***************************************************************** 02/24/06 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 14.47 ***************************************************************** 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 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Offers Data on Secret Uranium Project 2 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Russian nuclear chief in Tehran 3 AFP: Iran making progress in uranium enrichment 4 IRNA: EU FMs to reaffirm support for diplomatic solution to Iran's n 5 AFP: Top UN inspector heads to Iran for last-minute nuclear talks - 6 IRNA: India favors flexibility on Iran's nuclear issue 7 IRNA: Iran to guarantee its peaceful nuclear program 8 IRNA: Iran's energy minister in Beirut 9 Guardian Unlimited: U.S., North Korea to Hold Talks in N.Y. 10 US: Missing From ABC's WMD 'Scoop' 11 US: Salt Lake City Weekly: Just Testing 12 AFP: More work needs to be done for nuclear deal 13 US: UPI: Outside View: Cure worse than disease 14 US: Deseret News: Weapons detector to undergo Utah tests 15 Las Vegas SUN: U.S., Britain conduct nuclear experiment at 16 Guardian Unlimited: U.S., India Fail to Reach Nuclear Deal 17 Guardian Unlimited: Is Britain conducting nuclear tests? 18 Daily Yomiuri: Hiroshima peace tower reset after nuclear test 19 Radio New Zealand: Greens want concern expressed over nuclear test 20 Evening Times: Blair nuclear vow puts McConnell on spot - 21 ITAR-TASS: Ukraine won’t enrich uranium – Yekhanurov NUCLEAR REACTORS 22 Bellona: Kola NPP to supply aluminium plant with energy 23 US: NRC: NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards to Meet March 24 Platts: France still looking for damaged tube at Cruas-4 nuclear pla 25 US: Detroit News: Michigan needs more nuclear power plants - 26 US: Rutland Herald: Yankee uprate decision delayed 27 US: NRC: NRC Proposes Clarifications to New Reactor Licensing Proces 28 US: NRC: Notice of Availability of Documents Regarding Spent Fuel 29 US: NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Meeting Notice 30 US: Hudson Valley News: Entergy selects vendor for new community war 31 The Economist: Reactor Dreams 32 US: Vermont Guardian: Radioactive Russian roulette NUCLEAR SECURITY NUCLEAR SAFETY 33 [DU-WATCH] Dhafir and DU 34 US: NIOSH Update: NIOSH Offers Nanoparticle Information Library to NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 35 US: Desperately seeking waste - CSE News Bulletin [February 24, 36 US: Deseret News: PFS says it's ready to look for customers 37 Guardian Unlimited: Bill to clean up nuclear sites rises by nearly 1 38 US: AP Wire: Radioactive water from California plant leaks from tank 39 US: Washington Examiner: Toxic truth in Spring Valley - 40 Las Vegas SUN: Flashpoint for Feb 24, 2006 41 reviewjournal.com: Nuclear industry envisions expansion of Yucca pro 42 US: Platts: Spent fuel removal is industry's top waste legislation p 43 US: Platts: US NRC approves plan for spent nuclear fuel storage in U 44 US: LA Daily News: Grants proposed to stop perchlorate 45 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Radioactive water, bound for Tooele County, l 46 US: The Dispatch: Better Safe than ? Unless Olin's Corporate Profits 47 US: KUTV: Sen. Hatch Addresses Legislature On Skull Valley 48 US: edie news centre: America's answer to nuclear waste - recycle it 49 US: Canon City Daily Record: Comments show most opposed to Cotter MA 50 KVBC: Battle over Yucca waste capacity PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 51 DOE: DOE Announces $160 Million for Biorefinery Construction and 52 DOE: Secretary Bodman Highlights President Bushs Solar America 53 DOE: Assistant Secretary of Energy Touts Bush Administrations 54 DOE: DOE Official Highlights President Bushs Biofuels Initiative 55 DOE: Energy Secretary Highlights Hydrogen Fuel Initiative In Western 56 DOE: Assistant Secretary of Energy Highlights the Presidents New 57 DOE: DOE Official Highlights President Bushs Energy Initiatives 58 Platts: GNEP is months away from program plan, DOE says 59 Austin Daily Herald: Austin native nominated for DOE position - ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Offers Data on Secret Uranium Project From the Associated Press [UP] Friday February 24, 2006 4:16 AM AP Photo JAK110 By GEORGE JAHN Associated Press Writer NASSFELD, Austria (AP) - Iran has offered the U.N. nuclear watchdog information on a secret project that U.S. intelligence has linked to high explosives and warhead design, both parts of a possible nuclear arms program, two diplomats said Thursday. One of the diplomats told The Associated Press that a team of International Atomic Energy Agency experts was heading to Tehran this weekend to follow up on the offer to discuss the secret uranium processing project known as ``Green Salt.'' The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly discuss the matter. They said it was unclear if the information being offered by the Iranians would shed more light on suspicious aspects of Iran's nuclear program. But Tehran's overture appeared to be an attempt to blunt the threat of firm U.N. Security Council action in coming weeks. The council has the authority to impose sanctions on Iran. Also Thursday, the head of Russia's atomic energy agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, arrived in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials on the proposal, seen as the last chance for averting an escalation of the nuclear standoff. He was followed on Friday by China's Vice Foreign Minister Lu Guozheng, who arrived in an effort to broker a deal. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao has said that Lu was to spend three days in Tehran. Iran has denied seeking atomic weapons and more than three years of IAEA probing have failed to produce concrete evidence to the contrary. But the agency has discovered suspicious Iranian activity, including plutonium experiments and long-secret efforts to develop uranium enrichment - an activity that can produce nuclear fuel or fissile cores for warheads. Public mention of the ``Green Salt Project'' first surfaced in an IAEA report drawn up earlier this month for a meeting of the agency's 35-nation board of governors. The meeting ended with the board reporting Tehran to the Security Council over concerns it could be hiding a nuclear weapons program. The IAEA report voiced concern that under the ``Green Salt Project,'' conversion of uranium - a precursor to enrichment - was linked to suspected tests of ``high explosives and the design of a missile re-entry vehicle, all of which could have a military nuclear dimension.'' Among the links, they said, was the participation of several Iranian officials in uranium conversion, high explosives and warhead design work. High explosives can be used to detonate an atomic weapon. Diplomats familiar with the IAEA report said the agency based its concerns on several pages of recently declassified U.S. intelligence. Iran already has converted tons of uranium using a method that agency officials believe differs from the method believed used in the ``Green Salt Program.'' Iran's refusal to scrap domestic enrichment has aggravated concerns about its nuclear intentions and contributed to the IAEA board's Feb. 4 decision to report it to the Security Council. The council is taking no action ahead of the next IAEA board meeting, and as negotiations between Iran and Russia continue on a possible compromise solution that would move Tehran's uranium enrichment to Russia. The next IAEA meeting starts in Vienna on March 6. Moving Iran's enrichment to Russian soil would be meant to assuage international fears that the theocracy could divert uranium for atomic weapons. In Indonesia Thursday, Iran's foreign minister said that four unspecified issues must be resolved before his country agrees to the proposed Russian solution. Also Thursday, the head of Russia's atomic energy agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, arrived in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials on the proposal, seen as the last chance for averting an escalation of the nuclear standoff. China also was sending an envoy to Tehran in a last-ditch effort to broker a deal. ``We are ready to compromise,'' Iran's Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, told reporters during a brief visit to Indonesia as part of an Asian tour. Mottaki said that four issues remain unresolved in the Russian negotiations, among them which countries and companies would be involved. But ``if you ask me, the main element is timing and place or places,'' he said. He did not elaborate, but the reference to ``place or places'' appeared to allude to Iran's insistence that it be allowed to do some enrichment domestically, even if part of the prgram is moved to Russia. ----- On the Net: www.iaea.org Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 2 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Russian nuclear chief in Tehran IranNews Tehran Times Iran Daily 2006/02/24 11:59:15 Ţ.Ů Tehran, Feb 24 - The head of Russia's Atomic Energy Agency, Sergei Kiriyenko arrived in Tehran early on Friday. At the Mehrabad international airport Kiriyenko told reporters that mutual cooperation on various economic fields especially nuclear energy will be discussed during his meetings with Iranian officials. The Russian official is expected to visit the Bushehr nuclear power plant which is being built jointly by Iranian and Russian experts and is schedualed to go on line in 2007. Answering a question of joint Irano-Russian uranium enrichment, Kiriyenko said experts accompanying him in the visit will discuss the project with their Iranian counterparts. KH Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting ***************************************************************** 3 AFP: Iran making progress in uranium enrichment Fri Feb 24, 4:56 AM ET VIENNA (AFP) - Iran is now operating a 10-centrifuge cascade for uranium enrichment as it makes progress on its nuclear program, diplomats told AFP Friday ahead of a key UN nuclear report next week. The upcoming report from the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "will confirm that Iran is now running 10 centrifuges" with a feedstock gas used to manufacture enriched uranium, a diplomat said. Enriched uranium can be fuel for nuclear power reactors or the raw material for atom bombs. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse. ***************************************************************** 4 IRNA: EU FMs to reaffirm support for diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear issue - Brussels, Feb 24, IRNA EU-FM Council The Council of European Union Foreign Ministers is to discuss the cartoon controversy, EU relations with Iran and developments in Iraq and Palestine during its regular session in Brussels on Monday. The Council is expected to issue a statement saying that the EU continues to support a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear programme for peaceful purposes, sources in the current Austrian EU Presidency told reporters in Brussels Friday. The statement will also welcome the resolution adopted on 4 February by the IAEA Board of Governors and regret Tehran's decision to limit cooperation with the IAEA. The EU Foreign Minister will discuss reactions in the Muslim world towards the cartoon controversy and discuss ways to intensify dialogue between religions and civilizations. EU High Representative for a common foreign and security policy Javier Solana will brief the ministers on his recent visit to the Middle East. The Council will prepare for the spring EU summit to take place in Brussels in March. ***************************************************************** 5 AFP: Top UN inspector heads to Iran for last-minute nuclear talks - Fri Feb 24, 12:34 PM ET VIENNA (AFP) - A senior UN nuclear inspector heads to Tehran for talks Saturday days ahead of a report that could spark UN Security Council action, diplomats said, adding that Tehran had promised key information. They said Iran has promised to answer US claims that Tehran is doing atomic weapons work, including designing missile warheads and drawing up plans for a secret uranium conversion plant. The trip by Olli Heinonen, the director of safeguards for the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency " /> International Atomic Energy Agency, comes ahead of the planned release Monday to its board of governors of a report on the Iranian nuclear program. Under pressure from Western countries, the IAEA board referred Iran to the UN Security Council on February 4 over fears that its nuclear program may be a cover for atomic weapons development. However any action by the Security Council, which could include sanctions, was suspended until the board reviews the report at a March 6 meeting here. A diplomat close to the IAEA said that Heinonen, a deputy director general of the IAEA, "would not be going to Iran unless there was something that should be delivered. He does not go for routine visits." He is to return to Vienna early Monday. Heinonen met Thursday in Vienna with top Iranian nuclear officials, another diplomat said. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 6 IRNA: India favors flexibility on Iran's nuclear issue New Delhi, Feb 24, IRNA India-Iran-Safari India favored "flexibility" to find a solution to Iran's nuclear issue and said all sides should "eschew confrontation" and "exercise restraint". This was conveyed by the Indian side during talks visiting the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia and Pacific Affairs, Mehdi Safari, had with Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma, National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, and Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran here. The two sides had a comprehensive review of bilateral ties and agreed to continue cooperation in all areas of mutual interests and benefit, including in the energy field. They exchanged views on regional developments and international issues. Safari arrived here Thursday on a two-day visit, being undertaken in the context of regular interaction between the two foreign ministries aimed at strengthening bilateral relations and cooperation between the two countries. At the Feb 2-4 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting, India joined 26 other countries to vote for reporting of Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council. ***************************************************************** 7 IRNA: Iran to guarantee its peaceful nuclear program Madrid, Feb 24, IRNA Iran-Nuclear-Statement The Islamic Republic of Iran confirmed in a statement on Friday it is ready to guarantee its peaceful nuclear program through secure channels. Iran is only for peaceful nuclear energy within the framework of the regulations and articles stipulated in the international treaties, a statement published by I.R.I embassy in Madrid stressed. "The inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (which are currently being done), making use of advanced centrifuges with limited scale (as suggested by some American and British scientists) and contribution of interested countries in Iran's nuclear program are regarded as the options Iran recommends as its best guarantee to develop its peaceful nuclear program. The statement also reacted to the hue and cry by western propaganda and blamed the double standard policy the western governments have adopted towards Iran's nuclear case. As some European countries as well as Japan and Brazil have gained nuclear energy, Iran also would like to achieve nuclear knowledge with peaceful ends, said the statement. There are some ways showing Iran is not after nuclear program with military purposes, said the statement, adding Iran will send the additional protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to the Majlis (parliament) for final ratification should its mentioned guarantees are accepted. The European Union (EU) may provide new ways on Iran's nuclear case based on legal strategies respecting the NPT articles should it adopt an independent way and not to follow the US policies, the statement recommended. Iran, the statement notes, has announced that it is ready to hold talks and cooperate with all governments, except the Zionist regime, within the mentioned framework. The statement reiterated that the the EU should use its potentials to resolve the nuclear case and that Tehran is interested in a long-term cooperation with the EU. "If an international system existed to guarantee providing nuclear fuel, Iran would be interested to join it. However, such a system does not exist, today," the statement concluded. ***************************************************************** 8 IRNA: Iran's energy minister in Beirut , Feb 24, IRNA - Iran's Energy Minister Parviz Fattah arrived in Beirut, Lebanon on Friday and was welcomed by his Lebanese counterpart Mohammed Fneish. The Iranian minister, during his one-day official visit to Beirut, will hold talks with Fneish on issues of mutual interest such as energy and construction of power plants in Lebanon as well as promoting economic ties between the two countries. Iran's Fattah is scheduled to confer with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and Parliament's speaker Nabih Berri. ***************************************************************** 9 Guardian Unlimited: U.S., North Korea to Hold Talks in N.Y. From the Associated Press [UP] Friday February 24, 2006 2:31 AM By GEORGE GEDDA Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. and North Korean officials will meet next month in New York to discuss a rift over Pyongyang's alleged counterfeiting of American dollars, an issue that has contributed to North Korea's boycott of nuclear disarmament discussions. At the March 7 meeting, U.S. technical experts will brief a Foreign Ministry delegation from Pyongyang on U.S. laws that were applied when Washington imposed sanctions several months ago in response to counterfeiting and other U.S. allegations. State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said Thursday the purpose of the briefing ``is to respond to issues and concerns that the North Koreans have raised with regard to our actions.'' He said the decision to apply sanctions was unrelated to the six-party nuclear disarmament process. The North has denied the U.S. allegations and has ruled out participation in a new round until the sanctions are lifted. But North Korea's U.N. ambassador, Pak Gil Yon, said at a reception Wednesday night in New York that resumption of the talks ``fully depends on the U.S.,'' according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency. The U.S. allegations of counterfeiting have not been endorsed by South Korea. A top intelligence official in Seoul has said there is no evidence of any such activity by the North since 1998. In Seoul on Thursday, a South Korean opposition lawmaker showed colleagues and government officials what he said was a forged $100 bill allegedly bought from a company run by North Korea in the Chinese border city of Dandong. Last year, the U.S. slapped restrictions on a Macau bank and North Korean companies it said were involved in illicit activity, including counterfeiting, money laundering and funding weapons proliferation. Months ago, the United States offered to brief North Korea on the legal rationale for the sanctions but the North dismissed the proposal. The decision to send a delegation to New York for talks suggests a policy change by the North. Only rarely over the years has a senior North Korean official come to the United States for official discussions. Li Gun, chief of the Foreign Ministry's North American division, will lead his country's delegation to the March talks. Taking part for the United States will be experts from the State and Treasury departments and the National Security Council. The six parties involved in negotiations - the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia - have not met since November. Little has happened to inspire optimism over the process since September, when each party agreed in Beijing that the goal of the discussions was denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. North Korea is believed by U.S. officials to have possessed one or two nuclear weapons for years, with the capability to produce more. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 10 Missing From ABC's WMD 'Scoop' Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 00:58:39 -0600 (CST) ACTION ALERT: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2825 Missing From ABC's WMD 'Scoop' Star defector Hussein Kamel said weapons were destroyed 2/17/06 On February 15, ABC investigative reporter Brian Ross delivered an exclusive report on World News Tonight and Nightline that purported to be a bombshell. ABC had obtained tape-recorded conversations from mid-1995 that seemed to show that Iraq had been concealing its weapons of mass destruction program. The tapes, according to Ross, "will only serve to fuel the continuing debate about Saddam's true intentions and whether he, in fact, did hide weapons of mass destruction." But ABC viewers were left in the dark about information that would undermine the tape's most important revelations. ABC emphasized the excerpts of a conversation between Saddam Hussein and his weapons chief (and son-in-law) Hussein Kamel that seem to bolster the idea that Iraq was hiding weapons from inspectors. As Ross reported on Nightline, "Saddam's son-in-law briefs Saddam on the Iraqi campaign of deceit aimed at fooling UN inspectors." Kamel is then heard telling Saddam Hussein, in ABC's translation: "We did not reveal all that we have. Not the type of weapons. Not the volume of the materials we imported. Not the volume of the production we told them about. Not the volume of news. None of this was correct." ABC provides little context for the exchange, but suggests that these admissions might provide new insight into the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq a decade later. In fact, what Kamel revealed about the extent of Iraq's weapons programs has been known for some time, and portions of his account were an integral part of the White House's case for war. Kamel defected from Iraq in 1995, and talked at great length with U.N. weapons inspectors and the CIA about Iraq's unconventional weapons programs. He revealed at that time that Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs had been more advanced than the Saddam Hussein regime had admitted to the inspectors. Kamel publicly revealed the concealment of WMD-related activities in an interview with CNN (9/21/95): "The order was to hide much of it from the start, and we hid a lot of that information. These were not individual acts of concealment, but were as a result of direct orders from the top." So the fact that Saddam Hussein was attempting to deceive the weapons inspectors, as in ABC's tape, is hardly news more than 10 years later. But ABC's story does not include what was arguably Kamel's more important revelation, which was that Iraq had destroyed its stocks of usable unconventional weapons. "Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction," he told CNN in 1995. He told the same story to U.N. and U.S. officials, saying that by destroying the weapons in the summer of 1991, Saddam Hussein hoped to conceal how far Iraq had gotten in developing weapons, with the intent of restarting these programs after the inspection regime was ended. Hussein Kamel was lured back to Iraq in 1996, where he was almost immediately killed by Saddam Hussein's forces. But when the Bush administration began gearing up for war with Iraq in 2002, it found that selective citation of Kamel's testimony could be very helpful in making its case. Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in an August 2002 speech (8/26/02) that the Iraqi regime had been "very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents," and continued "to pursue the nuclear program they began many years ago." To back this up these claims, Cheney added, "We've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law"--a reference to Kamel. In a Chicago Tribune op-ed (9/10/02), former head of the U.N. weapons inspection team Scott Ritter pointed out that Cheney had left out a critical part of Kamels story: "Throughout his interview with UNSCOM, a U.N. special commission, Hussein Kamel reiterated his main point--that nothing was left. 'All chemical weapons were destroyed,' he said. 