***************************************************************** 01/12/06 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 14.10 ***************************************************************** 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 Platts: Iraq seen relying on oil product imports for at least five y 2 [NYTr] Face Facts: Iran is doing nothing wrong 3 [NYTr] Russia Supports Iran on Removal of IAEA Seals 4 Guardian Unlimited: Report: World Powers to Discuss Iran Nukes 5 Guardian Unlimited: Rice Presses U.N. to Confront Defiant Iran 6 Guardian Unlimited: Straw says UN referral 'probable' in nuclear row 7 Guardian Unlimited: Tangling with Tehran 8 Bellona: Russia disappointed by Iran’s uranium enrichment 9 Reuters: Iran far from being able to enrich uranium-diplomat 10 Reuters: FACTBOX-Summary of West's nuclear standoff with Iran 11 AFP: Europe to call for IAEA emergency meeting 12 AFP: Iran shrugs off referral to UN on nuclear row 13 AFP: Europe, US demand UN action on Iran nuclear crisis 14 AFP: Key powers to hold crisis talks on Iran nuclear row 15 Guardian Unlimited: 'Menu of Possibilities' May Await Iran 16 Guardian Unlimited: Europe Says Iran Nuke Talks Have Stalled 17 US: AFP: US nuclear negotiator in China to push for talks progress - 18 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Wants to Resume N.Korea Nuke Talks 19 US: Metroactive Features: Atomic Bombs 20 US: PRN: U.S. Secretary of Energy Bodman to Address Platts Nuclear E 21 RIA Novosti: Russia for broader energy cooperation with Kazakhstan - 22 BBC: Kerry 'backs' India nuclear deal 23 India Monitor: Kerry meets PM, positive on Indo-US nuke ties 24 VHeadline.com: Will USA use DU weapons in fourth attempt to unseat P 25 AU ABC: Environmentalists disappointed with greenhouse summit 26 AU ABC: Aust-China uranium talks set to begin. NUCLEAR REACTORS 27 US: Rachel's #837: Nuclear Power had a Bad year 28 US: [NukeNet] Findings on Storms Recast Debate-wants nukes 29 US: 79 Three Mile Island guards sue over wage dispute; Another 30 US: NRC: NRC Seeks Public Comment on Radiation Source Protection And 31 Times of India: Nuclear Ahimsa 32 RIA Novosti: Russia aiming to restore Soviet-era nuclear complex - o 33 US: APP.com: Agency to inspect Oyster Creek plant | 34 SN: RUSSIAN COMPANY OFFERS REACTORS FOR BULGARIA'S BELENE POWER PLAN 35 US: Hudson Valley News: Three of four Indian Point counties dont sig 36 Mos News: Russia Aims to Restore Soviet-Era Nuclear Power Network NUCLEAR SECURITY 37 AU ABC: Uranium export safeguards questioned. NUCLEAR SAFETY 38 US: AP Wire: Boeing reaches $30 million settlement in California can 39 US: NRC: RIN 3150-AH19: Medical Use of Byproduct Material NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 40 US: RGJ: Experts say dust plumes at mine caused by more than wind 41 US: reviewjournal.com: Senator demands perchlorate study 42 reviewjournal.com: Radioactive waste recycling criticized 43 Near-surface storage considered in French nuclear waste debate 44 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Rogue lobbyist had ties to Utah 45 US: courant.com: NRC Reports On Soil Testing 46 Whitehaven News: N-waste extension bid rejected PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 47 Rocky Mountain News: Judges listen to arguments on secrecy for grand 48 Albuquerque Tribune: Lockheed won't appeal bid loss 49 DOE: Hydrogen Production Cost Independent Review 50 Hanford News: K Basin cleanup gets 2 more years 51 American Press Institute: Blowing the whistle can also blow a career 52 kgw.com: K Basin cleanup extended two more years at Hanford reservat 53 DOE: Reimbursement for Costs of Remedial Action at Active Uranium an 54 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Fernald 55 DOE: Agency Information Collection Extension 56 Los Angeles Times: Payout Ends 8-Year Field Lab Battle - 57 lamonitor.com: Cleanup stretches at least another five months ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Platts: Iraq seen relying on oil product imports for at least five years Baghdad (Platts)--12Jan2006 Iraq will have to rely on imports of refined products for the next five years at least to satisfy growing local demand until proposed new refineries become operational, its existing refineries are upgraded and revamped and its pipeline network made safe from attack, Iraqi officials say. This is irrespective of the effects of unpopular measures taken to curb local consumption such as the imposition of alternate days for car travel and increasing the price of oil products, a move which led to the resignation of oil minister Bahr al-Ulum in December. The minister returned to his office this week and is trying to tackle the crisis over domestic fuel supply and pricing. Iraq's downstream oil sector is largely the responsibility of the ministry of oil and funded directly by the Iraqi government investment budget. The US Army's Project and Contracting Office (PCO) has committed itself to funding and overseeing the implementation of only 12 projects in the sector. Seven are projects for gas processing companies at a cost of $141-mil; one for the oil products company at a cost of $12-mil and only four for refineries at a cost of $18-mil, all to be completed in the first half of 2006. There are no projects related to capacity increase and process upgrading on the current agenda. However, companies affiliated with the ministry of oil made some progress last year towards the implementation of major development projects. A Czech firm was awarded the contract to design, engineer and supervise a 70,000 b/d vacuum distillation unit at Dora refinery on the edge of Baghdad at a cost of $40-mil. The project, which is due for completion at the end of 2006, will raise Dora's eventual capacity to 170,000 b/d from 110,000 b/d currently. Tenders for a 70,000 b/d complete refinery in Kurdistan, the Koi refinery, and for a 140,000 b/d refinery in central Iraq, the Nahrain refinery, have been issued but both are still in the negotiation stage. Tender documents for two package-type refineries of 30,000 b/d capacity to be installed in Najaf and Diwaniya respectively and for an isomarisation unit at Dora are on the verge of completion and will be declared soon, oil ministry officials say. Long delayed projects, such as the new reforming unit at Dora and the isomarisation unit at Baiji have been reactivated. The ministry also followed a policy of installing new locally-assembled small refining units, of 10,000 b/d capacity each, in various parts of the country. These units are exact replicas of US-manufactured units bought during the Iraq-Iran war. One such unit was installed in Samawa and was operated in June while work is in progress to install one in Najaf, two are destined for Sulaimania and two for Qayara near Mosul. The officials say it is premature to talk about a proposed 300,000 b/d export refinery at Nassiriya and a 150,000 b/d refinery around Mosul, which original reports suggested would both be financed by foreign investors and the Iraqi private sector. With its refineries running at around 50-60% of capacity, estimated currently at just under 600,000 b/d at all eight refineries, Iraq has been forced to import huge amounts of refined product to satisfy domestic demand. The imports bill, estimated at around $100-mil per month, has eroded the country's income from the sale of crude oil in a year when crude oil prices reached a record. Ministry of oil figures obtained by Platts for December showed that production and imports of refined products fell slightly over November but the pattern of consumption and refinery output confirms that the OPEC member with an estimated 115-bil bbl in crude oil reserves, will have to continue to import oil products. (see story at 1154 GMT) -Faleh al-Khayat, newsdesk@platts.com For more information, take a trial to Platts Global Alert at Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 2 [NYTr] Face Facts: Iran is doing nothing wrong Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 14:52:35 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit The Independent - 12 January 2006 http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/adrian_hamilton/article337971.ece Face the facts - Iran is doing nothing wrong The Iranians feel entitled to resume development on a small scale and under inspection by Adrian Hamilton Anyone who knows Iran knows two things. One is that there is nothing which excites Iranians as much as getting locked into hard bargaining over something they sense the other party wants. The second is that, of all Middle Eastern countries, Iran is the most nationalistic. Challenge them over what they regard as their sovereign rights and you will get head-on collision. The international community has managed to get sucked into the former and locked into the latter. There was no need for this. Nor is there any need for the confrontation to spiral out of control now, with dire warnings of referral to the UN security council, the imposition of sanctions and the scarcely veiled threat of military action, if not by the US then Israel. [...] Article Length: 752 words (approx.) [subscription required] * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 3 [NYTr] Russia Supports Iran on Removal of IAEA Seals Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 22:19:40 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Russia Supports Iran on Removal of IAEA SEals Moscow, Jan 12 (PL) Removing International Atomic Energy Organization seals from Iranian nuclear installations is not a violation of international law, Russian Foreign Minister Serguei Lavrov asserted Thursday. Pointing out that the removal took place in the presence of IAEO inspectors, as established in the regulations, Lavrov informed that representatives from Germany, France, China, the US, UK and Russia will meet next week to debate Iran's reinitiating its atomic program. Although Russia proposed in December that Iran be part of a joint company to enrich nuclear fuel in its territory, Teheran authorities decided to do their own research. Ayatolah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, president of Iranian Interest Board, declared that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful and is opposed by Western colonial taboo policy, especially by the US and European Union. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadi Nejad urged the West to forego threats and begin to cooperate with his country on atomic issues, while repeating his nation is opposed to weapons of mass destruction. Foreign Affairs ministers of Germany, France, Great Britain and Javier Solana, EU high commissioner on foreign policy and security, met Thursday and decided to cancel the January 18 negotiations with Iran and hold an extraordinary AEIO board meeting very soon. hr/ccs/jpm *** Rice Threatens Iran Washington, Jan 12 (PL) US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged the UN Thursday "to face the challenge presented by Iran" and demanded a halt of Teheran's nuclear project. Rice refused to say if Washington has every needed vote in the Security Council to sanction Iran, which government has said that, as any other nation, it needs nuclear energy to develop. During a press conference in Washington, the top US diplomat said, referring to Tehran, that it "had crossed the line". "It is very clear that everyone believes a very important threshold has been cleared," she warned, without mentioning possible White House reprisals against the Asian country. She said she was "gravely concerned" by Iran's secret operations, as they represented a dangerous challenge to the international community. Iran needs nuclear energy to develop, a high-ranking Iranian official explained on Thursday, responding to Western pressure against resumption of atomic research by Tehran. Iran's Atomic Energy Organization Deputy Director Mohammad Saeedi argued that every country needs nuclear energy to pursue their development, and Iran was no exception. In this regard, Saeedi confirmed the opening of Iranian nuclear fuel facilities and specific research in the sector under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supervision. According to the US Secretary of State "it is clear that Iran does not seem ready to solve its nuclear issue through diplomacy." Britain, France and Germany have urged an IAEA meeting to discuss Iran's reactivation of nuclear research. President of Iran Mahmoud Admadinejad said the program will go on as it is a project for civilian application and peaceful purposes. hr/ccs/rma/jvj * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 4 Guardian Unlimited: Report: World Powers to Discuss Iran Nukes From the Associated Press [UP] Thursday January 12, 2006 12:02 PM MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's foreign minister said Thursday that Russia, the United States, the European Union and China will discuss the resumption of Iran's nuclear program in London next week. Sergey Lavrov told Ekho Moskvy radio that the consultations would focus on Iran's breaking of U.N. seals on its nuclear enrichment facility Tuesday. He added that Iran's move did not violate international law. Russia has continuously opposed the U.S. push for referring its ally, Iran, to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions over its alleged nuclear weapons bid. But Moscow edged closer to Washington this week when Iran halted its moratorium on enrichment research. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that in a Tuesday phone conversation, Lavrov and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice voiced their countries' shared, ``deep disappointment'' over Tehran halting its moratorium on enrichment research. Officials haven't publicly divulged details of the conversation, but The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that during the call, Lavrov told Rice that Russia would abstain, rather than vote against, U.S. efforts to move the issue from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the Security Council. The British, French and German foreign ministers were to meet in Berlin later Thursday to agree on a response to Iran's resumption of nuclear activities, with Britain's prime minister saying the West likely will push for a Security Council referral. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 5 Guardian Unlimited: Rice Presses U.N. to Confront Defiant Iran From the Associated Press [UP] Thursday January 12, 2006 8:02 PM AP Photo DCHG105 By BARRY SCHWEID AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, coordinating with European allies, called on the United Nations Thursday to confront Iran's ``defiance'' and demand that Tehran halt its nuclear program. Rice, at a news conference, declined to say whether the United States has the necessary votes at the U.N. Security Council to punish Iran - or would even try at this stage. But she said impatience with Iran was growing and that Tehran was out of step with advances in democracy in the region. And she repeated that she believes there are enough votes for the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. agency that monitors nuclear activity, to refer the issue to the Security Council. ``I don't think it serves anybody's purpose to have a nuclear-armed Iran,'' Rice said. Rejecting Iran's claims that its nuclear program was not designed to produce waapons, Rice said, ``I don't think anybody believes Iran's protestations that this is a peaceful program.'' Pending coordination with the European allies, Rice did not spell out specific measures against Iran that the Bush administration might endorse or propose. But she said she was ``gravely concerned'' about Iran's secret operations and ``its dangerous defiance of the entire international community.'' ``We have to look hard at how a strong message is sent,'' Rice said. Earlier, Britain, France and Germany agreed the dispute should be referred to the Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency. But it has remained unclear whether China or Russia might use their veto powers to thwart Security Council action, or whether there are enough votes at the council for it to impose sanctions of some sort. ``We are not yet ready to talk about specific measures'' to take against Iran, Rice said. She said she hoped Tehran would take note of the unity around the world and act on the program. Rice cited Russia's unhappiness with Iran as an example. ``It is very clear that everyone believes a very important threshold has been cleared,'' she said. At a minimum, the Bush administration wants Iran to resume negotiations with the European Union. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns will go to London next week to coordinate strategy with the allies and Undersecretary of State Robert Joseph will travel to Vienna, the headquarters of the U.N. monitoring agency, Rice said. Chinese and Russian diplomats are also expected to attend as well, said a senior U.S. official who was not authorized to make a formal announcement. The European Union, meanwhile, will send its seniort diplomat, Javier Solana, to Washington for consultations. The Security Council could try to punish Iran with economic or political sanctions on the grounds it is proceeding secretly to develop nuclear weapons. However, that move could be blocked by a veto, a power that China and Russia share with the United States, Britain and France. The Council imposed blanket sanctions on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. In the case of Iran, it could start with a demand that Iran negotiate to end its program, and ratchet it up from there. Rice, meanwhile, rejected any comparison to the U.S. dispute with Iraq when it was ruled by Saddam Hussein, who was overthrown in a U.S.-led war. ``The situations are very, very different,'' she said. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has vowed to press ahead with a nuclear program that Iran says is designed to produce civilian energy. ``This is really an Iranian regime that is digging into isolation,'' Rice said. ``The Iranian people frankly deserve better.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 6 Guardian Unlimited: Straw says UN referral 'probable' in nuclear row Simon Jeffery Thursday January 12, 2006 [Foreign Secretary Jack Straw] The foreign secretary, Jack Straw. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images It is "highly probable" that Iran will be referred to the UN security council over the breaking of International Atomic Energy Agency seals at its nuclear research facilities, the foreign secretary said today. Speaking ahead of a meeting with his French and German counterparts and the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solano, Jack Straw said European negotiators had given up on trying to bring Iran into the fold. "The Iranians themselves must recognise that by this impetuous action and by other foreign policy decisions made by President Ahmadinejad, they have achieved what I didn't think they would achieve a year or so ago, which is almost universal criticism by the international community," he said. Relations with Iran have become strained in recent months as Tehran defied the EU, the US and Russia on its nuclear programme, and Mr Ahmadinejad made a series of hardline speeches on Israel and the holocaust, including one where he said the country should be "wiped off the map". The meeting later today between the French, British and German trio that represented the EU in negotiations with Tehran is expected to call for a meeting of the IAEA board, which in turn would make a decision on whether to refer Iran to the security council for possible sanctions. A meeting of the five permanent security council members - the US, Russia, Britain, China and France - who have the power of veto, plus EU negotiator Germany will be then held next week in London to discuss how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions. China has previously opposed bringing Iran before the security council. Iran insists its re-opened nuclear research facilities to allow work on enriching uranium for power stations, but the EU and US are concerned that the same processes could be used to manufacture a nuclear warhead or bomb. Mr Straw said Tehran's decision to break the IAEA seals would see a return to punitive diplomacy as it was a rejection of EU efforts to accommodate Iran's concerns. "When it became clear two-and-a-half years ago that Iran was in breach of its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty, the board of governors could have referred Iran immediately to the security council. Some say it should have done," he said outside Downing Street. "We suspended that action in return for Iran suspending its uranium enrichment activities. Iran has now broken a key part of that deal." Key to Iran's position is the insistence of its right to control the full fuel cycle from uranium mining to enrichment. A Russian compromise proposal to enrich Iran's uranium ore and send it back as civilian-strength fuel has been rejected by the Iranian leadership. Mr Straw declined to discuss the possibility of sanctions being imposed by the security council but said the US and Russia were "in a very similar place" to the Europeans in regard to the matter. "There are many issues which go on the agenda of the security council and which are actively discussed and where you then get action without sanctions. "Everybody knows the range of measures available to the security council. The first decision for us to make is whether it goes on the agenda." Negotiations between Iran and the EU broke off in August 2005 after Tehran restarted the conversion of raw uranium into the gas that is used as the feed stock in enrichment. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, welcomed Mr Straw's statement. "It is vital that every effort is now made to produce a united response from the members of the UN security council. This matter should now become a very high priority for British diplomacy." [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 7 Guardian Unlimited: Tangling with Tehran Leader Thursday January 12, 2006 The Guardian Iran has acted provocatively but predictably in unsealing facilities used to enrich uranium at Natanz in breach of a clear agreement with the European Union. Tehran insists it is simply resuming research and development. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, sees this move as the thin end of a very big wedge. The IAEA may now refer Iran to the security council, as Tony Blair yesterday demanded it do. Whether that will indeed happen, and if it does, what will follow, is uncertain. But make no mistake: this has the makings of a serious crisis, perhaps the knottiest diplomatic tangle facing the world. Still, diplomacy is the right way to respond. The Islamic Republic is within its rights to want to develop nuclear energy, like all signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). It is not entitled to build nuclear weapons, though despite denials there is circumstantial evidence that it may be trying to do just that. Past evasion and concealment do not inspire confidence. The CIA's best estimate is that Iran is 10 years from building a bomb, though with dual-use technical breakthroughs or black-market purchases it could be sooner. Intelligence though, as the Iraq war showed, is notoriously unreliable. If accurate - and not exaggerated by spies, spin doctors or exiles - it can pinpoint capabilities. Intentions are a different matter. The hawkish interpretation that Iran's secret goal is a nuclear weapon is alarming when juxtaposed with President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's recent call for the annihilation of Israel (though Israel's 200-plus warheads mean that any nuclear exchange between the two would be as unequal as it would be disastrous). Other experts believe Iran is only seeking the technologies required for a nuclear weapon without crossing the actual "threshold". Ordinary Iranians certainly want nuclear energy and have done since the days of the shah, though it is clerical hardliners around Mr Ahmedinejad who are handling the nuclear dossier and driving the current confrontation. Imposing UN sanctions, the most obvious punitive option, would play into their hands, to say nothing of the disastrous effect on the world price of oil. Perhaps the only encouraging feature of this escalation has been that international reactions have been united so far. Russia, a close ally of Iran, has protested vigorously, as has even energy-hungry China. That is significantly different to what happened over Iraq, when the US and Britain were isolated from the other three permanent members of the security council. Only extreme American neocons now advocate regime change and military options. Such unanimity means there is hope for a compromise that meets Iran's desire for nuclear energy while obeying the non-proliferation rules. The package offered by the EU last year - scorned as "gift wrapping around an empty box" - remains the basis for a bargain, as does Russia's later offer of enriching uranium for Iran. Tehran would have to accept intrusive inspections and pledge to stay in the NPT. It will be hard to make this happen in isolation. Iran has legitimate security needs in a tough neighbourhood that includes nuclear-armed Russia, Pakistan, India, China and Israel as well as the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. The five "official" nuclear powers need to move towards meeting their disarmament obligations, and the "unofficial" ones to be controlled if the perception of double standards is to end. That is a tall order. It is nevertheless worth asking a couple of questions. Would the world be safer if all nuclear weapons were scrapped? Yes it would. Would it be more secure if failure to achieve progress towards that laudable goal allowed Iran to acquire the bomb? The answer to the second question has to be an emphatic no. The international community needs to be united on that fundamental point. But it also needs to think hard and creatively to avoid making this crisis worse. Useful links The Foreign and Commonwealth Office The Department for International Development What do you think? Email comments for publication to: politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 8 Bellona: Russia disappointed by Iran’s uranium enrichment According to the press release published yesterday, the Russian Foreign Ministry of Foreign Affairs is “deeply disappointed by the Iranian side's announced decision to resume uranium enrichment research". 2006-01-11 16:32 “It had been suspended as part of Iran's voluntary moratorium on all the enrichment-related work in response to the appeals from the IAEA Board of Governors. Such a moratorium is an essential confidence-building measure to deal with the questions still to be answered on the Iranian nuclear program” press release states. The Russian representatives failed to persuade the Iranian partners during the Russian-Iranian consultations held in Teheran on January 7-8. “We urge Iran to return promptly to the moratorium, and full-fledged cooperation with the IAEA in compliance with the resolutions of the Agency's governing board on its nuclear program” says the press release. Russian even proposed “to establish within Russia a joint nuclear fuel facility with Iran for the needs of its nuclear power industry, which with a continuing moratorium would be capable of reliably meeting the country's nuclear energy requirements in years ahead”. 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 ***************************************************************** 9 Reuters: Iran far from being able to enrich uranium-diplomat Thu 12 Jan 2006 6:07 AM ET BERLIN, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Iran has finished removing all seals placed by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on its nuclear fuel research sites but is a long way away from being able to enrich uranium, a Western diplomat said on Thursday. "They've finished removing the seals," said the diplomat, who is close to the Vienna-based IAEA, on condition of anonymity. "But it's probably going to have to rebuild the entire (cascade of enrichment centrifuges). There's a lot of humidity, corrosion. It's going to take a long time." Iran escalated its nuclear standoff with the West on Tuesday when it began removing the U.N. seals on equipment used to enrich uranium -- a process of purifying it for use as fuel in nuclear power plants or, when very highly enriched, in bombs. The European Union and United States believe Iran wants to produce atomic fuel for weapons, but Tehran insists its nuclear ambitions are limited to the peaceful generation of electricity. Iran removed seals at three sites -- Natanz, Pars Trash and Farayand Technique. Iran has installed some 164 centrifuges -- machines that enrich uranium by spinning at supersonic speeds -- at Natanz but the diplomat said they were mostly not functional. The sites had been mothballed under a November 2004 agreement with France, Britain and Germany, whose foreign ministers meet in Berlin at 1430 GMT to discuss whether Tehran should be referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. © Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved. [ border=] ***************************************************************** 10 Reuters: FACTBOX-Summary of West's nuclear standoff with Iran Thu 12 Jan 2006 10:36 AM ET Jan 12 (Reuters) - Moves to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for defying the world over its nuclear programme gathered pace on Thursday. Britain, France and Germany said their talks with Iran had reached a dead end and agreed the dispute should move to the Security Council for possible sanctions against Tehran. Here is a summary of developments in the nuclear standoff. ORIGINS In August 2002, a group of Iranian exiles, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said Iran was hiding a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and other atomic sites. The allegations were later confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, which launched a probe into allegations that Iran was secretly developing atomic weapons as the NCRI and Washington claimed. Iran says obtaining or using atom bombs would violate Islam and that it hid its facilities because of a Western embargo. Tehran contacted a nuclear technology black market linked to the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, in the late 1980s in the midst of a war with Iraq. Iran received uranium enrichment technology and parts of a design for making the core of an atom bomb from Khan's people. THE PLAYERS * Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful, but has failed to declare many potentially arms-related nuclear facilities and activities to the IAEA over nearly two decades. * The IAEA, led by Mohamed ElBaradei, has found no hard proof of U.S. and NCRI claims that Tehran wants weapons, but has been unable to confirm its nuclear programme is purely peaceful. * In September, the IAEA board declared Iran had violated its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which must be reported to the U.N. Security Council, but it set no date for referring the issue to the council. * In late 2003, the EU began trying to persuade Iran to end its nuclear fuel activities in exchange for a package of political and economic incentives. In November 2004, Tehran agreed to freeze those activities temporarily while it pursued talks with France, Britain and Germany, the "EU3". However, Iran restarted one of the suspended activities, uranium conversion, in August. This week Iran removed IAEA seals from uranium enrichment equipment, triggering the latest crisis. * Russia, which has previously opposed sending Iran to the Security Council, has nearly $1 billion at stake in the Islamic republic's Bushehr nuclear reactor project plus a deal to supply the reactor with fuel that would be returned to Russia so Iran could not extract bomb-grade plutonium from it. WHERE IS IT GOING? * Even if the IAEA board refers Iran to the Security Council at an emergency session in February, Tehran is unlikely to face sanctions at first while a diplomatic solution is sought. * Several developing nations on the IAEA's 35-nation board oppose sending Iran to the Council for working on a nuclear fuel programme, which is legal under the NPT. They fear setting a precedent that could be used to deny them nuclear technology. * It is unclear if Russia and China, who like the United States, France and Britain wield veto power at the Security Council, would support tough action like sanctions against Iran. * Possible U.N. sanctions range from travel curbs on government officials to a full trade embargo. Any restrictions on Iranian oil exports would be a two-edged sword for the global economy as Iran is the world's fourth biggest oil exporter. * Israel has hinted it may use air strikes to try to cripple Iran's nuclear capability, though analysts say this would be no easy task. Washington has not ruled out military force either. © Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved. [ border=] ***************************************************************** 11 AFP: Europe to call for IAEA emergency meeting 12/01/2006 12h43 British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw ©AFP/File - Joseph Barrak LONDON (AFP) - Britain, France and Germany are to discuss calling an emergency meeting of the UN's nuclear watchdog at crisis talks in Berlin after Iran resumed sensitive nuclear activities, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said. It was "highly probable" that Tehran's case would end up being referred to the United Nations Security Council, a move that could lead to sanctions, Straw told reporters in London just before leaving for Germany. "At this meeting, top of the agenda will be the calling of an emergency meeting of the board of governors of the (International) Atomic Energy Agency and the question of whether we put before the board of governors the referral by the IAEA of Iran to the Security Council," Straw said on Thursday. In Berlin, the British foreign minister was to meet his counterparts from France and Germany, the EU countries also at the forefront of negotiations with Tehran over fears its nuclear programme may be hiding weapons development. Iran sparked a furious worldwide reaction on Tuesday when it broke UN seals at its Natanz nuclear plant to resume research into uranium enrichment. Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear power stations, but in its highly enriched form makes the explosive core for atomic weapons. "For two and a half years we've been working with Iran and the rest of the international community to bring Iran into compliance with its very clear obligations not to do anything that leads to suspicions that they are developing a nuclear weapons capability," Straw said. The decision to break seals "means that we have now to consider the next steps before us", he said. The IAEA could have referred Iran to the Security Council when Tehran was first deemed to be in breach of nuclear non-proliferation obligations, and "some say that it should have done", Straw said. "We suspended that action in return for Iran suspending its uranium enrichment activities. Iran has now broken the key part of that deal." Asked whether referral to the Security Council was now certain, Straw said it was "highly probable", while also noting that the decision to call an IAEA emergency meeting was officially "one for France, Germany, the United Kingdon and (EU foreign policy chief) Javier Solana combined". Straw noted that the "impetuous action" of Iran in breaking the seals had brought "almost universal criticism by the international community", but refused to discuss possible sanctions, saying: "I am not talking about sanctions at this stage." + Àđàáńêèé Copyright Disclaimer ©AFP 2006 ***************************************************************** 12 AFP: Iran shrugs off referral to UN on nuclear row Thu Jan 12, 4:22 PM ET TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iranshrugged off its possible referral to the UN Security Council, saying it was "not worried" after Europe and the United States urged UN action on Iran's nuclear ambitions. "We should not be worried," said Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, the deputy to Ali Larijani who is Iran's chief official for the nuclear file told state television. "It is not what we want, but if that's the case... our officials must plan their policy... to put on a strong show of diplomacy and make our case" in the Security Council, he said. Iran provoked a storm of international criticism when it broke the seals at three nuclear plants in order to resume research on uranium enrichment earlier in the week. But Britain, France and Germany stepped up pressure on Thursday, calling for an emergency meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog to refer the dossier to the UN Security Council. And in Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" /> Condoleezza Ricesaid the Security Council should "call for the Iranian regime to step away from its nuclear weapons ambitions." Western suspicions that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons have been strongly denied by Tehran, which says its program is for peaceful purposes. Iran's chief negotiator, in an interview with CNN television broadcast late Thursday, said: "We have already declared that our intention is to do nuclear research, it has nothing to do with enrichment." Ali Larijani said that, based on articles of the International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agencycharter and Non-Proliferation Treaty "all countries can conduct nuclear research, and indeed other countries must help them with this research," he said according to a dubbed translation. He added: "We cannot deprive our nations' scientists of the research." Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear power stations, but in its highly enriched form makes the explosive core for atomic weapons. UN chief Kofi Annan" /> Kofi Annanspoke with Larijani, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, but he gave no details of what was said during the 40-minute telephone conversation. Even before the European meeting in Berlin, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, cited by the student Isna agency, said the decision of Iran to "master nuclear technology is irreversible". Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said earlier that Iran would press on with its nuclear program to avoid dependency on leading nuclear energy powers who use it as "an economic and political weapon." "Today, those who have the highest level of nuclear energy, have the nuclear fuel in their claws and are using it as an economic and political weapon," national television quoted him as saying in a speech in the southern Hormuzgan province. He continued that "in these circumstances we must master the fuel cycle and the peaceful nuclear technology." Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had set the tone earlier in the week. "The ones who are invoking sanctions, have sanctioned Iran whenever they could... but these sanctions have resulted in Iranian youth's self reliance, therefore such sanctions have no effect," the powerful leader said. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 13 AFP: Europe, US demand UN action on Iran nuclear crisis 12/01/2006 23h21 Condoleezza Rice takes questions during a press conference at the State Department ©AFP - Andrew Councill BERLIN (AFP) - Europe and the United States demanded UN Security Council action over Iran's nuclear ambitions, saying two years of delicate negotiations had reached a dead end. Speaking after a crisis meeting in Berlin, the British, French and German foreign ministers called for an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the UN nuclear watchdog -- to refer the dossier to the world body's executive. "The talks with Iran are at a dead end," Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier told a news conference. A joint statement by Steinmeier, Britain's Jack Straw and France's Philippe Douste-Blazy cited Iran's "documented record of concealment and deception." Tehran's decision to restart enrichment activity was "a clear rejection" of the talks process and "constitutes a further challenge to the authority of the IAEA and international community." In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Tehran of a "deliberate escalation" of the dispute, and said it was in "dangerous defiance of the entire international community." The Security Council should "call for the Iranian regime to step away from its nuclear weapons ambitions," Rice said. Canada also joined the chorus, saying it was "deeply concerned" by Iran's move and calling for Security Council action. The coordinated statements usher in a period of hectic diplomacy as European and US officials seek support for some kind of intervention by the Security Council, which alone can impose UN sanctions. It follows a storm of international criticism after Iran broke the seals at three nuclear plants to resume uranium enrichment research. Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear power stations, but in its highly enriched form forms the explosive core for atomic weapons. (L-R) Philippe Douste-Blazy, Jack Straw, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and Javier Solana ©AFP - John MacDougall Western powers suspect that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, while Tehran insists the program is peaceful. A European official in Berlin said the IAEA's governors could be convened "in the coming weeks," but declined to give more details. Diplomats want to "use the authority and weight of the Security Council" to pressure Iran to abide by IAEA regulations, the official told AFP. "Don't expect us to move straight to sanctions," the official said. Instead, one option could be for UN officials to impose a mandatory suspension of uranium enrichment activities which Tehran had previously suspended voluntarily. Officials from the so-called EU-3 plus China, Russia and the United States will meet next week in London for more talks. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had a 40-minute phone conversation with Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, in an effort to help defuse the crisis. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ©AFP/PIN/File - Atta Kenare The Iranians "are interested in serious and constructive negotiation but within a time frame," Annan said, quoting Larijani. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran would press on with its nuclear programme to avoid dependency on leading nuclear energy powers who use it as "an economic and political weapon." Nuclear powers "have the nuclear fuel in their claws and are using it as an economic and political weapon," Iran national television quoted him as saying in a speech in the southern Hormuzgan province. "In these circumstances we must master the fuel cycle and the peaceful nuclear technology," he said. Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, deputy to Ali Larijani -- Iran's chief official for the nuclear file -- told state television that the country "should not be worried," and that diplomats should prepare "to put on a strong show of diplomacy and make our case" in the Security Council. Members of the National Council of Resistance of Iran display anti-Iran banners ©AFP - John MacDougall IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei has said Iran plans to start "small-scale" enrichment at Natanz, one of the sites where seals were broken. In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Iran's actions fed suspicions that its program "could have a hidden military aspect," while a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman urged Tehran to resume talks. The brewing crisis was affecting world markets: US share prices skidded lower, and oil prices were again up. "The market is very nervous about calls for sanctions against Iran," said Peter Cardillo, chief market strategist at SW Bach in New York. "The fear is about how Iran might retaliate if there are sanctions. Basically, a lot of speculative money is going into energy now." The Iran jitters prompted a spike in crude oil prices, although New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in February, ended unchanged at 63.94 dollars a barrel, having earlier hit 65.05 dollars. Copyright Disclaimer ©AFP 2006 ***************************************************************** 14 AFP: Key powers to hold crisis talks on Iran nuclear row 12/01/2006 11h33 Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ©AFP - Atta Kenare BERLIN (AFP) - Europe's big three powers prepared for crisis talks to thrash out the international community's response after Iran resumed sensitive nuclear activities in defiance of calls for restraint. Britain and the United States say the dispute is likely to end in Tehran's referral to the UN Security Council, which can impose sanctions. As China weighed in voicing its "concern" at the resumption of nuclear fuel research, US and European officials quoted by the Washington Post said Russia had pledged not to block efforts to haul Iran before the world body. The meeting in Berlin gathers the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany, which have been negotiating with Tehran for two years to try to allay Western fears that its nuclear programme may be hiding weapons development. Iran sparked a furious worldwide reaction Tuesday when it broke UN seals at its Natanz nuclear plant to resume research into uranium enrichment. Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear power stations, but in its highly enriched form makes the explosive core for atomic weapons. A defiant Iran vowed Wednesday to pursue its programme, which it insists is for civilian nuclear power. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he would not be intimidated by the "fuss." Iran presses on with nuclear program ©AFP/Graphic - Adrian Leung Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric and a key influence, said Thursday that nuclear energy was "the desire of our nation, we will pursue it." He said Iran had decided to resume the work and "break the colonial taboos regarding our peaceful nuclear energy (programme) since the West's opposition to our peaceful nuclear energy is rooted in their colonial mentality." Russia and China -- which have often been tactical allies of Iran at the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -- joined criticism of its nuclear resumption. "We express our concern... about the recent new development in the Iranian nuclear issue," said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan on Thursday. "We hope that the Iranian side can do more to help build mutual trust and promote the resumption of talks between Iran and the EU countries." Russia said breaking the seals was "cause for alarm." Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and US Vice President Dick Cheney both said Wednesday the likely next step was to refer Iran to the Security Council, a process which normally goes through the Vienna-based IAEA. Tony Blair ©AFP - Matthew Fearn "The first thing to do is secure agreement for a reference to the Security Council, if that is indeed what the allies jointly decide, as I think seems likely," Blair told parliament. A Western diplomat in Vienna said there could be a special meeting of IAEA governors in about two weeks. US diplomats say they have a majority of votes on the 35-member IAEA board to haul Iran before the Security Council, although it was unclear if there was enough support for eventual sanctions against Tehran. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was "very concerned" over Tehran's activity but it was for the IAEA to deal with it, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Cheney said in a radio interview that "probably the number one item on the agenda would be the resolution that could be enforced by sanctions, were they (the Iranians) to fail to comply with it." State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said it was "more likely than ever that we are headed to the Security Council on this question." He said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conferred Wednesday by phone with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei. Rice spoke earlier with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose country has offered to house Iranian uranium-enrichment activities on its soil as a control and confidence-building measure. Frank-Walter Steinmeier ©AFP - Michael Kappeler US officials had privately made no secret of their scepticism over the EU's negotiating efforts so far, but now appear convinced that their tactic of letting the talks run their course has borne fruit in highlighting Tehran's intransigence. The Washington Post said Russia's pledge not to block moves to take Tehran before the Security Council was only good for a vote within the IAEA, but that it was uncertain how Moscow would act once the issue hit the top world body. It said US officials considered Russia's pledge a victory, and they would now spend next few works working to secure support from China. Kong, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, urged Iran and the EU powers to use dialogue to resolve the crisis, and refused to speculate on how Beijing would act on any resolution. Àđàáńêèé Copyright Disclaimer ©AFP 2006 ***************************************************************** 15 Guardian Unlimited: 'Menu of Possibilities' May Await Iran From the Associated Press [UP] Thursday January 12, 2006 11:32 PM AP Photo DCHG105 By ANNE GEARAN AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration, the prime proponent of punishing Iran for its disputed nuclear program, cheered developments Thursday that moved the case closer to the U.N. Security Council. The United States still would not predict harsh penalties for Tehran, and some officials signaled they would accept a lesser punishment, seen as the more likely outcome. ``There are a variety of options, a variety of tools at the disposal of the international community once it has been referred to the Security Council,'' Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. ``I think that we will, at a time of our choosing in the international system, begin to actually apply those various means,'' she said. Rice would not say whether the U.S. believes it has enough votes in the Security Council for economic penalties against Iran. China and Russia traditionally have been reluctant to take that and French diplomats on Thursday bristled at the idea. The council also includes important trading partners of oil-rich Iran. ``We're not yet at the point to talk about specific measures that might be taken once we're in the Security Council,'' Rice said. ``There will be a menu of possibilities.'' Hauling Iran before the council would be a diplomatic victory for the administration. The U.S. contends Iran is hiding a weapons program behind its public drive to develop civilian nuclear energy. Iran says its intentions are purely peaceful. Weak or inconclusive action by the council could leave the administration again seeking a way to derail what Washington insists is Iran's path to nuclear capability. ``The council should call for the Iranian regime to step away from its nuclear weapons ambitions,'' Rice said. ``The United States will encourage the Security Council to achieve this end.'' The U.S. long has favored using the considerable powers of the Security Council against Iran while waiting for international negotiations to play out. Iran's selection of a hard-line president and a series of provocative steps on the nuclear issue have helped erode world support for Tehran. The British, French and German foreign ministers said Thursday that efforts to negotiate with Iran had hit a ``dead end'' and that the Security Council should step in. After Rice spoke, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Iran's top nuclear negotiator had told him that Tehran wants to resume negotiations and impose a deadline. Iran broke U.N. seals at a uranium enrichment plant this week and said it was resuming nuclear research after a two-year freeze. Enriched uranium can be used as a fuel for both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. The European ministers called for a special session of the International Atomic Energy Agency to vote on referring the matter to the Security Council. It was a move that Rice indicated was certain. The ministers did not say what the council should do; French diplomats said questions about penalties against Iran were premature. Wide-ranging penalties against Iraq over its 1990 invasion of Kuwait had harsh consequences for Iraqis, so the council since has moved toward more targeted measures. Such steps include arms embargoes against countries and rebel groups engaged in warfare, and travel bans and asset freezes against key individuals. In the case of Iran, the Security Council probably will increase pressure gradually, starting with a condemnation and demanding that Tehran comply with the IAEA's decisions. If Iran resisted, Western envoys almost certainly would push for penalties or issue a stern threat to do so. Rice drew a distinction between Iran's leadership and its people. The United States has ``enormous respect'' for Iranians, Rice said. ``It's a great culture, it's a great people that should be on the road to modernization and integration into the international system. We don't want to see those people isolated.'' --- EDITOR'S NOTE - Anne Gearan covers diplomacy and foreign affairs for The Associated Press. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 16 Guardian Unlimited: Europe Says Iran Nuke Talks Have Stalled From the Associated Press [UP] Thursday January 12, 2006 11:17 PM AP Photo WBER113 By DAVID McHUGH Associated Press Writer BERLIN (AP) - European foreign ministers said Thursday that nuclear talks with Iran had reached a dead end after more than two years of acrimonious negotiations and the issue should be referred to the U.N. Security Council. The top diplomats from France, Germany and Britain, however, held back from calling for the 15-nation council to impose sanctions and said they remained open to more talks. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also said a ``strong message'' had to be sent to Tehran but said she was not ready to talk about what action should be taken to curtail Iran's nuclear ambitions. Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, told U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that Tehran was interested in resuming ``serious and constructive negotiations'' with the Europeans but this time wanted a deadline. Senior Iranian negotiator Java Avid, meanwhile, said the Europeans should step back from referring his country to the Security Council, warning it would not change Iran's behavior but would lead to a tough response. The statements came two days after Iran broke U.N. seals at a uranium enrichment plant and said it was resuming nuclear research after a two-year freeze. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, while the U.S. and others say it is aimed at producing weapons. Negotiations aimed at getting Iran to permanently abandon uranium enrichment had reached ``an impasse,'' the Europeans said, citing what they called a ``documented record of concealment and deception.'' Enriched uranium can be used for fuel or, at high levels of enrichment, weapons. In a joint statement, they charged that Iran seemed ``intent on turning its back on better relations with the international community.'' The ministers called for a special session of the International Atomic Energy Agency to decide on referral to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions. ``From our point of view, the time has come for the U.N. Security Council to become involved,'' German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after meeting with his French and British counterparts and the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. Steinmeier said the three countries would inform the IAEA board ``that our talks with Iran have reached a dead end.'' He stressed the Europeans remain ready to solve the problem ``diplomatically, multilaterally and by peaceful means.'' Europeans stressed it was too early to discuss sanctions. Diplomats from France and Germany indicated time was needed to get the international community to agree on what measures should be considered for dealing with Iran. One possibility was seen as seeking sharper language from the U.N. nuclear watchdog in Vienna, Austria. Nuclear proliferation expert Francois Gere, who heads the French Institute of Strategic Analysis, said few options existed for punishing Iran and the Iranians know it. The French, he said, were still looking at diplomatic solutions short of sanctions. ``There is absolutely no discussion of punishment for the moment in the French approach,'' he said. Key to efforts to take action against Iran are Russia and China, traditional allies with Tehran who hold veto power in the Security Council and could thwart efforts to punish the Islamic republic. Moscow and Beijing have previously opposed taking the issue to the Security Council but have shown increasing impatience with Tehran during the latest standoff. Russian experts are helping build a nuclear reactor at Bushehr in Iran, and China is a major customer for Iranian oil and gas. And sanctions that restrict Iran's ability to sell oil could raise already high oil prices, hurting Western economies. An Iranian official said the issue could still be resolved through diplomacy. Supreme National Security Council spokesman, Hossein Entezami, said in a statement broadcast on state television that Iran's program remained within the IAEA framework and urged the Europeans not to challenge the Iranian people's demand for nuclear energy or to stall diplomatic channels by what he called ``their unwise decisions.'' Avid issued a stronger warning against referral later Thursday. ``It forces Iran to feel it is in an emergency and it contributes to hard-line policies,'' Avid said. Rice declined to spell out what moves the Security Council could take even as she called on it to deal with Iran's ``defiance.'' ``It is very clear that everyone believes a very important threshold has been cleared,'' Rice said. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, said during an appearance before the Aspen Institute in Berlin that Iran should follow the example of Libya, which gave up its nuclear program under international pressure. ``Iran holds the key in its own hands as to what is going to happen,'' Bolton said. ``By taking the matter to the Security Council, I think we change the political dynamic and increase the pressure on Iran. He declined to comment on the possibility of sanctions. The Security Council is most likely to ratchet up the pressure gradually, starting with a condemnation of the country and demanding that Iran comply with IAEA decisions. Russia, the United States, the European Union and China are to discuss the issue further in London next week. --- Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Melissa Eddy in Berlin, Nasser Karimi in Tehran, John Leicester in Paris and Barry Schweid in Washington contributed to this report. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 17 AFP: US nuclear negotiator in China to push for talks progress - Thu Jan 12, 3:52 AM ET BEIJING (AFP) - The chief US envoy on the North Korean nuclear issue, Christopher Hill, arrived in Beijing on the third leg of an Asian tour aimed at kickstarting the stalled six-party talks. We are ready to go when the Chinese are ready to go but obviously they have several parties to talk to," Hill said at Beijing airport before heading off for talks with his Chinese counterpart, deputy foreign minister Wu Dawei. We remain very committed to the process. We always know that after the agreement in principle, doing the implementation will be difficult. We look forward to moving on with this difficult stage of implementation. Hill was due to be in China -- the traditional host of the six-party talks -- only for the afternoon after similar lightning visits to Seoul and Tokyo. He met his Japanese counterpart, Kenichiro Sasae, in Tokyo on Wednesday and his South Korean equivalent, Song Min-Soon, in Seoul on Thursday morning. "I had good discussions in Tokyo last night and with the South Koreans this morning and we are all pretty much on the same page," Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said. "We are all pretty much anxious... on implementing and to implement on the principles as they were laid out in the September agreement." At the six-way talks in September, North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for diplomatic and economic benefits, as well as security guarantees. But diplomatic progress stalled at the next round in November, with North Korea warning they would boycott further negotiations unless US sanctions imposed for alleged counterfeiting and money laundering were lifted. The sanctions were imposed in September after Washington said Pyongyang was manufacturing counterfeit US dollar notes and using a Macau bank as a front for money laundering. US officials also blacklisted eight North Korean companies in October in connection with weapons proliferation. Hill's visit to Beijing coincides with a reported clandestine trip to China by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il. However China, which is one of North Korea's few allies, has so far refused to confirm Kim's visit. China has in the past only acknowledged Kim's secret visits only after they have finished. Hill sidestepped a question on whether he would meet the reclusive communist leader and said he had no plans to meet North Korean officials in Beijing. "We will have to see what the Chinese have heard most recently from the (North Korean) side -- perhaps they have very fresh news we have to find out," he said in Seoul earlier Thursday, according to Yonhap news agency. In Beijing, Hill also refused to be drawn on the sanctions, sticking to the official US line that they are a completely separate issue to the diplomatic efforts aimed at disbanding North Korea's nuclear program. "I am sure this (sanctions) issue will come up," he said. "I stress that I handle the diplomatic side and the diplomatic side concerns the six-party talks... there are other people who are dealing with that question." The six nations involved in the talks, which began in August 2003, are the North Korea, the United States, China, South Korea" /> South Korea, Japan and Russia. Hill's visit to Beijing is part of a wider Asian tour, which will also take him to Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia for talks on bilateral issues, the US embassy said. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 18 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Wants to Resume N.Korea Nuke Talks From the Associated Press [UP] Thursday January 12, 2006 4:47 AM AP Photo SEL119 By KWANG-TAE KIM Associated Press Writer SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The United States wants to quickly resume nuclear talks with North Korea, the U.S. envoy to Seoul said Thursday, as the top American negotiator headed to China for discussions on the North's nuclear ambitions. ``The United States is eager to resume negotiations as soon as possible so that we can make rapid progress toward the elimination of North Korea's nuclear programs,'' U.S. ambassador Alexander Vershbow said in a speech in Seoul. ``Our negotiators are packed and ready to go.'' Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who arrived in South Korea late Wednesday from Tokyo, said he would seek information in Beijing on the latest North Korean thinking from its closest ally. Hill's Asia trip comes as six-nation nuclear talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear programs are stalled over Pyongyang's anger at U.S.-imposed sanctions related to alleged counterfeiting and other wrongdoing by the North. ``We'll have to see what the Chinese have heard most recently from the DPRK side, and perhaps they have some very fresh news,'' Hill said upon arrival in Seoul, referring to the North by the abbreviation of its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. His schedule of talks with counterparts in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing is taking place amid unconfirmed reports that reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is in China. The North Korean strongman is widely believed to have gone by train Tuesday to China, his country's closest ally. But the trip has yet to be officially announced by North Korean or Chinese authorities, and his ultimate destination is unknown. ``I must say the trip that Chairman Kim Jong Il took to China was a surprise to all of us,'' Hill said upon arrival in Seoul. ``It's a complete coincidence that I'm in the area at the same time. There is no such plan of any kind'' to meet Kim. In South Korea, Hill talked with his South Korean counterpart Song Min-soon about ``ways to resume the nuclear talks and to produce substantial progress,'' Song told The Associated Press after the closed-door meeting. China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have been engaged in negotiations with North Korea since 2003 aimed at persuading it to abandon its nuclear programs. The process resulted in a breakthrough in September when the North pledged to give up its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security assurances. But follow-up negotiations have stalled. Vershbow said a Treasury Department delegation planned to visit South Korea in about 10 days for consultations with South Korean officials over the alleged North Korean financial activities that led to the sanctions. In September, Washington slapped the sanctions on a bank in the Chinese territory of Macau, alleging it helped the North distribute counterfeit currency and engage in other illicit activities. The next month, Washington sanctioned eight North Korean companies it claimed were fronts for proliferating weapons of mass destruction. North Korea denies the allegations. Vershbow said the Treasury delegation would travel to Macau after visiting South Korea. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 19 Metroactive Features: Atomic Bombs Exploding Myths: The author learns that Los Alamos is just a place. --> --> Atomic Hangover (Or, How I learned to start worrying and hate the bomb) By Daedalus Howell I can remember when I first started obsessing about the bomb. It was Nov. 21, 1983. The day after The Day After. The fulcrum of the so-called X-Generation, those of us who experienced puberty in the '80s under the tenure of President Reagan had inherited the Cold War in full bloom, like an atomic hangover. Its then-most popular exegesis was a made-for-TV thriller about a nuclear attack on middle America starring Jason Robards and marketed with a weapons-grade tagline that read: "Apocalypse: The end of the familiar, the beginning of the end." Everybody in my sixth-grade class had seen The Day After. They drifted into class the next morning as traumatized zombie children. I went to an experimental school comprised of multigrade "quads" in which teachers often led discussions about our feelings and topics of the day. That morning we discussed being nuked. A kid raised his hand and asked, "What do we do?" Ms. J, our instructor, mulled the question over, the ubiquitous mantra of the 1950s educational films, "duck and cover," surely echoing in her mind. After a moment, she simply said, "Nothing. There's nothing you can do," as her eyes misted over. Preteen Thanatos On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated in Los Alamos, N.M. Last month, 60 years later, the University of California won a renewal of its contract to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where it helped inaugurate the first nuclear weapons lab to devise the bomb. It was a matter of academic prestige. UC's relationship to the lab and the bomb is a feather in its cap, a quill plucked from the wings of the angel of death, with which buzzwords like "weapons of mass destruction" and "dirty bombs" are writ large on anchormen's teleprompters. No wonder MGM Home Entertainment hastened a DVD release of The Day After last year (several months overdue, having overslept the 20th anniversary of its original broadcast). It was relevant again--or so it seemed. I rented the DVD. I had to. I had missed the original broadcast, which in retrospect probably caused me more anxiety than if I had seen it in tandem with my classmates. The implications of The Day After that I had gleaned from my classmates had mushroomed in my wee skull. The result was a kind of preteen Thanatos. Was it possible? Could this happen? Could the falcon not hear the falconer? Yes. The president seemed to have his finger permanently grafted to the button, and clearly he was an idiot. After all, this was the guy who had once declared ketchup a vegetable worthy of our school lunches. Even at 11 we knew better. Ketchup comes from tomatoes, which are technically a fruit. Nuclear nightmares figured heavily in our sixth-grade curriculum. A class archeology project, in which we devised fictional cultures for others to exhume and analyze, was rife with homemade postapocalyptic artifacts like burnt toys and melted Michael Jackson records. The following summer, I participated in an all-ages drama class at the Cinnabar Theater where we were encouraged to create our own play. We ended up with a loose narrative dubbed There Is No Bigger Bomb that found us, for reasons mercifully lost to time, wearing animal-print jumpsuits and chanting aphorisms about an early demise. Our leftie parents, of course, beamed with pride. As kids, we accepted death-by-nuke as an inevitable rite of passage, the denouement of our youth that bypassed adulthood and took us straight to hell. To wit, we would have to fit all the other rites of passage in ASAP. So we smoked, drank and experimented with drugs and sex only a few years into our double digits. I won't attempt to recall the number of "orgies" scheduled to take place in the neighborhood cemetery in order to usher in the end of the world, or how the graveyard itself came to be eroticized as the symbolic nexus of teenage sex and death. More to the point, we had to keep changing the date of the end of the world due to all the no-shows. The end of the world never came, and neither did we. President Reagan made sure of that. "What if free people could live secure in the knowledge . . . that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil?" Reagan asked a wary citizenry during an address to the nation in 1983. The resulting program, of course, came to be known as "Star Wars," to the awesome chagrin of George Lucas and a generation of fans who had incorporated its archetypal precepts into their own blacktop mythology. Not even our ersatz belief systems were immune. Bored of the Bomb In some ways, my experience was more keyed up than that of my friends, many of whom, ironically, had fathers who worked for Lucas over the hill in West Marin. When these kids were doffing their collectible Revenge of the Jedi T-shirts and climbing into their bunks, I'd lay awake contemplating the fact that my own father had a passing association with "Star Wars" by way of Optical Coating Laboratories Inc., a government contractor tucked amongst the rolling hills of Sonoma County, a mile off Stony Point Road in Santa Rosa. Reagan was playing "Star Wars" in our own backyard. "That's just one small piece. It was all over the place," my father once revealed to me. He is the only person I know to have actually witnessed an actual atomic bomb detonation. He watched it from his living room window, though his address wasn't Main Street, Hiroshima--it was Las Vegas. In was 1951, when my dad was, by his own account, a bright if retiring seven-year-old amid his second attempt at first grade. Dennis Robert Howell was often disciplined for not following directions in an era when coloring outside the lines might have been forgiven had he at least used the correct palette. Though such knuckle-wrappings ceased after it was discovered that he was color blind, a kind of leery diffidence has persisted into his adult life. My father once diagnosed himself with Asperger's syndrome, a vogue affliction among the ranks of engineers he would later join. Those afflicted cannot properly engage socially, which apparently confers a sort of savantlike genius. (My father, however, does not have Asperger's syndrome; he's just shy--either that or neurologists have overlooked the miracle cure of single malt scotch, which allays most of his symptoms.) "I remember being awakened and told, 'Get up, get up, there's going to be a test,'" he recalls of his first atomic bomb. "So we all just sat around the living room looking out the window. The effect, essentially, was as if somebody was outside our window with one of those great big old flashbulbs that they used to have. It just lit everything up. Then stunned silence. A few seconds later, it was like a single clap of thunder. Boom!" The actual site of this particular atom bomb test was Nevada's Yucca Flats, about 60 miles north of his family's modest home in downtown Las Vegas. My father's stepfather was a laborer at the site and was advised of the early morning bomb test, which he thought would make for some inexpensive family entertainment. Enough such tests occurred that my father eventually became bored. "Think about that for a second," he says. "A flash. A couple of seconds later, a boom. Well, OK. This is worth getting up at oh-dark-30 for? For a seven-year-old kid? Not really. After that, I wouldn't even bother. In fact, I got a reputation for being 'the kid who could sleep through atom bombs.' The adults had some idea what the implications were, but I didn't. I knew what a bomb was and knew that this was a really, really big one. But you've seen one, you've seen them all. I remember laying in bed and the flash woke me up. I just rolled over and went back to sleep." Duck and Cover When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in '89 and the threat of nuclear annihilation was ostensibly mitigated, a kind of generation-wide case of posttraumatic stress disorder set in. This may account for why we had to endure the slur "slacker" in the early '90s. None of us had expected to live long enough to require a life plan stretching past adolescence. Prozac was there to help the transition, but the best elixir seemed to be the Glasnost promise of the Internet, at least for those of us who sold out before the dotcom boom fizzled. Was this the "boom" that we had been anticipating? Not I, though I did briefly have a stake in an online music label called, of all things, Atomik. (Post-bubble, I sold the name to a U.K.