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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 [NYTr] Iran Defends Its Right to Pursue Nuclear Technology
2 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Students: Restart Uranium Program
3 Reuters: Iran tells EU not to demand an end to nuclear work
4 AFP: Seoul warns against expectations of quick fix in North Korean n
5 MSN-Mainichi Daily News: Korea unhappy about facing Japan in revived
6 BBC: New push for North Korea progress
7 Guardian Unlimited: Taku Urges Diplomacy in N.Korea Nuke Talks
8 Xinhua: ROK, DPRK reach consensus on denuclearization
9 Xinhua: ROK delegation arrives in Beijing for six-party talks
10 Xinhua: DPRK raps US, Japan for pressure before six-party talks
11 Xinhua: Will new round break deadlock of nuclear talks?
12 Guardian Unlimited: Officials Attempt to End N.Korean Impasse
13 Korea Times: 'NK Won't Abandon Nukes Unless Security Is Assured'
14 Reuters: Issues at six-country talks on nuclear-free N.Korea
15 Reuters: Two Koreas call for substantial progress at talks
16 Reuters: Five facts about six-party talks on North Korea
17 Guardian Unlimited: North Korea Won't Hold Japan Nuke Talks
18 Powerless Americans Expect the Worst
19 US: [progchat_action] Fw: GLOBAL U.S. EXPANSION OF "MISSILE
20 US: WorldNetDaily: Why is Bush trashing nuke-safety regime?
21 PRAVDA.Ru: Russia to destroy its chemical weapons on its own -
22 Bellona: Putin against foreign money for Russian NGOs and public
23 Daily Times: Nobody can speculate on safety of Pakistan’s nuclear as
24 Japan Times Online: Meeting China's 'challenge'
25 Japan Times: Strangelove encounters of a MAD scientist kind
26 Scotsman.com News: Deal is 'answer to nuclear crisis'
27 Zaobao: Zhu Chenghu's blunder on nuclear bombs
28 The Observer: 'I don't blame them but I hope they mourn the dead'
NUCLEAR REACTORS
29 [NYTr] With Bush's Help, GE Courts Indian PM, Nuke Industry
30 US: Re: [HD-L] The Safe Friendly Peaceful Atom-Nuclear Power
31 US: Santa Maria Times: The Safe Friendly Peaceful Atom-Nuclear Power
32 Times of India: Case for private sector nuclear power
33 US: APP.COM: Plant's fate tied to dollars
34 US: APP.COM: Oyster Creek relicensing bid needs revising
35 Japan Times: More nuclear plant data leaked via file-swapping progra
36 US: RedNova News: Witness to a Nuclear Revival
37 US: RedNova News: A New Lease on Life
38 US: Reuters: Exelon seeks to extend N.J. Oyster Crk nuke permit
39 Reuters: With Bush's help, GE courts Indian PM, nuke sector
NUCLEAR SECURITY
40 US: NorthJersey.com: Nuke panel criticizes lab for misplacing uraniu
NUCLEAR SAFETY
41 Taipei Times: 'Shockwave' will unsettle you with the truth of nuclea
42 ANSA.it: Greens protest 'uranium bullets'
43 US: United Press International: DU exposure not linked to illness
44 US: Lew Rockwell: Cynicism and the Use of Depleted Uranium
45 The Observer: Children of Hiroshima
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
46 US: Bradenton Herald: Tallevast home values still in limbo
47 AU ABC: NT senator denies nuclear fuel rods destined for dump
48 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Data discrepancy stops shipment to Hanfo
49 Las Vegas RJ: Porter: DOE didn't quite comply
50 Brampton Guardian: Company wants to incinerate radioactive waste
51 US: Tri-City Herald: Study errors halt waste shipment
52 Congressman Jon Porter: DOE PRODUCES CERTAIN YUCCA DOCUMENTS
53 US: ABQJOURNAL: State Agrees With Changes To Deal with LES
54 US: DenverPost.com: Rules tougher since last uranium boom
55 US: DenverPost.com: New rush for uranium
56 US: Boston Globe: Maine's most wanted: junkyard polluter
PEACE
57 Japan Times: Scientists meet in Hiroshima to battle nuclear weapons
58 Korea Times: Engagement to Sustain Peace in N-E Asia
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
59 Tri-Valley Herald: Feds extend UC contract for lab
60 Boston Globe: The Manhattan Project's 'secret town' -
61 Greeley Tribune: Senators rally for benefits for workers at Rocky Fl
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 [NYTr] Iran Defends Its Right to Pursue Nuclear Technology
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 10:31:32 -0500 (CDT)
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Reuters via Yahoo - July 23, 2005
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=2&u=/nm/20050723/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_dc
Iran tells EU not to demand an end to nuclear work
TEHRAN (Reuters) -Iran said on Saturday it had delivered a message to
European foreign ministers in London last week, telling them not to try to
solve a nuclear dispute by asking Tehran to surrender atomic technology.
An EU troika of Britain, Germany and France has been negotiating with Tehran
to try to defuse a crisis over Iran's nuclear program. The EU group has
asked Iran to stop making nuclear fuel in return for economic incentives.
Iran says the nuclear fuel is destined for power stations rather than
warheads, and argues it has every right to continue making enriched uranium.
The EU trio has until late July or early August to present Iran with a set
of final proposals aimed at ending the dispute.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said a letter from Iran's chief
nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani had been presented to the trio's foreign
ministers before the proposals are submitted.
"We clarified to the Europeans that if the minimum requirements expected by
the Islamic Republic are not taken into account, we will not accept their
proposals," Asefi told a news conference.
When asked what the "minimum requirements" expected by Iran were, the
official said: "Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear technology."
Iran insists it is entitled to turn the uranium it mines in its central
desert into nuclear fuel and that there is no way it will give this up as a
diplomatic gesture.
Rohani gave an interview to the Kayhan daily on Saturday, saying Iran
already had a "significant" number of centrifuges, ready to start making
nuclear fuel, should Iran decide to do so. Centrifuges enrich uranium by
spinning it at supersonic speed.
Copyright ) 2005 Reuters Limited.
*
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2 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Students: Restart Uranium Program
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Sunday July 24, 2005 2:46 AM
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - More than 13,000 Iranian students and
academics signed petitions urging Iranian president Mohammad
Khatami to resume the country's suspended uranium enrichment
efforts, state-run radio reported Saturday.
The petition said prolonging the suspension - done at the behest
of international negotiators - was only pleasing those who
``cannot tolerate Iran's scientific triumphs.''
It called on the government ``to defend our scientific dignity
and national pride.''
But Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said
Saturday that the government has still not fixed a date for
resuming its nuclear program.
The petition emerged a day after Iran's president-elect, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, visited the uranium conversion center in Isfahan
and the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in his first direct
look at the country's nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad and Khatami met Saturday to discuss nuclear
enrichment issues, an indication of the significance of nuclear
technology in the incoming president's agenda, state-run radio
reported, without giving details of the talks.
Iran suspended its nuclear program last November to avoid
possible U.N. sanctions, but Iranian officials including
Ahmadinejad have vowed to restart some operations eventually.
The United States claims Iran seeks to develop nuclear bombs,
while Tehran says its program is aimed only to produce
electricity.
Some Europeans have worried that Ahmadinejad - who won the
elections with the backing of hard-line elements of Iran's
Islamic regime - could take a tougher stance in negotiations
than the reform administration he is replacing.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
3 Reuters: Iran tells EU not to demand an end to nuclear work
Sat Jul 23, 2005 4:52 AM ET
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Saturday it had delivered a
message to European foreign ministers in London last week,
telling them not to try to solve a nuclear dispute by asking
Tehran to surrender atomic technology.
An EU troika of Britain, Germany and France has been negotiating
with Tehran to try to defuse a crisis over Iran's nuclear
programme. The EU group has asked Iran to stop making nuclear
fuel in return for economic incentives.
Iran says the nuclear fuel is destined for power stations rather
than warheads, and argues it has every right to continue making
enriched uranium.
The EU trio has until late July or early August to present Iran
with a set of final proposals aimed at ending the dispute.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said a letter from
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani had been presented
to the trio's foreign ministers before the proposals are
submitted.
"We clarified to the Europeans that if the minimum requirements
expected by the Islamic Republic are not taken into account, we
will not accept their proposals," Asefi told a news conference.
When asked what the "minimum requirements" expected by Iran
were, the official said: "Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear
technology."
Iran insists it is entitled to turn the uranium it mines in its
central desert into nuclear fuel and that there is no way it
will give this up as a diplomatic gesture.
Rohani gave an interview to the Kayhan daily on Saturday, saying
Iran already had a "significant" number of centrifuges, ready to
start making nuclear fuel, should Iran decide to do so.
Centrifuges enrich uranium by spinning it at supersonic speed.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
4 AFP: Seoul warns against expectations of quick fix in North Korean nuclear talks
Saturday July 23, 2:20 PM
Photo: AFP
BEIJING (AFP) - South Korea's chief delegate for six-party
talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program
warned against expecting a swift resolution to the nearly
three-year stand off.
Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon said before leaving South
Korea for Beijing that Seoul was keen to see progress on the
issue during the fourth round of talks in the Chinese capital,
due to open Tuesday.
"It could be a long process. We don't know when the talks will
end," he said.
"At the six-party talks, we will focus our efforts on finding a
clue to laying the groundwork for the solution of the North
Korean nuclear issue."
Song's North Korean counterpart Kim Gye-Gwan arrived in Beijing
Friday, while Christopher Hill, US assistant secretary of state
for East Asia-Pacific affairs, was due to arrive Sunday.
North Korea was expected to hold bilateral talks with host China
in Beijing Saturday, but it was not immediately known if the
talks had taken place or what was to be discussed.
China has urged all sides to make "substantive progress" in the
talks and to bring "flexibility and sincerity" to the table.
North Korea agreed last week to rejoin the talks, which have
been stalled for over a year due to Pyongyang's concerns over a
"hostile" US policy it says is aimed at toppling the regime of
Stalinist leader Kim Jong-Il.
Pyongyang announced in February that it had succeeded in
developing nuclear weapons, prompting fears of an imminent
nuclear test and jolting diplomatic efforts to resume
negotiations.
In the past few days, North Korea has laid out a series of
demands for the end of its nuclear weapons program, calling on
the United States to normalize relations with Pyongyang and give
assurances that it does not intend to attack.
Officials from North Korea, known by its official title as the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), have called on
Washington to remove the Stalinist nation from a list of state
sponsors of terrorism and lift sanctions against it.
"Not a single nuclear weapon will be needed for us if the US
nuclear threat is removed and its hostile policy of 'bringing
down the DPRK's system' is withdrawn," a North Korean spokesman
was quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency as saying.
"It is important that the US changes its hostile policy toward
the DPRK and has the willingness to coexist with DPRK," the
spokesman added.
Pyongyang has also called for the establishment of a mechanism
to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which only ended in an
armistice -- leaving North Korea technically still at war with
the United States and South Korea.
The United States responded to the initial demands by urging
North Korea not to set any preconditions before the talks even
start.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said North Korea should
make the "strategic decision" to abandon its nuclear weapons
program for better relations with the United States and the rest
of the international community.
"If they make that decision, they can start to realize better
relations with the international community and start to realize
some of the benefits of coming into the international
community," he said.
"They need to make the strategic decision. But no one should be
coming into the talks with any preconditions," McClellan told
reporters.
After more than a year of stalemate, North Korea agreed earlier
this month to return to the six-way talks, which also involve
South Korea, Japan, Russia and China.
It broke off discussions in June 2004 after three inconclusive
rounds, rejecting a US offer then on the table which required an
up-front pledge to dismantle all nuclear programs before getting
energy and other assistance.
North Korea instead wanted a step-by-step approach, fearing it
could come under attack by the United States.
The nuclear standoff began after the United States in late 2002
accused North Korea of operating a covert uranium enrichment
program in violation of a 1994 nuclear freeze agreement that was
subsequently scuppered.
Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
*****************************************************************
5 MSN-Mainichi Daily News: Korea unhappy about facing Japan in revived nuclear talks
SEOUL -- North Korea said Saturday it "feels no need" to sit
down directly with Japan at revived six-country nuclear
disarmament talks because Tokyo is insisting on discussing the
North's past abduction of Japanese citizens.
North Korea's comments came as South Korea's top negotiator,
Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, left for Beijing to
attend the talks, set to open Tuesday after being stalled for 13
months.
North Korea "feels no need to sit face-to-face with Japan, a
black-hearted filibuster against the talks," official North
Korean newspaper Minju Joson said in an editorial, criticizing
Tokyo's intention to raise the abduction issue as a plan "to
meet its own interests."
It was not clear from the editorial, carried by the North's
official Korean Central News Agency, whether the North was
refusing to attend the nuclear talks if they include Japan _ or
saying it does not want to meet with Japanese officials on the
sidelines of the talks, as Tokyo has desired.
"If the parties concerned are to bring into bloom a beautiful
flower called the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, they
should root out the poisonous plant harmful to it," the
newspaper said, blaming Japan for lack of progress in the talks'
previous rounds.
In Tokyo on Thursday, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's
spokesman, Yu Kameoka, said Japan will still press the abduction
issue despite the North's objections.
"It may be Japan has been saying things North Korea is not so
happy to hear," Kameoka said. "But we will bring up the
kidnapping issue."
North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese in the 1970s and
'80s. In 2002 it allowed five to return to Japan, saying the
other eight have died.
However, Japan has demanded proof of the deaths, as well as
information on other missing Japanese believed to have been
abducted by the North.
China has hosted three rounds of inconclusive six-country talks
on North Korea's nuclear program since 2003. The negotiations
involve Japan, China, the two Koreas, the United States and
Russia.
In February, the North claimed it had nuclear weapons and has
since taken steps that would allow it to produce more
weapons-grade plutonium.
North Korea's delegation to the talks, led by Vice Foreign
Minister Kim Kye Gwan, arrived in Beijing on Friday. The other
delegates were expected to arrive over the weekend. (AP)
July 23, 2005
Copyright 2004-2005 THE MAINICHI NEWSPAPERS. All
*****************************************************************
6 BBC: New push for North Korea progress
Last Updated: Sunday, 24 July, 2005
[Yongbyon plant, North Korea]
N Korea blamed US aggression for the suspension of talks
The US chief negotiator on North Korea's nuclear programme says
he has come to this week's six-nation talks in the spirit of
making real progress.
Christopher Hill was speaking on his arrival in China for the
latest round of negotiations.
The talks, aimed at persuading North Korea to stop developing
nuclear weapons, begin in Beijing on Tuesday.
Earlier, Chinese state media reported that officials from North
and South Korea had held a preliminary meeting.
North Korea agreed to resume the six-nation talks earlier this
month, more than a year after it suspended them, blaming US
aggression.
Russia, China and Japan are also involved in the discussions.
'Measurable progress'
Mr Hill said he was deeply committed to the talks.
"I wouldn't expect this to be the last set of negotiations ... we
would like to make some measurable progress, progress we can
build on for a subsequent round of negotiations," he said.
"We come here in a real spirit of trying to make some real
progress."
South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon echoed the
comments after meeting his northern counterpart.
"We shared the view that participants in the talks should produce
substantial progress and come up with a framework for the
realisation of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula," Yonhap news
agency quoted him as saying.
Pyongyang has been making calls for a peace treaty with the US in
the days leading up to the talks.
But Washington has been refusing to talk about any kind of pact
until North Korea agrees to shut down its nuclear weapons
programme.
The US has indicated that the country could face further
sanctions if it fails to resolve the nuclear crisis, although it
has stressed that it does not intend to attack the North.
*****************************************************************
7 Guardian Unlimited: Taku Urges Diplomacy in N.Korea Nuke Talks
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Sunday July 24, 2005 6:16 AM
By HANS GREIMEL
Associated Press Writer
TOKYO (AP) - Japan will discuss the fate of Japanese citizens
abducted to North Korea at nuclear disarmament talks this week
but should not endanger the weapons negotiations by pushing the
abduction issue too far, a Japanese official said Sunday.
``I think Japan will bring up this issue,'' Taku Yamasaki,
former vice president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party,
said on TV Asahi's Sunday Project news talk show. ``But it
depends on the circumstances. If we destroy these talks, we
can't resolve both these problems, the nuclear issue or the
abductions.''
The fate of several Japanese kidnapped to North Korea decades
ago has been a sticking point as the countries prepare for
six-nation talks in Beijing aimed at eliminating North Korea's
nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang - brought to the negotiating
table through months of delicate diplomacy - has objected to
discussing anything outside the nuclear agenda and says the
abduction issue has already been resolved.
North Korea, which kidnapped the Japanese decades ago to use as
language teachers for spies, said Wednesday it would not deal
with Japan at all during the next round and blamed Tokyo for
``trying to change the direction and atmosphere of the six-party
talks.''
Yu Kameoka, a spokesman for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
said afterward that Japan still intends to pursue the issue and
``hear what North Korea thinks.''
Ahead of the nuclear talks, which resume Tuesday after a
13-month hiatus, Tokyo reportedly dispatched a diplomat to
revive negotiations over the kidnappings.
North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese in the 1970s and
80s. It allowed five of them to return to Japan, saying the
other eight died. Japan is demanding proof of the deaths, as
well as information on other cases of missing Japanese.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
8 Xinhua: ROK, DPRK reach consensus on denuclearization
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2005-07-24 18:12:34
BEIJING, July 24 (Xinhuanet) -- The Republic of Korea (ROK)
and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) here Sunday
reached a consensus on setting up a framework for the
denuclearization in the Korean Peninsula, according to a senior
ROK diplomat.
Following a 100-minute meeting with his DPRK counterpart Kim
Kye-gwan Sunday morning, Song Min-soon, deputy foreign minister
and head of the ROK delegation for the upcoming six-party talks,
told a press conference that the ROK and DPRK reached consensus
onmany issues during the meeting, but declined to give more
details.
It was the first meeting between the ROK and the DPRK after
their arrival in Beijing for the talks, which is scheduled to
open on Tuesday.
The ROK and DPRK decided to continue such bilateral talks
and cooperate for substantial results in the six-party talks,
which involves China, DPRK, the United States, ROK, Russia and
Japan, Song said.
The ROK delegation will hold bilateral contact with the
other four delegations, according to Song.
The DPRK and ROK delegations arrived here respectively on
Friday and Saturday.
The US delegation arrived here Sunday afternoon while
Japanese and Russian delegations are expected to arrive Sunday
evening and Monday morning respectively.
Upon the arrival of all the five delegations, the Chinese
side will host a banquet in honor of them Monday evening at the
Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, the venue for the previous three
rounds of six-party talks.
The new round of the talks will begin at 9:00 am Tuesday at
the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse.
The fourth round of six-party talks, which was originally
scheduled to be held last September, has been postponed due to
various reasons.
The resumption of the talks has rekindled hope for a
breakthrough to the nuclear dismantlement deadlock, local
observers said.
The Korean Peninsula nuclear issue broke out in the 1990s.
From 2003 to 2004, the six countries held three rounds of talks
in Beijing, but no substantial progress was made. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
9 Xinhua: ROK delegation arrives in Beijing for six-party talks
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2005-07-23 12:55:56
[Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Korea (ROK) Song
Min-soon, head of the ROK delegation,arrived in Beijing Saturday
morning to attend the six-party talks on the Korean Peninsular
nuclear issue.]
Deputy Foreign Minister of ROK Song Min-soon arrived in Beijing
Saturday morning to attend the six-party talks on the Korean
Peninsular nuclear issue. (Xinhua)
BEIJING, July 23 (Xinhuanet) -- Deputy Foreign Minister of
the Republic of Korea (ROK) Song Min-soon, head of the ROK
delegation,arrived in Beijing Saturday morning to attend the
six-party talks on the Korean Peninsular nuclear issue scheduled
to open next Tuesday.
"During the upcoming talks, we will make every effort to lay
a foundation for solving the nuclear issue," Song Min-soon said
at the Capital Airport in Beijing. Song came here in the
accompany of some ROK delegation members. Other members of the
delegation are expected to arrive in Beijing Sunday.
The delegation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
(DPRK)arrived in Beijing Friday afternoon. The United States
delegation is expected to arrive Sunday, and the delegations of
Japan and Russia will come next Monday.
It is reported that the ROK promised to play an active role
in the new round of talks and closely cooperate with other
participants to seek substantial progress. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
10 Xinhua: DPRK raps US, Japan for pressure before six-party talks
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2005-07-23 23:33:28
PYONGYANG, July 23 (Xinhuanet) -- The Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (DPRK) Saturday condemned the United States
for labeling Pyongyang as a "nuclear criminal." It also warned
Japan not to unsettle the forthcoming six-party talks by raising
the "human rights issue."
In a recent statement, the US House of Representatives
charged that "the DPRK threatens the stability in Northeast Asia
as a 'nuclear criminal'," said the official Korean Central News
Agency (KCNA) in a commentary.
"It is contrary to an atmosphere of dialogue for the US to
point an accusing finger at its dialogue partner when the
six-party talks are expected to be resumed soon," the KCNA said.
If Washington really wants to settle the nuclear issue
through talks, it must show a trustworthy, sincere attitude to
make conditions mature for the resumption of the six-party
talks, according to the commentary.
Meanwhile, the KCNA countered the remarks by Japanese
Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura that the six-party talks
should take up the "human rights situation" in the DPRK.
With a bad human rights record of its own, Japan has no
qualification to talk about human rights in the DPRK, said the
KCNA in another commentary.
The human rights issue has nothing to do with the agenda of
thesix-party talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,
the commentary added.
"They just want to twist the nature of the talks and to meet
its selfish purpose," said the commentary.
It also chided Japan for making use of "the 'abduction
issue' which had already been settled." The commentary warned
Tokyo not to impair its international image and escalate the
hostile policy towards Pyongyang.
The six-party talks -- involving China, Japan, the two sides
onthe Korean peninsula, Russia and the United States -- are set
to resume next week in the Chinese capital Beijing for the first
time in 13 months. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
11 Xinhua: Will new round break deadlock of nuclear talks?
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2005-07-24 20:45:52
BEIJING, July 24 (Xinhuanet) -- As delegations of the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Republic of
Korea (ROK) and the United States arrived in Beijing, the new
round of the six-party talks on the Korean Peninsular nuclear
issue slated to begin next Tuesday has again caught world wide
attention.
Although great uncertainties remain for the talks, analysts
said, there is a glimpse of hope that the deadlock of the talks
may be broken should all sides value the upcoming opportunity
following a break of 13 months.
Huge difficulties still remain ahead as the Korean
Peninsular nuclear issue is one the most complicated, sensitive
and tough issues in current world. No substantial progress was
made in the previous three rounds of the talks in 2003 and 2004.
The new round of the talks, to be held among China, the
DPRK, the United States, Russia, the ROK and Japan, will begin
next Tuesday but when the talks will conclude is undecided.
Compared the previous three rounds, which last usually three
days each, the new round has many uncertainties, said Piao
Jianyi,a professor with the Asian-Pacific Institute of the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The DPRK announced itself as a nuclear nation last February,
and the US official responsible for the six-party talks has
changed. Heads of delegations for four parties has changed too
except the DPRK and Russian delegations.
"Signs have indicated that it would be very difficult to see
major breakthrough or progress for the talks," said another
Chinese scholar Jin Linbo in an interview with Xinhua.
Both the United States and DPRK have not changed their
fundamental positions on the ways and approach to denuclearize
theKorean Peninsula, and their deep mutual mistrust still
remain.
In addition, China and the ROK still differ with the United
States on ways of denuclearization.
"Those are obstacles they must come through should the talks
reach substantial progress," said Jin, a professor with the
China Institute of International Studies.
But there is a glimpse of hope. The new round can only be
resumed after the two key parties, the DPRK and the United
States,have given some way.
According to a Chinese analyst, that the new round will
begin was mainly because the United States took "friendly"
steps. U.S. held bilateral talks with the DPRK, stopped strong
criticism on the DPRK, pledged it would treat the DPRK as a
sovereign state that it would not invade and that it would hold
one-to-one meetingwith the DPRK within the six-party framework.
Just before the new round is about to begin, US President
George W. Bush said the US hopes to resolve the Korean
Peninsular nuclear issue through diplomatic means and that he is
satisfied that the new round would be held soon.
On the other hand, the DPRK said it has been the DPRK's
stance to realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula
through dialogue and consultations.
A spokesman for the DPRK foreign ministry said the DPRK
seeks profound discussion on the ways and approach to
denuclearization so that the talks can make substantial
progress.
China, the ROK and Russia have all expressed the hope that
the new round should proceed smoothly and result in substantial
progress.
Zhang Lian'gui, a professor with the Party School of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, said the six
parties have two points in common -- that the Korean Peninsula
should remain nuclear-weapons-free and the new round should
achieve progress.
"Those two points have laid an important basis for the
upcominground of the talks," Zhang said in an article published
by the overseas edition of the People's Daily. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
12 Guardian Unlimited: Officials Attempt to End N.Korean Impasse
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Saturday July 23, 2005 8:01 AM
AP Photo BEI110
By GEORGE GEDDA
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - North Korea is returning to nuclear weapons
talks in China on Tuesday to tell its neighbors and the United
States how far it's willing to go toward meeting their calls for
disarmament - and at what price.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called on the communist
government to make the ``strategic choice'' to disarm, without
saying what awaits if it says no.
The North Koreans have boycotted the negotiating process for a
year, and getting them back to bargaining has been an arduous
task. Last winter it vowed never to return. It was coaxed into
returning by a flurry of diplomatic activities, less belligerent
U.S. rhetoric and South Korean pledges of large-scale food aid
and future deliveries of energy supplies.
The United States and South Korea are both conditioning energy
assistance to a credible commitment by Pyongyang to becoming
nuclear-free.
The lineup for the Beijing talks remains the same as it was for
three previous rounds held in 2003 and 2004: The United States,
China, South Korea, Japan, Russia and North Korea itself.
``Resolution of the nuclear issue through the six-party process
opens a path for North Korea toward better relations with all
parties,'' State Department press officer Tom Casey said Friday.
``As Secretary Rice said, the purpose of the six-party talks is
to get to a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula. We want to do that and
see what else comes but North Korea's nuclear program has to be
dealt with,'' Casey said.
In Beijing, the American delegation will be led by Christopher
Hill, a former ambassador to South Korea who now heads the State
Department's East Asia bureau. He replaces James Kelly, who sat
through the relatively fruitless talks.
The emphasis then was on set speeches written in capitals by the
delegations. A more freewheeling atmosphere is expected this
time with much more room for informal give-and-take. There will
be less hesitation about direct U.S. talks with the North
Koreans.
One official spoke privately the other day about the possibility
of shutting off cell phones to give negotiators maximum leeway
and avoid long-distance interference from Washington.
Previous rounds ended after a few days of discussion; this time,
there appear to be no time constraints.
North Korean officials informed American counterparts in Beijing
on July 9 that they were ready to resume negotiations, giving
assurances of their intent to make progress on
``denuclearization.''
Pyongyang later issued a clarification, asserting that the talks
should cover disarmament at the regional level and not just in
North Korea.
U.S. officials are not sure what to make of claims by North
Korean officials that it was the ``dying wish'' of Kim Il Sung,
the North Korean leader who died in 1994, to see a nuclear-free
Korean Peninsula.
Pyongyang acknowledges that it has plutonium-based nuclear
weapons, without saying how many it has. The Bush administration
says it probably has one or two such weapons and allows for the
possibility of several more.
