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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 [NYTr] A Neocon Plan to Plant WMDs?
2 [toeslist] Fw: Chossudovsky - Nuclear War against Iran March
3 [NYTr] Iran: The Bombs of March?
4 London Times: Saudis warn Iran that its nuclear plan risks disaster 
5 Sunday Times: Countries plan tactics on Iran
6 BBC: Iran 'does not need nuclear arms'
7 Guardian Unlimited: Iranian Leader Defends Nuclear Research
8 Guardian Unlimited: Iran's Leader Shrugs Off Sanctions Threat
9 AFP: US must be willing to take military action against Iran - McCai
10 Guardian Unlimited: Senators Support Penalties Against Iran
11 Guardian Unlimited: Iran increases tension with threat to block insp
12 Observer: West is in dark ages, says Iran's President
13 Korea Herald: Speculation rises over Kim's summit with Hu   
14 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: [VIEWPOINT] Paving the road to free trade
15 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: N.Korea 'Will Use Nukes Against Invaders'
16 US: [NukeNet] Scary Friday the 13th Movie Clip
17 Worldnet Daily: What noncompliance? 
18 Japan Times: CHECKING BOTH SIDES OF THE COIN
19 AFP: US diplomat to visit South Asia for talks on nuclear, ethnic co
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
20 parties answer nuclear power questions: Straightgoods.com
21 US: ajc.com: New PSC chairman pledges changes | 
22 US: San Luis Obispo Tribune: Reactor tops getting extra attention
23 US: San Luis Obispo Tribune: Duel over Diablo ends with denial
24 NEWS.com.au: Public supports nuclear power 
25 US: newsobserver.com: McGehee: Inspectors didn't identify any immedi
26 US: newsobserver.com: N-plant plans revive spent-fuel concern
27 BBC: Labour to discuss nuclear options
28 Scotland: ePolitix.com: McConnell rethinks nuclear stance
29 Sunday Herald: McConnell paves way for nuclear power U-turn - 
30 REGNUM: Head of Rosatom proposes to restore ex-USSR nuclear complex 
31 Independent: Blair sets out to sell his nuclear power policy to the 
32 US: Rutland Herald: Group plans protest Monday
33 TheStar.com: Bruce Power restart draws interest to Lake Huron shores
34 Japan Times: Settlement in Mihama steam leak
35 US: Boston Globe: Critics want a voice, and more cash from Pilgrim -
36 US: Napa Valley Register: U.S. sees resurgence in new nuclear plants
37 Scotsman.com News: Labour denies nuclear U-turn
38 ITAR-TASS: Govt to support federal nuclear centers
39 US: Palm Beach Post: Judge rules in favor of FPL in suit over nuke p
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
40 US: Appleton Post-Crescent: Metal detection
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
41 URGENT: Radiation Warning to SE Asian Countries! 
42 US: Hawk Eye: Harkin continues IAAP work 
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
43 US: Sydney Morning Herald: Miners talk up uranium safeguards - 
44 US: newsobserver.com: Why not just recycle nuclear waste and reuse i
45 Las Vegas SUN: Flashpoint for Jan. 14, 2006 (Yucca)
46 Guardian Unlimited; Ukraine Wants to Produce Own Nuclear Fuel
47 FT.com: UK - BNFL tells regulator of ‘significant’ leak danger
48 US: Boston Globe: Toxic dump cleaned up, to a point - 
49 US: OrlandoSentinel.com: Test takes aim at toxic waste - 
50 CNIC: Fictional Plutonium Utilization Plan
51 SBP: Sellafield verdict due on Wednesday 
52 US: Ca�on City Daily Record: Cotter Corp. cited with air quality vio
53 US: UPI: Australia may send uranium to China
54 US: The Signal: Bermite Sale Down to Two Final Bidders 
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
55 Contra Costa Times: Weapons lab open to offers for manager
56 AP Wire: U.S. opens bidding to run nuclear lab
57 Hanford News: DOE plan includes replacing 2 major Hanford contracts
58 SF Chron: LIVERMORE / U.C. must bid to run Lawrence laboratory / 
59 Tri-Valley Herald: UC Bechtel likely to win lab contract
60 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Opens Bidding to Run Nuclear Lab
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 1 [NYTr] A Neocon Plan to Plant WMDs?
 
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:20:22 -0600 (CST)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
This is an old story, but it keeps coming back. Up till now, all
of the allegations are traceable back to the original article
by Mehr News (Iran). Iranian intelligence was in a position to know
what was going on, if the botched operation actually occurred. 

For background, see:

"Did US foil its own WMD planting op with friendly fire?," March, 2004
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20040315/000170.html

CounterPunch - Jan 14/15, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp01142006.html

Talk About Chutzpah!

A Neocon Plan to Plant WMDs?

By GARY LEUPP

A recent Raw Story report by Larissa Alexandrovna suggests that the
notorious Office of Special Plans didn't just stovepipe cherrypicked
"intelligence" to the White House and press. It also sent teams into Iraq
after the invasion began, who after it became apparent that there were no
abundant WMDs, examined the possibility of planting such weapons in order to
help the president avoid embarrassment.

Citing "[t]hree U.S. intelligence sources and a source close to the United
Nations Security Council" Alexandrova indicates that the OSP planned "off
book" missions that were dispatched by Stephen Cambone, Defense Department
intelligence chief, from March 2003. (Cambone now occupies the # 3 post in
the Defense Department.) Teams sent to Iraq included "CIA, FBI, Green
Berets, Delta Force operators, and commandos from the Navy's Special Warfare
Development Group." Their first priority was to investigate an allegation
made by disinformation master Ahmad Chalabi that a USN pilot shot down in
1991 and proclaimed KIA soon afterwards was being held as a POW in Iraq.
(That was bogus.) The second was to deal with the WMD issue. The third was
to get Saddam.

During the summer and fall of 2004 one unnamed team, according to the UN
source, interviewed many Iraqi intelligence officers, telling them, "Our
President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are
no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?" The Iraqis understood they were
being asked to cooperate with a deception. "But," the UN source continues,
"the guys were thinking this is absurd because anything put down would not
pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not
using Iraqi methodology."

The Senate Select Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to at some point
investigate the OSP, has asked the Pentagon's Inspector-General to probe the
office and Douglas Feith's role in it. Feith and the other neocons have
shown themselves shameless purveyors of disinformation again and again.
Somebody among or close to them must have fabricated the Niger uranium
documents. Jacques Chirac as I recall once opined that if the U.S. didn't
find WMD in Iraq it would probably stage a discovery. But the report that
they actually considered doing just that to justify their war, to further
hoodwink the American people and the world, beats everything I've heard so
far. Talk about chutzpah.

There's no end to it. Before the Iraq attack, the disinformationists had
succeeded in convincing the majority of Americans that Iraq had WMD
threatening the world. Before the Iran attack, they have probably succeeded
in convincing most Americans that Iran has become a nuclear threat. They've
gotten the media to routinely refer to "Iran's nuclear weapons program" even
though IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has repeatedly said he finds no evidence
of one. Despite ElBaradei, the Bush administration has been able to organize
its allies in the IAEA to find Iran in violation of the Non-Proliferation
Treaty on the grounds that it kept aspects of its nuclear program secret up
to 2003, despite the fact that it's opened itself to an unprecedented level
of IAEA inspection since. Washington has successfully conflated Iran's
non-binding agreement with the UK, Germany and France with the NPT itself.
Thus when Iran ends its voluntary suspension of uranium enriching
activities, the administration pretends it's doing something illegal, even
though the Treaty itself specifically allows it to enrich uranium for
peaceful purposes.

The neocons have helped create an environment in which Syria is simply
assumed to be responsible for political assassinations in Lebanon, in the
absence of decisive evidence. While you'd think "the international
community" would recognize and reject U.S. efforts to attack more countries
in "the Greater Middle East," instead we find neocon successes in diplomacy.
They've brought Europe aboard the program. They may well seek UNSC sanctions
against both Iran and Syria, and resolutions that could be construed as
allowing U.S. attacks on these countries. These efforts will likely meet
with Chinese and Russian vetoes, but the Bush administration expressing
disappointment in the UN will proceed to bomb more Muslim countries on more
false pretexts, even while evidence of their Iraq deceptions mounts.

The proponents of an expanded war, including Vice President Cheney, must
feel under a lot of pressure to get the project done as soon as possible.
The ongoing Franklin/AIPAC and Plame investigations, the indictment of Libby
and impending trial, the inquiry into Feith and the OSP, the multiplying
revelations about executive lawbreaking at home and abroad, popular
discontent with the Iraq War, increasingly serious talk about impeachment
hearings---all must lend a sense of urgency to the neocons' enterprise.

Last month CIA director Porter Goss visited Ankara, Turkey where he argued
to Turkish officials that "Iran has nuclear weapons and this situation was
creating a huge threat for both Turkey and other states in the region." This
is the former Rep. Goss who has cooperated with the administration's efforts
to depict the neocon lies leading up to the Iraq War as honest "intelligence
failures" and to scapegoat the CIA as somehow incompetent. Once again the
experts like ElBaradei, Gordon Prather, Scott Ritter and others say there is
no evidence that Iran is anywhere near producing nukes. But those guys are
in the "reality mode" so despised by the empire- mode neocons, and as a high
official once lectured David Suskind, "We create our own reality." Have the
latter planned better this time? Have they prepared the evidence to plant in
the Bushehr rubble?

                                       * * *

"I don't have any doubt that at the right time, a time of our choosing,
we're going to go to the Security Council if the Iranians are not prepared
to do what they say they want to do, which is to pursue peaceful nuclear
energy," Condoleezza Rice tells the Washington Post, adding confidently,
"When it's clear that negotiations are exhausted, we have the votes. There
is a resolution sitting there for referral. We'll vote it."

With equal confidence, Jephraim P Gundzik of Asia Times states that, "Facing
almost certain veto by Russia and China, any US-EU attempt to impose
sanctions on Iran in the Security Council will fail---a situation both
Washington and the EU-3 [UK, Germany, France] are aware of."

These aren't contradictory statements. Rice is confident that the U.S. will
be able to get a slim majority on the IAEA board of 35 members to agree that
Iran, being in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (even though it's
not) to refer Iran to the UNSC for punitive action. The UK, France and the
U.S. will vote for sanctions; Russia and China will veto the resolution.
U.S. UN Ambassador Bolton will pronounce that the UN has become "irrelevant"
while President Bush will emphasize to the American people that our
freedom-loving allies (including France) are with us this time in a
clear-cut confrontation between good and evil. "The regime of President
Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, and calls for Israel to be wiped off the
map," he'll fume. "Iran poses a threat to its neighbors," he'll warn, even
though Iran has friendly relations with Afghanistan, Pakistan, the current
Iraqi U.S.-client government, Syria, Turkey, etc. "Iran hid a secret nuclear
weapons program for 18 years!" he'll preach, failing to note that it came
clean on clandestine aspects of its nuclear program, started in the 1970s
with U.S. support, in 2003. Since then, it has signed IAEA protocols
allowing extraordinary monitoring of a program it says is for purely
peaceful purposes, and which IAEA chief and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Mohamed ElBaradei says he finds no evidence is a military program.

The point is not to necessarily get a UNSC resolution that would validate
new measures against Iran, but to stage a show for the American public. The
French were deeply skeptical about U.S. reasons to attack Iraq; so now have
Americans become skeptical. But if both the French and Germans on the
Security Council are willing to stand with John Bolton in pressing for
anti-Iranian action, such action might be more marketable to the American
people. Once again the distortion of facts and some allied arm-twisting will
pave the way for a criminal attack. Or maybe an awakened American people,
outraged at all the uncovered deceit to date (torture, "special renditions,"
illegal domestic spying, vindictive moves against opponents) makes it
politically impossible for the warmongers to proceed.

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct
Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands
and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The
Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in
Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor
to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and
Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.]
       
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 2 [toeslist] Fw: Chossudovsky - Nuclear War against Iran March
 
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:05:13 -0600 (CST)

-------Original Message-------

From: Janet M Eaton
Date: 01/06/06 01:12:25
To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net
Cc: GLOBALL@mx08.ctinetworks.com
Subject: Chossudovsky - Nuclear War against Iran March 2006 [globalresearch
ca -Jan 3]

Dear All:

Some key points from Professor Chossudovsky's lengthy paper below:

[] The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against
Iran is now in the final planning stages.

[] Coalition partners, which include the US,  Israel and Turkey are
in "an advanced stage of readiness".

[] The US sponsored military plan has been endorsed by NATO, although
it is unclear, at this stage, as to the nature of NATO's involvement
in the planned aerial attacks.

[]  Contrary to the invasion of Iraq, which was opposed at the
diplomatic level by France and Germany, Washington has been building
"a consensus" both within the Atlantic Alliance and  the UN Security
Council.

[] All top Israeli officials have pronounced the end of March, 2006,
as the deadline for launching a military assault on Iran....

[] US military sources have confirmed that an aerial attack on Iran
would involve a large scale deployment comparable to the US "shock
and awe" bombing raids on Iraq in March 2003:

[]  The various components of the military operation are firmly under
US Command, coordinated by the Pentagon and US Strategic Command
Headquarters (USSTRATCOM) at the Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska.

[] No dissenting political voices have emerged from within the
European Union.

[] The "surgical strikes" are presented to world public opinion as a
means to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
They say .... this is not a war but a military peace-keeping
operation, in the form of aerial attacks directed against Iran's
nuclear facilities.

[] According to a 2003 Senate decision, the new generation of
tactical nuclear weapons or "low yield" "mini-nukes", with an
explosive capacity of up to 6 times a Hiroshima bomb, are now
considered "safe for civilians" because the explosion is underground.

[] The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name
of World Peace.   "Making the World safer" is the justification for
launching a military operation which could potentially result in a
nuclear holocaust.

[] a brand new command unit entitled  Joint Functional Component
Command Space and Global Strike, or JFCCSGS was created.
JFCCSGS has the mandate to oversee the launching of a nuclear attack
in accordance with the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, approved by the
US Congress in 2002. The NPR underscores the pre-emptive use of
nuclear warheads not only against "rogue states" but also against
China and Russia.

[] Since late 2004, Israel has been stockpiling US made conventional
and nuclear weapons systems in anticipation of an attack on Iran.
This stockpiling which is financed by US military aid was largely
completed in June 2005. Israel has taken delivery from the US of
several thousand "smart air launched weapons" including some 500
'bunker-buster bombs, which can also be used to deliver tactical
nuclear bombs.

[] Tehran has confirmed that it will retaliate if attacked, in the
form of ballistic missile strikes directed against Israel (CNN, 8 Feb
2005). These attacks, could also target US military facilities in
Iraq and Persian Gulf, which would immediately lead us into a
scenario of military escalation and all out war.

[]  The air strikes against Iran could contribute to unleashing a war
in the broader Middle East Central Asian region.

Chossudovsky concludes:

The implications are overwhelming !

The so-called international community has accepted the eventuality of
a nuclear holocaust !

Those who decide have swallowed their own war propaganda !

A political consensus has developed in Western Europe and North
America regarding the aerial attacks using tactical nuclear weapons,
without considering their devastating implications !

This profit driven military adventure ultimately threatens the future
of humanity !

WHAT TO DO !
What is needed in the months ahead is a major thrust, nationally and
internationally which breaks the conspiracy of silence, which
acknowledges the dangers, which brings this war project to the
forefront of political debate and media attention, at all levels,
which confronts and requires political and military leaders to take a
firm stance against the US sponsored nuclear war.

fyi-janet

============================

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20CH2
0060103&articleId=1714

Nuclear War against Iran

By Michel Chossudovsky

January 3, 2006

The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against Iran
is now in the final planning stages.

Coalition partners, which include the US,  Israel and Turkey are in
"an advanced stage of readiness".

Various military exercises have been conducted, starting in early
2005. In turn, the Iranian Armed Forces have also conducted large
scale military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf in December in
anticipation of a US sponsored attack.

Since early 2005, there has been intense shuttle diplomacy between
Washington, Tel Aviv, Ankara and NATO headquarters in Brussels.

In recent developments, CIA Director Porter Goss on a mission to
Ankara, requested Turkish Prime Minister  Recep Tayyip Erdogan "to
provide political and logistic support for air strikes against
Iranian nuclear and military targets."  Goss reportedly asked " for
special cooperation from Turkish intelligence to help prepare and
monitor the operation." (DDP, 30 December 2005).

In turn, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has given the green light to the
Israeli Armed Forces to launch the attacks by the end of March:

    All top Israeli officials have pronounced the end of March, 2006,
as the deadline for launching a military assault on Iran.... The end
of March date also coincides with the IAEA report to the UN on Iran's
nuclear energy program. Israeli policymakers believe that their
threats may influence the report, or at least force the kind of
ambiguities, which can be exploited by its overseas supporters to
promote Security Council sanctions or justify Israeli military
action.

    (James Petras,  Israel's War Deadline: Iran in the Crosshairs,
Global Research, December 2005)

The US sponsored military plan has been endorsed by NATO, although it
is unclear, at this stage, as to the nature of NATO's involvement in
the planned aerial attacks.

"Shock and Awe"

The various components of the military operation are firmly under US
Command, coordinated by the Pentagon and US Strategic Command
Headquarters (USSTRATCOM) at the Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska.

The actions announced by Israel would be carried out in close
coordination with the Pentagon. The command structure of the
operation is centralized and ultimately Washington will decide when
to launch the military operation.

US military sources have confirmed that an aerial attack on Iran
would involve a large scale deployment comparable to the US "shock
and awe" bombing raids on Iraq in March 2003:

    American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the
1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq nuclear center in Iraq, and would
more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq.
Using the full force of operational B-2 stealth bombers, staging from
Diego Garcia or flying direct from the United States, possibly
supplemented by F-117 stealth fighters staging from al Udeid in Qatar
or some other location in theater, the two-dozen suspect nuclear
sites
would be targeted.

    Military planners could tailor their target list to reflect the
preferences of the Administration by having limited air strikes that
would target only the most crucial facilities ... or the United
States
could opt for a far more comprehensive set of strikes against a
comprehensive range of WMD related targets, as well as conventional
and unconventional forces that might be used to counterattack against
US forces in Iraq

    (See Globalsecurity.org at
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iran-strikes.htm

In November, US Strategic Command conducted a major exercise of a
"global strike plan" entitled "Global Lightening". The latter
involved a simulated attack using both conventional and nuclear
weapons against a "fictitious enemy".

Following the "Global Lightening" exercise, US Strategic Command
declared an advanced state of readiness (See our analysis below)

While Asian press reports stated that the "fictitious enemy" in the
Global Lightening exercise was North Korea, the timing of the
exercises, suggests that they were conducted in anticipation of a
planned attack on Iran.

Consensus for Nuclear War

No dissenting political voices have emerged from within the European
Union.

There are ongoing consultations between Washington, Paris and Berlin.
Contrary to the invasion of Iraq, which was opposed at the diplomatic
level by France and Germany, Washington has been building "a
consensus" both within the Atlantic Alliance and  the UN Security
Council. This consensus pertains to the conduct of a nuclear war,
which could potentially affect a large part of the Middle East
Central Asian region.

Moreover, a number of frontline Arab states are now tacit partners in
the US/ Israeli military project.  A year ago in November 2004,
Israel's top military brass met at NATO headqaurters in Brtussels
with their counterparts from six members of the Mediterranean basin
nations, including Egypt,  Jordan,  Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and
Mauritania. A NATO-Israel protocol  was signed. Following these
meetings, joint military exercises were held off the coast of Syria
involving the US, Israel and Turkey. and in February 2005, Israel
participated in military exercises and "anti-terror maneuvers"
together with several Arab countries.

The media in chorus has unequivocally pointed to Iran as a "threat to
World Peace".

The antiwar movement has swallowed the media lies. The fact that the
US and Israel are planning a Middle East nuclear holocaust is not
part of the antiwar/ anti- globalization agenda.

The "surgical strikes" are presented to world public opinion as a
means to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

We are told that this is not a war but a military peace-keeping
operation, in the form of aerial attacks directed against Iran's
nuclear facilities.

Mini-nukes: "Safe for Civilians"

The press reports, while revealing certain features of the military
agenda, largely serve to distort the broader nature of the military
operation, which contemplates the preemptive use of tactical nuclear
weapons.

The war agenda is based on the Bush administration's doctrine of
"preemptive" nuclear war under the 2002  Nuclear Posture Review.

Media disinformation has been used extensively to conceal the
devastating consequences of military action involving nuclear
warheads against Iran. The fact that these surgical strikes would be
carried out using both conventional and nuclear weapons is not an
object of debate.

According to a 2003 Senate decision, the new generation of tactical
nuclear weapons or "low yield" "mini-nukes", with an explosive
capacity of up to 6 times a Hiroshima bomb, are now considered "safe
for civilians" because the explosion is underground.

Through a propaganda campaign which has enlisted the support of
"authoritative" nuclear scientists, the mini-nukes are being
presented as an instrument of peace rather than war.  The low-yield
nukes have now been cleared for "battlefield use", they are slated to
be used in the next stage of America's "war on Terrorism" alongside
conventional weapons:

Administration officials argue that low-yield nuclear weapons are
needed as a credible deterrent against rogue states.[Iran, North
Korea]  Their logic is that existing nuclear weapons are too
destructive to be used except in a full-scale nuclear war. Potential
enemies realize this, thus they do not consider the threat of nuclear
retaliation to be credible. However, low-yield nuclear weapons are
less destructive, thus might conceivably be used. That would make
them more effective as a deterrent. ( Opponents Surprised By
Elimination of Nuke Research Funds Defense News November 29, 2004)

In an utterly twisted logic, nuclear weapons are presented as a means
to building peace and preventing "collateral damage". The Pentagon
has intimated, in this regard, that the mini-nukes (with a yield of
less than 5000 tons) are harmless to civilians because the explosions
take place under ground. Each of these mini-nukes, nonetheless,
constitutes  in terms of explosion and potential radioactive fallout
 a significant fraction of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in
1945.  Estimates of yield for Nagasaki and Hiroshima indicate that
they were respectively of  21000  and 15000 tons (
http://www.warbirdforum.com/hiroshim.htm

In other words,  the low yielding mini-nukes have an explosive
capacity of one third of a Hiroshima bomb. The earth-penetrating
capability of the [nuclear] B61-11 is fairly limited, however. Tests
show it penetrates only 20 feet or so into dry earth when dropped
from an altitude of 40,000 feet. Even so, by burying itself into the
ground before detonation, a much higher proportion of the explosion
energy is transferred to ground shock compared to a surface bursts.
Any attempt to use it in an urban environment, however, would result
in massive civilian casualties. Even at the low end of its 0.3-300
kiloton yield range, the nuclear blast will simply blow out a huge
crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation
field over a large area.

http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm

Gbu 28 Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28)

The new definition of a nuclear warhead has blurred the distinction
between conventional and nuclear weapons:

'It's a package (of nuclear and conventional weapons). The
implication of this obviously is that nuclear weapons are being
brought down from a special category of being a last resort, or sort
of the ultimate weapon, to being just another tool in the toolbox,'
said Kristensen. (Japan Economic News Wire, op cit)

We are a dangerous crossroads: military planners believe their own
propaganda.

The military manuals state that this new generation of nuclear
weapons are "safe" for use in the battlefield. They are no longer a
weapon of last resort. There are no impediments or political
obstacles to their use. In this context, Senator Edward Kennedy has
accused the Bush Administration for having developed "a generation of
more useable nuclear weapons."

The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of
World Peace.

"Making the World safer" is the justification for launching a
military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear
holocaust.

But nuclear holocausts are not front page news!  In the words of
Mordechai Vanunu,

The Israeli government is preparing to use nuclear weapons in its
next war with the Islamic world. Here where I live, people often talk
of the Holocaust. But each and every nuclear bomb is a Holocaust in
itself. It can kill, devastate cities, destroy entire peoples. (See
interview with Mordechai Vanunu, December 2005).

Space and Earth Attack Command Unit

A preemptive nuclear attack using tactical nuclear weapons would be
coordinated out of US Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt
Air Force base in Nebraska, in liaison with US and coalition command
units in the Persian Gulf, the Diego Garcia military base, Israel and
Turkey.

Under its new mandate, USSTRATCOM has a responsibility for
"overseeing a global strike plan" consisting of both conventional and
nuclear weapons. In military jargon, it is slated to play the role of

"a global integrator charged with the missions of Space Operations;
Information Operations; Integrated Missile Defense; Global Command &
Control; Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; Global
Strike; and Strategic Deterrence.... "

In January 2005, at the outset of the military build-up directed
against Iran, USSTRATCOM was identified as "the lead Combatant
Command for integration and synchronization of DoD-wide efforts in
combating weapons of mass destruction."

To implement this mandate, a brand new command unit entitled  Joint
Functional Component Command Space and Global Strike, or JFCCSGS was
created.

JFCCSGS has the mandate to oversee the launching of a nuclear attack
in accordance with the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, approved by the
US Congress in 2002. The NPR underscores the pre-emptive use of
nuclear warheads not only against "rogue states" but also against
China and Russia.

Since November,  JFCCSGS is said to be in "an advance state of
readiness" following the conduct of relevant military exercises. The
announcement was made in early December by  U.S. Strategic Command to
the effect that the command unit had achieved "an operational
capability for rapidly striking targets around the globe using
nuclear or conventional weapons." The exercises conducted in November
used "a fictional country believed to represent North Korea" (see
David Ruppe, 2 December 2005):

"The new unit [JFCCSGS] has 'met requirements necessary to declare an
initial operational capability' as of Nov. 18. A week before this
announcement, the unit finished a command-post exercise, dubbed
Global Lightening, which was linked with another exercise, called
Vigilant Shield, conducted by the North American Aerospace Defend
Command, or NORAD, in charge of missile defense for North America.

'After assuming several new missions in 2002, U.S. Strategic Command
was reorganized to create better cooperation and cross- functional
awareness,' said Navy Capt. James Graybeal, a chief spokesperson for
STRATCOM. 'By May of this year, the JFCCSGS has published a concept
of operations and began to develop its day-to-day operational
requirements and integrated planning process.'

'The command's performance during Global Lightning demonstrated its
preparedness to execute its mission of proving integrated space and
global strike capabilities to deter and dissuade aggressors and when
directed, defeat adversaries through decisive joint global effects in
support of STRATCOM,' he added without elaborating about 'new
missions' of the new command unit that has around 250 personnel.

Nuclear specialists and governmental sources pointed out that one of
its main missions would be to implement the 2001 nuclear strategy
that includes an option of preemptive nuclear attacks on 'rogue
states' with WMDs. (Japanese Economic Newswire, 30 December 2005)

CONCEPT PLAN (CONPLAN) 8022

JFCCSGS is in an advanced state of readiness to trigger nuclear
attacks directed against Iran or North Korea.

The operational implementation of the Global Strike is called CONCEPT
PLAN (CONPLAN) 8022. The latter is described as "an actual plan that
the Navy and the Air Force translate into strike package for their
submarines and bombers,' (Ibid).

CONPLAN 8022 is 'the overall umbrella plan for sort of the pre-
planned strategic scenarios involving nuclear weapons.'

'It's specifically focused on these new types of threats -- Iran,
North Korea -- proliferators and potentially terrorists too,' he
said. 'There's nothing that says that they can't use CONPLAN 8022 in
limited scenarios against Russian and Chinese targets.'(According to
Hans Kristensen, of the Nuclear Information Project, quoted in
Japanese economic News Wire, op cit)

The mission of JFCCSGS is to implement CONPLAN 8022, in other words
to trigger a nuclear war with Iran.

The Commander in Chief, namely George W. Bush would instruct the
Secretary of Defense, who would then instruct the Joint Chiefs of
staff to activate CONPLAN 8022.

CONPLAN is distinct from other  military operations. it does not
contemplate the deployment of ground troops.

