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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 Guardian Unlimited: Bush told Blair we're going to war, memo reveals
2 IRNA: Tanzania stresses Iran peaceful nuclear right 
3 IRNA: MPs condemn West threats against Iran nuclear program 
4 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Closer to Security Council Referral
5 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Threatens to Retaliate if Referred
6 Guardian Unlimited: Broader Support Sought for Iran Referral
7 Guardian Unlimited: Tehran urged to agree to 10-year nuclear freeze
8 IRNA: Iran envoy to IAEA calls for nuclear disarmament
9 Greenpeace International: Nukes, Iran, the UN: a grave mistake | 
10 AFP: UN nuclear watchdog delays decision on Iran 
11 IRNA: Ahmadinejad says enrichment basis of nuclear energy -
12 IRNA: Iran envoy condemns West dual standards - Irna
13 IRNA: Rafsanjani says Iran UNSC referral a big mistake 
14 IRNA: FM reports to president on London conference, nuclear issues -
15 Guardian Unlimited: Koreas Agree to High-Level Military Talks
16 AFP: Bush asked for intelligence report on North Korea nuclear arms 
17 US: Las Vegas SUN: Pentagon Wants 10 Percent Cuts in Nukes 
18 US: Guardian Unlimited: Pentagon Announces Sweeping Defense Review
19 US: Nethaway: Energy policy gridlock
20 US: IEER | Our Electric Future: A Non-Nuclear Low Carb Diet?
21 US: UPI: GAO encouraged by nuke monitoring method
22 [NYTr] Nuclear Proliferation: A Gathering Storm
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
23 US: Charlotte Observer: Duke called to nuclear meeting
24 US: AP Wire: NRC to meet with Duke Energy about S.C. nuclear plant
25 US: AP Wire: Senator promotes nuclear power plants
26 Indiatimes: Nuclear power pricing again eludes ERCs
27 BBC: Nuclear plant life set to extend
28 US: Nuclear Energy Industry Poised For Growth Based On Performance
29 US: Rutland Herald: State says Yankee emergency drill fixed
30 US: canadaeast.com:  Graham wants to explore second nuclear reactor
31 US: NRC: Sunshine Act; Notice of Meetings
32 US: WiscNews.com: Republicans plan push to lift state ban on nuclear
33 US: Newsday.com: NRC finalizes order for backup power on Indian Poin
34 US: Vermont Guardian: Countdown: Will Vermont Yankee get a 20-year l
35 US: Vermont Guardian: Vermont Yankees uprate review: Is it adequate?
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
36 US: AFP: Pentagon unveils strategy shift for long war on terrorism -
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
37 US: Las Vegas SUN: CDC report: Abandoned Nevada copper mine a public
38 US: LA Daily News: Cancer in our own backyard
39 US: KHON2: Q&A with 25th Infantry Division & U.S. Army Hawaii
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
40 US: Deseret News: Envirocare adds nuclear waste firm 
41 US: Nevada Appeal: Bush opens the door for nuclear reprocessing
42 US: Bradenton Herald: Tallevast mystery: New test results leave many
43 NRC: Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Schedules Hearing on Proposed
44 US: BBC: BNFL sells nuclear clean up unit
45 US: Herald News: Tritium found at forest area
46 reviewjournal.com: State loses bid to see DOE's draft Yucca license 
47 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Envirocare: New name, big time 
48 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Envirocare solution
49 Scotsman.com: Clean-up after radioactive spill
50 US: PE.com: March ARB cleanup running smoothly
51 IEER Factsheet | Reprocessing: The international experience
52 AU ABC: Uranium in water may cause community harm - researcher.
53 US: UPI: Utah firm buys BNFL nuclear assets
 
                           PEACE
 
54 EGYPT PUSHES FOR MIDDLEAST NUKE-FREE ZONE
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
55 Guardian Unlimited: Gatling Guns Guard Calif. Nuclear Lab
56 Santa Fe New Mexican: Lab could be source of contaminant       
57 Hanford News: Heart of America wants to slow vit plant building
58 SFC: POTENT FIREPOWER FOR WEAPONS LAB / Modern Gatling guns to defen
59 Tri-Valley Herald: Livermore lab unveils big gun to scare off terror
60 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Paducah
61 KTVB.COM: INL to dismantle old reactors
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 Guardian Unlimited: Bush told Blair we're going to war, memo reveals
 
PM promised to be 'solidly behind' US invasion with or without UN 
backing              
 		
Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday February 3, 2006                 
 		
[Tony Blair and George Bush at a press conference in the White 
House on January 31 2003. Photograph: Shawn Thew/AFP] Tony Blair 
and George Bush at a press conference in the White House on 
January 31 2003. Photograph: Shawn Thew/AFP

 Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was "solidly"
behind US plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the
invasion's legality and despite the absence of a second UN
resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to the
war published today.

A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the
White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the
invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to
invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even
if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons
programme.

"The diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military 
planning", the president told Mr Blair. The prime minister is 
said to have raised no objection. He is quoted as saying he was 
"solidly with the president and ready to do whatever it took to 
disarm Saddam".

The disclosures come in a new edition of Lawless World, by
Phillipe Sands, a QC and professor of international law at
University College, London. Professor Sands last year exposed
the doubts shared by Foreign Office lawyers about the legality
of the invasion in disclosures which eventually forced the prime
minister to publish the full legal advice given to him by the
attorney general, Lord Goldsmith.

The memo seen by Prof Sands reveals:

· Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the
failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of
"flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover
over Iraq, painted in UN colours". Mr Bush added: "If Saddam
fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]".

· Mr Bush even expressed the hope that a defector would be
extracted from Iraq and give a "public presentation about
Saddam's WMD". He is also said to have referred Mr Blair to a
"small possibility" that Saddam would be "assassinated".

· Mr Blair told the US president that a second UN resolution
would be an "insurance policy", providing "international cover,
including with the Arabs" if anything went wrong with the
military campaign, or if Saddam increased the stakes by burning
oil wells, killing children, or fomenting internal divisions
within Iraq.

· Mr Bush told the prime minister that he "thought it unlikely
that there would be internecine warfare between the different
religious and ethnic groups". Mr Blair did not demur, according
to the book.

The revelation that Mr Blair had supported the US president's
plans to go to war with Iraq even in the absence of a second UN
resolution contrasts with the assurances the prime minister gave
parliament shortly after. On February 25 2003 - three weeks
after his trip to Washington - Mr Blair told the Commons that
the government was giving "Saddam one further, final chance to
disarm voluntarily".

He added: "Even now, today, we are offering Saddam the prospect
of voluntary disarmament through the UN. I detest his regime - I
hope most people do - but even now, he could save it by
complying with the UN's demand. Even now, we are prepared to go
the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully."

On March 18, before the crucial vote on the war, he told MPs:
"The UN should be the focus both of diplomacy and of action...
[and that not to take military action] would do more damage in
the long term to the UN than any other single course that we
could pursue."

The meeting between Mr Bush and Mr Blair, attended by six close
aides, came at a time of growing concern about the failure of
any hard intelligence to back up claims that Saddam was
producing weapons of mass destruction in breach of UN
disarmament obligations. It took place a few days before the
then US secretary Colin Powell made claims - since discredited -
in a dramatic presentation at the UN about Iraq's weapons
programme.

Earlier in January 2003, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary,
expressed his private concerns about the absence of a smoking
gun in a private note to Mr Blair, according to the book. He
said he hoped that the UN's chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix,
would come up with enough evidence to report a breach by Iraq of
is its UN obligations.

Downing Street did not deny the existence of the memo last
night, but said: "The prime minister only committed UK forces to
Iraq after securing the approval of the House of Commons in a
vote on March 18, 2003." It added the decision to resort to
military action to ensure Iraq fulfilled its obligations imposed
by successive security council resolutions was taken only after
attempts to disarm Iraq had failed. "Of course during this time
there were frequent discussions between the UK and US
governments about Iraq. We do not comment on the prime
minister's conversations with other leaders."

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat acting leader, said
last night: "The fact that consideration was apparently given to
using American military aircraft in UN colours in the hope of
provoking Saddam Hussein is a graphic illustration of the rush
to war. It would also appear to be the case that the diplomatic
efforts in New York after the meeting of January 31 were simply
going through the motions.

"The prime minister's offer of February 25 to Saddam Hussein was
about as empty as it could get. He has a lot of explaining to
do."

Prof Sands says Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's UN ambassador
at the time, told a foreign colleague he was "clearly
uncomfortable" about the failure to get a second resolution.
Foreign Office lawyers consistently warned that an invasion
would be regarded as unlawful. The book reveals that Elizabeth
Wilmshurst, the FO's deputy chief legal adviser who resigned
over the war, told the Butler inquiry into the use of
intelligence during the run-up to the war, of her belief that
Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, shared the FO view.
According to private evidence to the Butler inquiry, Lord
Goldsmith told FO lawyers in early 2003: "The prime minister has
told me that I cannot give advice, but you know what my views
are".

On March 7 2003 he advised the prime minister that the Bush
administration believed that a case could be made for an
invasion without a second UN resolution. But he warned that
Britain could be challenged in the international criminal court.
Ten days later, he said a second resolution was not necessary.
 	
[UP] 

      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 2 IRNA: Tanzania stresses Iran peaceful nuclear right 

Pretoria, Feb 3, IRNA                                                                                                            

Iran-Tanzania-Meet 

Tanzanian Vice-President Mohamed Ali Sheni on Thursday stressed
Iran's right to have access to peaceful nuclear technology.

 In a meeting with Iran's Ambassador to Tanzania, Abbas Vaezi,
Sheni praised growing trend of bilateral relations with Tehran
and stressed the importance of further bolstering bilateral
relations.

 He expressed hope to pay a visit to Iran in the near future.

 Vaezi, for his part, outlined the two countries' great
potentials in various fields of agriculture, dam-building,
agriculture equipment, natural gas and scientific achievements.

 During the meeting, Vaezi and Sheni exchanged views on avenues
for bolstering bilateral cooperation as well as key
international developments.



*****************************************************************
 3 IRNA: MPs condemn West threats against Iran nuclear program 

Tehran, Feb 3, IRNA                                                                                                              

Iran-Nuclear-MPs 

Majlis deputies in a statement on Friday condemned pressures and
threats leveled by the Western countries against Iran's peaceful
nuclear activities.

 The statement, signed by 212 MPs and presented to Majlis
Presiding Board, was read before Friday prayers sermons.

 "Based on Article 4 of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT) and Article 3 of article of associations of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), peaceful nuclear
program is an inalienable right of all member states of these
two important international complexes," the statement said.

 "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been a signatory to the NPT
for over three decades. It has implemented all necessary
measures to remove ambiguities on its nuclear activities and has
taken all the transparency steps during the past three years.

 "Today, the country is unfortunately faced with illogical
pressures of powers who are not interested in progress and
scientific development of other states.

 "These powers express their explicit opposition to nuclear
technology despite all international regulations.

 "We, as deputies of the great Iranian nation, express our
explicit and repeated opposition to any nuclear weapons and
stress a world and a Middle East region free from nuclear
weapons and announce our readiness to take any steps in this
regard.

 "We insist on inalienable right of the Iranian nation for
access to peaceful nuclear program which was achieved by capable
Iranian youth and stress that we will never renounce such a
right at any price."
 The MPs also stated, "The world should know all measures
adopted by Iran were within the frameworks of international
regulations and inalienable rights of the nation.

 "Majlis deputies believe in negotiation, peaceful coexistence
and good relations with countries."

*****************************************************************
 4 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Closer to Security Council Referral
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 
 	 
Saturday February 4, 2006 12:16 AM

AP Photo XHS104 

By GEORGE JAHN 

Associated Press Writer 

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran moved closer to referral to the U.N.
Security Council over its atomic program Friday, but a
U.S.-Egyptian dispute about linking the issue to a Middle East
nuclear-free zone - and indirectly to Israel - threatened to
delay a decision. 

Diplomats at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy
Agency's 35-nation board were still hopeful late Friday that the
gathering would decide on referral when it reconvenes Saturday. 

A majority of board members back referral, but the timing
remained in doubt late Friday after the United States and Egypt
tangled over the issue of indirectly linking long-standing Arab
demands that Israel, generally considered a nuclear power, give
up such arms with demands on Iran to dispel suspicions about its
atomic ambitions. 

Diplomats familiar with the issue said France, Britain and
Germany - the three European nations formally submitting the
U.S.-backed draft resolution calling for referral - were trying
to mediate between Cairo and Washington. 

The diplomats, who demanded anonymity in exchange for discussing
the negotiations, said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
and Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Aboul Gheit also were involved in
trying to iron out language acceptable to both sides. 

European diplomats expressed annoyance with both sides as
negotiations dragged into the late evening and language on a
nuclear-free Middle East was first inserted, then deleted and
finally reinserted in compromise language. 

A Western diplomat at the meeting said the United States felt
strongly about not linking its ally Israel to nuclear concerns
in the Middle East when it considers Iran the real threat in the
region. 

Egypt, whose support of the resolution is key to swaying other
Arab board members to join in backing it, was looking to make
the linkage to satisfy broad domestic concerns, a senior
European diplomat said. 

Iran claims its program is peaceful and aimed only at generating
electricity; the United States and European countries fear it is
trying to develop nuclear weapons. 

In a last-minute effort to avoid referral, Iran warned it would
stop considering a proposal to move Tehran's uranium enrichment
program to Russia. 

If the Security Council becomes involved, ``there will be no way
we can continue with the Russian proposal,'' said Javad Vaeidi,
the deputy head of Iran's National Security Council. 

Officials in Tehran have previously suggested that referral
could endanger the proposal. But Vaeidi's comments were the
first to state outright that Iran would stop considering the
plan, which is meant to remove from Iranian soil technology that
could be used to make nuclear weapons. 

The proposal has had broad international backing. 

Russia's chief IAEA delegate, Grigory Berdennikov, denied any
threat to the Kremlin proposal. 

``Our offer is still on the table and the negotiations will
continue,'' he said Friday. 

Vaeidi acknowledged that referral seemed inevitable, and said it
would have two results: ``First to stop diplomacy and second to
kill the Russian proposal.'' 

Vaeidi also reiterated earlier threats that Iran will resume
full-scale work on uranium enrichment and stop honoring an
agreement giving IAEA inspectors broad powers to conduct
short-notice inspections of his country's nuclear program. 

``I advise them not to make a historical mistake,'' he said,
alluding to nations actively backing referral. 

Support for Iran at the Vienna meeting appeared to be limited as
the clock ticked down on the issue of referral. Cuba, Venezuela,
Syria and a few other countries represented at the IAEA board
meeting remained opposed. India was said to be leaning toward
supporting referral. 

Beyond the issue of a Middle-East nuclear free zone, drafts
being debated late Friday that were shown to The Associated
Press contained only minimal changes to earlier ones and the key
demand - referral of Iran to the council - remained. 

Diplomats said support for Iran had shrunk among board members
since Russia and China swung their support behind referral at a
meeting with the United States, France and Britain - the other
three permanent council members - earlier in the week. 

Still, that support was conditonal. 

Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations Wang Guangya told
reporters in New York that he did not want the Security Council
to be used to put pressure on Iran, but instead to support the
IAEA as it tries to defuse the standoff over Iran's suspect
nuclear program. 

And even if the issue is referred, the Security Council would
not take up the issue before next month - a demand made by
Russia and China in exchange for their support. 

Washington has waited years for international suspicions over
Iran's nuclear ambitions to translate into support among board
members. 

Only a simple majority is needed to approve the text, but the
United States and its backers have held off pushing for earlier
referral in hopes of building support for the measure. 

Support has grown since Jan. 10, when Iran stripped IAEA seals
from enrichment equipment and announced it would restart the
program it says it needs to generate nuclear power. 

--- 

Associated Press reporter Palma Benczenleitner in Vienna
contributed to this report.	 
		 	 	   


      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 5 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Threatens to Retaliate if Referred
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Friday February 3, 2006 8:31 PM

AP Photo XHS124 

By GEORGE JAHN 

Associated Press Writer 

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran ratcheted up threats to retaliate if
reported to the U.N. Security Council over suspicions it wants
nuclear weapons, warning Friday that U.S.-backed referral would
``kill'' a proposal to move its uranium enrichment program to
Russia. 

But most of the 35 members of the International Atomic Energy
Agency board of governors appeared unmoved ahead of a Saturday
session slated to reach a decision. The backers of referral,
which include the United States, said they had broad support for
such a move. 

Iran claims its program is peaceful and aimed only at generating
electricity. 

Diplomats in Vienna were fine-tuning a resolution Friday night
calling for Iran's referral to the Security Council. But its
final approval in national capitals was being delayed by U.S.
objections to a clause calling for a nuclear-free Middle East
zone - indirectly linking Iran to Israel, said diplomats
accredited to the meeting. 

They spoke on condition of anonymity in exchange for discussing
the state of efforts to report Iran to the council. 

Iran - which already had threatened to resume its work on
enriching uranium as well as reducing IAEA inspections to a
minimum - upped the ante Friday. 

If the Security Council becomes involved, ``there will be no way
we can continue with the Russian proposal,'' said Javad Vaeidi,
the deputy head of Iran's National Security Council. 

Officials in Tehran have previously suggested that referral
could endanger the proposal. But Vaeidi's comments were the
first to state outright that Iran would stop considering the
plan, which is meant to outsource technology that could be used
to make nuclear weapons and has broad international backing. 

Still, Russia's chief IAEA delegate, Grigory Berdennikov, denied
any threat to the Kremlin proposal. 

``Our offer is still on the table and the negotiations will
continue,'' he said Friday. 

The Iranians and Russians were scheduled to meet Feb. 16 in
Moscow. 

Iranian officials have welcomed the plan as pressure for
Security Council involvement increased over the past few weeks.
But they say it needs work, leading to suspicions they are
stalling. 

Vaeidi acknowledged that referral seemed inevitable, telling
reporters: ``This is an adopted draft. 

``It means that the U.S. and the EU-3 are intending to kill two
issues: First to stop diplomacy and second to kill the Russian
proposal,'' he said, alluding to France, Britain and Germany,
the countries proposing U.S.-supported referral in a resolution
before the IAEA board. 

Vaeidi also reiterated earlier threats that Iran will resume
full-scale work on uranium enrichment and stop honoring an
agreement giving IAEA inspectors broad powers to conduct
short-notice inspections of his country's nuclear program. 

``I advise them not to make a historical mistake,'' he said,
alluding to nations actively backing referral. 

Support for Iran at the Vienna meeting appeared to be limited
Friday. Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and a few other countries
represented at the IAEA board meeting remained opposed. India
was said to be leaning toward supporting referral. 

Egypt, one senior diplomat said, was insisting on mention of a
nuclear-free Middle East zone - an allusion to demands that
Israel disarm. By late Friday the Americans had reluctantly
agreed to the inclusion of some language on the topic, but Cairo
was not happy with the wording. 

Beyond that issue, a new draft shown The Associated Press showed
only minimal changes to the one submitted Wednesday, and the key
demand - referral of Iran to the council - remained. 

Diplomats said support for Iran had shrunk among board members
since Russia and China swung their support behind referral at a
meeting with the United States, France and Britain - the other
three permanent council members - earlier in the week. 

Chief U.S. delegate Gregory L. Schulte said there was a ``solid
majority in support of a resolution that reports Iran to the
Security Council - and that majority is growing.'' 

In Tehran, former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, now
leader of the powerful Expediency Council, said taking Iran
before the Security Council would be a ``black page'' in
history. 

``There can't be cruelty clearer than this,'' he told tens of
thousands of worshippers gathered for Friday prayers at Tehran
University. 

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has stressed that even if the issue
is referred, the Security Council would not take up the issue
before next month - a condition attached by Russia and China in
exchange for their support. 

Washington has waited years for international suspicions over
Iran's nuclear ambitions to translate into support among board
members. 

Only a simple majority is needed to approve the text, but the
U.S. and its backers have held off pushing for earlier referral
in hopes of building support for the measure. Support has grown
since Jan. 10, when Iran stripped IAEA seals from enrichment
equipment and announced it would restart the program. 

--- 

Associated Press reporters Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran, Iran,
and Palma Benczenleitner in Vienna contributed to this report. 	 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 6 Guardian Unlimited: Broader Support Sought for Iran Referral
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Friday February 3, 2006 1:01 PM

AP Photo VIE121 

By GEORGE JAHN 

Associated Press Writer 

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - U.S. and European delegates at an
emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency
worked Friday to broaden support for Iran's virtually certain
referral to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program. 

The U.N. nuclear watchdog is considering a U.S.-backed
resolution sponsored by Britain, France and Germany that would
open the door to possible Security Council action against Iran. 

Diplomats said it was virtually certain the agency's 35-nation
board would adopt the resolution. But the meeting could drag
into Saturday, one day past its scheduled end, because the
sponsors and their supporters were intent on getting the widest
possible consensus, the diplomats said on condition of
anonymity. 

Iran, which says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes,
warned that a U.N. referral could backfire and instead provoke
Tehran into resuming questionable activities. 

Support for Iran has shrunk since Russia and China lined up
behind the United States, Britain and France during overnight
talks with the three other permanent Security Council members
earlier in the week. 

Cuba, Venezuela and Spain are among the few nations still
opposed to the referral. India was said to be leaning toward a
vote against Iran. Egypt, one senior diplomat said, was
insisting on mention of a nuclear-free Middle East zone - an
allusion to demands that Israel disarm. 

Still a new draft of the resolution - made available to The
Associated Press - showed only minimal changes to the one
submitted Wednesday and the key demand - referral of Iran to the
council - remained. 

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the number
of nations expected to vote against referral were in the ``low
to single digits.'' 

Iran remained defiant. In a last-minute warning, Tehran's chief
nuclear negotiator told IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei that his
country would severely curtail U.N. inspections and resume
uranium enrichment if reported to the council. Iran had
suspended enrichment, needed to produce both electricity and
nuclear weapons, as a confidence-building measure. 

But in a letter made available to the AP, negotiator Ali
Larijani said referral would leave Iran no choice but ``to
suspend all the voluntary measures and extra cooperation'' with
IAEA - shorthand for reducing U.N. monitoring to a minimum. 

Furthermore, ``all the peaceful nuclear activities being under
voluntary suspension would be resumed without any restriction,''
the letter said. 

Iran has made such threats before. What was significant this
time, however, was that the warnings were in the form of a
formal notification to the IAEA. 

In Tehran, former Iranian President, Hashemi Rafsanjani, now
head of the powerful Expediency Council, said taking Iran before
the Security Council would be a ``black page'' in history. 

``There can't be cruelty clearer than this,'' he told tens of
thousands of worshippers gathered for Friday prayers at Tehran
University. 

As Thursday's meeting adjourned until 3 p.m. (9 a.m. EST)
Friday, U.S. and European diplomats intensified efforts to widen
support for hauling Iran before the council, which has the
authority to impose sanctions. 

ElBaradei said there was a ``window of opportunity'' to defuse
the crisis, stressing that even if Iran is referred, the
Security Council would not take up the issue before next month. 

``We are reaching a critical phase but it is not a crisis,'' he
said. 

Grigory Berdennikov, Russia's chief IAEA delegate, reaffirmed
Moscow's position, saying referral to the Security Council would
send Iran ``a serious signal.'' 

Washington has waited years for international suspicions over
Iran's nuclear ambitions to translate into backing among board
nations. 

``It is time to send a clear and unequivocal message to the
Iranian regime about the concerns of the international community
by reporting this issue to the Security Council,'' said Gregory
L. Schulte, the chief U.S. delegate. 

Only a simple majority is needed to approve the resolution, but
the United States and its backers have held off pushing for
earlier referral in hopes of building support for the measure. 

Support has grown since Jan. 10, when Iran stripped IAEA seals
from enrichment equipment and announced it would restart the
program. 

--- 

Associated Press writer Palma Benczenleitner contributed to this
report. 	 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 7 Guardian Unlimited: Tehran urged to agree to 10-year nuclear freeze
 
Ian Traynor in Vienna
Friday February 3, 2006
The Guardian 		
 		
The UN's chief nuclear inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, is calling 
on Iran to freeze nuclear fuel production for up to 10 years as a 
way of defusing the escalating confrontation between Iran and the 
west.

