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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 IPS-English IRAN-ELECTIONS: Nuclear issue should top new
2 Guardian Unlimited: Mark Gasiorowski: The real power in Tehran
3 RIA Novosti: Russian-Iranian cooperation to be based on IAEA decisio
4 Xinhua: EU to deepen relations with Iran   
5 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Says It Could Repel Any NKorea Attack
6 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: U.S. Defense College to Simulate Korean C
7 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Nukes Won't Change Power Balance in Korea
8 Xinhua: S.Korean minister leaves for Washington for nuclear issue   
9 Korea Times: NK Using S-N Engagement to Buy Time on Nukes
10 US: News-Miner - Opinion: U.S. needs energy bill
11 US: Deseret News: Senate OKs major energy bill 
12 US: Las Vegas RJ: BARGAINING BEGINS: Senate passes energy bill
13 US: The Advocate: Highlights of legislation debated Tuesday
14 Guardian Unlimited: Micro-power hailed as cheap, safe energy of futu
15 ITAR-TASS: Russia may increase its continental shelf - specialists
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
16 US: NRC: NRC Finds No Significant Environmental Impacts from Extende
17 Manchester Evening News: City helps revive nuclear age
18 Platts:New UK nuclear only viable with government assistance - Oxera
19 RIA Novosti: Russia, Chile sign nuclear cooperation agreement
20 BBC: Cost of nuclear 'underestimated'
21 Forbes: Swedish nuclear power station leaks high levels of radioacti
22 US: toledo blade: Fermi repairs still incomplete
23 Ghana: Ghana’s Nuclear Reactor Is For Peaceful Purposes
24 CNW Group: Greenpeace report condemns safety conditions at Pickering
25 US: Roanoke Times: The facts say it's clean and necessary
26 US: NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Meeting of the 
27 Japan Times: Tepco gets OK to restart idled reactor
28 US: Hudson Valley News: Indian Point on environmental consortium's "
29 New Scientist: New UK nuclear plants could prove costly 
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
30 Bellona: Are there going to be fewer secrets in Russia?
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
31 US: NAS: No Such Thing As A Safe Dose Of Radiation
32 [du-list] [Fwd: Preliminary Declaration of the Jury of
33 US: [NukeNet] NAS panel confirms "linear, no threshold" model
34 US: Bradenton Herald: 1 in 10 Tallevast workers test positive
35 BBC: Nuclear workers' cancer risk rise
36 US: Medical Study News: Even low dose radiation exposure causes canc
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
37 rgj: Government scientist denies falsifying Yucca Mountain data
38 US: Deseret News: Energy bill doesn't include ban on N-fuel shipment
39 Las Vegas RJ: NUCLEAR WASTE PROJECT: Porter limits access to Yucca e
40 Las Vegas SUN: Opposing views show in Yucca surveys 
41 Las Vegas SUN: Scientist denies falsifying data on Yucca 
42 Las Vegas SUN: Senate energy bill has provisions for Nevada 
43 Salt Lake Tribune: Nuclear execs tout Yucca, but Curtis says Utah
44 US: Waste News: Radioactive waste cleanup concluded at two N.J. Supe
45 US: NRC: Establishment of the U.S. Department of Energy as the Long-
46 Las Vegas SUN: USGS scientist denies falsifying Yucca Mountain
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
47 Seattle Times: Politics: Hanford probe urged in Congress
48 DOE: Federal Energy Management Advisory Committee
49 Tri-City Herald: Program to pay injured Hanford employees working, o
50 DHHS: CDC: Rocky Flats Exposure petition

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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 IPS-English IRAN-ELECTIONS: Nuclear issue should top new
 
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 15:05:03 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
  AP WD HD IP WO
IRAN-ELECTIONS: Nuclear issue should top new leader's agenda, says UAE paper
Att.Editors: The following item is from the Emirates News Agency (WAM)

ABU DHABI, June 29 (WAM) - The change of guard in Iran has stunned the West
just as it has the rest of the world as there are genuine apprehensions
about the direction Iran will take under the new leader Mahmoud Ahmedinejad,
according to a United Arab Emirates (UAE) paper.

    "This is why the European Union assertion on Monday that there would be
no change in EU policy on Iran comes as a bit of surprise. No wonder U.S.
president George W Bush has expressed his reservations about EU's Iran
engagement policy," wrote the 'Khaleej Times'.

    In its daily comment, the paper said: "Yet, Europe's carrot-and-stick
approach to Iran's nuclear programme has been largely successful. EU's Big
Three -- Britain, France and Germany -- have managed to persuade Teheran to
meet IAEA demands.

    "Following its agreement with the EU, Teheran has put a freeze on its
uranium enrichment process -- albeit temporarily -- and has opened its
nuclear installations to regular IAEA inspections. Although the issue still
remains far from resolved, thanks to EU efforts it has not blown into a
major crisis.

    "However, EU and Iran will have to settle this business sooner than
later. Washington is keen to take the issue to UN Security Council, which
could lead to punitive action against Iran.

    "The first business on the agenda of Iran's new leader therefore should
be the resolution of the nuclear programme issue. Ahmedinejad has no time to
lose," concluded the paper. (WAM)




  

</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 2 Guardian Unlimited: Mark Gasiorowski: The real power in Tehran
 
Anger at corruption and the gap between rich and poor produced 
Iran's shock election result, but its foreign policy is likely to 
remain cautious               
 		
Mark Gasiorowski
Wednesday June 29, 2005
The Guardian 		
 		
The landslide victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the second round 
of Iran's presidential elections was largely a response to the 
populist campaign he had waged. His campaign emphasised the large 
gap between rich and poor in the country, the rampant corruption 
that exists there, and his own humble lifestyle. His victory was 
a rejection of the preceding era, under Presidents Akbar Hashemi 
Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, when this poverty gap grew wide. 
 			 			 						 						 						
It also represents something of a backlash against the social and 
cultural liberalisation over the past 15 years, especially the 
much more relaxed standards of dress for women and widespread 
public romantic activity and gender mixing. The gap between 
Iranians who support and those who oppose this liberalisation 
largely parallels the rich-poor divide, so it is difficult to say 
how much the election reflects anger at liberalization and how 
much at the gap between rich and poor. My guess is that the 
election outcome mainly reflects the latter, but the former 
certainly was important for some.

Ahmadinejad's victory should not have surprised anyone, given
the humiliating defeat of Rafsanjani, his second-round opponent,
in the 2000 parliamentary election and the equally dismal
performance of Iran's reformist faction in 2003 and 2004.
The magnitude of Ahmadinejad's victory should also not be
exaggerated. Only about 35% of Iranians supported him in the
second round. The results of the first round show that the
Iranian public remains deeply polarised, with 38% of the
electorate supporting conservative candidates; 40%-45%
supporting reformists, "holding their noses" and backing
Rafsanjani, or boycotting the election; and perhaps 10%
enthusiastically supporting Rafsanjani as a centrist.

No concrete evidence of large-scale electoral manipulation has
emerged, and I doubt that it will. Rather, this vote is a good
example of how elections can have very bizarre, unrepresentative
consequences in societies with weak political institutions.

Proponents of democratisation in the Middle East and elsewhere
need to focus less on the importance of elections and more on
building strong political parties and institutions and
encouraging democratic political culture.

In truth, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the
main winner here. Like Khatami, Ahmadinejad will be very visible
but not very powerful in the presidency, which has grown
considerably weaker as an institution in the past eight years.

Khamenei's main political rivals - Rafsanjani and the reformist
movement - have been decisively defeated, and he now controls
all governmental institutions. The centralisation of power will
be greater than at any time since the heyday of the last shah in
the 1970s.

Iranians who strongly oppose Ahmadinejad are now in a state of
shock and dismay, but I suspect that very few will be willing to
risk a major confrontation with his supporters. They have
maintained a posture of passive, sullen discontent in recent
years and are likely to remain this way for the foreseeable
future.

So a Velvet Revolution or some other form of political upheaval
seems unlikely any time soon. For one thing, the leaders of
Iran's security forces are jubilant about Ahm adinejad's victory
and will act decisively to stop any challenge to the new order.
Moreover, there is presently no leadership capable of
orchestrating a Velvet Revolution. Iran's reformist and centrist
leaders will need several months to assess the situation and
regroup.

With Khamenei rather than Ahmadinejad firmly in control, Iran's
domestic and foreign policies are likely to be less extreme than
many have predicted. Although Ahmadinejad's core supporters will
be energised by the outcome, Khamenei is likely to restrain them
out of concern that radical measures will antagonise
Ahmadinejad's opponents and the US and EU countries.

Khamenei's task will be a difficult one, given the severe
polarization and the possibility of foreign interference or
regional conflict spilling over into Iran.

My guess is that Ahmadinejad's victory will have the greatest
impact on economic policy and the new government's treatment of
its political opponents. His campaign emphasised populist
economic measures such as redistributive fiscal and monetary
policies and a crackdown on corruption. Ahmadinejad's political
opponents will face increased repression. And the security
forces are likely to make extensive efforts to contain popular
demonstrations.

Khamenei is likely to restrain the Ahmadinejad government on
social and cultural policy, given how important this is to
reformist and centrist Iranians, and especially to young
Iranians. I expect Ahmadinejad's government will undertake at
least token crackdowns on dress-code violations and gender
mixing. However, a reversion to the harsh standards of the 1980s
seems unlikely. Iran's foreign policy will also probably be less
extreme than many observers have predicted.

Khamenei will want to avoid triggering US interference in Iran's
domestic affairs. He also will want to maintain or expand Iran's
economic relations with EU countries and avoid a US-EU united
front against Iran. Consequently, it seems likely that Iran will
try to string out negotiations with the EU over its nuclear
development programme. There is still some possibility that it
will reach an agreement.

In addition, Iran and the west have similar approaches towards
Iraq, Afghanistan and al-Qaida, at least in the short term, so
there is some chance of cooperation on these issues.

Nevertheless, foreign policy will undoubtedly be more hostile
toward the west under Ahmadinejad than if Rafsanjani had been
elected.

· Mark Gasiorowski is a professor of political science and
director of international studies at Louisiana State University
pogasi@lsu.edu

[UP] 

Guardian Unlimited ¿ Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 3 RIA Novosti: Russian-Iranian cooperation to be based on IAEA decisions
 
30/06/2005

MOSCOW, June 29 (RIA Novosti) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov told an Arab journal al-Watan al-Arabi that Russia would
build its nuclear cooperation with Iran on the basis of the
decisions made by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
and other international organizations and not on third
countries' biased estimates. 

"The fact that Iran has been in the focus of the world community
does not affect our commitments regarding the construction of a
nuclear power station in the country," Lavrov said. "Iran's
compliance with the obligations under the Non-Proliferation
Treaty must be assessed only by the IAEA, as a special
authorized international body." 

He said that Russia was not bound by any other agreements in the
nuclear sector with Iran, except that on the construction of the
Bushehr plant. 

"There is also a condition that the supplies of nuclear fuel
provided by Russia must be followed by the return of nuclear
wastes. We are working on expanding interaction on the same
terms," Lavrov said. 

"Our cooperation with Iran is absolutely transparent and is in
rigorous compliance with the parties' international commitments
under the control of the IAEA." 

He said that means Russia cannot be accused of any improper
conduct. 

"Accusations that we are sponsoring Iran's acquisition of
nuclear weapons are absolutely groundless," Lavrov said. 

Lavrov denied allegations that Iran might develop a nuclear bomb
in a couple of years. 

"If we knew about such intentions, we would not cooperate with
Iran in the nuclear sector," Lavrov said. 

He said that although the IAEA had a number of questions on
Iran's previous activities, the agency had not established the
country's swing towards the improper use of atomic energy.

© 2005 "RIA Novosti"   
*****************************************************************
 4 Xinhua: EU to deepen relations with Iran   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2005-06-29 15:35:17   

    BEIJING, June 29 -- The European Union says it will continue
to deepen its relations with Iran, despite its leadership
change, on condition that Iran carries out its promises to the
international community. 

    European Commission spokeswoman Emma Udwin said Monday it
hopes Iran can implement last year's Paris agreement on nuclear
issue and resolve anti-terrorism and human rights questions. 

    On the same day, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said
the EU is concerned about Iran's political and economic reforms,
saying it is the basis of deepening relation between EU and
Iran. 

    Currently, the European Commission does not yet have any
contractual relations with Iran and there is no EC delegation in
Tehran. 

    In December 2002, talks for an EC-Iran Trade and
Co-operation Agreement were launched in Brussels, but have not
yet concluded. 

    (Source: CRIENGLISH.com) 

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 5 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Says It Could Repel Any NKorea Attack
 
From the Associated Press        
	 
[UP] 

        Wednesday June 29, 2005 9:46 AM
 	
AP Photo SEL105 
By BO-MI LIM 
Associated Press Writer 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - A U.S. military commander on Wednesday
said the United States and South Korea could repel any attack by
North Korea, even if the secretive country has one or two
nuclear bombs. 

Gen. Leon LaPorte, commander of the U.S. military in South
Korea, said he believes that North Korea has at least one or two
nuclear weapons, but that the combined American and South Korean
forces on the peninsula could deter or defeat any attack from
the North. 

Washington and Seoul ``retain our ability to deter North Korean
aggression and if required, to decisively defeat the North
Korean threat if they were to threaten South Korea,'' LaPorte
said in an interview with Seoul's PBC Radio. 

North Korea claimed in February it had nuclear weapons and has
since then made moves that would allow it to harvest more
weapons-grade plutonium. 

Meanwhile, South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young
headed to Washington to meet with Vice President Dick Cheney and
other U.S. officials. Chung planned to discuss his recent
meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who told Chung
that Pyongyang could return to the stalled six-nation nuclear
negotiations as early as July - if Washington respects it as a
partner. 

``We will continue diplomatic efforts, putting weight on the
possibility of (North Korea's) return in July'' as Kim has
suggested, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon told reporters
Wednesday. ``Through maximum diplomatic efforts, we will try to
resume the talks in July.'' 

Ban said a ``positive atmosphere'' has been created for
resumption of the talks and that ``it is desirable for North
Korea to return to the talks without further delay.'' 
North Korea has stayed away from the arms talks - which also
involve South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States
- for more than a year. 

Chung's Washington visit is aimed in part at dispelling U.S.
concerns over whether Kim will remain committed to his remarks
hinting at a return to the nuclear negotiations, said Hong
Seok-hyun, South Korea's ambassador to Washington. 

The United States has been skeptical of Kim's comments, urging
North Korea to set a firm date to return to the arms talks. 
``It is true there are doubts about whether words will lead to
actions,'' Hong told South Korea's MBC Radio Wednesday.

``Minister Chung's visit to the United States is important for
dispelling these.'' 

Experts say there is a high probability the disarmament talks
will resume soon. 

``I think it's possible the talks will resume in July or in
August if a little later,'' said Park Jun-young, political
science professor at Ewha Womans University. ``It's about time
the North return, bargain and negotiate.'' 

Park said North Korea - which has a history of using
brinkmanship to wring foreign aid - would be able to win large
concessions including energy aid from the South in exchange for
giving up its nuclear weapons. 

``The United States will make no more concessions, but it may
accept to a certain degree South Korea's assistance if that can
dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons program,'' he said.	 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 6 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: U.S. Defense College to Simulate Korean Crisis
 
  Home> National/Politics    Updated Jun.29,2005 20:53 KST   
 
emergency on the Korean Peninsula, Reuters reported Tuesday. 
In the exercise on July 18, the university, which is under the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, plans to explore the importance,
complexity and difficulties involved in responding to an
escalating crisis on the Korean Peninsula. University spokesman
Dave Thomas told the agency the simulation would be "a forum to
assess the range of policy options available to the United
States to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their
delivery systems by North Korea and to understand the associated
consequences of each option.¡± 
The exercise will be closed to everyone except a maximum of 20
high-ranking officials. "The classroom exercise is being held at
a delicate period as Pyongyang continues to advance its nuclear
weapons program and resist calls by the United States and
others... to return to six-country talks¡± on the program,
Reuters said. 
The National Defense University conducts various exercises every
year under a program initiated by Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld. This year, simulations have focused on bioterrorism,
South Asia and port security. 
(englishnews@chosun.com ) 

*****************************************************************
 7 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Nukes Won't Change Power Balance in Korea - USFK 
 
  Home> National/Politics    Updated Jun.29,2005 21:24 KST   
 
  The commander of Combined Forces Command in Korea does not
believe the two or three nuclear weapons North Korea may have
will change the balance of power on the Peninsula. 
General Leon LaPorte told a PBC radio program the U.S. Forces in
Korea believed Pyongyang has "at minimum" one or two nuclear
weapons. 

Asked whether the U.S. would have to return tactical nuclear
weapons to South Korea to counter the threat, the general said
Washington believed in the Joint Declaration on the
Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, concluded in 1992,
supported six-party talks on North Korea¡¯s nuclear program and
backed the efforts of nations involved including South Korea to
resolve the nuclear dispute by diplomatic means. 

LaPorte would not be drawn on whether tensions between Seoul and
Washington over an abortive operational plan for sudden changes
in North Korea have been resolved, saying only the USFK would
work in close cooperation with Korea to work on a contingency
plan in accordance with directions from the supreme commands of
both nations. He expressed confidence that any issue can be
resolved through dialogue with Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The commander dismissed fears that Washington could carry out
unilateral pre-emptive strikes on North Korea should the country
carry out a nuclear test. He said decisions to use force were
the result of political interaction and would be made at the
level of the Korean and U.S. governments. 

He warned North Korea was developing, producing, deploying and
selling longer-range and more accurate ballistic missiles and
continuing to manufacture Scud and Rodong missiles. 

(englishnews@chosun.com ) 

*****************************************************************
 8 Xinhua: S.Korean minister leaves for Washington for nuclear issue   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2005-06-29 17:52:34   

    SEOUL, June 29 (Xinhuanet) --The South Korean unification
minister left for Washington Wednesday to brief US officials on
his recent meeting with top leader of the Democratic People' s
Republic of Korea (DPRK). 

    South Korean Unification Minister and Chairman of the
Standing Committee of the National Security Council, Chung
Dong-young, headed for Washington aboard Korean Air's flight
earlier Wednesday, reported South Korean Yonhap News Agency. 

    Yonhap quoted sources at the Unification Ministry as saying
Chung will meet Richard Lugar, chairman of the US Senate
Committeeon Foreign Relations on Thursday. 

    Chung will also meet with US Vice President Dick Cheney on
Friday. 

    Chung is to leave Washington for home on Sunday. 

    The South Korean point man for DPRK affairs met with DPRK's
topleader Kim Jong Il as a special envoy of South Korean
President Roh Moo-hyun on June 17. 

    During the meeting, Kim said, "The DPRK is willing to return
tothe six-party nuclear talks even in July, if the US recognizes
and respects it." 

    Chung also led the South Korean delegation to an
inter-Korean ministerial talks concluded in Seoul last week at
which a joint statement on reviving inter-Korean exchanges was
adopted. 

    "Minister Chung met with Chairman Kim Jong Il and led last
week' s talks. It is important to vividly relay the outcome of
these talks to the US," South Korean Ambassador to the United
States Hong Seok-hyun said in an interview made by local
broadcasting station MBC. 

    "It is true that there are doubts (in the US) whether (the
DPRK)will put its words into action. Minister Chung's visit to
the US is important in dispelling this (skepticism)," Hong said. 

    In order to peacefully end the nuclear issue on the Korean
Peninsula, South Korea, the DPRK, China, the United States,
Russia and Japan have convened three rounds of six-party nuclear
talks in Beijing. 

    However, the fourth round of the multilateral talks failed
to be convened as the DPRK refused to attend the talks, citing
US hostile policy. Enditem   

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 9 Korea Times: NK Using S-N Engagement to Buy Time on Nukes

Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Nation   

By Reuben Staines Staff Reporter

 North Korea¡¯s recent willingness to revive inter-Korean
dialogue and reconciliation projects may be a tactic aimed at
buying time in the nuclear standoff, international relations
specialists in Seoul have warned.

