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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 [NYTr] Hagel Sneers at Bush's Empty Threats on Iran
2 WorldNetDaily: George Bush's zero tolerance
3 Guardian Unlimited: U.N. Agency Findings Back Up Iran Claim
4 Xinhua: Iranian president slams Iran's trading partners
5 Xinhua: Iran to talk with EU on resuming more sensitive nuke activit
6 Daily Times: IAEA and Pakistani officials to meet next week on Iran
7 Guardian Unlimited: Ahmadinejad Criticizes European Nations
8 Lebanon Daily News: Iran and the nuclear axis
9 Korea Herald: N.K. peace treaty after six-party talks: Ban
10 Reuters: South Korea says on same page as U.S. on nuke talks
11 Guardian Unlimited: N. Korea May Be Willing to Drop Nuke Plan
12 AFP: US satellite confirms NKorea reactivated nuclear reactor last m
13 US: Hartford Courant: America's Energy Rut
14 US: FOXNews.com: Energy Bill Offers Little Short-Term Relief
15 US: Guardian Unlimited: Coal's price is rising, but can it clean up?
16 Guardian Unlimited: 'Unsuitable' firm won huge MoD contract
17 The State: Growing energy demand global
18 Daily Times: India secretly building nuclear submarine
19 India: Telegraph: Delhi in nuclear wait and watch
NUCLEAR REACTORS
20 US: UN Convenes Scientists To Study Nuclear Power Plant Risks From N
21 US: APP.COM: TOPIC OF THE DAY: Nuclear power
22 TheStar.com: Ontario needs nuclear power
23 US: Hartford Courant: Utilities Powering Up
24 PI: Tempo: Time to use nuke power plant Morong mayor
25 Reuters: N.Korea restarts Yongbyon nuclear reactor-report
26 Mos News: Russias Nuclear Chief Sets Up Development Priorities -
27 US: Newsday: Vivid memories of Shoreham
28 outlookindia.com: Pak to ask US, EU to construct 13 nuclear power pl
29 CNIC: Tohoku Earthquake
30 US: Albuquerque Tribune: Safe options shunned as we put our eggs in
NUCLEAR SECURITY
31 Mos News: Radioactive Cargo Seized in Russian Far Eastern Port -
NUCLEAR SAFETY
32 Wichita Eagle: Before the bomb
33 US: Seattle Times: Downwinders focus of video for doctors
34 US: Jackson Hole Star-Tribune: Doctors focus on mental health of dow
35 US: Pocatello Idaho State Journal: Ex-lab workers to get free health
36 US: East Oregonian: Doctors should focus on mental health of downwin
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
37 Nevada senators want details about nuclear shipments
38 US: $1b uranium exports possible, says MP.
39 Yucca Mountain exposure
40 US: Mining industry pushes for uranium expansion
41 RGJ: Senators want more details on nuclear shipments by rail
42 US: Space Review: Nuclear waste in space?
43 US: Bradenton Herald: Tallevast residents lament plume remediation p
44 US: San Luis Obispo Tribune: Federal snub is such a waste
45 Green Left: No nuke waste dump campaign under way
46 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Homeland Security officials wrap up Skull Val
47 Senate: Reid, Ensign Demand Answers on Trains to Yucca
48 CNIC: Japanese uranium-contaminated soil to be sent to US
PEACE
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
49 The State: SRS cant handle all of nations
50 Jackson Hole Star-Tribune: Deputy energy secretary visits Hanford
51 Tri-City Herald: Report: Lack of plan threatens cleanup
52 Tri-Valley Herald: Schwarzenegger backs UC bid for nuclear laborator
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1 [NYTr] Hagel Sneers at Bush's Empty Threats on Iran
Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 03:57:58 -0500 (CDT)
WHITE_PHRASE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4
X-Spam-filter-host: pascal.ctyme.com - http://www.junkemailfilter.com
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Reuters via Truthout - Aug 19, 2005
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082005H.shtml
Republican Senator Calls for Talks with Iran
Washington - Republican Party foreign policy expert Sen. Chuck
Hagel is calling for the United States to open talks with Iran's
new president and has dismissed President George W. Bush's talk of
a military option against Tehran as an empty and foolish threat.
In an interview with Reuters during a trip across his home
state on Wednesday, Hagel said the United States should greet the
new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with a bold diplomatic
stroke.
"You've got a new president, a new opportunity to do something
bold here. Why not take that opportunity and do something bold?
Iran is going to be a major influence in the future of Iraq. It
already is. Who are we kidding when we think that they're not? They
are.
"I would start engaging with American face-to-face dialogue.
We're not at negotiations yet, but opening that dialogue. This is a
process. This needs to work. Every side has to give something
here," said Hagel, who is a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and is seen as a possible Republican
presidential candidate in 2008.
In an interview with Israeli television last week, Bush said
"all options are on the table" if the Iranians refuse to comply
with international demands to halt their nuclear program, and noted
that he has already used force to protect U.S. security.
Empty Threat
Hagel's response to that implied threat was completely
dismissive.
"Quite frankly, what is the military option, what are we
talking about here? We lose credibility in the face of the world
when we say things like, 'Well just don't forget what happened to
Iraq could happen to you Iran. We could invade you, we could bomb
you.'
"Oh come on now. First of all, where are we going to get the
troops? Who's going to go with us? Where are our partners going to
be with Iran?"
The United States has been working through its allies, France,
Britain and Germany, in an effort to persuade the Iranians to
freeze their nuclear program. This week, the Iranians resumed
operations at their uranium conversion facility at Isfahan.
Hagel, who has also been highly critical of the Bush
administration's Iraq policy and would like to see Washington end
its embargo of Cuba, said the current policy of working through
surrogates made no sense.
"I don't understand how we think we're going to make progress
by staying on the outside using surrogates, our allies France,
Britain and Germany, to go to the table and work with them while
stand back and don't want to get our hands dirty," he said.
"You need to move toward something and what are we moving
toward here? I don't see where we're moving toward anything. In
fact, I think we're eroding a base of strength that we still have
here. We have got to get inside this thing, because this is a very
dangerous problem," Hagel said. "I think we're actually losing
altitude, I think we're actually making it more dangerous."
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2 WorldNetDaily: George Bush's zero tolerance
SATURDAY AUGUST 20 2005
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
In President Bush's first State of the Union message, he
essentially accused North Korea, Iran and Iraq of having
clandestine nuke programs and in his first enunciation of what
later became known as the Bush Doctrine warned them he would
"not tolerate" their having the nuke programs he accused them of
having.
No matter that all three nation-states were signatories to the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Every NPT signatory not already having nukes pledges not to
acquire or even seek to acquire nukes, in return for being
guaranteed "inalienable" rights of access to everything
"nuclear" that is peaceful.
However, all "source and special nuclear materials" as well as
all activities involving the chemical or physical transformation
thereof have to be "declared" and made subject to a Safeguards
Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The IAEA was created in 1957, primarily to facilitate the
international transfer of "nuclear energy," but the IAEA Statue
requires the agency to "ensure" through its Safeguards and
Physical Security regime that "adequate measures" are taken
"to prevent the source and special fissionable materials"
transfered or produced, subsequently, "from being used in
furtherance of any military purpose."
If IAEA inspectors discover any such activity, the IAEA Board of
Governors can refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council
which could under the U.N. Charter impose sanctions.
When the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was
opened for signature in 1968, the IAEA Safeguards regime with
its Security Council enforcement mechanism had been in
operation for more than a decade.
So, the NPT simply required every signatory not already having
nukes to enter into a IAEA Safeguards Agreement "with a view to
preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to
nuclear weapons."
Note that the NPT makes use of, but does not in any way modify,
the IAEA Charter and its Safeguards regime.
However, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, the IAEA Board of
Governors concluded that existing Safeguards Agreements did not
ensure that "adequate measures" could be taken to ensure that
"special fissionable materials" were not used in furtherance of
some military purpose. So, in 1997, the IAEA unveiled a , which
they hoped all countries having Safeguards Agreements would
accept and adhere to.
In late 2003, Iran voluntarily did sign an Additional Protocol,
vastly expanding the authority of IAEA inspectors to go anywhere
and see anything. In particular, under the Additional Protocol,
the Iranians were required to provide all pertinent information
about their plans to acquire and/or manufacture and operate gas
centrifuges. Under their existing Safeguards Agreement, the
Iranians had not been required to divulge any information about
the planning, acquisition or manufacture of gas centrifuges, nor
any information about a future uranium-enrichment facility until
shortly before introducing "source or special nuclear materials"
into the centrifuges.
In other words, under the existing Iranian Safeguards Agreement,
only those activities that actually involved chemical or
physical transformation of source or special nuclear materials
were required to be reported to the IAEA.
Since Iran began voluntarily adhering to the Additional
Protocol, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has repeatedly
reported to the IAEA Board that he has found no evidence that
Iran has even planned to engage in activities including those
not even involving safeguarded materials in furtherance of any
military purpose.
So, after
Recalling the director general's assessment in GOV/2004/83 that
all the declared nuclear material in Iran had been accounted
for, and that such material had not been diverted to prohibited
activities,
and after
Recognizing the right of states to the development and practical
application of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, including
the production of electric power,
the IAEA Board, nevertheless, expressed last week "serious
concern" that "Iran had decided to resume the uranium conversion
activities at the Uranium Conversion Facility in Esfahan."
Hadn't those activities been subject to IAEA scrutiny for many
months? And hadn't ElBaradei found no evidence that they were
doing anything at Esfahan to "further a military purpose"?
So, why did the Board urge "Iran to re-establish full suspension
of all enrichment related activities" at Esfahan "on the same
voluntary, non-legally binding basis as requested in previous
Board resolutions"?
Well, believe it or not, because after two years of go-anywhere
see-anything inspections, "the Agency is not yet in a position
to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or
activities in Iran."
There is nothing in the IAEA Statute that requires such a
"conclusion."
But even if the IAEA did come to that conclusion, do you suppose
Bush would "tolerate" it?
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.
*****************************************************************
3 Guardian Unlimited: U.N. Agency Findings Back Up Iran Claim
[UP]
Saturday August 20, 2005 5:31 PM
AP Photo XHS118
By DANICA KIRKA
Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - U.N. nuclear agency tests have concluded
that traces of highly enriched uranium on centrifuge parts were
from imported equipment - rather than from any enrichment
activities by Iran, a senior Western diplomat said Saturday.
The findings support Iran's claims that the material entered the
country together with centrifuge parts provided by Pakistan. The
diplomat who confirmed the results spoke on condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
``The source of contamination was not related to Iran,'' said
Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. ``We are sure
the source is not internal.''
The United States has alleged the material was produced by
Tehran and the particles were evidence that Iran was
experimenting with producing highly enriched uranium, which is
only used in nuclear weapons.
The traces were found on centrifuges in the city of Natanz in
2003 and raised concerns about the motives behind Iran's nuclear
activities. Iran has insisted it is only interested in
processing low-enriched uranium to generate electricity.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has been testing
centrifuge parts provided by Pakistan as well as uranium found
on centrifuges bought by Iran on the nuclear black market.
Pakistan provided the components earlier this year to compare
the traces and assess Iran's claims of innocence.
The agency declined to comment.
On Friday, Iran's supreme ruler said his country does not intend
to build nuclear weapons, but it will continue to enrich uranium
because it does not want to be dependent on others for its
nuclear fuel needs.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also said Western claims Iran is secretly
trying to make weapons are ``a propaganda trick to deceive their
own public opinion.''
Meanwhile, Tehran rejected allegations by the dissident National
Council of Resistance of Iran that the country had manufactured
thousands of centrifuges.
``Hypocrites raise somethings to change (the) political climate.
They mislead Europeans by their wrong information,'' Asefi said
during his weekly briefing.
Iranian officials use the word ``hypocrite'' to refer to the
group and its armed wing, the Mujahedin Khalq, a group that
Washington and the European Union list as a terrorist
organization.
Asefi said Europe created problems for Iran by sheltering the
organization, which it called irrelevant and of little
importance.
In 2002, the organization disclosed information about two hidden
nuclear sites that helped uncover nearly two decades of covert
Iranian atomic activity and sparked present fears that Tehran
wants to build a bomb.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
4 Xinhua: Iranian president slams Iran's trading partners
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2005-08-21 19:50:25
TEHRAN, Aug. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad on Sunday slammed some trading partners of Iran for
their stances on its nuclear program.
"Nowadays, we are importing goods worth billions of US
dollars from some certain countries but they are not buying our
oil or other products. Such countries should be thankful to us
but they behaved like we owe them," Ahmadinejad said in a speech
broadcast live by state television and radio.
The president delivered the speech at the Majlis
(parliament), which held a session to debate and vote on
Ahmadinejad's nominated cabinet.
Ahmadinejad said that Iran had been contributing to the
prosperous economies of the countries mentioned but such
countries kept condemning Iran on the international arena and
interfering in Iran's internal affairs.
"What kind of justice is this? This is injustice and
oppression, and our nation will not tolerate this," Ahmadinejad
stressed.
Ahmadinejad's remarks came weeks after the Iranian nuclear
standoff was escalated.
On Aug. 8, Tehran resumed uranium conversion activities and
rejected a comprehensive nuclear proposal by the European Union
(EU), a move which draws stern warnings from the EU and the
United States.
The International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors
also adopted a resolution on Aug. 11, urging Iran to
re-establish full suspension of all enrichment-related
activities.
Iran has rejected the resolution, saying it is ready to
negotiate with the EU on the resumption of uranium enrichment, a
more advanced and sensitive step in the process of building
nuclear reactor.
Iranian officials condemned the EU for violating agreements
previously reached by the two sides.
The EU has been the broker of the Iranian nuclear issue for
nearly two years, but bilateral negotiations have been stranded
for months due to uncompromising stances of the two sides.
Iran has rejected the EU demand that Tehran permanently halt
all activities related to uranium enrichment to provide the
so-called objective guarantees that its nuclear research will
not be used for military purposes. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
5 Xinhua: Iran to talk with EU on resuming more sensitive nuke activities
www.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2005-08-20 00:13:38
TEHRAN, Aug. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran said on Saturday that it
was going to negotiate with the European Union (EU) on the
resumption of more sensitive nuclear activities.
"Iran is ready to negotiate with the Europeans over the
resumption of the nuclear activities in Natanz and also other
facilities," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said
during a weekly news briefing.
Tehran on Aug. 8 resumed the uranium conversion activities
in central city Isfahan after rejecting a comprehensive nuclear
proposal made by the EU, escalating the nuclear standoff lasting
for months.
The Natanz facilities, located 300 km south to Tehran,
functions more advanced to enrich the uranium hexafluoride gas,
the product converted from uranium ore nicknamed "yellowcake" at
the Isfahansite, into enriched uranium, which can be used for
both generatingel ectricity and building nuclear weapons.
Asefi reiterated that Iran would never suspend the
conversion activities in Isfahan, saying the dispute over the
Isfahanfacilities had already been over.
"Iran will not accept any precondition for future
negotiations,"he said, referring to the urge of the EU and the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to suspend the resumed
activities. Under the call of the EU, the Board of Governors of
the IAEA opened an emergency meeting on Aug. 9 and approved a
resolution on Aug. 11 on the Iranian nuclear file.
The IAEA resolution, which has been rejected by Iran, urges
Iranto "re-establish full suspension of all enrichment-related
activities."
The spokesman stressed that Iran's recent resumption did not
runcounter to the Paris Agreement reached by Tehran and the EU
in Oct.2004, according to which Iran suspended all activities
related touranium enrichment and opened gate to the following
negotiations.
"The activities at the Isfahan facilities were frozen
voluntarily and have been restarted similarly voluntarily under
the Paris Agreement, which they Europeans themselves breached,"
Aseifsaid.
Asefi further urged the EU to present a new proposal which
"would secure Iran's legitimate rights on peaceful nuclear
issues."Meanwhile, Asefi rejected a recent allegation made by an
exile opposition group that Iran had manufactured thousand of
centrifugesused for enriching uranium.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an organization
metamorphosed from the opposition Mujahedin Khalq Organization
which has been branded as a terrorist group by the EU and the
United States, said on Thursday that Tehran had been working
consistently on centrifuges construction and had thousands of
themin hand.
"The claim is not new, and it is the usual trick of the
terrorist group. However, the Europeans have been diverted
bythem," Asefi said.
The United States has accused Iran of developing nuclear
weapons under the disguise of civil usage. But Tehran has
rejected the accusation and insisted that its nuclear program is
for peaceful purposes. Enditem
Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
6 Daily Times: IAEA and Pakistani officials to meet next week on Iran uranium
Monday, August 22, 2005
VIENNA: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will meet
with Pakistani officials here next week as part of its efforts
to determine if Iran was using smuggled Pakistani equipment to
make enriched uranium that could be used for atom bombs,
diplomats said Saturday.
Pakistan had in May sent centrifuge parts to the UN nuclear
watchdog at its headquarters to enable it to compare microscopic
traces of uranium on them with those found on equipment in Iran,
believed to have been smuggled in from Pakistan. The IAEA
concluded that the highly enriched uranium appears to emanate
from Pakistan, from the imported equipment and not from Iranian
enrichment work, a Western diplomat close to the IAEA told AFP.
This ruling will be seen by those in favour of Iran as another
checkmark in their column, to back up Tehrans rebuttals of US
charges that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons, the
diplomat said.
The IAEA has since February 2003 been investigating US charges
that the Islamic Republic, which says its nuclear program is a
peaceful effort to generate electricity, has a covert weapons
program. The enriched uranium contamination issue was a main
sticking point in the investigation, although others still
remain. The diplomat said the talks with the Pakistanis are part
of a review of the IAEA findings which will also involve
independent experts later on.
Pakistan had in May insisted that the centrifuge parts it sent
to the IAEA remained technically under its control and would be
brought back home by Pakistani experts, a second diplomat said.
He said the Pakistanis did not want anyone outside the IAEA to
have access to information that could reveal Pakistani nuclear
secrets. afp
Daily Times - All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
7 Guardian Unlimited: Ahmadinejad Criticizes European Nations
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Sunday August 21, 2005 11:31 AM
AP Photo VAH102
By NASSER KARIMI
Associated Press Writer
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's hard-line president on Sunday
criticized nations that have economic ties with Tehran but
oppose its nuclear program, in an apparent reference to European
countries pressuring Iran to freeze parts of its atomic program.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments, made in Iran's parliament, came
before lawmakers began a debate expected to last until Thursday
on the new president's nominees to fill his first Cabinet.
The nominees include avid proponents of broadening Iran's
nuclear program - a step bound to ensure continued friction with
the United States. Iran's parliament is dominated by
Ahmadinejad's supporters and is expected to approve his
candidates.
Ahmadinejad didn't name the trade partners opposing Iran's
nuclear program, but was apparently referring Britain, France
and Germany, which referred Tehran to the United Nations'
nuclear watchdog after it resumed various uranium processing
activities last week.
The three countries are Iran's main European trading partners
and have been leading U.S.-backed European Union efforts to
persuade Iran to permanently freeze parts of its nuclear
program, including uranium enrichment.
``They expect to intervene in Iran's domestic affairs and make
Iran silent about important regional and international issues,''
the Iranian president said in a speech broadcast live on
state-run TV. ``They want Iran to follow international order and
norm while they accuse Iran in international bodies.''
``What kind of balance is this? This is cruel and unfair. Our
nation will not tolerate such behavior on the international
scene,'' he added.