North Korea initially confirmed U.S. claims in 2002 that it also
has a uranium-based weapons program but has since rejected the
allegation.
Don Oberdorfer, of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies, says the upcoming talks are the first
true test of the six-party process because the U.S. delegation
previously had no authority to negotiate.
As a result, Oberdorfer said, there is greater unpredictability
about the outcome. Beyond that, he said, the North Koreans are
``coming to this with an attitude that we don't yet know.''
Jack Pritchard, a Korea analyst at the Brookings Institution and
former State Department official, says the key to progress is
North Korean confidence that the they won't be subject to a U.S.
military attack if they disarm.
``They need assurances that their nuclear deterrent is no longer
necessary,'' Pritchard said.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
13 Korea Times: 'NK Won't Abandon Nukes Unless Security Is Assured'
Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Nation
By Park Song-wu Staff Reporter
Russian Amb. Gleb A. Ivashentsov
North Korea will not abandon its nuclear ambition unless it gets
security assurance at the six-party talks set to begin in
Beijing on Tuesday, Russia¡¯s top diplomat to South Korea said.
``There should be security guarantee (for North Korea),¡¯¡¯
Amb. Gleb A. Ivashentsov said at his office in Seoul during an
exclusive interview with The Korea Times on Friday. ``It is a
very important condition for the success of the talks.¡¯¡¯
North Korea wants the other five parties to promise security
assurances, affirming that they have no intention to invade or
seek regime change, in return for its dismantlement of nuclear
programs, North Korea experts in Seoul say.
To achieve substantive results at the fourth round of talks,
Ivashentsov said the participating countries should not stray
from the main topic of the talks _ denuclearization of the
Korean Peninsula.
``The six-party talks should not discuss the internal situation
(of North Korea),¡¯¡¯ he said. ``The topic (of the talks) is
openly stipulated. That is, the nuclear issue of the Korean
Peninsula. So the discussion should be concentrated on that very
issue. Other issues may be discussed elsewhere.¡¯¡¯
The remarks came as many in the U.S. argue that the talks
should address North Korea¡¯s human rights situation. In
addition, Japan wants to deal with North Korea¡¯s abduction of
its nationals in the past.
In reply to a question about Russia¡¯s definition of
denuclearization, Ivashentsov said there should be ``no weapons
of mass destruction¡¯¡¯ on the Korean Peninsula, indicating that
Russia would have no problems with peaceful North Korean nuclear
programs.
``I think some mutual understanding for the solution could be
found at the six-party talks because I presume that there may be
different understandings of the meaning of denuclearization,¡¯¡¯
he said.
Washington wants to dismantle all kinds of nuclear programs in
North Korea, but Pyongyang hopes to maintain some of them for
peaceful purposes such as electric power generation, North Korea
experts say.
Ivashentsov said Russia does not want to see the Korean
Peninsula having nuclear weapons due to geopolitical reasons.
``We do not want any nuclear weapons to be deployed here as
Vladivostok and other Russian cities are nearby,¡¯¡¯ he said.
``Any kind of conflict on the Korean Peninsula will threaten the
security not just of the two Korean states but the security of
China, Japan and Russia.¡¯¡¯
Ivashentsov said Russia is deeply interested in peace and
stability in the Korean Peninsula, given that South Korea and
his country have many long-term economic projects that depend on
inter-Korean relations such as linking the inter-Korean railways
to the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Replacing Teymuraz Ramishvili, Ivashentsov took office in Seoul
on July 1. The new ambassador has served most of his career in
India and Myanmar since entering Russia's foreign service in
1975.
im@koreatimes.co.kr 07-24-2005 19:02
*****************************************************************
14 Reuters: Issues at six-country talks on nuclear-free N.Korea
Sun Jul 24, 2005 1:13 AM
SEOUL (Reuters) - Regional powers on Tuesday resume long-delayed
six-country talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear
programmes.
Substantive progress has been scarce in the previous three rounds
over nearly two years, while disagreements, fresh demands and
pitfalls have breeded complications.
Following are key points surrounding the six-country talks.
GIVE AND TAKE
The basic premise of the talks is for North Korea to dismantle
all nuclear weapons programmes in a verifiable and irreversible
manner in exchange for much-needed aid for its moribund economy
and security guarantees.
THE ROUNDS
China hosted three rounds of talks beginning in August 2003 with
North and South Korea, the United States, Japan and Russia. It
was not until the third and last round in June last year that
substantive proposals were made. No discussions on the proposals
have followed so far.
WHAT NORTH KOREA WANTS
The North has sought energy aid, its removal from the U.S. list
of state sponsors of terrorism and the lifting of all sanctions
against it.
It has said it wants to see those moves in return for a freeze of
its nuclear programmes, before it begins dismantling them.
Since March, the North has demanded the six-party process be
turned into disarmament talks that also discuss U.S. nuclear
weapons it says are deployed in South Korea. Washington denies
the existence of such weapons. Pyongyang has also reissued calls
a peace treaty with the United States.
U.S. DEMANDS
Washington wants to see the North begin dismantling all nuclear
programmes, including one based on uranium enrichment technology,
within three months of freezing them. It has not offered to be
directly part of an energy aid package.
SWEETENER
Seoul said earlier this month it would supply 2,000 megawatts of
electricity to the North, doubling its current output, if
Pyongyang dismantles its nuclear programmes.
STUMBLING BLOCKS
Japan says the issue of its citizens abducted by the North
Koreans decades ago should be raised at the six-party talks. The
United States sees the need to include North Korea's record of
human rights abuse on the table. Seoul has tried to keep the
talks' purpose focused on the North's nuclear arms.
ANOTHER BREAKDOWN?
All the parties, including North Korea, say they are prepared to
work for substantive progress.
Another breakdown could mean the end of the six-party process and
renewed U.S. calls to take the issue to the U.N. Security
Council, which could impose sanctions.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
15 Reuters: Two Koreas call for substantial progress at talks
Sun Jul 24, 2005 8:13 AM ET
By Jack Kim
BEIJING, July 24 (Reuters) - Delegations from North and South
Korea, meeting in Beijing on Sunday, said they wanted to see
"substantial progress" in this week's six-party talks aimed at
ending Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The two sides said they also wanted the participants to come up
with a framework for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.
South Korea's Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, Seoul's
envoy to the talks, met his North Korean counterpart, Kim
Kye-gwan, in Beijing ahead of the talks, South Korean media
reported.
"We shared the view that participants in the talks should
produce substantial progress and come up with a framework for
the realisation of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula," he told
reporters in Beijing.
Christopher Hill, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East
Asian and Pacific Affairs, said on his arrival in Beijing that
he would like to see enough progress this week to keep the
talking going into a future round.
"I wouldn't expect this to be the last set of negotiations ...
we would like to make some measurable progress, progress we can
build on for a subsequent round of negotiations," he said.
"These are obviously very important negotiations that we are
very much committed to."
AID AND SECURITY
No end date has been set for this fourth round of talks, which
involve the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and
host China.
The six parties will try to hammer out a deal under which North
Korea would be offered security guarantees and economic aid in
exchange for dismantling its nuclear weapons programmes.
South Korea says it is willing to supply the North with 2,000
megawatts of electricity -- doubling its impoverished
neighbour's current output -- if Pyongyang dismantles its
nuclear programmes.
But patience for a negotiated deal is wearing thin among key
players, notably the United States, which may turn this session
into a make-or-break meeting.
Song earlier said he expected an arduous process in Beijing.
"We might have rapid progress, but I think it's more accurate
to say it's going to be a long process," he said.
Proliferation experts believe North Korea has pushed ahead with
its nuclear programmes over the past several years, likely
boosting its arsenal from one or two nuclear weapons to as many
as nine -- with suspicions growing the North wants to build more.
The challenge for the parties is to keep negotiations focused
and avoid diversions that could derail them, analysts said.
South Korea says the overriding concern at the new round of
talks would be ending Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, and it is
seeking to dissuade its partners from widening the discussions.
JAPANESE ABDUCTIONS
Japan has said it wants to raise the issue of its citizens
abducted by the North decades ago. U.S. officials have spoken of
touching on North Korea's human rights record.
Another stumbling block is the U.S. charge that Pyongyang has
been running a secret programme to enrich uranium into
weapons-grade material. North Korea has admitted to a plutonium
programme but denied running a uranium enrichment programme.
North Korea has also muddied the waters in recent days by
saying the talks would proceed on a more firm footing if they
addressed Pyongyang establishing diplomatic relations with
Washington and reaching a peace treaty with the United States to
replace the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
A North Korea Foreign Ministry spokesman said a treaty would
"automatically result in the denuclearisation of the peninsula."
There have been three rounds of the talks -- all hosted by
China -- since August 2003. At the third round, in June 2004,
the United States proposed fuel aid and security guarantees for
North Korea if it scrapped its nuclear programmes.
But a year of delay and much soul-searching by the parties have
also given rise to some hope that progress, if not a quick
resolution of the problem, may be within reach.
North Korea in recent weeks reaffirmed its commitment to
ultimately abandon its nuclear weapons and to resolve the
standoff through the six-party process.
Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top
U.S. negotiator for the talks has said North Korea must make a
strategic decision to get rid of nuclear programmes.
"We're going to really push these negotiations until we make
some progress," Hill said in Seoul last week after a strategy
session with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
16 Reuters: Five facts about six-party talks on North Korea
Fri Jul 22, 2005 8:02 AM ET
BEIJING, July 22 (Reuters) - The fourth round of six-party
talks aimed at resolving the international crisis over North
Korea's nuclear programme will open in Beijing on Tuesday, July
26.
Following are five key facts about the talks.
* The first round took place in 2002 and the third in June
2004. The first three rounds saw no substantive progress. Until
North Korea decided to return to the table on July 9, the talks
had been stalled for more than a year.
* The parties involved in the talks are North Korea (official
name: the Democratic People's Republic of Korea), South Korea,
the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
* The talks are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. (0100 GMT) on
Tuesday in the walled-off Diaoyutai state guest house in
Beijing. No closing date has been set.
* Hosts China, North Korea's main benefactor, will moderate the
talks. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing will host dinner for
the visitors on Monday evening.
* The Korean nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S.
officials said North Korea had admitted to a uranium enrichment
programme. Tensions rose in February this year when North Korea
declared it had nuclear weapons.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
17 Guardian Unlimited: North Korea Won't Hold Japan Nuke Talks
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Sunday July 24, 2005 7:31 AM
AP Photo SEL107
TOKYO (AP) - North Korea took another swipe at Tokyo on
Saturday, saying it ``feels no need'' to sit down directly with
Japan at upcoming nuclear talks because the country is insisting
on discussing the North's past abduction of Japanese citizens.
The North's state-run newspaper, Minju Joson, said in an
editorial that it ``feels no need to sit face-to-face with
Japan,'' and criticized Tokyo's intention to raise the abduction
issue as a plan ``to meet its own interests.''
It was not clear from the editorial, carried by the North's
official Korean Central News Agency, whether the North was
refusing to attend the talks set to open Tuesday in Beijing if
they include Japan - or if it was saying it did not want to meet
with Japanese officials on the sidelines of the talks, as Tokyo
has suggested.
On Sunday morning, the North's delegation in Beijing met with
officials from South Korea, China's official Xinhua News Agency
said. It did not provide any other details.
China has hosted three rounds of inconclusive six-country talks
on North Korea's nuclear program since 2003. The negotiations
involve Japan, China, the two Koreas, the United States and
Russia.
``If the parties concerned are to bring into bloom a beautiful
flower called the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, they
should root out the poisonous plant harmful to it,'' the
newspaper said, blaming Japan for the lack of progress in the
talks' previous rounds.
In Tokyo on Thursday, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's
spokesman, Yu Kameoka, said Japan will press the abduction issue
despite the North's objections. ``It may be Japan has been
saying things North Korea is not so happy to hear,'' Kameoka
said. ``But we will bring up the kidnapping issue.''
North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese in the 1970s and
'80s. In 2002 it allowed five to return to Japan, saying the
other eight have died. Japan has demanded proof of those deaths,
as well as information on other missing Japanese believed to
have been abducted by the North.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
18 Powerless Americans Expect the Worst
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 00:06:41 -0500 (CDT)
WASHINGTON - Americans are far more likely than the Japanese to
expect another world war in their lifetime, according to AP-Kyodo
polling 60 years after World War II ended. Most people in both
countries believe the first use of a nuclear weapon is never
justified.
Those findings come six decades after the United States dropped
atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The
war claimed about 400,000 U.S. troops around the world, more than
three times that many Japanese troops and at least 300,000 Japanese
civilians.
Out of the ashes, Japan and the United States forged a close political
alliance. Americans and Japanese now generally have good feelings
about each other.
But people in the two countries have very different views on
everything from the U.S. use of the atomic bomb in 1945, fears of
North Korea and the American military presence in Japan.
Some of the widest differences came on expectations of a new world
war.
Already started?
Six in 10 Americans said they think such a war is likely, while
only one-third of the Japanese said so, according to polling done
in both countries for The Associated Press and Kyodo, the Japanese
news service.
Mans going to destroy man eventually. When that will be, I dont
know, said Gaye Lestaeghe of Freeport, La.
Some question whether that war has arrived, with fighting dragging
on in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the U.S. campaign against
terrorism.
I feel like were in a world war right now, said Susan Aser, a real
estate agent from Rochester, N.Y.
The Japanese were less likely than Americans to expect a world war,
less worried about the threat from North Korea and less inclined
to say a first strike with nuclear weapons could be justified.
The Japanese people take peace for granted, said Hiroya Sato, 20,
of Tokyo. The Japanese people are not interested in things like
war. Atomic controversy President Truman decided to try to end the
war by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and on
Nagasaki three days later.
The first two atomic bombs killed tens of thousands in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki; thousands more gradually died with severe radiation
burns. Those bombings led to Japans announcement on Aug. 15 that
it would surrender.
Two-thirds of Americans say the use of atomic bombs was unavoidable.
Only 20 percent of Japanese felt that way and three-fourths said
it was not necessary. Just one-half of Americans approve of the use
of the atomic bombs on Japan.
Bob Garapedian, an 81-year-old retiree from Colchester, Conn., was
preparing to fly fighter planes over the planned invasion of Japan
when the war ended. Asked whether using the atomic bomb was
appropriate, he said without hesitation: Absolutely! But military
instructor Hugh D.J. Carlen, who lives near Fort Knox, Ky., said:
I dont think we really needed to do it. We darn near had the country
starved to death. We could have effected a blockade. Skepticism
about the bombings is widespread in Japan.
I often hear the bombings were not necessary, said Toyokazu Katsumi,
a 27-year-old engineer from Yokohama. They just wanted to experiment
with them. For 63-year-old Masashi Muroi of Tokyo, the attacks
with atomic bombs were mass, indiscriminate killings and perhaps
violated international law. Vivid memories For younger people,
World War II is something seen only on newsreel footage, in the
movies and in history books. For those who lived through it, the
memories are vivid.
Hideko Mori, a 71-year-old Tokyo housewife, said that as a child
in Nagano in central Japan, she and her neighbors had to take refuge
to avoid American air raids.
Around the time I was in the 5th grade, when we went to school,
instead of attending classes, we plowed the school grounds and
planted potatoes and pumpkins, and we dug up bomb shelters, she
said.
People in both countries overwhelmingly perceive the other country
favorably now.
Four in five Americans have an upbeat view of Japan and two-thirds
of Japanese feel that way about the U.S. But older people were not
quite as enthusiastic.
I dislike the Japanese military, but not the Japanese people, World
War II veteran William Aleshire, 84, of Peachtree City, Ga., said
during a recent visit to a war memorial in Washington.
Some of the good feelings may stem from the close cooperation between
the U.S. and Japan in postwar rebuilding and from Americas financial
support.
Postwar reconstruction During the years when American troops occupied
Japan, economic reforms enabled Japanese farmers to own their own
land. With U.S. help, Japan grew into an economic power.
The Americans contributed so much to the reconstruction of Japan
after the war. I think their influence was very significant and
positive, said 62-year-old Yasuzo Higuchi of Tokyo. Even now, because
of their presence in our country, North Korea cant attack us.
Americans good will about the Japanese extends to their government,
with six in 10 in the U.S. regarding it as trustworthy. But more
than half of the Japanese distrust Washington.
Asked whether a first strike with nuclear weapons ever could be
justified, a majority in both countries said no. But Americans were
twice as likely as the Japanese to think such a strike might be
justified in some circumstances.
Since the war, the U.S. military presence in Japan has come to be
accepted in most of Japan, but stirs resentment on the island of
Okinawa.
The Japanese are evenly split on whether the U.S. troops should
stay or go, the polling found. Three-fourths of Americans said this
country should keep its military in Japan.
Any country that will allow us to keep a base there as a forward
lookout post, I think we ought to do it, said Wade Hill, a copier
technician who lives near Dallas. We need a buffer zone. Economic
rivalry The strongest rivalry between the U.S. and Japan now is
economic. The presence of Americans products has increased in Japan,
though Tokyo continues to have a large trade surplus with Washington.
Japanese are most likely to name the U.S. as the most important
country for their economy, possibly a reflection of the success
among Americans for Japanese automobiles and electronics. Americans
were most likely to name China as most important for the U.S.
economy.
Trade tensions have increased between the United States and China
after America ran up a $162 billion deficit with China last year,
the largest ever with a single country.
Some see economic competition as the most important battle between
countries these days.
I dont think it will be like World War II, said James DiVita of
Sandusky, Ohio, who works in manufacturing. It will be more of a
silent takeover with dollars, buying up companies. The poll of
1,000 adults in the United States was conducted for the AP by Ipsos,
an international polling company, from July 5-10 and the poll of
1,045 eligible voters in Japan was conducted for Kyodo by the Public
Opinion Research Center from July 1-3. Each poll has a margin of
sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8681159/
*****************************************************************
19 [progchat_action] Fw: GLOBAL U.S. EXPANSION OF "MISSILE
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 00:33:04 -0500 (CDT)
----- Original Message -----
From: Global Network
To: Global Network
Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 4:35 AMpr
Subject: GLOBAL U.S. EXPANSION OF "MISSILE DEFENSE"
U.S. Missile Defense Being Expanded, General Says
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 22, 2005
The United States is expanding its preliminary missile defense system to
address potential threats from the Middle East and China, and from
ship-borne missiles off America's coast, the chief of the Pentagon's program
said yesterday.
The Pentagon is upgrading radars in Britain and surveying four European
countries for a new site for U.S. "interceptor" missiles, to better monitor
and defeat incoming strikes from the Middle East, said Air Force Lt. Gen.
Henry A. Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency.
"We are concerned about the Middle East," he said.
The U.S. military is also cooperating with Japan and other Asian nations to
address what the Pentagon considers a growing threat from China's
short-range ballistic missiles in the region, while also developing the
means to counter an attack by China's long-range missiles.
"What . . . we have to do is, in our development program, be able to address
the Chinese capabilities, because that's prudent," Obering told defense
reporters at a breakfast meeting.
Closer to home, the Pentagon is studying how to defend against a Scud or
other short-range ballistic missiles fired by an enemy from a ship within a
few hundred miles of the U.S. coast. The military is focusing on that threat
because it experimented with launching a Scud off a ship and found "it was
not hard to do," he said.
The ambitious missile defense program -- which has cost $92.5 billion since
it began with the "Star Wars" concept of space-based lasers in 1983 --
underwent a major redesign in the early 1990s after the Cold War ended. The
system, which is still being tested, is primarily now designed to counter a
missile attack from a "rogue state" such as North Korea.
The risk of unforeseen threats from terrorist groups and other enemies is
now leading the Pentagon to try to broaden the program's scope, Obering
said. "We expect to be surprised," he said, citing the example of North
Korea's unexpectedly fast progress in developing long-range missiles.
U.S. commanders have conducted tests on the activation of missile defenses,
which have been put on and off alert repeatedly in recent months, Obering
said. He estimated that the chain of command would have six to 15 minutes to
decide whether to launch intercepts against, for example, a North Korean
attack on the United States.
Still, Obering said the costly system suffers from a wide range of technical
problems -- from workmanship to software -- and the rush to put it on alert
before it is fully tested means the chances are limited that it would
succeed in thwarting any missile attack today.
"We have a better than zero chance of successfully intercepting, I believe,
an inbound warhead," Obering said. "That confidence will improve over time."
The system is intended to work by shooting into space a ground-based
interceptor rocket that releases a "kill vehicle" able to close in on an
enemy warhead and destroy it in a high-speed collision. Since 1999, the
Pentagon has conducted 10 tests of the system, five of which resulted in
hits.
After three failed tests in a row -- including an aborted test in February
because of a buildup of salty fog in an interceptor silo -- Obering said he
grew "suspicious of some of the workmanship and quality control" in the
system. The Pentagon suspended the testing, and teams of scientists
uncovered 39 categories of technical problems, Obering said. Boeing Co., a
prime contractor on the system, has been penalized "tens of millions of
dollars" for test failures that Obering said had been "preventable."
But he said he would rather grapple with the problems of simultaneously
testing and fielding the system than face the risk of being unprepared for
an attack.
"If we were attacked, the questions would have been: 'Why didn't you get it
out there, why didn't you connect the dots?' " he said.
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 729-0517
(207) 319-2017 (Cell phone)
globalnet@mindspring.com
http://www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Our blog)
*****************************************************************
20 WorldNetDaily: Why is Bush trashing nuke-safety regime?
SATURDAY JULY 23 2005
Perhaps President Bush had decided even before taking office to
replace the existing nuke proliferation-prevention regime –
largely our creation – because the regime no longer
automatically did our bidding.
In particular, when the U.N. Security Council discovered in the
immediate aftermath of the Gulf War that Iraq had been
attempting to enrich uranium for use in nukes, the International
Atomic Energy Action Team on Iraq – which reported directly to
the Security Council – was asked to develop and execute a plan
"for the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless as
appropriate of all nuclear-weapons-usable material or any
subsystems or components or any research, development, support
or manufacturing facilities related to the above."
To the consternation of President Clinton – who was determined
to effect "regime change" on Iraq – IAEA Director-General
Mohamed ElBaradei reported to the Security Council in 1998 that
there "were no indications that there remains in Iraq any
physical capability for the production of amounts of
weapons-usable nuclear material of any practical significance."
You see, the key to preventing nuke proliferation is the
international control of the production, processing,
transformation and disposition of certain "nuclear" materials. A
principal function of the IAEA – established in 1957 – is:
To establish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that
special fissionable and other materials, services, equipment,
facilities, and information made available by the Agency or at
its request or under its supervision or control are not used in
such a way as to further any military purpose;
When the IAEA's inspectors report noncompliance with a
Safeguards Agreement, the IAEA Board of Directors can then
decide – by a two-thirds majority – whether or not the
"non-compliance" furthers "any military purpose" and should be
reported to the U.N. Security Council for possible action.
The Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 1970 took
advantage of the existing IAEA verification and reporting
mechanism, requiring each no-nuke signatory to the treaty to
enter into a bilateral "safeguards" agreement with the IAEA
"with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from
peaceful uses to nuclear weapons."
So, the IAEA verifies "non-proliferation" by "importers" of
special nuclear materials, services, equipment, facilities and
information. What about "exporters"?
Enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
Established in 1974, the 40-plus member NSG was created because
the 1974 test by India – not then, or now, an NPT signatory – of
a nuclear device demonstrated that "especially designed or
prepared" nuclear technology as identified by the NPT,
transferred for peaceful purposes to non-NPT signatories, could
be misused.
NSG "Guidelines for Nuclear Transfer" have long required the
acceptance by the recipient state – NPT signatory or not – of
IAEA Safeguards on certain imported items.
But, as a consequence of what the IAEA found in Iraq in the
aftermath of the Gulf War, the NSG soon promulgated new
guidelines.
Since 1992, if India or Pakistan or Israel, for example, seek to
acquire "special fissionable and other materials, services,
equipment, and facilities" – such as nuclear power plants or
fuel – from any NSG member, NSG guidelines require that the NSG
member require them to subject all of their nuclear programs –
not just their "civilian" nuclear programs – to a full-scope
intrusive IAEA Safeguards Agreement.
All Indian nuclear programs – civilian or otherwise!
Hence, the "enforcement mechanism" for preventing nuke
proliferation by "importers" is provided by the IAEA statute and
the enforcement mechanism for preventing nuke proliferation by
"exporters" is provided by the coordinated export controls of
NSG members, themselves.
President Bush is proposing to emasculate the IAEA-NPT-NSG nuke
proliferation-prevention regime.
Bush announced this week that "as a responsible state with
advanced nuclear technology, India should acquire the same
benefits and advantages as other such states."
Translation? Even though India has refused to sign the NPT,
India should nevertheless "acquire the same benefits and
advantages" that the IAEA-NPT-NSG regime bestows on the United
States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China!
Since current U.S. law specifically prohibits that, Bush said he
would ask Congress to "adjust" those laws, repealing among other
things the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1994 and certain
provisions of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.
Bush also promised to "work" to "adjust international regimes"
to enable – among other things – the "expeditious consideration
of fuel supplies for safeguarded nuclear reactors at Tarapur."
Until this week, Bush had done everything in his power to
prevent the Russians from supplying that fuel. Now, Bush is
going to supply it, himself, and will not require – as NSG
Guidelines do – India to subject all its nuclear programs to the
IAEA-NPT-NSG nuke proliferation-prevention regime.
Will Pakistan be next?
Or Israel?
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy
implementing official for national security-related technical
matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and
Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office
of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr.
Prather also served as legislative assistant for national
security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking
member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate
Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had
earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National
Laboratory in New Mexico.
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
*****************************************************************
21 PRAVDA.Ru: Russia to destroy its chemical weapons on its own -
07/23/2005 12:58
Russia should reprocess 40 thousand tons of poisonous materials
Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko submitted to the
government a draft of the target program Destruction of chemical
weapons arsenal in the Russian Federation. According to Mr.
Khristenko, the program is already in effect yet procedures and
a financial package pertaining to the project should be
specified. The above draft is a third version of the document
produced over the last few years. The latest version calls for a
higher utilization pace of the Russian chemical weapons. The
document says that Russia should reprocess 40 thousand tons of
combat poisonous materials. In the past the bureaucrats planned
to finance the project with foreign funds. But Moscow never got
the money. Now the government has to allocate funds from the
budget. On the whole, the government approved the proposals
providing allocation of 171 billion rubles for the program
implementation.
The U.S. refused to provide financial aid Russia signed the
International Convention banning chemical weapons back in 1993.
However, it was not ratified by Russia until 1997. The actual
operations began five years later in one of seven storage
facilities available at the time. The facility was located in the
village Gorny of the Saratov region. In 2002, during the G-8
summit in Canada, the West promised to allocate $20 billion over
the period of 10 years to step up the process.
However, Russia never got the money in full due to the main
sponsor i.e. Washington. The U.S. demanded that Russia meet
additional requirements to finalize the deal. Russia was
supposed to grant access to U.S. inspectors to Russian chemical
plants outside the framework of the Convention, Americans also
wanted to visit Russian nuclear weapons storage facilities and
so on. The Kremlin refused to accept the requirements and the
U.S. funds were never sent to Russia as a result. Holland and
Germany are the only countries investing money in Russia's
chemical disarmament without imposing any additional
requirements.
"Russia received 21 billion rubles in lieu of 35 billion rubles
from the foreign states for the implementation of the program,"
said Mr. Khristenko on Thursday. He said that cooperation
between Russia and foreign states had involved only three
utilization facilities out of seven available. He pointed out
that the U.S. had not allocated any money for the program from
1999 through 2002.