'I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons--biological, chemical, missile, nuclear--were destroyed.'" Nevertheless, the administration continued to selectively use Kamel's disclosures to bolster its case that Iraq had hidden stockpiles of banned weapons. "It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX," then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said in his February 5, 2003 speech to the U.N. "The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law." Powell did not note that Kamel had also reported that this nerve gas, along with all other such weapons, had been destroyed years earlier (Extra!, 5-6/03). Shortly before the invasion of Iraq began, Newsweek (3/3/03) obtained the transcript of Kamel's 1995 debriefing by officials from UNSCOM, the U.N. inspections team, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It published Kamel's key statement from that transcript: "All weapons--biological, chemical, missile, nuclear--were destroyed." Newsweek reported that Kamel told the same story to the CIA, but his account had been "hushed up." Shortly thereafter, the complete transcript of Kamel's discussions with inspectors was made public by Cambridge University's Glen Rangwala. As FAIR noted shortly after the Newsweek report (FAIR Media Advisory, 2/27/03), this crucial information went largely unreported in the mainstream media. Three years later, that is still the case. Instead of this critical context--which frankly undermines the importance of the network's "exclusive"--ABC opted for political speculation. The network's report quotes Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.): "From reading some of the transcripts, you would think that it's pretty likely that there were WMD that were hidden or that were moved out of the country." By omitting countervailing information, ABC is in effect bolstering such ill-informed claims. Nightline anchor Terry Moran asserted that the tapes ABC aired made an important contribution to our understanding of the Iraq controversy: "Without question, these tapes will shed new light on the debate over the war and on Saddam's future." If ABC's report is any indication, that debate will continue to ignore inconvenient facts about what was really known before the war about Iraq's weapons. ACTION: Contact ABC and ask why its reports citing an Iraqi official to bolster the idea that Iraq had WMDs failed to mention that the same official told weapons inspectors that Iraq's weapons stockpiles were destroyed in 1991. CONTACT: ABC World News Tonight Phone: 212-456-4040 netaudr@abc.com ABC Nightline Phone: 202-222-7000 nightline@abc.com ****** If you would prefer to receive these messages in HTML format, please visit our website to change your Email Preferences. Go to: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/fair/signUp.jsp?key=708. Your donation to FAIR goes a long way. Help us hold mainstream media accountable. Make a difference Support FAIR today! http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=103 SUBSCRIBE TO EXTRA! AND GET FAIR'S NEW BOOK FOR FREE: The Oh Really? Factor http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=114 FAIR SHIRTS: Get your "Don't Trust the Corporate Media" shirt today at FAIR's online store: http://www.merchantamerica.com/fair/ FAIR produces CounterSpin, a weekly radio show heard on over 130 stations in the U.S. and Canada. To find the CounterSpin station nearest you, visit http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=5 Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org ). We can't reply to everything, but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented examples of media bias or censorship. And please send copies of your email correspondence with media outlets, including any responses, to fair@fair.org. Our subscriber list is kept confidential. To unsubscribe from this list at any time, visit our web at: http://www.demaction.org/fair/unsubscribe.jsp and follow the instructions. Or send an email to fair@democracyinaction.org with unsubscribe in the subject line. FAIR (212) 633-6700 http://www.fair.org/ E-mail: fair@fair.org /*Your email ID. --*/ ***************************************************************** 11 Salt Lake City Weekly: Just Testing Feature - February 23, 2006 Is the U.S. Government making anthrax bombs in Utah? by Ted McDonough In March 1988, Saddam Hussein unloaded some of his Pandora’s box of chemical weapons on the Kurdish village of Halabja. As many as 5,000 were killed by nerve agents believed to have included VX, a poison so deadly that a single drop the size of a pinhead can cause death minutes after touching the skin. By forcing all the body’s nerves to fire continuously, causing all of a victim’s involuntary muscles to contract, VX leads to racing heart, drooling, vomiting, gut spasms and, finally, death by asphyxiation. Fifteen years later, in 2003, that attack was still cited as a reason to force Iraq to get rid of its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, then believed to additionally include giant fermentors used to grow deadly bacteria such as anthrax and botulinum. Civilized countries, including the United States, had sworn off such weapons a generation earlier and were busy dismantling Cold War-era chemical and biological weapons factories. Much of the job of destroying America’s WMD stockpile took place in Utah’s west desert at the Deseret Chemical Depot, 12 miles south of Tooele. In March 2005, the depot celebrated its milestone destruction of the millionth VX-filled munition. The date of the announcement coincided nicely with a worldwide celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, when more than 150 countries pledged to never again make weapons of mass destruction. But something else was going on that March in the west desert that has some questioning the United States’ dedication to nonproliferation. Over at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds—the chemical depot’s Tooele County neighbor—procurement officers quietly placed orders for a system of bacteria-growing fermentors that would have made Saddam salivate. According to government solicitation, the order called for four fermentors with a total capacity of producing nearly 3,500 liters of bacteria and the possibility of another five fermentors in the future. That is enough bacteria-making equipment to cook up about three-fourths the 8,400 liters of anthrax Iraq admitted to having produced for Saddam’s biowar program. The order didn’t detail what Dugway wanted to grow, but at the same time, the secretive Army base put out feelers for a second set of fermentors and contractors willing to make 1,500-liter batches of a benign strain of anthrax called Sterne. The request sent shockwaves through the community of government watchdogs and scientists dedicated to ensuring the biowar genie stays in its bottle. For, while the fermentors were ostensibly ordered for production of a nonlethal strain of anthrax, they could easily be used to produce vast quantities of the lethal strain as well. Dugway had long been known to experiment with deadly agents. In spring 2003, for example, the base advertised for help brewing up paralysis-inducing botulinum toxin, as well as Ricin, plague, rabbit fever, food poisoning, the horse disease glanders and all manner of nerve agents including the Nazi-invented tabun and soman. But as far as anyone knew, Dugway only used small amounts of the agents inside sealed laboratories. “To anybody’s knowledge, there was no fermentation capacity anywhere near that size at Dugway until this decision to build it,” said Edward Hammond, who keeps an eye on bioweapons research from his Texas-based Sunshine Project. “A few years ago, if somebody did that it would be viewed as possibly a smoking gun of an offensive program. It would probably get the Iranians bombed if they did that at one of their facilities.” The requests for fermentors were the clearest sign yet that a huge build-up of U.S. biowar research, begun after 9/11, was coming to Utah. Dugway, long home to the nation’s biodefense testing, reports a 60 percent increase in its workload since the attacks on the World Trade Center and, late last year, readied plans for construction to double testing again. All of the testing is done in the name of protecting the country from terrorist attack with biological or chemical weapons. But the direction in which some of the testing is headed—including all but making WMDs ourselves—is troubling an increasingly vocal group of scientists. Even if America’s motives are pure, they worry, the work could spark a new WMD arms race. For Utah watchdogs, the prospect of increased testing at Dugway resurrects memories of a time before 1969, when outdoor testing with biological and chemical weapons was stopped. One chilling, unexplained request from Dugway last year asked for batches of dead, frozen sheep for testing a mobile crematorium, resurrecting the specter of 6,000 sheep found dead in Utah’s Skull Valley following the accidental release of VX from Dugway in 1968. Some worry the likelihood of accidents will increase as more tests are performed at a supposedly secure Army base where nine illegal workers from Mexico were found working for a subcontractor in February, hard at work building a new hotel. “There is a very blurry line between offense and defense when it comes to germ warfare,” said Salt Lake City Dugway watchdog Steve Erickson, director of the Citizens Education Project. “When they start doing stuff like ordering up fermentors, there is just no knowing what they are going to do,” said Erickson. “It’s not just unsettling for us locally, it is an international cause for concern. A lot of these other countries that are signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention—what will they think? Perception in this arena is critical.” Dugway isn’t saying why it wanted large volumes of the nonlethal Sterne anthrax, except that it was acting on orders from the U.S. Army Developmental Test Command. The particular solicitation that alarmed watchdogs was canceled when no contractor responded, said Dugway spokeswoman Paula Nicholson. Base commanders did not respond to questions about whether the order had been filled in another way. Dugway has been growing small amounts of its own Sterne-strain anthrax since 2002, according to Nicholson. It’s used as a substitute for the real thing when testing battlefield detectors that sniff out biowar agents and other defense equipment. Hammond thinks the only explanation for the Army’s need for thousands of liters of non-lethal anthrax would be outdoor testing. In such a case, faux anthrax would be grown in fermentors, dried out and turned into an aerosol to be released as a cloud above a Dugway training range to test detectors or to train troops. Critics say the problem is that such experiments look a lot like what a country would do if it wanted to make biological weapons. Because biological weapons don’t keep well, a biological weapons program looks like a bunch of fermentors ready to be turned on in case of war. When the Bush administration went to the United Nations with its case for war with Iraq, it noted reports that Saddam could produce 25,000 liters of anthrax. The administration didn’t claim Saddam had that much anthrax, just that it “had biological weapons sufficient to produce” that much. In other words, fermentors and equipment enough to turn the resulting death soup into a powder that will float on the wind. The best defense is a good offense, goes the old sports analogy. The question many are asking is, when it comes to military research, how do you tell the difference? Equipment used to grow large amounts of the type of anthrax given to soldiers to vaccinate them against the disease could just as easily grow the disease that causes black, crater-like swelling on the skin and that suffocates a victim in three days, said Hammond. And the real anthrax is also stored at Dugway, inside biological laboratories newly expanded in 2003 as part of the national biodefense build-up. Anthrax, thought to be either the fifth or sixth plague of Egypt described in the Bible, has been a favorite of WMD research because of its ability to survive as a spore for decades before finding its way into a host. As a skin infection, anthrax forms black, bacteria-oozing patches that can cover an entire limb, but it’s most deadly in the lungs. Infections from inhaling spores begin like a mild case of the flu that continues until the sudden onset of troubled breathing, when it’s often too late to stop. The skin turns bluish and a victim’s chest swells as anthrax spores, activated in the warmth of the lungs, begin to reproduce, widening a gap behind the breastbone and causing massive bleeding inside the chest cavity. Ultimately, the bacteria spread through the blood to the rest of the body, resulting in shock and death in two to three days. One of the furthest reaching, if little advertised, effects of the War on Terror has been a dramatic increase in U.S. spending on biological and chemical warfare research. A cursory review of Bush’s 2007 budget request released early February shows $7 billion in dedicated bioterror funding. That compares with about $750 million spent before 9/11. Hammond calculates that if off-the-books “black budget” spending is included, the United States is already spending up to $8 billion per year on biodefense. The same people who told us Saddam had weapons of mass destruction believe an attack on the United States with chemical or biological weapons is a dire threat. To justify experiments that a few years ago were generally considered off-limits for defensive purposes, the Department of Homeland Security has resorted to reinterpreting the Biological Weapons Convention, said Alan Pearson, director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s biological and chemical weapons program. On its face, the treaty bans development of biological weapon agents or methods of delivery, but in writing up plans for new biodefense centers being constructed this year, the Homeland Security department suggested developing defensive biological weapons would be OK. That’s a position taken by no other country, Pearson said. Announced plans for the new National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center include the United States working to “acquire, grow, modify, store, stabilize, package [and] disperse” biological weapons. Other announced biodefense plans include development of genetically-modified versions of deadly bacteria. The justification in both cases is threat assessment. That is determining what terrorists might be capable of in terms of producing vaccine-resistant strains of deadly biological agents or new methods of agent delivery. Scientific groups coming out against portions of the biodefense effort include Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Council for Responsible Genetics. The former chief American negotiator of the Biological Weapons Convention, James Leonard, has warned the administration’s initiative could be interpreted as “development” of biological weapons in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention. “The rapidity of elaboration of American biodefense programs, their ambition and administrative aggressiveness, and the degree to which they push against the prohibitions of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), are startling,” Leonard wrote in a critique authored with a former deputy director of the main U.S. biological-pathogens research center at Fort Deitrick, Md. The new defensive efforts “may constitute development in the guise of threat assessment, and they certainly will be interpreted that way,” they wrote. Even the National Academy of Sciences has chimed in, calling U.S. efforts to make more deadly germs “concerning”—if only because they might give terrorists ideas. Making his first appearance before Congress as national intelligence director in February, John Negroponte said a terrorist strike with conventional explosives remains the “most probable scenario,” but al Qaeda, along with nearly 40 other terrorist organizations, remains interested in acquiring chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. But since it’s now evident that Iraq dismantled its facilities producing weapons of mass destruction long before the American invasion of 2003, some scientists wonder if the current U.S. defensive biowar build-up is similarly based on faulty intelligence. University of Michigan science historian Susan Wright calls the extent of fear of terrorism with biological weapons “completely unrealistic.” “Heaven only knows how they think a terrorist is going to put up a lab and do this stuff without being caught,” she said. “Labs with ventilation and good scientists leave huge footprints.” Others criticize the amount of money spent on biodefense. “We have ongoing problems in coping with infectious disease that are killing tens of thousands of Americans every year and yet we’re soaking billions of dollars into the bioterrorist threat that is at the present time entirely hypothetical,” said University of California, Davis, microbiologist Mark Wheelis, one of many scientists arguing that if a bioterror attack occurs, spending on basic health infrastructure and emergency services will be far more important that exotic anti-biowar measures. According to post-9/11 studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, an American’s odds of dying from heart disease are one in 322, while the odds of dying in an act of bioterrorism are one in 56 million. Bush would fund next year’s proposed increased in bioterror research at the National Institutes of Health by trimming most other NIH disease programs. It’s a spending pattern consistent with past years’ post-9/11 budgets. Since 2001, federal grants to study biowarfare agents have grown more than 2,000 percent while research dollars for some diseases that infect large numbers of Americans—including turberculosis and hepatitis—declined. The U.S. biodefense build-up began one month after the 9/11 attacks, when envelopes containing anthrax were mailed to Congress and Bush requested $1.5 billion in counter-bioterrorism funding. Erickson points out one of the great ironies: The anthrax in the letters almost certainly came not from international terrorists, but from a U.S. biodefense laboratory. While the perpetrator was never found, investigators determined the powder was a militarized anthrax strain developed at Fort Deitrick, in Maryland. Another irony is that Hussein got part of his anthrax starter kit from U.S. storehouses, which shipped to Iraq cultures on seven occasions between 1986 and 1988. Despite increasing voices of caution, the biodefense boom shows no signs of slowing down. Construction is set to begin on new multimillion-dollar biodefense centers at Fort Deitrick. Douglas Tamilio, commander of Dugway’s West Desert Test Center, said in a prepared statement that planned construction in Utah isn’t yet underway. While Dugway has added laboratories since 9/11, it has shut older labs so less room is available for testing than was available 10 years ago. While numbers of Dugway’s customers and related tests have “significantly increased” since 2001, the amount of biological agents or simulant used at Dugway hasn’t grown significantly, Tamilio wrote. Still, last September, Dugway completed an environmental plan describing potential construction to support a doubling of the testing activities over the next seven years. That includes an annex for Dugway’s bio-laboratory and buildings for communications and protective-gear testing. A mock city was proposed for a dramatic expansion of Dugway’s soldier training. Last October, Dugway requested permission to take over an undisclosed amount of nearby federal land for training and test ranges. Dugway’s requests for this year include lodging, a year of bus service to transport workers from Tooele, a crew of paramedics, a natural-gas transport pipeline for heating and a real-time continuous air-monitoring system. The base has received $25 million for a rebuilt runway. It’s all for defense and perfectly safe. So says the government. But it makes watchdogs nervous. “It’s not so much that I’m afraid that the U.S. is going to start weaponizing anthrax. We’ve got enough ways to kill people. The problem is, what if everybody in the world starts doing this?” Hammond asks. “We’re creating the threat we are supposed to be defending against, and there isn’t a technical solution. There is always going to be one more step, one more vaccine to be defeated. It’s like a dog chasing its own tail.” slweekly.com ©1996-2006 Copperfield Publishing, Inc.. All rights reserved. offices: 248 S. Main Street Salt Lake City, Utah 84101 801-575-7003 ***************************************************************** 12 AFP: More work needs to be done for nuclear deal Fri Feb 24, 10:38 AM ET NEW DELHI (AFP) - More work has to be done if a groundbreaking nuclear deal with India is to be sealed before United States President George W. Bush visits India next week, a US official said. The inking of the pact which would give New Delhi access to long-denied advanced nuclear technology was being touted as the highlight of Bush's three-day trip to India, starting March 1. "We are working very hard on this agreement on both sides... We have some more work to do," US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told reporters after meeting Indian junior foreign minister Anand Sharma in New Delhi. "There is a goodwill by both governments, and a commitment by President Bush " /> President Bushto see this (deal) through towards a conclusion," Burns said, before going into another round of talks with foreign secretary Shyam Saran. Burns described the negotiations as "unique ... very challenging." New Delhi and Washington have sharp differences over demands that some of India's nuclear facilities be put under international supervision. Bush repeated the US position that India must split its civilian and military nuclear programs for the deal to go through, in an interview with an Indian newspaper published Friday. "First things first is to go to India and hopefully reach an agreement on separation, then bring that agreement back and start selling it to Congress," Bush told the Times of India newspaper. "We can't bring anything back until we've agreed to the agreement." Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to the nuclear deal in July 2005, but the two nations have been at odds over how to ensure that India's military facilities do not benefit from nuclear technology transfers. Under the proposal, energy-starved India would be given access to civilian nuclear technology it has been denied for conducting nuclear tests and refusing to sign on to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The deal still needs the approval of the US Congress and the 44-member Nuclear Suppliers Group. After his earlier round of talks Thursday with Saran, Burns said that outstanding differences could prevent the deal being ready by the time Bush arrived in India. "Both of us want to complete these negotations but there are still some remaining differences between us, and those differences need to be worked out," he had said. "We simply don't know whether we will have an agreement before President Bush's visit. We are trying our best." Indian media reports Thursday quoted unnamed government officials as saying that India was likely to tell Burns it would place no more than 32 facilities under safeguards compared to the 60 Washington wanted. India also wants to exclude its "fast breeder" reactors, which could be used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, from being put on a list of civilian facilities to be under international supervision as Washington would like. Indian scientists say that such a move would compromise the country's strategic interests. "It's in our country's interest, by the way, to encourage India -- and aid India in its development of a civilian nuclear power program," Bush said in the interview. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 13 UPI: Outside View: Cure worse than disease United Press International - Energy - 2/24/2006 9:09:00 AM -0500 By ROBERT ALVAREZ UPI Outside View Commentator WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush, a former oil industry executive from Texas, during his State of the Union address declared "America is addicted to oil." This bold statement is undeniable: With about 5.5 percent of the world's population, the United States consumes more oil than any nation -- about 20.6 million barrels per day, or a quarter of the world's total production. More than three-fourths of this fuel comes from foreign sources. "To keep our economy growing," Bush said, "we also need reliable supplies of affordable, environmentally responsible energy ... including safe, clean nuclear energy." Unfortunately, nuclear energy isn't safe or clean and it's too costly for the nation. Bush's nuclear medicine prescription means addicting the country to, perhaps, an even more expensive and dangerous alternative. Unlike oil, this vice is not based on the thrill of driving gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles, but rather on unfettered access to the U.S. Treasury. Since the first commercial nuclear power reactor went on-line in 1959, this form of making electricity has depended on regular infusions of taxpayer subsidies. Even today, nearly three decades after the last new U.S. reactor was ordered, subsidies remain necessary for the industry's survival. Since 1948, about $80 billion was spent by the U.S. government on nuclear energy research and development. Spending for this year by the U.S. Energy Department will be in excess of $800 million - nearly twice the money the government is investing in truly clean, renewable energy sources like conservation, solar and wind power. This is on top of the enormous "balloon mortgage" payments of tens of billions of dollars to clean up the environmental mess at dozens of Energy Department and other nuclear sites across the country, which developed nuclear power with test reactors as well as uranium mining and processing sites. Since nuclear power plants don't release greenhouse gases, the strongest argument for this technology is that it can help prevent serious climate disruption from the burning of fossil fuels. As for cost, in some instances the price tag for nuclear reactors has run 10 times higher than originally promised. Despite the recent spate of congressional subsidies, Wall Street is still maintaining its almost 30-year moratorium on the financing of new nuclear power plants. At nuclear reactors, smart investors know, unlike at coal or gas plants, all it takes is a "minor" mistake, like a poorly welded pipe, to cause a multibillion-dollar loss. In terms of safety, numerous "near-misses" at reactors do not inspire much confidence. In 2002, workers inadvertently discovered that boric acid ate through 6 inches of the solid steel reactor top at the Davis Bessie plant in Ohio. The problem went unattended for years -- leaving a fraction of an inch to prevent the superheated reactor core from a potential meltdown. Unfortunately, the prospect of solving the nuclear waste problem is getting dimmer. Recognizing that nuclear power spent fuel is among of the most dangerous material on the planet, Congress enacted legislation in 1982 requiring it be disposed so as to protect humans for at least hundreds of millennia. Twenty-four years later, the government's nuclear waste disposal program is plagued by scandal, legal setbacks and congressional funding cuts. As a result, the schedule for the proposed Yucca Mountain disposal site in Nevada has slipped for at least a decade or two. By the time the Yucca Mountain site can take the existing wastes, the Energy department estimates nuclear power plants will have accumulated about the same amount we have today - sitting in densely compacted pools. Last year the National Academy of Sciences warned that spent reactor fuel pools are vulnerable to terrorism, which might lead to a catastrophic radiological fire. Finally, in terms of proliferation, as beneficiaries of the "Atoms for Peace" program, Iran appears poised to make uranium for nuclear weapons, and North Korea probably has them. Undeterred, the Bush administration stands to make the problem even worse by its support for nuclear spent fuel reprocessing, which would allow weapons-usable plutonium to enter into global commerce. The United States wisely decided against doing this in 1975, because, it would lead, as stated succinctly by Albert Wohlstetter ( a mentor of the Bush national security team) to "life in a nuclear-armed crowd." It appears that Bush's cure for our dangerous dependence on foreign oil may prove worse than the disease. -- (Robert Alvarez is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, and served as senior policy adviser the U.S. Secretary of Energy from 1993-1999. He lives in Takoma Park, Md.) -- (United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.) © Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 14 Deseret News: Weapons detector to undergo Utah tests [deseretnews.com] Friday, February 24, 2006 By Lee Davidson Deseret Morning News A mobile detector system designed to warn soldiers if they are under invisible chemical, biological or radiological arms attack is about to face some tough tests. ['Photo'] Deseret Morning News graphic That includes measuring how well it can respond to such attacks if delivered by Scud missiles, artillery barrages or now-infamous "improvised explosive devices" hidden along roadways. Up to 30,000 pounds of explosives will be used, along with tens of thousands of liters of chemicals and biological agents. The tests won't come in Iraq with real weapons. They will come in the Utah desert, with what the Army says are relatively safe materials designed to simulate characteristics of real, deadly chemical and germ weapons. Dugway Proving Ground this week published a legal notice in Utah newspapers saying it performed a required environmental assessment of the planned tests, and found they will have "no significant impact" on people or the environment. It will accept public comments on that report and its findings until March 20 — and then tests are scheduled for April on the detector system with a long name: the Joint Services Lightweight Nuclear Biological Chemical Reconnaissance System. Documents say the tests — which worry at least one local watchdog group — are designed to challenge the detector "with real-world threat scenarios using realistically delivered chemical warfare agent simulants and agent of biological origin simulants." Last July, the Deseret Morning News reported that Pentagon inspectors were complaining that several similar detection systems now in use might not actually work or survive in contaminated areas that they are designed to detect. The Morning News obtained reports by the U.S. Army Audit Agency complaining that several such detection systems either had not been rigorously tested in tough battlefield conditions, or had failed such tests earlier conducted at Dugway. In this new round of tests, Dugway documents say the exercises will be "under intense, realistic threat conditions." Three-man crews riding either in specially equipped Air Force Humvees or eight-wheel Marines Light Armored Vehicles are scheduled to traverse 14,000 acres of test areas within the Rhode Island-sized base to determine how well the system can detect and handle simulated chemical and germ attacks — and map boundaries of their contamination. Some attacks are designed to be smaller, as if detonated and spread by an improvised explosive device along a road. Some larger attacks are planned, as if they were delivered by an artillery barrage. (Some preset explosive detonations will simulate that). And some "extra large" releases are planned, as if delivered by a Scud missile. A specially equipped helicopter spreading chemicals is designed to simulate that. Documents say up to 30,000 pounds of C-4 explosives will be used in tests to vaporize and spread the simulants. The Army banned using real chemical or germ weapons in open-air tests at Dugway after a 1969 nerve gas accident there killed 6,000 sheep in nearby Skull Valley (and may have caused long-term health problems for some ranchers). So it will use in these tests what the Army says are safer "simulants." That includes the biological agent Bacillus subtilis (Nigervariety). Medical texts say it is not considered dangerous to healthy adults but could cause infections for those who are sick or weak. About 16 pounds of it are planned to be used in tests, and are planned to be spread by a crop duster or a ground-based agricultural sprayer. Chemical arms simulants will include methyl salicylate (wintergreen oil), triethyl phosphate (used in production of some resins and pesticides), acetic acid (the compound that gives vinegar its sour taste and odor), polymethyl methacrylate (a clear plastic) and diethyl malonate (a plasticizer for polymers). Plans call for up to 28,500 liters of those chemicals to be spread by explosives or helicopter. One watchdog group says it is concerned about the tests, mainly because of past secretive experiments (and accidents) that proved to be more dangerous than the Army disclosed at the time. "We are always concerned if you stick soldiers and sailors in tests that might adversely affect their health and welfare, now or in the future. We would have to do some further review before we consider it benign," said Steve Erickson, director of the Citizens Education Project and a longtime critic of Dugway. "We want troops to be well-protected if they are put in harm's way, but this raises red flags that remind us of atomic veterans and Project SHAD (an at-sea series of tests that hit target ships with chemical and germ agents)," incidents where supposedly safe tests hurt or sickened soldiers who participated, he said. © 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 15 Las Vegas SUN: U.S., Britain conduct nuclear experiment at Nevada Test Site Today: February 24, 2006 at 11:3:45 PST ASSOCIATED PRESS LAS VEGAS (AP) - Government scientists conducting an underground nuclear experiment took the unusual step of posting a video Web log of preparations for the explosion, described as short of a nuclear blast, the National Nuclear Security Administration said. In the joint U.S.