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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 Security UN To Consider Iran's Nuclear Programme Tomorrow
2 [NYTr] Why Shouldn't Iran Have Nuclear Weapons?
3 IRNA: US attack on Iran unlikely: Interior minister
4 IRNA: Iran does not want war, door still open for negotiation - envo
5 Guardian Unlimited: U.S., Allies Push for Sanctions on Iran
6 Guardian Unlimited: EU Nations Outline U.N. Iran Resolution
7 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Threatens Israel if U.S. Attacks
8 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Urges U.N. Action Against U.S.
9 Guardian Unlimited: Israeli: World Has Means to Stop Iran
10 BBC: US warns of tough Iran resolution
11 AFP: US, Europe push for strong UN action on Iran nuclear standoff -
12 AFP: Iran nuclear programme 'not compatible' with demands - UN power
13 IRNA: Pak analyst for IAEA to look into Iran N-issue
14 IRNA: Speaker: Hue and cry over Iran's nuclear issue, a political mo
15 IRNA: Larijani says no need to talk to US, nuclear program transpare
16 US: [NYTr] Bush's Nuclear Madness
17 US: Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Bush's credibility tank is on empty 
18 US: New West Network: Divine Mistrake 
19 The Hindu: India for early nod for nuclear agreement 
20 UPI: Cheney to hold energy talks in Kazakhstan
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
21 US: [NukeNet] Domenici and Nine DOE Lab Directors Promote Global
22 US: risky return to nuclear reprocessing
23 The Australian: Costello 'must heed' nuclear warnings 
24 US: NRC: NRC to Discuss 2005 Performance Assessment for R.E. Ginna N
25 US: The State: Demand increasing for nuclear engineers
26 US: Contra Costa Times: Energy panel stands by nuclear plant ban
27 Spain Herald: The Nuclear Debate 
28 US: Courier News: Bush proposes $15 million for cleanup of Middlesex
29 US: NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Meeting of the 
30 US: NRC: Atomic Safety and Licensing Board; Before Administrative Ju
31 US: NRC: Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collecti
32 AlterNet: The Mix: Is France a nuclear wonderland?
33 ITAR-TASS: Armenia plans to build new nuclear power plant.
34 US: Vermont Guardian: State drops Vermont Yankee safety contentions
35 asahi.com: Nuclear plants get new quake standards
36 US: NRC: Sunshine Act; Notice of Meetings
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
37 US: AFP: Gulf officials discuss nuclear emergency plan 
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
38 [DU List] Deplete Uranium - far worse than 9/11
39 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Radiation, not representation
40 US: AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Bush's Nuclear Madness
41 US: DVA: Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses
42 US: Morris Daily Herald: Is tritium linked to Cancer
43 US: FOX 12 Boise: Getting Federal Aid for Downwinders
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
44 Las Vegas SUN: Official: EPA nuclear dump radiation limit expected t
45 US: Guardian Unlimited: Iran Discovers Uranium Ore at 3 New Sites
46 US: NRC: RIN 3150-AH93 Spent fuel casts
47 reviewjournal.com: EPA vows to set mark
48 US: NRC: RIN 3150-AH93 Spent Fuel Casks
49 AFP: Iran achieves higher uranium enrichment level 
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
50 Knox News: K-31 site could get some use
51 Guardian Unlimited: Los Alamos Safety Official Reassigned
52 The State: Graham announces 500 jobs at SRS
53 Seattle Times: Threat at Hanford can't be ignored
54 DOE: DOE's National Laboratory Directors Highlight Scientific Merits
55 Hanford News: DOE does away with pensions for new hires
56 Hanford News: Program to look at vit plant problems: Report on '60 M
57 Hanford News: PNNL scientists remember Chernobyl
58 Hanford News: Respirator rule lifted at Hanford
59 Hanford News: Hanford nuclear cleanup cost soars
60 Hanford News: Group says Hanford tanks still leaking
61 DOE: High Energy Physics Advisory Panel
62 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Hanford
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 Security UN To Consider Iran's Nuclear Programme Tomorrow
 
Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 17:00:38 -0400


 
SECURITY COUNCIL TO CONSIDER IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAMME TOMORROW
New York, May  2 2006  5:00PM
The United Nations Security Council will tomorrow begin considering 
Iran’s refusal to suspend uranium enrichment or provide the transparency 
necessary to determine whether its nuclear programme is 
purely for peaceful energy purposes as the Governments says, or 
for producing nuclear weapons as other countries contend. 

“We’ll be looking at it tomorrow and we’ll see what action needs 
to be taken,” Council president for May, Ambassador Basile Ikouebe 
of the Republic of Congo, told a news briefing today, referring 
to the report that the 15-member body had requested from the UN 
nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The report, sent to the Council on Friday, notes that existing gaps 
in knowledge about the programme “continue to be a matter of concern,” 
and stresses that any progress “requires full transparency 
and active cooperation by Iran,” which concealed its nuclear activities 
for nearly 20 years in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation 
Treaty (NPT).

Mr. Ikouebe said the Council was following with interest today’s 
consultations on the issue in Paris among the body’s five permanent 
members, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, 
plus Germany, and will decide later whether to summon IAEA Director-General 
Mohamed ElBaradei for talks.

Earlier this year, the IAEA referred the matter to the Council, which 
can impose sanctions, after Mr. ElBaradei had repeatedly reported 
that although the Agency had not seen any diversion of material 
to nuclear weapons or other explosive devices, it was still 
not able to conclude that there were no undeclared nuclear materials 
or activities in Iran.

Iran says its activities are solely for energy purposes but the United 
States and other countries insist it is clandestinely seeking 
to produce nuclear weapons. Last August, Iran rescinded its voluntary 
suspension of nuclear fuel conversion, which can produce 
the enriched uranium necessary either for nuclear power generation 
or for nuclear weapons.

Outlining the Council’s overall programme for the month, Mr. Ikouebe 
said much of its work would be taken up with African priorities 
“not solely because I’m African but because we will be looking 
at crises which are deemed to be the most serious in the world.”

He cited first and foremost the conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur 
region and the possible transition in six months’ time to a UN 
force there depending on the outcome of peace talks now taking place 
in Abuja, Nigeria. He noted other deadlines, too, such as elections 
to be held in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), now 
slated for July, and those scheduled for Côte d'Ivoire in October.

Other issues he mentioned included the Middle East. He also said 
he would continue consultations undertaken by his predecessors on 
a successor to Secretary-General Kofi Annan whose term ends on 31 
December with the aim of electing a UN chief by September or October. 


The Council President said there were questions on the table about 
the geographical rotation of the post, which this time falls to 
Asia, and whether there should be other criteria. Speaking in the 
name of his country he said Congo was faithful to the principle 
of geographical rotation.

“We support a candidate from Asia, we shouldn’t change the rules 
of the game; the rules of the game have to be set before the process 
gets underway; we promised that it was their turn now,” he added.
 2006-05-02 00:00:00.000 


________________

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*****************************************************************
 2 [NYTr] Why Shouldn't Iran Have Nuclear Weapons?
 
Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 03:56:45 -0400 (EDT)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
The Independent - 30 April 2006
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article360993.ece

Why shouldn't Iran have nuclear weapons? 

Israel has American warheads ready to fire;
Iranians see only hypocrisy from the world's nuclear powers

by James C. Moore

As international political powers seek Iran's capitulation on nuclear
weapons development, little notice is given to what the Americans and the
British have done to create this crisis nor what steps the Israelis might
eventually take to make it profoundly more complicated.

Iran's antipathy toward the West did not spontaneously generate out of the
crazed rhetoric of radical mullahs. It has been spurred by what Iranians see
as hypocrisy on the part of members of the world's nuclear community, and
the bumbled meddling of the US and UK in Iranian affairs for more than a
half century.

Iran is dangerous, but the British and the Americans have helped to make it
that way. And the situation is even more precarious than it appears.

Shortly after the Gulf War in 1991, Germany gave Israel two of its
diesel-powered Dolphin-class submarines. The Israelis agreed to purchase a
third at a greatly reduced price. In November 2005, Germany announced that
it was selling two more subs to Israel for $1.2bn (#660m).

Defence analysts have suggested the Dolphin-class boats are a means for
Israel to have a second-strike capability from the sea if any of its
land-based defence systems are hit by enemy nuclear weapons. Unfortunately,
the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war is geopolitically afoot: Israel and the
American president might not be willing to wait until after the first shot
is fired.

Initially, Israel was expected to arm its submarine fleet with its own
short-range Popeye missiles carrying conventional warheads. At least three
mainstream publications in the US and Germany, however, have confirmed the
vessels have been fitted with US-made Harpoon missiles with nuclear tips.
Each Dolphin-class boat can carry 24 missiles.

Although Israel has not yet taken delivery of the two new submarines, the
three presently in its fleet have the potential to launch 72 Harpoons.
Stratfor, a Texas intelligence business, claims the Harpoons are designed to
seek out ship-sized targets on the sea but could be retrofitted with a
different guidance system.

According to independent military journalist Gordon Thomas, that has already
happened. He has reported the Harpoons were equipped with "over the horizon"
software from a US manufacturer to make them suitable for attacks on Iranian
nuclear facilities. Because the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf make the
Israeli subs easily detectable, two of them are reported to be patrolling
the deeper reaches of the Gulf of Oman, well within range of Iranian
targets.

If Israel has US nuclear weaponry pointed at Iran, the position of the
country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, becomes more politically
supportable by his people. Despite the fact that Israel has been developing
nuclear material since 1958, the country has never formally acknowledged it
has a nuclear arsenal. Analysts have estimated, however, that Israel is the
fifth-largest nuclear power on the planet with much of its delivery systems
technology funded by US taxpayers. To complicate current diplomatic efforts,
Israel, like Pakistan and India, has refused to sign the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty even as it insists in the international discourse
that Iran be stopped from acquiring what Israel already has.

Before Ariel Sharon's health failed, Der Speigel reported that the then
Israeli prime minister had ordered his country's Mossad intelligence service
to go into Iran and identify nuclear facilities to be destroyed. Journalist
Seymour Hersh has also written that the US military already has teams inside
Iran picking targets and working to facilitate political unrest. It is
precisely this same type of tactic by the US and the UK, used more than a
half century ago, which has led us to the contemporary nuclear precipice.

In 1953, Kermit Roosevelt led the CIA overthrow of Mohamed Mossadeq, Iran's
democratic- ally elected prime minister. Responding to a populace that had
grown restive under imperialist British influence, Mossadeq had plans to
nationalise the vast oil fields of his country.

At the prompting of British intelligence, the CIA executed strategic
bombings and political harassments of religious leaders, which became the
foundation of Mossadeq's overthrow. Shah Reza Pahlevi, whose strings were
pulled from Downing Street and Washington, became a brutal dictator who gave
the multinational oil companies access to Iranian reserves. Over a quarter
of a century later, the Iranian masses revolted, tossed out the Shah, and
empowered the radical Ayatollah Khomeini.

Iran has the strength needed to create its current stalemate with the West.
Including reserves, the Iranian army has 850,000 troops - enough to deal
with strained American forces in Iraq, even if US reserves were to be
deployed. The Iranians also have North Korean surface-to-air missiles with a
1,550-mile range and able to carry a nuclear warhead.

America cannot invade and occupy. Iran's response would likely be an
invasion of southern Iraq, populated, as is Iran, with Shias who could be
enlisted to further destabilise Iraq. There are also reported to be
thousands of underground nuclear facilities and uranium gas centrifuges in
Iran, and it is impossible for all of them to be eliminated. But the
Israelis might be willing to try. An Israeli attack on Iran would give Bush
some political cover at home. The president could continue to argue that
Israel has a right to protect itself.

But what if Israeli actions endanger America? Israel cannot attack without
the US being complicit. Israeli jets would have to fly through Iraqi air
space, which would require US permission. And America's Harpoon missiles
would be delivering the warheads. These would blow up Iranian nuclear
facilities and also launch an army of Iranian terrorists into the Western
world.

But George Bush is still without a respectable presidential legacy. He might
be willing to risk everything to mark his place in history as the man who
stopped Iran from getting nukes. The greater fear, though, is that he
becomes the first person to pull the nuclear trigger since Hiroshima and
Nagasaki - and then his place in the history books will be assured.

[James C Moore is the author of three books about the Bush administration.
His latest, 'The Architect', will be published in September by Random House
of New York.]
       
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*****************************************************************
 3 IRNA: US attack on Iran unlikely: Interior minister

Ahvaz, Khuzestan Prov, May 2, IRNA                                                                                                               

Iran-US-Minister 

Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said here Tuesday it
was unlikely the United States would attack Iran.

 "It is unlikely the US would attack Iran. Nevertheless, we
should not disregard precautionary and preventive measures,"
Pour-Mohammadi told IRNA in the southwestern city of Ahvaz.

 "Enemies have always created dangers. We have the duty to be
vigilant and not disasters take place," he added.

 He said the security condition in Khuzestan province had
improved and expressed hope terrorist acts conducted in the
province in the past year would not be repeated.




*****************************************************************
 4 IRNA: Iran does not want war, door still open for negotiation - envoy -

, May 2, IRNA                                                                                                            

The Islamic Republic of Iran does not want war and is still
ready to hold talks over its nuclear program, Iranian Ambassador
to Denmark Ahmad Daniali said in an interview with the Danish
`Politiken' newspaper.

 "Although we are being threatened militarily, we are not
pursuing war. We believe there is still a way for negotiation,"
the Iranian official said.

 "History is a witness that we (Iranians) have never attacked
another country. However, on the other side there are those
countries which are threatening us now and have helped our
enemies, among these the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein,
to assault us," he added.

 Daniali warned against "dangerous adventurism" by certain
countries in the Middle East region.

 Iran's top diplomat in Copenhagen called on the United Nations
Security Council to refrain from "supporting military threats."
"The UN Security Counil is obliged to guarantee peace and should
not support threats or attacks against us," Daniali stressed.

 Alluding to a Middle East country which is a not signatory to
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but has stockpiled some 200
nuclear warheads, the Iranian envoy said: "Such a country should
be punished. How can the international community accept such
 double standards?"
 Daniali reaffirmed Tehran's intention to remain committed to
its international nuclear obligations while urging the
International Atomic Energy Agency to defend Iran's rights.

 Referring to the hundreds of inspections on Iranian nuclear
facilities by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) over the past few years, Daniali stressed that the
UN watchdog had not found any evidence of nuclear material
having been diverted for other than peaceful purposes.


*****************************************************************
 5 Guardian Unlimited: U.S., Allies Push for Sanctions on Iran
 
From the Associated Press        
	 
[UP] 

Wednesday May 3, 2006 12:16 AM
 	
AP Photo DCMG111 
By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United States, Britain and France are
pushing for sanctions if Iran continues to defy demands that it
halt uranium enrichment - but not the sweeping economic and
military embargoes imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of
Kuwait. 

What the U.N. Security Council's three veto-wielding Western
members aim for are targeted sanctions, such as restricting
trade in equipment with both civilian and military uses and
banning travel and freezing the assets of Iranians who oversee
the country's nuclear program. 

U.N. sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein's regime banned all
Iraqi imports and exports, except food and medicine, and
authorized inspections of shipments in and out of Iraq to verify
their cargo. The sanctions halted legal oil exports from Iraq, a
major producer with the world's second-largest reserves. 

``The general idea we have on Iran is more targeted sanctions
aimed at specific individuals responsible for the nuclear
program, and the country's direction of the nuclear program,''
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said in a recent interview. 
Bolton said targeted sanctions would also likely include

``restricting trade in dual use and other sensitive items.'' 
He didn't rule out tougher sanctions at some future date. 
In Paris, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns predicted

Tuesday that Europe would agree to support a Security Council
resolution that would carry the unstated threat of sanctions. 

But Washington and its allies face an uphill struggle in winning
backing from Russia and China, the council's other veto-wielding
permanent members. Those nations, which have strong ties to
Iran, are leery of the resolution even though it doesn't
specifically mention sanctions. 

The resolution would make the council's previous demand for Iran
to stop uranium enrichment mandatory, but the Western allies
want it authorized under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which
would make it enforceable later by sanctions or military action. 

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said Tuesday he expects the
resolution to be introduced in the Security Council ``within a
day or two.'' 

``I think it's going to be very difficult to get anything by
Russia and China unless Iran becomes even more belligerent,''
said James Phillips, a research fellow on the Middle East at the
Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been defiant toward
the Security Council's demands, and he has sparked international
criticism by saying Israel should be wiped ``off the map'' and
for questioning whether the Holocaust happened. 

A top Revolutionary Guards commander, Gen. Mohammad Ebrahim, was
quoted Tuesday by the Iranian Student News Agency as saying
Israel would be Iran's first retaliatory target in response to
any U.S. attack. 

Israel's army chief, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, told the Maariv
newspaper Tuesday that if Iran develops nuclear capability, it
will constitute a threat to Israel's existence. But he said the
world has the military might to prevent Iran from developing a
nuclear weapon. Asked whether Israel would be involved in such a
military operation, Halutz said ``We are part of the world.'' 

In contrast to the handling of Iraq, there has been no talk of
economic sanctions that could slow Iran's oil exports. China is
a big customer for Iranian oil, and a cutoff of the oil would be
a big blow for the world market's already high oil prices. 

Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, said there is not a
consensus that diplomacy has failed, which might open the way to
sanctions. 

``There's a genuine concern in Russia and China about Iran's
nuclear program, but there's not a strong conviction that we
have to move swiftly on sanctions,'' he said. 

Between 1945 and 1990, the Security Council imposed sanctions
only twice - against white-ruled Rhodesia in 1966 and apartheid
South Africa in 1977. But during the 1990s, it imposed sanctions
against governments or rebel movements 12 times, according to a
study by David Cortright and George Lopez at the University of
Notre Dame. 

Alterman said the sanctions against Iraq and sanctions on Libya
in 1992 to force Moammar Gadhafi's government to surrender two
men wanted in the 1988 jetliner bombing over Lockerbie,
Scotland, were ``largely successful'' in curbing nuclear
proliferation. 

``Iraq was not found to have an advanced program. Libya did not
have an advanced program,'' he said. ``So it seems to me that
the lesson you can draw is that if you can get to that point of
getting international agreement on sanctions, then they can be a
useful curb on proliferation.'' 

But, he added, ``It's evident we're not there yet, and if we
moved forward on sanctions too soon we could make that goal
farther away.'' 

The sanctions against Iraq led to severe hardship for millions
of Iraqis. In response, the Security Council created the
oil-for-food program, which succeeded in feeding the vast
majority of Iraqis but was riddled with corruption. 

In 1999, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan started calling for
``smart sanctions'' that target regimes or rebel groups with
specific measures and not broad-based trade embargoes that can
hurt civilians. 

The council has generally followed his recommendation. Sanctions
approved recently over the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region,
for example, imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on four
individuals. 

Lee Feinstein, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,
said the main lesson from the Iraq experience is that broad
sanctions splintered a united front against Saddam. 

``Whatever you think about a policy of sanctions,'' he said,
``the Security Council is not going to agree to impose them (on
Iran), with one caveat - which is if Ahmadinejad takes action
that leaves them no choice.'' 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 6 Guardian Unlimited: EU Nations Outline U.N. Iran Resolution
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Tuesday May 2, 2006 11:46 PM
 	
AP Photo PAR101 
By ANGELA CHARLTON Associated Press Writer 

PARIS (AP) - European nations, backed by the United States,
outlined Tuesday a planned U.N. Security Council resolution to
give ``mandatory force'' to the atomic watchdog agency's demands
that Iran halt uranium enrichment, officials said. 

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns dismissed any
possibility of direct talks with Iran but said he had not
``given up hope on diplomacy.'' He also predicted Europe would
agree within three months to support sanctions against Iran over
its nuclear activities, which Washington suspects are aimed at
manufacturing atomic weapons. 

``Diplomacy has to be hard-edged. Isolation is what we believe
will work best,'' Burns said Tuesday. 

``Within a month or two or three, you are going to see
international support for sanctions,'' he added. 

Burns was speaking at the start of talks in Paris by envoys from
six nations in Paris. They discussed the possibility of a
resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which makes any
demands mandatory and allows for the use of sanctions - and
possibly force - if they are not obeyed. 

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said
the focus of the resolution being prepared was to compel Iran to
suspend enrichment activity and submit to negotiations, but it
would not seek to impose sanctions. 

``We'll see how the Iranians react once there is a Chapter 7
resolution with these demands on them,'' he said. ``Certainly,
the issue of sanctions and other diplomatic levers are out
there,'' either through the Security Council, individual states
or like-minded states acting together, he added. 

The Security Council is scheduled to discuss the Iran nuclear
issue on Wednesday. 

While the resolution does not call for sanctions, that is likely
to be the next step sought by the United States, Britain and
France if Iran refuses to stop enriching uranium. 

Enriched uranium can be used in the production of both nuclear
energy and nuclear weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is
aimed only at producing electricity. 

Tuesday's talks were the first since the International Atomic
Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, confirmed Friday
that Iran has continued its enrichment of uranium. The IAEA has
demanded Iran halt uranium enrichment and reprocessing. 

The resolution was outlined at a closed-door meeting in Paris of
political directors of the foreign ministries of France,
Britain, Germany, Russia and China. The meeting ended Tuesday
night. 

Russia and China, veto-wielding permanent members of the
Security Council, remained firmly opposed to a resolution that
could pave the way for sanctions if Tehran refuses to end
uranium enrichment. 

Talks will continue ahead of a May 8 meeting of foreign
ministers at U.N. headquarters, aimed at ``reaching a firm
decision of the Security Council, addressing a clear message to
Iran,'' French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei
said. 

Mattei said the Europeans ``would hope to give mandatory force
to the resolution, which could suppose recourse to Chapter 7.''
But he said there was no decision on this point. 

Iran dismissed the latest talks and accused the Europeans of
bowing to U.S. pressure. 

``We expect nothing specific from these meetings. We have
already made our decision,'' said Seyyed Ali Moujani, a top
official at the Iranian Embassy in Paris. 

He accused Iran's European negotiating partners of ``losing
their capacities for independence.'' 

The United States favors economic sanctions against Iran and
countries that sell it weapons - or so-called dual-use
technology. Russia, which has arms and technology deals with
Iran, and China oppose sanctions or military force and want to
focus on diplomatic means. 

China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya said he had seen the draft
resolution expected to be circulated to Security Council
members, and confirmed that it calls Iran a threat to
international peace and security - and is under Chapter 7 of the
U.N. Charter. 

``I think there are some elements that might cause difficulty,''
he told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York. ``I think we
have to handle ... the Iranian nuclear issue with great care.'' 

A senior Russian lawmaker said Tuesday Moscow will not agree to
impose sanctions at this stage, and will reject a Security
Council resolution proposed by the United States and its
European allies. 

Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the lower house of parliament's
foreign affairs committee, told Ekho Moskvy radio that he
expected agreement on a milder resolution at foreign ministers'
meeting. 

This could give Iran a deadline of up to three months to meet
demands to stop uranium enrichment. If that deadline expires
without result, Kosachev said, a new Security Council resolution
would be required to impose sanctions on Iran. 

--- 
Associated Press Writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations,
Laurie Copans in Jerusalem, and Jamey Keaten and Jenny
Barchfield in Paris contributed to this report.	 
		 	 	   
                    
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 7 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Threatens Israel if U.S. Attacks
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Tuesday May 2, 2006 11:01 PM
 	
AP Photo VAH105 

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's first target would be Israel in any
response to a U.S. attack, a Revolutionary Guards commander said
Tuesday, reinforcing the Iranian president's past call for
Israel to be ``wiped off the map.'' 

``We have announced that wherever (in Iran) America does make
any mischief, the first place we target will be Israel,'' the
Iranian Student News Agency quoted Gen. Mohammad Ebrahim
Dehghani as saying. 

Dehghani, a top commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards,
also said Israel was not prepared to go to war against Iran. 
``We will definitely resist ... U.S. B-52 (bombers),'' Dehghani
was quoted as saying. 

On Tuesday, Israeli elder statesman Shimon Peres called on Iran
to scrap its nuclear program and warned: ``Remember that Israel
is exceptionally strong and knows how to defend itself.'' 

President Bush has said a military option remains on the table
if Iran does not agree to international demands for it to stop
enriching uranium and open its nuclear program to inspections.

However, Bush said he wants to solve the dispute through
diplomacy. 

Dehghani, who served as a spokesman during Revolutionary Guards
war games last month, said the exercises were held ahead of
schedule to send a message to the U.S. and its allies against
any plans for a military strike. 

``We were due to organize the maneuvers in May but because of
timing conditions and issues related to nuclear energy and upon
the recommendation of Mr. Larijani, it was held 40 days sooner
than planned,'' he said. Ali Larijani is Iran's top nuclear
negotiator. 

Friday marked the deadline set by the U.N. Security Council for
Iran to freeze its uranium enrichment program. Council members
are now considering the next steps, which could include
punishing sanctions though Russia and China are on record as
opposing that option. 

The semiofficial student news agency gave no further details on
Dehghani's remarks or where he made them. 

Israel's army chief, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, said in an interview
published Tuesday that the world has the military might to
prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. He also said that
if Iran does obtain nuclear capability, it will constitute a
threat to Israel's existence. 

When asked if the world can, militarily, stop Iran's nuclear
program, Halutz told the Maariv newspaper ``Yes, yes. Regarding
whether or not the world can, the answer is yes.'' 

Questioned on whether Israel would be involved in such a
military operation against its top enemy, Halutz said ``We are
part of the world.'' 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 8 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Urges U.N. Action Against U.S.
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Tuesday May 2, 2006 1:31 AM
 	
AP Photo DCMC101 
By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Iran denounced the United States on Monday
for contemplating possible nuclear strikes against Iranian
targets and urged the United Nations to take urgent action
against what it called a dangerous violation of international
law. 

In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan obtained by The
Associated Press, Iran's U.N. Ambassador Javad Zarif called
President Bush's refusal to rule out a U.S. nuclear strike on
Iran and a similar follow-up statement by Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice ``illegal and insolent threats.'' 

Bush was asked on April 18 whether U.S. options regarding Iran
``include the possibility of a nuclear strike'' if Tehran
refuses to halt uranium enrichment. ``All options are on the
table,'' the president replied, but he stressed that the United
States will continue to focus on diplomacy. 

Iran insists it is legally entitled under the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium to provide fuel for
civilian power plants but the United States suspects its real
aim is to produce nuclear weapons, a view backed by Britain and
France. 

Zarif said the use of ``false pretexts'' by senior U.S.
officials ``to make public and illegal threats of resort to
force against the Islamic Republic of Iran is continuing
unabated in total contempt of international law and fundamental
principles of the United Nations Charter.'' 

The ``U.S. aggressive policy'' of contemplating the possible use
of nuclear weapons also violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty and other U.S. multilateral agreements, he said. 

Zarif's letter made no mention of recent threats by Iran's
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe Israel ``off the map.'' 

Instead, the Iranian ambassador honed in on statements from U.S.
officials, especially from Bush, which he said ``defiantly
articulate the United States policies and intentions on the
resort to nuclear weapons.'' 

Zarif said past U.N. failures to respond ``to these illegal and
inexcusable threats have emboldened senior United States
officials to go further and even consider the use of nuclear
weapons as an `option on the table.''' 

In a brief statement responding to the letter, U.S. Ambassador
John Bolton said ``if Iran wants to be treated differently, then
Iran should stop pursuing nuclear weapons and give up
terrorism.'' 

The secretary-general had no immediate comment on the letter,
said Marie Okabe, a U.N. spokeswoman. 

After lengthy negotiations, the U.N. Security Council adopted a
statement a month ago demanding that Iran stop enriching
uranium. A new report Friday from the International Atomic
Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, confirmed what the
world already knew: Iran has refused to stop enriching uranium. 

The United States, Britain and France immediately announced
plans to introduce a new Security Council resolution this week
which would make Iran's compliance with their demands mandatory.

To intensify pressure, they want the resolution under Chapter 7
of the U.N. Charter which means it can be enforced through
sanctions or military action. 

China and Russia, the two other council members with veto power,
oppose sanctions and military action and want the Iran nuclear
issue resolved diplomatically, with the IAEA taking the lead,
not the Security Council. 

Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, reiterated Monday
that Tehran was ``ready for any kind of negotiation to achieve
our rights'' and again called for Iran's dispute with the
international community to be returned to the IAEA, rather than
taken up by the Security Council. 

He spoke on the eve of a meeting in Paris of political directors
from the six countries that have been trying to find a
diplomatic solution to the standoff - Britain, France, Germany,
the United States, Russia and China.	 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 9 Guardian Unlimited: Israeli: World Has Means to Stop Iran
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Tuesday May 2, 2006 9:31 AM
 	
AP Photo XHS102 

By LAURIE COPANS Associated Press Writer 

JERUSALEM (AP) - The world has the military might to prevent
Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, Israel's military chief
said in comments published Tuesday, after Iran pressed President
Bush to rule out a nuclear strike against Tehran. 

Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz also said that if Iran does obtain nuclear
capability, it will constitute a threat to Israel's existence.

When asked if the world can, militarily, stop Iran's nuclear
program, Halutz told the Maariv newspaper: ``The answer is
yes.'' 

Asked whether Israel would be involved in such a military
operation against its top enemy, Halutz said, ``We are part of
the world.'' 

Western nations have been considering tough sanctions - not yet
including military action - against Iran if it continues with
its program to enrich uranium, a process that can produce fuel
for a nuclear reactor or fissile material for a bomb. Iran
contends it has a right to enrich uranium as long as it does not
attempt to use it for nuclear weapons. 

Bush has refused to rule out military action in response to the
Iranian nuclear standoff. When asked last month whether U.S.
options regarding Iran ``include the possibility of a nuclear
strike'' if Tehran refuses to halt uranium enrichment, Bush
replied, ``All options are on the table.'' He stressed, however,
the United States will continue to focus on diplomacy. 

In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan obtained by The
Associated Press on Monday, Iran's U.N. Ambassador Javad Zarif
called Bush's refusal to rule out a U.S. nuclear strike on Iran
``illegal and insolent threats.'' 

Zarif said the use of ``false pretexts'' by senior U.S.
officials ``to make public and illegal threats of resort to
force against the Islamic Republic of Iran is continuing
unabated in total contempt of international law and fundamental
principles of the United Nations Charter.'' 

The ``U.S. aggressive policy'' of contemplating the possible use
of nuclear weapons also violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty and other U.S. multilateral agreements, he said. 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly spoken out
against Israel and threatened to wipe it ``off the map.'' 

While Israeli government and military officials had been very
vocal in calling for action against Iran, they have toned down
their comments in recent weeks, wishing to take a low profile as
the world proceeds in its efforts to stop the Iranian program. 

Officials from the five permanent U.N. Security Council members
gather Tuesday in Paris to discuss International Atomic Energy
Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei's report to the council that Iran
was in violation of the council's demand that Tehran stop
enriching uranium. The report opened the way for the council to
take punitive measures against Iran, but immediate action is not
likely because Russia and China are opposed to sanctions. 

Israel is convinced international efforts against the Iranian
program can help persuade Tehran to back down, Halutz said. 
Halutz told Maariv it is not clear if Iran will be able to

achieve nuclear capability by the end of the decade, as Israeli
officials had predicted earlier. But if Iran does one day
possess a nuclear weapon, it would constitute a threat to
Israel's existence, Halutz said. 

``When the Iranians will have a nuclear, military capability,
then we will be able to talk about an existential threat,''
Halutz said. ``If they have a nuclear weapon and the rulers
speak as they do today, this combination will be a dangerous
combination for Israel.'' 

--- 
Associated Press Writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this
report from the United Nations. 	 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 10 BBC: US warns of tough Iran resolution
 
Last Updated: Wednesday, 3 May 2006
 
[US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns ]                           
Mr Burns said the world must "send a stiff message" to Iran                                                
		
A top US diplomat has said he expects European states to prepare 
a binding UN resolution on Iran's nuclear programme that could 
allow for sanctions. 

However, US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns added that 
diplomacy still offers the best solution to the crisis over 
Iran's nuclear ambitions. 

The UN Security Council is to meet next Monday to discuss its 
stance on Iran. 

A meeting of top diplomats from the Council's five permanent 
members ended on Tuesday without agreement. 

The talks in Paris between representatives from the US, UK, 
Russia, China, France were held to discuss Friday's report by the 
UN's nuclear watchdog that Tehran had ignored calls to halt 
uranium enrichment. 

Iran says it needs the enriched uranium as fuel for nuclear power 
plants - and denies US accusations that it is trying to build a 
nuclear bomb. 

No consensus 

The different parties at the Paris talks expressed "their concern 
about the development" of Iran's nuclear programme, French 
Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told the 
Associated Press news agency. 

However, there was no consensus on what action to take. 

HAVE YOUR SAY                                                   
Coordinat international diplomacy is the only way forward Nick, 
Cambridge, UK 

The US, UK and France want the Security Council to adopt a 
so-called "Chapter 7" resolution, ordering Iran to suspend 
enrichment - and threatening it with sanctions if it disobeys. 

Chapter 7 Security Council resolutions are binding on all UN 
members, but do not automatically lead to sanctions or military 
action. Further decisions would be needed for such measures. 

Before a Chapter 7 resolution is passed, the Council has to agree 
that there is a threat to "international peace and security". 

China and Russia are yet to support such a resolution and are 
opposed to sanctions against Iran. 

