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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 VANITY FAIR == the yellowcake operation
2 IRNA: Solana delivers West's proposed package of incentives for Iran
3 IRNA: Iran to review Europe's latest offer: Larijani 
4 Xinhua: Wen, Merkel talk over phone on Iranian nuclear issue   
5 IRNA: Kazakh FM stresses right of countries to peaceful N-energy 
6 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Urged to Put Uranium Program on Hold
7 Guardian Unlimited: Diplomats: Package Gives Iran Some Leeway
8 Guardian Unlimited: World Powers Give Iran Enrichment Leeway
9 IRNA: Sudan backs Iran's N-right 
10 Guardian Unlimited: Iran regime split over west's latest offer
11 IRNA: Solana to hold talks with German Chancellor Merkel 
12 BBC: Iran deal 'may allow enrichment'
13 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Sudan backs Iran's nuclear right 
14 AFP: Iran weighs international nuclear offer 
15 AFP: Iran weighs international nuclear offer 
16 AFP: US adopts new tack in Iran nuclear standoff 
17 AFP: Iran offered possibility of enriching uranium 
18 Reuters: South Korea fails to sway North on trains at talks
19 US: NewStandard: Cheney's Office Declares Exemption from Secrecy Ove
20 SPI: Northwest EPA boss resigns to join Kempthorne's interior staff
21 RIA Novosti: Why does Pentagon need nonnuclear warheads?
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
22 Platts: EU needs more nuclear power to reduce oil dependency
23 US: Times Herald-Record: Report on closing Indian Point released
24 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Special hearing set on VY licensing
25 Reuters: Australia to examine nuclear power industry
26 NEWS.com.au: PM names rest of taskforce - Nuclear Debate - 
27 NEWS.com.au: Abbott happy to be nuclear plant MP - 
28 NEWS.com.au: Environmental group spurns nuclear inquiry - 
29 NEWS.com.au: Switkowski conflict of interest 'absurd' - 
30 NEWS.com.au: PM names rest of nuclear taskforce 
31 Australian Financial Review: Howard's about-turn in energy debate
32 Sydney Morning Herald: Nuclear critics 'trying to score points' - 
33 Sydney Morning Herald: Nuclear panel head steps down from ANSTO - 
34 AU ABC: Hot rock power suggested as nuclear alternative
35 BBC: Australia press split over nuclear
36 BBC: Blair's nuclear warning to Wales
37 US: AZ Republic: Faulty Palo Verde unit could soon be back in action
38 US: PoughkeepsieJournal.com: Report lists nuke plant alternatives
39 US: Rutland Herald: NRC's narrow view
40 US: Rutland Herald: NRC invites public to Lachis meetings today
41 ABC Asia: Head of nuclear inquiry in Australia ensures no conflict o
42 US: Brattleboro Reformer: VY assessment raises by 25% to $239M
43 US: Boston Globe: NRC opens hearings on Vermont Yankee's license ext
44 US: Times Herald-Record: Study cites hurdles to shuttering Indian Po
45 CNIC: Problems at Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant
46 US: Platts: Nine Mile Point relicensing application review advances
47 AU ABC: Howard commissions nuclear study
48 AU ABC: Howard faces stiff opposition in nuclear debate
49 AU ABC: Govt to establish nuclear taskforce
50 AU ABC: Physicist suggests thorium as uranium alternative
51 AU ABC: Nuclear industry would stand on own: Costello
52 AU ABC: Nuclear review chief quits ANSTO board. 
53 AU ABC: Queensland threatens laws against nuclear plants. 
54 AU ABC: Inquiry member says nuclear power clean and safe. 
55 US: The Hill:Expanding nuclear energy is a move we must commit to
56 US: Platts: Bush visits Limerick, continues promoting nuclear expans
57 AU ABC: Four nuclear plants needed for economic viability - ANSTO.
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
58 Hürriyet: US Defense Council report: 90 nuclear "B 61" bombs 
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
59 US: Shreveport Times: Group seeks atomic veterans 
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
60 US: Times-Standard Online: Feds eye impact of nuke storage ruling
61 NEWS.com.au: N-waste dumps 'at heart of PM's push' 
62 ITAR-TASS: Russia imports valuable material, not nuclear waste - Ros
63 Pahrump Valley Times: Carver sees new RR route as positive 
 
                           PEACE
 
64 US: The Olympian: Nuclear-free status remains - 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
65 Hanford News: Hanford boards charter revision limits member terms
66 AP Wire: Nuclear cleanup taking longer than expected
67 Seattle Times: Energy Department demands Hanford plant contractor re
68 komo news: Hanford Workers Take Cover After Container Falls Off Fork
69 Hanford News: PNNL, WSU hope for life science grants
70 Hanford News: Advisory board: Hanford 5-year review doesn't fit need
71 Hanford News: Tribes still oppose project at Columbia Point; Represe
72 Tri-City Herald: Vit plant gets new director 
73 Tri-City Herald: Hanford workers take cover after radioactive waste 
74 SF Chronicle: Media failed their duty in Lee case
75 Dayton Daily: Mound cleanup $476 million over budget
76 Hanford News: Oregon uneasy with Hanford study
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 1 VANITY FAIR == the yellowcake operation
 
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 01:35:17 -0500 (CDT)

Thanks GB

http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/articles/060606fege02

Vanity Fair June 2006

THE WAR THEY WANTED, THE LIES THEY NEEDED

The Bush administration invaded Iraq claiming Saddam Hussein had tried to
buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. As much of Washington knew, and the world
soon learned, the charge was false. Worse, it appears to have been the
cornerstone of a highly successful "black propaganda" campaign with links
to the White House
 	By CRAIG UNGER

 	*This is Craig Unger's third article for Vanity Fair. He is
currently working on a book based on his article "American Rapture," which
appeared in the December 2005 issue.

It's a crisp, clear winter morning in Rome. In the neighborhood between
the Vatican and the Olympic Stadium, a phalanx of motor scooters is parked
outside a graffiti-scarred 10-story apartment building. No. 10 Via Antonio
Baiamonte is home to scores of middle-class families, and to the embassy
for the Republic of Niger, the impoverished West African nation that was
once a French colony.

Though it may be unprepossessing, the Niger Embassy is the site of one of
the great mysteries of our times. On January 2, 2001, an embassy official
returned there after New Year's Day and discovered that the offices had
been robbed. Little of value was missing--a wristwatch, perfume, worthless
documents, embassy stationery, and some official stamps bearing the seal
of the Republic of Niger. Nevertheless, the consequences of the robbery
were so great that the Watergate break-in pales by comparison.

A few months after the robbery, Western intelligence analysts began
hearing that Saddam Hussein had sought yellowcake--a concentrated form of
uranium which, if enriched, can be used in nuclear weapons--from Niger.
Next came a dossier purporting to document the attempted purchase of
hundreds of tons of uranium by Iraq. Information from the dossier and,
later, the papers themselves made their way from Italian intelligence to,
at various times, the C.I.A., other Western intelligence agencies, the
U.S. Embassy in Rome, the State Department, and the White House, as well
as several media outlets. Finally, in his January 2003 State of the Union
address, George W. Bush told the world, "The British government has
learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of
uranium from Africa."

Two months later, the United States invaded Iraq, starting a conflict that
has killed tens of thousands of people, cost hundreds of billions of
dollars, and has irrevocably de-stabilized the strategically vital Middle
East. Since then, the world has learned not just that Bush's 16-word casus
belli was apparently based on the Niger documents but also that the
documents were forged.

In Italy, a source with intimate knowledge of the Niger affair has warned
me that powerful people are watching. Phones may be tapped. Jobs are in
jeopardy, and people are scared.

On the sixth floor at Via Baiamonte, a receptionist finally comes to the
door of the nondescript embassy office. She is of medium height, has
dark-brown hair, wears a handsome blue suit, and appears to be in her 50s.
She declines to give her full name. A look of concern and fear crosses her
face. "Don't believe what you read in the papers," she cautions in French.
"Ce n'est pas la viriti." It is not the truth.

But who was behind the forgeries? Italian intelligence? American
operatives? The woman tilts her head toward one of the closed doors to
indicate that there are people there who can hear. She can't talk. "C'est
interdit," she says. It is forbidden.

"A CLASSIC PSY-OPS CAMPAIGN"

For more than two years it has been widely reported that the U.S. invaded
Iraq because of intelligence failures. But in fact it is far more likely
that the Iraq war started because of an extraordinary intelligence
success--specifically, an astoundingly effective campaign of
disinformation, or black propaganda, which led the White House, the
Pentagon, Britain's M.I.6 intelligence service, and thousands of outlets
in the American media to promote the falsehood that Saddam Hussein's
nuclear-weapons program posed a grave risk to the United States.

The Bush administration made other false charges about Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction (W.M.D.)--that Iraq had acquired aluminum tubes suitable
for centrifuges, that Saddam was in league with al-Qaeda, that he had
mobile weapons labs, and so forth. But the Niger claim, unlike other
allegations, can't be dismissed as an innocent error or blamed on
ambiguous data. "This wasn't an accident," says Milt Bearden, a 30-year
C.I.A. veteran who was a station chief in Pakistan, Sudan, Nigeria, and
Germany, and the head of the Soviet-East European division. "This wasn't
15 monkeys in a room with typewriters."

In recent months, it has emerged that the forged Niger documents went
through the hands of the Italian military intelligence service, SISMI
(Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare), or operatives
close to it, and that neoconservative policymakers helped bring them to
the attention of the White House. Even after information in the Niger
documents was repeatedly rejected by the C.I.A. and the State Department,
hawkish neocons managed to circumvent seasoned intelligence analysts and
insert the Niger claims into Bush's State of the Union address.

By the time the U.S. invaded Iraq, in March 2003, this apparent
black-propaganda operation had helped convince more than 90 percent of the
American people that a brutal dictator was developing W.M.D.--and had led
us into war.

  To trace the path of the documents from their fabrication to their
inclusion in Bush's infamous speech, Vanity Fair has interviewed a number
of former intelligence and military analysts who have served in the
C.I.A., the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.),
and the Pentagon. Some of them refer to the Niger documents as "a
disinformation operation," others as "black propaganda," "black ops," or
"a classic psy-ops [psychological-operations] campaign." But whatever term
they use, at least nine of these officials believe that the Niger
documents were part of a covert operation to deliberately mislead the
American public.

The officials are Bearden; Colonel W. Patrick Lang, who served as the
D.I.A.'s defense intelligence officer for the Middle East, South Asia, and
terrorism; Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of
State Colin Powell; Melvin Goodman, a former division chief and senior
analyst at the C.I.A. and the State Department; Ray McGovern, a C.I.A.
analyst for 27 years; Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who served in
the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia division in 2002 and 2003; Larry
C. Johnson, a former C.I.A. officer who was deputy director of the State
Department Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993; former C.I.A.
official Philip Giraldi; and Vincent Cannistraro, the former chief of
operations of the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center.

In addition, Vanity Fair has found at least 14 instances prior to the 2003
State of the Union in which analysts at the C.I.A., the State Department,
or other government agencies who had examined the Niger documents or
reports about them raised serious doubts about their legitimacy--only to
be rebuffed by Bush-administration officials who wanted to use the
material. "They were just relentless," says Wilkerson, who later prepared
Colin Powell's presentation before the United Nations General Assembly.
"You would take it out and they would stick it back in. That was their
favorite bureaucratic technique--ruthless relentlessness."

All of which flies in the face of a campaign by senior Republicans
including Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, to blame the C.I.A. for the faulty pre-war intelligence on
W.M.D. Indeed, the accounts put forth by Wilkerson and his colleagues
strongly suggest that the C.I.A. is under siege not because it was wrong
but because it was right. Agency analysts were not serving the White
House's agenda.

What followed was not just the catastrophic foreign-policy blunder in Iraq
but also an ongoing battle for the future of U.S. intelligence. Top
officials have been leaving the C.I.A. in droves--including Porter Goss,
who mysteriously resigned in May, just 18 months after he had been
handpicked by Bush to be the director of Central Intelligence. Whatever
the reason for his sudden departure, anyone at the top of the C.I.A.,
Goss's replacement included, ultimately must worry about serving two
masters: a White House that desperately wants intelligence it can use to
remake the Middle East and a spy agency that is acutely sensitive to
having its intelligence politicized.

CUI BONO?

Unraveling a disinformation campaign is no easy task. It means entering a
kingdom of shadows peopled by would-be Machiavellis who are practiced in
the art of deception. "In the world of fabrication, you don't just drop
something and let someone pick it up," says Bearden. "Your first goal is
to make sure it doesn't find its way back to you, so you do several
things. You may start out with a document that is a forgery, that is a
photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, which makes it hard to track
down. You go through cutouts so that the person who puts it out doesn't
know where it came from. And you build in subtle, nuanced errors so you
can say, 'We would never misspell that.' If it's very cleverly done, it's
a chess game, not checkers."

Reporters who have entered this labyrinth often emerge so perplexed that
they choose not to write about it. "The chances of being manipulated are
very high," says Claudio Gatti, a New York-based investigative reporter at
Il Sole, the Italian business daily. "That's why I decided to stay out of
it."

Despite such obstacles, a handful of independent journalists and bloggers
on both sides of the Atlantic have been pursuing the story. "Most of the
people you are dealing with are professional liars, which really leaves
you with your work cut out for you as a reporter," says Joshua Micah
Marshall, who has written about the documents on his blog, Talking Points
Memo.

So far, no one has figured out all the answers. There is even disagreement
about why the documents were fabricated. In a story by Seymour Hersh in
The New Yorker, a source suggested that retired and embittered C.I.A.
operatives had intentionally put together a lousy forgery in hopes of
embarrassing Cheney's hawkish followers. But no evidence has emerged to
support this theory, and many intelligence officers embrace a simpler
explanation. "They needed this for the case to go to war," says Melvin
Goodman, who is now a senior fellow at the Center for International
Policy. "It serves no other purpose."

By and large, knowledgeable government officials in the U.S., Italy,
France, and Great Britain are mum. Official government investigations in
Italy, the U.K., and the U.S.--including a two-year probe into pre-war
intelligence failures by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence--have
been so highly politicized as to be completely unsatisfying.

Only the ongoing investigation by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
into the Plamegate scandal bears promise. However, it is focused not on
the forgeries but on the leaks that were apparently designed to discredit
former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson and that outed his wife, former C.I.A.
agent Valerie Plame, after Wilson revealed that the Niger story was false.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President
Dick Cheney, has already been charged in the case, and President Bush's
senior adviser, Karl Rove, has been Fitzgerald's other principal target.
But, with the dubious exception of an ongoing F.B.I. inquiry, there is no
official probe into who forged the Niger documents, who disseminated them,
and why, after they had been repeatedly discredited, they kept
resurfacing.

Meanwhile, from Rome to Washington, and countless points in between,
journalists, bloggers, politicians, and intelligence agents are pondering
the same question: Cui bono? Who benefits? Who wanted to start the war?

THE STUFF OF CONSPIRACY FANTASIES

If Italy seems like an unlikely setting for a black-propaganda plot to
start the Iraq war, it is worth remembering that Et tu, Brute is part of
the local idiom, and Machiavelli was a native son. Accordingly, one can't
probe Nigergate without examining the rich tapestry of intrigue that is
Italian intelligence.

Because Italy emerged from World War II with a strong Communist Party,
domestic politics had elements of a civil war, explains Guido Moltedo,
editor of Europa, a center-left daily in Italy. That meant
ultra-conservative Cold Warriors battled the Communists not just
electorally but through undercover operations in the intelligence world.
"In addition to the secret service, SISMI, there was another, informal,
parallel secret service," Moltedo says. "It was known as Propaganda Due."

Led by a neo-Fascist named Licio Gelli, Propaganda Due, with its penchant
for exotic covert operations, was the stuff of conspiracy
fantasies--except that it was real. According to The Sunday Times of
London, until 1986 members agreed to have their throats slit and tongues
cut out if they broke their oaths. Subversive, authoritarian, and
right-wing, the group was sometimes referred to as the P-2 Masonic Lodge
because of its ties to the secret society of Masons, and it served as the
covert intelligence agency for militant anti-Communists. It was also
linked to Operation Gladio, a secret paramilitary wing in NATO that
supported far-right military coups in Greece and Turkey during the Cold
War.

In 1981 the Italian Parliament banned Propaganda Due, and all secret
organizations in Italy, after an investigation concluded that it had
infiltrated the highest levels of Italy's judiciary, parliament, military,
and press, and was tied to assassinations, kidnappings, and arms deals
around the world. But before it was banned, P-2 members and their allies
participated in two ideologically driven international black-propaganda
schemes that foreshadowed the Niger Embassy job 20 years later. The first
took place in 1980, when Francesco Pazienza, a charming and sophisticated
Propaganda Due operative at the highest levels of SISMI, allegedly teamed
up with an American named Michael Ledeen, a Rome correspondent for The New
Republic. According to The Wall Street Journal, Pazienza said he first met
Ledeen that summer, through a SISMI agent in New York who was working
under the cover of a U.N. job.

The end result of their collaboration was a widely publicized story that
helped Ronald Reagan unseat President Jimmy Carter, whom they considered
too timid in his approach to winning the Cold War. The target was Carter's
younger brother, Billy, a hard-drinking "good ol' boy" from Georgia who
repeatedly embarrassed his sibling in the White House.

It began after Billy mortified the president in 1979 by going to Tripoli
at a time when Libya's leader, Muammar Qaddafi, was reviled as a radical
Arab dictator who supported terrorism. Coupled with Billy's later
admission that he had received a $220,000 loan from Qaddafi's regime, the
ensuing "Billygate" scandal made headlines across America and led to a
Senate investigation. But it had died down as the November 1980 elections
approached.

Then, in the last week of October 1980, just two weeks before the
election, The New Republic in Washington and Now magazine in Great Britain
published a story co-authored by Michael Ledeen and Arnaud de Borchgrave,
now an editor-at-large at The Washington Times and United Press
International. According to the story, headlined "Qaddafi, Arafat and
Billy Carter," the president's brother had been given an additional
$50,000 by Qaddafi, on top of the loan, and had met secretly with
Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. The story had come
dramatically back to life. The new charges were disputed by Billy Carter
and many others, and were never corroborated.

A 1985 investigation by Jonathan Kwitny in The Wall Street Journal
reported that the New Republic article was part of a larger disinformation
scam run by Ledeen and SISMI to tilt the election, and that "Billy Carter
wasn't the only one allegedly getting money from a foreign government."
According to Pazienza, Kwitny reported, Michael Ledeen had received at
least $120,000 from SISMI in 1980 or 1981 for his work on Billygate and
other projects. Ledeen even had a coded identity, Z-3, and had money sent
to him in a Bermuda bank account, Pazienza said.

Ledeen told the Journal that a consulting firm he owned, I.S.I., worked
for SISMI and may have received the money. He said he did not recall
whether he had a coded identity.

Pazienza was subsequently convicted in absentia on multiple charges,
including having used extortion and fraud to obtain embarrassing facts
about Billy Carter. Ledeen was never charged with any crime, but he was
cited in Pazienza's indictment, which read, "With the illicit support of
the SISMI and in collaboration with the well-known American 'Italianist'
Michael Ledeen, Pazienza succeeded in extorting, also using fraudulent
means, information ... on the Libyan business of Billy Carter, the brother
of the then President of the United States."

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Ledeen denied having worked with
Pazienza or Propaganda Due as part of a disinformation scheme. "I knew
Pazienza," he explained. "I didn't think P-2 existed. I thought it was all
nonsense--typical Italian fantasy."

He added, "I'm not aware that anything in [the Billygate] story turned out
to be false."

Asked if he had worked with SISMI, Ledeen told Vanity Fair, "No," then
added, "I had a project with SISMI--one project." He described it as a
simple "desktop" exercise in 1979 or 1980, in which he taught Italian
intelligence how to deal with U.S. officials on extradition matters. His
fee, he said, was about $10,000.

THE BULGARIAN CONNECTION

In 1981, Ledeen played a role in what has been widely characterized as
another disinformation operation. Once again his alleged ties to SISMI
were front and center. The episode began after Mehmet Ali Agca, the
right-wing terrorist who shot Pope John Paul II that May, told authorities
that he had been taking orders from the Soviet Union's K.G.B. and
Bulgaria's secret service. With Ronald Reagan newly installed in the White
House, the so-called Bulgarian Connection made perfect Cold War
propaganda. Michael Ledeen was one of its most vocal proponents, promoting
it on TV and in newspapers all over the world. In light of the ascendancy
of the Solidarity Movement in Poland, the Pope's homeland, the Bulgarian
Connection played a role in the demise of Communism in 1989.

There was just one problem--it probably wasn't true. "It just doesn't pass
the giggle test," says Frank Brodhead, co-author of The Rise and Fall of
the Bulgarian Connection. "Agca, the shooter, had been deeply embedded in
a Turkish youth group of the Fascist National Action Party known as the
Gray Wolves. It seemed illogical that a Turkish Fascist would work with
Bulgarian Communists."

The only real source for the Bulgarian Connection theory was Agca himself,
a pathological liar given to delusional proclamations such as his
insistence that he was Jesus Christ. When eight men were later tried in
Italian courts as part of the Bulgarian Connection case, all were
acquitted for lack of evidence. One reason was that Agca had changed his
story repeatedly. On the witness stand, he said he had put forth the
Bulgarian Connection theory after Francesco Pazienza offered him freedom
in exchange for the testimony. He subsequently changed that story as well.

Years later, Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs, who had initially
believed the theory, wrote that "I became convinced ... that the Bulgarian
connection was invented by Agca with the hope of winning his release from
prison. ... He was aided and abetted in this scheme by right-wing
conspiracy theorists in the United States and William Casey's Central
Intelligence Agency, which became a victim of its own disinformation
campaign."

Exactly which Americans might have been behind such a campaign? According
to a 1987 article in The Nation, Francesco Pazienza said Ledeen "was the
person responsible for dreaming up the 'Bulgarian connection' behind the
plot to kill the Pope." Similarly, according to The Rise and Fall of the
Bulgarian Connection, Pazienza claimed that Ledeen had worked closely with
the SISMI team that coached Agca on his testimony.

But Ledeen angrily denies the charges. "It's all a lie," he says. He adds
that he protested to The Wall Street Journal when it first reported on his
alleged relationship with Pazienza: "If one-tenth of it were true, I would
not have security clearances, but I do."

Not long before his death, in 2005, Pope John Paul II announced that he
did not believe the Bulgarian Connection theory. But that wasn't the end
of it. In March 2006 an Italian commission run by Paolo Guzzanti, a
senator in the right-wing Forza Italia Party, reopened the case and
concluded that the Bulgarian Connection was real. According to Frank
Brodhead, however, the new conclusions are based on the same old
information, which is "bogus at best and at worst deliberately
misleading."

In the wake of Billygate and the Bulgarian Connection, Ledeen allegedly
began to play a role as a behind-the-scenes operative with the ascendant
Reagan-Bush team. According to Mission Italy, by former ambassador to
Italy Richard Gardner, after Reagan's victory, but while Jimmy Carter was
still president, "Ledeen and Pazienza set themselves up as the preferred
channel between Italian political leaders and members of the new
administration." Ledeen responds, "Gardner was wrong. And, by the way, he
had every opportunity to raise it with me and never did."

When Reagan took office, Ledeen was made special assistant to Alexander
Haig, Reagan's secretary of state. Ledeen later took a staff position on
Reagan's National Security Council and played a key role in initiating the
illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran that became known as the
Iran-contra scandal.

THE ITALIAN JOB

In 1981, P-2 was outlawed and police raided the home of its leader, Licio
Gelli. Authorities found a list of nearly a thousand prominent public
figures in Italy who were believed to be members. Among them was a
billionaire media mogul who had not yet entered politics--Silvio
Berlusconi.

In 1994, Berlusconi was elected prime minister. Rather than distancing
himself from the criminal organization, he told a reporter that "P-2 had
brought together the best men in the country," and he began to execute
policies very much aligned with it.

Among those Berlusconi appointed to powerful national-security positions
were two men known to Ledeen. A founding member of Forza Italia, Minister
of Defense Antonio Martino was a well-known figure in Washington neocon
circles and had been close friends with Michael Ledeen since the 1970s.
Ledeen also occasionally played bridge with the head of SISMI under
Berlusconi, Nicolr Pollari. "Michael Ledeen is connected to all the
players," says Philip Giraldi, who was stationed in Italy with the C.I.A.
in the 1980s and has been a keen observer of Ledeen over the years.

Enter Rocco Martino. An elegantly attired man in his 60s with white hair
and a neatly trimmed mustache, Martino (no relation to Antonio Martino)
had served in SISMI until 1999 and had a long history of peddling
information to other intelligence services in Europe, including France's
Direction Ginirale de la Sicuriti Extirieure (D.G.S.E.).

By 2000, however, Martino had fallen on hard times financially. It was
then that a longtime colleague named Antonio Nucera offered him a
lucrative proposition. A SISMI colonel specializing in
counter-proliferation and W.M.D., Nucera told Martino that Italian
intelligence had long had an "asset" in the Niger Embassy in Rome: a woman
who was about 60 years old, had a low-level job, and occasionally sold off
embassy documents to SISMI. But now SISMI had no more use for the
woman--who is known in the Italian press as "La Signora" and has recently
been identified as the ambassador's assistant, Laura Montini. Perhaps,
Nucera suggested, Martino could use La Signora as Italian intelligence
had, paying her to pass on documents she copied or stole from the embassy.

Shortly after New Year's 2001, the break-in took place at the Niger
Embassy. Martino denies any participation. There are many conflicting
accounts of the episode. According to La Repubblica, a left-of-center
daily which has published an investigative series on Nigergate, documents
stolen from the embassy ultimately were combined with other papers that
were already in SISMI archives. In addition, the embassy stationery was
apparently used to forge records about a phony uranium deal between Niger
and Iraq. The Sunday Times of London recently reported that the papers had
been forged for profit by two embassy employees: Adam Maiga Zakariaou, the
consul, and Montini. But many believe that they, wittingly or not, were
merely pawns in a larger game.

According to Martino, the documents were not given to him all at once.
First, he explained, SISMI had La Signora give him documents that had come
from the robbery: "I was told that a woman in the Niger Embassy in Rome
had a gift for me. I met her and she gave me documents." Later, he said,
SISMI dug into its archives and added new papers. There was a codebook,
then a dossier with a mixture of fake and genuine documents. Among them
was an authentic telex dated February 1, 1999, in which Adamou Chikou, the
ambassador from Niger, wrote another official about a forthcoming visit
from Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq's ambassador to the Vatican.

The last one Martino says he received, and the most important one, was not
genuine, however. Dated July 27, 2000, it was a two-page memo purportedly
sent to the president of Niger concerning the sale of 500 tons of pure
uranium per year by Niger to Iraq.

The forged documents were full of errors. A letter dated October 10, 2000,
was signed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Allele Elhadj Habibou--even
though he had been out of office for more than a decade. Its September 28
postmark indicated that somehow the letter had been received nearly two
weeks before it was sent. In another letter, President Tandja Mamadou's
signature appeared to be phony. The accord signed by him referred to the
Niger constitution of May 12, 1965, when a new constitution had been
enacted in 1999. One of the letters was dated July 30, 1999, but referred
to agreements that were not made until a year later. Finally, the
agreement called for the 500 tons of uranium to be transferred from one
ship to another in international waters--a spectacularly difficult feat.

Martino, however, says he was unaware that they were forgeries. He was
merely interested in a payday. "He was not looking for great amounts of
money--$10,000, $20,000, maybe $40,000," says Carlo Bonini, who
co-authored the Nigergate stories for La Repubblica.

SISMI director Nicolr Pollari acknowledges that Martino has worked for
Italian intelligence. But, beyond that, he claims that Italian
intelligence played no role in the Niger operation. "[Nucera] offered
[Martino] the use of an intelligence asset [La Signora]--no big deal, you
understand--one who was still on the books but inactive--to give a hand to
Martino," Pollari told a reporter.

Rocco Martino, however, said SISMI had another agenda: "SISMI wanted me to
pass on the documents, but they didn't want anyone to know they had been
involved."

THE CUTOUT

Whom should we believe? Characterized by La Repubblica as "a failed
carabiniere and dishonest spy," a "double-dealer" who "plays every side of
the fence," Martino has reportedly been arrested for extortion and for
possession of stolen checks, and was fired by SISMI in 1999 for "conduct
unbecoming." Elsewhere he has been described as "a trickster" and "a
rogue." He is a man who traffics in deception.

On the other hand, operatives like Martino are highly valued precisely
because they can be discredited so easily. "If there were a deep-cover
unit of SISMI, it would make sense to use someone like Rocco," says
Patrick Lang. "His flakiness gives SISMI plausible deniability. It's their
cover story. That's standard tradecraft with the agencies."

In other words, Rocco Martino may well have been the cutout for SISMI, a
postman who, if he dared to go public, could be disavowed.

Martino, who is the subject of a recently reopened investigation by the
public prosecutor in Rome, has declined to talk to the press in recent
months. But before going silent, he gave interviews to Italian, British,
and American journalists characterizing himself as a pawn who distributed
the documents on behalf of SISMI and believed that they were authentic. "I
sell information, I admit," Martino told The Sunday Times of London, using
his pseudonym, Giacomo. "But I sell only good information."

Over the next two years, the Niger documents and reports based on them
made at least three journeys to the C.I.A. They also found their way to
the U.S. Embassy in Rome, to the White House, to British intelligence, to
French intelligence, and to Elisabetta Burba, a journalist at Panorama,
the Milan-based newsmagazine. Each of these recipients in turn shared the
documents or their contents with others, in effect creating an echo
chamber that gave the illusion that several independent sources had
corroborated an Iraq-Niger uranium deal.

"It was the Italians and Americans together who were behind it. It was all
a disinformation operation," Martino told a reporter at England's Guardian
newspaper. He called himself "a tool used by someone for games much bigger
than me."

What exactly might those games have been? Berlusconi defined his role on
the world stage largely in terms of his relationship with the U.S., and he
jumped at the chance to forge closer ties with the White House when Bush
took office, in 2001. In its three-part series on Nigergate, La Repubblica
charges that Berlusconi was so eager to win Bush's favor that he
"instructed Italian Military Intelligence to plant the evidence
implicating Saddam in a bogus uranium deal with Niger." (The Berlusconi
government, which lost power in April, denied the charge.)

Because the Niger break-in happened before Bush took office, La Repubblica
and many others assume that the robbery was initiated as a small-time job.
"When the story began, they were not thinking about Iraq," says La
Repubblica's Bonini. "They were just trying to gather something that could
be sold on the black market to the intelligence community."

But it is also possible that from its very inception the Niger operation
was aimed at starting an invasion of Iraq. As early as 1992,
neoconservative hawks in the administration of George H. W. Bush, under
the aegis of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, unsuccessfully lobbied for
regime change in Iraq as part of a grandiose vision for American supremacy
in the next century.

During the Clinton era, the neocons persisted with their policy goals, and
in early 1998 they twice lobbied President Clinton to bring down Saddam.
The second attempt came in the form of "An Open Letter to the President"
by leading neoconservatives, many of whom later played key roles in the
Bush administration, where they became known as the Vulcans. Among those
who signed were Michael Ledeen, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle,
Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and David Wurmser.

According to Patrick Lang, the initial Niger Embassy robbery could have
been aimed at starting the war even though Bush had yet to be inaugurated.
The scenario, he cautions, is merely speculation on his part. But he says
that the neocons wouldn't have hesitated to reach out to SISMI even before
Bush took office. "There's no doubt in my mind that the neocons had their
eye on Iraq," he says. "This is something they intended to do, and they
would have communicated that to SISMI or anybody else to get the help they
wanted."

In Lang's view, SISMI would also have wanted to ingratiate itself with the
incoming administration. "These foreign intelligence agencies are so
dependent on us that the urge to acquire I.O.U.'s is a powerful incentive
by itself," he says. "It would have been very easy to have someone go to
Rome and talk to them, or have one of the SISMI guys here [in Washington],
perhaps the SISMI officer in the Italian Embassy, talk to them."

Lang's scenario rings true to Frank Brodhead. "When I read that the Niger
break-in took place before Bush took office, I immediately thought back to
the Bulgarian Connection," he says. "That job was done during the
transition as well. [Michael] Ledeen ... saw himself as making a serious
contribution to the Cold War through the Bulgarian Connection. Now, it was
possible, 20 years later, that he was doing the same to start the war in
Iraq."