CONPLAN 8022 is different from other war plans in that it posits a
small-scale operation and no "boots on the ground." The typical war
plan encompasses an amalgam of forces -- air, ground, sea -- and
takes into account the logistics and political dimensions needed to
sustain those forces in protracted operations.... The global strike
plan is offensive, triggered by the perception of an imminent threat
and carried out by presidential order.) (William Arkin, Washington
Post, May 2005)

The Role of Israel

Since late 2004, Israel has been stockpiling US made conventional and
nuclear weapons systems in anticipation of an attack on Iran. This
stockpiling which is financed by US military aid was largely
completed in June 2005. Israel has taken delivery from the US of
several thousand "smart air launched weapons" including some 500
'bunker-buster bombs, which can also be used to deliver tactical
nuclear bombs.

The B61-11 is the "nuclear version" of the "conventional" BLU 113,
can be delivered in much same way as the conventional bunker buster
bomb. (See Michel Chossudovsky,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO112C.html , see also
http://www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=jf03norris ) .

Moreover, reported in late 2003, Israeli Dolphin-class submarines
equipped with US Harpoon missiles armed with nuclear warheads are now
aimed at Iran. (See Gordon Thomas,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/THO311A.html

Late April 2005.  Sale of deadly military hardware to Israel. GBU-28
Buster Bunker Bombs:

Coinciding with Putin's visit to Israel, the US Defence Security
Cooperation Agency (Department of Defense) announced the sale of an
additional 100 bunker-buster bombs produced by Lockheed Martin to
Israel. This decision was viewed by the US media as  "a warning to
Iran about its nuclear ambitions."

The sale pertains to the larger and more sophisticated "Guided Bomb
Unit-28 (GBU-28) BLU-113 Penetrator" (including the WGU-36A/B
guidance control unit and support equipment). The GBU-28 is described
as "a special weapon for penetrating hardened command centers located
deep underground. The fact of the matter is that the GBU-28 is among
the World's most deadly "conventional" weapons used in the 2003
invasion of Iraq, capable of causing thousands of civilian deaths
through massive explosions.

The Israeli Air Force are slated to use the  GBU-28s on their F-15
aircraft.

(See text of DSCA news release at
http://www.dsca.osd.mil/PressReleases/36-b/2005/Israel_05-
10_corrected.pdf

Extension of the War

Tehran has confirmed that it will retaliate if attacked, in the form
of ballistic missile strikes directed against Israel (CNN, 8 Feb
2005). These attacks, could also target US military facilities in
Iraq and Persian Gulf, which would immediately lead us into a
scenario of military escalation and all out war.

At present there are three distinct  war theaters: Afghanistan, Iraq
and Palestine. The air strikes against Iran could contribute to
unleashing a war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region.

Moreover, the planned attack on Iran should also be understood in
relation to the timely withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon,
which has opened up a new space, for the deployment of Israeli
forces. The participation of Turkey in the US-Israeli military
operation is also a factor, following last year's agreement reached
between Ankara and Tel Aviv.

More recently,  Tehran has beefed up its air defenses through the
acquisition of  Russian 29 Tor M-1 anti-missile systems. In October,
with Moscow`s collaboration, "a Russian rocket lifted an Iranian spy
satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit." (see Chris Floyd)

The Sinah-1 is just the first of several Iranian satellites set for
Russian launches in the coming months.

Thus the Iranians will soon have a satellite network in place to give
them early warning of an Israeli attack, although it will still be a
pale echo of the far more powerful Israeli and American space spies
that can track the slightest movement of a Tehran mullahs beard.
Whats more, late last month Russia signed a $1 billion contract to
sell Iran an advanced defense system that can destroy guided missiles
and laser-guided bombs, the Sunday Times reports. This too will be
ready in the next few months. (op.cit.)

Ground War

While a ground war is not envisaged under CONPLAN, the aerial
bombings could lead through the process of escalation into a ground
war.

Iranian troops could cross the Iran-Iraq border  and confront
coalition forces inside Iraq. Israeli troops and/or Special Forces
could enter into Lebanon and Syria.

In recent developments, Israel plans to conduct military exercises as
well as deploy Special Forces  in the mountainous areas of Turkey
bordering Iran and Syria with the collaboration of the Ankara
government:

Ankara and Tel Aviv have come to an agreement on allowing the Israeli
army to carry out military exercises in the mountainous areas [in
Turkey] that border Iran.

[According to]  ... a UAE newspaper ..., according to the agreement
reached by the Joint Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, Dan Halutz,
and Turkish officials, Israel is to carry out various military
manoeuvres in the areas that border Iran and Syria. [Punctuation as
published here and throughout.] [Dan Halutz] had gone to Turkey a few
days earlier.

Citing certain sources without naming them, the UAE daily goes on to
stress: The Israeli side made the request to carry out the manoeuvres
because of the difficulty of passage in the mountain terrains close
to Iran's borders in winter.

The two Hakari [phonetic; not traced] and Bulo [phonetic; not traced]
units are to take part in the manoeuvres that have not been scheduled
yet. The units are the most important of Israel's special military
units and are charged with fighting terrorism and carrying out
guerrilla warfare.

Earlier Turkey had agreed to Israeli pilots being trained in the area
bordering Iran. The news [of the agreement] is released at a time
when Turkish officials are trying to evade the accusation of
cooperating with America in espionage operations against its
neighbouring countries Syria and Iran. Since last week the Arab press
has been publishing various reports about Ankara's readiness or, at
least, agreement in principle to carry out negotiations about its
soil and air space being used for action against Iran.

(E'temad website, Tehran, in Persian 28 Dec 05, BBC Monitoring
Services Translation)

Concluding remarks

The implications are overwhelming.

The so-called international community has accepted the eventuality of
a nuclear holocaust.

Those who decide have swallowed their own war propaganda.

A political consensus has developed in Western Europe and North
America regarding the aerial attacks using tactical nuclear weapons,
without considering their devastating implications.

This profit driven military adventure ultimately threatens the future
of humanity.

What is needed in the months ahead is a major thrust, nationally and
internationally which breaks the conspiracy of silence, which
acknowledges the dangers, which brings this war project to the
forefront of political debate and media attentiion, at all levels,
which confronts and requires political and military leaders to take a
firm stance against the US sponsored nuclear war.

Ultimately what is required are extensive international sanctions
directed against the United States of America and Israel.

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best seller
"The Globalization of Poverty " published in eleven languages. He is
Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of
the Center for Research on Globalization, at   www.globalresearch.ca
. He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  His most
recent book is entitled: Americas "War on Terrorism", Global
Research, 2005.,

Related article: Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran, by Michel
Chossudovsky

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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------- End of forwarded message -------
*****************************************************************
 3 [NYTr] Iran: The Bombs of March?
 
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 12:45:46 -0600 (CST)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
CounterPunch - Jan 13, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney01132006.html

The Bombs of March

Countdown to War with Iran?

By MIKE WHITNEY

Iran will defend itself if it is attacked by the United States or Israel.

Defending one's country against unprovoked aggression is sanctioned under
international law and is a requirement of true leadership. We would expect
no different if either the United States or Israel was attacked.

The Sharon and Bush administrations' have done an admirable job of poisoning
public opinion against Iran; interpreting President Ahmadinejad's comments
as a potential danger to Israel's welfare. But such statements, however
offensive, are commonplace in the Middle East and cannot be construed as a
credible threat.

In fact, Iran has not demonstrated any territorial ambitions nor is it
involved in the occupation of any foreign country as is true of both the
United States and Israel.

Media-Hype; beating the war drums, again

The media has assumed its traditional role of fanning the flames for war by
providing ample space for the spurious allegations of administration
officials, right-wing pundits, and disgruntled Iranian exiles, while
carefully omitting the relevant facts in Iran's defense.

As always, the New York Times has spearheaded the propaganda war with an
article by Richard Bernstein and Steven Weisman which lays out the sketchy
case against Iran. In the first paragraph the Bernstein-Weisman combo
suggest that Iran has restarted "research that could give it technology to
create nuclear weapons."

Nuclear weapons?

Perhaps, the NY Times knows something that the IAEA inspectors don't? If so,
they should step forward and reveal the facts. More likely, however, they
are simply following in the tradition of mentor Judith Miller whose
scurrilous front-pages articles misled the nation to war with Iraq.

There is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

None.

Not even George Bush would make that claim.

There's also no evidence that Iran has the centrifuges necessary to enrich
uranium to weapons-grade material. These are the two issues which should be
given greatest consideration in determining whether or not Iran poses a real
danger to its neighbors, and yet, these are precisely the facts that are
absent from the nearly 2,500 articles written on the topic in the last few
days.

IAEA chief Mohammed Elbaradei has repeatedly stated that his team of
inspectors, who've had the opportunity to "go anywhere and see anything",
has found nothing to corroborate the assertions of the US or Israel.

On the other hand, we know that the U.S. has developed a new regime of
low-yield "usable" nuclear weapons to destroy underground bunkers. We also
know that the militarists in the Pentagon have threatened to use nuclear
weapons in a "first strike" preemptive attack, and that the main players in
the Defense Dept. unanimously believe that nuclear weapons should be used as
part of America's strategy for global security.

Iran claims that developing nuclear weapons runs counter to their religious
beliefs, while the Bush administration (as per the Nuclear Posture Review)
believes that nuclear weapons are an integral part of the war on terror.
Rumsfeld has even shaken up the Pentagon to further surround himself with
like-minded people who support this basic thesis.

Perhaps, our fear of Iran is misplaced?

Presently, the administration is trying to bring Iran before the UN Security
Council for violations that date back more than 2 years. Since then, there
have been no violations and Iran has willingly complied with strict
enforcement of its treaty obligations under the NPT (Nuclear Proliferation
Treaty) as well as other "confidence-building" measures which it freely
accepted as a sign of good-will.

In truth, Iran is entitled to enrich uranium under the terms of the NPT and
has agreed to do so in a manner that is consistent with the strict rules of
the IAEA. Iran will not, however, give up its "inalienable right" to convert
uranium for peaceful purposes, such as making fuel for use in nuclear power
plants.

No other nation except Iran has been asked to forgo its rights under the
NPT. The Bush administration expects the UN to annul parts of the treaty
simply to accommodate its unfounded suspicions. But, why should Iran agree
to be treated like an underling just to satisfy Bush? After all, Iran
initially signed the NPT as a way of reducing nuclear weapons while Israel,
the U.S., and other nations were busy building a new generation of nukes.

Besides, the conversion process takes place in front of IAEA inspectors and
cameras that are set up to film the entire procedure. The IAEA is required
to report any violations to the UN Security Council for punitive action. The
watchdog agency was very successful in analyzing the true state of Iraq's
"alleged" nuclear program. There's no need to suspect that they won't
succeed here as well. (Israel, Pakistan and India all avoided this regimen
and developed nuclear weapons secretly)

The Last Straw

Britain's Foreign Minister Jack Straw, who played such a critical role in
disseminating the lies that preceded the Iraq war, has been equally
disingenuous regarding Iran.

"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 they are developing
a nuclear weapons capability."

Straw knows, of course, that Iran has not violated its treaty obligations
for over two years and has been in full compliance since then. His statement
only confirms what reasonable people already know; Washington wants another
war.

The Bush administration knows that there's no hope of passing a Security
Council resolution for sanctions against Iran. Neither Russia nor China
would agree to penalties nor is there any proof of wrongdoing. The case will
simply be used to increase public suspicion and fear while Israel-Washington
put the final touches on their battle plans.

It is worth noting, however, that Iran will be attacked without a shred of
evidence that they have nuclear weapons, a nuclear weapons program, or even
a long-range plan for hostilities against the US or Israel. In other words,
they are completely innocent.

Now that the administration has abandoned the internationally recognized
benchmark of an "imminent threat", it has also disposed of any other
reasonable claim to justify unprovoked aggression. Iran will be attacked
without pretext and without congressional or UN authorization invoking the
executive authority to prosecute the war on terror by "all necessary and
appropriate means".

The determination to attack Iran goes back more than a decade to now famous
policy documents (PNAC) which support the idea of integrating Iranian
resources into the global system while eliminating potential adversaries of
Israel in the region. This first phase is intended to defang the regime and
leave it vulnerable to future invasion or regime change. The forthcoming
attack will probably unfold as surgical strikes by Israel on perhaps as many
as 12 facilities and weapons sites. Both Israel and the US have signaled to
Iran that retaliation will escalate quickly into nuclear war. In fact, the
Pentagon hawks may desire such a conflict to deter future adversaries in
Latin America and Asia.

If Iran does respond with force, there's no telling how things will play
out. The markets could nosedive, the dollar could fall precipitously, and
vital oil shipments could be indefinitely disrupted. (Read the business page
and see how jittery many analysts are) If the conflagration goes nuclear,
then we can expect that China, Russia and Venezuela will take firm steps to
demonstrate their disapproval. Oil shipments from Venezuela may be cut off
while China stages a destructive sell-off of its $769 billion in
foreign-exchange.

Then, of course, there's the likelihood that the attacks will draw the Iraqi
Shiites into an alliance with the Sunni-backed resistance making occupation
of Iraq even more tenuous. Or, perhaps the Mullahs will deploy
state-sponsored jihadiis across the globe targeting American energy
facilities and commercial interests. In any event, there could be hefty
price to pay for Washington's recklessness.

Whatever the cost, the attack seems likely to be carried out sometime on or
before March 2006 when Iran plans to open its new oil bourse. The new
exchange which directly challenges the continued dominance of the greenback
in the oil trade (the largest commodity traded in the world) poses an
"existential threat" to the well-being of western financial institutions and
elites.

Beyond the media subterfuge of "nuclear weapons" and "non-compliance", the
empire is marching resolutely to war; voluntarily risking nuclear holocaust
to preserve the system of privilege and concentrated wealth.
       
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*****************************************************************
 4 London Times: Saudis warn Iran that its nuclear plan risks disaster 

By Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor

SAUDI ARABIA broke its silence yesterday in the growing row 
between the West and Iran by warning Tehran that its nuclear 
ambitions could bring disaster to the region.

Prince Saud al-Faisal, the veteran Saudi Foreign Minister, 
criticised President Ahmadinejad's Administration, urging him to 
forgo atomic energy, to moderate his foreign policy and resist 
the temptation of interfering in Iraq.

Speaking before a terrorism conference in London, which he will 
be attending today, Prince Saud spoke for many in the Arab world 
when he cautioned of the dangers of a regional arms race.

"We are urging Iran to accept the position that we have taken to 
make the Gulf, as part of the Middle East, nuclear free and free 
of weapons of mass destruction. We hope that they will join us in 
this policy and assure that no new threat of arms race happens in 
this region," he told The Times.

He said that the problem stemmed from Israel being allowed to 
build nuclear warheads, prompting others to follow suit. "Nobody 
mentions that Israel has 100 nuclear weapons in stock, even 
though it is an open secret," he said.

In spite of suggestions that Saudi Arabia might seek to build its 
own nuclear deterrent if Iran acquired an atomic bomb, Prince 
Saud insisted that Riyadh was determined not to. While the 
international community is largely in favour of allowing Iran to 
develop a civilian nuclear industry to produce power, Prince Saud 
said that even this was potentially dangerous, a clear reference 
to the nuclear reactor being built at Bushehr in Iran. "(The 
Iranian reactor) is on the Gulf and being built with Russian 
technology. Just think if a Chernobyl accident happened here."

But the Prince was not optimistic that his appeal would be 
heeded. Although the Saudi Government had not yet had the 
opportunity of working closely with Mr Ahmadinejad, Prince Saud 
described his statements as extreme and urged him to continue the 
policies of his moderate predecessor Mohammad Khatami.

"We hope his Administration will be a stabilising force and not a 
destabilising force," he said. "If he goes the way that President 
Khatami went in foreign policy, we think we can work together. 
But that will have to be tested in time."

Another area of potential conflict between the two sides is over 
the future of Iraq. Saudi Arabia is concerned that Iran may be 
tempted to exploit its influence over Shia Muslim political 
parties that won last month's parliamentary elections and will 
form the future government.

Prince Saud said that Iraq must be maintained as a unified 
country, giving warning of the dangers of splitting off its 
oil-rich south into a Shia region with close ties to Iran.

Copyright 2006                 Times Newspapers Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 5 Sunday Times: Countries plan tactics on Iran

The Times       January 16, 2006

By Richard Beeston

Britain will this week take the lead in pressing for action 
against Iran when it hosts a six-nation meeting of senior 
officials in London to co-ordinate the next moves at the UN 
Security Council.

John Sawers, the political director at the Foreign and 
Commonwealth Office, will meet counterparts from the four other 
permanent council members - America, China, France and Russia - 
as well as Germany, which also has a rotating seat. The move is 
intended to maintain a consensus against Iran, which last week 
resumed uranium enrichment work, which could lead to it acquiring 
material for a nuclear warhead.

Iran's Foreign Ministry announced yesterday that it would hold a 
conference to examine the scientific evidence concerning Nazi 
Germany's massacre of the Jews. It did not say when the 
conference would be held nor who would attend.

Copyright 2006                 Times Newspapers Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 6 BBC: Iran 'does not need nuclear arms'
 
Last Updated: Saturday, 14 January 2006
 
[Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]                                 

The news conference was the second of Ahmadinejad's presidency                                             
		
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that his country 
does not need nuclear weapons. 

At a rare news conference in Tehran, Mr Ahmadinejad said they 
were needed only by people who "want to solve everything through 
the use of force". 

The president defended Tehran's recent move to restart nuclear 
research, which has sparked international condemnation. 

Iran says it has a right to peaceful nuclear technology and 
denies that it is covertly seeking to develop weapons. 

The US, UK, France and Germany are threatening to refer Iran to 
the United Nations Security Council, which could impose 
sanctions. 

Leaders who believe they c create peace for themselves by 
creating war for others are mistaken President Ahmadinejad 
Excerpts: Ahmadinejad remarks                           

But the president said a referral would not end its nuclear 
plans. 

"If they want to destroy the Iranian nation's rights by that 
course, they will not succeed," he said. 

Tehran has said it will stop snap UN inspections of nuclear sites 
if its case is sent to the Council. 

The crisis intensified this week when Iran removed seals at three 
nuclear facilities, ending a two-year freeze. 

'Arrogant rulers' 

Mr Ahmadinejad told reporters Tehran pursued an active foreign 
policy which sought peace, based on justice. 

IRAN'S NUCLEAR STANDOFF                  

Sept 2002: Work begin on Iran's first reactor at Bushehr 

Dec 2002: Satellites reveal Arak and Natanz sites, triggering 
IAEA inspections 

Nov 2003: Iran suspends uranium enrichment and allows tougher 
inspections 

June 2004: IAEA rebukes Iran for not fully co-operating 

Nov 2004: Iran suspends enrichment under deal with EU 

Aug 2005: Iran rejects EU plan and re-opens Isfahan plant 

Jan 2006: Iran re-opens Natanz facility Iranian press scorns 
criticism                          

He criticised the "double standards" of Western countries which 
already had nuclear weapons, and attacked "arrogant rulers" for 
causing suffering. 

"Leaders who believe they can create peace for themselves by 
creating war for others are mistaken," he said. 

A few had a "medieval mindset" and sought to deprive Iran of 
valuable technology, without evidence of wrongdoing, he added. 

Mr Ahmadinejad sparked international outrage with his hardline 
stance towards Israel, following his election last June. 

He repeated both his attacks and calls for a referendum for 
Palestinians to choose their future political fate. 

"(Israelis) have no roots in Palestine and almost all are 
immigrants," he said. 

"Let the nation of Palestine decide among themselves." 

Diplomatic divisions 

Western countries are now seeking to persuade other members of UN 
nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to 
agree to refer Iran to the Council. 

The Iranians crossed a line reactivating nuclear facilities the 
UN had shut Albert Arnim, Dresden, Germany Head-to-head: nuclear 
crisis                            

European, Russian, Chinese and US officials are due to meet in 
London on Monday, when they are expected to set a date for the 
crucial IAEA meeting. 

On Friday, US President George W Bush and German Chancellor 
Angela Merkel agreed that the crisis should be resolved through 
peaceful means. 

Washington, Israel and many European powers distrust Iran, partly 
because it had kept its nuclear research secret for 18 years 
before it was revealed in 2002. 

Since last August, Iran has resumed all nuclear activity apart 
from enrichment, which can produce fuel for power stations or, 
under certain conditions, for bombs. 

Tehran has always said it has the right under the nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty - which it has signed - to research 
nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 

*****************************************************************
 7 Guardian Unlimited: Iranian Leader Defends Nuclear Research
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday January 14, 2006 2:32 PM

AP Photo LON802 

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI 

Associated Press Writer 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's president on Saturday denounced
Western nations threatening to refer his country to the U.N.
Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear
program, saying the international community has no legal basis
for restricting Tehran's right to research. 

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran's president said his country
has not violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which
allows signatories to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel. 

``There is no evidence to prove Iran's diversion (toward nuclear
weapons),'' Ahmadinejad said at a news conference. 

His comments came a day after Iran threatened to end surprise
inspections and other cooperation with the International Atomic
Energy Agency if it is referred to the Security Council. 

Europe and the United States have been trying to build support
for such a move, saying more two years of acrimonious
negotiations have reached a dead end. But they faced resistance
from China, which warned the move could only escalate the
confrontation. 

Iran insists its program is peaceful, intended only to produce
electricity, but the U.S. and others believe it is seeking to
develop atomic weapons. 

``The world public opinion knows that Iran has not violated the
Nonproliferation Treaty,'' Ahmadinejad said. ``There are no
restrictions for nuclear research activities under the NPT
protocol and Iran has not accepted any obligation (not to carry
out research). How is it possible to prevent the scientific
development of a nation?'' 

Iran resumed research work on uranium enrichment earlier this
week drawing fierce international condemnations. 

Ahmadinejad called the accusations against Iran were
``propaganda'' and that the presence of surveillance equipment
from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency is proof Iran has nothing
to hide. 

``How will the world public opinion accept their propaganda
campaign against Iran when IAEA cameras are installed on all
nuclear sites?'' Ahmadinejad asked. 

He complained that ``a few'' Western countries were lobbying
against Iran and said Tehran did not trust them. 

``They speak and behave as if they are living in the medieval
age,'' the hard-line leader said. ``I'm recommending these
countries not isolate themselves more among the people of the
world. Resorting to the language of coercion is over.'' 

He said Iran had tried for two and a half years to restore the
trust of the international community, including by sealing some
research sites, signing a protocol allowing snap IAEA
inspections and ceasing uranium enrichment. 

``Now, it is the turn of the European countries to apply
trust-building measures,'' he said. 

On Tuesday, Iran removed some U.N. seals from its main uranium
enrichment facility in Natanz, central Iran, and resumed
research on nuclear fuel - including some small-scale
enrichment. 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 8 Guardian Unlimited: Iran's Leader Shrugs Off Sanctions Threat
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday January 14, 2006 7:47 PM

AP Photo XHS109 

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI 

Associated Press Writer 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's president stood fast Saturday behind
his decision to resume uranium enrichment research, shrugging
off threats of international sanctions while his Foreign
Ministry invited Europe and the U.N. nuclear watchdog back to
the negotiating table. 

In a ringing defense of his government's move, President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad said Tehran had not violated the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, which he said allows signatories to
produce nuclear fuel. 

On Tuesday, Iran removed some U.N. seals from its main uranium
enrichment facility in Natanz, central Iran, and resumed
research on nuclear fuel - including small-scale enrichment -
after a 2-year freeze. 

The shift alarmed Western nations that suspect Iran may be
trying to produce nuclear weapons. Uranium enrichment can
produce fuel for nuclear reactors to generate electricity or, if
sufficiently processed, the material for nuclear warheads. 

Tehran claims it is only conducting research and says uranium
enrichment remains suspended. 

But its decision drew fierce international condemnation and
threats to seek U.N. sanctions. 

``The time of using language of bullying and coercion ... is
over,'' Ahmadinejad said at a news. ``There is no evidence to
prove Iran's diversion (toward nuclear weapons).'' 

What's more, he said, Iran had no use for such weapons. 

``Our nation doesn't need nuclear weapons. You can use nuclear
technology in several ways, and we want to do so peacefully,''
he said, claiming that such weaponry violated the tenets of
Islam. 

Iran insists its nuclear program is intended only for
electricity generation. 

Ahmadinejad's news conference came on the second day of a tough
public relations offensive by Tehran. On Friday, it threatened
to end surprise inspections by and cooperation with the
International Atomic Energy Agency if the country is referred to
the Security Council for possible imposition of sanctions. 

Europe and the United States have been trying to build support
for the move. They say more than two years of acrimonious
negotiations between Iran and the European powers Britain,
France and Germany reached a dead end when Iran resumed work at
the enrichment facility. 

But they face resistance from China, which warned the move could
only escalate the confrontation. China is highly dependent on
Iran for oil. 

Russia, which like China holds a veto on the Security Council,
is a question mark as well. It is deeply involved in building
Iranian reactors for power generation and has in the past
indicated it would not support sanctions. 

``The world public opinion knows that Iran has not violated the
Nonproliferation Treaty,'' Ahmadinejad said. ``There are no
restrictions for nuclear research activities under the NPT
protocol, and Iran has not accepted any obligation (not to carry
out research). How is it possible to prevent the scientific
development of a nation?'' 

But Iran's foreign ministry made an apparent attempt to calm
tensions, calling for resuming talks with the European Union and
cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog. 

``Iran is ready to cooperate with the IAEA to clear
ambiguities,'' a foreign ministry statement quoted on state
television said. 

And Ahmadinejad said: ``We have always wanted dialogue.'' 

``I recommend to them (the West) to try to understand the
Iranian nation and government. Otherwise you may do something
that will make you regret it,'' he added. 

Ahmadinejad charged that the threats of sanctions and Security
Council action were the true dangers to world stability, not
Iran's nuclear program. 

``Why are you employing the Security Council? Doesn't that
endanger world security?'' he said. 

Ahmadinejad said the presence of IAEA surveillance equipment at
Iranian nuclear facilities is proof that Iran has nothing to
hide. 

``How will world public opinion accept their propaganda campaign
against Iran when IAEA cameras are installed on all nuclear
sites?'' he asked. 

He said Iran had spent 2 years trying to win the trust of the
international community, citing its agreement to seal some
research sites, allow surprise IAEA inspections and impose a
moratorium on uranium enrichment. 

``Now, it is the turn of the European countries to apply
trust-building measures,'' he said. 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 9 AFP: US must be willing to take military action against Iran - McCain

 Sun Jan 15, 2:42 PM ET 		 	 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Washington should be prepared to take
military action if necessary against Iran" /> Iran, a senior US
lawmaker said, calling the standoff over Tehran's nuclear
program the biggest international crisis in more than a decade. 

 "The military option is the last option but cannot be taken off
of the table," US Senator John McCain said. 

"This is the most grave situation that we have faced since the
end of the Cold War, absent the whole war on terror," the
Republican lawmaker told CBS television's "Face the Nation"
program. 

McCain said even the the massive military commitments in Iraq"
/> Iraqshould not allow the United States to rule out responding
with force against Iran. 

"We are tied up to a great degree. But that does not mean that
we don't have military options," McCain said. 

He added that such measures should only be resorted to after
peaceful methods have been exhausted, including immediate UN
action. 

"We must go to the UN now for sanctions," McCain said. 

"If the Russians and the Chinese, for reasons that would be
abominable, do not join us, then we would have to go with the
willing." 

McCain, one of the most influential members of the US Senate and
a leading contender to run for the White House in 2008, said
that Washington also should try to counter Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by shoring up opposition democratic
movements in Iran. 

"The Iranian people are not happy under these mullahs. They have
basically repressed and oppressed them. We got to do a lot more
in encouraging pro-democracy in Iran," McCain said. 