Meanwhile, Moscow found itself in a pretty difficult situation.
The U.S. promised to help Russia build a plant for reprocessing
chemical weapons in the village Shchutchie of the Kurgan region.
The facility is regarded as having crucial importance to
Russia's chemical disarmament program. A storage facility
located in the village has more than 5 thousand tons of sarin
(nerve gas), soman, and VX gas packed inside the land mines,
artillery shells, and missile warheads. From the technological
point of view, it is the largest and the most complex project
enabling Moscow's fulfillment of its conventional commitments.
The commissioning of the plant was scheduled for 2005. Now
Russia has to foot the bill due to the lack of U.S. funds.
"Destroying our stockpile of chemical weapons of a 3rd category
i.e. gunpowder detonators and artillery shells was our biggest
mistake," said Vladimir Lyashchenko, assistant to the industry
and energy minister for defense complex issues. Mr. Lyashchenko
said the gunpowder detonators and artillery shells were the
"packaging" material used for conveying poisonous stuff to
potential targets in Europe and America. "Once we destroyed
them, the world figured out Russia was not a threat anymore,"
added Mr. Lyashchenko.
As a result, Russia admitted four years ago that it could meet
the deadline and therefore was unable to start its utilization
program by 2007. Russia requested to postpone the start of
operations up to 2010. But the members of the Convention are
entitled to use its postponement rights only one time. Aside
from causing worldwide political repercussions, the failure to
meet the deadline may result in economic sanctions for Russia
e.g. embargo on the export of chemical fertilizers. Russia's
annual earnings from its fertilizer exports are in the
neighborhood of funds spent on the Russian chemical disarmament.
The last chance
The old version of the program provided for the construction of
facilities for chemical weapons utilization in seven locations:
Gorny (Saratov region); Kambarka and Kizner (both located in
Udmurtia); Maradykovsky (Kirovskaya region); Leonidovka (Penza
region); Pochep (Bryansk region); Shchyuchie (Kurgan region).
However, the implementation of the program was disrupted due to
lack of funds (only 25 billions rubles spent from 1995 to 2004).
"These days we have sufficient financial resources to resolve
the problem independently," said Mr. Lyashchenko. He said $600
million could be allocated for the program this year as opposed
to $200 million allocated in 2000. According to head of the
Federal Industry Agency Viktor Kholstov, the financing will
enable Moscow to complete the destruction of yperite (mustard
gas) and luisite stored in the village of Gorny. A plant will be
put into operation in the village of Kambarka in Udmurtia until
the end of this year. Another one will be commissioned early
next year in the village of Maradykovsky. The plant in the
village of Shchuchie is slated to enter service in 2008.
The sum to be allocated by the government up to 2012 totals 171
billion rubles. According to Mr. Khristenko, 160 billion rubles
will be allocated out of the federal budget while the remaining
sum will be provided by foreign sponsors. "Operating expenses
arising from the utilization of chemical weapons should amount
to 81 billion rubles, facilities maintenance costs should amount
to 66.5 billion, utilization and storage safety costs should
amount to 4.3 billion, and state environmental control costs
should amount to 1.2 billion," said the minister. According to
him, the whole stockpile of the Russian chemical weapons - 40
thousand tons - should be destroyed by the year 2012. The
program also provides for decommission of 24 chemical weapons
utilization facilities along with 1 facility for the development
of chemical weapons.
The program stipulates that 10% of the funds should be spent on
the development of social infrastructure of the regions hosting
the utilization facilities. "Additional 7.5 thousand jobs should
be created, residents' social conditions should be improved, 25
houses and a number of schools and other facilities should be
built in the course of realization of the program," said the
minister. The government adopted the draft program. According to
Vice Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, the draft program will be
polished off until August 15th and resubmitted for consideration
to the State Duma.
Read the original in Russian: (Translated by: Guerman Grachev)
Pravda.Ru
*****************************************************************
22 Bellona: Putin against foreign money for Russian NGOs and public
environmental evaluations
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would not tolerate
foreign money being used to finance the political activities of
nongovernmental organizations and public environmental
evaluations should not stop development of the country and its
economy.
Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Kremlin.ru
2005-07-21 15:23
"We are against overseas funding for the political activities
[of NGOs] in Russia. I categorically object," Putin said at a
meeting with human rights activists in the Kremlin yesterday.
"Not a single state that respects itself does that, and we won't
allow it either," he said.
Putin complained that foreign competitors of Russia sponsor the
Russian environmental organisations in order to stop the
development of Russia trying to get direct access to the foreign
markets. He gave example of the construction of the Russian sea
terminal beside Finland claiming the environmental NGOs were
specially sponsored allegedly by Finns ”to torpedo the
development of this project”.
Putin urged the activists to remain independent of foreign
influences.
"Let's solve our internal political issues ourselves," Putin
told the group, which included co-chairman of the biggest
Russian green NGO Socio-Ecological Union Svyatoslav Zabelin.
Concerning public environmental evaluations Putin gave a
negative example when a Russian oil company in Siberia
established an environmental NGO in Moscow attempting to
influence the results of the public environmental evaluation
about oil pipe line route.
Putin also called for greater cooperation between human rights
groups and the government in ensuring citizens' rights and
promised that the government would make more state grants
available to NGOs.
Overall impression of the Putin’s speech was that environmental
NGOs are sponsored by the western competitors and only hinder
the economy of Russia.
The chairman of Environmental Rights Centre Bellona in St
Petersburg Alexander Nikitin, who spent several months in prison
for his environmental activity, commented on the president’s
speech:
“We have heard a frank opinion of President Putin concerning how
the public environmental evaluation procedure should look like
and his judgement on the environmental organisations’
activities. I believe President Putin is absolutely wrong saying
about ”ordered” activities of the environmental organisations,
which receive money from abroad. He is also wrong about usage of
environmental NGOs for competitive struggle.
The President and the government keep complaining about
financing the Russian NGOs from abroad and constantly draw
attention to this fact, but at the same time they practically do
nothing to create good conditions (including financing) for
NGOs’ development really independent from the authorities on all
levels. However, we can watch that the state keeps establishing
and financing pro-Kremlin youth organisations like Nashi and
Idushie Vmeste.
We hope anyway, that Putin’s words about necessity to settle
precise mechanism of interaction between environmental
organisations and the state will not remain just words.”
Social outcry
The president’s statement led to a large reaction from
ecological organizations.
In its response, Greenpeace Russia points out the ambiguity of
Putin’s speech, which could lead to polar opposite
interpretations of the text.
On the contrary, according to the environmental group
Ekozashita!, “the president’s statement clearly demonstrates
that, in the near future, the institution of environmental
evaluatons could be abolished or replaced by a simplified
procedure without the participation of the community.”
Meanwhile, “state environmental evaluations are the last
democratic mechanism to control dangerous projects that could be
harmful to the environment. The abolition of the procedure will
allow big business to defile our natural resources and deprive
public organizations of the opportunity to take part in
decision-making. The country, where the natural environment is
being killed off on purpose, will never become
successful—neither economically, nor socially.
“The president of Russia does not understand that there is a
connection between the state of the environment and successful
economical development,” ecologists say.
Co-chairmen of the International Social-Ecological Union,
Svyatoslav Zabelin, who personally attended the meeting with the
president, believes that one can draw only one conclusion from
Putin’s speech: “If they are afraid of ecologists, it means they
have begun to respect them."
“If the (not always correct) details of the oil transport issue
are at the forefront of the president’s mind, it must mean that
the point has been driven home. It has finally become clear for
the first citizen that such trespasses are punished severely.
And the victims become not only the ship-owners, but the whole
nation and its public image.”
Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge
Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact:
webmaster@bellona.no
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
23 Daily Times: Nobody can speculate on safety of Pakistan’s nuclear assets
| Monday, July 25, 2005
* Musharraf says Pakistan not oblivious to regional developments
RAWALPINDI: President General Pervez Musharraf on Saturday said
that no one had a right to speculate on the safety of Pakistan’s
well-guarded nuclear assets.
Musharraf’s comments at a meeting of the National Command
Authority, a body that controls Pakistan’s nuclear programme,
came days after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed
concern about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
“No one had a right to speculate about the effectiveness and
reliability of Pakistan’s command and control structures, which
are efficient, scientific and transparent,” said the president,
adding that Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence was “fully operational
and continues to consolidate and strengthen with time”.
He said that Pakistan didn’t want an arms race in the region,
but said Islamabad could not close its eyes to advanced weaponry
being deployed elsewhere in the region. He added that Pakistan
was aware of the developments taking place in the region and
would take all necessary measures to maintain its deterrence
capability.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told the meeting that Pakistan’s
rapid economic growth would generate huge energy requirements
and that his government had identified nuclear energy as one of
the essential alternative sources. In view of energy needs,
Pakistan will engage with the international community to enhance
its peaceful civilian nuclear programme, he added.
The NCA took note of the recent Indo-US nuclear and defence
framework and decided appropriate measures. The meeting was
attended by Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, Defence
Minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal, Genral Ehsanul Haq, chairman Joint
Chiefs of the Staff Committee, services chiefs, the defence
secretary, senior scientists and military officials.
Daily Times - All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
24 Japan Times Online: Meeting China's 'challenge'
Saturday, July 23, 2005
By BRAD GLOSSERMAN
WASHINGTON -- In February 1946, George Kennan, then a political
officer in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word
telegram to the State Department, warning about Soviet behavior.
A little over a year later, a version of that telegram appeared
in Foreign Affairs magazine, written by "Mr. X."
That article became one of the pillars of the U.S. policy of
containment of the Soviet Union. Later, Kennan would regret that
his message was misread and commandeered by hardliners: He
bemoaned the reliance on the military dimension of the conflict
with the Soviet Union, arguing that the real challenge was
political.
I fear we are approaching a Mr. X moment with China. In the
last year, the tone of U.S. relations with China has changed
dramatically. A year ago, then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell could call the U.S.-China relationship "the best ever."
No official in Washington or Beijing would say that today with a
straight face.
In the United States, China is blamed for currency
manipulation, American job losses, an excessive military
buildup, failure to push North Korea to make a deal in the
six-party talks, attempts to isolate Japan diplomatically,
relations with "rogue" states, and encouragement of nationalism
at home to shore up domestic political legitimacy, consequences
be damned.
On matters of substance, the two governments continue to
cooperate when their interests overlap -- and there are many
issues where this occurs. Yet the new tone could lead to a quick
deterioration in the relationship. There is growing talk of "a
China threat," and the chorus will grow louder now that the
long-delayed U.S. Department of Defense report on the Chinese
military has been published. That assessment will be followed by
the Quadrennial Defense Review, another defense planning
document, which is also likely to focus on Chinese intentions.
Those documents will give plenty of ammunition to hawks who
demand that China be acknowledged as a threat to U.S. interests
and be contained. Those calls will be echoed by China's own
hawks; the recent comments of PLA Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu are a
sample of what to expect. He said China is prepared for a
nuclear exchange with the U.S. If those arguments are not
countered, the downward spiral in relations will accelerate into
a plunge.
The China threat is a constant refrain when traveling in China
or when discussing U.S. engagement with Asia. While we shouldn't
ignore the modernization of China's military, that shouldn't be
a primary concern. Rather, the real challenge is Beijing's
ambitions in East Asia: The real "China threat" is political.
While declarations of national strategy should always be viewed
with suspicion -- matching ends and means is difficult and
events usually intervene to interrupt grand designs -- there is
no disguising China's determination to establish itself as the
dominant power in Asia and to supplant the U.S. role in the
region.
Beijing has done an excellent job of defining the terms of
engagement with other countries in East Asia. During the 1990s,
it pursued "smile diplomacy," forging a new relationship with
Southeast Asia by signing a declaration of a Code of Conduct for
the South China Sea, acceding to ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and
Cooperation and moving forward with an ASEAN-China Free Trade
Agreement. In Northeast Asia, China has put itself at the heart
of the diplomatic process to resolve the North Korean nuclear
crisis. In doing so, it has focused on South Korean reaction and
now appears to take many of its cues from Seoul. Increasingly,
South Koreans see themselves more closely aligned with China
than the U.S.
Beijing has worked hard to assuage Asian concerns about its
long-term intentions. It has settled border disputes, engaged in
aggressive diplomatic outreach, put itself at the heart of the
regional economy and made substantial efforts to demonstrate
that it is a reliable partner. Implicit in Chinese policy is the
message that it understands Asian concerns better than
Washington, and that it manages Asian issues better than does
the U.S.
The challenge for Washington is responding to this situation
correctly: U.S. policy must not strengthen China's hand and a
hard line will do just that. Asian nations have no desire to be
forced to choose between Washington and Beijing. Many regional
governments are skeptical about Chinese intentions, but they
also know that China is a geographical fact of life. The U.S.
cannot increase tensions without reinforcing the Chinese message
that Beijing understands Asia better than the U.S. and that it
can manage the region better than Washington.
The U.S. cannot block or stop China's emergence. Containment
isn't a realistic option. The challenge for the U.S. is to match
China and engage Asia as a responsible partner. U.S. Deputy
Secretary of State Robert Zoellick acknowledged as much in his
recent tour of Southeast Asia. The challenge is to engage China
as it rises, to help it deal with the many difficulties it will
encounter, to encourage Beijing to be a responsible and
productive member of international society, and to invigorate
relations with Asia so that there are no doubts about the U.S.
commitment to the region. Doing so will neutralize "the China
threat," and build a constructive bilateral relationship that
benefits both countries and Asia as a whole.
Brad Glosserman, a contributing editor to The Japan Times, is
director of research at Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based
think tank ( bradgpf@hawaii.rr.com).
The Japan Times: July 23, 2005
(C) All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
25 Japan Times: Strangelove encounters of a MAD scientist kind
Sunday, July 24, 2005
COUNTERPOINT
By ROGER PULVERS Special to The Japan Times
Herman Kahn is back in the news.
He was the great geo-strategist, the ultimate doomsday
game-theory player and the model for Peter Sellers' character of
Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 movie of that name
subtitled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."
Some of the mad doctor's dialogue in the film is lifted from
Kahn's writing.
Kahn believed that nuclear war was not only highly likely, but
winnable. He wrote and spoke of tolerable levels of victims in
the tens of millions. He crunched his numbers, according to the
game theory that he helped to refine, and found the United
States coming out on top. The term "escalation" is attributed to
Kahn; and in a Cold War era plagued by fear stemming from the
nuclear powers' deterrence strategy of mutually assured
destruction (MAD), it was comforting to refer to his message:
that, scientifically analyzed, America's future was secure, if
somewhat blistered by the death fires of internecine war.
In our own era of nuclear threat and proliferation, it is
natural that Kahn's ideas should be brought into the light once
again. He was a pioneer in opening up the discussion of issues
that were all too horrible to contemplate in the years leading
up to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Kahn's two
books, "On Thermonuclear War" (1961) and "Thinking About the
Unthinkable" (1962), were worldwide best sellers. They became
central to discourse on the topic of nuclear strategy, and even,
curiously, bolstered the cause of pacifists who were able to
point to Kahn's cataclysmic predictions as proof that we were
all heading blindfolded down the road to Armageddon.
Two books about Kahn's life and theories have been published
recently in the U.S., and with them he has returned to a wider
public consciousness.
Self-styled Japan expert It may not be widely known, however,
that Kahn was a self-styled expert on Japan, co-authoring "The
Japanese Challenge" in 1979. But when he came to Japan in 1969,
he knew little about this country. I happen to know this quite
well, as I was guide and interpreter for Herman and Jane Kahn on
their trip here that year.
Kahn was a massive man, weighing nearly 140 kg. He was well
aware of the effect his size had, particularly on the generally
much smaller Japanese. When we found ourselves in the elevator
of the Kyoto Hotel with a few other Western tourists, Kahn
pointed to a little plaque that read, "Maximum Capacity 11
Persons." He turned to the tourists and said, "That's just for
Japanese."
Kahn's visit was welcomed by those in the highest echelons of
the Liberal Democratic Party. Prime Minister Eisaku Sato was
facing a difficult election in the coming January, and Kahn's
rosy predictions about the rise of a Japanese superstate gave
comfort to the ruling party. Kahn praised Japan and its
leadership to the hilt. Japanese people's opinions are
vulnerable to influence from the outside. A prominent American
who feeds Japanese nationalism can have more sway than a mere
politician in power.
But when Kahn went to Osaka to give a talk to entrepreneurs in
that commercial center, his theories about Japan leading the
world into the 21st century were greeted with skeptical
grimaces. The Osaka business world has traditionally been much
less ideological than its Tokyo counterpart, and the word dished
from on high, in this case the U.S., was taken with a very large
grain of salt.
Kahn was born in 1922, in New Jersey, and brought up, as I was,
in Los Angeles. We had both gone to UCLA (he 20 years before
me), and we talked about our alma mater. Kahn had gone on to
Caltech to study physics before joining the Rand Corporation,
the Air Force think tank in Santa Monica, Calif.
One evening during their visit I had dinner with the Kahns at a
tempura restaurant in Kyoto.
"This country will go nuclear by 1985," he predicted. "You
can't have an economic superstate without the nuclear deterrent.
And despite what the businessmen in Osaka said, Japan will
overtake the U.S. as an economic power by the turn of the
century."
"Well, that's a long way off," I said, trying to imagine what
life in Japan would be like more than 30 years on. "But the
nuclear allergy here is pretty strong."
"It won't last another two decades."
Having said that, he looked around the restaurant and then
peered at me.
"But Roger, let me ask you a question. What are you doing here
working for the Japanese?"
At the time I was lecturing at Kyoto Sangyo University in
Russian and Polish.
Absolute American values "What do you mean? I live here. I love
it here. I don't consider myself to be 'working for the
Japanese.' Take this food, tempura. It's Japanese food, but
what's the difference? If you like it, you like it."
I wasn't very articulate in my defense of expatriate life, and
Kahn came back with something quite incisive.
"It's an acquired taste. Just like your feelings about Japan.
You are an American and it's that simple. You may like it here,
but you don't belong here."
Kahn spoke much about America during those few days in 1969
that I spent with him and his wife. He was a prototype of the
present-day neocon, an unstinting advocate of absolute American
values. His game-theorizing about a nuclear holocaust was bold
and global; but when it came down to it, he was an American
patriot posing as an internationalist.
Kahn's knowledge of the culture, history and character of the
Japanese people was minimal. But then again, a person who
predicts the future of the world on the basis of systems
analysis hardly needs such background.
Yet Kahn, I think, knew himself quite well. He was affable and
without pretense.
"If you think I'm conservative," he quipped to me one morning
as we strolled down a lane in Kyoto, "you should talk to Jane.
She's somewhat to the right of the John Birch Society."
When Kahn died in July 1983, President Ronald Reagan had this
to say: "Herman Kahn was a futurist who welcomed the future. . .
. All who value independent thinking will mourn the loss of a
man whose intellect and enthusiasm embraced so much. I convey my
deepest sympathy to Mr. Kahn's family and all those who believe
tomorrow can be better than today."
There's the paradox of Kahn in a nutshell. The president's
expression of sympathy to those who believe that tomorrow can be
better than today belies the dark truth inside Kahn's nuclear
prophecy: The thing that is unthinkable is a world according to
Herman Kahn.
The Japan Times: July 24, 2005
(C) All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
26 Scotsman.com News: Deal is 'answer to nuclear crisis'
Sat 23 Jul 2005
JON HERSKOVITZ
IN SEOUL
AGREEING a peace treaty to replace the armistice that ended the
1950-3 Korean War would resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean
peninsula, a spokesman for North Korea's foreign ministry
claimed yesterday.
The statement, carried by the official KCNA news agency, came
before a meeting of regional powers in Beijing next week for
talks aimed at dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear weapons
programmes in exchange for security guarantees and economic
assistance.
"Replacing the ceasefire mechanism by a peace mechanism on the
Korean peninsula would lead to putting an end to the US hostile
policy toward the DPRK [North Korea], which spawned the nuclear
issue and the former's nuclear threat," the spokesman said.
He said this would "automatically result in the denuclearisation
of the peninsula".
The Korean War ended with a truce, leaving both sides still
formally at war. The main countries involved - the United
States, China and North and South Korea - last held talks on a
peace treaty in Geneva beginning in late 1997 but made almost no
progress after North Korea said it could not reach a deal until
US troops were removed from the peninsula.
US officials have said they want North Korea to respond to an
offer of a security guarantee and energy aid made at the last
round of nuclear talks in June 2004.
They have said their top priority is for North Korea to
dismantle its nuclear programmes, whereupon Washington could
discuss other issues such as normalising ties.
The North Korean spokesman said success in striking a peace deal
would "give a strong impetus to the process of the
soon-to-be-resumed six-party talks to settle the nuclear issue".
The North had boycotted the process for more than a year. The
other participants are South Korea, the United States, China,
Japan and Russia. Pyongyang's delegation to the talks flew to
Beijing yesterday.
North Korean analysts have noted that Pyongyang has often tried
to muddy the waters before major negotiations by bringing up
demands.
Chinese media have reported that North Korea was willing to
resolve the nuclear crisis and that normalising relations with
Washington was the key to a deal.
South Korea has offered to supply North Korea with 2,000
megawatts of electricity - almost matching the North's present
power output - if Pyongyang dismantles its nuclear programmes.
South and North Korea took a step towards better bilateral ties
yesterday when they opened the first private telephone line in
60 years, linking Pyongyang to Seoul.
The line will be used to connect video terminals in the two
capitals, allowing families separated by the Korean War to
conduct video reunions.
Seoul and Pyongyang have also recently reached bilateral
agreements on mining rights, factory development and steps to
ease military tensions along the border.
SCOTSMAN
*****************************************************************
27 Zaobao: Zhu Chenghu's blunder on nuclear bombs
2005-07-23
By Charles F. Hawkins
As rational humans we generally like to think that everyone can
get along in a peaceful way while seeking better lives for our
children and ourselves.
But once in a while an event or utterance by a national
official brings us back to reality - the world is not inherently
a peaceful place.
Such was the case this past Thursday when Major General Zhu
Chenghu, a dean at the prestigious National Defence University
in Beijing, coolly stated that China would have to resort to the
use of nuclear weapons in a war with the United States over
Taiwan.
So much for the ¡°peaceful rise of China.¡±
Although an official spokesman for Beijing repeatedly
emphasised that Zhu's comments were his ¡°personal opinion,¡±
there is ample reason to believe that Zhu is not the only senior
officer in China who holds this viewpoint.
I know Zhu Chenghu. We had dinner together two years ago with
another PLA general. He's a soft-spoken, logical man, and has an
excellent command of English, one of the reasons he supervises
instruction at NDU for English-speaking foreign military
students.
His words about using nuclear weapons against the US in a war
over Taiwan were not a mistake.
Since before March 2004, when Taiwan held national elections
what were highly contested on several points¡ªChen Shui-bian won
by a narrow margin and his constitutional reform initiative
failed to receive enough votes to count - I have detected among
Chinese defence analysts and military elites a growing concern
over war with the United States over Taiwan.
That concern has been expressed to me in two ways: one, China
will go to war against Taiwan if it declares independence; and
two, if the United States intervenes, China has the capability
to win, regardless of US capabilities.
But win by using what? Nuclear weapons?
Such an idea, if enacted, is sure to backfire and wreak
devastation on China. US planners in Pacific Command in Hawaii
take such wartime considerations seriously, and make war plans
accordingly.
First use of nuclear weapons by China in a war with the United
States would be met with overwhelming response.
I shudder to think of the consequences. Shanghai, a city I have
come to love and appreciate, would be wiped from the coast of
the sea. Beijing, a world-class city that will host the 2008
Olympics, would cease to exist.
More importantly, I would lose many friends - people in China
whom I care about deeply.
What must Zhu Chenghu have been thinking?
For one thing he was thinking about the many wargames that
Chinese defence analysts and PLA planners have conducted to
study consequences of a nuclear war with the United States.
These wargames, conducted in secret and unpublicised to the
Chinese public, explore different ¡°what if¡± scenarios. What
these wargames don't explore is the attitude of the American
people if they are attacked, especially by nuclear weapons.
Nothing would keep Americans from seeking a full measure of
retribution.
One is left to ponder why Zhu Chenghu would make such a
pronouncement in the first place. Clearly he understands the
American psyche and knows enough about military affairs to
realise that PACOM has the ability to dominate China in either a
conventional war or a nuclear one.
It can only be that the general was speaking on behalf of other
factions in Beijing, factions that want to send a message to the
United States over their deep-seated desire to gain control over
Taiwan.
I'm sorry that the man I enjoyed dinner with feels this way,
or, if he does not, that he was ordered to make such an
outrageous statement in the first place.
The policy of Washington on the matter of China-Taiwan is very
simple and direct: If China attacks Taiwan, the United States
will help defend it. This includes a nuclear war, if it comes to
that.
And I hope for all our sakes that it does't.
The writer is a senior defence analyst in Washington, D.C.and a
frequent visitor to Asia. He contributes this article to Lianhe
Zaobao.
*****************************************************************
28 The Observer: 'I don't blame them but I hope they mourn the dead'
[UP]
World special: 60 years after the atom bomb
David Smith tracks down men on both sides of the
conflict to find out whether they can ever move on from their
past and forgive
Sunday July 24, 2005
The Observer
Sixty years later, the debate still rages. Was America
right to drop the atomic bomb - both bombs? Did it truly face
the prospect of a full-scale invasion of Japan which some
estimated would result in a million casualties? Or was Japan's
imperial army, despite its astonishing savagery and
unwillingness to surrender, on the brink of capitulation? Can
the mass slaughter and irradiation of civilians without warning
ever have been justified?
The man who built the A-bombs, scientist Robert Oppenheimer, and
the man who used them, President Harry Truman, are both long
dead. But the men who were physically close to one of the
pivotal moments of the 20th century still live with the
consequences.
General Paul Tibbets, who commanded the Enola Gay, the B-29
Superfortress he named after his mother, is now 90 and living in
Columbus, Ohio. The Enola Gay's mission over Hiroshima was so
secret that Tibbets was given cyanide pills, one for each of the
crew, so they could commit suicide if they fell into Japanese
hands.
Many of the Japanese children who felt the wrath of the bomb,
Little Boy, when it exploded are still alive, too. As might be
expected, nearly all of them condemn the use of the A-bomb as
unethical. Yet many acknowledge that in 1945 they were ready to
fight to the death with bamboo spears, and dreamt of joining
Japan's military machine, perhaps as Zero fighter pilots,
kamikaze suicide bombers. Whether they would have done the same
as Tibbets in his position is a question some cannot, or will
not, answer.
The issue will be hard to duck on 6 August when Keijiro
Matsushima, 76, a survivor of the Hiroshima bomb, visits Tinian
Island, the US base in the Pacific, to commemorate the Enola
Gay's flight 60 years before. He is expected to come face to
face with US veterans who crewed the warplane that day, though
Tibbets himself cannot go due to ill health. Mr Matsushima, a
fluent English speaker and frequent visitor to America, was at
school in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945: 'I remember thinking, "Did
they drop thousands and thousands of fire bombs in a moment?"
People's hair was sticking up, or they had lost their hair.
Their whole bodies had been smoked to almost charcoal and their
clothes were singed or torn. Their skin was peeling off and you
could see red muscle.
'Without exception they stretched their arms out in front of
them and were walking very slowly, marching like ghosts. I saw
many 12- and 13-year-old boys and girls heavily burnt among
those victims. When I think of these boys and girls, I can't
stop the tears.'
