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Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject
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NUCLEAR POLICY
1 American Chronicle: THE REAL WMD'S IN IRAQ - OURS
2 IPS-English IRAN-NUCLEAR PROGRAMME: In the eye of the storm,
3 [southnews] CIA gave Iranians blueprint for Nuclear Bomb
4 [NYTr] Iran: The CIA's Flawed Nuke Blueprint Caper
5 Guardian Unlimited: US refuses to discuss Iran's nuclear plans in
6 New York Times: Iran Claims Nuclear Steps in New Worry -
7 AFP: Iran set to ignore UN demand for nuclear freeze
8 AFP: Iran set to ignore UN demand for nuclear freeze
9 AFP: Gulf Arab states will oppose US strike on Iran - Rafsanjani -
10 AFP: US concerned about Iran's claim of advanced nuclear research -
11 AFP: Iranian official in Washington for ... who knows?
12 Guardian Unlimited: Rafsanjani Scoffs at Talk of U.S. Attack
13 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Claims It's Testing a New Centrifuge
14 US: New York Times: Bombs That Would Backfire -
15 US: New York Times: 'The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Pos
16 US: WP: Big Rewards for Defense Firms
17 US: ICT: Western Shoshone oppose planned 700-ton detonation
18 US: DNFSB: FOIA Fee schedule
19 AFP:Indian military kicks off nuclear warfare conference -
NUCLEAR REACTORS
20 US: Media Rebuttal Re More NPPs Needed [19 More In S.E. USA]
21 US: NRC: NRC Completes Technical Review of Grand Gulf Early Site Per
22 Moscow Times: U.K. Report Spurns Nuclear Energy
23 RIA Novosti: Rosatom denies bid for Siloviye Mashiny shares
24 RIA Novosti: Russian experts build Chernobyl disaster simulator
25 RIA Novosti: Lessons of Chernobyl - heeded and unheeded
26 US: Rutland Herald: Review says Yankee operated safely in '05
27 Sofia Echo: British nuclear group interested in Bulgaria's energy se
28 AU ABC: Chernobyl's effects linger 20 years on -
29 St. Petersburg Times: Nuclear Textbook Provokes Debate
30 ITAR-TASS: Vladimir Putin awards 18 participants in Chernobyl clean-
31 SPIEGEL ONLINE: Chernobyl's Aftermath: The Pompeii of the Nuclear Ag
32 The Telegraph: India rejects US condition
33 icWales: Show will reveal Chernobyl errors
34 UPI: French minister sees nuclear future
35 Guardian Unlimited: Blair hints at go-ahead for new nuclear power pl
NUCLEAR SECURITY
NUCLEAR SAFETY
36 US: Deseret News: Matheson objects to plans for blast in Nevada
37 US: Spectrum: Baby Tooth Survey interesting story in downwinder saga
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
38 reviewjournal.com: The arbitrary science of Yucca Mountain
39 Energy Central: The Enduring Battle to Climb Yucca Mountain
40 US: AKIpress: Russia may offer Kyrgyzstan joint production of uraniu
41 Guardian Unlimited: DTI tries to stifle row over cost of British Ene
PEACE
US DEPT. OF ENERGY
42 DOE: [Docket No. AD06-6-000; Docket No. RM01-10-005; Docket No.
43 KnoxNews: Y-12 completes first work on B-61 bombs
44 Knox News: Haselwood companies emerge from need to contribute
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FULL NEWS STORIES
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1 American Chronicle: THE REAL WMD'S IN IRAQ - OURS
Monday, April 17, 2006
Douglas Westerman
Weapons of mass destruction are all over Iraq. Iraqi children
are playing among them every day. According to Iraqi doctors,
many are developing cancer as a result. The WMD in question is
depleted uranium (DU). Left over after natural uranium has been
processed, DU is 1.7 times denser than lead - effective in
penetrating armored vehicles such as tanks. After a DU shell
strikes, it penetrates before exploding into a burning vapor
that turns to dust.
"Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.7 billion years - that
means thousands upon thousands of Iraqi children will suffer for
tens of thousands of years to come. This is what I call
terrorism," says Dr Ahmad Hardan.
As a special scientific adviser to the World Health
Organization, the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of
Health, Dr Hardan is the man who documented the effects of
depleted uranium in Iraq between 1991 and 2002. U.S. forces
admit to using at least 300 tons of D.U. ordinance in Gulf War
I, with up to six times that amount in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
When a loved one is diagnosed with cancer, it can dramatically
alter the entire fabric of family life. The emotional impact can
be huge. Imagine having nine members of your family with
malignancies at the same time. Welcome to Basra, Iraq.
Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, educated in England, is head oncologist at the
Saddam teaching hospital in Basra. There are nine people with
cancer in his wife's family. They are not alone. At a conference
in Japan in 2004 he stated:
"Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have
never seen before. The first is double and triple cancers in one
patient. For example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had
one patient with 2 cancers - one in his stomach and kidney.
Months later, primary cancer was developing in his other
kidney--he had three different cancer types. The second is the
clustering of cancer in families. We have 58 families here with
more than one person affected by cancer. Dr Yasin, a general
Surgeon here has two uncles, a sister and cousin affected with
cancer. Dr Mazen, another specialist, has six family members
suffering from cancer. My wife has nine members of her family
with cancer".
"Children in particular are susceptible to depleted uranium( DU)
poisoning. They have a much higher absorption rate as their
blood is being used to build and nourish their bones and they
have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be
diseases affecting them the most, however, cancer of the lymph
system, which can develop anywhere on the body, and has rarely
been seen before the age of 12 is now also common."
At one point after the war, a Basra hospital reported treating
upwards of 600 children per day with symptoms of radiation
sickness. 600 children per day?
The widespread use of DU weapons was not limited to Iraq. The
Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC), founded by Dr. Asaf
Durakovic, a former U.S. Army Colonel, did extensive field
studies in Afghanistan just after the invasion. Excerpts from
their field reports read:
"We took both soil and biological samples, and found
considerable presence in urine samples of radioactivity; the
heavy concentration astonished us. They were beyond our wildest
imagination."......."The UMRC field team was shocked by the
breadth of public health impacts coincident with the bombing.
Without exception, at every bombsite investigated, people are
ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents
symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium."
In Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, UMRC lab results indicated high
concentrations of NON-DEPLETED URANIUM, with the concentrations
being much higher than in DU victims from Iraq. Afghanistan was
evidently used as a testing ground for a new generation of
"bunker buster" bombs containing high concentrations of other
uranium alloys
Dr. Durakovic stated, "The [U.S.] Veteran's Administration asked
me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in
the human body ...uranium does cause cancer, uranium does cause
mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with the
irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, the denial of the
fact that human life is endangered by the deadly uranium
isotope, then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice
to the truth, disservice to God and to all the generations who
follow."
Living in Iraq under Saddam Hussein was pretty bad much of the
time, and being ruled by the Taliban in Afghanistan was no
picnic either, but DU is worse. It's not safe even to breathe.
It's the ultimate tyranny.
NOTE: Mr. Westerman blogs at: vitaltruths.blogsource.com, which
contains a much longer and more comprehensive report on the
horrors of Depleted Uranium. He can be reached via e-mail at:
aspendougy@yahoo.com
Copyright 2006
American Chronicle is a trademark of .
*****************************************************************
2 IPS-English IRAN-NUCLEAR PROGRAMME: In the eye of the storm,
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 14:57:58 -0700
AP NP IP HD DV IC CS CV=20
IRAN-NUCLEAR PROGRAMME: In the eye of the storm, says UAE daily
Att.Editors: The following item is from the Emirates News Agency (WAM)
ABU DHABI, Apr.17 (WAM) - =94By harping on the Holocaust, Israel, and=20
declaring Iran a member of the 'nuclear club', Iran's leaders are playing=
=20
into the hands of the neocons and powerful Zionist lobby,=94 a United Ara=
b=20
Emirates (UAE) paper warned.
It called on Iran to seek real economic progress that can enhance Iran=
's=20
profile in the comity of nations.
=94Iran is in the eye of the storm. Not even a week has passed since a=
=20
secret U.S. plan to attack Iran was disclosed that includes a nuclear str=
ike=20
at its nuclear installations. And now there is this report about a mock I=
ran=20
invasion exercise by the U.S. and UK. Clearly, the noose is tightening=20
around Iran,=94 wrote the 'Khaleej Times'.
In its daily comment, the Dubai-based daily paper said: =94This is ver=
y=20
disturbing considering the disastrous ramifications of such a campaign fo=
r=20
the Middle East and the world. Even as the region is battling the terribl=
e=20
effects of the conflict in Iraq, not to talk of the impact on global=20
economy, this reckless talk of Iran invasion is most disconcerting.=94
But Iran, it noted, cannot escape its own responsibility for this=20
dangerous conflagration. The regime's lopsided priorities and incredibly=20
irresponsible rhetoric, especially by President Ahmedinejad, haven't real=
ly=20
won Iran many friends in the international community.
=94What's the point of this persistent talk about wiping out Israel? W=
hat's=20
the point of this absurd drama over nuclear enrichment? Clearly, Ahmedine=
jad=20
is playing to the gallery at home. But this is depriving Iran of the vita=
l=20
support of the international community that is keen to see Iran's nuclear=
=20
issue resolved peacefully.
=94By harping on the Holocaust, Israel and declaring Iran a member of =
the=20
'nuclear club', Iran's leaders are playing into the hands of the neocons =
and=20
powerful Zionist lobby. Like red rag to a bull, Iran is daring its enemie=
s=20
to attack it. Is it any wonder then the talk of an imminent Iran attack i=
s=20
taken seriously by the world?
=94The world community respects Iran's right to defend itself and prot=
ect=20
its sense of self-respect. However, Iran should do so in the best possibl=
e=20
ways, not by joining the nuclear club.
=94If Iran is indeed working towards acquiring nukes, we must point ou=
t=20
that military power is no guarantee to power or political survival. Look =
at=20
what happened to Soviet Union. It had a huge pile of nukes and=20
state-of-the-art weapons to match those of the U.S. But they couldn't sav=
e=20
it from breaking up after the Afghan adventure which led to a terrible=20
internal turmoil.
=94On the other hand, Japan and Germany, the big players of WWII, do n=
ot=20
have any weapons of mass destruction. Yet they are considered more powerf=
ul=20
than Russia because they have economic muscle. Iran needs to learn from=20
these examples. Instead of running after the nuclear mirage, the Islamic=20
republic should pay attention to the real and more immediate problems of =
its=20
people, who are the real power of a nation.
=94Real economic progress, not military muscle, can enhance Iran's pro=
file=20
in the comity of nations,=94 concluded the paper. (WAM)=20
=20
*****************************************************************
3 [southnews] CIA gave Iranians blueprint for Nuclear Bomb
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 01:59:32 -0500 (CDT)
The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, handed a blueprint for
a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book "State of War" by James
Risen, the New York Times reporter, who exposed the Bush
administration's controversial NSA spying operation, claims the plans
contained fatal flaws designed to derail Tehran's nuclear drive.
But the deliberate errors were so rudimentary they would have been
easily fixed by sophisticated Russian nuclear scientists, the book said.
Bill Clinton and CIA Gave Iranians Blueprint for Nuclear Bomb
By Jim Kouri
Apr 14, 2006
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27264940.shtml
Last night, radio talk show host and former US Justice Department
official Mark Levin shocked many listeners when he reported that
President Bill Clinton gave nuclear technology to the Iranians in a
harebrained scheme.
He said that the transfer of classified data to Iran was personally
approved by then-President Clinton and that the CIA deliberately gave
Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely
helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program.
The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, handed a blueprint for
a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book "State of War" by James
Risen, the New York Times reporter, who exposed the Bush
administration's controversial NSA spying operation, claims the plans
contained fatal flaws designed to derail Tehran's nuclear drive.
But the deliberate errors were so rudimentary they would have been
easily fixed by sophisticated Russian nuclear scientists, the book said.
The operation, which took place during the Clinton administration in
early 2000, was code named Operation Merlin and "may have been one of
the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA,"
according to Risen.
It called for the unnamed scientist, a defector from the Soviet Union,
to offer Iran the blueprint for a "firing set" -- the intricate
mechanism which triggers the chain reaction needed for a nuclear explosion.
The Russian was told by CIA officers that the Iranians already had the
technology detailed in the plans and that the ruse was simply an attempt
by the agency to find out the full scope of Tehran's nuclear knowledge.
But, contrary to orders not to open the packet, he added a note which
made it clear he could help fix the flaws for money.
Risen states in his book, "It's not clear who originally came up with
the idea, but the plan [to give Tehran nuclear blueprints] was first
approved by Clinton."
This is just another chapter in the Bill Clinton saga of giving weapons
technology to enemies of the United States. He's provided missile
technology to the Chinese, which increased the accuracy of their
ballistic missiles, and he provided nuclear technology to the North
Koreans that eventually enabled them to develop nuclear weapons.
Risen said the Clinton-approved plan ended up handing Tehran "one of the
greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one
of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the
United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were
desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short."
Mark Levin, director of the Landmark Legal Foundation, said that thanks
to Clinton Iran was able to "leapfrog one of the last remaining
engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon."
Ironically, Risen's New York Times has declined to cover Mr. Clinton's
Iranian nuclear debacle -- concentrating instead on his book's dubious
claims that the National Security Agency was first authorized to
commence domestic wiretapping by President Bush, according to NewsMax
and Levin.
NewsMax stated that Risen's report could also have a serious
implications for Sen. Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Mrs.
Clinton has been sharply critical of President Bush's handling of the
Iranian nuclear crisis, complaining that a nuclear-armed Tehran would be
a much more serious threat to the US than Iraq. However, NewsMax may be
proven wrong about Sen. Clinton if the news media continue to ignore
this story.
"Don't hold your breath waiting for the elite media to create a frenzy
over this story. They will never hurt either Clintons with such a
damning report," says former intelligence officer Sid Francis.
Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National
Association of Chiefs of Police and he's a staff writer for the New
Media Alliance (thenma.org).
-----------
George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear
weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints
to build a bomb?
In an extract from his explosive new book, New York Times reporter James
Risen reveals the bungles and miscalculations that led to a spectacular
intelligence fiasco
Thursday January 5, 2006 / The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1678220,00.html
She had probably done this a dozen times before. Modern digital
technology had made clandestine communications with overseas agents seem
routine. Back in the cold war, contacting a secret agent in Moscow or
Beijing was a dangerous, labour-intensive process that could take days
or even weeks. But by 2004, it was possible to send high-speed,
encrypted messages directly and instantaneously from CIA headquarters to
agents in the field who were equipped with small, covert personal
communications devices. So the officer at CIA headquarters assigned to
handle communications with the agency's spies in Iran probably didn't
think twice when she began her latest download. With a few simple
commands, she sent a secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in
the CIA's spy network. Just as she had done so many times before.
Article continues
But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The
CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to
one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be
used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.
Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who
received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the
data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to "roll
up" the CIA's network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of
the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of
the others is still unknown.
This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA
virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence
on one of the most critical issues facing the US - whether Tehran was
about to go nuclear.
In fact, just as President Bush and his aides were making the case in
2004 and 2005 that Iran was moving rapidly to develop nuclear weapons,
the American intelligence community found itself unable to provide the
evidence to back up the administration's public arguments. On the heels
of the CIA's failure to provide accurate pre-war intelligence on Iraq's
alleged weapons of mass destruction, the agency was once again clueless
in the Middle East. In the spring of 2005, in the wake of the CIA's
Iranian disaster, Porter Goss, its new director, told President Bush in
a White House briefing that the CIA really didn't know how close Iran
was to becoming a nuclear power.
But it's worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be
nervously, but very privately, wondering: "Whatever happened to those
nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?"
The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000,
when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna's winter streets.
The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna
with blueprints for a nuclear bomb.
To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480
high-voltage block, otherwise known as a "firing set", for a
Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge
needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain
reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest
engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a
handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United
States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate
to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.
The Russian, who had defected to the US years earlier, still couldn't
believe the orders he had received from CIA headquarters. The CIA had
given him the nuclear blueprints and then sent him to Vienna to sell
them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives to the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With the Russian doing its
bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the
last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear
weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian - the IAEA was
an international organisation created to restrict the spread of nuclear
technology.
The Russian was a nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, which had
arranged for him to become an American citizen and funded him to the
tune of $5,000 a month. It seemed like easy money, with few strings
attached.
Until now. The CIA was placing him on the front line of a plan that
seemed to be completely at odds with the interests of the US, and it had
taken a lot of persuading by his CIA case officer to convince him to go
through with what appeared to be a rogue operation.
The case officer worked hard to convince him - even though he had doubts
about the plan as well. As he was sweet-talking the Russian into flying
to Vienna, the case officer wondered whether he was involved in an
illegal covert action. Should he expect to be hauled before a
congressional committee and grilled because he was the officer who
helped give nuclear blueprints to Iran? The code name for this operation
was Merlin; to the officer, that seemed like a wry tip-off that nothing
about this programme was what it appeared to be. He did his best to hide
his concerns from his Russian agent.
The Russian's assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and
greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of
the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA
told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They
would quickly recognise their value and rush them back to their
superiors in Tehran.
The plan had been laid out for the defector during a CIA-financed trip
to San Francisco, where he had meetings with CIA officers and nuclear
experts mixed in with leisurely wine-tasting trips to Sonoma County. In
a luxurious San Francisco hotel room, a senior CIA official involved in
the operation talked the Russian through the details of the plan. He
brought in experts from one of the national laboratories to go over the
blueprints that he was supposed to give the Iranians.
The senior CIA officer could see that the Russian was nervous, and so he
tried to downplay the significance of what they were asking him to do.
He said the CIA was mounting the operation simply to find out where the
Iranians were with their nuclear programme. This was just an
intelligence-gathering effort, the CIA officer said, not an illegal
attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already
had the technology he was going to hand over to them. It was all a game.
Nothing too serious.
On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran's
nuclear programme by sending Iran's weapons experts down the wrong
technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the
blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable
and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs.
But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode
their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists
would witness a disappointing fizzle. The Iranian nuclear programme
would suffer a humiliating setback, and Tehran's goal of becoming a
nuclear power would have been delayed by several years. In the meantime,
the CIA, by watching Iran's reaction to the blueprints, would have
gained a wealth of information about the status of Iran's weapons
programme, which has been shrouded in secrecy.
The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes
of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't
right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There
is something wrong." His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight
answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the
Russian's assertion that the blueprints didn't look quite right, but no
one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either.
In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian's personal handler had
been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA
officer aside. "He wasn't supposed to know that," the CIA case officer
told his superior. "He wasn't supposed to find a flaw."
"Don't worry," the senior CIA officer calmly replied. "It doesn't matter."
The CIA case officer couldn't believe the senior CIA officer's answer,
but he managed to keep his fears from the Russian, and continued to
train him for his mission.
After their trip to San Francisco, the case officer handed the Russian a
sealed envelope with the nuclear blueprints inside. He was told not to
open the envelope under any circumstances. He was to follow the CIA's
instructions to find the Iranians and give them the envelope with the
documents inside. Keep it simple, and get out of Vienna safe and alive,
the Russian was told. But the defector had his own ideas about how he
might play that game.
The CIA had discovered that a high-ranking Iranian official would be
travelling to Vienna and visiting the Iranian mission to the IAEA, and
so the agency decided to send the Russian to Vienna at the same time. It
was hoped that he could make contact with either the Iranian
representative to the IAEA or the visitor from Tehran.
In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear
blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No
matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was
obviously something wrong with the blueprints - so he decided to mention
that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws
for themselves, and if he didn't tell them first, they would never want
to deal with him again.
The Russian was thus warning the Iranians as carefully as he could that
there was a flaw somewhere in the nuclear blueprints, and he could help
them find it. At the same time, he was still going through with the
CIA's operation in the only way he thought would work.
The Russian soon found 19 Heinstrasse, a five-storey office and
apartment building with a flat, pale green and beige facade in a quiet,
slightly down-at-heel neighbourhood in Vienna's north end. Amid the list
of Austrian tenants, there was one simple line: "PM/Iran." The Iranians
clearly didn't want publicity. An Austrian postman helped him. As the
Russian stood by, the postman opened the building door and dropped off
the mail. The Russian followed suit; he realised that he could leave his
package without actually having to talk to anyone. He slipped through
the front door, and hurriedly shoved his envelope through the inner-door
slot at the Iranian office.
The Russian fled the mission without being seen. He was deeply relieved
that he had made the hand-off without having to come face to face with a
real live Iranian. He flew back to the US without being detected by
either Austrian security or, more importantly, Iranian intelligence.
Just days after the Russian dropped off his package at the Iranian
mission, the National Security Agency reported that an Iranian official
in Vienna abruptly changed his schedule, making airline reservations to
fly home to Iran. The odds were that the nuclear blueprints were now in
Tehran.
The Russian scientist's fears about the operation seemed well founded.
He was the front man for what may have been one of the most reckless
operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped
put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President
George W Bush has called the "axis of evil".
Operation Merlin has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the
Clinton and Bush administrations. It's not clear who originally came up
with the idea, but the plan was first approved by Clinton. After the
Russian scientist's fateful trip to Vienna, however, the Merlin
operation was endorsed by the Bush administration, possibly with an eye
toward repeating it against North Korea or other dangerous states.
Several former CIA officials say that the theory behind Merlin - handing
over tainted weapon designs to confound one of America's adversaries -
is a trick that has been used many times in past operations, stretching
back to the cold war. But in previous cases, such Trojan horse
operations involved conventional weapons; none of the former officials
had ever heard of the CIA attempting to conduct this kind of high-risk
operation with designs for a nuclear bomb. The former officials also
said these kind of programmes must be closely monitored by senior CIA
managers in order to control the flow of information to the adversary.
