***************************************************************** 04/23/06 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 14.96 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 TorontoSun.com: The long shadow of Chernobyl 2 US: Bush was warned there were no WMD, says former CIA man 3 US: [NYTr] Ex-CIA agent says Bush ignored WMD intelligence 4 [NYTr] Iran says nuclear enrichment 'irreversible' 5 [NYTr] "Inadequate" Intelligence on Iran nuclear threat 6 [southnews] Iran: The Day After 7 Guardian Unlimited: Russia Warns Against Pressuring Iran 8 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Calls Nuclear Program 'Irreversible' 9 Guardian Unlimited: Rep. Says Iran's Nuke Capability Unknown 10 Guardian Unlimited: Report: Iran, Russia Reach Enrichment Deal 11 IRNA: 11th session of Iran-Cuba Joint Economic Commission concludes 12 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Wants Russia to Stop Iran Arms Sales 13 IRNA: Asefi: One should wait for ElBaradei's report on Iran 14 BBC: Iran nuclear work 'irreversible' 15 IRNA: Iran dismisses speculation on suspension of research on nuclea 16 AFP: Diplomats pessimistic over Iranian nuclear crisis 17 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Russians favor Iran nuclear program 18 AFP: Iran says nuclear enrichment 'irreversible' 19 AFP: Iran says nuclear enrichment 'irreversible' 20 IRNA: Iran says no intention to use oil as weapon 21 Guardian Unlimited: S.Korea Offers Aid if N.Korea Cooperates 22 Korea Herald: Fix the mess in U.S. intelligence 23 AFP: SKorea urges North to return to nuclear talks 24 Guardian Unlimited: Russian Likely Won't Face U.S. Trial 25 US: Guardian Unlimited: Report: Ex-CIA Official Blasts White House 26 SF Chronicle: TWO CENTS / Atomic dilemma 27 WNE: Indo-US nuclear deal called ‘flawed’ and problematic 28 Deccan Herald: Talks with IAEA on N-safeguards positive - Narayanan 29 US: AFP: CIA warned Bush of no WMD in Iraq: retired official 30 The Australian: Aussies support environment - poll 31 IRNA: 10th Int'l Energy Forum opens in Qatar 32 Times of India: Concerns over N-deal not credible: India 33 WorldNetDaily: Nuking bunkers NUCLEAR REACTORS 34 Guardian Unlimited: Villagers Return to Chernobyl's Shadow 35 Guardian Unlimited: Chernobyl: Ukraine's Soviet-Era Nightmare 36 Guardian Unlimited: Blair keeps an eye on Finland's nuclear setback 37 The Observer: Chernobyl's generations of suffering 38 London Times: Stalled: the Chernobyl rescue Ark - 39 US: San Luis Obispo Tribune: How Diablo could be safer 40 Taipei Times: Conference seeks to address question of nuclear power 41 FT.com: Editorial comment - Chernobyl's death toll 42 newsobserver.com: What's the real fallout? 43 BBC: Gorbachev weighs Chernobyl legacy 44 BBC: Chernobyl's unsettling legacy 45 Manila Times: The lingering fallout from Chernobyl 46 US: Eureka Reporter: PG plans to re-power Humboldt Bay plant 47 Independent: Chernobyl 'still causing cancer in British children' 48 AFP: British scientists fear 66,000 extra deaths due to Chernobyl - 49 AFP: Chernobyl: jewel of the Soviet nuclear industry turned into dea 50 Shanghai Daily : Chernobyl's destructive legacy 20 years later 51 EUPolitix.com: EU faith in nuclear based on misleading report 52 IPS-English FRANCE: Chernobyl Provokes Some Rethinking 53 US: toledoblade.com: Davis-Besse critic lauds FirstEnergy for upgrad 54 MercoPress: Chernobyl controversy: 9.000 or 100.000 cancer deaths? 55 Independent: Chernobyl twenty years on 56 US: Rutland Herald: Group appealing Vermont Yankee water discharge p 57 AFP: Finns in favour of building sixth nuclear reactor 58 US: Rutland Herald: Vt. Yankee power increase continues to 115 perce 59 TheStar.com: Nuclear power: A comeback story 60 US: Pottstown Mercury: NRC commends Exelon for safe year at Limerick 61 US: Odessa American Online: General Atomics has long history with nu 62 Knox News: Chernobyl remains a Soviet-era nightmare 63 icWales: Remembering Chernobyl 64 News & Star: N-plant blast would kill hundreds of thousands NUCLEAR SECURITY NUCLEAR SAFETY 65 US: Deseret News: Hatch urged to boost aid for downwinders 66 Sunday Herald: Revealed: fears over radioactive food threat - 67 NIGERIAN TRIBUNE: Ajaokuta Steel assures on radioactive materials 68 icWales: Would a Wylfa disaster affect you? NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 69 US: The Australian: Mystery of Hiroshima uranium solved at last 70 The Observer: Britain 'making a poor job' of nuclear waste 71 US: 72 US: Lexington Herald-Leader: For Earth Day, an open house at nuclear 73 US: San Luis Obispo Tribune: What happens if the fuel pools fail 74 US: Deseret News: Stop letting Utah be bullied 75 US: Deseret News: Alliance's ad urges nuclear waste opposition 76 US: Deseretnews: Activists and tribe sue to avert blast 77 Las Vegas SUN: Jon Ralston on the awkward position in which 78 US: PPG: Water treatment plant's lagoon cleanup urged by state 79 US: Gilroy Dispatch: Olin Officials are Looking for Perchlorate Scap 80 US: Daily Herald: U.S. Energy wants to open Utah's second uranium mi 81 US: NJMG: Safety didn't come first in hunt for N.J. school sites 82 US: NJMG: Thorium cleanup called on track 83 US: PE.com: Water-cleanup proposal rejected 84 US: PRN: Pennsylvania DEP Secretary Urges Company to Remove Uranium PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 85 Dayton Daily News: Ohio EPA rebuilding tainted Fernald ecosystem 86 Rocky Mountain News: More Flats hysteria 87 Hanford News: Engineers display 'new generation' radiation detector 88 Rocky Mountain News: Tools at Flats junked 89 Knox News: New uranium container can take a licking ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 TorontoSun.com: The long shadow of Chernobyl Sun, April 23 / 06 editor@tor.sunpub.com The fallout, 20 years after By MICHELE MANDEL For her daughter Zoya's 12th birthday, Raissa Galechko was hosting a picnic in the woods of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The infamous date was April 26, 1986. "It was a beautiful day," recalls Galechko, 60, as she pores over old photos in her Mississauga home. "We were in bikinis taking suntans. The mothers were picking sorrel and the kids were playing ball and climbing trees." She shakes her head at all they did not know then, and all that still lay ahead. "And at the same time the reactor was on fire and we didn't know anything. Heavy radiation was spreading over the sorrel we were picking and over the trees our kids were playing in and nobody knew." That just 90 km away, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor had exploded and their lives would never be the same. For 10 days the fire raged, expelling 172 tonnes of toxic materials into the atmosphere, clouds of which drifted across northern Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and more than 14 European countries. It wasn't until alarm bells went off at a Swedish power station that the world learned of the disaster the Soviets had tried to hide. The USSR waited almost three long days before it confirmed the "minor accident" with a terse statement read by a Moscow broadcaster. Still, they gave no warning of the poison that had been unleashed. Galechko was a well-known journalist at the state-run Ukraine magazine when she heard rumours that all communist party officials had suddenly moved their families out of Kiev. "Even if I'd seen the fire at Chernobyl I wouldn't have known what it meant," she explains. "But when you're a mother you have this security trigger inside. You know nothing, but you have the intuition that something is very wrong and my first thought was my daughter, my daughter." The single mother hastily made plans for them to spend the next few months by the Azov Sea thousands of kilometres away. But for her daughter Zoya, it may have already been too late. Those living within 30 km of the power plant were evacuated within days. But there was nowhere to hide from the cloud of radiation that drifted over the former USSR. Nadia Zastavna remembers it as the most glorious spring. On May Day, the biggest Soviet holiday, she and her children joined thousands in her Ukrainian town of Ternopil to celebrate with a traditional parade. "Everybody was outside, my oldest son and my youngest -- he had just been born that January," recalls Zastavna, now the senior administrator of the Children of Chornobyl Canadian Fund. "The weather was gorgeous. Your skin got red but we thought it was from the sun. But it wasn't." Just a few days later came the terrifying edicts: Wash your clothes, stay indoors, close your windows, don't drink the water. "Everybody was furious and scared to death," she says. "Mentally, it was very difficult." Her baby would grow to become such a sickly child that doctors feared it might have leukemia. "You can't say it was from radiation 100%, but he was born a very healthy child and after he was constantly sick." High incidences of childhood thyroid cancer, sudden premature deaths. Two decades have passed and the great debate still rages: To what degree is Chernobyl responsible for the health problems that seemed to follow in its wake? "There's no real consensus on the effects yet," notes Dr. David Marples, a professor of history at the University of Alberta who has written extensively on Chernobyl. "There's so much controversy over the health effects, the number of casualties, the number of long-term illnesses and what we might expect in the future." JUST 50 DIRECT VICTIMS The answers tend to depend on a group's views on the nuclear debate. At one end of the spectrum is the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency report last fall, which suggested health effects had been largely exaggerated and that most of the problems were actually psychological. The IAEA report argued there were only 50 direct victims of the Chernobyl disaster and no more than 4,000 will eventually die because of radiation exposure. Countering that view is a recent Greenpeace study that claims the atomic agency grossly underestimated the effects. "The IAEA has a vested interest in minimizing the impact of Chernobyl," argues Shawn-Patrick Stensil, of Greenpeace Canada, which launched a haunting photo exhibit of Chernobyl victims commissioned for the anniversary. The Greenpeace report predicts 93,000 will die of fatal cancers linked to Chernobyl radiation and more than 200,000 in all will eventually die from the disaster. But then, they are hardly objective themselves -- the environmental group has a decidedly anti-nuclear agenda. "There's no middle ground on Chernobyl," says Marples, who tends to lean more towards the Greenpeace version. "The secrecy that occurred in the Soviet period was really one of the biggest problems because that's why we're in such doubt today about what really happened. All that data was officially classified." Ruslana Wrzesnewskyj doesn't care about warring statistics; she knows what she has seen. When she adopted her daughter from Ukraine in 1993, the orphanages were crowded with children who had been born with deformities or left by parents who had suddenly died young. The Toronto realtor was so shaken by what she saw that she founded Help us Help the Children, a project of the Children of Chornobyl Canadian Fund that has assisted thousands of orphan victims with summer camps, medicines and scholarships. 'CALLED THE SILENT KILLER' "All you have to do is travel through Ukraine," she says. "It's called the silent killer. It's a horrible thing to come into a town and see that half of the people in their 40s are dead." To this day, Raissa Galechko doesn't know if her daughter's brush with cancer was caused by the nuclear disaster. No one can prove that it was. No one can prove that it wasn't. All she does know is that it opened her eyes to seeking a new life. Zoya had always had moles, but they suddenly began to change during the year after the Chernobyl explosion. When one turned bloody, her mother rushed her to the local cancer hospital. She will never forget the doctor's advice after he diagnosed melanoma and said her daughter needed immediate surgery: "After the operation, leave for a clean zone." Escape suddenly became her goal. "When this happened to Zoya, I knew where my clean zone was -- Canada," she says. "Chernobyl was the turning point. It pushed me to leave." When she arrived here in 1989, penniless and unknown, the journalist refused advice to seek charity as a victim of Chernobyl. "I couldn't show my daughter like a bear in a circus -- look at her scars, give me money," says the publisher of the satirical Ukrainian monthly Bcecmix (Laughter). "So many abuse the term 'victim.' We are survivors." Unlike Galechko, Mychailo "Mike" Ryndzak has no doubt that Chernobyl is directly responsible for his suffering. It was just two months after the explosion when the 19-year-old military conscript was ordered to report to the nuclear plant and run evening films and other propoganda for the "liquidators" who spent their days cleaning the disaster zone. "To me, radiation and death were synonyms. I was preparing myself to die," he recalls from his home in Ottawa. "According to the officials, everything was calm, under control and beautiful. But as you know and we learned from western media sources, obviously it was not under control." He could see the mutated plants that surrounded Chernobyl and how all the surrounding grass and leaves had turned the colour of metal. "I didn't have any protection at all. I didn't have any training at all," he says bitterly. "What was happening inside us? Radiation is something invisible but it has such severe power to change who you are." 5 WEEKS 'HOT' Yet the only time he was issued a respirator was when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrived for a few hours to survey the damage. "And after that, it was taken away." Due to the high levels of radiation, crews were replaced every 10 days. But there was a scarcity of projectionists, so Ryndzak was left in the hot zone for five weeks. His body would never be the same. In 1989, after his arrival in Canada, his teeth suddenly began to crumble. Blood tests revealed an almost fatally low red cell count. But he believes his time in the radioactive zone left him with a far more crushing legacy. "It affected my fertility," the 39-year-old says softly. "I will never have children." So he cannot forget Chernobyl on its 20th anniversary, not when its shadow haunts him to this day. "This is a tragedy that is ongoing," Ryndzak warns. "God knows what consequences are waiting in the future." CANOE home | We welcome your feedback. Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc.All rights reserved. Proprietor and Publisher - Sun Media (Toronto) Corporation, 333 King St. E., Toronto, ON, M5A 3X5 Test--> ***************************************************************** 2 Bush was warned there were no WMD, says former CIA man Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 21:45:11 -0500 (CDT) 24 April 2006 The Independent (UK) www.independent.co.uk Bush was warned there were no WMD, says former CIA man By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles The Central Intelligence Agency tried to warn the Bush administration on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein did not appear to have weapons of mass destruction but the warning was dismissed because the US political leadership was not interested in what the intelligence showed, according to a retired senior CIA operative. The revelation, by the CIA's former European chief Tyler Drumheller, was broadcast on CBS's news magazine Sixty Minutes last night and added to the body of evidence that US and British leaders saw the weapons of mass destruction issue only as a selling point for a war they had already decided to wage for other reasons. According to Mr Drumheller, Western intelligence services were told about Iraq's lack of chemical and biological weapons by Naji Sabri, a former Iraqi foreign minister. The CIA director of the time, George Tenet, took this information straight to President George Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and other senior officials, but it made no impression on them. * Three American soldiers were killed yesterday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb north-west of Baghdad. Twenty-three Iraqis also died in other violence yesterday, the day after Iraq's parliament elected a president, two vice-presidents, a parliament speaker and two deputies, which ended a long-standing political deadlock. The Central Intelligence Agency tried to warn the Bush administration on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein did not appear to have weapons of mass destruction but the warning was dismissed because the US political leadership was not interested in what the intelligence showed, according to a retired senior CIA operative. The revelation, by the CIA's former European chief Tyler Drumheller, was broadcast on CBS's news magazine Sixty Minutes last night and added to the body of evidence that US and British leaders saw the weapons of mass destruction issue only as a selling point for a war they had already decided to wage for other reasons. According to Mr Drumheller, Western intelligence services were told about Iraq's lack of chemical and biological weapons by Naji Sabri, a former Iraqi foreign minister. The CIA director of the time, George Tenet, took this information straight to President George Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and other senior officials, but it made no impression on them. * Three American soldiers were killed yesterday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb north-west of Baghdad. Twenty-three Iraqis also died in other violence yesterday, the day after Iraq's parliament elected a president, two vice-presidents, a parliament speaker and two deputies, which ended a long-standing political deadlock. ========== http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article359755.ece ========= ***************************************************************** 3 [NYTr] Ex-CIA agent says Bush ignored WMD intelligence Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 12:01:32 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Reuters - Apr 21, 2006 5:38 PM ET http://today.reuters.com/misc/PrinterFriendlyPopup.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-04-21T213813Z_01_N21335253_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-INTELLIGENCE-CIA.xml Ex-CIA agent says WMD intelligence ignored WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA had evidence Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction six months before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion but was ignored by a White House intent on ousting Saddam Hussein, a former senior CIA official said according to CBS. Tyler Drumheller, who headed CIA covert operations in Europe during the run-up to the Iraq war, said intelligence opposing administration claims of a WMD threat came from a top Iraqi official who provided the U.S. spy agency with other credible information. The source "told us that there were no active weapons of mass destruction programs," Drumheller said in a CBS interview to be aired on Sunday on the network's news magazine, "60 Minutes." "The (White House) group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested," he was quoted as saying in interview excerpts released by CBS on Friday. "We said: 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said: 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change'," added Drumheller, whose CIA operation was assigned the task of debriefing the Iraqi official. He was the latest former U.S. official to accuse the White House of setting an early course toward war in Iraq and ignoring intelligence that conflicted with its aim. CBS said the CIA's intelligence source was former Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and that former CIA Director George Tenet delivered the information personally to President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top White House officials in September 2002. They rebuffed the CIA three days later. "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," the former CIA agent told CBS. U.S. allegations that Saddam had WMD and posed a threat to international security was a main justification for the March 2003 invasion. A 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, to which the CIA was a major contributor, concluded that prewar Iraq had an active nuclear program and a huge stockpile of unconventional weapons. No such weapons have been found, however, and U.S. assertions that they existed are now regarded as a hugely damaging intelligence failure. But Drumheller, co-author of a forthcoming book entitled "On the Brink: How the White House Has Compromised American Intelligence," rejects the notion of an intelligence failure. "It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it's an intelligence failure," he told CBS. "This was a policy failure." ) Reuters 2006. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 4 [NYTr] Iran says nuclear enrichment 'irreversible' Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 11:30:45 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit AFP - Apr 23, 2006 http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/060423115107.g64r5856.html Iran says nuclear enrichment 'irreversible' TEHRAN (AFP) - With just five days to go before the expiry of a UN Security Council deadline for Iran to freeze uranium enrichment, Tehran insisted that the sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work was irreversible. "The suspension of Iran's activities is media propaganda. Iran's research activities are irreversible," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. The Security Council has given Tehran until Friday to suspend uranium enrichment, a process which makes reactor fuel but can be extended to make weapons, as a "confidence-building" measure. Iran has refused to do so -- despite growing talk of a possible US military strike -- asserting that its nuclear drive is a legal bid to generate energy. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency, is to report on Iran's compliance in a week and diplomats predict it is unlikely to reflect well on the Islamic regime. "The fact that Westerners say it will be a negative report shows they are applying pressure," Asefi said Sunday. "We are worried that Iran's dossier is being politicized". "We have to wait and see what Mr ElBaradei's report will be. He has not implied in previous reports that Iran has deviated from peaceful nuclear work," he added. The Security Council called on March 29 for Iran to honor within 30 days IAEA resolutions for Tehran to halt enrichment and to cooperate with the agency's more than three-year investigation of its nuclear program. Earlier this month Iran announced its scientists had successfully enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, triggering global alarm and heightening the pressure on the Islamic republic. In a new sign of defiance, hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also vowed that the next step will be working on highly efficient P2 centrifuges, which can enrich far more effectively than the P1 technology currently used. Asefi denied that Iran has used the new technology but said "the Islamic republic has the right to use this machinery as a member of the (nuclear Non-Proliferation) Treaty and it cannot be deprived of it". The United States is pushing for moves that could lead to economic and other sanctions if Tehran fails to comply but key Iranian allies and trading partners Russia and China are resisting such measures. Washington will call for the IAEA to cut off technical assistance to Iran and to be given a mandate for tougher inspections if diplomatic efforts falter. If Iran fails to meet the April 28 deadline, the United States wants the Security Council to adopt a "Chapter 7" resolution which would legally oblige Iran to meet the IAEA's calls. Asefi said a Russian plan for joint uranium enrichment was still on the table but that "grounds for its implementation should be provided". Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, on Saturday spoke of a "basic agreement" between Iran and Russia to set up a joint uranium enrichment firm on Russian soil. "The important thing is that Iran should not be deprived of its rights by any proposals," Asefi said. Soltanieh also announced Saturday that the regime will within the next month invite tenders from around the world for the building of two more nuclear power stations in Iran-- the number two exporter in OPEC. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 5 [NYTr] "Inadequate" Intelligence on Iran nuclear threat Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 14:21:59 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Reuters via Yahoo - Apr 23, 2006 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060423/pl_nm/security_intelligence_dc_2&printer=1;_ylt=AmDSFFlhWEJzZEBVcwDmxKob.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE- Intelligence on Iran nuclear threat seen as inadequate The United States doesn't have enough good intelligence to know whether or not Iran will be capable of producing nuclear weapons in the near future, top congressional intelligence committee members said on Sunday. Iran said earlier on Sunday it would not abandon its work on nuclear enrichment, which the United Nations has demanded it halt, and was prepared to face sanctions from abroad. Asked on Fox News Sunday when Iran might be capable of producing nuclear weapons, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, said: "I'd say we really don't know. "We're getting lots of mixed messages," Hoekstra said. "We've got a long way to go in rebuilding our intelligence community. .... We don't have all of the information we would like to have. Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, concurred. "Our intelligence is thin," she told Fox News. "I don't think we have enough sources, I don't think our analysis is sharp enough." Washington has said it wants a diplomatic resolution over Iran's nuclear ambitions but has not ruled out military action, a step its allies, as well as Russia and China, oppose. "This is not a time to be saber-rattling in our government," said Harmon. "Just the fact that the Iranian government is making a lot of noise doesn't prove their capabilities. Copyright ) 2006 Reuters * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 6 [southnews] Iran: The Day After Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 13:32:14 -0500 (CDT) What Iran really wants is serious negotiations with the U.S. So why are we gearing up for a preventive military strike? Iran: The Day After What Iran really wants is serious negotiations with the U.S. So why are we gearing up for a preventive military strike? Phyllis Bennis Mother Jones, April 21 , 2006 Article created by the Institute for Policy Studies. The airwaves and the headlines are full of talk of a U.S. military strike against Iran. That is as it should be - the danger of such a reckless move is real, and rising, and we should be talking about it. The Bush administration claims that negotiations are their first choice. But they have gone to war based on lies before, and there is no reason to believe that they are telling the truth this time. They have put the military - and even, horrifyingly, the nuclear - option at the center of the table. Dont worry, they say, even if a preventive military strike is needed, we're only talking about surgical attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities - no one, they say, is talking about invasion. It cant happen, some say. The military brass knows their troops are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, they appear to be strongly opposed to a strike on Iran. And we know that any military strike on Iran - ANY strike - would be a violation of international law prohibiting preventive war. And George Bush now admits that "preventive war" - not his earlier claim of pre-emptive war - is indeed his strategic doctrine. We know that according to the International Court of Justice, even threatening to use nuclear weapons is a violation of international law - and the Bush administration is threatening to use nuclear "bunker-buster" bombs to attack Iran. We don't hear much about it, but we know the National Academy of Sciences has found that "the use of such a weapon would create massive clouds of radioactive fallout that could spread far from the site of the attack, including to other nations. Even if used in remote, lightly populated areas, the number of casualties could range up to more than a hundred thousand" We know all that. But what if the Bush administration orders it anyway? What if they DO carry out just such a strike, nuclear or otherwise? Then what? What happens the day after? Practically no one is talking about that. And that makes this whole threat even more dangerous. It's as if the Bush administration believes that the day after they bomb Iran, everything will be over, except maybe for the happy campers in the streets of Tehran cheering and clamoring for the U.S. to bomb some more to help them change their regime. Maybe they really do believe that. We have to assume there are plenty of Iranian versions of Ahmad Chalabi around Washington, exiles eager to return to power on the backs of U.S. tanks, urging the White House on. But there's no reason we should believe them. Given the history of lies and deceit that underpinned the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq, we have no excuse for buying their lies once again. Fool me oncefool me twice, after all. Let's look at reality, instead of lies, distortions and weasel-words. If the U.S. attacks Iran - with nuclear or "conventional" bombs - it is virtually certain that Iranian retaliation will be swift and lethal. Iran's surrounding neighborhood is, as the military jargon puts it, "target-rich." Iran's military strategists will have a wide choice. A direct attack on U.S. troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region (Oman and Qatar are both possibilities) is only the first option. Iran's military is certainly no match for the Pentagon, but serious retaliation doesn't require that; Tehran has plenty of conventional capacity to target those troop concentrations. How about Israel? Tel Aviv has been making bellicose threats towards Iran even before the Bush administration took up the crusade, and Israel's 1981 destruction of Iraq's French-built nuclear power plant at Osirak still looms large in Middle Eastern memories. Iran's missiles can certainly reach Israeli cities. And given President Bush's statements that Iran represents a threat to Israel, and that the U.S. will do whatever is needed to "protect our ally," it is certainly possible that Iran's retaliation will target Israel, regardless of whether it is ultimately U.S. or Israeli bombers that drop their lethal payload. Another possibility would be an attack through proxies, particularly in Iraq. Iraqi Shi'a and others, outraged by the expansion of Washington's war to Iran, could well push already unstable parts of the country over the edge. Southern Iraq could collapse into chaos and violence. (Conversely, the widely-discussed claim that Iran might retaliate against the U.S. by "turning loose" Hezbollah to commit rampant terror attacks around the world appears to be grounded less in facts than in febrile Washington imaginations. Such a scenario assumes that Hezbollah, a decades-old anti-occupation movement in Lebanon created to resist Israel's 1982 invasion, is nothing more than a cat's-paw of the Iranian regime that Tehran can deploy at will. It denies the reality of Hezbollah's independent, popular legitimacy, including its powerful representation in the Lebanese parliament, and the fact that despite long-standing Iranian support, Hezbollah's strategic imperatives are driven by Lebanese, not Iranian, realities.) And what about the oil weapon? Iran certainly has the capacity to shut the strategic, but potentially vulnerable, Strait of Hormuz, through which a huge proportion of Middle Eastern oil flows to the rest of the world. What if the Iranian navy scuttled an oil tanker in the Strait, blocking oil traffic? What if it was a U.S. tanker? Do we really think the Bush administration - which so far has steadfastly refused even to hint at the possibility that Iran might respond with anything other than cheers and flowers to a U.S. bombing campaign - would respond to Tehran's military retaliation politely, saying "oh of course we anticipated an Iranian strike-back, it's just tit-for-tat and now it's over"? Or do we think they will be true to form and move towards powerful retribution against Iran, possibly including the invasion by U.S. ground troops that we're being told today is not even being considered? Some military analysts indicate Iran's troops these days are training primarily in defensive guerrilla-war strategies, seemingly aimed at overcoming a future invasion. That shouldn't surprise us. Iran, like the rest of the world, has watched the Bush administration's disparate treatment of the various "Axis of Evil" countries. It has escaped no one's notice certainly not Iran's that the U.S. invaded Iraq, a country that had no viable nuclear program, while quietly ignoring North Korea, understood to have at least the technical capacity to produce, and perhaps already having, an existing nuclear weapon. We can assume that other countries around the world have learned the same dangerous and tragic lesson that Non-Proliferation Treaty or not, if you get on the wrong side of Washington only a nuclear capacity might protect you from a possible U.S. invasion. At the end of the day Iran has been pretty clear about what it wants. It doesn't seem to want an actual nuclear weapon (both the late Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor have issued religious prohibitions, or fatwas, against such weapons) although there's little doubt that President Ahmadinejad appears to believe that posturing aggressively about "going nuclear" will help his flagging domestic ratings. (Sound familiar?) What Iran really wants, and has asked for, is serious negotiations with the U.S., based on equality, not humiliation. And at the end, a security guarantee that neither Europe nor the UN, but only the U.S. itself the world's "sole super-power" and the only nuclear weapons state threatening to actually use its nuclear arsenal can provide. For all sides, talk is crucial. Nuclear weapons - in anyone's hands - are a nightmare that should be abolished once and for all, as the now-fading Non-Proliferation Treaty anticipated so many years ago. Certainly Iran should abjure any search for nuclear weapons - but that's not going to happen alone. What we need - what we ALL need - is a weapons of mass destruction-free zone throughout the Middle East. So not only no nukes for Iran, but let's be sure Israel signs the NPT and places its unacknowledged but highly provocative Dimona arsenal of 200-400 high-density nuclear bombs under international supervision, and then allows the inspectors to destroy them. Let's be sure no country in the Middle East is running a chemical- or biological-weapons program - the poor countries' nuclear weapons substitute of choice and an unfortunate inevitability as long as Israel has a nuclear monopoly in the region. And its way past time for the U.S. to make good on its own NPT obligations to move towards full and complete nuclear disarmament. As long as Washington laughs off that obligation, and officially rejects it, it is hard to imagine why any other countries should take seriously a U.S. demand that take nuclear weapons off their agenda. Ironically enough the U.S. is already on record supporting just such a WMD-free zone in the Middle East. Article 14 of UN Security Resolution 687, that ended the 1991 Gulf War and imposed crippling sanctions on Iraq, states that disarming Iraq should be viewed as part of "establishing in the Middle East a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them." The language was written by the U.S. It's time we held Washington accountable to that pledge. Let's talk to Iran. Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and works with the United for Peace and Justice Coalition. Her most recent book is CHALLENGING EMPIRE: How People, Governments and the UN Defy U.S. Power. http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones.com/ commentary/columns/2006/04/iran_day_after.html The archives of South News can be found at http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/ ***************************************************************** 7 Guardian Unlimited: Russia Warns Against Pressuring Iran From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday April 22, 2006 8:16 PM AP Photo XHS102 By STEVE GUTTERMAN Associated Press Writer MOSCOW (AP) - A top Kremlin diplomat warned against threatening Iran with sanctions or the use of force, saying that would only aggravate the international standoff over Tehran's suspect nuclear program, Russian media reports said Saturday. Rather than getting Iran to stop uranium enrichment, a tougher stance could result in Tehran's total refusal to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, said Oleg Ozerov, deputy director of the Foreign Ministry's Middle East and North Africa Department, according to ITAR-Tass. ``We firmly stand today for resolving the problems in and around Tehran diplomatically rather than militarily. Increasing international pressure on Iran has no prospects,'' Ozerov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. The United States and European allies are pushing for sanctions because of Iran's refusal to suspend its enrichment program, as demanded by the U.N. Security Council. They suspect Iran is trying to develop atomic weapons in violation of its treaty commitments. The Iranian regime insists the program has only the peaceful purpose of generating electricity. Russia, which has close ties with Iran and is building that nation's first nuclear power plant, opposes sanctions. Despite what U.S. and Russian officials have described as increasingly close positions on the Iranian nuclear program in recent years, they appear far apart heading into the Friday deadline set by the Security Council for Iran to stop enrichment. The United States and Britain say that if Iran doesn't meet the deadline, they will try to get the council to make the demand compulsory, which would raise the possibility of sanctions. Seeking to avoid having the sanctions issue come before the council, Russian officials argue that the International Atomic Energy Agency should take the lead for the United Nations in trying to resolve tensions over Iran's nuclear program. Ozerov stressed Russia's opposition to the use of force against Iran - an issue that got close attention in state-run Russian media after President Bush said last week that military action could not be ruled out. ``The forceful option is extremely dangerous and not constructive,'' ITAR-Tass quoted Ozerov as saying during a seminar on global security. The report added that Ozerov also warned Iran against making belligerent statements. Moscow has been frustrated by Tehran's uncooperative attitude, and ITAR-Tass said Ozerov expressed regret over the failure to reach a final agreement with Iran on a compromise proposal to have the Iranian uranium enrichment program operate on Russian territory. The two nations announced a ``basic agreement'' in February on implementing the plan, which would allow closer international monitoring of Iranian enrichment program - which can produce both fuel for power-generating nuclear reactors and the core material for atomic bombs. Iran is prepared for more talks on the Russian proposal, Iran's IAEA envoy said in Moscow on Friday. But Ali Asghar Soltanieh stressed that the details were unresolved and needed much more discussion. Iranian officials already undercut the intent of Russia's plan by insisting that they would continue some enrichment work at home. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 8 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Calls Nuclear Program 'Irreversible' From the Associated Press [UP] Sunday April 23, 2006 4:31 PM AP Photo XHS101 By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran said Sunday its nuclear program is irreversible, issuing yet another rejection of a U.N. Security Council deadline to cease enriching uranium that expires in five days. Earlier this month, Tehran announced for the first time that it had enriched uranium using 164 centrifuges, a step toward large-scale production of nuclear fuel that can be used either in atomic weapons or in nuclear reactors for civilian electricity generation. ``Nuclear research will continue. Suspension of (nuclear activities including uranium enrichment) is not on our agenda. This issue is irreversible,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. The United States and some allies charge Iran is using the program as a cover for weapons production. Iran says it is designed only for power generation. The Security Council deadline of Friday is not binding, but the United States and Britain said Iran must comply or the two countries would seek a resolution to make the demand compulsory, which would raise the possibility of sanctions. ``Iran won't give up its rights and has prepared plans for any eventuality,'' Asefi said. The spokesman said a Russian compromise plan for joint uranium enrichment was still on the table. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Saturday spoke of a ``basic agreement'' between Iran and Russia to set up a joint uranium enrichment firm on Russian soil. The announcement was a repeat of a similar declaration by Iran and Russia in February but details have never been worked out. ``Necessary grounds need to be prepared for its implementation,'' Asefi said. It still remains unclear whether Iran would entirely give up enrichment at home, a top demand of the West, or if the joint venture would be complementary to the existing enrichment inside Iran. Asefi insisted Sunday that Iran has not used any advanced P-2 centrifuges in its enrichment of uranium. Such a device would be a vast improvement over the current P-1 centrifuges, which Iran has said it used to enrich uranium. Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed last week that his country was conducting laboratory research on the advanced P-2 centrifuge, which could be used to more speedily create fuel for power plants or atomic weapons. ``We have not so far used P-2 centrifuges. What we have used has been P-1,'' Asefi told reporters. The spokesman, however, said Iran had the right to work on P-2 centrifuge. ``No one can deny us of such a work,'' he said. Iran has vowed it would never give up its right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 9 Guardian Unlimited: Rep. Says Iran's Nuke Capability Unknown From the Associated Press [UP] Sunday April 23, 2006 5:31 PM AP Photo XHS101 WASHINGTON (AP ) - The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee acknowledged Sunday that mixed messages surround Iran's nuclear capabilities and that ``we really don't know'' how close Tehran is to developing a nuclear weapon. ``It all points out the fact we need to do much better in rebuilding our intelligence community, reshaping it, transforming it, making sure that we give public policy, that we give policymakers the information that they need so that we can make better decisions,'' Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., told ``Fox News Sunday.'' National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said last week that Iran, while determined to acquire a nuclear weapon, remains as many as 10 years away from having the material it needs. A week earlier, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed aside suggestions that Iran was far from nuclear weaponry and said the world believes Iran has the capacity and the technology that lead to nuclear weapons. Asked how close is Iran to actually developing a nuclear weapon, Hoekstra replied, ``I'd say we really don't know.'' ``We as public policymakers need to know that as we're moving forward and as decisions are being made on Iran, we don't have all of the information that we would like to have,'' Hoekstra said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 10 Guardian Unlimited: Report: Iran, Russia Reach Enrichment Deal From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday April 22, 2006 3:31 PM By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Saturday the Islamic republic had reached a ``basic deal'' with the Kremlin to form a joint uranium enrichment venture on Russian territory, state-run television reported. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, ``spoke of a basic agreement between Iran and Russia to set up a joint uranium enrichment firm on Russian soil,'' Iranian state television reported. It remained unclear, though, whether Iran would entirely give up enrichment at home, a top demand of the West, or whether the joint venture would complement Iran's existing enrichment program. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 11 IRNA: 11th session of Iran-Cuba Joint Economic Commission concludes - Tehran, April 22, IRNA Cuba-Iran-Commission The Iran-Cuba Joint Economic Commission concluded its 11th session here on Saturday. The Cuban delegation in the session was headed by Minister of State Ricardo Cabrisas while the Iranian delegation was headed by Minister of Agriculture Jihad Mohammad Reza Eskandari. Iran's deputy ministers of industries and roads and transportation as well as several of its economic and trade officials and the Cuban ambassador to Tehran also participated in the meeting. Expansion of bilateral cooperation in the areas of trade, economy and culture was the major objective of holding the session. During the meeting, the heads of the two delegations announced that the two sides held identical views on the need to expand their political and economic cooperation at the international level. 