***************************************************************** 08/27/06 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 14.203 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 SF Chron: NEWS ANALYSIS / Iraq war has Bush Doctrine in tatters 2 [NYTr] Defying UN (?!) Iran opens nuclear reactor 3 IRNA: Iran-Jalali-Nuclear /POL MP: Production of atomic bomb not aut 4 Guardian Unlimited: ANALYSIS: Bully Role Won't Help With Iran 5 IRNA: AEC meeting focuses on Indo-US nuclear deal 6 Guardian Unlimited: Defying U.N., Iran Opens Nuclear Reactor 7 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Tests Submarine-To-Surface Missile 8 London Times: Iran takes new nuclear step - 9 Bradenton Herald: Iran could be next U.S. target 10 IRNA: FM: Iran ready to continue talks on its nuclear issue 11 BBC NEWS: Iran nuclear project forges ahead 12 BBC NEWS: Annan to visit Iran amid dispute 13 IRNA: Iran's nuclear response accounts for positive change of approa 14 SF Chron: U.N. unlikely to punish Iran -- experts / Some say even li 15 WorldNetDaily: Cooking intelligence – again 16 IRNA: President Ahmadinejad: Iran to resist bullying powerfully 17 Independent: Iran launches next phase of nuclear project 18 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Arak plant inauguration,right of nation 19 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: EU to respond to IRI by end of Aug. 20 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Iran to resist bullying powerfully 21 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Justice,only solution to IRI N-issue 22 IRNA: Iran ready to negotiate with Group 5+1 - Speaker 23 AFP: Iran determined to make nuclear fuel despite UN ultimatum - 24 AFP: Iran determined to make nuclear fuel despite UN ultimatum - 25 AFP: White House low-key after latest Iranian nuclear advance - 26 AFP: Iran president inaugurates heavy water plant 27 AFP: Iran opens nuclear facility saying no threat to Israel - 28 AFP: Iran plans new light water nuclear reactor 29 AFP: Israel 'not fooled' by Iran nuclear assurances 30 Washington Post: Iran is Going Nuclear, the UN Can't Stop It 31 IRNA: Iran rejects any link between Arak heavy water plant and nucle 32 Guardian Unlimited: N.Korea Will Not Rule Out Nuclear Test 33 Korea Herald: U.S. demands Korea shoulder bigger share of military e 34 Korea Times: Pyongyang's Threat 35 AFP: North Korea nuclear test cannot be ruled out 36 AFP: NKorea warns of 'counter-measures' against US financial sanctio 37 AFP: Rumsfeld, Ivanov to discuss North Korea, Middle East in Alaska 38 US: Guardian Unlimited: Rumsfeld Cautions on Missile Shield 39 London Times: Nuclear power poker - 40 Times of India: Nuke deal: Manmohan meets top scientists- 41 Times of India: Scientists aboard, oppn to lose sting 42 IRNA: Time ripe for West to negotiate without pretext - Asefi NUCLEAR REACTORS 43 Canada's nuclear do or die 44 [NYTr] Iran's Major Nuke Facility Was Built by the USA 45 IRNA: President inaugurates Arak heavy water plant - 46 US: St. Paul Pioneer Press: Doyle defends meetings with utilities 47 Scotland on Sunday: Nuclear boss urges end to 'laborious' planning p 48 Independent: Last-minute deal averts nuclear walkout 49 US: Clarion-Ledger: Nuclear site in question - 50 MercoPress: US supports Argentina's nuclear program, but... 51 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI delegation visit Russian N-plant 52 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Arak heavy water plant inaugurated 53 US: JS Online: Doyle defends meeting with utility on power plant sal 54 AFP: Energy tops agenda as Japan PM heads to central Asia 55 ITAR-TASS: Bilibin nuclear power station to continue operation – Kir NUCLEAR SECURITY NUCLEAR SAFETY 56 Chemo may exact a greater toll than disclosed 57 How Global Warming Causes Earthquakes & Volcanoes & Nuke Plant's Eff 58 US: Journal Gazette: Military test inflames Bloomington 59 US: Chattanooga Times Free Press: Plugging tritium leaks | 60 US: Gazette.com: Radioactive assault 61 US: Gazette.com: Out of sight, out of mind 62 US: Tennessean: Nuclear plants leaked tritium, TVA says - 63 US: News and Tribune: Know what your Department of Defense is up to NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 64 US: Las Vegas SUN: Possibility of blast at Indiana quarry draws oppo 65 NEWS.com.au: Australia should enrich uranium, says Downer | 66 US: Bradenton Herald: Judge rejects Lockheed's effort to limit Talle 67 AU ABC: CLP sets up NT uranium enrichment inquiry 68 US: Daily Sentinel: 6 uranium mines scheduled to open in Colorado, U PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 69 KnoxNews: K-25 preservation funds divided; all partners get piece 70 Knox News: Officials: 3 TVA nuclear plants leak tritium 71 AP Wire: Paducah plant cleanup contractor criticized for safety prob 72 SF New Mexican: LANL Climate Study: Scientist talks about his work ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 SF Chron: NEWS ANALYSIS / Iraq war has Bush Doctrine in tatters [San Francisco Chronicle] Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau Sunday, August 27, 2006 (08-27) 04:00 PDT Washington -- President Bush vowed last week that he would never abandon his goal of creating democracy in Iraq, but outside the White House, the foreign policy world is wondering how to contain a civil war that could engulf the Middle East. Even Bush acknowledged the debate. "If you think it's bad now, imagine what Iraq would look like if the United States leaves before the government can defend itself," he said Monday. [Podcast: Sandalow and Helen Thomoas on Bush and terrorists.] Analysts across the political spectrum say the Bush Doctrine -- preventive war, choking the roots of terrorism by planting democracy, and brandishing power to force others into line -- has failed. Bush's lofty goals, shared even by his critics, have been set back, perhaps decades, by the Iraq occupation. Yet for all the criticism, neither the Democratic Party nor the foreign policy elite has devised an alternative for the post-Sept. 11 world, leaving U.S. foreign policy adrift. No one has an endgame for Iraq. No one offers any magic bullets against stateless terrorists undeterred by conventional military power, or the dangerous regimes in Iran and North Korea that many believe to be bent on nuclear arms. The United States now faces a set of bad options -- or, at best, a deeply chastened view of the limits of American power. By many measures, the United States is weaker and its enemies stronger than before the 2003 Iraq invasion, the experts say. The United States may find it hard, if not impossible, the analysts say, to again try in the near future to topple a hostile regime. Its military is stretched, its moral standing diminished. Even democracy itself is tarnished, often equated now with car bombs and chaos, rather than peace and prosperity. "The kind of thing people in the administration prided themselves in understanding, namely the use of power, was actually the very thing they proved not to be able to use effectively," said David Holloway of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, which conducts research and training on issues of international security. Bush's domestic support -- the crucial ingredient in U.S. foreign policy -- is fading fast. Conservatives are fracturing over the war, and rising Republican disenchantment could swell to rebellion if the GOP loses control of the House or Senate in the November elections. Even ardent backers of the Iraq invasion are alarmed. "We're losing" in Iraq, said Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who supported the war. "The country is sliding into civil war, and the president doesn't seem to be doing very much about it. That has tremendous negative repercussions throughout the region and indeed the world, because it's really a black eye for the United States and a blow to democracy advocates around the region." Bush's foreign policy is not without successes. Libya abandoned terrorism and weapons of mass destruction after the Iraq invasion. The A.Q. Khan nuclear arms network in Pakistan, dedicated to sharing weapons secrets, was dismantled. The administration defused a nuclear showdown between Pakistan and India and strengthened relations with both, especially India, a vital emerging power. Relations with Japan are at a high point. There have been no big missteps on China. The administration has elevated attention to Africa with new development and AIDS initiatives. Democratic movements have taken hold in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. Alliances with Europe have largely been repaired. And there still have been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001. But five years after Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda operatives leveled the World Trade Center, the world looks scarier than ever. The burgeoning civil war in Iraq threatens to draw in neighboring states -- Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia -- and set off an oil shock in the West. World opinion, dismissed by top Bush officials, has undermined U.S. clout, said Joseph Nye, a professor of international relations at Harvard University. Bush's emphasis on force has cost goodwill around the world -- nowhere more than among Muslims -- and squandered the sympathy that empowered the United States to invade Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. "A president has to be able to combine the hard power of military force with the soft power of attracting others to want to follow us," Nye said. "In fighting a struggle against terrorism -- where everything depends upon winning the hearts and minds of moderates -- that loss of soft power is very expensive. The key to diplomacy is to divide your enemies, and Bush has in a sense united our enemy." Elections have not turned out to be the panacea Bush promised. The Palestinian territories, as well as Egypt and Lebanon, have delivered victories to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, all considered terrorist groups by Washington. Lebanon's move to a new democratic government was damaged by war with Israel and soaring popularity for Hezbollah. The U.S. image abroad has so eroded that Iran's leading democracy activist, Akbar Ganji, viewed as that country's Nelson Mandela, last month spurned the White House and $75 million in aid. The failure to get international support is now seen as one of the costliest mistakes of the war. "In the end, we are weaker because we have fewer with us, and we cannot do everything alone," said Rand Beers, a National Security Council official for four presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush who resigned over Iraq. "There is no doubt in my mind that any president would or certainly should have done what we did in Afghanistan, but we had the entire U.N. with us," Beers said. "We had a real opportunity to change the way the world was dealing with terrorism on a cooperative, global basis, and we didn't use that opportunity." Said former Bush State Department official Jon Alterman, "It seems to me the key aspect of the Bush Doctrine is moral clarity. The problem with moral clarity is: How do you achieve better results in the here and now and not in the afterlife?" Iraq has become a terrorist training and recruitment tool. Afghanistan is slipping out of control, with the Taliban rising again in the south. Iran and North Korea -- part of Bush's "axis of evil" with Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- are thought to be continuing their quest for nuclear weapons in open defiance of the West. Many contend that the Iraq invasion strengthened Iran and weakened U.S. leverage. Neoconservatives are agitating for a pre-emptive air war against Iran, but many believe such a course would inflame the Muslim world. And, they say, it ignores Iran's capacity to retaliate and the limitations of air power, as demonstrated by Israel's campaign in Lebanon. The promotion of democracy -- Bush's key to transforming the Middle East -- has been set back. "For many decades, the United States was considered a model democracy and was an inspiration for democracy activists all over the world," said Mike McFaul, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a professor of political science. "Today, it is most certainly the case that being affiliated with the U.S. is no longer necessarily a positive for democratic activists. You see this particularly in Egypt. You see it particularly in Iran." Larry Diamond, a former adviser to the U.S. provisional government in Iraq now at the Hoover Institution, agreed. "There's a very broad view among not only the established pro-American regimes -- the Jordanian regime, the Moroccan regime, even the Egyptian and Saudi, and Qatar and Kuwait even more so -- and among many secular democratic forces in the region, that we have just messed up very badly, and strengthened Islamic forces, and strengthened the instinct of a lot of these regimes to resist." There are setbacks elsewhere. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is perceived as Latin America's new Castro, and Russia is sliding back to authoritarianism -- both, some believe, symptoms of administration distraction and rising anti-Americanism. Most damaging of all, the Iraq war has lost public support at home. "Without a strong president, it's hard for the United States to act decisively in the world," said Michael Mandelbaum, head of foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and author of "The Case for Goliath." "When you're successful, you attract followers. When you're not successful, the opposite happens, and in Iraq, so far, we're not successful." Iraq is not yet lost, Bush's allies contend. The measure of U.S. success, and how much "Iraqis believe this venture for democracy is going to succeed, is whether they continue to be willing to sign up for the police and the army," said Kori Shake, a former Bush National Security Council official now at Hoover. "That tells you, given the risk they are running, how much they believe in what's going on." Iraqi leaders "continue to make solid, sensible judgments that the American founding fathers would have been pleased to count their own," she said. Iraq "will succeed or fail based largely on what Iraqis do and not what we do at this point, and I think they're making good choices." But the broad consensus is that staying the course is not working. The Iraqi death rate of the last two months translates to 40,000 a year, Diamond said, and "if that isn't civil war, I don't know what is. "I literally do not know anyone outside the administration who thinks that simply staying the course we're on now is going to work," he said. "I know people who think we need to do a lot more. I know people who think the current level of troops is about right, but we need a very different strategy in terms of how we use them and proceed politically. I know people who think we need to start heading for the exits." The problem is, no one knows a way out. "There isn't a pretty scenario that is looming on the horizon, and that's one of the reasons the foreign policy community hasn't gravitated to a common position," said Charles Kupchan, a former National Security Council official for President Bill Clinton. "There's just lots of bad options." E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead@sfchronicle.com. Page A - 1 The San Francisco Chronicle] ***************************************************************** 2 [NYTr] Defying UN (?!) Iran opens nuclear reactor Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2006 11:36:20 -0500 (CDT) X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [They mean "Defying the US -- or perhaps the United Nations of America," as in George Bush Sr's famous Freudian slip from the days leading up to Gulf War I. "The UN" consists of the entire General Assembly, and the Security Council, of which both Russia and China are members, and which have both warned they will veto any aggressive resolution -- whether it's authorizing military force OR SANCTIONS -- the US tries to impose on the rest of the world. We are no fans of nuclear weapons, or nuclear power, but both Argentina and Mexico have signalled their intention to expand their use of nuclear power in recent days. As for nuclear weapons -- when the US requires India and especially Israel (both non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) to shut down their military weapons programs, then it's time to talk about Iran. Not until. -NY Transfer] AP via Yahoo - Aug 26, 2006 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060826/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear Defying U.N., Iran opens nuclear reactor By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer KHONDAB, Iran -Iran's hard-line president on Saturday inaugurated a heavy-water production plant, a facility the West fears will be used to develop a nuclear bomb, as Tehran remained defiant ahead of a U.N. deadline that could lead to sanctions. The U.N. has called on Tehran to stop the separate process of uranium enrichment -- which also can be used to create nuclear weapons -- by Thursday or face economic and political sanctions. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that his nation's nuclear program poses no threat to other nations, even Israel, "which is a definite enemy." Ahmadinejad said in a speech that Iran would never abandon what he once again called its purely peaceful nuclear program. "There is no discussion of nuclear weapons," he said. "We are not a threat to anybody even the Zionist regime, which is a definite enemy for the people of the region." Though the West's main worry has been enrichment of uranium that could be used in a bomb, it also has called on Iran to stop the construction of a heavy-water reactor near the production plant that Ahmadinejad inaugurated. A senior Israeli lawmaker warned in a statement that the plant inauguration marks "another leap in Iran's advance toward a nuclear bomb." Israeli legislator Ephraim Sneh of the Labor Party, a partner in the ruling coalition, said that the Jewish state must "prepare itself militarily." Ahmadinejad last year called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." The spent fuel from a heavy-water reactor can be reprocessed to extract plutonium for use in a bomb. Reactors fueled by enriched uranium use regular -- or light -- water in the chain reaction that produces energy. Heavy water contains a heavier hydrogen particle, which allow the reactor to run on natural uranium mined by Iran, forgoing the enrichment progress. Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who also heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said the heavy-water facility will be used to treat and diagnose AIDS and cancer, and for other medicine and agricultural purposes. Iran is scheduled to complete the reactor in 2009. Iran responded Tuesday to package of incentives, presented by the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany, for it to halt uranium enrichment and return to negotiations on increasing international oversight of its nuclear program. Tehran said it would be open to negotiations but did not agree to the West's key demand to halt enrichment as a precondition to talks. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, will report on the state of Iran's program by mid-September. If its report finds that enrichment is continuing, the council could move toward sanctions. Tehran has called the Security Council resolution that set the Thursday deadline "illegal" and has insisted it won't give up its nuclear program. "They may impose some restrictions on us under pressure. But will they be able to prevent the thoughts of a nation?" Ahmadinejad said Saturday. "Will they be able to prevent the progress and technology to a nation? They have to accept the reality of a powerful, peace-loving and developed Iran. This is in the interest of all governments and all nations whether they like it or not." Mohammed Saeedi, the deputy head of Iran's atomic organization, called the heavy-water plant "one of the biggest nuclear projects" in the country, state-run television reported. [Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report.] Copyright ) 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 3 IRNA: Iran-Jalali-Nuclear /POL MP: Production of atomic bomb not authorized in Iran - Tehran, Aug 27, IRNA Rapporteur of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Kazem Jalali here Sunday said that no one in Iran approves of atomic bomb production, neither is this authorized based on the Supreme Leader's Fatwa (religious decree). Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of Majlis open session, he said that in principle, the strategy of the ruling system is based on using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. He stated that according to Iran's security doctrine, using nuclear energy for non-peaceful purposes is banned. Underlining that Iran is totally against killing and threatening innocent people, the MP said, adding "Even if we had atomic bomb, we would never use it against Tel Aviv, given that killing innocent people is against our principles." Concerning the recent remarks of Majlis first deputy speaker Mohammad-Reza Bahonar about the nuclear expectations of Iranian people, he said, "Addressing the world community, he said that any irrational approach to the Iranian people could lead the public opinion toward a direction which would be in nobody's interest." Jalali stressed that Iran's nuclear right should be restored in a rational atmosphere. ***************************************************************** 4 Guardian Unlimited: ANALYSIS: Bully Role Won't Help With Iran From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday August 26, 2006 9:01 AM By ANNE GEARAN AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration may be on the verge of getting what it has long sought: United Nations sanctions on a defiant Iran over its accelerated nuclear program. That may not be much of a victory. The U.N. Security Council isn't likely to approve tough sanctions anytime soon, analysts said, and Iran can easily shake off light punishments. The United States risks shattering an international coalition it fought hard to build if it plays the bully now. Perhaps emboldened by what it views as a proxy victory over the West during the monthlong Israeli war with Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants, Tehran is testing the unity of the international front against it. Iran has so far ignored an Aug. 31 U.N. deadline to stop nuclear development activities that Washington and some allies say is evidence that Iran wants to build a bomb. Iran says it wants only to develop peaceful nuclear energy, and has made its program a point of national pride. On Tuesday, Tehran presented a lengthy response to a package of Western incentives, drawn up by the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany, to get Iran to roll back its program. Washington considered the reply overdue and insufficient. The offer came with the sweetener - a promise that the United States would join negotiations with Iran over the package if Iran first halted uranium enrichment - and the threat of sanctions if Iran failed to comply. Iran said it was prepared for ``serious negotiations'' but did not agree to the key condition. Enriched uranium can be used either for weapons or to produce nuclear power. ``If a will is going to be imposed on us, we will be ready to pay the price for defending our rights,'' Mohammad Reza Bahonar, vice speaker of Iran's parliament, told the semiofficial Iranian Student News Agency on Friday. If the deadline passes without any movement, the Security Council could take up a sanctions proposal as soon as next week. The Bush administration has urged just that for more than two years, while European nations tried and failed to talk Iran out of the most troublesome aspects of its nuclear program. Although slow and frustrating, the Iran diplomacy has so far represented a qualified victory for the United States. Once deeply suspicious of U.S. motives in Iran and put off by tough talk from Washington, European governments have largely come around to the U.S. view that sanctions, or the threat of them, is the best strategy left. Even Russia and China, with economic and strategic reasons to side more with Iran than with the United States, reluctantly agreed to the carrot-or-stick package now on the table. Those nations hold veto power as permanent members of the Security Council and are considered Iran's best defense against harsh punishment. Now with sanctions looming, long-standing divisions and anxieties among the partners Washington will need are coming to the fore. European nations with strong commercial ties to the major oil and energy exporter would be hurt themselves by the very sanctions on energy exports that would probably be most effective. The United States is likely to bow to the European preference for weak sanctions as a first step. That would leave the Bush administration making the best of half-measures, such as a ban on travel by Iranian officials, while pressing for tougher economic sanctions down the line. If Iran can split off Russia or China now, there may be no sanctions at all. Iranian-born author and Middle East scholar Trita Parsi interprets Iran's ambiguous response this week as a bid to blur the bright lines of the U.N. demand, perhaps by offering a very brief suspension of enrichment. He thinks European nations may be tempted. ``Sanctions with teeth tend to bite back,'' Parsi said, and European leaders know their publics don't think the Iranian nuclear threat is worth economic hardship at home. From Tehran's perspective, there is good reason to stall, said Council on Foreign Relations fellow Michael Levi. ``If their strategy was to divide the Security Council it seems to be working,'' Levi said, citing Friday's remarks from the Russian Vice Premier Sergei Ivanov that talk of sanctions is premature. Meanwhile small nations that can vote, but not veto, at the Security Council are in an uproar over perceived U.S. bias toward Israel in the recent war with Hezbollah militants. It is unclear how much opposition those nations could raise to a U.S.-backed sanctions plan. The United States should probably take what it can get at the Security Council for now, Levi said. He said mild sanctions are better than no sanctions, if only as a signal to Iran that the United States and its partners won't back down from a fight. ``There is no credible threat of sanctions if no one is willing to take even the smallest first step,'' Levi said. ``Without even minor steps right now, Iran has essentially no reason to comply with U.N. demands.'' --- EDITOR'S NOTE: Anne Gearan covers diplomacy and foreign affairs for The Associated Press in Washington. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 5 IRNA: AEC meeting focuses on Indo-US nuclear deal New Delhi, Aug 26, IRNA India-US-Nuke-AEC The Indo-US nuclear deal, fuel shortage at atomic reactors and security at nuclear installations are understood to have figured prominently at the meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) meeting chaired here on Saturday by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The meeting is believed to have discussed the quantum shortfall in fuel and means to address the problem. Atomic reactors are not getting adequate supply of fuel and a recent case in point is that of the Tarapur nuclear plant which was on the verge of shutdown had Russia not pitched in with uranium supplies. Nuclear power plants in the country are currently operating at 65 percent of their installed capacity. The Indo-US nuclear agreement, once implemented, is expected to meet the country's shortage of nuclear fuel as it will allow the international community to supply the much needed uranium. The meeting was attended by all commission members including AEC Chairman Anil Kakodkar, National Security Advisor M K Narayanan, Cabinet Secretary B K Chaturvedi, Chairman of the PM's Science Advisory Council C N R Rao, BARC Director Srikumar Banerjee, former AEC chairman M R Srinivasan and Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Prithviraj Chavan. The shortage of fuel could hamper the ability of India's nuclear power plants to generate 20,000mw of electricity by 2020. Another key issue that figured at the meeting was that of security at nuclear installations. Three persons working at the Narora Atomic plant in Bulandshar district of Uttar Pradesh were arrested earlier this month for providing fake residential addresses. Security at nuclear facilities across the country was stepped up following reports that terrorists might target these installations. ***************************************************************** 6 Guardian Unlimited: Defying U.N., Iran Opens Nuclear Reactor From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday August 26, 2006 3:46 PM AP Photo VAH101 By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer KHONDAB, Iran (AP) - Iran's hard-line president on Saturday inaugurated a heavy-water production plant, a facility the West fears will be used to develop a nuclear bomb, as Tehran remained defiant ahead of a U.N. deadline that could lead to sanctions. The U.N. has called on Tehran to stop the separate process of uranium enrichment - which also can be used to create nuclear weapons - by Thursday or face economic and political sanctions. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that his nation's nuclear program poses no threat to other nations, even Israel, ``which is a definite enemy.'' Ahmadinejad said in a speech that Iran would never abandon what he once again called its purely peaceful nuclear program. ``There is no discussion of nuclear weapons,'' he said. ``We are not a threat to anybody even the Zionist regime, which is a definite enemy for the people of the region.'' Though the West's main worry has been enrichment of uranium that could be used in a bomb, it also has called on Iran to stop the construction of a heavy-water reactor near the production plant that Ahmadinejad inaugurated. A senior Israeli lawmaker warned in a statement that the plant inauguration marks ``another leap in Iran's advance toward a nuclear bomb.'' Israeli legislator Ephraim Sneh of the Labor Party, a partner in the ruling coalition, said that the Jewish state must ``prepare itself militarily.'' Ahmadinejad last year called for Israel to be ``wiped off the map.'' The spent fuel from a heavy-water reactor can be reprocessed to extract plutonium for use in a bomb. Reactors fueled by enriched uranium use regular - or light - water in the chain reaction that produces energy. Heavy water contains a heavier hydrogen particle, which allow the reactor to run on natural uranium mined by Iran, forgoing the enrichment progress. Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who also heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said the heavy-water facility will be used to treat and diagnose AIDS and cancer, and for other medicine and agricultural purposes. Iran is scheduled to complete the reactor in 2009. Iran responded Tuesday to package of incentives, presented by the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany, for it to halt uranium enrichment and return to negotiations on increasing international oversight of its nuclear program. Tehran said it would be open to negotiations but did not agree to the West's key demand to halt enrichment as a precondition to talks. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, will report on the state of Iran's program by mid-September. If its report finds that enrichment is continuing, the council could move toward sanctions. Tehran has called the Security Council resolution that set the Thursday deadline ``illegal'' and has insisted it won't give up its nuclear program. ``They may impose some restrictions on us under pressure. But will they be able to prevent the thoughts of a nation?'' Ahmadinejad said Saturday. ``Will they be able to prevent the progress and technology to a nation? They have to accept the reality of a powerful, peace-loving and developed Iran. This is in the interest of all governments and all nations whether they like it or not.'' Mohammed Saeedi, the deputy head of Iran's atomic organization, called the heavy-water plant ``one of the biggest nuclear projects'' in the country, state-run television reported. ------ Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 7 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Tests Submarine-To-Surface Missile From the Associated Press [UP] Sunday August 27, 2006 11:01 PM AP Photo VAH106 By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran tested a new anti-ship missile fired by a submarine during war games Sunday, raising worries it could disrupt vital oil tanker traffic in the Gulf amid its standoff with the West over its suspect nuclear activities. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took a tough tone over the nuclear issue, saying his country's decision to pursue nuclear technology was irreversible. His comments and the missile test came only days before a Thursday deadline imposed by the United Nations for Tehran to suspend the enrichment of uranium, a process the United States says the Iranians intend to use to build nuclear weapons. Enrichment can produce both reactor fuel and material for a warhead. The Thaqeb, Farsi for Saturn is Iran's first missile that is fired from underwater and flies above the surface to hit its target, distinguishing it from a torpedo. A brief video showed the missile exiting the water and hitting a target less than a mile away. While the missile showed some technological advances by Iran, its main importance seemed to be that it gives the country another means for targeting ships, along with the arsenal of torpedoes and other anti-ship missiles it already has. Iran, which says its nuclear program is only aimed at generating electricity, has refused any immediate suspension and called the deadline illegal, though it says it is open to negotiations. Ahmadinejad insisted Iran's nuclear program was peaceful and said he saw no reason to give it up. ``The great decision of the Iranian nation for progress and acquiring technology is a definite decision. There is no way back from this path,'' he said in a speech on national television after giving awards to 14 nuclear officials and scientists. He said the United States should give up nuclear technology because it could not be trusted with it, having developed and used nuclear weapons. Israel recently purchased two German-made Dolphin submarines capable of carrying nuclear warheads - clearly aiming to send a message to Tehran that it could strike back. The purchase beefs up Israel's deterrent power, since the subs can remain submerged for longer periods of time than the three nuclear arms-capable submarines already in Israel's fleet. Israel is believed to have hundreds of warheads, the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, but it has kept the information secret and refuses to confirm or deny the reports. The test-firing of the new missile underlines a card Iran can play in the nuclear standoff with the West - the ability to disrupt oil tanker shipments in the Gulf, through which about two-fifths of the world's oil supplies pass. Iran has given mixed signals over how it would retaliate if the confrontation with the United States escalates. The oil minister and other government officials have said Iran would never attack Gulf tankers - but the interior minister warned in March that all options for retaliation are open and noted Iran's strategic position over Gulf traffic. The test took place during large-scale military exercises that Iran has been holding since Aug. 19. It was the latest in a series of new naval weapons Iran has unveiled this year to tout what it calls its new technological prowess in arms production. The Iranian naval commander, Gen. Sajjad Kouchaki, said the Thaqeb could be fired from any vessel, not just submarines. He called it a ``long-range'' missile but did not specify how far it could fly, and it did not appear capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. He also said the Thaqeb could escape enemy radar - a claim Iran made about a number of weapons it unveiled during military maneuvers in April. Some outside experts have questioned whether the weapons, tested against Iranian radar, would really be undetectable to more advanced U.S. radar. During the April maneuvers, Iran test-fired a new torpedo - the ``Hoot,'' Farsi for ``whale'' - which is capable of moving at some 223 mph, up to four times faster than a normal torpedo. It also unveiled a new land-to-sea missile, the Kowsar, and a high-speed missile boat that skims above the water and is undetectable by radar. Iran is known to have several submarines. It bought at least two diesel subs from Russia in the 1990s and has produced an unknown number of locally made ones. Last year, it announced it was building a new class of sub called the Ghadir, which it said was a stealth craft and could fire missiles and torpedoes. Nothing more is known about the craft. Iran says the weaponry is intended to defend itself against the possibility of a U.S. attack. It has also expressed worry about Israeli threats to destroy its nuclear facilities. Iran already is equipped with the Shahab-3 missile, which means ``shooting star'' in Farsi, and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. An upgraded version of the ballistic missile has a range of more than 1,200 miles and can reach Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 8 London Times: Iran takes new nuclear step - Sunday Times - August 27, 2006 Sarah Baxter, Washington IN A show of defiance against western efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear programme, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated the new phase of a heavy water reactor project yesterday, prompting an Israeli warning that Tehran had taken another step towards producing a bomb. The Arak plant in central Iran can now make eight tons of heavy water a year, with output expected to rise tenfold. Heavy water aids nuclear fission and the plutonium by- product could be used to make warheads. But the reactor to produce plutonium is still under construction. The Iranian president insisted the plant was for peaceful purposes. “We are not a threat to anybody,” he said at the opening. “There is no talk of nuclear weapons.” Arak’s construction was kept secret until the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran revealed its existence along with the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in 2002. An Iranian nuclear official claimed there was no need for the International Atomic Energy Agency to supervise Arak as it did not have a military purpose. But experts warned plutonium production could pose a greater threat than uranium enrichment. “With uranium it’s much easier to put in safeguards to monitor the atmosphere and instruments,” said Paul Ingram, a nuclear analyst with the British American Security Information Council. Arak could produce enough plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons a year. Ephraim Sneh, a senior Israeli MP, said Arak marked “another leap in Iran’s advance towards a nuclear bomb”. The Iranian media reported last week that an announcement concerning the “nuclear birth” of the nation would be made within days. Ahmadinejad’s inauguration of Arak could be it, but there is speculation that the regime plans more surprises before a UN deadline for suspension of its uranium enrichment programme expires on Thursday. The Sunday Times. ***************************************************************** 9 Bradenton Herald: Iran could be next U.S. target 08/27/2006 | RON HUTCHESON McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON - The escalating confrontation over Iran's nuclear program raises an unsettling question: Is Iran the next target for U.S. military action? Some analysts think so. The focus is on diplomacy for now, but President Bush hasn't ruled out the use of force to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Tensions are likely to ratchet up a notch next Friday if, as expected, Iran ignores a U.N. Aug. 31 deadline to abandon its uranium-enrichment program. Armed conflict isn't imminent or inevitable, and it wouldn't necessarily take the form of a full-scale invasion. Airstrikes alone might be the choice. But the possibility of military action lurks on the sidelines of the diplomatic dance that will play out over the coming months at the U.N. Security Council. "We are creating a situation where everything we're going to try short of military force is going to fail," said Ilan Berman, an Iran expert at the American Foreign Policy Council, which favors an aggressive approach. The steps to war could follow the same path that led to the invasion of Iraq: The U.N. passes a resolution demanding an end to Iranian nuclear-weapons development, then fails to enforce it. Bush prods the U.N. to support words with action. The U.N. dithers. Bush unleashes the U.S. military. "If George Bush is serious about denying Iran nuclear weapons and Iran doesn't respond to our diplomacy, then we're headed to a conflict," said Michael Rubin, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a research center with strong ties to the "neo-conservatives" who shaped Iraq policy in the Bush administration. However, even if the president is leaning toward military action, he faces several constraints. The military is already strained by Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran could strike U.S. forces in Iraq, incite Shiite Muslim militias there to do it or simply unleash Shiite chaos that ends Bush's dream of a stable, pro-U.S. Iraq. Iran also could encourage Hezbollah attacks on Israel. A unilateral U.S. strike probably would inflame world opinion anew against America. It could send global oil prices over $100 a barrel and tip the world into recession. And U.S. voters weary of war could punish Bush and his Republican Party in 2008. Some analysts think the risks of war will convince the president to forgo it. "When all the political and strategic pros and cons of an American military strike on Iran are taken into account, there is good reason to believe that the U.S. will stick to diplomacy," Philip Gordon, a foreign policy specialist at the Brookings Institution, a center-left research center, concluded in a recent article. "I know of almost no one who ... sees it as anything other than a last resort." ***************************************************************** 10 IRNA: FM: Iran ready to continue talks on its nuclear issue , Aug 26, IRNA -- Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in a meeting with the outgoing Belgian Ambassador to Tehran Jacques Vermoulin here Saturday said that Iran is ready to continue talks on its nuclear issue with the relevant negotiators within the framework of its commitments and rights to come up with a proper solution. According to a report released by the Foreign Ministry Media Department, he said that Iran has approached the package of proposals of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (5+1 group) constructively. Turning to Iran's strategy on regional and international issues, he said that proper understanding of the Middle East realities and the actual roots of its crisis by the West can help it identify its nature and help find a way to solve it. "A proper look at the origin of threats arising from the Zionist regime against Palestinian and Lebanese people will facilitate solving the Middle East major problem. "However, unfortunately, disregard for such threats and continued injustice to Lebanese and Palestinian people have caused the innocent regional people to suffer great loss, so that 16 years past Oslo Agreement, no progress has taken place in the peace process," he added. Mottaki said that the US policies based on intervention in Iraq have deteriorated the factional conflict and strengthened terrorists, adding that Iraqi crisis can be solved through passing on the charge of current affairs to people and withdrawal of foreign troops. The minister referred to the history of bilateral relations and expressed satisfaction with the growing trend of ties based on mutual respect. For his part, the Belgian diplomat assessed Iran-Belgium relations as positive and said that cooperation between the private sectors of the two sides has improved the overall trend of trade exchanges. He said that great progress has been made in joint LNG projects and trade exchanges. "Belgium's participation in reconstruction of the quake-hit Bam city has prepared the ground for cultural cooperation between the two countries," he concluded. ***************************************************************** 11 BBC NEWS: Iran nuclear project forges ahead : Saturday, 26 August 2006, 14:55 GMT 15:55 UK [Iranian President Ahmadinejad at Arak nuclear facility ] The Iranian president said his message was one of peace Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has inaugurated a new phase of a heavy water reactor project despite Western fears about its nuclear programme. He said Iran posed no threat to other states, not even its "enemy" Israel. Heavy water made at Arak will be used to cool a reactor being built that will create a plutonium by-product that could be used to make atomic warheads. Observers say Iran's move aims to send a signal of defiance days ahead of a UN deadline to halt uranium enrichment. The US says Tehran is trying to build a nuclear weapon, while Iran says it is building a reactor to supply the country with nuclear power. The Iranian president toured the site at Arak, 190km (120 miles) south-west of Tehran. After inaugurating the heavy water plant, he again said Iran would never abandon its nuclear programme, but that nuclear weapons were not its goal. "Basically, there is no talk of nuclear weapons," he said. "There is no discussion of nuclear weapons. We are not a threat to anybody, even the Zionist regime which is a definite enemy of the people of the region." The ceremony comes amid mounting international pressure for Iran to suspend its nuclear programme. Earlier this week, Iran had offered "serious talks" in response to a package of incentives offered if, by 31 August, it halted uranium enrichment - another possible route to nuclear weapons. However, the US said suspension of research was required first, echoing French comments. China and Russia said earlier that talks were the only way forward. Iran could face sanctions if it does not suspend its nuclear programme. 'Bone of contention' BBC regional analyst Pam O'Toole says the heavy water reactor project at Arak has long been a bone of contention between Iran and some Western governments. Arak was one of two Iranian nuclear facilities whose existence was revealed by an exiled Iranian opposition group four years ago. At that stage Iran had failed to declare its existence to the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA. The IAEA later called on Iran to reconsider construction of its heavy water reactor project. ***************************************************************** 12 BBC NEWS: Annan to visit Iran amid dispute Updated: Sunday, 27 August 2006, 14:24 GMT 15:24 UK [ [Iranian President Ahmadinejad at Arak nuclear facility ] Iran's president opens a new phase in a heavy water project UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is to visit Iran next Saturday, the Iranian foreign ministry has confirmed. The visit will come two days after a UN deadline for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and amid fears it is trying to develop a nuclear bomb. On Sunday Iran repeated it would go ahead with uranium enrichment - but only to fuel a nuclear power programme. Iran's foreign minister again called for European powers to "return to talks without prejudgement". News of the visit comes amid fresh tension over Iran's nucelar ambitions. On Saturday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated a facility producing coolant for nuclear reactors. And last Tuesday, Iran responded at length to a package of incentives offered in exchange for suspension of its uranium enrichment programme. The details of Iran's response to the offer were not made public, though the US said it "fell short" of the full and verifiable suspension of uranium enrichment demanded by the UN by 31 August - and that the "next steps" would have now to be considered. Those "next steps" will include the threat of sanctions, say correspondents. China and Russia have stressed their preference for a negotiated solution to the crisis. Diplomatic moves Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi confirmed that Mr Annan would be visiting Tehran on 2 September. Mr Annan cancelled his last scheduled visit to Tehran in November, saying it would be "inappropriate" in the wake of comments by Mr Ahmadinejad which appeared to call for Israel to be "wiped off the map". Some specialists have since questioned the accuracy of that translation. Mr Asefi also said it was "about time for the European side to return to talks without any prejudgement. Serious talks can lead us to reach an understanding," he said. However, the country's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani again underlined Iran's commitment to continuing to develop its nuclear programme. "Production of nuclear fuel is one of Iran's strategic objectives," Mr Larijani told state radio. "Any action to limit or deprive Iran could not force Iran to give up this goal." State television also reported that Iran had successfully test-fired a long-range, radar-evading Sagheb missile in Gulf waters on Sunday. 'Not a threat' President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would never abandon its nuclear programme, but insisted nuclear weapons were not its goal. "We are not a threat to anybody, even the Zionist regime which is a definite enemy of the people of the region," he said. Heavy water made at Arak, 190km (120 miles) south-west of Tehran, will be used to cool a reactor being built that will create a plutonium by-product that could be used to make atomic warheads. Iran points out that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) it is entitled to a nuclear power programme and says it has not broken any rules. But the Western powers accuse Iran of concealing an enrichment programme, and Washington has refused to rule out military action. ***************************************************************** 13 IRNA: Iran's nuclear response accounts for positive change of approach to it: Russian reporter - Madrid, Aug 26, IRNA Russia-Nuclear-Iran A Russian reporter and analyst, Eduard Gushchin, said on Saturday that Iran's recent response to the package of proposals of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (5+1 group) accounts for the positive change of general approach to the issue. He told IRNA that Iran's positive and favorable response to Europe's proposal has paved the way for continuing nuclear talks and solving the issue through serious negotiations. "The general reaction of the European states, Russia and China show that by protecting its rights Iran is making progress in the issue. Gushchin, the reporter of the Russian daily, Trud, said that Iran's response revealed to the international community that, as a member of NPT, the Iranians are determined to continue the nuclear program within the framework of the relevant laws rather than giving up their goals and nuclear activities for peaceful purposes. Turning to the approach of European countries, Russia and China to Iran's response, he said, "Their reactions show that despite their full dissatisfaction with the content of the response, it is still possible to solve the issue through peaceful talks. Meanwhile, the Russian reporter pointed to the reaction of the advisor of Spanish prime minister, who has fully defended continuation of Iran's nuclear program. He assured that despite UN's recent resolution urging Iran to suspend it uranium enrichment up to the end of August, Russia and China will protect Iran against any possible sanctions. Gushchin referred to the visit of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization delegation to Russia during the current week and said that it is scheduled to discuss nuclear cooperation between the two states and completion of Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, "The visit can mark Moscow's support for Iran's nuclear program for peaceful purposes against the pressures exerted on it," he added. He said that Iran's position in the Middle East and its great power are among the issues that will make the negotiators, who are involved in the country's nuclear issue, reach agreement with Iranian officials. ***************************************************************** 14 SF Chron: U.N. unlikely to punish Iran -- experts / Some say even light sanctions wrong way to curb nuclear drive Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, August 27, 2006 Barring an unforeseen breakthrough, Iran will ignore the U.N. Security Council's deadline Thursday to halt its uranium enrichment program, exposing the Islamic republic to the possibility of sanctions. What happens next is uncertain. Iran experts generally agree that the council is unlikely to impose any sanctions, at least right away, and that it is even less likely that future sanctions, if any, would be especially harsh. But there is wide debate on so-called light sanctions -- from those who believe they could have a significant effect in easing the current crisis to those who argue that any sanctions, however light, are simply the wrong way to go. Iran has insisted that it has a right to develop peaceful nuclear power and has called the U.N. resolution illegal. The United States says Iran's real aim is mastering the technology to produce nuclear weapons. U.N. Resolution 1696, adopted July 31, demands that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program and submit to verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. The resolution sets a deadline of Thursday for Iran to demonstrate a "full and sustained suspension" of all aspects of its nuclear program. If Iran fails to do so, the resolution authorizes economic, travel, communication and diplomatic sanctions -- but not military force. Resolution 1696 specifically calls for "additional decisions" before such restrictions are imposed, and many experts believe at least some Security Council members will favor negotiations over sanctions for the time being. "So far, the U.S. has had a lot of difficulty in wrangling U.N. members, particularly Russia and China, to support sanctions," said Ilan Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington. "Both Moscow and Beijing are major strategic partners of the Islamic republic and have a vested interest in protecting their investments in the Iranian regime." Officials in Russia said Friday that the situation is not "urgent" enough to warrant sanctions, adding that they could continue to "advocate a political and diplomatic solution to the problem." The harshest available sanctions would target Iran's petroleum -- the oil it exports, the gasoline it imports, or both. "About 40 percent of Iran's gasoline is imported, because Iran lacks refining capacity," said Charles Ferguson, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "If the United States could effectively sanction gasoline imports to Iran, then it might be able to bring Iran to its knees." Iran already has floated the idea of rationing gasoline, which experts saw as a move to prepare Iranians for a possible embargo, but quickly spiked the idea. "An embargo on gasoline supplies to Iran, if even moderately applied, will force the regime to either impose rationing or jack up prices ... both of which are likely to bring Iranians out into the street and threaten regime stability," Berman said. "Which doesn't sound like such a bad idea, in my opinion." But realistically, many experts said, such sanctions aren't going to be politically possible unless the Iranian threat becomes much more severe. Pinching the flow of petroleum out of or into Iran would have a ripple effect on the world's economy. "It is important to remember that Iran produces 5 percent of the global oil supply, and cutting even a small amount of that will send oil prices flying," said Khalid Al-Rodhan, author of "Iran's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Real and Potential Threat." "Even the U.S. does not want to see this happen," he said. Neither do major customers for Iran's oil, notably China, a permanent member of the Security Council, nor Japan, which sits on the council though it does not hold a veto. "It is also important to remember that Iran itself ... has threatened to use it to impact Western economies," Al-Rodhan said. Oil sanctions are not the only sticks available to the Security Council. "U.S. diplomatic reach, use of the bully pulpit ... I think will in the end convince Russia -- and Russia is the key vote -- to at least abstain on 'sanctions light,' " said Cliff Kupchan, a former State Department official now with the Eurasia Group in Washington. "Leadership travel ban, limited asset freezes and a ban on export of potential dual-use items to Iran." Even those limited sanctions will probably be introduced in stages, Ferguson said. "Most likely to be first used are those that try to ban the travel of Iranian officials and that target nuclear-related goods," he said. "Next most likely are freezes on Iranian officials' monetary assets in foreign banks. ... It is my understanding that U.S. officials began to lay the groundwork for these sanctions months ago." Iran's rulers already have something of a pariah status, thanks to long-standing U.S. sanctions, said Reva Bhalla, an analyst with the private intelligence consultancy Stratfor. "Iran is already used to these kinds of sanctions." Iran continues to have good reason -- in its leaders' views -- to seek nuclear weapons even in the face of adversity, said Karen Ruth Adams, an associate professor of political science at the University of Montana who has conducted research on the deterrent effects of nuclear weapons. "Iran has seen the U.S. topple the governments of two of its neighbors -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- while powerful states like Russia and China stood aside. Meanwhile, despite increasingly heated Bush administration rhetoric about North Korea, the U.S. has drawn down forces in South Korea," she said. "What is the difference? Iraq and Afghanistan did not have nuclear weapons. North Korea does." To some analysts, those limitations don't mean that light sanctions are pointless. Institute for International Economics fellow Gary Clyde Hufbauer, for example, has said that sanctions don't actually need to halt Iran's nuclear program or force its government to fall. "The goal here is to isolate Iran and administer financial punishment on the elites in an effort to delay the day when a bomb is tested, in hopes that less hostile minds will eventually acquire influence in Tehran," he has written. "The strategy of limited sanctions, accompanied by coordinated diplomacy, is to let time mellow Tehran's nuclear intentions, not derail its capabilities." To others, however, the limited likelihood of that happening suggests that other solutions should be sought. "I'm of the view that sanctions will not dissuade Iran from proceeding with its nuclear program," Ferguson said. "Reluctantly, I favor finding a compromise that would allow Iran a low-level enrichment program as long as it is closely monitored by the IAEA or some other respected inspections team." And there is a third school of thought that light sanctions on Iran at this stage could actually make the current crisis worse. "In the most bitter irony, these sanctions are perfect for Iran -- they don't take any real bite out of the economy, but they 'show' well enough that the president there can ... point to the evil Satan strangling the defenseless Iranian people," said George Lopez, co-author of "The Sanctions Decade: Assessing United Nations Strategies in the 1990s." Lopez, like some other experts, says a better alternative is direct formal contacts between the United States and Iran, which he contends stand a better chance of making progress than sanctions would. Imposition of sanctions plays well in both countries -- Iran's leaders can use it to rally domestic support, while public interest polls show sanctions are popular with American voters. "Whatever sanctions we put on them will work to both of our advantages politically, with little economic hurt, which of course only makes for escalation that goes nowhere," he said. E-mail Matthew B. Stannard at mstannard@sfchronicle.com. Page A - 9 San Francisco Chronicle] ***************************************************************** 15 WorldNetDaily: Cooking intelligence – again [Supercritical Thoughts] [Gordon Prather] Posted: August 26, 2006 Four years ago, President Bush ordered Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to prepare a National Intelligence Estimate to be used to "justify" to Congress the pre-emptive war against Iraq we now know he had already decided to launch. Two years later, the : Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate – "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction" – either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. In particular, the assessment that Iraq "is reconstituting its nuclear program" was "not supported by the intelligence provided to the committee." The committee noted that prior to 1999 our intelligence community had been heavily dependent upon information obtained from United Nations inspectors. True, in December 1998, President Clinton had warned all U.N. inspectors to get out of Iraq or risk getting killed during Operation Desert Fox. However, after Clinton quit bombing, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors had been allowed back into Iraq (in 2000, 2001 and 2002) to inspect all the surviving nuclear-related sites in Iraq – including Kuwaitha, where our "intelligence" had suggested the Iraqis might be doing something untoward – and found nothing untoward. But Tenet's 2002 NIE didn't even mention those IAEA inspections, much less the subsequent "null" reports made to the UN Security Council. Why not? Well, obviously the Cheney Cabal didn't want Congress to know – at least officially – that by 1994 all Saddam's nuclear programs had been verifiably destroyed and that he had made no attempt whatsoever to reconstitute them. Inexplicably, the Senate Intelligence Committee did not even mention – much less decry – the failure of the intelligence community to base the 2002 NIE "assessments" of Saddam's nuclear program on those IAEA "null" reports. There were, however, cries of anguish from those sent to Iraq on a fool's errand by Tenet. Never again produce an NIE that completely ignores the "best intelligence," that of on-the-ground inspectors! Last year the Washington Post's Dafna Linzer : A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis. The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis resolved diplomatically but that "all options are on the table." Linzer doesn't say whether the 2005 NIE on Iran's nuclear programs took into account at all – much less was largely based upon – the quarterly reports the on-the-ground IAEA inspectors had been making to the IAEA Board and to the Security Council. And a year later, IAEA inspectors have yet to see any "indication" – much less evidence – that Iran has engaged in any activity involving the use of any amount of proscribed nuclear materials in furtherance of a military purpose. Furthermore, if IAEA inspectors are allowed to continue "safeguarding" Iran's nuclear facilities, the Iranians will never succeed in producing any amount of weapons-grade enriched uranium, much less enough to make a nuclear weapon. Nevertheless, the members of the Cheney Cabal continue to forcefully assert – without offering any proof whatsoever – that Iran has a nuclear weapons program that has already "reached a point of no return." Why? Apparently because we have pledged not to use nuclear weapons against those signatories to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons who don't already have nukes. So, when Bush says "all options are on the table," he's telling the Iranians that our no-nuking pledge won't keep him from nuking them because he has it on authority – God Almighty, apparently – that the Iranians have nukes. Now comes Linzer to tell us – authored principally by Frederick Fleitz – that uses information contained in the IAEA "null" reports to come to conclusions diametrically opposed to those of the IAEA. You may recall that Undersecretary Bolton and his chief of staff, Fleitz, were point men in the largely successful attempts by the Cheney Cabal to "cook" the intelligence in the run-up to the pre-emptive attack on Iraq. Looks like they're at it again. Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. He also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. Copyright 1997-2006 All Rights Reserved. WorldNetDaily.com Inc. ***************************************************************** 16 IRNA: President Ahmadinejad: Iran to resist bullying powerfully ehran, Aug 26, IRNA Iran-Ahmadinejad-Nuclear Iranians while rejecting force and aggression would resist bullying powerfully and bravely, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in the central city of Arak on Saturday. President Ahmadinejad made the comments in his inaugural address for a newly constructed heavy water plant in the capital of Markazi province. "Our honorable nation has always carried a message of culture and civilization. Peace, friendship and kindness are among characteristics of the Iranian nation. "Different nations and ethnic groups neighboring Iran have lived in peace and calm without facing any aggression on the part of Iran for centuries," he said. He added, "Competence of the brave Iranian nation particularly its youth makes it conquer all peaks of wisdom, morality, art, faith, science and technology." He praised serious attempts being made by engineers, researchers, experts, managers and laborers of Arak heavy water plant particularly Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh. "Making progress is the right of the Iranian nation. No country should be deprived of its rights," Ahmadinejad said. "Iranians have scored great success in the field of science. Today, intellectuals and the youth of this land are carrying the flag of science, splendor, dignity, faith and bravery," he added. ***************************************************************** 17 Independent: Iran launches next phase of nuclear project As UN deadline nears, President says Tehran will not give up right to the technology, despite Western fears By Ali Akbar Dareini, AP Published: 27 August 2006 Iran's hardline president declared Saturday that his nation's controversial nuclear program poses no threat to any other country, even Israel "which is a definite enemy." President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke after inaugurating a heavy-water production plant, which went into operation despite U.N. demands that Iran roll back its nuclear program. Tehran says is for peaceful purposes, but Western countries fear it could eventually be used to develop a nuclear bomb. During a speech, Ahmadinejad declared that Iran would never abandon its nuclear program and repeated that nuclear weapons is not the goal. "Basically, there is no talk of nuclear weapons. There is no discussion of nuclear weapons," he said. "We are not a threat to anybody even the Zionist regime, which is a definite enemy for the people of the region." Iran is under a Thursday deadline established by the U.N. Security Council to suspend uranium enrichment or face political and economic sanctions. Tehran has called the Security Council's resolution that set the deadline "illegal" and has insisted it won't give up its nuclear program. Iran also responded on Tuesday to an incentives package presented by the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany. Tehran said it would be open to negotiations but did not agree to the West's key demand for Tehran to halt uranium enrichment as a precondition to talks. On Saturday, Ahmadinejad affirmed Iran's right to develop nuclear technology even if sanctions are imposed. "They may impose some restrictions on us under pressure. But will they be able to prevent the thoughts of a nation? Will they be able to prevent the progress and technology to a nation? They have to accept the reality of a powerful, peace-loving and developed Iran. This is in the interest of all governments and all nations whether they like it or not," he said. Despite Ahmadinejad's insistence Saturday that Iran is not a threat to Israel, one senior Israeli lawmaker said that the Jewish state must "prepare itself militarily." The Iranian president last year called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Israeli legislator Ephraim Sneh of the Labor Party, a partner in the ruling coalition, warned in a statement that Tehran's announcement concerning heavy-water production marks "another leap in Iran's advance toward a nuclear bomb." Though the West's main worry has been uranium enrichment, it also has called on Iran to stop the construction of a heavy-water reactor near the plant that Ahmadinejad inaugurated. Iran has been a building the reactor for two years but is not scheduled to complete it until 2009. Nuclear weapons can be produced using either plutonium or highly enriched uranium as the explosive core. Either substance can be produced in the process of running a reactor. Reactors fueled by enriched uranium use regular - or "light" - water as a "moderator" in the chain reaction that produces energy. Reactors using "heavy water" contains a heavier hydrogen particle, which allow the reactor to run on natural uranium mined by Iran, forgoing the enrichment progress. But the spent fuel from a heavy-water reactor can be reprocessed to extract plutonium for use in a bomb. Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who also heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said the heavy-water plant's production is 16 tons of heavy water with a purity of 15 percent per year and 80 tons of heavy water with a purity of nearly 100 percent annually. He said the heavy-water facility will be used to treat AIDS and cancer and for other medicine and agricultural purposes. Mohammed Saeedi, the deputy head of Iran's atomic organization, called the plant "one of the biggest nuclear projects" in the country, state-run television reported. The Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency will report on the state of Iran's program by mid-September. If IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's report finds that enrichment is continuing, the council is then likely to move toward sanctions. BRIEFING: What's inside at the Arak plant The plant is located at Khondab, a site near Arak, about 120 miles south-west of Tehran. The plant's plutonium by-product could be used to make atomic warheads but the reactor that would produce this from spent fuel is still being built. Heavy water is used in such a reactor. The heavy-water project now has two units, each making eight tons a year of heavy water but output is to be raised to 80 tons a year, Iranian officials said. Work started in late 2003 or early 2004. The plant started up on 11 July 2006. A top Iranian nuclear official said that, because heavy water itself had no military use, supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was not obligatory. UN inspectors have previously visited the site and another Iranian official said they would visit again next week. Western diplomats say heavy-water production is not itself a proliferation risk but that launching the project now, in the midst of a stand-off over Iran's nuclear programme, would not be viewed as a constructive gesture in the West. A UN Security Council resolution passed on 31 July gave Iran 30 days to halt uranium enrichment, the West's main worry in its atomic programme. The resolution also cited an IAEA call for Iran to reconsider building its heavy-water reactor project. © 2006 Independent News and Media Limited ***************************************************************** 18 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Arak plant inauguration,right of nation 2006/08/27 12:08:19 È.Ù Exploitation of Arak heavy water plant is certain right of the Iranian nation, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi underlind on Sunday. Speaking at his weekly press conference, Asefi reiterated that the project is a peacefull one and is using in scientific and medical fields. Referring to the evil intention of the Western media to link Arak's heavy water plant to Iran's nuclear issue, he added that exploitation of this complex does not have anything to do with reviewing Iran's nuclear program. "UN Security Council inspectors are currently in Iran visiting our country's nuclear centers," Foreign Ministry Spokesman added. SAM Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir ***************************************************************** 19 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: EU to respond to IRI by end of Aug. 2006/08/26 The European Union (EU) would make a response to Iran's answer on the nuclear issue by the end of August, EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana said on Friday. Telling a briefing after the EU emergency foreign ministers' meeting, Solana said Iran's answer to the six-state package of proposals is over 20 pages in length and it contains some new elements, and it would take time to study. Solana said he would continue to talk with Iran's Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani in the coming days, and he hoped that the EU would make formal response by the end of August. Earlier on Aug. 22, the Islamic Republic of Iran presented a written response to the package of proposals of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. SM Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir ***************************************************************** 20 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Iran to resist bullying powerfully 2006/08/26 05:44:15 È.Ù Iranians while rejecting force and aggression would resist bullying powerfully and bravely, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in the central city of Arak on Saturday. President Ahmadinejad made the comments in his inaugural address for a newly constructed heavy water plant in the capital of Markazi province. "Our honorable nation has always carried a message of culture and civilization. Peace, friendship and kindness are among characteristics of the Iranian nation, "the President said. "Different nations and ethnic groups neighboring Iran have lived in peace and calm without facing any aggression on the part of Iran for centuries," he said. He added, "competence of the brave Iranian nation particularly its youth makes it conquer all peaks of wisdom, morality, art, faith, science and technology." He praised serious attempts being made by engineers, researchers, experts, managers and laborers of Arak heavy water plant particularly Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh. "Making progress is the right of the Iranian nation. No country should be deprived of its rights," Ahmadinejad said. "Iranians have scored great success in the field of science. Today, intellectuals and the youth of this land are carrying the flag of science, splendor, dignity, faith and bravery," he added. M.H.Z Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir ***************************************************************** 21 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Justice,only solution to IRI N-issue 2006/08/26 An Egyptian newspaper on Saturday said that only justice will solve the dispute over Iran's nuclear case. Al-Ahram (The Pyramids) daily said that the doudle standards policy adopted by certain countries towards Iran's nuclear case was unacceptable, arguing that in all fairness no country in the world should be prevented from pursuing scientific and technological progress. It said that the practice of certain countries of putting Iran under severe pressure to suspend its nuclear activities while they allow the Zionist regime to build up its nuclear arsenal without putting it under international surveillance was a case of double standards which, it said, was unacceptable. The daily further argued that such a practice would encourage cerain countries to go ahead with their covert nuclear programs. It poointed out that nuclear technology for every country is a gateway to scientific and technological progress in various fields, including in economy and energy. It nonetheless stressed the importance of preventing countries from proliferating nuclear weapons in order to prevent global catastrophies. Al-Ahram said there was a need to stop the nuclear weapons race and to start disarmament of nuclear states. M.H.Z Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir ***************************************************************** 22 IRNA: Iran ready to negotiate with Group 5+1 - Speaker Tehran, Aug 27, IRNA Iran-Speaker-Nuclear Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel here Sunday expressed Iran's readiness to resume talks with Group 5+1 while stressing Tehran's inalienable right to nuclear technology. Addressing the open session of the Majlis, Haddad-Adel referred to Iran's response to a package of incentives offered by Group 5+1 and said now it is up to the group to prove its goodwill. Iran's top nuclear negotiator and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Larijani on August 22 presented Iran's official response to a package of incentives offered by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- China, Russia, Britain, France and the United States -- plus Germany (Group 5+1) to Tehran on June 6. Larijani delivered Tehran's answer to ambassadors of the Group 5+1 as well as Swiss ambassador as caretaker of the US interests in Iran. "Iran presented its response to the package after detailed studies exactly at the time it had previously announced. "The response points to questions that exist in the proposed package in different fields," the speaker said. He added, "Iran's response to the package shows our readiness to settle the case through negotiations. "The very idea of proposing the package by 5+1 aimed at opening the door of negotiations. "But we noticed a sudden shift in this process simultaneous with the Lebanon war and Iran's dossier was sent to the UN Security Council and a resolution was adopted for certain reasons." Haddad-Adel said, "Iran once again keeps the doors of negotiations open. The Islamic Republic of Iran while reiterating its inalienable right is ready to resume talks to remove the ambiguities in the proposed packaged. "If these states also have doubts about Iran's peaceful nuclear activities, they can be removed in the course of negotiations." "We hope Iran's nuclear case will be settled by way of logic while preserving the rights of the Iranian nation and stressing the peaceful nature of the nuclear activities," he added. Elsewhere in his remark, the speaker expressed felicitation to the Iranian nation over inauguration of the Arak heavy water plant. "The plant has a very advanced and complicated technology and shows the progress of nuclear technology inside the country," he said. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday inaugurated Arak heavy water plant in the central Markazi province. "Inauguration of the plant shows the determination and will of the Iranian nation to promote nuclear technology," Haddad-Adel said. He praised efforts made by Iranian engineers and scientists who played a role in fulfulling the great project. The speaker also pointed to the `Zolfaqar Blow' wargame and said, "It is a symbol of Iran's military potentials. "The wargame is not a threat to any country rather it is underway to preserve Iran's defensive readiness. "The wargame proves the country's strength and readiness." Haddad-Adel praised the Iranian armed forces participating at Zolfaqar Blow wargame. ***************************************************************** 23 AFP: Iran determined to make nuclear fuel despite UN ultimatum - by Siavosh Ghazi Sun Aug 27, 4:37 PM ET TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iranunderscored its determination to produce nuclear fuel just four days before a UN Security Council deadline to freeze the sensitive work or face the risk of sanctions. At the same time, in a fresh show of its military might, Iran test-fired a long range radar-evading sea-to-air missile during war games that aimed to demonstrate readiness for "any threat". But the Islamic regime said it still sought talks on Western concerns about its nuclear programme and confirmed that UN chief Kofi Annan" /> Kofi Annanwas due in Tehran on Saturday, two days after the deadline. "Production of nuclear fuel is one of Iran's strategic objectives," lead negotiator Ali Larijani told state radio. "Any action to limit or deprive Iran could not force Iran to give up this goal." Despite the apparent inflexibility however, Larijani later said Iran was ready for ministerial level talks on its nuclear ambitions with Western powers, including the United States. "Iran is ready to hold discussions with the foreign ministers of the five permanent Security Council members and Germany, wherever and whenever," Larijani said. "These talks could include all questions between the two sides, in particular the nuclear issue." Iran and the United States do not have diplomatic relations and have not engaged to date in direct talks on Tehran's nuclear research programme. Later Sunday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared: "The Iranian people will pursue their path and will not forswear it under threats or force." Ahmedinejad added that as the representative of the people he did not have the right to budge an inch, but nonetheless added: "It's a first step." The Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities by August 31 amid US-led concerns that its nuclear programme is cover for an attempt to produce an atomic bomb. A package of incentives backed by the six major powers is dependent on the regime first agreeing to suspend enrichment. But deputy foreign minister Mohammad Reza Bagheri insisted during a visit to key regional ally Syria" /> Syriathat a formal moratorium on enrichment was out of the question. "While cooperating with international institutions, we consider the suspension of enrichment as our red line," Bagheri was quoted as saying in Damascus by Iran's official news agency IRNA. Uranium enrichment can produce the fuel for the generation of nuclear power, or in extended form can be the fissile core of an atomic bomb. Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi also said that despite Iran's firm stance on enrichment, it remained open to new talks. "It is time the European side returned to the negotiating table without prejudgments and bad faith so that we talk and reach a result," he told media. "We gave our response to the European side and showed we support talks." The formal response was issued last week to a package of incentives backed by Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States. "In our response we have touched on the issue of enrichment. Our response is clear and comprehensive," Asefi said. Few details have emerged of Iran's response but the United States has warned it would lead moves to impose sanctions if the reply fell short of the Security Council demands. The incentives package includes light water reactors and an ensured supply of nuclear fuel for Tehran. On Saturday, Ahmadinejad defiantly inaugurated a plant to produce heavy water for use in a new research reactor. And on Sunday, the deputy head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation said Tehran planned to build a new light water reactor to produce electricity. Oil-rich Iran, the second biggest exporter in OPEC" /> OPEC, stresses its right to peaceful nuclear technology as a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit called for dialogue "to try to find a formula that will bring an end to the current tensions and reach a solution which meets the expectations of the different parties." His Italian counterpart Massimo D'Alema was quoted as telling the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Italy, a major trading partner of Iran, should also have a seat at the talks. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 24 AFP: Iran determined to make nuclear fuel despite UN ultimatum - by Siavosh Ghazi Sun Aug 27, 8:29 AM ET TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iraninsisted it remained determined to produce its own nuclear fuel, just four days before a UN Security Council deadline to freeze the sensitive work or face the risk of sanctions. And in a new show of its military might, Iran test-fired a long range radar-evading sea-to-air missile during war games it says aim to demonstrate its readiness for "any threat." But the Islamic regime added Sunday that it remained keen to hold talks on Western concerns about its nuclear programme and revealed that UN chief Kofi Annan" /> Kofi Annanwas due in Tehran next Saturday, two days after the deadline. "Production of nuclear fuel is one of Iran's strategic objectives," lead negotiator Ali Larijani told state radio. "Any action to limit or deprive Iran could not force Iran to give up this goal." The UN Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities by the end of the month amid US-led concerns that its nuclear programme is cover for an attempt to produce an atomic bomb. A package of incentives backed by the six major powers in return for Iran addressing Western concerns is dependent on the regime first agreeing to suspend enrichment. But Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Reza Bagheri insisted on a visit to key regional ally Syria" /> Syriathat a formal moratorium on enrichment was unacceptable. "While cooperating with international institutions, we consider the suspension of enrichment as our red line," Bagheri was quoted as saying in Damascus by Iran's official news agency IRNA. "We insist on our right because we want to utilize nuclear technology for peaceful ends," he added. Uranium enrichment can produce the fuel for the generation of nuclear power, or in extended form can make the fissile core of an atomic bomb. Iran has said it has enriched uranium to 4.8 percent, far below the more than 90 percent level needed for a bomb. Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said that despite Iran's strong line on enrichment, it remained keen for new talks. "It is about time the European side returned to the negotiating table without prejudgments and bad humour so that we talk and reach a result," he told reporters. "We gave our response to the European side and showed we support talks." He was referring to the package of incentives backed by Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States to which Iran gave its formal response last week. "In our response we have touched on the issue of enrichment. Our response is clear and comprehensive," Asefi said. "Europeans must first read it carefully and then come to talk. "There is a way out (of the standoff) unless they are determined to find fault." Few details have emerged of Iran's response although the United States has already warned it will lead moves to impose sanctions if the response falls short of Security Council demands. The package offers Tehran incentives including light water reactors and an ensured supply of nuclear fuel. On Saturday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defiantly inaugurated a plant to produce heavy water for use in a new research reactor. And on Sunday, the deputy head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation said Tehran was planning to build a new light water reactor to produce electricity. Oil-rich Iran, the second biggest exporter in OPEC" /> OPEC, insists it has the right to nuclear technology as a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and that it only plans to generate electricity. The International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agencyis to report to the Security Council on Iran's compliance on Thursday. If Iran is deemed to have failed to comply, the Security Council will consider adopting "appropriate measures" under Article 41 of Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, which sets out enforcement powers. Asefi said Annan would be in Tehran on Saturday, two days after the UN deadline, as part of a wider Middle East tour focussed on shoring up a truce in Lebanon between Israel" /> Israeland the Shiite militants of Hezbollah who are backed by both Iran and Syria. Meanwhile navy commander Admiral Sajjad Koochaki announced Iran has successfully test-fired from a submarine a long-range radar-evading sea-to-air missile during war games in southern Gulf waters. Iran's army, air and naval forces and missile units have been involved in week-long nationwide military exercises in a demonstration of the country's readiness to "respond to any threat". Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 25 AFP: White House low-key after latest Iranian nuclear advance - Sat Aug 26, 6:19 PM ET KENNEBUNKPORT, United States (AFP) - The White House responded with restraint as Iran" /> Iraninaugurated a new heavy water production plant, saying merely that the United States is consulting with its partners about what to do next. "As we've said, we are looking at the Iranian response and consulting with our P5+1 partners on next steps," White House deputy spokeswoman Dana Perino said. She was referring to Iran's 21-page response to a package of incentives from the five permanent UN Security Council members together with Germany to entice Tehran away from its nuclear ambitions. "We all share the goal of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability," said Perino, speaking in this small town in the northeastern state of Maine, where President George W. Bush" /> President George W. Bushwas spending a few days with family. Earlier Saturday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated a heavy water production plant in Arak, central Iran, to serve a controversial research reactor being built nearby. Heavy water reactors can be used to produce plutonium, which is the fissile core of most modern nuclear weapons. The facility was opened just five days before a UN Security Council deadline to suspend sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work. Iran says it only wants civil nuclear power and has the right to master the required technology. But western countries, led by the United States, believe that its civilian programme hides a covert military plan to build an atomic bomb. Last week, Iran formally responded to the offer backed by Germany and the five Security Council permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, saying it was willing to talk but not readily agreeing to halt its uranium enrichment program. The reply and the West's reactions did not bring much hope for a smooth settlement of the nuclear standoff. For months the United States has urged the United Nations" /> United Nationsto move swiftly to impose sanctions against Tehran if it fails to comply with international demands by the August 31 deadline. But Washington has toned down its statements on Iran as the date draws near. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 26 AFP: Iran president inaugurates heavy water plant by Siavosh Ghazi Sat Aug 26, 6:41 AM ET KHONDAB, Iran (AFP) - Hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened a heavy water plant that will feed a new research reactor, just five days before a UN Security Council deadline to suspend sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work. Inaugurating the facility along with the head of Iran" /> Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, and his deputy, Mohammad Saeedi, Ahmadinejad vowed the Iranian people would defend their rights to nuclear technology "with force". The Arak heavy water plant is located on the outskirts of the village of Khondab, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the city of the same name. The heavy water is to be used as cooling fluid for a 40 MW research reactor due for completion by 2009. But the International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agencyhas voiced concern over the risk of diversion of nuclear materials as the research reactor could produce 8-10 kilograms (about 20 pounds) of plutonium a year, enough to make at least two nuclear bombs. The high-security complex and its approach road are protected by dozens of anti-aircraft gun positions in preparation for a possible Israeli or US air strike against Iran's controversial nuclear facilities. Western countries led by the United States believe that Iran is seeking to build an atomic bomb, but the Islamic republic insists it only wants civil nuclear power and has the right to master the required technology. "The Islamic republic considers inauguration of this complex within the framework of its legal and international rights," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying. "This is another big step for the Islamic republic to use its undeniable right, namely achievement of peaceful nuclear technology," Asefi said. "We have done all the project from the beginning to the end all by ourselves, without assistance of anybody, that is why we are so proud," said a young engineer who gave his name as Khazai. According to the facility's director, Manouchehr Aghazadeh, it will produce 80 tonnes of heavy water a year. Despite Iranians' celebration of the achievement, a UN Security Council deadline is looming for Iran on August 31 to halt sensitive nuclear activities. Tehran risks facing possible economic sanctions if it continues to refuse the demand. In his latest reaction, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday the country would press on with its controversial nuclear work. "The Islamic republic has made up its mind and on the nuclear programme and other issues it will continue on its path with strength, with God's help," Khameini said. Last week, Iran formally responded to an offer backed by the five UN Security Council permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany. The package offers Tehran incentives in return for a freeze of sensitive nuclear work. However, the West's reactions to Tehran's reply did not bring much hope for a smooth settlement of the nuclear standoff. Washington repeated a call on the United Nations" /> United Nationsto move swiftly to impose sanctions against Iran the August 31 deadline. "There must be consequences if people thumb their nose at the United Nations Security Council. We will work with people on the Security Council to achieve that objective," US President George W. Bush" /> President George W. Bushsaid. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 27 AFP: Iran opens nuclear facility saying no threat to Israel - by Siavosh Ghazi Sat Aug 26, 4:02 PM ET KHONDAB, Iran (AFP) - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted that Iran" /> is no threat to Israel" /> as he inaugurated a heavy water production plant just five days before a UN Security Council deadline to suspend sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work. Israel reacted bluntly, saying it was "not fooled" by Ahmadinejad's assurances and recalling how the hardline leader has called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Opening the controversial facility, which the West believes may be used to acquire an atomic weapon, Ahmadinejad repeated Iran's desire for peaceful nuclear energy, saying his country posed no threat to arch-foe Israel. "The message of the Iranian nation is peace, calm and co-habitation with all nations based on justice ... We are no threat to any nation, even the Zionist regime," he said. "They must accept the reality of a strong Iran, developed and a supporter of peace," he said as he opened the Arak plant, which will supply heavy water to be used as coolant for a 40 MW research reactor due for completion by 2009. Speaking in Jerusalem, government spokesman Avi Pazner said "Israel is not fooled by such declarations, the sole aim of which are to avoid sanctions being imposed on Iran." Ahmadinejad "has often stated his true intentions concerning Israel," he told AFP, a reference to repeated calls by the Iranian president for the country's destruction. The International Atomic Energy Agency" /> has voiced concern over the risk of diversion of nuclear materials, as the research reactor could produce 8-10 kilograms (about 20 pounds) of plutonium a year, enough to make at least two nuclear bombs. The high-security complex and its approach road are protected by dozens of anti-aircraft gun positions in preparation for a possible Israeli or US air strike against Iran's controversial nuclear facilities. And the hardline leader said the Islamic republic would defend its right to nuclear technology "with force." "One cannot deprive any nation from its rights. The Iranian nation will defend its rights to nuclear technology with force," Ahmadinejad said. "The Iranian nation is seeking nuclear energy and I am in charge of pursuing the nation's demand." Western countries, led by the United States believe, Iran is seeking to build an atomic bomb, but the Islamic republic insists it only wants civil nuclear power and has the right to master the required technology. "The Islamic republic considers inauguration of this complex within the framework of its legal and international rights," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying. "This is another big step for the Islamic republic to use its undeniable right, namely achievement of peaceful nuclear technology," Asefi said. A young engineer who gave his name as Khazai said "we have done all the project from the beginning to the end all by ourselves, without assistance of anybody. That is why we are so proud." According to the facility's director, Manouchehr Aghazadeh, it will produce 80 tonnes of heavy water a year. Despite Iranians' celebration of the achievement, a UN Security Council deadline is looming on August 31 for Iran to halt sensitive nuclear activities. Tehran risks facing possible economic sanctions if it continues to refuse the demand. Last week, Iran formally responded to an offer backed by the five UN Security Council permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany. The package offers Tehran incentives in return for a freeze of sensitive nuclear work. However, the West's reactions to Tehran's reply did not bring much hope for a smooth settlement of the nuclear standoff. Washington repeated a call on the United Nations" /> to move swiftly to impose sanctions against Iran after the August 31 deadline. "There must be consequences if people thumb their nose at the United Nations Security Council. We will work with people on the Security Council to achieve that objective," US President George W. Bush" /> said. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 28 AFP: Iran plans new light water nuclear reactor Sun Aug 27, 8:18 AM ET TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran" /> Iranis planning to build a new light water nuclear reactor to produce electricity, the deputy head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization said. "We are working on a 360-megawatt light water reactor to produce electricity; we hope it will be completely indigenous," Mohammad Saeedi told state television Sunday. He did not say when Iran would start constructing the reactor. Iran faces an August 31 UN Security Council deadline to halt its sensitive nuclear work, which the West fears the Islamic regime could use to develop atomic weapons. On Saturday Iran inaugurated a controversial production plant for heavy water to be used as cooling fluid for a 40 megawatt research reactor in Arak due for completion by 2009. The heavy water reactor's plutonium by-product can be used for making atomic warheads but Iran insists its nuclear programme is purely peaceful and aimed only at generating energy. Unlike light water plants, heavy water reactors do not need enriched uranium fuel in order to function. But even in a light water electricity plant the uranium need only be enriched to 3.5-5 percent, well short of the level needed to produce a nuclear bomb. Oil-rich Iran, the second biggest exporter in the OPEC" /> OPECcartel, plans to build 20 nuclear power plants in the next 20 years to produce 20,000 megawatts of electricity. Iran's first nuclear power plant is currently under construction with Russian help in the south and it is expected to be operational by the end of 2007. World powers have offered Iran light water reactors and a guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel in return for a halt to its sensitive enrichment and reprocessing activities. But Iran says as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) it has a right to nuclear enrichment and to produce its own fuel. "Our membership to the NPT shows we will not use nuclear technology for military ends and the Arak reactor will be totally peaceful," Saeedi said, adding UN watchdog inspectors had monitored the construction work on the facility. Saeedi also denied that Iran was seeking to enrich uranium to 20 percent, despite remarks to this effect attributed to him earlier by the ISNA news agency. "I deny that Iran is seeking to enrich uranium to 20 percent," he told AFP. "In research reactors for light water, uranium enriched to 20 percent would be needed... (But) we have no programme to construct light water nuclear research reactors," he added. A light water research reactor would allow experimentation with enriched uranium well above the 3.5-5 percent level that is needed for electricity supply. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 29 AFP: Israel 'not fooled' by Iran nuclear assurances Sat Aug 26, 11:42 AM ET JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel" /> Israelsaid it was not fooled by assurances from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Tehran's nuclear programme was no threat to the Jewish state. "Israel is not fooled by such declarations, the sole aim of which are to avoid sanctions being imposed on Iran" by the UN Security Council, government spokesman Avi Pazner told AFP Saturday. Ahmadinejad "has often stated his true intentions concerning Israel," he said, a reference to repeated calls by the Iranian president for the country's destruction. Ahmadinejad said Saturday that "one cannot deprive any nation from its rights. The Iranian nation will defend its rights to nuclear technology with force." Iran" /> Iranis "no threat to any nation, even the Zionist regime," he said in Khondab, in central Iran, after inaugurating a heavy water production plant just five days before a UN deadline to suspend sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work. The heavy water plant at Arak will supply heavy water to be used as cooling fluid for a 40 MW research reactor due for completion by 2009. The International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agencyhas voiced concern over the risk of diversion of nuclear materials, as the research reactor could produce 8-10 kilograms (about 20 pounds) of plutonium a year -- enough to make at least two nuclear bombs. Iran is under intense pressure from the international community to suspend its controversial programme of uranium enrichment, and the UN Security Council has given Tehran until August 31 to comply or face the threat of sanctions. Western countries, led by the United States, believe Iran wants to create nuclear weapons, but the Islamic republic insists it only wants civil nuclear power and has the right to master the required technology. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 30 Washington Post: Iran is Going Nuclear, the UN Can't Stop It GREAT BRITAIN [Bill Emmott] Bill Emmott is the former editor of The Economist magazine, a leading international current affairs publication from England. He is now an independent writer, speaker, and consultant on international affairs. London, England - The truth is that Iran is following the Israeli principle: It is creating facts on the ground. Neither the UN, nor the United States, can stop Iran if (as seems certain) it chooses to develop nuclear weapons. Sanctions, after all, will be just a pin-prick. They will be an irritation to Iran, but little more than that, certainly for as long as the price of Iran's main export, energy, remains so high. Any sanctions that the UN Security Council can agree to won't be very tough in any case. Just about the only virtue of imposing sanctions is that it makes a statement that the Security Council is united in its view that nuclear proliferation is not welcome. So sanctions might as well be imposed, and the date of imposition might as well be now. But let us all be realistic about the situation. Iran is going nuclear, and, thanks to those high energy prices, can afford to do so. Courtesy of America's invasion of Iraq, Iran's main regional enemy, Saddam Hussein, is out of power. Courtesy of the post-invasion debacle, but probably also courtesy of simple practicality, Iran has no need to fear military attack by America. Sanctions, plus any amount of words from Condoleezza Rice or the European foreign ministers, will make no difference. Look what difference American sanctions made to India after it declared itself a nuclear power in 1998? Not a jot. Now, India has a nuclear deal with George W. Bush under which it doesn't even have to subject its nuclear installations to international inspection or verification. So why should Iran care about sanctions or anything else? I don't agree that this means that Iran's political strategy has been especially brilliant, or that it has outsmarted America. All the cards were in its hand. All it had to do was to play them, and follow logic forward. Who gave Iran those cards? A.Q. Khan, America itself, and the oil markets. Get used to it. Iran is becoming a nuclear power. What everyone needs to do now is to work out how to live with that fact. By Bill Emmott | August 25, 2006; 1:58 PM ET © 2006 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 31 IRNA: Iran rejects any link between Arak heavy water plant and nuclear case - Tehran, Aug 27, IRNA Iran-Asefi-Nuclear Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi on Sunday rejected any link between inauguration of Arak heavy water plant and Iran's nuclear dossier. Asefi, speaking to domestic and foreign reporters at his weekly press conference, said products of Arak heavy water plant would have a peaceful application. He said Iran's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was at the best level, adding, "We have a good cooperation with the agency's inspectors. Currently, two IAEA inspectors are in Iran to visit nuclear sites including Natanz." He added that Iran's response to a package of incentives offered by world six powers (Group 5+1) had no ambiguities, saying, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has responded to all points demanded by the Europeans. "It is high time for the West to return to the negotiating table without any prejudgment to find a solution to the standoff on Iran's nuclear case." Asked whether Saturday remarks by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Israel was tantamount to a modification in the country's stance, Asefi said, "We have an unchangeable stance on the Zionist regime which are determined based on national interests and realities of the world. "The president has said that the Islamic Republic of Iran is against nuclear weapon and is not a threat to any country and will launch no attack." He stressed, "The policies of the Zionist regime pose serious threats to the regime itself." In response to a question on the West's evaluation of Iran's response to the Group 5+1 package of incentives, the spokesman said, "European states, China and Russia do not share a common stance on Iran's response. "We recommend the European side to be patient and adopt a wise attitude towards the case." Asefi added, "In its response, Tehran proved its readiness to settle the case through negotiations and diplomacy. Our response to the proposed package was complete. "We recommend the Europeans to study Iran's response with precision and present their views. "Iran's response is transparent, comprehensive and complete and has no ambiguity," he added. Meanwhile, Asefi said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan would pay an official two-day visit to Iran on Saturday to hold talks with senior Iranian officials. He also noted that no date has been set for a meeting to be held between European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Iran's top nuclear negotiator and Secretary of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Larijani. ***************************************************************** 32 Guardian Unlimited: N.Korea Will Not Rule Out Nuclear Test From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday August 26, 2006 9:46 AM By BO-MI LIM Associated Press Writer SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea would not rule out a nuclear test as long as Washington is hostile toward Pyongyang, a newspaper linked to the communist nation said Saturday. There are growing concerns, bolstered by reports of suspicious activity, that Pyongyang may be planning to follow up its recent missile launches with a nuclear test. Pyongyang claims to have nuclear weapons but hasn't performed any known test. ``We can't say for sure that North Korea will not conduct a nuclear test as part of strengthening its self-defense,'' said Choson Sinbo, a newspaper published in Japan by a pro-North Korean association linked to the Pyongyang regime. ``The full responsibility for this lies with the U.S., which regards any forces that don't agree with or submit to its logic or actions as evil,'' the paper said, accusing Washington of trying to topple the North's communist regime. ``It is self-evident that we have to take strong countermeasures to protect our country from that threat,'' the paper said. China, the communist North's closest ally and key provider of oil, has agreed with South Korea to cooperate to prevent a possible North Korean nuclear test. China also has reduced ``a significant amount'' of its oil supplies to Pyongyang since the July 5 missile launches, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said. The report cited unnamed officials at an oil storage terminal near the Chinese border city of Dandong. Officials could not be reached for comment Saturday. Song Min-soon, South Korea's presidential security adviser, said Saturday that a North Korean nuclear test would be ``a grave situation of a different level from missile launches and that South Korea and China have agreed to continue cooperation not to let that situation occur.'' Song, who returned from a two-day trip to Beijing on Friday, refused to elaborate how the two countries would cooperate. South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States have tried in six-party talks to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear program. South Korea's seismic authorities said they detected a tremor in North Korea on Friday, but ruled out an underground nuclear test. Talks on the North's nuclear program have been stalled since November, when negotiators failed to make headway in implementing the North's agreement to drop its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees. Pyongyang has since refused to attend the six-party talks until Washington stops blacklisting a bank where the North's regime held accounts, a restriction imposed over alleged counterfeiting and money laundering. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 33 Korea Herald: U.S. demands Korea shoulder bigger share of military expenses Wartime control by 2009: Rumsfeld From news reports U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has reportedly sent a letter to his South Korean counterpart Yoon Kwang-ung saying that the United States would like to return the wartime operational control of South Korea's armed forces by as early as 2009.. Yonhap News agency reported that Rumsfeld also proposed that South Korea shoulder more of the cost of keeping 30,000 U.S. troops stationed in the country, raising its stake from 40 to 50 percent. South Korea and the United States are negotiating a roadmap to realign their military alliance that dates back to the 1950-1953 Korean War, and one of the key issues is when South Korea will regain wartime operational control of its own forces, a power that under the current arrangement sits with the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK). "Rumsfeld said in his letter to Yoon in mid-August that it is reasonable to hand over the operational control to South Korea in 2009 considering the timing of moving the USFK Seoul base to Pyeongtaek and the proposed dissolution of the command of U.S.-South Korea Combined Forces," the report said citing a unidentified Korean government source. It is first time that the U.S. secretary has suggested 2009 as the target year for the transfer of the wartime operational control. However, South Korea has proposed the transfer occur in 2012, citing the need for more time to become defensively self-reliant. "Rumsfeld's letter has reaffirmed the U.S. position, but the timing of the transfer has not been decided yet," said officials from South Korea's Defense Ministry. Analysts predict there will be much controversy in the negotiations between the two countries on the issue, with a final agreement expected to be reached at a bilateral security consultative meeting in Washington in October. "The timing of the transfer will be discussed at the summit between South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush in Washington, on Sept. 14," the source was quoted as saying. Rumsfeld apparently sent the letter after a meeting on Aug. 14, during which Bush told his military commanders that he agrees South Korea is now capable of exercising wartime control of its own forces. The realignment reflects Seoul's growing stature in the international community and Washington's need to have its troops readily available for speedy redeployment to deal with contingencies around the world. South Korea placed the operational control of its troops, during both wartime and peacetime, under the U.S.-led United Nations Command shortly after the Korean War. But peacetime control of its troops was transferred back to the country in 1994. The main opposition Grand National Party and former defense ministers are strongly opposed to an early retaking wartime control, saying it would lead to the collapse of the U.S.-South Korea combined forces, thus significantly reducing the country's deterrent effect against the communist North. Rumsfeld said that the South Korea-U.S. alliance will not be undermined or diminished by the transfer, the sources said. Rumsfeld arrived in Alaska Saturday for talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov to discuss North Korea, the Middle East and bilateral military relations. Rumsfeld also met with families of members of the Alaska-based 172nd Stryker Brigade which the Pentagon recently ordered to return to Iraq just as their one-year deployment had ended and they were returning home. He met Sunday with Ivanov, Russia's deputy prime minister and defense minister, in talks that include Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs, Pentagon spokesman Eric Ruff confirmed Friday, though without offering details. The Russian government publication, Rossiiskaia Gazeta, reported earlier that the two officials will also discuss bilateral military technology cooperation and antimissile defense. Both Iran and North Korea loomed large ahead of the talks. On Saturday Tehran inaugurated a heavy water production plant just five days before a UN Security Council deadline to suspend sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work and several days after Tehran rebuffed a package of incentives to halt uranium enrichment. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted that Iran has peaceful intentions as he inaugurated the new facility Saturday. But other countries fear it is part of a nuclear program which could lead to Iran's development of nuclear weapons, and Washington wants the Security Council to apply sanctions on Iran if it refuses to stop enrichment. Also overhanging the Rumsfeld-Ivanov talks was the report this week that North Korea was preparing for an underground nuclear test in the face of pressure to give up its own atomic weapons. 2006.08.28 ***************************************************************** 34 Korea Times: Pyongyang's Threat Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Opinion Nuclear Test Could Come Any Moment The North Korean Foreign Ministry said Saturday that it would take all available countermeasures against the U.S.¡¯s move to strengthen monetary sanctions on North Korea with a view to safeguarding the country¡¯s sovereign rights. It was Pyongyang¡¯s response to the recent move of the U.S. to expand the financial sanctions. However, the first thing that came to mind after the announcement was that the countermeasures might include a nuclear weapons test. It is quite natural for people here to be extremely concerned about each unusual move of the North. Even a faint seismic wave from the North monitored on Friday heightened tensions here, although it turned out to be an ordinary detonation unrelated to a test. Pyongyang should consider the seriousness of the repercussions that could result from a reckless nuclear weapons test. It should remember the cold response shown by China and Russia, its traditional allies, after its missile test-firing last month. However, one encouraging thing was a small change in Pyongyang¡¯s attitude in the announcement Saturday. It said ¡°we would have a lot to gain if the joint statement, adopted at the six-party talks in September last year, is to be fulfilled.¡± The North pledged in the statement to dismantle any nuclear weapons program in exchange for peaceful coexistence with the U.S. It was the first time for Pyongyang to have made such remarks, appearing to show recognition that conformity to the international norm might be beneficial to the North. It is certainly in the interest of Pyongyang to live up to its earlier promise. If that really happens, it is something that would contribute greatly to bringing about peace and stability in this part of the world. We would like to recognize it as a small but important change that could encourage a revival of the long-deadlocked six-party talks. We would like to take it as a signal of Pyongyang¡¯s hope to return to the six-party talks if conditions are right. The resumption of the six-party talks can¡¯t be stalled any longer and all concerned parties should make all available efforts to revive them. We believe that it is a time for the U.S. to consider direct face-to-face talks with the North to break the long deadlock. Many analysts are worried that if things continue as they are, it will only enhance the chances of Pyongyang becoming a full-fledged nuclear power. However, one thing Pyongyang should keep in mind is that the reckless move of carrying out a nuclear test at this stage will bring about devastating consequences for them. The test would unite the whole international community, including China and Russia, firmly against the North. It would mean that Pyongyang would have chosen to jump from the frying pan into the fire. 08-27-2006 19:09 ***************************************************************** 35 AFP: North Korea nuclear test cannot be ruled out Sat Aug 26, 6:19 AM ET SEOUL (AFP) - A pro-Pyongyang newspaper said that North Korea" /> North Koreamight carry out a nuclear test unless the United States stops its attempt to "stifle" the communist state. "We can't say for sure that the DPRK (North Korea) will not conduct a nuclear testing to bolster its self-defence capability if the United States comes up with stronger measures including military means (against North Korea)," the Choson Sinbo said in an editorial Saturday. The daily is published in Japan by an association of pro-Pyongyang Koreans living in Japan. It marked the first time that any organization backed by Pyongyang has referred to a possible nuclear test by North Korea. The daily said North Korea had been warning that it would take "counter-measures" unless the United States stopped its attempts to "stifle and destroy" the communist state. "It is not known whether this (counter-measure) refers to a nuclear testing that has been talked about (in foreign news media). However, it should be reminded that the DPRK has already left the nuclear Non-Profliferation Treaty," it said. South Korea" /> South Korea, the United States and Japan have warned Pyongyang against carrying out a nuclear test which Seoul said would invite "much more grave consequences" than North Korea's missile launch last month. North Korea fired off seven missiles in July, sparking international condemnation and criticism at the United Nations" /> United NationsSecurity Council. South Korea has stepped up monitoring of North Korea's nuclear activities amid news reports that it may be preparing for an underground nuclear bomb test. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 36 AFP: NKorea warns of 'counter-measures' against US financial sanctions - Saturday August 26, 10:19 PM [A North Korean soldier looks at the southern side through binoculars] SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea has warned the United States it will take "all necessary counter-measures" against Washington for ratcheting up the pressure on the communist state through financial sanctions, state media said. "It is the height of folly for the US to think that it can solve any issue by means of sanctions and pressure," a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said Saturday, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). "Now that the Bush administration is escalating (Advertisement) [Click Here] [ src=] its pressure upon the DPRK through the tightened financial sanctions in a bid to keep itself politically alive, the DPRK is left with no other option but to take all necessary counter-measures to protect its ideology, system, sovereignty and dignity." The spokesman, however, did not elaborate on what counter-measures could be taken, according to the KCNA report monitored here. The warning came as a pro-Pyongyang newspaper said North Korea -- which claims to have nuclear weapons -- might carry out a nuclear test unless the United States stops its attempt to "stifle and destroy" the communist state. "We can't say for sure that the DPRK (North Korea) will not conduct nuclear testing to bolster its self-defence capability," the Choson Sinbo said in an editorial. South Korea has stepped up monitoring of North Korea's nuclear activities amid news reports that Pyongyang may be preparing for an underground nuclear bomb test. The United States and South Korea -- both parties to stalled six-way nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea, along with China, Japan and Russia -- have warned Pyongyang against any such tests. Diplomatic efforts to jumpstart the six-party talks have intensified since North Korea test-fired seven ballistic missiles last month, drawing international condemnation and a sharp rebuke from the UN Security Council. The North left the multilateral talks last November and said it would not return until US financial sanctions against it were dropped -- a stance reiterated on Saturday. "The US financial sanctions against the DPRK are a stumbling-block lying in the way of the DPRK returning to the six-party talks," KCNA quoted the foreign ministry spokesman as saying. "The DPRK remains unchanged in this principled stand." The United States has moved to freeze North Korean funds it claims are the profits of drug trafficking, money laundering and other illegal activities. Last month, Stuart Levey, the US Treasury Department's Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, visited Vietnam, South Korea, Japan and Singapore to discuss the issue. But the North Korean spokesman retorted: "The DPRK is neither a 'law-breaking state' nor a 'state counterfeiting notes' as claimed by the US. "On the contrary, it has fallen victim to the issue of counterfeit notes and their circulation due to the US." AFP ***************************************************************** 37 AFP: Rumsfeld, Ivanov to discuss North Korea, Middle East in Alaska meeting - by Jerome Bernard Sat Aug 26, 6:33 PM ET FAIRBANKS, United States (AFP) - US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld arrived for talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov that are expected to touch on North Korea" /> , the Middle East and bilateral military relations. Rumsfeld was also to meet with families of members of the Alaska-based 172nd Stryker Brigade which the Pentagon" /> recently ordered to return to Iraq" /> just as their one-year deployment had ended and they were returning home. He will meet Sunday with Ivanov, Russia's deputy prime minister and defense minister, in talks that will include Iran" /> and North Korea's nuclear programs, Pentagon spokesman Eric Ruff confirmed Friday, though without offering details. The Russian government publication, Rossiiskaia Gazeta, reported earlier that the two officials will also discuss bilateral military technology cooperation and antimissile defense. Both Iran and North Korea loomed large ahead of the talks. On Saturday Tehran inaugurated a heavy water production plant just five days before a UN Security Council deadline to suspend sensitive nuclear fuel cycle work and several days after Tehran rebuffed a package of incentives to halt uranium enrichment. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted that Iran has peaceful intentions as he inaugurated the new facility Saturday. But other countries fear it is part of a nuclear program which could lead to Iran's development of nuclear weapons, and Washington wants the Security Council to apply sanctions on Iran if it refuses to stop enrichment. Also overhanging the Rumsfeld-Ivanov talks was the report this week that North Korea was preparing for an underground nuclear test in the face of pressure to give up its own atomic weapons. On Friday both Japan and South Korea" /> warned Pyongyang against undertaking a nuclear test, which the US television station ABC recently reported could be imminent, citing a US State Department official. And on July 5 North Korea test-launched several missiles over the Sea of Japan including its Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile, which theoretically can travel as far as Alaska and carry a nuclear warhead. While in Alaska Rumsfeld was to visit part of the US anti-missile defense system which has deployed rockets designed to intercept long-distance missiles targetted at the United States, including from North Korea. The system, which involves satellites that detect threatening missile launches and then guides interceptors to destroy the incoming missile, has not been fully proven, registering success in only five of ten tests. Rumsfeld dismissed criticisms Saturday that it should not have been deployed until it was more certain to be effective. "There were people who thought no weapons system should be deployed unless it was fully tested and fully developed. We overcame that opposition. As a result we have this capability that is getting better every month," he said. Rumsfeld's plan to meet with the families of US soldiers highlighted the strains on US defense forces to keep adequate numbers in Iraq. About 370 local soldiers had already returned home to their base at Fort Wainwright in Alaska in late July when Rumsfeld ordered them to turn around and go back to Iraq for several more months in the face of a persistent bloody insurgency in the country. Rumsfeld rebuffed critical questions from journalists about the order. "These people are all volunteers, they all signed up," he said, adding that this particular unit was very experienced. "They did a terrific job in Mosul and they are already doing (one) in Baghdad and it is making a difference." Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 38 Guardian Unlimited: Rumsfeld Cautions on Missile Shield From the Associated Press [UP] Sunday August 27, 2006 11:16 PM AP Photo AKAG103 By ROBERT BURNS AP Military Writer FORT GREELY, Alaska (AP) - After his first look inside the nerve center of the U.S. missile defense system, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Sunday sounded a note of caution about expectations that interceptors poised in underground silos here would work in the event of a missile attack by North Korea. Rumsfeld climbed down a steel ladder into one of 10 silos that house single 54-foot-long missile interceptors. If ordered by President Bush, or a successor, one or more of the rockets would blast into the sky and race at more than 18,000 mph to launch a small ``kill vehicle'' at an enemy warhead as it soared through space. An 11th interceptor is to be installed at Greely on Monday, officials said. Asked at a news conference later whether he believed the missile shield was ready for use against a North Korean missile like the one test-fired unsuccessfully on July 4, Rumsfeld said he would not be fully persuaded until the multibillion dollar defense system has undergone more complete and realistic testing. He alluded to his own skeptical nature. ``I want to see it happen,'' he said, ``A full end-to-end'' demonstration is needed ``where we actually put all the pieces'' of the highly complex and far-flung missile defense system together and see whether it would succeed in destroying a warhead in flight. ``That just hasn't happened,'' he said, adding that some elements of the missile defense system are yet to come on line, including some of the radars and other sensors used to track the target missile. He declined to say when he thought the missile defense system would reach the point of full reliability, but stressed that his advisers, including Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, the Pentagon's missile defense chief, have told him they believe it will work as designed in the event of an actual missile attack. ``I have a lot of confidence in these folks, and I have a lot of confidence in the work that's been done,'' Rumsfeld said. Later, in nearby Fairbanks, Rumsfeld met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov. They discussed the situation in the Middle East and in Afghanistan as well as Russian concern about an announced U.S. plan to remove nuclear warheads from some Trident long-range missiles aboard submarines and replace them with conventional warheads for potential use on short notice against terrorist targets. ``I would like to stress this point: These are preliminary (U.S.) plans and for sure these plans raise Russian concern,'' Ivanov said during a joint news conference with Rumsfeld at a lodge on the banks of the Chena River. ``There can be different solutions'' to the problem, such as using cruise missiles in that role, he added. Brig. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, program director for the ground-based interceptor system, told Rumsfeld that on Thursday an interceptor based at a second launch site, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., is scheduled to be tested against a target missile launched into the Pacific from Alaska's Kodiak Island. That will be the first full-up test of the latest version of the interceptor and its ``kill vehicle,'' a device attached to the nose of the interceptor. Once it separates from the interceptor's three-stage booster, the ``kill vehicle'' is designed to use its own propulsion system and optical sensors to lock onto its target and, by ramming into it at high speed, obliterate the warhead and any payload it might carry. Thursday's test also will be the first use of an early-warning radar at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., to provide the data required to put the interceptor on a proper path toward its target. The interceptor will be controlled from a command center near Colorado Springs, Colo. Fort Greely has a similar command center. Obering said the main objective of Thursday's test will be to see if the optical sensors on the ``kill vehicle'' aboard the interceptor work as designed. Whether it actually intercepts the target is secondary, he said. A further test, now scheduled for December, will try for an intercept, Obering said. At a news conference, Rumsfeld said that North Korea's leaders showed, by their test-launch of multiple missiles on July 4, a determination to ``continue to improve their capability and to threaten and attempt to blackmail other people.'' He said they also are a threat to spread missile technology to terrorists. ``I think the real threat that North Korea poses in the immediate future is more one of proliferation than a danger to South Korea,'' he said. Asked to elaborate on that point, Rumsfeld said U.S. intelligence about the intentions of North Korean leaders is not very good, but he said it is clear that the overall condition of the North Korean military has deteriorated. He mentioned that North Korean air force pilots are able to fly fewer than 50 hours a year - less than one-quarter the training done by U.S. pilots. ``I don't see them, frankly, as an immediate military threat to South Korea,'' he said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006 ***************************************************************** 39 London Times: Nuclear power poker - Sunday Times - Times August 27, 2006 History is strewn with stories of unintended consequences and the most recent one is the growing influence of Iran across the Middle East. As the Royal Institute of International Affairs has concluded, Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East. Its Sunni enemies in Iraq have been replaced by Shi’ite friends. The United States and Britain are bogged down in wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Taliban, Iran’s old enemy, are being distracted by the men of 3 Para. Pakistan, whose renegade nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, secretly sold technology to Iran, has proved a less than staunch ally of the West. And Hezbollah, the Iranian-armed militia in Lebanon, has smashed Israel’s once seemingly indomitable military self-confidence. From having its back to the wall three years ago, when the invasion of Iraq intimidated the ayatollahs next door, Iran has emerged as an influential power through little more than opportunism and the miscalculations of its enemies. How then can it be expected to take seriously the threats of the United Nations security council to punish it with economic sanctions this week for refusing to stop enriching uranium, a process that can be used to make fuel for nuclear power but also material for bombs? Iran’s contempt was demonstrated yesterday when it officially inaugurated a “new phase” in its heavy water production plant despite the opposition of the security council and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world’s nuclear inspectorate. According to a reliable report, an Iranian official said the plant has been operational for a month. Similar plants have been used by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea to turn uranium into plutonium for bombs. Clearly, although the Iranians claim a sovereign right to “peaceful” nuclear power, the IAEA has not reported its suspicions about them to the security council without good reason. We can only hope that Tehran has overreached itself. This is a game of high stakes in which the outcome is far from certain. At some point America or Israel could decide that the danger was so great that a military attack was the only option left. The Iranian bomb is still thought to be five years away, however, so a strike seems remote at present. z Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, its unpredictable president, may calculate that they can exploit the disunity of the security council and use old friends such as China and Russia to sidestep any sanctions. They may well be correct. Sergei Ivanov, the Russian defence minister, has signalled that Moscow would not support sanctions. John Bolton, America’s ambassador to the UN, talks of imposing them through a “coalition of the willing”. But who is willing and would the sanctions work? Shimon Peres, the Israeli deputy prime minister, seems to believe that Iran would cave in under pressure. But it is hard to see how Iran feels motivated to back down given its oil resources and the disunity of the security council. The United States appears to have no real plan. President Bush has let the Europeans lead the way in seeking a diplomatic solution just as Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac are on their way out. France has again shown Europe’s weakness with its vacillation over sending troops to Lebanon. The West is faced with a nation seemingly determined to get nuclear weapons. Few doubt that an Iranian bomb would lead to a nuclear arms race across the Middle East. At the same time diplomacy is floundering and sanctions seem remote, although not as remote as a military strike that has a high risk of failure and a certainty of uniting the country at a time when its youth seemed more inclined to embrace western values. It is 27 years since the West lost Iran to newborn Islamist forces. These Muslim revolutionaries have transformed international politics and the West is still struggling to deal with them. This would be farcical if it were not so fraught with danger. Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd. ***************************************************************** 40 Times of India: Nuke deal: Manmohan meets top scientists- 26 Aug, 2006 1423hrs ISTIANS ] NEW DELHI: In keeping with his assurance in Parliament, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday chaired a meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and conferred with the country's top nuclear scientists to evolve a 'broad' consensus on the India-US civil nuclear deal. Consultations with members of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the nuclear and scientific communities are expected to build a broad-based national consensus on this important issue. Manmohan Singh's meeting with the AEC comes a week after his statement assuring parliamentarians, especially the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and Left parties in the Rajya Sabha, that India's nuclear interests and sovereignty will not be compromised. In his speech, the prime minister said the nuclear deal was crucial for India to be accepted as part of the global nuclear community and to meet the country's growing energy needs. Much before Singh's forceful speech in the Rajya Sabha, a group of former nuclear scientists had in a letter urged MPs to discuss the nuclear deal and arrive at a unanimous decision recognising the fundamental facts of India's indigenous nuclear science and technology achievements to date. They wanted Parliament to debate the ground rules for the India-US nuclear deal, as they believed the deal in the form approved by the US House of Representatives infringed on India's right to carry out research and development in nuclear science and technology. Among those who had signed the appeal included former Atomic Energy Commission chiefs HN Sethna, MR Srinivasan, PK Iyengar and A Gopalakrishnan. Copyright ©2006Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 41 Times of India: Scientists aboard, oppn to lose sting Rajeev Deshpande & Srinivas Laxman [ 27 Aug, 2006 0213hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ] NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: With leading scientists now being coopted in the government’s bid to seal the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Opposition BJP and the Left allies of the government have lost a significant and weighty argument against the pact as they had sought to ride on the concerns of the scientific community to validate their dissent. The discussions seem to have gone off well from the government's standpoint as the "caution"light that the G-8 had flashed with regard to the nuclear deal risked eroding pact's credibility in the public eye. With the scientists aboard, government would now breathe easier. Scientists who met PM included H N Sethna, P K Iyengar and M R Srinivasan, A Gopalakrishnan, A N Prasad, Y S R Prasad and Placid Rodrigues. S L Kati was unable to attend while also present at the meeting were National Security Advisor M K Narayanan, former AEC chief R Chidambaram and Kakodkar. On August 14 the G-8 had released a statement where they did not oppose the deal, but asking parliamentarians to consider its implications on India's research capacities, and particularly whether it could expose its nuclear programme to unwarranted inspection. A PMO statement released on Saturday evening triumphantly stressed that the scientists welcomed the PM's statements on the deal in Parliament during which Singh had asserted India's right to conduct nuclear tests if needed and reiterated his commitment to the July 18, 2005 joint statement with US President George Bush. "Your statement was beautiful. We loved it,"PMO quoted Srinivasan to have told the PM. The PM sought to reach out to the scientists by asking them to "help outline a path to take advantage of this new opening to end the nuclear apartheid against India."He suggested that the scientists could show "how best to use opportunities on the horizon, while minimising risks and taking care of national interests." Both PMO and the scientists made it evident that their concerns were discussed at the meeting. The official statement said that PM directed DAE and NSA to remain "in touch"with the G-8 and seek its advise which negotiating the safeguards agreement and the India-specific conditionalities at the IAEA. Srinivasan confirmed this important understanding the PM reached with the scientists, stating "We told PM that there should be a discussion in the India-specific safeguards which will be implemented once the deal comes into effect. A major part of the discussions centred - besides the strategic aspects of the deal - on the development of nuclear energy. The scientists made the point that India needed to construct more power reactors and pressurised heavy water reactors. Throughout the emphasis was on energy and this assumes significance in context of the Nuclear Power Corporation saying that there was a mismatch between growth of reactors and availability of nuclear fuel. A N Prasad told ToI that "All of us impressed on him (PM) that he honour the commitment that he made in Parliament...that he should remain focussed and mot dilute (India's concerns) which working out the deal." Copyright ©2006Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. For ***************************************************************** 42 IRNA: Time ripe for West to negotiate without pretext - Asefi , Aug 27, IRNA Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said here Sunday it is high time the West returned to the negotiation table without any pretext to find a solution to the standoff on Iran's nuclear case. Asefi made the remark while speaking to domestic and foreign reporters at his weekly press conference. Despite the Westerners' pretext and impatience, Iran presented its "unambiguous and transparent response" to a package of incentives offered by the so-called Group 5+1, he said. "All points demanded by the Europeans have been included in Iran's response," the spokesman said. He added rights and obligations, transparent measures and cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), mutual confidence-building, long-term economic cooperation with Europe, sustainable security cooperation in the region and constructive and fruitful talks are among main topics underlined by Iran in its response. He said Iran's cooperation with the IAEA was at the best level, adding, "We have a good cooperation with the agency's inspectors. Currently, two IAEA inspectors are in Iran." ***************************************************************** 43 Canada's nuclear do or die Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 17:41:24 -0500 (CDT) X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY August 22, 2006 The Tyee www.thetyee.ca Canada's nuclear do or die Apocalypse looms unless we take the lead against proliferation. By Mel Hurtig The bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 15 kilotons. The average U.S. nuclear warhead today is 100 kilotons, and some are 250 kilotons, and some are as high as five megatons. Just one of these bombs could completely destroy a small country or a huge city, killing millions of men, women and children, destroying all buildings, and making the entire area uninhabitable for decades. All of this would happen in only a few seconds, and most likely with little or no warning. In Vancouver two months ago, Hans Blix, the U.N.'s former chief weapons inspector spoke of "the stagnation of global disarmament..." the fact that "the U.S. and Britain are developing a new generation of nuclear weapons..." and that "last year heads of state at a UN summit failed to adopt a single recommendation on how to attain further disarmament or prevent proliferation." Moreover, "Work at Geneva has stood still." At the UN, Blix said there is "a serious and dangerous loss of momentum in disarmament and non-proliferation efforts...work has stalled...the nuclear states no longer take their commitment to disarmament seriously." And only a few days later, in a truly incredible statement, the deputy director of Nuclear and Security Affairs for the U.S. State Department said "the peaceful use of space is completely consistent with military activity in space...there is no consensus about the supposed weaponization of space," "the Conference on Disarmament is not the appropriate venue for such discussions" and "it's impossible to define a workable ban on space-related weapons systems." >From Geneva, also in June, "The United States on Tuesday reasserted its right to develop weapons for use in outer space...and ruled out any global negotiations on a new treaty to limit them." Big spender >From Stockholm, the same day, "the U.S. spends 48 per cent of all military spending (2005) and accounted for 80 per cent of the 2005 military spending increase." Per capita, China spends $31.20 while the U.S. spends $1,602 (51.4 times as much). The 30-year-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty commits the 177 non-nuclear nations that signed the agreement not to acquire nuclear weapons and the "Big Five" nuclear powers- the United States, Britain, France, China, and Russia - to dismantle theirs. But, the Big Five have now largely ignored their obligations, and the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review unilaterally withdrew its previous promises. Meanwhile, both the U.S. and France have developed new ways of designing new generations of nuclear weapons that skirt the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and Donald Rumsfeld has talked openly about violating the treaty. It has recently been suggested that if the U.S. proceeds with new testing, up to 40 nations will take steps to begin to manufacture their own nuclear weapons. What the major nuclear nations that are now ignoring their previous commitments are doing is encouraging many other countries to acquire these weapons. And, why not? If the Big Five think they must have these weapons for their own security, why would countries such as Iran, North Korea and Syria not come to the same conclusion? If the U.S. and China have not ratified the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, why would we expect Pakistan and India and Israel to abide by it? Or, any other country? In November 2004, there was a vote in the United Nations on a treaty to place all production of fissile materials under international control, so that these materials could be used for nuclear power, but not for nuclear weapons. One hundred forty-seven countries voted in favour of such a treaty. One country, and only one country, the United States, voted against. If you take the $467 billion for the military that has already been approved by the U.S. Congress, and add in additional spending for Iraq and Afghanistan and other military costs to come, the total will be well over $600 billion. Heights of hypocrisy The U.S. White House and Congress are becoming increasingly paranoid about China, but China's military budget for this year is well under $50 billion. The American hypocrisy is remarkable: It is OK for the U.S. to have thousands of nuclear weapons and modernized delivery systems to send them crashing to earth, anywhere on earth, but you, Iran and North Korea, cannot have even one nuclear weapon. It's OK for the U.S. to send a test missile with three dummy warheads 4,200 miles to targets in the Kwajelein Missile Range in the Marshal Islands, but how dare North Korea try to test its own new long-range missile! It's OK for Russia to launch a ballistic missile from a submarine to strike a target in the Kamchatka Peninsula, 5,000 miles away, but others better not have similar aspirations. It's OK for the U.S. to budget a mammoth $6.4 billion for new nuclear activities in 2007, but we all better start worrying about China's military budget which is less than one tenth the American spending. And it's OK for the U.S. and Russia to have over 95 per cent of the 27,000 stockpiled nuclear weapons, of which some 4,000 are dangerously on hair-triggered alert, but other countries better not plan to build their own supply of nuclear weapons. It's OK for the U.S. to deploy 500 Minuteman III missiles on high alert, each carrying a nuclear warhead with a yield 27 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. It's OK for the U.S. to criticize others for testing missiles despite the fact that the U.S. has conducted at least 48 tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles in recent years. It's OK for the U.S. under both the Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations to target North Korea in its Nuclear Poster Review, and spend billions of dollars to improve its global strike capability, but North Korea must be condemned for its recent test by the United Nation Security Council. It's OK for China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea and the United States to have avoided ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which has been endorsed by more than 100 countries, while somehow expecting that countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Iran and Syria will somehow feel obligated not to test nuclear weapons in the future. Bye, bye disarmament So, just forget the 1995 and 2000 disarmament-related commitments by the major nuclear powers. Forget supporting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Forget allowing a verifiable ban on the production of fissile materials for bombs. Forget a moratorium on new uranium enrichment and plutonium separation plants. Forget any significant steps to strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Forget any idea of withdrawing U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from Europe. Forget any agreement on the use of space for missile defence, even though Russia, China, Japan and the European Union favour such a prohibition. And, forget the fact that the new U.S.-India nuclear deal implicitly promotes proliferation, a terribly dangerous double standard and a basic weakening of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. 'Aggravating arms races' The new U.S.-India deal almost completely undermines international trade rules to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and progress towards disarmament, and sets in place double standards that will certainly entice other countries to ignore the long-standing provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Economist magazine summed up George W. Bush's plans in a single sentence: "What folly for America to spend billions on missile defences, while unravelling the rules which limit the weapons that may some day get through or around them." As for the ridiculous, completely ineffective American missile defence plans, Hans Blix urges the U.S. to abandon these plans because they threaten global peace and security, and are "creating or aggravating arms races." Over and above the already long list of detailed Pentagon and U.S. Air Force plans for the weaponization of space, which I detailed in my last book, and in my recent speech in Vancouver at the World Peace Forum, a brand new report from Washington's Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis claims the U.S. has no alternative but to place weapons in space, because otherwise there will be major gaps in American national security, security which only space can provide. Meanwhile, the U.S. has agreed to sell 66 advanced F-16 fighter planes to Taiwan after already agreeing to sell it 150 earlier versions of the F-16, and eight submarines, plus 12 submarine-hunting aircraft, plus a large supply of patriot missiles. In 2005, the U.S. sold just under $19 billion in fighter planes, bombers, helicopters, tanks and other weaponry, exporting more arms than the next six exporters combined. And now the U.S. has begun construction of a new $1 billion plutonium research centre as part of an ambitious plan to modernize its nuclear weapons and build more than 125 new nuclear bombs a year, at an extra cost of $10 billion. The real threat Those who believe that the principal threat to North America will come from ICBMs fired from thousands of miles away are incredibly naove. The threat will come from missiles fired from submarines, from cruise missiles launched from freighters 200 miles off the North American shorelines, from nuclear bombs hidden in some of the myriad of unexamined containers that land in North American seaports every day. The real danger from North Korea is not the prospect of it developing ICBMs, but rather the fact that it has had a 400 per cent increase in its stock of plutonium, a dangerous supply some of which it would most likely not hesitate to sell to the highest bidder, as it probably has already. Given the activities of the evil Pakistani metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and his grossly irresponsible sale to North Korea, Iran and Libya, and untold others, of nuclear bomb secrets in "full-service bomb builder packages," given that most of his activities even today are still unaccounted for, who among us cannot be fearful? And terrorists? This is no fantasy. It is in fact an appalling, dangerous reality. Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said recently, "Extremists have become more sophisticated in trying to lay their hands on nuclear weapons. This is a real threat." And why would they have much difficulty in getting what they need from Iran, or from North Korea, or even from sources in Pakistan? And why would they be reluctant to use these horrible weapons on New York or Washington or London? Or, since Afghanistan, on Toronto? In the election campaign earlier this year, Stephen Harper promised that Canada's foreign policy, under a Conservative government, would "reflect true Canadian values and advocate Canada's nation interests." But, since the election, Canada's foreign policy seems, more often than not, simply a reflection of U.S. foreign policy. Whether it's Afghanistan, missile defences, our new attitude towards peacekeeping, the Middle East, our vastly increased military spending, the Kyoto Protocol, our terribly poor foreign aid performance, or in many other areas, more and more we've moved away from traditional Canadian policies, and more and more we seem to echo George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice and that awful man, Donald Rumsfeld. An agenda for Canada What should Canada be doing? We should be leading the world and working with the dozens of like-minded states to battle any plans by any country to weaponize space. We should work with the same countries to quickly strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We should lead the way in the development of a verifiable Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty. We should do our best to have hold-out states sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. We should work with the International Atomic Energy Agency to help them strengthen their verification capabilities. We should develop in Canada a centre for the elimination of all nuclear weapons, and invite Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden and South Africa and other willing, like-minded countries to join us in all these endeavours. My friend Douglas Matten of San Francisco quotes Euripides: "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." Matten goes on to ask "How else can you describe the strange apathy over the daily threat posed by nuclear weapons?" The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists surely now have it wrong. The hands on their doomsday clock should now be moved much closer to midnight. The combined events of the past few years are the greatest threat to the survival of our civilization that I can ever remember. Do or die The breakdown or abandonment of important international agreements, the increasingly uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials, the dangerous, belligerent U.S. administration, the rapid growth of militant terrorists around the world, the broad dissemination of bomb-making and bomb-delivery systems, U.S. plans to weaponize space and the inevitable response from Russia and China to do the same, American, Russian and Chinese plans to upgrade their nuclear weapons and to modernize their weapons delivery systems... Surely all of this is a guaranteed recipe for a cataclysmic nuclear holocaust unless urgent steps are taken to reverse these potentially horrific developments. Ultimately, there is one and only one solution: the total abolition of all nuclear weapons. There should not be another goal as important for Canadians. We Canadians should and can help lead the way to nuclear disarmament. Nothing should distract us from this task. Nothing should ever allow us to forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is adapted from a speech, "The Terrible and Rapidly Increasing Danger of a Nuclear Holocaust," given by Mel Hurtig at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto on August 9, 2006. Hurtig is the national chairman of the Committee for an Independent Canada and is the founder and former chairman of the Council of Canadians. Among his many bestselling books is Rushing to Armageddon: The Shocking Truth About Canada, Missile Defence and Star Wars, which the Globe and Mail review called "perhaps the most important book published in Canada this year." ======== http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/08/22/NuclearThreat/ ======== ***************************************************************** 44 [NYTr] Iran's Major Nuke Facility Was Built by the USA Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2006 18:29:58 -0400 (EDT) X-Sender-Host-Name: olm.blythe-systems.com X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Dave Muller (southnews) S. Florida Sun Sentinel - Aug 23, 2006 http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/chi-060823iran,0,5236288,print.story U.S. built major Iranian nuclear facility By Sam Roe Tribune staff reporter In the heart of Tehran sits one of Iran's most important nuclear facilities, a dome-shaped building where scientists have conducted secret experiments that could help the country build atomic bombs. It was provided to the Iranians by the United States. The Tehran Research Reactor represents a little-known aspect of the international uproar over the country's alleged weapons program. Not only did the U.S. provide the reactor in the 1960s as part of a Cold War strategy, America also supplied the weapons-grade uranium needed to power the facilityfuel that remains in Iran and could be used to help make nuclear arms. As the U.S. and other countries wrestle with Iran's refusal this week to curb its nuclear capabilities, an examination of the Tehran facility sheds light on the degree to which the United States has been complicit in Iran developing those capabilities. Though the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, has found no proof Iran is building a bomb, the agency says the country has repeatedly concealed its nuclear activities from inspectors. And some of these activities have taken place in the U.S.-supplied reactor, IAEA records show, including experiments with uranium, a key material in the production of nuclear weapons. U.S. officials point to these activities as evidence Iran is trying to construct nuclear arms, but they do not publicly mention that the work has taken place in a U.S.-supplied facility. The U.S. provided the reactor when America was eager to prop up the shah, who also was aligned against the Soviet Union at the time. After the Islamic revolution toppled the shah in 1979, the reactor became a reminder that in geopolitics, today's ally can become tomorrow's threat. Also missing from the current debate over Iran's nuclear intentions is emerging evidence that its research program may be more troubled than previously known. The Bush administration has portrayed the program as a sophisticated operation that has skillfully hid its true mission of making the bomb. But in the case of the Tehran Research Reactor, a study by a top Iranian scientist suggests otherwise. After a serious accident in 2001 at the U.S.-supplied reactor, the scientist concluded that poor quality control at the facility was a "chronic disease." Problems included carelessness, sloppy bookkeeping and a staff so poorly trained that workers had a weak understanding of "the most basic and simple principles of physics and mathematics," according to the study, presented at an international nuclear conference in 2004 in France. The Iranian scientist, Morteza Gharib, told the Tribune that management of the facility had improved in the past three years. When asked whether sloppiness at the reactor might have contributed to some of Iran's troubles with the IAEA, Gharib wrote in an email: "It is always possible, for any system, to commit infractions inadvertently due to lack of proper bookkeeping." Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at Harvard University, said bungling might be to blame for some infractions, but the Iranians clearly concealed major nuclear activities, such as building a facility to enrich uranium. "This was not an oversight," he said. Another overlooked concern about the Tehran reactor is the weapons-grade fuel the U.S. provided Iran in the 1960sabout 10 pounds of highly enriched uranium, the most valuable material to bomb makers. It is still at the reactor and susceptible to theft, U.S. scientists familiar with the situation said. This uranium has already been burned in the reactor, but the "spent fuel" is still highly enriched and could be used in a bomb. Normally, spent fuel is so radioactive that terrorists cannot handle it without causing themselves great harm. But the spent fuel in Iran has sat in storage for so long that it is probably no longer highly radioactive and could be handled easily, the U.S. scientists say. The fuel is about one-fifth the amount needed to make a nuclear weapon, but experts said it could be combined with other material to construct a bomb. In an interview, Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the U.S. Energy Department, said the U.S. would like to retrieve the U.S.-supplied fuel, but the top priority has been to get Iran to suspend its enrichment efforts. Under the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. But the UN Security Council, saying Iran has failed to prove it is not building weapons, has demanded Iran stop enrichment by Aug. 31 or face economic sanctions. This week, Iran offered "serious talks" on its nuclear activities but did not promise to stop enriching uranium. While Brooks downplayed the proliferation risk of the Tehran Research Reactor, some experts believe the facility is so important to Iran's nuclear program that it would be targeted in a U.S. military strike on Iran. "Its purpose is mainly advanced training and producing a cadre of nuclear engineers," said Paul Rogers, an arms control expert at the University of Bradford in England. "So it's one of the facilities that is really quite significant." Exactly how significant is unclear. The Tehran reactor provided the foundation for Iran's nuclear program, but that program now consists of numerous other facilities as well. And over the years, Iran has obtained nuclear aid from various sources, including Russia and the black market network of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan. China also has supplied research reactors. Most of the world's nuclear research reactors, which train students or produce radioisotopes for medicine, fall under IAEA restrictions. Agency inspectors have visited the Tehran facility several times in recent years. Iran says its nuclear program, including the U.S.-supplied reactor, is solely for peaceful purposes. When arguing for tough penalties on Iran, U.S. officials have pointed to activities in the U.S.-supplied reactor. In 2004, John Bolton, the State Department's senior arms control official at the time, told a congressional panel that Iran's covert nuclear weapons program was marked by a "two-decades-long record of obfuscation and deceit." He cited experiments in the reactor as part of the evidence. Several months later, Bolton told another congressional panel that Iran had received technological assistance from companies in Russia, China and North Korea in an attempt to develop missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Countries that provide Iran such weapons-of-mass-destruction technology "ought to know better," said Bolton, now the American ambassador to the United Nations. If foreign companies aid Iran, the U.S. "will impose economic burdens and brand them as proliferators." What Bolton didn't note: America's role in Iran's nuclear program. That role has complicated U.S. efforts to gain support for greater restrictions on Iran. For instance, the U.S. wants Russia to take a firmer stance on Iran's nuclear program and has been critical of Russian efforts to help Iran build a nuclear power plant. But Russia has noted the U.S. had no problem providing Iran a research reactor and highly enriched uranium when it was politically expedient. Those who defend the U.S. say it should not be faulted for aiding Iran in the past. "It's not the international community's fault for helping Iran exercise its rights in the past" to develop nuclear energy for peaceful uses, said Lewis, the Harvard expert. "It's Iran's fault for not living up to its safeguards obligation." Iran's nuclear program can be traced to the Cold War era, when the U.S. provided nuclear technology to its allies, including Iran. In 1953, the CIA secretly helped overthrow Iran's democratically elected prime minister and restore the shah of Iran to power. In the 1960s, the U.S. provided Iran its first nuclear research reactor. Despite Iran's enormous oil reserves, the shah wanted to build numerous nuclear power reactors, which American and other Western companies planned to supply. Yet today, the U.S. argues that Iran does not need to develop nuclear power because of those same petroleum resources. In 1979, when the shah was overthrown and U.S. hostages taken, America and Iran became enemies; Iran's nuclear power program stalled. The U.S. refused to give Iran any more highly enriched uranium for its reactor, and Iran eventually obtained new fuel from Argentina. This fuel is too low in enrichment to be used in weapons but powerful enough to run the facility. To this day, the reactor runs on this kind of fuel from Argentina. In papers filed with the IAEA, Iran states that before the 1979 revolution it gave the U.S. $2 million for additional highly enriched uranium fuel for its American-supplied reactor but the U.S. neither provided the fuel nor returned the $2 million. In 2003, shortly after IAEA officials inspected the U.S.