If mishandled, they could easily help an enemy accelerate its weapons
development. That may be what happened with Merlin.
Iran has spent nearly 20 years trying to develop nuclear weapons, and in
the process has created a strong base of sophisticated scientists
knowledgeable enough to spot flaws in nuclear blueprints. Tehran also
obtained nuclear blueprints from the network of Pakistani scientist
Abdul Qadeer Khan, and so already had workable blueprints against which
to compare the designs obtained from the CIA. Nuclear experts say that
they would thus be able to extract valuable information from the
blueprints while ignoring the flaws.
"If [the flaw] is bad enough," warned a nuclear weapons expert with the
IAEA, "they will find it quite quickly. That would be my fear"
) James Risen 2006
7 This is an edited extract from State of War, by James Risen, published
by The Free Press
The archives of South News can be found at
http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/
*****************************************************************
4 [NYTr] Iran: The CIA's Flawed Nuke Blueprint Caper
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 14:28:40 -0400 (EDT)
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
[James Risen tells this story in detail in his new book "State of War."
The scientist in question caught on to the flaws in the blueprint
immediately, and feared he was being set up by the CIA to be caught
as an agent by the Iranians. But he didn't say anything to his
case officer, since he didn't trust him. The case officer had
grave reservations about the whole plan and was relieved that his
agent had apparently not caught on to the flaws (but he had). In
the end, the agent dumped the phony plans through a slot in the door
of a foreign Iranian mission and fled, rather than attempting to
make personal contact. It all goes to show the CIA was incompetent
before George W. Bush. -NY Transfer]
sent by Dave Muller (southnews) - Apr 17, 2006
The National Ledger
http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27264940.shtml
Bill Clinton and CIA Gave Iranians Blueprint for Nuclear Bomb
By Jim Kouri
Last night, radio talk show host and former US Justice Department
official Mark Levin shocked many listeners when he reported that
President Bill Clinton gave nuclear technology to the Iranians in a
harebrained scheme.
He said that the transfer of classified data to Iran was personally
approved by then-President Clinton and that the CIA deliberately gave
Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely
helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program.
The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, handed a blueprint for
a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book "State of War" by James
Risen, the New York Times reporter, who exposed the Bush
administration's controversial NSA spying operation, claims the plans
contained fatal flaws designed to derail Tehran's nuclear drive.
But the deliberate errors were so rudimentary they would have been
easily fixed by sophisticated Russian nuclear scientists, the book said.
The operation, which took place during the Clinton administration in
early 2000, was code named Operation Merlin and "may have been one of
the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA,"
according to Risen.
It called for the unnamed scientist, a defector from the Soviet Union,
to offer Iran the blueprint for a "firing set" -- the intricate
mechanism which triggers the chain reaction needed for a nuclear explosion.
The Russian was told by CIA officers that the Iranians already had the
technology detailed in the plans and that the ruse was simply an attempt
by the agency to find out the full scope of Tehran's nuclear knowledge.
But, contrary to orders not to open the packet, he added a note which
made it clear he could help fix the flaws for money.
Risen states in his book, "It's not clear who originally came up with
the idea, but the plan [to give Tehran nuclear blueprints] was first
approved by Clinton."
This is just another chapter in the Bill Clinton saga of giving weapons
technology to enemies of the United States. He's provided missile
technology to the Chinese, which increased the accuracy of their
ballistic missiles, and he provided nuclear technology to the North
Koreans that eventually enabled them to develop nuclear weapons.
Risen said the Clinton-approved plan ended up handing Tehran "one of the
greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one
of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the
United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were
desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short."
Mark Levin, director of the Landmark Legal Foundation, said that thanks
to Clinton Iran was able to "leapfrog one of the last remaining
engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon."
Ironically, Risen's New York Times has declined to cover Mr. Clinton's
Iranian nuclear debacle -- concentrating instead on his book's dubious
claims that the National Security Agency was first authorized to
commence domestic wiretapping by President Bush, according to NewsMax
and Levin.
NewsMax stated that Risen's report could also have a serious
implications for Sen. Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Mrs.
Clinton has been sharply critical of President Bush's handling of the
Iranian nuclear crisis, complaining that a nuclear-armed Tehran would be
a much more serious threat to the US than Iraq. However, NewsMax may be
proven wrong about Sen. Clinton if the news media continue to ignore
this story.
"Don't hold your breath waiting for the elite media to create a frenzy
over this story. They will never hurt either Clintons with such a
damning report," says former intelligence officer Sid Francis.
[Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National
Association of Chiefs of Police and he's a staff writer for the New
Media Alliance (thenma.org).]
***
The Guardian - Jan 5, 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1678220,00.html
George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear
weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints
to build a bomb?
In an extract from his explosive new book, New York Times reporter James
Risen reveals the bungles and miscalculations that led to a spectacular
intelligence fiasco
She had probably done this a dozen times before. Modern digital
technology had made clandestine communications with overseas agents seem
routine. Back in the cold war, contacting a secret agent in Moscow or
Beijing was a dangerous, labour-intensive process that could take days
or even weeks. But by 2004, it was possible to send high-speed,
encrypted messages directly and instantaneously from CIA headquarters to
agents in the field who were equipped with small, covert personal
communications devices. So the officer at CIA headquarters assigned to
handle communications with the agency's spies in Iran probably didn't
think twice when she began her latest download. With a few simple
commands, she sent a secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in
the CIA's spy network. Just as she had done so many times before.
But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The
CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to
one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be
used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.
Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who
received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the
data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to "roll
up" the CIA's network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of
the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of
the others is still unknown.
This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA
virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence
on one of the most critical issues facing the US - whether Tehran was
about to go nuclear.
In fact, just as President Bush and his aides were making the case in
2004 and 2005 that Iran was moving rapidly to develop nuclear weapons,
the American intelligence community found itself unable to provide the
evidence to back up the administration's public arguments. On the heels
of the CIA's failure to provide accurate pre-war intelligence on Iraq's
alleged weapons of mass destruction, the agency was once again clueless
in the Middle East. In the spring of 2005, in the wake of the CIA's
Iranian disaster, Porter Goss, its new director, told President Bush in
a White House briefing that the CIA really didn't know how close Iran
was to becoming a nuclear power.
But it's worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be
nervously, but very privately, wondering: "Whatever happened to those
nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?"
The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000,
when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna's winter streets.
The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna
with blueprints for a nuclear bomb.
To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480
high-voltage block, otherwise known as a "firing set", for a
Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge
needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain
reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest
engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a
handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United
States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate
to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.
The Russian, who had defected to the US years earlier, still couldn't
believe the orders he had received from CIA headquarters. The CIA had
given him the nuclear blueprints and then sent him to Vienna to sell
them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives to the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With the Russian doing its
bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the
last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear
weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian - the IAEA was
an international organisation created to restrict the spread of nuclear
technology.
The Russian was a nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, which had
arranged for him to become an American citizen and funded him to the
tune of $5,000 a month. It seemed like easy money, with few strings
attached.
Until now. The CIA was placing him on the front line of a plan that
seemed to be completely at odds with the interests of the US, and it had
taken a lot of persuading by his CIA case officer to convince him to go
through with what appeared to be a rogue operation.
The case officer worked hard to convince him - even though he had doubts
about the plan as well. As he was sweet-talking the Russian into flying
to Vienna, the case officer wondered whether he was involved in an
illegal covert action. Should he expect to be hauled before a
congressional committee and grilled because he was the officer who
helped give nuclear blueprints to Iran? The code name for this operation
was Merlin; to the officer, that seemed like a wry tip-off that nothing
about this programme was what it appeared to be. He did his best to hide
his concerns from his Russian agent.
The Russian's assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and
greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of
the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA
told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They
would quickly recognise their value and rush them back to their
superiors in Tehran.
The plan had been laid out for the defector during a CIA-financed trip
to San Francisco, where he had meetings with CIA officers and nuclear
experts mixed in with leisurely wine-tasting trips to Sonoma County. In
a luxurious San Francisco hotel room, a senior CIA official involved in
the operation talked the Russian through the details of the plan. He
brought in experts from one of the national laboratories to go over the
blueprints that he was supposed to give the Iranians.
The senior CIA officer could see that the Russian was nervous, and so he
tried to downplay the significance of what they were asking him to do.
He said the CIA was mounting the operation simply to find out where the
Iranians were with their nuclear programme. This was just an
intelligence-gathering effort, the CIA officer said, not an illegal
attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already
had the technology he was going to hand over to them. It was all a game.
Nothing too serious.
On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran's
nuclear programme by sending Iran's weapons experts down the wrong
technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the
blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable
and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs.
But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode
their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists
would witness a disappointing fizzle. The Iranian nuclear programme
would suffer a humiliating setback, and Tehran's goal of becoming a
nuclear power would have been delayed by several years. In the meantime,
the CIA, by watching Iran's reaction to the blueprints, would have
gained a wealth of information about the status of Iran's weapons
programme, which has been shrouded in secrecy.
The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes
of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't
right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There
is something wrong." His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight
answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the
Russian's assertion that the blueprints didn't look quite right, but no
one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either.
In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian's personal handler had
been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA
officer aside. "He wasn't supposed to know that," the CIA case officer
told his superior. "He wasn't supposed to find a flaw."
"Don't worry," the senior CIA officer calmly replied. "It doesn't matter."
The CIA case officer couldn't believe the senior CIA officer's answer,
but he managed to keep his fears from the Russian, and continued to
train him for his mission.
After their trip to San Francisco, the case officer handed the Russian a
sealed envelope with the nuclear blueprints inside. He was told not to
open the envelope under any circumstances. He was to follow the CIA's
instructions to find the Iranians and give them the envelope with the
documents inside. Keep it simple, and get out of Vienna safe and alive,
the Russian was told. But the defector had his own ideas about how he
might play that game.
The CIA had discovered that a high-ranking Iranian official would be
travelling to Vienna and visiting the Iranian mission to the IAEA, and
so the agency decided to send the Russian to Vienna at the same time. It
was hoped that he could make contact with either the Iranian
representative to the IAEA or the visitor from Tehran.
In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear
blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No
matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was
obviously something wrong with the blueprints - so he decided to mention
that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws
for themselves, and if he didn't tell them first, they would never want
to deal with him again.
The Russian was thus warning the Iranians as carefully as he could that
there was a flaw somewhere in the nuclear blueprints, and he could help
them find it. At the same time, he was still going through with the
CIA's operation in the only way he thought would work.
The Russian soon found 19 Heinstrasse, a five-storey office and
apartment building with a flat, pale green and beige facade in a quiet,
slightly down-at-heel neighbourhood in Vienna's north end. Amid the list
of Austrian tenants, there was one simple line: "PM/Iran." The Iranians
clearly didn't want publicity. An Austrian postman helped him. As the
Russian stood by, the postman opened the building door and dropped off
the mail. The Russian followed suit; he realised that he could leave his
package without actually having to talk to anyone. He slipped through
the front door, and hurriedly shoved his envelope through the inner-door
slot at the Iranian office.
The Russian fled the mission without being seen. He was deeply relieved
that he had made the hand-off without having to come face to face with a
real live Iranian. He flew back to the US without being detected by
either Austrian security or, more importantly, Iranian intelligence.
Just days after the Russian dropped off his package at the Iranian
mission, the National Security Agency reported that an Iranian official
in Vienna abruptly changed his schedule, making airline reservations to
fly home to Iran. The odds were that the nuclear blueprints were now in
Tehran.
The Russian scientist's fears about the operation seemed well founded.
He was the front man for what may have been one of the most reckless
operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped
put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President
George W Bush has called the "axis of evil".
Operation Merlin has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the
Clinton and Bush administrations. It's not clear who originally came up
with the idea, but the plan was first approved by Clinton. After the
Russian scientist's fateful trip to Vienna, however, the Merlin
operation was endorsed by the Bush administration, possibly with an eye
toward repeating it against North Korea or other dangerous states.
Several former CIA officials say that the theory behind Merlin - handing
over tainted weapon designs to confound one of America's adversaries -
is a trick that has been used many times in past operations, stretching
back to the cold war. But in previous cases, such Trojan horse
operations involved conventional weapons; none of the former officials
had ever heard of the CIA attempting to conduct this kind of high-risk
operation with designs for a nuclear bomb. The former officials also
said these kind of programmes must be closely monitored by senior CIA
managers in order to control the flow of information to the adversary.
If mishandled, they could easily help an enemy accelerate its weapons
development. That may be what happened with Merlin.
Iran has spent nearly 20 years trying to develop nuclear weapons, and in
the process has created a strong base of sophisticated scientists
knowledgeable enough to spot flaws in nuclear blueprints. Tehran also
obtained nuclear blueprints from the network of Pakistani scientist
Abdul Qadeer Khan, and so already had workable blueprints against which
to compare the designs obtained from the CIA. Nuclear experts say that
they would thus be able to extract valuable information from the
blueprints while ignoring the flaws.
"If [the flaw] is bad enough," warned a nuclear weapons expert with the
IAEA, "they will find it quite quickly. That would be my fear"
) James Risen 2006
7 This is an edited extract from State of War, by James Risen, published
by The Free Press
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5 Guardian Unlimited: US refuses to discuss Iran's nuclear plans in
face-to-face talks on Iraq
[UP]
Jonathan Steele in Baghdad and Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday April 18, 2006
Although the US is resisting pressure to deal with Iran's
nuclear ambitions through direct talks with Tehran, rather than
sanctions or military strikes, it still intends to meet senior
Iranian officials for discussions on Iraq at which it will
demand an end to Iranian meddling, according to Zalmay
Khalilzad, the US ambassador in Baghdad.
He is to head the US team at face-to-face talks, which will be
the first formal diplomatic meeting between the two countries
since the Islamic revolution in 1979 and are expected to open in
Baghdad shortly.
Leading Republican and Democratic senators have urged the Bush
administration to engage Iran in full-scale talks, but in an
interview with the Guardian Mr Khalilzad made it clear that the
talks would be limited to Iraq. The US wanted Iran to halt aid
to Iraq's sectarian militias, and stop smuggling al-Qaida
fighters and weapons across the border, he said.
He criticised Iranian "negative propaganda". "The Shias have
been the main beneficiaries of this change, yet Iran has been
very critical of the liberation and the liberators," he said. "A
lot of media in Iran exaggerate the problems here ... They are
inciting people against the forces that have come to liberate
Iraq."
The talks with Iran have the backing of Iraqi leaders, who also
insist on their own representation at the table. "We have no
objection," Mr Khalilzad told the Guardian. "We're not going to
negotiate on behalf of Iraq." The talks were put on hold until
Iraq had a new government because "in this part of the world
people always think in great conspiracy theories ... We didn't
want people here to think that the Iranians and the Americans
are together deciding on the Iraqi government."
Concern over Iran's nuclear intentions was heightened yesterday
with the publication of new satellite photographs of its uranium
conversion plant at Isfahan and its uranium enrichment complex
at Natanz, showing evidence of new tunnels and underground
facilities.
The satellite images were analysed by the Institute for Science
and International Security, an independent nuclear watchdog
group. "They seem to be burrowing away like crazy," said its
president, David Albright, a former United Nations weapons
inspector. "Taking out the nuclear weapons programme in Iran
seems to be nearly impossible. They have so many underground
sites now, you don't know what to hit ... The times for military
strikes that could have taken out the weapons programme are
gone."
Mr Albright and Paul Brannan, an expert on the nuclear black
market, said the new tunnel at Isfahan was the third at the
site. "Mounds of earth can also be found next to the new
entrance, suggestive of recent excavation," they wrote in an
analysis of the photographs. "This new tunnel entrance is
indicative of a new underground facility or the further
expansion of the existing one."
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Iranian scientists are
"presently conducting research" on an advanced centrifuge that
would quadruple the country's capacity to enrich uranium. This
would add weight to suspicions that Iran has a parallel, covert
nuclear programme built around technology provided by the
renegade Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan.
At the forthcoming talks, the US envoy will speak to the
Iranians in their own language. Mr Khalilzad was born in
Afghanistan in 1951 and his mother tongue is Dari, which differs
little from Farsi. The third US overlord in Baghdad since the
invasion, Mr Khalilzad is considered the most successful. As a
Muslim, educated in Beirut, he understands local culture. But in
a constant reminder of the risks he runs, he keeps a tailor's
dummy draped with his flak jacket and helmet in his office.
Mr Khalilzad is a neo-con who felt the US should have toppled
Saddam Hussein after expelling him from Kuwait in 1991. His
technique for countering the fall in support for the war in US
opinion polls is to offer lurid scenarios for what might happen
"if we were to leave prematurely before Iraq can stand on its
own feet".
"One danger would be that the effort by terrorists to provoke
sectarian conflict could escalate and produce circumstances in
which regional states could be sucked in on one side or the
other."
The second scenario was of "al-Qaida taking over part of Iraq,
such as Anbar province, to found a 'mini-Talibistan'". What
al-Qaida did in remote, poverty-stricken Afghanistan would seem
like "child's play compared to what they could do given Iraq's
location and resources".
The third risk would arise if Iraq imploded into sectarian war.
"The Kurds may take matters into their own hands, saying, 'Look,
Iraq isn't going to work, we'd better look after ourselves'.
There are territorial disputes with a constitutional path to
resolve them. They may say, 'Aha, no, it can't be resolved that
way,' and from that Kurdish scenario regional powers could also
be drawn in."
Without spelling it out, Mr Khalilzad is suggesting the Kurds
might grab the oil-rich region of Kirkuk, which could then
prompt intervention by the Turkish army to protect the local
Turkoman population.
Mr Khalilzad acknowledges that the militias are now killing more
people than the Sunni insurgents. "I don't want it to come
across as though we want to disarm the Shias and let Sunnis have
arms," he said. "Or vice versa," he quickly added.
Before the war, the neo-cons touted the benefits of regional
democratisation that would flow from toppling Saddam. Mr
Khalilzad now talks in terms of damage limitation: leaving Iraq
would cost more than staying. It is a significant change.
Whatever people felt about the invasion, he insists, "the fact
that we came to liberate this country gives us a moral
responsibility to make it work now". Iraq is going through "a
difficult patch", but "we don't have the choice of disengaging".
FAQ
What's wrong with Iran's nuclear programme?
The rest of the world is sceptical that it is intended only for
generating electricity, after Iran attempted to hide much of its
work under ground. A 2004 agreement with Europe to suspend
uranium enrichment broke down after the election of Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad as president in June.
Is there proof Iran is making a bomb?
The International Atomic Energy Agency says no, but it is
unhappy about Iran's lack of cooperation and wants answers to
its questions. It is due to report back to the UN security
council by April 28.
And if Iran does not comply by then?
There is a split among the security council's permanent members.
The US, Britain and France want a binding resolution with legal
weight that could lead to sanctions; Russia and China want a
softer approach.
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
6 New York Times: Iran Claims Nuclear Steps in New Worry -
Published: April 17, 2006
Of all the claims that made last week about its nuclear program,
a one-sentence assertion by its president has provoked such
surprise and concern among international nuclear inspectors they
are planning to confront Tehran about it this week. Skip to next
paragraph Enlarge This Image [ border=] Agence
France-Presse-Getty Images
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said his country was
seeking better ways to make atomic fuel.
Multimedia
[Video: Nuclear Jihad]
Video: Nuclear Jihad
Graphic: The Nuclear Network
NUCLEAR JIHAD: Can Terrorists Get The Bomb?
"NUCLEAR JIHAD: Can Terrorists Get The Bomb?" a documentary
about Pakistani nuclear smuggler A.Q. Khan and his clients,
including Iran, airs tonight at 8 p.m. on the Discovery Times
Channel and Thursday, April 20, at 9 p.m. on CBC-TV ( Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation).
(April 16, 2006)
The assertion involves Iran's claim that even while it begins to
enrich small amounts of uranium, it is pursuing a far more
sophisticated way of making atomic fuel that American officials
and inspectors say could speed Iran's path to developing a
nuclear weapon.
Iran has consistently maintained that it abandoned work on this
advanced technology, called the P-2 centrifuge, three years ago.
Western analysts long suspected that Iran had a second, secret
program — based on the black market offerings of the renegade
Pakistani nuclear engineer — separate from the activity at its
main nuclear facility at Natanz. But they had no proof.
Then on Thursday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that
Tehran was "presently conducting research" on the P-2
centrifuge, boasting that it would quadruple Iran's enrichment
powers. The centrifuges are tall, thin machines that spin very
fast to enrich, or concentrate, uranium's rare component,
uranium 235, which can fuel nuclear reactors or atom bombs.
Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements, and those of other senior Iranian
officials, are always viewed with suspicion by American and
international nuclear experts, because Iran has, at various
times, understated nuclear activities that were later
discovered, and overstated its capabilities. Analysts and
American intelligence officials, bruised by their experience in
Iraq, say they are uncertain whether Mr. Ahmadinejad's claim
represents a real technical advance that could accelerate Iran's
nuclear agenda, or political rhetoric meant to convince the
world of the unstoppability of its atomic program.
European diplomats said a delegation of Iranian officials is due
to arrive on Tuesday in Vienna, where the International Atomic
Energy Agency will press them to address the new enrichment
claim, as well as other questions about Iran's program,
including a crude bomb design found in the country.
