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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War.
2 BBC: Rice lobbies for Iran sanctions
3 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Warns Against Nuke Referral to U.N.
4 Xinhua: Iran not to suspend nuclear activities - FM   
5 ITAR-TASS: Russia sees no reasons for UN review of Iran nuclear issu
6 Telegraph: UN inspectors 'powerless to stop atom bomb plans in Iran'
7 Reuters: Iran says nuclear talks must have no preconditions
8 Payvand: Iran's Nuclear Energy Program, Part VI: The European Union'
9 Korea Herald: [Hideaki Kaneda]China's rapid rise as a 'sea power'   
10 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Hill in Bid to Square Views With Unificat
11 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: U.S. Adamant on Civilian Nuclear Program 
12 Japan Times: Views from Asia suggest that 'Team Bush' is playing poo
13 Japan Times: Pyongyang palliative is Bush's bitter pill
14 Reuters: China moves special envoy ahead of N.Korea talks 
15 Reuters: RPT-N.Korea hardens stance ahead of nuclear talks 
16 US: [NYTr] USA's First-Strike Nuke Plan Called "Preemptive Use"
17 US: Las Vegas SUN: Plan Envisions Using Nukes on Terrorists 
18 US: WorldNetDaily: Keeping the truth from us peons
19 US: Independent: US develops strategy for first use of nuclear weapo
20 US: Biz Journals: Whistle-blower status denied - 
21 US: Boston Cod: Looking West From Boston: An American Hiroshima  
22 US: Sunday Times: WMD threat could spark American nuclear strike
23 US: Reuters: Pentagon document would alter nuclear weapons plan
24 Reuters: Fears grow of meltdown at ambitious UN summit 
25 Bellona: Russian Delta-IV back from sea trials after repairs
26 Xinhua: India to boost ties with France   
27 Japan Times: Has risk of nuclear proliferation risen?
28 Telegraph: Canada gets set to bury nuclear ghost
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
29 US: newsobserver.com: Nuclear, revisited
30 Bellona: China to build barge for floating nuclear plant
31 Bellona: Unplanned repairs continue at Kalinin NPP
32 BBC: Scars on (chernobyl)
33 The Observer: Ageing nuclear plant wins a reprieve
34 US: Reuters: Entergy keeps Arkansas 2 nuke reduced after dropped rod
35 Mehr News: Iran to offer intl. tender for construction of two nuclea
36 Chennai Online News Service: Safety of nuclear power plants reconfir
37 i-Newswire.com: Chernobyl - the true scale of the accident
38 Bangkok Post: Saha Group explores nuclear power options 
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
39 BBC: Armed police patrol nuclear
40 NewsFromRussia.Com: Switzerland makes two more arrests in nuclear
41 US: Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Envisions Using Nukes on Terrorists
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
42 US: PittsburghLIVE.com: No contamination found at A-bomb test site -
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
43 US: [CMEP] NRC Announces Decision on Utah Nuclear Waste Dump
44 US: AU ABC: Govt maintains uranium mining opposition
45 US: Deseret News: Utah's steps in nuclear storage battle
46 US: Las Vegas RJ: NRC clears way for nuclear waste storage at Skull 
47 US: Deseret News: NRC ruling won't end fight over nuclear waste 
48 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: There he goes again ... 
49 US: Tri-City Herald: DOE could re-route contaminated waste to other 
50 UK: Independent: Sellafield struggles with radioactive gulls 
51 Independent: Government to net Ł100m from sale of British Nuclear Gr
52 US: Reid: Reid statement on approval of UT nuclear waste facility 
53 US: Salt Lake Tribune: PFS: What's Next
54 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Church opposes nuclear dump 
55 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Utah nuclear waste site's road to approval 
56 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Utah vows to keep fighting the nuclear-waste
57 US: Salt Lake Tribune: State of irony: Waste storage plan still has
58 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Opposition to N-waste appears greatest in SLC
59 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Demand for facility unclear 
60 US: Reuters: US agency approves private nuclear-waste facility 
61 US: Public Citizen: Approval of Private Fuel Storage Means Dangerous
62 US: PittsburghLIVE.com: Fears of nuke waste cloud river's future - 
63 US: Canon City Daily Record: Cotter hearing begins Monday
64 US: La Crosse Tribune: NRC clears way to send Dairyland's spent nucl
65 US: RGJ: Regulatory panel OKs nuclear waste dump
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
66 Santa Fee New Mexican: LANL prepared for any attack  
67 LongmontFYI: Rocky Flats verification team will return for more test
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War.

By Anthony Shadid. Henry Holt. $26.00"> 

By Bradford Plumer 

September 9, 2005 

In the Garden of Armageddon

They were Iraq's only real WMDs. The U.S. refused to secure
them. Now Saddam's nuclear and bioweapons scientists are
dispersed and more dangerous than ever.   
  
When we hear the bomber coming, we hold our breath and our
hearts pound as if they are to jump out. Then as soon as we hear
the explosion, no matter how close, we launch a sigh of relief.
Afterward, one starts to calculate whether it's dropped on a
love one. 

Scenes like this one—an Iraqi civilian describing the American
invasion in 2003—are a hallmark of Night Draws Near: Iraq's
People in the Shadow of America's War, the new book from Anthony
Shadid, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at the Washington
Post. Like the countless other books on Iraq now hitting the
bookstores, this one gives an incomplete, largely anecdotal
picture of war. The main difference is that Shadid, a
Lebanese-American who, unlike many Western reporters speaks
Arabic, has given an account of what ordinary Iraqi civilians
have gone through in two years of war—a war for which Iraqis
have no name, merely calling it suqut, "the collapse" or "fall."
Other recent books such as Larry Diamond's Squandered Victory or
David L. Phillips' Losing Iraq discuss the policy failures of
the American occupation in Iraq. Shadid looks primarily through
the anxious eyes of those caught up by the forces shaping,
destroying, and rebuilding the country. 

Stationed in Baghdad during the invasion in March of 2003—waving
off the chance to be embedded with soldiers and fed storylines
by the Pentagon—Shadid was in a position to describe life during
the "precision bombing" raids. Saddam's regime dug trenches
around the city and burned oil in them, to try—ineffectually—to
confuse the bombers, plunging the city into darkness for weeks.
During the airstrikes, families would fling open all the doors
in the house to ensure that they didn't get ripped off the
hinges by the blasts. The price of food and gasoline fluctuate
wildly during the war, creating havoc in the lives of families
around the city. A mother, nerves frayed, screams at her son
after he bangs his chair. Iraqis experience the trauma of seeing
civilian casualties, telling Shadid that "the violence took
place over and over" in their heads. The author himself recounts
how he and Hamza Hendawi, a reporter for the AP, found their own
friendship fraying during the bombing of Baghdad. Minor details
like these—Shadid has a sharp eye—retell a period of the war
that most Americans remember through flashy graphics on CNN. 

After the fall of Saddam's regime, many Iraqis wavered between
relief that he was gone and anxiety at what was to come.
Shadid's perceptive reporting skewers any notion that Iraqis
divided neatly between anti-Saddam and anti-Bush camps. Most
were glad to see Saddam go, but remained suspicious of American
intentions. "God curse Saddam and the Americans" was a common
graffiti scribbling. When U.S. troops enter Baghdad and raise
the American flag, one man narrows his eyes and says, "This is
not the liberation they told us about." When the United States
failed to secure Baghdad in the weeks after the Iraqi Army
retreated, and weeks of looting ensued, bitterness swelled. As
Shadid notes, few in the Middle East speak of "freedom," but
rather of "justice," and the rape of Baghdad appeared
monstrously unjust to many fiercely patriotic Iraqis, who saw
the historic capital, as one artist put it to Shadid, as a
"beautiful girl." 

The mistakes were compounded when, on May 22, 2003, the new
proconsul of Iraq, Paul Bremer, announced the formation of the
Coalition Provisional Authority by using the word "occupation."
In Arabic, the word, ihtilal, evokes Israel's occupation of
Lebanon and Palestine defined by images such as "American-built
Apache helicopters hovering over West Bank villages." Assurances
that the United States had come to free Iraq offered scarce
comfort; Iraqis can recall the words of a British major general
in 1917: "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as
conquerors or enemies, but as liberators." 

The toppling of Saddam's regime set loose a thousand unintended
consequences in Iraq—even beyond those predicted by the State
Department's "Future of Iraq" project, which the Bush
administration famously ignored. The myth of American
omnipotence, widespread among Iraqis, unexpectedly gave rise to
conspiracy theories when the occupation forces failed to restore
electricity and services quickly—how could the United States
fail unless they intended to? Meanwhile, a religious revival
surged through the Shiite regions of Iraq, empowering men such
as the widely respected Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, as well as
Muqtada al-Sadr. Sistani surprised Bremer by demanding direct
elections for Iraq in late 2003, contrary to CPA plans. Sadr, a
young low-ranking cleric once dismissed as a "two-bit thug" by
CPA spokesman Dan Senor, tapped into anger and resentment among
poor Shiites over both the occupation and the lack of progress
on reconstruction. Sadr's movement eventually staged an uprising
in April of 2004 that, along with the simultaneous rebellion in
Fallujah, would hasten the end of the formal occupation (though
not the U.S. military presence). 

Shadid makes clear how significant Sadr's ascent really is. His
father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, a maverick ayatollah whom Saddam
had assassinated in 1999, had built up an energetic and devoted
following during the 1990s by engaging in grassroots activism,
offering social services and a message of resistance to Saddam's
rule. As with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian
territories, religious populism proved a potent new force in
Iraq. The younger Muqtada continued this innovation, attacking
the Shiite clerical establishment both for its acquiescence
under Saddam and its collaboration with the Americans. While
Sistani remains the spiritual leader of the Shiites, it is Sadr
who has become a national hero. (Polls consistently show him to
be one of the most popular figures in Iraq; and his opposition
to the newly drafted constitution may end up derailing the
political process—contrary to the widespread belief that his
movement was defeated for good in an August 2004 standoff.) 

As Sadr's popularity shows, nationalism remains a powerful force
in Iraq, mixing with Islam in often unpredictable ways. The rise
of the Sunni insurgency is a case in point. Shadid notes that
Islam provided the "vocabulary" for resistance against the
occupation, and all throughout the summer of 2003, as anger at
the United States boiled over, many Sunnis, especially in the
rural regions in the west, became radicalized. During those
days, Donald Rumsfeld called the insurgents Baathist
"dead-enders," but Shadid saw differently—for instance, from the
family of a young Sunni who died in an early firefight with U.S.
troops: "Omar sacrificed his soul for the sake of his faith, for
the sake of his country… not for the sake of the previous
regime." Unlike their Shiite counterparts, the Sunnis don't have
a rigid hierarchy of clerics whom they follow—indeed, the Sunni
ulema had long discredited itself by cooperating with Saddam's
government—and fervent young Sunnis freely interpreted Islam for
themselves, drawing upon the anti-American preaching of radical
clerics, whose sermons could be bought on DVD at the market for
pennies. Shadid finds few Iraqis in the Sunni regions talking
about liberation and democracy: "Instead, the language was that
of religion: infidels and Muslims, East and West, Islam and its
enemies." 

But if the insurgency is held together by religion, it was
founded on provocation and the sense of besiegement felt by many
Sunnis. The rural western regions of Iraq—dominated by
conservative tribes and poorly understood by the
Americans—quickly soured on the occupation after a few seemingly
minor incidents. Shortly after Baghdad fell, a rocket attack on
a U.S. convoy led to raids in the small Sunni town of Heet,
stoking anger among a population with strong notions of pride,
dignity, and honor. "After this operation," says a farmer, "we
think one hundred Saddams are better than the Americans." Says a
man after a house-raid: "If an Iraqi had done this, we would
have killed him." (In another town, Thuluyah, a man is commanded
by his tribal elders to kill his son, who was an informer for
the occupation; the Americans are of course blamed.) Sadr's
insurgent movement, too, gained strength after an American
helicopter tried to knock down a black flag (the standard of
Sadr's Mahdi Army) in Sadr City, angering many poor Shiites. 

The fault here doesn't lie primarily with the conduct of the
U.S. military—Shadid's book gives the sense that there was no
possible way to avoid provoking anger. An Army captain
participating in the raids tells Shadid: "We try to be as
culturally sensitive as possible, but we want to make sure
everybody goes home alive." Given that basic tension, some
degree of violence is inevitable. Meanwhile, the occupation
forces rarely get credit for the good things they do. At one
point, Shadid watches a U.S. soldier doles out dinars to local
imams for street-cleaning; later, speaking in Arabic, the imams
shrewdly take all the credit for the money. "I thank the sheikh,
not the Americans," says one recipient. In many ways, the
military simply cannot win. 

Perhaps, then, the occupation was simply doomed from the
start—though Shadid never addresses this question directly. Most
of the recent books on Iraq, such as Diamond's Squandered
Victory, rightly accuse both the Bush administration and the CPA
of botching what was otherwise—one assumes—a viable idea:
namely, transforming Iraq. Is this a reasonable conclusion?
We've all heard about the United States' mistakes in Iraq:
launching an invasion force without enough troops to keep the
peace; disbanding the Iraqi Army and swelling the insurgency
with angry and battle-hardened soldiers; failing to prevent
looting in Baghdad. These were all gross errors. But the
conclusion authors such as Diamond draw is that, with better
planning and more competence from the Bush administration, Iraq
might now be on the path to peace and democracy. 

Maybe so. But Night Draws Near—with its keen portrait of how
Iraqis viewed the occupation—makes clear how little room the
United States had for making mistakes. A "competent" occupation
would have had to foresee and handle the improbable rise of a
junior Shiite cleric; avoid using any inflammatory language such
as "occupation"; steer clear of offending the deeply
conservative and deeply distrustful Sunni tribes in the rural
regions of Iraq; reconstruct Iraq as quickly and as capably as
possible to avoid conspiracy theories about a belligerent United
States, and so on. Hundreds of perfectly understandable mistakes
would have had to have been skirted. And even then, a million
other things could have gone wrong. Just as likely, the idea of
transforming a society Americans barely understood was doomed
from the start. 


Bradford Plumer is assistant editor at MotherJones.com 

© 2005 The Foundation for National Progress 
*****************************************************************
 2 BBC: Rice lobbies for Iran sanctions
 
  			 Last Updated: Saturday, 10 September 2005
 
		 		 		 
	 		 	 		 			 	 		

			
			 				[Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at State
Department news conference]  				Rice is trying to rally support
against Iran's nuclear ambitions 			 			   		

		 	 	 The US secretary of state has urged China, Russia and
India to back US threats of imposing sanctions against Iran over
its nuclear programme. 

Condoleezza Rice said Iran needed to get a "unified message"
from the international community after reopening the Isfahan
uranium conversion plant. 

"We've all said that a next step to be expected would be
referral to the [UN] Security Council," Ms Rice said. 

Both China and Russia could use their veto power against a
resolution. 

In a reference to a recent report by the UN's atomic watchdog,
Ms Rice said Iran was failing to honour its commitments towards
the international community. 

"I think that after the IAEA (International Atomic Energy
Agency) report a couple of days ago, it is clear that Iran is
not living up to its obligations, and so UN Security Council
referral seems to be a reasonable option," she told a news
conference in Washington. 

Civilian programme 

Iran last month broke UN seals at the Isfahan plant, and resumed
sensitive nuclear work it had suspended during negotiations with
Britain, France and Germany. 

The EU had offered Iran a package of economic and security
incentives in return for the suspension of its nuclear
activities. 

But Iran insisted it had the right to pursue a civilian nuclear
programme for peaceful purposes until negotiations broke down. 

The US suspects Iran's scheme is a cover for a nuclear weapons
programme. 

Last week, an IAEA report said questions about Iran's nuclear
programme remained unanswered, despite an intensive
investigation. 

Tehran argued the findings were politically motivated, but said
it would continue to co-operate with the agency. 



		 	 		 	 	 



*****************************************************************
 3 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Warns Against Nuke Referral to U.N.
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Sunday September 11, 2005 12:46 PM

AP Photo VAH101 

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI 

Associated Press Writer 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran warned Sunday that there will be
``certain consequences'' if it is referred to the U.N. Security
Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear activities. 

New Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki also told a news
conference Iran plans to organize tenders for building two more
nuclear power plants in the Islamic republic. 

Mottaki reiterated Iran's position that it will not stop uranium
reprocessing, rejecting a U.S.-backed European threat that
Tehran has about a week to freeze the activities or face
referral to the Security Council for possible sanctions. 

``There is no legal or legitimate reason, given Iran's
transparent activities and its open cooperation with the IAEA
... that Iran be referred to the U.N. Security Council,''
Mottaki told reporters. 

``If a political decision is made to refer Iran to the U.N.
Security Council, it will be entering a lose-lose game,'' he
added. ``It will have its own certain consequences and will
affect Iran's decisions. We prefer that such a game is not
played.'' 

The United States accuses Iran of using its civilian nuclear
program as a cover to secretly produce nuclear weapons. Iran has
rejected the charges, saying its nuclear program is geared
toward generating electricity, not a bomb. 
		 	 	   


      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 4 Xinhua: Iran not to suspend nuclear activities - FM   

  www.xinhuanet.com
    
  www.chinaview.cn 2005-09-11 15:26:20   

    TEHRAN, Sept. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran refused to fully
suspend its nuclear activities in Isfahan nuclear plant and
threatened not to go into negotiations with the EU if
preconditions are set, its foreign minister said Sunday. 

    Speaking at a news conference, Iranian Foreign Minister
Manuchehr Mottaki termed re-suspending Iran's nuclear activities
as "out of the question". 

    "Iran will not accept any precondition set for the
continuation of nuclear negotiations, and we will never suspend
nuclear activities at the Isfahan uranium conversion facility
again," Mottaki said at his first press conference as foreign
minister. 

    Mottaki said although the nuclear talks between Iran and the
European Union (EU) are still underway, Iran will just continue
the negotiations which can recognize its legal rights on
peaceful nuclear technology. 

    The nuclear negotiations between the Islamic republic and
the EU, represented by the big three of Britain, France and
Germany, were stalled after Tehran resumed in August the uranium
conversion activities in the central city Isfahan, a preliminary
step toward uranium enrichment. 

    This move triggered outcry from the EU, which urged Iran to
re-suspend the conversion activities before Sept. 19, when the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors
will gather to discuss this issue. 

    The EU also warned that a defy of the deadline will prompt
the UN nuclear watchdog to refer Iran's case to the UN Security
Council. 

    However, Mottaki brushed aside the threat at the news
conference. 

    Iran will not deterred by a referral to the UN Security
Council,he said, adding such a referral will incur
"consequences". 

    "There is no legal base for the referral. The threat has
been political motivated," Mottaki said, stressing that Iran has
been reasonably cooperating with the IAEA to remove the
suspicion over its intention of nuclear program. 

    Mottaki, a former conservative lawmaker, was appointed as
foreign minister by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in mid-August,
and successfully received Majlis's (parliament) approval on Aug.
24. 

    The EU, as the longtime broker of the Iranian nuclear case,
has been trying but in vain to persuade Iran to abandon its
efforts to build nuclear reactor cycles, including uranium
enrichment. 

    The United States accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons
under the disguise of civil usage, a charge rejected by Tehran.
Enditem   

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 5 ITAR-TASS: Russia sees no reasons for UN review of Iran nuclear issue

11.09.2005, 00.16

NEW YORK, September 10 (Itar-Tass) - Russia does not see reasons
for sending the Iranian nuclear issue for a review by the UN, a
representative of the Russian mission to the UN, Maria
Zakharova, said. 

Commenting the proposal by US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice for passing Iran’s nuclear dossier to the UN Security
Council, Zakharova told Itar-Tass that Russia “does not see
grounds for turning over to the UN Security Council the issue
that the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency) is
actively and productively handling at present”. 

Russia proceeds from the assumption that “it is necessary to act
without rush steps and continue work within the framework of the
IAEA”, the diplomat said. 

The IAEA will thoroughly discuss at the September 19 session of
its board of governors the report by the agency’s
director-general Muhammed ElBaradei on IAEA guarantees to Iran. 

Further steps of the IAEA in Iran will be also outlined at the
session, Zakharova said. 

Rice said on Friday that sending Iran’s nuclear dossier to the
Security Council would be a “reasonable” option. 

However, she refused to say whether the talks between Tehran and
the European Union troika of Britain, France and Germany had
exhausted there potential. 

This question should be addressed to Iranians, Rice said. 
She is of the opinion not only the EU troika and US, but also
Russia, China, India and other states should be send to Iran a
“common signal”. 

It is necessary to tell Iran that is it unacceptable to enter
trust restoring talks on Iran’s meeting its international
obligations and then unceremoniously leave them and break the
accords, Rice said. 

© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
 6 Telegraph: UN inspectors 'powerless to stop atom bomb plans in Iran'
 
   telegraph.co.uk   
    
By Con Coughlin

(Filed: 11/09/2005) 

The former head of the United Nations inspection team that is
investigating Iran's nuclear programme has called on the
Security Council to give it greater powers so it can determine
whether Teheran is trying to build an atomic bomb. 

For the past six years Dr Pierre Goldschmidt, a Belgian nuclear
scientist, has been in charge of the inspectors sent by the
UN-sponsored International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in
Vienna, to investigate Iran's nuclear programme. 

[Dr Pierre Goldschmidt] 
  
         Dr Pierre Goldschmidt: 'Many serious omissions'
  
Throughout that period the Iranians have tried to conceal
crucial aspects of the programme and have indulged in a
dangerous game of diplomatic brinkmanship with the IAEA and the
UN over the level of access provided to the inspection teams. 

"It is reaching the point where it is beyond critical," Dr
Goldschmidt told The Sunday Telegraph in his first interview
since retiring from the IAEA in July. "The IAEA can only work on
the basis of the facts that are presented to it, and there have
been many serious omissions by the Iranians. The Iranians are
exploiting all the loopholes in the international agreements. As
to why they are doing this you can draw your own conclusions." 

Dr Goldschmidt believes that to deal effectively with Iran, IAEA
inspectors need to be given greater powers than they currently
have. 

"As it stands, the investigating authority of the agency is too
limited with regard to Iran. To do its job properly it needs to
have more authority than is currently available to it." 

In particular, he wants the inspectors to be given the power to
interview any Iranian scientist they choose. The inspectors
should also have the freedom to visit any military institutions
to inspect and take environmental samples, and should be
provided with all the original documents relating to Iran's
nuclear programme. 

Similar powers were given to IAEA inspectors investigating
Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes in Iraq. 

But Dr Goldschmidt refused to be drawn on whether he believed
Iran was involved in a clandestine operation to build a nuclear
bomb. 

"These issues are very sensitive and I prefer not to give my
personal opinion," he said. "I am a scientist and I like to deal
with the facts. And I would like to see all the facts relating
to Iran. Then I could reach an informed opinion." 

He took issue, however, with the way Mohammed El Baradei, the
head of the IAEA, had handled negotiations with Iran in the past
two years. "El Baradei says that any judgement about Iran should
be made on their intentions. My view is that we should look at
the indications, not the intentions, and then decide. 

"As things stand we cannot prove that Iran has a military
nuclear programme. But do you have indications that this is the
case? This is the question I think everyone should now be
asking." 
  
Mohammed El Baradei

Apart from heading up IAEA investigation teams in Iran, Dr
Goldschmidt was also responsible for inspecting other rogue
nuclear states, such as North Korea and Libya. 

He cited the difficulties experienced by the IAEA in
investigating Libya's nuclear programme as an example of the
agency's inability under its current mandate to determine
whether a country's intentions were peaceful or military. 

Until Tripoli agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme
in December 2003, Libyan officials had insisted that their
research was aimed at developing a domestic nuclear power
industry. 

"Our experience with Libya shows that it is almost impossible
for the agency to decide whether a country's nuclear intentions
are peaceful or otherwise," Dr Goldschmidt said. "If the Libyans
had not admitted [that they were trying to build an atomic bomb]
we would not have been able to prove it." 

The confrontation between Iran and the UN over Teheran's nuclear
programme is likely to intensify this week when the Iranian
President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, travels to New York to meet Kofi
Annan, the UN secretary general. 

The meeting follows Iran's decision last month to renege on its
agreement with Britain, France and Germany to halt its nuclear
activities until the IAEA had thoroughly investigated its
facilities. 

Mr Ahmadinejad personally ordered work to resume on processing
uranium at the plant at Isfahan, prompting Mr El Baradei to
threaten to report Iran to the UN Security Council. The
Iranians, however, managed to persuade the IAEA to defer its
decision until after Mr Ahmadinejad has spoken to Mr Annan. 

This has infuriated EU officials who believe that the Iranian
move was designed to embarrass their efforts to resolve the
issue peacefully. 

"The Iranians are up to their old games again," said a senior
European official. "They think they can ignore the past two
years and start again. It is just another delaying tactic."     
     
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005. Terms &Conditions
*****************************************************************
 7 Reuters: Iran says nuclear talks must have no preconditions

Sun Sep 11, 2005 6:58 AM ET

 By Parisa Hafezi

 TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday it would continue to 
process uranium at its Isfahan plant, defying EU demands to stop 
or face referral to the U.N. Security Council over a suspected 
programme to make nuclear bombs.

 Iran resumed uranium processing last month, leading to the 
virtual collapse of talks with the EU, which had hoped to 
convince Tehran to abandon all sensitive nuclear activities in 
return for political and economic incentives.

 "The resumption of the Isfahan plant's suspension is not part of 
our agenda and is out of the question for us," Foreign Minister 
Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference.

 "There are some efforts to restart Iran-EU talks. We want those 
talks to restart without any preconditions," he said.

 Iran denies U.S. accusations it is seeking nuclear bombs and 
says as a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) it is 
entitled to run a peaceful nuclear programme to generate 
electricity.

 Britain, France and Germany, negotiating on behalf of the EU, 
say the only way Iran can prove it is not seeking nuclear bombs 
is to give up sensitive nuclear work altogether.

 The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) governing board 
meets on September 19 to discuss Iran and the European powers and 
Washington want Tehran to sent to the Security Council, which has 
the power to impose sanctions.

 Mottaki said such referral, which he said had no legal basis, 
would have consequences for the international community.

 "Taking a politically-motivated decision and referring Iran's 
case to the Council will be a lose-lose situation," he said. 
"...if it happens, it will affect our decisions as well."

 Iran is lobbying hard with other countries to block any referral 
to the U.N. Security Council.

 But even if its case reaches the Security Council, it may be 
hard to win agreement on imposing sanctions, with its permanent 
members likely to be divided between the United States, Britain 
and France in favour and Russia and China opposed.

 The Council could also demand Iran resume negotiations with the 
EU and suspend uranium processing.

 This week in New York, on the sidelines of a U.N. summit of 
world leaders, Iran's new hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 
is expected to suggest ways of resolving the nuclear stand-off. 
Tehran has declined to say what he might propose.

 Asked whether Iran was in favour of direct talks with its 
long-time adversary, the United States, over its disputed nuclear 
case, Mottaki said :"... We haven't received any request from the 
Americans so far."                                             

© Reuters 2005. 
All Rights Reserved.                    
*****************************************************************
 8 Payvand: Iran's Nuclear Energy Program, Part VI: The European Union's
Proposal, Iran's Defiance, and the Emerging Crisis
 
www.payvand.com

  9/9/05   

  By Muhammad Sahimi, Los Angeles 

Introduction 

Since February 2003 Iran's program for constructing the complete
cycle for producing enriched uranium - the fuel for nuclear
reactors and nuclear power plants (NPPs) - has been the subject
of intense international debates. Over this period, the experts
and inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
have been visiting Iran on a regular basis to inspect its
nuclear facilities. The information and data that have been
collected by the IAEA have revealed sustained and determined
efforts by Iran since 1985 for constructing the complete cycle
for producing enriched uranium. The Bush administrtation has
been arguing that the primary purpose of Iran's nuclear program
is developing nuclear weapons. The European Union (EU), which
has very extensive commercial relations with Iran; Russia, which
is completing the construction of a NPP in Bushehr (on the
shores of the Persian Gulf), and Japan, which has signed a
lucrative oil agreement with Iran for developing Iran's giant
Azaadegaan oil field, have all pressed Iran hard, demanding that
it reveal all the details of its nuclear program. 

In a series of articles that were posted on Payvand.com in
October 2003, the author provided a brief history of Iran's
nuclear program (Part I); described in broad terms the reasons
that justify Iran's nuclear energy program as economically,
politically, and environmentally viable (Part II), and explained
the crisis that was emerging at that time (October 2003) in the
relationship between Iran and the IAEA (Part III). In Part IV,
posted on Payvand.com on December 7, 2004, the author presented
a detailed economical, political, and environmental analysis of
Iran's nuclear energy program, using the most reliable
statistics on Iran's current energy consumption and resources.
Part V, posted on December 22, 2004, described in detail the key
role that the United States (US) played from the 1950s to the
1970s in starting Iran's nuclear program. We showed that not
only did the US push the Shah to buy its NPPs, but also offered
Iran the technology for uranium enrichment and reprocessing of
spent nuclear reactor fuel if Iran agreed to buy eight
US-manufactured NPPs, assertions that were repeated later on in
an article published in the Washington Post [1]. We also
compared the history of the US involvement with Iran's nuclear
program with the current thinking of the neo-conservatives and
their sympathizers on how to prevent the Bushehr reactor from
operating, a reactor that, under no conceivable circumstances,
can be used for making a nuclear bomb [2]. 

Iran's Nuclear Program. Part I: Its History 

  + 
Iran's Nuclear Program. Part II: Are Nuclear Reactors
Necessary?
  + 
Iran's Nuclear Program. Part III: The Emerging Crisis

  + 
Iran's Nuclear Energy Program. Part IV: Economic Analysis
of the Program

  + 
Iran's Nuclear Energy Program. Part V: From the United
States Offering Iran Uranium Enrichment Technology to
Suggestions for Creating Catastrophic Industrial Failure
  
A major goal of the series has been to debunk the "argument"
that the US neo-conservatives and their allies have been making,
namely, that given Iran's vast oil and gas reserves, it does not
need nuclear energy. The neo-conservatives and their allies,
ranging from Israel to Iran's anti-democratic groups (from the
terrorist cultist group to the monarchists) and quasi-democratic
groups (those whose words wish seemingly nothing for Iran but a
secular democratic republic, but whose deeds indicate otherwise
[3]) are the only groups that are still hanging onto this absurd
argument [4]. The analysis presented in Parts II and IV of this
series (and their short versions published elsewhere [5,6]) have
made their impact: Iran's nuclear energy program has been
transformed from one perceived not to be needed by, or suitable
for, Iran to one for which the EU is willing to GUARANTEE the
supply of nuclear fuels and advanced nuclear technology (see
below), provided that Iran gives up its right for having the
complete cycle for producing enriched uranium. 

Another goal of this series has been to inform the public,
especially the Iranians who live outside Iran, about the
benefits and perils of the nuclear energy program that the
present Iranian government is pursuing. At the same time, giving
wide public exposure to the neoconservatives' thinking about
Iran is particularly important. 

The Board of Governors (BOG) of the IAEA has had periodic
special meetings to review the progress in assessing Iran's
nuclear program. In its special meeting held on Monday November
29, 2004, the IAEA reported to the BOG its latest findings on
Iran's program, and due to the Paris agreement that Iran had
signed with the EU troika - Britain, France, and Germany - for
suspending its uranium enrichment program, no further special
meeting of the BOG of the IAEA was supposed to be scheduled;
that is, Iran's case before the BOG was supposed to have gone
back to being a normal, un-urgent case. 

However, as usual, recent developments have taken unexpected
turns, as a result of which Iran's case before the BOG of the
IAEA has, once again, become special. The reason for the latest
twist in this saga is that, in mid August, after Iran rejected
the long-awaited proposal by the EU troika for curtailment of
its uranium enrichment activity in return for economic and
political concessions (see below), it restarted the Esfahan
facility for converting uranium yellow cake to uranium tetra-
and hexafluoride - gaseous compounds (at elevated temperatures)
that are used to produce enriched uranium. However, Iran
relaunched the process after informing the IAEA which is now
monitoring the Esfahan facility. The relaunch of the Esfahan
facility was against the Paris agreement according to which Iran
was obligated not to start any part of the complete cycle for
producing enriched uranium, so long as it was negotiating with
the EU troika. 

