that any more time or money spent on nuclear 
energy would unjustifiably divert resources from more promising 
solutions, like conservation and renewable energy.

It has been 32 years since the last nuclear reactor was ordered 
and built in the United States, and 1996 was the last year in 
which a civilian nuclear reactor - the Tennessee Valley 
Authority's Watts Bar reactor - was commissioned. Nuclear 
reactors, almost all of them the first generation of this 
technology, now provide about 20 percent of electric power in the 
United States.

Aside from the environmental issues, it is still far from clear 
when the fundamental economics of energy generation would favor 
the construction of new nuclear plants in the United States. 
Officials of electric company officials and those of companies 
that design and build reactors have said recently that without 
substantial government help, the costs of winning regulatory 
approval and building nuclear plants would be dauntingly high for 
investors.

The proposals that Senator McCain is considering would provide a 
50-50 cost-sharing arrangement, amounting to hundreds of millions 
of dollars in subsidies, to gain federal certification for three 
new designs for nuclear plants. On Monday he met with Jeffrey R. 
Immelt, the chairman and chief executive of General Electric, 
which constructs nuclear plants.

Such subsidies are still anathema to most environmental groups, 
which believe that the nuclear industry got far more than its 
fair share of government aid in the last generation, while their 
technologies of choice were left hungry.

"The notion out there from some of these deep thinkers is that we 
have to take our medicine and if only we could accept nukes, the 
global warming problem would be solved," said Anna Aurilio, the 
legislative director at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. 
"We have a whole bunch of solutions already that are not as 
risky." These include, Ms. Aurilio said, increasing national 
energy efficiency and investing in solar, wind, geothermal and 
biomass energy, like ethanol.

Thomas B. Cochran, the director of the Natural Resources Defense 
Council's nuclear program said: "The issue isn't: Do you support 
nuclear? The issue should be: Do you support massive subsidies to 
the tune of billions of dollars for nuclear power?" He said, "The 
answer is no."

The most frequent objection to nuclear reactors is that they may 
lead to the spread of nuclear weapons. In an era when hostile or 
potentially hostile governments like those in North Korea and 
Iran are gaining proficiency in nuclear weapons technology, 
opponents ask, why support a technology that would generate more 
weapons-grade fuel? They also balk at the notion that nuclear 
waste can be safely and economically stored.

The anger at the magazine articles advocating nuclear power was 
visceral. In the April edition of Wired, the editors wrote: "In 
February, we suggested it's time to reconsider nuclear power; 
readers had a meltdown." They said, "Even onetime 
environmentalist-in-chief Al Gore chimed in at Davos, complaining 
directly to our editor in chief."

One letter to the magazine called the article - "Nuclear Now!" by 
Peter Schwartz and Spencer Reiss - "right-leaning, 
Cheney-worshipping drivel about clean nuclear power" and said, 
"The bottom line is that nuclear power is inherently dangerous, 
and we have no way of disposing of the intensely radioactive 
trash it generates."

Mr. Brand, the author of the Technology Review article, believes 
that these arguments will, if anything, get more intense. After 
"decades of getting a message out and getting a degree of 
alignment" he said, "it's hard to reverse the polarity on this."

Jerry Slominski, a lobbyist for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a 
trade group for manufacturers, has yet to see much movement in 
the core constituencies of environmental groups.

"I think there's a lot of talk, but I haven't seen a real 
shifting in policy among environmental groups," Mr. Slominski 
said. "They just don't know how to get from here to there, I 
think."

But Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global 
Climate Change, disagreed.

"I do think that things are changing," Ms. Claussen said. "I 
think people in the environmental community are getting more 
realistic about what is possible and what is not. At the same 
time, they are getting more panicky, maybe, about what you have 
to do to deal with climate change." 
*****************************************************************
 42 TIMES OF INDIA: US ready to carry out N-strike- The Times of India
 
PTI[ SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2005 09:35:08 PM

  WASHINGTON: The United States is now ready to attack, if 
necessary with nuclear arms, hostile countries developing weapons 
of mass destruction, media reports said here on Sunday. 

Early last summer, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a 
top secret interim global strike alert order directing the 
military to assume and maintain readiness to attack hostile 
countries developing weapons of mass destruction, specifically 
Iran and North Korea, the Washington Post reported. 

Two months later, Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force, 
had said that his fleet of B-2 and B-52 bombers had changed its 
way of operating so that it could be ready to carry out such 
missions. 

"We are now at the point where we are essentially on alert," 
Carlson said in an interview with the Shreveport Times. 

"We have the capacity to plan and execute global strikes," he 
said, adding that his forces were the US strategic command's 
"focal point for global strike" and could executive an attack "in 
half a day or less". 

When military officials refer to global strike, they stress it is 
conventional elements. 

However, global strike also includes a nuclear option, which run 
counter to traditional US notions about the defensive role of 
nuclear weapons, the Post said. 

The official US position is to de-emphasise the importance of its 
nuclear arsenal. 

But the September 11, 2001 attacks and the President's commitment 
to the idea of pre-emptive action to prevent future attacks have 
set in motion a process that has led to a fundamental change in 
how the US military might respond to possible theats.   
    
  Copyright © 2005 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 43 [DU-WATCH] Iconoclast articles on DU
 
Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 14:17:59 -0500 (CDT)

 
Thanks to DS Nurse of [gulf-chat] for listing these articles.

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/

What Is Depleted Uranium?
A Scientific Perspective
Interview with Leuren Moret, Geo-Scientist
A Military Perspective
Interview with Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D, former Director of the U.S. Army 
Depleted Uranium Project
A Survivor's Perspective
Interview with Melissa Sterry, Gulf War Veteran who is surviving the effects 
of depleted uranium

What Is Depleted Uranium?

CRAWFORD - The Lone Star Iconoclast last week conducted a test by asking 20 
Texans, representing all walks of life and from different territories of the 
state, "What are your views on depleted uranium?"

Nineteen had no clue what the interviewer was talking about.

One offered, "Isn't that the stuff that's hauled away from nuclear power 
plants?"

None knew that depleted uranium (DU) is radioactive material being used in 
military ammunition and none knew that the U.S. military is utilizing 
weapons to launch these nuclear DU projectiles in Iraq.

Likewise, not one of the queried Texans was aware that DU poses significant 
health threats not only to Iraqis, but to Americans as well, for the 
radioactivity spreads from continent to continent through the atmosphere and 
is brought home through soldiers to their families and associates.

Uranium is one of the heaviest elements found in nature and increases in 
radioactivity as it decays. After enriched uranium which is to be used for 
nuclear fuel is extracted from natural uranium, the leftover nuclear waste, 
commonly known as depleted uranium, is stored in steel cylinders for public 
protection.

Depleted uranium is heavy, cheap, abundant, and is provided free of charge 
to arms manufacturers as a way of disposing of the material.

DU rounds are used in a variety of high intensity weapons and is used in a 
variety of forms. Since the projectiles are so powerful, the DU gets hot and 
oxides into aerosol-like particles that can be less than 10 microns or 
smaller than a white blood cell and are, therefore, easily inhalable.

According to a study conducted by Iliya Pesic in a paper entitled "Depleted 
Uranium - Ethics of the Silver Bullet"
http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/StudentWebPages/IPesic/ResearchPaper.htm,
there are serious long-term effects of DU in Iraq.

"In regions heavily hit by DU, studies have shown that numerous civilians 
have extensive problems with their immune systems, malignant cancers (such 
as ludicrously high leukemia rates), heart problems, and bizarre abnormal 
birth defects (such as children born without eyes, ears, tongue, etc.). In 
some regions, leukemia has become one of the main forms of cancer-related 
death."

Pesic continues, "Contaminated agriculture and water supplies help spread 
the DU dust which continues to hurt people in different regions where DU 
ammo was not used."

Pesic notes that veterans and civilians exposed to DU have experienced 
extensive irreversible damage to kidney and partial kidney failure. "Cancers 
related to one's blood, bone, and immune system become common. There are 
also various other biological effects claimed from DU, such as chronic 
fatigue, respiratory problems, heart problems, digestive organ damage (e.g. 
liver failure and severe rectal bleeding), etc."

For this edition, The Iconoclast contacted some of the top experts in the 
field of depleted uranium, who agreed to be interviewed:
. Leuren Moret, a Berkeley-based geo-scientist with expertise in atmospheric 
dust.

. Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D., Major (retired) United States Army Reserve, former 
Director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project.
. Melissa Sterry, a Gulf War veteran who is surviving the effects of 
depleted uranium.

The interviews are presented in these formats: A Military Perspective, A 
Scientific Perspective, and A Survivor's Perspective.
On the same subject, The Iconoclast is publishing an editorial encouraging 
the Texas Legislature to provide DU testing for soldiers who are returning 
from overseas, so that if problems exist, they can be addressed.

==========article 1 part I ==============

A Scientific Perspective

An Interview With
LEUREN MORET, Geoscientist

Interview Conducted
By W. Leon Smith
and Nathan Diebenow

Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who works almost around the clock educating 
citizens, the media, members of parliaments and Congress and other officials 
on radiation issues. She became a whistleblower in 1991 at the Livermore 
Nuclear Weapons Lab after witnessing fraud on the Yucca Mountain Project. 
She is currently working as an independent citizen scientist and radiation 
specialist in communities around the world, and contributed to the U.N. 
subcommission investigating depleted uranium. According to Wikipedia online 
encyclopedia, Moret testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for 
Afghanistan in Japan in 2003, presented at the World Depleted Uranium 
Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Germany, and spoke at the World Court of 
Women at the World Social Forum in Bombay, India, in January 2004.

THE INTERVIEW

ICONOCLAST: What are the latest developments with reducing depleted uranium 
exposures on U.S. troops?

MORET: A young veteran named Melissa Sterry of Connecticut has introduced a 
bill into the Connecticut Legislature requiring independent testing of 
returning Afghan and Gulf War veterans going back to 2001. She said that she 
did it because she's sick, and her friends are dead, and that's from serving 
in the 2003 conflict. I have been following the bill and talking to her. 
Yesterday, she testified twice at the United Nations. I said, "Why don't we 
get this bill all over the U.S. in state legislatures because it informs the 
public and get the local media to cover it."

The U.S. has blocked any accountability at international and national 
levels. There's a total cover-up just like with Agent Orange, the atomic 
veterans, MKULTRA, the mind control experiments the CIA did. This is more of 
the same, but the issue is much, much worse because the genetic future of 
all those contaminated is effected. Now vast regions around our world, as 
well as our atmosphere, are contaminated with the depleted uranium. They've 
used so much. It's the equivalent number of atoms, as the Japanese professor 
calculated it, to over 400,000 Nagasaki bombs that has been released into 
the atmosphere. That's really an underestimate.

I went to Louisiana in April. I was invited to speak at the University of 
New Orleans for three days. One of the veterans asked me to be in their 
April 19 protest and rally through the City of New Orleans. He took the 
Connecticut bill straight to the Legislature, and he got two legislators to 
sponsor it, and he said, "Just whiteout the name 'Connecticut' and write in 
'Louisiana' on the bill." You're not going to believe it. It passed 101 to 0 
yesterday in the Louisiana House.

I want you to write about it because we want it (the DU testing bill) in 
Texas. Nevada is going to introduce it. Congressman Jim McDermott is going 
to put it into the Washington legislature. We want to get the governor of 
Montana to do it because he's the first governor to demand his National 
Guard be returned. I think half of them are back. He said, "I need them in 
the state."

The DU issue is just really, really, really, really so awful. I don't think 
there's any greater tragedy in the history of the world in what they've 
done.

ICONOCLAST: Is there a danger of depleted uranium, being used in weaponry 
over there, spreading by air over here?

MORET: The atmosphere globally is contaminated with it. It's completely 
mixed in one year. I'm an expert on atmospheric dust. I'm a geoscientist, a 
geologist, and that's what I studied and did my research on. It's really a 
fascinating subject. We have huge dust storms that are a million square 
miles and transport millions of tons of dust and sand every year around the 
world.

The main centers of these dust storms are the Gobi Desert in China, which is 
where the Chinese did atmospheric testing, so that's all contaminated with 
radiation, and it gets transported right over Japan, and it comes straight 
across the Pacific and dumps all its sand and dust on the U.S., North 
America. It's loaded with radioactive isotopes, soot, pesticides, chemicals, 
pollution - everything is in it - fungi, bacteria, viruses.

The Sahara Desert is another huge dust center, and it goes up all over 
Europe and straight across the Atlantic, to the Caribbean, and up the East 
Coast. Of course, you get it in Texas with those hurricanes. They all 
originate in the Sahara Desert.

The third region is the Western United States, which is where the Nevada 
test site is located. We did 1,200 nuclear weapons tests there, so all this 
radiation that is already there, which is bad enough, has caused a global 
cancer epidemic since 1945. All of that radiation was the equivalent of 
40,000 Nagasaki bombs. We're talking about 10 times more.

In April of 2003, the World Health Organization said they expect global 
cancer rates to increase 50 percent by the year 2020.
Infant mortality is going up again all over the world. This is an indicator 
of the level of radioactive pollution.

When the U.S. and Russia signed the partial test ban treaty in 1963, the 
infant mortality rate started dropping again, which is normal.
Now they are going up again. It's the global pollution with this radiation.

ICONOCLAST: I had one of our correspondents send me a series of photographs 
of the Al-Asad dust storm in Iraq on April 28.

MORET: That dust is what I'm talking about.

ICONOCLAST: In the picture you can see a gigantic wall of sand.

MORET: I have 16 pictures of that storm. They're posted with photos from 
Iraqi doctors of the children of people with cancer and leukemia. So what 
did you think of that dust storm?

ICONOCLAST: I thought it was really dramatic.

MORET: It remobilizes all the radiation, but those are the larger chunks. 
The DU burns at such high temperatures. It's a pyrophoric metal which means 
it burns. The bullets and big caliber shells are actually on fire when they 
come out of the gun barrel because they are ignited by the friction in the 
gun barrel. Seventy percent of the DU metal becomes a metal vapor. It's 
actually a radioactive gas weapon and a terrain contaminant.

I'll email you the URL of the 1943 memo to General Leslie Grove under the 
Manhattan Project. It's the blueprint for depleted uranium. They dropped the 
atomic bombs, but they did not use the DU weapons because they thought they 
were too horrific.
I've toured and gone all over Japan with a pediatrician in Basra and an 
oncologist, a cancer specialist. These poor doctors - their whole families 
are dying of cancer. He has 10 members of his family with cancer now that he's 
treating, and this is just from Gulf War I. They've used much, much, much 
more in 2003. All over the whole country.

ICONOCLAST: What can soldiers expect when they come home?

MORET: If they were in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, they're coming home with 
rectal cancer from sitting on ammunition boxes. The young women are 
reporting terrible problems with endometriosis. That's the lining of the 
uterus malfunctioning, and they just bleed and bleed and bleed. Some of them 
have uterine cancer - 18 and 19 and 20 year olds.

The Army will not even diagnose it. They send them back to the battlefields. 
They won't treat them or diagnose them. A group of 20 soldiers pushed from 
Kuwait to Baghdad in 2003 in all the fighting. Eight of those 20 soldiers 
have malignancies.

ICONOCLAST: Does exposure to depleted uranium effect their psychological 
background when they come home?

MORET: Depleted uranium are these particles that form at very high 
temperatures. They are uranium oxides that are insoluble. They are at least 
100 times smaller than a white blood cell, so when the soldiers breathe, 
they inhale them. The particles go through the nose, go through the 
olfactory and into the brain, and it messes up their cognitive abilities, 
thought processes.

It damages their mood-control mechanism in the brain. Four soldiers at Fort 
Bragg came back from Afghanistan, and within two months, those four had 
murdered their wives. This is part of the damage to the brain from the 
radiation and the particles.

The soldiers from Gulf War I in a group of 67 soldiers who came back, they 
had DU in their equipment, in their clothes, in their bodies, in their 
semen, and they had normal babies before they went over there to war. They 
came back, and the VA did a study. Of 251 Gulf War I veterans in 
Mississippi, in 67 percent of them, their babies born after the war were 
deemed to have severe birth defects. They had brains missing, arms and legs 
missing, organs missing. They were born without eyes. They had horrible 
blood diseases. It's horrific.

If you want to look at something, Life magazine did a photo essay which is 
still on the Internet. It's called "The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm." You 
should look at that - oh, my God, the post-Gulf War babies playing with 
their brothers and sisters who are normal.
Basically, it's like smoking crack, only you're smoking radioactive crack. 
It goes straight into the blood stream. It's carried all throughout the body 
into the bones, the bone marrow, the brain. It goes into the fetus. It's a 
systemic poison and a radiological poison.

ICONOCLAST: What about the people in the United States that are here? You 
say that DU is being mixed and spread globally?

MORET: Yes, it's being mixed globally. We're getting secondary smoke. It's 
the secondary smoke effect. You know the people who inhabit a room with 
smokers? They are getting that secondary smoke, and so are we.

ICONOCLAST: Is that secondary smoke getting thicker as we speak?

