***************************************************************** 02/13/06 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 14.37 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Familiar criticism of Iraq war 2 Xinhua: Russia demands "full and final clarity" on Iraq's WMD progra 3 [NYTr] Iran Resume Nuclear Research 4 [NYTr] Why Russia Sold Out Iran 5 '10,000 would die' in A-plant attack on Iran 6 [sm] Iran: Thousands would die in US strikes, says study 7 Oil, $s and nukes: Understanding the Planned Assault on Iran 8 IRNA: Iran will not wait for IAEA's next session - Elham 9 IRNA: Gov't follows up nuclear program in line with NPT - Elham 10 IRNA: Iranians send a clear message to West on Saturday - Paper 11 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Moves Foward on Atomic Production 12 Guardian Unlimited: Iran's Moves Increase Nuclear Tension 13 Guardian Unlimited: Iran's Actions Reminiscent of N. Korea's 14 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Postpones Uranium Talks With Russia 15 Guardian Unlimited: Diplomats Say Iran Starts Enrichment 16 IRNA: Iran to resume nuclear research Sunday or Monday - Haddad-Adel 17 Guardian Unlimited: Thousands would die in US strikes on Iran, says 18 BBC: Iran 'resumes' nuclear enrichment 19 IRNA: Asefi: No cause for concern over reporting nuclear dossier to 20 AFP: Iran starts enrichment work, upping stakes with West - diplomat 21 IRNA: Nuclear talks with Russia not cancelled - Elham 22 AFP: Annan warns against escalation in Iran nuclear dispute - 23 IRNA: Germany committed to proceeding with Iran nuclear talks - FM - 24 IRNA: Lebanese MP rebukes West's pressures on Iran 25 IRNA: Iran's envoy in Uruguay says pressure on Iran will have opposi 26 Guardian Unlimited: N. Korea: Nuclear Talks Unlikely to Resume 27 Korea Herald: N.K. sanctions not having intended effect: BOK 28 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: A Widening Rift Between Seoul and Washing 29 UPI: Analysis: N. Korea's reliance on China 30 US: Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Environmental assault continues 31 Daily Times: EDITORIAL: Dilemmas of US-India nuclear deal 32 IHT: Vaunted U.S.-India nuclear deal begins to fall apart - 33 AFP: Asian nations strategize on nuclear proliferation 34 The Telegraph: No deal yet, but nuclear fight rages 35 IRNA: EU's Afghan envoy calls for resolution of nuclear row through NUCLEAR REACTORS 36 Sweden Aims For Oil Free Economy Without More Nuke Reactors 37 US: Deseret News: Nuclear power is safe and clean 38 US: APP.COM: Safety upgrades made after TMI | 39 US: APP.COM: Can a 40-year life be extended to 60? | 40 US: APP.COM: Utility's credibility under fire | 41 US: APP.COM: Hard-to-inspect cables, pipes create problems | 42 US: APP.COM: Electric bills could rise if plant closes | 43 US: APP.COM: Boiling water reactors: more troubling events | 44 US: APP.COM: Control room is nuclear plant's nerve center | 45 CNW Group: Public consultations opportunity to support nuclear 46 Sofia Echo: Construction bids for Bulgaria's Belene 47 Toronto Star: Nuclear power hearings a 'sham,' activists say 48 US: NRC: Regulatory Information Conference 49 AFP: Japanese firm raided over nuclear technology in Libya - 50 US: Newsday.com: Plant's owner acknowledges risk of radiation contai 51 US: Maine Antique Digest: Radiation Concerns Return While Collection 52 canada.com: Ontario's end to carefree power 53 UPI: Chernobyl suggested as tourist destination NUCLEAR SECURITY 54 Daily Yomiuri: Nuke tool said sold to China 55 US: Earth & Sky: Human World : Interviews with Scientists 56 US: Earth & Sky : Human World : Interviews with Scientists 57 US: Earth & Sky : Human World : Interviews with Scientists NUCLEAR SAFETY 58 US: APP.COM: Radiation barrier failure is likely in major accident 59 US: APP.COM: Corrosion test sought for radiation barrier | NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 60 Guardian Unlimited: Japanese Firm Raided in Nuclear Probe 61 ForUm :: Energoatom initiated round-table discussion on nuclear wast 62 Bellona: Duma committee votes to slash SNF reprocessing—while Rosato 63 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Breaking: Nuclear commission issues license f 64 US: MSNBC.com: Navajo take stand against uranium mining - Race in Am PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 65 AP Wire: Hydrogen Research Center opens near SRS 66 DOE: DOE Conducts Energy Saving Assessment at Lubrizol Corp. 67 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Rocky 68 DOE: Office of Science; Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee 69 lamonitor.com: NNSA mulls weapons, research ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Familiar criticism of Iraq war Today: February 13, 2006 at 7:48:37 PST Prewar manipulation of intelligence is again charged by someone in a position to know A 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, now retired and teaching security studies at Georgetown University, is gaining public attention through an article he wrote harshly criticizing how the Bush administration handled intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq war. His words add weight to similar criticisms made in the past, such as those by Richard Clarke, who served as the White House's top adviser on counterterrorism. Paul R. Pillar, a low-profile critic of President Bush's use of intelligence for some time, took on a much higher profile when he wrote an article for a forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs, the influential journal published by the nonprofit Council on Foreign Relations. The Washington Post obtained a copy of Pillar's article and published excerpts Friday on its front page. The newspaper said Pillar was considered the CIA's leading counterterrorism analyst, and that by the end of his career he was coordinating assessments on Iraq from all 15 agencies in the federal intelligence community. Pillar, the Post wrote, acknowledges that the intelligence communities made several errors, but says those errors were not a factor in the decision to wage war on Iraq. As quoted by the Post, Pillar writes in his article: "(The Bush administration) went to war without requesting - and evidently without being influenced by - any strategic-level assessments on any aspect of Iraq. "It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between (Bush) policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized." Pillar also wrote that the Bush administration "repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war." Additionally, he wrote that, taken together, the intelligence reports advised avoiding war, or, "if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath." Coming from a critic outside the administration, the article could be dismissed as more partisan politics. But coming from someone who held top positions in the CIA for 28 years, and who was so close to the intelligence gathering on Iraq, we believe it has to be taken seriously. Pillar's article is one more piece of evidence suggesting that the Bush administration manipulated prewar intelligence - and why Congress should hold hearings on the issue. All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 2 Xinhua: Russia demands "full and final clarity" on Iraq's WMD programs www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2006-02-14 04:49:56 MOSCOW, Feb, 13 (Xinhuanet) -- Russia wants all findings of the international weapons inspections in Iraq to be presented to the UN Security Council, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday. "We are proposing that all materials, gathered by your commission and by the occupation forces be combined and referred to the UN Security Council," Lavrov was quoted by Russian news agencies as telling Demetrius Perricos, acting head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) at a meeting in Moscow. "Russia is interested in full and final clarity on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs," Lavrov said at the meeting with the head of the now inactive UN weapons inspection team. Lavrov also said the findings should be combined with those of U.S.-led inspectors who combed the country for weapons of mass destruction after Saddam Hussein's ousting in 2003. Perricos said at the meeting that the Iraq dossier needed to be finalized, saying "We cannot have these files open three years afterward, it is not good for Iraq, it is not good for anyone." UNMOVIC withdrew its inspectors on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, which was justified by the U.S. and its allies on the grounds that Saddam's regime was developing weapons of mass destruction. But this was not verified by either UN or subsequent U.S. weapons inspectors. The IAEA and UNMOVIC were the two UN agencies charged with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The IAEA led the search for nuclear weapons, while UNMOVIC was responsible for biological and chemical weapons, as well as rockets. The IAEA said before the war it had no proof that Baghdad had reconstituted its nuclear program. Russia, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, staunchly opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 3 [NYTr] Iran Resume Nuclear Research Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 16:47:53 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Iran Resumes N-Research under IAEA's Watch Tehran, Feb 13 (Prensa Latina) Supervised by inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran has resumed Monday nuclear research, said the Parliament's President Gholamali Haddad Adel. According to the IRNA news agency, the congressman said that, after announcing Iran's willingness to start its nuclear investigation program, "we obviously had to wait for the IAEA inspectors to come as witnesses." Iran has been the target of an ongoing campaign, spurred by the US in particular, to keep it from development its atomic program for power generation. As for his country's right to have access to this kind of technology, he stated that UN statutes stipulate legal ways for nations like Iran to act within the framework of the Treaty on Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and international laws. "It serves enough to say this right belongs to the countries that already have atomic bombs and those who are still producing them," Haddad Adel said. mh/iff/lms/mf * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 4 [NYTr] Why Russia Sold Out Iran Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 16:52:35 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Ed Perl - Feb 13, 2006 Uruknet - Feb 6, 2006 http://www.uruknet.info Why Russia betrayed Iran by Mike Whitney Many people are probably wondering why Russia caved in at the IAEA board meeting and agreed to have Iran sent before the UN Security Council. Russia, of course, is very familiar with Iran's nuclear program (having worked with Iran on its nuclear power plants) and fully realizes that the Mullahs are not developing nuclear weapons. So, why would they go along with the coercive maneuvering of the United States that is so clearly designed to pave the way for war? Obviously, the Russian foreign minister's comment that the referral to the UNSC is "only a warning" doesn't adequately explain why Russia would have placed its ally in such grave danger of a preemptive attack. So why did Russia capitulate? It may be, in the words of the Godfather, that the Bush administration made Putin "a deal he couldn't refuse". Russia's real goal has always been to reclaim its contract-rights to explore and extract oil from the huge West Qurna-2 oil-field. This apparently was part of a previous agreement that Lukoil made with Saddam that was ignored after the invasion by American forces. According to the Boston Globe, Lukoil president Vagit Alekperov met with Iraq's oil minister Ibrahim al-Ulloum to firm up "an understanding" about Russia's $6 billion contract to develop the West Qurna-2 oil field. Was there a quid pro quo between the Bush administration and Putin? Iraq's oil minister is presumably just following Washington's directives in reviving the moribund Russian contract. But it is striking that Bush would surrender such an enormous trophy as one of Iraq's main oil fields just to secure Russia's vote. After all, the administration doesn't give away oil fields to anyone. Why? Does the administration really need a war with Iran so desperately? Yes. Even the control of oil is not nearly as critical to the US as maintaining its continued dominance in the exchange of oil in greenbacks. If Iran is allowed to open its oil bourse (exchange) in March and openly compete with the US's monopoly on trading oil in petrodollars, the central banks across the globe will dump hundreds of billions of dollars overnight, and the American economy will collapse. This is a problem Washington takes very seriously and we can expect to see Democrats and Republicans alike falling in line behind Bush for a war with Iran. The reason the United States is the unchallenged leader of the global economic system is because it has a stranglehold on the oil trade. Even the oil itself, or the price at which it is sold, is of less importance than the means by which it is traded. The nation that controls the currency, determines the rules of the game. It forces other nations to stockpile mountains of its debt-ridden script, while producing oceans of red ink. America's fat-cat bankers, corporatists, and politicos are now living off the profits from sweatshops in the developing world that prop up the ailing dollar so they can purchase oil. Iran's plan to sell its oil in petro-euros threatens to break up this massive extortion-ring and put the greenback nose-to-nose with its global competitor; the euro. The Lukoil transaction should prove to skeptics that Washington will do anything to prevent the opening of Iran's oil exchange, even if it means initiating hostilities against another peaceful nation. Bush is determined to preserve the present economic-system of global-servitude via debt and protect the ongoing supremacy of the greenback. The UN Security Council is just the last step before military operations begin. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 5 '10,000 would die' in A-plant attack on Iran Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:37:54 -0600 (CST) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11890.htm '10,000 would die' in A-plant attack on Iran By Thomas Harding 02/13/06 "The Telegraph" -- -- A major American attack on Iran's nuclear sites would kill up to 10,000 people and lead to war in the Middle East, a report says today. Hundreds of scientists and technicians would be targets in the opening salvos as the attacks focused on eliminating further nuclear development, the Oxford Research Group says in Iran: Consequences of a War. The research coincides with reports that strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for "a last resort" strike if diplomacy fails. Plans for an assault have taken on "greater urgency" in recent months, The Sunday Telegraph said. Tacticians at central command and strategic command, who report to Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, have been identifying targets and the weapons needed to hit them. The Oxford report says that Britain could be drawn into the conflict if the Prime Minister allowed American B2 bombers, which can carry 40,000lb of precision bombs, to use bases at Fairford, Glos, and on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Precision bombing could put Iran's weapons programme back five to 10 years but within a month the situation would become "an extremely dangerous conflict", says Prof Paul Rogers, the report's author. The attack would result in "a protracted military confrontation" involving Israel, Lebanon and some Gulf states. More than 100 American bombers, many based on carriers in the Gulf, would take part in a huge simultaneous surprise air attack on 20 key nuclear and military facilities, the report says. If the targets included the nuclear reactor at Bushehr, which will become fully fuelled this year, a radioactive cloud could spread over the Gulf. Iran's small navy, which includes three submarines, would have to be attacked to negate threats to vital shipping lanes in the Straits of Hormuz. But Iran could still retaliate with suicide speedboats, possibly leading to crippling rises in the price of oil. Prof Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, says that American military action would also have a unifying effect on the rule of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and exacerbate anti-American hostility in the Islamic world. The report says that a ground offensive in Iran would not be feasible, as it would require at least 100,000 troops - and American forces are already over-stretched with 130,000 soldiers in Iraq and 18,000 in Afghanistan. Iran would probably withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and speed up its secret nuclear weapons programme. The report concludes: "A military response to the current crisis is a particularly dangerous option and should not be considered further. Alternative approaches must be sought, however difficult these may be." In a similar briefing before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Oxford group predicted that Saddam Hussein's regime could easily be overwhelmed but that the country would become a hotbed of insurgency. ) Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited ***************************************************************** 6 [sm] Iran: Thousands would die in US strikes, says study Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 02:15:08 -0600 (CST) http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1708329,00.html Thousands would die in US strikes on Iran, says study 7 Report warns of effects of American or Israeli strikes 7 Military operations would mean long confrontation Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor Monday February 13, 2006 Guardian (London) A surprise American or Israeli air strike on Iranian nuclear sites could cause a large number of civilian as well as military casualties, says a report published today. The report, Iran: Consequences of a War, written by Professor Paul Rogers and published by the Oxford Research Group, draws comparisons with Iraq. It says the civilian population in that country had three weeks to prepare for war in 2003, giving people the chance to flee potentially dangerous sites. But Prof Rogers says attacks on Iranian facilities, most of which are in densely populated areas, would be surprise ones, allowing no time for such evacuations or other precautions. "Military deaths in this first wave of attacks would be expected to be in the thousands," he says. "Civilian deaths would be in the many hundreds at least, particularly with the requirement to target technical support for the nuclear and missile infrastructure, with many of the factories being located in urban areas." The death toll would eventually be much higher if Iran took retaliatory action and the United States responded, or if the US took pre-emptive military action in addition to strikes on nuclear sites. Prof Rogers, of the University of Bradford's peace studies department, says: "A military operation against Iran would not ... be a short-term matter but would set in motion a complex and long-lasting confrontation. It follows that military action should be firmly ruled out and alternative strategies developed." US and other western critics of Tehran say the government there is intent on securing a nuclear weapons capability. The Iranians deny this, saying they are pursuing civilian nuclear energy. The issue could still be resolved diplomatically, but both the US and Israel have said the option of air strikes remains open. Prof Rogers says the aim of an attack would be to set back Iran's nuclear programme by at least five years. He says Britain could be drawn in as US aircraft would probably use UK bases. He lists the expected targets as the Tehran Research Reactor, a radioisotope production facility, a range of nuclear-related laboratories, and the Kalaye Electric Company, all in Tehran, and facilities in Isfahan and Natanz. "The new reactor nearing completion at Bushehr would be targeted, although this could be problematic once the reactor is fully fuelled and goes critical some time in 2006," he says. "Once that has happened, any destruction of the containment structure could lead to serious problems of radioactive dispersal affecting not just the Gulf coast but west Gulf seaboards in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates." He adds: "All the initial attacks would be undertaken more-or-less simultaneously, in order to kill as many of the technically competent staff as possible, therefore doing the greatest damage to longer-term prospects." Iran would be unable to prevent such an attack, as it has only limited air defences. But Prof Rogers says it has a large arsenal of responses. It could: 7 withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and pursue speedy development of nuclear weapons capability; 7 encourage retaliatory action against Israel by the Lebanese-based Hizbullah group, which has missiles capable of hitting Haifa and several other Israeli cities; 7 close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the main access routes for oil from the Gulf; 7 send Iranian paramilitary units into states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; 7 or order Iranian Revolutionary Guards to step up links with insurgents in Iraq. Prof Rogers says a US or Israeli attack could also help al-Qaida by increasing the anti-US mood in the region and beyond. Guardian Unlimited ) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 7 Oil, $s and nukes: Understanding the Planned Assault on Iran Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 06:32:59 -0600 (CST) February 10, 2006 The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) www.GlobalResearch.ca Petrodollars and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: Understanding the Planned Assault on Iran by Michael Keefer Iran has been in the gun-sights of George W. Bush and his entourage from the moment that he was parachuted into the presidency in November 2000 by his fathers Supreme Court. A year ago there were signs, duly reported by Seymour Hersh and others, that the United States and Israel were working out the targeting details of an aerial attack on Iran that it was anticipated would occur in June 2005 (see Hersh, Gush Shalom, Jensen). But as Michel Chossudovsky wrote in May 2005, widespread reports that George W. Bush had signed off on an attack on Iran did not signify that the attack would necessarily occur during the summer of 2005: what the signing off suggested was rather that the US and Israel [were] in a state of readiness and [were] prepared to launch an attack by June or at a later date. In other words, the decision to launch the attack [had] not been made (Chossudovsky: May 2005). Since December 2005, however, there have been much firmer indications both that the planned attack will go ahead in late March 2006, and also that the Cheney-Bush administration intends it to involve the use of nuclear weapons. It is important to understand the nature and scale of the war crimes that are being plannedand no less important to recognize that, as in the case of the Bush regimes assault on Iraq, the pretexts being advanced to legitimize this intended aggression are entirely fraudulent. Unless the lurid fantasies of people like former Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security and now Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton count as evidenceand Boltons pronouncements on the weaponry supposedly possessed by Iraq, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela show him to be less acquainted with truth than Jean Harlow was with chastitythere is no evidence that Iran has or has ever had any nuclear weapons development program. Claims to the contrary, however loudly they may have been trumpeted by Fox News, CNN, or The New York Times, are demonstrably false. Nor does there appear to be the remotest possibility, whatever desperate measures the Iranian government might be frightened into by American and Israeli threats of pre-emptive attacks, that Iran would be able to produce nuclear weapons in the near future. On August 2, 2005, The Washington Post reported that according to the most recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which represents a consensus arrived at among U.S. intelligence agencies, Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years (Linzer, quoted by Clark, 28 Jan. 2006). The coming attack on Iran has nothing whatsoever to do with concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Its primary motive, as oil analyst William Clark has argued, is rather a determination to ensure that the U.S. dollar remains the sole world currency for oil trading. Iran plans in March 2006 to open a Teheran Oil Bourse in which all trading will be carried out in Euros. This poses a direct threat to the status of the U.S. dollar as the principal world reserve currencyand hence also to a trading system in which massive U.S. trade deficits are paid for with paper money whose accepted value resides, as Krassimir Petrov notes, in its being the currency in which international oil trades are denominated. (U.S. dollars are effectively exchangeable for oil in somewhat the same way that, prior to 1971, they were at least in theory exchangeable for gold.) But not only is this planned aggression unconnected to any actual concern over Iranian nuclear weapons. There is in fact some reason to think that the preparations for it have involved deliberate violations by the Bush neo-conservatives of anti-proliferation protocols (and also, necessarily, of U.S. law), and that their long-term planning, in which Turkeys consent to the aggression is a necessary part, has involved a deliberate transfer of nuclear weapons technology to Turkey as a part of the pay-off. Prior to her public exposure by Karl Rove, Lewis Scooter Libby, and other senior administration officials in July 2003, CIA agent Valerie Plame was reportedly involved in undercover anti-proliferation work focused on transfers of nuclear technology to Turkey that were being carried out by a network of crooked businessmen, arms dealers, and rogue officials within the U.S. government. The leaking of Plames identity as a CIA agent was undoubtedly an act of revenge for her husband Joseph Wilsons public revelation that one of the key claims used to legitimize the invasion of Iraq, Saddam Husseins supposed acquisition of uranium ore from Niger, was known by the Bush regime to be groundless. But Plames exposure also conveniently put an end to her investigative work. Some of the senior administration officials responsible for that crime of state have long-term diplomatic and military connections to Turkey, and all of them have been employed in what might be called (with a nod to ex-White House speechwriter David Frum) the Cheney-Bolton Axis of Aggression. Thanks to the courage and integrity of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, there is evidence dating from 2002 of high-level involvement in the subversion of FBI investigations into arms trafficking with Turkey. The leaking of Valerie Plames identity as a CIA agent may therefore have been not merely an act of revenge for her husbands contribution to the delegitimizing of one war of aggression, but also a tactical maneuver in preparation for the next one. George W. Bush made clear his aggressive intentions in relation to Iran in his 2002 State of the Union address; and his regimes record on issues of nuclear proliferation has been, to put it mildly, equivocal. If, as seems plausible, Bushs diplomats had been secretly arranging that Turkey s reward for connivance in an attack on Iran should include its future admission into the charmed circle of nuclear powers, then the meddling interference of servants of the state who, like Plame and Edmonds, were putting themselves or at least their careers at risk in the cause of preventing nuclear weapons proliferation, was not to be tolerated. The ironies are glaring. The U.S. government is contemplating an unprovoked attack upon Iran that will involve pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear-weapons-holding state. Although the pretext is that this is necessary to forestall nuclear weapons proliferation, there is evidence to suggest that planning for the attack has involved, very precisely, nuclear weapons proliferation by the United States. It would appear that this sinister complex of criminality involves one further twist. There have been indications that the planned attack may be immediately preceded (and of course legitimized) by another 9/11-type event within the U.S. Let us review these issues in sequence. Plans for a conventional and tactical nuclear attack on Iran On August 1, 2005 Philip Giraldi, an ex-CIA agent and associate of Vincent Cannistraro (the former head of the CIAs counter-intelligence operations and former intelligence director at the National Security Council), published an article entitled Deep Background in The American Conservative. The first section of this article carried the following headline: In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. I quote the first section of Giraldis article in its entirety: The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doingthat Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attackbut no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections. The implications of this report are breathtaking. First, it indicates on the part of the ruling Cheney faction within the American state a frank in-house acknowledgment that their often-repeated public claims of a connection between Saddam Husseins regime and the 9/11 attacks are the rubbish that informed people have long known them to be. At a deeper level, it implies that 9/11-type terrorist attacks are recognized in Cheneys office and the Pentagon as appropriate means of legitimizing wars of aggression against any country selected for that treatment by the regime and its corporate propaganda-amplification system. (Though the implicit acknowledgment is shocking, the fact itself should come as no surprise, since recent research has shown that the Bush administration was deeply implicated not merely in permitting the attacks of September 11, 2001 to happen, but in actually organizing them: see Chossudovsky 2002: 51-63, 144-56; Chossudovsky 2005: 51-62, 135-46, 237-61; Griffin 2004: 127-46, 169-201; Griffin 2005: 115-35, 277-91; Marrs 134-37; and Ruppert 309-436.) And finally, Giraldis report suggests that the recent U.S. development of comparatively low-yield nuclear weapons specifically designed to destroy hardened underground facilities, and the recent re-orientation of U.S. nuclear policy to include first-strike or pre-emptive nuclear attacks on non-nuclear powers, were both part of long-range planning for a war on Iran. Articles published by William Arkin in the Washington Post in May and October 2005 reported on what the U.S. militarys STRATCOM calls CONPLAN 8022, a global plan for bombing and missile attacks involving a nuclear option anywhere in the world that was tested in an exercise that began on November 1, 2005; the scenario for this exercise scripted a dirty-bomb attack on Mobile, Alabama to which STRATCOM responded with nuclear and conventional strikes on an unnamed east-Asian country that was transparently meant for North Korea. Jorge Hirsch has outlined the deployment of key administrative personnel and of ideological legitimations in preparation for a nuclear attack on Iran (Hirsch, 16 Dec. 2005). And Michel Chossudovsky has described the command structure that has been set up to implement STRATCOMs current plans for preemptive theatre nuclear warfare (see Chossudovsky 2006). But it must be emphasized that these plans, as tested in November 2005 in the exercise referred to by Arkin, involve the creation of an impression of what theorists of nuclear war call proportionality. An attack on Iran, which would presumably involve the use of significant numbers of extremely dirty earth-penetrating nuclear bombs, might well be made to follow a dirty-bomb attack on the United States, which would be represented in the media as having been carried out by Iranian agents. Yet as Giraldi indicates, although the bombing of Iran would follow and be represented as a response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States, the planned pattern involves a cynical separation of appearance from reality: the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in [this] act of terrorism. Earth-Penetrator dirty bombs Talk about low-yield nuclear weapons, by the way, means simply that the most recent U.S. nuclear weapons can be set to detonate with much less than their maximum explosive force. The maximum power of the B61-11 earth-penetrating bunker-buster bomb ranges, by different accounts, from 300 to 340 or 400 kilotons (see Nelson; Hirsch, 9 Jan. 2006). (By way of comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August, 1945, killing some 80,000 people outright, and a further 60,000 over the next several months due to radiation poisoning and other injuries, had a yield of 15 kilotons.) The lowest-yield setting of the BL61-11 is reportedly 0.3 kilotonsequivalent, that is to say, to the detonation of 300 tons of TNT. But since these new weapons are designed as earth-penetrating bunker-buster rather than air-burst bombs, each one can be expected to produce large volumes of very dirty radioactive fallout. Robert Nelson of the Federation of American Scientists writes that even at the low end of the B61-11 bombs yield range, the nuclear blast will simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area. The very intense local fallout will include both radioactivity from the fission products and also large amounts of dirt and debris [that] has been exposed to the intense neutron flux from the nuclear detonation; the blast cloud produced by such a bomb typically consists of a narrow column and a broad base surge of air filled with radioactive dust which expands to a radius of over a mile for a 5 kiloton explosion. Yet wouldnt the tactical and low-yield nature of these weapons mean that civilian casualties could be kept to a minimum? A study published in 2005 by the National Research Council on the Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons offers estimates of the casualties that could be caused by these weapons. According to Conclusion 6 of this report, an attack in or near a densely populated urban area could be expected, depending on the B61-11s yield setting, to kill from several thousand to over a million people. An attack in a remote, lightly populated area might kill as few as several hundred peopleor, with a high-yield setting and unfavourable winds, hundreds of thousands. But what kinds of yield settings might the U.S. military want to use? Conclusion 5 of the NRC report might seem to suggest that genuinely low-yield settings might be possible: the yield required to destroy a hard and deeply buried target is reduced by a factor of 15 to 25 by enhanced ground-shock coupling if the weapon is detonated a few meters below the surface. Conclusion 2, however, is more sobering. To have a high probability of destroying a facility 200 metres underground, an earth-penetrating weapon with a yield of 300 kilotons would be requiredthat is to say, a weapon with twenty times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb. Extrapolating from the information the report provides, one might guess that a weapon in the 7-8 kiloton rangewith half the power of the Hiroshima bombcould be deployed against a facility like Natanz, the sensitive parts of which are buried 18 metres underground and protected by reinforced concrete (Beeston). A similar or smaller weapon might be used against the uranium fuel enrichment facility at Esfahana city of two million people which is also, by the way, a UNESCO World Heritage City. The NRC report, it should be noted, was written by a committee, and one that on the issue of civilian casualties seems to have had some difficulty in making up its collective mind. Conclusion 4 of the report informs us that For the same yield and weather conditions, the number of casualties from an earth-penetrator weapon detonated at a few meters depth is, for all practical purposes, equal to that from a surface burst of the same weapon yield. But Conclusion 7 tells a different story: For urban targets, civilian casualties from nuclear earth-penetrator weapons are reduced by a factor of 2 to 10 compared with those from a surface burst having 25 times the yield. The most charitable interpretation I can give to Conclusion 7 is that it was composed for a readership of arithmetical illiterateswho the authors assume will be unable to deduce that what is actually being said (assuming a linear relation between yield and casualties) is that an earth-penetrating weapon will cause from 2.5 to 12.5 times more casualties than a surface-burst weapon of the same explosive power. In light of the fact that the NRC report was commissioned by the United States Congress, we can ourselves conclude that the U.S. government is contemplating, open-eyed, a war of aggression that American planners are fully aware will killat the very leastmany tens of thousands, and perhaps many hundreds of thousands of civilians. The pretexts The principal reason being advanced for an attack upon Iran is the claim that Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear threat with the capacity and presumably the intention of launching nuclear ballistic-missile attacks upon Israel and even western Europe and the United States. Iran does possess ballistic missiles, including the Shahab-3, which with a range of 1300 kilometers is capable of striking Israel, as well as U.S. forces throughout the Middle East. (Why Iran would dream of initiating military aggression against the U.S. or against Israel, which possesses an arsenal of some 200 nuclear warheads, together with multiple means of delivering them, including ballistic missiles, is not explained.) A fear-mongering article published by The Guardian on January 4, 2006, included the information that the next generation of the Shahab missile should be capable of reaching Austria and Italy. The leading sentence of this same article declares that The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb, according to the latest western assessment of the countrys weapons programmes (Cobain and Traynor). But neither this article nor a companion piece (Traynor and Cobain) published the same day provides any evidence that Iran actually has a nuclear weapons program, even though both articles were based upon a report from a leading EU intelligence service, a 55-page intelligence assessment, dated July 1 2005, [that] draws upon material gathered by British, French, German and Belgian agencies. There is in fact very good evidence, in the form of exhaustive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency since 2003, that Iran does not have and has never had any such program. As the physicist Gordon Prather wrote in September 2005, after two years of go-anywhere, see-anything inspections, [the IAEA] has found no indication that any special nuclear materials or activities involving them are beingor have beenused in furtherance of a military purpose (Prather, 27 Sept. 2005). But what about intentions? The Guardian journalists inform us that western leaders have long refused to believe Tehrans insistence that it is not interested in developing nuclear weapons and is only trying to develop nuclear power for electricity (Cobain and Traynor). Perhaps it is time these western leadersGeorge W. Bush, Tony Blair, and whatever rag-tag and bob-tail of lesser luminaries they are dragging after thembegan to attend to the facts. A good place to start might be with William Beemans and Thomas Stauffers assessment of the physical evidence for an Iranian nuclear weapons program. (Stauffer, by the way, is a former nuclear engineer and specialist in Middle Eastern energy economics; Beeman directs Brown Universitys Middle East Studies program; both have conducted research on Iran for three decades.) Beeman and Stauffer note that Iran has three principal nuclear facilities. Of the first two, a uranium enrichment plant in Natanz and a deuterium research facility in Arak, they remark that Neither is in operation. The only question of interest is whether these facilities offer a plausible route to the manufacture of plutonium-based nuclear bombs, and the short answer is: They do not. Beeman and Stauffer compare the third facility, the PWR pressurized light-water reactor under construction