Asked it Iran posed a greater threat to US security than Iraq,
McCain said: "I think at this time clearly it does." 

"Now, the difference between Iraq and Iran is that Saddam
Hussein" /> Saddam Husseinhad us all fooled, including his own
generals, about having weapons of mass destruction. I think it's
pretty clear in the mind of any expert that Iranians are about
to acquire them," he said. 

His comments came as Iran vowed to press on with its disputed
nuclear program regardless of mounting international pressure. 

The EU and the United States are pushing for Iran to be referred
to the Security Council over what they fear is a covert weapons
drive, leaving Tehran exposed to the prospect of international
sanctions. 

European, American, Chinese and Russian officials are due to
hold talks on the crisis in London on Monday, when they are
expected to set a date for an emergency meeting of the
International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic
Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors. 

Copyright � 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 10 Guardian Unlimited: Senators Support Penalties Against Iran
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 
 	 
Sunday January 15, 2006 9:32 PM

AP Photo WX105 

By NEDRA PICKLER 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - The prospect of higher energy prices should
not stop the world from imposing sanctions against oil-rich
Iran, U.S. senators said Sunday. 

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said sanctions will be tough but that
Iran poses a greater danger to the United States than Iraq at
this point and must be contained. 

``If the price of oil has to go up, then that's a consequence we
would have to suffer,'' McCain said on ``Face the Nation'' on
CBS. 

Iran restarted its research at a nuclear facility last week
after a two-year freeze. The Bush administration says Iran wants
to make nuclear arms and is pursuing harsh penalties through the
United Nations Security Council. 

But it's unclear if the U.S. has support from other Security
Council members, particularly Russia and China. Iran is OPEC's
second-largest producer, and trade restrictions could increase
already high prices across the globe, even for nations that
don't import oil from Iran. 

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Bush should do whatever he can
to get support from Russia and China. 

``They need stuff from us,'' Schumer said on ``Fox News Sunday.
``They need trade. They need all kinds of assistance. We ought
to play hardball with them.'' 

McCain said it would be ``abominable'' for Russia and China to
vote against sanctions. In that case, he said the U.S. should
pursue them anyway with other nations that are willing to
support them. 

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said penalties should be imposed as a
response to Iran's ``irresponsible'' behavior. He pointed to
Iran's announcement Sunday that it will hold a conference to
examine evidence of the Holocaust. Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a ``myth'' and called for
Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth. 

``We cannot be intimidated by economic threats from their
side,'' Lott said on CNN's ``Late Edition.'' ``At the very
minimum, we should go to the U.N. Security Council and we should
impose economic sanctions unless there's some dramatic change in
the Iranian position.'' 

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., said President Bush should have dealt
with threats from Iran years ago. He said Iran is the foremost
sponsor of terrorism in the world and a ``force for instability
and death.'' 

``I'm glad the president is finally speaking out about this, but
for four long years they have ignored this problem,'' Bayh told
CNN's ``Late Edition.'' ``It has brought us to the position that
we're in today. And it has undermined the national security
interests of the United States.'' 

The senators agreed that the United States should pursue
penalties and diplomatic options before taking military action
against Iran. 

``There's only one thing worse than the United States exercising
the military option, that is, a nuclear-armed Iran,'' McCain
said. ``Now, the military option is the last option but cannot
be taken off of the table.'' 

The senators also agreed that Iran poses one of the most serious
threats to the world since the Cold War. 

``I don't think it's a stretch to say that if the Iranians had a
nuclear missile that this president might well use it against
Israel,'' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on ``Face the
Nation.'' 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 11 Guardian Unlimited: Iran increases tension with threat to block inspections 
by UN watchdog
 
� Foreign minister offers talks despite hardline 
� Bush says the time for negotiation has passed 		
 		
Robert Tait in Tehran and Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday January 14, 2006
 		
Iran yesterday upped the ante in the dispute over its nuclear 
programme by threatening to block inspections of its facilities 
if it is referred to the UN security council.

As Britain raised the possibility of economic sanctions, the
Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said the Islamic
regime would retaliate by ending voluntary snap checks by
inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN
nuclear watchdog. Responding to Thursday's decision by the EU
trio of Britain, France and Germany to abandon two-and-a-half
years of talks with Iran, Mr Mottaki said: "In case of referral
of the nuclear dossier to the UN security council, the EU
members will lose their present chances, given that once such a
measure is taken, the government will have to stop all its
voluntary cooperation with the UN watchdog."

But in an apparent effort to avoid a UN referral, Mr Mottaki 
called for further talks that would "clarify ambiguities or 
worries" held by the west, which suspects the Iranian nuclear 
programme is intended to produce atomic weapons, and not just 
electricity, as the regime claims.

"They can choose to continue talks, hear Iran's clear
explanations and come up with a solution that would be
satisfactory to both sides," he said.

But in Washington President George Bush indicated that the time
for talking had passed. A nuclear Iran, he said, would be a
threat to global security, adding that it was "logical that a
country which has rejected diplomatic entreaties be sent to the
United Nations security council".

"Using the guise of a civil nuclear weapons programme to get the
know-how for a nuclear weapon is unacceptable," he said after
talks with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Ms Merkel said
unity was essential in facing the Iranian threat and added that
Europe and the US "will certainly not be intimidated".

Iran argues that it has a right to pursue technology that its
adversaries already possess. Its ultra-conservative president,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared that Iran "will not accept that
some hold science and technology as their possession and deprive
others of it".

Its adversaries argue it is in breach of UN weapons
proliferation treaties. Britain is due to host a meeting with
US, EU, Chinese and Russian officials in London on Monday to
agree a position after Iran this week removed UN seals to resume
uranium enrichment research.

Russia, which has been trying to broker a compromise under which
it would enrich Iran's uranium on its soil, has indicated it
would not veto a UN vote to censure the Iranians. In that case
it is believed that China, a major importer of Iranian oil,
would follow suit.

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, said yesterday that
such a vote would not automatically trigger sanctions. "There
are plenty of examples where the security council has made what
are called chapter seven resolutions," he told BBC radio,
"imposing obligations on a member state without the resort to
sanctions. Obviously if Iran failed to comply the security
council would then consider sanctions."

Mr Straw explicitly ruled out force, and Mr Bush said yesterday
that he wanted to solve the issue diplomatically. Last night
former president Bill Clinton said he doubted that the US would
revert to the military option. "I don't know where we would get
the troops right now," he said. "And the Iranians - it's a
different kettle of fish than Iraq. It's three times as big,
they have a much bigger military operation."

One of Britain's most senior military officers said yesterday he
strongly opposed any attack on Iran. "The impact would be
absolutely horrendous," Sir Alan West, the first sea lord, told
British defence journalists. He made it clear he was talking
about a military strike by Israel as well as by the US. "Getting
involved in military action would be a very silly thing to do."

Sir Alan's warning reflects widespread concern in the British
military about the Bush administration's reliance on military
action or threats to solve complicated issues. There is also
anger about comments by British ministers that Iran is
responsible for roadside bombs which have killed a number of
British soldiers and contractors in Basra. There is no hard
evidence that Iran was responsible, they insist.

Yesterday Conservative MP Michael Ancram said he supported calls
for Iran to be ejected from this summer's football World Cup. A
Fifa spokesman said it could not be barred for political reasons.

The threat of economic sanctions has spooked the oil market into
worrying whether supplies from Iran, the world's fourth biggest
producer, could be choked, causing a global shortage. The price
of crude rose above $65 dollars a barrel this week.

Analysts in Tehran said the regime would not be deterred by the
prospect of a UN referral or sanctions. "If it's a choice
between sanctions and the nuclear programme, they would choose
the latter. They believe the nuclear issue has forced the west
to take them seriously. They think they can force Washington to
accept the Islamic regime's status by waving the nuclear flag,"
said Sadegh Zibakalam, a political analyst at Tehran University.
 	
[UP] 

      Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 12 Observer: West is in dark ages, says Iran's President
 
[UP] 

Leader threatens retaliation if the US and EU continue
to try to block nuclear programme 		
 		
Robert Tait in Tehran
Sunday January 15, 2006
The Observer 		
 		
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline President of Iran, launched an 
angry tirade against the West yesterday, accusing it of a 'dark 
ages' mentality and threatening retaliation unless it recognised 
his country's nuclear ambitions.

In a blistering assault, Ahmadinejad repeated the Islamic
regime's position that it would press ahead with a nuclear
programme despite threats by the European Union and United
States to refer Iran to the UN Security Council, where it could
face possible sanctions. He added that Iran was a 'civilised
nation' that did not need such weapons. Iran insists its nuclear
programme is a wholly peaceful attempt to generate electricity.

Addressing a rare press conference in Tehran, he appeared to
issue thinly veiled threats against Western countries, implying
that they could face serious consequences unless they backed
down. 'You need us more than we need you. All of you today need
the Iranian nation,' Ahmadinejad said. 'Why are you putting on
airs? You don't have that might.'

Reminding the West that it had supported the monarchical regime
of the former Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi - overthrown in the
1979 Islamic revolution - he went on: 'Those same powers have
done their utmost to oppress us, but this nation, because of its
dignity, has forgiven them to a large extent. But if they
persist with their present stance, maybe the day will come when
the Iranian nation will reconsider.' He added: 'If they want to
deny us our rights, we have ways to secure those rights.'

Ahmadinejad, an ultra-Islamist populist elected last June, did
not elaborate on his apparent threat. But Iran is the world's
fourth-largest oil producer and analysts have predicted that any
disruption to its supplies could have a grave impact on global
markets.

The Iranian President's outburst - the latest in a series
asserting Iran's nuclear rights and questioning Israel's right
to exist - came after the EU last week effectively abandoned
two-and-a-half years of negotiations with the Iranians. The move
came after Iran decided to remove UN seals at a nuclear plant in
Natanz, enabling it to resume research into uranium enrichment,
a process that can be used to produce a nuclear weapon.

The EU, backed by the United States, is calling for an emergency
meeting of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), to discuss Iran's possible referral to the
security council. The next phase of the intensifying diplomatic
pressure on Iran takes place in London tomorrow when officials
from the EU, US, Russia and China gather to discuss future
strategy.

Ahmadinejad accused the West of misusing bodies such as the UN
and IAEA. 'Why are you damaging the good name of the security
council and IAEA for you own political purposes?' he asked.
'Don't take away the credibility of legitimate forums. Your
arsenals are full to the brim, yet when it's the turn of a
nation such as mine to develop peaceful nuclear technology you
object and resort to threats.'

In an apparent effort to cast the nuclear issue as one that
could unite all Iranians and appeal to nationalist sentiment,
Ahmadinejad spoke against the backdrop of a picture of the
Damavand volcano, widely seen as a patriotic, non-religious
symbol. But he did not withdraw his remarks, warning that Bush
and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who on Friday condemned his
comments as 'unacceptable', would be tried as 'terrorists' and
'war criminals' due to their support of Israel.

German Deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler yesterday called for
travel restrictions on Iran's politicians. He told German radio
that economic sanctions would be 'a very dangerous path' and
could hurt both sides. Germany is the biggest exporter to Iran.
 	
[UP] 

      Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 13 Korea Herald: Speculation rises over Kim's summit with Hu   

 (aibang@heraldm.com) By Annie I. Bang

2006.01.16
        
As North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is reportedly paying a
clandestine visit to China, speculation is rife about his
possible summit with Chinese President Hu Jintao, which experts
say would focus on Pyongyang's economic reforms. 

Over the weekend, Kim was believed to have toured southern
China, including Shenzhen, the communist country's model of a
market economy just across the border from Hong Kong.

 Hu also reportedly visited a Taiwanese investment zone in
Xiamen, a coastal city northeast of Shenzhen and an hour-long
flight from Guangzhou. Hu's rushed visit to southern China is
believed to meet with Kim's.

 Kim, who last visited China in 2004, reportedly left his
country last Tuesday with no confirmation or denial from the
Chinese or South Korean government. 

China usually does not confirm Kim's visits until he leaves the
country. 

Over the weekend, Japanese broadcasting companies have claimed
that they captured footage of Kim in China. Japan's NTV and TBS
networks have broadcasted what they said were scenes of Kim's
motorcade in Guangzhou and Kim with a mao jacket on a luxury
boat on the city's Pearl River on Friday.

 NHK showed blurred footage of a man with a bouffant hairstyle
with dark glasses leaving a luxury hotel in Shenzhen early
Sunday and getting into a black car.

 Experts here say his visit will bring a positive impact on the
future of the Stalinist state.

 "With Kim's visit, both China and North Korea have maximized
their national interests," Nam Sung-wook, North Korean studies
professor at Korea University, said. "Kim Jong-il has worked on
image-making by touring the southern part of China and showing
his willingness for the North's economic reform, and China has
probably got his promise to return to the six-party talks."

 Evaluating how useful and practical Kim's visit is, Jeung
Young-tae, director-general of the research council on
unification affairs at the Korea Institute for National
Unification, said North Korea needs to learn a lesson from "a
good economic model from China." 

Jeung said it is "clear" that Kim is showing efforts for
economic reform in the North.

 North Korea adopted a new reform policy in July 2002,
introducing some elements of a capitalist economy. But it failed
to go ahead with reforms due to prolonged tension over nuclear
problems, Jeung said.

 The six-nation talks, involving the United States, China,
Russia, Japan and the two Koreas, on dismantling the North's
nuclear programs reached a deadlock at the latest round last
November. 

The North has been boycotting nuclear disarmament talks due to
U.S. sanctions based on alleged illicit financial activities,
including counterfeiting $100 bills, money-laundering and
drug-dealing.

 "Proliferation of nuclear weapons is a great threat to China,"
Koh Yu-hwan, North Korean studies professor at Dongguk
University. "China will exchange its views and information with
the North on North Korea's alleged illicit financial activities
and urge return to the negotiating table as it offers economic
aids to the North for reform."

 Hoping North Korea will return to the six-party talks soon,
experts said Kim would try to find a breakthrough for "U.S.
diplomatic pressure" with China.

 
*****************************************************************
 14 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: [VIEWPOINT] Paving the road to free trade

January 16, 2006 KST 15:04 (GMT+9)

  Korea has so far signed free trade agreements (FTA) with
Chile, Singapore and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

However, Korea's trade with these FTA partners makes up less
than 3 percent of Korea's total trade. Korea's major trading
partners are the United States, Japan and China, totaling almost
half of Korea's trade. Thus, it is important for Korea to pursue
FTAs with these three major trading partners and thus secure
access to its major export markets.

 The Korea-Japan FTA negotiations have been deadlocked since the
end of 2004 after six rounds of negotiations. Since Korea is
expected to suffer in the short run from an FTA with Japan, due
to the similarity of industrial structure between the two
countries, it is expected to take some time to achieve a
Korea-Japan FTA.

 China is not yet up to making FTA arrangements with any
industrialized country like Korea. It is more important for
China to meet its WTO commitments. Thus, it would be more
realistic for Korea to consider an FTA with China later. We
should also realize that China, more than America, is putting
pressure on Korea to open up its agricultural market in the Doha
negotiations.

 Thus, it makes more sense for Korea to open FTA talks with the
United States in the near future. Korea should not waste its
limited negotiating man-power on FTAs with small economies or
with countries where there is little possibility of success.
Instead, Korea should focus on the Korea-U.S. FTA, which may
start right away and is expected to produce large benefits.

 From a Korea-U.S. FTA, both countries can enjoy large economic
gains because of their complementary industrial structures.

According to my research paper, co-authored with Jeffrey Schott
and published in 2001 by the Institute for International
Economics (IIE) in Washington, an FTA is estimated to increase
Korea's exports to the U.S. by up to 30% and U.S. exports to
Korea by up to 49% in the long-run. It is also estimated to
raise income, reaching up to 2.41% of GDP for Korea and 0.13% of
GDP for the U.S. If we add the impact of lowering non-tariff
barriers in the services sector, its positive impact will be
much greater. We can also expect more industrial alliance
between the two countries, which would increase their
competitiveness.

 For Korea, the trade diversion effect of an FTA could reduce
its trade surplus with the United States and also its chronic
trade deficit with Japan. Korea could also resolve many ongoing
trade disputes with the United States during the course of FTA
negotiations. As a result, Korea will be better able to maintain
its trade relations with the United States and to secure access
to the largest market in the world.

 Forming an FTA would also bring the two countries much closer
in their political and security relationships. Indeed, political
objectives have often driven American participation in FTA
negotiations in the past. In the midst of recent uncertainties
in the Korea-U.S. alliance, caused by differences over resolving
the North Korean nuclear issue and changing the role of U.S.
military forces in Korea, an FTA between the two countries would
provide meaningful and helpful benefits and strengthen the
alliance. Through an FTA, as more Americans, U.S. enterprises
and capital enter Korea, the security of the Korean peninsula
automatically becomes more important for the United States to
protect its citizens, corporations and investments.

 For the United States, many firms could benefit not only from
an increase in farm products and service exports to Korea, but
also from having strategic alliances with Korean firms, thereby
using Korea as a base for further expansion of their activities
in the Northeast Asia region. Furthermore, a Korea-U.S. FTA
would show firm United States support for peace and prosperity
in Korea, thereby strengthening the bilateral alliance and
contributing to the peace and security of the Northeast region.

 In spite of all these clear benefits of an FTA, the two
countries have not yet launched negotiations because of concerns
of facing domestic resistance from weak and sensitive sectors.
Korea faces strong resistance from the agriculture and service
sectors. The United States will also need to persuade its steel
and textile industries. Also, the recent rise in nationalism and
anti-American sentiment in Korea could act as a hindrance.

 In order to pave the road to a Korea-U.S. FTA, the Korean
public should have a better understanding of how important free
trade policy, a market economy, globalization and exports to
America are in contributing to the growth of the Korean economy.
Since the Korean economy is very much linked to the world
economy, Korea should try to maintain a globalization policy and
guard against nationalism, for its own sake. At the same time,
structural adjustment of industries that lack competitiveness
should be accelerated, while the government should provide
adjustment assistance programs along with an efficient use of
safeguards and a social safety net. 

* The writer is an adjunct professor at Sogang University.
 
by Choi In-bom   
	  
  2006.01.15       

Copyright by Joins.com, Inc. Terms of Use |
*****************************************************************
 15 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: N.Korea 'Will Use Nukes Against Invaders'
 
  Home> National/Politics    Updated Jan.15,2006 22:17 KST   
 
  North Korea has threatened to use nuclear weapons if the U.S.
invades it, CBS television reported on its website Saturday. 

The threat was made by the North Korean three-star general Ri
Chan-bok, also the representative for the truce village of
Panmunjum, to the U.S. broadcaster��s anchor Dan Rather, who
recently visited the Stalinist country for the long-running show
"60 Minutes". ��Tell the American people that you met the
general. If the United States invades our country and starts a
war, the People��s Army will fight to the death and defend
ourselves, taking appropriate revenge,�� Gen. Ri said. ��What we
can say to you definitely right now is that we currently have
nuclear weapons.�� He indicated a U.S. invasion was a real
threat. ��After striking Iraq, they want North Korea,�� he said 

Ri is acquiring a reputation for his belligerent remarks. Last
July he told the visiting New York Times publisher Arthur
Sulzberger, ''To defend our sovereignty and our system, we have
to increase the number of nuclear weapons as a deterrent
force.'' At that time, Li Gun, a senior official in the Foreign
Ministry, said if the U.S. launched a surgical strike on the
country��s nuclear facilities, the result ''will be all-out
war.'' 

CBS said the North during the channel��s weeklong coverage
banned reporters from residential areas or markets and did not
allow them to see or touch North Korean currency. Products in
the country are priced in euro, it added. 

(englishnews@chosun.com ) 

  
*****************************************************************
 16 [NukeNet] Scary Friday the 13th Movie Clip
 
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 18:30:09 -0800

<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)



This is from Greenpeace UK.  It's worth checking out and perhaps forwarding...
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/fridaythe13th/


Mike Ewall
Energy Justice Network
215-743-4884
catalyst@actionpa.org
http://www.energyjustice.net


_______________________________________________________________________
Subscribe/Unsubscribe Here: http://www.energyjustice.net/nukenet/
Change your settings or access the archives at:
http://energyjustice.net/mailman/listinfo/nukenet_energyjustice.net

</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 17 Worldnet Daily: What noncompliance? 

Posted: January 14, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern c 

2006 WorldNetDaily.com 

Subcritical Thoughts by Gordon Prather 


In President Bush's first State of the Union message, he 
essentially accused North Korea, Iran and Iraq of having 
clandestine nuke programs:

    States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an 
axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.

    I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not 
stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of 
America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to 
threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons. 

But - at that time - North Korea, Iran and Iraq were signatories 
to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and had 
their nuclear materials, facilities and activities subject to 
IAEA periodic inspection.

As for North Korea, under the so-called Agreed Framework, all 
existing "nuclear" activities had been "frozen" - under IAEA lock 
and seal - in return for a promise by the United States of 
alternative energy supplies.

Now, were ever the IAEA were to determine that a) Iraq was not in 
compliance with Gulf War Security Council resolutions, or that b) 
North Korea was not in compliance with the Agreed Framework, or 
that c) Iran was not in compliance with its Safeguards Agreement, 
it could ask the U.N. Security Council to impose "sanctions," 
which could - under the U.N. Charter - include the use of 
military force.

However, until the IAEA made such a determination and until the 
Security Council authorized the use of force, Bush would have to 
"stand by."

So, Bush announced his own National Strategy to Combat Weapons of 
Mass Destruction in late 2002, launched an unsanctioned 
pre-emptive attack on Iraq in March (to remove an imaginary nuke 
threat) and announced ad hoc his Proliferation Security 
Initiative, whose stated objective was to create a web of 
international "counter-proliferation partnerships" to prevent 
"proliferators" from "carrying out their trade in WMD and 
missile-related technology."

The PSI was "necessary" because "proliferators and those 
facilitating the procurement of deadly capabilities are 
circumventing existing laws, treaties and controls against WMD 
proliferation."

That is, the PSI supersedes existing treaties - including the NPT 
- and international law, itself.

That's why, at the Seventh NPT Review Conference last year, 
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi pleaded with the 
delegates to strengthen the three "pillars" of the treaty: a) 
nonproliferation, b) peaceful use of nuclear energy, and c) 
disarmament.

In particular:

    Mr. President, the "inalienable right" of the states to 
develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes emanates from 
the universally accepted proposition that scientific and 
technological achievements are the common heritage of mankind.

    The promotion of the use of nuclear technology for peaceful 
purposes has been, therefore, one of the main pillars of the NPT 
and the main statutory objective of the IAEA.

    It is unacceptable that "some" intend to limit the access to 
peaceful nuclear technology to an exclusive club of 
technologically advanced states under the pretext of 
"nonproliferation." This attitude is in clear violation of the 
letter and spirit of the treaty and destroys the fundamental 
balance which exists between the rights and obligations in the 
treaty.

    Iran, for its part, is determined to pursue all legal areas 
of nuclear technology, including enrichment, exclusively for 
peaceful purposes and has been eager to offer assurances and 
guarantees that they remain permanently peaceful. 

In fact, the previous November, Iran had agreed to negotiate with 
the Brits-French-Germans on a mutually acceptable agreement that 
"will provide objective guarantees" to the European Union that 
Iran's safeguarded nuclear program - explicitly to include 
uranium-enrichment activities voluntarily suspended for the 
duration - is exclusively for "peaceful purposes."

But, when the Brits-French-Germans finally got around to 
submitting their proposal, it explicitly required Iran "not to 
pursue fuel-cycle activities other than the construction and 
operation of light-water power and research reactors" - in 
complete violation of the spirit and letter of the so-called 
Paris Agreement.

Now, the IAEA was not a party to the negotiations. Nevertheless, 
under extreme U.S. pressure, the IAEA Board "urged" Iran to 
accept the offer even though, thereby, they would essentially be 
requiring Iran to forfeit its "inalienable" rights guaranteed by 
the NPT and the Iranian Safeguards Agreement.

Well, Iran didn't and has since resumed some of the Safeguarded 
activities they had voluntarily suspended.

The reaction of our secretary of state?

    We agree that the Iranian regime's defiant resumption of 
uranium-enrichment work leaves the EU with no choice but to 
request an emergency meeting of the IAEA board of governors . to 
report Iran's noncompliance with its safeguards obligations to 
the U.N. Security Council.

What "noncompliance"?

And defying whom?


Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy 
implementing official for national security-related technical 
matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and 
Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office 
of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. 
Prather also served as legislative assistant for national 
security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking 
member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate 
Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had 
earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence 
Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National 
Laboratory in New Mexico. 

*****************************************************************
 18 Japan Times: CHECKING BOTH SIDES OF THE COIN

  Sunday, January 15, 2006   
  
 Two writers, two very different North Koreas

 By GLYN FORD

NORTH KOREA: The Struggle Against American Power, by Tim Beal.
Pluto, 2005, 352 pp., �18.99 (paper).

 NORTH KOREA: The Paranoid Peninsula, by Paul French. Zed Books
Ltd., 2005, 352 pp.,�17.95 (paper).

 The subtitles of these books reveal the sharply differing
points of departure on North Korea for writers Tim Beal and Paul
French. For Beal, North Korea is a product as much of American
ill will as it is of its own internal ideology. Beal takes on
the despairingly bad press it gets by challenging
Western-accepted wisdom across the board. North Korea may spend
the highest level of gross domestic product in the world on its
military, but that's still less than 0.4 percent of the spending
by the U.S.-Japan-South Korea axis combined.

 With respect to arms sales, North Korea is outsold every year
by those famous military powers Australia, Canada and Sweden; it
sells 250 times less military hardware than the United States.

 As for its nuclear-weapons program, first of all, whether one
really exists is doubtful. Charles Kartman, the former head of
the U.S.-led Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO), is
quoted as saying "the number of proven weapons is zero." Second,
if it is developing one, it was forced to do so by the U.S. and
South Korea, primarily the threat of American use of such
weapons. Third, nuclear weapons are the cheap option that could
enable North Korea to release hundreds of thousands of
conscripts into civilian life to kick-start its failing economy.

 For Beal, the current nuclear crisis was deliberately
engineered by the Bush administration to enable it to renege on
Clinton's 1994 Framework Agreement to use KEDO to build two
light-water reactors in exchange for North Korea's freezing and
dismantling graphite-moderated reactors capable of producing
weapons-grade plutonium.

 Now the U.S. wants it all for free, a freeze without the
benefits of "blackmail" with regime change to follow, if North
Korea is foolish enough to disarm.

 As for human rights, the U.S. is portrayed almost as bad as
North Korea in light of the Guantanamo Bay scandals and the
percentage of Americans jailed or imprisoned, said to be similar
to the reported percentage of North Koreans in camps. The more
colorful North Korean-abuse stories are seen by Beal as the
product of media hype and elaboration by defectors wishing to
keep their sponsors in South Korea or American Christian
fundamentalist groups happy.

 French, however, is in a different country, driven by his
alliterative agenda "The Paranoid Peninsula." For him, North
Korea is always at fault, with their enthusiasm for Leninist
"War Communism," where all is subordinate to military policy and
regime survival. The result was the late 20th century's biggest
humanitarian disaster, when up to 3 million people starved to
death in the late 1990s.

 There is no mention of the contributions made to this disaster
by U.S. intelligence and North Korea's military. Both knew what
was happening on the ground. The former didn't want
international aid to flow to the communist North, even as the
world watched children starve live on prime-time TV, while North
Korea's generals unwittingly conspired with the U.S. by trying
to hide their weakness from an enemy that already knew well the
situation.

 French replays North Korea's Stalinist harmonies with the
Chollima Movement echoing the Soviet Union's Stakhanovites, Kim
Il Sung's enthusiasm for the Lamarckian theories of T.D.
Lysenkto (successive rice crops could acclimate to cold
weather), and the ideology of juche (self-sufficiency), designed
to elevate "Red" over "Expert." Yet he misses the past three
years of wage, farm and industrial reforms, which resonate more
with Deng Xiaoping's aphorism: "Black cat, white cat -- who
cares as long as it catches mice."