-based printing firm for a pittance.) I eventually moved to Hollywood, a place itself in a perpetual state of near-apocalypse, where I would hack scripts and turn 30. The only problem was that I was repeatedly dogged by panic attacks anytime I went above the fourth floor of a building. I would stave off the panic with various pharmaceutical elixirs and tonics, specifically gin and tonics, but to little avail. Something was ticking inside me, prodding me toward the mother of all panic attacks. I knew it was coming. What I didn't know was that it wouldn't come until I found myself squarely on the ground, under a canopy of endless blue sky, grinding my Beatle boots into the once radioactive wasteland of the Trinity Site, the birthplace of the bomb. I elected to undergo cognitive therapy for my new fear of heights, and was assigned a student shrink on the cheap, a baby boomer inaugurating her second career. Her rates were low because, technically, I was her homework. She deduced that my problems were "existential in nature." I was flattered. Finally, I thought, I'm living in a Woody Allen film. But I really just wanted to beat the vertigo. "You have a fear of death and inconsequence," she elaborated. "Well, yeah, I grew up in the shadow of the bomb." "So did I," she countered. "But you had 'duck and cover.'" "Sure, and the Tooth Fairy, too. You're obsession with the bomb is how you express your fear of death." "And you don't you have a fear of death?" "No. I have a fear of airplanes." "But aren't airplanes just how you express your fear of death and inconsequence?" "No. Sometimes an airplane is just an airplane." In lieu of a fistful of Xanax, my shrink took me to every tall building in Los Angeles, every rooftop swimming pool, every high-rise that would let us ride its elevator to the t-t-t-top until I no longer had a fear of heights. It worked. Kind of. With her help, I was able to transmute my fear of death from expressing itself as vertigo instead into agoraphobia--the abnormal fear of open spaces--a fair trade when living in Los Angeles, where every square inch is paved. Me and the Bomb In the Martian landscape of the American Southwest, however, there is nothing but wide-open spaces. I discovered this geographic reality on July 14, 2005, two days before the 60th anniversary of the first atomic bomb detonation, when cameraman Abe Levy and I made a grueling 16-hour drive from Los Angeles to the White Sands Missile Base, Los Alamos, New Mexico, to visit the original Ground Zero. We were special guests of the public affairs office, which had permitted us to shoot a segment dubbed "Me and the Bomb" for a show we were then calling, for lack of a better title, the Daedalus Howell Show. The next day would find the historic site swarming with thousands of people, everyone from Good Sam tourists to candle-toting Japanese Buddhist monks, a crowd that would turn the site into a kind of A-bomb-themed Burning Man. We were the only visitors attending the day before. Crossing the Arizona-New Mexico border, I drove with the sun visor down to eclipse my view of the stratosphere. I could no longer fathom that much goddamn sky looming over me like a great, blue void. My existential crisis was in high gear: death plus inconsequence equals inconsequential death. In my weaker moments I couldn't shake the thought that the earth was indeed flat and that we weren't driving across it so much as sliding down its face headlong into infinity. I tried to distract myself with conversation, but Levy and I have known each other nearly 20 years, which leads to a kind of conversation in absentia, like those between the very old or the characters in Waiting for Godot. The best moments on tape sound like rejected DVD commentary, which is entirely my fault, the result of being "on" for the camera, which Levy rolled sporadically throughout the trip. "Really, sci-fi as we know it today was brought on by the atomic bomb," Levy absently suggested. "When they detonated the bomb, that's when man crossed over and started playing God in a very legitimate way, because he had attained a way to destroy not only himself, but the world as he knew it. Which is a very godly place to be, I'd imagine," I said. "Or ungodly." "That too. Using the Frankenstein model of sci-fi, when you play God, the monster comes back to smite you. The atom bomb, so far as we can tell in popular culture, had a kind of retribution, wherein mutations would come back and fuck with you." "Like Godzilla." "Totally." "That's not his Japanese name, by the way. That's his American marketing name." "Godzilla? No shit? What's his real name?" "I don't know, 'Bukkake' or something." (This is why, at a recent eggnog party, I got slapped when I asked a Japanese movie buff if she was into Bukkake.) We would fall silent for hours at a time. Night came over the desert and the deep black sky swallowed the planet whole. The road was as straight as it was endless, a monotony broken only by the glowing oases of strip malls that would emerge from the horizon like chimeras. "This is where they should test the bomb," I observed. "We're in the middle of the desert and there, looming on the horizon, are the Golden Arches. It's terrible. When we get to the Trinity Site, I bet there's a big sponsorship sign, like a big Nike swoosh on the monument. Man, who would sponsor a bomb?" "Sony," Levy deadpanned. "You know, in Japan, if they like a movie, they don't applaud. They're just silent. That's their highest sign of respect." "Where did you hear that?" "Japan." "You heard 'silence' in Japan?" "It's different than American silence," he said, then attempted to re-create the two different types by slouching in his seat and closing his eyes. The Japanese version was indeed quieter. Levy was asleep. When the sun rose, the windshield looked like a super-sized microscope slide from an entomology lab. An hour past Socorro, N.M., the last pit stop of civilization before entering the realm of Ground Zero, I exhumed my Portage brand "Professional Reporter's Notebook." I had optimistically labeled it "Trinity and Beyond." Inside, a page read: "Call Debbie." Debbie worked in the White Sands Missile Range public affairs office. She was tasked with escorting us the 17 miles into the interior of the missile base. When we finally arrived at Stallion Gate, Levy was instructed to keep his camera off until our caravan to Ground Zero was complete. There we would be introduced to Jim Eckles, who helms the base's public affairs department. Just a Place Garbed in summer apparel that included shorts and a Panama hat, Jim Eckles looked like a man on permanent vacation. His attitude was likewise relaxed and his conversation easy. This was in stark contrast to me trying to keep my mind planted in the moment so as not to soar off into the wild blue yonder which was making me more buggy by the second. The site itself would make sore eyes sorer. It's a dustbowl surrounded by a cyclone fence with an a lava-rock obelisk planted in the middle with a plaque that reads: TRINITY SITE WHERE THE WORLD'S FIRST NUCLEAR DEVICE WAS EXPLODED ON JULY 16, 1945 During the course of our interview, Eckles was kind enough to run off facts and figures. The plutonium necessary for the first A-bomb was the size of a baseball, which yielded 21 kilotons of power, the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. I asked, "Is it still radioactive?" "Yes, but you're exposed to more radiation from cosmic rays while on an airplane than you are here," Eckles said flatly as Levy discreetly looked over the bottom of his shoes as if checking for dog shit. I thought, perhaps my shrink's airplane fears are justified. Then in a moment of utter demystification, Eckles casually said, "Ultimately, it's just a place where something happened." The wellspring of my anxieties, if not those of a fair portion of my generation, "just a place where something happened"? "It was a science experiment." Eckles smiled wryly. After a moment, he left Levy and I so that we could do some pickup shots without him in frame. I stood momentarily stultified. I made the mistake of looking into the sky and a sudden unease began to creep over me. "Oh, shit," I wheezed between the deep breaths my shrink encouraged me to take in such moments. But this was going to be different, I thought. Were not my mind and body headed for mutually assured devastation? Was this not my own private atomic meltdown, here in the desert where the ceremony of scientific inquiry drowned its innocence in sand? Surely some revelation is at hand. But like the nuclear holocaust promised during my youth, the panic never came. In the resulting footage, you can hear Levy snap his fingers and, like some midmarket media personality, I turn on again. "In the end, it's just a historic landmark," I say glibly. "All of these things we've projected upon it, and all it is, is something that happened a long time ago." I stand alone for a moment. Levy pans around and I continue sotto voce: "I can't believe they left us alone at the Trinity site." Then I jokingly pantomime like I'm a vandal shaking a spray can. Unfortunately, the shot is cropped so that it just looks like I'm jerking off out of frame. When we were done with the pickups, Levy reminds me, "You're leaving the Trinity Site," and goads me to say something more poignant, more significant before we leave the location for good. I could only shake my head in silence, though my mind flashed to Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist often considered the father of the bomb, and his alleged quote of the Bhagavad-Gita upon the first detonation: "Now I am become death, the shatterer of worlds; / Waiting that hour that ripens in their doom." Too overbearing, I thought. Another quote briefly came to mind, the closing stanza of Oppenheimer's favorite William Butler Yeat's poem, "The Second Coming," which concludes in a remarkably similar cadence: "And what rough beast, its hour come 'round at last, / Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born." Too maudlin. Then I remembered an apocryphal tale about the Movietone newsreel sound engineers who were at a loss to create an appropriate audio track to accompany footage of the bomb's billowing mushroom explosion. Without any source sound available to them, they improvised. They considered creating a sound effect, they experimented with music, but finally, their deadline looming, they settled on silence. Anything else would have been pat, they thought. When I recently rescreened our footage, I was taken aback by my moment of silence. I'm standing next to the obelisk. Levy says we're running low on tape and again encourages me to say something significant. But I don't say anything. I just look into the lens, which on the monitor is tantamount to looking into a mirror. I say nothing. I realized, watching it again, that my sudden muteness was not for a lack of anything to say. In fact, there's too much to say. But those who need to hear it most aren't listening. From the January 11-17, 2006 issue of the North Bay Bohemian. Copyright© 2006 Metro Publishing Inc.Maintained by Boulevards New Media. ***************************************************************** 20 PRN: U.S. Secretary of Energy Bodman to Address Platts Nuclear Energy Conference PR Newswire LEXINGTON, Mass., Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman will deliver a keynote address at the second annual Platts Nuclear Energy conference, February 13-14, 2006 in Washington, D.C. The conference features many of the leaders of the nuclear industry speaking about an expanded role for nuclear energy in North America. Featured speakers include: * Nils Diaz, Chairman, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission * Thomas A. Christopher, CEO and Vice-Chairman, AREVA, Inc. * Bill Johnson, President and COO, Progress Energy * Marilyn Kray, President, NuStart Energy Development * Dan Keuter, Vice President, Entergy Nuclear * Michael Wallace, President, Constellation Generation * Andrew C. White, President and CEO, Nuclear Energy, General Electric; * and many more -- 24 outstanding presenters in all! Panelists will explore questions such as timelines for licensing and building new nuclear plants; nuclear finance and risk; and the international growth of nuclear power. For a complete list of speakers and a conference program, go to or call 866-355-2930 (toll free in the USA). About Platts Platts is the world leader in providing energy information. For nearly a century, Platts has helped to enable ever-changing global energy markets enhance their performance through such offerings as independent industry news and price benchmarks. From 15 offices worldwide, Platts covers the oil, natural gas, electricity, nuclear power, coal, petrochemical and metals markets. About The McGraw-Hill Companies Founded in 1888, The McGraw-Hill Companies is a leading global information services provider meeting worldwide needs in the financial services, education and business information markets through leading brands such as Standard & Poor's, McGraw-Hill Education, BusinessWeek and J.D. Power and Associates. The Corporation has more than 290 offices in 38 countries. Sales in 2004 were $5.3 billion. Additional information is available at . SOURCE Platts Copyright © 1996- PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights ***************************************************************** 21 RIA Novosti: Russia for broader energy cooperation with Kazakhstan - Putin 12/ 01/ 2006 ASTANA, January 12 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is interested in broader energy cooperation with Kazakhstan, including in the field of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and oil production, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. During an official meeting with this Kazakh counterpart, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Putin welcomed the development of bilateral relations and, in particular, said the two countries' scientific communities had a great deal to offer. He said Russia was in favor of increased cooperation in the nuclear energy sphere. In addition, the president said that joint oil production enterprises would start working after technical issues were settled. "We have proposals on cooperation in this sphere," Putin said. "It is an interesting form of cooperation from the economic point of view, as well as from the standpoint of developing relations in high technologies sphere." Russia's leading independent crude producer, LUKoil, is a major investor in Kazakhstan and company president Vagit Alekperov said Wednesday that the major was intending to expand its operations in the republic. In 2004, it invested $4 billion in Kazakhstan and was the fourth largest producer. Putin said the two countries still had to settle issues concerning electric energy and oil transit, but had already achieved a high level of cooperation. © 2005 "RIA Novosti" ***************************************************************** 22 BBC: Kerry 'backs' India nuclear deal Last Updated: Thursday, 12 January 2006 [Bhabha atomic plant outside Mumbai, India] India says it wants nuclear power to meet its energy needs US Senator John Kerry has said he backs a controversial nuclear accord with India "in principle". The landmark 2005 deal to grant India access to civilian nuclear technology must be ratified by the US Congress. Critics of the accord, which hinges on India separating its military and civilian nuclear facilities, fear it could harm non-proliferation efforts. Mr Kerry is a key player in the US Congress and observers say India needs his support to get the deal passed. 'Implications' "In principle, I support this," Mr Kerry told reporters in Delhi, where he is on a three-day visit. [John Kerry (left) with Manmohan Singh] In principle I support this - this is a great gain a positive gain John Kerry Mr Kerry, loser in the last US presidential election, is an influential Democrat member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an advocate of non-proliferation controls. "It's a positive gain for India, the US and the international community," he said. But he said the fine print of the deal would have to be studied before Congress voted on the issue. "What Congress will or won't do is going to depend on what the four corners of the agreement finally say when it is arrived at." Washington and Delhi have held several rounds of talks on the issue and a senior US State Department official, Nicholas Burns, is due to visit India later this month to hold more discussions. Mr Kerry said that the nuclear deal would have large implications internationally. Apart from being approved by Congress, he said it would need: + to be approved by the 44-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group + changes to be made to the Atomic Energy Advisory Board + the adoption of the Fissile Technology Control Regime During his visit, Mr Kerry held talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and senior Indian officials. Change in law The accord was signed last July during a visit by Mr Singh to Washington. It came as a boost for India, which has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and therefore needs a change in US law. Under the agreement, US companies will be allowed to build nuclear power plants in India, and also supply fuel for nuclear reactors. The US imposed curbs on nuclear technology transfers to India in the wake of India's nuclear tests in 1998. Delhi is keen on a deal on ways to share nuclear technology to help meet its growing energy needs. ***************************************************************** 23 India Monitor: Kerry meets PM, positive on Indo-US nuke ties Alternative & Independent Source of Indian Subcontinent News Thursday, Jan. 12, 2006, New Delhi: During a 45-minute meeting on Wednesday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, US Senator John Kerry has taken a positive view of the progress in Indo-US relations, including the prospects for civilian nuclear cooperation. Kerry, who was the Democrat candidate for the 2004 US presidential elections, is also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. According to sources, he expressed his appreciation of the fact that India has a good nuclear track record, despite its not being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Kerry has always emphasised strengthening the international non-proliferation regime. However, he has not so far openly opposed the Indo-US nuclear deal. Himself among the first to raise the alarm over international dealings linked with Islamabad’s nuclear programme, Kerry accepted that India could not be equated with countries involved in clandestine proliferation activity, sources said. But the larger issue for him remained the question of how the Bush Administration planned to further non-proliferation objectives. Nuclear issues apart, Kerry was all praise for changes which have taken place in the country since his last visit five years ago. He conveyed the same to the Prime Minister, while underlining his support to strengthening the Indo-US bilateral relationship. Expanding bilateral economic ties was one of the issues he also discussed at length with the Prime Minister. The US Senator also met National Security Advisor M K Narayanan on Wednesday. India’s atomic programme, its view on increasing nuclear energy production and safeguards being undertaken in that respect were touched upon during these discussions. (Source : Express News Service) © 2003-Copyrights World News Exchange. ***************************************************************** 24 VHeadline.com: Will USA use DU weapons in fourth attempt to unseat President Hugo Chavez? Commentary Published: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 VHeadline.com guest commentarist Stephen Lendman writes: This essay is a review and expose of the threat posed by depleted uranium (DU) to all countries as a result of the US use of it since 1991 in four wars and continues using it every day in Iraq. The health affects on the US military now serving in Iraq will likely prove devastating based on the already known severe affects it's had on those forces that served in the Gulf war. That data will be explained later in this essay. How can events in Iraq possibly affect Venezuela? It can do it several ways ... as will later be explained in some detail, thousands of tons of DU weapons have been used over the past 15 years in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia/Kosovo. All these weapons are "bombs", including DU bullets, because when they strike a target they penetrate deeply and explode. The explosion causes aerosolization into a fine spray which then contaminates the air and soil around the target area. It's then swept into the air and carried by winds around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust falling indiscriminately everywhere, affecting every living thing and cannot be remedied. That's already happening from wars fought far from Venezuela ... but the US military now stores millions of DU bombs at an unknown number of bases around the world for possible future use. It's very likely large numbers of them are on bases in Latin America and may be close to the Venezuelan border. Should the US be bold enough to take an aggressive action again Hugo Chavez in a fourth attempt to unseat him, it's almost certain they'll use DU weapons in large numbers on Venezuelan soil and targets causing widespread radiation fallout and the lethal effects from it. Potentially millions of Venezuelans could be affected who would suffer severe future health consequences of virtually every imaginable type. I wrote this essay to sound an alarm and alert the world hoping that if people everywhere know the danger now and demand a halt to the use of these illegal weapons it will give the US military pause. I've written here to the people of Venezuela, and those as supportive of the Bolivarian Revolution as I am, to make them aware that what's now happening in Iraq may also happen on their soil with the potential devastating consequences that may follow that cannot be undone. Each day's mainstream headlines often misinform or divert our attention from real issues of concern. Prominent in them now is the threat of a new pandemic caused by Avian (bird) flu. Ignore them. The threat of so-called bird flu becoming a pandemic is more a political scare tactic and potential bonanza for drug company profits and its major shareholders' net worth (including Gilead Sciences, the developer of the Tamiflu drug and its former chairman and major shareholder Donald Rumsfeld) than a likely public health crisis -- unless you live around infected chickens or take an unproven safe immunization shot. There are much more other likely killer bacterial and viral threats than Avian that get little attention. Don't worry about possible or unlikely threats. Worry about real ones. Bacteria and viruses untreatable by antibiotics are good examples. So is global warming and many others. But, there's possibly one threat that tops all others both in gravity and because it's been deliberately concealed from the public -- never discussed, explained or had any action taken to remedy it. + It's the global threat from the toxic effects of depleted uranium (DU) and, like global warming, DU has the potential to destroy all planetary life. How can something so potentially destructive be hidden and ignored and why? THE ARROGANCE OF DOMINANCE There's little dispute that the US today is the preeminent world power and unlike any that ever preceded it. It now admits to being an empire. In fact, it's the first ever world global empire. To expand its reach and influence, it now spends nearly as much on its military as all other nations combined and has built and maintains a military capacity no other nation dare challenge. It also reserves for itself the sole right to develop and use the most dangerous and destructive weapons, even those banned from use by international law or custom. Some of those now in charge at the highest levels believe they have a divine right to use them, even a duty. George Bush may be one of them ... a self-proclaimed and so-called born-again Christian, he says he gets his direction from the Almighty. That's real arrogance ... the supreme kind only an unchallengeable power and its leaders dare arrogate to itself. Up to now, the US has effectively used its power to dominate other nations either by persuasion, economic isolation or conquest. We claim to be a model democracy, but our policies and actions prove otherwise. At home we're a democracy for the few -- the privileged and powerful. It's they who govern and run our institutions including the most dominant one of all -- the giant transnational corporations whose interests all administrations serve including waging war for their benefit. Wars are good for business -- as long as they're easily winnable, the public supports them, and they don't cause undo economic stresses that may disrupt the economy, in which case they're bad for business. There's a striking term often used in the plural and in a business context that's also appropriate more broadly. The term is "externalities." In business it refers to the unfortunate side effects or consequences of a company's action that may have a detrimental affect on others. A typical example is an industrial plant that produces a dangerous substance as an un-sellable by-product from its production process. To avoid the cost of disposal, storage or treatment, the plant dumps it into waterways, unused land areas or through smokestacks. In so doing it harms the environment. Wars also have "externalities" -- with far greater consequences. Overall, death, disease and destruction are the best examples. But so are the dangerous residues and their side effects from the use of weapons like toxic chemicals, biological agents and all types of nuclear munitions. We're all aware of the danger from the first two categories, although when used they only affect small areas and are not "weapons of mass destruction." We've also seen the destructive capability of a nuclear bomb and have heard of DU ... but, the public has little or no knowledge about the real danger and threat from the use of any nuclear device or substance. That information has been willfully and deliberately suppressed because the potential harm is so great and irreversible. Even when there's clear evidence of widespread problems as there was in the case of the Agent Orange effects on Vietnam veterans and "Gulf war syndrome" on the military from that conflict, our US government has denied any connection and stonewalled efforts to help those in need -- until they no longer could hide the truth and had to act. + Depleted uranium (DU) is a "dense metal" that increases its ability as a weapon to penetrate a target, thus enhancing its destructive capability. Pentagon propaganda and disinformation falsely describe all DU weapons as only being coated. In fact, they are solid missiles, bombs, shells and bullets weighing up to 5,000 pounds in a single "bunker buster" bomb. All these weapons have solid DU projectiles or warheads in them, and their use in combat as the US military has done in four wars and is now doing every day in Iraq is the "de facto" use of nuclear bombs. From Nagasaki in 1945 until the 1991 Gulf War, these weapons were effectively banned by common consent (and common sense) and never used, except for one time in the 1973 Yom Kippur war). No longer. Above, I asked why are these weapons used if they're so deadly and dangerous well beyond the areas they target? The answer's simple -- because they work so well, and the enemy forces attacked don't have them and can't retaliate against us with them. The fact that we understand the danger from their use and the "externalities" left in their wake is someone else's problem to deal with. Just like a public corporation worries only about meeting Wall Street estimates of next quarter's earnings, our government and the military only worry about winning the next battle and next war -- too bad if in the process we irradiate the planet and threaten all future life on it. That's someone else's problem later on. That's how big business thinks and also how our political and military leaders do as well. OUR PRECIOUS PLANET AND HOW BADLY WE TREAT IT Today we're threatened by many natural and "man-made" disasters we could act to prevent but don't. To the ones mentioned above add polluted air, water and soil. + Include the unsafe food we eat from the chemical and other contaminants and unsafe additives in them. Don't ignore ozone layer damage, deforestation, the destruction of precious natural habits and endangered species, the reckless ways we develop and use our natural resources including wasteful overuse of a finite supply of fresh water that could run out and is irreplaceable. And don't forget wars that get more recklessly destructive as new technologies and weapons are developed to fight them and powerful nations having them show no restraint in their use. In November, 2005 the United States lost a great man unfortunately unknown to most of the public. His name was Vine Deloria, Jr, a renowned Native American intellect, historian, author, scholar and activist. With great eloquence Deloria spoke and wrote about how for all its existence the planet was well preserved by those who lived on it -- until about 200 years ago when western technological development began and changed everything. It was then transformed from being pristine to poisoned. He expressed such great wisdom in his writings and talks, it's worth quoting. Below are some examples: "Progress is the absolute destruction of the real world in favor of a technology that creates a comfortable way of life for a few fortunately situated people. Within our lifetime the differences between the Indian use of the land and the white use of the land will become crystal clear. The Indian lived with his land. The white destroyed his land, he destroyed the planet earth." Deloria once said that Christian missionaries had "fallen on their knees and prayed for the Indians" before rising to "fall on the Indians and prey on their land." He also claimed the destruction wrought by corporate values and its technology was so damaging that a return to Native American tribal standards and culture could be viewed as salvation. He viewed a corporate run predatory society, like the U.S., as an "Adolph Eichmann of the plains", whose soldiers were tools "not defending civilization; they were crushing another society." Deloria wrote 20 books, edited others, and published his memoirs and a two-volume set of US-Native American treaties, all of which are devastating accounts of US duplicity. Every treaty made was broken or ignored to this day, and the rights of our Native Indians willfully violated and trampled over through lies, deception and deceit. Just the latest example of this is in one of the accusations in the ongoing Jack Abramoff political and financial corruption scandal now making daily headlines. Abramoff, his partner, and other well-known Republicans are accused of bilking Indian casino gambling interests out of an estimated $85 million. Further, in his now disclosed emails, he referred to Native Americans as "monkeys, troglodites (people with a sub-human like nature), and idiots." + Deloria also wrote that unlike African Americans, Native Indians did not want to be equals in US society ... they wanted no part of it. Vine Victor Deloria, Jr., historian, scholar, activist and much more was born March 26, 1933 and died November 13, 2005. He will be missed. The Industrial Revolution and its single-minded pursuit of profit (what Veblen called "the maximization of pecuniary interests") was Deloria's point. It produced along with it a vast array of toxins that have done untold ecological damage. The alarm was prominently sounded in Rachel Carson's landmark book "Silent Spring" published in 1962 that forced the banning of DDT, influenced US president Jack Kennedy and led to legislation affecting our air, water and soil. It also launched an environmental movement that's grown into many and diverse advocacy groups that lobby and fight for environmental sanity and justice. Since Carson's time we know much more about the dangers we face, and we have many more of them. But despite our knowledge and the influence of many concerned scientists and a public supporting the need for a healthy environment, our political leaders from both parties, in service to the dominant corporate interests they serve, pay little more than lip service to this most important of issues along with war and peace. Although the Congress passed more than a dozen major environmental statutes and laws since the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 including the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, CERCLA establishing the Superfund to pay for toxic cleanups, the Endangered Species Act and more, those statutes have since been weakened or ignored. As a result, conditions today are much worse than 40 years ago and the dangers from them threaten our survival. In his 2003 published book 'Hegemony or Survival,' Noam Chomsky cited the reflections of eminent biologist Ernst Mayr. Mayr observed that other species were better able to survive than humans and that the average life of a species is about 100,000 years. It's generally believed the human species has now about reached that limit and may be near becoming extinct. If so, and in light of our more recent behavior, we may, as Chomsky notes, turn out to be the only species ever to destroy ourselves and much else along with us. THE NUCLEAR AGE CHANGED EVERYTHING Since the atom was first split in a Berlin laboratory in 1938, the world has never been the same. The great scientist Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity was instrumental in the nuclear development that followed creating the atom bomb. But his greatest influence was the letter he sent to Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 urging him to build it. Einstein feared the Nazis might do it first with disastrous consequences. He later regretted his action and said: "I made one great mistake in my life....when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made...." He also said "our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good and evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." If he were alive today, what might Einstein say about the threat from depleted uranium (DU) which when weaponized is possibly the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. But even if he said it, would the public be allowed to hear him? And most important, would his words change anything? DEPLETED URANIUM (DU) -- WHAT IT IS AND HOW IT'S USED To use uranium as a fuel for commercial reactors or for nuclear weapons it must be enriched. The enrichment process is then followed by gaseous diffusion in two streams - one is enriched and the other depleted. Before a use was found for it, DU was just stored in vast amounts as a byproduct. However, when it was discovered that solid "dense metal" DU projectiles in all forms (missiles, bombs, shells and bullets) greatly increased their ability to penetrate and destroy a target, the Pentagon had a new technology it hoped to use in combat and now has for the past 15 years. The first DU weapon system was developed for the Navy in 1968, and DU weapons were first given to Israel for use in the 1973 Yom Kippur war under US supervision. These weapons were later sold to 29 countries but never used until the 1991 Gulf War when the US broke an international taboo prohibiting them. Since then the US has fought wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and again in Iraq. In all these conflicts, thousands of tons of solid DU weapons have been used causing far more devastation thus far from its radiation and chemical toxins than from the targets destroyed and those killed in target areas. Worst of all, the lingering and spreading affects from DU contamination never end, resulting in all those exposed to it and their loved ones with whom they have intimate contact and their offspring the likelihood of having one or more of virtually any illness, disease or disability imaginable often leading to early death or at the least a lifetime of pain, suffering and great expense. In Orwellian language, DU is the (deadly and unwelcome) gift that keeps on giving -- and killing. USING DU AS A WEAPON IS ILLEGAL UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW Poison gas in various forms was first used as a weapon in WW I by both sides. It's effects were deadly causing well over 1million total casualties and nearly 100,000 deaths. After the war, the revulsion over their use led to the 1925 Geneva Protocol and other succeeding Geneva Weapons Conventions that specifically outlawed the use of chemical and biological agents in any form for any reason in war. The 1925, Geneva Convention Gas Protocol specifically prohibits the use of poison gas weapons. Although no Geneva Convention or other treaty bans the use of radioactive uranium weapons, including DU weapons, these weapons are, in fact, illegal de facto and de jure when judged by the standard of the Hague Convention of 1907 which prohibits use of any "poison or poisoned weapons." DU weapons in all their forms and uses are radioactive and chemically toxic, and thus clearly fit the definition of poisonous weapons banned under the Hague Convention. The US is a signatory to the Hague and Geneva Conventions (which are binding treaties under international law). In using DU weapons in combat or for any purpose, the US has violated its sacred treaty obligations and is guilty of a war crime. Further, all DU weapons also meet the US federal code definition of "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) in 2 out of 3 categories: The US CODE, TITLE 50, CHAPTER 40, SECTION 2302 defines a Weapon of Mass Destruction as follows: "The term 'weapon of mass destruction' means any weapon or device that is intended, or has the capability, to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through the release, dissemination, or impact of (A) toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors, (B) a disease organism, or (C) radiation or radioactivity." Because the US is a signatory to the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the US military is violating its own military code. By using depleted uranium (which is clearly a WMD and thus illegal) in combat in four wars, the US is clearly guilty of the very crime we claimed our right to go to war against Iraq to prevent. In addition, under various UN Conventions and Covenants that are binding international law for its signatories, the use of any weapons that cause harm after the battle including away from the battlefield, harm the environment, or kill, wound or cause harm inhumanely are illegal and banned. DU weapons are poisonous under international law and violate all the above conditions. Even the seminal Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is legally non-binding to its signatories, implies a moral duty never to use any weapons as potentially harmful as DU. KNOWN EFFECTS FROM DU USE THUS FAR -- AND THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING, THE WORST IS YET TO COME I'm very indebted to Leuren Moret for the data discussed throughout this article and below. Leuren is an independent scientist and internationally recognized expert on radiation, DU and public health. She's done extensive research on the environmental and public health effects of low level radiation from atmospheric testing fallout, nuclear power plants and DU weapons radiation in 42 countries, has written detailed reports and articles on her important findings, given testimony on the harmful affects of DU poisoning and is an outspoken critic of DU use. In an article she authored in July, 2004 she wrote: "The use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States, defying all international treaties, will slowly annihilate all species on earth including the human species, and yet this country continues to do so with full knowledge of its destructive potential." Leuren's work has revealed some shocking facts. Since the US military first used DU weapons in the 1991 Gulf War, it has released the radioactive atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki nuclear bombs into the global atmosphere (that's no misprint) causing permanent contamination with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Furthermore, that DU radiation is 10 times the amount released by all atmospheric testing which in total equaled 40,000 Hiroshima bombs (again, no misprint). + The two atom bombs used against the Japanese killed a likely 300,000 or more people from the initial blasts and subsequent radiation and chemical poisoning deaths. To this day, there are still reported deaths attributed to the bombings. Now imagine the potential threat to all planetary life from all the DU weapons used since 1991 and their continued use in Iraq and Afghanistan -- the equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombings and increasing daily as US forces now are conducting 4 to 6 daily bombings of target sites in Iraq alone using DU bombs. Leuren calls DU "The Trojan Horse of nuclear war -- it keeps giving and keeps killing. There's no way to clean it up, and no way to turn it off because it continues to decay into other radioactive isotopes..." As it decays, it continues to release more radiation. DU when used as a weapon in war, as the US has now done four times and continues to do so in Iraq and Afghanistan and intends to continue using, is Stanley Kubrick's fictional Doomsday Machine for real (from his 1964 film Dr. Strangelove). DU may be the ultimate weapon of mass annihilation. + Unless there's a mass worldwide public awakening to this threat to demand an immediate end to its use for any purpose, we're left with little more than the message from the subtitle of the Kubrick film -- stop worrying and love the bomb -- and likely prepare to die. The greatest damage from DU comes from the radiation residue after its use. When a DU weapon strikes a target, it penetrates deeply and aerosolizes into a fine spray which then contaminates the air and soil around the target area. The residue is permanent, and its microscopic and submicroscopic particles remain suspended in air or are swept into the air from the tainted soil and are carried by winds around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust. That dust falls to earth indiscriminately everywhere causing radiation contamination that affects every living thing and cannot be remedied. The contamination causes virtually every known illness and disease from severe headaches, muscle pain and general fatigue, to major birth defects, infection, depression, cardiovascular disease, many types of cancer and brain tumors. It also causes permanent disability and death. In June, 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO), without specific reference to DU, announced in a press release that global cancer rates will increase by 50% by 2020. WHO is usually conservative in its estimates.Might they believe things are potentially far worse? And are they closely examining the effects of DU to those in combat areas where these weapons are and have been used? Those individuals (military and civilian) at or near target areas are most immediately affected by DU contamination, especially if they remain there for an extended time. During the 6-week 1991 Gulf war only 467 US personnel were wounded and about 150 killed. Out of the 580,000 military personnel who served in that war, 325,000 were reported to be on permanent medical disability by the year 2000. It was also reported then the number was increasing by 43,000 each year. In fact, the annual increases were even greater, and by 2004 the US Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA) reported over 518,000 Gulf-era veterans to be on medical disability. It also reported over 500,000 veterans were homeless. Studies were also done on veterans whose wives had normal babies before the war. It reported two-thirds of post-war births of those studied had severe birth defects, such as missing brains, eyes, legs and arms and blood diseases. There are already scattered early reports of DU caused health problems from the current Iraq conflict (and probably Afghanistan) as well as an above normal rate of still active duty military and veteran suicide and family violence. As deployments in the current conflict are much longer than the short Gulf war and most serving go back for a second or even third tour of duty, it's easy to imagine a literal holocaust that will eventually devastate all military and other personnel who have or are now serving or will serve in Iraq and the region. And it likely will have a similar effect on the wives and husbands of veterans and their post-service offspring. Once again it must be emphasized ... the US government prior to 1991 had full knowledge of the devastating effects DU would cause and still used it, still does and still intends to keep using it. Beyond belief? You bet. If someone wrote this as a work of fiction or science fiction, no one would believe it, and probably no one would publish it. DU USED AS WEAPONS -- A WILLFUL ACT OF GENOCIDE From its use already in four wars, the use of DU weapons is an act of insanity as well as possibly the greatest ever crime against humanity (and all other living species) and a war crime. Those responsible include three presidents, scores of high government officials and the Pentagon high command to include a lot of generals and admirals. These people are criminals. They're guilty of mass murder without end. They all should be made to answer for their crimes through indictment and trials both in our federal courts and at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague which was established in 2002 to try individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. These people, or at least most of them, are guilty of all three crimes and should pay the highest price for them with no leniency. Their convictions should once and for all serve as a reminder to all future leaders that this type reckless behavior will never again be tolerated. Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, a distinguished author and man of great honor, passion and eloquence, in his 2005 acceptance speech made these comments about the current Iraq war. Too ill with cancer, he was unable to travel to Oslo for the award ceremony and instead read his comments on videotape. Pinter is a sharp critic of the Iraq war and the US and his UK government's role in it. In his Nobel award address he called the invasion of Iraq a "bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law." He stressed "the United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious... It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant." Pinter is right, and he said much more in his 46 minute acceptance speech. He also could have added the Bush administration since 9/11/01 has governed recklessly and arrogantly. With obsessive secrecy and contempt for the Constitution, the Congress, the courts and the US public, George Bush has governed by Executive Order or Decree, a tool of tyrants when used to excess as this president has. He's done it to pursue a policy of permanent imperial war for US global domination. The tragedy of 9/11 aside, the Bush administration created a fear-induced sham world terrorist threat to fight a so-called "global war on terrorism" for decades to come. It also created a near police state at home with baseless mass roundups, illegal detentions and deportations as part of a racist war against dark-skinned immigrants, illegal warrantless domestic spying and systemic use of torture of those detained and those held in offshore prisons and "renditioned" to mostly unnamed countries tolerating this practice. The Bush administration did all this based on a foundation of willful deception, deceit, and endless web of lies, and an utter contempt for political, economic and social justice at home and abroad and the rule of law. Until recent months, Bush has gotten away with it all. Now with his poll numbers plummeting, the Iraq war a hopeless quagmire (despite the disinformation to the contrary), the possibility of further high level administration officials being indicted beside Lewis Libby along with the potentially huge political and financial Jack Abramoff corruption scandal, and the Democrats and some Republicans finally stirring and expressing their ire, the administration may be nearing its Waterloo. + Like many other regimes in the past guilty of imperial arrogance and overreach (like the last one that tried -- the Nazis -- and thought they'd rule for 1,000 years but only lasted 12) this administration and its reckless and heartless agenda may meet a similar fate. Great thinkers and perceptive observers have ventured to guess what our fate may be as a result of our actions. Without predicting it, Noam Chomsky in a recent talk cited the worst of all possible outcomes -- a nuclear holocaust, environmental destruction or the end of even nominal democracy. Yale Senior Research Scholar Immanuel Wallerstein in his important 2003 book, 'The Decline of American Power,' believes the US "has been a fading global power since the 1970s, and the US response to the (9/11) terrorist attacks has merely accelerated this decline." He goes on to say "the economic, political and military factors that contributed to US hegemony are the same factors that will inexorably produce the coming US decline." He later wrote he can't predict the outcome of "this chaotic crisis of our capitalist world system", but the US attempt to stop it will fail. At best, they'll only delay it as they've been trying to do. Wallerstein sees a future that will go one of two ways (if we survive) -- either one based on progressive values or something that's quite the opposite. Retired professor Chalmers Johnson, in his important 2004 book, 'The Sorrows of Empire,' also predicts the dissolution of the US empire if its present path continues. Unlike imperial Rome that took hundreds of years before it fell, he sees US sorrows arriving "with the speed of FedEx." He predicts four sorrows if the present trend continues that will create an ugly alternative to our present constitutional form of government: imperial overreach with a "state of perpetual war" leading to more terrorist retaliation against us; a loss of democracy and our constitutional rights; the end of truthfulness "replaced by a system of propaganda, disinformation, and glorification of war, power, and the military legions"; finally, he sees the nation going bankrupt from its inability to maintain ever more "grandiose military projects." The US national debt now exceeds $8.2 trillion. It's growing unsustainably by over $400 billion annually as is the current account deficit that in 2006 may reach $1 trillion. Both deficits rely "on the kindness of strangers" (foreign governments and investors willing to keep buying our treasury securities and invest in our equity and fixed income markets) to sustain us. They'll do it only as long as they believe they're making sound investments. Johnson doesn't believe the present trend is irreversible. There's still time to change it, but so far he says we're not even trying. He thus believes the only hope for us and the planet is for the world community of nations to act together to "checkmate" us. If they don't or won't or can't, nuclear war may eventually ensue and "civilization will disappear." To prevent the above scenarios from happening, the world community of nations must coalesce soon and go for "checkmate." And united they should demand that this kind of behavior will never again be tolerated by any nation. They should strengthen the international laws now in place enough to insure it, require every nation to be a signatory and force all nations to abide by these binding laws with the severest consequences for those who don't. But even if all this were to happen, the damage already done is overwhelming and spreading. It may already be too late. In the US alone, 42 states are now contaminated with DU from its manufacture, testing and deployment. Also, the manufacture of millions of DU bombs and their deployment to US military bases around the world continues. Leuren Moret just learned from a declassified document a Hawaii-based Quaker group obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that the US military has 2.7 million DU bombs in US still occupied South Korea (over 50 years after the end of the Korean War). She says it's little wonder North Korea wants nuclear weapons. She believes these bombs were moved there in the 1990s from US still-occupied (Japanese) Okinawa (60 years after WW2) because the Japanese (who abhor nuclear weapons) refused to domicile them any longer. And she speculates further that we very likely have many millions more DU bombs deployed in other countries where we have bases. That could include a great many more according to Chalmers Johnson. In 'The Sorrows of Empire,' Johnson mentioned the existence of at least 725 known US bases in 153 countries, besides hundreds more in this country. He also believes we have secret bases so the real total could be much higher and now likely is with all the new bases we're building in Iraq, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and plans for Africa. Even without these weapons being used, imagine the potential danger we're placing the people of these countries in (and our own citizens as well) just because the weapons are there (and here). There could be accidents, the military engages in exercises where they likely test and use these weapons, and, of course, they could be stolen or even sold by rogue military or other personnel looking for a quick buck. Imagine for a moment a reverse scenario. What if the UK, France, Russia or China had bases in this country (bad enough) and additionally stored millions of DU bombs or other nuclear weapons on our soil. Would we citizens tolerate just the bases, let alone with DU bombs? Unlikely. Also imagine if the public here knew thousands or millions of these weapons were being stored on US bases here, near where they lived. They might also consider the 104 current operating commercial nuclear power plants in the US. They're all dangerous, but especially the aging ones. Every one is a potential unstable nuclear bomb and possible disaster waiting to happen, either from an inevitable accident or from sabotage. Responsible experts believe it's just a matter of time before a major nuclear disaster occurs somewhere in the world, possibly or even likely a full nuclear core meltdown -- the worst possible kind of nuclear catastrophe other than a nuclear or thermonuclear explosion or widespread use of DU weapons. If a core meltdown happened (or more likely when one happens), a vast area would be contaminated and made uninhabitable forever. Where I live in Chicago I'm surrounded by 11 nuclear power plants, many of them aging and all of them with histories of safety violations caused by aging and shoddy maintenance. Even without an accident, these facilities (and all others everywhere) discharge enough radiation daily in their normal operations to contaminate the food we eat (even organic food), the water we drink and the air we breathe into our lungs. If one of these plants had a core meltdown and metropolitan Chicago was downwind from the fallout, the city and suburbs alone would become uninhabitable forever and would have to be evacuated quickly with all possessions left behind and lost (including our homes) except for what we could carry in suitcases or in the trunks of our cars. Everyone should thus ask the obvious question -- is this kind of insane "nuclear Russian roulette" risk worth taking? There are much cleaner, safer alternatives available or that can be developed, if we'd just be willing to invest heavily in alternative energy sources other than the nuclear option and fossil fuels. There are also common sense ways to practice conservation, without significantly impeding our western lifestyle. Up to now, our leaders have been irresponsible and derelict in their duty to inform us of the risk and act responsibly to remove it to protect us from potential harm. They've also shown no restraint in their actions or respect for the people in countries we seek to dominate. Those countries are never the developed ones in the Global North with the power to respond. They're always weak, less developed and overexploited ones, usually with darker skinned people and a non Judeo-Christian faith. In this country, especially without a draft and with few good career opportunities for the poor and underprivileged, military service with the promise of education and other benefits (that most inductees never get) becomes the temporary career choice of expedience. The rich and well-off only wage the wars but don't fight in them. Instead they send the poor to fight and die for them to make them richer. When our Vietnam era military came home sick and dying from the toxic effects of Agent Orange (highly toxic dioxin), Henry Kissinger, a Nobel Peace prize recipient and accused war criminal, arrogantly insulted them all when he called them "just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." Used, abused and discarded like worn out shoes. Kissinger's past has come back to haunt him. Before traveling abroad now, he must check with the US State Department to be sure there are no warrants out for his arrest. The world today is closer to the tipping point than ever before. We may, in fact, have passed it and it's already too late. The price we've paid for our technological advances has been an equal growth in the threat to our survival. Up to now we've found no way to end this destructive path. We're fast running out of time, and unless we do it and soon, we may not get another chance. The US today is like a giant Gulliver Agonistes and the rest of the world like the Lilliputians -- in Jonathan Swift's classic satire. Despite the mismatch, the Lilliputans (who stood 6 inches high) were able to tie down this giant and prevent him from wrecking their homes. In the end, they got Gulliver to leave and were able to go on with their lives. + The lesson is clear ... people everywhere need to understand the great peril we all face ... our survival. Then, like the Lilliputians, we need to hog-tie this out-of-control predatory Gulliver to save ourselves. Two final thoughts to consider -- the first one from Dr. Helen Caldicott, president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, an expert on the medical hazards of nuclear energy, author, activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee from her 1978 book 'Nuclear Madness' (updated in 1994): "As a physician, I contend nuclear technology (military and commercial) threatens life on our planet with extinction." "If present trends continue (and they have and have gotten worse), the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced." The second is from the great British journalist, Robert Fisk from his year-end London Independent column entitled War Without End: "Only justice, not bombs, can make our dangerous world a safer place." Stephen Lendman VHeadline.com ***************************************************************** 25 AU ABC: Environmentalists disappointed with greenhouse summit PM - Thursday, 12 January , 2006 18:22:00 Reporter: Michael Vincent KAREN PERCY: Environmentalists are dismissive of the outcomes of the summit, calling it a missed opportunity. They're angered by the declaration by the world's key polluters, which say they will not be cutting back on fossil fuel use, and they're alarmed that today's communique points to increased nuclear energy as a solution for climate change. But most of their frustration is aimed at Australia and the United States, which unlike the rapidly developing countries China and India, have yet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Nor have they committed themselves to renewable energy targets. Michael Vincent reports. MICHAEL VINCENT: Green groups and environmentalists weren't invited to this conference. They were critical of it before it began, and that criticism hasn't stopped with today's outcome. BILL HARE: I think it's a charade. MICHAEL VINCENT: Bill Hare is the Climate Policy Director with Greenpeace International in Berlin. BILL HARE: I think it's come out of a political need of the Australian Prime Minister to appear to be doing something to a problem that everyone knows is increasingly serious, but about which Australia is doing virtually zero. MICHAEL VINCENT: And the Australian Conservation Foundation's Director Don Henry is equally dismissive. DON HENRY: This is a very disappointing outcome from this meeting. There's a lot more hot air and inaction than we'd like to see, and particularly when Australians are suffering from climate change today. MICHAEL VINCENT: Don Henry is particularly critical of Australia's pledge of $100 million over five years to help India and China, of which $25 million will be for renewable energy projects. DON HENRY: That'd probably build one wind farm, right at a time when China, by using mandatory targets, for example, has introduced renewable power to over one million people in rural China. Without laws and markets that drive the billions of dollars of investment needed, not hundreds, the billions dollars of investment needed, we're not going to tackle climate change, nor provide the assistance that China and India need. MICHAEL VINCENT: As part of today's pact, none of the countries be reducing their use of fossil fuels, and along with renewable energy, they're looking at increased nuclear power as a solution. Bill Hare. BILL HARE: I'm not seeing this pact as a particularly serious proposition, and in fact these governments were represented at a very low level. I'm certain that the statements in the pact contradict those that were made by the Chinese Government recently at the UN conference in Montreal. So I'm not at all worried about this, I think everyone knows that these countries have to increase their emissions in the next decade or two. The main issue here for me is why aren't Australia and the United States actually acknowledging the need for absolute emission reductions. Because unless countries like Australia and the US and so on actually make deep reductions, there's no way we're going to be able to stop dangerous climate changes from occurring. MICHAEL VINCENT: What about the proposed greater use of nuclear energy as part of reducing emissions? Why won't that work? DON HENRY: Well, nuclear energy is a very dangerous technology in terms of, both intrinsically and nuclear proliferation. It's also very costly technology, and in the end is not economically sustainable anywhere in the world. MICHAEL VINCENT: Another major criticism of this conference is its support for voluntary goals or commitments, rather than binding targets, such as those in the Kyoto Protocol. In the United States, the World Wide Fund for Nature says companies who want to reduce their emissions fear they will lose money unless their competitors are forced to do so under mandatory targets. Hans Verolme is the Director of WWF's Climate Change Program in the US. HANS VEROLME: World Wildlife Fund has worked with the private sector for many years, and we actually negotiate in the absence of mandatory US limits absolute reduction targets with some US companies. But at the same time these companies tell us that without a mandatory framework, they face competitiveness risks. And so they actually are looking towards the Government to provide them a safe investment climate and a long term future. And that future is in the carbon markets, and that is what the talks in Montreal are all about. KAREN PERCY: The World Wide Fund for Nature's Hans Verolme. ***************************************************************** 26 AU ABC: Aust-China uranium talks set to begin. 13/01/2006. ABC News Online The Federal Government will begin discussions with China next week on an agreement that would allow uranium to be exported for China's nuclear power industry. Prime Minister John Howard says a safeguards agreement ensuring the uranium would be used only for peaceful purposes is necessary before any exports can go ahead. Mr Howard says it would then be up to China to pursue the matter. "The question of whether there are any exports and so forth that go ahead well that ultimately is a commercial matter involving companies and utilities in China," he said. 'But [the] Government's point of view [is] we are quite determined that there be proper safeguards and we're having discussions with the Chinese about that." This service may include material from Agence France-Presse (AFP), APTN, Reuters, CNN and the BBC World Service which is copyright and cannot be reproduced. ***************************************************************** 27 Rachel's #837: Nuclear Power had a Bad year Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:29:42 -0800 . ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Rachel's Democracy & Health News #837 "Environment, health, jobs and justice--Who gets to decide?" Thursday, January 12, 2006 www.rachel.org -- To make a secure donation, click here. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Featured stories in this issue... Nuclear Power Had a Bad Year in 2005 During 2005, there was considerable talk about the nuclear power industry reviving itself -- with the help of huge new federal subsidies -- but the industry seems to be in such deep trouble on many fronts that it will remain moribund, though still highly dangerous to world peace. A Democracy Revolution Breaks Out in Pennsylvania In Pennsylvania, citizens are developing fundamentally new tactics, aiming to take back control of their communities from corporations. To learn more about this exciting new development in American political thinking, you could attend democracy school. Errors, Errors... Monsanto and Percy Schmeiser First we numbered last weeks' issue #837 when it was really #836. Then we confused our readers by saying Percy Schmeiser owed Monsanto damages for having Monsanto's patented genes in his field. This is not quite correct. Precaution Academy: Practical Training for Precautionary Action Could your community begin to take precautionary action to improve its prospects for the future? To help your community make the shift to this new way of thinking, you could attend The Precaution Academy that we have just started. The first session will be held in New Brunswick, N.J. Mar. 31-Apr. 2. Three other sessions of the Academy are set for other locations in the U.S. later this year, too. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: Rachel's Democracy & Health News #837, Jan. 12, 2006 NUCLEAR POWER HAD A BAD YEAR IN 2005 By Peter Montague [In this series we are discussing the most important issues of 2005. --DHN Editors] Nuclear power did not have a good year in 2005, despite President Bush's and Congress's best efforts to revive the moribund industry with massive new federal subsidies. Consider these facts: ** The U.S. currently has 103 nuclear power plants in service. They employ a controlled atomic chain reaction to make heat to make steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity. The plants are very complicated and therefore prone to breakdown and operator error. Because of the partial fuel meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, followed by the serious fire at Chernobyl in 1986, no new nuclear power plants have been ordered in the U.S. for the past 29 years. Everyone -- even President Bush -- agrees that the current generation of nuclear plants is too problem-prone to inspire confidence. On June 22, 2005, the President gave a speech at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland saying, "Some Americans remember the problems that the nuclear plants had back in the 1970s. That frightened a lot of folks. People have got to understand that advances in science and engineering and plant design have made nuclear plants far safer." However, none of the President's new "far safer" plants have actually been built. Indeed, their designs have not even been approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Furthermore, as the Los Angeles Times reported June 11, the new nuclear designs are not very different from the old designs. This is an industry that lost most of its talent during the "dry period" of the last 30 years, and bright young engineers are not flocking to design new nuclear power plants. Still, three companies would love to build a new generation of nukes -- if they can convince taxpayers to put up the billions of dollars needed because there are few eager customers for new plants. President Bush said he would put up $2 billion to help get four new power plants running. And the Idaho Engineering Laboratory has a $1.25 billion project going to develop a next-generation atomic/hydrogen plant. But the industry says it needs much more in the way of taxpayer subsidies before it will thrive. Private utility companies are reluctant to invest in nuclear power because they got badly burned once before. As the Los Angeles Times said June 22, "But the sober reality of nuclear power is that the U.S. will move slowly and cautiously, at best, because Wall Street financiers and the nation's utility industry still have vivid memories of the legal, financial and regulatory debacles that resulted from the building binge of the 1970s." One of the things utility executives remember best is the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in 1979. Peter Bradford, a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, explained to the New York Times May 2, "The abiding lesson that Three Mile Island taught Wall Street was that a group of N.R.C.-licensed reactor operators, as good as any others, could turn a $2 billion asset into a $1 billion cleanup job in about 90 minutes," Mr. Bradford said. For reasons that are not entirely clear, President Bush and Vice- President Cheney are exceedingly eager to revive the civilian nuclear power industry. President Bush says it is because nuclear plants represent the best way for the U.S. to wean itself from foreign sources of oil. In his Calvert Cliffs speech June 22, the President said nuclear power, "could play a big role in easing the nation's dependence on foreign fuels," according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. But even nuclear industry executives acknowledge that this argument doesn't hold water. Nuclear power generates electricity; oil is used to generate only 2.8% of all the electricity in the U.S., so a few dozen new nuclear power plants can't make much of a dent in our reliance on foreign oil. At some time in the hazy distant future -- say 50 or 100 years from now -- after a raft of untried technologies have been financed, developed, tested, and deployed, then nuclear power plants might substitute for oil by producing hydrogen, but at present new nuclear power plants will do almost nothing to diminish U.S. reliance on foreign oil. Meanwhile, there are many other serious problems besetting the nuclear power industry: ** Shoddy workmanship continues to plague the nuclear industry. A leak of radioactivity at the Hope Creek Plant in New Jersey in March, 2005, was not caused by excessive vibration in the reactor's B recirculation pump, as the plant's operators first thought. It was caused by a faulty weld. ** Sloppy management continues to embarrass the industry as well. In March, 2005, operators of the Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida discovered that three illegal aliens had falsified social security numbers and thus gained employment inside the plant. ** It did not help when officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory revealed in January, 2005, that they had lost 600 pounds of plutonium -- enough to make dozens of atomic bombs. Laboratory officials tried to reassure the public by saying the missing plutonium may have been buried in landfills in the town of Los Alamos, or perhaps it was shipped to a salt mine for burial, without any records of the shipment having been kept, or perhaps it was stolen. If a gold- plated national atomic laboratory can lose 600 pounds of one of the deadliest substances on earth, what chance does the nuclear industry have of operating reliably or safely -- given that it cannot weld metal reliably, or keep illegal aliens from entering the plant? ** Mysteries continue to crop up at nuclear power plants. In December, 2005, federal regulators confirmed that radioactive water was showing up in storm sewer lines and in recently-dug wells near the Indian Point 2 nuclear plant on the Hudson River upstream from New York City. The plant's routine radioactive releases into the Hudson River are deemed "acceptable" by regulators, but the source of the underground radioactive water remained a mystery. ** The larger question of radiation safety came into focus in June with the publication of the BEIR VII report by the National Research Council. BEIR stands for Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation and this seventh report in the series said there is no amount of radiation that can be considered safe. In other words, all radiation carries with it some risk of causing cancer, said BEIR VII. This report put the kibosh on a favorite theory of some in the nuclear industry, called hormesis. According to the hormesis theory, a little radiation is actually good for you. According to the conclusions reached by BEIR VII, this theory can now be permanently put to rest. All radiation must now be considered harmful, and to be avoided whenever possible. (Naturally, this includes medical radiation, so make sure you actually need that next x-ray or CAT scan your dentist or doctor offers you.) ** Nuclear waste disposal has still not been solved even though nuclear power plants have been producing super-hot, extremely dangerous radioactive waste since 1956 when the first plant went on- line (and the federal weapons program has been producing radioactive wastes since about 1940). The federal government has committed to solving the waste problem on behalf of the private nuclear power industry, but so far without success. The feds have put all their eggs in a basket called Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the project is mired in scientific, technical and management disputes and may never accept any waste. The Philadelphia Inquirer probably spoke for tens of millions of Americans when it editorialized April 17, "Before the U.S. can grow more reliant on [nuclear] reactors, it must solve the problem of disposing of nuclear waste." It was revealed mid-year that some of the technical data supporting the Yucca site may have been falsified by project scientists; the FBI is still investigating. The U.S. so far produced 59,000 tons (54,000 metric tonnes) of high- level radioactive waste, most of it sitting in pools of water close to the reactors that produced it. Earlier this year the National Academy of Sciences confirmed what nuclear critics have maintained for years -- that these "spent fuel pools" are sitting ducks for terrorist attack and, if the water were simply drained out of such a pool, a ferocious fire could ensue, spreading large quantities of highly dangerous radioactivity into the air. Independent analysts also revealed this year that even if the Yucca Mountain waste repository were opened by 2012 -- the most optimistic projection for getting it open -- it will by that time be too small to accommodate the waste it was meant to sequester. Dr. Frank von Hippel of Princeton University calculated that the nuclear industry could move about 3000 tons of waste to Yucca Mountain per year, but the industry creates 2000 new tons each year, so the inventory of waste held at power plant sites would only be reduced by about 1000 tons per year. At this rate it would take over 50 years to get rid of the "spent fuel" hazard at existing power plants. These calculations do not take into account any wastes created by the dozens of new nuclear plants that President Bush hopes will be built to, as he insists, reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Actually the problems with high-level wastes go deeper still. In April the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a stinging report accusing the nation's nuclear power companies -- and their watchdog, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- of failing to safeguard wastes now held at nuclear power plants -- or even to keep track of them accurately. "NRC inspectors often could not confirm that containers that were designated as containing loose fuel rods in fact contained the fuel rods," the report said. Inadequate oversight and gaps in safety procedures have left several plants unsure about the whereabouts of all their spent fuel, the GAO said. Because Yucca Mountain is in deep trouble and may never open, eight utilities formed their own private waste disposal company and struck a deal with the Skull Valley band of Goshute Indians, who live 50 miles from Salt Lake City, Utah. The Goshute tribe agreed to provide "temporary" storage of spent fuel from reactors, and in September the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the plan its official OK. No one is saying how long "temporary" might be if Yucca Mountain fails to open. Even though this is an excellent example of the free market working its magic, the state of Utah has promised to sue in federal court, to try to stop the Bureau of Indian Affairs from approving the contract, and to try to prevent the federal Bureau of Land Management from allowing construction of a needed rail spur to transport waste to the site. So it's not yet a done deal. When it comes time to transport wastes, several states may try to prevent shipment on their highways, and it is not clear that utilities want to spend the money to ship wastes first to Utah, then, later, to Yucca Mountain in Utah. Yucca Mountain and the Skull Valley Goshute project are intended to handle "high-level" waste -- the super-hot, super-radioactive spent fuel from reactors. But even the problem of "low level" radioactive wastes has mired the industry and government in controversy. For several years the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been trying to "solve" the low-level radwaste problem by allowing them to be buried in municipal landfills. As part of its proposal, the NRC had proposed that certain radioactive metals could simply be sold to scrap dealers and recycled. The scrap dealers of the nation wanted no part of it, fearing that all metallic scrap would get a bad name because it might be (legally) radioactive after the government plan went into effect. No one wanted their child's braces made out of radioactive metal; no one wanted their forks and spoons to be slightly radioactive; no one wanted a radioactive hammer or saw. And no town wanted radioactivity in the local dump. In June the NRC abandoned its proposal. The fight against this proposal was led by the Nuclear Information Resource Service in Washington, D.C., and by the Committee to Bridge the Gap in Los Angeles. Dozens of small anti-nuclear groups around the