-British test Thursday, scientists from the two countries detonated explosives around a radioactive material in a vault about 1,000 feet underground at a remote part of the Nevada Test Site. No radioactivity was released, and no injuries or damage were reported, said Nancy Tufano, spokeswoman for Bechtel Nevada, a contractor at the nuclear security administration. Tufano described the material as specially processed nuclear plutonium, but said she could not disclose further details for security reasons. It was the 22nd subcritical test at the site since 1997 and was designed as a follow-up to a joint U.S.-United Kingdom experiment conducted in 2002. The site is a sprawling government reservation 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Kevin Rohrer, a Nevada Test Site spokesman, said the eight-minute video Web log "was the first time this much video was made available before the experiment." Anti-nuclear groups criticize the experiments as contrary to the spirit of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear arms. The U.S. has observed a moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing since 1992 but has not ratified the treaty. Federal officials call subcritical experiments essential to maintaining the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. --- On the Net: http://www.nv.doe.gov All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 16 Guardian Unlimited: U.S., India Fail to Reach Nuclear Deal From the Associated Press [UP] Friday February 24, 2006 11:01 PM By TERENCE HUNT AP White House Correspondent WASHINGTON (AP) - After two days of intense negotiations, the United States said Friday it had failed to reach agreement with India on the separation of its civilian and military nuclear programs. The White House is still hoping for an accord before President Bush visits New Delhi next week, but said the success or failure of the trip does not hang on the nuclear agreement. ``We would like to get it before the trip,'' national security adviser Stephen Hadley said. ``If we can, great. If we can't, we'll continue to negotiate it after the trip.'' Bush departs for India on Tuesday and his official schedule there begins on Thursday. The president also will visit Pakistan before beginning the long flight home on Saturday. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns spent two days in difficult talks in New Delhi and returned home Friday to report on the negotiations. ``We're making progress, but we're not yet there,'' Hadley said at a briefing on Bush's trip. ``The Indians, hopefully, will have an opportunity from their end to see where we are, and we would expect those negotiations will continue by phone, document and the like, probably up to the president's visit.'' Both sides want an agreement, Hadley said, but ``it's important to have a good agreement that works for the Indians, works for the United States, will be acceptable to our Congress and to the Nuclear Suppliers Group'' of nations that export nuclear material. The nuclear cooperation agreement has been billed as the cornerstone of a warming U.S.-India alliance. There is opposition in India to opening the country's secretive nuclear industry. In the United States, critics argue that the administration is rewarding bad behavior since India has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and defied the world by conducting nuclear weapons tests in 1998. Any agreement faces stiff opposition in Congress. Asked what was blocking an agreement, Hadley said: ``It's just getting some clarification from the Indian side about what's in the civil side and what's on the military side. Not only in terms of what exists now, at this time, but what are going to be the ground rules going forward. There's a lot of technical aspects to it.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 17 Guardian Unlimited: Is Britain conducting nuclear tests? Ian Sample Saturday February 25, 2006 The Guardian Yes and no. On Thursday, Britain took part in a "subcritical" test of nuclear material 1,000ft beneath the Nevada desert. But the explosion was too small to produce a nuclear blast. Known as the Krakatau test, the detonation was conducted, according to the Ministry of Defence, for the purposes of "stockpile stewardship", meaning it served to ensure that the country's nuclear bombs have not deteriorated while in storage and will still go off should they ever be launched. Article continues At the heart of the test is the nuclear warhead material, plutonium. Because plutonium can undergo phase changes which can alter its behaviour as it ages, nuclear warheads are regularly refurbished, but subcritical tests are still used to ensure that different compositions of warhead materials perform as expected. Britain is forbidden from carrying out real nuclear tests under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, although weapons experts at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston use computer simulations to check whether warheads will explode. The Krakatau test has raised concerns among some that Britain and the US will use the data to help develop next generation nuclear warheads. "There's a dual use behind this test," said Paul Ingram, a senior analyst at the British American Security Information Council. "The other possible use is to improve on the computer simulations that they use for new weapons designs." According to Mr Ingram, the US is particularly keen on developing "robust nuclear earth penetrators", or bunker-busters, which can destroy bunkers deep underground. "They're very keen for the weapons experts to come up with devices that can survive a deep thrust into the Earth before detonating," said Mr Ingram. "It's quite likely that this test will be used to produce data for that process of developing new nuclear weapons," he added. The Bush administration's funding to modify two existing nuclear warheads for earth penetration was blocked by Congress in 2005 and 2006. However, funding was approved for the Reliable Replacement Warhead programme, and some US politicians are concerned that this is a cover for new warhead development. Britain's live nuclear test programme ended in November 1991 at the Nevada test site where the Krakatau detonation was conducted. The first British test was carried out in 1952 off the Australian coast. Before the end of the current parliament, a decision has to be made on the future of Britain's nuclear deterrent, the Trident missile system. No more than 200 warheads are believed to be active in Britain's arsenal, but the submarines designed to carry them are rapidly wearing out as their hulls accumulate damage from being at depth. A decision on replacement submarines is closely tied to future plans for an upgraded or alternative Trident system. "This particular test, we suspect, will be used by Britain not just for stockpile stewardship, but to allow weapons scientists to take part in any research that could lead to a replacement for Trident," said Mr Ingram. Useful links British Energy Department of Trade and Industry British Nuclear Fuels Ltd Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Greenpeace HSE nuclear glossary Come Clean WMD awareness programme UK atomic energy authority National Radiological Protection Board Friends of the Earth World Nuclear Association World Nuclear Transport Institute [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 18 Daily Yomiuri: Hiroshima peace tower reset after nuclear test The Yomiuri Shimbun The peace watchtower at the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima, which displays the number of days since the last nuclear test, was reset to zero Friday after a subcritical nuclear experiment in Nevada was jointly conducted by the U.S. and British governments. It is the ninth time the number of days has been reset since the tower was erected on Aug. 6, 2001. When Minoru Hataguchi, director of the museum, pressed the reset button, the tower displayed "639," the number of days since the last nuclear experiment was conducted by the U.S. government on May 26, 2004. Hataguchi said, "I'm angry because it's an act that tramples on the feelings of the people of Hiroshima." Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba sent U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair a letter of protest saying that nuclear experiments that lead to the development of new nuclear weapons cannot be tolerated. (Feb. 25, 2006) © The Yomiuri Shimbun. ***************************************************************** 19 Radio New Zealand: Greens want concern expressed over nuclear test Posted at 4:33pm on 24 Feb 2006 The Green Party has called upon the government to express its concern over a nuclear experiment conducted today in the Nevada desert. The United States and the United Kingdom carried out what they describe as a joint nuclear experiment, to test the safety and reliability of their nuclear weapons stockpile. The Green's Disarmament Spokesman, Keith Locke says it is clearly an effort by the US and the UK to update their nuclear technology. He says the government should take the matter up with the US. Keith Locke says it is ironic that both bountries are concerned about nuclear proliferation in other countries, but they are in fact escalating the arms race. Test defended The US National Nuclear Security Administration says today's experiment test is in accordance with the US Nuclear Testing Moratorium. A spokeswoman at the Nevada Test Site, Nancy Tufano says it was a sub-critical experiment using explosives and nuclear materials that are configured in such a way that no nuclear explosion can happen. The test took place in a specially designed complex around 300 metres underground. Copyright © 2006 Radio New Zealand ***************************************************************** 20 Evening Times: Blair nuclear vow puts McConnell on spot - THERE was tight security in Highland ski resort of Aviemore today with Tony Blair due to address the Scottish Labour Party's annual conference. Roads leading to the conference centre were blocked off and there was a heavy police presence. The Prime Minister's appearance at the Scottish conference in Dundee last year was widely criticised as a major embarrassment when he spent most of his speech speaking about English health issues. That was mostly because of the impending General Election. Today, however, he was expected to shift his focus to issues affecting the whole of the UK and in particular energy. In a move which will antagonise the LibDems in the Scottish Executive coalition, he was expected to say there were positive choices to be made about the future of the UK's policy. That was being interpreted as meaning that First Minister Jack McConnell would have to move towards a policy favouring more new nuclear power stations despite the Labour-LibDem coalition agreement which is against more nuclear energy until waste disposal issues are solved. Although putting Mr McConnell on the spot over energy policy, Mr Blair was also expected to praise the First Minister for his efforts to tackle poverty and eradicate homelessness. It is the first time he has been in Scotland since Labour lost the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election. 24/02/06 Copyright © Newsquest (Herald & Times) Limited. All Rights ***************************************************************** 21 ITAR-TASS: Ukraine won’t enrich uranium – Yekhanurov 24.02.2006, 17.05 DONETSK, February 24 (Itar-Tass) -- Ukraine will develop elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, but it will not enrich uranium, Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov said during a working trip to Kharkov. He will chair a conference on the development of the nuclear fuel cycle in Ukraine and visit the Kharkov Physics and Technology Institute, the National Academy of Sciences and the Elektrotyazhmash plant. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, store in any medium (including in any other websites), ***************************************************************** 22 Bellona: Kola NPP to supply aluminium plant with energy Kola NPP will use free capacities to implement the construction project of the second aluminium plant in Kandalaksha, the head of economics department of Murmansk region Alexander Ruzankin said to Interfax. According to the economics development program of Murmansk region for 2004-2008, a new modern aluminium plant is to be constructed. 2006-02-23 17:19 The Siberian-Urals Aluminium Company (SUAL) suggested the project. The SUAL’s vice-president Vasily Kiselev said to Interfax that the new plant would require 4 billion kWh per year. The new plant is expected to produce 218,000 tons of aluminium per year and 200,000 of baked anodes per year. The project’s payback period is 3.7 years. Ruzankin added that if this project is not implemented then extra capacity could be used for electric boilers with 400MW capacity or for the construction of the second 330 kW power line. He said the power line could allow to deliver extra energy for some perspective investment projects in Murmansk region like natural gas liquefaction plant, oil refinery, Murmansk port hub development. At the moment Kola NPP’s capacity equal to 400MW is not used. 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 ***************************************************************** 23 NRC: NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards to Meet March 9-11 in Rockville, Maryland News Release - 2006-02 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 06-029 February 23, 2006 The Nuclear Regulatory Commissions Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) will hold a public meeting March 9-11 in Rockville, Md., to discuss, among other items, the final review of the Early Site Permit application for the Clinton Nuclear Power Plant in Illinois and the license renewal application for three Browns Ferry reactors in Alabama. The committee will also discuss the debris blockage issue in Pressurized Water Reactor sumps. The meeting will be held in Room T-2B3 of the agencys Two White Flint North building, at 11545 Rockville Pike. On Thursday, the session will run from 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. The Friday session will run from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Saturday session will run from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. A complete agenda is available on the NRCs Web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/acrs/agenda/2006/. Requests for video teleconferencing should be directed to Theron Brown, at 301-415-8066. Anyone with questions or those wanting to make public statements during the meeting should contact Sam Duraiswamy at 301-415-7364. The ACRS, as mandated by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, advises the Commission on licensing, the operation of nuclear power plants and related safety issues. Last revised Thursday, February 23, 2006 ***************************************************************** 24 Platts: France still looking for damaged tube at Cruas-4 nuclear plant Paris (Platts)--23Feb2006 Electricite de France is still looking for the steam generator tube that sprang a small leak at Cruas-4, causing the 900MW reactor unit to be pulled from the grid Feb 11, an official at the French nuclear safety authority said. EDF must also identify the cause of the incident, and will probably have to plug the tube, he said. However, he denied a rumor that the tube had ruptured, which is considered a serious incident at a pressurized water reactor. EDF says it has never had a steam generator tube rupture. The leak was only about 500 liters/hour, he said, equivalent to a "leaky faucet," whereas a steam generator tube rupture is at least several tens of cubic meters/hour. EDF said the Cruas-4 leak had been rated at Level 0 (no safety significance) on the International Nuclear Event Scale. For more information, take a trial to Nuclear Fuel at Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 25 Detroit News: Michigan needs more nuclear power plants - 02/24/06 Detnews.com Letter U niversity of Michigan-Dearborn professor Mark J. Perry's Feb. 2 commentary, "Nuclear plants best cure for high gas prices," provides a stark but accurate, provocative yet stimulating analysis of the electric generation situation facing Michigan today and tomorrow. As the chairman of the Michigan Senate's Standing Committee on Technology and Energy, in July of 2005, I declared Michigan's critical need to establish a long-range energy plan. As Perry observes in his article, we cannot continue to 'waste' natural gas generating electricity. That application of a scarce natural resource just drives the cost of both natural gas and electricity "through the roof." Higher prices for both make life ever more difficult for everyday, working, middle-class residents of Michigan. We must act -- NOW. Nuclear power is the mainstay for electric generation in countries as diverse as France and Japan. Why did they resort to nuclear in the first place? Because both France and Japan were forced to do so as they both lack other natural fuels for electric generation. After years and years of application, nuclear has proven to be safe for each of these developed, sophisticated societies. If France and Japan can succeed, certainly the United States can do better than the 23-25 percent we currently generate. The president has now called upon Congress to encourage nuclear utilization to lessen our addiction to fossil fuels. Now, if only Gov. Jennifer Granholm would have included a similar message in her State of the State address. Bruce Patterson Chairman Senate Committee on Technology and Energy R-Canton Township © Copyright 2006 The Detroit News. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 26 Rutland Herald: Yankee uprate decision delayed Rutland Vermont News & Information February 24, 2006 The Associated Press A technician checks the control panel at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon in this 1997 photo. Photo: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BRATTLEBORO — Federal regulators next week are expected to make a final decision whether to allow the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant to increase its power output by 20 percent. Officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission also are set to hold the first public informational meeting on their pending review of the plant's application to renew its license for 20 additional years. The NRC was expected to issue its final decision on the proposed power boost this week. But spokeswoman Diane Screnci said the agency's staff director had decided he wanted to take an extra week to review a 300-plus-page safety evaluation review prepared by agency staff. Screnci said Luis Reyes, the NRC's executive director for operations, does not usually participate in the decision-making process on applications by nuclear plants to increase their power output. She said she could not speculate on what that might mean for the request by Vermont Yankee owner Entergy Nuclear. Raymond Shadis, technical adviser to the nuclear watchdog group New England Coalition, said he couldn't speculate on what Reyes' review might mean, either. "This is neither good nor bad news," Shadis said. "It's hard to tell what the purpose of this is." The NRC staff had been expected to issue its recommendation to the five-member commission on Thursday; it is now expected to do so at the end of next week, Screnci said. Meanwhile, the NRC has set 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Latchis Theater in Brattleboro as the time and place for its first public information session on Vermont Yankee's application to continue running the plant for 20 years past the expiration of its current license in 2012. Screnci said the public will be invited to ask questions, but not to make comments; she said an opportunity for comments will be provided later in the agency's review process. © 2006 Rutland Herald ***************************************************************** 27 NRC: NRC Proposes Clarifications to New Reactor Licensing Process, Plans March 14 Public Meeting News Release - 2006-03 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 06-030 February 23, 2006 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing revisions to its regulations dealing with the licensing and approval of new nuclear power plants, and will hold a workshop March 14 in Rockville, Md., to discuss the proposal. The requirements are outlined in a proposed rule to clarify the interrelationships of NRC reactor licensing regulations. This includes how the NRCs regulations covering existing nuclear reactors apply to licensing processes under Part 52 of the Code of Federal Regulations, such as Early Site Permits (ESP), Standard Design Certifications and Combined Licenses. Since the agency adopted Part 52 in 1989, reviews of its provisions have revealed a need for clarification on the application of Part 50's general provisions to Part 52. The proposed rule would supersede revisions proposed in July 2003, and would incorporate lessons learned during review of the first three ESP applications. The workshop will be held March 14 in the auditorium of Two White Flint North, 11545 Rockville Pike, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The meeting will provide additional information on the basis for the proposed changes and give interested parties an opportunity to ask questions about the proposed rule. For more information on the proposed rule, contact NRC staff members Nanette Gilles (telephone 301-415-1180, e-mail nvg@nrc.gov) or Jerry Wilson (telephone 301-415-3145, e-mail jnw@nrc.gov). To pre-register or submit written questions for the workshop, contact Ms. Gilles. To help ensure complete and accurate responses, written questions should be submitted by March 10. Comments on the changes will be accepted for 75 days following publication of the proposed rule in the Federal Register, expected shortly. Comments should include the identification number RIN 3150 AG-24 in the header or subject line. Comments may be mailed to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff. They may be e-mailed to: SECY@nrc.gov, and may be submitted via the NRCs rulemaking Web site at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov, or through the Federal Rulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov. Comments may also be faxed to the Secretary at 301-415-1101, or hand-delivered to 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland, between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. on federal workdays. Last revised Thursday, February 23, 2006 ***************************************************************** 28 NRC: Notice of Availability of Documents Regarding Spent Fuel FR Doc E6-2663 [Federal Register: February 24, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 37)] [Notices] [Page 9612-9613] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr24fe06-121] Transportation Package Response to the Caldecott Tunnel Fire Scenario AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Notice of availability. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Allen Hansen, Thermal Engineer, Criticality, Shielding and Heat Transfer Section, Spent Fuel Project Office, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20005-0001. Telephone: (301) 415- 1390; fax number: (301) 415-8555; e-mail: agh@nrc.