Ahmadinejad said foreign states should be ``thankful'' Tehran
imports their products, but instead they ``apply hostile
policies against Iran and do not recognize our legitimate
rights,'' a reference to Iran's rights under the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty.
The president said his new government wanted friendly ties with
the international community, but added that economic links were
inseparable from political relations, including support for the
nuclear program.
His remarks follow Iran's rejection this month of a European
offer to permanently suspend uranium enrichment activities in
return for a package of incentives, including supplying Iran
with nuclear fuel.
Iran's snub was followed by a resolution by the U.N.'s
International Atomic Energy Agency urging Tehran to halt the
conversion of uranium into gas at its atomic plant in the
central Iranian city of Isfahan.
Conversion is a step before enrichment, which produces material
usable for both energy-producing reactor fuel and atomic bombs.
Iran also rejected the IAEA resolution, which diplomats familiar
with the proceedings said gives Tehran until Sept. 3 to halt
uranium conversion or risk being referred to the U.N. Security
Council for possible sanctions.
The United States accuses Iran of trying to build atomic weapons
and has been backing the EU negotiations with Tehran. Iran has
denied the U.S. claims and says it is pursuing a peaceful
nuclear program designed to generate electricity.
President Bush has said ``all options are on the table'' in
dealing with Iran in an implicit threat of possible military
action if Tehran doesn't rein in its nuclear program.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, however, has stressed the
need to solve the standoff diplomatically, saying military
action would be a ``high-grade danger.''
The prime minister of Kuwait also urged calm, adding in remarks
published Sunday that he was confident that Ahmadinejad will
deal with Iran's nuclear file ``wisely.''
Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah said the international community
wanted to avoid added tensions in the region, already marred by
the Iraq war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Islamic
militancy.
Iran voluntarily suspended enrichment in 2003 and expanded the
suspension last November to include uranium reprocessing
activities and building centrifuges used to enrich uranium. The
moves had been made to avoid U.N. Security Council referral for
possible sanctions and build trust in EU talks.
But following dissatisfaction with the EU offers, Iran resumed
uranium reprocessing activities at its Uranium Conversion
Facility in Isfahan.
---
Associated Press writer Diana Elias contributed to this report
from Kuwait City.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
8 Lebanon Daily News: Iran and the nuclear axis
Online - Editorials
August 21, 2005 Lebanon, PA
Iran has the international community in a muddle over its
nuclear activities. Two weeks ago, in clear defiance of Europe
and the United States, Iran restarted its uranium conversion
program. More recently, it warned Europe to stop pressuring it
to limit its nuclear operations.
Under the terms of the 1968 Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty,
Iran has the right to develop nuclear energy for power
generation, but U.S. officials and international monitors
believe Iran is taking steps to develop a weapons program.
Whatever Iran is up to, Europe is leading an effort to convince
them to stop. The U.S. supports the European initiative despite
suspicions that Iran is not negotiating in good faith.
Last week, President Bush hinted that, if Iran persists to
develop nuclear weapons, military force might be an option. The
comment was brushed off by Britain's Tony Blair and rebuked by
German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. "No one can want the
Iranian leadership to gain possession of atomic weapons," said
Schroeder. "But let's take the military option off the table. We
have seen it doesn't work."
The question is, what does work? Since the U.S. is bogged down
in Iraq and Afghanistan, a military threat may not seem credible
to Iran. And with gasoline prices soaring worldwide, an attack
on Iran's nuclear installations would probably send world oil
markets into a tailspin and send record prices ever higher.
Israel seems preoccupied with the Gaza withdrawal, and in any
event no one seems quite sure whether a strike could get the job
done.
Iran's intransigence has not yet been raised before the U.N.
Security Council, though that could happen if Iran's new
hardline president Mahmood Ahmadinejad continues to stiff-arm
the Europeans. In the Clinton era, Iran responded to unilateral
U.S. economic sanctions because it was in debt and anxious to
attract foreign investment. Today Iran is flush with oil
revenues and Ahmadinejad has rejected Europe's most recent offer
of economic and political incentives.
Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
notes that Russia is helping build one of Iran's reactors and
has said that it won't help fuel the nuclear plant until Iran
reaches an agreement with Europe.
Iran is not ruling out further talks, and Bush has renewed his
support for the European negotiators. Iran looms as a critical
hot spot, like North Korea, where an antagonistic country must
yet be persuaded to set aside its nuclear ambitions to avoid
destabilizing a fragile region.
© 2005 Lebanon Daily
*****************************************************************
9 Korea Herald: N.K. peace treaty after six-party talks: Ban
Foreign minister to meet Hill today, Rice tomorrow
By Lee Joo-hee
Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon emphasized that working out a
peace treaty between the two Koreas to replace the current
armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War should be tackled
after the six-party talks.
"It is appropriate to discuss the issue of a Korean Peninsula
peace treaty by watching how the six-party talks go," Ban said
on arrival Saturday in Washington, noting it was substantially
and realistically difficult to deal at the same time with the
North Korean nuclear standoff and its demand for a peace treaty.
Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon
During his six-day visit to the United States, he will hold a
series of meetings with top U.S. officials as part of a series
of bilateral contacts between member countries of the six-party
talks during a three-week recess that began Aug. 7. Ban will
have a session today with the top U.S. negotiator on the nuclear
standoff, Christopher Hill, meet Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice tomorrow and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John
Bolton on Wednesday.
As the recess in the fourth round of the six-party talks moved
into its final week, the bilateral contacts are in full swing
seeking to break down the wall between the United States and
North Korea over differences that emerged when the talks
involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and
Russia reopened for two weeks in Beijing after a 13-month hiatus.
The deadlock is over North Korean demands in return for
dismantling its nuclear programs.
"Signing a peace treaty on the Korean Peninsula and
constructing a peaceful structure is not a matter that should be
discussed at the six-party talks," Ban said in an interview with
Yonhap News Agency.
North Korea, along with its demand for a guarantee of peaceful
use of nuclear energy, requested at the six-party talks that the
armistice be transformed into a peace treaty: a demand that had
been repeated by the communist state for a long time but put off
by both South Korea and the United States..
North Korea claims a peace treaty will augment its security
from the invasion of the United States, which along with China
is the signatories of the armistice that ended the 1950-1953
Korean war.
Ban explained that South Korea, North Korea and the United
States have talked about opening a separate forum on the peace
treaty issue at an appropriate time. Hill said last week that
the United States is willing to address the issue of a peace
treaty as a security guarantee for the North and ultimately a
security structure for Northeast Asia as a whole.
Ban said that in regard to the core issue of North Korea's
nuclear dismantlement, the South and the United States stood on
the same ground.
"South Korea and the United States have no gap in views at all
as we both believe all nuclear weapons and nuclear programs of
North Korea must be dismantled," Ban said.
He explained that while South Korea did not outright support
North Korea's nuclear development for peaceful use, it would be
a just outcome for the North to gain the right for peaceful
nuclear use once it rebuilds trust by returning to the
Non-proliferation Treaty and fulfilling safeguards authorized by
the International Atomic Energy Agency.
China, the host to the six-party talks, will send messages to
reconvene the multilateral talks after watching the progress
being made in bilateral contacts in capitals of the member
countries, particularly North Korea. Government officials here
said they have not heard from China yet on when to return to the
table.
Hill is scheduled to meet with his Japanese counterpart
Kenichiro Sasae on Wednesday and the informal communication
channel between the United States and North Korea in New York is
also likely to be active during the final week of the recess.
(angiely@heraldm.com)
2005.08.22
*****************************************************************
10 Reuters: South Korea says on same page as U.S. on nuke talks
Sun Aug 21, 2005 2:56 PM ET
WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (Reuters) - South Korea's foreign minister on
Sunday played down any differences with the United States over
North Korea's future use of a nuclear program for peaceful means.
"Basically, we are on the same page. We do not have that much
difference on that point," said Ban Ki-moon, who is in the United
States to meet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice before
six-country talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions
are set to resume the week of Aug. 29.
South Korea's unification minister caused confusion last week
when he said North Korea had a general right to peaceful use of
nuclear energy for agricultural, medical and power-generating
purposes, a view the United States rejects.
Ban told CNN the view of South Korea was that once North Korea
dismantled its nuclear weapons program, signed on to the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and abided by International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, the issue of peaceful means
could be discussed again.
North Korea threw out IAEA inspectors on the last day of 2002
and withdrew from the nuclear NPT in January 2003.
Whether North Korea should be given the right to operate a
civilian nuclear program was a key stumbling block at the last
round of nuclear talks involving the two Koreas, China, Japan,
Russia and the United States. Those talks ended on Aug. 7 after
13 grueling days of discussions in Beijing.
Ban is scheduled to meet Rice on Tuesday to discuss next week's
resumption of talks. Japanese officials are expected to meet her
later in the week.
Ban said he was "more or less optimistic" the next round of
negotiations had a chance of success but no time frame had been
set. "We will try our best to resolve it as soon as possible," he
said.
Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported on Sunday that a U.S.
satellite detected signs North Korea recently restarted a reactor
that could be used for the extraction of material to make nuclear
warheads.
Ban said he had not yet been able to confirm the report but
would continue to closely monitor the situation.
He urged North Korea not to take any steps that might aggravate
the ongoing discussion on nuclear issues.
Resolution of the nuclear impasse could eventually lead to
normalization of relations between Pyongyang and Washington,
ending hostility stretching back to the 1950-1953 Korean War and
bringing North Korea out of its deep international isolation.
© Reuters 2005.
All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
11 Guardian Unlimited: N. Korea May Be Willing to Drop Nuke Plan
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Sunday August 21, 2005 5:46 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) - North Korea apparently is willing to abandon
its nuclear weapons programs, with a breakthrough possible in
the current round of international talks, South Korea's foreign
minister said Sunday.
Ban Ki-moon, in Washington to see Secretary of State Condoleezza
and other U.S. officials this week about the nuclear standoff,
raised the possibility that the North might be able to pursue
``peaceful'' nuclear activities in the future.
North Korea first must dismantle all its nuclear weapons and end
its development programs, return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty and comply fully with safeguards from the United Nations'
nuclear watchdog agency, Ban told CNN's ``Late Edition.''
``Then the trust will be restored and the talks for a peaceful
use of the nuclear energy should be opened,'' he said.
The Bush administration, however, wants the communist nation to
be nuclear-free.
``We don't really feel they need to get involved with nuclear
energy in the future,'' the chief U.S. envoy to the talk,
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, said last week.
The latest round of talks are set to resume Aug. 29 in Beijing
after a three-week break. Participants include the Koreas, the
U.S., China, Japan and Russia.
Ban acknowledged the need for close discussions, particularly
with the U.S., over letting the North pursue such nuclear
activities.
``At this time, we think that when it comes to peaceful uses,
like medical or industrial purposes, we should have no problem
in that,'' he said.
The minister contended that South Korea and the U.S. ``are on
the same page'' on this issue. ``We do not have that much
difference on that point.''
North Korean officials, in Beijing and Seoul, have said ``it is
the legacy'' of their country's founding president, the late Kim
Il Sung, and ``the will of the highest authorities of North
Korea to realize denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,'' Ban
said.
``It seems to us'' that the current leader, Kim Jong Il,
apparently has decided to abandon the North's nuclear weapons
programs and ``we are working for that through negotiations,''
Ban said.
Citing progress in the recent talks, Ban said: ``We have entered
into a stage of real and substantive negotiations. ... I think
we are more or less optimistic that we'll be able to result in
substantive resolution of the nuclear weapons program this
time.''
Ban also discussed a newspaper report Sunday that said North
Korea restarted a nuclear reactor before it returned to the
multinational talks in July.
Japan's Asahi Shimbun said that a U.S. reconnaissance satellite
detected steam coming from a boiler connected to a nuclear
reactor building.
``I haven't had confirmed information on this matter,'' Ban
said, adding that South Korea is closely monitoring and
exchanging information with Washington.
``However, as we have agreed during the six-party talks the last
time, the participating countries, particularly North Korea
should not make any measures, actions which may aggravate the
ongoing discussion on nuclear issues,'' Ban said.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
12 AFP: US satellite confirms NKorea reactivated nuclear reactor last month
Sunday August 21, 05:45 PM
TOKYO, (AFP) - A US spy satellite has found that North Korea
reactivated its nuclear reactor last month after it spotted
vapor coming out of the reactor's boiler, a Japanese daily said.
The reactivation of the Yongbyon nuclear complex came just
before six-nation talks aimed at halting the North's nuclear
drive began in Beijing in late July, the Asahi Shimbun daily
said, quoting unnamed diplomatic sources.
The topic of the reactivated reactor had been discussed during
the talks -- which involved the two Koreas, Russia, Japan, China
and the United States -- the daily said without giving further
details.
The Asahi said vapor had not been seen at the Yongbyon reactor
since early April, and the report quoted a US source as saying
that the release of vapor indicated renewed activity.
"It is hard to think that the boiler alone can operate without
the active nuclear reactor," a US government source was quoted
by the daily as saying.
In April, North Korea said it had shut down the reactor, 90
kilometers (50 miles) north of Pyongyang, while it was preparing
to reprocess more spent fuel, a move that could result in the
production of enough plutonium to double its nuclear arsenal.
"North Korea has indicated it will give up on the nuclear
reactor, but at the same time it is steadily expanding the level
of its nuclear development," a senior US official was quoted by
the Asahi as saying.
The latest round of six-nation talks resumed in Beijing last
month after a 13-month stalemate, following North Korea's
declaration in February that it already had nuclear bombs.
After nearly two weeks of sometimes heated and late-night
negotiations, the key sticking point was whether North Korea
should be allowed to run nuclear programs for peaceful, energy
use.
The United States has ruled out North Korea being allowed to
operate light-water nuclear reactors, but South Korea has said
the North should have the right to maintain a civilian nuclear
program.
The six-party talks broke off on August 7 for three weeks
without any sign of agreement on how to get the Stalinist state
to abandon atomic weapons.
The talks are scheduled to resume in the final week of August.
Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
*****************************************************************
13 Hartford Courant: America's Energy Rut
courant.com
EDITORIALS
August 21, 2005
Last week, a disgruntled consumer expressed frustration to a
stranger at a gas station on Silas Deane Highway in Wethersfield:
"Would you believe I paid 10 cents a gallon less only yesterday?
This is outrageous. Is this why we sent our soldiers to Iraq?"
As gas prices have reached $2.60 per gallon and beyond, there is
anger in the land. There is also confusion. It's as if the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein was supposed to produce cheap oil for
the world's biggest user of fossil fuels. It's also as if
Americans are entitled to cheap oil.
Turmoil in the Middle East is not the reason for high oil
prices. If there is blame, ascribe it to the rise of India,
China and other former Third World nations as economic
powerhouses. Their appetite for petroleum to fuel their
industrial engines is huge.
Inadequate refinery capacity is also a cause for the price
crunch. But, foremost, we should look at ourselves in searching
for who is to blame. Americans' lifestyles tell the story of a
nation that is by far the biggest consumer of oil. We use at
least one-quarter of the oil produced in the world, most of it
imported.
When supplies are short, producers naturally have the upper
hand. Oil-producing countries and oil companies are enjoying
windfalls, while consumers have been asked to grin and bear it.
So far, users have paid more and more, although there's been
grumbling along the way.
Experts are predicting $3 per gallon prices by December. That's
still less than consumers pay in most other developed countries,
goes one argument. True, but Americans are far more dependent on
oil products than people in industrial Europe and Asia.
Fuel-conserving vehicles are omnipresent in much of the world,
with the notable exception of the U.S. If Chinese and Indian
families required as much gas and oil to run their households
and businesses as we do, the world would not have enough energy
to meet the global demand.
One superficially comforting thought is that oil prices, high as
they are, are still lower in constant dollars than they were in
the early 1980s. Yes, but that threshold, which is about $3.30
per gallon, could easily be reached at the current rate of price
ascent.
The wonder of it is that the galloping prices haven't led - yet
- to skyrocketing inflation. Many producers of goods and
services have absorbed the shocks without passing on much of it
to consumers. But that cannot last. If the price push continues,
inflation is likely to raise its ugly head.
We have it on no less an authority than President Bush, who said
earlier this month that the massive energy bill he signed
wouldn't bring down the cost of energy in the foreseeable
future. He's right.
More ominously, gas lines due to supply shortages could return,
as they already have in some parts of the world.
What can be done?
Our leaders should push their constituents much harder to
conserve. The new energy bill pays lip service to conservation,
possibly because being more aggressive would require sacrifice
and invite a political backlash.
The bill contains incentives for developers of alternative
fuels, but not nearly enough. Conspicuously absent from the
legislation is language aimed at improved fuel efficiency from
manufacturers of motor vehicles.
The centerpiece of the federal strategy is to extract more
fossil fuels from the ground and oceans, even if that means
environmental despoilment. Also, nuclear power is making a
comeback, even though its development is very expensive.
It shouldn't take a seer to figure out that pumping our way out
of the problem is no lasting solution. Americans should be
prepared to pay higher prices until they show a better energy
ethic. We remain unwilling to demand more from ourselves by way
of conservation and more from our leaders by way of development
of alternative fuels.
Preparing for a safe and prosperous future requires a massive
national research and development effort now. The effort should
rival American taxpayers' historic investment in space
exploration.
Subscribe to the Hartford Courant today and receive up to 50%
courant.com is Copyright © 2005 by The Hartford Courant
*****************************************************************
14 FOXNews.com: Energy Bill Offers Little Short-Term Relief
Sunday, August 21, 2005
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
WASHINGTON Editor's note: The following article is the first in
a two-part series on the impact of the Energy Policy Act of 2005,
signed into law earlier this month.
On Aug. 11, just three days after President Bush signed the first
major piece of national energy legislation in more than a decade,
oil and gas prices hit a new dizzying height, drawing criticism
that the momentous new law will do nothing for American consumers
in the short term.
"The president acknowledged that the biggest relief that
consumers need right now is relief at the pumps and this bill
does not provide that," Jan Mazurek, head of the Direct Energy
and Environment Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, the
policy arm of the Democratic Leadership Council (search), told
FOXNews.com.
"There is nothing in this bill that will make anything better in
three to five years more like 10 to 15 years from now," said
Matthew Simmons, a Houston-based energy investment banker and
author of "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and
the World Economy."
Nonetheless, Simmons said he is amazed that with all the debate
and special interest lobbying over endless proposals and
amendments, a bill finally passed the Congress after four years
of negotiations.
"I have a sneaking suspicion that if oil prices were at $60 a
barrel when this was going on, then [Washington] would have
chickened out and not done it at all," he said.
Oil was selling at more than $63 a barrel the day Bush signed the
comprehensive energy bill, $3 more than the $60 record set when
the Senate gave its final approval to the legislation 10 days
earlier.
Days after the bill signing in New Mexico, whose two senators
head up the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, crude
oil prices hit $66 a barrel. Prices closed slightly lower last
week, but consumers are feeling the gouging at the pump.
While oil prices now rank as one of America's most pressing
issues, the president acknowledged in his remarks before the bill
signing that the legislation would not alter the immediate
situation.
"This bill is not going to solve our energy challenges overnight.
Most of the serious problems, such as high gasoline costs, or the
rising dependence on foreign oil, have developed over decades.
It's going to take years of focused effort to alleviate those
problems," Bush said.
But he insisted that the 10-year, $12.3 billion package will
affect Americans in a number of ways.
It is going "to help every American who drives to work, every
family that pays a power bill and every small business owner
hoping to expand," he said.