And yet Mr Matsushima, whose brother, Kanngo, was a Zero fighter
pilot, said he too had craved the fight against America. 'All
Japanese boys wanted to join the military in those days. When I
walked out of the city I could see both sides of the river
burning phosphorus. Big smoke had covered the whole city, rising
up, and I thought, "Hey, the Americans invented a real tough
weapon. It's very hard to win this war." At the same time I
never believed in surrender either. We were ready for suicide
attacks.'
Would he have dropped the A-bomb? 'I tell American people I
don't think we can blame you. This was during the war, when
people become mad to kill the enemy. If Japan had an A-bomb we
might have dropped it into New York. Do we have to thank them
for dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima? I don't think so. I can't
say that.'
Pressed on whether he would have done as Tibbets did, Mr
Matsushima raised his hands and said: 'This time I will reject
that. I know that some of the pilots of the Enola Gay say, "If I
was told to carry the A-bomb again I would do it, because that
was our job." But I don't think I can welcome this opinion.
'Sixty years ago maybe the pilots of the Enola Gay had to do
that because it was their duty but, after all, they killed men
and women, young and old, and even children and babies.
'If I see them on Tinian Island, what shall I tell them? "I
understand you did your job during the war so I don't blame you.
But I just hope you will be able to mourn the victims of
Hiroshima and have a drop of tear for the victims. Please
co-operate to stop the third use of it in this world".'
As a result of the A-bomb, Akihiro Takahashi, who turns 74 this
week, has no ears, suffers chronic liver disease and cannot
fully raise his right arm with its claw-like hand, and his body
still has shards of window pane embedded.
A couple of years ago he met Paul Tibbets in Washington. 'I told
him "I'm not going to complain or hold a grudge against you." I
pushed my right hand towards him and he noticed the burns on my
hand. He asked, "Is this the effect of the A-bomb?" I said,
"Yes". He looked surprised and shocked.
'I told him the sky over Hiroshima that day was so beautiful, so
clear. We felt safe because the alarm was called off at the
time. I told him I was even pointing at your airplane. He said,
"Oh yes, I could see Hiroshima very well."
'Before departing, I told him, "We believe as citizens of
Hiroshima that nuclear weapons are an absolute evil, and this
tragedy should not be repeated in any country in the world. I
hope you will try whatever you can do." He responded, "Mr
Takahashi, I understand, but I know I would do the same thing
once a war has started and I am ordered to drop the A-bomb." I
felt angry and also sad. But he also told me war shouldn't
happen again because, once a war breaks out, soldiers can do
nothing but follow orders.
'The conversation lasted half an hour and he kept holding my
right hand. I believe he felt some pain and remorse in his
heart. But when I told a friend, he said, "I doubt it".'
Tibbets was unavailable for comment, but in a 2002 interview he
insisted that he had no regrets: 'You're gonna kill innocent
people at the same time, but we've never fought a damn war
anywhere in the world where they didn't kill innocent people. If
the newspapers would just cut out the shit: "You've killed so
many civilians." That's their tough luck for being there.'
An associate of Tibbets, Ed Humphreys, of the Enola Gay
Remembered website, replied to a written request from The
Observer: 'The general recently met a Japanese aviator who was
scheduled to fly a kamikaze mission on 17 August. He is planning
to translate [Tibbets's memoir] Return of The Enola Gay into
Japanese for sale in Japan so they can know more about the truth
and wisdom of using the bomb to stop the killing.'
Humphreys added: 'The US picked Hiroshima and Nagasaki because
those cities contained over 100 viable military targets. I am
not minimising the suffering of the Japanese people. However, if
roles were reversed do you think the Japanese would have used
the bomb on the United States?
'The general has told me on several occasions he was not at war
with the Japanese people, he was at war with the samurai. They
were far more ruthless than the terrorists we battle today.
'I thank God our brave solders like General Tibbets rose to the
occasion to bring an end to the killing.'
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
29 [NYTr] With Bush's Help, GE Courts Indian PM, Nuke Industry
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 13:49:54 -0500 (CDT)
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
[GE wants to Bring Good Things to Life in India.... The US wants to
see US "defense" contractors like GE in a position to control things.]
Reuters via Yahoo - July 23, 2005
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=5&u=/nm/20050723/pl_nm/india_usa_nuclear_dc
With Bush's help, GE courts Indian PM, nuke sector
By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Just over an hour after the White House's surprise
pledge to help India develop its civilian nuclear power sector, the head of
General Electric, the American company that could benefit most from the
policy change, sat down for a celebratory dinner.
The host was President Bush; a few feet away was India's prime minister,
Manmohan Singh, and his top aides. GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt, a
contributor to Bush's presidential campaigns, had a coveted seat at the
president's table.
Bush's announcement on nuclear trade with India -- followed by a formal
dinner in the State dining room -- was not just a victory for Singh. For GE,
the only U.S.-owned company still in the nuclear business, it marked a
possible turning point in a years-long push to re-enter the Indian nuclear
power market, which it was forced to leave in 1974 when India conducted its
first nuclear test.
"In the short term, it's really business as usual. ... But if things unfold
the way it looks they may, then clearly it is a significant opportunity for
us," said Peter Wells, general manager of marketing for GE Energy's nuclear
business.
While the policy change may benefit GE and other companies in the long term,
critics contend Bush's move closer to accepting the world's largest
democracy as a nuclear weapons state could weaken decades-old prohibitions
against atomic arms.
"This administration's rogue, shoot-from-the-hip move to launch nuclear
cooperation with India puts the interests of industry ahead of our national
security," said Democratic Rep. Edward Markey (news, bio, voting record) of
Massachusetts, an arms control advocate.
GE was not mentioned in the joint statement issued by Bush and Singh, but
Bush specifically pledged "expeditious consideration of fuel supplies for
safeguarded nuclear reactors at Tarapur."
GE built Tarapur and one of its immediate goals in India would be resuming
fuel sales to the reactors, Wells said.
Immelt -- who said in May that "all conditions are right to invest in India"
and predicted that GE revenues from there could jump to $5 billion by 2010
-- was not the only American executive at Monday's dinner with a reason to
court Singh.
Bush also invited Lockheed Martin Corp. chief Bob Stevens and Boeing Co.'s
new chief executive, James McNerney. Bush cleared the way in March for the
two defense contractors to compete for a potential $9 billion market selling
combat planes to India. GE makes jet engines for Lockheed and Boeing.
GE spokesman Peter O'Toole said "tying GE's attending a State Dinner to a
political contribution is misleading. We support officials in both parties
and have done so for years."
"Jeff (Immelt) wants GE products picked to help solve India's challenges;
who better to make the case with than the prime minister?" O'Toole added.
BUSH'S NOD TO GENERAL ELECTRIC
Washington actively promoted nuclear energy cooperation with India from the
mid-1950s until the nuclear test in 1974. U.S. nuclear cooperation and
exports were later halted, freezing out GE, which built the Tarapur reactor
in 1963 and supplied it with low-enriched uranium as fuel.
India has since become the second-largest growth market behind China. In a
sign of its growing importance to Washington, Bush on Monday promised India
full cooperation in developing its civilian nuclear power program in
exchange for New Delhi's commitment to adhere to international regimes aimed
at curbing arms proliferation.
Provided the Indians move quickly to fulfill their obligations,
congressional sources said, it was Bush's intention to seek congressional
approval to implement the agreement on civil nuclear cooperation this year.
"It's the jewel in the crown," GlobalSecurity.org's John Pike said of the
Indian market. "We're the world's two largest English-speaking countries.
We're the two largest democracies and we're joined at the hip economically."
Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center said Bush's
decision was unlikely to benefit GE any time soon. "This may be cream but
it's certainly not gravy train, certainly not for a while." Sokolski said,
adding that GE will face stiff competition from non-U.S. suppliers.
GE'S ROLE
In the runup to Singh's visit, GE held a series of meetings at the
departments of State, Commerce and Energy, but Wells said the company did
not explicitly lobby the White House to change longstanding policy.
"It maybe sounds a little subtle, but we try not to tell the U.S. government
what we think their foreign policy should be," Wells said.
At a recent State Department meeting, Wells said, "We wanted to better
understand what the U.S. government's view was of the situation and also to
put an offer out there to them that was to say, 'We understand you've got a
lot of considerations to go through here when you make a policy decision,
and if there's anything we can do to help, then let us know."'
In addition to resuming fuel sales to Tarapur, Wells said GE could move
quickly to offer technical and maintenance services for Indian nuclear
plants, and eventually bid to build new reactors. If Bush succeeds in
pushing through the policy changes, "clearly we would look for U.S.
government support to advocate on behalf of GE," Wells said.
That support could take the form of government-to-government lobbying or
Export-Import Bank loans for future GE projects in India, experts said.
Earlier this year, the Export-Import Bank gave preliminary approval for $5
billion in loans to help British-owned Westinghouse Electric Co. and other
U.S. suppliers win contracts to build four nuclear power plants in China.
Copyright ) 2005 Reuters Limited.
*
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*****************************************************************
30 Re: [HD-L] The Safe Friendly Peaceful Atom-Nuclear Power
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 12:53:39 -0700
That's right, Sheila.
On the other hand, we could all call 911 when we hear those sirens,
and complain about the disturbance, and let the authorities know that
we object to the presumption that we can simply be shepherded out of
our houses like sheep on the way to market, never to return, and
receive no compensation for our possessions or property, so that PG&E
can make a profit at enormous cost to taxpayers and electricity
ratepayers, by creating 70 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste
that will remain on our coast indefinitely, threatening the next
thirty thousand generations of Californians.
(SImply had to get that off my chest!)
We would also take a moment to make a small contribution to the
Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, to help prevent relicensing of
Callifornia's two commercial nuke plants, beyond their current
operating licenses. http://a4nr.org
Also SLO residents could visit the library on August 9th for a special
event:
Lucida GrandeDiablo
is 20 - 20 years is enough
If you participated in the early actions involving Diablo, then come
and see yourself without gray hair and wrinkles fighting to protect
the future. If not, its time to come out of woodwork and stop the
insanity of license renewals NOW!
Mark the 20th anniversary of the Diablo Canyon
Nuclear Power Plant and the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of
Nagasaki in the best way possible: With the Alliance for Nuclear
Responsibility, viewing a rare copy of the landmark documentary on the
Diablo Canyon plant, A Question of Power and getting a update on how
to prevent license renewal
Re-live the beginning of the movement to halt nuclear power and help
plan the successful conclusion of this long-term campaign. Aug 9th 7-9
at the SLO Library, 995 Palm St. Donations welcome.
--r
On Jul 24, 2005, at 8:53 AM, Sheila Baker wrote:
San Luis Obispo County hosts Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power
Plant. -Sheila
0000,0000,EEEEhttp://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2005/07/24/news/local/news11.txt
San Luis Obispo
Warning system test at start of August
the public is urged not to call
9-1-1 during these times, according to Meg Swearingen, coordinator.
*****************************************************************
31 Santa Maria Times: The Safe Friendly Peaceful Atom-Nuclear Power
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 08:53:50 -0700 (PDT)
San Luis Obispo County hosts Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.
-Sheila
www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2005/07/24/news/local/news11.txt
San Luis Obispo
Warning system test at start of August
The San Luis Obispo County Office of Emergency Services will be
testing the Early Warning System sirens on Aug. 2 and 3 as part
of operation and maintenance checks, to prepare for an emergency.
The sirens are sounded once for twenty seconds until all 131
sirens in the system are tested. The testing will take place
between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., and the public is urged not to call
9-1-1 during these times, accor ding to Meg Swearingen,
coordinator.
From staff reports
*****************************************************************
32 Times of India: Case for private sector nuclear power
SWAMINOMICS/SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR
[ SATURDAY, JULY 23, 2005 08:47:10 PM
There is much rejoicing (and some groaning) over the
Bush-Manmohan agreement giving India full access to nuclear
fuel, equipment and technology. US Congress may stall Bush's
request for waiving the existing legal hurdles. But Russia and
France have long been stopped only by US opposition from selling
nuclear materials to India. With Bush lifting that opposition,
suppliers will queue up at India's door from France, Germany and
Russia, even if not from the US.
Our private sector giants like Reliance Energy and Tata Power
will also queue up to build plants. Now that we have agreed to
completely separate civilian and defence facilities and accept
international inspection, the security argument for a government
monopoly in nuclear power is dead. We must welcome private
nuclear generation, as in the West. Private sector plants will
be the best test
of whether nuclear power is economic without implicit subsidies,
something yet to be established.
The old Indian nuclear establishment is unhappy, since it
remains stuck in the siege mentality that began after Pokhran-1
in 1974. It was asked to make India a nuclear weapons power and
electricity generator using indigenous resources alone. It had
to keep out the dreaded foreign inspectors who would expose the
dirty truth that India's civilian and defence programmes were
one and the same. The scientists succeeded, and this was a major
strategic achievement. But they never had any commercial
orientation. They got unlimited money with no commercial
controls or penalties. The-ir task was to make India a
self-sufficient nuclear power at any cost, not to compete
commercially.
However, self-sufficiency soon proved illusory. India's uranium
mines are depleting rapidly, and cannot meet the demand of even
reactors under construction. Imports have become inescapable.
This is by no means the main reason for India seeking US
support. India has long demanded acceptance by the nuclear club
as a responsible nuclear power. That has now been given, and
with it the right to import all nuclear materials. This has
upset old-style scientists who want to carry on as before,
importing uranium but nothing else. Now they will have to face
global competition in equipment, technology and fabrication, and
they do not like that. The last thing they want is to see
Westinghouse, Areva and Siemens exposing them as second-rate.
Till now, the personal interest of scientists and the national
interest have coincided. But no longer. India's GDP is slated to
rise 30-40 times by 2050, according to the BRIC report. Fossil
fuels may run short, so we needs competitive nuclear
electricity. This means tapping the best nuclear supplies in the
world, not the best that Indian scientists can provide
indigenously. Almost certainly it means that the Indian
establishment, long hailed as a hero of self-sufficiency, will
be exposed as uneconomic, obsolete, and perhaps unsafe.
Global experiences (sketched in an excellent survey in The
Economist, July 7) shows that the viability of nuclear power is
unclear, partly because of widespread government guarantees and
subsidies. Nuclear plants cost twice as much as coal-based
plants, but have very low operating costs. If a nuclear plant is
built in five years with no time overruns, and operates at least
80% capacity, then it provides cheaper power than conventional
thermal plants. But construction delays or poor capacity
utilisation (for design or safety reasons) can make nuclear
plants hopelessly uneconomic. In the US, nuclear plants have
been dogged by delays and operational problems, making some of
them white elephants. So too in India. France has become the
most successful nuclear generator in the world. Its strategy has
been to build a large number of plants based on standardised
designs. This has lowered capital costs, and reduced delays and
operational glitches.
By contrast, the Indian programme has been marked by several
models. Taparur began with 160 MW reactors using enriched
uranium. Then our own scientists built a series of 220 MW plants
using natural uranium. They are now building 540 MW reactors at
Tarapur. Meanwhile, the Russians are building 1,000 MW
light-water reactors at Koodankulam.
The Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC) claims that it has
standardised 220 MW plants, and like France can now build these
cheaply without delays. But is it globally competitive? Nowhere
else in the world are such small nuclear reactors used. To reap
economies of scale, France has been using reactors of 1,300 MW
and 1,450 MW. No Indian fabricator can come anywhere near this.
Do not be misled by the claims of patriotic scientists. In a
capital-intensive business, old depreciated plants always look
economic. This does not mean that new plants without subsidies
or depreciation are competitive. That strengthens the case for
unsubsidised private sector nuclear plants. Corporations will
carefully choose the plants with the least cost and glitches. If
they choose Indian reactors, I will eat crow. But if they choose
foreign reactors, let the NPC eat crow.
Copyright © 2005 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
33 APP.COM: Plant's fate tied to dollars
Asbury Park Press
Published in the Asbury Park Press 07/24/05
The state wants major design changes at the Oyster Creek nuclear
power plant in Lacey to protect the fish that are killed by being
sucked into the plant's cooling systems.
We're glad to see their concern about fish. It's a concern we
share. But we're more concerned about the plant's potential
adverse effect on humans. Ironically, the cost of protecting fish
life could be a more important factor in determining whether the
plant will remain open beyond 2009, when its operating license
expires, than the formal license renewal process, which is rigged
to the nuclear industry's advantage.
Oyster Creek owner AmerGen, which is seeking a 20-year license
extension for the nation's oldest operating nuclear plant, has
reason to be confident it will successfully navigate the approval
process. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has never rejected a
license renewal request.
The more germane question is whether the upgrades that may be
required to keep Oyster Creek chugging along another two decades
will be so expensive that they would render the plant
unprofitable. Several older nuclear plants ceased operation
because the costs involved in upgrading them didn't make economic
sense.
Last week's announcement that the state Department of
Environmental Protection will require Oyster Creek to change the
way it draws water from the south branch of the Forked River and
discharges it into the Oyster Creek should be welcomed by
environmentalists and opponents of the plant's continued
operation.
The DEP's preferred alternative — building a cooling tower —
would not only reduce the number of fish and shellfish killed by
the plant's cooling system, but force AmerGen to spend hundreds
of millions of dollars on the tower's construction. That would
have a significant impact on the company's bottom line.
Other significant outlays can be expected. If the NRC does even
a minimally responsible job of trying to ensure Oyster Creek's
safety in its review of AmerGen's license renewal application,
costly physical upgrades to the plant are likely. AmerGen also
could face major new expenditures if it is required to better
protect Oyster Creek from airborne terrorist attacks and improve
the safety of its spent-fuel pool and the dry casks that store
radioactive waste. Decisions by the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission and state Board of Public Utilities on whether to
approve the proposed merger of PSE and AmerGen parent Exelon
also will have cost ramifications.
Nuclear power plants are expensive to run. Capital outlays
account for 60 to 75 percent of the cost of operating them. For
an aging plant such as Oyster Creek, license renewal will not
come cheaply. That may be the best hope for putting Oyster Creek
out to pasture.
the Asbury Park Press
*****************************************************************
34 APP.COM: Oyster Creek relicensing bid needs revising
Asbury Park Press Online
Oyster Creek relicensing bid needs revising
Published in the Asbury Park Press 07/23/05
BY NICHOLAS CLUNNAND TODD B. BATES STAFF WRITERS
The Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey will need to
resubmit an application to renew its operating license after a
technical blunder in an electronic version filed Friday prompted
federal regulators to turn it back.
Officials at the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission discovered
the error about five hours after plant Vice President Bud Swenson
hand-delivered a compact disc with 2,400 pages to the
commission's national headquarters in Rockville, Md.
According to commission spokesman Neil Sheehan, agency staff were
unable to electronically search numerous pages in the portable
document format, or PDF, file. The commission rules require
electronic applications to be searchable.
Officials from plant owner AmerGen have until July 29 to submit
an acceptable application, under conditions set by the NRC in
December, when it exempted the plant from a rule requiring
reactors to close when initial licenses expire during renewal
application reviews.
AmerGen spokesman Pete Resler said the error does not indicate
problems with the information contained in the application.
Company workers, he said, will fix the problem with the compact
disc. They also have a hard copy, he said.
"One way or another, we'll get the application in," he said.
Employees of AmerGen and its parent company Exelon spent 93,000
hours preparing the application over the past 18 months,
according to AmerGen.
A paper copy promised
Sheehan said Oyster Creek's application may have been the first
one turned away due to a technicality. The pages that were not
searchable appeared to be old documents that had been scanned
into the application.
When AmerGen officials filed the compact disc about 10 a.m.,
they told commission staff in Maryland that they also had plans
to send paper copies via FedEx, Sheehan said.
Edward Stroup, president of the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers local union representing plant employees,
said Friday he believed a complete hard copy had been"FedEx-ed"
to the NRC.
The commission would have regarded a paper copy as acceptable,
as long as no pages were missing and all were legible, Sheehan
said.
A license renewal would allow the 650-megawatt reactor, the
nation's oldest commercial nuclear plant, to stay open for
another 20 years beyond the end of its initial 40-year license,
which expires in 2009.
Safeguarding sea life
AmerGen has until Sept. 7 to notify the state Department of
Environmental Protection whether it prefers to build a cooling
tower to reduce marine life losses linked to Oyster Creek's
cooling water system or restore 3,500 acres of wetlands (a
preliminary estimate) in the Barnegat Bay watershed, according
to a DEP fact sheet.
Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, which
runs the two Indian Point nuclear reactors on the Hudson River
in Buchanan, N.Y., said it would cost about $1.5 billion,
including outage time, to build two cooling towers there.
And "it wouldn't surprise me" if it would cost "anywhere from
$500 million to $750 million" for Oyster Creek to build a
cooling tower, including outage time, Steets said.
"The fact that it's never been done before (adding a cooling
tower to an existing nuclear plant) raises questions . . . about
the economic viability" of doing so, he said.
If the NRC starts with an incomplete application, "then they
would be forced to do . . . a less than adequate review" if the
agency were to maintain the 30-month timetable for reviewing
them, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the
Union of Concerned Scientists.
The NRC has received many applications so there's no good reason
for Beaver Valley or Oyster Creek not to know what it takes to
satisfy the NRC, he said.
Earlier this year, NRC staff determined that FirstEnergy Nuclear
Operating Co.'s license renewal application for the Beaver
Valley Power Station in Shippingport, Pa., was incomplete and
"not acceptable for docketing," according to an NRC letter on
the agency's Web site.
"More than half the plants have already pursued" license
renewal, Lochbaum said. "Far more people have done it right than
have done it wrong.
"It shouldn't have been a surprise," he said.
Brick mayor skeptical
Brick Mayor Joseph C. Scarpelli said Oyster Creek "can't even
file their application right, so we'll give them Fs."
"If this is any indication on how they run a plant, we are in
deep trouble in Ocean County," Scarpelli said.
"Let's hope they run the plant better than they do the
paperwork," he said.
Stroup said: "To me, it's . . . just a paperwork glitch . . .
just like having something jam up on your computer. It will be
straightened out."
"Oyster Creek has provided safe, clean, reliable power for many
years" and "we need the power," Stroup said.
"'It's been a good, environmental, friendly plant," he said.
"I'm very glad to see the relicensing process move ahead."
Nicholas Clunn: (609) 978-4597 or nclunn@app.com
the Asbury Park Press
Copyright © 2005 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
35 Japan Times: More nuclear plant data leaked via file-swapping program
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Data on nuclear power plant safety inspections have been posted
on the Internet, apparently leaked through the Winny
file-swapping program on a virus-infected personal computer of
an employee at the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, the
agency said Friday.
The leaked data include reports on inspections between 2000 and
2002, and information on the operational status of nuclear
plants in Fukui, Niigata, Shizuoka and Kagoshima prefectures,
according to the agency, a unit under the Ministry of Economy,
Trade and Industry.
No information on the security surrounding nuclear material or
personal data has been posted on the Internet, the agency said.
An agency employee in charge of inspections of nuclear plants
had taken the data home and worked on his personal computer when
the data were leaked, it said.
The personal computer is suspected to have been infected with a
virus and the data are thought to have been leaked through Winny
peer-to-peer file-sharing software, which was installed in the
PC.
In June, a large volume of classified technical data on seven
nuclear power plants were discovered posted on the Internet.
That information was also taken through the Winny software on
the personal computer of an employee at a plant-maintenance
company.
The Japan Times: July 23, 2005
(C) All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
36 RedNova News: Witness to a Nuclear Revival
Posted on: Saturday, 23 July 2005,
In an earlier era, the financial community viewed utilities that
owned nuclear plants as risky investments. The Three Mile Island
(TMI) incident in 1979 sparked a tumultuous period for the
nuclear industry, a time in which costs for existing plant
operators and utilities with nuclear facilities under
construction increased significantly.
In 1979, William "Skip" Orser was working as an engineer at the
1,100-megawalt (MW) Trojan nuclear plant northwest of Portland,
OR, on the Columbia River. Trojan, the majority of which was
owned by Portland General Electric (PGE), began commercial
operations in 1976. That was the same year Orser joined the
company after serving 10 years in the U.S. Navy's nuclear
submarine program. In 1984, Orser was named Trojan's general
manager.
PGE routinely faced ballot measures in Oregon calling for the
plant's closure. During an extended outage at the plant in 1989,
the utility decided it did not make economic sense to keep the
plant operating and opted to begin its decommissioning after
only 13 years in service. Along with public opposition and high
operating costs, the plant was competing against cheaper
hydropower produced by Bonneville Power Administration.
Before Trojan began its decommissioning phase, Orser moved to
Detroit Edison in 1987 where he served as executive vice
president of nuclear generation. The utility's 1,150-MW Fermi Il
plant, the company's only nuclear generating facility, had
received a construction permit in 1968. The plant, however, did
not begin commercial operation until 1988, a delay attributed to
financial pressures at the company and new safety measures
established in the wake of TMI.
In the midst of this doubt, according to Orser, certain leaders
in the utility industry, such as former Detroit Edison CEO
Walter McCarthy, helped get the nuclear industry back on track
by committing their companies to finishing the construction of
nuclear plants. "McCarthy bet the company that Fermi would
benefit Detroit Edison," Orser said.
Fermi II, which today employs 900 workers at its facility in
Monroe, MI, produces 15 percent of the power generated by the
portfolio of powerplants owned by DTE Energy, Detroit Edison's
parent company.
After a seven-year stint at Detroit Edison, Orser joined
Carolina Power &Light in 1993 as executive vice president and
chief nuclear officer. He later became executive vice president
for energy supply at CP, a position he held until the company's
acquisition of Florida Progress in 2000. In April 2005, he
retired as Progress Energy's group president for energy supply,
a position in which he was responsible for managing 38
powerplants, including four nuclear facilities.
Former CP CEO Sherwood Smith and former Progress Energy CEO
William Cavanaugh, like McCarthy, served as "tremendous role
models and were out in front of the nuclear industry. These
leaders could see a lot further into the future than a lot of
their critics," Orser said.
Orser also credits the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations
(INPO) for helping to get nuclear industry costs under control.
INPO was formed in the aftermath of TMI to establish best
practice and standards against which to measure nuclear
activities. Industry executives recognized after TMI that the
industry had to do a better job of policing itself.
Some of the main challenges facing INPO and the rest of the
nuclear industry are recruiting new employees and maintaining a
focus on safety, said Orser. "Many of the employees who came on
board during the construction boom of the 1970s and 1980s are
retiring now," he said. "INPO has got a big job ahead of it. But
the nuclear industry does a good job looking ahead."
Mark Hand is associate editor of Electric Perspectives.
Copyright Edison Electric Institute Jul/Aug 2005
Source: Electric Perspectives
© 2002-2005 RedNova.com. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
37 RedNova News: A New Lease on Life
Posted on: Saturday, 23 July 2005,
The nuclear industry sees hope for the future in the quest for
fuel diversity, according to the recently retired vice president
of generation for Progress Energy. By Skip Orser
Nuclear power was going strong in 1979-and I'd been working at
Portland General Electric's Trojan nuclear plant for three
years- when the accident at Three Mile Island (TMI) damaged
public trust and cast grave doubts over the industry's future.
Indeed, TMI was perhaps the biggest challenge of the time for
electric utilities, which relied on nuclear power for 11.3
percent of the nation's total capacity.
But the utility response is a story of consistent success.
Utilities worked to enforce tougher safety standards and raise
operating performance across the board. In the process, they
orchestrated a convincing comeback that set the industry on a
course to reclaim public confidence.