 As with any author writing on contemporary issues, French's and
Beal's books threaten to age quickly. Now the final phase of the
six-party talks are under way with the North being asked to
swallow the U.S.'s reneging on the 1994 Framework Agreement,
which was concluded when imminent collapse of North Korea was
forecast by the U.S. intelligence community. French, like the
vast majority of Western authors, paints the North in dark
colors and so, inevitably, says little that's new. Beal, by
contrast, takes the white road and therefore is a fresh voice
that will deservedly endure much longer.

 Yet from time to time, Beal ventures an opinion too far. Not
everyone with a persecution complex is in error; nor are all the
stories of North Korean ill-doing. Few would agree, for example,
that the assassination attempt on South Korea's President Park
Chung Hee was led by Southern partisans rather than by North
Korean commandos. That would include Park Geun Hye, the late
president's daughter who lost her mother in the attack and who,
as leader of the Conservative opposition Grand National Party,
is still prepared to engage in a constructive dialogue with the
North's leadership. 

To make the case for engagement rather than confrontation, it is
not necessary to believe everything North Korea claims, merely
that they are rational actors.

 Glyn Ford is Labor member of the European Parliament for
Southwest England and member of the delegation for relations
with Japan. 

The Japan Times: Jan. 15, 2006
(C) All rights reserved 
*****************************************************************
 19 AFP: US diplomat to visit South Asia for talks on nuclear, ethnic conflict 

 Sat Jan 14, 12:21 AM ET 		 	 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A senior US diplomat will travel to South
Asia next week for talks aimed at firming a civilian nuclear
deal with India, setting Pakistan on the road to democracy and
halting rising violence in Sri Lanka. 

 Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns was to fly
to the region after participating in multilateral talks in
London over the Iranian nuclear issue on Monday, said State
Department spokesman Sean McCormack. 

He did not give specific dates on the visit to the three South
Asian nations, which would extend to January 25. 

In New Delhi, Burns is scheduled to discuss with his
counterpart, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, moves to push
forward a landmark agreement under which the United States has
pledged to transfer civilian nuclear technology to India. 

The pact was signed by US President George W. Bush" /> and
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July 2005. 

Officials have been laboring for months on the implementation
mechanism, especially India's need to separate its civilian and
military nuclear facilities and place its reactors under
International Atomic Energy Agency" /> (IAEA) inspections. 

Burns and Saran will hold a fourth meeting of the so-called
Joint Working Group on Civil Nuclear Cooperation and "discuss
how we go about implementing" the agreement," McCormack said. 

Under US law, the nuclear deal has to be approved by the US
Congress, which has stressed the need for it to be "credible,
transparent and defensible from a non-proliferation standpoint." 

Some US lawmakers questioned the wisdom of providing atomic fuel
and technology to a nuclear weapons power that has refused to
sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

India tested nuclear weapons in May 1998 -- a move matched by
rival Pakistan the same month, sparking concerns of a nuclear
arms race in South Asia. 

On his inaugural trip to Pakistan, Burns is scheduled to meet
with senior Pakistani officials and opinion leaders. 

He wants to discuss broadening US-Pakistan ties, Pakistan's
progress towards full democracy, ways for greater regional
cooperation, and continued US support for relief and
reconstruction efforts following the devastating October
earthquake that killed more than 73,000 people, the State
Department said. 

US officials have been taking a soft line on Pakistan President
General Pervez Musharraf, who has reneged on a pledge to give up
his military role following his power grab in a 1999 coup. 

Musharraf wants to seek another term after his current five-year
tenure as president ends in 2007. 

In Sri Lanka, where there has been a resurgence in violence in
recent weeks, Burns will discuss the status of the peace process
with the new government of President Mahinda Rajapakse and
Norwegian truce monitors. 

Burns would meet Norwegian special envoy Erik Solheim and others
"to reiterate the strong US desire to see all Sri Lankans work
for peace," the State Department said. 

Copyright � 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 20 parties answer nuclear power questions: Straightgoods.com
 
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 19:57:29 -0600 (CST)

All major parties in the Canadian federal election answer questions about 
nuclear power. Just part of the special Straightgoods.com Election Section.

http://www.straightgoods.ca/Election2006/ViewNews.cfm?Ref=35
Parties answer questions on nukes

NDP, Bloc & Greens say stop subsidizing Ontario's nuclear reactors.

Dateline: Thursday, January 12, 2006

from the Ontario Clean Air Alliance

The NDP, Bloc Quebecois and Green Party all oppose using federal taxpayer 
dollars to subsidize the construction or retrofit of nuclear reactors in 
Ontario according to the results of a federal election questionnaire 
released by the Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA) on January 9.

For its part, the Liberal Party says it stands ready to work with Ontario 
in addressing the province's energy needs. The party stated that it is the 
prerogative of Ontario, however, to determine what energy supply mix it 
will rely upon.

Canada has invested about $6 billion in nuclear R&D since 1952. Currently, 
the government of Canada provides approximately $100 million annually to 
AECL for R&D. It also provides some targeted R&D funds ($46 million, last 
year) for the development of the Advanced CANDU Reactor.

The Conservative Party said that, "We have not made a decision on this 
issue. We will meet with the government of Ontario to discuss its energy 
requirements."

Ontario's nuclear generating sector is currently heavily supported by 
direct and indirect public subsidies - ranging from the assumption of more 
than $15 billion in unfunded nuclear-related debt by Ontario taxpayers and 
ratepayers to provincial government underwriting of multi-billion dollar 
plant decommissioning and waste disposal costs. Nuclear construction and 
retrofit projects in Ontario have consistently run hundreds of millions to 
billions of dollars over budget and years late in completion....

whole article and link at 
http://www.straightgoods.ca/Election2006/ViewNews.cfm?Ref=35

Penney Kome, author and journalist
http://penneykome.ca
Editor, Straight Goods, http://straightgoods.com 
*****************************************************************
 21 ajc.com: New PSC chairman pledges changes | 

By MARGARET NEWKIRK

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 01/14/06                                                                                                                                                                                  
	 	

New Georgia Public Service Commission Chairman Stan Wise is 
already making it clear that there's a new sheriff in town. 

Wise replaced self-described "people's commissioner" Angela Speir 
early this month.

And by this week, he'd already engaged Gov. Sonny Perdue's
office in a campaign that could dull the teeth of the utility
regulatory body. 

The 11-year commission veteran and Cobb County Republican
announced Thursday that he planned to launch a review  and
potentially an overhaul  of the commission's staff. 

He called it an "efficiency" review but suggested that he was
specifically concerned about the role the staff plays in
opposing utility requests for rate increases. 

The PSC's so-called adversary staff has been too aggressive,
Wise said. 

Under the current system, the adversary staff conducts
independent reviews  without input or interference from
commissioners  when utilities like Atlanta Gas Light and Georgia
Power come in asking for more money from consumers. 

Though the independent review could find that the utilities'
requests are fully deserved, the adversary staff typically
argues that utilities should get less. 

The commission votes after hearing arguments from adversary
staff, the utility and other intervenors, like industry reps,
and after getting a recommendation from a second, "advisory"
staff, which often splits the difference. 

Wise said the system is flawed. 

"Being elected statewide, I have to rely on professional staff
and make sure we have an independent assessment" in rate cases.
"I'm not sure I'm getting the independent assessment I need," he
said, adding that adversary staff had been taking "extreme
litigation positions" instead. 

"There has to be a better way to conduct business," he said as
he made his announcement at a PSC committee meeting Thursday. "I
don't think anybody can ever become complacent." 

Wise's usual opponents on the sharply divided five-member
commission, fellow Republicans Speir and Robert Baker, both
looked on, visibly surprised. 

Baker later said Wise did "not discuss this proposal with anyone
else on the commission or staff prior to going to the governor's
office." 

Utility lobbyists in the audience, meanwhile, betrayed no
reaction  although AGL complained about the PSC staff in its
most recent rate case last year. 

Georgia Power spokesman John Sell later said the state's largest
utility had no opinion: "Georgia Power has an excellent working
relationship with the PSC staff and we will work with whatever
staff structure the commission asks us to work with." 

A 'light, steady' hand 

The PSC chairmanship rotates every year. 

And lately, it's been rotating not just between commissioners
but between commission factions. 

The departing Speir, along with Baker, represents the more
pro-consumer faction, which usually loses. Wise is on the other,
and majority, side. 

While the chairmanship itself carries little formal weight, it
does set a tone. 

Wise, a former Cobb County commissioner elected to the PSC for
the first time in 1994, said his tendencies are well known,
after 11 years and two terms on the commission: Wise is running
for his third six-year term this November. 

This year's chairman believes in regulation, as shown by his
response to a proposed AGL legislative proposal that would
curtail the PSC's ability to regulate the gas pipeline company:
"If we don't have oversight, who does it? ... Somebody's got to
do it. If not the commission, who?" 

But Wise also believes in regulating "with a light, steady,
predictable hand," as he said in one of his many position
papers. "My mantra is less government interference," Wise said
this week. 

Wise says commissioners need to protect utility financial
stability and that heavy-handed regulation could end up costing
consumers in the long run. 

His votes in rate and other cases at the commission reliably
line up with what utilities want. He was in the majority that
approved a settlement in a 2004 Georgia Power rate boost, for
instance, and that reversed a rate decision last spring that was
unfavorable to AGL. 

Wise has been known to berate his commission opposition for
"playing populist consumerist" instead of being leaders and has
called Baker "a socialist in a business suit." 

He has also publicly upbraided the commission staff and the
consultants they hire to take on utility requests, calling both
extremist. Last spring, after the initially unfavorable AGL
vote, he decried "a punitive decision that puts the company at
risk," blamed "flawed analysis by consultants hired based on the
lowest bid," and implied that opposing commissioners had made up
their minds before the evidence was in. 

It was a harbinger of his current move to review the staff
itself. 

Wise isn't known for an impeccable PSC attendance record: For
more than a year during his current term, for instance, he was
president of the National Association of Utility Regulatory
Commissions, or NARUC, which kept him active around the country. 

Though no longer the organization's president, Wise said he
continues to represent Georgia energy policy interests
nationally. 

He says he considers it a key part of his job: "My involvement
at the federal level is closely related to Georgia. If I'm not
advocating energy policy  for nukes, for clean coal  then maybe
I'm not doing my job representing Georgia. 

"Because we have a five-member commission, I can be freed to
make a case for Georgia." 

His list of top issues includes larger energy policies not
likely to come before state regulators soon. They include
investment in liquid natural gas facilities and clean coal
technology. 

He also favors a return of nuclear power, including removing
roadblocks to a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in
Nevada. Wise has a pro-nuke bumper sticker on the front of his
PSC office desk: "It irritates some people," he said, smiling. 

Recently, Wise has been mentioned as a candidate for a seat on
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, where two seats are
now open and a third is about to be. Wise concedes his name has
been out there, but said he's heard nothing back and doesn't now
anticipate a FERC appointment. 

Light '06 agenda 

Wise is taking the chairman's gavel in what promises to be a
light year, particularly compared with last year. 

Starting in late 2004, and continuing all the way through 2005,
the PSC deliberated rate cases for Georgia Power, Savannah
Electric, AGL and Atmos Energy, two fuel charge increases for
Savannah Electric and one huge one for Georgia Power. 

"It was a tough year last year," Wise said. 

The coming year's docket will include no rate cases. The PSC
will rule on a proposed merger between Georgia Power and
Savannah Electric, which Wise described as sad but probably
inevitable. 

The commission will also rule on another large fuel charge
increase for Georgia Power this year, and on a host of smaller
issues. 

Within that relatively slow season, Wise proposes reviewing the
PSC staff. 

In an interview, he said he wants to hold the commission to the
same efficiency standards the commission sets for utilities:
"One of the things we haven't done is look at how efficient we
are ourselves." 

The first salvo in the staff war actually came last month, at
the last commission meeting of 2005 and the last under Speir.
Commissioner Doug Everett lobbed it, accusing the commission
adversary staff of "doing the job of the consumer utility
counsel," which represents consumers on behalf of the governor's
consumer affairs office. 

Wise said this week that he found Everett's comments intriguing. 

"Maybe it's time we look at how we operate," he said. "We need
to look at some of these extremist consultants we now seem to
always get." 	   

[Cox Newspapers, Inc.] 	 	   
*****************************************************************
 22 San Luis Obispo Tribune: Reactor tops getting extra attention

01/14/2006 | 

Vessel heads that hold control rods have been a problem elsewhere

 By David Sneed The Tribune 

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is considering replacing the tops
of the two nuclear reactors at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant. 

Plant managers say the tops, called reactor vessel heads, are
still in good condition, but the same components at many other
nuclear plants have cracked and corroded as the plants aged. The
tops date from when the plant was built 20 years ago. 

"We assume that that will eventually happen with ours," plant
spokesman Jeff Lewis said. "We are recommending that they be
replaced based on what's happened at other plants." 

The replacements are expected to cost $141 million and will be
paid for by PG customers pending approval by the state Public
Utilities Commission. PG executives will recommend that the
company's board of directors approve the work when they meet
later this month. 

Reactor vessel heads are mounted at the top of the nuclear
reactors and hold the reactor's control rods. These rods are
moved in and out of the reactor to regulate the amount of
nuclear fission taking place there. 

In many plants, cracks caused by stress and corrosion begin
forming around the control rod openings. At Diablo Canyon, those
components are inspected every time the reactors are shut down
for a refueling, about every year, and no cracking has yet been
found, Lewis said. 

Severe corrosion in a vessel head nearly caused a reactor at the
Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio, to rupture in 2000. That
heightened awareness of the problem in the nuclear industry. 

PG estimates that Diablo Canyon's reactor tops will be replaced
in 2009 and 2010. They will be the third major component to be
replaced at Diablo Canyon this decade. 

Workers recently completed replacing rotors in the electrical
generators. The company is seeking to replace the plant's steam
generators in 2008 and 2009. 

The old vessel heads will be stored in a proposed reinforced
concrete building behind the plant. That building also would be
used to store the old steam generators. All of those replaced
components will emit low levels of radiation for decades after
their removal. 

*****************************************************************
 23 San Luis Obispo Tribune: Duel over Diablo ends with denial

| 01/14/2006 | 

  + Commission report on Diablo Canyon�s steam generator
replacement project

  + Reactor tops getting extra attention

Deadlock by planners is meant to send the $700 million steam
generator replacement plan directly to the Board of Supervisors
to decide
 By David Sneed The Tribune 

In a bizarre turn of events, a hopelessly deadlocked county
Planning Commission on Thursday denied a steam generator
replacement project at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant solely
for the purpose of passing it on to the Board of Supervisors. 

Plant owners Pacific Gas and Electric Co. say they are
considering what to do next. The utility must appeal at least
one part of the project to the supervisors, but is considering
modifying another part to avoid scrutiny by the state Coastal
Commission. 

"The whole process of appeal is something we are considering,"
Diablo Canyon spokesman Jeff Lewis said. 

The $700 million project calls for the replacement of eight
large components that transfer heat from the plant's two nuclear
reactors to steam-powered electrical generators. Without new
steam generators, the power plant would be forced to shut down
in 2014, a decade short of its license expiration. 

Planning Commissioners Sarah Christie and Bruce Gibson were
highly critical of the state's environmental analysis of the
project and wanted additional environmental concessions from PG.
Conversely, Commissioners Bob Roos and Eugene Mehlschau wanted
to approve the project. 

The panel's potential tie-breaker, Commissioner Penny Rappa,
declared a conflict of interest and stepped down before the
hearing started. Her husband is a PG employee. 

The denial capped an 11-hour hearing that included far-ranging
discussions about the future of the power plant and the limits
of the Planning Commission's authority. It also featured
numerous 2-2 votes and motions that died without a second as the
commissioners struggled to find common ground on the contentious
issue. 

Assistant County Planning Director Pat Beck said she had never
seen anything like it. 

"I told my staff I wouldn't have missed this for the world," she
said after the meeting. 

Focus on buildings 

Theoretically, the question before the commission was a simple
one: Should PG be given permission to build five temporary
buildings and one permanent structure? 

The temporary facilities would be used during the steam
generator replacement work. These buildings are in the coastal
zone and under the purview of the Coastal Commission. 

PG is considering forgoing the use of those temporary buildings
to bypass the Coastal Commission. Instead, the utility would use
existing buildings at the plant. 

In an interview, Peter Douglas, the Coastal Commission's
executive director, said PG's efforts to sidestep his agency
will be unsuccessful because the commission must review the
project in any case to determine if it conforms to federal
environmental laws. 

The permanent building will be used to store the old steam
generators, which are considered low-level radioactive waste.
This building is inland of the coastal zone and therefore would
not need Coastal Commission approval. 

Christie and Douglas have questioned the geologic stability of
the canyon behind the plant where the storage building would go. 

"It is stupid for them to put the steam generators in an
unstable place just to avoid the jurisdiction of the Coastal
Commission," Douglas said. 

The project also entails a $1.5 million donation by PG to
improve access to the historic Point San Luis Lighthouse and
fund a hiking-and-biking trail connecting Avila Beach to Port
San Luis. Support of those access provisions was one of the only
aspects of the project that the commissioners could agree on. 

Back-and-forth criticism 

Gibson and Christie were critical of the environmental analysis
done by the state Public Utilities Commission. That agency's
report failed to analyze the fact that replacing the steam
generators will set the stage for PG to apply to renew the
plant's operating license for 20 more years after the current
expiration date of 2025. 

Christie also criticized the county Planning Department's
failure to challenge the adequacy of that environmental
analysis. "That put us in such an untenable position," she said. 

Gibson and Christie also wanted to consider requiring PG to make
additional environmental concessions, such as increased funding
for the Avila to Port San Luis trail, in exchange for its
building permits. They argued that replacing the steam
generators will significantly prolong the nuclear plant's
effects on the environment. 

Roos and Mehlschau balked, saying $1.5 million in improved
access was enough mitigation for one permanent storage building
and a handful of temporary ones. 

"This is not a bottomless pit," Roos said. 

Christie and Gibson repeatedly tried to pass a motion to
continue the hearing to a later date. The other two
commissioners voted against that, saying delays would be unfair
to PG. 

Donna Jacobs, the power plant's director of nuclear operations,
said the utility cannot afford any delays. Replacing major
components of a nuclear plant requires lots of lead time and the
replacements are scheduled to begin in early 2008. 

Roos and Mehlschau tried several times to pass motions approving
the project, but they all failed in 2 to 2 votes. After it
became evident that the commission was at an unbreakable
impasse, Roos made several motions to deny the project. 

Christie resisted those attempts, saying that she preferred to
keep the project at the planning commission level as long as
possible in the hope that PG would not be able to do the
replacement project and the plant could be forced to shut down
in 2014. 

That outcome was unlikely, said Deputy County Counsel Tim
McNulty. County supervisors could break the impasse by replacing
their planning commissioners and PG would likely sue the county
to move the project along, he said. 

In the end, Gibson voted to deny the project, stating clearly
that he did so reluctantly and only to move the project along
the regulatory process. The final vote was Roos, Mehlschau and
Gibson voting to deny and Christie abstaining. 

The vote was a pleasant surprise for anti-nuclear activists. 

"For once, it won't be us who are filing an appeal," said Morgan
Rafferty, a San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace activist. 

David Sneed can be reached at dsneed@thetribunenews.com. 

See the County Planning Commission report on Diablo Canyon's
steam generator replacement project at sanluisobispo.com (13MB
pdf)
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/multimedia/sanluisobispo/archive/Ste
am.pdfemail

*****************************************************************
 24 NEWS.com.au: Public supports nuclear power 

Breaking News 24/7

By Tony Vermeer

 January 15, 2006                                                

ALMOST half the population supports the introduction of nuclear
power in Australia, a new poll reveals. Forty-seven per cent of
those surveyed said they favoured establishing a nuclear power
industry because of growing concerns about climate change. 

The Sunday Telegraph-Galaxy poll showed they outnumbered
opponents, with 38 per cent of people against and 15 per cent
undecided. 

Unlike coal-fired power stations, nuclear electricity produces
radioactive waste but no greenhouse gases. 

Australia has the world's largest deposits of uranium but only
one small nuclear reactor at Sydney's Lucas Heights used for
research and radioactive medicine. 

Support for nuclear power divides between the sexes with 59 per
cent of men in favour but only 35 per cent of women. 

Older Australians are also more likely to back the idea - among 
the over 50s those in favour outnumber those against two to one. 

Galaxy principal David Briggs said the results showed people
wanted to debate the pros and cons of nuclear power. 

"People agree the Government should be doing more but there is
division on what measures should be taken," he said. 

The poll was taken last week after a major conference of Asia
Pacific countries decided to pursue new technologies with
industry to reduce greenhouse emissions. The survey revealed
more than 80 per cent believed the issue was an important
priority for the Government in 2006. 

Fifty four per cent said they would be willing to pay more for
green energy produced from wind farms and solar panels. Half of
those surveyed said they would accept two-tier power pricing for
high-energy appliances such as air conditioners and heaters. 

With some forecasts predicting Australia's average temperature
could rise by up to 6C within 10 years, it seems many residents
are prepared to move somewhere cooler one day. The poll,
involving 500 residents of NSW and Victoria, showed 28 per cent
would consider shifting if the dire predictions are realised.
Among Sydney residents the number was much higher at 42 per
cent. 

Mr Briggs said younger people were more willing to accept price
pressure as a tool for changing energy consumption. 

"It is interesting to note that support for the surcharges is
greatest among the 18-24 year olds and declines with age," he
said. 

"The result is that among those aged 50 years and older
supporters of the surcharges are in the minority. 

"A consideration here is that many 18-24 year olds will still be
living in their parents' home and therefore would be unlikely to
incur the extra costs themselves." 

Meanwhile the Australian Conservation Foundation called on the
Federal Government to provide more incentives for householders
to install solar power, as happens in Japan. 		  		 		 		Search

*****************************************************************
 25 newsobserver.com: McGehee: Inspectors didn't identify any immediate concerns. 

Saturday, January 14, 2006

From Staff Reports Nuclear regulatory inspectors did not find
security breaches of immediate concern after a three-day review
of Progress Energy's Shearon Harris plant, the Raleigh-based
utility said Friday.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspected the facility in
response to complaints from a Durham group that alleged that
armed guards at the facility were allowed to sleep on the job
and had been forced to cheat on recertification tests and work
while injured.

The N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network also had alleged
that faulty intruder detection equipment and hardware kept doors
at the plant from locking properly. N.C. WARN opposes the
production of nuclear energy.

Progress spokesman Rick Kimble acknowledged in December that
some door locks at the facility had been malfunctioning, but
said that there was no basis for allegations of security
failures.

"While the NRC has not completed its assessment and provided us
with its conclusions, the inspectors did not identify any
concerns requiring our immediate attention while on site," said
Bob McGehee, chairman and CEO of Progress. "Once complete, we
will act immediately on any insights the agency may provide."

Jim Warren, director of N.C. WARN, said McGehee's statement
Friday was vague and open to multiple interpretations. Apart
from the malfunctioning doors, he said he expects more
allegations will be confirmed.

Raleigh-based Progress is expected to announce next week a site
for a new nuclear reactor, which, if built, could be the first
new reactor licensed in the United States in three decades. All
rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be published,
broadcast or redistributed in any manner.
   
 � Copyright 2006, The News & Observer Publishing Company
*****************************************************************
 26 newsobserver.com: N-plant plans revive spent-fuel concern

January 15, 2006

Progress Energy and Duke Power will soon name the locations of
new reactors in the Carolinas 

A tower rises at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant, 25 miles from
Raleigh. 
  
John Murawski, Staff Writer Any day now, Progress Energy expects
to announce a site for two new nuclear reactors in the Carolinas.

In coming weeks, Charlotte-based Duke Power will announce a site
for two reactors.

And this spring, Progress Energy, based in Raleigh, will pick a
site for two reactors in Florida.

The two North Carolina companies are among a dozen utilities
leading the push to seek licenses for the nation's first
reactors since a partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island
paralyzed the industry a quarter-century ago.
A diverse group of supporters is promoting nuclear power as the

best answer to global warming and to carbon-belching coal
plants. Progress Energy's chief executive said in April that the
company's Shearon Harris nuclear plant outside Raleigh would be
a logical choice for expansion.

But five decades into the era of nuclear energy, with 103
nuclear reactors powering one-fifth of the nation's homes, there
is still no accepted method for ridding the world of nuclear
waste that remains lethal for thousands of years.

The waste is so dangerous that after 50 years in storage it
emits gamma rays potent enough to deliver a fatal dose within a
half-hour, from a distance of 3 feet.

Neutralizing the waste requires thinking about time on an
entirely different scale -- not years or centuries, but
millennia. The spent fuel from a nuclear reactor must be
safeguarded for at least 10,000 years -- longer than the
recorded history of human civilization.

And that's the most optimistic scenario. Under a federal court
order, the U.S. government is drawing up a plan to sequester the
toxic material in a desert crypt in Nevada for 1 million years.

That's four times as long as homo sapi- ens has roamed planet
Earth.

With nowhere to go, the waste is now accumulating at scores of
nuclear plants around the country. The prospect of new reactors
churning out even more radioactive waste is presenting the
industry with a growing financial, legal and public-relations
liability.

"It's a public confidence issue," said Brian Gutherman,
president of CST Associates, a New Jersey nuclear consulting
group that advises Progress Energy and other utilities. "The
public wants assurance that we can handle this fuel from birth
to death, that it's not going to sit at [more than] 70 reactors
around the country. If it's not resolved -- that's not an
option. It's got to be resolved."

The subject is especially sensitive in North Carolina in an age
of international terrorism. Six times a year, under armed
escort, Progress Energy transfers radioactive waste by rail
about 200 miles from the company's Brunswick nuclear plant,
which is running out of storage room, to the Shearon Harris
plant in southwestern Wake County. The train's schedule and
route are kept secret to thwart sabotage. So is the amount of
deadly material moved to the Shearon Harris complex, just 25
miles from Raleigh.

"We don't have a solution for the waste that already exists,"
said Kevin Kamps, a nuclear waste specialist with the Nuclear
Information and Resource Service, an anti-nuclear organization
in Washington. "With 20-year license extensions [for existing
plants] and talk of building new reactors, we're talking about
doubling, tripling or quadrupling the problem."

Originally, the federal government proposed that nuclear waste
be buried, presumably forever, in two vaults: one in the West
and one in the East. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was picked as the
western site. Proposals for the eastern site included two North
Carolina locations, but the eastern one was dropped.

Environmentalists in North Carolina fear that with Duke Power
and Progress Energy pushing to build new reactors, the two sites
originally proposed in North Carolina -- one in Wake County, the
other near Asheville -- could be reconsidered.

A crucial debate

The benevolent promise of nuclear energy rested on the simple
pledge that modern science would devise a safe way to eliminate
highly radioactive waste.

But with a solution delayed indefinitely by political and
scientific disputes, the nuclear industry has been forced to
adopt a fallback public-relations strategy: that radioactive
waste can be stored safely for many decades at 73 sites around
the country, including Shearon Harris. Winning public acceptance
for this claim is crucial for companies such as Progress and
Duke to move ahead with plans to build new reactors.

"We're going to be fine on this," said John Kane, senior vice
president at the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade
group in Washington. "Spent fuel is safe for decades where it's
stored at plants today."

The option of stockpiling more waste on site is not universally
embraced within the nuclear industry. The nation's largest
nuclear utility, Chicago-based Exelon, has declared a
self-imposed moratorium on building reactors until a permanent
solution is found to isolate the radioactive material.