Mr Burns expressed frustration at their stance, saying: "It's 
time for countries to take responsibilities, especially those 
countries that have close relationships with Iran." 

He added that there will be international support for sanctions 
against Iran "within a month or two or three". 

Diplomacy towards Iran, he said, needs to "hard-edged". 

With the need for international unity seen as paramount, the 
stage seems set for more long and difficult diplomatic 
negotiations, our Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield says. 

'Against sanctions' 

Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said earlier Russia 
and China had told Iran they were "against sanctions and military 
attacks". 

[Workers at Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant] Iran says its 
nuclear programme will only serve its energy needs                                                           

"There is a very wrong assumption held by some that the West can 
do anything it wants through the Security Council," he told 
Tehran newspaper Kayhan. 

Iran has said already that it will dismiss any UN resolution 
regarding its nuclear programme. 

There is growing anxiety about the apparently fading prospects of 
making Tehran stop uranium enrichment - and of the risk of US 
military action if it fails to do so. 

An IAEA report on Friday said that Iran had failed to comply with 
a 30-day Security Council deadline to stop uranium enrichment. 

On Tuesday, Iran's atomic energy chief said Tehran had enriched 
uranium to 4.8% - which experts say is a low level used in atomic 
power reactors. 

Iran on Monday strongly criticised the US at the UN, accusing 
Washington of threatening to launch a military strike against its 
nuclear facilities. 

US President George W Bush has refused to rule out military 
action against Iran, but has repeatedly insisted that the dispute 
be resolved diplomatically.                                                      
*****************************************************************
 11 AFP: US, Europe push for strong UN action on Iran nuclear standoff -
                           
 Tue May 2, 12:40 PM ET 
		 	 
PARIS (AFP) - US and European officials pushed for a tough,
binding UN resolution against Iran
" /> Iranin key talks on Tehran's nuclear programme, which the
West fears could be hiding a drive for the atom bomb. 

"The Security Council has no option but to proceed with Chapter
7," US State Department number three Nicholas Burns said,
referring to an article in the UN charter that could lead to
sanctions or even military action.
 
The talks in Paris involved top political directors of the five
permanent UN Security Council members -- Britain, China, France,
Russia and the United States -- plus Germany.
 
They were called to lay the groundwork for a meeting of foreign
ministers of the world body in New York next Tuesday.
 
The international standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions
worsened when it failed to comply with a UN deadline last Friday
to suspend uranium enrichment, which makes the fuel for civilian
reactors but what can also be the explosive core of bombs.
 
A French foreign ministry spokesman confirmed that the EU three,
which had held months of ultimately fruitless negotiations with
Iran, backed a resolution that would give "binding force" to the
international community's demands.
 
That position was being pressed in the talks, which started at
5:30 pm (1530 GMT) and were due to extend through a dinner that
would finish around 9:30 pm (1930 GMT).
 
But while the Western countries put out a hard line, Russia and
China have signalled opposition and are seeking a more
diplomatic approach.
 
Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki expressed confidence
that those two veto-wielding countries, which are important
trading partners, would block a resolution with UN sanctions.
 
"There is a very wrong assumption held by some that the West can
do anything it wants through the Security Council," he told the
hardline Tehran daily Kayhan.
 
Mottaki insisted there was no question, "absolutely not," of
Iran returning to a freeze of its uranium enrichment work.
 
Also Tuesday, the head of the country's Atomic Energy
Organisation, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, told the ISNA student news
agency that Iran had succeeded in enriching uranium to a higher
level of purity than previously achieved.
 
But he said the grade reached -- 4.8 percent purity -- would not
be exceeded because "this level suffices for making nuclear
fuel".
 
The clerical regime has insisted its nuclear activities are
exclusively for developing atomic energy.
 
Purity of more than 90 percent is required to produce the
fissile core of an atom bomb -- a weapon Western intelligence
assessments say Iran is at least seven years from being able to
build.
 
The charge d'affaires at the Iranian embassy in Paris, Seyyed
Ali Moujani, told reporters his country intended to have a
nuclear power station operational in the near future.
 
"Our first nuclear power plant is to start operating within a
year," he said, adding: "For us, this is vital".
 
With a UN consensus on how to tackle the sensitive issue far from 
assured, several US media have speculated Washington might decide 
to launch airstrikes on Iranian nuclear targets without UN 
permission. US President George W. Bush has declined to exclude 
the military option and The New Yorker magazine said the use of 
small nuclear bunker-busters bombs was being considered. Burns, 
the US Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said in his 
briefing with reporters in Paris that "the United States is not 
taking options off the table". 

"We have not lost hope in diplomacy ... (but) we are not going
to accept a nuclear weapons future" for Iran, he said. 
Burns added that, even if a resolution invoking Chapter 7
failed, there would be "a lot of momentum" for UN sanctions,
particularly on technology imports with civilian and military
uses, a travel ban on Iranian leaders and a ban on all arms
sales. 

He stressed, though, that "we are not discussing at this time
oil and gas sanctions." 

That did little to reassure markets. World oil prices jumped back 
over 74 dollars a barrel ahead of the Paris meeting Tuesday, 
extending an increase of two dollars seen on Monday. Analysts 
worry that Iran -- the second-biggest oil producer in OPEC " /> 
OPECafter Saudi Arabia -- could retaliate to any punishment by 
disrupting crude exports, which account for about half of its 
daily output of four million barrels.
 	 		 			
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 12 AFP: Iran nuclear programme 'not compatible' with demands - UN powers

 Tue May 2, 5:04 PM ET 
		 	 
PARIS (AFP) - All five permanent members of the UN Security 
Council and Germany agree Iran " /> Iran's nuclear programme "is 
not compatible with the demands of the international community," 
a French official said after envoys wrapped up a meeting in 
Paris. 

Senior political directors from Britain, China, France, Russia 
and United States, as well as Germany, "all showed their concern 
over the development of this programme," said foreign ministry 
spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei.
 
He added that they agreed to pursue discussions on the issue at
the foreign minister level in New York next Monday -- advancing
by a day a scheduled gathering -- with the aim of reaching a
"firm" decision.
 
Iran's nuclear activities go against International Atomic Energy
Agency
" /> International Atomic Energy Agencydemands, as underlined in
an IAEA report to the UN Security Council last Friday, Mattei
said.
 
"It has been agreed to pursue discussions, in particular in New
York, with the aim of reaching a firm decision from the UN
Security Council and addressing a clear message to Iran," he
said.
 
"At the same time, thought will be given as to incentive
measures and dissuasive measure whose application will depend on
Iran's attitude."
 
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 13 IRNA: Pak analyst for IAEA to look into Iran N-issue

Islamabad, May 1, IRNA                                                                                                           

Pakistan-Analyst 

A noted Pakistani analyst and member of the Parliament on Monday
called upon the West to let International Atomic Energy Agency
look into the Iranian nuclear programme and withdraw the matter
from the United Nations Security Council.

 In an interview with "IRNA" here, a central leader of Pakistan
Peoples' Party and former minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi spoke at
length about the issue and the need that it should be handled by
the apolitical entity i.e. IAEA and not the UN Council.

 "Let technical matters be handled by a technical agency and not
by a political body," he emphasised, while referring to Iran's
call for giving the task of resolving the issue to the
international watchdog.

 As a dignified nation and member of the United Nations, it was
Iran's fundamental right to explore all possible means for
progress and prosperity, he said and added there should be
even-handed policy about all the UN member countries.

 He questioned the US silence on Israel's stockpile of nuclear
weapons and raising hue and cry over Iran's peaceful nuclear
programme.

 The analyst ruled out the possibility of US imposing war on
Iran and contended that President George W Bush would have to
think thousands of times before making up his mind for the
extreme option.

 Referring to recent anti-war protests in the United States and
elsewhere, Shah Qureshi said that the world opinion about the US
policies was fast changing and the same was reflective in China
and Russia's approach on the issue and even Pakistan had
cautioned that the attack on Iran would be construed as an
attack on Islam.

 The member of the lower house of parliament maintained that to
make the world a peaceful abode, the policy of double standard,
being followed by the US bloc would have to be done away with.

 He pointed out that the US was the first country usually to
welcome a political process, but it had rejected the election in
Palestine and the formation of Hamas-led government.

 "It is time for the US and its allies to shun selective
approach and support political processes whether they take place
in Nepal, Palestine or elsewhere," the analyst argued.

 He believed that there was no harm in convening a summit of the
Organisation of Islamic Conference to discuss new Palestine
government and the Iran nuclear issue.

 "The forum can help the Muslim Ummah to devise a better
strategy to safeguard the rights of Muslims," he opined.

*****************************************************************
 14 IRNA: Speaker: Hue and cry over Iran's nuclear issue, a political move
      
May 1, IRNA                                                                                                            

- 
Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel said Monday that the hue
and cry over Iran's nuclear issue is a political move with no
legal and rational ground.

 Speaking to the media on the sidelines of a function to mark
Teachers Day, he told IRNA that Iran recommends that the UN
nuclear watchdog to act in such a way to protect its future
reputation.

 He added that there is no point in condemning a country which
complies with the regulations of the International Atomic Energy
Agency.

 Haddad-Adel said that unfortunately some of the world states
misuse the IAEA and deprive a country of its inalienable right
to access nuclear energy in the name of the agency.

 In response to a question about Majlis reaction to the possible
sanctions by the UN Security Council against Iran, he said Iran
gives priority to independence and the Majlis speaks for the
nation.

 "In the nuclear issue, Majlis underlines safeguarding of the
nation's right and will insist on this," he added.

*****************************************************************
 15 IRNA: Larijani says no need to talk to US, nuclear program transparent
      
Tehran, May 2, IRNA                                                                                                              

Iran-US-Nuclear 

Secretary of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) said here
Monday that Iran dose not need to talk to the US.

 Iran did not ask for talks with the US, on the contrary it was
they who insisted on meeting with Iran on Iraq which did not
happen, Ali Larijani said.

 Larijani who was speaking at a student gathering in Tehran
University responded to a question on what he meant by Iran-US
not having talks saying "so far, these discussions have not
taken place." On the likelihood of Iran dropping out of the
Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), he said "we are not going to
leave the NPT unless we are forced to do so."

 On the West's assertions that they have problems in dealing
with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government, he added "they
said the same thing with the Khatami's government."

 "The real issue is that they do not want Iran to possess
peaceful nuclear technology and become a nuclear power."

 He further rejected any clandestine nuclear activities by Iran
in the past years. "This is a big lie that Iran had hidden its
activities. All of Iran's activities were announced to the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)," Larijani retorted.

 He further said the additional budget allocated for Bushehr
nuclear powerplant is to expedite its completion.

 He said that Iran is able to have access to nuclear-generated
electricity with the completion of Bushehr, which, he reckoned
to take one year.

 Larijani also called on the Western nations to let the IAEA
Secretary General Mohammad Elbaradei carry on with his work
based on international conventions.

 "Tehran regards NPT as a viable international document and has
accepted inspection of its facilities based on the treaty.
However, it also wants to carry out nuclear research and
development activities within the framework of the nuclear
watchdog agency."

 Tehran in continuing with the nuclear program has opted for a
clear and transparent approach and sees no need to hide its
activities, the SNSC secretary added.

 Larijani stressed that Iran is not looking to prove its
policies through force. "We are ready for all types of
discussions to secure our legitimate rights."

 He further said all the previous governments had made solid
contribution to the country's peaceful nuclear program.

 On Iran's uranium mines, he referred to the facilities for
exploration of uranium in close proximity to the mines.

 "The country has the capability of producing yellow cake next
to the mines."

 Iran has been able to enrich uranium of close to four percent
purity. "Today we have nuclear knowledge which should be
expanded." He characterized the request for suspension of
uranium enrichment as "baseless."

 Suspension is meaningless for us, because one cannot build
bombs with 164 centrifuges and the Europeans and IAEA inspectors
could also attest to this fact.

 The SNSC secretary said that US threats of military action
against Iran is "psychological publicity."

 "The constant repetition of the issue aims to influence our
behavior which has also been carried in the past. They should
know that today's Iran is different than the past."

 He also alluded to Europeans' unfair deal with Iran. After a
few rounds of negotiations with the Europeans we strived to show
our good intentions by agreeing to suspend all nuclear-related
activities. But after a few months and knowing that we will not
accept any deal which did not recognize our rights of enrichment
they offered a series of superfluous and irrelevant proposal to
us, he underscored.

 In related news, Larijani said Sunday that if West continues to
threaten Iran, the country will stop cooperating with the
 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

 Addressing students in Sharif Technical University, he said now
it is up to the West to make an option, on which Iran's reaction
will depend.

 "Therefore, they had better use their wits and select a way
that will make Iran cooperate with them," added the SNSC
secretary.

 Turning to the remarks of the US state secretary about the
allocation of 70 million dollars to measures against Iran, he
said that even if 70 billion dollars were earmarked to the
cause, they would get nowhere.

 "If you are seeking to disturb Iran, we will do the same, given
that we are able to do so but actually do not wish to disturb
anyone," noted the UNSC secretary.		 				 		 			

 			 			 				News sent: 00:07 Tuesday May 02, 2006 				Print 			
*****************************************************************
 16 [NYTr] Bush's Nuclear Madness
 
Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 15:32:01 -0500 (CDT)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Alternet - May 2, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/35530/

Bush's Nuclear Madness

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet

George W. Bush has a vision for a strong, independent nuclear America. He
wants nuclear weapons for everyday use -- deterrence is for Democrats -- and
he wants to build dozens of new nuclear energy plants across the United
States.

He'll also ship thousands of tons of nuclear waste across the country, first
to a huge storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev. But that will only
contain a little more than what we already have sitting around. We'll need
nine more Yuccas by the end of the century if Bush's plans go through.

Filling the one we already have means shipping highly radioactive waste
-- through 44 states coming within a half mile of 50 million Americans.
Themost toxic, deadly substances known to humanity would pass through
Boston, Baltimore, Newark and Miami.

A 1982 study by Sandia Labs -- the country's premiere nuclear research
facility -- found that a containment breech in one plant in Pennsylvania
would kill 74,000 people within a year and another 34,000 later from cancer.
The 1986 Chernobyl disaster spewed more radiation across Europe than was
released in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, took out 486 villages in
Belarus and left a region that had been inhabited by 100,000 people a
glow-in-the-dark no-man's land.

But don't worry. According to the administration and the deep-pocketed
nuclear lobby, it's all perfectly safe. Sure, there's no human invention
that's foolproof and, yes, we're talking about making dozens of ripe new
targets for terrorists to attack, but hasn't the administration and its
corporate partners earned our trust?

Nuclear Renaissance

According to Bush administration spin, the mighty atom is a 21st century
panacea for the United States' -- and the world's -- most intractable
problems. Nuclear energy will free us from our dependence on those
"tyrannical regimes" that sponsor global terror, bail out the planet from
global warming and avert a new superpower struggle by giving
fast-industrializing behemoths like China and India an endless supply of
"renewable" energy. Nuclear weapons that we can deploy freely in small
conflicts will lock in our global dominance for the rest of the century.
And, of course, all this will create lots and lots of high-paying jobs.

It sounds great on paper. But if you look behind the dramatic shifts in U.S.
nuclear policy over the course of Bush's presidency, you find an intense
lobbying and public relations campaign by a handful of firms that stand to
rake in billions from the construction of new civilian reactors, and by a
generation of Cold Warriors that lusts after new, more "usable" nukes for
their toy chest.

The administration has offered up a series of initiatives that will reshape
decades of nuclear policy, both civilian and military. Bush scrapped the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and undermined the Test Ban Treaty. And it's
not just plans for new bombs and new reactors; he's shifted U.S. policy
towards countries like India and Pakistan that developed nukes outside the
Non-Proliferation Treaty.

And Bush plans to use Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a repository for the
world's nuclear waste, not just our own. It's the linchpin of what the
administration hopes will become a new economic order -- superseding OPEC
with a nuclear cartel that reads "Made in the USA."

At the heart of Bush's atomic dreams is the Global Nuclear Energy
Partnership (GNEP) announced in February. Under the plan, we'll dramatically
expand nuclear energy production at home, encourage new nuclear generation
abroad and import other countries' spent fuel for reprocessing in the United
States.

The idea is to limit the two most sensitive parts of the nuclear cycle --
enrichment and disposal -- to a handful of sites in the United States,
Russia and perhaps France and Japan. In January Vladimir Putin announced
that one piece of the puzzle -- a joint waste initiative between the United
States and Russia -- was a done deal.

The GNEP constitutes a sharp break with decades of American nuclear policy,
dating back to Jimmy Carter. He banned nuclear fuel reprocessing in 1977,
concluding -- along with the American public -- that the costs were too high
and the hazards too great.

According to the administration, GNEP will incorporate "new
proliferation-resistant technologies to recover more energy and reduce
waste" from spent fuel -- there are an estimated 55,000 tons of the stuff
sitting around -- which will "reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation
worldwide." But while the first moves have begun -- in addition to the deal
with Russia, Bush signed a major, possibly illegal, nuclear agreement with
India just last month -- those "proliferation-resistant technologies" are
still on the drawing board. As Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms
Control Association, told the Christian Science Monitor: "What seems rather
fanciful about this project is that the fuel-supply aspect appears
contingent on proving some highly advanced technology."

It's a different kind of faith-based initiative; Bush is barreling
full-speed ahead with his programs and assuming that we'll invent the
technology we need to do it all as we go along.

It may be Bush's boldest vision yet, but it's nothing new; like so much
we've seen from this administration, Nixon's presidency is the source of
inspiration, and his old staff are the agents. In his 1974 State of the
Union Address, during the height of the great oil shock, Nixon touted his
proposed "Operation Independence," declaring that "1974 must be the year in
which we organize a full-scale effort to provide for our energy needs." The
plan would have increased the United States' use of nuclear energy in order
to break the back of OPEC.

But Nixon's vision of "independence" suffered a meltdown of public opinion
and political opposition after the near disaster at Three Mile Island in
1979 -- the most serious accident in the history of American nuclear energy.
Since then, the domestic nuclear agenda has been in deep freeze, and the
1986 Chernobyl disaster only strengthened public resolve against restarting
it.

On the military side, Bush wants to shrug off decades of constraints and
develop a new generation of nukes. Fred Kaplan, writing in Slate, noted some
of the overlooked provisions in Bush's 2004 defense budget, including the
repeal of a 1992 ban on the research and development of "low-yield" nuclear
weapons. Our cash outlay for new nukes, given the United States' military
supremacy, is stunning:

[T]he Department of Energy is spending an astonishing $6.5 billion on
nuclear weapons and President Bush is requesting $6.8 billion more for next
year and a total of $30 billion over the following four years.  Measured in
"real dollars" (that is, adjusting for inflation), this year's spending on
nuclear activities exceeds by over 50 percent the average annual sum ($4.2
billion) that the United States spent -- again, in real dollars
-- throughout the four and a half decades of the Cold War.

The military energy complex

While the administration's civilian initiatives have been launched with
great fanfare, Bush's revolutionary nuclear weapons policies have been
low-key -- no grand pronouncements, no media rollouts. But the line between
military nukes and civilian energy is not a clean one. A network of advocacy
groups, lobbyists and corporations link the nuclear community together. The
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) -- known to be firmly in the pocket of
the industry -- is charged with overseeing both sides of the atom.

The military and civilian programs are joined by companies like General
Electric, a major defense contractor that builds and services civilian
reactors (GE stopped manufacturing nuclear weapons in 1992) and Bechtel,
which despite an atrocious safety and environmental record, has a $6 billion
contract to develop Yucca Mountain, services two-thirds of the civilian
plants in the United States (and more overseas), and is part of a consortium
that manages the military's Nevada Test Site, where advanced nuclear weapons
tests are conducted. Another key player is defense giant Lockheed-Martin --
also part of the Nevada Test Site Team --which runs Sandia National Labs,
where both civilian and military research is conducted. Westinghouse, the
world's leading manufacturer of civilian reactors, was the government's
third-largest nuclear weapons contractor as recently as 1995. The United
States' last full-scale nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge Tenessee is
managed by a consortium including Bechtel. It took over the contract from
Lockheed-Martin in 2000. Bechtel and Westinghouse are both making a fortune
cleaning up nuclear facilities across America, both civilian and military.

The nuclear power industry is snuggled up tight with government -- even more
cozily than most. The NRC -- supposedly the public's watchdog -- is financed
not with tax dollars but by rate payers, meaning through the companies
themselves. All the while, a revolving door between business and government
spins like a top. According to the National Catholic Reporter, the NRC has
seen its "senior staff regularly moving into the nuclear industry as
employees and consultants." A General Accounting Office survey in 2000
showed that more than a quarter of all NRC staffers "are considering leaving
the agency within a year." "Everyone in any NRC position who can goes to
private industry," said one whistleblower.

That's pretty much true across all of the sectors of nuclear technology.
Only weeks after the passage of last year's energy bill -- which showered
billions on nuclear power operators in direct subsidies and other
giveaways-- eyebrows were raised when NBC reported that a key Senate staffer
"who helped steer those billions through" did so "in between stints
representing nuclear power companies like Exelon" as a major lobbyist.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom ridge joined Exelon's board soon
after leaving the administration. According to Open Secrets, which tracks
campaign contributions, Dick Cheney, who as former defense secretary and CEO
of Halliburton is intimately connected with both the military establishment
and the energy industry, is "by far, nuclear power's biggest ally." The
Cheneys are heavily invested in Lockheed-Martin; Lynn sits on the company's
board of directors.

It's just one big, happy nuclear family.

Who's bold vision is it?

Most of the provisions of GNEP started not in the Department of Energy, but
in the corporate suite of the Sandia Corp. Sandia is a wholly owned
subsidiary of Lockheed Martin and runs much of the National Nuclear Security
Administration's research infrastructure at two enormous campuses in
Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif.

According to Sandia Lab News, a company newsletter, the GNEP started with a
presentation then Vice President (and now Sandia's president) Tom Hunter
made to the Department of Energy in 1996:

"Basically, if you run through the chronology, we have been urging some
of the things that came out of GNEP (Global Nuclear Energy Partnership)
since 1996," he says. "Our concern as a national security lab has always
been that you can't influence nuclear safety, security and proliferation
risks at the global level if you're not in the nuclear business [We have to]
have an American-based nuclear supply industry that is capable of being a
leading supplier across the globe."

"Our role has been invisible leadership," Hunter told the newsletter. The
company spent a decade "organizing and articulating the arguments for US
leadership from the perspective of  what might happen, domestically and
globally, if we don't go forward with nuclear energy." And legislators like
Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and Harry Reid, D-Neb.,
and Rep. Joe Barton. R-Texas, were more than receptive to the message
-- executives like Sandia's Hunter got exactly what they wanted.

The dollars at stake are massive, and energy deregulation -- predating Bush
-- provided huge windfalls for the industry. In the 1990s staid, highly
regulated utility companies gave way to nuclear wildcatters. Layers and
layers of Limited Liability Companies with no liquidity shielded parent
corporations from litigation, and they began to use America's aging nuclear
infrastructure to shake some silver out of the treasury.

One of the schemes -- or scams -- that resulted from deregulation is known
as "gold mining." The gold is in the form of billions of dollars in funds --
paid by utility ratepayers -- that were established to clean up nuclear
generator sites at the end of their life spans.

Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service gave the
National Catholic Reporter an example of the money to be made in the
shakedown: "AmerGen, which bought [GPU Nuclear Corp.'s] Oyster Creek
reactor, basically in a garage sale atmosphere, paid $10 million and intends
to inherit over $400 million in decommissioning trust funds."

The new owners operate the reactors as long as they can, and when the plants
are decommissioned, they clean up the sites on the cheap (which means
poorly). Unused funds aren't returned to the ratepayers -- the firms pocket
them.

Buried in K Street's 2005 Energy Bill, along with a mountain of production
tax credits and loan guarantees, is a rule change that will free up $1.3
billion in decommissioning funds.

But the most important initiative so far has been the development of Yucca
Mountain. Waste disposal is the prerequisite for everything -- for building
new plants, for upgrading the nuclear arsenal and for implementing the
Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

Lobbying on the project has been hot and heavy since the site was selected
in the late 1980s. The location is problematic. According to Public Citizen
(PDF):

Yucca Mountain has not proven to be a geologically suitable site to
store radioactive waste, which remains deadly for thousands of years. The
Yucca Mountain Project would entail tens of thousands of shipments over the
nation's roads, rails and rivers, posing innumerable questions about
transportation safety in towns and neighborhoods nationwide.

Despite the potential hazards -- Yucca Mountain is perched above a
freshwater aquifer in an active earthquake zone -- Public Citizen's report
finds that the scientific and safety questions about the project have been
"smothered under a mountain of lobbyists," and concludes that "the nuclear
industry no doubt anticipates that there is no economic problem, no public
health threat, no long-term form of irrational energy policy idiocy that
can't be overcome by spending 'what it takes' to influence Congress."

Invisible leadership

Nuclear energy's lobbying arm on Capitol Hill is the Nuclear Energy
Institute (NEI), and it's doled out millions to friendly officials.
According to Open Secrets, George W. Bush got more money from the nuclear
energy industry in 2000 than any other federal candidate. In the 2002
election cycle, "the nuclear power industry [gave] $8.7 million to federal
candidates and committees." Seventy percent went to the GOP.

But the nuclear lobby has to do more than buy off legislators; its real
challenge is convincing people that a production process that produces tons
of the deadliest substances on earth -- waste that stays dangerous for
hundreds of thousands of years -- is safe enough to have in their
communities. NIMBY is a tall hurdle to clear.

But they're trying. Industry talking points have become ubiquitous on
Capitol Hill and in the media; a legion of industry spokespeople repeat the
phrase "clean nuclear energy" like a mantra. "Clean" and "green" are always
the words of the day.

As the administration's GNEP moves forward, they've stepped up the PR. In
January NEI retained PR giant Hill & Knowlton to handle an $8 million
campaign to build "policymaker and decision-maker support for nuclear energy
broadly and specifically for the Yucca Mountain project.'" In February, the
Wall Street Journal reported that NEI was preparing to launch its "clean air
campaign," a "multiyear advertising campaign to build public support for a
generation of new plants."

But more disturbing than the industry's traditional public relations efforts
is the "silent leadership" it's taken in influencing public opinion. The
lobby has been caught paying reporters to present "industry's side of the
story" and getting university professors to submit op-eds to local
newspapers that were "ginned up, assembly-line style, by a Washington, D.C.,
public relations firm." The lobby helped develop a new curriculum for high
school physics students that was put out by the Department of Energy to
promote new nukes. Just this month the lobby set up a big-money faux
environmental group to shill for its policies; it's already jumped into the
debate with a splash.

A potentially fatal lack of imagination

What makes Bush's grand nuclear strategy all the more preposterous is that
since 1950, we've been trying -- with zero success -- to figure out what to
do with the nuclear waste we already have.

Jon Lamb, writing in Green Left weekly cited a 1996 National Academy of
Sciences estimate that found the cost of reprocessing irradiated fuel from
U.S. reactors would easily exceed
$100 billion. Again, that just covers our existing waste.

And that's probably a very low figure. In 2000, the estimated cost of
cleaning up just one site, the Hanford nuclear reprocessing facility, was
$4.3 billion. The contract was awarded to Bechtel and, according to Lamb,
six years later the estimated cost is "a massive $50 billion to $60 billion,
with completion of works by 2035."

In 1993, the Department of Energy estimated that the cost of cleaning up the
environmental damage from its enormous nuclear weapons complex could run as
high as one trillion dollars. Nobody really knows how much it would actually
cost.

Nuclear energy, despite what its boosters say, isn't cheap. There's a global
shortage of uranium, and prices have skyrocketed from around $7 per pound to
over $40. In addition to enormous cleanup costs, the capital investment in
new plants is high -- too high to get Wall Street to bite. So Joe and Jane
Taxpayer will subsidize those capital costs heavily, as they have for years.
According to Public Citizen (PDF), the government shelled out $115 billion
in direct federal subsidies to the industry between 1947 and 1999. To give
you a sense of priorities, federal subsidies for wind and solar energy over
the same period totaled just $5.7 billion.

What's more troubling than the fact that corporate interests are driving
this "nuclear renaissance" -- the NEI's term -- is that these bankrupt
policies appear to be the best our government can come up with. They show us
the outer limits of our leaders' imaginations, of their political will to
effect real change.

We have real energy problems -- global warming, dwindling petroleum supplies
and an unhappy marriage to petro-dictatorships. The grotesque tragedy is
that this costly, cavalier, Nixon-era nuclear vision constitutes the most
ambitious proposal we've seen to address them so far. Dwight Eisenhower once
said, "If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it," and that's just what
we're doing.

The good news is that Americans have a good deal of horse sense; despite the
"clean nukes" campaigns, polls show that two-thirds of Americans oppose new
nuclear power. The idea of using nukes for first strikes, or in anything
less than an all-out conflagration, is too nutty to even merit a polling
question. And Bush's other grand visions have fizzled out and died. Think
about Social Security. And who even remembers our epic journey to mars? As
the Congress looks at massive deficits and a president that's trying to
borrow a nickel's worth of "political capital" from Fox News broadcasters,
the bulk of Bush's "nuclear renaissance" will probably, thankfully, die on
the vine.

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

) 2006 Independent Media Institute.
       
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*****************************************************************
 17 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Bush's credibility tank is on empty 

[seattlepi.com]     

        [OPINION] 

Tuesday, May 2, 2006
 
By MARIANNE MEANS SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's speech last week calling for a
new energy policy to combat the frightening jump in gas and oil
prices ought to have been a stirring moment of presidential
leadership.
 
Instead it was a flop.
 
If there were ever a time for dramatic proposals, it would be
now when the president is in deep political trouble and voters
are nervous about the economy, the war and the direction of the
country. But who could believe a word Bush said?
 
His credibility is zero on many subjects, but particularly on
this one. He was safe in saying during his State of the Union
speech that we have "an addiction" to oil, but he lost his way
when he got into remedies.
 
From the beginning of this administration, Bush has protected
the Texas-based industry that he and Vice President Dick Cheney
know so well. They have prospered together -- Bush, Cheney and
the Big Oil and Gas Boys.
 
The partnership has been good for both sides. But now, as oil
companies and market speculators greedily rip off consumers, the
politics of such an alliance have turned sour.
 
It was a high administration priority to pass a massive bill
benefiting the energy industry. Congress finally authorized it
last year and handed out $15 billion in taxpayer subsidies to
help the gas, oil, coal and nuclear industries.
 
It offered little to encourage conservation although it made
several inexpensive gestures to help develop alternative fuels.
For instance, it required an increase in the refinement of
ethanol made from corn and grain, a provision essential to win
the votes of farm state legislators.
 
In the midst of his controversial, secret 2001 deliberations
with industry bigwigs, Cheney publicly rejected a major role for
conservation in a national energy policy because it was merely
"a personal virtue."
 
In his view, it made no meaningful contribution to controlling
costs and pollution. As with so much else, Cheney was in step
with his president -- and wrong.
 
He later backed away from the statement, but the remark stands
as a reflection of administration attitude. The president has
not called for enforcement of a 55 mph speed limit, which would
save fuel. Nor has he tried to persuade Congress to raise
automobile fuel economy standards, which would be an obvious
help.
 
The president's basic solution is to encourage drivers to
purchase hybrids and clean diesel vehicles, for which Congress
has already provided a $3,400 tax credit. But that is a
long-range project; it is not possible to suddenly get millions
of Americans into the few such cars yet available. It is not an
answer for this summer's vacation.
 
Everybody recognizes we have a problem. There are many reasons
for the price increases, not all the administration's fault.
 
The rapidly growing Chinese and Indian demand for energy and
unrest in oil-rich Middle East countries are part of the
problem. But the Pentagon's inability to control the Iraqi
pipelines is also at fault -- remember how Iraq's oil was going
to pay for the war?
 
As Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., complained, "Ain't seen no
money -- ain't seen no oil."
 
The president said sternly, "This administration is not going to
tolerate manipulation" of prices by the handful of big companies
that dominate the energy industry.
 
Wry host Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" placed
that whopper as No. 3 on the master presidential fib scale,
behind only Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" and Bill
Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman."
 
All Bush really did was embrace an already-ongoing federal
investigation aimed at discrediting price-gouging workmen and
suppliers repairing damaged structures after Katrina. This is
not a serious effort to ferret out official energy malfeasance.
Besides, the White House opposes additional laws to strengthen
such inquires.
 
The president's to-do list was heavily padded. He proposed
stopping the filling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which
literally would be a drop in the bucket. Temporarily waiving
fuel blend or environmental requirements is also just tinkering
and asking for future big-time trouble besides.
 
And, predictably, Bush promoted the favorite Republican concept
of drilling in the protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
which has been repeatedly defeated in Congress. Conceding that
drilling would not increase our oil supply immediately, Bush
nonetheless claimed it could produce a million barrels of oil a
day.
 
What he didn't say is that would be merely a temporary fix at
best; experts believe the refuge holds only a six-months to
two-year supply. And the damage to the environment would be a
heavy price to pay.
 
To reinforce his conservative credentials, he said he opposed
price controls or a windfall profits tax on oil companies. The
reason he gave? They don't work. His likely real reason? That's
what the Democrats are proposing.

 Marianne Means is a Washington, D.C., columnist with Hearst
Newspapers. Copyright 2006 Hearst Newspapers. She can be reached
at 202-263-6400 or means@hearstdc.com. Tell us what's on your
mind. 

[Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 
98119 (206) 448-8000
 
©1996-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
*****************************************************************
 18 New West Network: Divine Mistrake 

www.newwest.net

  [Voice of the Rocky Mountains]

New West Unfiltered Commentary 

[Citizen Journalist] By Tracy Medley, Citizen Journalist 5-02-06

 In typical form, Sen. Orrin Hatch attempted to ease
Downwinders’ concerns over the planned Divine Strake test
scheduled to take place on June 2, at a Nevada testing site, 150
miles east of St. George. The location was originally used for
nuclear testing in the 1950’s and 60’s. 

Speaking to a group at St. George’s Dixie Regional Medical
Center, he initially dismissed the crowd’s trepidation over
having a 700-ton, non-nuclear, mega bomb denoted in their back
yard and kicking up a dust cloud that could reach upwards of
10,000 ft. “I’m a great stopper,� he said, offering that
if he had any real concerns about the test, he would surely put
a stop to it. 

This; coming from the guy who just last week called global
warming, “science fiction,�based on his reading of a Michael
Chrichton novel. Dear Sen. Hatch, We know you’re old, but come
on dude, do you really expect us to trust you with our health
and environmental future after lobbing that bit of “science�
at us? 

The Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), who are 
planning the test continue to assure Utahns and Nevadans that the 
test will be safe. They’ve promised that the detonation will 
not kick up any nuclear particles left over from previous testing 
and there is danger of being exposed to radiation, but they have 
lied before. Just ask the thousands of downwinders from the 
1950’s and 60’s testing who suffered and died from a myriad 
of cancers. I think this is all the proof Utah needs to know that 
the federal government finds no quandary in putting our long-term 
health at risk for the short term knowledge that a 700-ton bomb 
might help them uncover the one illusive bunker in Iraq hiding 
all those pesky WMDs.
 
While Sen. Hatch continues to flip-flop on the issue,
Congressman Jim Matheson has been a skeptical critic of the
project from the beginning.Earlier this month, Matheson wrote a
letter to James Tagnelia, the director of DTRA, stating not only
his concern for the safety of the residents surrounding the test
site, but also that the test itself was a gateway bomb to the
development of new nuclear weapons. Tagnelia denied that the
government has any interest in creating new nuclear weapons and
that this is an isolated test designed to help the military pick
the smallest-yield weapon necessary to destroy a given target.
But, Matheson, who lost his father, former Gov. Scott Matheson,
to Downwinders cancer, remains unconvinced. 

Pete Ashdown, who is hoping to unseat Sen. Hatch in November,
has also expressed concern. Speaking at the Salt Lake County
democratic convention last week, Ashdown had strong words of
criticism for Sen. Hatch’s performance in St. George, drawing
roars of applause from the crowd. He reiterated the sentiment in
his campaign blog, “A ‘great stopper’ should be able to
stop the PFS from hauling and dumping hot nuclear waste in Utah.
Last I checked, the congress was in charge of the BLM and not
the other way around. Senator, it’s time to put-up or retire,
use your much touted ‘seniority’ to stop something that
Utahns are opposed to.�
 
In the spirit of election year fickleness, Hatch and other
prominent Utah Republicans took an unexpected cue from their
critics with Hatch writing his own letter to the DTRA on Tuesday
and releasing a statement saying, “The good people who live
downwind from this test site have already been through enough,
and I’ve given them my word that I’ll never allow any
nuclear testing that could harm them again. I have directed my
staff to check into this very closely, and if I’m not
satisfied that this will be safe, I’m going to do everything I
can to put a stop to it.�
 
Governor Jonn Huntsman, also a Republican, released a statement
Thursday demanding that the test be relocated. "I believe that,
obviously, we need a strong national security position, a strong
defense position, and capabilities to protect us abroad. But do
the testing somewhere else, where citizens aren't downwind."
 
Whether this is all just political pandering and lip service
from our Senior Senator and his republican friends remains to be
seen, but with the lives and health of so many at risk, it
can’t hurt having them on our side. By Tracy Medley, 5-02-06 |
add comment| email this story | read more like this--> [''] 
Comments
 Be the first to comment on this article. Please complete the
form below. 

  © 2006 NewWest, All Rights Reserved 
*****************************************************************
 19 The Hindu: India for early nod for nuclear agreement 

Online edition of India's National Newspaper

 Tuesday, May 02, 2006     

Amit Baruah 

  New Delhi may be faced with more conditionalities if there is
delay: experts   


+ Bush administration has been doing its bit to push the deal
through Congress 
+ Votaries of non-proliferation in U.S. argue Congress should
not rush through with the deal 


NEW DELHI: The shape of the India-U.S. civilian nuclear deal may
change if the U.S. Congress doesn't approve of the agreement by
June-July, senior South Block officials fear. 

The officials have told The Hindu that in such a scenario India
will find it difficult to agree to the additional
conditionalities that are likely to be added by Congress in case
the agreement doesn't get legislative approval in the next
couple of months. 

According to them, the Bush administration has been doing its
bit to push the deal through Congress, but it is not clear when
the agreement will clear the legislative hurdles. 

Recently, visiting American Senator Chuck Hagel told
presspersons that there was no "May deadline." Mr. Hagel, who
had a number of questions about the agreement, was hopeful
Congress would give its nod by this year-end. 

"More crucial" 

Interestingly, senior Western diplomats in the capital share the
South Block's assessment. One of them said that with the Nuclear
Suppliers Group set to take its cue from what happens in
Congress, the action of the American legislative branch becomes
more crucial. 

Already, votaries of non-proliferation in the U.S. have begun to
argue that Congress should not rush through with the deal.

Robert Einhorn, an official in the Clinton administration,
argued before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 26
that the deal with India was a "net loss" for non-proliferation. 

Future safeguards 

Mr. Einhorn felt that before agreeing to amend the U.S. Atomic
Energy Act, Congress should insist on seeing a future safeguards
agreement between India and the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) as well as a "concluded" India-U.S. peaceful
nuclear cooperation agreement, currently under discussion. 

He also minimised the importance of India putting additional
nuclear reactors under future IAEA safeguards. According to him,
under the March 2 separation plan, India could continue
producing fissile material. 

Supporting the deal, Ashley J. Tellis, one of those who
negotiated the agreement, told the Senate Committee on April 26
felt that a close U.S.-India partnership would be impossible in
the absence of civilian nuclear cooperation. 

"This is not to say that U.S.-Indian collaboration will
evaporate if civilian nuclear cooperation between the two
countries cannot be consummated, but merely that such
collaboration would be hesitant, troubled, episodic and unable
to realise its full potential without final resolution of the
one issue that symbolically, substantially and materially kept
the two sides apart for over 30 years," Mr. Tellis said. 

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of
*****************************************************************
 20 UPI: Cheney to hold energy talks in Kazakhstan
     
   United Press International - Energy - 

5/2/2006 11:20:00 AM -0400                              

MOSCOW, May 2 (UPI) -- U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney will head
to Kazakhstan on an official visit to hold talks on energy ties,
the Kazakh Foreign Ministry said Monday. 

"The last time representatives of the U.S. administration at
this level visited our country was in 1993," Yerzhan Ashikbayez,
Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman said, Russian news agency RIA
Novosti reported. 

Cheney's two-day visit starts Friday and he will talk with
Kazakh officials on international and regional stability and
security, energy cooperation, counter-terrorism measures, trade
and economic cooperation and democratic development. 

Former Vice President Al Gore was the last senior U.S. official
to visit in 1993 the energy-rich Central Asian republic. Gore
signed a treaty with President Nursultan Nazarbayev on U.S.
assistance to destroy Kazakh's stockpile of the former Soviet
Union's nuclear weapons. 

The two countries established a U.S.-Kazakhstan Energy
Partnership in December 2001 to ensure governmental cooperation
in areas like energy security, oil and gas, electric power
development and nuclear and environmental protection, according
to the U.S. Department of Commerce International Trade
Administration.

© Copyright 2006 United Press
International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
 21 [NukeNet] Domenici and Nine DOE Lab Directors Promote Global
 
Date: Tue, 02 May 2006 15:07:51 -0700


<x-flowed>
News  Notes May 2, 2006 For Immediate Release
May 2, 2006 Contact:   Marnie Funk (202) 224-6977
Angela Harper (202) 224-7875  Domenici and Nine DOE Lab Directors Promote
Global Nuclear Energy Partnership

Washington, D.C.  - Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee Chairman
Pete V. Domenici today joined with the directors of Department of Energy
national laboratories from around the nation to promote a program intended
to accelerate the use of nuclear energy to ease global demand for fossil
fuels.     Domenici welcomed the solid and united showing of lab directors,
including Tom Hunter of Sandia National Laboratories and Robert Kuckuck of
Los Alamos National Laboratory, for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
(GNEP).     GNEP establishes reliable fuel services to provide reactor fuel
for developing countries that forego indigenous enrichment and reprocessing
facilities.  The goal behind the program is to provide nuclear power to
developing nations without spreading sensitive fuel cycle technology or
increasing proliferation threats.  GNEP is accelerating the work of the
national laboratories to develop the technologies and engineering-scale
facilities for eventual commercialization.       Nine national laboratories
are working together to develop program and technology plans that will
guide
technology development efforts. Sandia is expected to provide lead-on
reactors, and security and safeguards to prevent proliferation.  LANL is
expected to play a major role in advanced reactor fuels, as well as
reprocessing and reactor technology.

   3DOE and its national laboratories exist to develop technology options
for
our most challenging national problems,2 Domenici said.  3U.S. energy
security is one of our most significant challenges.  There is no single
silver bullet that will solve all our energy needs.  Many are upset with
high gas prices today but are unwilling to support measures that provide a
mix of options for our future.2

3I believe technology at our laboratories holds answers that must be
pursued
aggressively if we are to achieve greater energy independence at home and
around the world,2 he said.  3We must move aggressively with new nuclear
power today to assure sustainable electricity for the future as China,
India, and many other countries are now doing.2

Domenici said he is encouraged by 37 expressions of interest from
communities, companies and partnerships that would consider being potential
sites advanced recycling technologies demonstrations.

3Some have argued that the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership does nothing
in
the near term to provide energy security.  But I believe, as our past has
demonstrated, that we must start now so that 10 years from now the United
States has options that it can now only dream of.  This initiative provides
 >options for our energy future,2 Domenici said.

The Bush administration requested $250 million in FY2007, a $90 million
increase over FY2006, for GNEP and an advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative
(ACFI).
Domenici, as chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Development
Appropriations Subcommittee, has addressed the GNEP issue in several
hearings this year related to developing the FY2007 DOE budget and
advancing
nuclear energy initiatives included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Directors or deputy directors from the following labs attended Tuesday1s
GNEP event on Capitol Hill:  Sandia, LANL, Idaho National Laboratory,
Argonne National Laboratory, Savannah River National Laboratory, Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory, and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

energy.senate.gov

</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 22 risky return to nuclear reprocessing
 
Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 12:15:25 -0400

Dear opinion-page editor.

As you may know, the Department of Energy has requested $250 
million of taxpayer money for reprocessing of irradiated nuclear 
fuel. Markup by the House Energy and Water appropriations 
subcommittee will take place most likely on May 11th. After that 
there will be a floor vote. Throughout this process, senators and 
representatives from your state will play a key role in the 
outcome.

There is widespread opposition to reprocessing from arms control 
and environmental organizations and experts, a process that was 
banned under the Ford administration. Congressional 
representatives in your state are crucial players in preventing a 
return to this proliferation-vulnerable activity.

We request therefore, that you consider publication of the 
opinion-editorial below from our plutonium and radioactive waste 
expert, Mary Olson.

Please contact me for any further information you may need.

Linda Gunter

Director of Media Relations

301.270.6477 ext 23.

 

Clutching at Nuclear Straws
by Mary Olson

The Bush administration's misguided obsession with nuclear power 
has reached a critical and dangerous juncture. Desperate to 
attract Wall Street's help to resuscitate the moribund and 
unpopular nuclear power industry, the government is seeking a new 
and prompt solution to the nuclear waste problem. The first 
attempt was to fast-track the Yucca Mountain waste dump in 
Nevada.

Yucca Mountain, it hoped, would provide a politically-viable 
place to "permanently" hide the lethal residue of 
nuclear-generated electricity.

Instead the administration is spinning its wheels in the mire of 
Yucca Mountain's problems and scandals. Hard scientific data - at 
first suppressed but subsequently exposed - have revealed serious 
geologic instability at the site. Faced with an industry 
impatient to move its waste, the administration is now clutching 
at a new nuclear straw.

The Bush administration and its congressional allies are intent 
on reversing over 30 years of extraordinarily rare common sense 
in nuclear policy. Their latest scheme is the reprocessing of 
irradiated commercial fuel. Reprocessing was banned in this 
country by President Ford because plutonium in the waste is 
separated making it more accessible for weapons use. In fact, at 
the time of the ban, India had just demonstrated its viability in 
a nuclear weapon. 


Every nuclear power reactor annually generates 20-30 tons of 
high-level waste - the irradiated fuel from the reactor core. 
There are 103 commercial reactors still operating in this 
country, and more than a dozen that have shut down. More than 
50,000 tons of highly-radioactive waste is piled up at these 
sites. Wall Street has implied that it will not invest in new 
reactors unless the waste moves, but reprocessing should not be 
seen as a waste solution.

An attempt to put a benign face on reprocessing - by referring to 
it as "recycling," for example - is contradicted by history. The 
dirtiest of nuclear processes, countries that practice 
reprocessing - including Britain, France and Russia - are now 
reaping its hideous environmental legacy of contamination and 
disease.

Reprocessing - which requires dissolving the fuel rods in acid - 
increases, rather than reduces nuclear waste volume. France and 
Britain discharge this liquid into the sea which has resulted in 
the closing of beaches and fishing areas. Ireland has sued the 
British government for contaminating their sea food supply due to 
radioactive discharges from the Sellafield reprocessing site.

The price tag in dollars - as well as in health impacts - will be 
enormous if we return to reprocessing. The only U.S. commercial 
reprocessing site ever to operate - in West Valley, New York - is 
projected to cost more than $5 billion to clean up despite 
reprocessing only a fraction of the waste sent there between 1966 
and 1972. Now the U.S. Department of Energy has requested $250 
million of our money - added to the $130,000 already appropriated 
last year - to set this debacle in motion once again although the 
totals are likely to reach the hundreds of billions of dollars.


We live in a climate of nuclear instability, with today's threats 
less likely to come from rogue states than from outright rogues. 
A technology that effectively frees up plutonium - the trigger 
component of a nuclear bomb - is asking for trouble. Furthermore, 
a decision to return to reprocessing also casts in a hypocritical 
light the moral authority with which the U.S. calls on other 
nations to refrain from this activity. North Korea and Iran are 
the most recent examples of countries ready to join the "nuclear 
weapons club." The clear intention of the Bush / Cheney team to 
return to full-scale production of new nuclear weapons further 
jeopardizes global security.


The existing nuclear reactors around the globe are already 
sitting-duck terrorist targets. Separating plutonium from nuclear 
power waste fuel through reprocessing simply sets up new and 
inviting opportunities for terrorists to seize fissile, 
bomb-capable materials.  Support for a reprocessing program makes 
a mockery of statements coming out of this Dear opinion-page 
editor.

As you may know, the Department of Energy has requested $250 
million of taxpayer money for reprocessing of irradiated nuclear 
fuel. Markup by the House Energy and Water appropriations 
subcommittee will take place most likely on May 11th. After that 
there will be a floor vote. Throughout this process, senators and 
representatives from your state will play a key role in the 
outcome.

 

There is widespread opposition to reprocessing from arms control 
and environmental organizations and experts, a process that was 
banned under the Ford administration. Congressional 
representatives in your state are crucial players in preventing a 
return to this proliferation-vulnerable activity.

 

We request therefore, that you consider publication of the 
opinion-editorial below from our plutonium and radioactive waste 
expert, Mary Olson.

 

Please contact me for any further information you may need.

Linda Gunter

Director of Media Relations

301.270.6477 ext 23.

 

Clutching at Nuclear Straws
by Mary Olson

The Bush administration's misguided obsession with nuclear power 
has reached a critical and dangerous juncture. Desperate to 
attract Wall Street's help to resuscitate the moribund and 
unpopular nuclear power industry, the government is seeking a new 
and prompt solution to the nuclear waste problem. The first 
attempt was to fast-track the Yucca Mountain waste dump in 
Nevada.

Yucca Mountain, it hoped, would provide a politically-viable 
place to "permanently" hide the lethal residue of 
nuclear-generated electricity.

Instead the administration is spinning its wheels in the mire of 
Yucca Mountain's problems and scandals. Hard scientific data - at 
first suppressed but subsequently exposed - have revealed serious 
geologic instability at the site. Faced with an industry 
impatient to move its waste, the administration is now clutching 
at a new nuclear straw.

The Bush administration and its congressional allies are intent 
on reversing over 30 years of extraordinarily rare common sense 
in nuclear policy. Their latest scheme is the reprocessing of 
irradiated commercial fuel. Reprocessing was banned in this 
country by President Ford because plutonium in the waste is 
separated making it more accessible for weapons use. In fact, at 
the time of the ban, India had just demonstrated its viability in 
a nuclear weapon. 


Every nuclear power reactor annually generates 20-30 tons of 
high-level waste - the irradiated fuel from the reactor core. 
There are 103 commercial reactors still operating in this 
country, and more than a dozen that have shut down. More than 
50,000 tons of highly-radioactive waste is piled up at these 
sites. Wall Street has implied that it will not invest in new 
reactors unless the waste moves, but reprocessing should not be 
seen as a waste solution.

An attempt to put a benign face on reprocessing - by referring to 
it as "recycling," for example - is contradicted by history. The 
dirtiest of nuclear processes, countries that practice 
reprocessing - including Britain, France and Russia - are now 
reaping its hideous environmental legacy of contamination and 
disease.

Reprocessing - which requires dissolving the fuel rods in acid - 
increases, rather than reduces nuclear waste volume. France and 
Britain discharge this liquid into the sea which has resulted in 
the closing of beaches and fishing areas. Ireland has sued the 
British government for contaminating their sea food supply due to 
radioactive discharges from the Sellafield reprocessing site.

The price tag in dollars - as well as in health impacts - will be 
enormous if we return to reprocessing. The only U.S. commercial 
reprocessing site ever to operate - in West Valley, New York - is 
projected to cost more than $5 billion to clean up despite 
reprocessing only a fraction of the waste sent there between 1966 
and 1972. Now the U.S. Department of Energy has requested $250 
million of our money - added to the $130,000 already appropriated 
last year - to set this debacle in motion once again although the 
totals are likely to reach the hundreds of billions of dollars.


We live in a climate of nuclear instability, with today's threats 
less likely to come from rogue states than from outright rogues. 
A technology that effectively frees up plutonium - the trigger 
component of a nuclear bomb - is asking for trouble. Furthermore, 
a decision to return to reprocessing also casts in a hypocritical 
light the moral authority with which the U.S. calls on other 
nations to refrain from this activity. North Korea and Iran are 
the most recent examples of countries ready to join the "nuclear 
weapons club." The clear intention of the Bush / Cheney team to 
return to full-scale production of new nuclear weapons further 
jeopardizes global security.


The existing nuclear reactors around the globe are already 
sitting-duck terrorist targets. Separating plutonium from nuclear 
power waste fuel through reprocessing simply sets up new and 
inviting opportunities for terrorists to seize fissile, 
bomb-capable materials.  Support for a reprocessing program makes 
a mockery of statements coming out of this administration that 
protecting the American people from terrorism is paramount.  
Instead, it will put more Americans in harm's way.

-end-

Mary Olson is director of NIRS Southeast Office. She can be 
reached at:
PO Box 7586 Asheville, NC  28802
828-675-1792 nirs@main.nc.us

NIRS Main Office
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 340
Takoma Park, MD 20912
Tel: 301-270.6477
Email: nirsnet@nirs.org
www.nirs.org

administration that protecting the American people from terrorism 
is paramount.  Instead, it will put more Americans in harm's way.

-end-

Mary Olson is director of NIRS Southeast Office. She can be 
reached at:
PO Box 7586 Asheville, NC  28802
828-675-1792 nirs@main.nc.us

NIRS Main Office
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 340
Takoma Park, MD 20912
Tel: 301-270.6477
Email: nirsnet@nirs.org
www.nirs.org

Linda Gunter is Director of Development and Media Relations. She 
can be reached at: 301.270.6477 ext. 23


*****************************************************************
 23 The Australian: Costello 'must heed' nuclear warnings 

This story is from our network Source: AAP 

 May 02, 2006 

TREASURER Peter Costello must pay attention to expert warnings
on nuclear energy, Greenpeace said today.

 Mr Costello weighed into the re-emerging debate on nuclear
power driven electricity last week, saying Australia should
consider it if the power source became commercially viable.

 Australia was obliged to because of atomic power's attraction
in an unnaturally warming world and because it already sold
uranium to other countries, he said.

 A clutch of energy experts today told Fairfax newspapers that
Australia could not develop a domestic power industry in time to
stave off the effects of climate change and, in any case, it
would be prohibitively expensive.

 Among those scientists were Chris Reidy, a research principal
at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, Dr Mark Diesendorf, a
senior lecturer in environmental studies of New South Wales
University and Dr Iain McGill, research coordinator with the
Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets at NSW University.

 Greenpeace campaigns manager Danny Kennedy said Mr Costello
should heed the scientists' warnings and not become carried away
with the Government's campaign to sell uranium to China.

 "Mr Costello needs to heed the warnings of scientists that
nuclear power is not a practical source of power for Australia,"
he said.

 "The Treasurer has an opportunity in next week's budget to
provide proper support for clean, safe renewable energy that can
be brought online now to replace coal."

 Mr Kennedy said that if the Treasurer was serious about
developing some credentials on climate change he could use his
budget speech to support a climate change levy and announce
funds to insulate a quarter of a million homes and create 25,000
small-scale clean power projects.

 He should also cut excise duty on low polluting cars and
increase it for high polluting vehicles.

 "Unfortunately, the treasurer's contributions so far on climate
change seem to have been more about playing nuclear wedge
politics than providing real solutions to climate change," Mr
Kennedy said.
 
© The Australian
 
*****************************************************************
 24 NRC: NRC to Discuss 2005 Performance Assessment for R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant
 
News Release - Region I - 2006-02

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, 
Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 No. 
I-06-029                          May 2, 2006 CONTACT:     Diane 
Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331                     
E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov  
  
Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will meet with
representatives of Constellation Energy on Tuesday, May 9, to
discuss the agencys annual assessment of safety performance at
the R.E. Ginna nuclear power plant. The period of performance to
be discussed is Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2005.
 
Constellation Energy operates the plant, which is located in
Ontario, N.Y.
 
The meeting, which will be open to the public for observation,
is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. at the Ontario Golf Club, 2101
Country Club Lane in Ontario. The NRC staff will present the
results of the assessment and be available to respond to
questions or comments from the public before the close of the
meeting.
 
As we do every year, we have carefully reviewed the safety
performance of the Ginna nuclear power plant during the previous
calendar year, NRC Region I Administrator Samuel J. Collins
said. The meeting on May 9th will afford the public a chance to
learn more about the results of our assessment and to pose any
questions they might have regarding plant performance or our
oversight activities.
 
Overall, the Ginna plant operated safely during the period. The
NRC uses color-coded inspection findings and performance
indicators to assess nuclear power plant performance. The colors
start with green and then increase to white, yellow or red,
commensurate with the safety significance of the issues
involved. Because all of the inspection findings and performance
indicators for the plant during 2005 were determined to be
green, Ginna will receive a baseline (or routine) level of
inspections during the upcoming assessment period.
 
Routine inspections are performed by two NRC Resident Inspectors
assigned to the plant and by inspection specialists from the
Region I Office in King of Prussia, Pa. Among the areas of plant
operations to be inspected during the next year by NRC
specialists are emergency planning, fire protection and power
uprate.
 
A letter sent from the NRC Region I Office to plant officials
addresses the performance of the plant during the period and
will serve as the basis for the meeting discussion. It is
available on the NRC web site at:
http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/ginn_2005q4.pdf.
[PDF Icon] The meeting notice, with the meeting agenda attached,
is available in the NRCs Agencywide Documents Access and
Management System (ADAMS) under accession number ML060900089.
The NRC slides will be available in ADAMS under accession number
ML060940440. ADAMS is accessible via the agencys web site at:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Help in using ADAMS is
available by contacting the NRCs Public Document Room at
1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, or by e-mail at PDR@NRC.GOV.
 Current performance information for Ginna is available on the
NRC web site at:
http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/GINN/ginn_chart.html.
   

 	Last revised Tuesday, May 02, 2006 	
*****************************************************************
 25 The State: Demand increasing for nuclear engineers

05/02/2006 

on Tue, May. 02, 2006 email this print this 
 
As more of them reach retirement age, need for new employees
grows

 The Associated Press 

With nuclear plants expanding and their employee ranks growing 
older, trained nuclear engineers are in high demand. 

More than a quarter of the industrys 15,600 employees will be 
eligible for retirement in the next five years, said Carol 
Berrigan, senior project manager at the Nuclear Energy Institute. 

This is good news for engineering students across South Carolina. 

• All of the University of South Carolinas graduate students in 
nuclear engineering have jobs at least one semester before 
graduating, said Abdel Bayoumi, director of the graduate program. 

• Companies start recruiting undergraduate nuclear engineering
students at S.C. State University as early as their sophomore
year, said Kenneth Lewis, dean of the universitys College of
Science, Mathematics and Engineering Technology. 

Both school officials said the academic programs were developed
to meet the industrys need for workers. 

South Carolina is the largest producer of nuclear power in the
Southeast and ranks third among 31 states with nuclear capacity.
And Duke, SCANA, Southern Nuclear and Progress Energy all have
applied to build new plants in South Carolina. 

Whether it be an engineer, welding technician, trainer,
financial or procurement specialist, we need it all, and this is
the time to get involved, said Amy Buu, professional
development chairwoman for the North American Young Generation
in Nuclear, an industry association for people younger than 35. 

For us to remain a technologically advanced society, we need
energy, said Buu, 29, who works at Westinghouse Electric Co. in
Columbia as a Customer 1st Leader in nuclear fuels. 

Entry-level nuclear engineers can make more than $50,000, and
more if they have graduate degrees. 

SCANA subsidiary SCE&G, with state-owned utility Santee Cooper,
has announced it wants to build at least one more nuclear power
plant at V.C. Summer nuclear power station in Fairfield County.
The new plant, which would double V.C. Summers generation
capabilities, would add about 450 more jobs. 

Duke Energy plans to hire about 50 people each at plants in
Oconee, Catawba and McGuire, said company spokeswoman Rita Sipe.
The company also will hire about 800 full-time employees at a
planned nuclear station in Cherokee County. 

We recognized a number of years ago that we were going to need
to hire people for the future, Sipe said. 

Duke hires about 50 college interns to work at a nuclear plant
during the summer and learn about careers in the nuclear
industry. It also partners with technical colleges to allow
electricians, welders and maintenance workers to work while
attending school. 

S.C. State University has programs to expose both high school
students and teachers to basic concepts of nuclear science. 

There is a lot going on in the nuclear industry to try to
attract young people to these types of jobs and encourage them,
even when they are in high school, Sipe said. 

*****************************************************************
 26 Contra Costa Times: Energy panel stands by nuclear plant ban

Tuesday, May 02, 2006 Today in the Times

Commission's report goes against push by Bush administration to
develop energy source that reduces dependence on foreign oil

 By Samantha Young ASSOCIATED PRESS 

SACRAMENTO - In its first comprehensive look at nuclear power in
nearly 30 years, the California Energy Commission recommended
Friday that the state continue its moratorium on construction of
nuclear plants. 

The commission issued a report that was triggered by the
"renewed enthusiasm" about nuclear power in Washington and
overseas, commissioner John Geesman said. 

California has barred construction of nuclear plants since 1976. 

The 198-page report puts California at odds with the Bush
administration, which has advocated nuclear power development in
the face of rising gas prices and as a way to reduce the
country's dependence on foreign oil. 

The Energy Commission does not plan to let utilities build more
plants because there is no adequate place to store the nuclear
waste, said Geesman, who presided over the committee that
oversaw drafting of the report. 

"The disposal of waste is an extraordinarily important threshold
question for the increased reliance of nuclear power," he said. 

California gets about 13 percent of its electricity from three
nuclear power plants, two in California and one in Arizona. The
two plants in California, Diablo Canyon in San Luis Obispo
County and San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Diego
County, now store the potentially hazardous waste on site. 

Nuclear industry representatives say California's ban could cost
the state. 

"If they are going to rule out nuclear energy, what are they
going to rule in for a reliable electricity supply that keeps
the air clean?" said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear
Energy Institute, a nuclear industry group based in Washington. 

The U.S. Department of Energy is overseeing licensing of a
national repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, about
90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But that project has been set
back by funding shortages, legal challenges and mismanagement. 

"There seem to be technical problems, management problems,
economic problems and legal problems, and the combination of
those suggested to us that it was unlikely to be a viable
storage site," Geesman said. 

The Energy Department continues to push ahead with the project.
Earlier this month, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman submitted
legislation to Congress to speed development of the waste dump.
He also asked for the authority to expand the storage capacity
to take waste from more than 131 sites in 39 states. 

"It has to be built under federal law," Kerekes said. "It's not
going at the pace we in the industry would like to see, but it's
moving forward." 

Nevertheless, California regulators have little confidence in
Yucca Mountain. 

Authors of the report advised the state's utilities to recover a
share of the more than $1 billion they have paid in fees to the
nuclear waste fund, which was created to help pay for a national
repository. Such a move may take an act of Congress, and dozens
of utilities have sued the Department of Energy for the expenses
they have incurred since the government missed its target of
opening the repository by 1989. 

In addition to the costs, state regulators are concerned that
the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of
Homeland Security have failed to address safety issues
surrounding the waste that sits at nuclear plants. 

"In the heightened security environment since September 11,
2001, increased attention has been paid to the vulnerability of
nuclear facilities to potential acts of terrorism," according to
the Energy Commission report. "Nuclear power plants are
difficult targets due to their substantial containment vessels,
but spent fuel pools and interim fuel storage facilities may be
more vulnerable." 

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is studying how its facilities --
the Diablo Canyon plant and the closed Humboldt Bay nuclear
plant -- would be affected by a worst-case scenario natural
disaster. 

Southern California Edison, which co-owns the San Onofre Nuclear
Generating Station, has no plans for a similar study, according
to the report. 

An Edison spokesman said the company was reviewing the report
and declined to comment. 

On the Net: Read the report at www.energy.ca.gov/nuclear



*****************************************************************
 27 Spain Herald: The Nuclear Debate 

 Wednesday, May 03, 2006 <img

3-V-2006
 
Editorial

 «The nuclear debate needs to be opened up to include everyone.

Spaniards should, at least, have the opportunity to learn about
the reality of our energy needs,» After 38 years on the job,
this past Sunday was the final day the Jose Cabrera nuclear
plant in Zorita, Guadalajara contributed to electric production.

The previous conservative administration made the decision to
advance the plants closing by two years it had been scheduled to
close when it reached 40. It was a purely political decision.

The Council on Nuclear Security voted for the plant to remain in
operation. To date, the Cabrera plant, a pioneer in Spanish
nuclear production, has made a profitable and safe contribution
to the production of electricity and it served as a training
ground for many workers who, over the past two decades, helped
expand Spains nuclear operations. Right now, nuclear plants
produce around 20 percent of Spanish energy.   The news of the
plants closing coincides with the debate on the evolution of
nuclear energy involving various experts and politicians. But up
to now, this debate has not been opened up to Spanish society,
from which the most basic realities about nuclear energys
capacity to provide cheap and safe energy continue to be hidden.

The French example, where 80 percent of the country's energy is
produced in 60 nuclear plants, is quite clear in this regard.  
There are at least three factors that make nuclear energy
inevitable: estimates point to a 70 percent increase in world
demand for energy over the next 30 years; the world economy is
recovering, though not uniformly; and there are two new economic
powers that are growing at a spectacular rhythm following
internal reforms made to better integrate them into world trade:

China and India. Add to these the high price of oil, which
doesnt look likely to return to $20 a barrel. If these factors
werent enough, our government signed the Kyoto Protocol (of
which Spain is in blatant and ironic violation). The Protocol
forces our businesses to buy CO2 emission rights worth, at the
moment, about 1.5 billion a long ways from the 28 million our
Minster of Environmental Affairs said it would cost. Spains
nuclear plants reduced emissions of CO2 by 60 million tons; of
course, we have to subtract the Cabrera plants contribution now.