As the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency met in 
emergency session yesterday to debate sending the Iranian dispute 
to the UN security council in New York, Dr ElBaradei, the IAEA 
chief, said there was "no urgency" for Iran to embark on 
enriching uranium and said Tehran had a "window of opportunity" 
over the next few weeks for stepping back from a showdown with 
the west.

For the first time in three years of such meetings dominated by 
the Iranian dispute, the 35-strong board was expected to send the 
dispute to the security council, raising the ante after Russia 
and China, the most powerful opponents of such a move, joined the 
US and Europeans in supporting such a decision earlier this week.

US and German officials emphasised yesterday that hauling Iran
before the security council would not mean resorting to prompt
penalties against Iran.

"We are not now seeking sanctions or other punitive measures on
Iran," said the US delegate to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte. "We
seek a carefully calibrated approach in which the [security]
council applies escalating measures on Iran's regime."

Speaking for the EU, the German ambassador, Herbert Honsowitz,
also said there would be no rush to punish Iran for perceived
recalcitrance on its nuclear programmes. "The security council
is not being asked at this stage to take any action," said Dr
ElBaradei.

But reporting Iran to the council would be a victory for the US,
which has been demanding such action for two years. A decision
is almost certain today after the Russian ambassador said
yesterday Moscow had "no problems" with an IAEA resolution
drafted by the Europeans which takes the dispute to the council.

"The important thing is that this issue goes to New York, where
it belongs politically. That's what we expect to happen this
weekend," said a western diplomat.

The security council is not expected to act on the dispute,
however, for at least a month, giving Tehran a chance to climb
down and accept a Russian compromise proposal under which fuel
for Iran's civil nuclear programme is manufactured not in Iran
but in Russia. Iran insists on making its own fuel for what it
maintains is a civil nuclear programme, but many countries
suspect the aim is to obtain the knowhow and material for a bomb.

Dr ElBaradei said there would be several critical meetings on
the dispute over the next month. Behind the scenes, he is
advising the Iranians to agree to a five- to 10-year freeze on
uranium enrichment.

The proposal is being couched publicly as a transition period,
at the end of which Iran would obtain international blessing for
its domestic nuclear programmes if sufficient trust was built up.

"A 10-year moratorium is better than no moratorium at all," said
a western diplomat. A European source added that the EU did not
rule out eventually agreeing to Iran's enrichment programmes,
although the central aim of western diplomacy for the past two
years has been to get Iran to forfeit uranium enrichment - the
quickest and most reliable way to the bomb.

A senior IAEA official said, however, that Tehran had robustly
rejected the ElBaradei proposal. Western diplomats fear that
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is bent on generating a siege
mentality inside Iran towards the outside world.

The war of words looks likely to worsen. Iran is threatening
retaliation against the UN inspectors as early as tomorrow if
the IAEA board sends the dispute to New York today.
 	
[UP] 

      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 8 IRNA: Iran envoy to IAEA calls for nuclear disarmament

Vienna, Feb 2, IRNA                                                                                                              

Iran-IAEA-Soltanieh 

Iranian Resident Representative to IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh
said on Thursday that Iran attaches importance to international
cooperation on nuclear disarmament and
 non-proliferation.

 Addressing the emergency meeting of the Board of Governors,
Soltanieh said Iran and other peace-loving and like minded
developing countries have expressed serious concerns about
development and employment of new advanced nuclear weapons by
the United States and the United Kingdom.

 He said the initiative put forward by President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad at the World Summit in New York last September paved
the way for adoption of UN General Assembly resolution calling
for implementation of decisions and resolutions of the 1995 and
2000 NPT Review Conferences, especially establishment of nuclear
weapons free zone in the Middle East, confirms Iran's
determination to work with other countries towards total
elimination of nuclear warheads which exists in Nuclear Weapons
States.

 "The Nuclear Weapons States are totally ignoring the serious
concern of the international community. The Nuclear Weapons
States are highlighting the non-proliferation in order to
overshadow and cover up the essential issue namely nuclear
disarmament and the immediate threat of their nuclear arsenals
to the global security.

 "The attention of international community has been diverted
from existence of hundreds of nuclear warheads and
un-safeguarded nuclear installations mostly constructed and
developed with full technical and financial support of US and
some European countries in Israel to few issues regarding the
research in Iran which are under full surveillance of IAEA.

 "The Islamic Republic of Iran is party to NPT and has been
implementing NPT comprehensive Safeguards for three decades and
is voluntarily implementing Additional Protocol to NPT, whereas,
Israel has rejected to adhere to any disarmament treaties on
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) particularly NPT and to sign
IAEA Safeguards Agreements. Israel has not implemented over 30
resolutions of IAEA and the United Nations calling her to
observe international law and treaties and not to threaten the
countries in the region.

 "One could refer to strong condemnation Israel through
resolutions following the military attacks against nuclear
installations in the region. This discriminatory status quo
cannot and must not be tolerated by international community
anymore." 1416/1414

*****************************************************************
 9 Greenpeace International: Nukes, Iran, the UN: a grave mistake | 

02 February 2006 

Send [For the same investment, wind generates 5 times the
jobs and 2.3 times the power as a nuclear reactor.] 

For the same investment, wind generates 5 times the jobs and 2.3 
times the power as a nuclear reactor. Enlarge Image Vienna, 
Austria — Somewhere out there, the only winners in the current 
conflict over Iran's nuclear programme are rubbing their hands 
with glee. They love hearing about the "inalienable right" to 
build nuclear power plants. They love watching nuclear 
superpowers try to bully non-nuclear states into agreeing not to 
develop nukes, yet fail to explain why they themselves haven't 
gotten rid of theirs. They love seeing nuclear weapons being 
presented as the measure of a country's greatness. That's because 
the only winners in this conflict sell the stuff that makes all 
this war drumming possible. They sell nuclear power plants. They 
build nuclear weapons. Greenpeace learned late last night, 
through a leaked document, that the International Atomic Energy 
Agency's (IAEA) Board of Governers will almost certainly vote 
today* to report Iran to the UN Security Council over allegations 
that it is pursuing a programme to acquire nuclear weapons.  
 
This is a grave mistake.  

*Update Friday, February 3, 2006- An impasse on the draft
resolution on Iran proposed by France, Germany and Britain shows
that there remain divisions within the IAEA Board on whether or
not the best way to deal with Iran is to report them to the UN
Security Council.

â€œIAEA head Mr ElBaradei said earlier today that he believed
the Iran issue was not yet a crisis but reporting it to the UN
Security Council would in fact create one," said Greenpeace
nuclear analyst William Peden from IAEA headquarters in Vienna.
â€œIt will greatly hamper Agency inspectors in their quest to
resolve outstanding issues concerning Iran's nuclear programme.
Iran could easily take the wind out of the sails...by announcing
a re-suspension of enrichment and reprocessing activities to
allow negotiations to proceedâ€
 
We hope that with overnight contemplation cooler heads will
prevail and that more time will be given for the diplomatic
route to be pursued. 

Greenpeace is opposed to any nation acquiring nuclear technology
and nuclear weapons, including Iran. But we believe the best way
to ensure that doesn't happen is for the IAEA to have continued
access to Iranian facilities.  Iran has already made clear that
if the matter goes to the Security Council it will restrict
inspections and no longer comply with requests to reveal
information above and beyond what is legally required under
existing treaty obligations. 

As past situations have shown, in particular in Iraq, any action
that restricts inspections and that closes opportunities to
rebuild confidence can only lead to a confidence vacuum.  And
where hard evidence is not available, warmongers on all sides
exploit the currency of fear and speculation.
 
The UN Security Council is simply not the right body to resolve
a conflict over whether a country has a right to a nuclear
programme or not. The Security Council has failed to live up to
its Charter obligations to minimize human and economic resources
spent on armaments, or to advance the goal of a Middle East
nuclear free zone.  Instead the permanent members (who are
permanent members precisely because they have nuclear weapons)
have participated in arms races and weapons profiteering,
stubbornly refusing to comply with treaty commitments to
eliminate their nuclear arsenals. Given this record, how can the
Security Council resolve the Iran crisis?  
 
Given the failure to treat the nuclear weapons programmes of
other countries with the same vigilance as Iran's, how can the
accusation of hypocrisy not have a ring of truth?
 
The only solution to this crisis is a Nuclear Free Zone in the
Middle East.  It's a vital first step towards removing all
nuclear proliferation risks in the region, as well as providing
the essential security guarantees from nuclear weapons states
outside the region.  
 
That means an end not only to existing and nascent nuclear
weapons programmes, but an end to nuclear power as well.
 
Iran insists that it is simply exercising its rights under the
terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty  to develop
"peaceful nuclear technology."  There is no such thing as
peaceful nuclear technology.  Once a country has a nuclear power
programme it is possible for it to develop a weapons programme.
That's as true for Germany, Japan and Brazil as it is for Iran.
 
Our position on Iran is the same as that for all countries with
nuclear power or nuclear weapons - the ONLY basis for peace,
security and sustainable development is to abandon nuclear
programmes; and to phase out nuclear power in favour of
sustainable renewable technologies - in other words, a
nuclear-free world.
 
Iran has an opportunity to stop this slide toward war by calling
for a regional nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. The
international community has an opportunity to stop this slide
toward war by pursuing exactly the same thing.
 
The current path is lose-lose for everyone except the makers of
nuclear weapons and the peddlers of nuclear power.
 
*****************************************************************
 10 AFP: UN nuclear watchdog delays decision on Iran 

 Fri Feb 3, 12:54 PM ET 		 	 

VIENNA (AFP) - The UN atomic agency delayed a decision on
sending Iran" /> Iran's suspect nuclear program to the UN
Security Council despite protestations of unity among world
powers. 

"The meeting will not take place today and will
resume at 10:00 am (0900 GMT) Saturday," said a spokesman
for the "International Atomic Energy Agency"

Related information on International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 
He did not give a reason for the delay. 

The 35-nation board of IAEA governors, which opened an emergency
meeting in Vienna on Thursday, had been due to resume on Friday. 

Diplomats said China, Europe, Russia and the United States were
closing ranks behind a resolution sending Tehran to the UN over
fears it may secretly be developing an atomic bomb. 

But the decision was delayed because some non-aligned countries
were demanding that the resolution also include mention of a
Middle East nuclear-weapons-free zone, diplomats said. 

Washington, however, fears that if the nuclear-weapons-free zone
is mentioned in the resolution, "it will stay there forever and
allow the Iranians to hide behind it," avoiding IAEA demands, a
diplomat said. 

Egypt was lobbying strongly for the zone to be mentioned in the
resolution, diplomats said. 

Egypt and other Arab states regularly insist that Israel" />
Israel, which is believed to have nuclear weapons, be part of a
general security framework in the Middle East that bans atomic
weapons. 

Despite the complication, diplomats said the major powers were
ready to back a decision to send Tehran to the Security Council. 

Iran insists it is pursuing a peaceful nuclear energy program
and it has threatened to start industrial-scale uranium
enrichment if it is referred to the United Nations" /> United
Nations. 

"We're in a consultation phase right now," said a Western
diplomat who asked not to be named, expressing confidence that
non-aligned countries' concerns would be met without affecting
the referral of Iran to the Security Council. 

US Ambassador Gregory Schulte told reporters the West was
convinced "that we have a solid majority in support of the
resolution that reports Iran to the Security Council and that
majority is growing." 

The five permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China,
France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany have drawn
up a draft resolution sending the Iranian nuclear file to the
UN. 

The text is compromise between the US desire for immediate
Security Council action against Iran and Russia's demand for a
month's time, until the next IAEA meeting in March, for more
diplomacy. 

Russia, a key trade partner of Iran, hopes Tehran can be
convinced to respond to calls by the IAEA to suspend all nuclear
fuel work and cooperate fully with agency inspectors in order
for the crisis to be defused without the Security Council
imposing sanctions. 

Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani wrote to IAEA chief
Mohamed ElBaradei warning that if Tehran is sent to the Security
Council, Iran would move ahead on industrial-level uranium
enrichment, producing material that can be used for a nuclear
reactor or an atom bomb. 

Javad Vaidi, head of the Iranian delegation to the board
meeting, said referring Iran to the UN also would kill a
proposal by Moscow that Tehran enrich uranium on Russian soil. 

The IAEA has been unable to draw conclusions about whether
Iran's nuclear program is peaceful or not after three years of
investigating US charges that Iran is hiding secret atomic
weapons work. 

In January, Tehran broke international seals and made
preparations for uranium enrichment. In August last year, Iran
had resumed uranium conversion that makes the feedstock gas for
enrichment. 

ElBaradei told reporters Thursday that the showdown over Iran
was "reaching a critical phase but it is not a crisis
situation." 	 		 			

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 11 IRNA: Ahmadinejad says enrichment basis of nuclear energy -

Ahrom, Bushehr prov, Feb 2, IRNA                                                                                                                 

Iran-Nuclear-Ahmadinejad 

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in reaction to the remarks of the 
IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei that "Iran has the right to access 
nuclear technology, but does not need to enrich uranium" said 
Thursday that the essence of nuclear energy was the same as 
enrichment.

 Talking after the IAEA Board of Governors' extraordinary
meeting on Thursday, ElBaradei said the Board of Governors had
decided to call on Iran to restore full suspension of enrichment
until a final decision was reached on the extent and nature of
the process.

 Speaking at a gathering of people in the town of Tangestan to
the south of Bushehr province on the second day of his
provincial visit on Thursday, the president added that the
enemies intend to deprive Iran of its legitimate right.

 "Today, an IAEA official said there is no need for uranium
enrichment in Iran. They are determined to deprive us of our
legal rights to access nuclear technology so that they would
sell the same to us at a very high price," he added.

 Addressing Iran's antagonists and opponents, the president said
as an independent nation, the Iranians will continue their
efforts to restore their legitimate rights and will not yield.

 "They ask us to enrich uranium outside Iran. Even if we
accepted such a proposal, what should we do if one day they fail
to supply us with our required nuclear fuel? How can we trust
that our nuclear fuel requirement would be supplied?"

*****************************************************************
 12 IRNA: Iran envoy condemns West dual standards - Irna
 
, Argentina, Feb 3, IRNA                                                                                                                 

- 
Iran's Ambassador to Cuba Ahmad Edrissian here Thursday
condemned the West selective policies and dual standards on
international developments including nuclear know-how, democracy
and human rights.

 Addressing university students and professors of Havana
university, Edrissian said such moves will accelerate trend of
new regional and international developments including awareness
of nations of Latin America and the Middle East.

 He added the outstanding victory of Hamas in a democratic
parliamentary elections in Palestine was among outcomes of such
an awareness which caused dissatisfaction among the West.

 He outlined latest developments within Iran's nuclear case and
stressed the country's firm determination to have access to its
inalienable nuclear rights within the frameworks of
international regulations and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).


*****************************************************************
 13 IRNA: Rafsanjani says Iran UNSC referral a big mistake 

Tehran, Feb 3, IRNA                                                                                                              

Iran-Rafsanjani-Nuclear 

The Europeans will commit a big mistake if they send Iran's
nuclear case to the UN Security Council, Tehran's substitute
Friday Prayers Leader Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said here Friday.

 "Since yesterday all eyes are directed to Vienna to see what a
decision they (members of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) Board of Governors) will make; If they adopt what
Europeans have proposed and open our case's path even in the
form of report to the UN Security Council, they will in fact
commit a big mistake," warned Rafsanjani.

 Rafsanjani made the remark while addressing multitudes of
worshipers attending this week's Friday prayers congregation at
Tehran University campus.

 "On peaceful nuclear activities, we seek nothing beyond our
legal international right and making use of nuclear energy for a
better life.

 "Under current circumstances, we cause no trouble for anybody.

 We have achieved a science and want to use it for improvement
of our life; But if they (the Europeans) treat (us) this way,
the issues will take other shape.

 "We wish they would change the procedure during the remaining
time. Our representatives will make their efforts and give
necessary explanations.

 "I too, as a person who knows the Iranian nation, history and
the region, recommend them not to commit such a mistake,"
chairman of the Expediency Council said.

 He addressed the Europeans as saying, "If you are really honest
and worried that Iran may obtain nuclear weapons, there are
better ways to gain confidence.

 "Iran has had a good cooperation with the International Atomic
Energy Agency even beyond its duties. I think there might be
wise individuals in this atmosphere who could have a better look
at the future and will not be willing to record such a black
page in the history."
 Rafsanjani stressed, "It will be a matter of disgrace if five
big countries, enjoying the veto right, show injustice and
cruelty and record such an unfair measure in the history.

 "(In that case), how they can expect nations trust
international circles in the future?"
 The Friday prayer leader added, "Lack of confidence will break
chain of international security.

 "I friendly advise them not to commit such a historical crime.
If they do, they should not imagine they will reap the benefit
because God Almighty will not leave this nation alone."
		 				 		 			
*****************************************************************
 14 IRNA: FM reports to president on London conference, nuclear issues -
                              
Bushehr, Feb 3, IRNA                                                                                                             

Iran-President-FM 

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki here Thursday presented a
report to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on issues raised in
London conference and his talks with officials of European
states and member countries of the IAEA Board of Governors on
Iran's peaceful nuclear activities.

 Mottaki, who was in London to attend a conference on
 reconstruction of Afghanistan, met with President Ahmadinejad,
currently on a three-day tour to southern Bushehr province.

 Ahmadinejad praised efforts by the Iranian delegation to the
conference and said, "Based on the Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the
Governing Board should support rights of the member states for
access to nuclear technology and resist against bullying of
those who have nuclear arsenals.

 "If the logical proposals of the independent states for
eventual solution of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities are not
heeded within framework of the IAEA, the Islamic Republic will,
while suspending all the voluntary activities, study and
consider other means for restoration of its legal rights."

*****************************************************************
 15 Guardian Unlimited: Koreas Agree to High-Level Military Talks
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Friday February 3, 2006 5:46 AM

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The two Koreas agreed on Friday to
hold military talks for first time in nearly two years. 

The negotiations had been on hold due in large part to the
North's criticism of the annual military exercises conducted
jointly by South Korea and the United States. 

North Korea denounces the drills as a U.S. rehearsal to attack
the communist country, a charge Washington denies. 

The South Korean government announced the agreement after a
meeting at the border village of Panmunjom. The divided Koreas
agreed to hold the high-level talks in late February or early
March, the Unification Ministry said. 

The last round of high-level military talks was in June 2004. 

The two Koreas have remained technically in a state of conflict
since the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a cease-fire, not a
peace treaty. But their relations have warmed significantly
since an unprecedented summit of their leaders in 2000. 

Inter-Korean ties have stayed warm despite an international
standoff over the North's nuclear ambitions. 	 

      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 16 AFP: Bush asked for intelligence report on North Korea nuclear arms -
     
 Fri Feb 3, 6:14 PM ET 		 	 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US legislators asked President George W.
Bush" /> President George W. Bushto declassify an intelligence
report on North Koreas nuclear weapons so that Congress can hold
a full debate on policy towards the Stalinist state. 

The US intelligence community recently completed a comprehensive 
national intelligence estimate (NIE) of North Koreas nuclear 
weapons capability and long-range missile development programs at 
the request of Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid.

On Friday Reid and three other senior Democratic senators 
requested Bush to provide 'a declassified version of that NIE so 
that Congress can have at hand accurate information about the 
current threat and engage in a full and free debate about the 
best policy on North Korea going forward." 

Noting that Bush did not touch on North Korea's nuclear threat
during his State of the Union address last Tuesday, the senators
called into question "the credibility" of his commitment to
addressing the issue. 

"We urge you to clearly describe to America and the Congress
your policies on North Korea so that we can begin, in a
bipartisan effort, to put US policy on a more productive path
that reduces the threat to US national security," they said. 

The other senators were Carl Levin of the Senate Armed Services
committee, Joe Biden of the foreign relations committee and Jay
Rockefeller, vice chairman of the intelligence committee. 

They cautioned Bush that "time is not on our side" and that it
appeared his policy had failed to eliminate, freeze, or even
slow down North Koreas nuclear and ballistic missile activities. 

"We are now faced with the real possibility that North Korea may
have perhaps as many as a dozen nuclear weapons," they said. 

There was also no guarantee that North Korea would not export
fissile material or even finished nuclear weapons, they said. 

Many experts, the senators claimed, believed North Korea had the
capability to deploy nuclear warheads on its Nodong missiles,
bringing the entire Korean Peninsula and much of Japan under the
threat of nuclear attack. 

The United States is engaged with China, Russia, South Korea" />
South Koreaand Japan in six-party talks with North Korea to end
Pyongyang's nuclear weapons drive, but the negotiations have
stalled since November. 

Pyongyang has said it will not return to the talks unless
Washington withdraws financial sanctions for alleged
counterfeiting and money laundering activities. 

But Bush said last week that the United States would not
compromise on the financial sanctions to resolve the nuclear
stand-off. 

US officials have accused North Korea of using state trading
firms, diplomatic pouches and commercial cargo for criminal
activity. 

North Korea has denied the charges. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 17 Las Vegas SUN: Pentagon Wants 10 Percent Cuts in Nukes 

Today: February 03, 2006 at 10:26:6 PST 

By MARY CLARE JALONICK
 ASSOCIATED PRESS 



WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon on Friday recommended reducing the 
nation's nuclear missile stockpile by 10 percent. 

The report was not specific about where the missiles would come 
from. Five hundred Minuteman III missiles are based at Minot Air 
Force Base in North Dakota, Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana 
and F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. 



 
         All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
                                 


*****************************************************************
 18 Guardian Unlimited: Pentagon Announces Sweeping Defense Review
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Friday February 3, 2006 6:31 PM

AP Photo BAG108 

By LOLITA C. BALDOR 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon Friday announced plans to
significantly increase special operations forces, expand
psychological warfare and develop a program to counter
biological terrorism as part of a new broadbased military
strategy for the 21st century. 

The plan comes three days before President Bush sends Congress a
2007 budget that seeks a nearly 5 percent increase in Defense
Department spending, to $439.3 billion, with significantly more
for weapons programs, according to senior Pentagon officials and
documents obtained by The Associated Press. 

Under the long-range plan, called the Quadrennial Defense
Review, the Pentagon will increase special operations forces by
15 percent, including the establishment for the first time of a
Marine Corps commando unit. And there will be a one-third
increase - or a jump of 3,700 - in troops assigned to
psychological warfare and civil affairs units. 

There also will be a new $1.5 billion program to develop medical
countermeasures for bioterrorism threats. 

The plan will reduce the number of Minuteman III land-based
nuclear missiles from 500 to 450, and calls for the conversion
of a small number of nuclear missiles aboard Trident submarines
to non-nuclear ballistic missiles. 

The long-range strategy document, more than a year in the
making, outlines broad plans to reshape the military into a more
agile fighting force better able to fight terrorism, in what the
document calls the Long War, while still preserving the ability
to wage large conventional wars. The review, which does not call
for the elimination of any of the largest weapons programs, as
initially expected, will guide how dollars are spent within the
Pentagon budget. 

``Now in the fifth year of this global war, the ideas and
proposals in this document are provided as a roadmap for change,
leading to victory,'' said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld,
in a letter accompanying the document. This represents the
second four-year review that Rumsfeld has led during his tenure
heading the department. 

As part of the effort to shift the focus of the military toward
more non-traditional terrorist enemies, the plan calls for
doubling the procurement of unmanned aircraft, particularly for
surveillance; calls for the development of a new long-range
strike system, as a greater deterrent against future threats and
stresses the need to build strong partnerships both with other
nations and other U.S. government agencies. 

The plan also recommends reducing the number of Navy aircraft
carriers from from 12 to 11, a proposal rejected by Congress
last year. 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 19 Nethaway: Energy policy gridlock

Friday, February 03, 2006 		 	 		 		 		 		 	 	 	 	 	 			 	 	 	
		 	 	
 Rowland Nethaway Senior editor 

We need to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge (ANWR). 

We need higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards
for cars. 

We need to open up offshore drilling for oil and gas. 

We need strict energy conservation standards for houses and
buildings nationwide. 

We need to build more nuclear power plants. 

We need to require the lowest possible emission standards for
the nation's power plants, refineries and manufacturers. 