Brodhead is not alone. Several press outlets, including the San Francisco
Chronicle, United Press International, and The American Conservative, as
well as a chorus of bloggers--Daily Kos, the Left Coaster, and Raw Story
among them--have raised the question of whether Ledeen was involved with
the Niger documents. But none have found any hard evidence.

AN ABSURD IDEA

Early in the summer of 2001, about six months after the break-in,
information from the forged documents was given to U.S. intelligence for
the first time. Details about the transfer are extremely sketchy, but it
is highly probable that the reports were summaries of the documents. It is
standard practice for intelligence services, in the interests of
protecting sources, to share reports, rather than original documents, with
allies.

To many W.M.D. analysts in the C.I.A. and the military, the initial
reports sounded ridiculous. "The idea that you could get that much
yellowcake out of Niger without the French knowing, that you could have a
train big enough to carry it, much less a ship, is absurd," says Larry
Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff.

"The reports made no sense on the face of it," says Ray McGovern, the
former C.I.A. analyst, who challenged Rumsfeld about the war at a public
event this spring. "Most of us knew the Iraqis already had yellowcake. It
is a sophisticated process to change it into a very refined state and they
didn't have the technology."

"Yellowcake is unprocessed bulk ore," explains Karen Kwiatkowski, who has
written extensively about the intelligence fiasco that led to the war. "If
Saddam wanted to make nuclear bombs, why would he want unprocessed ore
when the best thing to do would be to get processed stuff in the Congo?"

"When it comes to raw reports, all manner of crap comes out of the field,"
McGovern adds. "The C.I.A. traditionally has had experienced officers....
They are qualified to see if these reports make sense. For some reason,
perhaps out of cowardice, these reports were judged to be of such
potential significance that no one wanted to sit on it."

Since Niger was a former French colony, French intelligence was the
logical choice to vet the allegations. "The French were managing partners
of the international consortium in Niger," explains Joseph Wilson, who
eventually traveled to Niger to investigate the uranium claim. "The French
did the actual mining and shipping of it."

So Alain Chouet, then head of security intelligence for France's D.G.S.E.,
was tasked with checking out the first Niger report for the C.I.A. He
recalls that much of the information he received from Langley was vague,
with the exception of one striking detail. The agency had heard that in
1999 the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican, Wissam al-Zahawie, had made an
unusual visit to four African countries, including Niger. Analysts feared
that the trip may have been a prelude to a uranium deal.

Chouet soon found that the al-Zahawie visit was no secret. It had been
covered by the local press in Niger at the time, and reports had surfaced
in French, British, and American intelligence. Chouet had a 700-man unit
at his command, and he ordered an extensive on-the-ground investigation in
Niger.

"In France, we've always been very careful about both problems of uranium
production in Niger and Iraqi attempts to get uranium," Chouet told the
Los Angeles Times last December. Having concluded that nothing had come of
al-Zahawie's visit and that there was no evidence of a uranium deal,
French intelligence forwarded its assessment to the C.I.A. But the Niger
affair had just begun.

U

A few weeks later, on September 11, 2001, terrorists struck the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. The neocons had long said that they needed
another Pearl Harbor in order to realize their dreams of regime change in
Iraq. Now it had taken place. According to Bob Woodward's Bush at War,
C.I.A. director George Tenet reported to the White House within hours that
Osama bin Laden was behind the attack. But by midday Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld had already raised the question of attacking Saddam.
Likewise, four days later, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
advised President Bush not to bother going after Osama bin Laden in
Afghanistan but to train American guns on Iraq instead.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Bush's approval ratings soared to 90
percent, the all-time high for any U.S. president. This was the perfect
opportunity to go after Saddam, except for one thing: the available
intelligence did not support the action. Ten days after the attacks, Bush
was told in a classified briefing that there was no credible evidence
linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.

Now the Niger operation went into overdrive. The details of how this
happened are murky. Accounts from usually reputable newspapers, the United
States Senate Intelligence Committee, and other sources are wildly at
variance with one another. In October 2001, SISMI, which had already sent
reports about the alleged Niger deal to French intelligence, finally had
them forwarded to British and U.S. intelligence. The exact dates of the
distribution are unclear, but, according to the British daily The
Independent, SISMI sent the dossier to the Vauxhall Cross headquarters of
M.I.6, in South London. The delivery might have been made, Italian reports
say, by Rocco Martino. At roughly the same time, in early October,
according to La Repubblica, SISMI also gave a report about the Niger deal
to Jeff Castelli, the C.I.A. station chief in Rome. According to a recent
broadcast by CBS's 60 Minutes, C.I.A. analysts who saw the material were
skeptical.

In addition, on October 15, 2001, Nicolr Pollari, the newly appointed
chief of SISMI, made his first visit to his counterparts at the C.I.A.
Under pressure from Berlusconi to turn over information that would be
useful for America's Iraq-war policy, Pollari met "with top C.I.A.
officials to provide a SISMI dossier indicating that Iraq had sought to
buy uranium in Niger," according to an article by Philip Giraldi in The
American Conservative.

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the analysts saw Pollari's
report as "very limited and lacking needed detail." Nevertheless, the
State Department had the U.S. Embassy in Niger check out the alleged
uranium deal. On November 20, 2001, the U.S. Embassy in Niamey, the
capital of Niger, sent a cable reporting that the director general of
Niger's French-led consortium had told the American ambassador that "there
was no possibility" that the African nation had diverted any yellowcake to
Iraq.

In December 2001, Greg Thielmann, director for strategic proliferation and
military affairs at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and
Research (INR), reviewed Iraq's W.M.D. program for Colin Powell. As for
the Niger report, Thielmann said, "A whole lot of things told us that the
report was bogus. This wasn't highly contested. There weren't strong
advocates on the other side. It was done, shot down."

"FASTER, PLEASE"

Michael Ledeen waves an unlit cigar as he welcomes me into his 11th-floor
office at the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington. Home to Irving
Kristol, Lynne Cheney, Richard Perle, and countless other stars in the
neocon firmament, the A.E.I. is one of the most powerful think tanks in
the country. It has sent more than two dozen of its alumni to the Bush
administration.

After 17 years at the A.E.I., Ledeen is the institute's Freedom Scholar
and rates a corner office decorated with prints of the Colosseum in Rome,
the Duomo in Florence, and other mementos of his days in Italy. Having
served as a consultant at the Pentagon and the State Department and on the
National Security Council, Ledeen relishes playing the role of the
intriguer. In the Iran-contra scandal, Ledeen won notoriety for
introducing Oliver North to his friend the Iranian arms dealer and con man
Manucher Ghorbanifar, who was labeled "an intelligence fabricator" by the
C.I.A. Ledeen has made his share of enemies along the way, especially at
the C.I.A. According to Larry Johnson, "The C.I.A. viewed Ledeen as a
meddlesome troublemaker who usually got it wrong and was allied with
people who were dangerous to the U.S., such as Ghorbanifar."

Apprised of such views, Ledeen, no fan of the C.I.A., responds, "Oh,
that's a shock. Ghorbanifar over the years has been one of the most
accurate sources of understanding what is going on in Iran. ... I have
always thought the C.I.A. made a big mistake."

Bearded and balding, the 65-year-old Ledeen makes for an unlikely 007. On
the one hand, he can be self-deprecating, describing himself as "powerless
.. and, well, schlumpy." On the other, one of his bios grandiosely
proclaims that he has executed "the most sensitive and dangerous missions
in recent American history."

Ledeen props his feet up on his desk next to an icon of villainy--a mask
of Darth Vader. "I'm tired of being described as someone who likes Fascism
and is a warmonger," he says. "I've said it over and over again. I'm not
the person you think you are looking for. ... I think it's obvious I have
no clout in the administration. I haven't had a role. I don't have a
role." He barely knows Karl Rove, he says. He has "very occasionally" had
discussions with Cheney's office. And he denies reports that he was a
consultant for Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans, the division of
the Pentagon that was famous for cherry-picking and "stovepiping"
intelligence that suited its policy of invading Iraq. "I have had no
professional relationship with any agency of the federal government during
the Bush Administration," Ledeen later clarifies via e-mail. "That
includes the Pentagon."

However, there is considerable evidence that Ledeen has had far more
access than he lets on to the highest levels of the Bush administration.
Even before Bush took office, Rove asked Ledeen to funnel ideas to the
White House. According to The Washington Post, some of Ledeen's ideas
became "official policy or rhetoric." As for Ledeen's role in the Office
of Special Plans, Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the Pentagon during the
run-up to the Iraq war, has described Ledeen as Feith's collaborator and
said in an e-mail that he "was in and out of there (OSP) all the time."

Through his ties to Rove and Deputy National-Security Adviser Stephen
Hadley, Michael Ledeen was also wired into the White House Iraq Group,
which was charged with marketing an invasion of Iraq.

Ledeen claims, as he told the Web site Raw Story, that he had strongly
advised against the plan, saying that the invasion of Iraq was the "wrong
war, wrong time, wrong way, wrong place." But the truth is somewhat more
complicated. Ledeen had urged regime change in Iraq since 1998, and just
four hours after the 9/11 attacks he posted an article on the National
Review Web site urging Bush to take "the fight directly to Saddam on his
own territory."

But to Ledeen, Iraq was just one part of a larger war. As he later told a
seminar, "All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then
we will do Iraq ... that is entirely the wrong way to go about it." He
urged Americans not to try to "piece together clever diplomatic solutions
to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants."

In January 2003, two months before the war started, he wrote, "If we were
serious about waging this war, we would, at an absolute minimum, support
the Iranian people's brave campaign against their tyrants ... and
recognize an Iraqi government in exile in the 'no fly' zones we control.
.. If we don't, we may well find ourselves facing a far bigger problem
than Saddam alone."

Ledeen repeatedly urged war or destabilization not just in Iraq but also
in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, even Saudi Arabia. "One can only hope that we
turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please," he wrote. "Faster,
please" became his mantra, repeated incessantly in his National Review
columns.

Rhapsodizing about war week after week, Ledeen became chief rhetorician
for neoconservative visionaries who wanted to remake the Middle East.
"Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and
abroad," he wrote after the attacks. "We must destroy [our enemies] to
advance our historic mission."

The U.S. must be "imperious, ruthless, and relentless," he argued, until
there has been "total surrender" by the Muslim world. "We must keep our
fangs bared," he wrote, "we must remind them daily that we Americans are
in a rage, and we will not rest until we have avenged our dead, we will
not be sated until we have had the blood of every miserable little tyrant
in the Middle East, until every leader of every cell of the terror network
is dead or locked securely away, and every last drooling anti-Semitic and
anti-American mullah, imam, sheikh, and ayatollah is either singing the
praises of the United States of America, or pumping gasoline, for a dime a
gallon, on an American military base near the Arctic Circle."

"AN OLD FRIEND OF ITALY"

As 2001 drew to a close, such positions seemed decidedly outside the
mainstream. Career military and intelligence professionals saw the
relatively moderate Colin Powell and George Tenet, a Clinton appointee,
reassuringly ensconced as secretary of state and director of central
intelligence, respectively. "George Tenet had been there for a number of
years," says Larry Wilkerson. "He knew what he was doing. He was a
professional. What did he have to do with Douglas Feith? It didn't seem
possible that someone like Douglas Feith could exercise such influence."
But a schism was growing between the cautious realism of analysts in the
C.I.A. and the State Department, on one side, and the hawkish ambitions of
Dick Cheney and the Pentagon, on the other.

As for Ledeen, how much clout he carried with the administration is a
matter of debate. But one measure of his influence may be a series of
secret meetings he set up--with Hadley's approval, he claims--in Rome in
the second week of December 2001. During these meetings, Ghorbanifar
introduced American officials to other Iranians who passed on information
about their government's plans to target U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
Among those in attendance were Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin of the
Office of Special Plans. (In a separate matter, Franklin has since pleaded
guilty to passing secrets to Israel and been sentenced to 12 years in
prison.) "That information saved American lives in Afghanistan," Ledeen
asserts.

But other accounts suggest that Ledeen may have used his time in Italy to
reactivate old friendships that played a role in the Niger affair.

According to La Repubblica, Nicolr Pollari had become frustrated by the
C.I.A.'s refusal to let SISMI deliver a smoking gun that would justify an
invasion of Iraq. At an unspecified date, he discussed the issue with
Ledeen's longtime friend Minister of Defense Antonio Martino. Martino, the
paper reported, told Pollari to expect a visit from "an old friend of
Italy," namely Ledeen. Soon afterward, according to La Repubblica, Pollari
allegedly took up the Niger matter with Ledeen when he was in Rome. Ledeen
denies having had any such conversations. Pollari declined to be
interviewed by Vanity Fair, and has denied playing any role in the Niger
affair. Martino has declined to comment.

By early 2002, career military and intelligence professionals had seen the
Niger reports repeatedly discredited, and assumed that the issue was dead.
But that was not the case.

"These guys in the Office of Special Plans delighted in telling people,
'You don't understand your own data,'" says Patrick Lang. "'We know that
Saddam is evil and deceptive, and if you see this piece of data, to say
just because it is not well supported it's not true is to be politically
naove.'"

Not everybody in the C.I.A. was of one mind with regard to the alleged
Niger deal. As the Senate Intelligence Committee report points out, some
analysts at the C.I.A. and other agencies considered the Niger deal to be
"possible." In the fall of 2002, the C.I.A. approved language referring to
the Niger deal in one speech by the president but vetoed it in another.
And in December 2002, analysts at WINPAC, the C.I.A.'s center for Weapons
Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control, produced a paper that
chided Iraq for not acknowledging its "efforts to procure uranium from
Niger."

Nevertheless, the C.I.A. had enough doubts about the Niger claims to
initially leave them out of the President's Daily Brief (P.D.B.), the
intelligence updates given each morning to President Bush. On February 5,
2002, however, for reasons that remain unclear, the C.I.A. issued a new
report on the alleged Niger deal, one that provided significantly more
detail, including what was said to be "verbatim text" of the accord
between Niger and Iraq. In the State Department, analysts were still
suspicious of the reports. But in the Pentagon, the Vulcans pounced on the
new material. On February 12, the D.I.A. issued "a finished intelligence
product," titled "Niamey Signed an Agreement to Sell 500 Tons of Uranium a
Year to Baghdad," and passed it to the office of Vice President Dick
Cheney.

Cheney gave the Niger claims new life. "The [C.I.A.] briefer came in.
Cheney said, 'What about this?,' and the briefer hadn't heard one word,
because no one in the agency thought it was of any significance," says Ray
McGovern, whose job at the C.I.A. included preparing and delivering the
P.D.B. in the Reagan era. "But when a briefer gets a request from the vice
president of the United States, he goes back and leaves no stone
unturned."

The C.I.A.'s Directorate of Operations, the branch responsible for the
clandestine collection of foreign intelligence, immediately tasked its
Counterproliferation Division (CPD) with getting more information.
According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, just
hours after Dick Cheney had gotten the Niger report, Valerie Plame, who
worked in the CPD, wrote a memo to the division's deputy chief that read,
"My husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the
former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of
whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity."

Her husband, as the world now knows, was Joseph Wilson, who had served as
deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and as ambassador
to Gabon under George H. W. Bush. Wilson approached the task with a
healthy skepticism. "The office of the vice president had asked me to
check this out," Wilson told Vanity Fair. "My skepticism was the same as
it would have been with any unverified intelligence report, because there
is a lot of stuff that comes over the transom every day."

He arrived in Niger on February 26, 2002. "Niger has a simplistic
government structure," he says. "Both the minister of mines and the prime
minister had gone through the mines. The French were managing partners of
the international consortium. The French mining company actually had its
hands on the product. Nobody else in the consortium had operators on the
ground."

In addition, Wilson personally knew Wissam al-Zahawie, the Iraqi
ambassador to the Vatican, whose visit to Niger had raised suspicions.
"Wissam al-Zahawie was a world-class opera singer, and he went to the
Vatican as his last post so he could be near the great European opera
houses in Rome," says Wilson. "He was not in the Ba'thist inner circle. He
was not in Saddam's tribe. The idea that he would be entrusted with this
super-secret mission to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger is out of the
question."

On March 1, the State Department weighed in with another cable, headed
"Sale of Niger Uranium to Iraq Unlikely." Citing "unequivocal" control of
the mines, the cable asserted that President Tandja of Niger would not
want to risk good relations with the U.S. by trading with Iraq, and cited
the prohibitive logistical problems in such a transaction.

A few days later, Wilson returned from Niger and told C.I.A. officials
that he had found no evidence to support the uranium charges. By now the
Niger reports had been discredited more than half a dozen times--by the
French in 2001, by the C.I.A. in Rome and in Langley, by the State
Department's INR, by some analysts in the Pentagon, by the ambassador to
Niger, by Wilson, and yet again by State.

But the top brass at the C.I.A. knew what Cheney wanted. They went back to
French intelligence again--twice. According to the Los Angeles Times, the
second request that year, in mid-2002, "was more urgent and more
specific." The C.I.A. sought confirmation of the alleged agreement by
Niger to sell 500 tons of yellowcake to Iraq. Alain Chouet reportedly sent
five or six men to Niger and again found the charges to be false. Then his
staff noticed that the allegations matched those brought to him by Rocco
Martino. "We told the Americans, 'Bullshit. It doesn't make any sense.'"

THE MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Until this point, the American people had been largely oblivious to the
Bush administration's emerging policy toward Iraq. But in August 2002,
just as Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans formally set up shop in
the Pentagon, White House chief of staff Andrew Card launched the White
House Iraq Group to sell the war through the media. The plan was to open a
full-fledged marketing campaign after Labor Day, featuring images of
nuclear devastation and threats of biological and chemical weapons. A key
piece of the evidence was the Niger dossier.

Test-marketing began in August, with Cheney and his surrogates asserting
repeatedly that "many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear
weapons fairly soon." Making Cheney seem moderate by comparison, a piece
by Ledeen appeared in The Wall Street Journal on September 4, suggesting
that, in addition to Iraq, the governments of Iran, Syria, and Saudi
Arabia should be overthrown.

But the real push was delayed until the second week of September. As Card
famously put it, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new
products in August." The first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was
perfect.

The opening salvo was fired on Sunday, September 8, 2002, when
National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN, "There will always be
some uncertainty about how quickly [Saddam] can acquire nuclear weapons.
But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

The smoking-gun-mushroom-cloud catchphrase was such a hit that Bush,
Cheney, and Rumsfeld all picked it up in one form or another, sending it
out repeatedly to the entire country.

Meanwhile, the C.I.A. had finally penetrated Saddam's inner sanctum by
"turning" Foreign Minister Naji Sabri. Tenet delivered the news personally
to Bush, Cheney, and other top officials in September 2002. Initially, the
White House was ecstatic about this coup.

But, according to Tyler Drumheller, the C.I.A.'s chief of operations in
Europe until he retired last year, that reaction changed dramatically when
they heard what Sabri had to say. "He told us that they had no active
weapons-of-mass-destruction program," Drumheller told 60 Minutes. "The
[White House] group that was dealing with the preparation for the Iraq war
came back and said they were no longer interested. And we said, 'Well,
what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel
anymore. This is about regime change.'"

At roughly the same time, highly placed White House sources such as
Scooter Libby leaked exclusive "scoops" to credulous reporters as part of
the campaign to make Saddam's nuclear threat seem real. On the same day
the "mushroom cloud" slogan made its debut, The New York Times printed a
front-page story by Michael Gordon and Judith Miller citing administration
officials who said that Saddam had "embarked on a worldwide hunt for
materials to make an atomic bomb." Specifically, the article contended
that Iraq "has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum
tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of
centrifuges to enrich uranium."

The next day, September 9, the White House received a visitor who should
have known exactly what the tubes were for--Nicolr Pollari. As it happens,
the Italians used the same tubes Iraq was seeking in their Medusa
air-to-ground missile systems, so Pollari presumably knew that Iraq was
not trying to enrich uranium but merely attempting to reproduce weaponry
dating back to an era of military trade between Rome and Baghdad. As La
Repubblica pointed out, however, he did not set the record straight.

Pollari met with Stephen Hadley, an understated but resolute hawk who has
since replaced Condoleezza Rice as national-security adviser. Hadley has
confirmed that he met Pollari, but declined to say what was discussed. "It
was a courtesy call," Hadley told reporters. "Nobody participating in that
meeting or asked about that meeting has any recollection of a discussion
of natural uranium, or any recollection of any documents being passed."

But there was no need to pass documents. It was significant enough for
Pollari to have met with Hadley, a White House official allied with
Cheney's hard-liners, rather than with Pollari's American counterpart,
George Tenet. "It is completely out of protocol for the head of a foreign
intelligence service to circumvent the C.I.A.," says former C.I.A. officer
Philip Giraldi. "It is uniquely unusual. In spite of lots of people having
seen these documents, and having said they were not right, they went
around them."

"To me there is no benign interpretation of this," says Melvin Goodman,
the former C.I.A. and State Department analyst. "At the highest level it
was known the documents were forgeries. Stephen Hadley knew it. Condi Rice
knew it. Everyone at the highest level knew." Both Rice and Hadley have
declined to comment.

Michael Ledeen, who had access to both Pollari and Hadley, categorically
denies setting up the meeting: "I had nothing to do with it." A former
senior intelligence official close to Tenet says that the former C.I.A.
chief had no information suggesting that Pollari or elements of SISMI may
have been trying to circumvent the C.I.A. and go directly to the White
House.

But the Niger documents had been resurrected once again. Two days later,
on September 11, 2002, the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks,
Hadley's office asked the C.I.A. to clear language so that President Bush
could issue a statement saying, "Within the past few years, Iraq has
resumed efforts to purchase large quantities of a type of uranium oxide
known as yellowcake. ... The regime was caught trying to purchase 500
metric tons of this material. It takes about 10 tons to produce enough
enriched uranium for a single nuclear weapon."

In addition, in a new paper that month, the D.I.A. issued an assessment
claiming that "Iraq has been vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and
yellowcake."

Later that month, the British published a 50-page, 14-point report on
Iraq's pursuit of weapons that said, "There is intelligence that Iraq has
sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

"When you are playing a disinformation operation," says Milt Bearden,
"you're like a conductor who can single out one note in the symphony and
say, 'Let the Brits have that.'"

On September 24, Prime Minister Tony Blair cited that "dossier of death"
and asserted again that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Africa.
"The reports in [the Niger file] were going around the world, and Bush and
Blair were talking about the documents without actually mentioning them,"
Rocco Martino told Milan's Il Giornale. "I turned the television on and I
did not believe my ears."

Now it was time for the international media to chime in with independent
corroboration. In early October 2002, Martino approached Elisabetta Burba,
a journalist at Panorama, the Milan-based newsmagazine. Burba and Martino
had worked together in the past, but there may have been other reasons he
went to her again. Owned by Silvio Berlusconi, Panorama was edited by
Carlo Rossella, a close ally of the prime minister's. It also counted
among its contributors Michael Ledeen.

Martino told Burba he had something truly explosive--documents that proved
Saddam was buying yellowcake from Niger. Burba was intrigued, but
skeptical. She agreed to pay just over 10,000 euros--about $12,500--on one
condition: Martino would get paid only after his dossier had been
corroborated by independent authorities. Martino gave her the documents.

When Burba told Rossella of her concerns about the authenticity of the
Niger documents, he sent her to Africa to investigate. But he also
insisted that she give copies to the U.S. Embassy. "I think the Americans
are very interested in this problem of unconventional weapons," Rossella
told her.

On October 17, Burba flew to Niger. Once there, she discovered for herself
how difficult it would be to ship 500 tons of uranium out of Africa. By
the time she returned, she believed the real story was not about Saddam's
secret nuclear-weapons program at all, but about whether someone had
forged the documents to fabricate a rationale for invading Iraq. But when
she reported her findings to Rossella, he called her off. "I told her to
forget the documents," he told Vanity Fair. "From my point of view, the
story was over."

Now, however, thanks to Panorama, the U.S. had received copies of the
Niger documents. They were quickly disseminated to the C.I.A. station
chief in Rome, who recognized them as the same old story the Italians had
been pushing months before, and to nuclear experts at the D.I.A., the
Energy Department, and the N.S.A.

The State Department had already twice cast doubt on the reports of the
sale of uranium to Iraq. In the fall, Wayne White, who served as the
deputy director of the State Department's intelligence unit and was the
principal Iraq analyst, reviewed the papers themselves. According to The
Boston Globe, he said that after a 15-minute review he doubted their
authenticity.

"STICK THAT BABY IN THERE"

In early October, Bush was scheduled to give a major address on Iraq in
Cincinnati. A few days earlier, according to the Senate Intelligence
Committee report, the N.S.C. sent the C.I.A. a draft which asserted that
Saddam "has been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of
uranium oxide from Africa--an essential ingredient in the enrichment
process."

The C.I.A. faxed a memo to Hadley and the speechwriters telling them to
delete the sentence on uranium, "because the amount is in dispute and it
is debatable whether it can be acquired from the source. We told Congress
that the Brits have exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already
have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory." Iraq's supply
of yellowcake dated back to the 1980s, when it had imported hundreds of
tons of uranium ore from Niger and mined the rest itself. The C.I.A. felt
that if Saddam was trying to revive his nuclear program he would be more
likely to use his own stockpile than risk exposure in an illegal
international deal.

But the White House refused to let go. Later that day, Hadley's staff sent
over another draft of the Cincinnati speech, which stated, "The regime has
been caught attempting to purchase substantial amounts of uranium oxide
from sources in Africa."

This time, George Tenet himself interceded to keep the president from
making false statements. According to his Senate testimony, he told Hadley
that the "president should not be a fact witness on this issue," because
the "reporting was weak." The C.I.A. even put it in writing and faxed it
to the N.S.C.

The neocons were not done yet, however. "That was their favorite
technique," says Larry Wilkerson, "stick that baby in there 47 times and
on the 47th time it will stay. At every level of the decision-making
process you had to have your ax out, ready to chop their fingers off.
Sooner or later you would miss one and it would get in there."

For the next two months, December 2002 and January 2003, references to the
uranium deal resurfaced again and again in "fact sheets," talking-point
memos, and speeches. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice all declared
publicly that Iraq had been caught trying to buy uranium from Niger. On
December 19, the claim reappeared on a fact sheet published by the State
Department. The bureaucratic battle was unending. In light of the many
differing viewpoints, the Pentagon asked the National Intelligence
Council, the body that oversees the 15 agencies in the U.S. intelligence
community, to resolve the matter. According to The Washington Post, in a
January 2003 memo the council replied unequivocally that "the Niger story
was baseless and should be laid to rest." The memo went immediately to
Bush and his advisers.

Nevertheless, on January 20, with war imminent, President Bush submitted a
report to Congress citing Iraq's attempts "to acquire uranium and the
means to enrich it."

At an N.S.C. meeting on January 27, 2003, George Tenet was given a
hard-copy draft of the State of the Union address. Bush was to deliver it
the next day. Acutely aware of the ongoing intelligence wars, Tenet was
caught between the hard-liners in the White House, to whom he reported,
and the C.I.A., whose integrity he was duty-bound to uphold. That day, he
returned to C.I.A. headquarters and, without even reading the speech, gave
a copy to an assistant who was told to deliver it to the deputy director
for intelligence. But, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee
report, no one in the D.D.I.'s office recalls receiving the speech.

A State of the Union address that was a call for war, that desperately
needed to be vetted, had been misplaced and gone unread. "It is
inconceivable to me that George Tenet didn't read that speech," says Milt
Bearden. "At that point, he was effectively no longer D.C.I. [director of
central intelligence]. He was part of that cabal, and no longer able to
carry an honest message."

In an e-mail, a former intelligence official close to Tenet said the
charge that Tenet was "part of a 'cabal' is absurd." The official added,
"Mr. Tenet was unaware of attempts to put the Niger information in the
State of the Union speech. Had he been aware, he would have vigorously
tried to have it removed."

The next day, despite countless objections from the C.I.A. and other
agencies, Bush cited the charges from the fraudulent Niger documents in
his speech. Later that year, Stephen Hadley accepted responsibility for
allowing the sentence to remain in the speech. He said he had failed to
remember the warnings he'd received about the allegations.

BLAMING THE C.I.A.

In last-minute negotiations between the White House and the C.I.A., a
decision was made to attribute the alleged Niger uranium deal to British
intelligence. The official reason was that it was preferable to cite
British intelligence, which Blair had championed in his 50-page report,
rather than classified American intelligence. But the C.I.A. had told the
White House again and again that it didn't trust the British reports.

The British, meanwhile, have repeatedly claimed to have other sources, but
they have refused to identify them. According to Joseph Wilson, that
refusal is a violation of the U.N. resolution stipulating that member
states must share with the International Atomic Energy Agency all
information they have on prohibited nuclear programs in Iraq. "The British
say they cannot share the information, because it comes from a
third-country intelligence source," says Wilson. "But that third country
is presumably a member of the United Nations, and it too should comply
with Article 10 of United Nations Resolution 1441." So far, Wilson says,
no evidence of a third country has come to light.

A week after Bush's speech, on February 4, the Bush administration finally
forwarded electronic copies of the Niger documents to the I.A.E.A.
Astonishingly, a note was attached to the documents which said, "We cannot
confirm these reports and have questions regarding some specific claims."

On March 7, the I.A.E.A. publicly exposed the Niger documents as
forgeries. Not long afterward, Cheney was asked about it on Meet the
Press. He said that the I.A.E.A. was wrong, that it had "consistently
underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing." He added,
"We know [Saddam] has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear
weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

On March 14, Senator Jay Rockefeller IV, the ranking Democrat on the
Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter to F.B.I. chief Robert
Mueller asking for an investigation because "the fabrication of these
documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating
public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq." But Senator Pat
Roberts, of Kansas, the Republican chair of the committee, declined to
co-sign the letter.

Then, on March 19, 2003, the war in Iraq began.

On July 11, 2003, faced with public pressure to investigate the forgeries,
Roberts issued a statement blaming the C.I.A. and defending the White
House. "So far, I am very disturbed by what appears to be extremely sloppy
handling of the issue from the outset by the C.I.A.," he said.

Under Roberts's aegis, the Senate Intelligence Committee investigated the
Niger affair and came to some extraordinary conclusions. "At the time the
President delivered the State of the Union address, no one in the IC
[intelligence community] had asked anyone in the White House to remove the
sentence from the speech," read the report. It added that "CIA Iraq
nuclear analysts ... told Committee staff that at the time of the State of
the Union, they still believed that Iraq was probably seeking uranium from
Africa."

In November 2005, Rockefeller and Democratic senator Harry Reid staged a
dramatic shutdown of the Senate and challenged Roberts to get to the
bottom of the forgeries. "The fact is that at any time the Senate
Intelligence Committee pursued a line of questioning that brought us close
to the White House, our efforts were thwarted," Rockefeller said.

So far, the Republican-controlled Senate committee has failed to produce a
more extensive report.

AN EVEN BIGGER MISTAKE

For his part, Michael Ledeen thinks all the interest in the Niger
documents and Bush's famous 16 words is overblown. "I don't want my
government's decisions based on falsehoods," he says. "But the president
referred to British intelligence. So far as I've read about it, that
statement is true."

Ledeen categorically asserts that he couldn't have orchestrated the Niger
operation, because he disagreed so strongly with the administration's
policy. "I thought it was wrong to do Iraq militarily," he says. "Before
we went into Iraq, I said that anyone who thinks we can march into Iraq,
overthrow Saddam, and then have peace is crazy. I thought it was a mistake
at the time, and the way they did it." He adds, "Let's get real. This is
politics. People in office do not like people who criticize them."

It is unclear how these assertions square with the widespread reports that
Ledeen was tightly wired into the neocons in the administration; with his
long history of ties to SISMI, as reported by The Wall Street Journal and
the court records from the trial of Francesco Pazienza; and with Ledeen's
own pro-war writings.

Despite all the speculation, there are no fingerprints connecting Ledeen
to the Niger documents. Even his fiercest adversaries will concede this.
"In talking to hundreds of people, no one has given us a hint linking
Ledeen to the Niger documents," says Carlo Bonini of La Repubblica, which
is facing a defamation suit by Ledeen in Italy.

It is also unclear what, if anything, the Italians may have received for
their alleged participation in Nigergate. In 2005, a consortium led by
Finmeccanica, the Italian arms company, and Lockheed Martin unexpectedly
beat out U.S.-owned Sikorsky to win a contract to build presidential
helicopters. Some saw the contract, worth as much as $6.1 billion, as a
reward to Berlusconi for helping Bush on Iraq.