"This is a much better machine," a European diplomat said of the
advanced centrifuge, which was a centerpiece of Pakistan's
efforts to build its nuclear weapons and was found in 2004 in
Libya, when that country gave up its nuclear program. The
diplomat added that the Iranians, among other questions, will
now have to explain whether Mr. Ahmadinejad was right, and if
so, whether they recently restarted the abandoned program or
have been pursuing it in secret for years.
If Iran moved beyond research and actually began running the
machines, it could force American intelligence agencies to
revise their estimates of how long it would take for Iran to
build an atom bomb — an event they now put somewhere between
2010 and 2015.
Robert Joseph, the Bush administration's under secretary of
state for arms control and international security, who is known
as one of the administration's hawks, said in an interview on
Saturday that President Ahmadinejad's claim constituted "the
first time I've ever heard the Iranians admit" to have a
significant effort on the advanced technology. Iran, Mr. Joseph
added, "has never come clean on this program, and now its
president is talking about it."
The new claim focuses renewed attention on Iran's rocky
relationship with Mr. Khan, who provided it with much of the
enrichment technology it is exploiting today. If Mr.
Ahmadinejad's claim is correct, it probably indicates that
relationship went on longer and far deeper than previously
acknowledged. Mr. Khan and his nuclear black market supplied
Iran with blueprints for both the more elementary machine, known
as P-1, and the more advanced P-2.
There are other indications that Mr. Khan may have been dealing
with Iran as recently as six years ago. President of Pakistan
disclosed recently that he fired Dr. Khan, a national hero
credited with developing Pakistan's bomb, in 2001 after
discovering that he was trying to arrange a secret flight to the
Iranian city of Zahedan, known as a center of smuggling.
Dr. Khan refused to discuss the flight, saying it was important
and very secret. "I said, 'What the hell do you mean? You want
to keep a secret from me?' " Mr. Musharraf recalled in an
interview with The New York Times for a Discovery Times
television documentary, "Nuclear Jihad."
"So these are the things which led me to very concrete
suspicions," Mr. Musharraf said, "and we removed him."
NYTimes.com
*****************************************************************
7 AFP: Iran set to ignore UN demand for nuclear freeze
Mon Apr 17, 7:26 AM ET
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iran's top nuclear official has vowed
that the clerical regime would press on with uranium enrichment
work despite mounting international pressure to freeze its
sensitive nuclear activities.
"Why should Iran suspend its research activities?" Ali
Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council, was
quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
Enrichment can be extended from making reactor fuel to the
production of warheads, but Larijani branded a UN Security
Council demand for a suspension by April 28 as "not rational".
"One should not follow such propositions... which are not
rational," he said, adding: "Iran will follow its nuclear
program with patience."
Last Tuesday Iran announced it had successfully enriched uranium
to the level needed for reactor fuel, reigniting fears that the
hardline regime would soon acquire the technical know-how to
make bombs.
The deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Mohammad
Saidi, also argued that the UN nuclear watchdog had failed to
find any proof that Iran's programme was anything other than a
legal effort to generate electricity.
"Therefore there is no need to continue a suspension," he told
the Etemad-Melli newspaper.
"These countries have to accept the reality and realise they are
talking with a country that masters this technology and wishes
to develop it," Saidi said.
The five permanent members of the Council -- Britain, China,
France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany meet in
Moscow Tuesday to discuss the issue amid a US push for robust UN
action.
In Tokyo, a foreign ministry official also said Japan will send
a senior envoy to Iran by the end of the month to urge it to
stop uranium enrichment -- following up on similar efforts by
China and International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International
Atomic Energy Agencychief Mohamed ElBaradei.
"We advise them not to repeat past mistakes... so that a
reasonable atmosphere is created to follow up the negotiations,"
Larijani said of the suspension demands.
He also dismissed a proposal by US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice" /> Condoleezza Rice, who has called on the
Security Council to adopt a resolution which could allow the use
of force against Iran.
"Such statements are not new and will not affect our
determination," he said.
Larijani also implicitly confirmed comments by hardline
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Iran was working on using
advanced P-2 centrifuges -- devices that can enrich at a much
faster rate than the existing P-1 technology Iran is presently
using.
When asked about the new work, Larijani replied that Iran "will
continue research work within the framework" of the IAEA.
According to the New York Times, Ahmadinejad's revelation of the
P-2 work has provoked such surprise and concern among
international nuclear inspectors that they are planning to
confront Tehran about it this week.
Inspectors had long suspected that Iran had been working on the
P-2 centrifuge design -- bought on the black market from the
renegade Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan --
separately from the activity at its main nuclear facility at
Natanz.
European diplomats said a delegation of Iranian officials is due
to arrive on Tuesday in Vienna, where the IAEA will press them
to address the new enrichment claim, as well as other questions
about Iran's programme, including a crude bomb design found in
the country, The Times said.
If Iran moved beyond research and actually began running the
machines, it could force American intelligence agencies to
revise their estimates of how long it would take for Iran to
build an atom bomb -- an event they now put somewhere between
2010 and 2015, according to the report.
In Israel" /> Israel-- which is widely believed to already have
a nuclear arsenal -- the head of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael
Beitenu party said the Jewish state may have to take its own
pre-emptive action.
Avigdor Lieberman said Iran's nuclear programme "represents an
existential threat for Israel which will oblige us to take
unilateral action if the international community does nothing to
stop it".
"The only difference between the aspirations of the madmen of
the current regime in Tehran and Hitler is that their (Iranian)
threat is more concrete," he added on Israeli radio.
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
8 AFP: Iran set to ignore UN demand for nuclear freeze
Mon Apr 17, 1:06 PM ET
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> 's top nuclear official has vowed that
the clerical regime would press on with uranium enrichment work
despite mounting international pressure to freeze its sensitive
nuclear activities.
"Why should Iran suspend its research activities?" Ali
Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council, was
quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
Enrichment can be extended from making reactor fuel to the
production of warheads, but Larijani branded a UN Security
Council demand for a suspension by April 28 as "not rational".
"One should not follow such propositions... which are not
rational," he said, adding: "Iran will follow its nuclear
programme with patience."
Last Tuesday, Iran announced it had successfully enriched
uranium to the level needed for reactor fuel, reigniting fears
that the hardline regime would soon acquire the technical
know-how to make bombs.
The deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Mohammad
Saidi, argued that the UN nuclear watchdog had failed to find
any proof that Iran's programme was anything other than a
legitimate effort to generate electricity.
"Therefore, there is no need to continue a suspension," he told
the Etemad-Melli newspaper. "These countries have to accept the
reality and realise they are talking with a country that masters
this technology."
The five permanent members of the Security Council -- Britain,
China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany meet
in Moscow Tuesday to discuss the issue amid a US push for robust
UN action.
The United States has said punitive measures such as freezing
Iranian assets or imposing travel restrictions on senior
officials will be on the agenda of the meeting.
In Tokyo, a foreign ministry official said Japan would send a
senior envoy to Iran by the end of the month to urge it to stop
uranium enrichment -- following up on similar efforts by China
and International Atomic Energy Agency" /> chief Mohamed
ElBaradei.
But Larijani dismissed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice"
/> 's talk of the Security Council adopting a resolution which
could allow the use of force against Iran.
"Such statements are not new and will not affect our
determination," he said.
And speaking during a visit to Kuwait, Iran's influential former
president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said he was certain the
Islamic republic's Gulf neighbours would not support any US
assault.
"The talk about a US attack on Iran is nonsense and we are sure
the Americans would not want create problems for themselves," he
said.
Larijani also implicitly confirmed comments by hardline
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Iran was working on using
advanced P-2 centrifuges -- devices that can enrich at a much
faster rate than the P-1 technology Iran is presently using.
When asked about the new work, Larijani replied that Iran "will
continue research work within the framework" of the IAEA.
According to the New York Times, Ahmadinejad's revelation of the
P-2 work has provoked such surprise and concern among
international nuclear inspectors that they are planning to
confront Tehran about it this week.
Inspectors had long suspected that Iran had been working on the
P-2 centrifuge design -- bought on the black market from the
renegade Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan --
separately from the activity at its main nuclear facility at
Natanz.
European diplomats said a delegation of Iranian officials is due
to arrive on Tuesday in Vienna, where the IAEA will press them
to address the new enrichment claim, as well as other questions
about Iran's programme, including a crude bomb design found in
the country, the US daily said.
If Iran moved beyond research and actually began running the
machines, it could force American intelligence agencies to
revise their estimates of how long it would take for Iran to
build an atom bomb -- an event they now put somewhere between
2010 and 2015, according to the report.
In Israel" /> -- which is widely believed to already have a
nuclear arsenal -- the head of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael
Beitenu party said the Jewish state may have to take its own
pre-emptive action.
Avigdor Lieberman said Iran's nuclear programme "represents an
existential threat for Israel which will oblige us to take
unilateral action if the international community does nothing to
stop it.
"The only difference between the aspirations of the madmen of
the current regime in Tehran and Hitler is that their (Iranian)
threat is more concrete," Lieberman told Israeli radio.
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
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9 AFP: Gulf Arab states will oppose US strike on Iran - Rafsanjani -
Iran: Rafsanjani
Mon Apr 17, 8:26 AM ET
KUWAIT CITY (AFP) - Iran" /> 's influential former president
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani says he is sure the Islamic republic's
Gulf neighbours would not support any US assault on his country
over its nuclear programme.
"We are certain that Gulf countries will not back the United
States in waging an attack on Iran," Rafsanjani said on the
second day of a visit to Kuwait aimed at allaying fears in the
region over Iran's nuclear activities.
"The talk about a US attack on Iran is nonsense and we are sure
the Americans would not want create problems for themselves."
Rafsanjani, who heads Iran's powerful Expediency Council, met
with Kuwaiti deputies after holding talks with the emir Sheikh
Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah.
His visit follows Iran's announcement last week that it had
successfully enriched uranium to the level needed to make
reactor fuel, triggering global concern about its nuclear
ambitions.
Uranium enrichment can be extended to make weapons, and the UN
Security Council has given Iran's hardline leadership until
April 28 to freeze the sensitive fuel cycle work.
Kuwaiti parliament speaker Jassem al-Khorafi tried to play down
the worries in the Gulf over Iran's nuclear facilities,
including a reactor being built with Russian help in Bushehr
across the Gulf, and its standoff with the West.
"I am personally not worried because I believe it's for peaceful
purposes," he told reporters after meeting Rafsanjani. "I see
nothing that should make us afraid."
The fallout from a fresh conflict in the Gulf would be
catastrophic for oil markets given that nearly 20 percent of the
world's daily oil shipments pass through the narrow Strait of
Hormuz.
And an influential deputy said the oil-rich region was fearful
of the escalating tension in Shiite-ruled Iran.
"The Iranians are escalating daily and this is terrifying not
just for the international community but for the region as
well," said Mohammed Jassem al-Sagr, a liberal deputy, who heads
parliament's foreign relations committee.
He said Iran had to take practical measures on the ground beyond
verbal assurances to comfort its Arab neighbours, but did not
give details.
Kuwait's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Sabah said last
week that Iran's nuclear activities must remain under the close
watch of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic
Energy Agency" /> (IAEA).
US-ally Kuwait and other Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab states are
concerned about the possibility that the current standoff may
develop into a full-scale military confrontation and fear a
possible environmental catastrophe from the Iranian nuclear
power plant in Bushehr.
Kuwait's leading liberal newspaper Al-Qabas warned in an
editorial Sunday that Gulf states may be the main victims of a
possible US-Iranian military confrontation.
"Our Iranian brothers have placed us -- the people on the other
bank of the Gulf -- right in the middle of the confrontation...
against our will, and we may become its main victim," the daily
said.
The region has witnessed three major conflicts in the last
quarter century -- the 1980-1988 Iran- Iraq" /> war, the 1991
Gulf war to end Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, and the US-led
invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
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10 AFP: US concerned about Iran's claim of advanced nuclear research -
Mon Apr 17, 4:25 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US administration voiced concern about
Iran" /> Iran's announcement it was working on advanced P-2
centrifuges to enrich uranium, saying it further signals the
Islamic republic's nuclear program is not purely civilian.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan renewed a US call for
action by the United Nations" /> United NationsSecurity Council
against Iran after the Islamic republic claimed last week it had
enriched uranium for the first time and was pursuing advanced
enrichment research, in defiance of a Council demand to halt
such activities.
Questioned about Iran's statement that Tehran was conducting
research on the P-2 centrifuge, McClellan said: "If the
statements prove to be true, it would be a very serious
concern."
Previously undisclosed work on P-2 centrifuges "would be a
further violation of Iran's safeguard obligations, in addition
to those that have already been identified by the board of the
International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic
Energy Agency," the UN nuclear watchdog agency, he said.
"Such violations and failures by the regime to comply with its
international obligations run contrary to the regime's claims
that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes," he
said.
Last Tuesday Iran announced it had successfully enriched uranium
to the level needed for reactor fuel, reigniting fears that the
hardline regime would soon acquire the technical know-how to
make bombs.
Then Thursday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that
Tehran was "presently conducting research" on the P-2
centrifuge, boasting that it would quadruple Iran's enrichment
powers.
Iran's nuclear activities defy a UN Security Council demand that
it suspend nuclear enrichment and processing activities by April
28.
"The United Nations Security Council, as I mentioned, has called
for the regime to comply with the requirements of the board of
the International Atomic Energy Agency," McClellan said.
"If the regime does not, then it is time for further action by
the Security Council."
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
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11 AFP: Iranian official in Washington for ... who knows?
Mon Apr 17, 6:04 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US State Department confirmed a senior
official from arch-US nemesis Iran" /> was in Washington but
would not say how he got into the country or what he was doing
here.
Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Mohammad Nahavandian
was in town but added, "He's not here for meetings with US
government officials to my knowledge; certainly not with members
of the State Department."
McCormack said Nahavandian had not been issued a visa but was in
the United States legally. He did not elaborate but said only,
"There are a variety of other ways for an individual to arrive
in the country."
The Washington foray by Nahavandian, described as an economic
aide to Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, was first
reported 10 days ago by Britain's Financial Times newspaper.
The rare sighting of a senior Iranian official in Washington
comes at a moment when Iran's showdown with the West over its
suspected nuclear weapons activities was nearing a climax.
Iran has announced plans to speed its research into uranium
enrichment while the United States and its allies are pushing
for UN sanctions against the Islamic republic.
The Financial Times quoted an Iranian adviser as saying
Nahavandian had come here to discuss the possibility of
wide-ranging direct talks between the two countries, which have
not had diplomatic relations for a quarter-century.
The United States has authorized its ambassador in Baghdad,
Zalmay Khalilzad, to hold direct discussions with the Iranians
about Iraq" /> but nothing else.
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
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12 Guardian Unlimited: Rafsanjani Scoffs at Talk of U.S. Attack
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Monday April 17, 2006 1:01 PM
By DIANA ELIAS
Associated Press Writer
KUWAIT CITY (AP) - Iran's former president said Monday that talk
of a U.S. military attack on Iran was overblown because it would
be ``too dangerous'' and no Persian Gulf countries would join
forces with the United States.
A few reports in the U.S. media have said the United States was
developing contingency plans to use military force against Iran
if it continues to challenge attempts by the West and the U.N.
nuclear watchdog agency to force it to abandon its uranium
enrichment program.
The Bush administration has said it had a ``number of tools,''
including a military option, if Tehran did not cease uranium
enrichment activities, which can create fuel for a bomb.
``Reports about plans for an American attack on Iran are
incorrect,'' former President Hashemi Rafsanjani said in an
appearance before Kuwait's parliament. ``We are certain that
Americans will not attack Iran because the consequences would be
too dangerous.''
On Sunday, he said he believed the United States was ``incapable
of taking a risk or engaging in a new war in the region without
discussing the subject seriously.''
Rafsanjani also said he was certain that Arab countries in the
Persian Gulf would not join the United States. But Iran's allies
in the region were voicing their concern.
Kuwaiti lawmaker Mohammed al-Saqer told reporters Monday that
``Iranians are escalating every day and this is terrifying not
only for the international community but for the region.''
``We feel real concern although our ties with Iran are good and
Iran is a brotherly country,'' said Al-Saqer, head of the
parliament's foreign relations committee.
The United States and some European countries are accusing Iran
of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, an accusation Tehran
denies, saying it intends only to generate electricity.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is due to report to the
U.N. Security Council on April 28 whether Iran has met its
demand for a full halt to uranium enrichment. If Tehran has not
complied, the council will consider the next step.
The United States and Europe are pressing for sanctions against
Iran, a step Russia and China have so far opposed.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
13 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Claims It's Testing a New Centrifuge
From the Associated Press
[UP]
Monday April 17, 2006 7:31 PM
AP Photo VAH101
By NASSER KARIMI
Associated Press Writer
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's president has thrown a new wrinkle
into the nuclear debate by claiming his country is testing a
centrifuge that could be used to more speedily create fuel for
power plants or atomic weapons.
But some analysts familiar with the country's technology said
Monday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be deliberately
exaggerating Iran's capabilities, either to boost his own
political support or to persuade the U.N. nuclear watchdog
agency to back off.
The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran cease
enrichment work, which the United States and some of its allies
suspect is meant to produce weapons. But Russia and China, two
of the council's five veto-holding members, have opposed
punishing Iran.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said Monday the Kremlin insists on a
diplomatic solution to the standoff rather than any tough
measures against Iran. A Western diplomat said officials of the
U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany would discuss
the matter in Moscow on Tuesday.
Ahmadinejad, in a speech to students last week, claimed for the
first time that Iran is testing a P-2 centrifuge for enriching
uranium. Such a device would be a vast improvement over the P-1
centrifuges that Iran says it has used to do small-scale
enrichment.
Iran previously told the International Atomic Energy Agency it
gave up all work on P-2 centrifuges three years ago. It was not
clear if Iran has been doing work all along on the updated
model, or recently restarted efforts, or even if Ahmadinejad's
comment was accurate.
But his assertion is sure to raise concerns that Iran might have
a more sophisticated atomic program than had been believed. The
IAEA and some independent groups have long questioned whether
Iran might have a parallel, secret nuclear program that is
further along.
``Our centrifuges are P-1 type. P-2, which has quadruple the
capacity, now is under the process of research and test in the
country,'' Ahmadinejad told students in remarks that weren't
reported by the official Iranian news agency but were later
found on the presidential Web site.
Iran insists it is building up a nuclear program only for
peaceful purposes - to generate electricity. But the United
States and many of its allies think the Iranians want nuclear
weapons.
Iran has come under pressure in recent months to halt all
uranium enrichment, but Ahmadinejad is adamant it will press
forward.
``He was likely posturing for his own political advantage and
playing to national sentiment. We have to remember that the
nuclear issue is very popular in Iran,'' said Khalid R.
al-Rodhan, an Iran nuclear expert at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies in Washington.
Anthony Cordesman, an expert also at CSIS in Washington, said
there was no way to gauge if Ahmadinejad's statement was true,
or if true, how significant that would be.
``Just making a claim about individual technical developments
doesn't tell you a thing about what progress has really been
made, or how it would change their operational capabilities,''
Cordesman said.
Officials at the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog based in
Vienna, Austria, refused to comment.
The IAEA has believed for some time that Iran obtained the plans
for a P-2 centrifuge. Some experts believe the designs were in
Iranian hands as long ago as the late 1980s through a
black-market network run by A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's
nuclear bomb.
Iran previously told the IAEA that the only work it had done on
the P-2 design was carried out between 2002 and 2003 and was
very limited. It also said the work was halted in 2003, when
Iran went back to the P-1 design.
But the IAEA has repeatedly questioned that claim and accused
Iran of not coming clean on past efforts.
``We know that they have had the drawings for P-2 centrifuge and
they've publicized that,'' said Gary Sick, professor of
international affairs at Columbia University and a former
adviser to the U.S. National Security Council.
``But up till now, they have said that they were not in fact
pursuing that path. If in fact Ahmadinejad said that, it is a
significant change,'' Sick said.
A diplomat in Vienna who agreed to discuss the matter only if
not quoted by name because he was not authorized to speak with
reporters, said if Iran has secretly developed its P-2 program,
that could mean it will be able to produce weapons-grade
enriched uranium faster and in greater quantities than
previously thought.
The latest estimate from the CIA and other U.S. intelligence
agencies says Iran could not create a bomb before the next
decade. But that analysis was based on Tehran using P-1
centrifuges.
---
Associated Press writer George Jahn in Vienna, Austria,
contributed to this report.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
14 New York Times: Bombs That Would Backfire -
RICHARD CLARKE
and STEVEN SIMON Published: April 16, 2006
WHITE HOUSE spokesmen have played down press reports that the
Pentagon has accelerated planning to bomb Iran. We would like to
believe that the administration is not intent on starting
another war, because a conflict with Iran could be even more
damaging to our interests than the current struggle in Iraq has
been. A brief look at history shows why.
Reports by the journalist Seymour Hersh and others suggest that
the United States is contemplating bombing a dozen or more
nuclear sites, many of them buried, around Iran. In the event,
scores of air bases, radar installations and land missiles would
also be hit to suppress air defenses. Navy bases and coastal
missile sites would be struck to prevent Iranian retaliation
against the American fleet and Persian Gulf shipping. Iran's
long-range missile installations could also be targets of the
initial American air campaign.
These contingencies seem familiar to us because we faced a
similar situation as National Security Council staff members in
the mid-1990's. American frustrations with Iran were growing,
and in early 1996 the House speaker, Newt Gingrich, publicly
called for the overthrow of the Iranian government. He and the
C.I.A. put together an $18 million package to undertake it.