The details of this massive bill, which promotes "clean"
vehicles, offers tax credits to consumers and businesses and
creates federal regulations for electric utilities, sheds light
on some of the administration's goals, but not everyone agrees
with just how much everyday Americans will notice the effects of
the bill or how much they will benefit even in the long term.
For example, the bill does not include a controversial bid to
increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards for
cars and trucks. Proponents say such a measure would have helped
improve fuel efficiency and reduce pollution; opponents say it
would have hurt car manufacturers and forced price increases.
Instead, the bill does include modest provisions for fuel
efficiency and pollution control, including new funding for clean
coal technology and renewable energy sources, like wind, biomass,
landfill gasand other electricity sources.
The bill also provides a series of tax incentives for homeowners
who make energy efficient improvements around the house, like
installing new exterior windows, highly efficient central air
conditioners, heat pumps, water heaters, and furnaces.
They also receive tax breaks for upgrading thermostats, caulking
leaks, installing solar-powered hot-water systems and buying new
hybrid or fuel cell-powered cars.
"I find that very encouraging," said Mazurek, who called the
incentives a "positive step," but a small one in the greater
fight to reduce pollution and what she says is a global warming
crisis.
"I expect the effect of these incentives to be fairly minimal,"
added Iain Murray, a senior fellow with the free-market
Competitive Enterprise Institutespecializing in global climate
changes and environmental sciences.
"[Consumers] who go to this extent are probably committed
environmentalists already," Murray said. "The average consumer, I
dont think, will take advantage of these things."
These incentives do not compare to $11.5 billion in subsidies
going to the big energy industries the bulk of the legislation,
he said.
Toby Chaudhuri, communications director for the Campaign for
America's Futureand the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor,
business, civil rights and environmental interests seeking better
energy solutions, gave a grave preview of the bill's impact.
The energy bill "will make things worse for everyday people who
work hard every day to make ends meet," he said, noting that
billions in tax dollars are going to corporate subsidies for oil
and gas with no guarantee they will result in consumer relief.
Alternative energy sources, meanwhile, got the short shrift, he
said.
But others say, if you look hard enough, some of the provisions
do hold the promise of one day bringing prices down.
"Household energy comes off pretty good in this bill," said
Murray. For example, the repeal of the Depression-era Public
Utility Holding Company Act will remove impediments to energy
company mergers and acquisitions and hopefully open up investment
and activity that will spur more competition.
"The competition itself would be forcing down prices," Murray
said.
H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for
Policy Analysis, a non-profit research center that promotes
private sector innovation over government regulation, said
several regulatory changes and tax incentives will help boost
production and lower prices perhaps in a decade from now.
"Prices are driven in part by policy matters, but they can't be
fixed overnight," Burnett said.
Positive measures, he said, include more federal control over
establishing new terminals for receiving liquefied natural gas
and allowing energy producers to write off production costs, like
equipment, more quickly. He added that to encourage new nuclear
power plant building, the bill insures the loan on early builders
of such plants.
In a more controversial provision, ethanol producers also
received a boost as oil refineries were required to double the
amount of the corn-based renewable fuel used in making gasoline
cleaner and more efficient.
"It helps gasoline burn better when you use it," said Jon
Doggett, a spokesman for the National Corn Growers Association,
which lobbied hard for the provision.
Critics say the measure is a boondoggle for big agribusiness, and
that ethanol actually costs more to create than the amount of
energy it produces an assertion the industry flatly refutes.
Most of the experts who spoke with FOXNews.com agreed that the
bill does little to seek out alternative sources to foreign oil,
whether that be new drilling in Alaska's Arctic Natural Wildlife
Refuge or investing more heavily in new, environmentally friendly
sources.
"I think we should have been more forward-looking about our
domestic [energy] supplies," said Burnett, adding that "the
vested interests have enough power to block the better
provisions."
*****************************************************************
15 Guardian Unlimited: Coal's price is rising, but can it clean up?
A rival to costly oil waits in the wings if
environmental issues can be overcome
Samira Sohail
Monday August 22, 2005
With the oil price above $60 a barrel, dragging the cost of
natural gas higher, and nuclear power - with one or two
exceptions - still politically sensitive as well as economically
controversial, the coal industry should be on a roll.
Although demand has surged, almost doubling the price on the
global market in two years, coal is in a bind, particularly in
developed economies. Regulators are slapping tougher emission
limits on power plants burning coal and, while the technology
exists to cope with the new regimes, its cost presents investors
with a tough choice.
Coal provides about 30% of the world's electricity. In China,
which burns half the world's consumption of 4.1bn tonnes a year,
the figure is 80%. With the growth of demand from other Asian
economies the world could be burning 7bn tonnes by 2030. As with
most markets facing a surge in demand, bottlenecks prevent supply
keeping up. Shortage of shipping has meant freight rates have
become a significant factor driving the price higher.
Nevertheless, coal still has a big edge over oil and gas:
6,000kcal-worth of coal costs $60 - less than a third of heavy
fuel oil at $195.
Such differentials, and the relative longevity of the world's
coal reserves, have led to a resurgence of interest in
alternative technologies such as converting coal into oil.
According to Gerard McCloskey, an independent coal industry
expert: "At $35 a barrel for oil, it becomes cost-efficient to
install chemical technology to convert coal into oil. Moreover,
in China and India there is a lot of poor quality coal mined,
which cannot be used for burning, but is perfect for converting."
China has recently committed $1.5bn (Ł840m) to a project
converting coal into diesel. Russia has huge reserves which have
not been exploited yet, though the ready availability of oil and
gas may keep the pressure for other fuels quiescent.
The big downside for coal is that it threatens to increase the
environmental damage that scientists say is causing global
warming. Burning coal is a contributor to the greenhouse effect
with its carbon dioxide emissions, and its sulphur emissions
create acid rain.
The European commission has already introduced emissions rules
that have put an economic question mark over coal.
The carbon emissions trading scheme has put limits on how much
CO2 polluters can emit. Anyone who pumps more has to buy carbon
permits to cover the excess. They started trading at 7 a tonne,
now they change hands at more than 20 - making them a real cost
for the industry. Coal fired generators are also wrestling with
the European community's large combustion plants directive,
which governs sulphur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen. Some have
fitted equipment to remove the gases. Others are planning to
reduce the hours a plant can run, a move which will end in
closure by 2015.
In the US the industry is looking hard at clean coal
technologies. Here again the snag is not expertise but money.
Hank Courtright, vice president for generation at the Electric
Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, says the aim
has to be to keep coal as a crucial component in the mix of
energy sources. To achieve this, new technologies need to
establish their credentials with investors quickly.
"Work must begin now to ensure that advanced coal technologies
can establish a solid track record before large numbers of coal
plant replacements become necessary," he says. "We see the need
to get plants built and operating soon in order to gain
experience and reduce the cost of advanced coal technology."
The pressures to reduce emissions will not abate quickly. Coal,
says Mark Strutt of Greenpeace, "is the biggest contributor in
the UK to climate change: 30% of carbon dioxide emissions come
from power generation, most of which is coal burning, and we
urgently need more government intervention. Globally too, it is
a massive problem, India and China have new plants sprouting up
every couple of weeks and there are 100 on the start line in the
US."
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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16 Guardian Unlimited: 'Unsuitable' firm won huge MoD contract
Officials' fears confirmed as cost of dockyard scheme soared
Rich Cookson and Rob Evans
Monday August 22, 2005
The Guardian
Defence ministers awarded a huge nuclear contract to a company
even though officials had had serious doubts about the competence
of the firm, internal documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.
The estimated cost then nearly doubled to more than Ł900m. The
Ministry of Defence said one of the main causes of this was the
"poor performance" of the company.
The project to build docks to refit nuclear-powered submarines at
Devonport, Plymouth, is crucial for maintaining Britain's nuclear
arsenal.
The documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act,
disclose how ministry officials had concerns about the firm, DML,
before ministers awarded the contract.
DML is partly owned by Halliburton, the American company
formerly run by the US vice-president, Dick Cheney.
The contract has been described as "probably the largest nuclear
construction project in Europe in recent times", and MoD
officials were worried that DML was incapable of controlling
costs and had little experience in managing such a complex
scheme.
In a previously secret evaluation of DML, MoD officials
concluded that the firm failed eight of the 10 criteria
measuring its competence, and the company should not be
"considered a suitable organisation to be awarded the contract".
They added: "The organisation, capability, capacity and control
systems of DML do not confirm their capability to successfully
undertake the project management functions. Significant action
needs to be taken by DML to address the deficiencies identified
prior to the award of any prime contract.
"DML demonstrated a naive confidence in their system of cost
control and financial management ... The general feeling was
that DML were lacking in their approach/ commitment to the
project and the controlling of costs to within the budget."
Another evaluation of DML 18 months later, in 1996, resulted in
more criticism: "Many of the areas of concern are due to the
limited development of DML's systems and procedures, and the
need to recruit large numbers of experienced staff quickly. Much
remains to be done."
A third evaluation, six months later, concluded that in general
DML had demonstrated "adequate progress" but there were still
areas of concern. In particular, DML's proposals for managing
the project needed "rapid progress".
The team that was to be in charge of ensuring the safety and
design was "considered to be untried and unproven".
DML wanted one manager to be both director and manager of the
project, but the MoD feared this individual would become
"overloaded", representing a "serious risk to the ability of DML
to deliver the project".
In 1997, the MoD, under the Tory defence secretary Michael
Portillo, appeared confident that DML had improved enough to
deliver the project and awarded it the contract, estimating that
it would cost Ł576m.
Within two years, the House of Commons public accounts committee
found the cost was increasing "on a grand scale".
Three years ago, the National Audit Office, parliament's
watchdog, discovered that, amid delays, the cost had risen
"significantly" to more than Ł933m. The MoD blamed the increases
on the "poor performance" of DML - a claim denied by the company
- and the toll of meeting the high safety standards required for
nuclear work.
At its height, more than 2,700 people were working on building
the docks.
The MoD now estimates that the cost of the project will have
dropped to about Ł880m by the time it is finished in five years'
time. The ministry yesterday stood by its decision to award DML
the contract, emphasising that much of the increase was the
result of unforeseen safety regulations.
No other company could have performed better because only one
other dockyard in the country could have completed the work, it
said.
DML declined to comment.
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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17 The State: Growing energy demand global
08/21/2
As more nations want oil, worries mount that production could
stagnate
By SUDEEP REDDY and BRENDAN M. CASE
The Dallas Morning News
Across China and India, millions of consumers are dumping their
bicycles and buying cars like never before.
U.S. motorists are burning more gasoline than ever, too. But the
global kings of gas guzzling are facing major challenges from
their Asian counterparts.
The shifting tide is launching a new era of competition across
the oil sector. Rapidly developing nations are growing thirstier
for petroleum while wealthier countries especially the United
States do little to rein in their own demand.
This is significant for U.S. consumers because the growing
battle means that higher prices at the pump might not go away
anytime soon.
The threatening imbalance between supply and demand has already
started a struggle thats smoldering from the Sea of Japan to
Venezuelas Lake Maracaibo to the Caspian Sea in Central Asia.
The developments could reshape foreign policy in the coming
century as energy-hungry nations increasingly forge alliances
with U.S. foes.
China and India together are a third of humanity, and they
dont want to ride bicycles anymore, said Anne Korin, the
co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global
Security, a Washington think tank. Their transportation demand,
which is to say their oil consumption, is growing at a
phenomenal rate.
The battle for energy resources sparked a frenzy in recent
months with the global battle over Unocal Corp., the object of a
bidding war between Chevron Corp. and CNOOC Ltd., a
state-controlled Chinese company.
That fight was settled Aug. 10 when Unocal shareholders approved
Chevrons $18 billion takeover.
But CNOOCs proposal, which was higher than Chevrons earlier
bid, prompted an outcry among U.S. lawmakers who opposed the
takeover of a large U.S. oil company by a firm owned largely by
Chinas communist government.
The takeover battle has drawn government leaders into a
discussion of the ties between energy suppliers, recalling
debates that took on greater urgency in world wars I and II and
during the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo.
But many analysts warn that such fears are guided by antiquated
notions about control of the oil trade. Over the last three
decades, oil producers and consumers have built a global oil
market that directs supplies to consumers who demand it and
guides prices based on the worlds needs.
We never really have grown out of the mentality of the 1970s,
said Dennis OBrien, director of the University of Oklahomas
Institute for Energy Economics and Policy.
We still carry a lot of basic, wrongheaded thinking about
energy security, he said. Its a globalized, efficient market.
Oil moves seamlessly across national boundaries.
Still, surging demand for oil comes as worries mount that global
production could stagnate. Several top industry officials
including the head of Chevron Texaco have warned that the era
of easy access to oil reserves is over
If supply cant keep up with demand, prices are bound to
increase and so is jockeying for supplies.
The supply of oil has been growing all these years in
approximate consonance with demand, said Michael Klare,
professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire
College.
Now it appears that the historical trend is changing. Demand is
galloping ahead of supply, said Klare, author of Blood and
Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of Americas Growing
Dependency on Imported Petroleum.
Youre going to see more competition because demand around the
world is increasing faster than supply.
The clearest sign of skyrocketing demand comes from China, where
astonishing economic growth is fueling huge increases in oil and
gas needs.
To meet that demand, Chinas state-owned energy companies are
scouring the globe for oil and gas deals, wooing the leaders of
pariah states such as Iran and Sudan, and striking deals in
established oil powers from Russia to Canada to Venezuela.
The Chinese government needs energy, period, said Peyton
Feltus, president of Randolph Risk Management, a Dallas-based
consultancy. Their appetite for imports is growing at a
cancerous pace, and thats with the Chinese government trying to
hold back demand.
Meanwhile, India is trying to satisfy its own growing energy
demand, which is expected to double by 2020.
The Indian government has formed alliances with leaders of
Russia and Venezuela, just as China has done.
With Pakistan and Iran, the country is laying out plans for a
multibillion-dollar gas pipeline connecting Iranian gas fields
with India. Indian and Pakistani officials said in July that
construction could begin next year. U.S. officials and energy
experts have expressed reservations about the project, given
what they charge are Irans nuclear ambitions and ties to
terrorist groups.
These countries like Iran, like Saudi Arabia, like Sudan, what
they have to offer is energy oil and gas, Korin said. And
different countries are willing to forgive an awful lot to do
business with them. Iran just bought a third of humanity by
making deals with India and China, she said.
As other nations scramble to secure supplies, the U.S.
government has spent the last five years mired in a contentious
debate over federal energy policy and access to domestic
resources.
Oil companies and many lawmakers want to open up coastal waters
and other federal lands such as the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge to oil and gas drilling. The resources beneath, they
say, could help reduce the nations dependence on other nations
and contribute to U.S. supplies for years.
The energy bill that President Bush signed in early August wont
help oil producers gain much additional access to U.S. lands.
But it does seek to spur development of newer technologies in
the wind, solar and even coal industries to help the nation
diversify its energy supplies.
With the United States guiding the global industry for the last
century, government leaders have generally deferred to oil
companies and global markets to secure supplies for U.S.
consumers.
Concerns about U.S. firms competing with national oil companies
helped win government support for megamergers over the last
decade, including the 1999 marriage unifying Exxon Corp. and
Mobil Corp. into the worlds largest publicly traded oil
company.
Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil and other companies often face
restrictions that other oil producers would not, such as laws
restricting U.S. firms from dealing with corrupt governments.
But industry officials say that the strength of U.S. companies
will help support the nations energy interests.
Were all competing for resources, said John Felmy, chief
economist at the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade
group. Fortunately, the United States has the technology. Weve
got a market system that supports it.
Well be seeing more and more oil being produced, he said. I
think the market will rule.
TheStateOnline
*****************************************************************
18 Daily Times: India secretly building nuclear submarine
| Monday, August 22, 2005
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: India is building a nuclear submarine secretly, but
it should do so openly as it is not breaking any laws, according
to a retired admiral of the Indian Navy.
Admiral Raja Mohan told a meeting at the Brookings Institution
on Thursday afternoon that India needs to come clean on this
secret project and the United States should extend an assurance
that If India owns up to it, there will be no adverse reaction
from Washington.
Mohan was speaking on the emerging defence and security
relationship between the US and India, in particular with
reference to the recent agreement on nuclear cooperation between
the two countries. He said India has the ability to outstrip
China in the production of plutonium but has no plans to do so.
Turning to the Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement announced
when the Indian Prime Minister visited Washington, he said
domestic opposition to the deal in both countries will need to
be satisfied. This is one issue on which the ultra right in
America and the ultra left in India are in accord. It will be
for the leaders of the two countries to set the pace.
He suggested the establishment of a high-level panel which
should have the authority to cut through inter-agency wrangling
that is sure to accompany the implementation process. He argued
that the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has flagged and the
Indo-US deal will invigorate it. It will be better to get India
into the tent rather than leave it out, he added.
Asked if the Indo-US nuclear agreement opens the door for
Pakistan to seek a similar arrangement with Washington, he
replied that Pakistan would have to demonstrate a clean record
for at least 10 years. As of now, nobody would take Islamabad
very seriously.
Mohan, asked about Pakistans cruise missile test, said it was
in January 1999 that Pakistan started work on this programme,
but the test firing at this particular time is coincidental.
He said Pakistans Shaheen II missile is without doubt of
Chinese make. As for Pakistans cruise missile, it would have to
be asked how a country with only 150 PhDs has made a cruise
missile.
The meeting arranged by Stephen Cohen, head of the Asia
Programme at Brookings, was attended by a number of experts,
including Michael Krepon. HE asked Mohan what the Indo-US
nuclear cooperation deal had for the US.
Cohen said both the left and the right in America would be
opposed to the deal.
Krepon said the Indo-US ties would weaken the Nuclear Suppliers
Group and acquisition of nuclear materials would be easier for
Pakistan. The bad news for Pakistan is that one area where it
competes with India is nuclear and the expansive relationship
envisaged by the agreement between India and the US will put
India ahead. He was critical of the agreement as it would leave
India to decide what is military and what is civilian in its
nuclear programme. He also said that in the past India has been
secretive about its nuclear programme, so the question arises:
why should America trust India now?
Daily Times - All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
19 India: Telegraph: Delhi in nuclear wait and watch
Calcutta : Nation
Kakodkar
Mumbai, Aug. 21 (PTI): New Delhi will closely watch the US on
what it does to dismantle restrictions against India on civilian
nuclear technology and keep an eye on the Nuclear Suppliers
Group front before segregating civilian and military nuclear
facilities in the country, Atomic Energy Commission chairperson
Anil Kakodkar has said.
Last month in Washington, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US
President George W. Bush signed a historic nuclear cooperation
agreement after which the US decided to remove the sanctions
imposed on India after the Pokhran nuclear tests.
But before we take up take any reciprocal steps, we have to
closely watch what happens to the US laws on restrictions and
lifting of embargo and the Nuclear Suppliers Group front,
Kakodkar said today.
He added that the act of identification and segregation of the
civilian and military nuclear facilities will be taken up in a
phased manner and will be purely on reciprocal basis.
The decision on separation of civilian and military nuclear
facilities would be purely an Indian one and every time we do,
we will take totality into account. We introduced enough
safeguards to protect Indian interests, Kakodkar clarified,
adding that there should be no question of any proliferation
concern on full civil nuclear co-operation with India.
The civilian facilities are those which are identified to be not
of any national security significance. Therefore, in identifying
such facilities, we have to determine that they are of no
national security significance
the Atomic Energy Commission
chairperson emphasised.
The decision on the method of segregation will also be purely
Indian and not dictated by anyone. It is clear that it would not
be a one-time job but will be determined as per national
requirements that prevail from time to time.