Regardless of who fabricated the Niger documents, it is difficult to
overstate the impact of the war they helped ignite. By May 18, 2006, the
number of American fatalities was 2,448, while various methods of tracking
American casualties put the number of wounded at between 18,000 and
48,000. At least 35,000 Iraqis have been killed. A new study by Columbia
University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in
Economics in 2001, and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes concludes that the
total costs of the Iraq war could top $2 trillion. That figure includes
the long-term health-care costs for injured soldiers, the cost of higher
oil prices, and a bigger U.S. budget deficit.

But the most important consequence of the Iraq war is its destabilization
of the Middle East. If neoconservatives such as Ledeen and their critics
agree on anything, it is that so far there has been only one real winner
in the Iraq conflict: the fundamentalist mullahs in Iran. For decades, the
two big threats in the Middle East--Iran and Iraq--had counterbalanced
each other in a standoff that neutralized both. Yet the Bush
administration, despite having declared Iran a member of the Axis of Evil,
proceeded to attack its two biggest enemies, Afghanistan and Iraq. "Iran
is unquestionably the biggest beneficiary of the war in Iraq," says Milt
Bearden.

Perhaps it is not surprising that the Bush administration is now rattling
its sabers against Iran, which has been flexing its muscles with a new
nuclear program. As a result, according to a Zogby poll in May, 66 percent
of Americans now see Iran as a threat to the U.S. Zbigniew Brzezinski,
national-security adviser to President Carter, has argued that starting
the Iraq war was a catastrophic strategic blunder, and that taking
military action against Iran may be an even bigger mistake. "I think of
war with Iran as the ending of America's present role in the world," he
told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. "Iraq may have been a
preview of that, but it's still redeemable if we get out fast. In a war
with Iran, we'll get dragged down for 20 or 30 years. The world will
condemn us. We will lose our position in the world."

To Michael Ledeen, however, Iran's ascendancy is just one more reason to
expand the Iraq war to the "terror masters" of the Middle East. "I keep
saying it over and over again to the point where I myself am bored," he
says. "I have been screaming 'Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran' for five years.
[Those in the Bush administration] don't have an Iran policy. Still don't
have one. They haven't done fuck-all."
*****************************************************************
 2 IRNA: Solana delivers West's proposed package of incentives for Iran -
      
Tehran, June 7, IRNA

Iran-Europe-Nuclear issue 

The European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana on Tuesday
handed over a package of commercial, technological and
diplomatic incentives and penalties to Iran which opened a new
chapter in Iran's nuclear case.

 The incentives were prepared by the EU big trio (Britain,
France and Germany) and approved by the United States, Russia
and China -- three permanent members of the five veto-wielding
members of the United Nations Security Council.

 Solana, who arrived in Tehran Monday night to present the
West's nuclear proposals to Iran, told reporters at Tehran
Mehrabad International Airport that the EU intends to settle
Iran's nuclear case based on a spirit of confidence and respect.

 His visit to Tehran showed Europe's willingness to resolve
Iran's nuclear case in a peaceful way.

 Solana added he was visiting Iran as a representative of
several important countries which intend to resume nuclear
negotiations with Tehran.

 The proposed package included great parts of West incentives to
Iran in commercial, technological and technical fields as well
as security guarantees, dispatch of the US-made aircraft parts
and agricultural technologies.

 A decision to sale aircraft parts by Boeing Co and Airbus to
Iran was regarded as a major step to lift sanctions against
Tehran.

 Washington imposed sanctions against Iran since the victory of
the Islamic Revolution in 1979 which prevented sale of parts of
military and non-military aircraft. The sanctions were imposed
not only on the US-made aircraft but even on European planes
such as Airbus whose some parts are being made in the US.

 The proposals indicated that the US may decide to review and
put an end to its hostile policies on Iran. US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice has earlier expressed her country's
readiness to join talks on Iran's nuclear program if it abandons
enrichment work.

 The US would consider nuclear right for Iran, if it is after
peaceful nuclear program which does not bear a danger of
production of advanced atomic fuel, she said.

 It seems an appropriate atmosphere currently exists in the
international community and Iran in its nuclear case and great
parts of concerns have been removed.

 Senior Iranian officials believe that the West's new nuclear
proposals include positive points while there are still certain
ambiguities.

 Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani
said on Tuesday said there are "positive steps" in the proposals
but certain "ambiguities" still need to be removed.

 Larijani made the remarks while speaking to reporters after a
meeting with Solana.

 The Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly announced it may
halt industrial-scale uranium enrichment but will never suspend
its research and development (R) work.

 Iran has always stressed that its nuclear activities are
totally peaceful and based on international regulations.

 According to the West new proposals, Iran is authorized to have
ccess to one light water reactor if it temporary suspends its
uranium enrichment. In such circumstances, all concerns over
possible trade sanctions will be removed.

 Meanwhile, the US and Europe have agreed to support Iran's
joining the World Trade Organization (WTO).

 The Europe presented a package of incentives to Tehran but
raised the issue of severe measures to be adopted by the
Security Council including sanctions in case of Iran's complete
opposition.

 The proposals mainly offered incentives to Iran but still have
punishments which include putting a ban on senior and state
Iranian officials and blocking Iran's assets outside the country.

 The proposals, however, include no threat of a military measure
against Tehran and avoid the language of force.

 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan ahs called on Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to precisely review the proposals.

 Undoubtedly, Iran should prevent any haste in giving its
response to the West's package of incentives. It needs
farsightedness, caution and a multilateral view, he added.

 After meeting with Solana, Larijani said: "We have received the
Europeans' offer. We will study them in detail and give our
response after that."
		 				 		 			
*****************************************************************
 3 IRNA: Iran to review Europe's latest offer: Larijani 

, June 6, IRNA

Iran has received new proposals from the five permanent members
of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany (5+1 Group)
and will review them, a senior Iranian nuclear offcial said here
Tuesday.

 Larijani remarks were made after his two-hour "constructive and
positive" talks with European Union foreign policy chief Javier
Solana.

 Representatives of the five permanent members of the Security
Council -- Russia, China, the United States, Britain and France
-- plus Germany (5+1Group) met in Vienna, Austria on Thursday
and approved a package of incentives for Iran in exchange for
suspension of its nuclear activities.

 "There is a need for further discussions and talks to reach a
compromise on the package of proposals of the 5+1 Group for the
Islamic Republic of Iran," Larijani said.

 Solana, for his part, agreed with Larijani on the need to give
Iran a period of time within which to study the proposals.

 The EU foreign policy chief, who arrived in Tehran Monday
evening, told reporters at Mehrabad International Airport upon
his arrival that he hoped the incentive package would give
parties to the nuclear issue the chance to start a "new
relationship" based on trust confidence.
*****************************************************************
 4 Xinhua: Wen, Merkel talk over phone on Iranian nuclear issue   
    
  www.chinaview.cn 2006-06-06 19:20:46   

    Special report: Iran Nuclear Crisis

    BEIJING, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Premier Wen Jiabao and his
German counterpart Chancellor Angela Merkel held a phone
conversation Tuesday afternoon and they conferred on solving the
Iranian nuclear issue through negotiations, according to the
Chinese Foreign Ministry. 

    The two sides exchanged views on further developing
Sino-German relations and settling the Iranian nuclear issue
through diplomatic negotiations and with peaceful means, the
ministry said. 

    A statement of the German government said the two leaders
discussed Iran's nuclear program "at length", and underscored
their common goal to find a solution to the nuclear problem with
diplomatic means. 

    The international community is stepping up efforts to
persuade Iran back to negotiations and suspend its nuclear
activities. 

    European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrived in
Tehran late Monday with a new package agreed by the five
permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus
Germany last Thursday. 

    He met with Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani on
Tuesday and presented him the new six-nation proposal over the
disputed nuclear issue. 

    Larijani was quoted as saying that his two-hour meeting with
Solana was good. The Iranian side will study these proposals and
then give a formal response. 

    He said the new proposal over the country's disputed nuclear
issue contains "positive steps" and "ambiguities". 

    "We welcome the European will to resolve the issue through
dialogues and the two sides should have more negotiations again
after our careful study over the proposal," the top nuclear
negotiator was quoted as saying. 

    The new six-nation package contains economic and political
incentives, including talks with the United States, to encourage
Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment, and also the implicit
threat of UN sanctions if Iran doesn't comply. 

    Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also reasserted on the
weekend during a telephone conversation with United Nations
Secretary General Kofi Annan that Iran was ready to hold talks
on the nuclear program, adding that Iran preferred the
negotiations to be held democratically without any precondition
or any threat. 

    During a phone conversation last Thursday, Chinese President
Hu Jintao told U.S. President George W. Bush that he welcomed
the U.S. stance on resolving the Iran nuclear issue through
diplomatic means and its willingness to join negotiations on the
issue. 

    "China is ready to maintain contact and coordination with
the United States and play a constructive role in resuming
negotiations at an early date," Hu was quoted by a Foreign
Ministry statement as saying. 

    Bush told Hu that his country was determined to resolve the
Iran nuclear issue through diplomatic means. As long as Iran
agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment activities in
verifiable ways, the United States would join relevant
negotiations.Enditem   

  Editor: Pan Letian   

*****************************************************************
 5 IRNA: Kazakh FM stresses right of countries to peaceful N-energy 

Tehran, June 7, IRNA

Iran-Kazakhstan-Nuclear 

Visiting Kazakh Foreign Minister Kasymzhomart Tokayev here 
Wednesday stressed countries' right to access nuclear technology 
for peaceful purposes.

 Kasymzhomart, who arrived in Tehran Tuesday morning at the head
of a political delegation for a two-day visit, made the remarks
at a press conference.

 Kazakhstan believes every country has the right to pursue a
peaceful nuclear program, he said.

 He added his country appreciates the recent visit of European
Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana to Iran to deliver a
package of EU incentives to Iran to try to settle its nuclear
case.

 He said he believes resort to diplomatic channels and adoption
of transparent measures as well as honesty on the part of
parties to the dispute would be the only solution to Iran's
nuclear case.

 Asked about Iran's bid for permanent membership in the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Kazakh minister said the SCO
attaches special importance to regional security and expressed
his country's support for Iranian membership in the organization
as a supervisor.

 He added he held talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr
Mottaki on Iran's official bid for membership at the SCO.

 Pointed to an upcoming summit of the Shanghai economic
organization, Kasymzhomart stressed the importance of exchange
visits between the Iranian and Kazakh presidents and said talks
between senior officials of the two countries would be very
constructive.

 He hoped Tehran-Astana ties would receive a further boost after
exchange visits undertaken by the two presidents.

 China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and
Kyrgyzstan are six members of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization while the Islamic Republic of Iran, India, Pakistan
and Mongolia are supervisory members of the SCO.

 On the issue of establishment of a legal regime for the Caspian
Sea, the Kazakh minister said Iran and Kazakhstan reached good
agreements and was optimistic more fruitful results would be
reached during the organization's upcoming summit.

 Kasymzhomart said his country rejected talks with the United
States for adopting a military action against Tehran, saying
Astana would do its utmost to settle Iran's nuclear case through
negotiation and diplomacy.

 He also called for expansion of ties between Iran and
Kazakhstan in all fields, saying Astana assessed as "very
positive" and "constructive" Iran's role in the region.

 He urged maximum use of bilateral potentials to promote trade
and economic cooperation as well as political relations.

 The minister, moreover, said the two countries also held talks
on Iran with the European sides and the US on the nuclear
issue.		 				 		 			

*****************************************************************
 6 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Urged to Put Uranium Program on Hold
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Wednesday June 7, 2006 8:31 PM

By ANNE GEARAN 

AP Diplomatic Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Iran must place its uranium enrichment program
on hold for the entire length of negotiations over the future of
its disputed nuclear program if it wants to reap rewards offered
by the United States and other nations, U.S. and European
officials said Wednesday. 

Nations hoping to bargain with Tehran were vague about whether
Iran could ever resume enrichment and reprocessing of uranium if
negotiations were successful. The enrichment process is one of
the central issues in the standoff over Iran's nuclear program.
It can be used both to make fuel for civilian nuclear power
plants, as Iran says it intends to do, or material for nuclear
weapons that the West fears Iran seeks. 

``We will have to negotiate with no process of enrichment in
place,'' European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana told
reporters in Germany. ``After the finalization of the
negotiations, we will see what happens.'' 

Any eventual deal with Iran could require that it give up
enrichment temporarily, but give Tehran the right to resume it
after convincing the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency that the
program has no military purpose. 

Iran has not responded to a U.S.-backed package of potential
rewards or punishments that Solana delivered to Tehran on
Tuesday. 

Initially, the proposal would give Iran Western help for
developing civilian nuclear energy, and access to nuclear fuel
produced elsewhere, diplomats have told The Associated Press. 

Iran has previously insisted that it must retain control of the
entire nuclear fuel cycle on its own soil. The regime dominated
by clerics has refused to suspend its current accelerated
uranium enrichment activities. 

Iran did suspend its enrichment work during a previous round of
bargaining with European nations that ended in failure last
year. Iran resumed enrichment activities after talks broke down,
and in April announced what could be a major technical
advancement that western nonproliferation experts said could
produce a bomb within five years. 

The United States agreed last month to join those talks if Iran
met a United Nations demand to again put uranium enrichment on
hold. Iran cannot enter what could be protracted negotiations
while also continuing the research and practice the complicated
enrichment process, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack
said. 

``That condition would have to hold throughout any negotiating
period,'' he said. ``Beyond that, I am not going to speculate.
Beyond that, we are truly into the realm of the hypothetical and
theoretical.'' 

The proposal was drawn up by the veto-wielding members of the
U.N. Security Council - the United States, Britain, France,
Russia and China. Details have not been released publicly. There
is no deadline for Iran to respond. 

``I hope that they will call me back soon to give me an answer
about the content,'' Solana said. 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 7 Guardian Unlimited: Diplomats: Package Gives Iran Some Leeway
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Wednesday June 7, 2006 11:31 AM

AP Photo VAH108 

By GEORGE JAHN 

Associated Press Writer 

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - World powers have compromised on a demand
that Iran commit to a long-term moratorium on uranium enrichment 
and are asking only for suspension during talks on Tehran's 
nuclear program, diplomats said Wednesday. 

In another concession, Iran would be allowed to carry out uranium 
conversion - a precursor to enrichment - if it agrees to 
multinational talks, the diplomats said. They spoke to The 
Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they are not 
authorized to divulge the contents of the offer made by six 
countries Tuesday in a bid to defuse the Iranian nuclear 
standoff. 

Such changes to long-standing international demands on enrichment 
are important, because they signal possible readiness to accept 
some limited form of the activity, despite fears that it can be 
misused to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads. 

Since talks between key European nations and Iran broke off in 
August, the United States, France, Britain and Germany have 
publicly said Iran must commit to a long-term moratorium on 
enrichment to establish confidence as a precondition for talks on 
the nuclear standoff. 

Diplomats have told the AP that Germany - which participated in 
drawing up the six-nation package of perks and punishments meant 
to ultimately wean Iran off enrichment - has been advocating that 
Tehran be allowed such activity on a small scale. 

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic 
Energy Agency, has backed that view, arguing that Iran was 
unlikely to give up its right to such activities now that it has 
already been successful in small-scale enrichment. 

Iran announced on April 11 that it had enriched uranium for the 
first time, using 164 centrifuges. Still, the country would need 
tens of thousands of centrifuges to produce adequate fuel for a 
nuclear reactor or material for a warhead. 

Those advocating that Iran be allowed to do research and 
development on enrichment say it is better to permit it an 
internationally supervised program on a small scale and try to 
gain agreement from Tehran that it will not develop a large 
industrial program. 

Iran has said it intends to move toward large-scale enrichment 
involving 3,000 centrifuges by late 2006 and 54,000 centrifuges 
after that, but it has also indicated it might suspend 
large-scale enrichment to ease tensions. 

In an April report, ElBaradei said Iran's claim to have enriched 
small amounts to a level of 3.6 percent appeared to be true. The 
level qualifies as fuel grade uranium, as opposed to weapons 
grade enriched to levels above 90 percent. 

It also said uranium conversion - an activity linked to 
enrichment - ``is still ongoing,'' adding that more than 120 tons 
have been converted over the past eight months. Were it used for 
weapons, that amount would be enough for more than 15 crude 
nuclear bombs, according to experts. 

The Iran package was approved last week in Vienna by the United 
States, Russia, China, Britain and France - the five permanent 
U.N. Security Council members - plus Germany. 

While it has not been made public, some of its contents have been 
leaked, revealing major concessions by the United States meant to 
entice Iran to the negotiating table. Those include an offer to 
join key European nations in providing some nuclear technology to 
Teheran if it stops enriching uranium, diplomats say.     

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 8 Guardian Unlimited: World Powers Give Iran Enrichment Leeway
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Wednesday June 7, 2006 10:01 PM

AP Photo MOSB111 

By GEORGE JAHN 

Associated Press Writer 

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - In a major concession, world powers are
no longer demanding that Iran commit to a prolonged moratorium
on uranium enrichment and are now asking only for a suspension
during talks on its nuclear program, diplomats and officials
said Wednesday. 

The proposal and a connected offer to allow continued uranium
conversion are part of an effort to avoid a showdown over
international concerns that the Iranians are trying to develop
nuclear weapons. 

Backing off the previous stance on enrichment signals a possible
readiness by the United States and key allies to accept some
limited form of enrichment by Iran, despite years of warnings
from Washington that Tehran wanted such technology to make
atomic warheads. 

Iran insists its nuclear program is intended only to produce
power, arguing it needs enrichment technology to produce fuel
for atomic reactors that would generate electricity. 

Since talks between European nations and Iran broke off last
August, the public stance by the European negotiators and the
United States has been that Iran must commit to a long-term halt
in enrichment as a precondition for talks. 

Still, a diplomat said that despite the concession, a long-term
moratorium remained the preferred goal of the six nations that
approved a package of incentives for the Tehran regime last week
- the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany. 

Beyond that, the talks are meant to reach agreement on what kind
of nuclear activities Iran can conduct under conditions that
dispel fears it wants a military program. 

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who presented
the offer to Iranian officials this week, said Wednesday that
the issue of enrichment would have to be reassessed once talks
were completed. 

``In principle ... they will have to stop now, we will have to
negotiate with no process of enrichment in place,'' he told
reporters in Germany. ``After the finalization of the
negotiations we will see what happens.'' 

Solana said the incentive offer came with ``no specific
timeframe,'' but that he expected an Iranian answer within
``weeks.'' 

He said nothing about uranium conversion, which is a step
preceding enrichment. But diplomats told The Associated Press
that Iran would be allowed to continue that activity.
Previously, Washington and its allies wanted a freeze on
conversion, too. 

The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they are
not authorized to divulge the contents of the offer. 

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said
suspension was a precondition for the talks, adding: ``Beyond
that, I am not going to speculate. Beyond that, we are truly
into the realm of the hypothetical and theoretical.'' 

France warned Wednesday that Iran would face U.N. Security
Council sanctions if it rejected the proposal for opening talks.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would
support sanctions only if Iran violated the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, a possible indication of continued
discord among the six powers involved in the effort. 

Diplomats said previously that both Russia and China agreed
during last week's talks in Vienna to the possibility of
imposing sanctions if Iran rejected the initiative. 

Diplomats told the AP that Germany is been advocating that
Tehran be allowed some small-scale enrichment. 

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the Vienna-based International
Atomic Energy Agency, backs that view, arguing that with Iran
already successful in small-scale enrichment, it is unlikely to
give up its right to such activity. 

Iran announced April 11 that it had enriched uranium for the
first time, using 164 centrifuges. It would need tens of
thousands of centrifuges to produce adequate fuel for a nuclear
reactor or material for a warhead. 

Those arguing that Iran be allowed to do research and
development on enrichment say it is better to permit an
internationally supervised program on a small scale while trying
to gain agreement from Tehran not to develop an industrial-scale
program. 

Iran has said it intends to move toward large-scale enrichment
involving 3,000 centrifuges by late 2006 and 54,000 centrifuges
later, but it also indicated it might suspend large-scale
enrichment to ease tensions. 

In an April report, ElBaradei said Iran seemed to be accurately
claiming to have enriched small amounts of uranium to a level of
3.6 percent - rich enough for reactor fuel, but far below the 90
percent level needed for weapons-grade material. 

The report also said uranium conversion ``is still ongoing,''
adding that more than 120 tons had been converted over eight
months. 

A new report from ElBaradei will be circulated to the IAEA's
35-nation board Thursday, ahead of the U.N. watchdog agency's
meeting next week. One diplomat said it was unlikely to have
major revelations about Tehran's activities. 

The Iran package was approved last week by the five permanent
U.N. Security Council members and Germany. 

It has not been made public but some of details have been
leaked, revealing major U.S. concessions designed to entice Iran
to the negotiating table - among them an offer for Europe to
provide some nuclear technology to Tehran in exchange for giving
up enrichment, diplomats say. 

A European offer of light water reactors for civilian nuclear
energy purposes was revealed last month. 

A diplomat said Wednesday that Iran also was being offered a
chance to acquire jetliners and get Boeing parts for its aging
civilian planes, with the initiative holding out the prospect of
lifting an embargo on such sales. 

--- 

Associated Press writers Anne Gearan in Washington and Geir
Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report. 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 9 IRNA: Sudan backs Iran's N-right 

Tehran, June 7, IRNA

Iran-Sudan-Nuclear issue 

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in Khartoum on
Wednesday said access to peaceful nuclear technology is an
inalienable right of Iran.

 Al-Bashir's remarks were made during a meeting with Iranian
Ambassador to Sudan Reza Ameri during which the ambassador
handed over his credentials to the president.

 Sudan believes Tehran will achieve its goal of accessing
nuclear energy for peaceful purposes through the continued
resistance of the Iranian government and nation to efforts of
bullying powers to prevent it from enforcing its rights, he said.

 He said his visit to Iran last month was "fruitful" and took
the occasion to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to
pay an official visit to Sudan.

 The president said that the Islamic world consider Iran's
dignity and honor as its own, and stressed the importance of
further bolstering Tehran-Khartoum ties in all fields.

 Moreover, he said he would do his best to facilitate
investments in his country by Iran's state and private sectors
and promote commercial cooperation.

 Iran's new ambassador, for his part, praised Sudan's political
support for Iran and highlighted the significance of boosting
economic cooperation as well as transfers of Iranian technical
and engineering services to Sudan.

 He called for the adoption of necessary measures to encourage
wider cooperation as well as facilitiate execution of projects
in the economic field.

*****************************************************************
 10 Guardian Unlimited: Iran regime split over west's latest offer
 
Robert Tait in Tehran and Ian Traynor

Wednesday June 7, 2006

The Guardian             

Europe yesterday tried again to settle the three-year nuclear 
impasse with Iran, offering an ambitious package of rewards to 
Tehran if it forfeits its right to enrich uranium.

Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, went to Tehran to 
present the initiative agreed last week. If it is not accepted, 
the route will be open to escalating sanctions and new 
confrontation.

Ali Larijani, the head of Iran's national security council and 
its chief nuclear negotiator, speaking after two hours of talks 
with Mr Solana, said the package contained positive elements and 
could form the basis for renewed negotiations.

"The proposals had some positive steps in them and some 
ambiguities that should be removed," Mr Larijani told 
journalists. "The point that Europeans would like to solve the 
problem through discussions and negotiations is something we 
welcome and have emphasised many times."

Analysts say the regime is split over the offer. Moderates,
including Mr Larijani and the former president Hashemi
Rafsanjani, are said to favour a deal at the right price. The
supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has yet to indicate his views.

Two years of negotiations between Iran and Europe broke down
last summer when Tehran rejected the trade, political and
economic package offered by the EU. The new package is more
generous, offering aircraft and spare parts for Iran's ageing
fleet, and equipment and cooperation for a civil nuclear energy
sector. Most crucially, the offer is underwritten by the
Americans, the Russians and the Chinese and is also backed by a
US offer to negotiate formally with Iran for the first time in
almost 30 years.

"Britain could play a pivotal role," said Sadegh Zibakalam, a
Tehran political scientist. "It could implicitly say to Tehran
that if there is a deal it would be able to prevent the
hardliners in Washington from pursuing their policy of regime
change."
 
[UP] 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 11 IRNA: Solana to hold talks with German Chancellor Merkel 

Brussels, June 7, IRNA

EU-Germany-Solana

EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy
Javier Solana, who arrived in Germany Tuesday, is to hold
meetings Wednesday with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign
Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier

 Earlier Tuesday, Solana delivered a new EU offer to Iranian 
officials in Tehran in efforts to find a solution to the nuclear 
standoff with the West.

 The offer, a carrot-and-stick package of proposals, offers Iran 
various incentives including renewed negotiations, in exchange 
for suspension of its enichment activities.

 During his two-day stay in Germany, he will also visit in 
Potsdam the operational headquarters of the forthcoming EU 
Operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and will meet 
Lieutenant General Karl-Heinz Viereck, EU Operation, said a 
statement issued by Solana's office Tuesday evening.

 260/2321/1414

*****************************************************************
 12 BBC: Iran deal 'may allow enrichment'
 
Last Updated: Wednesday, 7 June 2006
 
[Iranian nuclear facility]                              

Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for the generation 
of power                                                  
		
The offer to Iran over its nuclear programme holds out the 
prospect that it may be able to enrich uranium in the future, 
diplomats are quoted as saying. 

"Over the long haul... this Iranian regime can have enrichment at 
home," a US official told the Washington Post. 

Until now the US and its allies have refused to consider 
enrichment in Iran, while Iran insists that is its right. 

US President Bush said Iran's initial reaction to the package of 
incentives and potential penalties was "positive". 

Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Iran might give 
its full response to the offer by the end of June. 

NUCLEAR OFFER            

Iran allowed to buy spare part for civilian aircraft made by US 
manufacturers Restrictions lifted on the use of US technology in 
agriculture Provision of light water nuclear reactors and 
enriched fuel Support for Iranian membership of World Trade 
Organisation From Western diplomatic sources      

The US official, quoted anonymously by the Washington Post, said 
the possibility of Iran being allowed to enrich uranium depended 
on it suspending the process for the time-being, and answering 
"every concern" over fears it is running a nuclear weapons 
programme. 

Separately, a Western diplomat told the AFP news agency: "As part 
of a very long-term scenario in which everything goes smoothly, 
enrichment in Iran would be possible. 

"But there are a lot of conditions attached. It's too early to 
talk about Iran enriching. First of all, Iran has to suspend, 
then we negotiate and everything is on the table." 

National pride 

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said the package 
of proposals contained "positive steps". 

LIGHT WATER REACTOR              

[Diagram of a light wate reactor]                 

Uses normal water, H20, to cool and moderate uranium core Uranium 
used is enriched to include 3-5% fissionable isotope U-235 
Nuclear weapons require about 90% U-235 Produces plutonium as 
by-product, but in insufficient quality for a bomb

Iran has so far refused to accept any deal that relies on it 
giving up the right to enrich uranium - which it has said is its 
"inalienable" right. 

The BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says Iran has turned the 
nuclear issue into one of national pride, which makes it 
difficult to back down without being seen to compromise the 
country's fierce sense of independence. 

The incentives package was drawn up by European powers the UK, 
France and Germany, alongside the US, Russia and China, and 
delivered to Tehran by the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana 
on Tuesday. 

It is understood to include permission for Iran to buy spare 
parts for civilian aircraft made by US manufacturers, and the 
provision of light water nuclear reactors. 

Penalties warning 

The uranium used to make power in light water reactors needs to 
be enriched, but this can be done outside the country. The 
reactors are more difficult than other types to use as a source 
of plutonium for building nuclear weapons. 

NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY                

28 April: UN nuclea watchdog say Tehran has ignored calls to halt 
uranium enrichment Early May: UN debates draft resolution calling 
for halt to uranium enrichment Mid-May: EU countries work on 
proposals to try to induce Iran to curb atomic programme 31 May: 
US offers to join direct talks with Iran, in major policy shift 1 
June: US, Russia, China and three EU states agree on package of 
incentives and penalties 6 June: EU foreign policy chief presents 
proposals in Tehran 

Other incentives are said to include the lifting of restrictions 
on the use of US technology in agriculture and support for 
Iranian membership of the World Trade Organisation. 

The US earlier warned Iran a rejection of the proposals could 
bring UN-imposed penalties. 

That would depend on passing a resolution on sanctions at the UN 
Security Council, where unanimity between the US and Europe on 
one hand, and Russia and China on the other, has been difficult 
to achieve. 

Russia's Mr Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow would only 
support sanctions against Iran if it violated the nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

Western nations fear Iran is enriching uranium to make nuclear 
weapons, while Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful 
energy purposes. 
*****************************************************************
 13 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Sudan backs Iran's nuclear right 

2006/06/07   
  
    
  03:37:24 È.Ù 

Tehran, June 7 - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in
Khartoum on Wednesday said access to peaceful nuclear technology
is an inalienable right of Iran. 

Al-Bashir's remarks were made during a meeting with Iranian
Ambassador to Sudan Reza Ameri during which the Ambassador
handed over his credentials to the President. 

He said his visit to Iran last month was "fruitful" and took the
occasion to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to pay
an official visit to Sudan. 

The President said that the Islamic world consider Iran's
dignity and honor as its own, and stressed the importance of
further bolstering Tehran-Khartoum ties in all fields. 

Moreover, he said he would do his best to facilitate investments
in his country by Iran's state and private sectors and promote
commercial cooperation. 

Iran's new Ambassador, for his part, praised Sudan's political
support for Iran and highlighted the significance of boosting
economic cooperation as well as transfers of Iranian technical
and engineering services to Sudan. 

mk   

  Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran 
Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. 
E-Mail: <font color="#ff0000" face>Webmaster@IRIBNEWS.ir</font> 
*****************************************************************
 14 AFP: Iran weighs international nuclear offer 

 by Stefan Smith Wed Jun 7, 3:29 PM ET 		 	 

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iranwas weighing an international offer 
of incentives if it agrees to suspend uranium enrichment, with 
officials neither rejecting the offer nor indicating they would 
meet the condition. 

 European Union" /> European Unionforeign policy chief Javier 
Solana, who jetted in to Tehran to present the proposal on 
Tuesday, said he was "more optimistic today than a month ago" -- 
when Iran was ruling out any talk of halting sensitive nuclear 
work. 

"On the nuclear question, we prefer cooperation to 
confrontation," the official IRNA news agency quoted Foreign 
Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying. 

"The proposals were submitted by Mr Solana and we are going to 
carefully study them," said Mottaki. "Shuttle diplomacy, if it is 
in good faith, would allow us to find grounds for understanding." 

The package -- which offers trade, diplomatic and technology 
incentives in return for a freeze of enrichment -- was drawn up 
by Britain, France and Germany and is backed by the United 
States, Russia and China. 

It is aimed at resolving fears that Iran could acquire nuclear 
weapons yet at the same time seeks to guarantee the country's 
access to atomic energy. 

Top national security official Ali Larijani has said it
contained "positive steps" but also "ambiguities" -- signalling
no immediate decision from Tehran was likely. 

"I don't say that everything has been resolved but I'm more
optimistic today than a month ago," Solana told reporters in
Potsdam, eastern Germany. "I hope they will call me back soon
and give an answer to the proposal. 

"I am ready to go back to Tehran if it is necessary," he added. 

US President George W. Bush" /> President George W. Bushalso
cautiously welcomed the Islamic republic's "positive" initial
reaction. 

"We will see if the Iranians take our offer seriously. The
choice is theirs to make," Bush said Tuesday in Texas. "I want
to solve this issue with Iran diplomatically." 

A Western diplomat told AFP the "offer gives Iran a choice. The
condition is that Iran returns to a suspension, and this
condition is non-negotiable. 

"The deadline is one of several weeks, basically before the end
of the month and before the G8 meeting" in Saint Petersburg,
Russia, in five weeks' time, he said. 

"Even if the emphasis at the moment is on incentives, the
suspension is something we won't back down on. Iran has taken a
first step by accepting to consider the offer, whereas in the
past they have rejected such a thing," said the diplomat, who
asked not to be named. 

While being offered carrots, Iran also faces the stick of robust
UN Security Council action, including a range of possible
sanctions, if it rejects the offer. 

Russia, however, still appeared to be against the use of
sanctions in the dispute. 