Today, 20 percent of the electricity generated in the United
States; comes from nuclear ppwer. Also, its ability to produce
large amounts of energy without emitting greenhouse gases is a
vital advantage for the country. And while other fuel sources
are increasing in cost and supply uncertainties,
uranium-produced electricity has provided a stable base on which
to build.
Nuclear power faces a different set of challenges as it moves
into a new era: plant security, permanent waste disposal, and
public perceptions of the design and cost of the next generation
of plants are some of the key issues. Although disposing of
waste (that is, used fuel) is not a new issue, the challenges of
licensing a permanent repository continue to change.
The industry's most pressing need at this point is consensus. It
must set firm priorities to ensure nuclear's place in the future
generation mix. The major challenge in this area is to
consolidate different visions of what will keep the momentum
going in the right direction. Then the industry must make clear,
tangible requests to federal regulators and Congress about what
nuclear needs as it moves forward.
For example, safety-focused concepts that have proven effective
in nuclear plant oversight must be incorporated into formal
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations. This oversight
framework allows the industry and NRC to devote resources to
those aspects of plant operations that are most
safety-significant.
The industry must also ensure that Congress increases funding
for the Yucca Mountain project to expedite the licensing and
opening of the used nuclear fuel repository in Nevada. The
program faces chronic funding shortages despite the fact that
electricity consumers contribute $750 million a year to the
Nuclear Waste Fund, which contains a surplus of nearly $15
billion. Concurrently, the industry should encourage the timely
development of the Environmental Protection Agency's radiation
protection standard and the Department of Energy's license
application to the NRC.
In turn, government must develop an energy policy that addresses
the nation's evolving energy needs and encourages utilities to
explore technologies that make sound economic and environmental
sense.
There is growing interest in expanding the use of nuclear power
around the world, especially in countries with developing
economies, such as India and China. Their commitment to nuclear
power is a matter of national policy. But in many cases it is
also a matter of deciding the best fuel mix to get them through
the next 100 years.
Like those other nations, the United States must have a national
energy policy that clearly spells out the fuel mix for the next
100 years, no matter how politics in Washington changes.
New Licenses, New Plants
Backed by sustained safety performance, cost control, and public
approval, nuclear plants are taking steps to extend their
operating life. Many of the nation's 103 reactors have either
been granted-or are in the process of applying for-license
renewals from the NRC. To date, 32 nuclear units have been
granted a 20-year license extension, and 16 more are under
review.
Two views of Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor model, which NRC is
certifying. GE'S economic simplified boiling water reactor (not
pictured) is undergoing precertification. Both have passive
safety features and promise reduced material and construction
costs.
Several utilities are also looking ahead to construction of the
next generation of nuclear reactors. For example, nine utilities
(including Progress Energy) and two major reactor vendors formed
the NuStart Energy Consortium in 2004 to obtain a combined
construction- operating license (COL) from NRC and to test
streamlined rules for licensing new plants.
So far, no company in NuStart has committed to build, but if
they are granted a license, it could pave the way for a new
plant by 2014. The federal government is considering funding
options to support and encourage new construction. At a recent
gathering of nuclear energy executives, Energy Secretary Samuel
Bodman said the Energy Department will ask Congress to establish
a $3 billion insurance pool to help investors cover interest,
operating, maintenance, and newly acquired construction costs
stemming from regulatory delays.
If federal cost-sharing materializes, clearly early movers like
NuStart are going to be the beneficiaries of the next generation
of nuclear plants.
Other companies such as Duke, Entergy, and Southern have
announced plans to seek NRC early site permits, which would give
them the option to build on an existing nuclear site over the
next 20 years. Later on, the companies could submit a COL
application with much of the site preparations already
completed.
Cost-the ultimate nemesis of new nuclear construction-will be
considerably less for the next generation of plants than it was
for plants built in the 1980s. Because new units are proposed on
sites where nuclear plants currently operate, the
infrastructure, transmission lines, and emergency planning zones
are already in place. This will add up to substantial cost
savings during construction. Also the new designs being proposed
have fewer components and more built-in safety features.
Two views of Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor model, which NRC is
certifying. GE'S economic simplified boiling water reactor (not
pictured) is undergoing precertification. Both have passive
safety features and promise reduced material and construction
costs.
Get approvals up front. One purpose of consortia like NuStart Is
to streamline the application process with NRC commissioners.
The two new reactor designs the industry is considering are GE's
economic simplified boiling water reactor and Westinghouse's
AP1000 model. Neither has an off-theshelf design approval from
NRC, but steps are being taken in that direction.
The new reactors are futuristic designs and do not require the
large network of safety support systems needed in typical
nuclear plants. Passive safety systems reduce the actions
required by the operator-they sense unusual conditions and shut
down the reactor automatically. Plus, their simplified designs
reduce material and construction costs. So, if you have a
passive safety system that works by gravity, you don't have a
pump. If you don't have to pay for a pump-or the sustained
maintenance-there are benefits in cost savings.
Addressing the Spent Fuel Predicament
As the industry mulls growth options for the future, it
continues to grapple with the unresolved issue of centralized
waste disposal. Right now, limits in federal funding and
opposition in Nevada have indefinitely stalled plans for a
repository at Yucca Mountain.
Since the beginning of commercial operation, nuclear plants have
relied on spent-fuel pools at each site to store highly
radioactive fuel rods. Some plants nearing their storage
capacity in the 1980s began to use dry-cask storage. Wet-storing
or dry-storing spent fuel has been proven equally safe.
Dry cask storage is currently the only alternative that plants
have for onsite storage of spent fuel. Originally, all this fuel
was to be reprocessed, but President Carter abandoned that
policy over concerns of nuclear weapons proliferation.
Progress Energy, which I joined in 1993 as executive vice
president and chief nuclear officer, operates four nuclear
powerplants: Brunswick, a twounit site in Southport, NC; Harris,
a single-unit site near New Hill, NC; Robinson, a single-unit
site near Hartsville, SC; and the single-unit Crystal River
plant in Crystal River, FL.
The company was one of the original test platforms for dry-cask
storage at its Robinson plant, where spent fuel assemblies have
been safely stored for nearly 20 years.
At its Harris plant, originally designed for four units, there
are four complete spent-fuel pools that store rods from the
Robinson and Brunswick plants.
Study at Yucca Mountain took 15 years and $8 billion, and in
2002 Congress designated it the repository for high-level
nuclear waste.
Study at Yucca Mountain took 15 years and $8 billion, and in
2002 Congress designated it the repository for high-level
nuclear waste.
Waiting for Yucca. Progress Energy's Robinson plant (left)
employs dry cask storage and uses spent-fuel pools at Progress'
Harris plant. Below, a cask moves to a storage site at
Dominion's North Anna plant in Virginia.
Transportation of spent fuel also remains a controversial issue
for the industry as a whole. When pools fill up, dry storage
containers at each site will continue to be the preferred
storage method. The newest containers are des\igned so they can
be safely shipped to a national repository like Yucca
Mountain-without transferring the fuel into another container.
Nuclear plant security is another topic under debate, and many
questions remain about what the industry must do to address
potential vulnerabilities in light of 9/11. Many of the
industry's security issues are the same as national defense
issues. For an industry that has always been highly fortified
and taken strict security measures, the biggest debate right now
is how much of the burden for additional security reform lies
with the utilities and how much is the responsibility of the
federal government. It's going to take a couple more years to
get a clear line drawn somewhere.
Waiting for Yucca. Progress Energy's Robinson plant (left)
employs dry cask storage and uses spent-fuel pools at Progress'
Harris plant. Below, a cask moves to a storage site at
Dominion's North Anna plant in Virginia.
Enhancing Plant Performance
Despite those questions, the nuclear industry has maintained its
focus on safe and efficient operations. The end of the 1980s saw
a watershed event. The industry had been through several
different iterations of trying to improve performance through
peer pressure and regulatory pressure. Around 1993, both the
industry and NRC realized that simple compliance regulation was
not producing the results that the industry needed to move
forward. So the industry embarked on the NRC Reactor Oversight
Program, which established a uniform plant inspection and
assessment process. The program focuses on key safety indicators
such as unplanned automatic shutdowns, safety system
performance, and industrial safety. At the same time, many
initiatives undertaken to improve performance began to gain
traction.
From 1980 to 2000, capacity factors at plants climbed from the
50th percentile to the upper 90s after the industry started to
concentrate on increasing safety and reliability while improving
financial performance. Production costs dropped from more than 3
cents per kilowatt-hour in 1990 to 1.69 cents in 2004.
Refueling outage improvements, for example, produced many
benefits, financial and operational. In 1990, the average length
for such outages in the industry was 104 days. By 1995 the
number had dropped to 66; and by 2003 the average stood at 40
days.
During the 1990s, keeping plants online longer and reducing
outage times increased generation, an output equivalent to 19
new 1,000-megawatt plants. It was enough to satisfy nearly a
third of the growth in U.S. electricity demand over the decade.
The industry believed that if you took initiatives to improve
safety, quality, and efficiency, costs would fall in line. You
didn't go about reducing cost by cutting out things. You went
about it by improving the productivity of the basic assets.
Positive results at Crystal River. The more nuclear plants a
company operates, the greater the efficiencies for each plant.
Not just clean. In the end, improvements in safety, quality, and
efficiency serve to reduce operating costs.
Efforts to reduce human error and prevent negative events are
paying off for the industry as well. For example, many plants
use elaborate training mock-ups and practice scenarios that
emphasize error and injury prevention. Before refueling outages,
all workers, including contractors, must complete intensive
safety and human performance orientation before performing work.
Nuclear plants have tight security, says the author. How much
additional security comes from utilities and how much from
government?
Progress Energy approached human performance by studying fatal
aircraft accidents in the aviation industry. The company found
that around two-thirds of crashes resulted from pilot error-the
same fraction of events at nuclear plants. Along with many other
nuclear utilities, Progress Energy launched a human performance
improvement program that contributed to operational improvements
and a decline in human-error related events, prompting several
other organizations within the company to follow suit.
Over the years, several utility companies have become
frontrunners in building successful nuclear power programs and
have actively pursued the acquisition of new nuclear assets.
With interested buyers in the market, utilities that found it
hard to keep up with the industry's rising performance
expectations had the option to divest themselves of their
nuclear assets and concentrate on other areas.
It's not so much that the predecessor companies didn't want to
improve. It's just that when you're a single-unit company, for
example, it's hard to operate that unit with as much efficiency
as companies with many units, which could find more ways to
streamline operations and to export their economies of scale to
other plants.
With the acquisition of Florida Power Corporation, for example,
Progress Energy added a fourth nuclear plant to its fleet in
1999. The Crystal River plant had just emerged from a lengthy
regulatory outage and was on NRC's watch list. By applying the
same principles of performance improvement that worked at its
other three plants, Progress Energy has achieved positive
results at Crystal River. In fact, performance at the plant has
improved every year over the last four.
Recruiting the Next Generation
Hiring top nuclear plant workers is a key priority. Utilities
are keeping a close watch on anticipated employee turnover to
make sure that qualified replacements are in the pipeline and
that the industry retains the knowledge and experience it needs
to continue its upward trend in performance. With license
renewals and the potential for new plant construction on the
horizon, utilities are in a much better position to offer
long-term, stable careers to those seeking employment in the
industry.
One way that Progress Energy is addressing attrition, for
example, is through licensed operator training programs that
produce graduates in excess of the company's needs. As employees
mature in their operating assignments, they can be pulled off
and placed into other positions and projects in the
organization, where they can learn new skills, take on new
challenges, and cross-train in a variety of departments.
Like other nuclear companies, Progress Energy has stepped up its
recruiting efforts to hire entry-level engineers and technical
people as employees retire, a strategy that can be implemented
without raising costs. In addition, the industry is exploring
more flexible employment for workers, such as allowing retired
employees to return and work part-time or to help out during
refueling outages or special projects.
Plant relicensing has accelerated the need to recruit new
employees and find more creative and resourceful ways to apply
their talents. Only those plants that demonstrate a sustained
commitment to excellence can be successful in the licensing
renewal process. If the nuclear power industry didn't have power
plants with a sufficiently long life to provide career
opportunities for people, it wouldn't be able to attract new
recruits.
Gauging Public Perception
In many ways, nuclear power has achieved the promise that the
industry envisioned when it launched large-scale construction
projects in the 1970s.
Support for nuclear power began to improve once the industry
instituted reforms after TMI and learned how to engage the
public and communicate its progress. Even with heightened
national security concerns, the industry now has a 51-percent
approval rating in the United States.
More people support nuclear power plants, particularly when
they're wellrun and when a company has a good reputation for
improving performance. When you add to that the global climate
issues and other concerns, it is clear the public is beginning
to appreciate the benefits of nuclear power. That's why the
industry must remain proactive in educating the public about its
progress and the many ways that nuclear power adds to economic
development, a cleaner environment, and more. We can never
become satisfied or complacent about perception, because in many
ways, it predicts our future.
A Nuclear Future
Nuclear power by itself cannot provide all of the energy needs
in the years to come. That's why a diverse energy portfolio is
paramount. For baseload generation, the United States must
continue to use clean coal technologies, along with natural gas,
hydro, and renewables. One fuel source is not going to meet the
ever-growing energy demand in our future.
But nuclear is one of the largest parts of that future. Not so
long ago the top-quartile capacity factor for the nuclear
industry reached 81 percent. At the time, many were certain that
plants were nearing the ceiling of their potential. Over the
years they continued to raise that ceiling, and today the
average capacity factor hovers around 90 percent. And that's
just one of the measurements that has improved.
We've finally reached the point where construction of new
nuclear plants is moving closer to reality. In the coming decade
or so, it's very likely that the next generation of reactor
designs will debut in the United States, offering technologies
that enhance safety, security, and efficiency.
For now, the nuclear industry will continue to work on getting
the best results possible out of its 103 operating reactors.
There's some debate now about whether we're approaching the
limits of performance improvement. I, for one, believe that you
can take anything-any functioning organization-and make it
better. Certainly the improvements the industry makes in the
coming years will be smaller, percentage-wise, but you have to
go at it with the same conviction and continue to improve.
Copyright Edison Electric Institute Jul/Aug 2005
Source: Electric Perspectives
© 2002-2005 RedNova.com. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
38 Reuters: Exelon seeks to extend N.J. Oyster Crk nuke permit
Fri Jul 22, 2005 4:11 PM ET
NEW YORK, July 22 (Reuters) - AmerGen Energy Co., a subsidiary
of Exelon Corp. (EXC.N: Quote, Profile, Research), submitted an
application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend
the operating license of the 619-megawatt Oyster Creek nuclear
power station in New Jersey by 20 years.
In a release, AmerGen said Oyster Creek's current operating
license expires in April 2009. NRC approval would extend the
license until April 2029.
Oyster Creek began commercial operations on Dec. 23, 1969.
Oyster Creek produces enough carbon-free electricity to power
about 600,000 homes, equal to all the homes in Monmouth, Ocean
and Atlantic counties in New Jersey.
The station provides direct and indirect compensation of $52.9
million and pays more than $9.2 million in state and local taxes.
The NRC will likely spend about 30 months to review the
application before making a decision. The public will have
opportunities to participate in this process.
Chicago-based energy company Exelon's subsidiaries own and
operate more than 38,000 MW of generating capacity, market
energy commodities, and transmit and distribute electricity (5.2
million) and natural gas (460,000) to customers in Illinois and
Pennsylvania.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
39 Reuters: With Bush's help, GE courts Indian PM, nuke sector
Sat Jul 23, 2005 10:36 AM ET
By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - Just over an hour after the
White House's surprise pledge to help India develop its civilian
nuclear power sector, the head of General Electric, the American
company that could benefit most from the policy change, sat down
for a celebratory dinner.
The host was President George W. Bush; a few feet away was
India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and his top aides. GE
Chief Executive Jeff Immelt, a contributor to Bush's
presidential campaigns, had a coveted seat at the president's
table.
Bush's announcement on nuclear trade with India -- followed by
a formal dinner in the State dining room -- was not just a
victory for Singh. For GE (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the
only U.S.-owned company still in the nuclear business, it marked
a possible turning point in a years-long push to re-enter the
Indian nuclear power market, which it was forced to leave in
1974 when India conducted its first nuclear test.
"In the short term, it's really business as usual. ... But if
things unfold the way it looks they may, then clearly it is a
significant opportunity for us," said Peter Wells, general
manager of marketing for GE Energy's nuclear business.
While the policy change may benefit GE and other companies in
the long term, critics contend Bush's move closer to accepting
the world's largest democracy as a nuclear weapons state could
weaken decades-old prohibitions against atomic arms.
"This administration's rogue, shoot-from-the-hip move to launch
nuclear cooperation with India puts the interests of industry
ahead of our national security," said Democratic Rep. Edward
Markey of Massachusetts, an arms control advocate.
GE was not mentioned in the joint statement issued by Bush and
Singh, but Bush specifically pledged "expeditious consideration
of fuel supplies for safeguarded nuclear reactors at Tarapur."
GE built Tarapur and one of its immediate goals in India would
be resuming fuel sales to the reactors, Wells said.
Immelt -- who said in May that "all conditions are right to
invest in India" and predicted that GE revenues from there could
jump to $5 billion by 2010 -- was not the only American
executive at Monday's dinner with a reason to court Singh.
Bush also invited Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT.N: Quote, Profile,
Research) chief Bob Stevens and Boeing Co.'s (BA.N: Quote,
Profile, Research) new chief executive, James McNerney. Bush
cleared the way in March for the two defense contractors to
compete for a potential $9 billion market selling combat planes
to India. GE makes jet engines for Lockheed and Boeing.
GE spokesman Peter O'Toole said "tying GE's attending a State
Dinner to a political contribution is misleading. We support
officials in both parties and have done so for years."
"Jeff (Immelt) wants GE products picked to help solve India's
challenges; who better to make the case with than the prime
minister?" O'Toole added.
BUSH'S NOD TO GENERAL ELECTRIC
Washington actively promoted nuclear energy cooperation with
India from the mid-1950s until the nuclear test in 1974. U.S.
nuclear cooperation and exports were later halted, freezing out
GE, which built the Tarapur reactor in 1963 and supplied it with
low-enriched uranium as fuel.
India has since become the second-largest growth market behind
China. In a sign of its growing importance to Washington, Bush
on Monday promised India full cooperation in developing its
civilian nuclear power program in exchange for New Delhi's
commitment to adhere to international regimes aimed at curbing
arms proliferation.
Provided the Indians move quickly to fulfill their obligations,
congressional sources said, it was Bush's intention to seek
congressional approval to implement the agreement on civil
nuclear cooperation this year.
"It's the jewel in the crown," GlobalSecurity.org's John Pike
said of the Indian market. "We're the world's two largest
English-speaking countries. We're the two largest democracies
and we're joined at the hip economically."
Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
said Bush's decision was unlikely to benefit GE any time soon.
"This may be cream but it's certainly not gravy train, certainly
not for a while." Sokolski said, adding that GE will face stiff
competition from non-U.S. suppliers.
GE'S ROLE
In the runup to Singh's visit, GE held a series of meetings at
the departments of State, Commerce and Energy, but Wells said
the company did not explicitly lobby the White House to change
longstanding policy.
"It maybe sounds a little subtle, but we try not to tell the
U.S. government what we think their foreign policy should be,"
Wells said.
At a recent State Department meeting, Wells said, "We wanted to
better understand what the U.S. government's view was of the
situation and also to put an offer out there to them that was to
say, 'We understand you've got a lot of considerations to go
through here when you make a policy decision, and if there's
anything we can do to help, then let us know.'"
In addition to resuming fuel sales to Tarapur, Wells said GE
could move quickly to offer technical and maintenance services
for Indian nuclear plants, and eventually bid to build new
reactors. If Bush succeeds in pushing through the policy
changes, "clearly we would look for U.S. government support to
advocate on behalf of GE," Wells said.
That support could take the form of government-to-government
lobbying or Export-Import Bank loans for future GE projects in
India, experts said.
Earlier this year, the Export-Import Bank gave preliminary
approval for $5 billion in loans to help British-owned
Westinghouse Electric Co. and other U.S. suppliers win contracts
to build four nuclear power plants in China.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
40 NorthJersey.com: Nuke panel criticizes lab for misplacing uranium
North Jersey Media Group
Thursday, July 21, 2005
By JUSTO BAUTISTA STAFF WRITER
TEANECK - A chemical laboratory that lost a small amount of
enriched uranium fuel in April committed three apparent
violations in handling the nuclear material, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission said Wednesday.
The missing 3.3 grams of uranium-235 from LeDoux &Company on
Alfred Avenue triggered a search by state and federal officials
from Bergen County to Virginia.
The uranium is still missing. Investigators think the chemical
might have been accidentally thrown in the trash and trucked to
a landfill in Pennsylvania or New York State.
The NRC said the material isn't radioactive enough to harm
anyone and the amount is too small to create a so-called dirty
bomb, said Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman.
Still, the uranium "should not have been released into public
domain," Sheehan said.
LeDoux specializes in chemical analyses, largely of materials
used by the nuclear industry.
Company officials notified the NRC of the missing uranium on
April 13. It was part of a shipment of seven canisters of the
enriched uranium packed in a 20-gallon drum from BWX
Technologies of Lynchburg, Va., which makes nuclear material.
The uranium was for a university research reactor, and LeDoux
was testing the purity of the fuel.
"There were supposed to be seven [canisters], they [LeDoux lab
workers] count only six," Sheehan said. "The shipping papers
separated from the package, and at some point the box gets
thrown out before they thoroughly check it."
In its report issued Wednesday, the NRC said LeDoux workers
failed to adequately survey the package containing the uranium
samples, so one sample remained in the package.
Even though the workers could not account for all seven samples,
no action was taken to retain the package, which was eventually
placed in a trash bin. The NRC said the package then was
disposed of, and not transferred to an authorized "recipient as
required."
As part of their investigation, federal and state inspectors
interviewed officials at LeDoux and Miele Sanitation Co. and
workers for waste hauler Frank Capasso Inc.
NRC investigators met with LeDoux officials April 14 and July 8
to discuss the incident.
Charles Avallone, LeDoux's radiation safety officer, said
Wednesday he was aware of the NRC's report but had not fully
read it.
"We've put measures in place to correct the deficiencies before
the end of May," Avallone said.
One corrective action the company described to the NRC was that
two employees will verify and document that the contents and
associated documentation are correct when future packages are
sent.
LeDoux has seven days to respond to the report, either in
writing or at a meeting with the NRC, before any enforcement
decision is made, Sheehan said.
E-mail: bautista@northjersey.com
Copyright © 2005 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
*****************************************************************
41 Taipei Times: 'Shockwave' will unsettle you with the truth of nuclear
devastation John Murray gives a straight account of one of
humanity's defining moments, the bombing of Hiroshima in Japan
By Bradley Winterton CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Sunday, Jul 24, 2005,Page 18
Advertising [Advertising] The 60th anniversary of the dropping
of the atom-bomb on Hiroshima occurs next month, on Aug. 6. This
new book, a day-by-day account of the run-up to that day in
laboratories, on airfields and in the corridors of power, as
well as in the streets and parks of Hiroshima itself, appears to
have been commissioned in order to meet that deadline.
It's not only painful but also intellectually unsettling to
have to write about Hiroshima at all. The horrors themselves,
with the temptation to linger over them in some sort of
voyeuristic fascination, are only the worst part of it. But the
old, weary argument about whether the bombing was justified --
in order to end the war quickly, or as a lesson to the Soviet
Union, in the summer of 1945 poised to invade Japan from the
north -- is also troublingly compromising.
One of the worst parts of the argument for and against is the
tacit agreement by both sides not to include consideration of
the pure Buddhist precept that to take life at all is simply
wrong. In the tough world of real politics, we can forget that
one, people seem to assume.
Shockwave: The Countdown to Hiroshima
By Stephen Walker
352 pages
John Murray
Nevertheless, it was a revulsion at the whole grim, mega-death
calculations of the ensuing Cold War that led to the peace
movement of the 1960s, together with the alienation from
"conventional" society pioneered by the Beats in the 1950s,
something that led Allen Ginsberg to tell America, in a
deliberately shocking early poem, just what it could do with its
atom bomb.
And nowadays, when probably nine nations possess nuclear
weapons, the atomic one of 1945 can even appear of limited size
and power. If you go to the Peace Park in Hiroshima and look at
the twis-ted bicycle that's one of the exhibits, your reaction
as a modern visitor can very easily be. "How extraordinary that
it survived at all!"
Also curious, but numbing in its number-crunching, is the
absolute distinction made between the two bombs of August 1945
and the massive carpet bombing that had gone before. Over
100,000 civilians had been burnt alive in Tokyo on one night
alone in May 1945 from incendiary bombs, not to mention the
earlier wholesale destruction of Hamburg and Dresden by the UK's
Royal Air Force. Such deliberate killing of civilians, which
both sides claim the other began, was a huge step in the
evolution of the horror of modern war. In the 18th century,
right down to the Napoleonic Wars, citizens paid to be taken to
convenient hilltops to watch an important battle. By the end of
World War II they were being obliterated (if they were lucky) in
their beds.
Nor is it enjoyable to rehearse once again such things as what
Franklin Roosevelt might have done if he hadn't died in April
1945, or consider the public relations implications of Truman's
given name "Harry," with its suggestion that he was at heart an
easy-going, decent fellow who couldn't possibly have been
responsible for anything approaching a war-crime.
All this and more was gone over at the previous major Hiroshima
anniversary, the 50th in 1995. Then the planned exhibition at
Washington's Smithsonian Institute, aimed at airing both sides
of a permanently vexed question, was curtailed following
patriotic protests from the American Legion and the Air Force
Association. In the end only the aircraft, the Enola Gay, stood
as a mute and ambiguous tribute to what visitors could interpret
for themselves as either the US' success or humanity's disgrace.
Stephen Walker doesn't really take sides in Shockwave either.
Instead, he tabulates the countdown. You have a nuclear
physicist, Philip Morrison, carrying the core of the world's
first atomic bomb through New Mexico on the back seat of his
car. You have what is known of the conversations on board the
Enola Gay. And the author has interviewed such survivors of
those crucial decision-making days as remain, though some of
them died between the interviews and the publication of the book.
And for the Japanese side, Walker (a UK writer) identifies a
pair of lovers who met the night before the disaster, and has
the couple parting, and then the scene in the reconstituted park
in 2005, as his opening and closing sections, framing, as it
were, the momentous central action. He interviewed the young man
concerned, in 1945 a Hiroshima engineering student, last year
along in preparation for writing this book.
As for the photographs, it's hard to know which is the more
thought-provoking -- the before and after pictures of the
street-system of central Hiroshima as seen from the air, or the
photo of grinning Enola Gay tail-gunner Bob Caron in a Brooklyn
Dodgers cap holding a copy of the Oakland Tribune. Its headlines
read "Atom Bomb Destroys Entire City, Say Japs", "Nip Cabinet
Called in Crisis" and "Tokyo Wails Blast Illegal."
Did the crew experience remorse? Some did, after their own
fashion. Caron himself, who died in 1995, once commented "When I
think about the fission and fusion bombs of today, I wonder
whether we're not getting into God's territory."
This is an extremely vivid piece of historical recreation,
seeing events always in the concrete, never in the abstract.