 South Korea should carefully scrutinize the motives behind the
North¡¯s newfound willingness to restore inter-Korean relations
after an eight-month boycott of all dialogue, experts contacted
by The Korea Times said.

 They noted that Pyongyang¡¯s change of heart over its
relationship with Seoul, which was initially revealed in its
agreement to hold vice-ministerial talks starting May 16, came
amid increasing pressure over the nuclear issue, particularly
from the United States.

 ``North Korea probably realized that international opinion was
turning against it, even for allies like China,¡¯¡¯ said Lee
Jung-hoon, professor at Yonsei University¡¯s Graduate School of
International Studies.

 Six weeks ago Washington officials were calling for punitive
measures against Pyongyang, including referring its nuclear
programs to the U.N. Security Council, while in Seoul there was
talk of a ``June crisis.¡¯¡¯ 

``The resumption of inter-Korean dialogue swiftly got rid of
that conjecture,¡¯¡¯ Lee said. ``It gives North Korea some
breathing room.¡¯¡¯

 Illustrating the sudden renaissance in engagement between the
two Koreas, the Unification Ministry yesterday briefed National
Assembly members on an array of cooperative projects it is
planning to pursue over the next few months. They included the
establishment of an inter-Korean economic cooperation office, a
joint agricultural complex and a permanent reunion center for
families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

 Meanwhile, a South Korean freighter left for the North Korean
port of Nampo carrying part of 150,000 tons of fertilizer that
Seoul pledged to its impoverished communist counterpart last
week. The 60 billion won ($58 million) in fertilizer aid follows
another 200,000-ton batch delivered from late May. 

Much of the momentum for inter-Korean reconciliation stems from
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young¡¯s surprise meeting with
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il earlier this month.

 In the June 17 meeting in Pyongyang, Kim told Chung that his
country will return to the stalled six-party nuclear talks in
July if the United States shows it respect. The North¡¯s ``Dear
Leader¡¯¡¯ also signaled a strong desire to bolster relations
with the South, according to the unification chief. 

``There seems to be a mood of euphoria in Seoul over the
progress in inter-Korean relations,¡¯¡¯ a researcher at a
government-affiliated think tank said, requesting anonymity. 

``North Korea is making a very sophisticated attempt to drive a
wedge between Seoul and Washington. This is a very delicate
situation,¡¯¡¯ he said.

 Conservative politicians in Seoul criticized Chung of behaving
as if he were a spokesman for the North Korean leader while
Washington officials privately expressed skepticism over
comments made during the meeting.

 Park Ihn-hwi, professor at Ewha Womans University, welcomed the
improvement in inter-Korean ties but said Chung appeared ``kind
of amateur¡¯¡¯ in dealing with the meeting.

 After returning to Seoul, the unification chief focused on the
agreements and positive statements made by Kim during their
discussion, ``but he should simultaneously have offered
counterarguments and criticized the way North Korea has been
behaving over the nuclear issue,¡¯¡¯ Park said.

 The next few months will see a series of inter-Korean contacts
resuming, from high-level military talks to conferences bringing
together novelists from South and North.

 ``The government remains very optimistic,¡¯¡¯ Lee of Yonsei
University concluded. ``But while all of these things are going
on, let¡¯s not lose sight of the main problem: North Korea¡¯s
nuclear weapons programs.¡¯¡¯ 

rjs@koreatimes.co.kr 06-29-2005 17:48         
  
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 10 News-Miner - Opinion: U.S. needs energy bill
 
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner · 200 North Cushman Street · 
Fairbanks, AK · 99707 · (907) 456-6661   
    		             
Article Published: Wednesday, June 29, 2005                                             


It's been said time and again during the present debate about
passage of national energy legislation that the proposals under
consideration in Congress won't do anything to alleviate today's
high oil and gasoline prices.

 No kidding.

 But if a comprehensive energy policy for the country had been
approved by Congress, oh, 10 years ago when it was also being
vigorously debated, then maybe the energy picture would be a bit
less clouded than it is today. 			

 				
 The U.S. Senate's passage of an energy bill on Tuesday sets up
another opportunity to do what should have been done already--to
properly plan for the nation's energy demand. The House already
has passed its version, and members of each chamber now will
begin what are widely expected to be difficult negotiations. The
contentious issue of whether to allow oil drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge is expected to be determined through
means other than the energy bill, a good approach given that
debate over the refuge has in the past worked to derail a larger
energy package.

 Energy policies, by their nature, are about the future rather
than the moment. Bringing new oil and natural gas fields on line
takes years, assuming the exploration has already been conducted
and development has been shown to be viable in economics and
feasible in engineering. Permitting and construction of
additional nuclear power plants, which are getting a new look as
a comparatively clean source of energy, can take years. Seeing
the benefits of expanded wind farms, solar fields and other
alternative sources will take time, too. The list of energy
ideas is long, and most all will take a substantial period to
enter the energy market if adopted.

 So this isn't about today.

 While an energy plan always will have a variety of critics--who
complain about nuclear power, who argue about vehicle mileage
standards, who say there are too many tax breaks for the energy
industry, and so on--it's nevertheless essential that Congress
lead and give the nation a comprehensive energy bill. The United
States must do what it can in this competitive world to stop
bouncing from energy shortage to energy shortage, complaining
all the while that nothing is being done.

 But with so many competing interests, assembling a broad energy
bill is no easy task. The evidence is in the congressional
record, which consists of several failed attempts in recent
years.

 Yet the nation remains overdue for an energy overhaul.

 That the United States needs to produce more from its
traditional energy sources isn't in doubt; other nations are
competing harder for what seems to be a dwindling global supply,
so domestic production must increase here at home. Nor is it in
doubt, however, that the country must pay greater attention to
developing alternative energy sources and to energy conservation.

 The nation needs a bill that reflects all of this. And it needs
it now for the future.
 		   	 	
©2004 MediaNews Group, Inc. and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Inc.                           
*****************************************************************
 11 Deseret News: Senate OKs major energy bill 

[deseretnews.com] 

Wednesday, June 29, 2005 

Wide-ranging legislation may not do much to reverse soaring 
gas prices 

By Doug Abrahms Gannett News Service 

WASHINGTON — The Senate overwhelmingly passed a major energy bill
Tuesday that promises to boost U.S. supplies of oil, gas and 
solar power, but it's unclear whether the legislation will do 
much to reverse soaring gasoline prices. 

Oil topped $60 a barrel this week for the first time 
because of China's escalating demand and the Iranian 
government's announcements to impose limits on foreign companies 
operations' in Iran. U.S. gasoline prices are up nearly 70 cents 
a gallon from two years ago and jumped more than 5 cents a 
gallon in the past week, according to the Energy Information 
Administration. 

"Two years ago (oil) was $30 a barrel and now it's $60 a 
barrel," said Cathy Landry, senior oil correspondent with 
Platts, an energy information company. "Demand is up around the 
world. I think maybe two years ago, this energy bill would have 
done more than it would do today." 

The bill, which passed the Senate 85-12, addresses a 
range of issues: providing more tax breaks for oil and gas 
production, mandating electricity reliability standards on 
utilities to diminish blackouts and offering incentives for more 
wind and solar power. It also includes more money for technology 
research on clean coal and fuel cells and tax benefits for 
hybrid and alternative-fuel vehicles. 

Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, both Republicans, 
voted for the bill. 

Republicans have said the legislation also would create a 
huge number of mining, research and manufacturing jobs. 

"This (bill) is about national security and economic 
security," said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. "This is about safe, 
affordable, accessible, reliable energy. We need it. (But) it 
may not bring down prices immediately." 

The measure now heads to a Senate-House conference 
committee where differences between the two versions must be 
worked out. The House passed its bill in April. The two sides 
have been unable to agree on a comprehensive policy since 2001. 

Sticking points include provisions in the House bill to 
allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or 
ANWR, in Alaska and a liability waiver protecting manufacturers 
of the gasoline additive MTBE from water-pollution lawsuits — 
items that weren't contained in the Senate version. 

Exacerbating high oil prices is the Chinese oil company 
CNOOC Ltd.'s $18.5 billion bid to buy Unocal Corp., a 
California-based oil and gas company. Two key House lawmakers 
wrote a letter to President Bush last week asking for a federal 
review of the bid, especially since the company is owned by the 
Chinese government. 

"This should be a wake-up call for America to get as 
serious about energy as China appears to be," said Rep. Richard 
Pombo, R-Calif. "The U.S. should be shoring up our reserves, not 
divesting them to global competitors seeking to fuel their own 
tremendous economic growth." 

Environmentalists contend that more can be done to cut 
energy demand. Several groups criticized the Senate energy bill 
for not doing enough to cut down on pollution that causes global 
warming or raise mileage requirements on cars and SUVs. 

"Unfortunately, by doing nothing to protect consumers 
from high prices at the gas pump or to reduce America's 
dependence on oil, the bill still falls short of delivering the 
energy policy America deserves," said Anna Aurilio, legislative 
director at U.S. Public Interest Research Group, or U.S. PIRG. 

Even President Bush, who has been calling on Congress to 
pass an energy bill for years, cautions that consumers won't see 
an immediate effect. 

"Look, I recognize, and I hope you recognize, that when I 
sign that bill, your gasoline prices aren't going to drop," Bush 
said in a speech last week at Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant 
in Maryland. "This problem has been long in the making. But by 
addressing it now, we're going to be able to say life's going to 
be better for our children and grandchildren." 

© 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company 
*****************************************************************
 12 Las Vegas RJ: BARGAINING BEGINS: Senate passes energy bill
 
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
 
 
Bill backed by Nevada senators heads for tough talks with House
 By H. JOSEF HEBERT 
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

Democratic Leader Harry Reid talks to reporters Tuesday after he
and Nevada's GOP senator, John Ensign, voted for the energy bill.

Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
WASHINGTON -- An energy bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday
is more favorable to conservation, wind farms and ethanol and
less kind to oil and gas producers than legislation passed by
the House. 

Whether the differences can be resolved may depend on how much
pressure President Bush can bring to bear. Bush urged lawmakers
to resolve their differences quickly and send him a bill before
August. 

"The administration's attitude is we want a bill," Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman said. "I think you will see the
president quite proactive on this." 

Hard bargaining lies ahead, especially with an issue surrounding
the gasoline additive MTBE remaining a potential deal breaker,
as it was two years ago. 

The House, particularly Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas,
wants to protect oil companies and refiners who produced MTBE
from environmental lawsuits brought by communities whose
drinking water has been contaminated by the additive. 

DeLay said Tuesday an attempt is being made to "come up with a
solution" to the MTBE issue, but he provided no details. 

Supporters of the Senate bill, which has broad bipartisan
backing and is silent on MTBE, say such liability protection
would trigger a filibuster and send the bill to defeat, as it
did in 2003. 

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said the House needs to work out a
compromise on MTBE that can pass Senate muster. 

After finishing all but a final vote on the bill last week, the
Senate approved the 1,250-page document Tuesday 85-12. Seven
Democrats and five Republicans voted against the bill. 

Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., voted for the
bill. 

The Nevada senators said the bill contained an amendment that
requires the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and not a
bankruptcy judge, to make rulings on utility contracts tied up
in bankruptcy proceedings for Enron. 

The provision could help protect Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific
from more than $300 million in outstanding contracts to the
defunct energy trading firm, they said. The federal energy
commission has indicated it would rule in favor of the
utilities. 

The Senate bill also contains a three-year extension of the
renewable production tax credit for wind, biomass and geothermal
energy and a new investment tax credit for solar energy.
Investors view Nevada as a potentially lucrative source of
renewable power. 

The bill also contains a program for researching uses for gold
and other precious metals in industrial and automotive catalytic
converters. 

Despite its broad sweep, which would affect virtually every
energy industry while boosting energy conservation, lawmakers
acknowledged the bill would have little impact on high gasoline
and crude oil prices. Crude oil eclipsed $60 a barrel this week,
and gasoline averaged $2.22 a gallon nationwide, according to
the Energy Department. 

The bill's critics argued that it does little to reduce demand
for oil, two-thirds of which goes for transportation, or reduce
oil imports, which account for 58 percent of U.S. demand. 

More environmentally friendly than the energy bill passed by the
House in April, the Senate bill would funnel 40 percent of $18
billion in tax breaks over 10 years to boost renewable energy
sources, energy conservation and alternative transportation
fuels. 

Among other provisions: 

• Loan guarantees of up to 80 percent for developing new
technologies for clean coal and next-generation nuclear power
reactors. 

• A doubling of ethanol use in gasoline to 8 billion gallons a
year by 2012, a boost to corn farmers. 

• A requirement for utilities to produce 10 percent of their
electricity from renewable energy sources, such as wind and
biomass from garbage or plants, by 2020. 

• Mandatory reliability standards for electric power grids,
ending the current system of industry self-regulation. 

• Tax breaks for people who buy gas-electric hybrid cars, more
energy-efficient appliances or energy-efficient homes. 

The bill skirted some of the most contentious energy issues,
from drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge, which is called for
in the House bill, to requiring automakers to build more
fuel-efficient cars. 

It also avoided mandatory reductions in heat-trapping emissions
to address climate change, which some senators had wanted. 

Some Republicans, including Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, opposed the
bill in part because of its cost, an estimated $16 billion in
direct spending and tax breaks. That's double what the
House-passed bill would cost and well above the $6.7 billion
price tag the Bush administration wanted. 

An analysis by the advocacy group Taxpayers for Common Sense
said the bill would cost $55 billion over 10 years if all the
programs it authorizes were actually funded by Congress. 


Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault contributed to
this report.
 

Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 13 The Advocate: Highlights of legislation debated Tuesday
                        
Associated Press
 
	Published June 28 2005
 	
 	HARTFORD, Conn. -- 	 Following are highlights of legislation
debated in the General Assembly on Tuesday. The proposals were
expected to pass the House and Senate:

 - A Military Relief Fund would be established to provide grants
to eligible military families with financial hardship needs.
Taxpayers would be able to contribute to the fund by indicating
an amount on their tax returns.

 - A monthly $50 bonus would be established for certain active
duty Connecticut National Guard members. An eligible member or
veteran could receive a maximum of $500.

 - State military officials would have to award a ribbon and
medal to each Connecticut veteran who has served in time of war.
An estimated 275,000 veterans would be eligible.

 - Plans to require vision screening for all licensed drivers
would be postponed for two years, until July 1, 2007. The
screening would be performed by the Department of Motor Vehicles
or by a qualified health care professional prior to a driver's
license renewal.

 - A task force would be established to study the health effects
of Connecticut veterans' exposure to hazardous materials,
including depleted uranium. The task force would also establish
a health registry for veterans and military personnel returning
from Afghanistan and Iraq.

 - The Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Fund grant to cities and
towns, financed by part of the state's share of slot machine
revenues, would be increased by $4.8 million by fiscal year
2007. One-third of the amount would be distributed to members of
the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments and any
distressed municipality that is a member of the Northeastern
Connecticut Council of Governments or the Windham Area Council
of Governments.

 - $10 million in bonding to upgrade motor vehicle information
technology systems, including registration, suspension, driver
services and driver license systems at the Department of Motor
Vehicles.

 - $300,000 in bonding to American Red Cross chapters statewide
to purchase vehicles, trailers, telecommunications and computer
equipment.

 - $15 million in renovations, alterations and new construction
at state parks and other state recreation facilities, including
Americans with Disabilities Act improvements.

 - Plans to purchase state police patrol cars with fire
suppression systems would be delayed until no later than Jan. 1,
2007. Lawmakers are concerned Ford Motor Co. would not be able
to meet the demand for the vehicles by Jan. 1, 2006.

 - Members of the State Ethics Commission as of June 30 would be
able to serve as a member of a new Citizens Ethics Advisory
Board until Sept. 30. After that time, the governor and
legislative leaders will appoint the new board members. Those
new board members will hire an executive director of a newly
established Office of State Ethics, which will handle ethics
investigations and enforcement matters.

 - Delays from fiscal year 2007 to fiscal year 2009 a study on
the effect of legalized gambling in Connecticut. The study will
cost an estimated $532,000. The most recent study of the effect
of legalized gambling occurred in fiscal year 1997.

 	Copyright © 2005, The Associated Press 	 
            	 		 

© 2005, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 14 Guardian Unlimited: Micro-power hailed as cheap, safe energy of future
 
Thinktank sees nuclear subsidy as bar to full use of renewables              
 		
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Wednesday June 29, 2005
The Guardian 		
 		
Renewable power, particularly schemes where thousands of
homes have their own microgenerators for heat and electricity,
are a far cheaper way of meeting the UK's energy needs and
combating climate change than nuclear stations, says a report
out today. 

The New Economics Foundation, a radical thinktank, compares the
costs of nuclear energy and renewables, their contribution to
the economy, and security of electricity supply for Britain. 
It says renewable energy is quick to build and is abundant and
cheap to harvest. It is also flexible, safe, secure and climate
friendly. 

"The opposite conclusion is only possible if renewable energy 
technologies are negatively misrepresented and if the numerous 
weaknesses, high costs and unsolved problems of nuclear power are 
glossed over." 

The report is published in a week that the government has
decided to encourage microgeneration in homes, offices and for
whole streets of houses. 

The foundation report says such a new industry would create more
jobs, with cheaper and faster results than nuclear energy. 

"Renewables also do not leave a legacy of radioactive waste that
endures in the environment for tens of thousands of years," the
report adds. 

One great plus of micro-power is that it produces electricity at
the point of use so there is no need for large-scale grid
connections and the 10% losses in transmission associated with
big power plants. 

The report says 1m new gas-fired boilers are installed every
year in the UK. If half these boilers micro-combined heat and
power they would produce the equivalent electricity of a new
power station each year, removing the need for new large-scale
power plants. 

The other advantage of micro-power, which uses solar, wind,
hydropower and tides, depending on location, is that it provides
security of supply, since it uses such a variety of sources, the
report says. Surplus electricity generated can be put into the
local grid. 

The report estimates that the probable net benefit to the UK of
micro-generation would be £35m a year, mainly because the
generators use little or no fuel. 

The report calls on the government to withdraw the subsidies to
nuclear power which "feather-bed" its prospects. So that
renewables can reach their full potential, public support for
renewables should rise to match the levels historically enjoyed
by nuclear power. 

The government should have supported a recent private member's
bill which would have set targets for renewables by area and
removed planning restraints for rooftop wind turbines and other
household micro-power.

The report says an unacknowledged benefit of microgeneration is
that it puts people back in touch with where energy comes from,
and the need to live in balance with the ecosystems on which we
all depend. 

"It is possible that nuclear power has only survived for as long
as it has because its true costs have been hidden from us, and
because its radioactive emissions are invisible," the report
says. 

The costs of renewable energy vary enormously, with onshore wind
and landfill gas being the cheapest, though many still in the
earlier stages of development are far more expensive than fossil
fuels. 

The nuclear industry's estimates of the cost of building new
reactors, at 3p a kilowatt hour, are wild underestimates,
according to the report. It calculates the price, based on past
performance, delays and cost overruns, as up to 8p/kw hour,
excluding insurance, pollution and the risk of terrorism.
 	
 	 	
The issue explained
14.12.2001: Renewable energy

Interactive guide
Offshore wind farms

Useful links
Friends of the Earth
Greenpeace
British Wind Energy Association

[UP] 

      Guardian Unlimited ¿ Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 15 ITAR-TASS: Russia may increase its continental shelf - specialists

Institute of Resources of World Ocean 

29.06.2005, 20.50

ST. PETERSBURG, June 29 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia may increase its
territory by 1.2 million square kilometres with potential
hydrocarbon reserves outside the 200-mile economic zone in the
Arctic Ocean, specialists at St. Petersburg’s Institute of
Geology and Mineral Resources of the World Ocean said on
Wednesday. 