Kakodkar did not rule out external inputs in addition to the
existing indigenous nuclear programme to meet Indias
ever-growing energy requirements. However, any external
co-operation that is forthcoming will be put under specific
safeguards. This is consistent with our national policy, he
said.
Kakodkar said there is recognition about India that we are
fundamentally strong in research and nuclear technology
development.
There is growing awareness that India and China are the two most
populous and fastest-growing economies and if they have to carry
out business as usual, there would be growing concern for
increasing global warming situations. Nuclear energy has been
now considered as a clean technology, Kakodkar said.
We need 10 times more electricity in the next five decades to
come and how are we going to meet such large demand? Nuclear
power is important in this context.
With this growing awareness on environment as well as Indias
capability and impeccable track record
, there is a definite
change in the mindset among developed nations about India and
the Indo-US cooperation statement was the result, Kakodkar
said.
On the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, he said: As far as
India is concerned, our position is clear.... NPT has been a
discriminatory treaty and hence we are not a part of it.
Copyright © 2005 The Telegraph. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
20 UN Convenes Scientists To Study Nuclear Power Plant Risks From Natural Disasters
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 04:26:49 -0400
UN CONVENES SCIENTISTS TO STUDY NUCLEAR POWER PLANT RISKS FROM NATURAL
DISASTERS
New York, Aug 16 2005 10:00AM
Seeking to prevent nuclear power plant disasters from being unleashed
by natural calamities, the United Nations atomic watchdog agency
is organizing an international scientific workshop in India
this month to re-examine risks from events such as last Decembers
Learning from the lessons of this latest tsunami as well as from
other flood events that occurred in the past will allow the review,
revision and expansion, as appropriate of the Agency Safety
Standards on external flooding hazards," International Atomic Energy
Agency (<"http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2005/tsunami.html">IAEA)
Nuclear Installation Safety director Ken Brockman said.
The five-day International Workshop on External Flooding Hazards
at Nuclear Power Plant Sites will begin on 29 August at IndiaŽs
Kalpakkam nuclear power plant, which withstood the giant waves that
engulfed the small township, home to IndiaŽs centre for atomic
Battered but safe, the plant shut down automatically after detectors
tripped it as the water level rose. There was no release of radioactivity.
The reactor was restarted 1 January 2005, six days
There are scores of nuclear power plants operating in coastal areas
and some of these may need to take a renewed look at this external
hazard," IAEA Director of Nuclear Power Akira Omoto said. It
It is common for nuclear power plants to be built in coastal areas,
drawing the seawater to cool the reactor. The IAEA has stringent
safety standards designed to guard nuclear power plants against
natural calamities like earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding, tsunamis
and cyclones. The non-legally binding guidelines cover site and
design requirements, as well as appropriate monitoring and warning
Japan, which has developed systems to evaluate and protect reactors
against the earthquakes and tsunamis regularly striking there,
will provide guidance and share its experiences at the 17-country
workshop. Case studies will be presented by countries such as France,
whose Le Blayais reactor was hit by severe storms in December
The IAEA issued the Kalpakkam reactor a clean bill of health in the
tsunamiŽs wake, rating the event a zero or of no safety significance
on the International Nuclear Events Scale. Around 3.5
cubic metres of seawater, sludge and muck entered a construction
pit, where the foundations for a new Fast Breeder Reactor were being
built. Water also entered a pump house for cooling water, tripping
2005-08-16 00:00:00.000
________________
For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news
To change your profile or unsubscribe go to:
http://www.un.org/news/dh/latest/subscribe.shtml
*****************************************************************
21 APP.COM: TOPIC OF THE DAY: Nuclear power
Asbury Park Press 08/21/05
Replace reactor with new plant
Following the debates about the future of Oyster Creek power
plant in Lacey, a facility that existed long before most of its
opponents even moved to the area, I have yet to read of a viable
solution.
Simply shutting down a major power supply providing enough
electricity for approximately 600,000 homes a year is really not
an option. That's especially so since thousands of houses will
be built in the area in the next few years. Where will the power
come from?
We need to keep Oyster Creek online for now. But on relicensing
issues, you hear about minimum protections of the oldest nuclear
reactor in the county. Let's replace it.
The president is calling for new nuclear power facilities to
lessen our dependence on foreign oil and is offering federal
funding to help. We could replace Oyster Creek with the newest,
cleanest, safest, most efficient, best guarded nuclear power
facility, capable of generating more power.
When the new plant is online, with its cooling tower and
ecologically friendly systems meeting all standards of the
federal Clean Water Act, retire and decommission Oyster Creek.
John McKelvey
BRICK
Copyright © 2005 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
22 TheStar.com: Ontario needs nuclear power
Aug. 20, 2005. 01:00 AM
Few people noticed, but Ontario's antiquated power system was
strained more than 50 times this hot summer. On July 13,
consumers burned up more than 26,000 megawatts of power to keep
cool, a dangerous new record. We were lucky to make it through
the worst heat without outages.
The hot weather also gave Energy Minister Dwight Duncan a few
sleepless nights to ponder the inevitable.
"We have to look seriously at nuclear," he told the Star's
editorial board this week. Ontario in all likelihood will have
to build more nuclear facilities to meet its electricity needs,
as polluting-spewing coal-fired plants are taken out of
commission.
Plans are afoot to create other sources of clean energy, to be
sure.
Duncan outlined one deal between Ontario Power Generation and an
Austrian company to build the world's largest mechanical
earthworm to increase generating capacity at Niagara Falls. The
giant tunnelling machine will chew up 1.7 million cubic metres
of dirt from just above Niagara Falls to the Sir Adam Beck
Generating Station 10.4 kilometres downstream. The $1 billion
tunnel will be able to carry enough water through the Beck
generators to power 160,000 homes.
The colossal engineering feat serves as a reminder of just how
difficult and costly it is to create new sources of clean power.
And we need all we can get as demand outstrips supply.
But neither the tunnel nor the many other initiatives Premier
Dalton McGuinty's government has taken to boost supply will
solve that problem. New projects will barely make up for the
7,500 megawatts that will be lost when our coal-fired plants are
shut down by 2009.
So, to ease even the short-term demand-supply imbalance, the
province is going to have to find ways to produce more energy in
the next few years, even as it makes a concerted effort to curb
the inexorable rise in demand through conservation.
And that doesn't begin to address the province's longer-term
needs.
The pressures become even more severe by 2020, as Ontario is
forced to replace 80 per cent of current generating capacity.
Almost half comes from nuclear plants that are fast approaching
the end of their useful lives.
It will be impossible to generate as much as 15,000 megawatts of
reasonably priced power from expensive gas-fired plants, or from
small-scale wind farms and hydro stations. As Duncan suggests,
we simply have to accept that we are going to need new nuclear
power.
Considering that it takes a decade or more to build a new
nuclear facility, Ontario is running short on time. We shouldn't
waste overmuch of it debating the inevitable, controversial
though nuclear power is.
Rather, we should be discussing where new plants should be
located.
And where the billions of dollars needed to construct the new
facilities will come from. Do we want the private sector or
government owning and operating these plants?
The Niagara Falls worm will help. But we can't tunnel our way to
energy sufficiency. We will have to rely on the atom as well.
Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All
*****************************************************************
23 Hartford Courant: Utilities Powering Up
courant.com |
Industry's Back-To-Basics Strategy Giving Its Stocks Some New
Energy
August 21, 2005
By ANDREW LECKEY
Forget about new paradigms, those futuristic structural changes
that produced the tech bubble and that artful dodger, Enron Corp.
Old paradigms are alive and kicking. Electric utilities,
refocused on their time-tested businesses, have seen their stocks
double since their lows of October 2002.
During their biggest rally since World War II, these utilities
have been exiting their foreign investments, complex power
trading operations and other ventures once considered their
destiny.
Instead, they're upgrading power transmission, dealing with
environmental issues and seeking regulatory approval of new
plants. Their stocks, up 15 percent this year and outperformed
only by energy stocks, also benefit from industrywide merger
speculation.
"We're now in the third year of a back-to-basics strategy," said
Michael Worms, a electric utility analyst with Harris Nesbitt in
New York. "In 2003, electric utilities restored their balance
sheets that were heavy with debt from their past follies, and in
2004 they returned cash to shareholders through accelerated
dividend growth or the resumption of dividend growth."
The underlying investor question is whether these stocks can
continue their impressive run, or whether good news is fully
reflected in current prices.
Paul Fremont, an analyst with Jefferies &Co. in New York, is
concerned that if optimism for the broader market grows by year's
end, investors will yank money out of utilities and put it into
stock sectors with greater potential.
Others disagree.
"Electric utility stocks have had a good run and, while they'll
have pullbacks, our view is that their positive movement could
continue long-term," said Robert Becker, senior vice president
and co-portfolio manager of funds that include Cohen &Steers
Select Utility Fund Inc., up 15 percent this year.
"A general low-return environment that could continue for years
to come makes companies with predictable earnings and cash flow
growth attractive, and that's utilities," Becker added.
Tax law changes in 2003 that gave investors a tax break on
dividends helped energize the industry. Electric utilities, with
an average yield of 3.6 percent, trail only real estate
investment trusts in dividend yield. Low bond yields have helped
utilities in their competition for conservative, income-oriented
investors.
"Electric utilities have gotten the signal that investors want
dividends, so we've seen increased payouts," said Charles
Fishman, an analyst with A.G. Edwards &Sons Inc. in St. Louis,
noting that rising earnings permit this shift. "While yields on
long-term bonds remain low, utility stocks could provide
exceptional total returns [price appreciation and dividends] of
up to 10 percent over the next 12 months."
Some of the price appreciation is based on the new Energy
Policy Act of 2005, which ends longtime geographic constraints
that limited energy utilities to local markets and also permits
ownership by non-utility companies. Mergers have begun. It also
gives incentives for new investment in transmission,
distribution and environmental equipment.
"These stocks have a high level of predictability and high
yield, yet are trading at a discount to the broader market,"
Fremont said. "Electric utilities had an annual earnings growth
rate of 2 [percent] or 3 percent over the past 15 years, but in
the next three years the rate will be 7 percent."
Exelon Corp., the largest U.S. utility owner by market value, is
Becker's top holding and is recommended by Fremont and Worms.
The company's management has a track record of balancing
shareholder and customer interests, they say, and will produce
above-average dividend growth. Exelon also is in the process of
buying Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. of New Jersey.
Although nuclear power remains controversial on potential for
accidents or acts of terrorism - no new nuclear plant has been
commissioned in 30 years - the Energy Policy Act provides
incentives for nuclear power. A.G. Edwards' Fishman believes the
two biggest players in nuclear energy, Exelon and Entergy Corp.,
would benefit if its low cost and ability to reduce greenhouse
gases gain public acceptance. He expects two or three nuclear
plants will be built in the United States in the next decade,
likely as units at existing plants.
Dominion Resources Inc. is recommended by Fishman and Worms, in
part because it has oil and gas as well as electrical
businesses. Edison International, whose shares are owned by
Becker and recommended by Fremont, should benefit from southern
California's need to expand its transmission grid and build more
power plants.
Meanwhile, Fishman favors Florida Power &Light holding company
FPL Group Inc. as an industry blue chip and solid core holding.
Among other top Becker holdings, Duke Energy Corp. has capable
new management helping it recover from previous poor investment
in unregulated businesses, experts said.
Let the mergers begin: Possible takeover candidates, Fishman
said, could be Allegheny Energy Inc., Constellation Energy Group
Inc., DPL Inc., Energy East Corp., FirstEnergy Corp., Northeast
Utilities, NSTAR, PPL Corp., SCANA Corp. and Teco Energy Inc.
"But predicting mergers is difficult due to the human factors
involved," Fishman cautioned. "The deals aren't always motivated
by purely strategic reasons."
Andrew Leckey is a Tribune Media Services columnist.
courant.com is Copyright © 2005 by The Hartford Courant
*****************************************************************
24 PI: Tempo: Time to use nuke power plant Morong mayor
August 22, 2005
MORONG, Bataan Mayor Burt Linao of this town called yesterday
on the national government to set aside political bickering on
the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP-1) and
appreciate its value as part of a solution to the countrys
energy and economic woes.
As chief executive of the town hosting the BNPP-1, Linaos
takeaway on the controversial issue is to utilize it for
productive purposes rather than letting it stand idle for more
years and waiting for nothing.
The BNPP-1 was constructed during the time of former president
Ferdinand Marcos, who thought the textbig-billion facility was
the best answer for the need for cheaper and more efficient
energy production.
It would have been fully operational by the time of President
Corazon Aquino but her administration was strongly against the
use of nuclear energy on the pretext that it was dangerous to
operate and deemed detrimental to the environment.
However, the national government has had no alternative use for
the multi-billion dollar white elephant to date, Mayor Linao
pointed out. (Mar T. Supnad)
Copyright ©2004 . All Rights Reserved. USER PRIVACY POLICY
*****************************************************************
25 Reuters: N.Korea restarts Yongbyon nuclear reactor-report
Sun Aug 21, 2005 1:15 AM ET
TOKYO, Aug 21 (Reuters) - A U.S. satellite has detected signs
that North Korea recently restarted a reactor that could be used
for the extraction of material to make nuclear warheads, a
Japanese newspaper said on Sunday.
The surveillance satellite detected steam coming out of a boiler
connected to a building housing the five-megawatt reactor at
Yongbyon, Asahi Shimbun said, quoting unnamed sources related to
six-way nuclear crisis talks, including a senior U.S. official.
The sources said the steam had been detected before the
resumption of the six-way talks in late July that aimed to entice
the North to give up its nuclear weapons and bomb-making
programmes in exchange for economic aid and security guarantees.
"It is hard to think that the boiler would operate by itself
while the nuclear reactor is stopped. It can only be concluded
that North Korea has put in new nuclear fuel rods and has
restarted the nuclear reactor," Asahi quoted a U.S. government
source as saying.
South Korea said in April the reactor's operations had been
suspended and the following month, North Korea said it had
completed extracting 8,000 fuel rods from the 5 megawatt reactor.
Rods from old-style graphite reactors can be processed to
extract plutonium, a key component in nuclear bombs. Restarting
the reactor could mean the North aims to extract more plutonium
from the new rods.
North Korea said in February that it possessed nuclear weapons.
North Korea has also spread gravel over a road near a separate
unfinished 50-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon. Construction was
halted in the 1990s under a previous, and now defunct, nuclear
agreement with the United States. Repairing the road could be a
sign the North is preparing to resume building work, Asahi said.
The Yongbyon complex, around 100 km (60 miles) north of North
Korea's capital, Pyongyang, is the centre of the communist
state's nuclear programmes.
"North Korea has been suggesting that it is ready to scrap such
nuclear reactors, but it is steadily expanding the scope of its
nuclear development behind the scenes," the senior U.S. official
said.
Six-way talks between North and South Korea, the United States,
Russia, Japan and China are to resume in the week of Aug. 29
after 13 days of talks in Beijing from late July to early August
failed to reach an accord.
© Reuters 2005.
All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
26 Mos News: Russias Nuclear Chief Sets Up Development Priorities -
MOSNEWS.COM
The Leningrad nuclear power plant, photo from www.laes.ru
Created: 21.08.2005 11:37 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 11:37 MSK
MosNews
The creation of more powerful nuclear reactors and
hydrogen-based energy are the main priorities for Russias
atomic scientists, Aleksandr Rumyantsev, the head of Federal
Agency for Atomic Energy Rosatom said in a message
congratulating nuclear sector workers on the 60th anniversary of
the founding of their branch of science.
Of course military matters still occupy an important place, as
by handling these the security of the state is guaranteed, but
atomic scientists are also promoting civilian conversion
technologies, which today have already made it into space and
exploit the worlds oceans, Rumyantsev noted.
We are making sure progress towards finding solutions to
problems, which just yesterday were believed to be tasks for the
distant future, he stressed. He singled out the move, on one
hand, to 1,500 MW reactors and, on the other hand, to low
capacity reactors, including floating reactors, as being
priorities in the energy sector. Among the innovatory projects
named by Rumyantsev were heavy coolant reactors and also
hydrogen power. Currently a state programme for the development
of hydrogen power is being drawn up. The possibilities it
offers, being environmentally safe, are immense, he concluded.
Copyright © 2004 MOSNEWS.COM
*****************************************************************
27 Newsday: Vivid memories of Shoreham
New York City - Long Island Print Edition
Newsday.com
BY JOSEPH MALLIA STAFF WRITER
August 20, 2005
The Shoreham nuclear power plant stirred raw emotions on Long
Island in the 1980s and sparked protests that drew thousands of
demonstrators, young and old.
Many were just plain anti-nukers. They wanted to ensure that no
power would ever flow from Shoreham's glowing core of 560 fuel
assemblies filled with uranium pellets.
Others opposed the plant because they believed the Island's
geography - with only one escape route, through New York City -
made any evacuation plan unsafe in the event of a nuclear
catastrophe.
Now, as newly released documents related to Shoreham surface in
the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts, the old fights
over licensing and evacuation stirred up memories from some of
those involved in controversy.
"We fought against licensing Shoreham because there was no way
to have a safe and orderly evacuation" in the event of a nuclear
disaster, said Richard Kessel, an anti-Shoreham activist in the
1980s who is now chairman of the Long Island Power Authority.
Kessel and others learned Friday of a Jan. 22, 1986, letter
written by Roberts when he was a Reagan White House lawyer,
backing a federal evacuation plan despite local opposition.
"We were always concerned with whether the White House would
get involved," Kessel said.
Huntington Supervisor Frank Petrone, who in the early 1980s was
regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
was forced to resign in 1985 when he refused to declare federal
evacuation plans safe.
"The tone was extremely heated, and people were basically fed
up with the legal maneuvering, when the actual purpose of the
federal regulations was to ensure public safety," he said.
Shoreham fired up at a low level, for testing, and then was
decommissioned by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It cost
electricity ratepayers on Long Island as much as a half-billion
dollars - a debt that's still not paid off, Kessel said.
Peter Maniscalco of Manorville, an environmental activist who
was arrested four times for trespassing in protests against
Shoreham, said Roberts' letter shows a lack of respect for local
safety fears.
"There were 20,000 people demonstrating on the beach against a
nuclear power plant," he said. "This is after Three Mile Island
and people had reason to protest this form of technology."
Copyright © 2005,
*****************************************************************
28 outlookindia.com: Pak to ask US, EU to construct 13 nuclear power plants
PAK-NUCLEAR
ISLAMABAD, AUG 21 (PTI)
Apparently keeping in mind the concerns of the western countries
over nuclear proliferation, Pakistan would shortly put forward a
proposal to them to invest in 13 nuclear power plants in the
country on a "build and own" basis.
Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) has requested
President Pervez Musharraf to mitigate the concerns of the US
and the western world about proliferation by ensuring that the
new plants would work under "full safeguards" of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), officials here said.
Based on this the government would ask the US and western
countries to make investment in certain "designated zones and
parks" by partly or fully owning the proposed 13 new nuclear
power plants in the country, local daily 'Dawn' quoted the
officials as saying.
"We may propose to them (US and the west) to build these new
nuclear power plants on the basis of full ownership or have a
joint venture with us and the entire process would be carried out
in consultation with the IAEA," the officials said.
The nuclear plants would help generate 8400 MW of electricity in
the next 25 years.
The report came as IAEA officials geared up to meet Pakistani
officials in Vienna next week as part of its efforts to determine
if Iran was using smuggled Pakistani centrifuges to make enriched
uranium that could be used for nuclear bombs.