MORET: Yeah, the concentration of the depleted uranium particles in the 
atmosphere all around the globe is increasing. There are indications that 
the U.S. will go in June and bomb the heck out of Iran. We're monitoring the 
U.S. Army ammunition factories. They have very large orders for those huge 
bunker buster bombs that have 5,000 lbs. of DU in the warhead.

ICONOCLAST: So the prognosis for America isn't really good?

MORET: No, it's really bad.

ICONOCLAST: And if this continues then?

MORET: It's going to kill off the world's population. It already is, and it 
doesn't just effect people. It effects all living systems. The plants, the 
animals, the bacteria. It effects everything.

ICONOCLAST: So the things that we eat for instance, if they have DU in them, 
then we'll just get it in our systems, and so we're polluting the oceans, so 
that could effect all marine life?

MORET: Yes, it's in the air, water, and soil. The half-life of DU, Uranium 
238, is 4.5 billion years the age of the Earth.

ICONOCLAST: With the damage that's been done to this point, can we turn 
back? We can't clean it up?

MORET: There's no way to clean it up. What happens is these tiny particles 
float around the Earth. There are still plutonium and uranium floating 
around the Earth from bomb testing. These particles are so tiny that 
molecules bumping into them keep them lofted in the air, and so the only way 
for them to get out of the atmosphere is rain, snow, fog, pollution, which 
will clear them out of the air and deposit them in the environment. What 
happens is the surface of these particles gets wetted by the moisture in the 
air. They come down and land on stuff and stick to it like a glue. You can't 
ever get the particles off whatever they're sticking to because have you 
ever put a drop of water on a microscope slide and then put another one on 
top of it? Can you pull those apart?

ICONOCLAST: No.

MORET: Okay, that's the same effect that happens to radioactive particles. 
Once they are removed from the atmosphere, they stick to any surfaces they 
land on. In a way they are removed from circulation from the atmosphere. You 
can't wash them off. If it keeps raining or they're in a creek, you know, if 
they're on rocks or stones or something in a creek, they won't even wash 
off.
You didn't know it was this bad, did you?

ICONOCLAST: No, I knew it was bad, but I thought it was fairly isolated.

MORET: No. What is over there (in Iraq) is over here in about four days. I 
don't know if you followed Chernobyl. That big bubble of radiation went 
around and around the world, but this is dust. It becomes a part of 
atmospheric dust. Like the dust storm you saw in that photo, it goes 
everywhere

------------------------------------------------

ICONOCLAST: Is it in the upper levels of the atmosphere or the lower levels?

MORET: It's in lower orbital space.
They brought the Mir spacecraft back down to Earth when they got done using 
it, and there was something called a space midge which covered the 
electronics on the outside of the spacecraft and protected it from radiation 
that comes from the sun because electronics are real vulnerable to 
radiation. They analyzed the surface of that space net and found uranium and 
uranium decayed products which they said came from atmospheric testing or 
burned up spacecraft with nuclear materials or nuclear reactors on board. 
Uranium can also come from supernovas, but they thought that the most likely 
sources were atmospheric testing and the nuclear materials we put in space.

ICONOCLAST: Essentially then, you're saying that we're conducting a nuclear 
war.

MORET: Yes, and that's exactly what it is. We've conducted four nuclear wars 
since 1991. Yeah, these are nuclear wars. DU is a nuclear weapon.

ICONOCLAST: From the point of view of a scientist, what needs to happen to 
correct this?

MORET: Well, we need to stop the use of it. We've built an international 
movement to stop the use, the manufacture, the storage, the sales, and the 
deployment of depleted uranium weapons.

ICONOCLAST: Are the munitions we sell to other countries contained with 
depleted uranium?

MORET: We have. In 1968 the first depleted uranium weapons systems that we 
found a patent for suddenly appeared in the U.S. patent office. It was for 
the Navy. It was sort of a Gatling gun style weapon system that you mounted 
on ships. It rapidly fires like 2,500 bullets a minute. It's over 3,000 now. 
They've improved the design. Then in 1973, we gave depleted uranium weapons 
systems to the Israelis and supervised their use. They used them in the 
Arab-Israeli war and completely wiped out the Arabs in five days. Then the 
show was on the road. That was the first actual battlefield demonstration of 
this new weapon system.

Hughes Aircraft developed the full-length system which is for the Navy. That's 
the Gatling gun system. They still use it. That was produced in 1974 and 
tested. Within six months the U.S. government had sold the DU weapons system 
to 12 entities which included many branches of the U.S. military and other 
counties. We've sold DU weapons systems to about - we don't know exactly for 
sure - it's been about 12 or 17 countries. The good news is that normally 
such a weapons system that effective would have been sold to 80, 100, or 120 
countries by now. But because of the radiological, biological, and 
environmental hazard, countries were not only afraid to buy it, the ones who 
did buy it are afraid to use it. The only countries we know that have used 
DU are Britain, the U.S., and Israel.
The United Nations in 1996 passed a resolution that depleted uranium weapons 
are weapons of mass destruction, and they are illegal under all 
international laws and treaties.

In 2001, the European Parliament passed a resolution on DU. What happened is 
that the NATO forces went into Yugoslavia in 1998 and '99 and flew 39,000 
bombing runs and completely bombed Yugoslavia into radioactive rubble. 
Germany and the U.S. made the most money on the destruction of Yugoslavia, 
and they made sure that countries that didn't know about the DU, that the 
peacekeepers from those countries like from Italy and Portugal, were sent to 
the most contaminated regions in Yugoslavia. Germans and Americans didn't 
send their own troops into those areas. They were in the least contaminated 
areas. These poor soldiers from other countries came back and died within 
weeks or in a couple of days or months. The parents in Portugal and Italy 
are furious and went to the Parliament and media, and there was just a huge 
media storm of articles about DU.

The cat was out of the bag because of the 1998 NATO invasion of Yugoslavia. 
The cat was out of the bag, but Japanese troops have been sent into Somawa. 
They're self-defense forces. It was the most contaminated area where the 
heaviest fighting happened in Iraq. We can expect those soldiers to be 
really, really sick.

ICONOCLAST: What about Iraq itself? What's been done thus far?

MORET: It's uninhabitable. The whole country. Yugoslavia, Iraq, and 
Afghanistan are completely uninhabitable.

ICONOCLAST: But people live there, so they're going to live there suffering?

MORET: Well, you can see from the birth defects and the illnesses that it is 
pretty severe. Each year the number of birth defects and illnesses will rise 
because of the total contamination levels in all living things will increase 
because they are breathing that air and drinking water and eating the food 
from contaminated soils. It's just a slow death sentence. The same with 
Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

Depleted uranium is a very, very, very effective biological weapon. This is 
the primary purpose for using it. Marion Falk (a retired chemical physicist 
who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore lab), 
who is the Manhattan Project scientist I work with, taught me pretty much 
everything about radiation and particles and DU. He said the purpose of 
weapons used by the military is not only to injure and kill the enemy 
soldiers, but the purpose is to kill, maim, and disease the civilian 
population because it reduces the productivity of a country and pretty soon 
a lot of their resources are going to be used for taking care of sick 
people. They will have fewer and fewer healthy workers.

Of course, once you cause mutation in the DNA, that damage is passed on to 
future generations of that affected person or animal or plant. DNA does not 
repair itself.

ICONOCLAST: So the mutations would be probably destructive more so than 
constructive.

MORET: Oh, the mutations are causing those birth defects.

ICONOCLAST: They're not evolutionary diseases?

MORET: No, they are evolutionary. They are inherited by all future 
generations and passed on. It's like if you have red hair and all of your 
future generations will have that gene.

ICONOCLAST: So if I had a precondition to heart disease because of the 
radiation, then the generation that would come after me would have the same 
problem?

MORET: Well, if you damage the cell or parts of the cell or functioning of 
cells, that doesn't necessarily damage the DNA. There are two kinds of 
damage: one damages the cells of the living organism, and that may not be 
passed on, but if you damage the DNA in the egg or the sperm, that is passed 
on to all future generations.

ICONOCLAST: So the guys coming back from the war, their sperm is probably 
going to be -

MORET: Damaged. Yes. They also have depleted uranium in their semen. When 
they're intimate with their partners, they internally contaminate them with 
depleted uranium. The women become sick themselves. They have depleted 
uranium in their bodies, and there is something called burning syndrome. 
Just absolutely horrible. You can read about it in an article by David Rose 
in the December Vanity Fair. It's on the Internet.
A friend of mine is the widow of a Canadian Gulf War veteran. David Rose 
interviewed her, and she griped about the burning semen. She said, "I had 20 
condoms full of frozen peas in my freezer at all times, and after we were 
intimate, I would insert one into my vagina, and that is the only way I 
could bear the pain from the burning semen." And it goes through condoms, 
too.

ICONOCLAST: Gosh, durn!

MORET: Yeah, you should see the high school classes when I talk about the 
burning semen and the internal contamination. The girls' mouths go into 
little round Os, and the boys start panicking because they're like, "I'll 
never get sick!" (laughs) The name of this article is "Weapons of 
Self-Destruction."

ICONOCLAST: How much DU will it take to kill off all known life on this 
planet?

MORET: The amount of radiation released is certainly going to have a very, 
very profound global impact, and we're already seeing infant mortality 
increasing globally. The fetus is the most susceptible to radiation damage 
because all the cells are rapidly dividing, the limbs and the bodies 
developing, so when you start introducing toxic chemicals and radiation, it 
really damages the natural process of fetal development.

The reason they were able to convince the Senate to sign the partial test 
ban treaty in 1963 was because of the increase in infant mortality. It had 
been dropping and declining two or three percent for quite a long time each 
year because of better prenatal care and educating mothers.

Infant mortality started going up after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima 
and Nagasaki, especially in the '50s when the big bomb testing started.

By 1963, it was really obvious that the bomb testing globally was having a 
real impact on the unborn. They signed the partial test ban treaty. Russia 
and the U.S. stopped atmospheric testing, and the infant mortality rate 
started going down right away. They're going up again now. This is global 
radioactive pollution, and how long it would take to eliminate all life is 
something nobody knows, but the depleted uranium is a very, very effective 
biological weapon.

There are two purposes for the military use of weapons. One is to destroy 
the enemy soldiers, and the other, which is just as important, is to destroy 
the enemy civilian population. By causing illnesses and disease, long 
lingering illnesses really impact the productivity and the economy of a 
country. It was Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters that actually 
destroyed the Soviet Union because the former Soviet Union is very, very 
sick from all the radiation that was released. They were much more sloppier 
than we were.

I have a World Health Organization world health survey which they published 
in the Journal of American Medical Association last June. The impact of 
atmospheric testing is very, very apparent by the percentage of population 
in each country they investigated for some form of mental illness. For 
instance, Japan is 8.8 percent. Nigeria is very low - 4.7 percent. They have 
almost no radiation in Nigeria. In the Ukraine where they had the Chernobyl 
accident, it is 20.4 percent. Spain is at 9.2 percent. Italy is 8.2 percent. 
It's pretty low because they don't have nuke plants. France is 75 percent 
reliant on nuclear power, so you have mental illness in 18.4 percent of the 
population. Mexico is at 12.2 percent, and the United States is at 26.3 
percent - the highest rate of mental illness in the world.

And George Bush and his siblings were all exposed in utero to bomb testing 
fallout in the United States. He had a toddler sister who died of leukemia 
when she was about three.

I worked with a group called the Radiation And Public Health Project. Their 
website is <www.radiation.org>. We are all radiation specialists, well-known 
scientists, and independent scientists. We've collected 6,000 baby teeth 
around nuclear power plants and measured the radiation in them, and one of 
our members is the neighbor of the women who worked with all of the Bush 
children, including President Bush himself, because they had severe learning 
disabilities.

ICONOCLAST: How do we know that the Bush children were exposed?

MORET: By the year of their birth. The year they were carried by their 
mother. You have to look at how much bomb testing material was released into 
the atmosphere, and there's a direct correlation to the decline in SAT 
scores for all teenagers in the U.S. to the amount of radiation that was 
released into the atmosphere the year their mother was carrying them. These 
are delayed effects of radiation exposure in utero.

ICONOCLAST: So they were living in Connecticut, but they were still feeling 
the effects of the radiation in Nevada?

MORET: Two years ago the U.S. government admitted that every single person 
living in the United States between 1957 and 1963 was internally exposed to 
radiation. So for any pregnant woman during those years, her fetus was 
exposed.

ICONOCLAST: What type of radiation levels are we talking about?

MORET: It's low levels, and the main pathways are drinking water and dairy 
products. It even killed the baby fish in the Atlantic. Strontium-90 is a 
man-made isotope that comes out of nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors. They 
measured the levels of strontium-90 in milk in Norway from the 1950s up 
until the 1970s, and they measured the decline in the fishing catch in that 
same period, and as the strontium-90 increased in the milk in Norway, 
fishing catches declined.

By 1963, when the U.S. tested a nuclear bomb almost every day (they did 250 
tests in one year because the treaty was going to be signed), the fishing 
catch declined by 50 percent. In the Pacific, it declined 60 percent because 
there was Russian, Chinese, French, and U.S. testing in the Pacific.

ICONOCLAST: So we're still eating those contaminated fish today. Has the 
genetic code been changed?

MORET: The oceans are getting whatever is getting rained down, snowed down, 
or fogged down from the atmosphere. It's getting into the oceans. This big 
frog die-off, which is global, is certainly related to the radiation in the 
rainwater. It's a global nuclear holocaust. It effects all living things. 
That's why they call it "omnicide," which means it kills all living things - 
the plants, the animals, the bacteria. Everything.

ICONOCLAST: You think we ought to have the Weather Channel report on the 
current sand storm conditions in Iraq so we can prepare four days in advance 
for the radiation?

MORET: I'll tell you what I did when 9/11 happened.
I called all the doctors with Radiation And Public Health Project, and I 
said, "Get out of town, and don't come back until it has rained three 
 times." One lived 12 miles downwind from the Pentagon. She went out on her 
balcony with her Geiger counter. I said, "Get that Geiger counter out of 
your purse." We had just done a press conference in San Francisco, and I 
knew she had it in her purse. Well, the radiation levels were 8-10 times 
higher than background.

We called the EPA, HAZMAT, FBI, and said, "Get all those emergency response 
workers suited up. They need to be protected." Two days after 9/11, the EPA 
radiation expert for that region called back and said, "Yup, the Pentagon 
crash rubble was radioactive, and we believe it's depleted uranium, but we're 
not worried about that. It's only harmful if it's inhaled."

He said, "We're worried about the lead solder in the plane." Well, you know 
what's in Tomahawk missiles? They have depleted uranium warheads. The 
radioactive crash rubble contaminated with DU is evidence of a DU warhead.

ICONOCLAST: I did not think about that, but going back to my original 
question: Should the Weather Channel report for us on the toxic dust storms 
in Iraq?

MORET: But how could people get away from them? These dust storms are a 
million square miles. They're huge, and they come right across the Atlantic, 
the Caribbean, and Texas coast line, and right up the East Coast. There are 
people who are going to leave the state every time there's a hurricane It's 
in the food, drinking water, dairy products, and then the problem with 
Uranium 238, which is 99.39 percent DU, is that it decays in over 20 steps 
into other radioactive isotopes.

That's why I call it the "Trojan Horse." It's the weapon that keeps giving. 
It keeps killing. This is like smoking radioactive crack. It goes right in 
your nose. It crosses the olfactory bulb into your brain. It's a systemic 
poison. It goes everywhere. These particles that form at very high 
temperatures - 5,000-10,000 degrees C - are nanoparticles. They are a 10th 
of a micron or smaller. A 10th of a micron is 100 times smaller than a white 
blood cell. They get picked up in the lipids and probably the cholesterol 
and go right through the cell membranes of the cell. They screw up the cell 
processes. They screw up the signalling between the cells because the cells 
all talk to each other and coordinate what they're doing. It messes up brain 
function.

ICONOCLAST: Do you know what Iraq was like before the first Gulf War?

MORET: Iraq prior to the 1991 Gulf War was the most advanced in the entire 
Middle East. They had scrupulous databases of the health problems and 
disease rates, which is why the U.S. bombed all of the offices in the 
Ministry of Health. We destroyed all those records so that a pre-Gulf War 
health base could not be established to show how much these diseases have 
increased. This would concern the U.S. in terms of compensation for war 
crimes.

In these horrible U.N. sanctions, they (the Iraqis) could never get all of 
the protocol medicine for the treatment of leukemia. They (the U.N.) would 
say, "These steps of the leukemia treatment were components in weapons, so 
you can't have that." They never gave the people the full proper protocols 
in the areas of treatment they needed to get rid of the leukemia. It hid the 
effects of the depleted uranium because the children were starving. They had 
malnutrition. They had the healthiest population in the Middle East (prior 
to Gulf War I).

ICONOCLAST: Let's talk about the children of Iraq.