  While the United Status and other countries have no problem
allowing companies to make use of scientific and technical
advances to better meet their citizens needs, in Spain, the
Prime Minister, upon coming to power, stated his intention was
to close all of Spains nuclear plants by 2025. His goal is
foolish and will cost Spaniards a pretty penny when the electric
bill comes. In addition, it forces us to depend on other energy
sources that have to be imported into the country an energy
dependence of around 80 percent. The Popular Party wanted to end
the moratorium on nuclear energy, which makes our monthly
electricity bills higher than necessary and which will stay that
way until at least 2015. That is when the government can promote
the creation of new nuclear plants and extend the operation
lives of those currently in existence (as the US did recently)
to 60 years.  The nuclear debate needs to be opened up to
include everyone. Spaniards should, at least, have the
opportunity to learn about the reality of our energy needs, the
energetic capacity of nuclear plants to satisfy those needs and
the secure, clean and trustworthy conditions, in addition to
lower costs, that nuclear plants offer in comparison to other
sources. At the moment, distrust and fear are the rule, aided by
two allies: ignorance and the environmental movements on-going
message, designed to enslave and impoverish our society. Whether
this administration wants it or not, the time to banish
anti-nuclear prejudices has come 

Today in The Spain Herald:
 
 [RSS] © Copyright Libertad Digital, S.A.Conde de Aranda 8 -
28001 Madrid - tel.: (+34) 91 781 22 41 - fax: (+34) 91 435 74
97 
*****************************************************************
 28 Courier News: Bush proposes $15 million for cleanup of Middlesex plant
 
 By GIOVANNA FABIANO Staff Writer 

MIDDLESEX BOROUGH -- The cleanup of the former Middlesex
Sampling Plant -- an atomic research factory until 1967 -- can
finally be completed, thanks to $15 million in federal funds
proposed in President Bush's 2007 budget.

The 9-acre site on Mountain Avenue was once used to process
radioactive ores as part of the Manhattan Project to develop the
first atomic bomb. Though the site hasn't been operational in
decades, large amounts of chemical and radioactive contamination
still exist in what officials assure is a "secured and
contained" area.

Federal and state officials, including Rep. Frank Pallone Jr.,
D-Long Branch, Middlesex Mayor Jerry D'Angelo and members of the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- which is responsible for the
site -- announced the proposed funds Monday at the former plant.

"This funding level would actually allow the Army Corps to do
all possible work on the site in the upcoming fiscal year to
ensure it is safe for human use once again and does not pose a
threat to the rest of the community," Pallone said.

Although the funds were earmarked in the president's budget,
Pallone said the next step is to ensure the full amount of the
funding ends up in the final Appropriations Act for 2007.

"It still has to go to Congress to be appropriated, and I'm
going to make it my goal to make sure we don't lose it," said
Pallone, senior member of the House Energy and Commerce
Committee.

The funds would go toward the final phase of the cleanup of the
plant, which was listed as a Superfund site in 1999.

So far, the project, which has been undergoing a gradual,
ongoing cleanup, has cost the federal government about $80
million since 1980, said Allen Roos, project manager of the site
for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The final part of the project, expected to begin in August and
take about a year, calls for excavating the contaminated
subsurface soil and groundwater and transporting it to Idaho,
where it will be disposed of in a landfill called U.S. Ecology,
Roos said. In the 1940s, the government imported African uranium
ores, known as pitchblende, to be used in the nation's early
atomic energy program. The ores were examined at the Middlesex
Sampling Plant before they were shipped to other sites for
processing, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers'
official Web site.

The facility received uranium, thorium and beryllium ores until
1967, when the site was decontaminated according to
environmental standards in place at the time, the Web site
states.

But overlooked during the decontamination were traces of
radioactive materials that had been carried away from the site
over the years by wind and rain to the yards of neighboring
homes, as well as the Middlesex Municipal Landfill, located a
half mile away.

The contaminated residential homes and the landfill were cleaned
up in the 1980s, contributing to two piles with about 33,000 and
35,000 respective cubic yards of contaminated soil. The piles
were cleaned up in the late 1990s, and Corps officials say they
are continuing to monitor the air, ground and surface water to
ensure the contamination is contained.

Once the cleanup is finished, the plan is for the federal
government to transfer the site to the borough for use as
parkland, D'Angelo said.

Though the renovation project could be up to five years away,
D'Angelo said the borough is hoping to build a train station
nearby and possibly turn a portion of the site into a parking
lot for commuters.

 from the Courier News website www.c-n.com 

Copyright © 1997-2006 Courier News. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 29 NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Meeting of the 
 
                         FR Doc E6-6608 
[Federal Register: May 2, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 84)] [Notices] 
[Page 25862-25863] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr02my06-99]                         
 
Subcommittee on Plant License Renewal; Notice of Meeting The ACRS 
Subcommittee on Plant License Renewal will hold a meeting on May 
30, 2006, Room T-2B3, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland.
 
The entire meeting will be open to public attendance.
 
The agenda for the subject meeting shall be as follows: Tuesday, 
May 30, 2006--1:30 p.m.-5 p.m. The purpose of this meeting is to 
discuss the License Renewal Application for the Monticello 
Nuclear Generating Plant and the related Safety Evaluation Report 
(SER) with open items prepared by the NRR staff. The Subcommittee 
will hear presentations by and hold discussions with 
representatives of the NRC staff, Nuclear Management Company, 
LLC, and other interested persons regarding this matter. The 
Subcommittee will gather information, analyze relevant issues and 
facts, and formulate proposed positions and actions, as 
appropriate, for deliberation by the full Committee.
 
Members of the public desiring to provide oral statements and/or 
written comments should notify the Designated Federal Official, 
Mr. Cayetano Santos (telephone 301/415-7270) five days prior to 
the meeting, if possible, so that appropriate arrangements can be 
made. Electronic recordings will be permitted.
 
Further information regarding this meeting can be obtained by 
contacting the Designated Federal Official between 7:30 a.m. and 
4:15 p.m. (ET). Persons planning to attend this meeting are urged 
to contact the above named
 
[[Page 25863]] individual at least two working days prior to the 
meeting to be advised of any potential changes to the agenda.
 
Dated: April 25, 2006.
 
Michael R. Snodderly, Acting Branch Chief, ACRS/ACNW.
 
[FR Doc. E6-6608 Filed 5-1-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 30 NRC: Atomic Safety and Licensing Board; Before Administrative Judges: 
 
                         FR Doc E6-6621 
[Federal Register: May 2, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 84)] [Notices] 
[Page 25862] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access 
[wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr02my06-98]                         
 
Thomas S. Moore, Chairman, Dr. Paul Abramson, Dr. Anthony J. 
Baratta; In the Matter of Pa'ina Hawaii, LLC (Material License 
Application); Notice of Hearing April 26, 2006.
 
This proceeding involves the application by Pa'ina Hawaii, LLC, 
submitted on June 27, 2005, for a possession and use materials 
license to build and operate a commercial pool-type industrial 
irradiator using a cobalt-60 source at the Honolulu International 
Airport.\1\ In response to the August 2, 2005, Notice of 
Opportunity for Hearing published at 70 FR 44,396 (August 2, 
2005), the Petitioner, Concerned Citizens of Honolulu, on October 
3, 2005, timely filed a request for a hearing. Thereafter, on 
October 13, 2005, this Atomic Safety and Licensing Board was 
established by the Commission to preside over the proceeding. See 
70 FR 60,858 (October 19, 2005). 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
---------- \1\ See 70 FR 44,396 (Aug. 2, 2005). 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
---------- On January 24, 2006, the Board issued LBP-06-04, 63 
NRC 99 (2006), granting the hearing request of the Petitioner, 
Concerned Citizens of Honolulu, on the application of Pa'ina 
Hawaii, LLC. Due to the Petitioner's initial lack of access to 
sensitive non-public information contained in the Application, 
the January 24, 2006, memorandum and order, addressed only the 
Petitioner's standing and its two environmental contentions. 
Subsequently, on March 24, 2006, the Board addressed the 
Petitioner's safety related contentions and admitted three 
additional contentions. See LBP-06-12, 63 NRC------ (March 24, 
2006). Parties to the proceeding are Concerned Citizens of 
Honolulu, Pa'ina Hawaii, LLC, and the NRC Staff. The issues to be 
considered are the admitted contentions.
 
Please take notice that a hearing will be conducted in this 
proceeding. The hearing will be governed by the informal hearing 
procedures set forth in 10 CFR part 2, subpart L, 10 CFR 
2.1200-.1213. Except to the extent an early settlement or other 
circumstance renders them unnecessary, the Board may conduct an 
oral argument, may hold pre- hearing conferences, and may conduct 
an oral hearing. Unless otherwise ordered, the public is invited 
to attend any argument, pre-hearing conference, or oral hearing. 
Notices of these sessions will be published in the Federal 
Register and/or made available to the public at the NRC Public 
Document Room, located at One White Flint, 11555 Rockville Pike 
(first floor), Rockville, Maryland, and through the NRC Web site, 
http://www.nrc.gov. In addition, pursuant to 10 CFR 2.315(a), any 
person not a party to the proceeding may submit a written limited 
appearance. Limited appearance statements, which are placed in 
the docket of the proceeding, provide members of the public with 
the opportunity to make the Board and the parties aware of their 
concerns about the matters at issue in the proceeding. Persons 
wishing to submit a written limited appearance statement should 
send it by mail to the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555- 0001, Attention: 
Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff. A copy of the statement 
should also be served by mail on the Chairman of this Atomic 
Safety and Licensing Board, Atomic Safety and Licensing Board 
Panel, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 
20555-0001. In its sole discretion and at a later date, the Board 
may entertain oral limited appearance statements at a suitable 
location or locations. Notice of any oral limited appearance 
sessions will be published in the Federal Register and/or made 
available to the public at the NRC Public Document Room and on 
the NRC Web site, http://www.nrc.gov. Documents relating to this 
proceeding are available for public inspection at the NRC's 
Public Document Room or electronically from the publicly 
available records component of NRC's document system (ADAMS). 
ADAMS is accessible from the NRC Web site at 
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Persons who do not have 
access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the 
documents located in ADAMS may contact the NRC Public Document 
Room reference staff by telephone at 1- 800-397-4209 or 
301-415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. It is so ordered.
 
Dated: April 26, 2006 at Rockville, Maryland.
 
For the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.\2\ 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
---------- \2\ Copies of this Order were sent this date by 
Internet e-mail transmission to counsel for the (1) Applicant 
Pa'ina Hawaii, LLC; (2) Intervenor Concerned Citizens of 
Honolulu; and (3) NRC Staff.
 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
---------- Thomas S. Moore, Chairman, Administrative Judge.
 
[FR Doc. E6-6621 Filed 5-1-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 31 NRC: Agency Information Collection Activities: Proposed Collection; 
 
                         FR Doc E6-6633 
[Federal Register: May 2, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 84)] [Notices] 
[Page 25861-25862] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr02my06-97]                         
 
Comment Request AGENCY: U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
(NRC). ACTION: Notice of pending NRC action to submit an 
information collection request to OMB and solicitation of public 
comment.
 
SUMMARY: The NRC is preparing a submittal to OMB for review of 
continued approval of information collections under the 
provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 
Chapter 35). Information pertaining to the requirement to be 
submitted: 1. The title of the information collection: Nuclear 
Material Events Database (NMED) for the Collection of Event 
Report, Response, Analyses, and Follow-up Data on Events 
Involving the Use of Atomic Energy Act (AEA) Radioactive 
Byproduct Material.
 
2. Current OMB approval number: (3150-0178). 3. How often the 
collection is required: Agreement States are requested to provide 
copies of licensee material event reports electronically or by 
hard copy to NRC on a monthly basis or within 30 days of receipt 
from their licensee. This schedule provides the Agreement States 
30 days to assess the licensee information prior to providing the 
information to NRC. Reportable events involve industrial, 
commercial, medical use, and/or academic use of radioactive 
byproduct materials. In addition, Agreement States are requested 
to report events that may pose a significant health and safety 
hazard to the NRC Headquarters Operations Officer within the next 
working day of notification by an Agreement State licensee.
 
4. Who is required or asked to report: Current Agreement States 
and any State receiving Agreement State status in the future.
 
5. The number of annual respondents: 34. 6. The number of hours 
needed annually to complete the requirement or request: 756 hours 
(an average of 22 hours per respondent).
 
7. Abstract: NRC regulations require NRC licensees to report 
incidents and events involving the use, transportation and 
security of radioactive byproduct material, and source material, 
such as those involving radiation overexposures, leaking or 
contaminated sealed source(s), release of excessive contamination 
of radioactive material, lost or stolen radioactive material, 
equipment failures, abandoned well logging sources and medical 
events. Agreement State licenses are also required to report 
these events to their individual Agreement State regulatory 
authorities under compatible Agreement State regulations. NRC is 
requesting that the Agreement States provide information to NRC 
on the initial notification, response actions, and follow-up 
investigations on events involving the use (including suspected 
theft or terrorist activities) of nuclear materials regulated 
pursuant to the Atomic Energy Act. The event information should 
be provided in a uniform electronic format, for assessment and 
identification of any facilities/site specific or generic safety 
concerns that could have the potential to impact public health 
and safety. The identification and review of safety concerns may 
result in lessons learned, and may also identify generic issues 
for further study which could result in proposals for changes or 
revisions to technical or regulatory designs, processes, 
standards, guidance or requirements.
 
Submit, by July 3, 2006, comments that address the following 
questions: 1. Is the proposed collection of information necessary 
for the NRC to properly perform its functions? Does the 
information have practical utility? 2. Is the burden estimate 
accurate? 3. Is there a way to enhance the quality, utility, and 
clarity of the information to be collected? 4. How can the burden 
of the information collection be minimized, including the use of 
automated collection techniques or other forms of information 
technology? A copy of the draft supporting statement may be 
viewed free of charge at the NRC Public Document Room, One White 
Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Room O-1 F21, Rockville, MD 
20852. OMB clearance requests are available at the NRC Worldwide 
Web site: 
http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/doc-comment/omb/index.html. The 
document will be available on the NRC home page site for 60 days 
after the signature date of this notice.
 
Comments and questions about the information collection 
requirements may be directed to the NRC Clearance
 
[[Page 25862]] Officer, Brenda Jo. Shelton (T-5 F53), U.S. 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, by 
telephone at 301-415-7233, or by Internet electronic mail to 
INFOCOLLECTS@NRC.GOV. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 25th day 
of April 2006.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Brenda Jo. Shelton, NRC Clearance Officer, Office of the Chief 
Information Officer.
 
[FR Doc. E6-6633 Filed 5-1-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 32 AlterNet: The Mix: Is France a nuclear wonderland?

Posted by Joshua Holland at 12:30 PM on May 2, 2006.
 
Don't believe the hype.

[france]              

 There are lots of comments on "Bush's Nuclear Madness" over on
the front page about how France is a model of successful nuclear
energy. But it's not quite the shining example that nuclear
proponents would have you believe.

It's true that nuclear power plants generate almost 80 percent
of France's electricity, and that by and large the French public
supports it.

But the French don't want a nuclear future any more than the
American public does; found that 61 percent of French
respondents "would prefer to phase out nuclear energy."

They support nuclear energy but want to phase it out in the
future -- how do you explain that dichotomy? 

Part of the answer is waste. , in 1999, found that seven out of
ten French people "tended to 'distrust' nuclear-waste
management, this response being similar to that observed in
Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom."

France has the same waste problems that we have. When Dick
Cheney said in a speech that France was a model for how we could
deal with our waste at Yucca Mountain, the Institute for Energy
and Environmental Research answered with :

"The facts regarding the French repository program contradict
Vice-President Cheney," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of
IEER, who has written widely on nuclear waste issues. "France
has no repository, and their siting program faces huge domestic
opposition. The controversy that surrounds waste management is a
thorn in the side of the French nuclear industry." 

The French government's schedule for a repository, like the U.S.
schedule, is far too rapid for a careful scientific
investigation required for estimating repository performance
over hundreds of thousands of years, according to IEER. 

The French public's desire to phase out nuclear energy brings
them :

An incident in September 1999 at a nuclear power plant in
Tokaimura, Japan, provided a sharp reminder of the risks
involved. Considered to be the most dangerous nuclear accident
since Chernobyl, the Tokaimura incident left one employee dead
and eventually compelled the Japanese government to scale back
its nuclear power plant construction program. And Japan is not
an isolated example. New nuclear power plant construction
programs around the globe have been reduced or eliminated
entirely. In Europe, nuclear energy users such as Sweden and
Germany are staging a gradual withdrawal. Given this general
trend, the question remains whether France can afford to go
against the tide.

But France's biggest problem with nuclear energy over the long
haul is the opportunity costs; France is falling behind the rest
of Europe in terms of investing in clean, renewable energy.

One final note. I would have much more faith in nuclear energy
in a country like France, where free-markets are embraced but
free market fundamentalism doesn't reign supreme. I don't trust
the firms involved in this process and I don't want "efficiency"
and the profit motive to trump safety. And that's always what
happens in the U.S.

GET INVOLVED: I got an e-mail from Peggy Johnson, an activist
trying to build a grass-roots movement against shipping of
radioactive waste across our highways and biways. She says: "My
organization, Citizen Alert has been fighting the issue of
transporting nuclear waste across the country to our state for
31 years. It has been a hard fought battle. We have been
frustrated by the fact that we in Nevada know about the problem
and people around the world know about the problem, but people
who live within a half mile from a proposed transport route know
nothing."

If you want to get involved, you can reach her at 
pmj1@citizenalert.org 

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular

                   
Reproduction of material from any AlterNet pages without written
permission is strictly prohibited.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
 	 --> 
*****************************************************************
 33 ITAR-TASS: Armenia plans to build new nuclear power plant.

03.05.2006, 00.07

YEREVAN, May 3 (Itar-Tass) -- Armenia will build a new nuclear
power plant with the capacity of 1,000 megawatt, Finance and
Economy Minister Vartan Khachatrian said on Tuesday, after the
12th meeting of the Armenian-U.S. economic cooperation group. 

He said the new power plant will replace the old one with the
capacity of 440 megawatt. 

The United States objects to building a new nuclear power plant
in Armenia for safety reasons, as the country is located in a
seismically active zone, U.S. coordinator for Europe and Eurasia
Thomas Adams said. 

Not a single American company will agree to build a new nuclear
power plant in Armenia, he added. 

In the opinion of Adams, Armenia should find alternative ways
for energy security, and the United States will give it
technical and consultative assistance. 

The group was set up in 2000. It meets twice a year in Yerevan
and Washington. 


© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
 34 Vermont Guardian: State drops Vermont Yankee safety contentions

By Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian 

Posted May 2, 2006 

BRATTLEBORO  The Douglas administration has formally withdrawn
its concerns about the safety of Vermont Yankees power increase,
assuaged by the plant owners agreement to increase reporting and
conduct an additional inspection at the Vernon reactor. 

In a memorandum of understanding filed today with the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Vermont Department of Public
Service said it had reached a mutually satisfactory resolution
with Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee about the companys bid to
use containment overpressure to help cool the reactor during an
emergency. 

Containment overpressure is the practice of allowing the heat
and any escaping steam in the reactor containment to increase
pressure rather than reduce, which is what operators would
normally do during a loss-of-coolant accident to avoid bursting
the containment vessel. 

The increased pressure helps push water into the emergency
cooling pumps to keep them operable when the heat forms bubbles
that cause the pumps to lose the ability to draw and push water. 

During the uprate application, Vermont Yankee (VY) officials
received approval from the NRC to take credit for the
containment pressure as a way to keep the cooling pumps
operational. 

Opponents argue that the measure is counterintuitive to what
operators are normally taught, and increases the risk of
operator error during an accident. 

But state nuclear engineer William Sherman said the Public
Service Department received the assurances it was seeking,
including independent verification of VYs calculations, and that
containment overpressure would not compromise safety. 

Sherman said state officials had the opportunity to address
their questions at least four times during meetings last year
the Advisory Committee on Safeguards (ACRS), a panel of nuclear
experts that advises the five commissioners of the NRC. 

We basically got what we wanted, which was the detailed review
on this. The thing that was lacking was that we wanted some
additional guarantees that the containment would retain its
integrity when called on, Sherman said. 

In todays MOU, Entergy agrees to file weekly reports with
Sherman on the level of nitrogen, which is used to keep the
containment atmosphere inert. Decreasing nitrogen levels could
indicate containment leakage, he said. In addition, the company
has agreed to conduct an augmented inspection of the torus, the
doughnut-shaped structure that removes heat during an accident,
during the plants next refueling outage. 

Sherman said both measures are already conducted by the company.
The difference is that they will be reporting the results of
their nitrogen readings and the torus inspection to the state. 

Sherman added that the states concerns have been less with
Entergy than with the NRC. This looked like an issue that NRC
had granted on several other uprated plants but never looked at
thoroughly. The ACRS has never looked at it; it hadnt gotten the
higher attention of NRC staff, and we feel that we got that 
This process resulted in a very high level of attention  extra
analysis, lots of questions  and thats what we wanted. 

The NRC has approved containment overpressure credit at 26
reactors including Vermont Yankee, according to NRC spokesman
Neil Sheehan. 

The state of Vermont was one of only two parties ever to have
been granted standing on a power uprate before the ASLB, which
was to have reviewed the containment overpressure contentions in
the fall. 

The other party, the Brattleboro-based New England Coalition,
still has two contentions before the board, and four others
outstanding. The ASLB will hold a June 26 hearing in
Brattleboro, and again in September to hear the NEC contentions. 

Ray Shadis, NECs technical advisor, said the organization would
have attempted to file a containment overpressure contention had
the state not done so. We thought the state could carry the ball
on it, he said. 

Shadis said todays MOU does not answer the safety concerns. 

The idea of maintaining containment overpressure in order to
keep the emergency pumps working is a Rube Goldberg approach to
nuclear safety. The reactor operators are classically trained
from the very beginning to get containment pressure lowered, not
try to maintain it at some artificial level, so its completely
counterintuitive for the operators in an emergency.  Its still
an emergency and things get flustered, orders get confused. It
is no time to try to finesse containment pressure to try to keep
your pumps working. 

He continued, I think this is an issue that has been penciled
away and I think the region around Vermont Yankee is that much
less safe because of it. 

 Contact: 802.861.4880 (ph) | 802.861.6388 (fax) | 877.231.5382
(toll-free)

 ©2005 Vermont Guardian | 

Visit us: www.vermontguardian.com
 This document can be located online:
www.vermontguardian.com/local/052006/StateVYContention.shtml 
*****************************************************************
 35 asahi.com: Nuclear plants get new quake standards

05/02/2006

 The Asahi Shimbun

For the first time in 28 years, the government will revise and
strengthen its earthquake-resistance standards for nuclear power
plants. 

A Nuclear Safety Commission subcommittee has come up with a
draft revision of the current guidelines that would require
nuclear power plants to prepare for temblors 20 to 30 percent
stronger than currently stipulated. 

The subcommittee will post the draft on the Internet and solicit
public opinion. It will finalize the revisions as early as this
summer. 

Nuclear power plant operators say that the new guidelines will
not require much in the way of large-scale reinforcing work,
because the nation's plants were constructed to handle much
stronger tremors than the current guidelines demand. 

Smaller-scale work could be necessary on some plants, they said. 
Currently, nuclear power plant operators have to take the past
50,000 years of fault line activity into account when
constructing plants nearby. 

The facilities must also be able to withstand tremors of up to
370 gals, a unit of acceleration. That is roughly equivalent to
a magnitude-6.5 earthquake with its focus just underneath the
plant. 

The draft revisions require the past 120,000 to 130,000 years of
fault line activity to be factored into construction plans. 

If there are no active fault lines near the plants, the
operators must take into account both historical quake data and
studies of the underlying rock bed. 

The plants will also have to withstand tremors of up to 450
gals, about 20 percent stronger than the present guidelines,
equivalent to a magnitude-6.8 quake focused just below the
plant. (IHT/Asahi: May 2,2006) 
  
  + The Asahi Shimbun Company  

Go To PageTop [Copyright The Asahi Shimbun Company. All
rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without
*****************************************************************
 36 NRC: Sunshine Act; Notice of Meetings
 
                         FR Doc 06-4164 
[Federal Register: May 2, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 84)] [Notices] 
[Page 25863] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access 
[wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr02my06-100]                         
 
Agency Holding the Meetings: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Dates: Weeks of May 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, June 5, 2006.
 
Place: Commissioner' Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, 
Rockville, Maryland.
 
Status: Public and Closed.
 
Matters to be Considered: Week of May 1, 2006 Tuesday, May 2, 
2006 9:30 a.m. Briefing on Status of Emergency Planning 
Activities--Morning Session (Public Meeting) (Contact: Eric 
Leeds, 301-415-2334).
 
1 p.m. Briefing on Status of Emergency Planning 
Activities--Afternoon Session (Public Meeting).
 
These meetings will be webcast live at the Web address 
http://www.nrc.gov .
 
Wednesday, May 3, 2006 8:55 a.m. Affirmation Session (Public 
Meeting) (Tentative) a. Andrew Siemaszko, Docket No. IA-05-021, 
unpublished Licensing Board Order (March 2, 2006) (Tentative).
 
9 a.m. Briefing on Status of Risk-Informed, Performance-Based 
Reactor Regulation (Public Meeting) (Contact: Eileen McKenna, 
301-415-2189).
 
This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address 
http://www.nrc.gov .
 
Week of May 8, 2006--Tentative There are no meetings scheduled 
for the Week of May 8, 2006.
 
Week of May 15, 2006--Tentative Monday, May 15, 2006 1 p.m. 
Briefing on Status of Implementation of Energy Policy Act of 2005 
(Public Meeting) (Contact: Scott Moore, 301-415-7278).
 
This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address 
http://www.nrc.gov .
 
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 9:30 a.m. Briefing on Results of the Agency 
Action Review Meeting-- Reactors/Materials (Public Meeting) 
(Contact: Mark Tonacci, 301-415- 4045).
 
This meeting will be webcast live at the Web address 
http://www.nrc.gov .
 
Week of May 22, 2006--Tentative Wednesday, May 24, 2006 9:30 a.m. 
Discussion of Security Issues (closed--ex. 1). 1:30 p.m. All 
Employees Meeting (Public Meeting), Marriott Bethesda North 
Hotel, Salons D-H, 5701 Marinelli Road, Rockville, MD 20852.
 
Week of May 29, 2006--Tentative Wednesday, May 31, 2006 
Discussion of Security Issues (closed--ex. 1). Week of June 5, 
2006--Tentative Wednesday, June 7, 2006 9:30 a.m. Discussion of 
Security Issues (closed--ex. 1 & 3). * * * * * Additional 
Information The Affirmation of Andrew Siemaszko, Docket No. 
IA-05-021, unpublished Licensing Board Order (Dec. 22, 2005) 
previously tentatively scheduled on May 3, 2006, has been 
postponed and will be rescheduled.
 
* * * * * The schedule for Commission meetings is subject to 
change on short notice. To verify the status of meetings call 
(recording)--(301) 415- 1292. Contact person for more 
information: Michelle Schroll, (301) 415- 1662.
 
* * * * * The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the 
Internet at: 
http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-making/schedule.html. * * * 
* * The NRC provides reasonable accommodation to individuals with 
disabilities where appropriate. If you need a reasonable 
accommodation to participate in these public meetings, or need 
this meeting notice or the transcript or other information from 
the public meetings in another format (e.g. braille, large 
print), please notify the NRC's Disability Program Coordinator, 
Deborah Chan, at 301-415-7041, TDD: 301-415-2100, or by e-mail at 
DLC@nrc.gov. Determinations on requests for reasonable 
accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis.
 
This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred 
subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like 
to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the 
Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301-415-1969). In addition, 
distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is 
available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission 
meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic 
message to dkw@nrc.gov. Dated: April 26, 2006.
 
R. Michelle Schroll, Office of the Secretary.
 
[FR Doc. 06-4164 Filed 4-28-06; 1:03 pm] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M

 
*****************************************************************
 37 AFP: Gulf officials discuss nuclear emergency plan 

 Tue May 2, 2:48 PM ET 
		 	 
RIYADH (AFP) - Gulf Arab officials began a two-day meeting in
Riyadh to discuss a nuclear-fallout emergency and contingency
plan, an official from the oil-rich Gulf bloc said. 

The meeting had been planned for some time, but it comes against 
the backdrop of rising tensions between Iran " /> Iranand the 
West over Tehran's nuclear program.
 
Officials from health and environment ministries of the six
member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) "began
discussing a proposed emergency plan drawn up by the Kuwaiti
health ministry which would be implemented in the case of
nuclear or radioactive dangers," the official from the
Riyadh-based GCC secretariat told AFP, requesting anonymity.
 
He said officials also reviewed contingency measures already
adopted by GCC member states Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
 
The meeting will also examine ways of energizing a permanent GCC
committee of radioactivity prevention experts, he added.
 
The meeting was planned some time ago "as part of the activities
of the GCC's department of environmental and human affairs," the
official added.
 
It comes at a time of mounting tensions over Iran's refusal to
suspend its nuclear activities, which it insists are for
civilian energy purposes but which some Western countries fear
are aimed at manufacturing an atomic bomb.
 
Gulf Arab states are concerned about the ongoing crisis and fear
the repercussions on the oil-rich region from threatened US
military action against Tehran. Washington has not excluded the
use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran.
 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 38 [DU List] Deplete Uranium - far worse than 9/11
 
Date: Tue, 02 May 2006 15:06:24 -0700


<x-flowed>
<http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12903.htm>http<http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12903.htm>://informationclearinghouse.info/article12903.htm
Depleted Uranium - Far Worse Than 9/11
Depleted Uranium Dust - Public Health Disaster For The People Of Iraq
and Afghanistan
By Douglas Westerman

05/01/06 "Vital Truths" -- - In 1979, depleted uranium (DU) particles
escaped from the National Lead Industries factory near Albany,
N.Y.,which was manufacturing DU weapons for the U.S military. The
particles traveled 26 miles and were discovered in a laboratory filter
by Dr. Leonard Dietz, a nuclear physicist. This discovery led to a shut
down of the factory in 1980, for releasing morethan 0.85 pounds of DU
dust into the atmosphere every month, and involved a cleanup of
contaminated properties costing over 100 million dollars.

Imagine a far worse scenario. Terrorists acquire a million pounds of
the deadly dust and scatter
  it in populated areas throughout the U.S.
Hundreds of children report symptoms. Many acquire cancer and leukemia,
suffering an early and painful death. Huge increases in severe birth
defects are reported. Oncologists are overwhelmed. Soccer fields, sand
lots and parks, traditional play areas for kids, are no longer safe.
People lose their most basic freedom, the ability to go outside and
safely breathe. Sounds worse than 9/11? Welcome to Iraq and
Afghanistan.

Dr. Jawad Al-Ali (55), director of the Oncology Center at the largest
hospital in Basra, Iraq stated, at a recent ( 2003) conference in
Japan:
"Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen
before. The first is double and triple cancers in one patient. For
example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with 2
cancers - one in his stomach and kidney. Months later, primary cancer
was developing in his other kidney--he
  had three different cancer
types. The second is the clustering of cancer in families. We have 58
families here with more than one person affected by cancer. Dr Yasin, a
general Surgeon here has two uncles, a sister and cousin affected with
cancer. Dr Mazen, another specialist, has six family members suffering
from cancer. My wife has nine members of her family with cancer".

"Children in particular are susceptible to DU poisoning. They have a
much higher absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and
nourish their bones and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer
and leukemia used to be diseases affecting them the most, however,
cancer of the lymph system which can develop anywhere on the body, and
has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is now also common.",

"We were accused of spreading propaganda for Saddam before the war.
When I have gone to do talks I have had people accuse me of being

pro-Saddam. Sometimes I feel afraid to even talk. Regime people have
been stealing my data and calling it their own, and using it for their
own agendas. The Kuwaitis banned me from entering Kuwait - we were
accused of being Saddam supporters."

John Hanchette, a journalism professor at St. Bonaventure University,
and one of the founding editors of USA TODAY related the following to
DU researcher Leuren Moret.  He stated  that he had prepared news
breaking stories about the effects of DU on Gulf War soldiers and Iraqi
citizens, but that each time he was ready to publish, he received a
phone call from the Pentagon asking him not to print the story.  He has
since been replaced as editor of USA TODAY.

Dr. Keith Baverstock, The World Health Organization's chief expert on
radiation and health for 11 years and author of an unpublished study
has charged that his report " on the cancer risk to civilians in Iraq
from
  breathing uranium contaminated dust " was  also deliberately
suppressed.

The information released by the U.S. Dept. of Defense is not reliable,
according to some sources even within the military.

In 1997, while citing experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of
dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr. Asaf
Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at
Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as saying,

"The [US government's] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about
the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body."

At that time Dr. Durakovic was a colonel in the U.S. Army.  He has
since left the military, to found the Uranium Medical Research Center,
a privately funded organization with headquarters in Canada.

PFC Stuart Grainger of 23 Army Division, 34th Platoon. (Names and
numbers have been changed) was diagnosed with cancer several
  after
returning from Iraq.  Seven other men in the Platoon also have
malignancies.

Doug Rokke, U.S. Army contractor who headed a clean-up of depleted
uranium after the first Gulf War states:,

"Depleted uranium is a crime against God and humanity."

Rokke's own crew, a hundred employees, was devastated by exposure to
the fine dust. He stated:

"When we went to the Gulf, we were all really healthy,"

After performing clean-up operations in the desert (mistakenly without
protective gear), 30 members of his staff died, and most
others"including Rokke himself"developed serious health problems. Rokke
now has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts, and
kidney problems.

   "We warned the Department of Defense in 1991 after the Gulf War.
Their
arrogance is beyond comprehension.

Yet the D.O.D still insists such ingestion is "not sufficient to make
troops seriously ill in most
  cases."

Then why did it make the clean up crew seriously or terminally ill in
nearly all cases?

Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for
more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore Lab, was asked if he thought
that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb.