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: I. Introduction Under contract with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory prepared a draft NUREG/CR report, ``Spent Fuel Transportation Package Response to the Caldecott Tunnel Fire (CTF) Scenario.'' Highway tunnel fire accidents are very low frequency events, but can be severe, in terms of fire duration and peak temperatures. The CTF was chosen for the study because it represents a severe historical highway tunnel accident, even though it is a very low frequency event. This NUREG/CR documents the thermal analysis of one spent fuel transportation package, the NAC International Model No. LWT (``NAC LWT''), exposed to boundary conditions simulating the CTF scenario. The results of this study strongly indicate that no spent nuclear fuel (SNF) particles or fission products would be released from the NAC LWT or a similar spent fuel shipping cask involved in a severe tunnel fire such as the Caldecott highway tunnel fire. The peak internal temperatures predicted for the NAC LWT in the analysis of the CTF scenario were not high enough to result in rupture of the fuel cladding. Therefore, it would not be expected that any radioactive material (i.e, SNF particles or fission products) would be released from within the fuel rods. The maximum NAC LWT temperatures experienced in the regions of the lid, vent and drain ports exceeded the seals' rated service temperatures, making it theoretically possible for a small release to occur, due to CRUD that might spall off of the surfaces of the fuel rods. However, any release is expected to be very small due to a number of factors. These include: (1) The tight clearances maintained between the lid and cask body by the lid closure bolts; (2) the low pressure differential between the cask interior and the outside; (3) the tendency of the small clearances to plug; and (4) the tendency of CRUD particles to settle or plate out. The potential releases calculated in Chapter 8 of this report for the NAC LWT truck cask indicate that the release of CRUD from the cask, if any, would be very small--less than an A2 quantity. II. Summary The purpose of this notice is to provide the public an opportunity to review and comment on the Draft NUREG/CR thermal analysis, the consequence analyses and the conclusions. III. Further Information The document related to this action is available on-line at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/docs4comment .html. In addition, a copy of this document has been posted electronically at the NRC's Electronic Reading Room at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. From this site, you can access the NRC's Agencywide Document Access and Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and image files of NRC's public documents. The ADAMS accession number for the document related to this notice is ML060330028. If you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the document located in ADAMS, contact the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) Reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. This document may also be viewed electronically on the public computers located at the NRC's PDR, O 1 F21, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. The PDR reproduction contractor will copy documents for a fee. Comments and questions on the draft NUREG/CR can be entered on-line or directed to the [[Page 9613]] NRC contact listed above by May 30, 2006. Comments received after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but assurance of consideration cannot be given to comments received after this date. Dated at Rockville, Maryland this 17 day of February, 2006. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Larry Campbell, Chief, Criticality, Shielding and Heat Transfer Section, Spent Fuel Project Office, Office of Nuclear Material Safety, and Safeguards. [FR Doc. E6-2663 Filed 2-23-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 29 NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Meeting Notice FR Doc E6-2664 [Federal Register: February 24, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 37)] [Notices] [Page 9611-9612] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr24fe06-120] In accordance with the purposes of Sections 29 and 182b. of the Atomic Energy Act (42 U.S.C. 2039, 2232b), the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) will hold a meeting on March 9-11, 2006, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The date of this meeting was previously published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, November 22, 2005 (70 FR 70638). Thursday, March 9, 2006, Conference Room T-2b3, Two White Flint North, Rockville, Maryland 8:30 a.m.-8:35 a.m.: Opening Remarks by the ACRS Chairman (Open)-- The ACRS Chairman will make opening remarks regarding the conduct of the meeting. 8:35 a.m.-10:30 a.m.: Final Review of the Clinton Early site Permit Application (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff and Exelon Generation Company, LLC, regarding the early site permit application for the Clinton site and the associated NRC staff's Final Safety Evaluation Report. 10:45 a.m.-11:45 a.m.: Staff's Evaluation of the Licensees' Responses to Generic Letter 2004-02, ``Potential Impact of Debris Blockage on Emergency Recirculation During Design Basis Accidents at Pressurized Water Reactors'' (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding the staff's evaluation of the licensees' responses to Generic Letter 2004-02 on PWR sumps. 1 p.m.-3 p.m.: Results of the Chemical Effects Tests Associated with PWR Sump Performance (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff and its contractor regarding results of the chemical effects tests related to PWR sump performance. 3:15 p.m.-5:15 p.m.: Final Review of the License Renewal Application for Browns Ferry Units 1, 2, and 3 (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff and the Tennessee Valley Authority regarding the license renewal application for Browns Ferry Units 1, 2, and 3 and the associated NRC staff's Final Safety Evaluation Report. 5:30 p.m.-7 p.m.: Preparation of ACRS Reports (Open)--The Committee will discuss proposed ACRS reports on matters considered during this meeting. Friday, March 10, 2006, Conference Room T-2b3, Two White Flint North, Rockville, Maryland 8:30 a.m.-8:35 a.m.: Opening Remarks by the ACRS Chairman (Open)-- The ACRS Chairman will make opening remarks regarding the conduct of the meeting. 8:35 a.m.-10 a.m.: Draft Final Revision 4 (DG-1128) to Regulatory Guide 1.97, ``Criteria for Accident Monitoring Instrumentation for Nuclear Power Plants'' (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding the draft final revision 4 to Regulatory Guide 1.97. 10:15 a.m.-11:45 a.m.: Evaluation of Precursor Data to Identify Significant Operating Events (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding the staff's evaluation of precursor data to identify significant operating events. 1 p.m.-2 p.m.: Future ACRS Activities/Report of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee (Open)--The Committee will discuss the recommendations of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee regarding items proposed for consideration by the full Committee during future meetings. Also, it will hear a report of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee on matters related to the conduct of ACRS business, including anticipated workload and member assignments. 2 p.m.-2:15 p.m.: Reconciliation of ACRS Comments and Recommendations (Open)--The Committee will discuss the responses from the NRC Executive Director for Operations to comments and recommendations included in recent ACRS reports and letters. 2:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m.: Draft Final ACRS Report on the NRC Safety Research Program (Open)--The Committee will discuss the draft ACRS report to the Commission on the NRC Safety Research Program. 4:45 p.m.-7 p.m.: Preparation of ACRS Reports (Open)--The Committee will discuss proposed ACRS reports. Saturday, March 11, 2006, Conference Room T-2b3, Two White Flint North, Rockville, Maryland 8:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.: Preparation of ACRS Reports (Open)--The Committee will continue its discussion of proposed ACRS reports. 1 p.m.-1:30 p.m.: Miscellaneous (Open)--The Committee will discuss [[Page 9612]] matters related to the conduct of Committee activities and matters and specific issues that were not completed during previous meetings, as time and availability of information permit. Procedures for the conduct of and participation in ACRS meetings were published in the Federal Register on September 29, 2005 (70 FR 56936). In accordance with those procedures, oral or written views may be presented by members of the public, including representatives of the nuclear industry. Electronic recordings will be permitted only during the open portions of the meeting. Persons desiring to make oral statements should notify the Cognizant ACRS staff named below five days before the meeting, if possible, so that appropriate arrangements can be made to allow necessary time during the meeting for such statements. Use of still, motion picture, and television cameras during the meeting may be limited to selected portions of the meeting as determined by the Chairman. Information regarding the time to be set aside for this purpose may be obtained by contacting the Cognizant ACRS staff prior to the meeting. In view of the possibility that the schedule for ACRS meetings may be adjusted by the Chairman as necessary to facilitate the conduct of the meeting, persons planning to attend should check with the Cognizant ACRS staff if such rescheduling would result in major inconvenience. Further information regarding topics to be discussed, whether the meeting has been canceled or rescheduled, as well as the Chairman's ruling on requests for the opportunity to present oral statements and the time allotted therefor can be obtained by contacting Mr. Sam Duraiswamy, Cognizant ACRS staff (301-415-7364), between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m., ET. ACRS meeting agenda, meeting transcripts, and letter reports are available through the NRC Public Document Room at pdr@nrc.gov, or by calling the PDR at 1-800-397-4209, or from the Publicly Available Records System (PARS) component of NRC's document system (ADAMS) which is accessible from the NRC Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html or http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/(ACRS & oc-collections/(ACRS & ACNW Mtg schedules/agendas). Videoteleconferencing service is available for observing open sessions of ACRS meetings. Those wishing to use this service for observing ACRS meetings should contact Mr. Theron Brown, ACRS Audio Visual Technician (301-415-8066), between 7:30 a.m. and 3:45 p.m., ET, at least 10 days before the meeting to ensure the availability of this service. Individuals or organizations requesting this service will be responsible for telephone line charges and for providing the equipment and facilities that they use to establish the videoteleconferencing link. The availability of videoteleconferencing services is not guaranteed. Dated: February 17, 2006. Annette L. Vietti-Cook, Secretary of the Commission. [FR Doc. E6-2664 Filed 2-23-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 30 Hudson Valley News: Entergy selects vendor for new community warning and siren system Friday, February 24, 2006 Indian Point owner Entergy today formally notified Orange, Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester counties and New York State Emergency Management Office in a letter that they selected Acoustic Technology, Inc. of Boston to provide and install the new siren alert notification system for their nuclear power plants. The system will cost $10 million to purchase and install. Entergy uses the same system at two of its other nuclear power plants. The system that Entergy will be providing new to the counties will have several reliable, tested, and proven features including two banks of two rechargeable back-up batteries, four in all, for each siren; electronic, omni-directional sirens (no mechanical parts susceptible to problems such as the siren rotation difficulties experienced with the current system); redundant communications for siren activation, using radio, telephone, and cell phones, with satellite capabilities to supplement cell phone coverage; control system capable of activation of individual sirens or groups, reporting siren status, and interconnecting to a common alerting protocol server; and a silent-testing feature that sounds the sirens at a pitch inaudible to the human ear but would show the sirens sounded (scheduled audible testing will continue to familiarize the public with the sirens). Entergy will also provide to the counties CAP servers to be used at their discretion and under their control for transmitting messages to televisions, radios, telephones, cell phones, pagers, Blackberries®, and computers (e-mail) during more likely or common weather related events and accidents. Congresswoman Nita Lowey of Westchester and Rockland counties said Entergys selection is is a good step forward in fixing a problem that has plagued this community for far too long. HEAR today's news on MidHudsonRadio.com, the Hudson Valley's only Internet radio news report. ***************************************************************** 31 The Economist: Reactor Dreams Feb 23rd 2006 Not yet off the drawing board "If a problem cannot be solved," suggested Dwight Eisenhower, "enlarge it." When George Bush announced a new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), in a radio address on February 18th, he followed Ike's advice. Mr Bush's problem is how to deal with proliferation risks while promoting nuclear power. His solution is to get countries that already have advanced nuclear industries to "lend" nuclear fuel to poorer countries that need it, then recover the spent fuel from them for recycling and burning down, getting rid of dangerous nuclear wastes. The borrowers would forgo costly uranium-enriching or plutonium extraction of their own (technologies that can be used for making reactor fuels, or abused to make bombs). This would make it harder to do the covert nuclear dabbling that may be going on in Iran. The Department of Energy guesses that by 2050 energy demand will have doubled and there will be 1,000 nuclear power stations dotted about the globe (compared with fewer than 450 today). Without a big change in the way nuclear fuel-making is handled and nuclear waste is managed, the proliferation risks will grow too. Mr Bush hopes that new safer, smaller and simpler reactors can be built for developing countries; and that new technologies will extract more energy from fuels, while reducing both the amount and danger of left-over waste. There is a logic to this. America stopped extracting plutonium from its spent fuel in the 1970s. But others continued, leaving 200 tonnes of civilian plutonium around the world, a big proliferation risk. If GNEP technologies--more proliferation-resistant recycling techniques and fast-burning reactors--can move from the lab to production, plutonium stockpiles could eventually be eliminated. So far, claims an enthusiastic Clay Sell, the deputy secretary for energy, the idea has at least had a good hearing in London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo (all potential partners) and Vienna (home of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency). But will they also chip in to the huge cost of making the technology work? Mr Bush has included $250m in his next budget for R&D, with larger sums promised for what is likely to be at least a ten-year effort to produce a pilot fast-burner reactor. The danger, says Victor Gilinsky, an energy consultant and former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, comes in basing energy policy on technologies that may never work and, if they do, will be exorbitantly costly. So much so, he argues, that the bits involving new technologies will need to be government-run: a form of "nuclear socialism" that will finance laboratories for years but never be commercially viable. And even if more fuel is burnt more efficiently, there is still the problem of where the waste will go. Successive administrations have failed to build a repository for high-level (unrecycled) nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Mr Sell points out that, on present levels of nuclear use, America will need nine more Yuccas this century. Unprocessed spent fuel takes 1m years to pass its peak of radioactivity; recycled fuel wastes take a mere 1,000 years. http://www.economist.com ***************************************************************** 32 Vermont Guardian: Radioactive Russian roulette By Kevin Kamps posted February 24, 2006 The nuclear power industry and its friends in Washington want to build the first new reactors in 30 years. But to do so, the illusion of a solution to the radioactive waste dilemma must be maintained. A growing mountain of lethal atomic waste currently 55,000 tons has piled up at scores of atomic power plants in dozens of states, with nowhere to go. It is stored in stopgap facilities such as indoor pools and outdoor silos. Last summer, the National Academies of Science (NAS) reported that the wastes are vulnerable to terrorists and are essentially radioactive bulls eyes risking catastrophic downwind releases if attacked. Expanding such targets undermines national security. Tragically, the NAS solution to these sitting-duck reactor waste sites is to multiply these targets by tens of thousands. Instead of recommending that waste be safeguarded and secured against accident and attack where it is, NAS now advises that the waste be rushed onto our roads, rails, and waterways. In a report on waste transport published Feb. 9, NAS whitewashed the dangers of the weakest link of the nuclear fuel chain: moving waste by truck, train, and barge through 45 states, within a half mile of the homes, places of work and worship, schools, and hospitals of 50 million residents. The timing of this report is suspicious. The 20-year old Plan A to bury waste at Yucca Mountain is in disarray. That site was singled out for political reasons, but the faulty science has caught up. Over time, the earthquake-fractured geology would leak deadly amounts of waste into the underlying drinking water supply, poisoning one of Nevadas most vibrant farming communities downstream. Legal, budgetary, and political impediments have pushed Yuccas opening off for another decade at least. The Department of Energy (DOE) has gone back to the drawing board and is overhauling the dumps design, promising years more delay. Even the decade-old Plan B a nuclear utility initiative called Private Fuel Storage (PFS) to park waste on Indian land in Utah has fallen apart. A recent federal wilderness declaration has blocked the preferred railway extension for delivering the waste, and most PFS member utilities have announced that they will invest no more funds in the proposal. The nuclear establishment is now clutching at straws for a waste solution. Indefinite interim storage at DOE sites in Idaho, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington are being floated. Incredibly, there are calls to revive long-abandoned reprocessing, the extraction of plutonium from waste, supposedly to reuse as reactor fuel. Presidents Ford and Carter banned reprocessing as an atomic weapons nonproliferation measure. They recognized long before the era of al Qaeda that separated plutonium in the wrong hands leads to loose nukes. Any of these proposals would start a shell game of waste shipments crisscrossing the country and set up a smorgasbord of opportunities for terrorists. NAS has declared waste transport safe unless something goes wrong such as a long-duration, high-temperature fiery accident. The prospect of Mobile Chernobyls speeding at 60 mph or more down roads and rails through hundreds of cities introduces new accident risks not faced by stationary on-site storage at reactors. A study of a 2001 train tunnel fire beneath downtown Baltimore concluded that, had atomic waste been aboard, the shipping container would have been breached; so much radioactivity would have escaped that a $14 billion clean-up would have been required, or else 30,000 people would later have died from cancer as a result of living amidst the contamination. Such waste traveling through the hearts of our major population centers would also present tempting terrorist targets veritable dirty bombs on wheels. Each highway cask would hold 40 times the long-lasting radioactivity released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb; each rail or barge cask, 240 times Hiroshima. Casks are vulnerable to explosive and incendiary attack. Anti-tank missiles and shaped charges are designed to penetrate even thicker armor. Release of just a fraction of the deadly cargo would spell radiological disaster, for which our emergency responders are inadequately trained and equipped. NAS has attempted to grease the skids for launching unprecedented numbers of atomic waste shipments through our communities. The study, funded by such waste transport and dump advocates as DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the industrys own Electric Power Research Institute, does a dangerous disservice to the nation. The radioactive Russian roulette on our roads and rails must be stopped in its tracks. Kevin Kamps is a nuclear waste specialist with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington, DC. Send us your news tips, a letter to the editor or general comments. ©2005 Vermont Guardian | Visit us: www.vermontguardian.com This document can be located online: www.vermontguardian.com/commentary/022006/RadioactiveRoulette.sht ml ***************************************************************** 33 [DU-WATCH] Dhafir and DU Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:39:16 -0600 (CST) See also Press Release, on DU in Oz, at bottom. An Australian parliamentarian has been assured that the US will drop no bombs containing DU on Australian test ranges (eg Shoalwater Bay, Lancelin). Why make assurances if no such weapons exist? Disinformation? ----------------------------- Crime Of Compassion By Katherine Hughes 20 February, 2006 Dhafirtrial.net On October 27, 2005, after being detained 31 months and being denied access to his own records, Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an oncologist from Upstate New York, was sentenced to 22 years in Federal prison.[1] A man of Iraqi descent and Muslim faith, he lived in the U.S. since 1974 and has been an American citizen for almost 30 years. As a direct response to the humanitarian catastrophe created by the Gulf War and U.S. sanctions Dhafir founded the charity Help the Needy (HTN). Despite many difficulties, including the U.S. embargo and a brutal dictatorship in Iraq, HTN got food and medicines to millions of starving Iraqis for 13 years.[2] Without HTN aid the UN statistic of 5,200 preventable deaths per month of children under the age of five would undoubtedly have been much higher. On February 26, 2003, the day that Dhafir was arrested, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that "supporters of terrorism had been apprehended." Since that day senior government officials have continued to paint Dhafir as a terrorist, and Judge Norman Mordue denied Dhafir bail on four occasions. Yet local prosecutors successfully lobbied Mordue to prevent the charge of terrorism from being part of the trial. This ruling turned into a brick wall that the defense kept hitting during the proceedings: prosecutors could hint at more serious charges, but the defense was never allowed to follow this line of questioning. Despite denying Dhafir the right to address the charge in court, Mordue allowed prosecutors to bring the charge to his sentencing. Although the government continues to characterize Dhafir as a criminal supporting terrorism, the only context in which this case makes any sense is the overwhelming humanitarian crisis created by the brutal U.S. sanctions on the country of Iraq.[3] Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness (VITW), speaking about mainstream U.S media coverage before the Iraq War had begun, said, "I try to point out to the mainstream journalists that they have succeeded enormously in informing the U.S. public about the horrors committed by the current regime in Iraq while for the most part neglecting the horrors the United States has committed. That the regime here has used chemical weapons, engaged in torture, and violated the political and civil rights of Iraqi civilians is repugnant to all who cherish human rights. And yet, what the U.S. public doesn't understand and will possibly never comprehend is that the greatest violations of human rights in Iraq since the Gulf War have happened as a result of U.S.-led UN economic sanctions against Iraq."[4] Indeed, three senior UN officials living and working in Iraq resigned because they considered the sanctions to be a "genocidal" policy.[5] Talking about her return to the U.S. after a 1998 visit to Iraq, Kelly said, "Upon our return to the U.S., customs agents turned my passport over to the State Department, perhaps as evidence that, according to U.S. law, I've committed a criminal act by traveling to Iraq. I know that our efforts to be voices in the wilderness aren't criminal. We're governed by compassion, not by the laws that pitilessly murder innocent children. What's more, Iraqi children might benefit if we could bring their story into a courtroom, before a jury of our peers."[6] IRAQ UNDER SANCTIONS During the course of the proceedings the government did its utmost to prevent any discussion of the state of Iraq under the sanctions from being part of the trial. Government employees, including Susan Hutner, of the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), testified to having no knowledge of the effects of the sanctions. As the government attorney addressing the situation in Iraq, she helped draft the initial legal documentation to implement the sanctions and then worked on the sanctions for 12 years. When the defense attempted to question Hutner about the Oil for Food program, the court ruled the line of questioning irrelevant.[7] Several government witnesses of Iraqi descent broke down on the stand when they began to talk of the effects of the sanctions on their families.[8] Each time this happened the prosecution immediately interrupted the testimony.[9] The only newspaper reporting on the proceedings, the local Syracuse Post-Standard, failed to address the sanctions as they pertained to the case. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 1, 1990, and on August 2, U.S. sanctions against Iraq were put in place. On January 17, 1991, the first bombs of the Gulf War were dropped on Baghdad. Before this war the people of Iraq had a standard of living comparable to many Western countries. Although a brutal dictatorship, the government provided universal healthcare and education including college for all its citizens. There was virtually no illiteracy and the education system and health system were the best in the region. The result of the war was total devastation: more bombs were dropped on Iraq in a six-week period than were dropped by all parties together in the whole of World War II. Taken together, these bombs are at least six times more powerful than two atomic bombs. Many types of bombs were used including ones containing depleted uranium (DU), the waste matter from nuclear plants; hundreds of tons of DU ammunition now lie scattered throughout Iraq. The DU dust has entered the food chain through the soil and the water, and as a result many formerly unknown diseases have become prevalent in Iraq. Many pregnant women are delivering their babies as early as six months, and many babies are born with terrible deformities. Cancer rates have skyrocketed, and if current trends continue 44% of the population could develop cancer within the next ten years. [10] All major bridges and communication systems were bombed, making any communications both inside and outside the country extremely difficult. The water purification system was bombed and the UN has never allowed it to be repaired; as a result 15 years of raw sewage has piled up in the streets. This has been the cause of much disease and death, particularly among the young and very old. Hospitals and schools were not spared and, as a result of the bombing and the sanctions, the health and education systems in Iraq went from being the best in the region to being the worst. [11] Robert Fisk in his new book about the Middle East says, "There was one final scourge to be visited upon the Iraqi people, a foul cocktail in which both our gunfire and our sanctions played an intimate, horrific role, one that would contaminate Iraqis for years to come, perhaps for generations. In historical terms, it may be identified as our most callous crime against the Middle East, against Arabs, against children. It manifested itself in abscesses, in massive tumours, in gangrene, internal bleeding and child mastectomies and shrunken heads and deformities and thousands of tiny graves."[12] In 1998 Denis Halliday, Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations resigned from the UN after thirty-four years of distinguished service. At the time he was serving as the humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad, and his resignation was a direct result of the conditions he witnessed. He said, "I had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults. We all know that the regime, Saddam Hussein, is not paying the price of economic sanctions; on the contrary, he has been strengthened by them. It is the little people who are losing their children or their parents for lack of treated water. What is clear is that the Security Council is now out of control, for its actions here undermine its own Charter, and the Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention. History will slaughter those responsible."[13] Hans Von Sponeck succeeded Denis Halliday as humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad and, and in early 2000 he too resigned from that position. Von Sponeck, talking about the Oil for Food program, said that it was impossible for each person to live on the $100 per year that was being allocated, especially because of the conditions prevalent in Iraq at the time. He said, "Set that pittance against the lack of clean water, the fact that electricity fails for up to 22 hours a day, and the majority of sick people cannot afford treatment, the sheer trauma of trying to get from day to day, and you have a glimpse of the nightmare. And make no mistake, this is deliberate. I have not in the past wanted to use the word genocide, but now it is unavoidable."[14] And in a report to the UN Secretary General, Professor Marc Bossuyt, an authority on international law, stated that the ".sanctions regime against Iraq is unequivocally illegal under existing human right law and could raise questions under the Genocide Convention."[15] WHAT HELP THE NEEDY DID Over the course of 13 years, from 1990 until 2003, HTN sent food and medicines that reached millions of starving Iraqi civilians. The aid was first sent to Maher Zagha in Jordan. Zagha is a former Onondaga Community College and Utica College student who lived in the Upstate New York area for several years before returning to Jordan.[16] He is listed as a co-conspirator with Dhafir on the indictment. On the day of Dhafir's arrest, Zagha was arrested in Jordan and then held in solitary for 21 days. The Jordanians interrogated him and released him and since then he has gone about his normal life, including traveling internationally. After Dhafir's conviction in February 2005 the remaining HTN money in Jordan, $138,564.53 was confiscated along with $25,000 of Dhafir's personal money. Throughout the period of the sanctions container loads of food were shipped by HTN from Jordan to Iraq. Receipts from the purchase of food were shown in court. For example, an invoice from January 29th, 1997, showed the purchase of 25 tons of Thailand rice, 35 tons of flour and 2000 cans of cooking oil. Invoices from other days and years list tons of; American rice, Turkish sugar, Iranian flour, chickpeas and Iraqi lentils. Tea and tomato paste was also shipped.[17] Zagha sent the aid into Iraq using the correct official channels required by the Jordanian authorities. When he was unable to comply, he gave the aid over to the authorities. In 1990 when Dhafir sent 900 kilograms of medicine to Zagha without the correct paper work, Zagha had to give the medicine to the Iraqi embassy in Jordan. It was the only way to get the medicine into Iraq and he could only hope that it would reach the people for whom it was intended. >From 1996 through 2003 Zagha sent money to Iraq and local exchangers were used because there were no banks operating at that time. The money was sent to Dhafir's brother Najim in Baghdad (also a physician) and two other men, Mustapha and Ammar. By getting money into Iraq from Jordan HTN was able to provide starving civilians with meat protein. The three men in Baghdad bought animals at the open markets surrounding the city, and these purchases usually coincided with the major holidays of the Muslim faith. For example, in January 2003, for one of the most holy of Muslim holidays, Eid, Zagha sent four lots of money totaling $285,000. This money bought about 4,000 lambs and cows which were sacrificed, and the food was distributed to the needy.[18] Looking at the quantities of aid provided to Iraqi civilians by HTN, it is easy to believe that they were indeed feeding more people in Iraq than all the other aid agencies put together.[19] An email read in court showed that Dhafir believed that the U.S. government was not opposed to Iraqi civilians receiving humanitarian aid of the form that HTN was supplying. HTN and other groups, like VITW, openly advertised that they were sending aid to civilians. They did this through leaflets, websites and fundraising events. For 13 years the government took little action against people who sent aid to Iraqi civilians, and this tacit approval must have helped confirm Dhafir's belief.[20] Since the day of his arrest, using unfair tactics and innuendo, the government has managed to transform Dhafir from a compassionate humanitarian into a crook and supporter of terrorists. They have done this with the aid of a complicit press and a willfully ignorant public. THE GOVERNMENT APPROACH >From the outset in this case the approach of the government has been one of circumambulation. Michael Powell of the Washington Post said, "There is a shadow-boxing quality to the terror allegations lodged against Dhafir. In August [2004], Gov. George E. Pataki (R) described Dhafir's as a 'money laundering case to help terrorist organizations . . . conduct horrible acts.' Prosecutors hinted at national security reasons for holding Dhafir without bail. But no evidence was offered to support the allegations."[21] In April 2004 the U.S. government brought new charges against Zagha to Interpol, and Zagha had to give up his passport. It was returned so that he could make a business trip to Syria, but on December 20, 2005, the authorities again took his passport. To this day no evidence has been offered to link Dhafir to terrorists. And yet, on November 15, 2005, the government presented a lecture at Syracuse University's law school entitled, "A Law Enforcement Approach to Terrorist Financing," in which Dhafir's case was highlighted. [22] The three prosecutors from the case, Michael Olmstead, Greg West and Steve Green were present along with Jeff Breinholt, Deputy Chief, Counterterrorism Section United States Department of Justice who was the main speaker. Breinholt asserted that the Dhafir case had been "under prosecuted," this despite the fact that the government brought 60 counts against Dhafir and gained conviction on 59. He cited HTN's use of tax exemption numbers other than its own as an example of how charities functioned in their criminal activity. Many of Dhafir's convictions on tax evasion and fraud charges are based on the assumption that people who gave money to HTN used the tax exemption number of another charity and therefore did not pay tax. The government is holding Dhafir responsible for this lost tax revenue. One of the two numbers Dhafir used was from a charity that is the Saudi Arabian equivalent of the American charity United Way.[23] The use of another charity's number is not an uncommon practice. What is uncommon is the fact that it resulted in a criminal prosecution. Barrie Gewanter, Director of the Central New York ACLU, has explained the normal procedure for this type of situation in numerous interviews about the HTN case. Ordinarily the state government intervenes and shuts the charity down until the situation is sorted out to their satisfaction. When and if this is achieved, the charity continues its work.[24] The government's philosophy in prosecuting this case was made clear in the course of the lecture. Olmstead, the head prosecutor of the Dhafir case, cited the philosopher Emmanuel Kant's imperative, "To obey the law because it is the law." He added that "if you break the law, you must pay the price," apparently regardless of the unfairness of the law and the humanitarian nature of the act. Compassion comes with a very high price. Dhafir is undoubtedly paying the price of breaking the genocidal policy of U.S. sanctions against Iraq. However, the government was unwilling to prosecute him for this without the attendant obfuscation and cover provided by the laundry list of charges that he faced. A clear message is being sent that humanitarian acts like this will not be tolerated and will be punished accordingly. By hosting this lecture on terrorist financing, Syracuse University Law School provided the government with a platform that gives credence to an accusation that is wholly lacking in evidence. They have become the most recent government accomplice. The "shadow boxing" continues with the media, public and the local law school as willing participants in the charade. The journalist John Pilger writes, "It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it"[25] It is also not enough for citizens in a democracy to see themselves as mere receptors of information. As citizens in a democracy we have an obligation to seek justice for each other. In this case it means actively going beyond the government's obfuscation and seeking hard facts and other sources of information. If this can be achieved, Dhafir and the other HTN defendants will be vindicated; but it is no easy task. ACHIEVING JUSTICE Many people are reassured by the fact that Dhafir can appeal against his conviction and sentencing. But most have no idea what this means in terms of practicalities. Under the best possible circumstances the chances of a successful appeal are slim. Seven government agencies investigated this case for five years. The prosecutors presented the case in minutia over the course of the seventeen weeks of proceedings. What was expected to be a 6-week trial turned into a 17-week trial and the three defense lawyers have received a fraction of their fee. Due to this lack of finances a request for transcripts was made at the beginning of the trial.[26] Judge Mordue denied this request and so one of the three defense lawyers typed the proceedings on his laptop. But official transcripts are essential to an appeal and even if ordered today, it would take two years to get the transcript in full. The cost would be around $60,000. before any lawyer fees or other costs are taken into account. Dhafir has been bankrupted by this course of justice and has no money for an appeals lawyer. His only hope is that people who care about compassion and justice will be able to raise enough money for him to have a viable chance of a successful appeal. ------- Katherine Hughes is a potter and a voracious reader of history and current events. She responded to a request from the ACLU for court watchers and attended virtually all of the Dhafir trial. To find out more about this case, please visit her website: www.dhafirtrial.net. ---------- [1] Write to Dr. Dhafir: Rafil Dhafir, 11921-052, FCI-Fairton, PO Box 420, Fairton, NJ 08320. [2] We learned in the proceedings that a HTN volunteer was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime. [3] The first 15 counts of Dr. Dhafir's 60-count indictment involve violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), commonly known as the sanctions. The full indictment is available on my website: http://www.dhafirtrial.net/static/indictment.pdf [4] Kathy Kelly, "Other Lands Have Dreams" (Oakland: Counterpunch and AK Press, 2005), p.51. [5] John Pilger, "The New Rulers of the World" (London: Verso 2002), p.54. [6] Ibid, Kelly. P.37. [7] From my witness of the proceedings and official transcript of Susan Hutner's cross examination by the defense, November 10, 2004. [8] One witness broke down on the stand when testifying that his mother had died because she did not have access to necessary blood pressure medicine. [9] A video of an HTN fundraising event was shown early in the proceedings. The government intended to play only the first few minutes, but the defense insisted that the whole video be shown. [10] John Pilger, "The Impact of the Sanctions," found at http://pilger.carlton.com/iraq/impact [11] Information about Iraq under the sanctions can be found on the Voices in the Wilderness website. A video of a fundraising event in which Dr. Dhafir describes conditions of Iraq using the Pentagon and UNICEF as his sources is available at the address below. The file is 12 MB: QuickTime version: http://www.a39.net/Dhafir/Dhafir.html Flash version: http://www.a39.net/Dhafir/DhafirFlash.html [12] Robert Fisk, "The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2005) p.727. [13] John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (London: Verso 2002), p.53. [14] Ibid, Pilger, p.59 [15] Ibid, Pilger, p.95. [16] In Syracuse, New York, and Rome, New York, respectively. [17] From my witness of the proceedings [18] Maher Zagha sent me pictures of the animals being slaughtered. A sign in each photograph shows that the animals were purchased by HTN. [19] From my witness of the proceedings, correspondence with Maher Zagha and Dr. Dhafrir's sentencing statement to the media. [20] The government's tacit approval in this case reminds me of the way that people are granted dual-citizenship: this is achieved by taking the Oath of Allegiance (and swearing away their original citizenship) and keeping the country of origin passport. This is the "accepted" practice and the media write freely about "dual-citizens." But what if the government decides to prosecute this action in years to come? [21] Michael Powell, "High-Profile N.Y. Suspect Goes on Trial: Arrest Was Called Part of War on Terrorism, but Doctor Faces Other Charges," The Washington Post, October 19, 2004. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43278-2004Oct18.html [22] The lecture was advertised by the "Institute For National Security and Counterterrorism", INSCT, which is hosted by Syracuse University Law School: http://insct.syr.edu/Research_SWP0506.htm A photograph of Greg West can be seen at this site. It was taken during the lecture and IEEPA violations are chalked on the blackboard behind him. [23] Elaine Cassel, The War on Civil Liberties: How Bush and Ashcroft Have Dismantled the Bill of Rights (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2004). See the chapter, "Guilt by Association: The Islamic Charities," pp 87 - 105 [24] See WCNY Public Television, "Access" with George Kilpatrick. This program aired on Wednesday, 26th October at 11pm, the night before Dr.Dhafir's sentencing. I was part of a three-person panel with Barrie Gewanter (ACLU) and Julienne Oldfield, another of the Dhafir trial court watchers. [25] John Pilger's Homepage:http://www.johnpilger.com// [26] Pages that need to be transcribed cost $5.75 each, and already transcribed pages cost 50c a page. WWW www.countercurrents.org --------------------------------------------- Coming clean on US bombers February 22, 2006 NONE of the weapons the US Air Force drops on Australian military training ranges will contain depleted uranium, the Government said yesterday. Under an agreement reached at the Australia-US ministerial consultations in Adelaide last November, US Air Force bombers are to make greater use of our military ranges. In answer to a question on notice released yesterday, former junior defence minister De-Anne Kelly said the exact numbers of US aircraft operating over Australia had yet to be determined. But it could consist of between one and three B-1, B-2 or B-52 aircraft conducting combined training activities each month. Mrs Kelly said they would drop conventional and practice munitions plus precision guided weapons. But she could give an assurance that no weapons dropped during the training exercises would contain depleted uranium, a super hard material used for added penetration. http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,18233195-5001022,00.html [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] ***************************************************************** 34 NIOSH Update: NIOSH Offers Nanoparticle Information Library to Meet User's Needs for On-line Resource Contact: Fred Blosser (202) 401-3749 February 23, 2006 The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) offers a new, web-based Nanoparticle Information Library (NIL)for public use and comment. The new, interactive database responds to the needs of scientists, business leaders, and others for information on different types of nanoparticles in current use, their physical and chemical characteristics, and their occupational health and safety implications. The Library is available at www2a.cdc.gov/niosh-nil/ as a resource for those diverse users from students to researchers and as a forum in which scientists can share their latest technical information. By providing the database, NIOSH hopes to further the ability of researchers and decision-makers to address the question of whether work-related exposures to nanomaterials may have unintended health consequences. Stakeholders widely agree that new research on the occupational health and safety implications of nanotechnology is essential for U.S. leadership in this growing industry, said NIOSH Director John Howard, M.D. The Nanoparticle Information Library is designed to be a national resource to help advance such studies. It provides instant access to information that would take hours to find otherwise, and offers a dedicated cyber-forum to help scientists communicate and network with each other. The Library will be continually expanded to reflect new information, and will be revised as needed to meet users needs. Information is contributed by both NIOSH scientists and outside colleagues. Features include: + Images of nanoparticles. + Information on physical properties relevant to occupational safety and health studies, such as size, shape, structure, surface characteristics, and chemical properties. + Origin and/or synthesis of different kinds of nanoparticles. + Applications and/or industries if known. + Related occupations if known. + Health and safety notes, including links to material safety data sheets, information from toxicity studies, and best practices for production and workplace use. + Information on contributors, including email addresses and links to web sites. + A search engine for navigating the site quickly and easily. The Library is part of NIOSHs strategic program for conducting advanced research on the occupational health and safety implications of nanotechnology, providing interim guidance on occupational health practices, and stimulating new partnerships. Further information on this strategic program is available at www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/nanotech/ NIOSH Home | NIOSH Search | Site Index | Topic List | ***************************************************************** 35 Desperately seeking waste - CSE News Bulletin [February 24, Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 16:15:17 -0800 Please add CSE's fortnightly news bulletin to your Address Book so this newsletter doesn't get filtered or tossed into your bulk folder ============================= CSE's Fortnightly News Bulletin [Feb. 24, 2006] ============================= An e-bulletin from the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), India, to our network of friends and professionals interested in environmental issues. Scroll to the bottom of this page for information on how to unsubscribe. INSIDE: - Down To Earth Referral program - Cover Story: Beyond Le Clemenceau - A closer look at the the world's trashcan. - Editorial: Desperately seeking waste - News: Water Budget - An increase in acronyms - News: No Bullying - Scientists slam US nuclear deal - S&T: Biofuel not eco-friendly? - Feature: A visual narrative of women used as fertility machines to produce males - Books: Poison vs. Nutrition - Jobs: Web developers ================================= DTE referral scheme ================================= Down To Earth subscribers - Refer your friends, family and colleagues to Down To Earth print through this referral form, and they will receive a complimentary copy of Down To Earth print AND one month access to Down To Earth online. Give us 6 referrals and you will receive a gift>> http://www.cseindia.org/html/extra/dte_referral_form.htm ================================= Cover Story: Brinkmanship - Alang's ship-breaking yards ================================= Le Clemenceau, the decommissioned French warship isn't the first rejected vessel from industrialised countries to come to India. It isn't the first to be torn down by workers who risk their lives to strip the steel to make a living. Read the in-depth report about Alang, Gujarat the gateway of India's hazardous waste industry. Read the in-depth report about Alang>> http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=1 ================================= Editorial: Desperately seeking waste ================================= By the time you read this, the decision would have been taken: to allow or not to allow the French warship Le Clemenceau into India, so that it can be dismantled with unknown quantities of toxic substances in its structure. The decision could be to send the ship back for decontamination, or to send the asbestos waste back to France after removing it from the ship. But whatever the decision, it is important that the matter of Le Clemenceau is not buried with its body at the Alang ship funeral grounds. It is important to understand that this is not the first or the last ship that will make it to Indian waters for clean up - and with highly toxic waste. It is also important to realise that foreign hazardous waste does not come in ships only, and that our poverty - financial and mental - could well make us the world's biggest dumpyard, as we import larger and larger quantities of waste to reuse and recycle. This is particularly important for a country that is beginning to generate large quantities of toxic waste with few resources at its disposal to get rid of its junk. This French ship must be our call to set a few houses in order. Let us recognise that global agreements on waste trade have failed. The world cobbled together the Basel Convention in the early 1990s, after it was shocked with Le Clemenceau -type ships carrying waste going from country to country, finding ports to dump. This was the time when the industrialised world was beginning to explode with wealth and waste generation. It needs cheap dumping grounds. Africa was seen as the favourite, with surreptitious and not-so covert deals being made to send toxic waste of the rich North for disposal in the poor continent. The world was shocked. So, it decided to work on an agreement to control the transboundary movement of hazardous waste. The intention was heroic indeed - to stop all trade in toxic waste. But slowly green fervour gave way to brown realism. It was agreed that countries, which have the capacity to treat waste, should be allowed to trade in dirt. A rich waste managers' club - comprising oecd and other European countries - was formed, dividing the world between those that can treat and those that can't. In this waste-caste system, the poorer nations, who climb up the wealth-waste ladder, are debarred from membership. Waste, after all is also a resource, and so it was agreed that trade should be allowed for recycling or reprocessing. Ironically, the same poor countries who had once demanded that trade in toxics should be banned now want the trade to continue. They are markets for waste, as they could reprocess the dirt to extract resources - from paper to metal waste. With all its green morality, the rich world also needs cost-effective ways of treating its toxic and not-so toxic garbage. So, the convention began to hedge. The poor became the shield of the rich - as in many other environmental matters - and it was agreed to allow toxic waste trade as long as it was for recycling and as long as the facilities for reprocessing the waste were environmentally sound. In the mid-1990s it was decided that as monitoring of these "green waste facilities" could not be guaranteed, it would be banned. But this Basel Ban has never seen the light of day as it impinges on the interests of the rich waste producers and poor garbage collectors. Interestingly, every effort made to hold the rich 'liable' for compliance has failed, as have efforts to minimise the production of hazardous waste. The convention is then about regulating toxic trade. But even here it is miserably failing. My colleagues rummaged through data collected by the diligent custom authorities on imported goods. They have discovered that India continues to be the favourite destination of all kinds of the garbage and dirt - from mercury to ash from incinerators. It even imports clinical waste, which its own custom authorities say could be contaminated with pathogens. This when it cannot even begin to deal with its own waste in its own backyard. The Indian government says that all hazardous waste trade is banned into India. The European and American exporters of waste say that they abide with the Basel Convention and do not engage in dirt trade. How then does this happen? Take the case of mercury. India is importing large quantities of mercury from Europe and the us. The catch is that mercury is banned for trade if it is waste or if any waste product contains mercury. But the rich world, which is phasing out its mercury because of health concerns, is "selling" it's waste stock as fresh mercury. The sham continues in full light. Shame. Take incinerator ash or metal residues. The Indian importer, which buys this dirt from uk or Australia will claim that it is being done for recycling purposes - to extract "precious" metals for the Indian economy. This trade is not listed as hazardous in India. The rich waste generators cannot sell this ash. But they