country told the NRC what a dumb idea this was, and in June the NRC abandoned its plan, saying the idea wasn't dead and might be revisited at a later date. In any case, it was a great victory for citizen activism -- and yet another sign that the nuclear industry is desperate to solve its growing waste problem but clueless as to how to go about it. In sum, the radioactive waste problem remains unsolved -- indeed it seems further from solution at the end of 2005 than it did at the end of 2004 -- and it continues to provoke extremely heated debate. So it is with all things nuclear. ** The nuclear industry's biggest problem remains the inseparable connection between nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs. Nuclear power can always provide a determined nation with the know- how, the technology, and the means to make atomic bombs. This is what Iran is allegedly up to as we speak. This is how North Korea developed the bomb. India and Pakistan joined the nuclear club by first acquiring nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs are inextricably linked. If for some perverse reason you wanted to put nuclear weapons into the hands of people who presently don't have them, the best first step to take would be to help them acquire a nuclear power plant. On November 14, 2005, the former 9/11 Commission members issued a report card on the Bush Administration's efforts to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. The Commission noted that President Bush himself has said nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists are "the gravest threat our nation faces... at the crossroads of radicalism and technology." The Commission went on to say, "We know that al Qaeda has sought weapons of mass destruction for at least ten years. Bin Ladin [sic] clearly -- and he has said this -- would not hesitate to use them. We have no greater fear than a terrorist who is inside the United States with nuclear weapons. The consequences of such an attack would be catastrophic -- for our people, for our economy, for our liberties, and probably for our way of life." Then the Commission went on to evaluate the Bush Administration's response to this problem, pointing out that... ** about half the nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union "still have no security upgrades whatsoever." ** Some forty countries have the essential materials for nuclear weapons. ** Well over 100 research reactors around the world have enough highly-enriched uranium present to fashion a nuclear device. ** Too many of these facilities lack any kind of adequate protection. The terrorists are smart. They will go where the security is weakest. The Commissioners said they were alarmed that so little had been done by the Bush administration to reduce the dangers of a terrorist nuclear bomb going off in a U.S. city -- like New York or Chicago or San Francisco. They summarized the Bush administration's nearly-total failure this way: "The most striking thing to us is that the size of the problem still totally dwarfs the policy response," said Thomas H. Kean, the Republican former chair of the Sept. 11 commission. So, to summarize: President Bush says nuclear terrorism is the nation's biggest threat and everyone else seems to agree. But the Bush administration is not doing nearly enough to prevent this catastrophe from happening. Meanwhile everyone acknowledges that the best way for rogue states to "join the nuclear club" is to acquire a nuclear power plant first, then make a few weapons. The U.S. is aggressively promoting a new generation of nuclear power plants and Vice-President Cheney is personally trying to convince the Chinese (and others?) to purchase new nuclear power plants from Westinghouse. Thus it seems clear that this administration is committed to getting more nuclear power technology into the hands of more people around the world. In addition, in discussing the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world, the bi-partisan 9-11 Commission members noted that "widespread reports of abuse and even torture of Muslim suspects by American captors had served as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda." "The flames of extremism undoubtedly burn more brightly when we are the ones who deliver the gasoline," said Richard Ben-Viste, a Democratic member of the Sept. 11 Commission. In sum, the U.S. is working hard to revive the moribund nuclear power industry and export the technology abroad, where everyone knows it forms the basis for weapons programs in the hands of any nation determined to join the nuclear club. Meanwhile the Bush administration is dragging its feet, not taking the necessary steps to secure weapons-grade nuclear materials that are poorly-secured in 100 countries. And, finally, the administration has thumbed its nose at international treaties against abuse and torture of prisoners -- thus creating an inferno of white-hot hatred against the U.S. among Al Qaeda and its suicide-bomber followers. Does anyone besides me think this is a sure recipe for trouble ahead? No, it has not been a good year for the nuclear industry. One of these days, after a small A-bomb goes off in New York or Chicago, the nuclear era will draw to a close definitively. But so, too, most likely, will the world's 200-year-long era of experimenting with democratic self-governance. It must be apparent to almost everyone involved -- though few will venture to say so -- that nuclear technologies are simply too complex and unforgiving to be controlled by mere mortals. We humans are simply not up to the task of managing this hydra-headed monster. If we earthlings are anywhere near as smart as we seem to think we are, we would learn from the nuclear fiasco and declare a world-wide policy of No Nukes. Then we would declare a moratorium on further deployment of the products of synthetic biology, nanotechnology and biotechnology -- all of which are far more powerful and far less-easily controlled than nuclear power and nuclear bombs. Return to Table of Contents :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: Orion Magazine, Mar. 10, 2003 CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED The reign of corporations and the fight for democracy The autonomy of state and local governments continues to wane as corporations grow larger and gain more extensive rights under the U.S. Constitution. An increasing number of Americans have begun to consider a whole range of single-issue cases as examples of "corporate rule," with government merely enforcing rules defined by corporations for profit. But in communities across the country a revolt is underfoot that has corporations reeling. By Jeffrey Kaplan Describing the United States of the 1830s in his now-famous work, Democracy in America, the young French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville depicted a country passionate about self-governance. In the fifty years since sovereignty had passed from the crown to the people, citizens of the new republic had seized upon every opportunity "to take a hand in the government of society and to talk about it.... If an American should be reduced to occupying himself with his own affairs," wrote de Tocqueville, "half his existence would be snatched from him; he would feel it as a vast void in his life." At the center of this vibrant society was the town or county government. "Without local institutions," de Tocqueville believed, "a nation has not got the spirit of liberty," and might easily fall victim to "despotic tendencies." In the era's burgeoning textile and nascent railroad industries, and in its rising commercial class, de Tocqueville had already detected a threat to the "equality of conditions" he so admired in America. "The friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed," he warned, on an "industrial aristocracy.... For if ever again permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy make their way into the world it will have been by that door that they entered." Under those conditions, he thought, life might very well be worse than it had been under the old regimes of Europe. The old land-based aristocracy of Europe at least felt obliged "to come to the help of its servants and relieve their distress. But the industrial aristocracy... when it has impoverished and brutalized the men it uses, abandons them in a time of crisis." As de Tocqueville predicted, the industrial aristocrats have prevailed in America. They have garnered enormous power over the past 150 years through the inexorable development of the modern corporation. Having achieved extensive control over so many facets of our lives -- from food and clothing production to information, transportation, and other necessities -- corporate institutions have become more powerful than the sovereign people who originally granted them existence. As late as 1840, state legislators closely supervised the operation of corporations, allowing them to be created only for very specific public benefits, such as the building of a highway or a canal. Corporations were subject to a variety of limitations: a finite period of existence, limits to the amount of property they could own, and prohibitions against one corporation owning another. After a period of time deemed sufficient for investors to recoup a fair profit, the assets of a business would often revert to public ownership. In some states, it was even a felony for a corporation to donate to a political campaign. But in the headlong rush into the Industrial Age, legislators and the courts stripped away almost all of those limitations. By the 1860s, most states had granted owners limited liability, waiving virtually all personal accountability for an institution's cumulative actions. In 1886, without comment, the United States Supreme Court ruled for corporate owners in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, allowing corporations to be considered "persons," thereby opening the door to free speech and other civil rights under the Bill of Rights; and by the early 1890s, states had largely eliminated restrictions on corporations owning each other. By 1904, 318 corporations owned forty percent of all manufacturing assets. Corporate owners were replacing de Tocqueville's "equality of conditions" with what one writer of the time, W. J. Ghent, called "the new feudalism... characterized by a class dependence rather than by a personal dependence." Throughout the twentieth century, federal courts have granted U.S. corporations additional rights that once applied only to human beings -- including those of "due process" and "equal protection." Corporations, in turn, have used those rights to thwart democratic efforts to check their growth and influence. Corporate power, largely unimpeded by democratic processes, today affects municipalities across the country. But in the conservative farming communities of western Pennsylvania, where agribusiness corporations have obstructed local efforts to ban noxious corporate farming practices, the commercial feudalism de Tocqueville warned against has evoked a response that echoes the defiant spirit of the Declaration of Independence. In late 2002 and early 2003, two of the county's townships did something that no municipal government had ever dared: They decreed that a corporation's rights do not apply within their jurisdictions. The author of the ordinances, Thomas Linzey, an Alabama-born lawyer who attended law school in nearby Harrisburg, did not start out trying to convince the citizens of the heavily Republican county to attack the legal framework of corporate power. But over the past five years, Linzey has seen township supervisors begin to take a stand against expanding corporate influence -- and not just in Clarion County. Throughout rural Pennsylvania, supervisors have held at bay some of the most well-connected agribusiness executives in the state, along with their lawyers, lobbyists, and representatives in the Pennsylvania legislature. Linzey anticipated none of this when he cofounded the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a grassroots legal support group, in 1995. Initially, CELDF worked with activists according to a conventional formula. "We were launched to provide free legal services to community groups, specifically grassroots community environmental organizations," Linzey says. "That involved us in permit appeals and other typical regulatory stuff." But all that soon changed. In 1997, the state of Pennsylvania began enforcing a weak waste- disposal law, passed at the urging of agribusiness lobbyists several years earlier, which explicitly barred townships from passing any more stringent law. It had the effect of repealing the waste-disposal regulations of more than one hundred townships, regulations that had prevented corporations from establishing factory farms in their communities. The supervisors, who had seen massive hog farms despoil the ecosystems and destroy the social and economic fabric of communities in nearby states, were desperate to find a way to protect their townships. Within a year, CELDF "started getting calls from municipal governments in Pennsylvania, as many as sixty to seventy a week," Linzey says. "Of 1,400 rural governments in the state we were interacting with perhaps ten percent of them. We still are." But factory hog farms weren't the only threat introduced by the state's industry-backed regulation. The law also served to preempt local control over the spreading of municipal sewage sludge on rural farmland. In Pittsburgh and other large cities, powerful municipal treatment agencies, seeking to avoid costly payments to landfills, began contracting with corporate sewage haulers. Haulers, in turn, relied on rural farmers willing to use the sludge as fertilizer -- a practice deemed "safe" by corporate-friendly government environmental agencies. Pennsylvania required the sewage sludge leaving treatment plants, which contains numerous dangerous microorganisms, to be tested only at three-month intervals, and only for E. coli and heavy metals. Most individual batches arriving at farms were not tested at all. It was clear, from the local vantage, that the state Department of Environmental Protection had failed to protect the townships, turning many rural communities into toxic dumping grounds -- with fatal results. In 1995, two local youths, Tony Behun and Danny Pennock, died after being exposed to the material -- Behun while riding an all- terrain vehicle, Pennock while hunting. "People are up in arms all over the place," said Russell Pennock, Danny's father, a millwright from Centre County. "They're considering this a normal agricultural operation. I'll tell you something right now: If anyone would have seen the way my son suffered and died, they would not even get near this stuff." After a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientist linked the two deaths to a pathogen in the sludge, county supervisors tried to pass ordinances to stop the practice, but found that the state had preempted such local control with its less restrictive law. The state's apparent complicity with the corporations outraged local elected officials. People began to understand, Linzey recalls, "that the state was being used by corporations to strip away democratic authority from local governments." Many small farmers in rural Pennsylvania were already feeling the devastating effects of increasing corporate control over the market. They often had no choice but to sign contracts with large agribusiness corporations -- resulting in a modern form of peonage. By the corporate formula, a farmer must agree to raise hogs exclusively for the corporation, and to borrow $250,000 or more to build specialized factory-farm barns. Yet the corporation could cancel the contract at any time. The farmer doesn't even own the animals -- except the dead ones, which pile up in mortality bins as infectious diseases ravage the crowded pens. The agribusiness company takes the lion's share of the profits while externalizing the costs and liabilities; the farmer left financially and legally responsible for all environmental harms, including groundwater contamination from manure lagoons. Even if farmers could find a way to market their hogs on their own, loan officers often deny applications from farmers unless they are locked into a corporate livestock contract. "The once-proud occupation of 'independent family farmer' has become a black mark on loan papers," Linzey writes on the CELDF website. A bespectacled thirty-four-year-old, Linzey speaks with a tinge of southern drawl. Under the tutelage of historian Richard Grossman of the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy, he has become an eloquent speaker on organizing tactics, constitutional theory, and the history of corporations in this country. But he is also an excellent listener. He heard the indignation as incredulous supervisors came to understand their lack of authority in the regulatory arena. The rights and privileges that corporations were able to assert seemed incomprehensible to them. "There's disbelief," he says. "Then the clients attack you, and then you have to explain it to them, giving prior examples of how this works." Township supervisors were quick to see that the problem was not simply factory farms or sludge, "but the corporations that were pushing them," Linzey says. Enormously wealthy corporations were able to secure rulings that channeled citizen energies into futile battles. The supervisors started to realize, according to Linzey, "that the only thing environmental law regulates is environmentalists." By 1999, with CELDF's help, five townships in two counties had adopted a straightforward ordinance that challenged state law by prohibiting corporations from farming or owning farmland. Five more townships in three more counties followed suit. Also in 1999, Rush Township of Centre County became the first in the nation to pass an ordinance to control sludge spreading. Haulers who wanted to apply sewage sludge to farmland would have to test every load at their own expense -- and for a wider array of toxic substances than required by the weaker state law. Three dozen townships in seven counties have unanimously passed similar sludge ordinances to date. Citing a township's mandate to protect its citizens, Licking Township Supervisor Mik Robertson declares, "If the state isn't going to do the job, we'll do it for them." So far, the spate of unanimous votes at the municipal level has halted both new hog farms and the spreading of additional sludge in these townships. Iin De Tocqueville's time, local communities like those in Clarion County had enormous strength and autonomy. The large corporation was nonexistent, and the federal government had little say over local affairs. Americans by and large reserved patriotic feelings for their state. People, at least those of European descent, played a more active role in local governance than they do today. Their only direct experience with the federal government was through the post office. As de Tocqueville pointed out, "real political life" was not concentrated in what was called "the Union," itself a telling term; before the Civil War the "United States" was a plural noun, as in, "The United States are a large country." Since the consolidation of the Union and throughout the twentieth century, the autonomy of state and local governments has continued to wane as corporations have grown larger and gained more extensive rights under the U.S. Constitution. In two decisions in the mid-1970s, the Supreme Court affirmed a corporation's right to make contributions to political campaigns, considering money to be a form of "free speech." And over the past few decades, corporations have won increasingly generous interpretations of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Originally intended to prevent individual states from obstructing the flow of goods and people across their borders, the clause has been used by corporations to challenge almost any state law that might affect activity across state lines. In 2002, for example, the federal courts ruled that a Virginia law prohibiting the dumping of trash from other states violated a waste hauler's rights. In early 2003, Smithfield Foods, one of the nation's largest factory-farm conglomerates, sued on similar grounds to overturn Iowa's citizen initiative banning meatpacking companies from owning livestock, a practice the citizens believed undercut family farms. Elsewhere, corporate rights have posed increasingly absurd threats to sovereignty. In 1994, for example, Vermont passed a law requiring the labeling of milk from cows that had received a bioengineered bovine growth hormone; in 1996 the federal courts overthrew that law, saying that the mandated disclosure violated a corporation's First Amendment right "not to speak." Four years later, a Pennsylvania township tried to use zoning laws to control the placement of a cell-phone tower; the telecommunications company sued the township and won, citing a nineteenth-century civil rights law designed to protect newly freed slaves. Until recently, these incidents might have been seen simply as aberrations or "corporate abuse." But an increasing number of Americans have begun to consider a whole range of single-issue cases as examples of "corporate rule." The role that government has played, in their view, is merely that of a referee who enforces the rules defined by corporations for their own benefit rather than the public's. It was this perception that motivated the townships to take their revolutionary stand. But their successes in halting factory farming and sludge applications within their borders didn't prohibit corporations from attempting to press their case in the courtroom. In 2000, the transnational hauler Synagro-WWT, Inc. sued Rush Township, claiming its antisludge ordinance illegally preempted the weaker state law and violated the company's constitutional right of due process. It also sued each supervisor personally for one million dollars. In response, Linzey recalls, one township supervisor asked, "What the hell are the constitutional rights of corporations?" A year later, PennAg Industries Association, a statewide agribusiness trade group, funded its own suit against the factory farm ordinance in Fulton County's Belfast Township on similar constitutional grounds. Rulings on both suits are expected as early as mid-2004. It was only after those suits had been filed that the two Clarion County townships, Licking and Porter, took the historic step of passing ordinances to decree that within their townships, "Corporations shall not be considered to be 'persons' protected by the Constitution of the United States," a measure that effectively declared their independence from corporate rule. For Mik Robertson, the issue is simple: "Those rights are meant for individuals." He and his two fellow supervisors later revised their ordinance to also deny corporations the right to invoke the Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause; Porter Township is considering a similar amendment. Several other townships are preparing their own versions of the corporate rights ordinance, according to Linzey. Now, when a corporation claims that an antisludge ordinance violates its rights, the townships can simply say those rights don't apply here. The corporation would then be forced to defend corporate personhood in a legal battle. That hasn't happened yet, but Linzey and his allies have energized a statewide coalition that has vowed to fight the issue all the way to the Supreme Court, raising awareness along the way about a basic question of sovereignty: By what authority can a conglomeration of capital and property, whose existence is granted by the public, deny the right of a sovereign people to govern itself democratically? Linzey predicts that such a suit could happen within a decade. That battle, he says, could ignite populist sentiment across the country -- even around the world. Growing support for these issues was put to the test in 2002, when agribusiness interests, displeased by the spread of ordinances prohibiting factory farming, began prodding the Pennsylvania state legislature to pass an even more severe bill than the 1997 directive. This time there was no disguising it as waste-disposal regulation. The 2002 bill had one explicitly stated purpose: To strip away a township's right to control agriculture -- including sludge applications -- within its borders. When it stalled in a senate committee, the Pennsylvania legislators renumbered the bill and rammed it through before their constituents noticed. By the time CELDF found out about the bill, it was up for a vote in the house. "We ignited opposition almost overnight," Linzey recalls. "We were working with 100-plus townships already. All we had to do was notify them." Within two weeks, the coalition included four hundred local townships, five countywide associations of township officials, the Sierra Club, two small-farmers groups, the citizens' rights group Common Cause -- even the United Mine Workers (whose members had been sickened by sewage sludge applied on mine reclamation sites), which invited in the formidable AFL-CIO. "It was like Sam Adams in 1766, when the Townsend Acts were passed," says Linzey. "He had already built the mob, the rabble, and just had to alert the people that this was happening as an act of oppression." Because the issue had been defined as protection of a community's right to self-determination, the bill became unpopular and was tabled indefinitely. On Thanksgiving Eve 2002, it met its end when a mandated voting period elapsed. Astonishingly, the coalition had won. In so defining the issue, the deliberations in Clarion County resonate far beyond its borders. In recent years, judges, mayors, and a host of local and state legislators nationwide, whose authority as democratically elected representatives is similarly threatened by the increasing legal dominance of corporations, have begun to take action: * In Minnesota, State Representative Bill Hilty has introduced a state constitutional amendment eliminating corporate personhood. * The Arizona Green Party is campaigning for the passage of a similar amendment in their state. * In the northern California town of Point Arena, legislators passed nonbinding resolutions in opposition to corporate personhood. * Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin have all passed laws outlawing corporate ownership of farms. But in the age of globalization, questions of sovereignty can no longer be addressed strictly within U.S. borders. Clarion County's townships may pass an ordinance saying that a sludge hauler's constitutional rights don't apply. "But if there is foreign participation, say if they are partially German-owned or Canadian," says Victor Menotti of the International Forum on Globalization, "you run up against another set of corporate rights under [international] trade agreements." It was this other set of rights, the understanding of global "corporate rule," that brought many of the forty thousand demonstrators to the streets of Seattle in December 1999 to shut down the meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is also what incited subsequent demonstrations at the meeting of the World Bank in Prague in 2000, the meeting of the G-8 (the eight most economically powerful countries) in Genoa in 2001, the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting in Quebec in 2001, and most recently, the WTO meeting in Cancun. Through it all, protesters have held fast to one principle: the right of a people to govern themselves, through their representatives, without obstruction by corporations. One of the increasing number of public officials in the U.S. who face challenges to their sovereignty similar to those faced by their counterparts in the Pennsylvania townships is Velma Veloria, chair of the Washington State legislature's Joint Committee on Trade Policy. For fifty-three-year-old Veloria, the 1999 Seattle demonstration against the WTO was a defining event. Veloria realized that behind the tumult in the streets, "there was a whole movement that was asking for accountability and transparency." She imagined what might happen if a tanker that was not double-hulled spilled oil in Puget Sound. She and her colleagues could pass a law requiring double hulls in Seattle harbor, but under the emerging rules of the WTO, such a law could meet the same fate as a Clarion County antisludge ordinance: It could be attacked as interfering with the rights of corporations, as a barrier to trade. "It opened a whole new field for me about the sovereignty of the state," Veloria says. California State Senator Liz Figueroa, chair of the Senate Select Committee on International Trade Policy and State Legislation, has faced similar quandaries. In 2000, Figueroa authored a bill that made it illegal for the state to do business with companies that employed slave or forced labor. Figueroa explained to the city councils and constituents in her district that foreign trade imports produced by slave labor could undercut the local economy. But as pragmatic and ethically incontestable as the bill sounds, it could potentially be challenged under the WTO's rules. "Our job is monumental," she says, referring to her efforts to explain how trade agreements can usurp democracy. "We have to make sure our own legislative offices even know of the conflict... we have to explain the reality of the situation." Figueroa and Veloria are not alone. International trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the WTO's General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), and the pending Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) threaten the jurisdiction of any elected or appointed representative of a sovereign people at any level of government. A National League of Cities resolution declared that the trade agreements could "undermine the scope of local governmental authority under the Constitution." Last year, the Conference of Chief Justices, consisting of the top judges from each state, wrote a letter to the U.S. Senate stating that the proposed FTAA "does not protect adequately the traditional values of constitutional federalism" and "threatens the integrity of the courts of this country." In California, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, state legislatures have expressed concern over trade agreements, as has the National Council of State Legislators. Their statements, however more discreet, nonetheless echo the chants from the streets of Seattle: "This isn't about trade, this isn't about business; this is about democracy." Despite their enormous ramifications, most international trade agreements remain a mystery to the average American. At the core, they are simple. GATT and NAFTA cover the trade of physical goods between countries. They can be used to override any country's protection of the environment, for example, or of workers' rights, by defining relevant laws and regulations as illegal "barriers to trade." They provide for a "dispute resolution" process, but the process routinely determines such laws to be in violation of the agreements. In the case of GATT, a WTO member country can sue another member country on behalf of one of its corporations, on the grounds that a country's law has violated GATT trade rules. The case is heard by a secret tribunal appointed by the WTO. State and local officials are denied legal representation. If the tribunal finds that a law or regulation of a country -- or state or township -- is a "barrier to trade," the offending country must either rescind that law or pay the accusing country whatever amount the WTO decides the company had to forgo because of the barrier, a sum that can amount to billions of dollars. In short, practitioners of democracy at any level can be penalized for interfering with international profit-making. Through this process, WTO tribunals have overturned such U.S. laws as EPA standards for clean-burning gasoline and regulations banning fish caught by methods that endanger dolphins and sea turtles. The WTO has also effectively undermined the use of the precautionary principle, by which practices can be banned until proven safe -- in one recent instance superseding European laws forbidding the use of growth hormones in beef cattle. A WTO tribunal dismissed laboratory evidence that such hormones may cause cancer because it lacked "scientific certainty." On similar grounds, the U.S., on behalf of Monsanto and other American agribusiness giants, recently initiated an action under GATT challenging the European Union's ban on genetically modified food. Under NAFTA, which covers Canada, Mexico, and the U.S., a corporation can sue a government directly. The case would also be heard by a secret tribunal, such as when Vancouver-based Methanex sued the U.S. over California's ban on a cancer-causing gas additive, MTBE. The company, which manufactures the additive's key ingredient, claimed that the ban failed to consider its financial interests. Since July 2001, three men -- one former U.S. official and two corporate lawyers -- have held closed hearings on the thirteenth floor of World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., to decide whether, in this instance, a democratically elected governor's executive order to protect the public should cost the U.S. $970 million in fines. The FTAA, recently fast-tracked for negotiations to put it into effect by 2005, would extend NAFTA's provisions to all of Latin America. GATS, the General Agreement on Trade in Services, a recent trade agreement under the WTO, takes the usurpation of democracy one step further. While GATT deals with the exchange of goods across international borders, GATS establishes certain privileges for transnational companies operating within a country. It covers "services," meaning almost anything from telecommunications to construction to mining to supplying drinking water. It even includes functions that traditionally have been carried out or closely controlled by government, like postal services and social services such as welfare -- even libraries. Activists point out that the primary focus of the GATS is to limit government involvement, "whether in the form of a law, regulation, rule, procedure, decision, administrative action or any other form," to quote the treaty itself. Public Citizen's Lori Wallach has called GATS a "massive attack on the most basic functions of local and state government." Under GATS, any activity the federal government agrees to declare a "service" would be thrown open to privatization. The supply and treatment of water is a timely example, since the European Union is currently pressing the United States to make water among the first of the services it places under GATS. If clean drinking water is so declared, no government body in the U.S. could insist that it remain publicly managed. If any government wanted to create a publicly owned water district, foreign corporate "competitors" would have the right to underbid the government for control of the service. Just as important, a transnational company could challenge any rules -- including environmental and health regulations -- that would hamper its ability to profit from a business that is related to a service under GATS. On March 28, 2003, twenty-nine California state legislators signed a letter of concern to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick about the provisions contained in GATS. The letter states that GATS could usurp any government regulation, including nurse-to-patient staffing levels, laws against racial discrimination, worker health and safety laws, regulatory limits to oil drilling, and standards for everything from waste incineration to trace toxins in drinking water. As a result, the letter states, GATS would "jeopardize the public welfare and pose grave consequences for democratic governance throughout the world." Veloria and Figueroa both believe that if state legislators are to challenge this "power grab," in Veloria's words, they will have to organize among themselves. "One state cannot do it alone. We need to do it on a national scale." Otherwise U.S. citizens may find themselves under the thumb of NAFTA and WTO trade tribunals, "unelected bodies that have no accountability to the people." At that point, Veloria asks, "Why have state legislators, why have elected officials?" In his work with the rural Pennsylvania supervisors, Thomas Linzey's approach to domestic corporate rights may well illuminate how individuals, states, and nations can deal with international trade treaties. "Clarion County is one of many emerging examples of local communities reasserting their own authority to define how they want land managed and what sort of protections they want for their community," says antiglobalization organizer Victor Menotti. "It's when things like this come to light that people question what the hell we've gotten ourselves into. These local communities stand up, and others say, 'if they can do that, we can do that."" On many issues of local governance, Linzey believes, a state or local legislature "could declare null and void the federal government's signature on GATT." To him it would be the "ultimate act of insurrection: saying governments have no constitutional authority to give away sovereign and democratic rights to international trade tribunals that operate in secrecy." For now, Velma Veloria is still working through traditional channels. In an attempt to remove the antidemocratic provisions of the trade treaties, her committee will take up the issue with the state's delegation to Congress. But she is well aware that her colleagues, and the people of Washington State, may find that traditional route closed to them, as the Pennsylvania townships did in 1997. If that happens, the practice of democracy at the local level would require legislators to defy the trade agreements. "At some point we might get to where the people working with Linzey are," she says. "We may end up saying we don't recognize parts of the international trade agreements that impact us. But that depends on the grassroots, on people demanding it." There, too, the Pennsylvania coalition may offer some inspiration. "When the agribusiness folks filed suit over our anti-corporate farming laws," Linzey recalls, "page one of the lawsuit said 'we the corporations are people and this ordinance violates our personhood rights." When we photocopied that, people immediately understood how they're ruled by these constitutional rights and privileges. It sparks a conversation." The Pennsylvania township supervisors are backed by a determined grassroots movement, with a constituency "ready to go to the mat for their binding law to establish a sustainable vision that doesn't include corporate rights and privileges," says Linzey. "The product is not the ordinance," he adds. "The product is the people." The Pennsylvania ordinances express the will of a sovereign people who are exercising their right to create institutions that support their vision of how they wish to live. And, as one would expect in a democratic society, the people of Pennsylvania wish to be the ones who define the rules under which those institutions may operate, be they governments or corporations. History repeats itself. In the course of asserting their sovereign rights, the citizens of rural Pennsylvania have undergone a profound change in personal identity and political consciousness not unlike that of their forebears. As historian Lawrence Henry Gipson noted, "The period from 1760 to 1775 is really the history of the transformation of the attitude of the great body of colonials from acquiescence in the traditional order of things to a demand for a new order." People who for generations had considered themselves loyal Englishmen suddenly declared themselves to be citizens of a new nation, one based on the sovereignty of its citizens. Veloria believes we are at a similar juncture today. "I have faith that the American people will stand up for themselves and for democracy. They can only be pushed so far." Jeffrey Kaplan's essays and articles have appeared in many regional and national newspapers and periodicals. He lives and works in Berkeley, California. Copyright 2003 The Orion Society Return to Table of Contents :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: Rachel's Democracy & Health News #837, Jan. 12, 2006 ERRORS, ERRORS... MONSANTO AND PERCY SCHMEISER By Peter Montague Last week, I mistakenly numbered Rachel's News #836 (dated January 5, 2006) as #837, which confused even me. That is why this week's Rachel's News (dated January 12, 2006) is numbered (correctly) #837. In other words, last week's issue was actually #836 (dated January 5, 2006). You can find the correctly numbered issue #836 (dated January 5, 2006) here. Now for the more serious error. In Rachel's #836 (dated January 5, 2006), I said the Canadian Supreme Court required farmer Percy Schmeiser to pay damages to Monsanto Corporation because its patented genetically engineered genes canola plants were found in his fields. Monsanto says he put them there himself. Schmeiser says the genetically modified organisms were carried into his fields on the wind. It does not matter how the GMOs got into Schmeiser's fields because the Canadian Supreme Court decided that Monsanto owns any plants that contain their patented genes, no matter where they may be found or how they got there. Percy Schmeiser does not owe Monsanto damages, but Monsanto now owns Percy Schmeisers's crops, until he pulls up and discards each of the plants that contain Monsanto's patented genes. So the upshot is, as "gene flow" and pollen blowing on the wind carry patented genes across the globe, Monsanto, Dow and Novartis will be in a position to claim rights to any and all plants that contain their patented genes. At least, that's the precedent set by the Supreme Court of Canada. Return to Table of Contents :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: From: Rachel's Precaution Reporter #20, Jan. 11, 2006 PRECAUTION ACADEMY: PRACTICAL TRAINING FOR PRECAUTIONARY ACTION First Precaution Academy Mar. 31-Apr. 2 in New Brunswick, New Jersey Practical Training for Precautionary Action The Science and Environmental Health Network (www.sehn.org) and Environmental Research Foundation (www.rachel.org and www.precaution.org) have created The Precaution Academy to offer an intensive weekend of training to prepare participants to apply precautionary thinking to a wide range of issues in their communities and workplaces. The Academy is intended to serve the needs of citizen activists, government officials, public health specialists, small business owners, journalists, educators, and the engaged public. Presenters and discussion leaders include Carolyn Raffensperger, Nancy Myers, Ted Schettler, Katie Silberman and Peter Montague.