"That's exactly what they are. They fit the description of a dirty bomb
in every way."

According to Falk, more than 30 percent of the DU fired from the
cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles one-tenth of a micron
(one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on impact.  "The larger
the bang" the greater the amount of DU that is dispersed into the
atmosphere, Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs, nearly 100
percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the
"micron size" or smaller, he said.

When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things
and killing
  people, Falk was more specific:

"I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people."

When a DU round or bomb strikes a hard target, most of its kinetic
energy is converted to heat " sufficient heat to ignite the DU.  From
40% to 70% of the DU is converted to extremely fine dust particles of
ceramic uranium oxide (primarily dioxide, though other formulations
also occur). Over 60% of these particles are smaller than 5 microns in
diameter, about the same size as the cigarette ash particles in
cigarette smoke and therefore respirable.

Because conditions are so chaotic in Iraq, the medical infrastructure
has been greatly compromised.  In terms of both cancer and birth
defects due to DU, only a small fraction of the cases are being
reported.

Doctors in southern Iraq are making comparisons to the birth defects
that followed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII.
They have
  numerous photos of infants born without brains, with their
internal organs outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without
spines, and the list of deformities goes on an on.  Such birth defects
were extremely rare in Iraq prior to the large scale use of DU.
Weapons. Now they are commonplace.  In hospitals across Iraq, the
mothers are no longer asking, "Doctor, is it a boy or girl?" but
rather, "Doctor, is it normal?"  The photos are horrendous, they can be
viewed on the following website

Ross B. Mirkarimi, a spokesman at The Arms Control Research Centre
stated:

"Unborn children of the region are being asked to pay the highest
price, the integrity of their DNA."

Prior to her death from leukemia in Sept. 2004, Nuha Al Radi , an
accomplished Iraqi artist and author  of the "Baghdad Diaries" wrote:

"Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about
another acquaintance or friend of a
  friend dying. How many more die in
hospitals that one does not know? Apparently, over thirty percent of
Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukemia."

"The depleted uranium left by the U.S. bombing campaign has turned Iraq
into a cancer-infested country. For hundreds of years to come, the
effects of the uranium will continue to wreak havoc on Iraq and its
surrounding areas."

This excerpt in her diary was written in 1993, after Gulf War I
(Approximately 300 tons of DU ordinance, mostly in desert areas)  but
before Operation Iraqi Freedom, (Est. 1,700 tons with much more near
major population centers).  So, it's 5-6 times worse now than it was
when she wrote than diary entry!!   Estimates of the percentage of D.U.
which was 'aerosolized' into fine uranium oxide dust are approximately
30-40%. That works out to over one million pounds of dust scattered
throughout Iraq.

As a special advisor to
  the World Health Organization, the United
Nations, and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Dr. Ahmad Hardan has
documented the effects of DU in Iraq between 1991 and 2002.

"American forces admit to using over 300 tons of DU weapons in 1991.
The actual figure is closer to 800.  This has caused a health crisis
that has affected almost a third of a million people.  As if that was
not enough, America went on and used 200 tons more in Bagdad alone
during the recent invasion.

I don"t know about other parts of Iraq, it will take me years to
document that.

   "In Basra, it took us two years to obtain conclusive proof of what DU
does, but we now know what to look for and the results are terrifying."

By far the most devastating effect is on unborn children.  Nothing can
prepare anyone for the sight of hundreds of preserved fetuses "
scarcely human in appearance. Iraq is now seeing babies with terribly
foreshortened
  limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with
huge bulging tumors where their eyes should be, or with a single
eye-like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without
heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside
textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the
Pacific.



Dr. Hardan also states:

"I arranged for a delegation from Japan's Hiroshima Hospital to come
and share their expertise in the radiological diseases we

Are likely to face over time. The delegation told me the Americans had
objected and they decided not to come. Similarly, a world famous German
cancer specialist agreed to come, only to be told later that he would
not be given permission to enter Iraq."

Not only are we poisoning the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, but we
are making a concerted effort to keep out specialists from other
countries who can help.  The U.S.
  Military doesn"t want the rest of the
world to find out what we have done.

Such relatively swift development of cancers has been reported by
doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU
in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the US military invasion of Iraq using
DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this
phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been
unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU
exposure.
Just 467 US personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War
in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000
are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical
disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade
later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served in the first Gulf War
now have medical problems.

Although not reported in the mainstream American press, a
  recent Tokyo
tribunal, guided by the principles of International Criminal Law and
International Humanitarian Law, found President George W. Bush guilty
of war crimes. On March 14, 2004, Nao Shimoyachi, reported in The Japan
Times that President Bush was found guilty "for attacking civilians
with indiscriminate weapons and other arms,"and the "tribunal also
issued recommendations for banning Depleted Uranium shells and other
weapons that indiscriminately harm people."  Although this was a
"Citizen's Court" having no legal authority, the participants were
sincere in their determination that international laws have been
violated and a war crimes conviction is warranted.

Troops involved in actual combat are not the only servicemen reporting
symptoms. Four soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company
serving in Iraq are among several members of the same company, the
442nd Military Police, who say they have been
  battling persistent
physical ailments that began last summer in the Iraqi town of Samawah.

"I got sick instantly in June," said Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, a Brooklyn
housing cop. "My health kept going downhill with daily headaches,
constant numbness in my hands and rashes on my stomach."

Dr. Asaf Durakovic, UMRC founder, and nuclear medicine expert examined
and tested nine soldiers from the company says that four "almost
certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells
manufactured with depleted uranium. Laboratory tests revealed traces of
two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the
soldiers.

If so, the men - Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos
and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone - are the first confirmed cases of inhaled
depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.

The 442nd, made up for the most part of New York cops, firefighters and
correction
  officers, is based in Orangeburg, Rockland County.
Dispatched to Iraq in Easter of 2003, the unit's members had been
providing guard duty for convoys, running jails and training Iraqi
police. The entire company is due to return home later this month.

"These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were
military police not exposed to the heat of battle," said Dr. Asaf
Duracovic, who examined the G.I.s and performed the testing.

In a group of eight U.S. led Coalition servicemen whose babies were
born without eyes, seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU
dust. In a much group (250 soldiers) exposed during the first Gulf war,
67% of the children conceived after the war had birth defects.

Dr. Durakovic's  UMRC research team also conducted a three-week field
trip to Iraq in October of 2003. It collected about 100 samples of
substances such as soil, civilian urine and the tissue from the corpses

of Iraqi soldiers in 10 cities, including Baghdad, Basra and Najaf.
Durakovic said preliminary tests show that the air, soil and water
samples contained "hundreds to thousands of times" the normal levels of
radiation.

"This high level of contamination is because much more depleted uranium
was used this year than in (the Gulf War of) 1991," Durakovic told The
Japan Times.

"They are hampering efforts to prove the connection between Depleted
Uranium and the illness," Durakovic said

"They do not want to admit that they committed war crimes" by using
weapons that kill indiscriminately, which are banned under
international law."

(NOTE ABOUT DR. DURAKOVIC;  First, he was warned to stop his work, then
he was fired from his position, then his house was ransacked, and he
has also reported receiving death threats.  Evidently the U.S. D.O.D is
very keen on censoring DU whistle-blowers!)

Dr. Durakovic,
  UMRC  research associates Patricia Horan and Leonard
Dietz, published a unique study in the August 2002 issue of Military
Medicine Medical Journal. The study is believed to be the first to look
at inhaled DU among Gulf War veterans, using the ultrasensitive
technique of thermal ionization mass spectrometry, which enabled them
to easily distinguish between natural uranium and DU.  The study, which
examined British, Canadian and U.S. veterans, all suffering typical
Gulf War Syndrome ailments, found that, nine years after the war, 14 of
27 veterans studied had DU in their urine. DU also was found in the
lung and bone of a deceased Gulf War veteran. That no governmental
study has been done on inhaled DU "amounts to a massive malpractice,"
Dietz said in an interview.

The Japanese began studying DU effects in the southern Iraq in the
summer of 2003. They had a Geiger counter which they watched go off the
scale on many
  occasions. During their visit,a local hospital was
treating upwards of 600 children per day, many of which suffered
symptoms of internal poisoning by radiation.  600 children per day?
How many of these children will get cancer and suffer and early and
painful death?

"Ingested DU particles can cause up to 1,000 times the damage of an
X-ray", said Mary Olson, a nuclear waste specialist and biologist at
the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington D.C.

It is this difference in particle size as well as the dust's
crystalline structure that make the presence of DU dust in the
environment such an extreme hazard, and which differentiates its
properties from that of the natural uranium dust that is ubiquitous and
to which we all are exposed every day, which seldom reaches such a
small size.  This point is being stressed, as comparing DU particles to
much larger natural ones is misleading.

The U.S.
  Military and its supporters regularly quote a Rand Corp. Study
which uses the natural uranium inhaled by miners.

Particles smaller than 10 microns can access the innermost recesses of
lung tissue where they become permanently lodged. Furthermore, if the
substance is relatively insoluble, such as the ceramic DU-oxide dust
produced from burning DU, it will remain in place for decades,
dissolving very slowly into the bloodstream and lymphatic fluids
through the course of time. Studies have identified DU in the urine of
Gulf War veterans nine years after that conflict, testifying to the
permanence of ceramic DU-oxide in the lungs.  Thus the effects are far
different from natural uranium dust, whose coarse particles are almost
entirely excreted by the body within 24 hours.

The military is aware of DU's harmful effects on the human genetic
code. A 2001 study of DU's effect on DNA done by Dr. Alexandra C.
Miller for
  the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in
Bethesda, Md., indicates that DU's chemical instability causes 1
million times more genetic damage than would be expected from its
radiation effect alone.

Studies have shown that inhaled nano-particles are far more toxic than
micro-sized particles of the same basic chemical composition. British
toxicopathologist Vyvyan Howard has reported that the increased
toxicity of the nano-particle is due to its size.

For example, when mice were exposed to virus-size particles of Teflon
(0.13 microns) in a University of Rochester study, there were no ill
effects. But when mice were exposed to nano-particles of Teflon for 15
minutes, nearly all the mice died within 4 hours.

"Exposure pathways for depleted uranium can be through the skin, by
inhalation, and ingestion,"  writes Lauren Moret, another DU
researcher. "Nano-particles have high mobility and can easily enter the

body. Inhalation of nano-particles of depleted uranium is the most
hazardous exposure, because the particles pass through the lung-blood
barrier directly into the blood.

"When inhaled through the nose, nano-particles can cross the olfactory
bulb directly into the brain through the blood brain barrier, where
they migrate all through the brain," she wrote. "Many Gulf era soldiers
exposed to depleted uranium have been diagnosed with brain tumors,
brain damage and impaired thought processes. Uranium can interfere with
the mitochondria, which provide energy for the nerve processes, and
transmittal of the nerve signal across synapses in the brain.

Based on dissolution and excretion rate data, it is possible to
approximate the amount of DU initially inhaled by these veterans. For
the handful of veterans studied, this amount averaged 0.34 milligrams.
Knowing the specific activity (radiation rate) for DU allows one to

determine that the total radiation (alpha, beta and gamma) occurring
from DU and its radioactive decay products within their bodies comes to
about 26 radiation events every second, or 800 million events each
year.  At .34 milligrams per dose, there are over 10 trillion doses
floating around Iraq and Afghanistan.

How many additional deaths are we talking about? In the aftermath of
the first Gulf War, the UK Atomic Energy Authority came up with
estimates for the potential effects of the DU contamination left by the
conflict. It calculated that "this could cause "500,000 potential
deaths". This was "a theoretical figure", it stressed, that indicated
"a significant problem".

The AEA's calculation was made in a confidential memo to the privatized
munitions company, Royal Ordnance, dated 30 April 1991. The high number
of potential deaths was dismissed as "very far from realistic" by a
British defense minister,
  Lord Gilbert. "Since the rounds were fired in
the desert, many miles from the nearest village, it is highly unlikely
that the local population would have been exposed to any significant
amount of respirable oxide," he said.  These remarks were made prior to
the more recent invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, where DU
munitions were used on a larger scale in and near many of the most
populated areas.  If the amount of DU ordinance used in the first Gulf
War was sufficient to cause 500,000 potential deaths, (had it been used
near the populated areas), then what of the nearly six times that
amount used in operation Iraqi Freedom, which was used in and near the
major towns and cities?  Extrapolating the U.K. AEA estimate with this
amount gives a figure of potentially 3 million extra deaths from
inhaling DU dust in Iraq alone, not including Afghanistan. This is
about 11% of Iraq's total population of 27 million. Dan
  Bishop, Ph.d
chemist for IDUST feels that this estimate may be low, if the long life
of DU dust is considered.  In Afghanistan, the concentration in some
areas is greater than Iraq.

What can an otherwise healthy person expect when inhaling the deadly
dust? Captain Terry Riordon was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces
serving in Gulf War I. He passed away in April 1999 at age 45. Terry
left Canada a very fit man who did cross-country skiing and ran in
marathons. On his return only two months later he could barely walk.

He returned to Canada in February 1991 with documented loss of motor
control, chronic fatigue, respiratory difficulties, chest pain,
difficulty breathing, sleep problems, short-term memory loss, testicle
pain, body pains, aching bones, diarrhea, and depression. After his
death, depleted uranium contamination was discovered in his lungs and
bones. For eight years he suffered his innumerable
  ailments and
struggled with the military bureaucracy and the system to get proper
diagnosis and treatment.  He had arranged, upon his death, to bequeath
his body to the UMRC.  Through his gift, the UMRC was able to obtain
conclusive evidence that inhaling fine particles of depleted uranium
dust completely destroyed his heath.  How many Terry Riordans are out
there among the troops being exposed, not to mention Iraqi and Afghan
civilians?

Inhaling the dust will not kill large numbers of Iraqi and Afghan
civilians right away, any more than it did Captain Riordan. Rather,
what we will see is vast numbers of people who are chronically and
severely ill, having their life spans drastically shortened, many with
multiple cancers.

Melissa Sterry, another sick veteran, served for six months at a supply
base in Kuwait during the winter of 1991-92. Part of her job with the
National Guard's Combat Equipment Company "A"
  was to clean out tanks
and other armored vehicles that had been used during the war, preparing
them for storage.

She said she swept out the armored vehicles, cleaning up dust, sand and
debris, sometimes being ordered to help bury contaminated parts. In a
telephone interview, she stated that after researching depleted uranium
she chose not to take the military's test because she could not trust
the results.  It is alarming that Melissa was stationed in Kuwait, not
Iraq.  Cleaning out tanks with DU dust was enough to make her ill.

In, 2003, the Christian Science Monitor sent reporters to Iraq to
investigate long-term effects of depleted uranium. Staff writer Scott
Peterson saw children playing on top of a burnt-out tank near a
vegetable stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, a tank that had been
destroyed by armor-piercing shells coated with depleted uranium.
Wearing his mask and protective clothing, he pointed his
  Geiger counter
toward the tank. It registered 1,000 times the normal background
radiation. If the troops were on a mission of mercy to bring democracy
to Iraq, wouldn"t keeping children away from such dangers be the top
priority?

The laws of war prohibit the use of weapons that have deadly and
inhumane effects beyond the field of battle. Nor can weapons be legally
deployed in war when they are known to remain active, or cause harm
after the war concludes.  It is no surprise that the Japanese Court
found President Bush guilty of war crimes.

Dr. Alim Yacoub of Basra University conducted an epidemiological study
into incidences of malignancies in children under fifteen years old, in
the Basra area (an area bombed with DU during the first Gulf War). They
found over the 1990 to 1999 period, there was a 242% rise.  That was
before the recent invasion.

In Kosovo, similar spikes in cancer and birth defects were
  noticed by
numerous international experts, although the quantity of DU weapons
used was only a small fraction of what was used in Iraq.

FIELD STUDY RESULTS FROM AFGHANISTAN

Verifiable statistics for Iraq will remain elusive for some time, but
widespread field studies in Afghanistan point to the existence of a
large scale public health disaster. In May of 2002, the UMRC (Uranium
Medical Research Center) sent a field team to interview and examine
residents and internally displaced people in Afghanistan.  The UMRC
field team began by first identifying several hundred people suffering
from illnesses and medical conditions displaying clinical symptoms
which are considered to be characteristic of radiation exposure.  To
investigate the possibility that the symptoms were due to radiation
sickness, the UMRC team collected urine specimens and soil samples,
transporting them to an independent research lab in
  England.

UMRC's Field Team found Afghan civilians with acute symptoms of
radiation poisoning, along with chronic symptoms of internal uranium
contamination, including congenital problems in newborns. Local
civilians reported large, dense dust clouds and smoke plumes rising
from the point of impact, an acrid smell, followed by burning of the
nasal passages, throat and upper respiratory tract. Subjects in all
locations presented identical symptom profiles and chronologies. The
victims reported symptoms including pain in the cervical column, upper
shoulders and basal area of the skull, lower back/kidney pain, joint
and muscle weakness, sleeping difficulties, headaches, memory problems
and disorientation.

Two additional scientific study teams were sent to Afghanistan. The
first arrived in June 2002, concentrating on the Jalalabad region. The
second arrived four months later, broadening the study to include the

capital Kabul, which has a population of nearly 3.5 million people. The
city itself contains the highest recorded number of fixed targets
during Operation Enduring Freedom. For the study's purposes, the
vicinity of three major bomb sites were examined. It was predicted that
signatures of depleted or enriched uranium would be found in the urine
and soil samples taken during the research. The team was unprepared for
the shock of its findings, which indicated in both Jalalabad and Kabul,
DU was causing the high levels of illness. Tests taken from a number of
Jalalabad subjects showed concentrations 400% to 2000% above that for
normal populations, amounts which have not been recorded in civilian
studies before.

Those in Kabul who were directly exposed to US-British precision
bombing showed extreme signs of contamination, consistent with uranium
exposure. These included pains in joints, back/kidney pain, muscle

weakness, memory problems and confusion and disorientation. Those
exposed to the bombing report symptoms of flu-type illnesses, bleeding,
runny noses and blood-stained mucous.  How many of these people will
suffer a painful and early death from cancer? Even the study team
itself complained of similar symptoms during their stay. Most of these
symptoms last for days or months.

In August of 2002, UMRC completed its preliminary analysis of the
results from Nangarhar.  Without exception, every person donating urine
specimens tested positive for uranium contamination. The specific
results indicated an astoundingly high level of contamination;
concentrations were 100 to 400 times greater than those of the Gulf War
Veterans tested in 1999.   A researcher reported. "We took both soil
and biological samples, and found considerable presence in urine
samples of radioactivity; the heavy concentration astonished us.  They

were beyond our wildest imagination."

In the fall of 2002, the UMRC field team went back to Afghanistan for a
broader survey, and revealed a potentially larger exposure than
initially anticipated. Approximately 30% of those interviewed in the
affected areas displayed symptoms of radiation sickness.  New born
babies were among those displaying symptoms, with village elders
reporting that over 25% of the infants were inexplicably ill.

How widespread and extensive is the exposure?  A quote from the UMRC
field report reads:

"The UMRC field team was shocked by the breadth of public health
impacts coincident with the bombing. Without exception, at every
bombsite investigated, people are ill. A significant portion of the
civilian population presents symptoms consistent with internal
contamination by uranium."

In Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, UMRC lab results indicated high
concentrations of NON-DEPLETED
  URANIUM, with the concentrations being
much higher than in DU victims from Iraq. Afghanistan was used as a
testing ground for a new generation of "bunker buster" bombs containing
high concentrations of other uranium alloys.

"A significant portion of the civilian population"? It appears that by
going after a handful of terrorists in Afghanistan we have poisoned a
huge number of innocent civilians, with a disproportionate number of
them being children.

The military has found depleted uranium in the urine of some soldiers
but contends it was not enough to make them seriously ill in most
cases. Critics have asked for more sensitive, more expensive testing.

------------------------------------

According to an October 2004  Dispatch from the Italian Military Health
Observatory, a total of 109 Italian soldiers have died thus far due to
exposure to depleted uranium.  A spokesman at the Military Health

Observatory, Domenico Leggiero, states "The total of 109 casualties
exceeds the total number of persons dying as a consequence of road
accidents. Anyone denying the significance of such data is purely
acting out of ill faith, and the truth is that our soldiers are dying
out there due to a lack of adequate protection against depleted
uranium".     Members of the Observatory have petitioned for an urgent
hearing "in order to study effective prevention and safeguard measures
aimed at reducing the death-toll amongst our serving soldiers".

There were only 3,000 Italian soldiers sent to Iraq, and they were
there for a short time.  The number of 109 represents about 3.6% of the
total.  If the same percentage of Iraqis get a similar exposure, that
would amount to 936,000.  As Iraqis are permanently living in the same
contaminated environment, their percentage will be higher.

The Pentagon/DoD have interfered with UMRC's
  ability to have its
studies published by managing, a progressive and persistent
misinformation program in the press against UMRC, and through the use
of its control of science research grants to refute UMRC's scientific
findings and destroy the reputation of UMRC's scientific staff,
physicians and laboratories. UMRC is the first independent research
organization to find Depleted Uranium in the bodies of US, UK and
Canadian Gulf War I veterans and has subsequently, following Operation
Iraqi Freedom, found Depleted Uranium in the water, soils and
atmosphere of Iraq as well as biological samples donated by Iraqi
civilians. Yet the first thing that comes up on Internet searches are
these supposed "studies repeatedly showing DU to be harmless."  The
technique is to approach the story as a debate between government and
independent experts in which public interest is stimulated by
polarizing the issues rather than telling
  the scientific and medical
truth. The issues are systematically confused and misinformed by
government, UN regulatory agencies (WHO, UNEP, IAEA, CDC, DOE, etc) and
defense sector (military and the weapons developers and manufacturers).

Dr. Yuko Fujita, an assistant professor at Keio University, Japan who
examined the effects of radioactivity in Iraq from May to June, 2003,
said : "I doubt that Iraq is fabricating data because in fact there are
many children suffering from leukemia in hospitals," Fujita said. "As a
result of the Iraq war, the situation will be desperate in some five to
10 years."

The  March 14, 2004  Tokyo Citizen's Tribunal that "convicted"
President Bush gave the following summation regarding DU weapons: (This
court was a citizen's court with no binding legal authority)

1.   Their use has indiscriminate effects;

2.   Their use is out of proportion with the pursuit of military

objectives;

3.   Their use adversely affects the environment in a widespread, long
term and severe manner;

4.   Their use causes superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering.

Two years ago, President Bush withdrew the United States as a signatory
to the International Criminal Court's statute, which has been ratified
by all other Western democracies. The White House actually seeks to
immunize U.S. leaders from war crimes prosecutions entirely. It has
also demanded express immunity from ICC prosecution for American
nationals.

CONCLUSIONS:

If terrorists succeeded in spreading something throughout the U.S. that
ended up causing hundreds of thousands of cancer cases and birth
defects over a period of many years, they would be guilty of a crime
against humanity that far surpasses the Sept. 11th attacks in scope and
severity. Although not deliberate, with our military campaigns in Iraq
and
  Afghanistan, we have done just that.  If the physical environment
is so unsafe and unhealthy that one cannot safely breath, then the
outer trappings of democracy have little meaning. At least under
Saddam, the Iraqi people could stay healthy and conceive normal
children. Few Americans are aware that in getting rid of Saddam, we
left something much worse in his place.
==============
***NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a
prior interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.***
==============


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 39 Salt Lake Tribune: Radiation, not representation

Article Last Updated: 05/02/2006 12:45:33 AM MDT  

  Is this how representative democracy is supposed to work? They
want to dump nuclear waste in Utah, so the Bureau of Land
Management says we'll have to see if the people care? So, then
they're supposed to measure how angry we are? 

   I am busy raising a family, working in my community, doing my
job. Is the government so clueless that it needs me to rise up
in the streets every time it has to make a decision? Of course
we don't want nuclear waste lying around in storage cylinders
next to a bombing range and near a major Interstate freeway west
of our capital city. 

   It's pretty obvious that the people where the waste was 
generated don't want it in their backyards either. But the waste 
they generate is not our problem, just because someone back East 
saw the Salt Flats in a movie and they think they found a rug to 
sweep their “hot” dust under. The shameful politics in play right 
now to force Utahns to bear the consequences for someone else's 
nuclear program are unjust and akin to “radiation without 
representation!” 

   I hope our elected representatives will protect our
self-evident interests and at the same time contribute to a
solution that helps those “nuclear” communities deal with their
own mess. 
    
   Keith Homer 
   Midvale 
      
                  
  
© Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune. 
*****************************************************************
 40 AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Bush's Nuclear Madness

EnviroHealth is concerned with issues that affect the lives of
ordinary people and their communities; from air and water
pollution, food safety and climate change to toxics,
transportation and sustainable energy. Our goal is to inform and
inspire by providing up-to-date reporting, opinion and analysis,
and tips and tools for creating change.
 	 		 	 	 		 			 				
  + Background 			 		 		

By Joshua Holland,                 

AlterNet. Posted May 2, 2006.
 	
If George Bush gets his way, the USA is going nuclear -- and he 
won't let a little thing like radioactive waste stand in his way.

George W. Bush has a vision for a strong, independent nuclear
America. He wants nuclear weapons for everyday use -- deterrence
is for Democrats -- and he wants to build dozens of new nuclear
energy plants across the United States.

He'll also ship thousands of tons of nuclear waste across the
country, first to a huge storage facility in Yucca Mountain,
Nev. But that will only contain a little more than what we
already have sitting around. We'll need nine more Yuccas by the
end of the century if Bush's plans go through.

Filling the one we already have means shipping highly
radioactive waste through 44 states -- coming within a half mile
of 50 million Americans. The most toxic, deadly substances known
to humanity would pass through Boston, Baltimore, Newark and
Miami.

A 1982 studyby Sandia Labs -- the country's premiere nuclear
research facility -- found that a containment breech in one
plant in Pennsylvania would kill 74,000 people within a year and
another 34,000 later from cancer. The 1986 Chernobyl
disasterspewed more radiation across Europe than was released in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, took out 486 villages in
Belarus and left a region that had been inhabited by 100,000
people a glow-in-the-dark no-man's land.

But don't worry. According to the administration and the
deep-pocketed nuclear lobby, it's all perfectly safe. Sure,
there's no human invention that's foolproof and, yes, we're
talking about making dozens of ripe new targets for terrorists
to attack, but hasn't the administration and its corporate
partners earned our trust?

Nuclear Renaissance

According to Bush administration spin, the mighty atom is a 21st
century panacea for the United States' -- and the world's --
most intractable problems. Nuclear energy will free us from our
dependence on those "tyrannical regimes" that sponsor global
terror, bail out the planet from global warming and avert a new
superpower struggle by giving fast-industrializing behemoths
like China and India an endless supply of "renewable" energy.
Nuclear weapons that we can deploy freelyin small conflicts will
lock in our global dominance for the rest of the century. And,
of course, all this will create lots and lots of high-paying
jobs.

It sounds great on paper. But if you look behind the dramatic
shifts in U.S. nuclear policy over the course of Bush's
presidency, you find an intense lobbying and public relations
campaign by a handful of firms that stand to rake in billions
from the construction of new civilian reactors, and by a
generation of Cold Warriors that lusts after new, more "usable"
nukes for their toy chest.

The administration has offered up a series of initiatives that
will reshape decades of nuclear policy, both civilian and
military. Bush scrapped the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and
undermined the Test Ban Treaty. And it's not just plans for new
bombs and new reactors; he's shifted U.S. policy towards
countries like India and Pakistan that developed nukes outside
the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

And Bush plans to use Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a repository
for the world's nuclear waste, not just our own. It's the
linchpin of what the administration hopes will become a new
economic order -- superseding OPEC with a nuclear cartel that
reads "Made in the USA."

At the heart of Bush's atomic dreams is the Global Nuclear
Energy Partnership(GNEP) announced in February. Under the plan,
we'll dramatically expand nuclear energy production at home,
encourage new nuclear generation abroad and import other
countries' spent fuel for reprocessing in the United States.

The idea is to limit the two most sensitive parts of the nuclear
cycle -- enrichment and disposal -- to a handful of sites in the
United States, Russia and perhaps France and Japan. In January
Vladimir Putin announced that one piece of the puzzle -- a joint
waste initiative between the United States and Russia -- was a
done deal.

The GNEP constitutes a sharp break with decades of American
nuclear policy, dating back to Jimmy Carter. He banned nuclear
fuel reprocessing in 1977, concluding -- along with the American
public -- that the costs were too high and the hazards too great.

According to the administration, GNEP will incorporate "new
proliferation-resistant technologies to recover more energy and
reduce waste" from spent fuel -- there are an estimated 55,000
tons of the stuff sitting around -- which will "reduce the risk
of nuclear proliferation worldwide." But while the first moves
have begun -- in addition to the deal with Russia, Bush signed a
major, possibly illegal, nuclear agreement with Indiajust last
month -- those "proliferation-resistant technologies" are still
on the drawing board. As Daryl Kimball, executive director of
the Arms Control Association, told the <I>Christian Science
Monitor</I>: "What seems rather fanciful about this project is
that the fuel-supply aspect appears contingent on proving some
highly advanced technology."

It's a different kind of faith-based initiative; Bush is
barreling full-speed ahead with his programs and assuming that
we'll invent the technology we need to do it all as we go along.

It may be Bush's boldest vision yet, but it's nothing new; like
so much we've seen from this administration, Nixon's presidency
is the source of inspiration, and his old staff are the agents.
In his 1974 State of the Union Address, during the height of the
great oil shock, Nixon touted his proposed "Operation
Independence," declaring that "1974 must be the year in which we
organize a full-scale effort to provide for our energy needs."
The plan would have increased the United States' use of nuclear
energy in order to break the back of OPEC.

But Nixon's vision of "independence" suffered a meltdown of
public opinion and political opposition after the near disaster
at Three Mile Island in 1979 -- the most serious accident in the
history of American nuclear energy. Since then, the domestic
nuclear agenda has been in deep freeze, and the 1986 Chernobyl
disaster only strengthened public resolve against restarting it.

On the military side, Bush wants to shrug off decades of
constraints and develop a new generation of nukes. Fred Kaplan,
writing in Slate, noted some of the overlooked provisions in
Bush's 2004 defense budget, including the repeal of a 1992 ban
on the research and development of "low-yield" nuclear weapons.
Our cash outlay for new nukes, given the United States' military
supremacy, is stunning:

 [T]he Department of Energy is spending an astonishing $6.5
billion on nuclear weapons and President Bush is requesting $6.8
billion more for next year and a total of $30 billion over the
following four years. … Measured in "real dollars" (that is,
adjusting for inflation), this year's spending on nuclear
activities exceeds by over 50 percent the average annual sum
($4.2 billion) that the United States spent -- again, in real
dollars -- throughout the four and a half decades of the Cold
War.

The military energy complex

While the administration's civilian initiatives have been
launched with great fanfare, Bush's revolutionary nuclear
weapons policies have been low-key -- no grand pronouncements,
no media rollouts. But the line between military nukes and
civilian energy is not a clean one. A network of advocacy
groups, lobbyists and corporations link the nuclear community
together. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) -- known to be
firmly in the pocket of the industry -- is charged with
overseeing both sides of the atom.

The military and civilian programs are joined by companies like
General Electric, a major defense contractor that builds and
services civilian reactors (GE stopped manufacturing nuclear
weapons in 1992) and Bechtel, which despite an atrocious safety
and environmental record, has a $6 billion contract to develop
Yucca Mountain, services two-thirds of the civilian plants in
the United States (and more overseas), and is part of a
consortium that manages the military's Nevada Test Site, where
advanced nuclear weapons tests are conducted. Another key player
is defense giant Lockheed-Martin -- also part of the Nevada Test
Site Team --which runs Sandia National Labs, where both civilian
and military research is conducted. Westinghouse, the world's
leading manufacturer of civilian reactors, was the government's
third-largest nuclear weapons contractor as recently as 1995.
The United States' last full-scale nuclear weapons plant in Oak
Ridge Tenessee is managed by a consortium including Bechtel. It
took over the contract from Lockheed-Martin in 2000. Bechtel and
Westinghouse are both making a fortune cleaning up nuclear
facilities across America, both civilian and military.

The nuclear power industry is snuggled up tight with government
-- even more cozily than most. The NRC -- supposedly the
public's watchdog -- is financed not with tax dollars but by
rate payers, meaning through the companies themselves. All the
while, a revolving door between business and government spins
like a top. According to the <I>National Catholic Reporter</I>,
the NRC has seen its "senior staff regularly moving into the
nuclear industry as employees and consultants." A General
Accounting Office survey in 2000 showed that more than a quarter
of all NRC staffers "are considering leaving the agency within a
year." "Everyone in any NRC position who can goes to private
industry," said one whistleblower.

That's pretty much true across all of the sectors of nuclear
technology. Only weeks after the passage of last year's energy
bill -- which showered <I>billions</I> on nuclear power
operatorsin direct subsidies and other giveaways-- eyebrows were
raised when NBC reportedthat a key Senate staffer "who helped
steer those billions through" did so "in between stints
representing nuclear power companies like Exelon" as a major
lobbyist. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom ridge joined
Exelon's board soon after leaving the administration. According
to Open Secrets, which tracks campaign contributions, Dick
Cheney, who as former defense secretary and CEO of Halliburton
is intimately connected with both the military establishment and
the energy industry, is "by far, nuclear power's biggest ally."
The Cheneys are heavily invested in Lockheed-Martin; Lynn sits
on the company's board of directors.