It must be emphasized that producing uranium tetra- and
hexafluoride is NOT considered by the IAEA as part of the
uranium enrichment process. But, in the highly politicized and
polarized environment that exists between Iran, the EU troika,
and the US (which has worsened since the election of Mr. Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad as Iran's new President), even a process as
harmless, by itself, as producing uranium compounds causes much
tension. We must also realize that the production of tetra- and
hexafluoride in Esfahan is apparently still beset by technical
problems. Various reports indicate that the uranium compounds
produced there are not suitable for enrichment (see below). 

In response to Iran's action, the EU troika has angrily
suspended its negotiations with Iran, taking the case back
before the BOG of the IAEA, and threatening Iran with a referral
to the United Nations Security Council. We must, however,
realize that the only valid basis for referring Iran to the
Security Council is its breach of the nuclear non-proliferation
regime as described in the NPT. However, the IAEA has yet to
find any evidence that Iran was or is engaged in a nuclear
weapons program. In fact, the IAEA just announced that its tests
vindicated Iran's claims that traces of highly enriched uranium
found two years ago at Iran's nuclear facilities are from the
equipment imported from Pakistani (see below). 

The goal of the present part of the series is twofold: 

(1) We describe the developments that have led to the present
state of affairs between Iran and the EU troika. In the author's
opinion, much has been made of the proposal that the EU troika
has submitted to Iran, whereas a careful reading of the proposal
reveals that while Iran is being asked to give up some of its
fundamental rights under the NPT agreement, when it comes to the
most important part of an overall agreement between the EU
troika and Iran, namely, the security aspects, the EU proposal
falls severely short; it does not offer Iran any concrete
security guarantees. At the same time, there has been little
discussion of what the author considers a reasonable proposal
that Iran made last March to its EU counterparts regarding its
nuclear fuel cycle, which was, however, ignored completely by
the EU troika and the US. 

(2) We then discuss whether it is in Iran's national interest to
start its full nuclear fuel cycle without reaching a formal
agreement with the EU troika and, through them, the US. 


Fall 2003: Iran's Weak Position and the Sa'd Abaad Agreement 

On October 21, 2003, Iran signed the Sa'd Abaad agreement with
the European troika. According to this agreement, 

"The Iranian authorities reaffirmed that nuclear weapons have no
place in Iran's defence doctrine and that its nuclear programme
and activities have been exclusively in the peaceful domain.
They reiterated Iran's commitment to the nuclear
non-proliferation regime and informed the ministers that: 

a. The Iranian Government has decided to engage in full
co-operation with the IAEA to address and resolve through full
transparency all requirements and outstanding issues of the
Agency and clarify and correct any possible failures and
deficiencies within the IAEA. 

b. To promote confidence with a view to removing existing
barriers for co-operation in the nuclear field: 

i. having received the necessary clarifications, the Iranian
Government has decided to sign the IAEA Additional Protocol and
commence ratification procedures. As a confirmation of its good
intentions the Iranian Government will continue to co-operate
with the Agency in accordance with the Protocol in advance of
its ratification. 

ii. while Iran has a right within the nuclear non-proliferation
regime to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes it has
decided voluntarily to suspend all uranium enrichment and
reprocessing activities as defined by the IAEA..." 

These were important PRACTICAL concessions made by Iran. What
did Iran gain in return? According to the agreement, 

"The Foreign Ministers of Britain, France and Germany welcomed
the decisions of the Iranian Government and informed the Iranian
authorities that: 

Their governments recognise the right of Iran to enjoy peaceful
use of nuclear energy in accordance with the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

a. In their view the Additional Protocol is in no way intended
to undermine the sovereignty, national dignity or national
security of its State Parties...." 

which are nothing but stating the rights that Iran already
enjoyed under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Therefore, in essence, Iran gained nothing practical by signing
the Sa'd Abaad Agreement, except postponing a serious
confrontation with the West. The question then is, why was Iran
willing to sign such an agreement which was clearly indicative
of its weak position (at that time)? Several factors contributed
to Iran's decision to sign the Sa'd Abaad Agreement, some of
which are as follows. 

(1) Iran had not told the world about its nuclear energy program
for 18 years. Although in terms of Iran's legal obligations
towards the NPT, hidding the nuclear facilities was NOT illegal
[7], the fact is that the world was suspicious of Iran. At the
same time, even if Iran was, or still is, trying to make a
nuclear bomb (and this is still unclear), most experts agree
that it is still years away from achieving this goal [8], simply
because Iran does not appear to have solved all the technical
problems regarding the enrichment process (see below).
Therefore, temporary transparency and openness could help Iran
learn more about the process. 

(2) In October 2003 the US and Britain had appeared to be the
absolute victors in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's regime had been
overthrown swiftly, and there was not yet any strong indication
that the Sunnies, together with foreign terrorists, would fight
back and create the mess that Iraq is today. President Bush had
already declared "the end of major combat operations," and had
boasted about "mission accomplished." His approval rating was
high, and there was still strong support by a majority of
Americans for invasion of Iraq. In short, Mr. Bush's
"faith-based propaganda" [9] was still working, and had not
broken down yet. 

(3) The claim that Iraq had a "robust nuclear program" [10] was
still believable. The search for the program had only begun
recently, and many believed that it would be discovered sooner
or later. Therefore, why would the world not believe the same
claim about Iran? 

(4) The energy market, and in particular the oil market, was not
nearly as hot as what it is today. The oil price was in the $30
range (compared with the $60 range today), and there was still
considerable oil excess capacity, implying that if Iran's oil
exports were eliminated, other oil exporters could increase
their production and compensate for the loss, just as they had
done for Iraq's production. Moreover, there was "serious" talk
of increasing Iraq's oil production to 4 million barrel/day,
which has, of course, never materialized. 

(5) Internally, the Majles, Iran's parliament, was still
controlled by vocal reformists some of whom did not want any
nuclear energy program (for example, some members of the Islamic
Revolution Mojahedin Organization, and the Islamic Iran
Participation Front), while the rest, although supporting the
program, were advocating complete transparency in dealing with
the IAEA (with which the author agrees completely). Moreover,
Mr. Mohammad Khatami was still Iran's President, a man who
wanted to make detente with the West not confront it. 

In summary, Iran was in an extremely weak situation, and HAD TO
sign the Sa'd Abaad Agreement. 

Summer 2005: Iran's Strong and Defiant Position 

What has changed in little less two years that has made Iran
confident (or, perhaps, overconfident) that it can confront the
West and come out ahead? Consider the following: 

(1) Unlike Fall 2003, the world now knows much about Iran's
nuclear program. Yes, there are still serious issues to be
resolved (see below), but the fact is that the IAEA has not been
able to find any credible evidence - a smoking gun so to speak -
that would indicate that Iran is trying to make a nuclear bomb. 

(2) Unlike Fall 2003, the insurgency in Iraq is in full swing
with no end in sight, which has resulted in high US casualties,
as well as huge civilian casualties among the Iraqi population.
Even the Taliban are making a come back in Afghanistan.
President Bush's approval rating has tumbled to high thirties or
low forties, some of the lowest by any president. Nearly
two-third of Americans now believe that the invasion of Iraq was
a mistake, and that it has made the US LESS secure. 

(3) No nuclear weapon, or any "robust program" for making them,
was ever discovered in Iraq. Given that right before the
invasion the IAEA had declared that there was no such program in
Iraq, and that it has also failed to find the same in Iran, it
would be difficult to believe that Iran is making a nuclear bomb
unless, of course, new dramatic evidence is uncovered. 

(4) The oil market is in turmoil. The oil price is in the
neighbourhood of $70/barrel, and there is almost no excess
capacity in other oil exporting nations left to compensate for
Iran's exports - currently about 2.7 million barrel/day - if
they are lost due to a confrontation between Iran and the US. At
the same time, Iran will make about $60-70 billion in exports,
and its foreign debts and obligations are minimal, only about
$10 billion. In short, Iran's vulnerability to a worldwide
economic sanction (as unlikely as it is) could not be any less. 

(5) Through relatively democratic elections, a Shiite-dominated
government is now ruling Iraq, led by men who spent years in
Iran in exile. When Iraq's Prime Minister, Dr. Ebrahim
Al-Jafari, who speaks Persian fluently, visited Iran recently,
he put a wreath on Ayatollah Khomeini's grave. He admitted
Iraq's responsibility and fault for starting the Iran-Iraq war
in 1980, and asked Iran to help it train its armed forces. When
Mr. Kamal Kharrazi, Iran's (former) Foreign Minister, visited
Iraq recently, he visited Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most
powerful man in Iraq, if not in the entire Shiite world.
Ayatollah Sistani has never granted an audience to any Western
official. At the same time, radical Iranian elements and
factions can create immense problems in Iraq, way beyond what is
currently happening there. 

(6) China and India, the two most populous nations, have signed
huge contracts with Iran, worth well over $100 billion, to
import oil and gas from Iran, hence making them dependent on
Iran. India is the largest democracy in the world, while China
is the up-and-coming superpower. Hence, these countries provide
Iran with political support. In particular, it is plausible (but
not certain) that China may veto any resolution against Iran, if
its nuclear energy program is referred to the UN Security
Council. Russia might do the same, since it has great stake in
its nuclear copperation with Iran. But, their veto is not by any
means guaranteed. 

(7) The emergence of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO), consisting of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. The SCO goes back to 1996 when China
initiated the Shanghai Five, which included all the current SCO
members except for Uzbekistan. The purpose of SCO is to form a
network of cooperation among the member States, including
military security, economic development, trade and cultural
exchange. In its most recent meeting on July 5, 2005, the SCO
invited Iran to participate as an observer, which Iran did. Iran
is likely to join the SCO sometime in the near future, which
will provide it with further political support. The SCO has
started asserting itself and flexing its political muscles, with
Uzbekistan recently asking the US to evacuate its military
forces out of the country, which the US will do soon. Clearly,
if the US troops leave Central Asia, it will be an important
positive development for Iran. 

(8) Iran has started receiving the proceeds from its oil exports
in Euro rather than dollar. Over a period time, it will stop
receiving dollar altogether, and will completely switch to Euro.
This will not only provide more financial stability and security
for Iran's foreign exchange reserves, but also will have a
negative impact on the oil market in New York. 

(9) Internally, the Majles, the presidency, the armed forces,
and the judiciary are all controlled by Iran's right wing.
Although Iran's right itself is factionalized, but history
indicates that when it comes to a common enemy, it becomes
completely united. 

Thus, Iran is in a strong position which explains its
belligerence and defiance. At the same time, unlike what is
claimed in the Western Press, Iran's defiance is NOT due to the
election of Mr. Ahmadinejad as its new president, rather, as the
above discussion should make it clear, is due mostly to the
international developments. 

Iran's Proposal to the EU Troika 

In addition to the above, what contributes to Iran's position
strong is the following. For sometime Iran was focused on
providing the EU troika with the "objective guarantees" of the
peaceful nature of its nuclear program. In fact, on March 23,
2005, Iran submitted to the EU troika a plan of objetive
guarantees with the following elements [11]: 

(1) Spent reactor fuels will not be reprocessed by Iran, so that
no plutonium can be extracted to be used for bomb making. 

(2) Iran will forego plutonium production through a heavy water
reactor. 

(3) Only low-enriched uranium will be produced. 

(4) A limit will be imposed on the enrichment level, to be used
solely as fuel for reactors. 

(5) A limit will be imposed on the amount of enrichment,
restricting it to what is needed for Iran's reactors. 

(6) All the low-enriched uranium will be converted immediately
to fuel rods for use in reactors (fuel rods cannot be further
enriched). 

(7) The number of centrifuges in Natanz can be limited, at least
at the beginning. The full operation of the fuel cycle will be
incremental, beginning with the least sensitive part, such as
uranium conversion. 

(8) The IAEA will have permanent on-site presence at all the
facilities for uranium conversion and enrichment. 

Items (1)-(7) that Iran has offered to limit, or to give up
altogether, are actually allowed by Article IV of the NPT.
Therefore, any objective person who is even remotely familiar
with producing fuels for nuclear reactors would agree that what
Iran proposed in March 2005 was a substantial, if not complete,
step towards providing the EU troika and the US with the
"objective guarantees" that they are supposedly looking for. In
fact, item (8) goes even beyond the provisions of the Additional
Protocol on the NPT that Iran signed in December 2003, and has
been implementing ever since. At the minimum, Iran's proposal
could have been the basis for further negotiations. But, the EU
negotiators never responded to Iran's offer; they simply ignored
it, hence demonstrating their nations' utter arrogance [12]. 

The Proposal of the EU Troika to Iran 

The long-awaited proposal by the EU troika, "The Framework for a
Long-Term Agreement," was submitted to Iran in early August. In
the author's opinion, the proposal does contain several
important elements. For example, 

(1) it tries to force Iran to commit to combating terrorism
(article 9), hence stopping many adventuresome aspects of Iran's
foreign policy over the past twenty five years, such as
supporting radical groups in the Middle East, which have done
nothing but grossly damaging Iran's national interests; 

(2) it recognizes Iran's right to developing the infrastructure
for peaceful use of nuclear energy and research (articles 14 and
15) (these rights have, however, been recognized by the NPT); 

(3) it recognizes Iran's right to have access to "international
nuclear technology market" (article 18); 

(4) it offers to provide expert help for safety aspects of
Iran's program (article 20b); 

(5) it offers to facilitate Iran's access to the international
market for nuclear reactors fuels (article 23); 

(6) it offers to help Iran develop a "buffer store" of 5 years
of fuel supplies for the reactors in case either the supplies
dry up, or the suppliers refuse to provide Iran more fuels for
the reactors (article 30), and 

(7) it proposes a mechanism for addressing the situation that
arises in (6) (articles 27-29), although the mechanism is
tedious. 

However, certain aspects of the EU proposal are either against
the existing international agreements, or their language is
vague and leaves a lot to be desired. For example, the proposal
demands that Iran (emphasis with capital letters added) 

"make a legally binding commitment not to withdraw from the NPT
and to keep all Iranian nuclear facilities under IAEA
safeguarded UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES" (article 36a). 

The commitment not to withdraw from the NPT is even against the
NPT itself, which allows the member States to withdraw from the
agreement, subject to giving a 90 days notice to the IAEA, if
the States believe that abiding by the terms of the NPT
threatens their national security, and withdrawing from the NPT
is in their "Supreme Interest." 

At the same time, why is Iran's case so different that requires
new skewed interpretation of the NPT's provisions, or creating
new obligations for Iran that do not even exist in the
international agreements regarding nuclear weapons? If Iran has
violated certain aspects of the Safeguards Agreement by not
reporting to the IAEA what it has been doing (which is still a
matter of debate), it has not been the LONE violator. Over the
past year alone, the IAEA has reported that South Korea, Taiwan,
and Egypt have, at various times, violated the provisions of the
NPT by secretly engaging in experiments on uranium enrichment
and even bomb making. Brazil, a country that provided nuclear
assistance to Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980, refused, for
a long time, granting permission to the IAEA to visit and
inspect its uranium enrichment facilities under construction.
Where is the international outcry over these violations? 

Therefore, if Iran is to make a commitment not to withdraw from
the NPT, the logical first step is to revise the terms of the
NPT agreement, so that the commitment would become binding for
ALL the member States, not just Iran. In addition, the revisions
must address the all important issue of what to do about nuclear
powers that are NOT signatories to the NPT, namely, India,
Israel, and Pakistan, all in Iran's vicinity, with the latter
two posing great threats to Iran's national security. 

In addition, the "Political and Security Co-Operation" section
of the EU proposal leaves a lot to be desired. Let us review a
portion of it (article 4): 

"Within the context of an overall agreement and Iran's
fulfilment of its obligations under the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the United Kingdom
and France would be prepared to reaffirm to Iran the unilateral
security assurances given on 6 April 1995, and referred to in
United Nations Security-Council Resolution 984 (1995).
Specifically: 

the United Kingdom and the French Republic would reaffirm to
Iran that they will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear
weapon States Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons except in the case of an invasion or ANY attack
on them, their dependent territories, their armed forces, or
other troops, their allies or on a State towards which they have
a security commitment, carried out or sustained by such a
non-nuclear-weapon State in association or alliance with a
nuclear-weapon State...." 

Such guarantees actually leave open the possibility of a nuclear
or even non-nuclear attack on Iran because, as is clear in the
above paragraph, immediately after promising not to attack Iran,
a long list of "exceptional" cases which can provoke an attack
is mentioned. Moreover, Iraq was invaded and occupied not
through a nuclear attack, but by conventional forces. So, the
question is, where is the guarantee that Britain and France
(and, for that matter, Germany) will not participate in a war
similar to the invasion of Iraq using conventional forces? 

Even if full guarantees, with no ifs, buts, and exceptions, are
provided, where is the guarantee that the US will not attack
Iran? Where is the guarantee that its proxies, such as Israel,
will not attack Iran? The proposal is silent about these
aspects, except where it states that (article 4b): 

"the United Kingdom and the French Republic would recall and
reaffirm, as Permanent Members of the Security Council, to seek
immediate Security Council action to provide assistance, in
accordance with the Charter [of the UN], to any non-nuclear
State, party to Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons, that is a victim of an act of aggression or an object
of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used." 

In other words, the proposal guarantees nothing when it comes to
the use of conventional forces, and even in the case of an
aggression in which nuclear weapons are used, all the EU troika
will do will be seeking "immediate Security Council action,"
presumably after tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of innocent
people have already perished during the aggression. 

The New IAEA Report and its Absurd Demands 

As mentioned above, two years ago the EU troika insisted through
the Sa'd Abaad Agreement that Iran must "voluntarily" sign the
Additional Protocol to the NPT, which Iran did and began
implementing. But, in his September 3, 2005 report to the BOG of
the IAEA [13] entitled, "Implementation of the NPT Safeguards
Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran", Dr. Mohamed
ElBaradei, chief of the IAEA, has reported on the following
item: 

(1) Iran has submitted to the IAEA comprehensive declarations
with respect to its nuclear facilities, including design
information (article 5). 

(2) In view of Iran's steady cooperation and increasing
transparency, resolving the outstanding concerns (see below),
the IAEA believes that Iran's nuclear issue "would be followed
up as matters of routine safeguards" (article 6). 

(3) Other than some delays and slowness in providing information
on the design aspects, "no additional failures have been
identified" by the IAEA (article 8). 

(4) Certain aspects of Iran's previous declarations, especially
the "outstanding issue" of the sources of contamination of
Iran's equipment with high-enriched uranium which has turned out
to be Pakistan (as had been widely believed), have been verified
(article 12). 

(5) Several Iranian "transparency measures," well beyond the
Additional Protocol, are reported, including allowing inspection
access to Iran's military bases (article 37). 

(6) The report cites "good progress" in Iran's "corrective
measures" since October 2003 (article 43). 

(7) The report declares that, "all the declared nuclear material
in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material has
not been diverted to prohibited activities" (article 51). 

(8) The report confirms again again that Iran's uranium
enrichment facilities at Natanz have remained suspended; that
the converted uranium had been relocated to safe storages, and
that the uranium hexafluoride "remained under agency seals"
(article 59). 

(9) It admits that, "the agency's legal authority to pursue the
verification of possible nuclear weapons-related activity is
limited" (article 49). 

This is, of course, a basic problem of the non-proliferation
regime which transcends Iran, but is being selectively applied
to Iran. After admitting this general shortcoming, the report
states that Iran's transparency (emphasis with capital letters
added) 

(10) "should extend beyond the formal requirements of the
Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol and include ACCESS
TO INDIVIDUALS, documentation related to procurement, dual-use
equipment, certain MILITARY-OWNED WORKSHOPS and research and
development locations" (article 50). 

Such demands are clearly pure political pressure far beyond any
requirements demanded by the NPT and its Additional Protocol. In
fact, Iran is being asked to comply with demands that are
reminiscent of what Iraq was being asked to do in the months
leading to its illegal invasion by the US and Britain. In
essence, what the report is demanding is that Iran should reveal
its sensitive military information. If Iran were to go along,
where would the demand list end? 

In addition, it is not even clear why, with so many positive
aspects of Iran's cooperation with the IAEA reported by the
IAEA, Iran should accede to such additional demands. This is
particularly baffling in view of the IAEA's own discovery about
Iran's deals with Pakistan's Abdul Ghadeer Khan, indicating that
Iran turned down his offers of nuclear-weapons designs in the
1980s, which should reinforce Iran's position that it is not
interested in acquiring nuclear weapons. What happened to
President Bush's declaration at the National Defense University
on February 11, 2004 that, "I propose that by next year, only
States that have signed the Additional Protocol be allowed to
import equipment for their civil nuclear programs"? 

Lack of Mutual Trust and the Emerging Crisis 

Given the above, the question is: What is REALLY at issue in the
confrontation between Iran, the EU troika, and the US? The
issue, as Dillip Hiro [14] put it, is: 

"Do Third World countries have the right to develop and use all
nuclear technology, including enrichment, as authorized by the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, or not?" 

Iran believes that the answer is an unequivocal "Yes," and is
not alone in its stance: The Non-Aligned Movement, which has a
membership of 116 nations (and includes such important nations
with nuclear technology as Brazil, India, and South Africa),
agrees. So, whether intended or not, Iran has become the
champion of the developing nations, willing to stand up to the
Western world. Moreover, whether we like it or not, Iran's
stance has won it quiet admiration by Non-Aligned nations, as
they fear that the limitations that the EU and the US are trying
to impose on Iran could be extended to them eventually. 

The EU troika does not deny the right. But it (and the US) wants
Iran to give up its rights under the NPT FOREVER (article 34 of
the EU proposal) in return for the commitments described above. 

Why do the EU and the US want Iran to give up its right for
having the complete cycle for producing enriched uranium? Their
main argument is that, since Iran hid its nuclear energy program
for 18 years, it has, in essence, given up that right. In
essence, it is, more than anything else, an issue of trust
between two hostile sides. As President Bush stated in a news
conference on April 28, 2005, at the White House, 

"America recognises that we cannot trust the Iranians when it
comes to enriching uranium . . . they should not be allowed to
enrich uranium." 

In the author's opinion, there is not much merit to the argument
that, "we do not trust Iran because it hid its nuclear program."
To see why consider the following: 

(1) As explained in Part II of this series, beginning in 1982,
Iran started pursuing Germany to complete the reactors in
Bushehr. It tried any and all the reasonable (and some not so
reasonable) approaches in order to get Germany live up to its
obligations; it never succeeded. If anything, Iran's efforts
were indicating clearly to the West that it WAS pursuing a
nuclear program. At the same time, the (West) German
intelligence agency was the first to declare in 1984 that, "Iran
was only TWO YEARS away from a nuclear bomb" [15]. 

(2) As noted in Ref. [6], under the provisions of the Safeguard
Agreement of IAEA, building the Natanz facility and not
declaring it were NOT illegal (though they were clandestine), so
long as 180 days before introducing any nuclear materials into
the facility Iran notified the IAEA, which Iran did long before
the 180 days period. As has been emphasized in this series of
articles, the difference between being clandestine and illegal
has not been understood in the Western press; constructing the
Natanz facility is constantly referred to as Iran's "breach of
its obligations." 

(3) The truth is that the EU troika and the US do not wish Iran
to have the uranium enrichment facilities, REGARDLESS of what
Iran does or does not. To see this one only needs to consider
Iran's proposal of March 2005. At the same time, does anyone
really believe that if, in 1985, Iran had declared its intention
for constructing its present enrichment facilities, the US and
the EU troika would have rushed in to help it, or even allowed
Iran to proceed? It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine
any scenario under which this would have happened. So, the issue
is not one of hiding something, rather not wanting Iran to
possess the enrichment facilities and technology under any
circumstances. 

However, Iran's reactionary right has done too many things to
make the world suspicious or distrustful of Iran, some of which,
in the author's opinion, are as follows. 

(1) The hardliners have suppressed Iran's democratic movement
and violated, on a steady and consistent basis, the personal,
social, political, and economical rights of Iranians. In fact,
in the author's opinion, lost in the international fury over
Iran's nuclear energy program has been the fact that, respect
for human rights and a democratic political system are the most
effective deterrent against the threat that any aspiring nuclear
power run by an undemocratic government may pose to the world.
When the US strongly pushed the Shah to start Iran's nuclear
energy program at a time that it had no economic justification
(see Parts II and IV of this series), instead of pushing him to
undertake meaningful political reforms, it helped creating the
Frankstein now called Iran's nuclear program. 

A democratic political system in Iran greatly reduces and even
eliminates the threat that its nuclear program may pose to the
world because, in the author's opinion, the danger per se is not
that Iran may have nuclear weapons (which it does not), but that
some of its most important power centers and decision-making
process are shrouded with secrecy. A free press in Iran - a
pillar of human rights - will reveal nuclear adventures that
Iran's hidden power centers may pursue against Iran's national
interests [16]. 

Since 1970s, when the Shah started Iran's nuclear program,
India, South Africa, North Korea, Pakistan, and Israel have
joined the nuclear club. In the 1980s South Africa's apartheid
regime produced nuclear bombs, but the democratic government of
Nelson Mandella dismantled them. India, has developed a nuclear
arsenal, but not many perceive world's largest democracy as a
threat to the world. The same is true about Israel. 

But, North Korea's nuclear arsenal is a threat because its
regime is highly secretive and its leader a recluse. Pakistan's
nuclear arsenal is extremely dangerous (even if the US does not
acknowledge it) because Pakistan is an essentially failed State.
Its nuclear-armed military, populated by Islamic extremists,
created the Taliban which supported Osama bin Laden. Pakistan
has a sectarian war in which the majority Sunni population has
been murdering the Shiite minority, and many of its schools
teach Islamic radicalism. Could Abdul Ghadeer Khan, the founder
and owner of Pakistan's nuclear supermarket, have operated
freely for so long without the support of some elements of its
military? Could he have operated in a democratic Pakistan with a
free press to reveal the depth of his dangerous enterprise? 

Aside from the nature of Iran's hardliners which cannot be
conducive to building trust between Iran and the international
community, several questions about Iran's nuclear energy program
remain unresolved: 

(2) When did Iran obtain the design for the advanced P-2
centrifuges? Why did it not pursue its construction? or, has it? 

(3) Why did Iran experiment for sometime uranium enrichment
using lasers? Surely, laser enrichment is not economical, and
can be justified only in the framework of a military program for
which there is no limit to the budget that can be spent. 

(4) Why was the Bandar Abbas uranium mine not declared to the
IAEA for quite some time? How much uranium deposits does Iran
possess, any way [17]? 

(5) At least three companies - Kaalaa-ye Electric, Pars Taraash,
and Faraayand Technic - supposedly having nothing to do with
Iran's nuclear program - have turned out to be providing support
for it. Iran must be prepared to address the issue of such
companies in a systematic way, because it is likely that the
IAEA will press Iran on this issue in the future. 

But, this is not the complete story, but only half of it. The
lack of trust between Iran, the EU, and the US is also due to
the other half of the story, which is about the "guarantees"
given by France, Germany, and the US to Iran that later on
turned out to be "non-binding." Consider the following (which
represents just the tip of the iceberg) [18]: 

(1) As described in Part I and mentioned above, Germany was
supposed to build two nuclear reactors in Bushehr. The
construction of the reactors was begun and made considerable
progress. But Germany stopped the work after the Iranian
Revolution. It neither paid Iran back what it owed, nor did it
finish building the reactors, nor delivered the parts that had
already been purchased and paid for. 

(2) Iran paid in 1975 $1 billion to buy 10% of Eurodif, a French
company that produces enriched uranium. In return Iran was
supposed to receive enriched uranium for its reactors, but has
never received any. France was also supposed to construct
nuclear reactors in Khuzestan province, but it never did. 

(3) The Shah spent billions of dollars in the 1970s to purchase
US made weapons. The US was obligated to provide Iran with the
spare parts for the weapons. But, when the Iran-Iraq war began,
the US refused to supply Iran with the spare parts which had
already been paid for. But the US did not stop there. Donald
Rumsfeld travelled to Baghdad in December 1983, had a friendly
meeting with Saddam Hussein, and informed him that the US,
although officially neutral, was going to "tilt" towards Iraq.
The US then started supplying Iraq with detailed information on
troops movement in Iran, and other valuable information. 

(4) Historical factors also play important roles in the distrust
of the Europeans by Iran. The Golestan and Turkmenchaay
Treaties, signed in 1811 and 1827 between Iran and Russia,
forced Iran to give up, under force, a large portion of its
historical territories. Later on in 1867, the British empire did
the same to Iran when it used force to separate Afghanistan from
Iran. The 1953 coup d'etat overthrew the government of Iran's
national hero, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh. These historial events,
with gigantic implications, have left deep scars on Iran's
historial memory. 

Therefore, the lack of trust between Iran, the EU, and the US is
mutual. While the EU nations have many good reasons to distrust
Iran, they also have a track record of promises that they had
made to, and obligations that they had towards, Iran, which were
broken and violated later on. 



Iran's Technical Problems: A Reason for Caution 

While the Western Press has been trying to create a menacing
image of Iran's nuclear energy program, now that the Esfahan
facility has started operating again, the reality, which should
prevent the EU from panicking, is quite different. The fact is
that Iran faces many difficulties in operating both the Esfahan
and Natanz facilities [19,20], with the latter facility being
currently sealed, anyway. Iran had major problems with the
Esfahan facility in 2004 when it produced uranium hexafluoride,
which was unsuitable for enrichment because it contained
impurities that prevent its enrichment. Another problem is
obtaining suitable materials for handling and storing uranium
hexafluoride, which is in a solid state at room temperature, but
makes a transition to the gaseous state at about 135 F. Whether
Iran has overcome such difficulties is not known yet. A third
problem Iran is facing is about its centrifuge facility at
Natanz. Apparently, Iran has been unable to keep the centrifuges
running for a sufficient length of time at the required speeds. 

At the same time, most experts believe that the IAEA inspections
and safeguards will prevent Iran from directly using facilities
declared to the IAEA for its weapons program (if one exists), so
long as Iran does not withdraw from the NPT. A November 2004
report by the CIA supported these assertions. However, if Iran's
program is referred to the Security Council, and the Council
imposes tough sanctions against Iran (the possibility of which
AT PRESENT is remote), Iran may withdraw from the NPT and expel
its inspectors. Then, what Iran's hardliners do next is
anybody's guess. It is not in the interest of the world to
arrive at such a frightening moment. 



Summary: Is Defiance in Iran's National Interest? 

In the author's opinion, although Iran's current position is
very strong, it is not in its national interest to be referred
to the UN Security Council. The reason is threefold: 

(1) Although Russia and China are both opposed to referring
Iran's nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council,
their veto of a resolution against Iran is NOT guaranteed. An
approved resolution, even if it is mild, will be used by the War
Party in the US as an exuse for staging military attack against
Iran. 

(2) If the Security Council does pass some resolution against
Iran, it will have the legitimacy of the UN and, therefore, Iran
will be isolated. In short, Iran must realize that, (i) it
cannot afford to lose in the court of public opinion, and (2)
while it might win the current battles with the EU troika, it
may lose the ultimate war at the Security Council. 

(3) Although Iran is entitled to having the complete cycle for
producing enriched uranium, it does not have any urgent need for
it. The fuel for the Bushehr reactor has been guaranteed by
Russia, and any new reactor to be constructed in Iran is years
away. Thus, once again, there is no need to put Iran in a
position where the War Party in the US may become tempted to
attack it, which would inflict immeasurable damage on Iran's
industrial and population centers. Protecting Iran against such
attacks is far more important than having the cycle for
enriching uranium: Without a prosperous and safe Iran it makes
no sense to speak of uranium enrichment. 

At the same time, the EU and the US must also realize the
following: 

(1) Referring Iran to the Security Council is not in the
interest of the international community, because in that case
Iran may carry out its threat of withdrawing from the NPT. That
would destroy the already troubled non-proliferation regime and,
instead of full transparency, the IAEA will find Iran back in
the pre-2003 era. 

(2) In addition to being economically viable and necessary,
Iran's nuclear energy program also has to do with nationalism
and pride. If the EU and the US ignore this aspect, it will
cause lasting repercussions, setting back the relations between
Iran, the US, and the EU for a long time. 

(3) In the author's opinion, the way to address the problem of
Iran's nuclear program is not by threatening it with military
strikes, but by providing Iran with incentives to move towards a
democratic and transparent political system which would make its
nuclear program benign. The Achiles' heel of Iran's hardliners
is not their possible violation of Iran's international nuclear
obligations that may drag them before the Security Council to
bring about their eventual fall, but their violation of human
rights of Iranians, including suffocating Iran's independent
press. 