at Bushehr, with Israels heavy-water graphite-moderated plant at Dimona. The Bushehr reactor is designed to maximize power output through long fuel cycles of 30 to 40 months; it will produce plutonium isotopes (PU240, 241 and 242) that are almost impossible to use in making bombs; and the entire reactor will have to shut downa step that cannot be concealed from satellites, airplanes and other sourcesin order to permit the extraction of even a single fuel pin. Israels Dimona plant, in contrast, produces the bomb-making isotope PU239; moreover, it can be re-fueled on line, without shutting down. Thus, high-grade plutonium can be obtained covertly and continuously. Claims emanating from the U.S. State Department to the effect that Iran possesses uranium-enrichment centrifuges or covert plutonium-extraction facilities are dismissed by Beeman and Stauffer as implausible, since the sources are either unidentified or are the same channels which disseminated the stories about Iraqs non-conventional weapons or the so-called chemical and biological weapons plant in Khartoum. As Michael T. Klare remarks, the U.S. governments claim that an attack on Iran would be justified because of its alleged nuclear potential should invite widespread skepticism. But skeptical intelligence appears to be the last thing one can expect from the corporate media, whose organs report without blinking Condoleezza Rices threat that The world will not stand by if Iran continues on the path to a nuclear weapons capability (see [Rice]), and George W. Bushs equally inane declaration, following the IAEA s vote to refer Iran to the UN Security Council, that This important step sends a clear message to the regime in Iran that the world will not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons (see [Bush]). There is much to be said about the sorry process of propagandizing, diplomatic bullying, and behind-the-scenes blackmail and arm-twisting within the IAEA and in other forumsall of it strongly reminiscent of the maneuverings of late 2002 and early 2003that has led to the present situation, where in early March the Security Council will be called upon, as in the case of Iraq three years ago, to accept and legitimize the falsehoods on which the new war of aggression is to be based. The early stages of this process were lucidly analyzed by Siddharth Varadarajan in three fine articles in September 2005. Its more recent phases have been assessed by Gordon Prather in a series of articles published since mid-September 2005, and also, with equal scrupulousness and ethical urgency, by another well-informed physicist, Jorge Hirsch, who has been publishing essays on the subject since mid-October. I will not repeat here the analyses developed in their articles (the titles of which are included in the list of sources which follows this text). But Varadarajans recent summary judgment of the diplomatic process is worth quoting: Each time it appeases Washingtons relentless pressure on Iran, the international community is being made to climb higher and higher up a ladder whose final rungs can only be sanctions and war. This is precisely the route the U.S. followed against Iraq in its quest to effect regime change there (Varadarajan, 1 Feb. 2006). It is also worth saying something, however briefly, about the media campaign that has accompanied the diplomatic preparations for war. This has included, since mid-2005, accusations that that Iran was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, some of whose perpetrators are alleged (by members of the wholly discredited Kean Commission of inquiry into the events of 9/11) to have passed through Iran on their way to the U.S. (see Coman; Hirsch, 28 Dec. 2005; and also, if you believe The 9/11 Commission Report to have any credibility, Griffin 2005). A more relevant accusation surfaced in November 2005, when the New York Times reported that senior U.S. intelligence officials had briefed IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei and his senior staff on information gleaned from a stolen Iranian laptop computer which they said demonstrated that Iran had developed nuclear weapons compact enough to fit onto its Shahab missiles. But as Gordon Prather wrote, sources close to the IAEA said what they had been briefed on appeared to be aerodynamic design work for a ballistic missile reentry vehicle, which certainly couldnt contain a nuke if the Iranians didnt have any. Furthermore, according to David Albright, a sometime consultant to the IAEA, who has actually had access to the stolen Iranian laptop, the information on it is all about reentry vehicles and does not contain words such [as] nuclear and nuclear warhead (Prather, 23 Nov. 2005). Sorry, boys: no biscuit. And yet the object of the exercise was evidently not to persuade the IAEA people, who are not idiots, but rather to get the story into the amplification system of that Mighty Wurlitzer, the corporate media. This strategy has evidently worked. The New York Times, for example, may have parted company with Judith Miller, the star reporter whose sordid job was to serve as a conduit for Bush regime misinformation during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, but in Elaine Sciolino they have a reporter who is no less skilled in passing off neocon propaganda as fact (see Prather, 7 Jan. 2006). The New York Times also gave front-page space in mid-January to an article by Richard Bernstein and Stephen Weisman proposing that Iran has restarted research that could give it technology to create nuclear weapons (quoted by Whitney, 17 Jan. 2006). Perhaps, Mike Whitney suggests, the NY Times knows something that the IAEA inspectors dont? If so, they should step forward and reveal the facts. The key facts, as Whitney wrote on January 17, are that there is no evidence that Iran has either a nuclear weapons program or centrifuges with which to enrich uranium to weapons-grade concentration. These are the two issues which should be given greatest consideration in determining whether or not Iran poses a real danger to its neighbors, and yet these are precisely the facts that are absent from the nearly 2,500 articles written on the topic in the last few days. Add to these the further fact, noted above, that the August 2005 National Intelligence Estimate doubled the time American agencies thought Iran would need to manufacture the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon from the previous estimate of five years to a full decade. Why then is the American public being incited to ever greater anxiety in the face of a weapons program whichon the paranoid and unproven assumption that it actually existsis if anything a receding rather than a gathering threat? Fox News has led the way among the non-print media in drum-beating and misinformationto the extent, as Paul Craig Roberts observes, that a Fox/Opinion Dynamics poll can plausibly report that 60% of Republicans, 41% of Independents, and 36% of Democrats support using air strikes and ground troops against Iran in order to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Worse yet, an LA Times/Bloomberg poll apparently finds that 57% of the respondents favor military intervention if Irans government pursues a program that would enable it to build nuclear arms. Any civilian nuclear power program opens up this possibility (Canada, had it so desired, could have become a nuclear-weapons power forty years ago)but the function of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is precisely to open the way to peaceful nuclear power generation while preventing the further dissemination of nuclear weapons. What the LA Times/Bloomberg poll therefore means, Roberts says, is that if Iran exercises its rights under the non-proliferation treaty, 57% of Americans support a US military attack on Iran! Numbers like these suggest that George W. Bush will indeed get the new war he so desires. And it appears that he will get it soon. As Newt Gingrich declared on Fox News in late January, the matter is so urgent that the attack must happen within the next few months. According to Gingrich, Iran not only cannot be trusted with nuclear technology, but also Iranians cannot be trusted with their oil (Roberts). The Euro-denominated Tehran Oil Bourse Gingrichs wording may sound faintly ludicrous. However, it would appear to be a slanting allusion to the fact that the Iranian government has announced plans to open an Iranian Oil Bourse in March 2006. This Bourse will be in direct competition with the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and Londons International Petroleum Exchange (IPE)and unlike them will do business not in U.S. dollars, but in euros. What Gingrich evidently means is that the Iranians cannot be trusted to market their oil and natural gas in a manner that continues to benefit the United States. Peter Phillips and his colleagues in Project Censored explained very clearly in 2003 how the current U.S. dollar-denominated system of oil and gas marketing provides the U.S. with a highly advantageous system of exchange. In 1971, President Nixon removed U.S. currency from the gold standard: Since then, the worlds supply of oil has been traded in U.S. fiat dollars, making the dollar the dominant world reserve currency. Countries must provide the United States with goods and services for dollarswhich the United States can freely print. To purchase energy and pay off any IMF debts, countries must hold vast dollar reserves. The world is attached to a currency that one country can produce at will. This means that in addition to controlling world trade, the United States is importing substantial quantities of goods and services for very low relative costs. (Phillips) As Krassimir Petrov has observed, this amounts to an indirect form of imperial taxation. Unlike previous empires, which extracted direct taxes from their subject-nations, the American empire has distributed instead its own fiat currency, the U.S. Dollar, to other nations in exchange for goods with the intended consequence of inflating and devaluing those dollars and paying back later each dollar with less economic goodsthe difference capturing the U.S. imperial tax. Oil, backed by military power, has provided the rest of the world with a reason for accepting depreciating U.S. dollars and holding ever-increasing amounts of them in reserve. Petrov remarks that in 1972-73 the U.S. made an iron-clad arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the power of the House of Saud in exchange for accepting only U.S. dollars for its oil. The rest of OPEC was to follow suit and accept only dollars. Because the world had to buy oil from the Arab oil countries, it had the reason to hold dollars as payment for oil. [.] Even though dollars could no longer be exchanged for gold, they were now exchangeable for oil (Petrov). But as Phillips notes, the economic reasons alone for switching to the euro as a reserve currency have been becoming steadily more persuasive: Because of huge trade deficits, it is estimated that the dollar is currently [in late 2003] overvalued by at least 40 percent. Conversely, the euro-zone does not run huge deficits, uses higher interest rates, and has an increasingly larger share of world trade. As the euro establishes its durability and comes into wider use, the dollar will no longer be the world s only option. The result will be to make it easier for other nations to exercise financial leverage against the United States without damaging themselves or the global financial system as a whole. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, several analysts suggested that one very obvious motive for that war was the fact that, beginning in November 2000, Iraq had insisted on payment in euros, not dollars, for its oil. In mid-2003, by which time the U.S. had made clear the intended terms of its occupation of Iraq, one such analyst, Coilin Nunan, remarked that it remained just a theory that American threats against Iraq had been made on behalf of the petro-dollar systembut a theory that subsequent U.S. actions have done little to dispel: the U.S. has invaded Iraq and installed its own authority to rule the country, and as soon as Iraqi oil became available to sell on the world market, it was announced that payment would be in dollars only (Phillips). William Clark writes, more directly, that the invasion was principally about gaining strategic control over Iraqs hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain[ing] the US$ as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market (Clark, 28 Jan. 2006). There is currently some debate over the extent to which U.S. war preparations against Iran are motivated by concern for the continued hegemony of the petrodollar (see Nunan). I find the analyses of William Clark and Krassimir Petrov persuasive. Clark notes that an important obstacle to any major shift in the oil marketing system has been the lack of a euro-denominated oil pricing standard, or oil marker as it is referred to in the industry. (The current oil markers, in relation to which other internationally traded oil is priced, are Norway Brent crude, West Texas Intermediate crude [WTI], and United Arab Emirates [UAE] Dubai crudeall of them U.S. dollar denominated.) In his opinion, it is logical to assume the proposed Iranian bourse will usher in a fourth crude oil markerdenominated in the euro currency, and will thus remove the main technical obstacle for a broad-based petro-euro system for international oil trades. This will have the effect of introducing petrodollar versus petroeuro currency hedging, and fundamentally new dynamics to the biggest market in the worldglobal oil and gas trades. In essence, the US will no longer be able to effortlessly expand credit via US Treasury bills, and the US$s demand/liquidity value will fall (Clark, 28 Jan. 2006). An even partial loss of the U.S. dollars position as the dominant reserve currency for global energy trading would, as Petrov suggests, lead to a sharp decline in its value and an ensuing acceleration of inflation and upward pressure on interest rates, with unpleasant consequences. At this point, the Fed will find itself between Scylla and Charybdisbetween deflation and hyperinflationit will be forced fast either to take its classical medicine by deflating, whereby it raises interest rates, thus inducing a major economic depression, a collapse in real estate, and an implosion in bond, stock, and derivative markets [], or alternatively, to take the Weimar way out by inflating, [] drown[ing] the financial system in liquidity [] and hyperinflating the economy. Any attempt, on the other hand, to preserve what Mike Whitney calls the perfect pyramid-scheme of Americas currency monopoly (Whitney, 23 Jan. 2006) by means of military aggression against Iran is likely to result in equal or greater disruptions to the world economy. American military aggression, which might conceivably include attempts to occupy Irans oil-producing Khuzestan province and the coastline along the Straits of Hormuz (see Pilger), will not just have appalling consequences for civilians throughout the region; it may also place American forces into situations still more closely analogous than the present stage of Iraqi resistance to the situation produced in Lebanon by Israels invasion of that countrywhich ended in 2000 with Israels first military defeat (see Salama and Ruster). The involvement of Turkey One significant difference between the warnings of a coming war circulating in early 2005 and those which have appeared in recent months is the current evidence of feverish diplomatic activity between Washington and Ankara. The NATO powers have evidently been co-opted into Washingtons war plans: the so-called EU-3 (France, Germany, and Britain) presented Iran with a negotiating position on the nuclear fuel cycle for Irans power plants that seemed designed to produce an indignant refusal. (As Aijaz Ahmad writes, the European group was not negotiating; it was relaying to Iran, and to all and sundry, what the U.S. was demanding and threatening to report Iran to the Security Council if the latter did not comply. Everyone knows that Iran had closed its Isphahan facility voluntarily, as a confidence-building measure, expecting some reciprocity, and then re-opened it, in retaliation, after having waited for reciprocity for many months and not getting itindeed, receiving only escalated demands.) But according to the well-connected J|rgen Gottslich, writing in Der Spiegel in late December, Iran was not discussed during the new German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jungs recent visit to Washington. Gottslich wrote that the speculation surrounding an American strike against Iran centers more on developments in Turkey. There has been a definite surge in visits to Ankara by high-ranking National Security personnel from the U.S. and by NATO officials. Within the space of just a few days, FBI Director Robert Mueller, [CIA] Director [Porter] Goss and then NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer visited Turkey. Condoleezza Rice also flew to Turkey immediately after her December trip to Berlin. The aim of these visits has quite obviously been to bring Turkey into line with a planned attack on Iran. As Gottslich writes, On his Istanbul visit, Goss is alleged to have given Turkish security services three dossiers that prove Iranian cooperation with al-Qaeda. In addition, there was a fourth dossier focusing on the current state of Irans nuclear weapons program. But why, beyond the obvious fact of Turkeys shared border with Iran, should Turkey be such an important factor in American war plans? The answer is suggested by an article published by an American academic, Robert Olson, in the June 2002 issue of Middle East Policy. According to Noam Chomsky, Olson reports that 12 percent of Israels offensive aircraft are to be permanently stationed in Turkey and have been flying reconnaissance flights along Irans border, signaling to Iran that it would soon be challenged elsewhere by Turkey and its Israeli and American allies (Chomsky 159). These Israeli aircraft would evidently take part in any American and Israeli aerial attack on Iran, and Turkish consent would no doubt be necessary for their use in such an act. What advantages might Turkey hope to gain from its consent? The collaboration of Britain, France and Germany in the cranking up of diplomatic pressure on Iran might suggest that Turkeys much-desired admission to the European Union could have been held out as one carrotpossibly with the argument that participation in an attack on a fundamentalist Islamic state could be one way of calming European fears over the entry of a Muslim nation into the Union. An equally persuasive advantage may have been a secret promise of future admission to the select group of nuclear powers. Christopher Deliso has assembled evidence both of Turkeys persistent involvement in the smuggling and production of nuclear weapons technology, including centrifuge components and triggering devices (Deliso, 21 Nov. 2005)and also of the very interesting fact that the key administration officials involved in the outing of Valerie Plame, who was investigating these murky operations, included people, among them Marc Grossman, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, who give every appearance of having been centrally involved in the very network of nuclear arms proliferation that the CIA was working to uncover (Deliso, 24 Nov. 2005). Even when supplemented by Sibel Edmonds indications of high-level collaboration in the frustration by Turkish agents of the FBIs parallel investigations of what appears to be the same network, the evidence remains at best suppositious. And yet despite the inaccessibility of detailswhich will no doubt remain inaccessible for as long as Dick Cheney, John Bolton and the rest retain the power to frustrate investigations into the activities of their close associates and subordinatesthe larger pattern is, to say the least, intriguing. The same highly-placed neoconservatives who have been crying wolf over Irans non-existent nuclear weapons appear to have been deeplyand lucrativelyinvolved in the trafficking of restricted and forbidden weapons technology into Turkey. Should this pattern turn out indeed to involve corruption, hypocrisy, and treachery on the grand scale that Delisos investigative reporting would suggest, is there any reason one should be surprised? What else, to be frank, would you expect from people such as these? Global Research Contributing Editor Michael Keefer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Guelph. 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The countdown to war with Iran. Online Journal (17 January 2006), http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_425,shtml ----. Irans Oil Exchange threatens the Greenback. OpEdNews.com (23 January 2006), http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mike_whi_060123_iran_92s_oil_exchang e_.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. To become a Member of Global Research The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) at www.globalresearch.ca grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles in their entirety, or any portions thereof, on community internet sites, as long as the text & title are not modified. The source must be acknowledged and an active URL hyperlink address to the original CRG article must be indicated. 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To express your opinion on this article, join the discussion at Global Research's News and Discussion Forum For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com ) Copyright Michael Keefer, GlobalResearch.ca, 2006 The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20060210&article Id=1936 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- ***************************************************************** 8 IRNA: Iran will not wait for IAEA's next session - Elham Tehran, Feb 13, IRNA Iran-Elham-Nuclear Government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said here Monday that Iran will not wait for the next session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors before proceeding in its nuclear program. Elham made the disclosure while addressing domestic and foreign reporters during his weekly press conference in response to a question as to what measures Iran would take by the time the IAEA Board of Governors holds its next session. "The Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization is following and implementing a decree issued by President (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) in this regard," he said. "The government's decision is irreversible," he added. Asked about the US' calculated pressures on Iran, he said that the United States was moving toward a dead-end. "Pressures on Iran are not new." "The US has used all illegal and illegitimate ways over the past 27 years to achieve its objectives. The tested are being re-tested which shows the US' lack of wisdom," he said. "If the Islamic Republic of Iran were to yield to those pressures, there would be nothing left of the Islamic Revolution by now," he added. In response to a question on US pressure in the talks between Iran and Europe, the spokesman said, "Iran has repeatedly announced it favors logic and dialogue (to settle the dispute) based on legal and international regulations. "But it will not surrender to bullying by any country, whether on the issue of talks or pressure. "If negotiation will mean Iran surrendering its legitimate demands, this will be another kind of pressure that will bear no fruit. But if logic is asked for, we will reciprocate within the bounds of our national interests." Asked about the plan to hold a referendum on Iran's nuclear energy programs, Elham said that the "Bahman 22 rallies were a clear referendum participated in by all intellectual and political groups." "Looking at the issue closely and from a realistic point of view, one can understand it is one that is highly sensitive as far as the country is concerned," he concluded. ***************************************************************** 9 IRNA: Gov't follows up nuclear program in line with NPT - Elham Tehran, Feb 13, IRNA Iran-Elham-Nuclear Government follows up national nuclear program in the context of Non-Proliferation Treaty, Government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said Monday. "The government is committed to its legal undertakings. It follows up nuclear program in the context of NPT and Safeguards Agreement of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he said in his weekly press briefing. Asked about misinterpretation by certain Western press of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad statement on February 11 that certain Western states should respect Iran's legitimate rights enshrined by Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), otherwise, Iran would see no reason to stand by NPT, Elham said, "Iran signed the treaty over 30 years ago. Iranian nuclear program has been drawn up in the context of the NPT." "We carried out voluntary measures even beyond the Safeguards Agreement of IAEA in the past two years to remove all ambiguity and false ideas on national nuclear program." The spokesman added, "Recent threats proved that certain Western states are after an illegitimate goal to deprive Iran of peaceful nuclear energy right. This runs counter to NPT and the IAEA Charter." He said the IAEA Safeguards Agreement aims to respect the right of the member states to nuclear energy for civilian use and not to deprive them of the energy, stressing, "Iran should legally enjoy our membership at international bodies. "The European states and the IAEA should officially recognize Iran's inalienable right and support the country's peaceful nuclear achievements. "If this approach is implemented, we will remain committed to our undertakings. Otherwise, there will be no reason for Iran not to enjoy positive advantages of treaties and not to consider a change in policy making." Elham added, "We will make decision. We are committed to international treaties to preserve our inalienable rights." 2327/1416 ***************************************************************** 10 IRNA: Iranians send a clear message to West on Saturday - Paper Tehran, Feb 13, IRNA Iran-Editorial-Rallies An Iranian paper Monday commented on massive rallies of Saturday marking the victory anniversary of Islamic Revolution stressing that the rallies were actually a referendum for the system in the face of threats by Global Arrogance. "The message was clear from a nation that had rubbed the nose of the Great Satan into dust in pursuit of its inalienable rights," said 'Kayhan International,' stressing Iran's inalienable right for peaceful use of nuclear energy. Referring to the presence of several hundred foreign reporters who had come to Iran to cover the victory anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, it said they came "to witness the anniversary of the culmination of the popular grassroots movement, ... which acts as a model for Muslim and third world masses groaning under the jackboots of western-installed dictatorships and monarchies". "The marchers and officials made it clear to Global Arrogance that the days of the colonial past are long over and the ummah including Iran is no mood to bear the insult to the sanctities of Islam as some sections of the Zionist-controlled press in Europe have indulged in, in another feverish effort to hurt Muslim feelings worldwide," the editorial noted. It further criticized the paradoxical behaviour of politicians in Europe and the Americas, noting that such behaviour "confirms the Iranian president's Saturday's remarks that the Zionists are holding the West hostage. "It also goes on to verify his comments a couple of months ago that denial and mockery of such realities as God, the prophets and religion, is permitted in the West but academic research on fables like the holocaust are strictly taboo," the paper added. The article further argued that the Zionists "are taking the Christian World for a ride and are using it as a tool to fan the flames of Islamophobia." Stressing the inextricable link between Iran and Islam, which dates back to the days of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and his Persian companion Salman, the daily said, "Uncle Sam is living in a fool's paradise if it thinks that a people with such firm faith in God Almighty can be cowed down to relinquish their legitimate rights including the peaceful use of nuclear energy, or be dissuaded from exposing the myth of the holocaust." Referring to Iraq and Palestine as the prime lands which follow the example of Islamic Iran, the article said, Islamic grassroots movements are not only about to change all regional equations but it is inviting conscientious people in Europe and the Americas to ponder on the life-inspiring system called Islam. ***************************************************************** 11 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Moves Foward on Atomic Production From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 13, 2006 5:16 PM By NASSER KARIMI Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - In a fresh display of brinksmanship, Iran indefinitely postponed talks on a proposed solution to the standoff over its nuclear ambitions Monday and diplomats in Europe said Iranian scientists had resumed small-scale enrichment of uranium. Depending on the degree of processing, enriched uranium can be used in nuclear reactors or atomic bombs. Talks scheduled for Thursday about moving Iran's uranium enrichment to Russia to allay international concerns that it could develop nuclear weapons have been postponed indefinitely because of the ``new situation,'' Iranian presidential spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said. Iran uses the ``new situation'' to describe the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision this month to report the country to the U.N. Security Council because Iran had not offered convincing proof it was not seeking nuclear weapons. Diplomats told The Associated Press in Vienna, Austria, Monday that Iran has started small-scale enrichment of uranium, a process that can be used to make fuel for civilian reactors or nuclear weapons, depending on the degree of enrichment. ``Uranium gas has been fed into three machines,'' one senior diplomat familiar with Iran's nuclear file said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter. To produce significant amounts of enriched uranium, gas must be fed into hundreds of centrifuges. Iran is years away from running the 50,000 centrifuges it says it wants to produce fuel for its Russian-built nuclear plant at Bushehr. Even small-scale enrichment is significant because it represents symbolic determination to move forward with a technology that most nations want Iran to give up. Iran maintains that its nuclear program is designed solely to generate electricity, but the United States and some allies claim it is a cover for producing a bomb. The Security Council is expected to consider steps against Iran that could include sanctions after the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, issues a report on the issue next month. Iran has strongly protested its referral to the Security Council, which was supported by Russia, usually one of Tehran's allies. Analysts believe Iran has enough uranium for about five crude nuclear weapons. Estimates on how long Iran needs to enrich it range from three to 10 years. After the IAEA voted on Feb. 4 to report Iran to the Security Council, Iran ended voluntary cooperation with the agency and announced it would start large-scale enrichment and bar surprise inspections of its facilities. It has yet to announce whether any uranium enrichment, large- or small-scale, has begun. On Monday, Elham was asked if Iran was delaying the resumption of large-scale enrichment until after an IAEA meeting in March. He replied ``no,'' but did not elaborate. Moscow proposed Iran ship its uranium to Russia, where it would be enriched to a level suitable for nuclear reactors. It would then be returned to Iran for use at the Bushehr plant, which is due to begin operating this year. The plan, backed by the United States and the European Union, was an attempt to avoid international objections to Iranian uranium enrichment, by providing oversight so no weapons would be made. Iran had said the plan did not fulfill its requirements but was worth pursuing. Elham said the talks would reconvene at a time of ``mutual agreement.'' Russia did not mention Elham's statements in a Monday announcement that its foreign minister would discuss Tehran's nuclear program with European Union leaders in Vienna this week. In Berlin, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Jens Ploetner said his government regretted Iran's decision. Elham also reiterated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement Saturday that Iran will ``revise'' its policy toward IAEA regulations and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if they are used against the country - a veiled threat to withdraw from the pact. Elham said the world must recognize Iran's rights as a signatory to the treaty and regulations. ``Otherwise there is no reason to continue our current nuclear policy while we are deprived of the positive aspects of the treaty,'' he said. Tehran has stressed repeatedly that the treaty allows it to pursue a nuclear program for peaceful purposes and says it will never give up the right to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel. Elham also repeated an Iranian pledge that any sanctions on Iran would backfire. ``If some Western countries, provoked by Israel, intend to put pressure on Iran, then they will also lose. We do advise the United States and Europe to decide in a rational and prudent way,'' he said. Much of the surveillance equipment and seals from Iran's nascent uranium enrichment facilities has been removed by the Iranians since they announced they would resume limited activities there. Iran also decided to end the agency's rights to in-depth nuclear inspections at short notice. The moves left the IAEA with few means to monitor Tehran's enrichment efforts and look for secret sites and experiments that could be linked to nuclear arms. --- Associated Press writer George Jahn in Vienna, Austria, contributed to this report. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 12 Guardian Unlimited: Iran's Moves Increase Nuclear Tension From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 13, 2006 8:16 PM By NASSER KARIMI Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran notched up the brinksmanship over its disputed nuclear program Monday, abruptly postponing talks with Moscow on a plan to enrich Tehran's uranium on Russian territory to allay fears it is building an atomic weapon. Diplomats in Europe said Iran had started small-scale enrichment of uranium, a process that can produce fuel for an atomic bomb. ``Uranium gas has been fed into three machines,'' said a senior diplomat in Vienna, Austria, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter. Another diplomat confirmed that limited enrichment had begun at Iran's Natanz site. State-run Iranian television later reported that Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the national security and foreign relations committee in parliament, said the country had begun peaceful nuclear enrichment activities Monday. Boroujerdi said inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency were present. The talks with Russia were slated for Thursday but were postponed indefinitely because of the ``new situation,'' said Iranian presidential spokesman Gholamhossein Elham. He was referring to the IAEA's decision this month to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council because of uncertainty over its nuclear intentions. Iran maintains its nuclear program is designed solely to generate electricity, but the United States and some U.S. allies claim the program is a cover for producing an atomic bomb. Moscow had proposed that Iran ship its uranium to Russia, where it would be enriched to a level suitable for nuclear reactors. It would then be returned to Iran for use at the Russian-built Bushehr plant, which is due to begin operating this year. The plan, backed by the United States and the European Union, was an attempt to avoid international objections to Iranian uranium enrichment by providing oversight so no weapons would be made. Iran had said the plan did not fulfill its requirements but was worth pursuing. Despite resumption of enrichment, uranium gas must be fed into hundreds of centrifuges to produce significant amounts of enriched uranium, which - depending on the degree of processing - can be used for civilian nuclear reactors or warheads. Iran is years away from running the 50,000 centrifuges it says it wants to operate as a source of fuel for its Bushehr plant. But even small-scale enrichment is significant because it represents symbolic determination by Tehran to go ahead with a technology that most nations want it to give up because of fears of misuse. Also Monday, Tehran issued its third veiled threat in as many days to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. If the international community does not agree to Iran's right to enrich uranium under the NPT, ``there is no reason to continue our current nuclear policy while we are deprived of the positive aspects of the treaty,'' said a spokesman for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. North Korea - the world's other major proliferation concern - quit the treaty in January 2003, just a few months before U.S. officials announced that the North had told them it had nuclear weapons and may test, export or use them depending on U.S. actions. Iran had warned it would resume large-scale enrichment of uranium after it was reported Feb. 4 to the U.N. Security Council by the 35-nation IAEA board. The resolution indirectly linked the referral to breaches of the treaty and concerns that Tehran's activities represented a threat to world peace. The IAEA is to issue a report on Iran at its March meeting. After that, the Security Council is expected to consider taking steps against the country. German officials expressed disappointment the Moscow meetings were postponed. Canceling or postponing the talks means the time before the March IAEA meeting ``would not be used as effectively as is possible and necessary to push on toward a diplomatic solution,'' German Foreign Ministry spokesman Jens Ploetner said. On behalf of the European Union, Germany, Britain and France had conducted lengthy but essentially fruitless discussions with the Iranians hoping promises of civilian nuclear technology and other economic incentives would lure Iran away from the nuclear path that could produce weapons. Much of the surveillance equipment and seals from Iran's nascent uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz have been removed by the Iranians in the month since they announced they would resume limited activities there. Without the seals and surveillance equipment - and with Iran's recent decision to end the agency's rights to in-depth nuclear inspections at short notice - the IAEA has few means to monitor Tehran's enrichment efforts. It also has crippled the agency's efforts to look for secret sites and experiments that could be linked to nuclear arms. --- Associated Press writer George Jahn contributed to this report from Vienna, Austria. --- On the Net: IAEA, www.iaea.org Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 13 Guardian Unlimited: Iran's Actions Reminiscent of N. Korea's From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 13, 2006 9:46 PM AP Photo XHS106 By GEORGE JAHN Associated Press Writer VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Veiled Iranian threats to quit the Nonproliferation Treaty conjure up the case of North Korea, which announced it had atomic weapons shortly after walking away from the treaty. But while the North escaped punishment by the U.N. Security Council, any move by Iran to break out of the pact will likely bring a tougher response. For the second time in three days, Tehran warned Monday that it could rethink its adherence to the pact, meant to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, if the treaty's provisions are used against the country. At issue is uranium enrichment, which can make both nuclear fuel or the fissile core of warheads, and an activity that Iran insists it has a right to under the NPT, which expressly permits countries to develop peaceful nuclear programs. Iran insists its intentions are purely peaceful, but growing international concern about its aims contributed to Tehran being reported to the Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board. Reiterating President Mahmoud Ahmadijead's indirect threat, his spokesman, Gholamhossein Elham, warned Monday that Tehran will ``revise'' its policy toward the treaty signed by Iran and 90 other nations if it is used against the country. He said the world must recognize Iran's rights under the treaty - an allusion to the provision of the pact that recognizes countries' rights to peaceful nuclear programs - and indirectly nuclear enrichment for nonmilitary purposes. ``Otherwise,'' he said, ``there is no reason to continue our current nuclear policy while we are deprived of the positive aspects of the treaty.'' Only one other country - North Korea - has withdrawn from the treaty since it came into force 36 years ago, and the Tehran leadership may be hoping the Security Council's meek response to that decision could be repeated in its own case. While the Security Council expressed concern about North Korea's nuclear program, it undertook no concrete steps to punish the country. U.S. calls for economic or political sanctions foundered on Chinese and Russian opposition. Iran may also be counting on backing from Moscow and Beijing, both veto-carrying Security Council members. While they share international worries about Tehran's nuclear ambitions, they forced the other permanent council members - the United States, Britain and France - to agree to no action at the Security Council at least until March, when the council considers a new report on Iran's nuclear program from IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei. Still Iran is not North Korea - and 2003 not 2006. Back then, increasing concerns about Iraq - including the growing threat of U.S. invasion - deflected some of the focus on North Korea. And because Pyongyang already was a pariah state with only a subsistence economy, it had little to lose from U.N. political and economic sanctions. With China the North's main lifeline to the outside world, Beijing was given a leading role in engaging it outside the U.N. system along with other countries key to solving the conflict - the United States, Russia, South Korea and Japan. The on-off six-party talks - meant to convince North Korea to disarm in exchange for economic and political incentives - were born in August 2003. But that approach is unlikely to work for Iran, leaving the prospects of harsh U.N. Security Council action much more likely should it quit the nonproliferation treaty. Attempts outside the U.N. framework to persuade Iran to ease concerns about its nuclear ambitions have failed. Britain, France and Germany, negotiating for the European Union, threw in the towel last month after Iran announced it planned to resume small-scale enrichment. And on Monday, Iran indefinitely postponed new talks with Moscow on reducing fears it would misuse enrichment by moving its program to Russia just two days before they were to happen. ``The Europeans were willing to offer carrots and Iran has turned that down, so the logical thing is to step up pressure on Iran within the Security Council'' should it quit the Nonproliferation Treaty, said former Iraq nuclear inspector David Albright. For isolated North Korea, China is crucial for oil and other basics. Not so for Iran, which remains interconnected with the world - and would therefore be squeezed by Security Council sanctions. Ironically, Iran, OPEC's second-largest oil exporter, depends on Europe and India for 40 percent of its gasoline because of a lack of refinery capacity, said Albright, now head of the Washington based Institute for Science and International Security. Albright says that with Russia and China increasingly sharing concerns about Iran's nuclear aims, even those erstwhile allies would be hard put to veto firm Security Council action if Iran leaves the NPT. ``It may tip them into the camp,'' he said. At the least, said Albright, such an Iranian defection would force Russia to end all nuclear cooperation with Iran - and effectively mothball operation of its nearly completed billion-dollar Bushehr nuclear reactor. Moscow, which built Bushehr, will have no choice but to cancel arrangements to provide it with nuclear fuel - and Iran will not have enough enriched uranium to fire it up for at least 10 years, he said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 14 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Postpones Uranium Talks With Russia From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 13, 2006 10:31 AM AP Photo VAH205 By NASSER KARIMI Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran has called off this week's talks with Moscow on a plan to allay concerns about Tehran's use of nuclear fuel by enriching Iran's uranium in Russia, the president's spokesman said Monday. The talks were to have resumed Thursday but have been postponed indefinitely because of the ``new situation,'' spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said, referring to the U.N. nuclear agency's decision earlier this month to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council. Iran strongly protested the referral, which was supported by Russia, usually one of Tehran's allies. Elham said the talks will reconvene at a time of ``mutual agreement.'' Russia's Foreign Ministry said Monday that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov would discuss Tehran's nuclear program with European Union leaders in Vienna this week. It did not mention Elham's announcement. Elham also reiterated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement Saturday that Iran will ``revise'' its policy toward the International Atomic Energy Agency regulations and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if they are used against the country. Elham said the world must recognize Iran's rights as a signatory to the treaty and regulations. ``Otherwise there is no reason to continue our current nuclear policy while we are deprived of the positive aspects of the treaty.'' Moscow had proposed that Iran ship its uranium to Russia, where it would be enriched to a level suitable for nuclear reactors. It would then be returned to Iran to be used in its Russian-built reactor at Bushehr. The reactor is due to start up later this year. The plan, backed by the United States and European Union, was an attempt to avoid international objections to Iran's enriching uranium - a process that can also produce material for nuclear weapons. Iran had said the plan did not fulfill its requirements but was worth pursuing further in negotiations. The United States accuses Iran of seeking to build a nuclear bomb under cover of a peaceful nuclear program. Iran insists its program is confined to the generation of electricity. After the IAEA voted on Feb. 4 to report Iran to the Security Council, it ended voluntary cooperation with the agency and announced it would start large-scale uranium enrichment and bar surprise inspections of its facilities. It has yet to say whether uranium enrichment has begun. The IAEA is due to issue a report on Iran at its March meeting, after which the Security Council is expected to consider taking steps against the country, which could include sanctions. Elham said Monday that Iran was not delaying the resumption of uranium enrichment until after the IAEA meeting, but he did not elaborate. He repeated Iran's line that if the Security Council imposes sanctions on Iran, they will backfire. ``If some Western countries, provoked by Israel, intend to put pressure on Iran, then they will also lose. We do advise the United States and Europe to decide in a rational and prudent way,'' he said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 15 Guardian Unlimited: Diplomats Say Iran Starts Enrichment From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 13, 2006 1:01 PM VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran has started small-scale enrichment of uranium - a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors or bombs, diplomats said Monday. ``Uranium gas has been fed into three machines,'' one senior diplomat familiar with Iran's nuclear file told AP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter. To produce significant amounts of enriched uranium, gas must be fed into hundreds of such machines. Uranium enriched to a low degree can be used for nuclear reactors, while highly enriched uranium is suitable for warheads. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 16 IRNA: Iran to resume nuclear research Sunday or Monday - Haddad-Adel - Tehran, Feb 12, IRNA Iran-Speaker-Nuclear Iran would resume nuclear research on Sunday or Monday in the presence of International Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors, Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel said here Sunday. "Iran is determined to implement its decisions. When we announced our readiness to resume nuclear research, we should wait for the IAEA inspectors to come to Iran and supervise this phase," Haddad-Adel told reporters. Asked about the possibility of resuming nuclear talks, he said, "The atmosphere of talks will undoubtedly be different from what was before the IAEA Board of Governors' decision to report Iran to the UN Security Council." Pointing to Iran's peaceful nuclear activities, he said, "The IAEA article of association set legal methods for countries including Iran to act within the frameworks of international treaties and agreements. "We say what will be the use of IAEA if a country, which has opened doors of its facilities and repeatedly announced it has no intention of building nuclear weapons, are barred from nuclear technology under pretext that it may divert from peaceful nuclear activities. In that case, existence of the IAEA will be meaningless." In response to a question on reasons behind Iran's refusal to adopt more steps to prevent the IAEA Board of Governors' from reporting its nuclear case to the Security Council, the speaker said, "Iran has set a plan which is regarded by experts as its strategies." He added, "Iran will not close doors of negotiations to any country. Russia's nuclear plan can also be discussed. But we insist on our rights." ***************************************************************** 17 Guardian Unlimited: Thousands would die in US strikes on Iran, says study Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor Monday February 13, 2006 The Guardian A surprise American or Israeli air strike on Iranian nuclear sites could cause a large number of civilian as well as military casualties, says a report published today. The report, Iran: Consequences of a War, written by Professor Paul Rogers and published by the Oxford Research Group, draws comparisons with Iraq. It says the civilian population in that country had three weeks to prepare for war in 2003, giving people the chance to flee potentially dangerous sites. But Prof Rogers says attacks on Iranian facilities, most of which are in densely populated areas, would be surprise ones, allowing no time for such evacuations or other precautions. "Military deaths in this first wave of attacks would be expected to be in the thousands," he says. "Civilian deaths would be in the many hundreds at least, particularly with the requirement to target technical support for the nuclear and missile infrastructure, with many of the factories being located in urban areas." The death toll would eventually be much higher if Iran took retaliatory action and the United States responded, or if the US took pre-emptive military action in addition to strikes on nuclear sites. Prof Rogers, of the University of Bradford's peace studies department, says: "A military operation against Iran would not ... be a short-term matter but would set in motion a complex and long-lasting confrontation. It follows that military action should be firmly ruled out and alternative strategies developed." US and other western critics of Tehran say the government there is intent on securing a nuclear weapons capability. The Iranians deny this, saying they are pursuing civilian nuclear energy. The issue could still be resolved diplomatically, but both the US and Israel have said the option of air strikes remains open. Prof Rogers says the aim of an attack would be to set back Iran's nuclear programme by at least five years. He says Britain could be drawn in as US aircraft would probably use UK bases. He lists the expected targets as the Tehran Research Reactor, a radioisotope production facility, a range of nuclear-related laboratories, and the Kalaye Electric Company, all in Tehran, and facilities in Isfahan and Natanz. "The new reactor nearing completion at Bushehr would be targeted, although this could be problematic once the reactor is fully fuelled and goes critical some time in 2006," he says. "Once that has happened, any destruction of the containment structure could lead to serious problems of radioactive dispersal affecting not just the Gulf coast but west Gulf seaboards in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates." He adds: "All the initial attacks would be undertaken more-or-less simultaneously, in order to kill as many of the technically competent staff as possible, therefore doing the greatest damage to longer-term prospects." Iran would be unable to prevent such an attack, as it has only limited air defences. But Prof Rogers says it has a large arsenal of responses. It could: · withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and pursue speedy development of nuclear weapons capability; · encourage retaliatory action against Israel by the Lebanese-based Hizbullah group, which has missiles capable of hitting Haifa and several other Israeli cities; · close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the main access routes for oil from the Gulf; · send Iranian paramilitary units into states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; · or order Iranian Revolutionary Guards to step up links with insurgents in Iraq. Prof Rogers says a US or Israeli attack could also help al-Qaida by increasing the anti-US mood in the region and beyond. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 18 BBC: Iran 'resumes' nuclear enrichment Last Updated: Monday, 13 February 2006 [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at nuclear plant] President Ahmadinejad says he will resist attempts to curb Iran's plans Iran has restarted uranium enrichment work, UN diplomats have said. They said it had begun feeding uranium gas into centrifuges - a first step in a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors or bomb material. Tehran had warned it would resume enrichment after the UN nuclear watchdog decided to report it to the UN Security Council nine days ago. Iran has also postponed talks with Russia, due this week, on a proposal to enrich uranium on Russian soil. International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are due to visit Iran's Natanz nuclear facility, where Iran's enrichment work is reportedly being carried out, on Tuesday. Crunch meeting According to diplomats in Vienna, home of the IAEA's headquarters, workers at Natanz have begun putting uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas into a small number of centrifuges used to distil enriched uranium. Uranium enriched to a high level can be used to make an atomic bomb. Iran says its research is solely aimed at energy production, but Western powers are concerned that Iran's uranium enrichment programme is part of a plan to acquire nuclear weaponry. Iranian officials had warned they would restart small-scale uranium enrichment by early March, but they did not specify a date. The IAEA voted on 4 February to report Tehran to the Security Council over its decision, announced in January, to restart nuclear research. The nuclear watchdog's board is expected to meet at the beginning of March to consider whether to recommend action on Iran by the council. Withdrawal threat On Monday UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he hoped there would be "no steps taken to escalate the situation". [Natanz nuclear plant, Iran (file picture, March 2005)] Iran says it will stop allowing snap UN inspections at nuclear sites Speaking after talks with US President George W Bush in the White House, he urged Iran to "indicate that negotiations are not dead". As a means to alleviate the standoff, Russia had proposed that it enrich the uranium on its reactors and then ship the fuel to Iran. But talks with Russia have been pushed back indefinitely, Iranian presidential spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said. Russia - which supported the IAEA's decision to refer Iran to the Security Council - said talks could still take place this week. After the decision, Iran announced it would end its voluntary freeze on full-scale uranium enrichment and would stop allowing snap UN inspections of its nuclear sites. The move, which could lead to sanctions, has been roundly condemned in Tehran, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now threatening to quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT, which has 187 signatories, was created to prevent new nuclear states emerging, to promote co-operation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to work towards nuclear disarmament. Non-nuclear signatories agree not to seek to develop or acquire such weapons. In return, they are given an undertaking that they will be helped to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. It is believed to be the first time Iran has threatened to pull out of the treaty. ***************************************************************** 19 IRNA: Asefi: No cause for concern over reporting nuclear dossier to UNSC - Tehran, Feb 12, IRNA Iran-Asefi-Nuclear Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi here Sunday in response to the concerns of those involved in economic activities over reporting Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council (UNSC) said that there is no cause for such worries. Briefing reporters in this week's session, he added, "Propaganda may prepare conditions for concern, which I do not intend to conceal." Stressing that Iran's dossier should not remain on the UNSC agenda for a long time, he said that given the ruling system has plans for various issues, including economic, it will succeed in overcoming the challenge. In response to a question that the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Danish officials consider that Iran and Syria had a role in inciting the Muslims, he dismissed it saying that they wish to conceal the events which took place. Turning to the reaction of Muslims to the sacrilege of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) by sections of the European media as normal, he said that the remarks of Rice and Danish officials make the situation worse. Asefi said that accusing others will not solve the problem and called upon Rice and Danish officials to apologize Muslims. Underlining that the true followers of divine religions be they Christians or Jews were not involved in the blasphemy published in the European media, he said, "It seems that the Zionists, who have been behind the curtain, have a grip on Europe." Meanwhile, he called upon European officials to apologize to Muslims and take up the commitment not to make such blunders in future. Assessing part of the remarks of the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, "There is no definite reason for Iran's deviation from peaceful nuclear path," Asefi questioned the political approach to the issue without having any reason. Elsewhere in his briefing, the spokesman referred to the extensive public turnout in the Bahman 22 (February 11) rallies and said that their participation in the event conveyed a clear message to the world. He hoped that the world will receive the message on the call of Iranian people for their rights and their insistence on it, which is not merely the concern of state officials. Asefi termed the people's participation in yesterday's rallies as a backup for Iran's foreign policy. Responding to another question about the possible consequences of reporting the nuclear dossier to UNSC, he noted that the ruling system has made the required planning and that it was not taken unaware. He named the relevant policy as collective and said that all possible options have been assessed. The official said that the drawbacks and privileges of the related decisions have been examined and the outcome has been foreseen by the ruling system. "We are not worried about being reported to the UNSC rather they are the ones who are more likely to lose," he added. About President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech on Saturday rally at Azadi Square that the true holocaust should be sought in Palestine, he confirmed his remark and said that the dimensions of the Zionists crimes outweigh that of the holocaust. He added that what is taking place in occupied territories is more painful than holocaust. In response to a question about Russia-Hamas talks, he referred to it as a favorable move. Turning to Hamas as the elected representative of the Palestinian nation, he said, "It is clear that the people's votes were in favor of Palestine's Intifada (uprising), resistance and ideals. "It is up to both sides to determine the course of talks. We are not in a position to advise Hamas how to proceed. Hamas and other Palestinian groups themselves will certainly come up with the proper policy after multifaceted assessment of the issue." Asefi referred to a number of measures taken in response to the blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) published in the media of some European states and said, "The issue has been discussed by the Foreign Ministry and several of its counterparts in various countries and the clear approach of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been announced to them." He pointed to the letter recently written by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to the secretary general of the Organization of Islamic Conference, in which he called for holding a meeting of Islamic states. The spokesman referred to the meeting of Islamic states ambassadors to New York last week and said that during the current week another gathering of Muslim ambassadors will be held in Jeddah to deal with ways of tackling such a vicious move. Stressing that Iran makes the best use of all its potentials to this end, he noted that the OIC secretary general has been called upon to hold the Islamic states troika meeting. Asked whether the approach of Foreign Ministry towards various issues such as the nuclear dossier has been as firm as that of President Ahmadinejad, he said, "We have had firm approach on different matters such as the nuclear issue and believe that it is necessary to defend our status. "The Foreign Ministry's approach has been and will continue to be within the framework of the general policies of the ruling system and the country, which are based on the guidelines of the Supreme Leader as well as the policies of the president and the Supreme National Security Council." ***************************************************************** 20 AFP: Iran starts enrichment work, upping stakes with West - diplomats Tuesday February 14, 4:16 AM Photo: AFP VIENNA (AFP) - Iran has restarted uranium enrichment work by putting its feedstock gas into centrifuges, defying the West with a program that could make nuclear reactor fuel or atom bomb material, diplomats told AFP. It came as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted his country was not worried about possible sanctions and Tehran said talks in Moscow aimed at finding a compromise to the long-running international standoff would not go ahead as planned later this week. Uranium enrichment is seen as a red line by the United States and European Union in the dispute over Iran's nuclear program, as it is crucial to making atomic weapons. Putting uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas into centrifuges, which distill out enriched uranium, is a major escalation by Iran, and comes amid threats by the Islamic republic to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In an interview published Monday, Ahmadinejad said that nations calling for economic sanctions would lose far more than Tehran. "I believe those who want to impose limitations on us will lose more than us," he told USA Today newspaper in an interview conducted Saturday. Separately, Iran said Thursday's planned talks between Tehran and Moscow on a compromise to enrich uranium on Tehran's behalf in Russia, so that it would not acquire the strategic technology, would not go ahead. Russia however said talks could still be held. The United States and EU governments fear Iran's nuclear program could hide atomic weapons development, a claim strongly denied by Tehran which says it is for strictly peaceful civilian nuclear power. Iran had earlier Monday said it would resume uranium enrichment even before the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meets in Vienna next month to decide whether to recommend UN Security Council action. Meanwhile French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin arrived in Moscow for a 24-hour visit due to include talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Villepin said in an interview published Monday in a Russian newspaper that the international community was willing to negotiate with Iran on the nuclear crisis if Tehran took steps to end the standoff. But diplomats' comments in Vienna appear to show Iran is following through with its threat to carry out enrichment. "Iran has put gas into centrifuges at its pilot enrichment plant in Natanz," one diplomat said. The diplomat, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, said Iran had not yet fired up the whole 164-centrifuge cascade but had "over the past two or three days" started work with some centrifuges. A second diplomat said Iran was doing "preliminary work" with "stand-alone" centrifuges, almost certainly putting uranium gas into single machines rather than a whole cascade. The diplomat said this was necessary in a step-by-step approach involving first getting centrifuges running, then operating a pilot plant, which Iran has dubbed research work, and then moving on to industrial-scale enrichment with thousands of centrifuges. Iran says it wants to produce low enriched uranium, which is not refined enough for weapons. But it wants to install over 50,000 centrifuges at Natanz, an array which could produce enough highly enriched uranium every two or three weeks for one atom bomb. IAEA inspectors are Tuesday to visit Natanz, where Iran is threatening to remove surveillance seals and cameras, diplomats said. But one diplomat said some seals and surveillance cameras would remain in place as they would be monitoring the production of nuclear fuel rather than enrichment. Although Iran had suspended uranium enrichment work until talks with an EU negotiating troika broke down last month, it has since August been making the feedstock UF6 at a conversion plant in Isfahan. The West has seemed ready to let Tehran pursue this work, which technically is part of the activities the EU says should be suspended, as long as it did not actually enrich. The IAEA's 35-nation board of governors voted February 4 to report Iran to the Security Council, but left a one-month window for diplomacy on getting it to return to a full suspension of enrichment-related work and cooperate more with IAEA inspectors. Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information ***************************************************************** 21 IRNA: Nuclear talks with Russia not cancelled - Elham Tehran, Feb 13, IRNA Iran-Elham-Nuclear Government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said here Monday that nuclear talks with Russia have not been cancelled but that both sides still have to agree on a date for talks. Elham made the disclosure while addressing domestic and foreign reporters at his weekly press conference. "The important matter is that Russia's (nuclear) proposal should be based on policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran taking into account changes in circumstances and the government's determination to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes inside Iranian territory. "An agenda that includes following up of earlier negotiations and a date for talks should be agreed by the two sides," he added. ***************************************************************** 22 AFP: Annan warns against escalation in Iran nuclear dispute - Mon Feb 13, 3:13 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan" /> Kofi Annanurged Iran" /> Iranto take steps by March to enable talks on its nuclear program to resume and warned against actions that might escalate its tense dispute with the West. "We need to be able to work to resolve it, and I hope there will be no steps taken to escalate the situation," Annan said as he met at the White House with US President George W. Bush. Annan said he hoped Iran would take steps before the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) meets in Vienna next month to decide whether to recommend UN Security Council action. He urged Iran to "indicate that negotiations are not dead and both sides can come back to the table and find a way out of this crisis." Washington accuses Tehran of using a civilian nuclear program as cover for trying to develop atomic weapons. Iran denies the charge. Iran has restarted uranium enrichment work by putting its feedstock gas into centrifuges, defying the West with a program that could make nuclear reactor fuel or atom bomb material, diplomats told AFP Monday. It came as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted his country was not worried about possible sanctions and Tehran said talks in Moscow aimed at finding a compromise to the long-running international standoff would not go ahead as planned later this week. Uranium enrichment is seen as a red line by the United States and European Union" /> European Unionin the dispute over Iran's nuclear program, as it is crucial to making atomic weapons. Putting uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas into centrifuges, which distill out enriched uranium, is a major escalation by Iran, and comes amid threats by the Islamic republic to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 23 IRNA: Germany committed to proceeding with Iran nuclear talks - FM - Feb 13, IRNA -- New German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said his country remains committed to resolving the Iranian nuclear dispute through diplomatic negotiations. "Chancellor Merkel and I see negotiations as the path for a diplomatic solution which we are committed to proceed with," Steinmeier said Sunday evening in an interview with the German ZDF public television network. The German official reiterated that the international community would not accept a nuclear armed Iran. Steinmeier is currently on a Middle East tour to Israel, the Palestinian-run territories and Jordan. ***************************************************************** 24 IRNA: Lebanese MP rebukes West's pressures on Iran Beirut, Feb 13, IRNA Lebanon-Iran-Nuclear The West is imposing pressures on Iran in order to deal a blow to it and deprive the country of its legal right to enjoy nuclear technology, said a Lebanese MP on Monday. Iran will not retreat from its right to produce peaceful nuclear energy notwithstanding the increasing pressures, Lebanese lawmaker Kamel al-Refaee told IRNA. The winning card is in Iran's hands as it has the full backing of its people, he noted with particular reference to US and Israeli military threats against Iran and the fact that its nuclear case has been reported to the UN Security Council. He ruled out the possibility of a US invasion of Iran, arguing that the "US will not dare attack Iran as its consequences would go beyond Iran's borders, producing an oil crisis and regional explosion." He also condemned the insult to Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) by several European newspapers and criticized the silence of some religious leaders, the Pope in particular. Europe has not taken any measure to prevent the crisis from further aggravating but instead has helped spread the blasphemous cartoons from Denmark, where they were first published, to other European countries including Norway, France, Britain, Spain and Germany by defending their publication in the name of freedom of speech. From Denmark to Delhi, demonstrations have been staged over the blasphemous cartoons, rallies held outside embassies of several countries and Danish flags torched by Muslims angered by the sacrilege committed on their beloved Prophet (PBUH). ***************************************************************** 25 IRNA: Iran's envoy in Uruguay says pressure on Iran will have opposite effect - Madrid, Feb 14, IRNA Iran-Uruguay-Nuclear Iranian ambassador to Uruguay said Monday in Montevideo that pressure by the West and US on Iran's peaceful nuclear program won't help the West, but also make Iran more determined to develop its nuclear program. Mohammad Faraj speaking to a local daily El-Obsorvador added that the pressure are aimed at preventing the Iranian nation to achieve its legitimate rights. "They want us to become an isolated country." Threats to impose sanctions while using psychological bravado with the help of the Zionist lobby, are tools to make Iran dependent on the Western countries by purchasing its nuclear fuel needs from them, he stated. "Iran has progressed in its nuclear technology program, regards it as national pride and sees no reason for forgoing its legitimate right." He said Iran peaceful program is within the confines of International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA). "Tehran will try as in the last three years to remove ambiguities and concerns over its nuclear program." He also lambasted those nations and the IAEA which have not abided by their commitments as enshrined in the Non-Proliferation-Treaty (NPT) for assisting in peaceful nuclear technology of Iran as an independent country. Faraji also termed the recent resolution passed by the IAEA Governing Board in reporting Iran to the UN Security Council as a political gimmick." This step only broaches such questions as to why Iran, which has cooperated closely with the nuclear watchdog agency for three years and has not deviated from its nuclear program is under pressure and threats, while, Israel which has attested to having atomic weapons has not been investigated and not faced pressure over signing the NPT, Faraji underlined. He also cautioned that if the West insists on putting hurdles on Iran's peaceful nuclear energy activities, Tehran has tools to counter any measures. Faraji called on the Western nations to opt for logic and prudence in their policies to resolve Iran's nuclear row and to use diplomacy in place of confrontation and tension. "Tehran's principal policy in the nuclear issue is to continue cooperation and to resolve the issue by diplomatic means," he said. If pressure is increased on Iran, the US will fail in the nuclear row as it has in its objectives to prop up anti-Iran governments in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, Faraji warned. ***************************************************************** 26 Guardian Unlimited: N. Korea: Nuclear Talks Unlikely to Resume From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 13, 2006 12:01 PM PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) - A North Korean official said Monday it was unlikely that international talks on the country's nuclear weapons program will resume soon because of Washington's refusal to lift financial restrictions on businesses connected to the North. Last year, the United States slapped restrictions on a Macau bank, saying it had helped North Korea distribute counterfeit U.S. currency and engage in other illicit activities. Washington also imposed sanctions on eight North Korean companies it said were fronts for proliferating weapons of mass destruction. ``I don't think such six-party talks will take place in the near future,'' So Chol, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official, told Associated Press Television in an interview in the North Korean capital. ``It is because our people cannot find any evidence that the Americans are moving to lift the financial sanctions against our country.'' North Korea has repeatedly denied the U.S. charges and said it would stay away from the nuclear talks until Washington ends the sanctions. The U.S. has refused, saying they are a matter of law and a separate issue from the arms negotiations. So dismissed that argument by Washington, saying the restrictions were directed against the North. ``They are misusing these financial sanctions in a move to isolate our country,'' he said. The most recent round of the nuclear talks - involving China, Japan, Russia, the United States and two Koreas - was held in November and failed to make any progress on implementing a September agreement in which the North pledged to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees. No date has been set for the talks to reconvene. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 27 Korea Herald: N.K. sanctions not having intended effect: BOK (jungmin@heraldm.com By Kim Jung-min 2006.02.14 U.S. economic sanctions against North Korea will not be as effective as intended without China's participation and will only make the closed economy more dependent on China, a report by the central bank showed yesterday. North Korea's greater dependency on the Chinese economy was not planned but is the result of the rapid economic growth in the world's most populous nation, the report stated. "This suggests that the Seoul government's policy toward North Korea should be focused on promoting trade and investment and helping it transform into a market economy," said Lee Young-hoon, an economist at the Bank of Korea's Institute for Monetary and Economic Research. The report on the bilateral trade between North Korea and China came at a time when North Korea is seeking China's cooperation in coping with U.S. sanctions which are hurting the economically backward nation. The central bank's 60-page report reflected the concerns among Seoul policymakers about the hawkish stance towards the North by the U.S. administration, analysts say. The South Korean government has been constrained in speaking against the U.S. economic sanctions, but expressed grave concerns about their impact on the already troubled communist economy. They fear a sudden collapse of the North Korean economy would impose a huge financial burden on South Korea. The BOK has been closely watching the latest development of the North Korean economy and has updated its contingency plans, which would be implemented to stabilize the finance and economy of the unified Koreas, BOK officials say. Bilateral trade between North Korea and China between 2000 and 2004 expanded more than 30 percent annually, according to the think tank's report. It accounted for 39 percent of the North's total trading in 2004. The increasing bilateral trading volume for the period took up 77 percent of the rise in the nation's overall trading. China has been a dominant contributor to North Korean economic growth by adding 3.5 percentage points to the annual economic growth. "Without additional growth in bilateral trading, North Korea would be more likely to post a negative growth," said Lee. Angered by U.S. financial sanctions, North Korea has refused to return to the six-party nuclear talks unless the United States lifts the sanctions imposed over the communist state's alleged illicit activities such as counterfeiting and money laundering activities. President George W. Bush said that the United States would not compromise on the financial sanctions to resolve the nuclear stand-off. In a related development, Japan said it could consider sanctions against North Korea. ***************************************************************** 28 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: A Widening Rift Between Seoul and Washington Editorials/Columns Updated Feb.13,2006 22:09 KST South Korea apparently sat on information from the U.S. that US$140,000 in counterfeit dollars found in Seoul¡¯s Namdaemun market last year was produced by North Korea. Last month, a U.S. Treasury team who visited South Korea showed Korean officials so-called ¡°supernotes¡± it says North Korea made in 2001 and 2003. Yet the National Intelligence Service reported to the National Assembly that North Korea produced and circulated counterfeit U.S. dollars until 1998 but it has no knowledge that the North has been doing so since. In other words, Washington and Seoul disagree; in this case, one side is either lying or thinks the other is. The bilateral relationship between the so-called allies is unraveling, and now the two can barely agree on basic facts or trust that evidence the other produces is authentic. This is not the first time we have seen the two allies go their separate ways. The recent conflicting statements from the Foreign Ministry and the U.S. Embassy over what the Treasury team said were truly ugly. When the Embassy released a statement saying the Treasury team asked Korea to cooperate in financially isolating the North, the ministry said the statement ¡°does not accurately reflect what actually happened since it exaggerates some of the discussions that took place.