do. The government says that it monitors all toxics, that arrive for recycling but it cannot tell you where the waste is going - in products or dumped in our backyard. It makes incomplete lists of toxics and convolutes definitions of how hazardous is hazardous. The waste trade is dirty. To clean up will take more than the occasional war paint to herald the arrival of another Le Clemenceau. Read this editorial online >> http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=2 ================================= More in Down To Earth magazine ================================= Water Budget - comments invited! The last Union budget (2005-06) was characterised by slow progress, reduced allocations and an increase of the number of acronyms in the government's water schemes. This is the last year of the 10th five year plan, and a lot needs to be done to reach the Planning Commission's water goals. This analysis of the Union government's water programs outlines the state of the major central government schemes. We'd like to hear about what you think of the government's progress and what you expect from this year's budget with respect to water. Read the complete article>> http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=3 Send us your views>> http://www.rainwaterharvesting.org/asp/Feedback.htm ---------------------------- Scientists slam US conditions on nuclear deal Indian civilian nuclear scientists say US conditions of separating military and civilian nuclear would stall research. They say, unlike other nuclear weapon states, civilian and military facilities in India share resources and their separation would be too expensive. Read more about India's split nuclear personality>> http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=4 ----------------------------- Biofuel is efficient but eco-friendly? Plants based alternative fuels may be as efficient as petrol, but for now they offer only marginal environmental benefits, according to a US study appearing in the journal 'Science'. Read complete article>> http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=5 ----------------------------- Inside Down To Earth (subscription required) News>> Worlds smallest fish Pakistan earthquake debris dumped daily into Jhelum river Chhattisgarh biofuel germplasm theft a mystery Curtain raiser>> Convention on Biological Diversity - Sharing genetic resources Science and Technology>> Amphibians at risk even at low pesticide contamination Indian scientists develop a "fishy" test for diabetes Interview>> UK minister for biodiversity on wildlife crime and illegal trade Crosscurrents>> Technology for the poor-Wasteland maps Livestock boom - The poor will benefit with appropriate regulation Review>> Value added bird watching To read these and more subscribe to Down to Earth online>> http://www.downtoearth.org.in/Subscriber_new.asp ================================= CSE films and books ================================= Poison Vs Nutrition This briefing paper on pesticide contamination and food safety discusses the urgent need for legally enforceable standards and institutional reform in the governance of food safety in India Now available for download on our website>> http://www.cseindia.org/misc/cola-indepth/index.htm ================================= Jobs: Required immediately ================================= Web developers CSE is looking for web programmers with good analytical skills and a background in Computer Science/Computer Engineering. Experience in ASP, PHP, SQL Server 2000 and Javascript. Candidates should also be familiar with the UNIX operating system. Responsibilities will include developing dynamic applications for CSE's 6 websites>> Email CV to: Jagdeep Gupta =============================== About this email =============================== You are receiving this newsletter because you have asked to be included in our list, attended a CSE event or requested information. To stop receiving this e-bulletin, please e-mail: feedback@csenews.org with the word 'unsubscribe' in the subject. CSE is an independent, public interest organisation that was established in 1982 by Anil Agarwal, a pioneer of India's environmental movement. CSE's mandate is to research, communicate and promote sustainable development with equity, participation and democracy. Contact CSE: http://www.cseindia.org/aboutus/feedback.htm E-mail: < cse@cseindia.org > Privacy policy: http://www.cseindia.org/misc/privacy.htm Address: 41 Tughlakabad Institutional Area, New Delhi - 110062 Tell us if you know a colleague or friend who might enjoy this newsletter © Centre for Science and Environment ***************************************************************** 36 Deseret News: PFS says it's ready to look for customers [deseretnews.com] Friday, February 24, 2006 But Bennett downplays license awarded by NRC By Joe Bauman Deseret Morning News Private Fuel Storage says now that it has its operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it is ready to find customers. But Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, says the company is running out of options "but they're not dead yet." PFS, formed by a group of private electrical utilities, is hoping to construct a high-level nuclear waste storage facility on Goshute Indian land in Skull Valley, Tooele County. It would host up to 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods. While technically "spent," the rods retain much of their original radioactivity. Encased in protective casks, they would be shipped in by train and truck. "With the license now in hand, PFS will begin the process of marketing the facility to nuclear power plant operators across the country that are in need of safe, secure storage for spent nuclear fuel rods," says a company press release, e-mailed to the Deseret Morning News on Thursday. "This will generate the financing needed to construct the site." This week, after years of hearings and controversy, the NRC awarded a license to the company. "This is what we have been working on for nearly nine long years," John Parkyn, chairman of PFS, commented in the press release. "And it has been a very open licensing process, with the state of Utah and other intervenors heavily involved, along with significant information requests and demands from the NRC." Of all the operations in Skull Valley, dating back to World War II, PFS has been the most thoroughly scrutinized, he said. "We are sure the license is good news for our friends and partners, the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians, on whose reservation we plan to build our facility." The license is effective immediately. But PFS will not start construction until some other issues are resolved, he said. Actual building should take 18 to 24 months, according to Parkyn. Those other issues include getting formal approval from the federal Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Indian Affairs. The company notes that the BLM has started a public comment period about granting a right of way for a rail line or allowing PFS the alternative of constructing a transfer station 26 miles north of the site on I-80. The station would move casks from rail cars and place them on "specially constructed heavy haul trucks" to drive to the site, says the release. During a meeting with the Deseret Morning News editorial board on Wednesday, a reporter asked Bennett if the granting of the license meant the state is running out of options in its fight against Private Fuel Storage. "I think PFS is running out of options, but they're not dead yet," he repled. "The granting of the license is the inertia of the previous push. . . . The process was just rolling down the hill, and at the bottom of the hill was the license." A wilderness bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush makes it more difficult and more expensive for PFS, he said. The bill's goal was to block the railroad, although the highway route may still be possible with the construction of the transfer station. In addition, he said, utility executives "have been pulling out of PFS." Constructing the facility may cost in the range of $1 billion, he said. Just because the company has a license doesn't mean nuclear fuel rods will be coming to Utah, Bennett said. "They licensed a piece of sagebrush." © 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 37 Guardian Unlimited: Bill to clean up nuclear sites rises by nearly 1bn Mark Milner, industrial editor Saturday February 25, 2006 The Guardian The potential bill facing the government for cleaning up British Energy's nuclear liabilities has risen by almost Ł1bn to more than Ł5bn. British Energy said yesterday that the latest of a series of five-yearly reviews of its uncontracted liabilities and decommissioning costs had shown they had increased by Ł956m to Ł5.3bn, mainly as a result higher decommissioning costs. Under British Energy's restructuring plan completed last year, the government agreed to indemnify the company against any shortfall in the nuclear liabilities fund which meets the clean up costs. In return British Energy contributes 65% of its net cash flow to the fund. The increased liabilities will not mean the company will have to pay more to the fund. Article continues Yesterday British Energy said its operating profits for the nine months to January 1 totalled Ł377m, with Ł242m coming in the third quarter. The company has eight nuclear power plants and one coal fired station and its profits have been boosted by the rising price of electricity. It has pre-sold all its planned output for the current financial year at an average price of Ł33.3 per megawatt hourand has sold 60% of next year's output at an average price of Ł37.8 per megawatt hour. The company's performance was, however, held back by unplanned shutdowns with British Energy acknowledging that unexpected loss of generating capacity would lead to higher costs. So far this year British Energy has invested Ł170m in its plant and is planning to increase that to up to Ł300m for next year, a programme which it hopes will cut unexpectedshutdowns. It is also planning to increase spending on operating costs by around Ł60m, including more staff and higher spending on insurance and security. The company declined to be drawn on the increased security measures. Elsewhere in the energy sector, National Grid confirmed that it is in talks with the US natural gas distribution company KeySpan Corp which industry sources suggested could lead to a $7bn (Ł4bn) bid. The UK company already has energy interests in the north east United States and KeySpan's operations in New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire are seen as a good fit. Analysts had suggested National Grid could launch a rights issue or place shares to help finance a deal but yesterday the company said any transaction would be on a cash basis, financed from borrowings. Consolidated Edison from the US is also seen as a possible bidder, though it could face competition problems. Useful links British Energy Department of Trade and Industry British Nuclear Fuels Ltd Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Greenpeace HSE nuclear glossary Come Clean WMD awareness programme UK atomic energy authority National Radiological Protection Board Friends of the Earth World Nuclear Association World Nuclear Transport Institute [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 38 AP Wire: Radioactive water from California plant leaks from tanker | 02/24/2006 | Associated Press PAROWAN, Utah - Low-level radioactive water from a California nuclear power plant being shipped to Tooele County for disposal leaked at a Parowan truck stop parking lot. There were no injuries, and officials said the low-level radiation presented no threat to the public. However, an area 3 feet by 3 feet at the spill site was roped off pending cleanup. Ray Golden, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, which operates the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, said the water had been used in decommissioning a nuclear reactor at the California facility. He said the tank was carrying about 4,500 gallons of water and the amount leaked probably was around three gallons. The Triad Transport truck was headed to the Tooele County hazardous and low-level radioactive disposal site operated by EnergySolutions, formerly Envirocare of Utah. Last year, it received roughly 25 million cubic feet of waste, according to reports submitted to the state Division of Radiation Control. EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said the truck driver checked the load at the Port of Entry in St. George and saw nothing amiss. He said EnergySolutions would send a truck to the spill site Friday to pick up the contaminated soil. "They are responsible for the cleanup, but we are there assisting them," he said. Bill Sinclair, deputy director of the state Department of Environmental Quality, said the material may have been spilled in a number of places, because a pressure valve failed and allowed the water to leak down the tanker's side. The truck and driver remained at the truck stop Thursday night. The leak was noticed by the driver about 10 p.m. Wednesday after he stopped to get a soda at the TA Truck stop, which was never closed because of the spill. Truck driver Stan Hall said the drivers are required to check their equipment every three hours. Cedar City Fire Department Hazmat technician Travis Douglas said checked the radiation levels around the spill. He said the background radiation was 39 counts per minute and the area just above the spill was 113 counts per minute. Douglas said the only instruction was to keep people from walking in the spill. ***************************************************************** 39 Washington Examiner: Toxic truth in Spring Valley - Harry Jaffe Commentary - 24Feb'06 Published: Thursday, February 23, 2006 9:26 PM EST It is a little known fact that one of the most costly toxic waste cleanup operations in history is taking place right now in Spring Valley. Yes, parts of Washington's elite and high-priced neighborhood were built on chemical waste pits. The federal government has spent close to $100 million searching for deadly chemicals beneath the mansions and cleaning up ones it has discovered. The search is about half done. ***************************************************************** 40 Las Vegas SUN: Flashpoint for Feb 24, 2006 Today: February 24, 2006 at 7:47:14 PST By Jon Ralston Las Vegas Sun I don't like writing about Yucca Mountain. So little has changed since the first Screw Nevada Bill in 1987. The rhetoric is stale, the politicians so reflexive, the issue almost boring. But one tactic has worked: A dump delayed is a dump denied. Or at least: A dump delayed is a dump delayed. Now, the administration, prodded by the nuclear industry, is once again trying to accelerate the erection of the dump by producing legislation that would expand the capacity of the facility. Ordinarily, I would say: So what? More of the same. But in the middle of an election year, where Republicans here have enough national baggage to carry, this new push may have resonance. Or will it be boring ... again? All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 41 reviewjournal.com: Nuclear industry envisions expansion of Yucca project Feb. 24, 2006 77,000-ton capacity seen as 'artificial limit' By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The nuclear power industry plans to lobby Congress this year to remove the cap on how much nuclear waste could be stored at Yucca Mountain, a trade association official said Thursday. With all available space likely to be claimed by the time the proposed Nevada waste repository opens, a 77,000-ton capacity set by Congress in a 1982 law "eventually is going to stand in the way" of industry growth, said Steve Kraft, a senior director at the Nuclear Energy Institute. Kraft said the capacity is an "artificial limit" set through politics. The 1982 law requires the Department of Energy to report to Congress between 2007 and 2010 on the need for additional capacity, or perhaps a second repository. Kraft said the industry does not plan to suggest a new ceiling for Yucca Mountain storage but noted that DOE environmental studies have said the repository could hold 105,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. Some scientists believe the mountain could hold more depending on its design. About 50,000 tons of spent fuel is stored at commercial reactor sites, and plants continue to generate 2,000 tons of waste each year, industry figures indicate. Another 12,000 metric tons of government-generated waste also awaits disposal at Yucca Mountain. "We know that nuclear energy is going to expand, so (the capacity limit) needs to be dealt with," Kraft said in a briefing on the institute's Yucca Mountain goals this year. The Nuclear Energy Institute staked out positions on probable Yucca Mountain issues in Congress this year as the Bush administration prepares to send lawmakers a bill expected in the next few weeks to jump-start the delayed nuclear waste program. Paul Golan, the DOE's acting nuclear waste director, said earlier this month that the bill will address Yucca funding and will propose to formally claim 147,000 acres of public land surrounding the site. Golan said other provisions were being considered, but he declined to disclose them. Trade publications citing unnamed sources have reported that the bill might call for establishing federal sites where nuclear waste can be stored temporarily while Yucca Mountain work continues. Kraft said moving nuclear waste away from power plants and onto some federal site, be it Yucca Mountain or elsewhere, "is our number one goal, our number one issue." Among other legislation sought by the trade group: • A rate freeze on payments by utilities into the nuclear waste fund that pays for the repository. Companies pay one mil ($.001) per kilowatt hour of electricity generated by nuclear plants. The fund contains about $20 billion. • Accounting changes for the nuclear waste fund to let Congress appropriate more for repository construction. The industry has tried before but failed to persuade lawmakers to make the change, but it wants to try again. • Repeal of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission "waste confidence" regulation that industry officials believe might complicate licensing for new power plants. Kraft said the rule, which governs how the NRC weighs nuclear waste issues in reactor license applications and waste storage permits, has become outdated since Congress voted in 2002 to move forward on a Yucca Mountain repository. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2006 Stephens Media GroupPrivacy Statement ***************************************************************** 42 Platts: Spent fuel removal is industry's top waste legislation priority Washington (Platts)--23Feb2006 The removal of spent fuel from reactor sites tops the nuclear industry's list of what it wants to see in nuclear waste legislation, said Steve Kraft of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). NEI unveiled its top priorities at a media briefing today. The industry also wants Congress to remove the current 70,000 metric ton cap on the amount of spent fuel that can be entombed in a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., said Kraft, NEI's director of used fuel management. It also wants Congress to allow the technical capability of the site, as well as the disposal capacity needed to support a growing nuclear power industry, determine the disposal capacity there, he said. In addition, he said, Congress should eliminate the periodic waste confidence rule now required of NRC. Confidence in DOE's ability to dispose of utility spent fuel was demonstrated in 2002 when Congress approved the administration's recommendation that Yucca Mountain be used for a high-level waste repository, Kraft said. It was demonstrated again last year when comprehensive energy legislation was enacted that contains financial incentives for new reactors, he said. "Where NRC needs to concern itself is with [the] licensing and safety of plants," Kraft said. "Waste confidence would be a distraction." Meanwhile, there was no indication today of when DOE would send its legislative proposal to Congress. Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 43 Platts: US NRC approves plan for spent nuclear fuel storage in Utah Washington (Platts)--22Feb2006 The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday issued a license to Private Fuel Storage LLC to build and operate an independent spent nuclear fuel storage facility in Skull Valley, Utah. The company still must gain approval from other government agencies and prove it has the money for the project before it can begin construction. "We're very pleased that the 8 1/2 year long licensing process has resulted in a license," PFS Chairman John Parkyn said in a statement. "It has been a very rigorous process in which PFS proved that the facility will be built and operated in compliance with federal regulations designed to protect public health and safety." Parkyn said in an interview that it would be up to utilities to decide to invest in the facility, which is planned for the reservation of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians, about 50 miles from Salt Lake City. The facility is intended for temporary above-ground storage, in cylindrical casks, of up to 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from US reactors. The license is effective for 20 years. PFS, which is made up of eight utilities, must obtain necessary approvals from other agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Surface Transportation Board before proceeding. Utah's congressional delegation has vowed to stop the project. Last year, Congress passed a defense authorization bill with a provision establishing a wilderness area near the site, effectively blocking a rail line that would haul waste to the reservation. BLM is deciding whether to approve a facility where waste casks would be transferred from trains to trucks 20 miles from the site. ---Daniel Whitten, daniel_whitten@platts.com For more information, take a trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://nucweek.platts.com. Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 44 LA Daily News: Grants proposed to stop perchlorate Santa Clarita Article Launched: 02/24/2006 12:00 AM PST By Eugene Tong, Staff Writer SANTA CLARITA - A bill introduced in Congress by two California lawmakers could provide $50 million to clean up contamination by the rocket-fuel ingredient perchlorate in their home state, but it would likely amount to little for decontamination of local sites. The California Perchlorate Remediation Act introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Stockton, would set up a grant program administered by the Environmental Protection Agency for state agencies to help finance groundwater cleanup. "There's no question many communities in California face water supplies contaminated with perchlorate," Pombo said in a printed statement. "Californians expect and deserve high-quality drinking water, and this legislation provides valuable assistance moving forward to make it happen." In Santa Clarita, the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control has been overseeing the decontamination of the 996-acre Whittaker-Bermite property along Soledad Canyon Road, where decades of manufacturing and testing weapons has left various chemicals - including perchlorate - in the soil and local groundwater supply. But Jose Diaz, project manager overseeing the cleanup for the DTSC, said the project isn't likely to get much in federal funding if the bill makes it through Congress, since the effort has primarily been underwritten by Whittaker Corp., which operated on the property. "We try to get the responsible party to pay," he said Thursday. "Whittaker is still a responsible party. As long as we have that, we don't have to pursue it. "If (the money) gets filtered through, ... we may get some funding for a pilot study." Perchlorate contamination has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states, and it is widespread in California. The chemical can interfere with the production of thyroid hormones, which are needed for growth and development, though there is disagreement about how much is dangerous. The state Environmental Protection Agency deemed water with as much as 6 parts per billion safe to drink, while the federal EPA has set a preliminary remediation goal of 24.5 parts per billion. "Perchlorate contamination of our food and water is a growing threat to public health," Feinstein said in a printed statement. "So far, both the Defense Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have failed to recognize the gravity of perchlorate contamination. In the meantime, communities in California have been forced to suffer the financial burden of trying to provide safe drinking water for their residents." Meantime, the DTSC is preparing remediation plans for both the soil and groundwater on the Bermite property, Diaz said. The ground cleanup would include soil removal and treatment, while details for the water plan are still being worked out. "For the shallow soils, it's what is practical to go after with equipment - about 40 feet depending on the feature of the terrain," Diaz said. "As far as groundwater, we do have a remediation action report that (has) identified data gaps. It's under review. "The more information, the better for remediation." The Associated Press contributed to this report. Eugene Tong, (661) 257-5253 eugene.tong@dailynews.com Los Angeles Newspaper Group ***************************************************************** 45 Salt Lake Tribune: Radioactive water, bound for Tooele County, leaks Article Last Updated: 02/24/2006 12:34 AM MST By Mark Havnes The Salt Lake Tribune PAROWAN - Radioactive water from a California nuclear power plant being shipped to a disposal site in Tooele County leaked in a Parowan truck stop parking lot on Wednesday, but officials say there is no threat to the public. Ray Golden, a spokesman with Southern California Edison, which operates the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, said the tank was carrying about 4,500 gallons of water, but the exact amount leaked will not be known until the contents are unloaded at EnergySolutions, the truck's destination. "It was probably around three gallons," he estimated. The water was used in the decommissioning of one of three nuclear reactors at the California facility. The truck was headed to a mile-square disposal site in Tooele County that is operated by EnergySolutions, formerly Envirocare of Utah. The specialized landfill disposes of hazardous and low-level radioactive waste, mostly from nuclear reactors and government cleanups. Last year, it received roughly 25 million cubic feet of waste, according to reports submitted to the state Division of Radiation Control. EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said the truck driver checked the load at the Port of Entry in St. George and saw nothing amiss. EnergySolutions will send a truck to the spill site Friday to pick up the contaminated soil. "They are responsible for the load," he said. "They are responsible for the cleanup, but we are there assisting them." Bill Sinclair, deputy director of the state Department of Environmental Quality, said the material may have been spilled in a number of places, because a pressure valve failed and allowed the water to leak down the tanker's