(4) It is no accident that Iran's nuclear program began
accelerating in 1997 when Mohammad Khatami was elected
president, and began implementing a program of reform and more
transparency. Since then, instead of helping Iran's fledgling
democratic movement, which would have inevitably led to
transparency in its nuclear program, the US has been hurting it.
Whereas Mr. Khatami proposed people-to-people dialogue between
the US and Iran, the US has prevented Iranian scholars and
authors from publishing their work in the US. Whereas Iran
greatly helped the US in the war in Afghanistan, the US bestowed
upon it the "honour" of being a member of "Axis of Evil!" In
return for the overwhelming victory of Iran's democratic forces
in the 2000 elections for the Majles, the US lifted sanctions
against importing Iranian pistachios! The US repeats the claim
that Iran does not need nuclear energy because it has plenty of
oil and natural gas, yet it has blocked the US oil companies to
invest in Iran's oil industry. It is because of such
contradictions in the US policy towards Iran that it is
difficult for ANY Iranian leader to trust the US. 

The proposals by Iran and the EU both have many positive
elements. The Natanz facility remains suspended and sealed, and
Iran faces many technical difficulties to operate a complete
uranium enrichment cycle. Hence, there is no reason for the EU
to panic just because the conversion of the yellow cake to
uranium tetra- and hexafluoride, which the IAEA does not even
consider as part of an enrichment process, has started. Through
patience, flexibility, and mutual understanding, the two
proposals can be combined into one coherent proposal that
satisfies Iran's aspirations and the EU's and the US' concerns. 



References and notes 

[1] See, Dafna Linzer, "Past Arguments Don't Square with Current
Iran Policy," the Washington Post, March 27, 2005. 

[2] See Parts IV and V of this series for detailed discussions
of this point. See also, T.R. Stauffer, "Unlike Dimona, Iran's
Bushehr Reactor Not Useful for Weapons-Grade Plutonium,"
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (September 2003), p.
28, as well as,
www.washington-report.org/archives/sept03/0309028.html 

[3] A good example of such quasi-democratic groups is an Iranian
political journalist based in Europe and his cohorts in Los
Angeles. They repeat, VERBATIM, whatever non-sense the
neo-conservatives claim about Iraq and Iran. The same people had
a "joyous" (sickening to the author though) scream on an Iranian
satellite TV channel on March 19, 2003 - the day the US and
Britain began their illegal invasion of Iraq - stating their
hope and dream that, "Iran will soon have such a day." What has
been happening in Iraq since then has not, of course, made them
reconsider their "wish," simply because they do not understand a
simple fact: Without defending Iran's national interests, it is
meaningless to speak of democracy and human rights. 

[4] On July 5, 2005, at a joint news conference with France's
Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said, "the United States does not see the need
for a civilian nuclear program in oil-rich Iran," despite the
fact that in the same news conference she said that the US
strongly supports the EU-Iran neogotiations, and that the EU has
recognized Iran's right and need for NPPs. To read about the
news conference see, www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/48932.htm 

[5] M. Sahimi, P. Mojtahedzadeh, and K.L. Afrasiabi, "Iran Needs
Nuclear Reactors," International Herald Tribune, October 14,
2003. 

[6] M. Sahimi, "Forced to Fuel: Iran's Nuclear Energy Program,"
Harvard International Review, Volume XXVI (No. 4), Winter 2005,
p. 42. 

[7] According to the original IAEA Safeguard agreements, Iran
was not obligated to declare the start of construction of the
Natanz facility for uranium enrichment. These agreements
stipulate that, only 180 days before introducing any nuclear
material, must Iran declare the existence of the facility.
Therefore, construction of the undeclared Natanz facility is NOT
by itself a violation of the NPT. In addition, the NPT does
allow Iran to legally build any nuclear facility, including one
for uranium enrichment, so long as it is declared to, and
safeguarded by, the IAEA, and is intended for peaceful purposes. 

[8] The latest US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's
nuclear program states that Iran is about 10 years away from
making a nuclear bomb. See, Dafna Linzer, "Iran Is Judged 10
Years From Nuclear Bomb," The Washington Post, August 1, 2005.
To view the article, see,
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/01/AR200508
0101453.html See also Refs. [19] and [20] below. 

[9] This phrase was taken from F. Rich's column, "Falluja Floods
the Superdome," The New York Times, September 4, 2005. 

[10] This is the phrase that Vice President Dick Cheney used
frequently prior to invasion of Iraq. 

[11] Excellent discussions of Iran's proposal are given by G.
Prather (a physicist who has worked in the Departments of Energy
and Defence). See, for example, "What the Neo-Crazies Knew,"
August 13, 2005, in www.antiwar.com/prather/?article=6269 See
also Prather's August 8, 2005 article, "EU vs. Iran: Who's
Right?" at www.antiwar.com/prather/?article=6901 

[12] See also, T. Parsi, "Europe's Mendacity Doomed Iran Talks
to Failure," the Financial Times of London, August 30, 2005. To
view the article, see
news.ft.com/cms/s/0cfd2c90-1980-11da-804e-00000e2511c8.html 

[13] For a thorough analysis of the IAEA report see, K.L.
Afrasiabi, "ElBaradei's Report Deconstructed," September 7,
2005, at atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI07Ak05.html 

[14] Dillip Hiro, "Iran's Nuclear Ambitions," the Nation
Magazine, September 12, 2005. To view the article see,
www.thenation.com/doc/20050912/hiro 

[15] D. Leglu, Liberation (Paris), April 29, 1984. 

[16] See also, Shirin Ebadi and M. Sahimi, "In the Mullahs'
Shadow," the Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2005. 

[17] Estimates on Iran's natural uranium deposits vary widely.
They range anywhere from enough deposits to produce fuel for
only one 1000 MW reactor for 6-7 years, which is what the US
claims (hence pointing out that such small deposits do not
justify an enrichment program, unless it is for military
purposes), to much larger amounts cited in Part II of this
series. The true amount is likely to be something in between. 

[18] See also, F. Mokhtari, "Coping with Iran's Nuclear
Ambitions," the Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2005. To view the
article see,
www.latimes.com/opinion/printedition/california/la-oe-mokhtari22a
ug22,1, 1689359.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california 

[19] P. Kerr, "Back to Normal, Iran Nuclear Abilities Limited,"
Arms Control Association, September 6, 2005. To view the article
see,
www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_09/IranLimits.asp?print/act/2005_09/
IranLimits.asp 

[20] See also, A. Cowell, "Nuclear Weapon is Years off for Iran,
Research Panel Says," the New York Times, Wednesday September 8,
2005, p. A11. 



About the author:
 Muhammad Sahimi is Professor of Chemical Engineering and
Materials Science, and NIOC Professor of Petroleum Engineering
at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Since
1986 he has been a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists -
an organization dedicated to preventing the spread of nuclear
weapons - and a contributor to its Partners for Earth Program.
He has also been a visiting professor in Australia, Europe, and
the Middle East, and a consultant to many energy firms around
the world. In addition to his scientific work, his political
articles have appeared as book chapters, on various websites,
and in such publications as the Los Angeles Times and the Wall
Street Journal.   
  
<IMG SRC="http://www.payvand.com/books/0525940057.m.gif"><br>The
Iranians : Persia, Islam and the Soul of a Nation

© Copyright 2005 NetNative
(All Rights Reserved)   

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 9 Korea Herald: [Hideaki Kaneda]China's rapid rise as a 'sea power'   

  Editorial   

In an age of missiles and terrorist threats, many people think
that "sea power" is a word and concept from the past. Not in
China. Indeed, China is increasingly emphasizing its naval and
maritime interests: economic development, territorial
management, energy and food security as well as trade. A navy
sufficient to promote such activities is being rapidly developed
and purchased from abroad (mostly from Russia, the EU when
possible).

 Many of China's neighbors are alarmed. The United States
Defense Department views China's goal as being to build a series
of military and diplomatic strategic bases - a so-called "string
of pearls" - along the major sea lanes from the South China Sea
to the oil rich Middle East.

 China seeks not only to secure its energy supplies, but to
achieve broader security goals. For example, the Gwadar military
port, which China is constructing in southwest Pakistan, is
strategically placed to guard the throat of the Persian Gulf,
with electronic eavesdropping posts to monitor ships - including
war ships - moving through the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian
Sea.

 Similarly, China is building container port facilities at
Chittagong in Bangladesh for its naval and merchant fleets, as
well as more naval bases and electronic intelligence gathering
facilities on islands owned by Myanmar in the Gulf of Bengal.
Indeed, China's ties with Myanmar's military dictators look set
to turn into a de facto military alliance. In nearby Thailand,
China has invested $20 billion in a plan to build a canal across
the Kra Isthmus to connect the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of
Siam, thereby providing an alternate oil import route that
avoids the Strait of Malacca.

 In the South China Sea, China is developing systems to allow
large-scale deployment of naval and air force units by
fortifying bases on Hai Nan Island and the southern Chinese
coastal area. On the Spratley and Paracel islands - seized from
Vietnam and the Philippines respectively - China is building
port facilities to moor large surface ships and runways large
enough to handle long-range bombers. In effect, China is in the
process of building a group of literally unsinkable aircraft
carriers in the middle of the South China Sea.

 Why is China, usually considered a "continental power,"
engaging in this maritime expansion? China dominated Asia in
terms of "sea power" until the seventeenth century. Indeed,
during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Admiral Zheng He's "Great
Navy" was the world's most powerful. But for the last three
centuries, China has had no global maritime strategy, nor has it
possessed - or sought to possess - naval forces capable of
supporting such a strategy.

 Ironically, China's current maritime strategy has its roots in
the United States, the nation that China appears to perceive as
its key strategic rival, namely in the "sea power" theory
developed by Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan at the end of the
nineteenth century. In The Influence of Sea Power upon History,
published in 1890, Mahan argued that maritime power and economic
development were deeply intertwined. Only the ability to protect
trade and project power by sea could assure the vitality of this
nexus.

 Mahan identified the conditions that determine "sea power":
geographical position and environment; territorial capacity,
specifically coastline; population; character of people attuned
to maritime expeditions; character of government eager to
embrace "sea power." 

These conditions applied to the United States of Mahan's time,
and they surely apply to China today. China is already the
world's third largest trading nation and rapidly developing its
port capacities to manage an ever-increasing volume of trade.
Its ship tonnage (excluding fleets that sail under flags of
convenience) is the fourth largest in the world. Rapid expansion
of ship tonnage is part of China's current Five-Year, and by
2010 its shipbuilding capabilities will likely rival those of
Japan and Korea.

 However, unlike the United States and Britain in the past,
China today must turn to overseas bases rather than colonization
to enhance its "sea power" - hence its "string of pearls."
Still, China is transforming its coastal navy into an
ocean-going navy at a pace far quicker than most experts
reckoned possible. By 2010, China is expected to have 70 of the
most modern surface vessels, several modern strategic nuclear
submarines, and several tens of modernized attack submarines,
exceeding the modern forces of both Taiwan's navy and even
Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force, at least in quantitative
terms.

 Moreover, China plans to improve and expand its capabilities
for assault landing and joint logistical support, both of which
used to be weak points. This will provide China with necessary
capabilities to invade, should China's rulers wish, Japan's most
remote islands, including the disputed Senkaku Islands, as well
as Taiwan. If China's naval growth continues at its current
pace, it may have the world's largest naval force by 2020.

 All of Asia must wake up to the arrival of Chinese-style
aggressive "sea power." Japan, in particular, must reformulate
its national maritime strategy with this in mind. Japan, America
and other traditional maritime countries must also once again
treat "sea power" in Asia as a key component of their ability to
defend their own national interests.

Hideaki Kaneda, retired vice admiral of Japan's Self-Defense
Forces, is currently director of the Okazaki Institute. - Ed.

2005.09.12
 
*****************************************************************
 10 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Hill in Bid to Square Views With Unification Minister
 
  >     Updated Sep.11,2005 21:40 KST   
 
U.S. Adamant on Civilian Nuclear Program for N.Korea
   
The U.S. chief negotiator in six-party talks on North KoreaˇŻs
nuclear program Christopher Hill arrives in Seoul for a flying
visit on Monday afternoon, reportedly to square views with South
KoreaˇŻs unification minister. 

Hill will within a few hours move on to Beijing, where the
six-party talks return from recess on Tuesday. But he is
apparently eager for a meeting with Unification Minister Chung
Dong-young, who is off for inter-Korean ministerial talks in
Pyongyang from Tuesday. Officially, Hill is to meet Vice Foreign
Minister Song Min-soon, who heads the South Korean delegation at
the talks. But since the two will meet in Beijing, seeing Song
is unlikely to be the main reason Hill stops off in Seoul. 

"Hill's meeting with Chung will be a critical point for this
round of the six-party talks,ˇ± a South Korean official said.
Seoul and Washington differ over North KoreaˇŻs use of nuclear
energy for peaceful purposes. Chung has said that right should
be guaranteed, and admitted on Aug. 10 that the two allies do
not see eye to eye on the matter. After the talks adjourned,
Hill said Pyongyang should not be permitted a civilian nuclear
program since it has deceived the international community on
several occasions over what goes on at ostensibly peaceful-use
facilities. 

When Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon visited Washington immediately
after Chung's statement and met with his U.S. counterpart
Condoleezza Rice, he said there was ˇ°sufficient agreementˇ±
between the two countries about the issue. But taken together
the two statements suggest not all differences have been
settled. 

A South Korean official said HillˇŻs visit to Seoul was
understood as an attempt to harmonize views with Chung. Seoul
and Washington need to agree that North Korea must dismantle all
its nuclear programs to put effective pressure on Pyongyang,
while any remaining differences between the allies could hamper
progress at the talks. A South Korean diplomatic and security
source recently said the U.S. appeared to have softened its
stance somewhat. 

(englishnews@chosun.com ) 

*****************************************************************
 11 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: U.S. Adamant on Civilian Nuclear Program for N.Korea
 
  Home> National/Politics    Updated Sep.11,2005 19:43 KST   
 
The U.S. chief negotiator at six-party talks on North KoreaˇŻs
nuclear programs, Christopher Hill, on Thursday reiterated
Washington will not permit Pyongyang to operate a civilian
nuclear program. 

At a press conference on the eve of his departure for resumed
talks in Beijing, Hill cited South Korea's offer to provide the
North with sufficient electrical power to meet any shortfall.
"So if this is about energy, we've got a very good proposal for
that,ˇ± he said. ˇ°This would really meet their capacity needs.
We don't see any reason to go and develop additional capacity,
especially through such very difficult and extremely expensive
projects as nuclear energy." 

Hill said there was no time limit to the talks. He professed
himself neither optimistic nor pessimistic about getting
results. 

(englishnews@chosun.com ) 

  
*****************************************************************
 12 Japan Times: Views from Asia suggest that 'Team Bush' is playing poorly 
for all sides

  Sunday, September 11, 2005   

 By JEFF KINGSTON

CONFRONTING THE BUSH DOCTRINE: Critical Views From the
Asia-Pacific, edited by Mel Gurtov and Peter Van Ness. London:
Routledge Curzon, 2004, 277 pp., Ł20.99 (cloth).

 Reviewed by JEFF KINGSTON Characterizing the Bush
administration's foreign policy of zigzagging, dysfunctional
initiatives and self-inflicted wounds a "doctrine" seems a bit
of a stretch. Sadly, aggressive rhetoric, hegemonic delusions
and clumsy handling of allies have decisively trumped national
interests in the region.

 Good relations with South Korea and Japan have grown frayed,
North Korea has grown bolder and more dangerous, China is more
alienated while Indonesia represents a missed opportunity for
building better relations with the world's largest Muslim nation.

 This is not a book for those seeking a balanced assessment of
U.S. foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific under President George
W. Bush. Here readers encounter a no-holds barred critical
assessment that makes for grim reading precisely because the
contributors from around the region demonstrate just how much
U.S. interests have been imperiled now and in the future by Team
Bush. There is general agreement among the authors that the Bush
Doctrine's reliance on military options, preemptive war and
unilateralism is destabilizing the global order.

 The editors set the tone: "President Bush projects a naive,
dangerously childlike view of the world: a fundamentalist vision
of black and white, good and evil . . . . His characteristic
one-liners fail completely to capture the complex realities of
our 21st-century world."

 Richard Tanter reminds us that Bush can't be blamed for
everything, citing Japan's retreat from pacifism. He asserts
that "The Japanese government response to the Bush Doctrine was
essentially an acceleration and amplification of changes already
under way before Bush came to power, and which have increasingly
been the result of Japanese as much as American political
initiatives."

 In assessing how the Team Bush has bungled the North Korean
nuclear crisis, two South Korean scholars condemn "the Bush
Doctrine, which signals a major paradigmatic change in American
foreign and defense policy. Its moral absolutism, hegemonic
unilateralism, [and] offensive realism" have become part of the
problem. They argue that these inclinations not only serve to
define the problem but also unhelpfully limit options in trying
to address it. They emphasize: "A nuclear North Korea is
unthinkable. It would debilitate South Korea and trigger nuclear
proliferation in the region."

 Their critique is on target, but their policy suggestions are
uninspiring. Like Team Bush, they call for inspections and
verifiable, irreversible dismantling of nuclear facilities and
see no other option than reviving the stalled six-party talks
that they spend a good deal of space trashing. Essentially they
want the United States to take a more conciliatory line, arguing
that "While containment forces the North Korean leadership to
continue to rely on the status quo and erratic responses of
blackmail and brinkmanship, engagement can induce it to
deliberate on more practical options."

 Whether one agrees with this hopeful analysis or not, it is a
succinct expression of prevailing views in South Korea and goes
a long way in explaining why bilateral ties have become so
frosty. Clearly, some South Koreans believe a breakthrough
depends on regime change in Washington, D.C.

 Where is the congruence of strategic interest that once
underpinned the U.S.-ROK alliance? Is this merely a result of
DPRK manipulation, as apologists would have it? Or, has Team
Bush squandered this valuable asset and thus betrayed the
national interest by engaging in unproductive saber rattling and
treating South Korean concerns as little more than a nuisance?

 Peter van Ness proposes a four-member (U.S., Russia, China and
Japan) plus two (South and North Korea) security consortium as a
way out of the current deadlock. The framework would call on the
major powers to guarantee the security of the region and promote
peaceful reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula. He writes that
"The failure of the U.S. to consolidate its victories in either
country [Iraq and Afghanistan] means that the military option
for the U.S. against North Korea has become increasingly
untenable." This is welcome news to all of the countries likely
to experience the anticipated collateral damage; South Korea's
10 nuclear-power plants figure in this Armageddon scenario.

 So why would the U.S. suddenly abandon unilateralism? Van Ness
argues that the "Bush administration is seeking some sort of
face-saving multilateral format for resolving the crisis to
avoid being charged with caving in to North Korean nuclear
blackmail." He also argues that the U.S. is militarily
overextended and is thus increasingly drawn to the merits of
diplomatic solutions. However, Team Bush is unlikely to embrace
the formal institutions proposed by Van Ness precisely because
of the constraints they impose.

 In addition, how do leaders reconcile national interests with
the process? If North Korea is determined to acquire nuclear
weapons because it places no trust in either the framework or
the U.S., the question remains as to why any U.S. administration
would see this as an attractive option. 

Jeff Kingston teaches history at Temple University Japan. 

The Japan Times: Sept. 11, 2005
(C) All rights reserved 
*****************************************************************
 13 Japan Times: Pyongyang palliative is Bush's bitter pill

  Sunday, September 11, 2005   
  
 By EUGENE B. KOGAN
 Special to The Japan Times

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut -- Although buried by headlines from Iraq
and Hurricane Katrina-devastated U.S. Gulf Coast region, the
fourth round of six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear
program, about to resume in Beijing, presents the best chance
yet to resolve diplomatically the simmering crisis on the Korean
Peninsula. That's the good news.

 Unfortunately, the United States remains inflexible in its
negotiation strategy. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has
ruled out changing the sequence of the U.S. disarmament
proposal, which envisions Pyongyang first disclosing its weapons
programs, followed by provisional multilateral security
guarantees.

 The Bush administration also seems to be losing strategic
coherence in drawing unusual attention to the issue of human
rights in North Korea, which, while important, is an unnecessary
and dangerous distraction from the problem du jour -- North
Korea's nuclear program.

 America's inflexible and, lately, strategically incoherent
approach to the disarmament talks betrays a lack of
understanding of the history behind North Korea's drive to
become a nuclear power.

 North Korea has been shopping around for a nuclear bomb
intermittently since the end of the Korean War in 1953. After
being rebuffed by China, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung signed
two agreements on cooperation in nuclear research with Moscow.
The Soviets then provided Pyongyang with a small experimental
nuclear reactor. After the Soviets agreed to provide four
light-water nuclear reactors (LWRs) to North Korea, the latter
joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) on Dec. 12,
1985.

 The end of the decade witnessed the demise of the Soviet
empire, and the Soviets thus failed to provide the nuclear
reactors, leaving North Korea with only its NPT commitments.
Pyongyang withdrew from the NPT on Jan. 10, 2003 during an
escalation of tension with the U.S.

 In his account of North Korean negotiation strategy, "How
Communists Negotiate" (1955), Adm. C. Turner Joy, chief U.S.
delegate to the Korean Armistice Conference, writes that
"distortion of truth as practiced by Communists is a science."
North Koreans cheat systematically, but from their point of
view, they also have been cheated. The first instance was the
broken Soviet promise of four LWRs.

 Pyongyang also claims that it was cheated by the U.S. in the
1994 Agreed Framework, in which the "two sides agreed to move
toward full normalization of political and economic relations."
North Korea used the nonfulfillment of this clause as one
justification for declaring in May 1998 that it was no longer
bound by its Framework obligations. The history of North Korea's
drive to join the nuclear club holds important lessons for this
month's six-party talks:

 First, North Korea is afraid of being cheated. Therefore,
leader Kim Jong Il sees Washington's sequencing of the
disarmament proposal as a trap -- expecting the U.S. first to
disarm and then to destroy his regime. Bush's appointment of a
special envoy on human rights has aroused further suspicions in
Pyongyang about Washington's true intentions.

 In order for the talks to succeed, the Bush administration must
make the strategic decision that, all else (e.g., human rights)
being equal, a denuclearized North Korea is acceptable to the
U.S. The administration made this strategic choice vis-a-vis
Libya in December 2003 when Moammar Ghadafi, the Libyan leader,
agreed to give up all weapons of mass destruction programs.

 Given Washington's ambivalent attitude toward North Korea,
however, it comes as no surprise that Kim is reluctant to give
up his nuclear capability.

 A second lesson to be learned from the history of Pyongyang's
pursuit of nuclear capability is that sometimes an imperfect
option is better than none at all. The U.S. demand for a
complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament should remain
the end goal of negotiations. In the meantime, the six parties
must negotiate a secure freeze of North Korea's weapons programs.

 A freeze is desirable for two reasons. First, it will give the
U.S. and its regional allies the breathing space they require to
plan for the next steps in negotiations, while arresting the
growth of Pyongyang's deadly arsenal. (Since the last round of
talks in June 2004, North Korea's stockpile of weapons-grade
plutonium has increased fourfold, enough to make nine nuclear
bombs.) Second, this will be a test of Pyongyang's strategic
outlook. If North Korea refuses to freeze, it will help the U.S.
persuade China to exert more robust pressure on Pyongyang.

 A freeze is a bitter but strategically necessary pill for the
Bush administration to swallow. This decision will be similar to
the Clinton administration's when it negotiated the Agreed
Framework with Pyongyang. The common sense prevailed in 1994
that freezing the growth of North Korea's atomic arsenal was
preferable to allowing the regime to become a full-blown nuclear
power.

 The same common sense must prevail today especially since
Bush's options are more constricted than Clinton's. For
instance, during the 1993-1994 nuclear crisis, Clinton
administration officials developed contingency plans for
surgical strikes on the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which, if
carried out, could have effected a major regional conflagration
with Pyongyang. Overextended in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S.
simply does not have this option.

 This month the six parties must focus on disarmament and move
toward negotiating a freeze of Pyongyang's ever-growing
plutonium-based nuclear arsenal. This will lay a foundation for
the next round of talks where issues like North Korea's
uranium-enrichment program, LWRs, permanent dismantlement and
verification issues can be addressed.

 Eugene B. Kogan is a senior political analyst at Americans for
Informed Democracy. 

The Japan Times: Sept. 11, 2005
(C) All rights reserved 
*****************************************************************
 14 Reuters: China moves special envoy ahead of N.Korea talks 

Sun Sep 11, 2005 7:48 AM ET

 BEIJING, Sept 11 (Reuters) - China's special envoy handling the 
North Korean nuclear crisis has been appointed ambassador to 
South Korea, Xinhua news agency announced on Sunday, two days 
before six-party talks on the crisis resume in Beijing.

 Ning Fukui was appointed to his special envoy role in 2003 
before the second round of six-party talks and travelled to 
Moscow, Seoul, Washington, Tokyo and Pyongyang in his diplomatic 
shuffle.

 The talks, involving China, Russia, Japan, the United States and 
the two Koreas, are aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons 
programmes. Pyongyang has hardened its stance on its right to 
have a civilian nuclear programme, and this has proved a key 
sticking point.

 The fourth round of talks went into recess in Beijing on Aug. 7 
after failing to agree even a statement of principles during 13 
days of negotiations. It resumes on Tuesday.

 Xinhua's one-sentence report did not say who would replace Ning, 
who was China's ambassador to Cambodia from 2000 to 2003, or when 
he would take up his new post.                                          

© Reuters 2005. 
All Rights Reserved.                    
*****************************************************************
 15 Reuters: RPT-N.Korea hardens stance ahead of nuclear talks 

Sun Sep 11, 2005 8:28 PM ET

 By Jon Herskovitz

 SEOUL, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Six-party talks on ending North 
Korea's nuclear weapons programmes open on Tuesday in Beijing 
with Pyongyang having hardened its stance on its right to have a 
civilian programme -- a key sticking point in the discussions.

 The talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the 
United States headed into a recess on Aug. 7 after failing to 
settle even on a statement of principles during 13 days of 
discussions in Beijing.

 Since then, North Korea has stepped up its rhetoric on what it 
says is its inherent right to a peaceful nuclear programme and 
delayed the original late-August date for restarting the talks.

 Officials from the other parties say a peaceful nuclear 
programme should be considered, if at all, after North Korea 
builds up trust with the international community. For now, they 
fear such a project could be misused to make atomic weapons.

 The other parties to the talks say the top priority -- and the 
key to earning trust -- is to have North Korea dismantle its 
nuclear weapons programmes completely, verifiably and 
permanently. The North says it already has nuclear weapons.

 "The peaceful use (of nuclear programmes) is not the biggest 
issue at the talks. The biggest issue is whether North Korea will 
clearly commit itself to abandoning its nuclear weapons 
programmes and other nuclear programmes completely," said a 
Japanese delegate to the six-party talks.

 North Korea sees things differently.

 It has said it will press ahead with plans for a civilian 
nuclear programme, and U.S. objections could harm the talks, 
which this time are set to last a week but could continue longer.

 "Nobody should expect the DPRK to waive its right to peaceful 
nuclear activity," an official commentary said. The North's 
official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

 A senior South Korean official familiar with the talks said 
behind the scenes North Korea had been pressing to restart a 
suspended project to supply it with relatively 
proliferation-resistant light-water reactors.

 PROGRESS AND TRUST?

 An international consortium was to supply those reactors as part 
of a 1994 deal under which North Korea was to freeze its nuclear 
weapons programmes in return for fuel assistance that would later 
be replaced by power from the reactors.

 Washington says the North broke the deal by pursuing a secret 
nuclear weapons plan using highly enriched uranium.

 The South Korean official, who asked not to be named, said the 
United States would not agree to dusting off the 1994 light-water 
reactor deal nor striking a new agreement under which the North 
gets international help to build light-water reactors.

 A separate senior South Korean official said the parties had 
laid most of their cards on the table and the discussions had 
made strides since they began in August 2003.

 "We are not at the stage of talking about dismantlement versus 
corresponding measures any more. We're much deeper into the 
issues," he said.

 A senior Russian diplomat told Interfax news agency the six 
parties "have never been so close" to reaching a deal.

 Yet that optimism is not universal, and analysts note failure to 
make progress at this set of talks could lead to pressure to 
refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council.

 U.S. officials have expressed concern about the North having any 
sort of nuclear programme, saying the country could use a 
civilian programme to develop nuclear weapons.

 North Korea declared in February it had nuclear weapons. It left 
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in January 2003.

 The top U.S. negotiator to the talks said North Korea, which 
battles energy shortages, should look to a sweetener from South 
Korea to supply it with electricity about equal to its own output 
after it dismantles its nuclear weapons programmes.

 "Our position has been very clear on this. North Korea needs to 
get out of the nuclear business," Christopher Hill, assistant 
secretary of state for Asia and Pacific Affairs, told a briefing 
in Washington on Friday.

 "In some two-and-a-half to three years, they could have new 
electricity being generated into towns and villages and cities in 
the DPRK," he said of the proposal from South Korea.

 Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a briefing last 
week that Beijing -- host of all the talks so far -- hoped the 
parties would seize the opportunity to reach a deal. (With 
additional reporting by Teruaki Ueno in Tokyo and Jack Kim in 
Seoul)                                          

© Reuters 2005. 
All Rights Reserved.                    
*****************************************************************
 16 [NYTr] USA's First-Strike Nuke Plan Called "Preemptive Use"
 
Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 15:02:05 -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
 
[By "pre-emptive use," the US means a nuclear first-strike.]

The Washington Post - Sep 11, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091001053_pf.html

Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan

Strategy Includes Preemptive Use Against Banned Weapons

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons
that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to
preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass
destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to
destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

The document, written by the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs staff but not yet finally
approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, would update rules and
procedures governing use of nuclear weapons to reflect a preemption strategy
first announced by the Bush White House in December 2002. The strategy was
outlined in more detail at the time in classified national security
directives.

At a White House briefing that year, a spokesman said the United States would
"respond with overwhelming force" to the use of weapons of mass destruction
against the United States, its forces or allies, and said "all options" would
be available to the president.

The draft, dated March 15, would provide authoritative guidance for commanders
to request presidential approval for using nuclear weapons, and represents the
Pentagon's first attempt to revise procedures to reflect the Bush preemption
doctrine. A previous version, completed in 1995 during the Clinton
administration, contains no mention of using nuclear weapons preemptively or
specifically against threats from weapons of mass destruction.

Titled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" and written under the direction
of Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the
draft document is unclassified and available on a Pentagon Web site. It is
expected to be signed within a few weeks by Air Force Lt. Gen. Norton A.
Schwartz, director of the Joint Staff, according to Navy Cmdr. Dawn Cutler, a
public affairs officer in Myers's office. Meanwhile, the draft is going
through final coordination with the military services, the combatant
commanders, Pentagon legal authorities and Rumsfeld's office, Cutler said in a
written statement.

A "summary of changes" included in the draft identifies differences from the
1995 doctrine, and says the new document "revises the discussion of nuclear
weapons use across the range of military operations."

The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is
against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or
allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations.

Another scenario for a possible nuclear preemptive strike is in case of an
"imminent attack from adversary biological weapons that only effects from
nuclear weapons can safely destroy."

That and other provisions in the document appear to refer to nuclear
initiatives proposed by the administration that Congress has thus far declined
to fully support.

Last year, for example, Congress refused to fund research toward development
of nuclear weapons that could destroy biological or chemical weapons materials
without dispersing them into the atmosphere.

The draft document also envisions the use of atomic weapons for "attacks on
adversary installations including WMD, deep, hardened bunkers containing
chemical or biological weapons."

But Congress last year halted funding of a study to determine the viability of
the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator warhead (RNEP) -- commonly called the
bunker buster -- that the Pentagon has said is needed to attack hardened,
deeply buried weapons sites.

The Joint Staff draft doctrine explains that despite the end of the Cold War,
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction "raises the danger of nuclear
weapons use." It says that there are "about thirty nations with WMD programs"
along with "nonstate actors [terrorists] either independently or as sponsored
by an adversarial state."