The Iranian legislature responded with a $20 million initiative
for its intelligence organizations to counter American influence
in the region. Iranian agents began casing American embassies
and other targets around the world. In June 1996, the Qods
Force, the covert-action arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guards Corps, arranged the bombing of an apartment building used
by our Air Force in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans.
At that point, the Clinton administration and the Pentagon
considered a bombing campaign. But after long debate, the
highest levels of the military could not forecast a way in which
things would end favorably for the United States.
While the full scope of what America did do remains classified,
published reports suggest that the United States responded with
a chilling threat to the Tehran government and conducted a
global operation that immobilized Iran's intelligence service.
Iranian terrorism against the United States ceased.
In essence, both sides looked down the road of conflict and
chose to avoid further hostilities. And then the election of the
reformist Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran in 1997 gave
Washington and Tehran the cover they needed to walk back from
the precipice.
Now, as in the mid-90's, any United States bombing campaign
would simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process. Iran could
respond three ways. First, it could attack Persian Gulf oil
facilities and tankers — as it did in the mid-1980's — which
could cause oil prices to spike above $80 dollars a barrel.
Second and more likely, Iran could use its terrorist network to
strike American targets around the world, including inside the
United States. Iran has forces at its command that are far
superior to anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field. The
Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah has a global reach,
and has served in the past as an instrument of Iran. We might
hope that Hezbollah, now a political party, would decide that it
has too much to lose by joining a war against the United States.
But this would be a dangerous bet.
Third, Iran is in a position to make our situation in Iraq far
more difficult than it already is. The Badr Brigade and other
Shiite militias in Iraq could launch a more deadly campaign
against British and American troops. There is every reason to
believe that Iran has such a retaliatory shock wave planned and
ready.
No matter how Iran responded, the question that would face
American planners would be, "What's our next move?" How do we
achieve so-called escalation dominance, the condition in which
the other side fears responding because they know that the next
round of American attacks would be too lethal for the regime to
survive?
Bloodied by Iranian retaliation, President Bush would most
likely authorize wider and more intensive bombing. Non-military
Iranian government targets would probably be struck in a vain
hope that the Iranian people would seize the opportunity to
overthrow the government. More likely, the American war against
Iran would guarantee the regime decades more of control.
So how would bombing Iran serve American interests? In over a
decade of looking at the question, no one has ever been able to
provide a persuasive answer. The president assures us he will
seek a diplomatic solution to the Iranian crisis. And there is a
role for threats of force to back up diplomacy and help
concentrate the minds of our allies. But the current level of
activity in the Pentagon suggests more than just standard
contingency planning or tactical saber-rattling.
The parallels to the run-up to to war with Iraq are all too
striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that
there was "no war plan on my desk" despite having actually spent
months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion. Congress
did not ask the hard questions then. It must not permit the
administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be
known, or worse, known all too well.
Richard Clarke and Steven Simon were, respectively, national
coordinator for security and counterterrorism and senior
director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.
NYTimes.com
*****************************************************************
15 New York Times: 'The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite,'
by Ann Finkbeiner - The New York Times Book Review -
By JOHN HORGAN
Published: April 16, 2006
Last summer, I received an e-mail message from a defense
contractor that was advising a federal security agency and
wanted my ideas on fighting terrorism. I assumed it was a joke.
But when I called the contractor's number, a woman named Debbie
convinced me that the firm and the offer were real. Her firm's
client was seeking advice from non-experts who could "think
outside the box." Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image [
border=] Illustration by Viktor Koen. Photos, starting second
from left: AP; Susan Spann for The New York Times; Frank Curry
for The Times; Alexandria King/The Albuquerque Journal
Members of Jason have included, from left: Hans Bethe, Freeman
Dyson, Richard Garwin, Steven Weinberg and Murray Gell-Mann.
THE JASONS
The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite.
By Ann Finkbeiner.
304 pp. Viking. $27.95.
Readers Opinions
Forum: Book News and Reviews
I loathe militarism, so I worried that accepting the assignment
would be hypocritical. But the invitation was flattering and
challenging — and the money was tempting. So I agreed. As long
as I didn't propose anything that violated my principles, I told
myself, what would be the harm?
It seems only fair to reveal my own ethical elasticity before I
pass judgment on Jason, the subject of the journalist Ann
Finkbeiner's fascinating, disturbing new book. I first heard
about this secretive group of independent government science
advisers in 1993 from the physicist Freeman Dyson, one of
Jason's longest-serving members. Dyson made Jason sound like
fun: a bunch of brilliant iconoclasts brainstorming during
summer vacations about problems ranging from nuclear missile
defense to climate change. But Finkbeiner shows that at times,
Jason seethed with ethical conflict.
Of the 100 or so scientists who have served on Jason, Finkbeiner
has interviewed 36. A few spoke anonymously, and others refused
to talk at all. That reticence is not surprising, given that as
much as three-quarters of Jason's work has consisted of
classified military projects, some of them morally questionable.
Like Errol Morris's film "The Fog of War," in which Robert
McNamara painfully revisits Vietnam, Finkbeiner's book shows how
even the smartest people with the noblest intentions can end up
committing shameful acts.
Jason (the term refers both to the group as a whole and to
individual members) was conceived in the late 1950's, when the
physicist John Wheeler proposed assembling a few dozen top
academic scientists to give the government no-holds-barred
advice. In 1960 the group began gathering each June and July in
various locations. Physics was still riding the wave of prestige
generated by the Manhattan Project, and all the original Jasons
were physicists. Mildred Goldberger, the wife of the early
member Murph Goldberger (and herself a physicist), proposed
naming the group after the mythical Greek hero. Funding came
primarily from the Advanced Research Projects Agency at the
Pentagon (known today as Darpa).
Those who eventually enlisted included giants like Dyson, Murph
Goldberger and the future Nobel laureates Steven Weinberg, Val
Fitch, Charles Townes, Murray Gell-Mann and Leon Lederman. Some
of their motives, like serving their country and reducing the
threat of nuclear war, were altruistic. Others were less so:
becoming an insider with access to secret information; finding
"sweet" solutions to technical puzzles (to borrow Robert
Oppenheimer's description of the Manhattan Project); and getting
paid ($850 per diem today).
The Jasons interviewed take pride in some of their
accomplishments. They have excelled at "lemon detection,"
finding the flaws in ideas like "dense pack" nuclear-missile
sites, which one Jason, Sid Drell, called "dunce pack." In the
1980's, Jason helped establish a Department of Energy program to
improve the accuracy of climate models. In 1996 Bill
Clintonsigned the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, in part because
Jason had concluded that tests were no longer needed to ensure
the viability of America's nuclear arsenal.
Jasons also contributed to the invention of adaptive optics,
which boosts the power of telescopes by correcting for
atmospheric distortion. On the other hand, the Pentagon kept the
technology classified for almost a decade to reserve it for a
project that many Jasons opposed, the Strategic Defense
Initiative. Episodes like these made some Jasons wonder how much
good they were really doing. Dyson complained that "the secrecy
held up progress in adaptive optics for 10 years."
The Vietnam War was the group's nadir. In 1966, Dyson, Steven
Weinberg and two other Jasons compiled a classified report that
weighed the pros and cons of using low-yield nuclear weapons to
destroy bridges, roads, airfields, missile sites and troops in
Vietnam. The report concluded that using nukes made no military
sense. Dyson told Finkbeiner that he and his colleagues would
"probably" not have issued a report that reached any other
conclusion. Yet the disturbing implication is that, under
different circumstances, nuclear attacks might make sense.
Finkbeiner accuses Dyson and his co-authors of "supping with the
devil."
NYTimes.com
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
*****************************************************************
16 WP: Big Rewards for Defense Firms
Extra Fees Paid Regardless of Performance, GAO Finds
By Charles R. Babcock Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 17, 2006; D01
In late February 2004, the Army announced that it was canceling
plans to build a radar-evading helicopter called the Comanche, a
project that was nearly three years behind schedule and more
than $3.5 billion over budget. Those problems, however, didn't
stop an Army panel a few weeks later from granting the Boeing
Co.-Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. partnership running the program a
$33.9 million "award fee" for their work on the helicopter, part
of more than $200 million in such fees paid to the partnership
over four years.
Award fees are meant in theory to motivate defense contractors
with extra money for performance. But a recent Government
Accountability Office study found that the fees are often paid
regardless of whether a project is on schedule and within its
budget.
Instead of encouraging efficiency, the GAO found, award-fee
payments have become routine in some major weapons contracts,
built into company expectations and paid almost as a matter of
course.
Current practices "undermine the effectiveness of fees as a
motivational tool and marginalize their use in holding
contractors accountable," the GAO concluded. Defense contractors
are paid award fees for work that is simply "acceptable,
average, expected, good, or satisfactory."
An estimated $8 billion was paid in award fees from fiscal 1999
to 2003, when many of the projects involved were over budget and
behind schedule. Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp., for
example, collected $1.5 billion in award fees on three major
programs, the F/A-22 Raptor jet fighter, the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter, and the Space-Based Infrared System High satellite,
despite cost, schedule and reliability problems, the GAO found.
Defense industry officials say award fees are sometimes the only
way companies can profit from high-risk contracts that might
never reach full-scale production -- and are of particular
importance to companies that bid on large weapons systems.
Government officials say they are tightening the rules for
awarding them. Late last month, the Pentagon issued new guidance
that said that award fees must be tied to identifiable outcomes
as much as possible and that the contracting officials should
limit the common practice of rolling over fees from one period
to the next, effectively giving companies a second chance to
earn them.
Shay D. Assad, a former Raytheon Co.executive who is the
Pentagon's new director of defense procurement and acquisition
policy, said in an interview Friday that it was clear that
defense officials have been granting award fees on the basis of
"process performance and behavior" -- a category the GAO said
included things such as whether reports were filed on time.
Instead, he said, they should concentrate on "events . . . that
are going to be correlated to the outcome" of the contract.
The GAO began looking at corporate award fees after Marvin
Sambur, who was the Air Force acquisition chief, attended a New
York investor conference in 2003 and heard defense industry
executives talk cavalierly about receiving high award payments.
"I was amazed," Sambur said in a recent interview, likening the
executives' attitude to that of students expecting an "A" in
class "just for showing up." He then found that the Air Force
was paying contractors about 90 percent of the possible fees, no
matter what their performance, so he said he set out to tighten
Air Force policies.
The GAO study was requested by John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Daniel
K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), members of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, in response to Sambur's concerns.
Industry officials say that award fees are not simply bonuses
and that the question of how and when they should be given is
complicated.
John W. Douglass, president of the Aerospace Industries
Association, whose members include the large defense
contractors, said award fees may look "almost automatic" to the
outside world, but actually are the result of complex
negotiations.
In the case of the Comanche, for example, an Army spokesman
said, "The fact that the Army was considering termination and
did terminate would not relieve the government in any way of
paying the contractor the fee he earned." The program was killed
to allow the Army to pay for many other priorities, the
spokesman said.
Joseph LaMarca Jr., a spokesman for Boeing, said in a statement
that Boeing-Sikorsky received the final award fee for work
completed prior to the termination. The decision to cancel the
contract "was based on changing requirements and not due to
technical costs or schedule issues," he said.
Thomas J. Jurkowsky, a Lockheed Martin spokesman, said in a
written statement that large, complex development programs like
the three the report cited for Lockheed "have cost, technical
and schedule issues in their early stages because of the
unpredictability of the technology."
The Pentagon has approved full-rate production of the F-22, "a
decision that reflects the government's confidence in the
aircraft," while the strike fighter is on schedule for a first
flight this fall, Jurkowsky said. And though the satellite
project "has faced technical challenges because of its
sophisticated design," it has met some significant milestones
and the government says "the program has turned the corner," he
said.
Richard L. Aboulafia, an investment analyst with the Teal Group
Corp., said award fees have become more important to the defense
industry in recent years as the size of lucrative production
contracts have been cut. As companies must invest relatively
more in research, award fees became a way to boost earnings.
The difficulty in being more strict about award fees, Aboulafia
said, is determining "who is at fault for mission creep and
changing requirements," the usual reasons for programs
escalating in cost while falling behind schedules.
Lt. Gen. Donald J. Hoffman, the military deputy for Air Force
acquisition, said Friday that his service was following "the
spirit" of Sambur's initiatives but has not formally adopted a
new award fee policy. He said, for example, that Air Force
headquarters now reviews the findings of award-fee panels and at
times has cut fees it found excessive.
Sambur left the Air Force early last year.
Some Defense Department agencies have done better than others in
connecting fees to performance, the GAO said. The Missile
Defense Agency, for example, restructured Boeing's airborne
laser contract in 2002. In the process it changed the award-fee
plan to focus on a successful demonstration of the system by the
end of 2004.
Until that restructuring the contractor received 95 percent of
the available fees, even with cost increases and schedule
delays, the GAO report said. But because it didn't meet the 2004
test deadline, Boeing received none of the $73.5 million award
fee available under the revised plan.
Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, said
Boeing also lost $107 million in fees last year for not meeting
goals in the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System, which is
based in Alaska and California and is supposed to shoot down
long-range ballistic missiles.
"We have a policy of rewards for good performance and penalizing
for bad performance," Lehner said.
Maria McCullough, spokeswoman for Boeing's missile defense
programs, said it was not surprising that fees were reduced
because they were tied to performance in particular flight
tests. More recent successful tests show both programs are
"absolutely on track," she said.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
*****************************************************************
17 ICT: Western Shoshone oppose planned 700-ton detonation
[2006/04/17]
by: Brenda Norrell / Indian Country Today
Photo courtesy State of Nevada Division of Environmental
Protection
ELKO, Nev. - Western Shoshone opposed the Pentagon's planned
700-ton detonation on aboriginal Western Shoshone land, as a
delegation of Western Shoshone returned from Geneva, Switzerland,
with support from the United Nations for protection of their
human rights and territory.
James Tegnelia, director of the Pentagon's Defense Threat
Reduction Agency, confirmed that the United States plans to
detonate 700 tons of explosives at the Nevada Test Site on June
2.
While the Pentagon calls it ''Divine Strake,'' Western Shoshone
said there is nothing divine about a massive explosion on their
traditional lands.
''I believe when you are working testing weaponry for
destruction of life, you should not associate it with 'divine.'
We want this insanity to stop - no more bombs and no more
testing,'' Western Shoshone grandmother Carrie Dann, executive
director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project, said.
As Nevada and Utah congressmen pressed the Pentagon for
answers, critics of the Bush administration say the blast is
related to an effort to build a nuclear bunker-buster.
''It is abundantly clear, at least to me, that the military has
not given up the idea of a nuclear penetrator,'' Christopher
Hellman, policy analyst with the Center for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation in Washington, told the Las Vegas Sun
newspaper.
Hellman said that Congress killed funding for the nuclear
bunker-busting program last year. However, he said, ''they want
it'' and would continue those efforts.
Western Shoshone said the test would be in direct violation of
the recent decision of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination. CERD, in the decision made public March
10, urged the United States to ''freeze,'' ''desist'' and
''stop'' actions and threats against the Western Shoshone.
The committee stressed the ''nature and urgency'' of the
situation and informed the United States that it warrants
immediate attention under the committee's Early Warning and
Urgent Action Procedure.
The CERD decision explicitly cited ongoing weapons testing at
the Nevada Test Site as well as efforts to build an
unprecedented high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca
Mountain.
Chief Raymond Yowell, of the Western Shoshone National Council,
said Western Shoshone are opposed to any further military
testing on Shoshone lands.
''This is a direct violation of the CERD finding and an affront
to our religious belief [that] mother earth is sacred and should
not be harmed. All people who are opposed to these actions by
the U.S. should step forward and make their opposition known.''
Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, also questioned the detonation in a
letter to Tegnelia.
''Although I understand that this test is not a nuclear test, I
am greatly concerned that you have not provided the public with
adequate assurances that the test is not being conducted in
order to further misguided attempts to build new low-yield
nuclear devices,'' Matheson wrote.
The Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency does
not deny that the test was described last year as a planning
tool for development of a tactical nuclear weapon.
Earlier, Tegnelia told Agence France Presse that the result of
the 700-ton detonation would be a ''mushroom cloud.'' However,
he later retracted the statement.
''I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in
Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we
stopped testing nuclear weapons.'' Tegnelia also said it would
be the ''largest single explosive that we could imagine.''
While the military denies that it is a nuclear test, it will
still be many times more powerful than the smallest weapon in
the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
The Divine Strake blast will be five times larger than the
military's largest conventional weapon, the Massive Ordinance
Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs,
according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Pete Litster, executive director of Shundahai Network, said
ongoing weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site violate
international law.
''They violate the standing treaty between the U.S. government
and the Western Shoshone people. They also violate the spirit of
non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The test site
is located on Western Shoshone territory, and must not continue
to be misused in bold violation of standing agreements between
the U.S. government and the Western Shoshone Nation.''
Although approval for the test was sought and obtained from the
state of Nevada in January, the test detonation could be
cancelled. The Western Shoshone National Council, the Western
Shoshone Defense Project and Shundahai Network urged a united
effort to halt the detonation.
© 1998 - 2006 Indian Country Today. All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
18 DNFSB: FOIA Fee schedule
FR Doc E6-5603
[Federal Register: April 17, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 73)]
[Notices] [Page 19718] From the Federal Register Online via GPO
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr17ap06-52]
DEFENSE NUCLEAR FACILITIES SAFETY BOARD
FOIA Fee Schedule Update AGENCY: Defense Nuclear Facilities
Safety Board. ACTION: Notice.
SUMMARY: The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is
publishing its annual update to the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) Fee Schedule pursuant to 10 CFR 1703.107(b)(6) of the
Board's regulations.
DATES: Effective Date: May 1, 2006.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Kenneth M. Pusateri, General
Manager, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 625 Indiana
Avenue, NW., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20004-2901, (202)
694-7060.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The FOIA requires each Federal agency
covered by the Act to specify a schedule of fees applicable to
processing of requests for agency records. 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(4)(i).
On March 15, 1991, the Board published for comment in the Federal
Register its proposed FOIA Fee Schedule. 56 FR 11114. No comments
were received in response to that notice and the Board issued a
final Fee Schedule on May 6, 1991.
Pursuant to 10 CFR 1703.107(b)(6) of the Board's regulations,
the Board's General Manager will update the FOIA Fee Schedule
once every 12 months. Previous Fee Schedule updates were
published in the Federal Register and went into effect, most
recently, on May 1, 2005, 27 FR 20739. Board Action
Accordingly, the Board issues the following schedule of
updated fees for services performed in response to FOIA requests:
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Schedule of Fees for FOIA
Services (Implementing 10 CFR 1703.107(b)(6))
Search or Review Charge: $60.00 per hour.
Copy Charge (paper): $.05 per page, if done in-house, or
generally available commercial rate (approximately $.09 per
page).
Electronic Media: $5.00. Copy Charge (audio cassette): $3.00
per cassette. Duplication of Video: $25.00 for each individual
videotape; $16.50 for each additional individual videotape.
Copy Charge for large documents (e.g., maps, diagrams):
Actual commercial rates. Dated: April 10, 2006. Kenneth M.
Pusateri, General Manager. [FR Doc. E6-5603 Filed 4-14-06; 8:45
am] BILLING CODE 3670-01-P
*****************************************************************
19 AFP:Indian military kicks off nuclear warfare conference -
Mon Apr 17, 7:48 AM ET
NEW DELHI (AFP) - Indian military commanders were meeting here
to assess the capability of the country's million-plus army to
survive nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) warfare,
officials said.
The week-long commanders' conference would also review progress
in the military's ambitions to equip troops with the latest
electronics warfare systems, an army spokesman said on Monday.
The annual event, launched by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee,
was being attended for the first time by senior military
scientists along with the chiefs of the army, navy and airforce.
"The focus is on our military's preparedness to fight in
environments of NBC warfare and the progress our scientists have
made so far to provide protective technologies," one commander
said.
India and arch-rival Pakistan, who conducted tit-for-tat nuclear
weapons tests in 1998, came dangerously close to their fourth
war in 2002 sparking worldwide worries of a possible atomic
holocaust on the South Asian subcontinent.
Officials said scientists attending the closed-door meet would
make a presentation on the development of battlefield command
posts, anti-radiation clothing, and reinforced tanks and
armoured carriers capable of withstanding NBC attacks.
"We have achieved a lot but still we have miles to go in this
direction," the commander said.
A paramilitary unit tasked with protecting key installations
last month beat the army in the race to set up a specialised NBC
force by announcing plans to raise two specialised battalions by
the end of the year.
The army spokesman, meanwhile, said the commanders would also
hold talks on "future infantry soldiers as a system" -- in line
with an ambitious military blueprint.
The blueprint aims to include radar, sensor-guided helmets,
night vision devices and global positioning systems in the
battle gear of Indian troops.
"Training of army personnel on information technology for
organisational adaption and meeting future requirements will be
another important topic that will be deliberated," he said.
The conference is to be followed next month by military
exercises involving 60,000 frontline troops and war jets along
Pakistan's borders in northern Punjab state.
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
20 Media Rebuttal Re More NPPs Needed [19 More In S.E. USA]
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 15:12:11 -0400
Please act on this and forward this to other
lists and interested individuals and groups:
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/home.asp
Dear All,
I just saw a disgraceful piece
on MSNBC about the possibility of 19 more reactors
being built in the southestern USA. There was no
critic, no addressing renewables for both energy
sources and jobs. They interviewed the mayor of
Gaffney, S.C. and some business type. The NRC was
invoked without pointing out just who they really
are what they are really in place to do. NRC
admitted top Congress that there's a 45% chance of
a core meltdown in the USA:
http://www.mothersalert.org/probability.html
I couldn't find contact info for MSNBC to call
them and ask that they have a spokesperson from
NIRS, Greenpeace, etc. on but a
http://www.google.com search or a look at
http://www.fair.org/media-contact-list.html
http://www.fair.org/media-contact-list.html and
http://www.prop1.org/2000/media98.htm should
provide the appropriate contact data.