Reports from Vienna said the IAEA, which has examined centrifuges
supplied by Pakistan has concluded that "the highly enriched
uranium appears to emanate from Pakistan,from the imported
equipment and not from Iranian enrichment work.
©Outlook Publishing (India) Private Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
29 CNIC: Tohoku Earthquake
(Citizens' Nuclear Information Center)
18 August 2005
The magnitude 7.2 earthquake that hit the Tohoku Region1 of
Japan on Tuesday 16 August caused the 3 nuclear reactors at
Tohoku Electric's Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant to scram
automatically.
The maximum quake was measured at 251.2 gals2 on the second
floor basement of the number 2 reactor. This exceeded the design
basis of 250 gals. The Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency said
that it may in fact be the first time the earthquake design
basis for a nuclear reactor has been exceeded in Japan.
Tohoku Electric immediately dismissed the significance of this
saying the reactors can withstand a quake of 375 gals. The
reactors are designed to scram if the quake exceeds 200 gals
horizontally, or 100 gals vertically. All three Onagawa reactors
exceeded this limit.
Operations at the three Onagawa reactors will be suspended for
some time while the effects of the earthquake on the reactors
are assessed.
Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric Power Company has confirmed that water
leaked from the spent fuel pools at the No. 2 and No. 6 reactors
of the Fukushima I plant. It said that the water did not leak
outside the facilities.
Click here to go to our commercial media page. There you will
find news items about the earthquake.
Click here for an article about the Niigata earthquake last
year.
1. The Tohoku Region is in the north east of Honshu, the largest
island in Japan.
2. Gal is a measure of
acceleration. 1 gal = 0.01 m/s2.
Philip White
CNIC
Citizens' Nuclear Information Center
TEL.03-5330-9520
FAX.03-5330-9530
http://cnic.jp/english/
*****************************************************************
30 Albuquerque Tribune: Safe options shunned as we put our eggs in nuclear handbasket
Columnists
V.B. Price: Power play
By V.B. Price
Tribune Columnist
August 20, 2005
The arguments about the dangers of uranium and depleted uranium
stretch from the seriously concerned to the stunningly absurd.
And hard-up towns like Eunice, in southeastern New Mexico's oil
patch, where riches from $64-or-more-a-barrel oil won't ever
trickle down, are caught in a swirl of hard necessity and
nuclear propaganda.
Some nuke advocates are so glib about the safety of uranium and
other radioactive stuff that they say they would eat it or store
it their gardens to prove their point.
To move from the exasperating foolery of such risk assessments,
one has only to turn to common-sense economics and the most
basic notions of homeland security.
A uranium enrichment plant that will cost $1.25 billion to build
is apparently going up less than 5 miles from the Texas border
outside of Eunice. The plant, whose major owners are in Britain,
Holland and Germany, will have a life of between 20 to 50 years
before it is decommissioned and demolished.
After a short-lived job boom during construction, the plant
could create 140 clerical, security and maintenance jobs in
Eunice. High-paying tech jobs will go to outsiders.
The hundreds of billions of dollars that will go to the nuclear
industry itself, now that the Bush energy policy is law, will go
down the drain when the world runs out of uranium in fewer than
85 years, according to British and French scientists.
And so much for rugged individualism and the free market. The
recently signed energy bill spends millions of taxpayer dollars
to give the nuclear industry federal risk insurance to cover
licensing delays caused by safety issues and political
opposition.
What kind of economic sense does it make to spend billions on a
highly technical, terrorist-vulnerable power industry that will
cover, in the end, only 20 percent of our energy needs, when
other sources of energy involving no danger, such as solar
power, are close to blowing the competition out of the water if
they had the federal subsidies? It makes no sense at all. Solar
power won't run out, lends itself to local and even
individual-size low-tech equipment, has no dangerous waste and
can't be used by terrorists.
And don't be fooled into believing uranium enrichment plants
have no dangerous byproducts. There's something called UF6,
which during uranium processing turns into a radioactive, highly
toxic gas that must be stored as a hazardous waste.
In l985, at the Sequoyah Nuclear Fuels facility in Oklahoma, one
worker was killed and several others were injured in an accident
that exposed them to UF6.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety says exposure to
UF6 gas at even "low levels may result in death." And UF6 could
supply terrorists with dirty-bomb material, because "it reacts
violently with water and ethanol."
Let's just see those happy-go-lucky nuke lobbyists eat that
stuff.
Price is an Albuquerque freelance writer, author, editor and
commentator.
2005 © The Albuquerque Tribune
*****************************************************************
31 Mos News: Radioactive Cargo Seized in Russian Far Eastern Port -
MOSNEWS.COM
Photo from www.newsru.com
Created: 20.08.2005 16:18 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 16:18 MSK
MosNews
A cargo of radioactive litter has been found in Russias far
eastern port of Vladivistok, Russian news agencies reported
Saturday.
The Primtechnopolis radiation safety company got alarmed after
its monitoring devices showed a radiation level surpassing the
normal level 100 times in the port.
A check revealed 89 radioactive items, previously spare parts
for some equipment, RIA Novosti reported. In a special operation
that lasted six hours the dangerous pieces were sorted and taken
away from the port, and the radiation level stabilized.
Considering the small size of the cargo, the radiation level of
1,500 micro-roentgen per hour that it produced was very
impressive, the Primtechnopolis representatives told Interfax.
Write us: info@mosnews.com
Copyright © 2004 MOSNEWS.COM
*****************************************************************
32 Wichita Eagle: Before the bomb
| 08/21/2005 |
Diana Preston provides an overall perspective on the evolution
of the atomic bomb.
BY FRANK WILSON
Philadelphia Inquirer
"Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima" by Diana
Preston (Walker, $27)
Aug. 6 marked the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic
bomb on Hiroshima. Hardly cause for celebration -- though at the
time, for many, that is exactly what it was. As an American
second lieutenant, then 21, wrote:
"When... the news began to circulate that... we would not be
obliged to run up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while
being mortared and shelled, for all the fake manliness of our
facades we cried with relief and joy. We were going to live. We
were going to grow up to adulthood after all."
That lieutenant, and hundreds of thousands like him, knew well
the horrors of war. But not the precise horror of Hiroshima. Of
that, readers of Diana Preston's "Before the Fallout: From Marie
Curie to Hiroshima," are apprised from the start.
Preston begins by quoting a young mother, Futaba Kitayama, who
reported looking up and seeing "an airplane as pretty as a
silver treasure... in the cloudless pure blue sky." Something
dropped from the plane, then exploded into "an indescribable
light." Kitayama's face felt suddenly moist. Then, "when I wiped
my face the skin peeled off."
Between the young soldier's relief and the young mother's agony
lies the unsettling territory of Preston's narrative. Much of
this story has been told before. The virtue of Preston's book is
that it gathers the major threads and weaves them tightly into a
focused chronicle, positioning the key details in such a way as
to provide an overall perspective, a sort of chronological
contour map. Preston is also excellent when it comes to
explaining the science.
The perspective is provided as much by the personalities
involved as by the events recounted. As Preston notes in her
final paragraph, "history -- even the history of science -- is
inherently about people, how they thought, what they did with
their thoughts, and how they interacted with the individuals
immediately around them and then with society and the greater
world order."
A good illustration of this is provided by the case of Ida
Noddack.
In May 1934, Enrico Fermi began bombarding uranium with
neutrons. This seemed to cause the creation of new radioactive
elements beyond uranium, which he called transuranics. Fermi
also discovered that slow-moving neutrons were more effective
agents of bombardment.
Everyone agreed except Noddack, a German chemist and
co-discoverer of rhenium, the last naturally occurring element
to be identified. Noddack suggested that what might really be
happening is that the heavy uranium nucleus was being shattered,
releasing unprecedented energy and transmuting into much lighter
elements.
Noddack did not pursue the matter, and no one else paid any
attention. In fact, her suggestion was dismissed out of hand as
"absurd." In part, this was because she was a woman. It was
probably also because she was a chemist -- in the scientific
pecking order, chemists were thought inferior to physicists.
Mostly, it was because she and her husband had years before
claimed to have discovered an element, which they named
"masurium." It proved to be a claim they could not substantiate.
Italian physicist Emilio Segre, who later acknowledged that
Noddack's suggestion should have led to the immediate discovery
of nuclear fission, at the time thought Noddack and her husband
not only incompetent, but "plainly dishonest."
So nuclear fission ended up being officially discovered five
years later. So what? Well, as Preston observes, had the
discovery been made earlier, "the uses of fission would have
been more widely debated and information more widely pooled
before the outbreak of war.... The German program would have
gone into wartime isolation more advanced.... There might have
been much more French information and facilities for the Germans
to capture."
The major competitors in the search for an atomic bomb were, of
course, Germany and the United States, and personality played a
key role as well in that contest. Germany had no counterpart to
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves, "the supremely practical human
bulldozer" who headed the Manhattan Project. But Nobel laureate
Werner Heisenberg, who led the German effort, and J. Robert
Oppenheimer, who ran the laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., had
much in common. Both were theoretical physicists whose interest
in their subject was as much philosophical as scientific.
Neither was much of an experimentalist. Heisenberg could also be
careless when it came to the mathematics of his field.
But Oppenheimer was a gifted administrator and a skillful
manager of people. Heisenberg was neither.
Perhaps what is most unusual is how quickly nuclear physics
arrived, one might say, at critical mass. Marie Curie discovered
radium in December 1898. Preston points out that at the time,
there were perhaps 1,000 physicists worldwide, and only 10
percent of those were engaged in research on radioactivity. Yet
less than 47 years later a nuclear bomb exploded over Hiroshima.
We can be grateful none has been used since the one dropped on
Nagasaki three days later. But before we congratulate ourselves,
let us pause and ponder a fact noted in a footnote on Page 2 of
Preston's book. In 1998, a Russian general informed the world
that the Soviet Union had devised a portable nuclear bomb. More
than 100 were in fact made. At the time, fewer than half could
be accounted for.
*****************************************************************
33 Seattle Times: Downwinders focus of video for doctors
Saturday, August 20, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
The Associated Press
SPOKANE Judith Jurji drank milk and ate plenty of fruits,
vegetables and fish while growing up in the Tri-Cities, never
dreaming those activities would endanger her health.
Then she learned that radiation from the Hanford nuclear
reservation may have destroyed her thyroid. Now the 60-year-old
is one of thousands of people around the country wondering if
radioactive Iodine 131 released during plutonium production
caused health problems.
So far, that is a question without an answer. And it leaves many
so-called downwinders feeling angry, anxious and depressed.
As a result, a federal agency has produced a new video to
instruct doctors across the nation on how to deal with the
mental, as well as physical, ailments of downwinders.
Jurji, who is featured in the video, said many doctors have no
experience in dealing with radiation sickness and don't know
what to say when downwinders come to their offices. She said
some doctors will downplay radiation dangers or tell their
patients to ignore the symptoms.
"In medical school, they don't deal with this kind of
contamination," said Jurji, who now lives in Arroyo Grande,
Calif. "You get blank looks, outright dismissal."
The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
(ATSDR), an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention in Atlanta, produced the 30-minute video as a way to
help the tens of thousands of people who grew up downwind of
Hanford get proper medical care.
"It's important for physicians to reach out with understanding
and concern, and validate the patient's concerns," said Dr. Pam
Tucker of ATSDR. "Patients who don't feel understood will not
comply with treatment."
Hanford was created as part of the Manhattan Project to make
plutonium for nuclear weapons. From 1944 to 1951, large amounts
of radioactive Iodine 131 went up smokestacks and scattered
across parts of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho.
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
*****************************************************************
34 Jackson Hole Star-Tribune: Doctors focus on mental health of downwinders
Jackson, Wyoming - Sunday, August 21, 2005
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
Associated Press writer Sunday, August 21, 2005
SPOKANE, Wash. -- Judith Jurji drank milk and ate plenty of
fruits, vegetables and fish while growing up in the Tri-Cities,
never dreaming those activities would endanger her health.
Then she learned that radiation from the Hanford nuclear
reservation may have destroyed her thyroid. Now the 60-year-old
is one of thousands of people around the country wondering if
radioactive Iodine 131 released during plutonium production
caused health problems.
So far, that is a question without an answer. And it leaves many
so-called downwinders feeling angry, anxious and depressed.
As a result, a federal agency has produced a new video to
instruct doctors across the nation on how to deal with the
mental, as well as physical, ailments of downwinders.
Jurji, who is featured in the video, said many doctors have no
experience in dealing with radiation sickness, and don't know
what to say when a downwinder comes to their office. She said
some doctors will downplay radiation dangers, or tell their
patients to ignore the symptoms.
"In medical school, they don't deal with this kind of
contamination," said Jurji, who now lives in Arroyo Grande,
Calif. "You get blank looks, outright dismissal.
The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an
arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta, produced the 30-minute video as a way to help the tens
of thousands of people who grew up downwind of Hanford get
proper medical care.
"It's important for physicians to reach out with understanding
and concern, and validate the patient's concerns," said Dr. Pam
Tucker of ATSDR. "Patients who don't feel understood will not
comply with treatment."
Already feeling betrayed by the government, patients whose
concerns are dismissed can become angry and alienated, and
suffer depression or even post-traumatic stress, Tucker said.
It's no surprise that downwinders would be upset. In addition to
disbelieving doctors, there are also conflicting studies about
the actual health dangers of Hanford emissions.
And after waiting 13 years for a trial, downwinders earlier this
year watched a federal court jury in Spokane largely rule
against them in a major class-action lawsuit against the
companies that ran Hanford for the government.
Attorneys for the contractors contended it was not possible to
link Hanford emissions to the downwinders' health woes.
"The bottom line is, the best scientific studies available have
shown that Hanford did not cause any health effects," said Kevin
Van Wart, whose Chicago law firm represented General Electric
Co., E.I. DuPont de Nemours Co. and UNC Nuclear Inc., during the
trial.
The government and its contractors relied largely on a $19.5
million study by the CDC and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center in Seattle, which in 2002 found no conclusive link
between Hanford releases and thyroid diseases.
That appeared to refute an earlier study which sought to
reconstruct the radiation dose people downwind from Hanford
would have received. That study concluded the exposures were
substantial and chronic.
Other studies, including investigations at Chernobyl and the
Marshall Islands, have shown that exposure to radioactive iodine
is associated with an increased risk of developing thyroid
diseases.
Hanford, located near Richland, was created as part of the
Manhattan Project to make plutonium for nuclear weapons. From
1944 to 1951, large amounts of radioactive Iodine 131 went up
smokestacks and scattered across parts of Eastern Washington and
northern Idaho.
The radioactive material landed on farm fields, where it was
consumed by cows and goats and entered the human food chain
through milk. It also fell on fruits and vegetables and was
consumed by fish.
The government has estimated that children who were up to 5
years old and lived in Adams, Benton or Franklin counties in
Washington state at the time of the releases, received the
highest doses of Iodine-131. But the radiation reached much of
Eastern Washington, and also parts of northern Idaho and
northeastern Oregon.
The iodine concentrated in the thyroid, where it can cause
cancer and other diseases.
Tucker, a psychiatrist, said many of the downwinders are now in
their 50s and 60s.
Unlike a natural disaster, where damage is obvious and aid often
pours in, toxic contaminations are slow and murky and raise many
questions, Tucker said.
Some people become convinced that all their health woes are
related to radiation, while others contend they have no health
effects and blame their neighbors for bringing bad press to a
community, she said.
Tucker works in a relatively recent field called environmental
psychiatry, which began in the 1950s and initially looked at
issues like crowding in urban areas, and pollution from
accidents like Three Mile Island.
Hanford made about half the plutonium in the U.S. nuclear
arsenal and remains the nation's most contaminated nuclear site.
The health dangers from Hanford did not become widely known
until 1986, when the government began releasing many once-secret
documents about the site.
That's when Jurji learned that she had been exposed to Iodine
131.
"Anger is the predominant emotion people experience," she said.
"Plus there is a sense of betrayal, especially among people who
had families who worked at Hanford."
Health officials hope the video can strengthen the relationship
between downwinders and their physicians.
"Both doctors and patients are grappling with the unknown here,"
Tucker said.
Copyright © 2005 by the Casper Star-Tribune published by Lee
*****************************************************************
35 Pocatello Idaho State Journal: Ex-lab workers to get free health checkup
POCATELLO - A kickoff ceremony for launching a free health
screening for former Department of Energy Idaho National
Engineering and Environmental Laboratory construction workers is
scheduled on Tuesday at 10 a.m. in the outreach office of the
Labor Temple, 456 N. Arthur Ave.
The program is operated by a nationwide team of health
organizations and sponsored by the Building and Construction
Trades Department, AFL-CIO.
Individuals who did construction work at INEEL may have
developed health problems from exposure to asbestos, beryllium,
cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, noise, radiation, silica and
solvents. These workers are eligible to take part in the
screening program.
The screening is funded by a grant from the DOE to a consortium
led by the Center to Protect Workers' Rights in Washington, D.C.
The consortium includes Duke University Medical Center,
University of Cincinnati Medical Center and Zenith
Administrators Inc.
This document was originally published online on Saturday,
August 20, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Pocatello Idaho State Journal
P O Box 431 Pocatello, ID 83204-0431
*****************************************************************
36 East Oregonian: Doctors should focus on mental health of downwinders
Saturday, August 20, 2005
This photo provided by the U.S. Department of Energy shows
Hanford nuclear reservations B Reactor in the mid-1940s near
Richland, Wash. Associated Press
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) Judith Jurji drank milk and ate plenty of
fruits, vegetables and fish while growing up in the Tri-Cities,
never dreaming it would endanger her health.
Then she learned that radiation from the Hanford nuclear
reservation may have destroyed her thyroid. Now the 60-year-old
is one of thousands of people around the country wondering if
radioactive Iodine 131 released during plutonium production
caused health problems.
So far, that is a question without an answer. And it leaves many
so-called downwinders feeling angry, anxious and depressed.
As a result, a federal agency has produced a new video to
instruct doctors across the nation on how to deal with the
mental, as well as physical, ailments of downwinders.
Jurji, who is featured in the video, said many doctors have no
experience in dealing with radiation sickness, and dont know
what to say when a downwinder comes to their office. She said
some doctors will downplay radiation dangers, or tell their
patients to ignore the symptoms.
In medical school, they dont deal with this kind of
contamination, said Jurji, who now lives in Arroyo Grande,
Calif. You get blank looks, outright dismissal.
The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an
arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta, produced the 30-minute video as a way to help the tens
of thousands of people who grew up downwind of Hanford get
proper medical care.
Its important for physicians to reach out with understanding
and concern, and validate the patients concerns, said Dr. Pam
Tucker of ATSDR. Patients who dont feel understood will not
comply with treatment.
Already feeling betrayed by the government, patients whose
concerns are dismissed can become angry and alienated, and
suffer depression or even post-traumatic stress, Tucker said.
Its no surprise that downwinders would be upset. In addition to
disbelieving doctors, there are also conflicting studies about
the actual health dangers of Hanford emissions.
And after waiting 13 years for a trial, downwinders earlier this
year watched a federal court jury in Spokane largely rule
against them in a major class-action lawsuit against the
companies that ran Hanford for the government.
Attorneys for the contractors contended it was not possible to
link Hanford emissions to the downwinders health woes.
The bottom line is, the best scientific studies available have
shown that Hanford did not cause any health effects, said Kevin
Van Wart, whose Chicago law firm represented General Electric
Co., E.I. DuPont de Nemours Co. and UNC Nuclear Inc., during the
trial.