We need to build more oil refineries and speed up the permitting
process. 

We need to make it easier to drill for oil and gas on all
federal lands. 

We need strict pollution standards accompanied by severe
penalties for all oil and gas operations. 

We need to bury our nuclear wastes at the Yucca Mountain, Nevada
geologic repository built for that purpose. 

We need to revive the nation's railroad system for both
commercial and passenger service, especially to relieve the
reliance on diesel tractor-trailer trucks to transport the
nation's commodities and wares. 

Nation needs its coal 

We need to exploit America's abundance of coal as an energy
source. 

We need better land reclamation standards for all mining
operations and requirements to fund reforestation and wetlands
projects. 

We need higher fuel taxes dedicated to funding research and
development of alternative energy sources. 

The problem with meeting these needs is that liberals would
conscript every trial lawyer in the nation to stop half of the
ideas and conservatives would hire every lobbyist in the nation
to prevent passage of the other half. 

Actually, it's worse than that. There would be lawyers and
lobbyists on both sides. 

That's why the nation has been unable to pass an effective
national energy policy that would make our dependence on Middle
Eastern oil a thing of the past. 

Hmmm. In applauding that line in President Bush's
America-is-addicted-to-oil State of the Union speech, I didn't
notice that he limited his goal to breaking our oil addiction to
Middle Eastern oil. 

Actually we already have reduced our dependence on Middle
Eastern oil as a percentage of our foreign oil imports. 

At the same time, however, we have increased our foreign oil
imports as a percentage of our total oil consumption by
increasing imports from Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela and other
nations. 

Dependence on Middle Eastern oil is a serious problem due to
regional complications involving hostility toward Israel,
America's ally, and the area's questionable stability propelled
by radical Islamic causes. 

Not that there aren't serious reasons to worry about the
stability of oil imports from Russian, Nigeria or Venezuela. 

All things considered, Bush's State of the Union speech was
remarkable in that he advocated energy solutions that could have
come out of the mouths of liberals and environmentalists. 

If the manner of Nixon establishing relations with communist
China, if Bush's call to develop alternative energy sources,
build zero-emisson coal-fired power plants, make ethanol
competitive in six years and help develop pollution-free cars
that run on hydrogen  if all this is on the up and up  then
maybe he can get liberals to meet him halfway on ANWR, offshore
drilling, nuclear power plants and other measures needed to
develop a truly comprehensive national energy plan. 

And if the liberals can meet Bush half way on those issues, then
maybe Bush and the conservatives could compromise on the need to
pass stricter pollution standards and pass a fuel tax that will
accelerate the development of fuel-efficient cars and also fund
research into the development of alternative energy sources. 

Energy is an economic and national security necessity. That
should be the starting point to negotiate an effective national
energy policy between liberals and conservatives. 

Rowland Nethaway's column appears Wednesday and Friday. E-mail:
RNethaway@wacotrib.com 

Cox Newspapers, L.P. - The Waco Tribune-Herald - Our Partners 

*****************************************************************
 20 IEER | Our Electric Future: A Non-Nuclear Low Carb Diet?
 
IEER| Publications

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of the
New Hampshire Sierran, newsletter of the New Hampshire Sierra
Club. 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Electricity is clearly an essential pillar of our civilization.
We now have to face basic questions: With increasing demand and
dwindling energy sources, will there be enough electricity to
supply our needs? Can our future electricity be generated
without harmful effects to human health and planetary health? 

The NH Sierran was fortunate to have found Dr. Arjun Makhijani,
President and Senior Engineer of the Institute for Energy and
Environmental Research, willing to address some of these
questions. He is the principal author of the first ever
assessment of the energy efficiency potential of the U.S.
economy (1971) and has written widely on energy and
environmental issues. In preparing these answers, he consulted
with Dr. Brice Smith, Senior Scientist at IEER, who is working
on a book on nuclear power and global warming. 

Some environmentalists recently expressed the opinion that we
may have to face up to the risks of nuclear power generation and
its radioactive waste legacy as a lesser evil than burning
fossil fuels. Please share your view on this topic. 

There is now near universal agreement that climate change is by
far the most severe environmental problem facing the world and
that carbon dioxide is the chief among greenhouse gas driving
it. Since nuclear power plants (including the associated
infrastructure) have zero or low carbon dioxide emissions, some
leading environmentalists also appear to be having second
thoughts about their opposition to nuclear power. The nuclear
industry is trying to use climate change as an opportunity to
revive a moribund market with large governmental subsidies. 

However, the main question is not whether nuclear power can be
used to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. There is no
shortage of energy sources that have no or low CO2 emissions.
The potential for wind-generated electricity in the 12 states
down the spine of the United States (North Dakota to Texas,
including Midwestern and Rocky Mountain states) is equal to
two-and-a-half times the entire electricity generation of the
United States. 

Put another way, the energy potential there is roughly the same
as the oil output of all the members of the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). 

What is in short supply to address the problem is not energy
sources but money. Therefore, the main question is: for a given
amount of money, what approach to reducing CO2 emissions will
minimize other costs and risks to society and to future
generations? It is in answering this question that nuclear
energy fails the test. 

Please give us an overview of the percentages of U.S. and global
electricity currently supplied by coal, oil, gas, nuclear, and
renewables such as water, wind, solar. 

Coal supplies 50 percent of US electricity, nuclear power about
20 percent; natural gas under 20 percent, hydropower about 7
percent, oil about 2 percent. Renewables other than hydro are
just about 2 percent, mostly wind energy and some geothermal.
Solar energy is very small, much less than one percent. 

Globally, fossil fuels (mainly coal) supply about 64 percent of
electricity, hydro and nuclear about 17 percent each, and
renewables about 2 percent. It is important to remember that
fuel use in sectors other than electricity is also responsible
for CO2 emissions - notably transportation, heating in
buildings, and fuel use in industry. 

All energy sources have some impact - in this sense, the use of
energy is like other issues. As a corollary, unlimited use of
energy, like any other resource is neither possible nor
sensible. 

What is the potential for increasing efficiency? 

The efficiency of use of energy in the United States and other
industrialized countries is pathetically low - and it is even
lower in developing countries. For instance, a typical
high-efficiency gas-fired central heating furnace has an
efficiency of less than 10 percent, when evaluated by strict
physics criteria (the second law of thermodynamics). Electric
resistance heating is even more inefficient. The average
efficiency of electric lighting systems is about one percent -
that is, only about one percent of the energy in the fuel used
to generate the electricity comes out as visible light energy.
The rest is wasted as heat either at the power plant or in the
light bulb. Even high efficiency lamps have an efficiency of
only about 3 percent. And much of the light is wasted too. 

Passenger transportation efficiency is similarly dismal. The
useful work done when a car weighing a ton-and-half transports
one person weighing 150 or 200 pounds is less than one percent
of the energy content of the fuel input. 

The potential of increasing the efficiency of energy use with
currently available technology is vast. Two-thirds of U.S.
energy use per unit of economic output could be eliminated using
available technology, while still maintaining all the functions
present-day fuel use performs. With a sensible program of energy
research and public policy, it is quite possible to achieve
energy use per unit of economic output at one-tenth present
levels within a few decades. With some care in energy use, and
very high efficiency, economic output can be tripled over the
next fifty years while reducing energy use overall by more than
three times. 

But we still need to supply the energy to do all this - and it
will likely be more and more in the form of electricity since it
allows a wider range of technological approaches to make energy
use more efficient. In the U.S., the growth of electricity
required is modest, since the use is already high and there are
many opportunities for efficiency. Eventually it may even be
possible to begin to reduce this component as well, depending on
evolution of technology and lifestyles. In contrast, the growth
of electricity required in the developing countries is high
because billions of people cannot even meet minimum needs, much
less look forward to even modest comforts. And this growth is
occurring in much of the developing world, including China and
India. 

So efficiency alone does not allow us to answer the difficult
question of how we are going to get from where we are to a world
in which we will have eliminated 50 to 80 percent of CO2
emissions in the next fifty years or so and where those who are
poor today have a chance at a more comfortable life. 

What are the specific problems of nuclear energy that make it
inadvisable as a way to reduce CO2 emissions? 

To reduce CO2 emissions from power plants globally
significantly, 2,000 to 3,000 nuclear reactors of 1,000
megawatts each would need to be built over the next five decades
- that¹s one a week for the next fifty years. This is because
about half of present coal and oil capacity would need to be
replaced by nuclear (amounting to about 1,000 reactors) and the
rest would go towards meeting needs for additional electricity.
Even if such a large growth of the industry could be
accommodated, it would create many severe risks. 

Nuclear power plants and associated technology would be widely
used in dozens of countries. The human and technical
infrastructure for making weapons and power plants is largely
the same. About two uranium enrichment plants of several million
kilograms capacity would have to be built each year. The demand
for uranium would be so high that separation of plutonium from
spent nuclear fuel would be more and more likely and widespread.
This is the technology used by North Korea in its weapons
program. As another example, Japan could use its commercial
plutonium to make nuclear weapons. The leader of the Liberal
Party in Japan, Ichiro Ozawa, said in April 2002 that "If
(China) gets too inflated, the Japanese people will become
hysterical in response," and that "We have plenty of plutonium
in our nuclear power plants, so it's possible for us to produce
3,000 to 4,000 nuclear warheads." Japan owns enough plutonium to
accomplish this, though some of it is currently stored at the
British and French reprocessing sites, where almost all Japanese
commercial reprocessing takes place. Japan is also building a
large new reprocessing plant at home. 

Reprocessing is also part of the nuclear power strategy of the
Bush administration. A new reprocessing technology being
developed in the United States is more compact and easier to
hide. It produces impure plutonium that would not be used by
weapons states for bombs, but non-weapons states and terrorist
groups would find it attractive. The technology is far more
compact and much easier to hide than the present commercial
technology. Even with reprocessing, many deep geologic disposal
sites for long-lived radioactive waste would be needed - perhaps
several each decade. 

Even with improved safety, such a large number of reactors would
entail the risk of periodic catastrophic accidents. Though the
mechanisms and probabilities of accidents are different with
different designs, all reactor designs now installed have the
risk of accidents on the same scale as Chernobyl. The chance of
accidents is very difficult to estimate, but using conventional
approaches to risk estimation, such accidents could be expected
to occur once every decade or two if a couple of thousand
reactors are installed around the world. If inspections and
safety are lax, as they may well be if so many reactors are
built in a short time, the risks may well be higher. 

There is no good approach to disposing of long-lived nuclear
waste. The problems of estimating performance of geologic
repositories are too daunting and considerable uncertainties
will remain regarding impact. Leaving wastes at reactors or
other storage sites for indefinite periods is not safe, due to
risks of accidents, releases of radioactivity, or terrorism.
Geologic disposal is the "least-worst" option but the science
must be done free of politics and pressures. This has proved to
be difficult. The Yucca Mountain site, the only one being
studied in the United States, is, in my opinion, the worst site
that has been explored in this country. 

To top it all, nuclear energy is expensive and perceived to be
so risky that the industry wants government loan guarantees and
other concessions even after five decades of insurance and other
federal subsidies. A part of the problem is that nuclear energy,
far from being "too cheap to meter" as was promised in 1954 by
the then-Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis
Strauss, is expensive (see below). 

One might envision a nuclear power system that is far smaller on
the idea that it belongs in an energy mix that would reduce CO2
emissions. But even a system of one thousand reactors would have
the same kinds of vulnerabilities. Finally, it is far from clear
that development of nuclear power could be sustained if at some
point along the line, it resulted in a severe accident in the
West or in proliferation that led to terrorists destroying a
city. Why take on these vulnerabilities if there is another way
to approach the problem? 

What energy sources and technologies other than nuclear energy
are available for reducing CO2 emissions? 

Some facts about electricity generation costs are needed in
order to assess how the problem of reducing CO2 emissions can be
addressed. At present, U.S. costs for electricity generation in
new power plants are approximately as follows (not counting CO2
emissions, or any other external environmental or security
costs): 

+ Coal-fired: 3.5 to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour
 
+ Natural-gas, combined cycle: 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour
 
+ Nuclear: 5.5 to 6.5 cents per kilowatt-hour
 
+ Wind in favorable areas and up to 20 percent of the supply: 4
to 5 cents per kilowatt-hour
 
+ Solar: roughly 20 cents per kilowatt-hour (without energy
storage) 

Only solar is at present far too costly as a method for
addressing large-scale reductions in CO2 emissions. In the case
of coal, one might in theory postulate that its use can be
eliminated, but in practice, this will be essentially impossible
on a time scale that is compatible with the need to reduce CO2
emissions. That is because the United States, China, India,
Russia, and Germany all rely heavily on coal for electricity
generation. All five have large coal resources. For China and
India, there is not only no practical way to replace coal-fired
power plants with any other source (including nuclear), much or
most of the growth in electricity will continue to occur with
coal as a fuel, whether or not nuclear power is developed on a
much larger scale. (It is currently about 2 percent of
electricity supply in China and about 3 percent in India). 

There appears no alternative except drastically reducing CO2
emissions from coal-fired power plants to accommodate
electricity growth in China and India. Fortunately,
sequestration of CO2 (separating CO2 from the exhaust gases) and
reinjecting it into geologic repositories has been shown to be
feasible in the past few years, both in North America and in the
North Sea, where CO2 has been reinjected into the geologic
formations from which oil and gas are currently being produced.
Gasifying coal makes it less expensive to separate the CO2 from
the exhaust gases but also makes power plant operation
considerably more expensive. 

It appears feasible therefore to use coal for an interim period
of several decades, provided urgent efforts are undertaken to
change from coal fired boiler technology to integrated
coal-fired gas turbines with CO2 sequestration. 

Another area where large investments will be required is to
develop the infrastructure for integrating a large proportion of
wind-generated electricity into electricity grids. Since wind is
an intermittent resource, it must be used in combination with
other sources to ensure a steady, reliable supply. The
reliability of wind-generated electricity can be greatly
increased by: 
  + Geographic diversification of wind farms, since wind blows
at different times in different places 
  + Putting single stage gas turbines, now used to supply peak
electricity demand on standby in combination with wind, and
using gas only when wind-generated electricity falls below
forecasted values. 
  + Using existing hydro reservoirs for pumped storage -- that
is using wind-generated electricity to pump water back into
reservoirs when demand is low. 
  + Using wind in combination with combined cycle natural gas
power plants, in which the latter are not used at full capacity,
but part of the capacity is kept on standby for supplying
deficits in forecasted wind-generated electricity. Combined
cycle power plants have only about one-fourth the CO2 emissions
compared to coal per unit of electricity generation. 
  + Combine wind energy with some renewable biomass use, which
would yield a net reduction in CO2 in the atmosphere along with
increased energy supply. The cost per kilowatt hour of such
approaches is roughly 6 cents per kilowatt hour. This is about
the same as the anticipated cost of electricity from new nuclear
power plants. 

These approaches to large scale power generation can and should
be joined to more decentralized approaches. Distributed grids,
in which small, medium and large scale power plants are joined
into a single system, are much more reliable than centralized or
decentralized systems alone. They are also more resilient in
terms of recovery from extreme weather events or violent attack.
Finally, co-generation of electricity and heat makes overall
fuel use much more efficient. Co-generation is best done more
locally, at the scale of towns, large buildings, and
increasingly even with homes. 

Making energy use more efficient would be greatly facilitated by
a transition in space heating technology from the direct use of
natural gas or oil to far more efficient approaches. For
instance, earth source heat pumps, which derive heat from the
earth and supplementing it with electricity, can reduce fuel
used for heating by about a factor of 3. They can also free up
scarce natural gas for other uses, including co-generation. 

Please summarize your conclusions. 

In sum, it is quite possible with presently available technology
to create a path to eliminating most CO2 emissions in the
electricity sector. But of the options available to us, only
nuclear power carries very significant security and safety
liabilities that, moreover, extend out for generations beyond
where human society can reasonably see. It would be
unconscionable if, in a panic about climate change, we made
decisions that would burden present global society and future
generations far into the future with the risks of nuclear
proliferation, accidents, and waste management when we do not
need to do so to meet not only our needs but our desire to live
comfortably. 

Short excerpts of this article are based on or drawn from an
earlier work: Makhijani, A., "Atomic Myths, Radioactive
Realities: Why nuclear power is a poor way to meet energy
needs," Journal of Land, Resources and Environmental Law, v. 24,
no. 1, 2004, pages 61-72. Adapted from an oral presentation
given on April 18, 2003, at the Eighth Annual Wallace Stegner
Center Symposium titled "Nuclear West: Legacy and Future," held
at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. 

Arjun Makhijani got his Ph.D. for the Department of Electrical
Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where he
specialized in nuclear fusion. He is the principal author of the
first ever assessment of the energy efficiency potential of the
U.S. economy (1971). He has written widely on energy and
environmental issues as well as on security issues associated
with nuclear power and nuclear materials. He is president of the
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, in Takoma Park,
Maryland.   


This article originally appeared in the New Hampshire Sierran,
Volume XIII Issue III, Fall 2005, pages 3-6. 

Institute for Energy and Environmental ResearchComments to 
Outreach Coordinator: ieer at ieer.org Takoma Park, Maryland, USA

 Posted January 27, 2006 
*****************************************************************
 21 UPI: GAO encouraged by nuke monitoring method
     
     United Press International - Security &Terrorism - 

2/3/2006 1:58:00 PM -0500


WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- The General Accounting Office said
Friday that the method the United States uses to certify its
nuclear weapons stockpile is promising but still immature. 

The QMU (quantification of margins and uncertainty) method
launched by the National Nuclear Safety Administration in 2001
looks good on paper, the GAO said, but more work was needed to
unify the technical standards applied by the agency and the two
national laboratories charged with maintaining the safety and
reliability of America's nukes. 

The QMU process is used by the NNSA and by scientists at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Los Alamos
National Laboratory (LANL) to see how well the aging U.S.
arsenal is holding up without simply setting off an underground
test and seeing what happens. 

QMU pulls together data from past nuclear tests, the latest in
theoretical physics and high-powered computer simulations to
determine whether or not a weapon will work or needs to be
refurbished. 

The GAO said in its report that it "found important differences
in the understanding and application of QMU among the weapons
laboratories." 

"For example," the report stated, "while LLNL and LANL both
agree on the fundamental tenets of QMU at a high level, they are
pursuing different approaches to calculating and combining
uncertainties."

© Copyright 2006 United Press
International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
 22 [NYTr] Nuclear Proliferation: A Gathering Storm
 
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 10:58:52 -0600 (CST)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Foreign Policy in Focus - Feb 2, 2006
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3100

Nuclear Proliferation: A Gathering Storm

By Conn Hallinan

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in
good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear
arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and a Treaty on
general and complete disarmament under strict and effective
international control. 

 Article VI, Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 1968 

The United States will not use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear
weapon party state to the Non-Proliferation Treaty except in the case
of an attack on the United States, its territories or armed forces, or
its allies, by such a state allied to a nuclear weapon state 

   Addendum to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,
 1978, agreed to by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and endorsed
                               by France. Reaffirmed in 1980 and 1995.

The leaders of states who use terrorist means against us, as well as
those who would consider using, in one way or another, weapons of mass
destruction, must understand that they would lay themselves open to a
firm and adapted response on our part. This response could be a
conventional one. It could be of a different kind. 

        French President Jacques Chirac visiting the nuclear submarine
                                             Vigilant, Jan. 19, 2006. 

Treaties are rarely scintillating, but the 30-year-old Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has a certain sparseness of language
and precision of meaning that makes it an engaging read. Boiled down,
it commits the 177 non-nuclear nations that signed it not to acquire
nuclear weapons and the Big Five nuclear powersthe United States,
Britain, France, China, and the USSRto dismantle theirs.

The theory behind it was simple: non-nuclear weapons states would
forgo developing nukes on the conditions that, 1) they are never
blackmailed with nuclear weapons, and 2) the Big Five get rid of their
arsenals.

All of this seems to have gotten lost in the recent uproar over Iran.
While Tehran is being accused of trying to scam the NPT by secretly
developing nuclear weapons, the open flaunting of the Treaty by the
major nuclear powers is simply ignored.

For almost 38 years the vast majority of the world's nations have
adhered to the NPT. Only India, Pakistan, Israel, and possibly North
Korea have joined the Big Five, although, at the time the Treaty was
signed, a dozen more were on the verge of developing nuclear weapons.
In short, the vast bulk of the signers have held to what they agreed
to.

The Big Five, however, have ignored the obligation to dismantle their
nuclear arsenals or to even discuss general disarmament. At the NPT
Review Conference last summer the issue did not even come up, a
shortcoming which UN General Secretary Kofi Annan called a disgrace.

Not only have the Big Five refused to consider eliminating their
nuclear arsenals, in 2002 the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture
Review (NPR) unilaterally overturned the 1978 pledge, and the White
House threatened to use nukes on Syria, Iran, and Iraq, all
non-nuclear states. The Administration's rationale is that the NPT is
not just about nuclear weapons, but weapons of mass destruction, which
it argues, includes chemical and biological weapons. It is a
re-interpretation the French appear to embrace as well.

But chemical and biological weapons were specifically excluded from
the NPT for the very good reason that they are not weapons of mass
destruction.

Chemical weapons are certainly nasty, but generals in World War I
found them more an annoyance than a serious threat. While artillery
(the big killer), machine guns, and rifles inflicted 8.5 million
deaths from 1914-1918, gas only killed about 100,000. Chemicals are
simply too difficult to deliver and too volatile to do much damage.

Bacteriological warfare is spooky, but even more difficult to make
effective. Anthrax may have shut down Washington, but it only killed
five people.

Nuclear weapons are quite another matter, although as memories of
World War II grow dim, it is easy to fall into the equivalence trap.

A brief reminder:

The fireball that consumed Hiroshima reached 18 million degrees in one
millionth of a second. It evaporated 68% of the city, demolishing
structures built to withstand an 8.5 earthquake. It charred trees five
miles from ground zero, blew out windows 17 miles from the city's
center, and killed 100,000 people in a single blow. Another 100,000
plus would follow in the months ahead.

The bomb that flattened Hiroshima was 15 kilotons. The standard
warhead in the U.S. arsenal todaythe W-76is 100 kilotons. A
substantial number of our weapons are 250 kilotons, and they range as
high as five megatons. One of the latter can eliminate a small
country.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there are
presently about 27,000 such warheads in the world, many of them
capable of being launched within a half hour. In accepting the 2005
Nobel Peace Prize, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, said More than
15 years after the Cold War, it is incomprehensible to many that the
major nuclear weapons states operate with their weapons on
hair-trigger alert.

This is the price the world is paying for not insisting that the Big
Five do what they agreed to do.

And the danger is getting worse. Not from countries like Iran, but
from the nuclear weapons establishmentparticularly in the United
Statesthat is systematically trying to dismantle the fragile barrier
of treaties that hold the beast in check.

One of the key threads in this increasingly tattered web is the 1996
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The theory behind the CTBT was
that banning tests would prevent any further developments in nuclear
weapons technology, particularly the miniaturization of warheads. It
was also assumed that no one would risk deploying a weapon which had
not been tested. Nuclear devices are tricky and a substantial number
of designs produce duds.

A side benefit to the CTBT was that it would also prevent the nuclear
powers from randomly pulling warheads off line and testing them to
make sure they still worked. The Treaty designers hoped that a lack of
confidence in a weapon's reliability was all to the good. If you are
not sure something will work, you may be more reluctant to use it.

But the ink was hardly dry when the United Statesand, it would appear,
Francefigured out how to redesign weapons without actually setting
them off. Using sophisticated computers, weapon labs in France, and at
Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia in the United States, began to
configure a new generation of nuclear weapons.

Indeed, India pointed to this computer-based U.S. weapons program as
one of the reasons why it initiated a round of nuclear tests in 1998,
although New Delhi's accusations received virtually no ink in the
states.

Last year, Congress launched the Reliable Warhead Replacement (RWR)
program purportedly to insure that the U.S. nuclear arsenal would
continue to work. One could certainly make an argument that RWR was a
violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the CTBT.

But according to the local anti-nuclear group Tri-Valley CARE, the
program is also retooling warheads to make them smaller in yield (and
therefore more likely to be used), capable of taking out deeply buried
targets, and able to destroy chemical and biological weapons.