NRC and Sadia's CRAC-2 Report, along with
http://www.mothersalert.org/rickover.html are two
sources that they should address so listeners can
make up their minds for themselves.
-Bill Smirnow
*****************************************************************
21 NRC: NRC Completes Technical Review of Grand Gulf Early Site Permit Application
News Release - 2006-05
U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs
Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail:
opa@nrc.gov No. 06-054 April 14, 2006
complete safety evaluation report (SER) for an Early Site Permit
(ESP) at the Grand Gulf site, located about 25 miles south of
Vicksburg, Miss. Combined with the recent issuance of a final
Environmental Impact Statement on the application, this marks
the end of the staffs technical review on the first ESP,
although additional steps must be completed before the NRC
reaches a final decision on the matter.
The ESP process allows an applicant to address site-related
issues for possible future construction and operation of a
nuclear power plant at the site. The Grand Gulf application was
filed Oct. 21, 2003, by System Energy Resources, Inc., a
subsidiary of Entergy. If approved, the permit would give the
company up to 20 years to decide whether to build one or more
nuclear plants on the site and to file an application with the
NRC for approval to begin construction. With the technical
review complete, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board must
conclude its mandatory hearing on the matter before the
Commission can reach a final decision on issuing the permit. The
NRC expects to finish this process early in 2007.
The 400-page SER, NUREG-1840, contains the agency's safety and
site suitability review of the Grand Gulf ESP application. The
NRC staff reviewed information on: site seismology, geology,
meteorology and hydrology;
risks from potential accidents resulting from operation of a
nuclear plant at the site;
the sites ability to support adequate physical security for a
nuclear plant; and
proposed major features of the emergency plan System Energy
Resources would implement if a reactor is eventually built at
the site.
The report will be available shortly on the NRCs Web site at:
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-licensing/esp/grand-gulf.html
and http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/.
In addition, the Harriette Person Memorial Public Library at 606
Main St. in Port Gibson, Miss., has agreed to make the SER
available for public inspection.
Last revised Monday, April 17, 2006
*****************************************************************
22 Moscow Times: U.K. Report Spurns Nuclear Energy
April 18, 2006. Issue 3395.
U.K. Report Spurns Nuclear Energy By Renee Lawrence and Mark
Deen
LONDON -- Britain, Europe's biggest natural gas consumer, should
meet its electricity needs by relying on gas-fired plants and
renewable energy sources in the next decade and not nuclear
generation, a group of British lawmakers said.
Nuclear power plants will take too long to build, will require
government subsidies and may cut carbon emissions less than
expected, the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee
said in a report released Monday.
Eighteen of Britain's 23 nuclear reactors, some dating to the
1960s, will be shut by 2015. Including gas and coal-fired plants
that must be closed, a quarter of Britain's electricity
generation capacity will have to be replaced over the next nine
years even if demand does not increase.
"Nuclear power cannot contribute either to the need for more
generating capacity or to more carbon reductions as it simply
could not be built in time,'' the committee said in its report.
The gap will need to be filled "largely by an extensive program
of new gas-fired power stations, supplemented by a significant
growth in renewables.''
Prime Minister Tony Blair, told by utilities that renewable
forms of energy alone would not satisfy rising demand, signaled
his support for nuclear power in November by specifically asking
the committee to consider the option. Blair might decide whether
to build more nuclear plants before Parliament breaks for the
summer at the end of July.
Voters favor renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar
power. In February, 21 members of Parliament signed a petition
saying nuclear power would be "far too expensive and
environmentally damaging.'' Fifty signed a separate measure
demanding a vote. The Liberal Democrats, the third-largest party
in the House of Commons, oppose nuclear power.
The environmental committee raised other concerns about nuclear
power, including the diminishing availability of uranium
supplies needed to run the plants and the risk that terrorists
might cause catastrophe by attacking the stations.
The group of lawmakers also criticized the government for
failing to act on many of the recommendations of an earlier
report produced in 2003. The government white paper focused on
the use of renewable energy and conservation to help meet both
Britain's energy needs and its targets for reducing carbon
emissions.
"We remain convinced that the vision contained in the white
paper remains correct,'' the committee said. "What is now needed
is a far greater degree of commitment from the government on
implementing it.''
The committee concluded that Britain's free-market approach to
power generation would not solve power supply issues or cut
carbon emissions.
"The real issue is whether the current liberalized market and
policy framework will promote sufficient investment in
lower-carbon electricity generation to come on stream after 2016
to maintain a downward path in carbon emissions,'' it said in
Monday's 81-page report.
Emissions prices traded near a record in Europe on April 13, on
expectations that governments would force greater reductions in
output of carbon dioxide after 2007.
The European Union began carbon-allowance trading last year.
Each national government granted its factories and power plants
permits for carbon dioxide. Those that emit more than their
allowance must pay a fine or buy an allowance from a company
that emitted less.
© Copyright 2006 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
23 RIA Novosti: Rosatom denies bid for Siloviye Mashiny shares
17/ 04/ 2006
MOSCOW, April 17 (RIA Novosti) - Nuclear power monopoly Rosatom
Monday denied media reports that it was negotiating to buy a
stake in leading machinery manufacturer Silovye Mashiny.
"Rosatom is indeed developing ways of creating a mechanism to
control a number of crucial manufacturers in the nuclear energy
sector, but no talks on purchasing Silovye Mashiny shares are
underway," Rosatom press secretary Sergei Novikov said.
Commenting on the establishment of Atomenergomash, Novikov said
the company had been created March 29 as a subsidiary of
nuclear-fuel producer TVEL corporation, and that there was no
competition over it between TVEL and Techsnabexport, the state
provider of uranium and uranium enrichment services.
TVEL is one of the world's largest producers and suppliers of
nuclear fuel for power plants. Techsnabexport is a leading
provider of nuclear-fuel-cycle services and products, as well as
other Rosatom products.
TVEL manages a number of Russia's nuclear fuel companies. It
comprises major Russian natural uranium producers and nuclear
fuel suppliers to Russian and foreign nuclear power plants. The
corporation, which has 46,800 employees, has branches in Ukraine
and Slovakia.
© 2005 RIA Novosti
*****************************************************************
24 RIA Novosti: Russian experts build Chernobyl disaster simulator
17/ 04/ 2006
MOSCOW, April 17 (RIA Novosti) - A leading Russian nuclear
research center has built a simulator to train personnel to deal
with accidents like the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, a researcher
said Monday.
Viktor Sidorenko, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
told a conference ahead of the 20th anniversary of the world's
worst nuclear-power disaster that the Kurchatov Institute's
simulator would help operators run RBMK-type reactors and
prepare for possible emergencies.
Sidorenko said the situation at the Chernobyl NPP on April 26,
1986, was extremely complicated, and that the simulator
reflected this.
"Although operators knew what would happen, they could only
avert simulated accidents once in three attempts," Sidorenko
said, adding that RBMK reactors had been modernized and their
safety enhanced follow the catastrophe.
The explosion, which happened during testing on the night of
April 25, 1986, spewed radioactive clouds not only across
Western parts of the Soviet Union, but also some countries in
northern and Western Europe.
About 135,000 people were evacuated from within a 30-kilometer
(18-mile) zone, which has left the surrounding area looking like
a ghost town to this day. Many people, however, stayed or have
returned to live there, although radiation is still leaking from
the site.
The catastrophe caused enormous economic damage to the former
Soviet Union, and claimed the lives of many local people and
unprofessional clean-up workers.
Experts blame reactor degradation, a poor security system,
poorly qualified personnel and negligence for the accident.
RMBK reactors are in use at three nuclear-power plants in
Russia.
© 2005 RIA Novosti
*****************************************************************
25 RIA Novosti: Lessons of Chernobyl - heeded and unheeded
Opinion & analysis -
17/ 04/ 2006
MOSCOW. (Academician Yevgeny Velikhov for RIA Novosti) - Now
that 20 years have passed since the Chernobyl tragedy I would
like to express my opinion on certain things. It is very
important to assess Chernobyl correctly through the prism of
real facts and risks. In many cases, its aftermath was
exaggerated hundreds and even thousands of times, and not
without a contribution of the press. This had adverse effects
because words are a factor, which seriously affects people's
health. The damage done to the economy and social life in a
whole number of areas was also associated with the wrong
information and misjudgment.
The medical records of the exposed people do not confirm that
Chernobyl had a disastrous effect on their health. Here is an
example from the statistics of the Kurchatov Institute Medical
Service: all of its 600 research fellows who have regularly
visited Chernobyl during these twenty years (and some of whom
are still there) have good health records and continue working.
Or take a different aspect: Chernobyl showed that the nation
was not ready for a disaster, although a similar case took place
before. An explosion followed by radioactive emission occurred
at the Chelyabinsk Mayak Chemical Plant in the Urals in 1957.
The Soviet authorities instructed to classify all information
concerning the accident, including the analysis and conclusions
made by the best scientists and experts who had been studying
the causes and consequences of the accident at Mayak.
There is one more sad lesson: the priceless Chernobyl
experience, which was not classified, proved to be useless
anyway. Nobody in the whole world has asked for it, or tried to
study. This is very bad because this experience is extremely
valuable. It can be used for modeling human conduct in an
emergency, or for special training. Regrettably, it is
impossible to completely rule out the risk of technological
accidents at nuclear power plants, although very much has been
done to enhance the safety of atomic power engineering in the
years since Chernobyl. Nor can we ignore today's political
situation with its real threat of terrorism.
Even in Russia we do not keep the Chernobyl experience at hand,
which would be a reasonable thing to do. Only atomic scientists
have learnt the Chernobyl lessons really well. The RBMK reactors
(the first type of the Soviet reactor at nuclear power plants)
were immediately upgraded and made safe. They continue working
successfully. Hence, it was possible to make them reliable even
before the tragedy, but a mistake was made. This was the problem
rather than the fault of the then young nuclear power
engineering. For lack of experience accidents at the first
nuclear facilities took place in other countries as well, not
just here.
Although nothing is completely failsafe, today we guarantee the
safety of reactors. We also guarantee that even if an accident
happens by virtue of some incredible reason, it will not lead to
evacuation or have any other negative effects on the health and
prosperity of the people involved.
In the last 10 years Russia has not built a single new nuclear
power plant but the generation of nuclear energy grew from 12%
to 17% for this period. This growth has been achieved by better
control, modernization of nuclear power plants, and a whole
number of other factors. Natural resources - oil, gas and coal
-- are non-renewable, and the world's energy requirements are
growing. In this context nuclear power engineering has very good
prospects and no real competitors today. Further progress is
simply impossible without it.
Since the tragic day 20 years ago the physicists have been
trying hard to defeat radio phobia, and prove to the people that
atomic power engineering brings light and heat to their homes.
Have they done all they could? The drawbacks which this industry
had, and some of which were revealed by Chernobyl have been
largely overcome. Nuclear power engineering has evolved
incredible safety measures. I'd call some of them even somewhat
excessive. In general, the experience amassed today by the
physicists and designers, and the high safety standards of
nuclear power engineering guarantee that accidents similar to
Chernobyl will never repeat.
The likelihood of serious accidents at nuclear power plants is
very low; it is much lower than in mining or the chemical
industry, or on regular transport. Our phobia of nuclear power
engineering is largely a prejudice.
Academician Yevgeny Velikhov, Russian Academy of Sciences,
President of the Kurchatov Institute Russian Research Center.
© 2005 RIA Novosti
*****************************************************************
26 Rutland Herald: Review says Yankee operated safely in '05
Rutland Vermont News & Information
April 17, 2006
The Associated Press
BRATTLEBORO — An annual review of the Vermont Yankee nuclear
power plant by federal regulators says it operated safely during
2005.
Although a few issues showed up, none was extraordinary, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. "Overall Vermont Yankee
operated in a manner that preserve public health and safety and
fully met all cornerstone objectives," said the report.
The conclusions in the report mean that no additional oversight
of the plant in Vernon will be required.
Officials from the commission are due in Brattleboro on Thursday
to take any public comments on the running of the plant. The NRC
did make a number of findings but each of them was a "very low
safety issue," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan. They involved
such things as maintenance procedures and monitoring systems.
The findings were of "low significance" and do not require
additional monitoring by the NRC, Sheehan said.
That's in improvement from a year earlier when the NRC made a
finding that Vermont Yankee owner Entergy Nuclear had failed to
provide tone-alert radios to everyone living in the emergency
evacuation zone around the plant. Those are devices that alert
people to an emergency at Yankee.
Sheehan said the NRC had determined that the radio issue had
been addressed, although emergency planners in the region have
argued that there still aren't enough radios for every resident
in the area.
The review only addresses issues during 2005, so there is
nothing in it concerning the ongoing effort to raise the amount
of power produced at Yankee. Entergy Nuclear wants to produce 20
percent more power than it did. But it's only gone 12.5 percent
above its original design and has been holding at that level
while excess vibrations detected in a major steam line are
investigated. Yankee spokesman Rob Williams said more
information about the vibrations could be released in the coming
week.
It's unclear whether any of the issues with the power increase
will be part of next year's safety report, Sheehan said.
"We have to see how this plays out," he said. "If we find out
any shortcomings on the company's part as a result of (the power
boost), but it would be premature to say there would be any
enforcement action … as a result of power ascension."
© 2006 Rutland Herald
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27 Sofia Echo: British nuclear group interested in Bulgaria's energy sector -
www.sofiaecho.com
Mon 17 Apr 2006
Ovcharov
The British Nuclear Group (BNG) was interested in Bulgaria’s
nuclear sector, it emerged on April 6 after Bulgarian Economy
and Energy Minister Roumen Ovcharov met BNG representatives in
London. Ovcharov was on a two-day working visit to the UK.
The officials discussed BNG plans for direct investments in
Bulgaria’s energy sector through the establishment of a BNG
subsidiary in Bulgaria.
The two sides also shared experience in the field of
construction of new nuclear power plant units and the closure of
old ones. At present, Bulgaria has only one nuclear power plant
(NPP), in the Danube town of Kozloduy.
In 1999, the Bulgarian Government signed a memorandum of
understanding as a prelude to European Union accession talks,
agreeing to shut down the first two units of the plant by 2002
as part of its EU entry conditions. Units three and four are to
be decommissioned in 2007, but units five and six are to
continue operation, and hold an operating licence valid through
2009. Presently, BNG is consultant for some of the projects
connected to the closure of first and second units of the
Kozloduy NPP.
Bulgaria plans to eventually finish the construction of its
second NPP in Belene, also on the Danube. Construction of the
Belene NPP originally started in the late 1980s, but was halted
due to environmental protests and lack of funds. However, in
April 2005, the then-minister of energy Miroslav Sevlievski
announced that the Bulgarian Government had approved
construction of the plant. The construction, involving two
1000MW reactors, is estimated to cost 2.5 billion euro and
scheduled to be completed in the next 10 to 15 years.
In an April 10 interview with the Standart newspaper, Ovcharov
said that he did not have the designers, engineers, construction
workers or the necessary technical equipment and machines to
implement such a project as the construction of the Belene NPP.
The regulatory authorities also lack the capacity for the
construction of new power plants.
The Government’s plans for the construction of the Belene
nuclear power plant naturally attract the interest of some of
the leading companies in that field.
In February this year, a group of banks led by Citibank
announced that it would finance the bid of the Czech Skoda
Alliance consortium for the design and construction of units 1
and 2 of the Belene NPP. The banks would finance 75 per cent of
the project; the remaining 25 per cent to be shared between the
state-owned Czech Export Bank and the Export-Import Bank of the
United States (Ex-Im Bank). The Czech nuclear power engineering
company Skoda JS a.s. - owned by Obedinennye Mashinostroitelnye
Zavody (OMZ), a Russian mechanical engineering group - holds a
50-per cent stake in the consortium. The other half is shared by
two members of the CEZ Group: Skoda Praha a.s. (30 per cent) and
the Nuclear Research Institute Rez a.s. (20 per cent). According
to the plans of the alliance, more than 30 per cent of the work
is to be subcontracted to leading Bulgarian energy companies.
Skoda Alliance and Russia’s Atomstroyexport JSC submitted
initial bids in a negotiated procedure with prior publication of
a notice under the Public Procurement Act for selection of a
contractor for the design, construction and commissioning of
units 1 and 2 of the Belene nuclear power plant.
© 2001-2006, Sofia Echo Media Ltd.
*****************************************************************
28 AU ABC: Chernobyl's effects linger 20 years on -
Health & Medical News
17/04/2006
NEWS ANALYSIS
Adele Brard Agençe France-Presse
[Chernobyl power plant's fourth reactor]
Chernobyl surrounded by a crumbling concrete outer layer, which
the international community hopes will by replaced by a sturdier
steel jacket by 2012 (Image: Reuters/Gleb Garanich)
Twenty years ago, explosions at the Chernobyl power plant sent a
huge radioactive cloud into the air in the world's worst
civilian nuclear accident that still affects millions of people
today.
On 26 April 1986, at 1.23 am local time, a series of explosions
ripped through reactor four at the plant in the north of what is
today Ukraine, near its border with Belarus.
Radiation fell across much of Europe.
For days, the Soviet leadership refused to admit, either to its
own people or to the world, what had happened less than 100
kilometres north of a major city, Kiev, and near the huge Dniepr
River that crisscrossed Ukraine and provided much of its water
supply.
Only after the news blackout ended were 135,000 people evacuated
from the most affected areas around the plant.
To this day, Chernobyl fuels controversies over the use of
nuclear power, attracts tourists and researchers, feeds fears of
another release, continues to claim victims, and gobbles huge
amounts of international funds.
An army of some 600,000 'liquidators' - firemen, soldiers and
civilians - helped to construct a concrete sarcophagus meant to
contain the reactor for 20 to 30 years before a more permanent
structure could be built.
The fate awaiting these people and others exposed to radiation
from the blast is one of the main controversies still
surrounding the plant.
In its latest report on the disaster released in September, the
UNestimates that fewer people will eventually perish than was
initially predicted.
The report, the work of some 100 scientists from eight UN
agencies, says up to 4000 will eventually die as a result of the
accident, in addition to the nearly 60 people who have already
died.
Environmental groups like Greenpeacereject the findings as
"whitewash", collusion "with the nuclear lobby" and "insulting
for the victims". They estimate that the death toll will be in
the tens of thousands.
Psychological problems
In addition to health effects like thyroid cancer, survivors
also deal with psychological problems.
A study of more than 2000 liquidators by the Serbsky Psychiatric
Institute in Moscow found that two thirds of them suffered from
psychological illnesses.
"Considering their young age at the time of the accident, all of
the negative effects have not appeared yet," says Galina
Rumyantseva, who led the study.
Regions affected by the accident remain today both socially and
economically devastated.
Some 350,000 people have been evacuated from the surrounding
areas in all. Some 784,320 hectares of prime agricultural land
remain ruined, as do 700,000 hectares of forest.
[People of Chernobyl]
Chernobyl residents like 72-year-old Andriy Rudchenko have
returned to their homes within the 30 kilometre exlusion zone
around the plant, despite official bans (Image: Reuters/Gleb
Garanich)
The UN estimates that the eventual price tag of the disaster
will run to hundreds of billions of US dollars.
Today, the sarcophagus over reactor four is cracked and
crumbling, raising fears that more radiation can be released.
Some 28 countries have pledged to chip in more than US$750
million toward the construction of a new 20,000 tonne steel case.
The cover is expected to cost between US$1 and $2 billion
dollars and is hoped to be finished by 2012.
But it will take at least 100 years to safely get rid of
dangerous fuel and debris inside the plant, says spokesperson
Yulia Marusich.
The plant, whose last reactor was shut down for good only in
2000, continues to attract attention.
Tourists come to gawk, while researchers come to observe the
remarkable flourishing of flora and fauna.
Hundreds of mostly elderly people who lived in villages around
the plant have ignored government restrictions and warnings of
radiation to resettle in the 30 kilometre exclusion zone around
the plant, raising animals and eating fruits and berries from
the radiation-soaked land.
The final effects from the series of explosions that occurred in
the early hours at a Soviet nuclear power plant in 1986 may not
be known for years, scientists say.
"We may not see anything today, but genetic modifications can
appear in 20, 50 years," says Rudolf Alexakhin, director of the
Agricultural Radiology Institute in Moscow. Related Stories
Nuclear fusion plant gets the all clear, News in Science 29 Jun
2005Journey to Chernobyl, The Science Show Radio National
29 Jan 2005Nuclear power, Ask an expert The Lab ABC
Science Online
www.abc.net.au
"ABC Online" />
*****************************************************************
29 St. Petersburg Times: Nuclear Textbook Provokes Debate
Issue #1162(28), Tuesday, April 18, 2006
As the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster
approaches on April 26, a group of Russian environmentalists has
published a school textbook about the accident and begun
nationwide distribution.
Titled “Chernobyl Lessons”, the book, put together by experts
from Ecodefense, Greenpeace Russia and Bellona, describes the
disaster and its consequences in great detail, explaining the
dangers of radiation, analyzing the mistakes that were made and
suggesting protection strategies for similar situations.
The lectures give a critical assessment of nuclear industry in
general, and offer a comparative study of the risks and benefits
of nuclear industry versus renewable energy, such as, for
instance, wind energy. The book is intended to be used during
lessons on biology, physics, sociology and personal safety.
