***************************************************************** 02/27/06 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 14.49 ***************************************************************** 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: IAEA: Iran Wants to Expand Uranium Program 2 Guardian Unlimited: Russia Dampens Hopes on Iran Nuclear Talks 3 Guardian Unlimited: IAEA: Iran Wants to Expand Nuke Program 4 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Has Doubts on Russia-Iran Deal 5 Guardian Unlimited: Diplomats: IAEA to Receive Report on Iran 6 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Leader: U.S. Should Give Up Nukes 7 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Has Doubts on Russia-Iran Deal 8 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Nuclear Developments 9 Guardian Unlimited: Iran and Russia reach tenuous deal on nuclear pr 10 Guardian Unlimited: UN watchdog refuses to give Iran clean bill 11 IRNA: FM: Iran ready to discuss enrichment 12 AFP: Iran and Russia talk on, IAEA suspicious but cautious - 13 AFP: Iran says 'no reason' to back down in nuclear dispute - 14 AFP: Israel warns world don't let Iran play for time on nuclear - 15 AFP: Russia downplays Iran nuclear 'agreement' 16 AFP: Iranian FM in Japan for nuclear crisis talks 17 AFP: Japan pressures Iran on nuclear crisis 18 AFP: US 'skeptical' of Iran nuclear compromise 19 IRNA: Diplomat at IAEA terms 'positive' Iranian agreement with Russi 20 IRNA: IAEA chief awaiting Heinonen's report to complete his on Iran 21 IRNA: EU ready to support Iran's civilian nuclear programme if Tehra 22 IRNA: Volkov: Discords on nuclear issue to be solved through talks - 23 IRNA: Elbaradei: No deviation from peaceful activities observed in 24 [du-list] Bush and Nukes in India 25 Guardian Unlimited: India Mulls Nuke Deal Ahead of Bush Visit 26 New York Times: A Presidential Passage Through India, Quickly - 27 newsobserver.com: Energy questions have local answers 28 AFP: US confident of India nuclear deal 29 Xinhua: E. China institute to host IAEA annual seminar in 2007 30 Mos News: Russia’s Uranium Stockpiles to Run Out by 2020 — Official NUCLEAR REACTORS 31 US: NRC: NRC to Meet with Nuclear Management Co. to Discuss Safety S 32 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Selectboard takes up emergency VY plan 33 US: NRC: Sunshine Act; Meetings 34 US: USATODAY.com: Whence came the atom's energy 35 RIA Novosti: Baltic states agree to build nuclear power plant in Lit 36 BBC: Baltic states agree nuclear plant 37 Pravda.Ru: China announces plans to build 32 nuclear power plants - 38 Sofia Echo: Czech interest in Bulgarian power plants - 39 AFP: Japan to reward to S.Korea for support on ITER reactor 40 US: Roanoke Times: Energy bill generates heat NUCLEAR SECURITY 41 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Russia to host nuclear safty meeting NUCLEAR SAFETY 42 [du-list] Veterans with MS speak of problems a bill seeks to 43 [du-list] U hotspot in Prospect Park, UK attributed to 44 [du-list] QUEEN'S DEATH STAR.. DU Contaminates 45 US: [du-list] strontium 90 46 US: [du-list] Hearings scheduled on Nuclear Workers Benefits 47 US: [du-list]ALERT: HR4184: Call your representative 48 [du-list] Alternative Energy Report: New research debunks 49 US: ContraCostaTimes.com: Lawrence Livermore heavily fined for expos NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 50 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Dangerous Yucca proposal 51 US: ABC News: Govt not fazed by uranium policy fusion. 52 US: ENN: U.S. Drops Objections to Chemical Weapon Wastewater Plan PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 53 Newsday: Brookhaven National Lab director to step down -- ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Guardian Unlimited: IAEA: Iran Wants to Expand Uranium Program From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 27, 2006 6:01 PM AP Photo KUW103 By GEORGE JAHN Associated Press Writer VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Monday that Iran appears determined to expand its uranium enrichment program - a key international concern because of fears it could use the activity to make nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency, in a confidential report made available to The Associated Press, also suggested that unless Iran drastically increased its cooperation with an agency probe, the agency would not be able to establish whether past clandestine activities were focused on making nuclear arms. The report, drawn up for next week's 35-nation IAEA board meeting, will play a significant role in determining the international community's next steps as it tries to wrest compromises from Tehran meant to reduce suspicions it may be seeking to make nuclear weapons. The board already reported Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose economic and political sanctions on Iran. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 2 Guardian Unlimited: Russia Dampens Hopes on Iran Nuclear Talks From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 27, 2006 6:31 PM By JIM HEINTZ Associated Press Writer MOSCOW (AP) - Russia dampened hopes for a deal to rein in Iran's nuclear program, telling Tehran on Monday that it must first freeze domestic uranium enrichment. U.S. and German officials questioned Iran's commitment to addressing international concerns. A report by the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Iran appears determined to expand uranium enrichment, which can be a key step in producing nuclear warheads. The report also said a lack of Iranian cooperation has kept U.N. experts from establishing whether Iran's past clandestine nuclear activities were focused on making arms. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, called American and Russian nuclear arsenals a threat to the Middle East and called for them to dismantle their atomic weapons, although there was no indication he was making the demand part of Iran's negotiating position. The White House expressed doubt Monday that a Russian-Iranian deal would ease concerns that Iran's program is a cover for work to build atomic weapons, citing the indications that Tehran intends to continue uranium enrichment on its home soil. Washington is supporting the Kremlin's effort, as long as the final deal results in all enrichment activities take place outside Iran and all spent nuclear reactor fuel is returned to Russia. ``We'll have to see what the details of any agreement are,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. ``Given their history, you can understand why we remain skeptical.'' The developments came a day after Iran and Russia announced an agreement in principle for setting up a joint program to conduct Iranian uranium enrichment work on Russian soil, which would allow closer international monitoring. But no details were settled, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday that the plan was contingent on Tehran ending enrichment activities inside Iran - something the Iranians have refused to do. ``Among other components of these efforts, there must be a moratorium on enriching uranium inside Iran until specialists from the International Atomic Energy Agency have clarified all issues concerning the Iranian nuclear program that emerged in the past,'' Lavrov told reporters. Negotiations on the proposal were scheduled to resume in Moscow on Tuesday, the RIA Novosti news agency reported, citing an unidentified official in the Russian negotiating team. The Iranians insist their program has only the peaceful purpose of developing technology to produce enriched uranium fuel to power nuclear reactors for generating electricity. Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, accused Iran of using the talks with Russia to try to divide the international community. ``Iran does not really have a new strategy'' to defuse the crisis, Steinmeier told reporters after he was briefed on the Russian-Iran negotiations. ``They still want to drive a wedge into the international community, but this will not succeed.'' Lavrov stressed that the talks had not ended and would continue until the IAEA's board meets March 6 to discuss Iran. The board voted early this month to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council, but the council is waiting for the report and the outcome of the board meeting before considering any action, such as imposing economic and political sanctions. The delay was insisted on by two of the council's veto-wielding members, Russia and China, both of which have strong economic and political ties to Tehran. Japan, which is a strong U.S. ally but also buys much of its oil from Iran, is keen to play a role in resolving the standoff. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso urged his visiting Iranian counterpart Monday to respond ``wisely and positively'' to Russia's overture, his ministry said. Aso stressed to Manouchehr Mottaki that Iran needs to realize other countries have strong suspicions about the Iranian nuclear program, much of which was kept secret from U.N. inspectors for years. ``Iran has lost the trust of the international community, and I hope to urge Mr. Mottaki to gain a better understanding of the international situation,'' Aso told Parliament. The U.N. atomic agency's report on problems in the investigation of Iran's program was likely to add to those suspicions. Iran's president did not mention the negotiations with Russia during a quick visit to Kuwait on Monday, but nuclear weapons came up in a meeting with journalists. Asked about calls from the United States, Kuwait and other Arab states for the Middle East to be kept free of nuclear arms, Ahmadinejad said Iran also desired that, but added that his government wanted to see the whole world free of nuclear weapons. ``We believe that these weapons, possessed by the superpowers and the occupiers in our area, are a threat to stability,'' he said. International worries about Iran's intentions have been intensified by Ahmadinejad's belligerent talk about Israel, including his comment that the Jewish state should be wiped ``off the map.'' Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz on Monday denounced Iran's negotiations with Russia as a bid to buy time to develop nuclear arms, but said Israel was willing to let diplomacy run its course for now. He added, however, that Israeli leaders could not stand by indefinitely waiting for Iran's program to be reined in and said Israel will take all necessary steps to defend itself from a possible Iranian nuclear attack. ``As for the possibility of an Israeli attack (on Iran), I think it is not at all right to address this question publicly, but it can be said that Israel has the right and the obligation to do all that is necessary to defend itself,'' Mofaz told a group of high school students. Israeli warplanes destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in a 1981 strike using conventional munitions. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 3 Guardian Unlimited: IAEA: Iran Wants to Expand Nuke Program From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 27, 2006 10:01 PM AP Photo KUW103 By GEORGE JAHN Associated Press Writer VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran appears determined to expand its uranium enrichment program - a key international concern because of fears it could eventually make nuclear weapons, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a new report Monday. The U.N. watchdog, in a confidential report made available to The Associated Press, said Iran plans to start setting up thousands of uranium enriching centrifuges this year even as it negotiates with Russia on scrapping such domestic activity. The IAEA also suggested that unless Iran drastically increases its cooperation, the agency would not be able to establish whether past clandestine activities were focused on making nuclear arms. The report, prepared by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei for a March 6 meeting of the agency's 35-nation board of governors, could help determine what action the U.N. Security Council will take against Iran, which says its nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes. A Feb. 4 board meeting already reported Tehran to the council over concerns it might be seeking nuclear arms. But further action was deferred until the end of next week's meeting on the insistence of veto-wielding council members Russia and China, which have close economic and political ties with the Islamic Republic. The 11-page report emphasized that a more than three-year probe has not revealed ``any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.'' Still, it declared that - because of lack of sufficient cooperation from the Iranian side - the IAEA remained unable ``to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran.'' The finding was essentially an admission that the agency cannot establish whether Iran is hiding aspects of its nuclear program that it is obligated to report to the IAEA, the U.N. atomic watchdog, under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The evidence of Iran's intention to embark on full-scale uranium enrichment appeared to jibe with news of lack of progress in talks between Moscow and Tehran meant to move Iran's nuclear enrichment program to Russia, thereby defusing concerns it might be misused to make nuclear warheads instead of fuel. Earlier in the day, Russian officials played down reports of a deal in principle on the Russian proposal, reminding Tehran it must freeze its domestic uranium enrichment. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Kremlin proposal to set up a joint uranium enrichment facility on Russian soil was contingent on Iran's agreeing to such a freeze - something Tehran has so far refused to do. ``It seems there has been no decisive progress,'' German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. And Adam Ereli, the deputy U.S. State Department spokesman, described news of agreement as ``more chaff being thrown up by the Iranians ahead of the Board of Governors meeting'' next week. The United States and the European Union have backed the Russian offer to host Iran's uranium enrichment program. But the report made available Monday showed Iran pressing ahead with enrichment at home by going from testing a lone centrifuge - a machine that spins uranium gas into enriched uranium - to introducing the gas into 10 centrifuges and beginning enrichment between Feb. 11 and Feb 15. Furthermore, said the report, Iran began final maintenance of an additional 20 centrifuges a week ago, reflecting determination to further expand enrichment. That would leave Iran still far short of the thousands of centrifuges it needs to enrich substantial amounts of uranium. Still, it reflected the country's plans to forge ahead with domestic enrichment even as it talks with Moscow. And just a few months down the road, ``commencement of the installation of the first 3,000 ... (centrifuges) is planned for the fourth quarter of 2006,'' said the report. Experts estimate that Iran already has enough black-market components in storage to build the 1,500 operating centrifuges it would need to make the 45 pounds of highly enriched uranium needed for one crude weapon. The report also repeated appeals for Iran to cooperate that have been a staple of the more than a dozen documents produced by ElBaradei on the status of the probe into Tehran's nuclear program. Detailing some of Iran's foot dragging over the past month, as well as new findings of concern, the report said: - ``Iran again declined to provide'' a copy of a document located earlier by IAEA inspectors showing how to cast fissile uranium into the shape to fit a warhead. - There were ``inconsistencies'' in tests of plutonium isotopes provided to the agency to help it look into plutonium separation experiments in the mid-1990s, suggesting that not all plutonium had been accounted for. - Iran dismissed information based on U.S. intelligence documenting links between the so-called ``Green Salt Project'' - a precursor of uranium enrichment - with nuclear-related high explosives and warhead design as ``based on false and fabricated documents.'' ``It is regrettable and a matter of concern that the ... uncertainties related to the scope of nature of Iran's nuclear program have not been clarified after three years of intensive agency verification,'' said the report. ``Without full transparency ... the agency's ability to reconstruct the history of Iran's past program and verify the correctness and completeness of statements made by Iran ... will be limited and questions about the past and current direction of Iran's nuclear program will continue to be raised.'' --- On the Net: www.iaea.org Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 4 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Has Doubts on Russia-Iran Deal From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 27, 2006 9:16 PM WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration voiced skepticism Monday that Russia and Iran had reached agreement in which Russia would enrich uranium for Iran. ``There's no deal, frankly, that I'm aware of,'' said deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli. ``This, frankly, I would characterize as more chaff being thrown up by the Iranians ahead of the Board of Governors meeting'' next week, he said. Ereli referred to the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which could intensify pressure on Iran through the United Nations to halt any development of nuclear weapons. On Sunday, Russia and Iran were reported to have agreed in principle to joint uranium enrichment venture on Russian territory, a development that could be a breakthrough in the international showdown with Tehran over its suspected nuclear ambitions. The Bush administration has supported the Russian proposal, as long as all enrichment activities take place outside of Iran and all spent fuel is returned to Russia. Noting that further negotiations on the details of the agreement lay ahead and that an Iranian official has been quoted saying Tehran intends to continue uranium enrichment on its own soil as well, the White House voiced doubts that the deal meets the concerns of the United States and other countries. ``We'll have to see what the details of any agreement are,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. ``Given their history, you can understand why we remain skeptical.'' Russia said talks with Iran had not ended and would continue until the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors' meeting on Iran next week. That meeting could start a process leading to punishment by the U.N. Security Council, which has the authority to impose sanctions on Iran. ``We are concerned about Iran pursuing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian program,'' McClellan said. ``So we believe that in order to restore confidence they need to follow through on what the International Atomic Energy Agency called for.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 5 Guardian Unlimited: Diplomats: IAEA to Receive Report on Iran From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 27, 2006 1:01 PM By GEORGE JAHN Associated Press Writer VIENNA, Austria (AP) - A report detailing Iran's uranium enrichment efforts and a secret project linked by U.S intelligence to a possible atomic weapons program will be issued Monday to the board of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, diplomats said. The confidential report, drawn up for next week's 35-nation board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, will play a significant role in determining the international community's next steps as it tries to wrest compromises from Tehran meant to reduce suspicions it may be seeking to make nuclear weapons. The board already reported Iran to the U.N. Security Council, but the council is waiting for the report and the outcome of the board meeting before taking any concrete action. The council has the power to impose economic and political sanctions on Iran. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 6 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Leader: U.S. Should Give Up Nukes From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 27, 2006 4:31 PM AP Photo KUW103 By DIANA ELIAS Associated Press Writer KUWAIT CITY (AP) - Iran's president said Monday that his country supports calls for making the Middle East a nuclear arms-free zone, but he also urged the United States and Russia to give up all their atomic weapons as a threat to the region's stability. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not mention an agreement in principle reached Sunday by Iran and Russia to move Iran's uranium enrichment work to Russian soil, which would allow closer international monitoring of Tehran's suspect nuclear program. Although the details still must be negotiated, the deal was seen as a potential breakthrough in Kremlin efforts to ease international pressures on Iran over its nuclear program, but it was not clear the Tehran regime is willing to give up all enrichment work. The Iranians insist their program has only the peaceful purpose of developing technology for generating electricity, disputing suspicions in the United States and other Western countries that the project is a cover for work to develop atomic weapons. In Tokyo on Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told his Japanese counterpart, Taro Aso, that Iran has the right to pursue research and will not abandon its nuclear program, Japan's Foreign Ministry said. ``What we are doing is research at the laboratory level and it is impossible for us to stop it and that's Iran's right,'' Mottaki was quoted as saying. It was not clear if he was referring specifically to uranium enrichment, which can produce material for nuclear bombs. The White House expressed some doubt that the Russian-Iranian deal will meet the concerns of the United States and other countries about Iran's nuclear ambitions, citing indications from Iranian officials that Tehran intends to continue uranium enrichment on its home soil. Washington is supporting the Kremlin's effort, as long as the final deal results in all enrichment activities take place outside Iran and all spent fuel is returned to Russia. ``We'll have to see what the details of any agreement are,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. ``Given their history, you can understand why we remain skeptical.'' Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, accused Iran of using the talks with Russia to try to divide the international community. ``Iran does not really have a new strategy'' to defuse the crisis, Steinmeier told reporters after he was briefed on the Russian-Iran negotiations. ``They still want to drive a wedge into the international community, but this will not succeed.'' Ahmadinejad discussed nuclear arms during a brief stop in Kuwait, the first visit by an Iranian leader since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, for talks with the new emir, Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah. Kuwait is concerned about the possibility of a nuclear accident in nearby Iran. In a session with journalists, Ahmadinejad was asked about calls from the United States, Kuwait and other Arab states for the Middle East to be kept free of nuclear arms. He said Iran also desired that, but added his government wanted to see the whole world free of nuclear weapons. ``We believe that these weapons, possessed by the superpowers and the occupiers in our area, are a threat to stability,'' Ahmadinejad said. In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called on Iran to give up all uranium enrichment on Iranian territory. He also stressed that Sunday's agreement was only a preliminary one and said talks between Russia and Iran would continue up until the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency meets March 6 in Vienna, Austria, to discuss Tehran's program. ``We are convinced that among the other components of efforts (by the world community) should be a moratorium on enriching uranium inside Iran until specialists from the International Atomic Energy Agency have clarified everything,'' Lavrov told reporters. Diplomats in Vienna said the 35-nation board would receive a report Monday on Iran's uranium enrichment efforts and other nuclear work. The confidential report will play a significant role in determining the international community's next steps in trying to wrest compromises from Iran meant to reduce suspicions that it may be seeking to make nuclear weapons. The board voted early this month to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council, but the council is waiting for the report and the outcome of the board meeting before considering any action, such as imposing economic and political sanctions. The delay was insisted on by two of the council's veto-wielding members, Russia and China, both of which have strong economic and political ties to Tehran. Japan also has economic links with Iran, particularly for oil imports, and is keen to play a role in resolving the standoff. Aso, the foreign minister, urged his visiting Iranian counterpart Monday to respond ``wisely and positively'' to Russia's overture, his ministry said. Aso also stressed that Iran needs to realize other countries have strong suspicions about the Iranian nuclear program, much of which was kept secret from U.N. inspectors for years. ``Iran has lost the trust of the international community, and I hope to urge Mr. Mottaki to gain a better understanding of the international situation,'' Aso told Parliament. International worries about Iran's intentions have been intensified by Ahmadinejad's belligerent talk about Israel, including his comment that the Jewish state should be wiped ``off the map.'' Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz on Monday denounced Iran's negotiations with Russia as a bid to buy time to develop nuclear arms, but said Israel was willing to let diplomacy run its course for now. He added, however, that Israeli leaders could not stand by indefinitely waiting for Iran's program to be reined in and said Israel will take all necessary steps to defend itself from a possible Iranian nuclear attack. ``As for the possibility of an Israeli attack (on Iran), I think it is not at all right to address this question publicly, but it can be said that Israel has the right and the obligation to do all that is necessary to defend itself,'' Mofaz told a group of high school students. Israeli warplanes destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in a 1981 strike using conventional munitions. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 7 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Has Doubts on Russia-Iran Deal From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 27, 2006 4:31 PM WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House voiced skepticism Monday about a tentative agreement reached over the weekend in which Russia would enrich uranium for Iran. On Sunday, Russia and Iran agreed in principle to joint uranium enrichment venture on Russian territory, a development that could be a breakthrough in the international showdown with Tehran over its suspected nuclear ambitions. The Bush administration has supported the Russian proposal, as long as all enrichment activities take place outside of Iran and all spent fuel is returned to Russia. But - noting that further negotiations on the details of the agreement lay ahead and that an Iranian official has been quoted saying Tehran intends to continue uranium enrichment on its own soil as well - the White House voiced doubts that the deal meets the concerns of the United States and other countries. ``We'll have to see what the details of any agreement are,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. ``Given their history, you can understand why we remain skeptical.'' Russia said talks with Iran had not ended and would continue until the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors' meeting on Iran next week. That meeting could start a process leading to punishment by the U.N. Security Council, which has the authority to impose sanctions on Iran. ``We are concerned about Iran pursuing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civilian program,'' McClellan said. ``So we believe that in order to restore confidence they need to follow through on what the International Atomic Energy Agency called for.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 8 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Nuclear Developments From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 27, 2006 4:46 PM By The Associated Press Key developments Monday in the international faceoff over Iran's uranium enrichment program: -Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the United States and Russia should dismantle their nuclear arsenals, calling them a threat to Middle Eastern stability. -The White House expresses doubts a deal between Russia and Iran to begin a joint uranium enrichment venture on Russian territory will meet concerns of the United States and other countries that are suspicious of Iran's nuclear ambitions. -Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki tells Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso that Iran has the right to pursue nuclear research and will not stop despite international criticism. -Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov calls on Iran not to pursue domestic enrichment of uranium. -Crude oil prices fall, on optimism Iran's agreement with Russia will lessen international tensions. -Diplomats say a report with details of Iran's uranium enrichment efforts and information on a secret project that U.S intelligence has linked to a possible nuclear arms program will be give to the 35 nations on the board of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. -Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz says Israel will take all necessary steps to defend itself from a possible Iranian nuclear attack, and calls Tehran's talks with Russia a stalling tactic to give it more time to develop arms. -Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warns the United States against acting alone in global affairs and says the Iranian nuclear crisis should be solved through patient diplomacy. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 9 Guardian Unlimited: Iran and Russia reach tenuous deal on nuclear programmes Ian Traynor Monday February 27, 2006 The Guardian Iran and Russia signalled agreement yesterday on a joint uranium enrichment project aimed at reducing suspicions that Tehran is bent on building a nuclear bomb. But the agreement had few long-term prospects of surviving. Its timing and vagueness looked geared to forestalling Iran's referral to the UN security council when the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, meets next week to discuss Iran's nuclear plans. The IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, is about to issue a major report on three years of nuclear inspections in Iran. The Iranian moves - agreement with Russia plus access and information this week for senior IAEA officials - looked intended to influence and water down his findings. Moscow said at the weekend that it wanted the row confined to the IAEA and not taken to the security council, which can impose sanctions. The compromise on offer, previously rejected by Iran, is that Russia would manufacture enriched uranium for a civil nuclear programme in Iran, providing guaranteed supplies of nuclear fuel. The quid pro quo, demanded by the west, is that Iran forfeits its domestic uranium enrichment programme, disabling its capacity to acquire the knowhow and material for a nuclear bomb. The Iranians have said that they will not abandon their domestic uranium enrichment programme and recently restarted enrichment on a small scale, cancelling a suspension agreed 15 months ago with the EU. In order for the deal with Russia to work, the Iranians must reinstate a freeze. There was no sign yesterday that this was part of the "agreement in principle". UN nuclear inspectors headed to Tehran at the weekend, being promised answers to questions previously rebuffed on suspected links between Iran's civil and military programmes in nuclear matters. 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 ***************************************************************** 10 Guardian Unlimited: UN watchdog refuses to give Iran clean bill of health in nuclear row Ian Traynor Tuesday February 28, 2006 The Guardian The head of the world's nuclear watchdog declared last night that he could not give Iran's nuclear programme a clean bill of health, blaming Tehran for frustrating almost three years of inspections and detective work by experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency. The damning verdict delivered by Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, set the scene for a diplomatic battle next week in Vienna when the IAEA's 35-strong board is to take the longrunning dispute to the UN security council in New York. Article continues A confidential report by Dr ElBaradei, supplied to Vienna diplomats ahead of next week's meeting and obtained by the Guardian, said that the IAEA was still not in a position to assert that Iran's nuclear programme was "entirely peaceful". "It is regrettable and a matter of concern that the uncertainties related to the scope and nature of Iran's nuclear programme have not been clarified after three years of intensive agency verification," Dr ElBaradei complained. But he was also unable to state unequivocally that Iran was embarked on a nuclear weapons programme. Rather, the tone of the report was one of suspicion, criticism, and exasperation that Iran was not showing adequate "transparency" in its dealings with the nuclear inspections. Although the IAEA had not discovered "any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, the Agency is not at this point in time in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran". Following a number of confrontational IAEA meetings in Vienna and two emergency sessions of the IAEA board recently, international patience is running out with Iran. But the options available to the west in seeking to coerce Iran into scrapping its domestic nuclear fuel manufacture are limited and fraught with risk. The IAEA board decided this month to refer the row to the security council but also ruled that the UN's supreme body should not do anything until after next week's meeting in Vienna. The ElBaradei report and any resolution agreed next week will be passed to the security council and form the basis for subsequent action. The US and the EU will use the ElBaradei report to try to marshal a consensus for tougher action. But they are also anxious not to alienate the Russians and the Chinese who wield vetoes on the security council. Diplomats in Vienna cautioned against talk of UN sanctions on Iran quickly. Rather, the security council was expected to take up Dr ElBaradei's complaints and demand that Iran cooperate fully with the agency and reinstate a freeze on uranium enrichment recently abandoned when two years of negotiations between Iran and Britain, France, and Germany broke down. Three years ago, Dr ElBaradei was stunned when he was granted access to Iran's vast uranium enrichment complex at Natanz. The discovery triggered an international crisis that has been escalating ever since. Iran was found to have been engaged in secret nuclear work for 18 years in breach of its international commitments under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The IAEA official in charge of the Iranian investigation returned to Vienna from a three-day trip to Tehran yesterday at which Iran promised to answer previously dismissed questions about "weaponisation" and the suspected junctures between Iran's civil and military activities in the nuclear sphere. Timed to coincide with the ElBaradei verdict, Iran on Sunday sought to forestall the criticism by announcing it had reached "agreement in principle" with Russia on a compromise scheme for manufacturing Iranian nuclear fuel in Russia. But yesterday statements from Tehran and Moscow were contradictory on the details of the deal. Brussels and the White House dismissed reports of a breakthrough agreement. Germany accused Iran of tactical manoeuvring, aimed at sowing dissension among the major international powers. Russia said that for the deal to work, Iran has to forfeit uranium enrichment - the easiest route to a nuclear bomb - on its soil. Iran said it would accept the Russian offer only if it could continue work on uranium enrichment. Pinch of green salt In Tehran on Sunday, the IAEA's top sleuth, Olli Heinonen, a Finn, sat down with Iranian officials for a chat about "green salt", a term used to describe uranium tetrafluoride. As a result of that conversation, the Vienna agency is "waiting for Iran to address the other topics which could have a military nuclear dimension", says the ElBaradei report. The suspicions about green salt have their roots in a laptop computer which diplomats in Vienna say was given to German intelligence agents in Tehran in 2004. The computer is said to have contained information on Iran's nuclear programme, suggesting a link between its civil research and the military, fusing work on high explosives, uranium and missiles. "False, fabricated, baseless," the Iranians told Mr Heinonen. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 11 IRNA: FM: Iran ready to discuss enrichment Tehran, Feb 26, IRNA Iran-Mottaki-Enrichment Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in the Thai capital of Bangkok on Sunday said that Iran is prepared to hold talks on industrial enrichment of uranium. According to a report released by the Foreign Ministry's Media Department, Mottaki briefed reporters on the trend of nuclear talks over the past three years and Iran's multifaceted cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "Iran is determined to settle the nuclear issue in Tehran rather than anywhere else. We firmly believe that we are entitled to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes and such a right can neither be denied nor violated," he added. In response to a question on the possibility of US involvement in the recent blasts at the holy shrines of Imam al-Hadi (AS) and Imam Hassan al-Askari (AS) in Samarra, the minister said that Iran is monitoring the ongoing developments. "We believe that some parties are behind attempts to launch ethnic and religious conflicts between the Shiites and other groups in Iraq and Islamic states," concluded Mottaki. ***************************************************************** 12 AFP: Iran and Russia talk on, IAEA suspicious but cautious - Monday February 27, 10:58 MOSCOW (AFP) - Iran and Russia will resume talks in Moscow on Tuesday to try to resolve worldwide concern over the Islamic republic's nuclear program, feared by the West to be a cover for making an atomic weapon. A senior Russian official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP Monday that an Iranian delegation led by Ali Hosseini-Tash "will be in Moscow tomorrow for talks with the Russian security council" on a Russian plan backed by the West for defusing tensions over the Iranian program. of the fresh negotiations came a day after Iran announced it had reached an agreement in principle with Russia on a plan under which the two countries would set up a joint venture on Russian territory for enrichment of uranium to be used in Iran's first nuclear power station. A deal under which Iran would enrich uranium in Russia under Russian supervision has won support from the West but Russian officials quickly poured cold water on the claim by Tehran that a deal had been reached. And the United States reacted warily to the possible Russia-brokered deal, saying that the Islamic republic "cannot be trusted." Time is running out, as on March 6 the 35 member states of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are due to meet in Vienna. They will have before them a report on Tehran's nuclear activities which may form the basis of a decision on whether to refer Iran to the UN Security Council. The UN nuclear watchdog reported Monday that questions remained about Iran's nuclear program but it stopped short of saying the Islamic republic was secretly making nuclear weapons. The IAEA report will be crucial in the UN Security Council's decision whether to take punitive action against Iran. "It is regrettable and a matter of concern that the... uncertainties related to the scope and nature of Iran's nuclear program have not been clarified after three years of intensive agency verifications," the IAEA said in the report. The report said Iran's cooperation had been deficient but left the door open for Tehran to provide more information. "Although the agency has not seen any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, the agency is not at this point in time in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran," it said. It said further verification would take time -- a sign, a senior official familiar with the IAEA investigation said, that the agency is not closing the door on Iran, despite the agency's board having on February 4 sent the Islamic Republic to the Security Council, which has enforcement powers. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had threatened recently that this report could draw the conclusion that Iran's nuclear ambitions were not peaceful ones. But the official said the report showed ElBaradei "still thinks that there is some room for progress." ElBaradei is still waiting for Iran to take "the political decision to demonstrate some kind of transparency," he said. The European Union warned Monday that Iran's uranium enrichment activities were harming its relations with Europe and welcomed Russian efforts to try to end the stalemate over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. EU foreign ministers attending a regular meeting in Brussels urged Iran to review its decision to resume uranium enrichment, which it deemed a "negative development". Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz warned the UN Security Council Monday not to stand idly by while Iran did everything in its power to play for time to develop nuclear weapons. "Like a lot of countries in the international community, we believe the UN Security Council should stop Iran's efforts towards developing nuclear weapons that threaten our existence," Mofaz said in comments broadcast by public radio. "The Iranians are doing everything possible to play for time. "It is not wise to talk publicly, but Israel has the right and need to defend itself," the Iranian-born minister added, without elaborating. Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! UK Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 13 AFP: Iran says 'no reason' to back down in nuclear dispute - Monday February 27, 04:19 PM TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran said there was "no reason" for it to back down in a dispute over its nuclear programme, casting fresh doubt on the prospect of Russia being able to broker an 11th-hour compromise. The comment from Ali Hosseini-Tash, one of Iran's nuclear negotiators, came as Moscow urged the Islamic republic to return to a voluntary freeze of sensitive enrichment work that could deliver the clerical regime the capacity to make a bomb. "Iran has predicted and studied the consequences ADVERTISEMENT [ src=] of any possible Security Council decision. There is no reason for Iran to retreat," Hosseini-Tash was quoted as saying by state television. "Any possible Security Council resolution against Iran's peaceful nuclear activities will not have any legal or rational foundations. It is not the last loop in the chain of decisions, especially when the US and the West are not sure of an agreement among Security Council members," he said. The International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board has already reported Iran to the Security Council, and the next IAEA meeting on March 6 could prompt action from New York unless Iran returns to the moratorium on uranium enrichment. The Islamic republic insists it only wants to generate electricity, although enrichment work to make reactor fuel can also be extended to make the fissile core of a nuclear bomb. The diplomacy is currently hinging on a proposal by Moscow to enrich Iran's uranium on Russian soil, something that would keep the sensitive process outside Iran yet at the same time provide it with nuclear fuel. "The Russian proposal to create a joint venture for the enrichment of uranium in Russia is part of a general effort to remove concerns on the Iranian nuclear programme," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists in Moscow. "We are convinced that, among other components of this effort, a moratorium on enrichment of uranium in Iran is required until all issues have been clarified by the experts of the IAEA," Lavrov said. But Iran still appears unwilling to reinstate a suspension agreed to in 2003 -- but which it has breached since last June's shock presidential election win by hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Diplomats said unless Iran's enrichment research work restarted in January is halted, Security Council action looks inevitable. "The problem is not of the quantity of enrichment, but the know-how. This is a red line that Iran must not be allowed to cross," a Western diplomat told AFP. If Iran masters enrichment, it would acquire what is seen as a "breakout capacity" enabling it to divert -- even secretly -- its energy programme to making weapons. "The West cannot confidently say that Iran does not have a clandestine programme," the diplomat said. The underlying tensions overshadowed Iran's assertion on Sunday that talks with Moscow were making "progress". Russia's chief nuclear negotiator with Iran, Sergei Kiriyenko, also downplayed Iran's more upbeat assessment of the relationship. "This is a complex issue and the negotiations are difficult," he told the official ITAR-TASS news agency in an interview on his return to Moscow following weekend talks in Iran. "There is little time left for further agreements," the news agency quoted Kiriyenko as saying. ITAR-TASS also quoted an unnamed source within the Russian delegation as saying the result of the talks there amounted to "a small half-step forward." The source said Tehran was still insisting that all scientific research and development work on uranium enrichment be carried out within Iran, a condition which the source said "defeats the very purpose of the joint venture" for uranium enrichment in Russia. "Russia cannot go forward with creation of a joint venture under such terms," the source said, adding that this would be in contravention of the last IAEA resolution on Iran calling for the immediate halt of uranium enrichment work. Iran was also under pressure from Japan, where Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was on a three-day visit as part of a global tour amid last-ditch efforts to escape Security Council action. Iran "has lost international trust as it has ignored the IAEA's policies for such a long time," Mottaki's Japanese counterpart Taro Aso told a parliamentary committee ahead of their talks. Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! UK Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 14 AFP: Israel warns world don't let Iran play for time on nuclear - Mon Feb 27, 8:12 AM ET JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz warned the UN Security Council not to stand idly by while Iran " /> did everything in its power to play for time to develop nuclear weapons. "Like a lot of countries in the international community, we believe the UN Security Council should stop Iran's efforts towards developing nuclear weapons that threaten our existence," Mofaz said in comments broadcast by public radio. "The Iranians are doing everything possible to play for time. "It is not wise to talk publicly, but Israel " /> has the right and need to defend itself," the Iranian-born minister added, without elaborating. The International Atomic Energy Agency " /> has already reported Iran to the Security Council, and the next IAEA meeting on March 6 could prompt action from New York unless Iran returns to a freeze on uranium enrichment work. The Islamic republic insists it only wants to generate electricity, although enrichment work to make reactor fuel can also be extended to make the fissile core of a nuclear bomb. Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, but has campaigned tirelessly for Iran to be brought before the UN Security Council and face sanctions for its nuclear activities. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 15 AFP: Russia downplays Iran nuclear 'agreement' Mon Feb 27, 4:47 AM ET MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia downplayed progress on its plan to allay concern over Iran's nuclear program, saying there was still work to be done and warning that time was quickly running out ahead of a March 6 deadline. "This is a complex issue and the negotiations are difficult," Russia's chief nuclear negotiator with Iran, Sergei Kiriyenko, told the official ITAR-TASS news agency in an interview on his return to Moscow following weekend talks in Tehran. "There is little time left for further agreements," the agency quoted Kiriyenko as saying, though he also voiced optimism that a comprehensive agreement could be reached in the days ahead of the next International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting on Iran on March 6. "A few issues still need to be agreed upon," said Kiriyenko, who is head of the Russian atomic energy agency Rosatom. ITAR-TASS quoted an unnamed source within the Russian delegation sent to Iran over the weekend as saying the result of the talks there amounted to "a small half-step forward." At a joint news conference Sunday with Kiriyenko in the Iranian city of Bushehr, site of Iran's first nuclear power station which is being built by Russia, Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator said the two sides "have reached an agreement in principle" on the Russian compromise plan. Under that scheme, Russia and Iran would establish a joint venture for enriching uranium on Russian soil for use in Iran's civilian nuclear stations. Iran has so far said it wants to fully control the uranium enrichment process inside Iran, a stand that has sparked fears in Russia and the West because the process can be used to produce both fuel for nuclear power and the vital ingredient of nuclear bombs. Iran insists that its nuclear program is intended strictly for generation of nuclear power and not for production of nuclear weapons. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 16 AFP: Iranian FM in Japan for nuclear crisis talks Monday February 27, 4:40 PM Photo: AFP TOKYO (AFP) - Japan, a major oil importer friendly to both Iran and the United States, was set to try to persuade the Islamic republic to resolve the nuclear crisis during a visit by its foreign minister. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki arrived in Tokyo on a three-day visit as part of a global tour that comes amid last-ditch efforts by Iran to avoid punishment by the United Nations Security Council. Mottaki, who served as ambassador to Japan from 1995 to 1999, was due to hold talks Monday evening with his Japanese counterpart Taro Aso and meet briefly with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, officials said. The talks are expected to focus in part on the ongoing negotiations between Tehran and Moscow on a compromise plan under which sensitive uranium enrichment work would take place outside Iran. The Russian plan, heralded by Japan's Aso as a "constructive approach," would ease Western suspicions that Iran wants to enrich uranium to build nuclear weapons rather than to generate electricity. It could also delay potential sanctions. The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is due to present a report on Iran's nuclear program later Monday that could lead to Security Council action. Russian newspapers on Monday hailed the preliminary deal between Tehran and Moscow, but experts remained sceptical of any real breakthrough. "The second round of Russian-Iranian negotiations on the creation of a joint venture to enrich uranium on Russian soil unexpectedly brought a sensational result," the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily said. Russia has offered to set up a joint venture with Iran to enrich the Islamic republic's uranium on Russian territory as a guarantee that the fuel be used for a peaceful nuclear energy programme and not to build a nuclear bomb. The Izvestia daily greeted the announcement as "a sensation," while Vremya Novostei ran a front-page story under the headline "Tehran accepted Moscow's offer." But Russian experts remained sceptical, saying Iran's announcement was a step in the right direction but not a guarantee that the international crisis would end any time soon. Japan has walked a tightrope on the Iranian crisis, supporting US and European calls for Tehran to give up its nuclear program while trying not to jeopardize its close commercial ties with the Islamic regime. The world's second-largest economy imports nearly all of its oil needs, with 15 percent coming from Iran. Japan in 2004 inked a two billion-dollar contract to develop Azadegan in southwestern Iran, considered one of the biggest untapped oil reserves in the world. Mottaki, in an interview with Japanese journalists ahead of his visit, said that the Azadegan project was not in danger despite Japan's vote at the IAEA to refer Iran to the Security Council. "Japan's dependence on Iran for oil is high," Aso said earlier this month. "It is a great matter of interest for Japan to prevent trouble there." "It is very important for Japan's national interests and stability in the Middle East that Iran makes efforts to avoid friction with the international community over the issue of its nuclear development," Aso said. Japan has increasingly been competing over scarce energy resources with China -- which dispatched its vice foreign minister to Tehran for weekend talks on the crisis. The Asian powers are at odds over gas and oil reserves in disputed waters in the East China Sea and over a pipeline to be built in Siberia. "In the long run, Japan needs to diversify its sources of crude oil importers in an effort to lower its heavy reliance on the Middle East," said Koichiro Tanaka, an Iran expert at Japan's Institute of Energy Economics. "Crude oil from Far Eastern Russia is a realistic option, but Japan has so far failed to secure it," he said. It is Mottaki's first visit to Japan since he was appointed foreign minister in August after the election of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information ***************************************************************** 17 AFP: Japan pressures Iran on nuclear crisis Mon Feb 27, 6:14 AM ET TOKYO (AFP) - Japan, a major oil importer friendly to both Iran and the United States, pressed the Islamic republic to stand down in its nuclear drive in talks with its foreign minister. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is on a three-day visit to Tokyo as part of a global tour amid last-ditch efforts to avoid referring the issue to the United Nations Security Council. Mottaki, who served as ambassador to Japan from 1995 to 1999, entered a meeting Monday evening with his Japanese counterpart Taro Aso. He was also expected to meet Tuesday with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, officials said. Iran "has lost international trust as it has ignored the IAEA's policies for such a long time," Aso told a parliamentary panel ahead of the meeting, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We would like to let him know about the international view of the situation. We have to hold talks in an orderly way about what the pluses and minuses are for the country, its neighbors and (oil) importers like us," Aso said. Aso said he would ask Iran for details of negotiations with Russia on a compromise under which sensitive uranium enrichment work would take place outside Iran. Russia on Monday downplayed progress on the plan, which could ease Western suspicions that Iran wants to enrich uranium to build nuclear weapons rather than to generate electricity. IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, is due to present a report later Monday on Iran that could lead to Security Council action. Japan has walked a tightrope on the Iranian crisis, supporting US and European calls for Tehran to give up its nuclear program while trying not to jeopardize its close commercial ties with the Islamic regime. The world's second-largest economy imports nearly all of its oil needs, with 15 percent coming from Iran. Japan in 2004 inked a two billion-dollar contract to develop Azadegan in southwestern Iran, considered one of the biggest untapped oil reserves in the world. Mottaki, in an interview with Japanese journalists ahead of his visit, said that the Azadegan project was not in danger despite Japan's vote at the IAEA to refer Iran to the Security Council. Japan has increasingly been competing over scarce energy resources with China -- which dispatched its vice foreign minister to Tehran for weekend talks on the crisis. The Asian powers are at odds over gas and oil reserves in disputed waters in the East China Sea and over a pipeline to be built in Siberia. "In the long run, Japan needs to diversify its sources of crude oil importers in an effort to lower its heavy reliance on the Middle East," said Koichiro Tanaka, an Iran expert at Japan's Institute of Energy Economics. "Crude oil from Far Eastern Russia is a realistic option, but Japan has so far failed to secure it," he said. It is Mottaki's first visit to Japan since he was appointed foreign minister in August after the election of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 18 AFP: US 'skeptical' of Iran nuclear compromise Mon Feb 27, 11:30 AM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States said that it was "skeptical" of Iran's good faith after the announcement of a possible Russia-brokered deal to ease fears that Tehran seeks nuclear weapons. "We will see. Given their history, you can understand why we remain skeptical," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. "The regime has shown they cannot be trusted." "We'll see what happens with the discussions with Russia. But our concerns are very well known, and the steps that the regime needs to take are spelled out by the International Atomic Energy Agency " /> International Atomic Energy Agency, and that means suspending all their enrichment-related activities," said McClellan. The IAEA, the United Nations " /> United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, meets March 6 to vote on whether to refer the Iranian nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council, which has the power to introduce sanctions on Iran over the nuclear issue. Earlier, Russia downplayed progress on a possible compromise, saying there was still work to be done to reach agreement, and warning that time was quickly running out ahead of the March 6 deadline. "This is a complex issue and the negotiations are difficult," Russia's chief nuclear negotiator with Iran, Sergei Kiriyenko, told the official ITAR-TASS news agency on his return to Moscow following weekend talks in Tehran. At a joint news conference Sunday with Kiriyenko in the Iranian city of Bushehr, site of Iran's first nuclear power station, which is being built by Russia, Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator said the two sides "have reached an agreement in principle" on the Russian compromise plan. Under that scheme, Russia and Iran would establish a joint venture for enriching uranium on Russian soil for use in Iran's civilian nuclear stations. Iran has so far said it wants to fully control the uranium enrichment process inside Iran, a stand that has sparked fears in Russia and the West because the process can be used to produce both fuel for nuclear power and the vital ingredient of nuclear bombs. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 19 IRNA: Diplomat at IAEA terms 'positive' Iranian agreement with Russia Vienna, Feb 27, IRNA Iran-Russia-Nuclear Program The agreement in principle with Russia for uranium enrichment is a positive step Iran took to remove the standoff on national nuclear program, a Western diplomat at International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday. He told IRNA on condition of anonymity that currently the diplomats are curious what Iran would do with fuel cycle plant inside its territory. "It was a breakthrough Iran made with Russian Atomic Energy chief in Tehran with agreeing in principle to the Russian offer to jointly enrich uranium for Iranian nuclear power plants," he said. He said that the diplomats were following Iranian negotiations with Russia in Tehran very closely. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said that Iran does not enrich uranium at industrial level and it is merely for research studies by Iranian scientists. IRNA reporter in Vienna asked the diplomat whether he was aware of the report IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei is expected to present to the Board of Governors on March 6, he replied 'no', adding that if ElBaradei's report was positive, there will be no reason for the UN Security Council to study the report. He said that Iran is far away from economic sanctions thanks to satisfactory Iranian cooperation with the UN nuclear agency. ***************************************************************** 20 IRNA: IAEA chief awaiting Heinonen's report to complete his on Iran - Vienna, Feb 27, IRNA Iran-ElBaradei-Nuclear The Vienna-based diplomats of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) say that Director General of the agency Mohamed ElBaradei is waiting to receive the report of his deputy, Olli Heinonen, to include some of the relevant points in his report on Iran's peaceful nuclear program. Speaking to IRNA, they underlined that ElBaradei's report will not be released before Monday night. Deputy Director General of IAEA for Safeguards Agreement, who arrived in Tehran on Saturday to gather some information on Iran's nuclear program, left for Vienna on Sunday evening. Some of the Vienna-based IAEA diplomats take Heinonen's visit to Tehran as a positive sign of Iran's cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog. The visit, which took place in connection with the trend of Iran-IAEA cooperation, proved that as a member of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran is determined to comply with its commitments. ***************************************************************** 21 IRNA: EU ready to support Iran's civilian nuclear programme if Tehran accepts conditions - Brussels, Feb 27, IRNA EU-Iran The Council of European Union Foreign Ministers Monday reaffirmed the EU's continued support for a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear issue, but urged Tehran to "reinstate a full suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities." "The EU does not question the right of Iran to the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in conformity with its obligations under the NPT, a right which the EU has consistently reaffirmed," said the Council in a statement after discussing EU-Iran ties Monday afternoon in Brussels. "If international concerns about Iran's programme are fully addressed, the EU would be prepared, as already stated in its August 2005 proposal, to support the development of a safe, sustainable and proliferation-proof Iranian civilian nuclear programme," it noted EU foreign ministers welcomed Russia's efforts to seek a way forward involving the offer to Iran of a financial stake in an enrichment joint venture on the territory of the Russian Federation, "conditional on Iran's resumption of the moratorium on all enrichment related and reprocessing activities." . The Council called on Iran to meet in full all of the IAEA Board's requests in good time before the next Board meeting on 6 March. ***************************************************************** 22 IRNA: Volkov: Discords on nuclear issue to be solved through talks - Tehran, Feb 27, IRNA Iran-Volkov-Nuclear Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy Yuri Volkov in a meeting with the head of Iran-Russia Parliamentary Friendship Group, Kazem Jalali here Monday said that negotiation is the only way to solve various disagreements in the international community. According to a report released by Majlis Media Department, he added that resorting to threat and force in settling differences of ideas eliminates the positive prospect of solving such problems. Stressing the inalienable right of Iran to access nuclear energy for peaceful use, he noted that his country will support such a right, which is in accordance with international laws. "Russia's approach to regional and nuclear issues as well as expansion of trade ties with Iran is clear to everyone. The Russian state Duma will do its best to broaden Iran-Russia cooperation and restore Iran's right