"Any measures that could be supported by Russia in the Security
Council can only be in situations when Iran starts to act in
contradiction to its obligations under the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was
quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency. 

Currently "there is no discussion of sanctions against Iran in
the Security Council," Lavrov told Russia's lower house of
parliament. 

Diplomats say the United States has helped sweeten the package
by offering to lift certain sanctions if Tehran agrees to an
enrichment freeze. 

Washington has also agreed to join multilateral talks with Iran
if it suspends, offering the prospect of the first substantive
talks between the two arch-enemies for 26 years. 

Diplomats also said that if Iran suspends and negotiations go
well, enrichment on Iranian soil could be possible -- but that
such a situation is years away. 

"It leaves the door open to enrichment under certain caveats," a
European diplomat told AFP in Vienna, referring to what would
almost certainly be a process of many years to verify that
Iran's nuclear programme is peaceful. 

The package only calls on Iran to "suspend all
enrichment-related and reprocessing activities" in order to
resume talks with European negotiators Britain, France and
Germany, and perhaps the United States and even Iranian allies
Russia and China, the diplomat said. 

But Washington stressed that the package required Tehran to
suspend sensitive nuclear fuel work for the duration of any
talks, pushing any possible resumption far into the future. 

"That condition would have to hold throughout any negotiating
term," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. 

"Beyond that, I am not going to speculate. Beyond that, we are
truly into the realm of the hypothetical and theoretical." 	 		
			
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 15 AFP: Iran weighs international nuclear offer 

 by Stefan Smith Wed Jun 7, 8:13 AM ET 		 	 

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iranwas weighing an international offer 
of incentives if it agrees to suspend uranium enrichment, with 
officials neither rejecting the offer nor indicating that they 
would meet the condition. 

 "On the nuclear question, we prefer cooperation to 
confrontation," the official IRNA news agency quoted Foreign 
Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying after EU foreign policy 
chief Javier Solana jetted in to make the offer. 

"The proposals were submitted by Mr. Solana and we are going to
carefully study them," said Mottaki. "Shuttle diplomacy, if it
is in good faith, would allow us to find grounds for
understanding." 

The package -- which offers trade, diplomatic and technology
incentives in return for a freeze of the sensitive nuclear work
-- was drawn up by Britain, France and Germany and is backed by
the United States, Russia and China. 

It is aimed at resolving fears that Iran could acquire nuclear
weapons yet at the same time seeks to guarantee the country's
access to atomic energy. 

Top national security official Ali Larijani has said it
contained "positive steps" but also "ambiguities" -- signalling
no immediate decision from Tehran was likely. 

A Western diplomat told AFP the "offer gives Iran a choice. The
condition is that Iran returns to a suspension, and this
condition is non-negotiable. 

"The deadline is one of several weeks, basically before the end
of the month and before the G8 meeting" Saint Petersburg,
Russia, in five weeks' time, he said. 

"Even if the emphasis at the moment is on incentives, the
suspension is something we won't back down on. Iran has taken a
first step by accepting to consider the offer, whereas in the
past they have rejected such a thing," said the diplomat, who
asked not to be named. 

While being offered carrots, Iran also faces the stick of robust
Security Council action, including a range of possible
sanctions, if it rejects the offer. 

Russia, however, still appeared to be against the use of
sanctions in the dispute. 

"Any measures that could be supported by Russia in the Security
Council can only be in situations when Iran starts to act in
contradiction to its obligations under the Nuclear
non-Proliferation Treaty," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was
quoted as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency. 

Currently "there is no discussion of sanctions against Iran in
the Security Council," Lavrov told Russia's lower house of
parliament. 

Diplomats say the United States has helped sweeten the package
by offering to lift certain sanctions if Iran agrees to an
enrichment freeze. 

Washington has also agreed to join multilateral talks with Iran
if it suspends, offering the prospect of the first substantive
talks between the two arch enemies for 26 years. 

Diplomats also said that if Iran suspends and negotiations go
well, enrichment on Iranian soil could be possible -- but that
such a situation is years away. 

"Nobody is talking about a permanent halt. I emphasise the term
'suspend', not 'end'," a Western diplomat close to the issue
said. "As part of a very long-term scenario in which everything
goes smoothly, enrichment in Iran would be possible. 

"But there are a lot of conditions attached. It's too early to
talk about Iran enriching. First of all, Iran has to suspend,
then we negotiate and everything is on the table." 

"The suspension aspect was spelled out very very clearly" by EU
foreign policy chief Javier Solana when he presented the
proposal on Tuesday, the source asserted. 

US President George W. Bush" /> President George W.
Bushcautiously welcomed Iran's "positive" initial reaction. 

"We will see if the Iranians take our offer seriously. The
choice is theirs to make," Bush said Tuesday in Texas. "I want
to solve this issue with Iran diplomatically." 

The US administration has previously declined to grant security
guarantees to Iran, which some analysts say could be crucial to
defusing the standoff. 	 		 			

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 16 AFP: US adopts new tack in Iran nuclear standoff 

 by Sylvie Lanteaume Wed Jun 7, 4:05 PM ET 		 	 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US government, which has reportedly 
dropped its opposition to uranium enrichment by Iran" /> at some 
stage in the future, has changed its tack in the face of Iran's 
technological advances, according to diplomatic sources. 

 A week after saying it was willing to engage in direct
negotiations with Tehran, President George W. Bush" /> 's
administration has agreed behind closed doors to a possibility
that Iran could enrich uranium in coming years, but only if it
suspends its current enrichment program and talks go well,
according to diplomatic sources in Vienna and Tehran who
requested anonymity. 

Washington on Wednesday refused to confirm or deny the reports,
down-playing them as "hypothetical." 

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that
Iran must first "suspend all enrichment- and
reprocessing-related activities" on its soil before negotiations
could begin. 

"Beyond that, I am not going to speculate. Beyond that, we are
truly into the realm of the hypothetical and theoretical," he
said. 

The reports come after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" />
said last Wednesday that Washington was ready to join
international talks on Iran's nuclear program, but with certain
caveats. 

Rice said the US would readily join negotiations "as soon as
Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and
reprocessing activities". 

Iran was Wednesday weighing an international offer of incentives
if it agrees to suspend uranium enrichment, with officials
neither rejecting the offer nor indicating they would meet the
condition. 

According to State Department sources, Rice decided to change
tack with regards to US policy toward Iran partly due to Iran's
technological advances in recent months. 

Iran has since April 11 been enriching uranium at a centrifuge
cascade in Natanz but only to levels of up to five percent
enriched, which is far below the 20 percent level considered to
be HEU (highly enriched uranium), the UN nuclear watchdog agency
has said. 

Centrifuges arranged in production lines called cascades enrich
uranium for nuclear reactor fuel, or in highly refined form, for
atomic bomb material. 

"We knew we had this card to play, we wanted to play it at the
right time," said a State Department official who requested
anonymity. "We want it to work. We hope they make the right
choice." 

A different department official said: "The fundamental turning
point was when Iran took the seals off the plant at Natanz in
January and that since then they've made it clear that they
intend to continue with enrichment and enrichment R and D
(research and development)." 

"We don't want to give them a reason to say 'no' in order to
save face," a third high-level official said. 

Washington has accused Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons, but
Iran says its program is strictly for peaceful purposes. 

The package of international "carrots" -- which offers trade,
diplomatic and technology incentives in return for a freeze of
enrichment -- was drawn up by Britain, France and Germany and is
backed by the United States, Russia and China. 

It is aimed at resolving fears that Iran could acquire nuclear
weapons yet at the same time seeks to guarantee the country's
access to atomic energy. 

Iran's top national security official Ali Larijani has said it
contained "positive steps" but also "ambiguities" -- signalling
no immediate decision from Tehran was likely. 	 		 			

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 17 AFP: Iran offered possibility of enriching uranium 

 Wed Jun 7, 3:38 AM ET 		 	 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States and Europe have offered 
Iran" /> Iranthe possibility of carrying out uranium enrichment 
activities in its territory if it meets certain stringent 
conditions, The Washington Post said. 

 Contained in the "carrots and sticks" package presented to Iran 
on Tuesday by the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany 
and Russia, the proposal says that Iran has to satisfy 
International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic 
Energy Agencyinspectors and the UN Security Council, European and 
US officials told the daily. 

The IAEA must determine "with confidence" that Iran's nuclear
program is peaceful and the council must be satisfied that Iran
is not seeking a nuclear weapon, the officials said. 

The offer is a policy reversal for Washington, which up to now
has insisted that Iran abandon its uranium enrichment program --
which can be used in making a nuclear weapon -- before it joins
international talks on Tehran's nuclear ambitions. 

"We are basically now saying that over the long haul, if they
restore confidence, that this Iranian regime can have enrichment
at home," said one US official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity. 

"But they have to answer every concern given all that points to
a secret weapons program." 

The package, presented by European Union" /> European
Unionforeign policy chief Javier Solana, offers a variety of
incentives and fresh multilateral talks if Tehran agrees to
suspend uranium enrichment work, which can make both reactor
fuel and weapons. 

While being offered carrots, Iran also faces the stick of robust
Security Council action, including a range of possible
sanctions, if it rejects the offer and continues what the West
fears is a covert weapons drive. 

The decision to allow Iran to pursue its uranium enrichment
program, came after weeks of intense and high-level discussions
in Washington and in Tehran aimed at deflecting confrontation. 

"Each side has taken a more serious look at what the other wants
and how compromise can be reached," a Western diplomat told The
Washington Post. 

Negotiations between Tehran and Western countries concerned with
the spread of nuclear weapons have been largely stymied by a US
insistence that Iran abandon its uranium enrichment program and
Iran's steadfast refusal to do so. 

A US official who asked not to be identified said that, in
Washington's view, the possibility for Iran to one day enrich
uranium was "a very important part of the deal, and it's what
will allow Iran to accept it." 

"Iran always spun previous offers as an attempt to keep it from
exercising its rights to enrich. Now that is explicitly not the
case," the official added. 

Iran gave a cautious reception on Tuesday to the international
proposal, saying the offer contained "positive steps" but also
"ambiguities". 

US President George W. Bush" /> President George W.
Bushcautiously welcomed Iran's "positive" initial reaction. 

"We will see if the Iranians take our offer seriously. The
choice is theirs to make," Bush said Tuesday in Texas. "I want
to solve this issue with Iran diplomatically." 

In a separate report, ABC television news said Tuesday the
international proposal included possible guarantees for Iran's
"terroritorial integrity," in another possible reversal of a US
policy that refused to rule out military action against Iran if
it persisted on its alleged path to nuclear weapons. 

If Iran addresses concerns over its nuclear program, the
proposal holds out the possibility of international support for
"regional security cooperation" involving states in the Gulf
region and other "interested countries," according to the draft
copy of the proposal posted on the ABC News website. 

World powers would be ready to support discussions among Iran
and countries in the region "with the aim of establishing
regional security arrangements and a cooperative relationship on
important regional security issues, including guarantees for
territorial integrity and poltical sovereignty," the document
states. 

The US administration has previously declined to grant security
guarantees to Iran, which some analysts say could be crucial to
defusing the standoff. 	 		 			

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 18 Reuters: South Korea fails to sway North on trains at talks
         
Mon 5 Jun 2006 11:07 PM ET

 By Lee Jae-won

 SOGWIPO, South Korea, June 6 (Reuters) - South Korea failed to
persuade North Korea to hold the first run of trains in 55 years
over their heavily fortified border in economic talks that ended
on Tuesday.

 The four-day meeting came amid strains between the two Koreas
after Pyongyang abruptly called off test runs of trains, which
had been due to take place on May 25. In an exchange of harsh
words, each side had blamed the other for scuttling the plan.

 The South's Unification Ministry said in a statement after the
talks between economic officials that some progress had been
made on the rail links, but Seoul had not been able to persuade
the North Koreans to go ahead with the trial runs.

 "We expressed strong regret over the postponed test runs of
rails because of the North's unilateral call, and urged them to
start the test runs of rails and open rail links and roads as
soon as possible," the ministry said.

 The rail crossings would have been a deeply symbolic step in
generally warming ties between the two Koreas. The last train
ran across the border in 1951 during the Korean War, carrying
wounded soldiers and refugees to the South.

 Tracks extend across the border in two places. South Korea has
provided the bulk of the capital to restore the rail links.

 At the talks in the South Korean resort island of Cheju, the
two sides reached a nine-point agreement that mostly glossed
over differences on the rail links and North Korea's refusal to
return to stalled six-country talks on its nuclear weapons
programmes.

 They agreed that South Korea would provide $80 million in raw
materials for North Korean light industries such as clothing,
shoes and soap from 2006 in return for securing rights to
develop and sell the North's underground resources.

 "South and North Korea will adopt an agreement to cooperate in
developing light industries and underground resources, which
will be taken effect upon conditions maturing," a joint
statement said.

 A South Korean official told reporters that Seoul saw the
phrase "upon conditions maturing" as meaning a time after the
rail tests take place. However, the direct link between the aid
and the rail tests was not spelled out in the joint statement.

 The two sides said they had also agreed on several rounds of
inter-Korean cooperation talks in the near future.

 South and North Korea remain technically at war because the
1953 truce that halted the conflict never gave way to a full
peace treaty. Military tension remains high despite warming
commercial and political ties in recent years.

 The talks came just after South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's
ruling Uri Party suffered a stinging setback in local elections.
Since the election, Roh's support rating has plunged to a record
low of about 20 percent, a recent poll showed.

 Roh had been criticised by the main opposition Grand National
Party for providing too much unconditional aid to North Korea
and not being able to win concessions from Pyongyang.

 The last round of the six-country nuclear talks among the two
Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States was held in
November. North Korea has refused to return, saying it will not
be forced back to the table by U.S. pressure. (Additional
reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Kim Yeon-hee in Seoul)

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.                                              [ border=] 
*****************************************************************
 19 NewStandard: Cheney's Office Declares Exemption from Secrecy Oversight -

Bush Administration Documents on Secrecy Policy 

Project on Government Secrecy

This News Article originally appeared in the June 7 editionof The 
NewStandard. Michelle Chen is a staff journalist.


by Michelle Chen

Thickening the haze of secrecy surrounding the executive branch, 
the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney has declared itself 
exempt from a yearly requirement to report how it uses its power 
to classify secret information.                                                                                     

In its 2005 report to the president released last month, the
Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), a branch of the
National Archives, provides a quantitative overview of hundreds
of thousands of pages of classified and declassified documents.
But the vice presidentâ€™s input consists of a single footnote
explaining that his office failed to meet its reporting
requirements for the third year in a row. 

Open-government advocates say Cheneyâ€™s refusal to divulge even
basic information about classification activities reflects an
alarming pattern of broadening executive privilege while
narrowing public accountability. 

"Itâ€™s part of a larger assertiveness by the Office of the Vice
President and a resistance to oversight," said Steve Aftergood
of the Project on Government Secrecy, a division of the
public-interest association American Federation of Scientists.
"Itâ€™s as if theyâ€™re saying, â€˜What we do is nobodyâ€™s
business.â€™" 

Though not the only government entity to shrug off the reporting
duties, Cheneyâ€™s office is unique in that it has actually
issued a public justification for its non-compliance. Cheneyâ€™s
office argued on Monday that its dual role in the federal
government places it above the reporting mandate. 					Though
not the only government entity to shrug off the reporting
duties, Cheneyâ€™s office is unique in that it has actually
issued a public justification for its non-compliance. 				

"This matter has been carefully reviewed, and it has been
determined that the reporting requirement does not apply to [the
Office of the Vice President], which has both executive and
legislative functions," Lea McBride, a spokesperson for
Cheneyâ€™s office, told The NewStandard. 

Cheneyâ€™s press aides declined to specify to TNS how the
officeâ€™s legislative role effectively exempted it from the
executive order, or why the office had complied prior to 2003. 

In a May 30 letter to J. William Leonard, director of the ISOO,
the Project on Government Secrecy contended that Cheneyâ€™s
rationale was illogical, because additional legislative
functions should have no bearing on the vice presidentâ€™s
executive-branch obligations. Troubled by the continued
non-compliance, the organization warned that if the ISOO did not
act to enforce the vice presidentâ€™s responsibilities under the
executive order, "every agency will feel free to re-interpret
the order in idiosyncratic and self-serving ways." 

Each year, the ISOO publishes data on the amount of information
classified by government entities, such as the Department of
Justice and the Pentagon, and broadly analyzes how the
bureaucracy processes national-security secrets. Mandated by an
executive order, the report is intended to encourage greater
accountability and minimize secrecy. 

In 2003 â€“ around the time Cheneyâ€™s office stopped reporting 
to the ISOO â€“ the Bush administration affirmed and expanded the 
vice presidentâ€™s classification powers through a revision of 
Executive Order 12958, the same order mandating the yearly ISOO 
assessment. The amended order explicitly granted the vice 
president unprecedented authority to classify information "in the 
performance of executive duties," including the ability to label 
information "secret" and "top secret" on par with the heads of 
federal agencies and the president himself. Open-government 
advocates argue that argued the report on classification merely 
reflects the volume, not the individual public-interest value, of 
government secrets.                           

Critics also note another legal shield compounding the vice 
presidentâ€™s reticence about how he handles secrets: Cheney 
enjoys general immunity from the Freedom of Information Act, 
which empowers members of the public with a process for demanding 
the release of government documents. 

Along with Cheneyâ€™s office, the Presidentâ€™s 
Foreign-Intelligence Advisory Board and Homeland Security Council 
â€“ both advisory bodies attached to the White House â€“ also 
failed to report classification activity in 2005. In the footnote 
of its report, the ISOO suggested that the loss of this 
information was inconsequential, because these entities 
"historically have not reported quantitatively significant data." 

However, Aftergood argued that because the annual report is a 
statistical breakdown of information processed, the quantitative 
data merely reflects the volume, not the individual 
public-interest value, of the secrets withheld by the government. 

The most recent report shows that decisions to classify
information have declined by about 9 percent since 2004, and the
volume of newly declassified information has risen slightly. But
watchdogs say the government is still amassing secrets at a
disturbing rate: total classification activity was over 60
percent higher in 2005 than in 2001. Overall, agencies reported
14.2 million classification decisions last year. 					Some
question whether Cheney has wielded his power over secret
government information to smear opponents. 				

Though Cheneyâ€™s obfuscation of his classification activity has
been ongoing since 2003, the explosion of the Valerie Plame leak
scandal, which centers on the suspected retaliatory leak of a
CIA agentâ€™s identity by the White House, has invited fresh
scrutiny of the administrationâ€™s political opacity. Some
question whether Cheney has wielded his power over secret
government information to smear opponents. 

In a February interview with Fox News, asked whether he had ever
exercised declassification powers, Cheney replied, "I've
certainly advocated declassification and participated in
declassification decisions," though he refused to elaborate on
the nature of those decisions. 

Aftergood said that the ISOO could try to compel Cheney to
comply with the executive order through enforcement mechanisms.
These could include sanctions, which under the ISOOâ€™s mandate
might entail "termination of classification authority" or
"denial of access to classified information" â€“ or officially
requesting an advisory ruling from the attorney general to
clarify the vice presidentâ€™s obligations. 

Since receiving the letter, Leonard of the ISOO told TNS that he
is "currently pursuing the matter." Noting the novelty of
Cheneyâ€™s defense, he added, "I am not aware of any other
entity claiming any such â€˜exemption.â€™" 

Jennifer Gore, communications director for the watchdog group
Project on Government Oversight (POGO), pointed to a precedent
for public-interest advocates bringing legal challenges to curb
executive secrecy. Referring to the Watergate scandal, which
also involved a court battle over the White Houseâ€™s refusal to
disclose incriminating documents, she said, "In the past, when
members of the executive branch have voiced privilege as a
reason not to turn something over, then itâ€™s time to go to the
courts." 

To counterbalance the expansion of secrecy under the current
administration, POGO is also advocating the Executive Branch
Reform Act of 2006. The bill, introduced by Representatives Tom
Davis (R-Virginia) and Henry Waxman (D-California), targets new,
vaguely defined categories that build on the regular
classification system, mainly the "sensitive but unclassified"
label that has enabled agencies to limit public access to
counterterrorism-related information. 

Aftergood said that systemic problems in the classification
system undermine the public value of the ISOOâ€™s annual report,
with or without full compliance from agencies. To move toward
genuine transparency, he said, the ISOOâ€™s tracking should
encompass more aggressive, in-depth reviews of classified
materials to monitor whether federal operatives are overusing or
abusing their privilege. 

"Whatâ€™s really missing is a sense of the quality of the
classification activity," Aftergood said. "You could tell me how
many things you classify, but that doesnâ€™t give me any
indication of whether you exercised good judgment or not." 			
			 			 		 	 		 	 	 	 	 	 		 			© 2006 The NewStandard. All
rights reserved. The NewStandard is a non-profit publisher that
encourages noncommercial reproduction of its content. Reprints
must prominently attribute the author and The NewStandard,
hyperlink to http://newstandardnews.net (online) or display
newstandardnews.net (print), and carry this notice. For more
information or commercial reprint rights, please see the TNS
reprint policy. 		 	 	 		 	 		<img
*****************************************************************
 20 SPI: Northwest EPA boss resigns to join Kempthorne's interior staff
 	 	 	 	 	 
Seattle Post-Intelligencer] [seattlepi.com]     

Wednesday, June 7, 2006 · Last updated 3:37 p.m. PT 
Northwest EPA boss resigns to join Kempthorne's interior staff 

By CHRISTOPHER SMITH ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER                         

BOISE, Idaho -- The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection 
Agency for the Pacific Northwest announced his resignation 
Wednesday to join the staff of Interior Secretary Dirk 
Kempthorne.             

Michael Bogert was appointed by President Bush in August as EPA 
administrator over Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Alaska. Before 
that, he was Kempthorne's staff attorney from 1999 to 2004 when 
Kempthorne was the governor of Idaho.           

His resignation from EPA is effective July 8 and he will become 
special counselor to Kempthorne at the Department of Interior on 
July 10.                

"The governor and I will be engaged in many familiar 
conversations on law and policy because we have some very key 
issues we have to make progress on and resolve," said Bogert, who 
advised Kempthorne in negotiating water rights settlements with 
Indian tribes and suing the federal government over wolf and 
grizzly bear reintroduction plans while in Idaho.           

Kempthorne was formally sworn-in as secretary of interior
Wednesday by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at a White
House ceremony. Kempthorne said he would be focusing the
Department of the Interior's efforts on expanding energy
resources, improving education in Indian reservation schools,
protecting wildlife refuges and making improvements to national
parks. 		

"There is no more beautiful cathedral than the outdoors," said
Kempthorne. "America the beautiful is blessed with countless
natural cathedrals that deserve our preservation." 		

 [advertising] Bogert was the first Idahoan in nearly 20 years
to direct the EPA's Northwest region, which monitors compliance
of federal anti-pollution and public health safety laws in the
four states. Members of Idaho's congressional delegation had
spent nine months lobbying the White House to appoint Bogert to
the EPA post, describing him in a letter as "sensitive to the
need to protect the environmental treasures of the West." 		

The regional office has more than 600 employees and a $500
million annual budget. 		

Bogert said it is unclear whether his successor will also have
Idaho ties. By tradition, the opportunity to recommend nominees
for the regional administrator's job to the White House has
rotated among congressional delegations of the four Northwest
states. 		

"I am very mindful of the fact that customarily this was Idaho's
turn at the position," Bogert said. "But ultimately, that
decision will be made by the White House." 		

During his 10-month tenure at EPA, Bogert supervised efforts to
clean up radioactive waste from the Hanford nuclear reservation
in Eastern Washington, and mining pollution in the Coeur d'Alene
Basin area of northern Idaho and Eastern Washington, which is
one of the nation's largest Superfund projects. 		

"In my brief tenure at EPA, I've gained a better understanding
of the people in the region and the opportunities for
collaboration," Bogert said. "This position in public service
has been far and away the most fulfilling to me." 	             
   
[Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 
98119 (206) 448-8000
 
 Send comments to ©1996-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
*****************************************************************
 21 RIA Novosti: Why does Pentagon need nonnuclear warheads?

Opinion &analysis - 

 
07/ 06/ 2006

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti military commentator Viktor Litovkin.) --
On May 22, 2006, The Washington Post carried an article "A
Missile Strike Option We Need" by two former U.S. Secretaries of
Defense - Harold Brown (1977-1981) and James Schlesinger
(1973-1975). 

Brown and Schlesinger suggested installing nonnuclear warheads
on U.S. strategic missiles, first of all, Trident II D5
submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), which have
multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs). These
warheads can hit terrorist bases more effectively than, say,
cruise missiles or free-fall bombs. Such precise strikes could
be dealt minutes after the military receive information about
terrorist bases and their coordinates and would involve no
bombers or carrier task forces and submarines operating in
direct proximity to hostile areas. 

The U.S. establishment is so fascinated with this idea that the
Congress has started discussing the allocation of appropriations
for nonnuclear warheads. But it appears this will not become the
ultimate weapon in the fight against international terrorism
because, as any sober-minded military expert knows,
counter-terrorist operations require more subtle and diverse
weapons systems than warheads and strategic missiles. Then why
does the Pentagon need MIRVs for inter-continental ballistic
missiles, and why are its high-ranking lobbyists so concerned
about this? 

The answer may not be as simple as one thinks. 

Russian defense industry experts said MIRV warheads were, first
of all, needed to conceal nuclear warheads because no
early-warning radar could discern between conventional and
nuclear weapons. In this situation, a delayed retaliatory strike
would mean a sure victory for the attacker as the defending side
would lose precious moments trying to locate high-priority
targets. Moreover, it is pointless to install expensive
conventional warheads on ICBMs. 

Nonnuclear warheads are not covered by strategic arms-reduction
documents either, and it would be impossible to find out how
many U.S. strategic submarines have such warheads. Under the
Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, Russia and the United
States will reduce their strategic nuclear warheads to a level
of 1,700-2,200 by December 31, 2012. But Moscow would still
think that Washington is playing its own game, and that its
strategic missiles retain several dozen or even several hundred
nuclear warheads listed as conventional munitions. 

Experts say strategic offensive weapons with nonnuclear warheads
are intended for some extremely important military objectives,
such as hitting enterprises producing nuclear weapons, dumps
with solid-state and liquid radioactive waste, as well as other
nuclear facilities. A high-explosive conventional blast at these
facilities would cause the same damage as a nuclear warhead. An
electromagnetic impulse would knock out all electrical devices
and equipment, as well as communications and control networks.
Subsequent radioactive fallout would render such enterprises
useless for more than a century. 

Oil and gas producing enterprises, oil refineries, petroleum
depots, hydropower plants, dams, dikes, defense factories,
shipyards, plants and other facilities face the same risks.
Moreover, nonnuclear hypersonic deep-impact munitions can
penetrate a mountain dam and be detonated by the attacker at any
moment. Such an explosion can cause a disaster of unprecedented
proportions that would make Hurricane Katrina, which devastated
New Orleans in 2005, seem like child's play. National
authorities would not be able to cope with the panic in the face
of this threat. 

Former Pentagon heads Harold Brown and James Schlesinger, who
advocate such destabilizing weapons, enjoy firm Congressional
support. The U.S. Armed Forces have outpaced the world's armies
by several decades in their development and strive to obtain
additional military advantages. Washington also wants to set off
a new spiral in the arms race and to undermine the economy of
its weaker foreign rivals. Russian political and military
leaders should therefore display common sense in this situation.
It is obvious that strategic missiles with nonnuclear warheads
are gradually turning into battlefield weapons and losing their
role as a political deterrent, which should never be used. These
weapons can be launched even during local conflicts. 

However, Moscow should resist the temptation to indulge in
pointless rivalry. The Kremlin should continue to rely on its
relatively small, albeit highly effective nuclear arsenal, which
will always protect Russia against any military or political
blackmail and pressure. 

Any country is free to spend money on new weapons. But President
Vladimir Putin has warned in his latest state of the nation
address that the launch of a ballistic missile with nonnuclear
warheads could provoke an inappropriate response from nuclear
powers and a full-scale counterattack using strategic nuclear
forces. 

There is nothing more to say here.
 
© 2005 RIA Novosti   
*****************************************************************
 22 Platts: EU needs more nuclear power to reduce oil dependency
 
London (Platts)--6Jun2006
 
The European Union needs more nuclear power to reduce dependency 
on oil, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said June 5 
in Helsinki at a press conference that was broadcast by Finnish 
Radio. 

He also visited the construction site of the 1,600-MW Olkiluoto-3 
EPR which is being supplied by Framatome ANP and Siemens. 

Work on the unit is eight to nine months behind schedule because 
of quality control problems. 

De Villepin was in Finland to discuss the reactor, other energy 
issues and Finland's EU presidency which starts July 1. During 
Villepin's visit to the Eduskunta (parliament), Greenpeace 
protested outside,  raising an inflatable reactor with a banner 
reading "EPR: A French Nuclear Disaster." For similar stories, 
request a free trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at 
http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/
 
Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved
 [The McGraw-Hill Companies]       
*****************************************************************
 23 Times Herald-Record: Report on closing Indian Point released

  June 06, 2006 

By Greg Bruno gbruno@th-record.com

White Plains - Safe. Secure. Irrelevant? The Indian Point
nuclear power plant may not be so vital after all.

 The 2,000 megawatts of juice from Indian Point could be
generated by non-radioactive fuels, though significant political
and financial hurdles would impede shutdown of the Westchester
County nuclear plant, a study released today concludes. 

The findings, detailed in a report by the National Academy of
Sciences, suggest that Entergy Nuclear Northeast's claim of a
safe, secure and vital energy source at Indian Point may be
overblown. The study was called for by Rep. Nita Lowey,
D-Harrison.

There are "no insurmountable technical barriers to the
replacement of Indian Point's capacity, energy and ancillary
services," the report said. While "significant financial,
institutional, regulatory and political barriers" would have to
be overcome, "the committee anticipates that a technically
feasible replacement strategy for Indian Point could be
achievable."

The closure of Indian Point, which sits on the banks of the
Hudson River about 35-miles north of Midtown Manhattan, has been
a serious political issue for the lower Hudson Valley since
Sept. 11, 2001. 

Opponents of the plant say it is vulnerable to terrorist
attacks, a claim that plant officials vigorously refute. One of
the hijacked planes flew by the plant on its way to New York
City. 

Read the full story in tomorrow's editions of the Times
Herald-Record and recordonline.com.
 
© Orange County Publications. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 24 Brattleboro Reformer: Special hearing set on VY licensing

  By KRISTI CECCAROSSI, Reformer Staff  

 Tuesday, June 6 BRATTLEBORO -- For the next two days, the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission will avail itself to people who
want more information about the local nuclear power plant. 

The NRC's coming to town to talk about plans to extend Vermont
Yankee's license, and to collect public comment on the issue.
And after previous, rambunctious and well-attended visits, the
commission has decided to also host an unprecedented "open
house" on all matters related to the Vernon reactor. 

"We've never done it before," Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the
NRC, said of the open house. But the people of Windham County,
he said, have made it clear they have an interest. 

The open house is today 2 to 8 p.m. at the Quality Inn on Putney
Road. The formal meetings on relicensing will start Wednesday at
1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the Latchis Theatre. They'll last three
hours and for one hour before each meeting, NRC officials will
be available for "one-on-one" discussions with participants. 

Entergy Nuclear, owner of Vermont Yankee, is seeking a 20-year
extension to the plant's license, which expires in 2012. Federal
regulators have started a review of Entergy's application, which
includes a study of plant safety and the plant's environmental
impact. 

The team of NRC engineers leading the environmental portion will
be at the Latchis Theater on Wednesday. They'll give details on
what elements -- aquatic life, atmosphere, for example -- they
look at. And they'll give the public an opportunity -- two to
five minutes per person -- to weigh in. The comments will be
considered as engineers draft a report on their findings,
according to Richard Emch Jr., project manager for the NRC. 

The relicensing review is a long and convoluted process that
formally began in January when Entergy applied to the NRC. The
application comprised dense and detailed reviews, funded by
Entergy, of plant components and surrounding ecology. The NRC
bases much of its review on that data in hand, Emch said. 

The NRC's environmental review can identify other concerns --
the sort that aren't listed in the boilerplate used for all
nuclear power plants -- but as of yet, Emch said, the commission
hasn't discovered any issues unique to Vermont Yankee. 

But one reason for Wednesday's public meeting, Emch said, is
that local people could help the NRC find such problems. 