This redesign effort was revealed in a report by William Schneider
Jr., chair of the Defense Science Board, who wrote in 2004 that the
United States must not just simply improve nuclear weapons capacity on
the margins, but must develop weapons more relevant to the future
threat environment.

It is possible the United States could accomplish this without
resuming testing (although Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has
openly talked about violating the test ban). But even if the United
States doesn't test, other nations will certainly not allow themselves
to fall behind just because they don't have fancy computers. If the
United States continues on this path, other nations will resume
testing, which will, in turn, encourage non-nuclear nations to begin
their own programs. It is estimated that up to 40 nations could
manufacture nuclear weapons.

The most important thing, El Baradei told the Financial Times, is to
make the big boys understand that the major league is not an exclusive
club. If you are not going to dissolve that club, others are going to
join it. A world of haves and have-nots is not sustainable.

The major danger in the world today comes not from countries like Iran
and North Korea, but from the unwillingness of the major nuclear
powers to live up to the promise they made back in 1968.

The central problem in halting nuclear proliferation, says Selig
Harrison, director of the Asia Program of the Center for International
Policy and a former India bureau chief for the Washington Post, lies
in the failure of the original nuclear powers that signed the NPT to
live up to Article 6, in which they pledged to phase out their nuclear
weapons.

[Conn Hallinan is a foreign policy analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus
(online at www.fpif.org) and a lecturer in journalism at the
University of California, Santa Cruz.]
       
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*****************************************************************
 23 Charlotte Observer: Duke called to nuclear meeting

02/03/2006 | 12:12 pm | 

 STAN CHOE schoe@charlotteobserver.com

Federal nuclear regulators called Duke Energy Corp. in for a
meeting in Atlanta Monday to discuss the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission's concerns about the safety of an exterior wall at
Duke's nuclear plant near Seneca, S.C. 

An NRC spokesman said today the security risk is not "a major
safety situation." The NRC staff rates risk with a color-coded
system, with green as very low safety significance, then rising
to white, yellow and red. 

NRC staff have designated concern about the Oconee plant as
"greater than green" but haven't yet determined whether it's
white, the spokesman said. 

The NRC's concern rests on the north wall of the main control
room of Oconee's unit 3. It may not be able to withstand some
extreme wind force, tornadoes or missiles, NRC staff says. 

After some study, the possibility of such damage is
"probabilistically negligible," according to an NRC letter to
Duke. 

*****************************************************************
 24 AP Wire: NRC to meet with Duke Energy about S.C. nuclear plant

| 02/03/2006 | 

 Associated Press 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff
plans to meet Monday with Duke Energy Corp. officials about
safety concerns uncovered during an inspection of the company's
nuclear power plant near Seneca, S.C., the agency said. 

The commission staff found that Charlotte-based Duke did not
promptly identify and correct a discrepancy with the exterior
wall of the control room at the Oconee Nuclear Station. The
agency questions whether the control room can withstand damage
from a tornado, the commission said in a statement. 

The meeting is scheduled to take place in Atlanta and is open to
the public. 

The commission will not make decisions about the safety
significance, apparent violations or possible enforcement action
at the meeting. Those decisions will be made later, the
commission said. 

*****************************************************************
 25 AP Wire: Senator promotes nuclear power plants

| 02/03/2006 | 

 CHET BROKAW Associated Press 

PIERRE, S.D. - South Dakota should do more to explore the
possibility of constructing nuclear power plants in the state, a
South Dakota lawmaker said Friday. 

Sen. John Koskan, R-Wood, said South Dakota is promoting the
construction of new coal-powered plants and wind-driven
electricity generators, but the state has never conducted any
research into the feasibility of constructing nuclear power
plants. 

Koskan had introduced SB165, which called for having the
Legislature hire someone to research nuclear power. 

But after talking about nuclear power in a committee hearing
Friday, Koskan proposed changing his own bill to merely fund a
new state energy agency that the Legislature created a year ago.
The State Affairs Committee agreed and then sent the new version
of the measure to the Senate Appropriations Committee for
further study. 

The new version of the bill would provide $247,000 in state
funds to the South Dakota Energy Infrastructure Authority. The
Legislature last year created the authority to promote the
construction of new power plants and transmission lines in the
state. 

Koskan said part of the money used to run the agency could be
devoted to research on the feasibility of building nuclear power
plants. 

Paul Genoa of the Nuclear Energy Institute said nuclear energy
is a clean and reliable source of power, and nuclear plants can
help reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil. He said
nuclear plants can be kept safe and secure. 

Plans are now underway to build a number of new nuclear power
plants in the United States, Genoa said. 

"We are indeed witnessing a nuclear renaissance," he said. 

Michael Trykoski of Rapid City, chairman of the new state Energy
Infrastructure Authority, said the new agency has no intention
of owning or operating a power plant or transmission line. The
authority will seek to facilitate the development of such
facilities, he said. 

*****************************************************************
 26 Indiatimes: Nuclear power pricing again eludes ERCs

GIRISH KUBER

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2006 01:13:53 AM]   

  MUMBAI: With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh making it clear
that no deadline has been set for the separation of civil and
military nuclear establishments, the issue of bringing nuclear
power pricing under electricity regulatory commissions continues
to be in limbo. Currently, the Department of Atomic Energy
Department (DAE) is the sole authority for all issues related to
nuclear power, including the pricing. At present it charges Rs
2.70 per unit. 

The separation of military and civilian nuclear establishments
would have helped to bring atomic power, like electricity
produced by any other means, under the ambit of the power
regulatory bodies. 

Of Indias total installed capacity of 1,23,000 MW, nearly 3,360
MW  about 2.8%  is nuclear energy. As of now, the Nuclear
Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) has 15 reactors that produce
3360 MW of electricity, with another seven in various stages of
completion. The PM recently set a goal of 40,000 MW for the next
decade for the NPCIL to meet the rapidly rising demand for
power. 
  

 Mr Singh, in Wednesday's press conference, made it clear that 
there was no deadline for the separation of nuclear facilities 
under the Indo-US deal. The separation of civilian and military 
nuclear facilities was one of the major conditions in the nuclear 
power co-operation agreement the PM signed last July in the US. 
If the deal goes through, India will have access to advanced 
nuclear technology and, most importantly, enriched fuel for its 
atomic energy programmes in the civilian sphere.

Following the agreement, the energy ministry had drawn up a plan 
to bring nuclear power under the regulator's ambit. According to 
top sources, the ministry had finalised the proposal to submit to 
the Cabinet for final approval.

However, the reluctance of the Department of Atomic Energy, which 
controls India's nuclear establishments, to initiate the process 
of separation according to the US diktat, and the subsequent 
political upheaval over the issue forced the government to go 
slow on it. 

 As a result, the process of bringing atomic power, like 
electricity produced by any other means, under the ambit of the 
central power regulator, was delayed indefinitely.

After the introduction of the Electricity Regulation Act, 98, 
Electricity Regulatory Commissions were formed to deal with all 
energy related issues. The act also made ERC's approval mandatory 
for fixing power tariff. The only exception, however, was nuclear 
power.

But the government's reluctance to separate civilian and military 
nuclear energy means the status quo will be maintained for now, 
sources say. "The nuclear power sector will continue to be 
governed by the DAE and not the CERC," a top official noted.



        Copyright ©2006Times Internet Limited. All rights
*****************************************************************
 27 BBC: Nuclear plant life set to extend
 
Last Updated: Friday, 3 February 2006
 
[Hunterston B]                                  

Hunterston B had been due to close in 2011                                                           

British Energy has announced that it is hoping to extend the life 
of the Hunterston B nuclear power station. 

The Ayrshire station may now stay open until the year 2021. The 
move could secure the future of about 700 jobs. 

The plant is working on the 10-year extension proposal. A final 
decision will be taken in 2008. 

Meanwhile, Scottish Power is spending £170m on emission 
improvements to extend the life of the Longannet coal-fired power 
station in Fife. 

The Longannet modernisation would mean it could avoid closing 
when new limits on pollution come into force in nine years' time. 

Sulphur filters 

The station produces about a quarter of Scotland's electricity. 

Operator Scottish Power is to install special equipment to remove 
the sulphur from emissions. 

A spokesman said that filters would remove about 94% of the 
sulphur, meaning the plant could massively increase the amount of 
Scottish coal it used. 

Construction work will last for two years and it is hoped it will 
secure about 300 jobs. 

Energy hopes 

Friends of the Earth Scotland said the move laid to rest 
speculation that Scotland would need a revival of nuclear energy. 

Chief Executive Duncan McLaren said: "By the time Longannet 
finally closes, renewables - on and off-shore - energy efficiency 
and carbon capture technologies will easily be able to deliver 
all the electricity Scotland needs, and a healthy surplus for 
export." 

The UK Government is currently carrying out a major review of 
energy policy. 

It is looking at predicted future energy requirements and how 
power might be generated.                                                        



*****************************************************************
 28 Nuclear Energy Industry Poised For Growth Based On Performance

-->2/2/2006  		 		

New York - Demonstrating that nuclear power producers are
well-poised to help meet the nation's energy challenges, U.S.
nuclear power plants in 2005 posted near-record levels of
electricity production and reliability, industry leaders
announced. 

The 103 nuclear plants operating in 31 states produced an
estimated 783 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh) of electricity and
posted an average capacity factor - a measure of efficiency - of
nearly 90 percent, industry executives said in providing 2005
performance data at a briefing for Wall Street financial
analysts. 

Last year's electricity production mark is second only to the
2004 record of 789 billion kwh, and the 89.7 percent capacity
factor estimate is the third-highest level ever, just shy of
2004's record-high of 90.5 percent and the 90.3 percent average
capacity factor posted in 2002. 

"The safe, reliable operation of 103 reactors represents a
significant domestic source of electricity today and a solid
business platform from which to launch a new wave of nuclear
plant construction in America," said Anthony F. Earley Jr.,
chairman and chief executive officer of DTE Energy and chairman
of the board of directors of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). 

The briefing for Wall Street analysts came just two days after
President George W. Bush reiterated in his State of the Union
address that "clean, safe nuclear energy" should play a key role
in reducing dependence on energy supplies from unstable parts of
the world. 

NEI President and Chief Executive Officer Frank L. (Skip) Bowman
told the Wall Street analysts that excellent operations at
nuclear power plants have enabled nuclear energy to maintain its
20 percent share of U.S. electric supply over the past 10 years
despite overall growth in electricity demand of more than 25
percent. 

The Department of Energy forecasts that U.S. electricity demand
will increase another 50 percent by 2030. 

"To maintain nuclear energy's current 20 percent contribution to
our diverse electricity portfolio in 2030, we would need to
build over 60,000 megawatts of new nuclear capacity, out of a
total of over 300,000 megawatts required," Bowman said. A
nuclear power plant typically has a generating capacity of about
1,000 megawatts. 

To address the nation's need for affordable new supplies of
electricity, several utility companies are identifying potential
new nuclear plant sites and testing new federal licensing
processes for advanced-design reactors. Nine companies or
consortia are preparing combined construction and operating
license applications that could yield orders for as many as 19
new reactors over the next decade. 

"Before they commit to construction, the companies developing
new nuclear power projects will have a solid knowledge of the
capital cost for new nuclear capacity. Those costs appear to be
in the range of $1,750 per kilowatt for the first plants and
less than $1,500 per kilowatt for the later plants," Bowman
said. 

NEI's analyses show that even a plant built for $2,000 per
kilowatt would be able to produce electricity in its first year
of operation for about $68 per megawatt-hour, with the price
dropping to about $46 per megawatt-hour with the benefits of the
80 percent loan guarantee program or the 1.8 cent per
kilowatt-hour production tax credit authorized in the Energy
Policy Act enacted last year. 

Bowman said that electricity sold into the market at that price
would compare favorably to the production costs of other energy
sources. 

"We are quite confident that new nuclear plants will be
competitive," he said. 

Existing nuclear power plants produce power on average at $17
per megawatt-hour, the lowest of any electricity source with the
exception of hydroelectric power projects. Nuclear plants
provide nearly 75 percent of the electricity that comes from
emission-free sources of electricity, including solar, wind and
hydroelectric power. 

As recognition of nuclear energy's advantages grows, nuclear
energy is garnering record-high levels of support that spans the
Administration, congressional Democrats and Republicans and the
general public. 

"We see astonishing levels of public support," Bowman said. "Our
most recent national survey showed that 70 percent of Americans
support nuclear energy, the highest level since we started
tracking public opinion in the early 1980s." 

An industry priority is to ensure that the federal government's
used fuel management program continues to advance. 

"The Bush Administration remains fully committed to moving
forward" with development of a geologic repository for
high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev., Bowman
said. 

SOURCE: The Nuclear Energy Institute


Copyright © 1996-2006, VertMarkets, Inc. All rights
reserved.   	 	 
*****************************************************************
 29 Rutland Herald: State says Yankee emergency drill fixed

Rutland Vermont News & Information
 	 	 	 	 	 
February 3, 2006 

By Susan SmallheerHerald Staff   
  			 
WATERBURY — The state says it has resolved all but a few of the
"miscellaneous" problems from last spring's emergency
preparedness drill for the emergency zone around the Vermont
Yankee nuclear power plant.

Last summer, the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave the
state Emergency Management Office marks so low that parts of the
drill had to be replayed and re-evaluated within 120 days.

The federal agency said that in the event of a real emergency,
the public would have unnecessarily been exposed to additional
radiation, and that false, confusing and misleading information
had been released to the public by a disorganized state office.

In a real emergency, FEMA noted, the problems could have "caused
mass confusion."

"The state of Vermont failed to provide adequate direction and
control over the public alert and notification system," FEMA
concluded about the plume-exposure pathway drill on May 25-26.

The final report, which recently was released to the public,
identified seven "deficiencies" and 25 areas needing corrective
action.

Five of the seven deficiencies were in Vermont, with one each in
New Hampshire and Massachusetts, which are also neighbors of the
Vernon reactor and participated in the federal drill.

The problems ranged from delayed evacuations, delayed notice to
the public, lack of critical information necessary to evacuate,
and lack of communication equipment to keep emergency workers in
touch with federal and state authorities.

Marc Metayer, deputy commissioner of the Department of Public
Safety, said redirecting efforts to correct the deficiencies
identified by FEMA had put the state six to eight months behind
schedule in doing its own revision of its emergency preparedness
for a Yankee emergency.

"We agreed there were issues, disagreed with the tone," he said
of the sometimes highly critical language in the FEMA report,
particularly concerning the state emergency operations center in
Waterbury.

Metayer said that one major aspect of the redirected effort
would start today — the first day on the job for John Angill,
who will manage the local emergency planning office in
Brattleboro.

Metayer said Angill was hired from Barnwell County, S.C., after
a national search. He said Angill was perfect for the job and
had 10 years experience in emergency planning.

Angill will oversee the three-person office in Brattleboro,
which was opened a few years ago in response to complaints from
citizens and legislators that the communities around Vermont
Yankee were getting short shrift from the state emergency
planning office.

Metayer said that the state had protested the "harshness" of
FEMA's language in the draft report last summer, but had not
convinced them to change the language.

"We knew what the issues were, and we've demonstrated that to
FEMA's satisfaction," Metayer said. "What was discouraging was
the harshness in tone; it discouraged us from moving forward."

"We are really interested in doing revision and updating of the
plan," he said. "We had a fairly aggressive schedule; because we
had to go through redemonstration effort (we) are now behind our
original schedule."

FEMA also criticized two towns in the 10-mile evacuation zone,
Vernon, the home of Vermont Yankee, and Halifax, which took too
long to notify its residents they must evacuate.

The federal agency faulted Vernon for being slow to sound its
siren to warn its residents of the nuclear emergency, and for
setting off the real siren, which FEMA said would have
"unnecessarily alarmed its residents."

Vernon town officials who handle emergency planning efforts
didn't return telephone calls Thursday.

Brattleboro Town Manager Jerry Remillard was one of the few
people FEMA praised, citing his "excellent" communication skills
as the town's emergency management officer.

In Remillard's mind, the high marks for Brattleboro are a result
of practice makes perfect, or close to it.

"Well, we've been doing a lot of related drills anyway," he
said. "It was almost like a normal course of business; we've
been doing bus drills and table-top drills."

FEMA also praised William Sherman, the state's nuclear engineer,
and the Vermont State Police dispatchers at the Rockingham
barracks, who handled their real jobs simultaneously with the
drill.

Efforts to reach officials at FEMA regional offices in Boston
were unsuccessful Wednesday and Thursday.

Entergy Nuclear, the owner of Vermont Yankee, is responsible for
emergency planning only within its own gates. According to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it did a good job last May.

"We didn't identify any major problems," said NRC spokesman Neil
Sheehan.

Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
   
© 2006 Rutland Herald
*****************************************************************
 30 canadaeast.com:  Graham wants to explore second nuclear reactor

Friday, February 3, 2006                                                                                                          

By JENNIFER DUNVILLE dunville.jennifer@dailygleaner.com
 	 	 	 	 	 
                                                
Opposition Leader Shawn Graham will meet with American 
stakeholders in the energy sector next week to discuss how the 
Maritime provinces and New England states can work together.

Graham expressed a desire to make New Brunswick an "energy hub
for the northeastern corner of North America."

One of the ways that Graham wants to do this is by adding
another nuclear reactor to Point Lepreau

"We're in a unique position today where we're the only province
in Atlantic Canada that is certified for nuclear generation and
that's why I stated it's time to now look at the feasibility of
a second nuclear reactor in New Brunswick and to begin the
important work in undertaking a feasible study," said Graham.
"We're announcing that we're starting that process - I'm going
to be visiting a number of key stakeholders in Boston and
Washington to begin forging relationships for the future."

Graham said New Brunswick and the Maritime provinces are
uniquely positioned to satisfy the demand for energy in the
Eastern states. Adding another reactor, Graham said, will take
away some of New Brunswick's dependence on oil, reducing the
pressure of high prices.

David Coon of the New Brunswick Conservation Council said a
second nuclear reactor and a further dependence on exports is a
bad idea.

"This (reactor) is the last thing we need in terms of trying to
develop our province," said Coon.

"It'd be replacing skyrocketing costs of oil with the
skyrocketing price of nuclear power."

Coon said the problem in New Brunswick is not a lack of power or
electricity, but that New Brunswickers are using too much.

"We need to consume less and do so in a way that's going to
establish a vibrant conservation and energy efficient industry
in this province based on (renewable energy souorces) that's
also going to produce good long-term jobs right across the
province," said Coon.

"Instead of creating some mega-project that's going to create a
bunch of jobs in one place and leave us with a legacy of
radioactive waste and debt for our children to have to deal
with. Not to mention the tremendous financial liabilities
attached to owning a nuclear reactor."

Graham said he is meeting the stakeholders on a wide range of
topics and will discuss alternatives as well.

"We also need to look at other sources of energy and we need to
look at, at the same time, the ability to conserve energy and a
conservation measure here in New Brunswick," said Graham.

"So these contacts we're making in Boston and Washington will
pay dividends for New Brunswickers in the future because it's
going to help us solidify our election platform."

Coon said the effort should not be in making more connections
outside of Canada.

"We are blessed with a tremendous variety of resources that are
renewable that can be used instead of nuclear power," said Coon.

"(Nuclear power) is not economical, it's unsafe and it's
unnecessary. (Graham) is dreaming. What we need to be focusing
on is how best do we pursue economic development within this
province that complements a green energy sector based on
(renewable energy sources)."

Graham will be in Boston Feb. 8 and in Washington on Feb. 9 to
meet with organizations including Cape Wind Associates,
Northeast Gas, the U.S. Department of Energy officials and the
office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.

 			 			 						 									 			 			 			 			 			 			
 		   	 	
 		   			

 				
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 31 NRC: Sunshine Act; Notice of Meetings
 
                         FR Doc 06-1055 
[Federal Register: February 3, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 23)] 
[Notices] [Page 5896-5897] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr03fe06-116]                         
 
Agency Holding the Meetings: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
DateS: Week of January 30, 2006.
 
Place: Commissioners' Conference Room 11555 Rockville Pike, 
Rockville, Maryland.
 
Status: Public and closed.
 
Matters to be Considered: Week of January 30, 2006 Thursday, 
February 2, 2006 1:25 p.m. Affirmation Session (Public Meeting) 
(Tentative) a. U.S. Department of Energy (High-Level Waste 
Repository: Pre- Application Matters); NRC Staff and DOE appeals 
of LBP-05-27 (Tentative).
 
b. Nuclear Management Company, LLC (Monticello Nuclear Generating 
Plant); ``appeal'' by North American Water Office (``NAWO''), of 
LBP- 05-31 (Tentative).
 
* * * * * By a vote of 5-0 on January 30, 2006, the Commission 
determined pursuant to U.S.C. 552b(e) and Sec.  9.107(a) of the 
Commission's rules that ``Affirmation of U.S. Department of 
Energy (High-Level Waste Repository; Pre-Application Matters); 
NRC Staff and Doe appeals of LBP- 05-27'' be held February 2, 
2006, and on less than one week's notice to the public.
 
By a vote of 4-1 on January 30, 2006, the Commission determined 
pursuant to U.S.C. 552b(e) and Sec.  9.107(a) of the Commission's 
rules that ``Affirmation of Nuclear Management Company, LLC 
(Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant); ``appeal'' by North 
American Water Office (``NAWO''), of LBP-05-31'' be held February 
2, 2006, and on less than one week's notice to the public.
 
*The schedule for Commission meetings is subject to change on 
short notice. To verify the status of meetings call 
(recording)--(301) 415- 1292. Contact person for more 
information: Michelle Schroll, (301) 415- 1662.
 
* * * * * The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the 
Internet at: * * * * The NRC provides reasonable accommodation to 
individuals with disabilities where appropriate. If you need a 
reasonable accommodation to participate in these public meetings, 
or need this meeting notice or the transcript or other 
information from the public meetings in another format (e.g., 
braille, large print), please notify the NRC's Disability Program 
Coordinator, August Spector, at 301-415-7080, TDD: 301-415- 2100, 
or by e-mail at . Determinations on requests for reasonable 
accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis.
 
 This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred 
subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like 
to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the 
Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301-415-1969). In addition, 
distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is 
available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission 
meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic 
message to .
 
 
[[Page 5897]] Dated: January 31, 2006.
 
R. Michelle Schroll, Office of the Secretary.
 
[FR Doc. 06-1055 Filed 2-1-06; 11:49 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M

 
*****************************************************************
 32 WiscNews.com: Republicans plan push to lift state ban on nuclear power                                                                                                                                                                                                

Baraboo News Republic
 
By Tom Sheehan                                                                                                                                  

MADISON - Two Republican lawmakers said Thursday they'll 
introduce legislation this month to lift a ban on the expansion 
and construction of nuclear power plants in Wisconsin.

Nuclear power needs to be considered a viable option to help the
state meet its growing energy demands, said Assembly Majority
Leader Mike Huebsch of West Salem, who is introducing
legislation with state Sen. Joe Leibham of Sheboygan.

"Nuclear power is the most environmentally friendly, safest and
most efficient form of base load energy we have ... With this
moratorium, we can't even explore the possibility," Huebsch
said. The state already gets about 20 percent of its energy from
nuclear power plants, and there's never been a fatality in the
industry, Huebsch said.

The proposal won't make it past Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle,
however, even if it makes it through the Legislature, said Dan
Leistikow, an aide to the governor.

"The governor has always said there has not been a nuclear plant
built in the United States in three decades, and Wisconsin is
not going to be the first as long as he's governor," Leistikow
said. 

Legislators should work more on developing ethanol and renewable
energy sources rather than waste time on an issue that has no
"groundswell" of support, Leistikow said.

Huebsch said he and Leibham plan to introduce the measure, hold
hearings and hopefully have a committee and floor vote in one
house of the Legislature, with or without Doyle's support.

Huebsh introduced a similar proposal during the last legislative
session, which made it through an Assembly Committee but not to
a floor vote. 				 			 			 		   

© Copyright Baraboo News Republic   
*****************************************************************
 33 Newsday.com: NRC finalizes order for backup power on Indian Point sirens --
             
February 2, 2006, 9:11 PM EST

BUCHANAN, N.Y. (AP) _ The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has 
finalized an order requiring the owner of the Indian Point 
nuclear power plants to have a backup power source for their 
emergency sirens by January 2007. 