MORET: After the Gulf War, they had maybe one baby a week born with birth 
defects in the hospitals in Basra. Now they are having 10-12 a day. The 
levels of uranium are increasing in the population every year. Every day, 
people are eating and drinking while the whole environment is contaminated. 
Just what you'd expect. There are more babies born with birth defects, and 
the birth defects are getting more and more severe.

An Iraqi doctor told me that babies are being born now that are lumps of 
flesh. She said that they don't have heads or legs or arms. It's just a lump 
of flesh. This also happened to populations that were not removed from 
islands in the Pacific when the bomb tests occurred. Basically, governments 
were using them as guinea pigs.

ICONOCLAST: So all the countries that were equipped with nuclear weapons are 
guilty of those atrocities.

MORET: They were all doing it. France, Russia. China, and the U.S. And I'm 
not sure if Britain did bomb testing. They were real low key about it.

ICONOCLAST: Where are the radiation hot spots in the United States?

MORET: In the United States, it would be within a 100 miles of nuclear power 
plants. We have 110 nuclear power plants in the U.S. We have the most of any 
country in the world, but only a 103 are operating. Almost all of the entire 
East Coast.
What we did was we took government data from the Centers of Disease Control 
on breast cancer deaths between 1985 and 1989. Anywhere from within a 100 
miles of a nuclear power plant is where two-thirds of all breast cancer 
deaths occurred in the U.S. between 1985 and 1989.

It's also around the nuclear weapons laboratories. That would be Los Alamos 
in New Mexico, the Idaho Nuclear Engineering Lab in Idaho, and Hanford in 
Washington State, which is where they got the plutonium for all the bombs. 
They contaminated the entire Columbia River watershed and almost the whole 
state of Washington.

It gets into the water and into the plants and into the vegetation. If you 
eat clams or mussels or crabs or things like that, even certain kinds of 
fish that eat off of the mud at the bottom of the river, you have much 
higher levels of radiation in your tissues. It depends on each person and on 
how healthy they are, but this man from Washington State died suddenly. He 
was in his late 40s. They did an autopsy, and he was full of radioactive 
zinc. They went, "Where in the world did he get this? It only comes from 
nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors." They studied his diet and discovered he 
loved to eat oysters. They found out where he bought his oysters and found 
the oyster beds. They were 200 miles off shore, from Washington State. The 
radiation was being carried off out to sea from the coastline. It was 
passing over this oyster bed. The oysters were just gobbling them up.

ICONOCLAST: What are the symptoms of DU poisoning?

MORET: Soldiers on the battlefield have reported a metallic taste in their 
mouth. That's the actual taste of the uranium metal. Then within 24-48 
hours, soldiers on the battlefield have reported that they felt sick. They 
start getting muscle aches, and they lose energy. Some of them came back 
incontinent. In other words, in adult diapers.

One woman reported that the first night home, she wanted to be intimate with 
her husband, but she had absolutely no feeling. She couldn't feel anything 
from the waist down. This particulate matter damages the neuromuscular 
system, the nerves; it just goes everywhere. And there's no treatment for 
it. These particles are very, very insoluble, so they can't even dissolve in 
body fluids, so they can be excreted from the body. Then they keep 
releasing. Even when uranium decays, it turns into another radioactive 
isotope. So it's a particle that just sits there shooting bullets until you 
die.

Another problem is that soldiers have crumbling teeth. Teeth just start 
falling apart. The uranium replaces calcium in the calcium-phosphate 
structure of the teeth. Some have complained about grand mal seizures, 
cerebral palsy. Some diseases reported at very high rates in Air Force and 
Army soldiers are Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease, and Hodgkin's 
disease. This is damage to the mitochondria in the cells and the nerves. The 
mitochondria make all the energy for the body, so when you damage 
mitochondria, another symptom is chronic fatigue syndrome. There's just not 
enough energy produced by the body to function normally.
I found a study in the Sandia Nuclear Weapons Laboratory employee newsletter 
in September 2003. They are doing major studies in mitochondrial disfunction 
related to Lou Gehrig's, Hodgkin's, and Parkinson's diseases for veterans. 
Since it's at a nuclear weapon's lab, they are fully aware of the health 
damage.

ICONOCLAST: Tell me about the tests that detect for DU in the body.

MORET: The chromosome test in the best indicator. It's $5,000. The urine 
test is a $1,000. If you test positive with the urine test, you know you're 
contaminated. If you test negative, it does not mean that you're not 
contaminated. It just means that you may or may not be contaminated but 
enough hasn't dissolved in your blood stream to go through your kidneys to 
be excreted in your urine. Anyone who goes now cannot avoid being 
contaminated. Anyone. Anyone. Anyone. Everyone who goes to the Middle East 
and Afghanistan will be contaminated.

The DU issue affects every single living thing on this planet. What else has 
that impact? They have altered the genome for the entire planet forever with 
this DU. The Pentagon people say, "You're exaggerating or you use the 
uranium word to scare people." I don't care if people believe me or not. All 
I can say is that over time what I am saying will actually be an 
underestimation of the long term effects.

What Is Depleted Uranium?

A Scientific Perspective
Interview with Leuren Moret, Geo-Scientist
A Military Perspective
Interview with Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D, former Director of the U.S. Army 
Depleted Uranium Project
A Survivor's Perspective
Interview with Melissa Sterry, Gulf War Veteran who is surviving the effects 
of depleted uranium

=============== second article

A Military Perspective

An Interview With
MAJOR DOUG ROKKE, Ph.D
Former Director of the
U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project

Interview
By W. Leon Smith

Major Doug Rokke, PhD, is a retired Army combat officer who served as the 
director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project at the start of Gulf War 
I. His job was to prepare soldiers for nuclear, biological, and chemical 
warfare. He was in charge of cleaning up American tanks hit by 
friendly-fired depleted uranium (DU) munitions as well as helping casualties 
contaminated with DU.
His own health has suffered from the effects of uranium poisoning. Reports 
indicate that he has 5,000 times the acceptable level of radiation in his 
body and that he suffers from reactive airway disease from DU.
Prior to deployment to the Persian Gulf, Dr. Rokke worked with the 
University of Illinois Physics Department and served in Vietnam. His PhD is 
in health physics. His original training was in forensic science. Today, he 
travels the global informing people and governments of the dangers of DU 
exposure.

THE INTERVIEW

ICONOCLAST: How do you view depleted uranium?

ROKKE: DU.interesting nightmare.

ICONOCLAST: Actually, it's a lot more widespread and damaging worldwide than 
I had realized before talking to Leuren Moret.

ROKKE: Absolutely. The United States gave it to Israel. The first time it 
was used that I can document, for which I have the reports that I base my 
work on - it was 1973, during the Arab-Israeli conflict, and U.S. Army guys 
actually went on-site. We've got all the photographs, measurements. We've 
got trash medically, and equipment was trashed, so we know that for a fact.

And then we used it extensively, probably close to 375 tons - now this is 
solid uranium, not uranium plus explosives or casings, but solid uranium, 
the amount of munitions in Gulf War I. In '94 and '95 we used three tons in 
the Balkans, and I was specifically asked to write the clean-up procedures 
and emergency management procedures for that for the Army. I've still got 
them. In December of '95 and January of '96, the U.S. Marines shot the hell 
out of Okinawa, Trichoma Island. We didn't tell the Japanese for a year.

And then we used it getting ready for the Balkans in '99 down in Puerto 
Rico. When I found out about that, I tried to activate our Army emergency 
response team called Army Contaminated Equipment Recovery team. That's by 
the Army regulation 700-48 that I wrote that was adopted, accepted, and 
implemented.

The Army refused to do that. Then I tried to get medical care for them down 
there, and they refused to do that.

Then, on April 16 of '99, we got called up to the White House to meet with 
what's called Bill Clinton's Presidential Oversight Board and that was under 
Senator Warren Rudman and Navy Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. Our team met with them 
and told them we're going to see all these health effects in the Balkans. We 
were still trying to deal with health effects from Gulf War I. At that time, 
I still got all the emails, copies of all the letters sent.

They said we won't use it (DU) in the Balkans, and lo and behold, they were 
already using it. They used 30-40 tons in the Balkans in '99.

Since then, we've been shooting it up, as U.S Congressman James McDermott 
from Seattle, Washington, has confirmed. The Coast Guard's been shooting it 
up in the Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay, off the coast of Texas, every place.

ICONOCLAST: Why have they been doing that?

ROKKE: They're just crazy. They want to make sure their guns work. Real 
simple. They're crazy.
And, then, we came along with Gulf War II.

We started planning Gulf War II back in '95. That had nothing to do with 
9/11 at all. Zero. Not a thing. What's real interesting, if you go to the 
actual 9-1-1 report, General Franks totally acknowledges in the report in 
his testimony, that, yeah, they took and dusted off the invasion plans for 
Iraq and implemented it, which everybody knows because all that stuff was 
based on lies. So, anyhow, we went into Afghanistan based on a Feb. 12, 
1998, Congressional discussion to overthrow the Taliban because it wouldn't 
go along with the Unicol oil deal, so that's why that happened.

We probably dumped a thousand tons or more in Afghanistan, and God knows how 
many, thousand, two-thousand tons in Iraq, and we're still using it as we 
speak.

ICONOCLAST: You have no idea how much exactly?

ROKKE: Not really. Nobody can get a solid estimate. We do know from on-site 
measurements and videos and photographs, there's stuff laying all over the 
place.

We shot up water treatment facilities. I've got live video and photographs. 
Apartment buildings, tanks, everything just left there.kids climbing all 
over them.

Scott Peterson with the Christian Science Monitor reported it. The Japanese 
reported it. Ted Weyman who works for Uranium Medical Research Center went 
over there and measured it and reported it, not just took somebody's word 
for it, but went over and did the stuff.

Medical reports coming out of Iraq on birth defects probably two or three 
days ago are just catastrophic, much less what's happened to our own troops. 
It's just incredible because the U.S. Army had required since I issued the 
initial order back after the ground war in 1991 that medical care in the 
form of testing be provided to everybody that was exposed within 24-72 
hours. Still not happening.

The government Department of Defense is trying to prevent information from 
getting out. They'll say thousands of people have been tested since '92. If 
you go to the local VA and pick up a brand new issue of the Gulf War Review, 
Vol. 13, No. 1, or you can get it online <www.va.gov>, go to page 12 of it. 
It states since 1992 only 270 people have ever been tested. (laughs). I can't 
get my own staff tested yet, 14 years after the fact.

ICONOCLAST: What do you know about the munitions?

ROKKE: There are two different types of DU rounds. We have the kinetic 
energy penetrator, and that's fired by an Abrams tank, a Bradley Fighting 
Vehicle, and HN Warthog aircraft, the Navy Phalanx, and then the machine 
gun. Those are all basically gigantic darts of solid uranium, contaminated 
with all the other junk from DOE's facility down at Paducah, Oakridge, and 
Portsmouth where they make the stuff.

The Abrams tank round is a solid rod of uranium about three-quarters of an 
inch in diameter, 18 inches long. Each and every rod is over 10 pounds of 
solid uranium. The A-10 fires one that's three-quarters of solid uranium at 
4,000 rounds a minute. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle, that's a chain gun that's 
pretty fast, too, fires thousands of rounds. Each and every one of those 
rounds is half a pound. Those are kinetic energy penetrators. The machine 
gun is a giant bullet, too.

Then we have submunition landmines. These are cluster bombs. The casing is 
uranium, DU, with high explosives inside. I mean it's the absolute perfect 
dirty bomb.

And then we have the bunker busters where you've got the uranium casing from 
the McAlester army ammunition plant. The guys got sick putting these things 
together just about six months ago. I mean, real sick, and they had to shut 
the line down.

ICONOCLAST: Where do they make these?

ROKKE: The DUs are made all over the place. I mean Aerojet . we got health 
effects where they shut the whole thing down, up at Albany, New York. That 
was National Lead. They've got horrible effects all around Concord, Mass. 
where it's manufactured. 60 Minutes did a story back in 1981 about all the 
adverse health effects that were at the Aerojet facility in Tennessee. They 
make it up in Minneapolis at Twin Cities. I mean, all over the place. This 
stuff's a nightmare.When you get to Oakridge and Paducah and Portsmouth 
where they have this stuff, and the health effects around there are just 
legendary, with all the respiratories and the cancers and everything.

The best report that's out is called Discounted Casualties. It was written 
by a Japanese journalist who's an expert on Hiroshima, you know, the atomic 
bomb. Akira Tashiro was his name. You could just go online, and type 
Discounted Casualties, and pull the whole book up in English. Just read 
through it. There are interviews. Leuren Moret did the forward on it, and I 
talk about all my work as director of the DU Project when I was health 
physicist with the assessment team after Gulf War I.

You won't find hardly anything on the web. If you go to the Department of 
Defense website, and you put in the "Depleted Uranium Project" for which I 
was director, you won't find any of this stuff. You won't find any report on 
the depleted uranium assessment team from Gulf War I, and all the reports we 
did. It's just not there.

We had all these orders mandating medical care, going way back to day one. I 
issued the initial one and have a whole shitpot of medals. In '91, the 
commanding general issued the order to provide medical care for everybody, 
identifying those who needed it. It never happened.

And then General Shinseki, who is retired as the head Army general, issued 
the order himself Aug. 14, 1993, mandating medical care, thorough 
environmental clean-up and remediation, and education and training. As a 
consequence of that, as director of the DU Project, we developed all the 
regulations, environmental clean-up, all the training and education, 
videotapes to support it, and in September of 2002 General Shinseki signed 
Army regulation AR700-48 making it mandatory. But they just ignore it.
And then General Peake on April of last year issued the same order mandating 
medical care for everyone exposed. But they ain't doing it.

ICONOCLAST: Why won't they do it, if they received an order from the 
General?

ROKKE: They're above the law. They're just simply above the law.

ICONOCLAST: These guys issued the orders on behalf of the DOD, right?

ROKKE: They are the commanding generals of the DOD.

ICONOCLAST: If they issued the order, who has the authority to stop the 
orders?

ROKKE: Dickie Cheney. It stopped way up there because when you go through 
this, and you find they aren't complying with the order, not giving the 
medical care, they haven't told the truth, then you have to figure it out.
You've got Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Winkenwerder who's in charge of 
all medical. He issued an order himself in 2003 to do it, but they don't do 
it.

If you come down the medical line, you've got Georgie Bush, Dickie Cheney, 
and then you come on down from that to Don Rumsfeld. Then you've got Bill 
Winkenwerder, then you've got Mike Kilpatrick, Department of Defense.

These guys are absolved from telling the truth or complying or doing 
anything like this. And the only one that's got the authority and knowledge 
and who's been there from day one who can do that stuff is Dickie Cheney.

Rumsfeld's new. Georgie Bush is new. He didn't have any clue what's going on 
until after his 2000 election. He called me and had me go up there and speak 
to the U.S. Senate on all this stuff. Real interested to get ushered into 
the U.S. Senate as keynote speaker for a Veterans Day breakfast. It's a 
fascinating experience. It's pretty neat.

But you have all this stuff happening, so you figure, but we continue to use 
it. It violates United Nations laws and regulations. It doesn't even pass 
common sense to take tons and tons of solid radioactive material and throw 
it in someone else's back yard, refusing to give medical care although it's 
been ordered, refusing to clean up the environmental contamination, although 
it's required. And they keep getting away with it.

When you look at the commanding generals who can do this shit, although 
Shinseki signed off on the order, as the head of the Army, and Kirpatrick 
and Winkenwerder can get away without doing the medical care, who's got the 
authority above them that can do it? Well, Rumsfeld's an idiot. He's only 
been around a short while, and George Bush didn't know, so it points at 
Dickie Cheney, because when you figure Dickie Cheney back in 92, we got a 
directive sent down from a lady named Madeleine Albright, secretary of 
state, down through General Paul Greenberg to the U.S. Army corps research 
lab. We were ordered at that time to write a no-bid contract for 
Halliburton.

ICONOCLAST: Really?

ROKKE: Uh-huh. We did. And we did it, and they got it. You know, Brown and 
Root . Halliburton. So we hired them, and they went over to Kuwait and 
pushed a whole bunch of junk into a big hole at one of the camps and then 
walked away.

Now they've had all the no-bid contracts, as everybody's heard about. How 
much money's been wasted and can't be accounted for? It's real easy. When 
you trace the whole thing, who was involved in the beginning to allow this 
stuff . it all points to Dickie Cheney. I mean, just 100 percent. And then 
you still have all the generals who knew what was going on, and they've 
never done anything.

ICONOCLAST: Why would Dick Cheney want there to be -

ROKKE: Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.

ICONOCLAST: Is DU cheaper to produce or something?

ROKKE: Yeah. It's free. You have to understand, this is an incredible 
weapon. It kills and destroys everything. I mean, it's absolutely 
incredible. When I had to clean up the mess following Gulf War I, I learned 
how good this stuff was. There's no two ways about it. It's incredible. It's 
the best we've got.