NRC officials say their relicensing review will take about 22
months of work, amounting to about $8-10 million worth of
investment from Entergy. 

The NRC's full participation could take up to 30 months,
however, if a request for a quasi-judicial hearing on
relicensing is granted. Last week the states of Vermont and
Massachusetts, and nuclear watchdog group New England Coalition,
requested a case. Another long and convoluted process launched
there. It's up to an independent arm of the NRC to decide
whether that special set of hearings will take place. 

Beyond the NRC's review of relicensing, the state's Public
Service Board and the Legislature will also have a say on
continued operation of Vermont Yankee. 

» (802) 254-2311 » 62 Black Mountain Road » Brattleboro, VT 
05301-9242                    
*****************************************************************
 25 Reuters: Australia to examine nuclear power industry

Tue 6 Jun 2006 5:36 AM ET                                     

CANBERRA, June 6 (Reuters) - Australia is to study whether to set 
up a nuclear power and enrichment industry, Prime Minister John 
Howard said on Tuesday, angering environmentalists who want the 
country to maintain its nuclear-free stance.

 Australia holds about 40 percent of the world's uranium reserves 
and is a major exporter of the material, but has no nuclear power 
or enriching industry of its own and has only one research 
reactor, in suburban Sydney.

 "I have always maintained that holding the reserves of uranium 
that we do, it is foolish to see ourselves simply as an exporter 
of uranium," Howard told reporters.

 "I think we should also look at the value-added process, which 
is principally enrichment, and we should also look at whether 
nuclear power stations become economically feasible," he told 
reporters.

 The Australian Greens said Howard's position put the environment 
behind the needs of the international nuclear industry.

 "The nuclear debate is a sideshow to the greatest challenge 
facing Australia, and that is climate change," Greens Senator 
Christine Milne said in a statement.

 There are currently 441 nuclear power plants worldwide. More are 
planned in China and India to meet growing energy demands, while 
South Korea and the Russian Federation also intend to increase 
nuclear power generation.

 Australia is one of the world's biggest exporters of coal, a 
resource used more widely in power generation. Howard's 
conservative government has strongly supported coal mining 
companies despite calls for more renewable energy.

 But he said on Tuesday that support for nuclear energy was 
growing, adding that even some environmentalists supported it 
because it was a cleaner energy source.

 A survey in 2005 found 47 percent of Australians supported 
nuclear power, while 40 percent opposed it.

 Howard announced a task force to inquire into the issue and 
report back by the end of the year. The government's Nuclear 
Science and Technology Organisation has already said that four or 
five nuclear power stations would have to be built in eastern 
Australia for the industry to be viable.

 The coal industry welcomed the inquiry, but said the development 
of low-emission coal technology meant zero-emission coal-fired 
power stations would be available by the time nuclear power could 
be generated in Australia.


© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.                                              
*****************************************************************
 26 NEWS.com.au: PM names rest of taskforce - Nuclear Debate - 

By staff writers and AAP

 June 07, 2006                                                   

PRIME Minister John Howard has announced the remaining members of 
the nuclear industry inquiry. Mr Howard has already announced the 
inquiry – which will examine uranium mining, enrichment and 
nuclear power – will be headed by nuclear scientist and former 
Telstra chief Dr Ziggy Switkowski.

 New members announced today include nuclear safety expert Sylvia 
Kidziak, Dulhunty Power Ltd chairman Martin Thomas, and former 
supervising scientist with Environment Australia, Dr Arthur 
Johnston.

 "These appointments provide a well-rounded, highly experienced 
and balanced task force that will allow for an objective and 
highly professional review of the complex issues outlined in the 
terms of reference," Mr Howard said.

 They will join professors George Dracoulis and Warwick McKibbin 
from the Australian National University on the taskforce.

 A secretariat, led by senior public servant John Ryan will 
support the taskforce.

 Labor and environment groups have attacked the taskforce's
narrow terms of reference, calling for it to look into other
forms of electricity generation.

Mr Howard earlier today acknowledged people's fears about the 
location of power plants, but said the debate about a possible 
nuclear future for Australia was much broader.

 "There are 'not in my backyard' campaigns about everything," he 
said on ABC radio.

 "People talk generally about renewable energy but I know a lot 
of people in coastal areas of Victoria, for example, who don't 
like wind farms.

 "I don't know that anybody confronted with a question – do you 
want a coal-fired power station in your district – that they 
would say yes.

 "That is a natural reaction.

 "What I'm trying to do with this debate is to broaden it out so 
that we can look at what the potential is."

 Mr Howard denied the inquiry was a smokescreen for increasing 
uranium exports and establishing enrichment plants.

 "It's about being honest enough about our opportunities and 
confident enough about our future to look at all of these 
options, and when we get the information in we get judgments," he 
said.

 But the Prime Minister said the enrichment of uranium had to be 
considered and the current export of the mineral compared with 
sending fine Australian wool offshore to be processed.

 "If there's a viable economic, safe alternative I don't want
the same thing to be said in future generations about our
uranium," Mr Howard said.

 "What I see is an opportunity for this nation to think about
its future in the longer term."

 Mr Howard said he would not get into "silly games" of trying to
put a timeframe on the possible adoption of nuclear power.

 He again attacked negative views of nuclear as an energy source.

 "We need to be open minded and forward looking enough to at
least examine it," he said.

 "And this negative attitude that sets its mind against even
talking about or examining the subject is not good for
Australia's future.

 "I think it's a possibility. I'm not an expert, I'm not a
nuclear physicist and what I would like is an examination." 

*****************************************************************
 27 NEWS.com.au: Abbott happy to be nuclear plant MP - 

From: AAP

June 07, 2006

URANIUM mining is not substantially different to any other kind
of mining, federal Health Minister Tony Abbott said. Earlier
this week, Mr Abbott said he had no problem with a nuclear power
plant being built in his Sydney seat of Warringah.

 "I've got no in-principle objection to a nuclear plant anywhere
as long as long as it complies with all the usual sets of
planning standards and its not plonked bang smack in the middle
of a residential area," Mr Abbott said today.

 The minister said the important thing was to have a rational
debate about how nuclear power might be in Australia's long-term
national interest.

 "I don't think that uranium mining is substantially different
from any other kind of mining. I don't see why we shouldn't have
more mines," Mr Abbott said.

"If down the track it seems sensible to have nuclear
power generation, then I'm not against that either." 		  		 		

| | | | | | Copyright 2006 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT +
*****************************************************************
 28 NEWS.com.au: Environmental group spurns nuclear inquiry - 

By Joseph Kerr and Rick Wallace

 June 08, 2006                                                   

A PROMINENT environmentalist has refused to sit on John Howard's 
nuclear energy review, despite his own acceptance of a role for 
nuclear power. WWF Australia chief executive Greg Bourne 
dismissed yesterday the Prime Minister's six-month review as an 
"economic inquiry".

 The former boss of BP Australasia said the inquiry was designed 
to determine how much money could be squeezed out of the nuclear 
industry, rather than to address global warming, the reason 
behind WWF Australia's acceptance last month of the Federal 
Government's push to expand uranium mining. 

Mr Bourne said he had been asked to join the taskforce about two 
hours before Mr Howard announced it on Tuesday. But once he had 
seen the terms of reference he advised his board the inquiry was 
"rubbish". 

"It's an economic inquiry to see how much wealth can be created 
through uranium exports (and) nuclear power. It's purely an 
economic inquiry," he said. 

He acknowledged the reality that nuclear power plants were in 
operation around the world, but said the nation needed to be 
looking at ways of reducing emissions through biofuels, carbon 
capture and clean coal. While nuclear was part of today's energy 
mix, it was a part of the mix that would be reduced over time. 

Mr Howard announced the remaining three members of his inquiry 
yesterday, providing a strong background in nuclear science. 

Arthur Johnston, a retired public servant from Darwin, has
extensive environmental experience, developing programs to
protect Kakadu National Park. Sylvia Kidziak is the chairman of
the Radiation Safety Committee and Martin Thomas is the chairman
of Dulhunty Power and a director of a renewable power company. 

The head of the inquiry, former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski,
said a tax on carbon emissions - key to making nuclear power
competitive with coal - would be part of their discussions. 

Dr Switkoskwi, a nuclear physicist, said modern reactors
produced less waste, and moral arguments about Australia
exporting uranium and ignoring how the waste was disposed of
were "a bit of a stretch". He said his inquiry was unlikely to
consider the potential location of plants and its six members
were not predisposed towards nuclear energy. 

He could "understand" how people might think his presence on the
board of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology
Organisation made him predisposed towards atomic energy, but he
was also involved with the Government's Low Emissions Technology
Demonstration Fund, which is looking at other sources of clean
power. 

While Dr Switkowski and fellow inquiry members economist Warwick
McKibbin and nuclear scientist George Dracoulis have an open
mind on a carbon tax, Peter Costello ruled it out. 

"You can make anything competitive if you are willing to weigh
down all of the alternatives with crippling taxation," the
Treasurer said. 

Health Minister Tony Abbott said it was important to have a
rational debate about how nuclear power might be in Australia's
long-term interests. 		  		 		 		 			Search for more stories on

2006 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT + 10). 
*****************************************************************
 29 NEWS.com.au: Switkowski conflict of interest 'absurd' - 

From: AAP

June 08, 2006                                                    

ANY accusations that the head of the Federal Government's
inquiry into nuclear energy had a conflict of interest were
"absurd", Prime Minister John Howard said today. But the
decision by former Telstra boss and nuclear scientist Ziggy
Switkowski to step down from the board of Australia's peak
nuclear organisation was sensible, he said.

 "I didn't ask him to do so, and I am not aware that anybody in
the government did.

 "It seems to me to be a very sensible thing. "I think he has
handled all of these absurd allegations about a conflict of
interest very effectively," he said.

 Dr Switkowski decided last night to step down from the board of
the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
(ANSTO), which supports the expansion of the nuclear industry.

 Green groups and Labor had accused Dr Switkowski of bias
because of his position on the board.

Greens Leader Bob Brown said today that Dr Switkowski was 
pro-nuclear irrespective of his position on the board.

 "He can do his best, but the record is one of support for 
nuclear and I haven't heard his support - or analysis - of the 
better alternatives like solar or energy efficiency," Senator 
Brown said.

 "Impressions are important but I think there is a substantial 
case to be put here that this is a biased and loaded inquiry by 
the prime minister.

 Dr Switkowski said today his membership at ANSTO dated back only 
to the beginning of the year and he had attended just three board 
meetings.

 He said he was going into the inquiry with an open mind.

 "I think membership of the ANSTO board simply confirms that I'm
relatively competent in the whole area of nuclear physics and I
think that's going to be valuable for the next few months," he
told Channel 9.

 "I don't think I'll have any difficulties in being objective,
and after all I'm supported by a panel of very capable,
strong-willed individuals who I'm sure will ensure that there's
objectivity."

 Dr Switkowski said the inquiry was not stacked to examine only
the positives of nuclear energy and would not consider any
possible locations for reactors.

 The inquiry is due to report by the end of the year.

 WWF Australia chief executive Greg Bourne dismissed the review
as an "economic inquiry".

 The former boss of BP Australasia said yesterday the inquiry
was designed to determine how much money could be squeezed out
of the nuclear industry, rather than to address global warming,
the reason behind WWF Australia's acceptance last month of the
Federal Government's push to expand uranium mining.

 Mr Bourne said he had been asked to join the task force about
two hours before Mr Howard announced it on Tuesday but when he
saw the terms of reference he advised his board the inquiry was
"rubbish".

 "It's an economic inquiry to see how much wealth can be created
through uranium exports (and) nuclear power. It's purely an
economic inquiry," he said.

*****************************************************************
 30 NEWS.com.au: PM names rest of nuclear taskforce 

From: AAP                       

June 07, 2006                                                    

PRIME Minister John Howard has announced the remaining members of 
the nuclear industry inquiry. Mr Howard has already announced the 
inquiry – which will examine uranium mining, enrichment and 
nuclear power – will be headed by nuclear scientist and former 
Telstra chief Dr Ziggy Switkowski.

 New members announced today include nuclear safety expert Sylvia 
Kidziak, Dulhunty Power Ltd chairman Martin Thomas, and former 
supervising scientist with Environment Australia, Dr Arthur 
Johnston.

 "These appointments provide a well-rounded, highly experienced 
and balanced task force that will allow for an objective and 
highly professional review of the complex issues outlined in the 
terms of reference," Mr Howard said.

 They will join professors George Dracoulis and Warwick McKibbin 
from the Australian National University on the taskforce.

A secretariat, led by senior public servant John Ryan will 
support the taskforce.              

Copyright 2006 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT + 10).
*****************************************************************
 31 Australian Financial Review: Howard's about-turn in energy debate

Letters-->      

2006/06/08-->
	
There is a tinge of hypocrisy in Prime Minister John Howard's
road to Damascus conversion of more uranium production in the
name of "cleaner and greener" energy. 

In 10 years the Howard government has cut spending in research
and development, reduced mandatory renewable energy targets and
its strident opposition to the Kyoto Protocol has resulted in
business opportunities going overseas. 

Pacific Hydro has had to go offshore to form a joint venture
with the Fijian government to take advantage of the clean
development mechanism contained within Kyoto. This means taking
offshore skills, funds and intellectual capital. 

Chanticleer pointed out (June 6) that electricity generation
accounts for 35per cent of Australian greenhouse gases. The
other 65per cent comes from transport, landfill, industrial
emissions, land clearing and agriculture. 

Developing countries as they modernise also want a cleaner and
safer environment. Australia could be a world leader in research
and development, manufacturing and exporting technologies that
improved resource efficiencies and reduced greenhouse gas
emissions across all sectors. Imagine, for example, if the
$2.6billion in subsidies provided last year by taxpayers to
residential property investors was redirected to resource
efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction. 

It's just a question of Howard prioritising productive
investment. 

Vincent Mahon, Melbourne, Vic. 

*****************************************************************
 32 Sydney Morning Herald: Nuclear critics 'trying to score points' - 

www.smh.com.au

June 7, 2006 - 9:54AM
 	 	
Critics of a federal government inquiry to investigate
Australia's nuclear options are merely trying to score political
points, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says.

Mr Downer said Labor and environmental groups were misguided in
criticising the inquiry, announced on Tuesday by Prime Minister
John Howard.

"The criticism comes from people who are just trying to make a
party political point and score party political points against
the Liberal Party," Mr Downer told reporters in Adelaide.

"I don't think it's anything to do with the intellectual issues
involved.

"I think intellectually it's important that, as a country, we
have a look at these issues and we have a mature discussion."

Mr Downer said he understood a lot of people were opposed to
nuclear power and uranium mining and enrichment.

But he said Australia needed "to look at the totality of what
the arguments really are".

"The world is a changing place," he said.

"Australia is not going to get very far as a country if it's
resistant to every single change that is ever considered on the
basis that a scare campaign is run by oppositionist groups in
Australia."

Mr Downer said it was possible the inquiry could lead to uranium
enrichment in Australia.

"Enrichment makes prima facie common sense," he said.

"To enrich uranium, to process the raw material into a higher
level of processing, it would be good economically.

"But it would be something that would also have to be negotiated
internationally, so there are a number of hurdles you'd have to
get over before you got into the enrichment game." 	

© 2006  AAP
| Copyright © 2006. The Sydney Morning Herald. 
*****************************************************************
 33 Sydney Morning Herald: Nuclear panel head steps down from ANSTO - 

www.smh.com.au

June 7, 2006 - 5:26PM

The head of a review panel into nuclear energy says he will step
down from the board of Australia's peak nuclear organisation
while the inquiry takes place.

Former Telstra boss and nuclear scientist Ziggy Switkowski has
been hand-picked by Prime Minister John Howard to head a
wide-ranging inquiry into uranium mining, enrichment and nuclear
power.

Green groups and Labor say Dr Switkowski is biased because he
sits on the board of the Australian Nuclear Science and
Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which supports the expansion of
the nuclear industry.

Dr Switkowski said he would step down from ANTSO while the
inquiry was conducted.

"I'm going to step aside from the board of ANTSO and I've done
so now," he told ABC Television.

"And so I won't be any party to any submissions that ANTSO makes
to the committee over the next six months."

He also said the panel was made up of experts and it was
unlikely any one member would overpower the inquiry.

"The other thing is ... the review panel is made up of very
capable, strong, well informed people. I don't think any one of
us is going to have the capability to overwhelm the rest of the
committee with our views," he said.

Dr Switkowski said any decision to move to nuclear power would
be principally based on economics, although the effect on global
warming would be considered.

"Well I think it's a question of economics as well as a view
that global warming and carbon dioxide build-up is an issue to
which we must make a contribution," he said.

"Technologies like wind, like solar, like geothermal, like
nuclear are absolutely the ones we have to look at and in the
next six months we might have to help the community form a view
as to where in the queue nuclear energy fits." 	

© 2006  AAP

 Copyright © 2006. The Sydney Morning Herald. 
*****************************************************************
 34 AU ABC: Hot rock power suggested as nuclear alternative
 
 Thursday, 8 June 2006. 08:16 (AEDT)Thursday, 8 June 2006. 07:16

 A company testing resources in the Cooper Basin, on the
Queensland-South Australian border, is confident new exploration
will reveal huge power potential. 

Geodynamics is working in the far north-east of South Australia
where it says the known resource is the equivalent of 50 billion
barrels of oil. It will shortly move over the border to explore
in Queensland's south-west. 

Managing director Bertus de Graaf says while the current nuclear
debate is important, he hopes the hot rock technology is given
similar consideration. 

"We think we can play a large role here in the base load power
... and zero emissions and so far fewer problems than nuclear
has to cope with in terms of its disposal of wastes and also
other security issues," he said. 

"We think that hot rocks can play a major role in the future." 

The concept involves generating power by pumping water through
hot rocks several kilometres below the earth's surface. 

Mr de Graaf says it is hoping the enormous potential will
continue once the company crosses the border into Queensland. 

"It's enormous ... the known resource in the two licences we've
been working at ... the first kilometre of the hot rocks have
the potential to provide really thousands of megawatts of power
on the scale of nuclear power stations," he said. 

"In fact, the potential is so large that it could in theory
supply the total power needs for Australia for the next 70
years." 

*****************************************************************
 35 BBC: Australia press split over nuclear
 
Last Updated: Wednesday, 7 June 2006
 
[Lucus Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney] 

Australia currently has one research reactor in Lucas Heights                                                                 

Australian commentators are divided over Prime Minister John 
Howard's decision to commission a study into whether the country 
should develop nuclear power. 

For some, such as Peter Hartcher in The Sydney Morning Herald, 
the issue shouldn't even be on the table. 

"Australia, one of the world's great energy exporters, does not 
have an energy shortage," he says. "Even if Australia did have a 
shortage of energy, nuclear power is not the answer." 

He believes the numbers just don't add up. 	

It is not for government pick and choose between nuclear, clean 
coal, hydro or any other method of generating electricity                

The Australian          

"It is not commercially viable anywhere in the world without 
substantial government subsidy," he argues. 

"It is even less viable in Australia, a country awash in cheap 
alternatives." 

The Australian agrees that Mr Howard should let economics decide 
the outcome. 

"It is not for government to pick and choose between nuclear, 
clean coal, hydro or any other method of generating electricity," 
the paper says. "The role of government is to ensure there is a 
rules-based marketplace." 

If the government feels it must intervene in order to rein in 
greenhouse emissions, the paper maintains, "it should do by 
setting national environmental standards, rather than by pushing 
for one particular solution for power generation". 

Time to talk 

Others, however, argue that the pros and cons of nuclear power 
need to be assessed in full before any decision is taken. 

"This is a modest, limited and hastily announced start to the 
debate," says Michael Gordon in The Age. "But it is a beginning." 

However, Mr Howard was wrong, he says, to announce a review that 
will focus on nuclear power "in isolation, without examining how 
it stacks up against the various alternatives". 

Steve Lewis in The Australian agrees that the idea of using 
nuclear power needs to be considered.   

The potential to lease fuel a return it to Australia for 
processing, in conjunction with a global waste repository, may 
have many benefits                 
                
Guy Webber in The Australian    

"Australia, with 40% of the world's uranium reserves, must have
this debate," he says. 

"We should look to a future where Australia can value-add to
this precious mineral, not simply export it to energy-guzzling
nations such as China." 

All the same, he argues, Mr Howard faces a tough battle to win
over public opinion. 

"The prime minister spent several hours yesterday convincing his
cabinet colleagues of the merits of a full-blooded nuclear
inquiry," he points out. 

"It will take much longer to convince a sceptical community of
the benefits of going nuclear." 

Reaping the rewards 

But those sceptics will have to be won over, insists The
Australian's Guy Webber, who is adamant that going nuclear will
help Australia in the long run. 

"The potential to lease fuel and return it to Australia for
processing, in conjunction with a global waste repository, may
have many benefits," he argues. 

These would include "greater control over global management of
nuclear fuels and significant financial advantages to rural
Australia". 

BBC Monitoringselects and translates news from radio,
television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150
countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham,
UK, and has several bureaux abroad. 		 	 		 	 	 
*****************************************************************
 36 BBC: Blair's nuclear warning to Wales
 
Last Updated: Wednesday, 7 June 2006
 
By Adrian Masters Westminster correspondent, BBC Wales News   

[Anti-nuclear demonstrators at Downing Street] 
                                
Protesters handed an anti-nuclear petition to Downing Street in 
April                                                                

Prime Minister Tony Blair has told MPs Wales cannot be treated as 
a special case when it comes to making a decision on building new 
nuclear power stations. 

It puts him at odds with the Welsh Assembly Government, which 
says Wales does not need nuclear power. 

His comments came in a response during prime minister's questions 
to Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Lembit Opik. 

Mr Blair said dialogue was important, but he had "to balance the 
energy interests of the whole of the UK." 

Last month he caused anger when he said the building of new 
nuclear power stations was "back on the agenda with a vengeance." 

It is a different view from that of the Labour assembly 
government in Cardiff Bay. 

An assembly government spokesman said it had consistently stated 
that it "does not see the need for new nuclear power stations in 
Wales," and had made that position clear in its submission to the 
UK Government's energy review, which is due to report soon. 

Mr Opik said a delegation from the Centre for Alternative 
Technology in Machynlleth could demonstrate how Wales' energy 
needs could be met without using nuclear power. 

He said, "Many people are worried that the government is 
attempting to pre-empt its own energy review, and force us into a 
particular path. 

"The government must show that it's willing to listen to the 
alternatives, and look at ways of meeting our energy needs 
without simply attempting to build its way out of trouble with 
one option that the PM seems to favour."                                                         



*****************************************************************
 37 AZ Republic: Faulty Palo Verde unit could soon be back in action 

[The Arizona Republic]  June 7, 2006

A Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station reactor that has operated 
at reduced power all year finally could be fixed. 

Operator Arizona Public Service Co. relocated a valve in Unit 1 
to reduce pipe vibrations that sapped the reactor's output since 
December. Crews expect to fire up Unit 1 later this month, and if 
all tests go well, the reactor should be at full power sometime 
this summer. 

While APS expects the triple-reactor nuclear plant will be at 
full power during the hottest days, the utility secured contracts 
with other power plants to replace Unit 1's electricity if 
necessary. 

APS said Tuesday that it expects the Valley's summer peak 
electricity use will reach 11,149 megawatts. With 12,375 
megawatts secured by APS and Salt River Project, the utilities 
say there should be plenty of cushion to overcome sporadic 
outages caused by summer storms or other mishaps. 

- Ken Alltucker

Copyright © 2006, azcentral.com. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 38 PoughkeepsieJournal.com: Report lists nuke plant alternatives
 
Wednesday, June 7, 2006 

Data fuel debate on replacement of Indian Point
 
By Dan Shapley Poughkeepsie Journal
 		 		 
BUCHANAN, Westchester County — New power plants, more efficient
transmission and energy conservation could replace Indian
Point's power. But not without increasing air pollution and
consumer costs — and not without unprecedented leadership from
state officials, the nation's top scientific advisers determined.

The National Academies' National Research Council's report,
"Alternatives to the Indian Point Energy Center for Meeting New
York Electric Power Needs," was made public Tuesday.

The report was requested by Congress to address public concern
about safety at the plant following the Sept. 11,2001, terrorist
attacks, when one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center
flew over the nuclear complex.

Changes in place by 2013 

The power could be replaced by 2013 and 2015, when the federal
licenses to operate the Westchester County plant's two active
nuclear reactors expire. But it would require a long-term,
integrated strategy that may include changes to state law and
policies, including the Article X, power plant siting law.

The committee questioned whether there are enough financial
incentives for companies to build new plants, given the price of
energy and the complex plant siting and environmental protection
laws in New York.

"There are no insurmountable technical barriers to replacing the
energy lost by shutting down Indian Point, but we are less
confident that government and financial mechanisms are in place
to facilitate the timely implementation of alternatives," said
Lawrence T. Papay, chairman of the committee that wrote the
report.

Even if the plants were decommissioned, the perceived safety
risk would remain. Spent nuclear fuel would likely remain at the
Buchanan site for years.

Indian Point's 2,158 megawatts supply about a quarter of the New
York City metro-area energy demand. By 2008, demand in that
region is expected to increase by 500 megawatts — about the
capacity of Dynegy's Danskammer power plant in Newburgh.

Higher energy demand 

By 2010, the region's energy demand could increase by 1,200
megawatts or more. However, aggressive investments in existing
and new programs to reduce energy demand — through conservation
and other strategies —could reduce the load by almost that
amount by 2010.

Jim Steets, spokesman for Indian Point, said the company agreed
with the report's conclusions.

"It's kind of what we've been saying all along. Of course you
can replace Indian Point. Conceivably, you can row a boat across
the Atlantic Ocean, too," Steets said. "To me, it illustrates
why it's so important why we continue to operate the plants
responsibly."

U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Westchester County, who is among the
advocates calling for the plant's closure, downplayed the
challenge of replacing the plant.

"I'm pleased to announce today that this authoritative study is
complete," she said. "And the bottom line is this: we can meet
the region's increasing energy demands without Indian Point." 

Dan Shapley can be reached at 

Copyright © 2006 PoughkeepsieJournal.com 
*****************************************************************
 39 Rutland Herald: NRC's narrow view

Rutland Vermont News & Information
 	 	 	 	 	 
   Opinion   
    
June 7, 2006 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission representatives are in the state 
today to hear public comment on the environmental risk of Vermont 
Yankee, step No. 11 of 33 outlined on the Web site for review of 
the nuclear power plant's application for a license extension. 
It's a pointillist approach to nuclear power.

In addition to the environmental assessment, there will also be a 
safety assessment and inspections, all of which are subject to 
review by the Advisory Committee for Reactor Standards, a group 
of scientists and experts who ensure the proper procedures have 
been followed, and finally, a hearing if requested — which it has 
been by the states of Massachusetts and Vermont as well as by the 
New England Coalition, a public watchdog group — and if the NRC 
deems a hearing appropriate. More on that later.

The NRC will be considering 92 separate factors, which taken 
together will determine whether the plant meets the threshold for 
approval based on environmental criteria.

Of the 92 factors, 69 are considered Category I or minor 
criteria, and every plant applying for a license extension must 
show they meet the standards. The remaining 23 are Category II or 
major criteria and are plant specific; a plant not on a river 
does not have to discuss the warming effect of its effluent on 
the river, for instance.

In general, the environmental review includes water, land and air 
quality issues, radiation protection, and socio-economic or 
"environmental justice" issues: namely, whether the plant in 
question takes advantage of poor or minority citizens' relative 
lack of clout.

Today's meetings — although they are for hearing public comment, 
they are not considered hearings, which are more formal legal 
proceedings — are so the NRC panel can find out what 
environmental concerns the public has about the nuke plant in 
their backyard.

Speakers will be given from three to five minutes to tell the 
panel their concerns. While the public can say any damned thing 
it pleases, the NRC will only be listening for comments within 
the scope of its inquiry. There will also be one-hour open house 
sessions before the meetings for more wide-ranging discussion.

The NRC calls this "a search for new and significant 
information." Specific concerns about Category I issues are 
definitely included because the public who live next to the plant 
are in a better position to spot the little things than an 
inspection team, however thorough. While the NRC will listen to 
proposals to better their process, they clearly feel they know 
what they're doing already.

But the panel is constrained in what it can consider. The NRC 
cannot by law require an applicant to exceed the standards laid 
down in the Clean Water Act, for instance. On dry cask storage, 
the NRC bases its review on the assumption that there will be 
appropriate long-term storage for spent fuel rods by 2025, 
although it prefers the terminology "within the first quarter of 
this century." It is unclear how building the planned Yucca 
Mountain national nuclear waste dump in one of the most 
impoverished Indian reservations in the country passes the 
"environmental justice" test, but a waste dump in Nevada is 
clearly outside the scope of a licensing hearing — sorry, meeting 
— in Vermont.

"What if" questions are likewise not within the scope of this 
review. Long-term disposal of radioactive waste, emergency 
planning and security are matters for another time or panel.

The licensing process promises to be methodical, precise and 
thorough, within its parameters.

But the community's overall concern is not being heard. When the 
plant was built, the community and the nation had a chance to 
discuss the bigger issues of nuclear power: Is it a good thing, 
what will we do with the waste, what are the appropriate 
safeguards? At the end of that discussion, Vermont Yankee was 
approved to run at 100 percent for 40 years. Now, without benefit 
of the big-picture debate, the NRC has decided the plant can run 
at 120 percent of what was considered safe and appropriate in 
1972. It is in the middle of deciding whether it is OK for the 
plant to run at the new level for an extra 20 years beyond the 
original sell-by date.

The community should have the right to another full debate on
the merits of nuclear power. A lot has changed in the interim.
And although the state has promised a debate independent of the
NRC review, the feds clearly expect to have the final say over
the plant's future.

So the state has filed for a hearing, but don't be surprised if
they don't get one unless they have questions about specific
points the NRC has already agreed to review.

And don't be surprised if nobody from the federal government
listens when Vermonters ask hard questions at today's meeting;
they're too busy with their paint-by-number kit to look at the
big picture.
   
© 2006 Rutland Herald
*****************************************************************
 40 Rutland Herald: NRC invites public to Lachis meetings today

Rutland Vermont News & Information
                
June 7, 2006 

Southern Vermont Bureau   
  
BRATTLEBORO — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold two
public meetings today to solicit information from residents
concerning Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant's proposal to
extend its operating license by 20 years.

Residents are asked to identify environmental issues that the
NRC should consider when reviewing the application to extend the
Vernon plant's license beyond 2012. The meetings will be held at
1:30 and 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Latchis Theatre in downtown
Brattleboro.

Vermont Yankee's license expires on March 21, 2012, and earlier
this year the plant's owner, Entergy Vermont Nuclear, formally
asked to extend that term. The application to extend the license
can be read at the NRC Web site or viewed at libraries in
Brattleboro, Vernon, Hinsdale, N.H. and Northfield, Mass.

The NRC will later release to participants which significant
issues, if any, were raised at the meetings. That information
will be used in preparation for a draft report on the impact of
a license renewal and will be the subject of another public
meeting to solicit more comments.

Participants were encouraged to schedule time to speak at the
two meetings, but the NRC said some slots may still be open
immediately before the meetings begin.
   
*****************************************************************
 41 ABC Asia: Head of nuclear inquiry in Australia ensures no conflict of interest

  08/06/2006 14:46:00 

The man leading an inquiry into nuclear power in Australia has 
taken steps to kill off claims of a conflict of interest.

Our reporter, Hayden Cooper, says taskforce chairman Ziggy 
Switkowski has severed ties with the nuclear industry, standing 
down from the board of Australia's Nuclear, Science and 
Technology Organisation (ANSTO).

He says there will be no conflict of interest. 

"I won't be party to any submissions that ANSTO makes," he said. 

Meanwhile, another taskforce member has spoken out in support of 
nuclear power.

Environmental scientist, Arthur Johnston, says Chernobyl aside,
the risks have been exaggerated.

"There has been one incident in the entire period of nuclear
power, in fact one could say its record is very good," he said. 

But he, too, says he has an open mind.
 
ABC Asia Pacific TV / Radio Australia   

*****************************************************************
 42 Brattleboro Reformer: VY assessment raises by 25% to $239M

By KRISTI CECCAROSSI, Reformer Staff  

 Wednesday, June 7 VERNON -- Now that Vermont Yankee is
producing 20 percent more power, and its owners are picking up
more in annual profits, the plant's value on the grand list has
shot up for the first time in a long time. 