"The sites themselves are purposefully not licensed for
long-term storage of nuclear waste," said Adam Levin, Exelon's
director of spent fuel and decommissioning strategy. "The public
interest is satisfied only with a long-term solution for spent
nuclear fuel."

Concern about terrorism has given nuclear critics new cause for
worry. The opponents say that the accumulation of more than
50,000 tons of nuclear waste at nuclear plants has created 73
terrorist targets.

"We have viewed nuclear power plants as World Trade Centers with
a thousand Hiroshimas of radiation stored inside," said Dave
Kraft, director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service, an
anti-nuclear group in Evanston, Ill.

Exceptional safety?

Intense public emotions aroused by nuclear power have vexed an
industry that half a century ago promised to harness a source of
energy "too cheap to meter" and dismissed the likelihood of a
catastrophic accident as once in a million years. Instead, this
country has experienced one partial nuclear meltdown and, since
that 1979 accident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has
ordered 107 safety-related plant shutdowns.

Still, industry officials say nuclear power has an exceptional
safety record and is the wisest choice for keeping up with the
growing energy demand without polluting the environment.

Both Progress Energy and Duke Power have said they will need new
power plants in a decade, but they won't decide for several
years whether the fuel source will be uranium or coal. They're
starting the long process of licensing a nuclear plant now
because it takes two years to prepare the application. To
promote nuclear power, President Bush signed an energy bill last
year that includes up to $2 billion in incentives for the first
utilities that build nuclear reactors.

Steven Edwards, Progress Energy's supervisor for spent fuel
management, said building more reactors could finally force the
issue of waste disposal: "The new construction effort can be a
factor for making progress on [a permanent solution]."

Nuclear plants were not built for long-term waste storage. They
have reinforced water tanks to cool the spent fuel rods down to
about 500 degrees over five years; at that point the material
can be safely shipped to some permanent destination.

The water tanks are showing signs of age. Plants in New York and
Connecticut, for example, have developed minor seepage -- though
it poses no public health risk, according to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. The superheated fuel rods must be
submerged in water; if exposed, they would catch fire, cause a
meltdown and emit a radioactive plume that could expose tens of
thousands of people.

The nation's cooling pools are filling to capacity. The Shearon
Harris complex stores not just waste from its own reactor but
also the overflow from two other nuclear plants. Nearly half the
nation's 64 commercial nuclear sites have been forced to move
the radioactive waste out of the temporary water tanks and into
outdoor concrete silos for extended storage. And at least 15
utilities will need to start using outdoor storage in the next
several years, according to the NRC.

At a height of 20 feet, the outdoor storage silos present a much
more difficult terrorist target than the World Trade Center
towers, industry officials say. The 200-ton structures are
typically designed to withstand the impact of an airplane, the
violence of an earthquake and the force of a tornado, according
to the nuclear industry and federal regulators.

Once encased in stainless steel and shielded by reinforced
concrete, the intense radioactivity is safely contained and the
silo can be approached without a hazmat suit.

But the silos are not indestructible, critics warn, and are
vulnerable to direct hit by artillery. They are licensed for 20
years at a time but designed to last at least a century.

"They are incredibly resistant, but everything has a breaking
point," said Kraft at the Illinois anti-nuclear group.

The NRC maintains that if one of the stainless steel canisters
were damaged, the radioactivity would be decayed enough that the
area contaminated would be limited.

"At 100 yards, you don't worry about it," said Wayne Hodges, a
deputy director in the NRC's Spent Fuels Project Office. "The
public at large would not be threatened."

Moving the outdoor canisters -- as Progress Energy is forced to
do -- presents its own challenges. In 2002, two prison escapees
hopped aboard one of Progress Energy's rail transports,
apparently hoping to ride the rails to freedom, hobo-style. The
fugitives were caught, but industry critics seized on the
incident as an example of the company's vulnerability to
potential attack.

Still, for the foreseeable future, the country's nuclear waste
will be stored in outdoor silos and bunkers.

"It's a very long-term temporary solution," said Steve Nesbit,
Duke Power's spent fuel manager.

(Staff researchers Lamara Williams-Hackett, Becky Ogburn, Denise
Jones, Brooke Cain and Susan Ebbs contributed to this report.)
Staff writer John Murawski can be reached at 829-8932 or
murawski@newsobserver.com.
   
 � Copyright 2006, The News & Observer Publishing Company
*****************************************************************
 27 BBC: Labour to discuss nuclear options
 
Last Updated: Sunday, 15 January 2006
 
[Hunterston control]                            

The Scottish Labour Party is to consider nuclear power options                                                            

The Scottish Labour Party is planning to review its stance on the 
building of new nuclear power stations as part of an internal 
consultation. 

Holyrood's Labour/Lib Dem coalition has until now said it would 
not accept the construction of any new plants until the issue of 
waste was solved. 

Labour's decision to look into the issue prompted speculation 
that the first minister was poised for a u-turn. 

But the party insisted there was no presumption for or against 
nuclear. 

The move comes amid widespread speculation that Prime Minister 
Tony Blair will back new nuclear power stations as a solution to 
energy shortages. 

'Party row' 

The Scottish Labour Party's consultation will help form the basis 
of the party's 2007 Holyrood election manifesto. 

The Sunday Herald newspaper suggested that the review would pave 
the way for a Scottish Labour to remove its opposition to new 
nuclear power stations being built in Scotland. 

Bristow Muldoon MSP, the chair of Labour's Scottish policy forum, 
said the party would bring forward its election manifesto in 2007 
after a long and thorough consultation. 

Rather than dancing to To Blair's pro-nuclear tune, we need to 
show some backbone

Richard Lochhead MSP SNP     

	 

"It is right that nuclear is discussed as part of an energy mix," 
he said. 

"What our opponents cannot stomach is that we want a grown up 
discussion about it." 

But Scottish National Party energy spokesman Richard Lochhead MSP 
said the exercise showed the party could be poised for a u-turn. 

He said: "Just as Blair's review in London is nothing more than a 
rallying call for nuclear, Jack McConnell's exercise will be no 
more than a rubber stamping exercise for Westminster's decision. 

"Rather than dancing to Tony Blair's pro-nuclear tune, we need to 
show some backbone and develop Scottish solutions to Scottish 
problems." 

The Scottish Socialist Party national convenor Colin Fox MSP said 
the first minister had been "whipped into line" over nuclear 
power by Westminster. 

'Environmental enemies' 

"Scots will be horrified at the idea of nuclear power being 
seriously considered as an option by Labour," he said. 

"Nuclear power has the potential to inflict catastrophe and 
produces waste that we still not know how to deal with. 

"New Labour are showing themselves to be the enemies of the 
environmental movement." 

The Scottish Greens said they welcomed Labour's "apparent 
commitment" to a mature debate, and called for Labour to bring 
forward a debate on nuclear power in the Scottish Parliament. 

Green MSP Chris Ballance said myths surrounding nuclear power 
needed to be quashed. 

"It is still uneconomic, dangerous, it will not tackle climate 
change, and the waste is not going to magic itself away anywhere 
fast," he said. 

Scottish Labour's coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, said 
they would remain opposed to new nuclear power stations in 
Scotland whatever Labour decided. 
*****************************************************************
 28 Scotland: ePolitix.com: McConnell rethinks nuclear stance
 
  [Jack McConnell]   

Scotland's first minister has come under fire following claims
that he is set to perform a u-turn by backing a new generation
of nuclear power stations. 

Jack McConnell had initially signalled that Scottish Labour
would not support the development of any new nuclear plants
north of the border. 

But weekend media reports suggest McConnell, who has announced
plans for an energy review, is poised to support Tony Blair’s
likely commitment to building a new generation of nuclear
plants. 

Opposition parties slammed the Executive over what they claimed
was the latest reversal of policy. 
London calling
 

SNP energy spokesman Richard Lochhead said Scotland needed an
urgent energy review but accused ministers of "taking their lead
from London". 

"Just as Blair's review in London is nothing more than a
rallying call for nuclear, Jack McConnell's exercise will be no
more than a rubber stamping exercise for Westminster's
decision," he added. 

"We should all be committed to making Scotland the renewables
powerhouse of Europe by developing our industry and creating
jobs, not turning our beautiful country into a dumping ground
for thousands of years worth of nuclear waste. 

"Nuclear power is dirty, dangerous, unneeded and unwanted in
Scotland. By developing our renewables potential we can become a
world leader in the area, while creating jobs and maintaining
security of supply."     

Published: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:01:00 GMT+00
 Author: Craig Hoy 

�2006 ePolitix.com     
*****************************************************************
 29 Sunday Herald: McConnell paves way for nuclear power U-turn - 

      Scotland's award-winning independent newspaper

  First Ministerasks Scottish Labour to considernew nuclearpower
stations

By Paul Hutcheon, Scottish Political Editor 
 
 First Minister Jack McConnell is paving the way for a Scottish
Labour U-turn which would remove its opposition to new nuclear
power stations being built in Scotland. McConnell has launched
an internal party consultation on whether Scotland can afford to
turn its back on the controversial energy source. 

His colleagues are being asked to decide whether a commitment to
another generation of nuclear reactors should become official
party policy.

The move follows widespread speculation that Prime Minister Tony
Blair will back new nuclear power stations as a solution to
energy shortages and as a way of helping the government to
fulfil its pledge to reduce carbon emissions.

But the energy issue is sensitive for McConnell, who along with
his coalition partners at Holyrood, the Liberal Democrats, has
ruled out any new nuclear power stations while the problem of
radioactive waste remains unresolved. 

The consultation is part of Labours policy forum process that
will lay the foundations for the partys 2007 Holyrood election
manifesto.

Until last month, the party had omitted any reference to nuclear
power generation because it was perceived to be a reserved issue.

But senior Labour figures argued that the issues of planning and
overall energy needs made it essential that the subject was
addressed in Scotland.

Party bosses agreed before Christmas to include a series of
questions on nuclear power in stage two of the consultation
process which will involve activists and affiliated bodies.

They will be asked to comment on whether nuclear power should
have a future in Scotland and what the partys response should be
to the ongoing debate on UK energy needs.

Labour members will also be asked to comment on the political
feasibility of blocking a new power plant that has been backed
by Westminster.

While the Scottish Executive has the power to thwart Westminster
plans for new stations by refusing to give them planning
permission, the consultation launched by McConnell is likely to
make that threat disappear.

The Sunday Herald also understands that a row took place last
month over the content of the manifestos environment paper, with
senior Labour figures defeating an attempt to label nuclear a
less desirable option.

Many trade unionists and Labour MPs and MSPs with reactors in
their constituencies want the party to back nuclear power, while
Sera, an environmental pressure group linked to Labour, is
opposed to the idea of new reactors.

A source close to the First Minister said party members would
welcome a debate on nuclear power. It is recognised it was
missing from earlier drafts. Scottish Labour has to have a
position on future nuclear energy. There will be a debate within
the party.

 One party source told the Sunday Herald that the consultation
would bring the party into line with the thinking of the Prime
Minister, who has become increasingly pro-nuclear.

Scotland cannot sit out this debate. Its right that we look at
our own needs at the same time there is an energy review going
on at Westminster. 

Labour ministers will also use the findings of the Scottish
energy review, to be published this week, to restate the
importance of a balanced portfolio.

The AEA Technology report, which was commissioned by the
Executive, will confirm Scotlands reliance on nuclear power. It
will show that between 1990 and 2002, nuclear accounted for
around 35% of Scotlands electricity needs, with coal making up
about 33% and renewable sources 11%.

Scottish ministers are expected to warn that the failure to
consider a new generation of nuclear power stations would create
a gap that renewables cannot fill.

A spokesman for Scottish Labour confirmed that the party was con
sulting on nuclear power: Labours policy process is all about
debating issues and listening to the membership. In 2007, our
manifesto will put forward a robust and progressive reform
programme.

Claudia Beamish, the co-ordinator of the energy subgroup of
Sera, said she did not favour new nuclear power stations: Sera
is always working for a sustainable Scotland. Our position is
that we believe nuclear has no place in a sustainable energy
policy.

SNP leader Alex Salmond last night dismissed Scottish Labours
energy review. He said: It is the London stage of the
consultation that is important for Scottish Labour.

If London wants to foist nuclear power on Scotland, Jack
McConnell will stand to attention and salute. 
15 January 2006 			 			 		 			 				 					

 � newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved 			 		
*****************************************************************
 30 REGNUM: Head of Rosatom proposes to restore ex-USSR nuclear complex -
                        
Moscow  �  09:15  �  January 16, 2006 Subscribe 

Head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) Sergei
Kiriyenko will present his proposition on cooperation in
peaceful use of nuclear energy between Russia and Kazakhstan on
January 25, at the CIS Summit in Saint-Petersburg. As a
REGNUMcorrespondent was informed in Rosatom news office, this
was a commission, given by Russian President Vladimir Putinafter
the summit talks of Russia and Kazakhstan in Astana. 

Industrial cooperation of nuclear powered factories was also
discussed during the meeting of the Russian and Ukrainian
presidents. 

Head of Rosatom proposed to restore the complex of nuclear
plants that existed in the system of the USSR machinery
ministry, because all factories that exist in Russia, Ukraine
and Kazakhstan are a part of the united Soviet system that
should be restored. It is in the interest of all countries to
develop the whole complex, and not its parts. He also noted that
Russia is ready to all mutually beneficial mechanisms of
economic cooperation in this direction. These questions will be
discussed during Kiriyenko�s work trip to Kiev. 

Also, Sergei Kiriyenko stressed that the share of nuclear power
engineering in the country is planned to reach the level, fixed
in energy strategy of Russia (in the governmental decree of
August 28, 2003), that presumes the increase of nuclear power
engineering share from 16% in 2000 to 23% in 2020 (to 32% in the
European part). Permanent news address:

www.regnum.ru/english/571735.html
                                
� 1999-2006 REGNUM News Agency 
*****************************************************************
 31 Independent: Blair sets out to sell his nuclear power policy to the public 

www.independent.co.uk

By Colin Brown, Jonathan Brown and Andy McSmith 

Published: 14 January 2006 

Tony Blair will begin preparing public opinion today for a new
generation of nuclear power stations. 

The Prime Minister is to attend a policy forum where party
activists will be urged to engage in a public debate on the
"difficult decisions" ahead over nuclear power. 

Labour MPs who oppose any expansion of nuclear power claimed
last night it was part of a softening-up exercise for the
go-ahead to be given for up to 10 new nuclear power stations. 

The new plants are likely to be built on existing sites to
minimise the threat of a public backlash. 

The Government is proposing to streamline major planning
inquiries but The Independent has learnt that senior nuclear
industry figures also want to strip public inquiries of the
power to investigate the safety of Britain's new nuclear
reactors. 

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal
that officials in the nuclear power industry want ministers to
reduce public scrutiny on planning applications in order to keep
down costs and secure the support of investors. 

Environmental groups were enraged last year when Mr Blair
ordered a fresh energy review including nuclear power, which
many saw as a foregone conclusion. 

Malcolm Wicks, the Energy minister, has promised a thorough
review. But Labour MPs last night dismissed this as a "sham". 

Alan Simpson, a leading member of the left-wing Campaign Group
of Labour MPs, said: "The review is a sham solely for the
purpose of providing the pretext for a new generation of nuclear
power stations. 

"We do not know where or how we are going to store the nuclear
waste we are currently generating and a new generation of
nuclear power stations would leave us with five times more
radioactivity." 

Alan Whitehead, a former minister, said: "Downing Street has
looked at the options for energy supply after 2010 and based on
certain assumptions about how we use energy they have concluded
that there is a very big hole and that it would be very
difficult to fill it with anything other than nuclear power." 

The go-ahead for nuclear power is one of the most difficult
challenges Mr Blair faces with his own party, along with
increased private sector involvement in the NHS and greater
selection in schools. 

Mr Blair is to reinforce his message today that there can be no
let up on renewal, particularly with the Tories regaining
confidence. He will focus on the "reform agenda" at the Labour
forum in Nottingham, saying New Labour is in the ascendant, in
spite of the resurgence of the Tories under David Cameron's
leadership. 

He will say that Labour should start 2006 with confidence, and
should not surrender the centre ground to either the Liberal
Democrats or the Conservatives. "We are a rock of stability
around which the waters of the other parties are having to
swirl," he will claim. Six policy papers to be discussed by
party activists and the public today cover a new British nuclear
deterrent, tougher measures on terrorism, an expansion of rural
housing, road pricing to curb traffic congestion and pensions
reform. 

The pressure for nuclear power, however, is becoming one of the
most controversial issues that Mr Blair now has to face. 

The momentum for nuclear power will be stepped up by Amicus, the
white-collar union led by Derek Simpson, on Monday with a
warning that Britain needs nuclear power for strategic reasons
to protect itself from energy shortages as a result of
international instability or blackmail by countries such as
Russia. The policy documents warn there will have to be a "trade
off" over the environment and energy. They give a clear hint
that the option of going ahead with a new generation of nuclear
power stations could help Britain meet the Government's
ambitious target on climate change of reducing UK carbon dioxide
emissions by 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010. "All energy
options are up for consideration including the role of current
generating technologies," say the reports. 

Mr Cameron also faces his own test over a decision to adopt
nuclear power. His eco-adviser, Zac Goldsmith, recently accused
Labour of cosying up to big business and made it clear he was
opposed to a new generation of nuclear power stations. 

Playing the nuclear card 

By Steve Connor 

* Generating electricity by nuclear power does not produce
carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, which is the
strongest environmental card the nuclear industry can play. 

The downside is that nuclear power stations produce radioactive
waste that can be dangerous for thousands of years. This remains
an unresolved issue and dealing with waste disposal may cost
�56bn - a figure that will rise if new power stations are built.
Nuclear power enables Britain to be more self-sufficient in
energy, and security of supply is an important strategic factor.
Nuclear power is also a continuous operation that does not
depend on wind, sun or tides, unlike renewable sources of
energy. 

The industry says the last 10 nuclear reactors in the world were
all built on time and to budget. Opponents point out that the
technology used to generate nuclear power can be used to make
weapons. 
Also in this section 

� 2006 Independent News and Media Limited 
*****************************************************************
 32 Rutland Herald: Group plans protest Monday

Rutland Vermont News & Information
 	 	 	 	 	 
January 14, 2006 

BRATTLEBORO � Anti-nuclear activists say they are using the
example set by Martin Luther King Jr. as they plan to protest
Monday morning at the corporate headquarters of the owners of
Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

At least eight people, five from Vermont and three from
neighboring Massachusetts, plan on being arrested Monday to
protest the proposed power boost and license extension of
Vermont Yankee, which is owned by Entergy Nuclear of Jackson,
Miss.

Deborah Katz, executive director of Citizens Awareness Network,
said Saturday that the protesters were taking inspiration from
King, the civil rights leader whose birth is marked Monday as a
federal holiday.

"They are taking a moral stand against Vermont Yankee and its
continued operation," she said. The protest starts at 10 a.m.

This is the third protest at Entergy's corporate headquarters
since November, and Katz said there would be protests from
different "affinity groups" in February and March.

Charges against the protesters from the November demonstration
were dismissed, while no formal charges have been filed against
those involved in the December demonstration.

All of the previous protesters have been women, but Katz said
the latest group of protesters would include both men and women.

"These people are experiencing a level of helplessness and
outrage, (with) no avenue, except to go out and go in the
street, they are willing to put their bodies on the line," Katz
said.

Vermont Yankee, the state's only nuclear reactor, provides
one-third of all the electricity used in Vermont; half of its
production is sold out of state.
   
*****************************************************************
 33 TheStar.com: Bruce Power restart draws interest to Lake Huron shores
 
Sun. Jan. 15, 2006. | Updated at 07:35 AM 

Jan. 14, 2006. 01:00 

AM ROBERTA A VERY SPECIAL TO THE STAR SAUGEEN SHORES

News that Bruce Power is forging ahead with plans to restart two 
remaining mothballed nuclear reactors at its Lake Huron site  
and the discovery of this community by early retirees  have 
resulted in a residential building boom in the area.

"There has been a lot of activity since the announcement (of the 
planned restart),'' says Jim Bell, chief building official of 
Saugeen Shores, the municipality that includes the Lake Huron 
communities of Port Elgin and Southampton.

But it's not only power workers who have discovered Saugeen 
Shores, adds Bell.

 "A lot of retirees from the cities are moving up here.'' 

The $2-billion refurbishment of Bruce Power's Units One and Two 
at Tiverton, 20 kilometres south of Port Elgin and 28 km from 
Southampton, will result in hundreds of well-paying jobs. And 
that has already caused a demand for upscale homes.

"About 75 per cent of our buyers are from Bruce Power and they
are looking for high-end custom homes,'' says Tom Clancy, whose
company Clancy Builders Ltd. is servicing 37 lots to be ready
for building in the spring at Miramichi Shores between Port
Elgin and Southampton.

The half-acre (0.2-hectare) serviced lots ranging from $99,000
to $119,000 are within walking distance of the beach and the
world-famous Lake Huron sunsets, golf courses and hiking trails.
They're also less than a five-minute drive along Highway 21 to
shopping. 

Although buyers are free to bring in their own builders
(providing architectural controls are met), most are opting to
have Clancy, a well-known custom builder, construct their homes. 

Clancy homes start at around $300,000 to $400,000 for a
2,000-square-foot home, plus the lot cost. For more information
visit or call (519) 376-0637.

Reid's Heritage Homes has a 25-year plan for its 660-acre
(267-hectare) Summerside site in Port Elgin, said senior sales
representative Jackie Krysco.

"We strongly believe this area has a big future, so this is a
long-term project,'' said Krysco.

The company is developing "little pockets" in the former tobacco
fields with lots from 65 feet wide to a half-acre
(0.2-hectares). 

A total of 52 lots have been made available for 2006 and a model
home is scheduled for completion by late May. 

Homes are a mix of two-storeys and bungalows and range from
$283,400 for a bungalow to $323,900 for a 2,344-square-foot,
two-storey home. 

A sales office on the site on Highway 21 in Port Elgin is open
Monday to Wednesdays, 2 to 7 p.m.; Saturday, Sundays and
holidays, noon to 5 p.m. 

For more information visit or call (519) 389-4848 or toll-free
at 1-866-389-7343. 

Ray Fenton's development in Port Elgin's south end is also a
long-term project, but one that the former school principal
began 20 years ago after purchasing a 170-acre (68.8-hectare)
site for future development.

About 100 lots have already been developed on the site, which is
walking distance to the beach, and servicing is underway for 80
to 100 more lots to be available for sale by the spring. 

Lots range from 55 to 75 feet wide and sell for $50,000 to
$60,000. For more information call (519) 389-4444.

Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All
*****************************************************************
 34 Japan Times: Settlement in Mihama steam leak

  Sunday, January 15, 2006   
  
FUKUI (Kyodo) The injured workers and the families of those
killed in a 2004 lethal steam leak at Kansai Electric Power
Co.'s Mihama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture have
reached out-of-court settlements with the utility, sources said
Saturday.

 Five people died and six were hurt when superheated
nonradioactive steam burst from a ruptured pipe at the plant's
No. 3 reactor on Aug. 9, 2004.

 The plant's pipes had not been inspected for 28 years.

 Kepco declined to reveal the details of the settlement, but the
sources said the firm will pay a total of more than 1 billion
yen. 

Compensation for the families of those killed includes
consolation money, estimated lost earnings and funeral expenses,
the sources said, while the injured workers will have their
medical fees covered.

 The Japan Times: Jan. 15, 2006
(C) All rights reserved 


*****************************************************************
 35 Boston Globe: Critics want a voice, and more cash from Pilgrim - 

By Robert Knox, Globe Correspondent  |  January 15, 2006 

PLYMOUTH -- Calling the renewal of the Pilgrim nuclear power
plant's operating license the most important issue the town
faces, plant critics are proposing that voters be asked their
opinion in a nonbinding referendum in the town election in May.

Critics contend that a vote would educate the public about the
role Pilgrim plays in the town's finances and strengthen the
hand of local officials when they try to negotiate higher annual
payments from the plant's owner. Payments are now made in lieu
of taxes, and some say the town should also be compensated for
the risk of storing nuclear waste on site.

Entergy Corp., the plant's owner, has applied for a 20-year
extension of the plant's license, which is to expire in 2012.
While the decision will be made by the federal Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, local officials have argued that the town
has a role to play in the decision-making process.

Planning Board member Loring Tripp asked selectmen last week to
put a nonbinding referendum on the ballot asking for a yes or no
vote on the license extension. A ballot question would give town
officials ''the power to say to the power plant, 'This is where
our community stands,' " Tripp said.

The plant's critics also are proposing referendums in the
neighboring towns of Carver, Duxbury, and Carver, which are
close enough to the Plymouth plant to be required to have
emergency plans in case of a nuclear accident.

While the selectmen did not respond officially to Tripp's
proposal last week, the board has said that it would discuss
Pilgrim after reading a lengthy report from the town's Nuclear
Matters Committee, a citizens panel appointed by the selectmen
to give them advice on any issue relating to the plant. That
report, which was critical of Pilgrim's current relationship
with the town, was released Jan. 3.

In it, the Nuclear Matters Committee recommended that the town
require Entergy to pay its ''fair share" of taxes and compensate
the town for the risks it assumes through the plant's storing of
nuclear waste on site. The report also was critical of the
town's emergency-response plans.

Selectman Anthony Schena said Wednesday that he wanted to
examine the committee's recommendations further before taking a
position on a nonbinding referendum on license renewal.

Pilgrim spokeswoman Carol Wightman said Wednesday: ''We're
certainly willing to talk about these issues and seek fair and
equitable solutions to all these concerns." Wightman said she
was not aware of the referendum proposal but could not see any
benefit to it.

Nick Filla, the Planning Board chairman, said the board expects
to discuss the referendum idea at a joint meeting with the
selectmen and the School Committee on Jan. 24. Filla said that
instead of a simple yes or no question, the poll should ask
voters whether, if relicensing is approved, the town should
receive compensation for storing nuclear waste. 

''Everyone wants to change the status quo," Filla said. ''We're
storing nuclear material there. To me there has to be some sort
of compensation."

There is, critics say, precedent in this area; local pressure
led to the closing of a nuclear plant in California after its
owners chose not to make payments to compensate local
communities for the risks associated with housing a nuclear
plant, Tripp said. Officials in Maine have proposed a law that
would allow communities to charge a nuclear power plant an
impact fee because of its effect on the community.

Plymouth officials could pressure their state and federal
representatives to give towns the right to assess impact fees or
mitigation payments, Tripp said.

The fact that relicensing would increase the plant's value, some
say, is all the more reason for the town to make a better deal
now.

''The people of Plymouth have never been polled," said Ric Cone,
a town meeting member for a Plymouth center precinct. ''The
referendum would give the citizens in my part of town -- who
would never be able to get out of town in a nuclear emergency --
a chance to say what they feel."

State Representative Thomas J. O'Brien, a Kingston Democrat
whose district includes parts of Plymouth and Duxbury, said the
referendum issue should be determined on the local level. He
also said legislators representing Plymouth believe the town
should be receiving compensation for storing nuclear waste.

When deregulation of the electric-power industry went into
effect in the 1990s, the value of Pilgrim dropped and the town
negotiated a deal intended to cushion taxpayers from the loss of
tax revenue from the plant. Under that deal, payments in place
of taxes from the plant, currently $12 million, are scheduled to
drop to $1 million in fiscal year 2008. The average taxpayer
will be facing a tax increase of $300 to $500 in 2008, Tripp
said.

''A multibillion [dollar] corporation [Entergy] is taking record
profits at the expense of the public good here in Plymouth,"
Tripp said. ''If the general public rises up and speaks with one
voice on this issue, we have a better chance of getting
mitigation from that plant."