for access to peaceful nuclear technology," he added. Turning to Iran as a significant country sharing many regional commonalties with Russia, he said that the positive trend of political and parliamentary collaboration between the two states, the role of their parliaments and friendship groups is quite important and effective in strengthening such cooperation. He urged that both sides should make optimum use of their parliamentary potentials to further broaden bilateral political, parliamentary and trade ties. Volkov pointed to exchange of visits between the high-ranking officials of the two countries, in particular that of Majlis Speaker Gholam-Reza Haddad-Adel to Russia, and said that continuous visits on diplomatic missions will lead to further expansion of ties. Meanwhile, he called for increasing economic and trade exchanges in line with bilateral political relations. For his part, Jalali pointed to the favorable ties between the two states, while stressing its strategic significance to both sides, and called for bolstering relations in various parliamentary, political and trade fields. Underlining Iran's inalienable right to access nuclear energy for peaceful use, he said that this should not be replaced by any other plan. Jalali said that the world is witness to the fact that the global hegemony under the leadership of the US intends to deprive Iran of such an inalienable right and urged that Russia should attempt to restore it, which is the broad-based demand of the Iranian people. He added that Russia should not let the mutual strategic ties be overshadowed by irrational desires of the third party. As the rapporteur of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Jalali, referred to Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant as the symbol of nuclear cooperation between Iran and Russia and called for expediting its implementation. The meeting was attended by a number of Iranian members of Iran-Russia Parliamentary Friendship Group. ***************************************************************** 23 IRNA: Elbaradei: No deviation from peaceful activities observed in Iran's Parchin site - , Feb 27, IRNA -- IAEA Secretary General Mohammed ElBaradei said in his Monday report to UN nuclear watchdog's Board of Directors that no sign of deviation from peaceful activities, or breaching articles of NPT agreements have been spotted in Iran Parchin Nuclear Site. The same conclusion is drawn in ElBaradei's report where he has reported on Iran's nuclear Lavizan and Kolahdouz sites in northern Tehran. The report reads, "We have no evidence about any deviation from peaceful nuclear activities in Iran after inspecting all the suspected cases." The IAEA Chief elsewhere in the report points out that after the issuance of last IAEA Board of Governors' resolution on Iran, Tehran delivered an official letter to the IAEA in which the Iranians have announced they would resume their activities "within the framework of the NPT." The report reiterates, "Under such conditions that Iran has quite openly resumed activities at Isfahan UCF Nuclear Complex, one of whose products is Green Salt, other claims in the field are naturally insignificant." ElBaradei has told the Board of Directors that Iran is currently engaged in "research work regarding uranium enrichment." The report stresses in various parts that Iran's nuclear activities in Natanz are "still" conducted under NPT supervision overage. ElBaradei's report was handed out among IAEA members states' delegations on Monday evening in Vienna. The IAEA Board of Governors would a week from now convene to reflect its viewpoints on this report. The report, in which ElBaradei has as usual asked Iran for more transparency without defining in which areas, was scheduled to be submitted on Monday morning, was delayed till receiving latest report of ElBaradei's deputy who was in Tehran. ***************************************************************** 24 [du-list] Bush and Nukes in India Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:20:19 -0800 Institute for Public Accuracy 915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045 (202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org ___________________________________________________ PM Monday, February 27, 2006 Bush and Nukes in India Interviews Available President Bush will be visiting India and Pakistan this week. A major agenda item is a nuclear agreement between the U.S. and India. The following analysts are available for interviews. (India is 10.5 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time.) M. V. RAMANA, 011-91-80-2321-7013 ext 35, ramana@princeton.edu, http://www.cised.org, http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2006_01-02/JANFEB-IndiaFeature.asp Faculty member at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development in Bangalore, India, Ramana is coauthor of the recent article "Wrong Ends, Means, and Needs: Behind the U.S. Nuclear Deal With India" in Arms Control Today. He said today: "One carrot that the Bush administration has been offering India is the promise of cooperation on civil nuclear energy (i.e., sales of technology and raw materials). If it goes through, the deal will undermine the nonproliferation and disarmament regime, create the potential for an expansion of the Indian nuclear arsenal that is desired by some hawks, and further enlarge the uneconomical and environmentally unsustainable nuclear energy program." ACHIN VANAIK, in India until March 1, 011-91-11-260-17331; in Amsterdam from March 3 to 6 via the Transnational Institute, 011-31-20-662-6608; achin@bol.net.in, http://www.tni.org/archives/vanaik/iran.htm Vanaik is coauthor of the book "New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament." His most recent article is "The Iran Issue." He is currently a fellow with the Transnational Institute based in Amsterdam and edited the book "Globalization and South Asia: Multidimensional Perspectives." Vanaik helped initiate the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace in India (011-91-11-2651-7814, 011-91-11-2696-8121, cndpindia@gmail.com, http://cndpindia.org) which is protesting Bush's visit. SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN, 011-91-11-2371-5426, mobile: 011-91-98111-60260, svaradarajan@gmail.com, http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com Deputy editor of The Hindu newspaper, Varadarajan can address the nuclear agreement, the evolving strategic partnership between India and the U.S. and its wider implications for the region. ROBERT ALVAREZ, (301) 585-7672, kitbob@starpower.net, http://www.ips-dc.org/projects/nuclear/index.htm Between 1993 and 1999, Alvarez was at the U.S. Energy Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment as well as policy adviser to the Secretary. In 1994 and 1995, he led teams in North Korea to establish control of nuclear weapons materials. Alvarez said today: "Beneath the surface of nuclear boosterism and public diplomacy of the India deal with the U.S., are some troubling issues such as ... the Bush administration's unabashed efforts to revive the moribund U.S. nuclear industry with an emphasis on establishing a global plutonium market. This is being done through new research and development on plutonium reprocessing; and more ominously, by thwarting the IAEA. In response to the North Korean and Iranian nuclear crises, the IAEA proposed in the spring of this year a five-year moratorium on the international sale of technologies to enrich uranium and separate plutonium, which was immediately vetoed by the U.S." Alvarez is currently a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167 ---------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.1/270 - Release Date: 2/27/06 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. ***************************************************************** 25 Guardian Unlimited: India Mulls Nuke Deal Ahead of Bush Visit From the Associated Press [UP] Monday February 27, 2006 9:01 PM AP Photo XMQ103 By MATTHEW ROSENBERG Associated Press Writer NEW DELHI (AP) - With India and the United States struggling to work out a nuclear pact before President Bush arrives this week, India's prime minister pledged Monday not to compromise the country's security to seal the deal. During his visit beginning Wednesday, Bush is likely to find excitement over Indian-U.S. ties mixed with ambivalence about sidling up to a nation many see as the world's bully. The landmark nuclear pact has, for many here, come to illustrate what India stands to gain from America - and what it has to lose. Talks on the nuclear deal ``are currently at a delicate stage,'' held up by disagreements over which of India's nuclear facilities are to be designated as civilian and which are to be considered military, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told lawmakers Monday. Separating India's tightly entwined civilian and military nuclear programs is key to the deal, because the United States has only agreed to recognize India as having a civilian nuclear program - not as a legitimate nuclear weapons state. ``We have judged every proposal'' from the U.S., Singh said. ``The decision of what facilities may be identified as civilian will be made by India alone and not by anyone else.'' The pact would allow the United States to provide nuclear technology and fuel desperately needed by India to fuel its booming but energy-starved economy. In return, India has pledged to separate its programs and open the civilian ones to international inspection. The deal has faced opposition from some members of U.S. Congress, which must approve the pact. They argue it could undermine the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. India has refused to sign the treaty and defied the world by openly conducting nuclear weapons tests in 1998. India and Pakistan have often staged tit-for-tat missile tests that raise regional tensions. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the president's approach with the pact will not only address energy needs for India, but will also address important proliferation issues. ``We've made some progress. The negotiations are ongoing,'' he said. ``Whether it gets done during the trip or not, we will see. But we believe it will get done.'' Indian opponents worry the United States is pushing to classify far too many of India's facilities as civilian, and thus subject to international safeguards. Some see it as an attempt to undermine the country's nuclear weapons program. Among Indians, there is also ``a sense of America being arrogant in its dealings surrounding the nuclear pact,'' said Nandan Unnikrishnan of New Delhi's Observer Research Foundation. ``India does not like to be perceived as someone who is doing something according to an external diktat,'' he said. ``And the U.S. has been a little ham-handed in terms of trying to get India to see the world its way.'' He cited U.S. Ambassador David C. Mulford's remark in January that if India did not support referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program that the India-U.S. nuclear pact could ``die'' in Congress. The U.S. and other Western countries suspect Iran's program is geared toward making weapons. Parties crucial to the survival of Singh's government seethed at the comment, claiming it as evidence that New Delhi was selling out to Washington for the sake of the nuclear deal. The deal is also seen by some as Washington's attempt to balance to China's growing economic and political clout - something New Delhi wants no part of. India and China ``will cooperate, they will compete, they will try to balance each other,'' said analyst C. Raja Mohan. ``But we certainly don't want to be seen as acting as a task horse for the Americans.'' A poll in India's Outlook magazine illustrates the mixed feelings of many here. Asked if India could trust the United States in times of need, 55 percent of the 1,634 people interviewed by pollster AC Nielsen said yes. But asked whether they thought America was a bully, 72 percent said yes. No margin of error was given. ``It's a situation of a rich man and a poor man who's getting richer,'' said Vijay Bhagat, a shop owner in New Delhi. ``We need to work with the United States, we need the money - but we Indian people have to keep our self-respect.'' There's little doubt that India has reaped tremendous economic benefits from its American ties. India's outsourcing industry, for example, is expected to bring in $22 billion in revenues this fiscal year, much of that generated by business from America. The boom has created millions of jobs, and has even given rise to luxury goods market with brands like Louis Vuitton and Rolls Royce setting up shop. But the luxuries are for a tiny few, and the economic liberalization that has stoked the boom has also raised fears among Indians - some 80 percent of whom live on less than $2 a day - that the government will soon have to remove subsidies on essentials such as cooking oil. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 26 New York Times: A Presidential Passage Through India, Quickly - By ELISABETH BUMILLER Published: February 27, 2006 WASHINGTON — President Bush is planning a two-day wind sprint across Indiathis week, when he will meet with political leaders, chat up high-tech millionaires and give a speech at a 16th-century fort. But to the consternation of the Indians, he will not see the country's most famous monument, the Taj Mahal, a decision that Mr. Bush said was made by an omnipotent scheduler. Kamal Kishore/Reuters The Taj Mahal, in Agra, India, is one of the most visited tourist sites anywhere. But it will not be on President Bush's itinerary. "Look, if I were the scheduler, perhaps I'd be doing things differently," Mr. Bush said last week, when he was asked in an interview with Indian reporters at the White House why he was skipping the Taj. "I'll be the president, we've got the scheduler being the scheduler. I'm going to miss a lot of the really interesting parts of your great country. I know that." Mr. Bush has never been a sightseer, and his planned two days in India and one in Pakistan are typical of a president who visited the Great Wall of China in 30 minutes flat. For the most part, the president's India is one of strategic calculations — a hoped-for nuclear deal, a booming market for American goods, an Asian powerhouse to counterbalance China. But Mr. Bush did sound notes of eagerness last week about his first-ever trip to India, the world's largest democracy and a country that has long cast a powerful spell on the Western imagination. People who know Mr. Bush say he has an interest in the country through little-known personal and political connections in Texas. While he was governor, Mr. Bush befriended a number of prosperous Indian doctors and businessmen, all Republicans, who captivated him as embodiments of the American dream and contributed handsomely to his campaigns. One of them was Durga Agrawal, the founder of a Houston-based company, Piping Technology and Products, who was born 60 years ago in a village in central India without electricity or a water supply. Mr. Agrawal went to high school 14 miles away and returned home, by bicycle, only every three or four months. He went from there to the University of Delhi and then to the University of Houston for master's and doctorate degrees in industrial engineering. "I really admire the professors in this country," Mr. Agrawal said in a telephone interview on Friday. "We foreigners come, and they pour their hearts, souls and minds into us, and we do not speak like them, but they educate us." Mr. Agrawal first met Mr. Bush when he was running a second time for governor, and said he had raised as much as $100,000 among Indian friends for Mr. Bush's 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. He was a guest at the state dinner for the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, last July, and said he was stunned when the president seemed to remember him so easily. "All of us claim to know the president very well, but we wonder if he really knows us," Mr. Agrawal said. "But he introduced me to the prime minister of India as 'my good friend from Texas.' I was totally taken by that. I tell people about it all the time." Another Indian supporter of Mr. Bush from Texas, Dr. Virendra Mathur, said that a president who has made the spread of democracy a central theme of his second term was naturally inclined to support a country where the political opposition so regularly trounces the incumbents. "The fact that the ruling party gets overthrown in almost every election tells you that democracy really works," said Dr. Mathur, a cardiologist in Houston. Mr. Bush, he said, "realizes that India has a lot of potential, and he's watching the 7 to 8 percent annual growth rate." Mr. Bush is also said to get along well with the prime minister, Mr. Singh, even though Mr. Singh's daughter, Amrit, is a Yale-educated staff lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who regularly detonates explosive news releases against the Bush administration. ("The public has a right to know the full truth about the treatment of detainees not just in Abu Ghraib but elsewhere in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay," she said in a release this month, after new photographs of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison were made public.) Mr. Singh, the son of subsistence farmers who earned a doctorate in economics from Oxford University and then drove India toward economic reform as finance minister in the 1990's, has an engaging manner that Mr. Bush likes. "The previous Indian prime minister was a man of very few words," said Michael Green, the former senior director for Asian affairs on the Bush White House National Security Council, speaking of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. "When I was a note-taker for meetings with him, I would rarely go beyond one page. The current prime minister is a very modest man, very humble man, very sincere, very charming. And there's a nice chemistry." In interviews last week, Mr. Bush said that he would have to visit the Taj Mahal, a three-hour drive from New Delhi, another time. (President Bill Clinton, an avid sightseer, visited the Taj on a five-day trip to India in 2000.) "The part of international travel he likes the best, and the part he's best at, is meeting with other leaders," said Mr. Green, who is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "He'll make a lot of time for that, and he'll spend a lot of time preparing for it. That for him is the high value for travel." + Copyright 2006The New York Times Company ***************************************************************** 27 newsobserver.com: Energy questions have local answers February 27, 2006 Richard Graham-Yooll Woking, England, the town where I and my family lived for 12 years, is 30 miles west of London, set in unspectacular countryside and lacking historic or architectural charm. Becoming prominent only in the 19th century as a rail terminus, it is awkwardly bisected by railroads. Some years ago the city invested heavily to restore its almost abandoned downtown, as Raleigh is doing now. In one striking respect, however, Woking is unique. The city is energy self-sufficient, generating 135 percent more than it consumes. This did not come about by accident. The local council implemented a comprehensive new energy policy in 1991 affecting businesses, utilities and residents. In the 10-year period that followed, energy consumption was reduced by 40 percent, CO2 emissions by 67 percent and water consumption by 44 percent. The council's initiative had little support from a central government which still focuses myopically on a nuclear solution. Woking is still the only local authority in Britain supplying customers with electricity on private wire, combined heat and power and renewable energy networks. Other cities in Europe are now studying Woking's success, highlighting the reality that an energy revolution is more likely to occur at the local rather than the national level. Nationalized utilities, like major power companies, tend to favor the status quo, because thinking becomes blinkered on a large scale. In Britain and the U.S. we have moved away from dependence upon local power stations to national grids, which are highly wasteful and vulnerable to catastrophic, if rare, outages. The new energy solutions being adopted by cities around the world differ according to location. Toronto draws chilly water from the bottom of Lake Ontario to cool its office buildings. Holland uses "hot road" technology, which involves a layer of reinforced pipes through which water can flow from nearby storage aquifers. Even in relatively cool air temperatures, water pipe temperatures under the road can rise 50 degrees, amounting to an energy yield of as much as 77,000 kilowatt hours per kilometer of road per year, incidentally obviating the need for winter salt. Denmark leads the world in wind generation, accounting for 20 percent of its energy supply. " " " What these solutions tend to have in common is a new way of thinking. The focus is on small networks and on the end product, rather than the energy medium. In other words, if a building needs cooling, heating and lighting, only one of these requires delivery in the form of electricity. Most new systems use CHP technology (combined heat and power), which recovers heat while generating power, providing energy efficiency up to 90 percent, and heat-fired absorption cooling. Instead of seeking one simple answer to energy production and distribution, systems are multi-faceted, involving both local energy generation and energy saving. In the case of Woking, the city has implemented the use of photovoltaic roofs, solar street lamps, geothermal pumps, hydrogen cells to replace conventional electricity substations, and bio-digesters for household waste. With a conventional system of power generation and distribution, we lose roughly 80 percent of energy input. Look at any power station to see what goes up in steam! With a local hybrid system, we not only save energy but substantially reduce costs, emissions and our contribution to global warming. Such ideas only seem impractical if we consider them as immediate solutions rather than as sensible groundwork for long-term planning. Utility companies routinely plan 10 years ahead. Progress Energy is reportedly seeking a license to build up to two new nuclear reactors in Wake County. Supporters claim that is better than a new coal-fired power plant, which is rather like saying a surgeon does better using a chisel than an ax. The threat of increased nuclear power generation should be incentive enough. The Triangle is in a unique position to lead in the new energy wave. Our fast-expanding private housing sector could be influenced by judicious incentives. While the imposition of high impact fees -- with dramatic fee relief for energy self-sufficient homes -- might provoke initial opposition from developers, it might also point the way to both higher profits and increased consumer benefit. Raleigh has an opportunity which may not soon recur. With major downtown development under way, a concentration of state and city buildings and a sizable stock of affordable housing, our city could become an example for the nation. Richard Graham-Yooll is an advertising consultant and novelist ("A Foreign Policy," 2005) who lives in Raleigh. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be published, broadcast or redistributed in any manner. © Copyright 2006, The News & Observer Publishing Company A subsidiary of The McClatchy Company ***************************************************************** 28 AFP: US confident of India nuclear deal Mon Feb 27, 11:57 AM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States said it was confident of reaching a nuclear cooperation deal with India eventually, even if such an agreement is not finalized during US President George W. Bush's visit. "We've made some progress. The negotiations are ongoing. Whether it gets done during the trip or not, we will see. But we believe it will get done," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. Bush leaves late February 28 on his maiden trip to India and Pakistan, hopeful of finalize an agreement with New Delhi to bolster bilateral cooperation on civilian nuclear energy. The deal requires India, which has refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to separate its nuclear program into military and civilian components with the later under international inspection. In exchange for safeguards the United States would work to change domestic and international laws so that India would be allowed to buy civilian nuclear technology it currently cannot. "This will not only address energy needs for India, but it will also address important proliferation issues, as well," said McClellan. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced plans for the agreement during Singh's July 2005 visit to the United States. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 29 Xinhua: E. China institute to host IAEA annual seminar in 2007 www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2006-02-27 15:02:10 NANCHANG, Feb. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has formally invited the East China Institute of Technology (ECIT) to host the annual global seminar on uranium geochemistry in 2007, according to sources with the college. "It's a good opportunity to further cooperation between the IAEA and the ECIT and to make the college a world-class research center and platform for atomic energy," said Liu Qingcheng, ECIT president. Based in Fuzhou City, East China's Jiangxi Province, the ECIT is an important research institute and training base in atomic energy in China. It has set nine national standards for China's nuclear industry and two laboratory methods for studying the chemical composition of geothermal springs for the IAEA. With the help of the IAEA, more than 30 reputed scientists and researchers, including Dr. Chai Xinjun from the Saga University ofJapan, and Zhao Guopan from the China Academy of Engineering, have come to work at the ECIT. In addition, the IAEA has sponsored more than 30 ECIT researchers to receive training in the United States, France and Canada. Over 10 scientific research programs have been jointly carried out by the IAEA and the college, with a financial injection of 16 million yuan (about 2 million U.S. dollars). The institute now has state-of-the art research facilities and is the isotope data center for the Asian and Pacific regions. The analysis and test center at the institute has been designated as one of the five key reference labs by the IAEA and was highly appraised by Jane Gerardo, an official with the organization, during her visit to the ECIT. Formerly known as the East China Institute of Geology, the ECIT was founded in 1956 with the aim of fostering experts on nuclear geology. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 30 Mos News: Russia’s Uranium Stockpiles to Run Out by 2020 — Official - MOSNEWS.COM Photo from www.vremea.net Created: 27.02.2006 15:13 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:13 MSK MosNews Russia’s uranium reserves could be depleted by 2020 if the current rate of uranium mining is sustained, said on Monday, Feb. 27, Anatoly Ledovskikh, head of the Russian Subsoil Resources Agency (Rosnedra). The agency’s materials show that Russia only produced 3,200 tons of the 16,000 tons of uranium it needed in 2005 and that it drew on stockpiles to plug the shortage. In other words, uranium mine output must increase six-fold, the materials said. The reserves of Russia’s uranium deposits are estimated at 615,000 tons. Three enterprises belonging to nuclear fuel corporation TVEL mine and explore uranium fields. Uranium will be explored at 28 sites at a cost of 708.2 million rubles in 2006. Copyright © 2004 MOSNEWS.COM ***************************************************************** 31 NRC: NRC to Meet with Nuclear Management Co. to Discuss Safety Significance of Issue at Prairie Island Plant News Release - Region III - 2006-00 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region III 801 Warrenville Road, Lisle IL 60532 No. III-06-006 February 27, 2006 CONTACT: Jan Strasma (630) 829-9663 Viktoria Mitlyng (630) 829-9662 E-mail: opa3@nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet March 1 in Lisle, Ill., with representatives of Nuclear Management Company to discuss the safety significance of the plants non-conservative emergency classification process at the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Station. The two-reactor facility is located in Welch, Minnesota. The NRC staff has completed a preliminary assessment of the problem and concluded that it is of low to moderate safety significance. The meeting, called a Regulatory Conference, will seek the utilitys evaluation of its significance. The meeting will be held at 1 p.m. (CST) in the NRCs Region III Office, 2443 Warrenville Road, Suite 210, Lisle. Visitors should report to the second floor reception area. The public is invited to observe the business portion of the meeting and will have an opportunity to ask questions of the NRC staff before the meeting is adjourned. NRC inspectors determined that the Prairie Island staff established a non-conservative emergency classification in the plants Emergency Plan that, under certain flooding conditions, could result in the plants failure to declare a Site Area Emergency. The NRC has four emergency classifications, Site Area Emergency being the second highest of the four levels. It is crucial that nuclear plants properly classify the level of emergency because emergency classifications determine the appropriate level of response from the NRC, the plant, state and local officials to ensure that public health and safety are protected, said Geoffrey Grant, deputy regional administrator of the NRCs Lisle office. In addition, the utility missed an opportunity to correct the non-conservative classification in the Emergency Plan when it was corrected in the plants Updated Safety Analysis Report. Under its safety significance determination process, NRC officials classify certain conditions at nuclear power plants as being one of four colors which delineate increasing levels of safety significance, beginning with green and progressing to white, yellow and red. The NRCs preliminary evaluation determined the Prairie Island non-conservative emergency classification problem to be a white finding. Information presented by the utility in the Regulatory Conference will be used by the NRC staff, along with its inspection findings, to determine the final safety significance of the problem. White inspection findings can lead to additional NRC inspections. The details of the NRC inspection findings are discussed in Inspection Report 2005-11 which is available online in the NRCs electronic reading room. This report -- with the accession number ML060340623 -- may be viewed in the NRCs ADAMS document system, accessible at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. The final significance determination will be available on the NRC web site at http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/regulatory/enforcement/current.html #reactors. Last revised Monday, February 27, 2006 ***************************************************************** 32 Brattleboro Reformer: Selectboard takes up emergency VY plan February 27, 2006 Brattleboro, VT By KRISTI CECCAROSSI Reformer Staff BRATTLEBORO -- In the past few years, there's been heavy scrutiny and criticism of the local evacuation plan, in the event of an emergency at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The grumbling has reached as far as our Congressional leaders, and as close as our local elected officials, including the Brattleboro Selectboard. In 2004, Selectboard members decided that a stringent review of the local plan was one of their goals. And although the Vermont Emergency Management Agency maintains authority over the evacuation plan, the Selectboard has been offering its own input. On Tuesday, the board will vote on a revised plan, which reflects some of the board's suggestions. Barb Sondag, assistant town manager, says the board's recommendations for the plan have come out of several work sessions held in the last year and a half. The board will meet to vote on the plan and take up other items at 6:15 p.m., in the Selectboard meeting room in the Municipal Center. These following issues are also on the agenda: * A proclamation making March "Emergency Preparedness Month;" * A parade permit, requested by Tom Heydinger on behalf of the Girls on the Run program; * A public hearing by Planning Director Jim Mullen on the Putney Road master plan; * A funding request by the Apartments-in-Homes project; * An application for a grant that would address "aquatic nuisance control;" * An agreement from the U.S. Mayor's Association on climate protection; * A refinancing note for highway sweepers; * An update on the Civilian Police Committee; * An update by Barb Sondag on town finances; * Appointments for the Putney Road scoping committee and the ADA Committee. Kristi Ceccarossi can be reached at or (802) 254-2311, ext. 160. Copyright ©1999-2005 New England Newspapers, Inc., ***************************************************************** 33 NRC: Sunshine Act; Meetings FR Doc 06-1860 [Federal Register: February 27, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 38)] [Notices] [Page 9840] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr27fe06-76] Agency Holding the Meetings: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Date: Week of February 27, 2006. Place: Commissioners' Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. Status: Public and Closed. Matters to be Considered: Week of February 27, 2006 Monday, February 27, 2006. 2:45 p.m. Affirmation Session (Public Meeting) (Tentative). a. Hydro Resources, Inc. (P.O. Box 777, Crownpoint, NM 87313)(in situ leach mining operation)--concerning review of LBP-06-1, Partial Initial Decision (Phase II Radiological Air Emissions Challenges to In Situ Leach Uranium Mining License). (Tentative). * * * * * By a vote of 5-0 on February 21, 2006, the Commission determined pursuant to U.S.C. 552b(e) and Sec. 9.107(a) of the Commission's rules that ``Affirmation of Hydro Resources, Inc. (P.O. Box 777, Crownpoint, NM 87313)(in situ leach mining operation)--concerning review of LBP-06- 1, Partial Initial Decision (Phase II Radiological Air Emissions Challenges to In Situ Leach Uranium Mining License)'' be held February 27, 2006, and on less than one week's notice to the public. The schedule for Commission meetings is subject to change on short notice. To verify the status of meetings call (recording)--(301) 415- 1292. Contact person for more information: Michelle Schroll, (301) 415- 1662. * * * * * The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the Internet at: . * * * * * The NRC provides reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities where appropriate. If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in these public meetings, or need this meeting notice or the transcript or other information from the public meetings in another format (e.g. braille, large print), please notify the NRC's Disability Program Coordinator, Deborah Chan, at 301-415-7041, TDD: 301-415-2100, or by e-mail at . Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis. * * * * * This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301-415-1969). In addition, distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic message to . Dated: February 22, 2006. R. Michelle Schroll, Office of the Secretary. [FR Doc. 06-1860 Filed 2-23-06; 12:58 pm] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M ***************************************************************** 34 USATODAY.com: Whence came the atom's energy Updated 2/27/2006 7:36 PM Whence came the atom's energyQ: Where does an atom get its energy? Apparently they have been in existence for billions of years, resisting forces around them, spinning electrons around, keeping the nucleus packed tight and surely using energy to do all this. Why don't they run out of energy? (Mike, London, England) [A single cobalt atom (purple peak) over a copper surface (orange, yellow, and pink). A scanning tunneling microscope took this image. ] A single cobalt atom (purple peak) over a copper surface (orange, yellow, and pink). A scanning tunneling microscopetook this image. Courtesy of National Institute of Standards and Technology, Electron and Optical Physics Division A: Atoms are almost as old as time; they got their energy from the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago. Sometime in the first three minutes of the Big Bang, all the basic stuff that atoms are made of got created. But things had to cool for about 300,000 years before atoms could form. Then, a protoncould capture an electron, and form hydrogen. Some helium was formed then, too, and a scattering of other kinds of atoms but none heavier than lithium. Even now, after star furnaces have produced heavier elements for eons, hydrogen still makes up about 75% of the Universe's atoms. Helium comprises about 24%, and all the other atoms make up the remaining 1%. As you say, an atom resists forces around it. Even though mostly empty space, an atom wards off other atoms by repulsing the would-be trespasser with an electric force emanating from its electrons. It's a war of surface electrons. If another atom gets close enough (but doesn't combine to make a molecule), the first atom's surface electrons repel the second atom's and keep the second atom at bay. The only reason our feet don't fall through the floor is because the foot atoms push against the floor atoms in this way. Figure by the author Energy levels of a hydrogen atom (yellow is lowest energy, red highest). The nucleus is shown as the center blue blob, and an electron (green) is shown at its highest energy state, farthest from the nucleus. It will not last long in this state; soon it will emit a photon, and return to its lowest energy state (yellow ring). Electrons don't actually spin; rather they have an intrinsic property somewhat misleadingly called "spin." Electrons do, however, have associated discrete energy levels called shells, probability clouds or probability waves. The higher the shell energy level, the farther away the shell is from the nucleus. See Figure 2. I'm not simply being cavalier when I term the electron energy levels by so many names. We don't know what they are  only how to describe them. This we can do mathematically, though, with incredible accuracy. The nucleus is, indeed, packed tightly with protons and neutrons. See Figure 3. A couple of forces are at work here. The protons all have the same charge  positive  and therefore repel each other with a huge force because they are so tightly packed together. Protons don't all fly apart, only because another even stronger force holds them together. It's called the strong interaction, and only works over extremely short distances. This force plays out when the distance stretches across the nucleus of a big atom, like uranium. More about this in a moment. Yes. You are right. It takes energy to do all this (and even more that we haven't talked about). Why doesn't the energy fade away in time and atoms run out of energy? It just doesn't. Probably, because of energy conservation. This is the only thing that we truly know about energy; it is conserved. Let's consider a few energy changes involving atoms. Courtesy of Wikipedia A model of the helium atom, showing the nucleus (center glob), which contains two protons (blue) and two neutrons (red). Two electrons (waves) orbit the nucleus. An atom can absorb energy easily enough if a light particle (photon) hits it with just the right amount of energy to kick an electron from one of its energy levels to a higher one. (That's how a material blocks light.) But the atom doesn't get to keep that energy. Pretty soon the excited electron loses the extra energy by giving off a photon (or many lower-energy photons) and, in one (or many) steps, comes back down to its original rest-energy level  the only stable place for it to exist. No net gain. How about the energy that binds the nucleus together? Can we lose energy here or gain it? The answer is no for ordinary stable nuclei of light to medium atoms (atoms with less than about 80 protons  gold and below in the Periodic Table of Elements). The binding energy of these lighter atoms is always in its most-bound state; the atoms give up no nuclear energy spontaneously. For heavier atoms  the answer is sort of, depending on how you look at it. A heavier atom can lose mass and energy spontaneously (called radioactive decay), but in so doing it changes from one element into another. So, it's difficult to say that the atom lost energy because the atom changed into a different atom. Energy was conserved. Let me explain. Consider uranium U-238  a stable but uneasy atom. Within a given atom, close-together protons do fine because the nuclear "strong interaction" overcomes their mutual repulsion. But a uranium atom has 92 protons! So some protons are far apart, which is bad news because the strong interaction is weaker at greater distance. The far-apart protons almost manage to repel each other, and escape the nucleus. It's nip and tuck. Occasionally, this uneasy environment lets the nuclear "weak interaction"toss out a particle (an alpha or beta particle). In so doing, the atom gives off energy in the form of gamma radiation, kinetic energy of the alpha particle and kinetic energy of the recoiling new atom. When uranium-238 (consisting of 92 protons and 146 neutrons) emits an alpha particle, the nucleus loses two protons and two neutrons (that's what an alpha particle consists of). Then, the nucleus is left with only 90 protons and 144 neutrons. But that's a thorium atom. It no longer is a uranium atom. True, the uranium atom lost mass and energy, but it is transformed into a new element. Similarly, both fission and fusion change the mass and energy of an atom. But, in so doing, they transform the atom into different kinds of atoms. For example, uranium 235 splits into barium and krypton and releases much energy. Hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, fuse together to produce a helium atom and much energy. But a particular kind of atom (like a hydrogen atom) never runs out of energy. Its energy is innate and conserved. ... Richard Feynman as pictured in the book cover of Six Easy Pieces. "If one book was all that could be passed on to the next generation of scientists it would undoubtedly have to be Six Easy Pieces."  John Gribbin in New Scientist. All things are made of atoms. They are the little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. Suppose something terrible were to happen to Earth, and we the living could only pass one sentence to the next generation. What would it be? Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynmanin his book, Six Easy Pieces, nominates the first sentence of this paragraph. The concept of atoms is that important. Further Reading: Quantum physicsby Rod Nave, HyperPhysics Nuclear physicsby Rod Nave, HyperPhysics An explanation of the Big Bangby April Holladay, WonderQuest What is energy?by April Holladay, WonderQuest Atom, Wikipedia Conceptual physics, ninth edition, by Paul G. Hewitt. San Francisco, CA: Pearson Education, Inc., 2002. Atoms and the Particle Adventure Scanning Tunneling Microscope, National Institute of Standards and Technology Six Easy Piecesby Richard Feynman (Answered Feb. 28, 2006) April Holladay, science journalist for USATODAY.com, lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A few years ago Holladay retired early from computer engineering to canoe the flood-swollen Mackenzie, Canada's largest river. Now she writes a column about nature and science, which appears Fridays at USATODAY.com. To read April's past WonderQuest columns, please check out her site. If you have a question for April, visit this informational page. Atoms conserve energy2/27/2006 7:36 PMA single cobalt atom (purple peak) over a copper surface (orange, yellow, and pink). A scanning tunneling microscope took this image. Courtesy of National Institute of Standards and Technology, Electron and Optical Physics Division--> © Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 35 RIA Novosti: Baltic states agree to build nuclear power plant in Lithuania 27/ 02/ 2006 RIGA, February 27 (RIA Novosti, Yuri Guralnik) - The three former Soviet Baltic republics have agreed on the joint construction of a nuclear power plant, the office of the Lithuanian prime minister said in a statement Monday. The prime ministers of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia agreed at their meeting Monday to build a nuclear power plant in Lithuania before 2015, the statement said. The premiers concluded that the NPP construction would be the easiest way to resolve an energy crisis expected in 2009, when the Chernobyl-style Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania will be closed due to the European Union's nuclear safety requirements. Three energy companies - Latvenergo, Eesti Energa and Lietuvos energia AB - will work on the NPP project. They will have to draft an investment plan and select a contractor for the project, which will cost an estimated $3-4 billion. Lithuania had previously expressed its interest in continuing its nuclear program beyond the closure of the Soviet-era Ignalina nuclear power plant. © 2005 RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 36 BBC: Baltic states agree nuclear plant Last Updated: Monday, 27 February 2006 By Laura Sheeter BBC Baltic correspondent, Riga [Ignalina nuclear reactor] Ignalina currently provides most of Lithuania's electricity The three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have signed an agreement to build a new nuclear power plant in Lithuania. Their prime ministers said they wanted the Lithuanian, Estonian and Latvian state-owned energy companies each to take an equal share in the project. At present the Soviet-built Ignalina nuclear power plant generates more than 70% of Lithuania's electricity. It also supplies Estonia and Latvia with power. But as part of the deal which allowed Lithuania to join the European Union in 2004, Ignalina has to be closed down. That process will be complete by the end of 2009 - leaving the Baltic states reliant on Russian gas for almost all of their power. For countries which only gained independence from the Soviet Union 15 years ago, that has never been a popular prospect. And since the row between Ukraine and Russia which disrupted gas supplies to several European countries, there has been increasing political pressure on the Baltic leaders to find alternative sources of power. The agreement that the three prime ministers have signed also commits them to draw-up a pan-Baltic energy policy by the end of this year and to push for the development of a joint EU policy, which they hope would make them less vulnerable to any rise in the price of gas. However, it is on a new, large nuclear power plant that most hopes are pinned. But with few details as yet of how they will fund it, or even a firm decision on where it will be built, the Baltic states may face a gap between the closure of Ignalina and the opening of any new nuclear plant when they will have no choice but to rely on imported gas from Russia. ***************************************************************** 37 Pravda.Ru: China announces plans to build 32 nuclear power plants - 02/27/2006 12:17 Source: China will build 32 nuclear plants over the next 15 years in an effort to meet the country's burgeoning energy needs, more than doubling its reliance on the controversial source, the government said Monday. With the new plants, the country's nuclear generating capacity will reach 40 gigawatts and account for 4 percent of the nation's total, up from 1.59 percent now, the official China Securities Journal said, citing Shen Wenquan, vice director of the state-run China National Nuclear Corporation. China's government is investing heavily in nuclear power in an effort to meet its booming economy's surging power demands and limit its reliance on imported oil. The report Monday said that most of China's nuclear power plants are currently located in its highly developed coastal areas, and that it is considering building more in the interior hinterland, such as Sichuan province, reports the AP. I.L. © 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru». ***************************************************************** 38 Sofia Echo: Czech interest in Bulgarian power plants - Business news www.sofiaecho.com Mon 27 Feb 2006 - Business Staff CZECH company CEZ had realistic chances for obtaining the thermal power plant in Varna, Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev said on February 16. Stanishev led a Government delegation on a state visit to the Czech Republic on February 15-16. “CEZ has shown interest in the privatization of several Bulgarian thermal plants,” Roumen Ovcharov, Bulgarian Economy and Energy minister, said after meeting with his Czech counterpart Milan Urban in Prague. According to Ovcharov, CEZ was interested in the plants in Varna, Plovdiv, Pernik and Shoumen. CEZ has a history in the privatisation of the Varna thermal-power plant. Previously, CEZ had filed the second-best bid of 192 million euro for 67 per cent of the plant. Ranked first was the 390 million euro bid of the Russian company RAO UES, who eventually was withdrawn from the tender. The other candidates in the rally were Italy ‘s Enel, with a 151 million euro bid, and Greece ‘s PPC, with a bid at 132 million euro. Russia’s Gazprom has also expressed interest in the privatisation of the four thermal plants. Gazprom is also an indirect majority owner in one of the three firms forming the Skoda Alliance consortium, the other two firms being controlled by CEZ. The same day, Czech reporters quoted Stanishev as saying that CEZ had realistic chances for obtaining the plant in Varna. CEZ, as part of the Skoda Alliance consortium, is also one of the candidates for the construction of the Belene nuclear power plant in Bulgaria. An offer for Belene’s construction has been also submitted by Russia’s Atomstroyexport. During his visit, Stanishev received confirmations from the Czech leaders that Bulgaria will join the EU as scheduled on January 1 2007. Stanishev met cabinet members and business representatives who described Czech ties with Bulgaria as excellent and rapidly expanding. Stanishev, together with his Czech counterpart Jiri Paroubek, attended the opening of a Bulgaria-Czech business forum. Thirty companies from the tobacco and textile sectors represented Bulgaria, with the Czech part by some of its most influential domestic companies such as CEZ, Skoda, AZD Praha, Energo-Pro, Alexandria CK, the Czech Export Bank and others. Stanishev urged Czech investors to invest in Bulgaria and expressed his satisfaction that the Czech Republic was the tenth largest foreign investor in Bulgaria. Paroubek said that the tourism, energy and transport sectors in Bulgaria were of great interest for Czech investors. After the forum, Ovcharov and Urban signed an agreement for amendment of the Investment Protection Treaty signed by the two countries in 1999. © 2001-2006, Sofia Echo Media Ltd. ***************************************************************** 39 AFP: Japan to reward to S.Korea for support on ITER reactor Mon Feb 27, 5:32 AM ET TOKYO (AFP) - Japan is looking to reward South Korea with construction orders in a multibillion-dollar experimental nuclear project to reward Seoul for backing Tokyo's failed bid. After years of wrangling, France last year beat out Japan to host ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), a revolutionary project meant to create the energy of the future by emulating the power of the sun. "We are discussing allocating to South Korean companies, orders from what Japanese companies can get, considering factors such as the longstanding support we received from South Korea in our bid to host ITER," a science and technology ministry official said Monday. The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper reported that Japan has decided to give 20 percent, or about 11 billion yen (93 million dollars), worth of its ITER construction orders to the South Koreans. South Korea, which threw its support behind Japan before bilateral relations deteriorated last year in a row over history, had complained that only Tokyo won contracts as a consolation for losing the bid, the daily said. The United States also supported Japan's proposal to build ITER in northern Aomori prefecture. The European Union " /> 's successful bid to construct the reactor in the southern French town of Cadarache was backed by Russia and China. India is also involved in the project but joined after the French site was chosen. ITER, which is expected to cost 10 billion euros (12 billion dollars) over 30 years, seeks to create energy that would be cheap, clean, safe and almost infinite. Instead of splitting the atom -- the principle behind current nuclear plants -- the project seeks to harness nuclear fusion, the power of the sun and the stars. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 40 Roanoke Times: Energy bill generates heat roanoke.com Tuesday, Monday, February 27, 2006 The legislation has something for everyone, but some would get more than others. By Tim Thornton   381-1669 Gas- and oil-drilling rigs and electricity-generating windmills off the coast. A liquid natural gas port and oil refineries onshore. Nuclear and coal-fired power plants and more windmills inland. Solar panels. Tax breaks for energy-efficient appliances and clean-running, gas-sipping cars. All this and more is part of the vision of Virginia's future that Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, lays out in his Virginia Energy Plan. It's a vision that disturbs environmentalists. "The Virginia Energy Plan was basically written by big energy companies like AEP and Dominion to basically subsidize their existence," Sierra Club activist Joshua Low said last week. Wagner prefers to describe his bill as dealing with immediate energy needs through traditional sources while trying to develop alternatives for the future. "We don't have an energy shortage in this country," Wagner said. "We have an energy policy problem that creates an energy shortage." Everyone knew the United States' energy system was flawed, he said. Hurricane Katrina and the surge in fuel prices that followed made those flaws impossible to ignore. While the nation's energy policy has problems, Virginia doesn't have an energy policy. Wagner's legislation would change that by developing a 10-year road map. It addresses virtually every aspect of energy use and production and even offers some advice to the federal government. "It's a pretty broad-based approach and it addresses a lot of things," said Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, who is co-sponsoring Wagner's bill. Bell called an energy policy critical to the state's economy. Michael Town, director of the state chapter of the Sierra Club, agrees the state needs an energy plan. He's just not sure this is the right plan. The Sierra Club is concerned about the bill's support for offshore drilling and the way it overrides local government in the siting of liquid natural gas terminals, nuclear power plants and windmills. The plan doesn't say enough about conservation, either, in Town's opinion. "I'm sure there are some people who have heartburn with some parts of it," Bell said. "But that's true of a lot of bills we vote on." How much heartburn a person has, Bell suggested, depends on their perspective. From Cale Jaffe's perspective, the legislation has "a host of problems." The biggest, said Jaffe, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville, is the bill's promotion of offshore drilling. "It's a bit of a smoke-and-mirrors campaign," he said. Even if the most optimistic estimates prove to be accurate, Jaffe said, Virginia's coast won't produce enough oil or gas to affect energy prices in the commonwealth. "Unless Virginia is going to start out-producing Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela, we're not going to move the ball much," he said. If the legislation passes, the money Virginia would receive for drilling and other energy-related activity would be divided among transportation (40 percent), water quality (40 percent), coal research (5 percent) and alternative energy research (15 percent split among three programs). Michael Karmis, director of the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research, is more positive about the legislation. The Virginia Tech-based center would be intimately involved in developing the state's energy plan if Wagner's legislation passes. The center would also get more research money, particularly for clean coal. "Clean coal is a much broader term than most people appreciate," Karmis said. The term includes advanced technology such as the gasification of hydrogen from coal for use in fuel cells, he said. Created by the General Assembly in 1977, the center's board includes the biggest energy companies and some of the biggest energy users in Virginia. The Virginia Mining Association is represented on that board. Dink Shackleford, the association's executive director, called Wagner's bill "a move in the right direction." "Anything any of us can do to save and develop clean energy sources is almost a duty now," Shackleford said. "But we need a lot of energy and just saving some on heating cost or some lower-using electrical appliances are just not going to get us out of this. "When the rubber hits the road, it's coal that comes out as the best way to meet Virginia's energy needs. We can encourage these other technologies and their development, but they are many years out and can't really meet the huge demand that the entire country is facing." The Sierra Club's Town sees the legislation's concentration on conventional energy sources as one of its weaknesses. "This is a way to promote more fossil fuel use," Town said. And burning so much fossil fuel, he said, created many of the country's energy and environmental problems. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, fossil fuels generated 62.5 percent of Virginia's electricity in 2003. Nuclear power accounted for 33.6 percent. Hydroelectric plants provided 2.4 percent. Renewable sources such as wind accounted for 1.5 percent. Nationally, nuclear power accounted for less than 20 percent of electricity generation. Renewables and hydroelectric plants produced nearly 10 percent. Wagner's legislation would do more than promote fossil fuel. It would create a consortium to study alternative energy sources; set up a system to provide grants for alternative energy research; and provide tax breaks for people who buy energy-efficient cars. "I think it's really an attempt at green-washing," said Jaffe, "making it look like a more environmental bill than it is." The new alternative-energy consortium would be funded by offshore drilling proceeds. It would share that funding with the Water Quality Improvement Fund, the Transportation Fund, clean coal research and the alternative energy research grant program. To qualify for the tax break, cars would have to get more than 40 miles per gallon according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's combined mileage estimates. They would also have to be "super-ultra-low-emissions vehicles." According to the EPA's Web site, only four 2006 cars meet the 40 mpg requirement. Only three of them meet the SULEV standard. None of them is sold in Virginia. Karmis said the legislation would stimulate research and planning. "Essentially," he said, "it allows Virginia to do some short-term and long-term energy thinking." Town thinks the General Assembly needs to do more long-term thinking about this bill. He would like to use it as the starting point in a discussion about Virginia's energy policy, but he'd like to see the bill carried over to the legislature's 2007 session so legislators would have time to study it. "I don't think legislators want to go home and find out there were things in this legislation they didn't know were there." This bill could shape Virginia's energy policy for the next 20 years, Town said. "I don't think they need to do that in the next 20 days." The Roanoke Times ***************************************************************** 41 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Russia to host nuclear safty meeting IranNews Tehran Times Iran Daily 2006/02/27 09:18:36 Ţ.Ů Moscow, Feb 27 - Russia said Sunday it would host a month-long conference beginning this week on improving nuclear security, organized jointly with the Intenational Atomic Energy Agency. The conference, organized under the aegis of Russia's presidency of the Group of Eight countries, seeks to develop measures for IAEA member countries to take to improve nuclear security, the Russian Nuclear and Environmental Inspection Agency said in a statement. Representatives of IAEA member countries and international organizations are expected to attend the conference, which begins Tuesday, in Moscow. mk Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Network ***************************************************************** 42 [du-list] Veterans with MS speak of problems a bill seeks to Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:06:42 -0800 SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/260379_ms22.html Veterans with MS speak of problems a bill seeks to cure Wednesday, February 22, 2006 By MIKE BARBER P-I REPORTER Shortly after Christmas, a civilian doctor diagnosed Harry White III with multiple sclerosis. In one way, it was a relief for the 35-year-old Army veteran of Panama and the 1991 Persian Gulf War to have an answer for the sapping fatigue and work-related injuries he was enduring. White told U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., on Tuesday that his experience was also one of discouragement and frustration as he usually wound up in a Veterans Affairs clinic to be checked for post-traumatic stress disorder instead of MS. "My immediate reaction was shock," White recalled of the MS diagnosis Dec. 29, almost 15 years to the month after he served in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War. "To be honest, I began to think negatively -- how am I supposed to tell my wife?" White said. "My pride had kept me from seeking out what was wrong with me. People thought I was faking. I thought if I pursued it would mean I was going crazy," he said of the difficulties that veterans, especially men, face in coming forward. "I didn't want to admit that," said White, of Tacoma, who was among a group of similarly afflicted veterans and an MS expert who testified at a hearing Murray held at the Seattle federal building. Murray is gathering information to bolster legislation she introduced in December aimed at all MS veterans, especially for those among the nearly 700,000 veterans of Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield in 1991. Those veterans have suffered neurological disorders in disproportionate numbers. MS is difficult to diagnose. Far harder is to determine what caused it. Still, Murray said she would rather have the nation err on the side of veterans. She wants the seven-year window after a veteran is discharged from the military, during which veterans can seek a service-connected disability for MS, to be widened or eliminated. The many symptoms of the incurable, mysterious neurological disease often take longer to manifest, said Murray, whose father, a WWII veteran, had MS. Yet under current federal guidelines for service-connected benefits, "If it is seven years and a day, you are not eligible." Murray will attach her bill as an amendment to this year's veterans budget package. Gary Pearson, a Coast Guard veteran and president of the Northwest Chapter of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, was among several veterans in wheelchairs who attended. Pearson told Murray that Gulf War veterans with MS have to run the same frustrating gantlet for recognition that Korean War veterans did for frost injuries, Cold War veterans did for radiation sickness, and Vietnam veterans did for post-traumatic stress disorder. "The VA should not have one standard and America another," Pearson said. He said 28,000 veterans nationwide from all wars have service-connected MS -- 4,000 of them in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska region, about 400 of them in the VA's Puget Sound Health Care System. Julie Mock of Bothell, an Army veteran with MS and president of the National Gulf War Veterans Resource Center, said, "Twenty-five percent of the nearly 700,000 veterans who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War are ill." The potential suspects are an array of toxins ranging from anthrax vaccinations and depleted uranium to smoke from burning oil wells and Iraqi sarin nerve gas accidentally destroyed by U.S. forces at an ammunition dump. --------------------------------- P-I reporter Mike Barber can be reached at 206-448-8018 or mikebarber@seattlepi.com. © 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. ***************************************************************** 43 [du-list] U hotspot in Prospect Park, UK attributed to Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:06:36 -0800 And, if it was the concrete dust due to local construction, then there ought to be other instances in the record. Nothing like repeated coincidence to help establish causality. --------------------------------------------------------- Park radiation hotspot 'due to fallout from Iraq bombing' Feb 23 2006 RADIATION monitors in Prospect Park picked up a 400% increase in uranium levels during the "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign against Iraq. Scientists who used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover the data say it proves the toxic battlefield fallout was blown towards Reading on the wind. But the Environment Agency says the huge increase in atmospheric uranium is a coincidence. It suggests local building work might be responsible. Chris Busby, a government adviser on radiation, said: "This research shows that rather than remaining near the target, as claimed by the military, depleted uranium weapons contaminate both locals and whole populations hundreds to thousands of miles away." Dr Busby, from Liverpool University's department of human anatomy and cell biology, said weapons grade uranium consists of extremely small ceramic particles, and there is mounting medical evidence linking it to birth defects and cancer. He said: "You may say it's a very small risk, perhaps one in 100,000, but there's a lot of people in Europe, so you could be dealing with a lot of dead babies." The data used in his report has been routinely collected by AWE Aldermaston since the early 1990s, originally to reassure the public that its own operations were safe. Figures were published regularly until 1999. But after a 2004 request for information was ignored by AWE, scientists resorted to the FOI Act to get what they wanted. And despite asking for figures covering 2000-2004, when it arrived, data from the Gulf War period was missing. Eventually, the scientists allege, the information curiously arrived from the Defence Procurement Agency and not the Ministry of Defence itself. The Environment Agency was asked to investigate the abnormal readings in March and April 2003, but spokesman Emma Cassidy this week denied there is anything to worry about. She said: "It was shown the uranium wasn't anything to do with AWE and it was completely natural. It was not linked to AWE and could not have come from MOD shells. "It was a natural source and wasn't at levels that cause health concerns." Miss Cassidy pointed out that cement contains radiation, adding: "It was noted that construction was ongoing at the time the readings were taken." http://icberkshire.