They believe that the new fields may contain up to 9-10 billion
tonnes of conventional fuel. 

An expedition of naval geologists from Moscow and St. Petersburg
will travel to the Arctic aboard the research vessel Akademic
Fyodorov to “ascertain and substantiate the external boundaries
of the Russian continental shelf” between the Chukchi Sea and
the East Siberian Sea. The expedition will leave St. Petersburg
on July 5. 

Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, the external
border of a country runs along the perimeter of the 12-mile
zone, and the economic border along the 200-mile zone. The
economic zone may be extended only if “the boundaries of the
continental shelf go beyond the 200-mile economic zone”, the
head of the search group, Viktor Poselov told Itar-Tass. 

In order to seek such an extension, Russia has to scientifically
substantiate that “the Arctic Ocean shelf is a continuation of
the Siberian continental platform”, he said. 

Poselov stressed the government has adopted a special federal
programme that calls for delimiting sea borders, and determining
the boundaries of the seabed and the continental shelf. 

The Akademik Fyodorov will also deliver a relief party to the
SP-33 and move it to a new location. 

In 10 days, after sailing around Scandinavia, the Akademic
Fyodorov will make a stop at Murmansk to pick up a new
expedition that will replace 14 researchers who spent last
winter at the drifting North Pole-33 station. The ship will then
continue its way into the Arctic, following in the wake of a
nuclear icebreaker. 

The head of the expedition, Vladimir Sokolov, said the current
SP-33 crew, their huts and power-generating equipment would be
moved with the help of helicopters to a new icefloe northeast of
the Vrangel Island. 

The SP-33 station has drifted for about 2,000 kilometres since
September 9, 2004. “All 14 polar researchers and the dog
puppies, who have become quite big now, are healthy,” Sokolov
said. 

Every six hours, the crew sends Arctic weather and climate
reports to the world meteorological network. “Now SP-33 is
drifting in a point that is about 88 degrees latitude North and
54 degrees longitude West, some 120 kilometres form the North
Pole,” Sokolov said. 

The temperature is about zero degrees Celsius, there is slight
wind, and the Sun remains over the horizon 24 hours a day. 

© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 16 NRC: NRC Finds No Significant Environmental Impacts from Extended Operation of Browns Ferry
Nuclear Plant, Units 1, 2 &3

News Release - 2005-09

U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION   
  Office of Public Affairs     Telephone: 301/415-8200   
  Washington, DC 20555-0001     E-mail: opa@nrc.gov  
  No. 05-096     June 29, 2005   
  

  
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its final
environmental impact statement on the proposed renewal of the
operating licenses for the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, Units 1,
2 and 3. The report contains the NRCs finding that there are no
environmental impacts that would preclude license renewal for an
additional 20 years of operation. 

The Browns Ferry plant is located in Limestone County, Ala.,
about 10 miles southwest of Athens, Ala. The current operating
licenses expire on Dec. 20, 2013, for Unit 1; June 28, 2014, for
Unit 2; and July 2, 2016, for Unit 3. The Tennessee Valley
Authority (TVA), the licensee, submitted an application for
renewal of the licenses on Jan. 6, 2004.
 
Browns Ferry Unit 1 has been shut down since 1985, and TVA is
readying the facility for restart. TVA anticipates resuming Unit
1 operations in May 2007.
 
As part of its environmental review of the application, the NRC
held public meetings near the plant to discuss the scope of the
review and the draft version of the environmental impact
statement. Comments were received from members of the public,
local officials and representatives of state and federal
agencies.
 
The Browns Ferry Final Environmental Impact Statement is
available on the NRCs Web site at:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1437
/supplement21/index.html. Copies are also available for
inspection at the NRCs Public Document Room at One White Flint
North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md.; and the
Athens-Limestone Public Library, 405 East South Street, in
Athens.
   



  


 	Last revised Wednesday, June 29, 2005 	
*****************************************************************
 17 Manchester Evening News: City helps revive nuclear age
 
comments Wednesday, 29th June 2005 

 Ben Rooth
[Prof Richard Clegg] 

Prof Richard CleggMANCHESTER is to become a leading centre for
the development of nuclear energy, despite being the first city
in Britain to declare itself "nuclear-free" during the Cold War.

When the Dalton Nuclear Institute opens next month it will be a
focal point for nuclear research at Manchester University, in
conjunction with research councils, industry, government and
regulators.

The institute's director, Prof Richard Clegg, said the
combination of academic expertise and Manchester University's
long-standing pedigree in nuclear science will make it one of
the best research centres of its kind. 

The announcement comes as the prime minister has refused to rule
out the possibility of a new generation of nuclear power plants
across Britain.

Prof Clegg said: "The aim of the institute is to put back on the
map nuclear research and education within this country's
education sector. This has slipped over the past couple of
decades which is a result of a trend rather than a policy
decision."

The Dalton Institute will include newly refurbished and
re-equipped laboratories for handling radioactive material,
which will allow researchers to undertake work not possible at
any other university. The centre will have between 50 and 60
researchers as well as lecturer posts, post-doctorate positions
and Phd studentships.

Prof Clegg added: "All different types of energy have a role to
play, whether they are renewable, based on fossil fuels or
nuclear. But if we invest in nuclear power, it will give us
benefits of security of supply while also tackling CO2
emissions. 

"We need security of supply in this country as it appears as
though we are going to become increasingly reliant on gas
powered fire stations.

"In the future, our gas will be bought from other countries. If
we invest in nuclear energy, it will ensure that we have
independence."
 
Hurdles

Speaking at Prime Minister's Question Time on Monday, Tony Blair
said that the nuclear industry will have to overcome the twin
hurdles of "cost and acceptability" to the public before it can
hope to win approval for new generating facilities.

Manchester became Britain's first "nuclear-free" council and in
1980 called on the government "to refrain from the manufacture
or positioning of any nuclear weapons of any kind within the
boundaries of our city". The council updated that policy to
oppose nuclear power and support renewable energy.

This year it adopted a "peace policy", which talks of "promoting
social inclusion, social justice, good citizenship and peace
between the peoples, cultures and faith communities that it
serves".

Veteran councillor Bill Risby, who led the move to make
Manchester nuclear-free, said: "Our local authorities can't tell
universities what to do, but if a company applied to build a
nuclear power station in Manchester they would get very short
shrift."

Is nuclear energy the future? Have your say or take part in our
vote below.

© Copyright 2005 Manchester Evening News. If you wish to use
*****************************************************************
 18 Platts:New UK nuclear only viable with government assistance - Oxera

+ New nuclear build in the UK would only be economically viable 
with government assistance, according to Oxford-based consultants 
Oxera. If eight 1,000MW reactors were built, by 2025 nuclear 
power would be able to generate around 22% of UK electricity 
needs, about the same as it produced in 2003, says Oxera. 

But, say the consultants, the return on equity would only be 
around 11%. "These figures don't indicate there would be enough 
of an incentive for industry to finance a new nuclear program," 
says Derek Holt, Oxera director. 

"Recent analysis for the Department of Trade and Industry on the 
cost of onshore wind farms assumes a required equity return rate 
of 18%. So even taking a more conservative view of a 15% required 
return, our projected rates of return fall short of what most 
would consider a worthwhile investment." 

Oxera says government capital grants or debt guarantees could 
make the investment viable. Oxera says that the new nuclear build 
program it has considered would need equity capital financing of 
GBP3.0-bil ($5.5-bil). Cumulative capital grants of GBP1.6-bil 
for the fleet of eight reactors would boost the rates of return 
to 17.5%. 

A program of GBP3.2-bil of debt guarantees, meanwhile, could 
result in up to 14.5% returns, and up to 16.5% if the guarantees 
are doubled. Oxera says, meanwhile, that European Union emissions 
trading alone is not enough to support new nuclear build. 

Said Derek Holt: "Government would have to consider the prospect 
of providing further support if a decision is made to invest in 
nuclear power." If the current UK decommissioning program 
continues as planned, by 2020 nuclear will make up only 7% of 
total UK electricity generated, leaving the UK heavily reliant on 
imported gas and gas-fired power plants. This story was 
originally published in Platts European Power Alert 
http://europeanpoweralert.platts.com 

London (Platts)--28Jun2005
 
Copyright © 2005 - Platts, All Rights Reserved
 [The McGraw-Hill Companies]   
*****************************************************************
 19 RIA Novosti: Russia, Chile sign nuclear cooperation agreement
 
30/06/2005

MOSCOW, June 29 (RIA Novosti) - Russia and Chile signed an
agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear power Wednesday.

 Head of the Russian Federal Agency for Nuclear Power Alexander
Rumyantsev and Chilean Minister of Mining Alfonso Dulanto signed
the agreement during a session of a Russo-Chilean
intergovernmental commission for trade and economic cooperation.

 "Chile has few natural resources and is considering building a
nuclear power plant," Rumyantsev said after the signing. Chile
is interested in cooperation with Russia on this project, he
added.

 The intergovernmental commission, which is co-chaired by
Russian Regional Development Minister Vladimir Yakovlev, also
signed a bilateral cooperation program and a statement setting
up a joint working group on military-technical cooperation.

2005 "RIA Novosti"   
*****************************************************************
 20 BBC: Cost of nuclear 'underestimated'
 
Last Updated: Wednesday, 29 June, 2005
 
[Sizewell B, PA]                                

The NEF says nuclear power contains many hidden costs                                                              

The cost of new nuclear power has been underestimated by a factor 
of three, according to a British think tank. 

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) says existing estimates do not 
allow for the cost of building novel technologies and expensive 
time delays in construction. 

They claim that renewable energy sources like wind and solar 
should be relied upon instead of nuclear power. 

However their report has been dismissed as inaccurate by the 
Nuclear Industry Association (NIA). 

"This report is grossly out of kilter with almost all other 
reports that have been done," said Simon James of the NIA. 

Escalating costs 

According to British Energy and British Nuclear Fuels, the cost 
of nuclear generation is between 2.2 and 3.0p/kWh. But the NEF 
says that this figure is probably a severe underestimate, with 
the real cost being somewhere between 3.4 and 8.3/kWh. 

"This report is grossly out kilter Simon James, NIA        

         The NEF report claims that existing nuclear estimates 
are based heavily on "engineering judgements", which tend to be 
skewed towards the lower cost limits because they do not take 
sufficient account of "upside risk". 

In other words, the lower limits of cost are predictable but the 
upper limits might sky-rocket if things go wrong. And, the NEF 
says, current cost calculations for nuclear power do not 
acknowledge the very real risk factor involved in generating new 
nuclear power. 

In their report, Mirage and Oasis, the NEF highlights the example 
of Dungness B, a power station which took 23 years to complete 
instead of five, costing 400% above the predicted estimates. 

'Voodoo economics' 

These hidden costs, combined with the risk of terrorism, mean 
that nuclear should not be promoted as an answer to climate 
change, the NEF claims. 

Instead, the report says, renewable energy sources like wind, 
solar and geothermal could meet the world's energy needs in a way 
that is environmentally friendly. 

At a cost of 3.0-4.0p/kWh for offshore and 1.5-2.5/kWh for 
onshore production, wind is a far cheaper option than nuclear, 
the NEF claims. 

[A graph showing the cost of nuclear power according to the NEF]                                                                                             

"But a resurgence of interest in nuclear power, justified by 
voodoo economics, stands to hinder and potentially derail 
renewable energy," said Andrew Simms, NEF policy director. 

However, the Royal Academy of Engineers (RAE), who recently 
completed their own estimates of the cost of nuclear power, 
dismissed the report. 

"They are focusing on the worst-case scenario for nuclear power 
and the best-case scenario for renewables; so it is hardly a 
balanced view," an RAE spokesman told the BBC News website. 

"Too much of the debate at the moment is either nuclear or wind, 
when really we should be looking for a holistic approach."                      
		 	 	 



*****************************************************************
 21 Forbes: Swedish nuclear power station leaks high levels of radioactive waste 
into Baltic - 

Forbes.com
 	 
AFX News Limited 

06.29.2005, 09:35 AM 

STOCKHOLM (AFX) - A nuclear power station at Forsmark, north of
Stockholm, has leaked high levels of radioactive caesium into
the Baltic Sea, reported Swedish Radio. 

Measurements are 10 times greater than normal but the Swedish
State Radiation Protection Authority said the levels are still
well below the risk zone. The agency said it appears that
storage tanks for low and medium-level radioactive wastes have
corroded, and the wastes have leaked into the drainage system. 

Swedes voted in a referendum in 1980 to phase out nuclear power,
but the main political parties are currently at loggerheads over
the country's nuclear future with some parties arguing for an
extension to the life of existing power stations. 

stockholm@afxnews.com 

sjr/jsa 

Copyright AFX News Limited 2005. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 22 toledo blade: Fermi repairs still incomplete

  toledoblade.com   

Article published Wednesday, June 29, 2005
 
 Nuclear power plant may be closed several more days
 
By TOM HENRY BLADE STAFF WRITER
 

NEWPORT, Mich. - Detroit Edison Co.'s Fermi II nuclear plant in
northern Monroe County may remain out of service for several
more days.


 An unscheduled shutdown of the reactor was ordered during the
weekend because of another nonradioactive leak from the same
cooling unit that had a leaky gasket in late January.
The plant was put back into service in early February after
utility officials and Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors
agreed that repairs had been completed. But operators Saturday
night noticed a new leak had sprung from the same cooling unit.

They spent about 24 hours manually shutting down the reactor,
John Austerberry, a spokesman for the utility, said.

He declined to specify how long the latest outage would last,
except to say it could take "up to several days" to complete
inspections of the other 13 units.

The leaky unit is one of 14 that act like air conditioners to
keep air inside the plant's radioactive containment structure
from getting too hot or varying too much in pressure. The
containment structure houses the nuclear reactor.

Mr. Austerberry said the company will try to put the plant back
into service without repairing the one cooling unit in question.

It will replace it when the plant's nuclear reactor is down for
normal refueling in the spring, he said.

Jan Strasma, an NRC spokesman, said the federal agency does not
require a specific number of cooling units to be operable inside
containment at a given time because most of the nation's 103
nuclear plants vary in design.

Instead, the NRC requires that air inside the containment
structure be 145 degrees or less. Records show the air inside
Fermi II's containment structure usually ranges between 124 and
131 degrees during normal operations, he said.

Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com or 419-724-6079.
 
The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660
, (419) 724-6000 
*****************************************************************
 23 Ghana: Ghana’s Nuclear Reactor Is For Peaceful Purposes

General News of Wednesday, 29 June 2005


[Daily News from Ghana]     [Ghana Sports]     [Information
    

 [Nuclear Plant] Ghana is committed to using its nuclear reactor
for peaceful purposes, the Director-General of the Ghana Atomic
Energy Commission (GAEC), Professor Edmund Akaho, has said.

 He said the main focus of the GAEC was to use the reactor to
promote health, agricultural and industrial research and not for
military purposes.

 Prof Akaho was speaking in an interview after a tour of the
GAEC facilities by the Canadian High Commissioner to Ghana, Mr
Donald Bobiash.

 He said the reactor was adapted for research and added that
that had been the focus of the GAEC since the reactor was
installed.

 With regard to the generation of electric power, Prof Akaho
said the reactor could not perform that function, adding that if
Ghana was interested in doing so, it had to acquire new reactors
adapted for the purpose.

 He urged the government to consider the use of nuclear energy
to produce electricity, saying it was cheaper in the long-term.

 On his part, Mr Bobiash said Canada had been active in the area
of the application of nuclear energy in health and other
research areas and had also been pioneers in the construction of
particular types of reactors which were used for peaceful
purposes.

 He added that his country had also helped many developing
countries with nuclear research and biotechnology and said the
Canadian government would examine the possibility of helping the
GAEC in the commercialisation of its research results.

 In another interview later, the Director of Biotechnology and
Nuclear Agriculture of the GAEC, Prof Josephine Nketsia-Tabiri,
called on the government to encourage research into
biotechnology and genetic engineering.

 She said biotechnology ensured increased levels of crop
protection against pests and increased yield and dismissed the
notion that biotechnology could be harmful to the human body,
saying there was no scientific basis for that assertion.

 Story By Mark-Anthony Vinorkor

All Rights Reserved, 1994-2005, © Copyright GhanaHomePage 
*****************************************************************
 24 CNW Group: Greenpeace report condemns safety conditions at Pickering 
Nuclear Station 
 	
Canada NewsWire Group
 	
June 30, 2005                                                                                                                                                           QUICK
 	
Pickering Nuclear Station: Shutdown or Meltdown - 


    TORONTO, June 29 /CNW Telbec/ - Greenpeace Canada today 
released a report condemning safety conditions at the Pickering 
Nuclear Station, calling for its phaseout. The McGuinty 
government has approved the restart of a second reactor at the 
aging Pickering "A" nuclear plant which is scheduled to be 
commissioned before the end of June, to begin commercial 
operation in September. At the same time, the Canadian Nuclear 
Safety Commission is about to give Ontario Power Generation an 
unprecedented five-year license, despite the many safety problems 
at the plant.

    The McGuinty government is next considering the restart of 
two more reactors at the Pickering "A" station at a cost of about 
$1 billion each. Final government approval is also pending on 
proceeding with the restart of two reactors at the Bruce "A" 
nuclear station operated by Bruce Power.

    "The Pickering reactors are an accident waiting to happen and 
the alternatives are stark - either shutdown or face the 
inevitable consequences," said Dave Martin, Greenpeace Energy 
Coordinator. "At a cost of a billion dollars per reactor, there 
are good economic reasons for the McGuinty government not to 
restart reactors 2 and 3 at Pickering "A". But beyond the issue 
of wasted ratepayers' money is safety, and public safety should 
be paramount."

    In April, the one operating reactor at Pickering "A" (reactor 
No. 4) was forced to shut down because of concern about the 
integrity of feeder pipes. Feeder pipe degradation is a serious 
design flaw in CANDU reactors. Complete replacement of the feeder 
pipes or shutdown of Pickering are the only options with partial 
replacement making catastrophic pipe breaks inevitable.

    "Green energy options are cheaper, cleaner and safer, yet the 
McGuinty government continues down the nuclear path with all its 
serious risks," added Martin. "This government has a choice to 
make. Phase out nuclear power or hold Ontarians hostage to the 
risks that come with it. The choice is simple -- efficiency and 
renewable energy are the long-term solutions for Ontario."

    Safety problems identified in the Greenpeace report include: 
degradation of feeder pipes; the lack of a second fast emergency 
shutdown system for the Pickering "A" reactors; shared emergency 
systems; and a positive void effect similar to the cause of the 
Chernobyl meltdown. A review of "reportable events" at the 
Pickering "A" and "B" stations indicates that a variety of 
safety- related problems continue to plague Ontario Power 
Generation.
 
For further information: Dave Martin, Greenpeace Energy 
Coordinator Office: (416) 597-8408 X 3050, cell: (416) 627-5004; 
Shawn-Patrick Stensil, Greenpeace Energy Campaigner 
(French/English) Office: (416) 597-8408 X 3013, cell: (416) 
884-7053; Andrew Male, Greenpeace Communications Coordinator, 
cell: (416) 880-2757; The Greenpeace report, Shutdown or 
Meltdown: Safety Problems at the Pickering Nuclear Station, by 
Dave Martin is available at www.greenpeace.ca
 	
*****************************************************************
 25 Roanoke Times: The facts say it's clean and necessary

roanoke.com

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Jonathan J. Miles 

Miles is a professor in the Department of Integrated Science and
Technology at James Madison University. 

The prospect of utility-scale wind power in Virginia has spawned
a highly visible and public debate concerning the implementation
of this technology, which is proven and maturing but which
remains unfamiliar and even mystical to some. As our neighbors
and civic leaders consider whether to allow installation of
these clean power generators, it is critical that they have a
balanced and scientifically factual explanation of the core
issues and fundamental truths in order to make informed
decisions on our behalf. 