And then we did all the testing in '94 and '95, and we saw it again. In '94 
we did what was called a Bradley Fighting Vehicle burn test. I loaded a 
Bradley Fighting Vehicle with munitions and explosives, and I set it off. 
And I found that the contamination was so extensive within 50 meters that 
you absolutely had to wear full respiratory and skin protection.

Well, the Army adopted those recommendations I put in, absolutely 
implemented them. They're in place now. So with every single incident where 
they use it you have to wear full respiratory and skin protection within 50 
meters by U.S. Army specific guidance adopted by the Navy and everybody 
else.

When you get the stuff destroyed, it's like a checkerboard. It's all over 
the place.

And we know also from our experience that all respiratory and skin 
protection required within 50 meters' radius, that's about 160 feet, but the 
stuff goes out to about 400 meters. Now I did not measure any farther than 
400 meters, because I couldn't out of my pad called the Nevada test site 
area 25. God knows how much farther it went. We know, absolutely totally 
confirm, no question about it, that at the National Lead site where they 
were manufacturing it in Albany, N.Y., it went 30 miles, in sufficient 
quantities to cause health effects.

So, we put tons and tons and tons of solid radioactive materials all over 
the place. This stuff, when it hits, it breaks up, forms fine dust and 
oxides, and some of these dusts are so small, they are smaller than the 
inner diameter of a red blood cell. That's always been known.

Marion Fulk knew that from day one when he did the work on the Manhattan 
Project. Marion Fulk is one of the last living gods of the Manhattan 
Project. He was the particle physicist who spread of all of this stuff in 
the atmosphere. He's the last living god. Two or three of the last remaining 
ones have died during the past few months.

ICONOCLAST: So, to recap?

ROKKE: What we have is deliberate use of solid radioactive materials all 
over the place and the deliberate refusal to provide the medical care that's 
mandated by Army orders and regulations, Department of Defense directives, 
and a simple refusal to clean up all the environmental contamination that 
must be done by the direct Army regulation. It's that easy. There's no 
accountability.

Anybody that speaks up becomes persona non grata and the attacks just come 
flying your way beyond comprehension.

ICONOCLAST: Is this a move toward population control or something?

ROKKE: No. No. Just killing and destroying on the battlefield. It's real 
simple. You've got to remember the soldier and the warrior. His job is to 
kill and destroy. And they don't think anything beyond that.

I've heard people say it's about population control. No. It's about killing 
and destroying. How do you do it effectively? That's it.
I mean, when I was director of the DU Project, when I was still in the good 
graces of the military and the secretary of the Army and everybody, at that 
time they loved me. Then they had a real problem. Anyhow, I went in with the 
intent to insure that if we did use this in combat that we could clean it up 
and provide the medical care and that everybody had the education: which is 
knowledge, which is training, which is skills necessary to work with it and 
respond and clean it up.

Well, what I found out real fast when I got in doing all this work for 15 
months was "God Almighty, you can't clean it up. You can't provide medical 
care."

We knew we had to put procedures in place to minimize the effect as much as 
we could. That's why I wrote the Army regulations and put all the training 
programs together.

ICONOCLAST: Would you list yourself as a whistleblower?

ROKKER: Me? No. I'm an Army officer finishing my job.

I had a direct order to make sure the stuff is cleaned up. Multiple direct 
orders. Some people might call it a whistleblower because I got fed up with 
the fact they weren't complying in 1997 when the guys were sick and dying. I 
got fed up with it, but no, I'm not a whistleblower. I'm just finishing a 
job.

I got an order signed by Gen.Schwartzkopf's chief of staff assigning me to 
do this for the commander. Schwartzkopf got the order on down from the 
Pentagon telling him to assign me to clean up the mess. To this day, I have 
no idea why.

ICONOCLAST: I understand a law just passed in the Louisiana House regarding 
testing for DU.

ROKKER: You betcha. 101 to nothing, mandating medical care. The individual 
that was responsible for that is Command Sgt. Major Bob Smith.

ICONOCLAST: What would it take to get Texas to pass something like that, for 
the health of our soldiers coming home?

ROKKER: I don't know. I've given talks at the University of Texas Medical 
School in Houston. Done the same up in Dallas. We've been right there in 
Crawford. All over the place.

One of the other doctors that works with us is Dr. Ruth McGill. They tried 
to kill Ruth McGill and I down there on the south side of Dallas a couple of 
years ago. They tried to run us off the road on that big expressway. We had 
just finished a radio and television interview, and we were on the way back, 
and they came right at us. Man, if Dr. McGill hadn't been a good driver we 
would have been dead meat.

ICONOCLAST: Who did this?

ROKKER: DOD guys. I had my house broken into a gazillion times when I was in 
Jacksonville, Alabama. Had windows shot out. I have had direct threats from 
Army officers in uniform. They bounced me out of the Army Reserve after I 
testified and forced the Secretary of Defense in England to admit he lied to 
the House of Lords. That was real interesting. Oh, they don't like any of 
us.
The simple thing is, you take tons and tons of solid radioactive waste, and 
you spread it all over the world, both here in the states and overseas, in 
combat situations and non-combat situations, do it into the ocean, then 
refuse to clean it up and provide the medical care. It's that easy.

You guys are so close to one the largest Army bases in the world that you 
could spit. I can bet you that if you go over there, even though you had all 
the orders mandated, thorough training on DU, and it's in the common task 
training manual for the Army, which means everybody in the Army must pass 
the DU test that I wrote, knowing what it is and how to handle it, how to 
respond - I betcha if you went over you wouldn't find anyone that knew or 
did it. And that's scary as hell.

ICONOCLAST: So what needs to happen?

ROKKER: The President needs to issue an order - he and that idiot over in 
England, his puppy dog .

ICONOCLAST: Blair?

ROKKER: Yeah, Tony Blair. Just say, "Guys, you are going to comply with the 
orders that are issued." When the commanding generals and all the captains 
and colonels and everybody don't comply with an order and regulation, an 
order signed by the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army, and they don't comply 
with the Army regulations signed by General Shinseki, they ought to court 
martial their ass.

ICONOCLAST: But wouldn't that be the President overriding the Vice 
President?

ROKKER: No, the Vice President is just the head of the Senate. Cheney runs 
the thing because George is an idiot.

ICONOCLAST: But you would tell him (Bush) to start running it himself.

ROKKER: Yeah, he needs to run it himself. He's the Commander-in-Chief. He 
just needs to tell them to comply with the orders and regulations that are 
issued. And tell them to stop using DU because it doesn't even pass the 
common sense test. Who would want thousands and thousands of tons, who would 
even want five pounds, of solid radioactive materials thrown in your back 
yard? It doesn't even pass the common sense test.

ICONOCLAST: You don't think Bush is for DU?

ROKKER: Oh, yeah. They just go along with everything that's happening.

If you look at everything, it's real interesting. We know the Pentagon was 
never hit by an airliner, okay? Got hit by a cruise missile. Everybody knows 
that shit. No evidence of wreckage. No nothing. The hole was only 16 feet 
across. There's no way an airliner is going to disappear in a 16-foot hole. 
When the roof fell down later on and they say in the 9-1-1 report, it was a 
dive bomb, no trench, no nothing. Hello. You know? Isn't it astonishing? You 
go to the photograph of the 9-1-1 report on page 312 and look at it. It's a 
little hole, and nothing's burned and nothing's along the sides of it. There's 
no evidence of an airplane. There's no trench. There's no nothing. And then 
you kind of wonder how can they say that an airliner the size of a 757 did 
it. Nothing fits.

But you know, it's the same thing when you come on down. Bush and all those 
guys, and Powell knew better, okay? They kept saying, "The reason we're 
going into Iraq and Gulf War II is because they have WMDs, and they're going 
to use them," right?
Hell, Scott Ritter, Hans Blix, Richard Butler, all of us said we didn't do 
it because we blew'em up way back in 1990.

Schwartzkopf's autobiography on page 390 of It Doesn't Take A Hero, 
specifically states that we made the decision.
This is a message from Schwartzkopf, between Powell, Schwartzkopf, Chuck 
Horner, and Dickie Cheney that we decided to blow up the stuff we gave Iraq 
in place so it wouldn't be used on us.

And when we made that decision, we said we're all going to get sick and 
guess what? You now have over 325,000 Gulf War I vets, say from August 1990 
up till Fall of last year, permanently disabled. Hello? I mean, what more 
does it take? It's astonishing.
When you add this all up, it stinks. What I see I don't like. You have to 
understand, I'm a red, white, and blue Army officer all the way. I joined 
the military in 1967, and I just retired. So that's how many years? 
Thirty-eight? You know, you're retired, but you're still in. It's a hell of 
a lot of years.

We got the orders to provide medical care for U.S. military, okay? Well, you 
can't under any common sense or international law or Geneva Convention 
refuse to provide that medical care for anybody else, especially 
non-combatants. But they do.

ICONOCLAST: It's unbelievable that medical care is not provided.

ROKKE: That's what I said when I kept getting these assignments to do it, 
and every time I got things done, I hit a roadblock, and then when I started 
yelling and screaming and trying to make them comply, I became persona non 
grata so fast it would make your head spin.

You know, sometimes, you just have to do what's right. Boy, they don't like 
it. Hell, I'm just finishing a job. I got an order to do it, and I'm an Army 
officer that does it. If somebody gets wounded in combat, you give him the 
medical care. If the area gets trashed in combat, you clean up the 
environment. Because otherwise, it's useless to go in there.

Everybody's scared and been lied to so many times. Then all this gets blown 
apart, like the fact that they've had to acknowledge that there were no 
WMDs - everybody knew that. The guys that said it knew that there weren't 
any because they had already made the decision to blow'em up. But you still 
have people that believe these lies.

What Is Depleted Uranium?

A Scientific Perspective
Interview with Leuren Moret, Geo-Scientist
A Military Perspective
Interview with Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D, former Director of the U.S. Army 
Depleted Uranium Project
A Survivor's Perpsective
Interview with Melissa Sterry, Gulf War Veteran who is surviving the effects 
of depleted uranium

===================  end of second article ============

A Survivor's Perspective

An Interview With
MELISSA STERRY
Gulf War Veteran who served in Kuwait

Interview
By W. Leon Smith

Melissa Sterry is a 42-year-old Gulf War veteran who served for six months 
at a supply base in Kuwait during the winter of 1991-92. Her job with the 
National Guard's Combat Equipment Company A was to clean out and prepare 
tanks and other armored vehicles that had been used during the war for 
storage. She was also ordered to help bury contaminated parts.

Sterry recently testified before state lawmakers in Connecticut on the 
effects of depleted uranium in support of a bill, introduced by State Rep. 
Patricia Dillon, that requires that Connecticut National Guard troops now 
serving in Iraq and Afghanistan be properly screened and treated for 
depleted uranium contamination.

Sterry lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

THE INTERVIEW

ICONOCLAST: Tell me about what is going on in the Connecticut Legislature 
regarding testing soldiers for depleted uranium.

STERRY: We have two different bills here in Connecticut were working on. We 
have HB6008 that says soldiers returning have a right for an independent 
test for depleted uranium. There is a federal law that requires soldiers be 
tested for exposures to depleted uranium. There are Army regulations 
requiring it. There are Army publications and technical bulletins explaining 
how the physicals need to be performed. It is not happening.

The state law is saying soldiers have the right to this test, and that the 
federal government is not living up to its own laws, so the state is going 
to take care of it.

ICONOCLAST: The state would conduct the tests?

STERRY: We would ensure that independent testing be done. At this point, we're 
not quite sure how the financing of that is going to occur, whether or not 
the state would pay for it. Whether or not the National Guard will pay for 
it. Whether or not we would turn around and bill the federal government. The 
financing of it is up in the air right now, but people are pushing really 
hard to say it's federal law. The feds are not doing what they are supposed 
to be doing; therefore, we're going to bill them for doing their job.

ICONOCLAST: This passed in the legislature?

STERRY: No. It's on the docket to be voted on.

ICONOCLAST: It's already gone through a committee.

STERRY: It's gone through two committees. It unanimously passed the Veterans 
Affairs Committee. It unanimously passed the Public Health Committee. The 
hold-up right now is determining the fiscal note. We're determining the cost 
and working it into the budget because Connecticut has a fiscal cap. We have 
budget issues that we're working with.

ICONOCLAST: What about the Senate?

STERRY: We have an integrated system. The bill is going to be voted on in 
both the House and the Senate. The committees are joint committees, so by 
passing it out of the Veterans Committee and out of the Public Health 
Committee, it's seen by both Democrats and Republicans. It's been seen by 
both senators and representatives.

ICONOCLAST: Is there a date in which you expect to have a vote?

STERRY: Probably by the end of next week.

ICONOCLAST: Are the local papers covering that? Can I get online and find a 
story about this?

STERRY: Sure. You need to reach out to the Hartford Courant and talk to a 
reporter named Denny Williams.

ICONOCLAST: What's your stake in this? Are you a victim?

STERRY: No, buddy, I'm a survivor. The only ones who are victims when it 
comes to depleted uranium are children.
The second bill that is facing Connecticut is Bill 1245. It calls for the 
formation of a task force, a health study, a conference, and permanent 
health registry to track veterans health. It recognizes that we need to test 
to determine the health of veterans. But if we don't have the additional 
support structure - just because we know what the health of veterans is 
doesn't mean we're going to be able to respond to it. The second bill takes 
care of the other piece.

On the one hand, you have to test for things. On the other hand, you have to 
track veterans' testing.
You need to understand what is the best kind of test for depleted uranium.

We are also trying to learn from Vietnam. Every war has a signature illness. 
Every war has soldiers coming home with visible injuries from bullets and 
bombs, but every war also has soldiers coming home with illnesses that are 
unique to that war.

In World War I, it was mustard gas.
In World War II, it was extended stays in POW camps.
In Vietnam, it was Agent Orange and Agent Blue.
In Desert Storm and in these wars now, it's depleted uranium. That's what 
1245 does.

My interest is that I served in Desert Storm. I was exposed to depleted 
uranium. At that time, we didn't know about depleted uranium. We didn't know 
what it could do to the human body in these extremely low levels of 
exposure. People didn't understand what was making us sick.

ICONOCLAST: You didn't know when you were there that depleted uranium was an 
ingredient.

STERRY: I had no idea. The depleted uranium issue started to reveal itself 
in '96, '97, '98, and '99. We knew Desert Storm veterans were sick. We didn't 
know what was making Desert Storm veterans sick. Then when depleted uranium 
weapons were used again in Bosnia and Kosovo, we began to understand the 
connection. We now know what depleted uranium does.

ICONOCLAST: When you were there, you worked in the clean-up?

STERRY: I was involved with logistics. I worked in the pre-positioned 
stocks. These were the supplies that we left behind for the next time we 
needed to fight. I was involved with cleaning that equipment and putting it 
in storage.

ICONOCLAST: And it was after this that you realized you started becoming 
ill?

STERRY: I was injured while I was in Kuwait, so through all of 1992, I was 
going through surgeries to have my leg rebuilt, and I thought my health 
problems were related to my injuries. Then by 1993, it was clear that 
something else was going on. In 1994 and by February 1995, it was clear I 
was sick, and it was not from my injuries, and there was something wrong 
with me.

ICONOCLAST: And they determined it was depleted uranium?

STERRY: No. I have never been tested for depleted uranium. No one has ever 
definitively diagnosed me as having been exposed to depleted uranium. 
However, there is enough circumstantial evidence in terms of having 
symptoms, and I have pictures of where I was, what I worked with, and so it's 
abundantly clear that I was surrounded by equipment that had depleted 
uranium in it, and that I was working with the clean-up process, so I was 
exposed to what is called uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is a by-product of a 
DU weapon.

ICONOCLAST: So it's very obvious to you then that DU is the cause of the 
illness.

STERRY: No. I don't think it's the exclusive cause, but I think it's a 
contributing factor. Desert Storm veterans have a rather broad collection of 
symptoms, some of which you see in veterans of Bosnia and Kosovo, where DU 
weapons were also used, some of which you see in veterans of the current 
conflict where depleted uranium weapons were used. Some of our symptoms you 
don't see in these other groups, and I think those are things that were 
brought about by other unique environmental factors.

There were a lot of experimental vaccines used on us. There are also some 
profound questions about the destruction of the various bio-chemical warfare 
stocks that Saddam Hussein had in place at the time, whether or not we were 
accidentally exposed from those materials when those stocks were destroyed.

So some of our symptoms meet the criteria of exposure at low levels of sarin 
gas. Some of our symptoms meet the criteria for reactions to multiple 
vaccines. I'm not saying that depleted uranium is the only thing that made 
us sick, but clearly, it is a contributing factor.

ICONOCLAST: What do you think needs to be done to correct the problem of DU? 
Do we quit using it?

STERRY: There are several things we need to do. As a soldier, this is one 
extrordinary, effective weapon. I dig this stuff.
But I think we need to view it the same way we viewed mustard gas at the end 
of World War I, that the collateral damage that DU provides outweighs the 
benefits of utilizing the weapon and that we need to cease usage of this 
material.