side. The truck and driver remained in an isolated area at the truck stop Thursday night. The leak was noticed by the driver about 10 p.m. Wednesday after he stopped to get a soda at the TA Truck stop located on the northern outskirts of Parowan off Interstate 15 in Iron County. The truck stop was never closed because of the spill. The driver followed procedure and notified his supervisor at the Triad Transport Inc. terminal in Salt Lake City after noticing the leak. County Fire Chief Paul Irons also said the amount leaked was extremely low, with higher radiation readings coming from a computer chip in the Geiger counter used to measure the spill on Wednesday. --- Staff writer Judy Fahys contributed to this report. © Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 46 The Dispatch: Better Safe than ? Unless Olin's Corporate Profits are at Stake OPINION Thursday, February 23, 2006 By Tom Mulhern Perchlorates are all over the news again, at least in our corner of the world, and as I predicted quite a while back, it wasn't likely that the legal system would rub Olin's corporate nose in the mess it made. I conjectured that it would be a wait-it-out situation, and if Olin were patient enough, they would walk away happily whistling and snapping their fingers. Sadly, it seems that my prediction has largely come true. Although I'm not surprised, I guess I'm doubly mad about this outcome. For about as long as there have been people, there's been an almost universal dictate, "Better safe than sorry." Nowadays, there's fine print tacked on to it: "Unless it gets in the way of corporate profits." Forcing Olin to really, truly clean up the mess it left in our groundwater hasn't been easy, and now that new guidelines for "acceptable" amounts of perchlorates are in place, it may be nearly impossible. In Staff Writer Matt King's Feb. 2 article in The Dispatch (Olin Announces Cleanup Goal), "Olin's cleanup project manager (Rick McClure) said the company can't comply with the water code requirement to clean pollution to background levels because it's not clear how much perchlorate was in the groundwater basin before it was contaminated by Olin's now-closed road-flare factory in Morgan Hill. Olin operated the plant from 1955 to 1987." It took several years for anyone to notice that their chemicals had infiltrated the groundwater; tests of hundreds of wells in the past few years have determined its spread. The number of 11 parts per billion of perchlorate contamination was cited by McClure as "a valid number, based on scientifically sound and technically competent analysis," and yet, according to the article, "It is a preliminary number because there are requirements we can't fully comply with because a background level has not been established'" McClure said. "It's likely to change, and in fact, could go up." Olin's lack of doing anything more than the bare minimum makes me doubly mad and should rile you up, too. Instead of taking some responsibility, Olin has "weasel-worded" themselves into a position that says, essentially, "We plan to do something, but we may end up doing little or nothing." The technology and indeed the need to establish baseline pollution levels before 1955 just weren't there. In lieu of any recorded numbers for perchlorate levels prior to 1955, when Olin entered our corner of the world, wouldn't you assume the original level was somewhere near zero? In the past few years, Olin has tried to take the heat off of itself by introducing ludicrous notions, such as others causing the perchlorate plume in the underground water, the possibility that perchlorates were already above 6 parts per billion prior to 1955, and so on. Olin isn't entirely to blame for the outcome, however. With an Environmental Protection Agency that has been transformed by the Bush Administration from an environmental protector into pretty much a rubber stamp for industry, the former acceptable level of 1 part per billion of perchlorate pollution has been raised from 1ppb to 24.5 ppb. And what kind of precedent is now in place? Let's suppose that a Jiffy-Lube or a Chevron Station owner decides that "pretty clean is clean enough" and occasionally pours used motor oil into the ground or storm sewers. If restaurants pour their worn-out cooking oil and grease into the alley, should they be able to use the excuse "Nobody established a baseline before we were here?" and "Who's to say that this stuff doesn't occur in the ground naturally?" And how should we regard MTBE, the gasoline additive, or other pollutants introduced by others in recent years? Wait until the EPA raises the baselines, and just believe everyone's safe? We all make tradeoffs in our lives, using bug sprays to keep mosquitoes and ants at bay, using gasoline in our cars so that we can get to work, etc. It's impossible to live a pollution-free life. We realize that, and have to accept it. It means a certain amount of restraint and responsibility comes with this. What most of us resent, however, is someone doing something to us, and then telling us not to complain, and to have people in government that are more interested in protecting those who harm us and our environment than in acting as our advocates. Finally, consider this: The population in the South Valley keeps growing and the stakes concerning our drinking water will get ever higher. A tech writer, editor, and web developer, Tom Mulhern is a longtime South Bay resident. He and his wife have been living in Gilroy for two years. His column is published on Tuesday. ***************************************************************** 47 KUTV: Sen. Hatch Addresses Legislature On Skull Valley Feb 24, 2006 3:48 pm US/Mountain SALT LAKE CITY, Utah U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch called on the Legislature Friday to rally against a plan to store up to 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel on Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, about 50 miles from Salt Lake City. Hatch said he's concerned about the security of the site, which could be in the flight path of aircraft from Hill Air Force Base and Salt Lake City International Airport. He said the state has a small window of opportunity to submit comments to the federal Bureau of Land Management, which is reopening discussion as to whether the nuclear waste project is in the public interest. ``This is not in the public interest of the state, it is not in the public interest of the nation,'' said Hatch, R-Utah. Hatch said with public comments from state leaders and residents that BLM would refuse to sign a lease with Private Fuel Storage, which has already been granted a license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin marketing the proposed storage site. To begin construction, Private Fuel Storage must prove to the NRC that it has enough money to build the facility. It also is still seeking approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a right of way from the BLM and a permit from the Surface Transportation Board. Hatch said public comments on the facility can be submitted until May 8. Hatch also addressed a bill by Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, which Stephenson calls a 'soft repeal' of the 17th Amendment. Under Stephenson's bill the Legislature would be allowed to give direction to U.S. senators on issues of state importance and require U.S. senators to provide periodic reports on how they're responding to that direction. Originally, the bill would have allowed the Legislature to play a role in selecting party candidates for U.S. Senate. That part of the bill will now be studied during the interim. Stephenson suggested that sitting down with U.S. senators during an interim session to receive formal updates and provide formal direction might be the best way to establish a closer relationship with states and their U.S. senators. ``I can imagine if we had been doing this in the 50 states before No Child Left Behind, it would have looked different and wouldn't have been the embarrassment to the administration it has become. It wouldn't have had unfunded mandates,'' Stephenson said. Stephenson believes the 17th Amendment, which provides for the direct election of U.S. senators, was a mistake and that repealing it would be too difficult. Hatch said he didn't think Stephenson's bill is necessary. ``I think we can work this out together. I'm happy to do whatever it takes to work better with the state Legislature,'' Hatch said. Senate Bill 156 passed the Senate 19-7 and is awaiting to be heard in the House. During a question and answer period after giving a similar speech to the Utah House, Hatch said the White House had disastrously handled the situation with key U.S. ports mananged by the British company that has been sold to Dubai Ports World. The sale to DPW, a United Arab Emirates-based company, has caused an uproar as some question whether U.S. ports will be safe if managed by an Arab nation. But Hatch said the UAE is a moderate Arab country that has been a good friend to the United States. ``We don't want to kick the moderate Arab nations in the face,'' Hatch said. ``Our number one concern has to be security. The administration has to make sure that the American people are satisfied that we will be secure.'' (© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material ***************************************************************** 48 edie news centre: America's answer to nuclear waste - recycle it (24 February 2006) Nuclear fuel re-processing will be one of the pillars of America's new nuclear power strategy, overturning a thirty-year ban on reprocessing technologies. Advance Burner Reactors running on recycled nuclear fuel are part of President Bush's answer to the problem of nuclear waste disposal. But the Advanced Burner Reactors are yet to be designed. The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership plan sees the first such reactor coming into use by 2023. Nuclear fuel reprocessing is controversial because current technologies separate out weapons-grade plutonium in the process, and this could then be used for producing nuclear weapons. This is the fear behind a ban that has lasted since the Ford presidency in the 1970s. President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which the re-processing plans form a part of, will try to tackle nuclear proliferation concerns by separating nations into "suppliers" and "users" of nuclear fuel. The use of reprocessing technology would then become the monopoly of stable "supplier" countries, it is hoped. The US also hopes to develop reprocessing technologies that avoid the production of weapons-grade plutonium. "Together, we will develop and deploy innovative advanced reactors and new methods to recycle spent fuel. This will allow us to produce more energy, while dramatically reducing the amount of nuclear waste and eliminating the nuclear by-products that unstable regimes or terrorists could use to make weapons," President Bush said on Saturday. The nuclear strategy will bring "large amounts of low-cost electricity without emitting air pollution or greenhouse gases," he said. As part of its 2007 fiscal year budget, the US government has allocated $632 m for research, development and construction of nuclear facilities, and wants to start constructing new nuclear plants by the end of the decade. Work on the last American new nuclear power plant started in the 1970s. The drive to recycle nuclear fuel has been partly motivated by strong opposition to storing nuclear waste in the US, at sites such as the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, where protests continue. By Goska Romanowicz Source: © Faversham House Group Ltd 2006. edie news articles may be ***************************************************************** 49 Canon City Daily Record: Comments show most opposed to Cotter MAR Publish Date: 2/24/2006 Blakely Thomas-Aguilar The Daily Record The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reported Thursday that it received approximately 190 comments, including a statement from the Fremont County Commissioners, regarding Cotter Corp.’s recent Materials Acceptance Report. CDPHE Radioactive Materials Director Steve Tarlton said the vast majority of the comments were against the acceptance of 11,000 tons of radioactive raffinate materials at the Cańon City mill. “The overwhelming majority of the comments received are opposed to Cotter receiving the Sequoyah materials,” Tarlton wrote in an e-mail Thursday. “In fact, there were only a few who did not oppose the project, and these were concerned primarily with employment.” Both the Cańon City Council and the commissioners wrote comments in opposition of the acceptance. Commissioner Mike Stiehl said the county’s statement is a long going reply to a continuing struggle against direct disposal and alternate feed materials at Cotter. “We welcome that opportunity to respond,” Stiehl said Thursday. “We’re looking out for what’s best for the county.” House Bill 1358 set a requirement that uranium processors, such as Cotter, must notify the county of any desire to accept and process radioactive materials. The commissioners then are given the opportunity to respond to the request. This is the third acceptance request the commissioners and city has come out against. Materials from the Maywood, N.J., Superfund site and AMAX also have been requested for disposal and/or processing at the site. In the commissioners’ letter, dated Feb. 21, Stiehl, Larry Lasha and Ed Norden expressed opposition to the declassification of the raffinate materials as 11e2 materials and the continuing concerns about the integrity of the hypalon liner under the tailings ponds. “We urge the CDPHE to prevent deposition of any new materials into the impoundments,” the letter states. The commissioners, and many area residents, have raised concerns about the thorium content of the Sequoyah product, as well. It is believed to contain much higher thorium levels than naturally occuring ore, and residents have raised concerns that it will be harmful to the surrounding community and environment. Stiehl, however, said he is confident that the recent leadership change at the CDPHE and a continuing effort on its officials’ part will result in community satisfaction regarding Cotter’s MAR. “I’m very much heartened that the health department is taking things like commissioners’ comments into the decision process,” Stiehl said. “I’m really pleased with what the health department’s direction has been.” All contents Copyright © 2005 The Cańon City Daily Record. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 50 KVBC: Battle over Yucca waste capacity The nuclear power industry plans to lobby Congress to remove the cap on how much nuclear waste could be stored at Yucca Mountain. In 1982 Congress set a 77,000 ton capacity. According to the Review Journal, the senior director of the Nuclear Energy Institute says that law could stand in the way of industry growth. The law requires the Department of Energy to report to Congress between 2007 and 2010 for additional capacity or a second repository. DOE environmental studies have showed the repository could hold 105,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. .gif"> All content © Copyright 2000 - 2006 WorldNow and KVBC. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 51 DOE: DOE Announces $160 Million for Biorefinery Construction and Highlights New Agricultural Program to Promote Biofuels February 22, 2006 DECATUR, IL  Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman, today announced $160 million in cost-shared funding over three years to construct up to three biorefineries in the United States. The Secretary made the announcement while visiting the Archer Daniels Midland Ethanol Plant, his second of four stops to promote the Advanced Energy Initiative announced by President Bush in his State of the Union address. Secretary Bodman also highlighted the United States Department of Agricultures announcement today of almost $188 million in loan guarantees and grants for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. This funding will support a much-needed step in the development of biofuels and renewable energy programs, Secretary Bodman said. Partnerships with industry like these will lead to new innovation and discovery that will usher in an era of reduced dependence on foreign sources of oil, while strengthening our economy at home. The $160 million solicitation is part of President Bushs Biofuels Initiative which will lead to the use of non-food based biomass, such as agricultural waste, trees, forest residues, and perennial grasses in the production of transportation fuels, electricity, and other products. One of the goals of this initiative is to accelerate research and make cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive by 2012, offering the potential to displace up to 30 percent of our nations current fuel use by 2030. The goal of the solicitation announced today is to demonstrate that commercial biorefineries can be profitable once initial construction costs are paid. There is a $100,000,000 cap on any single-demonstration award, and projects are required to show a 60/40 (industry/government) cost share. Secretary Bodman also highlighted Agriculture Secretary Mike Johannss announcement today in Las Vegas, of $176.5 million available in loan guarantees and almost $11.4 million in grants to support investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements by agricultural producers and small businesses. For more information on the Department of Agricultures nearly $188 million in loan guarantees and grants for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, visit: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome In his State of the Union Address, President Bush announced two key, energy-related initiatives. President Bushs Advanced Energy Initiative requests $2.1 billion, a 22 percent budget increase, to develop new technologies and alternative sources of energy to help diversify and strengthen our nation's energy mix. The American Competitiveness Initiative is a multi-agency commitment to ensure that America remains competitive in the global marketplace. Its $5.9 billion investment in Fiscal Year 2007 puts Americas science budget on the path to doubling over the next ten years. Funding would increase investments in research and development, strengthen education in math and science, and encourage entrepreneurship and innovation. As part of the Bush Administrations broader effort to promote production and use of alternative and renewable sources of energy, Administration officials are traveling the country to promote President Bushs energy initiatives. Energy Secretary Bodman will make a total of four stops around the country this week, promoting the Advanced Energy and American Competitiveness Initiatives, in addition to highlighting a number of energy efficiency programs, notably biomass (including cellulosic ethanol), solar, and hydrogen. Earlier today, Secretary Bodman met with students and teachers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator National Laboratory in Newport News, Virginia, to discuss the importance of science and math education. Tomorrow, February 23, 2006, Secretary Bodman will visit GT Solar Manufacturing Company in Merrimack, New Hampshire to promote the Solar American Initiative and to highlight solar tax credits made available as a result of the recently enacted Energy Policy Act. Also tomorrow, Secretary Bodman will visit General Motors Advanced Technologies Facility in Honeoye Falls, New York, to promote the Advanced Energy Initiative. Also this week, DOE Assistant Secretary Karen Harbert will visit green manufacturer Steelcase in Grand Rapids, and provide remarks at the Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center, in Muskegon, Michigan; Assistant Secretary Jeff Jarrett will visit the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, West Virginia; and Assistant Secretary John Shaw will deliver remarks at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Acting Assistant Secretary Doug Faulkner will make two stops, the first to deliver remarks at a biofuels conference in Auburn Alabama, the second to deliver remarks at the Gerdau Ameristeel Steel Mill Energy Savings Assessment in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Media contact(s): Craig Stevens,202/586-4940 [ ] U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 | ***************************************************************** 52 DOE: Secretary Bodman Highlights President Bushs Solar America Initiative in Merrimack , NH February 23, 2006 MERRIMACK , NH  Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman joined Representatives Jeb Bradley (NH-1st) and Charles Bass (NH-2nd) to highlight President Bushs Solar America Initiative, during a visit to GT Solar Technologies in Merrimack, New Hampshire, today. The Solar America Initiative, a key component of President Bushs Advanced Energy Initiative, seeks to accelerate the widespread acceptance of clean solar energy technologies throughout the U.S. by 2015. As our nations economy grows we will need to find ways to diversify our energy mix, and solar is one promising way to do that, Secretary Bodman says. By harnessing the energy from the sun, we can power homes and businesses in an environmentally clean way. The goal of the Solar America Initiative is to generate enough solar energy by 2015 to provide 5-10 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power 1-2 million homes. The presidents Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 budget requests $148 million research into solar energy technology, a $65 million (78%) increase over FY 2006. GT Equipment Technologies, Inc. designs, manufactures and assembles semi-custom and specialty equipment for the current and emerging materials processing industries. The companys two divisions, GT Solar and GT Crystal, specialize in turn-key fabrication lines for manufacturing wafers, cells and modules for photovoltaic industry, and with crystal growth equipment for the semi-conductor industry. During todays event at GT Solar, Secretary Bodman discussed the importance of two key energy-related initiatives announced by President Bush in his State of the Union address. President Bushs Advanced Energy Initiative requests $2.1 billion, a 22 percent budget increase, to develop new technologies and alternative sources of energy to help diversify and strengthen our nations energy mix. The American Competitiveness Initiative is a multi-agency commitment that will ensure America remains competitive in the global marketplace. As part of the American Competitiveness Initiative, funding for science research will double to nearly $19.5 billion in 2016 at DOEs Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Commerces National Institute of Standards and Technology. The funding increase will begin in FY 2007 with the three offices receiving a total of $10.66 billion, an increase of 9.3% over FY 2006. As part of the Bush Administration's broader effort to promote production and use of alternative and renewable sources of energy, Administration officials are traveling the country to promote President Bush's energy initiatives. Secretary Bodman will make a total of four stops around the country this week, promoting the Advanced Energy and American Competitiveness Initiatives, in addition to highlighting a number of energy efficiency programs, notably biomass (including cellulosic ethanol) and hydrogen. Yesterday, Secretary Bodman met with students and teachers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia, to discuss the importance of science and math education. Also yesterday, Secretary Bodman toured the Archer Daniels Midland Ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois, and announced a $160 million solicitation for biorefinery construction. Later this afternoon, Secretary Bodman will visit General Motors Advance Technologies Facility in Honeoye Falls, New York. Also this week, DOE Assistant Secretary Karen Harbert will visit green manufacturer Steelcase in Grand Rapids, and provide remarks at the Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center, in Muskegon, Michigan; Assistant Secretary Jeff Jarrett will visit the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, West Virginia; and Assistant Secretary John Shaw will deliver remarks at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Acting Assistant Secretary Doug Faulkner will make two stops, the first to deliver remarks at a biofuels conference in Auburn, Alabama, the second to deliver remarks at the Gerdau Ameristeel Steel Mill Energy Savings Assessment in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. For more information, visit energy.gov. Media contact(s): Craig Stevens, 202/586-4940 [ ] U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 | ***************************************************************** 53 DOE: Assistant Secretary of Energy Touts Bush Administrations Commitment to Science and Technology Research at Sandia Labs February 23, 2006 ALBUQUERQUE , NM  During a visit today to Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety, & Health (EH) John Shaw promoted the Advanced Energy and American Competitiveness Initiatives, announced by President Bush in his State of the Union address. Assistant Secretary Shaw met with lab officials to discuss the important role Sandia will play in the development of these new initiatives, as a premier research and development institution in energy and environmental technologies. Emerging energy technologies must not only meet the demand of the growing marketplace, but must do so in a way that is clean and safe for the American people and our environment, Assistant Secretary Shaw said. Sandia plays an important role in maintaining our competitive edge and strengthening our national defense capabilities through technological innovation. In addition, Assistant Secretary Shaw announced a new worker safety rule (10 CFR 851) at the meeting with Sandia leadership. The new rule will provide a consistent level of protection for contractor workers by establishing a uniform set of standards that will require department-wide compliance and monetary fines for contractors who fail to apply these regulations. The new regulations are aimed at improving worker safety across the DOE complex, and are part of DOEs dedication to providing the safest possible environment for all employees. Secretary Bodman has been clear since his first day on the job that we must maintain worker safety to ensure employees work in an environment that will allow them to meet the goals of the department, Assistant Secretary Shaw said. During todays visit, Assistant Secretary Shaw outlined ways Sandia can help to contribute to the Presidents new energy initiatives. In his State of the Union Address, President Bush outlined the Advanced Energy Initiative to help reduce Americas reliance on foreign sources of energy, specifically by developing new technology. The Advanced Energy Initiative requests $2.1 billion, a 22 percent budget increase, to develop new technologies and alternative sources of energy to help diversify and strengthen Americas energy mix. President Bush also announced the American Competitiveness Initiative to encourage American innovation and strengthen our nations ability to compete in the global economy. The American Competitiveness Initiative is a multi-agency commitment to ensure that America remains competitive in the global marketplace. Funding for