¡± The immediate reason for the estrangement lies in different views about North Korea¡¯s counterfeiting of dollars. For the U.S., it is a criminal activity it has to take action against; for South Korea it is just an obstacle to resuming six-way nuclear talks. But the issue is by no means wholly separate from North Korea¡¯s nuclear ambitions. At least from now on, Seoul must urge North Korea publicly to give up its illegal activities around the world and make it clear that Pyongyang can profit more from dismantling its nuclear program than from producing fake U.S. dollars. ***************************************************************** 29 UPI: Analysis: N. Korea's reliance on China United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 2/13/2006 9:47:00 AM -0500 By JONG-HEON LEE UPI Correspondent SEOUL, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- U.S.-led financial sanctions against North Korea can hardly bear fruit without China's participation and will only make the closed economy further depend on its robust neighbor, South Korean officials said Monday. North Korea has been increasingly dependent on China for its economic survival, which could weaken inter-Korean cooperation, the central Bank of Korea said in a report. The North's trade with another major partner, Japan, has consistently diminished, further deepening Pyongyang's economic reliance on China, the BOK report added. Two-way trade between North Korea and China has been rising by an average 30 percent annually since 2000, boosting North Korea's economic growth by 3.5 percentage points every year, the bank said. According to South Korea's trade body, the Korea International Trade Association, North Korea's trade with China increased 14.8 percent to $1.58 billion last year. That figure accounts for some 50 percent of North Korea's total trade volume. The North's trade with China was $1.39 billion in 2004, or 48.5 percent of its total 2004 trade volume, up 42.8 percent from a year earlier when it posted $1.02 billion, according to officials in Seoul. North Korea's exports to China last year consisted mainly of coal and iron ore. The North's imports from China outpaced the growth of its exports, widening its trade deficit with the world's most populous country to a record $1.08 billion last year. "Some 80 percent of items appearing in North Korea's markets are from China," said Lee Young-hoon, an economist at the BOK-run Institute for Monetary and Economic Research. South Korean officials believe China provides between 70 and 90 percent of North Korea's oil and more than one-third of its imports and food aid. The sharp increase in bilateral trade between the two communist neighbors is the result of North Korea's lower production capacity and the cheap price of Chinese goods, said Lee, a main researcher for the BOK report. "The North Korean economy would have posted minus growth if it had not been for its rapidly growing trade with China," he said. The North Korean economy had shrunk for a decade before swinging into positive growth in 1999 when its gross national product surged 6.2 percent. It grew 1.3 percent in 2000, 3.7 percent in 2001, 1.2 percent in 2002, 1.8 percent in 2003, and 2.2 percent in 2004. Seoul's Unification Minister predicts the North Korean economy will post economic growth for last year on the back of industry and agriculture, saying the country's grain production rose 5.3 percent to 4.54 million tons in 2005. China's economic aid and investment in North Korea is rapidly growing, paving the way for the Red Capitalists' race to exploit developing the impoverished North, officials say. North Korea and China recently agreed to the joint exploitation of offshore oil fields. Chinese oil authorities said in October that they had found new oil reserves in Bohai Bay, which lies between North Korea and China, and assume the reserve will reach up to 5 billion barrels. North Korea said in 1997 that it had found oil reserves of around 5 to 40 billion barrels in the offshore area. The BOK said North Korea's economic reliance on China would deepen in the future due to China's fast economic growth and the North's move to induce more market elements. In contrast, North Korea's trade with Japan, its third-largest partner after South Korea, has steadily decreased in recent years. Bilateral trade posted $190 million last year, marking the lowest level since 1977, according to the KITA. The North's exports to Japan amounted to $130 million in 2005, while its imports from Japan totaled $60 million. The trade body attributed the fall to a boycott of North Korean goods by the Japanese and to Tokyo's economic sanctions against the North, including its restrictions on North Korean ships calling at Japanese ports. South Korean analysts also said the North's deepening economic ties with China would hinder possible U.S.-led financial sanctions from operating effectively. The U.S. has begun imposing economic sanctions on North Korea to punish its financial illegalities and is considering expanding them to force the defiant country to give up its nuclear weapons program. "Considering North Korea's economic reliance on China, U.S.-led sanctions without Beijing's participation can hardly bear fruits and would only lead to North Korea's [increased] dependence on China," Lee said. © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 30 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Environmental assault continues Today: February 13, 2006 at 8:52:35 PST Bush's budget proposes sweeping cuts to the nation's parks, conservation programs President Bush's proposed budget slashes water and land conservation grants to state and local governments by 40 percent, chops funding from the Environmental Protection Agency's network of libraries for scientists and cuts more money from an already struggling National Park Service. While slicing the government's environmental programs to ribbons, Bush is proposing to increase by $10 million - to $322 million - the fund for "cooperative conservation" programs, which encourage private landowners to protect endangered species, conserve wildlife habitats and do the other conservation projects that historically are done by the government. Sen. James Jeffords, an independent from Vermont, said the proposed cuts show that the environment isn't a Bush administration priority. That's like saying Osama bin Laden isn't a Yankees fan. The Bush administration has been relentless in its quest to drill for questionable amounts of oil in the Arctic National Wildife Refuge, has eased air pollution restrictions on industry and stubbornly refuses to accept responsibility for the United States' role in creating a quarter of the globe's greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Now, Bush wants to spend just $85 million in 2007 on federal Land and Water Conservation Fund grants that are used to create and preserve nonfederal parks, forest land and wildlife refuges. That's 40 percent less than the $148 million the fund received last year and a fraction of the $900 million Bush promised the fund early in his presidency, the Associated Press reports. Bush's plan also proposes lopping $89 million from the National Park Service's $2.6 billion budget, continuing a four-year string of cuts to park budgets that has forced the service to sell corporate ad space on its facilities. And the EPA stands to lose all but $500,000 of the $2.5 million it spends annually to maintain a national network of libraries where researchers can review the agency's enormous store of documents and environmental studies. This continuing assault on the nation's environment is a tragedy. The Bush administration won't be satisfied until private interests have picked America clean, from sea to shining sea. All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 31 Daily Times: EDITORIAL: Dilemmas of US-India nuclear deal February 14, 2006 As President George Bush prepares to visit India and Pakistan in March, negotiations between India and the United States over last July’s nuclear deal have entered a very sensitive stage. Reports suggest that, among other technicalities, both sides are trying to decide how to separate civilian and military nuclear facilities. The boundary between the civilian and military sides of the Indian nuclear establishment is hazy. This is expected because India has developed a weapons capability clandestinely. However, the July 17, 2005, deal requires India to declare its civilian nuclear facilities in order to be able to become eligible for cooperation with the US on nuclear energy and other technical know-how. The Indians have been reluctant to clearly demarcate the two sides of the nuclear establishment because they feel that some of the stipulations of the accord could constrain India’s development of its nuclear capabilities, particularly its weapon development programme. This is why the US scoffed at the first list of civilian nuclear facilities India gave the US in December because the list was too sketchy and short. The US also insisted that India put its fast breeder reactors under IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards. The US under secretary of state for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, who visited India in January to facilitate the deal ahead of Mr Bush’s India visit, expressed optimism over the deal but nonetheless pointed out that India would have to do more to get the deal through the US Congress and the Nuclear Suppliers Group. So enmeshed are the two sides of the programme that India is finding it hard to separate them. Reports emerging from India state that this is because India’s programme combines nuclear power generation with weapons development. The weapons-grade plutonium which India uses for its weapons stockpile is extracted from spent fuel from a reactor that was built to develop India’s nuclear power capacity. In the middle of all this, the chief of India’s Department of Atomic Energy, Anil Kakodar, has publicly come on-line against any decision by India to agree to international monitoring of its fast breeder reactors. Mr Kakodar argues that the move would ‘shackle’ India’s scientists and could leave India dependent on imported uranium. This would have a negative impact on the country’s weapons programme. Here’s the dilemma for India: on one hand the civil nuclear deal gives legitimacy to India as a nuclear weapon state — a status that India has been desperately seeking since its May 1998 tests — on the other it constrains the development of its nuclear establishment. The rough patch is that India has to decide to either use the deal to get the space it wants for its nuclear weapon status outside the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or stay out of the legitimacy business and hope to keep developing its nuclear potential without technology transfers and know-how. It is not an easy decision. The deal has already entered choppy waters in the US Congress and it is unlikely to be finalised during Mr Bush’s India visit. Already, it has cost India its relations with Iran. The fate of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline also hangs in the balance. However, the removal of Mani Shankar Aiyar as petroleum minister shows that India is tilting towards the US on the issue of Iran. This was also clear from New Delhi’s decision earlier this month to vote for the resolution moved in the IAEA to report Iran to the UNSC. But as things stand, India is at a crossroads on the nuclear deal. The lesson for Pakistan, which has been trying to get the US to cut a similar deal with it, is to see how the situation pans out for India and what quid pro quo the US expects to extract from New Delhi. It does not make much sense for us to try to get everything that India wants. As the old cliché goes: all that glitters is not gold. * SECOND EDITORIAL: US-Iran standoff dangerous A UK newspaper has reported that the United States is finalising plans to attack Iran to take out that country’s nuclear assets if Tehran cannot be dissuaded from taking the nuclear weapons route. The US is also hoping that it would have the support of a large majority of world states in case the situation deteriorates to the point where the use of force becomes important. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a US TV channel that a “tremendous coalition” of nations, while accepting that Iran has a right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy, agrees with the US that Iran must not have access to technologies that can help it make a nuclear bomb. This is ominous. While reports, for sometime, have suggested that the option to use force remains on the table, US experts themselves have expressed scepticism regarding the efficacy of such a course. Now we seem to be moving once again to the possibility of use of force to which US Vice President Dick Cheney had pointed two years ago. The recent move in the IAEA to report Iran to the UNSC has only made Tehran more defiant. Iran has not only stopped snap monitoring of its facilities under the Additional Protocol but has also indicated that if it were pushed any further it would withdraw from the NPT. The standoff has created a dangerous situation. Russia’s proposal that it could enrich uranium for Iran in Russia has also nearly fallen by the wayside because even as the proposal was being discussed the US and the Euro-3 — Britain, France and Germany — took a hard line on the issue. Pakistan’s stance that the world should seek a diplomatic solution to the crisis is well articulated. The only way out of the current logjam is to allow Russia to talk to Iran. Moscow could try and get Tehran’s nod for its proposal. * Daily Times - All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 32 IHT: Vaunted U.S.-India nuclear deal begins to fall apart - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune Brahma Chellaney MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2006 NEW DELHI With international attention focused on Iran's renegade nuclear program, a much-trumpeted nuclear deal that was to showcase the emerging global strategic partnership between the United States and India has begun to unravel virtually unnoticed. Unless the United States rolls back its demands, it is almost certain that no formal nuclear agreement will be ready for signature when President George W. Bush arrives in New Delhi on March 1. A barren U.S. presidential visit would ensure a slow death for the accord. That accord represented a statement of intent to promote civil nuclear-energy cooperation. Since it was announced last July, intense negotiations on a formal agreement have run into major hurdles over U.S. efforts to shift the goalpost, triggering an Indian backlash. The present and former chiefs of the Indian nuclear program have vented their fury in public against the U.S. negotiating goals. The concern in Washington over the July deal coming loose has found expression in contradictory ways - first an undiplomatic outburst by the U.S. ambassador to India that resulted in him being summoned to the Indian foreign office for an admonition, and then the dangling of a new carrot. To salvage the deal, the Bush administration is offering to include India in its proposed global energy partnership program that is to supply countries with reactor fuel and take back the spent fuel afterward to prevent its use weaponry. The dubious plan is to rely on a technology that at present remains prone to catching fire and is not cost-effective. The U.S. Congress, moreover, is unlikely to change the law to allow the dumping of foreign-generated nuclear waste. In any case, the invitation to India is contingent upon successful negotiations to implement last July's accord. Those negotiations, however, have been caught up in battles over U.S. demands that India bring much of its autonomous nuclear program under permanent international inspections. New Delhi "reciprocally" agreed in July to accept a series of legally binding obligations that include the civil-military separation of its nuclear program. But no sooner had the accord had been signed than Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns repudiated the principle of reciprocity, declaring the accord "will have to be implemented by the Indian government and then we will have to seek these changes from the Congress." While the accord merely states that India will begin "identifying and separating civilian and military nuclear facilities and programs in a phased manner," Washington has added specific conditionality - that such a separation plan be "credible," "transparent" and "defensible." Put simply, America has set itself up as the arbiter to whom India is answerable. In contrast, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has assured India's Parliament that, "It will be an autonomous Indian decision as to what is 'civilian' and what is 'military."' Washington has also sought to renege on the accord's central plank - that India would "assume the same responsibilities and practices and acquire the same benefits and advantages as other leading countries with advanced nuclear technology." Washington now insists India cannot pursue the same "practices" as the five established nuclear powers, which offer nuclear materials and facilities for International Atomic Energy Agency inspections in return for token inspections by the agency. U.S. negotiators are also insisting on a watertight civil-military separation in India, contrary to the practice in the other nuclear powers, most of which do not even pretend to have carried out any such segregation. Furthermore, by seeking to apply international inspections to the Indian uranium-enrichment and beryllium facilities and to the dual-purpose fast-breeder program, U.S. negotiators are seeking to constrict India's nuclear military capability before New Delhi has built a credible minimal deterrent against its main rival, China. America's goalpost-shifting approach shows it will accept India at most as a second-class nuclear power. India is unlikely to countenance that. The only way the deadlock can be broken is through political intervention at the highest level. And by a return to the principles enshrined in last July's accord. (Brahma Chellaney is a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi.) Herald Tribune All rights reserved [IHT] ***************************************************************** 33 AFP: Asian nations strategize on nuclear proliferation Sun Feb 12, 10:30 PM ET TOKYO (AFP) - Fifteen Asia-Pacific nations including the United States are holding a strategy session on how to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons amid growing concern over North Korea" /> North Koreaand Iran" /> Iran. The Tokyo talks aim in part "to share understanding on proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by North Korea and Iran, which is a significant concern of the international community," a Japanese foreign ministry statement said. Nuclear experts and diplomats from the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations states, Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and the United States are participating in the closed-door one-day talks. The talks come two days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again raised the stakes in his nuclear drive, threatening that the Islamic regime could quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. North Korea pulled out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 and is pressing the United States to drop financial sanctions as a condition to return to six-nation talks on ending its nuclear program. The Tokyo meeting is the third sitting of the so-called Asian Senior-level Talks on Non-Proliferation, a Japanese initiative launched in 2003 to discuss efforts against weapons of mass destruction. The diplomats will also talk about proposals to give the International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agencymore teeth and to stop the spread of ballistic missiles under the so-called Hague Code of Conduct. The Asian nuclear talks come ahead of a two-day international meeting in Tokyo on efforts to curb biological weapons. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 34 The Telegraph: No deal yet, but nuclear fight rages Calcutta : Nation Monday, February 13, 2006 K.P. NAYAR Washington, Feb. 12: Contrary to public perception, India did not at any stage offer to put its fast-breeder programme on the civilian nuclear list to be separated from military ones in order to move forward on the Indo-US nuclear deal. Nor did the Americans ask for it. Again, contrary to public perception, foreign secretary Shyam Saran did not submit to the Americans in December 2005 any list in black and white of facilities that would be exclusively used for civilian purposes. All he did at his meetings with the US under-secretary for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, was to discuss the broad parameters and yardsticks which would govern the separation of India’s civilian and military nuclear facilities, according to sources here and in New Delhi who are privy to their dialogue. But the shadow-boxing over the nuclear deal between the Prime Minister’s Office and the ministry of external affairs on the one hand and the country’s nuclear establishment and the scientific community on the other has already ensured that the fast- breeder programme will now not be put on the civilian list. With his clever strategy of going public on an issue that was not yet on the table, Anil Kakodkar, the secretary of the department of atomic energy, has ensured that fast-breeders will now remain part of the country’s military nuclear programme. The nuclear establishment currently has an impressive eight reactors simultaneously under construction. When all its fast-breeders become fully operational by the end of this decade, significant amounts of weapons-grade plutonium for making more and advanced atomic bombs will become available. The nuclear deal, agreed between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and American President George W. Bush in July last year, is like dinner guests fighting over food that is nowhere on the table. It is unique in that it is an agreement, which has no text, no framework, no signatures, and, as of now, no convergence of views between governments which are supposedly parties to it. T.P. Sreenivasan, who was until recently India’s permanent representative to UN organisations in Vienna, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says that in his 37 years as a diplomat, he has seen “no other bilateral agreement (that) has been the subject of so much analysis before it came into effect”. He told a group of think tanks in Washington recently that “there is no consensus” on it within the Indian establishment because the “deal was still in a blueprint when it was revealed”. Sreenivasan, who was at the Indian embassy in Moscow in the early years of implementation of the Indo-Soviet friendship Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation, says the treaty may not have come about if Indira Gandhi and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had publicly announced their intent and then proceeded to negotiate it as Singh and Bush are doing now. Last July’s joint statement by the Prime Minister and the US President required India, among other things, to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities and programmes, file a declaration regarding its civilian facilities with the IAEA, voluntarily place its civilian nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards and sign an additional protocol with the IAEA with respect to civilian nuclear facilities. None of these has happened. On Washington’s part, Bush said India “should acquire the same benefits and advantages” as other states with advanced nuclear technology, that he would promote “full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India” and seek agreement from the US Congress to adjust American laws and policies and work with America’s friends and allies to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India. None of these has happened either, making the agreement a mirage so far which is somewhat disproportionately exercising both its critics and supporters in India. Copyright © 2006 The Telegraph. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 35 IRNA: EU's Afghan envoy calls for resolution of nuclear row through dialogue - Kabul, Feb 14, IRNA Iran-EU-Nuclear EU's envoy to Afghanistan Francis Vendrel called for resolution of Iran's peaceful nuclear program through dialogue. Speaking to IRNA at the Iranian embassy in Kabul, he added that the issue of Iran's nuclear program is complicated and I hope the row is settled through peaceful means. Iran is an independent country with wide-ranging relations with the international community and this is the reason for my presence in the embassy, he added. The ceremonies were held at the Iranian embassy to commemorate the 27th year of the victory of the Islamic revolution. Several Afghan's scientific, cultural and political dignitaries, including heads of Afghanistan's Senate and National Council attended the ceremonies. Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi here Sunday reiterated Iran's commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Asefi made the statement while addressing domestic and foreign reporters at his weekly press conference. "What is important to Iran is that we cannot accept the treaty to be used as a tool for political purposes," the spokesman said. He added Iran believes it is acting on the basis of its responsibilities within the frameworks of the article of association of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Safeguards. "The world, however, should not act in a way that gives the impression that the NPT and the IAEA are being dealt with politically," he said. ***************************************************************** 36 Sweden Aims For Oil Free Economy Without More Nuke Reactors Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 22:27:32 -0500 http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=5786&method=full Sweden aims for oil-free economy BBCNews.com, Feb. 8, 2006 Sweden says it aims to completely wean itself off oil within 15 years - without building new nuclear plants. The attempt is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, car manufacturers, farmers and others. The country aims to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change damages economies and growing oil scarcity leads to price rises. According to the Guardian newspaper, a Swedish minister said oil dependency could be broken by 2020. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is worried that oil supplies are peaking, shortly to dwindle, and that high oil prices could cause global economic recession. "Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, Sweden's minister of sustainable development. "There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline." The Scandinavian country, which was hard hit by oil price rises in the 1970s, now gets the majority of its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power. In 2003, 26% of all energy consumed came from renewables, compared with an EU average of 6%. The oil committee is to report to parliament in several months. Swedish energy ministry officials said they expected the panel to recommend further development of biofuels derived from its substantial forests. It was also expected to expand other renewable energies such as wind and wave power. ***************************************************************** 37 Deseret News: Nuclear power is safe and clean [deseretnews.com] Monday, February 13, 2006 By Mike Noel and Brad Daw nuclear energy is the only non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand. . . . There is now a great deal of scientific evidence showing nuclear power to be an environmentally sound and safe choice. — Patrick Moore, Ph.D., co-founder Greenpeace, testimony to the U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on Energy and Resources, April 28, 2005. The "My View" column by Eileen McCabe-Olsen and Pete Litster (Feb. 8) accusing Mike Noel of being wrong about the safety of nuclear power generation is easily refuted by the facts in the literature. When one examines the current available means for generating electricity, nuclear power plants are not only clean and safe, they are also economic. This includes the extraction of the uranium ore all the way through decommissioning the plant and disposing of the waste. The amendment to HB46 (made by Brad Daw and incorrectly attributed to me) was primarily about including nuclear power as a viable part of the energy policy of Utah, rather than the immediate construction of a nuclear power plant. The changing, volatile, global energy marketplace drives the need for re-evaluation and consideration of nuclear energy. Utah's dependence on coal-fired generation (94 percent of electricity in the state) suggests diversification may be prudent. Including nuclear plants in the energy portfolio of the power producers will reduce emissions/unit of power generated over the entire state-wide fleet. In evaluating the potential for nuclear power generation in Utah the following issues and facts should be considered: Safety: Since 1969, with more than 3,000 operational years of nuclear power generation in this country, neither a single U.S. worker nor a member of the U.S. public has ever died as a result of exposure to radiation due to a nuclear reactor incident. This includes the period encompassing the Three Mile Island nuclear accident — the most serious U.S. nuclear accident ever. The "defense in depth" design philosophy common to U.S., European and Asian plants has led to the outstanding nuclear safety record of the industry. Clean: nuclear power generates far less greenhouse gas over its entire life cycle, including mining and enriching nuclear fuel, than any other currently available electricity source except wind power. Even solar power generates more greenhouse gases over its life cycle than does nuclear power. Enrichment: nuclear fuel enrichment is performed by private firms, not at "federal facilities" and does not require the use of fossil fuel plants. Enrichment could be performed using power from nuclear plants, thus reducing this component of greenhouse gas production. Transportation: Electricity is increasingly being used to power the transportation sector. The introduction of the "plug-in hybrid" automobile and magnetically levitated (MagLev) trains could become key components of our future people movers. Electricity from nuclear, renewable sources, and even clean coal, will likely be required to power these transport technologies as well as to generate the hydrogen that will ultimately allow the introduction of fuel cell technology into automobiles. These are potentially vital reasons for expanded application of nuclear power, since over the next decade, the production of global oil is likely to peak, heralding the eventual depletion of petroleum and the end of petroleum as the global fuel for transportation. Construction time: New nuclear power plants are expected to take about seven not 10 years to construct. Taiwan and Japan are presently leading the way. Economics: Even though it may cost billions of dollars to construct nuclear power plants, investors will not loan the capital to build a single nuclear plant if there is not a reasonable chance of profitable return on investment. nuclear power plants compete favorably with alternative energy sources, including renewables and clean coal, to produce the cheapest electricity on a kilowatt hour basis, taking all costs into account, including decommissioning and waste storage costs. Federal incentives may increase the profitability. If nuclear power cannot stand up to scrutiny from all stakeholders including policymakers, it will not be used as an energy resource in Utah. By prematurely excluding it from the roster of energy sources available to us, we may lose a potentially clean, safe and economically viable renewable energy resource that could keep the lights burning in Utah for hundreds of years into the future. We would hope that Ms. McCabe-Olsen and Mr. Litster would join us and the people of Utah in an effort to reconsider the prudence of making nuclear power a component of an appropriately balanced, clean and safe, Utah electrical generation portfolio. Mike Noel and Brad Daw are Utah state representatives. © 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company [ ***************************************************************** 38 APP.COM: Safety upgrades made after TMI | Asbury Park Press Online Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 02/13/06 BY TODD B. BATES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER Following the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident in 1979, in which small amounts of radiation were released into the environment after a partial meltdown, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission took steps to improve nuclear plant safety. And in 1988, the NRC asked all nuclear plants to examine the risks of severe accidents, according to an NRC memo. As a result of a 1992 Oyster Creek study, a number of upgrades were identified to reduce the chances of damage to the plant reactor's core or improve the performance of its radiation containment system, according to NRC officials. The NRC staff had previously encouraged Oyster Creek and the owners of similar reactors to install a special "hardened vent" pipe in the containment area to relieve high pressures that would develop in the event of an accident. The hardened vent would allow Oyster Creek's operators to send radiation into the air through the plant's 371-foot-high stack as a last resort to preserve the containment system's integrity, according to NRC officials. The vent, along with other plant and industry initiatives, has reduced the risk of containment system failure, according to Peter C. Resler, manager of nuclear communications for Exelon, which owns Oyster Creek operator AmerGen Energy Co. Assuming core damage is prevented during an accident, all but a small fraction of the radiation released would be trapped by the water in a containment system called the torus pool before possibly being vented to the environment, according to the NRC. But a few utilities said their studies indicated that installing a vent "does not significantly impact risk and therefore is only of marginal benefit," according to a 1997 federal study. And in a 1996 memo, an NRC official said most utilities consider venting, after the core has been damaged, to be a last resort to keep the containment from failing because venting can result in a "significant" radioactive release. "Operational changes" Most of the changes in the last 20 years to reduce the risks of radiation releases have involved improved training for plant operators, said Michael L. Corradini, professor and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Wisconsin Institute of Nuclear Systems, a nuclear research center. And better training to handle emergencies has significantly reduced the risk of containment failure, said Corradini, a mechanical and nuclear engineer. "They're not making a lot of physical changes because these plants were pretty overdesigned to begin with," he said. "They're making operational changes." However, a 2004 study by Brookhaven National Laboratory for the NRC suggests that the chances of containment failure if the reactor vessel is breached at General Electric Mark I plants are 1 percent to 100 percent. Oyster Creek has a Mark I containment system, and it has a 74 percent chance of failing to prevent a radiation release during a core damage accident, according to plant and NRC officials. The likelihood of any Mark I containment failing depends on the pressure in the reactor vessel and whether water is available to cool radioactive debris on the floor of the drywell (part of the containment), the Brookhaven study stated. Under some scenarios, a Mark I containment has a 100 percent chance of failing if hydrogen inside the unit ignites, according to the study and NRC information. Todd B. Bates: (732) 643-4237 or tbates@app.com [E-mail] Copyright © 2006 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 39 APP.COM: Can a 40-year life be extended to 60? | Asbury Park Press Online Monday, February 13, 2006 Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 02/13/06 BY TODD B. BATES, NICHOLAS CLUNN AND KIRK MOORE STAFF WRITERS Stress. Fatigue. Worn-out parts. Like the human body, a nuclear power plant ages, undergoing wear and tear over time. And a key question facing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is whether the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Lacey can safely provide power for 20 years after its current license expires in 2009. At issue is whether a plant with components manufactured for a 40-year lifetime can withstand the rigors of 60 years of service, according to state Department of Environmental Protection officials. The issue is critical. "A substantial radiological release would have a devastating impact on the environment and surrounding communities," said former DEP Commissioner Bradley M. Campbell, adding that he thinks the DEP would oppose extending the license to 2029 at this point. Campbell, who oversaw much of the DEP's review of Oyster Creek's license renewal application, left office Jan. 17. Running a nuclear plant well beyond 40 years is "new territory for nuclear engineers," Campbell said. It will "require a thorough and very public review process" by the NRC if questions about safety are to be answered. But Dennis Zannoni, a supervising nuclear engineer in the DEP, said improvements at the plant have made it "safer than you would think." The DEP's concerns may not be heard anytime soon by the NRC. In December, the NRC staff recommended that the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, a hearing panel for the NRC, not hold a hearing on the DEP's request for a public hearing on several safety issues, saying they are outside the scope of the relicensing process. For a license renewal, the NRC is concerned with how aging in a plant's systems, structures and components will be monitored and managed, as well as its potential environmental impact. The plant's aging process The 652-ton alloy reactor pressure vessel, which holds about 211,000 pounds of nuclear fuel, was made with too much copper. Copper is now known to promote metal embrittlement from constant neutron bombardment. Embrittlement weakens metal over time. Some welds made when the vessel was built cannot be inspected. But Barry Elliot, senior materials engineer in the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, said looking at all welds is not necessary. Inspectors can survey the welds that can be accessed to gauge how all of the welds are aging. A 1985 inspection showed that the vessel was not aging prematurely, and AmerGen Energy Co., which operates the plant, said it can closely monitor the reactor through 2029. But DEP officials are skeptical. The agency contends that if the reactor runs past 2009, some vessel components will eventually exceed their designed "metal fatigue" limits. The NRC and AmerGen Energy Co., which operates the plant, say the original limits can be increased based on a newer engineering code. But the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, a quasi-judicial hearing panel for the NRC, said it appears that until the original limits are revised, they remain in effect. Oyster Creek would be the first large-scale commercial reactor in the country to operate for more than 40 years if the NRC grants a 20-year license extension beyond April 2009. DEP officials want assurances that Oyster Creek can be operated safely until 2029. "The fundamental question is whether this plant can be made safe beyond its original design life, and there are a series of technical concerns that need (to) be fully addressed before that question can be answered," Campbell said. Some local residents also are concerned. Jennifer Styler, a 36-year-old Lacey resident with a 4-year-old