Town listers have assessed the plant at $239 million, up 25
percent from $180 million. 

Naturally, with an appraisal like that, the nuclear power plant
comprises almost half of the town's tax base. But whether its
owners will pony up payments for their higher tax bills remains
to be seen. 

For the last six years, Vermont Yankee has been in an agreement
between the town and the state whereby the plant was locked into
an appraisal, and a steady tax payment: $1.22 million a year. 

Strangely, the agreement was drawn with Amergen, a company that
has never owned the plant, but in 2000 made a failed bid to buy
it. 

Entergy Nuclear, a Mississippi-based company purchased the plant
in 2002, but Amergen's name remains on the tax agreement. 

And as far as Entergy Nuclear are concerned, that agreement --
uprate or no uprate -- is still in place. 

"It has provided the town and the company some certainty on
taxes," said Rob Williams, plant spokesman. 

However, the town and Entergy have met to discuss that policy a
number of times, Williams said, as recently as last year.
Apparently, no changes have been made. 

As far as the new assessment goes, Williams said, "we're still
analyzing that and an appeal remains an option." 

The new assessment was released by the town clerk's office last
week. In Vernon, appeals must be filed with the lister's office
by June 13. 

This spring, Entergy boosted the plant's power to 20 percent
above its original capacity. Williams declined to say how much
the uprate has generated in increased profits, but said the
additional power is being sold at current market rates. 

It was that uprate that prompted listers to take a second look
at Vermont Yankee's value. 

Entergy was also granted approval this year to build steel and
concrete nuclear waste containers on plant grounds. Officals in
the lister's office said when the so-called dry cask storage is
constructed, the town will negotiate an agreement, placing an
additional tax on them as well. 

» (802) 254-2311 » 62 Black Mountain Road » Brattleboro, VT 
05301-9242                    
*****************************************************************
 43 Boston Globe: NRC opens hearings on Vermont Yankee's license extension bid -
                           
Boston.com
 
Associated Press 

June 7, 2006 

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. --Federal regulators have opened hearings into
whether Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant should be granted a
license to continue operating 20 years beyond its original
planned closing.

Regulators were seeking during meetings Tuesday and Wednesday to
determine what environmental issues should be considered in the
relicensing review.

"We're doing a process called scoping. It's environmental
scoping, which is helping us decide what the scope and depth of
the environmental review will be and that's why we're here,"
said Richard Emch of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "But
what we're looking for from the public, the people who live and
work near the plant ... we're looking to see if there's any
issues that they think we should be looking at that we're not
already looking at ... and if there's any information where they
think we should be aware of that information."

The review of the licensing proposal is expected to last 2 1/2
years.

Regulators will evaluate the safety of the plant hardware to
determine if it will last for 60 years.

Deb Katz of the anti-nuclear group Citizens Awareness Network
said regulators should consider evacuation planning and spent
fuel storage at the plant as part of its review.

She said a California appeals court recently ruled that the
threat of terrorist attacks should be considered in relicensing
reviews.

------

Information from: WVPR-FM, [ /] © Copyright 2006 Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. More: 

*****************************************************************
 44 Times Herald-Record: Study cites hurdles to shuttering Indian Point

  June 07, 2006 

By Greg Bruno

gbruno@th-record.com	

White Plains - Safe. Secure. Irrelevant? 

Raising new questions about the importance of the region's only 
nuclear power plant, a federal study released yesterday concluded 
that New York could replace Indian Point's 2,000 megawatts with 
nonradioactive fuels. 

But major hurdles would impede a timely shutdown, the study said, 
suggesting that for now, Entergy Nuclear Northeast's claim of a 
safe, secure and vital energy source remains intact.

The $1 million study, conducted by the National Academy of 
Sciences, found there are "no insurmountable technical barriers 
to the replacement of Indian Point's capacity, energy, and 
ancillary services." 

However, "significant financial, institutional, regulatory and 
political barriers" would be extremely difficult to overcome.

Critics of Indian Point, who have advocated for a shutdown of the 
Westchester County facility since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist 
attacks, said yesterday that the study validated their belief 
that Indian Point could go quietly into night. 

Plant owners took a different tack. "I don't think you can make
a better case for Indian Point than what was made today," said
Jim Steets, an Entergy spokesman. Acknowledging the massive
economic, environmental and logistical hurdles for a shutdown
"basically validates everything we've said all along as to why
you shouldn't close Indian Point," Steets said. 

Finding an answer to whether Indian Point "should" close was not
the point of the study.

Instead, the committee of 17 national energy experts tried to
answer whether it "could" be closed. They investigated options
for replacing the nuclear reactors with other energy sources,
including coal, gas, wind, solar and biomass. The committee
found that in order for Indian Point to shut down by 2015, when
the plants' operating licenses are set to expire, New York would
need an additional 5,000 megawatts of generating capacity. 

Currently, the twin nuclear reactors produce about 23 percent of
the power that feeds southeast New York. According to an Entergy
Web site, www.safesecurevital.org, closing Indian Point would
lead to "electricity shortages, price spikes of as much as 40
percent, and rolling blackouts." But the study said that the
biggest challenge to closing Indian Point would be overcoming
the political and logistical hurdles of building new power
plants. 

The report, "Alternatives to the Indian Point Energy Center for
Meeting New York Electric Power Needs," is available at
www.nas.edu. 
  

Record Online is brought to you by the Times Herald-Record,
serving New York's Hudson Valley and the Catskills.

© Orange County Publications. All rights reserved. Advertisement
*****************************************************************
 45 CNIC: Problems at Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant

(Citizens' Nuclear Information Center)

6 June 2006 													 													 														

Media Release 													 													 														

There has been a series of problems since active tests commenced
at Rokkasho reprocessing plant on 31 March 2006. However the
owner, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. (JNFL), has deliberately released
only vague details of these problems. Now Citizens' Nuclear
Information Center (CNIC) has received information from a
whistleblower (extract below) which shows that these problems
are much more serious than JNFL has admitted. 														

Today CNIC submitted the following letter to JNFL, the Nuclear
and Industrial Safety Agency and the Governor of Aomori
Prefecture demanding that they publish full details of the
circumstances and the responses taken to these incidents.
														

CNIC Co-Director, Hideyuki Ban, said, "CNIC demands a thorough
investigation and full public disclosure of the facts."
														

Contacts: Hideyuki Ban (Co-Director)                      
81-3-5330-9520 Philip White (International Liaison Officer)        
81-3-5330-9520 

Mr Isami Kojima, President, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd.
 															Mr. Kenkichi Hirose, Director-General, Nuclear
Industrial Safety Agency
 															Mr. Shingo Mimura, Governor of Aomori Prefecture
6 June 2006 														

Yesterday (5 June 2006) Citizens' Nuclear Information Center
received an email message concerning two incidents at Japan
Nuclear Fuel Ltd.'s (JNFL) Rokkasho reprocessing plant (see
attached extract). The incidents were a leak of uranous nitrate
from a T-joint in the Purification Building on May 17th and the
exposure of a worker to plutonium announced by JNFL on May 25th.
														

The message makes claims about both incidents which are at
variance with the information provided so far by JNFL to the
media and with the information gathered by CNIC through our
direct inquiries to JNFL and Aomori Prefecture. 														

For example, JNFL stated that 7 liters leaked from the T-joint,
but the message claims that 10 times this amount leaked out,
overflowing the drains. It claims that the response to the leak
differed from JNFL's public statements and that JNFL is
concealing these details. The message also claims that there
have been a few other cases of radioactive contamination for
which no cause has been identified. It adds that even though
workers requested that the wearing of masks be required, JNFL
did not accept their request. 														

The information provided on JNFL's home page about the nature
and cause of accidents and the response taken is very limited,
so the details are still not clear. Furthermore, JNFL has not
responded adequately to inquiries by CNIC and other citizens'
groups. We have been seeking details in regard to several of the
points raised in the message, but have not yet received answers.
														

We believe the contents of the message to be credible, in that
they were provided by someone in a position to know the
circumstances of these incidents. We have published the message
and demand that JNFL, the Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency
and Aomori Prefecture publish full details of the circumstances
and the responses taken to these incidents, including the points
raised in the message. 														

Hideyuki Ban
 															Co-Director, Citizens' Nuclear Information
Center 														
Subject: Concerning the Truth about Troubles at JNFL
														

This is a sudden message, but I am very angry about the fact
that JNFL published false information about incidents that have
occurred recently. Therefore, I am writing this report.
														

1. Uranium Nitrate leak from a T-joint in the Purification
Building 														

JNFL publicly stated that the amount leaked was 7 liters, but
actually 10 times this amount leaked out, overflowing the
drains. If this had been publicly admitted, it would have been
Class A information, so the figures released were for the
situation after the contamination had been removed. Furthermore,
although it was said that the T-joint had been dealt with, in
fact it had only been repaired with plastic in a very crude
fashion. The amount of fluid collected in the repaired area was
about 7 liters. 														

The manufacturer (Toshiba) had envisaged that the T-joints could
leak, but JNFL did not allow it to deal with the problem.
														

It is very strange that this problem was discovered when a
worker in a neighboring room noticed a strange smell. The
ventilation is not working properly. If the low pressure had
been maintained, a worker in a neighboring room would not have
noticed the smell, especially not if the quantity was only 7
liters. 														

2. Concerning the internal exposure to plutonium of a worker in
the Analysis Laboratory Building 														

Contamination had been confirmed on a few occasions before the
contamination was discovered on this worker's clothes, but these
cases were reported. Indeed, the causes have not been
identified. All of these cases were confirmed since the active
tests began. 														

Regarding the fact that it was not a requirement to wear
half-face masks for work carried out under the hood [ventilation
hood], the same was the case for glove boxes (wearing masks was
specified in the manual in some cases). Some workers urged JNFL
to require that masks be worn, but this was not included in the
manual and the wearing of masks was overlooked. 														

Furthermore, the person in charge of the section responsible for
control of radiation, who was seconded from Japan Atomic Energy
Agency, didn't reflect the safety procedures of the prior
facility [translators remark: presumably Tokai reprocessing
plant, now operated by JAEA]. The exposed worker worked without
a break on the day in question. 														

The work system is unnatural. JNFL did not disclose that the
accident was caused by the fact that workers at this
subcontractor are forced to work in 4 teams over 3 shifts,
whereas JNFL operates 5 teams over 3 shifts. Rather, JNFL
emphasized that the problem was caused by human error.
														

Citizens' Nuclear Information Center                                            
TEL.03-5330-9520 FAX.03-5330-9530 http://cnic.jp/english/ Email                                                                                                                                                                                   
*****************************************************************
 46 Platts: Nine Mile Point relicensing application review advances
 
Washington (Platts)--5Jun2006
 
There is "reasonable assurance" that Nine Mile Point has 
satisfied the requirements for a renewed license and all previous 
open items have been resolved, NRC staff concluded in a safety 
evaluation report (SER) recently released. 

The SER is now available on NRC's document database Adams, 
accession number ML061460313. 

Constellation filed a license renewal application in May 2004, 
but NRC staff's review was suspended in March 2005 because of 
quality-related problems. 

The company submitted an amended application in July 2005. 

It is seeking renewed licenses for up to an additional 20 years 
beyond August 22, 2009 for unit 1 and October 31, 2026 for unit 
2. The staff issued a final supplemental environmental impact 
statement in late May 2006, and a decision on the application is 
anticipated in October.
 
Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved
 [The McGraw-Hill Companies]       
*****************************************************************
 47 AU ABC: Howard commissions nuclear study
 
AM - Wednesday, 7 June , 2006  08:00:00
 
Reporter: Catherine McGrath

 TONY EASTLEY: The Prime Minister says it's a debate we have to
have, but some of his opponents wonder whether the inquiry into
Australia's nuclear industry is a smoke screen for the wider
issue of increasing uranium exports and setting up enrichment
plants at home.

A hand picked group has been given the task of investigating the
economic, environmental and health and safety aspects of an
expanded nuclear industry. It's due to report back to the Prime
Minister by the end of the year. 

It will be headed by former Telstra Chief, and nuclear
physicist, Dr Ziggy Switkowski.

John Howard says he still has an open mind about nuclear power,
but renewable energy groups and environmentalists say this
investigation is inadequate and the Prime Minister is ignoring
wind and solar energy.

Mr Howard joins us by telephone from Kirribilli House and he's
speaking to our Chief Political Correspondent Catherine McGrath.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: Prime Minister, good morning.

JOHN HOWARD: Morning.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: How would you rate the chances of Australia
embracing nuclear power in the next 20, 30 years?

JOHN HOWARD: No, I'm not going to get into those silly games of
percentages. We need to be open minded and forward looking
enough to at least examine it, and this negative attitude that
sets its mind against even talking about or examining the
subject is not good for Australia's future.

I think it's a possibility, but I'm not an expert, I'm not a
nuclear physicist and what I would like is an examination. It's
not something that we've talked about much over the last 25
years. There has been some change in public opinion.

I want us to look at the nuclear option, as well as continuing
what we're doing in areas like renewables and trying to get
cleaner coal and gas technology. 

People seem to forget that only a couple of years ago we
established a low emissions technology fund of one-and-a-half
billion dollars to investigate ways of using both coal and gas
in a way that didn't produce as many greenhouse gas emissions.

You can in this area walk and chew gum at the same time and I
think the people who are reacting negatively just should calm
down and understand that if we're to have a secure energy
future, we should look at all of the options.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: On the subject of a secure energy future,
many in the mining industry are saying that the real economic
fortune is in enriching uranium and storage of waste.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, we should look at uranium enrichment. Of
course we should. We as a nation for generations have lamented
the fact that we had the finest wool in the world, but we sent
it overseas to be processed. 

I don't want… if there's a viable economic, safe alternative, I
don't want the same thing to be said in future generations about
our uranium. Now, surely…

CATHERINE MCGRATH: But do you see this…

JOHN HOWARD: Now, well I think, Catherine… what I see is an
opportunity for this nation to think about its future in the
longer term. 

Now, Mr Beazley and others can run a short term fear campaign
and they will and they'll say there's going to be a nuclear
reactor just around the corner. Of course they will do all of
that. You can do that on everything. 

He did that on the GST, he's done that on industrial relations;
he always does that. But I think the Australian people
understand that we live in a world where energy costs are very
volatile.

We live in a world where there's a growing demand for energy
from countries like China and India. And they look at Australia
and say gee, we've got 40 per cent of the world's high-grade
uranium reserves, we've got all this coal, we've got all this
gas and we've also got a lot of sunlight and we ought to be
looking at all of these things, and we are.

And we have done a lot of work in relation to renewables. I keep
hearing people say, let's look at renewables. We have in the
past.

We've brought down incentives, we'd have brought forth about
$3.5 billion of investment in renewables, and there are a lot of
people, of course, who don't get too excited about renewables
when it means that there's a windfarm in their district.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: Well, looking again, if we can, at the
enrichment and storage issue. I mean, do you see Australia as
having perhaps a special role or a special economic strength or
a power status if we do control that in the future?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, it's not a question of controlling, it's a
question of sensibly using the resources that providence has
given us. We are very greatly endowed with uranium, with natural
gas and with coal and we also have a lot of sunlight. 

We're probably as well endowed, if not more endowed than any
other nation in the world, and what I am saying to the
Australian people is: let us calmly and sensibly examine what
our options are. Let's not set our faces against examining all
of those options and when all the facts are in, we can then make
judgements. 

But I don't think all the facts are in in relation to nuclear,
because we've had very little debate on this issue over the last
25 or 30 years, because everybody's said, oh well, you can't
possibly even think about it. That's changed a lot.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: All right Prime Minister, well effectively…
well, it has changed a lot, hasn't it? I mean effectively, the
goal posts have changed, haven't they? 

Because now it's a question of, if nuclear power is rejected,
then enrichment becomes a feasible argument in Australia and
that wasn't the case three to six months ago.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, I think all of these things have got to be
examined. I hear people saying it's all about a smokescreen for
this or that development. It's not. It's about being honest
enough about our opportunities and confident enough about our
future to look at all of these options and when we get the
information in we make judgements.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: All right. What about the waste? I mean,
there was such an outcry in Australia about low level waste that
finally is going to go to the Northern Territory. What will we
do with all this waste?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, when you say "all this waste," we haven't
decided to have "this waste" yet.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: But if it were to happen, it's a question
that needs an answer.

JOHN HOWARD: Well Catherine, I understand. Look, we're not going
to put carts before horses. First of all, we have to establish
the circumstances, if any, in which any of these activities
would be feasible, and that's really what the inquiry is all
about and…

CATHERINE MCGRATH: But doesn't the credibility of an examination
depend on the feasibility of putting waste somewhere in this
country?

JOHN HOWARD: No, no. The credibility of the examination depends
upon the quality of the people carrying out the examination. 

So you start with people who know something about it, like
nuclear physicists, and the analysis that that examination
produces. 

And when that analysis has been produced, we then as a community
examine what the findings are and we make judgements about all
of these things.

But look, it's easy to kill something like this off if you want
to be negative and backward looking like Mr Beazley, you can
kill it off right at the beginning, well, I'm not going to do
that. 

And I have sufficient confidence that the Australian people want
their government to think about their future in the medium to
longer term and not just take this incredibly short-term,
negative approach.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: You're opening yourself possibly to
Australia's biggest "not in my own backyard" campaign.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, there are "not in my backyard" campaigns
about everything. People talk generally about renewable energy,
but I know a lot of people in coastal areas of Victoria, for
example, who don't like windfarms. 

I don't know that anybody confronted with a question - do you
want a coal-fired power station in your district? - that they
would say yes. That is a natural reaction. 

What I'm trying to do with this debate is to broaden it out so
that we can look at what the potential is and it would negligent
of me as Prime Minister not to set up circumstances where we can
sensibly examine all of the opportunities that this country has,
because we do have a changed environment. 

We do have a lot of people in the green movement now, even
people like James Lovelock, the founder of Greenpeace and Tim
Flannery, saying we've got to look at the nuclear option.

Now, this is an enormous change over a very short period of time
and all I am wanting is this country to be open-minded enough to
have a look at the alternatives and then in the fullness of
time, and we're not talking about the next two or three years,
we're talking about a longer time frame than that, a look at all
of the alternatives and see where we're going. 

And I can't, for the life of me, understand why people are being
so short-sighted and narrow minded and backward looking.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: Prime Minister, just finally on another
issue, quickly if we can. Your plans to scuttle the ACT's civil
marriage… civil union rights for gay marriages?

JOHN HOWARD: Yes. We have decided to do that because the Bill is
plainly an attempt to mimic marriage under the misleading title
of "civil unions". We are not anti-homosexual people or gay and
lesbian people. 

It is not a question of discriminating against them; it is a
question of preserving as an institution in our society marriage
as having a special character.

And if you look at the legislation, what it effectively says: a
civil union is not a marriage, but it will be treated for all
purposes as being equivalent to a marriage. 

Now, that is a piece of legislative hypocrisy of the first order
and that, in a sense, out of the words of the legislation itself
is an explanation as to why we are taking the action we are.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: Prime Minister, thanks for your time this
morning.

JOHN HOWARD: Thank you.

TONY EASTLEY: And the Prime Minister John Howard was speaking
there with our Chief Political Correspondent, Catherine McGrath.
And we'll come to the Federal Government scuttling of the
Australian Capital Territory story a little later in the
program.   
*****************************************************************
 48 AU ABC: Howard faces stiff opposition in nuclear debate
 
The World Today - Wednesday, 7 June , 2006  12:10:00
 
Reporter: Catherine McGrath

 ELEANOR HALL: It hasn't taken long for the Prime Minister's
nuclear debate to turn into a slanging match.

Today John Howard is labelling critics of his nuclear inquiry
panel short sighted, narrow minded and backward looking, and
he's urging Australians to have an open mind on the future of a
nuclear industry in the country.

But environment groups say that Mr Howard's nuclear power plan
is not a serious examination of clean energy alternatives, but a
campaign to ensure that uranium mining is expanded in Australia.

In Canberra, Chief Political Correspondent Catherine McGrath
reports.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: The Prime Minister is concerned that there
seems to be some negativity about, as reaction flows in to his
nuclear inquiry.

Take for example, the Australian Conservation Foundation's Don
Henry.

DON HENRY: One would have to say the inquiry doesn't seem to be
a serious look at what we can do to tackle climate change right
now, otherwise it would be looking at renewable energy and
energy efficiency.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: So what do you think's going on?

DON HENRY: Well, one has to assume the inquiry is out there to
play a booster role for new uranium mines and uranium enrichment
in Australia and we would say very loudly, don't go there.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: The Prime Minister, meantime, is talking
about some environmentalists who have changed their tune on
nuclear power.

JOHN HOWARD: We do have a lot of people in the green movement
now, even people like James Lovelock, the founder of Greenpeace,
and Tim Flannery saying we've got to look at the nuclear option.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: (Inaudible)... James Lovelock, but he wasn't
a founding member of Greenpeace, not according to their Chief
Executive Steve Shallhorn.

STEVE SHALLHORN: I'm afraid the Prime Minister has got it wrong.
James Lovelock is not a founding member of Greenpeace. 

The Prime Minister may be confusing him with Patrick Moore who
was involved with Greenpeace in the early years but has in the
last 20 years made a name for himself as being a contrarian to
Greenpeace campaigns, whether it be GMOs, forest policy or more
recently, nuclear power.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: What do you make of the Prime Minister using
James Lovelock's name and also Tim Flannery's name?

STEVE SHALLHORN: I think he's trying to invoke names of
conservationists to try to get support for nuclear power in
Australia. But it's a tough battle, because every environmental
group in Australia that I'm aware of continues to be opposed to
nuclear power, simply based on the facts of the economics,
safety issues and problems of disposal of waste.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: But the Prime Minister is continuing to argue
his case today.

JOHN HOWARD: All I am wanting is this country to be open-minded
enough to have a look at the alternatives and then in the
fullness of time, and we're not talking about the next two or
three years, we're talking about a longer time frame than that,
a look at all of the alternatives and see where we're going. 

And I can't, for the life of me, understand why people are being
so short sighted and narrow minded and backward looking.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: And he's denying that his nuclear power plan
is a furphy.

JOHN HOWARD: I hear people saying it's all about a smokescreen
for this or that development. It's not. It's about being honest
enough about our opportunities and confident enough about our
future to look at all of these options and when we get the
information in we make judgements.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: But the evidence here is that the Prime
Minister is playing a two-part political game. He is trying to
divert attention from other issues like the unpopular workplace
relations changes and he's put the idea of nuclear enrichment on
the agenda, an idea that was unthinkable just last year. And
he's talking up the economic benefits.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, we should look at uranium enrichment. Of
course we should. We as a nation for generations have lamented
the fact that we had the finest wool in the world, but we sent
it overseas to be processed. 

I don't want… if there's a viable economic, safe alternative, I
don't want the same thing to be said in future generations about
our uranium. 

CATHERINE MCGRATH: Labor has said that nuclear power is out, and
it believes it can run a major fear campaign on this issue.

This morning Labor's Resources Spokesman Martin Ferguson was
focusing again on asking the Government to identify possible
nuclear power sites.

MARTIN FERGUSON: Nuclear power does not stack up in Australia.
The Government's already ruled out, through statements by Mr
Macfarlane, there'll be no Government subsidy. But if the Prime
Minister believes nuclear power stacks up, then he's got to name
the sites.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: Hasn't the Prime Minister, though,
effectively changed the debate so that now the question of
whether Labor supports new mines or not is a redundant argument?

MARTIN FERGUSON: Really, the priorities, I think, in this debate
are… go to the issue of whether or not we expand uranium mining
in Australia. I must say there are problems with our scientific
capacity, everyone knows that.

But in terms of the Prime Minister's agenda, well I don't really
know what the Prime Minister's agenda is, because he's already
starting to backpedal across the Coalition. We've had the leader
of the Opposition in Victoria, Mr Baillieu, say no nuclear power
plant in Victoria.

We've got a host of Members of the Coalition Government,
backbenchers, saying they don't want a nuclear power plant in
their own backyard. So I think the Coalition is in a little bit
of disarray on this issue.

ELEANOR HALL: And that's Labor's Resources Spokesman, Martin
Ferguson, ending that report from Catherine McGrath.   

*****************************************************************
 49 AU ABC: Govt to establish nuclear taskforce
 
The World Today - Wednesday, 7 June , 2006  12:14:00
 
Reporter: Eleanor Hall

 ELEANOR HALL: Late today more names are expected to be added to
the Switkowski taskforce examining Australia's future nuclear
options. And one Australian engineer says he should be
considered for the job, because he's been behind major nuclear
projects around the world.

He's led the construction of new generation reactors in the
United States, was involved in a 1970s feasibility study into an
Australian atomic project for Jervis Bay and has refitted a
Soviet reactor in the Czech Republic.

That man is the one-time Iraqi hostage Douglas Wood and he says
he can deliver the hands-on experience to a task force that he
says is long on theory.

A short time ago Douglas Wood told me what he could bring to the
inquiry.

DOUGLAS WOOD: I think I've got a practical background in the
construction of nuclear power plants that might be useful to add
more breadth to the eminent scientific types that have been
selected to date.

My own personal background, I worked for Bechtel for 25 years
and most of which was the design and construction of nuclear
power plants.

ELEANOR HALL: So specifically, what could this sort of practical
experience add to the inquiry?

DOUGLAS WOOD: Oh, I think it's not just an academic debate on
how the physics of a reactor works, it's also the practicality
of what components could be manufactured in Australia as opposed
to imported and the number of jobs it might bring to Australians
in the construction, maybe in the operation, and know how to do
it.

ELEANOR HALL: So Douglas Wood, are you in favour of an expanded
nuclear industry in Australia?

DOUGLAS WOOD: I think Australia's doing the right thing having a
debate to discuss the options and the pros and the cons and make
a decision based on the studies.

ELEANOR HALL: Now, as you say, you were a project manager on
some major new US reactors. Have reactors changed much since
Chernobyl?

DOUGLAS WOOD: Well, Chernobyl was a Soviet design, which is
different from the light water reactors that America has
manufactured, or even the Germans or the French.

I was also involved, actually, in the Czech Republic, helping
them to convert a Soviet design reactor, similar to at
Chernobyl, and upgrade it to incorporate higher safety standards
from the West.

ELEANOR HALL: Because one of the concerns, of course, is safety,
people know about Chernobyl.

DOUGLAS WOOD: A very valid concern.

ELEANOR HALL: And there's also Three Mile Island, of course, in
the United States. Are you concerned that there is a safety
issue still or do you think that the technology has progressed
so that reactors can be safe?

DOUGLAS WOOD: Technology has progressed. America actually
incorporated a lot of changes in the requirement for nuclear
plants in the US after Three Mile Island and after Chernobyl.

A lot of money was spent modifying plants. I can remember Palo
Verde, the power plant we built in Arizona, incorporated about
more than $300 million worth of additional works to increase the
safety issues.

ELEANOR HALL: What about the economics of this? I mean, does the
building of massive infrastructure like a nuclear reactor
require Government input?

DOUGLAS WOOD: Well, if the decision was made to build one, the
Government should get involved in the regulatory aspects to make
sure that there's a ground level of 'you must comply with this,
this, this, this…'

ELEANOR HALL: Looking at the model in the United States, did the
reactor in Arizona, for example, have a lot of government money
in there?

DOUGLAS WOOD: No, it didn't have any government money.

ELEANOR HALL: No Government money?

DOUGLAS WOOD: No, no. It was all private - two major power
companies in Arizona and then they had another shareholder out
in Texas. There's three units at 1,300 megawatts - that's the
largest reactor built in America.

ELEANOR HALL: Now, of course, this debate was on in Australia a
good 30 years ago. You were part of the Jervis Bay feasibility
study in 1971.

DOUGLAS WOOD: Yes I was.

ELEANOR HALL: Why did that inquiry knock back the nuclear power
proposals then?

DOUGLAS WOOD: I think at the time it wasn't ultimately economic.
I think there was elements of the practicality of having a… the
Electricity Commission of New South Wales was going to operate
it, yet it was going to be owned by the nuclear authority
agencies.

And there were some leanings towards let's have a futuristic
type reactor, if you like, more of an experimental, futuristic -
let us, the scientists, have fun - rather than the nuts and
bolts and practical side of just let's have a light water
reactor that we know works and is practical and here's some
prices that we'd go on with.

ELEANOR HALL: So what are your thoughts on the future of a
nuclear industry in Australia? There's talk of the option of
just enrichment or of nuclear reactors going all the way there.
What are your thoughts?

DOUGLAS WOOD: Well, I think anywhere where you can create jobs
for Australians, if handled safely. I wish we were selling steel
to the rest of the world instead of digging up iron ore, and
just selling our minerals. I think it's always better to have a
valuated component. Jobs for Australians are good for our
economy.

ELEANOR HALL: So it sounds like if you were on the inquiry,
you'd definitely be an advocate of expanding the industry here.

DOUGLAS WOOD: No, not necessarily. I think they should listen to
all of the people's opinions and factor those in. It's not just
a 'hey we should do it because I want it' sort of business.
It's, is it right for Australia today?

ELEANOR HALL: Now Douglas Wood, of course many Australians know
you through your horrific experience in Iraq. How are you after
that?

DOUGLAS WOOD: Oh, not bad thanks. Alive and well.

ELEANOR HALL: And that's Australian engineer and former Iraqi
hostage, Douglas Wood.   
*****************************************************************
 50 AU ABC: Physicist suggests thorium as uranium alternative
 
The World Today - Wednesday, 7 June , 2006  12:18:00
 
Reporter: David Mark

 ELEANOR HALL: The nuclear debate so far has focused on uranium.
But there is another mineral that could drive an Australian
nuclear industry.

A Sydney nuclear physicist has been working on an experimental
accelerator driven reactor that uses thorium as a fuel.

Dr Reza Hashemi-Nezhad from the School of Physics at the
University of Sydney says thorium would be safer, its waste
would be easier to dispose of and it would be a cheaper energy
source than uranium.

He's been telling David Mark that Australia should embrace it.

REZA HASHEMI-NEZHAD: In commercial nuclear reactors we have four
problems.

Number one is that the fuel is not abundant. Uranium that you
mine is only less than one per cent of that useful in a nuclear
reactor. That's the reason you need to enrich.

And the second thing is nuclear waste. Nuclear waste produced in
these nuclear reactors must be stored for hundreds of thousands
of years sometimes. Today's technology cannot answer to that.

And the third one is cost. It is a slightly expensive way of
producing energy.

And another, number four, is the possibility of these accidents. 

Any new development in the nuclear for future reactors must
answer to all these four problems.

To solve the problem of the shortage of the fuel, well, use in
these new type of reactors thorium, which is four times more
abundant than uranium and fortunately Australia is number one in
the world on that one as well.

And the second point is the nuclear waste. The reactor that I'm
suggesting will not produce that much nuclear waste. We will not
produce plutonium. So once we do not produce plutonium, it is
not… nobody will have a military concern - that you divert it to
military use or something like that.

The waste that's produced with these new types of reactors, you
need to store them only for 500 years, not 100,000 years. And
today's technology has answered to that. It's quite easy. And
after 500 years, its radioactivity will be the same as the coal
ash.

Another advantage of these reactors is that you can burn the
nuclear waste of the conventional nuclear reactors in these…
within these reactors. We can get rid of the existing nuclear
waste and produce energy as well.

And the third problem was the accidents. If for any reason this
reactor went out of control, you can shut it down immediately
because this reactor runs by an accelerator. And then once you
shut down this accelerator, which is an electrical instrument,
everything will finish, stop.

Even the first reactor built on this will be safer than any
other reactor that exists on the earth at the moment.

DAVID MARK: You're putting a lot of faith in these new forms of
reactors. Are they going to happen? Is it a technology that you
believe will eventually be built?

REZA HASHEMI-NEZHAD: Definitely. Absolutely. That's the future
of nuclear reactors. Almost every developed country is working
on it. The European Union, even they have established a
Ministerial Committee which organises this research.

DAVID MARK: How soon could one of these accelerator driven
reactors be built?

REZA HASHEMI-NEZHAD: A prototype nuclear reactor in Dubna,
Russia will start in three years time, three or four years time.

DAVID MARK: Are these accelerator driven reactors the future of
nuclear technology, do you believe? Will they be embraced?

REZA HASHEMI-NEZHAD: That is... everybody believes in that
because these reactors have many, many advantages and we in
Australia, we are not in a hurry yet. 