To meet that situation, the document says that "responsible security planning
requires preparation for threats that are possible, though perhaps unlike the
use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, the Pentagon
paper says preparations must be made to use nuclear weapons and show
determination to use them "if necessary to prevent or retaliate against WMD
use."

The draft says that to deter a potential adversary from using such weapons,
that adversary's leadership must "believe the United States has both the
ability and will to pre-empt or retaliate promptly with responses that are
credible and effective." The draft also notes that U.S. policy in the past has
"repeatedly rejected calls for adoption of 'no first use' policy of nuclear
weapons since this policy could undermine deterrence."

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee
who has been a leading opponent of the bunker-buster program, said yesterday
the draft was "apparently a follow-through on their nuclear posture review and
they seem to bypass the idea that Congress had doubts about the program." She
added that members "certainly don't want the administration to move forward
with a [nuclear] preemption policy" without hearings, closed door if
necessary.

A spokesman for Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, said yesterday the panel has not yet received a copy of
the draft.

Hans M. Kristensen, a consultant to the Natural Resources Defense Council, who
discovered the document on the Pentagon Web site, said yesterday that it
"emphasizes the need for a robust nuclear arsenal ready to strike on short
notice including new missions."

Kristensen, who has specialized for more than a decade in nuclear weapons
research, said a final version of the doctrine was due in August but has not
yet appeared.

"This doctrine does not deliver on the Bush administration pledge of a reduced
role for nuclear weapons," Kristensen said. "It provides justification for
contentious concepts not proven and implies the need for RNEP."

One reason for the delay may be concern about raising publicly the possibility
of preemptive use of nuclear weapons, or concern that it might interfere with
attempts to persuade Congress to finance the bunker buster and other
specialized nuclear weapons.

In April, Rumsfeld appeared before the Senate Armed Services panel and asked
for the bunker buster study to be funded. He said the money was for research
and not to begin production on any particular warhead. "The only thing we have
is very large, very dirty, big nuclear weapons
       
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*****************************************************************
 17 Las Vegas SUN: Plan Envisions Using Nukes on Terrorists 

Today: September 11, 2005 at 9:26:16 PDT 

ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON (AP) - 

A Pentagon planning document being updated to reflect the
doctrine of pre-emption declared by President Bush in 2002
envisions the use of nuclear weapons to deter terrorists from
using weapons of mass destruction against the United States or
its allies. 

The "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations," which was last
updated 10 years ago, makes clear that "the decision to employ
nuclear weapons at any level requires explicit orders from the
president." 

But it says that in a changing environment "terrorists or
regional states armed with WMD will likely test U.S. security
commitments to its allies and friends." 

"In response, the U.S. needs a range of capabilities to assure
friend and foe alike of its resolve," says the 69-page document
dated March 15. 

A Pentagon spokesman said Saturday evening that Navy Cmdr. Dawn
Cutler, a public affairs officer for the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, has issued a statement saying the draft is
still being circulated among the various services, field
commanders, Pentagon lawyers and Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld's office, . 

Its existence was initially reported by The Washington Post in
Sunday editions, which said the document was posted on a
Pentagon Internet site and pointed out to it by a consultant for
the Natural Resorces Defense Council. 

The file was not available at that site Saturday evening, but a
copy was available at http://www.globalsecurity.org . 

"A broader array of capability is needed to dissuade states from
undertaking ... courses of action that would threaten U.S. and
allied security," the draft says. "U.S. forces must pose a
credible deterrent to potential adversaries who have access to
modern military technology, including WMD and the means to
deliver them." 

It says "deterrence of potential adversary WMD use requires the
potential adversary leadership to believe the United States has
both the ability and will to pre-empt or retaliate promptly with
responses that are credible and effective." 

It says "this will be particularly difficult with nonstate
(non-government) actors who employ or attempt to gain use of
WMD. Here, deterrence may be directed at states that support
their efforts as well as the terrorist organization itself. 

"However, the continuing proliferation of WMD along with the
means to deliver them increases the probability that someday a
state/nonstate actor nation/terrorist may, through miscaluation
or by deliberate choice, use those weapons. In such cases,
deterrence, even based on the threat of massive destruction, may
fail and the United States must be prepared to use nuclear
weapons if necessary." 

It notes that U.S. policy has always been purposely vague with
regard to when the United States would use nuclear weapons and
that it has never vowed not to be the first to use them in a
conflict. 

One scenario for a possible nuclear pre-emptive strike in the
draft would be in the case of an "imminent attack from adversary
biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can
safely destroy." 

The Bush administration is continuing to push for development of
an earth-penetrating nuclear warhead, but has yet to obtain
congressional approval. 

However, the Senate voted in July to revive the "bunker-buster"
program that Congress last year decided to kill. 

Administration officials have maintained that the U.S. needs to
try to develop a nuclear warhead that would be capable of
destroying deeply buried targets including bunkers tunneled into
solid rock. 

But opponents said that its benefits are questionable and that
such a warhead would cause extensive radiation fallout above
ground killing thousands of people. And they say it may make it
easier for a future president to decide to use the nuclear
option instead of a conventional weapon. 

The Senate voted 53-43 to include $4 million for research into
the feasibility of a bunker-buster nuclear warhead. Earlier this
year, the House refused to provide the money, so a final
decision will have to be worked out between the two chambers. 

--- 

On The Net: 

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/jp3-12fc2.pdf 

         All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 18 WorldNetDaily: Keeping the truth from us peons
 
  SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 10 2005           
                            
[Supercritical Thoughts] [Gordon Prather] 
 
Posted: September 10, 2005

Drawing upon the findings of the a) Iraq Survey Group, b) U.S.
and British official investigations, c) contemporary Iraqi
official documents, and d) personal memoirs of U.N. officials
and others, Associated Press reporter Charles Hanley has
constructed a highly regarded "post mortem" of Saddam&#39;s
non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" threat to us.

Hanley begins his post-mortem – appropriately enough – in August
1995. 

Gen. Hussein Kamal, director of Saddam's nuke and chem-bio
weapons programs (and also Saddam's son-in-law), had defected to
Jordan and was extensively "debriefed" by U.N. officials, the
CIA and the Brit equivalent (MI6). 

Kamal revealed that Iraq – at his direction – had destroyed all
chemical and biological agents and weapons, including the
missiles to deliver them, in 1991. 

Upon entering Iraq after the Gulf War, the International Atomic
Energy Agency had discovered and destroyed what remained of the
unsuccessful Iraqi nuke program. 

Quoth Kamal of Iraq's WMD programs: "Nothing remained." 

What Kamal revealed was kept secret from Saddam – and from us
peons – but was shared with high-level U.S. and Brit officials. 

By 1998, U.N. inspectors were able to verify Kamal's claims in
every detail. Hence, the Security Council was informed that
Saddam was substantively disarmed and that the "sanctions"
imposed on Iraq in 1991 could be lifted. 

Clinton "vetoed" it, claiming he had "intelligence" there were
WMD stockpiles hidden beneath Saddam's palaces. Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright announced that, even if Saddam had been
disarmed, the U.S. would never allow the sanctions to be lifted
so long as Saddam was in power. 

So, Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a four-day extensive
bombing campaign of Saddam's "palaces" in Baghdad, obviously
meant to "remove" Saddam. 

Understandably, when Clinton failed, Saddam wouldn't let U.N.
inspectors back into Iraq. 

We now know that President Bush came into office also looking
for an excuse to "remove" Saddam. He went to Congress in
September 2002 seeking "specific statutory authorization" to
resume the Gulf War, basing his case on the National
Intelligence Estimate of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction
Programs, hurriedly prepared by Director of Central Intelligence
George Tenet for Bush in the summer of 2002. 

But, NIE to the contrary, Bush and various congressional leaders
knew that, as of 1999, Saddam had no WMD programs and was not a
threat to the U.S. 

Of course, they still didn't let us peons in on that. 

We now know that by the summer of 2002 Prime Minister Tony Blair
had agreed to support Bush's pre-emptive war of aggression
against Iraq, but insisted that Bush get the Security Council to
demand that Saddam let the U.N. inspectors back into Iraq to
conduct totally intrusive inspections. Blair was confident that
Saddam would refuse and Bush-Blair would then have their casus
belli. 

To their surprise, Saddam readily agreed to every Security
Council demand. U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq in November
2002. 

Then, in February 2003, Newsweek magazine – and also Sherrie
Gossett of WorldNetDaily – published excerpts from the Kamal
"debriefing" documents, kept secret since 1995. 

Finally, with Bush's pre-emptive invasion already secretly under
way, the rest of us peons found out what a) Bush-Blair, b)
CIA-MI6, and c) Congress-Parliament had known since at least
1998 – Saddam had destroyed all his "weapons of mass
destruction" way back in 1991. 

<img width=300
height=250
src="http://z1.adserver.com/w/cp.x;rid=14;tid=7;ev=1;dt=3;ac=26;c
=327;" border=0>

So, Bush-Cheney-Rice-Powell launched a frantic last-minute media
blitz to convince us Saddam had been resurrecting his WMD
programs while the U.N. inspectors had been absent. 

But, alas, U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission Chairman
Hans Blix and IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei were
already reporting each month to the Security Council that they
could find no "indication" that Saddam had made any attempt to
reconstruct his WMD programs since 1991, much less 1998. 

What's a poor bunch of naked aggressors – and their media
sycophants – to do? 

Brazen it out! 

Consequently, according to the "determination" Bush sent to
Congress – as required – on March 19, 2003, we had to launch a
pre-emptive invasion because Iraq posed a continuing threat to
the national security of the United States by: 

continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and
biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear
weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist
organizations. 

Of course, Bush-Cheney-Rice-Blair couldn't admit they had known
about what Kamal had revealed back in 1995 and had to discredit
Blix and ElBaradei. 

The final report of the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Saddam
– as Kamal and Blix and ElBaradei maintained – had no WMDs and
posed no threat to anyone. A week after that report was filed,
Bush was still telling all us peons that Saddam did.
 
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy
implementing official for national security-related technical
matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and
Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office
of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr.
Prather also served as legislative assistant for national
security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking
member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate
Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had
earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National
Laboratory in New Mexico. 

[WorldNetDaily.com] 

--> news@worldnetdaily.com--> Contact WND
*****************************************************************
 19 Independent: US develops strategy for first use of nuclear weapons against WMD 

By Rupert Cornwell 

Published: 12 September 2005 

The Pentagon has drawn up a new strategy, built on the 2002
"Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive military strikes, that would
allow the United States to make first use of nuclear weapons to
thwart an attack using weapons of mass destruction against the
country. 

Under the scheme, developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff but yet
to be ratified by Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary,
commanders would be able to request permission from the
President to use nuclear weapons in a variety of scenarios.
According to The Washington Post, one scenario is of an enemy
that is using, or "is about to use", WMD against US military
forces or the civilian population. Another is where nuclear
weapons could be used against biological weapons that an enemy
was close to using, and which could only be safely destroyed by
nuclear weapons and their after-effects. 

In practice, the strategy would update existing guidelines,
drawn up in 1995 under the Clinton administration. It would fit
in with plans mooted by the Pentagon to develop a new generation
of nuclear weapons, specifically designed to attack enemy
bunkers holding WMD, which could be buried deep underground. 

Congress has thus far declined to provide funds for a study into
the so-called "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator", not least
because of criticism that such a move would make a mockery of
US-led efforts to prevent nuclear-weapons proliferation, and
make it more, rather than less likely, that such weapons would
be used. 

The Pentagon document argues that proliferation has already made
it more likely that nuclear weapons could be used. It claims
that some 30 nations have WMD programmes - not to mention
terrorists, or "non-state actors", some of them acting with
state sponsorship. 

© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 20 Biz Journals: Whistle-blower status denied - 

2005-09-08
 
bizjournals.com

Email Story September 8, 2005 

 Denver Business Journal 

Adrienne Anderson, a board member for the in 1996-98, can't claim 
whistle-blower status as an "authorized representative of 
employees" because she was a political appointee of the Mayor 
Wellington Webb administration, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 
10th Circuit in Denver ruled Sept. 2. 

The Metro District is the wastewater treatment agency for most
of metro Denver and the largest wastewater treatment facility in
the Rocky Mountain region. It collects and treats about 140
million gallons of wastewater a day at its plant five miles
northeast of central Denver. 

Anderson drew the ire of other board members from the moment she
joined the board in 1996 because of her very public concerns
about the district accepting and cleaning effluent from the
Lowry Landfill Superfund site. The district already had agreed
to take the effluent before Anderson's appointment in a legal
settlement overseen by the . 

The district began accepting the effluent in 2000 and continues
to do so to this day, said district spokesman Steve Frank. 

Anderson was worried about plutonium and other radionuclides in
the effluent. She spoke of her concerns on radio talk shows, in
press conferences and at district board meetings. 

But she also complained to the U.S. Department of Labor in May
1997, filing suit under environmental whistle-blower
regulations, and said the board wouldn't listen to her motions
in meetings and tried to muzzle her complaints about the
agreement to accept effluent from Lowry. 

That case wound through the labor department's legal channels
and at one point Anderson was awarded $425,000 in damages from
the district. It ended in May 2003 when the department's
Administrative Review Board ruled Anderson couldn't claim
whistle-blower status because she was a political appointee. 

Anderson appealed the ruling to the federal appeals court, which
issued a ruling Sept. 2 agreeing with the labor department's
Administrative Review Board. 

"Public service should encourage, not muzzle, public debate. On
the other hand, Anderson should not have been surprised when
bare knuckles were met with bare knuckles. And when the gloves
came off bloody knuckles as well as bloody noses were exposed to
public view and comment. Her claims that she suffered disparate,
even disparaging, treatment was rightfully part of her very
public campaign to win the hearts and minds of the greater
Denver citizenry. But it does not follow that her political
wounds need be met with healing balm in this forum," the ruling
said. 

The case was heard by appeals court judges Harris L. Hartz,
Monroe G. McKay and Terrence L. O'Brien. O'Brien wrote the
opinion. 

As for the radiation that Anderson worried about, "We've done
hundreds of analyses on the water out there and not found any of
the radionuclides that she was fearful would be present," Frank
said. 

The damages were never paid to Anderson because the case was
under appeal, Frank said. 			 			 			 			 

© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc. Add RSS Headlines 
			 	 
	 	 
*****************************************************************
 21 Boston Cod: Looking West From Boston: An American Hiroshima  

09/10/05 · 1:21 am      posted by Codfish Press
            
September 12th, 2005   			   				 				 				 				 				 				 				
				 				 				 				 				 				 						 				 				 				 search cape
[Greg O'Brien] 

Greg O'Brien is editor and president of Codfish Press, a
publishing and political/communications strategy company. He is
the author/editor of several books, a Boston Metro newspaper
columnist, a contributor to New York Metro, a freelance writer
for national and regional magazines, a television script writer
and a documentary producer. He has contributed in the past to
Boston Magazine, the old Boston Herald American, USA Today, The
Arizona Republic, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press,
UPI, and is former editor and publisher of The Cape Codder
newspaper and a former managing director of Community Newspaper
Company of Boston. He comments here about Boston and the world
beyond, and about Cape Cod , Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket on
his local blog, Codfish Press. 
	
Lost in recent newspaper headlines touting the 60th anniversary
of the dropping of nuclear bombs over two Japanese cities that
brought World War II literally to a screeching halt are the
downwinders of this countrythe forgotten victims of our atomic
testing program in the 1950s and 60s, the road kill of this
American Hiroshima, the scores who have died from radiation
exposure and their families who were left to cope with this
numbing loss. 	

[The prettiest radioactive wasteland in Nevada.]  The government
had told the downwinders it needed to test these fireballs to
stay ahead of the Soviets, who had detonated their first atomic
device on Aug. 29, 1949; in the years to follow, the Soviets
ignited 266 surface and air nuclear bombs in the Kazakhstan
region of Semi Palatinsk. And so no one in the remote downwind
corridor of southern Utah and northwest Arizona blinked when
over the course of two decades more than 100 nuclear weapons
were exploded above and below the ground at the Nevada Test
Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Residentsmany of them
patriotic Mormons who seldom questioned the governments
authoritywere not dissuaded in the early days from viewing the
explosions at a distance. (On right; The prettiest radioactive
wasteland in Nevada.) 	

The warnings at first were casual. Families were told there
would be a test, and hours later the ash would fallat first
light, then heavyas pink clouds of fallout, carried by downwind
air currents, drifted over Arizona and Utah. The ash tingled the
skin, almost stung. Children brushed it off. The debris covered
playgrounds, homes and fields where milk cows ate the grass
coated with radioactive ash. 	

It wasnt long before children and their parents began getting
sick. Many died, and soon the downwiders began to feel that they
had been deemed expendable by their government in its quest for
nuclear superiority. Government officials privately specified
that if it turns out that we have killed children, as we were
clearly doing in the 1950s, lie about it, Stewart Udall,
Interior Secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations,
and a lawyer for some of the downwinders, said several years ago
in an interview for a documentary, Downwind of Morality,
produced by Bill Turpie. I served as associate field producer on
the project and co-wrote the script. 	

The government lies would hide a multitude of sins: at the
Nevada Test Site and the Los Alamos (New Mexico) Lab where the
bombs were designed; at Hanford reservation in southwest
Washington where the government processed plutonium during World
War II and the Cold War, and secretly released radioactive
iodine up the stack of a plutonium processor in 1949; and at
government laboratories throughout the country, like Oak Ridge
Laboratory in Tennessee where a number of terminal patients were
injected without consent many years ago with plutonium (the
critical isotope needed in a nuclear chain reaction) to
determine how much exposure humans could endure. Not only is
radiation that is injected or burns the skin deadly, but equally
lethal is the absorption into the body of plants and animals
that have been contaminated. 	

We have killed off or maimed millions of people without any war
at all, Rudi Nussbaum, an expert on the nuclear issue who then
taught at Portland State University in Oregon, noted in Downwind
of Morality. 	

In our fear, we sacrificed whole parts of this country by the
creation of these weapons, William Lanouette, biographer of Leo
Szilard, the Hungarian scientist who first contemplated a
nuclear chain reaction, said in the documentary. We sacrificed a
generation of peoplethrough the radiation affects of producing
these weapons. 	

The litany of suffering and death in the wake of atomic test
explosions in the Nevada desert is stunning. It defies any
coincidence suggested by defenders of the testing program, or
statements by nuclear energy officials, that evidence of
radiation poisoning is anecdotal. One woman interviewed for the
documentary said she had a brother whose entire class, with the
exception of one, ultimately died from cancer. A retired Air
Force worker said that after Nevada test blasts Geiger counters
were often placed on cars in the area, and they buzzed like
rattlesnakes! And in nearby Utah, a hardware store owner lost 14
members of his family to cancer. The government lied to us, said
a downwinder in Northern Arizona. Thats the greatest travesty.
They told us we were safe, and they knew that we were not. 	

More than 50 years later, the tragedies continue. Entire family
trees have been seared, and the toll, passed down through
heredity, sadly keeps rising. 	 	 	 	 					 -->   

Website ©2005 & Best Read Guide . Questions? Comments? Call
(508) 385-0003 or email 			 			 			 			   		 		 	 
*****************************************************************
 22 Sunday Times: WMD threat could spark American nuclear strike

thetimes.co.uk

September 12, 2005                     

From Giles Whittell in Washington
 		   		 		
A PRESIDENT of the United States would be able to launch 
pre-emptive nuclear strikes against enemies planning to use 
weapons of mass destruction under a revised “nuclear operations” 
doctrine to be signed in the next few weeks. 

In a significant shift after half a century of nuclear deterrence 
based on the threat of massive retaliation, the revised doctrine 
would allow pre-emptive strikes against states or terror groups, 
and to destroy chemical and biological weapons stockpiles. 

Presidential approval would still be required for any nuclear
strike, but the updated document, the existence of which was
confirmed by the Pentagon at the weekend, emphasises the need
for the US to adapt to a world of worsening proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in which deterrence might
fail. In that event, it states, “the United States must be
prepared to use nuclear weapons if necessary”. 

The Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, last revised ten
years ago, extends President Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war
to cover a US nuclear arsenal that is expected to shrink to
between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012. 

It was drafted by the Pentagon in March and posted on the
internet, but did not attract widespread attention until a
report on it in The Washington Post yesterday. It has since been
removed from the Department of Defence website. 

It came to light as Iran insisted, in defiance of the European
Union, that it would continue processing uranium at its Isfahan
reactor. The US has called on the UN Security Council to impose
sanctions on Tehran for failing to shelve its nuclear programme. 

Referring repeatedly to “non-state actors” — parlance for
terrorists — the doctrine is designed to arm the White House and
US forces with a new range of threats and sanctions to counter
the situation of threatened nuclear attack by al-Qaeda or one of
its affiliates. 

The document’s key phrase appears in a list of pre-emptive
nuclear strike scenarios, the first of which is against an enemy
using “or intending to use WMD”. 

Elsewhere it states that “deterrence of potential adversary WMD
use requires the potential adversary leadership to believe that
the United States has both the ability and will to pre-empt or
retaliate promptly with responses that are credible and
effective”. 

The 1995 version of the doctrine contained no mention of
pre-emption or WMD as legitimate nuclear targets.   	 		

sponsorship in Times Online, The Times and The Sunday Times. 

Copyright 2005                 Times Newspapers Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 23 Reuters: Pentagon document would alter nuclear weapons plan

Sat Sep 10, 2005 10:05 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Defence Department has written a 
draft revision of its nuclear operations doctrine that outlines 
the use of nuclear weapons to pre-empt an enemy's attack with 
weapons of mass destruction, according to a copy of the document 
available online on Saturday.

The draft "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations," dated March 
15, revised the "discussion of nuclear weapons use across the 
range of military operations."

According to the document, combatant commanders could request 
approval from the president to use nuclear weapons under a 
variety of scenarios, such as to pre-empt an enemy's use of 
weapons of mass destruction against the United States, 
multinational or alliance forces or civilian populations.

Commanders could seek approval to use nuclear weapons in the face 
of an enemy's imminent biological weapons attack that "only 
effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy," the document 
said.

The draft also envisioned nuclear weapon use in attacks on enemy 
installations containing weapons of mass destruction, among other 
scenarios.

A Defence Department spokesman told Reuters the document had not 
yet been given to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It is due to 
be signed within the next few weeks by the director of the Joint 
Staff, the spokesman said.

The unclassified document was available on numerous Web sites 
such as GlobalSecurity.org, a defence policy Web site. A Pentagon 
site, however, listed the document as unavailable.

Other scenarios envisioned in the draft doctrine include nuclear 
weapons use to counter potentially overwhelming conventional 
forces, for rapid and favorable war termination on U.S. terms, to 
demonstrate U.S. intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to 
deter enemy use of weapons of mass destruction, and to respond to 
the use of weapons of mass destruction supplied by an enemy to a 
"surrogate."

The document said "numerous nonstate organizations (terrorist, 
criminal)" and about 30 countries have programs for weapons of 
mass destruction.

"Further, the possible use of WMD by nonstate actors either 
independently or as sponsored by an adversarial state, remain a 
significant proliferation concern," the draft said.                                             

© Reuters 2005. 
All Rights Reserved.                    
*****************************************************************
 24 Reuters: Fears grow of meltdown at ambitious UN summit 

Sun Sep 11, 2005 3:18 PM ET

 By Evelyn Leopold

 UNITED NATIONS, Sept 11 (Reuters) - With more than 150 world 
leaders headed to a U.N. summit this week, fears grew that a 
blueprint on new approaches to global security, human rights and 
extreme poverty in the 21st century would be negotiated down to 
pious generalities.

 Over the past year U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has 
organized experts on plans to halve poverty in the next 10 years, 
reduce the threat of war and terrorism, and advance human rights. 
But an outcome document for the three-day summit, that begins on 
Wednesday, is still not completed.

 Sharp divisions have arisen on each issue, between north and 
south, among groups of developing nations themselves, and between 
the European Union and the United States, reflecting differences 
in a complicated world.

 To make matters worse, the U.N. method of negotiating is to seek 
consensus among 191 members, which means a minority can block a 
majority's wishes.

 "At bottom, the purpose of summit is to rekindle the ideals that 
animated the founding of the United Nations 60 years ago in San 
Francisco," said Shashi Tharoor, the U.N. public information 
undersecretary-general.

 "That means international cooperation to resolve problems 
without passports, that no one country or one group of countries 
can solve on their own -- human rights, terrorism, climate 
change," said Tharoor, who is also an Indian novelist.

 The United States roiled developing countries last month when it 
moved to cut language that urged rich nations to increase foreign 
aid to 0.7 percent of their gross national product, as the 
Europeans have promised to do by 2015.

 The aim of the funds was to meet the 2000 U.N. Millennium 
Development Goals that would halve extreme poverty and child 
mortality and reverse the AIDS pandemic by 2015.

 Another area of dispute arose when a group of countries, 
including Russia, Cuba and Pakistan, fought against procedures 
and criteria for setting up a new Human Rights Council to replace 
the discredited Geneva-based Human Rights Commission.

 Also in trouble is the concept of "responsibility to protect" 
civilians threatened by genocide and war crimes as well as 
terrorism definitions.

 Stalled too are plans to give the secretary-general more power 
to move around jobs and put in place oversight bodies following a 
blistering report of U.N. management procedures by a yearlong 
investigation into the Iraqi oil-for-food program.

 This would mean reducing the power of the 191-member General 
Assembly, which controls management and the budget and where 
developing nations have a majority.

 DISAPPOINTMENT PALPABLE

 For David Shorr of the Washington-based Stanley Foundation, 
which organized programs on U.N. reform, the United States is 
"overreaching by niggling over small stuff rather than shoring up 
the major items." He said Cuba, Colombia, Egypt, India, Pakistan, 
Iran, among others, "often prefer the inconclusive debates that 
often paralyze the General Assembly."

 World leaders, however, will only spend part of the time on 
pressing U.N. reforms, with many hours spent on bilateral issues 
or in group meetings, ranging from Iran's nuclear policy to 
mini-summits among each regional association.

 But the anticipated disappointment on a summit outcome document 
is palpable, particularly among advocacy and voluntary 
organizations, charities and human rights groups.

 "It's the best chance we have had for decades ... with the Iraq 
war standing as an awful warning of what can go wrong when the 
collective security system is bypassed, and the oil-for-food 
debacle showing how much is wrong with the U.N.'s management 
systems," said former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans.

 "But it has become sadly apparent that we are in real danger now 
of blowing this opportunity -- with the summit coming and going 
with nothing more to show for it than a bland set of 
generalizations and weasel-words that commit nobody to anything 
much, and maybe not even that," said Evans, now head of the 
International Crisis Group research body.                                               

© Reuters 2005. 
All Rights Reserved.                    
 			
*****************************************************************
 25 Bellona: Russian Delta-IV back from sea trials after repairs
 
Delta-IV ”Tula” returned from sea trials on September 3 back to
Zvezdochka shipyard where it is undergoing overhaul. 

2005-09-08 19:00

The project 667 Tula, Delta-IV (factory no.382) began its third
trials this year on August 29 in the White Sea after repair
works at the Zvezdochka shipyard. 

According to Interfax news agency, the main task of the trials
was testing acoustic systems and the submarine’s systems. The
shipyard’s trials were combined with the acceptance trials
therefore the Northern Fleet’s representatives were onboard Tula
during the trials. The shipyard’s specialists should correct the
faults revealed by the Northern Fleet representatives and then
after the trials no.4 it should be decided whether the sub is
ready to return to active service. 

Earlier in July, Tula went to sea trials twice. There it
performed a test dive, the accuracy of the magnet compass and
speed measurements was checked, and various electric and magnet
parameters were examined. The submarine is scheduled to return
to active service in 2005. The Zvezdochka shipyard’s specialists
said to Interfax they had carried out works to prolong the
lifetime of the submarine in the way it ”will not reflect
negative on the crew and environment safety”. Before Tula the
shipyard has successfully repaired Verhoturye and Ekaterinburg,
the subs of the same class. 

K-114 was built at the Sevmash plant in 1987. Tuka is one of the
last Soviet built subs and it got its name in 1995 together with
the sponsorship from the city of Tula. Submarines of the Project
667BDRM (Delta IV) class entered service in 1985-1991. The total
of 7 ships of this class was built. Submarines of this class
carry the D-16RM missile system with 16 R-29RM (SS-N-23)
missiles. 
  
  Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge
Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact:
webmaster@bellona.no
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62  * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
 26 Xinhua: India to boost ties with France   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2005-09-11 18:33:13   

    NEW DELHI, Sept. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh left Sunday for France and the United Nations on
a weeklong visit, saying New Delhi was committed to buttressing
economic and strategic partnership with Paris, according to
Indo-Asian News Service. 

    "It is our intention to further expand co-operation in the
fields of trade and investment, defense, space, civilian nuclear
energy, advanced science and technology as well as culture and
civilization," he said in a departure statement. 

    Manmohan Singh said he would meet CEOs of major French
companies in Paris and inform them about burgeoning
opportunities for trade and investment in India. 

    Singh will hold talks on a wide range of bilateral issues
with President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de
Villepin Monday. He will be the first Indian prime minister to
visit Paris in seven years. 

    From Paris, Singh will fly to New York, where he will attend
the 60th session of the UN General Assembly that begins with a
high-level plenary meeting of heads of state and government.
Enditem   

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 27 Japan Times: Has risk of nuclear proliferation risen?

Sunday, September 11, 2005   
  
U.S.-INDIA COOPERATION

 By MICHAEL KREPON

 Special to The Japan Times

HONOLULU -- The nuclear cooperation agreement announced between
U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh on July 18 marked a major shift in U.S. policies aimed at
stopping and reversing proliferation. If implemented, it would
result in new rules of global nuclear commerce that the Bush
administration has previously opposed.

 Because the deal was generated from the top down, the deal's
particulars have not been spelled out. The details could mark
the difference between an agreement that makes us all safer or
more vulnerable to nuclear dangers. Congressional hearings and
oversight are needed, and tough questions must be asked.

 U.S. efforts to improve ties with India began in a serious way
at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency and has significantly
picked up speed during the Bush administration. Bush has
increased military cooperation with New Delhi, including the
offer of advanced combat jets and their coproduction in India.
The United States has long been ready to increase trade and
investment in India. The Bush administration has also relaxed
restrictions on space cooperation, and is working more closely
than ever with New Delhi on regional security problems.

 In other words, significantly improved ties are being forged
without having to relax existing rules to prevent proliferation.
So why has the administration proposed to weaken these rules?
Does it honestly believe that foreign nuclear suppliers will
agree only to make an exception for India and not for other
nations?

 At a time when Washington is pushing hard to toughen
requirements for nuclear commerce to states that have pledged
not to acquire nuclear weapons or appear to be seeking them,
does it make sense to relax requirements on states that have
nuclear weapons?

 If the administration is not so naive as to believe that India
alone will benefit from relaxed rules of nuclear commerce, why
has it proposed this deal? Is it because senior Bush
administration officials believe that New Delhi will serve as a
strong ally against Islamic extremism or as a counterweight to
Beijing?

 After 300 years of colonial rule, India will neither follow the
beat of a distant drummer nor accept a junior partnership to
Washington. Improved ties will therefore be based on common
interests, as well as a respect for differences that result when
national interests diverge. Washington can therefore expect New
Delhi to keep improving ties with Beijing, while striving to
avoid choosing sides in the event of a crisis over Taiwan.

 Likewise, New Delhi's approach to Islamic extremism will
sometimes coincide and other times differ with Washington.
India's concerns begin with Pakistan, where Washington's
policies have often frustrated India. India's Parliament passed
resolutions against both Persian Gulf wars, and has rejected the
Bush administration's entreaties to provide ground forces in
this front of the "global war against terrorism."

 If relaxing the rules of nuclear commerce to help India
contributes to a new nuclear future that raises barriers against
proliferation, these changes are worth supporting. If, instead,
the new rules are likely to result in more proliferation, the
deal is contrary to U.S. national security interests.

 The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) regime is not under
stress because of the possession of nuclear weapons by India,
Pakistan and Israel. It is under stress because North Korea and
Iran have nuclear ambitions that have been aided by Pakistan's
lax export controls; by new concerns of nuclear terrorism that
the NPT regime was not designed to address; by opportunistic,
state-supported nuclear commerce; and by blocking strategies
against regime-strengthening measures by an unlikely group of
states, including Egypt, France, Iran, Pakistan, India, and,
most regrettably, the U.S.