One of the sections contains the testimonies of Chernobyl
survivors.
Local teachers have been keen to acquire the book, Rashid
Alimov, editor of environmental portal Bellona.ru, told The St.
Petersburg Times on Friday.
“We received orders for over two hundred copies after just the
first two presentations, ...
A statue created by Yelena Nikitina entitled “Peeing Dog.â€
The statue is part of an ensemble created to celebrate the one
hundredth anniversary of the electrification of the city of
Vologda.
Russia In Dialogue Over Iran
MOSCOW — Russia will insist on a diplomatic solution to the
Iranian nuclear crisis when diplomats from six countries
involved in searching for a resolution ...
© Copyright The St. Petersburg Times 1993 - 2005
*****************************************************************
30 ITAR-TASS: Vladimir Putin awards 18 participants in Chernobyl clean-up
17.04.2006, 14.25
MOSCOW, April 17 (Itar-Tass) -- President Vladimir Putin has
signed a decree awarding state awards to eighteen participants
in the Chernobyl clean-up for valor and self-sacrifice, the
decree said. The awards include the Order for Services to the
State of the second degree awarded to nine of the heroes, and
the Orders and Medals for Valor awarded to the rest of the
group.
The president signed the decree on April 13- almost twenty years
after the Chernobyl nuclear accident - the most horrible
accident in the 20th century that occurred on April 26, 1986.
Last month, the awards were given to other twenty-two Russian
citizens who took part in the elimination of after-effects of
the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
31 SPIEGEL ONLINE: Chernobyl's Aftermath: The Pompeii of the Nuclear Age -
April 17, 2006 | |
By Walter Mayr
Chernobyl has become synonymous with the worst technological
disaster in the history of human kind. But how bad was it
really? Two decades after the calamity, the search for answers
continues.
The death zone is still off-limits today. Police officers armed
with automatic weapons and Geiger counters man the checkpoint
blocking the road to the Chernobyl reactor, and only those able
to produce special permits are waved through.
The forest grows wild on both sides of the asphalt road.
Windowless ruins of single-level houses are visible through a
thicket of birch, pine and poplar trees. Meter by meter, nature
is taking back the land once claimed by the residents of
Chernobyl.
PHOTO GALLERY: THE AFTERMATH OF THE DISASTER
"Preserve the environment for your descendants," reads a rusted
sign that has remained intact in the midst of a wilderness now
devoid of human presence, a grotesque imperative from a lost
era. But for the descendants of the Hassidic Jews who had
settled in the region around Chernobyl for centuries, and for
the children of Soviet workers who came to Chernobyl after 1970
to work at its nuclear power plant, no future of any kind exists
any longer.
The few remaining elderly inhabitants who refused to leave and
still live in the forests within the 30-kilometer (about 18
miles) restricted zone around Chernobyl complain about wolves
that have become so bold that they follow them into their
gardens and eat their guard dogs. Wild boars roam the streets of
Prypiat, now a ghost town, past abandoned Communist Party
buildings in which the open doors of file cabinets creak in the
wind. The city's "Energetik" cultural center sits abandoned.
A deathly silence prevails in this Pompeii of the nuclear age,
where time stopped at 1:24 a.m. on April 26, 1986.
A melange of radioactive debris
It was on that date when the fuel rods exploded inside Reactor
Four at the Lenin Nuclear Power Plant, forcing open the reactor
core's massive lids and ejecting radioactive dust high into the
atmosphere. Since then, the surrounding soil has been
contaminated with cesium, plutonium and strontium, and the name
Chernobyl has become synonymous with the biggest technological
disaster in the history of mankind.
Today the exploded reactor, lined with steel plates and dwarfed
by a towering smokestack, resembles a heavily armored steamship
in dry dock. During the months following the nuclear meltdown at
Chernobyl, workers installed a protective mantle over the
reactor consisting of 300,000 tons of concrete and 7,000 tons of
steel. To this day, the mantle conceals a mélange of radioactive
debris, including collapsed concrete girders, tons of
radioactive dust and cone-shaped piles of reddish-brown
radioactive lava.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), only
3 to 4 percent of the nuclear fuel used in the reactor escaped
in the Chernobyl explosion. The G7 countries are calling for a
new "sarcophagus" for the radioactive site, at a price tag of
more than $1 billion, a project for which Western corporations
are bidding.
But Ukrainian radiation expert Viktor Poyarkov believes that up
to "50 percent of the fuel" managed to escape into the
atmosphere in 1986. Indeed, after investigating the reactor
site, scientists at the Moscow's renowned Kurchatov Institute
now believe that almost all of Chernobyl's radioactive material
was released in the accident 20 years ago.
The whereabouts of 180 tons of radioactive material isn't the
only controversy swirling around the Chernobyl accident. Also at
issue is the number of victims, both past and future. The "body
count" is of critical importance in addressing whether the
Maximum Credible Accident, or MCA, at Chernobyl presents a valid
argument against investing billions into nuclear power projects
in the future.
Fifty-six dead or 50,000?
The IAEA's nuclear experts say that Chernobyl has claimed 56
lives to date -- 47 workers at the disaster site and nine
children who have since died of thyroid cancer. In contrast, the
Ukrainian National Council on Radiation Protection claims to
have documented 34,499 deaths among rescue workers. The United
Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) estimated the number of
Chernobyl workers who died from radiation exposure or committed
suicide at 50,000 -- six years ago.
Like hardly any other incident with global consequences, the
tragedy at the Lenin Nuclear Power Plant continues to drive a
steady debate between scientists and politicians to this day.
For many years, Chernobyl was used as fodder to support
practically any world view -- because of a lack of reliable data
on the causes and, more importantly, consequences of the
accident, and because the Soviet leadership under former premier
Mikhail Gorbachev either remained stubbornly silent on the issue
or lied about it. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991,
additional traces and medical files on the victims, as well as
evidence against culpable bureaucrats simply disappeared in the
newly independent republics.
But now, 20 years after the reactor accident, sufficient
evidence and documentation exists to arrive at a reasonably
accurate assessment of what really happened at Chernobyl. The
evidence is scattered throughout Moscow's Communist Party
archives and in the medical files of Belarusian pediatricians,
in the minutes of the meetings of international nuclear power
corporations and their lobbyists, and in the tales of suffering
told by nuclear workers who were resettled after the accident.
As much as they are snapshots taken from different points of
view, when combined they paint a surprisingly consistent picture
of the tragedy.
When the fuel rods exploded in Reactor Four at the Chernobyl
nuclear plant Soviet government head Nikolai Ryzhkov was still
asleep in his country house outside Moscow. Three and a half
hours passed before his official telephone rang for the first
time. The call came from the Minister of Energy, who reported
that that there had been an "accident" in Chernobyl, and that
local officials were talking about an "explosion."
"There are victims"
Ryzhkov asked to be provided with a detailed report at 9 a.m.
and had his driver take him to the Kremlin. Shortly after
arriving in his office, Ryzhkov received the first call: "It was
the reactor, comrade. There are victims, radiation victims."
Ryzhkov reacted immediately -- exactly the way he had been
taught. He formed a commission and placed himself at its head.
For the time being, he chose not to notify the country's most
powerful man, Mikhail Gorbachev, who had been General Secretary
of the Soviet Communist Party for the previous 13 months, nor
did he inform the Russian people.
Ryzhkov is a man who sticks to his convictions -- even today, 20
years and hundreds of thousands of radiation victims later. Now
76, he is a member of the upper house of the Russian parliament
and a man who, judging by his appearance, seems to bridge the
worlds of then and now. Peering out through Soviet-style
glasses, he wields a tiny, black-and-silver mobile phone in his
left hand.
The Soviet Union's former second-in-command denies any suggestion
of an official cover-up following the reactor disaster. "What
should we have written in the papers back then?" he asks. "The
deaths weren't visible. We acted quickly and didn't make any
mistakes."
To this day, Ryzhkov is proud of his initial response to the
reactor accident, of his traditional Soviet approach of
mobilizing massive numbers of people and quantities of material
to deal with the tragedy. On the day of the accident, nuclear
engineers were sent to Chernobyl from Moscow, followed by 6,000
troops, 40,000 members of the Soviet military's chemical task
force and experienced helicopter pilots -- some redeployed from
the battlefields of Afghanistan.
By the evening of April 26, 1986, Ryzhkov was still unaware that
the amount of radiation released at Chernobyl was 400 times
higher than that released by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and
that trillions of Becquerel units of radiation were already
drifting around the globe. He didn't know that firemen, young
police officers and soldiers with insufficient protective gear
were working 90-second shifts above the maw of Reactor Four,
above the red-hot lid of the reactor, ruining their lives in an
effort to control the flames.
But he did know, instinctively, that it would be a dark day for
himself and for the party.
Years of warnings
Scientists had been issuing warnings for years about Chernobyl,
where six reactors, with a combined output of 1,000 megawatts,
made up what was then the world's most powerful nuclear power
plant. On February 21, 1979, when he was still head of the KGB,
the former General Secretary of the Communist Party, Yuri
Andropov, had warned the party's central committee about
potential problems at Chernobyl.
In a report titled "Deficiencies in the Construction of the
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant," a document marked "top secret,"
Andropov described violations of construction specifications
"that could lead to technical failures and accidents." According
to the report, safety procedures at the plant were not being
observed, leading to 170 worker accidents within a span of only
nine months.
The response to the report was predictable: the ministry
responsible formed a commission. Four years later, on December
31, 1983, Victor Bryuchanov, Chernobyl's director and a Communist
Party official, certified the on-time completion of the plant's
fourth reactor -- despite the fact that the reactor, which would
explode three years later, was not yet fully secured. In December
1985, Bryuchanov told an associate: "God forbid that something
serious should ever happen to us. I am afraid that not only the
Ukraine, but the entire Soviet Union would be unable to handle
such an emergency."
The roof structure on the reactor building was made of a highly
flammable material. To satisfy the party's demands for speedy
completion, shortcuts were taken when it came to the concrete
containment walls, evacuation plans, protective gear and Geiger
counters. One of the most outspoken among those party officials
calling for rapid completion was Ryzhkov, who became prime
minister in September 1985.
At the 27th party congress of the Soviet Communist Party, only
eight weeks before the reactor disaster, the USSR's energy
ministry was denounced for having "failed to achieve, during the
11th five-year plan, the planned increase in the energy
production of nuclear power plants." As far as party officials
were concerned, it was an unacceptable state of affairs. After
all, Gorbachev himself had called for a two and a half-fold
increase in electricity production from nuclear sources within
five years. The war in Afghanistan, by then in its seventh year,
the arms race with the United States and a dramatic plunge in oil
prices had brought the USSR to the brink of bankruptcy. The party
was adamant in its demands for an increase in nuclear energy to
meet domestic consumer needs and free up the country's oil and
gas reserves for export -- and hard currency.
A warm Saturday in April
In the hours following the disaster, the 49,000 residents of
Prypiat -- located just three kilometers from the reactor --
continued to go about their lives as if nothing had happened. It
was a warm Saturday in April, and the streets were filled with
people; mothers walking with their children, men drinking beer
and kwas -- a local drink favorite -- at roadside stands.
According to a classified eyewitness report that was later sent
to party headquarters in Moscow, officials in Prypiat were well
aware of the amount of radiation exposure within an hour of the
accident. But no one dared alert the local population without
orders from Moscow. By noon, the streets were being washed with
soap, but only the men who had worked the night shift at the
reactor knew why, so that the only other residents of the city
with at least some forewarning were their families.
On that same Saturday -- at a time when radiation in downtown
Prypiat was already at several thousand times normal levels --
the operations manager at Chernobyl gave a raucous party to
celebrate his daughter's wedding. None of his colleagues who were
on duty that weekend felt that it was necessary to warn him.
On Saturday evening, Prime Minister Ryzhkov issued the order to
evacuate Prypiat within the next few days, and by Sunday evening
1,100 buses had reached the city from Kiev, the Ukrainian
capital. Those whose work did not require them to stay behind
were told that the party wanted them to pack their bags and leave
the city "for two to three days."
The politburo met in Moscow on Monday, and on Tuesday the
government newspaper Izvestiya ventured a terse, eight-line
report on an "accident" in Chernobyl, saying that "one of the
nuclear reactors was damaged" -- nothing more.
By that time, more than three days had passed since the reactor
accident. Officials were already aware of the scope of the
catastrophe. The most seriously affected of the rescue workers
had long since been admitted to Moscow's Clinic 6, their flaking
skin burned a dark brown from the radiation and their hair
falling out. But most citizens were still being kept in the dark.
"We were concerned that a panic could break out -- and that in
major cities like Kiev and Minsk," Gorbachev later said.
Ironically, as recently as that year's March party congress,
Gorbachev, quoting Lenin, had called for "the truth, always and
under all circumstances."
The results of studies conducted by Minsk physician Yevgeny
Demidchik now show that hundreds of cases of thyroid cancer in
Belarusian children who were either not yet born or had just been
born at the time of the disaster were caused by contamination
with iodine 131 during the first few days following the Chernobyl
explosion.
In a resolution dated May 8, 1986, the politburo ordered
allowable radiation doses increased by factors ranging from 10 to
50. In a document titled "Secret Attachment to Item 10" of the
minutes, party officials ordered radioactively contaminated meat
turned into sausage, using a 1:10 ratio, throughout the territory
of most republics within the USSR, including Russia, but
"excluding Moscow."
Suppression and falsification
Under official order number U-2617 C, issued on June 27, 1986,
all data relating to Chernobyl, to the treatment of the victims
and to the nature and scope of their radiation exposure was
classified. Though signed by Yevgeny Shulshenko, a minor official
in the USSR's Ministry of Health, the document was sanctioned by
senior party officials and smoothed the way for the subsequent
suppression, falsification and destruction of evidence.
It wasn't until 1989 that Pravda published a map of the
contaminated regions, which showed that 70 percent of the fallout
from Chernobyl descended upon Belarus, with the remainder falling
onto the Ukraine and southern Russia. This meant that 5 million
people living in thousands of villages and a few larger cities in
the Soviet Union spent three years living in areas exposed to
high levels of radiation while oblivious to the risks involved.
Many continued to eat home-grown vegetables and the berries and
mushrooms they normally gathered in the forests.
Central Committee internal report number 20-34 on the Chernobyl
disaster, dated July 10, 1986 and labelled "top secret," concedes
that the Chernobyl case was "one of the worst accidents in the
history of nuclear energy." According to the report, there were
26 dead, 135,000 evacuees and 800,000 people who required medical
treatment.
Svetlana wasn't even born yet when the fuel rods in Reactor Four
at the Lenin plant in Chernobyl exploded. Her parents lived in
Kiev, at least until the day when her father was sent to work at
the stricken reactor. In the days, months and years following the
disaster, 600,000 to 800,000 so-called liquidators from
throughout the Soviet Union were sent to Chernobyl to help out in
the cleanup project. Svetlana's father survived the mission, but
he returned home traumatized and exposed to high doses of
radiation.
Svetlana herself, born a year after the reactor disaster, is 19
today and lives in a home for disabled children and adolescents
in the town of Snamyanka near Kirovgrad. She was born with a
brain tumor and the right side of her face was so deformed that
she can only see with one eye. Today, several operations later,
Svetlana is still so disfigured that she shuns contact with the
outside world, preferring to express herself with her hands.
She paints, writes poetry and cares for younger inmates at the
home. Despite the severity of Svetlana's case, others in the home
are even worse off. Grisha, for example, who was born just a few
months after Chernobyl and is now almost 20, has deformed legs
and the appearance of a three-year-old.
Deformed limbs, missing ears
Doctors speculate that Grisha and other children with similar
symptoms are the victims of a growth disorder caused by a genetic
malfunction of the pituitary gland. Cases of this type of genetic
disorder were occasionally reported in the region before the
nuclear disaster.
But according to the foundation "Children for Chernobyl," in the
past decade doctors have seen a dramatic increase in deformities
among young patients from parts of Belarus and the Ukraine that
were exposed to high levels of radiation -- including deformed
limbs, missing ears, harelips and feet with up to eight toes. To
draw conclusions on the possible causes of these defects, doctors
must review the children's medical histories to determine where
and when they were born.
Geneticist Hava Weinberg, for example, examined 100 children of
Chernobyl rescue workers who had emigrated to Israel. The rate of
genetic mutations among those born after the accident was 700
percent higher than among those born before 1986. In a
government-funded, long-term study headed by Volodimir
Vertelecki, chief geneticist at the University of Southern
Alabama, an average of 14,000 newborns are examined each year in
the Ukrainian provinces of Volyn and Rovno. According to one of
the results of the study, there has been an almost 20-fold
increase in the number of infants born with "spina bifida" (cleft
vertebra).
These children with genetic defects are the second generation of
Chernobyl victims. And they have fuelled a revival of the debate
between scientists and doctors in rival camps -- between the IAEA
and its opponents.
The first round of the debate centered on thyroid cancer.
Beginning in 1990, Fred Mettler, a radiologist at the University
of New Mexico and a man with years of experience on the
pro-nuclear side of radiation damage assessment, began
researching the consequences of the Chernobyl reactor accident
for the IAEA. In a study he published in 1991, Mettler claimed
that there were none, not even children with radiation-induced
thyroid cancer.
"Those people from the atomic energy agency"
The next year, the British scientific journal Nature published
studies showing a dramatic rise in the incidence of thyroid
cancer in contaminated regions not far from Chernobyl, and it was
revealed that Mettler also had access to the same data from
Belarus and the Ukraine. It was clearly an embarrassing
revelation for Mettler and the IAEA, but not embarrassing enough
to put an end to their relationship.
In its most recent report dated September 2005, submitted to the
United Nations as part of the "Chernobyl Forum," the IAEA has
this to say about the issue of genetic defects: "No evidence was
found whatsoever for genetic anomalies that could be attributed
to radiation exposure." One of the authors of the report was none
other than Fred Mettler.
Kiev Professor Igor Komissarenko can only shake his head when he
talks about "those people from the atomic energy agency." "They
met with us, of course, but they're not interested in new
information. All they say is that it doesn't resemble the
evidence from Hiroshima."
Professor Komissarenko, the doyen of Ukrainian endocrinology, is
a short, energetic gentleman in his sixties. He is neither for
nor against nuclear power, but he does object to thyroid cancer,
and he's an expert on the issue. "Just look at the numbers," he
says, pointing to a hand-drawn diagram on his office wall.
"Thyroid cancer in children increased tenfold between 1986 and
1990, and is only now beginning to decline. But it's a different
story with adults: 38 cases in 1990, 308 today."
Iodine 131, which causes thyroid cancer, is one of the more
short-lived of the isotopes released in the Chernobyl reactor
accident. Cesium 137, on the other hand, has a half-life of 30
years, while plutonium's is much longer still. According to
medical experts, illnesses triggered or promoted by radiation
could remain dormant for decades.
Death by radiation is quiet, odorless and invisible. The firemen,
medical orderlies and helicopter pilots who helped clear the
debris from the reactor building knew little of the dangers. The
bodies of the first 28 of these men, who died of acute radiation
poisoning, have been buried under heavy lead plates in Moscow's
Mitino cemetery for the past two decades.
Demands for compensation
Some of those still alive today received radiation doses of up to
eight Sievert units -- more than 16,000 percent higher than the
allowable maximum yearly dose of radiation -- within extremely
short time spans. But according to Ukrainian radiation expert
Vladimir Usatenko, many of the documents that could serve as
evidence of the suffering these men have experienced were either
falsified in response to party pressure or, in the summer of
1986, stolen from a safe in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
These victims have found little support for their efforts to
uncover the truth. The countries charged with their welfare --
mainly Belarus and Ukraine -- are already heavily burdened with
the consequences of the accident they have shouldered,
unassisted, since the collapse of the Soviet Union. More than
300,000 of the disaster's most serious victims have demanded
compensation.
In Darniza, a Kiev neighborhood of high-rise apartment buildings
where many Chernobyl evacuees were resettled, residents in their
mid-fifties are now dying by the dozens. But the causes of death
listed on their death certificates are unlikely to make any
impact on the IAEA's victim statistics. "Ninety percent of the
people here are completely healthy when they die," survivors say
derisively. Those still alive complain of chronic fatigue,
headaches and the metallic taste on their tongues that radiation
exposure leaves behind as a lasting souvenir.
One man who lives in the neighborhood, a former head of
engineering in Reactor One at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
who was on duty on the night of the accident, remains optimistic.
In October, doctors amputated both of his legs from the thighs
down, but their diagnosis -- "arteriosclerosis" -- makes no
mention whatsoever of Chernobyl. Now he is learning to walk
again, using a walker built for him by former metal workers from
the power plant. His prosthetic limbs were intended for invalids
wounded in the war in Afghanistan.
Sergei Parashin was working the night shift when the fuel rods
exploded in Reactor Four. He was the senior party secretary for
operations at Chernobyl -- an extension of the party in the
Soviet Union's laboratory of the future.
Following the explosion, the area around the reactor erupted into
chaos. The director of the power plant, who arrived an hour late,
refused to believe radiation readings that were already
indicating radiation levels of up to two Sieverts outside the
reactor. He refused to comply with the civil safety regulations
that would have required him to issue a catastrophe alert.
"No cause for concern"
The plant's desperate engineers hurried to see party secretary
Parashin: "Sergei Konstantinovich, the director seems mentally
confused. You must speak with him!" But Parashin refused to
comply, saying: "Why should I speak with him? After all, I'm no
radiation expert."
Unlike many of his colleagues, the party's man on the ground at
Chernobyl survived that night unharmed. He was subsequently named
director of the nuclear power plant, whose remaining three
reactors were kept running for another 14 years. In the end, he
became director of the State Office for Resettlement and
Evacuation Issues -- the unchallenged ruler of the 30-kilometer
death zone.