Recent editorials and letters in a variety of publications
throughout the region seemed to reflect a perpetuation of many
of the common myths that disparage the wind industry.

Furthermore, a majority of published opinions express a simple
yet negative viewpoint, often without reasoned justification.

Treatment of any public policy issue in the media should warrant
a balanced brokering of truthful and informative analysis and
opinions that examine all sides of all the issues. This burden
has not been met adequately, and thus the opportunity for the
public to engage in fully informed discussion is compromised. 

In the spirit of balance, I offer the following points on behalf
of the Virginia Wind Energy Collaborative. 

The U.S. wind industry, while much younger than most traditional
power generation technologies, has learned well the importance
of responsible siting of wind turbines to minimize undesirable
environmental impacts. Its record reflects this priority. The
environmental impacts of wind power, sited responsibly, are less
destructive by orders of magnitude than those attributable to
conventional power generation, and by and large are reversible
should a community choose at the end of the life of a wind farm
not to renew permits. 

Further, the impacts on birds and bats by wind turbines are
minimal when compared to those caused by other man-made
structures such as smokestacks and cellular towers, a fact that
some anti-wind activists seem to overlook. These structures are,
in some instances, hundreds or even thousands of times more
lethal to avian life than are wind turbines. Regardless, the
wind industry is engaged with environmental experts to develop
techniques that will reduce impacts even further and to
constructively engage, at its own cost and peril, its most
vehement opponents. 

Existing published studies predict that the installation of
utility-scale wind power plants impacts local property values in
either a neutral or a positive fashion, and generates revenue
for its host community. In addition, wind power is comparable in
cost per unit of electricity to fossil-generated electricity.
With zero fuel costs and emissions of greenhouse gases and other
pollutants, the cost of generating wind power can be predicted,
reliably, decades into the future. All this is despite the fact
that public subsidies to wind are dwarfed by those provided to
the gas, oil, coal and nuclear industries, some of which have
been provided to these industries for more than 100 years. 

The confluence of several phenomena - the growing uncertainty of
prices and availability of fossil fuels, particularly natural
gas; the precarious environmental impacts of coal mining and
combustion and the likely increasing costs of environmental
compliance; and the removal of caps on utility rates in 2010 -
suggests a looming "perfect storm" of increases in and
volatility of electricity rates in Virginia's future. In short,
we are entering a new era of vulnerability in electrical energy
that could soon rival that which we face, and will face for
generations, in our petroleum-based sectors. 

Wind power can play a significant role in balancing our
statewide and regional power generation portfolio, thus
protecting consumers, power generators, our economy and our
environment all at the same time. Major power companies across
the country recognize this fact and are acting accordingly. It
is time we did the same here in Virginia. 

The familiar NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) opposition affects the
siting of wind-power generation as it does that of other energy
sources. Some of the more vocal opponents of local wind power,
especially those driven by personal interests, have engaged in
the distortion of scientific realities and gross speculation
about the potential impacts. The pragmatic approach for the
common good is to enrich the universal knowledge base with the
best informed analyses available and to proceed in a cautious
manner. 

The alternative, even regressive, strategy is to present a
cherry-picking of facts and figures in an effort to distract
from an impartial discussion and to disparage any and all
efforts, regardless of how measured, that promote wind power
development. But the evolution of Virginia's power-generation
portfolio toward greater diversity and an increased proportion
of renewable sources is inevitable and even desirable when
considering all the benefits, including increased national
security. 

The progression toward wind power in Virginia may provide us our
first opportunity in modern times to examine our role and
responsibilities to future generations as they apply to
large-scale power generation. The resolve of a passionate, but
informed, public and leadership will be tested as we approach
the difficult decisions that are critical to our long-term
prosperity. 

We encourage citizens and policy makers to seek out the most
qualified voices that represent the range of scientifically
informed opinions and recommendations when weighing options for
the transition to a more balanced and sustainable energy
portfolio that will serve our commonwealth.Wind power can play a
significant role in balancing our statewide and regional power
generation portfolio, thus protecting consumers, power
generators, our economy and our environment all at the same time.

*****************************************************************
 26 NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Meeting of the 
 
                         FR Doc E5-3387 
[Federal Register: June 29, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 124)] 
[Notices] [Page 37448] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29jn05-117]                         
 
Subcommittee on Reactor Fuels; Notice of Meeting The ACRS 
Subcommittee on Reactor Fuels will hold a meeting on July 27-28, 
2005, Room T-2B3, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland.
 
The agenda for the subject meeting shall be as follows: 
Wednesday, July 27, 2005--8:30 a.m. until the conclusion of 
business.
 
Thursday, July 28, 2005--8:30 a.m. until the conclusion of 
business.
 
The purpose of this meeting is to hear staff presentations about 
the results of NRC research into reactor fuel behavior during 
reactivity initiated accidents, and staff development of the 
revised LOCA criteria for reactor fuel. The staff will also 
present the results of studies of embrittlement correlations for 
high burnup fuel.
 
The Subcommittee will hear presentations by and hold discussions 
with representatives of the NRC staff and other interested 
persons regarding these matters. The Subcommittee will gather 
information, analyze relevant issues and facts, and formulate 
proposed positions and actions, as appropriate, for deliberation 
by the full Committee.
 
Members of the public desiring to provide oral statements and/or 
written comments should notify the Designated Federal Official, 
Mr. Ralph Caruso (telephone 301-415-8065) five days prior to the 
meeting, if possible, so that appropriate arrangements can be 
made.
 
Electronic recordings will be permitted.
 
Further information regarding this meeting can be obtained by 
contacting the Designated Federal Official between 7:30 a.m. and 
4:30 p.m. (ET). Persons planning to attend this meeting are urged 
to contact the above named individual at least two working days 
prior to the meeting to be advised of any potential changes to 
the agenda.
 
Dated: June 23, 2005.
 
Michael R. Snodderly, Acting Branch Chief, ACRS/ACNW.
 
[FR Doc. E5-3387 Filed 6-28-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 27 Japan Times: Tepco gets OK to restart idled reactor

  Wednesday, June 29, 2005   

FUKUSHIMA (Kyodo) Fukushima Prefecture said Tuesday it will
allow Tokyo Electric Power Co. to restart the last of its 17
nuclear reactors that were shut down after the utility was found
to have falsified safety reports on defects, prefectural
officials said.

 Before giving the formal approval, Fukushima Gov. Eisaku Sato
will summon Tepco President Tsunehisa Katsumata to urge him to
take measures to prevent further misdeeds and ensure that the
34-year-old No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant
is safe.

 The governor will also submit similar requests to the Nuclear
and Industrial Safety Agency of the Ministry of Economy, Trade
and Industry, the officials said.

 Tepco, Japan's largest utility, was ordered in November 2002 to
halt the No. 1 reactor for a year after it was found to have
distorted safety inspection results to hide problems at the
reactor. The case was seen as the most malicious among a series
of similar violations involving other Tepco reactors.

 The prefecture independently compiled a set of requirements for
Tepco to fulfill before it would be allowed to restart the
reactor and sent officials to inspect the site in May.

 Earlier this month, Tepco officially submitted its request to
the prefecture to resume operations.

 In light of a recent leak of classified nuclear power plant
data onto the Internet from a contractor employee's personal
computer, Sato and other senior prefectural officials who met
Tuesday also discussed measures to manage confidential
information.

 Tepco shut down its 17 reactors -- 10 in Fukushima and seven in
Niigata Prefecture -- by the end of April 2003 following
revelations in 2002 that it had falsified safety reports. The
reactors then underwent further inspections and repairs.

 The Japan Times: June 29, 2005
(C) All rights reserved 

*****************************************************************
 28 Hudson Valley News: Indian Point on environmental consortium's "Dirty Dozen"   

Wednesday, June 29, 2005 

Copyright © 2005 Mid-Hudson News Network, a division of
Statewide News Network, Inc.
  
Indian Point
                                 
The Indian Point nuclear power plants in Buchanan are among the
top 12 polluters in New York State, the New York Public Interest
Research Group and other environmental organizations said today. 

"Indian Point routinely releases liquid, gaseous, and solid
radioactive wastes in varying doses,which along with an
unworkable evacuation plan endangers the public and local
environment," said Jason Babbie, environmental policy analyst
for NYPIRG. "The plant is dirty and dangerous by its very
existence." 

But, James Steets, Indian Point's spokesman for parent company
Entergy, said the environmental groups have "lost their way." He
said if Indian Point were not operating, there would be 50
million tons annually of toxic pollution into the air. "It
doesn't sound like smart reward for them. It's apparent that
they've lost their way and have forgotten what their purpose
is." 

Others on the Dirty Dozen list are Chemical Waste Management,
the Village of Tuckahoe, New York Organic Fertilizer Co., Kodak,
A.N.S.W.E.R.S. Consortium proposed landfill in Coeymans, GE
Hudson River PCB Superfund site and GE plant sites, Long Island
Sound, Radiac, Lafarge Ravena Cement plant, Onondaga Creek
proposed midland; and the Department of Transportation.   
  
news on MidHudsonRadio.com, the Hudson Valley's
*****************************************************************
 29 New Scientist: New UK nuclear plants could prove costly 

[NewScientist.com]                      

        30 June 2005                    

MORE bad news this week for those in the UK hoping that nuclear
power will help keep global warming in check. Much of the cost
of replacing the country's 12 ageing nuclear power stations will
have to come out of the public purse. What's more, the energy
from new reactors will cost almost three times industry
predictions. 	 

So say two independent reports released this week - one from
Oxera, an economics consultancy group in Oxford, and another
from the New Economics Foundation (NEF), a London-based think
tank. 	 

Oxera says that meagre returns on the estimated £8.6 billion
needed to replace the UK's nuclear power stations will deter the
industry from investing in nuclear energy. So the taxpayer will
have to fund new reactors. And the NEF says that once realistic
construction and running costs are factored in, the price of
electricity rises from an estimated 3 pence per kilowatt-hour to
8.3 pence per kilowatt-hour. And that does not include the cost
of managing pollution, insuring the nuclear power stations or
protecting them from terrorists. 	 

The reports come shortly before the G8 summit in Scotland next
week, at which nuclear power is on the agenda. NEF's policy
director Andrew Simms says that the answer to global warming is
renewable technologies. "In an international context [nuclear
power] is a no-brainer," he says. 	 	From issue 2506 of New

Scientist magazine, 02 July 2005, page 7 
*****************************************************************
 30 Bellona: Are there going to be fewer secrets in Russia?
 
ST. PETERSBURG—A new and more up-to-date classification system
on cartographic information could be in the offing after several
environmental groups and businesses have found themselves afoul
of Russia’s secrecy laws for possessing maps that older
legislation considers classified. 

Rashid Alimov, Vera Ponomareva, 2005-06-29 15:04

The debate over what scale of mapping constitutes state secrecy
has been heated in recent years as the Federal Security Service
(FSB)—the KGB’s successor—has brought espionage charges against
several environmental NGOs and businesses for possessing what is
considered to be detailed information about the location of
sites the security services consider national security hazards. 

  Classified Geography   
  
  A map found on a computer at an Eastern Siberian geographical
research centre has sparked an investigation by Russian
authorities who say the detailed Soviet-era map contains
classified information. The geologists under investigation,
however, say the map contains no information that could be
considered classified and reveals information that is already
known internationally.
   
The push to overhaul outdated legislation, which has not changed
in tune with publicly available technology was discussed at the
INFOFORUM-2005 conference convened by the Russian GIS
Association of Russian Cartographers, and organisation that
studies geospatial technologies and defends its members rights
to collect topographical information. 

The GIS Association is continuing to encourage public and
government discussion of the problem of classification and
secrecy. As a part of INFOFORUM-2005, GIS hosted on June 16th a
roundtable devoted to the issue of information security and
rational classification in the realm of positional data.

Representatives of social organizations, governmental
departments, and geoinformational studies specialists were
invited to participate. 

Prior to the conference, the chairwoman of the Advisory Council
to the President of the Russian Federation “On cooperation in
the development of the institutions of civil society,” Ella
Pamfilova, proposed creation of a working group to examine the
question of declassifying topographic maps scaled at 1:25,000. 

Current Russian secrecy laws confine maps to a scale of
1:100,000, with a cleansing of all secret installations, for
them to be considered public information. 

The problem drew public attention yet again after in March 2004
the Federal Security Service (FSB)—the KGB’s successor
organisation— launched a criminal case after it discovered a
1:25,000 scale map—which is more detailed than current state
secrecy laws allow— at a university in Buryatia. This represents
only one of several similar FSB-initiated cartography cases on
“revealing of state secrets,” makes public and activists
concerned of what is called —particularly by the recently
founded “Public Committee in Defense of Scientists” that was
recently founded in Moscow in response to these concerns — an
“all-embracing spy-mania”. 

Pamfilova’s letter

 Pamfilova sent invitations to participate in the working group
to several organizations and departments – the GIS Association,
the Ministry of Defense, the State Cartography Agency
(Roskartografiya), the Economic Ministry, the Interdepartmental
Commission on the Protection of State Secrets, as well as the
Presidential Administration. 

Bellona-web learned of the plans for the working group at the
conference “Human rights, the environment, and civil society,”
which took place from June 3-4 near Moscow. Participants at the
conference passed a resolution supporting Pamfilova’s initiative
to investigate the stringent cartographic secrecy in Russia. 

Environmentalists and cartographers have been calling for the
declassification of detailed topographic maps for several years.

An open letter to Vladimir Putin drafted by the leaders of
social, scientific, and non-governmental organizations in 2000
stated that: “In our view, decisive reform is necessary in this
field. It is high time to reject the baseless policy of secrecy
and bring the contents of directive documents to light, as is
done in all developed countries of the world.” 

The necessity for the use of topographic maps of a scale of
1:25,000 arose in connection with construction employing
geographical informational technology on unclassified municipal
building plans, Pamfilova continued in her letter. 

“[These plans] indicated the locations of cemeteries, scrap
heaps, and points of dead livestock internment that presented a
potential danger to the surrounding environment and to
residents’ health.” 

A law against technological progress

 GIS President Sergei Miller said the question of cartographic
declassification embraced an even larger context. 

“In addition to the arguments in Pamfilova’s letter, there are
many other factors—more specifically, classification is a
serious obstacle to the development of geoinformational
technology.” 

  Sergei Shapkhaev   
  Rashid Alimov/Bellona   

Governmental restrictions that have not been reconsidered for
several years have come to contradict and have fallen behind the
current level of developments in modern geographical information
charting techniques. Modern satellite photography can
distinguish a vehicles’ license plate numbers from several
hundred kilometres above the earth, and navigational systems can
determine exact coordinates to within an accuracy of 5 meters.
However, the secrecy threshold for classification according to
current Russian law is 30 meters. 

In an interview with Bellona Web, Miller stated that he
considers appropriate the inclusion of revisions in the law on
state secrets that would establish a principle that information
does not merit classification “if it is already known or readily
available to a third party.” This would include the above
technologies and many others. 

Currently, the precise coordinates of an object can be
determined without a secret map—all you need is a GPS device,
which orients using positional data from satellites. 

“That is precisely why such maps cannot be classified. Modern
satellite photography easily allows the representation of
geographic areas at an equivalent level of detail. These maps
present no interest to foreign governments,” said
environmentalist Sergei Shapkhaev who is named in the FSB
investigation that ensued in March after the discovery of the
1:25,000 scale map. 

“But for our own population, for environmental and ecological
work on-site, exact maps are absolutely necessary,” Shapkhaev,
who is also a professor at Buryat University. 

Shapkhaev’s research centre at the university had used a
1:25,000 map in working out a development plan for the Kabansky
region of Buryatia. 

Shapkhaev told Bellona Web that most of his confiscated computer
data has been returned by FSB agents, but the investigation
continues. 

“The computers are still at the FSB. University studies suffer
because of this,” said Shapkhaev. 

“Now we’re launching a complaint with the prosecutors’ office to
get our computers back. At the end of the day, FSB doesn’t need
them anymore—everything they needed may well have been copied
already.” 

No personal charges in the criminal case have yet been filed.
The existing article of the Criminal Code, 283.1, provides for
imprisonment in a labor camp for up to four years. 

"Object Defense"

 In 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton annulled a system of
selective access that limited the accuracy of civil GPS systems
to 100 meters. That meant that the several million owners of GPS
devices in the world, at no additional expense, were suddenly
allowed to determine their precise location within a few dozen
centimeters. However, the US Administration still reserved the
right to selectively block access to GPS signals in regions of
armed conflict. 

Russian cartographers hold the opinion that the underlying
principle in determining state secrets in the sphere of
positional data should not be that of a blanket “area defense,”
whereby all exact geopositional data are classified, but should
be based on “object defense,” where only geographic data related
to concrete strategic objects are classified. 

“It makes sense to classify only select objects,” argued Nikolai
Kazantsev, director for the Center of Geoinformational Research
at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences
said. He said in an interview with Bellona Web that the absence
of free access to cartographic data creates numerous zoning
conflicts and serves as an obstacle to investors. Therefore,
those companies with access to “secret” information today have a
great advantage This hinders free market development to the
advantage of companies with the right government connections.
 
Has the terrain started to shift?

 “What is the sense in declassifying only the 1:25,000 scale?
Let’s not stop at that, we need to demand the declassification
of 1:10,000 as well,” maintained former astronaut and
environmentalist Sergei Krichevsky at the “Human rights, the
environment and civil society” conference.
 
  Sergei Krichevsky   
  Rasid Alimov/Bellona   

Krichevsky has been a long-time supporter of doing away such
cartographic secret. In November 2002 a criminal case similar to
the Buryatia case was filed by the FSB in against the
environmental organization Baikal Wave for disclosure of state
secrets because the organisaton possessed a 1:50,000 scale map
charting radiation pollution on the territory surrounding the
Angarsky Electrolyte Chemical Combine. Krichevsky publicly
supported the NGO's claim that "coordinates to within one meter
can be absolutely legally ascertained by satellites from the
earth orbit". 

Shapkhaev, who also participated in the conference, was less
optimistic-"the situation is more complicated than I thought.
There are many people who have an interest in the preservation
of the current situation." 

Shapkhaev continued that "there is no point in the
classification of such maps, but to serve as a source of bribe
income for the representatives of the 'first department'
[Russian shorthand for the FSB]." 

The general opinion of members of the GIS society is that
"Roskartografiya, the chief department in the field of land
surveying and cartography in Russia, bears the greatest
responsibility for the failure to take any significant steps in
this area. The underlying reason for this is the muddle within
Roskartografiya's mandate of the functions of governmental
customer, regulator, and implementer of cartographic and
survey-related work," said the GIS Association Vice-President
Yevgeny Kapralov. 

Furthermore, the dismantling of the planks of secrecy will
require definitive additional costs connected with information
control, which is another of the reasons government agencies
have been delaying action. 

What is secret and what is not?

 According to a Roskartografiya list issued in 1997, only maps
detailed at a scale of less than 1:100,000 if all the secret
objects and sites have been removed from them were considered
public. Maps scaled at 1:25,000 are considered secret. 

Lists of other governing bodies and departments define the rules
in a similar fashion, but not in precisely the same way-which is
the reason why Russian environmentalists assert that "[the
notion of] state secret in Russia has been replaced with a
departmental secret." 

"When the Law on the state secret was adopted, the idea was that
it should describe the categories of secret data. And the
departmental lists should classify the concrete data and facts.

But in reality, it turned out, that ministries and departments
compose their own lists of secrets, which comprise broader
categories than in the Law," said lawyer Ivan Pavlov who
defended Bellona's Alexander Nikitin and Grigory Pasko, two
Russian environmentalists who were accused by FSB in divulging
of state secrets. Nikitin was fully acquitted by the Russian
Supreme Court in 2000. Pasko served four years in prison, but is
waiting for his case to be examined, and his name cleared of
wrongdoing, by the European Human Rights Court. 