The usage of this material is war on generations not yet born. It wages war 
on children long after military conflict has ended. It's not just children 
of Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It's the children of American 
soldiers because we bring this radioactive poisoning back to our families in 
our genetic material. It's inside our bodies. We have to stop using it.

I think the second thing we need to do is completely, fully, accurately 
assess, measure, test, diagnose - pick an verb - our soldiers' health 
because doctors can't heal us until they know what the problem is.

And the third thing is we have to do everything we can to return our 
National Guard, our Reservists. We have to do whatever we can to bring back 
people's health.

ICONOCLAST: I know here in Central Texas, there's a move to save the Waco 
Veterans Hospital from being closed..

STERRY: It's hard to believe what's happening there, that they would even 
consider shutting it down. We're going to need every facility that's 
available. It is our duty to care for our veterans when they sacrificed 
everything in defense of the nation.

ICONOCLAST: Are there tell-tale signs that a person has been exposed to DU?

STERRY: It doesn't burn your skin the way external exposure does. It's 
consuming your major organs on the inside.

ICONOCLAST: Like a microwave oven?

STERRY: Kind of. Depleted uranium gets funky.
A bulk of depleted uranium is insoluble. It's organic in nature. When it 
slips into that uranium oxide state it attaches itself to other metals and 
materials that are inorganic. That makes it insoluble. But there are still 
parts of depleted uranium that are organic, that are soluble. So you can 
test for depleted uranium with a urine test, but that only gets you the 
soluble part of DU. A bulk of the DU is insoluble and attaches itself to 
your bones and your major organs, so it doesn't wash out with your kidneys.

ICONOCLAST: You can't test for that in any other way?

STERRY: Not yet. Those tests are being developed by people in Britain and 
Europe and Japan. Right now, when the government says, "Oh, we're testing 
soldiers. We're testing people. We've got this urine test, and we're not 
getting positive results, so they weren't ever exposed," there's a fault in 
that logic. They are using as soluble test for an insoluble item.

ICONOCLAST: Do they have an idea when these other tests will be available?

STERRY: As far as I know, other nations have it. I'm trying to track it 
down. There are two nations left in the world that utilize depleted 
uranium - the United States and Great Britain. Everybody else not only doesn't 
use the stuff, they've forbidden the stuff. Last week, from what I 
understand, Belgium went so far as to ban all of these materials from their 
country and are in the process of telling the United States, "Get your 
garbage out."

You've got a sovereign nation saying, "Get your tanks out. Get your armored 
personnel carriers out. Get your nuclear warheads out. Get everything out of 
our country that contains this material."

There's a real problem with being able to utilize communication systems to 
try and find the appropriate test.

On Tuesday, I was at the U.N. for an all-day session of conferences about 
depleted uranium, part of the nuclear proliferation treaty situation. And, I 
spoke with a member of the Scottish parliament about what they're doing. I 
spoke with Dr. Rosalie Bertell who's doing a lot of the testing components 
to try to find out what's out there. And the Japanese are doing a tremendous 
amount of this because they've had 60 years of living with external 
radiation poisoning. I've been learning about the health situation of 
hibakusha (radiation victims who were terribly scarred and diseased 
sufferers of the first atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki),and they're 
dealing with what they call "radiation wars."

People get really freaked out, and they get really scared, and they go into 
major denial. Part of how we've been successful so far (in educating the 
public) is to keep it real simple. Talk about National Guard. Talk about 
local troops. Talk about how it impacts people on the local level. Talk 
about your first responders, your National Guard, or your emergency response 
people.

Some of the great quotes to come out of people and the best movements that 
we've had in New York State on the subject were because the legislator 
turned around and asked the local emergency response people for their plans 
to handle responses to these situations, and their EMS people had no idea 
that these materials were even being transported through their area.

And they immediately got on board and said, "Oooh, we can't play with this 
stuff. You've got to ban this. You've got to get it out of here."

ICONOCLAST: Maybe we need to talk to some local EMS personnel to find out if 
they even know what depleted uranium is.

STERRY: Do they know what it is? Do they know if it is being transported 
through their area? Do they have any kind of response to it? If you have a 
747 crashing in your back yard, you've got exposure. It may be 
extraordinarily small, but you've got an exposure. And we're talking about 
materials that fluctuate between the size of a tenth of a micron to ten 
microns, and that's all aerosol, and that's all stuff that you can inhale, 
and it's stuff that can pass through the pores of your skin.

============================================

http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/StudentWebPages/IPesic/ResearchPaper.htm 

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 44 [DU-WATCH] Iraq: Soaring birth deformities & child cancer rates
 
Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 11:02:25 -0500 (CDT)

 
Soaring birth deformities and child cancer rates in Iraq

By James Cogan
10 May 2005
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/may2005/iraq-m10_prn.shtml

Iraqi doctors are making renewed efforts to bring to the worlds 
attention the growth in birth deformities and cancer rates among the 
countrys children. The medical crisis is being directly blamed on the 
widespread use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by the US and 
British forces in southern Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, and the even 
greater use of DU during the 2003 invasion.

The rate of birth defects, after increasing ten-fold from 11 per 
100,000 births in 1989 to 116 per 100,000 in 2001, is soaring further. 
Dr Nawar Ali, a medical researcher into birth deformities at Baghdad 
University, told the UNs Integrated Regional Information Networks 
(IRIN) last month: There have been 650 cases [birth deformities] in 
total since August 2003 reported in government hospitals. That is a 20 
percent increase from the previous regime. Private hospitals were not 
included in the study, so the number could be higher.

His colleague, Dr Ibrahim al-Jabouri, reported: In my experiments we 
have found some cases where the mother and father were suffering from 
pollution from weapons used in the south and we believe that it is 
affecting newborn babies in the country.

The director of the Central Teaching Hospital in Baghdad, Wathiq 
Ibrahim, said: We have asked for help from the government to make a 
more profound study on such cases as it is affecting thousands of 
families.

The rise in birth defects is matched by a continuing increase in the 
incidence of childhood cancers.

Six years ago, the College of Medicine at Basra University carried out 
a study into the rate of cancer among children under the age of 15 in 
southern Iraq from 1976 to 1999. It revealed a horrific change between 
1990 and 1999. In the province of Basra, the incidence of cancer of 
all types rose by 242 percent, while the rate of leukaemia among 
children rose 100 percent. Children living in the area were falling 
ill with cancer at the rate of 10.1 per 100,000. In districts where 
the use of DU had been the most concentrated, the rate rose to 13.2 
per 100,000.

The results were cited at the time in campaigns to end the UN-imposed 
and US-enforced sanctions against Iraq, which were held responsible 
for the death of as many as 500,000 Iraqi children from malnutrition 
and inadequate medical treatment.

The study noted: Most doctors and scientists agree that even mild 
radiation is dangerous and increases the risk of cancer. The health 
risk becomes much greater once the [DU] projectile has been fired. 
After they have been fired, the broken shells release uranium 
particles. The airborne particles enter the body easily. The uranium 
then deposits itself in bones, organs and cells. Children are 
especially vulnerable because their cells divide rapidly as they grow. 
In pregnant women, absorbed uranium can cross the placenta into the 
bloodstream of the foetus.

In addition to its radioactive dangers, uranium is chemically toxic, 
like lead, and can damage the kidneys and lungs. Perhaps, the fatal 
epidemic of swollen abdomens among Iraqi children is caused by kidney 
failure resulting from uranium poisoning. Whatever the effect of the 
DU shells, it is made worse by malnutrition and poor health 
conditions....

Iraq holds the United States and Britain legally and morally 
responsible for the grave health and environmental impact of the use 
of DU ... (A version of the report is available at: 
http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du_iraq.htm).

Terrible as these results were, the last six years have witnessed a 
further rise in the number of children under 15 falling ill with 
cancer in Iraq. The rate has now reached 22.4 per 100,000more than 
five times the 1990 rate of 3.98 per 100,000.

Dr Janan Hassan of the Basra Maternity and Childrens Hospital told 
IRIN in November 2004 that as many as 56 percent of all cancer 
patients in Iraq were now children under 5, compared with just 13 
percent 15 years earlier. Also, he said, it is notable that the 
number of babies born with defects is rising astonishingly. In 1990, 
there were seven cases of babies born with multiple congenital 
anomalies. This has gone up to as high as 224 cases in the past three 
years.

The statistics point to the long-term consequences of depleted uranium 
contamination. Munitions containing an estimated 300 tonnes of DU were 
unleashed by coalition forces in southern Iraq in 1991. A decade after 
the war, DU shell holes are still 1,000 times more radioactive than 
the normal level of background radiation. The surrounding areas are 
still 100 times more radioactive. Experts surmise that fine uranium 
dust has been spread by the wind, contaminating swathes of the 
surrounding region, including Basra, which is some 200 kilometres away 
from sites where large numbers of DU shells were fired.

A 1997 study into the cancer rate among Iraqi soldiers who fought in 
the Basra area during the 1991 Gulf War found a statistically 
significant increase in the rate at which they were stricken with 
lymphomas, leukaemia, and lung, brain, gastrointestinal, bone and 
liver cancers, as compared to personnel who had not fought in the 
south. One in four of the American personnel who fought in first Iraq 
warmore than 150,000 peopleare also suffering a range of medical 
disorders collectively described as Gulf War Syndrome. While the US 
military denies there is any relationship, exposure to depleted 
uranium is one of the factors blamed by veterans and medical 
researchers.

Somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 tonnes of DU was expended during the 
three-week war in 2003. Unlike 1991, however, where most of the 
fighting took place outside major population centres, the 2003 
invasion witnessed the wholesale bombardment of targets inside 
densely-populated cities with DU shells. Christian Science Monitor 
journalist Scott Peterson registered radiation on a simple Geiger 
counter at levels some 1,900 times the normal background rate in parts 
of Baghdad in May 2003. The city has a population of six million.

Given that it was two to four years after the 1991 war before cancer 
and birth defect rates began to rise dramatically, the fear among 
medical specialists is that Iraq will face an epidemic of cancers by 
the end of the decade, under conditions where the medical system, 
devastated by years of sanctions and war, is unable to cope with the 
existing crisis.

Dr Amar, the deputy head of the Al-Sadr Teaching Hospital in Basra, 
one of the main hospitals treating Iraqi cancer patients, told the 
Sydney Morning Herald on April 29: We dont have drugs to treat 
tumours. I have a patient with tumours who is unconscious and I dont 
have drugs or a bed in which to treat him. I have two women with 
advanced ovarian cancer but I can give them only minimum doses of only 
some of the drugs they need.

Two or three days ago we had to cancel all surgery because we had no 
gauze and no anaesthetics. Our wards are like stables for horses, not 
humans. We cant properly isolate patients or manage their diets. We 
dont have proper laboratory facilities....

If you are sick dont come to this hospital for treatment. It is 
collapsing around us. Were going down in a heap.

Copyright 1998-2004
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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 45 Seattle Times: Doctors check health of A-bomb survivors

Sunday, May 15, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m. 	 	
 	
By Mark Rahner		
Seattle Times staff reporter 	 	 		 		

 The week of the 60th anniversary of the Allied defeat of
Germany in World War II, some Seattle-area residents were
marking the defeat of Japan in a more-somber manner. Several
dozen survivors of the atomic-bomb blasts in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki got medical exams tracking radiation's long-term
effects yesterday. 

"I've been to doctors so many times," said Sonoe Taketa, 68, a
retired Boeing factory worker. 

Complaining of a laundry list of ailments, including an ulcer
and degenerative-disk problems in her back, Taketa said, "I
don't know if it's related. I've come to this exam to find out." 

The checkups began yesterday and were to continue today at the
Pacific Medical Center's Beacon Hill Clinic, where visiting
Japanese physicians have held them every two years since 1977. 

About 1,000 of the 340,000 hibakusha  survivors of the A-bombs
that killed more than 200,000 people  have relocated to the
United States and Canada. Eighty-five percent of them live in
California and Washington, said Dr. Shizuteru Usui of the 15th
Medical Mission for A-bomb Survivors in North America. At least
one patient flew in from as far away as North Carolina for the
two-hour battery of tests for heart disease, colon cancer and
thyroid cancer, which is more prevalent among people exposed to
radiation, such as Hanford's "downwinders." 

(The Hanford factories sent plutonium to the top-secret
Manhattan Project charged with constructing the first atom
bombs. A major trial is under way in which downwinder plaintiffs
are claiming Hanford radiation made people sick.) 

The A-bomb survivors also continue to suffer from psychological
problems, Usui said. "We just like to say, 'How do you do?' in
Japanese to make them relax. Some of them say American doctors
don't listen to their stories." 

Usui, who has also examined patients near the site of the 1986
Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union, is
himself an A-bomb survivor. He was 8 years old when the
Hiroshima blast went off about 1.5 miles from his home. Standing
behind the house at the time, Usui said he merely "took some
broken glass." 

Generally, most medical effects from the radiation fallout 60
years ago would have shown themselves long before now,
acknowledged Dr. Richard Ludwig, Pacific Medical Center's chief
medical officer. "Compared to Japan, they're seeing things like
diabetes, more related to the lifestyle in this country, as
opposed to exposure to radiation from the bomb." 

Age has begun to claim those who survived the blasts. Usui said
his average patient is 73, with the oldest in the 90s. His
youngest was 59, still in the mother's womb during the disaster. 

Many of those who showed up for exams yesterday were reluctant
to speak of their experiences. As she waited for her turn,
Taketa, a slight, bespectacled woman engulfed by her hospital
gown, recalled the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, when the bomb
devastated Hiroshima. She said she doesn't talk about it with
her three children, and they never ask. But she's written it
down for them to read someday. 

"It was 8:15 a.m. I was in school, and class had just started.
That's when we saw the flash and the bomb dropped. 

"We were told to get out of the building because the building
was shaking and the windows were breaking. It was a beautiful
morning. We stayed outside about two hours." 

Taketa said the reason she survived was that there were
mountains between the center of the city and her school five
miles away. 

"The city was burning. Black rain started, and the teacher told
us to walk home in the rain." 

It was a terrifying walk, even though she did make it home
safely, and her family survived. "I didn't know what was
happening and the teacher didn't know what has happening,"
Taketa recalled. 

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company 	 	 		 		
*****************************************************************
 46 Tri-City Herald: Jury to decide first downwinder case 

This story was published Saturday, May 14th, 2005 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

SPOKANE -- A jury will begin considering Monday the first six of
about 2,200 claims of people who believe their health was harmed
by living downwind of the Hanford nuclear reservation. 

"They want you to decide on sympathy, not science," defense
attorneys told the jury. 

But the plaintiff attorneys in closing arguments compared the
defense to tobacco companies who long denied that smoking could
lead to lung cancer. 

"You can't spread radiation all over Eastern Washington and then
say there is no effect," said plaintiff attorney Richard Eymann.
"You can't say no one was ever hurt -- it was nothing." 

During World War II and the start of the Cold War, radioactive
iodine was released into the air above Hanford as it produced
plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. The
radioactive iodine drifted downwind and settled out on orchards,
vegetable gardens and pastures where dairy cows grazed. 

Those most at risk of harm were small children with vulnerable
thyroids who drank a lot of contaminated milk. 

Radioactive iodine concentrates in the thyroid and may cause
disease years later. 

After 14 years of delays and appeals in a court case brought by
downwinders, the first six plaintiffs went to trial this month.
Judge William Fremming Nielsen is hoping that by deciding the
claims of a few bellwether plaintiffs, attorneys will have
enough information to settle more of the claims. 

Nearly two days of closing arguments in the complicated and
contentious case concluded Friday, and Nielsen sent the
12-member jury home to start fresh with deliberations next week. 

It must decide if the thyroid disease caused by each of the six
plaintiffs more likely than not was caused by Hanford and then
award any damages, including damages for pain and suffering. 

Medical damages have already been determined, ranging from
$21,133 to $522,056 for individual plaintiffs, should the jury
find radioactive iodine caused the illnesses. 

One of the cases is shaky enough that Nielsen said sending it to
the jury was a close call. Kathryn Janelle Goldbloom lived in
Richland and Kennewick as a child and received an estimated dose
of 15 rads, according to information from the Hanford
Environmental Dose Reconstruction project. 

She believes that as a young woman, she developed an underactive
thyroid because of an autoimmune response to the radioactive
iodine. 

A doctor called by the plaintiff would only say that the
exposure could be a cause of her illness, but stopped short of
saying that it likely caused her illness. 

The defense pointed out that Goldbloom had taken thyroid
medication most of her life, but a blood test failed to turn up
antibodies that would show she has autoimmune thyroid disease.
Her attorneys did not tell the doctor who testified about
Goldbloom's illness that the test was negative, leaving him to
learn on the witness stand that the test had been done, the
defense said. 

Attorneys for the plaintiffs hammered on the theme of the
defense representing uncaring big business, the early Hanford
contractors DuPont and General Electric. 

The jury has not been told under a ruling by the judge that the
federal government indemnified the contractors, and taxpayers
will be paying any damages awards. 