We have… we are not in shortage of fuel and so on, so we'd
better invest in the most modern type of nuclear reactors,
research and development and then we can start making and
putting in nuclear reactors which are state of the art.

ELEANOR HALL: That's Dr Reza Hashemi-Nezhad from the School of
Physics at the University of Sydney speaking to David Mark.   

*****************************************************************
 51 AU ABC: Nuclear industry would stand on own: Costello
 
PM - Wednesday, 7 June , 2006  18:10:37
 
Reporter: Alexandra Kirk

 MARK COLVIN: The Treasurer Peter Costello insists the nuclear
power industry would have to stand on its own feet if it were to
be a prospective new energy source in Australia.

He says the Government won't be weighing down existing energy
industries with extra taxes to help make any nuclear power
plants more competitive.

The Prime Minister, meanwhile, has spent the day defending his
decision to take a detailed look at uranium mining, processing
and nuclear power generation.

Late this evening he announced the names of the final three of
the six-member panel. They are an expert on nuclear safety,
Sylvia Kidziak, a representative of the power industry, Martin
Thomas and environmental scientist, Dr Arthur Johnston. 

Critics have suggested the Government would use the six-month
inquiry as a smokescreen, to soften voters up for increasing
mining and setting up uranium enrichment plants in Australia.

Mr Howard says all uses of uranium should be considered and he's
rejected Labor's claim that he's focusing on uranium at the
expense of renewable energy sources.

From Canberra, Alexandra Kirk reports.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: The Prime Minister acknowledges many Australians
are totally opposed to a local nuclear power industry and won't
change their minds. He says he understands and respects that.

JOHN HOWARD: But I ask them to understand and respect that I
have a responsibility to promote intelligent debate about
long-term issues, irrespective of the fact that some people in
the community hold strongly opposite views. Now, that's what I'm
doing, that is my job.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: John Howard says he has a feeling that at some
stage, Australia will have nuclear power and maintains that's
consistent with being open-minded about what will happen. But he
says he wants to make sure that Australia doesn't repeat the
mistakes made with the wool industry.

JOHN HOWARD: Where for generations we lamented that fact that we
had this wonderful world-class product but we sent it overseas
to be processed and bought it back at a much higher price.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Labor, which has only just started considering
ditching its three mines policy, says the focus of the public
debate should be on renewable energy. Kim Beazley maintains the
Government's nuclear discussion is passe. 

KIM BEAZLEY: Back in the 1980s the Libs wanted nuclear reactors
and then they walked back from that. And now 20 years on, this
50 year-old technology is all he's got to say about the need for
this country to look at its power generation. 

Frankly he's way out of date. We should be looking at renewables
now. What do we do with solar? What do we do with wind power?
How do we make clean coal? These are the things which are
critical to our economy, critical to our future. 

It is a part of the Howard ploy to evade the debate on
renewables rather than reactors.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Mr Howard denies the Government's been ignoring
renewables. He says he's just broadening the energy debate. 

Kim Beazley predicts nuclear reactors can't be made economic
without imposing a huge carbon tax. And he doesn't think
enrichment is an option either.

KIM BEAZLEY: The simple fact is that the French enrich, the
Russians enrich, the British enrich, the Americans enrich.
Virtually every country with a nuclear power industry has an
enrichment facility. They use the enrichment facility to develop
the rods for their nuclear reactors. 

So we're not actually talking… while we can say, we are a
dominant player in the worldwide uranium market, we would not be
a dominant player in the enrichment market and that still is an
economic argument against it.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: But the Foreign Minister Alexander Downer thinks
the debate could lead to an expansion of uranium mining as well
as enrichment. 

ALEXANDER DOWNER: Why wouldn't we have more mines if more mines
are economically viable? By having a three mines policy as a
country we're just costing ourselves jobs and income. 

Enrichment - enrichment, you know, makes prima facie common
sense to enrich uranium to process the raw material into a
higher level of processing. It would be good economically, but
it would be something that would also have to be negotiated
internationally. So there are a number of hurdles you'd have to
get over before you got into the enrichment game.

PETER COSTELLO: Here's what I think; we mine uranium, we sell it
around the world for people to use to make energy, so how could
we be opposed to the principle? 

Does that mean we should build a nuclear energy plant? No. Not
unless it's competitive and economical.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: The Treasurer Peter Costello says the aim of the
exercise is to get a handle on the comparative costs of
electricity from nuclear power versus coal, without any attempt
at saddling coal plants with taxes to try and give the nuclear
industry a leg-up.

PETER COSTELLO: That's not the object here. And I'll see what
comes out of it. 

You know, it may say that it's not competitive now but it will
be in 10 years time. Or it's not competitive now, and it will be
in 20 years time. Let's get a handle on it. I've got my own
hunches as to where this'll end up but I think we ought to do
the math, as the Americans would say.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: As for whether the Commonwealth would consider
using its power to override state objections to setting up
nuclear power plants, the Prime Minister says that's a long way
off. Hinting it may never need to be considered, because he
thinks premiers may well have a change of heart.

JOHN HOWARD: Not only can state governments change, but within
state governments of the same political persuasion there can be
great change. And everybody in the end, to use that marvellous
phrase, will get mugged by reality. 

And that is in the process of happening with the Labor Party now
on uranium mining and potentially uranium enrichment. And I have
little doubt that years into the future it could happen on other
issues in this whole area as well.

MARK COLVIN: The Prime Minister ending Alexandra Kirk's report. 
 
*****************************************************************
 52 AU ABC: Nuclear review chief quits ANSTO board. 

08/06/2006. ABC News Online

Conflict: Dr Switkowski says he wants to avoid bias claims.

The head of the Government's nuclear inquiry has resigned from
the board of the Australian Nuclear, Science and Technology
Organisation (ANSTO).

 Dr Ziggy Switkowski had been accused of a conflict of interest
over his board membership, due to the organisation's support for
nuclear power.

 The former Telstra chief has told Lateline he has decided to
leave the board of ANSTO to avoid accusations of bias.

 "I'm going to step aside from the board of ANSTO and have done
so now," he said.

 "And so I won't be party to any submissions that ANSTO makes to
the committee over the next six months."

 Also on the task force are nuclear physicist Professor George
Dracoulis and Professor Warwick McGibbon of the Australian
National University.

 The Prime Minister John Howard has announced that an expert on
nuclear safety, Sylvia Kidziak, a representative of the power
industry, Martin Thomas, and environmental scientist Dr Arthur
Johnston have also been appointed.

 Dr Switzkowski insists he is impartial. 
"I don't think that having a nuclear physics background should
be interpreted as orienting me towards being pro-everything to
do with nuclear," he said.

 "I approach this review with an open mind." 
*****************************************************************
 53 AU ABC: Queensland threatens laws against nuclear plants. 

08/06/2006. ABC News Online

The Queensland Premier has joined other state leaders in
threatening to introduce laws blocking nuclear power plants in
the state.

 Peter Beattie used State Parliament to make his case against
nuclear power. 

"It's crazy to suggest we need nuclear plants in a state that
has some of the most plentiful coal supplies in the world," he
said.

 Mr Beattie says he is willing to introduce legislation to keep
Queensland nuclear-free. 







*****************************************************************
 54 AU ABC: Inquiry member says nuclear power clean and safe. 

08/06/2006. ABC News Online
 	

Dr Johnston says nuclear power has much to offer from an 
environmental perspective." Dr Johnston says nuclear power has 
much to offer from an environmental perspective. (Reuters)              

An environmental scientist appointed to the Federal Government's
nuclear task force has defended the safety record of nuclear
power and says that, along with uranium enrichment, it can be
achieved safely. 

Dr Arthur Johnston, former supervising scientist with
Environment Australia, has spent much of his time examining the
impact of uranium mining on the Northern Territory's Kakadu
National Park.

 He says from an environmental perspective, nuclear power has
much to offer. 

"There is no reason at all why in principle you couldn't have
continued protection of the environment under the circumstances
of enrichment," he said.

 Dr Johnston says, Chernobyl aside, the risks have been
exaggerated. 

"There has been one incident in the entire period of nuclear
power. One could say its record is very good," he said.

 He says he has an open mind on the issue.

 The head of the Federal Government's nuclear task force has
stood down from the board of the nuclear science agency, ANSTO,
to avoid a conflict of interest.

 Yesterday afternoon, Dr Switkowski was defending his role on
the board of ANSTO, the organisation which runs Australia's only
reactor. 

Just hours later, he revealed to ABC TV's Lateline program, that
he has made moves to sever his ties to the nuclear industry. 
Dr Switkowski says he has stood down from the board to prevent
claims of bias. 

"So I won't be party to any submissions that ANSTO makes to the
committee over the next six months," he said. 

*****************************************************************
 55 The Hill:Expanding nuclear energy is a move we must commit to
 
The Newspaper for and about the U.S. Congress

June 7, 2006   
    
  special report: energy &environment

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.)
   
For the sake of economic security and national security, the 
United States of America must aggressively move forward with the 
construction of nuclear power plants, President Bush recently 
said in a speech. 

The president is right, and Congress agrees. 

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public 
Works, and a member of the committee since 1995, I have worked 
closely with my committee members to write essential legislation 
and increase critical oversight to ensure the development of a 
safe, secure and affordable nuclear energy future for our 
country. 

EPACT 05

I worked closely with Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), chairman
of Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate Change and Nuclear Safety,
to write three nuclear bills, which were included in the Energy
Policy Act of 2005, or EPACT 05, to provide for the safe and
secure growth of nuclear power. The Environment and Public Works
Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee worked
together to develop a comprehensive approach toward the
resurgence of nuclear power in the United States. 

The committees worked collaboratively to address the critical
provisions needed for a nuclear renaissance. These include
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) human-capital provisions,
enhanced security around nuclear plants, liability and risk
insurance, production tax credits and loan guarantees to provide
the foundation for construction of new nuclear plants. Because
of these, nine generating companies and consortiums across the
United States are preparing applications for permission to build
between nine and 19 new nuclear power plants. 

If all 19 are built, they would generate between 20,000 and
25,000 megawatts of new electricity by 2020. Those plants would
also create tens of thousands of construction jobs and
approximately 10,000 high-paying, high-tech plant-operation
jobs. One plant is capable of providing the entire electricity
needs of an average U.S. city. 

Now the NRC will have to do its part to provide a stable and
predictable licensing process. The key is regulatory certainty.
The potential number of applications, the interaction of the
various types of approvals, the potential for duplication of
efforts and the need to coordinate the development of new
regulations and regulatory guidance with the industrys license
application preparation work all pose substantial challenges. 

Through our oversight efforts, which began in 1997, the NRC
moved to a risk-based decision process. The relicensing process
had been estimated to take between five and 10 years. By
concentrating on risks, they shortened the period to less than
two years. They need to apply the same concepts to the licensing
of new facilities. 

As chairman of the committee that oversees the NRC, I am
committed to ensuring that the NRC obtains the resources
necessary to do its job. I am confident that the NRC can and
will exercise its independent health and safety responsibilities
without stifling the rebirth of nuclear power in this country. 

OPENING YUCCA MOUNTAIN
Congress must solve the nuclear-waste issue, which appears to be
more political than scientific. 

Earlier this year, the Environment and Public Works Committee
held its first ever hearing on the nations first permanent
high-level waste repository. Though nuclear waste is stored
safely on sites around the country, the eventual disposition of
this waste was slated to be at Yucca Mountain in accordance with
the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987. Today, most of the
scientific barriers surrounding the site have been adequately
resolved, yet significant political barriers continue to prevent
the site from opening. 

After visiting this site, I strongly support the storage of
nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. More is known about Yucca
Mountain than any other parcel of real estate on the planet.
This knowledge extends well below the surface, through miles of
tunnels and dozens of drillings. It has been confirmed in the
laboratory, reviewed by independent experts and validated
against information from analogous sites around the world. 

Through all that has been gained by 20 years and $8.6 billion of
world-leading scientific research, one thing has remained
constant  the more we examine Yucca Mountain, the better it
looks. There is certainly no scientific reason not to move
directly forward with this project. 

MOVING FORWARD
As chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, I
will continue to work with my colleagues on the committee and
with the Energy Committee, along with the president, to work
through the remaining issues to support increasing nuclear
energy. 

Inhofe is chairman of the Committee on the Environment and
Public Works. 


© 2006 The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington, DC 20006 
202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax 
*****************************************************************
 56 Platts: Bush visits Limerick, continues promoting nuclear expansion
 
Washington (Platts)--5Jun2006
 
President George W. Bush visited Exelon Nuclear's two-unit 
Limerick station May 24 and in a speech to plant employees 
continued pushing nuclear power as "a really important way to 
meet our goals" of "abundant, affordable, clean, and safe sources 
of energy."

"For the sake of economic security and national security," and 
"to maintain our economic leadership," the US "must aggressively 
move forward with the construction of nuclear power plants," Bush 
said. 

"Once you get the plant up and running, the operating costs of 
these [nuclear] plants are significantly lower than other forms 
of electricity plants, which means the energy is affordable," 
Bush said. 

Bush said nuclear power is safe "because of advances in science 
and engineering and plant design," and "because the workers and 
managers of our nuclear power plants are incredibly skilled 
people who know what they're doing."

Bush described nuclear power as "an overregulated industry," a 
situation which makes investment in new plants "highly risky, 
because of the regulations to try to build a plant. 

People don't know this, but you get yourself a design for a 
nuclear power plant, you start spending money for plans and 
engineering plants and everything, you get building, and all of 
sudden, somebody can shut you down. 

And that makes it awfully difficult to take risk if a lawsuit can 
cause you to spend enormous sums of money and have no productive 
use of the money spent."

Provisions in the 2005 Energy Policy Act are designed to reduce 
that risk, Bush said. Loan guarantees "give investors confidence 
that this government is committed to the construction of nuclear 
power plants," he said.

Production tax credits "will reward investments in the latest 
advanced nuclear power generation," and federal risk insurance 
"helps protect builders of the [first six new nuclear power] 
plants against lawsuits, or bureaucratic obstacles and other 
delays beyond their control," he said.

Bush said, "We've got to do something about" the issue of nuclear 
waste. He said he is "a believer that Yucca Mountain is a 
scientifically sound place to send the waste, and I would hope 
the United States Congress would recognize that as well."

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership to develop advanced spent 
fuel reprocessing and recycling technologies "will reduce the 
amount of the toxicity of the fuel and reduce the amount we have 
to store," Bush said. 

GNEP is "a smart way to combine with other [nations] to reduce 
storage requirements for nuclear waste by up to 90 percent," he 
said. After his speech at the plant in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, 
he spoke at a dinner for the Pennsylvania Congressional Victory 
Committee fundraiser for Republican candidates.

Bush's speech is on the White House web site at 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/05/20060524-5.html. 
For similar news, take a trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at 
http://nucweek.platts.com.
 
Privacy Notice Terms & Conditions Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All 
Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill Companies]       
*****************************************************************
 57 AU ABC: Four nuclear plants needed for economic viability - ANSTO.

05/06/2006. ABC News Online 

Update: Monday, June 5, 2006. 10:01am (AEST) 	 

Federal Cabinet will tomorrow consider the terms of reference for
an inquiry into nuclear power options. (ABC) 

The chief executive of the Australian Nuclear Science and 
Technology Organisation (ANSTO) says nuclear power is a viable 
alternative to coal-fired power in Australia. 

But in order for Australia to have a viable nuclear power 
industry, Ian Smith says four or five nuclear power plants would 
have to be built on the east coast. 

"This would be, power stations would go on the main grids and 
would supply electricity into those main grids. A normal fleet 
of four or five nuclear stations would produce something in the 
vicinity of 5,000 mega-watts of power," he said. 

"Because nuclear power produces large quantities of power it 
would need to be on the major grid... We're talking about, yes, 
the east coast is the major grid in Australia." 

Mr Smith's comments come after ANSTO presented a report to 
federal Cabinet, which concluded that nuclear power is currently 
competitive with coal-fired power for the base load generation 
of electricity in Australia. 

"This report finds that the electricity produced averaged over 
the lifetime of the power station is about the same, if not a 
little lower, than that of a coal-fired power station 
constructed at the same time," he said. 

Mr Smith says the report did not look at how many nuclear power 
plants Australia would need. 
"The report is an economic analysis, so it does not assume that. 
I think in reality a nuclear operation would require more than 
one power plant," he said. 

Mr Smith says a decision where those plants would be built is a 
long way off. 

"Well, I think there is a long way to go before you look at 
sighting of these stations," he said. 
"The first thing the Government has to do is to make a decision, 
it then has to put the regulative and legislative framework in 
place, it then has to decide who is going to be the operator of 
these stations and then it is a relatively simple task to find 
technological feasible places to place them." 

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer agrees, saying it is 
too early to start discussing the location of nuclear power 
plants in Australia. 

The Opposition says the Government should come clean and 
announce where it is proposing to build nuclear power plants. 

Mr Downer has accused the Opposition of playing pathetic party 
politics. 

"What's the point of a debate about a site if in the end, 
having considered all of these matters, they turn out not to be 
economically viable," he said. 

"I mean there's definitely a downside to the nuclear industry 
and I am quite happy for the downside to be discussed as much as 
the upside." 
Inquiry 

Tomorrow Cabinet will consider the terms of reference for an 
inquiry into Australia's nuclear power options. 

Mr Smith says he is unsure how long the inquiry will take. 

"I think that inquiry, if you compare it to international 
inquiries, it will probably take about six months to gather the 
facts and then it will be for the Government to decide how it 
proceeds from there," he said. 

Mr Smith says the issue needs to be addressed urgently. 
"I think that one of the driving forces of this is the major 
effects of climate change. Australia at the moment is the 
highest emitter of carbon-per-head of any country in the world. 
The global problem for carbon emissions is 40 billion tonnes of 
carbon dioxide a year. This needs urgent action," he said. 

"Part of that action is nuclear power, it certainly is 
overseas, and I guess this inquiry will decide whether Australia 
should contribute to reducing its high carbon emissions through 
nuclear as one of the options included with the other options of 
wind and solar etc." 

Meanwhile an expert in nuclear energy, Dr Adam Jostens, has 
told ABC Radio's AM program there are barriers to creating a 
nuclear power industry in Australia. 

"My real problem is that there are real impediments to an early 
start-up and they have much to do with Australia as a federation 
and the responsibilities between states and federal governments, 
and these have to be addressed before we can really provide a 
market," he said. 
*****************************************************************
 58 Hürriyet: US Defense Council report: 90 nuclear "B 61" bombs 
stocked at Incirlik

Thursday, June 08, 2006 10:05                                                                         

 A report prepared by the US National Resources Defense Council 
called "US nuclear weapons in Europe," reveals that the US 
currently has 90 nuclear bombs of the "B 61" variety in Turkey, 
all on the Incirlik Air Force base. 

The report, put together by Hans Kristensen of the Defense 
Council, is based on figures provided last February by the US Air 
Force. The report is being discussed in the Turkish Parliament 
(TBMM). 
 
In further details from the report, of the 90 nuclear bombs
found at Incirlik, 50 are kept ready to be loaded onto American
bomber planes, while 40 are ready to be loaded onto Turkish
planes. CHP MP Sukru Elekdag, who is bringing the report to the
attention of the parliament today, has pointed out to his
government collegues that, following the Cold War, Greece had
all the nuclear bombs being kept on its soil taken away. Elekdag
has noted also that Turkey's allowance of the US nuclear bombs
to be kept at Incirlik is an act which could not be easily
explained to its Muslim and Arab neighbors. 

  © Copyright 2006 Hürriyet   
*****************************************************************
 59 Shreveport Times: Group seeks atomic veterans 

June 6, 2006 

More:
 National Association of Atomic Veterans, www.naav.com	 
 
By John Andrew Prime jprime@gannett.com

Military personnel who took part in atomic weapons and other
nuclear testing from 1945 to 1992, when such above-ground
testing ended, are being sought to attend the Reunion of
Louisiana Atomic Veterans in Pineville on June 17.

The gathering will be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Kees Park
Convention Center, state Highway 28 East at Palmetto Street.

In addition to soldiers, sailors and airmen who took part
directly in the tests, the reunion is open to munitions
handlers, loaders and fusers, as well as nuclear submariners,
former prisoners of war in Japan, civilian workers at nuclear
manufacturing facilities and their survivors, said state group
commander Rod Guidry.

The group is a state chapter of the National Association of
Atomic Veterans, a nonprofit veterans service corporation
dedicated to assisting an estimated one million U.S. veterans
from all service branches, who were first-hand participants in
atomic weapons test detonations. These were held from July 16,
1945 to Nov. 23, 1992, according to the group.

Group representatives stress that survivors can inquire about
survivor benefits and Dependents Indemnity Compensation, or DIC,
for veteran deaths linked to the more than two dozen cancers and
illnesses tied to ionizing radiation. Chapter spokesman John
Nelson Broussard said the secret classification for the
participants has been lifted and they are now free to apply for
veterans benefits when applicable.

For more information, call Broussard at (337) 234-7813.

WorldCopyright 2006© The Times. Principles of Ethical Conduct
for The Times
*****************************************************************
 60 Times-Standard Online: Feds eye impact of nuke storage ruling

www.times-standard.com        Online Edition   

Article Launched: 06/06/2006 04:30:31 AM PDT  

John Driscoll The Times-Standard  

Could 9th Circuit opinion foul up Humboldt Bay nuke fuel plan? 

A recent federal court ruling draws into question the approach
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took to examine possible
terrorist attacks on a storage system approved in 2005 for the
Humboldt Bay Power Plant's old nuclear fuel. 

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision last week
specifically addressed a plan to store fuel for the Diablo
Canyon nuclear facility in San Luis Obispo County. It determined
that the commission should have examined in environmental
reports the threat of attack on cement and steel storage casks
the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. proposes to build. 

But the ruling could apply to the Humboldt Bay plant, as well,
which has permits to build six 10-foot tall casks to store spent
fuel and radioactive reactor parts -- now stored in a pool -- at
the King Salmon site. The fuel would be stored on a bluff on the
property until at least 2014, provided a federal repository is
available to take it. 

Like in the Diablo Canyon case, the commission did not consider
terrorism as part of an environmental report for the Humboldt
Bay project. 

Whether that means that the commission needs to revisit the
Humboldt Bay plan is unclear. 

James Park with the commission's Office of Nuclear Material
Safety and Safeguards said that the agency is reviewing the
ruling. He said that the commission has done a lot of work to
ensure that nuclear facilities beef up security, but in 2005,
when the environmental assessment was issued for Humboldt Bay,
its position was that an attack was remote and speculative. 

The agency's position here was that terrorism wasn't explicitly
called out for review, Park said. 

That is, the steps that PG will take to protect the fuel from
terrorist attacks were not outlined for public review under the
National Environmental Policy Act. 

Such a review was called for by the state during the commission
process. When the California Energy Commission commented that
sabotage or a terrorist attack on the proposed dry casks should 
be considered in an environmental review, the NRC said that it 
wasn't the appropriate forum. The details of such security plans 
can't be released to the public, it said. 

The 9th Circuit said that it recognizes issues of national
security, but said it believes the NRC's history of handling the
nation's nuclear secrets makes it able to sensitively analyze
the question of terrorism. 

Barbara Byron, the nuclear policy adviser for the state energy
commission, said there should be a significant attempt to
explain to the public what measures are being taken to protect
spent nuclear fuel to be stored in the casks at Humboldt Bay,
she said. 

I think everyone agrees that it would be better in a robust cask
than where it is now, Byron said. But there should be a
significant attempt to explain the measures. 

Diane Curran, an attorney for the San Luis Obispo Mothers For
Peace, which brought the suit, said that the ruling could affect
the Humboldt Bay plant. She said the regulatory commission did
not look at alternatives like scattering casks over a large
area, using higher-grade steel for the casks, or building berms
around the casks -- and then circulate the report to the public. 

PG spokesman Jeff Lewis said that the threat of a terrorist
attack was considered as part of the permitting process for the
project -- but not through the National Environmental Policy
Act. 

You can't just take the fuel out of the pool and not have an
approved security plan, Lewis said. 

He said the Humboldt Bay project should not be affected by
Friday's ruling, a view not held as assuredly by the commission.
  
Â© 2005 Times - Standard 
*****************************************************************
 61 NEWS.com.au: N-waste dumps 'at heart of PM's push' 

From: AAP                       

June 07, 2006                                                    

THE location of nuclear power sites and waste dumps was at the 
heart of Prime Minister John Howard's nuclear review, Queensland 
Premier Peter Beattie said today. Mr Howard yesterday unveiled a 
review of nuclear energy, but has said his hand-picked task force 
would not be looking at where any potential reactors might be 
built.

 Mr Beattie said anyone with experience knew the debate would 
inevitably lead to the location of power stations and waste 
dumps.

 "If it wasn't, why has the Federal Government taken years to 
find a national nuclear waste depository for even the low-level 
waste we already have, and it has failed to do so?" Mr Beattie 
told Parliament.

 "The prime minister must come clean.

 "It is inconceivable that a man of his experience would have 
entered into this debate without a clear plan for the placement 
of nuclear reactors."

Mr Beattie accused Mr Howard of seriously misreading the public 
mood on the issue and vowed to fight any plan to establish a 
nuclear reactor or dump in Queensland.

 "The prime minister has misread the public mood on this issue 
and no more so than here in Queensland, where the coal industry 
generates the funds that employ our doctors, nurses, police and 
doctors," he said.

 "While I am premier of this state, I will use the full 
constitutional powers available to me to block any unwanted 
nuclear move into Queensland by the federal government.

 "I urge the prime minister to rethink the issue.

 "Queenslanders don't want it and Queensland doesn't need it."

 Mr Beattie said his government had the power to stop any power
station being built, but he was concerned the Federal Government
was claiming it had the power to place a waste dump in the state
if it wished.                                                           

Copyright 2006 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT + 10).
*****************************************************************
 62 ITAR-TASS: Russia imports valuable material, not nuclear waste - Rosatom

07.06.2006, 14.48

MOSCOW, June 7 (Itar-Tass) - Russia imports not nuclear waste
but a valuable uranium material under contracts for its
processing at unique facilities that are available only to
Russia, the Federal Agency of Atomic Energy (Rosatom) said on
Wednesday. 

The statement follows publications by some of the mass media
asserting that a “transport ship with nuclear waste has come
from Rotterdam to St. Petersburg”. 

A Rosatom expert told ITAR-TASS that “another batch of dump
hexofluoride (depleted uranium) is aboard the ship that comes to
enterprises of Russia’s nuclear sector for processing and
re-enrichment under contracts between Russian an European
companies”. 

The expert explained that “dump hexofluoride is a material,
radioactivity of which is two times below that of natural
uranium, but a valuable product is obtained from it for nuclear
energy engineering using Russian unique technologies”. 

Rosatom press secretary Sergei Novikov said, commenting on the
media reports, that “this information is known to all
specialists”. 

However, “a number of ecological organisations each time use
another delivery of hexofluoride to Russia from Europe in order
to cause nervousness and panic amount the population using a
lack of public information”. 

© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
*****************************************************************
 63 Pahrump Valley Times: Carver sees new RR route as positive 

June 7, 2006

By MARK WAITE PVT 

An announcement that U.S. Department of Energy officials will
study a rail route from Hawthorne to Yucca Mountain to ship high
level nuclear waste was greeted as good news by some Nye County
officials.

 A Warm Springs rancher, however, was not at all happy.

 DOE wants to study a plan to ship the high-level nuclear waste
along existing Union Pacific Railroad tracks along the
Interstate 80 corridor to Winnemucca, then down to Hawthorne,
where a new rail line would be built south through Mina and near
the U.S. Highway 95 corridor. The Caliente corridor would be a
route from southeastern Nevada looping around the Nevada Test
Site and down along the U.S. Highway 95 corridor. The Hawthorne
corridor would travel farther west of communities like Tonopah
and Goldfield.

 The Hawthorne route was one of a handful of options to build a
railroad, but it was placed on the back burner in 1991 when
members of the Walker River Paiute Tribe were opposed. The DOE
said the Walker River Paiute Tribal Council April 13 reversed
its policy of refusing to explore the rail route through the
reservation.

 The building of a rail route from Hawthorne would require
building 209 miles of track instead of 319 miles from Caliente
in southeastern Nevada. The Caliente route is projected to cost
$2 billion.

 "I am so happy about this. It will be the least disruptive and
least expensive," Nye County District One Commissioner Roberta
"Midge" Carver said. Her district includes wide stretches of
northernmost Nye County.

 Carver said the Caliente route would involve traversing three
mountain ranges, cutting into solid rock.

 "Everywhere they would be going they would be going through a
rancher's water," she said.

 Carver said DOE officials lied to county residents when they
said the land withdrawal for the railroad would be only 360,000
acres. In adding up the squares for the land maps showing the
land withdrawal, it adds up to 609,000 acres, she said.

 Allen Benson, director of the office of institutional affairs
for the DOE Yucca Mountain Project, said previously the corridor
wouldn't include all 640 acres in each section, explaining part
of the discrepancy.

 The Caliente route would go right through 663,000 acres of
grazing allotments used by Warm Springs rancher Joe Fellini. He
normally grazes about 2,000 head of cattle, but said the numbers
are down this year due to the drought.

 "The way they (DOE) always figure, we're the least amount of
people. Let's put it here. Foreign countries reprocess that
stuff," Fellini said.

 "The way they did it was wrong. If they want to run it through
here they should've talked to everybody that had property
rights," he said.

 Fellini said the Caliente corridor would cut through 40 miles
of land where he has grazing allotments and 17 water sources.

 "When they proposed the Caliente route they never contacted us.
It's unreal. I don't think they should be here. They
contaminated so much of our goddam country," Fellini said.

 His wife Sue Fellini said they hired attorneys after news broke
of the Caliente route proposal with a message for the DOE:
"We're going to sue your butt the minute you come over that
summit!"

 The Hawthorne route would traverse rail bed for former rail
routes, like the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, which was
completed in 1907.

 "I've always been in favor of something other than what they've
chosen," Carver said. "The Hawthorne route is more viable,
hundreds of miles of rail bed are still intact."

 Nye County District Two Commissioner Joni Eastley, who
represents Tonopah, Beatty, Amargosa Valley and parts of
Pahrump, didn't hold out much hope the railroad would boost
economies of the small towns along the route.

 "Hawthorne has a rail yard, an airport and they're still
struggling," she said.

 "The Board of County Commissioners resolved twice to support
the Caliente route. I voted with the board to support the
Caliente route because it was the best of the options available
to us and the Mina route had never been part of the original EIS.

 "It didn't matter with the Mina route or the Caliente route
because they both come past Tonopah. If you're talking a
strictly economic or fiscal aspect I never agreed with the
Caliente route because of the cost it would take to put it in,"
Eastley said.

 But she added, "The reason I am such a proponent of the Mina
proposal, it gives the least amount of impact to mining and
ranching in this part of the county."

 When the DOE held an open house in Amargosa Valley in May 2004
to gather input about the Caliente route, Ed Goedhart, manager
of the Ponderosa Dairy in Amargosa Valley asked, "Isn't the
shortest distance between two points a straight line?" He was
referring to the Chalk Mountain corridor, which would've cut
right through Nellis Air Force Base.

 Another possible route under consideration at one time was the
Carlin Corridor, from Interstate 80 south. Other routes that
were rejected would've connected Yucca Mountain with rail routes
along the I-15 corridor via Jean.

 Jeff Taguchi, a former Nye County Commissioner representing a
consulting group, pushed the Hawthorne rail route at the May
2004 open house months after he stepped down from the
commission. He pushed for continuing the Hawthorne rail line
south to the I-15 corridor instead of a one-way, dead end rail
line.

 "We're talking about economic development. All rail ends at
Yucca Mountain which is Nye County. Any rail that dead ends is
not a good thing," said Nye County Commissioner Gary Hollis, the
county commission's liaison on nuclear waste, "We've always been
of the opinion that the rail should be used for dual purposes."

 Hollis chaired a recent daylong technical workshop on Yucca
Mountain in Pahrump at the Community College of Southern Nevada.
"There was very little said about the Hawthorne corridor," he
said.

 But Hollis had more of a fatalistic attitude.

 "I've been hearing rumors for the last year. It's really not up
to Nye County, either route goes through Nye County," Hollis
said. "It's something we don't have much control over."

 Back in 2004, Taguchi said it would be disastrous for tourism
along U.S. Highway 95 communities if the nuclear waste had to be
shipped by truck until the rail route was completed.