 Therefore, the central question before Congress is whether this
deal is good or bad for proliferation. To answer this question,
we need to know more about its particulars. We also need to know
from the Bush administration whether it is seeking to create a
new nuclear order and, if so, what it looks like. Here are three
measurements of merit:

 Radicals dismember old institutions without serious regard for
what will replace them. Conservatives don't tear down useful
institutions unless and until something better will take their
place. So what does the Bush administration have in mind? It has
suggested some valuable measures against proliferation, many of
which have not yet gained traction. It has also opposed measures
that are important to build barriers against proliferation, such
as ratifying a treaty ending nuclear testing, making intrusive
monitoring integral to treaty constraints, and negotiating a
verifiable end to fissile material production for nuclear
weapons. When relaxed rules for nuclear commerce are added to
this mix, what kind of a nuclear future can we expect?

 As a responsible steward of its nuclear capabilities, the
administration proposes to reward India with the same benefits
and advantages of the five nuclear weapon states recognized by
the NPT, all of which enjoy permanent membership in the U.N.
Security Council. If India is to enjoy these benefits, has the
Bush administration received assurances that New Delhi is also
willing to accept comparable obligations and constraints as the
five permanent members?

 All five of the nuclear-weapons states recognized by the NPT
have signed the treaty banning all nuclear-weapons tests,
thereby accepting the obligation under international law not to
defeat the objectives and purposes of this agreement pending its
entry into force. At a minimum, has the Bush administration
received assurances from New Delhi that it will not be the first
to resume nuclear testing?

 Most analysts believe that all five of the permanent Security
Council members are not now producing new stocks of fissile
material for weapons, although Beijing has yet to confirm this
publicly. India appears to be increasing its stocks. By this
measure, India is moving in the wrong direction. Does the
administration now plan to take a proactive and constructive
approach to putting in place a moratorium on fissile material
production while negotiating a verifiable cutoff agreement?

 Are the inventories of the states that possess nuclear weapons
growing or contracting. Four of the permanent member states are
clearly moving to reduce their nuclear weapons. China is most
probably increasing its nuclear arsenal at a modest rate.
India's nuclear arsenal, like Pakistan's, is also growing. How
might the proposed deal with New Delhi affect growing nuclear
arsenals in South Asia?

 Michael Krepon is cofounder of the Henry L. Stimson Center 
<FONT COLOR="BLUE">(mkrepon@stimson.org).</FONT>

The Japan Times: Sept. 11, 2005
(C) All rights reserved 
*****************************************************************
 28 Telegraph: Canada gets set to bury nuclear ghost

Calcutta : Nation
 
Monday, September 12, 2005

																											 										   				 			 			 
  K.P. NAYAR   			 
           
Ottawa, Sept. 11: After the US and the UK, Canada is well on the
way to being reconciled with a nuclear India.
																						 														 				 								
																								
A visit by external affairs minister K. Natwar Singh to Ottawa
next fortnight will give India and Canada an opportunity to
revisit the issue during closed-door discussions.
																						 														 				 								
																								
Unlike during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent meetings
with US President George W. Bush or British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, no dramatic announcements are expected to be made on
nuclear matters after the external affairs minister’s talks with
his Canadian counterpart, Pierre Stewart Pettigrew.
																						 														 				 								
																								
That will have to wait, probably until the Prime Minister visits
Ottawa next year: both sides are looking at a visit here by
Manmohan Singh in May or June 2006, if all goes well.
																						 														 				 								
																								
But there are straws in the wind here to suggest that the
nuclear issue, which has bedevilled bilateral ties for 31 years
since India’s first nuclear test, is already on the backburner.
																						 														 				 								
																								
In May, R. Chidambaram, the principal scientific adviser to the
Prime Minister and the architect of the Pokhran-II nuclear tests
in 1998, visited Ottawa at the invitation of the Canadian
government. 																						 														 				 								
																								
There was a time after Pokhran-II when Chidambaram was persona
non grata for the Canadians to such an extent that they would
have prevented him — if it was possible — from driving along
Shanti Path, the seat of the Canadian High Commission in Delhi.
																						 														 				 								
																								
Canada has proposed nuclear safety co-operation with India. For
appearances of balance in South Asia, Ottawa also proposed such
co-operation with Islamabad. 																						
														 				 								 																								
The Pakistanis accepted the proposals, but India is yet to
respond and will only do so after the nuclear imbroglio with
Canada is wiped off the diplomatic slate once and for all.
																						 														 				 								
																								
Another signal that Canada is finally willing to move beyond its
nuclear stalemate with India is that it considers the nuclear
deal between Manmohan Singh and Bush in July as a positive
development. 																						 														 				 								
																								
Non-proliferation, which is in tatters globally, is still an
issue of political correctness in Canada and officials here are,
therefore, unwilling to speak on record, but they said Canada’s
response would be “pragmatic” and “creative” if New Delhi were
to seek Ottawa’s support for India’s membership of the Nuclear
Suppliers Group (NSG). 																						 														
				 								 																								
That is expected to happen during Natwar Singh’s visit here next
fortnight. 																						 														 				 								
																								
Canada is a leading and active member of the NSG and India’s
application for entry into the group, which has a whip-hand on
the sale of nuclear equipment and transfer of nuclear
technology, has been pending since the beginning of last year.
																						 														 				 								
																								
China applied for NSG membership along with India and has
already entered the club, whose membership is a must for
eventual global recognition of New Delhi as a nuclear weapons
state. 																						 														 				 								
																								
Canadian officials said the modus vivendi with India on the
bilateral nuclear stalemate will be that Ottawa will no longer
lecture India on non-proliferation or speak about India’s
non-compliance with an “unfair” global nuclear regime at every
global forum. 																						 														 				
								 																								
In fact, the Canadians, by and large, have already stopped doing
so. But they will continue to state their declared positions at
relevant fora, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency or
a conference on non-proliferation. India, for its part, will
continue to ignore such statements. 																						
														 				 								 																								
As the last hold-out against the 1998 nuclear tests by India,
Canada has realised that any continued attempt to pressure India
on Pokhran-II is counter-productive and nothing will move India
away from the path of weaponisation. 																						
														 				 								 																								
When they talk here next fortnight, Natwar Singh and Pettigrew
will acknowledge behind closed doors the pragmatism of such an
understanding and free Indo-Canadian relations after three
decades of being hostage to the single issue of India’s nuclear
programme. 																						 											 					  
											 			 
   Copyright © 2005 The Telegraph. All rights reserved.    
*****************************************************************
 29 newsobserver.com: Nuclear, revisited

| Editorials
 
Modified: Sep 11, 2005 3:00 AM
  
Power companies understandably are considering new nuclear
plants, but suitable waste disposal remains a big hang-up
 
Raleigh-based Progress Energy has bolted from the industry
blocks with its announcement that it will seek federal
permission to build a new nuclear power plant. Federal energy
legislation, crafted by the Bush administration and recently
approved by Congress, provides $2 billion in subsidies to the
first six firms to build next-generation nuclear plants.

 The earlier to build, the greater the subsidy, which is strong
inducement for utility companies to act expeditiously. Even
before Congress acted, Progress President Robert B. McGehee had
made it clear that the company looked favorably at adding
another reactor to its generation mix.

 Nuclear power remains a challenging technology, requiring
expertise and careful oversight for safe operation. There have
been close calls with calamity in this country. Yet after
several decades, many Americans have arrived at a more favorable
perspective concerning the risks. Couple that with the fact that
nuclear is less polluting than coal- and gas-generated
electricity, and that fuel supplies are less vulnerable to
disruption, and there is ample reason for renewed interest in
this mode of power supply.

 The major drawback, of course, continues to be the lack of a
permanent, reliably safe means to dispose of highly radioactive
waste, notably the used-up, or spent, fuel rods that produce the
heat that turns water to steam for power generation. CEO McGehee
also acknowledges that Progress would look closely at building a
second reactor at its Shearon Harris nuclear plant in
southwestern Wake County, which already has a large stockpile of
spent fuel rods stored in pools of water.

Finding a way to safely dispose of those rods, preferably away
from the heavily populated Triangle region, needs to be a
priority if Progress is to expand its nuclear operations here.
The federal government was to open a national repository for
highly radioactive waste, in a complex beneath Yucca Mountain in
Nevada, but questions remain about that facility's safety.
Above-ground, long-term storage in highly fortified casks is
another possibility deserving further study.

 Nuclear power went through a difficult growth stage from a
safety standpoint -- a stage notoriously marked by the Three
Mile Island incident in 1979, after which nuclear plant
construction eventually ground to a halt. But in the two decades
since the last U.S. plants were built, engineers have designed
safer features. The new designs take advantage of advances made
in Europe, where nuclear power generation has flourished. For
waste disposal, European producers have turned to reprocessing
of fuel rods, which results in smaller amounts of less-deadly
wastes.

 The United States abandoned reprocessing in the 1970s out of
fear that nuclear material might fall into the wrong hands.
That's still a concern, but it may be overblown. The Triangle's
congressional delegation ought to re-energize debate on
reprocessing, with an eye to whether it could be a safe option.
Building more nuclear plants without a sure and safe method of
disposing of the resulting waste -- lethal for thousands of
years -- should be no option at all.

© Copyright 2005, The News &Observer Publishing Company
*****************************************************************
 30 Bellona: China to build barge for floating nuclear plant
 
A deputy chief of the Russian Federal Nuclear Agency Vladimir
Uryvsky said this in an interview to the newspaper Trud in July

2005-09-09 18:27

China will produce only the barge while Russia will take care of
the reactor equipment. The first nuclear power plant should be
finally assembled at the Sevmash plant in Severodvinsk (in the
Arkhangelsk region in northern Russia). 

China offered the best conditions for the barge production and
in addition it will issue Russia a long-term credit covering the
price of the barge. The price tag of the contract with China is
$86.5m. 

Recently Russia’s Federal Nuclear Energy Agency has made a
decision to build a low capacity floating nuclear power plant
(FNPP). The plant will be small and will produce roughly 1/150th
of the power produced by a standard Russian nuclear power plant.
Construction could begin in 2006 if the project finds financing,
Mosnews reported. 

The mini-station will be located in the White Sea, off the coast
of Severodvinsk. It will be moored near the Sevmash plant, which
is the main facility of the State Nuclear Shipbuilding Center.
The FNPP will be equipped with two power units using KLT-40S
reactors. The plant will meet all of Sevmash’s energy
requirements for just 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt. If necessary,
the plant will also be able to supply heat and desalinate
seawater. The reactors will be loaded with nuclear fuel once
every three years and will have a lifespan of 40 years. 
  

  2005-07-08 International Co-operation
 Floating nuclear power plants easy prey for terrorists

  Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge
Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact:
webmaster@bellona.no
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62  * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
 31 Bellona: Unplanned repairs continue at Kalinin NPP
 
September 1, the nuclear plant’s operator manually shut down
reactor unit no.2. 

2005-09-09 18:57

On September 1, at 10.13 local time the Kalinin NPP’s operator
manually shut down reactor no.2 after the reactor control and
safety system’s spontaneous movement. The shut down went in
according with the regulations and the radiation levels reported
to remain normal. The plant’s specialists promised to put the
second unit back on line on September 6, but it is still under
repairs. At the moment only reactor no.3 is in operation with
the 939 MW load.   

  
  Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge
Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact:
webmaster@bellona.no
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62  * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway


*****************************************************************
 32 BBC: Scars on (chernobyl)
 
Last Updated: Saturday, 10 September 2005

By Nick Thorpe BBC News, Chernobyl   

A recent United Nations report into the long-term consequences of 
the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986 has concluded that the 
death toll will be lower than previously estimated. But many 
commentators feel that much still needs to be done to help the 
survivors. Nick Thorpe visited Chernobyl and spoke to people 
living with the consequences of a disaster they feel is 
continuing today. 

[Chernobyl nuclear reactor block 4 in its sarcophagus]                            
Chernobyl's number 4 reactor is now sealed in a concrete 
sarcophagus                                                          

We are approaching Chernobyl down a tunnel of light. 

The early morning mist in the forests of northern Ukraine is 
suffused with sunlight. 

Driving into the remains of the world's worst nuclear accident, 
you expect scenes of horror. 

Instead, the first impression is of beauty: silver birches, their 
leaves just beginning to turn to gold, and rows of pines in what 
ought to be a mushroom picker's paradise, beneath a blue sky 
flecked with distant clouds. 

Then you catch sight of little triangular red and yellow 
radiation signs in the undergrowth, like minefield markers in a 
war zone. 

Then a village sign - Kopachi - but no village. Only overgrown 
mounds. 

This is not a graveyard for people, explains our guide to the 
exclusion zone, but for houses. 

All the buildings here had to be buried. They were too 
radioactive. 

And now? 

We can stand here for a couple of minutes, he says. But it would 
not be sensible to hang around. 

'Cosmetic' 

Near the power station, giant catfish, more than two metres long, 
glide like submarines through the yellow waters of a radioactive 
pond. 

We watch, awestruck, from the bridge above as they nudge the half 
loaves we throw them, as if they were mere crumbs. 

In front of Reactor Block 4, the site of the disaster, there is a 
bed of brilliant orange flowers. 

[Map of Ukraine]                                                                                                

Everywhere in Chernobyl, there are people sweeping or mowing the 
lawn or trimming the hedges. 

But it is strangely cosmetic. 

There is no undoing the accident, no re-establishment of the 
community. 

You have a sense they are making a body more presentable, before 
returning it to the relatives for burial. 

Over the concrete sarcophagus which covers the site of the 
accident, the fading red and white chimney still rises, like a 
lighthouse with scaffolding but no light. 

Ghost town 

Down the road in Pripyat - the town where most of the workers 
from the nuclear plant once lived - we meet utter desolation. 

[Statue of Lenin in Pripyat town centre ]                               
A vandalised statue of Lenin in the deserted town of Pripyat                      
			   		
I have been in many villages ruined by war, but never an 
abandoned city. 

The levels of radiation here are among the highest in the zone. 
You reach it through three separate checkpoints. 

Poplars grow tall in the main square; the asphalt is cracked; the 
windows of 12-storey tenement buildings, hotels, and office 
blocks stand blind and empty. 

Everywhere we go near Chernobyl, there are red apples. 

Here too, in the centre of Pripyat, there is a crimson carpet of 
windfalls under one tree: fairy-tale apples, poisoned by the 
wicked stepmother of nuclear technology. 

If you bit one of these, you might sleep for 30,000 years. 

Near the Olympic-sized swimming pool, we wade not through blue 
water but through debris and broken glass. 

[Basket of apples from the Chernobyl area] Apples are plentiful 
near Chernobyl - but may be poisoned
			 			   		

There is still a giant clock on the wall, to measure split 
seconds not split atoms. 

This is a Soviet Pompeii, abandoned in a matter of hours to the 
radiation. 

Propaganda posters of stylised Soviet men and women still smile 
down through the ruins. 

There is no wind but suddenly a metal door swings open. 

Pripyat is a town of ghosts. 

Returnees 

Since the accident, more than 300 people have returned, 
illegally, to their homes in the zone. Not to Pripyat but to less 
radioactive villages. 

The authorities tolerate them nowadays, even laying on buses to 
take them to market or to health centres outside. 

Olga Mykhaylivna is 75. 

The UN have been trying encourage people to see themselves as 
survivors rather than victims                 

She has slices of red apples drying in the sun, chickens at the 
back as well as a dog and cats to keep her company since her 
husband died. 

Her daughters visit her when they can get a permit. 

Is she not afraid of radiation? 

"It's never hurt me," she laughs, her eyes sparkling beneath a 
blue headscarf. 

She meets the other "settlers" - as they are known here - at 
church on Sundays. But she misses the old neighbours. 

In striking contrast to Olga, nearly everyone in villages on the 
edge of the zone says they are sick.                    

[Abandoned school playground in the village of Kovalkiv] Some 
villages have lain empty since they were evacuated in 1986                                                               

One woman says three of her four children, all born since the 
accident, are invalids. 

In Lystvyn, 80km downwind from Chernobyl, two-thirds of local 
boys are still rejected for military service because of their 
poor physical condition. 

There are cancers, circulatory and heart disorders, and many 
handicapped children. 

In Sukachi, to which thousands of people from Pripyat were 
evacuated, nine young people died in a single month earlier this 
year. 

None will enter the statistics as casualties of the nuclear 
accident. But everyone blames it. 

Solidarity 

But there is also a dynamism in the air. 

Local staff of the United Nations Development Project have been 
trying, with some success, to encourage people to see themselves 
as survivors rather than as victims. 

"I realised long ago," explains Kovalenko Petro, the head of the 
village council in Sukachi, "that no-one would be able to deal 
with the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster on their own. We 
have learnt to co-operate with one another." 

Funded in part by the UNDP, youth centres have sprung up, as well 
as better schools and village health centres. 

Gas was piped into the region because the wood the people 
traditionally burn for heat is radioactive. 

Each log we burned in the school heating plant, the headmistress 
in Kyrdany said, used to release a little Chernobyl. 

In tiny Ukrainian villages, there is also a feeling of solidarity 
with survivors of global catastrophes. 

Around Chernobyl, everyone is talking about New Orleans. Before 
that, it was the tsunami. 

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 10 
September, 2005 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the 
programme schedules for World Service transmission times.                       
*****************************************************************
 33 The Observer: Ageing nuclear plant wins a reprieve
 
[UP] 

Oliver Morgan, industrial editor

Sunday September 11, 2005 The Observer            
 		
Nuclear power generator British Energy will this week announce 
that it is extending the operating life of its Dungeness B power 
station on the Kent coast. The move comes against the background 
of a mounting debate on the need for a new generation of nuclear 
power stations.

The nuclear industry has lobbied hard for the government to move
swiftly to approve a plan to build at least eight new stations.
It has argued that with long lead times, and a rapid fall off
after 2008 when first-generation Magnox stations owned by
British Nuclear Group come off stream, decisions on replacements
will be needed soon.

The industry argues that this 'nuclear gap' must be filled and
that nuclear stations provide the only credible source of
non-carbon-emitting electricity generation. Industry lobbyists
have found powerful support in the Department of Trade and
Industry, although the Department for Environment Food and Rural
Affairs is opposed, favouring the continued development of
renewable sources of power.

The timetable for new stations becomes less urgent if BE
successfully extends the lives of its eight second-generation
stations because it allows the government more time to consider
its options. Ministers are aware of the intense controversy that
would surround any move to 'new build'. The company intends to
follow the Dungeness extension - for up to five years - with
Hunterston in Scotland and its remaining plants.

Sources close to the company said the announcement is expected
to be made at the company's annual meeting on Wednesday. The
decision will be finalised at a board meeting on Tuesday.

The move has to be approved by the Department of Trade and
Industry and the new Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, which will
eventually be responsible for decommissioning the plant. It is
understood that the application for extension has been approved.

[UP] 

      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 34 Reuters: Entergy keeps Arkansas 2 nuke reduced after dropped rod

Fri Sep 9, 2005 3:39 PM ET

 NEW YORK, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Entergy Corp. (ETR.N: Quote, 
Profile, Research) kept the 1,000-megawatt unit 2 at the Arkansas 
Nuclear One nuclear power station in Arkansas at about 66 percent 
of capacity for control rod testing following a dropped rod on 
Thursday, a company spokesman said Friday.

 The spokesman said a rod inadvertently dropped while the company 
was conducting some maintenance in the area of the control rods.

 After raising the dropped rod, the company decided to keep the 
unit at reduced power to conduct some tests, the spokesman said.

 He could not say when the unit would return to full power due to 
competitive reasons, but noted the power reduction would likely 
not last a long time.

 Earlier on Thursday, the unit was operating at full power.

 The 1,840-MW Arkansas Nuclear One station is in Russellville in 
Pope County, about 75 miles northwest of Little Rock. There are 
two units at the station: 844 MW unit 1 and 1,000 MW unit 2.

 Unit 1, meanwhile, continued to operate at full power.

 One MW powers about 800 homes, according to North American 
averages.

 Entergy's regulated Entergy Arkansas Inc. subsidiary owns the 
station.

 Entergy's regulated and unregulated subsidiaries own and operate 
about 30,000 MW of generating capacity, market energy 
commodities, and transmit and distribute power to 2.6 million 
customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.                                                

© Reuters 2005. 
All Rights Reserved.                    
 			
*****************************************************************
 35 Mehr News: Iran to offer intl. tender for construction of two nuclear power plants           
                
MehrNews.com - 

2005/09/10  
											  [ src=]  													Print version   [ src=] 
TEHRAN, Sept. 10 (MNA) -- Iran Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) 
Deputy Director Mohammad Saeedi said on Saturday that Iran is 
determined to offer an international tender for the construction 
of two new nuclear power plants in the near future.                                                                                                                                                                
 											  
He made the remarks in a speech delivered at the World Nuclear 
Association (WNA) conference in London. 
  
Participants discussed the worldâ€™s current nuclear energy 
capacity during the three-day conference of the World Nuclear 
Association, which is based in London. 
  
Representatives of some of the worldâ€™s most important nuclear 
fuel providing companies including Franceâ€™s Eurodif, the 
European Unionâ€™s Urenco, Russiaâ€™s Tenex, the U.S. Nuclear 
Fuel Company, and the Canadian Nuclear Fuel Company, as well as 
officials of Iranâ€™s IAEO attended the conference to discuss 
nuclear fuel production and related issues. 
  
Saeedi elaborated on Iranâ€™s capability to produce various kinds 
of uranium products and the countryâ€™s efforts to master the 
complete nuclear fuel cycle. 
  
He referred to Iranâ€™s strategic plan to produce 20,000 
megawatts of electrical power from nuclear energy in the next 20 
years and told conference participants, â€śIn the near future, 
Iran will officially announce an international tender for the 
construction of two nuclear power plants and, taking all 
technical requirements as well as security guarantees into 
consideration, will definitely choose the most qualified 
companies.â€ť 
  
A slide show of photos of the Natanz and Bushehr nuclear 
facilities, the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF), and 
Iranian centrifuge tests was also presented during Dr. Saeediâ€™s 
lecture. 
  
At the end of the WNA conference, a number of participants said 
they welcomed Iranâ€™s viewpoints and called the transparency of 
Iranâ€™s civilian nuclear program laudable. 
  
During the conference, representatives of developing countries 
expressed satisfaction that the Islamic Republic of Iran is now 
ranked as the worldâ€™s eighth most advanced country in the field 
of civilian nuclear technology research after the United States, 
Russia, Canada, France, Britain, Brazil, and China. 
  
Meanwhile, on Saturday the Mehr News Agency conducted interviews 
with Saeedi, several MPs, and a legal expert. 
  
Saeedi said the international tender for building two nuclear 
facilities, which will be offered in the coming months, is a step 
toward the implementation of a Majlis bill calling for the 
production of 20,000 megawatts of nuclear power within the next 
twenty years. 
  
â€śIn this tender, a proposal of cooperation for the construction 
of two power plants with a capacity of 2000 megawatts of nuclear 
electricity will be offered.â€ť 
  
He went on to say that the tender plan was under study during the 
previous administration and has nothing to do with the nuclear 
initiative which President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is expected to 
announce in the next few days. 
  
Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Deputy 
Chairman Mohammadnabi Rudaki says inviting international 
companies to build nuclear plants in Iran is another step forward 
in the efforts to build confidence about the peaceful nature of 
Iranâ€™s nuclear program. 
  
As Iran has sought Russian help to build the Bushehr power plant, 
Iran can make use of foreign investment for the construction of 
another twenty nuclear plants as envisioned by the Majlis bill, 
he added. 
  
Iran is prepared to work together with other countries in nuclear 
activities and considers this measure to be in line with efforts 
to build confidence about Iranâ€™s nuclear program in the 
international arena, he explained. 
  
MP Hossein Nejabat of the Majlis Energy Committee said that the 
tender offer will further clarify Iranâ€™s nuclear policies and 
help to break monopolies on technology. 
  
Law professor Abbas-Ali Kadkhodei believes that the announcement 
of an international tender for the construction of new nuclear 
power plants is an indication that Iranâ€™s nuclear program is 
only meant for peaceful purposes. 
  
This measure also indicates that past activities have been 
peaceful and shows the transparent and legal path of Iranâ€™s 
nuclear program, Kadkhodei noted. 
  
And finally, MP Hamidreza Hajibabayee of the Majlis Presiding 
Board stated that the tender proves that Iran seeks constructive 
interaction with all countries, including European countries. 
  
SA/MS/HG End 
  
MNA   										 										
Â© 2003 Mehr News Agency                       
*****************************************************************
 36 Chennai Online News Service: Safety of nuclear power plants reconfirmed 

  Sep 12, 2005 Mon

Mumbai, Sept 11: Advanced studies using probabilistic techniques 
carried out by the Nuclear Power Corporation India Limited 
(NPCIL) have reconfirmed the safety of Indian nuclear power 
plants. 

The NPCIL conducted two important studies involving
multi-disciplinary experts with intimate knowledge of plant
design, operation and Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA)
techniques and are on par with studies carried out elsewhere,
its executive director S N Ahmed said in a release here today. 


The just concluded studies covered Level-1 PSA for Tarapur
Atomic Power Station (TAPP-3), the first 540 MW Indian
Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR), and Level-2 PSA study of
two 220 MW Kakrapara Atomic Power Station (KAPS-1). 


These studies reconfirm the safety of these reactors including
their design features and operating procedures and practices, he
said. 


This in-depth rigorous analysis is to look at the impact of
design and operating practices of the plant on the overall
safety of the plant in an integrated manner. 


Risk informed decision-making based on PSA is now becoming the
order of the day for the nuclear industry globally, Ahmed said,
adding with the completion of these studies, NPCIL has enhanced
the capability towards risk informed decision-making. (Agencies)
 																 															 														   													
Published: Sunday, September 11, 2005                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
 													   													 	
*****************************************************************
 37 i-Newswire.com: Chernobyl - the true scale of the accident
 
  A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation
exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident
nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100
scientists has concluded.     

(I-Newswire) - As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had
been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost
all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within
months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004. 

The new numbers are presented in a landmark digest report,
“Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic
Impacts,” just released by the Chernobyl Forum. The digest,
based on a three-volume, 600-page report and incorporating the
work of hundreds of scientists, economists and health experts,
assesses the 20-year impact of the largest nuclear accident in
history. The Forum is made up of 8 UN specialized agencies,
including the International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA ), World
Health Organization ( WHO ), United Nations Development
Programme ( UNDP ), Food and Agriculture Organization ( FAO ),
United Nations Environment Programme ( UNEP ), United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ( UN-OCHA ),
United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic
Radiation ( UNSCEAR ), and the World Bank, as well as the
governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. 

“This compilation of the latest research can help to settle the
outstanding questions about how much death, disease and economic
fallout really resulted from the Chernobyl accident,” explains
Dr. Burton Bennett, chairman of the Chernobyl Forum and an
authority on radiation effects. “The governments of the three
most-affected countries have realized that they need to find a
clear way forward, and that progress must be based on a sound
consensus about environmental, health and economic consequences
and some good advice and support from the international
community.” 

Bennett continued: “This was a very serious accident with major
health consequences, especially for thousands of workers exposed
in the early days who received very high radiation doses, and
for the thousands more stricken with thyroid cancer. By and
large, however, we have not found profound negative health
impacts to the rest of the population in surrounding areas, nor
have we found widespread contamination that would continue to
pose a substantial threat to human health, within a few
exceptional, restricted areas.” 

The Forum's report aims to help the affected countries
understand the true scale of the accident's consequences and
also suggests ways the governments of Belarus, the Russian
Federation and Ukraine might address major economic and social
problems stemming from the accident. Members of the Forum,
including representatives of the three governments, will meet
September 6 and 7 in Vienna at an unprecedented gathering of the
world's experts on Chernobyl, radiation effects and protection,
to consider these findings and recommendations. 

Major study findings

Dozens of important findings are included in the massive report: 

-- Approximately 1000 on-site reactor staff and emergency
workers were heavily exposed to high-level radiation on the
first day of the accident; among the more than 200 000 emergency
and recovery operation workers exposed during the period from
1986-1987, an estimated 2200 radiation-caused deaths can be
expected during their lifetime. 

-- An estimated five million people currently live in areas of
Belarus, Russia and Ukraine that are contaminated with
radionuclides due to the accident; about 100 000 of them live in
areas classified in the past by government authorities as areas
of “strict control”. The existing “zoning” definitions need to
be revisited and relaxed in light of the new findings. 

-- About 4000 cases of thyroid cancer, mainly in children and
adolescents at the time of the accident, have resulted from the
accident's contamination and at least nine children died of
thyroid cancer; however the survival rate among such cancer
victims, judging from experience in Belarus, has been almost 99%.

-- Most emergency workers and people living in contaminated
areas received relatively low whole body radiation doses,
comparable to natural background levels. As a consequence, no
evidence or likelihood of decreased fertility among the affected
population has been found, nor has there been any evidence of
increases in congenital malformations that can be attributed to
radiation exposure. 

-- Poverty, “lifestyle” diseases now rampant in the former
Soviet Union and mental health problems pose a far greater
threat to local communities than does radiation exposure. 

-- Relocation proved a “deeply traumatic experience” for some
350,000 people moved out of the affected areas. Although 116 000
were moved from the most heavily impacted area immediately after
the accident, later relocations did little to reduce radiation
exposure. 

-- Persistent myths and misperceptions about the threat of
radiation have resulted in “paralyzing fatalism” among residents
of affected areas. 

-- Ambitious rehabilitation and social benefit programs started
by the former Soviet Union, and continued by Belarus, Russia and
Ukraine, need reformulation due to changes in radiation
conditions, poor targeting and funding shortages. 

-- Structural elements of the sarcophagus built to contain the
damaged reactor have degraded, posing a risk of collapse and the
release of radioactive dust; 

-- A comprehensive plan to dispose of tons of high-level
radioactive waste at and around the Chernobyl NPP site, in
accordance with current safety standards, has yet to be defined. 

Alongside radiation-induced deaths and diseases, the report
labels the mental health impact of Chernobyl as “the largest
public health problem created by the accident” and partially
attributes this damaging psychological impact to a lack of
accurate information. These problems manifest as negative
self-assessments of health, belief in a shortened life
expectancy, lack of initiative, and dependency on assistance
from the state. 

“Two decades after the Chernobyl accident, residents in the
affected areas still lack the information they need to lead the
healthy and productive lives that are possible,” explains Louisa
Vinton, Chernobyl focal point at the UNDP. “We are advising our
partner governments that they must reach people with accurate
information, not only about how to live safely in regions of
low-level contamination, but also about leading healthy
lifestyles and creating new livelihoods.” But, says Dr Michael
Repacholi, Manager of WHO's Radiation Program, “the sum total of
the Chernobyl Forum is a reassuring message.” 

He explains that there have been 4000 cases of thyroid cancer,
mainly in children, but that except for nine deaths, all of them
have recovered. "Otherwise, the team of international experts
found no evidence for any increases in the incidence of leukemia
and cancer among affected residents." 

The international experts have estimated that radiation could
cause up to about 4000 eventual deaths among the higher-exposed
Chernobyl populations, i.e., emergency workers from 1986-1987,
evacuees and residents of the most contaminated areas. This
number contains both the known radiation-induced cancer and
leukaemia deaths and a statistical prediction, based on
estimates of the radiation doses received by these populations.
As about quarter of people die from spontaneous cancer not
caused by Chernobyl radiation, the radiation-induced increase of
only about 3% will be difficult to observe. However, in the most
exposed cohorts of emergency and recovery operation workers some
increase of particular cancer forms ( e.g., leukemia ) in
particular time periods has already been observed. The
predictions use six decades of scientific experience with the
effects of such doses, explained Repacholi. 

Repacholi concludes that “the health effects of the accident
were potentially horrific, but when you add them up using
validated conclusions from good science, the public health
effects were not nearly as substantial as had at first been
feared.” 

The report's estimate for the eventual number of deaths is far
lower than earlier, well-publicized speculations that radiation
exposure would claim tens of thousands of lives. But the 4000
figure is not far different from estimates made in 1986 by
Soviet scientists, according to Dr Mikhail Balonov, a radiation
expert with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna,
who was a scientist in the former Soviet Union at the time of
the accident. 

As for environmental impact, the reports are also reassuring,
for the scientific assessments show that, except for the still
closed, highly contaminated 30 kilometer area surrounding the
reactor, and some closed lakes and restricted forests, radiation
levels have mostly returned to acceptable levels. “In most areas
the problems are economic and psychological, not health or
environmental,” reports Balonov, the scientific secretary of the
Chernobyl Forum effort who has been involved with Chernobyl
recovery since the disaster occurred. 