The government and its contractors relied largely on a $19.5
million study by the CDC and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center in Seattle, which in 2002 found no conclusive link
between Hanford releases and thyroid diseases.
That appeared to refute an earlier study which sought to
reconstruct the radiation dose people downwind from Hanford
would have received. That study concluded the exposures were
substantial and chronic.
Other studies, including investigations at Chernobyl and the
Marshall Islands, have shown that exposure to radioactive iodine
is associated with an increased risk of developing thyroid
diseases.
Hanford, located near Richland, was created as part of the
Manhattan Project to make plutonium for nuclear weapons. From
1944 to 1951, large amounts of radioactive Iodine 131 went up
smokestacks and scattered across parts of Eastern Washington and
northern Idaho.
The radioactive material landed on farm fields, where it was
consumed by cows and goats and entered the human food chain
through milk. It also fell on fruits and vegetables and was
consumed by fish.
The government has estimated that children who were up to 5
years old and lived in Adams, Benton or Franklin counties in
Washington state at the time of the releases, received the
highest doses of Iodine-131. But the radiation reached much of
Eastern Washington, and also parts of northern Idaho and
northeastern Oregon.
The iodine concentrated in the thyroid, where it can cause
cancer and other diseases.
Tucker, a psychiatrist, said many of the downwinders are now in
their 50s and 60s.
Unlike a natural disaster, where damage is obvious and aid often
pours in, toxic contaminations are slow and murky and raise many
questions, Tucker said.
Hanford made about half the plutonium in the U.S. nuclear
arsenal and remains the nations most contaminated nuclear site.
Entire contents © Copyright, 2005 by The East Oregonian, All
Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
37 Nevada senators want details about nuclear shipments
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 11:40:36 -0500 (CDT)
autolearn=ham version=3.0.4
X-Spam-filter-host: pascal.ctyme.com - http://www.junkemailfilter.com
31 Las Vegas SUN: Nevada senators want details about nuclear shipments
by rail
Today: August 19, 2005 at 15:40:11 PDT
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada's senators are demanding the Energy
Department more fully explain its plan to use dedicated freight
trains to haul spent nuclear fuel to a national radioactive
waste dump at Yucca Mountain.
In a letter this week to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, Senate
Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign,
R-Nev., complain of "gaps and inconsistencies" in a recently
announced plan to have trains haul just one kind of cargo:
highly radioactive waste.
"Like all things Yucca, the conclusions in this policy statement
are seemingly pulled from thin air," the senators said in a
joint statement released Thursday. Reid and Ensign oppose the
Yucca Mountain project.
The Energy Department had not received the letter, and spokesman
Craig Stevens declined to answer questions it raised.
"We remain committed to opening Yucca Mountain using the best
science and technology available to ensure the safety and health
of all citizens," he said.
The Energy Department has said it would rely more on trains than
trucks to haul 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from sites in
39 states to a proposed underground nuclear dump at Yucca
Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The department announced July 18 it would use dedicated trains
instead of linking cars carrying nuclear waste with cars
containing other freight.
Nevada officials have long advocated dedicated trains. But Reid
and Ensign said the plan was incomplete.
Among other questions, they asked how the department plans to
move waste from 24 reactor sites that have no train tracks; how
long waste would sit in rail yards and whether rail employees
would be exposed to radiation; how the public risk of radiation
was evaluated; and when the department would release a
comprehensive shipping plan and cost assessment.
They sought answers by Sept. 1.
In another development, the nuclear power industry's chief
lobbyist said in Washington, D.C., that reprocessing technology
could make retrieval of spent fuel from the Yucca Mountain
project more likely.
"A lot of people have the image that the idea is to put this
stuff in, close the door, walk away, and that's the end of it,"
said Frank L. "Skip" Bowman, president of the Nuclear Energy
Institute. "Not true. That would be irresponsible, and it never
has been the plan."
The Energy Department requires the DOE to be able to retrieve
highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel from Yucca Mountain for at
least 100 years and possibly for as long as 300 years, Bowman
said.
Bowman acknowledged that the United States has not reprocessed
spent nuclear fuel since 1977.
Bob Loux, chief of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency, called it
unlikely that radioactive material could safely be retrieved
from tunnels where internal temperatures will be above the
boiling point of water.
The Energy Department plans to submit a license application for
the Yucca repository to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next
year. Recent setbacks have pushed back the target date for
receiving waste from 2010 to 2012 or later.
All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
38 $1b uranium exports possible, says MP.
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 12:11:09 -0500 (CDT)
version=3.0.4
X-Spam-filter-host: pascal.ctyme.com - http://www.junkemailfilter.com
37 ABC News Online: $1b uranium exports possible, says MP.
19/08/2005.
The chairman of a parliamentary inquiry looking at the nation's
uranium industry says Australia has the opportunity to double
its uranium exports to $1 billion.
The Melbourne sitting of the House of Representatives Committee
on Industry and Resources is hearing submissions from mining
companies, conservation and industry groups.
Chairman Geoff Prosser says in an energy hungry world the
attitude of the state governments to further uranium mining
needs to be considered.
"It would seem a bit unusual that of course we've got mining in
South Australia and the Territory when other states are not
doing it," he said.
"I think that if the country has the view that we should export
uranium, it would seem sensible that all states, if they wish
to, participate in it."
*****************************************************************
39 Yucca Mountain exposure
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 12:11:16 -0500 (CDT)
autolearn=ham version=3.0.4
X-Spam-filter-host: pascal.ctyme.com - http://www.junkemailfilter.com
38 Pahrump Valley Times: Yucca Mountain exposure
August 19, 2005
'SMALL' PERCENTAGE OF NUKE WASTE CANISTERS WILL LEAK
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS - A small percentage of nuclear waste containers is
expected to arrive at Yucca Mountain with undetected leaks and
cracks, potentially exposing workers at the proposed repository
to high levels of radioactive contamination, the Las Vegas
Review-Journal reported Saturday.
Without special precautions, spent nuclear fuel contained in
these damaged tubes could trigger chemical reactions when
extracted from protective canisters in preparation for long-term
storage, according to an Energy Department study obtained by the
newspaper under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Completed in March by the Energy Department and outside
engineers, the study concluded the department had not fully
evaluated the hazards associated with handling damaged fuel at
the site, nor designed a process for effectively managing it.
"It is rather late in the day for these people to be thinking
about this stuff," said Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear engineer and
president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental
Research. "It is truly astonishing that they have not thought
about this issue thoroughly a quarter of a century after serious
work on repositories began.'"
Earlier this year, DOE officials abandoned a 2010 opening date
for the repository, saying it could be 2012 or later before
Yucca Mountain could begin accepting nuclear waste. The
government plans to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste
at the Yucca Mountain site, located in Nye County roughly 50
miles northeast of Pahrump, with a population of roughly 34,000
and growing, and 20 miles north and east, respectively, from
Amargosa Valley and Beatty.
"There have been a lot of meetings on this,'' a DOE official
wrote in an e-mail to the Review-Journal on condition of
anonymity. "You are talking about design, and you can't have a
license application without a design."
The tubes carrying the spent fuel are expected to arrive at
Yucca Mountain at a rate of about 9,000 per year for 25 years.
About 4 percent are expected to have varying degrees of damage,
according to the study.
Most are expected to be identified through reactor records, but
a small percentage, about 0.4 percent, are expected to have
unknown or undetected damage that could allow the fuel to
oxidize and possibly trigger a chemical reaction during the
storage process.
Although machinery and robots would handle the tasks, workers
would be present.
The study identified areas to research, including the rates at
which fuel might degrade, the potential exposure risk for
workers and the chances of a chemical reaction.
"The process for handling failed fuel in damaged fuel cans is
not yet detailed in current design documents, and the related
hazards have not yet been evaluated," the study said.
Among the options considered by DOE is the addition of pools at
the repository to handle damaged fuel rods underwater, a process
currently used at nuclear power plants, according to the
Review-Journal.
Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects,
said it appears DOE has overlooked an important safety issue.
DOE "has not thought through the issues of the surface
operations, from what we've seen," said Loux, who coordinates
Nevada's opposition to the repository. If DOE decides to install
such pools, it would create questions about earthquake
vulnerability, Loux said.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a Yucca Mountain
opponent, said the study proves the project is flawed and should
not move forward.
"At no point while moving waste off site, to transportation to
proposed storage, can DOE protect workers and communities from
being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation," Reid said.
For comment or questions, please e-mail
Copyright ) Pahrump Valley Times, 1997 - 2005
*****************************************************************
40 Mining industry pushes for uranium expansion
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 12:11:00 -0500 (CDT)
UNDISC_RECIPS,WHITE_PHRASE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4
X-Spam-filter-host: pascal.ctyme.com - http://www.junkemailfilter.com
36 AU ABC: Mining industry pushes for uranium expansion
The World Today - Friday, 19 August , 2005 12:38:00
Reporter: Lynn Bell
ELEANOR HALL: To Melbourne now, where a federal parliamentary
inquiry is being held into how Australia should deal with its
uranium resources.
Industry leaders are talking up the benefits of expanding
Australia's uranium industry, with some warning that a chronic
skills shortage and a lack of coherent Government policy is
holding the industry back.
But the Australian Conservation Foundation is arguing that
Australia should not consider increasing uranium exports.
In Melbourne, Lynn Bell reports.
LYNN BELL: Australia exports about 10,000 tonnes of unprocessed
uranium each year. It's a small amount when compared with the
millions of tonnes of coal that are also sent offshore, and Dr
Rod Hill from the CSIRO says Australia has the potential to
export much more.
ROD HILL: Australia has a major opportunity, not only to
increase that contribution to the world's energy demands,
emerging now from increased uses in China and India, etcetera,
but it also has the opportunity to add further value down the
energy chain by processing that uranium into more higher
value-added products, and thereby generating more wealth for
Australia.
LYNN BELL: But expanding Australia's uranium industry and
increasing exports to Asia, particularly to China, is
controversial. Dr Hill says Australia's uranium reserves are a
key resource in the region.
ROD HILL: Theyre very strategically important. We already
supply something like 20 per cent of the world's uranium, we
have in our on our continent, something like 40 per cent of the
world's reserves of uranium, and with an increasing expected
requirement for energy as countries develop, that demand for all
energy sources will increase dramatically over the next well,
over the foreseeable future.
LYNN BELL: The mineral exploration company Southern Gold wants
to start mining uranium in South Australia. The company's
Chairman Rick Horn told the parliamentary inquiry in Melbourne
this morning that the Government should remove some of the
barriers to expanding Australia's uranium industry.
RICK HORN: We see the inconsistency of policies between States
and regulatory activities between States as being conflicting
and difficult at times, so we'd see we'd like to see some sort
of consistency brought onboard. We do see a shortage of
technicians and people that work in the industry, geoscientists,
we're short of geoscientists, short of drilling operators,
drilling companies, so it's difficult sometimes to access
drilling. We also see a need for increased infrastructure in
regional Australia, because that's where we're exploring, that's
where most of the activity is.
LYNN BELL: With the price of uranium more than trebling in the
past two years, Rick Horn believes Australia should be moving to
supply much more to the global market.
RICK HORN: Well we believe that Australia has the ability to
become a dominant producer in world terms. In fact, we're
certainly large at the present times. However, we believe that
we could take up a large shortfall that is being forecast, and
there's a significant worldwide shortfall being forecast over
the next two or three years, and we could take a large chunk of
that, if not all of it.
In contrast, the Australian Conservation Foundation says the
push to increase uranium exports to China and India compromises
regional security and Australia's nuclear non-proliferation
responsibilities. The ACF and Friends of the Earth will make
their submissions to the inquiry later this afternoon.
Dr Rod Hill, from the CSIRO, says whatever the future this is an
important debate for the Australia.
ROD HILL: At last it's back on the table as a source of
discussion. I'm not saying that we'll end up having a nuclear
industry, I don't know. That's what the debate will produce as
an outcome hopefully. Whether or not we have a nuclear industry
will be the outcome of debate, so I'm delighted that it's
started. It wasn't right in the scientific context to have a
debate stifled for whatever reason, because we don't advance
unless we continue to assess options in relation to the
contemporary issues.
ELEANOR HALL: Dr Rod Hill from the CSIRO ending Lynn Bell's
report on that federal inquiry being held in Melbourne.
*****************************************************************
41 RGJ: Senators want more details on nuclear shipments by rail
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Posted: 8/19/2005 10:33 pm
LAS VEGAS Nevadas senators are demanding the Energy
Department more fully explain its plan to use dedicated freight
trains to haul spent nuclear fuel to a national radioactive
waste dump at Yucca Mountain.
In a letter this week to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, Senate
Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and U.S. Sen. John Ensign,
R-Nev., complain of gaps and inconsistencies in a recently
announced plan to have trains haul just one kind of cargo:
highly radioactive waste.
Like all things Yucca, the conclusions in this policy statement
are seemingly pulled from thin air, the senators said in a
joint statement released Thursday. Reid and Ensign oppose the
Yucca Mountain project.
The Energy Department had not received the letter, and spokesman
Craig Stevens declined to answer questions it raised.
We remain committed to opening Yucca Mountain using the best
science and technology available to ensure the safety and health
of all citizens, he said.
The Energy Department has said it would rely more on trains than
trucks to haul 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from sites in
39 states to a proposed underground nuclear dump at Yucca
Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The department announced July 18 it would use dedicated trains
instead of linking cars carrying nuclear waste with cars
containing other freight.
Nevada officials have long advocated dedicated trains. But Reid
and Ensign said the plan was incomplete.
Among other questions, they asked how the department plans to
move waste from 24 reactor sites that have no train tracks; how
long waste would sit in rail yards and whether rail employees
would be exposed to radiation; how the public risk of radiation
was evaluated; and when the department would release a
comprehensive shipping plan and cost assessment.
They sought answers by Sept. 1.
In another development, the nuclear power industrys chief
lobbyist said in Washington, D.C., that reprocessing technology
could make retrieval of spent fuel from the Yucca Mountain
project more likely.
A lot of people have the image that the idea is to put this
stuff in, close the door, walk away, and thats the end of it,
said Frank L. Skip Bowman, president of the Nuclear Energy
Institute. Not true. That would be irresponsible, and it never
has been the plan.
The Energy Department requires the DOE to be able to retrieve
highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel from Yucca Mountain for at
least 100 years and possibly for as long as 300 years, Bowman
said.
Bowman acknowledged that the United States has not reprocessed
spent nuclear fuel since 1977.
Bob Loux, chief of Nevadas Nuclear Projects Agency, called it
unlikely that radioactive material could safely be retrieved
from tunnels where internal temperatures will be above the
boiling point of water.
The Energy Department plans to submit a license application for
the Yucca repository to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next
year. Recent setbacks have pushed back the target date for
receiving waste from 2010 to 2012 or later.
align="right">© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett Co.
Inc.Newspaper.
+
*****************************************************************
42 Space Review: Nuclear waste in space?
[Laser launch illustration] Laser launch systems could provide
low-cost space access and also resolve the growing problem of
nuclear waste. (credit: LLNL)
by Jonathan Coopersmith
Monday, August 22, 2005
When I fly from Texas to Europe, I pay $36 a pound, depending
on how well I do buying a ticket. When a satellite or shuttle is
launched into space, the customer (or taxpayer) pays over
$10,000 a pound. That is the major challenge of space flight:
until the cost of going into space drastically decreases, the
large-scale exploration and exploitation of space will not
occur.
The world currently sends approximately 200 tons of payloads,
the equivalent of two 747 freighter flights, into space
annually. At $50500 million a launch, very few cargoes can
justify their cost. We have here the classic chicken-and-egg
situation. As long as space flight remains very expensive,
payloads will be small. As long as payloads remain small,
rockets will be expensive.
If annual demand were 5,000 tons instead of 200, the equation
would shift. Engineers would have the incentive to design more
efficient launch systems. Large, guaranteed payloads could
significantly reduce the cost of reaching orbit, ushering in a
new, affordable era in space for governments, businesses,
universities, and, hopefully, individuals.
Where would this much new cargo come from? Fortunately, there is
an answer. Unfortunately, its not intuitively attractive, at
least at first glance: its high-level nuclear waste, the 45,000
tons and 380,000 cubic meters of high-level radioactive spent
fuel and process waste and detritus (as opposed to the more
abundant but far less dangerous and shorter-lived low-level
waste) from six decades of nuclear weapons programs and civilian
power plants.
There are three good reasons to send nuclear waste into space.
First, it is safe. Second, space disposal is better than the
alternative, underground burial. Third, it may finally open the
door to widespread utilization of space.
Where would this much new cargo come from? Fortunately, there
is an answer. Unfortunately, its not intuitively attractive, at
least at first glance: its high-level nuclear waste.
Because of the obvious and real concern about moving such
dangerous material anywhere, let alone into space, this proposal
justly raises the question of safety. Can nuclear waste be
safely launched into earth orbit? The answer is yes. By keeping
the launch system on the ground instead of putting it on the
vehicle, designing and building unbreakable containers, and
arranging multiple layers of safety precautions, we can operate
in a judicious and safe manner.
The nuclear waste problem
The problem of nuclear waste disposal is real, especially for
future generations. Leaving radioactive wastes on earth creates
permanent and tempting targets for terrorism as well as
threatening the environment. We have a moral imperative to solve
this problem now so we do not burden our children and their
children.
For twenty years, the federal governments preferred solution to
the nuclear waste problem is underground disposal, specifically,
over 11,000 3080 ton canisters buried in 160 kilometers of
tunnels hundreds of meters underneath Yucca Mountain in northern
Nevada. Forty-nine states favor this plan. Its not hard to
guess which state does not.
To be fair to Nevada, any site would draw the same objections
from anybody who lost this lottery, yet policymakers remain
stuck on the idea of burial. Nevadas fears are justified:
researchers cannot guarantee complete environmental isolation
for the thousands of years needed for these wastes to decay
harmlessly. A recent report by the Government Accountability
Office raised nearly 200 technical and managerial concerns about
the site. Even the promise of construction and maintenance jobs
has failed to sway a skeptical public.
Historically, garbage has been something to bury or recycle.
Consequently, nuclear waste disposal has remained the province
of the geologists, who are professionally inclined to look down,
not up. Thats shortsighted. The permanent elimination of
high-level radioactive waste demands a reconceptualization of
the problem. We need to look up, not down. Lets put high-level
radioactive waste where it belongs, far out in space where it
will not endanger anyone on earth.
The laser launch solution
Neither the space shuttle nor conventional rockets are up to
this task. Not only are they expensive, but they lack the
desired reliability and safety as insurance rates demonstrate.
Instead, we need to develop a new generation of launch systems
where the launcher remains on the ground so the spacecraft is
almost all payload, not propellant. As well as being more
efficient, ground-launched systems are inherently safer than
rockets because the capsules will not carry liquid fuels,
eliminating the in-flight danger of an explosion. Nor will the
capsules have the pumps and other mechanical equipment of
rockets, further reducing the chances of something going wrong.
We need to develop a new generation of launch systems where
the launcher remains on the ground so the spacecraft is almost
all payload, not propellant.
How would disposal of nuclear wastes in space actually work? In
the simplest approach, a ground-based laser system will launch
capsules directly out of the solar system. In a more complicated
scheme, the laser system will place the capsules into a
nuclear-safe orbit, at least 1,100 kilometers above the earth,
so that they could not reenter for several hundred years at a
minimum. Next, a space tug will attach the capsules to a solar
sail for movement to their final destination orbiting around the
sun, far, far from earth.