 Members of the Walker River tribe want a study to look at a
rail segment traveling through the outskirts of the reservation
away from Schurz, the main tribal town at the north end of
Walker Lake. The tribe also wants assurances there won't be
truck shipments, through the reservation, Tribal Chairwoman
Genia Williams told the Las Vegas Review-Journal recently.

 "It's just too early to tell what DOE is going to do," Hollis
said.

For comment or questions, please e-mail
webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com
Copyright © Pahrump Valley Times, 1997 - 2006 
*****************************************************************
 64 The Olympian: Nuclear-free status remains - 

Olympia, Washington
 
By Christian Hill The Olympian 

A tie vote has kept Olympia a nuclear-free city. 

Mayor Mark Foutch was unsuccessful in his request late Tuesday 
night to immediately revoke the ordinance he described as 
redundant, ineffective and counterproductive.

Instead, the council amended the ordinance to exempt local 
governments from the certification requirement.

Foutch and council members Jeff Kingsbury and Doug Mah voted to
revoke the ordinance. Mayor Pro Tem Laura Ware and council
members Joe Hyer and TJ Johnson voted to preserve it.
Councilwoman Karen Messmer abstained.

Before the vote, numerous speakers spoke in support of keeping
the ordinance.

Adopted in August, the ordinance requires any entity doing
business with the city to certify by a notarized statement to
the City Clerk that it is not knowingly or intentionally engaged
in the development or storage of nuclear weapons.

The ordinance already exempts the activities of the U.S.
government.

On Tuesday, it was amended to exempt local governments.

These agencies, including the city of Lacey, Thurston County
Board of Commissioners and Washington State Patrol, have
declined to sign the required certification for joint agreements.

The city manager may exempt a contract party that refuses to
sign a certification, but the process is lengthy and can cause
delays. 							 			 							 	 							 						 							 				 				

SITE MAP: TheOlympian.com

©2006 Knight Ridder                      [

*****************************************************************
 65 Hanford News: Hanford boards charter revision limits member terms
 
This story was published Monday, June 5th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

LEWISTON, Idaho - An unexpected change to the charter of the
Hanford Advisory Board has members watching to see how new term
limit requirements will be enforced. 

When DOE renewed the board's charter, it replaced language that
talked about what typical terms for members should be with
language requiring members to serve no more than three, two-year
terms. 

If the pool of people to hold the seat is limited, one of two
top Hanford managers may ask DOE's assistant secretary for
environmental management to make an exception, according to the
revised charter. 

The change came without any discussion with the board's
leadership, said Board Chairman Todd Martin during the board's
meeting last week in Lewiston, Idaho. 

Members have been leery, fearing the change could affect the
board's independence. 

"The perception is it's a punitive effort by the Department of
Energy to get rid of long-term members who have given them a lot
of grief," Ken Niles, who represents the Oregon Department of
Energy on HAB, said at an unrelated meeting May 24 in Richland. 

That's absolutely not the case, said Erik Olds, spokesman for
DOE's Hanford Office of River Protection. 

The boards need continuity, but they also need some fresh views,
Charles Anderson, DOE's principal deputy assistant secretary for
environmental management, told Niles at the State and Tribal
Government Working Group meeting. 

DOE will work with the board as long as it has turnover that
allows new ideas to be heard, said Shirley Olinger, deputy
manager of DOE's Hanford Office of River Protection, at the
Lewiston meeting. 

"DOE feels that ideally a third of the board should turn over
every two years for new blood," Martin told HAB members. 

In three years, half of the board has turned over, if the 30
primary members and their alternates are counted. A quarter of
the board has turned over if just primary members are
considered, Martin said. 

The board, which provides advice to DOE and regulators on
Hanford cleanup, has seats assigned to groups or governments
with an interest in cleaning up the nuclear reservation where
plutonium was made for the nation's nuclear weapons program. 

The seats are assigned to agencies ranging from the University
of Washington to Benton County to Physicians for Social
Responsibility, with each group deciding who will represent it
on the board. 

The makeup of the board was the result of negotiations with DOE
as it was formed and was designed to provide a balance of very
different views. Some groups with seats on the board have had
the same member on the board for 12 years. 

The city of Richland should not have to replace its Hanford
projects manager, Pam Larsen, on the board, said HAB member
Vince Panesko, the Richland city alternate. 

"That's a problem. It's her job," he said. 

Term limits also are difficult for agencies that depend on
volunteers to fill seats on the board, said other HAB members. 

"Frankly, it's difficult for interest groups to recruit people
to do this," said Dr. Jim Trombold, who represents Physicians
for Social Responsibility, on HAB. 

"(Hanford cleanup) is a tedious, rather depressing problem," he
said. "They should not be looking for a way to rotate people
with experience." 

The board meets just 10 times in a two-year term, which does not
give members a lot of time to gain experience, said Rob Davis, a
volunteer representative of Pasco. Members also attend committee
meetings. 

Martin said his concerns were eased over the change in the
charter when he received a copy of a memo sent to Hanford
managers before the board was to discuss the matter. It told
them to make sure their boards are operating in compliance with
the Federal Advisory Committee Act. 

James Rispoli, the assistant secretary for environmental
management, included a hand-written note at the bottom of the
memo, calling the boards "a valuable tool to give us insights we
might not otherwise have available." 

"Please engage in a meaningful way" to take advantage of their
perspective, he said. 

The letter indicates that DOE does not expect major changes,
Martin said. However, if a problem does develop, the matter will
be discussed at the board's next meeting in September, he said.

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 66 AP Wire: Nuclear cleanup taking longer than expected

| 06/07/2006 | 

 JAMES HANNAH Associated Press 

DAYTON, Ohio - Delays in cleaning up the former Mound nuclear
weapons plant are frustrating efforts to attract new businesses
to an industrial park that sits on the 306-acre site where
triggers for nuclear bombs were once made, officials said
Wednesday. 

Once scheduled for completion in 2005, the cleanup of
radioactive and hazardous waste at the site in suburban
Miamisburg is not expected to be finished until September 2007. 

The nonprofit Miamisburg Mound Community Improvement Corp. is
building the Mound Advanced Technology Center from land and
buildings turned over by the U.S. Department of Energy. There
are 18 businesses employing 225 workers at the site, but Michael
Grauwelman, the group's president, said the cleanup delays are
hurting efforts to expand. 

Grauwelman said that instead of the group taking over the
property incrementally, it appears most of it will be
transferred right at the end. 

"The process has been a difficult one," he said. 

Mound began making triggers and detonators for nuclear weapons
in 1949 and at its height employed more than 2,000 workers. The
Energy Department ended production at the plant in 1996, leaving
cleanup of radioactive and hazardous waste as the primary
activity. 

Congress originally funded the Mound cleanup project in 1996 as
a fast-track program with a 2005 completion date. 

According to an audit filed in March by the Energy Department's
office of inspector general, total cleanup is expected to cost
at least $903 million - $476 million more than the original
estimate. The inspector general's office included in its cost
figures the $497 million paid to the original contractor, which
was replaced following cost overruns and delays. 

Bill Taylor, head of the Energy Department's Ohio field office
in Springdale, said most of the cleanup work will be done by
September. 

Taylor said the current contractor - CH2M Hill Mound Inc. - has
done everything it's been asked to do and has had to deal with
the discovery that there was more than twice as much
contaminated soil at the site than first believed. 

In addition, community officials have insisted that a four-acre
landfill at the site be removed. The Energy Department had hoped
it could bury and seal the landfill and restrict digging there
instead of removing the soil. 

"We found that completely unacceptable," Grauwelman said. "There
is some radioactive waste in that waste area." 

Mayor Dick Church said the delays have been irritating. 

"But even though I'm aggravated, I can go another six or seven
months to make sure the job is done right," he said. "As mayor,
I don't want that landfill sitting in the middle of my
community." 

Phil Johnson, 69, lives five blocks from the Mound plant. 

"I was not worried if they left it as is from the standpoint of
any hazard," he said of the landfill. 

But he said it is important it be cleaned up for the economic
health of the community. 

"We don't want to have to make those kinds of excuses or caveats
when we talk to people about leasing or renting the space," he
said. 

ON THE NET 

Mound Advanced Technology Center: http://www.mound.com/

*****************************************************************
 67 Seattle Times: Energy Department demands Hanford plant contractor return fee
 
Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - Page updated at 05:54 PM 	
 		
By Shannon Dininny The Associated Press                                                                                                                                    

YAKIMA -- The U.S. Department of Energy has notified the
contractor hired to build a waste treatment plant at the Hanford
nuclear reservation that it must return $48 million the company
has been paid as a performance fee for the project, which has
been mired in cost overruns and delays. 

The so-called vitrification plant will convert highly
radioactive waste into glasslike logs for permanent disposal in
a nuclear waste repository. The plant has long been considered
the cornerstone of cleanup at the highly contaminated Hanford
site. 

Under its complex contract with the federal government,
contractor Bechtel National could have earned as much as $445
million for building the plant. About $200 million was tied to a
so-called cost-performance fee, paid out over the course of the
contract, for meeting the plant's estimated $5.4 billion budget.
That budget has since skyrocketed. 

So far, the company has been paid $48 million under the
cost-performance fee provision. The Energy Department notified
company officials by letter Wednesday that it wanted the money
returned, saying it was now clear that Bechtel will not qualify
for any cost-performance fee. 

The "appropriate fee for this performance incentive is zero,"
the letter said. The company has 45 days to respond. 

John Britton, Bechtel spokesman, said company officials were
still reviewing the letter but would respond in writing later.
He also said the cost-performance fee is based on the current
contract, which will have to be renegotiated. 

"The scope of work has changed dramatically on the project," he
said, citing seismic and technical issues, the rising cost of
construction materials and too-optimistic estimates. 

The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of
the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.
Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, with
cleanup costs expected to total as much as $60 billion. 

Key to the cleanup is the removal of 53 million gallons of
toxic, radioactive waste from 177 aging underground tanks.
Dozens of the tanks have leaked into the groundwater,
threatening the nearby Columbia River, making construction of
the one-of-a-kind plant a priority. 

Once completed, the plant will stand 12 stories tall and be the
size of four football fields. 

But the Energy Department, which manages cleanup at the
south-central Washington site, has encountered an endless stream
of problems with the project since the contract was first
awarded to former contractor BNFL Inc. in 1998. The agency fired
BNFL in 2000 and hired Bechtel. 

The estimated construction cost has skyrocketed from an initial
$4.3 billion, to the $5.4 billion estimate Bechtel was operating
under in its contract, to more than $10 billion today. 

The plant also is being designed as it is being built  a method
that has proven costly. The design is 70 percent complete and an
estimated 30 percent of the plant has been built, but billions
of dollars have already been spent. 

The Energy Department halted construction on the plant last fall
amid rising costs. The slowdown came after the agency announced
it had underestimated the impact a severe earthquake could have
on the plant, forcing a re-examination of the plant's design and
construction. 

The latest delay marked the fourth time the plant's operating
deadline had been pushed back. The department expects to release
a new cost estimate and schedule later this summer. 

Under the current contract, Bechtel could still earn $225
million by meeting certain construction and performance
milestones. So far, Bechtel has been paid $54.5 million. That
includes $14.5 million, also announced Wednesday by the Energy
Department, for completing a software program and building for
training plant operators. 

Meanwhile, Bechtel's project director for the waste treatment
plant has taken another Bechtel position in Houston. Jim
Henschel had served as project director for the waste treatment
plant since 2003. 

Bechtel announced on Tuesday that he would be replaced by Bill
Elkins, who joined the project as manager under Henschel around
the first of the year. Elkins joined Bechtel in 1971 and
previously worked at the Energy Department's Savannah River site
in South Carolina. 

	 		 		
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company 	 	 		 		
*****************************************************************
 68 komo news: Hanford Workers Take Cover After Container Falls Off Forklift
 
KOMO TV
June 7, 2006

By Associated Press

RICHLAND - Some workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation were
ordered to take cover Wednesday morning after a sealed container
holding contaminated waste slid off a forklift. 

The incident occurred at about 10 a.m. in the 200 West area of
the site, where workers have been retrieving contaminated waste
and removing contaminated equipment. 

At the time, workers were removing a container containing
radioactive waste from the Plutonium Finishing Plant. The
container slid off a forklift about 1½ feet to the ground and
rolled on its side. 

Workers verified through a visual inspection that the container
was not breached, and radiological monitoring determined that no
contaminants had been released, the U.S. Department of Energy
said in a statement. 

The take cover order was lifted by 11 a.m., and workers returned
to work. No one was injured. 

Exactly how many workers were forced to take cover was unknown.
About 1,500 people are assigned to work in the 200 West area,
said Geoff Tyree, spokesman for Fluor Hanford, the contractor
handling cleanup in that part of the nuclear site. 

Beginning in 1949, the Plutonium Finishing Plant was the last
step in converting plutonium nitrate solutions into pure
plutonium "buttons" about the size of hockey pucks, which were
sent to other Energy Department sites to make atomic bombs. The
work stopped in 1989 at the end of the Cold War. 

Work is now focused on dismantling and tearing apart the
plutonium plant's contaminated equipment, which will be packaged
and sent to a nuclear waste repository in New Mexico. The
deadline for the plant to be demolished is 2016 under the
Tri-Party Agreement, the cleanup pact signed by the state,
Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. 					

questions to:  Tips@KOMO4NEWS.com. 

This site contains copyrighted material of Fisher
Communications, Inc.(KOMO RADIO-TV) which may not be copied,
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 69 Hanford News: PNNL, WSU hope for life science grants
 
This story was published Monday, June 5th, 2006 

By Chris Mulick, Herald Olympia bureau 

OLYMPIA - Trustees for a new state board responsible for doling
out life sciences grants are meeting in the Tri-Cities this week
to get ideas about how the fund should work. 

"We're very much in the formative stages," said Lee Huntsman,
executive director of the Life Sciences Discovery Fund, whose
trustees already have staged several listening sessions
elsewhere. "We thought the Tri-Cities has enough concentration
of focus, particularly in the research sector, that we ought to
book one there." 

The Tri-Cities meeting is set for 10 a.m. Thursday at the
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Environmental Molecular
Sciences Laboratory in Richland. 

The fund, originally pushed by Gov. Chris Gregoire during her
2004 election campaign, was created last year to use a portion
of annual payments from the state's settlement with the tobacco
industry to create a grant program to spur life sciences
research. It is scheduled to accumulate $35 million a year for
10 years beginning in 2008. 

That money could be used to provide start-up money for fledgling
companies in the biomedical or other related fields, or boost
research that could lead to both new medical breakthroughs and
new companies. 

Both PNNL and Washington State University hope to compete for a
slice of the pie and other local companies could, too. 

The board isn't so much interested in hearing specific proposals
yet - though it will entertain them - as it is in general ideas
about what its spending priorities should be and how the money
could best inspire other investments. 

The board could be making grant commitments within a year, long
before it has money in hand. It's hoped the state's financial
commitments will help grant recipients attract other investors. 

"The promise is very, very important," Huntsman said. "You can
use the promise long before you can use the money." 

"This fund represents a dramatic strength," he said. "$35
million a year, if we can spend it catalytically, is serious
money and can have a serious impact." 

The law that created the fund prohibits the state from spending
it all in one place, though that wasn't likely to happen anyway,
Huntsman said. 

"There's enough going on in the Tri-Cities, Pullman and Spokane.
I don't think people are going to need points for geography," he
said. "There's some good ideas out there." 

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 70 Hanford News: Advisory board: Hanford 5-year review doesn't fit needs
 
This story was published Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

LEWISTON, Idaho - A five-year review of certain Hanford cleanup 
projects has not lived up to the expectations of the Hanford 
Advisory Board. 

A draft report on the review relied too heavily on keeping people 
away from contamination, rather than cleaning up contamination, 
the board said in advice it prepared for the federal government 
at its June meeting in Lewiston. 

In addition, it did not consider some new information developed 
in the last five years, the board said. 

"The Five-Year Review does not provide the insights the board 
hoped to see in such a review," the board wrote in advice to the 
Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Every five years DOE is required to review contaminated sites 
that fall under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, 
Compensation and Liability, or CERCLA, Act. The review determines 
whether cleanup decisions are adequately protecting human health 
and the environment. 
z The board found the review based too many of its findings on 
protecting human health on "institutional controls" that prevent 
the public from being exposed to radioactive or chemical 
contamination. 

For instance, the review found that some current policies for 
contaminated ground water were protective of human health because 
the water was not used for drinking. 

But in some cases, contamination is still spreading into the 
river, the board said. In addition, institutional controls, such 
as preventing the use of water for drinking, are difficult to use 
indefinitely. 

"The board believes a Hanford Five-Year Review would be more 
useful if it assessed the ongoing protectiveness of remedies 
beyond the institutional control period," the advisory board 
said. 

One goal of the review is to look at whether cleanup plans are 
working in light of new information not available when cleanup 
decisions were made, but the review appeared to overlook several 
new pieces of information, the board said. 

Among information not assessed in the draft report of the review 
was a study commissioned by Richland to determine industry 
interest in using Hanford's 300 Area once it's cleaned up. DOE 
plans to clean up the area just north of Richland only to 
industrial-use standards. 
z The city study found no interest in using the area, which still 
would have some contamination. Ground water beneath the area is 
contaminated with uranium from the past production of uranium 
fuel pieces that were used to make plutonium for the nation's 
nuclear weapons program. 

The study also did not look at data from the U.S. Geological 
Survey that show genetic damage to fish, the board found. 
Chromium, a nonradioactive chemical once used as a corrosion 
inhibitor in Hanford reactors, is seeping into the Columbia River 
and can be harmful to fish. The draft review did consider Pacific 
Northwest National Laboratory studies on salmon. 

The board questioned why negotiations with Priest Rapids dam 
operators addressing river fluctuations were not considered in 
the review. Fluctuations in the level of the river can cause more 
contaminants to enter the river from the ground water. 

The board also brought up a report of the National Academy of 
Science on the risks to humans of exposure to radiation and 
questioned whether it would have an effect on the protectiveness 
of cleanup plans. The report, Biological Effects of Ionizing 
Radiation Study No. VII, or BEIR VII, concluded that even low 
doses of radiation are likely to pose an increased risk of 
cancer. 

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 71 Hanford News: Tribes still oppose project at Columbia Point; Representatives
from group expected to be involved in cultural resources study
 
This story was published Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 

By Elena Olmstead; Herald staff writer 

The decision has long since been made, but members of the 
Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation made it 
known Monday that they still oppose development at Richland's 
Columbia Point. 

Yet the tribes are expected to be heavily involved in doing a 
cultural resources study of the site of the new Hanford Reach 
National Monument Heritage and Visitor Center proposed for the 
area. 

Richland City Council members drove to Umatilla on Monday to meet 
with the tribe's board of trustees, their first joint meeting in 
two years. 

Armand Minthorn, a member of the Umatillas' board of trustees, 
told the council members the tribes still oppose Columbia Point 
South as the site of the interpretive center. 

But regardless of that, he also said the Umatillas would like to
be heavily involved in the project. He said the area where the
interpretive center is set to be built likely holds many items
of cultural significance to local tribes. 

Because federal money is being used to pay for a portion of the
interpretive center, Minthorn said the tribes will conduct a
cultural resource study of the site. The study will determine if
there are any objects of cultural significance in the area and
suggest ways to mitigate any impact. 

Another area where cultural objects are an issue is Howard Amon
Park, where the city is trying to replace an aging irrigation
system. 

Bill King, deputy city manager, said because artifacts were
found in the park when the city constructed a new restroom near
Lee Boulevard, the Corps of Engineers is requesting further
study before work can start on replacing the irrigation system. 

The Corps wants the city to dig several 6-foot pits throughout
the park to see if any other artifacts are present. 

"We're having a little trouble understanding," King said,
explaining the irrigation lines would be only 18 inches deep. 

Teara Farrow, manager of the tribe's cultural resources
protection program, said smaller tests have been done in the
park and "there were pretty much artifacts throughout." 

"The Corps is going to require the testing because it might be a
site to put on the historic register," Farrow said. 

King said if the study is required it could cost $30,000 to
$50,000, money the city isn't ready to spend. He said the city
may have to continue using its aging irrigation system. 

Minthorn and other members of the board of trustees said
regardless of the visitors center project, they would like to
have more contact with the city. Before 2004, the two groups
held regular meetings, something both seemed interested in doing
again. They tentatively scheduled another meeting for October in
Richland.

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 72 Tri-City Herald: Vit plant gets new director 

Published Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

Hanford's massive vitrification plant has a new project director 
after Jim Henschel took another job. 

Bechtel National named Bill Elkins to lead the project. Elkins 
joined the vit plant, or Waste Treatment Plant, around the first 
of the year as project manager under Henschel. 

Before that Elkins was the principal vice president and project 
manager for Bechtel's Iraq Infrastructure Reconstruction Program. 

He also has more than a decade of experience at the Department of 
Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina. 

Henschel has accepted a job as manager of Bechtel's Integrated
Gasification Combined Cycle business in Houston. 

"It's an excellent opportunity for Jim," said Bechtel National
spokesman John Britton. "It fits in well with his background." 

He will remain at Hanford for a short while to help Elkins with
the transition. The job switch occurred Thursday, and Bechtel
employees were told Monday and Tuesday. 

Henschel joined the vit plant project in 2003 and led the
project through some difficult years that drew national
attention to the plant. 

The vit plant is being built to turn some of Hanford's worst
radioactive waste into a stable glass form for permanent
disposal. 

Bechtel struggled with rising costs of steel and problems
finding suppliers qualified to provide nuclear-quality materials
after decades without a major nuclear construction project in
the United States. 

In late 2004, a new earthquake study showed that DOE design
standards on key parts of the project might be inadequate, and
Bechtel National had to check thousands of design calculations. 

That and a declining budget from Congress forced Bechtel
National to lay off about 1,700 workers. 

Despite challenges, significant progress was made under
Henschel's leadership. Nearly 100 technical problems on the
plant, the largest and most complex of its kind ever built, were
solved. The design of the plant is about 65 percent complete and
construction is about 30 percent complete. 

"I want to thank our project team for their dedication and
commitment, hard work and for making me feel at home," Henschel
said in a message sent to employees. 

He said that Elkins will bring a new perspective to the project
"as we head into a new year that promises to have more than its
share of challenges." 

"We're very fortunate that he has agreed to join our team," he
said. 

DOE has approved the leadership change. 

Elkins joined Bechtel in 1971 and has experience with nuclear
power plant projects and DOE's Savannah River Site in South
Carolina. 

In the '70s and '80s he supervised construction of nuclear and
fossil power plant projects throughout the United States,
according to the Bechtel announcement sent to employees. 

Elkins spent 14 of the last 18 years at the Savannah River Site.
Through the years he managed new construction, plant
modification and repair, environmental remediation, and
decommissioning and dismantling of nuclear and chemical
facilities. 

He left the site in 2004 as president of Bechtel Savannah River.
He was responsible for a work force of 3,000 employees doing
$400 million to $500 million in work annually. 

A replacement for Elkins as project manager is expected to be
announced soon. 

© 2006 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 73 Tri-City Herald: Hanford workers take cover after radioactive waste mishap
 
Published Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

Workers in Hanford's 200 West Area were ordered to take cover at 
10 a.m. after a sealed container of waste contaminated with 
plutonium slid off a forklift at the Plutonium Finishing Plant. 

The container fell about a foot and a half to the ground and 
rolled onto its side, according to contractor Fluor Hanford. No 
contamination was released and the take cover order was lifted by 
11 a.m. 

For more information, read Thursday's Herald. 


© 2006 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services





*****************************************************************
 74 SF Chronicle: Media failed their duty in Lee case
 
Robert Scheer 

Wednesday, June 7, 2006

FIVE MEDIA giants joined the U.S. government last week in paying
maligned Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee $1.6 million while once
again denying any serious culpability in his totally unjustified
and extremely harsh incarceration. Hiding behind their "bond"
with government sources, the media companies continue to protect
officials who broke the law in leaking highly classified
information to defame an individual, as they have more recently
in the Valerie Plame case. 

In the now infamous racial profiling of Lee, the media was in
cahoots with government leakers, who were bizarrely determined
to prove that Lee was a dangerous spy whose freedom would
profoundly jeopardize national security. Amid this manufactured
hysteria, a frail, middle-aged Lee was forced to spend nine
months in solitary confinement, chained even in meetings with
his attorneys, and under 24-hour video surveillance during his
every private moment, because the government claimed that, if he
were released on bond, the lives of "hundreds of millions of
Americans" would be endangered. 

That lurid claim was made possible by a public atmosphere
poisoned by shoddy reporting -- particularly that of the New
York Times, which splashed this headline across its front page:
"Breach at Los Alamos: A special report; China Stole Nuclear
Secrets for Bombs, U.S. Aides Say." The story claimed that,
"Working with nuclear secrets stolen from an American government
laboratory, China has made a leap in the development of nuclear
weapons: the miniaturization of its bombs, according to
administration officials." 

Those officials were lying to the Times then as they were days
later when Lee was named as the culprit in the case. Lee was
never charged with spying for China or any other government and
58 of the 59 charges against him were dropped when the Clinton
Justice Department eventually settled for time served on one
minor charge of improperly handling classified information.
While the Times and the other news organizations that
uncritically conveyed the "administration officials" falsehoods
failed to apologize to Lee, the Reagan-appointed judge who heard
the government's pathetic case had the decency to do just that. 

"I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner
[in which] you were held in custody by the executive branch,"
Judge James Parker said at the time. Taking note of the
"demeaning, unnecessarily punitive conditions" governing Lee's
incarceration, Parker added that he was "sad and troubled
because I do not know the real reasons why the executive branch
has done all of this." Parker, who had surveyed the classified
data behind the government's case, went on to blast "the top
decision-makers in the executive branch" who, he said, "have
embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of
it." 

The most important of those officials was, of course, President
Clinton, who had the power to stop this travesty at any time and
later conceded the entire case was a farce and likened the
media's role in the Lee case to their Whitewater coverage. 

Yet while the main responsibility lay with the president, as
Judge Parker pointed out -- "The executive branch has enormous
power, the abuse of which can be devastating to our citizens" --
so, too, does it lay with the members of the fourth estate whose
power as a check on government excess is enshrined in the
Constitution. When that power is uncritically put at the service
of rogue government agents, then the devastating effect on the
abused citizen is more than doubled. 

In its post-settlement statement, the five media outlets -- the
Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, ABC, AP and the New York
Times -- claimed they paid Lee only to protect their sources.
But those government sources broke the law and the news
organizations covered for them. They still refuse to cover the
important news of "government officials" who, acting on their
own political agendas, decided to selectively leak highly
classified information to smear a scientist who was innocent of
the crimes they claimed. The "bond" of the media with their
sources was in fact a bond with rogue government witch-hunters
willing to destroy a loyal American citizen -- a man who had
devoted his working life to this nation's military security --
in order to renew the Cold War with China. 

It is insulting to the spirit of the First Amendment to regard
concealing that abuse of governmental power as a sacred duty of
the media. There is nothing noble about the media joining the
government in paying a bribe to a financially strapped and
emotionally exhausted Lee to prevent exposure of the true
criminals in this case. It is rather an abrogation of the
journalists' prime duty to expose official malfeasance. 

E-mail: 				
Page B - 13 			
The San Francisco Chronicle] 

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 75 Dayton Daily: Mound cleanup $476 million over budget
 
Energy Department says finishing the work will cost more and
take longer than expected.
 	
By Timothy R. Gaffney Staff Writer                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
			 			 			 			 			 		 	 	 	 	 		 	 	
MIAMISBURG  Cleaning up the former Mound nuclear weapons plant
is taking longer and costing millions of dollars more than
planned, a government audit says. Tools

The Energy Department's office of inspector general said
finishing cleanup of the 305-acre site will cost at least $903
million  $476 million more than the original estimate. 

Once scheduled for completion in 2005, the work will run into
next year, the office said in an audit report filed in March. 

Bill Taylor, head of the Energy Department's Ohio Field Office
in Springdale, said contractor CH2M Hill Mound Inc. will finish
cleanup work by Sept. 30, and the agency will sign off the last
piece of land to the Miamisburg Mound Community Improvement
Corp. by February 2008, the deadline in its sales agreement. 

But the CH2M contract excludes one old dump the agency had hoped
it could bury and seal, a plan approved by the Ohio
Environmental Protection Agency but opposed by MMCIC, said
Michael Grauwelman, MMCIC president. 

He said the plan was "totally unacceptable" to the nonprofit
group, which is building the Mound Advanced Technology Center
from land and buildings turned over by the agency. 

With help from local lawmakers, Congress added $30 million to
this year's budget to fund the extra cleanup. 

Congress originally funded the Mound cleanup project in 1996 as
a fast-track program with a 2005 completion date. The agency had
planned to take 25 years. 

It awarded the work to BWXT of Ohio Inc. with a target cost of
$427 million, but the company went $70 million over that mark
and was behind schedule by 2001. The agency rebid the contract
and awarded it to CH2M Hill in 2002. 

CH2M Hill has had trouble meeting cost and schedule targets as
well, the report said, in part because it underestimated how
much soil it would need to remove  6.6 million cubic feet
instead of 4.3 million. 	 


Copyright ©2006 Cox Ohio Publishing, Dayton, Ohio, USA. All
*****************************************************************
 76 Hanford News: Oregon uneasy with Hanford study
 
This story was published Sunday, June 4th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

The Department of Energy must not consider leaving radioactive
waste behind in underground tanks at Hanford, said Oregon's
congressional delegation. 

Both of the state's U.S. senators and all five of its U.S.
representatives signed off on a letter to Energy Secretary
Samuel Bodman commenting on DOE's plans for a large
environmental study. 

The study, called the Hanford Tank Closure and Waste Management
Environment Impact Statement, will look at emptying and closing
Hanford's waste tanks and also at disposing of Hanford waste and
waste brought to Hanford from elsewhere in the nation. 

Both issues affect Oregon. 

An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive waste have leaked
from Hanford's underground tanks in the past. Some of the waste
has reached the ground water and is spreading toward the
Columbia River, the letter emphasized. 

In addition, radioactive waste shipped to and from Hanford could
be carried by trucks through Oregon. 

Part of the delegation's concern over the environmental study is
a scenario to leave 10 percent of the waste in Hanford's 149
oldest and leak-prone underground tanks. 

"Such an alternative would require changing or overturning laws
and agreements," the letter said. 

The scenario is one of several alternatives proposed to be
studied. Others look at removing 99 percent or more of the
waste. 

DOE has defended studying that 90 percent removal alternative,
saying showing the effects of leaving 10 percent of the waste in
the tanks could work as an argument for emptying the tanks to 99
percent. 

The legally binding Tri-Party Agreement calls for 99 percent of
the waste - or as much as is technically possible - to be
removed from the tanks. 

Comments made at spring meetings, including Oregon meetings held
in Hood River and Portland, showed that the public wants the
proposal removed from the study, the letter said. 

The Oregon delegation also questioned the stability of the
tanks, which hold mostly salt cake and sludge after Hanford
workers finished removing most pump-able liquid in 2004. 

It pointed out a recent study by the activist group Heart of
America Northwest that cited 2002 DOE data on soil contamination
to conclude that the tanks have leaked more recently than DOE
has acknowledged. 

When the study was released a month ago, DOE said contamination
was from past known leaks, and the Washington State Department
of Ecology said it had no information to show there are new
leaks from the tanks. 

DOE needs to install leak detection monitors, the Oregon
delegation said. 

"In the meantime, the department should create a 'watch list'
for tanks which do not have early leak detection capability and
for which there is evidence of either increased contamination or
faster spread of contamination than predicted," the letter said. 

It also called for accelerating work to look at how much and
where contamination has spread beneath the tanks. The waste is
left from the past production of plutonium for the nation's
nuclear weapons program. 

On the subject of transportation risks, the congressional
delegation called for the environmental study to include an
analysis that reflects the reality of trucking radioactive
material through their state. That includes calculating risks in
bad weather, and to children, who are more susceptible to harm
from radiation than adults, the letter said. 

The delegation said it was concerned about a potential accident
or terrorist attack on the shipments. 

The letter is posted at www.hoanw.org.cq It was signed by
Republicans Sen. Gordon Smith and Rep. Greg Walden and Democrats
Sen. Ron Wyden and Reps. Peter DeFazio, Darlene Hooley, Earl
Blumenauer and David Wu.

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
    
*****************************************************************

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