***************************************************************** 11/08/05 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 13.260 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 FPIF News | India & the IAEA Iran Vote 2 AFP: Iran says nuclear offer final chance 3 UPI: Intl. Intelligence - Iran sends mixed signals on talks 4 AFP: Iran says nuclear offer final chance 5 AFP: Iran rejects EU call for new nuclear fuel work freeze 6 Guardian Unlimited: North Korea Promises 'Sincere Efforts' 7 Guardian Unlimited: S. Korea Urges Trust for N. Korea Talks 8 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Scientist: N. Korea Pursuing Nukes 9 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: A Word to the Wise From Kim Dae-jung 10 BBC: North Korea nuclear talks 11 Xinhua: ROK negotiator: all sides should build up mutual trust 12 Xinhua: Six parties gather in Beijing for nuclear talks 13 AFP: Negotiators arrive in Beijing for North Korean nuclear talks - 14 AFP: North Korea to be given new timeline for disarmament at six-par 15 US: [DU-WATCH] Nuclear bunker-busters: don't be fooled , they are 16 US: Victory Over New Nuclear Weapon! 17 US: U.S. Department Of State: U.S. To Remove 200 Tons of Enriched Ur 18 US: MSNBC.com: Road to war - Hardball with Chris Matthews - 19 Webindia123.com: India needs to deliver for nuclear deal - US expert 20 [BATN] Smithers! Prepare my nuclear-powered computronic Smart Car! 21 UN Atomic Agency Chief Lays Out Plan To Deal With Nuclear Terrorism, 22 Indiatimes: US official says nuke deal with India is special 23 PRAVDA.Ru: Little-brained big heads of the States - 24 Bellona: Proposed changes to Russian law on NGOs unconstitutional 25 Reuters: UK seeks Chinese lead on climate change 26 Minjok-Tongshin: Japan's Dangerous Moves for Nuclear Weaponization B 27 AFP: IAEA needs to enhance authority, face retirement crunch - US au NUCLEAR REACTORS 28 Ecodefense: REVEAL THE TRUTH - SHUT DOWN REACTORS 29 US: NRC: NRC, Entergy to Discuss Implementation of Backup Power for 30 US: NRC: NRC Advisory Panel Subcommittee to Meet in Brattleboro, Vt. 31 RIA Novosti: Russia may corporatize nuclear power utility by year's 32 REGNUM: Murmansk ecologists stand against operation of old reactors 33 US: NRC: Portland General Electric Company, Trojan Nuclear Plant, 34 US: American Nuclear Society: Industry, Policy Leaders Discuss Role 35 US: courant.com: Samples Taken At Nuclear Plant 36 US: York Daily Record: Smooth refuel for TMI Unit 1 - 37 US: NRC: Notice of Availability of Interim Staff Guidance Documents 38 AFP: Japan appoints head of breakthrough nuclear reactor in France - 39 US: NRC: Sunshine Act; Meetings NUCLEAR SECURITY NUCLEAR SAFETY 40 [DU-WATCH] DU expose' film "Blowin in the Wind" nominated for 41 [DU Information List] US forces used chemical weapons during 42 [DU Information List] Has the nuclear catastrophe already 43 US: Agency Seeks Broad Standard for 'Dirty Bomb' Exposure 44 US: Rocky Mountain News: Senate rejects bill to help workers hurt by 45 BBC: 1957: Inquiry publishes cause of nuclear fire 46 KAVKAZ CENTER: Depleted Uranium Is WMD 47 US: KESQ: State investigating claims worker dumped radioactive mater NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 48 Las Vegas SUN: Lawmakers cut funding for Yucca Mountain to $450 mill 49 US: Daily Sentinel: Cotter Corp. closes six Western Slope uranium mi 50 AU ABC: Senator dismisses fears over NT nuclear dump 51 AU ABC: NT nuclear dump debate adjourned 52 reviewjournal.com: Lawmakers move to cut funding for Yucca Mountain 53 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca dump may be losing support 54 FT.com: Fallout from radioactive leak hits nuclear waste strategy 55 KDM: Nuclear waste storage could be an opportunity - Canfield 56 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Utah's delegation optimistic on plan to block PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 57 The Santa Fe New Mexican: Decision looms on lab contract 58 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Employees evacuated from Idaho nuclear l 59 ABQJOURNAL: Decision Looms on Los Alamos Nuclear Lab Contract 60 DenverPost.com: Rocky Flats session spurs outrage 61 DenverPost.com: Senate nixes benefit for speedy cleanup crew 62 lamonitor.com: DOE funding hammered out ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 FPIF News | India & the IAEA Iran Vote Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 01:36:08 -0600 (CST) X-Fingerprint: owner-imap@chumbly.math.missouri.edu-127.127 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ New at FPIF Working to make the United States a more responsible global leader and partner http://www.fpif.org/ November 1, 2005 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Introducing the latest policy analysis from Foreign Policy In Focus India and the Iran Vote in the IAEA By Ninan Koshy Indias vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) against Iran in September came as no surprise to anyone who has followed closely the recent course of Indias foreign policy. It is a safe guess that support for U.S. actions on Iran was one of the conditions of Indias nuclear deal with the United States, which was given the final seal of approval by President Bush during the July 2005 visit of the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice during her visit to New Delhi in March, 2005 openly raised objections to Indias proposal for a gas pipeline from Iran, and dropped a broad hint that the Indian aspirations for a greater role in international affairs would be better served not through reform of the UNand a permanent seat for India in the Security Councilbut through ad hoc U.S-led multilateral initiatives. The message was clear. Indias relations with countries, which were against the United States were subject to approval by Washington. By the time of the Indian Prime Ministers visit to Washington this summer the military alliance of India with the United States had reached hitherto unimaginable and unprecedented levels of cooperation to use the wording of the Defense Framework Agreement signed in Washington this past June. The commitment demanded from India was clear: Behave as a nuclear power which has the closest military alliance with the United States. The vote against Iran was only a natural corollary. Dr. Ninan Koshy knkoshy@vsnl.com is a political commentator based in Trivandrum, Kerala, India, author of The War on Terror: Reordering the World (DAGA Press, 2002), and a regular analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at http://www.fpif.org). See new FPIF commentary online at: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/2907 With printer-friendly pdf version at: http://www.fpif.org/pdf/0510iaea.pdf ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For media inquiries: Emily Schwartz Greco, emily@ips-dc.org 202-297-5412 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Produced and distributed by FPIF:A Think Tank Without Walls, a joint program of International Relations Center (IRC) and Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). For more information, visit http://www.fpif.org. If you would like to add a name to the Whats New At FPIF list, please email: communications@irc-online.org, giving your area of interest. Please consider becoming an IRC member or donor. You can join the IRC and make a secure donation by visiting http://www.irc-online.org/donate.php. Thank you. Also see our Progressive Response newsletter at: http://www.fpif.org/progresp/index.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ International Relation Center (IRC) http://www.irc-online.org/ Siri D. Khalsa Outreach Coordinator Email: communications@irc-online.org P.O. Box 2178 Silver City, NM 88062 ***************************************************************** 2 AFP: Iran says nuclear offer final chance 08/11/2005 18h50 Ali Larijani ©AFP/File TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran's top nuclear official warned an offer to resume stalled atomic talks with Europe was his final attempt to salvage negotiations, insisting Tehran would never renounce its demand to enrich uranium. Ali Larijani told the BBC his offer in a letter on Sunday to the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany to pick up the talks was "our last word to the Europeans". European foreign ministers have said they are studying the proposal but have yet to indicate if they will accept the offer, the first since Larijani became hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's pointman on the nuclear dossier. However Larijani's letter makes clear that Tehran has no intention of dropping its demand to enrich uranium as part of a full nuclear fuel cycle -- the key sticking point in the tortuous negotiating process with Europe. It says Iran has a "certain and indisputable right to have access to full nuclear fuel cycle and enrichment capability for peaceful purposes such as research, medical, genetics, agricultural and similar applications." In a first reaction to the letter Monday, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Iran must heed an International Atomic Energy Agency resolution passed in September demanding a renewed freeze on all activity related to uranium enrichment. But in a later statement Tuesday, Larijani angrily rejected Straw's call. "The various parts of this declaration were put together with an extremist outlook and I'm against them," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. Two Iranians work at the zirconium production plant at Isfanhan ©AFP/File - Henghameh Fahimi "The Europeans want to harm the Iranian people's will and determination by putting psychological pressure on Iran but they are making a mistake," he said. Larijani acknowledged that Straw's comments were not an official response to his letter, which had yet to be received, but he warned that negotiation was not the only way forward for Iran. "From our point of view, negotiation is not the sole solution for settling the nuclear problem but it is one of the ways," he said. "The letter we sent to the Europeans was aimed at showing that Iran was exploring all peaceful ways to guarantee the national rights of Iranians." The Iranian request for new talks came three weeks before a November 24 meeting of the IAEA which could theoretically send Iran to the Security Council. The European Union has been trying to persuade Iran to permanently suspend uranium enrichment, as well as its precursor conversion, as a watertight guarantee that its nuclear programme is peaceful and sees it as a condition for reopening the stalled talks. Iran had already defied the Europeans by resuming uranium ore conversion in August, a move which brought the already stuttering talks to a grinding halt. It is still observing a suspension on enriching uranium, but has repeatedly made clear this will not last forever. "Our strategy is that we have to achieve nuclear technology and the resumption of... conversion is a sign that Iran is determined to master nuclear technology," Larijani told the BBC. Iranians of the People's Mujahadeen organization demonstrate against Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime ©AFP/File - Thierry Monasse On enrichment, he said: "Absolutely it is part of our programme. We are not stopping short of enrichment. "Through the language of force and threats you cannot persuade Iran to give up this right." Enriched uranium is used as the fuel for power stations but in highly enriched form can also form the explosive core of a nuclear bomb. Whether Larijani's approach will be enough to save Iran from being sent to the UN Security Council remains to be seen. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste Blazy said Monday such an option was still being kept open. However Europe and the United States may have their work cut out to secure a Security Council referral with Russia expected to oppose such a move and China unconvinced. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei on Monday called for increased transparency from Iran after it had concealed the extent of its atomic programme for 18 years. But he also acknowledged that "we are making progress," referring to additional information offered recently and access given to UN inspectors to visit key nuclear sites. + Ŕđŕáńęčé Copyright Disclaimer ©AFP 2005 ***************************************************************** 3 UPI: Intl. Intelligence - Iran sends mixed signals on talks United Press International - 11/8/2005 10:53:00 AM -0500 Newstrack: An Oregon man apologized to his TEHRAN, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Iran criticized the European Union for asking Tehran to suspend all nuclear activities. "The demands of the European Union made in a statement Monday do not conform with the current developments in the world and in the Islamic Republic of Iran," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Reza Asafi said Tuesday, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. Asafi reaffirmed Iran's "legitimate rights" to possess and use nuclear technology for peaceful objectives. "Iran will not give up its rights, and also Europe should be committed to respecting previous agreements in that regard and acknowledge Iranian rights," Asafi added. He stressed, however, that Iran welcomes dialogue for settling all pending problems on condition "it should be on an equal footing with mutual respect and without imposing preconditions." Separately, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, told the BBC in an interview the resumption of talks with Europe could be "fruitful." "In the same way that Iran is negotiating with China, Russia and the non aligned countries, it can have fruitful negotiations with the Europeans as well," he said. ***************************************************************** 4 AFP: Iran says nuclear offer final chance 08/11/2005 12h27 Iranian National Security Council chief, Ali Larijani ©AFP/File TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran's top nuclear official has warned an offer to resume stalled atomic talks with Europe was his final attempt to salvage negotiations, insisting Tehran would never renounce its demand to enrich uranium. Ali Larijani told the BBC Tuesday his offer in a letter on Sunday to the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany to pick up the talks was "our last word to the Europeans". European foreign ministers have said they are studying the proposal but have yet to indicate if they will accept the offer, the first since Larijani became hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's pointman on the nuclear dossier. However Larijani's letter makes clear that Tehran has no intention of dropping its demand to enrich uranium as part of a full nuclear fuel cycle -- the key sticking point in the tortuous negotiating process with Europe. It says Iran has a "certain and indisputable right to have access to full nuclear fuel cycle and enrichment capability for peaceful purposes such as research, medical, genetics, agricultural and similar applications." The letter, obtained by AFP on Tuesday, said that this right is "explicit and unambiguous" under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The European Union has attempted to persuade Iran to permanently suspend uranium enrichment as a watertight guarantee that its nuclear programme is peaceful and sees it as a condition to reopen the stalled talks. Iran had already defied the Europeans by resuming in August uranium conversion -- the precursor step to enrichment -- a move which brought the already stuttering talks to a grinding halt. It is still observing a suspension on enriching uranium, but has repeatedly made clear this will not last forever. An Iranian technician works at a uranium conversion facility in Isfahan ©AFP/File Larijani's offer of talks came less than three weeks ahead of a new meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog on November 24 which could theoretically see Tehran sent before the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme. It also came amid intensified international concerns about the future of Tehran's nuclear programme after Ahmadinejad caused an international outcry by calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map". "Our strategy is that we have to achieve nuclear technology and the resumption of... conversion is a sign that Iran is determined to master nuclear technology," Larijani told the BBC. On enrichment, he said: "Absolutely it is part of our programme. We are not stopping short of enrichment". Enriched uranium is used as the fuel for power stations but in highly enriched form can also form the explosive core of a nuclear bomb. "Through the language of force and threats you cannot persuade Iran to give up this right," he said. But he also said the offer made to the Europeans "shows Iran's serious willingness to resume negotiations". Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi also rebuffed the European demands for Iran to give up enrichment. "Iran will never renounce its right. The Europeans must respect the agreements from the past and instead of making excessive demands recognise Iran's right so the conditions of an understanding are satisfied." Whether Larijani's approach will be enough to save Iran from being sent to the UN Security Council remains to be seen. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste Blazy said Monday such an option was still being kept open. However Europe and the United States could have their work cut out for them by taking such action. Tehran will count on support from Russia, China is dubious about punitive measures while India has shown signs of changing its position. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei on Monday called for increased transparency from Iran after it had concealed the extent of its atomic programme for 18 years. But he also acknowledged that "we are making progress," referring to additional information offered recently from the Iranian side and access given to UN inspectors to visit key nuclear sites. + Ŕđŕáńęčé Copyright Disclaimer ©AFP 2005 ***************************************************************** 5 AFP: Iran rejects EU call for new nuclear fuel work freeze 08/11/2005 17h40 Ali Larijani ©AFP/File TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran rejected a call by European ministers for it to heed a resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) calling for a renewed freeze on all activities related to uranium enrichment. "The various part of this declaration were put together with an extremist outlook and I'm against them," the official IRNA news agency quoted top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani as saying. "The Europeans want to harm the Iranian people's will and determination by putting psychological pressure on Iran but they are making a mistake," Larijani said at the closing session of a conference on the Caucasus and central Asia. Responding to a letter from Larijani seeking renewed talks with the European Union on its nuclear programme, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw demanded Monday that Iran heed the IAEA resolution, which called principally for a renewed freeze on uranium ore conversion, the precursor to enrichment. Iranians of the People's Mujahadeen organization demonstrate against Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime ©AFP/File - Thierry Monasse "The Iranians are under the obligation to respond positively to the resolution of the board of governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency in late September and we look to them to do that," he said. Larijani acknowledged that the European Union had yet to respond formally to his letter but warned that negotiation was not the only path open to Iran. "The official position of the Europeans hasn't yet been conveyed to us," he said. "It's normal that they would need time to examine the letter. "From our point of view, negotiation is not the sole solution for settling the nuclear problem but it is one of the ways. The letter we sent to the Europeans was aimed at showing that Iran was exploring all peaceful ways to guarantee the national rights of Iranians." Straw said "informal discussions" were continuing with the Iranians, despite the deadlock on the formal nuclear talks. Larijani told the BBC Tuesday that his letter was "our last word to the Europeans". The Iranian request for new talks came three weeks before a November 24 meeting of the IAEA which could theoretically send Iran to the Security Council. + Ŕđŕáńęčé Copyright Disclaimer ©AFP 2005 ***************************************************************** 6 Guardian Unlimited: North Korea Promises 'Sincere Efforts' From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday November 8, 2005 1:16 PM AP Photo XGB101 By STEPHANIE HOO Associated Press Writer BEIJING (AP) - North Korea's envoy promised to make ``sincere efforts'' as diplomats prepared to resume six-nation talks Wednesday aimed at stripping Pyongyang of its nuclear weapons program - but analysts warned against expecting a breakthrough. China says the talks in Beijing - the fifth set since 2003 - will last three days before a recess to let the diplomats attend an Asia-Pacific economic forum in South Korea. Participants in the nuclear talks are the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia. The last round of talks ended in September with North Korea promising to disarm in exchange for aid and a security guarantee. But negotiators haven't taken up the most difficult issues: how the North will disarm, and how to verify it. North Korea has raised doubts about its intentions by demanding it be given a civilian nuclear reactor before it disarms - a demand the United States has rejected. A joint statement at the end of September's talks sidestepped the North's demand for the reactor, saying it would be discussed ``at an appropriate time.'' North Korea's envoy, Kim Gye Gwan, said his government ``cherishes the joint statement,'' China's official Xinhua News Agency reported. ``We are willing to make sincere efforts at this round of the talks to fulfill the spirit of the joint statement,'' Kim was quoted as saying in Pyongyang before flying to Beijing. South Korea's Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said he met with Kim on Tuesday to discuss how the joint statement would be implemented. ``We compared North Korea's thoughts with ours,'' Song told reporters after the 80-minute meeting. ``There are similar points as well as different points.'' He did not give any details but said all parties needed to ``take actions mutually that are conducive to create confidence.'' Pyongyang appears to be dragging its feet, said Peter Beck, the Seoul-based director of the North East Asia Project for the International Crisis Group, an independent think tank. ``I don't think they're serious about progress yet,'' he said. In the meantime, he said, ``Washington has no choice but to go along with this charade.'' Even host China tried to moderate expectations, saying this week's meeting could be considered a success even if it produces no written agreement. ``I do not think that progress of the talks needs to be measured by the signing of a document,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Tuesday. The North's leader, Kim Jong Il, promised a visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao last month to press ahead with the talks. Kim said the North was committed to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. Yet Hu's promise of economic help might have taken the pressure off Pyongyang to make a deal, Beck said. Beck said Hu's pledge suggested that the governments that are trying to get North Korea to give up nuclear development were failing to coordinate the timing of their ``carrots and sticks'' - the timeline for the North to meet conditions in exchange for aid. Further, the issues to be resolved are too vast, said Liu Jiangyong, a specialist in international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. ``We do not expect breakthroughs to be achieved in the next three days in all issues mentioned in the joint statement,'' Liu said. In Seoul, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said the talks are the only way to resolve the dispute, which erupted in 2002. ``Although it may take some time, failure is inconceivable,'' Roh said at a luncheon with foreign journalists. The new round of talks will recess so negotiators can attend the Nov. 12-19 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Busan, South Korea, the Chinese government has said. --- Associated Press reporter Kim Kwang-Tae in Beijing contributed to this report. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 7 Guardian Unlimited: S. Korea Urges Trust for N. Korea Talks From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday November 8, 2005 7:16 PM AP Photo XGB101 By KIM KWANG-TAE Associated Press Writer BEIJING (AP) - South Korea on Tuesday urged delegates to six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament to create an atmosphere of trust as participants geared up for another round of negotiations in Beijing. Tensions between the United States and North Korea, however, were already building. The communist country criticized President Bush for calling North Korean leader Kim Jong Il a ``tyrant,'' saying the remark put the prospects of the talks in doubt. North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China will participate in the fifth set of negotiations, scheduled to begin Wednesday. They were expected to last three days before a recess to let diplomats attend an Asia-Pacific economic forum in South Korea. South Korea's Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said he met with Kim Gye Gwan, the North's envoy, Tuesday to discuss the implementation of a joint statement issued at the end of the last round of talks in September. ``We compared North Korea's thoughts with ours,'' Song told reporters after the 80-minute meeting. ``There are similar points as well as different points.'' He said all parties must ``take actions mutually that are conducive to create confidence.'' Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator and assistant secretary of state for Asia affairs, said the key to the talks ``is to see how we can take an agreement in principle and begin to see how an agreement in principle can be put into practice.'' But Pyongyang said Bush's comment cast a shadow over the talks. Bush made the remark Sunday in Brazil while praising Japan as a close U.S. ally in confronting a ``tyrant'' in North Korea. He did not mention Kim by name. ``If this is true, what he uttered is a blatant violation of the spirit of the joint statement of the six-party talks, which calls for 'respect for sovereignty' and 'peaceful coexistence,''' a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. ``These remarks ... arouse our serious concern about the prospect of implementing the joint statement and deprive us of any trust in the negotiators of the U.S. side,'' said the spokesman, who was not identified. The last round of talks ended with North Korea promising to disarm in exchange for aid and a security guarantee. But negotiators have not taken up the most difficult issues: how the North will disarm and how to verify it. North Korea has raised doubts about its intentions by demanding it be given a civilian nuclear reactor before it disarms, a condition the United States has rejected. The joint statement last month sidestepped the North's demand for the reactor, saying it would be discussed ``at an appropriate time.'' Earlier Tuesday, Kim Gye Gwan said North Korea ``cherishes the joint statement,'' China's official Xinhua News Agency reported. ``We are willing to make sincere efforts at this round of the talks to fulfill the spirit of the joint statement,'' Kim was quoted as saying in Pyongyang before flying to Beijing. Analysts cautioned against expecting a breakthrough. Pyongyang appears to be dragging its feet, said Peter Beck, the Seoul-based director of the North East Asia Project for the International Crisis Group, an independent think tank. ``I don't think they're serious about progress yet,'' he said. In the meantime, he said, ``Washington has no choice but to go along with this charade.'' Even host China tried to lower expectations, saying this week's meeting could be considered a success even if it produces no written agreement. ``I do not think that progress of the talks needs to be measured by the signing of a document,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said. ``During the process, all parties will enhance their understanding for each other and accumulate consensus.'' In Washington, Siegfried Hecker, a U.S. scientist who toured North Korea's reactors in August, said he believes Pyongyang is ``moving full speed ahead with its nuclear weapons programs.'' Hecker, a senior fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was given an inside look at apparent plutonium production by North Korean scientists. ``They're poised to continue their program, to make more plutonium and to strengthen their deterrents,'' Hecker said at a nuclear nonproliferation conference in Washington. ``We have to assume that the North Koreans also have made at least a few primitive nuclear devices.'' U.S. intelligence has previously estimated that North Korea has separated enough plutonium for at least one or two nuclear weapons. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said the talks were the only way to resolve the dispute, which erupted in 2002. ``Although it may take some time,'' Roh said at a luncheon with foreign journalists in Seoul, ``failure is inconceivable.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 8 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Scientist: N. Korea Pursuing Nukes From the Associated Press [UP] Tuesday November 8, 2005 8:46 PM By FOSTER KLUG Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - A U.S. scientist who toured North Korea's reactors shortly before the country agreed to abandon its nuclear program said Tuesday he believes Pyongyang is still aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons. Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, was given a rare inside look at apparent plutonium production by North Korean scientists in August, one month before negotiators from six nations reached their agreement. Talks are to start Wednesday on how to implement the September deal. Based on what Hecker saw and was told during the visits, the nuclear scientist said North Korea is ``moving full speed ahead with its nuclear weapons programs.'' While others have visited the reactors, Hecker was given a particularly detailed look. He said North Korean scientists allowed him to hold what they claimed was plutonium, and he found it ``inconceivable that (the North Koreans) don't have at least some sort of nascent uranium enrichment program'' that could generate nuclear fuel for warheads. The September agreement had no timetable for the North to abandon its nuclear program, and there's no indication it has done so. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who toured the reactor last month, said officials told him it was refueled in April and indicated they had reprocessed the spent fuel into plutonium. At a nuclear nonproliferation conference in Washington, Hecker said Tuesday that North Korea is ``poised to continue their program, to make more plutonium and to strengthen their deterrents.'' He added, ``We have to assume that the North Koreans have also made at least a few primitive nuclear devices.'' The six-nation talks, which involve North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, China and Russia, are aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear programs. Within a day of the September agreement, North Korea said it wouldn't dismantle its nuclear programs without getting concessions including a light-water nuclear reactor it says it needs to fight massive energy shortfalls. Washington wants North Korea's nuclear programs eliminated before talking about rewards. Hecker, who also visited the North's reactors in January 2004, gave the conference a ``rough estimate'' of what he thought North Korea's nuclear status would be this month. He said one small North Korean reactor would probably have the capacity to produce enough plutonium for at least one nuclear weapon a year. He said officials told him that a larger reactor, capable of producing much more plutonium, was being worked on, and officials believed they would finish it in a couple of years. He added that while no one except a few people in North Korea knows whether the North has nuclear weapons, based on available evidence, ``we have to assume they have bombs.