 Robert Knox can be reached at rc.knox@gmail.com. [ /] �
Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company. 12More: 
*****************************************************************
 36 Napa Valley Register: U.S. sees resurgence in new nuclear plants
 
By EMERY P. DALESIO, AP Business Writer

 Saturday, January 14, 2006 1:04 AM PST 

RALEIGH, N.C. -- With guaranteed federal loans and insurance
protection promised to the first power companies to build a new
wave of nuclear plants, the race is on for construction of up to
10 stations between Maryland and Mississippi.

At least two utilities plan to announce their intended sites
within a few weeks. And some communities appear enthusiastic
about luring the jobs and tax dollars the plants would bring.
One South Carolina county looking to land a proposed Duke Energy
Corp. plant has even offered a 50 percent break on property
taxes.

But even with the nuclear power industry in an apparent
resurgence in the fast-growing Southeast, one traditional
participant in the debate over nuclear power has remained
largely silent. Environmentalists, mostly mum so far about the
potential dangers and pitfalls associated with this proposed
round of reactors, say they're just taking a long view.

"The nuclear industry has tried to revitalize itself a number of
times in the past," said Stephen Smith, executive director of
the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy in Atlanta. "Just because
the political climate is favorable for the next couple of years,
these things take 10 years to build and the climate may not be
favorable then." 

No nuclear reactor has been ordered for construction since 1973,
and the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant
in Pennsylvania in 1979 killed interest in anything beyond
completing plants then under construction. The United States now
gets 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear reactors.

In North Carolina, where Charlotte-based Duke Energy and
Raleigh-based Progress Energy Inc. expect to announce their
preferred sites for nuclear plants within weeks,
environmentalists want to have a broader conversation before
getting into a debate over new plants.

"We do not want to jump the gun and put out a bunch of
incendiary comments," said Ivan Urlaub, executive director of
the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, a nonprofit
advocacy group. "We haven't done an honest evaluation of the
role energy efficiency can play in our economic development and
our energy future as a state. Until we do that we think it would
be bad policy to approve any new nuclear or coal plants."

Urlaub's group is working with at least half a dozen others in
compiling data to support their argument -- that environmental
and economic prudence dictates using existing energy supplies
more efficiently rather than spending to increase supplies.
Their report will be used to fight plant licensing efforts in
hearings before state regulators across the Southeast,
environmentalists said.

"The utilities have to demonstrate that the facilities are
needed. The first step is assessing demand and what are the
opportunities to meet it," said Molly Diggins, executive
director of the Sierra Club's North Carolina chapter.

The Energy Department forecasts that the consumption of nuclear
energy will increase 5.3 percent between this year and 2015 --
the earliest date when any of the proposed new plants might come
on line -- and by almost 11 percent by 2030.

Renewable energy, excluding hydroelectric, now produces less
than half as much power as U.S. nuclear plants. But that source
is predicted to grow by 29 percent in 2015 and 76 percent in
2030, says the Energy Information Administration, the
government's energy statistical agency.

In an environment where coal, oil and gas prices remain unstable
following recent spikes, nuclear supporters say the world needs
a variety of power sources that don't contribute to global
warming.

"In a carbon-constrained world ... nuclear plants have got to be
in that mix," said Andy White, the president and chief executive
officer of Wilmington-based GE Energy, the nuclear engineering
and consulting business of General Electric Corp.

White expects lots of business over the next decade until the
first plants open and beyond the middle of the century as old
plants are replaced. After 2015, White said the nuclear industry
will need to build two plants a year to replace the power lost
as aging, first-generation reactors go offline, translating to
60 or more new reactors. The U.S. has about 100 existing plants.

Progress Energy, which has almost 1.4 million customers in North
Carolina and South Carolina, expects to announce a preferred
site in one of the two states this month, spokesman Keith Poston
said. A site for a second nuclear plant in Florida, where the
company has an additional 1.5 million customers, should be
announced by April, he said.

Before clearing the way for construction, state regulators are
expected to investigate whether the utility can squeeze more
production out its existing plants.

"Certainly conservation and energy efficiency has a role to
play, as does the continuing exploration of renewable
resources," Poston said.

Progress added 69,000 homes and businesses in its three states
over the past year, Poston said, and expects to add 600,000 new
customers over the next decade as the population boom continues
in its service area.

The options for the heavy-duty plants needed to supply all those
customers come down to natural gas, oil, coal and nuclear, he
said.

"We think that nuclear may end up as the best option for a
variety of reasons, but we're always going to have a mix of
fuels to protect customers from volatility in supply and price,"
Poston said.

Duke Energy's utility division, Duke Power, is preparing to add
up to 60,000 customers a year in its two-state service area of
North Carolina and South Carolina, spokeswoman Rita Sipe said.

Duke will select a site in one of the states soon, but even that
milestone isn't expected to draw much response from
environmental watchdogs, said Jim Warren, executive director of
the anti-nuclear North Carolina Waste Awareness &Reduction
Network.

"There's a lot of organizing going on. I don't think as much of
it will be geared around when they make an announcement. Most of
the opposition will come in a phased type of way," he said. "It
will especially be geared toward the need for a full-blown
public debate."

On the Net:

Southern Alliance for Clean Energy: http://www.cleanenergy.org/

American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy:
http://www.aceee.org

Energy Information Administration:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/forecasting.html

Progress Energy: http://www.progress-energy.com/index.asp

Duke Energy: http://www.duke-energy.com/

Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov

General Electric:
http://www.gepower.com/businesses/ge--nuclear/en/index.htm 
			     		 
  Copyright � 2006 Lee Enterprises   
*****************************************************************
 37 Scotsman.com News: Labour denies nuclear U-turn
 
Sun 15 Jan 2006        

Claims that First Minister Jack McConnell is poised for a U-turn
on the Executive's opposition to building more nuclear reactors
have been denied by the Scottish Labour Party. 

The debate over the future of the controversial energy source in
Scotland is part of an internal consultation that will form the
basis for the party's 2007 Holyrood election manifesto. 

Scottish Executive ministers are deciding policy on whether or
not there should be another generation of nuclear reactors north
of the border. 

The move comes amid widespread speculation that Prime Minister
Tony Blair will back new nuclear power stations as a solution to
energy shortages. But the Labour-Lib Dem coalition at Holyrood
has already ruled out any new nuclear power stations while the
problem of radioactive waste remains unresolved. 

The Sunday Herald reported Labour had not debated nuclear power
until last month because it was perceived to be a reserved
issue. But senior Labour figures argued that the issues of
planning and overall energy needs made it necessary to address
the subject in Scotland. 

The newspaper said it understood a row took place last month
over the content of the manifesto's environment paper, with
senior Labour figures defeating an attempt to label nuclear a
"less desirable" option. 

The Sunday Herald also said Labour ministers would use a
Scottish energy review, published this week, to restate the
importance of nuclear power. 

Responding to the report, Bristow Muldoon, the chair of Labour's
Scottish policy forum, said: "It is right that nuclear is
discussed as part of an energy mix. There is no presumption for
or against nuclear power, what our opponents cannot stomach is
that we want a grown up discussion about it. 

"When Labour brings forward its manifesto in 2007 it will be
after a long and through dialogue with the party, trade unions,
affiliates and Scottish civic society." 

But SNP energy spokesman Richard Lochhead MSP said he believed
the party were poised for a U-turn over nuclear power, saying:
"Just as Blair's review in London is nothing more than a
rallying call for nuclear, Jack McConnell's exercise will be no
more than a rubber-stamping exercise for Westminster's
decision." 

© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 38 ITAR-TASS: Govt to support federal nuclear centers

15.01.2006, 20.36

SAROV (Nizhny Novgorod region), January 15 (Itar-Tass) -- The
government will do its best to support fundamental science and
federal nuclear centers, Federal Atomic Energy Agency head
Sergei Kiriyenko said at a Sunday meeting with researchers from
the Sarov federal nuclear center. 

�Any review of the status of Russian nuclear centers is out of
the question,� Kiriyenko said. 

He lauded the participation of Sarov nuclear researchers in the
development of a special economic zone and a techno-park in the
Nizhny Novgorod region. The scientific and technical potential
of the region makes one feel optimistic about the projects�
success, he said. 

       
� ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,



*****************************************************************
 39 Palm Beach Post: Judge rules in favor of FPL in suit over nuke plant
 
By Sarah Prohaska Staff Writer             

Saturday, January 14, 2006               

Two sets of Treasure Coast parents  who blame emissions from 
Florida Power & Light's nuclear power plant for their sons' rare 
cancers  won't get to present their cases to a jury this month 
after a federal judge ruled in favor of FPL. 

While an FPL spokeswoman said Friday the ruling handed down by 
U.S. District Judge James Cohn confirms their argument that the 
suit "had no merit," the families are disappointed that the judge 
ended the case before they had a chance to air their allegations 
in a trial.

"It's frustrating. We were within days of a trial," said Jensen
Beach resident Scott Finestone, who sued in 2003 after his
now-11-year-old son, Zachary, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma,
cancer in his nervous system, in 2000. "More than anything we
wanted our day in court." 

Cohn on Monday granted FPL's request for summary judgment in the
case, saying the plaintiffs "shall take nothing from the
defendants in this action," and ordered clerks to close the
file. 

The Finestones, along with Tish Blake and John Lowe, the Port
St. Lucie parents of 13-year-old Ashton Lowe, allege FPL was
negligent and breached various duties to limit radioactive
releases from its St. Lucie County nuclear plant. Ashton Lowe
died in 2001 of a form of brain cancer called medulloblastoma. 

However, Cohn ultimately agreed with FPL, saying "there still is
no admissible evidence to support" the families' allegations
that FPL exceeded allowable emissions. 

"Plaintiffs must do more than present plausible, yet
speculative, theories about the amount of radiation released by
the St. Lucie nuclear plant," Cohn wrote in the 38-page ruling. 

West Palm Beach attorney Nancy La Vista, who represented the two
families, said she plans to appeal the ruling and hopes her
clients will one day get a trial. 

FPL spokeswoman Rachel Scott said the utility is satisfied with
the outcome. 

"We have to operate our nuclear plants with a strict focus on
safety, not only for our employees, but also for the public,"
Scott said. "And we're very serious about that." 

Both families took part in a state investigation into a possible
"cancer cluster" among children in St. Lucie County in the late
1990s. At the time, it was one of the largest investigations of
its kind, after officials found 28 cases of brain and central
nervous system childhood cancer between 1981 and 1996 in the
area. But the investigation offered the families no definitive
answers, and officials said there was no pattern or "smoking
gun." 

They later participated in a study by a national organization
analyzing levels of strontium-90, a fission product, in children
and whether radioactive emissions from nuclear reactors raise
cancer risks for children. Baby teeth from Lowe and Finestone
showed high levels of strontium-90, according to their lawsuit. 

While the families alleged the nuclear plant was the source of
the strontium-90 in their boys, FPL vehemently denied it. 

"Why else would it be here?" Scott Finestone said Friday. "My
son was not flying nuclear bomb planes in the 1960s." 

Attorneys for FPL argued that all strontium-90 in St. Lucie
County, as well as the rest of Florida, is here as a result of
atmospheric weapons testing and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant
disaster. 

Despite the suit's dismissal, Finestone and Tish Blake said they
still believe the nuclear plant is at the root of their sons'
illnesses. "I blame them more now because of the information we
found out," Blake said Friday. 

They point to documents their attorneys dug up from the early
1980s detailing the release of sewage sludge that was
accidentally contaminated with radioactive waste in the late
1970s and early 1980s. The waste from a contaminated sink was
mistakenly shipped to a cow pasture near Glades Cut-Off Road in
western St. Lucie County, and also to the Fort Pierce Sewage
Treatment plant, the plaintiffs argued. FPL and the families
disagreed on the amount of contamination. 

FPL officials say the contamination was "extremely low radiation
levels," and was cleaned up. They said air, soil and water tests
showed there was no public health risk. 

In his ruling, Cohn said he found the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission's final report on the sludge releases to be "of
critical importance." That report concluded "it is unlikely that
anyone received a measurable radiation dose." 

Throughout the litigation, the families' attorneys complained
that FPL did not produce documents about the incident on time,
and Cohn in his ruling acknowledged that "certain plant records
regarding three days in mid-September 1982, when the sludge
incident was first discovered, remain missing and were perhaps
destroyed long before this case began." 

But Cohn dealt a blow to the families' cases when he declared
testimony by three of their expert witnesses about the levels of
radiation in the sludge as inadmissible. He ruled their theories
had not been subject to peer review and publication, and he
expressed concern about the potential error rate in their
assumptions. 

While he said he wants to appeal, Scott Finestone said his
family's focus now is on Zachary, who is about to turn 12 and is
in the sixth grade at a private school in Martin County. He is
undergoing chemotherapy but is playing soccer in a recreational
league, and is doing pretty well right now, his dad said. 

"Yes, we would have liked to have had the trial, but right now
we have bigger fish to fry," Finestone said. "We feel lucky
we've been able to enjoy the quality of life we have with
Zachary. We have a lot of friends who have buried their children
in the past few years." 

Scott said while FPL has maintained the plant did not have
anything to do with the boys' cancer, it sympathizes with the
families. 

"Of course, it's very, very sad when a family is dealing with
cancer, especially children," she said. "We can understand their
search for answers." 	 

Copyright � 2006, The Palm Beach Post. All rights reserved.
 By using PalmBeachPost.com
*****************************************************************
 40 Appleton Post-Crescent: Metal detection

Madison weekly: 

Posted January 15, 2006 

By Ben Jones

A public hearing was held Tuesday on a bill that would provide
National Guard soldiers with safety and training information on
depleted uranium contamination. 

The Assembly Committee on Veterans Affairs heard testimony from
the bill's author, Rep. Thomas Nelson, D-Kaukauna, who is
calling for a "comprehensive approach" to awareness, screening
and assistance regarding contamination from munitions in
military conflict. Depleted uranium is used in armor-piercing
munitions and some tank armor. 

"Our National Guard soldiers have a right to know about the
dangers of DU (depleted uranium) contamination before they are
mobilized and have access to information, screening, and
treatment when they come home," said Nelson. 

Nelson said recent evidence has shown that military personnel in
Iraq and Afghanistan have been affected "biogenetically" from
exposure to the detonation of depleted uranium and resulting
contamination. 

The bill has support from the departments of Military Affairs
and Veterans Affairs, and from various veterans' organizations. 

Appleton Post-Crescent| Fond du Lac Reporter| Green Bay
*****************************************************************
 41 URGENT: Radiation Warning to SE Asian Countries! 
 
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:32:56 -0600 (CST)

Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE):
Free Americans Proclaiming Total Emancipation and Working Towards
Democracy.

From: Cathy Garger <savorsuccesslady@yahoo.com>
Date: January 15, 2006 12:31:07 PM EST
Subject: [911TruthAction] Warning to SE Asian countries about Iran war
and monsoon rains depositing radiation in environment
Reply-To: 911TruthAction@yahoogroups.com

To All Those Who Possess a Heart and a Conscience,
 
This most disconcerting news is of utmost urgency, importance, and
concern.  I suspect strongly that there are few of us who doubt any
longer our controlling powers' desire to wage more wars
against innocent people of more nations who have done us no harm.
 
Someone, anyone, please write and tell me what we are going to do to
stop this - our  nation - from striking and ruining forever yet one
more area of the world in the next couple of months?
 
Since ulra-tiny particles of radiation travel through the atmosphere in
the winds and the clouds, the use of any type of radioactive uranium
does eventually hit "home" to roost upon us here, in the United States,
right in our own kids' and grand kids' backyards.
 
Although we may take comfort by telling ourselves that these wars are
taking place "over there" someplace, across some distant sea... the
fact of the matter is, the radioactivity we use "over
there"... eventually comes back to harm us all, right here in the US. 
Right where our kids play.  Right where they try to breathe.
 
Friends, these wars are Personal. Extremely Personal, in fact. We may
not realize it, but eventually the poison our military uses affects
each and every one of us.
 
As they say, what goes around comes around.  And what comes around to
haunt us from these wars is, quite literally, a toxic, radioactive mess
that gets into the air that we breathe, the soils that support our
animal and plant life we use for food, and the water that we drink. 
   
What can each one of us do to stop this War-Making Madness
before our rulers in power strike out at the Asian world, and
eventually ourselves, yet again?
 
Please, for the sake of our kids - for the sake of all of us
- please pass the article below around.
 
Thank you very much in advance.
 
Warm regards,
 
Cathy Garger
Maryland

For Immediate Release
Contact: Bob Nichols
bob.bobnichols@gmail.com
Or, Leuren Moret
leurenmoret@yahoo.com

-----------------------

This is a deadly message to Southeastern Asian Countries about the
upcoming IRAN War and the monsoon rains depositing deadly radiation in
the environment.

The message is from Leuren Moret, a world famous geoscientist and
radiation expert and myself, Bob Nichols, newspaper correspondent and
writer.

I request that you send this to everyone in your address book and that
you "Be the Media". Help us stop the Fifth US Nuclear War in 15 years
from even starting.

Thank you,

Bob Nichols
Project Censored Award Winner
Correspondent, San Francisco Bay View newspaper

--------------------------------------------

To: All People concerned about American Wars Worldwide
From: Leuren Moret <leurenmoret@yahoo.com>
Subject: Warning to SE Asian countries about Iran war and monsoon rains
depositing radiation in environment

Dear Editor and Staff,

The United states has now caused depleted uranium illnesses in more
than 50% of our soldiers who have served on the depleted uranium
battlefields in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. "Depleted Uranium:
Dirty Bombs, Dirty Missiles, Dirty
Bullets" http://www.sfbayview.com /081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml

People at the top of the US govt and Military know this: "Terrell E.
Arnold, who has been responsible for training our most senior and most
promising military officers as chairman of the Department of
International Studies at the U.S. National War College in Washington,
reports that Coalition dead and wounded may actually be twice what the
US government admits and that, including the effects of our use of
depleted uranium and other toxic weapons, "a long-term casualty rate
for American forces of 40-50 percent appears realistic.""

The US and Israel are threatening nuclear war on Iran.

The Chinese intelligence have already warned countries that will be
contaminated with radiation from monsoon rainout of nuclear materials:
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/dec30-jan606.htm Page Down the page
for the article on Chinese Intelligence.

  "Southeast Asian intelligence sources report that Burma's (Myanmar's)
recent abrupt decision to move its capital from Rangoon (Yangon) to
remote Pyinmana, 200 miles to the north, is a result of Chinese
intelligence warnings to its Burmese allies about the effects of
radiation resulting from a U.S. conventional or tactical nuclear attack
on Iranian nuclear facilities."

  "There is concern that a series of attacks on Iranian nuclear
installations will create a Chernobyl-like radioactive cloud that would
be caught up in monsoon weather in the Indian Ocean."

  "Reports from Yemen indicate that western oil companies are concerned
about U.S. intentions in Iran since the southern Arabian country
catches the edge of the monsoon rains that could contain radioactive
fallout from an attack, endangering their workers in the country."

  "Low-lying Rangoon lies in the path of monsoon rains that would
continue to carry radioactive fallout from Iran over South and
Southeast Asia between May and October."

"Coastal Indian Ocean cities like Rangoon, Dhaka, Calcutta, Mumbai,
Chennai, and Colombo would be affected by the radioactive fallout more
than higher elevation cities since humidity intensifies the effects of
the fallout. Thousands of government workers were given only two days'
notice to pack up and leave Rangoon for the higher (and dryer)
mountainous Pyinmana."

Moret continues: I have been on SAHAR TV - Teheran Office - warning
about this radiation and discussing other issues. Please contact
Afsaneh Ostovar, the Producer of the programs if you would like more
information. You should do a big story on this coming nightmare from
the "Infidels".  I have lived in Iran briefly. I love Iran and the
people. This cannot be allowed to happen to Iran by the people of the
world.  It will make the country radioactive forever. Please do what
you can to help.

Here is an article I wrote for the World Affairs Journal.  Look at the
map and see where Iran is in this nuclear war: "Depleted Uranium: The
Trojan Horse of Nuclear War" http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs
/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04 .htm
Or, http://tinyurl.com/7dydm

Here is a Letter to the Editor for you to post everywhere:

BATTLE CREEK ENQUIRER  Letter to Editor/Opinion, August 9, 2005

Depleted uranium is WMD by Leuren Moret
http://www.battlecreekenquirer
.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050809/OPINION02/508090332/1014/
OPINION
Or, http://tinyurl.com/87crs

Thank you,

Leuren Moret 
LeurenMoret@yahoo.com

========================================================================
========================
*****************************************************************
 42 Hawk Eye: Harkin continues IAAP work 

Saturday, January 14, 2006 Site updated daily at 11 a.m. CST   
      
Senator says more workers, families need assistance. 

The Hawk Eye 

Sen. Tom Harkin wants more cancers included in a special program
to provide funding for former nuclear weapons workers at the
Iowa Army Ammunition Plant and other Department of Energy
facilities across the nation. 

The Iowa Democrat attached two provisions to the Labor, Health
and Human Services and Education appropriations bill working
through Congress. Harkin is the ranking Democrat on the LHHS
Appropriations Subcommittee. 

The first provision calls for the National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health to draft a recommendation to add
other types of cancer to the Special Exposure Cohort
classification in the Energy Employees Occupational Illness
Compensation Program. 

Former IAAP energy employees who worked in the nuclear weapons
program between 1949 and 1974 were added to the cohort last
year, making them eligible for automatic $150,000 compensation
for any of 22 various types of cancer. 

Approximately two�thirds of the eligible families have received
compensation thus far. 

Expanding the cohort would mean those employees denied
compensation because their cancers were not determined to be
radiation�related might get a second chance. 

Harkin's second provision requires that the NIOSH Advisory Board
on Worker and Radiation Health receive an additional $4.5
million this year. Harkin said the board's work helped prove
that IAAP plant records were insufficient and inaccurate, and
that it was necessary to instead provide automatic compensation
for former workers with job�related illnesses. 

Nuclear weapons components were built and tested at the
19,000�acre Middletown plant throughout the Cold War.   
  
The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington, Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 
� 1-800-397-1708 � FAX 319-754-6824 � webmaster@thehawkeye.com
*****************************************************************
 43 Sydney Morning Herald: Miners talk up uranium safeguards - 

smh.com.au
 
By Melissa Fyfe

January 16, 2006

AUSTRALIAN officials will ask China to agree to strict
safeguards on uranium sales, and an industry group says
Australia's chief negotiator will take a tough line on the
issue. 

But the Australian Conservation Foundation doubts China has the
means to ensure safeguards are followed through. 

Talks will be held tomorrow on a deal the industry-funded
Uranium Information Centre says will be a significant step
forward as China plans a huge expansion in nuclear energy plants.

But China must agree to use the resource for peaceful purposes
only, and critics of the deal believe China's nuclear energy
program has links with its weapons program. There have also been
concerns about China's threats to use nuclear force in staking
its claim to Taiwan, and its poor environmental record. 

The uranium centre manager, Ian Hore-Lacy, said: "I think all
Australians would support a firm line on that [safeguards]." 

He said the industry was trusting the professionalism of
Australia's chief negotiator, John Carlson, the director-general
of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office, a
division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

"He's a very meticulous person and not the sort of person you
can pull wool over his eyes," Mr Hore-Lacy said.

Australia has up to two-fifths of the world's uranium deposits
and exports 11,500 tonnes of the resource annually.

Mr Hore-Lacy said China was unlikely to buy all its extra
uranium from Australia and, at its peak, Chinese demand would
represent only one-third of current exports, or one-sixth after
BHP Billiton's expansion of its Olympic Dam mine in South
Australia.

Australia only sells uranium to nations that have signed the
nuclear non-proliferation treaty and a bilateral agreement. The
agreement stipulates purchasing nations must not enrich the
uranium for weapons, must separate military and civil
processing, must show that the resource can be accounted for and
must submit to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. 

However, the anti-nuclear campaigner for the Australian
Conservation Foundation, Dave Sweeney, said he was sceptical.

"The key things which have been so important in improving the
nuclear industry in the West - the independent trade unions,
rigorous media, independent regulators, green groups and
environmental watchdogs - these don't exist in China." 

Mr Sweeney said a uranium deal with China would give Rio Tinto
more reasons to stick with its troubled Ranger mine in the
Northern Territory's Kakadu National Park and hold out for the
traditional owners of the nearby Jabiluka site to reverse their
opposition to development of a mine.

The deal would also put "wind in the sails" of uranium
exploration companies.

Mr Hore-Lacy said it was inevitable Australia would get more
uranium mines; it was just a matter of waiting for state
government policies to change. The states remain opposed to
expanding uranium mining, but Federal Government is not.

"There is a high world demand for clean energy and the wisdom of
meeting that demand will prevail over ideological
considerations," Mr Hore-Lacy said.

Australia already sells uranium to other nuclear powers,
including Britain, the US and France.

Copyright � 2006. The Sydney Morning Herald. <img
*****************************************************************
 44 newsobserver.com: Why not just recycle nuclear waste and reuse it forever 
like scrap metal?

January 15, 2006

John Murawski, Staff Writer 


If only it were that simple. Only in science fiction would
reprocessing eliminate nuclear waste.

Reprocessing extracts viable nuclear fuel from the waste -- but
it doesn't reduce the amount of waste. By removing usable fuel,
reprocessing leaves about 25 percent less material for disposal.
But eventually, the reprocessed fuel is turned into radioactive
waste, too, and must be dealt with.

"From the perspective of waste reduction, it doesn't really give
us any benefit," said Felix Killar, senior director of nuclear
insurance and fuel supply for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an
industry trade group in Washington.

Of the 33 nations that use nuclear power, 12 reprocess nuclear
fuel, according to the NEI. Some countries reprocess the fuel as
a national policy to reduce the need for importing uranium.
Reprocessing nations include France, Japan and the United
Kingdom.

The United States attempted nuclear fuel reprocessing in the
1970s but stopped the practice under President Carter out of
concern about nuclear proliferation. Reprocessing creates
leftover plutonium that, in the wrong hands, could be used to
manufacture a crude nuclear weapon. Because mining new uranium
is much cheaper, reprocessing never gained traction in this
country.

Nuclear reprocessing is no simple task. The process requires the
construction of costly chemical plants that require oversight
from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The appeal of reprocessing has not faded. Last year, Congress
allocated $80 million to pay for research into developing new
reprocessing technologies. Some advanced technologies would
deplete waste to safe radioactivity levels within a few hundred
years. But futuristic reprocessing would also require
construction of a new class of nuclear reactors to use the
recycled fuel.

No current reprocessing technology can neutralize the
radioactivity of the waste. In our age, turning nuclear waste
into a harmless byproduct is comparable to other far-fetched
proposals for eliminating nuclear waste, such as launching the
toxic material into outer space.

STORING RADIOACTIVE WASTE CAN BE RISKY

Here are examples of problems utilities have encountered in
storing and moving nuclear waste:

OCONEE NUCLEAR STATION IN SENECA, S.C.
Date: 1996
What happened: Duke Power workers failed to properly place spent 
fuel rods in the cooling pool's storage racks, about 24 feet 
under water.

Instead, after fuel inspection, the engineers left the rods for
more than three weeks on the spent fuel bridge mast, less than
10 feet under water.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission fined Duke Power $50,000,
concluding the company had created a risk of extremely high
radiation release had the tank accidentally drained and exposed
the bridge mast, leaving the forgotten rods unprotected.
The NRC concluded: "Had an accident scenario involving the
standby shutdown facility occurred, requiring water to be
supplied from the spent fuel pool, the irradiated fuel assembly
could have been uncovered."

POINT BEACH NUCLEAR PLANT, WIS.

Date: 1996

What happened: When a container full of nuclear waste was being
welded shut, a spontaneous explosion blew back the 6,400-pound
container lid.

The accident caused no injuries or damage but raised questions
about build-up of combustible gases that could create hazardous
conditions during storage.

The NRC concluded: The seriousness of the problem merited
doubling the penalty and fined Wisconsin Electric Co. $25,000.