A draft of the order to owner Entergy Nuclear Northeast was 
issued last month. The final order was issued on Tuesday, NRC 
spokeswoman Diane Screnci said. 

A spokesman for Entergy, Jim Steets, said the company already had 
begun replacing the old Indian Point siren system with a new 
system that would include backup batteries for each siren and 
other improved capabilities. 

The NRC order follows a new federal requirement contained in the
Energy Policy Act of 2005. The requirement, which was targeted
solely at the Indian Point plants, mandates that there be backup
power for emergency notification systems under certain
conditions. 

Sen. Hillary Clinton, who introduced the legislation, praised
the NRC's actions. 

"The community deserves to know that emergency sirens will work
no matter what and that there are backup systems in place to
ensure that they do," Clinton, D-N.Y., said in a statement
issued Wednesday. 

The sirens for the Indian Point plants, which are 35 miles north
of midtown Manhattan, had been unreliable in recent tests of
their ability to alert residents within 10 miles to an
emergency. 

In one October 2005 test, 10 of the 16 sirens in Orange County
failed to go off, and in a September 2005 test, none of
Rockland's 51 sirens responded. Performance was better, but not
perfect, in November 2005. 

	 
http://www.newsday.com.

*****************************************************************
 34 Vermont Guardian: Countdown: Will Vermont Yankee get a 20-year lease on life?
        
[radiation] 

By Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian 

posted February 3, 2006 

BRATTLEBORO  As far as PR goes, it was not a particularly
propitious week for nuclear power. Radioactive tritium was
leaking into the water supply near Chicago, critics pointed to
gaping holes in the defense of the nations 103 reactors, and 60
Minutes reported on the countrys vulnerability to a nuclear
attack just as Osama bin Laden promised a new assault in your
homeland very soon. 

Nevertheless, Entergy, the second largest nuclear generator in
the country, plodded forward with its 900-page application to
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a 20-year license
extension at Vermont Yankee power plant in Vernon when that
reactor turns 40 in 2012. 

Entergy had little reason to be concerned about the timing. Its
plans come as the countrys lackluster but enduring relationship
with nuclear power embarks on a second honeymoon. 

Like Baby Boomers, the nations aging fleet of reactors is being
repackaged as young and relevant. With little national news
attention or local input, power uprates at existing reactors now
produce an additional 10,000 megawatts of electricity, the
equivalent of about 20 new plants the size of Vermont Yankee
(VY). The NRC has denied neither a power uprate nor a license
extension, and fully expects every one of the nations 103
commercial reactors to apply for the latter. 

Its taken a long time, longer than the industry predicted, for
nuclear plants to have a solid, positive economic impact on
rates, but its really been emerging, said Jim Steets, a
spokesman at Entergy Nuclears regional corporate headquarters in
White Plains, NY. 

New federal energy priorities and a streamlined regulatory
structure virtually assure Vermont Yankees sexagenarian future,
barring any unforeseen problems or breakdowns. The plants
livelihood, therefore, falls to Vermont, whose ongoing struggles
with its energy identity may back the state into a corner when
its major power contracts begin to expire in 2012. 

I know [Vermont] would like to see some green alternatives,
which is a good goal, but those are not baseload type supplies,
said Steets. On days that the wind doesnt blow or the sun isnt
out, you still need to have a baseload of power. 

Because of its lower prices compared to oil or natural gas,
rejecting nuclear, Steets claims, could work against Vermonts
effort to development a greener energy portfolio. They would be
in a very difficult position of having to replace an important
source of baseload power with other baseload power, and that
would necessarily take priority over development of the green
power possibilities that you might want to use. he said. 

Weaning from nuclear power 

Stable power prices and long-term contracts have kept Vermont
utilities hooked on nuclear power, but once the VY contracts
expire in 2012, all bets are off. 

What they dont talk about is post-2012, when they gouge us or
they dangle a rate slightly below market to entice us into
another 20 years, said state Rep. Sarah Edwards, P-Brattleboro,
a skeptic of the corporate nuclear industry. 

Just six years away from 2012, after passing up a chance to buy
a valuable series of hydroelectric dams on the Connecticut and
Deerfield rivers, observers say Vermont appears unprepared to
wean itself from the atom, or even to give itself that option. 

I believe the state made a very, very serious error, a
tremendous misjudgment, when it did not make a more concerted
and serious effort to acquire the dams, which would have
produced roughly the same amount of power as Vermont Yankee,
said Frederick Weston, a former Public Service Board analyst who
now works as a consultant with the nonprofit Regulatory
Assistance Project in Montpelier. 

A believer in the promise of energy efficiency, Weston also does
not dismiss nuclear power as part of Vermonts future energy
portfolio. Whats worse, global warming or nuclear waste? I dont
mean to sound flip when I ask that question, but I think in many
ways it comes down to that. Weve got some hard choices to make. 

Ever since the $10 billion multinational Entergy bought Vermont
Yankee for $160 million in 2002, the company has pursued a
piecemeal agenda aimed at running the plant at 120 percent of
its original capacity for 20 years longer than its original
license. 

The company has announced its relicensing proposal before
Vermont regulators have made a final decision on a proposed 20
percent power increase; before they opened hearings on the
companys bid to store radioactive waste in dry casks; and before
Montpelier officials have decided which way to take Vermonts
energy future. 

The states 20-year Electric Plan 2005  adopted after an inverted
process that saw a draft produced by the Department of Public
Service before statewide public hearings were held  is widely
recognized as a poor roadmap. 

In a little-publicized move last fall, DPS gave a $15,000 grant
to Marjan van den Belt of Meditated Modeling Partners, LLC, to
launch the Participatory Energy Planning-Mediated Modeling
Project, billed as a series of workshops about electrical energy
in Vermont. 

Van den Belt handpicked participants to represent a
cross-section of stakeholders in Vermonts energy future at four
invitation-only workshops in Montpelier and Burlington. Another
six workshops, in the same locales, are scheduled between now
and September. The participants are from major utilities,
including Vermont Yankee, lawmakers, and Montpelier-based
environmentalists, but with the exception of VY lobbyist Brian
Cosgrove, none is from southern Vermont. 

Public Service Commissioner David OBrien said the participants
were not chosen based on geography, but interests. We thought
taking this somewhat scientific approach to weigh and quantify
our options would be helpful to setting a course for the future.
Were doing that in a collaborative environment, where we have
asked a variety of different players from the utility sector,
the business community, environmental groups, and renewable
energy advocates. Its an interesting cross section of people
coming into this. 

Rep. Steve Darrow, D-Putney, a staunch opponent of VY
relicensing, said the model is being considered as one way for
the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee on which he
sits is to make the public more aware of the energy choices
coming at us. 

From bad PR to good profits 

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 31, Pres. George Bush
again endorsed a nuclear renaissance, announcing a 22 percent
increase in funding for clean energy research, including
nuclear, zero-emission coal-fired plants, and renewables. That
comes on the heels of federal subsidies announced last year for
new reactors that, if developed, would be the first in more than
three decades. 

In his current budget proposal, Bush is seeking $250 million to
reverse a decades-old ban on nuclear fuel reprocessing, widely
seen as a first step in dealing with thousands of tons of
radioactive waste piling up around the country after Washington
failed to deliver on its promised central waste repository at
Yucca Mountain. 

This is clearly the most pro-nuclear power administration our
country has ever had, and it is trying to revive an industry
that was deservedly moribund and incapable of supporting itself
in a free-market situation, said Michael Marriott, executive
director of the Nuclear Information and Research Service in
Washington. 

After half of Three Mile Islands core melted down in 1979 and
Chernobyl spewed radiation over most of Europe in 1986, the
United States lost its taste for splitting the atom. Pres. Jimmy
Carter put an end to spent fuel reprocessing, citing the risk of
producing weapons-grade plutonium that could lead to a
proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide. 

Given the bad publicity and nowhere to store the 20 to 30 tons
of radioactive waste each plant produces annually, investors
began to balk at nuclear power. Not one new plant has been
ordered since 1974, and 18 commercial reactors have been
shuttered. 

Small utility owners began selling off their nuclear plants at
fire sale prices. In New Jersey, Exelon picked up Oyster Creek
for $10 million  a deal at twice the price, since the plant came
with $80 million worth of fuel. And in Vermont, a group of
utility owners was looking to offload their 510-megawatt boiling
water reactor in 2001 to AmerGen for $23 million, plus the cost
of the fuel, before the Public Service Board put the kybosh on
that deal. 

VY then headed for the auction block where, predicted Jim
Dumont, a Bristol attorney who has argued many cases before the
PSB, it would be sold to a big, out-of-state utility that would
take its profits out of state, as well as the power, leaving
Vermont with the problem of its nuclear waste. 

Dumont was wrong on one count: Most of Vermont Yankees power
remains in state. The sales agreement included a pact that
guaranteed Entergy would sell VY power to Vermont utilities at a
contracted price for the duration of the plants license. 

The deal turned out well for Vermont. Five years ago it had one
of the most costly utility markets in the Northeast. Today, it
is one of the most stable, thanks in part to long-term contracts
with Vermont Yankee and Hydro Quebec, each of which provide
about a third of the states total power supply. 

This market share has also put Entergy at a distinct advantage
in negotiating its own future. 

Consolidated power 

Even while nuclear powers popularity was at its lowest ebb, the
industry quietly began consolidating, gaining corporate and
political muscle, to emerge as the answer to global warming and
what Bush calls the nations addiction to foreign oil. Less than
three dozen companies now own all of the U.S. reactors. Exelon
has the biggest share, followed by Entergy. 

The advantage is, for the most part, some of the smaller
utilities that had no business getting into the nuclear power
industry in the first place, and didnt have the resources to
operate these plants, are no longer in the business. That is
probably a good thing, said Marriott. The downside is there is a
lot less accountability for these behemoth corporations, and
there is a great tendency among them to try to streamline their
operations. 

Entergys Steets sees that as a distinct advantage, not just for
the company, but also for its customers. The industry has gotten
tremendously, significantly better at operating these plants. 
They figured out how to run these plants, they figured out that
safety and efficiency were compatible. They figured out that if
your top priority, as management and workers together, was to
focus on safety as the primary objective in operating a plant,
performance rose significantly. 

The result has been reliability, Steets said: fewer shutdowns
and more time online, creating a business that can keep prices
competitive. Economies of scale are what were trying to achieve,
but also economies of synergy, he noted. 

One such move is Entergys bid to process a dual application for
Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim, a sister reactor near Plymouth, MA.
A single review team for both reactors would achieve greater
review efficiency for both NRC and Entergy personnel, according
to Entergys preliminary slide presentation to the NRC in
November. It would also save the company money. The Nuclear
Energy Institute estimates that each relicensing application
before the NRC costs an operator between $10 million and $15
million. 

But there are significant differences in the plants. At 653
megawatts, Pilgrim is considerably larger than its Vermont
cousin and has undergone a much smaller power uprate of 1.5
percent, or 30 megawatts. 

By the NRCs regulations, the relicensing process has to be plant
specific, Marriott said. States or intervener groups are not
allowed to bring up generic issues. Youre allowed to bring up
only very plant-specific issues  so its very interesting that a
utility would choose to try to take two reactors at the same
time. 

Entergys groundbreaking relicensure move further muddies the
waters for groups like the Citizens Awareness Network, Nuclear
Free Vermont in 2012, and the New England Coalition, which is
waging costly and time-consuming battles against the VY uprate
before the NRC, and in favor of safer waste storage before the
PSB. 

Confronted by a battery of corporate lawyers and hundreds of
thousands of pages of documents in each docket, the grassroots
NEC struggles with dialup Internet service and file downloads
that take so long that technical advisor Ray Shadis, who works
from his home in Maine, often gets bounced out of the NRCs
electronic database before he can access the needed documents. 

NEC last week filed three new contentions with the Atomic Safety
and Licensing Commission (ASLB), a quasi-judicial arm of the NRC
that reviews safety-related concerns surrounding the proposed
uprate. 

The coalition has relentlessly hammered away at key safety
questions since Vermont Yankee applied for its uprate more than
two years ago. It will be joined by the state in hearings before
the ASLB this summer, but that could be months too late. The NRC
is widely expected to approve the uprate later this month. 

Other critics say external threats are equally if not more
dangerous as those from within. The Union of Concerned
Scientists last month blasted the NRC for failing to take
adequate steps to better safeguard nuclear plants from a
terrorist attack in the agencys proposed design basis threat
rule. 

The truth is that a successful attack on a nuclear plant would
be one of the worst disasters in American history, said the
group in a report. The utter fallacy of their statements is
perhaps best revealed by two unassailable facts. First, the
nuclear industry and the NRC urged Congress to renew
Price-Anderson federal liability protection for nuclear power
plants. If an attack could not cause harm outside nuclear plant
fences, owners could get private insurance coverage and would
not need Price-Anderson. 

As Shadis sees it, the entire regulatory structure is set up to
exclude and suppress any kind of citizen concerns. They make it
really difficult, and nobody understands how many hurdles you
have to jump, and how many times you have to say Simon says. 

Steets admits that groups like NEC have posed a unique challenge
for Entergy, which has encountered more opposition and public
involvement in Vermont than in any of its other nuclear markets.
These are things they havent often dealt with at their other
plants, but to Entergys credit, their eyes have opened, and I
think they have learned a lot from it. I think youre going to
find that dealing with Entergy may be more enjoyable for
everybody going forward, because now we understand better the
thinking behind the criticism. 
Send us your news tips, a letter to the editor or general
comments.
 
* All fields required - This information is used for
verification purposes only - Thanks! 

Vermont Guardian PO Box 335 Winooski, VT 05404 

  | | Northern Vermont: PO Box 335, Winooski, VT 05404
 Southern Vermont: 139 Main Street, Suite 702, Brattleboro, VT
05301
 Contact: 802.861.4880 (ph) | 802.861.6388 (fax) | 877.231.5382
 ©2005 Vermont Guardian | 

Visit us: www.vermontguardian.com
 This document can be located online:
www.vermontguardian.com/local/022006/VYCountdown.shtml 
*****************************************************************
 35 Vermont Guardian: Vermont Yankees uprate review: Is it adequate?

By Crea Lintalhac 

posted February 3, 2006 

Recently, a key advisory panel of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) that licenses nuclear power plant increases
gave Entergy the go-ahead to increase Vermont Yankee nuclear
plants wattage by 20 percent, the largest capacity increase
allowed by the federal government. 

Vermont Yankee is the nations oldest nuclear plant to increase
the amount of power it generates. 

Some Vermont officials, including U.S. Sen. James Jeffords,
I-VT, have expressed concerns that the NRC and Entergy have not
answered lingering questions about equipment fatigue. Inspectors
have found cracks in steam dryers at Vermont Yankee. 

I fear that safety concerns, once a primary obstacle to the
further development of the industry, are being overshadowed by
the need for more energy at the risk of overlooking flaws in
construction and safety procedures that could prevent future
accidents. 

My concerns remind me of an accident that occurred more than 40
years ago. The events on April 10, 1963, changed the lives of
many people living in Groton, CT, where I lived as a child, the
only civilian family in a community of Navy families. The
accident was due to metal fatigue in a nuclear submarine that
was designed to achieve greater depth and speed without
sacrificing control. 

The U.S.S. Thresher was the lead ship of her class of nuclear
powered attack submarines in the U.S. Navy. Her loss at sea, and
the loss of the 129 people aboard, many of whom were our
neighbors, was a watershed event in the implementation of a
rigorous submarine safety program. After the Thresher went down,
the Court of Inquiry determined that the loss of the boat was
likely due to welding failure that flooded the engine room with
water. 

At the time, my father was working as a metallurgist for
Electric Boat in Groton, and was one of the engineers who had
developed a new ultrasonic inspection device. Before heading out
for deep-diving tests, those responsible for the commissioning
of the Thresher had not found time in the schedule for thorough
inspection and no time for ultrasonic inspection at the
submarine base in Groton. The Thresher went to sea without the
benefit of this new testing method and sank, taking the lives of
129 officers, crewmen, and technicians. 

I have lingering doubts about the NRCs confidence that a
34-year-old reactor design can sustain increased power outputs.
Their confidence is way ahead of their ability to cope with
problems inherent in these uprates. They simply dont have the
data to make predictions and nuclear power is an unforgiving
industry. 

The Quad Cities nuclear plant in southeastern Illinois, a plant
similar in pedigree to Vermont Yankee, developed cracks and
fragments in the dryers. In June 2002, after the NRC allowed an
uprate of 18 percent at the Quad Cities 2, a cover plate on the
outside of the steam dryer broke loose, the NRCs report on the
incident states, and caused pieces of the dryer to be swept down
the main streamline. 

A second failure of the steam dryer at Quad Cities 2 happened in
May 2003. The cause of the failure was determined to be metal
fatigue brought on by more vibrations due to higher flows of
steam throughout the system. 

In December, at the Dresden II plant near Chicago, inspectors
found new fissures earlier in a reinforced steam dryer. Days
before, Entergy officials had reported that a routine inspection
of Vermont Yankee had found 40 hairline cracks in a steam dryer
that had been reinforced in 2004. 

After the Thresher disaster, the Navy implemented a program to
correct design and construction problems on all submarines in
service (both nuclear and diesel-electric). Likewise, citizens
should demand a more adequate independent safety assessment that
would provide a more thorough review of these ageing reactors
that may have special vulnerabilities. We must remember that,
given enough time, a seemingly impossible turn of events becomes
probable, and an unlikely one becomes certain. 

Crea Lintalhac lives in Shelburne. 
Send us your news tips, a letter to the editor or general
comments.
 
Vermont Guardian PO Box 335 Winooski, VT 05404 

  | | Northern Vermont: PO Box 335, Winooski, VT 05404
 Southern Vermont: 139 Main Street, Suite 702, Brattleboro, VT
05301
 Contact: 802.861.4880 (ph) | 802.861.6388 (fax) | 877.231.5382

 ©2005 Vermont Guardian | 

Visit us: www.vermontguardian.com
 This document can be located online:
www.vermontguardian.com/commentary/022006/VYUprateReview.shtml 
*****************************************************************
 36 AFP: Pentagon unveils strategy shift for long war on terrorism -
                           
 Fri Feb 3, 2:05 PM ET 		 	 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon said it will beef up special 
operations forces and expand its capabilities for dealing with 
weapons of destruction as a result of a major review of strategy 
for a "long war" on terrorism. 

The four-year strategy review also called for the development of 
conventional high-tech weapons -- from long-range strike weapons 
to unmannned drones -- as a hedge against 'strategic 
uncertainty.'

But the strategy review, drafted in the midst of a four-year-old 
war against terrorism, reflected the Pentagon's views that future 
challenges are more likely to spring from adversaries like 
Al-Qaeda than conventionally armed nation states. 

'This war requires the US military to adopt unconventional and 
indirect approaches,' the so-called 'Quadrennial Defense Review' 
said. 

"Currently, Iraq" /> Iraqand Afghanistan" /> Afghanistanare 
crucial battlegrounds, but the struggle extends far beyond their 
borders," it said. 

"With its allies and partners, the United States must be
prepared to wage this war in many locations simultaneously for
some years to come," it said. 

Among its proposals for funding in the 2007 defense budget is a
15 percent increase in the size of the Special Operations Force,
which now number about 53,000. 

Army Special Forces battalions will be increased by one-third,
and the US Marine Corps will establish a special operations
command for the first time, the report said. 

The air force will establish an unmanned aerial vehicle squadron
under the US Special Operations Command, and the navy will beef
up manning of its SEAL command teams and develop capabilities
for riverine warfare. 

The command's psychological operations and civil affairs units
will be increased by 3,700 persons, or 33 percent, it said. 

A major concern of the review is the growing danger of weapons
of mass destruction in the hands of rogue states or terrorist
groups. 

It said the department will "greatly expand its capabilities and
forces" for contingencies involving weapons of mass destruction. 

The US Strategic Command was given the task of setting up a
rapidly deployable joint-task force headquarters "for WMD
elimination to be able to provide immediate command and control
of forces for executing those missions," it said. 

The report said the Defense Department will invest 1.5 billion
dollars over the next five years to develop medical
counter-measures against the threat of genetically engineered
bio-terror agents. 

The Pentagon also intends to develop "a wider range of
conventional and non-kinetic deterrent options while maintaining
a robust nuclear deterrent," the report said. 

A small number of Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles
will be converted for use in a "conventional prompt global
strike," it said. 

The Pentagon also plans to nearly double its existing capacity
to conduct what it called "persistent surveillance" by acquiring
more unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). 

"It will also begin development of the next-generation,
long-range strike systems, accelerating projected initial
operational capacity by almost two decades," the report said. 

It cast those investments as an effort "to help shape the
choices of countries at strategic crossroads, strengthen
deterrence and hedge against future strategic uncertainty." 	 		
			
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 37 Las Vegas SUN: CDC report: Abandoned Nevada copper mine a public health hazard 

Today: February 03, 2006 at 17:57:26 PST 

By SCOTT SONNER ASSOCIATED PRESS 

RENO, Nev. (AP) - A huge, abandoned northern Nevada copper mine
is a public health hazard in need of more testing and monitoring
to determine its threat to nearby residents, federal health
experts said Friday. 

But the most pressing need is fencing to keep people out of the
six-square-mile property that is contaminated with uranium and
other heavy metals, according to a new report by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. 

"Current barriers are inadequate to restrict access," the CDC's
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry warned. 

The agency said monitoring has been insufficient to assess
health risks posed by pollutants left behind by decades of
copper mining and processing at the former Anaconda mine,
located on the edge of Yerington in the Mason Valley, about 70
miles southeast of Reno. 

More testing is needed to determine the extent to which uranium,
arsenic and other contaminants in the mine's groundwater have
migrated to bordering farms and neighborhoods, the report said. 

Old tailings piles and evaporation ponds also are potential
sources for harmful materials that could be blown off the site
by strong winds, the agency said. 

The federal agency began its review in August at the request of
residents concerned that materials left behind at the mine might
make then sick. Some diseases cited by residents or observed by
agency staff "are plausible health outcomes for the contaminants
present in the (mine) site area," the agency concluded. 

The agency has begun training Yerington's medical community to
recognize conditions that might be caused by the contaminants,
said Mark Evans, an environmental geologist for the agency who
helped prepare the report. 

"We are not trained to really make any medical diagnoses," Evans
said Friday from Atlanta. "All we can say is there are high
levels of some contaminants there, particularly uranium and
arsenic, and there probably is - or may be - a dust problem." 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assumed responsibility
for the mine last year and is negotiating cleanup plans with
Atlantic Richfield Co., a past owner of about half of the
property, and the Bureau of Land Management, which owns the
other half. 

About 2,250 people live within a mile of the mine and about
5,730 within three miles of the site, including those on the
Yerington Paiute Tribe reservation. 

The new report "really validates some of the concerns we have
been raising for a number of years and underscores the need for
EPA to take some decisive steps," tribal Chairman Wayne Garcia
said Friday. "We'd like to see a lot more monitoring going on." 

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the report "provides further
evidence that (Atlantic Richfield) and the EPA are not working
fast enough to get this site cleaned up." 

"There is no good reason that there should still be unresolved
site security concerns, including simple things like fencing,"
he said. 

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., also remains concerned about the pace
of cleanup. "It is certainly a very disturbing report," said Amy
Maier, his chief of staff. 

Atlantic Richfield officials earlier refused requests by
residents and the EPA to fence off the site, but an EPA official
said late Friday they were close to reaching an agreement that
would see the company upgrade site security and build a
four-foot high, wire mesh fence with two-feet of barbed wire on
top around much of the site. 

Jim Sickles, EPA's site manager at Yerington, said the new
report "raises some worthwhile technical points." 

"We are all pretty much on the same page. There is a problem on
the site. It's well established. The question is, how much of it
has moved off the site?" 

Atlantic Richfield officials did not immediately return a call
Friday seeking comment. 

Evans praised EPA's efforts to speed the cleanup. 

"They are trying to do the right things. Our recommendation is
to just give the public health portion of that some legs," Evans
said. 