scientific research will double to nearly $19.5 billion in 2016 at DOEs Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Commerces National Institute of Standards and Technology. The funding increase will begin in FY 2007 with the three offices receiving a total of $10.66 billion, an increase of 9.3% over FY 2006. As part of the Bush Administrations broader effort to promote production and use of alternative and renewable sources of energy, Administration officials are traveling the country to promote President Bushs energy initiatives. Secretary Bodman made a total of four stops around the country this week, promoting the Advanced Energy and American Competitiveness Initiatives, in addition to highlighting a number of energy efficiency programs, notably biomass (including cellulosic ethanol), and solar. Yesterday, Secretary Bodman met with students and teachers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia, to discuss the importance of science and math education. Also yesterday, Secretary Bodman toured the Archer Daniels Midland Ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois, and announced a $160 million solicitation for Biorefinery Construction. Earlier this afternoon, Secretary Bodman visited GT Solar Technologies in Merrimack, New Hampshire, to promote President Bushs Solar America Initiative, which seeks expand the use of solar energy technologies throughout the U.S. by 2015. He also promoted President Bushs $1.2 billion, five-year commitment to the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, as part of President Bushs Advanced Energy Initiative, while visiting the General Motors Global Alternative Propulsion Center in western New York today. Also this week, DOE Assistant Secretary Karen Harbert will visit green manufacturer Steelcase in Grand Rapids, and provide remarks at the Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center, in Muskegon, Michigan; and Assistant Secretary Jeff Jarrett will visit the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, West Virginia. Acting Assistant Secretary Doug Faulkner will make two stops, the first to deliver remarks at a biofuels conference in Auburn, Alabama, the second to deliver remarks at the Gerdau Ameristeel Steel Mill Energy Savings Assessment in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. For more information, visit energy.gov. Media contact(s): Craig Stevens, 202/586-4940 [ ] U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 | ***************************************************************** 54 DOE: DOE Official Highlights President Bushs Biofuels Initiative in Auburn, Alabama February 23, 2006 AUBURN , AL  As part of an effort to promote President Bushs advanced energy initiatives, Department of Energy (DOE) Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Douglas L. Faulkner highlighted the presidents Biofuels Initiative, particularly regarding cellulosic ethanol, today. President Bushs Biofuels Initiative is a major component of his Advanced Energy Initiative which seeks to reduce Americas dependence on foreign sources of oil by replacing more than 75% of oil imports by 2025. We are on the threshold of incredible advances in biomass technology, said Faulkner. Bold research into cellulosic ethanol as well as hybrids and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles will help reduce our reliance on foreign oil President Bush has requested $150 million for the Biofuels Initiative in his FY 2007 budget, a $59 million (60%) increase from FY 2006; this includes biofuels research and development. The Biofuels Initiative will lead to the use of non-food based biomass, such as agricultural waste, trees, forest residues, and perennial grasses in the production of transportation fuels, electricity, and other products. One of the goals of this initiative is to accelerate research and make cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive by 2012, offering the potential to displace up to 30 percent of our nations current fuel use by 2030. Acting Assistant Secretary Faulkner gave remarks at the Biomass and Switchgrass Conference at Alabamas Auburn University. Other speakers included Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who discussed foreign energy dependence and national security; Auburn University professor David Bransby, who discussed the technical feasibility of producing 30 percent of U.S. transportation fuels from agricultural and forestry products; and Hoover Mayor Tony Petelos, who discussed ethanol and biodiesel markets in the Southeast and in his citys police fleet, the largest in the nation powered by E-85 (a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline). During todays event, Acting Assistant Secretary Faulkner also discussed the importance of two key energy-related initiatives announced by President Bush in his State of the Union address. President Bushs Advanced Energy Initiative requests $2.1 billion, a 22 percent budget increase, to develop new technologies and alternative sources of energy to help diversify and strengthen our nations energy mix. The American Competitiveness Initiative is a multi-agency commitment that will ensure America remains competitive in the global marketplace. As part of this initiative, funding for science research will double to nearly $19.5 billion in 2016 at DOEs Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Commerces National Institute of Standards and Technology. The funding increase will begin in FY 2007 with the three offices receiving a total of $10.66 billion, an increase of 9.3% over FY 2006. As part of the Bush Administration's broader effort to promote production and use of alternative and renewable sources of energy, Administration officials are traveling the country to promote President Bush's energy initiatives. Energy Secretary Bodman will make a total of four stops around the country this week, promoting the Advanced Energy and American Competitiveness Initiatives, in addition to highlighting a number of energy efficiency programs, notably biomass (including cellulosic ethanol) and hydrogen. Yesterday, Secretary Bodman met with students and teachers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia, to discuss the importance of science and math education. Also yesterday, Secretary Bodman toured the Archer Daniels Midland Ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois, and announced a $160 million solicitation for biorefinery construction. Earlier this afternoon, Secretary Bodman toured GT Solar in Merrimack, New Hampshire to promote the Solar America Initiative, a component of the Advanced Energy Initiative. Later today, Secretary Bodman will visit General Motors Fuel Cell Activities in western New York to discuss the Advanced Energy Initiative and hydrogen technology. Also this week, DOE Assistant Secretary Karen Harbert will visit Steelcase Wood Plant in Grand Rapids, and provide remarks at the Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center, in Muskegon, Michigan; Assistant Secretary Jeff Jarrett will visit the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, West Virginia; and Assistant Secretary John Shaw visited Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico and delivered remarks. For more information, visit energy.gov. Media contact(s): Tom Welch, 202/586-4940 [ ] U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 | ***************************************************************** 55 DOE: Energy Secretary Highlights Hydrogen Fuel Initiative In Western New York February 23, 2006 HONEOYE FALLS, NY  Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman highlighted President Bushs $1.2 billion, five-year commitment to the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative while visiting General Motors Fuel Cell Activities in western New York today. As part of President Bushs Advanced Energy Initiative, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 budget request for the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative is being increased by $53 million over FY 2006 to $289.5 million. Developing hydrogen as a key energy source for automobiles is an important step in diversifying our nations energy mix, Secretary Bodman said. If we can fully implement the promise of hydrogen fuel cells, we can significantly reduce our reliance on foreign sources of oil within the next two decades. The presidents goal is to enable an industry commitment to commercialize fuel cell vehicles and a hydrogen infrastructure  which primarily includes fueling stations, storage, and transportation  by 2015. General Motors has been involved in automotive fuel cell research and development since the mid-1980s and has partnered with Shell Hydrogen to participate in DOEs National Hydrogen Learning Demonstration Project. The demonstration project is a unique collaboration of automobile and energy industry partners and the federal government to assess hydrogen fuel cell vehicle and infrastructure technology. The goal of the project is to allow for a commercialization decision by manufacturers by 2015 with the potential to see hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in showrooms by 2020. During todays event at General Motors, Secretary Bodman discussed the importance of two key energy-related initiatives announced by President Bush in his State of the Union address. The Advanced Energy Initiative requests $2.1 billion, a 22 percent budget increase, to develop new technologies and alternative sources of energy to help diversify and strengthen Americas energy mix. The American Competitiveness Initiative is a multi-agency commitment to ensure that America remains competitive in the global marketplace. Funding for scientific research will double to nearly $19.5 billion in 2016 at DOEs Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Commerces National Institute of Standards and Technology. The funding increase will begin in FY 2007 with the three offices receiving a total of $10.66 billion, an increase of 9.3% over FY 2006. As part of the Bush Administrations broader effort to promote production and use of alternative and renewable sources of energy, Administration officials are traveling the country to promote President Bushs energy initiatives. Secretary Bodman will make a total of four stops around the country this week, promoting the Advanced Energy and American Competitiveness Initiatives, in addition to highlighting a number of energy efficiency programs, notably biomass (including cellulosic ethanol), and solar. Yesterday, Secretary Bodman met with students and teachers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia, to discuss the importance of science and math education. Also yesterday, Secretary Bodman toured the Archer Daniels Midland Ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois, and announced a $160 million solicitation for Biorefinery Construction. Earlier this afternoon, Secretary Bodman visited GT Solar Technologies in Merrimack, New Hampshire, to promote President Bushs Solar America Initiative, which seeks to accelerate the widespread acceptance of clean solar energy technologies throughout the U.S. by 2015. Also this week, DOE Assistant Secretary Karen Harbert will visit green manufacturer Steelcase Wood Plant in Grand Rapids, and provide remarks at the Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center, in Muskegon, Michigan; Assistant Secretary Jeff Jarrett will visit the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, West Virginia; and Assistant Secretary John Shaw delivered remarks at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Acting Assistant Secretary Doug Faulkner will make two stops, in the first, he delivered remarks at a biofuels conference in Auburn, Alabama, the second to deliver remarks at the Gerdau Ameristeel Steel Mill Energy Savings Assessment in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. For more information, visit energy.gov. Media contact(s): Craig Stevens, 202/586-4940 [ ] U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 | ***************************************************************** 56 DOE: Assistant Secretary of Energy Highlights the Presidents New Energy Initiatives and Funding for Clean Coal Technologies at NETL February 24, 2006 Morgantown , WV  During a visit today to the Department of Energys (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, West Virginia, Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Jeffrey Jarrett promoted the Presidents new Advanced Energy Initiative and the Presidents Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 request for $281 million to develop advanced coal technologies. Assistant Secretary Jarrett discussed with lab officials the important role NETL will play in the development of this new initiative through the expansion of advanced clean coal technologies. Coal is our country's most abundant and affordable energy resource, and we must find ways to use it in a clean, environmentally friendly way, Assistant Secretary Jarrett said. NETL will help change the outlook for Americas energy future by placing more reliance on our massive coal reserves and lead the drive to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades. With his FY07 request, the president nearly completes his $2 billion commitment to fund clean coal technologies four years ahead of schedule. As one of the worlds leading research organizations, principally for coal and fossil energy, NETL scientists are working to develop these advanced pollution-control technologies through the Clean Coal Technology Program. The environmental benefits for Americans  particularly with the development of pollution-reduction technologies - are estimated in the tens of billions. In addition to clean coal, NETL is also furthering the presidents energy agenda through programs like the $950 million FutureGen Project, the world's first zero-emissions prototype power plant aimed at producing hydrogen through coal. The FutureGen Project is underway today based on NETL-developed technologies with the goal of transforming the way Americans power our automobiles and trucks by serving as an early source of hydrogen. During todays visit, Assistant Secretary Jarrett outlined ways NETL can continue to contribute to the presidents new energy initiatives. In his State of the Union Address, President Bush outlined the Advanced Energy Initiative to help reduce Americas reliance on foreign sources of energy, specifically by developing new technology. The Advanced Energy Initiative requests $2.1 billion, a 22 percent budget increase, to develop new technologies and alternative sources of energy to help diversify and strengthen Americas energy mix. President Bush also announced the American Competitiveness Initiative to encourage American innovation and strengthen our nations ability to compete in the global economy. The American Competitiveness Initiative is a multi-agency commitment to ensure that America remains competitive in the global marketplace. Funding for scientific research will double to nearly $19.5 billion in 2016 at DOEs Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Commerces National Institute of Standards and Technology. The funding increase will begin in FY 2007 with the three offices receiving a total of $10.66 billion, an increase of 9.3% over FY 2006. As part of the Bush Administrations broader effort to promote production and use of alternative and renewable sources of energy, Administration officials are traveling the country to promote President Bushs energy initiatives. Secretary Bodman made a total of four stops around the country this week, promoting the Advanced Energy and American Competitiveness Initiatives, in addition to highlighting a number of energy efficiency programs, notably biomass (including cellulosic ethanol), hydrogen and solar. On Wednesday, Secretary Bodman met with students and teachers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia, to discuss the importance of science and math education. Also on Wednesday, Secretary Bodman toured the Archer Daniels Midland Ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois, and announced a $160 million solicitation for Biorefinery Construction. Yesterday, Secretary Bodman visited GT Solar Technologies in Merrimack, New Hampshire, to promote President Bushs Solar America Initiative, which seeks expand the use of solar energy technologies throughout the U.S. by 2015. He also promoted President Bushs $1.2 billion, five-year commitment to the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, as part of President Bushs Advanced Energy Initiative, while visiting the General Motors Fuel Cell Activities in western New York. Also this week, DOE Assistant Secretary John Shaw visited Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, DOE and Assistant Secretary Karen Harbert will visit green manufacturer Steelcase wood plant in Grand Rapids, MI, and provide remarks at the Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center, in Muskegon, Michigan. Acting Assistant Secretary Doug Faulkner will make two stops; yesterday, he delivered remarks at the Biomass and Switchgrass Conference at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. Today, Faulkner will visit the Gerdau Ameristeel Mill Savings Assessment in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, to promote the presidents energy initiatives and energy efficiency. For more information, visit energy.gov. Media contact(s): Craig Stevens, 202/586-4940 [ ] U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 | ***************************************************************** 57 DOE: DOE Official Highlights President Bushs Energy Initiatives February 24, 2006 WASHINGTON , DC  To promote President Bushs new energy initiatives, Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs Karen A. Harbert toured the Steelcase Wood Plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center in Muskegon, Michigan, today. Assistant Secretary Harbert discussed the presidents Advanced Energy and American Competitiveness Initiatives during both visits. What Im seeing today are tremendous examples of how private companies can take significant steps to incorporate renewable energy and energy conservation into their own personal energy mix, Assistant Secretary Harbert said. The presidents energy policies support the development of additional renewable energy technologies to make them market competitive and more affordable to consumers. By working together and diversifying our nations energy supply, we can continue to strengthen our nations energy security. Steelcase Wood Plant is known as the worlds first manufacturing plant to receive the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. The LEED program is a voluntary certification system designed to promote buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable, and healthy places for people to live and work. Steelcase also participates in the Environmental Protection Agencys Climate Leaders program that encourages companies to establish corporate-wide greenhouse gas reduction goals. The Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center (MAREC) is the first fully integrated demonstration facility for distributed generation of electricity using alternative and renewable energy technologies in the U.S. MAREC seeks to create and attract new business in alternative energy technologies that can be widely employed globally. Its facility is LEED-certified and uses advanced electric generation systems, including fuel cell, photovoltaic solar roof tiles, and nickel metal hydride battery for power. In the near future MAREC plans to use renewable energy based on methane from biomass as an operational model demonstration. During her visit to Grand Rapids, Assistant Secretary Harbert also met with Grand Rapids Interurban Transit Partnership executives and visited The Rapid Central Station. The Rapids Central Station is the first and only LEED certified transit facility in the country. Following this, Assistant Secretary Harbert participated in a roundtable luncheon with Michigan Congressman Vernon J. Ehlers (R-3 rd) and other community and business leaders from the Greater Grand Rapids area to discuss President Bush's energy initiatives. At all three stops today, Assistant Secretary Harbert highlighted President Bushs energy initiatives. The Advanced Energy Initiative requests $2.1 billion, a 22 percent budget increase, to develop new technologies and alternative sources of energy to help diversify and strengthen our nations energy mix. The American Competitiveness Initiative is a multi-agency commitment that will ensure America remains competitive in the global marketplace. As part of the American Competitiveness Initiative, funding for science research will double to nearly $19.5 billion in 2016 at DOEs Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Commerces National Institute of Standards and Technology. The funding increase will begin in FY 2007 with the three offices receiving a total of $10.66 billion, an increase of 9.3% over FY 2006. As part of the Bush Administration's broader effort to promote production and use of alternative and renewable sources of energy, Administration officials are traveling the country to promote President Bush's energy initiatives. Secretary Bodman made a total of four stops around the country this week, promoting the Advanced Energy and American Competitiveness Initiatives, in addition to highlighting a number of energy efficiency programs, notably biomass (including cellulosic ethanol), solar and hydrogen. On Wednesday, February 22, 2006, Secretary Bodman, met with students and teachers at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia, to discuss the importance of science and math education. Also on Wednesday, Secretary Bodman toured the Archer Daniels Midland Ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois, and announced a $160 million solicitation for biorefinery construction. Yesterday, February 23, 2006, Secretary Bodman discussed the presidents energy initiatives with employees at two stops; the first at GT Solar in Merrimack, New Hampshire, to promote the Solar America Initiative, and the second at General Motors Fuel Cell Activities in Honeoye Falls, to discuss hydrogen research and development. Also this week, DOE Assistant Secretary Jeff Jarrett will visit the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, West Virginia; and Assistant Secretary John Shaw delivered remarks at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Acting Assistant Secretary Doug Faulkner will make two stops; yesterday, he delivered remarks at the Biomass and Switchgrass Conference at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. Today, Faulkner will visit the Gerdau Ameristeel Mill Savings Assessment in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, to promote the presidents energy initiatives and energy efficiency. Media contact(s): Craig Stevens, 202/586-4940 [ ] U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 | ***************************************************************** 58 Platts: GNEP is months away from program plan, DOE says Washington (Platts)--22Feb2006 DOE's vision for the new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) is months away from having a program plan, according to Shane Johnson, the department's acting director of nuclear energy. Johnson, who addressed a DOE advisory committee today, was bombarded with questions on how the new closed fuel cycle initiative would be carried out and what other countries would be willing to participate. DOE officials indicated that some of the department's current partners in the Generation IV International Forum advanced reactor program might be a natural starting point. Johnson was unable to say when any foreign agreements with international partners might be in place. This program is "not getting implemented in the next 10 years;" its implementation will probably be in the next 40-50 years, committee member Marvin Fertel said. Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies] ***************************************************************** 59 Austin Daily Herald: Austin native nominated for DOE position - Lee Bonorden February 24, 2006 An Austin native, Dennis Spurgeon, has been nominated by President Bush to fill the newly created position of assistant secretary for nuclear energy in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). A DOE spokesperson confirmed the nomination has been made, but Jacqueline Johnson, department of nuclear energy, cautioned it still requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate. According to The Energy Daily, a Washington trade newspaper, the Bush Administration's "new interest in nuclear reprocessing as a result of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative" fits a part of Spurgeon' s background: he was a nuclear policy ma ker when Gerald Ford was President. The trade newspaper also reported the Ford Administration ordered nuclear reprocessing delayed until unidentified uncertainties could be resolved. "Current reprocessing systems expose weapons-usable plutonium for possible diversion, which has generated many critics of the practice," The Energy Daily reported. President Carter then ordered a complete ban on reprocessing, but President Reagan had the ban li fted. The DOE 's new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative is said to rely on the success of reprocessing. A new experimental system called "Urex +" would leave plutonium mixed with actinides and "thus useless for weapons systems.," according to the trade newspaper. William Magwood, a Clinton appointee, left the DOE's directorship of nuclear energy last year. Background Spurgeon is the retired executive vice president and COO of USEC. USEC Inc., a global energy company, is the world's leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. Before joining USEC, Spurgeon served as a principal owner and CEO of Swift Group LLC, an international leader in shipbuilding for commercial and military markets. His earlier career included executive leadership positions at UNC Resources (formerly United Nuclear Corporation) where, as COO, s ome of his management responsibilities included the manufacturing of automated machine tools, operation of a uranium recovery facility, the manufacturing of reactor cores for the US Navy and operation of the dual purpose "N" reactor. He previously held posts in the Ford Administration, including an assignment as assistant director for fuel cycle in the US Energy Research and Development Administration and as a member of the White House Task Force that developed President Ford's nuclear policy. He also worked for the General Atomic Com pany, where he assisted in the development of nuclear reactor plants for electric power generation. During a distinguished military career with the US Navy, Spurgeon served aboard two submarines, was a ship superintendent in a naval shipyard and was assigned on loan to the US Atomic Energy Commission as technical assistant to Commissioner "Tommy" Thompson and later Chairman Glenn Seaborg. He ultimately achieved the rank of captain, USNR . Spurgeon holds an MS in nu clear engineering and the degree of Nuclear Engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BS with distinction from the US Naval Academy in 1965. He graduated Austin High School in 1961. He is the son of Bonnie (Gayle) Spurgeon and the late Merle Spurgeon. He has a sister, Gayle Faber, who also lives in Austin. Lee Bonorden can be contacted at 434-2232 or by e-mail at