daughter, Savannah, said she thinks "the plant's a little old." "I just don't feel that it's very safe," Styler said. Peter C. Resler, manager of nuclear communications for Exelon, which owns AmerGen, said Oyster Creek is not the same as when it was built. With more than $1.2 billion in improvements since 1969, "we have replaced major components over the years," Resler said. "We continue to upgrade equipment to modern technology, and it meets the same standards that all plants meet." The company must prove to the NRC that it has the proper programs to "continually monitor" plant equipment and replace equipment as required, he said. "We fully believe that we can continue operating the plant safely for an additional 20 years," he said. Scrutiny of reactor vessel A key concern of DEP officials is Oyster Creek's steel reactor pressure vessel, which contains nuclear fuel and other components. In a boiling water reactor, such as Oyster Creek's, water is turned to steam that is used to drive turbines that generate electricity. "The reactor vessel is rather unique in that if it were to fail, all bets are off," according to Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and director of the Nuclear Safety Project in the nonprofit watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists. "It has no backups. There's no assurance that a meltdown can be averted." The Oyster Creek reactor vessel was to be designed to have a "useful life of forty (40) years under operating conditions specified by the buyer," according to a 1964 document from General Electric, which manufactured the reactor. DEP officials contend that Oyster Creek's license renewal application would result in a 25 percent increase in allowable "metal fatigue" over 60 years, "significantly reducing the margin of safety," according to a DEP petition seeking a federal hearing. Both the NRC staff and AmerGen have rejected the petition, which also addresses other DEP concerns about a license extension. Roger F. Reedy, president of Reedy Engineering, a nuclear engineering consulting firm in Campbell, Calif., said based on GE specifications, he was responsible for designing the Oyster Creek reactor vessel and containment. Reedy said he's "fully in favor" of a higher fatigue factor for the Oyster Creek vessel, and noted that he has chaired the American Society of Mechanical Engineers panel that writes the rules for nuclear reactor and containment vessels. The fatigue factor is "merely a design tool," Reedy said. It takes into account fatigue from stress and from the number of heating and cooling cycles and other operating events a plant is projected to undergo, according to AmerGen's application. GE designed the plant with an "ultra-conservative" factor, and increasing it is "really a no-brainer because all the plants that we have are designed" with a higher factor, which is also very conservative, Reedy said. "The secret" isn't the fatigue factor, he said. "The secret is to keep inspecting these plants so the areas that might be subject to cracking are found as soon as you can, and the programs we have now have been very efficient in doing that." Lochbaum, of the Union for Concerned Scientists, said, "In our view, there's nothing magic about 40" years for the life of a nuclear power plant. "If you have a well-maintained plant, then you can operate beyond 40 with no appreciable reduction in safety margins," said Lochbaum, who worked in nuclear power plants for 17 years. "It really depends on how well you maintain the plant as to how well or safe you'll be at 40, 50, 60 years," he said. "It depends on how well you do your homework as to whether you'll be able to have the safety margins (at 60 years). We'll see if you can do that." But it becomes harder year after year because plant components begin wearing out, he said. Todd B. Bates: (732) 643-4237 or tbates@app.com; Nicholas Clunn: 609-978-4597 or nclunn@app.com; Kirk Moore: (732) 557-5728 or kmoore@app.com ***************************************************************** 40 APP.COM: Utility's credibility under fire | Asbury Park Press Online Posted by the Asbury Park Presson 02/13/06 BY JEAN MIKLE TOMS RIVER BUREAU TOMS RIVER — To say that United Water Toms River has a credibility problem could be understating the case. The company, already under fire from Dover Township officials for not telling the township about the severity of ongoing state water allocation issues, disclosed Feb. 8 that it had failed to notify both the public and the state Department of Environmental Protection about seven instances of elevated radiation levels found during routine testing in 2005. The elevated radiation was found in a Whitesville Road well and at two points of entry into the system — in Berkeley and in the Parkway well field in Dover. But United officials were quick to point out that the water actually distributed to customers met or exceeded all state and federal standards, including those for radiation. The Whitesville Road well has been taken off line until it can be fitted with a treatment system. Radiation levels in both the Berkeley and Parkway points of entry were below state standards in testing conducted in November. Those reassurances have not placated township officials or members of the public who have criticized United Water repeatedly over the past five days. "This is inexcusable," Township Council President Gregory P. McGuckin said. "Enough is enough. This isn't "fool me once' or "fool me twice.' This is ridiculous." Mayor Paul C. Brush shared McGuckin's concerns. "Regardless of who dropped the ball at the water company, the water company is responsible," Brush said. "We can't tolerate this kind of behavior from the water company." Linda L. Gillick, who chairs the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, said that, once again, residents were not able to make their own decisions about whether or not to drink the water because they were not told about the elevated radiation levels. "It is the company's responsibility to have reported this to the public, and to have taken action immediately," Gillick said. The elevated radiation levels are the result of decay of radium in ground water and can be found in shallow aquifers throughout southern New Jersey, according to the DEP. State law requires the water company to notify the DEP within 48 hours of the discovery of an elevated level of radiation and to notify the public within 30 days. The water company's testing first found elevated radiation levels in early May. The company could be fined by the DEP. McGuckin said the council is "reviewing the options that are available to us," which could include filing a petition with the state Board of Public Utilities, a tactic taken in 1997 by the Township Committee. In August 1997, the committee petitioned the BPU, charging the water company had failed to provide an adequate and safe drinking water supply for the township. The township's petition asked the BPU to compel the water company to drill more wells and build more storage tanks. That portion of the petition was resolved in 1999 with a settlement between the township and United Water. United agreed to drill three more wells by 2002 and add storage facilities. Dover resident Kim Pascarella, a member of the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, said last week's events illustrate the need for more regulation of public utilities like United Water. "For this to happen, it shows we have to change the system of the way things are reported," Pascarella said. "If you can have this system that is the most scrutinized in the world, to have this slip through the cracks the way it has, it certainly is something that shows there is a need to make some changes." Pascarella was referring to the intensive monitoring of United's system, which began in 1996, the year elevated levels of some childhood cancers were discovered in Dover. The discovery led to a lengthy state and federal investigation into possible causes for the elevated rates of leukemia, as well as cancers of the brain and central nervous system. As part of that investigation, United Water's system was subjected to the most extensive testing ever conducted on a water system in New Jersey, and probably the United States, state and federal officials have said. Pascarella's call for a more extensive reporting requirement for water systems echoes McGuckin's recent request for more extensive reporting of water allocation issues. McGuckin wrote a Feb. 7 letter to Assemblymen David W. Wolfe and James W. Holzapfel, as well as state Sen. Andrew E. Ciesla, all R-Ocean, asking them to introduce measures that would require utilities including United Water to report monthly, quarterly and annually to local municipalities about their permitted state water allocation, whether they have exceeded it during the reporting time frame, and if they are seeking allocation increases. Dover officials have said they were caught off guard by the DEP's decision to prohibit new connections to United's system in early September, a move that has stopped almost all new construction in Dover and South Toms River, as well as in the Holiday City and Silver Ridge sections of Berkeley. Brush and council members said they were never informed by the DEP or the water company that United had exceeded its state water allocation permit in three of the past five years. United spokesman Richard Henning said company officials plan to attend Tuesday night's Township Council meeting to try to explain what happened and the steps United has taken to make sure the problem does not happen again. "Unfortunately, it doesn't take very long for a mistake to injure your credibility," Henning said. "And there is certainly no doubt here that we have some mountains to move to earn the trust of the community that we serve. Truthfully, that can only be done by providing people with a safe and reliable supply of water, because that's job one for us." in Berkeley and in the Parkway well field in Dover. But United officials were quick to point out that the water actually distributed to customers met or exceeded all state and federal standards, including those for radiation. The Whitesville Road well has been taken off line until it can be fitted with a treatment system. Radiation levels in both the Berkeley and Parkway points of entry were below state standards in testing conducted in November. Those reassurances have not placated township officials or members of the public who have criticized United Water repeatedly over the past five days. "This is inexcusable," Township Council President Gregory P. McGuckin said. "Enough is enough. This isn't "fool me once' or "fool me twice.' This is ridiculous." Mayor Paul C. Brush shared McGuckin's concerns. WHAT'S NEXT? United Water Toms River officials plan to attend Tuesday night's Dover Township Council meeting, at which the council is likely to discuss recent problems with the company. The meeting is at 6 p.m. at town hall, 33 Washington St. Copyright © 2006 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 41 APP.COM: Hard-to-inspect cables, pipes create problems | Asbury Park Press Online Monday, February 13, 2006 STAFF REPORT Key underground cables and leaking pipes, both of which are difficult to inspect, have been problematic for the Oyster Creek nuclear plant over the years, according to state officials. In 2003, a 4,160-volt power cable associated with an emergency diesel generator failed, forcing a plant shutdown, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Minimizing cable failures helps keep the risk of damage to the plant's core, which contains radioactive fuel, at an acceptable level, according to a state Department of Environmental Protection document. In 2004, the NRC issued a white safety finding for AmerGen Energy Co., the operator of Oyster Creek, that cited a failure to "take appropriate corrective actions to evaluate, inspect, test or replace" power cables similar to ones that failed in 2001 and 1996. A white finding is the second lowest on the NRC's four-part review scale. DEP officials have indicated they are concerned about underground pipes and cables at Oyster Creek. An AmerGen document said many pipes were replaced in 2004, and they plan to replace many others before April 2009. Faulty cables made before 1985 and which may come in contact with moisture were replaced in 2004 or are scheduled to be replaced this year, according to an AmerGen document. Copyright © 2006 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 42 APP.COM: Electric bills could rise if plant closes | Asbury Park Press Online Monday, February 13, 2006 BY TODD B. BATES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER If the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant closes in 2009 or sooner, homes won't go dark. But new power transmission lines in the region will likely be needed, and electric bills could rise, experts say. If the Lacey plant "went off-line tomorrow, it would have an impact . . . but lights are not going to go out," said Scott A. Weiner, director of Rutgers University's Center for Energy, Economic &Environmental Policy in New Brunswick. No one knows if electricity from new power plants or additional transmission lines would be more or less expensive than electricity generated at Oyster Creek, said Ray E. Dotter, a spokesman for PJM Interconnection in Pennsylvania. PJM coordinates the flow of electricity in New Jersey and 12 other states. "It depends on what the market conditions were and what kind of a contract could be negotiated," Dotter said. "Nobody can know what the price would be . . . until those contracts are actually negotiated." Still, wholesale electricity prices tend to be rising because the cost of the underlying fuels that generate power — natural gas, oil and coal — have been increasing, he said. And demand for electricity in New Jersey increases roughly 1.4 percent a year, according to an interim report of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Development of Wind Turbine Facilities in Coastal Waters. The average cost of producing electricity at the Oyster Creek plant in 2002 was 2.35 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with 1.9 cents for coal, 5.53 cents for natural gas and 7.96 cents for oil, according to an Oyster Creek economic benefits report. Last year through October, the production cost for electricity at the plant was 1.72 cents per kilowatt hour, according to Peter C. Resler, nuclear communications manager for Exelon, which owns plant operator AmerGen Energy Co. The higher production cost in 2002 was the result of the approximately $22 million refueling outage that took place then, according to Resler. Weiner said the cost of electricity from out of state is generally higher than the cost of power generated within New Jersey. Upgrades to regional transmission lines probably will be needed if the Oyster Creek plant is retired, according to a 2004 PJM study. The cost is expected to exceed $50 million, says the study, conducted for the state Board of Public Utilities. "There are transmission restraints into southern New Jersey," Resler said in an interview. If Oyster Creek had to close down or go off-line for an extended period, "you would definitely see the negative impacts in the high season in the summer," Resler said. Especially in southeastern parts of New Jersey, transmission congestion — particularly during the peak summer months — often has forced the use of costlier and less environmentally friendly energy sources, such as diesel-fueled generators, according to the blue ribbon panel report. Transmission congestion is when participants want to transmit electricity in a pattern the system cannot accommodate. On several occasions in New Jersey, such congestion has prevented the supply of electricity from meeting peak demand, resulting in brownouts (voltage reductions) and, in extreme circumstances, localized blackouts, the blue ribbon panel report says. The Oyster Creek plant outputs 636 megawatts, enough electricity for about 600,000 homes, and provides about 9 percent of the power produced in New Jersey. But the plant represents less than 1 percent of the power capacity in the 13-state PJM region, which also includes the District of Columbia. If cost-effective measures to conserve energy were implemented in New Jersey, the potential energy savings would be equivalent to the electricity generated by eight to 12 mid-sized (500 megawatt) power plants, according to a consultant's 2004 study done for Rutgers. But it would cost more than $5 billion between 2004 and 2020 to achieve such energy savings, the study says. Improving residential and commercial building energy codes and energy-efficiency standards for appliances also would be required, the blue ribbon panel report says. The possible loss of Oyster Creek is complicated by the potential shutdown of several other plants in southern and northeastern New Jersey. The Oyster Creek plant, which opened in 1969, wants the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to renew its operating license for 20 years beyond April 2009. PSEG Power wants to retire several older, nonnuclear plants in northeastern New Jersey, but PJM has identified the plants as necessary, according to Dotter, the PJM spokesman, and Neil Brown, PSEG Power spokesman. Meanwhile, Atlantic City Electric is attempting to auction the coal- and oil-fired B. L. England Generating Station in Cape May County and will close it by December 2007 if the auction is unsuccessful, said Betty Kennedy, a company spokeswoman. BPU spokesman Eric Hartsfield said "there is some concern" about the possibility of the B. L. England, Oyster Creek and northeastern N.J. plants closing within a few years of each other. In general, there are three options: build new power plants, add new transmission lines or try to control the demand for electricity, he said. The BPU proposes requiring that 20 percent of the electricity used in New Jersey, by 2020, come from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, up from the current requirement of 4 percent by 2008, according to BPU officials. Dotter, the PJM spokesman, said without the PSEG plants, "there would have to be significant upgrades to the (transmission) system or new plants built." "The amount of electricity that we all use grows annually," Dotter said, and some new power plants are being built. But "we're seeing a leveling off of new construction in PJM as a whole," he said. "There's a lot of power there, a lot more than is immediately needed, and that means prices are lower. That's not encouraging folks to invest in new power plants." There are no plans before federal regulators to build another nuclear plant in New Jersey. Solar, wind power on land or offshore and other alternate sources of energy cannot "entirely at this point in time" replace the Oyster Creek nuclear plant, said Hartsfield, the BPU spokesman. Meanwhile, PJM has projected that New Jersey will need more than 2,000 megawatts of additional power capacity by 2009 to "satisfy its ever-increasing demand for energy," according to the blue ribbon panel report. "This need is projected to be especially critical in the oceanfront counties that are experiencing above-average growth," the report says. "In addition, seasonal population growth has further increased summertime peak energy demand." This story includes material from previous Press stories. Todd B. Bates: (732) 643-4237 or tbates@app.com [E-mail] ***************************************************************** 43 APP.COM: Boiling water reactors: more troubling events | Asbury Park Press Online :Monday, February 13, 2006 STAFF REPORT Since 1991, nuclear power plants have produced more electricity with fewer safety incidents than in previous years, according to reports from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But older-style boiling water reactors, such as the General Electric reactor that powers the Oyster Creek Generating Station in Lacey, have seen a spike in so-called precursor events, or possible mishaps, that could cause an accident, the NRC reported. Nuclear power generators have boosted their collective output from 610 billion kilowatt hours in 1993 to 789 billion in 2004, according to the NRC. (One kilowatt hour is enough electricity to run a 100-watt light bulb for 10 hours.) Nuclear power accounts for about 20 percent of the United States' electrical generation. Most power comes from natural gas and coal-fired power plants. No new nuclear plants have gone on line since 1996, but the industry managed to raise output by nearly 30 percent by keeping reactors online more of the time. Just a decade ago, a reactor could go off line for extended periods for a variety of reasons, from equipment malfunction to a long-term upgrade. In 1993, all the reactors in the United States produced electricity 73 percent of the time; in 2004, that rate was up to 91 percent, according to the NRC. During the same time, failures in critical safety systems decreased from an average of three to four a year in the early 1990s to less than one in 2004. Still, from 2001 to 2004, boiling water reactors have had 22 precursor events, which is 11 more than in the previous eight years. Many of the events were caused by failures in emergency power systems that would keep the plant running in the event outside power was cut off. In September 2004, Oyster Creek had one precursor event that triggered the reactor to automatically shut down because a monitoring system was not operating correctly. The NRC did not cite it as a license violation, but noted that plant officials had tried to fix the problem in the past without success. Copyright © 2006 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 44 APP.COM: Control room is nuclear plant's nerve center | Asbury Park Press Online :Monday, February 13, 2006 BY TODD B. BATES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER It's much larger than an airliner cockpit, and it's loaded with switches, indicators, computers and operating manuals. It's the critically important control room — the nerve center — of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey. At about 1 p.m. on a rainy day in late October, three men work in the big room with a high ceiling and rows of long desks where reactor operators sit. The control room is where most of a nuclear plant's power production and emergency safety equipment can be operated via remote control, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. As of this day, Oyster Creek has been operating for 138 days at full power, and shift manager George Voishnis Jr. describes various control room functions to two newspaper reporters, who are allowed to look but not take notes. To flip a switch, two operators must approach it and agree that activating the control is indeed the right thing to do, according to Voishnis, a senior reactor operator who has worked at the plant for years. It's called "peer-checking," plant spokeswoman Rachelle Benson said later. Each action is recorded on a paper checklist that is kept in a logbook for later review by plant workers or the NRC, Benson said. STAR, "Stop, Think, Act and Review," is a basic concept that every Exelon employee learns, she said. Exelon owns Oyster Creek operator AmerGen Energy Co. During the control room tour, two alarms went off. They were the "off-gas building trouble alarm" and the "new radwaste trouble alarm," according to Benson. The off-gas alarm was due to a refrigeration unit that was in "a cool-down cycle, and this was a normal set alarm," she said. No problem existed, she said. The "small, squat" off-gas building takes the byproducts of nuclear fission — radioactive gases, as well as hydrogen and oxygen, said Graham Mulholland, work week manager at the plant. "What we do is we are a zero-release plant," Mulholland said during a tour of the plant. "We take all of those byproducts, we put 'em through that (off-gas) building, filter 'em out, recombine 'em — the hydrogen and oxygen back into water — and reuse it back in the plant," he said. The new radwaste trouble alarm went off due to a normal event, and "no problem existed," according to Benson. The radwaste building is used to "reprocess any water that comes into the plant. We do not release to the environment," Mulholland said. "Even rainwater that leaks into the plant, whether it's a roof hole or backup of a drain, does not go back out. We reprocess it and use it in the plant." Voishnis said all of the equipment in the control room is up to date. Operators have "a week of training as a full crew every five weeks, and they do classroom work, they do work in the control-room simulator where they actually practice responding to events and things like that in an exact replica of the control room," said Peter C. Resler, manager of nuclear communications for Exelon. Operators are required to get at least 192 hours of ongoing technical training a year, according to Benson. They receive more initial training than space shuttle pilots and more ongoing training than doctors. Todd B. Bates: (732) 643-4237 or tbates@app.com [E-mail] Copyright © 2006 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 45 CNW Group: Public consultations opportunity to support nuclear energy for Ontario, says Greenpeace co-founder February 13, 2006 QUICK Attention News/Environment Editors: TORONTO, Feb. 13 /CNW/ - Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore said public consultations this week on Ontario's energy supply are an opportunity to communicate the vital importance of nuclear energy to the province's future. "Nuclear energy is the only non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels while helping to alleviate the massive shortfall of 24,000 megawatts in Ontario's energy supply expected by 2025," said Moore, Chairman and Chief Scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd (www.greenspiritstrategies.com). "Greenspirit Strategies Senior Vice President Trevor Figueiredo will be attending the consultations on my behalf to emphasize the importance of nuclear power to Ontario's energy future," said Moore. "The Ontario Power Authority expects by 2025 a shortfall of 24,000 megawatts resulting from increasing demand combined with the scheduled retirements of pollution-prone, greenhouse-gas emitting coal-fired power plants by 2009 and the loss of most of Ontario's existing nuclear facilities as these plants reach the end of their design life," said Moore. "That shortfall of 24,000 megawatts is equivalent to 80 per cent of Ontario's existing capacity," said Moore. "We strongly support cost-effective renewables such as wind, hydro and geothermal, but there is no practical way renewables alone will be able to alleviate the expected shortfall," said Moore. "It is simply not realistic - as the anti-nuclear energy activists argue - to replace existing nuclear and coal-fired plants, which currently make up 68 per cent of Ontario's electricity production, with renewables," said Moore. "The only way to alleviate this shortfall is by building new nuclear facilities, and since these plants take 10 years to build, we must start planning for them now," said Moore. "Nuclear power is an extremely safe, clean and reliable form of energy," said Moore. "There has never been a serious accident at any Canadian nuclear facility since the establishment of the industry over 40 years ago," said Moore. Public consultations are scheduled for cities across Ontario on February 13th, 15th and 17th. For further information: Trevor Figueiredo, Senior Vice President, Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. will be attending consultation sessions in Toronto (Feb 13th), Oshawa (Feb 15th) and Kitchener-Waterloo (Feb 17th). He can be reached by cell phone: (604) 726-5774 GREENSPIRIT STRATEGIES LTD. - More on this 2005 CNW Group Ltd. PRIVACY &TERMS ***************************************************************** 46 Sofia Echo: Construction bids for Bulgaria's Belene 10:00 Mon 13 Feb 2006 - Ivan Vatahov TWO quite similar bids were submitted by the February 1 deadline for the construction of Bulgaria’s second nuclear plant at Belene, on the Danube. As expected, thebidders are Russia’s Atomstroyexport in partnership with France’s Framatome and the Czech consortium Skoda Alliance. Atomstroyexport submitted 177 boxes containing three tons of tender documentation on January 31, and Skoda Alliance furnished only 29 boxes, weighing just half a ton. The heavy loads were handed to Yulian Zheliazkov, head of the tendering commission that will evaluate the bids. Both candidates have offered to design, build and put into operation the Belene nuclear power plant. Each of them has explored the two core options, envisaging either the use or the non-use of already supplied facilities that have been kept on the Belene site for almost two decades. Construction for the original nuclear plant project on the Belene site began in 1987, but was discontinued in February 1990 due to lack of funding. The project was first suspended by Parliament after environmental protests in mid-1991 and then finally abandoned as “technically unsound and economically unviable” by a cabinet decision on May 21 1997. The project’s revival came in 2004. To save on the project’s total costs, the Cabinet said it wanted to use as much of the equipment and infrastructure already on site as possible and add another 1.9 billion euro in new equipment. This infrastructure has now been evaluated at some 500 million euro. Each of the candidates has, in addition, proposed a third alternative. Atomstroyexport offered to build a so-called nuclear island, or part of the facility, including solely the turbine equipment, while Skoda Alliance offered the use of an alternative turbine. “The nuclear island means only part of the facility to be constructed. That will be only the turbine part of the facility,” said Yordan Dimov, Deputy Minister of Economy and Energy. “The third option is indeed an alternative, which includes an offer for a new turbine,” Miroslav Fiala, general manager of nuclear-power-equipment maker Skoda JS, told reporters. He added that an alternative envisaged the use of the current turbine, which has been supplied by Skoda’s plants in Ukraine. Fiala declined to name the producer of the new turbine, but said the Skoda Alliance offer foresees alternative suppliers of nuclear fuel and that the consortium was ready to finance up to 100 per cent of the project costs. Skoda Allianc’s bid includes a proposal for financing of 75 per cent of the project by a group of banks led by Citibank and including Italy’s UniCredit Group. The remaining 25 per cent are to be shared between the state-owned Czech Komercni Banka (Czech Export Bank) and the ExIm Bank of the US. The Czech nuclear power engineering company Skoda JS a.s., owned by Obedinennye Mashinostroitelnye Zavody (OMZ), a Russian mechanical engineering group, holds a 50 per cent stake in the consortium. The other half is shared by two members of the CEZ Group: Skoda Praha a.s. (30 per cent) and the Nuclear Research Institute Rez a.s. (20 per cent). Skoda Alliance said that according to their bid, more than 30 per cent of the work is to be subcontracted to leading Bulgarian energy companies. The Atomstroyexport group also includes Framatome ANP, owned by France’s Areva, and the German Siemens. “We have submitted a very detailed offer, which will take Bulgarian experts time to study. We hope that by the middle of this summer, it will be clear who will get the deal,” Vladimir Parigin, head of Atomstroyexport’s department for overseas construction of nuclear plants, told reporters. Both Atomstroyexport and Skoda Alliance declined to reveal the financial parameters of the bids. According to official estimates, the plant is expected to cost about 2.7 billion euro to build, and up to four billion euro including financing costs. It should go into operation in 2011 or 2012. “Within three months, we will be able to speak about terms for signing the deal; it is too early yet,” said Dimov. He added that the evaluation commission would announce the value of the offers in due course of assessment. Bulgaria, which expects to join the European Union in 2007, hopes that the Belene plant will make up for the generating capacity it will lose after closing a second pair of 440-megawatt reactors at its existing Kozlodui Nuclear Power Plant at the end of 2006. The closures were one of the conditions Bulgaria accepted in order to join the EU. Kozlodui itself also has two modern reactors of 1 000 megawatts each. [ ***************************************************************** 47 Toronto Star: Nuclear power hearings a 'sham,' activists say Mon. Feb. 13, 2006. | Updated at 07:59 PM 11:39 AMFROM CANADIAN PRESS Environmental groups say the Ontario government's three days of public hearings into building new nuclear power plants are a "sham." The hearings are being held this week in a dozen cities, including Mississauga, Ottawa, Sarnia, Toronto, Thunder Bay, Kingston, St. Catharines, Kincardine, Kitchener, London and Sudbury. Dan McDermott of the Sierra Club says the "nuclear cult" that once ruled the former Ontario Hydro has found a new home in Premier Dalton McGuinty's office. McDermott calls a recommendation from the Ontario Power Authority to build new nuclear plants "insane" given huge cost overruns in the past that taxpayers are still paying for. Greenpeace spokesman Dave Martin says three days of public hearings are "totally inadequate" for a 20-year energy plan with a minimum price tag of $80 billion. The Toronto Environmental Alliance calls the three days of hearings "a disgrace" and says McGuinty is trying to avoid a public backlash against the plan. Environmentalists say the province should emphasize conservation measures to curb electricity demand and forget about building costly new nuclear plants. Copyright Toronto Star ***************************************************************** 48 NRC: Regulatory Information Conference now for the NEI Luncheon on March 8, 2006 Regulatory Information Conference (RIC) [Logo for Regulatory Information Conference] Welcome to the NRC's Regulatory Information Conference (RIC) web page. This page will provide planning information and updates about the next conference, as well as information about past conferences. The Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) will join forces with the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research (RES) to provide challenging technical and regulatory topics, along with research activities and issues, to make RIC 2006 the best ever! The 18th Annual RIC will be held Tuesday March 7, Wednesday March 8, and Thursday March 9, 2006 at the . Opposite Metro's White Flint Station on the Red Line and diagonal to NRC's Headquarters, the hotel is located just off Route 355 (Rockville Pike) at 5701 Marinelli Road, North Bethesda, Maryland 20852. The conference will be open to the public and there is no conference fee. See the following for detailed conference information: + Conference Program + Keynote Speakers + Conference Registration + On-Line Registrant List + Sponsored Events + Hotel Reservations and Area Information + Travel Information + Past RIC Information + Frequently Asked Questions + Contact Us About RIC Throughout the RIC pages, you will see icons. The Exit icon is placed directly after an external link to let you know that the link is going to take you away from the NRC pages. For more information, refer to the Site Disclaimer. Last revised Monday, February 06, 2006 ***************************************************************** 49 AFP: Japanese firm raided over nuclear technology in Libya - Sun Feb 12, 11:41 PM ET TOKYO (AFP) - Police raid a major Japanese manufacturer for allegedly exporting advanced machines that can be used to build nuclear weapons after one of the firm's devices was found in Libya. Officers searched the headquarters and plants of precision equipment maker Mitutoyo after it exported the machines to China and Thailand, police said. Mitutoyo is believed to have exported two 3D gauges, precise machines regulated by Japan's trade control ordinance, to the other Asian nations in 2001 without permission from the trade ministry. They were the same model that the International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agencyfound in Libya when the UN nuclear watchdog inspected its nuclear facilities in 2003 and 2004, Jiji Press reported. Libya is believed to have obtained the machine through the "nuclear black market" after the company exported it to Malaysia about 2001, the report said. Mitutoyo also allegedly exported to China and Thailand two CD-ROMs to instruct on how to operate the machines. The company could not be immediately reached for comment as it had closed for the day. Japanese police dispatched officers to China and Thailand and found that the exported devices were highly precise machines that could be used in nuclear arms development, Jiji Press said. However, the machines that led to the raids were not sold to a third country or turned to military use, the news agency said. Last month, police raided major motorcycle maker Yamaha Motor on suspicion the Japanese company tried to export illegally to China agricultural use helicopters that can be converted for military purposes. Yamaha Motor denied any wrongdoing. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 50 Newsday.com: Plant's owner acknowledges risk of radiation containment failure Feb 13, 2006 [Newsday.com - AP New Jersey] LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) _ A radiation barrier built inside the Oyster Creek nuclear plant has a 74 percent chance of failing should the plant's reactor core melt or its fuel be damaged in an accident, owner AmerGen Energy Co. said in re-licensing application. The steel-and-concrete containment system, which surrounds the reactor and its nuclear fuel, is designed to condense steam and cool the reactor in an emergency. AmerGen Energy Co., said in a risk assessment analysis that the radiation barrier is more likely than not to fail, the Asbury Park Press of Neptune reported for Monday's newspapers. The analysis was part of a 2,400-page license application aimed at keeping the plant open after its current license expires in 2009. That estimate would hold true only "in the highly unlikely event that there is a core damage event," said Peter C. Resler, manager of nuclear communications for Exelon, which owns AmerGen. AmerGen is seeking permission to keep Oyster Creek open for another 20 years. It is the nation's oldest operating commercial nuclear plant, having opened in 1969. "The good news is that a lot of effort is undertaken to reduce the likelihood of an accident," said David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the environmental organization, the Union of Concerned Scientists. But, Lochbaum said, if an accident occurs, the containment system isn't likely to work. Information from: Asbury Park Press, http://www.app.com http://www.newsday.com. ***************************************************************** 51 Maine Antique Digest: Radiation Concerns Return While Collections Grow and Glow , February 2006 by Robert Kyle Radiation, an almost forgotten remnant from the Cold War, has returned to public consciousness as a weapon of terrorism and in potential nuclear bomb development from other countries. Uranium, the key element in atomic bombs, discovered in the mineral pitchblende in 1789, was found to be radioactive in 1896. Its decay byproduct, radium, was discovered in France by Marie Curie in 1898. It is far more radioactive than uranium. The Nobel Prize-winning Dr. Curie, originally Marie Sklodowska from Poland, coined the term radioactivity. At the time she wasn't aware of its danger. Almost a decade later, the British became the first to suspect radiation may be harmful, but only X-rays. In 1915 they adopted a resolution to limit its exposure. The U.S. followed in 1922. But exposure to alpha and beta particles, not very penetrating but harmful if inhaled or ingested, went unregulated, as did rules to curb the very penetrating gamma rays, which take a concrete wall or lead shielding to stop. Although scientists at the time knew what they found was exciting and special, especially for its brightening and fluorescing quality, it was decades later that overexposure to all radiation was determined a serious health risk. Marie Curie's death of leukemia in 1934 was attributed to her research. (Her husband died young, but was run over by a carriage in 1906.) Depending on what you collect or deal in, you may be experimenting with radiation yourself. Your merchandise may contain enough uranium to send a Geiger counter soaring and you worrying. Should you? Nearly 100 years ago, radiation was all the rage. Harnessed electricity was still new. It proved good for society, so why not radioactivity? Before scientists had time to evaluate its merits, it was thrust into the production of retail goods. Uranium was added to tint glassware. Lantern mantles were dipped in radioactive thorium. Radium caused dials of watches and clocks to glow in the dark, and radioactive polonium was added to spark plugs. Cloisonné jewelry used uranium oxide to enhance gold, yellow, and ivory colors. Uranium was added to dentures to get that bright, clean smile. Thorium was put in eyeglasses, camera lenses, and in welding rods. Record album brushes had polonium. The U.S. military used radium in dials of aircraft instruments and compasses. In 1924 the shoe-fitting fluoroscope appeared. For the next 30 years, children who stuck their feet under an X-ray could see their little bones while a salesman gave the perfect fit. By the late 1950's, it was finally declared hazardous, especially to the salesman. Another early 20th-century invention was the Radium Ore Revigator, a ceramic water cooler lined with uranium enabling consumers to enjoy the healthy benefits of radiation by drinking it. Radioactive toothpaste was a sure way toward brighter teeth-while you had them. We won't even go into the radioactive suppository movement. But speaking of bathrooms, some had tiles that sparkled with uranium. So did vaseline glass by Boyd, Mosser, Fenton, and Summit, as well as custard glass by Heisey and California pottery by Bauer, Catalina, Pacific, and Vernon Kilns. Some products were boldly called "uranium glass." Peddled also were radium tablets, bath salts, bread, comforters, and pillows. It's a wonder our grandparents survived. European glassmakers began using uranium in the 1840's. Thomas Webb & Son put it in Burmese. Glass by Bagley, Davidson, Jobling, Sowerby, Walsh, and Vickers also had uranium. Czechoslovakian makers produced a wealth of uranium-laced glassware. From 1936 to 1943, Fiestaware, by the Homer Laughlin China Company of Newell, West Virginia, added natural uranium to the glaze to make colors brighter. Extra uranium was added to red dinner plates. From 1959 to 1969, depleted uranium (40% less radioactive) was used. When the company came under new ownership, Fiesta lasted only from 1969 to 1973. It used ironstone in that period. David Connelly, the company's director of sales and marketing, said Fiesta ceased using uranium as of 1970. Fiestaware returned in 1986, sans the red. The slogan now is "Lead Free China for the Millennium." Connelly said the company got the lead out in 1986. If you use or trade in vintage watches, clocks, or instrument dials with hands that glow, there's a chance the young woman who painted those hands became ill, disfigured, or died a gruesome death. An early clue to the dark side of radioactivity occurred in the medical condition called "radium jaw." On its Web site, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility contains a graphic account by Dr. Gordon Edwards: "In the mid 1920's a number of dentists reported a phenomenon called 'radium jaw' among some of the hundreds of young women workers in radium dial-painting factories. Their jaw bones were quickly deteriorating, becoming soft and porous, often suffering spontaneous fractures. Teeth were breaking and falling out. Gums were sore and septic with virulent bacterial infections. These symptoms were often accompanied by profound anemia. "In 1925 Harrison Martland, a forensic pathologist, concluded that radium jaw was caused by minute amounts of radium which the women swallowed by 'pointing their brushes' with their lips…He cited...the faint but detectable gamma radiation emitted from their living bodies and the radon gas detected in their exhaled breath. "Several of these women died in their 20's or 30's from anemia or from septic infections which were resistant to treatment. Autopsies clearly revealed alpha activity concentrated in bones, spleen and liver. Radium, being chemically similar to calcium, had followed the same biological pathways as calcium and ended up mainly in the skeleton. The women's bones were sufficiently radioactive that images of them could be made simply by resting the bones on photographic paper in a dark room." Before you call the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to pick up your old travel clocks and red plates, consider the views of a radiation expert. Ray Johnson, a Maryland engineer, confirmed the dial-painting tragedy happened. Nevertheless, he has purposely sought vintage consumer goods laden with radiation. He's just careful not to inhale or ingest any. Armed with a pocket-size Ludlum Geiger-Mueller detector, he has rummaged antiques shops and malls across the country in search of objects that make his needle jump. With his detector's volume turned off (he said the clicking alarms people) he waves the device over items whose bright colors or fluorescent parts tell him they were likely made before the Second World War and thus contain uranium, radium, or thorium. Johnson adds to his cache of colorful goods solely on the advice of his Geiger counter. If the needle doesn't budge, Johnson doesn't buy. He's had no trouble finding his prey; his collection now amounts to about 800 pieces. "Initially, I picked up everything that was radioactive. Now I'm more selective," he said. "Are they radioactive, and are they in good condition?" He displays his finds where he works: the Radiation Safety Academy in Rockville, Maryland. As its president and director, Johnson uses his collection as teaching tools for the hundreds of professionals from around the country who enroll in his academy to become Radiation Safety Officers. Other enrollees receive training in industrial X-ray safety, inspection of manufactured radioactive goods, and how to ship them. Others are first responders, the firefighters and police. Prior to launching his academy, Johnson, who retired in 1985 after 28 years with the federal government, was chief of the Radiation Surveillance Branch of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He is also one of the nation's experts on radon. He has been exposed to more radiation than most of us will ever see (even if we could see it). Johnson appears to be a fit, healthy, active, sharp-witted senior citizen who glows only when he talks about his job, his collection, and the satisfaction derived from radiation education. Collectibles and antiques containing radiation are everywhere in his classroom, a metaphor that radiation is, indeed, all around us. Johnson's detector emphasized this during our interview as it sounded off in regular chirps indicating invisible rays were piercing the steel and stone office building like tiny comets heard but not seen. Scientists call this normal background radiation. We're bombarded with it. "We're all exposed to radiation all the time from outer space and from the ground," Johnson said. "People generally don't know this." Unlike most things harmful to humans, the enigmatic, invisible radiation can't be seen, smelled, felt, heard, or tasted. A chest X-ray sends a substantial charge straight through the body, yet there is no sensation or awareness it happened. Research has shown that humans receive around 28 millirems per year from terrestrial radiation and 27 millirems from space. Johnson said these amounts, combined with other sources, adds up to about 300 millirems a year per person, not enough to harm us. A millirem is a unit of absorbed radiation dose. It's 1/1000 of a rem. A rem is the acronym for roentgen equivalent man. A roentgen (pronounced rent-gen) is for Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen, a German physicist who discovered X-rays in 1895. A millirem, therefore, is a minuscule amount. According to the University of New Hampshire's Office of Environmental Safety, which ups Johnson's amount to about 360 millirems per person per year from background radiation, we get about 65 millirems annually from man-made exposure such as X-rays and consumer products. This ranks second to 198 millirems caused by radon gas. A barium enema will give you an extra 406 millirems from X-rays. Just another reason to decline the procedure. Johnson said global studies have found regions where people are exposed to far more radiation than the U.S. yet show no ill effects. "There are places in Brazil and the east coast of India, for example, where the average is three thousand to eight thousand millirem [annually]," Johnson said. "There are whole communities in north Iran where their normal level is twenty-five thousand millirem. We don't see these people getting anything strange or shortened lifetimes or more cataracts. They're normal as far as we can determine." He said the limit to which a person may be exposed to radiation without harmful side effects is 25,000 millirem per year. Johnson is confident large collections of vintage glassware and ceramics, either in a shop or the home, do not cause harm. Nevertheless, he said he can't help poke a little fun at his students. "I don't always help things because I joke with people about putting their sandwich on a Fiestaware plate to keep it warm." Johnson demonstrated that although these plates will jolt a Geiger counter when a measurement is taken within an inch or two, moving back a few more inches will reveal no radiation. Although the plate he used measured far beyond the reading for normal background radiation, Johnson said, "If you tell people that, they're going to get really scared. But you've got to get right on top of it before you begin to pick it up. At most, if you held a Fiestaware plate in your hand for an entire year you might get one hundred millirem," he said. "And that's to the hand. These don't expose the whole body because the radiation signal only travels a short distance." The plate and other radioactive dinnerware, he said, must come in contact with the skin for a prolonged period for measurable exposure to occur. And about those radium-laced clocks, he said you'd need to lay your head on one for a long period of time to get any measurable radiation. Glass collector/dealer Tony Hayter of Gosport, England advises his customers on his site not to grind or abrasively polish glassware, lest the uranium will escape. "Dust and residue produced by these actions can be toxic if inhaled or ingested and therefore should be avoided," he wrote. Hayter measured radiation from his own collection and put the results, with photos, on his Web site. A 19th-century green cut wine glass, made in England, rocked the meter at 2745 counts per minute (CPM). Another green example, in a Greek key design, was 1900 CPM. But a Czech opaque marbled glass bead necklace, 1930's, soared to 6800 CPM. The average CPM is about 20. When I performed my own check with a modest 40-year-old civil defense meter, I got a 12 CPM outside and slightly higher in the kitchen. (I'd better check some of those old plates.) The question remains, is it safe to wear a highly radioactive, 6800 CPM glass necklace around your neck all evening? By the Second World War, manufacturers were losing their source of uranium when it became a vital ingredient in the first atomic bombs. The U.S. government began rounding up all of it. In 1943 it seized Fiesta's entire uranium supply, which had been imported from Canada. The popular color red was dead. It "went to war," as the company stated. Ray Johnson said the subsequent A-bomb attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 gave the American public their first glimpse of the destructiveness and horror of a household word, uranium, when converted to create nuclear power. By the early 1950's, fear of an atomic attack from the USSR gripped America, resulting in the fallout shelter movement. School kids all over the country drilled in atomic bomb evasion by hiding under desks. We know now it probably wouldn't have helped much, but it made us feel safer at the time. Hollywood perpetuated phobias with science-fiction films staring radiation-stricken, large angry monsters or mutant humans. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms; Them!; The Incredible Shrinking Man; The 30-Foot Bride from Candy Rock; and Beginning of the End are some of the creature-features that made the public all the more fearful. Ironically, people in the 1950's were still living and working amid daily drenchings of radiation. They were eating off red Fiestaware (not advisable today), sitting too close to TV sets (X-rays shoot out), taking Kaopectate for bowel problems (kaolin, the main ingredient, is derived from radioactive clay), eating Brazil nuts (very high in uranium), eating bananas (high in radioactive potassium-40), and using Kodak, Pentax, and Leica cameras (lenses and eyepieces contain thorium). But the worse hazard, then and now, Johnson said, lurks under homes from toxic geological formations that release radon gas, a product of radium decay. This was big news in the 1980's, then faded away. Studies show about 55%, or 180 to 200 millirems, of our annual radiation exposure comes from natural radon gasses. Test kits are available at hardware stores for around $30. Johnson mentions a common misconception. "If you don't have a basement, then you don't have to worry about radon. The only way you don't have to worry is if your house is sitting above the ground with ventilated airspace in between." Johnson, who first began studying radon in the 1970's, said its link to cancer was confirmed in a study of uranium miners. "They had much higher rates of lung cancer, and it correlates with how much radon they were exposed to." He said lung cancer in the U.S. causes 150,000 deaths per year. "The EPA, National Academy of Sciences, and others who have looked at the best data believe that radon contributes to twenty thousand lung cancer deaths among homeowners." Johnson said a homeowner who smokes will complicate the diagnosis, as well as a person's mobility. "If you get cancer from radon it may not show up for twenty to forty years later." Thus, a person may have unknowingly lived at an unhealthful address many years earlier. The EPA's Web site has a map of the U.S. showing regions of highest and lowest radon. Maine and Colorado, for instance, are high radon states. Louisiana has hardly any. The EPA also breaks its map down into individual counties. The Web address is listed below. The American public by 1960 had firmly developed its opinion of radiation based on negative reports without hearing both sides of the story. Lacking public educational or awareness programs to counter radioactivity's bad PR, the fears and phobias persisted, and still do today. The exception is environmentalists, engineers, and scientists like Ray Johnson, who are well schooled in the facts and myths of radiation. Johnson gave an example. It involved a traffic accident on Washington's Beltway involving a truck. Some persons first on the scene began to feel sick. "Containers of radioactive material went on the road," Johnson said. "One was leaking, so there was liquid on the road. The container had a radioactive sign on it. So the first responders, the fire department and the state policeman, see the radiation sign and the leaking on the road, and they both become ill. They were taken to the hospital for treatment. That sounds pretty bad, right? Their illness had nothing to do with radiation. It had to do with their perception of radiation. My measurement of that material gave no signal." Associating this incident to a terrorist attack, Johnson said, "If there's a nuclear incident like a dirty bomb, and people hear they've potentially been exposed to radiation, how many people are going to be sick just from hearing that? And their illness is real, they are really sick; they're not faking it. But it has nothing to do with radiation, it has to do with their fears. How is a hospital going to tell the difference? The answer is that it may not be able to." A nurse from Doctor's Hospital in Lanham, Maryland, confirmed this. She said they saw numerous patients from the 2001 Washington anthrax exposure and the August 2004 Novovirus outbreak at the University of Maryland. While these students were indeed sick, the anthrax patients they saw were not. "We call them the 'worried well,'" said the nurse, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They will inundate a hospital, hugely outnumbering the people who are really sick. These people just want to be tested and get reassurance that they're not clinically ill." Ray Johnson believes this is the power of the dirty bomb, which he believes cannot contain enough radiation to do significant harm. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) agrees, stating on its Web site there would be more injuries from the explosion of the container than its radioactive contents. Likewise, introducing radioactive material to an area's food and water supply, states the NRC, "most likely would cause great concern or fear, it probably would not cause much contamination or increase the danger of health effects." Johnson has experienced the prevailing fear of radioactive objects when on business trips. He drops by antiques shops and malls whenever he can, wandering with his Geiger counter turned on. "I've had a couple of cases where they [store personnel] were kind of upset," Johnson recalled. "One case, maybe it was in Utah, I found an antique automobile clock that appeared to have a radium dial. It was in a showcase, and when it is I can't measure anything. The man took it out of the case, and I told him I'm interested in collecting antiques that may be radioactive, and I'd just like to check that. So I put the meter on it, and sure enough. I said, 'Well, that's interesting.' He took it out of my hand, put it back in the case, locked it, and walked away. I thought, 'Hey, maybe I wanted to buy that.' It was something that seemed to upset him a lot." At a large antiques mall in Ohio near the Pennsylvania line he recounted this experience: "Apparently once a week they do a television show from this mall," Johnson said. "There was a lady with a collection of children's tea sets. I spotted several right away by eye and thought, 'I know those are radioactive.' So I said, 'These are kind of interesting. Do you mind if I just check?' And the meter takes off. She got quite upset with me because she was about to have these shown on this weekly television program. I don't try to alarm people, so I just went away. She was kind of disturbed by the prospect...that if somehow on this television show it was announced that some of these teapots are radioactive, that would likely have drastically affected the value." At another shop where Johnson had his eye on a travel alarm clock priced at $45, the owner told him she was concerned he'd find too many radioactive items. "I said, 'Are you concerned enough to give me a discount?' She said she was not that concerned." He left it. A woman at another place thought his meter had another purpose. "I'm panning various items, and she said, 'I've been watching you, and I wondered, how does that tell you what the age of that item is?' It was like I had an antique detector-yeah, 1910, that was good year," Johnson laughed. Today, surplus Cold War radiation detectors are available. The CDV-700, a low-range meter, was issued by the thousands to government agencies and schools. These use a Geiger-Mueller tube and thus are more of a Geiger counter. They cost between $50 to $100, can measure only small amounts, and aren't as sensitive as those professionals use, which can run about $250 to $500. The model CDV-715 detects radiation through an ionization chamber, the same device in a smoke detector. These are considered more beneficial because they measure higher exposure per hour than the CDV-700. The price, however, is likely to be only in the $15 to $25 range. Scientists advise that persons who obtain a Geiger counter for personal use first measure the normal counts per minute in their own home or yard as a base line. Normal is 20 to 25. Drastically higher readings are cause for concern. Some Geiger counters, such as the CDV-700, contain a built-in radioactive sample to determine if the meter is working. If you'd like a larger sample, radioactive marbles and minerals can be legally purchased over the Internet. Ray Johnson said the federal government has established a limit of 25 pounds of uranium ore per person. Now there's a unique gift. An ultraviolet light (black light) will make some green glass glow. The glowing has no connection to radioactivity, only to the presence of uranium. A room needs to be fairly dark for objects to fluoresce. While most glass and pottery makers have phased out uranium in their wares, Johnson said green perfume bottles currently made in the Czech Republic are very high in radioactivity. You can find them on eBay in the $75 to $150 range. It's where Ray Johnson shops for his. Time, distance, and shielding are the key factors in avoiding too much radiation. Johnson said thousands of years of human exposure to it has not enabled us to develop a tolerance. There is simply a threshold. Exceed it, and your health will pay the consequences. "The human body is not very susceptible to radiation damage," he reassured. "That's contrary to popular beliefs." But he cautioned, "The prevailing view in radiation safety says if you don't have to be exposed to it, don't do it." The EPA supports this: "There is no firm basis for setting a 'safe' level of exposure above background [radiation]. Most regulatory and advisory boards around the world (including EPA) assume that any exposure carries some risk, and the risk increases as the exposure increases." More information is available from these Web sites: (Oak Ridge Association Universities) (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission) (Environmental Protection Agency) (Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility) (Food & Drug Administration) (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) (Centers for Disease, Control & Prevention) These collector Web sites have information and photos of radioactive glass and pottery: (cameras) For information on a book, Living With Radiation: The First Hundred Years by William Kolb and Paul Frame, go to (). This site has a case sensitive address. © 2006 by Maine Antique Digest ***************************************************************** 52 canada.com: Ontario's end to carefree power The electricity supply is stretched so thin that rolling brownouts and even blackouts are the new reality, and the public's input is being sought on the best way to fix the problem, Patrick Dare writes. supply problem isn't just a problem of inconvenience and cost for residents of the province. It's critical for the economy, as unreliable electricity can turn away business investment. Photograph by : Wayne Cuddington, The Ottawa Citizen Patrick Dare, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Monday, February 13, 2006 Ontario built its 20th century economy on cheap, plentiful electricity. But power is no longer cheap and abundant, so what happens to the province's economy now? It's the most important engineering and economic question facing Dalton McGuinty's government, and it's one for which the government is inviting public views. Today, at the Ottawa Congress Centre, the Ministry of Energy is holding an open house during the day and a "public consultation" from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The government is holding similar meetings across the province this month. The idea is to get the public's views on the proposed new "supply mix" for the provincial electricity system. The days of carefree power supply in Ontario are long gone. Just last month, the Independent Electricity System Operator did a planned brownout, cutting voltage through the power grid to test the system as the province braces for more supply problems. Last year, the Ontario grid had three brownouts during the summer heat wave, when demand for air-conditioning outstripped the power supply, even with help from neighbouring power jurisdictions. The only coping measure left for the power grid after brownouts is rolling blackouts. Last week, the Independent Electricity System Operator issued a forecast that warned of rotating blackouts in Toronto by the summer of 2008 because the city's transmission system is overtaxed and there is no local supply. The power supply issue isn't just a problem of inconvenience and cost for residents of the province. It's a critical question for the province's economic future. Jeffrey Dale, president of the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI), which cultivates technology business and research, says a good site with a reliable, affordable power supply is the second thing, after talent, that technology companies seek when they consider Ottawa. "It's a huge issue for us," says Ian Howcroft, Ontario vice-president of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters. "What does that (last year's brownouts) foretell? Is this going to be a regular occurrence? "We're trying to attract and retain investment to Ontario and that's another barrier that now has to be dealt with. People want to come to a jurisdiction that has competitively priced energy, reliable energy of a particular quality. If you're getting brownouts, and there's uncertainty as to the price, it makes the job of Ontario more difficult." Ontario's power system depends to a large degree on aging nuclear power plants -- which have proven extraordinarily expensive to maintain -- and coal-fired plants that the government wants to close because they generate too much air pollution. The province piled up $38 billion of debt in the late 20th century building and fixing the electricity system, while the price of power was kept artificially low. The Ontario government's proposed plan is to bring on a new mix of power supply that includes a lot more renewable energy, such as wind power and expanded hydroelectric projects, but also a whole new generation of nuclear power plants. Together with a power conservation program, the province believes it will be able to keep the lights on while mothballing the coal plants. But not everyone agrees that the province's plan is realistic. Mr. Howcroft, for example, says it's unrealistic to believe Ontario can close its coal-fired plants without risking power shutdowns during peak periods. This week, Conservative energy critic John Yakabuski, the MPP for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke, toured the Nanticoke power plant -- the third largest source of power in the province -- and says he's satisfied the coal-powered plant's emissions have been cut in recent years. He says Ontario should have been learning from European nations in recent years, where new technology is being installed to make coal plants cleaner, rather than "flying by the seat of their pants" with grand promises to close power plants. NDP leader Howard Hampton says Ontario is on the brink of making a massive financial blunder with a commitment to another generation of nuclear power plants. In an interview this week, he estimated it will be "at least a $40-billion proposition" to replace the current crop of nuclear plants with new ones and, he said, those costs could climb much higher, representing a major burden for Ontario power customers. Mr. Hampton instead advocates a massive conservation program for Ontario that would include retrofitting grossly inefficient old apartment buildings and office towers, to make them cooler in summer and warmer in winter. He also favours changing the building code to ensure new buildings are properly insulated and providing cash incentives to get homeowners to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. While new nuclear plants would provide a lot of jobs to trades in the province, Mr. Hampton says, thousands of energy retrofit projects would create even more jobs. And those projects would create jobs quickly, he says, while nuclear projects could take years to get going. And time, says Mr. Hampton, is of the essence."If we have a hot summer, we're going to be in a very risky situation." c The Ottawa Citizen 2006- © 2006 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest ***************************************************************** 53 UPI: Chernobyl suggested as tourist destination United Press International - NewsTrack - 2/13/2006 6:50:00 AM -0500 KIEV, Ukraine, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- The speaker of Ukraine's parliament has recommended turning the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant into a tourist destination. Volodymyr Lytvyn said, "I think we must do everything to derive some practical good out of this tragedy, including by organizing extreme tourism," RIA Novosti reported. Lytvyn said that offering tours of the area surrounding the Chernobyl plant would make people more aware of the impact that man-made disasters could have on life on earth. The explosion that occurred at the Chernobyl facility on April 26, 1986, released a cloud of radioactive contamination that spread over parts of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and other nations of Europe. Residents living within 30 kilometers (18 miles) of the power plant were permanently evacuated to other areas. Speaking at a meeting for parliaments of the Commonwealth of Independent States member nations, Lytvyn urged the parliaments to work together to solve the problems caused by the Chernobyl accident. © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 54 Daily Yomiuri: Nuke tool said sold to China The Yomiuri Shimbun Leading precision measuring instruments manufacturer Mitutoyo Corp. of Takatsu Ward, Kawasaki, is suspected of exporting without permission to China and Thailand--and possibly Libya--a 3-D measuring tool that can be used in the production of nuclear weapons, violating the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law, police said Monday. About 200 investigators searched more than 10 locations nationwide Monday, including the firm's head office and a factory in Utsunomiya. The measuring tool also was found in Libya, which tried to acquire nuclear weapon technology. The Metropolitan Police Department also will investigate how the tool reached the North African country. According to the MPD, Mitutoyo allegedly exported the tool and operating software to a local affiliate in China and Thailand without gaining permission from the economy, trade and industry minister. Mitutoyo also allegedly dispatched engineers to explain how to use the tools. The Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law forbids the export of precision equipment that can be converted for military use unless permission has been granted. The MPD said sources in Mitutoyo explained that the firm has export control regulations, but checks were lax, and exports were rarely inspected. According to Mitutoyo's Web site, the firm's screening committee is under the direct control of the president. The MPD suspects the system has not been functioning properly and is looking at the background behind the illegal exports. A Mitutoyo spokesman had no comment, except to say the firm was under investigation and cooperating with police. (Feb. 14, 2006) © The Yomiuri Shimbun. ***************************************************************** 55 Earth & Sky: Human World : Interviews with Scientists about the Human World + February 13, 2006 [Home Button] Interview: Edwin Lyman Posted: February 2006 Edwin Lyman is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Global Security program at the in Washington, DC. This organization that nuclear fuel reprocessing would increase the risk of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons and exacerbate the nuclear waste problem. Lyman's research focuses on security and environmental issues associated with the management of nuclear materials and the operation of nuclear power plants.  He spoke with Earth &Sky's Jorge Salazar in early February 2006. Salazar: Please give me some background. What is nuclear reprocessing, or "recycling?" Lyman: Since the dawn of the nuclear power era, the dream of nuclear scientists has been to utilize the plutonium that occurs occurs as a nuclear energy by-product. This plutonium could, in principle, be used in a different type of nuclear reactor than the kind that we use in the United States today. It's called a . "Yes, the idea sounds good. But the fact is the technology isn't there yet." In principle, a fast breeder reactor could be used to produce slightly more nuclear fuel than it consumes. So, the dream was that plutonium could be used to provide, essentially, an inexhaustible energy resource. However, over the years, reality has intruded. It turns that the technology is much more complicated, cumbersome, and dangerous than was originally envisioned. And for that reason, the original dream of inexhaustible fuel from nuclear hasn't been realized. One of the concerns associated with reusing the plutonium in spent fuel is that plutonium is not only a potential energy source. It's a nuclear weapons material. So any nuclear reactor that handles pure plutonium in its fuel has to have much greater security over its operations and its materials than reactors that don't have this sensitive material. And that greatly increases the cost associated with nuclear energy. Also, the plutonium has to be tracked extremely carefully at every stage of the process. That's because it only takes a few kilograms of plutonium to make a nuclear weapon, and the typical large reprocessing plant might handle something like eight metric tons of plutonium a year. That is on the order of a thousand times the amount it would take to make one nuclear weapon. [ /] Salazar: But isn't the U.S. capable of handling the precautions needed, given that it's a leader in the world of nuclear reprocessing? Lyman: Actually, the U.S. is the leader in not using this technology. That was a very deliberate policy decision that was made in the 1970s, originally in the Ford administration, then carried out by the Carter administration. The decision was that the spent fuel from nuclear power plants should not be reprocessed, and the plutonium in that fuel not be extracted and then used for commercial purposes. And the reason for that is that in the 1970s, the proliferation risks associated with nuclear energy were becoming even more manifest. India developed a nuclear weapon using technology that it had acquired from Canada and the United States for ostensibly peaceful purposes. And as a result, U.S. policy makers realized the amount of plutonium that could be circulating throughout the world if a fully realized reprocessing and recycling program were instituted. They realized it would be virtually impossible to control that technology and make sure that not a single gram of plutonium actually was misused for weapons purposes. Because of that, the Carter administration decided that the U.S., instead of reprocessing spent fuel, would pursue a policy of developing a geologic repository so that the spent fuel could be directly disposed of in a mine repository and isolated from the environment that way, without reprocessing. Other countries, notably France, the United Kingdom, and Japan, did not follow the the U.S. lead. They developed and pursued reprocessing programs on their own. As a result, all three of those countries have substantial stockpiles of separated plutonium that they are paying significant exorbitantly amounts of money to secure. The United States does not have that particular problem. The reason that the U.S. is now revisiting that decision is that the repository program at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, has run into political difficulties. Those were fully expected, because no one said it would be easy to situate a high level nuclear waste dump anywhere in the United States. But the political opponents to the repository seem to have gotten the upper hand. Scientists within the Department of Energy complex who have been nursing a grudge for 30 years since the Carter administration curtailed their own research programs have been seeking a way to once again expand and become the future of nuclear energy. And I think they've seen the opportunity in the current political context. So there haven't been any new technological developments that have made this technology look more attractive. In fact, it's quite the opposite, in that it's become clear from the experience of other countries that although it's very easy to separate the plutonium from the reactor fuel if you spend enough money doing it, reprocessing is a very expensive operation. The difficulty is, what do you do with that plutonium? If you just let it pile up, you're creating a massive proliferation risk. So the intent would be to use that plutonium as fuel in reactors. But, in reality, that's not what's happening overseas to a large extent. For instance, in the United Kingdom, they have built up a stockpile of 80 metric tons of plutonium that they have absolutely no plans to utilize in a reactor. So all they've done is reprocess spent fuel, accumulated plutonium, accumulated high waste, and they have no plans for disposing either type of material. It's hard to look at that program and say that this is something that the U.S. should be emulating. France, on the other hand, has had somewhat more success in using at least part of the plutonium that its separated in fuel in its existing reactors. But it turns out that the fuel that has plutonium in it is much more expensive and cumbersome than the typical uranium fuel that is used by most reactors in the world. So the reactor operators in France are essentially provided subsidies to take this material off the hands of the reprocessing company. And because there are technical limits on the ability to use plutonium fuel in these reactors, it's a much less desirable fuel than uranium. Salazar: Well, in theory, doesn't it make sense to try and develop technologies that reuse spent nuclear fuel, which is accumulating by the truckload each year, and trust that scientists will eventually work out the bugs in the process? Lyman: Well, on paper, a lot of things look good. But when you're talking about engineering such a delicate, dangerous, and expensive system to carry out such a process, the devil is in the details. And actually getting like something like that to work is the problem. It turns out that if you wanted to have a system of reprocessing plants - and advanced reactors to utilize the plutonium coming out of reprocessing plants - for that system to have the effect that you mentioned (to reduce the amount of nuclear waste that would have to be sent to a repository by a factor of 100), it would require an effort that would take well over a century. Just for the amount of spent fuel we've already accumulated, it would cost anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion. That was from estimates provided by both the Department of Energy and the National Academy of Sciences. And most of that would require government subsidies to the electric utility industry to carry out. So, yes, the idea sounds good. But the fact is the technology isn't there yet. Even if it were there, it would be much more expensive than the current nuclear power technologies, and it would require a level of control over the nuclear energy infrastructure that would be unparalleled. It would essentially mean that the federal government would have to take over the whole business of generating nuclear electricity and disposing of waste. And it's not clear that that is the right direction for the U.S. to go with regards to its energy policy. Salazar: Thank you, Dr. Lyman. Copyright ©1996-2006 Byrd and Block Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 56 Earth & Sky : Human World : Interviews with Scientists about the Human World + February 13, 2006 [Home Button] Interview: Frank von Hippel is co-director of the Program on Science and Global Security of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He is a former Assistant Director for National Security in the White House Office of Science and Technology. His areas of policy research include nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, energy, and checks and balances in policymaking for technology. In early February, 2006, Dr. von Hippel spoke to Earth &Sky's Jorge Salazar about his concerns over renewed interest to reprocess spent nuclear fuels. Salazar: Can we start with some background about nuclear power and the reprocessing of nuclear fuel? von Hippel: Nuclear fuel, when it goes into the reactor, is basically 100% uranium. It's somewhat enriched to 4-5% in the chain reacting isotope, uranium 235. When it comes out, most of that uranium 235 has been fissioned, and that's where the nuclear energy comes from. And about 1% of the uranium has been turned into plutonium. And the original purpose, and the primary purpose of reprocessing this