"(Plaintiff attorneys) are trying to appeal to your biases,
prejudices and passions," Van Wart told the jury. 

Three of the bellwether plaintiffs are asking for damages for
autoimmune thyroid disease, causing their thyroids to
underperform. Their doses range up to 34.1 rads under the median
estimate of the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction
project. 

One doctor used as an expert witness by the plaintiffs had said
that studies had shown a risk of developing the thyroid
illnesses only in doses of 40 rads and more. 

Another of the plaintiffs' experts had previously called the
illness one of the most common human afflictions. 

Defense attorneys called only two witnesses, instead building
their case on attacking plaintiff witnesses on cross
examination, and questioning what they said was a lack of
science behind the assertions made by plaintiff witnesses. 

But the jury saw six plaintiffs lined up in the front row of the
courtroom, some of them and their families in tears as the
defense attacked their case during closing arguments. 

Shannon Rhodes, one of the three plaintiffs with thyroid cancer,
learned during the trial that cancer that had spread to her
lungs was growing. Rather than delay the conclusion of the trial
to allow the defense time to gather information about her
worsening condition, the plaintiff attorneys agreed to withhold
the information from the jury and allow the judge to adjust any
damages awarded by the jury for Rhodes. They proposed that
compromise after the judge was inclined to send the jury to
deliberate only on whether Hanford had caused illnesses and
later call the jury back to consider any damages. Rhodes had the
smallest estimated dose, 5.1 rads. One of the experts called by
plaintiffs had previously estimated a 28 percent risk of
developing thyroid cancer from that dose, which defense
attorneys pointed out did not meet the more-likely-than-not
standard set by the judge. 

The other two cancer victims had doses of 12.5 and 20 rads. The
defense argued that one had worked in the dry-cleaning business,
which uses a chemical that a plaintiff expert said has been
linked to thyroid cancer, and the other had been diagnosed with
colon polyps, which have been linked in studies to an increased
risk of thyroid cancer. Plaintiff attorneys repeatedly reminded
the jury that they need not find that Hanford emissions
definitely caused the diseases of the six bellwether plaintiffs,
only that it probably did. 

"They are casualties of war," said plaintiff attorney Louise
Roselle. "What is more likely? That all six would have developed
thyroid disease without Hanford or that Hanford was a cause of
the disease?" 

© 2005 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 47 kgw.com: After two days of closing arguments, jury gets case 

| News for Oregon and SW Washington | AP Wire
 
05/14/2005 

Associated Press 

After two days of closing arguments, a federal jury in the
Hanford "downwinders" trial got the case Friday. 

The U.S. District Court jury promptly voted to go home for the
weekend and begin deliberating on Monday. 

The case, which has involved a three-week trial, was brought by
six Hanford "downwinders" who were infants and small children
during the early years of the Hanford nuclear reservation. They
claim their thyroid cancers and diseases were caused by
radiation releases from Hanford plutonium factories in the
mid-1940s. 

Lawyers for the two contractors, E.I. DuPont de Nemours and
General Electric, that ran the government programs at Hanford,
called witnesses to refute plaintiffs' experts who contend there
is a link between Hanford radioactive iodine releases and
thyroid diseases. 

The jury is deciding whether Hanford operations "more likely
than not" caused the diseases and whether the plaintiffs should
be compensated. 

The plaintiffs allegedly received large doses of radioactive
iodine-131 that wafted from Hanford stacks. They are considered
representative of nearly 2,300 people who have filed claims
against the early Hanford contractors. 

The outcome of this trial, which began April 25, will determine
whether other downwinder trials go forward or new settlement
talks begin. 

The Hanford downwinders lived in Eastern Washington,
northeastern Oregon and north-central Idaho when plumes of
radiation blew across the region from stacks on the
south-central Washington reservation. 

For 40 years, Hanford made plutonium for the nation's nuclear
weapons arsenal, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project
to build an atomic bomb during World War II. 

This text is invisible on the page, but this text is affected by
the invisible item's flow. This text is invisible on the page,
but this text is affected by the invisible item's flow.     

&copy; 2005, KGW-TV  
*****************************************************************
 48 Hudson Valley News: Depleted uranium victims plead for understanding, help   

Sunday, May 15, 2005 

Copyright © 2005 Mid-Hudson News Network, a division of
  
Army National Guard Specialist Gerard Matthew is a veteran of
the Iraq war. He has an 11-month-old daughter who was born with
a deformed right hand. If she tries to stand, and falls, she
will not put out here arms to protect herself. 

Matthew, himself, suffers constant headaches and blurred vision.
He has tested positive for depleted uranium, a component used in
tank armor, and weapons shells. Dust from unexploded shells can
be inhaled. The symptoms can be devastating.
 
Matthew, and Sgt. Herbert Reed, were part of a panel, Saturday
afternoon, organized by the Saugerties Committee for Peace and
Social Justice.
 
Reed told the 50 people who gathered, that he was told, by
military doctors, that his tests results were not a cause for
concern. Right, they said we had acceptable levels of depleted
uranium. Acceptable to whom?" 

Reed has serious physical debilities and suffers memory loss.
 
Event organizer Angela Morano said their hope is to broaden
awareness of the problem. As a nation, we need to understand
that these are the type of weapons we are using," she said.
"They are harmful to us, not only to our enemy, if you want to
call someone our enemy, but they are harmful to us as well. 

Morano said they are working with members of Congress, including
Rep. Maurice Hinchey, to get proper testing and treatment for
affected veterans.
 
Also on the program, two representatives of Veterans for Peace,
both Vietnam veterans, who take their message into schools. I
dont hate recruiters, said Jim Murphy. I just want to put
them out of business. 

  HEAR today's news on MidHudsonRadio.com, the Hudson Valley's
*****************************************************************
 49 [du-list] Close nuclear leak plant for good, says Sellafield
 
Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 04:04:53 -0700

 
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      <th nowrap="nowrap" align="right" valign="baseline">Subject: </th>
      <td>[du-list] Close nuclear leak plant for good, says Sellafield</td>
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      <th nowrap="nowrap" align="right" valign="baseline">Date: </th>
      <td>Sun, 15 May 2005 22:26:40 +1200</td>
    </tr>
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      <th nowrap="nowrap" align="right" valign="baseline">From: </th>
      <td>David Broatch <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:davidbroatch@xtra.co.nz">&lt;davidbroatch@xtra.co.nz&gt;</a></td>
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<pre><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1483942,00.html">http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1483942,00.html</a>

Thorp reprocessing should never be restarted - boss 

Oliver Morgan, industrial editor
Sunday May 15, 2005
The Observer 

The owner of the Sellafield site in Cumbria, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, wants its main reprocessing facility to shut forever following a leak of highly radioactive liquefied nuclear fuel containing plutonium and uranium. 
The move would bring an early end to the UK's reprocessing programme, which was conceived in the Sixties to provide plutonium for Britain's nuclear deterrent while recycling uranium for civil energy  (sic) needs. 

In any event, the leak of some 20 tonnes of uranium and plutonium fuel, dissolved in nitric acid, will keep the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) shut for months. 

But senior sources at the NDA, the government body set up to dismantle radioactive facilities at 20 sites across the UK, now believes that keeping the plant shut is the most economical option, and also one that would remove reprocessing - which has always attracted controversy - from the debate over building new nuclear stations which many believe the government is keen to initiate. 

'The view is that Thorp should never restart,' said a senior source. 

Officials indicate that, even when operational, the plant does not make money. Thorp's figures are not split out in the NDA's plan for 2005-6. However, the published figures show that, of a total budget of &pound;2.2 billion, the NDA receives some &pound;1.08bn from the commercial operations it inherited from British Nuclear Fuels. Of this, it expects to get &pound;635.1 million from reprocessing and transporting nuclear material around the world. 

A large proportion of this figure will be from Thorp's activities - reprocessing spent fuel from British Energy's nuclear power stations, along with contracts from Japan, Germany and other overseas customers. But the NDA also incurs huge costs from Sellafield, forecast to be &pound;727.4m over 2005-6. Also, up to three new storage facilities for separated plutonium and uranium are needed, at a cost of nearly &pound;200m each. 

Meanwhile the NDA official said: 'The government is starting to think about new stations. The view is that it would be impossible to argue that there should be a new generation [of facilities] that relies on reprocessing.' 

Closing Thorp would reduce the time it takes to run down the massive stockpile of 'highly active liquid' - spent nuclear fuel containing uranium and plutonium - by four and a half years. Nuclear regulators have insisted on the backlog being dealt with by 2015. And closure of Thorp would drastically reduce emissions into the Irish Sea, a continuing source of tension with the Irish government. 

NDA chief executive Ian Roxburgh told The Observer that a decision on closure would be up to the government. He added: 'The NDA must produce by the autumn its plans for the 20 sites it operates, including Sellafield. The latest incident had clearly brought that forward.' 

Meanwhile, sources at British Energy have indicated that the privatised nuclear operator wants to run any new nuclear power stations, but is not keen to take a major investment stake in any projects. There are doubts over whether private investors have the appetite to finance and build a new generation of reactors, given the volatility of energy markets. 

The sources believe the operation of new plants should be kept separate from ownership and financing. 

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 50 [NukeNet] Utah EnviroCare Dump Rejects Maine Yankee waste
 
Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 17:40:35 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)


Maine Yankee's low-level radioactive soil is returned
Bob_Kalish@TimesRecord.Com
04/20/2005

Spokesman says 'leaking cars posed no threat'

WISCASSET - Moisture condensation and deteriorating sealant were the cause 
of the return of eight cars loaded with Maine Yankee waste from its 
destination at a mixed waste site in Utah, according to Maine Yankee 
officials. Spokesman Eric Howes said that only one rail car out of the 
eight returned was actually leaking.

"But it was enough that we further ordered 48 cars that were enroute to 
Utah to turn around and return," he said.

Howes said the leaking cars filled with low-level radioactive soil posed no 
threat.

"At this stage in the decommissioning process, we're just removing soil," 
he said.

Mark Roberts, a senior health physicist with the Nuclear Regulatory 
Agency's Region 1, who has been monitoring Maine Yankee, said the 
contamination level of the soil in the cars "is quite low."

"The hot stuff has all been taken out," he said. "What's left is a 
combination of soil taken from beneath the surface, mixed with some 
concrete left over from the buildings."

Roberts said that the contamination level is so low it is below the 
threshold set by the federal Department of Transportation for radioactive 
waste.

But Maria Holt, longtime nuclear activist and director of the Citizens 
Monitoring Network, said any leakage is too much.

"There's leakage all the time," she said. "Lots of contamination is still 
there in the soil. And what about the high level waste in those casks? 
That's an unknown technology. What's going to happen when we start shipping 
them all over the country?"

The eight rail cars were returned not because of contamination, but because 
they failed to meet criteria set by the waste disposal company Envirocare, 
located in Clive, Utah. The cause of the leakage was probably deteriorating 
sealant and increased condensation caused by warmer weather.

"We noticed last month that some of the loaded cars were leaking," Howes 
explained. "All winter we had been loading frozen soil into these rail 
cars. It's hard to judge moisture content of frozen soil, and when it sits 
in black cars with the spring sun, condensation occurs."

Howes said the cars were sealed on the inside years ago, and postulated 
that the sealant had deteriorated allowing the condensed moisture to leak.

"Just to play it safe," he said, "we have recalled the cars that were out 
and when they return we will check their seals and the moisture."

Howes said they may add a desiccant, a material that absorbs moisture, to 
the rail cars to prevent condensation.

"Earlier in the process we were loading concrete with the soil," he said. 
"The concrete absorbed much of the moisture. Now we're down to soil."

Howes said he was hopeful shipments of the waste would resume shortly. The 
decommissioning is scheduled to be completed next month.

http://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/56606056e44e37508525696f00737257/8525696e00630dfe05256fe900635806




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 51 Bradenton Herald: Just a thought . . .

| 05/14/2005 | 

  Opinion  [XML]            

It's rather surprising - and upsetting - to learn that there
appears to be very little communication between our local
elected officials. That is the conclusion we take from the
exchange this week between Manatee County Commissioner Joe
McClash and Congresswoman Katherine Harris over the Wares Creek
dredging project. 

On a visit to the creek, Harris told residents she felt sure she
could get federal funding for the project next year and could
have sooner if only local officials had asked. This was in
reaction to a decision by the commission, led by McClash, to
begin the first phase of the project using county and city funds
because it didn't make the federal funding list for this year. 

This truly is astounding. Dredging and upgrading Wares Creek has
been a high priority here for at least 15 years to relieve
chronic flooding in the creek's drainage basin. County
commissioners have made numerous trips to Washington, D.C., and
Tallahassee to request federal funding. County staffers have
negotiated for years with the Corps of Engineers to design a
dredging plan that the corps would approve. 

And now we're told "Just ask?" 

Didn't the county ask? If not, why not? If yes, why wasn't
Harris aware of it? 

Something about this picture doesn't add up. 

A fortuitous find 

It's encouraging to learn that the missing medical records of
former Loral American Beryllium Co. employees have been found.
That has to be a relief for hundreds of former employees of the
Tallevast plant who worry about health issues connected to the
chemicals and beryllium dust to which they were exposed in the
manufacture of precision-tooled parts. It may enable them to
qualify for federal compensation if ailments can be traced to
the toxic exposure. 

It has taken time for the plant's current owner, Lockheed Martin
Corp., to dig up the old records from thousands of boxes
obtained from the former American Beryllium Co. That
understandably caused concern among ex-employees who thought it
should be easy to go into computers and get the records. But
much of the employment interval in question was before the
widespread use of computers. The walls of files in most
physicians' offices indicate that even today, many medical
records are not computerized. 

Hopefully, those who need access to their records will now be
able to get it. 

Honore link needed 

Connectivity. That's the magic word in transportation circles.
It means that, where possible, local roads should connect to
bigger arteries that link major travel destinations. Like East
Manatee and east Sarasota. 

Honore Avenue is an example of needed connectivity out there. It
runs from Venice to just north of University Parkway. But it
stops shortly before the Braden River. What's needed is a bridge
and a short connecting segment to Tara Boulevard. That would
create a badly needed new north-south artery to relieve I-75 and
Lockwood Ridge Road. 

It's understandable that those living near the proposed corridor
of the Honore extension would object, for it will bring more
traffic through their neighborhoods. But the connector has long
existed on paper; it just wasn't built when it should have been. 

Commissioners should proceed with the bridge and extension while
attempting to mitigate residents' objections. They should
include keeping the speed limit fairly low and prohibiting heavy
trucks from using the road. Also, keep sidewalks well clear of
the roadway shoulder. 

Much of the road's use will be local residents going between
State Road 70 and University, rather than through traffic headed
for south Sarasota County. Providing connectors for the local
traffic will ease congestion on I-75 as East Manatee fills up.   




          


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 52 Bradenton Herald: Tallevast residents rally for support

05/15/2005 | 

SYLVIA LIM

 Herald Staff Writer

MANATEE - It warmed Robyn Darville's heart on Saturday evening
to see her neighbors trickling in to a service in front of the
oldest church in Tallevast. 

It meant a lot to Darville that 95 percent of the 100-plus
people who came to the candlelight vigil, "A Tribute to a
Neighborhood Compromised," were Tallevast residents. 

"It's a perfect example of how we stick together," said Darville
proudly of her predominantly black neighborhood that traces its
roots back to the early 1900s. 

After facing a year of worrying about chemicals left over from
the former Loral American Beryllium Co. plant contaminating
their drinking water, residents decided to hold a vigil to
spiritually encourage one another, organizers say. 

Members of the local advocacy group Family Oriented Community
United and Strong tied colorful ribbons and black bows around
the front yard of the Mt. Tabor Missionary Baptist Church, where
120 chairs were set. 

Nearby, a green sign with yellow arrows and letters bearing the
words "Crime Scene! Crime Scene! Crime Scene! Where are the
signs?" pointed to the site of the former beryllium plant. 

Guest speakers led prayers, speeches and songs, including the
Rev. Jerome Dupree of the Koinonia Missionary Baptist Church in
Sarasota. Politicians including Congresswoman Katherine Harris
and Rep. Bill Galvano attended. Each gave rousing speeches, some
peppered with biblical passages. 

"Capitalism is not designed for poor folks, especially poor
folks of color," said Fredd Atkins, vice mayor of the city of
Sarasota, to a burst of applause. 

Community activist Raphael Allen, 75, agreed with that
sentiment. 

"The speakers were nice. It's just that, if this is Lakewood
Ranch, the community would not have to prevail to get justice,"
Allen said. "We have to beg for what we want and shouldn't have
to do that. The government should be rallying to our calls." 

Looking back, it has been a stressful year, Darville said. And a
depressing one as uncertainty continues to shroud the community
about how wide the contamination really is. 

"Before we found out about it, we looked forward to coming
home," she said. "Now, every day is a struggle because we don't
know what will happen. It is scary." 

Residents will be planning more vigils, which they say help
people cope with their anxiety and give them hope. 