Recommendations

Recommendations Recommendations call for focusing assistance
efforts on highly contaminated areas and redesigning government
programs to help those genuinely in need. Suggested changes
would shift programs away from those that foster “dependency”
and a “victim” mentality, and replacing them with initiatives
that encourage opportunity, support local development, and give
people confidence in their futures. 

In the health area, the Forum report calls for continued close
monitoring of workers who recovered from Acute Radiation
Syndrome ( ARS ) and other highly exposed emergency personnel.
The Report also calls for focused screening of children exposed
to radioiodine for thyroid cancer and highly exposed clean-up
workers for non-thyroid cancers. However, existing screening
programs should be evaluated for cost-effectiveness, since the
incidence of spontaneous thyroid cancers is increasing
significantly as the target population ages. Moreover, high
quality cancer registries need continuing government support. 

In the environmental realm, the Report calls for long term
monitoring of caesium and strontium radionuclides to assess
human exposure and food contamination and to analyse the impacts
of remedial actions and radiation-reduction countermeasures.
Better information needs to be provided to the public about the
persistence of radioactive contamination in certain food
products and about food preparation methods that reduce
radionuclide intake. Restrictions on harvesting of some wild
food products are still needed in some areas. 

Also in the realm of protecting the environment, the Report
calls for an “integrated waste management program for the
Shelter, the Chernobyl NPP site and the Exclusion Zone” to
ensure application of consistent management and capacity for all
types of radioactive waste. Waste storage and disposal must be
dealt with in a comprehensive manner across the entire Exclusion
Zone, according to the Report. 

In areas where human exposure is not high, no remediation needs
to be done, points out Balonov. “If we do not expect health or
environmental effects, we should not waste resources and effort
on low priority, low contamination areas,” he explains. “We need
to focus our efforts and resources on real problems.” 

One key recommendation addresses the fact that large parts of
the population, especially in rural areas, still lack accurate
information and emphasizes the need to find better ways both to
inform the public and to overcome the lack of credibility that
hampered previous efforts. Even though accurate information has
been available for years, either it has not reached those who
need it or people do not trust and accept the information and do
not act upon it, according to the Report. 

This recommendation calls for targeting information to specific
audiences, including community leaders and health care workers,
along with a broader strategy that promotes healthy lifestyles
as well as information about how to reduce internal and external
radiation exposures and address the main causes of disease and
mortality. 

In the socioeconomic sphere, the Report recommends a new
development approach that helps individuals to “take control of
their own lives and communities to take control of their own
futures.” The Governments, the Report states, must streamline
and refocus Chernobyl programs through more targeted benefits,
elimination of unnecessary benefits to people in less
contaminated areas, improving primary health care, support for
safe food production techniques, and encouragement for
investment and private sector development, including small and
medium-size enterprises. 

Notes Vinton, “The most important need is for accurate
information on healthy lifestyles, together with better
regulations to promote small, rural businesses. Poverty is the
real danger. We need to take steps to empower people.”…. 


If you have questions regarding information in this press
release contact the company listed below. I-Newswire.com is a
press release service and not the author of this press release.
The information that is on or available through this site is for
informational purposes only and speaks only as of the particular
date or dates of that information. As some companies / PR
Agencies submit their press releases once per week/month or
quarter, make sure check the official company website for
accurate release dates as our site displays the I-Newswire.com
distribution date only. We do not guarantee the accuracy or
completeness of information on or available through this site,
and we are not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in that
information or for actions taken in reliance on that information.
   
  2005-09-12   

*****************************************************************
 38 Bangkok Post: Saha Group explores nuclear power options 

Monday 12 September 2005 - 

SUKANYA JITPLEECHEEP 

The Saha Group, the country's largest consumer product
manufacturer and best known for its popular Mama instant noodle
and Pao detergent brands, believes that there could be
investment opportunities in nuclear power. Boonsithi Chokwatana,
the group's chairman, said it was conducting a feasibility study
on building a nuclear power plant as an alternative source of
energy in the face of rising oil prices.
 
The project could take place within the next five to 10 years if
the government gives a green light for this kind of investment.
However, no specific details about the project were provided.
 
``I want the government to come out and promote nuclear power as
a safe form of energy that will not cause pollution,'' Mr
Boonsithi said, adding that it was his dream to run a nuclear
power plant one day.
 
With oil prices peaking at US$70 a barrel recently, a leading
energy policy specialist, Piyasvasti Amranand, has advised
Thailand to seriously reconsider nuclear power as an alternative
source of energy.
 
But the government, which has a small research reactor, has not
yet shown any signs of moving in that direction.
 
The Saha Group, which has been in business in Thailand for five
decades, expects to post revenues of 100 billion baht this year.
 
The group manufactures a multitude of consumer product items
from 300 plants across the country. It also runs a co-generation
plant in Si Racha, Chon Buri to supply energy to manufacturing
plants in an industrial estate in the province and sell to Egat.
 
In another development, Mr Boonsithi urged the government to
speed up its investments in megaprojects, particularly in mass
transit, in the view that the more the projects were delayed,
the higher the costs would be.
 
``I don't agree with the government's plan to cancel the
construction of the Purple and Orange subway lines. If the
expansion of the mass transit network is well planned and built,
people will become familiar with it and use it. In the long run,
it would help the country save energy,'' Mr Boonsithi said.
 
The chairman of the Saha Group remains upbeat about the economic
environment overall in Thailand.
 
``There are huge opportunities for us to invest in both new
businesses and new channels,'' he said.
 
The Saha Group last week opened its fourth QB kiosk, which
provides fast and economical hairdressing services, at the
Sukhumvit subway station.
 
It has targeted to open 10 such outlets over the next 18 months.
Each outlet costs 2-3 million baht and is to be located at
subway stations.
 
The company is also looking to set up vending machines and open
food outlets at subway stations. 


© Copyright The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 2005
*****************************************************************
 39 BBC: Armed police patrol nuclear
 
Last Updated: Saturday, 10 September 2005
 
[Sizewell B]                            

Armed officers will patrol at the Sizewell sites                                                          

Armed police have been introduced at two nuclear power stations 
in Suffolk amid security fears. 

Civil Nuclear Constabulary officers have been drafted in to 
patrol Sizewell A and B near Leiston. 

Security was reviewed following the 11 September attacks in 
America and stepped up following the London bombings in July. 

Sizewell B director Mark Gorry said the move was intended to 
boost confidence and act as a deterrent. 

Security breached 

He said: "We now have an armed contingent on the site." 

A spokeswoman for British Energy, which operates Sizewell B, 
confirmed that armed officers had recently started to patrol the 
site. 

And a spokesman for British Nuclear Group, which runs Sizewell A, 
said that security had been reviewed in the light of terrorist 
attacks. 

A Civil Nuclear Constabulary spokeswoman added: "Security at 
sites is kept under constant review and is not introduced in 
response to any particular event or attack." 

Greenpeace campaigners have breached security at Sizewell B twice 
in the last few years to highlight what they claim is Sizewell 
B's poor security and vulnerability to terrorist attack.                                                          



*****************************************************************
 40 NewsFromRussia.Com: Switzerland makes two more arrests in nuclear
export case
 
 02:43 2005-09-11

 Swiss officials have arrested two more people in the case of
engineer Urs Tinner accused of helping Libya's now abandoned
effort to build a nuclear bomb, a spokesman said Saturday. 

Hansjuerg Mark Wiedmer, spokesman for the Federal Prosecutor's
Office, declined to identify the two, or say whether they were
related to Tinner. Wiedmer said the two people have been in
investigative detention since Monday. 

Tinner, who was arrested last year in Germany, was extradited to
Switzerlandin May. Swiss authorities have been investigating him
on suspicion of violating export laws on controlled goods and
war materials. 

German authorities said Tinner is suspected of being part of an
international network of nuclear smugglers under ringleader
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the creator of Pakistan's atomic weapons
program. 

Tinner is alleged to have overseen machine work in Malaysia on
gas centrifuge parts that were intercepted by Western
intelligence in October 2003 on a ship bound for Libya. 

Gas centrifuges are needed to enrich uranium for use in nuclear
weapons. 

Tinner's name first surfaced last year when Malaysian police
said his father, Friedrich Tinner, was an associate of Khan.
Tinner's family confirmed the father had known Khan since the
1970s, but said he was uninvolved in the transactions. 

Urs Tinner's younger brother, Marco, reportedly owns a
Swiss-based company that sold equipment to the Malaysian firm
that manufactured the parts sent to Libya, AP reported.

PRAVDA.Ru's editors.   
*****************************************************************
 41 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Envisions Using Nukes on Terrorists
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Sunday September 11, 2005 5:46 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Pentagon planning document being updated to
reflect the doctrine of pre-emption declared by President Bush
in 2002 envisions the use of nuclear weapons to deter terrorists
from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States
or its allies. 

The ``Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations,'' which was last
updated 10 years ago, makes clear that ``the decision to employ
nuclear weapons at any level requires explicit orders from the
president.'' 

But it says that in a changing environment ``terrorists or
regional states armed with WMD will likely test U.S. security
commitments to its allies and friends.'' 

``In response, the U.S. needs a range of capabilities to assure
friend and foe alike of its resolve,'' says the 69-page document
dated March 15. 

A Pentagon spokesman said Saturday evening that Navy Cmdr. Dawn
Cutler, a public affairs officer for the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, has issued a statement saying the draft is
still being circulated among the various services, field
commanders, Pentagon lawyers and Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld's office, . 

Its existence was initially reported by The Washington Post in
Sunday editions, which said the document was posted on a
Pentagon Internet site and pointed out to it by a consultant for
the Natural Resorces Defense Council. 

The file was not available at that site Saturday evening, but a
copy was available at www.globalsecurity.org. 

``A broader array of capability is needed to dissuade states
from undertaking ... courses of action that would threaten U.S.
and allied security,'' the draft says. ``U.S. forces must pose a
credible deterrent to potential adversaries who have access to
modern military technology, including WMD and the means to
deliver them.'' 

It says ``deterrence of potential adversary WMD use requires the
potential adversary leadership to believe the United States has
both the ability and will to pre-empt or retaliate promptly with
responses that are credible and effective.'' 

It says ``this will be particularly difficult with nonstate
(non-government) actors who employ or attempt to gain use of
WMD. Here, deterrence may be directed at states that support
their efforts as well as the terrorist organization itself. 

``However, the continuing proliferation of WMD along with the
means to deliver them increases the probability that someday a
state/nonstate actor nation/terrorist may, through miscaluation
or by deliberate choice, use those weapons. In such cases,
deterrence, even based on the threat of massive destruction, may
fail and the United States must be prepared to use nuclear
weapons if necessary.'' 

It notes that U.S. policy has always been purposely vague with
regard to when the United States would use nuclear weapons and
that it has never vowed not to be the first to use them in a
conflict. 

One scenario for a possible nuclear pre-emptive strike in the
draft would be in the case of an ``imminent attack from
adversary biological weapons that only effects from nuclear
weapons can safely destroy.'' 

The Bush administration is continuing to push for development of
an earth-penetrating nuclear warhead, but has yet to obtain
congressional approval. 

However, the Senate voted in July to revive the
``bunker-buster'' program that Congress last year decided to
kill. 

Administration officials have maintained that the U.S. needs to
try to develop a nuclear warhead that would be capable of
destroying deeply buried targets including bunkers tunneled into
solid rock. 

But opponents said that its benefits are questionable and that
such a warhead would cause extensive radiation fallout above
ground killing thousands of people. And they say it may make it
easier for a future president to decide to use the nuclear
option instead of a conventional weapon. 

The Senate voted 53-43 to include $4 million for research into
the feasibility of a bunker-buster nuclear warhead. Earlier this
year, the House refused to provide the money, so a final
decision will have to be worked out between the two chambers. 

--- 

On The Net: 

www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/jp3-12fc2.pdf 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 42 PittsburghLIVE.com: No contamination found at A-bomb test site - 

 By Jennifer Bails
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
 Sunday, September 11, 2005 

A scientific expedition to a remote Aleutian island led by a
University of Pittsburgh researcher has found no signs of
radioactive waste seeping from the largest underground nuclear
explosion in the nation's history. 

Sooner or later, radioactive particles will begin to leak from
Amchitka Island, but right now, the plants, fish, birds and
marine mammals in the surrounding waters of the Bering Sea show
no signs of contamination, said project director Conrad "Dan"
Volz, head of the Center for Healthy Environments and
Communities at Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health. 

"This is good news," said Volz. "But obviously there could be a
breakthrough at some point, so a long-term monitoring plan must
be put in place." 

The methods used at Amchitka also could provide a model to study
other bomb testing sites and even to evaluate areas in Western
Pennsylvania that house waste from the iron, steel and nuclear
industries, he said. Last month, Volz traveled to Lithuania to
speak to NATO officials about preventing catastrophes at old
nuclear installations in the former Soviet Union. 

"We really have developed an interdisciplinary methodology that
could be used to solve a wide variety of problems," Volz said,
whose efforts to assess the island's nuclear legacy were
profiled last year in the Tribune-Review. 

Volz and a team of scientists working through an independent
partnership of university researchers called the Consortium for
Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation spent about two
months on and around Amchitka last summer. CRESP helps the
federal government make decisions about cleaning up the nation's
nuclear weapons sites. 

A $3.1 million field expedition last summer was paid for by the
U.S. Department of Energy, which is moving to designate the
outpost as a national wildlife refuge under the stewardship of
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Located 1,340 miles southwest of Anchorage, the uninhabited
island was the site of three underground nuclear tests conducted
by the Atomic Energy Commission from 1965 to 1971. The last
explosion was a 5-megaton bomb detonated a mile beneath the
earth. 

The thermonuclear blast was almost 400 times more powerful than
the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. It lifted Amchitka
one foot in the air and sent waves two stories high crashing on
its rugged cliffs. 

Until Volz and his colleagues embarked on their study, it was
unclear whether radioactive particles released underground by
the nuclear tests were leaking into the ocean from a crater
created by the bomb that is supposed to contain radioactive
debris. 

Cancer-causing nuclear waste in the waters around Amchitka could
have serious consequences for marine life and the Alaskan
fisheries industry, native Aleutian hunters and seafood
consumers worldwide. 

To test for seepage, Volz and other CRESP scientists collected
biological samples from nearly 30 species -- from sea urchins to
giant octopuses -- and obtained geophysical samples from ocean
sediments. 

After a year of analysis, a 1,300-page report released last
month revealed that levels of radioactivity found at Amchitka
were similar to those found at another spot in the Aleutians and
to noncontaminated places in the northern hemisphere. 

The CRESP data will serve as a baseline to help scientists
recognize when the dangerous nuclear residue begins to emerge,
whether it happens hundreds of years from now or sooner, Volz
said. 

"The findings should provide assurance to both those who depend
on the island's marine environment for subsistence food and for
the significant commercial fishing interests of the region,"
said the project's principal investigator, Charles Powers, in a
statement. 

Powers is a professor of environmental and occupational medicine
at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. 

Jennifer Bails can be reached at jbails@tribweb.comor (412)
320-7991. 

Images and text copyright © 2005 by The Tribune-Review
Publishing Co.
*****************************************************************
 43 [CMEP] NRC Announces Decision on Utah Nuclear Waste Dump
 
Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2005 23:25:02 -0500 (CDT)

 
	autolearn=ham version=3.0.4
X-Spam-filter-host: pascal.ctyme.com - http://www.junkemailfilter.com

September 9, 2005

This email contains four items:

1) Press Release On NRC Utah Waste Dump Decision
2) September's Issue of Eye on Energy - Public Citizen's Energy Newsletter
3) Update: Thanks for Taking Action! Overwhelming Number of Comments Received
by NRC on Standards for Relicensing Reactors
4) Invitation to DC Premier of Documentary "Homeland: Four Portraits of Native
Action"

=====================================

*** P R E S S   R E L E A S E ***

Sept. 9, 2005

Contact: Melissa Kemp (202) 454-5176
Michele Boyd (202) 454-5134

Approval of Private Fuel Storage Means Dangerous and Unnecessary Storage of
Highly Radioactive Waste in Utah

Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Director, Public Citizens Energy Program

Todays decision by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to approve a
temporary high-level radioactive waste storage site, Private Fuel Storage
(PFS), on Native American land in Utah, is a significant mistake, made for all
the wrong reasons. PFS is an unnecessary, irresponsible and unethical proposal
that will do nothing to address the nuclear waste problem this country faces.

The primary motivation for PFS is the nuclear industrys need for a publicly
presentable waste solution that it can use in its push for a nuclear
renaissance. Despite what has been claimed, PFS will not consolidate waste in
one safe and secure place. As long as we continue to operate nuclear reactors,
waste will always remain near cities and communities around the country,
because irradiated fuel must be stored on-site for at least five years to
allow it to cool before it can be transported.

In addition, PFS will mean the transportation of waste through densely
populated urban and suburban areas across the country. The project will rush
transportation forward and increase the number of times waste is moved. Even
if all possible precautions are taken, and they have not been, the shipping of
nuclear waste is a dangerous undertaking and should be absolutely minimized.
Accidents of some nature are unavoidable.

PFS will also bring risks to Utah. The dump is not planned for permanent
storage and will simply place the waste storage containers on concrete pads
above ground. There will be no waste repacking facility on-site, as there are
presently at reactors, to deal with accidents or problems. The temporary
nature of PFS is also questionable, as it is dependent on the opening of Yucca
Mountain, which continues to have significant problems and may never open.

Todays irresponsible and misguided approval of this proposal should
illustrate how far the NRC has strayed from its mission of protecting public
health and safety.

###

Public Citizen is a national, nonpartisan consumer advocacy organization based
in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.citizen.org.

=====================================

New Eye On Energy Newsletter Available

The September issue of Public Citizens monthly energy newsletter Eye On
Energy is now available!  Articles this month include:

 The Ever-Rising Price of Gas
 Lax Radiation Standards Proposed for Yucca Mountain
 Westar Energy Fined for Illegal Contributions to Congress
 New Nuke for North Carolina?
 New Power Plants Could Pollute Bush's Crawford Ranch

To read Eye on Energy, click here:

http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/eoe/articles.cfm?ID=13987

or visit www.EyeOnEnergy.org. You can also find a PDF version of the
newsletter in a convenient 2-page format that you can print out and bring with
you to meetings or give to your friends!

=====================================

Update: Thanks for Taking Action!

Two weeks ago, we sent you an appeal to take action on a rulemaking at the
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to ensure nuclear plants that seek to
operate for twenty years beyond their original anticipated lifetime were
subjected to the same level of scrutiny that a brand new nuclear plant would
be.  Were pleased to report that over 700 of you submitted comments to the
NRC supporting the petition!  Combined with our friends over at the
organization Riverkeeper, over 1200 comments were received by NRC, completely
overwhelming their staff and quite possibly setting a new record.

Great work!  Thanks for helping to shine a light on some of the NRCs most
outrageous practices.

==============================

INVITATION to DC Premier of Documentary "Homeland: Four Portraits of Native
Action"

Public Citizen encourages people to attend the upcoming screening of the
documentary film Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action by Katahdin
Productions. Homeland tells the story of Mitchell and Rita Capitan,
co-founders of Eastern Navajo Dini Against Uranium Mining (ENDAUM) and three
other leaders from Native American communities who are passionately struggling
to preserve their sovereignty, protect their lands, and preserve their way of
life.

Nearly all Indian nations sit on land threatened by environmental hazards -
toxic waste, strip mining, oil drilling, and nuclear contamination. Homeland
tells the stories of just four of these tribal nations, chronicling the
efforts of the remarkable Native American activists who are working to stop
and reverse the devastating affronts of multi-national energy companies and
the dismantling of 30 years of environmental laws.

This feature-length film premiered in February 2005 at the Santa Barbara
International Film Festival, where it won the Fund for Santa Barbara Social
Justice Award for Documentary Film, and the Audience Award for Documentary
Film. The Washington DC screening will take place on Wednesday, September 14,
2005, at Landmark's E Street Cinema (555 11th Street NW). All funds from
tickets and sponsorships will benefit ENDAUM. Visit www.katahdin.org or call
(202) 466-8585 to purchase tickets for $15.
/*Your email ID. <diaEmailID='36290427' thread=6315/>--*/
*****************************************************************
 44 AU ABC: Govt maintains uranium mining opposition
 
12 September 2005. 07:44 (AWST)

 The Labor Member for the north-west Queensland state seat of Mt
Isa and Queensland Speaker, Tony McGrady, says the party is firm
in its opposition to uranium mining. 

Queensland Liberal Senator Russell Trood has told Federal
Parliament four uranium mining sites in Queensland could begin
production immediately if the Beattie Government agreed to issue
licences. 

A Canadian company has begun an exploration program in the
north-west but Mr McGrady says he is uncomfortable with the idea
of any uranium mining. 

"Where does the waste go? And I hear these people from Sydney
saying that, you know, 'the waste can go to western Queensland
or indeed the Northern Territory'," he said. 

"Well, thankyou very much, but I don't think I want to see the
area which I live in being seen as a dumping ground. Nor do I
want the area that I live in being used to transport the nuclear
waste."

*****************************************************************
 45 Deseret News: Utah's steps in nuclear storage battle
 
[deseretnews.com] 

Saturday, September 10, 2005                             

With a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license in hand, the utility 
group Private Fuel Storage wants to store 44,000 tons of spent 
nuclear fuel in steel casks on the Goshute Indian Reservation in 
Skull Valley, perhaps by 2008. Utah leaders and other opponents 
hope to prevent that by:

       • Challenging PFS's NRC license and proposal in the 
courts.

       • Asking the Bureau of Indian Affairs to deny final 
approval of the PFS lease on the Goshute reservation.

       • Persuading the Bureau of Land Management to deny 
approval of a rail line on federal land.

       • Having Congress declare the BLM lands to be wilderness, 
blocking the rail line.
 			  		 		   

© 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company [ /] 
*****************************************************************
 46 Las Vegas RJ: NRC clears way for nuclear waste storage at Skull Valley Goshute
 
Saturday, September 10, 2005
 
Indian Reservation in Utah 

By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
 
A sign in April 2002 notes a prohibition against high-level
nuclear waste except by permit along Highway 186 leading to the
Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley, Utah.

Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday
approved a private company's plans to store nuclear waste on an
Indian reservation in Utah, moving the proposal a step closer to
reality and causing Nevadans to question how it might affect the
repository planned for Yucca Mountain.
 
 Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman immediately vowed to challenge the NRC's
decision in the courts, and state officials promised to fight
the facility using all possible options. The state contends the
project on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation would be
too dangerous.
 
 The strong reaction by Utah officials mirrored that of their
neighbors in Nevada who are waging an aggressive fight against
Department of Energy plans to build a nuclear waste complex at
Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
 
 Nevada elected leaders had closely watched the proposal by
Private Fuel Storage, a group of utilities that wants to store
44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel at the Skull Valley site about
50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
 
 A handful of lawyers and consultants who helped Utah fight the
nuclear waste initiative before the NRC also are on Nevada's
payroll, including Joe Egan, the state's lead nuclear waste
attorney.
 
 Views were mixed as to what approval of the private nuclear
waste site in Utah might portend for the Yucca Mountain Project.
The Energy Department has yet to file an application for the NRC
to consider. 
"I don't think there is much in parallel between PFS and Yucca
Mountain," said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects. 
"A couple of issues are similar but the issues at Yucca are far
more complex, the time frames are much longer and the geology is
complicated," Loux said.
 
 At Yucca Mountain, nuclear waste arriving by truck or rail
would be repackaged in an above-ground industrial complex and
stored in an underground warren. To obtain a license, the
Department of Energy must show it can meet standards to store
77,000 tons of waste safely for tens of thousands of years. 
At Skull Valley, nuclear waste would be kept above ground in
concrete and steel casks arrayed on concrete pads over 100
acres. Planners envision up to 4,000 casks, each containing 10
metric tons of spent fuel and licensed for storage up to 40
years.
 
 Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the NRC's approval was a bad
omen for Nevadans who oppose nuclear waste storage within or
near the state. 
"This does not bode well for our fight," she said. "The NRC
decision totally disregards the wishes of the people of Utah,
and the people of Nevada have also spoken they do not want
nuclear waste. Whatever happened to states rights?"
 
 Berkley said the ruling also signaled federal regulators'
acceptance of the concept that large volumes of nuclear waste
can be transported safely over long distances, which Yucca
Mountain critics and nuclear activists have disputed. 
"Any decision that permits the storage of nuclear waste far from
where it is produced is not a good idea for the state of
Nevada," Berkley said. 
Sue Martin, a spokeswoman for Private Fuel Storage, said the
Utah facility would be a temporary dump pending the delayed
opening of a national repository at Yucca Mountain. Original
plans were for a Nevada repository to begin accepting spent fuel
in 1998. 
"First and foremost, this certainly is not an alternative to
Yucca Mountain," Martin said. "If Yucca Mountain had been
completed and opened on schedule this facility would not be
needed at all."
 
 Wenonah Hauter, energy director of Public Citizen, a watchdog
group, questioned the temporary nature of the Skull Valley site.
 
 "It is dependent on the opening of Yucca Mountain, which
continues to have significant problems and may never open,"
Hauter said. Even if a Yucca repository were to open, waste
could remain in Utah until schedules call for the specific
utilities to shift their waste to Nevada. 

"The two dumps are very much joined at the hip," said Kevin
Kamps, a waste specialist with the Nuclear Information Resource
Service. "If the waste is moved all the way to Skull Valley, it
is just a hop, skip and jump to Nevada." 

Kamps added utilities are expected to generate 105,000 metric
tons of nuclear waste by 2046, enough to fill both Yucca
Mountain and the Utah facility.
 
 Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has proposed
storing nuclear waste at the facilities where it is produced, an
alternative to both the Private Fuel Storage site and Yucca
Mountain.
 
 On Friday, Reid said in a statement that he still believes that
is the safest option.
 
 "Thousands of tons of deadly nuclear material will pass homes,
schools, businesses and churches in communities all across the
country, and there is simply no way to safely do this," Reid
said.
 
 It took eight years for the NRC to judge the Private Fuel
Storage application. By law, the agency has four years to weigh
Yucca Mountain, although experts have said they expect it could
take much longer considering Nevada's unremitting opposition.
 
 Utah officials had argued the Skull Valley facility would be
too close to a major population center and that the risk of a
jet fighter from Hill Air Force Base crashing into the storage
casks was too great.
 
 But commissioners dismissed the argument, taking a two-pronged
vote. First, they affirmed an earlier ruling that the waste
containers wouldn't release an unacceptable amount of radiation
if a jet crashed into them. Then they voted 3-1 to authorize the
NRC staff to issue a license to construct and operate the
storage site.
 
 The license will be ready after paperwork is completed, said
NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner.
 
 The dissenting vote was cast by Gregory Jaczko, a former energy
adviser to Reid. In a five page opinion, Jaczko said more study
was needed of the consequences should an F-16 fighter jet were
to crash at the site.
 
 Huntsman said in a statement that he was "deeply disappointed"
in the NRC decision and would continue fighting the storage
facility. In addition to a court appeal, another option for the
state could be to designate a wilderness area to block
construction of a rail spur to the site.
 
 Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a statement that the plan was
"dead on arrival."
 
 "This is a reckless, dangerous proposal, and I am pulling out
all the stops to make sure this waste never makes a home in
Utah," Hatch said.
 
 An impoverished tribe, the Goshutes had been looking for ways
to make money and eventually teamed with Private Fuel Storage to
propose the station.
 
 The earliest the site is expected to be in operation is 2008.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 47 Deseret News: NRC ruling won't end fight over nuclear waste 

[deseretnews.com] 

Saturday, September 10, 2005 

D. Spangler and Bob Bernick Jr. 

Deseret Morning News 

WASHINGTON — Utah officials say they are disappointed but not 
surprised that the Nuclear Regulation Commission ruled Friday to 
let a consortium of nuclear power utilities store nuclear waste 
on Goshute Tribal lands in Tooele County. 

"I think we gave up on the NRC a long time ago," said 
Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. "We could see where they were headed." 

The timing of the ruling was more surprising. The NRC was 
set to rule Friday on the last in a long line of appeals by the 
state, this one over the issue of military over-flights by 
fighters using the Utah Test and Training Range. 

The NRC denied that appeal, as expected, but then, in a 
3-1 vote, ordered its staff to go ahead and issue Private Fuel 
Storage a license to store up to 40,000 tons of spent nuclear 
fuel in above-ground casks. 

"Our decision today concludes this protracted 
adjudication, which has generated more than 40 published board 
decisions and more than 30 published commission decisions," the 
commission wrote in its ruling. "The adjudicatory effort, plus 
our staff's separate safety and environmental reviews, gives us 
reasonable assurance that PFS's proposed (storage facility) can 
be constructed and operated safety." 

The ruling does not necessarily open the door for PFS to 
begin construction. The state will appeal the ruling in federal 
court and will likely seek an injunction blocking the consortium 
from proceeding. 

"Although this is certainly a setback," said Gov. Jon 
Huntsman Jr., "it does not mean that spent nuclear fuel will be 
shipped to Utah any time soon. This is a battle that will take 
several years to fight to completion, but it is also a battle 
that I intend to win." 

Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett agree. Hatch 
said there are "just too many administrative and legal hurdles 
to clear for this to ever become a reality," and he pledged to 
continue pursuing every avenue of opposition. 

"It's no secret that the NRC had its own motivations for 
granting this license, and up until now the PFS plan has enjoyed 
the protection of the NRC process," Hatch said. "Today's 
decision opens the proposal up for legal challenges from the 
state and administrative challenges from the Department of 
Energy and the White House, and we are still pursuing 
legislative solutions." 

Appeals to come 

Not long after the NRC decision, Utah's congressional 
delegation fired off a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, 
urging her not to approve the lease agreement between PFS and 
the Goshutes before all the legal, economic, environmental and 
safety issues are resolved. 

"You should know that the Utah congressional delegation 
will use every means at our disposal to block the construction 
of the proposed PFS site at Skull Valley," the delegation wrote. 

Huntsman hinted that the state may file a lawsuit in 
federal court, where it has already lost once, in addition to 
the appeal. And the state still has several other avenues of 
opposition. The Bureau of Indian Affairs must also approve the 
lease between the company and the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes. 
And the Bureau of Land Management must approve a revision of its 
management plan for Skull Valley to permit PFS to construct and 
operate a rail line through BLM lands connecting the PFS site to 
Union Pacific rail heads. 

"The simplest way to stop this rests with the Bush 
administration," said Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah. "As the trustee 
for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Interior Secretary Gale Norton 
could refuse to sign off on the BIA lease agreement negotiated 
by the Goshute tribe." 

Officials have met repeatedly with Department of Interior 
officials, who oversee the BIA and BLM, to press their case. 
But, despite Friday's letter to Norton, having either agency 
block the proposed nuclear waste dump is considered a long shot. 

The best remaining option could be legislation, sponsored 
by Bishop and now included in the Defense Reauthorization Act 
that would declare the BLM lands as wilderness, thereby blocking 
the construction of the rail line. That bill is now in the 
Senate. 

Construction may begin 

A spokesperson for the Goshute band could not be reached 
for comment. The Goshutes contracted with PFS to temporarily 
store radioactive spent fuel rods in some 4,000 steel-encased 
concrete casks on their land about 50 miles southwest of Salt 
Lake City. Goshute leaders have characterized the $3 billion 
deal as a much needed economic development project for their 
impoverished people. But the project has become a divisive issue 
for the band, resulting in a protracted battle for leadership of 
the band. 

Sue Martin, spokesperson for Private Fuel Storage, said 
Friday that while there is still preliminary work to be done, 
construction could begin within six months, with fuel rods 
transported and stored at the site by 2008. 

PFS as a condition of the permit taking effect "must 
provide proof to the NRC that we have enough customers to make 
the project viable," Martin said. She believes that is the case, 
but a study must be provided. 

That requirement could open up a new avenue of opposition 
to the state, Bishop admitted. There have been informal talks 
with partners in the PFS consortium about not participating, and 
if the state can persuade enough of them not to send their waste 
to Utah, the state could argue that PFS has not met the economic 
conditions of the project. 