"There have been pieces of monitoring data collected for a good
long time, some of it in the 1980s. Part of the problem is there
hasn't been a consistent sampling plan." 

The CDC agency recommended that residents with private wells in
the Mason Valley have their water tested to ensure uranium and
arsenic concentrations are safe. Recent tests of wells adjacent
to the mine found arsenic, boron, fluoride and uranium exceeding
health safety standards, the agency said. 

People receiving bottled water from Atlantic Richfield should
continue to do so, the agency said, but using well water for
bathing, cleaning and irrigation is not dangerous based on
measurements to date. 

People who drank water containing the highest measured
concentrations of the contaminants are unlikely to experience
any adverse health effects, with the possible exception of
uranium, the report said. Any health effects from
uranium-tainted water probably would show up as kidney disease,
the report said. 

         All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 38 LA Daily News: Cancer in our own backyard

Article Launched: 02/03/2006 12:00:00 AM                                                        
               
Studies show rates higher for those within 2 miles of Santa 
Susana lab
 			 			 			 			 			 			 
By Kerry Cavanaugh, Staff Writer   
           
  Residents living within two miles of the Santa Susana Field
Lab may have been exposed to toxic chemicals through air, water
and soil contamination - and they have higher cancer rates than
people in communities farther from the lab, researchers revealed
Thursday in two landmark studies. 

People living close to the Simi Hills lab had slightly higher
rates of all cancers, particularly those linked to radiation and
chemical exposure, the studies found. 

Authors of the two reports warned the results do not
conclusively show that contamination from the former nuclear
research and rocket engine testing lab caused cancer and other
illnesses in the surrounding community. 

However, the studies are the strongest evidence to date that
residents near the lab were exposed to hazardous chemicals that
could have increased their chance of developing cancer. 

"I was actually surprised by some of these results," said Hal
Morgenstern, author of one of the studies and chairman of the
epidemiology department at the University of Michigan School of
Public Health. 

"This may be something that has nothing to do with Rocketdyne
and Santa Susana, but it's provocative enough that we have to
pursue it." 

The Boeing Co., which has owned the lab since 1996, reviewed a
PowerPoint presentation of the study but company officials said
they could not comment on the specifics until they've studied
the full reports. 

Company spokeswoman Inger Hodgson said lab owners and
environmental regulators have studied the site for more than 15
years and their analysis has shown that neighboring communities
are not impacted by the lab's past nuclear-energy research or
the more recent rocket-engine testing. 

Earlier studies in 1991 and 1997 suggested higher rates of
bladder cancer and lung cancer in the community nearest the
Rocketdyne lab. But state and federal officials were slow to
order a more thorough analysis. 

For some community members, the findings raised serious concern. 

"We're a mile away. Had I known it was there, I would have made
completely different decisions coming in," said Henry L.N.
Anderson, who lives in a mobile-home park downhill from the lab.
"We remodeled, and we're getting out." 

The Santa Susana Field Lab is a 2,800-acre facility at the top
of the Simi Hills in Ventura County, near the Los Angeles city
limits. From the 1940s to 1988, the Department of Energy
experimented with 10 nuclear reactors, one of which experienced
a partial meltdown. There was also an open-air pit where workers
burned radioactive and chemical waste. 

The lab also conducted rocket-engine tests for the Department of
Defense through last September - though there might be more
testing in the future, Hodgson said. The facility also conducts
a small laser testing program. 

Decades of nuclear research and chemical use left massive
contamination at the lab. The soil is rife with heavy metals and
chemical contaminants. The groundwater had high levels of
radiation and extremely potent concentrations of the
cancer-causing chemical TCE. 

The Daily News revealed extensive contamination at the lab in
1989, and since then neighbors have pushed for a community
health study. Their calls grew louder after two studies released 
by the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1997 and 1999 
showed that workers who handled radiation and a rocket-fuel 
chemical had higher rates of cancer. 

The two new studies presented Thursday night at a meeting of a
citizens and regulatory oversight group were commissioned in
2000 by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry. NASA and the Department of Energy provided several
hundred thousand dollars for the two studies. 

One of the studies, led by UCLA chemical engineering professor
Yoram Cohen, looked at how contamination at the Santa Susana
Field Lab could have moved off the hilltop lab into surrounding
neighborhoods. 

"It is clear to us that there has been a migration of
contaminants from the facility by surface water, air dispersion
and ground water," Cohen said. 

His team found that from the 1950s through 1970s residents
within two miles could have been exposed to significant amounts
of TCE and hydrazine, another highly potent chemical believed to
cause cancer. 

Even today, residents within two miles of the site could be
exposed to chemicals through private groundwater wells, by
eating vegetables grown in tainted soil or by inhaling
contaminants from future rocket engine tests. 

The second study was performed by Morgenstern, who analyzed
cancer incidences in Los Angeles and Ventura counties from 1988
through 2003. 

Morgenstern found slightly higher rates of all cancers,
particularly cancers linked to radiation and chemical exposure.
And Hispanic residents appeared to be the most affected by the
higher cancer rates. 

Bladder cancer and melanoma had the highest increase above
normal, with lung and immune system cancers also slightly
elevated. There was no sign of higher than normal rates of
breast or colon cancers. 

Kerry Cavanaugh, (818) 713-3746 

kerry.cavanaugh@dailynews.com

COMMUNITY HEALTH STUDY 

Here are highlights of the UCLA health study conducted of
residents living near Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field
Laboratory: 

Elevated incidence of cancer within 2 miles of the lab,
especially among Latino residents. 

Greatest elevation for melanoma and bladder cancer (1996-2003). 

Modest elevation for lung cancer and lymphoma (1988-1995). 

Little elevation for breast and colorectal cancers. 

Results are preliminary, and establishing a direct link between
exposure and illness would require additional research. 

Los Angeles Newspaper Group 
*****************************************************************
 39 KHON2: Q&A with 25th Infantry Division & U.S. Army Hawaii
Schofield Barracks, 2/2/06 

The Team That Knows Hawaii

Friday, February 3, 2006      


Q: Can you please confirm the quantity of chemical or
suspect-chemical munitions found, where, and when? 

A: Total suspected rounds are 137 suspect, 1 identified (155mm
phosgene). The rounds are being stored in a safe, secure
location on Schofield Barracks. 

Q: How were they handled at the time, and where are they being
stored now? 

A: We are taking every precaution to treat these suspect rounds
as if they were chemical munitions. 

Q: What is the long-term plan -- can they be shipped away,
incinerated, etc.? 

A: We are taking every precaution to treat these suspect rounds
as if they were chemical munitions. 

Q: Witnesses indicated mustard, chloropicrin and phosgene were
among what was found. Please provide more specifics on chemical
compounds discovered. 

A: Historically, there have been chemical munitions here
including mustard, chloropicrin and phosgene. The munitions we
have stored safely must be assessed using Portable Isotopic
Neutron Spectroscopy (PINS) to determine the exact contents. 

Q: Why was it there? 

A: Historically, there was a chemical munitions filling station
on Schofield Barracks dating back to the 1930s. These items are
most likely from the World War I & II era. 

Q: Has there been a human or environmental health follow-up?
What are the risks to the dozens of workers, and to the
cleaned-up area, plus ravines that weren't scoured? 

A: We are taking every precaution to treat these suspect rounds
as if they were chemical munitions. 

Q: What will the future use of that area be? 

A: The range is being cleared in order to construct a maneuver
live fire range called a Battle Area Complex. 

Q: What impact do the discoveries have on the planning and
timing of Stryker, as the range work was being done to
accommodate the new vehicles and training? 

A: Transformation at Schofield Barracks continues on course and
these munitions must be assessed to determine the impact on the
future if any. 

Q: What is the estimated cost (A) so far to deal with the
chemical weapons and (B) estimated cost going forward to
remediate the problem? 

A: Safety is our number one concern and the most important thing
to remember. Costs will be determined following full assessment. 

Q: At what point was the Commanding General made aware of the
issue? 

A: The Commanding General is apprised of safety-related matters
immediately.
 								 							 	 							 							
Chemical weapons found at Schofield Barracks
                                                                
Gina Mangieri                                                                   

First at sea, now on land. KHON2 reveals chemical weapons on
base at Schofield Barracks. Nearly 150 suspect munitions were
found during preparation for the Stryker Brigade. Our series
"Buried at Sea" chronicled decades-old dumping of chemical
weapons in the ocean. But what's right here on land has already
caused injury, and shipping it away isn't an option. 

Chemical weapons are on Oahu -- found at Schofield Barracks
while readying the base for the Stryker Brigade. 

The Army is calling them "suspect" rounds. Witnesses and
disposal experts say they contain a choking agent called
phosgene, the blistering chemical mustard, and a tear gas called
chloropicrin. They're in rounds ranging from 75 to 155
millimeters, plus mortars and projectors. 

"It's a pretty huge area, it's Range 5 at Schofield Barracks --
which is everything behind range control that goes up toward
Kolekole Pass," says a witness to the discoveries. 

Up to 70 private contract employees worked on the range clearing
project since 2004. One range maintenance worker even cut around
suspect ordnance with a weed whacker. 

"There's been a lot of individuals on the site that have been
sick for no reason," one former contractor says. 

A contractor employee's eyes were burned while documenting one
of the rounds. 

"I think the Army should have taken out an entire list of
everything that was recovered, and all the health problems
associated with each one of those items, for every single person
who has worked on that site," says a worker exposed to the
weapons. 

But they say the Army has so far denied such requests. The Army
is still examining the rounds. 

Until our documentation, the Army denied such weapons were even
present. We asked the commanding general in December 2005 if
there were chemical weapons on base: 

Commanding General Benjamin Mixon's reply: "Not to my
knowledge." 

"So Schofield and all that is clean?" KHON2 asked. 

"We're doing some cleaning in the impact area now of basic
ordnance," Mixon said in the December interview. "It's a basic
part of the process for improving for Stryker, and we haven't
found anything to date that concerns us." 

But the suspect rounds concerned many, based on communications
among Army officials involved in the project. 

"The Army certainly has known since fall of last year, fall of
2005, and perhaps as early as June of 2004 that there were
chemical weapons being discovered at Schofield," said David
Henkin, an attorney with Earthjustice, which represents Malama
Makua in dealings with the Army. 

Witnesses to the cleanup think more needs to be done. 

"They would have to send in a whole other team and decontaminate
everything, which is a big cost issue," a witness says. 

The Army responds: "Safety is our number one concern. Costs will
be determined following full assessment." 

International treaty prevents the transport of chemical weapons.
The items are being stored in a secure location on base until
they can be disposed of here. 

KHON2 previously reported depleted uranium was also found as
part of the same base project. 			 			 			 		 	   	
 		 	   			 	 			Advertising Information | 		 			About KHON2 |
© Copyright KHON2 - Emmis Communications. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 40 Deseret News: Envirocare adds nuclear waste firm 

[deseretnews.com] 

Friday, February 3, 2006 

Merger fuels talk of even reprocessing spent rods 

By Joe Bauman 

Deseret Morning News 

Envirocare of Utah's owners have bought a British government 
radioactive waste cleanup company and are merging it with 
Envirocare and another of its divisions to form a new 
corporation, one that may even come up with technology to 
reprocess spent nuclear fuel rods. 

If reprocessing technology is developed, as company 
president Steve Creamer believes it will be, it will make the 
need for high-level waste storage facilities like the proposed 
Private Fuel Storage site in Utah unnecessary. 

That may be far in the future. Meanwhile, the new entity, 
EnergySolutions, which is based in Salt Lake City, is continuing 
many cleanup and waste management projects. 

The Times of London reported in its Friday online edition 
that the purchase price for the British company BNG America was 
$90 million. 

The new corporation, of which the former BNG America will 
be one part, is called EnergySolutions. Also making up 
EnergySolutions are the Envirocare and Scientech D Division, 
which Envirocare acquired in October 2005. 

EnergySolutions, to be headquartered in Salt Lake City, 
is owned by a private equity group led by Lindsay, Goldberg 
&Bessemer, Peterson Partners and Creamer Investments, a press 
release from the new company says. 

As of today, Envirocare and Scientech D are operating 
under the EnergySolutions name. "BNG America, upon completion of 
the transaction in the next few weeks, will also be operating as 
EnergySolutions," a company press release says. 

BNG is involved in a Department of Energy project to test 
technologies for reprocessing or recycling of spent nuclear 
fuel, based at the DOE site at Savannah River, S.C. 

In the release, Creamer is quoted as saying, 
"EnergySolutions looks forward to working with the government 
and industry to help provide the technology and expertise to 
help make recycling of spent fuel a reality in the United 
States." 

Currently, federal law calls for disposal of highly 
radioactive fuel rods at the stalled Yucca Mountain, Nev., 
repository. The proposed PFS facility in Skull Valley, Tooele 
County, has been seen as a temporary storage solution. But if 
fuel rod reprocessing is developed, that could obviate the need 
for either plant. 

As a national company, the 1,000-plus employees of 
EnergySolutions will work in 14 states. Utah would be the 
headquarters, not a site for reprocessing waste or for working 
on decommissioning old nuclear facilities. 

Currently headquartered in Arlington, Va., BNG America 
manages the solid waste program at the DOE's Savannah River 
Site, says the BNG America Web site. 

Since 1991, the company has managed projects at DOE 
sites, national laboratories, nuclear fuel plants, utilities and 
industrial sites across the country, it adds. 

According to the company's Internet posting, BNG America 
already has a presence in Utah: helping operate Western 
Zirconium, located west of Ogden. 

In 2001, Western Zirconium, which manufactures coatings 
for fuel rods, received the Legislature's permission to ship 
low-level radioactive waste to Envirocare. 

BNG America provided project management and technical 
support for an environmental compliance review that was 
"expected to improve liquid effluent handling facilities" at 
Western Zirconium, the BNG America Web site says. 

Other BNG America projects include work at the Hanford 
Site, Washington; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee; 
Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho; Savannah River Site, South 
Carolina; Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site, Colorado; 
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California; Mound 
Closure Site, Ohio; West Valley Demonstration Project, New York; 
Big Rock Point, Michigan; and Hematite D Project, Missouri. 

Scientech's Decontamination and Decommissioning Division, 
the second company in the group, was acquired by Envirocare of 
Utah in October 2005. The division manages the decommissioning 
of sites nationwide for government agencies, education 
facilities and commercial projects, according to Envirocare. 

Scientech D, based in New Milford, Conn., "offers a 
variety of services ranging from initial consultation to project 
management and execution of facility decontamination and 
decommissioning projects," Envirocare said at the time of the 
acquisition. 

Envirocare's low-level radioactive waste disposal site 
near the railroad siding called Clive, Tooele County, would not 
be affected by the acquisition, although the name has changed. 
The release says the site will continue to "only take low-level 
Class A waste, as permitted by Utah's Department of 
Environmental Quality. 

"No higher levels of radioactive waste will be handled or 
managed in the state of Utah." 

© 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company 	 		 		 			 		 		 		 		 [ 
*****************************************************************
 41 Nevada Appeal: Bush opens the door for nuclear reprocessing

Opinion
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
February 3, 2006                                                                
               
Nevada Appeal editorial board

                                                
 With a mere four words in his State of the Union speech -
"clean, safe nuclear energy" - President Bush has rekindled
interest in an industry that has been out of favor for 25 years
and could have long-reaching effects on Nevada.

Since the Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania in 1979, in
which no one was hurt or killed and a small amount of radiation
leaked, the nuclear-power industry has remained something of a
pariah. Its promise as the leading source of electricity for the
nation has faded.

Bush is looking to revive that promise as one part of his
Advanced Energy Initiative, which in one long breath in his
speech also managed to cover zero-emission coal-fired plants;
solar and wind technology; hydrogen, electric and hybrid cars;
and ethanol.

It was all part of his "addicted to oil" warning, and we welcome
a broad look at how this country is going to meet its energy
needs over the next 50 years. But it is the president's
enthusiasm for nuclear energy that should bring both interest
and concern from Nevadans.

One facet of Bush's nuclear proposal is likely to call for
reprocessing of spent fuel, perhaps even importing it from other
countries, in order to extract the remaining radioactive content
for use in special reactors.

Even before Three Mile Island, the United States has banned
reprocessing of radioactive fuel, so Bush will have a tough
selling job to do. It takes a high-wire act to condemn Iran for
possessing high-level plutonium while at the same time proposing
to produce a fuel that is actually more powerful.

In the meantime, Nevadans can be encouraged by Bush's
open-mindedness on reprocessing, because it signals a
willingness to consider options other than piling radioactive
waste inside Yucca Mountain. Unfortunately, there's no long-term
alternative in sight.

The nuclear industry touts itself as "emission-free," which is
true except for that small detail of the waste that remains
potentially hazardous for thousands of years. Scientists need to
be working on that detail, and a push from the president will
surely help.

All contents © Copyright 2006 nevadaappeal.com
Nevada Appeal - 580 Mallory Way - Carson City, NV 89701                         
*****************************************************************
 42 Bradenton Herald: Tallevast mystery: New test results leave many questions

| 02/03/2006 | 

How big is the toxic plume underneath Tallevast? 

How deep into the aquifer has it gone? 

Which direction is it moving? 

Why does it appear to be moving so fast? 

Those are just a few of the questions that arise from the latest
test results released by the independent geologist representing
Tallevast residents in the ongoing pollution scandal in the
South Manatee community. 

Unfortunately, there are precious few definitive answers to give
worried residents much assurance about the future of their
property - or their health. But analysis of test well drillings
by Michael Graves of Environmental Sciences & Technologies Inc.
should raise the level of concern by all affected parties,
including the one responsible for eventual cleanup of the toxic
leak, Lockheed Martin Corp. Officials of Lockheed, which in 2000
bought the former American Beryllium Co. plant that is believed
to be the source of the pollution, say there were no surprises
in Graves' recent report that showed the plume extends
considerably farther and at much stronger levels than previously
thought. 

Perhaps the company asks employees to downplay those findings to
avoid admitting any more liability than absolutely necessary.
But they seem alarming to us and doubtless to Tallevast
residents who live atop or near the plume. Graves believes the
plume ebbs and flows with the seasons and that as a result the
original pool, which has been traced to a broken sump at the
beryllium plant, may actually have split into three separate
branches. 

Graves' latest readings are an indication that the contamination
may have spread under most of Tallevast and moved east almost to
U.S. 301. They also indicate that toxic chemicals may have
penetrated to three different aquifer zones, including the
Floridan, the primary groundwater source for wells in this area. 

As if that weren't troubling enough, Graves' tests show higher
concentrations of toxic contaminants: double previous levels for
1,4-dioxane in some areas, for example. And wells that
previously showed no measurable levels of that chemical have now
tested well above the allowable state standard. 

Obviously, more tests are needed to better understand the level,
depth and extent of the plume or plumes. To its credit, Lockheed
is in the process of drilling dozens of monitoring wells outside
the perimeters of the last plume map in an effort to define the
toxins' movement. In that effort it is crucial that Lockheed
crews have access to the well owned by Heidi Boothe, about a
quarter of a mile from the beryllium plant. The property owner
allowed Graves to run tests on her well but denied access to
Lockheed for fear it would mean cutting her pine trees. The
Department of Environmental Protection, which is overseeing the
contamination project, is seeking an administrative order to
gain access. 

Lockheed can't fulfill its promise to clean up the mess if it
isn't allowed to do the necessary testing to define the problem.
The toughest part of this environmental crisis is the unknown.
DEP and Manatee County officials must be vigilant to ensure that
everything possible is done to get to the bottom of this
disaster and begin cleanup measures as soon as possible. email
*****************************************************************
 43 NRC: Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Schedules Hearing on Proposed Uranium Enrichment Plant in New
                             Mexico
News Release - 2006-01 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office 
of Public Affairs     Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 
20555-0001     E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 06-014     February 3, 
2006   
  

Board (ASLB) will begin an evidentiary hearing March 6 in Hobbs,
N.M., on a proposed uranium enrichment plant to be built in Lea
County. In addition, the Board will hold special sessions March
5 and March 6 to allow members of the public to make brief
statements. 

During the evidentiary hearing, the ASLB will receive testimony
and exhibits in the mandatory hearing portion of the
adjudication concerning the proposed National Enrichment
Facility to be built by Louisiana Energy Services near Eunice,
N.M. This hearing will concern safety and environmental matters
other than those that were raised by intervening parties and are
currently being litigated in a separate contested hearing. LES
and the NRC staff will be parties in the mandatory hearing. 

Members of the Licensing Board are G. Paul Bollwerk, III,
Chairman; Dr. Paul B. Abramson and Dr. Charles N. Kelber. 

The evidentiary hearing will begin at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, March
6, and will continue daily until completed. Hearing sessions
will be held at the New Mexico Junior College, Moran Building
Multi-Purpose Room, 5317 Lovington Highway, in Hobbs. Portions
of these hearing sessions may be closed to the public to allow
discussion of protected information. 

On Sunday, March 5, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., and on Monday, March
6, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., the Board will convene at the same
location to hear statements from the public. Members of the
public who are not parties or representatives of parties in the
hearings may make oral statements no longer than five minutes on
matters relating to the LES proceeding. 

Persons wishing to make oral statements at either the March 5 or
March 6 evening session should send a written request by
February 22, 2006, to Office of the Secretary, Rulemakings and
Adjudications Staff, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
Washington, D.C. 20555-0001; by fax to (301) 415-1101; or by
e-mail to hearingdocket@nrc.gov. Requests should also be sent to
the ASLB by fax to (301) 415-5599 or by e-mail to
emp1@nrc.govand gpb@nrc.gov. Depending on the number of requests
to speak received by Feb. 22, the Board may decide to cancel one
or both of the public statement sessions.   



  


 	Last revised Friday, February 03, 2006 	   
*****************************************************************
 44 BBC: BNFL sells nuclear clean up unit
 
Last Updated: Friday, 3 February 2006
 
[Sellafield nuclear power plant in Cumbria]                             

A number of nations are planning to boost nuclear power output                    
			   		
British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) has sold its US nuclear clean-up 
unit for £51m ($91m) to Utah-based Energy Solutions. 

BNFL, which also plans to sell its US-based nuclear power station 
construction unit Westinghouse, wants to focus on its UK 
businesses. 

State-owned, loss-making BNFL operates the Sellafield waste 
reprocessing plant in Cumbria and the UK's remaining older Magnox 
stations. 

Plans to sell off its businesses is proving controversial. 

Many critics argue that the company is getting rid of valuable 
assets just as demand for nuclear power is about to pick up, a 
development that could make large amounts of money for the firm.
		 	 		 	 	 



*****************************************************************
 45 Herald News: Tritium found at forest area

  [SuburbanChicagoNews.com]   

 Radioactive contamination: Leaders upset after findings in

Braidwood Dunes 

By Cindy Wojdyla CainStaff Writer 

JOLIET  Radioactive tritium contamination has been discovered at
the Braidwood Dunes forest preserve.

 Exelon Corp. set up monitoring wells two weeks ago to determine
how far contaminated water leaked off the Braidwood nuclear
power station property.

 The forest preserve district was informed Wednesday of the
contamination at the 300-acre Braidwood Dunes, which is on
Illinois 113 east of Braidwood, Executive Director Mike Pasteris
said.

 Pasteris, who reported on the contamination at Thursday's
county board executive committee meeting, is concerned about the
effect the contamination will have on endangered species in the
area.

 "I'm extremely disturbed," Pasteris said after the meeting.
"We're going to do everything we can to make sure any
contamination on our property is addressed and mitigated."

 The spills occurred in 1998 and 2000 when water containing the
radioactive material leaked out of valves on a pipe carrying the
water to the Kankakee River. 


The company first discovered elevated tritium levels on its
property in November. That's when it started testing off site.

 One Braidwood Dunes monitoring well discovered a tritium level
of 25,000 picocuries per liter, Exelon spokesman Craig Nesbit
said in a phone interview. A second well found a level of 2,700
picocuries.

 A level of 200 picocuries is normal in the environment, Nesbit
added. Anything above 20,000 picocuries is deemed unsafe for
drinking water, however.

 Monitoring wells at the nearby Sand Ridge Savanna Nature
Preserve showed normal tritium levels, Pasteris added.

 Nesbit said Exelon is testing to see how far the radioactive
material has traveled and the company will file a remediation
plan with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in the
future.