1422/2321/1414 ***************************************************************** 12 Guardian Unlimited: U.S. Wants Russia to Stop Iran Arms Sales From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday April 22, 2006 9:16 AM AP Photo XMM102 By ANNE GEARAN AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Lacking assurances from Russia and China that they would approve of U.N. sanctions, the Bush administration is trying to deny Iran technology, assets and especially weapons to slow down a suspected nuclear weapons program. As part of that campaign, a top State Department official urged Russia on Friday to drop its plan to sell Tor anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. ``We hope and we trust that the deal will not go forward because this is not time for business as usual with the Iranian government,'' said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns. He has been trying to line up support for the sanctions proposal the United States and the European Union are hoping to make at the U.N. Security Council early next month. Referring to Russia and China, Burns told reporters, ``The message privately was that we do not have an agreement'' about specific tactics in the U.N. Security Council. But he said no nation wanted to see Iran build nuclear weapons - a goal Iran denies pursuing with its enrichment and other nuclear programs - so other measures were being promoted. ``It's time for countries to use their leverage with Iran,'' Burns said, beginning with prohibiting Iran access to technology that has military applications. A lot of countries have multibillion-dollar trade relations with Iran ``and they ought to begin to rethink those commercial trade relationships,'' Burns said. No country should sell weapons to Iran, he added. Undersecretary of State Robert Joseph, who is in charge of nonproliferation policy at the department, said he had made a similar pitch on a trip to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries. Joseph said he talked to officials there about limiting banking transactions with Iran to crimp its ability to acquire more technology. He said he also discussed greater cooperation in establishing a missile defense. ``The Iranians have put both feet on the accelerator,'' he said. ``They are moving very quickly to establish new realities on the ground associated with their nuclear program.'' The United States has pushed for more than two years to bring Iran's nuclear programs before the U.N. Security Council. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is due to make a report to the council at the end of April. ``There's only one thing he can really report,'' Burns said, ``and that is that Iran is not in compliance with the terms of the presidential statement issued by the Security Council.'' Adopted last month, the statement calls on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment-related activities and to resume negotiations with the European Union. --- On the Net: State Department: http://www.state.gov CIA Factbook on Iran: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ir.html Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 13 IRNA: Asefi: One should wait for ElBaradei's report on Iran Tehran, April 23, IRNA Iran-Asefi-Nuclear Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said on Sunday that one should wait for the report of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chief Mohamed ElBaradei, adding that his former reports have underlined that Iran has never deviated from peaceful path in its nuclear activities. Speaking to the media in this week's press conference, he said that in recent days some world powers have attempted to exert pressure on Iran, given they treat the country's nuclear dossier as a political case instead of a technical one. "If the dossier is not dealt with as a political case, there is no cause for concern. However, we are always worried about its being politicized," he added. In response to a question about Iran-India-Pakistan gas pipeline project, Asefi referred to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's phone conversation with his Indian and Pakistani counterparts and said that the officials of both states insist on accelerating it. The spokesman noted that the implementation of the project will contribute to the development of regional states and will be in the interest of the three countries involved in it. About Iran's use of P2 centrifuge, he said that this type of centrifuge has not yet been used in the country. He added that Iran has just used P1 centrifuge, of which the IAEA is aware. Concerning the use of P2 centrifuge in future, he said that it depends on the decisions to be taken. Asefi noted that the NPT members are entitled to use this type of centrifuge and that no party can ever ban its use by Iran. In reply to another question about the prospect of Iran becoming the 11th country possessing nuclear technology, the official said, "It is obvious that Iran is one of the limited countries which have developed such a technology." Asefi referred to Iran's extensive exchange of views about the nuclear issue over recent days and said that the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Secretary Ali Larijani left for Bahrain today on the first leg of his regional visit. In addition to holding talks with Russia and European states, Iranian officials have discussed the nuclear issue with the secretary general of the Arab League as well as Malaysia, Cuba, Japan and China. "Meanwhile, during the 5+1 meeting in Moscow, held upon the initiative of the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, an Iranian delegation including members of the Supreme National Security Council and Foreign Ministry officials visited Russia and held talks with the European officials in charge," he added. He noted that besides, Iranian negotiators are now holding talks with representatives of various countries on the nuclear matter in Vienna. Turning to the international tender for two more nuclear power plants, he said that given the need for a few more of this type of power plants, the issue will be pursued through tenders and the outcome will be declared. Asked about the West's outlook on ElBaradei's report being harsh, he replied that such comments prove that the West is exerting pressure on the IAEA chief. He pointed to the fact that the former reports released by the agency have underlined that Iran has not deviated from the peaceful nuclear path and said that these prove that the West is pressurizing the IAEA, which is a cause of concern for Iran. ***************************************************************** 14 BBC: Iran nuclear work 'irreversible' Last Updated: Sunday, 23 April 2006 [A general view of Iran's first nuclear reactor, being built in Bushehr] Iran claims it has struck a deal to enrich uranium with Russia Iran has called its uranium enrichment work "irreversible", days before a UN deadline for the programme to stop. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi also said demands for Iran to suspend its nuclear research work were "not on the agenda". The UN Security Council called on Iran to suspend enrichment by 28 April, amid fears it wants to make nuclear weapons. Iran - which insists its programme is peaceful - announced this month it had enriched uranium for the first time. The UN Security Council, in a statement issued on 29 March, asked nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report back within 30 days on whether Iran has complied with the UN call. But Mr Asefi told a weekly news conference: "Iran's uranium enrichment and nuclear research and development activities are irreversible". He said that so long as the IAEA report contained "expert assessment", there would be "nothing left to worry about". Diplomatic flurry "However, if the report comes out and somehow puts pressure on Iran or speaks with a language of threats, naturally Iran will not abandon its rights and it is prepared for all possible situations and has planned for it." The BBC's Tehran correspondent, Frances Harrison, says there has been a flurry of diplomatic activity by Iran in the run-up to the deadline, and some calls internally for a less confrontational approach towards the West on the nuclear issue Mr Asefi said Iran was still discussing with Russia a plan for Iran to enrich uranium on Russian soil. Iran first gave details of the plan in February, and on Saturday, state radio said an outline agreement had been reached, but details were still to be worked out. Our correspondent says that the problem with the plan, which has been seen as a possible solution to the stand-off with the West, is that Iranian officials continue to adamantly rule out halting enrichment research on their own soil. Enrichment work Iran's announcement that it had enriched uranium for the first time has thrown attention on to its enrichment technology. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said earlier this month that Iran was testing a more advanced centrifuge, known as a P-2. The P-2 centrifuge can enrich uranium more quickly, raising fears in some Western capitals that Iran could develop nuclear weapons more quickly than originally thought. Mr Asefi said Iran had not yet used P-2 centrifuges in its enrichment work. "So far, we have never used P-2 centrifuges, and what we have used is P-1 machines. We have informed the agency (IAEA) about that. "No-one can deny Iran from using these devices. However, they have not yet been used," said Mr Asefi. [Two technicians carry a box containing yellowcake at the Iranian nuclear facility at Isfahan] Iran says its nuclear programme is for purely peaceful purposes Mr Asefi also said there were no plans for Iran to meet the US to discuss the situation in war-torn Iraq. "Nothing has been scheduled and set. Preparations have not even been made for these talks," Mr Asefi told reporters. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had authorised the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, to reach out to the Iranians for direct talks on Iraq, raising hopes that the two sides might also been drawn into discussions on the nuclear stand-off. "We are not in hurry because we have been pessimistic about US intentions as we still are. It is nothing important," said Mr Asefi. ***************************************************************** 15 IRNA: Iran dismisses speculation on suspension of research on nuclear energy - Tehran, April 23, IRNA Iran-Nuclear Program -Asefi Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi on Sunday dismissed the speculation that Iran agreed to suspend research studies on producing nuclear energy. Asefi made the remark while speaking to domestic and foreign reporters at his weekly press conference. "Research studies is the national sovereignty right of the Islamic Republic of Iran and will not be overlooked," he said. Asked whether Iran presented a proposal on suspension of activities during the meeting of the Group 5+1, he added, "This is not the case." The five veto-wielding permanent UN Security Council members -- United States, Britain, France, China and Russia -- along with Germany held a meeting in Moscow on April 18 to discuss the Iran nuclear issue. In response to a reporter who asked whether Iran currently uses P2 centrifuges, the spokesman said, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has not used P2 centrifuges yet. It just used P1 centrifuges which was previously reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Asked about Russia's nuclear proposal for Iran, he said, "Russian offer is still on the table. Appropriate grounds should be prepared for its implementation. "No proposal should deprive Iran of its rights. Iran is interested in settlement of its nuclear case through negotiations." Asefi expressed Iran's readiness to continue with cooperation with the IAEA, saying, "We will continue with our work under the agency's surveillance. "Iran will not renounce its rights. The country's rights should be recognized." He stressed, "Iran will not withdraw its right on (uranium) enrichment inside its territory." On the time of talks between Iran and the United States on Iraq, the spokesman said, "Grounds should be prepared. Nothing has been prepared yet. Iran is not in hurry on this issue." ***************************************************************** 16 AFP: Diplomats pessimistic over Iranian nuclear crisis Sunday April 23, 09:04 AM TEHRAN (AFP) - For the first time since the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme kicked off some three years ago, Western diplomats are saying the prospects for a negotiated settlement look extremely slim. They believe the Islamic republic's hardline rulers have decided to work all-out to acquire a nuclear deterrent -- be that a bomb or the capacity to make one -- which will in turn accelerate Western efforts to impose punitive action such as UN sanctions in the short term. Many diplomats [ src=] also say that, barring a sudden and surprise change of heart by Tehran's radical right-wingers, a conflict between Iran and the United States cannot be ruled out in the medium term. "The Iranians believe they are in a very, very strong position. They're counting on the Russians and Chinese to block the Security Council from imposing any meaningful sanctions," a senior Tehran-based Western diplomat said. "But the regime also seems convinced the Americans cannot attack," he added. Iranian officials regular speak of the US as being in a "quagmire" in Iraq and allergic to any further spike in oil prices, already at 75 dollars a barrel partly thanks to the Iran crisis. "This, I think, is a very grave miscalculation," said the diplomat, speaking on condition that he not be named. The UN Security Council has given Tehran until April 28 to freeze uranium enrichment -- which makes reactor fuel but can be extended to make weapons -- as a "confidence-building" measure. Iran's has refused to do so, asserting its nuclear drive is a legal bid to generate atomic energy. It has also announced that its scientists have successfully mastered enrichment and -- in a display of total defiance -- has vowed to reach an industrial-scale enrichment capacity within 12 months. "The Iranians have tried to present a fait accompli. In reality they're not quite there yet, but it is a turning point. From now on the faster their work advances, the quicker the crisis will escalate," said a European diplomat close to the issue. Furthermore, Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been firing on all cylinders -- upping his fierce anti-Israeli rhetoric and showing off Tehran's close ties with Palestinian and Iraqi militant groups. Iran's armed forces have also played up military exercises in the Gulf and the oil-supply choke point at the Strait of Hormuz. The US is now pushing for tough action from New York, but Russia -- which has a veto on the Council -- on Friday ruled out any discussion of sanctions until it had proof supporting allegations that Tehran has been hiding something. Moscow also said it was "categorically" opposed to the use of force. The fear voiced by several European diplomats was that a lack of consensus within the UN could prompt the United States to go it alone -- a threat evoked last week by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who spoke of Washington's right to "self-defence". Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear weapons power, also views Iran as an existential threat. "This situation has the potential to deteriorate very quickly," said the diplomat. "It would be inconceivable for the Americans to stand aside and watch Iran make a bomb or even possess the technology to make one. "They're not going to hang around for a smoking gun." In dealing with Iran's former moderate government, diplomats from Britain, France and Germany had sensed that Iran wanted to strike a deal. "It was as if the regime viewed the nuclear programme as a bargaining chip. They wanted to be in a strong position, bring the Americans to the negotiating table and get security guarantees and incentives," said another European diplomat. "A solution would have taken time, but it was possible." But Ahmadinejad's shock election win last June heralded a total takeover in Tehran by hardliners who view the world in terms of Islam versus the West. The United States is seen by them as being bent on regime change. Iran's shift to the right has resulted in a sense of pessimism in Tehran's diplomatic community -- and even some speculation of when, where and how the Americans will attack. Over the coming week all eyes will be on the latest report on Iranian compliance from Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The report is unlikely to reflect well on Iran, diplomats predict. "The problem is that there's is no productive dialogue with Iran anymore," said another European diplomat, who described a recent meeting between the EU and Iran in Moscow as "both sides talking to a brick wall". "It certainly looks as if we are heading towards sanctions, which means the door for diplomacy is closing." AFP ***************************************************************** 17 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Russians favor Iran nuclear program 2006/04/23 Tehran, April 23 - Russia's TV Channel One reported Saturday that according to recent polls a majority of Russian people support Iran's nuclear programs. Holding a round table with senior statesmen on attendance, the program concluded that Iran's programs are solely of peaceful nature. During the one-hour program, deputy Russian President General Leonid Ivachev defended Iran's scientific progress and said that Iran, though witnessing a mounting military might, is a peace-loving country and poses no threat to the region. Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting ***************************************************************** 18 AFP: Iran says nuclear enrichment 'irreversible' Sun Apr 23, 3:55 PM ET TEHRAN (AFP) - With just five days to go before the expiry of a UN Security Council deadline for Iran" /> Iranto freeze uranium enrichment, Tehran insisted that the sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work was irreversible. "The suspension of Iran's activities is media propaganda. Iran's research activities are irreversible," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. The Security Council has given Tehran until Friday to suspend uranium enrichment, a process which makes reactor fuel but can be extended to make weapons, as a "confidence-building" measure. Iran has refused to do so -- despite growing talk of a possible US military strike -- asserting that its nuclear drive is a legitimate bid to generate energy. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agency, is to report on Iran's compliance in a week and diplomats predict he will be less than complimentary about the Islamic regime. "The fact that Westerners say it will be a negative report shows they are applying pressure," Asefi said. "We are worried that Iran's dossier is being politicized. "We have to wait and see what Mr ElBaradei's report will be. He has not implied in previous reports that Iran has deviated from peaceful nuclear work." The Security Council called on March 29 for Iran to honor within 30 days IAEA resolutions for Tehran to halt enrichment and to cooperate with the agency's more than three-year investigation of its nuclear program. Earlier this month Iran announced its scientists had successfully enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, triggering global alarm and heightening the pressure on the Islamic republic. In a new sign of defiance, hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also vowed that the next step will be working on highly efficient P2 centrifuges, which can enrich far more effectively than the P1 technology currently used. Asefi denied that Iran has used the new technology but said "the Islamic republic has the right to use this machinery as a member of the (nuclear Non-Proliferation) Treaty and it cannot be deprived of it." The United States is pushing for moves that could lead to economic and other sanctions if Tehran fails to comply but key Iranian trading partners Russia and China are resisting such measures. Washington will call for the IAEA to cut off technical assistance to Iran and to be given a mandate for tougher inspections if diplomatic efforts falter. If Iran fails to meet the April 28 deadline, the United States wants the Security Council to adopt a "Chapter 7" resolution which would legally oblige Iran to meet the IAEA's calls. Asefi said a Russian plan for joint uranium enrichment was still on the table but that "grounds for its implementation should be provided." Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, on Saturday spoke of a "basic agreement" between Iran and Russia to set up a joint uranium enrichment firm on Russian soil. On Sunday, Soltanieh played down the cancelation of a planned visit by IAEA deputy secretary general Olli Heinonen last week. "It's not very important, we'll discuss it with IAEA officials in Vienna," the ISNA news agency quoted him as saying. The UN nuclear chief had portrayed Heinonen's aborted visit as an attempt to open an "intensive dialogue." Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 19 AFP: Iran says nuclear enrichment 'irreversible' Sun Apr 23, 7:57 AM ET TEHRAN (AFP) - With just five days to go before the expiry of a UN Security Council deadline for Iran" /> to freeze uranium enrichment, Tehran insisted that the sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work was irreversible. "The suspension of Iran's activities is media propaganda. Iran's research activities are irreversible," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. The Security Council has given Tehran until Friday to suspend uranium enrichment, a process which makes reactor fuel but can be extended to make weapons, as a "confidence-building" measure. Iran has refused to do so -- despite growing talk of a possible US military strike -- asserting that its nuclear drive is a legal bid to generate energy. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency" /> , is to report on Iran's compliance in a week and diplomats predict it is unlikely to reflect well on the Islamic regime. "The fact that Westerners say it will be a negative report shows they are applying pressure," Asefi said Sunday. "We are worried that Iran's dossier is being politicized". "We have to wait and see what Mr ElBaradei's report will be. He has not implied in previous reports that Iran has deviated from peaceful nuclear work," he added. The Security Council called on March 29 for Iran to honor within 30 days IAEA resolutions for Tehran to halt enrichment and to cooperate with the agency's more than three-year investigation of its nuclear program. Earlier this month Iran announced its scientists had successfully enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, triggering global alarm and heightening the pressure on the Islamic republic. In a new sign of defiance, hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also vowed that the next step will be working on highly efficient P2 centrifuges, which can enrich far more effectively than the P1 technology currently used. Asefi denied that Iran has used the new technology but said "the Islamic republic has the right to use this machinery as a member of the (nuclear Non-Proliferation) Treaty and it cannot be deprived of it". The United States is pushing for moves that could lead to economic and other sanctions if Tehran fails to comply but key Iranian allies and trading partners Russia and China are resisting such measures. Washington will call for the IAEA to cut off technical assistance to Iran and to be given a mandate for tougher inspections if diplomatic efforts falter. If Iran fails to meet the April 28 deadline, the United States wants the Security Council to adopt a "Chapter 7" resolution which would legally oblige Iran to meet the IAEA's calls. Asefi said a Russian plan for joint uranium enrichment was still on the table but that "grounds for its implementation should be provided". Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, on Saturday spoke of a "basic agreement" between Iran and Russia to set up a joint uranium enrichment firm on Russian soil. "The important thing is that Iran should not be deprived of its rights by any proposals," Asefi said. Soltanieh also announced Saturday that the regime will within the next month invite tenders from around the world for the building of two more nuclear power stations in Iran -- the number two exporter in OPEC" /> . Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 20 IRNA: Iran says no intention to use oil as weapon Sat Apr 22, 4:44 PM ET DOHA (AFP) - Iran" /> Iran's Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh told AFP that his country will not use oil as a weapon in the row over its nuclear program and that it was not to blame for current market tension. Oil prices breached the 75 dollar a barrel level on Friday triggering worries about the impact on world economic growth. "We have repeatedly said there is no intention and there has not been any indication that Iran will use oil as a weapon," Vaziri-Hamaneh said on the sidelines of the 10th International Energy Forum. "When the war was imposed on Iran by Iraq" /> Iraqfor eight years, the exports of Iran did not stop and the same will continue." The forum which officially opens Sunday kicked off on Saturday with meetings between ministers from oil producing and consuming countries and the heads of some of the world's biggest oil companies. The 11-member OPEC" /> OPECcartel is expected to hold informal talks on Monday. Tension over Iran's defiance of the international community in pressing ahead with uranium enrichment has rattled oil markets and pushed prices higher according to analysts. But the Iranian minister disagreed. He said those who are putting pressure on Iran over its legitimate right to nuclear technology were to blame for the crisis. "Research in enrichment should not be the cause for that sort of tension, those who are escalating are the ones causing the tension," he said. "We are moving within the framework NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) regulations and laws, we have to ask the question what is really the cause of the tension and who are the people who are intimidating us." The minister said the shortage of refined products such as gasoline in the United States played a big part in pushing prices higher. He is opposed to any change in OPEC's production ceiling, arguing the cartel is already at full capacity. The West led by Washington has accused Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program while Tehran insists its intentions are peaceful and civilian. The UN Security Council has given Iran a deadline of April 28 to halt enrichment activity. Iran is the world's fourth and OPEC's second crude producer, with a production level of around four million barrels a day. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 21 Guardian Unlimited: S.Korea Offers Aid if N.Korea Cooperates From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday April 22, 2006 9:31 AM AP Photo SEL804 By JAE-SOON CHANG Associated Press Writer SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea on Saturday urged North Korea to return to nuclear disarmament talks and offered possible economic assistance in exchange for the North's cooperation on the issue of South Korean citizens believed held in the communist state. Seoul estimates that 486 South Korean civilians abducted by the North are alive. It also says the North is holding 542 others taken as prisoners of war during the 1950-53 Korean War. ``It's urgent to resolve the issue of POWs and abductees in the course of addressing the tragic suffering caused by the national division,'' South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok said in the opening session of Cabinet-level talks with the North in Pyongyang. ``If North Korea takes a bold measure regarding this issue, our side will make a reciprocal decision of cooperation,'' he said, according to pool reports from South Korean journalists accompanying the delegation. Earlier this week, Lee specified that he would propose ``bold economic assistance'' to the impoverished North in exchange for the return of the South Korean nationals. The South has previously raised the issue with North Korea, but the North has denied holding any war prisoners and says the civilians defected voluntarily. It was not immediately clear how North Korea reacted to Lee's offer. Lee also urged the North to return to six-nation talks on ending its nuclear program. ``What is more important than anything else is to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully,'' he said. North Korea has boycotted the nuclear negotiations with China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States since November, protesting financial restrictions imposed by Washington for the North's alleged wrongdoing, including currency counterfeiting. The North's chief delegate, Kwon Ho Ung, a senior Cabinet counselor, repeated a long-standing North Korean demand that South Korea end joint military drills with the United States, according to the pool reports. The Cabinet-level talks were originally scheduled for last month, but North Korea delayed them by a month to protest military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea in late March. Kwon also proposed working with South Korea to formulate a joint response to Japan in a mounting row over a set of disputed islets in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. The South also proposed jointly developing the estuary of a border river by excavating construction materials such as sand and gravel. The project would also help prevent flooding, it said. The two Koreas officially remain in a state of conflict because the armistice that ended the Korean War has never been replaced with a peace treaty. However, their relations have warmed significantly since the first-ever meeting of their leaders in 2000. The Cabinet-level talks - the highest-level regular dialogue channel between the divided states - are to run through Monday. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 22 Korea Herald: Fix the mess in U.S. intelligence Editorial/Op-Ed [David Ignatius] WASHINGTON - For the U.S. intelligence community, the warning lights are blinking red. A reorganization that was supposed to bring greater coordination has instead produced a layering of responsibilities and bureaucratic confusion. A demoralized CIA that needed professional management is chafing under a Republican former congressman who has proved to be the most political and ineffective director in the agency's history. Look at the organization chart of the new Office of the Director of National Intelligence and you wonder if America has become a Third World country with a rival intelligence agency for each patch of turf. At last count, there were 16 different spy units under the DNI's umbrella - a number that puts even Syria to shame. In theory, this flotilla of spy agencies is being supervised by a deputy responsible for "customer outcomes," whatever that means, and three other deputy directors. The organization chart gives each of the four a peppy two-word mission statement: "Want It," "Know It," "Get It" and "Build It." I'd like to suggest a new mission for John Negroponte, the man who sits atop this intelligence ziggurat. "Fix It." One year on, the intelligence reorganization isn't working. It has overanalyzed the little problems without solving the big ones. It hasn't succeeded in coordinating the various agencies, and it has allowed the biggest problem of all - the disarray at the CIA - to get even worse. I'm told that several foreign intelligence services have recently observed a decline in CIA performance, which should scare us all. "The reorganization reshuffled rather than augmented the nation's federal intelligence personnel," argued Richard A. Posner, a federal circuit court judge who knows the intelligence world well, in a speech in March to a gathering of CIA lawyers. He said of the DNI structure: "It has become a new bureaucracy, layered on top of the intelligence community, a new agency on top of the fifteen or so previously existing agencies." According to The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, Negroponte's budget is nearing $1 billion - about five times what was previously spent for intelligence-community management. His staff is now 1,539 people, about twice what was expected. The intelligence mess is serious enough that it has triggered a quiet investigation by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a secretive blue-ribbon panel that advises the White House. The group's new chairman is Stephen Friedman, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs and former White House economic adviser. Other luminaries on the 16-member panel are former Sen. Charles Robb, former Rep. Lee Hamilton and retired Adm. David E. Jeremiah. I'm told the intelligence board has summoned a series of top current and former officials in recent weeks to get a handle on the problems at the CIA and DNI. "They are trying to get a sense of what is really going on and how bad it is," says one intelligence insider. Because many of the board members have run big companies, they are said to be applying management metrics to the crazy quilt of the reorganization. The Bush administration unfortunately is a big part of what's wrong. From the start, officials close to Vice President Cheney viewed a moribund, risk-averse CIA as an obstacle to their goals. Certainly the CIA made mistakes, especially in its assessment of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but that's not why it was punished. It became a political whipping boy for the right wing largely because it tried to tell the truth on two key issues - alleged Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Niger, and alleged Iraqi operational links with al-Qaida. On both, CIA analysts repeatedly warned the administration that the evidence didn't support their conclusions, yet the office of the vice president kept coming back and telling them to take another look. The CIA issued a secret paper in January 2003 that there was no Iraqi authority, control or direction over al-Qaida. Yet the political pressure continued. Negroponte defended his performance in a speech Thursday at the National Press Club, and one can only wish him well. He has a huge job: The CIA has lost a generation of senior managers, burned off by Porter Goss and his political aides in a senseless vendetta. Dissatisfaction is growing in the middle ranks. Operations officers are looking over their shoulders; analysts are looking at the proliferating bureaucracies and wondering where to try to make their careers; terrorism specialists are torn between the CIA's Counterterrorist Center or the DNI's National Counterterrorism Center. We don't have enough good spies to afford this confusion. You would have thought it was impossible to make our intelligence problems even worse, but the Bush administration has accomplished that. This is a dangerous situation for the country and it needs to be fixed, now. David Ignatius' e-mail address is davidignatius@ washpost.com. - Ed. (Washington Post Writers Group) 2006.04.24 ***************************************************************** 23 AFP: SKorea urges North to return to nuclear talks Sat Apr 22, 4:03 AM ET SEOUL (AFP) - South Korea" /> South Koreahas urged North Korea" /> North Koreato return to six-nation talks on its nuclear weapons programme and to repatriate abducted South Korean nationals. Unification Minister Lee Jong-Seok issued the call at the start of talks in Pyongyang, at which a high-level delegation from Seoul hopes to find a way of breaking the deadlock over the North's controversial nuclear program. "It is of utmost importance to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully and to realize the building up of military trust," Lee said in his keynote speech. He called on the Stalinist state to resume "at the earliest possible date" the six-party talks so that an agreement struck in September could be implemented. In September, North Korea agreed in principle to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for diplomatic and economic benefits and security guarantees. But at the last session in November it said US sanctions were blocking any progress. Lee also called on the North to resume inter-Korean military and defence talks at the ministerial level to discuss ways of reducing tensions on the peninsula, especially in the disputed fishing areas off the western coast. His North Korean counterpart Kwon Ho-Ung called on the South to stop joint military exercises with the United States from next year and to expand investment and economic cooperation with Pyongyang. "The North and South should join forces to deal with Japan's maneuvering to distort history and rob Dokdo," Kwon said in reference to the row between Seoul and Tokyo over a disputed island chain, known as Takeshima in Japan. Lee also said the two sides needed to resolve the issue of South Korean abductees and POWs kidnapped by the North as a way to address the suffering caused by the division of the two Koreas. Seoul says the communist regime in the North is holding 485 South Koreans it kidnapped in the years following the 1950-53 Korean War as well as some 600 prisoners captured during the war. Lee said last week Seoul was prepared to pay North Korea to secure their freedom. Lee arrived in Pyongyang on Friday for the four-day talks expected to be dominated by the abduction issue and the stalled nuclear talks, which also involve China, Japan, Russia and the United States. "For a peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue that has been casting a long shadow over the Korean Peninsula, the six-party talks must resume as soon as possible," he told a banquet Friday hosted by North Korean Premier Pak Pong-Ju. North Korea has been boycotting the talks for five months, demanding Washington lift economic sanctions it imposed on Pyongyang over allegations of illicit financial dealings. The US Treasury Department" /> Treasury Departmentin September told US financial institutions to stop dealing with a Macau bank, Banco Delta Asia, which it accused of being a willing front for North Korean counterfeiting. A month later, the US blacklisted eight North Korean companies allegedly involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. At the start of Saturday's talks, South Korea also proposed the joint development of the Han River, part of which crosses the heavily-militarised border between the two Cold War rivals. He said huge economic gains from the project, which would involve making the river deeper to help prevent floods and to obtain sand and pebbles for construction, would be in store for the two Koreas. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 24 Guardian Unlimited: Russian Likely Won't Face U.S. Trial From the Associated Press [UP] Sunday April 23, 2006 5:01 AM PITTSBURGH (AP) - Russia's former nuclear energy minister, accused of stealing millions of dollars in U.S. aid with his American business partner, will likely never be tried in the United States, a federal prosecutor said. The United States had sought Yevgeny Adamov's extradition, but a Swiss court ruled last year he should be sent back to Russia. Adamov, 66, has been in a Moscow jail since. Adamov was indicted in the United States on charges of conspiracy to transfer stolen money and securities, conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering and tax evasion. On Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Teitelbaum fought a defense request to allow Adamov to waive his initial court appearance and have the case move forward. Teitelbaum said ``it's pointless to proceed'' because Adamov will never be able to face the charges in person. ``The Russian government has made it clear that if Adamov is to be tried, it will be in Russia under Russian law,'' Teitelbaum said. Russian government officials have stated publicly that Adamov cannot be tried in the United States. Adamov oversaw Russia's civilian and military nuclear programs and is ``the possessor of state secrets,'' said his attorney, Lanny Breuer. Breuer quoted one parliamentarian in the Russian government who said if Adamov was to come to the United States, he ``had to be eliminated.'' Yet prosecutors said they would not dismiss the indictment, because it would be premature to act before there the Russian charges are resolved. Prosecutors say Adamov and his business partner, Mark M. Kaushansky, 53, of Monroeville, Pa., stole $9 million earmarked by the U.S. Energy Department for improvements at Russia's nuclear plants. Prosecutors allege some of the money wound up in bank accounts in Pittsburgh, where Kaushansky and Adamov owned two businesses. U.S. District Judge Maurice B. Cohill called the case ``uncharted territory'' and said he will rule soon. Kaushansky, who is free on bond, faces similar charges. The two men met in the early 1990s when Adamov toured Westinghouse Electric Corp. in Pittsburgh, where Kaushansky worked. Kaushansky's attorney, Fred Thieman, said his client cannot defend himself without Adamov's testimony. Russian President Boris Yeltsin appointed Adamov as the country's nuclear energy minister in 1998. In 2001, the anti-corruption committee of Russia's State Duma, or lower house of parliament, accused Adamov of illegally setting up companies inside and outside Russiadimir Putin. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 25 Guardian Unlimited: Report: Ex-CIA Official Blasts White House From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday April 22, 2006 6:46 PM WASHINGTON (AP) - The former chief of the CIA's European operation is accusing the White House of ignoring the spy agency's doubts that Iraq had a budding nuclear program or weapons of mass destruction as the U.S. prepared for war. ``The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy,'' Tyler Drumheller told CBS' ``60 Minutes'' for an interview to be broadcast Sunday night. The network released excerpts ahead of the airing. The White House has denied that intelligence, while flawed, was exaggerated or manipulated in the months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Drumheller, who retired last year, said the White House ignored crucial information from a high and credible source who claimed that there were no active programs for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. ``60 Minutes'' identified the source as Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, with whom U.S. spies had made a deal. CIA Director George Tenet delivered the information to President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other high-ranking officials in September 2002, according to Drumheller. A few days later the administration said it was no longer interested. Drumheller said he was told about the exchange that followed: ``And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.''' CIA spokesman Tom Crispell said Saturday that Drumheller's remarks do not reflect the views of the agency. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 26 SF Chronicle: TWO CENTS / Atomic dilemma Sunday, April 23, 2006 Should Iran have the right to make nuclear energy? Joanne Denison, Danville We all know that Iran's leadership is nuts, but I doubt they would be nuts enough to launch their own destruction. It boils down to a balance of power -- power equally distributed is a great deterrent to war. What makes us the big pooh-bah for who gets what? Half the other hostiles have it anyway. Dan Cohen, Oakland I say no. Iran's leadership has told us why they want nuclear energy -- to create new weapons to destroy Israel and threaten the West. This isn't about energy; it's about raw ambition and terror. Hutch Turner, Novato Last time I checked, Iran was a sovereign nation. End of story. Doris Mendell, Albany Iran has the right, but should they make nuclear energy? If we could restrict their capability of making a bomb, I'd say for Iran to go ahead. Unfortunately, we are the ones who have made and used the bomb, so it's a little late for us to be righteous. Mike Haworth, Vallejo Not only do they have the right, they have the obligation. We all do. Next to solar, wind and hydro, it's the best way to generate power, and with the universally accepted 10-year window for turning around global warming, every nonpolluting power-generating alternative should be aggressively pursued. As soon as we get the oil lovers out of office, the U.S. can join the fight. Ted Soderberg, San Francisco Given its supply of oil, to even suggest Iran would use nuclear power for peaceful purposes is insulting to the West. Iran is using the Iraq war to its advantage, and will continue to look for support against the West. And, no, I don't think Iran is rational enough to join the "nuclear club." Two Cents is a pool of Bay Area residents we tap for comments and anecdotes. Columns are a representative sampling of responses to questions we pose via e-mail. To join, e-mail us at . The San Francisco Chronicle] ***************************************************************** 27 WNE: Indo-US nuclear deal called ‘flawed’ and problematic World News Exchange Alternative & Independent Source of Indian Subcontinent News By Khalid Hasan Monday April 24, 2006, WASHINGTON: David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), has described the Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement, now before Congress, a “flawed deal with serious problems.” Addressing a discussion organised by the US Institute of Peace on the nuclear agreement, Albright, a leading American expert on nuclear proliferation issues, said he simply cannot get “enthusiastic” over the agreement and urged that the administration not try to rush it through, since there are several aspects of it that need scrutiny and careful analysis, given their grave implications for non-proliferation. He feared that if the agreement goes in its present form, it would lead to an arms race involving India, China and Pakistan. He said the agreement severely weakens nuclear suppliers’ control over dual-use technology. He pointed out that the separation plan prepared by India was not satisfactory, slanted as it was in favour of New Delhi. He said there is no guarantee that India will not revert to nuclear testing. He stressed that India should provide a guarantee, to be built into the agreement, that it would not make illicit purchases of nuclear materials that it has been making through offshore companies. The split between India’s military and civilian facilities must be made more credible, he added. He said there are worries over retransfer of technology by India as well as reverse engineering. He described India’s export control system as inadequate and emphasised that a strengthened export control regime must be made a part of the agreement. Dr Seema Gahlaut of the University of Georgia and Dr Anupam Srivastava from the same university defended the agreement, which they saw as posing no danger to non-proliferation efforts. Dr Gahlaut said that 28 years of US sanctions against India’s nuclear programme had yielded no results and the world had to find a place for India since without having signed the NPT it had done everything that is required of an NPT signatory. She said the deal between India and the US was much stronger than the one the US had signed with China. She also pointed out that there is no such thing as a “perfect” export control system, while lauding the one India has set in place. Former Indian foreign secretary Salman Haider, now a fellow at the US Institute of Peace, pointed out that it is no longer possible to maintain a sanctions regime against India, which must be treated as a global partner. The statutory downgrading of India has to end. India must be recognised as a nuclear power. He rejected the view that the Indo-US agreement would lead to an arms race in South Asia, arguing that India and Pakistan are engaged in a peace process which is moving forward. He said China would carefully assess the deal, given the fact that is has always been reluctant to accept India as a global power, viewing it as a regional player. This thinking, he added, has to change. He did not think Pakistan feels threatened by the deal. He stressed that India is not to be bracketed with Pakistan as it has pulled itself into a different orbit, which is why the US has dehyphenated its South Asia policy. India, he said, has wider horizons and is no longer a creature of South Asian power dynamics. A “relaxed” India, he added, would be a better neighbour to the countries it is surrounded by. During a lively question-answer session, Albright pointed out that India’s ordering of 60 tons of fuel for its Tarapur nuclear facility from Russia was suspect since there was no emergency need for such a huge quantity. He called the Indo-US deal “bomb friendly.” He also pointed out that Canada maintains that India violated its treaty obligations when it used the Canadian-supplied CIRRUS reactor to produce material for its first nuclear weapon. He said the US must not make the same mistakes it has made in the past, but instead build in all necessary guarantees and commitments that India needs to furnish, in the agreement which is now before Congress. He also wanted to know why India wants 50 nuclear bombs a year, which it will have the capability of making once the agreement goes through. He also insisted that the US should not finalise the deal unless it becomes clear what kind of safeguards agreement India has concluded with the IAEA. He said there is no cap in the agreement on weapon building or breeder reactors. One questioner, a former US foreign service officer, said he failed to see what there was for the United States in this agreement, though there was much in it for India. (Source : Daily Times) © 2003-Copyrights World News Exchange. Site maintained and ***************************************************************** 28 Deccan Herald: Talks with IAEA on N-safeguards positive - Narayanan - Saturday, April 22, 2006 New Delhi, pti: Negotiations with UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on India-specific safeguards under the Indo-US nuclear deal have been very positive, National Security Adviser M K Narayanan has said. All that India is insisting on are assured nuclear fuel supplies for its civilian reactors, Mr Narayanan told PTI in an interview here. Asked about the talks Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar had had with IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei in Vienna recently on the safeguards issue, he said, They are very initial discussions and all that I can say is that the initial talks have been very positive. However, the discussions could not not be made public until the negotiations had reached a certain stage, the NSA said. Under the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement reached between US President George W Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, India has agreed to open 14 of its 22 nuclear reactors to international safeguards. It will not, however, subject its military nuclear programme and fast breeder reactors to international safeguards. One of the things we are insisting on is an assured fuel supply for the lifetime of a reactor, and the safeguard would be on what would happen in case that is not forthcoming. This is in a nutshell what the safeguards talks are all about, the NSA said. He added: India and the US arrived at an agreement on March 2, which, I think, is all-encompassing. It satisfies both sides the US and India. Asked about the basic conditions that New Delhi was laying down with the IAEA, he said, We have made our position fairly clear that all that we are asking is to concretise what we have agreed upon those items that we have put under the civilian nuclear separation plan and those that come under the international safeguards. On the issue of a minimum credible deterrent, Mr Narayanan said that nobody has the right to ask such a question as the countrys strategic programme was totally insulated from any outside involvement. I dont think anybody has a right to ask us what our minimum credible deterrent is, the NSA said. When asked to comment on the recent remarks made by US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Richard Boucher here on April 7 that India should define its credible minimum nuclear deterrent, Mr Narayanan said, Even in this country, I think it is known only to a handful of people, and we certainly have no intention of sharing this with anyone else. Copyright 2005, The Printers (Mysore) Private Ltd., 75, M.G. Road, Post Box No 5331, Bangalore - 560001 Tel: +91 (80) 25880000 Fax No. +91 (80) 25880523 ***************************************************************** 29 AFP: CIA warned Bush of no WMD in Iraq: retired official Sat Apr 22, 1:01 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Central Intelligence Agency" /> Central Intelligence Agencywarned US President George W. Bush" /> President George W. Bushbefore the Iraq" /> Iraqwar that it had reliable information the government of Saddam Hussein" /> Saddam Husseinhad no weapons of mass destruction, a retired CIA" /> CIAoperative disclosed. But the operative, Tyler Drumheller, said top White House officials simply brushed off the warning, saying they were "no longer interested" in intelligence and that the policy toward Iraq had been already set. The disclosure, made in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" program due to be broadcast late Sunday, adds to earlier accusations that the Bush administration used intelligence selectively as it built its case for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam's regime. The administration claimed in the run-up to the war that Baghdad had extensive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was working clandestinely to build a nuclear arsenal, therefore, presenting a threat to the world. An extensive CIA-led probe undertaken after the US military took control of Iraq failed to turn up any such weapons. But Bush and other members of his administration have blamed the fiasco on a massive intelligence failure and vehemently denied manipulating information they had been provided. However, Drumheller, who was a top CIA liaison officer in Europe before the war, insisted Bush had been explicitly warned well before an invasion order was given that the United States may not find the suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The information about the absence of the suspected weapons in Iraq, according to excerpts of Drumheller's remarks, was clandestinely provided to the United States by former Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri, who doubled as a covert intelligence agent for Western services. Then-CIA director George Tenet immediately delivered this report to Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney" /> Dick Cheneyand other high-ranking administration officials, but the information was dismissed, Drumheller said. "The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested," the former CIA official recalled. "And we said 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'" Drumheller said the White House did not want any additional data from Sabri because, as he pointed out, "the policy was set." "The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," he argued. The CIA declined to comment on the disclosure. Drumheller admitted that Sabri was just one source, but pointed out that the administration would not shy away from other single-source information if it suited its policy goals. "They certainly took information that came from single sources on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroboration at all," he complained. The White House had embraced a British report that Iraq had purchased 500 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger, allegedly to restart its nuclear weapons program. A special CIA envoy Joseph Wilson, who made a secret trip to Niger in late 2002 to verify the report, dismissed it as unfounded -- much to the displeasure of the White House. Drumheller, who retired from the agency last year, is the second high-ranking ex-CIA official to criticize the administration's use of intelligence in months leading up to the war. Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, wrote in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs magazine that the White House was "cherry-picking" information and that "intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made." There was no immediate reaction from the White House to the latest charges. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 30 The Australian: Aussies support environment - poll + NEWS.com.au This story is from our news.com.aunetwork Source: AAP By Amy Fallon April 22, 2006 AUSTRALIANS get top marks for recycling and their concern over the country's water crisis, but need to think more about nuclear energy, a new international poll has found. The survey, conducted by market intelligence solutions provider Global Market Insite Inc (GMIC) compared the environmental attitudes of 9000 people from nine countries – the UK, France, Germany, USA, Russia, Canada, Brazil, China and Australia. The poll, which coincides with International Earth Day, revealed that 91 per cent of Aussies are worried about the future of the environment, slightly ahead of the international average of 90.9 per cent. Australians are also the most keen recyclers of all the countries, with 89 per cent of Australians recycling at home on a regular basis, compared to the average of 68 per cent. Aussies felt the most significant issue affecting the country was its water crisis, the research also found, with 84 per cent saying they believed the issue was top priority. This was followed by pollution (59.9 per cent), sustainable energy supply (55.7 per cent), the Greenhouse Effect (52.9 per cent) and nuclear energy (22.9 per cent). Planet Ark founder and managing director Jon Dee said the survey was significant as it was the first time that Australians environmental attitudes had been directly compared with other countries. "When we make it easy for people to do the right thing environmentally, Australians respond incredibly well," he said. "The fact that we lead in recycling in participation terms reflects very well on Australia." But he pointed out that Australians were showing the same fears as other countries such as Germany, France and Russia who were more proactive. "Germany, by far, environmentally leads the way in a whole number of areas and yet so many of the concerns that the Australians showed were very similar to those expressed by the Germans," Mr Dee said. "And the German Government has been a lot more proactive in respecting the wishes of the German population and their voters." He also pointed out that Australia came third, behind only Germany and Brazil, in their concerns over saving rainforests. "Yet we are still logging our rainforests here in Australia," Mr Dee said. "It's a very bizarre situation to find ourselves in." He said it was interesting that 20 years after Chernobyl and with a global coordinated attempt by the nuclear energy industry to put the issue back on the agenda, it was the lowest priority for Australians. ***************************************************************** 31 IRNA: 10th Int'l Energy Forum opens in Qatar Doha, April 23, IRNA Qatar-Energy-Forum The 10th International Energy Forum kicked off in Doha, Qatar, Sunday. Oil ministers from 65 countries including members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the United States, as the world main oil consumer, are attending the three-day forum. Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh, heading a delegation, is also among participants of the forum. Energy producing and consuming countries decided to make joint efforts to establish more stable ties following crises in oil prices in 1970s, a fall in oil prices in 1986 and an increasing dependence on economy between the two groups. The first round of talks between energy consumers and producers was held in Paris in 1991 upon an initiative of France and the International Energy Agency (IEA). Oil ministers from 25 countries and nine international organizations including OPEC and the IEA attended the talks. The participating ministers in Paris meeting agreed to continue talks with respect to leading role of energy and oil in economy and in international trade. The next meetings were held in Norway, Spain, Venezuela, India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Japan every two years. The 9th International Energy Forum, held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 2004, chose Qatar as the host country of the next forum. Providing fuel for the future, confrontation with challenges and access to sustainable energy are among main topics of the 10th International Energy Forum. The IEA Secretariat was officially opened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on November 19, 2005. ***************************************************************** 32 Times of India: Concerns over N-deal not credible: India [ Saturday, April 22, 2006 12:24:48 pmPTI ] WASHINGTON: Hoping that the historic nuclear deal would soon be approved by the US Congress, India has said that concerns raised by some about non-proliferation were not "very credible" and should not prevent anyone from endorsing the pact. "We really appreciate the fact that President (George W) Bush has taken strong action; Secretary (of State Condoleezza) Rice's testimony before Congress is a very strong affirmation of the deal and the need for the deal and the fact that it is good for the US, it is good for India," Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia said at a media event at the Indian Embassy here. "We hope it (the deal) will go through Congress...I am not surprised there are non-proliferation concerns. But from our point of view, I don't think those concerns should prevent anybody from endorsing the deal," he said. The fact is that India has "an impeccable record" on non-proliferation and "the biggest source of proliferation have been other countries, many of whom are signatories to the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty)," he said. "So the notion that you can't do something for India because India is not a signatory to the NPT and this is because you are concerned about non-proliferation, I don't think it is a very credible argument," he added. "It's a deal that makes a big difference to India's search for energy. It will help us in fact hugely expand nuclear power generation capacity. From the US' point of view it will prevent us from putting pressure on fossil fuels which is good for the US, reduce our dependance on carbon, on coal which is good from the environmental point of view. "And I think it will also open up technology flows and other ...from other countries to India including the US, I have seen a lot of support for it," Ahluwalia said. Certainly, he said, US business interests "strongly support it and I am sure Congress will look at all these considerations but it is not proper for me to second guess what is going to happen, but I am hoping we are getting an approval very soon," Ahluwalia said. "It is a deal that has received a lot of attention in India. It is seen very widely to be emblematic of a tranformed relationship and to that extent when the deal is approved by Congress it will definitely generate extremely positive reaction in India in favour of more cooperation with the United States, which is good," he remarked. The Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission said that he has not had any indications of a postponement in Congressional action until after the November elections. "In all the meetings I have had, I have conveyed that we appreciate the speed with which decisions have been taken, to take it to Congress and we hope it will be done soon. We are assured that the administration is working to that objective," Ahluwalia said. Copyright ©2006Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. For ***************************************************************** 33 WorldNetDaily: Nuking bunkers Founded 1997 Sunday, April 23, 2006 Today's Edition [Supercritical Thoughts] [Gordon Prather] Posted: April 22, 2006 © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com Just before Christmas, a few days after President Bill Clinton had been impeached by the House of Representatives, Clinton received "intelligence" from Iraqi "exiles" that Saddam Hussein and his entourage would be spending a specific night in an underground bunker beneath one of his "palaces." Facing possible removal from office for "high-crimes and misdemeanors," Clinton decided to remove Saddam from his office, thereby diverting attention from himself, as well as achieving the "regime change" in Iraq long sought by both neo-crazies and looney-lefties. After determining the Global Positioning Satellite coordinates of that and other palaces, Clinton launched a GPS-guided cruise missile attack. Clinton publicly claimed he had launched his attack because he had "intelligence" that Saddam had hidden stockpiles of "weapons of mass destruction" beneath his palaces, where U.N. inspectors were denied access. At first, Clinton thought he had killed Saddam. But he hadn't. Saddam wasn't killed by our cruise missiles because the non-nuke warheads they carried weren't powerful enough, nor capable of penetrating deep enough, to destroy underground bunkers. For the neo-crazies and the looney-lefties, any excuse to depose Saddam Hussein was as good as any other. But, opinion polls had told them that Saddam's possession of nukes and the intent to use them against Americans was the only rationale the electorate would "buy" for invading and occupying Iraq. So, President Bush – citing "intelligence" he had obtained from Iraqi exiles – got the highly skeptical U.N. Security Council to pass Resolution 1441, requiring Saddam to disarm or face "serious consequences." Bush then provided U.N. inspectors – who were granted unfettered access by Saddam – considerable selective intelligence about dozens of suspected WMD sites in Iraq. But, when the inspectors checked out those sites, they found nothing. Mohamed ElBaradei – director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency – reported to the Security Council that "after three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq." Worse, ElBaradei publicly debunked the "aluminum-tubes-for-enrichment" report and revealed the Niger "yellowcake" documents to be clumsy forgeries. Nevertheless, just days after receiving what turned out to be highly accurate reports from ElBaradei, Bush launched his war of aggression against Iraq. And, having got "intelligence" that Saddam was spending the night in a German-designed underground bunker near Baghdad, Bush decided to try to kill him immediately, 20 hours before Operation Iraqi Freedom was officially scheduled to begin. Bush first hit the target with powerful GPS-homing "bunker-busting" bombs specifically designed to penetrate deep into the earth before exploding. After the bunker was busted, then came the GPS-homing cruise-missiles. Like Clinton, Bush thought he had killed Saddam, for sure. But he hadn't. When an advance team of American liberators went to that GPS site to look for bodies, they found no bodies. In fact, they reported that there was no evidence that a bunker had ever been there. All they found were "bunker-buster" holes in the ground. Well, here it is, three years later, and Bush is claiming that Iran has got a well-hidden nuclear weapons program, much of it in deep-earth bunkers. However, IAEA inspectors have enjoyed virtually free access to Iran and have – even at sites suggested by Bush's intelligence – found no "indication" of a nuclear weapons program. Two months ago, Bush got the highly skeptical IAEA Board of Governors to pass a resolution requiring Tehran to indefinitely suspend all uranium-enrichment activities while the Board satisfied itself that Iran's programs were strictly for peaceful purposes. Last month, Bush tried to get that Board resolution "referred" to the Security Council for possible action under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. Bush had to settle for the Board simply "reporting" the entire Iranian dossier to the Council. And all he got from the Council, this month, was a "Presidential Statement," effectively remanding the Iranian "nuclear issue" to the IAEA Board for resolution. Nevertheless, Bush is falsely claiming that the Security Council imposed a "deadline" on Iran to suspend all nuclear-related activities, including the completion by the Russians of the nuclear power plant at Bushehr, or face "serious consequences." Now comes Seymour Hersh's stunning exposι in the New Yorker magazineabout Bush plans – which Hersh claims are already in the early stages of implementation – to pre-emptively "take out" Iran's alleged nuke program. Of course, almost all horror-stricken observers – especially the defiant Iranians – realize that Bush's real intention is to effect "regime change" in Iran. But, using 'bunker-busting" nukes this time. If necessary. Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. He also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. ***************************************************************** 34 Guardian Unlimited: Villagers Return to Chernobyl's Shadow From the Associated Press [UP] Sunday April 23, 2006 5:01 PM AP Photo XEL107 By MARIA DANILOVA Associated Press Writer BARTOLOMEYEVKA, Belarus (AP) - The map says Bartolomeyevka is off-limits. A sign at the outskirts displays the international radiation symbol and says ``Do Not Enter.'' But smoke rises from the chimneys of wooden houses, dogs bark and villagers go about their business. Bartolomeyevka is one of scores of contaminated villages in Belarus that are being revived 20 years after the Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion, nudged back to life by a government that says the farmland is badly needed, that the radiation threat is overblown, and that people claiming radiation-related diseases may simply be seeking a government handout. Bartolomeyevka suffered such high radiation levels that its several dozen inhabitants were evacuated. However, over the past decade 10 villagers have moved back, disregarding the radiation warnings. In neighboring villages - labeled contaminated but still suitable for living - many others are returning, along with job-seeking migrants from impoverished ex-Soviet republics. On Bartolomeyevka's surface, it looks like renewal - but resignation is at the core. ``You cannot escape your death,'' said 70-year-old Ivan Muzychenko. ``It's better to die of radiation than of hunger.'' As evacuees, he and his wife, Yelena, lived hand-to-mouth. Here, along with a combined monthly pension worth about $200, their vegetable garden, 10 geese, a cow and a pig add desperately needed nutrition. Muzychenko dismisses warnings that the vegetables and animals are probably contaminated, and gathers berries and mushrooms in the nearby woods. A fifth of Belarus' area was evacuated after the April 26, 1986, explosion in neighboring Ukraine, and health officials say about 20 percent of the country's 10 million people suffer from radiation-linked ailments including thyroid and circulation problems. Official figures say 1,100 square miles, less than 1.5 percent of Belarus' territory, remains too irradiated for human habitation. The government of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko - the same government that put up the warning signs at Bartolomeyevka - is encouraging resettlement. Activists and doctors complain that it is ignoring radiation dangers, cheating on illness statistics and refusing to care for ailing children and adults. Bartolomeyevka's neighboring village, Belyayevka, was recently taken off the list of highly contaminated population centers, stripping its villagers of a $20 monthly supplement for living there. Mothers say the payment is still justified because most of the village's 58 children have health problems and need healthy food and vitamins. Belarusian workers who participated in the cleanup at Chernobyl have also seen their benefits sharply reduced. Nineteen collective farms in the region have been revived to grow crops which officials say can be rendered safe with special fertilizers; another 39 farms are awaiting their turn. Vladimir Tsalko, head of the State Chernobyl Committee, the official agency for dealing with Chernobyl's consequences, says the goal is ``to teach people to earn money and invest it into the region.'' When asked if economics are more important than health, he is frank: ``Yes. We need those lands. ... Who will feed them?'' Activists say their independent studies find people in contaminated areas still displaying high radiation doses from locally made food. They say more should be done to warn returnees of the dangers. ``To take advantage of people's lack of information and lull them into believing that it is safe there is the biggest crime there can be,'' said Valentina Smolnikova, of the Children of Chernobyl group. Smolnikova said the radiation effects have been devastating. She said her group's study of one district in the contamination zone showed cases of congenital anomalies have increased fourfold, the number of cancers have doubled and the number of heart attacks is seven times higher than before the accident. She said she is struggling to get foreign funding to monitor and treat children's contamination levels because the state shows little interest and minimizes the numbers. The government denies it. Victims also complain the government is reluctant to link radiation to health problems such as heart disease, cancerous growths and diabetes. Yakov Kenigsberg, the Chernobyl State Committee's top medical expert, says only thyroid cancer is internationally recognized as directly caused by radiation contamination and calls attempts to link other diseases with the Chernobyl accident ``stupidity,'' suggesting the motive often is monetary compensation. But, Tamara Kurbatova, a 40-year-old unemployed mother of three in the town of Buda-Koshelevo, sharply disagrees. Her 4-year-old son, Pavel, is being treated for eye cancer, and after years of struggle, she has won official recognition that it's the result of his mother's radiation levels while he was in the womb. That entitles the boy to financial aid. ``It is a miracle he is still alive,'' Kurbatova said. ``But what awaits him I don't know.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 35 Guardian Unlimited: Chernobyl: Ukraine's Soviet-Era Nightmare From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday April 22, 2006 5:16 PM AP Photo XOB102 By EFREM LUKATSKY Associated Press Writer KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - The first advice we got after the Chernobyl explosion was to take a daily drop of iodine on a sugar cube. We heard it on the Voice of America broadcasts we listened to clandestinely. Local media, heavily under the Soviet thumb, told us there was nothing to worry about. A few days after the explosion, my friend Viktor Ivashchenko called me and told me I should flee Kiev and never come back. Viktor's words carried a lot of weight - he was an engineer at the Institute of Nuclear Physics. But Kiev, the Ukrainian capital just 75 miles from the destroyed, radiation-spewing reactor, was home. My parents lived there, and leaving never occurred to me. Staying meant that I eventually was able to go to Chernobyl dozens of times since the world's worst nuclear disaster, whose 20th anniversary falls Wednesday (April 26). There I would take photographs and feed my hunger to learn all I could about the catastrophe that had hit my country. But staying also meant that I lived with gnawing anxieties and saw good friends die mysteriously or grow thin and sallow. Some frightened people went overboard on the Voice of America's advice. They drank half-glasses of iodine and ended up hospitalized with throat and stomach burns. Later I would meet a biologist, Professor Vyacheslav Konovalov, who wore a lead undergarment for years after the explosion. He collected mutated plants, animals and human embryos, planning to create a museum to the perils of radiation, but ended up storing his specimens underground. May Day, the biggest Soviet holiday, fell just five days after the explosion and those who trusted the authorities' reassurances took part in rallies and parades. I was one of them, carrying a portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who had taken the helm of the Soviet Union a year earlier promising reform. Many of us felt a tickle in our throats that day - apparently a sign of radioactive iodine - and decided not to linger outdoors to watch the bicycle race. News of the explosion didn't surprise me. Four years earlier I had visited Pripyat, the city where most Chernobyl workers lived, and had seen trucks spreading soapsuds on the asphalt. There were rumors of a radiation leak. But after the explosion we were worried enough to get hold of a military radiation gauge and check ourselves, our homes and loved ones. Some of the readings were high, especially aboard city buses which had been used to evacuate residents from Pripyat and Chernobyl. My neighbor, Bohdan Semenov, a bus driver, told me that since his passengers didn't have protective masks, he wouldn't wear one either. His wife told my mother that he ordered her to throw out every stitch of clothing he wore on those trips. But she refused - they couldn't afford to replace them. A week later this athletic man in his 30s was dead of a heart attack. At his funeral, shocked mourners whispered that it was because of Chernobyl. Kievans panicked. They jammed the railroad station trying to send their children as far away as possible. Many refused to eat dairy products and berries, relying instead on canned fish. The health effects of the radiation that the blast spewed over a wide stretch of the Soviet Union are still hard to assess 20 years later. A consortium of U.N. agencies said last year that about 9,000 people eventually are likely to die from Chernobyl-caused illnesses; Greenpeace International this month said the death toll will be 10 times higher - around 93,000. Back in 1986, anybody's guess was good, and I was dying to know the truth about what happened at Chernobyl. But at that time I was working as an underwater welder at a scientific institute and had no official justification for going to the power station. I tried to meet with Volodymyr Shevchenko, who was making a TV documentary about Chernobyl, but he died - another victim of a mysterious heart ailment. A few months later, I managed to get into the ``exclusion zone.'' I was amazed by the dedication of the ``liquidators'' - crews of soldiers, workers, coal miners who had been drafted to cover the destroyed reactor in a coffin of steel and concrete. It was too hot to breathe, so disregarding safety rules, they tore masks off their faces and dug tunnels with shovels to pour concrete under the reactor. Hundreds of concrete mixers, trucks with sand, and excavators crawled around the plant. Later, I saw them in a graveyard of highly contaminated vehicles a few miles away. Sergei Chashchenko worked as an engineer on a diesel locomotive that brought building materials to the sarcophagus under construction. He picked up a wrench from the ground and burned his palm. Four years later, he was suffering from leukemia. People stole anything that might come in handy or make a souvenir. Years later I saw the destroyed reactor's control panel. The buttons were gone. I met some of those souvenir-hunters in hospitals. They had leukemia. I made repeat visits to Chernobyl and took photographs. Some of them appeared in the magazine Ogonyok, which at that time was in the vanguard of the Soviet Union's newly assertive news media. In 1989 The Associated Press hired me. The nuclear specter lingered: I'm 49 and in good health, yet an AP colleague who had never been to Chernobyl was operated on for thyroid cancer, one of the diseases most closely tied to the disaster. Meanwhile, signs of big change were afoot. In the spring of 1989, the Soviet republic of Ukraine had its first-ever protests. Thousands rallied in Kiev to demand the ``truth about Chernobyl,'' carrying handmade yellow radiation warning signs. On the waves of Chernobyl rallies, a powerful national movement grew stronger. Millions demanded independence. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, with some politicians saying the Chernobyl accident speeded the breakup. In 1992, Kiev, now the capital of an independent Ukraine, saw the first rallies of widows carrying portraits of their husbands and sons who died after being exposed to radiation while participating in the desperate cleanup effort at Chernobyl. Chernobyl has always stayed with me - a great tragedy compounded by a shameful coverup whose lesson was to always seek the truth with my own eyes and camera. Shortly before Chernobyl's last operating reactor was closed in 2000, I went there for AP and got a look into the sarcophagus over the destroyed unit. I put on two layers of thick white cotton clothes, protective rubber boots, a special hat and a helmet, padded jackets, gloves and a face mask. I covered my camera with plastic as thoroughly as I could, and followed the guide through high-security checkpoints into the sarcophagus. My guide's flashlight picked up the sparkle of dust slowly whirling around us - just a speck of radioactive dust could be lethal if it enters the body. We tried not to take any deep breaths as we wove our way through dark, wreckage-strewn passages. We reached the old control room, long and poorly lighted, with its damaged machinery, the place where the Soviet engineers threw a power switch for a routine test at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, and two explosions followed one after another immediately. We bent our heads to get through the dark, narrow labyrinth leading to the center of the sarcophagus. The walls were covered with lead plates intended to decrease radiation levels. There were piles of lead and boron powder dropped by helicopters to suppress the nuclear reaction. My Geiger counter registered about 80,000 microroentgens an hour - 16,000 times the safe limit. It was time to leave. The nearby city of Pripyat is now a ghostly ruin. The only signs that anybody has been there recently are graffiti drawn by Dutch artists, and compositions of dolls, gas masks and yellowed newspapers placed in a deserted kindergarten to communicate how tragedy still haunts the land 20 years later. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 36 Guardian Unlimited: Blair keeps an eye on Finland's nuclear setback Terry Macalister in Finland Monday April 24, 2006 The first nuclear plant to be built in the European Union for more than a decade has fallen nine months behind schedule - barely a year since work began on the west coast of Finland. The company at the heart of the 3bn project, Teollisuuden Voima Oy (TVO), said the start-up date to produce electricity was likely to slip from 2009 to 2010 due to safety scares about the quality of concrete and steel forgings for the plant. The problems are not just a setback for the Finns: the British government is watching the scheme and its progress could influence debate in Britain over whether to proceed with a new generation of atomic plants. There have already been fears expressed in Britain about the length of time it would take to build new facilities - even if everything went to plan. Pertti Simola, TVO's chief executive, believes some of the difficulties that dogged the British nuclear industry in the past could make it harder to win the backing of the British public. Asked whether problems such as the near bankruptcy of British Energy and the shutdown of the Thorp reprocessing facility at Sellafield could make it hard to win the debate over nuclear in Britain, he replied: "It is a long, long road for the British industry to recover." The same issues that have been raised in favour of nuclear power in Tony Blair's energy review were at play in Finland when politicians voted four years ago to proceed with a new facility at Olkiluoto. The site, 155 miles north west of the capital, Helsinki, was already home to two atomic plants. Mr Simola said the country wanted to be more self-sufficient, but it also faced rising energy demand and the shutdown of coal-fired stations at a time when the government needed to meet its Kyoto climate change commitments. Britain is in the same situation and the prime minister will make a decision this summer on how to meet the same demands while reducing Britain's impact on global warming. This will probably be through a combination of imported gas, nuclear and renewables such as wind. The Finnish reactor, Olkiluoto 3, is being constructed by the French-German consortium of Areva and Siemens. About 60 Finnish companies have also taken a stake in the not-for-profit project. The reactor is expected to run for 60 years. Besides the two atomic units already built at Olkiluoto, there are two 500-megawatt reactors at Loviisa, 55 miles east of Helsinki. The four produce more than a quarter of Finland's electricity. The 1,600-megawatt Olkiluoto reactor, which had been expected to start producing electricity in early 2009, will not be online until early 2010, said Martin Landtman, TVO's manager of the project. "Right now, it looks like it will be delayed eight or nine months," Mr Landtman said. "So, it means it will finally be ready in late 2009 or early 2010." The Finns say the delays are disappointing but show how strict its vetting systems are to ensure quality control and safety. It also says the cost of these problems will have to be borne by the supply companies because the construction contract is at a fixed price. Too much water was found in the concrete for the base of the new reactor. There have also been problems with the quality of some of the steel forgings, Mr Landtman admitted. Useful links British Energy Department of Trade and Industry British Nuclear Fuels Ltd Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Greenpeace HSE nuclear glossary Come Clean WMD awareness programme UK atomic energy authority National Radiological Protection Board Friends of the Earth World Nuclear Association World Nuclear Transport Institute [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 37 The Observer: Chernobyl's generations of suffering [UP] It is 20 years this week since the world's worst nuclear accident shot huge amounts of radiation into the Ukraine sky. Now hospital wards there, in Belarus and in Russia are filled with sick youngsters who are the latest, but not the last, casualties of the disaster. Juliette Jowit reports from the region, where only the wildlife is still flourishing. View pictures from her visit Sunday April 23, 2006 Vitali Prokopenko is cradling his 10-year-old daughter Sasha in his arms as he opens the door of his flat. He ushers guests into the small living area so he can sit more comfortably with Sasha in an armchair. As he talks, his muscular hands are constantly fretting, smoothing the trousers on her withered legs, shifting her enlarged head to ease the pressure. Early in the morning of Saturday, 26 April 1986, the world's worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl jettisoned 100 times as much radiation into the atmosphere as the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War. Most fell on the now independent republics of Belarus, Ukraine, and in western Russia. In 1996 Sasha was born prematurely at the main hospital in Gomel, Belarus's second city. She weighed only 3.7lb, but developed well in the first weeks. Then, at seven months, Vitali and his wife Tanya noticed her head 'becoming bigger and bigger'. The hospital reassured them that children's bodies grew at different rates. Soon afterwards, Sasha developed an infection and was sent to hospital in the capital Minsk, where doctors found she had hydrocephalus, a condition in which cerebrospinal fluid builds up, putting pressure on the brain and swelling the unfixed skulls of small children. Today Sasha's head weighs 17.6lb, in distorted contrast to her undeveloped, almost immobile body. The weight gives her pressure sores and chafing. Vitali does most of the caring, while Tanya, who grew up in the contamination zone, works as an accountant. Sasha can hear well but cannot respond easily, says Vitali, but he understands that when she fidgets her legs she's hungry, wants a nappy changed or is bored. 'I get support from Sasha,' says Vitali. 'I don't know how I'd live without her.' A girl of 10 with an enlarged head and small body who loves peach and passionfruit yoghurt could never be a statistic. Nor is Sasha - nor any of the other children and families supported by Gomel's hospice - a certain victim of Chernobyl, just over the border in Ukraine. Only two people were killed in the explosion, but the lethal legacy of the accident could scarcely be grasped at the time. Within a few months 31 emergency workers - the 'liquidators' - had died. Two decades later, Chernobyl is blamed for thousands of deaths and has blighted the health, economic prosperity and social fabric of millions of people, especially in Belarus. A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency and seven other United Nations bodies estimated 4,000 people would die as a result of Chernobyl. The report was greeted by relief and disbelief. Many studies from the World Health Organisation, independent scientists and campaign groups had predicted a far more catastrophic impact. In response, a group of disbelievers, led by the European Green party, commissioned their own study, The Other Chernobyl Report, or Torch, which estimated a toll of between 30,000 and 60,000 premature deaths. Last week the international Greenpeace campaign group released another study by 50 scientists claiming 200,000 lives would be lost, nearly half from cancers. In southern Belarus, the evidence of experts and families supports the scientists who claim Chernobyl's impact is much worse than the IAEA forecast. A senior doctor at Gomel children's hospital claims that as few as one in four babies born in the region is healthy. The reasons expert opinions differ so widely range from data collection problems to corruption and a tangled web of cause and effect in a society dealing with the explosion's legacy - the mass evacuations and the devastation. Radiation would be found almost everywhere in the northern hemisphere, from the US to Japan, and on hill farms in Wales, some of which are still too contaminated to sell their produce. The greatest part of the pollution fell on the three countries nearest the reactor: more than 150,000 square kilometres - an area the size of England, Wales and Northern Ireland - in Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia were contaminated; between five million and nine million people were affected. Belarus suffered most: according to the World Bank, 70 per cent of the radioactive fallout landed there, affecting more than 3,600 towns and villages, 2.5 million people and a quarter of farmland and forests. A quarter of Belarus still has some contamination. Most of the problem was and is in the Gomel region. In early spring the vast birch and pine forests in the 30km 'exclusion' zone around Chernobyl are still carpeted with thick snow. But employees who ignore bans on entering or hunting here report the area is thick with wild mushrooms and berries, animals such as wild boar, elk, wild goats, wolves, hares and deer are thriving, and fish in the rivers are bigger than ever. Scientists from the US and Ukraine found nature has blossomed in the absence of almost any humans. 'In a way it [the radiation] is good for the wildlife ... the Ukrainian government has to make a decision whether to make it a preserved area,' says one of the official Chernobyl guides, Sergei. But this quiet, beguiling beauty belies the evil of the silent, invisible, deadly radiation that is everywhere, immediately around Chernobyl and far beyond in Belarus. Travelling around Belarus, it is striking how many people know more than one, sometimes several, friends and relatives who have health problems: school friends with cancer, a grandson or sister with thyroid problems. Luba Tagai, a nurse sponsored by the Irish charity Chernobyl Children's Project International at the Vesnovo Children's Asylum, a few hours' drive south of Minsk, was eight and living 50km from Chernobyl in 1986. She is one of 4,000 children of the town recorded as having thyroid cancer. Her sister has had the cancer and she regularly gets news of friends falling ill. 'There are lots of young people with different cancers, lung cancer, thyroid glands removed, leukaemia. When I was leaving the region there was a new cemetery; now it's full.' Luba's story is supported by health and community workers. Vesnovo's director, Vecheslav Klimovich, says that, despite a declining birthrate in Belarus, as many children as ever need beds at the 'orphanage', suffering from both physical and mental problems. At the day care centre in Yelsk, Andrei Luzan has seen the same trend. At Gomel children's hospital, the story is depressingly familiar. 'Before 1985, the common number of kids being born in Gomel region was 28,000 a year and the hospital had 350 beds,' says Olga Pushchenka, the hospital's deputy chief doctor. 