EDWIN I. HATCH NUCLEAR PLANT, GA.

Date: 1986

What happened: The plant's spent fuel pool leaked more than
141,000 gallons of water through a wall into an grassy area
outdoors.

The leak went unnoticed for several hours. The soil was
contaminated with radioactive waste and had to be placed in
drums and shipped to a low-level waste site in Barnwell, S.C.
The NRC concluded: "If water had been completely lost from the
transfer canal, radiation fields would be high enough that
remedial measures may be difficult."

Fine: $50,000.

HADDAM NECK NUCLEAR PLANT, CONN.

Date: 1984

What happened: When nuclear waste is removed from the reactor
and placed in storage, the spent fuel rods are submerged in
water at all times to prevent meltdown.

But in this instance, a seal failed in the water canal
connecting the spent fuel pool and the nuclear reactor, allowing
200,000 gallons of water from the refueling area to drain out
within 20 minutes.

Luckily, the nuclear waste hadn't yet been taken out of the
reactor and placed into the refueling area when the water level
dropped.

Had workers begun removing fuel during the accident, the NRC
concluded that the nuclear waste "could have been partially or
completely uncovered with possible high radiation levels, fuel
cladding failure and release of radioactivity."

Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company paid an $80,000 fine.

PERMANENT STORAGE OF NUCLEAR WASTE

Finding a permanent solution for radioactive waste has eluded
every country that relies on nuclear energy.

The answer for the United States was supposed to be Yucca
Mountain in Nevada, a 1,000-foot-deep vault originally scheduled
to open in 1998 but now delayed indefinitely. At the site,
63,000 metric tons of nuclear waste from commercial reactors
were to be lodged until the end of time.

Congress originally envisioned two geologic vaults. The East
Coast candidates included two potential sites in North Carolina:
the Rolesville Pluton, a geological formation in Wake County,
and the Elk River Massif, a formation near Asheville. In 2002,
Congress selected Yucca Mountain as the nation's sole resting
place for nuclear waste.

Nevada officials have fought the federal government's plan
fiercely for two decades.

They contend that the stainless steel casks would deteriorate
and leak radioactivity into a subterranean aquifer 90 miles from
downtown Las Vegas.

"The whole thing is about when will the [containers] fail," said
Joe Egan, Nevada's lead lawyer in the fight against Yucca
Mountain. "We believe they'll fail in 200 years."

With permanent storage at an impasse, a private organization has
stepped in with a proposal to round up some of the nuclear waste
for temporary safekeeping in one location. The company has
signed a land lease with the Goshute Indian tribe in Skull
Valley, Utah. But the proposal is tied up in legal and political
resistance from the state of Utah.

Last year, Nevada won a critical court ruling on the federal
plan to design the Yucca Mountain vault to last 10,000 years.
The court ruled that wasn't long enough; it cited scientific
evidence that it takes 100 centuries for nuclear waste to decay
to the point that it won't contaminate water and plants that
could be ingested by animals and people.

Now the Environmental Protection Agency is drafting standards
for the desert crypt to remain intact until the nuclear fuel
decays to its original radioactivity levels -- about 1 million
years.

Meanwhile, the country's nuclear plants have already accumulated
about 53,000 metric tons of waste, fast approaching Yucca
Mountain's legal limit.

Within the next five years, the Department of Energy was to
advise Congress on the need for opening a second repository for
nuclear waste, before Yucca Mountain is likely to accept its
first ounce of spent nuclear fuel.

Environmentalists in North Carolina fear that with Duke Power
and Progress Energy pushing to build new reactors, the two sites
originally proposed in North Carolina could be reconsidered. All
rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be published,
broadcast or redistributed in any manner.
   
 	   	 	  
 � Copyright 2006, The News & Observer Publishing Company
*****************************************************************
 45 Las Vegas SUN: Flashpoint for Jan. 14, 2006 (Yucca)

January 14, 2006 

By Jon Ralston <>

 Las Vegas Sun

 Something tells me Rep. Jon Porter may regret announcing so
quickly that he backs Ohio's John Boehner to succeed Tom DeLay.
Porter appeared to know nothing about Boehner's notorious
disbursement of tobacco checks on the House floor a decade ago.

And I bet he is unaware that dump proponent Boehner once was
"educated" about Yucca Mountain by the Nuclear Energy Institute.

And as Jonathan Turley wrote in The Chicago Tribune, Boehner and
a colleague felt that "they could best understand Yucca Mountain
not by visiting Nevada but with a paid tour of Barcelona and
Seville, Spain--with their wives--at a cost of roughly $34,000."
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.


         All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 46 Guardian Unlimited; Ukraine Wants to Produce Own Nuclear Fuel
 
From the Associated Press        
         
[UP] 

Saturday January 14, 2006 1:02 AM

AP Photo MOSB125 

By MARIA DANILOVA 

Associated Press Writer 

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said
Friday that his country should produce its own nuclear fuel for
power plants, part of the West-leaning leader's effort to reduce
its reliance on Russia following a dispute over natural gas
prices. 

``We must change our uranium policy - our policy on the use of
uranium for peaceful purposes,'' Yushchenko said on national
television. ``We must cooperate with international allies on a
serious political and economic level so that we can have a full
cycle of processing and production of nuclear fuel.'' 

Yushchenko's call could put his Western allies in an awkward
position as they seek to balance the desire to help Ukraine shed
Russian influence with concerns about nuclear weapons
proliferation and their campaign to contain Iran's nuclear
ambitions. 

The announcement came after Moscow and Kiev ended a public fight
over natural gas with a deal last week that nearly doubled the
price of gas for Ukraine and drew protests from Yushchenko's
opponents ahead of March parliamentary elections. 

The compromise was reached only after Russia briefly cut off gas
supplies to Ukraine, whose pipelines pump most of the gas Russia
exports to Europe. 

Ukraine is the site of the world's worst nuclear accident, the
1986 explosion and fire at a reactor at the Chernobyl plant,
which has been shut for good. Nearly two decades later, the
nation of 47 million relies on four operating nuclear power
plants for about half its electricity production - and it
depends on Russia for fuel that feeds them. 

Ukraine supplies Russia with raw uranium, then buys it back
after enrichment; a full nuclear cycle means that Ukraine would
be enriching uranium by itself. Uranium enrichment is a possible
pathway to the development of nuclear arms, but Yushchenko
insisted his country - a member of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog - had only peaceful
intentions. 

Yushchenko's announcement came amid a mounting international
standoff over Iran's refusal to give up uranium enrichment, and
against the background of calls to halt the spread of enrichment
facilities. 

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has proposed a moratorium on the
construction of any new enrichment plants, and President Bush
has proposed principles that would limit enrichment technology
to countries that already carry it out. 

Yushchenko's call for a nuclear cycle poses ``a dilemma for the
Bush administration,'' said Edwin Lyman, senior staff scientist
at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a private nuclear
proliferation watchdog group. ``This is an ally. They want to
support an independent Ukraine that can stand up to Russia ...
but it would violate this policy that Bush has proposed.'' 

Ukraine is not barred from enriching uranium under the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty or IAEA rules, and the nation that
inherited the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal with the
1991 Soviet collapse has proved trustworthy in proliferation
matters. It renounced nuclear weapons and transferred some 1,300
nuclear warheads to Russia for disarming. 

But while Yushchenko - who beat a Russian-backed candidate in an
election struggle just over a year ago - has friendly ties with
Europe and the United States, Lyman said the potential for
further political turmoil in Ukraine could raise concerns about
what future leaders would do with a fuel cycle, warning that
enrichment facilities can be retooled for weapons purposes
relatively easily. 

IAEA officials said they had no comment late Friday. 

Yushchenko said providing Ukraine the capability of producing
its own nuclear fuel was part of his plan for creating ``an
independent energy balance'' within five years. He also said the
nation should diversifying gas supplies and developing its own
gas fields. 

His call for a fuel cycle could face major financial obstacles
in the economically struggling country. At least in part, it may
have been meant as a public display of independence and
industriousness ahead of the parliamentary elections - and a
message to the West that Ukraine needs more support for its
effort to cut reliance on Russian energy.	 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 47 FT.com: UK - BNFL tells regulator of ‘significant’ leak danger

By Jean Eaglesham

Published: January 15 2006 20:55 | Last updated: January 15 2006
20:55

[Graphic] British Nuclear Fuels has admitted there is a
significant risk of future radioactive leaks at its flagship
Thorp reprocessing plant. 

The company did so in response to regulatory demands to improve
its safety culture before it can restart the plant, which has
been closed since a serious leak was discovered in April.

The scale of the changes demanded by the regulator – 49
recommendations affecting Thorp and the Sellafield site where it
is based – will provide ammunition for opponents of the
government’s expected decision later this year to back new
nuclear stations. Surveys suggest concern about nuclear
contamination is one of the main drivers of public opposition to
new plants. 

But the fact the regulator is willing to allow Thorp to reopen,
provided its demands are met, offers a partial reprieve for the
nuclear lobby. 

The early permanent closure of Thorp would damage the case for
new nuclear plants. It could also jeopardise the government’s
£56bn programme to clean up Britain’s nuclear legacy, which
gets more than a quarter of its income from Thorp.

The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, which regulates Thorp,
last month concluded its investigation into the leak of 20
tonnes of highly radioactive material that was detected at the
plant last April. The regulator has sent British Nuclear Group,
the BNFL subsidiary that runs Thorp, a list of 49 improvements
needed before the plant can be reopened. 

The wide-ranging recommendations affect management of the
Sellafield site in Cumbria, where Thorp is based, as well as the
operational and safety processes governing the plant itself.

The recommendations will not be made public until the NII has
decided whether to prosecute BNFL over the leak – a move that
would face the state-owned company with the threat of
potentially unlimited fines. 

But British Nuclear Group has told the Financial Times it will
revise one of the core safety assumptions affecting Thorp as
part of its response to the regulator.

An internal inquiry by BNFL into last year’s incident
criticised the existing assumption that leaks were unlikely,
saying this had contributed to a “complacent” operational
culture.

The BNFL report warned that, even after its recommendations had
been implemented, “it seems likely that there will remain a
significant chance of further plant failures occurring in the
future”.

British Nuclear Group said the revised safety assessment for
Thorp that it would submit to the regulator “will be beefed up
to take that recommendation on board [and] will reflect the fact
that we shouldn’t make the assumption there won’t be
leaks”.

The company stressed the fact that the plant was designed to
ensure such leaks were contained and said the April incident had
posed no hazard to the public. 

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the government agency
that owns Sellafield and contracts the running of the site out
to BNG, said it hoped Thorp would be operational again by this
summer.

The reopening of the plant will have to be agreed by the NDA,
after the regulator has given its approval.

The bill for repairing the plant, which media speculation has
put at hundreds of millions of pounds, is likely to be less than
£10m, according to a senior figure in the industry.

But the consequential cost of the leak will soar if the
reopening is delayed so long that BNG cannot meet its existing
contracts for reprocessing spent fuel by the 2010 deadline. A
long delay could also affect the proposed sale of BNG.

© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2006. "FT"
and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times.
*****************************************************************
 48 Boston Globe: Toxic dump cleaned up, to a point - 

WATERTOWN 

Some question whether arsenal site is safe yet
 
By Christina Pazzanese, Globe Correspondent  |  

January 15, 2006 

It should be good news for environmentalists. After nearly two
decades of cleanup and testing by the federal government, a
former dumping ground for radioactive waste may soon become
athletic fields or walking paths.

The property, an 11-acre parcel on Greenough Boulevard between
Grove Street and the Arsenal Street bridge, once housed drums of
depleted uranium produced by the Watertown Arsenal's nuclear
reactor, which was used for research from 1946 to 1967. The land
has been off-limits to the public ever since.

Some local activists question whether the US Army Corps of
Engineers, which has been conducting the decontamination, has
been sufficiently thorough.

''We are very concerned" that ''the Army just wants to get rid
of the land," said Ernesta Kraczkiewicz, who is on an advisory
board for the cleanup. ''The Army is definitely not going to do
any more cleanup."

The Corps of Engineers intends to turn over the land to the
state Department of Conservation and Recreation in September,
said spokesman Larry Rosenberg.

Susan Falkoff, who cochairs the advisory board and heads
Watertown Citizens for Environmental Safety, said that after the
military stopped dumping hazardous waste at the site, the land
was further contaminated by chemicals and lead from a firing
range and equipment stored there. Polluted water from nearby
Sawin's Pond also seeped into the area, said Falkoff, who has
been involved in the $100 million arsenal cleanup since the
1980s.

A public meeting will be held Tuesday night at Town Hall to
discuss the property's future.

Falkoff said the Army Corps had determined the land is now clean
enough for athletic fields, but not safe enough for young
children to play on. She argues it should be safe for everyone,
since young children would probably use the land to watch the
soccer or lacrosse games of their siblings.

''The corps says, 'It's clean enough,' and the DCR is saying,
'It's good enough for us,' " Falkoff said. ''It seems like
they're not concerned with public safety or public use."

Rosenberg said the Corps of Engineers is ''obligated by law"
only to clean up the land for use as an industrial site, not for
recreational or residential purposes. ''It's not the highest
standard," he said.

The goal of the Army Corps is to leave the land in a condition
so that it can be used for whatever purpose the town, the state,
and the federal government agree on, Rosenberg said.

''We will listen to the concerns and respond to the concerns;
together, we'll find the right solution," said Rosenberg, adding
that the final decision ''may not make everybody happy."

Kraczkiewicz and Falkoff said they're also concerned that
Buckingham, Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge,
will offer to pay the state to create athletic fields there in
exchange for preferential access.

Though she doesn't object to the land being converted to playing
fields, Kraczkiewicz suggested that the private school's heavy
demand for field time would limit access for others.

Richard Corsi, a DCR project manager, said that while there has
been talk of using it for athletic fields, no decision has been
made.

''We don't allow preferential access" to public land, said Joe
O'Keefe, chief of staff at the state's Executive Office of
Environmental Affairs, which oversees the DCR. ''We are not
allowed to enter into such agreements and wouldn't. Everyone
would have an equal opportunity to use that parkland."

 Christina Pazzanese can be reached by e-mail at . [ /] �

Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company. More: 
*****************************************************************
 49 OrlandoSentinel.com: Test takes aim at toxic waste - 

Submitted by: John Cutter
10:45 PM EST, Jan 15, 2006

Eighteen man-made mountains of radioactive waste, some as big as 
downtown Orlando, create an eerie skyline over southwestern Polk 
County.
 
They are the byproduct of more than 100 years of phosphate strip
mining. Each pile of phosphogypsum is topped by acres of toxic
wastewater that can burn and blister flesh if touched.
 
Researchers have long struggled to find safe uses for the
powdery white substance -- anything that would reduce the piles
that grow by 30 million tons a year.
 
Their best hope may lie in a 30-by-60-foot test bed planned in
Seminole County.
 
In December, county commissioners approved a research project
that calls for phosphogypsum, or PG, to be spread over a small
tract at the county dump. The Florida Institute of Phosphate
Research hopes to show that PG can accelerate the decay of
garbage and possibly double the life of landfills. It is
considered the first experiment of its kind.
 
Researchers promise the site will be carefully monitored, but
that doesn't satisfy members of ManaSota-88, an environmental
group that has battled the phosphate industry for years.
 
The group warns that moving PG, which has two to three times
EPA-acceptable radiation levels, would only spread the problem
and pose even greater health risks. What's more, allowing the
test could "open the regulatory door for the use of
phosphogypsum in construction or agricultural applications,"
ManaSota-88 Chairman Gary Compton wrote Seminole County
Commission Chairman Carlton Henley.
 
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of any
PG created from south-central Florida phosphate in 1992 after
concluding that long-term exposure increased the risk of cancer.
PG created in North Florida is less radioactive and used as an
additive to improve soil for peanut farming.
 
Henley said he was surprised to learn about the safety issues
raised by ManaSota-88. A benign-sounding staff memo, which made
no mention of any radioactivity, was all commissioners saw
before approving the research agreement.
 
"If what they say is accurate, we should have been [told]," he
said.
 
Last year, plans for a similar test site in Brevard County were
quashed, though not because of safety concerns. Uri Rodriguez,
Brevard's landfill manager, said the researcher who first
approached the county was initially with the Florida Institute
of Technology but lost that affiliation, so the project was
nixed.
 
"If you're not a full-blown professor at a college, we don't let
you do that kind of stuff," he said.
 
Seminole County officials remain committed to the project, which
is being done in conjunction with the University of Central
Florida.
 
David Gregory, Seminole's landfill manager, said he was aware of
PG's radioactive qualities but was assured its health threats
were minimal.
 
"The way it was characterized to me is that a ton of it in your
living room would generate as much radioactivity as your smoke
detector," he said.
 
Gregory concedes his memo to the county commission should have
been clearer about health and safety issues.
 
Many people who live near the landfill, such as in the rural
communities of Geneva and Chuluota, have been quick to object to
any potential threat to their fragile water supply. They are
keeping a watchful eye on the PG test.
 
"We hope the monitoring will be continuous and be done
correctly," said Deborah Schafer, a community activist in
Chuluota. "Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, but we're
going to ask for their [monitoring] data."
 
Florida's phosphate industry produces 90 percent of the
phosphoric acid needed for fertilizers used in the United
States. Experts estimate that Florida's phosphate deposits can
keep the industry operating for 15 to 40 more years.
 
Production could continue beyond that if phosphate ore is
imported, so the problem of what to do with PG promises to be
around for some time.
 
The piles of PG, which are kept within fenced phosphate-company
compounds, pose little immediate danger. But the wastewater -- a
mix of water and sulfuric acid used to leech out usable
phosphate -- is a pressing problem.
 
A 1997 spill dumped 50 million gallons of acidic wastewater into
the Alafia River near Tampa, killing more than a million fish
and destroying wetlands. In 2004, high winds from Hurricane
Frances caused toxic water to breach a dike at the Cargill Corp.
plant in Riverview, a small town near Tampa Bay.
 
A view of gyp-stacks with heavy equipment on top at Green Bay
Phosphate Plant in Polk County.
 
Robert Perez can be reached at rperez@orlandosentinel.com or
407-322-1298.
 
GEORGE SKENE/ORLANDO SENTINEL FILE
 PHOTO: Heavy machinery sits atop the Green Bay phosphate
plant's pile of phosphogypsum in June 2002. Researchers have
long struggled to find safe uses for the substance -- anything
that would reduce piles that grow by 30 million tons a year.
Their best hope may lie in a test bed planned in Seminole County.

 GEORGE SKENE/ORLANDO SENTINEL FILE

 BOX: THRIVING INDUSTRY

 90 PERCENT: Amount of

 phosphoric acid needed for


 fertilizers used in the United States that comes from Florida's
 phosphate industry.

 15 TO 40 MORE YEARS: How long

 experts estimate Florida's

 phosphate deposits can keep

 the industry operating.

 30 MILLION TONS: How much piles of phosphogypsum grow each year.

 Health risks

 IN 1992: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the
use of any PG created from south-central Florida phosphate after
concluding that long-term exposure increased the risk of cancer.

 2 TO 3 TIMES: How much PG exceeds EPA's acceptable radiation
levels.

 A dangerous past

 IN 1997: A spill dumped 50 million gallons of acidic wastewater
into the Alafia River near Tampa, killing more than a million
fish and

 destroying wetlands.

 IN 2004: High winds from Hurricane Frances caused toxic water
to breach a dike at the Cargill Corp. plant in Riverview, a
small town near Tampa Bay.

 --> 	 	 	 	 	 	 		 	 	 	 	 	 	 		 		 		

Copyright � 2006, Orlando Sentinel|
*****************************************************************
 50 CNIC: Fictional Plutonium Utilization Plan

(Citizens' Nuclear Information Center)
 			 			 			 			 				 				 				
11 January 2006 													 													 														

Media Briefing 														

Letter to Mohamed ElBaradei, General Director of IAEA
														
MEDIA BRIEFING BY CNIC, AND 														

"No" to Start-Up of Active Testing at Rokkasho Reprocessing
Plant 													 													 														

Japanese NGOs Label Electric Utility Plutonium Utilization Plan
"Fiction"
 																Concern Raised that Atomic Energy Commission
may Rubber-Stamp Plan 														

Japanese NGOs yesterday released a scathing critique1 of the
Plutonium Utilization Plan issued by the Federation of Electric
Power Companies (FEPCO) on 6 January, dubbing the plan as
"fiction" and pointing out that it does not comply with
specifications stipulated by the Japanese Atomic Energy
Commission (JAEC) in 2003. 														

At this time there is concern JAEC may approve this plan as
early as mid-month in order to start "active testing" at the
Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant.2 Regional and local authorities'
opposition to the plan is expected. 														

Rushing to Start "Active Tests" at Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant
 															The Plutonium Utilization Plan covers the use of
plutonium fuel, known as MOX fuel, in nuclear power plants3
operated by Japan's electric power companies. However, none of
the reactors slated under the plan have received consent from
local authorities to consume the material. 														

In February 1997, the government of Japan made a written
commitment to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to
uphold the "principle of no surplus plutonium". Based on this,
JAEC issued a decision on 5 August 2003 stipulating that
electric utilities must state the amount, location, starting
date, and length of time required to consume MOX fuel before
spent nuclear fuel can be reprocessed to extract plutonium at
the Rokkasho reprocessing plant. 														

The plan issued by FEPCO falls far short of this requirement.
There is concern that JAEC will rubber-stamp it in the rush to
start "active testing" at the Rokkasho reprocessing plant.
Active testing is currently scheduled to begin in February.
During the active tests the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant will
extract plutonium from spent fuel for the first time. According
to the plan, 1.6 tons of plutonium will be extracted during
fiscal years 2005 and 2006, enough for 200 Nagasaki type nuclear
bombs. 														

Plan will Increase Plutonium Stockpile in Japan
 															This plan ignores the plutonium that Japan
already possesses. Japan already has a surplus of 43.1 tons of
plutonium (37.4 tons held in Europe and 5.7 tons held in Japan).
The plutonium surplus continues to grow, despite the 1997 "no
surplus plutonium" pledge. 														

An earlier Plutonium Utilization Plan, relating to plutonium
held overseas, was submitted to the IAEA in December 1997. The
plan, along with the "no surplus plutonium" commitment, was
published in IAEA INFCIRC/549/Add.1, 31 March 1998. No MOX fuel
has been used in Japan's nuclear power plants in accordance with
this 1997 plan because it foundered. 														

NGOs point out that the latest FEPCO plan is simply a
copy-and-paste job of the 1997 plan. Under the former plan,
utilities were to consume MOX fuel at 16 to 18 reactors. The
number of reactors slated this time is identical to the 1997
plan, but the latest plan relates to plutonium separated in
Japan at the Rokkasho reprocessing plant. No explanation is
given regarding the overseas plutonium, so it must be assumed
that separating more plutonium now will add to the existing
surplus. (Japan's "Framework for Nuclear Energy Policy" issued
October 2005 by the JAEC gives priority to the consumption of
the plutonium in Europe over any produced at Rokkasho.4)
														

Plan Fails to Provide Required Information
 															The plan fails to provide the minimum
information required by JAEC's 2003 decision. 														

It effectively says nothing about the time of commencement, or
the time required to use the plutonium. It says that the
plutonium will be used "in and after 2012". However, this is
just a statement of the obvious. Plutonium extracted at Rokkasho
is to be fabricated into MOX fuel at the MOX Fuel Fabrication
Plant, but this plant has not been built and is only "expected"
to commence operation by 20125. Apparently the time required to
use the plutonium is just calculated on the basis of the number
of reactors and their power output. There is no indication of by
when all the plutonium will be used. 														

Regarding the location, reactors where the plutonium will be
used are identified for only six companies: Kansai Electric,
Kyushu Electric, Shikoku Electric, Chugoku Electric, Chubu
Electric and Japan Atomic Power Company. The remaining four
companies fail to specify which reactors will be used: Tokyo
Electric, Hokuriku Electric, Tohoku Electric and Hokkaido
Electric. Due to local opposition and past scandals, Kansai
Electric and Tokyo Electric were forced to refer to the need to
recover public trust before their plans can be implemented.
														

No company has obtained the prior consent of the prefectural or
local governments except Kansai Electric and three have not even
applied for prior consent. Previously granted consent was
withdrawn by Niigata and Fukushima Prefectures (Tokyo Electric).
Kansai Electric states it is not in the position to proceed with
the Pluthermal (MOX fuel use) program at this time due to the
2004 Mihama nuclear power plant accident. 														

Regarding the amount to be used by each company, some plutonium
is to be allocated to companies which will have no spent fuel
reprocessed in fiscal 2005 and 2006. This will put pressure on
these companies to proceed with Pluthermal plans, even thought
they are not ready to do so. 														

Plutonium is also allocated to the non-existent Ohma Nuclear
Power Plant. Ohma is still under review for a nuclear reactor
installation license. It is still not certain Ohma will be
built. Not surprisingly, no date is specified for plutonium use
at Ohma. 														

Japan's Atomic Energy Commission Must Not Accept Plan
 															Clearly FEPCO's latest Plutonium Utilization
Plan is not based on reality. The purpose of the plan is simply
to enable the Rokkasho reprocessing plant to start "active
tests" in February. 														

JAEC should uphold its own 2003 decision and state clearly that
the plan is inappropriate. It should declare that "active tests"
cannot begin at Rokkasho. 														


CONTACT:
 															Philip White, Citizens' Nuclear Information
Center (International Liaison)
 															Aileen Mioko Smith, (Director)
FOOTNOTES:
 															1. On 10 January, twenty-five NGOs from
Fukushima, Niigata, Fukui prefectures, Tokyo and Kansai
metropolitan areas, and Kyushu issued a critique on FEPCO's
Plutonium Utilization Plan. Available in .
 															2. The Rokkasho Reprocessing plant located in
Aomori Prefecture, Japan is under construction and currently
undergoing uranium commissioning. The plant has the capacity to
reprocess 800 tons/HM of spent nuclear fuel a year. At full
capacity, Rokkasho is capable of separating approximately 8 tons
of plutonium annually.
 															3. The use of plutonium fuel in light water
reactors ('thermal' reactors as opposed to 'fast' reactors) is
called 'pluthermal'. The fuel is made from a mixed oxide of
plutonium and uranium, commonly referred to as MOX.
 															4. Japan Atomic Energy Commission, "Framework
for Nuclear Energy Policy", 14 October 2005, p.11.
 															5. Ibid., p. 34. 													 													
														
LETTER TO MOHAMED ELBARADEI, DIRECTOR GENERAL OF IAEA
													 													 														
Director General Mohamed ElBaradei
 															International Atomic Energy Agency
11 January 2006 														

Re: ROKKASHO REPROCESSING PLANT AND JAPANESE ELECTRIC UTILITIES'
PLUTONIUM UTILIZATION PLANS 														

Dear Director General ElBaradei: 														

On 5 January 2006 we sent you a petition urging you to ensure
that Japan does not breach its international commitment to the
principle of "no surplus plutonium" and to quickly take
appropriate action before active testing begins at Rokkasho and
plutonium is accumulated. The following day the Federation of
Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPCO) published its
Plutonium Utilization Plan. 														

Attached please find a media briefing we issued today. It is a
critique of the plutonium utilization plans of Japanese electric
utilities. It addresses the concern that the Japan Atomic Energy
Commission (JAEC) may be approving these plans later this month
in order to start "active testing" at the Rokkasho reprocessing
plant. 														

While some of the numbers in the latest Plutonium Utilization
Plan are slightly different from those previously released, the
plan confirms the basic substance of our petition. We therefore
reiterate our appeal for the IAEA Secretariat and Board of
Governors to immediately discuss this matter and quickly take
appropriate action. 														