"It feels wonderful. It feels great to hear horns honking
support," Darville said of the cars that drove by the church
during the service. "There are definitely bigger and better
things to come. I know we are on the map and this is far more
than just the vigil." Sylvia Lim, criminal justice reporter, can
be reached at 745-7041 or slim@HeraldToday.com. 

• This report is part of The Herald's in-depth coverage of toxic
contamination stemming from the former Loral American Beryllium
Co. plant in Tallevast. 

• Read The Herald's archive coverage on Tallevast at
HeraldToday.com.   

*****************************************************************
 53 Business Gazette: THORP MAY BE SHUT FOR MONTHS AFTER LEAK 

Published in Times & Star on Friday, May 13th 2005 

SELLAFIELDS Thorp reprocessing plant could remain closed for 
several months after a major leak of radioactive liquid.

British Nuclear Group said complex work is yet to start on 
removing the 83 cubic metres of liquor, which spilled out into a 
secure unit during a pipe failure. 

Although the company says there will be no lay offs, there will 
be some temporary re-deployment of workers because the recovery 
operation is so technical. 

Workers with special skills are to be transferred from other 
parts of the site, while some others will switch to alternative 
work. This will also help engineering work which was due to start 
a few days after the leak occurred last month. 

The difficult clean-up operation cannot begin until radiation 
levels in the head-end part of the plant are lowered. An 
inventory now has to be carried out on the stock of radioactive 
materials so these can be reduced to aid the clean up. 

When this is done, the company intends to start recovering the 
large amount of liquid from the floor of the stainless steel 
contained cell, which is specially designed to hold any leaks. 

It will then be put into buffer tanks before it is eventually 
sent on to be reprocessed. 

A detailed plan showing how BNFL will recover the spillage has 
now been drawn up. 

A Sellafield spokeswoman said: We have shared this with our 
regulator, the NII, and they are supportive of the approach we 
intend to take. 

Despite the need to lower the radiation levels, there is no 
requirement for workers to enter the cell, which has no 
man-access. 

The liquor is to be recovered remotely by draining it from a 
bunded area. 

Sellafields managing director Barry Snelson has reassured people 
that the leak posed no health risk. Safety monitoring has 
confirmed no abnormal activity in the air and there has been no 
impact on our workforce or the environment, he said. Back                                                                                           

*****************************************************************
 54 Sunday Herald: Revealed: the safety failures at Dounreay - 

  .EXCLUSIVE.  

By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor 
 
 THE nuclear complex at Dounreay has suffered more than 250
safety failures in the past six years, according to documents
released by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).

Many of the leaks, spills and equipment breakdowns have never
been reported before, and raise concerns that Dounreays
operator, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), has failed to
overcome the poor safety practices of the past.

In response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act,
Sepa has provided the Sunday Herald with a 26-page list
summarising every incident at Dounreay. It reveals that, since
1999, there have been an average of 40 problems a year, with the
highest number, 53, in 2004.

They include the radioactive contamination of whelks, winkles,
rabbits, concrete, soil, water, air and beaches. Samplers
monitoring for tritium and other radioactive emissions have
frequently been reported as being faulty. 

There are repeated violations of safety conditions, leaking
waste tanks, lost radioactive waste and power cuts. Some records
of discharges have been wrong for months. 

As many as 18 incidents are listed in the first three months of
2005. They include an abnormal radioactive discharge from a
stack, the contamination of grass with caesium-137, and a spill
of radioactive caustic soda.

Sepas list also records evidence that, in 2003, rabbits and
birds had been using several nuclear waste pits. In January
2004, an analysis of rabbit droppings from a contaminated area
showed that they were radioactive.

In November 2002, yellow liquid leaked from a transport flask on
to the floor. In December 2001, Sepa was told that liquid waste
had turned pale pink, then green.

The list recounts the incident in December 1999 when radioactive
waste containers were loaned to the local community to help make
a Santas grotto in Thurso. No adequate protocols or systems are
in place for segregating and controlling this type of waste,
commented Sepa at the time.

The disclosure of the Dounreay list has prompted renewed attacks
from the plants foremost critic, Lorraine Mann of Scotland
Against Nuclear Dumping. There is a constant danger of
catastrophic failures and catastrophic accidents, she said.

That is illustrated by this constant stream of incidents, not
all of which may have been serious, but none of which should
have happened.

Mann pointed out that there seemed to have been an increasing
number of problems since 1999. Some may be due to legacy issues,
but a large proportion are in the here and now, she argued.

In addition to the 255 incidents since 1999, Sepas list mentions
a further 82 that took place between 1972 and 1998. But that is
almost certainly an underestimate as in the early years Dounreay
did not report every incident to regulators.

The UKAEA stressed that Dounreay today was a very different
place from what it was in the 1970s and 1980s when it was exempt
from some safety regulations. A safety audit in 1998 by Sepa and
the governments Nuclear Installations Inspectorate had been a
watershed after which new standards had been brought in. 

All staff are encouraged to report unusual occurrences, however
insignificant they may appear. These are investigated thoroughly
and the findings are shared openly and honestly with regulators
and stakeholders, said a UKAEA spokeswoman. 

Many of these reports, such as the discovery of every particle
found in the marine environment, reflect the practices of the
1960s and 1970s, not those of today. Dounreays current
commitment to safety is shown by its ranking as one of the
safest workplaces in Britain, the spokeswoman contended.

A Sepa spokesman said that Sepa had always taken a close
interest in Dounreay. Ensuring that Dounreay is now
decommissioned in compliance with its authorisations was a major
challenge, he added. 

Sepa understands that the current management team at Dounreay is
fully aware of its environmental obligations and is committed to
meeting them. However, this will not stop Sepa from taking
appropriate enforcement action should there be a breach of its
authorisations.


+ news in focus: Nuclear Power: an investigation 
15 May 2005 

  © newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved   
*****************************************************************
 55 Tri-City Herald: DOE gets OK to ship wastes to Hanford 

This story was published Saturday, May 14th, 2005 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

The Department of Energy may ship some plutonium-contaminated
waste to Hanford, U.S. District Judge Alan McDonald ruled Friday
in Yakima. 

However, state officials were pleased to hear the judge is
continuing the prohibition on shipping some other types of
radioactive waste to the Hanford nuclear reservation. He
extended a ban for 90 days on shipments of low-level radioactive
waste, including waste mixed with hazardous chemicals. 

McDonald also continued a ban on plutonium-contaminated waste
mixed with hazardous chemicals as issues related to Initiative
297 are settled. 

Long before voters approved the Hanford waste initiative, the
state had filed suit to keep DOE from sending
plutonium-contaminated and low-level radioactive waste to the
site, fearful that it would become a waste dump for the nation. 

The initiative, which passed in November, is intended to bar DOE
from sending more waste to Hanford until waste already there is
cleaned up. But whether it violates the U.S. Constitution is
being considered in a separate lawsuit. 

Hanford is massively contaminated from more than 40 years of
production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons
program. 

Friday's ruling opens the way for DOE to send most, but not all,
of the plutonium-contaminated waste left at Battelle's Columbus,
Ohio, site to Hanford. 

"While the United States continues to review this lengthy
opinion, we're encouraged the court has agreed the department
can move forward safely in the processing of transuranic
(plutonium-contaminated) waste in the interest of its final
disposal," said Colleen French, a DOE spokeswoman in Richland. 

The judge agreed to let DOE ship 34 of 37 cubic meters of
plutonium-contaminated waste from Ohio to Hanford. 

The remaining three cubic meters are contaminated with hazardous
chemicals and federal law prohibits long-term storage of
hazardous materials intended to be disposed of in the ground.
Earlier this year, the judge ruled the state has authority over
plutonium-contaminated waste mixed with hazardous chemicals. 

But the same prohibitions do not apply to waste contaminated
only with plutonium, which the federal government would store
and process at Hanford until it could be shipped to an
underground federal repository in the New Mexico desert. 

"The state has not identified how the storage of
(plutonium-contaminated waste) at Hanford until processing can
take place presents some environmental risk which DOE did not
adequately analyze or of which it did not inform the public,"
McDonald wrote in his ruling. 

DOE has wanted to ship the Battelle waste to Hanford to allow it
to clean up and close the Ohio site. It also has up to 1,557
cubic meters of similar waste around the country that eventually
could be handled at Hanford. 

The state has argued Hanford does not have the facilities to
handle the most radioactive of the plutonium-contaminated waste,
called remote-handled waste. It also lacks capabilities to
handle plutonium-contaminated waste in large containers or waste
that is contaminated with PCBs. The waste is often laboratory
equipment or other items being disposed of because they've been
contaminated with plutonium during the production of plutonium. 

In addition, the state is concerned that New Mexico is now not
accepting remote-handled waste so the waste could become
stranded at Hanford. 

But the judge said it is not reasonable for DOE to have plans
fully formulated on how to handle different types of
plutonium-contaminated waste. 

"The state merely engages in unscientific speculation about
potential impacts," the judge wrote. 

The judge also pointed out the 25 cubic meters of remote-handled
waste among the plutonium-contaminated waste to be shipped from
Ohio would constitute only 1 percent of the remote-handled
plutonium-contaminated waste already at Hanford. 

Also, even if DOE sent all 1,557 cubic meters of
plutonium-contaminated waste to Hanford, the amount would be
dwarfed by the nearly 46,000 cubic meters of waste generated by
production and cleanup at Hanford, the judge wrote. 

The injunction prohibiting DOE from sending low-level
radioactive waste to Hanford for disposal there will remain in
place for 90 days to allow the state more time to make arguments
about potential ground water contamination. 

The state also has questioned how much radioactive iodine will
be concentrated in off-gases as some of Hanford's worst waste is
vitrified or turned into glass for permanent disposal. 

The iodine would end up in waste encapsulated in grout and
buried at Hanford in the same landfill proposed for the imported
low-level waste. The state is concerned about their combined
effect on ground water. 

"By and large, this court believes DOE experts have offered
reasonable responses and explanations to the criticisms and
questions raised by the state's experts, some of which are
nothing more than second-guessing," McDonald wrote. 

But the court does have "a lingering concern" about the effect
of radioactive iodine from vitrification because of
inconsistencies in DOE estimates, he said. 

He's only allowing arguments from the state in the next 90 days
on estimates of radioactive iodine and another isotope,
technetium. 

© 2005 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 56 Courier Journal: If not coal, what then?
 
www.courier-journal.com

» Opinion     Sunday, May 15, 2005     
  
By Mark H. Porta
 Special to The Courier-Journal

Let's be honest. For most of you outside the mountains of
Eastern Kentucky, the debate on mountaintop mining, or coal
mining in general, is of very little interest.

 Recently, the issue has received some front-page coverage, due
in large part to a very vocal minority, and with gasoline
selling for well above $2 a gallon, it's easy to worry about
energy, so you scan the articles and wonder: "What in the world
is going on over there?"

 You see a picture of an active mine, read about Grandma's house
cracking, and your instinct is, "This has got to stop." A recent
poll in the Lexington paper asked, "Do you oppose mountaintop
mining? Many people, not a majority, voted yes.

 So there is a concern, maybe not informed, but a concern. I
could show you other pictures of green pasture land, airports,
industrial sites, all from reclaimed mine sites. I could tell
you about the jobs coal provides, and ask the question, "When is
your company going to move an operation into the coal fields?" I
could tell you that Grandpa and the grandkids, made their money
working in coal, but who do you believe?

 Maybe a better way to form your opinion is to look at this
issue based on how mining directly affects you outside the coal
fields. To do so, let's assume the following: Coal is no longer
an option for our energy needs.

 Mountaintop, contour, auger, highwall and underground are all
types of mining performed, and, trust me, somebody somewhere
doesn't want each of these types of mining practices performed.
The opponents of mountaintop will tell you they don't oppose
other forms of mining, but others do, so let's just stop it all.
Not just in Kentucky; don't forget West Virginia and all the
mining in the Appalachian mountains, and then we need to move
out West, the real damage is being done. After all, that's prime
prairie land. We certainly don't want to impose our will on the
rest of the world, so we will leave South America, Australia,
China, Russia and anyone else producing coal alone. Americans
like importing their energy needs.

 Now let's review our alternatives. Without coal, we just
eliminated 52 percent of our electric power generation for the
U.S., and 97 percent of electric power generation in Kentucky.
We must find other options.

 Option one is nuclear, which currently supplies 20 percent of
the electric needs of the U.S. In Kentucky, we don't have any
nuclear power plants. This option doesn't seem to be very
viable, because most of you opposed Marble Hill, and remember
the waste from these plants lasts thousands of years. If you
like this idea, we might get one on line in about 20 years.

 The second option is natural gas, which supplies 16 percent of
our power needs. Now we're cooking (sorry about that). Natural
gas prices have soared in recent months, we are drilling to find
new sources (I hope not in Alaska), and we are importing from
other countries; but that's OK, importing our energy needs is
not a big issue. By the way, you might consider replacing your
heat pump for a gas unit.

 A third option is hydropower, currently 7 percent of our energy
needs. This might be a problem in Kentucky as I just don't see
us damming the Ohio or any other river in our area. We can't
seem to find common ground on two bridges, so I think our
chances of building a dam aren't good, but I do like hydropower.

 Our fourth option for producing electricity is oil, currently
producing 3 percent of our needs, I am not going to touch this
option.

 Finally, there are renewable energy sources, currently 2
percent. Here we look at things like wind, solar, biomass and
geothermal. I particularly like wind, but I don't know how many
it would take to power the population of Metro Louisville. Just
guessing, a couple thousand might be a good start. I'm not sure
they look any better than cell towers, nor do I know what we do
in summer when the winds are light -- but they could provide
some power part of the time.

 So let's review our options for life without coal. Although
limited, there is a chance we can produce, through conservation
and sources other than coal, 10-20 percent of our current energy
needs; and if we are lucky, we can get this done in about five
to 10 years.

 Now let's take another poll: Do you oppose coal mining,
understanding that doing so would cause you to go without power
80 percent of the day?

 It is very easy today for special interest groups to oppose the
coal industry based on their very narrow vision of how the world
should be. It is something else for them to have a plan to
produce the energy necessary to run your house, business, city
and county. The coal industry is responsible to its communities,
its employees and the environment, while producing a clean,
reliable, domestic power source. I'm proud to be associated with
this vital industry.

 The writer is vice president of eastern operations for the
Whayne Supply Co. in Louisville. 


Copyright 2004 The Courier-Journal.
*****************************************************************
 57 Independent: Waste warning over plans to expand UK's nuclear power 

www.independent.co.uk
    
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor 

14 May 2005

No decision about building new nuclear power stations in Britain
should be taken until a solution to the problem of nuclear waste
has been outlined, a committee of scientists has told the
Government. 

Any early move to go ahead with new atomic power plants - as the
Government is believed to be considering - would compromise
public consultations going on at the moment to address the waste
issue, they say. 

Their intervention is a complicating factor in the decision
about whether Britain should "go nuclear" once more, as part of
its programme to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions from
conventional coal and gas-fired power stations in the fight
against climate change. 

Three weeks ago, The Independent reported that Tony Blair was
preparing to do just that, and this week the Government's chief
scientific adviser, Sir David King, said that in the bid to
combat global warming one more generation of nuclear power
stations "may be necessary". 

But now the waste question has erupted into the policy process
with a vengeance. The scientists, mostly with a nuclear
background, form a group set up by the Government 18 months ago
- CORWM, the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management - to
consider how the waste legacy of 50 years of nuclear power can
best be dealt with. That is regarded as long overdue. Successive
governments, Conservative and Labour, have failed to come up
with any long-term solution for disposal of the mini-mountain of
spent nuclear fuel and other irradiated products produced by
Britain's nuclear industry since the first atomic power station,
at Calder Hall in Cumbria - the Sellafield site - began
operating in 1956. 

The radioactive waste pile now totals 470,000 cubic metres -
enough to fill the Royal Albert Hall five times over. 

Mostly it is being stored on site at nuclear plants, but this is
merely an interim solution. CORWM was set up to look at options
for long-term disposal, and recommend a way forward to the
Government. The recommendation is due in July 2006. 

After a public and scientific consultation exercise, which
included public meetings around the country, last month CORWM
made its interim recommendations. The committee ruled out a
number of more extreme options for nuclear waste disposal that
have been (quite seriously) put forward, including firing it
into space or burying it beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.
Instead, they listed four main options, ranging from deep
geological disposal - putting the waste in rocks deep
underground - to local shallow disposal for short-lived wastes. 

The committee is now setting out on another round of public
consultations and assessments of this shortlist, before its
final decision in July next year. It is that process, the
members believe, which will be compromised if the Government
takes any decision to go ahead with "nuclear new build", as it
is known, in the meantime. 

They think that the co-operation of environmentalists in the
process, for example, will be withdrawn if Green activists think
that all they are doing is removing a hurdle - ie, the waste
problem itself - for a new generation of nuclear power. 

The committee chairman, Professor Gordon MacKerron, director of
the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex,
has written to the Government. "We have told the Government that
if there were a decision on nuclear new build, it would
complicate our process, and some stakeholders might not take
part," he said yesterday. "It might mean that the level of
overall public confidence in our process might be lacking." 