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0300reading/tm_objectid=16738055&method=full&siteid=50102&headline=park-radiation-hotspot--due-to-fallout-from-iraq-bombing--name_page.html Copyright and Trade Mark Notice © owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror Plc 2006 icBerkshireTM is a trade mark of Trinity Mirror Plc. To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. ***************************************************************** 44 [du-list] QUEEN'S DEATH STAR.. DU Contaminates Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:20:22 -0800 THE QUEEN'S DEATH STAR Depleted Uranium Measured in British Atmosphere from Battlefields in the Middle East February 24, 2006 By Leuren Moret The Sunday Times Online, February 19, 2006, reported on a shocking scientific study authored by British scientists Dr. Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan: “Did the use of Uranium weapons in Gulf War 2 result in contamination of Europe? Evidence from the measurements of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK”. The highest levels of depleted uranium ever measured in the atmosphere in Britain, were transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia; of special significance were those from the Tora Bora bombing in Afghanistan in 2001, and the “Shock & Awe” bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003. Out of concern for the public, the official British government air monitoring facility, known as the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), at Aldermaston was established years ago, to measure radioactive emissions from British nuclear power plants and atomic weapons facilities. The British government facility (AWE) was taken over 3 years ago by Halliburton, which refused at first to release air monitoring data, as required by law, to Dr. Busby. An international expert on low level radiation, Busby serves as an official advisor on several British government committees, and co-authored an independent report on low level radiation with 45 scientists, the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), for the European Parliament. He was able to get Aldermaston air monitoring data from Halliburton /AWE by filing a Freedom of Information request using a new British law which became effective January 1, 2005; but the data for 2003 was missing. He obtained the 2003 data from the Defence Procurement Agency. Continued: DEATH STAR: Depleted Uranium Measured in British Atmosphere from Battlefields in the Middle East http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/6656081.html Depleted Uranium Hazard Awareness http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/6616638.html UK radiation jump blamed on Iraq http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/6616162.html CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/ http://www.dailykos.com/user/ccnwon MARC PARENT CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/ http://www.dailykos.com/user/ccnwon [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. ***************************************************************** 45 [du-list] strontium 90 Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:07:21 -0800 *DID YOU KNOW? (by Robin Mills) 1. The Tooth Fairy Project* Strontium 90 mimics calcium. Plants can not tell the difference due to their similiarities. Large quantities of radioactive strontium 90 were spread over our planet by nuclear weapons testing in the 1940's and 1950's. Plants have been bioaccumulating (concentrating) this strontium 90 and then we eat those plants. Our bodies are also fooled by strontium 90. In a breakthrough study done in 1958 by Barry Commoner and others, it was shown that the teeth of every baby in the country had some level of strontium 90 accumulation. When this information was released, it caused such a stir that it is sometimes cited as the real reason for the above ground test ban treaty. Strontium 90 is a radioactive fission product produced by either nuclear weapons or nuclear bombs. Before the first fissioning in the 1940's, strontium 90 did not exist on our planet. It is a totally man made element with a half life of 28 years. This relatively middle range half life is part of the reason strontium 90 is so dangerous, along with its similiarity to calcium. Even very small quantities of strontium 90, when incorporated into a persons teeth and bones, would be doing great damage internally. Women also accumulate large quantities of calcium in their breast milk. If strontium 90is bioaccumulating in womens breasts, it could account for the rise in breast cancer. The only reasonable course of action is to oppose any further production of this dangerous element. *2. The Peace Farm * The Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas is a large federal facility where the United States assembles all of its nuclear weapons. This 3000 acre site is 3600 feet above sea level on the billiard table flat high plains. Average annual rainfall of about 15 inches makes the area a semi-arid grassland that produces crops mostly through irrigation from the Ogallala aquifer. Since the end of the cold war, instead of assembling nuclear weapons, the facility has been dismantling about 1500 nuclear weapons per year. At the core of each of these dismantled nuclear weapons is the trigger, a hollow sphere of plutonium commonly called a pit. These pits weigh ten to fifteen pounds, so the approximately 15,000 pits currently stored at Pantex equals near to 50 tons of plutonium. Across the street from Pantex is the 20 acre Peace Farm. The Peace Farm is a watchdog group that formed in 1982. The current director of the Peace Farm is Mavis Belisle, a veteran peace activist originally from the Dallas area. The big issues now for the Peace Farm are safe storage of the plutonium, making sure the weapons are safely dismantled and the ongoing contamination of the Ogallala aquifer. The Peace Farm helps put out a monthly newsletter, the Nuclear Examiner. It is a membership organization with about a thousand members who each pay $25 per year. Over the past 18 years the Peace Farm has accumulated a 2000 square foot meeting house, a small library building, two old mobile homes, several sheds and a straw bale sculpted artwork surrounding a statue of mother earth. Guests are welcome to come and stay for brief visits if arrangements are made in advance. Over the past 18 years there have been numerous demonstrations in front of the gates of Pantex, an annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration, hundreds of meeting and hearings have been attended, and the neighbors have been organized to defend themselves against the threat that Pantex represents. *3. Fernald Is Shut Down * Spiderworts are low growing plants with blue and yellow flowers. Japanese researchers noticed that spiderworts around Hiroshima and Nagasaki exhibited an unusual number of defects in the flower staymen. The usually pink staymen had more blue mutations around Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tens of thousands of spiderworts were planted and tested each year, which eventually gave an estimate of the radiation in any area. These spiderworts (tradescantia ohiensis) are essentially radiation sensing devices. In 1984, after having stopped the Zimmer nuclear plant, local activists were made aware of the Fernald uranium processing facility near Cincinnati. Cows grazed around the plant which is located in rural Hamilton county. The Fernald plant took the uranium hexaflouride that Oak Ridge enriched, and onverted it into uranium metal and shaped it into fuel rods for the plutonium production reactors at Hanford and Savannah River. Fernald was a link in the nuclear weapons pipeline. Several demonstrations were held at the gate of Fernald in 1984 and 1985, but perhaps the planting of spiderworts first broke the veil of silence around the plant. Members of the Ohio Nuclear Weapons Awareness Group (ONWAG) and University Citizens Against a Radioactive Environment (UCARE) decided to try planting thousands of plants around Fernald over a weekend that included demonstrations against the plant at the gate. We went door to door asking Fernalds neighbors if we could plant a spiderwort in their yards, distributing thousands over a weekend. The little plants started a tital wave which forced the plant to close just two years later, 1986. So many of the neighbors were concerned that they formed Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH). The leader of FRESH, Lisa Crawford, convinced Senator John Glenn to look into the situation at Fernald. What he found was an admission that 20,000 pounds of uranium had been released (1984), then 200,000 pounds of uranium had been lost (1985), and again 2 million pounds had been misplaced (1986) to the final truth today, over ten million pounds of uranium dust and uranium hexaflouride contaminated the Great Miami River and about ten square miles around it heavily. The people who live around Ross, Ohio will have to live with that contamination forever. Buildings are being dismantled. A waste vitrification plant blew up after a pressure relief valve clogged with condensed glass. It is a big secret that all the Manhattan project nuclear waste ended up in waste silos at Fernald!, and they are trying to deal with that too. The reason the little plants worked was that the Fernald workers and owners believed that we had radiation detectors placed all around them. They were surrounded. The truth is we psyched them out. None of us ever went back to test those spiderworts. *4. Nuclear Waste Dump Is Stopped * Sierra Blanca is a small town of about 400 people way out in arid west Texas. After a bitter battle eight years ago, Sierra Blanca became the end of the line for the Poo Poo Choo Choo. New York City produces millions of tons of sewage sludge. They were looking for a place to put it. Currently they ship it by barge to Corpus Christi, then load it on the Poo Poo Choo Choo which takes the sludge to Sierra Blanca. Actually, a 500 acre site northwest of town a few hundred yards. After the shit came to town, promoters tried for nuclear waste. The state of Texas is in a low level nuclear waste disposal Compact with the states of Maine and New Hampshire, and the state selected an area just southeast of Sierra Blanca for its planned dumpsite. Activists formed the Sierra Blanca Legal Defense Fund to stop the dump. The dump was supposed to be in a clay lined pit fifty feet deep, 200 feet wide and about 500 feet long. Waste would arrive in barrels and be buried with bulldozers. This part of west Texas gets less than 10 inches of rain a year and is technically part of the Chihuahua desert. The site was also only 5 miles to the border with Mexico, which is what stopped it. Activists were eventually able to show that the dumpsite violated the environmental provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement and organized the Mexican side of the border to press that point through. The state of Texas abandoned the Sierra Blanca site early this year. No nuclear waste has or will ever be dumped there. *5. Plutonium Fuel Stockholder Actions * Anti-nuclear stockholder actions have been around since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. In the early 1980's there were hundreds of proposals submitted to companies trying to get them to get out of nuclear, deal with the waste and better monitor releases. The number of proposals has dropped off in the 1990's. Recently I attempted several anti-nuclear proposals at nuclear utilities. In 1997 I was attending an anti-nuclear training session at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER). Pat Birnie was also attending the session. She has been doing anti-nuclear stockholder actions against General Electric for many years. During a special idea session about plutonium (MOX) fuel she suggested we attack the plan by using a stockholder action. That fall I received some inheritance in the form of utility company stocks, including Commonwealth Edison (10 reactors), Philadelphia Electric (5 reactors) and Duke Energy (7 reactors). At that time, all three utilities were in the running to get the government contract to use the plutonium fuel. Since then the contract has gone to Duke Energy. The rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission are very specific concerning stockholder actions. Proposals must be submitted six months or more before the company shareholder meeting and can be not more than 500 words long. Groups or individuals must have over $2000. worth of stock and have owned it for more than one year and promise to continue holding the stock through the meeting. Copies of the proposal and a legalistic cover letter must be sent by registered mail to the SEC and the company secretary. I found several other stockholders who owned stock in these and other companies, a nd in the fall of 1998 we filed our first action against plutonium fuel. The proposal at Duke Energy went rather well. The company tried to squash the proposal citing technicalities, and we were able to convince the SEC to allow the proposal. We gave a good speech at the stockholders meeting. The proposal got 7.7% of the vote. There are about 300 million shares and a quarter million shareholders. Our 500 word proposal was printed in the proxy statement that was mailed to all the shareholders. Our 7.7% represented over 19 million shares valued at over a billion dollars (out of a company worth of about $15 billion). So, while we did lose, we got a good forum to present our ideas. SEC rules stipulate that a proposal can be resubmitted the next year if it gets over 3%. In the fall of 1999 we submitted another, better worded proposal. We also wrote to many of the big owners of Duke Energy asking them to support the proposal. In the spring of this year we attended our second Duke shareholders meeting. With this second proposal we got a group of almost a dozen people to join together in submitting the proposal to the SEC and company. We organized to go to the meeting together and in force. Unfortunately, on April 20th, we received only 4.5% of the vote from the shareholders. This unexpected drop in percentage means we can not submit the proposal for a third year. We needed 6% for that. Our analysis of why we failed this second year is that the company lobbied heavily against us. The vote was not a secret vote. They had all the results and lobbied those individuals and companies that had voted with us the first year, convincing many of our supporters to abandon us. We also did not do a good enough job of communicating with and identifying our supporters and positions. Overall though the action was very cost effective for the number of people we reached with our message. 6. License Extension Stockholder Action When nuclear power plants get their licenses to operate, it has always been for 40 years. The logic to this is that after that much time the whole plant will have become radioactive from radiolytic byproducts. These radioactive parts are more brittle. Pipes could shatter like glass. Recently there has been the action from the nuclear industry to extend the licenses of their nuclear plants past the originally planned 40 years to 60 total years. This extra 20 years is called 'License Extension'. Several new england plants tried for license extension and were stopped. In 1998 Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BG&E) applied for a license extension for it's Calvert Cliffs nuclear plants. Unit 1 opened in 1974 and unit 2 in 1976. In the fall of 1998 I initiated a stockholder action against this license extension. I found two other people with BG&E stock and we submitted a good proposal against license extension. We talked about pipe and reactor vessel embrittlement, the higher radioactivity of the plant and the extra 20 years worth of nuclear waste. Our call for opposition to license extension received 4.3% of the stockholder vote. There are about 200,000 BG&E stockholders. The anti-license extension proposal was sent to all of them in the proxy statement. The cost effectiveness in reaching all the stockholders with our message was good, but we don't know how many of them actually read the proxy statement. * 7. Radioactive Isotopes Are Killing Us * Most matter on our planet is stable elements, including oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and iron. Each element has a number of protons and neutrons which when added up equal the atomic mass number of the element. Thus stable oxygen is 16 Atomic Mass Units (AMU), hydrogen is 1, nitrogen is 14, and carbon is 12. There are also unstable radioactive elements called isotopes. An atom is radioactive if it decays into some other form over a period of time. There are naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM's), including potassium 40, radon and uranium isotopes, all in very small quantities. Until the 1940's there was no strontium 90, no iodine 131 and no iron 59 anywhere on planet earth. These isotopes are totally man made from the fissioning of uranium and plutonium. Some of these new materials are playing havoc with the human body. Our bodies selectively absorb nutrients from the environment around us through what we eat and breathe. Never before have human bodies encountered these newly made isotopes. It turns out that strontium 90 is chemically very similar to stable calcium and that our bodies are absorbing and concentrating it like it was calcium. This radioactive material is then inside us doing great damage to the organs in which it is concentrated, breast, bones and sex glands. There is more than one way this internal radiation is damaging us. Cancers and leukemias are one possible damage. Birth defects and retardation (teratogenic defects) are another source of damage. A reduction in the resistance of our immune systems is a third source of danger. Children and fetuses are much more likely to suffer damage than adults. The tooth fairy project has detected both plutonium and strontium 90 in the teeth of babies worldwide. This is the result of the spread of these materials by nuclear weapons testing. An estimated five tons of plutonium have been spread over planet earth by the detonation of about 2000 nuclear weapons in the 1940's through 1990's. Many other isotopes also now contaminate our food chain. Strontium 90 has a half life of 28 years while cesium 137 has a half life of 30 years. Technetium 99 and iodine 131 are also isotopes of concern to human health. Radioactive iodine is suspected of causing thyroid cancer, so stable iodine is distributed to the public after a nuclear accident to saturate the thyroid so the radioactive iodine is not absorbed. -- Think virtue. Teach virtue. Live virtue Lightheartedness Assertiveness Faithfulness Kindness Respect Caring Flexibility Love Responsibility Cleanliness Forgiveness Reverence Compassion Friendliness Mercy Self-discipline Confidence