'Now the number of kids being born is about 14,000 and the number of beds is the same and we don't have spare beds. The kids suffer more often, and diseases are more severe.' The most common illnesses are respiratory and rheumatic diseases, heart and blood problems. Pushchenka says it's not right to say all these are caused by Chernobyl; social and environmental problems are also to blame. But, she adds, 'you can see the numbers'. Later Iryna Kalmanovich, a senior doctor in the hospital's intensive care unit, tours the wards, where she says they have daily evidence of a huge increase in premature children. In several cots are unmoving babies who, like Sasha, have hydrocephalus. One two-day-old boy is trembling due to a problem with his nervous system. Many of the tiny bodies are hooked to ventilators and drips. 'We can give life, but not quality of life,' says Dr Kalmanovich, standing in the drab corridor, echoing with children's chatter. 'The number of absolutely healthy newborns is around 25 per cent, maybe 30 to 40.' She says the hospital is full of fallout from Chernobyl: 'Young women who were girls then, now they are becoming mothers and the health of those young women is not really good.' In a small flat in another grey apartment block in the border town of Yelsk, Valentina and Victor Panfilenka live with their children, Anna, 13, Anton, 12, and seven-year-old Zenya, who has cerebral palsy. After Anton and Anna have played the Beatles' 'Yesterday' on accordion and flute and Zenya has shown off her exercise books, and tea has been served, the Panfilenkas offer an insight into why official statistics and local opinions differ. As everyone whose illness is Chernobyl-related qualifies for extra state benefits, a bill which already costs 1 per cent of the economy, the authorities have a reason to play down problems. 'A few doctors said "give us $2,000 and we'll get the papers saying her illness is because of Chernobyl", ' says Valentina Panfilenka. 'But we're tired of proving [it], we just don't want to think about it now.' Other impacts are indirect. The IAEA's report talks of a 'paralysing fatalism ... negative self-assessments of health, belief in shortened life expectancy, lack of initiative and dependency on assistance from the state.' The post-explosion evacuation of 350,000 people scattered communities across the region and led to escalating rates of divorce, alcoholism and unemployment. Belarus's incarceration rate is the third highest in the world and nearly one in five people lives below the poverty line. People survive by growing small crops and keeping a cow or chickens, all feeding off contaminated land. The costs of Chernobyl are in the strain of caring for Sasha on Vitali and Tanya's marriage, in the tears of the parents of a girl with a brain tumour called Ann Pesenko, children with rheumatism spending spring afternoons in hospital. The IAEA concerns itself with deaths among an estimated 600,000 emergency workers and residents of the contaminated areas at the time; it has no intention of looking at their children. A report to be published this week by British scientists picked up on this theme. It repeats the IAEA's finding that only thyroid cancer has increased, but adds: 'Most radiation-related solid [tumour] cancers continue to occur decades after exposure.' The scientists found unexpected increases in thyroid cancer in children born after the isotopes of iodine believed responsible for it would have ceased to be a danger. 'It is still very early days in terms of evaluating the full radiological impact.' In a small room in the almost abandoned town of Chernobyl, filled with the stench and scratching of hundreds of mice, such uncertainty will not be a big surprise. Viktor Krasnov, head of this radiobiological lab, also says research has focused on the relatively misunderstood impacts of long-term exposure to low radiation levels and found it can cause harm. 'The effect is definitely here,' he says. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 38 London Times: Stalled: the Chernobyl rescue Ark - Sunday Times - Times Online The Sunday Times April 23, 2006 Askold Krushelnycky, Chernobyl PLANS to build an engineering wonder of the world - a gigantic œ300m hangar to prevent a second disaster at Chernobyl - have been stalled by a series of rows between western donors and the Ukrainian government. Known to its designers as "the Ark", the arch-shaped tubular structure, 360ft high and 900ft across, will make safe the site of the world's worst nuclear accident when it is finally given the go-ahead. Scientists and international aid donors who will meet in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, this week on the 20th anniversary of the accident were hoping to announce approval for work to begin on the Ark. But the project has become embroiled in wrangling between the donors, the French-led engineering consortium and the Ukrainian authorities over the tendering procedure. The massive structure, officially called the New Safe Confinement, is designed to cover the hastily constructed "sarcophagus" that encases the highly radioactive remains of Number Four reactor. The sarcophagus was built within months of the disaster, with helicopters lifting slabs of concrete into place to cover the devastated reactor building. An estimated 200 tons of radioactive matter lies within the temporary structure but the sarcophagus and everything within it are contaminated. The European Union and other international donors have spent tens of millions of pounds on stabilising the structure, which many had feared would collapse, releasing its deadly contents in another calamity. The new shield has been designed to contain the radioactive remains for the next 100 years. The Ark is intended not only to enclose the site but to permit work by remote- controlled devices or specially trained teams to dismantle and store the lethal material safely. Large prefabricated portions of the arches will be brought to Chernobyl and assembled in two halves at a distance from the sarcophagus to minimise workers' exposure to radiation. The final operation to lock the two parts together will be performed within 24 hours by sliding them into place on a specially constructed railway line. To enable the ruined reactor to be dismantled, the Ark has been designed to carry four bridge cranes which will be suspended from the arches. Each crane will be capable of lifting 100 tons. Railway carriages shielded against the radiation will transport workers deep into the bowels of the new structure. Ukraine's political instability since the Orange revolution 15 months ago - three ministers have been responsible for the scheme in that time - has added to the air of uncertainty surrounding the Ark project. The funds for the programme, to total œ600m, are being administered by the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Vince Novak, the director of the bank's nuclear safety department, said: "It is disappointing we won't be able to declare on the 20th anniversary that work on the new shelter is to commence." But he predicted the dispute would be resolved soon. "Hopefully a new government will be in place which will realise there is no alternative to proceed." David Sycamore, a Briton who works for the EU's delegation in Kiev, said: "If a similar disaster had happened in Britain the sarcophagus couldn't have been built in such a short time because in a democracy you couldn't have ordered people into a fatally dangerous zone. "The new shelter is going to be the eighth wonder of the world - it's an amazing piece of engineering which is on the scale of the Egyptians building the pyramids." Ukrainians maintain that tens of thousands of people have died of radiation-related illnesses. After the disaster the city of Pripyat, which housed Chernobyl's workers and their families, was emptied of inhabitants. Today it has a chilling, post-apocalyptic look to it. Ragged curtains blow through the broken windows of apartments in deserted and crumbling high-rise blocks. The streets with their Lenin statues and fading posters exhorting a march towards a communist paradise are being reclaimed by vegetation. The 47 villages in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl were also evacuated, but scores of mainly elderly people who could not adapt to the cramped city apartments they were offered, have returned surreptitiously. Eventually the authorities were forced tacitly to accept their presence. The zone's inhabitants can collect their pensions and once every two weeks each village is visited by a policeman to check that everyone is still alive. Adam Lahovskiy, an 82-year-old war veteran who lives in a small, single-storey timber cottage, said: "I was not going to allow the Chernobyl disaster to drive me out." His wife Nina said that a van selling bread and other staples visited once a week and they spent their pension on food and medicine. They keep chickens and supplement their diet with berries and wild mushrooms - some of the food most contaminated by radiation. Their son visits regularly to help out. Herds of boars are among the wildlife now thriving in the exclusion zone despite the radiation. Mostly free of human predators, the area provides sanctuary for moose, rare Przewalski horses and even wolves. Although most Ukrainians wanted to close down their nuclear industry for years after the accident, four other power stations - including Europe's largest at Zaporizhya - have continued to operate. Ukraine is dependent for much of its energy, especially gas, on Russia, which quadrupled prices earlier this year as punishment for Ukraine straying away from Moscow's orbit and cultivating closer ties with the EU and Nato. Developing the country's nuclear industry has become a priority: Ukraine wants to build up to 13 more reactors for its own needs and to export electricity to western Europe. David Corbett from Lancashire, who works for a private company hired by the EU, said: "We are here to ensure another Chernobyl can never happen." The Times and The Sunday Times. Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd. ***************************************************************** 39 San Luis Obispo Tribune: How Diablo could be safer | 04/23/2006 | For an estimated $50 million to $100 million, the nuclear plant could move radioactive waste sooner By David Sneed [During a refueling in April 2001, workers examine a new assembly of uranium fuel rods at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.] Tribune photo by Jayson Mellom During a refueling in April 2001, workers examine a new assembly of uranium fuel rods at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. More photos + + + Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant could lower the amount of highly radioactive waste stored in pools and reduce the possibility of a fire that would release catastrophic amounts of radiation into the county, respected scientists say. But federal regulators and officials at Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which owns Diablo, say the densely loaded pools are safe and unloading them would be costly and unnecessary. The disagreement puts the plant north of Avila Beach in the midst of a long debate in the nuclear industry — what to do with spent fuel. Spent fuel is one of the most hazardous materials known to man. Direct exposure to its intense radiation would kill a person within minutes, and it stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years. Storage pools at Diablo Canyon and other plants across the nation now contain five times the number of spent fuel assemblies they were designed to handle. Concerns about terrorism and uncertainty over the future of a national facility to store nuclear waste have prompted a push by experts, activists and some legislators to move spent fuel from the pools after six years and place them in above-ground dry casks, which many experts consider a safer storage method. Dangerous stockpile A 2005 study requested by Congress raised questions about the vulnerability of the nation’s growing stockpile of highly radioactive waste, which is scattered at 103 commercial nuclear reactors in 31 states across the nation. "The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks raised the possibility of a new kind of threat to commercial power plants and spent fuel storage: premeditated, carefully planned, high impact attacks by terrorists to damage these facilities for the purpose of releasing radiation into the environment and spreading fear and panic among civilian populations," concluded the study by the National Academy of Sciences’ Board of Radioactive Waste Management, which advises Congress on nuclear waste matters. The densely packed spent fuel pools are the result of repeated delays in opening a national underground storage repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Nuclear plants were built with the assumption that spent fuel would be either reprocessed into fresh fuel or shipped off to Yucca Mountain soon after it spent the mandatory five years cooling in the pools. Neither of those has come to fruition, and just two years after Diablo opened, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved PG’s request to replace the original in-pool fuel storage racks, which can hold 270 assemblies, with ones that can hold 1,324 assemblies. The use of such high-density storage racks soon became an industrywide trend, and some scientists and nuclear power critics began to wonder what would happen if a powerful earthquake or other catastrophic event caused the water —which circulates around the spent fuel to keep it cool, blocks radiation and protects plant workers — to drain out. A frightening possibility emerged: Within several hours of losing its cooling water, the newest and hottest assemblies in the pool could heat up and begin to burn, spreading fire to the rest of the assemblies. Since spent fuel pools are outside of a nuclear plant’s containment domes, there would be little to stop the spread of the resulting clouds of radioactive steam and smoke. The radiation could spread hundreds of miles, the National Academy of Sciences report states. The pools also contain much larger amounts of radioactive material than a reactor, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a liberal-leaning organization often critical of the nuclear industry. "The reactor is better protected than the spent fuel pools," Lochbaum said. "It might be that spent fuel is a more attractive target for our enemies than the reactor itself." Assessing the risk The NRC’s stance is that the possibility of a terrorist attack or earthquake damaging the spent fuel pools to the point that they would lose their water is so low that it does not justify requiring utilities to go to the time and expense of reducing them to their low- density loading. Diablo’s pools are sunk below ground level and lined with six feet of concrete and steel, which would make draining them very difficult, said Jearl Strickland, Diablo Canyon’s spent fuel manager. Plus, PG officials and federal regulators say, a fire in a drained pool would take hours to develop, giving plant workers time to take corrective action. Four months ago, in response to the report, the NRC directed plant operators to arrange the fuel assemblies into a safer configuration, among other measures that remain secret for security reasons. The other factor is expense. Along with many other plants, Diablo Canyon already is constructing an aboveground dry cask storage facility in anticipation of the day that the denser racks, too, become full. The $118 million installation will hold as many as 138 casks, with each cask containing 32 assemblies — enough to store all the spent fuel Diablo Canyon will produce through 2025, when its operating license ends. But if plants were forced to accelerate the transfer from the pools to the dry casks, Diablo and other plants with dry cask facilities already under construction would have to go back and redesign them. The NRC estimates the cost to utilities of accelerating transfer of spent fuel from the pools to dry casks at $3.5 billion to $7 billion nationwide. Estimates vary of how much it would cost Diablo Canyon. Nuclear safety expert Gordon Thompson, who has consulted for the nuclear watchdog group San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, has put the price at $50 million. Strickland estimates the cost would be closer to $100 million. By comparison, the utility plans to spend more than $700 million to replace the plant’s eight steam generators and $141 million to replace the tops of the reactors, paid for through rate increases. That work coupled with the recent replacement of Diablo Canyon’s low-pressure turbines brings the total price of equipment replacements at the power plant to $1 billion over a decade. What the critics think The National Academy of Sciences report stops short of recommending that spent fuel pools be returned to their low-density configuration. Such decisions need to be based on cost-benefit considerations by the NRC and the nuclear industry, the report said. But nuclear power watchdog groups — including the Union of Concerned Scientists, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace and the San Luis Obispo-based Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility — believe it is worth the expense. "There is no excuse for failing to take this extremely feasible and affordable step to protect the public from the potentially disastrous effects of a successful attack on a spent fuel pool," said Morgan Rafferty, Mothers for Peace activist. They consider dry casks to be a safer storage option because it divides a plant’s spent fuel stockpile into smaller groups and encases the assemblies individually in strong steel-and-concrete cylinders. The casks at Diablo will be bolted to an open-air concrete pad behind the plant. Local environmental groups unsuccessfully urged PG to disperse the casks at several locations and protect them with earthen berms to make them a less attractive terrorist target. "Even if you go with the cheapest thing — which is a concrete pad — that is a better solution than filled pools, by leaps and bounds," Lochbaum said. A long-term problem One thing about storage of spent fuel at Diablo Canyon is certain. It is a problem that will confront San Luis Obispo County residents for decades to come. Staunch opposition to the Yucca Mountain project by Nevada lawmakers, coupled with questions about its safety and scientific viability, leave the future of the facility in serious doubt. "The Yucca Mountain project is never going to open," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has vowed. Lawmakers in Utah similarly oppose a proposal to build a temporary nuclear storage facility on an American Indian reservation about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Congressmen and senators from those two states introduced a bill in December that would require all spent-fuel assemblies to be transferred to dry casks within six years. The Spent Nuclear Fuel On-Site Storage Security Act of 2005 is part of an overall effort to require the federal Department of Energy to take ownership of and manage all of the on-site dry cask storage facilities at individual nuclear plants. It also calls for compensating utilities for transferring the fuel to dry storage with money now earmarked for the Yucca Mountain facility. The bill has been referred for consideration to committees in both the Senate and House of Representatives. How spent fuel pools could be safer Recommendations from a six-month review of the safety of spent fuel pools at commercial nuclear power plants by a panel of scientists with the National Academy of Sciences: 1. The NRC should do more analysis of vulnerabilities of spent fuel pools and make recommendations to correct them. NRC and nuclear industry officials say this is being done. 2. Two measures to improve spent fuel pool safety should be promptly implemented. They are: • Reconfiguring the fuel in the pools in a checkerboard fashion so that newer, hotter fuel is surrounded by older, cooler fuel. The NRC has adopted this recommendation and Diablo Canyon has implemented it. • Installing a water spray system that would be able to cool the fuel even if the pool or overlying building is severely damaged. NRC and nuclear industry officials say sprinklers are unnecessary because there are other ways to refill the pools. No such sprinklers have been installed at Diablo Canyon. David Sneed can be reached at 781-7930. ***************************************************************** 40 Taipei Times: Conference seeks to address question of nuclear power By Shelley Shan STAFF REPORTER Sunday, Apr 23, 2006,Page 2 Advertising [Advertising] The National Conference on Environmental Action Towards Sustainability ended yesterday amid fervent exchanges focusing on the resumption of the fourth nuclear power plant project and setting an exact timeline to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide as dictated by the Kyoto Protocol. Representatives from environmental protection groups urged the government to gradually shut down all nuclear power plants and opposed using nuclear power to achieve the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emission. Participants managed to reach consensus on 248 items but failed to do so on 72 other items. Premier Su Tseng-chang (Δ¬­s©χ) said that some of the suggestions could be implemented soon and that the National Council for Sustainable Development (NCSD) will strive to resolve some of the controversies in the next few months. Su also promised that he would convene the NCSD as soon as possible. Responding to the controversies over the two issues, Environmental Protection Administration Minister Chang Kuo-lung (±i°κΐs) said any nation had to consider whether or not it has the capacity to develop nuclear power. "We have to assess the risks involved in building nuclear power plants," Chang said, "We also have to consider whether Taiwan is able to handle the risks." The two-day forum was co-organized by the NCSD and the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA). Minister with Portfolio Lin Si-yao (ͺLΏόΔ£), who is also the chief executor of the Council, said that the NCSD would adopt the consensus reached at the conference as guidelines to revise the nation's sustainable development action program. Yesterday, the conference seminars focused on issues related to constructing an eco-friendly and healthy environment, conservation, and civic engagement. Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (§υ»·­υ) had expressed support for the resumption of the fourth nuclear power plant project during the first day of the conference on Friday. He said Taiwan should develop fusion plasma confinement technology to generate nuclear power, which has proven to have a low environmental impact. This story has been viewed 448 times. www.taipeitimes.com Copyright © 1999-2006 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 41 FT.com: Editorial comment - Chernobyl's death toll Comment & analysis / Published: April 22 2006 03:00 | Last updated: April 22 2006 In the run-up to the 20th anniversaryof the Chernobyl disaster next week, supporters and opponents of nuclear power have been trading wildly different estimates for the number of people who are likely to die as a result of the radioactivity spread across Europe by the explosion. Fatal cancers will eventually kill 93,000 people according to Greenpeace, 9,000 according to the World Health Organisation and just 1,000 according to one optimistic academic study. The death toll from the world's worst nuclear accident is of far more than academic interest. The figures are propaganda in the increasingly vociferous debate over whether industrialised countries should resume building nuclear power stations in response to dwindling fossil fuel supplies and the threat from global warming. And Chernobyl's impact on public health is an important practical issue in the worst affected regions of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, where an epidemic of thyroid cancer among young people is overwhelming oncology services. Independent public health researchers, writing in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature, say all the uncertainties make it impossible to give a reliable estimate for Chernobyl's death toll, particularly among themillions of Europeans who livedfurther from the reactor but still received a radiation dose. (Eventoday, 370 sheep farms in Britain are subject to movement restrictions as a result of Chernobyl fall-out.) There could be tens of thousands of Chernobyl-related deaths over the next 30 years though it will be almost impossible to distinguish these from other causes of cancer mortality. The psychological consequences - an inevitable result of any nuclear accident - are probably even more important, in public health terms, than the physical damage from radiation. While environmental groups such as Greenpeace may exaggerate the effect of Chernobyl, the nuclear industry and organisations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency have tended to play them down. Nuclear advocates do their cause no service when they portray Chernobyl as a historical event irrelevant to today's debate - an accident caused by human error and an obsolete Soviet reactor. Although the technical details may not be relevant to a 21st-century nuclear renaissance, the broad principles of how to respond to a large radioactive discharge certainly are. The accident - and its catastrophic handling by the Soviet authorities - remains such a powerful symbol that advocates of nuclear power must confront the issues it raises rather than ignoring or belittling them. It is a pity that a full-scale international study of Chernobyl's health effects was not started soon after the disaster, along the lines of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission and its successor, the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, which have produced invaluable radiological data by studying Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors for 60 years. It may still be worth launching such a project, although the research would be much harder than in Japan because Chernobyl survivors are dispersed so much more widely - and raising funds for it from independent sources would be a formidable challenge. But the scientific uncertainty about the number of long-term casualties from Chernobyl directly undermines public trust in the nuclear industry. And this at the very time when a serious debate about its merits is most needed. Β© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2006. "FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times. ***************************************************************** 42 newsobserver.com: What's the real fallout? April 23, 2006 'There is so much that we still don't know,' a Red Cross doctor laments Vika Chervinska, 8, waits with her mother to receive cancer treatment at the children's hospital in Kiev, Ukraine. Greenpeace has predicted that 270,000 cases of cancer will be attributable to Chernobyl radiation and that 93,000 of those are likely to be fatal. U.N. predictions are far lower. AP Photo by Oded Balilty Mara D. Bellaby, Associated Press Writer KIEV, UKRAINE - KIEV, UKRAINE - With every cough and sore throat, every ache and pain, Valentyna Stanyuk feels Chernobyl stalking her. "It's only a matter of time," she said as she waited for a thyroid test at a mobile Red Cross clinic in her village of Bystrichy, 150 miles west of Chernobyl. The tests came back clean, but that's little reassurance to this 54-year-old or to millions of others who live in the parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia that were heavily irradiated when the nuclear reactor exploded 20 years ago, spewing radioactive clouds over Ukraine and much of Europe for 10 days. The April 26, 1986, disaster forced the evacuation of large swaths of some of the former Soviet Union's best farmland and forests. The radiation spread far enough to be detected in reindeer meat in Norway and in rainfall in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. It shocked most European countries into a 20-year freeze on building nuclear plants. In so starkly exposing the failings of the communist system, the world's worst nuclear accident might even have hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later. And the effect on the health of the people exposed to its invisible poisons? That is the most heatedly debated legacy of Chernobyl. "There is so much that we still don't know," said Dr. Volodymyr Sert, head of a team of Red Cross doctors who canvass Ukraine's rural Zhytomyr region in search of thyroid abnormalities -- one of the few problems that all scientists agree are linked to Chernobyl's fallout. "The most important thing we can do is reassure people that they aren't being forgotten," he said. After the explosion, about 116,000 residents were evacuated from a 20-mile zone around the plant. About 5 million others in areas that got significant fallout were not evacuated. Over the years, reports and rumors have spoken of thousands of these especially vulnerable people dying from radiation. But a September report by a group of U.N. agencies concluded that the accident wasn't nearly as deadly as feared. Fewer than 50 deaths had been directly linked to radiation exposure as of mid-2005, the report said. A total of 4,000 of the 600,000 "liquidators" -- workers who were hastily mobilized to clean up the accident site -- are likely to die from radiation-related cancers and leukemia, it predicted. That's far below the tens of thousands many claimed were fatally stricken. The researchers found that thyroid cancer rates have skyrocketed among people who were under 18 at the time of the accident, but they noted that more than 99 percent survive after treatment. The report by the Chernobyl Forum -- a group comprising the International Atomic Energy Agency and several other U.N. groups -- said there was no convincing evidence of birth defects or reduced fertility. Most of the general population suffered such low radiation doses that the scientists decided not to make predictions about deaths, except to say that some increase -- less than 1 percent or about 5,000 -- might be expected, it said. Venyamin Khudolei, director of the Center for Independent Ecological Expertise at the government-founded Russian Academy of Science, disagrees. In the part of Russia most heavily hit by the fallout, mortality rates have risen nearly 4 percent since the explosion, indicating the Chernobyl toll in Russia alone could be calculated at 67,000 people, he said. His findings are cited by the environmental group Greenpeace, which said in a report Tuesday that more than 90,000 people were likely to die of cancers caused by radiation from the disaster. Greenpeace suggested the U.N. report was deliberately misleading. "It is appalling that the IAEA is whitewashing the impacts of the most serious nuclear accident in human history," said Ivan Blokov of the group's Russia office. "Denying the implications is not only insulting to the thousands of victims, but it also leads to dangerous recommendations and the relocation of people in contaminated areas." Ukrainians outraged Other experts point to studies that show increases in everything from schizophrenia among the liquidators to breast cancer. The U.N. report suggested that people in heavily affected areas were gripped by "paralyzing fatalism" that induced them to see themselves as victims and blame Chernobyl for every ailment, even those caused by smoking or drinking. That outraged Ukrainian officials. "I am speechless that we can allow this blasphemy in front of the graves of those who died," said lawmaker Borys Oliynyk. The death toll immediately after the disaster was about 30. Researchers trying to determine combined death tolls -- and predict deaths to come -- don't have an easy task. Soviet-era attempts to cover up the chaotic and often inhumane response made it difficult to track down victims. Lists were incomplete, and Soviet authorities later forbade doctors to cite "radiation" on death certificates. The rural regions affected are impoverished and unemployment is high. Alcohol abuse is rampant, diets poor. It's hard to distinguish Chernobyl-related health problems from a more general post-Soviet malaise, scientists said. "I'm sure we'll see claims of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of deaths, but again we checked, we checked all the research, all the files," said Didier Louvat, a radiation waste expert with the International Atomic Energy Agency. "The explosion was very concentrated around the facility, and the fallout was spread in great plumes that went high into the atmosphere and crossed Europe, diffusing the concentration. ... It could have been much worse." About 1,000 people -- plant personnel, military conscripts, firefighters from the Kiev region, emergency workers -- bore the brunt of the inferno, and 134 were officially confirmed as suffering from acute radiation syndrome. One person died during the explosion, and his body has never been recovered. The U.N. report says that 28 died from radiation sickness in 1986 and that 19 suffering from radiation syndrome died from 1987 to 2004, but not all the deaths were necessarily caused by radiation. The rest remain alive. Wearing no masks or protective suits, dozens of firefighters were deployed. While the bosses sheltered underground, plant workers recall, people stood around awaiting instructions, breathing poisoned air. The Chernobyl plant now is a cracked hulk in the eerie "dead zone." The last of its four reactors was taken out of service in 2000, and the main activity is to shore up the concrete-and-steel "sarcophagus" that covers the reactor. But radiation infects a vast stretch of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia -- in the soil, in the berries and mushrooms, in the firewood needed to heat homes. Oleksandr Nabok, 21, has never been near the nuclear station, 60 miles from his village, but he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He is one of more than 5 million people who live in areas deemed contaminated but habitable, far removed from the villages circling the plant that were considered so irradiated that they were bulldozed under mounds of dirt. There, isotopes with half-lives of 24,390 years came to rest. Children vulnerable In Nabok's village, experts say, the biggest concern was radioactive iodine. People there suffer from a lack of iodine, so when the radioactive iodine was released, their thyroids gobbled it up; children's thyroid glands work most actively, putting them at greatest risk. Many ingested the iodine in milk from cows that had grazed on radiated fields. Accounts vary, but experts agree that between 4,000 and 5,000 people, children when the explosion happened, have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer in Ukraine and Belarus -- making it the single biggest Chernobyl-related medical problem. At least nine have died. Before the accident, the illness was so rare that in most years only about 10 children were diagnosed with it. The numbers keep growing. The main spurt was expected to come around this time, but no one knows whether this is the beginning of the peak or its end. The U.N. report found that the high anxiety levels persist and even appear to be growing among people who live in contaminated zones. "It is scary. You try not to worry about it," said Valentyna Yanduk, whose face brightened into a smile after the Red Cross doctors gave her 12-year-old son Ihor's thyroid the all-clear. Technically he's not part of the risk group -- he wasn't even born at the time of the explosion -- but his mother worries. "For 20 years, these people have been living as victims instead of survivors," said Louvat, the IAEA radiation expert. "We need to be telling them: 'Look, you survived this.' " (AP correspondent Jim Heintz contributed to this report.) All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be published, broadcast or redistributed in any manner. AP correspondent Jim Heintz contributed to this report. © Copyright 2006, The News & Observer Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 43 BBC: Gorbachev weighs Chernobyl legacy Last Updated: Saturday, 22 April 2006 [Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (file photo, 1999)] Former leader Mikhail Gorbachev admits some mistakes were made Mikhail Gorbachev had been Soviet leader for only 13 months when the Chernobyl nuclear accident happened. He describes how the authorities responded and reflects on the lessons from the disaster. I received a call at 0500 on 26 April 1986, informin me that a major accident, followed by a fire, had just occurred in the fourth block of the Chernobyl nuclear power station, but that the reactor was still intact. In those early hours, until the evening of 26 April, we had not yet realised that the reactor had actually exploded and that there had been a huge discharge of radioactive materials into the atmosphere. Nobody had any idea that we were facing a major nuclear disaster. Naturally, we can regret, today, after the fact, that we did not grasp everything more quickly. [At the time], I was astounded: how was such a thing possible? Nuclear scientists had always assured the country's leadership that our nuclear reactors were completely safe. 'Not panicking' Immediately after the accident, the management of the station gave the order to flood the reactor with water, because they were not aware that the reactor had exploded and there was nothing left to extinguish. [Map of the zone around Chernobyl] Finally, the pool under the reactor and some underground locations were filled up with water. Scientists were afraid that if the hot mass of nuclear fuel and graphite were to rupture the bottom of the reactor's tank and fall into radioactive water, this would create the conditions for a further nuclear explosion. We were not panicking... but we urgently needed to pump out this water. This was completed at the beginning of May. In this way, such an explosion, however slight its probability, was effectively prevented. There were other threats that needed to be eliminated with the utmost urgency. In the beginning even the t experts did not realise the gravity of the situation Firstly, there remained the danger that the mass at the heart of the reactor would rupture its tank and even blast through the foundations of the building housing the reactor, so coming into contact with the soil and leading to a major contamination of groundwater. We also had to prevent the radioactive waste and debris from around the plant from contaminating the waters of the Dnieper and Desna rivers. This required operations on a massive scale... But, of course, our main concern was to evacuate the population from the most contaminated areas. On 27 April we performed an exemplary operation: in just three hours the entire population of Pripyat, located very close to the power station, was evacuated. And in the early days of May, we evacuated everybody living within a 30km radius of the power station, in dozens of localities: a total of 116,000 people. Told the truth? Quite simply, in the beginning even the top experts did not realise the gravity of the situation. [The abandoned city of Pripyat stretches ou in front of the Chernobyl plant] I confes that we were afraid of panic - you can imagine for yourselves the consequences of a terrible panic in a town of several million inhabitants We needed several weeks to obtain precise evaluations and to draw up maps of the contamination. Certainly, I will not exclude the possibility that certain functionaries, who were afraid of being accused of not having taken the correct measures, had a tendency to embellish their reports. But, for the most part, I believe that I was kept informed in good faith by my representatives. We did not cancel the May Day parades [in Kiev and Minsk] because we still did not have information on the full extent of the disaster. I confess that we were afraid of panic - you can imagine for yourselves the consequences of a terrible panic in a town of several million inhabitants. I admit that it was a grave mistake. We published the first information on the accident on 28 April, in Pravda, but to speak to the people, I needed a more substantial and precise analysis. That is why I waited almost three weeks before speaking on television. Correct response? Nowadays, experts think that our fears over the possible contamination of groundwater were exaggerated, and that it was not worth the trouble of installing a "cushion" [concrete slab] underneath the reactor. Today, mankind faces challenge so huge that, by comparison, the Cold War appears like an incongruous vestige from the past The construction of the sarcophagus, all the measures for aquatic protection, most of the measures aimed at decontamination - these were good decisions, even though some of the deactivation did ultimately prove to be superfluous. We decontaminated areas which were later evacuated. Nobody knew, for instance, that Pripyat, that beautiful modern city, would find itself forever uninhabitable. At first, scientists thought that the population of Pripyat would be able to return to the city around the end of May or beginning of June. People left leaving their fridges full of food, without even unplugging them, since they expected to return quickly. Environmental cost The explosion at Chernobyl showed that we are capable of contaminating the planet for the long term, and of leaving a terrible legacy for future generations. Today, mankind faces a challenge so huge that, by comparison, the Cold War appears like an incongruous vestige from the past. Chernobyl clearly demonstrated that each disaster is unique and that no country can be prepared for every eventuality. That is why we must deploy the maximum amount of effort to prevent disasters. One must not compromise on nuclear safety. The social, ecological and economic consequences of these kind of disasters are much too heavy in every sense of the word. We can therefore see what enormous responsibility is placed not only on politicians, but on scientists, engineers and designers - their mistakes could cost the life and health of millions of people. The victims of Chernobyl continue to suffer both physically and mentally. It is our moral duty to help them while continuing to limit the ecological consequences of this disaster. Mikhail Gorbachev was interviewed by Green Cross International, a non-governmental organisation he founded in the wake of Chernobyl. A fuller version is appearing in the latest issue of the Optimist magazine. How culpable was the Soviet leadership for the Chernobyl disaster? What do you think of Mr Gorbachev's analysis of the dangers facing today's world? ***************************************************************** 44 BBC: Chernobyl's unsettling legacy Last Updated: Saturday, 22 April 2006 By Bridget Kendall BBC News, Chernobyl, Ukraine Bridget Kendall returns to Chernobyl 20 years after the nuclear disaster to find an eerie and unsettling view. I well remember the spring of 1986, the year the Chernobyl disaster happened. [The abandoned city of Pripyat stretches out in front of the Chernobyl plant] The abandoned city of Pripyat - a frozen reminder I was in Moscow shortly afterwards and the city was awash with rumours. These were still Soviet times and Mikhail Gorbachev had only been in power just over a year, General Secretary of a Communist Party determined to keep its grip on power. No-one was yet expecting bold reforms that would turn the country upside down. So in quiet conversations around kitchen tables, there was scepticism and anger about official pronouncements. Mr Gorbachev had gone on television to admit the situation was serious, though he said the worst had been avoided. Few at the time realised he was referring to the danger of a thermo-nuclear explosion. In Moscow the suspicion was of a cover-up to hide the extent of contamination: were Muscovites now travelling on buses used to transport irradiated Chernobyl emergency workers to hospital? Were the strawberries and mushrooms in the market from areas where radioactive rain had fallen? Those in Kiev at the time tell the same story. In 1986 Ukraine was only a Soviet republic with limited local powers, not yet a separate country. Unofficial panic Any serious emergency, especially one involving the centralised and highly secretive nuclear industry, was reported straight to Moscow. Even at radio Kiev, part of state propaganda apparatus, journalists had little information. Behind an officially proclaimed calm there was unofficial panic. You couldn't find petrol anywhere. The joke was you were mo likely to die of exaggerated information in Kiev than radiation At the main train station there was chaos, as everyone tried to procure tickets for mothers and children to get them well away from the area. Kiev became a ghost town of inebriated males, drunk on the red wine that rumour had it could strengthen your immune system. They fed each other's alarm with nightmarish speculation. The joke was you were more likely to die of exaggerated information in Kiev than radiation. Closer to Chernobyl and to the moment of the accident itself, the reminiscences are even more sobering. One woman who worked at the nuclear plant told me she had been due to start an early shift on 26 April, but at 0200 she got a call from her boss at the reactor telling her not to come in. [Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (file photo, 1999)] Gorbachev said 'it was serious' but few knew he meant Chernobyl "I can't tell you over the phone what's happened," he said. "Just keep the children back from school and close the windows." Pripyat, the workers' town, is only a few kilometres away from the plant. From one side, high up, the reactor would have been visible on the horizon, the damaged core smouldering red, and the black cloud billowing skywards. All day she sat at home, while other folk, in festive mood, strolled in the April sunshine. Children played in the dusty streets and splashed in the frothy water that was sprayed periodically. We were grieving for the lo of our beautiful plant we'd been so proud of Chernobyl engineer Neighbours invited her onto the roof for a better view of the drama at the reactor. In vain she urged them to stay indoors. "I'd heard the fear in my boss's voice," she said. "And I was an engineer. I knew the potential consequences of a nuclear accident." Later she and many other workers went back to the plant. "We wanted to help," she said. "We were grieving for the loss of our beautiful plant we'd been so proud of. But above all we felt responsible." Pets knew better Not everyone in Pripyat was proud of the plant. In the summer of 1986 I tracked down the editor of the local Pripyat paper, a feisty independent-minded journalist called Lyubov Kovalevskaya. At the start of 1986, Mr Gorbachev launched a new policy proclaiming no-one was above criticism. Reactor number four is still