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 9 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: A Word to the Wise From Kim Dae-jung Home> Editorials/Columns Updated Nov.8,2005 21:21 KST Former president Kim Dae-jung on Tuesday told the Uri PartyˇŻs interim leadership the ruling party fell far short of public expectations for economic prosperity and improved living standards. The party failed because it "has not tried hard enough to convince the public and win its understanding." The former president was also quoted as saying the party should have made it clear that Prof. Kang Jeong-koo's inflammatory pro-North Korean remarks "were wrong," and taken the firm position that without the Incheon Landing of 1950 led by U.S. general Douglas MacArthur, the Republic of Korea would not exist. Under a presidential system, he said, it is "undesirable for ruling-party lawmakers to openly point out mistakes made by the president." He was referring to some legislators' blunt criticism of the chief executive in the wake of the party's crushing defeat in the Oct. 26 National Assembly by-elections. One lawmaker at the time asked whether the president thought he was God. Kim also told the assembled party leaders the Korea-U.S. alliance was "absolutely necessary in view of the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear dispute, among other things." But when the meeting closed, the elder statesman told his visitors he felt they were the inheritors of his political mantle. Few can deny that the current government, both politically and in terms of personnel, is KimˇŻs successor. President Roh Moo-hyun himself held a Cabinet portfolio under Kim, served as a commissioner of the Millennium Democratic Party when Kim chaired it, and was the partyˇŻs presidential candidate at KimˇŻs instigation. Acting Uri Party chairman Chung Sye-kyun went as far as to say in the meeting, "I started my political career because you gave me the opportunity.ˇ± The Uri Party spokesman too, briefing reporters on the meeting, called the party the former presidentˇŻs successors. Yet even against that background, the elder statesman berated the party leadership point by point, saying, "You've bungled your politics." Attacked as a "leftist" by his opponents throughout his decades in politics, Kim nonetheless noted that the ruling camp acted beyond bounds when they shielded Prof. Kang in the name of freedom of expression and defended activists who are trying to topple the MacArthur statue in Incheon. ***************************************************************** 10 BBC: North Korea nuclear talks Last Updated: Wednesday, 9 November 2005 [Six-party talks in Beijing] The start of the Beijing talks was overshadowed by harsh words International talks aimed at convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions have resumed in Beijing. The six nations involved hope to make progress on an agreement in principle, reached in September, for the North to halt its nuclear programme. In an opening statement Chinese delegate Wu Dawei called on negotiators to be flexible and pragmatic. Earlier, North Korea's foreign ministry said recent comments by US President George Bush had jeopardised the talks. The latest dispute seems to have been triggered by remarks Mr Bush allegedly made in Brazil at the weekend. SEPTEMBER AGREEMENT N Korea to abandon al nuclear weapons and programmes N Korea to return to nuclear treaty and UN monitoring US states it has no intention of attacking N Korea N Korea says it has right to "peaceful" nuclear energy" N Korea's demand for light water reactor to be discussed at "appropriate time" Full text of agreement Japanese and South Korean press reports said the US president referred to a "tyrant in North Korea", without mentioning the country's leader Kim Jong-il by name. North Korea's foreign ministry responded indignantly. Bush "malignantly slandered our supreme headquarters with such unspeakable vituperation as 'tyrant' and the like," the spokesman said, in a statement carried by the North Korean KCNA news agency. "If this is true, what he uttered is a blatant violation of the spirit of the joint statement of the six-party talks which calls for 'respect for sovereignty' and 'peaceful co-existence'," he said. CRISIS TIMELINE Oct 2002: US says North Kore is enriching uranium in violation of agreements Dec 2002: North Korea removes UN seals from Yongbyon nuclear reactor, expels inspectors Feb 2003: IAEA refers North Korea to UN Security Council Aug 2003: First round of six-nation talks begins in Beijing Feb 2005: Pyongyang says it has built nuclear weapons for self-defence Sep 2005: N Korea agrees to give up nuclear goals Timeline: Nuclear crisis Have your say The agreement struck at the last round of talks, in September, remains in doubt. The North agreed to give up its nuclear programme in exchange for energy assistance and other benefits, but then demanded a civilian nuclear reactor as well. Both Japan and the US have rejected Pyongyang's demand for such a reactor, which would be expensive and take years to build. There are also questions over the timing of the agreement's implementation. The North has insisted that it should not have to make the first move. The nuclear dispute began in late 2002, when the US accused North Korea of having a uranium-based nuclear arms programme, in violation of international agreements. ***************************************************************** 11 Xinhua: ROK negotiator: all sides should build up mutual trust www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2005-11-08 23:17:28 BEIJING, Nov. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Top negotiator of the Republic of Korea (ROK) to the six-party talks on the Korean nuclear issue Song Min-soon said here on Tuesday that all sides should take measures to build up mutual trust, so as to implement the joint statement reached at the previous round of talks. He made the remarks at a press briefing after the ROK delegation held bilateral consultation with the delegation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and had a brief meeting with the Russian delegation on Tuesday evening. The ROK delegation, which arrived in Beijing on Monday, also held consultation with the Chinese delegation on the procedure of the upcoming fifth-round talks and on how to reduce differences among the six parties, said Song. Song said that during his meeting with his DPRK counterpart KimKye-gwan, the two sides discussed how to fulfill the commitments made in the joint statement, and the two sides have both "common understandings" and "slight differences" in this regard. Both sides agreed to abide by the principles outlined in the joint statement, he said. According to Song, all the involved parties are expected to express their views in the first phase of the fifth-round talks, which will help lay a foundation for the discussion of a more effective agreement in the next phase. All sides have agreed that the fifth-round talks shall include,as in the previous rounds, both plenary sessions and bilateral consultations, said Song, adding that hopefully an action plan forall the parties might be worked out in the second phase of the talks. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 12 Xinhua: Six parties gather in Beijing for nuclear talks www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2005-11-08 23:52:29 BEIJING, Nov. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- With the arrival of the US delegation in Beijing, all negotiators to the fifth round of six-party talks converged here Tuesday for a peaceful solution to the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. The delegation of the Republic of Korea (ROK) arrived here Monday, and other delegations, including the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Russia, Japan and the United States arrived here successively on Tuesday. US chief negotiator Christopher Hill told reporters upon his arrival in Beijing that the first step in the way ahead is to look at the issue of the denuclearization in the Korean Peninsula and begin to see how the agreements and the principles can be put into practices. ROK chief negotiator Song Min-soon said in Beijing Monday afternoon that the upcoming fifth round of the six-party talks will lay the groundwork for carrying out the first joint statement reached during the fourth round of the talks. "There will be intensive consultations in this round of the six-party talks," Song told Xinhua. He and his delegates were the first to arrive in Beijing for the talks, scheduled for Nov. 9. Aiming at resolving the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, China hosted four rounds of six-party talks with the latest one adopting the first joint statement in September this year. The DPRK pledged in the statement to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and return, at an early date,to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, in exchange for energy aid and security guarantees. The fifth round of the six-party talks is expected to discuss how to follow through on the statement. Kim Gye-gwan, head of the DPRK delegation to the six-party talks, said at Pyongyang's Sun-an Airport before departure to Beijing earlier Tuesday morning that his country is willing to make sincere efforts to fulfil the joint statement at the upcoming fifth-round talks. "The DPRK cherishes the joint statement formed in the previous round. We are willing to make sincere efforts at this round of the talks to fulfil the spirit of the joint statement," he said. The DPRK delegation head said the talks have already had a clear direction, which guides the six parties all the way forward like a lighthouse. "But the lighthouse is too far away from the DPRK and becomes less visible sometimes as the sea is always full of fogs," Kim said. However, he said, all the parties involved could pool their wisdom and work together for further progress. Russia's chief negotiator Alexander Alexeyev said Tuesday upon arrival in Beijing that Russia will cooperate with the DPRK in a bid to make substantial result in the new round of the six-party talks. Sasae Kenichiro, head of the Japanese delegation, said here Tuesday that Japan is particularly interested in the implementation of the agreement already reached by all sides, especially the process of denuclearization. Japan will also express its views on future actions in the talks, he noted. The fifth round of six-party talks will open on Nov. 9 and is expected to last for three days as the first phase. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan said earlier that "holding the talks by phases in the new round could have a better result," as the chief negotiators of some parties might also attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit slated for mid-November in Pusan, ROK. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 13 AFP: Negotiators arrive in Beijing for North Korean nuclear talks - Tue Nov 8,12:37 AM ET BEIJING (AFP) - Negotiators for six-party talks aimed at dismantling North Korea" /> North Korea's nuclear program were arriving in Beijing but there was little hope of major progress during the upcoming round. The first session of the fifth round of talks will only last for three days, while the following phase of the round will start by the end of the year, China's vice foreign minister Wu Dawei told journalists. The talks, involving China, the two Koreas, the United States, Russia and Japan, begin Wednesday in central Beijing. It will be "rather difficult" to make progress in the talks because big differences remain between parties over the order of implementation of an agreement reached at the last round in September, Wu said. The six sides issued a joint statement of purpose after the last round of talks in September, agreeing to verifiably scrap North Korea's nuclear programs in exchange for energy assistance and other benefits. Now discussions are expected to focus on the technically complex issue of scrapping the nuclear programs in a manner consistent with the agreement, which called for "commitment-for-commitment, action-for-action," diplomats said. The United States wants North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program immediately, while Pyongyang is holding out for benefits from Washington up front before surrendering its bargaining chip. South Korean chief negotiator Song Min-soon, and the North Korean delegation, had already arrived in Beijing while delegates from the other nations were expected to arrive later. China has asked that the first phase of the next round end by Friday so that diplomats at the talks can also attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation ( APEC" /> APEC) leaders' summit in South Korea" /> South Koreaon November 18 and 19. In Tokyo, a Japanese newspaper said Japan, the United States and South Korea will propose to North Korea a "roadmap" of specific steps it can take to show it is giving up nuclear weapons and receive promised benefits. Amid US and Japanese concern that North Korea is untrustworthy, the roadmap would give a timeline for concrete ways for Pyongyang to verify it is giving up its nuclear program, the Asahi Shimbun said, citing unnamed South Korean diplomatic sources. The Asahi Shimbun said the roadmap would include a series of stages starting with North Korea confirming its nuclear programs are dismantled, freezing nuclear facilities and renouncing its nuclear program. In exchange for further benefits, Pyongyang would eventually need to return to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and accept inspections by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA). Japan, the United States and South Korea will also propose setting up three committees assigned to verifying the scrapping of the North's nuclear program, to economic and energy assistance and to international security, the Asahi said. The committees are needed "because specific details of scrapping the nuclear program and the verification process cannot be drawn up at the gathering of chief negotiators," the Asahi quoted a Japanese diplomatic source as saying. The United States and Japan accuse North Korea of violating a 1994 agreement under which a US-led consortium would have built two light water reactors in the impoverished state. The United States accused the North in 2002 of developing a secret uranium-enrichment program. The North responded by throwing out weapons inspectors and leaving the NPT. Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 14 AFP: North Korea to be given new timeline for disarmament at six-party talks 08/11/2005 11h25 Japanese chief negotiator Kenichiro Sasae (C) is questioned by journalists ©AFP - Peter Parks BEIJING (AFP) - North Korea will be urged to adopt a step-by-step plan towards nuclear disarmament when the latest round of six-party talks begins on Wednesday, Japan's chief negotiatior said after arriving in Beijing. However with the first phase of the fifth round scheduled to last just three days before resuming later in the year, expectations were low that major progress will be made this week. Progress would be "rather difficult" because big differences remain over how to implement an agreement reached at the last round in September, Chinese vice foreign minister Wu Dawei told journalists. China, the two Koreas, the United States, Russia and Japan agreed in September verifiably to scrap North Korea's nuclear programs in exchange for energy assistance and other benefits. However the United States has insisted that North Korea dismantle its nuclear program immediately, while the Stalinist state has been holding out for benefits from Washington up front before surrendering its bargaining chip. In particular, North Korea said after the September agreement that it would not dismantle its nuclear arsenal before the United States supplies it with a light-water atomic reactor to generate electricity. The United States says North Korea must first disarm. Japan's chief negotiatior Kenichiro Sasae told reporters after arriving in Beijing on Tuesday that North Korea would be urged to adopt a phased approach to dismantling its nuclear weapons program. A North Korean soldier looks toward the South side in the border village of Panmunjom ©AFP - Jung Yeon-Je "We will study how to implement what we agreed at the last six-party round," Sasae said. "We believe it is necessary to achieve progress on the central question, that is how to proceed in concrete terms with nuclear disarmament, which was promised by North Korea. "Japan for its part believes it is important to present a specific prospect leading to next steps." Sasae did not give details. The Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper said Japan, the United States and South Korea would propose a "road map" to the North under which it would give up its nuclear weapons in return for promised benefits. The road map would include a timeline for ways for Pyongyang to verify it is giving up its nuclear program, the Asahi Shimbun said, citing South Korean diplomatic sources. The newspaper said the road map would include a series of stages starting with North Korea confirming its nuclear programs are dismantled, freezing nuclear facilities and renouncing its nuclear program. In exchange for further benefits, Pyongyang would eventually need to return to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and accept inspections by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency. The United States and Japan accuse North Korea of violating a 1994 agreement under which a US-led consortium would have built two light water reactors in the impoverished state in return for nuclear disarmament. The United States accused the North in 2002 of developing a secret uranium-enrichment program. The North responded by throwing out weapons inspectors and leaving the NPT. North Korea's Kim Gye-gwan (R) ©AFP/File - Ng Han Guan All the delegations to the talks except the US team led by Christopher Hill, had arrived in Beijing by mid-afternoon on Tuesday. Hill was due to land in the early evening. The other delegations were holding various bilateral meetings on Tuesday. North Korea's lead negotiator divulged little on arrival. "We are willing to make sincere efforts at this round of the talks to fulfil the spirit of the joint statement," Xinhua news agency quoted Kim Gye-gwan as saying. "The DPRK (North Korea) cherishes the joint statement formed in the previous round." In Seoul, South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun said the failure of the six-party talks was not an option, but said he had no new plans to divulge ahead of Wednesday's talks. "Though it may take some time, failure is inconceivable," Roh said. China has asked that the first phase of the next round ends by Friday so that diplomats can also attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea on November 18 and 19. + Ŕđŕáńęčé Copyright Disclaimer ©AFP 2005 ***************************************************************** 15 [DU-WATCH] Nuclear bunker-busters: don't be fooled , they are Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 00:56:10 -0600 (CST) X-Fingerprint: owner-imap@chumbly.math.missouri.edu-127.127 Oct 28/05 whitehouse says its "Closing door on nuclear BB's" http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/chronicle/archive/2005/10/28/EDG2NFEHIE1.DTL But Pentagon and State have already told North Korea it should fear fissile warhead on a bunlerbuster cruise missile http://www.wslfweb.org/nukes/foia.htm www.wslfweb.org/docs/12_jsscm.pdf Here you will see a picture of a uranium penetrator carrying a nuke. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Does he tell you he loves you when he hits you? Abuse. Narrated by Halle Berry. http://us.click.yahoo.com/CjRcdD/rbOLAA/xGEGAA/Sj.0lB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] ***************************************************************** 16 Victory Over New Nuclear Weapon! Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 01:26:40 -0600 (CST) X-Fingerprint: owner-imap@chumbly.math.missouri.edu-127.127 Thanks in part to your actions, we achieved an enormous victory this week, when Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) announced that Congress would deny all funding for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. The Bush administration has sought to justify developing this new nuclear weapon in order to attack deeply buried command centers or underground stores of chemical and biological weapons. Independent analysis, however, has found that such a weapon would be ineffective and the radioactive fall-out could kill millions of innocent people in surrounding areas. For the last three years UCS and our activists have been working to eliminate funding for this misguided weapons program. While last year this work led to the money being dropped, this year the Bush administration came back with a renewed but reduced request for funding. Senator Domenici, who has been a prominent supporter of research into this new weapon, sought to keep the program alive. With the support of thousands of activists like you, and the leadership of Representative David Hobson--Republican chair of the key House committee that decides funding for nuclear weapons programs--this year the money was again eliminated. For more information, please see: The UCS statement on the victory http://ucsaction.org/ct/wp_tf_Y1SRfM/ Senator Domenici's statement http://ucsaction.org/ct/w1_tf_Y1SRfL/ The UCS fact sheet on the program http://ucsaction.org/ct/w7_tf_Y1SRfA/ The UCS animation that visually demonstrates the critical flaws in this weapon. http://ucsaction.org/ct/wd_tf_Y1SRf_/ Thank you for sending thousands of letters to Congress opposing this dangerous and ineffective weapon. -------------------------------------------------- Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this. http://ucsaction.org/join-forward.html?domain=ucsaction&r=Ud_tf_Y1QRdG If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for Union of Concerned Scientists at: http://ucsaction.org/ucsaction/join.html?r=Ud_tf_Y1QRdGE ***************************************************************** 17 U.S. Department Of State: U.S. To Remove 200 Tons of Enriched Uranium from Weapons- [International Information Programs and USINFO.STATE.GOV url] Energy Secretary Bodman says amount enough to make 8,000 nuclear warheads Washington -- Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced November 7 that the United States will remove 200 metric tons of highly enriched uranium, also known as HEU, from the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. He said this is the single largest amount of nuclear material ever removed from the nuclear weapons stockpile in the history of the U.S. weapons program.  The material that is being removed is the equivalent of 8,000 nuclear warheads, and the related fissile material will be used in the future for nonweapons purposes. Bodman made his announcement during the annual nonproliferation conference sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  Speaking to more than 750 experts gathered from around the world, the secretary said 160 metric tons of HEU will be repurposed for naval ship propulsion systems.  Another 20 tons will be used for space missions and research reactors, he said, while the remaining 20 tons will be blended down to low enriched uranium for civilian nuclear power reactors or research reactor use. Bodman described this plan as a triumph for the twin causes of energy development and nonproliferation.  He said it is an example of the type of approach the United States is committed to in the years ahead. The secretary said the need for peaceful nuclear power all over the globe never has been more apparent while, at the same time, the proliferation threat posed by nuclear materials and technology “has never been more grave.” He talked at length about recent successful cooperative efforts by the United States and Russia.  Bodman said a significant amount of HEU recently was airlifted from the Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic, to Russia for safe and secure storage there and that final arrangements are being made for the first shipment of returned Soviet-origin spent HEU from Uzbekistan to Russia. (See .) Bodman added that two weeks ago Russian observers watched a simulated exercise in the United States, sponsored by the Energy Department, in which department and FBI officials responded to a scenario in which they had to search for nuclear materials and deal with the detonation of a radiological dispersal device. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph, another conference keynote speaker, said Bodman’s announcement about nuclear materials is positive not only because it means a more assured fuel supply, but also because it means a reduction in the amount of weapons-related material. Joseph spoke about the ways the Bush administration has sought to address ongoing proliferation concerns “directly in league with our international partners.”  The U.S. strategy that is being pursued involves preventing proliferation, countering proliferation and, if need be, managing the resulting consequences of proliferation.  This strategy is being accomplished through a variety of means, including improved intelligence and greater physical protection of weapons materials, he said. IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM DISCUSSED, IAEA INSPECTIONS CONTINUE The under secretary talked in particular about Iran’s steady pursuit of an indigenous nuclear program, and what he described as “a dizzying array of false statements” made by Iranian officials about their development efforts.  Joseph reminded the audience that elements of the Iranian regime have called for Israel and the United States to be wiped off the world map. Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was asked about Iran following his keynote address to the conference.  He said he has told Iran that the international community is becoming impatient on the nuclear issue.  He said he has urged Iran to be as transparent as possible about its nuclear plans.  (See .) ElBaradei said the jury is still out on the subject of whether Iran’s program is exclusively designed for peaceful purposes.  He also said there is still work to be done by his agency with respect to Iran.  For example, the director general said his inspectors still have another suspected site to visit. Even when the IAEA’s work is complete, ElBaradei reminded the audience that there is no such thing as 100 percent guarantees when dealing with verification -- with Iran or any other nation.  But the sooner Iran lets the inspectors finish their work, the better, he said. PREVENTING WMD PROLIFERATION ElBaradei also was asked about the A.Q. Khan network, and said that the nuclear proliferation network once run by the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb no longer is operational, nor has he seen any evidence of it resuming. Preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) also was addressed by Joseph.  He said the two-year-old Proliferation Security Initiative has changed the way nations act in unison to prevent the spread of WMD, WMD technologies and associated delivery systems.  National and international laws can be applied innovatively to stem proliferation, he said, and now the PSI approach is being applied to disrupt the financial networks that might be used to fund WMD proliferation.  (See .) Joseph, who recently visited Libya, also was asked what factors helped convince the Libyans to give up their weapons programs.  He said the Libyans clearly wanted an end to sanctions, and also came to the realization that the existence of WMD programs was costing Libya more than the benefits it accrued. Coalition military action against Iraq also had a role in Libya’s decision, as well as a PSI success, which involved the interception of the ship BBC China bearing centrifuge parts destined for Libya.  Joseph also said the Libyan government was looking for ways to establish a definable legacy for Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi, and forswearing WMD provided that opportunity.  In addition, Libya had signaled its desire to cooperate with the United States on counterterrorism efforts, he said. Since Libya gave up WMD, it has experienced a string of economic, political and diplomatic benefits, Joseph said.  The Libyans “did win in this outcome,” he added. On the Middle East more generally, Joseph said, “We do, of course, support a Middle East that is free of weapons of mass destruction.” During day two of the conference November 8 there are panel discussions on subjects such as negotiating with North Korea, the utility of nuclear weapons, congressional oversight of these weapons and reforming the nuclear fuel supply. The prepared remarks of and at the nonproliferation conference are available on their respective agencies’ Web sites. For more information, see and the State Department electronic journal .  about the conference is available on Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Web site. Created:07 Nov 2005 Updated: 08 Nov 2005 USINFO delivers information about current U.S. foreign policy and about American life and culture. This site is produced and maintained by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Information Programs. Links to other internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views contained therein. [usinfo.state.gov url] ***************************************************************** 18 MSNBC.com: Road to war - Hardball with Chris Matthews - How the Bush administration sold the Iraq War to American people •Road to war Nov. 7: In the fall of 2002, the Bush Administration sold the Iraq War to Congress and the American public.  But were their arguments of an Iraqi nuclear threat misleading?  Hardball's David Shuster takes an in-depth look at the claims and statements that led the United States down the road to war. David Shuster MSNBC Correspondent It was September of 2002, just three days before the emotional one-year anniversary of 9/11 and the giant wound of the al Qaeda attack on New York was still open. The Bush administration had assembled a media strategy team known as the White House Iraq Group.  It consisted of top officials, including those in the vice president's office whose goals starting after Labor Day was to sell a war on Iraq, which had no detectable role on 9/11.  On September 7, 2002, White House chief of staff Andy Card referred to the effort in an interview with The New York Times and said, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." The next day, the White House marketers delivered their product, a New York Times front-page story.  U.S. says Hussein intensifies quest for A-Bomb parts. Judy Miller attributing the story to Bush administration officials reported, "Iraq has stepped up it's quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb.  In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes meant for Iraq's nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney referred to that article in a speech and again later in a scheduled appearance on "Meet the Press" that same day.  He pointed out, "That he is in fact actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons." Cheney was not the only scheduled guest that day pushing The New York Times story and hammering the nuclear argument.  In a unique media blitz, the White House dispatched five A-list administration officials to the television airwaves, one to each of the Sunday talk shows.  On FOX News Sunday, Colin Powell, said about Saddam, "We saw in reporting just this morning, he is still trying to acquire, for example, some of the specialized aluminum tubing one needs to develop centrifuges." Gen. Richard Myers, former Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff said "Our intelligence is always imperfect and we usually find out that what we don't know is the most troublesome.  In this case, so we don't know.  Our estimate is at this point he does not have nuclear weapon, but he wants one."  On CNN, when Condoleezza Rice was asked if it's possible the tubes were not for nuclear weapons.  She replied, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." The nuclear claims led the papers and the nightly newscasts for two days in a row.  