* The cost of the Precaution Academy in New Brunswick, N.J. is $350, which includes hotel for 2 nights, plus six meals, and all instructional materials. Participation is limited to 15 people. You may want to send an Email to Sherri Seidmon (sherri@sehn.org) to learn whether space is available. Send your payment to Science and Environmental Health Network, P.O. Box 50733, Eugene, OR 97405 ====================================================== Scholarships Available We have three full scholarships available for the New Jersey session Mar. 31-Apr. 2. To apply for a scholarship, please tell us what organization you are affiliated with, what constituencies you represent, what you hope to get out of the experience, and your organization's total budget. Preference will be given to people who represent groups with financial need. Please also estimate your travel costs if you will be applying for a travel stipend as part of your scholarship. Send your scholarship request to: Science and Environmental Health Network Sherri Seidmon (sherri@sehn.org) P.O. Box 50733 Eugene, OR 97405 ====================================================== At least two weeks prior to the date of the Academy, participants will receive a copy of the new book, Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy (MIT Press, 2006; ISBN 0-262-63323-X), supplemented by a short workbook of articles. Academy participants are urged to read selected portions of these materials before the session begins on Friday evening. All day Saturday and half a day Sunday, presenters will lead discussions of the precautionary approach to problem-solving (and problem prevention), with emphasis on real-world applications of precautionary thinking. The purpose of the Precaution Academy is ** to prepare participants to apply precautionary thinking and action to problems in their home communities and workplaces; ** to familiarize participants with the history of the regulatory system, quantitative risk assessment, and the development of precautionary thinking. What is different about the world today that makes a precautionary approach necessary and appropriate? ** to clarify the different kinds of uncertainty involved in contemporary problems and the role of precaution in addressing uncertainty; ** to prepare participants to respond to criticisms of the precautionary approach; ** to help participants recast and rethink familiar problems and issues within a precautionary framework, and to explore how a prevention philosophy differs from a problem-management philosophy; ** to familiarize participants with some of the many ways that precaution is being applied in the U.S., Canada and abroad so that you can considering trying these approaches at home. ====================================================== Other Precaution Academy Sessions planned for 2006 (Prices for these sessions will vary according to costs.) May 19-21 in Chicago June 23-25 location to be announced Sept 8-10 location to be announced ====================================================== The Mechanics Participants will arrive at the Academy site on Friday afternoon. New Brunswick, N.J. is readily accessible by train and automobile from the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. A train connects New Brunswick with Newark Airport. After an evening meal, we will meet for two hours to begin discussing the need for precautionary thinking in the contemporary world, and how the precautionary principle developed during the past 30 years. Saturday We will meet from 9:00 to noon, take a 90-minute break for lunch, then meet from 1:30 to 5:30. At 7:00 we will have dinner together. After dinner, we will meet informally for a free-ranging discussion. Goals for Saturday ** to prepare participants to put the precautionary principle to work in their own areas of interest; ** to prepare participants to respond to criticisms of the precautionary approach; ** to clarify the different kinds of uncertainty involved in contemporary problems and the role of precaution in the face of uncertainty; ** to familiarize participants with a variety of ways that precaution is being applied in the U.S. and elsewhere; During this session we will discuss in detail the five elements of a precautionary approach. Sunday Goals for Sunday: ** to give participants experience recasting typical issues into a precautionary framework; ** to make sure participants take home an understanding of the many ways that precaution is being used in communities all across the U.S., Canada, and abroad. We will meet from 9:00 to noon, gaining experience in reframing issues from a precautionary perspective. We will have lunch together, then go our separate ways so we can "try this at home." ====================================================== * Carolyn Raffensperger is executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network (SEHN) in Ames, Iowa. Nancy Myers is communications director of SEHN; Ted Schettler is SEHN's science director and Katie Silberman is SEHN's administrative director. Peter Montague is director of Environmental Research Foundation in New Brunswick, N.J., and an editor of Rachel's Precaution Reporter and of Rachel's Democracy & Health News. Return to Table of Contents :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Rachel's Democracy & Health News (formerly Rachel's Environment & Health News) highlights the connections between issues that are often considered separately or not at all. The natural world is deteriorating and human health is declining because those who make the important decisions aren't the ones who bear the brunt. Our purpose is to connect the dots between human health, the destruction of nature, the decline of community, the rise of economic insecurity and inequalities, growing stress among workers and families, and the crippling legacies of patriarchy, intolerance, and racial injustice that allow us to be divided and therefore ruled by the few. In a democracy, there are no more fundamental questions than, "Who gets to decide?" And, "How do the few control the many, and what might be done about it?" As you come across stories that might help people connect the dots, please Email them to us at dhn@rachel.org. Rachel's Democracy & Health News is published as often as necessary to provide readers with up-to-date coverage of the subject. Editors: Peter Montague - peter@rachel.org Tim Montague - tim@rachel.org :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: To start your own free Email subscription to Rachel's Democracy & Health News send a blank Email to: join-rachel@gselist.org. In response, you will receive an Email asking you to confirm that you want to subscribe. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Environmental Research Foundation P.O. Box 160, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903 dhn@rachel.org --- You are currently subscribed to rachel as: rogerh@energy-net.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-158464-68545X@gselist.org ***************************************************************** 28 [NukeNet] Findings on Storms Recast Debate-wants nukes Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 15:13:17 -0800 NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net) Interesting on Katrina. But another one with credentials trying to come across as a climate change hero who is pushing major nuclear initiatives. Andy http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/science/10conv.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1136935522-7FyJ/UuDiTFOKNZuAZiN6A&pagewanted=print January 10, 2006 A Conversation with Kerry Emanuel With Findings on Storms, Centrist Recasts Warming Debate By CLAUDIA DREIFUS For decades, Kerry Emanuel, the meteorologist and hurricane specialist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was known as a cautious centrist on questions of global warming and hurricane ferocity. Professor Emanuel asserted often that no firm link had been established between warming and the intensity and frequency of hurricanes. But in August, two weeks before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Professor Emanuel wrote in the journal Nature that he had discovered statistical evidence that hurricanes were indeed affected by global warming. He linked the increased intensity of storms to the heating of the oceans. "His paper has had a fantastic impact on the policy debate," said Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford. "Emanuel's this conservative, apolitical guy, and he's saying, 'Global warming is real.' " On a recent visit to New York, Professor Emanuel, who is 50, said, "It's been quite a ride since the Nature article." He added, "But it's a really bad thing for a scientist to have an immovable, intractable position." Q. Let's go back to late August. What were your feelings as you watched television and saw Hurricane Katrina heading toward New Orleans? A. I'll go back to a few days before that. As Katrina was making up off the coast of Florida, it was already an interesting storm. Though she was weak, the prediction was she was going to hit Florida. But when Katrina came off the west coast of Florida, there were new predictions taking it into the central gulf and then up toward New Orleans, and I became concerned. Many people in my profession had been worried about New Orleans for a very long time. And we had always envisioned these worst-case scenarios, and this was beginning to look like one of those. And so I plotted out the position of the "loop current," which is this warm current of water in the Gulf of Mexico, and the forecast had the hurricane going right up the axis of this loop current. I remember looking at that, and alarms went off. I had this terrible feeling of dread, which deepened when the hurricane was elevated to a Category 5. We all knew that the pumps that kept New Orleans dry wouldn't be able to handle more than about a Category 3. My mother has an elderly friend in New Orleans, and I did something I never do. I sent her a message: "You ought to get out, now!" In retrospect, I will say that had Katrina been 30 miles further west, the death toll could have been much worse. New Orleans would have flooded more rapidly and to deeper levels. Q. Because last year's hurricane season was so intense, many people declared: "Ah, ha! Global warming!" Were they right? A. My answer is, Not so fast. That may have been a contributor. But the fact we had such a bad season was mostly a matter of chance. On the other hand, though the number of storms globally remained nearly constant, the frequency of Atlantic storms has been rising in concert with tropical ocean temperature, probably because of global warming. There is no doubt that in the last 20 years, the earth has been warming up. And it's warming up much too fast to ascribe to any natural process we know about. We still don't have a good grasp of how clouds and water vapor, the two big feedbacks in the climate system, will respond to global warming. What we are seeing is a modest increase in the intensity of hurricanes. I predicted years ago that if you warmed the tropical oceans by a degree Centigrade, you should see something on the order of a 5 percent increase in the wind speed during hurricanes. We've seen a larger increase, more like 10 percent, for an ocean temperature increase of only one-half degree Centigrade. Q. So what are the implications of increased ocean temperatures? A. Not much for storms at the time of landfall. But if you look at the whole life of storms in large ocean basins, we are seeing changes. And even if that doesn't have an immediate effect, people ought to be concerned about this because it is a large change in a natural phenomenon. Q. There are scientists who say of fossil fuel consumption and global warming, We may not have all the evidence yet, but we ought to be acting as if the worst could happen. Do you agree? A. It's always struck me as odd that this country hasn't put far more resources into research on alternative energy. Europeans are. France has managed to go 85 percent nuclear in its electrical generation. And the Europeans have gotten together to fund a major nuclear fusion project. It almost offends my pride as a U.S. scientist that we've fallen down so badly in this competition. Q. How did hurricanes become your specialty? A. When I was a child, we lived in Florida for three years, and I went through of a couple of hurricanes and was very impressed by them. Later, at M.I.T., I was asked to teach a course in tropical meteorology, which included hurricanes. As I started preparing, I realized I didn't understand what I'd been taught on the subject. As with many things, you think you understand something until you try to teach it. After some reading, I realized that the reigning theory had to be wrong. This theory held that the main thing that drives a hurricane is just ingestion of enormous quantities of water vapor from the atmospheric environment. It made predictions that weren't true. So it became a very big intellectual challenge to me. The more I got into it, the more interesting it became. Q. Given what you know about hurricanes, should we be building beachfront housing on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts? A. Disaster specialists will tell you that part of the increasing lethality of land-falling hurricanes isn't related to nature. A lot of it has to do with human activity. We're moving to the coasts in droves, like lemmings. We're building waterfront structures there that aren't necessarily strong. We're taxing the infrastructure and paying a big price for doing that. Q. Would you ever buy a house on the beach? A. I'd love to! But if I could do that, I'd insist on paying for my risk. And I'd do what is now being called "the Fire Island option," which involves putting up flimsy houses that you don't mind losing to a storm. You don't insure them. Q. Almost concurrent to Hurricane Katrina, you published a beautifully packaged book, "Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes." How did you feel about the timing of its publication? A. Not terribly good. If one is just interested in sales, I suppose it was fortuitous. But I was trying to convey a sense of hurricanes as not just things of scientific interest, but as beautiful. A leopard is a very beautiful animal. But if you took it out of its cage, it would go for your jugular. Anyone can understand that neither a leopard nor a hurricane is a willful killer. Copyright 2006The New York Times Company _______________________________________________________________________ Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/ Change your settings or access the archives at: http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net ***************************************************************** 29 79 Three Mile Island guards sue over wage dispute; Another Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 15:13:52 -0800 ---------- Three Mile Island guards sue over wage dispute 1/11/2006, 2:51 p.m. ET By MARK SCOLFORO The Associated Press HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) ‹ Dozens of guards at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant claim in a federal lawsuit that a private security agency made them work unpaid overtime for more than two years. The lawsuit alleges that Wackenhut Corp. wasn't paying the 79 guards for the time it took them to get armed and check through security from January 2002 until April 2004. The guards' lawyer, Leslie Deak, said the time in question was typically 10 or 15 minutes before work and a few minutes at the end of their shifts, and that the workers are entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay. Advertisement The company has declined to compensate them for the allegedly lost wages, but began paying the guards for that time after they staged a work action, she said. "They all arrived one minute before their start time, and needless to say, even though they were there before their hours ‹ they were not late ‹ they were late to their posts," Deak said. "Guess what? It takes more than a minute to get them all checked in." Wackenhut senior vice president Marc Shapiro said Wednesday the company had not seen the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg. "As part of our general policy, we're not in a position to comment on the matter until we've had a chance to review (and) investigate the actual allegations," Shapiro said. The guards organized as a union, a part of the United Government Security Officers of America, in 2004. Deak declined to specify how much money the guards believe they are owed, but said not all were working 40 hours per week at the time, so some of the pay did not qualify as overtime. The guards are armed but do not take their weapons home, and they require some time at the start and end of their shifts to deal with the guns and other equipment, she said. The company had not been paying them for that time until the work action took place. "Even if you spent two minutes checking out at the end of the day, if you're spending eight or nine or 10 minutes in the morning and then the two, the amount is cumulative," she said. Ralph DeSantis, a spokesman for Three Mile Island's owner, AmerGen Energy Co., had no comment on the lawsuit but said Wackenhut has provided security there for about the past five years. "We have a contract with Wackenhut, but they are the ones that pay the officers and determine the work rules with those officers," DeSantis said. AmerGen Energy is headquartered in Warrenville, Ill. Three Mile Island, located in Middletown, about 10 miles southeast of Harrisburg, was the site of the nation's worst nuclear accident when a partial meltdown occurred in March 1979. Security there has tightened considerably since Sept. 11, 2001. ------ MIDWEST BRIEFS Quad Cities plant probe Tribune staff, wire reports Published January 12, 2006 Chicago Tribune Exelon Corp.'s Quad Cities nuclear plant is being inspected by federal regulators after the Chicago-based company found damage that may have been caused by running the plant at higher power production levels. A four-person team from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began work this week at the plant, located on the Mississippi River near Cordova, Ill. ***************************************************************** 30 NRC: NRC Seeks Public Comment on Radiation Source Protection And Security News Release - 2006-00 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 06-006 January 12, 2006 on several issues concerning the protection and security of radiation sources, as part of its requirements under the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The legislation established the Radiation Source Protection and Security Task Force, with the NRC as its chair, to evaluate and provide recommendations relating to the security of radiation sources in the United States from potential criminal or terrorist threats, including acts of sabotage, theft or use of a radiation source in a radiological dispersal device (dirty bomb). The task force is comprised of representatives from NRC; the departments of Homeland Security, Defense, Energy, Transportation, Justice, State and Health and Human Services; the Director of National Intelligence; the Central Intelligence Agency; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Federal Emergency Management Agency; and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Details on the task force and the request for comment are available in a Federal Register noticepublished Jan. 11. The task forces efforts are concerned primarily with Category 1 and Category 2 sources as defined by the International Atomic Energy Agencys Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources. (These are considered sources of greatest concern from a security standpoint; examples include but are not limited to sources used in irradiators, radiography and certain radiation cancer treatments.) Spent nuclear fuel and special nuclear materials (plutonium and uranium isotopes) are excluded. The topics on which the NRC is seeking comment include: (1) the list of sources requiring security because of their public health risk or potential attractiveness to terrorists; (2) the national system for recovery of lost or stolen radiation sources; (3) safe and secure storage of radiation sources when not in use; (4) the national source tracking system for radiation sources; (5) a national system for proper disposal of radiation sources; (6) import and export controls; (7) procedures for improving security and control for use and storage of radiation sources; (8) procedures for improving the security of transportation of sources; (9) background checks for individuals with access to sources; and (10) alternative technologies that could perform all or some of the functions that use radiation sources. Comments may be submitted through Feb. 10 to Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Office of Administration, Mail Stop T6-D59, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C., 20555-0001; by e-mail to NRCREP@nrc.gov; or by fax to (301) 415-5144. Please mark all comments RSPS-TF in the subject line. Last revised Thursday, January 12, 2006 ***************************************************************** 31 Times of India: Nuclear Ahimsa [ Thursday, January 12, 2006 12:00:00 amTIMES NEWS NETWORK ] Chinks in the international nuclear order are beginning to be exposed, with Tehran's decision to break UN seals at its Natanz nuclear plant. This indicates that protracted negotiations with the EU-3, to whom Tehran had earlier committed to freezing its nuclear activities, have borne little fruit. It is not clear what Tehran intends to do now, but resuming full-scale nuclear enrichment activity at Natanz would certainly throw out a challenge to the international community and the IAEA. Under the Non-proliferation Treaty which Tehran is signatory to, it is allowed to conduct nuclear enrichment activity for peaceful purposes. The catch is that it had kept activities at Natanz secret for a long time, and has not given the IAEA access to all sites as well as the information it wants. These amount to violations of the NPT, leading to suspicion that it is really interested in a nuclear bomb. Matters are not helped by President Ahmadinejad's threats to wipe Israel off the map, or his denial that the holocaust ever occurred. New Delhi is only a bit player in all this, and it is unlikely that either Tehran, Washington or Tel Aviv are going to pay much attention to what it says. But what New Delhi used to say before, and stopped because nobody would listen, has great relevance for today's predicament. It is not as if nuclear weapon states have kept their part of the NPT deal, which was to reduce and eventually liquidate their stockpiles. The end of the Cold War offered an excellent opportunity to do this, only to be passed up. The West also looked the other way when friendly regimes in Israel and Pakistan went about acquiring their own weapons. History may be exacting its wages now. If Tehran should choose to bring matters to a head, attempts to single it out for punishment will be resisted not only by its elites but also the masses. The old 20th century balance-of-power paradigm is irrelevant to the 21st century, when the means of destruction have been democratised. The best option now is nuclear ahimsa, with the world's most powerful countries leading by example. Copyright © 2006Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 32 RIA Novosti: Russia aiming to restore Soviet-era nuclear complex - official 12/ 01/ 2006 ASTANA, January 12 (RIA Novosti) - Russia intends to restore the nuclear power industry network that existed during the Soviet period, and is initiating talks with Ukraine and Kazakhstan on the subject, the chief of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency said Thursday. "All nuclear power facilities on the territory of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan are part of the single complex of the former Soviet Ministry of Medium Machine Building, which we need to restore," Sergei Kiriyenko said. Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed nuclear energy cooperation with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko Wednesday, and with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev Thursday. The technological complex of the former Soviet Ministry of Medium Machine Building largely remained in Russia after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but some of its elements are located in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Kiriyenko said. Uranium is mined in Kazakhstan while Ukraine produces turbines, he said. Kiriyenko said Russia was interested in becoming a partner in the Ukrainian turbine plant. "We are ready to agree to any option advantageous for us and our partners," Kiriyenko said. Russia's nuclear energy chief also said that Russia intended to increase the share of nuclear in the country's energy, mix beyond that set out in the country's energy strategy. © 2005 "RIA Novosti" ***************************************************************** 33 APP.com: Agency to inspect Oyster Creek plant | Asbury Park Press Online January 12, 2006 AFTER VIOLATIONS FOUND Posted by the Asbury Park Presson 01/12/06 BY NICHOLAS CLUNN MANAHAWKIN BUREAU LACEY — Federal regulators will conduct a special inspection at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant after finding two safety violations concerning emergency response in a year's time. Inspectors with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will focus on whether plant officials took remedial steps promised as a result of the mistakes. Only six of the 103 reactors operating in the United States are under scrutiny that is either similar or more intense, according to the NRC. Despite its new status, Oyster Creek is operating safely, NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said. The most recent violation at Oyster Creek happened in August, when operators failed to tell local and state officials about an emergency. Such an advisory is required so officials can prepare for a radioactive release, regardless of the likelihood. Operators should have issued the advisory — called an alert — after large mats of eelgrass from Barnegat Bay clogged an intake used to suck cooling water into the plant. The situation forced operators to reduce power. A shift manager's misunderstanding of how to apply the emergency plan caused the error, according to the NRC. As a result, company officials removed the manager from shift duty and assigned another to look at people's performance in operations full time, plant owner AmerGen stated in a letter to the NRC. Those steps and others are meant to prevent a similar mistake from happening, and the special inspection is to make sure the measures were put in place. "If Oyster Creek satisfies the inspection, the findings will go away," Screnci said. If it doesn't, then regulators would likely visit more frequently. Regulators documented the other safety violation in November 2004, finding that plant workers had failed to adjust a threshold used to classify serious emergencies. People near the plant were not at risk while the incorrect threshold existed during a seven-day period, plant spokeswoman Rachelle Benson has said. Nicholas Clunn: (609) 978-4597 or nclunn@app.com OYSTER CREEK INSPECTION Federal regulators will conduct a special inspection at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey because they issued two "white findings" in one area of concern over a 12-month span. White findings have a low-to-moderate safety significance. In the color-coded system used by regulators to grade violations, there are green, white, yellow and red — the last color being reserved for the worst kind of problems. ***************************************************************** 34 SN: RUSSIAN COMPANY OFFERS REACTORS FOR BULGARIA'S BELENE POWER PLANT - [Sofia News] Thu 12 Jan 2006 The Russian company AtomStroyExport has offered to supply two new reactors for the Belene nuclear power plant. This is one of the options the Russian company is offering for the completion of the power plant. AtomStroyExprt is offering reactors which can be used for 60 years. Currently, the Belene plant has one Czech reactor, which can be used for 40 years. The second option the Russian company is offering is the completion and modernisation of the first block, followed by the creation of a second one. The company is also offering the creation of a passive security system, which turns on automatically in case of a technical failure. The deadline for submitting Belene offers is February 1. Apart from the Russians, the Czech consortium Skoda Allianz is also participating. If the Czech consortium wins, it will have to work together with Russian nuclear companies, as the Belene project and equipment supplied is Russian, Standart newspaper reported. Other Articles BULGARIA 2001-2005, Sofia Echo Media Ltd. ***************************************************************** 35 Hudson Valley News: Three of four Indian Point counties dont sign annual certification letter Thursday, January 12, 2006 County executives in Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties this month did not submit their annual certification letter for the Indian Point nuclear power plants emergency preparedness plan. In Putnam County, County Executive Robert Bondi did submit his ACL this year and that has Riverkeeper, the anti-Indian Point environmental group confounded. Lisa Rainwater van Suntum, Riverkeepers Indian Point person said last August and September showed us just how unprepared and ill-equipped FEMA is when it comes to evacuating high population densities. Add to that, Indian Point had a slew of safety problems this past year, she said. It is time to apply common sense to the fact that evacuation in the face of a catastrophe is impossible, said Putnam County legislator Vincent Tamagna of Cold Spring. If we have learned nothing else in 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it is impossible to evacuate masses in an orderly fashion. HEAR today's news on MidHudsonRadio.com, the Hudson Valley's only Internet radio news report. ***************************************************************** 36 Mos News: Russia Aims to Restore Soviet-Era Nuclear Power Network MOSNEWS.COM Sergei Kiriyenko / Image by MosNews Created: 12.01.2006 15:08 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:08 MSK MosNews Russia intends to restore the nuclear power industry network that existed during the Soviet period, and is initiating talks with Ukraine and Kazakhstan on the subject, the chief of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency said Thursday. “All nuclear power facilities on the territory of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan are part of a single complex of the former Soviet Ministry of Medium Machine Building, which we need to restore,” Sergei Kiriyenko was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying. Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed nuclear energy cooperation with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko Wednesday, and with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev Thursday. The technological complex of the former Soviet Ministry of Medium Machine Building largely remained in Russia after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but some of its elements are located in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Kiriyenko said. Uranium is mined in Kazakhstan while Ukraine produces turbines, he said. Kiriyenko said Russia was interested in becoming a partner in the Ukrainian turbine plant. “We are ready to agree to any option advantageous for us and our partners,” Kiriyenko said. Russia’s nuclear energy chief also said that Russia intended to increase the share of nuclear in the country’s energy mix beyond that set out in the country’s energy strategy. Copyright © 2004 MOSNEWS.COM ***************************************************************** 37 AU ABC: Uranium export safeguards questioned. 13/01/2006. ABC News Online The Federal Government has vowed to hold China to uranium safeguards. Uranium export safeguards questioned Questions have been raised about Australia's ability to ensure that any uranium exported to China for use by its nuclear power industry is not diverted into the country's weapons program. Discussions will begin in Canberra next week on a safeguards agreement with China that would allow for uranium to be exported to the country. Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane says China will have to agree to strict controls. "We will require inspections - that's part of the normal protocol," he said. He says there is no way China will be allowed to get around export controls designed to ensure the uranium is used for peaceful purposes only. "Australia won't compromise our reputation as having the most stringent safeguard agreements in the world," Mr Macfarlane said. "We won't compromise that reputation and our ability to be absolutely insistent on the non-proliferation of Australian uranium in any agreement we sign with any country." But Greens Senator Christine Milne is not confident that any safeguards would prevent the uranium falling into the hands of the Chinese military. Senator Milne says China has already asked Australia about how it could avoid the controls. "Now the fact that they even asked suggests that they are looking to secure uranium for all sorts of purposes other than peaceful purposes," she said. "We should never forget that China made its technology available to Pakistan, which sold it onto a number of Middle Eastern countries. "We also know that China has said in the event of a disagreement with the US over Taiwan it would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons." South Australian Premier Mike Rann says Australia must maintain its record on strict guidelines for exporting uranium. "My view is that we should never sell uranium to people who aren't prepared to abide by the current most strict standards in the world," he said. "There's never been any examples of South Australian uranium being diverted that I've ever seen and therefore I think that those strict standards must continue to be applied rigorously." ***************************************************************** 38 AP Wire: Boeing reaches $30 million settlement in California cancer lawsuit | 01/12/2006 | Associated Press EL SEGUNDO, Calif. - Boeing Co. has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit by residents who alleged that pollutants from a company lab caused them to get cancer. The settlement, agreed to in September but not immediately disclosed, ends an 8-year dispute with neighbors of Boeing's Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The plaintiffs said dozens of years of nuclear and rocket engine testing at the 2,668-acre hilltop lab near Simi Valley was responsible for a wide range of cancers, autoimmune disorders and tumors afflicting nearby residents. Boeing spokesman Inger Hodgson declined to comment Wednesday. The settlement included a confidentiality agreement between Boeing and the 133 plaintiffs in the case. "All I can say is we are satisfied and our clients are satisfied," said Barry Cappello, an attorney for the plaintiffs. The lawsuit alleged that a partial nuclear meltdown at the lab in 1959 released more radiation than originally estimated. The accident was not widely publicized until 20 years later. For years, Boeing said the meltdown posed no danger to its workers or the public. But disclosure in 1989 of lingering low-level contamination from past nuclear projects created an uproar, and pushed the company to halt nuclear research there the following year. ***************************************************************** 39 NRC: RIN 3150-AH19: Medical Use of Byproduct Material FR Doc 06-266 [Federal Register: January 12, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 8)] [Rules and Regulations] [Page 1926] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr12ja06-4] --Recognition of Specialty Boards; Correction AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Correcting amendment. SUMMARY: This document contains a correction to the final regulations which were published in the Federal Register of Wednesday, March 30, 2005 (70 FR 16336) amending the Commission's training and experience requirements in 10 CFR part 35. The regulations related to the requirements for recognition of specialty boards whose certifications may be used to demonstrate the adequacy of the training and experience of individuals to serve as radiation safety officers, authorized medical physicists, authorized nuclear pharmacists, or authorized users. This action corrects the regulations by inserting a reference that was inadvertently omitted. EFFECTIVE DATE: January 12, 2006. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. Anthony N. Tse, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; telephone (301) 415-6233, e-mail ant@nrc.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Background On March 30, 2005 (70 FR 16361), NRC published a final rule amending its regulations in part 35 regarding the medical use of byproduct material. In Section 35.50, ``Training for Radiation Safety Officer,'' the reference to paragraph (c)(2) in paragraph (d) was inadvertently omitted. Section 35.50 specifies that an individual fulfilling the responsibilities of Radiation Safety Officer must be: (a) An individual who is certified by a specialty board recognized under this section, (b) An individual who has completed a structured educational program, (c)(1) A medical physicist who has been certified by a specialty board recognized under Sec. 35.51(a) and who has experience in radiation safety, or (c)(2) An authorized user (AU), authorized medical physicist (AMP), or authorized nuclear pharmacist (ANP) who has experience in radiation safety. Currently, Sec. 35.50(d) requires an individual seeking radiation safety officer status to obtain written attestation that the individual has satisfactorily completed the requirements in paragraphs (a), (b), or (c)(1) of this section. However, reference to paragraph (c)(2) was inadvertently omitted. This rule inserts the reference to paragraph (c)(2) in paragraph (d). List of Subjects for Part 35 Byproduct material, Criminal penalties, Drugs, Health facilities, Health professions, Medical devices, Nuclear materials, Occupational safety and health, Radiation protection, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements. 0 Accordingly, 10 CFR part 35 is corrected by making the following correcting amendment: PART 35--MEDICAL USE OF BYPRODUCT MATERIAL 0 1. The authority citation for part 35 continues to read as follows: Authority: Secs. 81, 161, 182, 183, 68 Stat. 935, 948, 953, 954, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2111, 2201, 2232, 2233); Sec. 201, 88 Stat. 1242, as amended (42 U.S.C. 5841); Sec. 1704, 112 Stat. 2750 (44 U.S.C. 3504 note). 0 2. In Sec. 35.50, paragraph (d) is revised to read as follows: Sec. 35.50 Training for Radiation Safety Officer. * * * * * (d) Has obtained written attestation, signed by a preceptor Radiation Safety Officer, that the individual has satisfactorily completed the requirements in paragraph (e) and in paragraphs (a)(1)(i) and (a)(1)(ii) or (a)(2)(i) and (a)(2)(ii) or (b)(1) or (c)(1) or (c)(2) of this section, and has achieved a level of radiation safety knowledge sufficient to function independently as a Radiation Safety Officer for a medical use licensee; and * * * * * Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 6th day of January, 2006. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Michael T. Lesar, Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Office of Administration. [FR Doc. 06-266 Filed 1-11-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 40 RGJ: Experts say dust plumes at mine caused by more than wind [Reno Gazette-Journal] [Reno Gazette-Journal] January 12, 2006 Reno, Nevada, USA 775-788-6200 Experts say dust plumes at mine caused by more than wind Full report of year-long air monitor effort expected in March. Patrick AbanathyMVN Posted: 1/12/2006 11:07 am Investigation into airborne dust leaving the Anaconda Mine site has contributed a few more puzzlers to an already complex site; however, data is arriving and experts hope to have a better-educated report in March following results from all four air monitoring quarters. Elaborating on some interesting findings so far, Douglas Herlocker, environmental scientist/senior air quality specialist of Tetra Tech EM, Inc., spoke during Monday night’s meeting of the Yerington Community Action Group (CAG). He noted the information presented Monday night was limited data set, as it presented only results from second quarter monitoring. “(There’s) not a lot to get excited about,” Herlocker said later adding only about six to eight events were represented Monday. In fact, he said the only constituent on the list, which had numbers “jumping out” as unusual, was the amount of radium 228 (a uranium daughter element) found in second quarter analysis at one monitor location along U.S. Highway 95A. Also, numbers had to be represented in relatively small units as data produced very small amounts of each constituent. Of course, the recurring question of natural versus technologically enhanced contaminants remains at the site, as background levels in Mason Valley and the site are not known outside of educated guess. Independent Consultant to the mine site Earle Dixon questioned whether air monitor filter tests took into account characteristics, which might give a better answer to said question in relation to dust blowing from the site. In other words: Were the filters examined closely for natural particles versus those separated with acid leaching processes? Dixon said a clear difference could often be seen between the two. Herlocker said an answer to this is “unlikely” and the filters were more or less completely digested during tests such as those looking for radionuclides and radioactivity. Further, in regard to background levels, Dixon later noted in his presentation the area might even require studies at other locations if further data indicates the mine has spread contaminants in several directions within the valley. However, he indicated this is only speculative at this point and current data does not point to this scenario. As for further air monitoring data, Herlocker said he expects third quarter results within the week following their Tuesday (Jan. 10) scheduled release. He noted mine site responsible party Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) would not release the information a day early. Fourth quarter results should be available within the next month and an overall year report should be completed by March. “I’d like to have more for you in March,” Herlocker said. Further information distributed in a handout from Jim Sickles, remedial project manager for EPA region 9, indicated the air monitor network was scheduled for audit on Jan. 9 and 10. Also, it is likely all results will be discussed in a technical work group forum during the morning hours prior to the next stakeholders meeting on Feb. 22. When people think of dust coming from the site, images of large dust plumes during windstorms come to mind. In fact, CAG Contact Peggy Pauly described a recent storm saying “the site was just a big dust ball.” This is posing one of the conundrums seen in monitoring data, Herlocker said. “I think there’s more to it than just wind,” he said adding it seems a specific combination of factors must be in place before large dust plumes begin emanating from the site. Herlocker said this is further illustrated, as wind speed does not necessarily correlate to constituent concentrations found in the air monitor filters. Factors contributing to the more-than-wind view include precipitation and other meteorological factors, he added. Yerington Paiute Tribal Manager Bob Boyce questioned whether the old Bluestone Mine (located southwest of Yerington in the Singatse Range) could be contributing to dust monitor results during windstorms. Herlocker said it is possible with prevailing winds out of the south and southwest; however, it would likely be taken into account during various data eliminations between the different air monitors at the Anaconda site. This raised another question as to why the Anaconda site only has the six air monitors placed in the central to northern locations onsite and not at the southern end. Herlocker said a lot of the monitor placements were subject to electricity availability. “It’s not perfect,” he said later assuring the air monitoring effort has “a fair amount of science involved.” Also, he assured ARCO, consulting firm Brown and Caldwell, BLM, Nevada Division of Environmental Protection and EPA all gave the go-ahead to the specific monitoring station placements. Herlocker also said audits performed on air monitoring maintenance and collection has been satisfactory. ***************************************************************** 41 reviewjournal.com: Senator demands perchlorate study Jan. 12, 2006 More analysis unnecessary, Pentagon says By SAMANTHA YOUNG
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- A California senator this week accused the Pentagon of passing the buck on studying the health effects of perchlorate, the rocket fuel chemical found in Lake Mead and water supplies in at least 33 other states. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, on Tuesday demanded the Pentagon fulfill its obligation to conduct a public health assessment of perchlorate exposure as directed by Congress in 2003. The department has not followed through and has said that other studies on the subject are sufficient. "By shirking responsibility for performing thorough and exhaustive studies on the impact of perchlorate, the Defense Department is putting the health of thousands of Americans at risk," Feinstein wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Her office released the letter Wednesday. Pentagon spokeswoman Maj. Susan Idziak said Rumsfeld plans to respond to Feinstein. The Defense Department is the country's largest user of perchlorate. Kenneth Krieg, the undersecretary of defense for acquisitions, technology, and logistics, has told Congress it should rely upon "an exhaustive review" released in January 2005 by the National Academy of Sciences. He said the National Academy of Sciences review, with seven other studies by the Centers for Disease Control, should satisfy lawmakers. In letters sent to House and Senate lawmakers on Sept. 20, Krieg said the collective studies "obviate the need to conduct" a separate study. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., authored the provision calling for the Defense Department study. They could not be reached for comment. Nationwide, scientists have detected the toxic salt chemical in the water supply of 34 states, Feinstein said. They discovered perchlorate in Lake Mead about seven years ago and traced it to defense contractor Kerr-McGee Corp. of Henderson. The company is working with the state to clean up the contamination. Lake Mead's average perchlorate levels tested at 3 parts per billion last year, a significant drop from 10 ppb in 2002, according to data compiled by the Southern Nevada Water Authority. One part per billion is equivalent to about one grain of sand in an Olympic-size swimming pool. The chemical affects the thyroid gland, mental acuity and the human body's ability to produce growth and fetal development hormones. Military bases and defense contractors could be hit with billions of dollars in cleanup costs should perchlorate be regulated as a toxic chemical. Feinstein complained that previous studies, including the academy review, focused solely on animal testing. The academy's study noted that no human data were available, Feinstein added. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2006 Stephens Media GroupPrivacy Statement ***************************************************************** 42 reviewjournal.com: Radioactive waste recycling criticized Jan. 12, 2006 Yucca Mountain needed, industry officials say WASHINGTON -- Reprocessing and other alternatives to the storage of nuclear waste may be a diversion, and the Department of Energy should remain focused on developing a repository at Yucca Mountain, nuclear industry executives were told Wednesday. "We can't allow long-term technology to divert us from our goal for central storage," said Steven Kraft, director of used fuel management at the Nuclear Energy Institute. Kraft said prospects for new nuclear power plants are improving and he would not be surprised if the United States has 20 new plants by 2025. There has not been an order for a new nuclear power plant in the United States since December 1978. Even if reprocessing is successful and the amount of nuclear waste is reduced, permanent disposal of some spent fuel still would be necessary at Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas, Kraft said at an annual meeting sponsored by the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management. Jay Silberg, an attorney representing nuclear power utilities, said recycling nuclear waste is attractive to Congress because it's still uncertain when Yucca Mountain will begin storing radioactive spent fuel. "There's not much you can do for recycling (nuclear waste) on $50 million," Silberg said, referring to $50 million in the $450 million budget for Yucca Mountain in 2006. Chris Kouts, an Energy Department analyst who works on the Yucca Mountain project, said the department plans to submit a recycling plan to Congress by March 31. Kraft and Silberg criticized legislation introduced last month by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., that would explore alternatives to Yucca Mountain. Among other things, the bill would require utilities to move spent fuel into above-ground steel and concrete reinforced casks within six years after the waste is removed from reactors and placed in cooling pools. Silberg said it would take money away from Yucca Mountain. "Hopefully, it will die a short, painless death," he said. Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said the bill is a realistic alternative to Yucca Mountain and would update security at nuclear reactor sites. "The cost of Yucca Mountain is approaching $100 billion, and Senator Reid believes too much money has been wasted on the project," Hafen said. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2006 ***************************************************************** 43 Near-surface storage considered in French nuclear waste debate Paris (Platts)--11Jan2006 "Perpetual sub-surface storage" has emerged as an alternative to deep geologic disposal of high-level and long-lived nuclear (HAVL) waste, the chairman of the commission conducting a public debate on French waste policy said yesterday. Georges Mercadal spoke to journalists in Lyon, where the Special Commission on Public Debate (CPDP) conducting the waste debate is to hold its final public meeting this Friday. Mercadal said that participants in the nationwide debate since Sept. 12 had indicated that keeping HAVL waste close to the surface in engineered concrete storage cells creates less anxiety because the waste packages can be monitored and repaired, if necessary. The storage facility would be renewed "every 200 or 300 years," Mercadal said. Friday's meeting will be followed by an official report to the government by the CPDP before the month's end. Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 44 Salt Lake Tribune: Rogue lobbyist had ties to Utah Article Last Updated: 01/12/2006 08:06:27 AM Envirocare: The N-waste firm did business with a former Abramoff company By Judy Fahys The Salt Lake Tribune Envirocare of Utah mounted a $4 million Washington lobbying effort in recent years and used Jack Abramoff's former firm as part of it. Preston Gates Ellis &Rouvelas Meeds was one of 14 firms the Utah radioactive and hazardous waste company hired to push for contracts, funding and legislation. The effort included changes needed for the company's failed attempt to bring highly concentrated radioactive waste from government cleanups in Fernald, Ohio, and Niagara Falls, N.Y., to Utah. Based on federal lobbyist disclosure reports, Envirocare had the help of roughly four dozen lobbyists, including five former congressmen and more than a dozen professional persuaders who had previously held high-ranking government positions. Company officials emphasize that Abramoff, who was with Preston Gates from 1994 to 2000, never worked for Envirocare. "We have absolutely no relationship with him, and we never have," said Tim Barney, Envirocare's senior vice president. Once a super-lobbyist working for one of Washington's top firms, Abramoff has pleaded guilty to fraud and faces several other corruption investigations. The scandal surrounding him has left Washington reeling, even top firms like Preston Gates, which counted Envirocare as a client between 1998 and 2003. It is no surprise Envirocare sought expert help in Washington to build support for its mile-square radioactive and hazardous waste business. The company has looked to the federal government - the U.S. Energy Department, the Defense Department and the Environmental Protection Agency - for most of its business since its creation in 1988. The company was on track to see 2005 as its busiest year on record, with roughly 4 million cubic feet disposed of at its Tooele County landfill in the first six months of the year. "It's very hard for a small Utah company to navigate the federal bureaucracy," said Barney, who calls his company the most-regulated in Utah and among the most regulated nationally. "It's a business expense, but it comes with the territory to work with these federal agencies." Sheila Krumholz, research director for Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, the Center for Responsive Politics, noted that companies find it invaluable to have lobbyists who can gain access to the nation's decision makers. "It opens doors that might otherwise be closed to them," she said. "It's those relationships clients are paying for." The Center for Public Integrity, another watchdog group, ranks Envirocare's lobbyist spending at 490th nationwide, several notches below the much larger Huntsman Chemical Corp., another Utah-based company. Envirocare, a private company that does not release revenue estimates, spent about $3.8 million on its Washington lobbying between 1998 and 2004. Huntsman, which had $11.5 billion in revenues last year, spent $4 million, according to the center's tally. Envirocare has spent more with Miller &Chevalier than any other Washington lobbying organization. Since 1999, the firm's Leonard Bickwit, onetime counsel to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has received more than $1 million from the Utah company. Some years, Bickwit visited the House and Senate on Envirocare's behalf, pressing such causes as "legislation to encourage rapid nuclear waste disposal" or U.S. policy toward Iran, the homeland of former company owner Khosrow Semnani. Other years, the efforts were more targeted. In 2003, Bickwit reported tracking "waste disposal in Iraq, and disposal of Fernald silo waste." That fall, Congress passed legislation reclassifying the highly contaminated waste so that it could go to Envirocare, but public uproar in Utah prompted the company to withdraw its bid for the disposal job. Bickwit declined to comment for this article. So, too, did former Texas Rep. Jim Chapman, another Washington-based Envirocare lobbyist, and Tim Peckinpaugh, the lead D.C. lobbyist for Envirocare at Preston Gates. The five onetime lawmakers who have worked for Envirocare include Arkansas Republican Ed Bethune, Idaho Democrat Larry LaRocco, and Texas Democrats Bill Sarpalius, Ron Coleman and Jim Chapman. Under new management for the past year, the company has put new emphasis on Washington, according to Barney. Among those who have been hired are state GOP Chairman Joe Cannon, a former Environmental Protection Agency official, and Greg Hopkins, a former Utah Republican Party director and the onetime chief of staff for Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah. Envirocare has reported spending $290,000 on lobbying Washington in the first half of last year. "It was nothing more than a commitment by our new ownership that we needed to strengthen our ability to work with these government agencies," said Barney. fahys@sltrib.com © Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 45 courant.com: NRC Reports On Soil Testing CONNECTICUT NEWS Studied Possible Contamination From Spent Nuclear Fuel Pool Leak January 12, 2006 By GARY LIBOW, Courant Staff Writer HADDAM -- Soil, concrete and bedrock near a suspected spent fuel pool leak at the decommissioned Connecticut Yankee nuclear power plant do not exhibit dangerous levels of contamination, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported Wednesday. NRC inspectors on Nov. 7 took samples for testing at the Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education in Tennessee. Connecticut Yankee officials also took samples for independent testing. NRC official Marie Miller said it remains inconclusive whether the pool that housed spent nuclear fuel rods ever leaked, but it is certain there is no active seepage. Connecticut Yankee has said contamination was limited to a 4-by 4-foot cube on the east side of the spent fuel pool building slated for demolition this year. Miller said soil samples from an excavation outside the spent fuel pool wall have "no detectable" levels of tritium and strontium-90. The soil contained low levels of cesium-137, most likely from fallout from nuclear testing decades ago, Miller said. Those radioactive isotopes in high doses may cause cancer. Of the three crushed bedrock samples tested, the NRC found one sample with slightly higher levels of cesium and strontium - in line with nuclear bomb testing in the desert decades ago. The NRC hasn't received the test results for tritium yet, though Connecticut Yankee's testing found no detectable levels, Miller said. There is also no cause for concern with two boring samples taken from the concrete spent fuel pool wall, Miller said. Low levels of strontium, tritium and cesium were found on the outer wall sections, and in decreasing levels in sections closer to the fuel pool, she reported. The NRC, noting that Connecticut Yankee's findings were consistent with the Oak Ridge Institute readings, said independent groundwater testing would continue at the plant site. As of early January, Connecticut Yankee had excavated 15,000 tons of soil and bedrock from the plant site. NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the agency would release a full report on the Connecticut Yankee findings later this month, but wanted to release the information Wednesday to allay public concerns. Connecticut Yankee spokeswoman Kelley Smith said the NRC test results confirm the company's earlier finding that the contaminated soil adjacent to the spent fuel pool was confined to a small area on the plant site, which has been cleaned as part of ongoing decommissioning activities. "We will also be conducting additional tests on the spent fuel pool concrete to determine if any further cleanup is needed prior to the demolition of the spent fuel pool building this year," Smith said. Connecticut Yankee permanently shut down in 1996, after producing 110 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity over 28 years. courant.com is Copyright © 2006 by The Hartford Courant ***************************************************************** 46 Whitehaven News: N-waste extension bid rejected Published on 12/01/2006 By David Siddall A CONTROVERSIAL planning application to store low-level nuclear waste has been thrown out by county councillors. The result of the free vote reveals that Cumbria and Copeland Labour councillors take opposing views on the issue. Copeland’s mayor, Coun Norman Clarkson (Conservative), branded the refusal of planning consent as “irresponsible” having pleaded with the Cumbria development control meeting at Kendal to allow British Nuclear Group a 12-month temporary consent to allow the industry to find a proper solution to the 25 lorry loads of waste arriving at the Drigg dump each week. “I am extremely disappointed at the majority decision of the county planing committee to refuse the application for the temporary higher stacking of containers within vault 8 at the low level waste repository,” Coun Clarkson said. “I am also disappointed that no-one supported my proposal to allow the continued use of the facility for a further 12 months. This would have allowed time for the county council and Copeland to progress an ‘offset package’ and to take account of the recommendations soon to be published by Defra and Corwm.” Coun Clarkson said one possible ‘offset benefit’ Copeland could have requested as recompense for the waste dump would be dropping all business rates for the area. Coun Clarkson said of the county councillors’ no vote: “British Nuclear Group would in the end appeal and a lost appeal would cost the county ÂŁ130,000.” A spokesman for British Nuclear Group said: “We are disappointed with the decision by Cumbria County Council’s development control committee to refuse our application... we are now considering our options.” The Labour group leader on Cumbria County Council, Coun Stewart Young, said: “It has to be a free vote on planning, we cannot crack the political whip. We are not allowed to compel councillors to vote a certain way. Councillors have to vote on purely planning grounds.” Copeland Council had taken a differing view to their Labour colleagues at Cumbria and had recommended a go-ahead for the application to stack an extra layer of low level nuclear waste containers at Drigg. There were 24 letters of objection to the Drigg plans. Fergus McMorrow, director of community regeneration, added: “We are not happy to see increased capacity at Drigg until there is an offset package, but we were prepared to allow temporary stacking that would later have to be removed. If there is a No vote what happens to low level waste from hospitals? There are employment issues on site as well.” Justin Hawkins for the county council said it was a 10-4 vote to go against the officer’s recommendation of approval. But he added the planning application would get a second chance, because any decision that goes against officer recommendation has to be subject to a second vote. This will take place at the development control meeting on January 30. ***************************************************************** 47 Rocky Mountain News: Judges listen to arguments on secrecy for grand juries By Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News January 12, 2006 Grand jurors who have begged for nearly a decade to disclose what they believe was prosecutorial misconduct during an investigation of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant should be allowed to do so even though deadlines may have passed for criminal prosecution of any wrongdoers, their lawyer told three federal appeals judges Wednesday. "We have knowledge, and are witnesses to, misconduct," said Jonathan Turley, the Washington, D.C., lawyer representing all but one of the grand jurors who served from 1989 to 1992. Turley also said that, counter to the U.S. Justice Department's contention, some deadlines for criminal prosecution may not have passed. Government lawyer Jerry Jones argued that the grand jury secrecy rule prohibits any disclosures by grand jurors of anything that occurred before them - even if they never disclose details of what they were investigating when the alleged misconduct took place. "Grand jury secrecy has been recognized for hundreds of years as imperative to our system of criminal justice," Jones said. The grand jury secrecy rule is intended to protect the reputations of people who may be investigated but never charged, to protect witnesses from possible harm by people against whom they testify, and to keep people under investigation from finding out and fleeing. Jones said the secrecy rule is very strict and that Turley was wrong when he argued that judges can decide to relax it, depending on circumstances. Jones stuck to that position even when Judge Harris Hartz of New Mexico asked him if a grand juror who saw a witness bribe a prosecutor in the grand jury room had to keep silent about it. The grand juror could tell the judge presiding over the grand jury, but no one else, Jones said. Judge David Ebel of Colorado pursued that theory, asking Jones, what if the grand juror thought the presiding judge was in cahoots with the crooked prosecutor? What if the grand juror wanted to tell a prosecutor he trusted? What if he wanted to tell the press? Jones stood firm: Grand jurors can't do that, he said - and if the judges let the Rocky Flats grand jurors talk, many more grand jurors will make time-consuming requests to talk, further weakening the grand jury secrecy rule. Colorado attorney Kenneth Peck, who served on the grand jury, argued separately that, as a lawyer, he is required by ethics rules to report any lawyer misconduct he observes to state attorney discipline authorities. He said part of the alleged misconduct he observed as a grand juror involved fraud. Discussion during the oral arguments was limited because most of the case is sealed. Ebel said the judges decided not to close the courtroom because they believed the lawyers could discuss legal issues without revealing factual allegations in the case. Colorado U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch refused in 2004 to let the grand jurors disclose what they believe was misconduct, saying Congress would have to change the grand jury secrecy rule in order for them to do so. The grand jurors then appealed to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Rocky Flats grand jury, known as Special Grand Jury 89-2, was the first federal special grand jury convened in Colorado's history. It was convened after FBI agents conducted an unprecedented dawn raid at the former nuclear weapons plant in the summer of 1989. Rockwell International Corp., which ran Rocky Flats at the time for the U.S. Department of Energy, reached a plea bargain with federal prosecutors, pleading guilty to 10 environmental crimes and paying an $18.5 million fine. But the grand jurors said then- U.S. Attorney Mike Norton thwarted their decision to indict individual managers with the DOE and Rockwell. Norton said there wasn't enough evidence to convict any managers. Then-Colorado Chief U.S. District Judge Sherman Finesilver refused to release the grand jury's full report. Eighteen of the 23 jurors petitioned in 1996 for permission to testify before Congress and a federal magistrate judge conducted closed hearings in which grand jurors testified about what they believed was misconduct. Turley said the grand jurors want the transcripts of those 1997 hearings made public. abbottk@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5188 | | 2005 © The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 48 Albuquerque Tribune: Lockheed won't appeal bid loss By Scripps Howard News Service January 12, 2006 WASHINGTON - Lockheed Martin is not appealing the Energy Department's decision to award the contract to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory to a team led by the University of California and Bechtel Corp. "Although we are very disappointed with the outcome, we have decided at this time not to protest," Wendy Owen, vice president of communications for Lockheed's information and technology services division, said Wednesday. An appeal would have triggered an automatic injunction holding up the award of the seven-year, $79 million-a-year contract to the UC-Bechtel team, until the Government Accountability Office had reviewed the decision. The team led by Lockheed and the University of Texas has four more days to file an appeal without an injunction, but that also appears unlikely. The GAO could have ordered the Energy Department to reopen the bid, delaying the transition from the University of California's sole management on June 1. "Now the entire Los Alamos community can continue moving forward in the transition process with the new LANL management team," said Rep. Tom Udall, the Santa Fe Democrat who represents the lab area. "I will continue to monitor the transition and work to ensure it as smooth as possible." Sen. Pete Domenici praised the Lockheed team for being "consistently professional and competent" throughout the competition. The Albuquerque Republican is scheduled to address lab employees today. "I am in the end most interested in seeing the transition to a new contract proceed as smoothly and expeditiously as possible. I believe this would be best for the lab, its missions and, importantly, its employees," said Domenici. Lab critics were stunned Dec. 21 when Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced he was awarding the contract to a team that included the same university that has run the lab since 1943. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, demanded and received copies of documents filed in the contract competition. Committee spokeswoman Lisa Miller said the next step has not been determined. 2006 © The Albuquerque Tribune ***************************************************************** 49 DOE: Hydrogen Production Cost Independent Review FR Doc 06-265 [Federal Register: January 12, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 8)] [Notices] [Page 2032-2033] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr12ja06-50] AGENCY: Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy (DOE). ACTION: Request for information and notice of independent review. SUMMARY: The Department of Energy (DOE) today gives notice of a request for information and an independent progress assessment by the DOE Hydrogen Program in meeting research and development (R) cost goals for production of hydrogen using distributed natural gas reforming technology. A review panel is being assembled by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Hydrogen Program Systems Integrator to review the current state of distributed natural gas reforming technology and costs. Based on the findings of the panel, the Systems Integrator will submit a written report to DOE on or before April 1, 2006. Position papers regarding the cost of hydrogen production via distributed natural gas reforming will be accepted by the Systems Integrator for consideration by the review panel. In addition, the panel may hear presentations from submitters as part of the assessment. DATES: Written position papers for consideration by the review panel regarding this topic must be received by February 1, 2006. The NREL Systems Integrator must receive requests to speak before the review panel no later than February 15, 2006. Attendees at the review panel will be limited to the presenter(s), the independent review panel, NREL Systems Integrator, and DOE representatives. ADDRESSES: Written position papers regarding the topic and requests to speak before the review panel are welcomed. Please submit 2 hardcopies of the position paper to: NREL Systems Integrator, U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 1617 Cole Boulevard, Mail Stop 1732, Golden, CO 80401-3393, Attn: Dale Gardner. Requests to present before the panel should be sent to Mr. Gardner via e-mail to dale_gardner@nrel.gov or Phone (303) 275-3020. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Independent review panel and process questions--Mr. Dale Gardner, U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 1617 Cole Boulevard, Mail Stop 1732, Golden, CO 80401-3393, Attn: Dale Gardner, Phone (303) 275-3020, e-mail dale_gardner@nrel.gov. Distributed natural gas reforming technology questions--Mr. Pete Devlin, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Mail Station EE-2H, Attn: Pete Devlin, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585-0121, Phone: (202) 586- 4905, e-mail peter.devlin@ee.doe.