It's hard to put down, and reminiscent in style of, say, Truman
Capote's 1964 blockbuster In Cold Blood. It's true it doesn't
always blench at making events immediate in a quasi-journalistic
manner, but the sources for statements made and scenes depicted
are nevertheless cited throughout. It is also admirably
even-handed, seeking neither to make heroes or villains of the
bomb's creators, nor condemning anything or anyone out of hand.
All in all, if you must read about Hiroshima yet again, this
book would probably be as good a one to settle down to as any.
This story has been viewed 242 times.
Copyright © 1999-2005 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
42 ANSA.it: Greens protest 'uranium bullets'
25/07/2005 04:59
[[foto]] Controversial weapons used on Sardinian range, they
claim (ANSA) - Cagliari, July 23 - Italian environmentalists on
Saturday protested against alleged depleted-uranium tests at a
military firing range in Sardinia .
The green activists poured off a boat and waved banners on a
Sardinian beach near the firing range .
The Italian environmental group that uses the Goletta Verde
(Green Sloop) boat, Legambiente, claimed widespread military
tests and exercises on the island had hit tourism and business .
Some experts say depleted uranium, used for armour-piercing
bullets and shells, causes cancer and other diseases .
American and other soldiers who cleaned up in the Balkans and
fought in the Gulf War have campaigned for compensation for
serious conditions allegedly caused by depleted uranium .
© Copyright ANSA. All rights reserved 2005-07-23 14:01
*****************************************************************
43 United Press International: DU exposure not linked to illness
Updated: Sunday, July 24, 2005 10:31 PM EDT
Jul. 22, 2005 at 11:58PM
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico say
depleted uranium used during the 1991 Gulf War did cause
increased illness in the military.
The two-year study of the potential health effects
associated with accidental exposure to depleted uranium, or DU,
during the 1991 Gulf War concluded that the reports of serious
health risks from DU exposure are not supported by veteran
medical statistics or by the Sandia analysis.
DU is a byproduct of the process used to enrich uranium
for use in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. During the
enrichment process, the fraction of uranium-235 is increased
relative to the fraction found in natural uranium.
As a consequence, the uranium left over after the
enrichment process -- mostly uranium-238 -- is depleted in
uranium-235 and is called depleted uranium.
The Sandia study included an analysis of potential health
effects of DU fragments embedded as shrapnel in the bodies of
some U.S. veterans.
Copyright 2005 United Press International
*****************************************************************
44 Lew Rockwell: Cynicism and the Use of Depleted Uranium
by Kim Hawkins and Robert Shetterly
by Kim Hawkins and Robert Shetterly
As the controversy swirls around Karl Rove and how blatantly or
surreptitiously he disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame to the
press, it’s important to remember that the preceding issue was
the question of whether Iraq was importing yellow cake uranium
from Niger to make nuclear weapons. Rove, Bush, Cheney,
Wolfowitz, et al., wanted to use this issue to terrify the
American people and win support for the attack on Iraq.
They wanted Saddam, al Qaeda, Osama, and Mushroom Cloud, like
four horsemen of the apocalypse, to be synonymous in the American
mind. What could frighten people more than terrorists willing to
detonate atomic bombs and spread radioactive fallout?
Of course, even when they knew it wasn’t true that Iraq had
imported yellow cake – thanks to Joseph Wilson, husband of
Valerie Plame – the administration continued to cynically hype
the fear. They knew that only a threatened and credulous public
would support this war. But the cynicism that allows elected
leaders to use a false fear of nuclear weapons to manipulate
people doesn’t begin to match the cynicism of those same leaders
who are using nuclear weapons themselves and lying about it.
We’re talking about Depleted Uranium (DU). DU is a cheap
by-product of nuclear energy and the production of nuclear
weapons. It is a heavy metal, 1.7 times more dense than lead.
Artillery shells, missiles, and bombs encased in DU will
penetrate practically anything – tanks, fortified bunkers,
hospitals, schools. DU is also radioactive. When a Depleted
Uranium shell explodes it is pyrophoric, that is, it burns
intensely, sending into the air billions of microscopic,
radioactive, uranium oxide particles, so fine that they can be
breathed through a gas mask. They become wind born, blow
everywhere, enter the water, the food chain.
When they are swallowed or inhaled, they lodge in every part of a
person’s body, emitting toxic radiation that damages DNA and
causes cell mutations. The mutations, in turn, cause an
incredible variety of cancers, birth defects, miscarriages, and
debilitating conditions that resist treatment. DU is primarily
made up of uranium 238, but our stockpile of it is contaminated
with neptunium and plutonium which are thousands of times more
carcinogenic than uranium. Children are 10 to 20 times more
sensitive to the effects of radiation than adults.
The United States and Great Britain used hundreds of tons of
Depleted Uranium in the first Gulf War, and they have used
thousands of tons in this current war. (A dose the size of an
M&M is potentially fatal.) During the first war they were used
primarily in the desert, now they are used in the cities. In the
area around Basrah where DU was used extensively in the first
war, the incidence of childhood leukemia has increased by 700
percent, overall cancers by 1000 percent, birth deformities by
2000 percent. People also experience immunodeficiency disorders,
AIDS-like syndromes, kidney and liver dysfunction, neurological
problems, rashes, vision degradation, sexual dysfunction, and
psychological disorders – to name a few of the problems. In
effect, the people of Iraq are suffering as though they are the
victims of a nuclear war. They are. The United States has
inflicted a low level, slow motion nuclear war on the people and
country of Iraq.
But the Iraqis are not the only ones suffering. Nearly 356,000
American and British troops, more than half of all soldiers
deployed in the first Gulf War, have experienced symptoms of
exposure to Depleted Uranium (commonly called Gulf War Syndrome).
Many have died of cancers and mysterious ailments. The
radioactive particles from DU are taken up by body fluids and
travel around the body, damaging multiple organs. They cause the
body’s communication system to break down. That is why Gulf War
Syndrome presents itself with innumerable, seemingly unrelated
ailments.
There is a 67% birth defect rate among the children of returning
veterans from the first Gulf War! Veterans with DU contamination
are also transferring it to their wives through sexual contact
(it is carried in the semen), the result of which is an increased
rate of cervical cancer. And many women have repeatedly
miscarried.
In 1996 and 1997 the United Nations Human Rights Tribunals
condemned Depleted Uranium weapons for illegally breaking the
Geneva Convention and classed them as "weapons of mass
destruction." But the U.S. and British governments have
repeatedly denied that the radioactive dust from DU is harmful
and blocked research into the effects. In 1997 Dr. Asaf
Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at
Georgetown University said, "The [U.S.] Veteran’s Administration
asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted
uranium in the human body ...uranium does cause cancer, uranium
does cause mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with
the irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, the denial of
the fact that human life is endangered by the deadly uranium
isotope, then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice
to the truth, disservice to God and to all the generations who
follow." His research was blocked.
In 1995 a leaked U.S. report said, "The potential for health
effects of DU exposure is real; however, it must be viewed in
perspective… the financial implications of long-term disability
payments and healthcare costs would be excessive." In other
words, from the "perspective" of a government that wants to
continue using these weapons, wants to continue the lucrative
arms trade, wants to shield the manufacturers from liability,
better to keep it all secret and deny everything. In other
words, from this "perspective" it is acceptable to poison
hundreds of thousands of your own troops, millions of civilians,
and poison a country’s environment forever, rather than use a
different weapon.
The biggest danger our troops and the Iraqi people face is the
most insidious and the most invisible. It is one that won’t go
away when the troops come home. It won’t solve the quagmire we
have created over there. The half life cycle for DU is 4.5
billion years. It is not going away simply because we withdraw
and the press goes home. The toxic pollution from DU can never
be cleaned up. Nor will it stay in Iraq. Once in the air, it can
blow anywhere. The mutation damage done to human cells will
continue to be passed in perpetuity – much like a sick joke
around the internet. What this administration is committing is a
silent, quiet genocide of both planet and people.
Cynicism manifests itself in many ways. One of the most common
is the way people cynically inure themselves to corruption by
the politically and economically powerful. We say to ourselves
that corruption is so oppressively entrenched and intransigent
that, what’s the use of fighting against it? Thus, we diminish
ourselves, we render ourselves powerless. Our cynicism defeats
us. And we accept defeat even knowing that by accepting we
relinquish our ability to have control over the injustices in
our society. But, as long as we can grill the hamburgers,
squeeze out the car payments, dress the kids in clean clothes,
patch the roof, and escape catastrophe, the big picture will
leave us alone.
This is not true, though. The big picture won’t leave us alone.
There is another kind of cynicism that is more insidious. That
is the cynicism of the powerful.
We must ask ourselves, what kind of respect does a government
have for its people if it lies to them and hides the truth from
them, truth that is endangering their lives? In what kind of
cynical disregard are the victims trapped? The use of Depleted
Uranium demonstrates that our government has no respect for its
own soldiers. They are only a means to an end. Discards. The use
of DU also demonstrates the U.S. government has no long-term
concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people, democracy or no.
They are an expendable impediment to our real goals. Depleted
Uranium is real. The cynical denial of its danger endangers us
all. And the most cynical fact of this war is that the only
weapon of mass destruction in Iraq is the one we brought there.
July 23, 2005
Robert Shetterly [send him mail] is a writer and artist who
lives in Brooksville, Maine. He is the author of Americans
Who Tell the Truth. See his
website.
Kim Hawkins is a Veteran of the U.S. Navy and the first Gulf
War. She lives in Trenton, Maine.
Copyright 2005 © LewRockwell.com
*****************************************************************
45 The Observer: Children of Hiroshima
The Guardian
[UP]
World special: 60 years after the atom bomb
The mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki threw a terrible
shadow over the 20th century. David Smith went to Japan to meet
the survivors of the bright and horrifying dawn of the atomic age
Sunday July 24, 2005
Seven-year-old Masaaki Tanabe spent that hot and humid summer
playing in the gardens of the industrial promotion hall, beneath
the striking green dome which had become a local landmark. In
those days Hiroshima, set against rolling mountain peaks and
spread across a delta dotted by bridges, was known as the 'city
of water'.
Here the old Japan merged with the new: women in kimonos mingled
with men in suits, Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines and Kabuki
theatres were neighbours to shops, cinemas, clothing factories,
gambling houses - and military installations. The child,
descended from a samurai warrior who once ruled Hiroshima, lived
next to the industrial promotion hall in a sumptuous house with a
tiled roof, tamati-matted floors and sliding wood and paper
doors.
'For children the industrial promotion hall was the best
playground there was,' said Mr Tanabe, now 67. 'I rode my
tricycle in the gardens there. With friends I slid down the
handrail of the spiral staircase in the hall. There was a park
beside the hall where we caught insects and dragonflies and
played hide and seek and jumped into the river from the bridge.
It was so much fun.'
The Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, built in Western
style by a Czech architect in 1915, was a symbol of modernity,
and boys peer in for a glimpse at the modern world. 'Inside they
sometimes had tap dancing by Japan's best dancers, although not
as good as Fred Astaire. Or they played jazz on a gramophone and
people danced the tango. They played Western music and it was
very exciting. But by 1944 songs and films to raise the morale
of the Japanese people for war prevailed,' Mr Tanabe said.
The Second World War, in many Western minds, was to make
Hiroshima less a geographical place than an image and an event:
a blasted landscape dated 6 August 1945, when the American B-29
Superfortress bomber Enola Gay shimmered out of a beautiful blue
sky and dropped on it the bomb, nicknamed 'Little Boy' by its
makers, which seconds later became the most destructive weapon
the world had ever seen. At 8.15am the uranium atom bomb
exploded 580 metres above the city with a blinding flash,
creating a fireball that blazed like a small sun with a
temperature of more than a million degrees Celcius at the
centre. In one second the fireball reached a diameter of 280
metres, sending surface temperatures to 4,000C. Fierce heat rays
and radiation burst out in every direction, unleashing a high
pressure shockwave, vaporising tens of thousands of people and
animals, melting buildings and streetcars, reducing a
400-year-old city to dust.
Housewives and children were incinerated instantly or paralysed
in their daily routines like the victims of Pompeii, their
internal organs boiled and their bones charred into brittle
charcoal. All 30 people inside the industrial promotion hall,
about 160 metres north-west of the explosion's hypocentre, were
killed instantly and the building was gutted by fire. Yet many
of the walls remained upright and the copper skeleton of the
dome remained intact as 48,000 buildings in the city were
flattened.
For Mr Tanabe, Hiroshima is not an image or event but home, a
core of identity where his mother and baby brother perished. For
decades he could not bring himself to return to the industrial
promotion hall, which has been renamed the A-bomb Dome and
granted United Nations World Heritage status. It perches on the
corner of a memorial peace park in the shadow of skyscrapers and
that most American of landmarks, a baseball stadium.
Recently, however, he has been able to confront that apocalyptic
morning. On occasion now, amid the crowds of tourists and
children peering over the iron fence at the stark, sculptural
qualities of the A-bomb Dome rising above piles of rubble, there
is the face of Mr Tanabe, lost in thought and blinking back
tears.
'Usually Hell is something people only see,' he said. 'But I
touched and smelled Hell. And I will take it to Heaven with me.'
On 6 August 1945, he was at his grandparents' home, 40
kilometres west of the city. Two days later he returned to find
his home wiped off the map and his mother, Yaeko, who was 32,
and one-year-old brother, Kohro, dead. 'I don't want to speak
about it because it still hurts and makes me feel sick. I have
never told my own family about it.'
His father, Fumio, 38, then an elite officer in the imperial
army, had been on horseback at Hiroshima's military headquarters
and was critically wounded. The young Masaaki went back to his
grandparents. 'My father came there but he was not like my
father. He was all bloody and so was his uniform. He used his
sword as a walking stick. He lay on a mattress and at times he
was so feeble because most of his blood had gone.
'When he heard the emperor's voice on the radio on 15 August,
the man who looked on the brink of death suddenly woke and sat
up. Listening to the news that Japan had surrendered, he said:
"There is no way for a soldier to live," and he collapsed and
died. Maybe something supporting him inside expired, all hope
gone. But I think largest of all was the loss of his beloved
wife and child.'
His voice trembling, Mr Tanabe added: 'I thought I should
retaliate and get up and fight by myself against the Americans
and British. How, I had no idea. We used to have only bamboo
shoots to fight the enemy. But as I grew up I wanted to become a
cinematographer because of films from Western cinema, so I was
contradicting myself. The country I wanted to retaliate against
is also the country I longed for. Although my hatred was not as
serious as before, when my daughter wanted to marry an American
I was still very shocked. There are 200 photos of the wedding
and in not one of them is there a smile on my face.'
Until his 60th birthday Mr Tanabe avoided the A-bomb issue, but
when he pursued his ambition to become a film-maker he finally
confronted it, and has since used computers to create vivid
depictions of the pre-war city. He is also collaborating with
Hollywood on a blockbuster movie about the event.
'Hiroshima was much more beautiful in 1945 than it is today.
There were warm conversations between people. I still dream of
the good old town [and of] my parents. I want to see them. I
miss them.'
Today Hiroshima is a thriving city with a population of 1.1
million and plenty of entertainment, carefree cyclists and
Starbucks. But the A-bomb, which by the end of 1945 was
estimated to have killed 140,000 people here, defines it. At the
city's heart is the memorial peace park and museum, in which
school pupils look at exhibits left behind by dead children:
school uniforms ragged and scorched, a lunchbox of carbonised
food, a doomed three-year-old's tricycle, a pocket watch stopped
at 8.15am. They look at photographs of a woman's skin branded by
the pattern of her kimono. They gather around a glass case
containing the cut-away steps of the local Sumitomo bank;
whoever was sitting on those steps became a smudge.
There are 81,649 A-bomb survivors - or hibakusha - living in the
city. Some, including 'forgotten survivors' from Korea, are
still challenging the Japanese government for financial support.
Some have become eloquent international peace campaigners,
demanding adherence to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and
expressing deep fears for an unstable world, post-11 September.
Many have lived with the legacy of the powerful radiation and
gamma rays triggered by the A-bomb, which poisoned the large
ashen drops of 'black rain' drunk by thousands of thirsty
survivors.
Dozens of babies who had been in their mothers' wombs when the
bomb exploded were born with microcephaly - abnormally small
heads. From around 1950, cases of leukaemia in Hiroshima soared,
and from around 1955 thyroid, breast, lung and other cancers
increased. Fears persist that the problem will pass down
generations.
From early 1946, in more than half of those exposed to direct
heat rays up to two kilometres from the hypocentre, the skin of
burn scars that were thought to have healed began to swell, the
skin puckering and thickening into keloids. These obscene
growths caused marriages to be cancelled, discrimination in the
job market and suicides. The hibakusha became pariahs in their
own land.
Michiko Yamaoka, 75, who was 800 metres from the hypocentre,
said: 'At first I didn't realise what had happened to me because
I was lying down, but months later I looked into a mirror and
saw how changed my face was. Then I often thought about
committing suicide. My mother broke all the mirrors where we
lived so I could not see myself any more. I had a fiance but he
left me after he saw the keloids all over my face.'
Ms Yamaoka was among 25 'Hiroshima Maidens' invited to live in
the United States and undergo plastic surgery, prompting a New
York tabloid to boast: 'America can drop the biggest bomb, but
it can also make the biggest, warmest gesture of goodwill.' She
had 27 operations there. To her regret, she never married.
Earlier this year she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
The bullet train journey from Hiroshima to Nagasaki is a rare
luxury by British standards, with its polished wooden floors,
politely bowing ticket inspectors and blurring speed. The
traveller might glance out at the Kokura stop, however, and
ponder the city beyond. On 9 August 1945, Kokura was earmarked
as the original target for the second atom bomb to be dropped
but it was obscured by cloud and smoke from earlier firebombs.
After circling the city three times, with bomb doors open, the
B-29 bomber 'Bockscar' gave up and flew to its reserve target,
Nagasaki.
Here was a city of culture: temples, shrines and 19th-century
houses overlooking a deep harbour, the city which inspired
Madame Butterfly and is known as the 'Naples of the Orient', on
the western edge of the Japanese archipelago. The A-bomb
exploded at 11.02am, killing 74,000 people, most of them women,
children and the elderly in a traditionally Catholic area. The
Urakami Cathedral, which had taken three decades to build, was
flattened in three seconds. A replica of this bomb, nicknamed
'Fat Man', in the city's museum shows a plutonium core no bigger
than a human fist.
Katsuji Yoshida, who still lives in Nagasaki, was 13 in 1945.
'There was a big bang and I was thrown 40 metres into a rice
field,' he recalled. 'The skin on my arms had peeled off and was
hanging down like a torn shirt from my fingertips. We had mud
from the paddy all over us, and we pressed leaves on our exposed
flesh to make up for missing skin. My right ear was blown off.
Two of my ribs were broken and they've never mended, even 60
years later.
'A group of women came down from the fields, screaming, to an
area where wooden houses were burning in a huge fire. All those
dead and wounded people. Arms and legs cut off. Stomachs split
open and intestines hanging out. Heads split open and brains
hanging out. Eyes had popped out and I could see the blood
vessels still pulsing. I have never seen such a brutal thing.
Adults put their heads into the river and never came back up -
they died just like that. People in the mountains were hit by
black rain and for years they came down with diarrhoea. This is
what the atom bomb is: even when you think the worst is over, it
comes back to haunt you.'
Sumiteru Taniguchi, who was then 16, suffered such severe burns
to his back that he had to lie on his chest for 21 months. He
said: 'I felt so much pain that every day I asked the doctors,
"Please kill me." I was only skin and bone and many times I was
in a very serious condition, barely breathing.
'All of the nurses thought I could not live any longer. But the
next year I was given some experimental medicine and after four
months my blood became normal and my injuries began to heal. I
had 17 graft operations; usually they take skin from one place,
but for me they took from two. Even now my injuries have not
completely healed and I can only lie on my back for 10 minutes
or so. I can go swimming but I wear a towel when I'm on the
shore.'
Of all the A-bomb memories, tens of thousands of which are
stored in both museums as a collective exhortation against a
third nuclear strike, few are as harrowing as that of Sakue
Shimohira, from Nagasaki. By August 1945 her father, Tomosaku, a
soldier, had already been abducted and executed, and her
20-year-old brother had been killed in battle. 'Fat Man' would
cause the deaths of her mother, brother and sisters too, as well
as 1,400 of her fellow pupils at their primary school. 'There
was an air raid warning,' said Mrs Shimohira, now 70. 'We went
into the shelter but the warning was lifted. My brother,
Masuichi, told me that in Hiroshima there had been a bombing
after the warning, so I stayed in the shelter. He went to school
as usual and, although he didn't have any external injuries, he
died three days later, vomiting and crying, "I don't want to
die". He was 16.
'I remember the flash of light. Then a blast of wind came into
the shelter and I was blown on to some rocks. I lost
consciousness then somebody called, "Are you all right?" I was
shocked to see people with eyeballs hanging out, faces black,
some with flesh hanging off. Some had internal organs coming out
of their abdomen. They were holding their arms out asking for
water. I heard people saying, "Help me! Help me!" but I couldn't
do anything because I was so frightened, shaking with fear.
'Somebody was saying, "Kill me! Kill me!" Those voices faded
out, which meant they had died. The floor was full of dead
bodies and they smelt so bad we just kept vomiting.
'I went to my eight-year-old sister, and she had lost
consciousness so I hit her head to wake her up. I couldn't see
myself but I saw my sister had hair like needles. We called,
"Mother! Mother!" but nobody came. My one-year-old nephew was
groaning from under a mattress of rice stems and we got him out.
'Late at night my stepfather, who was in the army in the next
city, took us out of the shelter. We knew it was already night
but it was lit by the flames of the fire. We saw the charred
bodies of my friends and there was a woman holding a charred
child to her bosom. She called me but I couldn't reply because I
knew she was my next-door neighbour. She was crawling and
something had cut her throat across. All her body was black
except that part of her throat, which was red with blood.'
Yet for the 10-year-old girl, the worst horror was to come. 'I
saw part of a broken gate in the debris and I knew it was my
house. I called, "Mother, sister," and pulled off the debris - I
can't forget the heat of it. I found a charred body under it. It
was covering its eyes and ears with its hands. I took out the
black hand and there was a little part not damaged, so I knew it
was my elder sister, Satako. She was 22.
'I cried, "Nechan!", meaning elder sister. I looked for my
mother, crying, "Mummy! Mummy!" and found two corpses. On one
dead body the eyes were hollowed out but the teeth had gold
fillings, so I knew it was my mother. My mother and the mother
of my future husband were lying together.'
Mrs Shimohira and her sister had been exposed to dangerous
levels of radiation. 'A week later I suffered bleeding from the
nose and purple spots appeared on my face. Later on I had
problems in my womb and my ovaries had to be removed. My sister,
Ryoko, became sick with an appendix problem. She couldn't go to
hospital so it smelt badly and was going rotten. People thought
it was a disease. She was 18 and a high-school student so she
was too young to marry and all her friends left her. She lost
hope. She committed suicide on the railway line.'
Even Mrs Shimohira loses her composure for a moment, and her
eyes mist over when she tells the next part of her story: 'A few
days after my sister's death I also felt like killing myself. I
stood by the railway line and could hear the choo-choo-choo of
the train. I was so frightened that I jumped off the line. Again
I waited for another train but I was so frightened I jumped off.
Now I think it was a good choice not to kill myself.'
She married and had three children and eight grandchildren. But
her husband, Nawei, 76, suffered thyroid cancer because of the
A-bomb, and their twin children, Toshiko and Yuko, 49, also have
thyroid problems, which they believe are linked to it.
The date 9 August will always be with her: 'I still have dreams
about that day. Sometimes I am woken by my own voice crying,
"Help!" I can still see the images, a woman falling down on me.
"Help me!" Her shoes are hanging and melted. I still revisit the
scene.'
Back in Hiroshima, Mr Tanabe continues to revisit the scene of
the devastation, where preparations are under way for peace
ceremonies to mark the 60th anniversary. For him remembrance
means seeing the closest thing he has to a sacred place: the
A-bomb Dome.
'If I could excavate the spot two metres beneath the surface I'm
sure I could find the skeletons of my mother and brother,' he
said. 'But now I think it may be good for them to sleep there
for ever because so many people come to pray at the site. Once
or twice a year I get permission from the city to go inside with
a bouquet of flowers.
'When I was young I didn't want to glimpse the A-bomb Dome; I
wanted it destroyed as quickly as possible. But 60 years have
passed and now I often go to the area and have a feeling of
longing and nostalgia at seeing the structure. It is like seeing
someone who shared all the hardships over 60 years.
'I'm afraid it will be destroyed if there is an earthquake. If
we lose the Dome there will be no symbol in Hiroshima any more.
It's not just a concrete structure for me. It's like looking at
myself in the mirror.' And with that Masaaki Tanabe of
Hiroshima, descendant of a samurai warrior, begins to weep like
a child for the past.
The bombs that shook the world
Hiroshima
· The bomb named 'Little Boy' was dropped by the Enola Gay, a
Boeing B-29, at 8.15am on 6 August 1945.
· It was 3 metres long and weighed four tons.
· Element: uranium 235.
· The bomb exploded 580 metres above the city.
· The air temperature on detonation exceeded 1 million degrees
Celsius.
· The energy released by the bomb was equal to about 15,000 tons
of TNT.
· About 140,000 of Hiroshima's 350,000 people were estimated to
have died by the end of 1945.
· The city was almost completely destroyed.
Nagasaki
· The bomb - named 'Fat Man' for its round, tubby shape,
apparently after Winston Churchill - was dropped at 11.02am on 9
August 1945 by the B-29 bomber, Bockscar.
· It was 3.2 metres long and weighed 4.5 tons
· Element: plutonium 239
· It exploded about 470 metres above the ground.
· Destructive energy: equal to 21,000 tons of TNT.
· About 74,000 people died by the end of 1945.
· Eighty per cent of homes within two kilometres of the
hypocentre were wrecked.
More information
Hiroshima Peace Website
Nagasaki
· Research: Dana Gornitzki
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
46 Bradenton Herald: Tallevast home values still in limbo
| 07/24/2005 |
DUANE MARSTELLER
Herald Staff Writer
TALLEVAST - If Marvin and Wanda Washington decided to sell their
house, they wouldn't know how much to ask for it.
That's because no one will tell them how much it's worth.
Last year, the Washingtons asked two different local appraisers
to value their 7616 16th St. E. home so they could get a
home-improvement loan. But both appraisers declined, citing a
plume of contamination from a former beryllium plant nearby.
"I couldn't believe it," Wanda Washington said, shaking her
head. "No one would take it on."
The appraisers' unwillingness underscores the uncertainty about
the contamination's financial impact on neighboring properties,
even those outside the 131-acre plume - like the Washingtons'
home.
Residents believe the pollution has hurt their property values,
scaring away potential buyers and making it harder to get
home-improvement loans.
But officials of the plant's former owner Lockheed Martin Corp.,
which didn't cause the pollution but has taken responsibility
for cleaning it up, say that hasn't happened in other tainted
communities they've cleansed.
And appraisers say they can't settle the debate, largely because
there's been little recent sales activity in Tallevast, and
there's no other neighborhoods with similar pollution problems
to use for comparison.
"We won't know until something sells," said Dale Friedley of the
Manatee County Property Appraiser's Office, which has frozen
Tallevast property values at 2003 levels because of the
uncertainty. "That's the Catch-22."
67 homes in plume
The contamination stems from the former Loral American Beryllium
Corp. plant at 1600 Tallevast Road, which had operated since the
1950s. Lockheed acquired the plant as part of a corporate buyout
in 1996, but never operated it and later sold it.