Then on the anniversary of 9/11, President Bush said, "We will not relent until justice is done and our nation is secure.  What our enemies have begun, we will finish."  The next day at the United Nations, Bush discussed Iraq's alleged nuclear ambitions.  "Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon." Bush continued, " Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year."  The following week, Congress began debating a war resolution.  While the Clinton administration and intelligence agencies around the world had suspected Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration was the first to argue Saddam posed a direct threat to the continental United States.  In early October, the president spoke again about Iraq's efforts to buy aluminum tubes, echoing Condoleezza Rice, "We cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Four days later, the Senate and the House voted to allow President Bush to launch a war on Iraq if Saddam doesn't disarm.  The resolution stated that Iraq posed, a continuing threat to the United States by, among other things, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability. Many Democrats who voted for the resolution emphasized that very point.  Unbeknownst to the public at the time, however, two agencies in the administration, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Department of Energy, concluded the aluminum tubes were the wrong specification for nuclear materials.  Agency officials, under orders not to talk publicly, thought the tubes were intended to be Iraqi artillery rockets, not nukes.  In early January 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported, "While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it." The Bush administration dismissed the IAEA report and in the president's State of the Union, the ultimate platform for the administration to sell the idea that Saddam was a nuclear threat. "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.  Our intelligence sources tell us he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapon production," said Bush. The first sentence was retracted six months later, following criticism from Ambassador Joe Wilson.  In turn, that led to White House actions against Wilson and his CIA wife, that evolved into a criminal investigation into White House leaks.  But the investigation was not in time to stop White House operatives from executing what had already been a masterful and successful marketing of what State Department official Richard Haass called at the time, "a war of choice." Watch 'Hardball' each night at 5 and 7 p.m. ET on MSNBC.  © 2005 MSNBC Interactive MSNBC.com ***************************************************************** 19 Webindia123.com: India needs to deliver for nuclear deal - US expert - New Delhi | November 08, 2005 7:15:06 PM IST The India-US nuclear deal can become a reality only if New Delhi fulfils its commitment to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities as the US Congress is "pretty sceptical" about the pact, an influential American opinion maker said Tuesday. "Once India takes steps to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities, President (George W.) Bush will be in a position to go to Congress, which at the moment is pretty sceptical about the deal," former US defence secretary William S. Cohen said. Cohen, here as part of a US-India Business Council delegation, was speaking at a seminar on 'Implementing the US-India strategic partnership'. Earlier in the day, he met Defence Secretary Shekhar Dutt and Indian Army chief Gen. J.J. Singh. According to Cohen, "To the extent India moves to separate its facilities and to allow IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspection, the president can persuade Congress. It will not be easy but there are people in Congress who will listen to him and support him." The landmark India-US civil nuclear energy deal that entails changes in US laws and guidelines of the influential Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was signed during the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the US on July 18. Under the deal, India is to separate its nuclear and military facilities and open its civilian facilities for IAEA safeguards. Cohen also utilised the opportunity to hardsell US military hardware, but dodged a question on whether he thought India would some day buy F-16 or F-18 combat jets for its air force, even as he envisaged greater military cooperation between the two nations. "Military-to-military cooperation is sometimes easier than political cooperation so I guess we will be seeing more of this," he contended. The Indian and US air forces Monday began the Cope India 05 joint air exercises, the latest in a series of manoeuvres that had marked "2002-2005 as the most active years of military-to-military exchange between the two countries in over 40 years", according to a US embassy statement. The US Air Force has sent an over 250-member aircrew and 15 F-16 Fighting Falcon jets from a unit based at Misawa in Japan and E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control systems (AWACS) aircraft for the manoeuvres. The Indian Air Force is represented by some 30 fighter jets, including Mirage 2000s, Su-30s and MiG-21s. India and the US conducted their first air exercise at Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh in central India last year. Over the past three years, Indian and American troops have conducted joint exercises at locations ranging from icy deserts of Alaska to the Taj Mahal city of Agra and the jungles of Mizoram in India's northeast. The two countries, with deepening strategic ties, have stepped up manoeuvres between their three services to build "inter-operability" for possible joint operations during terrorist attacks and other contingencies. In this context, Cohen noted: "The more commonality (of equipment) there is, the more efficiency there is. But then, there doesn't necessarily have to be commonality, only the capability to operate effectively what you have." On the combat jets, all he said was: "The Indians have said they will examine this. Let's see what happens." US-India Business Council chief Ron Somers also spoke about strengthening military ties between the two countries. "At present, we have just $90 million of your $12 billion military pie. We make the best defence hardware in the world so it makes sense to engage more closely," Somers maintained. (IANS) - Webindia123.com © 2000-2005 Suni System (P) Ltd. ***************************************************************** 20 [BATN] Smithers! Prepare my nuclear-powered computronic Smart Car! Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 15:28:59 -0800 X-Fingerprint: sentto-2486642-27329-1131492563-news=energy-net.org@returns.groups.yahoo.com-127.127 Published Tuesday, November 8, 2005, in the Oakland Tribune Smart-car technologies getting Bay Area test run San Francisco one of two metro areas in U.S. that will try a host of new mobile gadgets By Sean Holstege SAN FRANCISCO -- Government ministers from Japan, China, the United Kingdom and the European Union told a global conference here they plan to reduce traffic deaths and congestion in the next decade using a network of wireless communications, vast traffic databases and navigation tools. Today, technology exists for a system that pipes up-to-the-minute traffic information, including travel times, direct to drivers in their cars. No waiting for the radio traffic report. No checking traffic Web sites before leaving home. No calling 5-1-1. All the information is live, dynamic and could be customized. Cars of the near future could warn drivers of potholes, rain-slicked streets, even impending local weather cells. Cars could advise of available parking near favorite restaurants and even reserve a car slot and a table. Roadside traffic signs posting everything from speed limits to one-way streets would be obsolete because they would be flashed onto dashboard displays. The same wireless technology that allows market-ready cars to alert drivers to imminent collisions also makes them each a source of traffic data, like a kind of mobile road loop. The Bay Area is one of two U.S. metropolises -- along with Detroit -- to be a test area for such a network, called Vehicle Infrastructure Integration, or VII. In September the Metropolitan Transportation Commission installed two short-range radio nodes in Palo Alto to share data with passing cars. Next year, MTC will wire U.S. 101, Interstate 280 and El Camino Real with 40 nodes. "The U.S. is leading the world in VII, and California is leading the U.S.," said MTC Travel Coordination Director Melanie Crotty. But leading it where? Will the wireless car-to-car technologies showcased this week at the 12th World Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems become the next eight-track tapes? Or will the industry end up like VHS andBeta video cassettes? For the last two years, MTC has been ripping out roadside call boxes because cell phones have made them obsolete. For collision-avoiding, data-sharing cars to really work, a critical mass of cars needs to be sold, and an estimated $7 billion worth of hardware needs to be built along U.S. roadways. Industry leaders such as Chicago's Navteq promise wireless-based mapping tools that deliver all the bells and whistles: up-to-the-minute street maps, live detour advisories and road-condition alerts. But in the United States only 3 percent of cars have navigation systems. In Japan, it's closer to 50 percent, and there automakers are working on cars that "see" each other around blind intersections and send warnings to drivers. Some smaller Bay Area and Seattle firms are not waiting for the government or private industry to build a universal network. They offer simplified services now. Silicon Valley's Outreach Inc. offers live traffic data and travel time estimates streamed over cell phone connections into PDAs. The system works by aggregating traffic data from Caltrans, taxicabs and individual cars, using an over-the-counter GPS device. Based on 500,000 individual points of data per day, it divides the world into a grid of 150-meter squares and calculates the travel time from one to another. Currently the grid exists only in the South Bay. Palo Alto-based Circumnav Networks does the same thing but takes it a step further. It adds a plug-in dashboard mapping device and provides alternate routes around traffic jams. Cicumnav promises the only system that works on freeways and major surface streets in a VII system that is available "today, not in 2010." A Seattle firm, TrafficGauge, offers something similar in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and the Puget Sound area. It created a hand-held electronic map that sells for $80 and shows the 900 miles of Bay Area freeways from Novato to Santa Cruz and east to Livermore and Antioch. Each congested stretch of freeway is represented by either a solid bar for medium traffic or blinking bar for stop-and-go conditions. Icons pop up for sporting events. Sounds simple, but in Seattle, TrafficGuage customers save an average of eight hours of traffic a month. While all of this may sound like just another car toy, consider this: MTC surveys show that one-third of the people who call 5-1-1 change their route, or time to travel or take mass transit based on the information. "Next June marks the 50th anniversary of the interstate system. Now that the system is largely complete, we have to keep it in good repair. We have to manage it better," said Richard Capka, acting administrator of the Federal Highway Administration. Intelligent Transportation Systems "is all about making the best, most efficient use of the network we have." The conference continues at the Moscone Center through Thursday. Contact Sean Holstege at sholstege@angnewsapers.com ------------------------ Yahoo! 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See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN for web access & archives. ***************************************************************** 21 UN Atomic Agency Chief Lays Out Plan To Deal With Nuclear Terrorism, Trafficking Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 11:01:17 -0500 In a bid to thwart the smuggling of nuclear materials and the threat of terrorists’ acquiring weapons of mass destruction, the head of the United Nations atomic watchdog agency has laid out a series of “yardsticks”, including multilateral management of potential weapons-grade fuel and Security Council resolve to take action. “We are approaching a crossroads. After the end of the Cold War, we were hopeful that a new global security regime would emerge - inclusive, equitable, and no longer dependent on nuclear deterrence,” International Atomic Energy Agency (<"http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2005/nrealitycheck.html">IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told the 2005 Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference in Washington yesterday. “Regrettably, we have made little progress towards that goal,” added Mr. ElBaradei, who together with the IAEA shared this years Nobel Peace Prize. In recent years, four developments have radically altered the security landscape - the emergence of clandestine nuclear supply networks, the spread of nuclear fuel cycle technology, the efforts by more countries to acquire nuclear weapons, and the declared ambition of terrorists to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction, he declared. In response, he proposed four “yardsticks” against which to gauge recent performance and set future goals. First, he stressed the need for expanded access, with spot checks, as provided by additional protocols to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), since “in today´s security environment, inspections that only verify what a country has declared are not likely to be judged ‘effective’.” But only 70 countries have additional protocols in force, and he cited the case of Iran, which concealed its nuclear programme for nearly 20 years, saying that a number of open questions remain. “The responsibility rests with Iran to provide, if needed, additional transparency measures - beyond the confines of the safeguards agreement and additional protocol - to enable the Agency to resolve these questions, and to provide the required assurance about the peaceful nature of Iran´s nuclear programme,” he added. In September the IAEA Board of Governors found that Iran’s previous NPT safeguards agreement breaches were within the competence of the Security Council, which can impose sanctions when such issues are referred to it. The second yardstick concerns sensitive nuclear technology, with a key ‘choke point’ for weapons development being production of weapon-usable nuclear material through uranium enrichment and plutonium separation. Among measures Mr. ElBaradei proposed is a framework for multilateral management both for enrichment and fuel production and spent fuel reprocessing and waste disposal, to ensure supply of reactor technology and nuclear fuel based on apolitical, objective non-proliferation criteria and at competitive market prices. The third yardstick concerns the protection of nuclear material. Multiple international and regional initiatives are helping countries to improve the physical protection of such material. “These and other projects are helping to reduce the risks posed by existing nuclear material. But much remains to be done,” he said. Finally, Mr. ElBaradei stressed the need for credible mechanisms to deal with cases of non-compliance, including Security Council action. “To be effective, the UN Security Council must be ready at all times to engage, in order to cope with emerging threats to international peace and security,” he said, noting that while referral to the Council has sometimes encouraged compliance, referral of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1992 and 2003 resulted in little to no action. But, he added, “the slow progress of nuclear-weapon States towards making good on their commitments to move towards nuclear disarmament - with 27 000 warheads still in existence - is creating an environment of cynicism among the non-nuclear-weapon States.” 2005-11-08 00:00:00.000 ________________ For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news To change your profile or unsubscribe go to: http://www.un.org/news/dh/latest/subscribe.shtml ***************************************************************** 22 Indiatimes: US official says nuke deal with India is special AGENCIES[ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 09, 2005 02:13:38 AM] WASHINGTON: The US state department is defending the Bush administrations agreement to share civilian nuclear technology with India as a pragmatic approach to Indias nuclear programme. Appearing before a sometimes sceptical audience at a nuclear non-proliferation conference on Monday, Andrew Semmel, deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear non-proliferation, said the US position is that India is unique; that its a special case. President George W Bushs administration, he said, made the much-discussed, and much criticised, July 18 deal in recognition that India, a nuclear power thats not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), had a solid history in guarding against nuclear proliferation. The US-India civilian nuclear initiative reflects the need to be creative and adjust non-proliferation approaches to conditions as they exist, rather than as we would wish them to be, Semmel said. The US Congress must amend law before the deal can be completed. Some lawmakers have expressed frustration that the administration did not consult before the deal was made, and they say officials have largely taken congressional support for granted. David Fite, a professional staff member of the House of representatives international relations committee, reflected some of that frustration when he said, We still dont know entirely what the administration wants to do with this. ...This has understandably upset many members of Congress. Its perhaps the greatest change to US non-proliferation policy in nearly three decades and the Congress isnt consulted beforehand. Semmel argued that the agreement holds India to more strict non-proliferation pledges, while also opening "India's lucrative and growing nuclear energy markets" to US and foreign companies - "potentially providing thousands of jobs for Americans". "Until now, we've confined the world's second most populous country to a place outside the system, in spite of its very good record in preventing the proliferation of its nuclear technology," he said. Semmel said. "This is not strategically wise." The US, he said, is now waiting for India to submit a plan for separating its civilian and military nuclear facilities, a key part of the US-India agreement. Fite, the Congressional aide, said that if India makes a "credible effort" to separate those nuclear facilities and place them under mandatory safeguards, "I think the agreement will pass Congress." But, he said, "Congress is going to have some very tough questions." Copyright © 2005 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 PRAVDA.Ru: Little-brained big heads of the States - 11/08/2005 10:42 Brutal effects of America's Agent Orange in Vietnam and Nuclear Bombs in Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki still continue The use of Agent Orange and the massive napalming of the forests and consequent pollution of the water supply have created problems which are still manifesting as birth defects. One of the lectures I attended was on "auricular reconstruction" which is about giving people ears when they are born without them". This is what Dr. Meredith Burgmann, the President of New South Wales Legislative Council, who returned recently from a trip to Vietnam, has written in the Daily Telegraph of 25th October 2005.[US planes spray agent orange defoliant over Vietnam] The above comments from Dr. Burgmann serve as the latest proofs of the US Crimes against humanity inflicted on the Vietnamese peopleby the US forces during their invasion of Vietnam. In spite of the constant flow of facts about the consequence of USA's crimes against humanity most of the heads of states seem to lack the courage to call it what it was to put an end to continuation of America's policy of aggression in the world. Agent Orange and Napalm Bombs are America's own, purposely built WMDs. One could imagine how loud and fierce would have been the US retaliation if it was the American babies who continue to pay decades long "price" for not fault of their own. There are no "embedded American journalists" in Vietnam to rally relief for the Vietnamese victims of the crimes committed by US. It has been politically incorrect and will be soon prohibited in Australia, to talk about US, in those terms. Howard's new anti-terror laws which are about to be steam rolled through the Senate and the House of Representatives will give powers to ASIO to interpret an article such as this as a "threat to national security" and to arrest and detain the author indefinitely. They will dig in to peoples political beliefs to fabricate anything to convict anybody under any pretext. They have teams of spin doctors to come up with the "appropriate justification." Some people, who have strong feelings about human rights, and state sponsored terrorism would rather be silent than "inviting themselves trouble" this is exactly what the new laws are aimed at. But many others will shed their differences to unite against the new laws. It has started to happen already. A strong public opinion is being born across the wide and deep fabric of the Australian society, including religious, political, independent media and business leaders and also ordinary Australian of various political, religious and ethnic backgrounds. Worse draconian laws introduced in other parts of the world have not been able to keep the truth away from the public. In the meantime enormous deal of work has been carried out silently by many good hearted Australian Medical Professionals, Students and staff of the Universities and some Politicians to ease the pain of their Vietnamese neighbours suffering from US crimes against humanity. Chaired by Professor Bruce Robinson, Hoc Mai Foundation has been in the forefront in carrying out such relief work in Vietnam. This is a charity organisation for the medical exchange between the University of Sydney and the Viet Duc Hospital in Hanoi. The Governor of New South Wales, Professor Marie Bashir is the patron of the Hoc Mai Foundation. The Asia Pacific Friendship Group, of the New South Wales Parliament has been active in fundraising and supporting the medical relief, training and exchange projects carried out in the Viet Duc Hospital. Brutal effects of America's Agent Orange in Vietnam and Nuclear Bombs in Japan's Hiroshimaand Nagasaki still continue in the form of various complications in pregnancies and babies with inborn defects. Some of these health problems can be partially cured with medical intervention whereas there are others which remain lifelong. The untold misery, pain and suffering of these victims do not find publicity in the media, as it is "politically incorrect" and "unpatriotic" to talk about these issues. After half a century US aggression and inhuman policies still continue in Iraq. Instead of old WMDs this time US forces used depleted Uranium, Bombs, cluster bombs and other ordinance against the people of Iraq. US do not keep a record of the "enemy casualties". Only after the dust has been settled (which is not likely to happen for quite a sometime) that the world would find out the enormity of the US crimes against humanity in Iraq. According to the latest statistics, the war in Iraq, which Rumsfeld initially promised to be a "Cake Walk," has so far cost 2000 American Lives, and still keep on growing. Many Americans are taking to street to demand Bush to end this war. It is our freedom of speech that Bush, Blair and Howard would like to restrict so that there would not be any voice against their "justification" of the unjustifiable. According to their model of democracy no one would dare write and speak the truth about their crimes against humanity, as according to Bush, Blair and Howard it will be "Alquidian," Bin Ladinian" "Jihadist" or "unpatriotic" to do so. While John Howardis continuing to act subservient to Bush in supporting the senseless continuation of crimes against humanity in Iraq, the ordinary Australians not only oppose the war but also open their hearts to carry out humanitarian aid to ease the pain already inflicted on many hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings by the previous crimes against humanity planned and carried out by the US. It will be these humanitarian and big-hearted ordinary Aussies, the world would honour as the real heroes and leaders of our time. Once the power is gone and struck off from the media lime light, Bush, Blair and Howard will only be remembered as the most deceptive, "Little Brained Big Heads of States" that the world has ever known. Dr.Gamini Mithra Sydney ©1999-2002 "PRAVDA.Ru". When reproducing our materials in ***************************************************************** 24 Bellona: Proposed changes to Russian law on NGOs unconstitutional ST. PETERSBURG - A group of United Russia deputies has submitted amendments to the Law On Public Associations to the Duma for consideration which would put the activities of all non-governmental organisations (NGOs) under the control of the state, flagrantly violating the constitutional rights of Russian citizens. Vera Ponomareva, 2005-11-08 08:49 The United Russia faction, or Yedinstvo in Russian, is a loyalist party to Russian President Vladimir Putin and holds the majority of seats in the state Duma, Russia’s lower house of Parliament. It is not yet clear when the amendments will come up for vote on the Duma floor, but they are already facing outrage from Russia’s NGO sector. “The proposed amendments are nothing less than an attempt to establish totalitarian control over the whole of the country, and in particular over the institution [NGOs] that allow citizens to solve their own problems without government interference,” said respected rights activist and deputy chairman of the Citizens' Watch organisation Yury Vdovin, deputy chairman of the Citizens' Watch organisation. Vdovin is also a board member of the Environmental Rights Center (ERC) Bellona, in St. Petersburg. According to Vdovin, passing the amendments into law would mean “the government is openly slipping from authoritarianism to totalitarianism on the Soviet model”. The bill proposes placing NGOs under virtually complete state control. For example, the deputies propose introducing compulsory registration of public associations. According to the bill, an NGO will be allowed to function only after informing the state registration body on the creation of the new organisation. Moreover, this procedure will be regulated by the whim of the Russian Government, and not a federal law. “Organising unregistered social activity will thus practically fall outside the law, which means a return to the ban in effect in 1920's Soviet Union on the activity of non-registered social associations,” said Lev Levinson of the Institute for Human Rights and the Social Expertise Institute in his written conclusions on the bill. Separation of foreign NGOs At a session of the Council for Development Assistance for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights on July 20th, Putin expressed doubts regarding environmental organisations funded from abroad. According to Putin, such organisations are often used “as levers for a competitive struggle” with Russia. Regarding the financing of political activity by foreign organisations, the president said: “No self-respecting state allows this, and we will not allow it.” According to the amendments proposed United Russia, subsidiaries of foreign NGOs will be banned from operating in Russia. Foreign NGOs will have to register their representative offices and branches as separate social associations, and divisions of foreign NGOs cannot be created either as social foundations or any other legal or organisational form. The best-known foreign NGOs operating in Russia, such as Human Rights Watch, only have representative offices in Russia. “Thus, the freedom of action of social organisations (protected by article 30 of the Russian Constitution) is limited. The proposed amendments also contradict Article 55 (section 2) of the Russian Constitution, according to which 'No laws should be passed in the Russian Federation that cancel or reduce the rights and freedoms of man and the citizen,” Levinson said. Financial control Under current legislation, NGOs submit an annual account of their activity to the state registration body comprised of data submitted to the tax authorities. The amendments to the law significantly expand the state's authority in this regard: The registration body—in all likelihood the Ministry of Justice—will be granted the right to ask, with no limitations and without having to provide justification, for an NGOs' financial documents. According to Levinson, this amounts to “provocation for abuse by the state and arbitrary enforcement by officials”. This amendment, according to Vdovin, means “control and undisguised interference by the state in the activity of NGOs”. NGOs against the state? “My information is that the bill was made by the presidential administration and is now being submitted to the Duma via United Russia deputies,” Levinson told Radio Liberty. “The main idea behind this document is to tighten the screws on NGOs.” If the bill is adopted, the state will be able to get rid of public oversight in all spheres, including environmental matters. At present, NGOs occupy a fairly active position in the defence of citizens' environmental rights: They provide consultative help, stand up for citizens' constitutional rights in state bodies, and give legal assistance in court cases. There are also precedents of cases involving the legal assistance of NGOs being examined in the European Court of Human Rights. In the near future the State Duma may pass the new Forest and Water Codes, both of which have been subject to change thanks to the activity of public environmental organisations. Rights activists have already made their position clear regarding United Russia's initiative. However, the bill has yet to be discussed in the Duma, at ministerial level, or at the Presidential Council on Human Rights, and there is still hope that it will not be passed—or that it will not be passed in its current form. 