It's just one big, happy nuclear family.

Who's bold vision is it?

Most of the provisions of GNEP started not in the Department of
Energy, but in the corporate suite of the Sandia Corp. Sandia is
a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin and runs much of
the National Nuclear Security Administration'sresearch
infrastructure at two enormous campuses in Albuquerque, N.M.,
and Livermore, Calif.

According to Sandia Lab News, a company newsletter, the GNEP
started with a presentation then Vice President (and now
Sandia's president) Tom Hunter made to the Department of Energy
in 1996:

"Basically, if you run through the chronology, we have been
urging some of the things that came out of GNEP (Global Nuclear
Energy Partnership) since 1996," he says. "Our concern as a
national security lab has always been that you can't influence
nuclear safety, security and proliferation risks at the global
level if you're not in the nuclear business [We have to] have an
American-based nuclear supply industry that is capable of being
a leading supplier across the globe."

"Our role has been invisible leadership," Hunter told the
newsletter. The company spent a decade "organizing and
articulating the arguments for US leadership from the
perspective of … what might happen, domestically and globally,
if we don't go forward with nuclear energy." And legislators
like Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and
Harry Reid, D-Neb., and Rep. Joe Barton. R-Texas, were more than
receptive to the message -- executives like Sandia's Hunter got
exactly what they wanted.

The dollars at stake are massive, and energy deregulation --
predating Bush -- provided huge windfalls for the industry. In
the 1990s staid, highly regulated utility companies gave way to
nuclear wildcatters. Layers and layers of Limited Liability
Companies with no liquidity shielded parent corporations from
litigation, and they began to use America's aging nuclear
infrastructure to shake some silver out of the treasury.

One of the schemes -- or scams -- that resulted from
deregulation is known as "gold mining." The gold is in the form
of billions of dollars in funds -- paid by utility ratepayers --
that were established to clean up nuclear generator sites at the
end of their life spans.

Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service gave
the National Catholic Reporter an example of the money to be
made in the shakedown: "AmerGen, which bought [GPU Nuclear
Corp.'s] Oyster Creek reactor, basically in a garage sale
atmosphere, paid $10 million and intends to inherit over $400
million in decommissioning trust funds."

The new owners operate the reactors as long as they can, and
when the plants are decommissioned, they clean up the sites on
the cheap (which means poorly). Unused funds aren't returned to
the ratepayers -- the firms pocket them.

Buried in K Street's 2005 Energy Bill, along with a mountain of
production tax credits and loan guarantees, is a rule changethat
will free up $1.3 billion in decommissioning funds.

But the most important initiative so far has been the
development of Yucca Mountain. Waste disposal is the
prerequisite for everything -- for building new plants, for
upgrading the nuclear arsenal and for implementing the Global
Nuclear Energy Partnership.

Lobbying on the project has been hot and heavy since the site
was selected in the late 1980s. The location is problematic.
According to Public Citizen (PDF):

Yucca Mountain has not proven to be a geologically suitable site
to store radioactive waste, which remains deadly for thousands
of years. The Yucca Mountain Project would entail tens of
thousands of shipments over the nation's roads, rails and
rivers, posing innumerable questions about transportation safety
in towns and neighborhoods nationwide.

Despite the potential hazards -- Yucca Mountain is perched above
a freshwater aquifer in an active earthquake zone -- Public
Citizen's report finds that the scientific and safety questions
about the project have been "smothered under a mountain of
lobbyists," and concludes that "the nuclear industry no doubt
anticipates that there is no economic problem, no public health
threat, no long-term form of irrational energy policy idiocy
that can't be overcome by spending 'what it takes' to influence
Congress."

Invisible leadership

Nuclear energy's lobbying arm on Capitol Hill is the Nuclear
Energy Institute (NEI), and it's doled out millions to friendly
officials. According to Open Secrets, George W. Bush got more
money from the nuclear energy industry in 2000 than any other
federal candidate. In the 2002 election cycle, "the nuclear
power industry [gave] $8.7 million to federal candidates and
committees." Seventy percent went to the GOP.

But the nuclear lobby has to do more than buy off legislators;
its real challenge is convincing people that a production
process that produces tons of the deadliest substances on earth
-- waste that stays dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years
-- is safe enough to have in their communities. NIMBY is a tall
hurdle to clear.

But they're trying. Industry talking points have become
ubiquitous on Capitol Hill and in the media; a legion of
industry spokespeople repeat the phrase "clean nuclear energy"
like a mantra. "Clean" and "green" are always the words of the
day.

As the administration's GNEP moves forward, they've stepped up
the PR. In January NEI retained PR giant Hill & Knowltonto
handle an $8 million campaign to build "policymaker and
decision-maker support for nuclear energy broadly and
specifically for the Yucca Mountain project.'" In February, the
<I>Wall Street Journal</I> reportedthat NEI was preparing to
launch its "clean air campaign," a "multiyear advertising
campaign to build public support for a generation of new plants."

But more disturbing than the industry's traditional public
relations efforts is the "silent leadership" it's taken in
influencing public opinion. The lobby has been caught paying
reportersto present "industry's side of the story" and getting
university professors to submit op-edsto local newspapers that
were "ginned up, assembly-line style, by a Washington, D.C.,
public relations firm." The lobby helped develop a new
curriculum for high school physics studentsthat was put out by
the Department of Energy to promote new nukes. Just this month
the lobby set up a big-money faux environmental groupto shill
for its policies; it's already jumped into the debatewith a
splash.

A potentially fatal lack of imagination

What makes Bush's grand nuclear strategy all the more
preposterous is that since 1950, we've been trying -- with zero
success -- to figure out what to do with the nuclear waste we
already have.

Jon Lamb, writing in <I>Green Left weekly</I>cited a 1996
National Academy of Sciences estimate that found the cost of
reprocessing irradiated fuel from U.S. reactors would easily
exceed $100 billion. Again, that just covers our existing waste.

And that's probably a very low figure. In 2000, the estimated
cost of cleaning up just one site, the Hanford nuclear
reprocessing facility, was $4.3 billion. The contract was
awarded to Bechtel and, according to Lamb, six years later the
estimated cost is "a massive $50 billion to $60 billion, with
completion of works by 2035."

In 1993, the Department of Energy estimated that the cost of
cleaning up the environmental damage from its enormous nuclear
weapons complex could run as high as one <I>trillion</I>
dollars. Nobody really knows how much it would actually cost.

Nuclear energy, despite what its boosters say, isn't cheap.
There's a global shortage of uranium, and prices have
skyrocketed from around $7 per pound to over $40. In addition to
enormous cleanup costs, the capital investment in new plants is
high -- too high to get Wall Street to bite. So Joe and Jane
Taxpayer will subsidize those capital costs heavily, as they
have for years. According to Public Citizen (PDF), the
government shelled out $115 billion in direct federal subsidies
to the industry between 1947 and 1999. To give you a sense of
priorities, federal subsidies for wind and solar energy over the
same period totaled just $5.7 billion.

What's more troubling than the fact that corporate interests are
driving this "nuclear renaissance" -- the NEI's term -- is that
these bankrupt policies appear to be the best our government can
come up with. They show us the outer limits of our leaders'
imaginations, of their political will to effect real change.

We have real energy problems -- global warming, dwindling
petroleum supplies and an unhappy marriage to
petro-dictatorships. The grotesque tragedy is that this costly,
cavalier, Nixon-era nuclear vision constitutes the most
ambitious proposal we've seen to address them so far. Dwight
Eisenhower once said, "If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge
it," and that's just what we're doing.

The good news is that Americans have a good deal of horse sense;
despite the "clean nukes" campaigns, polls show that two-thirds
of Americans oppose new nuclear power. The idea of using nukes
for first strikes, or in anything less than an all-out
conflagration, is too nutty to even merit a polling question.
And Bush's other grand visions have fizzled out and died. Think
about Social Security. And who even remembers our epic journey
to mars? As the Congress looks at massive deficits and a
president that's trying to borrow a nickel's worth of "political
capital" from Fox News broadcasters, the bulk of Bush's "nuclear
renaissance" will probably, thankfully, die on the vine. 

Joshua Hollandis an AlterNet staff writer.
 
                   
Reproduction of material from any AlterNet pages without written
permission is strictly prohibited.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
 	 --> 
*****************************************************************
 41 DVA: Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses; 

                         FR Doc 06-4124 
[Federal Register: May 2, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 84)] [Notices] 
[Page 25892-25893] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr02my06-118]                         

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

Amended--Notice of Meeting
    The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) gives notice under 
Public Law 92-463 (Federal Advisory Committee Act) that the 
Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans's Illnesses will 
meet on May 15-16, 2006. On May 15 the meeting will be held in 
the 7th floor conference room of the American Legion at 1608 K 
Street, NW., Washington, DC. On May 16 the meeting will be held 
in room 230 at the Department of Veterans Affairs, 810 Vermont 
Avenue, NW., Washington, DC. The sessions will convene at 8 a.m. 
each day and adjourn at 6 p.m. on May 15 and at 3 p.m. on May 16. 
Sessions will be open to the public.

    The purpose of the Committee is to provide advice and make 
recommendations to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs on proposed 
research studies, research plans and research strategies relating 
to the health consequences of military service in the Southwest 
Asia theater of operations during the Gulf War.

    The Committee will review VA program activities related to 
Gulf War veterans' illnesses and updates on [[Page 25893]] 
scientific research on Gulf War illnesses published sine the last 
Committee meeting. Additionally, there will be presentations and 
discussion of background information on the Gulf War and Gulf War 
illnesses, application of proteomic and genomic research to the 
study of Gulf War illnesses, physiological mechanisms potentially 
underlying chronic symptoms affecting Gulf War veterans, and 
discussion of committee business and activities.

    Members of the public may submit written statements for the 
Committee's review to Dr. William J Goldberg, Designated Federal 
Officer, Department of Veterans Affairs (121E), 810 Vermont 
Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20420. Any member of the public 
seeking additional information should contact Dr. Goldberg at 
(202) 254-0294.

    Dated: April 26, 2006. By Direction of the Secretary. E. 
Philip Riggin, Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. 06-4124 
Filed 5-1-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 8320-01-M
 
*****************************************************************
 42 Morris Daily Herald: Is tritium linked to Cancer

Serving The Greater Grundy County Area

news@morrisdailyherald.com                              
     	
  5/2/2006 5:19:00 PM
  
  A concerned citizens group plans to form a committee to check
into cancer deaths in the Godley, Braidwood, Wilmington and
Essex areas and their possible link to tritium-laced spills at
the nearby nuclear generating station. (Herald Photo/Jo Ann
Hustis)  

Group to launch probe in effort to determine
 
By Jo Ann Hustis Herald Writer

 CUSTER PARK – Local resident Irene Clark said Exelon cannot be
faulted for incidents of cancer in the Wilmington, Godley,
Essex, Custer Park, Braidwood, and Braceville areas.

“You can’t blame it on Exelon — you can’t blame it on them,”
Clark said Monday evening, during the Concerned Citizens
Awareness Group informational meeting at the Custer Township
Hall.

“But, you can’t help but wonder,” she added.

The CCAG organized the meeting in the wake of recent attention
to tritium-laced water leaks at nearby Braidwood Generating
Station at Braceville, starting in 1996, but not made public
until December of 2005. 

Tritium is a naturally occurring isotope of hydrogen that emits
a very low level of radiation, and is found in more-concentrated
levels in water used in nuclear generating stations.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has gone on record stating
public health and safety has not been jeopardized by the at
least nine releases of tritiated water from the plant.

Monday’s meeting was the second for the group, which now plans
to join with the grassroots citizens group in Godley on forming
a committee to research incidence of cancer in the area.

The CCAG consensus is the tritium leaks of the past several
years may be a factor in the cancer incidents, which the group
believes are worth investigating.

Will County Executive Larry Walsh spoke Monday evening of the
grassroots’ group meeting with U.S. Senator Dick Durbin,
D-Illinois, two weeks ago in the Godley Town Hall, and noted the
tritium issue “really hit home with him.”

“It’s hard to dispute these kinds of numbers,” he said the
cancer-related deaths. “It would be interesting to see what we
find out from doing a consensus of the area.”

Walsh said residents and authorities need to know if
tritium-laced water from Braidwood Station has either caused or
supported the cancer incidents.

“Will County government is behind your quest here. We’ll bring
in the county health department,” he said.

“No matter how important our energy, jobs, and assessed
valuation is to us, nothing — NOTHING — is more important than
the quality of life of our citizens. We will do what we can to
try and find an answer to this set of circumstances found here.”

He called the issue devastating.

“You can’t sit back and say, ‘What a coincidence,’” Walsh said.
“I can’t speak for Senator Durbin, U.S. Senator Barack Obama, or
Congressman Jerry Weller, but I think they have as much concern
as we’re speaking of here tonight. We’ll do what we can do to
try and come up with answers.”

CCAG co-leader Shirley Cavanaugh noted the death certificates of
those who died from cancer lists other causes than cancer.
Because of this, the deaths are not listed as having been caused
by cancer, she said.

Co-leader Kim Morey noted the group does not have statistics to
back up its observations.

Joliet attorney Kenneth Gray, whose law firm has filed a
class-action suit related to the tritium spills, with Exelon as
the defendant, spoke of the need for anecdotal evidence —
gathering of data to analyze for any possible connection with
radiation-related cancer in the area.

“If the court orders medical monitoring, hopefully it will be at
Exelon expense,” Gray said.

An unidentified woman suggested incidents of animal cancers in
the area be included in the data-gathering process.

“We don’t want to cause fear — that’s why we want to do the
study,” said Gray. “The cause and effect of various diseases are
very hard to prove. That’s why we’re trying to gather data and
come to some logical conclusion.”

Cindy Sauer, wife of former area physician Dr. Joseph Sauer and
mother to a 12-year-old with a brain tumor, spoke of the
family’s leaving Grundy County two years ago, five years after
their daughter was diagnosed with the malignancy.

She suggested the study be limited to a population area not more
than 18 miles from the Braidwood Station site to not dilute the
statistics. She also said information on the Public Health Web
site “suggests something wrong in this area,” and noted the
great need for an epidemiological study to look at the situation
fairly and objectively.”

“When my daughter was diagnosed with the brain tumor, they said
it was most likely environmentally induced,” she said. “I won’t
point a finger at Exelon. Information from that industry is very
visible.”

Sauer said she was concerned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
and others say the tritium levels in the Braidwood Station are
safe. Even low levels of tritium do pose a risk, however, she
added.

“Would your doctor orders an x-ray of your body every day? No,”
Sauer said. “I think you are taking the first step tonight.
Radiation is no different than second-hand smoke. We don’t need
any more spin on the situation — we need information and facts.”

Walsh suggested concerned citizens contact their state and
federal elected officials to urge the NRC to monitor human
health in the areas of generating station.

He also suggested citizens circulate a petition or write short
letters to their elected officials, asking the acceptable level
of tritium in water be lowered from the current 20,000
picocuries per liter.

“We shouldn’t be changing the environment,” said Dr. Bruce Hogan
of Will County.

He suggested the CCAG put together a committee to talk to the
Will County Health Department and report back its findings, and
be a repository for information.

A woman said her husband worked 17 years at Braidwood Station
before he died of leukemia. She noted a number of employees at
the station died of cancer.

“I think we ought to get the government involved in this,” said
a man who did not identify himself.

“The government is involved now,” said Walsh. “Things have moved
forward since this issue has come to light. When you are brought
into a problem 10 years after it happens, we can’t get answers
in three to four months.”

Walsh said results of 57 water well tests indicate none have
surpassed the tritium level set by the government. He also said
he understood no water samples from the Kankakee River test
higher for tritium than the government level.

“I think the trigger has been tripped, and everyone shy of
President Bush on down is watching Exelon,” said Walsh, noting
the utility acknowledges it has a credibility problem.

   Morris Daily Herald • 1804 N. Division St. • Morris, Illinois
60450 
(815) 942-3221 • (800) 215-9778 
*****************************************************************
 43 FOX 12 Boise: Getting Federal Aid for Downwinders

Boise, Idaho -- Downwinders of Idaho are getting their cause
heard in the United States Senate. 

They are people that believe they have been hurt, or are
undergoing health problems, due to fallout from nuclear testing
in Nevada during the 1950's and '60s. People living in states
like Utah and Nevada are receiving federal aid from the
Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, and now Senators Mike Crapo
and Larry Craig are trying to get Idaho added to the list. 

"Its very clear, and a number of tests have shown, that Idaho
and Montana were among the highest areas, or received some of
the highest doses, of radiation. And it's only fair that some of
the residents of these areas, including Gem County, should be
included under the RECA program," said Lindsay Nothern,
spokesman for Sen. Crapo. 

Nothern says 80 to 100,000 Idahoans are affected by radiation
from nuclear testing. In fact, he said four of the top five
counties most affected by radiation are inside the Gem State.   

  
      All content © Copyright 2000 - 2006 WorldNow and KTRV. All
Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 44 Las Vegas SUN: Official: EPA nuclear dump radiation limit expected this year 

Today: May 02, 2006 at 8:36:48 PDT 

ASSOCIATED PRESS 

LAS VEGAS (AP) - The federal Environmental Protection Agency
expects to finalize a radiation safety standard by the end of
this year for a planned nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert,
a public health officer said. 

Capt. Ray Clark, of the U.S. Public Health Service and team
leader for Yucca Mountain project standards, told a conference
Monday in Las Vegas that the radiation limit will be designed to
protect people living near the repository for 1 million years. 

But he declined to say what confidence he would have in such a
standard based on climate changes and corrosion of metal waste
containers at the planned repository for the nation's most
radioactive waste. 

Establishing a confidence level will be left to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, the agency that must review an Energy
Department license for the Yucca Mountain project. 

Asked if radiation dose calculations would be meaningful beyond
500,000 years, Clark said, "We have qualms about that." 

Clark said that was why the EPA first proposed a 10,000-year
standard for radiation safety at the site, 90 miles northwest of
Las Vegas. 

In July 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit invalidated the 10,000-year standard, ruling it
disregarded recommendations of a National Academy of Sciences
panel that it cover peak dose periods of up to 1 million years. 

In August 2005, to satisfy the court's ruling, the EPA proposed
a two-tiered standard with one set of limits set at 15 millirem
above natural background radiation for the first 10,000 years of
repository operation and a second standard of up to 350 millirem
for succeeding years, up to 1 million years. 

By comparison, a chest X-ray exposes a patient to 10 millirem
while a mammogram results in a 30 millirem exposure. 

Nevada officials have criticized the proposed two-tiered
standard, saying the EPA has backpedaled from its previous
stance that a 150 millirem dose is unacceptable. 

Some 400 attendees from 22 countries are attending the annual
International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference
sponsored by the American Nuclear Society runs through Thursday
at the Texas Station hotel-casino in a Las Vegas. The conference
theme is "Global progress toward safe disposal." 

The Energy Department plans to submit a license application to
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the Yucca Mountain
repository in 2008, or four years later than had been planned,
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has said. 
-- 
 
All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 45 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Discovers Uranium Ore at 3 New Sites
 
From the Associated Press        
	 
[UP] 

Tuesday May 2, 2006 7:01 PM
 	
AP Photo VAH101 
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer 

QOM, Iran (AP) - Iran said Tuesday it had found uranium ore at
three new sites in the center of the country, an announcement
that appeared designed as a fresh challenge to the drive by the
United States and allies to curb Tehran's nuclear program. 

Iran already has considerable uranium resources available for
its nuclear program, a fact that called into question the
importance of the new discoveries - beyond their propaganda
value. 

``We have got good news: the discovery of new economically
viable deposits of uranium in central Iran,'' Mohammad Ghannadi,
deputy chief for nuclear research and technology, told a
conference. 

He said the deposits were found in the Khoshoomi region,
Charchooleh and Narigan. 

Iran's principal source of uranium is the Saghand mine in the
center of the country, which has the capacity to produce 132,000
tons of ore per year. 

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said
Iran's announcement showed ``they are feeling increasingly
uncomfortable'' with their programs being reviewed by the U.N.
Security Council. 

As a result, he said, ``they are throwing up all sorts of chaff
in the air right now to divert attention, to try to make
threatening statements to the international community.'' 

Ghannadi said Iran's enrichment of uranium was continuing, but
he confirmed reports that a few of centrifuges at the enrichment
facility in Natanz had crashed last month. 

``It's not a problem. They were repaired,'' Ghannadi said in
this holy city south of Tehran. 

Iran announced April 11 that it had enriched uranium through
cascades of centrifuges for the first time. 

The Security Council has demanded that Iran cease enrichment
until all questions have been answered about extent of its
nuclear program. Enriched uranium is used a fuel for nuclear
power generators or in nuclear warheads. 

Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that
Iran has flouted a Security Council deadline to suspend
enrichment and had failed to provide answers to questions about
its program. 

Iran says its nuclear program is confined to generating power,
but the United States and France accuse the country of secretly
trying to build nuclear weapons. 

Representatives of the United States, Britain, France, Germany,
Russia and China discussed the outlines of a Security Council
resolution on Iran's nuclear program in Paris on Tuesday. 

``I think what we will see unfold is that European governments
will put forward following today's (Tuesday's) discussion some
form of Chapter 7 resolution, and we'll discuss the form of
it,'' U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said before
the talks began. 

A resolution under the U.N. Charter's Chapter 7 makes any
demands mandatory and allows for the use of sanctions and
possibly force. 

Russia and China have said they are opposed to sanctions on
Iran's nuclear program.	 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 46 NRC: RIN 3150-AH93 Spent fuel casts

 
                         FR Doc 06-4115 
[Federal Register: May 2, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 84)] [Rules and 
Regulations] [Page 25740-25743] From the Federal Register Online 
via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr02my06-2]                         
 
List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage Casks: NUHOMS[supreg] HD 
Addition AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
ACTION: Direct final rule.
 
SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is amending its 
regulations to add the NUHOMS[supreg] HD cask system to the list 
of approved spent fuel storage casks. This direct final rule 
allows the holders of power reactor operating licenses to store 
spent fuel in this approved cask system under a general license.
 
 
DATES: The final rule is effective July 17, 2006, unless 
significant adverse comments are received by June 1, 2006. A 
significant adverse comment is a comment where the commenter 
explains why the rule would be inappropriate, including 
challenges to the rule's underlying premise or approach, or would 
be ineffective or unacceptable without a change. If the rule is 
withdrawn, timely notice will be published in the Federal 
Register.
 
 
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by any one of the following 
methods. Please include the following number (RIN 3150-AH93) in 
the subject line of your comments. Comments on rulemakings 
submitted in writing or in electronic form will be made available 
for public inspection.
 
Because your comment will not be edited to remove any identifying 
or contact information, the NRC cautions you against including 
personal information such as social security numbers and birth 
dates in your submission.
 
Mail comments to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications 
Staff.
 
E-mail comments to: SECY@nrc.gov. If you do not receive a reply 
e- mail confirming that we have received your comments, contact 
us directly at (301) 415-1966. You may also submit comments via 
the NRC's rulemaking Web site at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov. 
Address questions about our rulemaking Web site to Carol 
Gallagher (301) 415-5905; e-mail cag@nrc.gov. Comments can also 
be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal 
http://www.regulatons.gov. Hand deliver comments to: 11555 
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, between 7:30 a.m. and 
4:15 p.m. Federal workdays [telephone (301) 415-1966].
 
Fax comments to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at 
(301) 415-1101.
 
Publicly available documents related to this rulemaking may be 
viewed electronically on the public computers located at the 
NRC's Public Document Room (PDR), O-1F21, One White Flint North, 
11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. Selected documents, 
including comments, can be viewed and downloaded electronically 
via the NRC rulemaking Web site at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov. 
Publicly available documents created or received at the NRC after 
November 1, 1999, are available electronically at the NRC's 
Electronic Reading Room at 
http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/ADAMS/index.html. From this site, the 
public can gain entry into the NRC's Agencywide Document Access 
and
 
[[Page 25741]] Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and 
image files of NRC's public documents. If you do not have access 
to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the documents 
located in ADAMS, contact the NRC PDR Reference staff at 
1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. An 
electronic copy of the proposed Certificate of Compliance (CoC), 
TS, and preliminary safety evaluation report (SER) can be found 
under ADAMS Accession Nos. ML052860036, ML052860043, and 
ML052860049, respectively.
 
CoC No. 1030, the TS, the underlying SER, and the Environmental 
Assessment (EA) are available for inspection at the NRC PDR, 
11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD. Single copies of these 
documents may be obtained from Jayne M. McCausland, Office of 
Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, telephone (301) 415-6219, 
e-mail jmm2@nrc.gov. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Jayne M. 
McCausland, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, 
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, 
telephone (301) 415-6219, e-mail

 
jmm2@nrc.gov.
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Background Section 218(a) of the 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended (NWPA), requires 
that ``[t]he Secretary [of the Department of Energy (DOE)] shall 
establish a demonstration program, in cooperation with the 
private sector, for the dry storage of spent nuclear fuel at 
civilian nuclear power reactor sites, with the objective of 
establishing one or more technologies that the [Nuclear 
Regulatory] Commission may, by rule, approve for use at the sites 
of civilian nuclear power reactors without, to the maximum extent 
practicable, the need for additional site-specific approvals by 
the Commission.'' Section 133 of the NWPA states, in part, that 
``[t]he Commission shall, by rule, establish procedures for the 
licensing of any technology approved by the Commission under 
Section 218(a) for use at the site of any civilian nuclear power 
reactor.'' To implement this mandate, the NRC approved dry 
storage of spent nuclear fuel in NRC-approved casks under a 
general license by publishing a final rule in 10 CFR Part 72 
entitled ``General License for Storage of Spent Fuel at Power 
Reactor Sites'' (55 FR 29181; July 18, 1990). This rule also 
established a new Subpart L within 10 CFR Part 72, entitled 
``Approval of Spent Fuel Storage Casks,'' containing procedures 
and criteria for obtaining NRC approval of spent fuel storage 
cask designs.
 
Discussion On May 5, 2004, and as supplemented on July 6, August 
16, October 11, October 28, November 19, 2004; February 18, March 
7, April 14, May 20, May 24, August 16, 2005; and January 24 and 
February 15, 2006, the certificate holder, Transnuclear, Inc. 
(TN), submitted an application to the NRC to add the 
NUHOMS[supreg] HD cask system to the list of NRC approved casks 
for spent fuel storage in 10 CFR 72.214. The NUHOMS[supreg] HD 
System provides for the horizontal storage of high burnup spent 
pressurized water reactor fuel assemblies in a dry shielded 
canister that is placed in a horizontal storage module utilizing 
an OS187H transfer cask. The system is an improved version of the 
Standardized NUHOMS[supreg] System described in CoC 1004.
 
The NUHOMS[supreg] HD System has been optimized for high thermal 
loads, limited space, and radiation shielding performance. The 
-32PTH dry shielded canister (DSC) included in this system is 
similar to the - 24PTH DSC submitted for licensing as Amendment 
No. 8 to the Standardized NUHOMS[supreg] System. The -32PTH DSC 
will be transferred during loading operations using the OS-187H 
transfer cask (TC).
 
The OS- 187H TC is very similar to the OS-197 and OS-197 TCs 
described in the final safety analysis report for the 
Standardized NUHOMS[supreg] System. The -32PTH DSC will be stored 
in a horizontal storage module (HSM), designated the HSM-H. The 
HSM-H is virtually identical to the HSM-H submitted for licensing 
as Amendment No. 8 to the Standardized NUHOMS[supreg] System. The 
NRC finds that the TN NUHOMS[supreg] HD cask system, as designed 
and when fabricated and used in accordance with the conditions 
specified in its CoC, meets the requirements of 10 CFR Part 72. 
Thus, use of the TN NUHOMS[supreg] HD cask system, as approved by 
the NRC, will provide adequate protection of public health and 
safety and the environment. Simultaneously, the NRC is issuing a 
final SER and CoC that will be effective on July 17, 2006. Single 
copies of the CoC and SER are available for public inspection 
and/or copying for a fee at the NRC Public Document Room, O-1F21, 
11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD.
 
This direct final rule adds the NUHOMS[supreg] HD Storage System 
to the listing in 10 CFR 72.214 by adding CoC No. 1030. The 
NUHOMS[supreg] HD Storage System, when used under the conditions 
specified in the CoC, the TS, and NRC regulations, will meet the 
requirements of Part 72; thus, adequate protection of public 
health and safety will continue to be ensured.
 
Discussion of Amendments by Section Section 72.214 List of 
Approved Spent Fuel Storage Casks CoC No. 1030 is added to the 
list of approved spent fuel storage casks.
 
Procedural Background This rule is limited to the conditions 
contained in CoC No.
 
1030. The NRC is using the ``direct final rule procedure'' to 
issue this addition because it represents an improved version of 
the Standardized NUHOMS[supreg] System described in existing CoC 
1004, and its addition to the list of approved spent fuel storage 
casks is expected to be noncontroversial. Adequate protection of 
public health and safety continues to be ensured. The amendment 
to the rule will become effective on July 17, 2006. However, if 
the NRC receives significant adverse comments by June 1, 2006, 
then the NRC will publish a document that withdraws this action 
and will address the comments received in response to the 
proposed amendments, published elsewhere in this issue of the 
Federal Register, in a subsequent final rule. The NRC will not 
initiate a second comment period on this action.
 
A significant adverse comment is a comment where the commenter 
explains why the rule would be inappropriate, including 
challenges to the rule's underlying premise or approach, or would 
be ineffective or unacceptable without a change. A comment is 
adverse and significant if: (1) The comment opposes the rule and 
provides a reason sufficient to require a substantive response in 
a notice-and-comment process. For example, in a substantive 
response: (a) The comment causes the NRC staff to reevaluate (or 
reconsider) its position or conduct additional analysis; (b) The 
comment raises an issue serious enough to warrant a substantive 
response to clarify or complete the record; or (c) The comment 
raises a relevant issue that was not previously addressed or 
considered by the NRC staff.
 
(2) The comment proposes a change or an addition to the rule, and 
it is apparent that the rule would be ineffective or unacceptable 
without incorporation of the change or addition.
 
(3) The comment causes the NRC staff to make a change (other than 
editorial) to the CoC or TS.
 
 
[[Page 25742]] Voluntary Consensus Standards The National 
Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-113) 
requires that Federal agencies use technical standards that are 
developed or adopted by voluntary consensus standards bodies 
unless the use of such a standard is inconsistent with applicable 
law or otherwise impractical. In this direct final rule, the NRC 
will add the NUHOMS[supreg] HD System to the listing in Sec.  
72.214 (List of NRC- approved spent fuel storage cask designs). 
This action does not constitute the establishment of a standard 
that establishes generally applicable requirements.
 
Agreement State Compatibility Under the ``Policy Statement on 
Adequacy and Compatibility of Agreement State Programs'' approved 
by the Commission on June 30, 1997, and published in the Federal 
Register on September 3, 1997 (62 FR 46517), this rule is 
classified as Compatibility Category ``NRC.'' Compatibility is 
not required for Category ``NRC'' regulations.
 
The NRC program elements in this category are those that relate 
directly to areas of regulation reserved to the NRC by the Atomic 
Energy Act of 1954, as amended (AEA), or the provisions of Title 
10 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Although an Agreement 
State may not adopt program elements reserved to NRC, it may wish 
to inform its licensees of certain requirements via a mechanism 
that is consistent with the particular State's administrative 
procedure laws but does not confer regulatory authority on the 
State.
 
Plain Language The Presidential Memorandum dated June 1, 1998, 
entitled ``Plain Language in Government Writing,'' directed that 
the Government's writing be in plain language. The NRC requests 
comments on this direct final rule specifically with respect to 
the clarity and effectiveness of the language used. Comments 
should be sent to the address listed under the heading ADDRESSES 
above.
 
Finding of No Significant Environmental Impact: Availability 
Under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended, 
and the NRC regulations in subpart A of 10 CFR part 51, the NRC 
has determined that this rule, if adopted, would not be a major 
Federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human 
environment and, therefore, an environmental impact statement is 
not required. The rule will add the CoC for the NUHOMS[supreg] HD 
System within the list of approved spent fuel storage casks that 
power reactor licensees can use to store spent fuel at reactor 
sites under a general license. The NUHOMS[supreg] HD System 
provides for the horizontal storage of high burnup spent 
pressurized water reactor fuel assemblies in a dry shielded 
canister that is placed in a horizontal storage module utilizing 
an OS187H transfer cask. The system is an improved version of the 
Standardized NUHOMS[supreg] System described in CoC 1004.
 
The NUHOMS[supreg] HD System has been optimized for high thermal 
loads, limited space, and radiation shielding performance. The 
-32PTH dry shielded canister (DSC) included in this system is 
similar to the - 24PTH DSC submitted for licensing as Amendment 
No. 8 to the Standardized NUHOMS[supreg] System. The -32PTH DSC 
will be transferred during loading operations using the OS-187H 
transfer cask (TC).
 
The OS- 187H TC is very similar to the OS-197 and OS-197 TCs 
described in the final safety analysis report for the 
Standardized NUHOMS[supreg] System. The -32PTH DSC will be stored 
in a horizontal storage module (HSM), designated the HSM-H. The 
HSM-H is virtually identical to the HSM-H submitted for licensing 
as Amendment No. 8 to the Standardized NUHOMS[supreg] System. The 
EA and finding of no significant impact on which this 
determination is based are available for inspection at the NRC 
Public Document Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD.
 