 Meanwhile, county officials are fuming that they weren't
informed earlier of the tritium leaks at the nuclear power
station.

 County board Chairman Jim Moustis, R-Frankfort, has written a
letter to state and federal officials asking that legislation be
drafted to require local notification of such incidents. Moustis
said it appears that the company "covered up" the leaks.

 Nesbit said the spills were "mishandled" but there was no
cover-up. He said an internal investigation is looking into what
happened when the valves malfunctioned and why only "informal"
notification was given to the IEPA.

 Also, he admitted local officials should have been informed
when the leaks occurred.

 "We should have done that," he said. "It's just a matter of
courtesy. Nobody could say otherwise."

 Moustis also is wondering why some Will County departments
learned of the spills in December but the county board remained
in the dark until last week.

 "Quite frankly, I find this very disturbing on a number of
levels," Moustis said. 

In other news related to the Exelon spill, residents who are
concerned about the leaks are being invited to Thursday's county
board health and aging committee meeting, which begins at 8:30
a.m. at the Will County Office Building, 302 N. Chicago St.,
Joliet. The committee's chairman is attorney Don Gould,
R-Shorewood.

 
- Reporter Cindy Wojdyla Cain may be reached at (815) 729-6044
or at ccain@scn1.com.

 02/03/06 

SuburbanChicagoNews.com — ©  Digital Chicago & Sun-Times
*****************************************************************
 46 reviewjournal.com: State loses bid to see DOE's draft Yucca license application
 
Feb. 03, 2006

Panel: Document on nuclear waste repository doesn't meet rules to 
be placed on database         

By STEVE TETREAULT <br/>STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Nevada lost the latest round on Thursday in a legal 
battle over Yucca Mountain documents. 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled the Department of Energy 
was not required to release its draft license application for the 
planned nuclear waste site, rejecting the state's bid for an 
early peek at the 5,800-page packet. 

In a legal fight that began last summer, attorneys for Nevada
argued for access, saying the document might provide important
clues as to how the government plans to justify constructing a
repository for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear
fuel. 

But the commission, which has jurisdiction over Yucca licensing
matters sided with the Department of Energy in a 26-page order.
It ruled the draft did not meet standards set by federal rules
to place it on a public database. 

Four of the NRC commissioners participated in the decision.
Commissioner Gregory Jaczko recuses himself from Yucca Mountain
matters because he used to work for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a
repository opponent. 

The commissioners overruled their administrative licensing
board, which said in September that Nevada should gain access to
the documents. 

"Based on our initial assessment of the ruling, we are pleased,
but not surprised with the NRC's decision," DOE spokesman Craig
Stevens said. "We will continue on our path forward, based on
sound science, to get Yucca Mountain licensed and opened." 

Nevada official Bob Loux said the ruling "once again
demonstrates that the commission is wholly and solely in bed
with DOE." 

He said state lawyers were studying the NRC ruling and had not
discussed yet whether it might be appealed to federal court. 

The draft license paperwork was prepared in July 2004 and
revised in September of that year. Loux, executive director of
the Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the documents might have
only limited value now because DOE is reorganizing the project
and redirecting some key elements. 

A House subcommittee that is investigating the Yucca project has
subpoenaed DOE for the draft license application but the
department has resisted turning it over, questioning its
relevance to the probe. The House panel, headed by Rep. Jon
Porter, R-Nev., set a deadline for Tuesday for DOE to comply. 

"While today's ruling is troubling it has no bearing" on the
subcommittee's actions, Porter said. "The longer DOE withholds
the application from the subcommittee, the more I question their
motives." 	   

Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2006
*****************************************************************
 47 Salt Lake Tribune: Envirocare: New name, big time 

Last Updated: 02/03/2006 06:14:08 AM 

EnergySolutions promises no higher-radiation waste in Utah 

By Judy Fahys The Salt Lake Tribune 

Steve Creamer Envirocare CEO 

Envirocare of Utah has bought the U.S. arm of a British nuclear 
waste company and, with the change of a name, hopes to retool 
itself as a vastly expanded business that handles and ships 
reactor waste elsewhere in the nation, while continuing to 
dispose of low-level radioactive waste in Tooele County. 

The new venture, called EnergySolutions, will be based in 
Salt Lake City, the company said Thursday. After Envirocare 
completes its reported $89 million purchase of Virginia-based 
BNG America and blends it with Scientech D, which Envirocare 
bought last fall, the new company will be in 14 states, reaching 
from Washington to Massachusetts and South Carolina, with a work 
force of more than 1,000. 

The announcement comes on the heels of Envirocare's recent 
decision not to seek legislative and gubernatorial approval to 
double the size of its mile-square low-level radioactive waste 
landfill in Tooele County. It also comes almost a year after 
Envirocare's ownership changed hands from its founder, Khosrow 
Semnani, to developer Steve Creamer and two investment groups, 
Peterson Partners and Lindsay, Goldberg &Bessmer. 

"It puts us in a position now to change ourselves from a 
landfill in the west desert [of Utah] into a full-service 
nuclear company," said Creamer, who led the purchase of 
Envirocare a year ago and will be the new company's president 
and chief executive officer. 

The company said in a news release its Tooele County 
landfill for low-level radioactive and hazardous waste will not 
be affected by the changes. The facility will continue to take 
only low-level radioactive waste known as Class A. 

"No higher levels of radioactive waste will be handled or 
managed in the state of Utah," the company statement said. 

Members of the Utah congressional delegation and Gov. Jon 
Huntsman Jr.'s office were briefed in recent days on the 
acquisition, according to a source in the state Capitol. 

Dianne Nielson, director of the Utah Department of 
Environmental Quality, said it is too soon to say exactly what 
sort of regulatory changes, if any, will be required of the 
recast Envirocare. 

"If nothing is changing in the Utah operations, and if 
Envirocare is still Envirocare [in all but name], then my guess 
is there isn't a change" in state oversight, she said. 

One likely area of review will be in whether the renamed 
company must update its financial sureties for long-term 
maintenance and safety of the site, she said. 

Creamer said that EnergySolutions will be safe, 
environmentally sensitive and streamlined. 

With the acquisition, the privately owned and operated Envirocare
continues to extend its reach into new areas of the nuclear waste
business. The Utah-based company has been looking for new ways to
make money as its mainstay business, disposing of 
radiation-contaminated government cleanup waste, begins to dry 
up. 

The acquisition indicates Envirocare sees a brighter future 
in the industry's commercial side, including decommissioning and 
decontaminating power plants, spent-fuel handling, 
transportation and high-level waste management, along with 
disposal. 

Creamer returned Thursday from London, where the BNG 
purchase was announced after being approved by the British 
government. 

EnergySolutions acquired all of the technologies of BNG 
America, which means it now has rights to one of the world's two 
functioning technologies for reprocessing nuclear waste, said 
Creamer, who has personally lobbied U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel 
Bodman on ending the ban of nuclear reprocessing in the United 
States. 

Creamer said he hopes reprocessing will be allowed in the 
United States again someday. 

"We'd like to be involved with the DOE in reprocessing if 
there is an opportunity," he said. 

An article posted on the Web site of Britain's The Guardian 
newspaper said Creamer also indicated Energy Solutions sees the 
deal as a way to gain entrance into radioactive cleanups in the 
United Kingdom and "probably" for the purchase of all of BNG in 
England. 

The name change also may help Envirocare remake its 
longstanding image as strictly a site for low-level waste. Since 
purchasing Scientech on Oct. 7, Envirocare has had some 
difficulty marketing its services for higher-level wastes, and a 
name change may be able to recast its image. 

Envirocare opened 18 years ago in Utah. The largest of three 
sites licensed to accept low-level radioactive waste in the 
United States, Envirocare had its busiest year ever in 2005, 
taking in 25 million cubic feet of waste. 

fahys@sltrib.com 

Â© Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 48 Salt Lake Tribune: Envirocare solution

Article Last Updated: 02/03/2006 12:24:49 AM                              
                   
The Salt Lake Tribune   
  	   
  * The deal: Envirocare of Utah will join Scientech D and BNG
America to form a company called EnergySolutions. 
   * The new company: EnergySolutions will have more than 1,000
employees in 14 states, including Utah. The company will work in
processing, transportation and disposal of nuclear waste,
including spent fuel, and hopes to work with the federal
government to reprocess nuclear waste. 
   * What it means for Utah: EnergySolutions will be
headquartered in Salt Lake City. EnergySolutions' Utah disposal
site, the former Envirocare landfill in Tooele County, will not 
be affected, according to the company. That facility will 
continue to only take low-level radioactive waste. 
    
Â© Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. 




*****************************************************************
 49 Scotsman.com: Clean-up after radioactive spill
 
Fri 3 Feb 2006         

A Â£1 million clean-up operation has begun at a nuclear
treatment plant after a radioactive spill, it has emerged. 

The cementation plant at UKAEA Dounreay in Caithness was shut
last September after a batch of hazardous, dissolved spent fuel
was poured over a sealed drum, spilling on to the floor. 

No-one was harmed or exposed to radioactive material in the
incident, but bosses said it was a "wake-up call" and carried
out a series of safety checks. Dounreay spokesman Colin Pulner
said they hoped the site could begin operating again by autumn. 

"At the moment we are using remotely operated equipment for the
clean-up, because radioactivity levels are too high for people
to do it," he said. 

"Once these levels have fallen, our staff will be able to go in
and help." 

Mr Pulner added that the spillage had delayed the
decommissioning of the cementation plant by around a year, with
work now expected to finish in 2010. 

The cementation site is where batches of radioactive liquid are
mixed with cement and stored in drums. 

After the incident, bosses accepted certain failures and
reviewed safety at the plant. 

The spillage came just days after Dounreay was served with an
enforcement order for breaking rules which allowed it to dispose
of radioactive waste. 

Dounreay, which has a workforce of around 2,000, was Britain's
centre of fast reactor research and development from 1955 until
1994. It is now being decommissioned by UKAEA on behalf of the
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. 

Â© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 50 PE.com: March ARB cleanup running smoothly

Inland Southern California | Southwest Riverside County
 
MARCH: Workers tackle toxic wastes at one of the oldest U.S. air
installations. 

07:16 AM PST on Friday, February 3, 2006 

By JOE VARGO / The Press-Enterprise 

ENVIRONMENTAL EFFORT 

Began: 1989 

Projected completion: 2021 

Total cost: $169 million 

Sites: 44, from a few square feet to a mile-long solvent plume 

Cleanup techniques: filtering, pumping toxic fumes to surface
and burning, fuel-eating bacteria. 

Percentage completed: 90 percent   

MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE - In their efforts to clean up decades of
hazardous waste and industrial pollution, March Air Reserve Base
environmental engineers are employing huge carbon filters,
above-ground furnaces and even gas-gobbling bacteria. 

It's a long-term process that began when the base was put on the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list --
designating it a top priority for cleanup -- in 1989. It's not
scheduled to be completed until 2021, with a cost of $169
million. 

Members of a community watchdog group, who recently toured the
pollution sites on the base, give March officials high marks for
their efforts to clean up the mess, some of which dates to the
1930s. 

Gerry Budlong, a member of March's Restoration Advisory Board
and the Moreno Valley Ecological Protection Board, said when the
first meetings were held to discuss the problem, the theater at
March was packed with concerned residents. Now, barely a handful
show up. 

"They've done an excellent job," Budlong said last week during a
tour. "They've had an open-door policy and kept us informed." 

Technicians have removed about 90 percent of the solvents,
sludge, fuel spills and industrial wastes that included some
cancer-causing agents, said Eric Lehto, an environmental
engineer and March's point man on the issue. Thirty-five of the
44 pollution sites have been completely cleaned up, while
significant work continues on the other nine locations. Base
officials are monitoring the progress. 

  Ed Crisostomo / The Press-Enterprise   

  Technicians have removed about 90 percent of the solvents,
sludge, fuel spills and industrial wastes that included some
cancer-causing agents, said Eric Lehto, an environmental
engineer.   

Lehto said cleanup efforts go on above and below ground. 

Base officials consolidated several landfills into one large one
and entombed it to prevent further contamination. Today, all
trash is trucked off base, ending the need for a permanent
garbage dump. 

Most fuel contamination evaporates over time, Lehto said. Base
officials vaporize what's left and pump the noxious fumes to the
surface, he said, where they are combined with other combustible
gases and ignited. The mixture burns completely in furnaces that
operate around the clock. 

Fuel-Eating Bacteria 

Fuel cleanup also gets a boost from microorganisms that eat
gasoline. 

The bacteria occur naturally and pose no threat to humans, Lehto
said. Some thrive without oxygen. Those that need a jolt of air
get a boost from oxygen pumped into the ground. Contaminated
groundwater is pumped to the surface and run through huge carbon
filters. Some gets diverted to Riverside National Cemetery.
Other plumes of toxic materials that can't be easily removed are
monitored by some of the 300 wells scattered throughout March.
The base uses no groundwater for human consumption. Founded in
1918, March is one of the oldest air bases in America. It's been
in continuous use since the late 1920s and served as a bomber
base during World War II and the Cold War. Storage bunkers held
nuclear bombs and B-52 bombers stood ready to launch from the
base's runway during the 1960s and 1970s. 

Later, the base became home to tankers and cargo planes, a role
it continues to fill today along with its contingent of F-16
fighters that provided Homeland Security cover. 

For a long time, the military and its civilian contractors just
didn't understand the danger, said Jan Beyers, a plant ecologist
and member of the Moreno Valley Ecological Protection Board. 

"People thought they could dump stuff anywhere and then move
someplace else," Beyers said. "Now we want to build on those
places. What was once considered state-of-the-art disposal is
now on the Superfund list." 

Nuclear Issue 

Concerns about possible nuclear contamination have produced no
evidence of unusually high levels of radiation. 

Government monitors conducted extensive tests after March's
nuclear mission ended. Later, when it was discovered that
technicians checking for corrosion on nuclear weapons at another
base had buried their coveralls, the government began another
search of the storage-bunker area, looking for signs of buried
clothing. 

That search, which uses ground-penetrating radar, continues but
to date has uncovered nothing, Lehto said. 

Lehto said the easy-to-get-to waste sites as well as locations
of "scary" toxins like PCB and TCE, both cancer-causing
chemicals, have been identified and cleaned up. 

"Now we're getting to the annoying stuff," Lehto said. 

Brig. Gen. James Rubeor, March's commander, said he's pleased
with the progress made so far, but said the military and the
government owe it to future generations of airmen and women to
finish the job. 

"March Air Reserve Base has made terrific progress in the
cleaning up the installation in the last 10 years," Rubeor said. 

"I'm pleased that we are good stewards of our environment, and
we're trying to make our surroundings better for the next
generation of citizen-airmen who will follow in our footsteps.
We owe it to our community and we owe it to our children, and we
are committed to doing our part." 

Reach Joe Vargo at (951) 567-2407 or 

  Survey 

Do you believe further testing should be done to verify that
contamination from March Air Reserve Base has not spread to
outside the base? Comment 		

February 3, 2006 09:45 a.m. 
A "clean-up" is a clean-up. Despite designated political
boundries, public health and safety concerns should be a
considered factor if any contamination has spread outside the
base.
An additional reminder: Future use of the MAFB has been
commented on publically (in multiplicity) at many Riverside
County Planning Commission Hearings and before County
Supervisors by both the extreme environmentalists and the
motorized recreationalists that "MARB would be an ideal location
for legal motorized recreation. As MAFB has a history of being a
high impact area. A legal motorized recreation designation would
certainly ease the issues of illegal recreational activities,
and tresspassing issues on Multi Species Habitat Critical Plans
(MSHCP's) by providing a practical solution to solve and improve
logical recreational and economical opportuntities. After all,
it is public land!
Support your politicos that can help you discover reasonable
solutions to assist you and your community with practical
cooperation strategies that proactivly addresses resource and
recreational problems. Let's help them do their job!	 		 		

February 3, 2006 09:36 a.m. 

Press-Enterprise Table of Contents
 
*****************************************************************
 51 IEER Factsheet | Reprocessing: The international experience

International experience with reprocessing and related
technologies

Arjun Makhijani, IEER January 25, 2006 

1. Costs. The separation of plutonium (called "reprocessing")
from reactor spent fuel is very costly. France, the worlds
reprocessing leader, spends about $1 billion extra per year on
plutonium fuel compared to uranium fuel. Plutonium fuel obtained
by reprocessing (also called mixed-oxide fuel or MOX) is two to
three times more costly than uranium fuel. The use of MOX in
France in 20 out of 58 reactors with 30% core loading produces
less than 10 percent of its nuclear electricity. 

Japan's new reprocessing plant, Rokkasho, will likely provide
the most expensive nuclear power fuel in the history of nuclear
power, close to about 3 cents (about 3.5 yen) per kilowatt hour
of electricity. The major part of this is capital costs.
Operating costs and fuel fabrication can also be expected to be
significant. It would be much cheaper to not start up the plant
and instead write it off. This is true not even taking into
account decommissioning costs and high level waste disposal
costs, reactor modification costs and other costs, such as added
security costs of MOX, and assumes that the Rokkasho plant will
operate well and process 1,000 metric tons of spent fuel per
year. 

2. Need for a repository. Reprocessing does not decrease waste
to be sent to a repository. While vitrified waste is smaller in
volume than the original spent fuel, reprocessing produces large
quantities of intermediate level waste that, in France, must be
disposed of in a deep repository. The total volume of vitrified
and intermediate waste is considerably larger than the original
spent fuel. Moreover, there is uranium left over that is
contaminated with plutonium and other high activity
radionuclides. (Uranium is 94 percent of the weight of spent
fuel.) This, too, is radioactive enough to have to be disposed
of in a repository. France sends at least some of its recovered
uranium to Russia. No public documentation of what happens there
is available. There is a near total lack of accountability on
this. So, after accounting for the uranium, the intermediate
waste (which should be disposed of in a WIPP-like deep
repository because of its high specific activity), and the
vitrified waste, the volume of waste destined for a repository
ends up being far greater than the original spent fuel. 

There is also the problem of spent MOX fuel. Most spent MOX fuel
is generally not suitable for reprocessing, is hotter in terms
of radioactivity and temperature than regular spent fuel, and a
bigger problem for disposing of in a repository. The French do
not reprocess it at present and will likely have to make
provision for it in their repository disposal program. In the
U.S. only 3 reactors, at Palo Verde in Arizona, were explicitly
designed for MOX fuel use. 

A repository is needed for long-lived wastes in all cases.
France has a program that resembles Yucca Mountain. According to
the French law there should be two sites. A potential one, where
research is currently being conducted, is in a politically weak
area. The characterization program has some strong points but
many weak points and fails to address key issues. It is behind
schedule. A search for a second one was canceled because of
strong local opposition. 

3. Plutonium. There is more than 200 metric tons of surplus
commercial plutonium worldwide that have not been used as MOX.
This surplus is building up each year. There are many reasons
for this. MOX fuel is not made and used immediately. Many
reactors need costly modifications to use MOX; some reactors
cannot be modified. In France, about half of the reactors cannot
be modified to use MOX. There are about 80 metric tons of
surplus plutonium at La Hague in France and similar amounts at
Sellafield in the UK. More than 30 metric tons are in
Chelyabinsk in Russia, stored in tens of thousands of bins
(similar to large sugar bins). Accounting for them is difficult.
Japan had more than 200 kilograms of unaccounted-for plutonium
in 2003. 

If the plutonium is stored for too long (more than 5 years) it
has to be reprocessed again to clean out the americium-241 that
builds up. This is costly and problematic. Much of the stock
cannot be used without further huge expenditures, which is a
good reason to vitrify it. The surplus is building up each year
even with existing reprocessing capacity. 

4. Weapons proliferation. Japan has a large stock of separated
plutonium, but has not yet used any as commercial power reactor
fuel. Its program to do so has been stalled for years. Japanese
politicians have spoken in recent years about making nuclear
weapons. Japan's Labor Party chief, Ichiro Ozawa, suggested in
2002 that Japan could use its commercial plutonium to make
thousands of nuclear weapons if China got too uppity. Most of
Japan's separated plutonium comes from La Hague. Japan could
become a full-fledged nuclear weapons state in approximately six
months, according to IEER calculations. 

5. Transmutation. Transmutation requires reprocessing. The
leading candidate technology is called electrometallurgical
processing, or pyroprocessing. It is not proliferation proof.
Pyroprocessing produces impure plutonium but nonetheless it can
be used to make nuclear weapons. The U.S. and other weapons
states won't want it for weapons (it's too impure relative to
weapons-grade) but terrorists and non-nuclear states might. It
is much easier to hide than the PUREX technology. Pyroprocessing
would do for reprocessing what centrifuges did for enrichment,
but on a much more serious scale since it is much more compact
than present reprocessing plants. Transmutation was not
supported even in some pro-nuclear studies such as the recent
MIT study on nuclear power. 

6. Liquid waste discharges. Reprocessing creates huge volumes of
liquid waste, far more than the original waste volume. In
Europe, it is discharged to the sea. France and Britain, the two
leading reprocessing countries, have contaminated seafood all
the way to the Arctic. Many governments, such as Ireland and
Norway, have asked France and Britain to stop their reprocessing
discharges, so far to no avail. France and Britain do not count
these discharges as waste due to an accounting trick since they
are via a pipeline in the sea. If the waste were packaged in
drums and thrown overboard from a ship, it would be illegal
under international law. 

7. High-level waste tanks. High-level liquid waste generated
from reprocessing is not immediately vitrified. It is stored in
stainless steel tanks that must be cooled. Loss of cooling for
few days risks a catastrophic explosion. The 1957 explosion in
the Soviet Union of a waste tank contaminated nearly 6,000
square miles. The land is still contaminated. There was complete
loss of cooling for five hours in France due to a series of
electrical system mishaps in 1980. 


Presidents Ford and Carter initiated the U.S. policy to stop
commercial reprocessing after India's nuclear test in 1974. None
has taken place in the U.S. since that time. The only commercial
reprocessing plant in the U.S., near Buffalo, New York, was
closed in 1972. Forgoing reprocessing makes economic sense and
is good for non-proliferation and the public purse. Reprocessing
should not be pursued. 


Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. (1972, University of California Berkeley,
specialization: nuclear fusion), is President of the Institute
for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland. 

+ - Subject index for ieer.org.
 
+ - Readable science on a range of issues.
 
+ - IEER's quarterly newsletter. Understandable scientific
information and analysis - with a dose of humor!
 
+ - Eggcellent reads on energy, environment, science, nuclear
security, radiation, climate!
 
+ 
Comments to ieer at ieer.org
 Takoma Park, Maryland, USA

 January 25, 2006 
*****************************************************************
 52 AU ABC: Uranium in water may cause community harm - researcher.

03/02/2006. ABC News Online

A research centre will investigate whether uranium in the water
supply of a central Australian Aboriginal community is causing
long-term damage to its residents.

 Barry Noller from the National Research Centre for
Environmental Toxicology says uranium levels in the underground
water supply of Yuendumu, north-west of Alice Springs, hovers
around the drinking water limit.

 He says the naturally occurring uranium may be causing kidney
damage to residents who drink the water over a long period of
time.

 "The population in Yuendumu, like many other places in Northern
Territory or northern Australia, have impaired renal function,
so drinking water at the upper level of the uranium guidelines
consistently may have consequences that are not yet fully
understood," he said. 




*****************************************************************
 53 UPI: Utah firm buys BNFL nuclear assets
     
  United Press International - NewsTrack

2/3/2006 4:25:00 PM -0500

LONDON, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. has sold its 
U.S. nuclear cleanup unit for $91 million to Utah-based Energy 
Solutions. 

BNFL, which also plans to sell its U.S.-based nuclear power 
station construction unit Westinghouse, wants to focus on its 
British businesses, the BBC said Friday. 

Some critics argue that the company is getting rid of valuable 
assets just as demand for nuclear power is about to pick up, a 
development that could make large amounts of money for the firm.
								
© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights 
Reserved


*****************************************************************
 54 EGYPT PUSHES FOR MIDDLEAST NUKE-FREE ZONE
 
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 00:43:18 -0600 (CST)


The United Nations atomic agency, the IAEA, delayed until Saturday a vote 
on sending Iran's suspect nuclear program to the UN Security Council after 
Egypt insisted on adding a clause implying that Israel should give up its 
alleged atomic weapons.