Generosity Moderation Service Consideration Gentleness Modesty Steadfastness Courage Helpfulness Obedience Tact Courtesy Honesty Orderliness Thankfulness Creativity Honor Patience Tolerance Detachment Humility Peacefulness Trust Determination Idealism Prayerfulness Trustworthiness Enthusiasm Joyfulness Purposefulness Truthfulness Excellence Justice Reliability Unity. "Seek the truth. Speak the Truth Support the Truth" Steve Moyer Web site: http://qualitychoices.us/stevemoyer Blog: http://purl.net/net/nodes/steve/blog 802-496-8917 RR1 Box 60, Warren, VT 05674 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. ***************************************************************** 46 [du-list] Hearings scheduled on Nuclear Workers Benefits Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:06:45 -0800 Hello all As you are finding out the compensation bill is know better in the hands of DOL as it was with DOE like we said when DOL took over it wasn't gone to help the sick and dying workers but stall the process while more workers would die before getting any compensation. For over two years now I have been awarded two of my illnesses from the physician panel to date I have not been paid a single penny. The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio contractors and the state of Ohio still fight my workers compensation claim that has been award for many job related illness from the chemicals and radiation exposures that I received when working at the Piketon plant even through the State of Ohio had award me compensation for the illness. I am still paying for medication that is related to the award claim. I am not aware of any workers being paid for toxic chemical radiation illnesses from the EEOICPA of 2000 unless they got cancer and many of these cancer patients haven't seen a penny either. Please feel free to call me anytime my number is 740-353-2275. If you can't reach me than call my cell phone 740-357-8916. Many workers are still fighting health issues. It is a crime what the government is doing to the sick and dying workers around the sites of the Nuclear Plants. Remember they admitted that the companies withheld information to protect the workers at the Nuclear Plants. It was know fault of the workers that the government let them be exposed without protecting them. www.nnwj.com Vina Hearings scheduled on nuclear workers' benefits By NANCY ZUCKERBROD The Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's efforts to limit benefits for Cold War­era nuclear weapons workers will be the focus of a congressional hearing next week, Rep. John Hostettler, R­Ind., announced Wednesday. Hostettler, chairman of a House Judiciary subcommittee, said he is holding the March 1 hearing because of concerns about a White House Office of Management and Budget document that discusses stemming the cost of the compensation program. The document, first reported by the Associated Press, notes that groups of sick nuclear workers may soon receive automatic compensation. Such groups are known as special exposure cohorts. They consist of workers with certain kinds of cancer who were at facilities where record keeping was too poor to determine how much radiation workers were exposed to, including some former nuclear weapons employees who worked between 1949 and 1974 at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. An advisory board is to recommend in April whether workers at IAAP and other facilities in Colorado, Tennessee and the Marshall Islands should be automatically compensated. They would get $150,000 plus medical benefits under the five­year­old program. The budget document states that a White House­led interagency group will consider requiring administration clearance of benefits decisions and a review of who sits on the advisory board. "Actions that undercut the claimants' trust, whether real or perceived, such as replacing board members with individuals who will advance the goal of benefit cuts is contrary to congressional intent," Hostettler said. "If the OMB should become the final determining body for the approval of these scientific decisions, each special exposure cohort denial will not survive public scrutiny and the program's credibility will be further diminished in the eyes of these workers." Hostettler said the hearing also would focus on how the compensation program is operating. A recent report by the program's ombudsman cited claimants' frustrations, including concerns about speed of decisions and a requirement that workers locate old records. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. ***************************************************************** 47 [du-list]ALERT: HR4184: Call your representative Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:08:23 -0800 Following is the newest DU testing bill in Congress. Note the very important phrase "veterans of service in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent conflicts shall be considered to be radiation-exposed veterans" --------------------------------------------------- The third DU testing bill in Congress is HR4184 introduced by Rep Filner on 11/1/05. It has 5 co-sponsors: (Tell your representative in Congress to show support and become a co- sponsor now.) Rep Brady, Robert A. [PA-1] - 11/15/2005 Rep Engel, Eliot L. [NY-17] - 11/15/2005 Rep Harman, Jane [CA-36] - 1/31/2006 Rep Hinchey, Maurice D. [NY-22] - 11/15/2005 Rep Peterson, Collin C. [MN-7] - 11/15/2005 Tell your representative that this bill is one of extreme importance to veterans. You Were There, You Get Care Act of 2005 (Introduced in House) HR 4184 IH 109th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 4184 To amend title 38, United States Code, to provide that veterans of service in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent conflicts shall be considered to be radiation-exposed veterans for purposes of the service-connection of certain diseases and disabilities, and for other purposes. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES November 1, 2005 Mr. FILNER introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs A BILLTo amend title 38, United States Code, to provide that veterans of service in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent conflicts shall be considered to be radiation-exposed veterans for purposes of the service-connection of certain diseases and disabilities, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the `You Were There, You Get Care Act of 2005'. SEC. 2. RADIATION EXPOSURE PRESUMPTIONS FOR VETERANS WHO SERVED IN THE 1991 PERSIAN GULF WAR AND SUBSEQUENT CONFLICTS. (a) Presumptions- Section 1112(c) of title 38, United States Code, is amended--(1) by adding at the end of paragraph (2) the following new paragraph:`(V) Any other disease that is covered under section 3.309 or 3.311 of title 38 of the Code of Federal Regulations and any other disease found by the Secretary to result from exposure to depleted uranium or the by-products of the burn-off that occurs when a depleted uranium munition penetrates a target.'; and(2) by adding at the end of paragraph (3)(B) the following new clause:`(v) Service during the Persian Gulf War or any subsequent conflict in which depleted uranium munitions are used, if that service is in the theater of operations of that war or conflict or involved the clean- up or servicing of vehicles or equipment that had been in such a theater of operations.'.(b) Independent Civilian Medical Study- The Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall provide for the conduct by civilian medical entities independent of the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs of in-depth medical study to determine other diseases (in addition to those covered by section 1112 (c) of title 38, United States Code, as amended by subsection (a)(1)) that may result from exposure to depleted uranium . Upon receipt of the report providing the results of that independent study, the Secretary shall transmit a copy of the report to the Committees on Veterans' Affairs of the Senate and House of Representatives. --------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this groups send a message to du-list-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. In the body of the message type unsubscribe and send. ***************************************************************** 48 [du-list] Alternative Energy Report: New research debunks Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:19:53 -0800 UK PM Bliar tries "to fix the facts around" the nuclear energy option. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Green Party Press" ***Media Call***Photocall***Media Call***Photocall***Media Call*** Greens to launch Alternative Energy Report DATE: Tuesday 28th February TIME: Midday PLACE: 1 Birdcage Walk, London, SW1H 9JJ New research shows nuclear is inferior choice The report, co-authored by Dr David Toke, Green Party Energy Advisor, and Dr Simon Taylor, will add to the debate surrounding publication of the government's Energy Review. Green Party Principal Speaker Caroline Lucas MEP, commenting on the report said: "Tony Blair is determined to push this country down the nuclear route, based on two arguments: guaranteeing affordable energy supply, and reducing carbon emissions. The Alternative Energy Review proves what anti-nuclear campaigners have long suspected - that even using these criteria, nuclear power is the inferior choice. It shows that a twin-pronged investment in renewable alternatives and energy efficiency and conservation measures will not only deliver greater emissions reductions than nuclear power, it will deliver them more cheaply, and all without the huge safety risks inherent in the nuclear option." Green Party Principal Speaker Keith Taylor said: "The DTI's energy review is a token effort, aimed at legitimising a pre-determined decision to commission a new generation of nuclear power stations. "This report introduces some radical yet practical steps to combat emissions without expensive investment in unsustainable, uneconomic and unsafe nuclear power." Proposed measures include: - A Demand Reduction Obligation: extending the current Energy Efficiency Commitment to cover the commercial, industrial and public administration sectors - Expansion of the Renewables Obligation A range of measures are evaluated, specifying how much carbon and investment capital would be saved, with a net saving economically, compared to a nuclear option that will cost billions, even by optimistic industry figures. Dr Toke said: "The amount of carbon saved through 'fast tracked' nuclear power over the next 15 years will be around 28 million tonnes compared to 150 million via the cheaper measures mentioned. The non-nuclear measures cited constitute the equivalent of a reduction in annual CO2 emissions from the electricity sector of nearly 40 per cent of present levels." Keith Taylor added: "By implementing the measures proposed in this report we can save the present generation a huge hike in electricity bills and taxes, and the generations to come an unsolvable legacy of toxic nuclear waste." ENDS From Green Party press office, 020 7561 0282. Published and promoted by Jim Killock for the Green Party, both at 1a Waterlow Road, London N19 5NJ. ***************************************************************** 49 ContraCostaTimes.com: Lawrence Livermore heavily fined for exposure incidents | 02/27/2006 | Posted on Mon, Feb. 27, 2006 By Betsy Mason CONTRA COSTA TIMES LIVERMORE - Lawrence Livermore Laboratory has been fined nearly $600,000 for incidents that exposed workers to plutonium and phosphorous during the last two years. This is the sixth time the lab has been cited for safety violations since the inception of the Department of Energy's nuclear safety enforcement program in 1995. The $588,500 fine is the highest ever received by the lab on its own, though it was one of several labs that shared a million-dollar citation in 2000. However, all the fines are waived by law because the lab's manager, the University of California, is a nonprofit institution. During the summer of 2004, five workers were repeatedly exposed to low levels of plutonium while working in a mobile facility that packages and transports radioactive waste. The exposure levels were well below regulatory limits, but had the potential to be higher "since work place controls were not adequate for the observed radiological conditions," according to a sternly worded letter dated Thursday to lab director Michael Anastasio from National Nuclear Security Administration head, Linton Brooks. In April 2005, a worker in a chemistry lab spilled radioactive phosphorous on his shoe, and instead of notifying the lab's hazard control team, he bagged up the shoe and closed up the lab for the weekend. The proper measures were taken the following Monday, according to lab spokesperson Susan Houghton. "It is absolutely unacceptable that both of these incidents occurred and we recognize that," Houghton said. The incidents along with other safety issues at the lab's plutonium facility such as taped-up cracks in the ventilation system and glove boxes used to handle plutonium without adequate seismic restraints precipitated a nine-month stand-down of operations at the facility that ended in November. In his letter, Brooks said the incidents and safety issues, and the lack of an appropriate response to those problems "demonstrate the need for significant improvement in LLNL's nuclear safety culture." Brooks also wrote that he was disappointed by the "long-standing and recurring nature" of the problems that "casts significant doubt on the Laboratory's ability to effectively analyze and correct performance problems." Lab officials responded with a statement Monday acknowledging the lab's role in the incidents and the need for "significant improvements in the Laboratory's safety culture." According to the statement, the lab has been working aggressively over the past year to correct the problems and avoid future incidents. The steps taken so far include new equipment and radiation protection procedures, employee training, a new office to track external assessments of the lab, and senior management tours of high-hazard activities. "Laboratory managers also are working to develop and implement a culture that encourages all employees to stop work at any time if safety could possibly be compromised," according to the statement. Betsy Mason covers science and the national laboratories. Reach her at 925-847-2158 or bmason@cctimes.com. The Contra Costa Times ***************************************************************** 50 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Dangerous Yucca proposal Today: February 27, 2006 at 8:5:14 PST Lobbying group wants to stuff even more nuclear waste into mountain near Las Vegas The Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based organization that lobbies on behalf of nuclear power plants, wants to make the specter of Yucca Mountain even worse than it has been for the past 20 years. Ever since Congress chose Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the only site in the country to be studied for its potential as a permanent burial ground for the nation's nuclear waste, its capacity for the deadly material has been capped at 77,000 tons. The Nuclear Energy Institute would like to see that raised, perhaps by as much as another 38,000 tons. Nevada has proven over the past two decades that any amount of waste buried underneath Yucca Mountain would be unsafe. Yucca Mountain, no matter how imposing it looks and no matter how dry the surrounding desert appears, would not be a sufficient barrier to ground water contamination. Energy Department scientists have developed what they say are high-tech casks to encase the waste to compensate for Yucca Mountain's geological inability to safely contain it. They have developed shields to protect the casks from dripping water. Yet none of the department's science has stood up, either in courtrooms, laboratories or in computer modeling tests. That is why Yucca Mountain is in limbo now, its federally projected date for opening suspended indefinitely. The Nuclear Energy Institute chooses to ignore the scientific findings by Nevada and researchers from outside the state. And it ignores Nevada's common-sense argument that transporting the waste to Yucca Mountain from the nation's 103 nuclear power plants would inevitably lead to a mass-casualty accident or act of terrorism at some point during the daily trips over a period of 25 years. Now the Nuclear Energy Institute is urging the Bush administration to increase the tonnage limit at Yucca Mountain. It says it could hold much more than 77,000 tons, perhaps as much as 115,000 tons. The danger in this request is that Bush, whose attitude toward Yucca is driven not by science but by political pressure from operators of nuclear power plants, just might agree. Nuclear waste should be stored right where it is, safely at the nuclear power plants, until a solution is found that is more sane than endangering Southern Nevada for the rest of time. All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 51 ABC News: Govt not fazed by uranium policy fusion. 27/02/2006. The Western Australian Government says it is not concerned leaders of the Labor and Liberal branches in the south-eastern mining centre of Kalgoorlie have united to promote the benefits of uranium mining. Both branch presidents have put their political differences aside to sponsor an information session on uranium mining and nuclear energy next month. The Labor State Government has maintained an anti-uranium policy since it came to power in 2001. Resources Minister and local, Goldfields MP John Bowler admits he was surprised at the move, but does not think it will undermine the Government's position on the issue. "No way, look this is typical Goldfields politics, you know, we're a bit different than the rest of the state, we always have a special allowance here, we're special people here and we do things a little bit differently," he said. 2006 ABC| Privacy Policy ***************************************************************** 52 ENN: U.S. Drops Objections to Chemical Weapon Wastewater Plan Environmental News Network February 27, 2006 — By Associated Press DOVER, Delaware — Citing new safety assurances, the Environmental Protection Agency has dropped objections to a plan to treat chemical weapon wastewater at a DuPont Co. plant and discharge it into the Delaware River. DuPont has been seeking a lucrative Army contract to treat 2 million (7.57 million) to 4 million gallons (15.14 million liters) of chemicals left over from a disposal operation in Indiana. Delaware and New Jersey opposed an earlier version of the plan. Officials feared that traces of VX nerve agent, other toxic byproducts and basic pollutants would reach the river even after treatment at a DuPont plant in New Jersey, across the river from Wilmington. A pinhead-size droplet of VX can quickly kill an adult. DuPont said it has since developed a new treatment step that would prevent toxic leftovers from escaping into the river. "EPA believes that all of our previously identified ecological concerns have been resolved," EPA official Walter Mugdan said in a letter released Friday that was obtained by The News Journal of Wilmington. A final report by analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected in April. Critics reacted with caution. "I'm skeptical in the sense that I need to review the evidence, and I think my staff has the same attitude," John A. Hughes, secretary of Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said late Friday. Source: Associated Press ***************************************************************** 53 Newsday: Brookhaven National Lab director to step down -- Newsday.com Feb 27, 2006 BY ERIK GERMAN STAFF WRITER The director of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Praveen Chaudhari, announced this month that he would step down effective April 30 to spend more time with his family and pursue his own scientific research at the lab. In the fall, Chaudhari, a metallurgist by training, oversaw the lab through hard financial times when budget shortfalls led officials to consider shutting down the relativistic heavy ion collider for 18 of its 30 scheduled weeks of operation in 2006. Physicists from around the world flock to the lab's Upton campus to use the collider, a 2.4-mile-long, ring-shaped superconductor that smashes ions together at nearly the speed of light. The device allows scientists to study subatomic particles in conditions resembling moments after the "big bang," which scientists say created the universe. During his three-year tenure as director, Chaudhari also supervised the lab as it completed several major environmental cleanup projects, including soil and ground water remediation, as well as the first phase of decommissioning the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor, one of the oldest nuclear reactors in the country. Officials at the lab praised Chaudhari's record as director and said blame for the money crunch lay elsewhere. "I don't think it was a Brookhaven problem or a Brookhaven leadership problem," said Sam Aronson, assistant lab director for high energy and nuclear physics. "Our recent problems had to do with the way funding for physical sciences is done throughout the country." Officials said the lab -- with its $497 million yearly budget and 2,650 employees -- would be run by an interim director if a candidate possessing the right mix of qualities is not found before April 30. "Running a national lab is tricky," Aronson said. "It takes that mix of political skills and scientific credentials to be successful." http://www.newsday.com. and Privacy Policy. Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************