Single copies of the EA and finding of no significant impact are 
available from Jayne M. McCausland, Office of Nuclear Material 
Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
Washington, DC 20555- 0001, telephone (301) 415-6219, e-mail 
jmm2@nrc.gov. Paperwork Reduction Act Statement This direct final 
rule does not contain a new or amended information collection 
requirement subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 
U.S.C. 3501 et seq.). Existing requirements were approved by the 
Office of Management and Budget, Approval Number 3150- 0132.
 
Public Protection Notification The NRC may not conduct or 
sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a request 
for information or an information collection requirement unless 
the requesting document displays a currently valid OMB control 
number.
 
Regulatory Analysis On July 18, 1990 (55 FR 29181), the 
Commission issued an amendment to 10 CFR Part 72. The amendment 
provided for the storage of spent nuclear fuel in cask systems 
with designs approved by the NRC under a general license. Any 
nuclear power reactor licensee can use cask systems with designs 
approved by the NRC to store spent nuclear fuel if it notifies 
the NRC in advance, the spent fuel is stored under the conditions 
specified in the cask's CoC, and the conditions of the general 
license are met. In that rule, four spent fuel storage casks were 
approved for use at reactor sites and were listed in 10 CFR 
72.214. That rule envisioned that storage casks certified in the 
future could be routinely added to the listing in 10 CFR 72.214 
through the rulemaking process. Procedures and criteria for 
obtaining NRC approval of new spent fuel storage cask designs 
were provided in 10 CFR part 72, subpart L.
 
The alternative to this action is to withhold approval of this 
new design and issue a site-specific license to each utility that 
proposes to use the casks. This alternative would cost both the 
NRC and utilities more time and money for each site-specific 
license. Conducting site-specific reviews would ignore the 
procedures and criteria currently in place for the addition of 
new cask designs that can be used under a general license, and 
would be in conflict with NWPA direction to the Commission to 
approve technologies for the use of spent fuel storage at the 
sites of civilian nuclear power reactors without, to the maximum 
extent practicable, the need for additional site reviews. This 
alternative also would tend to exclude new vendors from the 
business market without cause and would arbitrarily limit the 
choice of cask designs available to power reactor licensees.
 
This final rulemaking will eliminate the above problems and is 
consistent with previous Commission actions. Further, the rule 
will have no adverse effect on public health and safety.
 
The benefit of this rule to nuclear power reactor licensees is to 
make available a greater choice of spent fuel storage cask 
designs that can be used under a general license. The new cask 
vendors with casks to be listed in 10 CFR 72.214 benefit by 
having to obtain NRC certificates only once for a design that can 
then be used by more than one power reactor licensee. The NRC 
also benefits because it will need to certify a cask design only 
once for use by multiple licensees. Casks approved through 
rulemaking are to be suitable for use under a range of 
environmental conditions sufficiently broad to encompass multiple 
nuclear power plants in the United States without the need for 
further site-specific approval
 
[[Page 25743]] by NRC. Vendors with cask designs already listed 
may be adversely impacted because power reactor licensees may 
choose a newly listed design over an existing one. However, the 
NRC is required by its regulations and NWPA direction to certify 
and list approved casks. This rule has no significant 
identifiable impact or benefit on other Government agencies.
 
Based on the above discussion of the benefits and impacts of the 
alternatives, the NRC concludes that the requirements of the 
final rule are commensurate with the Commission's 
responsibilities for public health and safety and the common 
defense and security. No other available alternative is believed 
to be as satisfactory, and thus, this action is recommended.
 
Regulatory Flexibility Certification Under the Regulatory 
Flexibility Act of 1980 (5 U.S.C. 605(b)), the NRC certifies that 
this rule will not, if issued, have a significant economic impact 
on a substantial number of small entities. This direct final rule 
affects only the licensing and operation of nuclear power plants, 
independent spent fuel storage facilities, and TN. The companies 
that own these plants do not fall within the scope of the 
definition of ``small entities'' set forth in the Regulatory 
Flexibility Act or the Small Business Size Standards set out in 
regulations issued by the Small Business Administration at 13 CFR 
part 121.
 
Backfit Analysis The NRC has determined that the backfit rule (10 
CFR 50.109 or 10 CFR 72.62) does not apply to this direct final 
rule because this amendment does not involve any provisions that 
would impose backfits as defined. Therefore, a backfit analysis 
is not required. Congressional Review Act Under the Congressional 
Review Act of 1996, the NRC has determined that this action is 
not a major rule and has verified this determination with the 
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of 
Management and Budget.
 
List of Subjects in 10 CFR Part 72 Administrative practice and 
procedure, Criminal penalties, Manpower training programs, 
Nuclear materials, Occupational safety and health, Penalties, 
Radiation protection, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements, 
Security measures, Spent fuel, Whistleblowing.
 
0 For the reasons set out in the preamble and under the authority 
of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended; the Energy 
Reorganization Act of 1974, as amended; and 5 U.S.C. 552 and 553; 
the NRC is adopting the following amendments to 10 CFR part 72.
 
PART 72--LICENSING REQUIREMENTS FOR THE INDEPENDENT STORAGE OF 
SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL, HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE, AND REACTOR- 
RELATED GREATER THAN CLASS C WASTE 0 1. The authority citation 
for part 72 continues to read as follows: Authority: Secs. 51, 
53, 57, 62, 63, 65, 69, 81, 161, 182, 183, 184, 186, 187, 189, 68 
Stat. 929, 930, 932, 933, 934, 935, 948, 953, 954, 955, as 
amended, sec. 234, 83 Stat. 444, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2071, 
2073, 2077, 2092, 2093, 2095, 2099, 2111, 2201, 2232, 2233, 2234, 
2236, 2237, 2238, 2282); sec. 274, Pub. L. 86-373, 73 Stat. 688, 
as amended (42 U.S.C. 2021); sec. 201, as amended, 202, 206, 88 
Stat. 1242, as amended, 1244, 1246 (42 U.S.C. 5841, 5842, 5846); 
Pub. L. 95-601, sec. 10, 92 Stat. 2951 as amended by Pub. L. 102- 
486, sec. 7902, 106 Stat. 3123 (42 U.S.C. 5851); sec. 102, Pub. 
L. 91-190, 83 Stat. 853 (42 U.S.C. 4332); secs. 131, 132, 133, 
135, 137, 141, Pub. L. 97-425, 96 Stat. 2229, 2230, 2232, 2241, 
sec. 148, Pub. L. 100-203, 101 Stat. 1330-235 (42 U.S.C. 10151, 
10152, 10153, 10155, 10157, 10161, 10168); sec. 1704, 112 Stat. 
2750 (44 U.S.C. 3504 note); sec. 651(e), Pub. L. 109-58, 119 
Stat. 806-10 (42 U.S.C. 2014, 2021, 2021b, 2111).
 
Section 72.44(g) also issued under secs. 142(b) and 148(c), (d), 
Pub. L. 100-203, 101 Stat. 1330-232, 1330-236 (42 U.S.C. 
10162(b), 10168(c), (d)). Section 72.46 also issued under sec. 
189, 68 Stat. 955 (42 U.S.C. 2239); sec. 134, Pub. L. 97-425, 96 
Stat. 2230 (42 U.S.C. 10154). Section 72.96(d) also issued under 
sec. 145(g), Pub. L. 100-203, 101 Stat. 1330-235 (42 U.S.C. 
10165(g)). Subpart J also issued under secs. 2(2), 2(15), 2(19), 
117(a), 141(h), Pub. L. 97- 425, 96 Stat. 2202, 2203, 2204, 2222, 
2224 (42 U.S.C. 10101, 10137(a), 10161(h)). Subparts K and L are 
also issued under sec. 133, 98 Stat. 2230 (42 U.S.C. 10153) and 
sec. 218(a), 96 Stat. 2252 (42 U.S.C. 10198). 0 2. In Sec.  
72.214, Certificate of Compliance 1030 is added to read as 
follows: Sec.  72.214  List of approved spent fuel storage casks. 
* * * * * Certificate Number: 1030.
 
Initial Certificate Effective Date: July 17, 2006.
 
SAR Submitted by: Transnuclear, Inc.
 
SAR Title: Final Safety Analysis Report for the NUHOMS[supreg] HD 
Horizontal Modular Storage System for Irradiated Nuclear Fuel.
 
Docket Number: 72-1030.
 
Certificate Expiration Date: July 17, 2026.
 
Model Number: NUHOMS[supreg] HD-32PTH.
 
* * * * * Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 13th day of April, 
2006.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
William F. Kane, Acting Executive Director for Operations.
 
[FR Doc. 06-4115 Filed 5-1-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 47 reviewjournal.com: EPA vows to set mark
 
May 02, 2006

Radiation standard for Yucca expected by end of this year        

By KEITH ROGERS <br/>REVIEW-JOURNAL
	
The Environmental Protection Agency expects to finalize a 
radiation safety standard by the end of this year for the planned 
Yucca Mountain repository, one that protects Nevadans from 
decaying nuclear waste for 1 million years, a public health 
officer said Monday.
 
But the officer, Capt. Ray Clark of the U.S. Public Health 
Service and team leader for Yucca Mountain standards, declined to 
say what confidence level he would have in such a standard based 
on climate changes and corrosion of metal waste containers 
projected so far out in the distant future.
 
That task of determining confidence will be left to the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission, the agency that must review a license 
application from the Energy Department for the Yucca Mountain 
Project.
 
Asked if dose calculations to the public would be meaningful
beyond 500,000 years, Clark said, "We have qualms about that.
That's why we first proposed 10,000 years" for radiation safety
standards for the Yucca Mountain site, 100 miles northwest of
Las Vegas.
 
"However, at this time we feel we need to go out to 1 million
years," he told colleagues gathered at a session of a nuclear
waste conference at Texas Station attended by scientists from
around the world.
 
The annual International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management
Conference sponsored by the American Nuclear Society runs
through Thursday and has 400 attendees representing 22
countries. The conference theme is "Global progress toward safe
disposal."
 
Clark's presentation followed one by Bo Stromberg of the Swedish
Nuclear Power Inspectorate who said a deep geologic repository
in Sweden is undergoing layers of review to uncover any weakness
with his country's effort to dispose of deadly, spent nuclear
fuel.
 
Sweden's review of investigations at a proposed disposal site is
taking place this year with a license application due before
regulators and an environmental court in 2008.
 
Similarly, the U.S. effort by the Energy Department to submit a
license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a
Yucca Mountain repository will be ready for review in 2008 or
four years later than had been planned, according to Energy
Secretary Samuel Bodman.
 
In July 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit invalidated the EPA's 10,000-year standard,
ruling it would not cover peak dose periods of up to 1 million
years as it should based on recommendations of a National
Academy of Sciences panel.
 
Then in August 2005, to satisfy the court's ruling, the EPA
proposed a two-tiered standard with one set of limits for the
first 10,000 years of repository operation and a second set for
succeeding years, out to 1 million years. The radiation dose
limits were set at 15 millirem and 350 millirem per year,
respectively, above natural background radiation.
 
A millirem is a small amount of energy that produces the same
biological effect as a similar unit of absorbed dose from
ordinary X-rays. For comparison, a chest X-ray exposes a patient
to 10 millirem while a mammogram results in a 30 millirem
exposure.
 
Nevada officials have criticized the proposed two-tiered
standard, saying the EPA has backpedaled from its previous
stance that a 150 millirem dose is unacceptable.
 	   
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2006
*****************************************************************
 48 NRC: RIN 3150-AH93 Spent Fuel Casks
 
                         FR Doc 06-4116 
[Federal Register: May 2, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 84)] [Proposed 
Rules] [Page 25782-25783] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr02my06-14]                         
 
List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage Casks: NUHOMS[supreg] HD 
Addition AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
ACTION: Proposed rule.
 
SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is proposing to 
amend its regulations to add the NUHOMS[supreg] HD cask system to 
the list of approved spent fuel storage casks. This proposed rule 
would allow the holders of power reactor operating licenses to 
store spent fuel in this approved cask system under a general 
license.
 
 
DATES: Comments on the proposed rule must be received on or 
before June 1, 2006.
 
 
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by any one of the following 
methods. Please include the following number (RIN 3150-AH93) in 
the subject line of your comments. Comments on rulemakings 
submitted in writing or in electronic form will be made available 
for public inspection.
 
Because your comment will not be edited to remove any identifying 
or contact information, the NRC cautions you against including 
personal information such as social security numbers and birth 
dates in your submission.
 
Mail comments to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications 
Staff.
 
E-mail comments to: SECY@nrc.gov. If you do not receive a reply 
e- mail confirming that we have received your comments, contact 
us directly at (301) 415-1966. You may also submit comments via 
the NRC's rulemaking Web site at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov. 
Address questions about our rulemaking Web site to Carol 
Gallagher (301) 415-5905; e-mail cag@nrc.gov. Comments can also 
be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal 
http://www.regulations.gov. Hand deliver comments to: 11555 
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, between 7:30 a.m. and 
4:15 p.m. Federal workdays [telephone (301) 415-1966].
 
Fax comments to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at 
(301) 415-1101.
 
Publicly available documents related to this rulemaking may be 
viewed electronically on the public computers at the NRC's Public 
Document Room (PDR), O-1F21, One White Flint North, 11555 
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. Selected documents, 
including comments, can be viewed and downloaded electronically 
via the NRC rulemaking Web site at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov. 
Publicly available documents created or received at the NRC after 
November 1, 1999, are available electronically at the NRC's 
Electronic Reading Room at 
http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/ADAMS/index.html. From this site, the 
public can gain entry into the NRC's Agencywide Document Access 
and Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and image 
files of NRC's public documents. If you do not have access to 
ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the documents located 
in ADAMS, contact the NRC PDR Reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 
301-415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. An electronic copy of 
the proposed Certificate of Compliance (CoC), TS, and preliminary 
safety evaluation report (SER) can be found under ADAMS Accession 
Nos.
 
ML052860036, ML052860043, and ML052860049, respectively.
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Jayne M. McCausland, Office of 
Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, telephone (301) 415-6219, 
e-mail

 
jmm2@nrc.gov.
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: For additional information see the 
direct final rule published in the final rules section of this 
Federal Register.
 
Procedural Background This proposed rule is limited to the 
conditions contained in CoC No. 1030. The NRC is using the 
``direct final rule procedure'' to issue this addition because it 
represents an improved version of the Standardized NUHOMS[supreg] 
System described in existing CoC 1004, and its addition to the 
list of approved spent fuel storage casks is expected to be 
noncontroversial. Adequate protection of public health and safety 
continues to be ensured. The direct final rule will become 
effective on July 17, 2006. However, if the NRC receives 
significant adverse comments by June 1, 2006, then the NRC will 
publish a document that withdraws the direct final rule and will 
subsequently address the comments received in a final rule. The 
NRC will not initiate a second comment period on this action.
 
A significant adverse comment is a comment where the commenter 
explains why the rule would be inappropriate, including 
challenges to the rule's underlying premise or approach, or would 
be ineffective or unacceptable without a change. A comment is 
adverse and significant if: (1) The comment opposes the rule and 
provides a reason sufficient to require a substantive response in 
a notice-and-comment process. For example, in a substantive 
response: (a) The comment causes the NRC staff to reevaluate (or 
reconsider) its position or conduct additional analysis; (b) The 
comment raises an issue serious enough to warrant a substantive 
response to clarify or complete the record; or (c) The comment 
raises a relevant issue that was not previously addressed or 
considered by the NRC staff.
 
(2) The comment proposes a change or an addition to the rule, and 
it is apparent that the rule would be ineffective or unacceptable 
without incorporation of the change or addition.
 
(3) The comment causes the NRC staff to make a change (other than 
editorial) to the CoC or TS.
 
List of Subjects in 10 CFR Part 72 Administrative practice and 
procedure, Criminal penalties, Manpower training programs, 
Nuclear materials, Occupational safety and health, Penalties, 
Radiation protection, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements, 
Security measures, Spent fuel, Whistleblowing.
 
For the reasons set out in the preamble and under the authority 
of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended; the Energy 
Reorganization Act of 1974, as amended; and 5 U.S.C. 553; the NRC
 
[[Page 25783]] is proposing to adopt the following amendments to 
10 CFR part 72.
 
PART 72--LICENSING REQUIREMENTS FOR THE INDEPENDENT STORAGE OF 
SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL, HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE, AND REACTOR- 
RELATED GREATER THAN CLASS C WASTE 1. The authority citation for 
part 72 is revised to read as follows: Authority: Secs. 51, 53, 
57, 62, 63, 65, 69, 81, 161, 182, 183, 184, 186, 187, 189, 68 
Stat. 929, 930, 932, 933, 934, 935, 948, 953, 954, 955, as 
amended, sec. 234, 83 Stat. 444, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2071, 
2073, 2077, 2092, 2093, 2095, 2099, 2111, 2201, 2232, 2233, 2234, 
2236, 2237, 2238, 2282); sec. 274, Pub. L. 86-373, 73 Stat. 688, 
as amended (42 U.S.C. 2021); sec. 201, as amended, 202, 206, 88 
Stat. 1242, as amended, 1244, 1246 (42 U.S.C. 5841, 5842, 5846); 
Pub. L. 95-601, sec. 10, 92 Stat. 2951 as amended by Pub. L. 102- 
486, sec. 7902, 106 Stat. 3123 (42 U.S.C. 5851); sec. 102, Pub. 
L. 91-190, 83 Stat. 853 (42 U.S.C. 4332); secs. 131, 132, 133, 
135, 137, 141, Pub. L. 97-425, 96 Stat. 2229, 2230, 2232, 2241, 
sec. 148, Pub. L. 100-203, 101 Stat. 1330-235 (42 U.S.C. 10151, 
10152, 10153, 10155, 10157, 10161, 10168); sec. 1704, 112 Stat. 
2750 (44 U.S.C. 3504 note); sec. 651(e), Pub. L. 109-58, 119 
Stat. 806-10 (42 U.S.C. 2014, 2021, 2021b, 2111).
 
Section 72.44(g) also issued under secs. 142(b) and 148(c), (d), 
Pub. L. 100-203, 101 Stat. 1330-232, 1330-236 (42 U.S.C. 
10162(b), 10168(c), (d)). Section 72.46 also issued under sec. 
189, 68 Stat. 955 (42 U.S.C. 2239); sec. 134, Pub. L. 97-425, 96 
Stat. 2230 (42 U.S.C. 10154). Section 72.96(d) also issued under 
sec. 145(g), Pub. L. 100-203, 101 Stat. 1330-235 (42 U.S.C. 
10165(g)). Subpart J also issued under secs. 2(2), 2(15), 2(19), 
117(a), 141(h), Pub. L. 97- 425, 96 Stat. 2202, 2203, 2204, 2222, 
2224 (42 U.S.C. 10101, 10137(a), 10161(h)). Subparts K and L are 
also issued under sec. 133, 98 Stat. 2230 (42 U.S.C. 10153) and 
sec. 218(a), 96 Stat. 2252 (42 U.S.C. 10198). 2. In Sec.  72.214, 
Certificate of Compliance 1030 is added to read as follows: Sec.  
72.214  List of approved spent fuel storage casks. * * * * * 
Certificate Number: 1030.
 
Initial Certificate Effective Date: (insert effective date of 
final rule).
 
SAR Submitted by: Transnuclear, Inc.
 
SAR Title: Final Safety Analysis Report for the NUHOMS[supreg] HD 
Horizontal Modular Storage System for Irradiated Nuclear Fuel.
 
Docket Number: 72-1030.
 
Certificate Expiration Date: [insert 20 years from the effective 
date of the final rule].
 
Model Number: NUHOMS[supreg] HD-32PTH.
 
* * * * * Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 13th day of April, 
2006.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
William F. Kane, Acting Executive Director for Operations.
 
[FR Doc. 06-4116 Filed 5-1-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 49 AFP: Iran achieves higher uranium enrichment level 

 Tue May 2, 7:53 AM ET 
		 	 
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran " /> has managed to enrich uranium up to 4.8 
percent purity, the head of the country's Atomic Energy 
Organization said, as envoys of the main world powers met in 
Paris to discuss how to halt the sensitive nuclear fuel work. 

"The latest level of enrichment carried out in Iran has been 4.8 
percent," Gholam Reza Aghazadeh told the ISNA student news 
agency.
 
"Enrichment of more than five percent is not on Iran's agenda
and this level suffices for making nuclear fuel."
 
Iran had already announced last month that it had enriched
uranium to 3.6 percent purity, sufficient to produce reactor
fuel.
 
The process of enriching uranium though cascades of centrifuges
lies at the centre of international concerns about Iran's
nuclear programme.
 
When extended to much higher levels of purity of more than 90
percent, it can produce the fissile core of an atom bomb,
although Iran insists it is only interested in producing fuel
for civilian nuclear reactors.
 
Aghazadeh reiterated that Iran plans to upgrade its enrichment
facilities.
 
"Construction work and preparation of centrifuge machines are
being done to create a 3,000-centrifuge cascade," he said.
 
At present Iran is using a cascade of 164 centrifuges installed
at a pilot plant in Natanz.
 
The new announcement from Iran came as envoys from Britain,
China, France, Gerany, Russia and the United States gathered in
Paris to thrash out a common position on how to tackle Iranian
defiance over its nuclear programme.
 
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 50 Knox News: K-31 site could get some use
                                                                        
Fla. company interested in closed facility as a place to convert 
coal to ethanol By RICHARD POWELSON, powelsonr@shns.com 

May 2, 2006 

WASHINGTON - Florida company BRI Energy announced Monday that it 
has a letter of intent to use perhaps all 1.4 million square feet 
of the long-closed K-31 complex in Oak Ridge for one or two types 
of ethanol production. BRI President William Bruce said in an 
interview that the deal depends on federal loan guarantees for a 
portion of startup costs and could employ about 500 within five 
years. He hopes to make ethanol from coal and municipal waste. 
			 			
Ethanol can be mixed with gasoline to reduce U.S. imports of oil. 

Bruce was one of five witnesses Monday telling the Senate Energy 
Committee about alternative energy options that would have little 
or no air pollution. His company's patented process does not burn 
coal, so there is no pollution, he said. 

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman at Monday's hearing,
said afterward that a new facility in Oak Ridge to convert coal
to ethanol could be a huge advance for the country. 

"I think it has the potential to make a profound change in the
way that we produce energy in this country," Alexander said in
an interview. "The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal. If
we can begin to run our automobiles on coal, then that can
immediately begin to reduce our dependence on foreign oil." 

Bruce is meeting with Department of Energy officials today about
federal financial assistance on the coal gasification plant,
which would cost about $25 million. He is seeking about $20
million in a federal loan guarantee. 

His company also has technology to convert carbon-based
municipal waste to ethanol - items such as garbage, paper,
plastic and leather. Bruce said he also hopes to use the K-31
site, which has 17.5 acres under one roof, for a $300 million
waste-to-ethanol plant. He proposes a $250-million federal loan
guarantee for that, paired with $62.5 million of private
investment. 

Bruce has been working on the ethanol process with a University
of Tennessee graduate, James Gaddy, who received a doctorate in
chemical engineering at UT. He's been doing research and
development at a Fayetteville, Ark., plant, Bruce said. 

Rep. Zach Wamp said he's been working with Bruce's company for
nearly a year on the option to use the K-31 site and to get TVA
to use the steam from the process for power production. Oak
Ridge is in Wamp's district. 

Lawrence Young, president of the Community Reuse Organization of
East Tennessee, which seeks users for closed federal buildings
at Oak Ridge, said the K-31 complex was built in the 1950s for
enriching uranium and was closed in the mid-1980s. K-31 is the
largest of the closed facilities. 

Bruce told the Senate committee that the company's process is
projected to produce about 150 gallons of ethanol per ton of
coal. Just half of the current U.S. consumption annually of coal
could produce 75 billion gallons of ethanol, he said, which is
roughly half the U.S. gasoline consumption. 

Richard Powelson may be contacted at 202-408-2727.
 					
 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel
 
*****************************************************************
 51 Guardian Unlimited: Los Alamos Safety Official Reassigned
 
From the Associated Press        
	 
[UP] 

Tuesday May 2, 2006 6:16 AM
 	
By HEATHER CLARK Associated Press Writer 

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - A senior safety officer for the U.S.
nuclear security agency says he has been reassigned because
higher-ups want to silence his criticism at Los Alamos National
Laboratory. 

Chris Steele, 47, said Monday that the Energy Department's
National Nuclear Security Administration reassigned him from his
job overseeing safety at the nuclear weapons lab to another job
supervising safety training at department facilities nationwide. 

He said he was notified in early April, about a week after a
meeting in which he criticized a two-year project that would
shift some safety oversight from the federal government to the
management contractor at Los Alamos lab. 

Steele said he told agency officials that the change would be
``unsafe, unethical, immoral and just plain wrong.'' 

He said he initially turned down the new job but was told he had
to take it. 

Agency spokesman Bryan Wilkes said Steele's reassignment
recognized his expertise and would put him in charge of training
the next generation of nuclear safety analysts. 

``It's going to increase his visibility; it's going to increase
his influence,'' Wilkes said. 

Steele said his criticisms were based on several incidents,
including radioactive contamination in July 2005 that spread to
a worker's Los Alamos home and three other states. An Energy
Department report blamed worker complacency and inadequate
federal oversight. 

In November 2002, Steele was put on administrative leave after
calling attention to improper storage of radioactive material.
Lab officials denied that the suspension was related to his
criticism. 	 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 52 The State: Graham announces 500 jobs at SRS

05/02/2006 

But congressional commitment to mixed oxide program is shaky

 By LAUREN MARKOE Special to The State 

Roughly 500 jobs will be installed at Savannah River Site by the 
end of the year for a long-promised mixed oxide or MOX plant 
that would transform weapons-grade plutonium into commercial 
nuclear fuel, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Monday. 

But MOX advocates are wondering whether Grahams announcement is
overly optimistic. 

While there is enough money already allocated for MOX to justify
Graham issuing a news release on the jobs and the start of
construction more than $500 million dollars  congressional
commitment to MOX is hardly assured, said Mal McKibbon,
executive director of the Aiken-based Citizens for Nuclear
Technology Awareness. 

Last week, a House Armed Services Committee panel slashed
funding for MOX. Lawmakers cut $150 million and froze $450
million from the Bush administrations $600 million request for
fiscal 2007 pending a clear plan for moving ahead with the
project that is expected to cost several billion dollars to
complete. 

If the House Armed Services Committee sticks to this, we wont
have any money in 2008, and that problem needs to be solved,
McKibbon said. I hope our congressmen can break some kneecaps
or something. 

The entire S.C. delegation in Congress supports a MOX plant at
SRS, the nuclear campus outside of Aiken that once made much of
the fuel for the nations nuclear arsenal. Until recently, the
Bush administration had billed the plant as part of an
international effort. 

The S.C. facility would rid the United States of 34 metric tons
of weapons-grade plutonium, while a sister plant would dispose
of the same amount of the dangerous material in Russia. 

But the Russians have made little progress, prompting the House
panel to hold back on funding for MOX at SRS. Congress could
restore the cut and frozen money over the next few months  but
there are no guarantees. 

Grahams announcement  heralded as 500 Jobs Coming to Savannah
River Site  tied the jobs directly to MOX. 

Two hundred would come by the end of the year from the MOX
contractor, Duke Cogema Stone &Webster. These employees are
based in Charlotte and would manage the startup activities at
the site. 

Another 320 subcontractor employees  who would work pouring the
plants foundation, among other tasks  are expected before the
end of the year, according to Graham. 

This is welcome news for Savannah River Site, the MOX program,
and the state, Graham said in a prepared statement. The MOX
program is incredibly important to the site, nation, and world.
Im glad we are taking steps to get the construction and
eventual operation of the facility moving forward. 

Last week, shortly after the House panel cut MOX funding, Graham
said Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security
Administration, had assured him that MOX in South Carolina would
go forward  with or without the Russians. 

An aide to Graham said the news about the 500 jobs was not
official then, so no pronouncement on filling jobs was made. 

Advocates have said a finished facility processing MOX could
create 1,000 jobs. 

*****************************************************************
 53 Seattle Times: Threat at Hanford can't be ignored

Editorials &Opinion: 

Tuesday, May 2, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
 	
STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES
 					 					
This Hanford gate leads to underground tanks holding radioactive
waste.
 				 				 				  
SKEPTICAL members of Congress were the best possible audience
for the grim update provided by "60 Minutes" on the soaring
expenses and repeated delays of cleanup at Washington's Hanford
Nuclear Reservation.
 
The broadcast Sunday night was a potent reminder of the lethal
threat tens of millions of gallons of radioactive waste in
underground tanks pose for this region. Groundwater fouled by
leaking tanks is headed toward the Columbia River. CBS
correspondent Leslie Stahl's tour of Hanford presented a sad
accounting of fumbles by contractor Bechtel National Inc. and
the woeful oversight by the U.S. Department of Energy.
 
Yes, the tally of expensive stumbles and miscues could spook an
already skittish Congress on the verge of a screaming,
arm-waving flight from a cleanup budget that has climbed from
$4.3 billion to $11.3 billion. All the incentives for a cheap,
quick fix loom in those scary numbers.
 
The budget numbers are bad, progress is painfully slow and the
state's patriotic sacrifices to help win a world war and Cold
War confrontations matter not a whit.
 
No, the power of the report was in the sheer potential for
ecological disaster.
 
An interview with Gov. Christine Gregoire closed out the report,
and she did an excellent job of punctuating the absence of any
margin for failure.
 
The technical challenge presented by the waste at Hanford is
enormous, but it is dwarfed by the consequences of Hanford's
contamination reaching the Columbia.
 	 		 		
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
 	 	 		 		
*****************************************************************
 54 DOE: DOE's National Laboratory Directors Highlight Scientific Merits of GNEP
 
  May 2, 2006
 
WASHINGTON , DC  Directors of nine of the Department of Energy's 
(DOE) national laboratories today announced their support for the 
Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) and discussed the 
collaboration among the labs in carrying out the partnership.  

GNEP, part of President Bush's Advanced Energy Initiative, will 
support advanced technologies to recycle spent nuclear fuel and 
promote emissions-free nuclear energy in a more 
proliferation-resistant manner.  President Bush has request $250 
million in fiscal year (FY) 2007 for GNEP.   

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership demonstrates the enormous 
role that advanced nuclear science and technology can play in 
making the world a better, cleaner, safer place to live by 
providing abundant, affordable, emissions-free energy while 
reducing the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation.  The 
national labs will help us realize this vision, Deputy Secretary 
of Energy Clay Sell said.

  The national lab directors have been working together on U.S. 
energy initiatives for several years and see the definition, 
development and implementation of GNEP as a unique opportunity to 
join together to address a significant national and global need.  
They stressed the urgency of proceeding with the work that will 
make GNEP a reality.  Universities and industry will also be 
involved in all phases of the partnership.   

Moving forward with the research and technology development 
proposed under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership is of great 
importance to all Americans, said John Grossenbacher, director 
of the Idaho National Laboratory.  

We will be developing and demonstrating in the U.S. new 
recycling technologies for spent nuclear fuel that may produce 
more energy, reduce nuclear waste and address proliferation 
concerns. We also will be working on a new generation of reactors 
with inherently safe features suitable for fueling the economies 
of the developing world.  

Our goal is to develop the technology options and analyses that 
will provide the foundation for future decisions about the 
direction of the nations nuclear energy program and the 
technologies that will be moved into the commercial sector, said 
Jeff Wadsworth, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 

 As the use of nuclear energy expands globally, it is essential 
that it occurs in a fashion that actually reduces the fears of 
nuclear proliferation, noted Bob Kuckuck, director of Los Alamos 
National Laboratory.  

We can accomplish this by integrating modern safeguards and 
nuclear materials management concepts into future nuclear fuel 
cycles from the very beginning of the process, not adding them 
after the fact.   Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 
Director George Miller stressed that, U.S. leadership in 
developing advanced safeguards and security technology is 
paramount to protect against diversion of nuclear materials by 
states or sub-state actors.  

It is critical that we work with suppliers and the International 
Atomic Energy Agency on an international framework and mechanism 
for supply, storage and disposal in concert with the global 
development of technology for advanced fuel recycle, fast 
reactors and small-scale reactors.   The GNEP Technology 
Demonstration Program is based on a five-year technology plan, 
which is currently being developed in consultation with 
scientists from DOEs national labs.  This detailed roadmap for 
GNEP technology development and demonstration process is focused 
on technologies that will: 

  + Separate the high-energy elements of spent nuclear fuel that
can be recycled. 

  + Develop fast burner reactors that can convert these
high-energy elements into electricity and shorter-lived
isotopes, dramatically reducing the volume and toxicity of the
waste.  

  + Integrate modern nuclear materials management concepts into
each step of the fuel cycle to increase safeguards confidence. 

  + Close the nuclear fuel cycle through research and
technologies for recycling fuel and fabricating fuel suitable
for recycling. As we demonstrate these technologies in real
applications, we will be able to advance the designs even
further and incorporate the lessons weve learned, said Todd
Wright, director of the Savannah River National Laboratory. 
This is a rigorous process designed to demonstrate the
technical credibility of the research that has been and will be
conducted.   Three major demonstration facilities are expected
to be built, following the decision on the technologies in FY
2008: 

  + An Engineering-Scale Demonstration of the UREX+ and other
advanced processes that separate the useful components in spent
nuclear fuel from its waste components, without separating pure
plutonium.  