Roskartografia's list is classified having "restricted access,"
which is the lowest level of Russian state secrecy
classifications. As result, an updated version of this list,
enacted in 2003, has yet to been published. It is only known
that it differs little from the 1997 list. 

"They [the investigation] proposed to show me the
Roskartografiya list, but for that they ask that we should have
a specially equipped room to keep it there," said Shapkhaev. 

"In principle, while I'm not familiar with this list, they ought
not incriminate me with anything." 

According to the Russian Constitution, "any legal acts
pertaining to rights, freedoms and responsibilities of a person
and a citizen, should not be applied, unless officially
published for general knowledge." But Russia's court practice
differs significantly from the constitution, as courts usually
understand the classified lists as just "technical documents."

Though by using these "departmental" lists, a person may be
accused of "divulging of state secrets," not "departmental"
ones. 

Until recently there was a "restricted access" list issued by
the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) that offered another
definition about what secret data about various facilities is,
and compiled a list of secret data and cartographic scales. 

In some items the lists duplicate each other -e.g. concerning
secret scale of gravimetric maps, which is 1:1,000,000, and
precision of the space shooting, not less than 2 meters. 
But sometimes the lists differ. 

According to the Roskartografiya list, "topographic maps scaled
1:100,000, photo plans and maps, plans of cities and other
settlements, detailed from 1:50,000 to 1:100,000 […]" are
considered secret. 

MNR defined as secret only those "topographic, digital and
electronic maps, photo plans and maps, plans of cities scaled
1:50,000 and larger in the 1942 coordinate system in the
territory of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States
[…]." 

The upshot is that, according to the MNR, 1:100,000 maps were
considered "open," while Roskartografiya classified them. 

  Supreme Court slaps down secret decree   
  
  2002-02-13 — The Russian defence ministry's secret decree 055
was declared illegal by a ruling in the Supreme Court's military
collegium Tuesday. The decision is a major victory in the fight
for Russian environmentalists' right to express concern on
military related issues, such as handling of nuclear waste.
   
The paragraphs of the MNR list pertaining to the maps were
copied from " Order of the Ministry of Defense no.055" issued
August 10th 1996, which concerned the list of data to be
classified in the military. This order was declared void by
Russian courts in February 2002 as a result of a complaint filed
by Pavlov in Pasko's defense. 

"Actually, from that very moment, the corresponding paragraphs
of the MNR list ceased to have any effect", said Pavlov. "But
according to my data, in the end of 2004 or in the beginning of
2005, MNR enacted a new list, which unlike the previous, is not
simply on "restricted access." but "secret". 

It was the Defense Ministry order No.055 that was used to charge
Nikitin and Pasko. Order no.055 had not been published or
registered with the Ministry of Justice. Pavlov challenged the
military list because, instead of defining concrete data to
classify, it had new categories of data to classify, which
weren't mentioned in the Law On the State Secret itself. 

"If you issue a legal document concerning human freedoms and
rights, please, remove all the secret data from it, and publish
it. If you want this document to be secret, remove from it
everything about freedoms and rights," - Nikitin's chief counsel
Yuri Schmidt advised the Russian authorities, commenting on a
similar complaint filed by him in 2001 against order No.055. 

With the latest Pamfilova's initiative, it's possible that the
departmental lists will follow the abolished order no.055 and
the answer to the question "what's secret in Russia, and what's
not." will become clearer.
 
  2005-04-12 Access to enviroinformation
 Classified Geography
             

  Publisher: , President: 
Information: , Technical contact: 
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62  * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
 31 NAS: No Such Thing As A Safe Dose Of Radiation
 
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 01:30:22 -0400

 


   Videos, Including Space Weaponization,
Nuclearization:
   http://www.envirovideo.com


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Radiation-Risks.html?

Panel Affirms Radiation Link to Cancer
  a..              E-Mail This
  b.. Printer-Friendly



By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 29, 2005
Filed at 11:13 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Even very low doses of
radiation pose a risk of cancer over a person's
lifetime, a National Academy of Sciences panel
concluded. It rejected some scientists' arguments
that tiny doses are harmless or may in fact be
beneficial.

The findings, disclosed in a report Wednesday,
could influence the maximum radiation levels that
are allowed at abandoned reactors and other
nuclear sites and raises warnings about excessive
exposure to radiation for medical purposes such as
repeated whole-body CT scans.

''It is unlikely that there is a threshold (of
radiation exposure) below which cancers are not
induced,'' the scientists said.

While at low doses ''the number of
radiation-induced cancers will be small ... as the
overall lifetime exposure increases, so does the
risk,'' the experts said.

Even common X-rays pose some risk of adverse
health effects, the scientists found, although the
panel said there was not enough information
available to accurately estimate the cancer risk
from X-rays. Nevertheless, the report said, there
is evidence that per unit of absorbed radiation,
X-rays may be more dangerous than other radiation.

The panel also said that approximately one person
out of 1,000 would develop cancer from exposure to
the amount of radiation from a single, average
whole body CT-scan.

But the report should not scare people away from
nuclear medicine, said Dr. Henry Royal, a
professor of radiology at Washington University in
St. Louis. He said most often the benefits of such
tests and treatments outweigh the risks.

But Royal also said that procedures such as CT
scans should be used to deal with a specific
medical problems and not part of annual medical
screenings. ''You should not be exposed to
radiation for superficial reasons,'' Royal said in
a telephone interview.

Scientists for years have debated how extremely
low doses of radiation affect human health.

Pro-nuclear advocates, as well as some independent
scientists, have maintained that the current risk
models for low-level radiation has produced more
stringent requirements than is necessary to
protect public health.

It is an issue in determining decontamination
requirements at abandoned reactors and at federal
weapons sites.

The academy's panel stood by the ''linear, no
threshold'' model that generally is the acceptable
approach to radiation risk assessment. This
approach assumes that the health risks from
radiation exposure decline as the dose levels
drop, but that each unit of radiation -- no matter
how small -- is assumed to cause cancer.

''The scientific research base shows that there is
no threshold of exposure below which low levels of
ionized radiation can be demonstrated to be
harmless or beneficial,'' said Richard R. Monson,
the panel's chairman. He is a professor of
epidemiology at Harvard's School of Public Health.

The panel said new and more extensive data
developed over the past 15 years only strengthen
the conclusions of the panel's last report, in
1990, on low-level radiation risks.

The scientists estimated that one out of 100
people exposed to 100 millisievert of radiation
over a lifetime probably would develop solid
cancer or leukemia, and that half of those cases
would be fatal.

It also said that 42 additional cancers can be
expected in the same group from other than
low-level radiation sources.

A millisievert is a measurement of radiation
energy deposited in a living tissue. People absorb
about 3 millisievert of radiation annually from
natural sources and 0.1 millisievert every time
they get a chest X-ray.

The report noted that exposure from a whole body
CT scan is about 10 millisievert, much higher than
a normal X-ray.

Some anti-nuclear advocates said the study
reaffirms that stringent regulations are needed
when cleaning up abandoned nuclear sites or
considering health risks near nuclear power
plants.

''The NAS panel puts to rest once and for all
claims that low doses of radiation aren't
dangerous ... nuclear advocates have been making
this claim for years'' said Daniel Hirsch,
president of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a Los
Angeles-based nuclear watchdog group.

Mitchell Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear
Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying arm,
said the report ''is a positive finding. It shows
there is very little risk of exposure from low
levels of radiation.''

The academy is a private organization chartered by
Congress to advise the government of scientific
matters.

^------

On the Net:

National Academy of Science:
http://www.nationalacademies.org

*****************************************************************
 32 [du-list] [Fwd: Preliminary Declaration of the Jury of
 
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 15:07:58 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
From: 	benny zable <bennyzable@hotmail.com>

Dear All

Please take the time to read this statement carefully and
post it around and take action in your own way.

Yours Benny Zable

Dear Reader:

As this declaration is unlikely to be carried by the
pervasive and incorporated media outlets, please take a
moment to read and forward to others via what remains of
free expression, inherent in person to person exchanges of
email and the internet.

Posted at http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0506/S00484.htm
and elsewhere:



Preliminary Declaration of the Jury of Conscience World
Tribunal on Iraq, Istanbul

      27th June 2005, Istanbul

      In February 2003, weeks before war was declared on
Iraq, millions of people protested in the streets of the
world. That call went unheeded. No international institution
had the courage or conscience to stand up to the aggression
of the US and UK governments. No one could stop them. It is
two years later now. Iraq has been invaded, occupied, and
devastated. The attack on Iraq is an attack on justice, on
liberty, on our safety, on our future, on us all. We the
people of conscience decided to stand up. We formed the
World Tribunal on Iraq, to demand justice and a peaceful future.

      The legitimacy of the World Tribunal on Iraq is located
in the collective conscience of humanity. This, the Istanbul
session, was the culmination of a series of 20 hearings held
in different cities of the world focusing on the illegal
invasion and occupation of Iraq.

      We the Jury of Conscience, from 10 different countries,
met in Istanbul. We heard 54 testimonies from a panel of
advocates and witnesses who came from across the world,
including from Iraq, the United States and the United Kingdom.

      The World Tribunal on Iraq met in Istanbul from 24-26th
of June 2005. The principal objective of the WTI is to tell
the truth about the Iraq war as clearly as possible, and to
draw conclusions that underscore the accountability of those
responsible and underline the significance of justice for
the Iraqi people. Saddam Hussein's crimes against his people
are not the focus of this Tribunal. We believe it is up to
the Iraqi people to investigate these crimes in an
independent and free trial.

      I. Overview

      1. The reasons given by the US and UK governments for
the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003
have proven to be false. The real motive was to control and
dominate the Middle East. Establishing hegemony over the
Middle East serves the goal of controlling the world's
largest reserves of oil and strengthening the position of
the US's strategic ally Israel.

      2. Blatant falsehoods about the presence of weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq and a link between Al Qaeda
terrorism and the Saddam Hussein régime were manufactured in
order to create public support for a "preemptive" assault
upon a sovereign independent nation.

      3. Iraq has been under siege for years. The imposition
of severe inhuman economic sanctions at the end of the first
Gulf war in 1991; the establishment of no-fly zones in the
Northern and Southern parts of Iraq; and the concomitant
bombing of the country were all aimed at degrading and
weakening Iraq's human and material resources and capacities
in order to facilitate its subsequent invasion and
occupation. In this enterprise the US and British
leaderships had the endorsement of a complicit UN Security
Council.

      4. In pursuit of their agenda of empire, the Bush and
Blair blatantly ignored the massive opposition to the war
expressed by millions of people around the world. They
embarked upon one of the most unjust, immoral, and cowardly
wars in history.

      5. The Anglo-American occupation of Iraq of the last 27
months has led to the destruction and devastation of the
Iraqi state and society. Law and order have broken down
completely, resulting in a pervasive lack of human security;
the physical infrastructure is in shambles; the health care
delivery system is a mess; the education system has ceased
to function; there is massive environmental and ecological
devastation; and, the cultural and archeological heritage of
the Iraqi people has been desecrated.

      6. The occupation has intentionally exacerbated ethnic
and confessionnal divisions in Iraqi society, with the aim
of undermining Iraq's identity and integrity as a nation.
This is in keeping with the fam liar imperial policy of
divide and rule.

      7. The imposition of the UN sanctions in 1991 caused
untold suffering and thousands of deaths. The situation has
worsened after the occupation. At least 100,000 civilians
have been killed; 60,000 are being held in US custody in
inhuman conditions, without charges; thousands have
disappeared; and torture has become virtually routine.

      8. The privatization, deregulation, and liberalization
of the Iraqi economy has transformed the country into a
client economy that serves the Washington Consensus. The
occupying forces have also accomplished their primary goal
of acquired control over the nation's oil.

      9. Any law or institution created under the aegis of
occupation is devoid of both legal and moral authority. The
recently concluded election, the Constituent Assembly, the
current government, and the drafting committee for the
Constitution are therefore all illegitimate.

      10. There is widespread opposition to the occupation.
Political, social, and civil resistance through peaceful
means is subjected to repression by the occupying forces. It
is the brutality of the occupation that has provoked a
strong armed resistance and certain acts of desperation. By
the principles embodied in the UN Charter and in
international law, the popular national resistance to the
occupation is legitimate and justified. It deserves the
support of people everywhere who care for justice and freedom.

      II. Findings and Charges

      On the basis of the preceding findings and recalling
the Charter of the United Nations and other legal documents
quoted in the appendix, the jury has established the
following charges.

      A. Against the Governments of the US and the UK

      1. Planning, preparing, and waging the supreme crime of
a war of aggression in contravention of the United Nations
Charter and the Nuremberg Principles.

Evidence for this can be found in the leaked Downing Street
Memo of 23rd July, 2002 in which it was revealed that:
"military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to
remove Saddam through military action, justified by the
conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and
facts were fixed around the policy." Intelligence was
manufactured to willfully deceive the people of the US, the
UK, and their elected representatives.

      2. Targeting the civilian population of Iraq and
civilian infrastructure, by intentionally directing attacks
upon civilians and hospitals, medical centers, residential
neighborhoods, electricity stations, and water purification
facilities in violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949
and the International Covenant for Civil and Political
Rights ("ICCPR"), Articles 7(1)(a), 8(2)(a)(i), and
8(2)(b)(i). The complete destruction of the city of Falluja
in itself constitutes a glaring example of such crimes.

      3. Using disproportionate force and indiscriminate
weapon systems, such as cluster munitions, incendiary bombs,
depleted uranium (DU), and chemical weapons. Detailed
evidence was presented to the Tribunal by expert witnesses
that leukemia had risen sharply in children under the age of
five residing in those areas which had been targeted by DU
weapons.

      4. Failing to safeguard the lives of civilians during
military activities and during the occupation period
thereafter, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention,
Articles 13 and 27, and the ICC Statute, Articles 7 (1)(a)
and 8(2)(a)(i). This is evidenced, for example, by "shock
and awe" bombing techniques and the conduct of occupying
forces at checkpoints.

      5. Using deadly violence against peaceful protestors,
beginning with, among others, the April 2003 killing of more
than a dozen peaceful protestors in Falluja.

      6. Imposing punishments without charge or trial,
including collective punishment, on the people of Iraq, in
violation of the International Convention on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR), Geneva Conventions, and customary
international law requiring due process. Repeated
testimonies pointed to "snatch and grab" operations,
disappearances, and assassinations.

      7. Subjecting Iraqi soldiers and civilians to torture
and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in violation of
the Geneva Conventions, the ICCPR, other treaties and
covenants, and customary international law. Degrading
treatment includes subjecting Iraqi soldiers and civilians
to acts of racial, ethnic, religious, and gender
discrimination, as well as denying Iraqi soldiers Prisoner
of War status as required by the Geneva Convention. Abundant
testimony was provided of unlawful arrests and detentions,
without due process of law. Well known and egregious
examples occurred in Abu Ghraib prison as well as in Mosul,
Camp Bucca, and Basra. The employment of mercenaries and
private contractors to carry out torture has served to
undermine accountability.

      8. Re-writing the laws of a country that has been
illegally invaded and occupied, in violation of
international covenants on the responsibilities of occupying
powers, in order to amass illegal profits (through such
measures as Order 39, signed by L. Paul Bremer III for the
Coalition Provisional Authority, which allows foreign
investors to buy and takeover Iraq's state-owned enterprises
and to repatriate 100 percent of their profits and assets at
any point) and to control Iraq's oil. Evidence listed a
number of corporations that had profited from such transactions.

      9. Willfully devastating the environment, contaminating
it by depleted uranium (DU) weapons, combined with the
plumes from burning oil wells, as well as huge oil spills,
and destroying agricultural lands. Deliberately disrupting
the water and waste removal systems, in a manner verging on
biological-chemical warfare. Failing to prevent the looting
and dispersal of radioactive material from nuclear sites.
Extensive documentation is available on air, water
pollution, land degradation, and radiological pollution.

      10. Actively creating conditions under which the status
of Iraqi women has seriously been degraded contrary, to the
repeated claims of the leaders of the coalition forces.
Women's freedom of movement has been severely limited,
restricting their access to education, livelihood, and
social engagement. Testimony was provided that sexual
violence and sex trafficking have increased since the
occupation of Iraq began.

      11. Failing to protect humanity's rich archaeological
and cultural heritage in Iraq, by allowing the looting of
museums and established historical sites and positioning
military bases in culturally and archeologically sensitive
locations. This took place despite prior warnings from
UNESCO and Iraqi museum officials.

      12. Obstructing the right to information, including the
censoring of Iraqi media, such as newspapers (e.g.,
al-Hawza, al-Mashriq, and al-Mustaqila) and radio stations
(Baghdad Radio), targeting international journalists,
imprisoning and killing academics, intellectuals and scientists.

      13. Redefining torture in violation of international
law, to allow use of torture and illegal detentions,
including holding more than 500 people at Guantánamo Bay
without charging them or allowing them any access to legal
protection, and using "extraordinary renditions" to send
people to torture in other countries known to commit human
rights abuses and torture prisoners.

      B. Against the Security Council of United Nations

      1. Failing to protect Iraq against a crime of aggression.

      2. Imposing harsh economic sanctions on Iraq, despite
knowledge that sanctions were directly contributing to the
massive loss of civilian lives and harming innocent civilians.

      3. Allowing the United States and United Kingdom to
carry out illegal bombings in the no-fly zones, using false
pretense of enforcing UN resolutions, and at no point
allowing discussion in the Security Council of this
violation, and thereby being complicit and responsible for
loss of civilian life and destruction of Iraqi infrastructure.

      4. Allowing the United States to dominate the United
Nations and hold itself above any accountability by other
member nations.

      5. Failure to stop war crimes and crimes against
humanity by the United States and its coalition partners in
Iraq.

      6. Failure to hold the United States and its coalition
partners accountable for violations of international law
during the occupation, and giving official recognition to
the occupation, thereby legitimizing an illegal invasion and
becoming a collaborator in an illegal occupation.

      C. Against the Governments of the Coalition of the
Willing - Collaborating in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

      D. Against the Governments of Other Countries -
Allowing the use of military bases and air space, and
providing other logistical support, for the invasion and
occupation.

      E. Against Private Corporations -
Profiting from the war with complicity in the crimes
described above, of invasion and occupation.

      F. Against the Major Corporate Media

      1. Disseminating the deliberate falsehoods spread by
the governments of the US and the UK and failing to
adequately investigate this misinformation. This even in the
face of abundant evidence to the contrary. Among the
corporate media houses that bear special responsibility for
promoting the lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction,
we name the New York Times, in particular their reporter
Judith Miller, whose main source was on the payroll of the
CIA. We also name Fox News, CNN and the BBC.

      2. Failing to report the atrocities being committed
against Iraqi people by the occupying forces.

      III. Recommendations

      Recognising the right of the Iraqi people to resist the
illegal occupation of their country and to develop
independent institutions, and affirming that the right to
resist the occupation is the right to wage a struggle for
self-determination, freedom, and independence as derived
from the Charter of the United Nations, we the Jury of
Conscience declare our solidarity with the people of Iraq.