The underlying concept is simple: the launcher accelerates the
capsule to escape velocity. Like a gun, only the bullet heads
toward the target, not the entire gun. Unlike a shuttle or
rocket, ground systems are designed for quick reuse. To continue
the analogy, the gun is reloaded and fired again. These systems
would send tens or hundreds of kilograms instead of tons into
orbit per launch.
Of the three possible technologieslaser, microwave, and
electromagnetic railgunslaser propulsion is the most promising
for the next decade. In laser propulsion, a laser beam from the
ground hits the bottom of the capsule. The resultant heat
compresses and explodes the air or solid fuel there, providing
lift and guidance. Although sounding like science fiction, the
concept is more than just an elegant idea. In October 2000, a
10-kilowatt laser at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico
boosted a two-ounce (50 gram) lightcraft over 60 meters
vertically. These numbers seem small, but prove the underlying
feasibility of the concept.
American research, currently at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
in New York with previous work at the Department of Energys
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, has been
funded at low levels by the United States Air Force, NASA, and
FINDS, a space development group. The United States does not
have a monopoly in the field. The four International Symposiums
on Beamed Energy Propulsion have attracted researchers from
Germany, France, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and other
countries.
The long-term benefit of a ground-based system will be much
greater if it can ultimately handle people as well as plutonium.
Dartmouth physics professor Arthur R. Kantrowitz, who first
proposed laser propulsion in 1972, considers the concept even
more promising today due to more efficient lasers and adaptive
optics, the technology used by astronomers to improve their
viewing and the Air Force for its airborne anti-ballistic
missile laser.
Where should the nuclear waste ultimately go? Sending the
capsules out of the solar system is the simplest option because
the laser can directly launch the capsule on its way. Both Ivan
Bekey, the former director of NASAs of Advanced Programs in the
Office of Spaceflight, and Dr. Jordin T. Kare, the former
technical director of the Strategic Defense Initiative
Organizations Laser Propulsion Program, which ran from 1987-90,
emphasized solar escape is the most reliable choice because less
could go wrong.
A second option, a solar orbit inside Venus, would retain the
option of retrieving the capsules. Future generations might
actually find our radioactive wastes valuable, just as old mine
tailings are a useful source of precious metals today. After
all, the spent fuel still contains over three-quarters of the
original fuel and could be reprocessed. Terrorists or rogue
states might be able to reach these capsules, but if they have
that technical capability, stealing nuclear wastes will be among
the least of our concerns. This approach is more complex,
demanding a temporary earth orbit and a solar sail to move it
into a solar orbit, thus increasing the possibility of something
going wrong.
Addressing safety
The issue of safety has two components. One is the actual
engineering of safe operations. This is demonstrable and
testable. The other, equally important, part is the public
perception of safety. As University of Missouri nuclear
engineering professor William H. Miller, a specialist on nuclear
fuel cycle and fuel management, noted, "The obvious problem is
public perception. No matter how far you go to show that it is
safe, there will always be someone to say `what if'." John W.
Poston, a Texas A&M nuclear engineering professor with a
forty-six year career in nuclear health physics, agrees,
considering convincing people of the safety of space-based
disposal as challenging, if not more so, than the actual
technical questions.
Safety should appropriately dominate public discussion of this
proposal. To succeed, space disposal must demonstrate lower risk
and uncertainty than underground disposal. This project must be
completely safe technically, but nonetheless will not succeed
unless potential supporters and opponents are thoroughly
convinced about its safety and efficiency.
Safety should appropriately dominate public discussion of this
proposal. To succeed, space disposal must demonstrate lower risk
and uncertainty than underground disposal.
Assuring safety is possible. The two major concerns are launching
the capsule and ensuring the integrity of the capsule. Laser
launching is safer and more reliable than rockets. The absence of
rocket propellants and its accompanying propulsion systems
eliminates the possibility of an explosion. The major problem
would be if the laser failed before the capsule reached escape
velocity. Because the capsule will be bullet-shaped, its
ballistic characteristics are well known. Thus, if a launch
failure occurred, the capsule would land only in known recovery
zones. Launch trajectories would be designed to avoid populated
areas.
One advantage of a laser launch system is that the safe return
from these aborted missions can be demonstrated by testing with
inert capsules. Scores of launches could test every conceivable
scenario, the equivalent of firing a new rifle to understand all
its characteristics. This could not be done with a rocket. If
another layer of safety is desired, placing the launch system on
an island in the Pacific Ocean will further decrease the chance
of an aborted flight landing in a populated area. Such isolation
would also improve security.
The capsule itself must protect its radioactive cargo not only
from the demands of a normal launch with its severe atmospheric
heating and aerodynamic loading, but also from potential
accidents ranging from reentry into the atmosphere to a seriously
flawed launch that would send the capsule into the high pressures
of the ocean's depths or into land. Summing up the engineering
challenges, Bob Carpenter, the program manager for Orbital
Sciences' space nuclear power program, cautioned, "I'm not saying
they are insurmountable, but they are major technical issues to
be solved."
Jordin Kare, now an independent aerospace consultant, was more
optimistic. The laser can accelerate the capsule slowly in the
lower atmosphere, reducing heating. Furthermore, noted NASA
nuclear engineer Dr. Robert C. Singleterry, the same aerobraking
analyses and technologies that use a planet's atmosphere to slow
down a visiting spacecraft as the Mars Global Surveyor
demonstrated in 1997 can ensure the control of a capsule leaving
the earth's atmosphere.
The integrity of a capsule can be demonstrated too. The aerospace
industry has accumulated decades of research and experience on
how to contain radioactive material in containers that can
maintain their integrity despite atmospheric re-entry, accidents,
explosions, and other potential catastrophes. They are called
nuclear warheads. Designing containers for space disposal is well
within the state of the art. Dr. Rowland E. Burns, the engineer
who led a NASA study in the mid-1970s on this issue, stated it is
feasible to design and construct containers that can safely
withstand the demands of even a catastrophic explosion, claiming,
"I won't say you would have to nuke the container to break it,
but it would take something like that."
Materials technology has improved since the 1970s, making even
tougher capsules possible. Because launch costs will be
relatively inexpensive, engineers can overdesign for safety
instead of trying to create the lightest possible container.
Fail-proof capsules can be built, though the ratio of waste to
shielding will be low.
Ensuring safety must have an inclusionary component. A broadly
based panel of stakeholders, including skeptics and opponents,
should determine the criteria for tests and scenarios that
proponents must pass. Computer simulations and controlled tests,
however, will not be enough. Convincing demonstrations such as
aborting launches with a mock payload and sending test capsules
to reenter the atmosphere will be necessary to calm fears and
prove the veracity of safety calculations. Minimum danger must be
demonstrated, not assumed. Those opponents who unilaterally
reject space-based disposal should be asked to propose an
alternative. Nuclear waste will not go away on its own volition.
Expensive and inexpensive
What about the economics? Let's be honest and upfront in our
accounting: Space disposal will ultimately cost tens of billions
of dollars, but the federal government has already spent $8
billion researching underground disposal and expects the total
cost will be $60 billion. The difference is that future
generations will not have to worry about the waste and they will
have an infrastructure for reaching space. While technologically
impressive, developments in tunnel boring have far less
potential. Disposal in any form will be expensive. Space disposal
at least offers a major spinoff, inexpensive access to space.
Putting a small surcharge-a fraction of a cent per kilowatt-hour
of electricity-on power generated by nuclear reactors would
handle the operational costs.
Those opponents who unilaterally reject space-based disposal
should be asked to propose an alternative. Nuclear waste will not
go away on its own volition.
How can a system be both expensive and inexpensive? Judging by
the costs of other high technology projects such as the Airbus
380 and Boston's Big Dig, developing a laser launch system will
require at least $5-10 billion. This is a lot of money, but
historically space technologies are expensive: The Apollo program
cost over $150 billion in contemporary dollars. Constructing the
actual launch system will require a few billion dollars and
operations will consume billions more. And even if the price of a
pound to escape velocity is only $100, 5000 tons is $1 billion.
We owe the future as well as ourselves the opportunity to
determine whether space-based disposal is the best way to handle
nuclear waste. Accordingly, over the next few years, NASA and the
Department of Energy should establish three research programs.
The first will determine the criteria and acceptance for a
demonstration program. The second program will design safe
capsules and the third program will test the ground-launched
system. For the price of a new hotel in Las Vegas or a day or two
of the defense budget, we will have enough information to decide
whether to commit large resources to space-based disposal.
Space disposal may not appear the obvious solution to the
high-level nuclear waste problem. Nor is disposing of nuclear
waste the obvious answer to the question of how to reduce the
cost of reaching space. But the immense magnitude of nuclear
wastes provides the incentive to develop launch systems that will
drastically cut the cost of space exploitation. The result will
be lower operating costs, more infrastructure, and more skilled
personnel able to develop other areas of space.
Once a ground launcher is developed and built, constructing
additional launchers will be far less costly and risky. The dream
of affordable access to space may then come true, opening up the
final frontier in ways that we have not dreamed of since the
1960s.
The development of the computer may offer a good analogy.
Government funding, mostly from the military, intelligence
community, and NASA, greatly accelerated research, development,
and diffusion of computers since the 1940s. The federal
government did this to conduct projects of national significance
such as the census, Social Security, weapons research (especially
nuclear explosions), cryptoanalysis, and space exploration. Not
until the 1970s did the civilian market grow large enough to
seize the technological initiative.
Space disposal may prove a similar opportunity. Once a ground
launcher is developed and built, constructing additional
launchers will be far less costly and risky. The dream of
affordable access to space may then come true, opening up the
final frontier in ways that we have not dreamed of since the
1960s. As important, we will be acting ethically, providing our
children a safer earth and inexpensive access to space for people
as well as plutonium.
Jonathan Coopersmith is an associate professor of history at
Texas A&M University, where he teaches the history of technology,
including the history of space exploration. He can be reached at
j-coopersmith@tamu.edu.
*****************************************************************
43 Bradenton Herald: Tallevast residents lament plume remediation plan
| 08/20/2005 |
DONNA WRIGHT
Herald Staff Writer
MANATEE - Lockheed Martin Corp.'s efforts to clean up a toxic
plume in Tallevast has put residents' lives on hold, angry
community leaders told county government staff Friday.
"Everything is waiting on them," said Tallevast dentist Billy
Ward during a meeting to discuss the 131-acre plume. Lockheed
Martin "should not be allowed to control our lives like this.
Someone in the county has to be more proactive."
Ward's frustration erupted after county staff reviewed a myriad
road and water improvement projects on hold until contamination
and cleanup issues are addressed.
"There never will be an end to this," said Wanda Washington,
vice president of Family Oriented Community United and Strong, a
community advocacy group.
The historic Tallevast community comprises about 85 households.
"Just like your projects are on hold, our lives are on hold,"
Washington said. "Everything about us is on hold. The county
does not seem to be able to step up to the plate. Something has
to be done for the people of Tallevast."
Lockheed officials were invited but did not attend Friday's
meeting at the county administration building.
Assistant County Administrator Dave Rothfuss assured FOCUS
leaders that funds allocated for Tallevast road and water
projects will not be used for other projects and will be
available when county crews get the green light to move ahead.
But Laura Ward, FOCUS president, questioned why the county is so
concerned about road improvements while the community is so
threatened by toxic pollution.
"I couldn't care less about the roadways," Ward said, "because
my health is at risk."
Tallevast leaders have said repeatedly that they want the
county's help to relocate the community.
But Lockheed's latest report said the levels of toxins detected
beneath Tallevast homes are not significant and do not even
warrant remediation.
In a report submitted Aug. 5 to the Florida Department of
Environmental Protection, Lockheed said only the area directly
beneath the former Loral American Beryllium Co. plant at 1600
Tallevast Road needs remediation.
The defense giant believes it has defined the extent of the
plume stemming for the old beryllium plant, but another year of
research is necessary to determine the best method of
remediation.
The plume contains industrial solvents and chemicals, some of
which have been linked to cancer in humans. The contaminants
were discovered in 2000, but residents did not learn of the
toxins until 2003.
As owner of the property when the contamination was found,
Lockheed has assumed responsibility for cleaning up the toxic
waste.
"They are asking for another year to assess what remediation
process will work best," Ward said. "That's another year of our
lives. And these are remediation processes they have been using
elsewhere for years."
FOCUS leaders are also concerned that Lockheed wants the county
to rezone the five-acre site for heavy industrial use. Ward said
that will mean Lockheed does not have to meet the higher cleanup
standards for residential neighborhoods.
FOCUS also questioned why several Tallevast properties known to
have contaminated drinking water wells have now been excluded
from the plume perimeter.
County staff deferred comment until they review Lockheed's
latest site assessment submitted to the Department of
Environmental Protection.
Charles Henry, of the Manatee County Health Department, also
said he had not finished digesting the report.
FOCUS is conducting its own soil and water testing through an
independent company that is being paid by Lockheed.
Results of those tests are not expected until after Labor Day.
Donna Wright, Herald health and social services reporter, can be
reached at 745-7049 or at dwright@HeraldToday.com.
*****************************************************************
44 San Luis Obispo Tribune: Federal snub is such a waste
| 08/21/2005 |
Editorial /Opinion of The Tribune
The Tribune
Once touted as an energy source "too cheap to meter," the cost
of nuclear power continues to have fall-out effects in dollars
far beyond what pro-nuclear advocates ever imagined.
Not that we ever believed anything as complicated as nuclear
power would be "too cheap to meter."
But the economic cost -- and the safety issues -- associated
with storing nuclear waste ARE as frustrating and long lasting
as the half life of a plutonium isotope.
Worse, though, is the attitude and effectiveness of federal
agencies in resolving the problem.
As The Tribune's environmental reporter, David Sneed, outlined
in a series of articles last week, California ratepayers have
already been soaked for some $1 billion in costs associated with
the bedeviled federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca
Mountain, Nev.
Scheduled to receive waste by 1998, the massive underground
facility may not be ready until the next decade ... if then.
This means that our own Diablo Canyon, which was originally
slated to move its waste to Yucca in 2017, will have to store
its radioactive material on-site for a considerably longer
period than once thought --perhaps for decades, and maybe
centuries according to some critics.
Needless to say, this nuclear waste shell game is going to
hammer taxpayers for millions and millions of dollars beyond
what was originally sold to the public.
So you'd think, with billions of dollars and the almost
surreptitious creation of on-site waste sites at Diablo and
other plants hanging in the balance, the federal agency
responsible for Yucca Mountain would have the courtesy of
attending a two-day meeting of the California Energy Commission
to explain its program.
You'd think. But you'd be wrong. The federal Department of
Energy declined the invitation to attend.
Let's be clear, we have no beef with PG&E and the way it runs
Diablo. In fact, its facility seven miles north of Avila Beach
has a safety record that equals or surpasses all 300-plus
nuclear plants around the nation. In addition, it provides
hundreds of head-of-household jobs and its tax base has
contributed tens of millions of dollars to the county and local
schools.
No, our concern is one of spent fuel waste -- a concern that's
been an issue for more than 30 years. Before Yucca Mountain was
chosen as the federal dump site, for example, waste- disposal
proposals included shooting the stuff at the sun or burying it
under ocean sea beds. Needless to say, neither idea gained
traction.
So we were sold the notion of Yucca Mountain. Now that its
future is cloudy at best, and PG&E has a license to run its
reactors until 2023 and 2025 (it's studying whether to apply to
renew the licenses for an additional 20 years), it's apparent
that Diablo will become, de facto, a waste-storage site.
In anticipation, PG&E plans to store its spent fuel in dry
storage casks after its storage pond reaches capacity in 2007.
Under that plan, the citizens of San Luis Obispo County deserve
a voice in what may eventually become a permanent nuclear waste
storage site at Diablo Canyon.
It's imperative that PG&E, California Energy Commission, Nuclear
Regulatory Commission and federal Department of Energy include
local representation in these discussions.
Not everyone in this county may be a stockholder in PG&E, but
we're all stakeholders in the future of Diablo. To turn a deaf
ear to our concerns -- much as the federal Department of Energy
did last week in Sacramento -- would be, at best, arrogant.
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45 Green Left: No nuke waste dump campaign under way
Kathy Newnam, Darwin
The newly formed No Waste Dump Committee will hold a public
meeting on August 31 to bring together the growing opposition to
the federal Coalition governments plan to build a national
radioactive waste dump in the Northern Territory.
NWDC spokesperson Justin Tutty said the meeting will be both an
information forum and a demonstration against the dump. Tutty
contrasted the meeting to the pro-dump information sessions
organised by Senator Nigel Scullion around the NT a fortnight
earlier, which were all well attended by opponents of the dump.
The only information presented in those sessions came from
people who want to build a new reactor in Sydney that would
generate more long-lived radioactive waste, he said.
The NWDC public meeting will explore the other side of the
story what this dump means for NT workers, residents,
traditional owners and our shared environment, Tutty said. It
will feature Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation
Foundation, along with indigenous spokespeople and other
environmental campaigners.
The information meeting will be held at 7pm in the Ballroom,
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Mitchell Street, Darwin. The next NWDC
organising meeting is on August 25 at 6.30pm in the NTCOSS
office, Oleander Street, Nightcliff. For more information, phone
Justin on (08) 8945 4116 or Peter on (08) 8981 1984.
From Green Left Weekly, August 24, 2005.
Authorised by K. Miller, 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale, NSW
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46 Salt Lake Tribune: Homeland Security officials wrap up Skull Valley
inspection
Article Last Updated: 08/20/2005 12:39:07 AM
By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune
U.S. Homeland Security Department officials wrapped up a
weeklong visit Friday to study plans for using a Tooele County
Indian reservation as a way station for nuclear-plant waste.
Their activities were low profile and their report won't be
made public, but their work made a big impression on Utahns
concerned about the proposed waste site.
I'm just thrilled they were here, said Michael S. Lee,
general counsel to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.
It was very important to all of us, agreed Sen. Orrin
Hatch.
The Utah Republican has been complaining loudly lately about
the federal government's involvement in the waste storage plan,
a joint enterprise of a consortium of nuclear-power utilities
and the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes.
This is a tremendously strong target for terrorism, and I
don't see how anyone in Homeland Security couldn't see this is a
dangerous place to put 44,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.
Homeland Security officials brought along an adviser from
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the federal agency
poised to make a final decision in coming weeks on licensing the
waste site.
Plans by the consortium, Private Fuel Storage (PFS), call
for leasing 820 acres of the Goshute reservation to build a
100-acre parking lot for 4,000 steel-and-concrete containers
of used reactor rods. The PFS-Goshute license would be for 20
years, with a possible 20-year extension.
The NRC is responsible for the waste once at the storage
site. But the Homeland Security Department has the job of helping
to prevent sabotage in the area surrounding the facility and
responding to any attacks the facility might face.
Homeland Security officials toured the site Thursday and
were expected to meet with tribal officials Leon Bear and Lori
Skiby. The delegation included Bob Stephan, acting
Undersecretary for Information Analysis and Infrastructure
Protection.
They also heard from officials based in Utah, including
those overseeing environmental laws, public safety and security.
"They were fruitful meetings," said Homeland Security
spokeswoman Michelle Petrovich. "We felt like we got a lot out
of it."
The Utah government has been the project's most vocal and
aggressive opponent. It welcomed a fresh look at project over
which state law has practically no control because it is being
built on sovereign tribal lands.
© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune.