While preparing for the plant's sale in 2000, Lockheed
discovered a crack in the liner of an old evaporation pond that
had allowed toxic solvents like trichloroethylene (TCE) to seep
underground. Lockheed accepted responsibility for the cleanup
and began drilling wells to measure the extent of the
contamination, initially saying it was limited to a five-acre
area centered on the plant site.
Later sampling showed the contamination had spread to a much
wider area, including the well-established, close-knit Tallevast
community that surrounds the plant. The contamination plume now
covers an estimated 131.3 acres.
A computer analysis by The Herald shows the plume's latest
boundaries either wholly or partially encompass 133 different
parcels, including 104 listed on county property records as
residential. Of those, 67 have structures on them, an
undetermined number of which are occupied.
Those properties' assessed values range from $4,500 to almost
$179,000, records show.
Appraisers leery
Homeowners fret that the contamination, and intense local media
coverage of it, has tainted their community's image and property
values.
"I'm sure my house's value has gone down, but I don't know to
what degree," said Ronald Mathis, whose house at 1716 78th Sr.
E. is within the plume.
Therein lies the rub, say appraisers.
"You have to put your house on the market to find out what
people are willing to pay for it," said Richard Birkholz, owner
of Birkholz Appraisal Service in Palmetto.
Yet "For Sale" signs have long been rare in the neighborhood,
which was established by several black families in the late
1800s. Many of their descendants still own and live on the land,
passing it down from generation to generation as the community
became increasingly surrounded by industrial development.
With so few sales in Tallevast - the last residential property
transaction took place in early 2004 - appraisers must find
comparable properties nearby that have recently sold to
determine what a Tallevast home is worth. Lenders typically
require appraisers to look at comparable properties that were
sold within the previous six months and are within a one-mile
radius of the property being appraised, Birkholz said.
In the case of Tallevast, appraisers said finding a comparable
property similarly affected by contamination is difficult, if
not impossible.
Without that information, appraisers said they can't accurately
determine the market values of Tallevast homes. And because
their professional reputations depend on the accuracy of their
appraisals, many said they wouldn't even attempt to place a
value on a Tallevast property.
"Quite frankly, if I had an assignment in the area, I would
decline to do it," Birkholz said. "There's just too many
unknowns."
The county property appraiser's office, which assesses property
values for tax purposes, faces the same problem, Friedley said.
Because of that, the county has essentially frozen property
values in Tallevast at what they were in 2003, before the
community first learned of the contamination. But those
properties' values have actually decreased slightly because of
depreciation, Friedley said.
"There are properties nearby that we could use to justify
increases (in Tallevast), but if we did that, people would be
complaining," he said.
Lockheed optimistic
Despite that, Lockheed officials said they don't believe the
contamination will have a negative impact on neighbors' property
values for several reasons:
• The primary contaminant is TCE, which is easy to remove
because it forms blobs and sinks in water.
• Residents' risk of further TCE exposure was removed when they
were hooked up to the county's water system and their wells
capped.
• It hasn't happened near other contaminated sites.
"It's been our experience with other remediation sites that
environmental contamination of this type does not diminish
property values," said Meredith Rouse Davis, a Lockheed
spokeswoman.
She cited Great Neck, N.Y., where Lockheed assumed a cleanup
operation already under way when the company acquired a facility
there. The cleanup, mostly of TCE, is continuing.
A real estate agent said he didn't see any impact of the
contamination and cleanup on sales prices of homes in the area,
which he described as "high-income."
"I don't think there was any near-term or long-term impact,"
said Phil Raices, who owns Turn Key Real Estate in Great Neck.
But Tallevast residents said what happened in Great Neck was an
aberration that isn't applicable to their community because both
areas are different.
Trend: Values drop
Several researchers who have studied contamination's effects on
property values said that's usually the case.
"In general, property values go down because of contamination,"
said Kathy Kiel, an associate professor of economics at College
of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., who has studied the
issue.
"There are exceptions to that, but that's the general trend. The
important thing to remember is that every site, and its impacts
on property values, is unique. Every site is going to be
different."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that a
property loses by 2 percent to 8 percent of its value for each
mile it is near a contaminated site, a calculation based on more
than a dozen studies, she said. Kiel said her study of four EPA
Superfund sites, including two in South Florida, found an
average decline of 7 percent per mile.
Those impacts can be felt as far as three miles from the edge of
the contamination, she said. In the Tallevast case, that could
mean the Whitfield Estates area to the north and west and
portions of northern Sarasota County.
But the impact depends on a variety of factors, including the
type of contamination, where the contamination is, the public
health risk and the kind of neighborhood where the contamination
occurs, Kiel said. In general, the smaller the contaminated area
is and the easier it is to remove, the less it will drag down
property values.
In the end, there's no hard-and-fast rule because property
values are based on people's perceptions, she said.
"People have to make a decision about how bad they think the
pollution is and how much they're willing to pay for that
house," Kiel said. "It's a question of people's perceptions and
how much of a perceived risk they're willing to take. We see
people buying houses near Superfund sites. Of course, we're
assuming that people are fully aware of the pollution."
Another study said that's often the case.
"(W)e know of several cases in which market activity in a
contaminated area is robust with no apparent difference from
other neighborhoods," two Austin, Texas, appraisers, Rudy R.
Robinson III and Scott R. Lucas, wrote in a 1998 paper presented
to the Texas Oil and Gas Association.
"We have often found that knowledge of the contamination in the
area is virtually nonexistent. Thus, it calls into question
whether these transactions fit the criteria of a market sale
with a fully informed and willing buyer and seller."
Uninformed buyers
That apparently was the case in 13 property transactions in
Tallevast, according to a Herald review of property records.
Lockheed discovered the Tallevast contamination in 2000 and
immediately notified state and federal governments as required
by law. But there was no requirement at the time that anyone
tell nearby residents, who learned of the contamination when
Lockheed began drilling monitoring wells in their yards in
November 2003.
During that gap, 13 residential property owners whose land is
touched by the contamination either bought or inherited their
property, according to property records.
Among them was Mathis and his wife, Angela, who bought their
home and moved in with their three children in August 2002.
"I didn't know about it at the time I bought the property
because nobody told me," he said. "If somebody had told me, I
wouldn't have bought it. "
In Florida, property sellers or their agents are required to
disclose any contamination to prospective buyers.
A local real estate agent, Warren Johnson of Wagner Realty, said
clients have asked him if property they're interested in was
near the Tallevast contamination.
But the true impact on the area's property values won't be known
until someone puts up a "For Sale" sign, he said.
"My personal opinion, the plume will affect the real estate
values," Johnson said. "I am not saying they will go down.
That's for the market to decide. The real value of real estate
is what people are willing to pay for property."
Donna Wright, Herald Staff Writer, contributed to this report.
Tallevast plume
*****************************************************************
47 AU ABC: NT senator denies nuclear fuel rods destined for dump
(ACST)Sunday, 24 July 2005. 11:14 (AEDT)Sunday, 24 July 2005.
Country Liberal Party Senator Nigel Scullion says radioactive
waste produced by the processing of spent fuel rods from the
Lucas Heights reactor could be stored in the Northern Territory.
Since the Federal Government announced plans for the dump
various groups from Friends of the Earth to the South Australian
Government have predicted that the fuel rods will be stored at
the facility.
Senator Scullion rejects suggestions the rods themselves will
end up in the Territory.
He says they will continue to be taken overseas for processing.
Senator Scullion admits the resulting material, of a lower
radioactive level, will be returned to Australia and could end
up in the Territory.
"Whilst that's correct, I'll say again that this, the proposed
material, would be an entirely different material from a nuclear
fuel rod. It's intermediate level radioactive material," he
said.
"I think there's a clear gap between something coming straight
from Lucas Heights to here."
*****************************************************************
48 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Data discrepancy stops shipment to Hanford
[seattlepi.com]
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Ohio firm sending waste is tied to site's impact study
By SHANNON DINNINY
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
YAKIMA -- The U.S. Department of Energy announced yesterday it
was immediately halting shipments of radioactive trash from Ohio
to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation after learning that a
contractor provided inconsistent data about the environmental
effects of waste disposal at the Central Washington site.
The Energy Department, which manages the site, planned to begin
shipping radioactive waste from the Battelle Columbus Laboratory
in Ohio to Hanford next week.
Those plans were put on hold yesterday when the 2004
environmental impact statement governing solid waste disposal at
the site came into question.
The environmental impact statement was completed by scientists
at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, an Energy Department
science laboratory managed by Battelle.
A spokesman for the PNNL declined to comment and referred all
calls to the Energy Department.
The environmental impact statement outlines the expected effect
of storing nuclear waste in a proposed burial ground at Hanford.
But data scientists used to determine the effects on groundwater
differed from data that appeared in the final report, the Energy
Department said.
The discrepancies were uncovered as part of the discovery
process in a lawsuit filed by Washington state to block waste
shipments to Hanford.
"As of today, we do not have sufficient information to determine
if the data in question will significantly alter the conclusions
of the EIS," Charles Anderson, Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management, said in a news
release.
"In order to fully determine the extent of the problem, the
Department is immediately initiating an aggressive review of
both the data in question and Battelle's quality-assurance
process."
[Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA
98119 (206) 448-8000
Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com
©1996-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
*****************************************************************
49 Las Vegas RJ: Porter: DOE didn't quite comply
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Energy Department spokesman defends efforts to deliver Yucca
documents By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy failed to fully comply
Friday with a subpoena issued by a House committee that demanded
thousands of pages of documents about Yucca Mountain, Rep. Jon
Porter said.
A DOE spokesman said the department delivered 1,652 pages of
personnel and research records for the nuclear waste repository.
The material was sought by the House Government Reform Committee
for an ongoing investigation of e-mail messages that suggested
quality assurance documents may have been manipulated.
Among the material that was not supplied was a copy of a draft
license application for the Yucca site, a 5,800-page document
that would be expected to detail the Energy Department's safety
justifications for building a waste burial site in Nevada.
The department "is not in full compliance," said Porter, R-Nev.,
who is heading the House investigation as a subcommittee
chairman. "I had an opportunity to look at some of the documents
and it is quite clear they have not fulfilled the subpoena at
this point."
Porter said the material did not arrive with an index, and the
committee would be in contact with DOE on Monday for an
accounting of what was delivered. He said the department could
be given more time to fulfill the subpoena.
DOE spokesman Craig Stevens said the department believed it was
"in full compliance" with the subpoena, which it received on
Wednesday. He said some of the subpoenaed documents were in Las
Vegas and were being summoned.
He said other documents had not been previously requested and
could not be rounded up by the Friday deadline.
"We have made every reasonable effort to enable the subcommittee
to examine the documents they requested," Stevens said.
The Energy Department continued to resist handing over the draft
license application, which its lawyers have argued does not
appear to fall within the scope of Porter's investigation.
The DOE and the state of Nevada have been involved in a separate
legal dispute over access to the document, which was written by
a contractor and delivered in July 2004. It was subsequently
revised, attorneys have said.
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
50 Brampton Guardian: Company wants to incinerate radioactive waste
Sunday, July 24th, 2005
PAM DOUGLAS, Staff Writer
A Brampton company has applied for a licence to build and
operate an incinerator that will burn waste contaminated with
low-levels of radioactivity.
Residents can learn more about the proposal at a public
information open house Tuesday, 5 to 8 p.m., at the Monte Carlo
Inn on Coventry Road. Those who drop in between those times will
also be able to ask questions.
A second information session will be held in September, and that
open house will also include a formal presentation on the
proposal.
The meetings are part of a study being done under the Canadian
Environmental Assessment Act.
The company-- Mississauga Metals &Alloys Inc.-- has been
recycling metal at 75 Sun Pac Boulevard in the east end of the
city for the past 10 years. For the past seven years it has been
licensed to recycle metal contaminated with low levels of
radiation. Company President David Sharpe said approximately 10
per cent of the 1,300 tons of metals the company processes each
year has "very, very low level" contamination. The rest is
"clean".
The proposed incinerator would allow the company to accept
materials other than metal, including paper, gloves, rugs, wood,
and construction materials, he said.
The radioactive material would come from manufacturers that
supply nuclear power plants with pellets and tubing, he said.
"These are materials that were located in the areas where they
would be processing the fuel (pellets)," Sharpe said, noting
some of it may not be contaminated because it has not come in
direct contact with the radioactive pellets.
The material would be trucked in to the local facility, then
screened. Anything exceeding the government-regulated guidelines
for low-level radioactivity would not be incinerated and would
be returned to the source, he said.
The proposal is for a natural gas incinerator that would burn a
maximum of 250 pounds per hour. The ash would then be shipped
back to the source of the original garbage, where the
radioactive material would be separated and re-used, he said.
If the Environmental Assessment comes to a successful
conclusion, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission would review
the company's request for a licence to operate the incinerator,
according to a government spokesperson.
For more information on the Mississauga Metals &Alloy proposal,
call Sharpe at 905-790-0796, or email davidsharpe@mm-a.com.
© Copyright 1996-2005
Metroland Printing, Publishing and Distributing, North Peel
Media Group
All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
51 Tri-City Herald: Study errors halt waste shipment
This story was published Saturday, July 23rd, 2005
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
The Department of Energy on Friday canceled plans to start
shipping some plutonium-contaminated waste to Hanford next week
after Battelle discovered errors in a multimillion-dollar
environmental study it had prepared.
The 2004 study led to DOE's decision to ship certain radioactive
waste to the Hanford nuclear reservation.
However, shipments had been on hold because of a suit filed in
federal court by the state of Washington to bar DOE from
shipping certain types of waste to Hanford and challenging the
adequacy of the study.
Two months ago, federal Judge Alan McDonald in Yakima ruled in
part against the state, saying DOE could ship 34 cubic-meters of
plutonium-contaminated waste to Hanford to help DOE close the
Battelle Columbus Laboratory in Ohio.
But he also extended a ban for 90 days on shipments of other
waste -- those that had low-level radioactive waste with or
without hazardous chemicals -- to allow the state more time to
make arguments about potential ground water contamination. That
waste would be buried at Hanford.
As DOE was collecting information and data owed to the state as
part of the legal discovery process, errors were found in the
section of the study that analyzed possible effects on ground
water beneath the waste disposal area, according to a DOE
announcement Friday.
"As of today, we do not have sufficient information to determine
if the data in question will significantly alter the conclusions
of the (study)," said Charles Anderson, DOE's principal deputy
assistant secretary for environmental management, in a prepared
statement.
DOE is immediately beginning an aggressive review of the extent
of the problem and Battelle's quality assurance process,
Anderson said. The 2004 Hanford Solid Waste Environmental Impact
Statement, numbering more than 1,000 pages, was prepared at
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is operated by
Battelle, in Richland.
Information in the report was not always consistent with data
used for a computer model to predict how ground water might be
affected by the waste over thousands of years.
Among problems in the report was information on how much
radioactive iodine might be released from treated radioactive
waste over 10,000 years. However, computer modeling to determine
the information had been done only for 1,000 years, not the
required 10,000 years.
In another instance, there were discrepancies between the study
report and DOE data on the amount of radioactive iodine and
technetium DOE anticipates being disposed of at Hanford, said
Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the Washington state
Department of Ecology.
In addition, there appeared to be problems in information used
in a computer model of possible radioactive releases from
treated waste.
"Prior to the discovery of these differences within the past few
days, the defendants were not aware that any such
inconsistencies existed between the model parameter files and
the (study)," according to a notice filed in federal court
Friday by the U.S. Department of Justice, which is representing
DOE in the lawsuit filed by the state.
State employees had pointed out in court proceedings that there
appeared to be discrepancies between DOE information on
potential ground water effects in the study and other documents,
which helped convince the judge to expand the ban on sending
waste to Hanford for 90 days.
DOE will be preparing a supplemental document with correct
information and told that court that the examination of the
ground water information would include an opportunity for public
review and comment.
"We remain committed to fulfilling our cleanup obligations at
Hanford in a forthright, transparent manner that is respectful
of both the environment and the communities close to Hanford,"
Anderson said.
In a notice to the federal court Friday, DOE told the judge that
the ban on sending low-level radioactive waste to Hanford that
it has fought against should remain in place for the time being.
Federal attorneys asked for more time to provide correct
information to the state. Reviewing data in computer models will
take two to three months, according to the Department of
Justice.
In addition, even though the problems in the ground water
analysis do not directly affect the plutonium-contaminated waste
DOE plans to ship from Ohio, DOE will delay those shipments.
That waste, called transuranic waste, is planned to be stored at
Hanford until it can be treated and shipped to a permanent
repository in New Mexico.
The state had objected to accepting the waste, fearing it might
become stranded at Hanford.
A Washington State Patrol memo Friday afternoon said the
shipments would be rescheduled for October. But Hutchison said
DOE told the state Department of Ecology later in the afternoon
that the waste shipments were suspended indefinitely.
DOE had planned to send 13 loads of waste to Hanford by Sept.
20, Hutchison said.
A national laboratory spokesman said because of the lawsuit, he
could not comment on what went wrong with the study.
"The department is very disappointed that Battelle's lack of
appropriate quality assurance would allow such discrepancies to
exist," Anderson said.
The problems in the study reinforce the merit of the state's
lawsuit, Hutchison said.
© 2005 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
52 Congressman Jon Porter: DOE PRODUCES CERTAIN YUCCA DOCUMENTS
TO SUBCOMMITTEE, BUT FAILS TO FULLY COMPLY WITH SUBPOENA
(NV03) - Press Release -
July 22, 2005
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Department of Energy (DOE) has
started the process of handing over a number of key documents
related to the investigation into whether or not science behind
the Yucca Mountain Project was falsified. However, questions
remain as to why certain requested documents which DOE should
have readily available were not produced. On Wednesday, July
20, the House Government Reform Committee served a subpoena for
the documents at the behest of Third District Congressman Jon
Porter. Porter chairs the Federal Workforce and Agency
Organization Subcommittee, which is leading the investigation.
DOE had until 4 PM ET today to begin complying with the document
requests, or risked being held in contempt of Congress.
“Since e-mails suggesting Yucca Mountain safety data had been
falsified came to light in March, I’ve used every tool at my
disposal as Chairman of the Federal Workforce and Agency
Oversight Subcommittee to launch a full and thorough
investigation,” said Porter. “That includes issuing subpoenas
to individuals and agencies who have refused to cooperate with
my requests. Upon hearing documents had been delivered to the
Subcommittee this afternoon, it appeared as though DOE had
finally seemed to grasp the importance of this investigation and
the effect it could have on millions of Americans. However,
after personally reviewing what was delivered, the absence of
certain key documents leads me to believe DOE is continuing to
play games.”
The key document that was requested but not produced is the
draft license application, which is expected to be handed over
by DOE to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the coming
months. If approved by the NRC, the license application would
allow the Yucca Mountain Project to begin the process of
accepting nuclear waste. DOE has not even attempted to explain
why they failed to hand over this document, which remains a
major element of the investigation.
The following is a list of documents DOE was asked to produce,
as outlined in the subpoena:
1) All records that reflect the falsification and/or
fabrication of records by any Federal employee, contractor, or
any other person in connection with relation to the proposed
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository not previously produced
by the Department of Energy to the Subcommittee on March 29,
2005
2) All records referring or relating to the hiring,
reassignment, or transfer of Joseph Hevesi, Alan Flint, or
Lorraine Flint, to the Yucca Mountain Project (“YMP”), including
the re-employment or reassignment of any such employees to YMP
on or after December 1, 2004
3) All lists or glossaries of frequently used terms,
including scientific terms, associated with the Yucca Mountain
Project
4) All lists of water infiltration models relating to the
Yucca Mountain Project from 1997 to the present
5) All lists of employees who worked on water infiltration
models relating to the Yucca Mountain project from 1997 to the
present, including but not limited to the employees and the
models they worked on
6) All Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management
(“OCRWM”) organizational charts that show the names of employees
and/or the management structure of the Yucca Mountain Project
form 1998 to the present
7) Any portions of the current version of the draft
license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (“NRC”)
for construction and operation of the Yucca Mountain Repository
referring or relating to the work or modeling performed by
Joseph Hevesi, Alan Flint, or Lorraine Flint
8) A copy of the current version of the draft license
application to the NRC for construction and operation of the
Yucca Mountain Repository
9) All records referring or relating to any communications
between Bectel SAIC and Department of Energy officials regarding
the records listed in Item 1 of this Schedule, without regard to
whether such records were produced by the Department of Energy
to the Subcommittee on March 29, 2005
10) All records referring or relating to the Department of
Energy’s review of scientific work conducted by Alan Flint,
Lorraine Flint and Joseph Hevesi since December 1, 2004
# # #
*****************************************************************
53 ABQJOURNAL: State Agrees With Changes To Deal with LES
the Albuquerque Journal newspaper.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Albuquerque Journal-->
Associated Press
SANTA FE — The state of New Mexico wants federal
regulators to approve a slightly revised agreement with a
company proposing a uranium enrichment plant in southeastern New
Mexico that will determine the fate of radioactive waste
generated by the plant.
Gov. Bill Richardson and Attorney General Patricia Madrid
said Friday they have approved a filing with the Atomic Safety
and Licensing Board that urges adoption of the agreement with
Louisiana Energy Services.
"This agreement sharply limits the project's waste storage
and disposal. It also allows the state to enforce the agreement,
not just the federal government,'' Richardson said in a
statement.
The governor also pointed out that the agreement applies
significant penalties — such as fines or shutting down the
facility — if the agreement is violated.
"It is clearly in the very strong interests of New Mexico's
people and environment,'' Richardson said.
The agreement with the state was an attempt to satisfy the
state's concern that New Mexico might be stuck with the 8,000
tons per year of radioactive waste to be generated by the plant,
which would make fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
LES currently has no way to dispose of it, but the company
has plans to contract with a private company for treatment and
eventual disposal of the waste. The federal government also
could be asked to take responsibility for it.
With no firm commitment in place for either disposal option,
state officials fear the waste could end up sitting in steel
storage cylinders at the plant.
Richardson made state support for the project contingent on
a binding commitment to get rid of the waste.
The state had announced the deal in June, but the following
month LES officials asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to
delay action on the agreement because they wanted to continue
negotiations.
According to Richardson and Madrid, NRC staff made minor
technical revisions to the deal and that state agrees with the
changes. Earlier, the staff had filed a legal brief saying the
agreement wasn't legally enforceable.
The revised agreement will be resubmitted to federal
regulators for approval next week, the New Mexico officials said.
In their filing, Richardson and Madrid urged the Atomic
Safety and Licensing Board to adopt the agreement and insert it
in the facility's license as soon as possible.
Steve@abqjournal.com
Copyright Albuquerque Journal
*****************************************************************
54 DenverPost.com: Rules tougher since last uranium boom
Article Launched: 07/24/2005 01:00:00 AM
By Nancy Lofholm Denver Post Staff Writer
Grand Junction - When Paul Carkhuff began working in a western
Colorado uranium mine in 1949, workers would take underground
smoke breaks. They would hurry back into mines after dynamiting
and breathe the heavy, choking dust raised by the blast. They
would trudge deep into unventilated tunnels to jackhammer veins
of uranium ore.
"I knew uranium mining wasn't too good for you, but I figured
like everybody else that I'd get out of it," the 88-year-old
Carkhuff said, as he finished a lung test at the Saccomanno
Research Institute last week.
Carkhuff did get out - after 30 years. Today, he suffers from
pneumonoconiosis, a scarring of lung tissue caused by inhaling
dust.
And today, if he went into one of the reopened uranium mines in
the Uravan area that are prominently posted with "Safety First"
signs, he would not breathe that kind of dust.
Fans ventilate mine air. Radon levels are monitored. The air is
checked for diesel and silica particles. Miners are kept out of
areas where radon or dust exceeds certain levels and are allowed
in only with respirators. And if miners even carry smoking
materials into the mines, they are fired.
Industry and health officials say they have learned much from
past mistakes, including knowledge gleaned from the lungs of
former uranium workers such as Carkhuff.
"This next boom will be a lot safer for those working in the
industry," said Teresa Coons, senior scientist at the institute.
A host of tightened federal and state regulations are designed
to ensure the scourge of lung cancers, emphysema and other lung
diseases suffered by an earlier era of uranium miners, millers
and transporters, won't happen again.
"I think the standards are good enough now if miners follow the
regulations," said Ben Kilgore, a former miner who has been
hired as a safety consultant by the Cotter Corp.
Kilgore and some mine company officials admit there is a big
"if" in that prediction. Miners are risk-takers, they say. They
carry respirators and are equipped with safety glasses and ear
protectors. But that doesn't mean they will use the equipment or
follow safety-training guidelines.
Mines aren't the only segment of the uranium industry where
attempts are being made to increase safety. The mills are under
the same tightened safety and monitoring regulations.
And a new understanding of the danger of tailings would never
allow for the detritus of uranium mining to be piled near towns
or even spread under a town like it was under Grand Junction in
the 1950s and '60s. Enough radon-contaminated tailings to cover
23,000 football fields a foot deep were used as fill material
around hospitals, schools, golf courses, downtown businesses and
private dwellings. It cost $70 million to clean it up.
Ron Greenwood, a Pennsylvania engineer who is known as "Kaptain
Krypton" for his role in preventing a meltdown during the
accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, said if
the United States pursues increasing nuclear power as President
Bush is advocating, nuclear plants also will be much safer.
Three Mile Island was built in an era of operator-monitored
gauges rather than computers, he said. The Three Mile Island
plant leaked radioactive material when instruments malfunctioned
and an operator erred.
"Today, it couldn't happen," Greenwood said. "The computer
wouldn't let it."
Tom Pool, chairman of the Golden-based International Nuclear
Inc., is even more bullish.
"A nuclear power plant is about the safest place to work in the
world," Pool said. "Heck, it's a lot safer than a 7-Eleven."
All contents Copyright 2005 The Denver Post or other copyright
*****************************************************************
55 DenverPost.com: New rush for uranium
Article Launched: 07/24/2005 01:00:00 AM
Colorado and Utah are ground zero for mining firms trying to meet
surging global demand for nuclear power
By Nancy Lofholm Denver Post Staff Writer
Jerry Kettel, left, and Ron Ernst drill Tuesday about 600 feet
deep in a Cotter Corp. uranium mine northwest of Naturita. Cotter
owns the four mines that operate in Colorado. (Post / RJ
Sangosti)
Foreman Rick Ernst talks Tuesday about the the Cotter
Corp. uranium mine northwest of Naturita. Cotter plans to open
four more mines by the end of the year to help meet the nation s
growing demand for uranium. The area also holds deposits of the
steel-hardener vanadium. (Post / RJ Sangosti)
Grand Junction - In western Colorado and eastern Utah, where
salt-wash deposits and sandstone hold the source of nuclear
power, a scramble for mining claims, a flurry of demand for
processing radioactive ore and a clamor for more miners are
underway.
The latest race for yellowcake, spurred by plans for increased
nuclear power across the globe, follows years when claim
activity was nearly nil.
The 435 nuclear reactors in the world, including 104 in the
United States, need 180 million pounds of uranium annually, but
only 100 million pounds have been produced in recent years.
China and India are leading a worldwide push for more nuclear
power with ambitious plans for new power plants. President Bush
is pushing to increase the 20 percent of United States power
produced in nuclear plants.
With that growing demand, if no new supplies were being mined,
domestic uranium would run out in three years.
"No doubt about it, the world needs more uranium," said Tom
Pool, chairman of International Nuclear Inc. in Golden.