      We recommend:

      1. The immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the
coalition forces from Iraq;

      2. That coalition governments make war reparations and
pay compensation to Iraq for the humanitarian, economic,
ecological, and cultural devastation they have caused by
their illegal invasion and occupation;

      3. That all laws, contracts, treaties, and institutions
established under occupation which the Iraqi people deem
inimical to their interests, should be considered null and void;

      4. That the Guantanamo Bay prison and all other
offshore US military prisons be closed immediately; that the
names of the prisoners be disclosed, that they receive POW
status, and receive due process;

      5. That there be an exhaustive investigation of those
responsible for crimes of aggression and crimes against
humanity in Iraq, beginning with George W. Bush, President
of the United States of America; Tony Blair, Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom; and other government officials from
the coalition of the willing;

      6. That we initiate a process of accountability to hold
those morally and personally responsible for their
participation in this illegal war, such as journalists who
deliberately lied, corporate media outlets that promoted
racial, ethnic and religious hatred, and CEOs of
multinational corporations that profited from this war;

      7. That people throughout the world launch actions
against US and UK corporations that directly profit from
this war. Examples of such corporations include Halliburton,
Bechtel, Carlyle, CACI Inc., Titan Corporation, Kellog,
Brown and Root (subsidiary of Halliburton), DynCorp, Boeing,
ExxonMobil, Texaco, British Petroleum. The following
companies have sued Iraq and received "reparation awards":
Toys R Us, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Shell, Nestlé, Pepsi,
Phillip Morris, Sheraton, Mobil. Such actions may take the
form of direct actions such as shutting down their offices,
consumer boycotts, and pressure on shareholders to divest.

      8. That soldiers exercise conscience and refuse to
enlist and participate in an illegal war. Also that
countries provide conscientious objectors political asylum.

      9. That the international campaign for dismantling all
US military bases abroad be reinforced.

      10. That people around the world resist and reject any
effort by any of their governments to provide material,
logistical, or moral support to the occupation of Iraq.

      We, the Jury of Conscience, hope that the specificity
of these recommendations will lay the groundwork required
for a world where the international institutions will be
shaped and reshaped by the will of people and not fear and
self-interest, where journalists and intellectuals will not
remain mute, where the will of the people of the world will
be central, and human security will prevail over state
security and corporate profits.

      Appendix: List of Legal Documents
      The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
      The Convention on the Political Rights of Women (1952)
      The Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959)
      The Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination (1963)
      The International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (1966)
      The Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (1979)
      The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984)
      The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)
      The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998)
      The European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms (1950)
      The American Convention on Human Rights (1969)
      The Code of Conduct for the Armed Forces of the United
States of America (1963)





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*****************************************************************
 33 [NukeNet] NAS panel confirms "linear, no threshold" model
 
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 15:08:03 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)

  Panel Rejects Nuclear Industry Claim, Affirms Radiation Link to Cancer

by H. Josef Hebert
*

The preponderance of scientific evidence shows that even very low doses
of
radiation pose a risk of cancer or other health problems and there is
no
threshold below which exposure can be viewed as harmless, a panel of
prominent
scientists concluded Wednesday.

The finding by the National Academy of Sciences panel is viewed as
critical
because it is likely to significantly influence what radiation levels
government agencies will allow at abandoned nuclear power plants,
nuclear weapons
production facilities and elsewhere.

The nuclear industry,, as well as some independent scientists, have
argued
that there is a threshold of very low level radiation where exposure is
not
harmful, or possibly even beneficial. They said current risk modeling
may
exaggerate the health impact.

The panel, after five years of study, rejected that claim.

"The scientific research base shows that there is no threshold of
exposure
below which low levels of ionized radiation can be demonstrated to be
harmless
or beneficial," said Richard R. Monson, the panel chairman and a
professor of
epidemiology at Harvard's School of Public Health.

The committee gave support to the so-called "linear, no threshold"
model that
is currently the generally acceptable approach to radiation risk
assessment.
This approach assumes that the health risks from radiation exposure
declines
as the dose levels decline, but that each unit of radiation - no matter
how
small - still is assumed to cause cancer.

The panel, formally known as the Committee on Biological Effects of
Ionizing
Radiaton, or BEIR, generally supported previous cancer risk estimates -
the
last one by an earlier BEIR group in 1990.

Contrary to assertions that risks from exposure from low-level
radiation may
have been overstated, the panel said "the availability of new and more

extensive data have strengthened confidence in these (earlier)
estimates."

The committee examined doses of radiation of up to 100 millisievert, a

measurement of accumulated radiation to an individual over a year. By
comparison, a
single chest X-ray accounts for 0.1 millisievert and average background

radiation 3 millisievert.

The committee estmated that 1 out of 100 people would likely develop
solid
cancer or leukemia from an exposure of 100 millisievert of radiation
over a
lifetime.

© Copyright 2005 Associated Press

_______________________________________________________________________
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Change your settings or access the archives at:
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*****************************************************************
 34 Bradenton Herald: 1 in 10 Tallevast workers test positive

| 06/29/2005 | 

DONNA WRIGHT

 Herald Staff Writer

One of every 10 former Loral American Beryllium Co. workers
screened through a federal program tested positive for beryllium
sensitivity, according to the Oak Ridge Institute for Science
and Education in Tennessee. 

The 10 percent positive rate is normal among workers who
machined the rare but toxic metal, said Dr. Donna Cragle,
director for the Center for Epidemiologic Research in Oak Ridge,
Tenn. 

"So far we have tested 132 people and we have found 13 who have
an abnormal test result," Cragle said. 

One abnormal or positive test qualifies workers for medical
benefits through a federal compensation program for atomic
weapons workers who did work for the U.S. Department of Energy
during the Cold War, Cragle said. 

Loral workers in Tallevast were among the Cold War warriors
nationwide who made parts for nuclear weapons during the
standoff with the Soviets. 

Workers who test positive for beryllium sensitivity can receive
lifetime medical benefits. Those who develop beryllium disease
may be eligible for up to $150,000 in compensation through the
U.S. Energy Department. 

A recent investigation by federal employees uncovered thousands
of pages of documents revealing Loral American Beryllium Co. did
far more work for the Energy Department than previously thought. 

Those documents expanded coverage in the compensation program to
all workers employed at the plant from 1967 through 1992.
Originally the program was open only to those workers employed
in 1968 and during the 1980s. 

Cragle said four of the 132 workers tested so far had borderline
results. Those workers were offered a repeat test, Cragle said. 

The Loral plant operated under various names for more than four
decades. It was closed in 1997 when Lockheed Martin Corp.
purchased the plant in a corporate buyout of Loral. 

When Lockheed decided to sell the plant in the late 1990s a leak
was found in the liner of an evaporating pond. That leak was
later discovered to be the source of an underground plume of
contamination Tallevast residents believe has caused widespread
sickness. 

In 2000, Lockheed reported the leak and plume to the Florida
Department of Environmental Protection, but residents did not
learn about the toxin in their back yards until 2003. 

That plume of toxins- the most dangerous include
trichloroethylene, or TCE, and dioxane - is now known to cover
more than 131.3 acres. 

Workers used TCE to clean the beryllium parts they tooled and
machined at the plant. Their daily exposure also put workers at
risk for a number of cancers and neurological disorders caused
by TCE. 

Workers were also exposed to beryllium dust while on the job. 

Inhaling the dust created by the machining process can lead to a
serious and chronic lung disease called beryllium disease that
can be fatal if not treated. 

Experts say it can take up to 20 to 30 years to develop
beryllium sensitivity, although Cragle said most workers develop
symptoms within six months. 

She believes that enough time has passed for most former
American Beryllium workers to have developed the symptoms. 

But workers were not the only the ones exposed to beryllium
dust. 

Family members were exposed to dust workers tracked home on
their clothes and shoes or in their cars. 

In a beryllium testing program financed with county funds, local
health workers found three residents, all of whom were household
members of former workers, who had developed beryllium
sensitivity. 

A total of 239 people were tested through the Manatee County
program, said Dr. Gladys Branic, director of Manatee County
Health Department. 

Four others were given repeat tests when their first tests were
inconclusive. 

Initially seven people tested positive, three people were
borderline and one was uninterpretable. 

Of those seven people, three were Tallevast residents, one of
whom did work at the plant but was not an employee, Branic said. 

Three were former workers and non-Tallevast residents. One was a
household member and spouse of a former worker, but not a
Tallevast resident, Branic said. 

After retesting, two Tallevast residents remained positive and
were referred to a local lung doctor, Branic said. 

The Tallevast resident who worked at the plant was not a
full-time employee. The worker retested normal. The household
member who had initially tested positive was borderline. 

All three of the original borderlines and one uninterpretable
were normal upon retesting, Branic said. 

The local health department referred the positive workers to the
federal compensation program. 

In all, there were a total of five positives in the county
program, including retests and referred workers. 

The county testing program was conducted in December and
January. 

A third testing program was offered through the Sarasota County
Health Department in the spring and was funded through the
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. 

The Florida Department of Health supervised the Sarasota testing
program. 

The Sarasota program tested 56 Tallevast residents, seven of
whom are also household members of former workers. 

Nineteen former workers tested though the Sarasota health
department. One of those is also a Tallevast resident. 

Sarasota also tested 47 household members of former workers who
live outside of Tallevast. 

Results of those tests are unknown at this time. 

Donna Wright, health and social services reporter, can be
reached at 745-7049 or at dwright@HeraldToday.com. 

Free testing 

Former workers employed at Loral American Beryllium Co. from
1967 through 1992 can still be tested free of charge through the
Oak Ridge Institute. Workers can call Oak Ridge Institute toll
free at 1-866-219-3442 to arrange for the free test. 

Read our archive coverage on the Tallevast contamination.   

*****************************************************************
 35 BBC: Nuclear workers' cancer risk rise
 
Last Updated: Tuesday, 28 June, 2005
 
[Dounreay nuclear power station]                                

Power station workers are exposed to less radiation than in the 
past                                            
		

Exposure to a low level of radiation is linked to a small 
increase in a person's cancer risk, a study of nuclear power 
station workers found. 

An international team studied over 407,000 workers in 15 
countries, who were followed up for around 13 years. 

The British Medical Journal study estimates up to 2% of cancer 
deaths were due to radiation exposure. 

But they said the increased risk did not apply to people living 
near to power stations. 

	

	
                                                        It's 
certain that for t population, exposure would be much lower than 
what we're talking about here Dr Colin Muirhead, Radiological 
Protection Division, Health Protection Agency       

	 

Ionising radiation is a well known cancer-causing agent. 

Current radiation protection recommendations are to limit 
occupational doses to 100 millisieverts (mSv) over five years and 
doses to the public to 1 mSv per year. 

These guidelines were based mainly on data from survivors of the 
atomic bomb in Japan and the extrapolation of risks to the 
general population and radiation workers is controversial. 

Researchers studied the thousands of nuclear industry workers in 
order to get a better idea of their risk. 

Hiroshima 

Most were men and had been employed for at least one year in 
nuclear power production facilities, or in related activities 
such as research, waste management or fuel and weapons 
production. 

Ninety per cent of workers were exposed to a cumulative dose of 
under 50mSv, and less than 1% over 500mSv. 

Factors such as age, duration of employment, and socioeconomic 
status were taken into account when the researchers looked at the 
workers. 

Just under 200 died from leukaemias, and 6,519 from other 
cancers. 

The researchers say, that from their evidence, 1 to 2% of deaths 
from cancer among workers in this study may be attributable to 
radiation. 

The risk estimates from the study are consistent with those used 
for current radiation protection standards, they say. 

And they add that many of the workers in this study worked in the 
early years of the industry when doses tended to be higher than 
they are today. 

'Vigilance' 

Dr Colin Muirhead, of the Radiological Protection Division of the 
Health Protection Agency, who worked on the study, told the BBC 
News website: "This is what we expected to see, because even with 
a low dose of radiation, there would be a cancer risk. 

He added: "The levels of exposure we saw in this study are much 
lower than were seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

"In absolute terms, it is a fairly small increase in risk." 

He said workers in the industry should be reassured by the 
study's findings. 

"At an individual level it will make a very small difference." 

And he said the results also fitted in with studies which had 
found no link between cancer risk and living near a nuclear power 
station. 

"It's certain that for the population, exposure would be much 
lower than what we're talking about here. 

"There is no inconsistency." 

Professor John Toy, Medical Director at Cancer Research UK, said: 
"Radiation is a very well known carcinogen. 

"This extremely large study shows an increased risk, albeit 
small, of cancer and most types of leukaemia associated with 
occupational low-dose radiation exposure." 

He added: "The radiation risk estimates are statistically 
comparable with those used for current radiation protection 
standards. 

"The nuclear industry must remain ever vigilant to ensure these 
standards are not breached and constantly endeavour to reduce the 
exposure of its workers to radiation." 

*****************************************************************
 36 Medical Study News: Even low dose radiation exposure causes cancer
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 
News-Medical.Net...

  Published: Wednesday, 29-Jun-2005   
  
A new study says that workers in the nuclear industry who are
exposed to chronic low doses of radiation have a slightly higher
risk of developing cancer.
 
Dr Elisabeth Cardis, head of the radiation group at the
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)in Lyon,
France, says the study shows that even low doses of radiation
causes cancer.
 
The risk, she says appears to be similar to what scientists had
estimated based on data from survivors of the atomic bombings in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.
 
Radiation protection standards, which limit occupational
exposure to ionising radiation to 100 millisieverts (mSv) over
five years and 1 mSv per year for the public, are based mainly
on data from survivors who had been exposed to high doses of
radiation over a very short time period.
 
Cardis says for decades there has been controversy about the use
of data on A-bomb survivors for setting standards for the
protection of the general public and radiation workers, but
their findings, she says,may finally settle the issue, as the
study shows that the current basis for radiation protection
appears to be reasonable.
 
In the largest study of nuclear workers ever conducted,
researchers from IARC studied 407,000 nuclear industry workers
in 15 countries who had been exposed to low doses over an
extended time span.
 
They estimated that cumulative exposure could lead to a 10
percent raised risk of death from all types of cancer and a 19
percent increase from leukaemia, excluding lymphocytic leukaemia.
 
The study results suggest that only a small proportion of cancer
deaths in the study group were due to chronic, low-dose
exposure. 

The scientists estimated that 1-2 percent of deaths from
cancers, except leukaemia, in the nuclear workers in the study
may be due to radiation and these were mostly were in older
employees who had worked in the industry many years ago.
 
Cardis says they would have had the highest doses in the 1940s
and 1950s when the radiation protection standards were much less
than they are today.
 
The study is published in the British Medical Journal. 

*****************************************************************
 37 rgj: Government scientist denies falsifying Yucca Mountain data
 
Reno Gazette-Journal]  June 29, 2005
Reno, Nevada, USA  775-788-6200   

Jaclyn O'MalleyASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — A scientist at the center of a controversy over
potential falsification of documents about the Yucca Mountain
nuclear waste dump insisted before Congress on Wednesday that he
did not alter paperwork on the project. 

“I have never falsified any documents related to Yucca Mountain
or any other project,” Joseph Hevesi, a U.S. Geological Survey
hydrologist in Sacramento, Calif., told a House Government
Reform subcommittee. 

The panel is investigating e-mails written by Hevesi and other
scientists that, according to critics, seem to suggest they
changed work to reach a predetermined conclusion. The existence
of the e-mails, written between 1998 and 2000, was made public
by the Energy Department in March. 

Hevesi was appearing under subpoena before the panel chaired by
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev. 

Before testifying, the thin, gray-haired scientist sat alone at
the witness table with his hands clasped, occasionally shifting
in his seat, as Porter read portions of e-mails Hevesi had
written. 

Among them: “In the end I keep track of two sets of files, the
ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually
used.” QA refers to quality assurance. 

Hevesi and others were studying how water moved through the
desert site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas where the government
wants to store 77,000 tons of commercial and defense nuclear
waste for at least 10,000 years. The USGS validated Energy
Department conclusions that water seepage was relatively slow,
so radiation would be less likely to escape. 

A planned completion date of 2010 for the Yucca project was
recently abandoned by Energy Department officials. 

>© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett Co. Inc.Newspaper.
*****************************************************************
 38 Deseret News: Energy bill doesn't include ban on N-fuel shipments
 	 
[deseretnews.com] 
 	
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
 	   	 
Language of the energy act approved by the Senate on Tuesday did 
not include an amendment proposed by Utah senators Orrin Hatch 
and Bob Bennett that would have banned the shipment of spent 
nuclear fuel to a non-federal facility.

       The amendment was intended to block a consortium of
nuclear power utilities from shipping waste to Goshute tribal
lands in Tooele County.

       Hatch and Bennett withdrew their amendment, having
received an on-the-record statement from the chairman of the
Senate Energy Committee, Pete Dominici, that the Goshute storage
plan was not part of the nation's nuclear waste strategy.

       The commitment was vital, Hatch said, because he did not
consider Dominici to be "friendly" to Utah's opposition to the
waste.

       Pulling the amendment was a strategic move that lays the
groundwork for Hatch and Bennett to start working the other
senators on the fact the Goshute storage plan is not part and
parcel to the Yucca Mountain permanent storage site supported by
the White House and a majority of senators.

      "A large majority of senators support Yucca Mountain and a
large number associate Skull Valley with Yucca Mountain," Hatch
said. "We are trying to create a disconnect (between the two
sites). The two issues are not connected; Skull Valley is not
part of our national waste strategy."
 	 
 © 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company 
*****************************************************************
 39 Las Vegas RJ: NUCLEAR WASTE PROJECT: Porter limits access to Yucca e-mails
 
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
 
hearing
 
Berkley, Gibbons asked to stay away so he can broaden probe
 By STEVE TETREAULT 
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU 
WASHINGTON -- Concerned that a Yucca Mountain investigation he
is leading might be perceived as too parochial, Rep. Jon Porter,
R-Nev., asked Nevada's two other House lawmakers not to take
part in a hearing today on the nuclear waste project,
congressional officials said. 

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., readily agreed. But Rep. Shelley
Berkley, D-Nev., objected. She said Porter was making a mistake
not to include fellow Nevadans who have fought the proposed
waste repository. 

"I wanted to take part and I was not invited to," Berkley said
Tuesday. 

"My understanding is that (Porter) has a misplaced idea that if
other Nevadans participate then Congress will consider this a
Nevada-only issue," Berkley said. "If it wasn't for the Nevada
delegation this issue would have been dead a long time ago." 

Nonetheless, Berkley said she planned to stay away while Porter
conducts the hearing as chairman of the House federal workforce
and agency organization subcommittee. 

Porter was not available Tuesday evening. His spokesman T.J.
Crawford said Berkley and Gibbons participated fully at an
initial Yucca Mountain hearing on April 5, and Porter wanted to
focus today's session on his subcommittee's ongoing
investigation. 

Though he is an opponent of Yucca Mountain like most other
Nevada elected leaders, Porter also is taking a longer view of
the investigation, which he believes raises questions about
Energy Department management and the behavior of federal
workers, Crawford said. 

"This is not just a Nevada issue for him," Crawford said. "He
has two hats to wear as chairman of his subcommittee. His
responsibility, his scope, is much, much more broad." 

The subcommittee is seeking to uncover details behind a cache of
e-mails from 1998 to 2000 in which several scientists assigned
to the Yucca project by the U.S. Geological Survey discussed
possible falsification of quality assurance records for their
research. 

Joseph Hevesi, a USGS hydrologist who has been identified as one
of the e-mail authors, has been subpoenaed to testify today.
Crawford said Hevesi is expected to appear but it was not clear
whether he would discuss the e-mails. 

The inspectors general at the Energy Department and the
Department of Interior also are investigating the e-mails with
assistance from the FBI. 

John Arthur, deputy director of the Yucca project, also is
scheduled to testify. Arthur said earlier this month that an
internal DOE probe was concluding that Yucca science was not
compromised by allegations raised through the e-mails. 

The April 5 hearing, held days after the explosive e-mails were
made public, was dominated by Nevadans. Only two or three other
subcommittee members appeared for brief periods. 

Crawford said subcommittee members are expected to take a more
active role today. The panel has 11 members. 

Gov. Kenny Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval and Sens. John
Ensign and Harry Reid testified on April 5, as did Bob Loux,
director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, Judy
Treichel of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, and Joe Egan,
the state's nuclear waste lawyer. 