eyesore, a dark grey hulk, encased in armour plated coating of concrete and metal She took him at his word and published a devastating critique of Chernobyl's nuclear power station, describing corners being cut and procedures ignored, with potentially serious consequences. Her warning was of course prophetic: the accident took place a couple of months later. But she received no commendation from the party authorities. They saw her then as a troublemaker. And when I met her in August 1986, like everyone else in Pripyat, she'd been evacuated to Kiev where she was camping in temporary accommodation and worrying about the health consequences. It was she who told me about the pets that had been left behind, the dogs who bayed through the apartment windows as they watched their owners line up to get on buses, taking at face value official advice that they'd be back in a day or two. Some animals seemed to know better. Tatiana is now 24, so she was four when her family left Chernobyl. She remembers her granny decided not to take the family cat. But as they boarded the bus, the cat threw itself at the folding doors - the last glimpse they ever had of it. Perfect view It seemed appropriate, for a trip into the Chernobyl zone 20 years on, to ask Tatiana if she'd like to come with us to revisit Pripyat, the place of her birth. All she had, she said, was a vague memory of a gleaming white town, surrounded by woodland. Now, like the damaged reactor, the town is at the heart of the 30-km contamination zone that has been fenced off, to keep out most human habitation. A few old souls have returned to their former villages. And the wild life is abundant. Past the first checkpoint, past the irradiated villages buried in cement that still cause the Geiger counter to click furiously, we came across a herd of Przhelvalsky horses, brought in to crop the grasses in the dry summer marshlands - to reduce fire hazards. Reactor number four is still an eyesore, a dark grey hulk, encased in armour plated coating of concrete and metal. But more weird still are the enormous cranes that 20 years ago were busy constructing two more reactors. Now they are frozen in mid-lift against the skyline, stuck in history. [Map of the zone around Chernobyl] Like other metallic hardware that litters the site, they're too contaminated to be shifted. We arrive in Pripyat, and Tatiana shivers in anticipation. The town is still white, still surrounded by woodlands, but it too is frozen in a bygone age. A massive coat of arms - a red and gold hammer and sickle - hangs from the roof of one 16-storey building - a reminder that 20 years ago this was the now defunct Soviet Union. Broken glass crunching underfoot, up 16 flights of concrete steps, we reach the top floor. This is Tatiana's building. The wind whistles through the glassless windows. Faded pale blue wallpaper flaps. In one room there is a rusty children's chair. We open the door onto the balcony. In the distance, the grey slumbering reactor is like a dragon, biding its time. I remember the view. And it still just as perfect Tatiana Survivor Down below, trees that have sprouted through the paving stones mark two untended decades. And beyond them is the unmistakable silhouette of a big wheel - the centrepiece of an unused funfair. By 1 May 1986 when it should have opened, the inhabitants had left for good. Unsettling images that prompt uneasy thoughts. But not for Tatiana. For her this is not bittersweet. It's a precious restoration of a childhood memory she feared to lose. "This is it," she says, "I remember the view. And it's still just as perfect." From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 22 April, 2006 at 1030 GMT / 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the for World Service transmission times. ***************************************************************** 45 Manila Times: The lingering fallout from Chernobyl Monday, April 24, 2006 EDITORIAL IT has been two decades since several explosions ripped through a nuclear plant in Ukraine, at that time still a part of the Soviet Union, instantly killing at least 60 people and releasing a huge radioactive cloud that spread through most of Europe and reached even North America. The meltdown at the Chernobyl plant on April 26, 1986, is the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster. Its fallout has been more than just radioactive; the tragedy hastened the disintegration of the Soviet Union and triggered debates over just how safe nuclear energy is. Up until now, blame for the disaster has not been pinned down. What is known is that power in one of the plant’s reactors had surged 100 times after the water coolant vaporized. The death toll is also a source of fierce debate. A 600-page report by seven United Nations agencies released in September said fewer than 50 deaths can be directly attributable to radiation during the first months after the accident, much lower than previously believed. Nine of the 4,000 children who developed thyroid cancer had died, a survival rate of 99 percent, the report added. The Greenpeace environmental group disputed the UN’s findings and accused the organization of covering up the disaster. In its own report, Greenpeace estimated that 93,000 more people could die of cancer because of radiation from Chernobyl. The cost of preventing radiation from further leaking from the devastated facility has been high. Ukrainian authorities have encased the reactor in a concrete sarcophagus, but the covering is showing signs of wear. A new steel sarcophagus would cost nearly $2 billion, an expense Ukraine cannot shoulder on its own. The farms and forests around the facility have been declared an exclusion zone. No one except scientists and authorized personnel is allowed to venture into the “hot” areas. The consequences of the Chernobyl accident resonate even louder today, when the price of oil in the world market has soared to record heights. Nuclear energy has long been touted as an efficient and clean alternative power source to oil and coal. The question is: is it safe? Here in the Philippines there is a plan to revive the idle nuclear plant in Morong, Bataan. The facility was built in 1976 after oil-producing Arab countries imposed an embargo, plunging the world into an oil crisis. The plant, which was supposed to produce 621 megawatts of electricity, was finished in 1984 but never went online. Then President Corazon Aquino refused to open the plant, citing safety issues. Reopening the plant is a tempting proposition, but authorities should not rush to judgment. It is true that nuclear plants do not emit greenhouse gases and the volume of waste produced is small. But there is always the risk of a major accident. We cannot afford another Chernobyl. What The Other Papers Saytc "WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY" Baltic tiger WHAT’S the reward for taking over a devastated ex-Soviet economy at the tender age of 32 and rapidly turning it into one of Europe’s dynamos? Some measure of personal satisfaction, no doubt. The gratitude of your countrymen. And, it turns out, a pretty substantial cash prize. The Cato Institute announced that former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar is the winner of its biennial Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. He will receive a $500,000 check at a ceremony next month in Chicago. Mr. Laar is the third recipient of the award—previous winners were development economists Peter Bauer and Hernando de Soto—and in one sense, at least, the most apt. Mr. Laar has acknowledged that Mr. Friedman’s “Free to Choose” was the only economics book he had read when he took power in 1992. He had absorbed Mr. Friedman’s idea about privatization, the flat tax and free trade and moved with impressive speed to make them policy. “It seemed common sense to me and, as I thought it had already been done everywhere, I simply introduced it in Estonia,” he said. Mr. Laar soon discovered he was turning little Estonia into a reform leader not just among the ex-Soviet bloc countries, but compared with the increasing calcified welfare states of Western Europe too. One of the prices reluctantly paid for the perceived security guarantees that came with its European Union membership in 2004 was some degree of retrogression—the EU calls it “harmonization”—in its free-market economic policies. Still, Estonia ranks seventh among the world’s freest economies in the annual Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom, the only ex-Soviet bloc country in the top 10. It has a flat-rate income tax, a currency board that pegs its kroon to the euro for stability, and a low external tariff rate (albeit slightly higher since joining the EU). Those policies have helped Estonia achieve 6- percent plus annual economic growth in recent years. --Excerpted from The Asian Wall Street Journal Copyright (c) 2001 The Manila Times | Terms of Service The Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 46 Eureka Reporter: PG plans to re-power Humboldt Bay plant Sun. Apr. 23, 2006 by Sharon Letts, 4/22/2006 Since the announcement of PG&Es plans to re-power the Humboldt Bay Power Plant, questions have arisen as to the nature of the energy created from the new and improved plant, and the status of the plant during the reconditioning process. The plant was first built by PG&E and consists of two fossil fueled units, two mobile gas turbines, and a decommissioned nuclear unit. The nuclear unit operated commercially from 1963 to 1976 as a 65-MWe boiling water reactor nuclear power plant. The nuclear portion was shut down in 1976 for seismic modifications. In 1983, while still shut down, PG&E determined that due to the Three Mile Island incident, it would not be economically feasible to operate and it went into a condition called SAFSTOR and has been in that state ever since. According to a fact sheet put out by PG&E, the remaining four diesel units are still up and running. Units 1 and 2 have the capacity to generate 52 and 53 megawatts respectively, and began operation in 1956 and 1958. Two mobile peaking units with capacities of 15 megawatts each are also located on the site. With plans to re-power the plant with a new and improved state-of-the-art generation facility, all four older units will be shut down. The target date for re-generation is 2009. Copyright (C) 2005, The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 47 Independent: Chernobyl 'still causing cancer in British children' By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor Published: 23 April 2006 More than a third of Britain is still contaminated by radioactivity from the Chernobyl disaster two decades ago, and children are getting cancer as a result, an Independent on Sunday investigation has established. Official measurements - published in a report launched in London yesterday - show that at least 34 per cent of the country will remain radioactive for centuries as the result of the accident, which took place 20 years ago on Wednesday. And scientists have found rates of thyroid cancer in children in Cumbria, the worst-affected part of England, rose 12-fold after the catastrophe - and blame fallout from the radioactive cloud that spread from the stricken reactor. This confounds government assurances at the time that the radiation in Britain was "nowhere near the levels at which there is any hazard to health". The report - presented at a conference at the Royal College of Surgeons organised by Medact, a health charity - cites official figures to show that most of the highly radioactive caesium emitted in the disaster was blown across Europe by winds. In Britain, about 81,000 sq km (31,000 sq miles) - mainly in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the west of England - were contaminated above 4,000 bequerels per square metre. The report says the radioactive caesium - and the doses of radiation it gives Britons - will only "decline slowly over the next few hundred years". Scientists at Newcastle University examined rates of thyroid cancer in children across northern England before and after the Chernobyl cloud passed overhead. They found slight increases across the region - and an abrupt 12-fold jump in Cumbria, which received most fall-out. Professor Louise Palmer, who led the study, said yesterday that the results were "consistent with a causal association with the Chernobyl accident". © 2006 Independent News and Media Limited ***************************************************************** 48 AFP: British scientists fear 66,000 extra deaths due to Chernobyl - Sat Apr 22, 8:01 AM ET LONDON (AFP) - The long-term effects of the Chernobyl disaster could cause up to 66,000 extra deaths from cancer, 15 times more than UN officials predicted last year, two British scientists have claimed. Nearly 20 years after the world's worst-ever nuclear accident, the impact of the 1986 catastrope on the world beyond the borders of the erstwhile Soviet Union may never be fully realised. The study, commissioned by Greens in the European Parliament, claims that more than half of the fallout landed outside Belarus, Ukraine and Russia -- contaminating about 34 percent of the British land mass alone. Restrictions are still in place on 374 farms covering 750 square kilometres as well as 200,000 sheep in Britain. Throughout Europe, a total area of 3.9 million square kilometres was contaminated. The findings were published in a report, "The Other Report on Chernobyl", which was to be discussed at a conference in London on Saturday ahead of next week's 20th anniversary of the disaster. Penned by British scientists Ian Fairlie and David Sumner, it claims that up to 66,000 people around the world could die from cancer due to Chernobyl, on top of the number who would normally die from cancer. This conflicts sharply with a forecast from the International Atomic Energy Agency" /> (IAEA) and World Health Organisation (WHO) in September which set the number of Chernobyl-related extra cancer deaths at 4,000. Sumner said the International Agency for Research on Cancer -- part of the WHO -- has released estimated figures only "a little bit lower" than those in his report, while the IAEA is no longer holding to the 4,000 figure. "The main message is that this was a very, very serious accident. The consequences are very bad in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia," he said. "But the consequences extend all over the northern hemisphere and worldwide really. The full extent of the damage will perhaps never be known of cancer induced by radiation after exposure." "We have to think carefully about engaging in nuclear programmes," added Sumner, referring to a debate in Britain over whether to build more nuclear power stations. Sumner said it was difficult to work out exact figures of cancer deaths linked to Chernobyl because the exposure to the radiation that spilled out of the plant is long-term. When it exploded on April 26, 1986, radioactive gases and debris were sent hurtling more than five miles (eight kilometres) into the air, worsened by a fire that raged for five days. The radiation emitted from the disaster was 200 times that of the combined releases of the US atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to end World War II in the Pacific. Sumner said studies had been done on survivors exposed to short-term high-level radiation, but that not enough is known about the inverse -- long-term low-level radiation. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 49 AFP: Chernobyl: jewel of the Soviet nuclear industry turned into dead zone - [A 'radioactivity' sign in front of the 'sarcophagus' covering the damaged fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant] CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (AFP) - Twenty years after the worst nuclear accident in history, a huge concrete shield and small army of workers are all that stand between Chernobyl's deadly number-four reactor and the outside world. The sarcophagus stands over the ruins of the reactor and radioactive fuel in the heart of the 30-kilometer-radius (18.6-mile) exclusion zone, where the gray concrete buildings of the power plant emerge from a pine birch forest near the Pripyat river. The only sign of life is a plume of smoke from a thermal plant providing electricity needed for work on dismantling what was once meant to be the world's largest nuclear power station, with eight reactors planned. On a wall, a barely legible slogan still proclaims: "We are building communism." Abandoned cranes loom above reactors number five and six, which were never completed. Chernobyl's last functioning reactor was shut down in December 2000. The 3,500 people still working here for the most part concentrate on maintaining the sarcophagus that was erected in the immediate aftermath of the accident to confine the radioactive leaks. Over the years they have installed huge steel girders and propped up the sarcophagus's foundations and outer walls. Chernobyl's deputy head engineer, Valery Seida, says the sarcophagus is in a satisfactory state, but needs further stabilizing before a second and better wall, nicknamed "the arch," can be built. This 190-meter (623-feet) wide and 200-meter (656-feet) long construction will be in the shape of a half-cylinder and literally slide over the existing sarcophagus. The steel structure will weigh some 18,000 tons -- more than twice the Eiffel tower. Two buildings are also being constructed to house the facilities that will process radioactive waste, consisting of 15,000 cubic meters (529,740 cubic feet) of liquid radioactive discharge and 3,000 cubic meters (105,948 cubic feet) of solid matter, Seida says. In fact, the exclusion zone is already a large nuclear dump, where waste is gathered in designated places, or buried in 30-meter (98-feet) by 10-meter (33-feet) trenches. There could be as many as 1,000 such trenches in Ukraine, although only 426 have been officially listed, says Valery Antropov, who works with the Komplex company responsible for processing waste. Some contain concrete debris, others tools used during emergency work immediately after the accident, or the remains of contaminated trees that had to be cut down. Other trenches contain the remains of entire villages that were evacuated following the Chernobyl meltdown. But not everything has been buried. Here and there, hoses and cement girders lie in the grass, while elsewhere abandoned cranes and metal structures rust away. At the Rosokha military cemetery, hundreds of contaminated trucks, armored vehicles and helicopters lie abandoned. Nearby, a whole town, Pripyat, has been abandoned, and is now fenced in with barbed wire. Before the disaster, it was home to more than 45,000 people. Some experts say the radioactive contamination in the exclusion zone is so bad that no one will be able to live there again for another 500 years. Seida says Chernobyl will always remain a "brown stain," as opposed to a "green lawn." He explains: "Normally, after facilities like these have been dismantled, you must be able to have a picnic on the premises. But here, the sarcophagus will always remain." AFP Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! UK Limited. All rights reserved. AFP '); [ src=] ***************************************************************** 50 Shanghai Daily : Chernobyl's destructive legacy 20 years later The Wenhui-Xinmin United Press Group Filed in Opinion | Foreign perspectives Kalman Mizsei and Louisa Vinton 2006-04-24 THE twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, April 26, 1986, is prompting a new wave of alarmist claims about its impact on human health and the environment. As has become a ritual on such commemorative occasions, the death toll is tallied in the hundreds of thousands, and fresh reports are made of elevated rates of cancer, birth defects, and overall mortality. This picture is both badly distorted and harmful to the victims of the Chernobyl accident. All reputable scientific studies have concluded that the impact of radiation has been less damaging than was feared. Studies are still under way into elevated rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease among the "liquidators" who worked at the reactor site in the months following the accident. There has been real suffering, particularly among the 330,000 people who were relocated after the accident. About that there is no doubt. But, for the five million people living in affected regions who are designated as Chernobyl "victims," radiation has had no discernible impact on physical health. This is because these people were exposed to low radiation doses that in most cases were comparable to natural background levels. Two decades of natural decay and remediation measures mean that most territories originally deemed "contaminated" no longer merit that label. Aside from thyroid cancer, which has been successfully treated in 98.5 percent of cases, scientists have not been able to document any connection between radiation and any physical condition. The new understanding deprives the region's officials of a routine way to seek international sympathy, even if the repetition of such appeals after two decades yields little financial aid. By misstating the problems, these approaches threaten to divert scarce resources into the wrong remedies. The twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl accident is an ideal occasion for all actors to do some honest soul-searching. Governments are right to worry about the fate of Chernobyl-affected territories. But the way forward will require fresh thinking and bold decisions. It will also require a shift in priorities from paying paltry benefits to millions to targeted spending that helps to promote jobs and economic growth. The children of Chernobyl are all grown up. Their interests, and those of their own children, are best served not by continually evoking the nightmare of radiation, but by giving them the tools and authority they need to rebuild their own communities. (Kalman Mizsei is Assistant Administrator of UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and CIS; Louisa Vinton is UNDP Senior Program Manager responsible for the Western CIS and Caucasus countries. The views expressed are their own. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2006. www.project-syndicate.org) Shanghai Daily Home | Copyright © 2001-2005 Shanghai Daily ***************************************************************** 51 EUPolitix.com: EU faith in nuclear based on misleading report The EU’s decision to step up investment in nuclear energy is based on a UN report that is deliberately misleading, environmental groups claim. A report by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the impact of the Chernobyl disaster on April 26 1986 claims that no more than 4,000 people worldwide will die as a result of nuclear fallout. It also states that only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the explosion at the plant, and that radiation levels in the environment are returning to normal. But in its own report published this week, Greenpeace challenges the UN figures, accusing the IAEA of underestimating the impact of the disaster by focusing only those directly impacted by the explosion at the plant. The environmental group claims that as many as 200,000 people in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus could already have died as a result of the accident, and that cancer rates in the region have increased 40 per cent increase since 1990. Data from Russian veterinary sources also shows that meat and dairy products produced in the region still contain high levels of radiation, the report claims. Greenpeace believes that the IAEA has produced deliberately misleading figures to boost public confidence in nuclear power at a time when many governments are reconsidering it as an alternative to fossil fuels. β€œIt is appalling that the IAEA is whitewashing the impacts of one of the most serious industrial accident in human history,” said Jan Vande Putte, Greenpeace’s nuclear campaigner. β€œIt is a deliberate attempt to minimize the risks of nuclear power in order to free the way for new reactor construction.” Greenpeace is not the only organisation challenging the UN’s data. Green MEPs have also produced an alternative report on the impact of Chernobyl, compiled by two leading British scientists. It claims that fallout from Chernobyl contaminated about 40 per cent of Europe’s surface area, including much of the EU, and that cancer deaths related to the disaster could reach 60,000, up to 15 times more than the IAEA’s figure. β€œThere must be no mistaking the catastrophic dangers that are still very much associated with nuclear power,” said Rebecca Harms, the German MEP who commissioned the report. The Greens also tabled 13 questions to the European commission at a parliamentary hearing earlier this week calling, among other things, for more information on how many EU citizens have died as a result of Chernobyl and whether there were any restrictions still in place concerning agriculture within the EU. New EU energy proposals agreed by European leaders in March call for an increase in investment in nuclear energy – up to €4.8bn between 2007-13 – as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, but campaign groups believe the safety case is far from proven. β€œNuclear is the most dangerous form of energy. The problem of nuclear waste treatment remains unsolved, and a disaster like the one in Chernobyl can happen at anytime,” according to Silva Hermann of Friends of the Earth. The IAEA has denied the claims that it played down the number of cancer cases caused by fallout from Chernobyl. β€œTwenty per cent of the population – the Russian population, the world population – are going to die of cancer. There is no way to attribute this cancer to one specific cause,” an IAEA spokesman told Radio Free Europe. Published: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 12:52:46 GMT+02 Author: Chris Jones ©2006 EUpolitix.com ***************************************************************** 52 IPS-English FRANCE: Chernobyl Provokes Some Rethinking Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 14:38:42 -0700 ROMAIPS EU IP HE20 By Julio Godoy PARIS, Apr 21 (IPS) - The 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster has renewed debate over the high French dependence on nuclear power, and the danger it could pose to public health. The debate has been spotlighted in a new book, 'Atomic Park - a la recher che de victimes du nuclE9aire' (Atomic Park - searching for the victims of nuclear power) in which author Jean-Philippe Desbordes paints a fright ening scenario of the consequences of the nuclear programme for public health. Over the last 40 years, more than one million people have worked for d ifferent French nuclear programmes, both in the civil and the military br anches,94 Desbordes told IPS. 94Based on official figures by the French social security administrations, in this period at least 25,000 people have died or are suffering from deadly diseases caused by exposure to radi oactivity such as leukaemia and several other types of cancer.94 This is a low estimate, Desbordes said in an interview. 94The real number of victims must be much higher, but is hidden by the secret character of all things nuclear in France.94 The estimate does not for instance include the effect of nuclear generation on the population in areas where French nuclear facilities are concent rated, such as the Rhone and Loire river valleys and the Cotentin peninsu la on the northwestern Atlantic coast. France has the highest concentration of nuclear installations. Fifty-eight are currently functioning, providing 78.5 percent of all electricity ge nerated in the country. In addition, France has hundreds of civilian and military nuclear research centres. France also has about 900 sites for disposal of nuclear waste. More than a million cubic metres of radioactive waste is stored at these sites. This quantity is expected to double by 2020. Several studies have warned of dangers from this heavy nuclear reliance. In a joint paper released January, the Institute for Nuclear Security and Protection, and the Institute of Health Surveillance say the number oft hyroid cancer cases has risen threefold between 1975 and 1995. France beg an its nuclear reactors programme in 1975. But despite growing evidence of the impact of nuclear power on public health, French authorities are pushing ahead with nuclear programmes, Desbor des said. 94Nuclear power is the first French industry, and its economic influence over the country is so large that France will never renounce it.94 Several anti-nuclear groups are calling for more investment in renewable energies such as solar and wind power.20 For many years French authorities have lied to us about the benign mir acle of nuclear energy and hidden the dark side of it, StE9phane Lhom me, leader of the French anti-nuclear network 'Sortir du nucleaire' (Get rid of nuclear power) told IPS. Lhomme said nuclear power depends on uranium. But the world reserves of uranium are about to be exhausted, meaning that we are investing big mo ney in renewing a dangerous technology, which will in any case become obsolete in a couple of decades.94 France should build more wind and solar energy facilities, Lhomme said. In these areas, despite the abundance of these resources in our country, France is at the bottom of Europe, far below Germany, Denmark, Spain, and Italy.94 According to the French state agency for the environment and the manageme nt of energy (ADEME after its French name), France has an installed capacity of 632 megawatts in wind turbines, representing barely 0.15 percent o f the country's total energy production. Germany can produce more than 15 ,000 megawatts from wind turbines, and has ten times more solar panels th an France. (END/IPS/EU/IP/HE/JG/SS/06) ***************************************************************** 53 toledoblade.com: Davis-Besse critic lauds FirstEnergy for upgrades Article published Saturday, April 22, 2006 [Photo] McGaffigan By TOM HENRY BLADE STAFF WRITER One of FirstEnergy Corp.'s sharpest critics on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's five-member governing board said last night he was pleasantly surprised by what he had seen earlier in the day during a private, seven-hour tour of the utility's Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ottawa County. "The Davis-Besse we all misjudged - not only the NRC, but also [the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations] - I think that is the Davis-Besse of the past," NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan, Jr., said during a 75-minute interview with The Blade at the Clarion Hotel-Westgate in West Toledo. The Atlanta-based institute provides technical expertise for America's 103 nuclear power plants. Funded by utilities, it does not publicly divulge its information. Barely two years ago, an exasperated Mr. McGaffigan fumed about FirstEnergy's lackluster performance at Davis-Besse while addressing 1,300 nuclear executives, scientists, and regulators from 21 countries at the NRC's annual conference in Washington. The utility had allowed so much rust to form on the plant's old reactor head that the massive steel lid nearly burst open in 2002. If it had, that would have allowed radioactive steam to form in the plant's containment area, leaving northern Ohio on the brink of an accident akin to the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor near Harrisburg, Pa., in 1979. During that speech in March of 2004, Mr. McGaffigan chided Davis-Besse for being the "poster child" for what happens to utilities that run afoul of regulations and industry standards. He urged nuclear executives in the audience to remember their industry is "only as strong as its weakest members." The tour was his first of Davis-Besse in his near-decade on the NRC's board. Though he was impressed, he didn't forget how he used to perceive FirstEnergy. "If you'd asked me a few years ago, I would have said the sooner they sell them to Exelon or Entergy, the better off we'd all be," he said, referring to FirstEnergy's nuclear operations. Those include Davis-Besse, the Perry plant east of Cleveland, and the twin-unit Beaver Valley complex west of Pittsburgh. Exelon and Entergy are two of the NRC's favorite utilities. He also said the NRC was guilty of relying on "good-guy regulation" at Davis-Besse while distracted by issues in other parts of the country in the fall of 2001. "We thought they were good guys. We thought they were better than they were," he said. The near-rupture was a black eye for America's nuclear industry at a time it was poised for a comeback. Mr. McGaffigan said he's convinced there "would be no nuclear renaissance today" if it had occurred. FirstEnergy earlier this year was fined a record $28 million for lying to the government about the plant's status before its two-year shutdown on Feb. 16, 2002. It regained the NRC's confidence enough to restart the plant in March, 2004. The plant went offline again recently for normal refueling and maintenance, a 30-day cycle that all plants do every 18 months to two years. It was supposed to have been back online by now. Mr. McGaffigan said he was pleased that FirstEnergy proactively extended the outage, at great cost, to fix a questionable weld on a reactor coolant pump's cold leg drain nozzle. The weld wasn't leaking and is outside of the radioactive containment area. He noted the utility's ability to self-diagnose a potential problem before it became a safety concern. The utility was in the process of restarting Davis-Besse last night. -TOM HENRY The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 ***************************************************************** 54 MercoPress: Chernobyl controversy: 9.000 or 100.000 cancer deaths? Falklands-Malvinas & South Atlantic News [MercoPress - www.mercopress.com] - Sunday, 23 April As the world prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the accident on April 26, the report issued by the UN World Health Organization, WHO, recommends renewed efforts to provide the public and key professionals with accurate information about the health impact as part of the efforts to revitalize the people and areas affected. However a new report from the environmental group Greenpeace challenges the UN and reveals that the full consequences of the Chernobyl disaster could top a quarter of a million cancers cases and nearly 100,000 fatal cancers. According to Greenpeace the report involved 52 respected scientists and includes information never before published in English and describes the UN International Atomic Energy Agency Chernobyl Forum report, “as a gross simplification of the real breadth of human suffering”. “As we work to rebuild futures, we must not forget the families of those who died as a result of the accident, and those who continue to suffer the consequences of radiation exposure and the severe disruption of their lives,” WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook said of the report, which covers contaminated regions in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, home to more than 5 million people. But Greenpeace’s report based on Belarus national cancer statistics predicts approximately 270,000 cancers and 93,000 fatal cancer cases caused by Chernobyl. The report also concludes that on the basis of demographic data, during the last 15 years, 60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and estimates of the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach another 140,000. The report also looks into the ongoing health impacts of Chernobyl and concludes that radiation from the disaster has had a devastating effect on survivors; damaging immune and endocrine systems, leading to accelerated ageing, cardiovascular and blood illnesses, psychological illnesses, chromosomal aberrations and an increase in foetal deformations. “The WHO report on the health effects of Chernobyl gives the most affected countries, and their people, the information they need to be able to make vital public health decisions as they continue to rebuild their communities. WHO is supporting these efforts.” The agency is continuing its efforts to improve health care for affected populations through the establishment of telemedicine and educational programmes, and supporting research. After the accident 116,000 people were evacuated from the area. An additional 230,000 people were relocated from the highly contaminated areas in subsequent years. Relocation proved a deeply traumatic experience because of disruption to social networks and the impossibility of returning home. For many people, there has been a social stigma associated with being an “exposed person,” the report notes. Those who were affected came to be labelled as “Chernobyl victims.” Despite government compensation and benefits for evacuees and residents, some people perceive themselves as victims rather than survivors, with limited control over their own futures. Many of these people have demonstrated higher anxiety levels, multiple unexplained physical symptoms and subjective poor health compared to non-exposed population. Fin del Texto - Mercosur - Sunday, 23 April E-mail: merco@mercopress.com- Web technical help: webmaster@mercopress.com ***************************************************************** 55 Independent: Chernobyl twenty years on Twenty years ago this week, an unparalleled nuclear disaster struck. Its effects are still felt across Europe. As the West seeks to revive the technology, the anniversary sends a chill warning By Andrew Osborn in Chernobyl and Geoffrey Lean Published: 23 April 2006 She is known as "Maria of Chernobyl" and - though she is not a saint - many view her birth in the shadow of the infamous reactor as little short of miraculous. Now aged six, Maria Vedernikova is the first and only child to be born in Chernobyl's post-catastrophe dead zone, a bleak and frightening area 18 miles in radius, now in Ukraine. Indeed, if you ask a guide at Chernobyl whether anyone has been born in the zone since 20 years ago this Wednesday, when the reactor exploded, you will get an emphatic "net". Officially nobody is allowed to live here and the several hundred masochistic souls who insist on doing so are here illegally. The soil is poisoned with caesium and strontium. Only temporary workers and catastrophe tourists are allowed to enter for short periods at their own risk. And "the zone" is associated in most people's minds with only one thing: death. Yet Maria's parents - canteen worker Lida Savenko and clean-up worker Mikhail Vedernikov - insist that she did indeed take her first breaths here, in a ramshackle peasant's cottage in Chernobyl village. Maria's upbringing has been unconventional; her food is checked with a Geiger counter and her home is regularly tested for radiation. She swims in a "nuclear" river and has no other children to play with. Since she has started going to school outside the zone, she has begun to lead a more normal life. So far she has shown no signs of being affected by radiation and appears healthy. Long may she continue to be so. For the toll of the catastrophe that erupted at four seconds past 1.23am on 26 April 1986 has spread all over the surrounding area - and nearly half of Europe. More than 200 times as much radioactivity was released as by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The reactor's operators switched off all its safety systems while trying to carry out an officially authorised, but dangerous, experiment. Suddenly, as the official investigator of the accident put it, the reactor "was free to do as it wished". Its power surged to several hundred times its normal level in the very last second of its life, and a massive explosion blew its 1,000-ton lid clean off, blasting highly radioactive material more than 7km up into the atmosphere. Its core then caught fire, pouring out yet more radioactivity. The toll on health and lives was determined by a mixture of happenstance and freak weather conditions, which spared the immediate area an even greater catastrophe - but spread its effects out over the continent. First, the accident took place at night so there were just hundreds, not the usual thousands, of people on duty at the plant. More important, the people of the area were asleep indoors: their homes shielded them from 90 per cent of the radiation. Then, the very fierceness of the fire sent the radioactive emissions high into the air, as if contained in an invisible chimney. It was a still night, and so the radioactive plume was able to rise steadily until it reached about 1km up where a high, gentle south-easterly breeze wafted it over some relatively uninhabited marshes. Most fortunate of all, it did not rain for days afterwards. This would have brought down radioactive materials with it. Instead, the longer they stayed up in the air the more the most virulent, short-lived ones decayed. The first result of this was that only 28 people died in the accident and its immediate aftermath- and they were all people at the reactor site at the time, or when fighting the blaze (another 19 of them have died from their exposures since). This is extraordinarily few: studies suggest that thousands would have died if conditions had been different. The second result is that the radioactivity spread far and wide. Indeed the accident first became known the following afternoon when radiation monitors in Sweden - set up to check compliance with the 1963 test ban treaty - detected high levels of radioactivity crossing its borders. For days the Chernobyl cloud wandered over Europe, blown by varying winds, and shedding some of its radioactive cargo whenever it rained. It reached Britain on 2 May. European Union measurements show that, in all, 40 per cent of the continent was contaminated. Areas with particularly high fallout - apart from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, all near the plant in what was then the Soviet Union - include Austria, Slovenia, northern Greece, southern Finland, parts of Norway and Sweden, Cumbria, north Wales and parts of Scotland. Even now some 375 sheep farms in Cumbria and Wales suffer restrictions on marketing their meat because their pastures are so radioactive. There are similar restrictions on reindeer in Sweden and Finland and on wild boar and mushrooms, berries and some fish across much of Europe. Unexpectedly high levels of thyroid cancer, in people who were children at the time of the accident, have emerged in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. And as we report today, rates of the same rare cancer in children have risen twelvefold in Cumbria. Nobody knows what the final toll from Chernobyl will be - not least because the solid cancers that will be some of its main effects take decades to develop, while genetic damage will take generations to show. Last year the International Atomic Energy Agency predicted 4,000 deaths, but this has been widely discredited as too low. Equally, a Greenpeace estimate of 100,000 deaths published last week seems overblown. The best estimates range between 16,000 deaths (the International Agency for Research on Cancer, on Thursday) and 60,000, most outside the old USSR. The effect on nuclear power was more immediate - applying the coup de grace to an already failing industry across much of the world - but may now be fading as Tony Blair, George Bush and other leaders try to revive the technology. But it still carries a warning, At the time Dr Pierre Tanguy, a leader of the aggressive French nuclear industry, confessed that the catastrophe was caused by "the kind of operator error that we all experience in our plants, and is hard to eliminate". Back in Chernobyl another disaster may be brewing. For the vast concrete "sarcophagus" shielding the shattered reactor is listing to one side, cracking and in danger of collapsing. But Maria of Chernobyl is, illegally, staying put. "This child will regenerate our land", insists her mother. "We won't let her be taken away from here." Additional reporting by Severin Carrell Eyewitness: Natalia Manzurova Natalia Manzurova, a radiation expert ,spent four and a half years clearing up Chernobyl and the nearby town of Pripiat. She has written a vivid memoir of her experiences. Here extracts are published for the first time When I arrived, Pripiat was a city of abandoned, sometimes looted, multi-storeyed apartment houses, public squares, buildings, athletic complexes and stores, greeting us with a stench leaking from refrigerators that had not been turned on for over a year. Mice were everywhere. Sometimes I wept at the things I saw: children's beds and their toys and living room floors covered with photographs of people's smiling faces which I could never ignore, or bring myself to walk on. Photos in the kindergarten saddened me immensely and I hoped some miracle had spared their young owners. In one of its rooms I found a cage with the prickly skin of a hedgehog as wrinkled as an empty plastic bag. A second cage held bird feathers, the bodies likely eaten by mice. A sick dog lay in a child's bed in one of the napping rooms. It was the only bed that looked used so perhaps the child that slept there had befriended her. She crawled towards me with difficulty. She had no hair on her paws and lower legs, her flesh was bleeding, her eyes clouded and saliva streamed from her mouth. She had external beta radiation burns from hunting in contaminated grass . I went to an abandoned hospital to find a container we could use for water samples. I found a suitable large farm milk can, but inside it was the saddest thing imaginable - four, six or eight months old chocolate-coloured 'mummified' newborns with closed eyes and bowed arms and legs. © 2006 Independent News and Media Limited ***************************************************************** 56 Rutland Herald: Group appealing Vermont Yankee water discharge permit Rutland Vermont News & Information April 22, 2006 By ROSS SNEYD The Associated Press MONTPELIER — An environmental group appealed a state permit Friday that would allow Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to discharge warmer water into the Connecticut River. The Connecticut River Watershed Council said last week it might appeal the permit unless it could work out a compromise with the plant's owner that would ensure cooler water flows into the river. But leaders said they chose to go to the Vermont Environmental Court because some of the issues they want resolved are conditions of the permit ordered by the Natural Resources Agency, meaning that Yankee owner Entergy Nuclear can't change them on its own. "We realized they don't control the answers to all the problems that we have with the permit," said Rep. David Deen, D-Westminster, who also is the river steward for the council. In particular, the council argues that it and other members of the public should have a greater voice in decisions regarding the river. But the discharge permit relied on advice from the Environmental Advisory Committee, consisting of representatives from federal and state agencies in the three states surrounding Vermont Yankee. The plant is on the banks of the river in Vernon, near Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The primary issue that the council wants addressed, however, is the temperature of water that Vermont Yankee is permitted to send into the Connecticut River. The nuclear power plant draws water out of the river and pipes it through a closed system to cool the steam after it has passed through the electricity-producing turbines. The river water, which has warmed after passing through the hot steam, then can flow directly back into the river or be diverted into a series of cooling towers on the plant grounds before going back into the Connecticut. Entergy Nuclear wants to be able to bypass the cooling towers when it can because they're expensive to run, drawing 10 megawatts of the electricity Yankee produces. It sought permission essentially to raise by 1 degree the temperature of water that's returned to the river, which Deen has said could mean the water could be as warm as 85 degrees during the summer. The permit allows warmer water from June through October. The Connecticut River Watershed Council said Yankee was never forced to prove that the warmer water is not harming fish life in the river. "The evidence shows there has been some incremental damage, specifically to American shad," said David Mears of Vermont Law School, who has been working on the case along with student interns Christopher Curtis and Erin Barnes. "The state is not supposed to allow degradation of resources over time." Deen said there once had been 15,000 or more American shad passing through the hydroelectric dam at Vernon, but in recent years that number has fallen to as few as 500. There still are significantly more fish passing through a station in Holyoke, Mass., downstream from Vernon, suggesting that the Yankee plant could be contributing, he said. Vermont Yankee spokesman Brian Cosgrove said the company was interested in protecting the river, too, but there was no evidence what might be causing fewer fish in the river. "He doesn't have any smoking gun that points anywhere," Cosgrove said. Yankee was willing to work with the council to see if there were a better way to deal with the water temperature issue — including running the cooling towers more often — but it became clear that the council also wanted to address additional issues over which the company had no control, he said. "(Deen) seems to feel the regulatory process is flawed," Cosgrove said. ***************************************************************** 57 AFP: Finns in favour of building sixth nuclear reactor Sunday April 23, 11:47 AM [A nuclear power plant in Loviisa, Finland] HELSINKI (AFP) - Twenty years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, a majority of Finns are in favour of building a sixth nuclear reactor in their country, a poll has showed. Some 26 percent said Sunday they supported the idea while 36 percent said they supported it to some degree, the Gallup poll in leading daily Helsingin Sanomat said. Meanwhile, 16 percent were totally opposed to the idea and 17 percent were against it to some degree, according to the survey of 1,000 people conducted April 10-20. Some four percent were undecided. Finland is currently in the process of building its fifth nuclear reactor. The 1,600-megawatt pressurised water reactor at the Olkiluoto plant, near Pori in southwestern Finland, is expected to become operational in 2009. It will be the world's first third-generation reactor. Going against prevailing attitudes in many European countries at the time, the Finnish parliament approved the construction of the fifth reactor in 2002 on the basis that it would help reduce pollution and ensure energy independence in the Nordic country. Finland has few natural energy resources of its own, possessing neither oil, gas or coal deposits and having little hydroelectric capacity. As a result, it currently imports almost 70 percent of the electricity it needs. AFP ***************************************************************** 58 Rutland Herald: Vt. Yankee power increase continues to 115 percent Rutland Vermont News & Information April 23, 2006 By DAVID GRAM The Associated Press MONTPELIER — Vermont Yankee's on-again, off-again power increase is on again. Technicians at the 34-year-old nuclear plant in Vernon began the process of increasing the plant's power output by 20 percent, to 650 megawatts from 540 megawatts, in early March after receiving final regulatory approvals in late February. But they've twice halted the increase, which is being done in stages equal to 5 percent of the original power level, to check out sounds that may indicate undue strain on plant components. The second unplanned hiatus in the power increase process ended Friday evening, when officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Vermont Yankee it could increase its power output by another notch, from 112.5 percent to 115 percent of its original output. Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the NRC's Northeast regional office in King of Prussia, Pa., said in an e-mail that "NRC staff, with support from its consultants at Argonne National Laboratory, completed its review of the information. The NRC staff had no objections, based on that review, to Vermont Yankee continuing with the power ascension to the next plateau, 115-percent power." Vermont Yankee spokesman Robert Williams said the 115 percent level was reached at 11 a.m. Saturday. "Since March 4, Vermont Yankee has completed power increases totaling 81 megawatts for the New England electrical grid," Williams said by e-mail. "The 81 megawatts is enough to power approximately 81,000 homes." Sheehan and Williams said that when the plant hit 115 percent, it was to pause for 96 hours, or four days, to collect data on how it is performing at the new power level. The four-day pauses were to occur at 105 percent, 110 percent and 115 percent of original power before the plant was given the green light to go to 120 percent. But twice, once at the 105 percent level and again halfway between the 110 percent and 115 percent levels, instruments have picked up sounds indicating possible strain on the plant's steam dryer. The steam dryer is a large unit at the top of the reactor that removes moisture from the steam made by the boiling water before it is sent to spin the plant's turbines. Officials with Vermont Yankee's owner, Entergy Nuclear, and the NRC have expressed concern about the steam dryer because steam dryers have cracked at some other nuclear plants around the country that have increased power. Sonic signals picked up when the plant hit 105 percent of original power in early March caused it to stop the power increase process for four weeks, while Vermont Yankee officials joined their counterparts from General Electric, which built the plant, and the NRC in reviewing the data and determining the plant could proceed to the next level. Vermont Yankee appeared to clear the 110 percent hurdle without any significant problems, but officials said April 6 that the power increase had been halted again at 112.5 percent because of a new sonic signal — this one at a slightly higher frequency than the one picked up at 105 percent. That caused the most recent pause in the power increase process, this one lasting about two weeks. ***************************************************************** 59 TheStar.com: Nuclear power: A comeback story Sun. Apr. 23, 2006. | Updated at 04:13 AM Governments everywhere are suddenly in love with nukes again. What gives? Apr. 23, 2006. 04:07 KURT KLEINER When Premier Dalton McGuinty last week suggested Ontario needs new nuclear power plants to provide clean, cheap energy for the future, he didn't talk about "our friend the atom," but his statement still caused an odd sense of dιjΰ vu. For many of us, optimism about nuclear energy carries the whiff of faded 1950s futurism, of a World of Tomorrow where citizens in silver jumpsuits would drive along elevated skyways and vacation in undersea cities. In the decades after World War II, eager governments bankrolled the creation of a civilian nuclear industry. But optimism about nuclear power evaporated after the Three Mile Island accident and, more notably, the horrific explosion at Chernobyl that occurred 20 years ago next Wednesday. Now it turns out that while most of us were looking the other way, nuclear power has once again become the energy source of the future. Ontario's new interest in the nuclear option puts it smack in the middle of what looks like a global comeback for a power source that many thought was finished. Of course, nuclear power never really went away. In Ontario, 16 reactors supply almost half of the province's electricity. Worldwide, more than 400 reactors generate 2,560 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year, about 17 per cent of all electricity generated. But until just a few years ago, nuclear capacity was flat or decreasing, as old nuclear units were decommissioned with no plans to replace them. Now, however, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that worldwide nuclear generation capacity will jump from 361 gigawatts to 422 gigawatts by 2025. McGuinty's speech last Wednesday hinted that Ontario would add to those numbers. Although the premier admitted that nuclear power has its problems, he seems to be setting the stage for accepting an Ontario Power Authority recommendation that the province spend $40 billion and build 12 new nuclear reactors. The original promise of nuclear power was that it would be plentiful, cheap and pollution-free. The U.S. nuclear weapons program had proven that a few pounds of uranium could generate astonishing amounts of power. Harnessing that power for civilian ends seemed to be just a matter of getting the technology right. That early optimism faded. Although nuclear plants generated the promised electricity, they did it at a much higher cost than expected. Once they were up and running, they could generate fairly cheap electricity, but because they were so expensive to build in the first place, the total cost of the electricity over the lifetime of the plant ended up being higher than for plants powered by coal, oil or natural gas. Although the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents played a role, much of the resistance to building new plants has been simply economic, as utilities and investors shied away from what seemed like a risky business. The number of new plants being planned now shows that something has changed in the past few years. The biggest growth in nuclear power will be in China, which has vowed to build 25 to 35 new reactors by 2020. Companies are already trying to get in line for the contracts. In February, Toshiba Corp. agreed to pay $5.4 billion for nuclear-power-plant manufacturer Westinghouse Electric Co., largely because of its expertise in making the kind of reactors favoured by the Chinese. In the United States, which hasn't built a new nuclear plant since 1978, nine utilities have started the licensing process that would allow them to build between 15 and 26 new nuclear plants over the next 10 years. `The economics of nuclear power is 90 per cent policy and 10 per cent wishful thinking' Daniel M. Kammen Physicist So what has changed? One factor in nuclear power's favour is that it doesn't require fossil fuels. Not only does that make it less likely that countries will have to fight one another for scarce coal, oil and natural gas a few years in the future, it also means nuclear plants don't produce carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. The idea of nuclear power as a "green" energy source seems odd, after decades of opposition from environmentalists. But with global warming shaping up as the greatest environmental danger, nuclear power's lack of greenhouse emissions is definitely a benefit. If all of the nuclear plants in the world were to be replaced with fossil fuel plants tomorrow, annual carbon emissions would rise by 2 billion tonnes. Of course, radioactive waste is nuclear power's environmental Achilles heel, since it remains dangerous for centuries and no one is quite sure what to do with it. The only solution anyone has thought of is to bury it in a deep hole and hope there are no leaks for a few thousand years. Years of controversy over the planned nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev., show that nothing is easy when it comes to disposing of nuclear waste. The economic argument for and against nuclear power is a more complicated one. Probably the most authoritative recent study was a 2003 report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology titled The Future of Nuclear Power. The report concluded that, taking all costs into account, electricity generated by nuclear plants was the most expensive  half again as expensive as coal, and 20 per cent more expensive than natural gas. But the authors also suggested that nuclear power could become more affordable with new plant designs that can be built more quickly and require less downtime for maintenance. Nuclear power will look even more affordable, the authors said, if governments impose a carbon emissions tax. A tax of $200 (U.S.) per tonne of carbon would make nuclear power the cheapest form of energy, they say. Not everyone is convinced that the nuclear power comeback will materialize. "I don't think there's going to be this huge renaissance," says Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S. environmental group. Cochran thinks the renewed interest in nuclear power in the U.S., at least, is spurred by a recent energy bill that promised more tax breaks and loan guarantees for the first new plants to be built. He thinks many of the proposed U.S. plants will never materialize, and that China will slow down its proposed nuclear program when the costs become more apparent. Daniel M. Kammen, a Berkeley physicist who studies energy policy, says it's hard to untangle the cost of nuclear power, largely because it is so heavily subsidized by governments. "The economics of nuclear power is 90 per cent policy and 10 per cent wishful thinking," Kammen says. "Nuclear is shrouded in its own internal economic analysis that other technologies don't need to deal with." Nevertheless, if governments such as Canada, the U.S. and China continue to push for nuclear energy, plants will be built, whatever the economic realities. In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his "Atoms for Peace" speech before the United Nations General Assembly, calling for a global effort to harness nuclear energy. "Who can doubt," he said, "if the entire body of the world's scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fissionable material with which to test and develop their ideas, that this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal, efficient and economic usage." Despite 50 years of trying since then, many still doubt whether nuclear power is necessary or desirable. But for now, it looks like the world is willing to give it one more shot. Kurt Kleiner is a Toronto-based science writer. Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All ***************************************************************** 60 Pottstown Mercury: NRC commends Exelon for safe year at Limerick Sunday 23 April, 2006 Mike Castiglione, mcastiglione@pottsmerc.com 04/23/2006 LIMERICK -- Exelon’s Limerick Generating Station had a safe year of operation in 2005, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported at its yearly assessment. The NRC reported four findings of "very low safety significance" during the past year, which still places Limerick below the national average of eight such findings per plant. In addition, Unit 1 and Unit 2 each had an unplanned automatic shutdown in 2005. "Those shutdowns were caused by unexpected equipment failures," said Jim Trapp, the NRC’s branch chief. "The operator response in those events was excellent in each case. The plant was maintained in a safe condition each time, and the station identified and corrected problems prior to the plant restart." The findings mean the NRC will perform only baseline testing at the plant for the coming year. This is the fourth consecutive year baseline testing will be done at the plant. Last year, the NRC spent more than 4,700 hours on inspections, looking at areas such as equipment, emergency preparedness, radiation protection and corrective action. In 2004, by comparison, there were 5,660 hours of inspections at the plant. "While we had just a few findings, we all agree, they were good findings and good critical reviews," said Ron DeGregorio, Exelon’s site vice president. "Our goal is obviously is to self-assess to find those kind of things and take corrective action." The NRC’s evaluations are focused on operational execution and safety, security, equipment reliability, corrective action and self assessment programs, and environmental stewardship. While Exelon plants in Illinois have come under fire recently for concealing leaks of radioactive tritium, DeGregorio said Limerick has had no such issues. To the contrary, the plant received a special certification last year for its environmental stewardship. "We know that the leaks are of significant interest to the regulators, to the utilities, to the surrounding communities," DeGregorio said. "While none have been found to have significant safety issues, they are surely at the forefront of our minds in the industry. Limerick has embarked on an environmental assessment program this year so we can get out ahead of that and make sure that we have good healthy systems in place to monitor that." Donna Cuthbert, vice president for the Alliance for a Clean Environment, questioned officials about tritium leaks at Limerick. "I am concerned," Cuthbert said. "As it turns out, we have evidence that there has been a substantial leak here since 1997, and there is a paper from 2004 that says Limerick was cited with an inadequate strategy for repairing the crack." Trapp said the NRC inspected the issue to which Cuthbert was referring, though he said it was not a leak. He said there is a dike surrounding two storage tanks on site and if they were to break, the water would be contained in a dike area and not be released to the public. "Those dikes do have some small cracks that have been patched over the years," Trapp said. "There have been some initial reports written to go back again another time and patch those areas up that have small cracks to make sure there is no doubt that if anything does leak from the tanks inside the dike area, that it stays contained. "We looked at this issue, and we also inspected it recently about a month ago. Based on (Exelon’s) renewed program to monitor tritium, they are going back to take another look at the issue. They will have to address their corrective action program. To be clear, there was no water leak containing tritium from 1997 to 2004. There was just the possibility that it could go through the cracks in the dike area." The NRC’s assessment letter is available online at the NRC’s Web site, www.nrc.gov ©The Mercury 2006 Copyright © 1995 - 2006 Townnews.comAll Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 61 Odessa American Online: General Atomics has long history with nuclear power Serving the Permian Basin of West Texas Saturday, April 22, 2006 EDITOR'S NOTE: Last October, officials met to debate the possibility of locating a next-generation nuclear power plant in Andrews County. That plant would be the first constructed on U.S. soil in 30 years. General Atomics, a global high-tech company, drafted the original design for the reactor, which is being customized for Andrews County. This is the third of four articles exploring the effect its construction would have on the area and perhaps the globe. By Jennifer Edwards Odessa American SAN DIEGO For more than 40 years, atomic energy has grown 15 buildings, countless tropical flowers and an employee swimming pool on top of Torrey Pines Mesa. Indirectly, of course. The park-like, 120-acre site is home to General Atomics, a company begun in a small schoolhouse in 1956 with a simple idea, Doug Fouquet, public relations head for GA, said. That idea: the peaceful use of the atom. "A number of the scientists who worked on the (first nuclear bombs) after WWII wanted to work on peaceful technology," he explained. Those scientists brain-stormed all through the summer, Fouquet said, racking brilliant minds for the best, most useful ideas. They decided on three initial projects. They decided to research fission - the splitting of the atom to generate enormous heat and electricity. They selected the field of fusion - the melding together of two atoms to create energy. The facility now has the largest experimental fusion machine in the country, called the DIII-D. Scientists come from all over the world to perform research with the machine, Ken Schultz, operations director for GA's energy group, said. Most germane to the Basin, perhaps, was the summer's third idea - the MHR research reactor, which used helium for coolant rather than water. MHR stands for Training Research and Isotope Production, General Atomics. The design was so successful that scores were built across the globe. Sixty-seven are currently still in use. "That's basically the major reactor in use today by U.S. utility companies," Fouquet explained. Three of them are within an hour of General Atomics, in use at San Onofre electric plants, Fouquet said. In the meantime, General Atomics has not been idle. "Research has continued all that time to develop a better reactor." Enter Andrews. In October and at the recommendation of the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, GA met with the little town's leadership to determine interest in locating a reactor there. The MHR, said Alan Baxter, GA's manager of nuclear engineering, was the father of the reactor currently in the design stage for Andrews: The VHT3R. (For a more in-depth look at the reactor, check Wednesday's OA.) TODAY'S LAND OF TOMORROW Scientists continue to build on research into fission, fusion and MHR, but that research has spun outward in numerous, unanticipated ways. That technology includes, among a vast array of projects, magnetically levitated vehicles, deadly unmanned aircraft, Humvee-mounted lasers, a towering fusion device and the bedrock of the proposed Andrews reactor. As a result, the company that was originally just a division of General Dynamics has grown into a technology giant with clients as powerful and diverse as the U.S., Russian, Japanese and Korean governments, which buy or study the technology hatched here. The U.S. government clients include the U.S. Air Force, NASA and the U.S. Navy - which houses submarines powered with nuclear reactors not far away in San Diego Bay. Kenneth Schultz, operations director for GA's energy group, said that Japanese and Russian scientists also fund some of its programs - like its mammoth fusion project - in order to study them. The little schoolhouse office is gone, replaced by facilities that stretch past the mesa and throughout the states of California, Iowa and Utah. "There are over 3,000 employees equally split between aeronautical systems and what we call `the rest of General Atomics,' " Fouquet said. Some scientists even work as far away as Russia, Fouquet said. Not bad for a summer's work. INSIDE THE LAB Outside the General Atomic labs and research areas, lush grass and landscape softens the angular buildings. Inside at least one research area, non-sequiters like a crossbow or a Styrofoam cup gives a false sense of casualness to serious-looking machinery. Beakers are filled with green substances. Sharpie markers are mounted in holsters near prototypical apparatus. The lasers for at least one experiment are shielded from dust by Styrofoam cups. The effect is a cross between Star Wars and a high school science club hangout. Those little, casual touches perhaps point to engineer's ease with their field and its accoutrements. Their eagerness to talk about their projects bespeaks enthusiasm. Ken Schultz, for instance, a man with an impeccably groomed white beard and a flawless Kasey Kasem voice, smiles broadly in the photograph on his I.D. badge. He also smiles often as he leads visitors - and there are many - on a tour. He smiles even more when he talks about the proposed Andrews reactor. REACTOR-READY Schultz was one of the scores of engineers who originally conceptualized, then drafted the design on which Andrews' proposed VHT3R reactor is built. But, says Schultz, the country was not ready then for the much safer, more efficient and so-called "next generation reactor." The design then, has slumbered for the past 30 years. Scientists won't have to work hard to revive it. The question is not `if' the reactor is built, he banters with co-workers. It's when. American Online: c /o Odessa American 222 E. 4th Street P.O. Box 2952 Odessa, TX 79760 Copyright © 1999-2006 Odessa American. All rights reserved. Refer comments to Webmaster. ***************************************************************** 62 Knox News: Chernobyl remains a Soviet-era nightmare By EFREM LUKATSKY, Associated Press April 23, 2006 EDITOR'S NOTE - Associated Press photographer Efrem Lukatsky has visited the Chernobyl power plant and the highly contaminated zone dozens of times since a 1986 reactor explosion caused the world's worst nuclear accident. He reflects on the catastrophe that continues to haunt him and his nation. KIEV, Ukraine - The first advice we got after the Chernobyl explosion was to take a daily drop of iodine on a sugar cube. We heard it on the Voice of America broadcasts we listened to clandestinely. Local media, heavily under the Soviet thumb, told us there was nothing to worry about. A few days after the explosion, my friend Viktor Ivashchenko called me and told me that I should flee Kiev and never come back. Viktor's words carried a lot of weight - he was an engineer at the Institute of Nuclear Physics. But Kiev, the Ukrainian capital just 75 miles from the destroyed, radiation-spewing reactor, was home. Staying meant that I eventually was able to go to Chernobyl dozens of times since the world's worst nuclear disaster, whose 20th anniversary falls Wednesday. There I would take photographs and feed my hunger to learn all I could about the catastrophe that had hit my country. But staying also meant that I lived with gnawing anxieties and saw good friends die mysteriously or grow thin and sallow. May Day, the biggest Soviet holiday, fell just five days after the explosion, and those who trusted the authorities' reassurances took part in rallies and parades. Many of us felt a tickle in our throats that day - apparently a sign of radioactive iodine - and decided not to linger outdoors to watch the bicycle race. News of the explosion didn't surprise me. Four years earlier, I had visited Pripyat, the city where most Chernobyl workers lived, and had seen trucks spreading soapsuds on the asphalt. There were rumors of a radiation leak. The health effects of the radiation that the blast spewed over a wide stretch of the Soviet Union are still hard to assess 20 years later. A consortium of U.N. agencies said last year that about 9,000 people eventually are likely to die from Chernobyl-caused illnesses; Greenpeace International this month said the death toll will be 10 times higher - around 93,000. Back in 1986, anybody's guess was good, and I was dying to know the truth about what happened at Chernobyl. But at that time, I was working as an underwater welder at a scientific institute and had no official justification for going to the power station. I tried to meet with Volodymyr Shevchenko, who was making a TV documentary about Chernobyl, but he died of a mysterious heart ailment. A few months later, I managed to get into the "exclusion zone." I was amazed by the dedication of the "liquidators" - crews of soldiers, workers and coal miners who had been drafted to cover the destroyed reactor in a coffin of steel and concrete. It was too hot to breathe, so disregarding safety rules, they tore masks off their faces and dug tunnels with shovels to pour concrete under the reactor. Hundreds of concrete mixers, trucks with sand and excavators crawled around the plant. Later, I saw them in a graveyard of highly contaminated vehicles a few miles away. Sergei Chashchenko worked as an engineer on a diesel locomotive that brought building materials to the sarcophagus under construction. He picked up a wrench from the ground and burned his palm. Four years later, he was suffering from leukemia. People stole anything that might come in handy or make a souvenir. Years later, I saw the destroyed reactor's control panel. The buttons were gone. I met some of those souvenir-hunters in hospitals. They had leukemia. I made repeat visits to Chernobyl and took photographs. Some of them appeared in the magazine Ogonyok. In 1989, The Associated Press hired me. The nuclear specter lingered: I'm 49 and in good health, yet an AP colleague who had never been to Chernobyl was operated on for thyroid cancer, one of the diseases most closely tied to the disaster. Meanwhile, signs of big change were afoot. In the spring of 1989, the Soviet republic of Ukraine had its first-ever protests. On the waves of Chernobyl rallies, a powerful national movement grew stronger. Millions demanded independence. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, with some politicians saying the Chernobyl accident speeded the breakup. Chernobyl has always stayed with me - a great tragedy compounded by a shameful cover-up whose lesson was to always seek the truth with my own eyes and camera. Shortly before Chernobyl's last operating reactor was closed in 2000, I went there for AP and got a look into the sarcophagus over the destroyed unit. I put on two layers of thick white cotton clothes, protective rubber boots, a special hat and a helmet, padded jackets, gloves and a face mask. I covered my camera with plastic as thoroughly as I could and followed the guide through high-security checkpoints into the sarcophagus. My guide's flashlight picked up the sparkle of dust slowly whirling around us - just a speck of radioactive dust could be lethal if it enters the body. We tried not to take any deep breaths as we wove our way through dark, wreckage-strewn passages. We reached the old control room, long and poorly lighted, with its damaged machinery, the place where the Soviet engineers threw a power switch for a routine test at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, and two explosions followed one after another immediately. We bent our heads to get through the dark, narrow labyrinth leading to the center of the sarcophagus. The walls were covered with lead plates intended to decrease radiation levels. There were piles of lead and boron powder dropped by helicopters to suppress the nuclear reaction. My Geiger counter registered about 80,000 microroentgens an hour - 16,000 times the safe limit. It was time to leave. The nearby city of Pripyat is now a ghostly ruin. The only signs that anybody has been there recently are graffiti drawn by Dutch artists and compositions of dolls, gas masks and yellowed newspapers placed in a deserted kindergarten to communicate how tragedy still haunts the land 20 years later. Copyright 2006, Associated Press. All rights ***************************************************************** 63 icWales: Remembering Chernobyl Apr 23 2006 Wales on Sunday A WELSH Euro MP travelled to Chernobyl yesterday as a top radiation expert warned a nuclear accident in Britain could make the 1986 disaster "look like a vicar's tea party". Dr Keith Baverstock told a conference marking the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl that enough radioactive material to fill Albert Hall five times was being stored in "very much less than ideal conditions" at British power stations, including Wylfa on Anglesey. Visiting the Chernobyl site yesterday, 80 miles north of Kiev, Plaid Cymru MEP Jill Evans said it was the strongest argument against any expansion of nuclear power in Wales. "Some people say Chernobyl could never happen again, but you can never say that. They said it could never happen before," she said. Her comments came as The Other Report on Chernobyl (Torch), written by British scientists Dr Ian Fairlie and Dr David Sumner, claimed the long-term effects of the disaster had been severely underestimated by officials. Torch claims that more than half of the fallout from the explosion landed outside Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, contaminating about 34 per cent of the UK's surface, including Wales. The report says the 1986 disaster could eventually cause up to 66,000 deaths from cancer, 15 times higher than the figure from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organisation, who in September set the number of excess cancer deaths at 4,000. Copyright and Trade Mark Notice © owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror Plc 2006 icWalesTM is a trade mark of Trinity Mirror Plc. ***************************************************************** 64 News & Star: N-plant blast would kill hundreds of thousands Published on 22/04/2006 By Staff Reporter A SUCCESSFUL terrorist plot to crash a hijacked airliner into Sellafield could lead to hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths across the British Isles, experts warned yesterday. Nuclear physicist from the Oxford Research Group think-tank, Dr Frank Barnaby, said a September 11-style terrorist attack would cause 210,000 deaths for every one of Sellafield’s 14 tanks used to store high-level radioactive waste. The terrifying scenario was outlined in a report submitted to the Government’s review of Britain’s energy policy. Dr Barnaby said it would be β€œgrossly irresponsible” of the Government to expand nuclear power and thus extend the risk of nuclear terrorism. He based his death toll estimate on public information about the amount of the caesium-137 radioisotope stored at the Cumbria plant, compared with the amounts of the same isotope released by the Chernobyl disaster and its subsequent fatalities. The report said: β€œScaling up the calculated Sellafield release to the Chernobyl accident suggests that a terrorist attack on the high-level waste tanks could result worldwide in about 210,000 fatal cancers per tank. β€œDepending on the strength and direction of the winds at the time of the release of the radioactivity, these deaths will occur in the United Kingdom, Ireland and parts of Europe and perhaps even further afield. β€œIf a terrorist attack used a commercial jet airliner more than one tank may be involved.” He concluded that the decision to build new nuclear reactors would β€œconsiderably enhance” the risk of proliferating nuclear weapons to other countries and to terrorists. β€œIn today’s world, in which fundamentalist terrorists are active and likely to become more active, to increase the risk of nuclear terrorism is, to say the least, grossly irresponsible,” he said. Dr Barnaby has formerly worked at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, been director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and held professorships at the Free University of Amsterdam and the University of Minnesota. He said more than one tank at Sellafield would be likely to be destroyed in a commercial airliner hijack. β€œThe crash would create an enormous fireball which would vaporise everything,” he said. β€œIf we concentrate on caesium-137 – the most dangerous to human health – it would go up in the fireball and blow downwind.” Sellafield has 21 water-cooled tanks used to store fission products from the two sites’ reprocessing plants, said the report, but seven are normally kept in reserve in case one of the others needs to be emptied. The report also raised the possibility of terrorists attacking a reactor or spent fuel pond by: Crashing a light aircraft or truck filled with high explosives into the facilities; Attacking it with missiles; :: Sabotaging from inside by using infiltrators. ***************************************************************** 65 Deseret News: Hatch urged to boost aid for downwinders [deseretnews.com] Sunday, April 23, 2006 By Nancy Perkins Deseret Morning News ST. GEORGE — Nearly 200 people crowded a conference room at Dixie Regional Medical Center this week to tell Sen. Orrin Hatch they want the federal government to expand its compensation program for victims of nuclear fallout and stop further weapons testing in Nevada. Michelle Thomas, who grew up in St. George and suffers from numerous health problems tied to radiation exposure, asked Hatch about the government's plans to test a massive conventional weapon at the test site on June 2. "Where will you be on June 2?" she asked the senator, who did not answer. "Will you be here with us, or will you be on a plane flying far away from it all?" Many people, including Thomas, said they are worried about the experiment, in which 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil will be blown up. The material will explode with a force equivalent to 593 tons of TNT and is expected to raise a mushroom cloud of dust, which officials have said would cause no harm to the population of Las Vegas and other communities nearby. "I am not going to let them do anything that would cause downwind damage," Hatch told the group. Utah's lone Democratic congressman, Rep. Jim Matheson, has already voiced concerns that the experiment could be a possible prelude to resumption of nuclear tests. One woman told Hatch she feared Utah would do nothing to stop nuclear-weapons tests if they do resume. "I want Utah to fight to stop this. What do the children of our future do? What do we tell them?" she asked the senator. Others in the audience questioned whether more could be done for victims of previous radiation exposure. "I wonder why we can't get help for people who were living in northern Utah at the time," one woman told Utah's senior Republican senator. "There are seven of us who lived in Bountiful at the time of the tests and we've had breast cancer, liver and kidney cancer." Hatch said although he worked hard on the government's Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 and its amendment in 2000, he wishes more people could be covered under the program. "I have to admit I wish I could have gotten more done," he told the group of mostly senior citizens. "We have expanded the area of coverage, but you have to understand that not every cancer came from this. Scientifically, legally and legislatively it's very, very difficult to work that through." From 1951 until 1992, the U.S. government conducted more than 900 nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site. The National Cancer Institute released reports in 1997 and 2001, providing evidence of radiation exposure across Utah. People who lived in the area during the testing years and are victims of specific forms of cancer could be eligible for the federal government's radiation-compensation program. The medical center is the site of the Radiation Exposure Screening Education Program, a federally funded clinic that helps identify health problems for those who qualify under the compensation program. Hundreds of people have taken advantage of the free testing and education materials offered at the clinic. E-mail: nperkins@desnews.com © 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 66 Sunday Herald: Revealed: fears over radioactive food threat - Scotland By Rob Edwards Environment Editor PLANS to increase emissions of radioactive waste from Scotlands two nuclear power stations would contaminate food in breach of safety limits, the governments Food Standards Agency (FSA) has warned. The Sunday Herald can reveal that any escalation of releases of radioactive gases from the Hunterston nuclear station in North Ayrshire would be unacceptable to the food safety watchdog. Children who eat locally produced food could receive radiation doses above the recommended limit, it said. The FSA also pointed out that proposed new aerial emissions from the Torness nuclear plant in East Lothian could cause a problem to crops. Peas, beans and other vegetables grown nearby could be polluted in excess of European radiation safety levels, it said. The revelations come amidst a rising crescendo of arguments over the Prime Minister Tony Blairs desire to build new nuclear power stations. A flurry of pro and anti-nuclear campaigns are being launched this week to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the worlds worst nuclear accident, at Chernobyl in Ukraine. The international consensus among scientists is that exposure to even the tiniest amounts of radioactivity can increase the risk of cancer. Radiation can damage human DNA and trigger changes that lead over years to the growth of tumours. That is why health and regulatory agencies worldwide are now working to minimise public exposure to radiation. Despite this, the company that runs Hunterston and Torness, British Energy, submitted plans for major increases in some of its emissions. The company applied to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) for a 50% increase in the amount of the radioactive gas, carbon-14, that Hunterston is allowed to discharge into the atmosphere. This is necessary, British Energy said, because carbon-14 builds up in reactors as they age. The gas is created as radiation bombards the blocks of graphite that surround the reactor core. But in a letter obtained by the Sunday Herald, the increase has been rejected by the FSA. We have considered the proposed limits that British Energy has requested and believe that these will lead to unacceptable levels of radioactivity in food, wrote the agencys scientific advisor Neil Leitch. This is because, an FSA spokeswoman explained, it may be possible for an infant consuming locally produced foods to receive a radiation dose more than 20% above the constraint recommended by government radiation scientists. Dr Ian Fairlie, an independent radiation consultant who used to advise Sepa, argued that a close watch had to be kept on carbon-14, which would persist for thousands of years and had the ability to bind organically with cells and organs in the human body. He said: Any advice by the FSA that emissions could lead to radiation dose limits being breached must be viewed with concern. No matter how small the doses are there is always some level of risk. At Torness, the FSA said that releases during maintenance twice every three years under the new proposals could contaminate legumes and leafy green vegetables planted nearby. On the worst assumptions, contamination by another radioactive gas, sulphur-35, could exceed the intervention levels adopted by the European Union for nuclear accidents. The prospect of children eating food contaminated in breach of radiation safety limits is unthinkable, said Pete Roche, a consultant to Greenpeace. It is not something that any regulator or any government should tolerate. British Energys proposed emission limits for Torness have also been criticised by another government watchdog, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The limits for carbon-14 and sulphur-35 leave little or no headroom above projected emissions, according to the HSEs principal nuclear inspector, Ron Cooper. HSE considers that this lack of headroom may have safety implications by putting the power station operators under unnecessary pressure, he said. It may also lead to the additional accumulation of radioactive wastes on the site. The Scottish Executive drew attention to issues concerning the proposed treatment of waste resins from Torness. Their early disposal could lead to discharges to the environment which raised a fundamental principle for Sepa to consider, it said. British Energy is also seeking permission for large increases in the amount of contaminated solvents, paints and batteries it is permitted to send to be burnt in an incinerator at Hythe, near Southampton. And the company wants similar hikes in the amounts of radioactive waste its allowed to disposed at the Drigg disposal site near Sellafield in Cumbria. British Energy claimed that most of its discharge authorisations would be reduced. We share Sepas aims to seek the best environmental outcomes, said a company spokeswoman. We are also carrying out our own consultation with community stakeholders at both sites to outline why and by how much we are requesting to decrease and in a minority of cases to increase authorisation limits. Byron Tilly, from Sepas radioactive team, said: We will not consider how to deal with British Energys request until we have received the response to the consultation. The consultation is due to end on June 2. This week, the Scottish Greens and Friends of the Earth Scotland will be separately launching new campaigns against nuclear power. On Monday, the CBI business lobby will be calling for a programme of new nuclear stations. On Thursday, the governments Committee on Radioactive Waste Management is expected to issue its long-awaited draft recommendations on how to deal with Britains nuclear waste. It is likely to suggest that the waste be buried in a hole, but it will not say where the hole should be. Among a welter of other initiatives is a new website aimed at providing details of pro-nuclear campaigners. Called nuclearspin.org, it details the affiliations of prominent nuclear enthusiasts. 23 April 2006 © newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 67 NIGERIAN TRIBUNE: Ajaokuta Steel assures on radioactive materials Newsupdated: 24 April 2006 The Ajaokuta Steel Company has given the assurance that the radioactive materials in its possession were safe and poised no immediate danger. The companys General Manager(Project), Mr Stanley Imagie, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ajaokuta, Kogi State, at the weekend that the radioactive materials were properly secured. The Russians left behind the radioactive materials that were to be used in the lining of the walls of the blast furnace, but todays technology had made them irrelevant and unusable. We have contacted the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the issue and they have visited the complex three times and they gave us a clean bill regarding leakage or contamination of the environment, he said. Imagie said the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile- Ife, had also been contacted and had also given the company a clean bill. The university, he said, had been invited to assist the company in the proper disposal of the materials and would carry out the disposal according to international standards. He commended the Russians for the proper ways they stored the materials, making it impossible for them to contaminate the environment. Imagie gave the assurance that the company would remain committed to safety standard and protect the environment. He said the company had distributed 4,000 boots, 3,500 hand gloves and 4,000 helmets to its staff to reduce health hazard and protective suits had been provided to workers in the company. © 2006 African Newspapers of Nigeria Plc. Publishers of the Tribune Titles. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 68 icWales: Would a Wylfa disaster affect you? Apr 22 2006 Rhodri Clark, Western Mail [Wales] PEOPLE living in South Wales and beyond might have to be resettled if disaster struck the ageing Wylfa nuclear station 200 miles away on Anglesey, it was claimed yesterday. Campaigners have applied fallout patterns from the Chernobyl disaster 20 years ago to predict how Britain would be affected if Wylfa suffered a similar explosion. If the wind blew from the north, rain could deposit some of the worst Wylfa fallout on Cardiff and other settlements in South and Mid Wales, according to the Keep Wales Nuclear Free campaign. The map was dismissed yesterday by Wylfa's operators as "scaremongering", but campaigner Ian Taylor said it was produced to show people how an accident at a reactor hundreds of miles away could affect them. He claimed a Chernobyl-style accident in Wales could not be ruled out and that Wylfa's reactor has been shut down in recent years because of cracks. "Most people think they live far enough from a nuclear reactor not to worry," said Mr Taylor, a former scientific and political adviser to Greenpeace. "Our map, which re-plots the radiation hotspots resulting from Chernobyl as if the explosion had occurred at Wylfa, shows that such an accident could require long-term evacuation of Cardiff and a swathe of South Wales, as well as Anglesey itself." He said the fallout shown would never occur in exactly the same pattern as after Chernobyl, because of different climatic effects. "The map shows what's possible. In this case the map presumes that the wind is broadly from the north. We've had a lot of northerly winds these last few weeks. "The map also presumes that it's comparatively rainy over the southern belt at the time the fallout is going through the atmosphere over the southern towns. "If the wind came from the prevailing direction, the fallout would splatter Manchester. If it blew from the east, you would be worrying about Dublin and Ireland. "People generally don't realise how far-reaching the effect of Chernobyl was. The areas requiring mandatory long-term evacuation are not only close to the reactor, but also include equally radioactive hotspots 100 miles and more from the nuclear reactor. "Even something that happened in the far north of Wales could have dramatic consequences in the southern cities and Bristol." Mr Taylor, who lives near Machynlleth, admitted Wylfa's design was different from Chernobyl's and experiments like the one which led to the Chernobyl accident were not conducted at Wylfa. But he said nuclear inspectors had ordered Wylfa's closure between 2000 and 2001. "Their worries centred on the discovery of cracks in welds to the reactor pipework and the graphite reactor core that has become crumbly and weak after decades of erosion by radiation. "They feared that leakage through the cracks could lead to a sudden shock which could cause the reactor core to move or partially collapse. This could make it impossible to re-insert the control rods, which, as at Chernobyl, would leave the reactor core in a runaway nuclear reaction." He said Wylfa was operating beyond its design life but local politicians on Anglesey were pressing for it to remain open after planned closure in 2010. Mr Taylor also claimed Wylfa was not built to withstand an impact from a large aircraft hijacked by terrorists. British Nuclear Group, which operates Wylfa, said safety was its priority. "We wouldn't operate the reactor if we didn't think it was safe, and we wouldn't be allowed to do so," said spokesman Nigel Monckton. "We have to convince an independent regulator that this reactor is safe to operate. "I don't think this kind of scaremongering is helpful. It isn't a constructive way to hold a debate about the future energy needs of the country." He also dismissed the claim Wylfa could not withstand impact from a plane flown by terrorists. "These are some of the most robust structures that man has ever built. There's a huge concrete shield around the reactors. There are emergency plans in place to deal with all eventualities." * Opened in 1971 on the north coast of Anglesey. * The last power station built for Magnox nuclear technology. * Has two reactors * Meets 40% of Wales' electricity needs * On a typical day it supplies enough electricity for Liverpool and Manchester combined * Since commissioning it has supplied more than 225,000m units (kilowatt hours) of electricity * Closure is scheduled for 2010 * After closure the fuel and waste will be removed and the reactor block put into a safe and secure state for "a prolonged period of time" Source: British Nuclear Group* Opened in 1971 on the north coast of Anglesey. Copyright and Trade Mark Notice © owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror Plc 2006 icWalesTM is a trade mark of Trinity Mirror Plc. ***************************************************************** 69 The Australian: Mystery of Hiroshima uranium solved at last + NEWS.com.au Tom Richardson and Jeremy Roberts April 24, 2006 A 60-YEAR mystery over whether uranium used for the Hiroshima atomic bomb came from Australia has finally been solved. On August 8, 1945, two days after the bomb was dropped on the Japanese city, killing more than 90,000 people, The Sydney Morning Herald splashed a headline across its front page, "Uranium from South Australian source", reporting that Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill had obtained Australian uranium for the Manhattan Project, which was "flown out" from Mt Painter in South Australia. But an investigation by The Australian has revealed that although Australia was willing to provide uranium to British scientists for use in the atomic bomb project, logistics meant none was sent to Britain. The Daily Telegraph reported at the time that the deal "was one of Australia's most closely guarded secrets". And just last week speculation about Australia's role in the project was rekindled when a former Australian navy chief, Vice-Admiral (retired) Richard Peek, said he had been told of a military voyage from Adelaide to California that may - or may not - have delivered uranium for use in the Manhattan Project. Documents unearthed from the National Archives show that while Churchill requested Australian counterpart John Curtin provide uranium from Mt Painter in South Australia's Flinders Ranges for military purposes, the uranium never left the country. A Defence cable dated August 8, 1945, confirms "the production stage was never undertaken as the quantities required ... could not be produced". The National Archive documents show that Curtin met then chancellor of the exchequer John Anderson in May 1944 regarding "the urgent need for greatly increased production of uranium for empire and war purposes". A secret cable from the deputy high commissioner in London reveals Curtin believed there was "little doubt that the (British) Government would wish to arrange for the purchase of all uranium concentrate produced in Australia". But logistical problems and the negligible quantities of uranium available scuppered the deal. Mt Painter is 610km north of Adelaide, and the last 6km was passable only on camel, and Australia could extract only about 20 tonnes from the site. Incredibly, the British government paid Australia pound stg. 59,000 to cover the costs of the aborted exploratory program. Sir Richard said the story of the secret military voyage was told to him by one of the mission's participants, Engineer Rear Admiral Frederick Purves, who died several years ago. He said several merchant engineers in Australia's Seagoing Reserve were told to report to Melbourne in civilian clothes "probably in 1943". The group decamped to Adelaide before joining a Scandinavian merchant ship bound for San Francisco. The Australians were never told the nature of the cargo, but were told to scuttle the ship if it was intercepted by Allied or enemy naval vessels. The ship docked and was met by a group of grey-suited officials, who scanned the men with what Purves later believed to be a geiger counter. Privacy Terms © The Australian ***************************************************************** 70 The Observer: Britain 'making a poor job' of nuclear waste [UP] Robin McKie Sunday April 23, 2006 A leading radiation expert yesterday attacked the unscientific approach being taken by a Government committee investigating the disposal of UK nuclear waste. Keith Baverstock, a former World Health Organisation radiation expert, said enough radioactive material to fill the Albert Hall five times over was being stored 'in very much less than ideal conditions' at power stations such as Sellafield and Dounreay. 'If it were to be dispersed into the atmosphere, Chernobyl would look like a vicar's tea party,' he said. Baverstock - speaking at a conference to mark the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl - was sacked last year from the committee on radioactive waste management (CoRWM) after describing its approach as amateurish. Baverstock said there had been no coherent policy on nuclear waste disposal in Britain since sea dumping was stopped in the Eighties. CoWRM, which has been discussing disposal for three years, was taking a 'distinctively non-scientific approach', he added, and had discussed droping waste into glaciers or blasting it into space. 'They have done a Mickey Mouse job,' he said. Useful links British Energy Department of Trade and Industry British Nuclear Fuels Ltd Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Greenpeace HSE nuclear glossary Come Clean WMD awareness programme UK atomic energy authority National Radiological Protection Board Friends of the Earth World Nuclear Association World Nuclear Transport Institute [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 71 SLOT: The five findings that led to the recommendations on spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants SanLuisObispo.com | 04/23/2006 | SLO TRIBUNE In April 2005, a panel of scientists with the National Academy of Sciences completed a six-month review of the safety of spent fuel pools at commercial nuclear power plants. The review was commissioned by Congress following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 as homeland security officials sought to understand the potential consequences of such an attack on a nuclear facility. It came up with five findings and two recommendations. Findings: 1. Spent fuel pools are a necessary part of a nuclear power plant. Used but still highly radioactive uranium fuel assemblies must sit in these pools for at least five years before they have cooled off and lost enough radioactivity to safely be put in aboveground dry storage casks. 2. A terrorist attack that drains a spent fuel pool of its water could result in a fire that releases large quantities of radioactive materials into the environment. 3. Nuclear plant operators can take steps to reduce the likelihood of such a fire. 4. The vulnerability of spent fuel pools at each nuclear plant can only be determined by a plant-by-plant evaluation of their characteristics. 5. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made progress in understanding the vulnerability of spent fuel pools to attack and the consequences of that attack, but more work needs to be done. Recommendations: A. The NRC should do more analysis of vulnerabilities of spent fuel pools and make recommendations to correct them. NRC and nuclear industry officials say this is being done. B. Two measures to improve spent fuel pool safety should be promptly implemented. They are: 1. Reconfiguring the fuel in the pools in a checkerboard fashion so that newer, hotter fuel is surrounded by older, cooler fuel. The NRC has adopted this recommendation and Diablo Canyon had implemented it. 2. Installing a water spray system that would be able to cool the fuel even if the pool or overlying building is severely damaged. NRC and nuclear industry official say sprinklers are unnecessary because there are other ways to refill the pools. No such sprinklers have been installed at Diablo Canyon. SanLuisObispo.com ***************************************************************** 72 Lexington Herald-Leader: For Earth Day, an open house at nuclear dump | 04/23/2006 | By Jim Warren HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER [Tom Stewart of the Maxey Flats project explained how water samples are taken as part of an open house at the closed nuclear waste site.] Janet Worne/Staff Tom Stewart of the Maxey Flats project explained how water samples are taken as part of an open house at the closed nuclear waste site. More photos MAXEY FLATS - Nearly 40 years ago Herbert Jolly and other farmers and landowners organized the environmental fight that ultimately led to the closing of the leaking Maxey Flats nuclear waste site in Fleming County. Yesterday, Jolly and some of the other original Maxey Flats concerned citizens celebrated Earth Day by revisiting the dump site during a public open house organized by state environmental officials to show off the progress they've made in cleaning up what once was one of the nation's most infamous environmental messes. "Things have changed; it looks a lot better today," Jolly said, surveying the seemingly endless expanse of black, plastic-like geomembrane liner that covers Maxey Flats' 55-acre restricted area, where about 4.7 million cubic feet of radioactive wastes were buried starting in 1963. The liner is designed to keep rainwater out of the trenches where the waste is stored, preventing a repeat of the contaminated-water leaks of the early 1970s that first indicated serious problems at Maxey Flats. The site closed in 1977. Now, environmental officials say that with improvements made over the past decade or so, Maxey Flats is safe and getting safer. They're even looking for ways of reusing it one day, maybe as a wildlife management area. But after living with the problem so long, Herbert Jolly isn't sure the danger is over. "I don't think I'll ever be totally convinced," he said yesterday. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Maxey Flats opened in 1963, authorized by state legislators in hopes of helping Kentucky get in on the ground floor of the then-growing nuclear disposal industry. Radioactive waste from laboratories all over the country came to Maxey Flats. In addition to toxic stuff like plutonium, enriched uranium, and tritium, there was just plain junk -- contaminated tools, clothing and furniture. Some of it was deadly. Early disposal methods were crude. At Maxey Flats, crews basically dug deep trenches, dumped in steel drums and cardboard boxes of waste, and filled the trenches with dirt. Rainwater entered the trenches. Environmental monitoring in the early 1970s indicated that contaminated water might be leaking off site. Fearful local citizens already were clamoring to have the place closed. Maxey Flats eventually would generate numerous studies, cost millions of dollars and be featured in network TV documentaries. Those days are over, said Scott Wilburn, who manages Maxey Flats for the Kentucky Division of Waste Management. Corrective steps completed in 2003 have brought most problems at the site under control, he said yesterday. The steps include installation of the geomembrane liner, which directs rainwater into a detention basin to be tested for radioactivity before it is released into a nearby creek. Contaminated water was pumped out of the storage trenches, solidified with concrete and buried on site. Automatic monitoring equipment samples surface water at multiple locations around the site every six hours for testing. A 550-acre "buffer zone" has been added around the perimeter of the site to separate it from the surrounding farms and homes. No contaminated water is found outside Maxey Flats' restricted area, except for two springs in the buffer zone where low levels have been detected, said Wesley Turner, a geologist with the state Department of Environmental Protection. It's not perfect, but it's a major improvement, he said. "We've taken a really bad situation and turned it into a manageable situation," Turner said. If work continues on schedule, a permanent "cap" over the site is planned for sometime around 2012. According to Turner, it would consist of multiple layers of liner and soil, with grass sown on the surface. Even so, the stuff buried at Maxey Flats will remain radioactive for hundreds of years. Residents who visited the site yesterday seemed pleased with what they saw and hopeful for the future. But many, like Pauline and Willie Scaggs, couldn't forget the old days when they battled to get Maxey Flats closed. The Scaggs once lived next to the site, but their farm was bought by the state in the mid-1990s for the buffer zone around the site. "We knew something wasn't right when they would come by and check your well water every week, but they wouldn't say why," Pauline Scaggs said. Herbert Jolly credited John P. Hayes, now deceased, with really starting the fight against Maxey Flats in the late 1960s. "John P. came into the store in Hillsboro one day and said, 'They're burying stuff up at Maxey Flats that's going to kill all of us,'" Jolly recalled. "Everybody laughed at him, but he kept on until he closed it." Jolly also remembered the day they went to see then Gov. Julian Carroll in Frankfort, and put a jug of water from Maxey Flats on his desk. "I said, 'This is what people are drinking down there,'" Jolly recalled. "John P. finally found this lab in Minnesota that would test our water samples. And as soon as they tested them, they called back here wanting to know where we got samples with readings as high as that. That's what got it going." ***************************************************************** 73 San Luis Obispo Tribune: What happens if the fuel pools fail | 04/23/2006 | An attack that damaged the cooling system, though unlikely, could spark a radioactive fire By David Sneed [Plans call for removing radioactive material from the spent fuel pools and storing it in dry casks on a concrete pad near the plant's water storage.] Photo illustration courtesy of PG Plans call for removing radioactive material from the spent fuel pools and storing it in dry casks on a concrete pad near the plant's water storage. Behind each of Diablo Canyon's two containment domes is a metal building that houses one of the plant's most important safety features — its spent fuel pools. Once every 18 months, one of the power plant's two reactors shuts down for refueling. About a third of the fuel in the reactor is removed and replaced with fresh fuel. The highly radioactive used fuel goes into a spent fuel pool where it must remain for at least five years. At first glance, these pools look somewhat like indoor swimming pools. But that is where the similarity ends. These pools are steel-lined and 40 feet wide and deep. Pumps circulate hundreds of thousands of gallons of boron-laced water over more than 1,000 used fuel assemblies, removing residual heat and screening workers from radiation. A report by the National Academy of Sciences outlines what could happen if a terrorist attack compromised one of the pools. If the attack incapacitated the pool's water circulation system, the temperature of the water would gradually rise and begin boiling off. "Once the water level drops to within a few feet of the tops of the fuel racks, elevated radiation fields could prevent direct access to the immediate areas around the lip of the spent fuel pool building by workers," the report says. "This might hamper but would not necessarily prevent the application of mitigation measures, such as deployment of fire hoses to replenish the water in the pool." Should the spent fuel ever become uncovered, the danger would rise dramatically. The temperature of individual uranium fuel pellets would rise, the zirconium cladding surrounding each pellet would begin to burn and the fire could spread to other spent fuel assemblies. "Heat released from such fires can be even greater than the decay heat produced in newly discharged spent fuel," the report states. The worst-case scenario would be the pools being partially drained. Water at the bottom of the pool would prevent air from circulating around the fuel and cooling it. As the temperature of the fuel continued to rise, the pellet claddings would balloon out and rupture, releasing radioactive gases. The most dangerous would be cesium-137, which researchers in Russia determined accounted for much of the human radiation exposure following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and nuclear industry officials say that even a terrorist attack similar to those of Sept. 11, 2001, would likely not result in a spent fuel pool draining and catching fire. "In the United States, spent fuel, in both wet and dry configurations, is safe and measures are in place to protect the public," the NRC ruled in August 2003. News | Business | Sports SanLuisObispo.com ***************************************************************** 74 Deseret News: Stop letting Utah be bullied [deseretnews.com] Saturday, April 22, 2006 The U.S. government and the Goshute Indians have chosen to ignore the concerns of the people of Utah in regard to dumping high-level nuclear waste close to our people and the Air Force bombing range. What part of "no" do they not understand? We have signed petitions saying "no." The majority of voters in a statewide election said "no!" Three of our governors have said "no." Maybe we should stop talking about a wall on the south border and start a movement to build a wall around the Goshute reservation. There comes a time when you must stop letting yourself be bullied. Pearl B. Goodson Kaysville © 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 75 Deseret News: Alliance's ad urges nuclear waste opposition [deseretnews.com] Saturday, April 22, 2006 Letter makes plea for Utahns to contact the BLM By Zack Van Eyck Deseret Morning News The Alliance for Unity, a group consisting of some influential Utahns, made a public plea Friday for residents of the Beehive State to oppose the potential storage of high-level nuclear waste here and in Nevada. The group took advertising space in Friday's edition of both the Deseret Morning News and the Salt Lake Tribune to publish a letter calling on all Utahns to "protect our image as a beautiful, healthy, safe state." "If we value our economic future and the health of our children," the letter stated, "we must not become the nation's nuclear garbage dump." The group said it is concerned both about the proposal by Private Fuel Storage (PFS) to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel rods on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation in Tooele County, and the possible transportation through Utah of the high-level nuclear waste headed for a proposed permanent storage site in Yucca Mountain, Nev. "Skull Valley is only 50 miles, upwind, from one million people along the Wasatch Front," the letter noted. "The possibilities for accidents, or acts of terrorist sabotage, put the health, safety and well-being of all Utahns at unacceptable risk." The Alliance, according to its position paper, is a group of Utah civic, religious and business leaders seeking to "foster the common good in the state." Its members include Jon M. Huntsman Sr. (father of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.), Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, Elder M. Russell Ballard of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, University of Utah President Michael K. Young, Deseret Morning News Editor and Chief Operating Officer John Hughes and MediaNews Group Inc. President Dean Singleton, all of whom signed the letter. One aim of the letter is to encourage Utahns to write the federal Bureau of Land Management by May 8 to oppose an application by PFS for permission to construct a rail line to move the spent rods to the reservation, or to build a transfer station on BLM land and then move the waste via trucks. "We hope Utahns will write Pam Schuller (of the BLM's Salt Lake City office) or e-mail her (Pam_Schuller@BLM.gov) and we hope they talk to their elected representatives, because we don't need this in Utah," said Alexander B. Morrison, the alliance's executive director and an emeritus general authority of the LDS Church. "I hope it has some impact," Morrison said of the advertisement, "because the Alliance for Unity feels quite strongly that we don't want this extremely dangerous high-level stuff ending up in Utah or being transported through the state. "We don't want it in the Skull Valley reservation, nor do we want it to traverse the state on its way to Yucca Mountain." Morrison said the group does not plan to place additional ads or purchase any other form of advertising prior to the May 8 deadline. "This is our expression," he said of the letter. "We're not going to go beyond what we've said in this ad." The letter is also signed by Wells Fargo Bank Chairman Emeritus Spencer F. Eccles, former Utah first lady Norma Matheson, community activists Robert "Archie" Archuletta and Pamela J. Atkinson, Zions Bancorp. President Harris H. Simmons and others. Any letters to the BLM, the group said, should be addressed to: Pam Schuller, BLM Salt Lake Field Office, 2370 S. 2300 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84119. E-mail: zman@desnews.com © 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 76 Deseretnews: Activists and tribe sue to avert blast [deseretnews.com] Sunday, April 23, 2006 By Geoffrey Fattah Deseret Morning News Two Utah anti-nuclear activists have joined with a Nevada Indian tribe in filing a federal suit to try to stop a planned large-scale non-nuclear explosion in the Nevada desert next June they say will kick up radioactive fallout left over from previous nuclear testing. In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada, Salt Lake residents Peter Litster and Stephen Erickson joined members of the Winnemucca Indian Colony in a suit against the U.S. government and officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to put a stop to a planned June 2 detonation of a 700-ton ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bomb. They say the blast will create a 10,000-foot mushroom cloud that could threaten the health of people living downwind and to the east of the Nevada Test Site. Test site and federal officials have said the blast, some 280 times larger than the bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, should not disturb surface contamination at the test site. In their suit, tribe officials say the test, dubbed "Divine Strake," would desecrate ancestral lands that the Western Shoshone say were not turned over to the U.S. government. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency has said the blast will help design a weapon to penetrate hardened and deeply buried targets. The National nuclear Security Administration, which operates the Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas, has said the Divine Strake explosion will be at least 1 1/2 miles from the nearest underground nuclear test area and three miles from the nearest ground-zero areas of known radioactive contamination from above-ground tests. The suit also says the decision to conduct the test violates federal requirements to seek public notice and to consult with affected Indian tribes. Plaintiffs also say government officials intentionally concealed the test in order to circumvent the law and conceal health hazards. "This is a human rights issue and a public health issue, and this blast must be stopped," said tribe attorney Robert Hager of Reno. "Our people were forcibly removed from their homes at the Nevada Test Site where the Western Shoshone had lived for thousands of years, without being told that our lands would be used for testing of nuclear weapons," said Thomas Wasson, chairman of the Winnemucca Indian Colony. "After destroying our lands and causing untold death and human misery with their radiation, the U.S. government now wants to do the same thing again. They must be stopped, for the good of the Western Shoshone and all people." Defense Department, National nuclear Security Administration and Defense Threat Reduction Agency officials have each declined to comment, saying they had not immediately seen the court documents. When contacted by the Deseret Morning News, plaintiff Stephen Erickson said he joined the suit out of solidarity for the cause to stop nuclear testing. There have been conflicting studies as to whether fallout was to blame for increased incidences of particular types of cancer in "downwinder" residents living in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 provides compensation to downwinders who contracted certain cancers and other serious diseases. Contributing: Associated Press. E-mail: gfattah@desnews.com © 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 77 Las Vegas SUN: Jon Ralston on the awkward position in which Bush's visit puts the state GOP Today: April 23, 2006 at 8:3:29 PDT The most powerful man on the planet is coming to town Monday, and I couldn't feel more compassion for his hosts - Rep. Jon Porter and the state GOP. Porter and the Republicans are opening their house, aka The Venetian, to President Bush in the way that a bank might welcome a deposit from a dictator who has committed serial human rights abuses. They want the money. But they really don't desire the guilt by association. Many Republican candidates this year will not invite into their districts a president drowning in the worst approval ratings since approval ratings have been measured for White House occupants. Here in Nevada, national pollster Peter Hart recently found that 52 percent of Nevadans have a negative view of Bush and only 39 percent have a positive view of the president. Bush doesn't have coattails; he has cement shoes. I understand why the state party needs to embrace the president. He is, after all, a Republican. He is, after all, the president. And, after all, the state GOP is broke. Porter, though, is far from penniless. He has $1.3 million in his bank account and really doesn't need much help from Bush to outpace Democratic challenger Tessa Hafen, who is a million behind. So the benefits from the money the president brings in are negligible at best, especially since there are a whole lot of Democrats in Porter's divided district who really don't like Bush. But the detriment to the Porter campaign probably is minimal from being so closely associated with the president as the administration convulses with staff changes and historians begin to muse if he is the worst president ever. The congressman may be fortunate that no one much cares about the Yucca Mountain issue anymore. Nevadans have heard it all in the last two decades, and it never seems to cut much as a political issue. No one has yet seen any benefit from pointing out that Bush has been the most actively hostile president on the nuclear waste dump, lying about it during his first campaign, stringing along the compliant Nevada GOP elected elite after he became president and then affixing his name to the legislation that could ensure Yucca Mountain would one day be filled with waste. Other presidents may have been guilty of benign neglect, including Bill Clinton, who did nothing to stop the permanent dump project. But no president has ever treated the state so badly, patronizing his putative allies and disregarding any real scientific findings. In fact, even beyond Yucca Mountain, it's hard not to conclude that Bush simply takes Nevada for granted since he has won twice here and the state has received nothing in return. The latest example, of course, is his administration's snub of Las Vegas when it comes to Homeland Security funding, which is something people should care about even more than the dump. Yet Porter and the state GOP remain willing to welcome him to Las Vegas where the Democrats will concoct some lame, predictable protest and the media will fawn over the great man visiting our little state. And the congressman will do his best to embrace Bush while distancing himself at the same time - perhaps he will tell us they "agree to disagree" on Yucca Mountain? Where have we heard that before? The hypocrisy is redolent. Porter and the other GOP folks expressed their outrage 10 days ago when Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman came to town and they attacked him for signing off on the new legislation to accelerate the dump's opening. Reality check: Who proposed that bill, and who is Bodman's boss? What's more, the man being feted Monday is the same man who Porter will be obliquely lambasting just a day later when he uses that federal subcommittee he heads for a dog and pony show to get publicity and hammer the Energy Department for "mismanagement and quality assurance weaknesses at Yucca Mountain." Again I ask: Who is ultimately responsible for the DOE? But perhaps I am wrong about all of this, perhaps there will be no discomfort at all Monday, perhaps Porter will step up dramatically on stage and say to Bush: "Mr. President, as much as we might be honored to have you here, I must ask you to explain to my fellow Nevadans how you could have done what you have done to this state. Please, sir, you must answer for your actions." Or perhaps another Republican official, such as Sen. John Ensign, will do so. Or, perhaps, they will do what most politicians seeking re-election do in such situations: Take the money and run. Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program "Face to Face With Jon Ralston" on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the daily e-mail newsletter "RalstonFlash.com." His column for the Las Vegas Sun appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com. All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 78 PPG: Water treatment plant's lagoon cleanup urged by state Saturday, April 22, 2006 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette State Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty yesterday urged BWX Technologies Inc. to remove uranium-laden ash from the Kiski Valley Water Pollution Control Authority's treatment plant lagoon in Allegheny Township, Westmoreland County. "This community is burdened with waste materials, including some radioactive materials that originated from plants BWX operated at the former Babcock & Wilcox facility in Apollo," Ms. McGinty said in a statement. She said that as a "matter of good corporate citizenship," the Lynchburg, Va., company should immediately take steps to remove the material to a hazardous or low-level radioactive waste facility for proper disposal. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined in January 2005 that the ash is not a risk to residents. The authority has been working to remove about 12,000 cubic yards of ash from its lagoon but has been unable to secure a disposal site. "The situation has festered long enough," Ms. McGinty wrote in a letter to company officials. Regina Carter, a BWX spokeswoman, said the company was unable to comment yesterday. Copyright ©1997-2006 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 79 Gilroy Dispatch: Olin Officials are Looking for Perchlorate Scapegoats OPINION Saturday, April 22, 2006 Dear Editor Good grief! It was with total incredulity and shock that I read Saturday's article about Olin's latest effort to avoid their financial responsibility for perchlorate clean-up in our valley. Their latest assertion is that at least some of the contamination is caused by mushroom farms! UNBELIEVABLE! If it were not so scary, it would be hilarious. My "Perchlorate" folder goes back to February 2003, and the metamorphosis of Olin's position on their responsibility is absolutely fascinating over the three years. On 2/6/03, Peter Forest of Olin said (in the Dispatch) that in his opinion, "Olin may not be totally responsible for all the perchlorate contamination farther from the original source. 'It could come from flares along the railroad tracks' (yeah, we see thousands of them daily), 'from residue from methamphetamine labs', (yeah, we all have those!), 'and from ammonium nitrate imported from Chile.'" (Yeah, blame another country.) Then, on 2/18/03 (in the Dispatch) - "Olin Corp. has voluntarily accepted responsibility for the perchlorate problem since it first discovered the chemical in well water as early as 2000. California state law also requires the polluting company for pay for the results of the pollution and for its cleanup." A little later in the article, "Olin has been providing bottled water for everyone whose well was being tested and permanently for those whose wells test positive." Hmmmm...... Now they propose to clean perchlorate to a level nearly twice the public health goal, and discontinue providing drinking water to the innocent victims of their negligent dumping of toxic waste. And they're trying to get out of their responsibility by alleging that a portion of the contamination is caused by the bleach. I wouldn't be surprised if their next allegation is that WE poisoned our own water by using bleach when we wash white laundry, because that's just as ridiculous. If it's the mushroom farms, how come their contamination level was "a tiny fraction of that discovered at the factory site?" Everyone who thinks Olin is looking for scapegoats, please raise their hands. Elaine Jelsema, Gilroy ***************************************************************** 80 Daily Herald: U.S. Energy wants to open Utah's second uranium mill Saturday, April 22, 2006 PAUL FOY - The Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY -- U.S. Energy Corp. has applied for a state license to open Utah's second uranium mill. With prices for nuclear fuel soaring, the Riverton, Wyo.-based company wants to restart a mill it hasn't operated since 1982, and then only for 2 1/2 months. The Shootaring Canyon mill is near Ticaboo, Utah, a company-owned town north of Lake Powell's Bullfrog Marina and about 230 miles south of Salt Lake City. The plant was mothballed when a glut of uranium flooded the market, driving down prices. Uranium prices have rebounded to $41 a pound from a historic low of $7, the company said. Many U.S. nuclear power plants are operating on dwindling supplies of uranium converted from Russian bombs while energy-hungry China and India are rushing to build nuclear power plants and driving global demand for more fuel, U.S. Energy Corp. chief executive Keith Larsen said Thursday. Larsen said U.S. utilities are expected to build more nuclear power plants after a 30-year lull caused by fear of radioactive-spewing accidents. Fear of global climate change also could give nuclear power a resurgence, and Larsen said he expected uranium prices to climb to more than $50 a pound and hold there. "We think our nation needs more nuclear power. It's the cleanest, the cheapest and it's advanced so much we're not going to have another Chernobyl," said Larsen, who was born and raised in Utah, the son of an underground uranium miner. "Three Mile Island is still in operation, and it's one of the most efficient plants in the U.S," he said. "The plants have vastly improved since the 1970s." U.S. Energy subsidiary Plateau Resources Ltd. filed for the license earlier this year at the Utah Division of Radiation Control, which hired an outside consultant to evaluate the technical merits of the proposal. Dane Finerfrock, the agency's director, said it would open up the proposal to public comment before a 13-member board decides on a license. It wasn't immediately clear when that would happen. Larsen said he was hoping for an answer by year's end. Plateau Resources filed a 95-page environmental report that says the company plans to produce 1.7 million pounds of uranium yellowcake a year. The crushed uranium minerals would be packed in steel drums and sent by trucks to a plant in Metropolis, Ill., that mixes yellowcake with gas for enrichment. The report says a direct hit from a tornado was the only "conceivable" mishap that could release "large quantities" of radiation at the mill. Plateau Resources would take ore from mines throughout southern Utah. International Uranium Corp. operates Utah's only other uranium mill, 66 miles east of Ticaboo near Blanding, or 254 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. Last fall, the company's White Mesa Mill took 500 tons of unwanted crushed uranium ore from Japan's Atomic Energy Agency. The ore arrived in 550 rubberized bags aboard a freighter at Everett, Wash., and was trucked, 20 tons at a time, to the White Mesa Mill. Utah also has EnergySolutions, formerly know as Envirocare, which operates the nation's largest low-level radioactive waste dump in Utah's west desert and has plans to seek approval for more radioactive waste. Those plans were put on hold at the behest of state politicians fighting a repository for highly radioactive spent fuel rods in canisters at an Indian reservation in Skull Valley. Last September, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave its approval for that Tooele County disposal site. Utah has asked a federal appeals court to overturn that decision and got President Bush in January to create the 100,000-acre Cedar Mountains Wilderness Area, which blocks the only practical route a rail spur could take delivering spent rods to Skull Valley. This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D6. Copyright © 2006 Daily Herald and Lee Enterprises ***************************************************************** 81 NJMG: Safety didn't come first in hunt for N.J. school sites North Jersey Media Group Sunday, April 23, 2006 By JEFF PILLETS TRENTON BUREAU In the darkest days of World War II, the U.S. Army came to Union City with an open checkbook and a secret mission. Officers from the Army Corps of Engineers were searching for industrial sites for use in a program that came to be known as the Manhattan Project. The old R.H. Simon Silk Mill at 39th Street and Kennedy Boulevard was chosen to produce cold-rolled rods of solid uranium as one of hundreds of factories and labs working covertly to help produce the first atomic bomb. Sixty years later, officials of New Jersey's Schools Construction Corporation spent millions out of its own fat checkbook advancing the silk mill as the best location for a new Union City High School for 1,750 students. But state records show that the SCC's push in 2004 to buy the silk mill and evict longtime residents nearby glossed over an important fact: The site was contaminated with radioactive uranium. There was more. Toxic PCBs in the soil. Tainted groundwater from ruptured tanks at an old Merit gas station. Leaky barrels of dyes and solvents. Abandoned drums of carginogenic dry-cleaning compounds. Plans to build a four-story-high school at the Union City site collapsed in April 2005, but not because of environmental concerns. The SCC had simply run out of cash in its haste to gobble up land. Documents reviewed by The Record show that the SCC's headlong rush to buy the 130-year-old silk mill – despite the incomplete picture of the mill's hidden hazards -- was standard practice at an agency geared more toward speed than student safety. An unpublicized 2003 agreement between the SCC and the state Department of Environmental Protection set up an elaborate protocol to fast-track environmental review of school construction sites. Hundreds of school projects across the state are scheduled to move forward under expedited review. Critics say the state's choice to truncate the review process and speed construction was a purely political one that needlessly puts children in jeopardy. "A group of us pleaded with the McGreevey administration on more than one occasion to slow down the process long enough to set up some sensible standards for siting schools,'' said Bill Wolfe, a former longtime DEP official who is an outspoken critic of the agency. "They ignored us because they wanted to show they could get schools built.'' In response to questions raised by The Record, that fast-track agreement will now be reviewed and may change substantially, DEP spokeswoman Elaine Makatura said Friday. She said DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson and the SCC chief, Scott Weiner, spoke late last week and agreed that it was time for the review. The state Attorney General's Office is also looking into the SCC's land acquisition program. A spokesman for the office, Paul Loriquet, said investigators are scrutinizing three land deals for possible wrongdoing by state or local officials. Loriquet declined to say if any of the cases involved environmental issues. But he said criminal prosecutions are a possibility. "We've been doing a lot of due diligence on this," Louriquet said. Undeterred by hazards State documents show that officials at the SCC's headquarters in Trenton knew about many of the hidden hazards at the Union City site as early as April 2004, yet pressed ahead with plans to demolish the mill. In late June of that year, the SCC petitioned the Department of Education for permission to buy the property -- even as regulators warned that the extent of contamination was unknown and that a detailed survey of the site's industrial history was imperative. By that time, SCC Property Acquisition Officer Thomas Ahern had already written heavy-handed letters to 39th Street residents informing them that the state was looking to seize their property for a school project of which few had even heard. The letters talked about the SCC's "right of preliminary entry" onto their property to make tests and measurements, and warned residents that they would forfeit relocation payments if they sold their houses before the state made an offer. "All of a sudden ... my whole life is being pulled from under me," said Kathy Pontus, a 39th Street resident who has lived next to the silk mill for 56 years. "No one even asked us our opinion -- there was no public hearing of any kind," said Pontus, who has done extensive