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47 Senate: Reid, Ensign Demand Answers on Trains to Yucca
Thursday, August 18, 2005
REID, ENSIGN DEMAND ANSWERS ON DOE TRANSPORTATION SCHEME
Point out gaps and inconsistencies in plan to ship nuclear waste
by train
On Monday, July 18th, 2005, DOE distributed its new
âDepartment of Energy Policy Statement for Use of Dedicated
Trains for Waste Shipments to Yucca Mountain.â Under this
policy DOE claims it will use dedicated train service â train
service dedicated to one commodity â for its rail transport of
spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to the Yucca
Mountain Repository site in Nevada.
In a letter sent to Department of Energy Secretary Samuel
Bodman, U.S. Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign raise many of
the inaccuracies, for example how DOE plans to ship waste by
train when one-third of the reactor sites around the country do
not have rail access, and demand further explanation.
âThe policy statement is riddled with gaps and inconsistencies
and provides no sound justification or support for its
conclusions,â the Senators said. âLike all things Yucca, the
conclusions in this policy statement are seemingly pulled from
thin air. While we donât believe the proposed Yucca Mountain
repository will ever open, weâre also not going to let DOE get
away with misleading the public into thinking there is any way
to safely transport 70,000 tons of nuclear waste over thousands
of miles and through hundreds of communities.â
A copy of the letter follows:
August 17, 2005
The Honorable Samuel W. Bodman
Secretary
Department of Energy
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington DC 20585
Dear Secretary Bodman:
In reviewing the Department of Energyâs policy statement for
the use of dedicated trains for spent fuel and high-level waste
shipments to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository that was
announced on July 18, 2005, we am requesting the following
additional information:
(1) Since 1986, the State of Nevada has been urging DOE to
require the use of dedicated trains for all SNF and HLW
shipments to a repository. For almost two decades, DOE has
consistently refused to make such a commitment. What prompted
DOE to issue its policy statement on the dedicated train issue?
Please explain the process that DOE went through in reassessing
its policy.
(2) The policy announced on July 18th states that DOE âwill
use dedicated train service (DTS) for its usual rail transport
of spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste to the
Yucca Mountain Repository site ⊠when the repository is
operational (emphasis added). Please define what is meant by
âusual rail transportâ and how this policy differs from
current DOE policy that anticipates the use of general freight
service on a case by case basis. Does the new policy mean that
DOE will require all SNF and HLW shipments to a repository to
use dedicated trains?
(3) The announced policy statement appears to be internally
inconsistent in that it purports to require the use dedicated
train shipments to Yucca Mountain but, in discussing security
benefits, states that âDOE shipments have been and will
continue to be made securely using both DTS and general freight
serviceâ (emphasis added). Please explain how the use of
general freight service is compatible with the decision to use
dedicated trains. Also, please explain the circumstances under
which DOE would use general freight service instead of dedicated
train service. Will DOE require use of dedicated trains for
shipments of spent naval reactor fuel to INEEL and/or other
federal facilities?
(4) DOE has proposed, in a March 2004 supplement analysis to the
Yucca Mountain Final Environmental Impact Statement, to
transport smaller, legal weight truck casks on rail cars in the
likely event that a rail spur to Yucca Mountain is delayed or
not available at all. Under this scenario, about 2,200 truck
casks per year would be shipped to Nevada on about 440 train
movements, off-loaded at an intermodal facility, and transported
to Yucca Mountain by truck. Even if it is assumed (as DOE has
done) that such a scenario would only be needed for a six year
period, DOE would require at least one train per day, seven days
per week, for shipments to the repository. Does the new policy
on dedicated train service apply to legal-weight truck casks
shipped on railcars? Has DOE assessed the safety, security, and
operational implications inherent in shipping thousands of truck
casks on railcars, in hundreds of dedicated trains per year? If
so, please provide us with that assessment.
(5) There are about 24 reactor sites, out of a total 72, or
one-third, of reactor sites that are not capable of shipping
spent fuel by rail. DOE has proposed transporting rail casks
from these sites to rail connections by using large, heavy haul
trucks. DOE has also proposed using barges to ship rail casks
from 17 of these sites. Will dedicated train service be used at
these 24 sites? If so, please provide DOEâs plans and timeline
for providing the necessary infrastructure.
(6) There are about 24 reactor sites, out of a total 72 reactor
sites, that are not capable of shipping spent fuel by rail. DOE
has proposed transporting rail casks from these sites to rail
connections by using large, heavy haul trucks. DOE has also
proposed using barges to ship rail casks from 17 of these sites.
Does the new policy mean that DOE will require all SNF from
these 24 sites to use dedicated trains once the casks are
delivered to a rail connection?
(7) In order to make efficient use of dedicated trains, it will
be necessary for DOE move spent fuel from about 50 eastern
reactor sites to marshalling yards or collection points where
trains can be assembled for cross-country transport to Yucca
Mountain. DOE has identified the Union Pacific Provisio Yard
near Chicago as one of the probable primary marshalling points.
Does the new policy mean that DOE will require all SNF shipments
to use dedicated trains for shipment to these marshalling yards,
as well as for shipment from these yards to Yucca Mountain?
(8) The policy statement cites âavoidance of lengthy âdwell
timesâ in rail yardsâ as an advantage of dedicated trains.
Please describe the method used by DOE to compare âdwell
timesâ for dedicated train service with the âdwell timesâ
for general freight service.
(9) The policy statement asserts that âthe radiological risk
resulting from transport without incident may be lower due to
decreased time in transit.â Please explain how DOE evaluated
radiological risk to members of the general public. How will the
use of dedicated trains affect routine radiological exposures to
yard workers, train crews, safety inspectors, and escorts?
Please provide us all analyses or assessments of radiological
risk that DOE undertook or relied on in making this evaluation
and coming to these conclusions.
(10) Since 1983, the State of Nevada, together with the Western
Governorsâ Association, has urged DOE to prepare a
comprehensive plan for transporting spent fuel and high-level
waste to a repository. Today, more than 20 years after the
passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, DOE still has not
prepared a comprehensive transportation plan. The dedicated
train policy statement is another example of piecemeal
decision-making on DOEâs part. When will DOE be able to
provide a comprehensive transportation plan that shows in detail
how the dedicated train policy statement relates to and
integrates with the other aspects of the requisite
transportation system?
(11) The policy statement asserts that âthe primary benefit of
using DTS is the significant cost savings over the lifetime of
the Yucca Mountain project.â Since 1983, the State of Nevada
has urged DOE to prepare a comprehensive cost analysis for
transporting spent fuel and high-level waste to a repository.
Today, more than 20 years after the passage of the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act, DOE still has not prepared a comprehensive cost
assessment of its comprehensive transportation plan. When will
DOE provide us with that assessment?
Given the magnitude of human health and safety implications of
the proposed Yucca Mountain transportation plan and that this
policy has already been finalized, we request that you reply to
these questions by September 1, 2005. We appreciate your
attention to this important matter.
Sincerely,
HARRY REID, United States Senator
JOHN ENSIGN, United States Senator
Cc: Kenny C. Guinn, Governor of Nevada
Bob Loux, Executive Director, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects
Brian Sandavol, Attorney General, State of Nevada
Nils Diaz, Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission
B. John Garrick, Chairman, Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board
G. Paul Bollwerk III, Chairman, Atomic Safety and Licensing
Board
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48 CNIC: Japanese uranium-contaminated soil to be sent to US
(Citizens' Nuclear Information Center)
15 August 2005
On August 9th Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology (MEXT) and Japan Nuclear Cycle
Development Institute (JNC) formally announced at a full meeting
of the Yurihama Town Council that it is their intention to ship
290 cubic meters of uranium-contaminated soil to the US.
It is expected that a contract will be signed mid August with a
US refining company to take and process the soil. The company's
name has not yet been revealed.
The shipment is expected between the end of August and the
middle of September. MEXT's representative said that US
government approval has been obtained.
Click here for background information.
Philip White
International Liaison Officer
CNIC
Citizens' Nuclear Information Center
TEL.03-5330-9520
FAX.03-5330-9530
http://cnic.jp/english/
*****************************************************************
49 The State: SRS cant handle all of nations
08/20/2
Congressional arm reports any plan to consolidate the material
at the Aiken site should wait
By LAUREN MARKOE
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON Tentative plans to consolidate the nations
surplus plutonium at the Savannah River Site should be put on
hold, a congressional study released Friday concludes. The Aiken
nuclear campus couldnt safely store and monitor the 50 metric
tons of plutonium now at various nuclear sites around the
country, according to the study by the Government Accountability
Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Environmentalists
agree with the reports conclusion but say it shouldnt have
taken Congress so long to take notice of the nations serious
plutonium storage problem. It has already been a decade since
the program to dispose of surplus weapons plutonium began, and
the Department of Energy still hasnt developed a workable plan
to handle this deadly material, said Tom Clements, an
independent nuclear consultant and former senior adviser to
Greenpeace International. The U.S. Department of Energy plans to
eventually deposit this spent nuclear fuel at the deep nuclear
vault at Yucca Mountain, Nev. But construction of the vault has
faced serious delays and is not expected to open before 2012.
Until it is ready, Energy Department officials have argued it
would be safer and more economical to gather plutonium at one
location SRS. The department has indicated the waste could be
stored there for up to 50 years. But GAO investigators say much
would have to change for that to happen. Among their reasons:
nțFederal law prohibits shipments of plutonium to SRS until the
Energy Department completes a plan to change the waste into a
form in which it can be permanently disposed.
nțMuch of the plutonium identified for storage at SRS is in the
form of 12-foot-long fuel rods. SRS can handle only containers of
plutonium waste.
nțThe storage facility that would be used does not have adequate
fire protection, ventilation or monitoring capabilities to detect
whether the stored waste is becoming unstable.
The Department of Energy, given a draft of the report earlier
this summer, did not dispute its basic recommendation that the
department develop a comprehensive strategy for storing excess
plutonium and that it review its current cleanup plans. Such a
strategic plan is being developed, said Charles E. Anderson, the
departments principal deputy assistant secretary for
environmental management.
In December 2003, another government agency the Defense Nuclear
Facilities Safety Board raised similar concerns about the
Department of Energys plans to consolidate plutonium at SRS.
Kevin Bishop, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,
said the GAO report does not seem to break much ground. Bishop
said Graham and the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C.,
assured that federal law prohibits the permanent storage at SRS
of plutonium that would be turned into nuclear fuel. One of SRS
missions is to recycle spent weapons-grade nuclear fuel into
commercial fuel for use in nuclear reactors. Reach Markoe at
(202) 383-6023 or lmarkoe@krwashington.com
TheStateOnline
*****************************************************************
50 Jackson Hole Star-Tribune: Deputy energy secretary visits Hanford
Jackson, Wyoming - Sunday,
By SHANNON DININNY
Associated Press writer Sunday, August 21, 2005
RICHLAND, Wash. -- Workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation
have made progress on one cleanup project and completed another
at the highly contaminated site, the U.S. Department of Energy
says.
Finished was an 11-year effort to upgrade pipes that will carry
highly radioactive waste.
The progress was announced Wednesday during a visit by the
agency's new deputy secretary, Clay Sell, who was seeing Hanford
for the first time.
"We are naturally very proud of these accomplishments, and we're
pleased with what they represent for the future of cleanup work
here at Hanford," Sell said.
Workers at the 586-square-mile site have been working since
October 2003 to retrieve deteriorating drums and boxes of
radioactive waste from burial grounds. Some of that material is
believed to be highly radioactive transuranic waste, which can
take millions of years to decay.
Under the Tri-Party Agreement, the 1989 cleanup pact signed by
the Energy Department, state Department of Ecology and the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, workers must complete the
removal of all suspected transuranic waste -- the equivalent of
about 75,000 drums -- by the end of 2010.
Included in the pact are interim deadlines for each year of the
project. Workers met this year's milestone five months ahead of
schedule by retrieving more than 13,500 drums by late July, said
Keith Klein, manager of the Energy Department's Richland
operations office.
The drums were buried in the 1970s and '80s.
Progress on that project significantly reduces risk to the
environment, Klein said.
"Obviously, the work is going to get harder," Klein said. "It
further underscores the need to get this waste out of the ground
at Hanford."
Workers also celebrated the completion of a project to upgrade
miles of pipes linking 177 underground tanks. The tanks hold an
estimated 53 million of gallons of highly radioactive waste less
than 10 miles from the Columbia River.
Waste from 149 aging single-shell tanks, some of which are known
to have leaked, is to be transferred to 28 newer, double-walled
tanks. However, pipes between the tanks, installed in the 1970s,
also had only a single-wall construction that did not meet
current regulations governing hazardous waste.
About 14 miles of stainless steel pipes were encased in a
fiberglass outer jacket with a leak detection system. In
addition, thousands of feet of pipe were upgraded within the
tank farms themselves and leading to a new waste treatment plant.
Workers completed the pipe project in mid-July -- just past the
June 30 deadline -- but brought it in for $400 million, about
$29 million under budget.
U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., whose district includes the
Hanford site, was on hand for the celebration Wednesday.
Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire also sent a letter of
congratulations to workers.
"These achievements represent meaningful progress in reducing
long-term environmental risks on the Hanford reservation," the
letter said. "And they are particularly good news at a time of
some uncertainty over the future of this project."
The Energy Department announced recently plans to scale back
construction on the new waste treatment plant amid soaring
costs, seismic issues and construction problems. The plant,
already about one-third built, will turn much of the waste into
glasslike logs for permanent disposal in a nuclear waste
repository.
The state has raised concerns about the slowdown, fearing
cleanup at the Hanford site could be delayed.
"I know that the long history of the Hanford cleanup project has
had its fair share of troubles, litigation and shifting
deadlines," Sell said. "It is my hope that those days are behind
us, and that we can continue to move the cleanup of Hanford
steadily down the path toward completion. The successes we
celebrate today further our belief that progress is being made
here, all across this vast and diverse site."
For 40 years, the Hanford nuclear site made plutonium for the
nation's nuclear weapons arsenal, beginning as part of the
top-secret Manhattan project to build the atomic bomb. Today,
Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country,
with cleanup costs estimated between $50 billion and $60
billion. The work is scheduled to be completed by 2035.
Copyright © 2005 by the Casper Star-Tribune published by Lee
Publications, Inc., a subsidiary of Lee Enterprises,
Incorporated
*****************************************************************
51 Tri-City Herald: Report: Lack of plan threatens cleanup
This story was published Saturday, August 20th, 2005
By Chris Mulick, Herald Olympia bureau
The Government Accountability Office believes the Department of
Energy's failure to produce a suitable plan for processing and
shipping its excess plutonium to its Savannah River site could
threaten Hanford cleanup.
"Because it is unable to consolidate its plutonium, DOE faces
additional costs in excess of $85 million annually to securely
store plutonium at its current locations, and its cleanup goals
for Hanford are in jeopardy," it said in a July report to
Congress released Friday.
To lower costs and improve security, DOE is considering
consolidating its nearly 50 metric tons of plutonium no longer
needed for weapons production at the South Carolina reservation
until it can be stored permanently at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.
Most of that plutonium now resides at Hanford, where an
accelerated cleanup plan calls for plutonium to be shipped out
by the end of the 2006 fiscal year.
But DOE couldn't ship additional plutonium to Savannah River if
it wanted to because it hasn't yet completed a plan to process
it into a form suitable for permanent storage, the report said.
Also, about 20 percent of Hanford's plutonium is in the form of
unused 12-foot-long fuel rods from the Fast Flux Test Facility
that are not scheduled to be disassembled under Hanford's
accelerated cleanup plan. Savannah River's storage plans call
for plutonium to be stored in 10-inch-long containers.
"DOE is facing these storage challenges because of its failure
to adequately plan for plutonium consolidation and disposition,"
the report said. "Until DOE develops a plan to process the
plutonium for permanent disposition, additional plutonium cannot
be shipped to SRS and DOE will not achieve the cost savings and
security improvements that plutonium consolidation could offer.
"For example, continued plutonium storage at Hanford will cost
approximately $85 million annually and will threaten that site's
achievement of the milestones in its accelerated cleanup plan."
Continued storage at Hanford would prevent the demolition of the
Plutonium Finishing Plant by September 2008, as called for under
the accelerated cleanup plan.
The report also indicated Savannah River does not have adequate
systems to monitor the plutonium once consolidated nor a
facility to ensure safe and secure storage.
Its recommendations to DOE were simple: Develop a comprehensive
strategy for consolidating excess plutonium, then review site
cleanup plans to ensure they are consistent with it.
In its response DOE argued it is in the process of developing
its comprehensive plan for the consolidation. It points to this
year's formation of the Nuclear Materials Disposition and
Consolidation Coordination Committee to do just that.
"This Strategic Plan will encompass the comprehensive strategy
called for in your first recommendation," assured Charles
Anderson, DOE's principal deputy assistant secretary for
environmental management, in a June letter to the GAO.
The report and DOE's response are available online at
www.gao.gov.
© 2005 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
52 Tri-Valley Herald: Schwarzenegger backs UC bid for nuclear laboratories
Article Last Updated: 08/20/2005 07:54:38 AM
Governor tours Lawrence Berkeley lab's facilities
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
BERKELEY - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger threw his strongest support
yet Friday behind the University of California's efforts to keep
running two nuclear weapons labs in two states.
In a bit of a coup for the university, the governors of both New
Mexico and California now have endorsed UC's partnership with
Bechtel National and others to bid for management of the
birthplace of the bomb, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
What's unclear is what the backing from Schwarzenegger and New
Mexico Democrat Bill Richardson is worth.
U.S. Department of Energy officials have insisted
that a
competition this year over management of Los Alamos and in 2007
over management of its California sister lab, Lawrence
Livermore, will be handled by career bureaucrats fully insulated
from politics.
``It's absolutely essential for our state and for the country
for us to have those contracts back,'' Schwarzenegger said.
In fact, the University of California has run both institutions
since their doors opened in World War II and the early Cold War.
But UC officials are eyeing Texas and the consortium of
universities there that have joined the world's largest defense
contractor, Lockheed Martin, to topple UC and take charge of Los
Alamos.
Other potential bidders have said that University of Texas
officials in particular hinted broadly earlier this year that
they were a shoo-in at Los Alamos, with a Texan in the White
House and others well situated in Congress.
The backing of a high-profile Republican governor could help as a
counterbalance and hurt UC if it wasn't forthcoming.
The endorsement came as the governor talked to scientists and
toured one of the nation's workhorse X-ray machines, the giant
Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
He was shepherded along by UC President Bob Dynes, UC Berkeley
Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Berkeley lab director Steven Chu,
a Nobel laureate. All three are productive physicists who shared
a time in the famed Bell Labs.
Inside the lab, Schwarzenegger listened to scientists talk about
the prospects of nanoscience for solar energy, faster computers
and better drugs - and more high-tech jobs for California.
Calvin Cho, the president of Nanosystems in Palo Alto, told
Schwarzenneger that he moved his company to the West Coast from
Cambridge, Mass.,
two years ago to access more intellectual
talent. Cho said he since has tripled his work force and now
produces inexpensive plastic sheets of solar cells to new kinds
of computer memory and medical devices, all manufactured with
techniques operating at the scale of billionths of a meter.
Schwarzenegger questioned scientists closely about solar cells,
their cost and efficiency, said Paul Alivisatos, a nanotech
pioneer who founded the firm Quantum Dot and now leads
nanoscience work at the Berkeley lab.
``It was absolutely incredible the things they're doing in
there,'' the governor
told reporters later. He described the labs and
California's universities as a ``great brain gain'' for the
state, creating jobs and drawing smart, innovative scientists
here.
© 2005 ANG Newspapers
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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for
non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more
information go to:
*****************************************************************