More than 8,500 mining-claim permits have been filed in eight
uranium-rich Colorado and Utah counties this year,
About 50 years ago, a miner in Montrose County would
handle uranium a wheelbarrow load at a time. Now, machines can
haul off much larger loads of ore at the Cotter Corp. mine near
Naturita. (Post / RJ Sangosti)
according to records compiled by The Denver Post.
And the U.S. Department of Energy is preparing to put 13,600
acres of uranium-laced western Colorado lands up for bid next
year, the first such action since 1974.
Interest is focused on the Uravan Mineral Belt, a swath of
western Colorado desert that holds a unique combination of the
steel- hardener vanadium mingled with uranium.
Those rushing to file new claims or activate old ones include
Canadian companies, which already control some of the richest
uranium deposits in the world, domestic mining companies and
local families that have been chasing uranium and vanadium
payoffs for generations.
"I see this boom not being a spike like in the early '90s. And I
see it being more sustained than it was in the '70s and '80s,"
said Ed Cotter, the contract project manager for uranium leasing
for the Department of Energy.
A more-controlled boom
Despite the jostling to lay hands on the 75 million pounds of
uranium and 282,000 pounds of vanadium estimated to remain on the
Colorado Plateau, this boom is not expected to be another
willy-nilly and dangerous race to get as much uranium and
vanadium out of the ground as quickly as possible.
"Companies are planning in a much more effective way for the
future. They're making sure when you ramp up production, you ramp
up carefully," said Stuart Sanderson, director of the Colorado
Mining Association.
A number of factors - increased permit requirements and a lack of
manpower and equipment - won't allow a rush to uranium
production.
Environmental and safety regulations also have moved into a new
era - with some projects needing approval from a dozen agencies -
since the last real uranium boom in the 1970s. And each mine
startup brings expensive bonding requirements to make sure
cleanup is accomplished.
"It has to be done right this time," said Richard Dorman, vice
president of exploration for Universal Uranium Ltd. of
Winnemucca, Nev. Dorman has worked through three uranium boom
periods.
The new regulations and growth pressures explain why only four
mines are operating in remote canyons in the west end of Montrose
County nearly two years after uranium and vanadium prices began
to surge. Uranium now brings about $30 a pound and vanadium
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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about $19. That's up from $7 and $2, respectively,
in 2001.
Processor has plenty to do
The Cotter Corp. owns the mines operating in Colorado and the
country's only licensed mill taking newly mined ore. Cotter plans
to open four more mines in Montrose and San Miguel counties by
year's end. Three other mining companies with claims near Uravan
and Gateway are inking agreements with Cotter to have ore
processed at its Cañon City mill.
Permitting and exploratory work is being done at dozens of other
mines, but full-scale production is on hold while the Universal
Uranium Corp. mill near Blanding, Utah, decides if it will accept
new ore this fall.
Uranium mining projects planned around corporate boardrooms as
well as rural kitchen tables are expected to move into high gear
when more milling opportunities open up.
The Shumway family, which has been mining off and on in Utah for
three generations, is anxious to get a fourth generation into it.
"Our kids are excited. They want to learn how to mine," said
Deryl Shumway, who, with his brother Mitch, is preparing to
reopen some of the more than a dozen leased parcels near
Blanding.
The Shumways can rely on a network of relatives for employees,
but companies are struggling to find miners.
A new crop of miners
The uranium industry has been mostly dormant since the 1980s, so
nearly a generation of workers has been lost. Cotter has been
luring people from Nevada and Montana. A recent Cotter safety
training class included a fireman, a truck driver and a mechanic.
Some employees have been drawn from farms where the profits don't
equal the average $70,000 to $80,000 miners earn annually.
And as the nuclear industry heats up, it has so far not drawn a
loud outcry from environmental groups, some say because the oil
and gas boom pressing into much more populated areas is drawing
all the attention.
Jim Martin, executive director of Western Resource Advocates,
said the potential for a resurgence in the nuclear industry needs
a thoughtful response from environmentalists as well as a more
controlled and responsible startup by the industry.
"At the moment, we're agnostic on nuclear. We spend most of our
time worrying about global warming," he said.
One of the overriding problems that remains to be dealt with
since the last boom is where to put the waste.
Colorado is still riddled with 20,000 abandoned mines with
potentially hazardous materials. And the spent fuel from nuclear
reactors still needs a home. Plans to build an underground
repository for such waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada are
stymied. No new repositories are planned.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or .
All contents Copyright 2005 The Denver Post or other copyright
*****************************************************************
56 Boston Globe: Maine's most wanted: junkyard polluter
Boston.com - Maine - News
Owner left mess that cost millions
By Beth Daley, Globe Staff | July 24, 2005
MEDDYBEMPS, MAINE -- The crimes of Harry Smith Jr., a former
selectman and one of Maine's most wanted fugitives, ooze in his
hometown.
There was the radioactive neutron generator that officials
discovered nestled in weeds on his land off Route 191. There was
the tractor-trailer packed with chemicals so reactive its side
spontaneously melted in the woods he owns. Last year, workers
found half-century-old acids leaking from containers stuffed in
Smith's mother's basement next to the federally protected Dennys
River.
''It's mind-boggling," said Jean Firth of the Maine Department
of Environmental Protection.
US taxpayers have paid more than $20 million to clean up parts
of five illegal military surplus junkyards Smith or his father
operated for more than 50 years in this tiny Down East town near
the Canadian border and there is more to do.
Smith re-contaminated one of his properties after officials
spent more than $1 million scrubbing it clean. Today, hundreds
of rusted boxcars, tractor-trailers, and vehicles still form
twisted metal paths in his junkyards. ''He comes back and
pollutes again and again," Firth said.
Smith was added to Maine's most-wanted criminal list earlier
this year after failing to show up for a 2003 jail sentence on a
probation violation following more than a decade of criminal
violations and court orders for illegally handling hazardous or
other types of waste.
How Smith, an affable ladies' man known for snowplowing
neighbors' driveways, became the worst single polluter state
officials can remember has become the stuff of legend in this
remote reach of New England and a walking example of the clash
between personal property rights and environmental protection.
Smith's friends and neighbors in Meddybemps either didn't know
the extent of his pollution or chose to ignore it in a region
where the belief that a man should be able to do what he wants
on his own land runs deep. The lack of state oversight of
town-licensed junkyards meant that for decades, authorities
weren't aware Smith's business existed. And once they did find
out, the slow grind of the justice system meant the damage Smith
wreaked morphed into a jaw-dropping expense to clean.
''Ultimately if someone really wants to violate [environmental]
law, it's very hard to stop them," said William Butler, a Maine
Department of Environmental Protection specialist. ''The only
thing we can do is go get them -- and that takes time. In a
place like Meddybemps, it's even harder because most people have
worked for Harry or are afraid of him . . . and it's not a place
a lot of other people go to."
Officials say they believe Smith, 64, may still be in Maine and
driving a white van with New Hampshire plates. They believe he
attended his daughter's wedding in the last two years in
Meddybemps, a town of about 140 people, but Smith's friends say
they've heard he's in Venezuela and offer tight smiles to
strangers who pry much deeper.
''Everyone says to me they hope he doesn't get caught," said
Florence ''Boots" Johnson, Smith's former girlfriend, who works
at Clark's Variety in nearby Calais and says Smith did nothing
wrong. After Smith was added to Maine's most-wanted criminals
list, joining the likes of James ''Whitey" Bulger, Johnson's
boss tacked up a map, Harry's picture, and signs that read,
''Where in the World is Harry Smith" and ''Run Harry Run."
''It's not like he's a mass murderer," said Johnson.
In pages of court testimony and through his lawyer, Smith has
maintained that he ran a legal salvage recycling business, even
though he had no permit to do so. Most of the goods on his
property, from submarine parts to canvas tents, were from
surplus sales from military bases across New England that would
package contaminated material with higher value items, Smith has
testified. Smith has also said he did not know the waste was
truly hazardous.
''His position was . . . he was doing [his business] in a lawful
manner," said Schuyler G. Steele, Smith's lawyer. Steele, whose
Newport, Maine, office is in an old boxcar Smith sold to him,
said he hasn't heard from his client since he didn't show up for
jail. Members of Smith's family declined to comment or didn't
return calls.
Meddybemps, which is believed to be a Native American name for
either the many alewives or islands in its signature lake, is a
sprawling town of trees, two paved roads, and little else. There
is no downtown to speak of -- only a community center and a
closed grocery store -- and little attention from outsiders,
save for summer people visiting the lake or the slice of
Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge in town.
Smith's father found Meddybemps in the 1940s, built a dam at the
headwaters of the Dennys River to supply electricity to area
towns, and moved his family next door. Soon, military items
began showing up on the property. Smith took over the business
from his father in the 1970s, and expanded it to four new sites,
eventually stockpiling 1.3 million tires and items that included
dummy torpedoes, old ammunition, thousands of paint cans, and
leaking electrical transformers. Low levels of some chemicals
eventually seeped into a local brook, state officials say.
Today, many neighbors call Smith's land an eyesore, but over the
years, there were few official complaints. Through the decades,
Smith put people to work when work was hard to find. He was kind
-- allowing people to buy items on credit -- and helped find
spare parts for the town fire truck. He always operated in cash,
pulling wads of bills from his pockets on payday. Authorities
still can't find any bank accounts of Smith's to seize to pay
for the cleanup.
''People don't want to talk; we have to live in town," said one
woman who asked not to be identified by name when speaking about
Smith. Those who know Smith describe him as smart, a pack rat,
and, by most local accounts, the father of about 10 children. He
was married at least twice, friends say.
State officials finally received a complaint about Smith's
junkyards in 1983 and soon realized several sites were deeply
contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals, solvents, and other
hazardous debris. The original area next to the Dennys River,
called Eastern Surplus, was eventually declared a Superfund
site. The US Department of Defense, where most of the pollution
originated, contributed millions to clean it up.
Two other cleanups were conducted on Smith's land, including his
tire pile, but he avoided prosecution because much of it was
polluted before environmental laws existed and it was impossible
to prove when the waste arrived on the property. But state
authorities made it clear to Smith: No more polluting.
He didn't listen. In 1998, Smith was convicted on two
misdemeanor criminal counts of taking in tires after being told
to stop. He was sentenced to 60 days in prison and probation and
served more jail time after violating probation.
By 2001, Maine DEP specialist Butler stumbled over new
containers of hazardous waste on one of Smith's properties that
officials had already cleaned. Smith was convicted in 2003 on a
felony count of handling hazardous waste without a license from
that case, as well as a related misdemeanor charge, and
sentenced to a year in jail. While on bail pending appeal, he
allowed his property to be poisoned again: He hired workers to
slice hundreds of empty gas cylinders after being told not to,
contaminating 2 million pounds of soil with asbestos and
solvents. Because that action violated the probationary term
Smith was still on for the original tire charge, a judge
sentenced him to six months in jail two years ago. Smith never
showed up.
''You have all these environmental schemes and laws, and they
might work for a reasonable business, but they just don't work
for someone who doesn't care," said Leanne Robbin, the Maine
assistant attorney general who prosecuted Smith in 2003 for the
state hazardous waste violations. At one point, cleanup workers
had to get a proclamation from the governor to prevent Smith
from blocking work crews by parking heavy machinery on roads or
near his trailers. The town of Meddybemps has also prosecuted
Smith for operating illegal junkyards.
Authorities are still searching for Smith. They get periodic
reports of him across Maine, Canada -- and in Meddybemps.
Residents, meanwhile, say they don't necessarily want Smith to
serve jail time, but they want him to come back to clean up his
mess.
''This used to be such a pretty town," said Joyce Brown, who
lives near Smith's deserted home.
Beth Daley can be reached at bdaley@globe.com. [ /] © Copyright
2005 Globe Newspaper Company. 123More:
*****************************************************************
57 Japan Times: Scientists meet in Hiroshima to battle nuclear weapons
Sunday, July 24, 2005
HIROSHIMA (Kyodo) Scientists and academics from around the world
gathered Saturday for a five-day conference to discuss ways to
eliminate war and nuclear weapons ahead of the 60th anniversary
of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In an opening address to the 55th Pugwash Conferences on
Science and World Affairs, Hitoshi Onishi, a representative of
the Pugwash group of Japan, expressed alarm over the state of
nuclear proliferation. He cited the collapse of the review
conference for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, U.S.
plans to develop "mini-nukes" and stepped-up proliferation.
"Today, we gathered again here in Hiroshima to discuss how we
can overcome such a horrible situation and realize a just and
peaceful world," said Onishi, also a professor of international
politics at Tohoku University.
It is the second time the annual conference has been held in
Japan, following one in Hiroshima in 1995 when the Pugwash group
won the Nobel Peace Prize.
About 170 scientists from 40 countries are attending the event
to discuss a wide range of issues concerning nuclear abolition,
antiterrorism measures and security issues in the Middle East
and East Asia.
The Japan Times: July 24, 2005
(C) All rights reserved
*****************************************************************
58 Korea Times: Engagement to Sustain Peace in N-E Asia
Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Special
Kenneth Quinones
This article, the fourth and final installment in a series
evaluating prospects for this week's six-party nuclear talks, is
a condensed version of a contribution published in August's
edition of the Korea Policy Review, which comes out today. The
six-party talks will begin tomorrow in Beijing, China. _ ED.
Dr. C. Kenneth Quinones
Former North Korea Affairs Director
U.S. Department of State
Peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula is the cornerstone
for peace and prosperity throughout East Asia. Today, the region
is at peace. Northeast Asia is home of some of the world's most
prosperous and dynamic economies. Also, prospects for stability
recently improved with the anticipated resumption of the
six-party talks this week.
A peaceful, diplomatic resolution of the Korean Peninsula's
nuclear woes remains a distant hope, but the talks' resumption
will, at the very least, restrain tensions and facilitate
diplomatic dialogue.
The South Korean government policy toward its neighbors has
contributed substantially to Northeast Asia's continuing
stability since the Cold War's end. After the Soviet Union's
collapse discredited communism, South Korea cautiously discarded
its preference for containment in favor of engagement with its
Cold War adversaries.
Looking back, we can now realize that containment intensified
and sustained rivalry between the two Koreas, and perpetuated
the Korean War's legacy of intense mutual distrust and
animosity. Engagement, as now practiced in South Korea, has
restrained tensions and nurtured South-North reconciliation.
Containment Versus Engagement
Containment and engagement were both formulated in Washington
during the Cold War. They are essentially strategies for
democratic and capitalistic societies to use in dealing with
authoritarian, communist societies. President Truman applied the
strategy of containment to North Korea at the beginning of the
Korean War. His aim was to discredit and isolate North Korea
diplomatically and commercially in the hope of undermining its
government.
South Korea understandably became an ardent practitioner of
containment. For almost two decades, South-North Korea relations
alternated between peaks of tension and brief periods of
reconciliation.
President Roh Tae-woo in 1988, however, decisively discarded
containment in favor of engagement. He called his form of
engagement ``Nordpolitik (Northern Policy).'' He approached all
communist states in the hope of isolating North Korea by
enlisting its allies' participation in the 1988 Seoul Olympiad.
His impressive success garnered South Korea respect around the
world and greatly expanded its diplomatic and economic relations
with other nations. Washington played a supporting role while
Seoul forged a series of ``basic agreements'' with Pyongyang.
But the pace of engagement's success may have unnerved North
Korea. In August 1992, Seoul and Beijing normalized their
diplomatic relations. Pyongyang's leaders reacted with a
profound sense of insecurity. While Seoul had won diplomatic
relations with Moscow and Beijing, Pyongyang had failed to
normalize relations with Washington and Tokyo, Seoul's primary
champions.
While Pyongyang was exposing its nuclear weapons development
program to international inspection, Washington's nuclear
umbrella over South Korea remained secret. Between 1992 and
2000, Pyongyang vacillated between isolation and engagement of
the international community. Seoul under President Kim Young-sam
similarly alternated between containment and engagement.
Sunshine Policy Versus Neo-containment
President Kim Dae-jung moved assertively in 1998 to restore
engagement as South Korea's preferred strategy for dealing with
North Korea. Kim labeled his brand of engagement, ``Sunshine
Policy.''
This strategy shares with engagement the preference for
diplomacy over confrontation, economic cooperation rather than
rivalry, and humanitarian concern instead of animosity. The
combination of these elements applied consistently finally
convinced North Korea to respond positively to South Korea's
overtures.
When President George W. Bush assumed office in January 2001, he
dismissed engagement's success and concentrated instead on its
shortcomings. Bush promptly re-oriented his government's
strategy from engagement to ``neo-containment'' of North Korea.
Loudly he chastised Pyongyang for failing to fulfill its
international commitments while threatening it and other members
of his self-proclaimed ``axis of evil'' with a ``pre-emptive''
strategy of nuclear counter proliferation. Bush also confronted
Kim and urged him to cease ``appeasing'' North Korea. He also
urged Kim's successor, President Roh, to stop ``pandering''
North Korea.
Anti-American or Pro-Korean?
Roh has sustained his government's engagement of North Korea and
did not bow to Bush's assertive unilateralism. Some have
incorrectly labeled Roh's stance as ``anti-American.'' On the
contrary, his stance is pro-Korean. It promotes Koreans'
foremost priority peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.
But it is also ``pro-American'' since the United States shares
this goal, along with all the other nations of Northeast Asia.
Roh's policy of economic cooperation has sustained Pyongyang's
confidence in the sincerity of Seoul's efforts to promote
national reconciliation. Also, Roh's preference for engagement
over containment has profoundly affected both Washington's and
North Korea's approach to resolving the nuclear issue.
As recently became evident, Bush and North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il have both felt compelled to adjust their respective
strategies regarding the six-party talks. This process has taken
one year of intense quiet diplomacy, but Seoul's patience has
paid handsome dividends.
South Korea can proudly claim considerable credit for this
significant diplomatic accomplishment. Seoul helped restrain the
level of tension and promote an atmosphere conducive to
diplomacy during the U.S.-North Korea dueling.
It also tempered Pyongyang's impulsiveness and sustained its
preference for diplomacy by providing a carefully calibrated
flow of economic inducements to North Korea. Simultaneously,
Seoul quietly and resolutely counseled Washington to put peace
before national pride, diplomacy before confrontation and
flexibility before resoluteness.
Ultimately, peace and stability in Northeast Asia hinge on
Korea's fate. The Bush administration would do well to recognize
that Roh's current policy of economic cooperation, a form of
engagement, promotes peace and stability on the Korean
Peninsula, while nurturing Korean reconciliation.
Over the long term, it also sustains peace and prosperity
throughout the region. After all, this is precisely what
Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, and Washington are attempting to achieve
through the six-party talks.
07-24-2005 18:23
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59 Tri-Valley Herald: Feds extend UC contract for lab
Article Last Updated: 07/23/2005 02:46:06 AM
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
The University of California will keep running Lawrence Livermore
nuclear-weapons lab until at least September 2007, under a new
extension of its federal contract.
The university's governing Board of Regents ratified the
extension Wednesday and cleared university executives to
negotiate a new fee arrangement.
Those negotiations follow findings by the inspector general
for the
U.S. Department of Energy that the university improperly had
charged the federal government more than $8 million for a
faculty loan program, a student-recruitment program and other
expenses having nothing to do with operating a federal weapons
lab.
University officials said the federal government has paid UC
about $15 million a year in expenses to run its labs. It is
unclear how much
that figure may change as the university and
the Energy Department renegotiate lab management fees.
The extension of the university's contract to operate Lawrence
Livermore is driven largely by the more than yearlong
competition over its sister lab, Los Alamos in New Mexico, also
operated by the university.
At least one university regent, David Lee of San Jose,
questioned whether the university ought to ask for some profit in
running the federal labs and use the money to keep tuition and
fees lower for students.
The university never has taken a profit from running the federal
labs and instead has turned most of the unused portion of its
contractor fees back over to lab managers to fund new scientific
research.
Keeping profits would jeopardize
the university's nonprofit
status, according to UC executives, and undermine the
university's claim to manage the labs as a public service to the
nation.
Regents could decide to keep some fees as profit, said UC
president Bob Dynes, "but I would fight it."
Tri-Valley Herald All Rights Reserved
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60 Boston Globe: The Manhattan Project's 'secret town' -
Boston.com - Travel
By Julia M. Klein, Globe Correspondent | July 24, 2005
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- Kay Froman Johnson still remembers the
steep, rough road she traveled up to the secret town where her
physicist-father moved his Chicago family in 1943. Once she
arrived, the 11-year-old was enrolled in a school so
unstructured that when she and another fifth-grader decided to
promote themselves to the sixth grade, no one even noticed.
''I thought it was a big adventure," says Johnson, 73. ''And
everybody was new. Everybody didn't know what was going on here.
And none of the daddies said anything."
Sixty years ago, on Aug. 6, 1945, when the first atomic bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, their secret became headline news.
In a wartime laboratory led by the charismatic physicist J.
Robert Oppenheimer, a group of Nobel laureates and other
scientists, engineers, and technicians had worked nearly nonstop
for more than two years to create a weapon of unprecedented
lethality. Their work helped usher in a new scientific and
political era -- and helped bring World War II to a close. Los
Alamos is commemorating the bomb and the war's end with a series
of special events, including art exhibitions and an Aug. 9
program of readings and reminiscences.
One hot May day, I drove 35 miles northwest from Santa Fe and
met Johnson at a reunion of Los Alamos High School classes from
the 1940s and early '50s. With spouses in tow, attendees had
traveled across the country to picnic beside Ashley Pond, a
tranquil oasis near the town center.
Reunion organizer Dan Nelis, 74, a community college
administrator in Las Vegas, moved to Los Alamos in 1945 with his
electrician-father. He recalls his friends as ''normal teenagers
trying to have a normal life in very adverse conditions."
Not much remains of wartime Los Alamos, whose mostly rudimentary
housing and technical buildings were torn down almost as quickly
as they had been built. It is possible, though, to tour the
structures that survive, and learn the stories behind them at
the Los Alamos Historical Museum.
At Fuller Lodge, in the company of Nancy R. Bartlit, president
of the Los Alamos Historical Society, and Georgia Strickfaden, a
guide with Buffalo Tours, I sat beneath the vaulted ceilings in
the building's central room, where Manhattan Project scientists
once dined. The lodge, designed by architect John Gaw Meem and
built in 1928 with 771 vertically placed pine logs, was once the
dining hall of the Los Alamos Ranch School, founded in 1917 by
Ashley Pond Jr., one of President Theodore Roosevelt's Rough
Riders.
Pond's small preparatory school was designed to toughen up the
sons of the Eastern elite with a vigorous outdoor regimen. The
writer Gore Vidal was among those educated here.
Oppenheimer, who vacationed in New Mexico, had visited the
school and loved the site, on the Pajarito Plateau at the foot
of the Jemez Mountains. It was beautiful, but also isolated
enough for a classified project. With a couple of months'
notice, the federal government closed the financially ailing
school and launched the lab in spring 1943, with a frenzy of
construction and a small advance guard of scientists.
The lodge is now a community and art center.
Nearby is a Tewa Pueblo ruin, dating from about 1225. On an
earlier tour of abandoned cliff dwellings in the Tsankawi
section of Bandelier monument, Tewa Pueblo historian Tito
Naranjo had described the influx of Manhattan Project scientists
as a ''cultural bomb" dropped on his people.
In Los Alamos, we walked beside the houses on ''Bathtub Row."
Originally constructed for Ranch School faculty and later
occupied by the project's most elite scientists, they were once
the only homes in town with bathtubs. In a place plagued by mud,
dust, and the soot from coal-burning furnaces, the tubs were a
luxury.
The houses are now privately owned, but I squeezed past a hedge
for a better look at the heavily shaded dwelling where
Oppenheimer (with his wife, Kitty, and two children) ruminated,
chain-smoked, and mixed his famous icy martinis at parties that
would continue late into the night.
For a detailed account of life at wartime Los Alamos (known
alternately as ''The Hill," ''Site Y," ''PO Box 1663," and even
''Shangri La"), I visited the small historical museum, with
Pueblo artifacts, vintage photographs, and artifacts from the
Ranch School.
Its heart, however, is in the ''secret town," a place without
unemployed people, in-laws or jails, whose story is told through
quotations from those who lived there. They describe wartime
censorship of phone calls and letters, travel restrictions, and
other hardships, but also the spirit of camaraderie and shared
intellectual struggle that Oppenheimer did so much to foster.
(On the other hand, stringent security measures at Los Alamos,
including surveillance of Oppenheimer, failed to detect the
presence of at least three spies, including the British
physicist Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass, brother of Ethel
Rosenberg.)
Led by General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project included
uranium and plutonium manufacturing plants in Oak Ridge, Tenn.,
and Hanford, Wash. Its validation came with the successful
Trinity test on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert. Just
three weeks later, the United States under President Truman
dropped bombs on Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki --
actions that killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians
with motives and consequences that are still fiercely debated by
historians.
The museum takes note of the philosophically inclined
Oppenheimer's own prescient words, from the Sanskrit ''Bhagavad
Gita," after seeing the first mushroom cloud: ''I am become
Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Oppenheimer's later opposition to construction of the even more
deadly hydrogen bomb helped spark the most painful episode of
his career: the Atomic Energy Commission's 1954 revocation of
his security clearance. (Oppenheimer died at 63, in 1967.)
Los Alamos transferred from government to private ownership in
the 1960s, but its main industry is still the Los Alamos
National Laboratory, which employs some 14,000 people. The
public face of the lab is its Bradbury Science Museum, named for
former lab director Norris Bradbury, who succeeded Oppenheimer.
As dusk approached, I drove past the laboratory to Bandelier
monument, a 32,000-acre park 12 miles from town. Following the
footsteps of Manhattan Project scientists, I hiked past
spectacular ruins left by the vanished ancestors of today's
Pueblo Indians.
Even at 7:30, the desert air was warm, and the setting sun threw
harsh shadows on the orange-gold volcanic cliffs. Experiencing
the power of nature and the transience of man, side by side, I
thought: No wonder Oppenheimer found this spot so alluring.
Contact Julia M. Klein, a freelance writer in Philadelphia, at
julklein@juno.com. [ /] © Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper
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61 Greeley Tribune: Senators rally for benefits for workers at Rocky Flats
July 24, 2005
Staff Reports
July 23, 2005
BY LINDSAY RENICK MAYER
m-renick@northwestern.edu
WASHINGTON -- Sens. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and Ken Salazar,
D-Colo., joined forces Friday to seek federal funding to cover
benefits for Rocky Flats workers who completed the cleanup of
the nuclear weapons site a year early to qualify for pensions
and insurance.
According to an Energy Department report released in April, the
early closing of Rocky Flats would affect pension benefits of 25
employees and health and life insurance coverage of up to 29
employees. The report estimated the unearned medical, life
insurance and pension benefits could add up to between $2.1
million and $10.5 million.
The senators proposed an amendment to the FY 2006 Defense
Authorization bill that would provide $15 million to cover the
costs.
"Doing something right and doing it well deserves a reward, not
a demerit," Salazar said. "The Rocky Flats workers have done
just that, completing their job ahead of schedule and superbly.
The benefit will help ensure that they are rewarded for that
high-quality work and commitment."
These efforts saved taxpayers more than $500 million in cleanup
costs, according to Allard, and should set an example for
employees at other cleanup locations.
All contents © Copyright 2005 greeleytrib.com
The Greeley Publishing Co. - P.O. Box 1690 - Greeley, CO 80632
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