In this position, Parashin continues to this day to represent
Ukraine at international conferences. Accompanied by Volodimir
Holosha, his former deputy Communist Party secretary and today a
deputy minister in the country's disaster ministry, Parashin was
present on Sept. 6, 2005 when the IAEA released a 600-plus-page
report on the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster two decades
after the fact. The report was issued by the UN's Chernobyl
Forum, a group led by the IAEA and including representatives of
World Health Organization, five other UN organizations, the World
Bank and the governments of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
In addition to arriving at the seemingly favorable conclusion
that the disaster has claimed all of 56 lives to date, the expert
panel also issues a broader all-clear when it comes to nuclear
mishaps. WHO representative Michael Repacholi expresses the
group's message in a way that even the uninitiated can
understand: "The Chernobyl Forum's main message is this: no cause
for concern." The East-West partnership, nourished over the
decades, between the elite of the Soviet nuclear research
community and their counterparts in the West has apparently borne
fruit.
Building a new Chernobyl coffin
Hans Blix served as a willing figurehead for this conference of
the like-minded from the very beginning. The Swedish career
diplomat with the academic demeanor was named head of the IAEA in
1981. On May 8, 1986, Blix was the first Western eyewitness to
fly over the remains of the Chernobyl reactor. The words he used
to express his impressions earned him the Soviet leadership's
lasting appreciation. Blix's message to the world was benign: "We
were able to see people working in the fields, livestock in the
pastures and cars driving in the streets." He said that the area
surrounding the reactor didn't look nearly that bad: "The
Russians are confident that they will be able to clean up the
area. It will be available for agriculture once again." To this
day, the Kiev Institute of Radiation Medicine displays a plaque
with which the government of the Soviet Union paid tribute to
Hans Blix for his role in managing the catastrophe of Chernobyl.
Although Blix resigned as IAEA director in 1997, he remains
connected to Chernobyl. He now heads the group of donor countries
that, under the leadership of the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development, plans to raise ?1 billion to
build a new coffin for the Chernobyl reactor.
Germany, with direct and EU-channelled contributions amounting to
?127 million, is the group's largest contributor. Despite
adequate funding though, the project advanced little during the
past eight years. The delay is not due to the individual studies
submitted to the group that conclude that a new, expensive
protective shell is unnecessary because hardly any radioactive
material remains within the reactor.
Instead, the construction project's tortuous progress can be more
accurately attributed to behind-the-scenes claims by former
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Tomenko. In April 2005, he
denounced the consulting and expert fees paid to Ukrainian
government officials and representatives of international
organizations as the misuse of "incredibly large sums of money."
In fact, the Ukrainian people have a term for the business of
turning a profit from Chernobyl. They call it "Chernobyliski
bisnes."
It's a business that reflects taxpayers' fears of radioactive
waste, and there are two parties fighting over the spoils.
Profiting from disaster
On the one hand, major corporations in donor countries are hoping
to garner contracts for the contaminated 30-kilometer zone:
Germany's RWE-Nukem Group, French construction firms Bouygues and
Vinci and, at the head of the pack, US firm CH2M Hill.
On the other hand are the parties representing the interests of
Ukraine. The problems involved with Chernobyl's nuclear waste
guarantee thousands of jobs at the reactor site, along with
healthy profits for consultants. And international nuclear power
corporations' construction projects promise long-term employment
for the region.
Under the leadership of Orange revolutionary Viktor Yushchenko,
Ukraine has placed its bets on nuclear power to accelerate its
path into the future. The Ukrainian president has announced that
the country plans to build eleven new nuclear power plants. The
government's potentially profitable plan to import spent nuclear
fuel from abroad for final storage in the Chernobyl death zone
was temporarily put on ice in the face of massive popular
protests against the idea.
And the 30-kilometer restricted zone around the defunct reactor?
As far as nuclear energy experts and scientists are concerned,
the government's supreme overseer of the zone, former party
secretary Parashin, is in charge of nothing short of a gem -- the
ideal site for genetic experiments, botanical field tests and
research projects on radiation safety.
Plans are underway for a giant open-air laboratory within a
10-kilometer perimeter of the disaster site. An "International
Test Site for Radiation Safety Research," shielded from the
outside world, is already in development.
There are even plans to develop a tourist attraction in the space
between the research site and the checkpoint where police
officers with automatic pistols and Geiger counters still block
access to the zone. The plans include a national park, complete
with wild animals and rare plants.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2006
All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
32 The Telegraph: India rejects US condition
Calcutta : Frontpage
| Tuesday, April 18, 2006
OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi, April 17: India today said it would not accept the US
proposal requiring Delhi to give up the option of a nuclear
test, but iterated its commitment to the unilateral moratorium
on testing it has been following.
Responding to a report in The Telegraph, the external affairs
ministry confirmed that Washington had sent to New Delhi a draft
of what is called the “123 agreement” — named after Section 123
of the US Atomic Energy Act — the two countries will sign.
“The US had shared with India some weeks ago a preliminary draft
agreement on Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation under Article 123
of the US Atomic Energy Act,” a spokesperson said.
One of the clauses of the 22-page draft, which is in possession
of this paper, requires India to commit to forgoing the option
to conduct further nuclear tests. If it were to violate this
commitment, the Americans would stop civilian nuclear
cooperation, which was agreed between Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh and President George W. Bush on July 18, 2005.
India has told the US that these conditions are not acceptable,
the spokesperson said. “In preliminary discussions on these
elements, India has already conveyed to the US that such a
provision has no place in the proposed bilateral agreement and
that India is bound only by what is contained in the July 18
joint statement, that is continuing its commitment to a
unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing,” the ministry said.
It was reported in this paper yesterday that the bilateral
agreement was in addition to Washington’s attempt in the US
Congress to impose the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) on
India through the backdoor.
The bill that is now before the US Congress contains the
no-testing clause for India. The legislation will amend the US
Atomic Energy Act, which is necessary for Washington to be able
to implement the nuclear cooperation deal with India.
The external affairs ministry has reaffirmed India’s position
that it would sign the CTBT only if the treaty was made
universal and all its signatories destroyed their nuclear
arsenal. India’s refusal to sign the CTBT is making the passage
of the Indo-US nuclear deal through Congress tough.
Now, its refusal to agree to the no-testing clause in the
bilateral agreement will make it even more difficult for the
Bush administration to get Congress to clear the amendment.
By making the no-testing clause a part of the amendment bill,
the administration has already in a way committed India’s
acceptance of it to Congress. With Delhi now declining the
proposal, the draft agreement will enter a phase of hard
negotiation.
Voices from the US have been causing discomfort in New Delhi.
Foreign secretary Shyam Saran has said India will not accept any
new conditions.
Copyright © 2006 The Telegraph. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
33 icWales: Show will reveal Chernobyl errors
Apr 17 2006
Western Mail
THERE was a "catalogue of mistakes" and lack of preparation by
the Government when the radioactive rain from Chernobyl fell on
Wales, according to a new documentary.
The nuclear power station accident happened 20 years ago but new
papers have been released.
BBC Wales current affairs programme Taro Naw has obtained
documents on secret meetings and underlines the issues the
country was unprepared for. It reveals panic among the public
and secret testing of sheep.
A letter from a senior adviser to the Welsh Office warned it was
impossible to test all food for safety from radiation
contamination, the programme will reveal tomorrow night at
8.25pm on S4C.
Copyright and Trade Mark Notice
? owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror Plc 2006
icWalesTM is a trade mark of Trinity Mirror Plc.
*****************************************************************
34 UPI: French minister sees nuclear future
United Press International - Energy -
4/17/2006 8:50:00 AM -0400
PARIS, April 17 (UPI) -- Francois Goulard, France's
minister-delegate in charge of higher education and research,
has said nuclear energy will be used for decades to come.
In an interview with French Europe 1 radio, the minister said
the world's energy and environmental problems have a nuclear
solution, and that with appropriate safety measures, nuclear
power could be very safe.
"Today, in the current state of the world, with the energy and
environmental problems we face, we cannot do without nuclear
power. On the contrary, it seems obvious that we'll have to use
nuclear power for a number of decades to face up to energy
challenges and environmental challenges," Goulard said. "Nuclear
power is dangerous in itself, but it can be a form of energy
which is useful to humanity if technical safety rules are
observed."
"It is in France's interest and in the planet's interest to
return to nuclear power.
"France has not abandoned it, but other countries have abandoned
it or have in any case stopped their programs, and this is a
mistake. The greenhouse effect is a real issue," the minister
said.
"Nuclear power is a kind of energy which can be very safe --
provided really careful tests are carried out, of course -- and
which, above all, does not produce any greenhouse effect gases.
This is of fundamental importance."
As France has not suspended its nuclear programs, Goulard said,
the country is well-placed to export its nuclear expertise, and
to share its experience of safe nuclear power, and a leader in
the field.
"There is no reason why we should lose this advantage, why, on
the contrary, we should not use our know-how, our technology, to
engage in exports. I think there is an opportunity for France to
use this form of energy, and there is an opportunity for our
industry, which is indeed in a leading position in this field."
© Copyright 2006 United Press
International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
35 Guardian Unlimited: Blair hints at go-ahead for new nuclear power plants
Patrick Wintour, political editor
Monday April 17, 2006
The Guardian
Tony Blair has given his strongest indication yet that he will
press ahead with a new generation of nuclear power stations
despite a highly critical report from MPs yesterday claiming
that Britain's coming energy gap can best be filled by new
carbon efficient gas stations.
Mr Blair, speaking ahead of the government's energy review in
June, said Britain will need both new nuclear and renewable
energy to fill the energy gap. Asked in a video interview,
before the parliamentary recess, if Britain should rely on
nuclear or on renewables, Mr Blair replied: "I have a feeling it
is possible we may need both."
He added: "We are investing a lot in renewable energy, it is
very, very important, but we are going to lose 20% of our power
from nuclear, which is what we get at the moment. Looking
forward, for reasons of energy security as much as for reasons of
climate change, I think there is going to be a huge need to
develop all of this."
Britain is set to lose 20GW of electricity generating capacity
by the end of 2015, largely due to the decommissioning of old
nuclear stations. The environmental audit select committee,
which issued its report yesterday, claims new nuclear stations
could not come on line until 2019 at the earliest.
But ministers hope to overcome this by problem by speeding up
the planning process, and have formally requested that the
health and safety executive consider whether it could give
licence consents to prospective designs for reactors before
assessing specific projects, thereby foreshortening the
construction process.
The HSE has acknowledged that "potential private licensees may
wish to reduce project and commercial risk, by seeking
preliminary, or pre-licensing regulatory assessments of
prospective reactor designs, before large-scale financial
commitments are made". Since the reactors are likely to be of
foreign design, the HSE may also rely more than in the past on
the safety assessment of foreign regulators.
Useful link
Green party of England and Wales
Email us
Email your comments for publication to
politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
36 Deseret News: Matheson objects to plans for blast in Nevada
Monday, April 17, 2006
He fears 700-ton test may assist in making new N-arm
By Joe Bauman
Deseret Morning News
Rep. Jim Matheson is raising his voice against a planned huge
conventional explosion at the Nevada Test Site, saying it may be
intended to assist in developing a new low-yield nuclear weapon.
Earlier this month, the Utah Democrat wrote to James
Tegnelia, director of the test's sponsor, the Defense Treat
Reduction Agency. The test, named "Divine Strake," would be
carried out June 2.
Congress in 2003 repealed a ban on research and
development of low-yield nuclear devices, Matheson wrote. Some
members of Congress, including Matheson, thought the repeal
amounted to "yielding to those who actively support the
development of new nuclear weapons."
After the repeal, the Defense Department and the National
nuclear Security Administration assured Congress that the ban
should be lifted because it hindered research and that no actual
weapon was being stealthily developed, Matheson wrote.
However, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency recently
indicated the demonstration "will develop a planning tool that
will improve the warfighter's confidence in selecting the
smaller proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground
facilities while minimizing collateral damage."
Matheson commented, "That sounds like preparation for a
low-yield nuclear weapon to me."
Matheson said that the explosion of 700 tons won't
simulate an actual conventional bomb "because no bomber in the
U.S. fleet has the capacity to carry a weapon of that size."
However, based on unclassified information, the Divine Strake
explosion would be "much smaller than (the power of) any nuclear
weapon the U.S. currently possesses," he wrote.
Matheson added he is worried that the explosion is being
billed as a conventional demonstration when its actual intent is
to further the pursuit of a new nuclear weapon.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com
© 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company
*****************************************************************
37 Spectrum: Baby Tooth Survey interesting story in downwinder saga
www.thespectrum.com - The Spectrum, St. George, UT
+ MIT professor shares history of study of nuclear fallout
effects
BY PATRICE ST. GERMAIN
SPRINGDALE - During the era of nuclear testing in the Nevada
desert at the Nevada Test Site, there was an air of secrecy
surrounding the tests although those in the path of the clouds
carrying radioactive particles were reassured by the government
that they were safe.
Because of the veils of secrecy - especially when questioned
about the health of children - a group consisting of scientists,
physicians and citizens from church groups and civic
organizations initiated what was called the Baby Tooth Survey in
1958.
The goal was to develop a data bank on the changing levels of
strontium 90 in the milk supply by measuring its presence in
baby teeth. Families were encouraged to save teeth as they fell
out and to donate them for analysis. Over a five-year period
250,000 teeth were collected from children who "gave their teeth
to science" rather than to the "tooth fairy."
'Hot spot'
While residents in St. George were subjected to fall-out during
the testing, the test's primary concentration was in St. Louis,
Mo., an area which was considered a "hot spot" - high in levels
of radioactive fallout.
Dr. Charles Weiner, Professor of History of Science at MIT, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presented a talk Thursday
evening in Springdale, sponsored by Z-Arts!, about the program.
The first official results of the test done by the Committee for
Nuclear Information in November 1961 showed - based on an
analysis of children born from July 51 from December 1954 whose
mothers lived in St. Louis while they were pregnant - a direct
liner increase in strontium 90.
Weiner said people enthusiastically participated in the program,
as notes sent in with the teeth showed.
"One note that was sent in read 'Dear Fairy, I would like to
have a dime but do not take my tooth. I am going to send it to
siense (sic)," Weiner said.
Another note came in from a mother that said "I pulled the tooth
with a pair of pliers before it became loose in a burst of
scientific enthusiasm."
In return, the children received a note with a button that
stated "I gave my tooth to science."
The Baby Tooth Survey followed testing done on cadaver thigh
bones measuring the amount of atmospheric fallout. The British
Atomic Authority admitted in 2001 that it removed the thigh
bones from 3,400 infants to be tested without their parent's
authority.
In addition to the Baby Tooth Survey testing for strontium 90,
other testing detected Iodine 131, which affected the thyroid of
small children who drank a lot of milk and developed thyroid
problems.
Help for downwinders
The above-ground nuclear test Dirty Harry was appropriately
named since, as Weiner stated, it was really dirty, dropping
much more fallout than anticipated due to atmospheric conditions.
While some scientists and the government said during and after
testing that "no harm was done," programs such as RESEP,
Radiation Exposure Screening Education Program, and RECA, the
Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, speak otherwise.
To date, 15,261 claims have been approved by RECA with 9,707 of
those approved as downwinders, for a total of $485,320,000.
The downwinder clinic, located at the 400 East campus of Dixie
Regional Medical Center, has been open for two years.
DRMC public relations director Terri Draper said the clinic has
had more than 1,400 patient visitors and last year, 64 cancers
were discovered that did not have any other precancerous
indications.
"We feel like this has been worthwhile," Draper said. "If you
can diagnose 64 people who had concern and are totally not aware
of it, that's a success."
The purpose of the RESEP clinics is for the education and
medical screenings of "downwinders." An estimated 40,000 area
residents who fit that designation were exposed to radiation
from above-ground nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site from
1951 to 1958 and during the month of July in 1962.
Draper said the clinic will continue to operate as long as the
federal government, which is funding the clinic, views it as
worthwhile.
Originally published April 17, 2006 Print this article
Copyright ©2006 The Spectrum.
All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
38 reviewjournal.com: The arbitrary science of Yucca Mountain
Opinion - ERIN NEFF
Apr. 16, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, left, and Acting Civilian
Radioactive Waste Management Director Paul Golan answer
questions about Yucca Mountain.
Photo by Jeff Scheid.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman looked like an unwilling tourist
Wednesday when he stepped into the Review-Journal's building for
an editorial board meeting.
It was his first trip to Las Vegas, and he had the air of
someone who hates gambling but comes along for the ride with a
spouse who can't leave the machines.
His first stop in town was at the Atomic Testing Museum. Bodman
said he was pleasantly surprised with the museum because, "I
frankly hadn't looked forward to that."
Bodman should have saved his low expectations of Nevada for his
first visit to Yucca Mountain on Thursday. He's a scientist,
after all. And the political junk that continues to pass for
science certainly couldn't have pleased the MIT-trained
engineer.
Judging from his body language and his animated responses to
some questions at the editorial board meeting, it's clear that
Bodman will continue the Bush administration's time-honored
tradition of trumping science at all cost. The secretary
casually responded to a question about his department's new
legislation, the bill that would essentially double the size of
Yucca Mountain's capacity for the most toxic substance on Earth.
It's the bill that would eradicate the state's fight against the
federal government for the use of water at the site. It's the
bill that would result in hundreds of additional
transcontinental rail and road shipments of waste we don't
produce. And it's the bill that seeks to skirt the current rules
the government is supposed to play by.
"The law as it now stands was set up ... with an arbitrary
figure," Bodman said, referring to the 77,000 metric tons of
high-level nuclear waste Yucca Mountain is permitted to store.
So his department would like to set a new figure. His new acting
director for civilian nuclear waste management, Paul Golan,
added: "The repository should be allowed to potentially take up
what it's technically able to hold."
Talk about arbitrary.
Bodman made it clear the added capacity is needed because of the
administration's push to spark construction of new nuclear
reactors. Bodman detailed a litany of incentives to spark such
development and bemoaned the fact that only four new reactors
are slated to be built.
"We need 14, or 24, or a large number," Bodman said.
Under existing law, Yucca Mountain will be maxed out on the
waste it can handle before it even opens. That's why the
repository needs to take more waste, and that's why the
department will be applying, probably next year, for a second
repository.
Bodman wanted to come across as a pragmatist, the new man on the
street who inherited a "broken" project and is now working to
right the ship.
"I have been disappointed in what I inherited with respect to
the practices and everything used in the past," the secretary
said.
He told The New York Times in February that he couldn't fathom a
guess at what Yucca Mountain ultimately would cost.
Bodman and Golan explained the department's new procedures, new
management style and how they are cleaning up the "culture."
They talked about development of a new type of storage cask,
with the poll-tested, sunny name "clean canister."
But how, exactly, are they going to move waste from existing
canisters to the new "clean" ones that can be buried at Yucca
Mountain?
I asked them if they now have any handle on the cost. Bodman
pointed to Golan and said: "I'm not going to have that until he
has his plan."
Nothing arbitrary about that, either.
The most recent cost estimate, made back in 2001, said the Yucca
Mountain repository would hit the $60 billion mark. The current
proposed opening of 2012 could easily cause that number to
double. Nevada's congressional delegation suspects Yucca
Mountain will be a $300 billion baby.
Think of all the reprocessing research that could buy.
Bodman repeatedly played the noble servant role, saying he's
merely doing what Congress has told him to do. "I'm obliged to
do this by law. It's my task to carry it out," he said.
But he didn't care much when I threw a cog in his "just
following the law" argument by asking: "But you'd like to change
the law?"
"Look, that's not a big deal," he started.
"It's a significant difference," I interrupted.
"It is a significant difference," Bodman said. "But I do not
consider this a major part of the legislation. It is a part, to
be sure."
You see, Bodman's agency would probably prefer to change the
part of the law that requires the department to go to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval of the repository's
license.
After all, Bodman said more than once: "I know science. ... This
project will be done according to good science, or it will not
be done."
Been there. Heard that before.
This legislation, introduced two weeks ago, would cut off
Nevada's main lines of opposition.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been successful in cutting the
project's funding, so the Energy Department wants to squeeze
every little ounce of room out of the repository that it can.
Pressure's building from the nuclear industry and from a public
looking for cleaner energy.
Bodman also bristled when Review-Journal reporter Keith Rogers
told him Citizen Alert wanted him to answer questions at a
public forum in Nevada.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked, throwing up his hands.
"I'm here."
In addition to the museum, the Review-Journal offices and Yucca
Mountain, Bodman also visited Nellis Air Force Base and the
Nevada Test Site during his trip. Let's hope the scientist saw
some real science -- not just an experiment on a place he
doesn't care too much about visiting.
Erin Neff's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be
reached at 387-2906, or by e-mail at .
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2006
*****************************************************************
39 Energy Central: The Enduring Battle to Climb Yucca Mountain
Energy Biz Insider
April 17, 2006
It will be a long climb before Yucca Mountain is used as a
permanent nuclear waste site. Questions abound over the quality
of scientific and engineering work performed there, adding to a
hostile atmosphere that could long delay any opening.
Ken Silverstein
EnergyBiz Insider
Editor-in-Chief
Ed Finamore
ValuTech Solutions
Guest Editor
Mike Smith
Sierra Energy Group
Guest Editor
Martin Rosenberg
Guest Editor
Stephen Barlas
Guest Editor
Certainly, there's a strong feeling that if Yucca Mountain goes,
so goes the future of nuclear energy in general. One of the
issues plaguing the fate of such power is where to store spent
radioactive fuel. Those in the industry say that on-site storage
was only meant to be temporary and that a permanent site is
ultimately the answer. And Yucca, with its dry heat and
isolation, is the ideal spot. That's, of course, a stark
contrast to how those in Nevada feel, who argue that the risk of
any radioactive waste escaping and endangering the local
communities is too great.