Although not members of the subcommittee, Gibbons and Berkley
were invited to sit on the dais with Porter. They questioned
witnesses including USGS director Charles Groat and acting Yucca
Mountain project director Ted Garrish. 

Discussions about the focus of the hearing included leaders of
the House Government Reform Committee as well as Porter, Gibbons
and Berkley, according to Amy Spanbauer-Maier, Gibbons' chief of
staff. 

"It was agreed upon by everyone that we wanted to be sure that
this did not turn into something that critics could say was just
Nevada against Yucca Mountain," Spanbauer-Maier said. 

The perception that Nevada lawmakers look only to capitalize on
Yucca Mountain flaws "is something that is always out there,"
she said. "We didn't want to divert any attention from the
questions at hand about gross mismanagement and falsification of
documents."
 
 

Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 40 Las Vegas SUN: Opposing views show in Yucca surveys 

Today: June 29, 2005 at 11:5:49 PDT 

Citizens in rural areas, Clark County reach different conclusions

By Launce Rake <lrake@lasvegassun.com> 

LAS VEGAS SUN 

Nevada regional governments with opposing opinions on the 
proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump have studied how 
their citizens view the project, and the conclusions are as 
different as the areas in which the people who were surveyed 
live. 

There were other differences as well, starting with the cost of 
the projects. 

The study of fewer than 70 people in rural areas of Nevada, 
where governments have supported the dump as a way to invigorate 
moribund local economies, cost $212,000. Clark County, the 
state's most urban county with a government that steadfastly 
opposes the dump, interviewed 600 county residents at a cost of 
$18,000. 

According to those who put the survey together for interviews 
in Nye, Esmeralda and Lincoln counties, the project consisted of 
six questions targeted for business leaders, community leaders 
and property owners, on how a proposed transport route for 
nuclear waste called the Caliente Rail Corridor would affect the 
respondents. The cost for each question came to about $505. 

The Clark County survey, depending on how questions were 
answered, could include up to 140 questions, at a cost of about 
20 cents per question. The official report about the study 
results is going through final polishing and should be released 
to the public within the next several weeks, Clark County 
consultants and officials said. 

Those who put the survey together for the rural areas and those 
who worked on the Clark County effort said that direct 
comparisons of the two projects miss the point. The rural 
effort, funded through Energy Department funds, was based on 
dozens of face-to-face interviews with opinion shapers across 
the wide open spaces of central Nevada. 

The Clark County effort, also funded by the Energy Department, 
was a telephone survey from Las Vegas. Irene Navis, planning 
manager for Clark County's Nuclear Waste Division, which works 
on Yucca Mountain issues, said the goal was to have a randomly 
selected group of people for a scientifically valid study that 
could be compared to earlier opinion research, to see how 
attitudes towards the dump have changed. 

Navis said the results from the Clark County are under review, 
and the results should be released later this summer. She said 
the early review of the results show that residents here fear 
the impact the dump and radioactive waste transportation will 
have on property values and tourism. 

Detailed input 

The authors of the central Nevada project, which was completed 
under the auspices of the Central Nevada Community Protection 
Working Group, said in their study that the goal was to get 
"specific, detailed input from individuals whose lives would be 
most affected by the Caliente Rail Corridor and to begin the 
process of developing and providing a list of impacts and needed 
mitigation." 

Caliente Mayor Kevin Phillips, whose government approved the 
project, said the effort is a step towards understanding all the 
potential impacts of moving nuclear waste through central 
Nevada. He described the central Nevada work as more of a 
"conversation to gain understanding" than an effort to reach a 
final conclusion. 

Among those whom Larry Lytle and Vaughn Higbee, the 
subcontractors for the work, interviewed were 16 property owners 
near the proposed transportation route for the nuclear waste, 
nine business owners, 18 "public service providers," 15 public 
officials and a handful of others from nonprofit groups and 
other interest groups. 

Lytle and Higbee, in their report, said the face-to-face 
interviews in people's homes "provided a distinctly human touch 
to this report ... The emotional impacts were most profound." 

"This report is not comprehensive. The interviews that were 
completed are not a scientific sample of those impacted by the 
Caliente Rail Corridor. Rather, they are ... a very personal and 
subjective look into the lives and concerns of a relatively few 
people." 

The report did not produce definitive findings in the way that 
numerically based research would bring, but it generally found 
that those who were interviewed welcome the economic growth that 
they believe will come with Yucca Mountain and its rail corridor.

Lytle and Higbee also found that on the other hand, some are 
concerned that property that has been in some families for 
generations may be lost. 

"Mitigation of the physical and financial impacts will be very 
complicated," the authors wrote. "Mitigation of the emotional 
impacts will be miraculous." 

While Lytle and Higbee, two Lincoln County residents operating 
as L Consulting, wrote the report and conducted interviews, the 
lion's share of the funding went to Robison/Seidler, a 
consulting firm that has a long history of work both for rural 
counties and the Nuclear Energy Institute, an advocacy group 
supporting the Yucca Mountain dump and the rail corridor. 

Ace Robison, company founder, is a former Energy Department 
deputy assistant secretary and chief of staff to former Sen. 
Paul Laxalt, R-Nev. Robison is a past chairman of the Nevada 
Republican Party and, last year, was named by Gov. Kenny Guinn 
to the Colorado River Commission, which represents the state in 
discussions of Colorado River water and energy produced by 
Hoover Dam. 

Working hard 

Robison said his company worked hard for the money it made off 
the project, which started last year. Robison/Seidler billed 
$17,810 monthly for the effort, about double what Lytle and 
Higbee made every month. 

"We earned our money," Robison said. 

"We were out with the subs (subcontractors) a good deal of the 
time. We spent a good deal of time overseeing and focusing them. 
We wanted to use people who were local to the county. We did not 
want to use a professional organization. If we had used a 
professional organization, we would not have gotten the result 
that we needed to get. 

"Otherwise, the local folks who were being interviewed, would 
have been hesitant to give their opinions," Robison said. 

He said comparing the Clark County survey to the work in the 
rural counties was not fair. 

"It's a qualitative study," he said. "It is not a quantitative 
study at all. 

Robison said the subcontractors in many cases knew the people 
they interviewed personally -- which was an important part of 
the effort. 

"What it was intended to be was a very personal interaction on 
a personal level with the business and property owners that 
would be most affected by the Caliente route," Robison said. "It 
was done by individuals who are people from Lincoln County, and 
it was almost a conversational thing. It discussed what your 
feelings are, whether it should be built, how you think it will 
affect you, and in a very subjective way, how do you feel about 
that." 

Different in form 

Navis, with Clark County, is usually on the opposite side of 
Robison on Yucca Mountain issues, but agreed that different 
kinds of studies would be very different in form, content and 
ultimate cost. Qualitative studies include such techniques as 
focus groups, forums or face-to-face interviews, with 
significant travel costs. 

Quantitative surveys are usually done over the telephone, as it 
was for the Clark County effort, and that can be a lot cheaper 
to do than a face-to-face interview. 

Terry Murphy, president of Strategic Solutions, a Las Vegas 
consulting firm that was one of several that worked on the Clark 
County study, said the difference in goals and techniques can 
explain the cost difference. 

"I can easily see how a study could cost $200,000, especially 
if it involved face to face interviews and a lot of travel," she 
said. "It depends on how in-depth they go into the survey. 

"Ours was quantitative. If his was qualitative, that can 
sometimes be more expensive ... With qualitative research you 
can get a much better insight into the community. You can get at 
some real nuggets of information that you might not get in a 
quantitative study. There is value to both." 

Allen Benson, spokesman for the Energy Department's Yucca 
Mountain project, said the agency will review the spending of 
both the urban and rural efforts. He also defended the scope and 
purpose of the rural survey. 

"There is an auditing process after the fact. There is also a 
routine monitoring process," he said of the appropriation for 
the rural survey. "This is money that has been appropriated for 
this program and the department believes would be of benefit to 
the program. 

"We provide funds to produce information," he said. "The 
policymakers in these communities certainly are entitled to know 
the views of their constituents." 

Some of those who have long been critical of the Yucca Mountain 
project said the funding for the survey represents business as 
usual for central Nevada governments. 

"It's typical," said Louis Benezet, a Caliente resident and an 
outspoken voice against the project. The survey doesn't really 
represent the opinions in Lincoln County, he said. 

"I'd say it's really stacked," he said of those who were 
interviewed in the rural survey. With the exception of a few, 
"most of those people are already supporters." 

"They didn't interview me. They didn't interview ordinary 
people. That leaves a lot of people who were affected. Many of 
these people (who were interviewed) are among a select group 
that were wined and dined on behalf of Yucca Mountain in the 
past." 

Another person who has not seen the completed survey of rural 
residents is Lincoln County Commissioner Hal Keaton, who was one 
of those interviewed. 

Keaton, who opposes the Yucca Mountain project, said he was, 
however, able to get a copy of the transcript of comments he 
provided Higbee and Lytle. He said most of his comments were 
faithfully included in the transcript of his survey, except for 
one point. 

"Everything that they put in there was accurate except the last 
statement, that I thought nuclear power plants were the best way 
to produce power. I've never said that." 

Funding plan 

Keaton criticized the funding plan for the central Nevada 
project. The Energy Department funding went through the Central 
Nevada Working Group to Nye County, which transferred the money 
to the Caliente in Lincoln County, which then formed the 
contract with Robison/Seidler. 

He said the goal of the funding program was to avoid going 
through Lincoln County, where he would have oversight. 

"The consultants totally run the program," Keaton said. "They 
convinced the working group and Nye County that they should 
funnel the money through Caliente. That way they don't have to 
work with me. 

All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. 
*****************************************************************
 41 Las Vegas SUN: Scientist denies falsifying data on Yucca 

Today: June 29, 2005 at 11:8:53 PDT 

Porter presses for more information on e-mails 

By Suzanne Struglinski <suzanne@lasvegassun.com> 

SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU 

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Geological Survey scientist Joe Hevesi told 
a congressional subcommittee that he did not falsify any 
scientific information on the Yucca Mountain project, though he 
was "somewhat horrified" when he looked back at his e-mails on 
the subject, which he thought were personal correspondence. 

"I have never falsified any documents related to Yucca Mountain 
or any other project," Hevesi said at a House Federal Workforce 
and Agency Organization subcommittee hearing today. "This whole 
process has been a learning process for me when I realized that 
an e-mail is actually an official documentation. I was not 
perceiving e-mail that way." 

Hevesi testified in response to questions about the latest 
Yucca Mountain project controversy that has had Nevada calling 
for the Energy Department to stop the project. 

Hevesi insisted that while he used "poor wording" in some of 
his messages, he did not falsify any documents or scientific 
information. 

"I have completely rethought how I use the whole e-mail system 
and how I communicate with others," Hevesi said. 

Hevesi testified at the subcommittee hearing this morning as 
part of an investigation by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., into e-mail 
messages uncovered by Energy Department in March. The department 
said it found e-mails written by U.S. Geological Survey 
employees that suggest they falsified scientific information at 
the Yucca Mountain project. 

As Porter read down a list of e-mails, asking for detailed 
information on Hevesi's intent and reasoning behind the 
messages, the scientist calmly described his work on the project 
and his frustration in trying to get the job done. 

"I place things in e-mails out of emotional response," Hevesi 
said. "... I believe I had reputation for being flippant in 
e-mails." 

Requests for "delete this memo" that appeared in several 
messages made public by the subcommittee were not attempts to 
cover up information but just to delete personal e-mail sent 
between himself and his colleagues, Hevesi said. They were not 
professional memos. 

Hevesi testified that when he used the words "fudge factor" in 
his e-mail, he meant "simplification, not falsification." 
Fudging the information meant to use placeholders, and Hevesi 
said scientists use fudge factors all the time. 

"My heart was in my work to do the best I could," Hevesi said. 
"I did feel the work was important." 

Hevesi called the scientific work on the project "sound" but 
that getting the documentation together took more time than 
originally thought. 

Hevesi was a research hydrologist who studied how water flowed 
through the mountain. He said several times at the hearing that 
he was not in a position to say whether the site was suitable to 
safely store nuclear waste. 

After its announcement on the e-mails, the department did not 
name the scientists, citing ongoing investigations, but Porter 
sent a letter to the Interior Department asking for Hevesi along 
with fellow scientists Alan L. Flint and Lorraine E. Flint to 
appear before the subcommittee. Today's hearing was one that 
Porter had initially tried to conduct in late April, but the 
three scientists refused to attend at that time. 

The Flints, who are married, have met with subcommittee staff, 
Porter said, but he had House Government Reform Committee 
Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., issue a subpoena to Hevesi earlier 
this month after he refused repeated attempts to testify. 

Hevesi said today that the only reason he refused to appear was 
that he wanted to wait until other investigations into the 
e-mails were over. 

"I was trying to focus on one situation at a time, rather than 
having two parallel situations," Hevesi said. 

Porter is still waiting for a number of documents from the 
Energy Department related to e-mails written by Hevesi and 
others. Porter may request another subpoena for the documents, 
although he has not made a decision yet. 

Porter wants the documents for the committee's investigation 
and to back up his claims to fellow House members that this is 
not just a Nevada issue. 

"Nevada's message consistently for 20 years has been 'no' and 
many times we get discounted because they expect us to say no," 
Porter said in an interview. "So I have been making it very 
clear to the committee members, that this is not just a 'no.' It 
is real people with real falsified documents, with real 
falsified science and it is not just Nevada one more time saying 
'no.' " 

Porter said as the subcommittee chairman he has a 
responsibility to the federal employees working on the project. 
He wants to make sure they were not harassed and that the 
management culture illustrated in the e-mails does not carry 
over into nuclear weapons or other Energy Department programs. 

"It isn't just a witchhunt for employees," Porter said. "It's 
to be fair to those employees as well as to the agency and to 
the American people first. It's a balance." 

Nevada's other House members, Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, 
and Rep. Jim Gibbons, a Republican, did not attend the hearing, 
but were invited to submit written testimony. 

Porter spokesman T.J. Crawford said the subcommittee sees this 
as a continuation of the hearing Porter conducted April 5, which 
Berkley and Gibbons attended, asked questions and made 
statements. 

"They've already spoken," Crawford said. "This is more of a 
subcommittee thing." 

Gibbons spokeswoman Amy Maier said Porter wanted to make sure 
the hearing would focus on the "blatant mismanagement" within 
the Energy and Interior Departments, and not be labeled another 
Nevada driven-initiative against Yucca Mountain, so Gibbons 
agreed not to attend. 

"It's a broader issue," Maier said. 

Berkley spokesman David Cherry would only say that she was 
asked not to participate. 

All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. 
*****************************************************************
 42 Las Vegas SUN: Senate energy bill has provisions for Nevada 

Today: June 29, 2005 at 11:18:41 PDT 

By Benjamin Grove <grove@lasvegassun.com> 

SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU 

WASHINGTON -- If Congress ultimately accepts the energy bill 
approved by the Senate on Tuesday, the legislation could spur 
more development of solar, wind and geothermal energy in Nevada, 
the state's senators said. 

The state has long been considered the perfect one in which to 
develop renewable energy. But obstacles -- mostly high 
development costs and production uncertainty risks -- have 
prevented energy farms from sprouting across the Nevada desert. 

The Nevada Legislature in 2001 set an ambitious plan that 
required 15 percent of the state's energy to be produced by 
renewable sources by 2013. The state was required to phase in 
the plan, with 7 percent renewable use by this year. 

But power companies, including Nevada Power, have not met the 
goals. Southern Nevada has no major renewable energy plant in 
development, except for a 50-megawatt solar plant near Boulder 
City, which has been beset by financial delays. 

A number of other solar and wind proposals have hit financing 
and technical snags, said Nevada Power vice president for 
generation and energy supply Roberto Denis said. Some analysts 
have said part of the problem was the company's low bond rating, 
which kept developers away. 

"Contracts have faltered and not come to fruition for various 
reasons," Denis said. 

But Nevada Power received 70 proposals since issuing a new 
request for proposal in May, Denis said. Federal tax credits 
like the ones found in the Senate bill would help drive 
development, he said. Nevada Power will do its part to get the 
state to its 2013 goal, he said. 

"It's not just a situation of I think we can -- I know we 
will," Denis said. 

The Senate bill extends a key production tax credit for new 
plants that are running by Jan. 1, 2009. 

That may be just the incentive utility companies need to 
encourage new development, renewable advocates said. 

The bill includes a renewable energy production tax credit that 
could prod developers to construct new geothermal plants, said 
Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy 
Association. The bill would allow developers to claim the tax 
credit for 10 years for all plants built and running by Jan. 1, 
2009. 

Geothermal plants mine heat from deep underground to produce 
energy. Nevada could hold the most geothermal energy in the 
nation, with untapped potential of 2,500 to 3,700 megawatts of 
electricity, according to the Energy Department. One megawatt 
powers roughly 1,000 homes. 

Currently Nevada's 14 geothermal plants produce roughly 240 
megawatts, which amounts to 9 percent of Northern Nevada's 
electricity, according to the department. 

"If you don't see 20 to 30 new plants (in Nevada) in the next 
three years, I would be surprised," Gawell said. 

The Senate bill also creates a federal loan guarantee program 
that would help make solar energy development more affordable, 
and that may be enough to lead to new solar plants in Nevada, 
said Rhone Resch, executive director of the Solar Energy 
Industries Association. 

"Nevada has some of the best solar resources in the world," he 
said. 

The proposed 50-megawatt solar plant that was to be developed 
outside Boulder City by Solargenix has been stalled as the 
company arranges for financing. A company spokesman was 
unavailable for comment. 

State officials hope Congress can ultimately agree to extend 
renewable tax credits and other incentives. Las Vegas energy 
consumption has risen 5 percent each year in recent years, said 
Pete Konesky, acting director of the Nevada State Office of 
Energy. 

Part of the development problem is a lack of transmission 
infrastructure where power sources exist -- in remote areas, 
Konesky said. He lamented that the state still has no major wind 
farm. 

"Anything we could get would be more than we have," he said. 

Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., praised the 
Senate version on Tuesday and said the legislation could pave 
the way for Nevada to lead the nation in renewable energy 
production. Reid has called Nevada "the Saudi Arabia of 
geothermal energy." 

Renewable energy plants would provide desperately needed jobs 
in rural Nevada, the lawmakers said. 

"This energy plan provides tremendous benefits to the people of 
Nevada," Ensign said. "It is not only a strong commitment to the 
development of renewable resources but new technology as well." 

All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. 
*****************************************************************
 43 Salt Lake Tribune: Nuclear execs tout Yucca, but Curtis says Utah
could get the waste 

Article Last Updated: 06/29/2005 07:56:03 AM 

U.S. legislators meet: Utah's speaker warns that the "temporary" 
Goshute site could be permanent 

By Thomas Burr The Salt Lake Tribune 

WASHINGTON - Nuclear energy industry officials told a group of 
lawmakers from around the nation Tuesday that making Yucca 
Mountain a permanent storage site for nuclear waste is an 
“important national priority,” and of “critical importance.” 

They touted the public's desire for more nuclear power plants 
and the safety of transporting and storing spent nuclear fuel. 
“Yucca Mountain is the path forward we see in dealing with this 
material,” said Steve Kraft, director of waste management for 
the Nuclear Energy Institute. 

But before the industry heads down that path, Utah House 
Speaker Greg Curtis pointed out, up to 44,000 tons of the waste 
may rest in Utah's West Desert, site of a proposed temporary 
storage facility on the Skull Valley reservation. 

“We can call it interim, but it could end up being 200 
years,” Curtis warned, noting that Private Fuel Storage, a 
consortium of energy companies pushing to store spent fuel rods 
on Goshute Indian land, is poised to get a 20-year license with 
an option to renew it for another 20. 

“Why is anybody naive enough to think they wouldn't just 
renegotiate it [for longer]?'' Curtis added. 