"We have been aware of that option for some time," Bishop 
said. "We have come to realize that PFS does not represent all 
of the industry, and it does not project the best image that the 
industry wants right now." 

Martin said PFS should have no problem meeting the 
economic conditions. "A lot has changed in the industry over the 
last eight years," she said. "A lot more facilities are close to 
running out of space in their spent fuel pools and others have 
on-site storage. But doing a centralized facility is more 
economical than for each utility to do its own storage." 

Concern and anger 

The ruling prompted outrage and concern across the 
country. 

"Transporting high-level radioactive waste to Utah is as 
dangerous as it would be transporting it to Nevada," said Senate 
Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada. "Thousands of tons of 
deadly nuclear material will pass homes, schools, businesses and 
churches in communities all across the country, and there is 
simply no way to safely do this." 

Reid has been fighting his own battles to keep nuclear 
waste out of Nevada, and he has been at loggerheads with Utah's 
two Republican senators, who support the Yucca Mountain 
permanent disposal site. 

But Bishop said the time has come to join forces with 
Reid. 

"He's right on this one," Bishop said. "Harry Reid has 
been talking about recycling and on-site storage (at nuclear 
power plants), and that is the real long-term solution for 
everybody. It solves Nevada's problem and it solves Utah's 
problem." 

Bishop said he would work to persuade fellow House 
members to come around to Reid's proposed solution. "The time 
has come to help Harry Reid," he said. 

Bishop has allies in Matheson, D-Utah, who has always 
supported Reid's proposal, and Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah. 

"It is increasingly clear that a more prudent policy is 
to provide opportunities for reprocessing and secure on-site 
storage," Cannon said. "Our time and resources should be spent 
developing better ways to use or dispose of nuclear waste than 
outdated, risky plans such as storage in our western states." 

Meanwhile, Jason Groenewold of HEAL Utah, an 
environmental group fighting PFS's plans, challenged Sens. Bob 
Bennett and Orrin Hatch, both R-Utah, to become more active in 
supporting Bishop's wilderness amendments. "The wilderness 
amendments are in the House version that has gone to the Senate. 
But the language is not yet in the Senate version, which should 
be voted on this month. Why not?" 

And while Huntsman has been talking about joining with 
Western states on a number of cooperative efforts recently, 
Bennett and Hatch have not joined with Nevada, Idaho and other 
states in fighting nuclear waste storage options in West, 
Groenewold said. It might be time for Bennett and Hatch to 
change their stands and work with Nevada to block a permanent 
storage facility. 

Groenewold said while the NRC acknowledges that a 
military jet fighter flying over the bombing range in Utah's 
west desert could crash into the above-ground storage units, the 
NRC "is completely ignoring the risk." 

"There won't be a federal emergency management plan if 
that happens, or there is some kind of sabotage or attack" 
against the facility, he said. 

"No plan of response? In the wake of the Gulf Coast 
hurricane and that emergency response, Utahns should utterly be 
concerned about our health and safety if this happens," 
Groenewold said. "It could have a devastating effect impact on 
our state, not to mention the lives of those who live along the 
transportation corridor," along which the waste would be shipped.

Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Energy 
Program, based in Washington, D.C., called the NRC decision "a 
significant mistake made for all the wrong reasons. PFS is an 
unnecessary, irresponsible and unethical proposal that will do 
nothing to address the nuclear waste problem this country faces."

"Today's irresponsible and misguided approval of this 
proposal should illustrate how far the NRC has strayed from its 
mission of protecting public health and safety," she added. 

PFS has had an agreement with Tooele County for several 
years to pay the county fees in lieu of property taxes. And that 
could be as much as $250 million over the life of the 40-year 
project, Martin said. There is no such agreement with the state 
of Utah "because the state has been fighting the project" 
instead of trying to work with PFS, Martin said. 

E-mail: spang@desnews.com; bbjr@desnews.com			 		 		 

© 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company 	 		 			 		 			 		 			 		 
*****************************************************************
 48 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: There he goes again ... 

September 09, 2005 

 WEEKEND EDITION

 Sept, 10-11, 2005

 The fiasco that arose from Michael Brown's appointment was not
a learning experience for President Bush. On Thursday he
nominated a person to lead the Yucca Mountain project who
candidly admits he knows next to nothing about the permanent
storage of nuclear waste.

 Edward F. Sproat III is Bush's pick to head the Energy
Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
This is the office that oversees the department's plan to open
Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the nation's
permanent burial site for high-level nuclear waste from power
plants.

 Yucca Mountain is a disaster waiting to happen. For starters,
it is located in an earthquake zone. Many scientists say the
department's plan to encase the waste in metal casks to
compensate for the mountain's porous geology is flawed. And
transportation of the waste across the country for decades also
poses grave national-security risks.

 Sproat admitted to the Sun that he is "John Q. Public" when it
comes to knowledge about Yucca Mountain. As a consultant to the
nuclear-power industry, and as a former executive at nuclear
power-plants, his expertise lies in producing the waste. Even if
he were an expert in waste disposal, why is he being recommended
at all when the nuclear power industry is pushing hard to open
Yucca Mountain? The job requires a neutral scientist, one not
driven by a pro-Yucca agenda.

 Like Brown, Sproat believes that all he needs is on-the-job
training. "I am hoping at some point I will get a briefing book
to be better prepared for the (Yucca Mountain) details," he
said. This is ridiculous. But we suppose it would be just as
ridiculous to expect Bush to recommend an open-minded person
with knowledge of all aspects of nuclear waste storage,
including its dangers. 

All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 49 Tri-City Herald: DOE could re-route contaminated waste to other sites 

This story was published Saturday, September 10th, 2005 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

The Department of Energy is proposing sending some
plutonium-contaminated waste bound for Hanford to a waste site
in South Carolina or Texas after learning of problems with a
study prepared by Battelle at Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory. 

DOE has published a supplemental analysis in the Federal
Register that could be adopted in 30 days that proposes a new
plan for 37 cubic meters of transuranic waste. 

The material, typically laboratory debris contaminated with
plutonium, needs to be removed from the Battelle Columbus
Laboratory in Ohio. 

Although it originally planned to send the waste to Hanford, it
now proposes sending it to the Savannah River Site in South
Carolina or to Waste Control Specialists, a commercial facility
in Andrews, Texas. 

However, the proposed DOE plan does not rule out the possibility
the waste might eventually be shipped from one of those sites to
Hanford. 

The state of Washington filed a lawsuit to prevent DOE from
sending the Ohio or other transuranic waste to Hanford in 2003. 

DOE said it wanted to use the Hanford site to identify and
package the waste before it is sent to a national repository for
transuranic waste in the New Mexico desert. 

But the state feared the transuranic waste might be stranded at
Hanford. New Mexico has not agreed to accept all the waste, and
Hanford now does not have the facilities needed to handle some
of the most radioactive of the waste. 

In addition, Washington voters passed an initiative in November
to stop DOE from sending more waste to Hanford until radioactive
waste from the past production of plutonium for the nation's
nuclear weapons program is cleaned up. 

The initiative is on hold as a federal court considers DOE
accusations that it violates the Constitution. 

On Thursday, Jay Manning, Washington State Department of Ecology
director, told a Hanford Advisory Board meeting in Portland that
the state was negotiating a settlement on the lawsuit that could
mean Hanford would have to accept at least some of the Ohio
transuranic waste. 

"I'm feeling considerable pressure to resolve the issue,"
Manning said. 

Federal Judge Alan McDonald in May ruled in part against the
state, saying that DOE could ship most of the transuranic waste
in Ohio to Hanford. 

DOE was a week away from making the first shipment in late July
when Battelle, which operates the DOE national laboratory in
Richland, told DOE it had some quality control issues with an
environmental study used to decide to ship certain types of
radioactive waste to Hanford. 

Some information in the study, such as possible effects of waste
on ground water beneath the waste disposal site, may have been
incorrect. 

DOE canceled plans to ship the Ohio waste as it began an
aggressive review of the extent of problems in the environmental
study, even though possible problems in the ground water
analysis did not directly affect the Ohio waste. 

However, the state continued to feel pressure because of
McDonald's concerns that without Washington's cooperation at
Hanford, Battelle Columbus could not close up the Ohio waste
site, saving considerable taxpayer money. The Ohio site does not
have the capabilities needed to deal with the waste. 

But the federal government was also under pressure to remove the
waste from Ohio by the end of 2005 when the Battelle Nuclear
Regulatory Commission license for the waste in Ohio expires. 

Faced with both that deadline and sorting out the problems with
the environmental study, DOE concluded the best plan may be to
find a site other than Hanford to store the waste, according to
the announcement in the Federal Register. 

The state is continuing discussion with U.S. Department of
Justice attorneys on its objections to shipping waste to
Hanford, Manning said. 

But DOE's intention not to send the Ohio transuranic waste to
Hanford "takes one more complicated issue off the table,"
Manning said. 

Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest,
called the DOE decision "a big win for cleaning up Hanford,
instead of making the problem worse." Heart of America was the
primary backer of the initiative to stop DOE from sending waste
to Hanford. 

Although McDonald ruled in May that some transuranic waste could
be sent to Hanford, he has yet to rule on whether DOE may send
low-level radioactive waste and low-level waste mixed with
hazardous chemicals to Hanford for permanent disposal. 

A preliminary injunction barring those shipments has been
extended to Oct. 9. 

The plan proposed by DOE to send the Ohio transuranic waste to
South Carolina or Texas does not exclude the possibility it
might someday be shipped from one of those sites to Hanford. 

DOE is asking New Mexico to modify some requirements about how
the transuranic waste it accepts are characterized. 

If New Mexico will not agree to the changes, more
characterization of the waste might be required than could be
done at the South Carolina or Texas site. 

Then DOE would transfer the waste to Hanford or a nuclear waste
site in Idaho or Tennessee for characterization before disposing
of it in New Mexico. 

© 2005 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 50 UK: Independent: Sellafield struggles with radioactive gulls 

By Jason Nisse 

Published: 11 September 2005 

Under fire for its safety record, accused of poisoning the Irish
Sea for decades, Sellafield is wrestling with a new and
unexpected threat. 

It has been revealed that deep in the bowels of the Cumbrian
nuclear plant there is a freezer packed with an expanding
mountain of radioactive gulls. 

They are the result of a controversial culling policy operated
at the Britain's most notorious nuclear site for more than a
decade. And no one has a clue what to do with them. 

The explanation is as follows: seagulls and pigeons would land
at Sellafield and then fly on, potentially carrying hazardous
radiation. 

Therefore, stung by criticism from local people, the managers at
BNFL employed sharpshooters to kill any birds which were rash
enough to land on the premises. Those that are killed are
designated low-level nuclear waste and have to be put in a
freezer because of contamination worries. Normally BNFL would
dump its low level waste at Drigg, a site a few miles up the
coast. But there is another, unpleasant twist. 

Since the seagulls would decay if they were left out in the
elements, they were deemed "putrescent" and had to be stored in
a large industrial freezer similar to those used by Tesco or
Asda to transport frozen foods. 

A spokesman for BNFL could not say exactly how many gulls and
pigeons were in the deep freeze but was willing to speculate.
"We are adding to the store all the time so we do not count
them. But given the size I'd say it was in the hundreds," he
said. 

These days, BNFL's subsidiary, British Nuclear Group, manages
Sellafield for a new government body, the Nuclear
Decommissioning Agency, which is charged with cleaning up
Britain's nuclear sites. 

BNG is having to decide how it might dispose of the birds as
part of the new attitude to nuclear waste. It is planning to
build a special landfill site where it could tip the birds, but
no decision has yet been made. 

Meanwhile the deep freeze continues to fill. 

© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd. 
*****************************************************************
 51 Independent: Government to net Ł100m from sale of British Nuclear Group 

By Michael Harrison, Business Editor 

Published: 12 September 2005 


The Government has decided to sell off British Nuclear Group,
the state-owned body with the job of cleaning up most of the
UK's civil nuclear sites, including the Sellafield waste
reprocessing plant in Cumbria. 

The sale is likely to be carried out in the middle of next year
and is expected to raise around Ł100m. The business will be sold
to a trade buyer with a number of American, British and
Continental companies expected to enter the bidding. 

British Nuclear Group (BNG) is the business spun out of British
Nuclear Fuels following the transfer of all BNFL's assets and
its Ł48bn in liabilities to the new Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority. It has 15,000 staff and its chief executive is a
former BNFL director, Lawrie Haynes. 

Initially, BNG will have legacy contracts to manage and begin
the clean up of BNFL's 14 sites which include Britain's Magnox
nuclear stations as well as the Sellafield complex. 

Most of these legacy contracts will run for three years before
they are put out to competitive tender. But in the case of
Sellafield, which could cost as much as Ł40bn to clean up, BNG
will have up to four years before facing competition for the
contract. Among those expected to bid for the contracts are the
American companies Fluor, Bechtel and Washington Group, the UK
engineering contractor Amec and Serco, the support services
company. Cogema, the state-owned French nuclear company is also
likely to bid. 

These same companies are likely to be amongst the bidders for
BNG. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has not said what the
value of the clean-up contracts will be. Initially BNG will earn
an annual fee based on the work it does. BNFL has already
announced the sale of its US subsidiary Westinghouse, which
designs reactors and fabricates nuclear fuel. Up to 15 bidders
are thought likely to submit offers and the deal, due to be
announced by the end of the year, could raise Ł1bn. 

Once Westinghouse and BNG have been sold, BNFL is likely to be
wound up. Apart from its engineering division Nexia, the only
asset left in BNFL will be its one-third stake in Urenco, a
uranium enrichment business owned jointly with the Germans and
the Dutch based at Capenhurst near Chester. 

© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 52 Reid: Reid statement on approval of UT nuclear waste facility 
                                
Friday, September 9, 2005 
                                
WASHINGTON, D.C. â€“ U.S. Senator Harry Reid released the
following statement today: 

â€śTransporting high-level radioactive waste to Utah is as
dangerous as it would be transporting it to Nevada. Thousands of
tons of deadly nuclear material will pass homes, schools,
businesses and churches in communities all across the country,
and there is simply no way to safely do this. 

In Nevada, we will continue to fight as hard as we always have to 
stop the proposed Yucca Mountain site. 

The safest and smartest solution to solving the nationâ€™s 
nuclear waste problem is to store waste at the facilities where 
it is already being produced, as Sen. Ensign and I have 
proposed.â€ť 


### 

  
*****************************************************************
 53 Salt Lake Tribune: PFS: What's Next

Article Last Updated: 09/10/2005 02:05:59 AM                              
                   
  THE PFS BATTLE: Next steps for both sidesWhile federal
approval of a license was a landmark step in the long fight over
putting a high-level nuclear storage site in Utah, the battle
isn't over. Combatants now move to an array of other fronts. 
    
   The Agencies: 

   OPPONENTS include Utah government, environmentalists and
certain members of the Goshute tribe. They will most likely
pursue the following options: 
    
   State appeals U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision to
grant a license to store 4,000 containers of used nuclear plant
fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele
County. 
    
   The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs still has to give final
approval for the 121-member Skull Valley Band to lease land for
the site. State attorneys say the agency only gave the deal a
quick look and the lease is invalid. 
    
   The U.S. Bureau of Land Management must sign off on a
right-of-way the company needs to build and use a rail spur that
would take waste from the junction of I-80 and Delle. 
    
    
   The Courts: 

   State attorneys await a decision on whether the U.S. Supreme
Court will hear its appeal of a case brought by PFS and the
Skull Valley Band against state laws to block the waste project.
The Court's ruling would be on the timing of the issue, not the
substance. 
    
   Utah attorneys expect to file an appeal of the NRC ruling
immediately. 
    
   Goshutes opposed to the waste say their civil rights have
been violated by federal in-action on the corruption charges
they have raised. 
    
   Two would-be tribal leaders and their attorney go on trial
later this month - and a third is sentenced - in a federal fraud
and theft case. The four say they thought the dissident trio had
won a 2001 leadership election. 
    
   Congress: 
   A bill to designate wilderness along the western edges of
Skull Valley and the Cedar Mountains would prevent PFS from
building its rail lines from I-80 to the storage site. The U.S. 
House of Representatives has passed the bill several times, but 
the measure has faltered in the Senate. 
    
   Utah's congressional delegation pushed unsuccessfully to
block any development of the Skull Valley waste site until the
federal Homeland Security Department completes an in-depth
analysis of possible security impacts. 
    
   Utahns hope to get support for a new law that would emphasize
reprocessing of nuclear waste and long-term storage. If they
succeeded, the PFS storage would not be needed. 
    
   PROPONENTS include the Goshute tribe and PFS. Their primary
push will be in the marketplace. 
    
   Among their options: 
    
   The Markets: 

   Nuclear plants have accumulated more than enough waste to
fill the entire 44,000 ton capacity at the PFS site, but PFS
needs to begin signing up customers now. 
    
   As it develops plans for transporting waste to the remote
site, PFS will begin construction of the concrete and soil pads
that will hold the storage containers. The consortium hopes to
begin in two years. 
    
Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 54 Salt Lake Tribune: Church opposes nuclear dump 

Article Last Updated: 09/11/2005 12:23:21 AM 

LDS leaders 'regret decision' by federal regulators on
Skull Valley facility 

By Judy Fahys and Robert Gehrke 

Utah's political bigwigs have for eight years fought a plan to 
bring high-level nuclear waste to the desert just beyond the 
heart of the state's population centers. 

But missing from the chorus has been one voice of authority: 
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

Until now. 

Church leaders spoke up after federal regulators Friday 
signed off on the waste plan. For an institution that has 
remained staunchly, if enigmatically, silent on the issue for so 
long, the words were strong: 

"We regret [the] decision by the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission to authorize the issuance of a license that would 
allow storage of radioactive waste in Skull Valley. Storage of 
nuclear waste is a matter of significant public interest that 
requires thorough scrutiny." 

Maryann Webster, a member of Utah's dominant church, has 
petitioned leaders for years. She knew their influence helped 
keep the MX missile out of Utah. She hoped they would agree it 
would be a shame to welcome most of the nation's used reactor 
rods just an hour's drive from the church's world headquarters. 

"The church is the only political entity in the state 
powerful enough to defend us," she said. "I hope they will speak 
more strongly and work to prevent it." 

In the wake of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's 
decision Friday to license the nuclear storage, waste opponents 
hope their new apparent ally will change the conversation from 
that of who is to blame for a strategy that has failed so far, 
to that of how they get on a winning course. 

The aim is to defeat a plan by a group of utilities, Private 
Fuel Storage LLC, to lease land on a tribal reservation about 45 
miles southwest of Salt Lake City for storing up to 44,000 tons 
of used reactor fuel. By teaming up with the Skull Valley 
Goshutes, the company has co-opted the neighbors and their 
government. 

Utahns hate the idea. In a 2002 poll, 87 percent said they 
opposed the NRC license. 

The opposition is not surprising. Utah has no nuclear plants. 
Utahns already live with military installations handling 
chemical and biological arms. Many have lost a family member to 
illness caused by uranium mining or simply living downwind of 
atomic weapons tests. 

And now, with the license granted Friday, Skull Valley is the 
first U.S. license to be granted for a high-level facility in 
more than three decades. 

Some blame greed. 

PFS has promised the Skull Valley Band's 121 members - whose 
incomes are below poverty level - hundreds of millions of 
dollars to take part in the multibillion-dollar waste project. 
In return, it enjoys protection under the band's sovereign 
status, immune to Utah's complaints and free to collect rent 
from other companies for its storage pads. 

"Who but the companies and the band benefits?" complained 
Michael S. Lee, chief counsel for Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. and 
leader of the state government's opposition to the site. 

The NRC made its decision after eight years of reviewing the 
state's objections, more than 50 of them. Some were simply 
thrown out on procedural grounds. Others, like the potential 
impact of earthquakes and a jet-fighter crash, became fodder for 
years of in-depth debate. 

Lee and other state leaders have said that, while 
disappointed with the NRC's decision, they can't wait to raise 
Utah's concerns in a different forum - U.S. District Court - 
because the NRC gives the nuclear industry a home-court 
advantage. He noted the state will continue its three-pronged 
approach, fighting the site in the courts, federal agencies and 
before Congress. 

Former Rep. Jim Hansen still sees the U.S. Capitol as Utah's 
best hope. He says his bill to block the waste site's rail route 
with wilderness would have succeeded a few years ago if an 
environmentalist had not stymied the move. 

"If he had just given up," Hansen said, "[the waste] would 
have been going to Yucca Mountain by now." 

The bill is being carried this year by Hansen's successor, 
Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop. It has passed in the House but 
stalled once again in the Senate. 

"I don't know that it can be done, but we are going to keep 
trying," said U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, also a Republican. 

Others wonder if the state has burned an important bridge in 
Congress. 

Jason Groenewold, director of the Health Environment Alliance 
of Utah (HEAL), notes that a deep rift divides Utah's mostly 
Republican delegation and Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the 
influential U.S. Senate minority leader. It sprouted from a 
historic vote three summers ago that made it possible for the 
federal government to pursue the Yucca Mountain repository over 
that state's bitter objections. 

Groenewold said Hatch and fellow Utah Republican Bob Bennett 
fumbled by voting to speed the waste to Yucca Mountain - past 
Skull Valley - rather than hanging with the Nevadans. 

"It may be time to change strategies," said Groenewold. "And 
we hope that Senators Bennett and Hatch will work with our 
allies in the West rather than alienating them." 

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, a liberal who is 
frequently a target of Utah's Republican majority, says leaders 
need to be prodded to action. 

"My greatest hope is that we don't all stand around like a 
bunch of sheep waiting for the slaughter," he said after the 
license decision, "but that we rise up and let our elected 
federal officials know that we are very displeased with this." 

In Nevada, the strategy that has worked for more than 20 
years is having a unified opposition, says Eric Herzik, a 
political scientist at the University of Nevada, Reno. 

He notes that there is a split in Utah that does not exist 
in Nevada, with the Goshutes welcoming the waste and others 
opposing it. 

"Within the state [of Nevada]," he said, "there is really 
only one side." 

Along with the LDS Church's statement Friday, there are 
other signs that Utah leaders may be able to pull together 
behind the cause after all. 

On Friday, the state's congressional delegation, including 
its lone Democrat, renewed its lobbying effort at the U.S. 
Interior Department. The Interior secretary supervises two 
federal agencies that have something PFS needs in order to go 
forward with its plans: a rail spur through land controlled by 
the Bureau of Land Management and a final lease that requires 
the approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

Bennett, in a statement, noted there remain a number of 
legal issues "that stand between granting a license and 
operating" the site. "These legal issues will be raised and 
aggressively pursued by all members of the congressional 
delegation and our governor." 

Bishop, in Utah's U.S. House delegation, offered a 
philosophical take Friday, saying the state "never had a great 
hand to play in the first place." 

"I just keep reminding myself," he said, "in every Rocky 
movie, he loses every round until he wins by a knockout in the 
end." 

--- 

Tribune reporter Heather May contributed to this story. 

Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 55 Salt Lake Tribune: Utah nuclear waste site's road to approval 

Article Last Updated: 09/11/2005 12:38:41 AM 

The utility consortium Private Fuel Storage signs a lease Dec. 
27, 1996, with the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes. The Bureau of 
Indian Affairs gives tentative approval about six months later. 

Tooele County signs a contract May 23, 2000, with Private 
Fuel Storage, based on assurances that the nuclear storage site 
would bring in between $90 million and $300 million in economic 
benefits. 

PFS and tribal leaders sue the state in federal court Dec. 
12, 2001, over passage of five laws intended to block the 
project. The state lost and has appealed to the U.S. Supreme 
Court. 

New leadership emerges out of an August 2001 tribal 
election, but the election's authenticity is disputed. 

Rep. Jim Hansen pushes a bill through the House of 
Representatives in 2002 aimed at creating a wilderness area 
around the Skull Valley reservation, blocking shipments to the 
facility. The bill fails in the Senate. Similar proposals have 
met the same fate. A new version is pending. 

It is revealed in 2002 that a former Idaho congressman and 
Utah Republican Party chairman quietly explored "Plan B," an 
alternative to store nuclear waste on Utah school trust lands. 
It is 

dropped. 

Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett in July 2002 cut a 
deal with the White House to vote in favor of storing high-level 
nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev., arguing that storing it 
there makes it less likely it will have to be stored in Utah. 

FBI agents in April 2003 raid the Salt Lake City business 
offices of the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, confiscating 
computers and financial records as part of an ongoing corruption 
scandal. 

Tribal Chairman Leon Bear is indicted Dec. 18, 2003, by a 
federal grand jury on suspicion of embezzling money from the 
band and for reporting to the IRS that he is unemployed while 
accepting $192,316 in payments from the tribe. He later pleads 
guilty to the tax charges and is sentenced to fines and 
probation. 

Energy Department transportation official Gary Lanthrum in 
October 2004 says the agency won't accept for shipment to Yucca 
Mountain any welded-shut waste containers from PFS. 

The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on Feb. 24, 2005, 
rules against the last of Utah's 125 objections to the PFS plan 
- the state's contention that the possibility of an F-16 crash 
poses too great a risk. 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday approves a 
license for PFS on a 3-1 vote. 

Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 56 Salt Lake Tribune: Utah vows to keep fighting the nuclear-waste
storage 

Last Updated: 09/10/2005 02:37:47 AM 

'I intend to win': Utah governor acknowledges the NRC decision is
a major setback but refuses to give in 

By Judy Fahys and Robert Gehrke 

Mary Allen, a member of the Goshute Tribe, is opposed to 
the proposal of a business group to build a nuclear-garbage dump 
on the sacred sites of the Native American Church in Skull 
Valley. (Francisco Kjolseth/Tribune file photo) 

The federal government Friday signed off on a new home for the 
nation's nuclear-plant waste - not at the proposed Yucca 
Mountain dump in Nevada, but in something resembling a parking 
lot in the Utah desert about an hour's drive from the state's 
population centers. 

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a license 
for Private Fuel Storage LLC to store used nuclear fuel on the 
Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation for up to 40 years. 
Under the license, the $3.1 billion site could hold more than 10 
million depleted nuclear rods in 4,000 steel and concrete 
containers. 

The commission's 3-1 decision was historic. The Utah site is 
the first new high-level nuclear facility licensed in the United 
States since 1973. 

Still, no one expected the commission to reject the private 
storage proposal, which is billed as temporary storage until the 
federal government opens its own permanent repository, 
presumably at Yucca Mountain. Both PFS, a limited liability 
company formed by eight electric companies, and the storage 
site's opponents, led by the Utah government, anticipated the 
commission would approve the project after eight years of legal 
and technical review that included everything from customer 
contracts to earthquake worthiness. 

"It's been a lot of years, a lot of hearings and a lot of 
explanation," said John Parkyn, PFS chairman and chief executive 
officer. "We're glad it turned out this way." 

+ Opposition to N-waste appears greatest in SLC 

+ PFS: What's Next 

+ PFS: What others
think 

Skull Valley Goshute Chairman Leon Bear did not return a 
phone request for comment. 

PFS says the earliest the site could open for operation is 
2008. It first needs to line up paying customers and finalize 
some government paperwork. 

Utah vowed to keep fighting in other forums, such as the 
federal agencies, the courts and in Congress. Utah Gov. Jon 
Huntsman Jr. called the license approval a setback, but insisted 
keeping spent nuclear fuel out of Utah is "a battle I intend to 
win." 

His chief counsel, Michael S. Lee, promised to appeal the 
NRC license immediately in federal court. 

"The state is fighting tooth-and-nail to kill this thing, 
and we will kill this thing," he said. "We have to kill it. It's 
bad policy." 

Utah's congressional delegation sent a letter to Secretary 
of the Interior Gale Norton, urging her to use her authority 
over the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs to stop the project. PFS needs a right-of-way grant from 
BLM for a 32-mile rail spur and the BIA's final approval of a 
lease with the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes before the project 
could be built, notes the rare, bipartisan plea. 

"PFS has never provided any assurance that [spent nuclear 
fuel] stored on the reservation will ever be moved, leaving open 
the possibility that the Band could be permanently saddled with 
an environmental hazard of gigantic proportions," the lawmakers 
wrote. 

The consortium plans to build 100 acres of soil-and-concrete 
pads on the 820 acres it has leased on the reservation, which is 
about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The massive casks 
would be stored on the pads untethered, surrounded by a 
chain-link fence just across the two-lane highway to the Skull 
Valley Goshute village, which is home to about three dozen 
tribal members. 

The private storage could handle nearly all of the 
radioactive waste that has been generated so far in the nation's 
half-century of commercial nuclear power. But a U.S. Energy 
Department estimate maintains that by 2035 Yucca's 77,000-ton 
capacity will be filled and the nation will have an excess 
40,000 tons to deal with. 

The NRC made two key votes on the PFS-Goshute project 
Friday. They took less than two minutes. 

First the commission rejected Utah's argument that a 
dangerous radiation release could result if the casks were 
struck by a bomb-laden jetfighter. The waste site is planned for 
a location a few miles from the largest test-bombing and 
pilot-training range in the mainland U.S. 

The jet-crash scenario was the final one of more than 50 
objections raised by the state to the PFS plan. 

After that, the panel directed NRC staff to finish drafting 
the license. The dissenting commissioner said the aircraft 
ruling allowed too much uncertainty in engineering calculations 
and computer models, given the potential harm to the public. 

"The adjudicatory effort, plus our staff's separate safety 
and environmental reviews, gives us reasonable assurance that 
PFS' proposed [storage facility] can be constructed and operated 
safely," the majority said. 

Despite the new license, the consortium faces several 
obstacles before it can begin taking waste. 

One is the dramatic change that has occurred in the 
marketplace for waste storage since the consortium was formed. 
Originally, 11 companies underwrote the project. Only eight 
remain, and six of those have developed their own "dry-cask" 
storage, usually adjacent to their reactors. 

Plus, for the new license, PFS must address some questions 
about the project financing. According to company attorneys, who 
declined to discuss proprietary details, PFS must contract for 
enough waste to ensure there is enough to bankroll the project's 
construction, operation and decommissioning. 

PFS also must secure final paperwork needed from the BLM and 
the BIA - all while beating back the state's legal, lobbying and 
congressional attacks. 

Meanwhile, the 121-member Skull Valley Band continues to 
struggle with the complications that have come along with the 
prospect of the waste project. They have been promised hundreds 
of millions of dollars for leasing their land, but the community 
has been in disarray ever since the deal was inked in June 1997. 

Their leader, who first volunteered Skull Valley land to PFS 
about a decade ago, recently pleaded guilty to federal criminal 
charges related to tribal funds. Bear agreed to serve three 
years probation, pay back taxes, pay IRS fines and reimburse his 
tribe for duplicate travel payments. 

Meanwhile, three Bear critics now face criminal charges in 
connection with a disputed 2001 tribal election intended to 
unseat Bear. 

The would-be vice chairman is set to be sentenced next week 
on theft charges. Two other disputed leaders, along with their 
attorney, face trial the following week on charges they 
illegally spent tribal funds. 

Other members claim in federal court their civil rights are 
being violated by the allegedly corrupt tribal administration. 

"The NRC can now be called the Nuclear Racism Commission," 
said Kevin Kamps of the Nuclear Information and Resource 
Service, a Washington, D.C-interest group opposed to the PFS 
site. The group attacked the license for dumping the nation's 
nuclear waste on an impoverished American Indian tribe. 

"The Bush administration needs to put an end to this outrage 
by rejecting the rail line and the lease," he said. 

fahys@sltrib.com 

gehrke@sltrib.com 

Why you should care: 

* This is the first time federal regulators have licensed a 
site that would be used for nuclear power-plant waste 
independent of a reactor. Utah has no nuclear power plants. 

* 67 percent of Utah's 2.2 million residents live within five 
miles of likely transportation routes for the waste. 

* A typical shipment will carry 240 times the radiation of 
the Hiroshima bomb. The shipment containers have only been 
tested with computer modeling. 

Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 57 Salt Lake Tribune: State of irony: Waste storage plan still has
problems 

Opinion 

Last Updated: 09/09/2005 11:27:50 PM 

Even with the approval given Friday by the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, it is unlikely that the storage facility planned for 
Utah's Skull Valley will be receiving any nuclear waste before 
2008. 

Until then, Utah will merely radiate irony. 

That's the irony of elected leaders who normally score points 
by decrying the interference of judges and federal bureaucrats 
now leaving no lawyer unturned in their search for a judge or a 
bureaucrat to interfere with the plans of the Skull Valley 
Goshute Indians and their business partners at Private Fuel 
Storage. 