Egypt pushed for a reference to a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle 
East to be included in the resolution in order to represent Arab concerns 
over Israel's alleged nuclear weapons capacity, diplomats said.

The United States opposed the insertion but France, Germany and Britain -- 
the so-called "EU 3" -- have drafted a compromise formulation currently 
under consideration by Egypt, a diplomat said.

They propose a clause "recognizing that a solution to the Iranian nuclear 
issue would contribute to the goal of a Middle East free of all weapons of 
mass destruction and their means of delivery."

The US "will have to settle on some formulation, given how isolated they 
are," a second diplomatic said, pointing out that US Secretary of State 
Condoleezza Rice was discussing this point with foreign ministers from 
Britain, France and Germany.

But another Western diplomat downplayed the rift. During this 
"consultation phase" the aim was, he said, to get as many nations on board 
for the next crucial step in the international community's confrontation 
with Iran, which the United States claims in hiding a secret nuclear 
weapons program.

Non-aligned states, meanwhile, were challenging the very idea of reporting 
Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions, though with little 
influence on the deliberation process.

A Western diplomat said the resolution could be modified such that the 
moves against Iran would be "specific to this country" and not set a 
precedent that could interfere with a nation's right to use peaceful 
nuclear energy.

An emergency meeting of the board of governors of the International Atomic 
Energy Agency (IAEA) had been due to resume Friday but the plenary session 
was postponed as intense closed-door talks continued.

The five permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China, France, 
Russia and the United States -- and Germany have closed ranks over the 
resolution to take Iran to the Security Council. Unlike the IAEA, the 
Security Council has enforcement powers.

The text of the resolution is a compromise between the US call for 
immediate Security Council action and Russia's insistance that any 
decision be put off until the IAEA's next meeting in March.

A non-aligned diplomat said that since previous Security Council 
resolutions had already referred to a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the 
Middle East, any resolution concerning Iran would have to include such a 
reference as well.

But a Western diplomat said that countries including the United States 
"support the establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle 
East but ... see this as a separate issue from what we are dealing with 
now."

Russia, a key trade partner of Iran, hopes Tehran can be convinced to 
respond to calls by the IAEA to suspend all nuclear fuel work and 
cooperate fully with agency inspectors to defuse the crisis without the 
Security Council imposing sanctions.

Iran has threatened to retaliate if referred to the Council.

Top Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani sent a letter to IAEA director 
general Mohamed ElBaradei warning that Iran would move ahead on 
industrial-level uranium enrichment -- which can produce nuclear reactor 
fuel or atom bomb material -- if sent before the Security Council.

Despite the IAEA call for Iran to suspend nuclear fuel work, Tehran 
pressed ahead in January with preparations for uranium enrichment.

Cuba, Syria and Venezuela -- which all have disputes with the United 
States -- said they would vote against referral to the Security Council. 
But the resolution written by Britain, Germany and France is expected to 
meet the US goal of rallying some 30 of the board's 35 member states. It 
needs a majority to pass.



 

*****************************************************************
 55 Guardian Unlimited: Gatling Guns Guard Calif. Nuclear Lab
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Friday February 3, 2006 1:46 AM

By MICHELLE LOCKE 

Associated Press Writer 

LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) - Officials at the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory have added a new weapon to their armory: a
high-powered machine gun that can fire more than 50 rounds a
second. 

The weapon, unveiled Thursday, is a six-barrel Gatling gun
called the Dillon Aero M134D. An undisclosed number of the guns
will be mounted on vehicles and elsewhere at the lab. 

``What we want to do is equip our protective force with the
capability that will leave no doubt about the outcome,'' said
Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security
Administration. 

Lab critics questioned the wisdom of putting such a powerful gun
at the lab, which is across the street from suburban homes. They
say the real problem is that the lab site, which is relatively
small at 1 square mile, is not a good place for nuclear
materials. 

``If you don't have the firepower, that's one kind of security
weakness, but if you do have the firepower, you potentially
endanger nearby workers and community members because it's such
a compact site,'' said Marylia Kelley, executive director of
Tri-Valley CARES, a Livermore-based activist group. 

Lab spokeswoman Susan Houghton said the guns add ``one more
layer of protection.'' 

The 8,000-employee lab is 50 miles east of San Francisco. 

--- 

On the Net: 

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: http://www.llnl.gov 

      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 56 Santa Fe New Mexican: Lab could be source of contaminant       

Fri Feb 3, 2006 10:23 pm                                                                                                       

By ANDY LENDERMAN | The New Mexican             

Los Alamos National Laboratory is probably one source of 
contamination in fish that led to a warning from state government 
not to eat them, a lab spokesman has said.

 But lab officials reported levels of polychlorinated biphenyls,
or PCBs, in the Rio Grande and Rio Chama watersheds in 2004, lab
spokesman James Rickman said Thursday.

 "Yes, we did use PCBs, and therefore, the laboratory is
probably a contributing source," Rickman said.

 But the lab -- along with the state Environment Department and
other agencies -- has been studying the matter for years. In
2004, Rickman said, the lab published information from one study
in its newsletter.

 "We published these findings back in June 2004, and our studies
do seem to indicate that the laboratory is a possible source of
PCBs," Rickman said.

 He added that research has shown the presence of PCBs upstream
and downstream from the lab, where nuclear weapons and other
scientific work has occurred since 1943.

 Rickman said the lab did not know why PCBs were located
upstream from the laboratory.

 PCBs are a toxic carcinogen found in insulating oil for
electrical transformers, hydraulic fluids, solvents and
plasticizers, Rickman said.

 "We're doing what we can to mitigate our impacts," Rickman
said, including environmental restoration, monitoring and
cooperating with the state Environment Department.

 Contact Andy Lenderman at 995-3827 or
alenderman@sfnewmexican.com.		 	   	 	 	 			
 		   			 		   	 		 						
©2006, Santa Fe New Mexican, all rights reserved. Opinions
*****************************************************************
 57 Hanford News: Heart of America wants to slow vit plant building
 
This story was published Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

A Hanford watchdog group is calling for no more money to be
spent on construction on key parts of the vitrification plant
until problems are solved. 

The Heart of America Northwest report was released just days
before the Bush administration is scheduled to send its proposed
fiscal year 2007 budget for Hanford and the vitrification plant
to Congress. It also comes the week that a producer from the 60
Minutes television news program has been visiting the plant in
preparation for a possible story on its problems. 

The Heart of America message is at odds with the plan being
pushed by state and congressional leaders who say full funding
of $690 million a year for the plant is critical. 

"It's a huge mistake to be advocating a slowdown," said Jay
Manning, director of the Washington State Department of Ecology. 

Some members of Congress are interested not just in underfunding
the plant, but ending funding completely, and the report could
help justify that, he said. 

But Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America
Northwest, said he believes the halt to construction could be
part of a plan to get the project on schedule and control costs. 

"Continuing to provide U.S. DOE and Hanford contractors with
$690 million per year for the vitrification plant is enabling
stupidity," said the Heart of America proposal. 

Pollet wants construction on the two parts of the plant that
would handle radioactive waste - the Pretreatment Facility and
the High-Level Waste Facility - halted until their design is
completed. Then, he wants the design and costs validated - which
would be based in part on pilot-scale tests - before more money
is spent on their construction. 

Construction would not proceed until the Department of Energy
knew the project would work, which might take years. 

But Pollet believes his proposed plan could answer vital
questions about whether the plant will be able to safely turn
radioactive waste into a glass form that protects the
environment. It also would solve problems caused by construction
starting before most of the design had been completed, according
to Heart of America. 

Heart of America is calling for other changes before the
construction resumes, including management and contract reforms,
independent safety regulation and concrete plans for treating
all the low-activity radioactive waste. 

Pollet emphasized the plan does not call for stopping
construction on parts of the plant that would treat low-activity
radioactive waste. He believes treatment could begin before the
rest of the plant is finished. 

The vitrification plant is planned to turn much of the 53
million gallons held in underground tanks into a stable glass
form for permanent disposal. But it has not been designed to
treat all of the waste left from the past production of
plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program by a legal
deadline of 2028. 

The project was plagued by problems in 2005. The design standard
had to be revised to make sure parts of the plant could
withstand a severe earthquake. That and other problems increased
the cost of the plant from $5.8 billion to potentially as much
as $9.6 billion and gave the Department of Energy no way to
start operations by a legal deadline of 2011. 

Congress reacted by cutting funding from the $690 million per
year planned at the start of construction to $526 million for
fiscal year 2006. About 1,700 workers were laid off during the
past year, and construction has temporarily stopped on the High
Level Waste Facility and the Pretreatment Facility with plans to
resume building late in the year. 

With the budget cuts added to other problems at the plant, the
state is estimating that the plant might not begin treating
waste until 2018, seven years past the legal deadline. 

Not just Heart of America, but also the Government
Accountability Office, has questioned the wisdom of proceeding
with building while the design still was being developed. 

However, DOE decided that the substantial savings in time and
money were worth the risk. The plant includes some technologies
that have been widely used in industry and others that have been
tested at half or full scale, but no vitrification plant of its
size has been built before. 

Gov. Chris Gregoire and U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., have
urged the Bush administration in recent days to restore funding
for the vitrification plant to $690 million, the amount on which
long-term construction plans were based. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray,
D-Wash., sent a letter to President Bush on Wednesday, calling
for adequate funding for the federal government to meet its
obligations for Hanford cleanup. 

Any slowdown in construction can only add to the plant's costs,
Manning said. 

"The technology at issue here is the right technology," he said.
"It is the right plant. We just need the guts to finish it."

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.


*****************************************************************
 58 SFC: POTENT FIREPOWER FOR WEAPONS LAB / Modern Gatling guns to defend
against land, air terrorist attack
 
[San Francisco Chronicle] 
				 
Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Friday, February 3, 2006

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory plans to install
high-powered machine guns over the next few months capable of
hitting land vehicles or aircraft almost a mile away in the
event of a terrorist attack. 

Known as Gatling guns because they are multi-barreled, like
their 19th-century ancestors, they simultaneously fire 7.62mm
bullets from six barrels at up to 4,000 rounds per minute,
powerful enough to take down an enemy aircraft or helicopter,
officials said. 

The guns will give the nuclear weapons lab greater ability to
guard its huge cache of radioactive plutonium, said Linton
Brooks, head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security
Administration, a quasi-independent agency that oversees the
nation's nuclear weapons complex for the U.S. Department of
Energy. The agency ordered the weapons. 

"A lot of people are willing to die if they can kill lots of
Americans ... You want to make clear that when they come here to
die (by attacking the lab), they die for a failure," the
blunt-speaking Brooks said at a press conference at Livermore on
Thursday, where he unveiled one of the guns. 

He said the guns will be operational later this year after the
lab's guards are trained and the weapons and related equipment
are purchased. Brooks insisted the Gatling gun purchase is
unrelated to a recent announcement that the lab might double its
supply of plutonium. 

Lab officials said several Gatling guns will be deployed at the
lab, some mounted on vehicles and others at undisclosed fixed
locations, but for security reasons declined to say exactly how
many or when. 

Manufactured by Dillon Aero of Scottsdale, Ariz., the guns cost
between $50,000 and $75,000, depending on accessories, and can
unleash their barrage of bullets up to 1,500 meters or nearly a
mile away. 

Each gun gives Lawrence Livermore firepower equivalent to a
dozen guards armed with the high-powered rifles they currently
carry, said Robert Claire, the lab's armorer -- the man in
charge of its anti-terrorist weaponry. 

Officials said, however, there are no plans to reduce the lab's
security force, employed by Lawrence Livermore and UC, which
runs the lab under contract with the Energy Department. 

Lab spokesperson David Schwoegler said the plan to equip the lab
with the high-tech guns has been "closely coordinated with all
local and federal law enforcement agencies." Officials for the
city of Livermore could not be reached late Thursday. 

But a lab critic called the plan a threat to innocent men, women
and children, particularly with the lab being across the street
from suburban homes. A better solution would be to investigate
ways to remove the plutonium and other weapons-grade nuclear
materials from the lab altogether, said Marylia Kelley, head of
Tri Valley Cares, a Livermore anti-nuclear group. 

"There are residential homes all up and down what is the western
perimeter of Livermore lab," Kelley said. "You always see
children on their bicycles or skateboards ... people walking
their dogs ... You can't just indiscriminately open fire." 

Until now, the most lethal weapons known to be used by the lab's
notoriously no-nonsense guards are the big, black high-powered
rifles they display prominently at its several gates. Schwoegler
said the guards, whom he numbered at a couple of hundred, will
be thoroughly trained in the use of the new weapons. 

The Gatling gun was introduced during the Civil War but saw
limited action. It played a more prominent wartime role a few
years later, giving U.S. troops enormous advantages in firepower
in their fight against western Indians. The hand-cranked weapon,
named for its inventor, Richard Jordan Gatling, fired 100 rounds
per minute. 

Gatling hoped the gun could "enable one man to do as much battle
duty as a hundred" and thereby would "supersede the necessity of
large armies," according to an online site operated by American
Heritage. 

Livermore lab is one of the nation's two nuclear weapons design
labs, where, among other things, scientists study plutonium, a
key ingredient in nuclear weapons. To carry out this task, the
lab stores plutonium for research at a site called Building 332. 

Conceivably, terrorists might wish to attack the lab either to
steal plutonium, which they could then convert into their own
bombs, or to blow up the plutonium storage building to spread
radioactive material over a densely inhabited area. 

Brooks acknowledged that "if somebody wants to drive an aircraft
into a building, you can't prevent that." But in the event of a
"military-style" terrorist attack either from a ground vehicle
or an aircraft, Livermore needs to have this kind of
super-armament "to leave no doubt about the outcome," he said. 

"You don't want half of (the terrorists) killed and half of your
(Livermore) guys killed, then say, 'We won.' " 

Rather, he said, lab officials want to ensure that in such a
violent encounter, lab security guards can quell the invasion
immediately without any Livermore staff losses. 

In November, the Energy Department authorized the lab to
increase its amount of stored plutonium to an amount exceeding
3,000 pounds -- enough for as many as about 300 nuclear bombs. 

The authorization came three months after an advisory panel to
the department urged the lab to ship almost all of its nuclear
bomb materials -- estimated to be as much as 1,540 pounds worth
-- to a remote, safer site because of the growing
suburbanization of the Livermore area to prevent a potential
terrorist attack. 

On Thursday, Brooks said he hadn't decided whether to increase
the amount of plutonium stored at the lab. He defended the lab's
continuing research on plutonium as essential to ensure that
U.S. weapons scientists understand better what he characterized
as the "nasty, ugly, complicated stuff with a metallurgy I don't
pretend to understand." 

Over the years, federal officials have repeatedly worried about
security standards at Lawrence Livermore and other labs in the
U.S. nuclear weapons complex. In February 2004, an intruder
managed to drive a truck inside the Livermore site security
perimeter. During the incident guards failed to activate
recently installed pop-up barriers, according to a report six
months later by the Energy Department's inspector general. 

Lawrence Livermore's new protection 

M134 Gatling gun 

Length: 31.5 inches 

Width: 12 inches 

Weight (without ammo): Steel, 29.1 lbs., Titanium, 20.8 lbs. 

Range: 0.93 mile, (1,500 meters) 

Firing rate: Up to 4,000 rounds per minute 

7.62 mm x 51 mm "NATO" round 

Source: Federation of American Scientists 

E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com. 				
Page A - 1 			

The San Francisco Chronicle] 
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 59 Tri-Valley Herald: Livermore lab unveils big gun to scare off terrorists

Article Last Updated: 02/03/2006 11:12:48 AM                              
                   
  By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER   

ANDREW GRAYCAR, a security officer at Lawrence Livermore
nuclearweapons lab, handles a new Gatlingstyle minigun, capable
of firing 3,000 rifle rounds a minute. (Jay Solmonson - Staff)  

After years of hearing critics say nuclear weapons security 
forces lacked enough firepower, federal officials are arming the 
nation's H-bomb labs and factories with highly lethal Gatling 
guns that belch thousands of bullets a minute. 

The nation's nuclear weapons chief, Linton Brooks, unveiled the
first of the new miniguns Thursday at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, where enough plutonium and uranium for
dozens of atomic weapons is stored close to suburban houses and
apartments. 

Lab executives plan to install a half-dozen of the machineguns
in trucks, vans and pillhouses as their most powerful answer to
terrorists attacking to steal or detonate a nuclear weapon. 

"Firepower is part of any protective strategy against people who
are willing to die," Brooks said. 

More remote pieces of the nation's nuclear weapons complex such
as the Nevada Test Site, PANTEX weapons assembly plant and Los
Alamos lab have had heavy weapons 				 				 					 					 					
				 				 				 					 					 				 for years, including .30-caliber
machine guns, rockets, even small tanks. But Livermore's army,
the exact size of which is classified, had largely been limited
to semiautomatic rifles, shotguns and flash-bang grenades. 

That has required increasing manpower and more than $100 million
a year in security costs, with some uncertainty whether the
force could destroy a band of attackers as numerous as the Sept.
11 hijackers armed with truck bombs, rocket-propelled grenades,
insider information and perhaps chemical or biological weapons. 

See a video of the new . [WMV, 119K] 

The new Gatling guns — electrically spun, six-barreled M134D
made by Arizona-based Dillon Aero — are the latest and largest
ratchet up in the arms race between attackers and defenders of
U.S. weapons facilities. 

They spew dense waves of standard, NATO-issue 7.62 mm bullets so
				 				 					 					 					 				 				 				 					 					 				 that
each weapon equals the firepower of 10 to 12 security officers.
The guns cost about $60,000 each, depending on options such as
manual or powered rotating turrets. Demonstration videos show a
constant blossom of flame erupting from the spinning barrels as
they burp rapid fire over Arizona sagebrush and desert. Minigun
experts say they can shred unarmored attackers, vehicles and
aircraft in seconds. 

"It's a force multiplier. This probably saves you 10 officers
with one weapon," said Russ Miller, head of physical security
for the weapons lab. "It basically keeps me from hiring more." 

The guns will join an innermost ring of defenses around
Superblock, the lab's fortress-like cluster of weapons
facilities where bomb-quantities of plutonium and uranium are
stored and handled. Livermore's protective force is expected to
sacrifice itself if necessary to block attackers from gaining
access to Superblock and, if that fails, to retake the facility
before terrorists acquire a weapon's worth of plutonium or 
uranium. 

"You could do it with less people with this gun," said
Livermore's protective-force deputy chief and operations
manager, Chuck Johnson. "It puts out a lot of lead." 

Brooks said it isn't good enough for security officers to kill
an entire attacking force if half the officers die. Even now, he
said, "plutonium here is protected sufficiently well that anyone
who comes here to steal it is not going to be happy with the
outcome." 

Federal officials expect the new guns will be a large deterrent
that will make any such attack unthinkable. Brooks said the guns
will be rolled out in major nuclear weapons facilities
nationwide. At the Y-12 plant in Tennessee, where tons of
enriched uranium are stored, protective forces have installed a
remote-controlled version that can handle heavier ammunition and
hurl grenades, guided by an officer working a joystick and
watching video screens. 

"We're not trying to have a level playing field here," Brooks 
said. "What we're trying to have here is, we never find out 
whether it all works or not because no one will ever come here." 

Lab officials still are working on a safety analysis for use of
the machine guns, then will begin installing the weapons and
training its security force in firing them. 

The guns have a range of 1,500 meters. That's nearly double the
distance to the nearest houses. 

Critics of security around the nation's weapons facilities say
the better solution remains removal of the plutonium and uranium
from Livermore to more remote locations such as the Nevada Test
Site that are easier to defend. 

"It makes our case that you've got to get the special nuclear
materials out of there when you're going to these extremes,"
said Peter Stockton, a former security adviser to the U.S.
Energy Department and senior investigator for the
Washington-based Project on Government Oversight. 

Residents say the neighborhoods close to the lab are full of
children at play, joggers and families working in their yards. 

"We have to be very careful," said David Leary, associate lab
director for safeguards and security. "We're going to use these
very judiciously around our critical facilities. We're going to
be very familiar with our fields of fire." 


© 2000-2006 ANG Newspapers 
*****************************************************************
 60 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Paducah
 
                         FR Doc E6-1512 
[Federal Register: February 3, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 23)] 
[Notices] [Page 5820] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr03fe06-33]                         
 
AGENCY: Department of Energy (DOE).
 
ACTION: Notice of open meeting.
 
SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental 
Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EMSSAB), Paducah. The 
Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) 
requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the 
Federal Register.
 
 
DATES: Thursday, February 16, 2006, 5:30 p.m.-9 p.m.
 
ADDRESSES: 111 Memorial Drive, Barkley Centre, Paducah, Kentucky 
42001.
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: William E. Murphie, Deputy 
Designated Federal Officer, Department of Energy 
Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office, 1017 Majestic Drive, Suite 
200, Lexington, Kentucky 40513, (859) 219-4001.
 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of 
the Board is to make recommendations to DOE in the areas of 
environmental restoration, waste management and related 
activities.
 
Tentative Agenda 5:30 p.m. Informal Discussion 6 p.m. Call to 
Order Introductions Review of Agenda Approval of January Minutes 
6:15 p.m. Deputy Designated Federal Officer's Comments 6:35 p.m. 
Federal Coordinator's Comments 6:40 p.m. Ex-officios' Comments 
6:50 p.m. Public Comments and Questions 7 p.m. Task 
Forces/Presentations Site Management Plan--John Morgan, BJC Water 
Disposition/Water Quality Task Force--End State Maps 8 p.m. 
Public Comments and Questions 8:10 p.m. Break 8:20 p.m. 
Administrative Issues Preparation for March Presentation Vote on 
Bylaws and Operating Procedures Budget Review Review of Workplan 
Review Next Agenda 8:30 p.m. Review of Action Items 8:35 p.m. 
Subcommittee Report Executive Committee 8:50 p.m. Final Comments 
9 p.m. Adjourn Public Participation: The meeting is open to the 
public.
 
Written statements may be filed with the Board either before or 
after the meeting. Individuals who wish to make oral statements 
pertaining to agenda items should contact David Dollins at the 
address listed below or by telephone at (270) 441-6819. Requests 
must be received five days prior to the meeting and reasonable 
provision will be made to include the presentation in the agenda. 
The Deputy Designated Federal Officer is empowered to conduct the 
meeting in a fashion that will facilitate the orderly conduct of 
business. Individuals wishing to make public comment will be 
provided a maximum of five minutes to present their comments. 
This is being published less than 15 days before the date of the 
meeting due to programmatic issues that had to be resolved.
 
Minutes: The minutes of this meeting will be available for public 
review and copying at the U.S. Department of Energy's Freedom of 
Information Public Reading Room, 1E-190, Forrestal Building, 1000 
Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585 between 9 a.m. and 
4 p.m., Monday-Friday, except Federal holidays. Minutes will also 
be available at the Department of Energy's Environmental 
Information Center and Reading Room at 115 Memorial Drive, 
Barkley Centre, Paducah, Kentucky between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., on 
Monday thru Friday or by writing to David Dollins, Department of 
Energy, Paducah Site Office, Post Office Box 1410, MS-103, 
Paducah, Kentucky 42001 or by calling him at (270) 441-6819.
 
Issued at Washington, DC on January 31, 2006.
 
Rachel Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer.
 
[FR Doc. E6-1512 Filed 2-2-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P

 
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 61 KTVB.COM: INL to dismantle old reactors

Boise Idaho News, 

02:30 PM MST on Friday, February 3, 2006 

Associated Press 

IDAHO FALLS -- Three nuclear reactors at Idaho National
Laboratory will likely be dismantled this fall. 

The three were instrumental in leading to the understanding and
construction of more advanced reactors, but have since become
obsolete. 

Some debris from the facilities will remain at INL in a special,
lined area. 

More debris could be transported to other sites, including a
repository in New Mexico. 

Amy Lientz, vice president of communications for the company
doing the dismantling, says the projects won't start until after
a public comment period. 

©2006 KTVB MEDIA GROUP   
    
*****************************************************************

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this 
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who 
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for 
non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more 
information go to: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
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