Another committee member, Pete Wilson, a former director of
Friends of the Earth, said: "We want to solve the problem and
draw a line under it, but if this is only so we can create more
waste and more problems for future generations, people will feel
they do not want to take part." 

Professor MacKerron said the committee did not take a view on
whether or not there should be more nuclear plants. 

The four key options 

By Michael McCarthy and Sophie Borland 

* Four definite choices are on the table to deal with the
substantial pile of radioactive waste that Britain's nuclear
industry has produced, and is still producing. 

The problem is now urgent because of the possibility of a new
generation of nuclear power stations. 

Proposals put forward by the Committee on Radioactive Waste
Management are: deep disposal, phased deep disposal, shallow
burial and interim storage. It will give its final report after
a year of consultations. 

In deep disposal, waste is permanently placed in a repository
between 300 metres and 2km underground, in an area where rocks
act as the protective chamber. This option is the most
expensive, likely to cost up to £12bn. 

Phased deep disposal is the same process as deep disposal,
except the waste will be retrievable. 

Shallow burial is for waste with short-lived radioactivity
buried just below the surface. 

Interim storage is a temporary solution. Waste could be stored
above the ground or just below the surface - but it must be out
of the biosphere, the envelope around the world in which life
occurs. 

The committee is not addressing the question of disposal sites,
which will be an even thornier problem once the Government comes
to confront it. But it has given an estimate of how much waste a
new generation of power stations might produce. This is
calculated at about 47,000 cubic metres, or half an Albert Hall.
	           
©2005 Independent News &Media (UK) Ltd.   
*****************************************************************
 58 Guardian Unlimited: Close nuclear leak plant for good, says Sellafield
 
Thorp reprocessing should never be restarted - boss            
 		
Oliver Morgan, industrial editor
Sunday May 15, 2005
 		
The owner of the Sellafield site in Cumbria, the Nuclear 
Decommissioning Authority, wants its main reprocessing facility 
to shut forever following a leak of highly radioactive liquefied 
nuclear fuel containing plutonium and uranium. 

The move would bring an early end to the UK's reprocessing 
programme, which was conceived in the Sixties to provide 
plutonium for Britain's nuclear deterrent while recycling uranium 
for civil energy needs.

In any event, the leak of some 20 tonnes of uranium and plutonium 
fuel, dissolved in nitric acid, will keep the Thermal Oxide 
Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) shut for months. 

But senior sources at the NDA, the government body set up to 
dismantle radioactive facilities at 20 sites across the UK, now 
believes that keeping the plant shut is the most economical 
option, and also one that would remove reprocessing - which has 
always attracted controversy - from the debate over building new 
nuclear stations which many believe the government is keen to 
initiate. 

'The view is that Thorp should never restart,' said a senior 
source. 

Officials indicate that, even when operational, the plant does 
not make money. Thorp's figures are not split out in the NDA's 
plan for 2005-6. However, the published figures show that, of a 
total budget of £2.2 billion, the NDA receives some £1.08bn from 
the commercial operations it inherited from British Nuclear 
Fuels. Of this, it expects to get £635.1 million from 
reprocessing and transporting nuclear material around the world. 

A large proportion of this figure will be from Thorp's activities 
- reprocessing spent fuel from British Energy's nuclear power 
stations, along with contracts from Japan, Germany and other 
overseas customers. But the NDA also incurs huge costs from 
Sellafield, forecast to be £727.4m over 2005-6. Also, up to three 
new storage facilities for separated plutonium and uranium are 
needed, at a cost of nearly £200m each. 

Meanwhile the NDA official said: 'The government is starting to 
think about new stations. The view is that it would be impossible 
to argue that there should be a new generation [of facilities] 
that relies on reprocessing.' 

Closing Thorp would reduce the time it takes to run down the 
massive stockpile of 'highly active liquid' - spent nuclear fuel 
containing uranium and plutonium - by four and a half years. 
Nuclear regulators have insisted on the backlog being dealt with 
by 2015. And closure of Thorp would drastically reduce emissions 
into the Irish Sea, a continuing source of tension with the Irish 
government. 

NDA chief executive Ian Roxburgh told The Observer that a 
decision on closure would be up to the government. He added: 'The 
NDA must produce by the autumn its plans for the 20 sites it 
operates, including Sellafield. The latest incident had clearly 
brought that forward.' 

Meanwhile, sources at British Energy have indicated that the 
privatised nuclear operator wants to run any new nuclear power 
stations, but is not keen to take a major investment stake in any 
projects. There are doubts over whether private investors have 
the appetite to finance and build a new generation of reactors, 
given the volatility of energy markets. 

The sources believe the operation of new plants should be kept 
separate from ownership and financing. 
	

[UP] 

*****************************************************************
 59 Sunday Times: Revealed: list of sites to take nuclear waste - 

The Sunday Times - Britain   

May 15, 2005                   

Jonathan Leake and Dan Box
 		   		 		
A TOP SECRET list of the 12 sites shortlisted for dumping 
Britain’s most dangerous radioactive waste is to be published by 
the government — after 16 years of being kept under lock and key. 

The list is held by Nirex, the government-controlled agency 
charged with finding a long-term repository for the waste which 
will remain deadly for millions of years. 

It was drawn up in 1989 but ministers refused to publish it for
fear of local protests and of blighting property values in each
area. 

Two favourite sites, at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria
and the Dounreay plant in Caithness, were made public but the
rest were not. 

Nirex wants to disclose all the sites as part of a public debate
on where Britain’s waste should now be dumped. They are
understood to include an RAF base at Thetford in Norfolk and a
site managed by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
(UKAEA) at Harwell in Oxfordshire. 

Others include two uninhabited islands off the west coast of
Scotland and two further sites in the seabed. There was also a
proposal to build an artificial island off Scotland. 

Nirex, which was established in the 1980s to oversee the storage
of radioactive waste, has written to local authorities and
environmental groups to arrange a meeting on May 26 at the
Thistle Manchester hotel. 

Chris Murray, managing director of Nirex, said: “These sites
were based on a sound technical study. Some of them we could now
rule out, but we could still be interested in others. The key
point is that the next debate over where any repository is sited
must be a public one and not secret.” 

Nirex wants to avoid a repeat of the public protests and
humiliation that it suffered the last time it tried to build an
underground facility. Its proposal for an experimental “rock
characterisation facility” under Sellafield was rejected by John
Gummer, then environment secretary, after a public inquiry
showed that the project had been shrouded in confusion and
secrecy. 

Murray wants to follow the example set by Finland and France
which held public consultations on where to site their nuclear
repositories. Britain could also follow the French example by
offering inducements such as schools and leisure centres to
communities close to the facility. 

Plans to publish the list come as the government confirmed this
weekend that Britain could build a new generation of nuclear
power plants to help to combat climate change. Alan Johnson, the
new productivity, energy and industry secretary, said it would
re-examine the question “some time this year”. 

Britain’s 14 reactors produce a quarter of the nation’s
electricity, but because of their age all but one will have to
close by 2023. 

For supporters of new nuclear power stations, one of the biggest
problems is that Britain still has no means to dispose of
radioactive waste. A government committee is expected to
recommend an underground repository but will not report until
late next year. If agreement were reached and a dump were built
it would become much easier to argue the technical case for more
power stations. 

The 12 sites were identified after work by the British
Geological Survey. They were extracted from a longer list of
about 500 sites that were geologically suitable including parts
of the home counties, Leicestershire, Yorkshire and Cheshire. 

Many inside the nuclear industry are known still to favour
Sellafield as the best place for an underground dump, largely
because this would avoid transporting a lot of waste around the
country. 

There is likely to be intense local opposition. Martin Forwood,
campaign director at Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive
Environment, said that the area’s geology was unsuitable: “If
they think they are going to saddle us with the country's
nuclear dump they are going to have a God-almighty battle on
their hands.” 

The pro-nuclear lobby received a setback last week when it
emerged that the Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield had
suffered a big radioactive leak. A burst pipe allowed the escape
of about 100 tons of highly corrosive nitric acid containing 20
tons of dissolved uranium and plutonium. Insiders admitted that
workers had not spotted the leak, which had gushed waste for
weeks.   	 		

Copyright 2005                 Times Newspapers Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 60 Seattle Times: Hanford required to take limited waste, judge rules
 
  [The Seattle Times]

Saturday, May 14, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m. 	 	
 	
By Nicholas K. Geranios The Associated Press                                            

 SPOKANE  A federal judge ruled that the Hanford nuclear
reservation must accept some radioactive waste from Ohio but
kept in place a temporary ban on shipping other such waste into
the state. 

The split decision by U.S. District Judge Alan McDonald of
Yakima was satisfactory for the state Department of Ecology,
which had sued the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) over the
shipments. 

"Our overall reaction to this is it is not a bad outcome for the
state," said Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the Ecology
Department in Olympia. "The largest volumes of waste out there
are still under injunction and cannot be shipped here." 

The state sued to block shipments of transuranic waste from Ohio
to Hanford, where the Energy Department wants to store it before
it goes to eventual permanent storage in New Mexico. State
officials feared the waste would be stranded here. 

Gerald Pollet, a Hanford critic with the group Heart of America
Northwest, said the ruling was good news. 

"The ruling bodes well for upholding the will of Washington
voters to require Hanford to be cleaned up before more waste can
be dumped," said Pollet, who sponsored Initiative 297 last year. 

The federal government has filed suit seeking to overturn
Initiative 297, which bars the Energy Department from sending
any more waste to Hanford until all existing waste there is
cleaned up. The initiative has not been enforced, pending
resolution of the lawsuit. 

McDonald earlier granted a motion by the state to allow the
state Supreme Court to first decide how the measure should be
interpreted. 

Colleen French, an Energy Department spokeswoman at Hanford,
said yesterday the agency was encouraged that the judge agreed
it could safely process some of the waste. 

"This work can clearly be conducted in an environmentally sound
manner," French said. 

In the complicated decision, McDonald: 

" Granted for 90 days the state's motion to extend a preliminary
injunction to cover low-level and mixed low-level wastes, to
allow for additional studies of groundwater issues. 

" Granted the Energy Department's motion to lift an injunction
related to transuranic waste, except for transuranic mixed
waste. That covered the shipments from Ohio. 

" Ruled that his preliminary injunction remains in place
indefinitely for transuranic mixed waste. No such waste can be
sent to Hanford from other sites. 

"This court believes DOE experts have offered reasonable
responses and explanations to the criticisms and questions
raised by the state's experts, some of which are nothing more
than second-guessing," McDonald wrote. 

Taking the waste from Ohio will aid the nationwide cleanup of
radioactive waste, Hutchison said. 

"We do have a role in the larger nationwide cleanup," Hutchison
said. "Hanford is going to have to take additional waste, but it
should come with very strong assurances and deadlines about how
it will be handled and moved on." 

The state sued the U.S. Department of Energy in 2003 to block
shipments of plutonium-laced trash to Hanford out of concern
that it could be left at what is already the nation's most
contaminated nuclear site. 

The lawsuit, which was later expanded to include other types of
waste, contended the federal government failed to complete an
adequate environmental review to support its decision to ship
highly radioactive transuranic, low-level and mixed low-level
waste to Hanford from other places. 

On Monday, Washington state notified the court it would be
willing to accept 37 cubic yards of radioactive waste from Ohio.
The Energy Department has said the waste from the Battelle
Columbus Laboratory must be removed before the Ohio site can be
closed. 

The waste eventually would be sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant, a nuclear-waste repository in New Mexico, the agency has
said. 

In January, McDonald barred the federal government from shipping
mixed transuranic waste from sites around the country to Hanford
unless it meets state storage requirements. The trash typically
is debris  such as clothing, equipment and pipes left over from
nuclear-weapons production  that has been contaminated both
with plutonium and hazardous chemicals. 

For 40 years, Hanford workers made plutonium for the nation's
nuclear-weapons arsenal, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan
Project to build the first atomic bombs. 

Costs to clean up the highly contaminated site are expected to
total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished
by 2035. 

	 		 		
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company 	 	 		 		
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 61 lamonitor.com: Texas antes $1.2M for lab 

The Online News Source for Los Alamos
 
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor

The University of Texas System Board of Regents voted on
Thursday to proceed with renewed plans to partner with Lockheed
Martin for the contract to manage Los Alamos National
Laboratory. 

In his prepared remarks, Chancellor Mark G. Yudof assured the
regents that the risks and rewards, as well as the University's
capacity to make a contribution, have been addressed.

"Anyone who has followed the news over the last several years
knows that Los Alamos has had some serious difficulties and that
those difficulties raise warning flags about potential risks,"
he said. "However, the past problems at the laboratory involve
issues of security, environment and managerial judgment at the
highest level." 

The role of UTS, he concluded, "would involve none of these
high-risk enterprises."

As envisaged by Yudof and elaborated in a brief presentation by
Vice Chancellor Robert E. Barnhill, UTS participation would
emphasize the academic strengths of the Texas system as a broker
between the academic community and the national laboratories. 
UTS would oversee peer review for LANL research, Barnhill said,
engage and broker new research, create educational opportunities
for lab scientists and assist in developing LANL scientists'
careers.

UTS plans to put together an academic consortium that would
involve other institutions of higher learning. These might
include Texas A University and others to be named, Barnhill
said. 

With a limited role and limited risk, Yudof said that the
benefits were immense.

"The opportunity to fully evaluate, restructure and reinvigorate
the work of our largest, and, arguably, most important national
laboratory is rare," he said in his prepared remarks.

Barnhill estimated the cost for UTS' share of the proposal
preparation at $1.2 million.

The money was needed for short-term personnel, consultants and
outside legal counsel.

A motion by Regent Scott Caven, Jr. called for authorizing Yudof
to proceed at his discretion to respond to the Department of
Energy's forthcoming request for proposal and to execute the
necessary agreements with Lockheed Martin and other parties. The
funding request was approved in the same motion.

The officials were aware of an announcement made on Wednesday
that the University of California had reached agreement with an
industrial team led by Bechtel National Inc., contingent on UC's
board of regents deciding to pursue the LANL contract.

The regents met in Austin, following up on a special meeting on
April 28, when pros and cons of the partnering venture were
aired.

The UTS regents had approved $500,000 for preparing a bid last
year but decided against participating when Lockheed Martin's
interest waned. Since Lockheed Martin said it would make a bid,
UTS has moved quickly to restart its effort.

UTS and Lockheed signed a collaborative agreement early last
month in Washington for scientific collaborations at Sandia
National Laboratories.   

  © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.   
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 62 North Jersey Media Group: Nearby, atomic test sites 

  [NorthJersey.com]     

Sunday, May 15, 2005 

By JILL SCHENSUL
TRAVEL EDITOR 

Just 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas lies some of the country's
harshest, most forbidding terrain. Burning hot, bone dry, good
for nothing except snakes and sagebrush. And nuclear testing. 

In 1951, 1,400 acres there were chosen by the government to
become the Nevada Test Site, the country's principal nuclear
weapons testing area until the moratorium on testing was
declared in 1992. 

On Feb. 20, the 8,000-square-foot Atomic Testing Museum debuted
on the campus of the Desert Research Institute just east of The
Strip. An affiliate of the institute and the Smithsonian, it is
designed to present the development of nuclear weapons in the
context of world history, through artifacts, movies, personal
stories and interactive exhibits. 

It takes visitors through the Atomic Age, from a copy of a
letter from Einstein urging President Franklin Roosevelt to
investigate the use of atomic technology to the 1992 moratorium
on atomic tests. 

The museum has been controversial from the outset. During my
stay, a group from Japan protested at the site. Some have
faulted the museum for being pro-nuke; some of its sponsors have
made money from atomic energy. I'm a staunch peacenik myself,
but found the overall presentation of the information to be at
least somewhat balanced and, more importantly, it puts a human
face on the "other side." 

The museum's effect will undoubtedly depend on what each visitor
brings to it. Scenes of the power of the bombs were chilling,
horrifying. Not only the unfortunately familiar shots of
mushroom clouds billowing and observers watching nearby,
protected only by sunglasses, but the film of underground tests
that rippled the earth as if it was water and vaporized
recording equipment almost instantaneously. 

Interspersed were interviews with men who worked at the facility
for decades, who said that they regretted nothing, and with men
who protested against nuclear weapons then and now are able to
do so because of those weapons. Political philosophies and logic
clash onscreen, but the passion behind each side's beliefs
resonates clearly. 

Whatever your views, it's worth a visit, and don't forget to
stop at the gift shop for your Miss Atomic Bomb cutout doll and
Albert Einstein action figure. 

The museum, at 755 E. Flamingo Road, is open from 9 a.m. to 5
p.m. Monday through Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is
$10; seniors, military and youth 7-17 admitted for $7; 6 and
under free. No cameras or cellphones allowed. 

Information: (702) 794-5161 or atom ictestingmuseum.org.   

Copyright © 2005 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
    
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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: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
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