A deeper irony, perhaps, is the possibility that it may all 
have been for naught. The utilities that were supposed to be 
paying members of PFS, having grown accustomed to holding onto 
their own spent fuel rods, are now suggesting that they may just 
maintain the status quo. 

NRC members Friday formally brushed aside state concerns 
about the possible crash of a Hill Air Force Base jet into the 
above-ground storage facility and granted their approval. 
Permission must also come from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 
which retains the paternal role of approving leases of tribal 
lands, and the Bureau of Land Management, which must sign off on 
the rail spur that would have to pass over federal land. 

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and other officials have reiterated 
their resolve to block the plan. And they have some serious 
objections. 

Prime among them is the fact that, while Skull Valley is 
envisioned as a temporary lay-over for 44,000 tons of spent power
plant fuel, the endless delays to the supposedly permanent 
repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain suggest that PFS may prove 
"temporary" only on a geologic time scale. 

Also unclear is whether the devices and plans for 
transporting and storing the waste have been properly designed 
and whether any central storage facility is really better than 
keeping it all at the power plants that created it. 

That storage-in-place option, together with hopes that we 
could learn to reprocess the waste so we don't have to keep it 
for thousands of dangerous years, is finally beginning to unite 
Utah's Skull Valley skeptics and Nevada's Yucca Mountain 
opponents. 

Such an alliance is needed if better solutions to the nuclear 
waste problem are to be found. And, given the increasing need 
for energy that doesn't emit greenhouse gases and soot, 
solutions must be found. 

Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 58 Salt Lake Tribune: Opposition to N-waste appears greatest in SLC 

Article Last Updated: 09/10/2005 01:48:10 AM 

By Christopher Smart and Heather May The Salt Lake Tribune 

Ivah Doverspike 

While Salt Lake City residents objected fiercely Friday to a 
decision allowing high-level radioactive waste in Utah, folks in 
Tooele County - where spent fuel rods would be stored - were far 
less concerned. 

Likewise, the Skull Valley Goshutes remain divided on the 
issue. Some members of the small band see nuclear waste storage 
as key to their economic future. Others say it would poison 
Mother Earth. 

Debate over Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of utilities, 
temporarily storing 44,000 tons of radioactive waste 45 miles 
southwest of Salt Lake City on the Goshute Reservation was 
reignited Friday when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved 
the plan. 

Some Salt Lakers fear it is asking for calamity to ship the 
highly radioactive material in steel and concrete casks by rail 
through the Wasatch Front and other Utah communities. 

State 

Federal nuclear regulators Friday gave the go-ahead to a 
nuclear waste disposal at the Goshute Indian Reservation 
southwest of Salt Lake City. The railroad track at 950 South and 
1100 West running underneath I-15, which goes through a 
residential area in Salt Lake City, is the possible route for 
nuclear waste on its way to the storage site. (Al Hartmann/The 
Salt Lake Tribune) 

Sen. Fred Fife lives near the 900 South Union Pacific line and 
believes the railroad tracks there would be a likely route for 
the nuclear waste. 

"I'm saddened that extremely dangerous and problematic 
material would be shipped through our residential neighborhood," 
he said. 

The West Side Sunday Anderson Senior Center sits next to the 
900 South railroad line at 900 West. 

A regular at the senior center, Harold Jones said the 
companies that produce the nuclear waste should store it where 
it's produced. 

"You are shipping highly radioactive material through highly 
populated areas. There's always a very good possibility of an 
accident. A train wreck, a truck wreck. Let's face it, they 
happen every day." 

The city will need to brush up its plan to deal with 
radiation, said Michael Stever, emergency program manager. 

"It's a low probability of an accident, but the consequences 
are high," he said. "I don't suppose they are going to give us 
any more money for planning or response. It comes out of our 
hide." 

But Brock Johnson who lives in Grantsville, not far from 
where a spur would switch rail cars into Skull Valley, says 
there is not much to worry about. 

"If people knew how safe it was in those casks, I don't 
think there would be a problem," he said. "I think it will be 
safe enough out there." 

Tooele County residents are used to having such things in 
their backyard, said Frank Liddiard, owner of Al &Lid's 
Furniture and Appliance in Tooele. 

"I don't know much about it, but I could care less," he 
said. "We have been destroying chemical weapons out here for 
years." 

The Tooele City Council has taken no position on the PFS 
proposal, according to Mayor Charlie Roberts. 

"Personally, I don't like it," he said. "My concern is the 
constant negative headlines it brings to the community." 

Tooele County Commissioner Dennis Rockwell, who signed a 
mitigation contract with PFS more than six years ago, said the 
depot could bring up to $300 million to county coffers. 

"We would have been happy if it had gone on through to Yucca 
Mountain," he said, speaking of the proposed, but stalled, 
permanent underground nuclear-fuel depository in Nevada. "But if 
there is going to be a temporary site in Tooele, we have to be 
prepared to make the best of it." 

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, though, called the 
decision horrendous, putting "the safety and security of people 
throughout this region at tremendous risk potentially for tens 
of thousands of years." 

Despite the NRC's approval, some Goshutes continue to fight 
the agreement between PFS and tribal Chairman Leon Bear, who is 
under federal indictment on tax and fraud charges. 

"It's far from over," said Margene Bullcreek. "Since Mr. 
Bear's indictment, a lot of people don't think he should be in 
that position to sign contracts." 

She and other members of the Skull Valley band are pressing 
their case in court and are calling for new tribal elections. 

"Mr. Bear is thinking only of his own greed," she said 
noting that most American Indians are opposed to storing such 
poisons on their land. 

"We only have one air, one water and one Mother Earth," she 
said. 

But Mary Allen, who along with Bear signed the contract with 
PFS, said that although new tribal elections should be held, the 
spent fuel rods eventually would be stored at the Skull Valley 
reservation. 

"A majority [of Goshutes] still want it," she said. "We've 
had so much poverty. The people deserve to get this." 

csmart@sltrib.com 

hmay@sltrib.com 

Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 59 Salt Lake Tribune: Demand for facility unclear 

Article Last Updated: 09/10/2005 01:48:30 AM 

Fuel fears: Some observers worry that the Utah facility could 
replace plans for one in Yucca Mountain, Nev. 

By Patty Henetz and Steven Oberbeck 

Now that they finally have permission to proceed with 
development, most of the power plant operators who for years 
pushed to build a spent nuclear fuel storage facility in Utah 
say they no longer need it. 

Eight years was just too long to wait. 

Since coming together in 1997 to form the Private Fuel 
Storage consortium to push for construction of a spent nuclear 
fuel storage site on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation, at 
least six of the eight original PFS members pursued their own 
storage options. 

"The possibility is pretty remote for at least the 
foreseeable future that we'll end up sending anything to Utah," 
said Ray Golden, spokesman for Southern California Edison's San 
Onofre nuclear power plant. "At the time we joined PFS we didn't 
have licenses for on-site storage [of spent fuel] but now we 
do." 

Five other members, including Xcel Energy of Minnesota, one 
of the driving forces behind the consortium, agreed. 

"We'll have plenty of our own on-site storage," said Charles 
Bomberger, general manager of nuclear asset management at Xcel. 
He noted that since PFS was organized Xcel has expanded the 
storage capacity at one of its two nuclear power plants and now 
is in the process of expanding the other. 

PFS chief John Parkyn, who hailed the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission's Friday decision to issue PFS a license to build and 
operate, is unfazed by his members' plans to handle their spent 
fuel on-site rather than send it to Utah for storage. 

Nuclear power plants were never envisioned or designed to be 
long-term storage sites, Parkyn said. "Now that we're licensed 
and will soon have the capacity to put [spent] fuel in one 
place, I suspect that every company in the country will 
seriously consider using our facility," he said. 

American Electric Power may be the first consortium member in 
line. Spokesman Bill Schalk said the reactor has enough storage 
capacity at its Bridgeman, Mich., plant for at least the next 
six years. "But after 2011 we're going to need a place," he 
said. "At that time the Utah facility could be a viable option 
for us." 

Whether it's feasible for anyone else is a question mark, 
said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, 
a trade group. "I don't know on the economics, who it's going to 
be good for, who it's not," he said. 

Attitudes about interim storage at nuclear reactors and 
reprocessing are evolving with more utilities willing to store 
the material themselves. Meanwhile, calls for federal interim 
storage continue, including a spending bill proposal from Ohio 
Rep. David Hobson, who wants DOE to take possession of spent 
waste and store it until reprocessing technologies mature. 

The Senate, led by Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and 
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, has rejected that proposal. 
But Hobson will continue to push it in the House, said 
spokeswoman Sara Perkins. 

Parkyn is manager for nuclear and special projects for 
Dairyland Power Cooperative in La Crosse, Wis., which owns the 
shuttered La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor just downstream from 
the Mississippi River village of Genoa. He would like to move the
reactor's 41 tons of spent fuel to Utah. 

Parkyn has had to plead his case before a host of public 
officials, including skeptical members of the Western Governors' 
Association, who oppose siting any nuclear facility without 
express consent of governors. 

At a recent appearance before the California Energy 
Commission, Parkyn said waste from decommissioned plants could 
not be returned if a planned permanent repository at Yucca 
Mountain, Nev., fails to open. 

PFS projects the life of the Skull Valley facility at 40 
years. However, Parkyn told the California Energy Commission, if 
the PFS license is not renewed, "the most likely scenario would 
be that it would be assigned to someone else." 

That kind of talk worries some observers, who see PFS 
becoming a convenient substitute should Yucca collapse - a very 
real possibility. 

"Fortunately or unfortunately for Utah, this has a lot to do 
with the future of Yucca Mountain," said Bob Halstead, a 
consultant to the state of Nevada in its fight to stop Yucca. 
"The future of Yucca Mountain does not look very bright right 
now. Will PFS somehow be able to capitalize on the delay or 
failure of Yucca Mountain?" 

Even if Yucca opens by its new expected completion date of 
2015 - a big if, considering the Energy Department hasn't even 
filed an application for a license amid multiplying political 
problems - the DOE has stated flatly it won't accept the 
welded-shut waste containers PFS will store. 

David Zabransky of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian 
Radioactive Waste Management, speaking in May in Salt Lake City 
to representatives of the Western Governors' Association, said 
DOE rules on accepting waste from nuclear reactors have been 
known since the late 1980s. Those rules require that it be "bare 
fuel," that is, packed to DOE specifications directly from 
reactors' cooling pools. 

DOE's position only adds to concerns that once the waste is 
here, it won't leave. 

Jason Groenewold, director of the anti-nuclear citizens group 
Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, fears PFS could be a 
hazardous-waste business incubator, especially as spent fuel 
reprocessing becomes more economically and politically viable. 

"You're hearing [Gov. Jon] Huntsman call for reprocessing, 
you hear [Sens. Bob] Bennett and [Orrin] Hatch call for 
reprocessing. That to me is the worst-case scenario," Groenewold 
said. 

New enterprises could include expanded waste hauling 
business, expansion of Envirocare's low-level waste facility or 
even reprocessing at Dugway Proving Ground or Deseret Chemical 
Depot, which may be looking for new missions, he said. "If we're 
not careful, we're going to be the magnet for all nuclear waste 
and every harebrained idea related to it." 

Â© Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 60 Reuters: US agency approves private nuclear-waste facility 

Sat Sep 10, 2005 1:52 AM ET

 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators Friday approved a private 
firm's plan to store tens of thousands of tons nuclear waste 
above the ground on an American Indian reservation in Utah.

 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted the license to Private 
Fuel Storage to store the radioactive waste on the reservation of 
the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians, about 50 miles 
southwest of Salt Lake City.

 The commission's approval of the Utah facility comes as the 
government has delayed action on its disputed plan to dump 
nuclear waste beneath Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert.

 Federal regulators had hoped the Nevada waste site would be open 
in 2010, but strong opposition from state officials and 
environmental groups has forced an indefinite delay.

 In its latest order, the commission rejected claims made in 
appeals by Utah officials that there is a risk of radioactive 
leaks in the event of a plane crash.

 According to the state, there are some 7,000 F-16 fighter-jet 
flights a year over the facility from nearby Hill Air Force Base.

 The nuclear commission said safety and environmental reviews had 
given it "reasonable assurance that (the proposed facility) can 
be constructed and operated safely.

 The above-ground facility would use up to 4,000 NRC-approved 
storage casks, each of which can hold up to 10 tons of spent 
fuel. The special casks consist of a steel canister in which the 
fuel is stored, and another layer of steel and concrete.

 Operation of the nuclear-waste storage facility faces other 
regulatory hurdles, the NRC said. The Bureau of Indian Affairs 
must approve a lease between Private Fuel Storage and the tribe, 
and the Bureau of Land Management must approve plans to build and 
operate a rail line on the facility.                                                

© Reuters 2005. 
All Rights Reserved.                    
 			
*****************************************************************
 61 Public Citizen: Approval of Private Fuel Storage Means Dangerous 
and Unnecessary Storage of Highly Radioactive Waste in Utah; 
Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Director, Public Citizen’s Energy 
Program
 
Sept. 9, 2005 

Todays decision by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
to approve a temporary high-level radioactive waste storage
site, Private Fuel Storage (PFS), on Native American land in
Utah, is a significant mistake, made for all the wrong reasons.
PFS is an unnecessary, irresponsible and unethical proposal that
will do nothing to address the nuclear waste problem this
country faces. 

The primary motivation for PFS is the nuclear industrys need
for a publicly presentable waste solution that it can use in its
push for a nuclear renaissance. Despite what has been claimed,
PFS will not consolidate waste in one safe and secure place.
As long as we continue to operate nuclear reactors, waste will
always remain near cities and communities around the country,
because irradiated fuel must be stored on-site for at least five
years to allow it to cool before it can be transported. 

In addition, PFS will mean the transportation of waste through
densely populated urban and suburban areas across the country.
The project will rush transportation forward and increase the
number of times waste is moved. Even if all possible precautions
are taken, and they have not been, the shipping of nuclear waste
is a dangerous undertaking and should be absolutely minimized.
Accidents of some nature are unavoidable. 

PFS will also bring risks to Utah. The dump is not planned for
permanent storage and will simply place the waste storage
containers on concrete pads above ground. There will be no waste
repacking facility on-site, as there are presently at reactors,
to deal with accidents or problems. The temporary nature of
PFS is also questionable, as it is dependent on the opening of
Yucca Mountain, which continues to have significant problems and
may never open. 

Todays irresponsible and misguided approval of this proposal
should illustrate how far the NRC has strayed from its mission
of protecting public health and safety. 

### 

Public Citizen
*****************************************************************
 62 PittsburghLIVE.com: Fears of nuke waste cloud river's future - 

  [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]
 
 By Wynne Everett VALLEY NEWS DISPATCH

 Sunday, September 11, 2005 

The Kiski River no longer runs red with iron deposits. The fish
are back. The riverbanks are alive with plants and birds. 

The biggest question remaining about the Kiski's recovery,
however, stems from pollution no one can see. 

Environmentalists who have spent decades cleaning the river
still don't know how much nuclear contamination from the former
Nuclear Materials Corp. sites in Apollo and Parks have poisoned
the river. 

"People ask me that question all the time," said John Linkes, a
member of the Roaring Run Watershed Association. "I tell them we
don't really know how contaminated it is, but if I were them,
I'd worry more about bacteria in the water than radiation." 

NUMEC and its predecessors produced nuclear material for the
military and private industry at plants in Apollo and Parks
until the mid-1980s. Residents and former employees blame more
than 400 deaths and illnesses on contamination from the sites
and have fought for years to force the companies and
governmental agencies to clean up the radioactive legacy. 

In 2001, tests of river sediment near the former NUMEC plutonium
facility in Parks Township showed that trichloroethylene, a
toxic industrial solvent, leached from the plutonium facility
site into the river, but at levels that don't pose a threat to
human health or safety, according to officials from the state
Department of Environmental Protection and the federal
Environmental Protection Agency. 

Similarly, tests of the river water and sediment in 2002,
required for construction of the Apollo Bridge, found no
radioactive contamination that would affect human health or
safety near the bridge, which carries Route 66 across the river. 

Comprehensive testing of large sections of the river, though,
has not been done. 

The state Department of Environmental Resources does not believe
the river water is contaminated, spokeswoman Betsy Mallison
said. 

Tom Clark, watershed specialist with the Armstrong Conservation
District, said state agencies base their assessments of the
Kiski's overall health on biological indicators like the number
of plant and animal species found there. 

"All I can tell you is that we are finding these fish and other
things in the river," Clark said. "If it were contaminated to
the point that those things couldn't live in the water, we
wouldn't be finding them." 

Wynne Everett can be reached at weverett@tribweb.comor (724)
226-4676. 

      
Images and text copyright © 2005 by The Tribune-Review
Publishing Co.
*****************************************************************
 63 Canon City Daily Record: Cotter hearing begins Monday
 
www.canoncitydailyrecord.com

  Publish Date: 9/10/2005 			 

Blakely Thomas-Aguilar

 Daily Record Staff Writer

Three groups will span the spectrum of opinion for the next two 
weeks as the Cotter Corp. licensing hear-ing is set to begin 
Monday at the Fremont County Administration Building, 615 Macon 
Ave. 

In its 50th year at the mill outside Cańon City, Cotter Corp. is
appealing a stipulation in the Colorado De-partment of Public
Health and Environment’s draft of the renewal State Radioactive
Materials License. 

As one of the United States’ two uranium mills, Cotter has
expressed the desire to begin direct disposal of radioactive
waste on its property. The CDPHE, after two years of
deliberations and testing, has denied this proposal. 

Steve Torlton of the CDPHE Radiation Management Unit said the
reasons for the denial come from con-cern of a detrimental
impact to the socioeconomical impact on the areas surrounding
the mill. 

Cotter Corp. has requested bringing in radioactive waste from
Mayfield, N.J., and Torlton said the CDPHE was concerned the
materials would have a negative impact on tourism, the quality
of life and citizen’s views of the area as a desirable place to
live. 

Local activist group Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste has
obtained party status for the hearing and will enter evidence,
introduce witnesses and cross-examine testimonies. The group has
been active for more than two years and specifically hopes the
hearing will result in Cotter’s complete closure, CCAT member
Donna Murphy said. 

Cotter Corp. contends the facility and the state have few
differences and the hearing is a method of appeal-ing what they
view as an extension of the procedures already offered at the
mill. Executive Vice President Rich Ziegler said the facility
has a history of working to change with recent rules and
regulations. 

“I think that (CCAT’s) agenda has always been to shut Cotter
down and nothing is going to change their minds,” Ziegler said.
“When issues come up, we bring them to the forefront. Anyone can
come down to our facility any time. We’re not the bad guys.
We’re hard working people just trying to do our jobs. 

CCAT co-chair Jeri Fry hopes the hearing will bring the
community’s concern for their socioeconomic well-being to the
forefront during the hour designated for citizen testimony at 5
p.m. daily or give written statements to presiding judge,
Richard Dana. 

“We’re hoping that the hearing will give citizens an impact on
the ruling,” Fry said. “It’s the average of us that we’ll be
stuck with. Their silence won’t protect them. They should not be
able to open until the ques-tions regarding our safety are
answered.” 

The licensing appeal hearing also will deal with issues
regarding the closure of the secondary containment facility and
specific plans for changing the methods for the handling of
waste products in the main con-tainment “pond” to assure the
liners are not leaking. 

Cotter and the CDPHE have come to consensus regarding the
majority of the stipulations in the agreement. The two groups
have created an “Order on Consent” as a “condition for
day-to-day operations without having to shut down the mill,”
Torlton said. 				   

All contents Copyright © 2005 The Cańon City Daily Record. All
rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 64 La Crosse Tribune: NRC clears way to send Dairyland's spent nuclear fuel 
to Skull Valley, Utah - 

Steve Cahalan

By STEVE CAHALAN / La Crosse Tribune and The Associated Press .
WASHINGTON — Dairyland Power Cooperative officials were pleased
by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's vote Friday to approve a
private company's plan to build a nuclear waste storage site on
the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah, moving the
proposal a crucial step closer to fruition.

But Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman immediately vowed to challenge the
decision in the courts, and state officials promised to fight
the facility using all possible options. The state contends the
project would be too dangerous.

Private Fuel Storage, a group of utilities that includes La
Crosse-based Dairyland, wants to store about 40,000 tons of
spent nuclear fuel at the site 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake
City. That includes about 40 tons of spent fuel from Dairyland's
closed nuclear reactor in Genoa, Wis.

Until the spent fuel is removed, Dairyland cannot fully
decommission the Genoa facility, which it shut down in 1987. The
federal government built Dairyland's nuclear plant, known as the
La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor, in 1967.

Dairyland officials say maintaining the closed facility until
the spent fuel can be moved costs Dairyland more than $5.5
million annually.

The earliest the Utah facility is expected to be operational is
2008, said John Parkyn, chairman and CEO of Private Fuel Storage
as well as Dairyland's manager of nuclear and special projects.
It's too soon to predict whether Dairyland's spent nuclear fuel
will be shipped there in 2008, he said.

Utah officials had argued the facility would be too close to a
major population center and that the risk of a jet fighter from
Hill Air Force Base crashing into the storage casks was too
great.

But commissioners dismissed the argument, taking a two-pronged
vote. First, they affirmed an earlier ruling that the waste
containers wouldn't release an unacceptable amount of radiation
if a jet crashed into them. Then they voted 3-1 to authorize the
NRC staff to issue a license to construct and operate the site.

The license will be ready after paperwork is completed, said NRC
spokesman Eliot Brenner.

Huntsman said in a statement that he was "deeply disappointed"
in the NRC decision. In addition to a court appeal, another
option for the state could be to designate a wilderness area to
block construction of a rail spur to the site.

"This is a reckless, dangerous proposal, and I am pulling out
all the stops to make sure this waste never makes a home in
Utah," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a statement.

Private Fuel Storage's facility would be a temporary dump
pending the opening of a national nuclear waste repository at
Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the senate minority leader, has
proposed storing nuclear waste at the facilities where it is
produced — an alternative to both the Private Fuel Storage site
and Yucca Mountain.

An impoverished tribe, the Goshutes had been looking for ways to
make money and eventually teamed with Private Fuel Storage to
propose the station.

Under their plan, the waste would be kept aboveground in 4,000
steel casks, which can hold up to 10 tons of spent fuel each.
The casks would be shielded in an overpack of two steel shells
encasing a wall of concrete more than 2 feet thick.

There are still more regulatory hurdles before construction can
begin. .   			 
  


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 65 RGJ: Regulatory panel OKs nuclear waste dump

Reno Gazette-Journal]  September 11, 2005 Reno, Nevada, USA 
775-788-6200   

Posted: 9/9/2005 11:01 pm 

WASHINGTON — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday
approved building a high-level nuclear waste repository at the
Goshute Indian Reservation over the objection of Utah officials.

The decision paves the way for casks of spent nuclear fuel from
atomic reactors around the country to be shipped to the site in
Skull Valley, Utah. The Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of
Land Management still must approve the project before it can
proceed. 

Construction on the facility, which would house nuclear waste
for 20 years, is expected to begin within the year, said Sue
Martin, spokeswoman for Private Fuel Storage, the company that
owns the facility. 

“The earliest that we could start accepting fuel would be 2008,”
she said. “Ultimately, the utilities want to send their fuel to
the federal repository (at Yucca Mountain) as soon as possible.”
Martin said.

Utah officials cited safety reasons in objecting to storage,
even temporarily, of nuclear waste a mere 50 miles upwind from
Salt Lake City, the state’s capital. But Utah has no
jurisdiction, because the proposed construction site lies on
tribal lands. 

Bob Loux, who heads Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, said
the Utah decision would have little impact on the Yucca Mountain
project that his group opposes. The casks sent to Utah
ultimately cannot be shipped to Yucca Mountain because they
don’t comply with Energy Department standards, he said. 

Utilities already store their nuclear waste safely in dry casks
alongside their reactors that can remain there for decades, so
why move it to Utah, he said.

Private Fuel Storage plans on transporting the casks by railroad
and building a 32-mile rail spur through federal lands to its
storage site, Martin said. From some reactors, casks may have to
be moved by truck to the nearest rail line, she said.

The facility can accept up to 4,000 casks, which look like soda
cans that are 19 feet tall and 11 feet in diameter. 

The Nuclear Energy Institute said it was pleased with the
nuclear commission’s decision, but spokesman Mitchell Singer
noted it took eight years for the application to be approved.
Utilities have been pressing the federal government for years to
live up to its promise to take possession of spent nuclear fuel
from their atomic reactors.

“(The facility) does not meet in any way shape or form the
federal government’s obligation to take ownership of the nuclear
fuel,” he said. “It’s not a substitute for Yucca Mountain.” 

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Friday he opposes shipping nuclear
waste to Utah or Nevada. 

“Thousands of tons of deadly nuclear material will pass homes,
schools, businesses and churches in communities all across the
country, and there is simply no way to safely do this,” he said
in a statement. “The safest and smartest solution to solving the
nation’s nuclear waste problem is to store waste at the
facilities where it is already being produced, as Sen. Ensign
(R-Nev.) and I have proposed.” 

© Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Newspaper.
*****************************************************************
 66 Santa Fee New Mexican: LANL prepared for any attack  

 Sun Sep 11, 2005 6:17 pm                                                                                                       

By ANDY LENDERMAN | The New Mexican             

LOS ALAMOS -- If bad things come to Northern New Mexico,
Beverly Ramsey and Los Alamos National Laboratory have a plan
and a place to go.

There's a $21 million emergency operations center west of Los
Alamos where its director Ramsey and about 60 others are trained
to handle any emergency Northern New Mexico could face -- a
forest fire, chemical spill or a radioactive dirty bomb.

"This emergency-operations center is a regional center, and it's
capable of dealing with anything to a national security scale,"
Ramsey said. "This building was not built for Los Alamos
National Laboratory but for the people of Northern New Mexico."

Disaster management, or lack of it, has been a topic of national
discussion since Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast on
Aug. 29.

And Friday, a local watchdog group called attention to a recent
government report that says the lab could be better prepared for
a forest fire.

"Although LANL and (the National Nuclear Security Administration
) have increased their attention to fire protection and taken
some actions to improve fire protection, resolution of issues
has been piecemeal," reads an April report issued by the federal
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent agency.
The board believes a more comprehensive approach would lead to
better fire protection at the lab, according to the report.

The report was included in a news release issued by Concerned
Citizens for Nuclear Safety of Santa Fe, which called the lab
"deficient" in its fire preparation.

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said the lab is much better prepared
now than it was five years ago and has accomplished a massive
forest-fuel-reduction program, increased space between the
forest and buildings and opened the new emergency operations
center.

The new center was built after the 2000 Cerro Grande fire, which
burned about 43,000 acres in an around Los Alamos. Federal money
given to the lab after the fire paid for the $21 million center.

It has 38,000-square feet and can house 120 people for two
weeks. Backup power generators, layers and layers of air filters
and big concrete walls were included in the construction.
Communications include a multiband radio system, 600 telephone
or data lines and live video feeds from cameras around the
county.

But perhaps more important than the equipment is the
emergency-management philosophy that drives it.

The federal Department of Homeland Security is requiring all
federal agencies to adopt the same emergency plan, called the
National Incident Management System, Ramsey explained.

That means things like standardized training, organization
structures, terminology, communications equipment and technology
that people from different agencies can use with ease.

As an example, Ramsey explained how the lab would respond to a
truck with nuclear waste that crashed on a state highway. First,
the New Mexico State Police would respond. And the lab's
emergency center would know at the same time as the police about
the accident, she said.

One incident commander, most likely the state police, would
oversee the reaction because it happened on state jurisdiction,
Ramsey said. That commander would delegate responsibility and
work with the lab team that would clean up the radioactive mess.

"You basically form a team and act as a unit in the field,"
Ramsey said.

So who's in charge?

"It really doesn't matter who's in charge," she said. "The folks
that need to know are there."

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said the system does not allow for
confusion over who's in charge.

The LANL team is constantly training to probe for weaknesses in
its response system, Ramsey said. She assured the public the lab
is well-prepared to protect its most valuable property. "We
aren't given the option of not protecting Category 1 and 2
nuclear materials," Ramsey said, referring to enriched uranium
and plutonium. "We will protect those babies, period."

Roark later pointed out that fires and traffic accidents are the
most likely risks at the lab. There's never been an attempted
intrusion by an outside force, he said, and there's been no
major chemical or radiological spills.

"The joke is the one thing we're not ready for is if the moon
de-orbits the earth and crashes into us," Roark said.

Contact Andy Lenderman at alenderman@sfnewmexican.com.		 	   	 	

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
Santa Fe New Mexican.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
*****************************************************************
 67 LongmontFYI: Rocky Flats verification team will return for more testing
 
www.longmontfyi.com

Publish Date: 9/10/2005 

By Brad Turner 

The Daily Times-Call 

The team of scientists who discovered residual radiation at
Rocky Flats’ most contaminated site in August will conduct
another survey to see if the hot spots are concentrated enough
to warrant more cleanup, a Department of Energy spokesman said
Friday.

 Investigators from the Oak Ridge Institute of Science and
Education will return to the site in the next few weeks for
another look at the traces of plutonium and americium they found
just months before the project was scheduled to conclude, DOE
spokesman John Rampe said.

 “Our initial impression is that they aren’t that large, aren’t
that significant,” Rampe said Friday of the contaminated areas.
“Whether we pull the trigger on whether or not to do more work,
we don’t know yet.”

 As part of a $7 billion contract with the DOE, Kaiser-Hill
agreed to decontaminate the Rocky Flats site and use outside
contractors to confirm that all substantial radioactive material
had been removed.

 With the project’s wrap-up slated for October, DOE hired ORISE
scientists to check the company’s work at the industrial site,
which churned out explosive plutonium cores for nuclear bombs
during the Cold War.

 Oak Ridge advisers found 13 radioactive hot spots in the area
around the 903 Pad, where thousands of leaky, plutonium-tainted
petroleum containers were stored on bare soil in the 1950s and
1960s.

 In a dash to determine the severity of the hot spots, DOE
dispatched Kaiser-Hill workers to gather data for a presentation
at a Sept. 1 Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board meeting, Rampe
said.

 Under the contract, Kaiser-Hill must remediate an
80-square-meter plot where radiation levels exceed 50 picocuries
per gram of soil, a level that is estimated to raise a person’s
risk of developing cancer by one chance in a million.

 Of the 13 hot spots discovered by the Oak Ridge team,
Kaiser-Hill cleaned five just outside the 903 Pad’s outer lip.

 None of the remaining hot spots matched the cleanup threshold
when averaged over 80 square meters, Rampe and Kaiser-Hill
representative Jan Walstrom said at the Sept. 1 meeting.

 But Kaiser-Hill spokesman John Corsi said Thursday that the
company has not made any final decisions on the matter.

 “The only thing we have on what ORISE found or didn’t find is
some data points that ORISE sent over to us,” he said. “If an
action is required, it’s not going to be a significant action.
It’s a relatively simple thing to go out there and dig up dirt.”

 LeRoy Moore of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, a
longtime Rocky Flats watchdog, said the discussion shows how
Kaiser-Hill’s contract with the DOE allows the company to
“average away hot spots.”

 “I really don’t understand why, at this point, they don’t go
ahead and do the right thing, and that’s remove some additional
soil,” Moore said.

 Oak Ridge scientists would be returning to Rocky Flats for
additional analysis even if they hadn’t found hot spots, Rampe
said. But their discovery at the 903 Pad will be the focus of
their work when they return, he said.

 The shift in emphasis comes after activists questioned DOE’s
handling of the independent verification.

 “How does it look, in terms of public perception, with
Kaiser-Hill answering a question that ORISE had about
Kaiser-Hill’s work?” David Abelson, director of the Rocky Flats
Coalition of Local Governments, asked this week.

 Abelson stressed that he did not necessarily think
Kaiser-Hill’s data was wrong. But he questioned whether the
company had stepped in the middle of what was supposed to be an
independent validation.

 DOE shut down the 6,500-acre Rocky Flats site in 1992.
Ultimately, most of the site will be converted to a wildlife
refuge with public access. The 903 Pad site is in an industrial
area that will remained sealed off from access.

 Brad Turner can be reached at 720-494-5420, or by e-mail at
bturner@times-call.com.

All contents Copyright © 2005 Daily Times-Call. All rights
    
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