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The mission of DOE's Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies Program is to research, develop and validate fuel cell and hydrogen production, delivery, and storage technologies such that hydrogen from diverse domestic resources will be used in a clean, safe, reliable and affordable manner in fuel cell vehicles; central [[Page 2033]] station electric power production; distributed thermal electric; and combined heat and power applications. The President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative accelerates research, development and demonstration of hydrogen production, delivery and storage technologies to support an industry commercialization decision on the hydrogen economy by 2015. The FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership is working toward an industry commercialization decision on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by 2015. The transition to a hydrogen economy will take decades. During this transition, it is anticipated that a primary source of hydrogen for use in transportation by light duty fuel cell vehicles will be the distributed reforming of hydrogen from natural gas. This method is anticipated because (1) reforming is already a mature technology for some applications, (2) it conceivably can be cost competitive with other fuels and technologies in the transition timeframe, (3) the natural gas feedstock is accessable and dispersed, and (4) distributed production avoids a large scale hydrogen delivery/distribution infrastructures during the transition period. The following table shows the DOE cost goal status and targets over time for this production method. As calendar year 2005 comes to an end, an assessment of progress toward the $3.00/gge H2 target is needed. Table 3.1.2.--Technical Targets: Distributed Production of Hydrogen From Natural Gas \a\ \b\ Calendar year Characteristics Units 2003 \c\ 2005 \d\ 2010 \d\ status target target ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------- Total Hydrogen Cost............................ $/gge H2...................... 5.00 3.00 2.50 ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------- (See http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/mypp/pdfs/product ion.pdf, page 3-10, for complete table and footnotes). DOE has access to the results of R and demonstration projects in this technology area that it has funded to date, but additional information is requested from industry, academia, associations, and entities who are otherwise involved in aspects of distributed natural gas reforming. Position papers are limited to 10 pages maximum. A Cost Data Table is being assembled to help determine the current state of distributed natural gas reforming technologies. This table must be included in the position papers and/or presentations. The table can be downloaded from the DOE Hydrogen Program Web site at http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/ docs/natural--gas--cost--sheet.xls. At a minimum, a submitter (position paper, presentation, or both) should provide this table filled out to the maximum extent possible. DOE recognizes that some submitters may not be able to complete all fields. For example, a company that develops only a subsystem/component of a reformer will only be able to address those table elements involved in that subsystem/component technology. Briefing materials should be forwarded to the NREL Systems Integrator for consideration as a presentation to the review panel. The review panel will meet during the February 15 through March 15 time frame to hear presentations that include data to support the presenter's position. If confidential/proprietary information is provided in position papers or presentations, it must be clearly marked as such by the submitter. The independent review panel will be screened for conflicts of interest and each member will have completed confidentiality agreements to protect any information submitted. In addition, all materials will be returned to the submitter when the assessment is complete. The final assessment by the panel will be publicly available and will not contain any information which is identified by a submitter as confidential or proprietary. For more information about the DOE Hydrogen Program and related hydrogen production activities visit the program's Web site at http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov . Issued in Golden, CO on January 3, 2005. Andrea K. Lucero, Acting Procurement Director, Golden Field Office. [FR Doc. 06-265 Filed 1-11-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 50 Hanford News: K Basin cleanup gets 2 more years This story was published Thursday, January 12th, 2006 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to give the Department of Energy and Fluor Hanford more time to clean up Hanford’s K Basins. DOE and EPA have signed off on new legal deadlines for the project under the Tri-Party Agreement. Last week the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board also agreed to a longer schedule. The new Tri-Party Agreement deadlines allow an additional two years and one month for all the radioactive sludge in the basins to be treated. Although EPA could add to earlier fines on the project because of missed deadlines, it does not plan to, said Larry Gadbois, EPA environmental scientist. “We’re not happy with the delay, but this is where we are,” he said. “This is the reality.” Vacuuming radioactive sludge into underwater containers at the K East Basin has been much more difficult than anticipated, causing delays for the cleanup of both basins. They must be cleaned up before other work at the K Reactors can be done as part of the remediation of Hanford’s 100 Area along the Columbia River where nine reactors once produced plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program. DOE faces a legal deadline to have the K Reactors in safe storage and other cleanup finished in the 100 K Area by 2012. “Even though there have been delays with the sludge, we’re going to push to meet 2012,” Gadbois said. “It’s a key milestone.” The K Basins, each holding more than 1 million gallons of water, were built in the 1950s to hold irradiated reactor fuel from the K East and K West Reactors until it was processed. They later were used to hold other fuel. After the last Hanford processing plant shut down, leftover irradiated fuel remained in the pools for more than a decade. It corroded and particles mixed with dirt and concrete that sloughed off the sides of the basins to form the radioactive sludge. The Tri-Party Agreement had called for sludge in the more contaminated pool, K East, to be vacuumed into underwater containers by March 1, 2005. The water shields workers from the radiation. Originally, Fluor had expected the work to take two months and be done well ahead of the deadline, but about 18 percent of the sludge still needs to be vacuumed into containers 10 months past that deadline. Problems ranging from water that’s too murky to see through during vacuuming to sludge that’s hard-packed on the bottom of the basin has slowed work. Once sludge is in underwater containers, it will be transferred to the less-contaminated K West Basin. The deadline for all sludge to be out of K East has been moved from the end of this month to the end of May 2007. The bulk of K West sludge is to be into containers by the end of July 2007 with all vacuuming completed by the end of January 2008. The previous deadline was the end of June 2006. Treatment of sludge is to begin by the end of 2008, a 10-month extension from the earlier deadline. Sludge treatment must be completed by the end of November 2009, a 25-month extension. By EPA’s count, this is the 10th time it has worked with DOE to adjust the schedule to reflect DOE’s request for flexibility in cleaning up the basins. In 2003, EPA fined DOE $76,000 for missing a December 2002 deadline to start retrieving sludge. But then EPA agreed to allow DOE and Fluor time to come up with a new plan to remove the sludge and dismissed the schedule of deadlines. But DOE and Fluor also had trouble under the new plan. In April 2005, EPA fined DOE $75,000 for failing to meet the Tri-Party Agreement deadline to get radioactive sludge in the K East Basin into underwater containers. “We’ve been frustrated with how long it’s taken to get done and there has not been stellar performance on the management,” Gadbois said, noting there also have been technical problems. Better characterization of the sludge could have led to a better design and avoided many of the problems on the project, he said. But work on the project has reduced the risk to the environment, he said. That includes emptying the water and grouting in a portion of the K East Basin that leaked in the past and getting much of the sludge into containers. In addition, 4.65 million pounds of irradiated fuel were removed from the basins. “Through the life of the project, there have been interruptions, but work goes forward. There has been progress,” Gadbois said. “We did underestimate the challenge sludge posed,” said Matt McCormick, DOE’s assistant manager in Richland for central Hanford projects. But after a revision to the K East sludge vacuuming plan to remove large fuel racks that were difficult to vacuum around, Fluor has performed well, he said. “There is some predictability happening in the project,” he said. © 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 51 American Press Institute: Blowing the whistle can also blow a career - Published: Thursday, January 12, 2006 When it comes to free-speech protections for federal employees, the Constitution sometimes isn’t quite enough. As far back as 1912, Congress began work to ensure that federal agency workers wanting to blow the whistle on excesses and missteps were protected from retaliation. In addition to a raft of laws, Congress over the years has laid down protections in the Merit Systems Protection Board, established an Office of Special Counsel for whistleblowers in trouble, and even given a new federal appellate court it created in 1982 exclusive jurisdiction over litigation arising from whistleblower cases. Why all this concern for bureaucratic tattletales? Because they have served as a constant and valuable check on the federal government. As Louis Fisher writes in “National Security Whistleblowers,” a new Congressional Research Service report: “Over the years, agency employees have received credit for revealing problems of defense cost overruns, unsafe nuclear power plant conditions, questionable drugs approved for marketing, contract illegalities and improprieties, and regulatory corruption.” From the top down, whistleblowers have received high praise, even from presidents, for their service in improving government, according to Fisher. President Jimmy Carter, in fact, proposed the Office of Special Counsel to protect whistleblowers “who expose gross management errors and abuses.” President Ronald Reagan saluted whistleblowers and promised them protection for reporting illegal or wasteful activities. They “must be assured that when they ‘blow the whistle’ they will be protected and their information properly investigated,” he said. (Later, President Reagan turned back the first Whistleblower Protection Act passed by Congress.) President George H.W. Bush said that “a true whistleblower is a public servant of the highest order,” and that “these dedicated men and women should not be fired or rebuked or suffer financially for their honesty and good judgment.” But suffer they have. According to Fisher’s report, whistleblowers rarely have won when they’ve taken their cases to the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Office of Special Counsel, or even the courts. Instead, whistleblowers routinely have faced firing, transfers, reprimands, loss of promotion and harassment, not to mention criminal sanctions in some instances. A House committee taking up amendments to the Whistleblowers Protection Act in 1994 reported that though the act “is the strongest free speech law that exists on paper, it has been a counterproductive disaster in practice. The WPA has created new reprisal victims at a far greater pace than it is protecting them.” That woeful record continues today. Consider, for instance, the travails of Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI translator who was fired after she went public with claims of security violations, mismanagement and possible spying within the FBI department translating documents vital to the war on terror. Another whistleblower, Bunny Greenhouse, was demoted from the top procurement post at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after she challenged the process by which a subsidiary of Halliburton won multibillion dollar contracts just before the war in Iraq. Similar troubles were in store for the Army general who disputed his superiors’ troop-strength projections for the Iraq war, the Medicare expert who tried to tell Congress about the real costs of new drug subsidies, and the government climate specialist who was disciplined for pointing out that political appointees were manipulating global-warming data. Little wonder that whistleblowers more often go the press, which has a better record of protecting them than boards, special counsels, the courts, members of Congress – or their bosses. But even going to the press is not all that safe. The Justice Department has just launched a criminal investigation to track down anyone who leaked information to The New York Times about the National Security Agency’s super-secret monitoring of telephone calls and e-mails from within the United States. In another investigation, a special counsel in the Justice Department has been trying for two years to find out who in the White House leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak. The prosecutor was able to force some journalists to testify before a grand jury and to send one reporter to prison for refusing to testify. And the CIA general counsel’s office has taken the first step for yet another probe by notifying the Justice Department that someone in the government revealed classified information about “black site” interrogation centers in Eastern Europe to The Washington Post. No one knows how many whistleblowers who have shared information with journalists are looking over their shoulders right now. For example, the Times relied on a dozen or so current and former government officials for its coverage of the NSA surveillance. Now, a prominent attorney warns there could be further erosion of the press’s ability to help whistleblowers offer information about government abuse, mistakes and violations of the law. Harvey Silverglate, who represented several parties in the Pentagon Papers case in the 1970s, says in a recent article in the Boston Phoenix that the laws and court decisions are such that newspapers, reporters, editors and publishers “are at serious risk of indictment” in leak investigations. When laws, regulations, courts and the Constitution itself are not enough to protect freedom of speech and freedom of the press, there is more than just good government at risk. pmcmasters@fac.org Paul K. McMasters is one of the nation's Copyright © 2006 American Press Institute ***************************************************************** 52 kgw.com: K Basin cleanup extended two more years at Hanford reservation News for Oregon and SW Washington | AP Wire 01/12/2006 Associated Press The deadline for cleaning up the K Basins at the Hanford nuclear reservation has been extended by two more years. The K East and K West basins were built in the 1950s to hold irradiated fuel from nuclear reactors at the federal site in south-central Washington. The pools have been prone to leaks, making cleanup a priority, but emptying them of radioactive sludge has proven more difficult than expected. Under the new agreement, an additional two years and one month have been added to the deadline for removal and treatment of all radioactive sludge in the basins. Hanford cleanup is governed by the Tri-Party Agreement, a cleanup pact signed by the state, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, "We're not happy with the delays, but this is where we are," said Larry Gadbois, an EPA environmental scientist. Under the cleanup pact, sludge in the more contaminated pool, K East, is to be vacuumed into underwater containers and then transferred to the K West basin. About 18 percent of the sludge in K East still needs to be vacuumed into containers. The deadline for all sludge to be out of K East has been moved from the end of this month to the end of May 2007. The bulk of K West sludge is to be vacuumed into containers by the end of July 2007 with all vacuuming completed by the end of January 2008. The previous deadline was the end of June 2006. Treatment of sludge is to begin by the end of 2008, a 10-month extension of the previous deadline. Sludge treatment must be completed by the end of November 2009, a 25-month extension. The Energy Department manages cleanup at the highly contaminated Hanford site, which was created during World War II as part of the top-secret Manhattan project to build the atomic bomb. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be completed by 2035. By EPA's count, this is the 10th time it has worked with the Energy Department to adjust the schedule for cleaning up the basins. "We did underestimate the challenge sludge posed," said Matt McCormick, the Energy Department's assistant manager for central Hanford projects. But after a revision to the K East sludge vacuuming plan to remove large fuel racks that were difficult to vacuum around, the contractor has performed well, he said. "There is some predictability happening in the project," he said. In 2003, EPA fined the Energy Department $76,000 for missing a December 2002 deadline to start retrieving sludge. EPA then agreed to allow the department and its contractor, Fluor, to come up with a new plan for removing the sludge. In April 2005, EPA fined the Energy Department $75,000 for failing to meet the deadline to get radioactive sludge in the K East Basin into underwater containers. ___ Information from: Tri-City Herald, http://www.tri-cityherald.com © 2006, KGW-TV ***************************************************************** 53 DOE: Reimbursement for Costs of Remedial Action at Active Uranium and FR Doc E6-218 [Federal Register: January 12, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 8)] [Notices] [Page 2030-2031] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr12ja06-47] Thorium Processing Sites AGENCY: Office of Environmental Management, Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice of the acceptance of Title X claims for reimbursement in fiscal year (FY) 2006 and the acceptance of plans for subsequent remedial action. SUMMARY: This Notice announces the Department of Energy (DOE) acceptance of claims in FY 2006 from eligible active uranium and thorium processing sites for reimbursement under Title X of the Energy Policy Act of 1992. For FY 2006, Congress has appropriated approximately $20 million for reimbursement of certain costs of remedial action at these sites. The approved amount of claims submitted during FY 2005 and unpaid approved balances for claims submitted in FY 2004 will be paid by April 28, 2006, subject to the availability of funds. If the available funds are less than the total approved claims, these payments will be prorated, if necessary, based on the amount of available FY 2006 appropriations, unpaid approved claim balances (approximately $0.45 million), and claims received in May 2005 (approximately $22 million). This also provides notice of the continuing DOE acceptance of plans for subsequent decontamination, decommissioning, reclamation, and other remedial action (Plans for Subsequent Remedial Action). If Title X licensees expect to incur remedial action costs for remedial action after December 31, 2007, licensees must submit a Plan for Subsequent Remedial Action during calendar year (CY) 2005 or 2006, and DOE must approve a Plan submitted by a licensee by the end of CY 2007, if the costs incurred after CY 2007 are to be eligible for reimbursement. DATES: The closing date for the submission of claims in FY 2006 is May 1, 2006. These new claims will be processed for payment by April 27, 2007, together with unpaid approved claim balances from prior years, based on the availability of funds from congressional appropriations. Plans for Subsequent Remedial Action must be submitted no later than December 31, 2006. ADDRESSES: Claims and Plans for Subsequent Remedial Action should be forwarded by certified or registered mail, return receipt requested, to the U.S. Department of Energy, 19901 [[Page 2031]] Germantown Rd., EM-12/CLF, Germantown, MD 20874-1290, or by express mail to the U.S. Department of Energy, 19901 Germantown Rd., EM-12/CLF, Germantown, MD. All claims should be addressed to the attention of Mr. David Mathes. Three copies of the claim should be included with each submission. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Contact David Mathes at (301) 903-7222 of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Office of Commercial Disposition Options. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: DOE published a final rule under 10 CFR part 765 in the Federal Register on May 23, 1994, (59 FR 26714) to carry out the requirements of Title X of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (sections 1001-1004 of Public Law 102-486, 42 U.S.C. 2296a et seq.) and to establish the procedures for eligible licensees to submit claims for reimbursement. DOE amended the final rule on June 3, 2003, (68 FR 32955) to adopt several technical and administrative amendments (e.g., statutory increases in the reimbursement ceilings). Title X requires DOE to reimburse eligible uranium and thorium licensees for certain costs of decontamination, decommissioning, reclamation, and other remedial action incurred by licensees at active uranium and thorium processing sites to remediate byproduct material generated as an incident of sales to the United States Government. To be reimbursable, costs of remedial action must be for work which is necessary to comply with applicable requirements of the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978 (42 U.S.C. 7901 et seq.) or, where appropriate, with requirements established by a State pursuant to a discontinuance agreement under section 274 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2021). Claims for reimbursement must be supported by reasonable documentation as determined by DOE in accordance with 10 CFR part 765. Funds for reimbursement will be provided from the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund established at the United States Department of Treasury pursuant to section 1801 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2297g). Payment or obligation of funds shall be subject to the requirements of the Anti-Deficiency Act (31 U.S.C. 1341). Authority: Section 1001-1004 of Public Law 102-486, 106 Stat. 2776 (42 U.S.C. 2296a et seq.). Issued in Washington DC on this 30th of December, 2005. David E. Mathes, Office of Commercial Disposition Options, Office of Logistics and Waste Disposition Enhancements. [FR Doc. E6-218 Filed 1-11-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 54 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Fernald FR Doc E6-219 [Federal Register: January 12, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 8)] [Notices] [Page 2032] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr12ja06-49] AGENCY: Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice of open meeting. SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EMSSAB), Fernald. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. No. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Saturday, January 21, 2006, 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. ADDRESSES: Crosby Township Senior Center, 8910 Willey Road, Harrison, Ohio 45030. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Doug Sarno, The Perspectives Group, Inc., 1055 North Fairfax Street, Suite 204, Alexandria, VA 22314, at (703) 837-1197, or e-mail: djsarno@theperspectivesgroup.com. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of the Board is to make recommendations to DOE in the areas of environmental restoration, waste management, and related activities. Tentative Agenda: 8:30 a.m. Call to Order 8:35 a.m. Updates and Announcements 8:45 a.m. Stewardship Needs and Responsibilities 10:00 a.m. Break 10:15 a.m. Friends of Fernald Group 10:45 a.m. Fernald History Activities 11:45 a.m. Fernald Citizens' Advisory Board Calendar and 2006 Activities 12:15 a.m. Public Comment 12:30 p.m. Adjourn Public Participation: The meeting is open to the public. Written statements may be filed with the Board chair either before or after the meeting. Individuals who wish to make oral statements pertaining to agenda items should contact the Board chair at the address or telephone number listed below. Requests must be received five days prior to the meeting and reasonable provisions will be made to include the presentation in the agenda. The Deputy Designated Federal Officer is empowered to conduct the meeting in a fashion that will facilitate the orderly conduct of business. Individuals wishing to make public comment will be provided a maximum of five minutes to present their comments. This notice is being published less than 15 days before the date of the meeting due to programmatic issues. Minutes: The minutes of this meeting will be available for public review and copying at the U.S. Department of Energy's Freedom of Information Public Reading Room, 1E-190, Forrestal Building, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday-Friday, except Federal holidays. Minutes will also be available by writing to the Fernald Citizens' Advisory Board, MS-76, Post Office Box 538704, Cincinnati, OH 43253-8704, or by calling the Advisory Board at (513) 648-6478. Issued at Washington, DC on January 5, 2006. Rachel Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. E6-219 Filed 1-11-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 55 DOE: Agency Information Collection Extension FR Doc E6-220 [Federal Register: January 12, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 8)] [Notices] [Page 2031-2032] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr12ja06-48] AGENCY: U.S. Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice and request for comments. SUMMARY: The Department of Energy (DOE), pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, intends to extend for three years the information collection packages listed at the end of this notice. Comments are invited on: (a) Whether the extended information collections are necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the agency, including whether the information has practical utility; (b) the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of the information collections, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions used; (c) ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; and (d) ways to minimize the burden of the information collections on respondents, including through the use of automated collection techniques or other forms of information technology. Comments submitted in response to this notice will be summarized and included in the request for Office of Management and Budget review and approval of these information collections; they also will become a matter of public record. DATES: Comments regarding these proposed information collections must be received on or before March 13, 2006. If you anticipate difficulty in submitting comments within that period, contact the person listed below as soon as possible. ADDRESSES: Written comments may be sent to: Jeffrey Martus, IM-11/ Germantown Building, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Ave., SW., Washington, DC 20585-1290 or by fax at 301-903-9061 or by e-mail at Jeffrey.martus@hq.doe.gov. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Requests for additional information or copies of the information collection instrument and instructions should be directed to Jeffrey Martus at the address listed above in ADDRESSES. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The information collection packages listed in this notice for public comment include the following: 1. (1) OMB No.: 1910-0300. (2) Package Title: Environment, Safety and Health. (3) Type of Review: Renewal. (4) Purpose: This information is required to ensure that environment, safety, and health resources and requirements are managed efficiently and effectively and to exercise management oversight of DOE contractors. (5) Respondents: 11,344. (6) Estimated Number of Burden Hours: 269,475. 2. (1) OMB No.: 1910-0500. (2) Package Title: Financial Management. (3) Type of Review: Renewal. (4) Purpose: This information is required by the Department to ensure that financial management resources and requirements are managed efficiently and effectively and to exercise management oversight of DOE contractors. (5) Respondents: 12,626. (6) Estimated Number of Burden Hours: 152,704. 3. (1) OMB No.: 1910-5101. (2) Package Title: U.S. Dept. of Energy: Annual Alternative Fuel Vehicle Acquisition Report for State Government & Alternative Fuel Provider Fleets. (3) Type of Review: Renewal. (4) Purpose: This collection is critical to ensure the Government has sufficient information to ensure that covered fleets are complying with annual reporting and acquisition requirements under the Alternative Fuel Transportation Program. (5) Respondents: 310. (6) Estimated Number of Burden Hours: 1,550. 4. (1) OMB No.: 1910-5102. (2) Package Title: Make-or-Buy Plans. (3) Type of Review: Renewal. (4) Purpose: This information is required by the Department to ensure the Department's management and operations are sub-contracting in the most cost-effective and efficient manner and to exercise management and oversight of DOE contractors. (5) Respondents: 36. (6) Estimated Number of Burden Hours: 5,350. 5. (1) OMB No.: 1910-5111. (2) Package Title: Purchasing by DOE Management and Operating Contractors from Contractor Affiliated Sources. (3) Type of Review: Renewal. (4) Purpose: This information is critical to ensure the Government has sufficient information to judge the degree to which awardees meet the terms of their agreement and ensure that improper organization conflicts are not created. (5) Respondents: 20. (6) Estimated Number of Burden Hours: 100. 6. (1) OMB No. 1910-5121. (2) Package Title: End-Use Certificate. (3) [[Page 2032]] Type of Review: Renewal. (4) Purpose: This information is required to ensure that respondents acquiring High Risk Property are responsible, not debarred bidders, Specially Designated Nationals or Blocked Persons, or have not violated U.S. export laws and to advise them of compliance with export laws and regulations. (5) Respondents: 5,000. (6) Estimated Number of Burden Hours: 1,650. Statutory Authority: Department of Energy Organization Act, Public Law 95-91. Issued in Washington, DC on December 30, 2005. Sharon A. Evelin, Director, Records Management Division, Office of the Chief Information Officer. [FR Doc. E6-220 Filed 1-11-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 56 Los Angeles Times: Payout Ends 8-Year Field Lab Battle - January 12, 2006 latimes.com : California + Boeing agrees to a $30-million settlement for those affected by its Santa Susana facility. By Gregory W. Griggs, Times Staff Writer Boeing Co. has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit brought by neighbors of its Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, ending an eight-year legal battle over the effect on public health from radioactive and chemical contamination at the lab. Terms of the settlement were reached in September but were not immediately disclosed. They included a confidentiality agreement between Boeing and the remaining 133 plaintiffs in the case. "All I can say is we are satisfied and our clients are satisfied," said Barry Cappello, an attorney for the plaintiffs. Boeing spokesman Inger Hodgson declined to comment. Initially about 300 individual lawsuits were filed against Boeing and the lab's former owner, Rockwell International Corp. The plaintiffs argued that pollutants from dozens of years of nuclear and rocket engine testing at the hilltop lab were responsible for a wide range of cancers, auto-immune disorders and tumors afflicting nearby residents. A major contention in the lawsuits was that a partial nuclear meltdown at the lab in 1959 released more radiation than originally estimated. The accident was not widely publicized until 20 years later. The company maintained for years that the meltdown posed no danger to its workers or the public. But disclosure in 1989 of lingering low-level contamination from past nuclear projects sparked a furor and led Rockwell's Rocketdyne division to halt nuclear research there the next year. Cleanup operations continue. Scientists hired by the plaintiffs reviewed more than 8 million pages of company documents and concluded that the damaged reactor released up to 260 times more radiation than was released from a similar accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island in 1979, according to court documents. Experts also found links between chemicals used in rocket tests and nuclear research and numerous illnesses of people living in Simi Valley and the neighboring western San Fernando Valley, according to the documents. Individual payouts were based on a formula that considered specific illnesses, a person's age, economic loss and other factors, according to one plaintiff. For example, a plaintiff diagnosed with bone marrow cancer in his mid-30s, will receive $650,0000, while $5,000 will go to the grandson of someone who died of a brain tumor. Plaintiff Margaret-Ann Galasso, 52, challenged her payment, saying the Santa Barbara law firm hired by the plaintiffs will end up with the lion's share of the settlement, about 60%. After subtracting Galasso's proportional share of fees and costs, her $87,500 payment would be reduced to $35,000 for treatment of uterine cancer. She suggested such payouts would make it difficult for many victims to get the long-term care they need. "This guy used us to get [nearly] $20 million," said Galasso, who now lives in Florida. "That's who I'm angry at." But Cappello said the payouts would provide money to people who watched family members die of cancer and for college tuition for children who lost parents. He said a majority of the plaintiffs have received their checks. He defended his law firm's portion of the settlement, saying it battled since 1997 on behalf of lab neighbors and continued after the lawsuits lost their class-action status and half the plaintiffs were dropped from the case. "We spent millions of dollars and went eight years without being paid," Cappello said. "If there's one disgruntled person, all I can say is 'no comment.' "I could walk down the street passing out $20 and you could find somebody opposed to it." Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 57 lamonitor.com: Cleanup stretches at least another five months The Online News Source for Los Alamos ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor POJOAQUE - An old radioactive laundry that was supposed to involve excavation and removal of 50-square-yards of contaminated soil will now need more like a 1,000-square-yards dug out. That was one among many surprises officials have encountered in their first 10 months in a rapidly expanding site-wide decontamination at Los Alamos National Laboratory. A number of similar issues were discussed at a public meeting Wednesday night that examined the status of the environmental cleanup at the laboratory under the consent order with the state. The cleanup project will triple in funding this year, said Dave McInroy, the lab's deputy director for the environmental project. Hazardous Waste Bureau Chief James Bearzi addressed the schedule delays and hot topics like the chromium contamination that has been identified in the deep aquifer under the lab. A recent notice issued by the state calls for LANL to take prompt interim measures to deal with the possibility that relatively recent effluents containing above-standard amounts of chromium may be polluting the regional aquifer. "We have a point in space that has chromium, and that's it," Bearzi said. He said there are many things that will have to be done to determine what is going on, whether it's coming or going, how big and how fast, and where it's coming from. Drinking water in Los Alamos has not been affected, according to county utility officials. J.D. Campbell, chair of the Northern New Mexico Citizens Advisory Board, announced that the board is planning a major public forum on the water-monitoring program, similar in intent to last year's forum on Area G, the lab's hazardous waste site. Area G, acknowledged to be the most difficult clean-up site is the last project on the consent order, now scheduled to be finished April 4, 2016, four months later, the original schedule. More information on the potential chromium problem is expected at a NNMCAB committee meeting today in Santa Fe, which will include a report from the LANL officials involved in the chromium investigation. Under the consent order, Bearzi said, the schedule can be changed on request by the laboratory or automatically, when prerequisite reviews and approvals by the department have been delayed. Most of the extensions reflected in the new schedule have been caused by staff shortages in the bureau, he said. The Department of Energy has agreed to fund additional positions to facilitate timely review, but there have been delays in receiving a second installment of that payment and the state legislature must approve an additional five full-time employees. The legislature goes into session on Jan. 17. "Decisions are being made; work is getting done; the ball is moving forward," Bearzi said. "I don't think anybody could have said that two years ago." Bearzi said there will also be a delay in issuing the laboratory's operating permit, which covers future operations. Promised for February, Bearzi said, "Now, we're looking at April." The delay was caused by a bureaucratic snafu involving the transfer of funds from the University of California, the lab's manager, through the Environmental Protection Agency. EPA didn't know what to do with it, Bearzi said, so there has been a delay in setting up a computerized system for accessing the administrative record for the permit process. Scott Novak, of Nuclear Watch New Mexico was among those attending the sparsely attended meeting. "It's a little discouraging. The (consent order) schedule slips and then when something like the chromium comes up, it delays even more," he said. "The chromium is going to eat a lot of our time," said Bearzi. "We were hoping we were not going to find that kind of stuff." "We knew the first year was going to be hard," he said. "But in subsequent years it's going to get easier, and I don't think it will take us as long, either." © 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: *****************************************************************