Most recently, the General Accountability Office has weighed in.
The congressional watchdog agency says that the U.S. Department
of Energy is faced with quality assurance matters and is unable
to submit a full-proof application for license. The department
had planned to turn in such an application in 2004 but has been
derailed because of lingering questions about scientific and
engineering work. Now, it says that it is shooting for 2008 in
which to hand in its application to the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
"I am convinced the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump
will never be built because the project is mired in scientific,
safety and technical problems," says Senate Minority Leader
Harry Reid from Nevada.
Congress had approved in 2002 the permanent nuclear waste site
that is located 90 miles from Las Vegas. The plans were to store
77,000 tons of spent fuel there, although a bill now pending in
Congress would raise that limit to 132,000 -- something Reid
said is dead even before it would hit the Senate floor. With all
the court challenges and various delays, the soonest Yucca could
open would be 2012. Some even say it might be 2020 -- if at all,
and again, a potential dagger to a bright future for nuclear
energy.
More than 55,000 tons of spent fuel at 72 separate sites is now
awaiting possible transport to Yucca Mountain. The watchdog
agency said that the project is beset with high turnover and
that the Energy Department has yet to develop the management
tools to solve issues in an effective manner.
The Bush administration takes issue with that negative
assessment, noting that last year it drew up plans to redesign
waste storage containers and appointed an independent scientific
firm to monitor all progress. "This department remains committed
to following our obligation under the law to license, construct
and operate Yucca Mountain as the nation's permanent repository
for spent nuclear fuel," says Craig Steven, a spokesman for the
Energy Department.
Challenges Galore
Besides scientific and engineering challenges, even more
lawsuits are pending -- the fourth now in effect. Nevada has
just sued the Energy Department and alleged that the government
is withholding documents. The state specifically wants to see a
release of the draft application that it intends to submit to
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The government is unwilling to release the 2004 application,
noting that it has instead made public thousands of pages on the
Internet and all relating to its Yucca project. Once the
application is finalized and ultimately submitted -- 2008 is now
the target -- it will be done in the full view of the American
public, it says.
While the Energy Department says it won't let that lawsuit deter
it from pursuing a permanent storage facility in Nevada, state
officials there are pressing numerous officials including the
president of the United States to comply with their wishes.
Their argument: If you have nothing to fear, then let loose of
the draft.
"The federal government is required by law to share its
important Yucca information with the host state, and we are
entitled to such information under the Freedom of Information
Act as well," Nevada Attorney General George Chanos said in a
statement.
Meantime, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
is expected to decide on a different suit. In this case, Nevada
is saying that the Energy Department has run afoul of
environmental laws and abused its authority when it drew up its
blueprint to transport the spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain.
At the same time, another state suit would forbid the project
from using the area's ground water supplies.
Opponents of opening Yucca Mountain to nuclear waste deposits
say that beyond the issues tied to public health there are also
questions related to national security. Moving 77,000 tons of
waste is a logistical nightmare that would involve 53,000 truck
shipments or 10,000 rail shipments over 24 years.
"It is time to look at alternatives so we can safely store
nuclear waste," says Sen. Reid. "Fortunately, the technology for
a viable, safe and secure alternative is readily available and
can be fully implemented within a decade if we act now. That
technology is on-site dry cask storage. Dry casks are being
safely used at 34 sites throughout the country right now. The
Nuclear Energy Institute projects 83 of the 103 active reactors
will have dry storage by 2050."
The Bush administration is fighting all the suits and has vowed
to press on. In fact, the Energy Department is submitting
legislation to Capitol Hill to raise the limit on the amount of
nuclear waste that would be stored at Yucca Mountain to 132,000
tons. It's also asking lawmakers to allow the federal government
the right to pre-empt state and local transportation laws in an
effort to expedite the movement of the waste.
"This proposed legislation will help provide stability, clarity
and predictability to the Yucca Mountain project," says Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman, in a statement.
The president says that "sound science" is on its side and that
it has the will to see the Yucca project through to its finish.
But it is up against some strong opponents that include key
congressional leaders. If the country decides that nuclear
energy's prominence should grow, a national repository will get
built.
Copyright © 1996-2006 by All rights reserved. Energy Central® is
Contact: 303-782-5510 or
Or write us via U.S. Mail - 2821 S. Parker Rd Suite 1105, Aurora
CO 80014.
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40 AKIpress: Russia may offer Kyrgyzstan joint production of uranium
08:54 18-04-2006
- Russia may offer Kyrgyzstan joint production of uranium.
According to mass media of Russia, this question may become a
subject of discussion in the course of visit to Bishkek and
negotiations of head of the Russian Atomic Energy Agency Sergei
Krienko with representatives of the Kyrgyz Government.
It is necessary to note that uranium was extracted in several
towns of Kyrgyzstan. Uranium waste products, which lately has
become key problem for the government, testifies it. It
represents real danger not for the republic’s ecology but also
other states of Central Asia because of insufficient work on
recultivation.
Extraction of uranium is stopped in Minkush, Aktuz, Kajysai and
Mailysuu in connection with several reasons, above all,
profitability of extracting raw material. 16:57 17-04-2006
+ 17-04-2006 Russia may offer Kyrgyzstan joint production of
uranium
+ 11-04-2006 Russia is willing to support Kyrgyzstan in warning
and prevention of emergency situations
+ 29-03-2006 Uranium tailings storage rehabilitation completed
in Kajisai
+ 07-02-2006 Kazakhstan to become one of world's top uranium
producers
+ 24-11-2005 Japan, Kazakhstan Agree to Hold Talks on Joint
Uranium Projects
+ 13-06-2005 Joint-stock company “Kyrgyz Mining Industrial
Complex” negotiates with Germany on deliveries of
uranium-containing materials to the plant
+ 04-05-2005 Mailuu-Suu closely monitored following recent
landslide
+ 03-05-2005 Landslide near uranium ore dumps worrisome
+ 08-04-2005 The State Property Committee of KR to sell 72.28%
of stock of Karabalta uranium mining and processing facility
+ 14-02-2005 Karabalta uranium mining and processing facility
has no raw material
© News agency ÀÊÈpress - 2001-2005 yy. Materials on the AKIpress
site are assigned only for personal needs. Public distribution of
AKIpress materialscan be made only at at written agreement of
AKIpress. Our address: Moskovskaya str. 189, Bishkek, the
Kyrgyz Republic Tel/Fax: +996(312)61-03-96 admin@akipress.org
*****************************************************************
41 Guardian Unlimited: DTI tries to stifle row over cost of British Energy waste
Terry Macalister
Tuesday April 18, 2006
The Guardian
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has attempted to
stifle a mounting row over the cost of nuclear waste liabilities
at British Energy, weeks after it was unable to explain its
accounting policies.
In claiming to have used the correct figures all along, the DTI
failed to explain why it had taken three weeks to answer a query
raised by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and why its top
official was unable to give the Commons an immediate response.
Article continues
The issue is important because the government wants to sell its
stake in BE.
The dispute broke out on March 27 when Sir Brian Bender, the
DTI's permanent secretary, and Hugo Robson, the director of the
DTI's shareholder executive, were questioned about the use of a
"discount rate" in assessing the cost to BE of dealing with its
waste liabilities.
Helen Goodman and other MPs on the PAC asked why the DTI had not
used the normal discount rate set out for public bodies in the
Treasury's green book.
Sir Brian and Mr Robson could not explain this. If the green
book had been followed the cost of the liabilities would have
been far higher than the £5.3bn figure used by the DTI. Ms
Goodman said she had been "shocked" that the DTI had been unable
to explain why it had seemingly miscalculated, but after an
investigation by the Guardian, the DTI has come up with a
response: "The DTI has used the correct discount rate and we
have now written to the PAC to confirm that we followed the
correct rules at all times in calculating its [BE's] liability."
The level of liabilities at Britain's biggest electricity
producer was assessed in February this year at £5.3bn, but the
DTI had since admitted that the figure was calculated using a
historic discount rate of 3.5%.
Yet the Treasury green book that governs such public sector
liabilities says 3.5% rate should only be used for the first 30
years with 3% and 2.5% being used over a longer period. This
would increase the costs of waste disposal.
The BE liabilities run beyond 80 years, yet Sir Brian was unable
to explain to the PAC why he had used a 3.5% rate for the whole
period. Asked about this, Sir Brian apologised for not coming up
with an answer. Sir Brian had already admitted that the £5.3bn
liabilities - up £1bn on the last estimate - could rise even
higher.
Ms Goodman said she was shocked that civil servants seemed
unable to provide accurate figures. "Taxpayers' money was used
to restructure BE and yet it seems the DTI is still making basic
mistakes that misrepresent future nuclear liabilities by
millions," she argued.
BE declined to comment.
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
42 DOE: [Docket No. AD06-6-000; Docket No. RM01-10-005; Docket No.
FR Doc E6-5621
[Federal Register: April 17, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 73)]
[Notices] [Page 19724-19725] From the Federal Register Online via
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr17ap06-60]
RM05-30-000
\1\]
Joint Meeting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Interpretative Order
Relating to the Standards of Conduct; Rules Concerning
Certification of the Electric Reliability Organization; Notice of
Joint Meeting of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission With Revised Agenda April
10, 2006.
As announced in the April 3, 2006 Notice of Joint Meeting, the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) will hold a joint meeting on April
24, 2006, in Room 2C, 888 First Street, NE., Washington, DC
20426. The meeting is expected to begin at 2 p.m. (EDT) and
conclude at 4 p.m. All interested persons are invited to attend.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
---------- \1\ The Commission does not anticipate any decisions
being made in either of these rulemaking dockets at this meeting;
however, as both rulemakings may be discussed, the Commission is
noticing both dockets to ensure no violation of the Government in
the Sunshine Act requirements occurs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
---------- Purpose of Joint Meeting In accordance with the April
3 Notice, the purpose of the joint meeting is to continue the
dialog between the two agencies in furtherance of the goals set
forth in the Memorandum of Agreement, signed on September 1,
2004, especially in light of the concurrent matters involving
offsite power,\2\ and to explore the most effective role of each
agency in addressing grid reliability issues and, thereby, to
ensure an integrated approach in accomplishing their respective
missions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
---------- \2\ On February 1, 2006, the NRC issued Generic Letter
2006-002, Grid Reliability and the Impact on Plant Risk and the
Operability of Offsite Power, OMB No. 3150-0011. On February 16,
2006, in Docket No. RM01-10-005, FERC issued Interpretive Order
Relating to the Standards of Conduct for Transmission Providers,
114 FERC ] 61,155 (2006).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
----------
[[Page 19725]] Format for Joint Meeting The format for the joint
meeting will be discussions between the two sets of commissioners
following presentations by their respective staffs, as set forth
in the revised agenda below. There will not be industry
presentations.
Revised Agenda Opening Remarks by FERC Chairman Kelliher, NRC
Chairman Diaz and Commissioners Brief presentations by NRC Staff
on effects of grid reliability on nuclear power plants and
projected additions of new nuclear reactors to the grid and by
FERC Staff on grid reliability and the Electric Reliability
Organization proceeding.
Discussion Brief presentations/updates by NRC Staff on Generic
Letter and by FERC Staff on Interpretive Order Proceeding.
Discussion Brief presentations by NRC Staff on reactor regulation
and oversight, including adopting and revising standards, and by
FERC Staff on new responsibilities under the Energy Policy Act of
2005.
Discussion Closing Remarks by NRC Chairman Diaz, FERC Chairman
Kelliher and Commissioners * * * * * As noted in the April 3
Notice, free webcast of this event is available through Anyone
with Internet access who desires to view this event can do so by
navigating to .
's Calendar of Events and locating this event in the Calendar.
The event will contain a link to its webcast. The Capitol
Connection provides technical support for the webcasts and offers
access to the meeting via phone bridge for a fee. If you have any
questions, visit or contact Danelle Perkowski or David Reininger
at 703-993-3100.
Transcripts of the meeting will be available immediately for a
fee from Ace Reporting Company (202-347-3700 or 1-800-336-6646).
They will be available for free on the Commission's eLibrary
system and on the events calendar approximately one week after
the meeting.
FERC conferences and meetings are accessible under section 508 of
the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. For accessibility accommodations
please send an e-mail to or call toll free (866) 208- 3372
(voice) or 202-502-8659 (TTY), or send a fax to 202-208-2106 with
the required accommodations.
All interested persons are invited. There is no pre-registration
and there is no fee to attend this joint meeting. Questions about
the meeting should be directed to Mary Kipp at or by phone at
202-502-8228.
Magalie R. Salas, Secretary.
[FR Doc. E6-5621 Filed 4-14-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6717-01-P
*****************************************************************
43 KnoxNews: Y-12 completes first work on B-61 bombs
By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com
April 17, 2006
OAK RIDGE — Workers at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant have
completed the first refurbishment of B-61 bomb components,
setting the stage for a two-year production program that will
extend the life of the strategic weapon system.
Tom D’Agostino, a high-ranking official with the National Nuclear
Security Administration, was in Oak Ridge today for a ceremony
honoring Y-12 for the "major milestone."
According to information distributed to the news media, Y-12
completed its portion of work on the "first production unit" of
the B-61 in late March.
"Y-12’s role involves the manufacture of the canned subassembly
or secondary — the second stage of modern thermonuclear weapons,"
the plant said in a press release. "The canned subassembly is
shipped from Y-12 to Pantex (near Amarillo, Texas) for final
assembly."
The refurbishment program of the B-61 is expected to make the
bombs useful for another 20 years, officials said.
Steven Wyatt, a Y-12 spokesman, said he could not discuss how
many B-61 bombs will be refurbished, but the work is supposed to
be completed by late 2008.
In a prepared statement, D’Agostino said production milestone at
Y-12 "is the culmination of several years of cooperative
planning, development, engineering and testing" by two national
laboratories and four production plants.
The B-61 refurbishment program has come under criticism in
recent years. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Inspector General
last year issued a report that said the production schedules
were in jeopardy because of technical problems and project
management issues at several sites — including Y-12.
Dennis Ruddy, the former general manager, said one of the issues
involved replacing a material that could no longer be used in
the nuclear weapons. Other issues were raised by new analyses of
aging materials and warhead parts, he said.
He also said he thought it was unfair to blame Y-12 for the
problems.
George Dials, the new general manager at the Oak Ridge warhead
facility, said in a prepared statement that Y-12 is on schedule
and "moving forward" with the B-61 life-extension program.
"Y-12 is proud of this achievement, and we congratulate the
employees who have worked hard to make this happen," Dials said.
Full production of B-61 components will begin in fiscal year
2007, a plant spokesman said.
Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.
© 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel
*****************************************************************
44 Knox News: Haselwood companies emerge from need to contribute
By FRANK MUNGER
April 17, 2006
It may sound a little corny or aw-shucks naive, but Rose Wood
said she got into business - doing work for the federal
government and its contractors - to make a contribution.
That was about 12 years ago, and she and her husband, Hal
Haselton, ended up forming two companies, both of which combine
their last names: Haselwood Enterprises in Oak Ridge and
Haselwood Services &Manufacturing, based in Coalfield.
She is president. He is chief operating officer.
Wood talks proudly about 15 percent-a-year growth in revenues, a
strategy of hiring the best people in town, and winning
contracts - some with an assist for being a woman-owned company
or other small-business designation, some in which Haselwood
goes up against all comers.
But mostly she talks about the contribution. "This has been a
wonderful, wonderful opportunity," she said.
The Haselwood companies have supported national-security
projects at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, performed work for
the FBI and the State Department, and installed equipment at the
Spallation Neutron Source - the $1.4 billion science research
complex that's nearing completion at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory.
"We're really proud of the fact that we're problem-solvers," she
said.
Haselwood Enterprises, with a core of 85 employees and annual
revenues of about $10 million, specializes in management of
nuclear materials and other nuclear-related tasks. Haselwood
Services has a smaller employee base and provides technical
support, project management and some security expertise. The
company typically has revenues between $1 million and $2
million, but that ballooned to about $6 million this past year
because of the SNS work.
Both companies hire additional workers to meet the needs of
individual projects.
Generally speaking, the businesses look for contracting
opportunities that involve specific tasks or short-term support
in specialized areas, particularly at the U.S. Department of
Energy's Oak Ridge facilities.
"We look at places where we can go in and do a project and get
out," Wood said. "We're not out there to do staff aug(mentation)
or take other people's jobs."
Wood, who has a master's degree in business administration from
Vanderbilt University, did international marketing for DOE's
uranium-enrichment program before deciding to get into business
for herself.
Her husband, who has a doctorate in atomic physics with a strong
engineering background, worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
before the Haselwood ventures.
"We started thinking of where we could go to make a
contribution," she said.
Oak Ridge was a logical place to do business because both she
and her husband were familiar with the federal operations.
Some of the contracting opportunities are "set-asides" for small
or disadvantaged business, which limits the types of companies
that can bid on a project.
Haselwood Services &Manufacturing gains preference on certain
contract proposals because it's located in Coalfield, an
economically depressed area in Morgan County that's a federally
designated "hub zone."
Even with a limited field of bidders, "It's hard to always win,
because there's a lot of competition in this area," Wood said.
But Wood said she pursues good, meaningful work, even if the
contracts attract big-name companies with a lot of resources.
"Sometimes if your price is right and you have the technical
folks that are really good, you can compete with anybody," she
said.
Wood said the Haselwood companies occasionally look for
commercial business, but most work is for federal agencies and
their contractors.
The best thing about contracting with the government is the
opportunity to work on important projects, she said.
Probably the worst thing is dealing with the federal budget
cycle and trying to make a steady business out of a
peaks-and-valleys situation with money flow, Wood said.
Sometimes the companies take on smaller jobs to make sure that
the work force is kept busy while waiting on bigger projects to
start up, she said.
The "cost of money" is another problem when bidding on federal
projects.
"When you go for a big bid, you've got to have the working
capital for the first two or three months to mobilize, and
that's hard for a small business," Wood said. "You work with the
local banks as much as you can."
New execs named at BWXT Y-12 Two senior-level managers recently
left the contract staff at the Y-12 National Security Complex,
which is managed by BWXT Y-12 LLC, and three new appointments
were made as part of a restructured management team.
Glenn Kizer, the chief financial officer, and Asa Kelley, the
manager of projects, left Y-12 to join the team that won the
management contract at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico. BWX Technologies, which co-manages Y-12 along with
Bechtel National, was part of the winning contract team at Los
Alamos.
In the new lineup at Y-12, Robert M. Gifford is chief financial
officer for BWXT. He comes to Y-12 from the Pantex weapons
assembly plant at Amarillo, Texas, but he previously worked at
Y-12 and has 20 years of experience in procurement, planning,
scheduling and payroll. He spent 12 years at the Idaho National
Engineering Laboratory.
Dennis Grove is the new manager of projects. Before coming to
Y-12, Grove was manager of defense programs at the Savannah
River Site in South Carolina. He has three decades of service
with the Bechtel Corp.
In another change, Debra Shecterle is the new manager of human
resources at BWXT Y-12. She replaces Steve Smith, who was
reassigned to manager of Y-12's training organization. Shecterle
previously was human resources VP at Doane Pet Care Inc. in
Brentwood, Tenn. Before that, she was with Dekalb Genetics Corp.
and Wisconsin Power and Light.
ORNL recognizes small-biz stalwarts Quality Waste Solutions and
Strata-G were among the small businesses honored recently at the
Seventh Annual Small Business Subcontractor Award program
sponsored by ORNL. Both companies are owned by U.S. military
veterans.
Other subcontractor awards went to Haselwood Services
&Manufacturing, Melange Solutions, Enterprise Advisory Services,
Innovative Design, Trident Resources, Nutex and Wildflower
International.
Kathy Collins, Cecilia Jones and Jason Piller of ORNL's
Contracts Division received advocate awards for their support of
small-business initiatives at the lab. Steve Pennycook and Ted
Williams were recognized for their support of historically black
colleges and universities.
NFS a member of winning contract team Nuclear Fuels Services,
based in Erwin, Tenn., was a member of the corporate team that
won the contract to manage the government's Nevada Test Site.
The contract award was announced March 28.
The winning contractor is called National Security Technologies
LLC, a team headed by Northop Grumman. Other members are AECOM,
CH2M Hill and NFS.
The contract is valued at about $500 million annually for five
years, with the possibility of two five-year options.
ORAU announces new board membersOak Ridge Associated
Universities, which recently won a new 10-year, $1.6 billion
contract to manage federal programs for the U.S. Department of
Energy, has elected four members to its board of directors and
re-elected another to a second term.
ORAU is a consortium of more than 90 universities with its
corporate offices in Oak Ridge, where it manages DOE's Oak Ridge
Institute for Science and Education and does work for other
federal agencies.
The new board members are: Philip E. Coyle III, a private
defense consultant and senior adviser to the Center for Defense
Information; Nancy C. Martin, senior vice president for research
at the University of Louisville, with background in molecular
biology; Colin G. Scanes, vice president for research at
Mississippi State University and a fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science; Orlando L. Taylor of
Howard University, where he is vice provost for research, dean
of the graduate school and professor of communications.
Peter M. Hekman, an independent consultant who is retired from
the Navy, was elected to a second three-year term on the board
of directors.
Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329.
© 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel
*****************************************************************
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