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 ***************************************************************** 25 Reuters: UK seeks Chinese lead on climate change Reuters.com Mon 7 Nov 2005 6:10 PM ET By Katherine Baldwin LONDON, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Britain and China will seek this week to expand cooperation on cleaner technologies to tackle global warming during a state visit to London by Chinese President Hu Jintao. Beijing, like Washington, rejects targets-based approaches to climate change like the Kyoto pact and Prime Minister Tony Blair knows he must focus on developing less-polluting ways to burn coal and on pursuing alternative power sources with China. Blair wants to encourage China to take a lead among developing countries ahead of a United Nations climate change conference in December in Montreal, British officials said. Trade, China's human rights record and its growing influence in tackling issues such as the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea will also be on the agenda of Hu's visit, officials said. Britain is Hu's first stop on a trip that will take him to Germany, Spain and South Korea. He will push for an end to a European Union arms embargo but no breakthrough is expected. The ban was imposed after China's suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests. Lavish ceremony will dominate the two-day London visit. Hu will attend a state banquet with Queen Elizabeth and some of London's famed landmarks are expected to be illuminated in red. But activists demanding that China end its half-century occupation of Tibet have said they will protest at every stage. The visit is the first to Britain by a Chinese president since that of Hu's predecessor Jiang Zemin in October 1999, when police angered rights activists by breaking up demonstrations over Tibet. Amid reports police are being ordered to keep protesters away, Blair told reporters on Monday: "People are perfectly entitled to wear Free Tibet T-shirts or anything else." At talks with Hu on Wednesday, Blair will discuss growing economic and trade ties. Trade tensions between the EU and China flared earlier this year as Chinese textile exports surged, forcing a new limit on Chinese sales to the bloc until 2008. Hu's tour comes at a time when China is particularly active on the international stage. Beijing hosts six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear crisis programme next week and plays host to U.S. President George W. Bush from Nov. 19. "We will discuss ... the current security preoccupations in the world and how we co-operate better on the (United Nations) Security Council," Blair said. Blair, who visited Beijing in September for an EU-China summit, has put tackling climate change at the top of the agenda for his presidency of the Group of Eight rich nations and of the EU, which both end in December. He has yet to achieve any major breakthrough and environmentalists last week accused him of losing his nerve in the face of opposition from the United States, China and India when he said emissions targets made some people "very worried" and called for a "more sensitive set of mechanisms". China, Australia, the United States, India and South Korea have united in a regional pact on greenhouse emissions for when Kyoto expires in 2012, focusing on the use of new technologies. Britain and the EU are helping China to develop a power plant that uses technology to capture carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and store it underground. © Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 26 Minjok-Tongshin: Japan's Dangerous Moves for Nuclear Weaponization Blasted 2005.11.08 23:24:25 KCNA 2005-11-08 - Pyongyang, November 7 (KCNA) -- Japan is massively stockpiling plutonium under the pretext of "laying in stock nuclear fuel". Rodong Sinmun Monday observes in a signed commentary in this regard: These moves of Japan are aimed not at storing fuel for nuclear power plants but at stockpiling the nuclear substance for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Japan's stockpiling of "nuclear substance" is designed to realize its militarists' deep rooted ambition to have access to nukes. The Japanese reactionaries' oft-touted "nuclear and missile threat" from the DPRK is nothing but sophism intended to justify their criminal plan to go nuclear. They are set to step up the nuclear weaponization under the pretext of coping with the non-existent "nuclear threat" from the DPRK. Japan developed long-range missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads already long ago. Its huge military spending every year is aimed at emerging a military power and having access to nukes. The Japanese militarists have a sinister intention to possess nuclear weapons and use them for realizing their ambition for dominating Asia at any cost. Herein lie the gravity and danger of their moves for nuclear weaponization. The United States brought nuclear disasters to Asia in the last century and this danger is likely to be created by Japan in the present century. The Korean and other Asian peoples are following Japan's moves to go nuclear with a high degree of vigilance. Should the Japanese reactionaries persistently keep to the road of nuclear weaponization and nuclear war, oblivious of the lesson taught by the past history, they will only meet an irretrievable disaster and destruction. Copyright © 1999-2005 Minjok Tongshin ***************************************************************** 27 AFP: IAEA needs to enhance authority, face retirement crunch - US audit watchdog - Mon Nov 7, 7:12 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agencyhas strengthened its watch over nuclear nonproliferation, but must address weaknesses that limit its ability to implement tougher safeguards, the US General Accountability Office said. The GAO said in a report to Congress that the IAEA faces challenges that limit its ability to use enhanced methods of investigation, such as a lack of agreements with some countries for new authority to search for clandestine nuclear activities. The agency also faces an employee crunch, with a large number of inspectors and other experts expected to retire in the next five years, it said. The report coincided with the opening of an international nonproliferation conference here. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, was the keynote speaker at the nongovernmental event, sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank in Washington. The GAO noted that the IAEA had begun to develop the capability to independently evaluate all aspects of a country's nuclear activities rather than only verifying the peaceful use of a country's declared nuclear material. "However, despite successes in uncovering some countries' undeclared nuclear activities, safeguards experts cautioned that a determined country can still conceal a nuclear weapons program," the report warned. "The Agency cannot provide member states assurance that its activities are detecting clandestine nuclear weapons programs or helping secure nuclear and radioactive materials," the GAO concluded. In an appendix to the report, the US State Department disagreed with that finding, saying it was inconsistent with the body of the GAO report which discusses the IAEA's success in uncovering undeclared nuclear activities in Iran" /> Iranand Egypt. "We believe the Agency does provide meaningful assurances that its activities in both safeguards and nuclear material security are contributing to US and global security," the State Department said. But the State Department said it "generally agrees with the GAO's findings and the thrust of its conclusions and recommendations." Spurred by the 1991 discovery of Iraq" /> Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program, the United Nations" /> United Nations-linked nuclear watchdog began to gather additional information about states' nuclear and nuclear-related activities. The GAO made several recommendations to Congress, including that the secretary of state, working with the IAEA and its member states, consider: - eliminating or at least reducing the number of agreements which limit the IAEA's authority to inspect countries with small quantities of nuclear material; - establishing clear, improved measures to better evaluate the effectiveness of its activities; and - reform human resources practices that impede ability to recruit and retain critical staff, warning of a "looming human capital crisis" resulting form the upcoming retirement of senior staff and "a shrinking pool of nuclear experts." The report on the IAEA was based on a study from October 2004 to August 2005. Dated October 7, it was released to the public Monday. Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 28 Ecodefense: REVEAL THE TRUTH - SHUT DOWN REACTORS Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 19:08:14 +0300 PRESS-RELEASE Moscow-Murmansk, November 8, 2005 "REVEAL THE TRUTH - SHUT DOWN REACTORS!" Activists urge a halt to operation of Kola nuclear plant; local prosecutor says license for reactors is false. Today two environmental groups, local "Nature and Youth" and national Ecodefense, staged an anti-nuclear protest in the center of Murmansk city, located on Kola peninsula above the polar cicrle, about 1500 km north-west of Moscow. Activists demanded a halt to operation of the Kola nuclear plant, presented a petition to the local governor and a symbolic locking device to shut down nuclear reactor. A representative of the governor accepted both the device and petition and told local media "the governor would try to sort things out" with illegal operation of the nuclear reactor. Activists hung a banner "Reveal the truth - shut down reactors!" on the fence of the governor's office. The nuclear industry is afraid of revealing the truth about dangerous old nuclear reactors that would be shut down once proper environmental assessment of Kola NPP takes place, activists said. The 1st and 2nd units of Kola nuclear plant were put in operation in 1973 and 1974. They are VVER-440/230 - first generation of Soviet-designed reactors, comparable to Chernobyl type, which has 30-years operation resource.But instead of shutting down both reactors in 2003 and 2004, a new license was issued to Kola NPP last year. The environmental assessment needed for the new license was never done, which is illegal under Russian Law on environmental assessment. In Summer 2004, environmental activists staged a protest near Kola nuclear plant to demand legal environmental assessment for old reactors. That action led to a special investigation by the local prosecutor 's office. On March 28, 2005 investigators concluded that the license for old Kola reactors was issued illegally. They ordered nuclear plant and GAN, regulatory agency, to stop violation over legislation. But the local prosecutor's demands are being ignored by the nuclear industry. "Our governor is one of the persons responsible for what happens with old reactors. We demand that he force the nuclear industry to respect the law. There must be a program to develop renewables on the local level while old nuclear units must be shut down", said Vitaly Servetnik, anti-nuclear coordinator for "Nature and Youth" in Murmansk. "Old reactors are like old food - very dangerous and may kill many people. The nuclear industry must not be allowed to produce new risks: old reactors are illegal and must be put out of operation immediately", said Andrey Ozharovsky, Ecodefense' campaigner on old reactors. For more info: in Moscow - +7-095-7766281 (Vladimir Slivyak), in Murmansk - +7-921-2865087 (Andrey Ozharovsky, Vitely Servetnik), e-mail: ecodefense@online.ru http://www.antiatom.ru ***************************************************************** 29 NRC: NRC, Entergy to Discuss Implementation of Backup Power for Indian Point Alert and Notification System News Release - Region I - 2005-05 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I No. I-05-059 November 7, 2005 CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov representatives of the Indian Point nuclear power plant on Wednesday, Nov. 16, to discuss the portion of the 2005 Energy Policy Act involving the facilitys Alert and Notification System. Corrective actions aimed at improving the reliability of the current system will also be a topic. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at Crystal Bay on the Hudson Charles Point Marina, at 5 John Walsh Blvd. in Peekskill, N.Y. It will be open to the public for observation and NRC officials will provide an opportunity for questions and/or comments prior to adjournment. Indian Point is located in Buchanan (Westchester County), N.Y., and operated by Entergy Nuclear Northeast. Like all U.S. commercial nuclear power plants, Indian Point is required to have an alert and notification system capable of making the public aware of an emergency event at the site. Specifically, the system would be used to inform citizens within the 10-mile-radius emergency planning zone to listen to emergency alerting stations for instructions and information. As part of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which was approved by Congress on July 29 and then signed into law by President Bush on Aug. 8, the NRC is to require nuclear power plants with certain population densities to have backup power for the facilitys emergency notification system, including sirens. The only plant to meet this criteria is Indian Point. We welcome this opportunity to have a candid exchange of information with Entergy in a public setting regarding the 2005 Energy Policy Act and the corrective actions for the Indian Point Alert and Notification System, said Eric Leeds, the NRC Director of the Division of Preparedness and Response. We recognize that this is an issue of interest to the public and to state, county and local officials, and it is one in need of timely resolution. In addition to NRC officials and Entergy managers, representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, will also take part in the Nov. 16th meeting. While the NRC is responsible for on-site emergency preparedness requirements, FEMA is responsible for assessing the efficacy of the off-site portion of nuclear power plants emergency response plans. Last revised Tuesday, November 08, 2005 ***************************************************************** 30 NRC: NRC Advisory Panel Subcommittee to Meet in Brattleboro, Vt., on Nov. 15-16 to Discuss Vermont Yankee Proposed Power Uprate News Release - Region I - 2005-06 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I No. I-05-060 November 8, 2005 CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov panel will review the power uprate proposed for the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant on Tuesday, Nov. 15, and Wednesday, Nov. 16, in Brattleboro, Vt. The Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) sessions are scheduled for 8:30 a.m. until about 5:30 p.m. both days at the Quality Inn and Suites, at 1380 Putney Road. Entergy, the company which owns and operates Vermont Yankee, has proposed a 20-percent increase in power for the plant, located in Vernon, Vt. The NRC staff is continuing to review the proposal. As it does with all power uprate applications of this size, the ACRS an independent body of experts that, among other duties, reviews and reports on reactor safety studies, license-renewal applications and certain license-amendment requests will assess the proposal and offer its recommendations. During the meeting in Brattleboro, the ACRS Subcommittee on Power Uprates will hear presentations by, and hold discussions with, NRC staff members, agency contractors, Entergy representatives and other individuals interested in this matter. The panel will gather information, analyze relevant issues and facts, and formulate proposed positions and actions, as appropriate, for deliberation by the full committee. The ACRS is independent of the NRC staff and reports directly to the Commission. Members of the public interested in making oral statements are asked to contact Ralph Caruso of the ACRS at least five days prior to the sessions. He can reached at 301-415-8065 or via e-mail at RXC@NRC.GOV. Also, there will be a sign-up sheet at the meeting for those who do not provide advance notification of their intention to offer comments. The panel will try to accommodate as many of those speakers as possible within the time limits of the meeting. There will also be an opportunity to submit written comments. Electronic recordings of the meeting will be permitted. However, signs will not be allowed in the meeting room. Further information regarding the meeting is available from Mr. Caruso at the phone number and e-mail address listed above. In addition to the Brattleboro sessions, the ACRS subcommittee expects to consider the Vermont Yankee power uprate application on Nov. 29-30 at the NRC Headquarters in Rockville, Md. The full committee will consider the application on Dec. 8. Some portions of those meetings may be closed to the public during discussions involving proprietary information. In line with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, the ACRS provides a forum where experts representing many technical perspectives can provide independent advice that is factored into the Commissions decision-making process. The ACRS consists of 11 individuals with a wide variety of engineering expertise. At present, the kinds of expertise provided by panel members cover such areas as nuclear, mechanical, civil and electrical engineering; risk assessment; chemistry; materials science and metallurgy; and thermal-hydraulics and heat transfer. Additional information about the ACRS, including meeting dates and times, is available at: http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/regulatory/advisory/acrs.html. Last revised Tuesday, November 08, 2005 ***************************************************************** 31 RIA Novosti: Russia may corporatize nuclear power utility by year's end 08/ 11/ 2005 MOSCOW, November 8 (RIA Novosti) - A bill on the corporatization of Rosenergoatom, the utility that operates Russia's nuclear power plants, could be sent to the government for consideration by the end of 2005, a senior concern official said Tuesday. "I hope we will receive an approval from the Ministry of Economic Development [and Trade] on all the details of the corporatization concept in November 2005, so that the corporatization bill could be passed to the government and the State Duma for consideration by year's end," Rosenergoatom's General Director Stanislav Antipov said. © 2005 "RIA Novosti" ***************************************************************** 32 REGNUM: Murmansk ecologists stand against operation of old reactors at Kolsk power plant - Environment - REGNUM Moscow ¤ 07:53 ¤ November 09, 2005 Subscribe Murmansk Regional Youth Ecological Organization “Nature and Youth” staged a protest action against prolonging operation of the old reactors at the Kolsk nuclear power plant (KNPP). As REGNUMwas told by the initiators of the action, the organization believes that time constraints of operation of the Kolsk power plant were prolonged unduly, and the reactors pose danger to the nature people’s lives. In summer 2004, the “Nature and Youth” organization carried out a picket under the slogan “KNPP, observe the law!”. The ecologists urged to carry out a State Ecological Expertise of prolonging operation terms of the reactors envisaged by the law. “In March 2005 the Murmansk Regional Prosecution Office pronounced we were right. An inspection showed that licensing was carried out with violations of law, according to the letter of the Prosecutor’s First Aid Nagimov. The Prosecutor’s office issued a regulation on eliminating violations in the use of nuclear power on March 28, 2005,” say the ecologists. But the violations have not been eliminated, so the ecologists had to stage another protest action. Permanent news address: www.regnum.ru/english/540643.html 15:54 08.11.2005 © 1999-2005 REGNUM News Agency ***************************************************************** 33 NRC: Portland General Electric Company, Trojan Nuclear Plant, FR Doc 05-22198 [Federal Register: November 8, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 215)] [Notices] [Page 67742-67743] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr08no05-61] Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation; Notice Regarding Consideration of Approval of Proposed Corporate Restructuring AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. [[Page 67743]] ACTION: Notice regarding consideration of approval of proposed corporate restructuring. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Christopher M. Regan, Senior Project Manager, Spent Fuel Project Office, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555. Telephone: (301) 415-1179; fax number: (301) 415-8555; e-mail: cmr1@nrc.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the Commission or NRC) considered the issuance of an order under 10 CFR 72.50 for approval of the indirect transfer of Special Nuclear Materials (SNM) License No. SNM-2509 for the Trojan Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI). The consent for indirect transfer was requested by letter dated July 12, 2005, by Portland General Electric Company (PGE) and Stephen Forbes Cooper, LLC. (SFC), as Disbursing Agent on behalf of the Reserve for Disputed Claims (Reserve), to facilitate implementation of the transfer of 100% of PGE's common stock held by the Enron Corporation (Enron) to the creditors of Enron. This is to be done by canceling the existing PGE common stock held by Enron and by authorizing and issuing to Enron's creditors new PGE common stock. PGE is a wholly owned subsidiary of Enron. The circumstances of PGE's request for consent are that all current PGE stock will be cancelled and new PGE stock will be distributed to Enron's creditors as partial settlement of claims brought in Enron's bankruptcy proceeding. A Reserve will hold the new stock in escrow until it is distributed. Voting rights of the new stock will be exercised under direction of the Reserve Overseers, who will exercise their business judgment to maximize the value of the assets. The Reserve Overseers are bound by fiduciary duties in making decisions to vote the stock. The Reserve's role is to disburse the assets to creditors as rapidly as possible, and it will not seek control of PGE. The stock will be widely distributed and no individual will hold more than 5% of the outstanding stock as a result of the distribution. The Bankruptcy Court approved the creation of the Reserve and the distribution of the stock. The effect of the stock distribution is that PGE will become a stand-alone, publicly traded Oregon corporation. There will be no substantive change in the control or operation of PGE. PGE's name will not change and the current management team will remain in charge of day-to-day operations. The Oregon Public Utilities Commission will continue to exercise oversight of PGE. PGE will remain in control of and operate the Trojan ISFSI. Under these circumstances, the staff determined that the stock distribution is not a transfer of control within the meaning of 10 CFR 72.50. Therefore, PGE does not require NRC approval for the distribution. The issuance of the new PGE common stock will not change the status of PGE as NRC licensee of the Trojan ISFSI. Control of the 10 CFR part 72 license for the Trojan ISFSI, now held by PGE and its co-owners, will remain with PGE and the same co-owners, and will not be affected by the issuance of the new PGE common stock. Issuance of the new PGE common stock will not affect PGE's technical and financial qualifications and its ability to continue funding its share of the costs of operating, maintaining, and ultimately decommissioning the Trojan ISFSI. No physical changes to the Trojan ISFSI or operational changes are being proposed in the application. Notice of opportunity for hearing and petition for leave to intervene regarding this action was published in the Federal Register (70 FR 50427) on August 26, 2005. No requests for hearing or petitions for leave to intervene were received within the required 20 days from the date of publication of the notice and no written comments regarding the license transfer application, as provided for in 10 CFR 2.1305, were submitted or considered by the staff as part of the decisional record. Further Information For further details with respect to this action, see the application dated July 12, 2005, available for public inspection at the Commission's Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, Public File Area O-1F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly available records will be accessible electronically from the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System's (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at the NRC Web site, http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, should contact the NRC PDR Reference staff by telephone at 1 (800) 397-4209, (301) 415-4737 or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. Dated at Rockville, Maryland this 31st day of October 2005. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Christopher M. Regan, Senior Project Manager, Licensing Section, Spent Fuel Project Office, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. 05-22198 Filed 11-7-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 34 American Nuclear Society: Industry, Policy Leaders Discuss Role of Nuclear in Energy Mix Political, Environmental and Financial Leaders Will Examine Revitalized Role for Nuclear Energy in America's Future WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The opening plenary session of the American Nuclear Society's 2005 Winter Meeting in Washington DC will feature leading policy makers and influencers. Talking About Nuclear Differently: A Critical Element for Our Future, scheduled for 8 a.m. Monday, Nov. 14, officially kicks off and sets the tone for the week's meeting which will run from Nov. 13-17, 2005 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. "We are seeing a new era develop in nuclear power generation and advanced research," says Tom Christopher, CEO of AREVA, Inc. and General Co-Chair of the ANS 2005 Winter Meeting. "A number of factors, including passage of the Energy Policy Act, increased desire for emissions-free sources of energy and economic shifts in the energy sector are coming together to underscore the necessity for nuclear power as part of a balanced energy portfolio in the United States." Christopher joins Mike Wallace, President of Constellation Energy's Generation Group to host an informative panel that will examine critical aspects for the nuclear industry going forward. The morning dais includes: * U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel will discuss the Energy Bill and its implications. * Environmentalist and author Patrick Moore will look at recent shifts in thinking from the environmental perspective. * Public opinion researcher Ann Bisconti will share what issues are on the minds of the general public. * And former NRC commissioner James Asselstine, now with Lehman Brothers, will discuss financial and economic factors affecting nuclear power generation. "Along with external factors, the industry has continued to advance nuclear technologies and operations which has, in turn, built public confidence in nuclear energy," according to Mike Wallace, who will co-chair the 2005 Winter Meeting. "All of these elements come together and say one thing. The time is right to build nuclear power plants in America." In addition to the Energy Policy Act, 2005 has seen the introduction of new partnerships, such as UniStar Nuclear, NuStart Development LLC and other ventures that are considering building the first new nuclear plants in nearly three decades. This panel will examine the recent developments that are making nuclear technology so critical to U.S. energy supply and energy security in the decades to come. The American Nuclear Society is a not-for-profit, scientific and educational organization. ANS has a diverse membership composed of 10,500 engineers, scientists, administrators, and educators who seek to exchange scientific and technical research, encourage scholarship, and disseminate information on nuclear science and technology. NOTE TO MEDIA: ANS welcomes the media to pre-register for complimentary conference badges at http://www.ans.org/meetings/winter/registration/. Or visit the ANS Media Center, Nov. 14-17 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. Website: http://www.ans.org/ Copyright © 1996-2003 PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights ***************************************************************** 35 courant.com: Samples Taken At Nuclear Plant CONNECTICUT NEWS NRC Measuring Contamination November 8, 2005 By GARY LIBOW, Courant Staff Writer HADDAM -- Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors Monday conducted radiological tests and obtained samples from a wall that once leaked contaminated water from the Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant's spent fuel pool. James J. Kottan, NRC senior health physicist, estimated it would take two weeks to a month for an independent lab to identify the level of contamination in the soil, and a concrete boring from the spent fuel pool wall. The NRC and Connecticut Yankee stress the leak is not active and there is no danger to public health and safety. Kottan and NRC physicist Laurie Kauffman secured concrete from a boring that probed a foot into the 6-foot-thick wall, near hairline cracks discovered late last month by workers decommissioning the Haddam Neck plant. Decommissioning is 83 percent completed at the plant, which permanently shut down in 1996 after producing 110 billion kilowatt hours of electricity over 28 years. Connecticut Yankee reports the east side concrete wall exhibits very low concentrations of cesium, cobalt, strontium and tritium, isotopes that in high doses could cause cancer. The nuclear plant's highly radioactive uranium pellets were housed for decades in the spent fuel pool. More than a thousand nuclear fuel rods, which contain the pellets, have been moved to an outdoor dry cask complex, allowing the pool water to be cleaned and drained. Kottan said the NRC, which plans to remain at Connecticut Yankee for a week as part of a routine inspection, will take about a quart of tainted soil off-site for analysis. The NRC also gathered additional radiological information, he said. "We've been out there for a couple of hours. ... We made some independent measurements," said Kottan, who is based in King of Prussia, Penn. "We didn't see any evidence of an active leak." Kottan said that while the NRC has investigated other spent fuel pool leaks, such incidents are a "rare occurrence." Connecticut Yankee officials Monday said contamination still appears limited to a 4- by 4-foot cube on the east side of the spent fuel pool building, which is slated for demolition in the next year. Joe Bourassa, Connecticut Yankee's director of nuclear safety and regulatory affairs, said it appears "cups" or "a few quarts" of contaminated water breached the concrete wall at some point. Bourassa said the pool water likely traveled through hairline cracks, rather than construction seams in the concrete, as earlier theorized by Connecticut Yankee. "There is a crack in the concrete, that's for certain," Bourassa said. The company, he said, is analyzing white powder residue discovered over the hairline cracks. If the powder turns out to be boron, it's an indicator that tainted water leaked through the cracks Bourassa reported that monitoring wells around the spent fuel pool building exhibit low to moderate amounts of radiological contamination. Connecticut Yankee also is analyzing nearby bedrock samples from borings 20 to 25 deep, he said. Jelle DeBoer, professor emeritus of earth and environmental sciences at Wesleyan University, is among town residents fearful the spent fuel pool leak may have contaminated groundwater. To comment on this story, or to request a correction click here to send a message to Karen Hunter, The Courant's reader representative. to read Karen's daily Weblog. Subscribe to the Hartford Courant today and receive up to 50% off! If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at courant.com/go/archives/. courant.com is Copyright © 2005 by The Hartford Courant ***************************************************************** 36 York Daily Record: Smooth refuel for TMI Unit 1 - [ydr.com] [York Daily Record/Sunday News] The plant removed fuel assemblies to perform maintenance on a valve. By SEAN ADKINS Daily Record/Sunday News Tuesday, November 8, 2005 The seemingly still waters inside Three Mile Island Unit 1's spent fuel pool gave little clue Monday to the systematic shifting of assemblies 23 feet below the surface. A computer-controlled arm descended into the boron-laced coolant and latched onto a fuel assembly stationed in one of the storage racks positioned at the bottom of the pool. Under the close supervision of AmerGen Energy officials, the arm retracted, revealing a bundled nuclear fuel assembly that glowed a light blue. The glow comes from an electron-level reaction, which causes the radiated rods to give off light. A few robotic maneuvers later, which included a trip through an underwater channel built within a concrete wall, the assembly was safely back in place inside the unit's pressurized-water reactor. Monday was Day 14 of the unit's regularly scheduled refueling outage. Held every two years, the outage is an opportunity for site workers to swap depleted fuel assemblies with new bundles and to perform routine maintenance on various plant equipment. Last month, roughly 1,200 contractors and tradesmen reported to the site to complete more than 12,000 operational, maintenance and testing activities at the Dauphin County nuclear power plant just across the river from Goldsboro. So far, the outage has run smoothly with no surprises, said Rusty West, TMI's site vice president. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not identified any major concerns during this refueling and maintenance outage, said Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the NRC. Aside from refueling, workers will install two feed-water heaters and inspect about 30,000 tubes inside the plant's two steam generators. Except for damaged tubes the plant has previously plugged, a robotic probe will snake through each tube and scan for thickness and identify cracks. Over the years, TMI Unit 1 has plugged 1,561 tubes in its first steam generator and 765 tubes in the second steam generator, said Ralph DeSantis, a spokesman for the plant. In 2009, AmerGen will replace both steam generators, DeSantis said. Plant officials have worked around the clock in two 12-hour shifts each day to complete the outage as quickly, safely and efficiently as possible. A typical TMI refueling outage lasts about 40 days, DeSantis said. Plant officials filled the unit's Outage Control Center, which sported a large wall-mounted screen displaying four separate live video feeds. The frames exhibited refueling and maintenance activities. One field of view focused on workers in yellow protective jumpsuits and hard hats stationed at the plant's spent fuel pool. As part of the current shutdown, workers shifted all 177 fuel assembly bundles within the reactor to its neighboring spent-fuel pool in an effort to perform maintenance on a valve, DeSantis said. At 11 a.m. Monday, the plant had moved back into place 46 fuel assembly bundles — a task that will take about 58 hours, said Stuart Brantley, a shift manager at TMI. By the end of the outage, the spent-fuel pool will be home to 1,093 depleted bundles that date back to the start of the plant in 1974, said Howard Crawford, reactor engineering manager at TMI. The 40-foot-deep pool is large enough to accommodate a steady flow of spent fuel assemblies until 2025, he said. In 2007, the plant will install additional spent-fuel storage racks "that will carry us to 2025," Crawford said. Reach Sean Adkins at 771-2047 or sadkins@ydr.com. Copyright © York Daily Record 2005 122 S. George St., P.O. Box 15122 York, PA 17405, (717) 771-2000 ***************************************************************** 37 NRC: Notice of Availability of Interim Staff Guidance Documents for FR Doc 05-22199 [Federal Register: November 8, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 215)] [Notices] [Page 67757-67761] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr08no05-64] Fuel Cycle Facilities AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Notice of availability. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: James Smith, Project manager, Technical Support Group, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and Safeguards, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20005-0001. Telephone: (301) 415- 6459; fax number: (301) 415-5370; e-mail: jas4@nrc.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: I. Introduction The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) continues to prepare and issue Interim Staff Guidance (ISG) documents for fuel cycle facilities. These ISG documents provide clarifying guidance to the NRC staff when reviewing licensee integrated safety analysis, license applications or amendment requests or other related licensing activities for fuel cycle facilities under subpart H of 10 CFR part 70. FCSS-ISG-08 has been issued and is provided for information. II. Summary The purpose of this notice is to provide notice to the public of the issuance of FCSS-ISG-08, Revision 0, which provides guidance to NRC staff to address accident sequences that may result from natural phenomena hazards relative to license application or amendment request under 10 CFR Part 70, Subpart H. FCSS-ISG-08, Revision 0, has been approved and issued after a general revision based on NRC staff and public comments on the initial draft. III. Further Information The document related to this action is available electronically at the NRC's Electronic Reading Room at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. From this site, you can access the NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and image files of NRC's public documents. The ADAMS ascension number for the document related to this notice is provided in the following table. If you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the document located in ADAMS, contact the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) Reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Interim staff guidance ADAMS Accession No. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ------- FCSS Interim Staff Guidance-08, Revision ML052650305 0. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ------- This document may also be viewed electronically on the public computers located at the NRC's PDR, O 1 F21, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. The PDR reproduction contractor will copy documents for a fee. Comments on these documents may be forwarded to James Smith, Project Manager, Technical Support Group, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and Safeguards, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20005-0001. Comments can also be submitted by telephone, fax, or e-mail which are as follows: Telephone: (301) 415-6459; fax number: (301) 415-5370; e-mail: jas4@nrc.gov. Dated at Rockville, Maryland this 27th day of October 2005. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Melanie A. Galloway, Chief, Technical Support Group, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and Safeguards, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. Attachment--FCSS Interim Staff Guidance-08, Revision 0, Natural Phenomena Hazards Prepared by Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and Safeguards, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards Issue Additional guidance is required to address accident sequences that may result from natural phenomena hazards in the context of a license application or an amendment request under Title 10 Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) part 70, subpart H. Introduction This Interim Staff Guidance (ISG) provides additional guidance for reviewing the applicant's (or licensee's) evaluation of natural phenomena hazards up to and including ``highly unlikely'' events for both new and existing facilities. Discussion The performance requirements of 10 CFR 70.61 for facilities processing special nuclear materials require that individual accident sequences resulting in high consequences to workers and the public be ``highly unlikely'' and that sequences resulting in intermediate consequences to these receptors be ``unlikely.'' Although the threshold levels that differentiate high consequence events from intermediate consequence events are established in the regulations, the definitions of ``highly unlikely'' and ``unlikely'' are not. Definitions of these terms must be described in the integrated safety analysis (ISA) summary submitted by applicants and licensees according to 10 CFR 70.65(b)(9) and subjected to staff approval. Further description of the acceptance criteria for the definitions of these terms can be found in Chapter 3 of NUREG-1520, ``Standard Review Plan for the Review of a License Application for a Fuel Cycle Facility.'' The implementation of these requirements may vary somewhat due to different definitions of likelihood proposed by different applicants (or [[Page 67758]] licensees).\1\ The consequence thresholds of the performance requirements (except for chemical releases) are specified quantitatively in the regulation. The regulation and its performance requirements pertain to existing facilities as well as proposed facilities and apply to man-made external hazards and natural phenomena hazards as well as process hazards. However, new facilities and new processes at existing facilities must also address 10 CFR 70.64 requirements which includes the baseline design criterion for natural phenomena hazards (10 CFR 70.64(a)(2)). This baseline design criterion requires that ``the design must provide for adequate protection against natural phenomena with consideration of the most severe documented historical events for the site.'' The Statement of Considerations (Reference 2) describes the application of the baseline design criteria as consistent with good engineering practice, which dictates that certain minimum requirements should be applied to design and safety considerations. The baseline design criteria must be applied to the design of new facilities and new processes at existing facilities, but does not require retrofits to existing facilities or existing processes (e.g., those housing or adjacent to the new processes). Also included in 10 CFR 70.64(b) is a requirement for incorporation of defense-in- depth in design and a requirement to prefer engineered controls over administrative controls. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- \1\ For natural phenomena, deterministically defined events such as the probable maximum flood (PMF) or safe shutdown earthquake (SSE) which are used as reactor design bases can also be applied to 10 CFR Part 70 facilities as ``highly unlikely'' events. The actual probability (or likelihood) of such events may be difficult to define quantitatively and varies from site to site. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- New structures associated with facilities being reviewed, such as the gas centrifuge facilities and the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MOX), will be designed and constructed to meet the seismic regulatory requirements. Hence, these facilities and additional new facilities to be licensed under 10 CFR part 70 are not expected to present designs with seismic deficiencies. New facilities can also be expected to be above a ``highly unlikely'' flood such as the PMF and can be expected to withstand tornado winds and missiles, if necessary. Most structures at existing nuclear fuel cycle facilities are built to a model building code which includes meeting a design basis earthquake having an exceedance probability of 2 x 10-3 per year to less than 10-3 per year (Department of Energy (DOE) Standard-1020-2002, Appendix C). Existing facilities are generally sited above the 100-year floodplain and are designed for wind as well as snow and ice loading as specified in applicable building codes. Extreme natural events such as ``highly unlikely'' floods and/or earthquakes have not been calculated for many existing sites, and it would be expensive and time consuming to do so. The staff believes that many existing facilities can be shown to be in compliance with, or, at least, near compliance with, the performance requirements of the regulation by accounting for conservatisms in the seismic, flooding, and wind design of the facility. In addition, relatively minor engineered improvements and administrative measures may further enhance safety, at least with respect to the public and other off-site receptors. Seismic Hazards Potential damage to and/or failure of items relied on for safety (IROFS) due to ground movement and/or the seismic response of adjacent or interior IROFS must be considered in the ISA/ISA Summary accident sequence evaluations. Damage or failures that also should be considered include: 1. Seismic-induced failure of a facility component which is not an IROFS but which can fall and damage an IROFS, for example, a heavy load drop from a crane on a container. 2. Displacement of adjacent IROFS during a seismic event, causing them to pound together. 3. Displacement of adjacent components resulting in failure of connecting pipes or cables resulting in flooding, fires, and/or releases of radiological or chemical materials. Seismic event evaluations must also consider potential multiple failure of IROFS. For example, multiple failures of tanks. DOE has also recognized the difference between earthquake design probability and the probability that a safety component cannot perform its function. To quantify this difference, DOE has developed a risk reduction factor, R, as the ratio between the seismic hazard exceedance probability and the performance goal probability. Conservatism in nuclear facility design arising from factors such as use of prescribed analysis methods, specification of material strengths, and limits on inelastic behavior explains at least part of this apparent reduction in actual risk. This risk reduction factor is discussed in Appendix C of DOE-STD-1020-2002 (Reference 3). For a consequence to occur to the public or external site workers, licensed material or hazardous chemicals that could affect the safety of licensed material must be released through at least one, and often two, confinement barriers, for example: 1. Storage containers, gloveboxes, tanks, or handling devices, 2. Ventilation system dynamic confinement and filtration, and/or 3. Building structural shell. Criticalities, on the other hand, may result from the introduction of a moderator or loss of safe geometric control of confined materials. By using risk reduction factors calculated for a facility and its specific components and/or making estimates of the degree of failure by comparison with the observed behavior of similarly constructed buildings during severe earthquakes, reasonable scenarios can be postulated. These scenarios may not release all the material at risk or present an unimpeded leak path to receptors. For example, some facilities might be able to show that even with an earthquake that is ``highly unlikely'' only certain types of containers or confinement systems are likely to be breached. If the amount of material contained in such containers is variable, then that probabilistic component may be factored into the overall likelihood of the accident sequence. If employing some of these mitigating considerations to the analysis requires reliance on special containers or procedures, then additional IROFS may also be needed. Another factor to be considered is the likely rate of release based on the damage sustained. For example, some facilities may lose dynamic confinement but maintain building integrity. In some processes, radiological and/or chemically hazardous material is held inside its primary containment at subatmospheric pressure. In these cases, even though the primary containments are inside a structure designed to withstand less than a ``highly unlikely'' earthquake, the subatmospheric conditions may be sufficient to limit both facility worker and off-site doses in the event of a greater earthquake. For example, an earthquake that results in limited subatmospheric containment losses may allow adequately trained workers to evacuate and/or take mitigative actions. The buildings containing cylinders of liquid UF6 at gas centrifuge facilities are designed for a ``highly unlikely'' earthquake. In addition, some buildings at one of the proposed facilities are equipped with a seismically-activated interlock (an IROFS) that will shut off the buildings' heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system during an event, [[Page 67759]] thus limiting any leakage of UF6 to the outside. Flooding Hazards Most fuel cycle licensees do not require large quantities of cooling water and, therefore, do not need to be located near large bodies of water. A site licensed under 10 CFR Part 70 does not need to meet prescriptive flood protection requirements but does have to meet the performance requirements for all credible events including flooding. A site meeting the flood protection requirements of a commercial reactor should be considered as being designed or located adequately to withstand a ``highly unlikely'' flooding event. NUREG- 1407, ``Procedural and Submittal Guidance for the Individual Plant Examination of External Events for Severe Accident Vulnerability,'' Section 2.4, states that the design basis flood (which for river sites is the probable maximum flood) as described in Regulatory Guide 1.59, ``Design Basis Flooding for Nuclear Power Plants,'' is estimated to have an exceedance frequency of less than 10-5 per year. Sites that do not meet this level of protection can still meet the 10 CFR 70.61 performance requirements but have to be considered on an individual basis. In evaluating the effects of flooding on existing facilities, the following flood-related hazards should be considered: River Flooding Inundation and hydrostatic loading Dynamic forces Wave action Sedimentation and erosion Ice loading Upstream Dam Failures Inundation and hydrostatic loading Dynamic forces Erosion and sedimentation Precipitation/Local Storm Runoff Inundation (local ponding) and hydrostatic loading Dynamic loads (flash flooding) Tsunami, Seiche, Hurricane Storm Surge Inundation and hydrostatic loading Dynamic forces Wave action Methods for determining these flooding and water-related effects for reactor sites are described in American National Standards Institute/American Nuclear Society 2.8, ``Determining Design Basis Flooding at Power Reactor Sites.'' These methods can be applied to 10 CFR 70.61 analyses with less conservatism in some of these parameters. A standard siting requirement for residential and commercial developments is to be above the 100-year floodplain. For large river basins, warning time and time to secure materials and evacuate personnel will probably be available. For small streams there may be relatively little warning in regard to thunderstorms and localized rainfall. In such cases, rapid actions may be the only administrative protection available. In evaluating the effectiveness of proposed protection, the effects of inundation, hydrostatic loading, erosion, and sedimentation will need to be evaluated. At a minimum, this would require that criticality events be prevented and materials remain confined within site structures. At some sites, a delineation of the 500-year floodplain may also be available. If the site is above the 500-year floodplain, flooding may be considered an unlikely event \2\ depending on the quality of the estimate. In this category, criticality events should still be prevented, but the breaching of a limited number of material containers may be allowable under the performance requirements (up to 25 rem for the public, up to 100 rem for workers, and a specified release limit) for events, that in terms of likelihood, are between ``unlikely'' and ``highly unlikely.'' ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- \2\ Even if the licensee defines unlikely as less than 10-3 per year for the process sequences in the ISA Summary, the conservative assumptions inherent in most flood plain hydrologic studies such as those performed for Federal Emergency Management Agency flood insurance rate maps should justify the consideration of flooding above the 500-year floodplain as an unlikely event. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- In addition to the facility's location relative to the 100-year or 500-year floodplains, the effects of local intense precipitation and snow load should be considered. Local intense precipitation especially with snow can result in roof collapse and localized site flooding. Normally, protection from local precipitation and snow is relatively easy to achieve in roof design and local site drainage design. Wind and Tornado Loading Wind design for an existing facility if prescribed by an applicable building code would have an annual exceedance probability of greater than or equal to 2 - 10-2. At such relatively high probabilities, tornado design criteria are not specified. However, depending on the geographical location of the facility, the effects of a tornado with an annual exceedance probability of 10-5 or greater may need to be considered. Wind forces on walls of structures should be determined using appropriate pressure coefficients, gust factors, and other site- specific adjustments. If the wind is likely to blow inside the structure, either through design or wind-driven missile vulnerability, the effects of wind on internal IROFS requires consideration. If the winds are from a tornado, the effects of the atmospheric pressure change (APC) associated with the tornado must be considered. Normally, ventilation systems are most vulnerable to APC but windows, buried tanks, and sand filters can also be affected. For straight winds, hurricanes, and weak tornadoes, missile criteria as specified in Table 3-3 of DOE-STD-1020-2002 (Reference 3) may be considered. The missile specified is a 15 pound, 2 inches by 4 inches plank at a specified elevation and impact velocity. For facilities which may be subjected to more severe tornado missiles, the guidance in Tables 3-4 and/or 3-5 of DOE-STD-1020 may be followed. For the tornado, a 3,000 pound automobile rolling and tumbling on the ground should also be considered. For such evaluations, the probability of the entire sequence should be considered, and missile criteria from either Tables 3-4 or 3-5 of DOE-STD-1020 may be used as appropriate. Considerations for Existing Processes at Existing Facilities Existing processes at existing facilities are not required to address 10 CFR 70.64 baseline design criteria. They must still meet the performance requirements of 10 CFR 70.61 including accidents caused by natural phenomena, for which the staff may require additional IROFS to meet the performance requirements. For existing facilities, additional administrative controls/IROFS can be used to meet the performance requirements without the need for design features normally required by accepted engineering practice. For plants where near compliance can be obtained and complete compliance will be relatively costly, an exemption to the regulation may be requested. As discussed earlier, many existing 10 CFR Part 70 facilities are not designed for an earthquake beyond that specified in applicable building codes. Although this design may provide fairly good seismic protection to the structure, it may not protect internal equipment. Also, an existing facility may not be designed to any specific seismic criteria in which case its ability to withstand earthquakes can only be estimated based on comparison with similar structures or through complex structural analysis. In such cases, licensees may add [[Page 67760]] additional IROFS to meet the performance requirements. An example where such IROFS (procedures and upgrades) may be effectively implemented could be a facility where the consequences of a release of licensed material to the public in a seismic event would be from fires and/or explosions. In this case, fixes such as seismically qualified flammable gas shutoff valves or electrical shutoffs might provide a large decrease in potential seismic consequences. In regard to flooding, flood elevations beyond that of the 100-year flood may not have been determined for the site. For sites in close proximity to a river, these determinations could be expensive and time consuming. For these cases, flood warning time may allow measures such as moving material at risk and/or blocking doors and openings in the facility structure. Improving a facility's ability to withstand high winds, rain and snow loads, and exterior fires can likewise be improved with a combination of administrative procedures and engineered improvements. Removing material at risk from under walls or roofs that are not seismically designed can reduce potential releases in case of collapse from winds or roof loads. Exemptions to the regulation may still be required for existing facilities even with administrative and engineered improvements. In regard to consequences to the public, complete compliance with 10 CFR 70.61 using realistic assumptions should be the goal if obtainable. Compliance with 10 CFR 70.61 regarding consequences to facility workers may require a request for an exemption once personnel protective equipment, emergency procedures, and worker training is accounted for. In evaluating a request for an exemption to the regulation, the expected operational life of the facility should also be factored into the determination of risk. Considerations for New Processes at Existing Facilities The design of new processes at existing facilities must address natural phenomena hazards in accordance with 10 CFR 70.64 (a)(2) as well as the performance requirements of 10 CFR 70.61. Nevertheless, new processes at existing facilities may have the same problems in demonstrating compliance with 10 CFR 70.61 in regard to accident sequences initiated by natural phenomena as existing facilities based on the design and/or siting of the original structures. In the case of new processes, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff should expect compliance with the performance requirements of 10 CFR 70.61 to the extent possible given the existing facility design and location. New processes at existing facilities also must meet the requirements of 10 CFR 70.64(b) which requires defense-in-depth and a preference for engineered controls over administrative controls. However, structural improvements, permanent flood barriers, and other engineered improvements which could be considered retrofits cannot be required by the staff for application to existing structures. New structural features within existing structures to prevent breaches in containment in the event of natural phenomena hazards may be considered, however. An example might be a seismically-designed vault to hold radioactive materials associated with a new process. In regard to new processes, engineered controls, where feasible, are preferred over administrative procedures that might otherwise be proposed for an existing process with a limited operational lifetime. Such engineered improvements may not be required for licensing but could be scheduled to replace administrative procedures or other long-term compensatory measures on a timely basis after the start of operations. The object is to encourage engineered safety in new processes compared to equivalent existing process while recognizing the restraints of the existing structures and location. Although primarily aimed at reducing risk to the public, the emphasis on engineered safety may also be applied to worker consequences in a way consistent with what has been accepted at other facilities. Regulatory Basis 10 CFR 70.61 specifies performance requirements associated with risks identified by an ISA. 10 CFR 70.64 specifies requirements for new facilities or new processes at existing facilities including baseline design criteria (a)(2), ``Natural Phenomena Hazards.'' Technical Review Guidance In reviewing the applicant's evaluation of the effects of natural phenomena on its facility, it should be recognized that estimates of ``unlikely'' and ``highly unlikely'' natural phenomena such as the PMF or SSE may not exist for the particular site. Hence, extrapolation and/ or transposition of extreme event estimates made for other relatively nearby facilities (such as power reactor sites) should be allowed where feasible and technically justifiable. In addition, sophisticated probabilistic tools such as Bayesian analysis or Monte Carlo sampling methods need not be employed to improve the estimate of likelihoods of natural phenomena event sequences unless desired by the applicant (or licensee). For the purpose of determining appropriate values of extreme events, deterministic events such as the probable maximum flood or safe shutdown earthquake can be used in place of purely probabilistically determined ``highly unlikely'' events and may be preferable, depending on the quality of historical data. Where extreme events need to be coupled with other probability-driven mechanisms such as the release fraction or transport pathway, already low likelihood combinations do not have to be made even less likely with the use of conservative parameters. For existing facilities, due credit should be given to analysis assumptions and administrative controls, emergency procedures, and active engineered controls that do not change the design bases of the facility structures to natural phenomena. If the ISA/ISA Summary demonstrates that the existing facility is near compliance (within an order of magnitude of a likelihood threshold or within 50 percent of meeting a consequence threshold, but not both), an exemption to the regulation may be considered. An example evaluation for an amendment request is provided in the appendix to this ISG. Recommendation This guidance should be used to supplement NUREG-1520, Chapter 3, Integrated Safety Analysis. References U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 10, Energy, Part 70, ``Domestic Licensing of Special Nuclear Material.'' U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (U.S.) (NRC). NUREG-1520, ``Standard Review Plan for the Review of a License Application for a Fuel Cycle Facility.'' NRC: Washington, D.C. March 2002. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (U.S.), Washington, D.C. ``Domestic Licensing of Special Nuclear Material; Possession of a Critical Mass of Special Nuclear Material.'' Federal Register: Vol. 65, No. 181, pp. 56211-562331. September 18, 2000. NUREG-1407, ``Procedural and Submittal Guidance for the Individual Plant Examination of External Events (IPEEE) for Severe Accident Vulnerabilities.'' NRC: Washington, D.C. June 1991. Regulatory Guide 1.59, Revision2, ``Design Basis Flooding for Nuclear Power Plants.'' NRC: Washington, D.C. August 1977. U.S. Department of Energy (U.S.) (DOE). DOE-Standard-1020-2002, ``Natural Phenomena Hazards Design and Evaluation Criteria for Department of Energy Facilities.'' DOE: Washington, D.C. 2002. [[Page 67761]] American National Standards Institute/American Nuclear Society (ANSI/ANS). ANS-2.8, ``Determining Design Basis Flooding at Power Reactor Sites.'' ANSI/ANS: July 1992. Dated: October 28, 2005. Robert C. Pierson, Director, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and Safeguards, NMSS. APPENDIX--Example Natural Phenomena Hazard Review for Compliance with 10 CFR 70.61 This example review is for an amendment to authorize operations in a blended low-enriched uranium oxide conversion building (OCB). The site is located near a river and is just above the 100-year flood plain of a nearby creek. The Effluent Process Building (EPB) was also part of the amendment but was not evaluated because the quantities of radioactive material or hazardous chemicals (that come under NRC regulation) contained in the EPB are not considered sufficient to exceed the 10 CFR 70.61 consequence threshold for ``unlikely'' events. Seismic Evaluation The OCB is of reinforced concrete construction and is constructed to seismic criteria contained in the Standard Building Code (SBC-1999) which is equivalent to being designed for an earthquake having a probability of exceedance of approximately 4 X 10-4 per year. Using Appendix C of DOE-STD-1020-2002, a risk reduction factor of 4 was determined by U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff, giving the structure a likelihood of significant damage from an earthquake of 10-4 per year or less. Hence, the collapse or loss of building integrity from an earthquake may be considered to be ``highly unlikely'' as the probabilistic value of ``highly unlikely'' indicated by the applicant was a probability of exceedance of 10-4 to 10-5 per year. Within the building, the material at risk consists of low enriched uranyl nitrate liquid, ammonium diuranate slurry, and uranium dioxide powder. All of these materials are expected to be within containers and spillage during a seismic event is expected to be minimal. Since the building is expected to retain its integrity, the leak path factor will be relatively low even without dynamic confinement from the ventilation system. Facility workers are expected to take actions to limit personal intake of radionuclides. The staff concludes that the OCB complies with the performance requirements of 10 CFR 70.61 with regard to seismic events. High Winds Evaluation The OCB structure is also designed for wind loads in accordance with the SBC-1999, and the probability of a tornado impacting the facility is less than 10-5 per year. Therefore, the facility needs only to be evaluated in regard to the effects of wind loads and missiles, but not for tornadoes. The reinforced concrete exterior walls of the OCB are considered by NRC staff to be adequate to withstand high wind velocities as well as missiles (from DOE-STD- 1020-2002) that should be assumed for such events. A collapse of building walls due to wind forces such that radioactive material would escape is considered to be ``highly unlikely'' by NRC staff. In addition, the meteorological conditions likely to result in severe winds may be forecast in advance, and protective measures taken. The staff concludes that the OCB complies with the performance requirements of 10 CFR 70.61 with regard to wind events. Flooding Evaluation The lowest floor in the OCB is 15 feet above the 100-year flood plain from an adjacent creek. From a review of the topography of the site area, it appears that flooding of the site could occur, most likely, from flooding on the nearby river with coincident flooding on the adjacent creek which could back up through the railroad culvert. This event is expected to have warning time and may overtop the railroad embankment to the north of the facility and flood parts of the town nearby. However, the facility is sufficiently removed from the main channel of the river such that flood-induced scouring and erosion would not be expected. In addition, the hydrostatic loading from the flood on the exterior walls of the OCB would not be expected to cause collapse. The primary concern is inundation which could float unsecured containers within the OCB but not remove them from the facility. A criticality event can not be excluded, but could occur only in the flooded and, therefore, evacuated section of the plant and would not affect facility workers. In addition, the warning time would allow the movement of material to reduce the likelihood of a flood-induced criticality. The staff concludes that the OCB complies with the performance requirements of 10 CFR 70.61 with regard to flooding. [FR Doc. 05-22199 Filed 11-7-05; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 38 AFP: Japan appoints head of breakthrough nuclear reactor in France - Tue Nov 8,12:32 AM ET TOKYO, Nov 8 (AFP) - A Japanese engineer turned ambassador has been named to head the international project to build a multibillion-dollar experimental nuclear fusion reactor in southern France, a Japanese official said. Japan's Ambassador to Croatia Kaname Ikeda, a nuclear engineer by training, was named director general of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) organization, slated to be launched in or after 2007. The decision was made Monday in Vienna at a meeting of high-ranking officials from the project's participating countries, a Japanese official said. The six ITER partners -- the European Union" /> European Union, the United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea" /> South Koreaand China -- agreed in June to bring the main facility to Cadarache, southern France, after Japan withdrew its bid to host the 10-billion-euro (12-billion-dollar), 30-year project. Following years of wrangling between Japan and the EU, Japan was given the 20 percent of staff posts including the director general's job in exchange for dropping its proposal to build the reactor in northern Aomori prefecture. Ikeda, 59, has been Japan's ambassador to Croatia since 2003 after a career in nuclear science, including heading a Japanese nuclear safety office. ITER is a pilot project aimed at creating energy that would be cheap, clean, safe and almost infinite. Instead of splitting the atom -- the principle behind current nuclear plants -- the project seeks to harness nuclear fusion: the power of the sun and the stars. Copyright © 2005 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 39 NRC: Sunshine Act; Meetings FR Doc 05-22316 [Federal Register: November 8, 2005 (Volume 70, Number 215)] [Notices] [Page 67743-67744] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr08no05-62] DATE: Weeks of November 7, 14, 21, 28, December 5, 12, 2005. PLACE: Commissioner's Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. STATUS: Public and Closed. MATTERS TO BE CONSIDERED: Week of November 7, 2005 There are no meetings scheduled for the Week of November 7, 2005. Week of November 14, 2005--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled for the Week of November 14, 2005. Week of November 21, 2005--Tentative Monday, November 21, 2005 9:30 a.m. Briefing on Status of New Reactor Issues, Part 1 (Public Meeting) (Contact: Laura Dudes, 301-415-0146) 1:30 p.m. Briefing on Status of New Reactor Issues, Part 2 (Public Meeting) (Contact: Laura Dudes, 301-415-0146) These Meetings Will Be Webcast Live at the Web Address-- . Week of November 28, 2005--Tentative Tuesday, November 29, 2005 9:30 a.m. Discussion of Management Issues (Closed--Ex. 2) Wednesday, November 30, 2005 9:30 a.m. Briefing on EEO Program (Public Meeting) (Contact: Corenthis Kelley, 301-415-7380) This Meeting Will Be Webcast Live at the Web Address-- . Week of December 5, 2005--Tentative Thursday, December 8, 2005 1 p.m. Meeting with the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) (Contact: John Larkins, 301-415-7360) These Meetings Will Be Webcast Live at the Web Address-- . Week of December 12, 2005--Tentative Monday, December 12, 2005 9:30 a.m. Discussion of Security Issues (Closed--Ex. 1) Wednesday, December 14, 2005 1:30 p.m. Discussion of Security Issues (Closed--Ex. 1) Thursday, December 15, 2005 1:30 p.m. Briefing on Threat [[Page 67744]] Environment Assessment (Closed--Ex. 1) * The schedule for Commission meetings is subject to change on short notice. To verify the status of meetings call (recording)--(301) 415-1292. Contact person for more information: Michelle Schroll, (301) 415-1662. * * * * * The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule Can Be Found on the Internet At: . * * * * * The NRC provides reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities where appropriate. If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in these public meetings, or need this meeting notice or the transcript or other information from the public meetings in another format (e.g. braille, large print), please notify the NRC's Disability Program Coordinator, August Spector, at 301-415-7080, TDD: 301-415- 2100, or by e-mail at . Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis. * * * * * This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301-415-1969). In addition, distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic message to . Dated: November 3, 2005. R. Michelle Schroll, Office of the Secretary. [FR Doc. 05-22316 Filed 11-4-05; 11:02 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M ***************************************************************** 40 [DU-WATCH] DU expose' film "Blowin in the Wind" nominated for Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 01:46:26 -0600 (CST) X-Fingerprint: owner-imap@chumbly.math.missouri.edu-127.127 Hi - I thought this would be of interest. I met David at the Bradbury at the Uranium Weapons Conference in 2003. Our interview with him is found at http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html (scroll to the end of the page for the mp3 audio file) http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m17404&date=02-nov-2005_18:09_ECT Australia November 2, 2005 I have just had the distinct privilege of viewing the Australian short film documentary titled Blowin in the Wind,. Blowing in the Wind has been nominated for Academy Award; it premiered at a Newtown (Sydney) cinema, on Thursday, where it will run for one week, then moves to other major city centres (see www.bsharp.net.au ). The cleverly produced documentary is a wake-up call to Australians, exposing the dreadful, horrible, inhuman use of the material known as Depleted Uranium, (DU), as a projectile warhead, on all manner of arsenal and weaponry, being used to annihilate nations around the world. DU is the weapons material of choice for all of the guided missiles and Bunker-Buster, bombs being rained onto the Afghanistan and Iraqi citizens in the senseless, unlawful invasion of these Middle-East countries. Tank shells, heavy calibre machine guns, ship-to-shore rockets and heavy guns, have poured thousands of tons of the miserable compound into the cities and countryside of affected battlegrounds, producing a wasteland of radioactively contaminated earth, water and air, DU has a half-life, which is rated in millions of years. So, not only the poor sods who are murdered by the blast or are left dismembered and crippled for the rest of their lives, suffering the effects of the blasted DU, those who survive are also effected. The contamination lingers in their food, drinking water and the air they breath, causing grotesque deformities and diseases, especially in new- born children. Blowin in the Wind, was produced by New South Wales, North coast film producers, David Bradbury and Peter Scott, who, together with a team of very talented technicians, have put together a most powerful expose, on the manufacture and widespread use of Depleted Uranium weapons, with special emphasis on U.S. and Australian Defence Forces use of the miserable material. The film draws attention to the lack of awareness amongst Australian residents, regarding the amount of exposure we have in this country, to the effects of DU. Already, cases of horribly deformed new-born babies are occurring in Australia, due to the huge amounts of DU weaponry being dumped onto our countryside in some of the most absurdly stupid and careless acts anyone could possibly imagine. If you want to know more about this dumping of DU into Australia and other serious challenges to you and your family for the future, might I suggest you make it your business to get to see Blowing in the Wind. Some of the more amazing facts which are exposed in the film, concern the huge amount of cover-up by deliberate lying and either no announcements or outright denials about Australia,s complicit involvement in furnishing the supply of DU into the World,s atmosphere, soil and water. You will be stunned when you learn the number of large American Military Bases which exist on this island and more are planned through the Memorandums of Understanding, which are held by our leaders with the United States of America. You will be staggered. I give this film five stars. I recommend it to all Australians, especially young Australians and Australians with young families. The film is considered to be suitable for 15 plus, however, outside the ugliness in the scenes of maiming and disfigurement, there is nothing which is beyond the comprehension of early teen-agers and I would thoroughly recommend the whole family view what is after all, real life, real time, everybody should know, type drama. I bet there will be some serious family discussion after you see Blowin in the Wind. ### Charles Jenks Chair of Advisory Board and Web Manager Traprock Peace Center 103A Keets Road Deerfield, MA 01342 413-773-7427 fax 413-773-7507 http://www.traprockpeace.org [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Ever feel sad or cry for no reason at all? Depression. Narrated by Kate Hudson. http://us.click.yahoo.com/rL1caD/ubOLAA/xGEGAA/Sj.0lB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] ***************************************************************** 41 [DU Information List] US forces used chemical weapons during Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 16:36:08 -0800 5f4f51.jpg My Groups | pandora-project Main Page US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah By Peter Popham Published: 08 November 2005 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article325560.ece Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon. Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city. On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote: "US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988." The website quoted insurgent sources as saying: "The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons." In December the US government formally denied the reports, describing them as "widespread myths". "Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used 'outlawed' phosphorus shells in Fallujah," the USinfo website said. "Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. "They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters." But now new information has surfaced, including hideous photographs and videos and interviews with American soldiers who took part in the Fallujah attack, which provides graphic proof that phosphorus shells were widely deployed in the city as a weapon. In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete. "Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for." Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster's 24-hours news channel, www.rainews24.it, show exactly what the former soldier means. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells. A biologist in Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact." The documentary, entitled Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets. Meanwhile, five US soldiers from the elite 75th Ranger Regiment have been charged with kicking and punching detainees in Iraq. The news came as a suicide car bomber killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint south of Baghdad yesterday. Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon. Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city. On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote: "US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988." The website quoted insurgent sources as saying: "The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons." In December the US government formally denied the reports, describing them as "widespread myths". "Some news accounts have claimed that US forces have used 'outlawed' phosphorus shells in Fallujah," the USinfo website said. "Phosphorus shells are not outlawed. US forces have used them very sparingly in Fallujah, for illumination purposes. "They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters." But now new information has surfaced, including hideous photographs and videos and interviews with American soldiers who took part in the Fallujah attack, which provides graphic proof that phosphorus shells were widely deployed in the city as a weapon. In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete. "Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for." Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster's 24-hours news channel, www.rainews24.it, show exactly what the former soldier means. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells. A biologist in Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: "A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact." The documentary, entitled Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, also provides what it claims is clinching evidence that incendiary bombs known as Mark 77, a new, improved form of napalm, was used in the attack on Fallujah, in breach of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of 1980, which only allows its use against military targets. Meanwhile, five US soldiers from the elite 75th Ranger Regiment have been charged with kicking and punching detainees in Iraq. The news came as a suicide car bomber killed four American soldiers at a checkpoint south of Baghdad yesterday. ---------- Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail ---------- YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS * Visit your group "pandora-project" on the web. * * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: * pandora-project-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com * * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. ---------- Attachment Converted: 5f4f51.jpg: 00000001,66ee0c03,00000000,00000000 ***************************************************************** 42 [DU Information List] Has the nuclear catastrophe already Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 16:36:22 -0800 http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/647/647p26.htm From Green Left Weekly, November 2, 2005. Has the nuclear catastrophe already arrived? Blowin’ in the Wind Directed by David Bradbury Limited national season commencing in Sydney and Melbourne at Dendy cinemas on October 27, other cities to follow REVIEW BY LACHLAN MALLOCH David Bradbury needs almost no introduction to Green Left Weekly readers: his lifetime of progressive film-making speaks for itself. Bradbury’s latest documentary — a film he says “you’ll never see on ‘your ABC’” — continues that tradition into perhaps his most dangerous subject yet, the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the era of the “war on terror”. In production terms it might seem modest — just under an hour long and made for the equivalent of chicken feed — but its content is breathtaking, sensational and urgent. Blowin’ in the Wind documents the increasing use of so-called “depleted uranium” (DU) in weapons around the world and forcefully reveals the devastating health and environmental effects of these “mini-nukes”. The world authority on the devastation wreaked by DU is former US Army physicist Dr Doug Rokke, who suffers from radiation sickness due to his work in Iraq after the first Gulf War. Dr Rokke is one of the heroes of this film, tirelessly campaigning around the world against the criminal use of nuclear weapons. The other great heroes are the dying children in Iraq, whose bodies are riddled with the minuscule deadly radioactive particles unleashed by US bombing 15 years ago and carried for kilometres by Iraq’s notorious, dusty winds. The condemned children stare at us as if from the other side of a great abyss. It is impossible to look at them and not feel a burning guilt and shame at the nightmare visited upon them in our name. The footage seen here, of dying children and grotesquely malformed foetuses, is not new. John Pilger’s 2000 TV documentary Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq eloquently exposed the West’s genocidal regime of economic sanctions and DU bombing in Iraq. Before the Gulf War, few babies in Iraq were born with malformations. Now there are 7-10 per day, some of them so badly mutated that they are “just pieces of flesh”. This medical nightmare can only be expected to worsen, with the US’s increasing use of DU on battlefields around the world. Yugoslavia was bombed with over 84 tonnes of DU, over 1000 tonnes were dropped on Afghanistan and Iraq was blasted with more than 2500 tonnes in the latest invasion. Bradbury’s new and sensational thesis is that these deadly nuclear winds have come to Australia and are set to blow even harder, in several ways. First, Australian military veterans are suffering from the euphemistically titled “Gulf War Syndrome” — more likely, radiation sickness. We meet Gulf War veteran Ed Grant, suffering an unexplained disease and battling the Australian government to take his case seriously. Not surprisingly he’s afraid of what poison he might have passed on to his children and eventual grandchildren. Second, Bradbury outlines the Australian government’s enthusiastic plans for dramatically expanding uranium mining here. This is a double-edged sword: we’ll be faced with increased dangers of waste storage and accidents at mine sites, as well as increasing our complicity in the proliferation of nuclear weapons, by increasing the global supply of uranium. But the centrepiece of Bradbury’s thesis is his examination of the secret treaty, or “Memorandum of Understanding”, that was signed by Australia and the US on July 7, 2004, setting the framework for intensified military cooperation between the two nations. Bradbury argues that this agreement gives a 20-year-long, virtual blank cheque to the US to use all sorts of deadly weapons, including those with DU, in their testing and training exercises on Australian soil. It is likely that nukes were used in the June 2005 Talisman Sabre exercises at beautiful Shoalwater Bay on the Queensland coast, when 11,000 US troops joined the Australian military in live aerial bombardments, doing unknown levels of damage to such a precious environmental treasure. Blowin’ in the Wind shows us that we are entering a new period in Australia’s long history of complicity with and support for imperial power, but it’s mostly taking place behind the backs of the Australian people. The extremely truncated cinematic exhibition of this film means that activists will need to work hard to make it anything more than a voice in the wilderness. It asks urgent questions that we ignore at our own peril. ------- [Visit the film’s website at <http://www.bsharp.net.au>.] ============== ***NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.*** To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. ---------- YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS * Visit your group "pandora-project" on the web. * * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: * pandora-project-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com * * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. ---------- ***************************************************************** 43 Agency Seeks Broad Standard for 'Dirty Bomb' Exposure Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 16:36:47 -0800 Agency Seeks Broad Standard for 'Dirty Bomb' Exposure By MATTHEW L. WALD Published: November 8, 2005 WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - The Homeland Security Department, preparing advice on responding to a "dirty bomb" attack, has concluded that cities and states should take into account the cost of abandoning or cleaning up contaminated areas when deciding how much exposure to radiation is acceptable. The goal of writing "protective action guidelines" that do not set fixed numerical standards for acceptable radiation exposure is to "balance protection with other important factors," according to the advance text of the advice. In contrast, the federal government has established precise standards for radiation exposure involving workers in industrial settings and people who live near hazardous waste dumps or nuclear power plants, whether operating or decommissioned. A copy of the proposed text, which the department plans to publish in the next few weeks in The Federal Register, was first published by Inside EPA, a trade magazine. Government officials confirmed its central points on Monday. According to the text, if terrorists detonate a nuclear bomb or simply spread radioactive material in the United States, they could overwhelm the nation's ability to clean up the contamination or shelter all of the people who would have to evacuate. The department plans to take comments for 60 days after publication, but the guidance would go into force immediately upon publication. One official who was involved in writing the guidance, Edward McGaffigan Jr., a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said adopting overly strict rules "only aids and abets Al Qaeda or any other terrorists." When nuclear power plants are decommissioned, Mr. McGaffigan said, their owners must clean them up to the extent that the potential dose of radiation to a member of the public each year is equivalent to the amount of environmental radiation that the average person is exposed to in two or three weeks. Some sites have been cleaned up to a standard of 15 millirem per year. But, Mr. McGaffigan said, people who work in some buildings made of granite, including the United States Capitol, are exposed to substantially higher doses than that. "You don't raze buildings if they have to be as hot as the Capitol is," he said, pointing out that workers there absorb 100 millirem a year. The new guidance calls for balancing the public health risk against the value of a highway or crucial transportation structure or of a high-profile place. It also encourages state and local officials to show flexibility. People who oppose nuclear power argue that the new guidance is part of an effort by the government to loosen health protections so the industry can more easily build new reactors and dispose of its waste. Officials say that in the days or weeks after an attack with a dirty bomb, which is a conventional explosive with radioactive material added to it, officials at all levels of government and members of the public will discuss what standards to use. Government officials involved in drafting the document said it filled a gap in the existing regulatory framework, which set the limits on waste dumps and power plants. The federal government already offers some guidance on acceptable exposure for emergency personnel during an attack, but not on what standards to use later, when the contamination would be cleaned up and decisions made about reopening areas that had been sealed off. After officials simulated a dirty bomb attack in a five-day exercise in Seattle in May 2003, they concluded that one problem was a lack of planning for long-term cleanup. Mr. McGaffigan said representatives of different federal agencies participating in the drill gave varying advice to the mayor about what had to be done before the affected area could be reoccupied. The new federal guidance is also meant to apply to a recovery after a nuclear bomb. Next Article in Washington (5 of 12) > ***************************************************************** 44 Rocky Mountain News: Senate rejects bill to help workers hurt by early cleanup By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News November 8, 2005 WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate on Monday rejected $15 million in extended benefits for workers who helped clean up the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant early. Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, the measure's sponsor, and Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar called it a matter of fairness to extend benefits to about 70 workers for contractor Kaiser-Hill Co. who fell short of the amount of service needed to qualify for pensions and lifetime medical benefits. Those workers would have been eligible for benefits if Kaiser-Hill had taken all the time the Department of Energy gave it - until Dec. 15, 2006 - to complete the cleanup job at Rocky Flats. Kaiser-Hill declared the job done in mid-October, 14 months before the deadline. Company officials said only the federal government can extend benefits to workers just shy of satisfying the eligibility requirements. But in a bipartisan, 38-53 vote, the Senate rejected an amendment Allard offered to a larger defense authorization bill being considered. Allard called the situation "a wrong being perpetrated by the Department of Energy." "He was surprised so many senators would vote against working people," said Allard spokeswoman Angela de Rocha. Salazar argued that the Senate needed to honor the sacrifice of workers and their families. "It's unfair from my point of view to penalize the employees who performed this great work on behalf of our national security in this cleanup by not providing the benefits they had anticipated," Salazar said. Opponents, including Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said it would set a bad fiscal precedent that would affect countless federal contracts throughout the United States. "I join (Allard) in commending the workers at Rocky Flats for what has been achieved. I cannot support, however, taking this unprecedented step . . . It's contrary to good, sound fiscal policy." Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that if the amendment had passed, "We'd be opening up a very interesting line of argument by a number of contractors and employees." The vote disappointed Leo Chavez, 51, who worked at Rocky Flats for 17 years but was laid off by the contractor in 2004 just six working days short of his 50th birthday, which would have qualified him for medical benefits and a substantially larger pension. Although his pension will be half what he once anticipated, he said a bigger worry is how to afford medical coverage because he is a diabetic. "The way the budget is going, there are priorities and choices being made in expenditures," Chavez said. "Obviously, this is one not many people thought was a priority." Reprints| Corrections 2005 © The E.W. Scripps Co. Privacy ***************************************************************** 45 BBC: 1957: Inquiry publishes cause of nuclear fire ON THIS DAY | 8 | 1957: Inquiry publishes cause of nuclear fire An inquiry into last month's fire at Cumberland's Windscale nuclear power plant has blamed the accident on a combination of human error, poor management and faulty instruments. The fire happened on 10 October during a routine maintenance operation. An unspecified amount of radioactive iodine vapour - iodine 131 - escaped into the atmosphere and on the advice of the health physics manager a ban on the sale of local milk was imposed. The Committee of Inquiry report made several recommendations including more speedy assessment of risks to public health following such an accident in future. Lessons to be learned However, it emphasised the fire had "no bearing on the safety of nuclear power stations being built for electricity authorities" and that the Medical Research Council was satisfied it was unlikely any harm had been done to human health. This point was emphasised by the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, addressing MPs in the Commons today. He announced three new committees will be set up to study the report and advise on lessons to be learned from the fire. Fire broke out at atomic pile [nuclear reactor] number one during a routine maintenance exercise called a Wigner release. This involves switching off the reactor's cooling device to allow graphite to heat up in a controlled situation to release the energy that builds up when graphite is irradiated. This procedure is known as "annealing". But on 10 October the energy was released too quickly because instruments not specifically designed for annealing showed incorrect readings. Milk ban The fuel melted, fuel cans burst, uranium was ignited and iodine 131 was released through the cooling chimneys. This collected on grass in fields around the plant which was in turn eaten by cows and soon absorbed into their milk. Local milk was analysed on 12 October. The following day milk produced by local cows was banned from sale. The report adds there was "no district radiation or inhalation hazard" and that to issue an emergency warning "would have caused unecessary alarm". Nevertheless, Sir Edwin Plowden, chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority has also pointed out a need for better communication beween the plant's management and various local interests. Windscale has been producing plutonium for the military since October 1950 as part of the Britain's weapons program which began in 1946. Reactors use natural uranium as fuel, graphite as the moderator and air for cooling. In Context The Windscale fire is one of three nuclear disasters cited by opponents of nuclear power as proof that its risks outweigh its benefits. The other two are Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. In 1971 Windscale management was transferred from the UKAEA to British Nuclear Fuels and renamed Sellafield. It became the world's greatest discharger of radioactive waste most of which went into the Irish Sea. A nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, Thorp, opened there in 1994. Two years later, BNFL was fined Ł25,000 after admitting "serious and significant" failures in safety that left a Sellafield worker contaminated with radioactivity. In 2000, concerns over marine pollution prompted Ireland and Denmark to press for Sellafield's closure, while safety worries led other countries to suspend processing contracts. Sellafield is now being decommissioned as part of a programme to close down Britain's 14 ageing nuclear power stations as they reach the end of their working lives. However, in 2005 the Labour government put the issue of nuclear power back on the political agenda, calling for a public debate about its future, because of the shortage of fossil fuels. Web Links UK Atomic Energy Authority ***************************************************************** 46 KAVKAZ CENTER: Depleted Uranium Is WMD Wed, 11 9 2005, 06:47 Djokhar Time My grandfather, U.S. Army Col. Edwin Joseph McAllister, was born in Battle Creek in 1895. He does not know that his first grandchild is an international expert on depleted uranium. I have worked in two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, and in 1991 I became a whistleblower at the Livermore lab. Depleted uranium is very, very, very nasty stuff: Depleted uranium (DU) weaponry meets the definition of weapon of mass destruction in two out of three categories under U.S. Federal Code Title 50 Chapter 40 Section 2302. DU weaponry violates all international treaties and agreements, Hague and Geneva war conventions, the 1925 Geneva gas protocol, U.S. laws and U.S. military law. Since 1991, the U.S. has released the radioactive atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs into the global atmosphere. That is 10 times the amount released during atmospheric testing which was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs. The U.S. has permanently contaminated the global atmosphere with radioactive pollution having a half-life of 4.5 billion years. The U.S. has illegally conducted four nuclear wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and twice in Iraq since 1991, calling DU "conventional" weapons when in fact they are nuclear weapons. DU on the battlefield has three effects on living systems: it is a heavy metal "chemical" poison, a "radioactive" poison and has a "particulate" effect due to the very tiny size of the particles that are 0.1 micron and smaller. The blueprint for DU weaponry is a 1943 Manhattan Project memo to Gen. L. Groves that recommended development of radioactive materials as poison gas weapons - dirty bombs, dirty missiles and dirty bullets. DU weapons are very effective kinetic energy penetrators, but even more effective bioweapons since uranium has a strong chemical affinity for phosphate structures concentrated in DNA. DU is the Trojan Horse of nuclear war - it keeps giving and keeps killing. There is no way to clean it up, and no way to turn it off because it continues to decay into other radioactive isotopes in over 20 steps. Terry Jemison at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs stated in August 2004 that over 518,000 Gulf-era veterans (14-year period) are now on medical disability, and that 7,039 were wounded on the battlefield in that same period. Over 500,000 U.S. veterans are homeless. In some studies of soldiers who had normal babies before the war, 67 percent of the post-war babies are born with severe birth defects - missing brains, eyes, organs, legs and arms, and blood diseases. In southern Iraq, scientists are reporting five times higher levels of gamma radiation in the air, which increases the radioactive body burden daily of inhabitants. In fact, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan are uninhabitable. Cancer starts with one alpha particle under the right conditions. One gram of DU is 1/20th of a cubic centimeter and releases 12,000 alpha particles per second. Before my grandfather died, he told me that his generation had made a mess of this planet. I wonder what he would say to me now I would tell him to see "Beyond Treason" (www.beyondtreason.com), a new documentary about the history of treason by the U.S. government against our own troops: Atomic veterans, MK-Ultra, Agent Orange and DU. After Vietnam, Henry Kissinger said, "Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. . ." (from Chapter 5 in the "Final Days" by Woodward and Bernstein). By Leuren Moret *************Leuren Moret is an international radiation specialist, with a B.S. degree in geology from University of California at Davis, a M.A. degree in Near Eastern studies from University of California at Berkeley and has done post-graduate work in the geosciences at UC-Davis. She is environmental commissioner for the City of Berkeley, Calif. 