Tuesday's meeting with lawmakers from the National Conference 
of State Legislatures mainly dealt with Yucca Mountain, the 
proposed storage site for the nation's spent fuel that has been 
frequently delayed and may not operate for a decade, if ever. 

But Curtis occasionally turned the topic to PFS, which may 
serve as a storage site until Yucca is operation. Or, as Curtis 
fears, it could permanently hold nuclear waste. 

“In 40 years, most of us won't be here,” he said. “We're 
taking the problem and sticking it with the Goshutes. We're 
letting my children deal with it, and that's not a solution.” 	 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is poised to approve 
a license for the Goshute site this summer if Utah loses its 
last administrative bid to oppose the storage in Utah. 

Earl Easton, a senior-level adviser on transportation for the 
NRC, told the group there is no automatic renewal of a license, 
and the Goshute site, if approved, would have to apply for its 
renewal. Asked what would happen if the license wasn't renewed, 
Easton said he guessed the nuclear waste would have to be moved. 

“We've never come to that situation, to be honest,” he said. 
“I don't know of a situation where we've ever terminated a 
license.” 

Easton clarified later that most licenses haven't come up for 
renewal so there wasn't much history. 

Curtis, the only Utah representative at the meeting, said he 
is not a “fan” of the Yucca Mountain proposal, especially 
because it appears to him that the nation's plan for taking care 
of its nuclear waste is to find the least populated area and 
dump it. 

“The state ought to have a say in it,” Curtis said after the 
meeting. “If Nevada doesn't want Yucca we shouldn't force it 
down their throats. And if Utah doesn't want it, it shouldn't be 
shoved down our throats.” 

tburr@sltrib.com 

Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 44 Waste News: Radioactive waste cleanup concluded at two N.J. Superfund sites

[Wastenews.com

  
 June 29 -- The cleanup has been concluded at two New Jersey
Superfund sites contaminated with radioactive material, and the
federal government has determined that the area´s groundwater
meets federal drinking water standards.

 The Montclair/West Orange and Glen Ridge Radium sites in Essex
County, N.J., were contaminated with radioactive waste suspected
to have come from radium processing facilities that operated
there in the early 1900s. The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency added the sites to its National Priorities List in 1985.

A contractor used some of the contaminated soil as fill or mixed
it in with cement for sidewalks and foundations, the agency said.

 The EPA excavated and disposed of the radium-contaminated soil
and remediated the affected properties. The agency completed the
excavation in December, removing and disposing of about 220,000
cubic yards of soil and debris and filling in the areas with
clean soil.

 The EPA performed extensive studies to determine whether
groundwater at the sites was contaminated, and found that the
groundwater meets drinking water standards for radiological
contaminants and that radon levels in the groundwater are
consistent with regional background levels.
 
  Entire contents copyright 2005 by Crain Communications Inc.
All rights reserved.   
*****************************************************************
 45 NRC: Establishment of the U.S. Department of Energy as the Long-Term 
 
                        FR Doc 05-12849 
[Federal Register: June 29, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 124)]
[Notices]               
[Page 37448-37449]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access
[wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr29jn05-118]                         
 
Custodian of the Shirley Basin South Uranium Mill Tailings Site
in 
Shirley Basin, Wyoming and Termination of the Petrotomics
Company 
Source Materials License for the Shirley Basin South Site
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
ACTION: Notice of establishment of the U.S. Department of Energy
as the 
long-term custodian of the Shirley Basin South uranium mill
tailings 
site in Shirley Basin, Wyoming under the general license
provisions of 
10 CFR part 40.28, and termination of the Petrotomics Company
specific 
Source Materials License SUA-551 for the Shirley Basin South
site.
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
------
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Rick Weller, Project Manager,
Fuel 
Cycle Facilities Branch, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and
Safeguards, 
Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Telephone:
(301) 415-
7287; fax number: (301) 415-5955; e-mail: rmw2@nrc.gov.
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Introduction
On March 25, 2005, the Petrotomics Company (Petrotomics) 
transferred ownership of the Shirley Basin South uranium mill
tailings 
site in Shirley Basin, Wyoming to the U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE), 
as required by 10 CFR part 40, appendix A, criterion 11, prior
to 
termination of Petrotomics' specific license. Subsequently, by
letter 
dated May 12, 2005, the DOE submitted the final Long-Term
Surveillance 
Plan (LTSP) for the Shirley Basin South site for review by the
U.S. 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). A correction to one page of
the 
LTSP was provided to the NRC in a DOE letter dated June 1, 2005.
 
Based 
on the review of the LTSP, the NRC has determined that the LTSP 
satisfies the requirements in 10 CFR part 40, appendix A,
criterion 12, 
and Sec.  40.28 for the long-term surveillance of a tailings
disposal 
site. Accordingly, notice is hereby given that the NRC has
accepted the 
LTSP for the Shirley Basin South site. This acceptance
establishes the 
DOE as the long-term custodian and caretaker of the Shirley
Basin South 
site under the general license specified in 10 CFR 40.28. In a 
concurrent action, the NRC has terminated Petrotomics' specific
Source 
Materials License SUA-551 for the Shirley Basin South site.
 
These 
actions complete all requirements for closure of the Shirley
Basin 
South site under the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act
of 
1978, as amended. These actions do not require an environmental 
assessment as they are categorically excluded under 10 CFR 
51.22(c)(11).
II. Further Information
The NRC has prepared correspondence which documents the
actions 
that establish the DOE as the long-term custodian of the Shirley
Basin 
South site under the general license specified in 10 CFR 40.28
and 
terminate Petrotomics' specific Source Materials License SUA-551
for 
the Shirley Basin South site. In accordance with 10 CFR 2.390 of
the 
NRC's ``Rules of Practice,'' copies of this correspondence, as
well as 
the Shirley Basin South LTSP submitted by DOE letters dated May
12 and 
June 1, 2005, are available electronically at the NRC's
Electronic 
Reading Room at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. From
this 
site, you can access the NRC's Agencywide Document Access and 
Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and image files
of NRC's 
public documents. The ADAMS accession numbers for the documents
related 
to this notice are listed below. If you do not have access to
ADAMS or 
if there are problems in accessing the documents located in
ADAMS, 
contact the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) Reference staff at
1-800-
397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov.
Documents Related to this Notice:
1. Letter dated May 12, 2005, from T. Pauling, DOE, to G.
Janosko, 
NRC, submitting the final LTSP for the Shirley Basin South site. 
ML051370527.
 
2. Letter dated June 1, 2005, from T. Pauling, DOE, to G.
Janosko, 
NRC, submitting a correction to one page of the final LTSP for
the 
Shirley Basin South site. ML051610322.
3. Letter dated June 8, 2005, from G. Janosko, NRC, to T.
Pauling, 
DOE, accepting the final LTSP for the Shirley Basin South site. 
ML051660316.
 
4. Letter dated June 8, 2005, from G. Janosko, NRC, to S.
Pfaff, 
Petrotomics Company, terminating Petrotomics' specific Source
Materials 
License SUA-
 
[[Page 37449]]
551 for the Shirley Basin South site. ML051660331.
These documents may also be viewed electronically on the
public 
computers located at the NRC's PDR, O 1 F21, One White Flint
North, 
11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. The PDR reproduction 
contractor will copy documents for a fee.
 
Dated in Rockville, Maryland, this 17th day of June 2005.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Richard Weller,
Senior Project Manager, Fuel Cycle Facilities Branch, Division
of Fuel 
Cycle Safety and Safeguards, Office of Nuclear Material Safety
and 
Safeguards.
 
[FR Doc. 05-12849 Filed 6-28-05; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 46  Las Vegas SUN: USGS scientist denies falsifying Yucca Mountain
                              data 
Return to the referring page.
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
                          Las Vegas SUN

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Today: June 29, 2005 at 12:38:56 PDT 
USGS scientist denies falsifying Yucca Mountain data 
By ERICA WERNER
 ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON (AP) - A scientist at the center of a controversy
over potential document falsification on the Yucca Mountain
nuclear waste dump insisted before Congress on Wednesday that he
did not alter paperwork on the project. 
"I have never falsified any documents related to Yucca Mountain
or any other project," Joseph Hevesi, a United States Geological
Survey hydrologist in Sacramento, Calif., told a House
Government Reform subcommittee. 
The panel is investigating e-mails written by Hevesi and other
scientists that, according to critics, seem to suggest they
changed work to reach a predetermined conclusion. The existence
of the e-mails, written between 1998 and 2000, was made public
by the Energy Department in March. 
Hevesi was appearing under subpoena before the panel chaired by
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev. 
Before testifying, the scientist, a thin, gray-haired main in a
dark gray suit, sat alone at the witness table with his hands
clasped, occasionally shifting in his seat, as Porter read
portions of e-mails he had written. 
Among them: "In the end I keep track of two sets of files, the
ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually
used." QA refers to quality assurance. 
Explaining that message, Hevesi said that the only difference
between the two sets was that the set for quality assurance had
a header field. 
"All the numbers in those files are identical, so in essence
they are identical files," Hevesi said. 
He said he never felt pressure from his managers to reach a
specific result, and defended the work he and his colleagues
were doing. 
"I feel the work is sound, and I realize it doesn't seem that
way with these e-mails," Hevesi told lawmakers. "The e-mails I
characterize, myself, as being water-cooler talk, and I would
not do that again in hindsight." 
Hevesi and others were studying how water moved through the
desert site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas where the government
wants to store 77,000 tons of commercial and defense nuclear
waste for at least 10,000 years. The USGS validated Energy
Department conclusions that water seepage was relatively slow,
so radiation would be less likely to escape. 
A planned completion date of 2010 for the Yucca project was
recently abandoned by Energy Department officials. 
The e-mails are under investigation by the inspectors general of
the Energy Department and the U.S. Geological Survey, with help
from the FBI. Hevesi said the ongoing investigations were the
reason he refused to meet voluntarily with the subcommittee. 
Hevesi said he did feel pressure to meet deadlines and did wish
for more resources. But he described his frustration as a
natural conflict between the approach of scientists and the
approach of project managers. 
"There were deadlines that would require a more simplified
approach to solving a scientific issue, but that's always going
to be the case," Hevesi said. "As a scientist, we have a
tendency to put too many resources into a problem because we're
after the right answer, which is the true answer, and in many
cases you can never get to that point." 
"I placed things in e-mails out of emotional response," Hevesi
said. 
He encountered skepticism from Porter, who like the rest of
Nevada's congressional delegation is trying to stop the Yucca
project. Other subcommittee members were more sympathetic. 
"Even members of Congress, if someone had to look at all our
e-mails they might have a field day," said Rep. Elijah Cummings,
D-Md. 
-- 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Return to the referring page.
 Las Vegas SUN main page

-----------------------------------------------------------------
               Questions or problems? Click here.

 
         All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
                                 

*****************************************************************
 47 Seattle Times: Politics: Hanford probe urged in Congress

Wednesday, June 29, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
 	 	
By Shannon Dininny
 		
The Associated Press
 	 	 		 		
YAKIMA  In the latest embarrassing setback to the federal
government's largest construction project, a congressional
subcommittee is calling for an investigation into a
multibillion-dollar waste-treatment plant at south-central
Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation.
 
Paul Anderson, a spokesman for the General Accounting Office,
confirmed yesterday that the Republican chairman, Rep. David
Hobson of Ohio, and ranking Democrat, Rep. Peter Visclosky of
Indiana, on the House appropriations subcommittee on energy and
water requested an audit of the project in a letter dated June
24.
 
Meanwhile, U.S. Department of Energy officials said yesterday
they have halted construction on parts of the plant most
affected by concerns about seismic instability, in light of a
review released earlier this year.
 
There are legal, enforceable milestones that require that the
plant be built by 2009, and "we are prepared to enforce those
milestones unless the Department of Energy submits a change
request that clearly justifies the need for any delays," Gov.
Christine Gregoire said in a statement.
 
The plant is being built to treat millions of gallons of
radioactive waste left from Cold War-era nuclear-weapons
production.
 
Anderson declined to release additional details or the letter.
 
However, the review is likely to focus on the exploding cost of
the project  a point that has been a continuing source of alarm
for the Energy Department, which manages cleanup at the highly
contaminated Hanford site.
 
The cost of construction was estimated at $4.35 billion before
the contract was awarded in 2000. Already, the cost has grown
more than 30 percent  to $5.8 billion.
 
Earlier this year, the Energy Department began to study the
plant's design and cost estimate after a scientific review said
that the force of the ground movements at the plant site during
a severe earthquake would be 38 percent greater than previously
estimated.
 
In 2002, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board raised
concerns that the Energy Department had failed to adequately
investigate the impact a severe earthquake might have on the
plant. The Energy Department had gathered seismic data from the
entire 586-square-mile Hanford reservation to determine the
impact such a quake might have, but it did not conduct a seismic
investigation of the plant site itself.
 
The agency has notified Congress that the project's cost is
expected to grow by at least an additional 10 percent, said
Bruce Carnes, associate deputy secretary. But the Energy
Department will not speculate on a final cost estimate or the
schedule before a new review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
is completed, he said.
 
For 40 years, the Hanford reservation made plutonium for the
nation's nuclear-weapons arsenal. Today, work there centers on a
$50 billion to $60 billion cleanup, to be finished by 2035.
 
The waste-treatment plant will use a process called
vitrification to turn the waste into glass logs for permanent
disposal.
 	 		 		
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
*****************************************************************
 48 DOE: Federal Energy Management Advisory Committee
 
                        FR Doc 05-12819 
[Federal Register: June 29, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 124)] 
[Notices] [Page 37379-37380] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29jn05-50]                         
 
AGENCY: Department of Energy.
 
ACTION: Notice of open meeting.
 
SUMMARY: This notice announces an open meeting of the Federal 
Energy Management Advisory Committee (FEMAC). The Federal 
Advisory Committee Act (Public Law 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires 
that these meetings be announced in the Federal Register to allow 
for public participation. This notice announces the tenth FEMAC 
public meeting, an advisory committee established under Executive 
Order 13123--``Greening the Government through Efficient Energy 
Management.''
 
DATES: Monday, August 15, 2005; 6 to 7 p.m.
 
ADDRESSES: Long Beach Convention Center, 300 East Ocean 
Boulevard, Room 101, Long Beach, CA 90802.
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Rick Klimkos, Designated Federal 
Officer, Office of Federal Energy Management Programs, U.S. 
Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, 
DC 20585; (202) 586-8287.
 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Meeting: To seek input 
and feedback from interested parties on working group 
recommendations to meet mandated Federal energy management goals.
 
Tentative Agenda: Agenda will include discussions on the 
following topics: [cir] Update on FEMAC Working Groups.
 
[cir] Discussion on FEMAC priorities.
 
[cir] Open discussion with public.
 
Public Participation: In keeping with procedures, members of the 
public are welcome to observe the business of the
 
[[Page 37380]] Federal Energy Management Advisory Committee. If 
you would like to file a written statement with the committee, 
you may do so either before or after the meeting. If you would 
like to make oral statements regarding any of these items on the 
agenda, you should contact Rick Klimkos at (202) 586-8287 or 
rick.klimkos@ee.doe.gov (e-mail). You must make your request for 
an oral statement at least 5 business days before the meeting. 
Members of the public will be heard in the order in which they 
sign up at the beginning of the meeting. Reasonable provision 
will be made to include the scheduled oral statements on the 
agenda. The chair of the committee will make every effort to hear 
the views of all interested parties. The chair will conduct the 
meeting to facilitate the orderly conduct of business.
 
Minutes: The minutes of the meeting will be available for public 
review and copying within 30 days at the Freedom of Information 
Public Reading Room; Room 1E-190; Forrestal Building; 1000 
Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 4 
p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays.
 
Issued in Washington, DC on June 23, 2005.
 
Rachel M. Samuel, Deputy Committee Management Officer.
 
[FR Doc. 05-12819 Filed 6-28-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 49 Tri-City Herald: Program to pay injured Hanford employees working, officials say 

This story was published Wednesday, June 29th, 2005
 
By Mary Hopkin, Herald staff writer 

U.S. Department of Labor representatives said the agency already
has made significant progress in compensating injured Hanford
workers. 

Since the Department of Labor took over the troubled portion of
a workers' compensation program for the Department of Energy
nuclear weapon sites last fall, it has approved payments of
$29.8 million to Hanford workers. 

"Most of those payments have been to the survivors of deceased
workers," said John Vance, chief of the department's Washington,
D.C.-based branch of outreach and technical assistance, during a
Tuesday town hall meeting at the Red Lion Hanford House in
Richland to discuss changes in the program. 

The program provides up to $250,000 for physical impairment and
wage loss to workers who suffered occupational illnesses from
exposures to toxic substances or radiation at the Hanford
nuclear reservation, which produced plutonium for the nation's
nuclear weapons program. 

The compensation program also provides up to $175,000 for
certain family members if the worker has died. 

But after sitting through a 11Ãš2-hour PowerPoint program
outlining the new rules, Lance Anderson of Pasco didn't have any
more faith about receiving one of those checks. 

Anderson, who has cancer, already has had his claim rejected
once under the program's Part B, which offers $150,000 plus
medical care to Hanford workers who had cancer caused by
exposure to radiation or a rare lung disease caused by exposure
to beryllium. 

Anderson said his claim was rejected because claim evaluators
said it didn't meet the criteria that "it was at least as likely
as not" that his cancer was caused by radiation exposure at
Hanford. 

Vance said Anderson's claim could be re-evaluated under the
portion of the program transferred to the Department of Labor
late last year, which is called Part E. It offers workers'
compensation payments to employees harmed by a wide range of
toxic substances, including radiation, asbestos and heavy
metals. 

Rachel Leiton, chief of the department's Washington, D.C.-based
branch of policy regulations and procedures, said the new rules
will allow for a broader range of cancers to be considered. 

Leiton said the department will create lists of what toxic
chemicals were stored at the site, when they were there and
where they were kept, to help them evaluate specific cases. 

The department also will consult medical experts to create lists
of what types of toxins would cause covered illnesses. 

Vance said the department will help collect evidence, but
ultimately the burden of proof rests with the workers, like
Anderson. 

"Any information they have they need to share," he said. 

The department will have a second town hall meeting today at 1
p.m. at the Richland Red Lion Hanford House to go over the new
program rules and answer questions. 

© 2005 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
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 50 DHHS: CDC: Rocky Flats Exposure petition

                        FR Doc 05-12832 
[Federal Register: June 29, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 124)] 
[Notices] [Page 37410] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29jn05-76]                         

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
 

Decision To Evaluate a Petition To Designate a Class of Employees 
at the Rocky Flats Plant, Golden, CO, To Be Included in the 
Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention (CDC), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 
ACTION: Notice.

SUMMARY: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gives 
notice as required by 42 CFR 83.12(e) of a decision to evaluate a 
petition to designate a class of employees at the Rocky Flats 
Plant, in Golden, Colorado, to be included in the Special 
Exposure Cohort under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness 
Compensation Program Act of 2000. 

The initial proposed definition for the class being evaluated, 
subject to revision as warranted by the evaluation, is as 
follows: Facility: Rocky Flats Plant.

    Location: Golden, Colorado.

    Job Titles and/or Job Duties: All represented members, past, 
present, and current, of USWA Local 8031 and its predecessors.

    Period of Employment: April 1952 to February 15, 2005. FOR 
FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Larry Elliott, Director, Office of 
Compensation Analysis and Support, National Institute for 
Occupational Safety and Health, 4676 Columbia Parkway, MS C-46, 
Cincinnati, OH 45226, Telephone 513-533-6800 (this is not a 
toll-free number). Information requests can also be submitted by 
e-mail to OCAS@CDC.GOV. John Howard, Director, National Institute 
for Occupational Safety and Health, Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention. [FR Doc. 05-12832 Filed 6-28-05; 8:45 am] BILLING 
CODE 4163-19-P
    
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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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