research on the old mill. "It's been around for more than 130 years, and it's been used for every kind of industry -- no one really knows what's in the ground," she said. A spokesman for the SCC, Kevin McElroy, defended the agency's actions in Union City but refused to provide detailed responses to The Record's questions. He said top SCC officials, including Land Acquisition Director Paul Hamilton, did not have time over the past five weeks for an interview. McElroy said that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection had "concluded that the [Union City] site was suitable for this project." But Makatura, the DEP spokeswoman, denied that claim, pointing out that the agency had ordered the SCC to do soil borings and other tests at the site. In September 2005, Makatura said, a DEP review had found "no significant adverse environmental impacts" at the site. But she pointed out that the review was "strictly preliminary" and based solely on a paper review of data provided by an SCC consultant. Final approval, she said, would not have been given until the DEP's own experts had inspected the site. The SCC's consultant had not taken soil samples beneath a wooden floor where radioactive uranium had been found in levels exceeding regulatory cleanup levels, Makatura said. In her report on the SCC last year, Inspector General Mary Jane Cooper described an agency ruled by "lax and/or non-existent oversight and accountability" in blowing through $8.6 billion in taxpayer money that had been set aside to build schools for New Jersey's neediest communities. The inquiry also found that the SCC had "minimal" guidelines in selecting sites and often bought property that was "patently unsuitable for schools ... and found to be environmentally contaminated." Cooper's office says the 2005 report, which lists no specific school projects, contained only "preliminary" findings in an inquiry that is ongoing. Warnings ignored Several leading environmentalists interviewed for this story said they repeatedly urged former Gov. James E. McGreevey and his top advisers to halt the land-buying frenzy. They said they told McGreevey that some local officials were using the SCC bonanza as a way to dump brownfields and other contaminated sites on the state. "We were alarmed because there was, and remains, a complete lack of adequate standards for siting these schools," said Rick Engler, director of the Work Environment Council, a coalition of 70 environmental, labor and community groups. "Their response was basically, 'Trust us, we'll do the right thing,' " Engler said. "But that turned out to be nothing but a PR line. They kept right on buying these sites." Jeff Tittel, the head of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said he and others urged McGreevey to emulate California in developing rigorous environmental standards for schools that recognize the fact children are more vulnerable to toxic hazards than adults. "They ignored us because all they wanted to do was get these schools built so McGreevey could brag about it during his reelection campaign," Tittel said. "To this day, there is still not even a requirement for a public hearing when it comes to school construction." Wolfe, who left the DEP in 2004, said the state's top environmental enforcers "knowingly looked the other way" when it came to the school construction program. "The breathtaking aspect of all this is that the state deliberately relaxed its standards for this program," said Wolfe. "The SCC wasn't a wild cowboy out there acting by itself. They were just following the policies of the governor's office." A September 2003 "Memorandum of Understanding" between the SCC and DEP details the McGreevey administration's plans to fast-track the construction of schools. "The pace of acquiring new sites ... will increase significantly over the next 18 to 24 months," the memo said, estimating that 100 new properties would be bought during that time. The agreement called on the DEP "to establish shorter review times for priority sites" identified by the school agency. The DEP was to dedicate eight full-time employees to do nothing but expedite permit approvals for school construction. In some cases, regulators were given just 30 days to review and comment on reports involving air pollutants and hazardous waste. "That's less time than the state requires to review the installation of a sewer pipe," said Wolfe. "These are sites where our children will be working and playing," he added. "But instead of a full and proper review, with full disclosure to parents and meaningful input from the community, we get a secret handshake between regulators and the school authorities." Ironically, that handshake came after top officials at both agencies had expressed concern about the lack of standards for siting school projects. Alfred McNeill, the SCC's chief executive officer at the time, said in a 2003 report in The Star-Ledger of Newark that some local officials were earmarking the most polluted sites in their community for school construction so the state would pay for cleanup. More suitable sites, he claimed, were being saved for developers whose projects would produce ratables. While McNeill did not name any sites, state officials say several deeply contaminated properties -- such as an old varnish factory in Newark -- had been championed by local officials. Former DEP Commissioner Brad Campbell even proclaimed that he was mulling an emergency set of guidelines that set limits for the levels of contamination the state would consider acceptable. Neither Campbell nor McGreevey, who resigned in August 2004 amid a gay sex scandal, could be reached for comment last week. Joseph Karpa, a chief mitigation specialist at the DEP, said in an interview that he did not know why Campbell had not issued the emergency guidelines. Karpa acknowledged DEP critics' contention that the agency has no authority to stop school projects on contaminated land. He also said the agency has no specific cleanup and siting standards for school projects. But he pointed out that the DEP, through an early screening program it monitors, has prevented the purchase of sites that were clearly contaminated "over the top." He cited the Newark varnish plant and sites in Elizabeth as examples. The Union City site, while clearly contaminated, did not appear in initial screenings to rise to the "screaming" level of those sites, he said. One official's defense Karpa defended the agency's fast-track approval of school sites, saying that DEP's group of school regulators meets frequently with the SCC to address permitting problems. Shorter review times, he said, do not mean that agency standards are compromised. Karpa also said that developing new "child-specific" cleanup standards would be a complex undertaking that might not necessarily result in lower acceptable limits for contaminants. Both Karpa and Makatura, the DEP spokeswoman, said they could not comment on Inspector General Cooper's findings that the state had targeted "patently unsuitable" sites. "That was the previous administration," said Makatura. "We cannot be asked to comment on their policies." In Union City, locals are relieved that the state has abandoned the project. (School district officials have since decided to build a single, unified school for Grades 10-12 at another site.) The project would have displaced several dozen nearby residents, as well as some artists' lofts and a few small manufacturing businesses that are located on subdivided parts of the massive mill property. Mayor Brian Stack and several school district officials interviewed said they were not aware that a long-shuttered tungsten plant once operating at the site supplied uranium to the Manhattan Project, a fact that emerged in a confidential 1944 U.S. Army document that surfaced in the 1980s. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Energy identified the Callite Tungsten plant as one of 550 labs and factories where secret work had been done for the bomb. The list was released as part of a new federal program to compensate the families of workers who got sick or died from radiation exposure. Preliminary tests done by the state in 2004 found radioactive uranium residue in the floorboards of an old machine shop at the mill now known as Building 4. High readings also were found in another building. Soil borings that would have shown whether the contamination seeped into the ground were never taken. PCB contamination from three electrical transformers also remains on the site. State officials were uncertain if tainted soil near the gas station site is still present. "This is all new to me, and it makes me sick,'' said Mayor Stack. "The students who would have gone to school at that site deserve better. Frankly, we all deserve better.'' Staff Writer Josh Gohlke contributed to this article. E-mail: pillets@northjersey.com Copyright © 2006 North Jersey Media Group Inc. ***************************************************************** 82 NJMG: Thorium cleanup called on track North Jersey Media Group [NorthJersey.com] Sunday, April 23, 2006 By MONSY ALVARADO STAFF WRITER MAYWOOD -- More than 3,050 rail cars carrying about 215,000 cubic yards of thorium-laced soil from contaminated sites in the borough, Rochelle Park and Lodi have been shipped out of state. There is still an estimated 180,000 cubic yards left to go, but project officials say they are on target to have it all removed by 2012. "We have made good progress out here,'' Allen Roos, project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, said Friday. "We've had support from the property owners and we have gained some confidence by being able to meet our commitments." The tainted soil dates to when the former Maywood Chemical Co. was in operation. The plant, on West Hunter Avenue, relied on thorium, a naturally occurring radioactive material, to produce material for gas lanterns until 1956. The radioactive material escaped into waterways and contaminated nearby properties. The plant was eventually purchased by the Stepan Co., which discontinued work with thorium in 1959. Surveys of the site led to the property and some surrounding areas being placed on the Environmental Protection Agency National Priorities List in 1983. Two years later, an 11.7-acre section of the Stepan property was acquired by the federal government to store excavated soil. That site, known as the Maywood Interim Storage Site, can be seen from Route 17. Polluted material unearthed from other sites is taken there before being transported to Utah. The federally owned site will be the last one cleaned, officials said. Since assuming responsibility for the Maywood Superfund Site's remediation in 1997, the Corps has completed cleanups on 64 residential and municipally owned properties. It has also completed work on 12 commercial properties, with 12 remaining. Roos said that of the dozen left, seven of the sites are in various stages of remediation. Cleanup on two of those properties, on Route 17 north, is expected to be complete by the fall. The work couldn't be done fast enough for Maywood officials who are hoping to declare a section off Route 17, including four of the contaminated properties, an area in need of redevelopment. "This place could have been cleaned up and suitable for development 10 years ago," Mayor Thomas Richards said. "It's been too long, but we will take what we can get." Although the borough is holding public hearings on declaring the area in need of redevelopment, Richards said that if approved the borough would begin plans to revitalize sites that have been cleaned up, even if work on other affected sites continues. "Why should we not develop those properties?'' he asked. Richards said borough officials expect to entice commercial or biomedical businesses to the area. "The hope is that we will have a significant development that will stabilize the taxes in Maywood,'' he said. "Whatever gets the best tax revenues." Sites included in the borough's redevelopment plan are the Gulf Service Station, Mitsubishi Motors and Hunter Douglas Inc., all on Route 17. The Maywood Chemical Co., now known as Stepan Co., is also included in the study. Another thorium-contaminated site in northern New Jersey has been cleaned up and will soon be ready for a new use. The W.R. Grace industrial site in Wayne was cleaned up in December 2001 by the federal government. Last week, Rep. Bill Pascrell announced that the property will be given to the township. Wayne plans to convert the rectangular site into ballfields. "Those are the ones that make you happy,'' Roos said. "When you can look back and see what folks had to live with for some time and they have a future of open space ... it makes you feel good when that can be accomplished." E-mail: alvarado@northjersey.com Copyright © 2006 North Jersey Media Group Inc. ***************************************************************** 83 PE.com: Water-cleanup proposal rejected Inland Southern California | Pass-Oak Valley PERCHLORATE: The plan targeted the apparent source of the contamination below Rialto and Colton. 10:00 PM PDT on Friday, April 21, 2006 By JENNIFER BOWLES The Press-Enterprise Inland residents and activists, frustrated by what they say is a lack of progress on ridding perchlorate from their groundwater sources, failed Friday to get regional water-quality regulators to adopt a plan they devised to speed the cleanup of the rocket-fuel ingredient. "I'm really concerned that we need to work fast so no more children are harmed," said Marene Deischer, 51, of Rialto, who says two of her children's illnesses stem from perchlorate. She was among 30 people, mostly Hispanic, who held signs that said "Clean Water Now" during the meeting of the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board in Loma Linda. Board chairwoman Carole Beswickand others on the board said they could not support the plan brought to them by Environment California and the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice because it casts too wide of a net, including companies that might not be guilty. Beswick said the investigation into a 160-acre site in Rialto, believed to be the source of the perchlorate contamination below Rialto and Colton, must be deliberate and evidence has to be compiled before the right companies are held liable. Beswick said the board would consider adopting at its May 19 hearing a policy stating its commitment to cleaning up perchlorate, a main ingredient of rocket fuel and other explosives. In sufficient amounts, perchlorate can interfere with the thyroid gland's ability to make hormones that control metabolism and guide neurological development. Small children, pregnant women and their fetuses are believed to be the most vulnerable. Area agencies either serve water containing no perchlorate or barely detectable amounts below California's goal of 6 parts per billion, said Kurt Berchtold, the board's assistant executive officer. New test results showed groundwater below the 160-acre site to be 3,800 parts per billion and in higher concentrations in the soil, said Bob Holub, a senior engineer with the board. Reach Jennifer Bowles at (951) 368-9548 or jbowles@PE.comMore 2006, The Press-Enterprise Company ***************************************************************** 84 PRN: Pennsylvania DEP Secretary Urges Company to Remove Uranium Ash From Westmoreland County Lagoon PR Newswire TITLE="http://www.dep.state.pa.us"> Material in Kiski Valley Water Pollution Control Authority's Lagoon Came from Processes Used at Former Babcock & Wilcox Facility in Apollo HARRISBURG, Pa., April 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen A. McGinty today called on BWX Technologies Inc. of Lynchburg, Va., to immediately remove uranium-laden ash from the Kiski Valley Water Pollution Control Authority's treatment plant lagoon in Allegheny Township, Westmoreland County. "This community is burdened with waste materials, including some radioactive materials that originated from plants BWX operated at the former Babcock & Wilcox facility in Apollo," McGinty said. "As a matter of good corporate citizenship, BWX should move immediately to remove the material to a hazardous or low-level radioactive waste facility for proper disposal. The materials are in the floodplain and should be moved as soon as possible." The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in January 2005 determined that the ash is not a risk to residents and meets all the criteria for unrestricted use. The NRC maintains that states are preempted by these types of determinations from requiring materials be handled based on radiological concerns. "The situation has festered long enough. Action on BWX's part finally to resolve this situation with special care and precaution is the right and proper course," McGinty wrote in her letter to company officials. The Kiski Valley authority has been working to remove approximately 12,000 cubic yards of ash from its treatment plant lagoon but has been unable to secure a disposal site. DEP approved the authority's plans in October 2005. The authority placed its clay-lined lagoon into service in 1975. Two years later, the authority began receiving wastewater flow from the former Babcock & Wilcox facility in Apollo. The discharge consisted of sanitary and sewage water from the facility's NRC-licensed uranium fuel manufacturing facility, as well as a licensed laundry. In 1984, Babcock & Wilcox ceased operation and stopped discharges. The authority's sewage treatment process included collection of solid wastes from both primary and secondary treatment, followed by removal of the water and on-site incineration. The authority stopped sending ash to the lagoon in 1993 when it reached its capacity. A byproduct of the wastewater treatment process, the ash contains low levels of uranium. For more information, visit DEP's Web site at http://www.dep.state.pa.us, Keyword: "Waste Management." CONTACT: Susan Woods of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, +1-717-787-1323. SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Web Site: http://www.state.pa.ushttp://www.dep.state.pa.us Copyright © 1996- PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights Reserved. A United Business Mediacompany. ***************************************************************** 85 Dayton Daily News: Ohio EPA rebuilding tainted Fernald ecosystem With radioactive material moved, officials are trying to create a wetland, and eventually a public park. By Steve Bennish Staff Writer HAMILTON COUNTY Later this year, Fernald will appear to be like many other wildlife refuges if you overlook the 120-acre, 55-foot-tall fenced-in sarcophagus. Enlarge photo[Photo] A 10-year, $4.4 billion cleanup of the former uranium refinery in western Hamilton County, marked by lawsuits and controversy, is winding to a close. With it goes a Cold War legacy and a key link in the atomic bomb industry, a place so secret for 37 years that loose talk even among facility co-workers was banned. Uranium purification was once among America's most closely held secrets. The largest remaining symbol of those secrets is the on-site disposal sarcophagus, an above-ground pile of 3 million cubic yards of low-level waste uranium-contaminated soil and debris from demolished concrete buildings, covered with three feet of limestone rocks and another six feet of other materials. That nine-foot cap is meant to discourage prying animals or curious humans into the far-flung future. Soil and debris with higher levels of radioactivity including leftover refining material from waste pits and silos was sent to Utah. Tainted groundwater will continue to be pumped from the aquifer and purified for a decade until it is drinkable, said Johnny Reising, the Energy Department's closure project director. Fernald, he said, one day will become a place of unique habitats offering a series of self-guided walking trails and overlooks. An education facility will guide visitors. Some 16,000 trees are being planted, and in the past three years, 90,000 cubic yards of compost was used to restore soils, Reising said. In the past two years, Fernald has used the entire organic compost output of Rumpke Waste Collection &Disposal Systems. Visitors should be impressed, he added. "What they are going to see is a tremendous diversity of wildlife habitat within that one square mile," he said. Reising, whose education is in wildlife biology, had good background for his work. He once worked for the Department of the Interior's Office of Surface Mining, where he oversaw mine reclamation. Lest taxpayers bemoan the new park as the most expensive playground in the known universe for critters and nature lovers, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has an answer. The Ohio EPA is using Fernald as a laboratory that could help experts engineer wetland restorations elsewhere. It's a harder task than just digging up contaminated soil, leaving a hole, and filling it with water, as Dayton-based OEPA employees Joe Bartoszek, a biologist, and Tom Schneider, Fernald project manager, can attest. Both work in an advisory capacity with Fluor Daniel, the company cleaning up the site and trying to create the wetlands. OEPA is the official regulator. The state has an interest in Fernald. In 1986, Ohio filed a $206 million claim against the Department of Energy for environmental damage caused by uranium production. Twenty years later, Bartoszek and Schneider are trying to figure out how man-made wetlands can best be created to work just as well as nature intended to support populations of threatened creatures. They're having success, but it's become clear that real progress takes years. The two have seeded wetlands at Fernald with muck from natural wetlands, hoping that organisms and seeds transfer and prosper. Ultimately, Schneider wants amphibians like salamanders to call the place home in large numbers. "It's very difficult to create high-quality wetlands that's what we realized," Schneider said. "We have wetlands that have the potential to be high-quality, but some that have been in the ground five years aren't there yet." A series of cascading wetlands that flow into each other and ultimately to the Great Miami River were built here seven years ago. They feature bullfrogs and cricket frogs, dragonflies, fingernail clams, and mayflies all good signs. In one wetland adjacent to a woods, tiger salamanders have turned up, Schneider said. Said Reising: "We hope this will be a learning lab. The re-establishment of wetlands that have been disturbed is a fairly new science. We are learning a lot about how to do it right." Contact the reporter at (937) 225-7407 or sbennish@daytondailynews.com. Copyright ©2006 Cox Ohio Publishing, Dayton, Ohio, USA. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 86 Rocky Mountain News: More Flats hysteria Editorials April 22, 2006 We understand that Rep. Wes McKinley, D-Walsh, carries a lot of emotional baggage related to Rocky Flats and its cleanup. He was the foreman of the Rocky Flats grand jury that met from 1989-1992 and came to believe that there was a massive coverup and that it had compromised the safety of the cleanup. He can believe that if he wants, but it is truly embarrassing that he has been able to get the Colorado House of Representatives to sign on to his theories. On Thursday, it passed House Bill 1389, which would require warning signs at every entrance to Rocky Flats once it is open as a national wildlife refuge. The signs would direct potential visitors to nearby weatherproof containers with pamphlets or recordings delivering an alarming message about the possible dangers of entering the site. The same message would have to be sent to parents and guardians before children could visit Rocky Flats on a school field trip. The message is alarming; and seemingly scientific, but that is misleading. Yes, it's true that "plutonium remains radioactive for tens of thousands of years" and can be harmful in very small amounts, but not in the amounts visitors would encounter, which are many times smaller still. Megan Barnett, speaking for the Department of Energy, said Friday, "After tens of thousands of soil, surface water and ground water samples; the monitoring of 6,400 acres at and around the site; hundreds of interviews with former workers and numerous comprehensive studies the department in December certified Rocky Flats safe for future federal use as a national wildlife refuge." We'll cast our vote with the scientists. We hope the Senate does likewise, and spares Colorado embarrassment. --> 2006 © The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 87 Hanford News: Engineers display 'new generation' radiation detector This story was published Friday, April 21st, 2006 By Melanie Dabovich, Associated Press Writer ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - New Mexico nuclear engineers ran a series of demonstrations Thursday on a prototype radioactive detection system they say could make U.S. ports more secure. The inventors, Harry Majors and Louis Guillebaud of Technology Management Consulting Services Inc. and Global Transshipment Monitoring Co., did several drive-throughs with mock shipments on a flatbed truck in front of an audience that included Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M. and federal officials. The $1.5 million Mobile Point of Need Detector System can scan shipment containers arriving on U.S. soil quickly and with few failures, they said. The 40,000-pound, 23-foot-by-23-foot device can be moved from ship to ship and port to port on wheels and gives a computer readout of any radioactivity detected in containers in about two seconds, Majors and Guillebaud said. "By being mobile, you can scan a container right as it gets off a ship, then scan it again before it gets on another ship," Majors said. The inventors said the detector can measure and discern between naturally occurring radioactive isotopes, industrial isotopes and threatening isotopes - the neutron-gamma type of radiation that might indicate a weapon. "(The system) can help the U.S. ensure that 100 percent of cargo and shipping containers are quickly scanned and are safe," said Guillebaud, referring to the tens of thousands of containers arriving in the country daily. Thursday's first demonstration shipment contained catbox litter, which contains thorium. The readout detected thorium's low-level radioactivity. "This is the next generation of detection technology to take the place of less-effective technology we've been using," said Bingaman, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee that has jurisdiction over international trade and ports of entry. Current technology "has more false alarms and takes more personnel to use," he said. The federal government has been concerned for years about nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands - whether terrorists or governments hostile to the United States. However, the emphasis grew after the Sept. 11 attacks and fears that al-Qaida could obtain a nuclear device or nuclear materials to spread radiation in an urban area. "This is an answer to what all of us have identified as our biggest nightmare - someone putting a nuclear device in a shipping container ... that detonates on U.S. soil," Wilson said. "This is a new tool in the tool kit." The company is currently in the process of meeting with government officials and private industry to secure a contact to build additional systems, said Glen Loveland, spokesman with Hirst Cordova Public Relations. The system will be manufactured in Albuquerque by Global Transshipment Monitoring. Detectors have long been used at ports of entry, but scientists warned Congress last June that the security blanket to keep nuclear material out of U.S. ports has plenty of holes, including hundreds of false alarms. And a three-year study of the Homeland Security Department said lapses by private port operators, shipping lines or truck drivers could allow terrorists to smuggle in weapons of mass destruction, The Associated Press reported last month. Cargo containers can be opened secretly during shipment to add or remove items without alerting authorities, according to government documents obtained by the AP. © 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 88 Rocky Mountain News: Tools at Flats junked Company defends rush to dump, says gear possibly tainted [''] Marc Piscotty © News Steven Weber, a longtime Rocky Flats employee, stands on a spool of wire at a Denver electrical supply store. Weber claims similar material and tools were thrown away by Kaiser-Hill, which directed the cleanup of the plant that once made triggers for nuclear weapons. Rocky Flats cleanup controversy Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News April 22, 2006 As contractor Kaiser-Hill raced to demolish the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant to collect a $170 million bonus for speedy, cost-saving work, managers ordered untold stores of often brand new equipment and tools thrown away, former workers say. But a Kaiser-Hill spokesman said the company couldn't take the chance that the material was contaminated and argued that in the big picture, the speed and efficiency of the cleanup saved taxpayer money. "We safely delivered a very thorough cleanup significantly under budget and ahead of schedule, saving the U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars," said John Corsi, Kaiser-Hill's spokesman. Ex-workers say the company also wasted uncounted dollars. The motors, drills, jackhammers, hand tools, paint sprayers, hydraulic pumps, plumbing supplies and myriad additional items thrown away were worth, collectively, millions of dollars, workers estimate. One described the level of waste as "the ugliest thing I'd ever seen." Barb Smith, a former waste inspector for Kaiser-Hill, said she personally saw her employer throw out "thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff that had never been used." "Everybody was shocked," said Smith, who worked at Rocky Flats for 30 years. "All they wanted to do was throw it away. They never took any time to give it to anybody." Tons of materials were sealed in waste bins and buried in pits at dump sites in Nevada and Utah, despite the fact they came from uncontaminated areas of the former weapons plant, workers said. One worker, Steven Weber, took his complaints to the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Energy. That office later told Weber its review "did not reveal waste." But the OIG has so far provided no documents to the Rocky Mountain News about its investigation. Nor, according to Weber, did it ever interview him about his concerns. For years, excess materials from Rocky Flats were sold at public auctions. But workers said that in the push to get the cleanup finished early and under budget - an accomplishment that netted $170 million worth of bonuses from the Department of Energy - Kaiser-Hill managers pulled out all the stops and began throwing more materials in the trash. "I don't think anybody can realize, unless you were there, the rush, the sense of urgency to get that bonus," said Doug Woodard, a 23-year employee at Rocky Flats who was laid off in September, as the closure wound down. Kaiser-Hill's Corsi acknowledged that there was a "massive amount of equipment disposed of," but he attributed the decision to the difficulty of proving the materials were not contaminated. "It was just a difficult process to prove this equipment wasn't contaminated in any way, and there's very strict guidelines," Corsi said. "We took conservative measures, and if there was even a question, the equipment was disposed of as waste." Waste inquiries rebuffed Opened in the early 1950s, Rocky Flats was a critical part of the country's nuclear weapons manufacturing network for more than three decades. But accumulating environmental hazards at the 6,200-acre site 16 miles west of Denver, combined with an end to the Cold War, led to its shutdown in the late 1980s. In 1995, the federal government hired Kaiser Hill - a joint venture of CH2M Hill and Kaiser Group Holdings - to begin the monumental task of dismantling Rocky Flats. The perilous work was concentrated in a 385-acre core area of the bomb factory, where radioactive waste had contaminated a number of the 800 buildings. The DOE entered into a second cleanup contract with Kaiser-Hill in 2000, and to encourage speed and efficiency, offered to reward the company based on how much its costs came in under the target budget of $3.96 billion, and for beating a March 2006 deadline. The company did both, coming in more than $400 million under budget and beating the deadline by more than five months. Workers said that in the rush toward completion, managers didn't want to take the time to evaluate leftover materials. When questioned, managers had little interest in debating the matter, workers said. "We'd say, 'You're throwing all this away?' " Smith said. "They'd just get mad and say get the job done." The former president of United Steelworkers Local 8031, the union representing many of the workers at Rocky Flats, said he took workers' concerns to management, but he was rebuffed. "Basically, it was cheaper to throw it away than survey (for radioactivity) and release it," Tony DeMaiori said. "That was the bottom line - no more, no less." Former worker Weber said Kaiser-Hill didn't have to survey everything for radioactivity. In past years, Weber said, the company often moved material to auction without conducting the laborious contamination surveys because officials knew the material wasn't contaminated. But as the cleanup grew closer to finishing, the same kind of material was simply thrown away instead of being auctioned off or set aside for some other use, Weber said. Corsi responded by saying it was largely up to the company that ran the public auctions to decide whether it wanted to sell the uncontaminated materials or dispose of them. Frazier Lockhart, who oversaw the cleanup for the Department of Energy, said it's possible there were "isolated incidents" of throwaway practices, but "it isn't the behavior I observed." Lockhart said Kaiser-Hill had "a bias toward recycling" and it's likely the complaining workers didn't always understand the situation, perhaps confusing material that needed to be disposed of with usable materials. "We saw just hundreds and thousands of items going out through auctions," he said. "Even up to the end, the last auction was the last week of August or the first week of September (2005), when we closed the site a month later." Lockhart said workers were moved around a lot in the late stages of cleanup, often to new areas. Workers' "misconception" Department of Energy officials noted that most of the $170 million in bonus money paid to Kaiser-Hill came because the company came in under budget, not simply by beating cleanup deadlines. But officials also said the speedy cleanup helped greatly in beating the budget, since payroll could be cut quickly as workers were let go. "It's not very conceivable that any company could have reduced costs in any other fashion than finishing early, so the two are very closely linked," said Charlie Dan, a contracting officer for the Department of Energy familiar with the Kaiser-Hill contract. For years, many items at Rocky Flats were sold at auction, a point with which the workers agree. According to Kaiser Hill's Corsi, about 1 million pieces of excess equipment were sold at more than 130 public auctions. The sales returned more than $6 million to the Department of Energy, money used to pay for cleanup at Rocky Flats. In addition, Corsi noted, more than 7 million tons of metals from the demolished plant were recycled and more than 3,000 computers were provided to a program that refurbishes them and distributes them to Colorado schools. Eric "Rick" Dahlin, the president of the company that ran the auctions, called the notion that usable materials were thrown away a "misconception" driven by workers who were getting laid off as the facility approached closure. "We went through a very methodical process," said Dahlin, a former DOE employee who has built a 25-year career working on federal sites. Dahlin acknowledged his staff wasn't in a position to see any alleged waste. "We can't speak from the experience of actually watching it happen," he said. "We weren't physically (on site)." Dahlin's company, Integrated Logistics Services Inc., or ILSI, recently entered into a new contract with the Department of Energy, this one related to cleanup of the former nuclear weapons Hanford Site in eastern Washington state. DeMaiori, the former union president, says officials at ILSI "always complained" to him that material was being thrown away that the company could have auctioned. Dahlin denied that. "No, I don't recall us ever making a stink about that," he said. Many workers, including some interviewed by the Rocky Mountain News for this story, are bitter at their treatment by Kaiser-Hill and the DOE. It wasn't losing their jobs that angered them as much as losing out on lifetime health and pension benefits because they were laid off months - in some case weeks and days - before they would have hit a date that qualified them for the benefits package. Those workers fell short of meeting the so-called Rule of 70 requirement, which required that a worker's age and years of service at Rocky Flats total 70 to qualify for the benefits. In all, 50 to 70 workers narrowly missed out on benefits. The matter found its way to the floor of the U.S. Senate, where extending benefits was voted down despite pleas from Colorado's senators, Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar. Weber was laid off nine months short of qualifying. "Pretty soon it was getting to the point where we were working ourselves out of a job," he said. "But I kept figuring they'd take care of people like us." 'Millions dumped in trash' Weber, a 21-year employee at the plant, said he complained repeatedly about what he saw as the waste. Sometimes, Weber said, managers ordered equipment thrown away, then reordered more when the need arose. Weber said he even found subcontractors sawing fiberglass ladders so they could fit them inside waste containers. Weber said managers grew irritated with him for continually raising questions. Weber was planning on starting an electrical business after leaving Rocky Flats, which he has since done, and said much of the material would have given him a helpful start. Weber began writing Allard in fall 2004, focusing on the loss of benefits for longtime workers at Rocky Flats. He also mentioned the disposal of "perfectly good" equipment and supplies, arguing that the millions being "thrown away" could help pay for benefits. Later, Weber wrote to an official at the Office of Inspector General of DOE, complaining Kaiser-Hill was being awarded with a cleanup bonus for "wasteful practices." In an April 2005 letter to an OIG official, which Weber provided to the News, he wrote: "Instead of taking this equipment to be auctioned they had these waste teams who would show up and clear everything out of these rooms and throw it away in either big waste roll-offs or put (the material) in big waste containers that would be then sent to Nevada as waste." Weber provided a detailed list of items he said he knew first-hand were thrown away to the OIG investigator. "During this time (early 2005), I tried to save some items and would move (them) to another hideout or cargo containers," Weber wrote. "But in the end these teams were instructed by management to clean them out." In closing, Weber wrote that he was pursuing the issue "to help bring to light the troubles that have hurt the workers who gave to the mission and watched as millions was dumped in the trash, while watching the people responsible receive millions in bonuses and new assignments elsewhere." A spokeswoman for Allard, Angela de Rocha, said Weber's concerns about waste were forwarded to the DOE. "Senator Allard takes any concern of any waste, fraud and abuse very seriously and spends a lot of time and goes to a lot of trouble to get them explored and addressed," she said. As for the OIG, it's not clear what officials at the agency did after Weber's complaints. A spokesman refused to discuss the issue. The Rocky Mountain News has submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for any documents relating to an investigation, but officials have not provided anything in the three months since the News requested documents. Weber, who submitted complaints to OIG, said he was never interviewed by OIG on the matter. Nor were any other workers interviewed by the News. Corsi, the Kaiser-Hill spokesman, said OIG never opened an investigation into allegations of waste: "As far as I know, there was no investigation on that," he said. While Lockhart - the DOE manager who oversaw the project -- said he was aware of "several" OIG examinations of how Kaiser-Hill dealt with excess equipment, including instances when workers complained, he said he couldn't recall specifics. "In all cases that I had any awareness of, (the complaint) turned out to be unfounded," Lockhart said. "When (OIG looked into) specifics, there was a very good reason why the action was taken, and . . . the inquiry was closed." What was discarded A sampling of items listed by former Rocky Flats worker Steven Weber of new and used equipment thrown away during the demolition of the former nuclear weapons plant: • "Brand new, still in the boxes" 10-horsepower electric motors, valued at $1,551 each. • Brand new "high-voltage suits," including hoods, valued at $6,000 to $8,000. • Twelve to 15 eight-drawer tool chests, some with tools still in them, as well as 12-drawer chests. Value ranged from $487 to $909. • "Brand new" insulated high-voltage tools still in boxes. Many boxes of tools, with each tool ranging in value from $40 to $45. • "Brand new" boxes of Hubbell cord caps and locking plugs and connectors, $48.60 each. • Several trolley hoists, 5-ton and 2 1/2-ton. Estimated at $2,500 each. • "Brand new," still in the cases Makita drills and sanders. Approximate value, $600 each. Rocky Flats cleanup CHRONOLOGY • 1995: Site cleanup begins • March 2006: Target date for completion • Oct. 13, 2005: Cleanup officially complete • 1995 to February 2000: Span of first Kaiser-Hill cleanup contract • 2000 to closure: Span of second Kaiser-Hill cleanup contract FEES AND BONUSES • $340 million: Kaiser-Hill fee for cleanup work (second contract) • $20 million: Bonus earned for early completion (second contract) • $150 million: Bonus earned for cost savings (second contract) • $6 million: Amount earned selling Rocky Flats equipment at more than 130 public auctions hartmant@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5048 site 2006 © The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 89 Knox News: New uranium container can take a licking Design to be used by _Y-12 withstands series _of punishing tests By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com April 23, 2006 OAK RIDGE - The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant is purchasing 500 new-age containers for shipping highly enriched uranium, with plans to begin using them this fall. Y-12 engineers designed the ES-3100 container, which reportedly adds safety and security features while maximizing the amount of fissile material - up to 33 kilograms of U-235 - that can be transported in a single container. The ES-3100 will replace the 6M container, which has been the "workhorse" for Y-12 and other nuclear facilities for more than 20 years but no longer meets all safety regulations. The U.S. Department of Transportation is terminating use of the 6M by 2008. Accurate Machine Product Co. in Johnson City is manufacturing the new containers, said Jeff Arbital, the program manager at Y-12. The cost is about $5,000 per container, he said. The company previously manufactured 14 prototypes, using the Y-12 design, and those ES-3100 containers were used in various tests to meet U.S. and international regulations, Arbital said. A container was dropped from a crane, immersed in water under pressure, and placed inside a steel-mill furnace at 1,475 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. The ES-3100 also survived puncture drills and having a 1,100-pound steel plate dropped on it from a height of 30 feet. According to the Y-12 Report, a quarterly publication, "The new container passed all test conditions with flying colors, leaving the inner cavity of the drum completely unscathed." The Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified the new container April 7 and the Department of Transportation is expected to issue a "certificate of competent authority," Arbital said. The Y-12 official said the ES-3100 would not be used for transportation of actual warhead components - only for bulk quantities of enriched uranium or other fissile materials, such as plutonium. But Arbital emphasized that transportation of highly enriched uranium is an essential part of efforts to downsize the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons. As old weapons are taken apart and fissile materials become surplus, the uranium must be moved to other sites to be "downblended" to remove its weapons usefulness or converted into fuel for nuclear reactors, he said. "The disposition of HEU is going to go on until maybe 2020, and we'd have trouble shipping materials without (the ES-3100)," Arbital said. "This allows that mission to continue with increasing efficiency." The new Y-12 container will hold up to 45 kilograms of uranium in total weight, with as much as 33 kilograms of U-235 - the fissionable isotope of uranium. That's double the mass allowed in the currently used containers, he said. Walter North, who headed the engineering group that designed the ES-3100, said the inner containment vessel was fabricated from a single billet of stainless steel. The seamless fabrication saves some money because welds don't have to be inspected, and it's also stronger, North said. Arbital said the inner sleeve contains a neutron-absorbing material that enhances the nuclear safety and helps prevent the fissile material from reaching criticality. That allowed Y-12's design engineers "to push the envelope quite a bit" and increase the amount of uranium that could be loaded, he said. Eventually, the new ES-3100 will be licensed for air transportation, and that could open up use of the containers for non-proliferation projects internationally. Other nuclear sites in the U.S. Department of Energy's weapons production complex may purchase containers of the new design or borrow those in the Y-12 inventory, Arbital said. Senior Writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. © 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************