Sincerely yours, 														

Aileen Mioko Smith
 															Director, Green Action 														

cc: IAEA Board of Governors 														
 													 													 														 															
Plutonium Utilization Plan published by the Federation of
Electric Power Companies of Japan on 6 January 2006 (CNIC's
translation) 															

Status of light water reactors using MOX fuel in Japan
															

Japan's nuclear power reactors 															

Reactors currently under construction or proposed 														
														

CNIC
Citizens' Nuclear Information Center                                            
TEL.03-5330-9520
FAX.03-5330-9530
*****************************************************************
 51 SBP: Sellafield verdict due on Wednesday 

15 January 2006  By Kieron Wood 

A senior official at the European Court of Justice will decide
on Wednesday whether or not Ireland breached EU law by taking a
case about Sellafield to a United Nations tribunal.

The European Commission claimed that the Irish government had no
right to institute proceedings before a UN tribunal over
emissions from the Cumbrian nuclear plant.

Ireland began the proceedings in 2001 because of continuing
environmental and health fears about Sellafield's emissions.

The government argued that proposals for a 687 million plant to
produce mixed plutonium and uranium oxide (Mox) fuel breached
international laws on sea pollution and posed security concerns.


Dublin wanted Britain to suspend Mox operations until an
international arbitration tribunal could resolve the dispute.
But judges at the UN International Tribunal for the Law of the
Sea in Hamburg ruled that the situation was not urgent enough to
justify suspension.

It ordered Britain to exchange information with Ireland about
the Mox plant's possible effects on the Irish Sea.

The two governments were ordered to devise �appropriate measures
to prevent pollution of the marine environment which might
result from the operation of the Mox plant'�.

But the European Commission claimed that, as the European
Community was a signatory to the UN Convention on the Law of the
Sea, Ireland had violated the exclusive jurisdiction of the
Court of Justice by submitting the dispute to the UN tribunal.

It said that EU institutions should take precedence for
resolving any dispute, and it reported the Irish government to
the European Court of Justice.

The court's Advocate General will deliver his opinion on
Wednesday. The full judgment of the court - which is almost
certain to follow the Advocate General's opinion - will be
delivered in about two months' time.   	 

� The Sunday Business Post, 2004, Thomas Crosbie Media TCH   
*****************************************************************
 52 Ca�on City Daily Record: Cotter Corp. cited with air quality violations
 
http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com

  Publish Date: 1/13/2006 			 

Blakely Thomas-Aguilar

 Daily Record Staff Writer                                                                              With the licensure

recommendation from Judge Richard Dana expected to arrive within
the next few weeks, the Colorado Department of Public Health and
Environment cited Cotter Corp. with five Notices of Violation
regarding air quality. 

The citations, labeled as �alleged findings of fact� in the
N.O.V., stem from a Nov. 9 inspection by Steven Hine of the Air
Pollution Control Division of the department. 

The Ca�on City uranium and vanadium mill failed a stack test and
was found to be in violation of the conditional license�s
requirements that the plant operate using two bag houses and a
scrubbing unit to lessen the emissions, APCD public information
officer Chris Dann said Thursday. 

The opacity levels are the density of the smoke leaving the
stack of the Decomposition Kiln and Fusion Furnace, according to
the N.O.V. The normal Environmental Protection Agency limits are
20 percent opacity, and Cotter had levels between 39.2 and 45
percent. The report was issued on Dec. 9, one month after the
violations. 

Although plant manager John Hamrick accepted the opacity
violations, saying, �It is what it is,� on Thurs-day, he said
the use of the bag houses and scrubbers have been an ongoing
negotiation between the plant and CDPHE. 

�The simple answer is that the air permit has gone through
several phases,� Hamrick said. �With the errors of fact (in the
license), there was no way we could comply with that.� 

Dann said the license requires the bag houses, which are fabric
filters at the end of two separate pipes in the facility, to run
at the same time. Hamrick said the plant has produced a
communication �two to three inches thick� explaining to the
department that the bag houses need to work alternately so that
workers can per-form maintenance without shutting down
operations. 

The two entities met for negotiations on Dec. 28 to discuss a
resolution of the issues. Although a fine of up to $15,000 is
enforceable by CDPHE, Dann said it is unlikely as long as
efforts for compliance are being made. 

�We have a really wide range of enforceable discretion. It would
really be difficult to speculate,� Dann said. �Regardless, they
are required in the short term to conduct a stack test and that
has not been done.� 

Although Dann would not comment on the Dec. 28 meeting, Hamrick
said the two entities are coming to an agreement regarding the
stack testing. Because the mill failed the opacity portion, it
is not in compliance with the license. Dann said the mill was
given 180 days and an extension, which has currently expired. 

In order to pass the stack test, Hamrick said the mill will work
with CDPHE to pass the opacity test by running at a lessened
production rate than stated as the maximum in the license. The
protocol for the mill will change based on the rate found to be
at the acceptable, 20 percent limit. The other violations,
however, still are under negotiation. 

�We can probably live with that production rate,� Hamrick said. 

Agreement on licensing has been a continual struggle between
CDPHE and the Superfund site. Dana is expected to provide a
recommendation to CDPHE in late January or February regarding
the mill�s request and the September hearing regarding the
possibility of depositing outside radioactive materials at the
site in Lincoln Park. Once this recommendation has been
received, CDPHE will take it into advisement when issuing the
final license. 				   

News and Information from Ca�on City and the Greater Royal Gorge
Region
   
All contents Copyright � 2005 The Ca�on City Daily Record. All
rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 53 UPI: Australia may send uranium to China

   United Press International - NewsTrack - 
1/14/2006 11:35:00 PM -0500

CANBERRA, Australia, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- China could soon be
importing Australian uranium and investing in Australian mines. 

Officials from the two countries meet Tuesday for talks on how
to ensure that uranium from Australia will not be used for
nuclear weapons, The Australian reported. 

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the possibility. 

"Uranium should not be exported because there are no safeguards
that stop terrorists or, in reality, to stop the production of
nuclear weapons," said Eric Ripper, acting premier of West
Australia. 

China National Nuclear Corp. sent a delegation to study the
Honeymoon Mine in South Australia in 2004. Another company,
Southern Uranium, has also been talking to the Chinese about
investment. 

"My impression is that these are some of the early arrivals from
China and the floodgates are starting to open in terms of
investment into Australia when these bilateral agreements are in
place," said Stephen Biggins, Southern Uranium's managing
director.

� Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights 
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 54 The Signal: Bermite Sale Down to Two Final Bidders 

Sunday, January 15 2006 

Judge expected to decide new owner next month; cleanup under way 
to rid soil, water of toxins. 

Lila Campuzano [Signal Staff Writer] 

Nearly 1,000 acres of land in the middle of the Santa Clarita 
Valley, which sat idle for years after toxins were found there, 
is finally set to begin cleanup, officials said, as involved 
parties met in Arizona to consider the property�s sale. 

A bidders� conference in federal bankruptcy court in Phoenix 
on Friday drew creditors and other parties linked to the 
Whittaker-Bermite site, including the city of Santa Clarita, 
Whittaker Corp., the state Department of Toxic Substances 
Control and the Castaic Lake Water Agency, said Carl Newton, 
city attorney for Santa Clarita. 

The owner of the land, Remediation Financial Inc., or RFI, 
filed for bankruptcy in July 2004. The judge presiding over the 
case is due to decide in February which of two bidders will get 
the property. 

�They�re essentially analyzing the bids,� Newton said 
Friday. �They�re all determining from their own points of view 
which of the bids is better.� 

The bidders are Cherokee Investment Partners Inc., a North 
Carolina-based firm that specializes in cleaning up and 
developing polluted land, and SunCal Cos., an Irvine-based 
housing and mixed-use developer with a number of projects to its 
credit in the Santa Clarita Valley. The NorthLake development in 
Castaic, where a new high school is due to be built, is among 
SunCal�s local projects. 

Details of the bids were not made public, said Dwight 
Stenseth, general manager for Cherokee in the firm�s Denver 
office. Officials with SunCal could not be reached for comment 
Friday. 

�Our idea is to get in and hopefully resolve that situation 
immediately,� Stenseth said of the long-polluted land. Still, he 
said, �It�d take several years before all of that (cleanup) 
could be completed.� 

The Bermite site, located south of Soledad Canyon Road from 
behind Saugus Speedway to Golden Valley Road, was the scene of a 
munitions manufacturing plant and testing site, and later a 
fireworks manufacturing firm from 1934 to 1987. 

Shut down in 1987, it was found to be contaminated with 
perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel, and about 250 other 
hazardous chemicals. 

Volatile organic compounds contaminate the soil, and 
perchlorate is in both the soil and in the groundwater. 

Perchlorate has been determined to cause thyroid problems in 
humans, particularly in the very young and in pregnant women. 
Volatile organic compounds are found in paints, petroleum 
products such as turpentine, cleaning fluids and deodorizers. 
They are a major concern to the U.S. Environmental Protection 
Agency because they contribute to air pollution, especially 
unsafe ozone levels. 

In 1995 the 996 acres were approved for a development of 
nearly 3,000 homes, to be called Porta Bella. 

�When RFI purchased (the land) and went bankrupt, the 
cleanup reverted to the previous owner,� which was Whittaker 
Corp., Newton said. Whittaker, a missile manufacturer, was held 
responsible for the cost of the cleanup. 

That expense remains a staggering if indeterminate amount. 
The groundwater cleanup alone will cost �into the eight-figure 
range,� said Dan Masnada, general manager for the Castaic Lake 
Water Agency. 

Water cleanup began last year as the Valencia Water Co. 
unveiled a perchlorate-scrubbing system for one of its wells, 
dubbed �Q2,� located across the Santa Clara River from the 
Soledad-Bouquet Canyon Road intersection. 

Water from two additional wells will begin the same �ion 
exchange� process by the end of this year, Masnada said. 

Those two wells near San Fernando Road and Magic Mountain 
Parkway drew water from the deeper of the valley�s two aquifers. 
They were shut down when they were found to be contaminated with 
perchlorate. 

Pumping the deep wells is expected to draw back the slowly 
advancing plume of perchlorate in the aquifer, Masnada said. 
�We�ll be treating water from those for decades,� he added. 

Soil cleanup at the Whittaker-Bermite site also is 
progressing, said Hassan Armini, vice president of Geomatrix 
Consultants of Newport Beach and a consultant on the Bermite 
cleanup. 

Later this week, construction workers are due to lay asphalt 
for a treatment pad on the east side of the Bermite property 
near Golden Valley Road, Amini said. Perchlorate-destroying 
organisms will be used in soil treatment. 

�The plan is to excavate the soil, mix it with amendments 
and � using agricultural bags under kind of contained conditions 
� allow biological breakdown of the perchlorate,� Amini said, 
�and then sample the material to ensure the treatment was 
complete, and put it back in the ground.� 

Volatile organic compounds will be removed from the soil 
through dry wells dug in the ground, he said. 

Under the �soil-vapor extraction system� approved for the 
property, air will be drawn from the ground under vacuum 
conditions and �polished� of its dangerous gaseous components, 
Amini said. 

Once the air is cleaned and tested, it will be released 
under strict monitoring by the Air Quality Management District, 
he said. 

�There is an enormous level of talent that is thrown on this 
project,� he added. 

Sometimes referred to as Santa Clarita Valley�s �donut hole� 
because of its central location, the Bermite property has sat 
idle while the city grew around it. 

Whittaker filed cleanup plans for the property in the 1980s, 
but in 1992 DTSC investigators raided the facility and 
determined that Whittaker�s plan was inadequate. Perchlorate, a 
relatively recent addition to government hazardous-waste lists 
whose safe levels are still under study, forced closure of five 
wells around the area. 

Compounding the situation is the property�s proximity to the 
Santa Clara River, a mostly underground waterway from which 
Santa Clarita Valley water purveyors draw nearly 50 percent of 
their supplies. 

With the Porta Bella housing development now in limbo, some 
officials are calling for other uses for the land besides 
covering it with more houses. 

Connie Worden-Roberts, who spearheaded community involvement 
in the cleanup, has said she favors an amphitheater or other 
community-centered facility there. It has also been discussed as 
the location for a new civic center. 				 			 

�2005 The-Signal.com - Site powered with DynamicBase by 
ActiveQuest, Inc. 
*****************************************************************
 55 Contra Costa Times: Weapons lab open to offers for manager

Posted on Sat, Jan. 14, 2006 

 By Betsy Mason CONTRA COSTA TIMES 

The competition to find the next manager of Lawrence Livermore
Laboratory is under way. The Department of Energy got the ball
rolling Friday with a request for interested parties to make
themselves known. 

A draft request for proposals, complete with contract terms, is
tentatively scheduled for release this summer. 

The University of California's current contract is set to expire
Sept. 30, 2007. 

That date includes a two-year extension granted so competition
for the Livermore management contract could be held separately
from the Los Alamos National Laboratory competition, which was
just completed in December. 

UC won the Los Alamos competition along with a trio of
industrial partners led by Bechtel National. 

The university's main rival for the Los Alamos contract was
Lockheed Martin, which teamed with the University of Texas for
the competition. 

In April of last year, UC successfully retained the contract for
Lawrence Berkeley Lab. 

UC has not yet decided whether it will compete for Lawrence
Livermore, but insiders consider the university's participation
very likely. 

"The regents have authorized the university to begin
preparations for the competition, and we are doing so in
earnest," UC president Robert Dynes said in a statement Friday.
"Should we compete, we will do so vigorously and with the firm
belief that excellence in science and technology is critical to
the mission of the laboratory." 

Lockheed may be still smarting over the Los Alamos decision,
which it has decided not to contest, but the company isn't
ruling out another stab at taking control of a nuclear weapons
lab. 

"We will look at every business opportunity as it comes
forward," said company spokeswoman Wend Wen. "At this time it's
just too early to speculate on what we may or may not choose to
do related to the Livermore contract." 

UC has managed Lawrence Livermore Lab for the DOE and its
predecessors since the lab opened its doors in 1952. The
university had also run Los Alamos and Berkeley labs since their
creation and had never been forced to compete for the contracts. 

Following a string of accounting, security and safety lapses at
the two nuclear labs, Los Alamos and Livermore, the DOE was
prompted in 2003 to put all three of ECU's contracts up for bid,
along with several other sites whose contracts had been held by
the same manager for 50 years or more. 

The problems at Los Alamos lab under ECU's watch reached a
climax in July 2004 when the lab reported two classified
computer disks had gone missing. The incident triggered intense
scrutiny from lawmakers and the press and led to a complete
shutdown of the lab and eventually a DOE-wide stand-down of all
operations involving classified removable electronic media. 

UC brought Bechtel on board to help allay concerns about its
ability to safely and securely manage Los Alamos. The new team
is in a six-month transition period and will formally take the
reins on June 1. 

Betsy Mason covers science and the national laboratories. Reach
her at 925-847-2158 or bmason@cctimes.com. email this print

*****************************************************************
 56 AP Wire: U.S. opens bidding to run nuclear lab

01/14/2006 

 Associated Press 

LIVERMORE, Calif. - The U.S. Department of Energy has opened a
competition for managing Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
the research and nuclear weapons lab run by the University of
California for more than 50 years. 

The department's National Nuclear Security Administration on
Friday asked for bids to run the $1.9 billion lab. Livermore is
one of the nation's three chief installations responsible for
maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal. 

UC has managed the 8,000-employee lab, located about 50 miles
east of San Francisco, without having to bid for the job since
it opened its doors in 1952. Its current contract is set to
expire in September 2007. 

Following a string of accounting, security and safety lapses at
the Los Alamos and Livermore labs, the Energy Department decided
in 2003 to seek new bids for UC's contracts to run those labs
and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

UC has not officially decided whether it will compete for the
Livermore contract. 

"The regents have authorized the university to begin
preparations for the competition, and we are doing so in
earnest," UC president Robert Dynes said in a statement Friday.
"Should we compete, we will do so vigorously and with the firm
belief that excellence in science and technology is critical to
the mission of the laboratory." 

Less than one month ago, UC teamed up with engineering giant
Bechtel Corp. to win the new contract to run Los Alamos, in New
Mexico. The UC-Bechtel team prevailed over a competing
partnership between the University of Texas and defense
contractor Lockheed Martin. The contract runs for seven years,
with a provision to extend it to 20 years. 

Lockheed Martin hasn't ruled out entering the competition to
manage the Livermore lab. "At this time it's just too early to
speculate on what we may or may not choose to do related to the
Livermore contract," said spokeswoman Wendy Owen. 

UC successfully held on to its contract to run Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory last April. 

ON THE NET 

UC: 

Lawrence Livermore: 

Los Alamos: 

*****************************************************************
 57 Hanford News: DOE plan includes replacing 2 major Hanford contracts
 
This story was published Friday, January 13th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

The Department of Energy will replace the Hanford contracts held
by Fluor Hanford and CH2M Hill Hanford Group with three new
contracts, according to a plan released Thursday. 

Current workers will retain their pension benefits, but new
contractors will be required to provide market-based pension
plans for employees hired after the contract is awarded. 

Together the contractors now employ about 4,650 workers. 

The Fluor and CH2M Hill contracts expire at the end of
September, but could be extended up to 24 months to allow
transition to the three new contracts. 

The work now done by Fluor will be divided into two contracts,
one covering support services such as utility operations and
emergency services, and the other covering environmental cleanup
work in central Hanford. The third contract will cover tank farm
radioactive waste operations now under CH2M Hill. 

River corridor cleanup will continue under Washington Closure
Group, Bechtel National will continue building the waste
vitrification plant and AdvanceMed will continue medical
services, but most other cleanup-related work will fall under
the new contracts. 

The plan released Thursday included only a basic outline of
DOE's plan. The length of the new contracts have yet to be set. 

DOE also has not established how it will provide opportunities
for small businesses, but indicated that will be considered. 

That could mean setting aside work for small businesses in the
support services contract, subcontracting opportunities within
the prime contracts or using other contract plans - such as
DOE's indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts awarded
to business that qualify in advance for DOE work. 

The new contracts will continue DOE's practice of transferring
employees from old contractors to new with equivalent pay for
equivalent positions, according to the plan. 

"New contracts will require that incumbent employees be fairly
considered for continued employment under existing and new
contracts," the plan said. However, it warned the number of
employees at Hanford will decline. 

No decision on medical benefits has been made, but DOE noted it
is assessing its policies. 

The new contracts will be phased in starting with the support
services contract, followed by the central Hanford cleanup
contract and then the tank farm contract. 

Some additional smaller contracts or task orders could later be
offered for work such as demonstration projects or specific
demolition or environmental remediation work. 

The support services contract will include information
management, utilities and a broad range of site services. Those
include information technology, telecommunications, road
maintenance, security, emergency services, analytical laboratory
work and radiological dosimetry. 

The support services contract also will include ground water
monitoring and management. 

Other work in the contract will include administration of
Hanford employee pensions and benefits, real estate management
and support to DOE in preparing future task order contracts. 

The central Hanford cleanup contract will include all work to
retrieve, package, treat and store radioactive and hazardous
chemical waste, except for work in the tank farms. 

Central Hanford includes 970 surplus buildings that must be
decontaminated and demolished, five large processing plants to
clean up and 850 sites where waste was discharged, buried or
spilled. 

The site is contaminated from more than 40 years of production
of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. 

The tank farm contractor will retrieve waste from underground
tanks holding millions of gallons of radioactive chemical waste.
The contract includes operating the bulk vitrification plant to
supplement waste treatment at the main vitrification plant now
under construction, if bulk vit is approved as a supplemental
technology. 

The tank farm contractor also would be in charge of the 242-A
evaporator and the 222-S building. 

The contract plan is posted at www.pr.doe.gov under "special
notices."

Battelle/PNNL: Review finds problems in Hanford study 
� 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 58 SF Chron: LIVERMORE / U.C. must bid to run Lawrence laboratory / 
No challengers to university have surfaced so far
 
[San Francisco Chronicle] 
				 
Sunday, January 15, 2006

The exclusive contract the University of California has to
operate the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is in
jeopardy now that the federal government has opened the
competition to manage the facility in eastern Alameda County. 

The University of California has run the 8,500-employee lab
since it opened in 1952. 

The competition is one of a series ordered by the federal
Department of Energy and Congress in 2003 after a string of
accounting, security and safety lapses at the Livermore lab and
the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. 

The Livermore lab is responsible for testing the nation's
nuclear weapons for safety and reliability without exploding
nuclear bombs. It has spent more than $3 billion developing the
National Ignition Facility on a still unsuccessful effort to
generate thermonuclear fusion by using laser beams to blast and
super-compress pellets of nuclear fuel. 

It is also involved in numerous other types of research ranging
from advanced defense technologies, nuclear nonproliferation,
homeland security, energy, environment, biosciences and
biotechnology. 

Last month, UC and engineering giant Bechtel Corp. won a
government contract to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory in
New Mexico, beating out a competing partnership between the
University of Texas and defense contractor Lockheed Martin. 

In April of 2005, UC also held on to its contract to run
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Livermore lab
contract is set to expire in 2007. 

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Friday invited
"expressions of interest" to run the lab. 

No challenger for the Livermore contract has yet emerged, but a
formal request for proposals is not scheduled for release until
late summer, said Al Stotts, a spokesman for the National
Nuclear Security Administration, a quasi-independent arm of the
Department of Energy. 

UC is expected to submit a bid, either alone or as in some kind
of partnership. 

"The regents have authorized the university to begin
preparations for the competition, and we are doing so in
earnest," UC president Robert Dynes said in a statement Friday.
"Should we compete, we will do so vigorously and with the firm
belief that excellence in science and technology is critical to
the mission of the laboratory." 

The lab occupies a one-square-mile site in Livermore and a
10-square mile site 18 miles to the east. 

Marylia Kelley, executive director of the nonprofit Tri-Valley
CAREs, or Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, said
she hoped the contract competition process would provide a
chance to move the Livermore lab's mission away from nuclear
weapons testing. 

"Livermore is the obvious choice as the first lab that should
transition to be a green lab,'' she said. 

Such a decision would have to come from elected officials,
however, Stotts said. 

In late November, Energy Department officials decided to double
the amount of radioactive plutonium that can be stored at
Lawrence Livermore, enough for as many as 300 nuclear bombs. 

E-mail Patrick Hoge at . 				
Page B - 1 			

The San Francisco Chronicle] 

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 59 Tri-Valley Herald: UC Bechtel likely to win lab contract

Article Last Updated: 01/14/2006 03:30:25 AM                              
                   
Opposition seems unlikely after Lockheed shows lack of interest

  By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER   

The nation's nuclear weapons agency opened a competition Friday 
for running Lawrence Livermore National Labor-atory, but more and 
more it appears the new boss at Livermore could be the same as 
the old. 

With less fee money on the table and potential competitors
leery, the likelihood is mounting that the University of
California will be unchallenged for the helm of Livermore, a
nuclear-weapons laboratory that university scientists have run
for 54 years. 

As in the past, the university remained coy Friday about whether
the school would re-apply for the job of running the $1.9
billion lab with 8,000 employees, one-third of them scientists
and engineers. The lab has the world's most powerful laser and
computers and responsibility for roughly 				 				 					 					
					 				 				 				 					 					 				 one-third of the U.S.
nuclear arsenal. 

But soon after federal officials at the U.S. Department of
Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration announced the
Livermore competition, the most powerful potential challenger
signaled a lack of interest. 

Executives at Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest defense
contractor, are angered at losing a similar competition last
month to run a sister lab, Los Alamos in New Mexico, to a team
led by the University of California and Bechtel National Corp. 

Lockheed managers are convinced that federal contracting
officials scored the competing bid proposals improperly, skewing
the outcome in ways that favored the university. Lockheed
decided this week against a formal challenge. 

The Los Alamos experience soured the defense firm on bidding for 
Energy Department labs, especially a weapons lab in the 
University of California's back yard. 

If Lockheed bids for Livermore, said one executive, "it'll be a
cold day in hell, and the devil gets a hockey team together and
they win the Stanley Cup." 

Mike Camardo, Lockheed executive vice president over federal
contracts, went further in comments to investors three weeks
ago, just before the National Nuclear Security Administration
awarded the Los Alamos contract to UC/Bechtel. 

If Lockheed did not win Los Alamos, Camardo said, it is unlikely
anyone would bid against UC for Livermore. 

Federal officials expect to run the competition for management
of Livermore lab much as they 				 				 					 					 					 						
					 	 	 	 	 	 		 		 		 		 		 		 			 				 				 				 				 			 	
did the Los Alamos competition. They released no details Friday 
and turned on a largely blank Web site that was the mirror image 
of one used for posting contract documents in the Los Alamos 
competition. 

NNSA chief Linton Brooks said the government's primary bid
document, a request for proposals or RFP, is still being
drafted. 

"But our internal thinking is the Los Alamos RFP is sort of the
first draft of the Livermore one and many of the features of the
Los Alamos RFP will probably carry over," he said Friday by
telephone. 

Instead of major differences, "I think we're looking at a
certain amount of tweaking," Brooks said. "We're pretty pleased
with the way the RFP worked with Los Alamos. We think we got two 
very strong proposals." 

If the Livermore competition is handled as Los Alamos' was, the 
government will press for a separate corporate entity to run the 
lab and for private industry to play a role. That means Livermore 
workers could trade a UC paycheck, academic affiliation and 
pension for employment with a limited liability corporation half 
led by the university and half led by industrial partners. 
Federal contractors say the fee for running Livermore is likely 
to go up substantially, but not as high as at Los Alamos, where 
it rose more than eightfold to as much as $512 million over the 
next seven years. 

Livermore lost its director and several weapons executives to
Los Alamos as part of the new UC/Bechtel management team there.
No replacements have 				 				 					 					 					 				 				 				
					 					 				 been named. Whoever gets the job would be
expected to lead Livermore in a newly started weapons design
competition against Los Alamos � and fend off competitors for
the management contract, if any emerge. 

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com				 				 				
			   		 		 		
� 2000-2006 ANG Newspapers 
*****************************************************************
 60 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Opens Bidding to Run Nuclear Lab
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday January 14, 2006 10:17 PM

LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) - The U.S. Department of Energy has
opened a competition for managing Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, the research and nuclear weapons lab run by the
University of California for more than 50 years. 

The department's National Nuclear Security Administration on
Friday asked for bids to run the $1.9 billion lab. Livermore is
one of the nation's three chief installations responsible for
maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal. 

UC has managed the 8,000-employee lab, located about 50 miles
east of San Francisco, without having to bid for the job since
it opened its doors in 1952. Its current contract is set to
expire in September 2007. 

Following a string of accounting, security and safety lapses at
the Los Alamos and Livermore labs, the Energy Department decided
in 2003 to seek new bids for UC's contracts to run those labs
and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

UC has not officially decided whether it will compete for the
Livermore contract. 

``The regents have authorized the university to begin
preparations for the competition, and we are doing so in
earnest,'' UC president Robert Dynes said in a statement Friday.
``Should we compete, we will do so vigorously and with the firm
belief that excellence in science and technology is critical to
the mission of the laboratory.'' 

Less than one month ago, UC teamed up with engineering giant
Bechtel Corp. to win the new contract to run Los Alamos, in New
Mexico. The UC-Bechtel team prevailed over a competing
partnership between the University of Texas and defense
contractor Lockheed Martin. The contract runs for seven years,
with a provision to extend it to 20 years. 

Lockheed Martin hasn't ruled out entering the competition to
manage the Livermore lab. ``At this time it's just too early to
speculate on what we may or may not choose to do related to the
Livermore contract,'' said spokeswoman Wendy Owen. 

UC successfully held on to its contract to run Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory last April. 

On the Net: 

UC: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu 

Lawrence Livermore: http://www.llnl.gov/ 

Los Alamos: http://www.lanl.gov/ 

Lawrence Berkeley: http://www.lbl.gov 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
    
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material is distributed without profit or payment to those who 
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information go to: 
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