2005-11-08 10:51:13 Copyright © 1999-2005. "Kavkaz-Center" News Agency ***************************************************************** 47 KESQ: State investigating claims worker dumped radioactive material in Richmond NewsChannel 3 Palm Springs, CA: November 8, 2005 RICHMOND, Calif. State regulators are investigating claims by a former groundskeeper that he dumped barrels of radioactive material at a waterfront landfill in Richmond 40 years ago. The state Department of Toxic Substance Control says a marshy area where the former worker says he buried 55-gallon drums containing an ore-like material will be excavated and tested. The tests come after Rick Alcaraz told department officials in June that when he worked at U-C Berkeley's Richmond Field Station in the 1960s he was sometimes sent to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories to collect metal drums and bury them in the marshland. Laboratory officials say they have no record of anything being dumped in the area. Tests conducted in September found no indication of radioactivity on the surface. But readings taken last month with a magnetometer indicated there were metal objects several feet below the surface. Contra Costa Times Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All ***************************************************************** 48 Las Vegas SUN: Lawmakers cut funding for Yucca Mountain to $450 million in 2006 November 07, 2005 By ERICA WERNER ASSOCIATED PRESS Lawmakers cut funding for Yucca Mountain to $450 million in 2006 WASHINGTON (AP) - Lawmakers agreed Monday to cut 2006 spending for Yucca Mountain well below past-year levels and President Bush's budget request, reflecting the faltering prospects for locating the nation's nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert. House and Senate negotiators also ditched a House plan to supplement Yucca Mountain with interim storage sites for nuclear waste, settling instead on spending $50 million to promote recycling spent nuclear fuel. In finishing work on a $30.5 billion bill to fund energy and water projects, lawmakers agreed to spend $450 million in 2006 on Yucca Mountain, the planned underground repository for 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste. The project's budget was $577 million in each of the past two years, and Bush asked for $650 million for the dump in his 2006 budget request. The final figure also was less than the House and the Senate agreed to separately earlier this year, but lawmakers and aides said delays on the project kept the number low. "No matter what side of Yucca you're on, the truth of the matter is Yucca is ... not on the schedule that even was predicted the last time. It's behind schedule," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee's energy and water subcommittee. "We think that this will keep what should be done on schedule," he told reporters. Two years ago, the Energy Department projected needing $1.2 billion for Yucca Mountain in 2006. That was when officials were hoping to quickly submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and open the dump by 2010. Since then, a series of setbacks - including a required rewrite of radiation safety standards - have slowed the project. Now it's not clear when the license application will be submitted, and the projected opening date has slipped to 2012, at the earliest. "While this funding decision may force us to go at a slower pace, it will not deter us from our principles of using sound science to develop a high-quality license application and a disposal facility that is safe and reliable to operate," Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has opposed locating the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, said the project is "fraught with inadequate science and insidious mismanagement." "The project is never going to open and each year we grow closer to killing it," he said. Lawmakers deleted a House proposal to spend $10 million for the Energy Department to produce a plan for temporary aboveground storage for spent reactor fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. Instead the bill contains $50 million for spent fuel recycling, including $20 million for states or localities to compete to host a recycling facility and $30 million for research and other work. The bill, expected to be approved later this week by the full House and Senate, also: -Meets Bush's $337 million budget request for the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons lab in California. Domenici had sought to slash construction funding for the project, a giant laser being built to simulate the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. Already $2.8 billion has been spent on it. On the Net: Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 49 Daily Sentinel: Cotter Corp. closes six Western Slope uranium mines By By DON MELVIN Cox News Service Monday, November 07, 2005 By BOB KRETSCHMAN Cotter Corp. closed six uranium mines in the Uravan area last week and laid off 49 workers, company officials said. The company also gave an additional 78 workers their 60-day notice at Cotters ore-processing mill in Cañon City, said Jerry Powers, the companys manager of administration. The 49 people laid off in western Colorado included miners and support staff, said Glen Williams, manager of mining for Cotter Corp.s operations in Nucla. They were offered severance packages. Cotter Corp.s decision to close its mines and scale back its mill operations is the result of the companys plan to revamp its operation in order to process uranium and vanadium ore more efficiently, Powers said. The mill is designed to operate efficiently at a certain production level, and the amount of available ore isnt adequate to reach that operational level, he said. With the current number of mines and production from the Western Slope mines, we could not get that much ore through the mill, Powers said. Williams said the six underground mines closed last week are the JD-6, JD-7, JD-8, JD-9, SR-11, and SM-18, all of which are in Colorado. They were in various stages of production and development, he said. A Cotter-owned limestone mine near La Sal, Utah, will remain in operation. We were shipping about 1,000 tons a week over to Cañon City to the mill over there, he said. Miners at the now-closed mines lived not only in Montrose Countys West End, but in places as far away as Grand Junction, Montrose, Dove Creek and Cortez, Williams said. Another factor that contributed to Cotters decision is the volatility of vanadium prices, Powers said. Uranium and vanadium occur together, and western Colorado ore generally contains more vanadium than uranium, he said. The economics are good for us to recover both uranium and vanadium, Powers said. However, he noted, vanadium prices are very volatile compared to uranium. A resurgence of interest in nuclear power around the world has pushed up the price of uranium, which is used to fuel nuclear power plants, to about $33 per pound, and the price is relatively stable, he said. But vanadium prices have ranged from about $2 per pound to $26 per pound in recent years. Vanadiums main use is to harden and strengthen steel. Powers said that during the next 60 days, the Cañon City mill will operate around the clock to process remaining ore, and company officials will look for ways to improve mill processes, Powers said. Cotter Corp. also plans to continue shopping for additional mining leases in western Colorado. That would be key to getting a larger supply of ore for the mill, Powers said. Sixteen people remain working for Cotter in Western Colorado, Williams said, and theyre maintaining the mines and working on other administrative duties. Were keeping all the mines maintained, and theyll be ready for production again, Powers said. Richard Cherry, president of Cotter Corp., said in a statement that he is hopeful production will resume after the company revamps its operations. Recent trials to increase mining and processing output from Colorado ores is showing promise but cannot be implemented in the current production environment, Cherrys statement said. We hope that as we move forward with these changes, the company will again be able to expand its employment at both locations (the mines and the mill). Bob Kretschman can be reached via e-mail at bkretschman@gjds.com. PARIS The French government, struggling to contain riots that are spreading across the country, announced that it would impose curfews and call up police reservists in an attempt to stem the worsening violence that Monday claimed its first fatality, a 61-year-old retired autoworker who died of wounds suffered in an attack last week. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin resisted calls to call up the army to quell the riots, but he promised that the government would take the necessary measures to re-establish order very quickly throughout France. Violence spread Monday to nearly 300 towns across France and threatened to spill elsewhere in Europe in a rampage being viewed by many as a plea for attention from a neglected and embittered ethnic underclass. The mayhem, in which nearly 5,000 cars have been torched over the past 12 days, is being carried out largely by the children of immigrants, young people who are unemployed and feel marginalized by French society. Many, but not all, are Muslims. Islam is Frances second-largest religion and Muslims make up as much as 10 percent of the population. Most of the young generation doesnt have jobs, said Nadim Younas, 39, a Parisian sign-painter of Pakistani descent. They are standing around here. They have drugs. When they are not busy, the devil is always there. Since the riots broke out on Oct. 27, 1,206 people have been arrested, French television reported. But the violence shows no signs of abating. Officials and observers in many other European countries fear the conflagration in France could spread to their disaffected populations, as well. This is something that should concern all European cities, said Dick Leurdijk, an expert on Europe at the Clingendael Institute of foreign policy in the Netherlands. Inter-ethnic violence has recently affected various countries, including Britain and the Netherlands, and Leurdijk said he expects the situation to get worse. Outside France, attacks thought to be the work of youths copying their French counterparts took place in Brussels and Berlin and were being investigated by police. Five cars were torched outside the main train station in Brussels and cars were also burned in the German capital. The U.S. embassy in Paris issued a warning to Americans traveling in France to be cautious following the violence Sunday night the worst yet in the nearly two weeks of rioting. More than 1,000 cars were torched and 36 police were injured. In many ways, Europe is reaping the whirlwind of history. The years since World War II, and particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, saw a major migration into Europe. In part, the newcomers came as temporary workers to rebuild a continent left devastated and bereft of many of its young men. These included the Turkish guest workers who flooded into Germany to rebuild shattered cities and people from the Indian subcontinent who moved to northern England to work the factories. Decolonization propelled the migration, as well, with people from former North African colonies such as Algeria and Morocco, for example, moving to France. Because the guest workers were assumed to be temporary and assumed themselves that their stay would be limited neither government officials nor the guest workers themselves made strong efforts to integrate the newcomers into the host countries. Many Turks have lived in Berlin for 40 years without learning German. The same is true of many Pakistanis in Britain. But for many, the situation did not turn out to be temporary at all. Hundreds of thousands of the guest workers stayed, as did former colonial subjects who came initially for education. While members of that first generation live somewhat contentedly in their ethnic neighborhoods, often their children and grandchildren feel alienated at home neither in the land of their parents nor the land of their birth. Massoud Shadjareh, the chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission in Britain, said in a recent interview that immigrants tend to compare their circumstances with those of people back in their home countries, a comparison that makes them feel lucky. But members of the second generation, he said, compare their circumstances with others born where they were born, whether France, Britain, the Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe. And that comparison can leave them feeling cheated. The riots in France began on Oct. 27 after two Muslim youths in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, reportedly fleeing police, took refuge in a power plant and were electrocuted. The anger was inflamed when police set off tear gas near a mosque, and when the French interior minister and prospective presidential candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, referred to the rioters as scum. The causes of the anger run deep. According to reports, half the suburbs inhabitants are under age 20, unemployment is above 40 percent and identity checks and police harassment are common. Housing is dilapidated. And a recent study showed that a student with a foreign last name has 6 times less chance to get a job interview than a student bearing a French name. In comments on TF1 television, Villepin said Monday that France must offer them hope and a future. But he also alleged that organized criminal gangs are backing the violence and he did not rule out the possibility that Islamic extremists are involved. The riots have spread across the country from north to south and east to west to Toulouse, Nice, Rennes, Lille, and Saint Etienne, among other cities. There have been recent incidents of violence, and signs of a clash of cultures, in other European cities, as well. Most notably, three British citizens of Pakistani descent and one of Jamaican descent allegedly perpetrated the July 7 bombings of the London transportation system, which killed 52 people besides the four bombers. And rioting flared last month in Birmingham, England, sparked by tensions between members of the Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities over the alleged rape of a 14-year-old black girl by an Asian man. Last year, Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, who made a film critical of Islamic culture, was stabbed and shot dead in Amsterdam, allegedly by a man with joint Dutch and Moroccan nationality, police said. A number of mosques were desecrated in revenge. Many people in the Netherlands say that Muslim values conflict with Dutch values of respect for women and tolerance of homosexuals, for example - and that, as Dutch people, the one thing they wont tolerate in their country is intolerance. French officials have said that residents of France must accept the French value of secularism. Last year, the wearing of headscarves or other religious clothing in school was banned. Just last week in Denmark, thousands of Muslims - unimpressed by defenses of Danish value of freedom of expression - took to the streets to protest the publication of unflattering cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammad. Europe prides itself on having a worldly and enlightened outlook. But some people are now suggesting, perhaps surprisingly, that the continent should take lessons from the United States. Abdelkarim Carrasco, a leader of Spains estimated 1 million-member Muslim community, told the Associated Press that the French experience poses a key test for Europe. Either Europe develops and supports the idea of a mixed culture, or Europe has no future, he said. Europe has to learn from what the United States has done. It is a country that has taken in people from all over the world. Don Melvins e-mail address is dmelvin(at)coxnews.com Cox Newspapers, L.P. - The Daily Sentinel - Our Partners ***************************************************************** 50 AU ABC: Senator dismisses fears over NT nuclear dump November 2005. 13:10 (ACDT)Tuesday, 8 November 2005. 10:10 (AWST) CLP Senator Nigel Scullion says traditional owners in central Australia have unreasonable fears about a nuclear waste dump bordering their land. Legislation forcing a dump on the Territory was introduced into the Senate yesterday but is unlikely to be debated until later in the year. A delegation of traditional owners from central Australia has been in Canberra this week lobbying senators to vote against the Bill. Senator Scullion says he will meet with the delegation but he is yet to see any evidence that a waste facility is not safe. "People are still peddling to a fairly naive community, complete evil misinformation to make people so afraid - anybody that suggests that this is at all dangerous to anything it is entirely wrong," he said. But delegation member William Tilmouth says traditional owners still believe nuclear waste is dangerous and their opposition to the dump is unchanged. "They are scared of the poisoning of the land, the water areas, the animals that live within that land and bush tucker," he said. ***************************************************************** 51 AU ABC: NT nuclear dump debate adjourned November 2005. 20:44 (ACDT)Tuesday, 8 November 2005. 17:44 (AWST) Debate in the Senate over the Federal Government's nuclear dump legislation has been adjourned until tomorrow. The Government's Radioactive Waste Management Bill seeks to locate a nuclear waste facility in the Northern Territory. Labor Senator Trish Crossin today tabled a motion to refer the bill to a Senate committee for further scrutiny, delaying the passage of the legislation. She says she negotiated with the Government for the committee to report back in December, leaving two days to debate the laws before Christmas. But she told the Senate today she was disappointed to learn the Government had circulated an amendment bringing forward the reporting date to November. "This is legislation that is going to be steamrolled through this chamber and this Parliament, just like the dump's going to be steamrolled on Territorians," she said. It is unclear whether the Government will pursue the shortened time frame. ***************************************************************** 52 reviewjournal.com: Lawmakers move to cut funding for Yucca Mountain Nov. 08, 2005 Legislators work on bill for energy and water projects By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers in Congress on Monday moved to cut spending for Yucca Mountain while adding money to next year's budget to explore other strategies to manage nuclear waste. Negotiators approved $450 million for a scaled back 2006 work plan on the Nevada waste repository, substantially less than the $651 million the Bush administration had requested at the beginning of the year. At the same time, the Energy Department will be directed to spend $50 million on a new push into nuclear waste reprocessing, technology that scientists say holds promise over time to wring more use out of spent nuclear fuel rods while compressing the amounts of material that would require disposal. The bill, which sets spending for the Energy Department and a handful of other agencies for 2006, reflects growing thinking in Congress that with the Yucca repository mired in delay, policy makers should see whether emerging nuclear waste management techniques might be worked into the mix, said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., one of its authors. "No matter what side of Yucca you are on, the matter is that Yucca is not moving, its not on a schedule," Domenici said. The Department of Energy has postponed 1998 and 2010 repository opening dates, and is in the process of a design and management revamp with no new set deadlines. Senators and Energy Department officials say other nuclear waste initiatives -- yet to be detailed -- are being considered at the White House. DOE will be given money to keep the Yucca project alive and moving forward, but "there's no need to fund it at an accelerated pace while we are looking at the big picture," Domenici said. Details of the spending bill still were being written late Monday. Senate aides said it will include $30 million for a push to develop advanced technologies to "recycle" nuclear waste into further usable reactor fuel, with only smaller amounts needed to be disposed at a repository. Another $20 million will be set aside for grants of $5 million apiece. The money would be given to communities interested in hosting a nuclear waste reprocessing factory. The Energy Department had no immediate response to the reprocessing initiative, spokesman Craig Stevens said. As for the spending cut, Stevens said the allocation "may force us to go at a slower pace." He said he did not know whether layoffs may result. Contractors were told this summer to prepare for cuts in the range of 30 percent. Since the Bush budget was sent to Congress in February, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and acting Yucca program director Paul Golan have initiated changes that Stevens said will increase efficiencies. "This gives us plenty of money to do the work we need to do in the entire picture of what the secretary and (Golan) had been looking at doing," Stevens said. Bob Loux, a Nevada official who monitors Yucca Mountain, said the reduced spending "clearly reflects a lack of confidence by Congress that (the Energy Department) is doing anything. "None of this reprocessing talk would be coming along if Yucca Mountain was going well," Loux said. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a leading critic of the Yucca project, said he had mixed feelings about the reprocessing initiative. Believing nuclear waste is dangerous to transport, Reid has promoted the idea of keeping the highly radioactive material stored at commercial power plants. But Reid said Congress is realizing that something has to be done "to change the dynamic surrounding the failed Yucca Mountain project." "I think onsite storage is a better, safer answer but I applaud my colleagues for being willing to try something different," Reid said. The Yucca program was one of the big ticket items in a $30.5 billion spending bill for energy and water projects that appropriations negotiators completed on Monday and sent to the House and Senate for final votes later this week. Written in part by Reid, a senior Appropriations Committee member, the bill also contains $285 million in earmarked spending for projects in Nevada. [Yucca Mountain] More about Yucca Mountain BILL WILL FUND ENERGY AND WATER PROJECTS House and Senate negotiators completed work Monday on a $30.5 billion fiscal 2006 energy and water project spending bill, preparing it for final votes later this week. The bill contains more than $285 million in earmarked spending for Nevada. Among the projects that are funded: $17 million for ongoing Tropicana and Flamingo wash flood controls. $3.4 million for Southern Nevada water recycling. $15.7 million for hydrogen fuel research at UNLV and UNR. $2 million for state of Nevada oversight of Yucca Mountain. $7.5 million for Nevada counties to monitor Yucca Mountain. $7.5 million for road upgrades at the Nevada Test Site. $4 million for a fiber optic link between Nevada Test Site and Creech Air Force Base. $20 million for security upgrades at Nevada Test Site. $5 million for advanced nuclear fuel research at UNLV. $4 million to replace water storage tanks at Nevada Test Site. --- Source: Office of Sen. Harry Reid Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2005 Stephens Media GroupPrivacy Statement ***************************************************************** 53 Las Vegas SUN: Yucca dump may be losing support Today: November 08, 2005 at 8:44:56 PST Latest budget cuts show some are rethinking nuke dump By Benjamin Grove Sun Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- The slashed Yucca Mountain budget could be the latest example of the proposed nuclear waste repository steadily losing steam and favor. The $450 million budget is "just barely enough to keep it alive," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a Yucca supporter and member of the panel that met Monday to finalize a broader energy and water projects spending bill. The Yucca budget was trimmed as Congress scrambles to make spending cuts in a tight budget year, and as lawmakers rethink whether permanent burial in a geologic repository is the nation's best nuclear waste strategy. Domenici said the Yucca budget cut was not the beginning of the end for Yucca, but he hinted that there would be soul-searching in Congress over the nation's nuclear waste policy, which now focuses squarely on Yucca. "It's a beginning of a re-evaluation of a bigger policy, which will include Yucca," he said. The amount approved is a significant decrease from what was requested -- President Bush asked for $651 million, and the Senate approved $577 million. The program has been around $570 million in each of the last two years. "This is pretty significant," said Michele Boyd, an analyst for Public Citizen, which opposes Yucca. "It's a pretty clear acknowledgement that the Yucca Mountain program is in deep trouble." Yucca critics noted that the House-Senate panel earmarked $50 million to pursue the establishment of a waste reprocessing, or recycling, plant. Waste recycling ultimately could reduce the amount of radioactive material destined for an underground geologic repository such as the one proposed at Yucca. That earmark is being seen by critics as a tacit acknowledgement by Congress that a revamped nuclear waste policy is needed. "It really is telling," Tessa Hafen, Sen. Harry Reid's spokeswoman, said. "It's an admission that something needs to be done differently." Critics say Yucca has lost momentum in both Congress, where lawmakers are mulling Yucca alternatives, and inside the Energy Department, which appears to be retooling its Yucca program. In addition to ongoing legal snares and an e-mail controversy that challenged whether Yucca scientific information was falsified, critics point to other evidence: ** Domenici, traditionally a leading Yucca advocate, appears to have cooled in his enthusiasm for Yucca. Last month Domenici cryptically said Yucca "must remain alive," but then added, "I didn't say what it (Yucca) should be." In September, longtime Yucca advocate Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, publicly scrapped his support for Yucca, saying the underground repository no longer made sense. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has said other lawmakers are quietly saying the same thing this year, calling it a "dirty little secret" in Congress that Yucca is dead. ** The Energy Department appears to be looking for ways to reinvigorate the delay-plagued Yucca program. On Oct. 25 the department issued a directive that would require waste to be shipped to Yucca in a standardized container capable of storing waste above-ground. The department denied that the move was a step away from Yucca and toward storing waste at interim, above-ground sites. But Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman also has said no final decisions have been made about the potential for establishing interim sites. ** Energy industry trade publications have been speculating that Domenici and Reid, the Senate minority leader, are quietly negotiating plans for a major shift in waste policy away from Yucca, although staffers for both senators downplay the reports. Domenici told the trade publication Energy Washington Week that he believes the Bush administration is also at work on a new waste strategy. But Energy Department officials and Yucca advocates in Congress and in the nuclear industry insist that Yucca is on track -- and as vital as ever. "There are a lot of demands for funding in Congress this year," said Jason Bohne, spokesman for top Yucca contractor Bechtel. "To make a unilateral statement that a cut means a loss of support (for Yucca), I'm not sure that's fair." Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said the budget cut would "slow" the project, but he declined to say if any jobs would be cut. Stevens sharply denied charges that Yucca is losing favor in Congress, adding that the department hopes that lawmakers will "continue to look favorably" on Yucca. "It allows us to do what we need to do," Stevens said of the $450 million. "A half a billion dollars is not chump change. It's a significant investment." Since 1983, the nation's waste policy has been centered on constructing a repository, and nuclear power officials are not about to abandon Yucca just because it has been slowed by years of delay, budget cuts and controversy. Yucca advocates say the dump site is important to an ambitious industry plan to construct a new generation of U.S. nuclear power plants to feed the nation's growing demand for electricity. Nuclear industry officials strongly oppose the proposal by Nevada lawmakers that waste be left on site at power plants. That was never a workable long-term solution, industry officials say. And they say that recycling waste is not an alternative to Yucca because the technology would not erase the need for a geologic repository. The administration is committed to both Yucca and recycling, Bodman said in a speech Monday at the Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference in Washington. "Solving the problem of how to store spent fuel will reap tremendous benefits for America's future and will help set the stage for an expansion of nuclear power," Bodman said in prepared remarks. "And permanent geological storage at Yucca Mountain offers the safest, most secure solution for dealing with this challenge." He said that pursuing recycling technology "must be considered not just a worthwhile, but necessary, goal." Benjamin Grove can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at grove@lasvegassun.com. All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 54 FT.com: Fallout from radioactive leak hits nuclear waste strategy Published: November 8 2005 21:29 | Last updated: November 8 2005 21:29 [uk nuclear] News that the troubled Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield will not reopen until next summer at the earliest raises important questions over the government’s strategy to deal with nuclear waste. The plant was shut earlier this year after the discovery of a leak of 20 tonnes of radioactive material in April. The leak occurred inside the plant’s containment shell and British Nuclear Group, the company that operates the site in Cumbria, said it posed no hazard to the public. But it was nevertheless classified as a “major incident” by the International Atomic Energy Authority, the UN’s nuclear watchdog. BNG said it could still meet all of Thorp’s existing contracts for reprocessing spent fuel by its current 2010 deadline – provided the plant reopened next year. But the process will not be straight forward and could take much longer. BNG has yet to submit its “safety case” to the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, the safety regulator, setting out how it plans to prevent the problems recurring. Officials said the inspectorate would probably wish to examine the case for several months before giving the company permission to reopen the works. An extended or permanent shutdown of the Thorp plant could throw the government’s strategy to deal with Britain’s legacy of nuclear waste into disarray, as well as complicate the planned sale of BNG. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the government agency that now owns Thorp, would have to figure out what to do with the waste from nuclear reactors currently due for reprocessing, as well as waste coming from other countries for reprocessing at Sellafield. Closure of the plant would also deprive the NDA of hundreds of millions of pounds a year that were to go towards cleaning up the country’s civil nuclear sites. This year, the NDA was expecting just less than ÂŁ600m in revenues from Thorp, although it has been able to offset the majority of the losses. If Thorp closed for good, however, the NDA would have to find a replacement for the ÂŁ5.1bn expected from reprocessing at Thorp by 2010. In spite of the question marks over Thorp’s future, BNG is still seeking additional contracts to reprocess spent fuel from countries such as Japan. “It’s a possibility,” said Mike Parker, chief executive of British Nuclear Fuels, BNG’s parent. “If there are any opportunities coming along, we’ll be presenting them to the NDA.” However, experts said that it was unlikely that the NDA would consider any contracts that would bring more foreign waste to Britain until the government had settled on a strategy to dispose of its own existing stock. The committee on radioactive waste management is due to make a recommendation to government in summer 2006. “Nobody’s really going to look at [new contracts] until the . . . review comes in next July,” said Fiona Reilly, co-chair of the nuclear group at Norton Rose, the law firm. An internal inquiry by British Nuclear Fuels found that the leak of radioactive material had gone unnoticed for up to nine months and blamed “complacency” by plant staff. Lawrie Haynes, chief executive of BNG, said he accepted that the planned sale of the company could not be completed until a report by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate into the leak was published. The regulator, whose report is expected “in a matter of weeks”, could decide to prosecute BNG for safety violations or impose enforcement conditions, officials said. The NDA said it was “working closely with BNG to scrutinise their engineering options for a restart” of Thorp and would not be drawn on the consequences of a permanent shutdown. “Until we have seen the NII’s report and had time to digest its implications, we are not in a position to prejudge [its contents],” it said. © Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2005. "FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times. ***************************************************************** 55 KDM: Nuclear waste storage could be an opportunity - Canfield Kenora Daily Miner November 8, 2005 Kenora, ON P9N 3X7 Phone: (807) 468-5555 Fax: (807) 468-4318 In spite of the political ramifications, Kenora’s mayor won’t dismiss at least looking at the possibility of hosting a nuclear waste storage facility deep within the Canadian Shield near the city. By Dan Gauthier Miner and News Tuesday November 08, 2005In spite of the political ramifications, Kenora’s mayor won’t dismiss at least looking at the possibility of hosting a nuclear waste storage facility deep within the Canadian Shield near the city. “If I wanted to say something politically positive and give myself some marks I would say ‘They are not going to use Northwestern Ontario as a nuclear dump’,” said Mayor Dave Canfield Friday. “But that would be, in my mind, irresponsible because at this point in time, nobody’s looking at making Northwestern Ontario a nuclear dump.” Canfield was responding to questions about the Kenora area being a possible nuclear waste storage site, following a report presented to the federal government by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization on Thursday. The report and its recommendations for storing Canada’s nuclear waste in a single central location, was presented to federal Minister of Natural Resources John McCallum, who must now decide on the appropriate approach. After a comprehensive three-year study that engaged specialists, stakeholders and citizens through public open houses, including sessions held in Kenora last year, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization recommended an “adaptive phased management” approach for the long-term care of used nuclear fuel. Adaptive phased management includes a technical method that would be implemented in stages with the end goal of centralizing all of Canada’s used nuclear fuel in one location. The nuclear waste would be isolated and contained deep underground in a suitable rock formation in the Canadian Shield. The plan also calls for opportunities to incorporate new social learning and technological innovation as it is implemented. At each stage, options, including a contingency for temporary shallow underground storage, can be evaluated and the plan modified before proceeding. The final deep geological storage facility would not be built for about 60 years, so a future society would decide whether there is sufficient confidence in the safety of the approach to eventually seal and backfill the repository. Kenora MP Roger Valley said while science may claim safe storage of nuclear waste is possible, he recalled the concerns of Dryden residents, while he was mayor there in 1997, with the dangers of transporting the hazardous material to the storage site. However, he encouraged all residents to look at all the information provided and not dismiss the possibility. He said it is ultimately up to the communities themselves and he wouldn’t stand in their way should they choose to be a storage site. “My job is to support communities or individual organizations if they want to start a project,” said Valley. “If a community identifies this as something they want to explore, it’s my job to support them.” Canfield said he is “very keen” to watch the progress of this plan, as well as the technological advances that come for storing nuclear waste. “I think technology is going to find a way of dealing with (nuclear waste),” said Canfield. “I’ve always thought that. It’s just a matter of time.” Regardless, he said residents in the communities in the area, like Kenora, will always have the final say whether or not they want nuclear waste stored here. “If it’s something that can be safe and can be an opportunity, then it’s something I think anybody would have to look at,” said Canfield, noting nuclear energy is the way of the future versus the typical use of fossil fuels. “I don’t think it’s something that is going away.” Choosing a Way Forward, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s final study report, is available for download at www.nwmo.ca or in hard copy by contacting them by e-mail at info@nwmo.ca. © 2005 Kenora Daily Miner and News ***************************************************************** 56 Salt Lake Tribune: Utah's delegation optimistic on plan to block nuke dump Article Last Updated: 11/08/2005 01:08:39 AM By Robert Gehrke and Judy Fahys The Salt Lake Tribune WASHINGTON - One of Utah's best options for blocking a nuclear waste dump on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation will probably not be part of a Defense Department policy bill before the Senate this week. But Utah's delegation says the chances for passage of the Cedar Mountain Wilderness provision, which would block rail access to the reservation, are the best they have ever been. The Cedar Mountain language would create a new wilderness area near the reservation, preventing the Bureau of Land Management from approving a rail line to deliver waste to the dump proposed by Private Fuel Storage, a group of electric utilities that wants to store 44,000 tons of waste at the site. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, got the wilderness designation included in the House version of a Defense Department policy bill passed earlier this year. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said efforts to get similar language included in the Senate, which is considering the bill this week, while once promising, hit obstacles. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said there was opposition from some in both parties who thought it was a bad way to create wilderness. An effort to try to add Cedar Mountain on the floor could have backfired, so the decision was made to try to persuade senators to accept the House language when House and Senate members meet later to work out differences in the legislation. As it stands, Bishop said, "we are in the strongest position we've ever been in with this language since [former Rep.] Jim Hansen came up with this idea." Bennett said Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner has been open to the Utah delegation's efforts, but the ranking Democrat on the committee, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., opposes the wilderness designation. Two of the utilities that are partners in PFS operate in Michigan. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who had opposed Cedar Mountain in the past, is not a factor. "I would not use the word helpful, but he has not been a hindrance," Bishop said. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., also has had concerns addressed. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, whose former staffer is now a lobbyist for PFS, remains one of the staunchest opponents of the Utah effort. One other possible stumbling block: The White House has threatened to veto the Pentagon bill if the final version includes language proposed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., prohibiting torture of enemy combatants. The bid to create a wilderness area surrounding the Skull Valley reservation is part of a multipronged attack on the waste dump. The state has also asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to reconsider a license it approved for the PFS facility in September. Utah attorneys argue the nuclear waste containers that would be used at the PFS site would not be allowed at a proposed permanent dump at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The state raised a similar point last fall, but was rejected by the NRC. However, last month, the Energy Department announced a new strategy for Yucca Mountain that Utah's attorneys say changes the equation. Revisiting the container compatibility issue could yield a different result, the state argued. Both PFS and the NRC staff are expected to argue against the state's request. --- Tribune reporter Thomas Burr contributed to this story. © Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 57 The Santa Fe New Mexican: Decision looms on lab contract Tue Nov 8, 2005 4:55 pm The Associated Press | WASHINGTON  The government office overseeing the nations nuclear-weapons complex is nearing its Dec. 1 deadline to decide which of two teams will get the $79 million-a-year contract to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory . The contenders include a group headed by the University of California  which has managed the lab since it was created during World War II  and Bechtel Corp., and another team comprised of Lockheed Martin and the University of Texas. As they await the decision, both teams are rushing to make sure everythings ready in case they win. Things are very hectic here, said Don Carson, a spokesman for the UT/Lockheed group. Everybodys trying to make sure weve dotted all the Is and crossed all the Ts to make sure weve done all the things we need to do. Both teams submitted their bids in July, then gave oral presentations in August. So far, neither has been called back to answer more questions. The bids contain plans for how they will encourage science and manage safety and security. The National Nuclear Security Administration says it is evaluating the teams strengths and weaknesses and will score each according to a set of criteria. After the government awards the contract, there will be a six-month transition period so the new managers can observe the labs operations before taking over. Further details of the bids or the evaluation process have been closely guarded secrets. Many lawmakers hope the change will stop the run of scandals and safety concerns that have plagued Los Alamos in recent years. But meanwhile, the decision is anxiously awaited in Los Alamos, where life revolves around the lab at which scientists secretly developed the worlds first atomic bomb. Some say life has been put on hold. Alex Arevalo, acting manager of Prudential Los Alamos Realty, said hes noticed that some people are hesitant to buy property. I joked about people being deer in the headlights, not knowing what to do until the contract is announced in December, he said. Privacy Policy | ©2005, Santa Fe New Mexican, all rights ***************************************************************** 58 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Employees evacuated from Idaho nuclear lab after propane leak [seattlepi.com] Tuesday, November 8, 2005 · Last updated 4:48 p.m. PT By CHRISTOPHER SMITH ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER BOISE, Idaho -- Crews fixed a leaky propane line in a radioacive waste treatment plant on the federal Idaho National Laboratory site after approximately 650 employees were evacuated Tuesday. No injuries were reported and officials said there was never a chance the incident could lead to a radiation release. After spending most of the day trying to determine the source of the leak in the piping assembly that delivers fuel to the building's space heating system from a pair of external 1,000-gallon propane tanks, repair crews were able to stop the leak and return the facility 65 miles northwest of Idaho Falls to normal operations. "They did seal it off, and are just monitoring now to make sure there is no reoccurence," said Tom McKay, a spokesman for CWI, the contractor for the Department of Energy's Idaho Cleanup Project at the eastern Idaho compound. "At this point in time, the next morning's shift is expected to report for work as scheduled." According to surveys of combustible levels of gas taken during the leak, no detectable readings of propane were found beyond 100 yards from the structure. Even if the propane had been accidentally ignited, officials said the resulting explosion would not have dispersed radioactive material into the atmosphere. The 177-acre Radioactive Waste Management Complex handles the cleanup of buried Cold War-era defense nuclear waste and low-level radioactive waste, but the excavated radioactive material is isolated from the facility where the propane leak was discovered. "The chances of a radiological episode are none whatsoever," said Ray Grant of the Idaho Cleanup Project. [advertising] The leak occurred in a pipe connecting two 1,000-gallon propane tanks that fuel the space heating system inside the Accelerated Retrieval Project facility in the southwestern corner of the 890-square-mile federal research area. Officials initially thought one of the tanks had been filled beyond capacity and had begun venting excess propane into the air. "It turned out to be more serious than we first believed," said McKay. The first attempt Tuesday afternoon to repair the leaking pipe failed, so crews withdrew from the building and undertook a second attempt that shut off the gas leak that succeeded shortly before 5 p.m. MST. Investigators were working Tuesday night to determine the cause of the leak. The 350 employees at the Accelerated Retrieval Project facility were evacuated from the building to a parking lot about 500 yards away when the leak was first discovered early Tuesday. An additional 300 employees from the nearby Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project facility were also evacuated to the parking lot. Around noon, officials decided to send all but the emergency response crews home for the day. "It just basically made no sense to have them standing around while the investigation of the leak was under way," Grant said. The evening shift of employees at the waste management complex was told not to report for work Tuesday night. The Idaho Cleanup Project is removing tons of plutonium-contaminated debris and other radioactive waste from pits and trenches and shipping it to a permanent underground repository in New Mexico. The propane leak was discovered a day after a conference committee approved a fiscal 2006 spending bill expected to pass both houses of Congress this week giving INL a $50 million increase in funding above President Bush's initial $510 million request for the Idaho site. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, a member of the House and Senate conference committee that hammered out details of the final spending bill, said INL's good safety record and reputation for security have been factors in the willingness of Congress to steer more projects to the Idaho site. "I think the safety record at INL has been fantastic and when problems do come up as this one did with the propane leak, they are professionals and handle things as they should," said Simpson. Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 448-8000 ©1996-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer ***************************************************************** 59 ABQJOURNAL: Decision Looms on Los Alamos Nuclear Lab Contract ABQjournal.com the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. Monday, November 07, 2005 Albuquerque Journal--> By Jennifer Talhelm/ Associated Press WASHINGTON — The government office overseeing the nation's nuclear weapons complex is nearing its Dec. 1 deadline to decide which of two teams will get the $79 million-a-year contract to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory. The contenders include a group headed by the University of California — which has managed the lab since it was created during World War II — and Bechtel Corp., and another team comprised of Lockheed Martin and the University of Texas. As they await the decision, both teams are rushing to make sure everything's ready in case they win. "Things are very hectic here,'' said Don Carson, a spokesman for the UT/Lockheed group. "Everybody's trying to make sure we've dotted all the 'I's' and crossed all the 'T's' to make sure we've done all the things we need to do.'' Both teams submitted their bids in July, then gave oral presentations in August. So far, neither has been called back to answer more questions. The bids contain plans for how they will encourage science and manage safety and security. The National Nuclear Security Administration says it is evaluating the teams' strengths and weaknesses and will score each according to a set of criteria. After the government awards the contract, there will be a six-month transition period so the new managers can observe the lab's operations before taking over. Further details of the bids or the evaluation process have been closely guarded secrets. Many lawmakers hope the change will stop the run of scandals and safety concerns that have plagued Los Alamos in recent years. But meanwhile, the decision is anxiously awaited in Los Alamos, a remote town at the top of a mesa where life revolves around the lab at which scientists secretly developed the world's first atomic bomb. Some say life has been put on hold. Alex Arevalo, acting manager of Prudential Los Alamos Realty, said he's noticed that some people are hesitant to buy property. "I joked about people being deer in the headlights, not knowing what to do until the contract is announced in December,'' he said. Both sides have opened storefront offices in Los Alamos where employees and residents can ask questions about the teams' plans for the lab under the new contract. "Our concern is doing everything we can to prepare to minimize the level of anxiety that comes with change,'' said Michael Anastasio, who leads the University of California group. The UT/Lockheed team is preparing to open an office within the next week in Espańola, where many Los Alamos employees live. Rod Geer, a spokesman for the team, said an average of seven or eight residents, employees and retirees visit the Los Alamos office each day. Some just pick up brochures, but others talk for hours about making sure the new managers will encourage the same level of science the lab has been respected for in the past 60 years. "The most important thing is to answer and listen,'' Geer said. "We have a pretty good idea of what they want to see stay ... and what they don't like.'' Copyright Albuquerque Journal Steve@abqjournal.com ***************************************************************** 60 DenverPost.com: Rocky Flats session spurs outrage Article Launched: 11/08/2005 01:00:00 AM The meeting with federal officials on payment of claims for toxic exposure, which required that all questions be written, leaves many former employees and their kin angry By Kim McGuire Denver Post Staff Writer Arvada - Dozens of disgruntled former Rocky Flats employees walked out of a town hall meeting Monday after officials with the U.S. Department of Labor insisted on taking only written questions about toxic-exposure claims before allowing them to speak. "This is a joke," said Kay Barker, whose husband, Larry, a former Rocky Flats worker, died of cancer in 1994. "This is an absolute joke." Several hundred workers showed up for the meeting, which focused on new rules governing a program designed to compensate people who were exposed to toxic substances. Unlike previous meetings, however, Labor officials declined to take verbal questions from the audience until the end of the two-hour meeting. The few who did speak out early - such as former Rocky Flats engineer Laura Schulz - were quickly handed a yellow index card and asked to submit their questions in writing. "I want to understand why I have this," said Schulz, waving her cane. "Or why I have this," she said, pointing to her oxygen tube. Labor officials said the meeting's format was designed to move it along more quickly so that all the workers' questions might be answered. Several of the written questions, however, repeated each other, while others contained very case-specific information. "If they can't tell me when we're going to get paid, there's no use in staying," said one former worker who declined to give his name. Before most of the workers left the meeting early, Labor officials went over the new details of the workers' compensation program, which were crafted in part to help expedite the payment process. In October 2004, the Labor Department took over administration of the nuclear workers' compensation programs after Congress lost patience with the Department of Energy, which had managed to pay only 31 claims in four years. Labor inherited more than 35,000 cases from the Energy Department and paid some of the easiest claims to process. "I would like to say on the outset that we've already been issuing payments in Colorado, particularly to Rocky Flats workers," said Rachel Leiton, branch chief for policy, regulations and procedures. To date, the department has paid $23 million in toxic-exposure claims, which includes $8.8 million for sick Rocky Flats workers and their families. Many workers were exposed to radioactive and toxic substances at the former nuclear bomb factory near Golden. Recognizing that many of the workers have terminal illnesses, the Labor Department has increased its staff in its regional offices in hopes of expediting the claims process, Leiton said. "As I indicated earlier, it is important for us to make sure we get to these claims that have been sitting for a very long time," she said. Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-820-1240 or kmcguire@denverpost.com. All contents Copyright 2005 The Denver Post or other copyright ***************************************************************** 61 DenverPost.com: Senate nixes benefit for speedy cleanup crew Article Launched: 11/08/2005 01:00:00 AM By Anne C. Mulkern Denver Post Staff Writer Washington - The U.S. Senate on Monday voted down an amendment from Colorado's two senators that would have provided $15 million in extended medical benefits for Rocky Flats cleanup workers. Some employees lost out on retirement medical coverage when they finished the cleanup project at the former nuclear weapons plant 15 months ahead of schedule. Senators voted 38 for and 53 against the amendment to a bill providing funding to the Defense Department. About 75 workers at the site became ineligible for benefits because they finished the cleanup a year early. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., said that early cleanup saved taxpayers $500 million. "The senator is very disappointed," said Angela de Rocha, spokeswoman for Allard. "He felt like he fought the good fight." The Department of Energy had opposed the provision. Allard said workers such as Doug Woodard and Leo Chavez "now find themselves with either severely reduced benefits or no benefits at all." "Doug started work at Rocky Flats all the way back in 1982 and was responsible for monitoring radiation contamination at the site. He missed qualifying for medical benefits by less than two months," Allard said. "For Leo Chavez, who worked at Rocky Flats for 17 years, the Department of Energy's treatment was even worse. The Department of Energy thanked him for his service and showed him to the door six working days before he qualified for lifetime medical benefits." Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., co- sponsored the bill. "This amendment would have ensured that we didn't punish those who have served our nation well and faithfully, at significant sacrifice to themselves and their families," Salazar said. All contents Copyright 2005 The Denver Post or other copyright ***************************************************************** 62 lamonitor.com: DOE funding hammered out The Online News Source for Los Alamos ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor House and Senate conferees split the $1.5 billion difference between their respective energy and water appropriations bills, they reported Monday. The House went up $748 million to reach agreement on the $30.5 billion measure; the Senate came down $750 million. "There were significant differences between the House and Senate on this bill, but I believe we have come up with a package that will maintain key lab missions without personnel or facility disruptions," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM, chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee. "I want to be clear that our increased investments in science, nonproliferation, nuclear energy and the like will keep our labs strong. And when you consider the Homeland Security funding going to our labs, we are in good shape," he said. The House-passed cuts and Senate-approved increases revealed fundamental differences in the two bodies' approaches to funding the Department of Energy, which was cut by $179 million overall to reach the $24.3 billion recommended. The two houses of Congress must now endorse the agreement, before it is forwarded to the President for approval. "I am very pleased with the energy and water conference bill," said Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Robert Kuckuck in a prepared statement. "Sen. Domenici has once again helped secure the laboratory's position as a world leader in national security, science and technology." Key projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory met with mixed results. One winner, as expected: Environmental Cleanup at the laboratory will increase significantly, from about $80 million last year to $142.2 million in FY2006. Noting its importance to maintaining scientific integrity at the national laboratories, Domenici said the conferees had agreed to his effort to raise the Lab Directed Research and Development level from 6 percent up to 8 percent. This key item supports a variety of independent scientific projects, fosters recruitment and enables collaborations with many other institutions. Another installment in developing the proposed Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement facility was fully funded at $55 million. "It is obvious that as federal budgets continue to constrict, that we will be faced with more difficult choices on the direction of the labs and some projects related to ensuring the safety, reliability and future of our stockpile," Domenici said. "In that light, we've built in a number of reforms and directives to force DOE to take a critical look at projects like Yucca Mountain, DARHT, pit production and other ongoing projects." While the bill denies funding once again for construction of a modern pit facility, it instructs NNSA to improve the existing manufacturing capability at LANL, a move that nudges the laboratory closer to assuming a major long-term responsibility in that area. LANL's Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility won its budget request of $27 million, but the bill calls for an independent study by the JASONS research group, to see if the unfinished second axis is on budget and capable of providing its expected function. Gregg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, said he believes the hard decisions have been postponed for next year. "Sen. Domenici has succeeded in getting money to Los Alamos, but a price has been paid in overall coherence," he said. "Horsetrading has resulted in a fragmented approach to the program." In the broader weapons community, the bill restores full funding for Lawrence Livermore's National Ignition Facility, which Domenici had tried to cut. Domenici expressed his continuing doubts that the facility would meet future milestones. The bill also continued the declining fortunes of Yucca Mountain, now dipping to $500 million for the year, but including a $50 million fund to reduce the spent fuel bound for the repository by setting up a recycling plan and campaign to find local governmental entities who want to volunteer to accept a reprocessing facility. Despite the apparent resolution of budget uncertainties, LANL will continue to scrutinize its hiring activities through the current contract, which expires May 31. "The council will closely review and consider each proposed hiring action to insure that priority is given to hiring positions that are crucial to mission and science capabilities, safety and compliance needs and internal efficiencies," said James Rickman, a laboratory spokesman. "The hiring council will help insure that the lab maintains a stable workforce and a sound fiscal profile from now through the transition to a new prime contract." Also included in the bill, another $5 million will go to Los Alamos County to stabilize the airport landfill and $500,000 has been earmarked for Manhattan Project site preservation. © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************