  + An Advanced Fuel Cycle Facility that will demonstrate
advanced proliferation-resistant fuel recycling technologies,
including chemical processing; sensors, detectors and monitoring
approaches; and fuel fabrication.  It also will develop advanced
safeguards, including instrumentation for materials protection,
control and accountability, and advanced control and monitoring
systems. 

  + An Advanced Burner Test Reactor that will demonstrate the
performance of the newly recycled fuel in a facility that will
be about one-tenth the size of a current nuclear power plant. 
This reactor will convert the transuranic elements in spent
nuclear fuel into shorter-lived isotopes.  As the conversion
process takes place, significant energy is released and
converted into electricity through environmentally safe
channels.  Each of these facilities will yield safety, cost and
performance information to guide future commercial designs.  

GNEP will also help advance other technologies that are needed
for its implementation.  For example, developing more efficient
and accurate computer simulation tools is critical to meeting
the deployment goals of GNEP, since our current tools are 20
years old.  The advanced simulation tools we will develop to
support GNEP will take advantage of developments in modeling and
computer architecture that will help us rapidly test innovative
approaches and improve our ability to control sensitive
materials, said Bob Rosner, director of the Argonne National
Laboratory.   

Taken together, the nuclear fuel-focused technologies to be 
developed and demonstrated in GNEP will be an enormous step 
forward in solving both proliferation and waste management 
concerns, said Tom Hunter, director of Sandia National 
Laboratory. 

While the nation must have the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste 
repository, a successfully implemented GNEP can eliminate the 
need for additional repositories.   GNEP also calls for the 
development of small, proliferation-resistant and naturally safe 
reactors sized to the electric transmission grids of small, 
developing nations that need reliable electrical energy for their 
economic growth.    

Providing clean, dependable and affordable electricity is the 
single most important commodity we can contribute to improving 
the quality of life in underdeveloped countries, said Mike 
Lawrence, deputy director of Pacific Northwest National 
Laboratory.   

Ensuring public and worker safety is the foundation for all 
aspects of GNEP.  All facilities and operations within GNEP, 
including small reactors, actinide burner reactors, fuel cycle 
facilities, and transportation activities, will be considered as 
an integrated system and accordingly managed to ensure safety 
through the programs lifecycle, said Peter Bond, deputy 
director for Science and Technology, of Brookhaven National 
Laboratory.    

DOE national lab directors lead the some of the nations most 
prestigious and productive scientific research laboratories, 
where more than 30,000 scientists and engineers work to secure 
our energy, economic and national security through cutting-edge 
technology.  The nine DOE national labs participating in the 
effort to highlight GNEP today are Argonne National Laboratory, 
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, 
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National 
Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest 
National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory and Savannah 
River National Laboratory.   For more information on GNEP, please 
visit http://www.gnep.energy.gov/. 

Media contact(s): Craig Stevens, (202) 586-4940     [ ]   

  U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | 
Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 | 
  
*****************************************************************
 55 Hanford News: DOE does away with pensions for new hires
 
This story was published Friday, April 28th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

New employees at Hanford no longer will receive traditional
pensions beginning next year. 

The Department of Energy announced a new policy Thursday for new
employees hired by its contractors across the nation. 

Instead of a traditional pension that pays a set amount monthly
in retirement, new employees will be offered a 401(k)-style plan
that invests contributions from the worker and employer. 

New employees also could be covered by a different medical plan
than other workers under a new requirement that medical plans be
"market based." 

The changes will not affect current and retired employees'
pensions and medical benefit plans, according to DOE. 

"The new policy recognizes the contributions of current and
retired contractor employees and, at the same time, ensures that
future costs for pension and medical benefits are more
consistent with market trends," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman
said in a statement. 

The plan requires that the retirement and medical benefit plans
for new workers have a value and cost to DOE no greater than 5
percent above an average plan as set by market-based benchmarks.
The benchmarks look at companies similar in size doing
nongovernment work under comparable circumstances in the same
region. 

Contractors must have the new programs in place by at least
March 1, 2007. 

It's no coincidence that the deadline comes just before the
collective bargaining agreements for CH2M Hill Hanford Group,
Fluor Hanford, Parsons and Advanced Technologies and
Laboratories International expire, said Dave Molnaa, president
of the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council. 

"DOE does not realize it will lose skilled and qualified
workers," he said. 

HAMTC agreed to a two-tiered pension benefit system under the
new contract awarded to Washington Closure Hanford to clean up
the corridor along the Columbia River. But the contract length
was limited to the time required to finish the project, about
seven years. 

That's not time to build significant benefits in the traditional
Hanford benefit plan, so HAMTC agreed to an enhanced 401(k) plan
for new workers, Molnaa said. They receive an extra 5 percent
company contribution to the plan, he said. 

However, other work at Hanford, such as cleaning up the central
plateau, will take longer and traditional pension plans should
be offered there for new workers, he said. 

Some specifics of how the new DOE policy could affect workers in
the Tri-City area were unclear Thursday. 

Battelle, which operates Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
in Richland for DOE, appears to be included in the new policy,
said Megan Barnett, spokeswoman for DOE in Richland. The DOE
policy listed contractors for its Office of Science as being
covered by the policy. 

However, Battelle had just received a copy of the policy
Thursday and still was trying to determine how it might be
affected. 

Also in question is what would happen to current Hanford
employees who were laid off and then rehired, or who transfer
between contractors. DOE said whether the worker was then
considered a new employee would depend on what the specific
retirement plan document said, any collective bargaining
agreement in place, the contractor's human resources policy and
the DOE contract. 

"I believe DOE's goal is to get out of legacy costs," Molnaa
said. 

In a letter sent to contractors Thursday, Bodman emphasized that
he was aware of the valuable contributions made by current and
former employees and was recognizing that by retaining their
current benefits. 

But the costs to DOE for contractor pension and medical benefits
for new hires must be reasonable and reflect the best business
practices of the private sector, he wrote. 

"It is important that we take this action now to improve the
predictabilitiy and impact of these costs ... and mitigate the
growth of the department's long-term liabilities," he wrote. 

A link to the new pension policy is posted on the Internet at
www.energy.gov/news in the news release on contractor benefit
reimbursement. 

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 56 Hanford News: Program to look at vit plant problems: Report on '60 Minutes'
airs at 7 p.m. Sunday
 
This story was published Friday, April 28th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

Problems at Hanford's waste vitrification plant will get more 
national attention this weekend as CBS's 60 Minutes looks at the 
massive construction project during its 7 p.m. Sunday program. 

Estimated cost of the plant has nearly doubled since early 2005 
to $11.3 billion and it is not expected to begin operating until 
2018. The facility has a legal deadline to begin turning some of 
Hanford's worst radioactive waste into a stable glass form for 
permanent disposal in 2011. 

The news program will look at quality control issues and a 
discovery that the design for parts of the plant could be 
inadequate to withstand a severe earthquake, according to a 
statement from CBS News. 

The Department of Energy has fined the contractor on the project, 
Bechtel National, $198,000 for quality control problems and 
withheld $500,000 from its fee. 

60 Minutes is expected to look at one of the quality control 
issues included in the fine, problems with installation of the 
first of dozens of tanks in November 2003. 

Obvious problems were discovered when the tank was delivered and 
some of the welds were redone, said Bechtel National spokesman 
John Britton. But after it was installed, more problems were 
discovered by a subcontractor hired by Bechtel National to 
inspect the welds. More of the welds then were redone. 

That and other quality problems stemmed from what DOE has called 
"an inadequate nuclear safety culture," or inadequate adherence 
to the strict quality controls that are required for a plant 
being built to safely handle high-level nuclear waste. 

When the fine was issued, DOE said Bechtel "did a good job of 
identifying and fixing problems, but not a good job of preventing 
them from happening again." Bechtel is working to improve its 
nuclear safety culture. 

The problems with the tank raise the issue of whether other 
undiscovered problems exist, believes Tom Carpenter of the 
Government Accountability Project, according to CBS News. 

The issue of earthquake design for the plant was raised by the 
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board in 2002, and a study was 
commissioned by DOE in 2004. It showed that a severe earthquake 
might result in more movement of the ground than figured when 
engineering began for the vitrification plant. 

Design standards were increased 38 percent for parts of the 
plant. However, extensive changes to construction already 
completed have not been needed because most of the threat would 
be to upper levels of the plant not yet built, which would sway 
more during a severe earthquake. 

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 57 Hanford News: PNNL scientists remember Chernobyl
 
This story was published Sunday, April 30th, 2006 

By John Trumbo, Herald staff writer 

A new age in nuclear safety dawned when nuclear reactor No. 4 at
Chernobyl in the Ukraine blew its top 20 years ago, spewing
clouds of radioactive laden dust and forcing tens of thousands
of people to evacuate. 

Halfway around the globe, scientists at Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory would be called upon to help Ukrainians and
Russians learn from that disaster and develop the safest
possible nuclear systems in the world. 

"The Chernobyl accident opened the eyes of the West to potential
safety issues based on design of reactors," said Bob Moffitt,
manager of the International Nuclear Safety Program that has
been focused on Chernobyl since the mid-1990s. 

Moffitt and dozens of other scientists from PNNL and its parent
corporation, Battelle Memorial Institute of Ohio, observed the
20th anniversary of Chernobyl last week, knowing that after more
than a decade of teaching Ukrainians and Russians best nuclear
safety procedures and technologies, a repeat Chernobyl event is
unlikely. 

The U.S. Department of Energy, with PNNL as the lead lab, has
invested $340 million into helping Ukrainians learn from
Chernobyl. The explosion at Unit No. 4 occurred April 25, 1986. 

"We've been providing assistance and training, and technical
mentoring (since the mid-1990s), so now we've determined that
the Ukrainians have the ability to continue making safety
improvements on their own," Moffitt said. 

In addition to focusing on issues at the Chernobyl site, the
International Nuclear Safety Program under Moffitt's leadership
has worked on safety technology and training for dozens of
Chernobyl-like reactors in the Ukraine and Russia. 

"The U.S. has invested a lot of money to insure nuclear safety,"
Moffitt said, noting that at one time there were up to 70
full-time equivalent staff members working on the project at
Chernobyl. 

"Now there are about a dozen. The program is winding down,"
Moffitt said Friday. 

The Ukrainians have asked only that the nuclear safety program
continue working with them in one area - developing an alternate
source for obtaining nuclear fuel. Currently, Russia is the sole
source of fuel for the Ukraine's 15 nuclear operations and
provides almost all of its gas and oil supplies. 

"It has become a matter of national security for the Ukraine to
develop some energy independence," Moffitt said. 

While the International Nuclear Safety Program efforts in the
Ukraine are winding down, efforts to better manage the
contaminated No. 4 site are about to accelerate. 

That too has involved PNNL and Battelle employees for several
years. 

The most ambitious project to date involves building a $1.1
billion confinement structure to fully enclose the steel
sarcophagus that was built after the 1986 event, in an attempt
to protect the damaged reactor from further collapse. 

Eric Schmieman, chief engineer for Battelle Memorial Institute
and an employee at PNNL, said 23 nations have contributed toward
the cost of the project. The U.S. share is approximately $350
million. 

As designed, the new shelter will be built nearby in an area
safe from radiation risk, then slid into position to enclose the
sarcophagus. 

The new confinement building, about the size of Safeco Field,
has to be large enough to allow Ukrainian workers to go inside
and deconstruct the remains of Unit No. 4. 

"Battelle is responsible for much of the design of the
confinement structure," said Schmieman, who noted that when
built it will be large enough to hold the Statue of Liberty on
its stone base - a little over 500 feet high. 

Schmieman said a contractor should be selected soon, and
construction is expected to take 41D2 years. 

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is managing
the funds for the project, he said. 

Schmieman said five Battelle employees are assigned to the
Chernobyl confinement structure project in Ukraine. They include
contract manager John Fallon and Bill Hartz, an expert on deep
foundations. 

The big concern is that the dome on the damaged reactor could
collapse further, spreading highly radioactive dust to a wider
area. Having a super-sized confinement structure in place
minimizes the spread, Schmieman said. 

Several other smaller PNNL-involved construction projects at
Chernobyl are already completed. 

One is a $40 million replacement heating plant to provide hot
water and steam for all the buildings and facilities. 

Jim Hartley, a senior project manager at PNNL, was the
construction manager for the heating plant from June 1997 until
it was finished four years later. The Ukraine government paid
$7.5 million, and the rest came from the U.S. and DOE, Hartley
said. 

When the plant began operation, the last remaining
graphite-moderated nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, No. 3, was shut
down, eliminating the last of approximately 6,000 jobs that were
tied to Chernobyl's several nuclear plants. 

Hartley said having Westerners working with Ukrainians was an
opportunity to mentor them in project management. 

"We were able to transfer our knowledge and skills to the folks
at Chernobyl. Human relationships were significant with the
(nuclear) power people and the construction people. It was a
very rewarding experience to see it through to completion,"
Hartley said. 

The reward was personal in a special way to Hartley. "And along
the way I met my wife, who I brought back to the U.S.," he said. 

Another PNNL researcher, Andrea Fernandez, was in the shadow of
the Chernobyl event, working and living in Slavutich, a city of
25,000 people created to house people who were displaced from
Prypyat when Unit No. 4 exploded. 

Like Moffitt, Fernandez had experience with the International
Nuclear Safety Program at PNNL and worked in contract management
side-by-side with Ukrainians preparing construction projects for
storage facilities, a change facility for workers and an
administration building. 

There was a bit of resentment from the Ukrainians initially
about having to learn new ways of doing things, she said. "We
had a lot of red tape issues, but by the time I left the storage
facility project was completed," she said. 

Fernandez, who lived in Slavutich for 31D2 years until 2003 with
her husband and five children, said the working relationships
improved and friendships formed. The children participated in
sports and music, and her husband, a musician, did studio
recordings at home and home-schooled their children. 

"Every year there was an anniversary (marking the Chernobyl
disaster), and we attended," she said. That last year in
Slavutich her family was invited to participate and sing prior
to the banquet and the vigil. 

"When we realized that this week was the anniversary we
reflected on our time there because we knew families that were
affected by the loss of (loved ones)," she said. 

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 58 Hanford News: Respirator rule lifted at Hanford
 
This story was published Monday, May 1st, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

Hanford workers are working around some underground tanks
without respiratory protection for the first time in about two
years. 

Restrictions were lifted about two weeks ago in some tank farms
after studies were completed of the chemicals vented from the
underground tanks into the air and their possible health
effects. 

About 20 percent of workers in the tank farms where the
restrictions were lifted continue to choose to use respiratory
protection, said Tom Anderson, director of environmental health
for Department of Energy contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group. 

But on jobs where workers are closer to places vapors could be
vented, up to half of workers choose to wear respirators, he
said. 

In addition, workers continue to be required to wear respirators
if they are working within five feet of the vapor vents or there
is any reason to believe that workers might breath in chemicals
at levels even close to the upper limits that the studies
concluded would be safe. 

So far, supplied air respirator restrictions have been lifted in
part around the 35 tanks in the tank farms with A prefixes, such
as the AN Tank Farm and the AZ Tank Farm. 

"We're certainly taking a wait and see attitude to see if the
programs work - that exposures are prevented, that people are
protected when they want to use voluntary protection," said Tom
Carpenter of the Government Accountability Project, or GAP, a
watchdog group for workers. 

CH2M Hill has assured GAP that workers always will have the
freedom to wear supplied air without fear of harassment or
coercion from co-workers or supervisors, Carpenter said. GAP
will be watching to make sure any type of pressure, including
disparaging comments from coworkers, is not tolerated by
management, he said. 

GAP is urging workers to think twice before choosing not to wear
respirators. 

"If we worked at Hanford's tank farms, we would continue to wear
supplied air because of the unknown but possibly severe health
impacts that could result from exposure to multiple chemicals,"
Carpenter said. 

The Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council supports CH2M Hill's new
respirator policy as long as workers who want to wear
respirators continue to be allowed to, said Rebecca Holland,
HAMTC officer, just before the new policy was implemented. 

Many workers at the tank farms want to come off respirators and
CH2M Hill has done a good job with sampling and analysis of the
vapors, she said. 

The supplied air respirators are heavy and add to heat stress in
summer and their masks can limit vision. 

But in 2003 and early 2004, workers and GAP raised concerns
about possible longterm health effects from breathing vapors
from the 177 tanks at Hanford. Some workers complained of
symptoms such as headaches, dizziness and shortness of breath
after smelling vapors from the tanks, particularly when work was
being done that disturbed the waste or the weather changed. 

Hanford has 53 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous
chemical waste left from the past production of plutonium for
the nation's nuclear weapons complex. The waste is stored in
underground tanks, including older tanks that vent chemical
vapors into the atmosphere. 

As a result of a report prepared by GAP, national and state
studies were ordered that concluded not enough was known about
the vapors to be sure that workers were not being harmed. 

Since then, CH2M Hill has brought in independent experts to
identify what turned out to be about 1,500 chemicals present in
the head space of the tanks, then set safe occupational exposure
limits for individual chemicals. 

That process has been completed for the tanks in farms with A
prefixes. 

On the first day the requirement was lifted that supplied-air
respi-rators be used at all times in those tank farms, work
temporarily stopped as workers asked for more information on the
results of outside reviews of vapors. 

CH2M Hill's focus on tank vapor work now shifts to the C Tank
Farm, where tank vapor monitoring and sampling are being done. 

Unlike the tank farms with A prefixes, work is under way in the
C Tank Farm to empty tanks, which disturbs the waste. Data
analysis on the C Tank Farm vapors is expected to be completed
next month. 

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 59 Hanford News: Hanford nuclear cleanup cost soars
 
This story was published Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 

By Lisa Stiffler and Charles Pope, Seattle Post-Intelligencer 

It's costing Americans $1.4 million a day to build a facility to 
safely treat millions of gallons of radioactive and toxic waste 
stored in the leak-prone underground tanks of the Hanford Nuclear 
Reservation in Washington state. 

When the project is completed, the bill could total $38 for every 
man, woman and child in the nation - that's if the $11.3 billion 
price tag doesn't swell even further. It has nearly tripled in 
less than six years, making it a massive taxpayer burden. 

This is a critical time for the project. An increasingly 
impatient Congress is now deciding how much money to contribute 
to the effort - considered the most important step in the cleanup 
of the sprawling desert site on the Columbia River. Some fear 
lawmakers could simply wash their hands of it and walk away. 

"The whole house of cards is ready to collapse," said Gerald 
Pollet, director of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford 
watchdog group. 

The challenge of safely disposing of 53 million gallons of
deadly waste left over from decades of plutonium production has
caused the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractors to
stumble repeatedly. 

Weak - even negligent - management has pushed the project's
completion from 2011 back to 2017 or later and driven costs up
by billions, according to reports from government agencies, the
Army Corps of Engineers and watchdog groups. 

At the same time, environmental and health risks are mounting.
The corrosive waste weakens the walls of the tanks and the risk
of leaks keeps growing, regulators admit. 

The federal officials running the Hanford cleanup and their
contractors apologize for the delays and errors in cost
calculations. They promise to do better. 

"Everything that I do on this project each day is to identify
with certainty what the costs and schedule basis is, and to
restore confidence and credibility in this project," said John
Eschenberg, the Energy Department's manager for the project. 

Construction is under way on the massive "vitrification"
project, which one day would turn the waste into a glassy
compound that will trap the radioactive material for safe
storage. But the department's contractor - construction giant
Bechtel National Inc. - has had to put the brakes on most of the
building due to safety and technical problems. 

Countless additional factors have helped drive up costs. They
include the initial miscalculation of the amount and cost of
materials needed for the project and underestimation of the
technical and regulatory hurdles facing the facility. In March,
a team of experts identified more than two dozen issues that
could prevent the plant from working as planned. The plant was
expected to operate for nearly two decades. 

The mounting setbacks have sent state leaders recently to
Washington, D.C., to beseech lawmakers to keep funding the
costly endeavor near Richland. 

Next week government officials will come to Seattle to explain
publicly how much money is needed to support the Hanford
cleanup, including the vitrification project, and to get
feedback on where it's being spent. 

The case is getting harder to make. Some worry Congress or the
Energy Department could scrap the vitrification project, perhaps
opting to build new storage tanks and putting the waste there.
Another option is using a cheaper, but less safe, technology for
treating the waste plaguing Hanford - a key player in World War
II's Manhattan Project. 

Comments at an April 6 congressional hearing examining Hanford's
problems heightened that fear. 

"I'm convinced now that after learning about the failures of
project management, the neglect of nuclear safety quality
assurances and the uncontrollable costs we will hear about today
that this project is on a fast road to failure," said Rep. David
Hobson, R-Ohio. 

Hobson's dark opinion is important because he chairs the
subcommittee providing money for cleaning up Hanford and other
Energy Department plants. 

Everyone agrees the project is challenging. In the decades since
Hanford fired up the first reactor in 1944, a mishmash of waste
has been dumped into 177 tanks in the quest for weapons-grade
plutonium. The tanks - which some say may have leaked recently -
store millions of gallons of chemically complex liquids, sludge
and chunky salt cake. 

Those responsible for problems with the vitrification project
frequently put much of the blame on its unique nature. 

"After all, it was a first of a kind, never been built anywhere
in the world, much less in the United States," Tom Hash,
Bechtel's president of systems and infrastructure, told Hobson's
subcommittee. 

That statement, however, was not entirely accurate. 

Hanford isn't the Energy Department's only radioactive headache. 

South Carolina's Savannah River Site was established in the
early 1950s to produce plutonium and radioactive hydrogen to arm
nuclear weapons. 

In 1983, the department began the process of building a
vitrification plant there to treat 37 million gallons of
dangerous waste that also had been stored in buried, leak-prone
tanks. 

At Savannah River, just as at Hanford, Bechtel was a prime
partner in building the facility. 

And just as at Hanford, the project was beset by major cost
overruns, poor management and technical problems. 

In a 1992 report that is similar in tone and findings to recent
reviews of the Hanford project, the General Accounting Office
(now the Government Accountability Office) itemized the
problems. The cost, the GAO said, had soared from an estimated
$2.1 billion to $4 billion. The project fell behind schedule. 

Ineffective management "has been a principal factor contributing
to the tremendous cost growth of the (waste facility) program
and the schedule delays," reported the government investigators. 

"Other factors, such as system testing that identified technical
problems and equipment and design deficiencies" also affected
the program's cost and schedule, the GAO said. 

As with Hanford, DOE officials and the contractors repented and
vowed to do better. 

The plant finally opened in 1996 - three years late. It has
produced 2,200 canisters of glassified waste since then, but
lingering technical problems have limited its effectiveness,
allowing the capture of only small amounts of radioactive
material per canister. DOE estimates the plant will finish the
job in 2026. 

Savannah River has struggled to develop a process that separates
high-level waste from less lethal, low-level waste. Once the
process works, it will speed cleanup because only the worst
waste will be sent to the vitrification plant. A citizens
advisory board said last month that the delay could add $1
billion to cleanup costs. 

While concerns raised about the operations are disturbingly
similar, some say comparisons between Hanford and Savannah River
are unfair because the Washington operation is much larger and
more complicated. 

John Britton, spokesman for Bechtel's Hanford project, said of
Savannah: "It's a very small plant in comparison." 

Not long before the first drop of concrete was poured at
Hanford's vitrification plant in the summer of 2002, the desert
site was flush with optimism. 

"This really is a watershed year," said Harry Boston, the Energy
Department's manager for the project at the time. "A lot of hard
work has been done over many years and now we are in a position
to reap the rewards." 

Today, construction essentially has stopped on two of the
vitrification project's three main facilities. While 1,700
builders bustled there a year ago, that number has withered to
about 375. 

The project has embraced a "design-build" strategy in which
chunks of the facility are engineered and construction starts
before the overall blueprint is completed. Critics call it the
"ready, shoot, aim" approach, but supporters say it's a smart,
accepted practice. 

Engineering problems have plagued the effort over the years. 

Last year, the government finally heeded earthquake-related
concerns raised in 2002 by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety
Board - the independent government board charged with monitoring
DOE programs. That again forced Bechtel engineers to review
their plans to make sure the facility could withstand a
potential temblor. 

Construction already had started, but because the plans were
"conservative," Britton said, "we haven't had to tear anything
down or do anything over." 

But fixes to some of the equipment may be necessary, said A.J.
Eggenberger, the board's chairman. And more information about
the area's earthquake potential is still needed, he said at last
month's subcommittee hearing, resulting in "continued
uncertainty." 

That keeps the cost estimates and timelines for completion on
shaky ground. 

Bechtel's original contract was for a $4.3 billion project - a
figure that has ballooned since 2000, topping $11.3 billion. 

The causes for the price inflation and delays are many. First,
the initial cost estimates were too low. Bechtel officials admit
they overestimated the potential productivity of workers and
engineers, failing to account for the decades that had passed
since a large-scale, U.S. nuclear project was launched. The cost
of concrete and steel shot up globally since the effort started.
Original expectations for the amount of materials needed also
were too low. The project underestimated technical challenges.
The list goes on. 

To help correct for the setbacks, watchdogs are calling for more
outside oversight, such as bringing in the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission - the national agency responsible for nuclear safety. 

There are calls to back off the design-build approach so that
plans are closer to completion before the hammering begins. The
GAO recommends that plans are 90 percent finished before
building happens. Currently, they're 65 percent complete. 

Clearly, something needs to happen to keep Congress on board. 

At the April hearing, Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said Congress
was frustrated with Hanford's slow progress, usually driven
"after we whack them in some way." 

"There's a lot of taxpayer money out here ," he said. "In the
private sector, we're concerned about timeliness, waste of
money." 

In response to those concerns, Washington state lawmakers and
Gov. Christine Gregoire have launched an aggressive charm
campaign to calm the nerves of those holding the purse strings.
This summer, another analysis is due from the Army Corps that
will more definitely set the costs and timing for the project.
Many folks are not expecting good news. 

"What we can't afford is another cut" in the vitrification plant
budget, Gregoire said last week after meeting with Senate
leaders and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. "Every one of these
delays costs us time, money and hurts the environment." 

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 60 Hanford News: Group says Hanford tanks still leaking
 
This story was published Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

Hanford's oldest tanks of high-level radioactive waste have
continued to leak, Heart of America Northwest reported Monday. 

Its findings were met with skepticism by the Department of
Energy and the Washington state Department of Ecology, a
regulator at the Hanford nuclear reservation. 

DOE believes that although 67 of Hanford's single shell tanks
may have leaked in the past, none of the tanks is leaking now.
Pumpable liquid has been removed from the 149 single-shell
tanks. 

Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group, hired
geological engineer John Brodeur to review tank data from recent
years. Brodeur, a Hanford whistleblower, ran Hanford's tank leak
characterization effort in the mid-1990s. 

Brodeur looked at data for six tanks in the TY Tank Farm, five
of which are believed to have leaked in the past. But he also
believes the data show the sixth tank, TY-102, or nearby piping
also has leaked and leaked recently. 

No contamination was detected in 1997, but contamination showed
up according to data from monitoring in 2002, he said. 

He also found far more contamination between two tanks believed
to have leaked in the past in the tank farm by examining recent
monitoring data, he said. He believes it's from a new leak from
one of the tanks. 

"This is only one tank farm, and we found two unreported leaks,"
said Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America. 

Hanford has 53 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous
chemical waste left from the past production of plutonium for
the nation's nuclear weapons program. 

Most of Hanford's 149 single-shell tanks still hold sludge or
salt cake, even though liquid has been pumped to newer
double-shell tanks. 

The liquid that remains is bound up in salts and sludge that
hold it like a sponge, said Zack Smith, assistant manager of
tank farm projects for DOE. 

DOE watches the waste level in most tanks to make sure they are
not leaking and uses equipment to monitor for water and
radiation beneath tanks that are being emptied. 

Tank TY-102 was studied in 1998 and again in 2001, with both
studies concluding it was unlikely the tank had leaked, Smith
said. 

Within the past year, repeated sampling has been done in the
other area of the TY Tank Farm where Heart of America believes
there is a new leak. 

"This is old contamination," Smith said. "There is nothing to
indicate any active leaks." 

Work is continuing to map contamination from past leaks, he
said. An estimated 1 million gallons of waste have leaked from
tanks in the past as welds gave out decades past the time when
early Hanford workers expected the tanks would still be used. 

The state has no information that shows there are new leaks from
Hanford's underground tanks, said Joye Redfield-Wilder,
spokeswoman for the Department of Ecology. It's likely that
Heart of America has found contamination from old leaks, she
said. 

"But we will be evaluating this and asking DOE for any
information or new reports it may have," she said. 

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 61 DOE: High Energy Physics Advisory Panel
 
                         FR Doc E6-6605 
[Federal Register: May 2, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 84)] [Notices] 
[Page 25824-25825] From the Federal Register Online via GPO 
Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr02my06-42]                         
 
AGENCY: Department of Energy.
 
ACTION: Notice of open meeting.
 
SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the High Energy 
Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP). Federal Advisory Committee Act 
(Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of 
these meetings be announced in the Federal Register.
 
DATES: Thursday, July 6, 2006; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday, July 
7, 2006; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
 
ADDRESSES: The Latham Hotel, Georgetown, 3000 M Street, NW., 
Washington, DC 20007.
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: John Kogut, Executive Secretary; 
High Energy Physics Advisory Panel; U.S. Department of Energy; 
SC-25/ Germantown Building, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., 
Washington, DC 20585-1290; Telephone: 301-903-1298.
 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of Meeting: To provide advice 
and guidance on a continuing
 
[[Page 25825]] basis with respect to the high energy physics 
research program.
 
Tentative Agenda: Agenda will include discussions of the 
following: Thursday, July 6, 2006, and Friday, July 7, 2006.
 
Discussion of Department of Energy High Energy Physics Program 
Discussion of National Science Foundation Elementary Particle 
Physics Program Reports on and Discussions of Topics of General 
Interest in High Energy Physics Public Comment (10-minute rule) 
Public Participation: The meeting is open to the public. If you 
would like to file a written statement with the Panel, you may do 
so either before or after the meeting. If you would like to make 
oral statements regarding any of these items on the agenda, you 
should contact John Kogut, 301-903-1298 or 
John.Kogut@science.doe.gov (e- mail). You must make your request 
for an oral statement at least 5 business days before the 
meeting. Reasonable provision will be made to include the 
scheduled oral statements on the agenda. The Chairperson of the 
Panel will conduct the meeting to facilitate the orderly conduct 
of business. Public comment will follow the 10-minute rule. 
Minutes: The minutes of the meeting will be available for public 
review and copying within 90 days at the Freedom of Information 
Public Reading Room; Room 1E-190; Forrestal Building; 1000 
Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC between 9 a.m. and 4 
p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays.
 
Issued at Washington, DC on April 26, 2006.
 
R. Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer.
 
[FR Doc. E6-6605 Filed 5-1-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P

 
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 62 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Hanford
 
                         FR Doc E6-6606 

[Federal Register: May 2, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 84)] [Notices] 
[Page 25824] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access 
[wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr02my06-41]                         
 
AGENCY: Department of Energy.
 
ACTION: Notice of open meeting.
 
SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental 
Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Hanford. The 
Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) 
requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the 
Federal Register.
 
 
DATES: Thursday, June 1, 2006, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, June 2, 
2006, 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m.
 
ADDRESSES: Red Lion Hotel, 621 21st Street, Lewiston, Idaho 
83501, Phone Number: (208) 748-1033, Fax Number: (208) 746-9467.
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Erik Olds, Federal Coordinator, 
Department of Energy Richland Operations Office, 2440 Stevens 
Drive, P.O. Box 450, H6-60, Richland, WA, 99352; Phone: (509) 
376-8656; Fax: (509) 376-1214.
 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of 
the Board is to make recommendations to DOE in the areas of 
environmental restoration, waste management, and related 
activities.
 
Tentative Agenda: Ground Water Tutorial Fiscal Year 2007 Hanford 
Advisory Board Priorities CERCLA Five-Year Review and outreach 
activities Tri-Party Agreement, Milestone M-15 Waste Treatment 
and Immobilization Plant, Estimate at Completion Labor and 
Industries Report on Compensation Program Public Participation: 
The meeting is open to the public.
 
Written statements may be filed with the Board either before or 
after the meeting. Individuals who wish to make oral statements 
pertaining to agenda items should contact Erik Olds' office at 
the address or telephone number listed above. Requests must be 
received five days prior to the meeting and reasonable provision 
will be made to include the presentation in the agenda. The 
Deputy Designated Federal Officer is empowered to conduct the 
meeting in a fashion that will facilitate the orderly conduct of 
business. Individuals wishing to make public comment will be 
provided a maximum of five minutes to present their comments.
 
Minutes: The minutes of this meeting will be available for public 
review and copying at the U.S. Department of Energy's Freedom of 
Information Public Reading Room, 1E-190, Forrestal Building, 1000 
Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585 between 9 a.m. and 
4 p.m., Monday-Friday, except Federal holidays. Minutes will also 
be available by writing to Erik Olds' office at the address or 
telephone number listed above.
 
Issued at Washington, DC on April 26, 2006.
 
Rachel M. Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer.
 
[FR Doc. E6-6606 Filed 5-1-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P

 
    
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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: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
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