spent nuclear fuel is to recover that plutonium and to recycle. It has fuel value just like the uranium 235. Now, this is an idea that is as old as nuclear power. In fact it's older than nuclear power because this process is the way in which plutonium was produced for nuclear weapons, before we had nuclear power. And that's what makes it controversial, because if we promote this as a civilian technology, it gives access to any country with nuclear power plants, it gives them access to plutonium, to separated plutonium, which can be directly used to make nuclear weapons like the Nagasaki bomb. Now, the original reason for promoting this, from the very beginning of nuclear power, was the concern that nuclear power was going to very quickly going to outgrow the uranium resources of high-grade uranium ore, and therefore nuclear power would just be a flash in the pan, unless it was possible to make much more efficient use of uranium. Now, the current generation of reactors can't make much more efficient use of uranium, but there was an idea of a different kind of reactor which was invented called the plutonium breeder reactor, which could in fact use uranium 100 times more efficiently than the current generation of reactors could. And, in the 1960s and the 1970, countries like the United States and other advanced industrialized countries put most of their energy and R money into an effort to demonstrate and commercialize these plutonium breeder reactors. It turns out that they were very expensive. One reason is that they're cooled by liquid sodium -- liquid sodium catches fire if it's exposed ot the air or water. That was a great complication. And it turned out that there was a lot more uranium than people thought, and it turned out that nuclear power didn't grow anywhere near as rapidly. The projections that were being made 30 years ago for nuclear power in the United States, it was expected that by the year 2000, the U.S. would have 1000 nuclear power plants and it would be building 100 a year. Well, in fact, we have a hundred. And we've had a hundred since the 1980s or so. There's an attempt now, with the incentives that are in the last energy policy act, to get industry to buy a few more, with the very large subsidies that are being provided there for the first ones, and then the hope that they might take off. So, reprocessing is no longer motivated by the original purpose, which was to separate plutonium to start up plutonium breeder reactors. Today, reprocessing is motivated primarily by the fact that it's been very difficult to find a place to put spent fuel after it's discharged from nuclear reactors. It's accumulating onsite at the reactors. That's not really a problem in the near-term, because after it's cooled down for a few years, you can put it in dry storage, which is quite safe. But eventually it will have to be moved, and the destination in this country was supposed to be Yucca Mountain, this mountain just next to the nuclear test site in Nevada, which was chosen by Congress a couple of decades ago. In fact the the Department of Energy committed that Yucca Mountain would be opened, and the Department of Energy would start removing spent nuclear fuel from U.S. nuclear power plants by 1998. Well, it didn't happen, Yucca Mountain is still not licensed. And so now there's pressure, political pressure to get the spent fuel off site and to demonstrate that there's someplace for it to go as part of the way to convince the public that this is not an inseparable problem, and that we can build new nuclear power plants which will generate more spent nuclear fuel. So the reprocessing plans that we expect will be proposed by the Bush administration next week, if they're not already mentioned tonight in the State of the Union address, would provide another destination, another place to put the spent nuclear fuel that has being discharged from U.S. nuclear power plants until Yucca Mountain becomes available. Now, one could just simply transport the spent fuel to another site and store it there. From my point of view, that would be the best thing to do, so not to separate out more plutonium. Right now there's hundreds of tons of plutonium that have been separated in other countries, which they're struggling what to do with as a result of reprocessing. About 30% of the world's spent fuel is being reprocessed. The U.S. took a stand against reprocessing 30 years ago for nonproliferation reasons. And so there's plenty of separated plutonium, and in fact we have excess weapons plutonium from our cold war arsenal which is being downsized, which we're struggling to figure out what to do with. So the best thing would be to just store the spent fuel, either at the reactor sites or someplace else. The problem is that if you want to take it someplace else, there's going to be tremendous push back from the state and local government. So the unspoken political calculation is, that if we give this location, we offer a facility that represents tens of billions of dollars of investment, in fact there would be some sites in the United States which would volunteer to take this spent fuel and the radioactive waste that would be created by reprocessing it on an interim basis until some long-term solution for their waste problem can be found. Salazar: The idea of reprocessing nuclear fuel looks good on paper. Assuming that some kinks in the way its done get worked out in the future, what's the problem? von Hippel: First of all, there is no hurry to do this, because, in fact, spent fuel is in very stable form, and I think we can store it safely and cheaply for a hundred years if we have to. So the problem with rushing forward with this has to do with the example that we set for the rest of the world, for example for Iran. This is why, in fact, U.S. policy turned against reprocessing 39 years ago. What happened was that the U.S. was promoting reprocessing worldwide. We were saying," nuclear power is the future of energy. And plutonium breeder reactors are going to be the future of nuclear power, and it will be essential for plutonium breeder reactors to separate plutonium and recycle it. So you might as well learn this technology now." One of the countries that we provided the technology and trained the people in its use was India. And, we said, "of course, you understand that this technology is being provided on the understanding that it will be used for peaceful purposes only." And India did separate some plutonium from fuel, it only had a research reactor at the time. And the first thing they did with that fuel was in fact make a nuclear explosive. They said, "look, this is a peaceful nuclear explosive, so we are in conformance with our agreement with you." And, in fact, there were some people in the United States who were promoting the idea of nuclear explosives for excavating canals and harbors and things like that, so that was the fig leaf that they used. But, in fact, after the Indians did this, The U.S. started rethinking the promotion of reprocessing worldwide. And, in fact it was just at a time when other countries as well as we were promoting and transferring the technology to countries like South Korea, Brazil, Pakistan, and so on. And we then intervened in a very forceful way. We said that we reviewed the policy and decided that it was not necessary, it was not economic, and there was plenty of uranium for what we have been practicing ever since, for what we call the once through fuel cycle, where you basically put in low enriched uranium into a reactor into a reactor and then you store the spent fuel. And our policy was very effective. No new countries since we changed our policies have begun reprocessing. the number of countries who were on the verge of it didn't go forward, and some countries that were reprocessing have abandoned it, like Germany for example, and soon, the United Kingdom. They've found that it in fact is very costly, and that it in fact, since you have to store the radioactive waste that comes out of the reprocessing plant, you're only recovering the plutonium, why not just store everything together. And the advantages there are that the plutonium in spent fuel is mixed with very highly radioactive fission products so that you can't get at it except behind thick radiation shielding and remote handling equipment, very costly equipment, which is not available to would be nuclear terrorists. And, whereas plutonium, you can actually carry plutonium around in a plastic bag, it doesn't put much penetrating radiation at all, and therefore someone could run away with it and make it into a bomb. Salazar: Doesn't it kind of make sense for the U.S. to take the lead on reprocessing, keep this work "in-house" and provide the services to the rest of the world, just so that we can rest assured that there will be good controls on it? von Hippel: If in fact everybody agreed to send their spent fuel to us or Russia, or France, or Japan, and no new countries got into this business, it would at least limit the proliferation problem. France and the U.K. have been providing that service to other countries. But what they've been doing is sending back the separated plutonium, sometimes in the form of fuel, but in a much more accessible way than it is in the spent fuel. So we'd have to do what Russia does, which is in fact to take the spent fuel and then keep the high level waste and the plutonium. And that's something that only the Russian public, well, in fact the Russian objects to that, but in fact it's not enough of a democracy yet to where they haven't been able to be overridden on that. So that's something that in fact I think would be a very tough sell in the United States. But let's say that it could be done. We're actually trying to do this in another area right now, in the area of uranium enrichment. That's the focus of the current struggle that western european countries, the U.S. and other countries are having with Iran. We're trying to persuade Iran that Iran does not need to enrich Uranium for its nuclear power plants. That that service can be provided by other countries, and in fact Russia is trying to continue a contract to do it for Iran's first nuclear power plant. Iran is saying that it's their right to do it for themselves. Our concern is that uranium enrichment is another route to nuclear weapons capability, because while the current generation of nuclear power plants uses uranium enriched only 4 or 5 % uranium 235, which is not weapons usable, you can put the uranium and cycle it through the plant a couple more times and you would get out weapons-grade uranium. And many people see that Iran's interest in acquiring an enrichment plant adds, in fact, a way to get a nuclear weapons option. Uranium enrichment, really, is a service that countries need. Reprocessing is a service that countries don't need. So I think that we should try to sort this out and establish this kind of arrangement to first see if we can sell it to the rest of the world, first with uranium enrichment. And Iran is not the only country which is pushing back on this. Brazil, South Africa, and the developing world sees this as, some of them actually describe this as a kind of "nuclear apartheid," where certain number of countries want to not only be the only countries with nuclear weapons, but also the only countries with other advanced nuclear technologies. It's a very tricky political business, and there's no need, because spent fuel can be stored for many decades cheaply, there's no real need to open up a second front in this battle right now. Salazar: A very basic question to all this business of reprocessing nuclear fuel is, how safe is it. Comments? von Hippel: Originally, the way reprocessing was processed when we were separating plutonium for weapons was a very environmentally messy business. And there is a huge cleanup legacy, in both countries in the range of a hundred billion dollars to clean up the radioactive waste that was left by the process. The process that's being practiced by France and the United Kingdom today, and Japan wants to get into this business soon, is much cleaner. There still are releases to the atmosphere and to water that would not happen otherwise, if the radioactivity was just allowed to decay for a hundred years in the spent fuel. But it's not a really big deal. But was is potentially a big deal is that the radioactive waste is in liquid form after the spent fuel is dissolved, and can accumulate to very large quantities, the equivalent radioactivity of 10-100 reactors in just a few tanks in liquid form. So it would be a catastrophic event, if in fact those tanks, if there was an accident that blew up one of those tanks or if it was sabotaged. This is a real problem, and in fact it's been a great concern especially in the United Kingdom. Now, eventually that liquid waste is solidified, it's mixed with glass and comes back to a form that is comparably stable to the original form in spent fuel. But there is that intermediate stage when you really could have a major, major accident. And on the safety front, that's my main concern. I think that the reprocessing issue has to be separated from the issue of the future of nuclear power. And it can be kept separate from that for 100 years or so, at least, until we get to very much higher levels of nuclear power. Technically, it can be separated, and in fact there's and MIT study which predicts a nuclear future where the U.S. has 500 nuclear power plants about 50 years from now, or in 2050, up from 100 now, a very robust nuclear future, where in fact the nuclear power plants would be producing as much electricity as we get from all sources today, without reprocessing. In fact they argue that reprocessing could be the kiss of death of nuclear power in the United States today, because it is so costly. The cost of reprocessing and recycling and doing everything that is being proposed as an alternative to putting the plutonium into Yucca Mountain would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, enough to buy 100 new nuclear power plants, to basically replace our whole current nuclear infrastructure. So if the consumer, the utilities were asked to pay for that, then that would make nuclear power uncompetitive. Now, the French and the Japanese are getting around that by putting a tax to support reprocessing, and if the utilities in this country were to come out in opposition to reprocessing if they had to pay for it, but they're understanding of it is that this is going to be a subsidy to nuclear power form the federal government to the tune of many billions of dollars a year. It's a completely unnecessary thing in the near term is what I'm saying, and that we have more important issues with regard to nuclear power to deal with. So, it's just complicating life for those who realistically want to promote nuclear power for the next decade. Salazar: Thank you for your time today, Dr. von Hippel. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with the public today? von Hippel: I guess I would encapsulate it and say that it's enormously expensive. Secondly, it will enormously complicate our nonproliferation efforts, our anti-nuclear terrorism efforts. And third, it's not necessary to the future of nuclear power in the near term, that is in the next 50-10 years. Copyright ©1996-2006 Byrd and Block Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 57 Earth & Sky : Human World : Interviews with Scientists about the Human World + February 13, 2006 [Home Button] Interview: Phillip Finck Phillip Finckis Deputy Associate Laboratory Director of Applied Science and Technology and National Security for Argonne National Laboratory, operated by the University of Chicago for the Department of Energy. Finck coordinates all nuclear energy related activities at Argonne, including the development of an experimental program that intends to safely recycle nuclear waste. Dr. Finck spoke with Earth &Sky's Jorge Salazar about his vision of sustainable use of nuclear energy through reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. Salazar: Thank you for speaking with me today, Dr. Finck. Could you explain just how nuclear fuel recycling works? Finck: Let me first explain what a nuclear fuel cycle is. Typically, we have about 400 reactors in the world, and most of them work with what's called one full cycle. You put fresh fuel in the reactor, typically the fresh fuel contains mostly uranium 238 and a little bit, about 5% of uranium 235, and you burn it for some time. When you extract it, the spent fuel contains only a little bit of uranium 235, but it also contains fission products, plutonium, americium, neptunium, in small quantities. Many countries right now are still working with what's called the once-through cycle. Once you've irradiated the fuel for a while, for say three years, you take it out and store it for a while, and eventually you will send it to a geological repository such as the one that the U.S. is developing at Yucca Mountain. One important consideration is to see how nuclear is going to develop for the world. It is clear to me, that with the growing energy problems that we're seeing, the need for energy independence, plus the need for higher energy production in countries that are developing right now, nuclear is one of the key options. And the once-through cycle, in the long term, is probably not sustainable, for three reasons. The first reason is that eventually, uranium supplies will run out. Now, that's not for quite a while, we have time to get ready for this, but certainly we have to think about it. The second reason that the once-through cycle just described is not sustainable is that we have to find a way to dispose of the irradiated nuclear fuel. The geologic repository approach we have adapted, for example, in the U.S. is a complex way of doing things. We are working on opening Yucca Mountain, but we already know that the capacity of Yucca Mountain, the legislative capacity of Yucca Mountain, will be reached by 2010, that's in a few years. And the technical limit of Yucca Mountain will be reached by 2030, which is when the current fleet of reactors will be retired in the U.S. So certainly, we need to look at our long-term solution, maybe other repositories, maybe advanced fuel cycles to do the job. Our country is also looking into repositories. Nobody has yet opened one. There is, typically, quite a bit of public and political resistance to geological repositories. One alternative solution that has been adopted in a few countries is what I call limited recycle. Limited recycle is something that has been implemented right now in France, Japan, the U.K., Russia to some extant. And the idea is to take the spent fuel, and instead of sending it to a repository, you send it to what is called a reprocessing process. What you do out of the reprocessing is that you separate the components of the spent fuel into groups of individual species that you dispose of in different ways. The closed fuel cycle consists, right now, as implemented, for example, in France, of extracting the plutonium out of spent fuel. And typically, spent fuel contains about 1% plutonium, taking that plutonium and fabricating new fuel out of it, which is called mox fuel. That's an industrial process that's in existence in several countries and was developed a long time ago in the U.S. And I think that most of the world technology is derived from U.S. technology. The idea is that once you have fabricated that mox fuel that contains the plutonium, you irradiate it again and you burn a fraction of the plutonium. Eventually, of course, you still will have some irradiated mox assemblies that you will need to dispose of. Again, going to a repository is a solution that is being looked at very strongly. An alternate solution is to go to what we call a closed fuel cycle. In the closed fuel cycle, instead of only extracting plutonium, you would extract, together, all of the transuranic elements, plutonium, americium, neptunium, and curium, you would send them to a fast reactor, that's a reactor where neutrons stay at high energy and are not motivated by water. The advantage of this is that the fast neutrons help you destroy these transuranic elements. What you do is that you add them into a fast reactor, you extract the spent fuel, and you recycle in the reactor. And what we have shown, in many tests over the last 20 or 30 years is that you're likely to be able to reduce the toxicity of the cycle of the nuclear waste by a factor of up to 100. What this translates to is that you could put 100 times more waste into a given repository. And we have to be careful to normalize that hundred times. Essentially, for the same repository, you could produce 100 times more electricity in your nuclear reactors, or you could have 100 times more reactors, or you would need 100 times less repositories. There are many ways to normalize that. But the idea of the closed fuel cycle is to extract out of the spent fuel these elements that could be a problem and destroy them for fission. Where do we stand today? Some of the technologies have already been developed, and in some certain cases, deployed for the world. There exist today reprocessing plants in Russia, in France, in the U.K., there's one that is under completion in Japan that actually takes the spent fuel from the conventional reactors and does the separation based on the PUREX process. PUREX is a process that is very well known in industry, that existed in Europe and was developed in the U.S. many years ago. It has, in my mind, the disadvantage of separating pure plutonium, which raises proliferation issues. I believe that we should never separate pure plutonium, and that is also the U.S. policy. Separation of pure plutonium leads to possible build up of materials that can be misused. So we have been developing, at Argonne, with two other laboratories in Idaho and Oak Ridge National Lab, the process called UREX+ that would replace PUREX. And the main idea of UREX plus is that it would keep together all of the transuranics, that is the materials that are much less attractive for misuse, and then send that material directly to fast reactors in adequate fuel form, additional to what it would manage the other elements to separate, it would send various streams to various types of waste forms, and most importantly, it would not create any liquid waste, which to us is a key condition. We want to drive towards processes that are as "green" as possible, that are as clean as possible. Going from PUREX to UREX in U.S. industry is a process we have to go through, which is probably not too complex, but we still need to go through demonstration stages. UREX has been demonstrated at laboratory scales to kilogram quantities of spent fuel here at Argonne. And we met all of our expectations. The next stage is to irradiate this in a fast reactor. The first reactor that ever produced electricity in the world was a reactor that we designed at Argonne and built in Idaho in the early 1950s, before I was born, actually. Reactors like that have been built in various countries throughout the world. We have built some, the Russians and Japanese, the British, the French, the Germans, currently the Chinese and the Indians are each building one. It's a technology that's relatively well-known. We have some operational experience, typically you learn from having difficulties, and we have solved those difficulties, so we think that reactor technology is ready to go. And we at Argonne are certainly more interested in designing and building one. There are some remaining issues that need to be resolved. We need to make sure that we know to fabricate fuels that contain a significant amount of transuranic elements, and we have done some of that. We are not totally finished. We are collaborating with foreign countries and doing that. We need, also, for that very special fast reactor fuel, we need to make sure that we have a process to recycle it. Special process has been developed at Argonne for the last 20 years. Again, we are collaborating with foreign countries. And there are still a couple of issues that we believe we can solve, but we need to finish the R process. Many of the technologies exist, there are still some R to be completed, and then some large-scale demonstrations are needed. Salazar: Elaborate a little more on the UREX and PUREX reprocessing method. Finck: I 'm really talking about two different processes. There is one that is used to reprocess the spent fuel from current commercial reactors. That's called UREX. And then there is a process that will be used to reprocess the fast reactor fuel. That's pyro-processing. UREX is essentially a process where you dissolve the spent fuel in a nitric acid solution, and then you do a successive operation to extract first the transuranic elements. You also extract the fission products, you also extract the uranium in a very clean form. And then you use the various products for different applications. Uranium would probably be kept for future operations in fuel. The Trans-uranics are used to fabricate fuel for a fast reactor. The fission products are extracted and stored in a very stable waste form for disposal. The big different in the pyro-processing scheme that we are talking about is that pyro-processing is not a scheme based on dissolution in aqueous solution. It's essentially, electrolysis of fuel in molten salt. The advantage of this is that it does group separation of the transuranics, all the transuranics stay together in it. It works very well for fuel that is very hot. It works very well for fuel that is very hot. It also doesn't have critical limits, typically when you mix fuel an water, critical limits are low, whereas with pyro-processing there is no water, and criticality limits are higher. But the main advantage is that it works very easily with hot fuel. Pyro-processing is not new. None of the processes that I'm talking about have been invented recently. PUREX is about 50 years old. Pyroprocessing has been used in other industries, for example aluminum industry for many years. So, in a sense, we have just adapted these industrial processes to our use. And that's what we've been doing the R on for the last many years. Salazar: So is the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels safe? Finck: Let me talk quickly about safety. One point I want to make is that Argonne doesn't work alone. We are always collaborating with most of the other laboratories. There is actually a very good collaboration, it's a very good spirit right now. Argonne pioneered, about 20 years ago, a concept called passive safety. We developed a reactor design, that based on physical principles shuts itself down if anything abnormal occurs. It was not only developed on paper, it was actually demonstrated physically in a reactor called EVR-2 that existed in Idaho at a time, and we demonstrated through various events, unexpected events, the reactor based on pure physical principles would go back to a safe mode. And we believe, I believe strongly that this is probably one of the biggest progress in nuclear energy in the last 20 years is to go to passive safety for a reactor. And this concept is being applied more and more to other designs of reactors that we see emerging right now. In general, as far as I know, in civilian applications, there has been no accidents related to our reprocessing plants. We are essentially working on very sound safety principles. We plan to have no effluence to the public, and the basis of the design, we guarantee ourselves against any abnormal event by design. It's just a very low probability, a nonexistent probability of accident. The plant that has operated in France and the U.K. have had no accidents. It's been a very safe operation, and a very good industrial experience there. Salazar: Thank you for speaking with me today, Dr. Finck. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the public today? Finck: I think that, the bottom line is that today, the nuclear option is really necessary to ensure our energy security for the long term. Mixed with our technology, I think that we should develop not only nuclear, but we should develop all forms of energy, and nuclear is very important to that mix. The fact of going to advance fuel cycle will provide us the benefit of long-term sustainability in the sense that it will significantly reduce the amount of waste produced. We will actually significantly insure long-term supply of energy. We will also, by using this closed fuel cycle, reduce the global risk of buildup of special nuclear materials by burning them. Salazar: So what lies in the development of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel? Finck: The technology is beyond the laboratory scale, all are either fully implemented, and we need to go, I would say, worldwide, with demonstration of these technologies. We need to build plants of a pilot scale size to really show that they are working at real scale. We need to also build an international consensus to develop these things. I think that international collaboration is very important in these matters to move forward. The step is to move to a demonstration stage, and then, when we are done with a demonstration, there comes the time to decide where to implement them commercially, or not. In the U.S.,we used to have reprocessing plants, we don't have any anymore. Any process of deployment of the technology would have to go through some pilot-scale and then commercial plant. Rough timeline to go to a commercial plant is roughly 20 years. In France, U.K., and Russia, they have plants operating right now that are operating on the PUREX technology, not on the UREX technology. The Japanese, I believe, have been building one for a few years and are very close to opening it (Rokkasho). Salazar: Thank you again for your time today. Finck: Thank you very much. I think this is very important for our future. we need to get these technologies going. It's important for our energy security and it's important for our global world stability. Copyright ©1996-2006 Byrd and Block Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 58 APP.COM: Radiation barrier failure is likely in major accident Asbury Park Press Online In the second part of a five-day series, the Asbury Park Press examines vulnerabilities in the plant's radiation containment system. Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 02/13/06 BY TODD B. BATES AND NICHOLAS CLUNN STAFF WRITERS If there were a major reactor accident at the Oyster Creek nuclear plant, chances are its most critical radiation barrier would fail. That means radiation could spread into the environment, schools and thousands of homes. This is not speculation from an anti-nuclear group or a disgruntled employee. The chilling possibility comes from a detailed evaluation of Oyster Creek by its owner and operator. Oyster Creek's steel and concrete radiation containment system has a 74 percent chance of failing if the reactor core melts or fuel is seriously damaged from an accident, according to a risk analysis by AmerGen Energy Co., which runs the plant. The details are in the plant's 2,400-page relicensing application. Despite this known risk, Oyster Creek's owner wants to run the plant for 20 more years beyond the end of its current 40-year license in 2009. Such a high probability of containment failure is common among the 103 nuclear reactors in the United States, according to documents and studies from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The possible failure rate ranged from 1 percent to 99 percent, according to a nuclear engineer who has seen an NRC database that is no longer publicly available. Although getting to the point of core damage at Oyster Creek has astronomically low odds — about 1 chance in 95,000 per year — once that threshold is crossed, the final barrier will be little match for the heat, steam and radiation produced during a catastrophic accident. "The good news is that a lot of effort is undertaken to reduce the likelihood of an accident," said David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit alliance of citizens and scientists. "The bad news is that if that date arrives," the containment system, whose sole function is to protect the public, is "not likely to work," he said. If you were to slice the plant from top to bottom, Oyster Creek's containment system would look like an enormous upside-down light bulb balanced on a doughnut. The principle is similar to that of a thermos bottle: If the inside lining of the container breaks, the liquid would remain trapped within the bottle's steel outer shell. Oyster Creek's containment system, which surrounds the reactor and its 105 tons of nuclear fuel, is designed to condense steam and cool the reactor in an emergency. But if the reactor core is damaged, the 74 percent chance of failure means that at least some radiation would escape within hours or days of the accident, according to Oyster Creek's application for relicensing, a plant spokesman and NRC officials. "I'm horrified because the mantra of Oyster Creek and the nuclear industry is that they're safe," said Jeffrey Brown, a 63-year-old Brick resident and a member of Grandmothers, Mothers and More for Energy Safety, an Oyster Creek opposition group. "At what point do people say that Oyster Creek is not worth the risk?" Engineers not affiliated with the NRC or the plant should be allowed inside Oyster Creek to evaluate the drywell, said Thomas Cervasio, chairman of EnviroWatch, a Berkeley-based environmental watchdog. The drywell is a steel pressure vessel surrounded by reinforced concrete. Both surround the reactor. "We would feel an awful lot better if we could get an independent study," he said. How much radiation, and how deadly the plume is, would be determined by the severity of any accident and the timing of a release, according to the plant's risk assessment. The likelihood of a deadly release — which would usually occur in the first six hours of reactor damage — is about 1 in 1.7 million per year, according to plant and NRC officials. A massive radiation release would be the most deadly in the early hours because up to 244,000 residents and visitors may not have enough time to evacuate from the area around the plant. The plant's 74 percent chance of containment system failure would apply only "in the highly unlikely event that there is a (reactor) core damage event," said Peter C. Resler, manager of nuclear communications for Exelon, which owns plant operator AmerGen. Core damage includes melting of the highly radioactive fuel in the reactor. Fuel could melt, for example, if a large pipe breaks, and water used to keep the core at a safe temperature is lost. Failure risks vary greatly Oyster Creek's weak containment system is not unique among the 102 other nuclear reactors in the United States. The integrity of nuclear plant containment systems varies widely, with their chances of failing ranging from 1 percent to 99 percent, according to Lochbaum, of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He cited information from an NRC database that is no longer available. An expert with the nuclear industry's policy group said that the chances of containment failure have vastly decreased since plants first studied severe accident risks 15 years ago. The chance of a containment system failing is now generally 10 percent to much less than 1 percent, said Tony Pietrangelo, senior director of risk regulation for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based nuclear industry group. But he could not point to any studies to support his conclusion. Oyster Creek has a General Electric Mark I containment system, and all plants with such a system installed additional venting systems, according to Pietrangelo. Industry guidelines were developed to preserve containment integrity, among other improvements. NRC spokesman Neil A. Sheehan said the NRC knows of no new reports on the risks of containment failure at plants. Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the 1997 NRC reports detailing the chance of containment failure were removed from the NRC's Web site. The NRC removed the documents from the Web because "there was not a desire to point up risks associated with various aspects of nuclear power plant operation," Sheehan said. The reports, though, are still for sale. Copies of the three-volume report — without the database that details the containment ratings of individual plants — are available for purchase from the U.S. Department of Commerce for $55.85. Assessing the danger Since a commercial nuclear plant has never released a fatal plume of radiation in this country, the probability of such an accident is based on mathematical models. The likelihood of an accidental radiation leak — be it small or large — is about 1 in 128,000 per year at Oyster Creek, according to AmerGen estimates. For comparison, the odds of dying from poisoning are 1 in 86,313 a year, according to National Safety Council estimates. The chance of dying from medical and surgical care complications is 1 in 101,281 a year. The ultimate effects of an early radiation leak would obviously be borne primarily by people living near the plant. It would take between 7 and 9 1/2 hours to evacuate a 10-mile ring around Oyster Creek known as an emergency planning zone, according to New Jersey's Radiological Emergency Response Plan. Oyster Creek's containment "would work in minimizing releases of radioactivity early on, which allows time for emergency measures to be put into place," Sheehan said. How containment works Oyster Creek was built in the 1960s with a relatively small General Electric Mark I containment system. Different systems were built in later years, such as the GE Mark II containments for the Susquehanna 1 and 2 reactors in Pennsylvania. A plant study showed that its containments would have a 1 percent chance of failure, according to data provided by Lochbaum. "GE wanted to make (the Mark I) smaller and more efficient," said Roger F. Reedy, a California-based nuclear engineering consultant who did the detailed design work for Oyster Creek's reactor and containment vessels based on GE specifications. The Mark I, and the subsequent GE Mark II and III designs installed at some other nuclear plants, met the American Society of Mechanical Engineers code "that tells you how to build these to be safe," Reedy said. He once chaired the ASME committee that writes the rules for nuclear reactor and containment vessels, he said. "That code is around the world now because it has a reputation for being safe," he said. Twenty other boiling water reactors in the United States have GE Mark I containments, according to Hans Ashar, a senior structural engineer for the NRC in Rockville, Md. This is how a Mark I containment system would work: During an accident, excess steam and gases would be trapped in the steel shell called the drywell. Connected to the bottom of the drywell is the torus, which is shaped like a doughnut and partially filled with about 1 million gallons of water. "If you have a discharge of steam (from the reactor vessel during an accident), the hot steam is shoved down into the water in the bottom of the torus," Reedy said. "That cools the steam down immediately, which reduces the pressures." It is the nuclear equivalent of a child using a straw to cool his hot breath by blowing bubbles into a glass of cold water. The torus water condenses the steam and also would be pumped into the reactor to help prevent the fuel from melting. Sprayers at the top of the drywell would be used to cool the reactor vessel. In theory, a meltdown would be averted, radiation contained in the drywell and torus, and the public saved from a disaster. The drywell is rated to withstand 44 pounds of pressure per square inch but can withstand twice that rate, according to Ashar, AmerGen and NRC documents. Oyster Creek's isolation condenser tubes — which were repaired years ago and help quickly turn steam into water — make the Mark I "a particularly good design, even though it's an older design," said Dennis Zannoni, supervising nuclear engineer in the state Department of Environmental Protection's Nuclear Engineering Section. "If there's an accident, the steam will be dumped to the isolation condensers, which will condense the steam into water and recirculate it back," Zannoni said. "They're just tubes in a big container, and they're very, very important, and they work well." Kent Tosch, manager of the DEP Bureau of Nuclear Engineering, said if there were a "high probability of failure" at Oyster Creek overall, "the plant wouldn't operate." Much of the information that has emerged since the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in 1979 suggests that a lot of the radioactive materials in an accident will stay in and around the reactor, significantly reducing "early fatalities," Tosch said. COMING TUESDAY: Kinks in the evacuation plan. Todd B. Bates: (732) 643-4237 or tbates@app.com; Nicholas Clunn: (609) 978-4597 or nclunn@app.com (FILE PHOTO) Shown here is an upper level of Oyster Creek's main reactor building during a 1984 outage for refueling. The plant's radiation containment system has a 74 percent chance of failing in a major nuclear accident. Related Articles • Utility's credibility under fire February 13, 2006 • Safety upgrades made after TMI February 13, 2006 • Corrosion test sought for radiation barrier February 13, 2006 • Boiling water reactors: more troubling events February 13, 2006 • Can a 40-year life be extended to 60? February 13, 2006 • Electric bills could rise if plant closes February 13, 2006 • Hard-to-inspect cables, pipes create problems February 13, 2006 • Oyster Creek manager lost job after positive test for cocaine February 12, 2006 • Near-miss prompts safety wake-up call February 12, 2006 • Property values far exceed insurance fund limit February 12, 2006 • "Degraded" list means greater NRC oversight February 12, 2006 • Human error hurts plant's safety record February 12, 2006 • RELICENSING OYSTER CREEK: IS IT WORTH IT? February 12, 2006 ***************************************************************** 59 APP.COM: Corrosion test sought for radiation barrier | Asbury Park Press Online Monday, February 13, 2006 BY TODD B. BATES AND NICHOLAS CLUNN STAFF WRITERS Activists concerned about corrosion discovered in the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant's radiation containment vessel in the 1980s want more tests done to confirm that it is thick enough to last until 2029. One area of the corroded steel drywell liner, a key part of containment that is designed to help prevent a radiation release during an accident, hasn't been thoroughly inspected in years, plant critics say. AmerGen Energy Co., which runs Oyster Creek and is seeking a 20-year license extension beyond 2009, says the corrosion has been stopped. The drywell "will not corrode to less than minimum required thickness" before 2029, according to an AmerGen document. But AmerGen has agreed to perform a measurement prior to 2009, when its current license expires, to see whether a 1992 drywell coating has halted the corrosion, an AmerGen letter says. The company has also told the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it will inspect the liner once every 10 years. William Muehleisen, a former midlevel plant supervisor who retired last year after 35 years at Oyster Creek, said conducting an ultrasonic test to measure the liner's thickness would be easy during a planned outage. As part of the plant's relicensing request, an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, which conducts fact-finding hearings for the NRC, may consider the corrosion issue. Nuclear watchdogs and environmental activists have filed a petition seeking a hearing. But the NRC staff and AmerGen have called the petition "inadmissible." "Both AmerGen and the NRC have attempted to (minimize) the damage that's been done to this component due to corrosion," said Paul Gunter, reactor watchdog with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington. "Frankly, we think this damage should get the closest and most thorough scrutiny that can be mounted." In the 1980s, ultrasonic test results confirmed that parts of the liner were corroding from water leaks in the sand bed and upper regions, with the most severe corrosion in the sand area, the AmerGen document stated. Sand around the drywell that corroded metal areas was removed years ago, and the corroded metal areas were coated with a special epoxy, according to AmerGen documents. Critics aren't sure the corrosion is under control, and they want ultrasonic inspections of the drywell. The last ultrasonic tests of the drywell's former sand bed region were done in 1996, and the epoxy coating was visually inspected in 2000 and 2004, according to AmerGen. Ultrasonic measurements in critical areas of the upper drywell were made in 2004. AmerGen will conduct ultrasonic tests to measure the thickness of the drywell in the former sand bed region to confirm that the coating has stopped the corrosion, the company says. The state Department of Environmental Protection considers additional testing to be prudent, said Kent Tosch, manager of the DEP's Bureau of Nuclear Engineering. ***************************************************************** 60 Guardian Unlimited: Japanese Firm Raided in Nuclear Probe From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 13, 2006 10:46 AM AP Photo XKK107 By HIROKO TABUCHI Associated Press Writer TOKYO (AP) - Police on Monday raided a Japanese precision instruments maker, reportedly on suspicion it illegally exported machinery that could be used in uranium enrichment, a key process in making a nuclear bomb. An official at Mitutoyo Corp., based outside Tokyo, confirmed the raid but refused to discuss the case, saying only that the company would cooperate with police. The company shut down its phone lines later in the day. Japan's top newspapers, public broadcaster NHK and Kyodo News agency reported the company was suspected of exporting three-dimensional measuring machines to Japanese companies in China and Thailand in 2001 without seeking government permission as required. Some of the reports also said the company's machinery may have been diverted separately to Libya for use in that country's now-abandoned nuclear program. The conservative Sankei newspaper reported the company's machinery could also have reached North Korea. The reports all cited unidentified sources. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police confirmed that investigators raided the company but said they could not provide other details of the case unless an arrest was made. Government officials also refused to discuss the case. Japan's technological prowess as Asia's most advanced economy could make it an attractive shopping ground for states and others eager to build a nuclear weapon. Resource-poor Japan is particularly active in nuclear energy. Nobumasa Akiyama, a specialist at the government-affiliated Center of the Promotion of Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, said Japan is a ``treasure trove'' for those seeking technology with nuclear applications. ``Japanese companies are often uninterested in where their products end up, or what they are used for, and often try to dodge export regulations without realizing the consequences,'' Akiyama said. Three-dimensional measuring machines map cylindrical shapes to great detail and cannot be exported without government permission, said Mikio Aoki, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Aoki, who refused to specifically discuss the Mitutoyo case, said that high-tech versions of the machine can also measure centrifuges used in uranium enrichment. Japanese news reports have said the International Atomic Energy Agency discovered machinery manufactured by Mitutoyo at nuclear-related sites in Libya during inspections in December 2003 and January 2004. The equipment was shipped to Libya via Dubai by Scomi Precision Engineering Bhd., a Malaysian maker linked to an international nuclear trafficking network, Kyodo News agency reported Monday. Kyodo said the company, also known as SCOPE, imported six units from Mitutoyo in early 2002. The company was linked to the proliferation network led by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, in October 2003, when some 25,000 SCOPE-produced centrifuge parts for enriching uranium were seized en route to Libya. Malaysian police cleared SCOPE of knowing the parts were bound for Libya, or intended for nuclear use. The company says it thought they were destined for the oil and gas industry in Dubai. Police suspect machinery exported by Mitutoyo may have also reached North Korea via the international black market in nuclear-related technology, the Sankei newspaper reported. Libya said in 2003 it had given up what had been a secret nuclear, biological and chemical weapons program, handing over drawings of a crude nuclear bomb to the IAEA. North Korea is believed to have enough radioactive material for about a half-dozen bombs from its publicly acknowledged plutonium program. It claimed it had nuclear weapons in February last year. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 61 ForUm :: Energoatom initiated round-table discussion on nuclear waste storage construction News / 13 February 2006 | 15:50 The representatives of the profile ministries, departments and project organizations of Energoatom National Company together with the members of Ukrainian parliament discussed the building project of the nuclear waste storage for four Ukrainian nuclear stations. Energoatom the current operator of the nuclear power plants initiated the meeting. The participants backed the initiation concerning the nuclear waste storage which is extremelly needed in the light of the economical and political situation of Ukraine-Russia relations because Ukraine still sends its nuclear waste to Russia. According to Energoatom calculations, the total sum of expenses on constrauction and exploitation of the storage in Ukraine will make $520 million; the current price for russain storge makes $2 milliard for prices of 2005. The new storage will serve for Yuzhno-Ukrainskaya, Rivno and Khmelnitskaya nuclear power plants. Zaporizhzhye nuclear plant using its own waste storage saves $40 million annually. The parties failed to agree on the place where the new storage will be constructed. There two place where it may be done – Chernobyl Shelter or Khmelnitsky nuclear plant. All participants stressed that the realization of the project must be executed in accordance with the law of Ukraine “On the conditions of placing, projecting and construction of nuclear objects and equipment intended for nuclear waste having of national importance.” Such decision must be passed by Verkhovna Rada through the corresponding law. Editorial staff:english@for-ua.com All rights are reserved by © LTD. Inter-Media, ForUm 2001-2006 ***************************************************************** 62 Bellona: Duma committee votes to slash SNF reprocessing—while Rosatom gets ready to take on more Duma resolution reveals expanding fuel types that would be recycled ST. PETERSBURG—The State Duma Environment Committee has passed a resolution that proposes gradually reducing the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) at the Mayak facility, while at the same time, it has emerged that Rosatom had secretly been preparing to reprocess SNF from VVER-1000 reactors at Mayak—which the facility is not equipped to handle. Fences surrounding the Mayak facility. Thomas Nilsen/Bellona Vera Pomomareva, 2006-02-13 11:32 Despite this, the deputies did not vote to deprive Mayak of its reprocessing license, as earlier threatened. Bellona Web has obtained the text of the resolution adopted at the State Duma Environment Committee session held on February 8th at which problems at the Mayak facility were discussed. Duma demands an end to nuclear reprocessing at Mayak A resolution is being prepared by the State Duma’s Ecology Committee, calling for a halt on the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) at the Mayak Chemical Combine. The resolution calls for guaranteeing safety at Mayak to be a “state task of the greatest importance,” and recommends that Rosatom gradually reduce reprocessing of SNF at the facility. “This is not a populist decision—we really want to stop this madness with the dumping at Mayak,” committee chairman Vladimir Grachev told Bellona web. “We have already managed to get the decision accepted by Rosatom.” According to the deputies, the first stage should be to restrict SNF reprocessing to volumes “necessary for fulfilling international agreements, and also environmental and defence programmes.” “This means fuel from submarines,” Grachev said. “If we leave that out, it will be even more dangerous than reprocessing it.” Rosatom's secret plans The Duma resolution also recommends “reducing work linked to the reprocessing of SNF from VVER-1000 reactors.” Until now nothing was known about Rosatom's plans to reprocess fuel from VVER-1000 reactors at Mayak. Fuel from such reactors—which are used at three nuclear power plants in Russia—is not presently reprocessed anywhere in Russia, but rather put into temporary storage at the Krasnoyarsk Mining and Chemical Combine’s RT-2 facility. “Rosatom was planning to increase reprocessing at Mayak, and had already bought equipment to break up fuel rods from these reactors and prepare it for reprocessing,” Grachev said. Mayak's RT-1 facility currently reprocesses spent fuel from VVER-440, BN-350, and BN-600 reactors, as well as naval reactors and some research reactors. Some 120 tonnes of SNF is reprocessed annually at Mayak, though the facility has a theoretical annual capacity of 400 tonnes. Mayak keeps its license The deputies watered down the original text, removing a demand to revoke Mayak’s licence to reprocess SNF and dump waste into local water systems. However, dumping of radioactive waste into the Techa reservoir system along the southern Urals’ Techa River is the focus of the complaints against Mayak. In January 2003, the federal nuclear oversight agency stripped Mayak of its licence for precisely this reason—although the licence was subsequently renewed anyway, and agency head Yury Vishnevsky sacked, apparently for revoking the licence in the first place. He was replaced by then-Minatom—Rosatom’s predecessor—Deputy Minister Andrei Malyshev. Recommended measures The Duma resolution talks about the necessity for a comprehensive plan to deal with Mayak's environmental problems “with an analysis of the situation, development of basic measures and an assessment of the environmental consequences.” As well as the reduction in reprocessing, front-line measures include action to improve safety in the Techa reservoir system, including reconstruction of the top of dam no. 11 and the construction of a first-level combined sewerage system to take run-off water into the left-bank canal. In addition, deputies recommended that the Emergency Situations Ministry, together with the Chelyabinsk Regional administration, carry out a raft of social, medical, and legal measures stipulated in federal and local target programmes to protect the local population. Bush and Russia wish to join forces in making nuclear fuel The Bush administration will propose in the budget it hands down today the creation of an atomic energy partnership with Russia, offering countries around the world a supply of fuel for their reactors under restrictions intended to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons, according to administration officials in Washington, D.C. Russian-American plans While the deputies were making recommendations on ending SNF reprocessing, US President George Bush announced his readiness to work with Russia in order to increase reprocessing in both counties. Bush suggested that the US and Russia would deliver reactor fuel to other countries, and then collect the used fuel in order to reprocess it and prevent it being used for military purposes. Programmes to recycle nuclear waste in the United States were curtailed under President Jimmy Carter, and re-establishing them would take considerable resources and time. Bush proposed allocating $250m in his 2007 federal budget request to develop the new technologies. Grachev said joint Russian-American plans do not contradict his committee's position. “My reaction to this proposition is very positive,” he said. “We should not confuse fuel reprocessing at Mayak with fuel reprocessing in general. Reprocessed fuel should be kept at two or three locations under strict control in order to stop proliferation around the world.” Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 63 Salt Lake Tribune: Breaking: Nuclear commission issues license for Skull Valley nuclear storage Article Last Updated: 02/13/2006 2:59 PM MST By Robert Gehrke The Salt Lake Tribune WASHINGTON --The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a license to Private Fuel Storage to build its spent nuclear fuel storage facility on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation west of Salt Lake City. A copy of the license was hand-delivered to Private Fuel Storage Chairman John Parkyn in Chicago, where Parkyn was chairing a meeting of the American Nuclear Society, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Dave McIntyre. PFS, a consortium of nuclear energy-producing electric utilities, plans to store 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation, some 50 miles west of Salt Lake City, until a permanent repository can be built beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The license does not entitle PFS to begin construction on the project immediately. Before that can happen, the company needs to show that it has contracts signed that would provide enough money to decommission the facility after it closes and to cover a portion of the construction costs. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch has said that the crumbling PFS coalition, which has lost several major members from its original consortium, and dwindling enthusiasm for the project will make it impossible for those financial conditions to be met. The consortium also has to win approval of the necessary permits to operate the site, including a method to deliver the waste to Skull Valley. The issue of waste delivery was complicated when Congress created a wilderness area near the Skull Valley reservation that severely hindered the original plan to build a rail line to the reservation. PFS now says it may have to build a transfer facility to move the nuclear waste from rail cars to trucks and drive them to the Skull Valley site. McIntyre said that either method of delivery is permitted by the license. PFS has until Friday to review the license for technical or typographical errors. Utah attorneys also will receive a copy, but do not get to recommend changes. Nuclear Regulatory Commission members do not have to vote on the final version of the license. © Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 64 MSNBC.com: Navajo take stand against uranium mining - Race in America - The nation is at the epicenter of the current uranium scramble By Jerry Reynolds WASHINGTON - The global Cold War sparked the first uranium rush on Navajo land in the 1950s - and now a superheated global economy has threatened a third. Nuclear industry management has discredited the idea that a uranium ''rush'' is on, noting that even as the per-pound price of uranium has climbed to $35 from just over $7 four years ago, the industry's wages and insurance costs are still much higher now than at the crest of the second national scramble for uranium, in the late 1970s. A highly placed uranium executive, quoted in a January Arizona Republic article, said the current intense activity - the newspaper reported that in 2005 alone, 700 mining claims have been filed and 100 test holes bored in the high desert of Arizona, the country's most uranium-rich state - won't qualify as a uranium rush by historical standards until prices reach $50 a pound. On what they will call it when prices reach $500 a pound, no word. But one industry analyst, quoted on the Internet at www.stockinterview.com, states that it could happen. China, India and Japan are all competing for uranium as they count on nuclear fuel to power their so-far successful commitment to explosive economic growth on the Western model. New generation of nuclear power plants Considering its status as the planet's leading economic power, the United States is poorly positioned to compete for uranium. It hasn't added to its 103 nuclear plants since 1978, and uranium mining has been stagnant since a wave of bankruptcies closed out the second uranium rush in the 1980s. ''We're hurting for revenues, yes; we're hurting for jobs, but we're not going to get into something that has killed us and will continue to kill us.' - Joe Shirley Jr. Navajo president Altogether, that means that as the United States prepares to establish a new generation of nuclear power plants, futures contracts will be signed for uranium supplies that are both scarce and in high demand, guaranteeing the kind of competition that has driven prices for other energy resources off the chart in recent years. Uranium, of course, is the heavy metal at the heart of nuclear power; one pound of uranium ''yellowcake'' produces the energy equivalent of many, many tons of coal - as many as 15 train car loads of coal, according to the U.S. Geological Survey as cited in the Arizona Republic. And worthy of note here: That none of this information is the stuff of standard headlines should lead no one to conclude it's not happening as described. The headline seen around the world from President Bush's recent State of the Union address, after all, was that America has an oil addiction. By comparison, one of the remark's main intents - to prepare the ground policy-wise and grow public acceptance for a new chapter in U.S. nuclear power - passed almost unnoticed. But the Navajo have been on notice for a long time. With extensive lands in the leading uranium states of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, the nation is at the epicenter of the current uranium scramble. Mindful of the health and environmental devastations visited on tribal members by the previous waves of uranium mining, the nation last year enacted the Dine Natural Resources Protection Act, banning uranium mining throughout its territories. More recently, President Joe Shirley Jr. issued an executive order forbidding conversation between tribal employees and energy industry representatives on the subject of uranium exploration. Opposition will not soften But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has since dismissed arguments against a uranium mining project based on water quality and groundwater contamination, setting the table for mining the richest uranium vein in the nation on lands that border Navajo territory. Under the recent NRC ruling on a uranium mining application, such mining may also proceed on Navajo allotted land. Because groundwater flows obey no imposed borders, this is cause for continuing concern in a nation whose many victims of uranium exposure (cancer and kidney damage are the leading afflictions) have never been compensated and continue to suffer, according to community opinion, grass-roots activists and many observers within the environmental and health care communities. In an interview that accompanied the Arizona Republic article in January, Shirley expressed confidence that Navajo opposition to uranium mining will not soften no matter how high uranium prices climb, and notwithstanding the many Navajo members unemployed by the closure of Black Mesa coal mine. (The announced cause of the closure was the cost of meeting environmental standards.) ''We're hurting for revenues, yes; we're hurting for jobs, but we're not going to get into something that has killed us and will continue to kill us,'' said Shirley. Shirley and the nation have a history of commitment on the issue. In 2003, about midway through the long, complex and embattled legislative process that ultimately passed a national energy reform law, Shirley campaigned on Capitol Hill against a then-provision ''that invites uranium mining on the Navajo Nation.'' Part of the campaign was to distribute a book, ''If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans,'' among lawmakers and the media.© 2006 Indian Country Today. All rights reserved. © 2006 MSNBC.com ***************************************************************** 65 AP Wire: Hydrogen Research Center opens near SRS | 02/13/2006 | JACOB JORDAN Associated Press AIKEN, S.C. - As the pressure mounts to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, South Carolina has strengthened its foothold on possibly becoming a key player in the nation's future energy needs by opening a new hydrogen research hub. The Center for Hydrogen Research, located near the former nuclear weapons complex the Savannah River Site, held its ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday. Though the labs were still mostly empty, researchers who will soon occupy the $9 million space beamed with excitement about what it could eventually mean to South Carolina and the rest of the country. The center will combine existing efforts from the Savannah River National Lab, private industry and the state's research universities, hoping the discoveries will one day lead to commercial success and economic development in an area hit hard by layoffs at the the former nuclear weapons site. "I would argue that the hydrogen footprint in South Carolina, for research and development of a hydrogen economy, is probably as advanced as anywhere in the country," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "Change is coming. Those who deny it are the ones who are going to get left behind. South Carolina realizes change is coming." The universities of South Carolina, Clemson and South Carolina State recently began studying hydrogen, and the national lab has for more than 50 years been involved in research and development of hydrogen. Since the 1950s, the lab has helped the nearby site maintain tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. The lab will lease about half the space and initially relocate about 40 researchers. Some scientists think hydrogen fuel cells could replace electricity as a more cost effective energy source, and hydrogen has been eyed as a replacement for oil and other fossil fuels. President Bush first detailed a $1.7 billion hydrogen research program in 2003. The government and automakers have been working to develop vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Toyota and General Motors have announced partnerships with the lab to test lighter-weight and more cost-effective storage tanks for hydrogen fuel. Toyota has already leased space at the center, said Ernie Chaput of the Economic Development Partnership of Aiken and Edgefield Counties. Several obstacles remain before cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells are readily available. That includes reducing production costs and building an infrastructure of fueling stations. "We're committed to it because it's our future. When we think about our over-dependence on foreign sources of oil, the real future, the real vision is getting our transportation sector off of petroleum, and the way that we really do that is with hydrogen fuel cells," said Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell. There's an aggressive plan to commercialize the technologies by 2015, but significant investments need to be made in research and development, "and we're going to do a lot of that here in Aiken," Sell said. The center will help address costs, reliability and safety associated with using hydrogen as an energy source, said Savannah River lab director Todd Wright. "This is not a six-month commitment," Wright said. "Sometimes, maybe you can see the enthusiasm change. In this particular case, I don't think that's going to happen because I really think there's a resolve and a drive to look for alternatives. ... It is a challenge, but it's not unlike many that we've faced in the past." Republican Gov. Mark Sanford praised the collaborative effort, including the Commerce Department's recent announcement of the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Alliance, a statewide coalition to promote the development of hydrogen fuel cell technology. "This is about addressing a major need of mankind. Whoever is first to the finish line is going to reap enormous benefits," Sanford said. "I think it represents a remarkable opportunity in South Carolina." ***************************************************************** 66 DOE: DOE Conducts Energy Saving Assessment at Lubrizol Corp. Facility in Deer Park, TX February 13, 2006 WASHINGTON, DC  The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced today that a three-day industrial Energy Saving Assessment will take place at the Lubrizol Corp. facility in Deer Park, Texas, as part of the comprehensive national energy efficiency effort being undertaken by the Bush administration. Through no-cost assessments, DOE is working with major manufacturing facilities to identify opportunities to save energy and money, primarily by focusing on steam and process heating systems. President Bush has called on all Americans to be more energy efficient. Private industry is joining the federal government in taking a lead role in this effort, Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman said. DOEs Energy Saving Teams will play a key role in assessing and recommending energy efficiency strategies for some of the largest industrial facilities across the nation. The Lubrizol Corporation is a specialty chemical company that produces and supplies technologies that improve the quality and performance of products in global transportation, industrial and consumer markets. Lubrizols Deer Park facility manufactures lubricant additives for engine oils, other transportation-related fluids and industrial lubricants, and fuel additives for gasoline and diesel fuel. DOEs Energy Saving Teams have completed visits to 28 large federal facilities and are in the process of visiting 200 of the most energy-intensive manufacturing facilities in the United States as part of the national Easy Ways to Save Energy campaign launched by Secretary Bodman on October 3, 2005. The first six Energy Saving Assessments that DOE has conducted of private-sector facilities have identified, in aggregate, $10 million per year in energy cost savings that on average, will reduce total plant natural gas consumption by 6.7 percent. Companies interested in accessing DOE energy saving resources can get more details at www.eere.energy.gov/industry/saveenergynow/and request brochures detailing 15 Tips to Help Your Plant Save Energy. For tips on easy, inexpensive steps consumers can take to lower their energy bills this winter, please visit http://www.energysavers.gov/ or call DOEs Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Hotline at 1-877-337-3463. Media contact(s): Michael Waldron, 202/586-4940 [ ] U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 | ***************************************************************** 67 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Rocky FR Doc E6-1969 [Federal Register: February 13, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 29)] [Notices] [Page 7551] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr13fe06-65] Flats AGENCY: Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice of open meeting. SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Rocky Flats. 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, March 2, 2006. 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. ADDRESSES: College Hill Library, Room L-107, Front Range Community College, 3705 W. 112th Avenue, Westminster, Colorado. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Ken Korkia, Executive Director, Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board, 12101 Airport Way, Unit B, Broomfield, CO, 80021; telephone (303) 966-7855; fax (303) 966-7856. 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: 1. Public hearing on the Landfill Monitoring and Maintenance Plan and Post-Closure Plan for the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site Present Landfill. 2. Approval of recommendation on the Proposed Plan for Rocky Flats. 3. Other Board business may be conducted as necessary. 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 Ken Korkia at the address or telephone number listed above. Requests must be received at least five days prior to the meeting and reasonable provisions will be made to include the presentation in the agenda. The Deputy Designated Federal Officer is empowered to conduct the meeting in a fashion that will facilitate the orderly conduct of business. Individuals wishing to make public comment will be provided a maximum of five minutes to present their comments. Minutes: The minutes of this meeting will be available for public review and copying at the office of the Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board, 12101 Airport Way, Unit B, Broomfield, CO, 80021; telephone (303) 966-7855. Hours of operations are 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. Minutes will also be made available by writing or calling Ken Korkia at the address or telephone number listed above. Board meeting minutes are posted on RFCAB's Web site within one month following each meeting at: http://www.rfcab.org/Minutes.html. Issued at Washington, DC on February 6, 2006. Rachel M. Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. E6-1969 Filed 2-10-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 68 DOE: Office of Science; Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee FR Doc E6-1970 [Federal Register: February 13, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 29)] [Notices] [Page 7551-7552] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr13fe06-66] AGENCY: Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice of open meeting. SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat.770) requires that public notice of these meetings be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Tuesday, February 28, 2006, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 1, 2006, 8:30 a.m. to 12 noon. ADDRESSES: The Gaithersburg Hilton Hotel, 620 Perry Parkway, Gaithersburg, Maryland, 20887, USA. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Albert L. Opdenaker, Office of Fusion Energy Sciences; U.S. Department of Energy; 1000 Independence Avenue, SW.; Washington, DC 20585-1290; Telephone: 301-903-4927. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Meeting: The major purpose of the [[Page 7552]] meeting is for the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) to hear the report of its Committee of Visitors that has dealt with the program's large experimental facilities, diagnostics, and Enabling R program, and to prepare a letter transmitting the report and the Committee's recommendations to the Department. Tentative Agenda: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 (10 a.m.-5 p.m.). Office of Science Perspective. Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Perspective. Presentation by the Committee of Visitors on Large Facilities, Diagnostics and Enabling R. Public Comments. Wednesday, March 1, 2006 (9 a.m.-12 Noon). Status of ITER Agreement. Status of U.S. ITER Project. Burning Plasma Program Office Organization. Status of the National Ignition Facility Project. Prepare letter to DOE transmitting the COV Report. Adjourn. Public Participation: The meeting is open to the public. If you would like to file a written statement with the Committee, you may do so either before or after the meeting. If you would like to make oral statements regarding any of the items on the agenda, you should contact Albert L. Opdenaker at 301-903-8584 (fax) or albert.opdenaker@science.doe.gov (e-mail). You must make your request for an oral statement at least 5 business days before the meeting. Reasonable provision will be made to include the scheduled oral statements on the agenda. The Chairperson of the Committee will conduct the meeting to facilitate the orderly conduct of business. Public comment will follow the 10-minute rule. Minutes: We will make the minutes of this meeting available for public review and copying within 30 days at the Freedom of Information Public Reading Room; IE-190; Forrestal Building; 1000 Independence Avenue, SW.; Washington, DC, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. Issued at Washington, DC, on February 6, 2006. Rachel M. Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. E6-1970 Filed 2-10-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 69 lamonitor.com: NNSA mulls weapons, research The Online News Source for Los Alamos ROGER SNODGRASS, , Monitor Assistant Editor Editor's note: This is the second part of a two-part series on the National Nuclear Security Administration's evolving plans for the nuclear weapons complex. Part one, last Sunday discussed the agency's consolidation plans. This article is about the revised nuclear weapon that has emerged as the catalyst for transforming the system. For a relatively minor item in a $9.1 billion weapon's agency budget request, the Reliable Replacement Warhead has inspired a wide interest since it quietly became an item in the nuclear weapons budget last year. Next year's request will be $27.7 million, according to DOE fact sheets which would represent an increase of $2.7 million over current levels. The reasons for the scrutiny have to do with uncertainty and change, but also with concerns about just how new and how reliable the RRW will be. Its novelties may affect not only national security but also the fraying international arms control regime. At the same time RRW, featuring characteristics more tailored to current needs than the rapidly aging weapons now in the stockpile, has become a pivotal factor in restructuring the weapons complex. At a press conference this week in Washington, D.C, on the Department of Energy budget request, a reporter asked what would be happening with the Reliable Replacement Warhead. "Remember, this is research so we don't know that we can do all the things that we hope we can do, but if so, we think that it has a great deal of possibility of improving long-term safety, security, and reliability, and reducing the need for nuclear testing and helping to transform the infrastructure," said Ambassador Linton Brooks, head of the national nuclear weapons program. The first phase of RRW involves a nuclear weapon re-design competition between Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, with Sandia National Laboratories providing a supportive role to the designers. One objection raised by critics of the program, summed up in a recent Congressional Research Service report, has to do with fears that the goals of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty may be abandoned. Article IV calls for all parties, including the US, 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." In a visit to Los Alamos Tuesday, Brooks said, "We are unlikely to see the political condition that would allow us to eliminate all nuclear weapons, and even if we saw it we wouldn't be able to verify it." He expressed confidence that the RRW should not be classified as a new weapon because it is intended as a replacement to do the same job for the same military purpose against the same classes of targets. "It would have the same characteristics," he said. "It is really not about improving military capacity, but increasing reliability to respond to problems. "It would be easier to maintain," he said, acknowledging that the "pit" would be "slightly different." The pit, or nuclear trigger, is a primary package containing plutonium-239 that ignites a secondary package of fissionable materials to create the explosive power of the bomb. Back in the days of the Cold War, Brooks said, when the national strategy was to keep up with the Soviet Union, the idea was to put a lot of warheads on each missile. "At the time, we believed plutonium was a precious resource," he said. "It's ironic because now we're trying to get rid of it." Since the replacement weapons can use more plutonium and don't have to be as lightweight, they can be more robust and have a greater margin of reliability. "I've got ballistic throw weight coming out of my ears," he said. Brooks compared the remake of the nuclear weapons to rebuilding an automobile motor. "How many components do replace before you say I have a new engine rather than a rebuilt engine? That's not a scientifically determinable number." Brooks said. RRW has become a target of anti-nuclear groups, buoyed by their success last year in defeating funding for another weapon-remodel study, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, which was advertised as a hardened version of current weapons system. To those concerned that newly designed weapons would be inherently riskier than existing warheads in the stockpile that have been tested, Brooks said deploying the replacements without testing was part of the assignment. "That's one of our criteria," he said, adding that it was "almost an absolute condition, because the country's not going to go back to testing." He noted that the first weapon tested at Trinity Site worked, as did the bombs dropped on Japan, without having been previously tested."We now have infinitely more knowledge of fundamental phenomena (of nuclear weapons physics)," he said. © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************