-supplied reactor, Iran acknowledged it had conducted experiments on uranium in the reactor between 1988 and 1992activities that had not been previously reported to the agency. The IAEA rebuked Iran for failing to report these experiments and expressed concern about other activities in the reactor. These included tests involving the production of polonium-210, a radioisotope useful in nuclear batteries but also in nuclear weapons. Inspectors also were curious why some uranium was missing from two small cylinders. Iran said the uranium probably leaked when the cylinders were stored under the roof of the research reactor, where heat in the summer reached 131 degrees Fahrenheit. When inspectors took samples from under the roof, they indeed found uranium particles. But inspectors did not think Iran's explanation about leaking cylinders was plausible. Eventually, Iran acknowledged the missing uranium had been used in key enrichment tests in another facility. *** McClatchy - Aug 24, 2006 Threat of military action hangs over escalating tensions with Iran By Ron Hutcheson McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON - The escalating confrontation over Iran's nuclear program raises an unsettling question: Is Iran the next target for U.S. military action? Some analysts think so. The focus is on diplomacy for now, but President Bush hasn't ruled out the use of force to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Tensions are likely to ratchet up a notch next Friday if, as expected, Iran ignores a U.N. Aug. 31 deadline to abandon its uranium-enrichment program. Armed conflict isn't imminent or inevitable, and it wouldn't necessarily take the form of a full-scale invasion. Airstrikes alone might be the choice. But the possibility of military action lurks on the sidelines of the diplomatic dance that will play out over the coming months at the U.N. Security Council. "We are creating a situation where everything we're going to try short of military force is going to fail," said Ilan Berman, an Iran expert at the American Foreign Policy Council, which favors an aggressive approach. "By the spring of next year, we're going to be looking at very serious discussions about next steps, including military options." The steps to war could follow the same path that led to the invasion of Iraq: The U.N. passes a resolution demanding an end to Iranian nuclear-weapons development, then fails to enforce it. Bush prods the U.N. to support words with action. The U.N. dithers. Bush unleashes the U.S. military. "If George Bush is serious about denying Iran nuclear weapons and Iran doesn't respond to our diplomacy, then we're headed to a conflict," said Michael Rubin, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a research center with strong ties to the "neo-conservatives" who shaped Iraq policy in the Bush administration. However, even if the president is leaning toward military action, he faces several constraints. The military is already strained by Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran could strike U.S. forces in Iraq, incite Shiite Muslim militias there to do it or simply unleash Shiite chaos that ends Bush's dream of a stable, pro-U.S. Iraq. Iran also could encourage Hezbollah attacks on Israel. "There exists a very real possibility that, if the U.S. attacks Iran, then Iran will inflict a devastating defeat upon the U.S. in Iraq, and also take the fight to the U.S. across the Middle East," concluded an analysis Wednesday by Chatham House, a respected British research center. A unilateral U.S. strike probably would inflame world opinion anew against America. It could send global oil prices over $100 a barrel and tip the world into recession. And U.S. voters weary of war could punish Bush and his Republican Party in 2008 - as might Congress in the meantime if Democrats win control of it in November. Some analysts think the risks of war will convince the president to forgo it. "When all the political and strategic pros and cons of an American military strike on Iran are taken into account, there is good reason to believe that the U.S. will stick to diplomacy," Philip Gordon, a foreign policy specialist at the Brookings Institution, a center-left research center, concluded in a recent article. "I know of almost no one who ... sees it as anything other than a last resort." Still, Gordon added, "it would be foolish" to completely dismiss the idea that "Washington is getting ready to bomb Iran." There are other possible scenarios. Iran might cave to international pressure and give up its uranium-enrichment programs. A diplomatic stalemate might leave the issue unresolved through Bush's term. The international community might be able to force Iran's cooperation by imposing tough economic sanctions. That's the American game plan for the moment. U.S. diplomats are trying to come up with a package of sanctions that could win Security Council approval, but Russia and China oppose tough measures and each holds veto power. Both have strong economic ties to Iran. Many experts think the right mix of sanctions could work. Despite the windfall it's reaped from skyrocketing oil prices, Iran's economy is shaky. Although Iran is the second-largest exporter of Middle East oil, behind Saudi Arabia, it imports about 40 percent of its refined gasoline. The government has drafted plans for fuel rationing. "The mullahs have terribly mismanaged the economy. They're economically vulnerable," said Peter Brookes, an Iran specialist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research center. "The hard part, when you're talking about sanctions, is getting the Europeans to do it and getting the Chinese and the Russians not to oppose it at the Security Council." The Security Council passed a resolution in July demanding that Iran shut down its uranium-enrichment program, but Russia and China blocked American efforts to include an automatic trigger for sanctions if Iran failed to comply. Iran says it wants enriched uranium for nuclear power plants, not bombs, but few accept that. U.S. intelligence officials think Iran is on track to produce a nuclear weapon over the next four to nine years. "If they get the bomb, all bets are off," Berman said. "We don't want the leading state sponsor of terrorism to have a finger on the trigger." Berman said the best-case scenario would be a regime change within Iran. Earlier this year, Bush asked Congress for $75 million to encourage internal dissent, but there are no indications that the Iranian regime is close to collapsing. Iran's leaders show no sign of backing down on the nuclear issue. Their prestige in the region is on the rise, as Iranian support for Shiite militias in Iraq and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon has expanded Tehran's influence. If diplomacy fails and the Iranian regime presses ahead with its nuclear program, Bush could order airstrikes, although Iran's nuclear facilities are hidden and scattered. Or he could let Israel do it; in 1981, Israel bombed a nuclear plant in Iraq to prevent it from being used to develop weapons. It's the nation most at risk from a nuclear Iran. Alternatively, Bush could let diplomacy drag out through the end of his term in January 2009. "Political reality may force him to punt it. His credibility is, in a sense, shot internationally. Domestically, there's no appetite for a military confrontation," said Thomas Alan Schwartz, who teaches diplomatic history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. "He might be faced with the issue of whether he wants to go out with a bang, so to speak, or leave it to his successor." Brookes of Heritage, who agrees with Bush's zero-tolerance policy toward a nuclear-armed Iran, suggested that events may force a compromise. "We may have to live with a nuclear Iran," he said. The archives of South News can be found at http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/ ***************************************************************** 45 IRNA: President inaugurates Arak heavy water plant - , Markazi Prov, Aug 26, IRNA -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday inaugurated a heavy water plant in this central provincial capital. The president inspected various units of the plant and unveiled a memorial tablet. Except for Iran, only eight countries have mastered the technology for producing a product of this kind. Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) chief Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh and his deputy for international affairs, Mohammad Saeedi, accompanied the president at the inauguraal ceremony. Construction work om the plant began in 1998. The plant can function for various purposes including treatment of cancer and AIDS. The heavy water produced can also be used as a cooling fluid for nuclear reactors. Heavy water is 10 percent heavier than ordinary water. Talking to reporters, Saeedi said the plant significantly raises the scientific and academic capability of the country's domestic industries and shows the improved technical and specialized skill of Iranian experts. ***************************************************************** 46 St. Paul Pioneer Press: Doyle defends meetings with utilities | 08/26/2006 | He received campaign contributions from 2 companies trying to sell Kewaunee plant BY RYAN J. FOLEY Associated Press MADISON — Gov. Jim Doyle said Friday he properly met with executives from a Virginia utility seeking to buy a nuclear power plant whose sale is now the subject of a joint state-federal investigation. Doyle told reporters he met with executives of Dominion Resources of Richmond, Va., when the company was seeking to purchase the Kewaunee plant. The governor described the meeting as one of many he has had during his first-term with utility executives and completely appropriate. State and federal investigators are looking into whether Doyle's administration had any role in influencing state utilities regulators to approve the sale of the plant. "They were thinking of buying a nuclear power plant in Wisconsin and so one of the things that they would do was come and talk to the governor of the state," Doyle said. "I would think people would be pretty darned concerned if the governor of the state wasn't meeting with the utilities." Doyle said he has never tried to influence state utilities regulators. The investigators, led by U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic in Milwaukee, are reviewing whether $43,650 in donations to Doyle's re-election campaign by executives with the two utilities trying to sell the Kewaunee plant influenced utilities regulators to approve the sale. The Public Service Commission voted 2-1 to reject the sale in November 2004. After Dominion and the plant's owners — Wisconsin Public Service Corp. and Wisconsin Power & Light Co. — made changes to the proposal in response to concerns of the two Doyle appointees on the commission, the PSC allowed the sale to proceed. Dominion executives donated $2,000 to Doyle's campaign in January 2004 when the sale was pending, campaign records show. Doyle spokesman Matt Canter said the meeting took place Dec. 1, 2003. "This company came to introduce themselves, explain what they do, explain their intention to purchase this plant and that they would be filing that application before the PSC," Canter said. The governor said his chief of staff, Susan Goodwin, also met with Dominion executives while the purchase was pending in February 2004. She spoke with then-PSC Chairwoman Burnie Bridge after the meeting about an unrelated matter, Doyle said. Bridge has said allegations "about improper influence in the Kewaunee case are absolutely untrue and deeply offensive." Doyle said there was nothing inappropriate about the meetings. "The thought that a company that was seeking to purchase a power plant in the state of Wisconsin and they wouldn't talk to the governor's office would be ludicrous," he said. "I saw a headline today that said, 'Governor's aide speaks with utility.' I said, well, stop the presses." Bill Lipscomb, a spokesman for Biskupic, said he could not comment on the investigation. ***************************************************************** 47 Scotland on Sunday: Nuclear boss urges end to 'laborious' planning process Sunday, 27th August 2006 Change Date GUY DIXON () BRITAIN'S planning system must be overhauled to speed up the construction of new nuclear plants to prevent the country running out of electricity, the boss of the country's biggest nuclear generator has warned. Bill Coley, chief executive of British Energy, described the system currently in place - which would govern the construction of the next generation of nuclear power stations should the government decide this is the best way of meeting the country's future energy needs - as "laborious". He said energy companies are waiting until the system is modernised before agreeing to invest the billions of pounds required to overhaul the UK's fleet of ageing nuclear plants. In an energy review, the government concluded last month that nuclear would have a major part to play meeting the country's future energy needs but stopped short of providing specific details. But Coley said more had to be done to reduce the risk for the private sector before this happens. "If you are going to make an investment, you need a degree of certainty as to how long it will take to build [the nuclear plant]," he said. "The permitting and planning process is slow. "I think you can have public input and certainly you should not be cavalier about public input and perception. By the same token, the country needs to do something quickly, because my concern is that we are not going to have the energy available that the country needs. Generation capacity is declining but demand continues to grow." Coley said he was hopeful that the issue would be partially clarified when the government produces its next white paper on energy, due next year. BE, which generates around one-fifth of the UK's electricity, operates eight nuclear power stations, including two in Scotland - Torness in East Lothian and Hunterston B in Ayrshire - and one coal-fired plant at Eggborough in Yorkshire. The company's ageing fleet is gradually being decommissioned. Nuclear power accounts for almost a fifth of the UK's electricity but this is likely to drop to just 6% by 2020 as plants gradually go out of service. Coley said planning systems governing new-build nuclear power stations used elsewhere in the world could be utilised in the UK. These include the government pre-licensing sites to be used for generation and giving fast-track planning permission for plants that meet generic, pre-agreed designs. Coley said BE's Sizewell B station in Suffolk took seven years to build, and suggested that timescale could be reduced to around four-and-a-half years for the next generation of plants if changes were made. A spokesperson for the Department of Trade and Industry said: "The UK needs a planning framework for energy projects that takes account of both local and national issues, reaches timely decisions and provides more certainty of the duration of the process, while allowing the public to participate properly in the system." Coley also declined to rule out working with European power groups such as France's EDF and Germany's E.On in new-build nuclear power stations. Foreign operators are known to be interested in playing a part in the UK's new nuclear programme, which is expected be one of the biggest in the world. ©2006 Scotsman.com| contact ***************************************************************** 48 Independent: Last-minute deal averts nuclear walkout By Tim Webb Published: 27 August 2006 An 11th-hour agreement over pensions has been struck between unions and the nuclear industry to avert a crippling strike. Unions, led by Amicus and Prospect, were planning to hold a strike ballot over a generous new pension scheme for the industry that would have excluded about 1,600 employees of the state-owned nuclear holding company, BNFL. But the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which is responsible for most of Britain's nuclear sites and is setting up the scheme, has agreed to union demands that provisions be made for those excluded. The NDA will use some of the proceeds from BNFL's £3bn sale of its reactor services unit, Westinghouse, which will be completed next month, to plug the £70m deficit in the BNFL group pension scheme and fully fund its liabilities. The 1,600 workers not currently covered by the NDA scheme - workers at BNFL's project services business, its R&D arm, Nexia, and its head office - should now be transferred into this existing scheme. The Department of Trade and Industry and the Treasury have not yet formally sanctioned the new proposal, which was hammered out in the past few days. A spokesman for BNFL said: "We are delighted that we seem to have facilitated a resolution to this issue." The nuclear industry is in the middle of being privatised. The Government has promised to make new arrangements to guarantee that these public sector workers will continue to be eligible for generous final-salary pension schemes after privatisation. But the NDA originally refused to guarantee pensions for all workers. The agreement was only made after Amicus, which represents about 5,000 nuclear workers, and Prospect, which represents 3,500, threatened a strike ballot. A strike would have shut down the UK's main nuclear site at Sellafield in Cumbria. © 2006 Independent News and Media Limited ***************************************************************** 49 Clarion-Ledger: Nuclear site in question - August 27, 2006 [/] Byram resident plans to protest at meeting + Claiborne residents concerned about Entergy's efforts to build plant WHAT'S NEXT + The legal arm of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be taking public comments Monday on Entergy Nuclear's application for an "early site permit" for a second nuclear power plant in Claiborne County. + The meeting will be from 6-9 p.m. at City Hall in Port Gibson. Entergy Nuclear will take another step Monday in its quest to win clearance for a second nuclear power plant in Claiborne County, a move that pits safety concerns against economics, and fears of terrorism against the rising cost of energy. Entergy has an "early site permit" pending with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build the second reactor for its Grand Gulf Nuclear Station near Port Gibson. The company has said the second plant would increase its customer base in Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, displace rising natural gas costs and inject new jobs into the community. While its supporters point to the need to diversify fuel sources, protesters say the risks that come with operating nuclear power plants are not worth it. "We're talking about people's lives and the health of generations, when you're looking at these wastes," said Ruth Pullen, a retired computer program analyst. NuStart Energy Development LLC, a consortium of nuclear companies formed in 2004, has selected the station as one of two plant sites it will target for construction and operating licenses. An early site permit for Entergy would help clear the way for the license NuStart is seeking from the commission, an independent agency that regulates civilian use of nuclear materials. The permit declares a particular piece of land capable of supporting a reactor. The commission conducts environmental and safety reviews to make that call, and its legal arm, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, reviews the work, giving the public a chance to weigh in. But protesting has limits. "If a citizen wants to use their opportunity to say in effect, 'I don't want this nuclear plant to be considered,' that will be said, but that's not going to be something that's going to help the board come to its decision," said commission spokesman Scott Burnell. "If someone comes before the board and says, 'I don't think the NRC staff properly followed the National Environmental Policy Act' or 'I don't think the NRC staff properly followed the provisions of the Atomic Energy Act' - specific factual points where they think something has not been done correctly - that will be very useful to the board." Once the board determines whether the regulations have been met, the five-member commission must decide whether to issue the permit. A company can appeal a denial. The Grand Gulf application for the early site permit was one of three the commission received in late 2003. Others followed. "At the moment, the staff is aware of 13 distinct utilities or other entities that have told us they plan to apply for a license to build a new nuclear power plant," Burnell said. The last plant that went into operation in the United States was in Tennessee in 1996, although construction began in 1973, Burnell said. The commission has not licensed a nuclear power plant since the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island Unit near Middletown, Pa. Although no one died or was injured, it was the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history. Pullen, 58, says she and her husband plan to move if a second plant comes to the state. "I live in Byram, south of Jackson, but close enough that if there was an accident at that plant, I would be affected," she said. While Pullen says she is not forever opposed to nuclear power, she believes there are too many waste, expense and safety issues to make it viable now. "If you're talking about a catastrophic accident, the results would just be disastrous. We've got the Mississippi River, which is one of our main commercial waterways going down to the Gulf of Mexico, which is one of the country's main fisheries, and nurseries, oysters, shrimp, fish," she said. Tim Crisler, spokesman for Entergy Grand Gulf Nuclear Station, assures doubters there is nothing to worry about. "Grand Gulf has been in operation for over 20 years. ... We've never had any problems with our operation there, and the public knows our safety record," he said. "We feel the plant is well capable of being able to defend itself against any type of terrorist attack." Opening the possibility of a second reactor is a huge step for the energy industry, he said, pointing to customers who want affordable electricity that doesn't contribute to climate change. "America really needs more fuel diversity." The nuclear option is one the United States might have to start considering more seriously as other forms of energy become depleted, said Lucien Cremaldi, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Mississippi. "I think President Bush believes it's the direction to go into to revitalize our energy policy. ... I don't know that we exactly need it right now, but ... I think, probably, in the next 50 years, we'll see that the gain outweighs the risk." Clarion-Ledger. ©2006 The Clarion-Ledger ***************************************************************** 50 MercoPress: US supports Argentina's nuclear program, but... Falklands-Malvinas & South Atlantic News [MercoPress - www.mercopress.com] Saturday, 26 August US supports Argentina’s nuclear program, but… Mara Tekach, Buenos Aires US Embassy spokesperson said Friday that Washington has no objections to the uranium enrichment plans but “demands guarantees that the technology will not be exported”, reports the Argentine press. “United States strongly promotes the extensive use of clean, safe and innocuous nuclear energy. In this context we support Argentina’s decision to advance its nuclear program”, she underlined. The short release adds that Argentina is “a strong international ally in issues such as non proliferation and a cooperation associate in the search of peaceful uses for nuclear energy”. But, “we hope that on advancing with its civilian nuclear energy program, Argentina makes sure its actions correspond to the solid credentials of non proliferation shown so far”. Argentina’s Foreign Affairs Director for Nuclear Affaire Elsa Kelly is quoted saying that “United States can rest very much at ease. The Argentina political will has always been to respect the principles of non proliferation”. The Argentine press indicates that Washington fears the technology could be transferred to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, which recently became a full member of Mercosur and besides has very close ties with Argentina. Oil rich and flush in cash Chavez Venezuela has purchased Argentine sovereign bonds, supplied heavy fuel and ordered the construction of several tankers in Buenos Aires ship yards. Argentine has reciprocated with food, live cattle, manufactured goods and technology. President Nestor Kirchner’s administration last week announced a 3.5 billion US dollars nuclear energy development program which includes the building of a fourth nuclear electricity generating plant and resumption of uranium enrichment which was suspended in the eighties following strong international pressures. Argentina has a nuclear energy plant, Atucha I, which was inaugurated in 1974, the first in Latinamerica plus a second in Embalse in the heart of the country. A third plant has been under construction since 1981, Atucha II, and is scheduled to be finished between 2010 and 2011. Fin del Texto - Mercosur - Saturday, 26 August ***************************************************************** 51 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI delegation visit Russian N-plant 2006/08/25 An Iranian delegation headed by IRI's Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) Vice-President Mahmoud Jannatian visited different parts of Russia Kalininskaya nuclear plant north of Moscow. The Atomstroiexport state company announced Friday that the head of Bushehr nuclear plant Alireza Moradian and the Russian Company's department responsible for manufacturing Bushehr plant Vladimir Pavlov accompanied the delegation. The Iranian delegation got familiarized with the third unit of Kalininskaya nuclear plant which its VVER-10 reactor is similar to that of Bushehr nuclear reactor as well as the second reactor and studied the advanced technologies being applied by them. After the visit, Jannatian described it as interesting and expressed hope for expansion of ties between IAEO and Atomstroyepxport. The Kalininskaya nuclear power plant is located in northern Tver region, 330 kilometers from Moscow. The Iranian delegation on Friday visits the research center for safety of nuclear power plants in Electrogorsk city to get familiar with operation of the automated systems for atomic technologies being used in Bushehr nuclear plant. The Iranian nuclear delegation began its visit to Russia on August 22 and so far has discussed issues of mutual interest with Atomstroiexport top officials and experts. M/D Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir ***************************************************************** 52 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Arak heavy water plant inaugurated 2006/08/26 01:29:55 È.Ù President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday inaugurated a heavy water plant in this central provincial capital. The president inspected various units of the plant and unveiled a memorial tablet. Except for the Islamic Repulic of Iran, only eight countries have mastered the technology for producing a product of this kind. Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Chief Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh and his deputy for international affairs, Mohammad Saeedi, accompanied the president at the inauguraal ceremony. Construction work om the plant began in 1998. The plant can function for various purposes including treatment of cancer and aids. The heavy water produced can also be used as a cooling fluid for nuclear reactors. Heavy water is 10 percent heavier than ordinary water. Talking to reporters, Saeedi said the plant significantly raises the scientific and academic capability of the country's domestic industries and shows the improved technical and specialized skill of Iranian experts. Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir ***************************************************************** 53 JS Online: Doyle defends meeting with utility on power plant sale By PATRICK MARLEY pmarley@journalsentinel.comPosted: Aug. 25, 2006 Madison - Gov. Jim Doyle met with executives from Virginia-based Dominion Resources before the company bought the Kewaunee nuclear power plant, a meeting Doyle defended Friday as wholly appropriate. [73942] Nuclear Plant Sale Inquiry "Of course I've met with Dominion," he said. "I've met with We Energies. I have met with Alliant. There isn't a utility in this state I haven't met with, and I would think people would be pretty darn concerned if the governor of the state wasn't meeting with the utilities." State and federal investigators are looking into whether politics played a role in the approval of the plant sale by the Public Service Commission. The commission first rejected the sale, then approved it after Dominion revised its proposal. In the months surrounding the final decision, utility executives gave Doyle $43,650 in political donations. In addition, Dominion employees gave Doyle $2,000 a year earlier, two months after the governor met with top Dominion officials. Doyle's calendar shows he met for half an hour with two Dominion executives and officials with the Wisconsin Public Service Corp. and Wisconsin Power & Light Co. utilities on Dec. 1, 2003, in his Capitol office. WPS and Wisconsin Power & Light, an Alliant Energy subsidiary, co-owned the Kewaunee plant until Dominion bought it last year. The meeting with Doyle came three weeks after the utilities announced the deal and two weeks before they formally filed their proposal with the Public Service Commission. Nearly a year later, in November 2004, Wisconsin Public Service Corp. hosted a fund-raiser for Doyle that brought in $27,750 from WPS and Alliant employees the night before the commission took up the proposed sale. The commission rejected the sale 2-1, but spelled out sale terms it would deem acceptable. In March 2005, after Dominion and the other utilities revised their proposal to meet those conditions, commissioners accepted the deal. In the weeks before and after that vote, Doyle received another $15,900 from WPS and Alliant employees. When questions about the donations first arose in December 2005, the PSC and Doyle's office made nearly identical statements stressing that the commission is an independent agency. The Journal Sentinel reported Friday that Doyle's chief of staff, Susan Goodwin, met with Dominion after it filed its proposal to buy the plant. Doyle then said he also met with company officials before the sale was approved. He said it was appropriate and brushed off any criticism of the meeting. "The thought that a company was seeking to purchase a power plant in the state of Wisconsin and they wouldn't talk to the governor's office, I mean, it would be ludicrous," he told reporters. "You know, I saw a headline today that said, 'Governor's aide speaks with utility,' well, stop the presses, you know?" Doyle appointed two of the three commission members, but he said they make decisions completely on their own. "I don't call up the PSC and tell them how to decide cases," he said. "The PSC makes independent adjudications." According to his calendar, Doyle met with Thomas Capps, then the chairman and CEO of Dominion; Tom Farrell, a Dominion executive vice president at the time and now the company's president and CEO; Larry Weyers, the chairman of WPS; and Bill Harvey, then Alliant's chief operating officer and president of Wisconsin Power & Light, and now Alliant's chairman, president and CEO. Doyle said meeting with Dominion was appropriate. "They were thinking of buying a nuclear power plant in Wisconsin, so one of the things they would do is come and talk to the governor of the state," he told reporters. "You guys can try to make anything you want out of it." Meetings called routine Others bolstered Doyle's case. Eric Callisto, the executive assistant to PSC Chairman Dan Ebert, said utilities talk to the governor about major issues that will affect ratepayers or the state's power supply. "I can imagine that when a company comes into this state and they're looking to make a multimillion dollar transaction . . . they want to inform the chief executive," he said. Barry McNulty, a spokesman for We Energies, the state's largest utility, said he couldn't speak specifically to the Kewaunee case, but that it was typical for a utility to send executives or high-level officers to meet with state officials and legislative leaders to brief them on significant company developments. "It's totally expected and appropriate," he said. "It's a courtesy call. . . . That's just a part of the process. You consult, you inform him - and that's to be expected." But Jay Heck, executive director of political watchdog Common Cause in Wisconsin, said Doyle should have disclosed the meetings that he and Goodwin had when questions about the donations first arose. "When they claim the PSC is utterly independent and then it comes out there were all these meetings, it just draws into question what they said," he said. "They should have been upfront. It's like Chinese water torture - drip, drip, drip - and you wonder what else we don't know." On Feb. 10, 2004, two months after Doyle's meeting with the utility executives, Dominion officials met with Goodwin, Doyle's chief of staff. Records show that half an hour later, Goodwin spoke by telephone with then-PSC Chairwoman Burnie Bridge. But Doyle said Goodwin's phone call with Bridge was unrelated to the meeting with Dominion. "They talked about what they should be doing in a cabinet retreat that we were planning," Doyle said. "The meeting and the call were 10 months before the Public Service Commission decision. So, you know, stop the presses again - governor's chief of staff spoke to somebody at the Public Service Commission. It happens. That's what government is." For the second day in a row, Bridge did not return calls and a Doyle aide said Goodwin was busy and couldn't talk to a reporter. Thomas Content of the Journal Sentinel staff, reporting from Milwaukee, contributed to this report. From the Aug. 26, 2006 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Have an opinion on 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. | ***************************************************************** 54 AFP: Energy tops agenda as Japan PM heads to central Asia by Kyoko Hasegawa Sun Aug 27, 2:48 AM ET TOKYO (AFP) - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi heads to central Asia this week on his first trip to the region as Japan steps up its rivalry with China and Russia to gain influence over the energy-rich region. Koizumi, who leaves office next month, will hold summit meetings with Presidents Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan during his four-day trip to the two countries starting Monday. The visit, the first by any Japanese prime minister to the region, comes as Tokyo looks to bolster cooperation with the oil- and gas-rich nations to compete with the booming Chinese economy for regional energy resources. Japan relies heavily on foreign energy and imports nearly all of its oil, mostly from members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC" /> OPEC) in the volatile Middle East, such as Iran" /> Iran. "Non-OPEC, non-Middle East oil producers are important for Japan's energy security," a senior government official said on condition of anonymity. "In addition, deterring terrorism from spreading northwards to central Asia from Afghanistan" /> Afghanistanis essential for the security of Japan and the world," he added. In Kazakhstan, Koizumi and Nazarbayev will announce an agreement to send Japanese experts to help develop Kazakh nuclear power plants, Nobutaka Takeo, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, told AFP. Beyond the energy issue, talks in Uzbekistan will focus on the need for democratization and respect of human rights, another senior official at Japan's foreign ministry said on condition of anonymity. Rights activists including the United Nations" /> United Nations' rapporteur on torture have said that torture is systematically used by Uzbek security forces. Russia and China are also seeking to boost their influence over the region, notably through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Last month, Russian nuclear construction company Atomstroyexport said it and the Kazakh national nuclear company, Kazatomprom, had signed an agreement creating a joint venture for cooperating on uranium extraction in Kazakhstan and its enrichment in Russia. China also has a pipeline from Kazakhstan capable of supplying it with nearly a sixth of its current annual oil imports. Western countries have secured the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which will bring oil from the Caspian Sea fields to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan -- a major US-backed project conceived 12 years ago to supply oil to Western markets that bypasses Russia and Iran. Energy analysts say natural resources reserves in Central Asia are plentiful but development there, as in the Middle East, carries geopolitical risks. "Gas and uranium there are very important as an alternative energy to oil, but private companies may need some kind of guarantee for risks," said Akio Shibata, director of the Marubeni Research Institute. "The existence of ethnic and religious issues is worrisome for investors, so if Koizumi's visit can provide some kind of framework such as aid loans or insurance, that might be helpful," he said. Eduard Poletayev, an analyst on central Asian strategies in Almaty, said that Kazakhstan could reap benefits from closer ties with Japan, particularly in uranium exports to the Asian economic powerhouse for use in nuclear power. "Kazakhstan may be interested in Japanese investment," he said. Japan agreed in June to bolster cooperation with central Asian nations in the development of transportation links and the fight against terrorism and drug smuggling in a meeting in Tokyo of foreign ministers from the region. Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 55 ITAR-TASS: Bilibin nuclear power station to continue operation – Kiriyenko 26.08.2006, 06.29 ANADYR (Chukotka), August 26 (Itar-Tass) - The Bilibin nuclear power station in Chukotka will keep operating and increase energy production under a protocol signed by the head of the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) Sergei Kiriyenko and Chukotka Governor Roman Abramovich. Kiriyenko said the station would step up energy supplies to Chukotka’s new gold deposits. He added all investment and government papers would be ready in two or three months. The construction of a floating nuclear power station in Pevek was also a subject for discussion. It will begin in 2007. First energy will be generated by 2011, Kiriyenko went on to say. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, ***************************************************************** 56 Chemo may exact a greater toll than disclosed Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 18:47:32 -0500 (CDT) X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP) Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability www.ahrp.org FYI Reuters reports that a study published in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found that advanced chemotherapy put patients at far greater risks of harm than adverse effect reports from clinical trial data reveal. "Researchers mined insurance claims for 3,526 women who had intravenous chemotherapy for breast cancer and tallied problems serious enough to require emergency care or a hospital stay." They found: "Overall, 16% of women in the new study had at least one of eight side effects that required emergency care or hospitalization. Side effects also included blood clots, dehydration, nausea and diarrhea." An editorial in the same journal issue immediately caught our attention since the authors, Dr. John K. Erban and Dr. Joseph Lau, begin with an affirmation of the Hippocratic Oath. "Perhaps the most important message is not specific to chemotherapy at all, but instead is a warning that as we enter the new era of targeted therapies, we must be especially vigilant for the potential of late adverse effects." The problem with clinical trials: "Despite its low sensitivity in detecting harms, the randomized controlled trial design remains an important source of safety information because it has the potential to provide the most reliable evidence of relative harms if the events are relatively frequent and if the study is properly designed to capture these events. The poor reporting of harms data in clinical trials is a widespread problem in many areas, including oncology. The need for standards of reporting of clinical trials harms data is well recognized, and such standards have been proposed. Effort should be directed at establishing standards of reporting and collection of this information from future breast cancer clinical trials." The sobering informed acknowledgement is as follows: "Breast cancer treatment recommendations derive largely from population-based studies. Because the survival benefit of a few percentage points estimated by these studies may be offset by acute, chronic, and late-onset toxicities, it is important to be aware that events such as heart attacks and hip fractures may not emerge for years or even decades after treatment. The inability of our well-designed studies to detect uncommon (less than one in 1000) acute yet important, or even fatal, adverse effects serves as a reminder that clinical trials data are only an estimate of the worth of a drug and that healthy skepticism and diligent reporting of potential toxicities should continue even after an agent enters general use." The editorial authors then cite a provocative question raised in a 1983 article--"If nothing goes wrong, is everything all right? Interpreting zero numerators." Clinical trials are simply not designed to detect the wrongs that occur long after the trial termination. Thus, their conclusion is: "In the case of cancer therapeutics and toxicity data reporting, the answer must be a qualified "no." How then, do FDA officials justify their most recent data analysis of antidepressants and emergent suicidal behavior in clinical trials? These officials eliminated from their analysis the rock bottom minimal time frame during which such life-threatening adverse effects occurred. Stay tuned for further details. Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav 212-595-8974 veracare@ahrp.org http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/health/la-he-chemotherapy21aug2 1,1,2440078.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-health From Reuters Chemo may exact a greater toll In a study of breast cancer patients, the side effects are more serious than earlier thought. August 21, 2006 Chemotherapy drugs may cause more serious side effects for breast cancer patients younger than 64 than once thought, according to a study released last week. Researchers mined insurance claims for 3,526 women who had intravenous chemotherapy for breast cancer and tallied problems serious enough to require emergency care or a hospital stay. Their review found more than 8% of women underwent treatment for a fever or infection compared with less than 2% reported in an earlier review of clinical trials. Other problems also occurred more frequently than previously estimated, according to the study, which was conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. For example, 5.5% of women were reported to have low blood counts that could raise the risk of infection or bleeding, the study showed. The rates were less than 1% or 2% in clinical trials. Overall, 16% of women in the new study had at least one of eight side effects that required emergency care or hospitalization. Side effects also included blood clots, dehydration, nausea and diarrhea. All of the women were 63 or younger. Researchers did not see any evidence that the side effects shortened lifespan, said lead author Dr. Michael Hassett, a researcher at Dana-Farber's Center for Outcomes and Policy Research. But the findings could help women individually weigh risks versus chances of benefit. Not all women are helped by adding chemotherapy to surgery and other measures. "Our results don't change the benefits of chemotherapy:. We still think chemo can improve survival" for many women, Hassett said. The women in the new study were treated with various intravenous drugs in families known as alkylating agents, anthracyclines, taxanes and anti-metabolites. The information came from insurance claims filed between 1998 and 2002, before some newer drugs were available. Chemotherapy's side effects can be minimized through steps such as prescribing blood-cell-boosting drugs or nutritional supplements, said Dr. Edgar Staren, chief medical officer at Cancer Treatment Centers of America. "It's important we make sure [patients] know the various options available." The study (Hassett M ,O'Malley A ,Pakes J,Newhouse J,Earle C;) Frequency and Cost of Chemotherapy-Related Serious Adverse Effects in a Population Sample of Women With Breast Cancer, was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. http://jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/jnci;98/16 /1108 Editorial below Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 98, No. 16, 1096-1097, August 16, 2006 EDITORIAL On the Toxicity of Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer-the Need for Vigilance http://jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/extract/jnci;98/16/ 1096 John K. Erban, Joseph Lau Primum non nocere, "First, do no harm" is a central tenet guiding medical practice. To know whether a prescribed treatment may cause harm and to assess that quality that has been referred to by the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project and others as the "worth" of a treatment, clinicians depend on well-designed clinical trials. The function of such trials should be to estimate worth by carefully weighing the difference between the potential benefit and the potential harm of a treatment. However, clinical trials in cancer are usually powered to assess endpoints such as disease-free and overall survival, rather than the toxicities of interventions. Thus, trial design often precludes precise quantification of infrequent toxicities. Furthermore, even in well-designed trials, toxicity reporting is often incomplete, uncertain, or truncated at the reporting of the primary endpoint. The article by Hassett and colleagues (1 ) in this issue of the JNCI describes an important effort to understand whether toxicity data reported in clinical trials of chemotherapy for breast cancer therapy reflect the experiences of relatively young women (?63 years of age) in the general population who undergo similar treatment. The authors used medical claims and diagnostic codes to determine the frequencies of various toxicities attributable to breast cancer chemotherapy and compared the frequencies of these toxicities in a chemotherapy-treated cohort with those in a propensity score-adjusted cohort of breast cancer patients who did not receive chemotherapy. Imbalances that might have influenced the frequency of toxic events were adjusted to the extent possible, but small differences remained between the two groups. The frequencies in the treated and untreated cohorts of toxicities that are not traditionally associated with chemotherapy such as fractures, asthma, kidney disease, back pain, and thyroid disorders were also compared. Not surprisingly, the frequency of chemotherapy-related toxicities was greater among chemotherapy recipients, but there was no difference in the frequency of nonrelated toxicities between recipients and nonrecipients. Increased toxicities in chemotherapy recipients entailed substantial incremental costs for this group of patients and considerable additional cost per affected person. Several toxicities appeared to be substantially more frequent than what was reported previously in randomized controlled trials (2 ). Adding to the importance of this study is the fact that it is the first to assess toxicities in a younger population of breast cancer patients. Younger patients are frequently offered chemotherapy in the adjuvant setting, and though improvements in survival may be below 5%, women will often accept chemotherapy for as little as a 1%-2% survival advantage (3). The conclusions about the frequency and cost of chemotherapy-related toxicities are important and intriguing, but the methodology used deserves comment. First, the raw data were derived from employer-provided health insurance claims and coding information; other sources or direct observation were not used. Thus, certain socioeconomic groups are likely to have been excluded outright, and the racial distribution was unknown and unlikely to represent the population as a whole. Underrepresentation of certain populations has also been shown to exist within NCI-sponsored trials (4), and this study does not address this particular question either. The authors do not comment on the question of whether toxicity incidence and reporting may differ among ethnic groups. Second, due to the imbalance between the groups that did or did not receive chemotherapy, equalization by generation of a propensity score model was required, and the validity of this model is key to the reliability of the conclusions. Importantly, the authors compared the data generated by including only those chemotherapy patients for whom matched controls were available with data generated by including all chemotherapy patients and found no differences. Regardless of these methodologic issues, this study found a much higher frequency of chemotherapy-related toxicities than did NCI-sponsored and other well-conducted randomized controlled trials. For this reason, there are several important messages implicit in this article. One is the need to continue to develop patient-specific predictive instruments (5)to focus the use of therapeutic drugs and the supportive treatments that accompany the drug therapies. As therapy becomes increasingly tailored to individuals, population-based recommendations will become less widely used, and thus, the potential for indiscriminate toxicity will be reduced. Another important message is that trial data are only approximations of risk that may underestimate the true likelihood of an adverse event. Perhaps the most important message is not specific to chemotherapy at all, but instead is a warning that as we enter the new era of targeted therapies, we must be especially vigilant for the potential of late adverse effects. Newer molecular therapeutics are increasingly effective against breast cancer and less toxic in the short term. Thus, the medical barriers to their use are coming down. The experience with traztuzumab and aromatase inhibitors, drugs that are important in the adjuvant setting to prevent breast cancer recurrence, illustrates these trends. As new drugs of increasing efficacy and few acute toxicities emerge, the tendency will be to push them to market, and there will be few incentives for longer term toxicity studies. After all, the primary endpoints in trials will continue to be disease-free and overall survival in the shorter term. Without careful long-term tracking of late adverse effects, there is a risk that very important toxicity events will occur unnoticed. Moreover, current trial design is incapable of assessing the toxicities that may occur from rapid sequential use of novel agents. Some in the medical community have already pointed out the potential for long-term toxicities posed by novel therapeutics. For example, in an editorial accompanying an article recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine comparing letrozole to tamoxifen for adjuvant treatment of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, Swain emphasizes the need to continue to be observant for any potential cardiac differences that may emerge with time (6). For young survivors of breast cancer, cardiovascular events and bone health are two important areas in which meticulous tracking of long-term toxicity of new drugs in ongoing trials is necessary if we are to know how to advise practitioners and patients on best practices for the future. Despite its low sensitivity in detecting harms, the randomized controlled trial design remains an important source of safety information because it has the potential to provide the most reliable evidence of relative harms if the events are relatively frequent and if the study is properly designed to capture these events. The poor reporting of harms data in clinical trials is a widespread problem in many areas, including oncology. The need for standards of reporting of clinical trials harms data is well recognized, and such standards have been proposed (8) Effort should be directed at establishing standards of reporting and collection of this information from future breast cancer clinical trials (7) Breast cancer treatment recommendations derive largely from population-based studies. Because the survival benefit of a few percentage points estimated by these studies may be offset by acute, chronic, and late-onset toxicities, it is important to be aware that events such as heart attacks and hip fractures may not emerge for years or even decades after treatment. The inability of our well-designed studies to detect uncommon (less than one in 1000) acute yet important, or even fatal, adverse effects (9) serves as a reminder that clinical trials data are only an estimate of the worth of a drug and that healthy skepticism and diligent reporting of potential toxicities should continue even after an agent enters general use. Thus, it is useful to remember the provocative question raised by Hanley and Lippman-Hand with the title of their 1983 article "If nothing goes wrong, is everything all right? Interpreting zero numerators" (10)In the case of cancer therapeutics and toxicity data reporting, the answer must be a qualified "no." REFERENCES (1) Hassett MJ, O'Malley AJ, Pakes JR, Newhouse JP, Earle CC. Frequency and cost of chemotherapy-related serious adverse events in a population sample of women with breast cancer. J Natl Cancer Inst 2006;98:1108-17.[Abstract/Free Full Text] (2) Shapiro CL, Recht A. Side effects of adjuvant treatment of breast cancer. N Engl J Med 2001;334:1997-2008. (3) Simes R, Coates A. Patient preferences for adjuvant chemotherapy of early breast cancer: how much benefit is needed? J Natl Cancer Inst Monogr 2001;30:146-52. (4) Murthy VH, Krumholz HM, Gross CP. Participation in cancer clinical trials. JAMA 2002;291:2720-6. (5) Savvides P, Terrin N, Erban J, Selker HP. Development and validation of a patient-specific predictive instrument for the need for dose reduction in chemotherapy for breast cancer: a potential decision aid for the use of myeloid growth factors. Support Care Cancer 2003;11:313-20.[ISI] [Medline] (6) Swain SM. Aromatase inhibitors-a triumph of translational oncology. N Engl J Med 2005;353:2807-9.[Free Full Text] (7) Trotti A, Bentzen SM. The need for adverse effects reporting standards in oncology clinical trials. J Clin Oncol 2004;22:19-22.[Free Full Text] (8) Ioannidis JP, Evans SJ, Gotzsche PC, O'Neill RT, Altman DG, Schulz K, et al. Better reporting of harms in randomized trials: an extension of the CONSORT statement. Ann Intern Med 2004;141:781-8.[Abstract/Free Full Text] (9) Ioannidis J, Lau J. Completeness of safety reporting in randomized trials: an evaluation of 7 medical areas. JAMA 2001;285:437-43.[Abstract/Free Full Text] (10) Hanley JA, Lippman-Hand A. If nothing goes wrong, is everything all right? Interpreting zero numerators. JAMA 1983;249:1743-5.[CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] Affiliations of authors: Division of Hematology-Oncology (JKE) and Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies (JL), Tufts-New England Medical Center, Boston, MA Correspondence to: Joseph Lau, MD, Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, Tufts-New England Medical Center, 750 Washington Street, Box 63, Boston, MA 02111 (e-mail: JLau1@tufts-nemc.org ). FAIR USE NOTICE: This may contain copyrighted (? ) material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit. ***************************************************************** 57 How Global Warming Causes Earthquakes & Volcanoes & Nuke Plant's Effects Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2006 19:52:10 -0400 X-Sender-Host-Name: elasmtp-mealy.atl.sa.earthlink.net X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=5966&Method=Full From July 5, 2006 & June 9, 2006 http://www.heatisonline.org For possible effects on nuclear power reactors in study mandated by NRC and carried out by Sandia Labs: http://www.mothersalert.org/crac.html This study is greatly watered down for obvious reasons. The real effects of a tsunami, earthquake or volcano can and very well may be greatly worse than what is portrayed in the study above. ***************************************************************** 58 Journal Gazette: Military test inflames Bloomington 08/27/2006 | Associated Press BLOOMINGTON  Politicians, environmentalists and others are concerned that the U.S. military might conduct a large test explosion at a southern Indiana limestone quarry as soon as next year. Mitchell Mayor Butch Chastain and David Sanders, who is running for the 4th District congressional seat against incumbent Republican Rep. Steve Buyer, have planned a news conference Monday to discuss the so-called Divine Strake test. The test is scheduled for next year, pending legislation on the floor of the U.S. Senate. The Senate could vote on the bill as soon as Sept. 5. The $23 million test had been scheduled to take place this summer in the Nevada desert. It would involve detonating 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. But the Defense Threat Reduction Agency said Aug. 1 it was delaying the controversial project at least until 2007 and considering other locations. Agency spokeswoman Cheri Abdelnour has not said whether the quarry about 70 miles south of Indianapolis is under consideration for the test. However, smaller test explosions using up to 1.5 tons of explosives occurred at Mitchell Quarry in July 2004 and March 2005 as part of a project the military dubbed the Tunnel Target Defeat Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration. Timothy Baer of the Bloomington Peace Action Coalition told 25 people at the Monroe County Public Library on Friday that he believes the military plans to use the quarry for the Divine Strake. The test could help develop weapons to penetrate hardened, deeply buried targets. This is the largest conventional explosion ever, Baer said. The explosion could harm the regions underlying cave system, Baer said. Its likely going to do irreparable damage to karst topography, he said. ***************************************************************** 59 Chattanooga Times Free Press: Plugging tritium leaks | By Pam Sohn Staff Writer The three nuclear power plants in the Tennessee Valley have leaked a radioactive form of hydrogen called tritium that is traveling toward the Tennessee River through underground streams, according to TVA documents and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials. The leaked tritium has not moved beyond TVA property boundaries and is not a public health hazard, NRC officials said. NRC spokesman Kenneth Clark said if the leaked tritium reaches the river, that body of water would dilute the substance until its concentration would not be a health and safety issue for the public. Tritium, usually found in water, is a byproduct created when electricity is produced with nuclear power. It is the least dangerous of radioactive materials. NRC inspector George Kuzo said groundwater sampling at all three Tennessee Valley Authority plants  Watts Bar in Spring City, Tenn.; Sequoyah in Soddy-Daisy and Browns Ferry in Athens, Ala.  revealed tritium, according to reports prepared by TVA for a nuclear industry trade group and shared with the NRC. At Watts Bar, they actually had a small hole in a pipe, Mr. Kuzo said. We verified that they fixed it. In an Aug. 4 letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, TVA officials documented at least seven instances of leaks, spills or leaching at the three plants. According to TVAs letter, all the leaks or spills either have been fixed or are being worked on. The letter does not specify the quantity of the inadvertent releases, but it states that a 2005 sampling at Watts Bar following the pipe leak there found tritium concentrations at a nearby monitoring point were more than 13 times the groundwater limit acceptable by federal standards. SURPRISED NEIGHBORS Some neighbors of the Watts Bar plant and nuclear watchdog groups said they were surprised and frightened to learn about the inadvertent releases. Its scary to know this happens and its not made public, said Sharon Harris, who said she fishes with her husband, Scott, near the plant about once a week. If theyre going to have problems, they should notify the public. But TVA spokesman John Moulton said the most recent sampling at Watts Bar found the tritium concentrations have dropped below the groundwater limit. Tritium is one of the least dangerous radionucleids in existence, Mr. Moulton said. Did we do a press release on it? No. There was no reason to. They do not present a risk to the public. Mr. Moulton said TVA reported the leaks to the NRC, which puts them on its Web site. He said the leaks never posed a danger to plant employees or the public. Mr. Moulton said all nuclear plants release some tritium in controlled discharges to rivers, but he said he could not say how much tritium is released locally in either controlled or uncontrolled releases. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators permit all nuclear plants to release some tritium either to the river or the air, officials said. However, the leaks detailed in the TVA letter were not permitted releases. Stephen Smith with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy said the leaks are very serious. The industry does not take it as seriously as it needs to, he said. TVA officials prepared the letter in response to a nuclear-industry trade-group questionnaire. The industry agreed to share the questionnaires with NRC after an Illinois plant was found to have had a 6.5 million gallon leak of tritiated water. The letter also outlined: * Discoveries of low-level radioactive contamination and leaks at Watts Bar dating back to 1998, including two onsite instances in which a groundwater monitoring point exceeded the U.S. EPA maximum contaminant levels for drinking water. * Instances of spills, leaks or discoveries of radioactive liquids at the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant dating back to the mid-1980s, including radioactivity that had leached through a concrete wall to the soil outside the cooling towers. An investigation of tritium releases began there in 2004 after sampling found tritium in four of the six onsite groundwater monitoring locations, according to the letter. * Detections of tritium and other radioactive materials dating back to 2001 at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, some believed to be caused by a leak in the cooling tower and an overflow of the cooling tower basin. GROUNDWATER MONITORING Dave Lochbaum, a former Browns Ferry engineer and now director of the nuclear safety project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said he believes there is a silver lining in the recent attention to nuclear leaks. No leaks at TVA facilities have migrated off the plant sites so far, and now power-plant operators will know more people are watching their actions, he said. For years, nuclear plants have had leaks or, like TVA, a spill, he said. The plant in Illinois spilled so much that some of it got past the fence and ended up in peoples drinking wells. It was the Illinois leak  6.5 million gallons of tritiated water  that spurred the Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear industry trade group, to prepare a questionnaire for the nations commercial reactor operators. With the responses, the institute hopes to compile baseline information about spills and groundwater monitoring at and near the plants. The group is sharing all of the information with the NRC, and TVAs letter was its 15-page response to the questionnaire. Mr. Lochbaum said the Union for Concerned Scientists and other groups tried unsuccessfully to get the NRC to establish a minimum spill amount that plant operators must report. Instead, the public now has the industry promise, he said. But its still an improvement. Before the voluntary initiative, plants had to report significant spills, but significant was undefined, Mr. Lochbaum said. Now any spill or leak of more than 100 gallons is supposed to prompt a quick report to the public and to state and NRC authorities. Bud Strader, a former Watts Bar worker who now works in the sporting industry, said the leaks at that plant dont surprise him. A lot of the pipes are rusted out, he said. The plant (construction) was started years before its power generation began. It was worn out before it started. E-mail Pam Sohn at Staff Photo by Dan Henry Copyright ©2006, Chattanooga Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 60 Gazette.com: Radioactive assault August 27, 2006 UCCS professor Jim Burkhart says it’s time for Colorado to take action to fight radon. The alpha particle demonstration above, he says, illustrates radon’s effect on the lungs and its deadliness. (CAROL LAWRENCE, THE GAZETTE) Prof demonstrates radon’s damaging effects By CARY LEIDER VOGRIN THE GAZETTE Jim Burkhart sat in the dark and aimed a flashlight beam into the homemade radon cloud chamber he had just assembled. Using dry ice, a clear container, rubbing alcohol and a radioactive mantle from an old lantern, he set out to show evidence of radon’s harmful effects. Within minutes, the combination had created a fog punctuated by what looked like continuous tiny bursts of fireworks or shooting stars. “What you’re seeing are the alpha particles that come off the radon — the radiation that comes off the radon,” he explained. “This is exactly what’s happening in the lungs: alpha particles hitting lung cells. It’s like a bowling ball going through pins — highly energetic.” Radon tests used in homes measure these same alpha particles from the radioactive gas. Burkhart, a professor and chairman of the physics department at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, is a nationally known radon expert. Burkhart just spent 10 days writing two chapters for a training manual to be used at four regional training centers established by the EPA — one at UCCS. His next assignment: leading a subcommittee that will discuss radon in Colorado. “Our mission is to make recommendations back to the full Radiation Advisory Committee whether or not the state Health Department should come up with new legislation,” he said. Burkhart is hopeful there will be support for action on radon. In the not-so-distant future, don't be surprised if you're sprayed with a puff of air before boarding a plane or monitored by an overheard video camera. Copyright 2006, The Gazette, a division of Freedom Colorado Information. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 61 Gazette.com: Out of sight, out of mind August 27, 2006 Colorado’s radon levels are among nation’s highest, but little has been done By CARY LEIDER VOGRIN - THE GAZETTE You can’t see it. You can’t even smell it. But in Colorado, it’s all around. Plenty of skeptics scoff at it, but experts say you shouldn’t ignore it. Radon, a colorless, odorless, radioactive gas, is considered the second-leading cause of lung cancer, behind only tobacco smoke. “It’s a risk that’s in your home where you feel safe — your home is your castle,” said Kristy Miller of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. “Even carbon monoxide — you get too much of it, you’re going to get dizzy or nauseated within minutes. You just don’t have that with radon.” Colorado has some of the highest radon levels in the country, with 52 of 64 counties labeled “Zone 1” — areas with high potential for the radioactive gas. Nearly half of the homes tested for radon last year in the state were at or above a level considered a health danger by the EPA. Colorado also has minimal regulations com- pared with some other states. And although some Colorado communities have decided to do something about radon, Colorado Springs is not among them. In depth analysis of ZIP codes in the region. “We’re not by any means among the more proactive states,” said Chrys Kelley, the state’s radon coordinator. Colorado’s only radon regulation requires that schools test for the gas. But there’s no requirement for schools to fix problems or conduct follow-up tests. Results must simply be kept on file should an inspector or the public want to see them. Many schools in El Paso County haven’t been tested in more than 15 years. But stronger radon regulations could be in the state’s future, according to a Colorado Springs professor and radon expert who is heading up a new state subcommittee formed to make recommendations about whether to push for updated regulations. Jim Burkhart, chairman of the Department of Physics and Energy Science at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, says the time has come for the state to take up the issue. Colorado is “lagging behind the research and lagging behind the studies that show radon is a real health hazard,” he said. In El Paso County, radon concentrations tend to be higher in homes west of Interstate 25, although lofty readings have been recorded in other pockets across the county, according to a ZIP code analysis provided to The Gazette by AirChek, a North Carolina radon test kit manufacturer that has data on nearly 37,000 tests in Colorado. AirChek’s data show even higher average readings in Teller County. Results from more than 2,500 other tests analyzed at a UCCS lab for the most part mirrored the AirChek data. Radon is among several “environmental conditions” that home sellers in Colorado are required to disclose if they know their homes have elevated levels. More and more often, though, home buyers are requesting radon tests and requiring that mitigation systems be part of the deal. Most of the region’s largest home builders are not installing radon systems in new homes, even though the EPA urges they do so in Zone 1 areas. Only a couple of communities in Colorado have followed the recommendation. Some states have taken tough approaches to radon, requiring that radon testers and mitigators be certified or commissioning health studies. New Jersey requires radon-prevention features in all homes in “Tier 1” areas — those with high potential for the gas. Other states with tougher regulations include Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois, said Phil Jalbert, who heads the EPA’s radon team in Washington, D.C. “New Jersey would be a 10,” he said, referring to regulatory programs. “I would say Colorado is somewhere in the vicinity of a one or a two.” Radon is formed by the breakdown of uranium in soil and rock. Because buildings act like a vacuum against the earth, radon is sucked inside through cracks or holes in foundations. Readings are typically highest in basement and lowlevel rooms, and concentrations may rise in winter when less fresh air enters homes. The surgeon general has declared radonthe second-leading cause of lung cancer, and the EPA classifies radon as a “Group A carcinogen,” along with substances like asbestos and arsenic. Still, some dismiss the notion that radon is dangerous. Others even tout the radioactive gas as beneficial. Several “radon caves” in Montana draw visitors from around the nation who believe that breathing the gas eases chronic pain and boosts the immune system. “Some people think the radon risk is overstated by the EPA. I think the EPA is sensitive to that, and it’s why there are no federal regulations,” said Burkhart, who runs the radon testing lab at UCCS. “Like everything, the evidence has to grow and grow and grow before people are convinced, and that’s fine.” “The Western states in general have been slow to do any legislation regarding radon, and I’m pretty convinced it’s because the Western states — well, I call it the ‘cowboy mentality’ — we have a history of doing our own thing, and we don’t like government to intrude in our lives.” The radon panel Burkhart is heading up is a subcommittee of The Colorado Radiation Advisory Committee, a ninemember group appointed by the governor to advise state health officials on radiation safety — everything from hazardous waste facilities to hospital X-ray operations. RESISTANCE TO RULES Fort Collins has jumped far ahead of such discussions. It took up the radon issue in the early 1990s by first encouraging people to test their homes. In 2004, it adopted an ordinance requiring radon-reduction systems in all new singlefamily homes and duplexes. It was a tough sell. “We had council chambers filled with people; we had the home-builder association taking out ads in the local paper saying, ‘Don’t let government do this to you.’ We had it all,” said Brian Woodruff, Fort Collins’ radon coordinator. The measure passed 4-3. “Those who were opposed said things like this: ‘The health risk is not proven; stop scaring people. You’re talking about lung cancer, and you’re frightening them, and you shouldn’t be allowed to do that.’ Some said the theory behind radon is bunk,” Woodruff said. “The others who support it say the building codes should protect against known regional hazards. You can use the example of hurricanes down in Florida. We don’t have hurricanes, but we do have radon, and we can build for protection.” Aspen also requires a radon mitigation system in all new homes. Fort Lupton had a rule but rescinded it at the urging of builders. Installing a radon-reduction system during construction costs about $500; fixing a radon problem in an existing home costs about double that — and sometimes much more. The EPA is collecting a list of builders nationwide that are installing passive radon-reduction systems in new homes. Jalbert said the idea is to hold the list up as an example to others. Passive radon systems, in which radon from under a home is naturally sucked up a pipe and vented outside, can cut the gas levels by half. Radon can be further reduced by adding fans to the systems. Because building codes in El Paso County don’t require radon systems, the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department does not track which builders, if any, routinely install them. Classic Homes, which builds 600 to 700 homes a year in El Paso County, will put in radon systems at the suggestion of soils engineers but does not do it on most new homes, company President Joe Loidolt said. Zane Wilkerson, vice president for customer care at John Laing homes, said the builder usually does not install radon systems in new homes but is making an exception with a development on Gold Hill Mesa, a former mining site southeast of U.S. Highway 24 and 21st Street. “We are doing that really just purely for peace of mind,” Wilkerson said. “There is no evidence or indication that we even need to. Other than that, we have not installed an active or passive system in any of our homes. I think it’s kind of an unproven concern that most people don’t worry themselves with too much,” he said. John Laing has built 1,400 homes in El Paso County since 2001. Wilkerson said he is not aware of any other large home builders installing the systems locally. Richmond American Homes, Lennar Homes, Pulte Homes and Keller Homes did not return phone calls from The Gazette. “I wonder if maybe we go overboard sometimes,” Wilkerson said of the radon debate. “If given a choice between a radon system or a carbon monoxide system, I would think that a carbon monoxide warning system would make a lot more sense than radon.” INVISIBLE RISK Doubts linger in the minds of many because they don’t notice radon, and its effects aren’t immediately tangible. And many people have never heard of radon. Kelley, radon coordinator for the state Health Department, said half the people she meets at fairs and home-and-garden shows have no idea what radon is. A lot of money is going into educational efforts. Jalbert’s EPA office coordinates a $7.5 million indoor radon grant program. Colorado received $312,000 for the upcoming Oct. 1-Sept. 30 grant cycle — $4,369 of which will go to radon education and testing in El Paso County. Burkhart has been studying radon since 1986. He said it can take years of exposure — two decades, even — for radon to cause lung cancer. And he has an explanation as to why the lung cancer rate is lower in a high radon state like Colorado than in other states: Newcomers make up much of the population, and the state as a whole has fewer smokers. But he said he has no doubt a casecontrolled study like others done in the nation would show a correlation between radon and lung cancer. “I don’t think there’s any more question there’s a linear relationship that radon causes lung cancer,” Burkhart said. “I think we’re now at the same point when the surgeon general said, ‘OK folks, that’s it, we don’t need any more research to tell us that smoking causes cancer.’ You don’t any more hear intelligent people saying that cigarette smoking does not cause lung cancer, and I think we should be at that same point now (with radon).” Burkhart and others cite an analysis of seven North American studies published in the journal Epidemiology in March 2005 that found the odds for lung cancer increase with residential radon exposure. The analysis included a five-year study in Iowa that tracked more than 1,000 women who lived in the same home for at least 20 years. Studies also are showing that more nonsmoking women are being diagnosed with lung cancer, although both radon and genetics have been cited as possible contributors. According to the most recent estimates from the American Lung Association, there were 2,546 cases of lung cancer in Colorado in 2002; 306 of the cases — about 12 percent — were in El Paso County. About 60 percent of people with lung cancer die within a year of being diagnosed. Burkhart would like to see Colorado toughen its school regulation and see home builders put in radon systems from the get-go. “Builders should advertise — make it a selling point. Instead, what most of them are doing is just pretending the issue isn’t there.” CONTACT THE WRITER: cary.vogrin@gazette.com RADON FACTS How does it form? Radon is formed by the breakdown of uranium in soil and rock. How does it get into a house? Radon is sucked inside through cracks or holes in foundations. Cost of prevention: Installation in homes being built costs about $500; the cost is at least double for existing homes. COMMENT ON THIS STORY (15) Copyright 2006, The Gazette, a division of Freedom Colorado ***************************************************************** 62 Tennessean: Nuclear plants leaked tritium, TVA says - Nashville, Tennessee - Sunday, 08/27/06 - Tennessean.com Byproduct is not a health hazard, NRC officials say Associated Press CHATTANOOGA — Three of the Tennessee Valley Authority's nuclear power plants have leaked a radioactive form of hydrogen called tritium into the groundwater, according to TVA documents and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials. The leaked tritium has not moved beyond TVA property and is not a public health hazard, NRC officials told The Chattanooga Times Free Press. NRC spokesman Kenneth Clark said if the leaked tritium reaches the Tennessee River, that body of water would dilute the substance until its concentration would not be a "health and safety issue for the public." Tritium, usually found in water, is a byproduct created when electricity is produced with nuclear power. It is the least dangerous of radioactive materials. NRC inspector George Kuzo said groundwater sampling at all three Tennessee Valley Authority plants — Watts Bar in Spring City, Tenn.; Sequoyah in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn.; and Browns Ferry in Athens, Ala. — revealed tritium, according to reports prepared by TVA for a nuclear industry trade group and shared with the NRC. "At Watts Bar, they actually had a small hole in a pipe," Kuzo said. "We verified that they fixed it." In an Aug. 4 letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, TVA officials documented at least seven instances of leaks, spills or leaching at the three plants. According to TVA's letter, all the leaks or spills have been fixed or are being worked on. The letter does not specify the quantity of the "inadvertent releases," but it states that a 2005 sampling at Watts Bar after the pipe leak there found tritium concentrations at a nearby monitoring point were more than 13 times the groundwater limit acceptable by federal standards. Some neighbors of the Watts Bar plant and nuclear watchdog groups said they were surprised and frightened to learn about the "inadvertent releases." "It's scary to know this happens and it's not made public," said Sharon Harris, who said she fishes with her husband, Scott, near the plant about once a week. "If they're going to have problems, they should notify the public." But TVA spokesman John Moulton said the most recent sampling at Watts Bar found the tritium concentrations have dropped below the groundwater limit. "Tritium is one of the least dangerous radionucleids in existence," Moulton said. "Did we do a press release on it? No. There was no reason to. They do not present a risk to the public." Moulton said TVA reported the leaks to the NRC, which puts them on its Web site. He said the leaks never posed a danger to plant employees or the public. Moulton said all nuclear plants release some tritium in controlled discharges to rivers, but he said he could not say how much tritium is released locally in either controlled or uncontrolled releases. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators permit all nuclear plants to release some tritium either to the river or the air, officials said. However, the leaks detailed in the TVA letter were not permitted releases. Stephen Smith with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy said the leaks are "very serious." "The industry does not take it as seriously as it needs to," Smith said. Copyright © 2006, tennessean.com. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 63 News and Tribune: Know what your Department of Defense is up to LETTERS: Aug. 26, 2006 It appears the Department of Defense is proposing to use a limestone quarry in Southern Indiana to test the effectiveness of nuclear detonations on underground facilities and bunkers such as those they expect to find housing Irans nuclear development facilities. The explosion, oddly called the Divine Strake using a whopping 1,400,000 pounds  yes, you read that right, almost a million and a half pounds, thats 700 tons of explosives, will not make use of any nuclear material, thus enabling the test to circumvent existing test ban treaties. The test was originally intended to be conducted at the Nevada test site until local opposition scuttled the project over concerns of health risks to the local population from toxic materials released by the explosion and dispersed by a predicted 10,000 foot mushroom cloud. So the site has now been moved to the Bedford-Mitchell area. Furthermore the DoD intends to burn over 300 buildings at the Indiana Army Ammunition Depot north of Jeffersonville, because burning is the least expensive option for demolition. The DoD apparently is unconcerned about the high levels of lead and PCB contamination found in those buildings. I cant tell you how incensed I am over this story. Why is the Department of Defense so unconcerned that it can put at grave risk the lives of the very citizens its supposed to be protecting? Surely I would expect your readers to be concerned about the negative health risks this poses to them. I urge your readers to write to Rep. Mike Sodrel, Honorable Evan Bayh, and Honorable Richard Lugar on this issue. I dont want to be breathing lead and mustard gas, do you? This information and more, can be accessed at: www.nukestrat.com/us/stratcom/gs-divinestrake.htm or www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/ops/divine-strake.htm  Elaine Kitchel, New Albany © 2006, The Evening News &The Tribune Associated Press content © 2006. All rights reserved. AP content ***************************************************************** 64 Las Vegas SUN: Possibility of blast at Indiana quarry draws opposition August 26, 2006 ASSOCIATED PRESS BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - Politicians, environmentalists and others are concerned that the U.S. military might conduct a large test explosion at a southern Indiana limestone quarry as soon as next year. Mitchell Mayor Butch Chastain and David Sanders, who is running for the 4th District congressional seat against incumbent Republican Rep. Steve Buyer, have planned a news conference Monday to discuss the so-called "Divine Strake" test. The test is scheduled for sometime next year, pending legislation currently on the floor of the U.S. Senate. The Senate could vote on the bill as soon as Sept. 5. The $23 million test had been scheduled to take place this summer in the Nevada desert. It would involve detonating 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. However, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency said Aug. 1 it was delaying the controversial project at least until 2007 and considering other locations. Agency spokeswoman Cheri Abdelnour has not said whether the quarry about 70 miles south of Indianapolis is under consideration for the test. However, smaller test explosions using up to 1.5 tons of explosives occurred at Mitchell Quarry in July 2004 and March 2005 as part of a project the military dubbed the Tunnel Target Defeat Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration. Timothy Baer of the Bloomington Peace Action Coalition told 25 people at the Monroe County Public Library on Friday that he believes the military plans to use the quarry for the Divine Strake. The test could help develop weapons to penetrate hardened, deeply buried targets. "This is the largest conventional explosion ever," Baer said. The explosion could harm the region's underlying cave system, Baer said. "It's likely going to do irreparable damage to karst topography," he said. --- Information from: The Herald-Times, http://www.hoosiertimes.com All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 65 NEWS.com.au: Australia should enrich uranium, says Downer | By Christopher Russell August 28, 2006 07:28am AUSTRALIA should enrich the uranium it mines before exporting it overseas, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer has said. He has gone as far as raising Australia's case for taking the next step in the nuclear power cycle with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month. Mr Downer made his comments during a South Australian Business Journal roundtable on uranium and the nuclear industry, which will be published in The Advertiser tomorrow. The Federal Government has raised the prospect of an enrichment industry before but will not declare an official position until a federal inquiry, headed by nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski, reports on the issue later this year. Mr Downer's comments are the strongest yet from a Government minister in support of uranium enrichment. "There are some very good arguments on why it would be better to have uranium enriched in Australia," Mr Downer said. "Number one, of course, is that you could make a lot of money out of it and that's good for the country. "Secondly, when it comes to non-proliferation, the enriched product is the one you're concerned about. "It's going to be better to have fuel enriched in a country like Australia with its instinctive sense of responsibility than enriched in countries which would apply less responsible standards. "Our involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle is a better guarantee, in so far as there can be a guarantee, there won't be proliferation. Enrichment is the process of transforming uranium ore so it be used as nuclear reactor fuel. The US is opposed in principle to countries other than existing nuclear processors enriching uranium but is looking at making an exception for Australia and Canada. Mr Downer said he had discussed Australia taking the next step in the nuclear power cycle with Ms Rice and "had a fair hearing" when they met last month in Kuala Lumpur. The Government has established an inquiry panel on the nuclear industry, under former Telstra chief executive Dr Switkowski. That is due to report in December. Mr Downer told the roundtable there would be "a lot of enthusiasm in the short-term" and "a lot of companies will come forward". The Advertiser roundtable forum on uranium and the nuclear industry also heard mining companies are actively preparing feasibility studies on the economic viability of such projects. Australia exports uranium to the European Union, South Korea, Japan, the US and Canada. It is considering exports to China and India as well. Mr Downer said public debate was moving on, with Labor certain to scrap its policy of prohibiting any new uranium mines. Taking further steps involved difficult political strategy but "we need to take very seriously the proposition that we could build an enrichment plant in Australia and thereby make a very great contribution to the global non-proliferation regime". SA Chamber of Mines chief executive Phil Sutherland said feasibility studies were being conducted into all stages of the nuclear cycle. "Right here and now, I'm not sure the numbers do stack up for a nuclear power plant," he said. "But if it's about economics and making money and generating wealth for Australia... you can make a lot more money from enrichment than from just selling yellowcake." Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner David Noonan argued against any expansion of the nuclear industry. SA Mineral Resources Minister Paul Holloway said there were no firm proposals on the table to build an enrichment plant but it had been "raised as a general issue of interest" with the State Government. The Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory, meanwhile, voted at the weekend to establish an inquiry on the nuclear industry. Copyright 2006 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT + 10). ***************************************************************** 66 Bradenton Herald: Judge rejects Lockheed's effort to limit Tallevast suit | 08/26/2006 | DONNA WRIGHT Herald Staff Writer TALLEVAST - Circuit Judge Durand Adams has denied Lockheed Martin Corp.'s motions to severely limit a lawsuit filed against the company by Tallevast residents. Durand dismissed without much comment all but one of Lockheed's motions to dismiss most of the Tallevast lawsuit in an order issued Thursday. The motion Durand granted was the dismissal of Loral Corp. as a defendant. "Apparently Loral Corporation was completely merged into Lockheed Martin Corporation . . . and so does not exist," Durand wrote in his order. A Lockheed spokeswoman said the company is moving on with its legal defense. "While we are disappointed, we understand the need to obtain more facts in the case before dismissing these claims," said Gail Rymer. "We are currently reviewing our next steps." Tallevast residents were pleased with the decision, said Laura Ward, one of the plaintiffs and the president of the Tallevast advocacy group, FOCUS. "We are happy that the motions were denied, as we are able to continue as we started," Ward said. Tallevast attorneys could not be reached for comment. Loral Corp. owned and operated the Loral American Beryllium Co. plant at 1600 Tallevast Road from 1961 until 1996 when Lockheed gained control of the plant during a corporate buyout of Loral. In 2000 Lockheed, while preparing the property for sale, discovered an underground plume of toxic waste traced back to a broken sump. That plume is now known to cover more than 200 acres. The Tallevast lawsuit claims property damage and emotional distress. Loral is named as a defendant along with BECSD, current owners of the property and Wire Pro Inc. a cable manufacturer and present operator of the plant through its subsidiary WPI Sarasota Division. The lawsuit, which was filed on Sept. 1 on behalf of 322 Tallevast residents, includes the following complaints: 1. A common law strict liability complaint alleging abnormally dangerous actions on the part of Lockheed and other defendants. 2. Violation of a Florida statute that governs the release and discharge of hazardous chemicals. 3. Negligence and breach of duty in the release of those chemicals and failing to adequately inform and warn residents. 4. Trespass, because those chemicals invaded the property of residents. 5. Private nuisance, because the chemicals interfered with and impaired residents' use of their property. 6. Intentional infliction of emotional distress and outrage stemming from Lockheed's failure to inform residents. Through several motions, Lockheed had asked the court to dismiss claims 1, 4, 5, and 6. Lockheed also asked the court to dismiss Tallevast residents' request for injunctive relief. Durand denied all of those motions. The relief sought by residents would allow the court to impose injunctions regarding the abatement and remediation of the toxic waste, as well as monetary damages based upon the profits Lockheed was able to make by failing to disclose the contamination to residents after its discovery. Donna Wright, health and social services reporter, can be reached at 745-7049 or at dwright@HeraldToday.com. ***************************************************************** 67 AU ABC: CLP sets up NT uranium enrichment inquiry (ACDT)Sunday, 27 August 2006. 07:11 (AWST) The Country Liberal Party (CLP) has voted to investigate whether the Northern Territory could support a nuclear enrichment industry. A motion to set-up the inquiry was unanimously approved by the party's conference in Darwin yesterday. Safety, cost and the availability of energy to power an enrichment plant will all be considered by the inquiry. CLP Senator Nigel Scullion says if Australia exports uranium, it makes sense to consider enriching it as well. "One of the principles about economic development is to ensure we have value adding for the existing industries we have now," he said. "This is being done around the world. This is nothing new. It appears to be completely safe around the world. "What this motion seeks to do is to seek support to ensure that we can fully investigate the safety, the efficacy and the economics of that in the current context of the Northern Territory." Senator Scullion says the extent of government assistance needed to make such an industry viable will also be on the agenda. "Over time, governments certainly have been keen to support very young industries and this obviously would be a new industry for Australia," he said. "But that would be a question at the time and it can be a question obviously that a report of this scope could consider." This afternoon, the CLP candidates for the next federal election are set to be decided at the party conference. The decision will end speculation about the future career prospects of the Northern Territory's current CLP Senator Scullion. Last month, speculation abounded that Senator Scullion's preselection would be challenged by a group of CLP members. At the time, the party's executive director John Elferink and Territory Opposition Leader Jodeen Carney both quashed speculation they were interested in going to Canberra. Today, the matter will be settled when the party meets to determine who will contest the election on its behalf. ***************************************************************** 68 Daily Sentinel: 6 uranium mines scheduled to open in Colorado, Utah Saturday, August 26, 2006 By GARY HARMON A call heard round the world for uranium soon could have the Burros back in business, to say nothing of the Pandora, Sunday, St. Jude, JD5, October, Blue Streak and perhaps hundreds more. Those mines and their monikers are getting new attention as the long-dormant uranium industry in western Colorado and elsewhere shimmers back to life. A nuclear renaissance is happening worldwide, said Ron Hochstein, president of International Uranium Corp., which owns the White Mesa uranium mill in Blanding, Utah, and several mines in the Uravan Mineral Belt of the Colorado Plateau. International Uranium plans to have six mines in Colorado and Utah operating by the first quarter of 2007. Its White Mesa Mill one of two operating mills in the United States is expected to begin processing late in 2007 or early 2008, initially pumping out about 3.4 million pounds of uranium oxide and 5.9 million pounds of vanadium from new and stockpiled feedstock. Its expected to average between 1.5 and 2 million pounds of both per year thereafter. That means employment at the mill likely will triple from the current 50, and Hochstein said he believed the company would eventually employ about 400 people in western Colorado and Utahs San Juan County. International Uranium is far from the only company to hear the worldwide rumble of demand for uranium. Miners hoping to catch the glow of the next boom have staked thousands of 20-acre claims in Mesa, Montrose and San Miguel counties in just the last two years, as uranium prices have mushroomed to $48 a pound, up from a low of about $7 a pound. Prices are rising as stockpiles disappear and demand increases among the 104 reactors that supply 20 percent of the United States electricity. In Mesa, Montrose and San Miguel counties, demand for uranium around the world has miners staking claims again, and lots of them. In 2001 and 2002, fewer than five mineral claims were registered in any of those counties. By 2005, San Miguel County had 719 mineral claims recorded, Montrose had 784, and Mesa saw 155 mineral claims. Through July 2006, BLM officials have logged 1,262 claims in San Miguel County, 472 in Montrose County and 145 in Mesa County. In Utah in 2005, more than 6,000 uranium claims were filed, according to the Utah Geological Survey, and in Arizona about 700 claims have been filed on federal lands not far from the Grand Canyon. The U.S. Department of Energy, meanwhile, is studying how to manage 38 tracts of land it has previously offered for lease for uranium mining. The departments preferred option is to renew 13 of those leases for 10 years and put the remaining 25 up for bid. The affected area includes 27,000 surface acres, about 750 of which would be disturbed under the preferred alternative. Don Coram holds three uranium leases from the Energy Department, all on standby. Thats about to change, Coram said, as he is gearing up to start production. While the nuclear renaissance has garnered plenty of attention from big producers, Coram said he anticipates there will be many other opportunities. Theyre going to need the small mines, the family operations, he said. Coram not only wants to work his own mines, he has a process he said will allow him to reclaim on site miniscule bits of uranium from the overburden dragged out of other mines. Its a process that we can take all over the world, and thats what we plan on doing, he said. The Energy Departments preferred alternative to encourage uranium mining has stirred fears in Gunnison County and Crested Butte, where officials fear spills of radioactive materials on their way to the mills. Environmental or other objections, however, arent the most immediate problems that uranium companies face. A generation of uranium miners has come and gone over the time that the mines have been idled by low prices and skepticism about nuclear power, said John Reams of Tomcat Mining Corp. in Naturita, which does contract mining for International Uranium. It wont be long before mining companies go outside the area to recruit the miners needed to keep up with demand, said Jim Fisher, general mine superintendent for International Uranium. The effort, though, will prove worthwhile, said Fisher, who has spent more than 35 years in the uranium business. He figures this play is good for 20 to 25 years. Even if Australia, which has large, proven, high-grade reserves, decides to jump into the burgeoning global uranium market, the Colorado Plateau mines still could run for about 10 years, Fisher said. The mining end isnt the only one with difficulties. Were facing issues at the mill getting needed reagents to Blanding, Hochstein said. In many respects, the North American industry needs to retool, he said. We need investment, Hochstein said. You can only flip hamburgers for so long. Getting the nuclear industry moving toward critical mass, though, could have payoffs some might not anticipate, he said. Uranium mining leaves the surface undisturbed, and nuclear power can reduce demand for natural gas, which is expensive and has other, better applications, such as plastics and a range of technical, scientific and medical products. Using natural gas to generate electricity, Hochstein said, is a waste of a natural resource. Gary Harmon can be reached via e-mail at gharmon@gjds.com. Cox Newspapers, L.P. - The Daily Sentinel - Our Partners ***************************************************************** 69 KnoxNews: K-25 preservation funds divided; all partners get piece By BOB FOWLER, fowlerb@knews.com August 26, 2006 OAK RIDGE - For months, the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Office has been sitting on $495,000 set aside for preservation of a former uranium enrichment complex called the K-25 site. Now, Oak Ridge and a national nonprofit group have agreed how best to divvy up that federal funding. "It's taken quite a while to work through the process of deciding where the money is going to go,'' said Bill Wilcox. Wilcox is the city historian, who worked most of his life at K-25, which has been renamed East Tennessee Technology Park. Wilcox is championing the plan to preserve one part of the mile-long K-25 building and convert it into a heritage tourism center. Under guidelines approved last week by City Council, there's something for everyone. Preservationists get $340,000, a large chunk of it for a study of putting an interpretative center in part of the 135,000-square-foot North Tower of K-25. The rest of that building, once the world's largest, is being razed. Oak Ridge gets $155,000 that it will use to help pay for a documentary about the city and the cost of the latest Secret City Festival. Also planned by the city: funding of the next phase of a heritage tourism study. Two groups joined forces to create the Partnership for K-25 Preservation in a quest to keep intact at least part of K-25's nuclear legacy. The partnership is a merger of the Atomic Heritage Foundation and the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association. The foundation, a national nonprofit group, seeks historical designations for key parts of the World War II-era Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb. The K-25 building has been identified as one of eight Manhattan Project structures nationwide that should be preserved. "We need to modify it (the North Tower) a little bit to make it attractive and exciting for heritage tourists,'' Wilcox said. The new partnership also intends to use its share of the federal money to update exhibits at an overlook off Highway 58. The overlook offers a sweeping vista of the sprawling K-25 site, much of which is now being decontaminated and dismantled. Also sought: the turnover by DOE of that overlook. Bob Fowler, News Sentinel Anderson County editor, may be reached at 865-481-3625. © 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel ***************************************************************** 70 Knox News: Officials: 3 TVA nuclear plants leak tritium By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS August 26, 2006 CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) - Three of the Tennessee Valley Authority's nuclear power plants have leaked a radioactive form of hydrogen called tritium into the groundwater, according to TVA documents and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials. The leaked tritium has not moved beyond TVA property and is not a public health hazard, NRC officials told The Chattanooga Times Free Press. NRC spokesman Kenneth Clark said if the leaked tritium reaches the Tennessee River, that body of water would dilute the substance until its concentration would not be a "health and safety issue for the public." Tritium, usually found in water, is a byproduct created when electricity is produced with nuclear power. It is the least dangerous of radioactive materials. NRC inspector George Kuzo said groundwater sampling at all three Tennessee Valley Authority plants Watts Bar in Spring City, Tenn.; Sequoyah in Soddy-Daisy and Browns Ferry in Athens, Ala. revealed tritium, according to reports prepared by TVA for a nuclear industry trade group and shared with the NRC. "At Watts Bar, they actually had a small hole in a pipe," Kuzo said. "We verified that they fixed it." In an Aug. 4 letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, TVA officials documented at least seven instances of leaks, spills or leaching at the three plants. According to TVA's letter, all the leaks or spills either have been fixed or are being worked on. The letter does not specify the quantity of the "inadvertent releases," but it states that a 2005 sampling at Watts Bar following the pipe leak there found tritium concentrations at a nearby monitoring point were more than 13 times the groundwater limit acceptable by federal standards. Some neighbors of the Watts Bar plant and nuclear watchdog groups said they were surprised and frightened to learn about the "inadvertent releases." "It's scary to know this happens and it's not made public," said Sharon Harris, who said she fishes with her husband, Scott, near the plant about once a week. "If they're going to have problems, they should notify the public." But TVA spokesman John Moulton said the most recent sampling at Watts Bar found the tritium concentrations have dropped below the groundwater limit. "Tritium is one of the least dangerous radionucleids in existence," Moulton said. "Did we do a press release on it? No. There was no reason to. They do not present a risk to the public." Moulton said TVA reported the leaks to the NRC, which puts them on its Web site. He said the leaks never posed a danger to plant employees or the public. Moulton said all nuclear plants release some tritium in controlled discharges to rivers, but he said he could not say how much tritium is released locally in either controlled or uncontrolled releases. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators permit all nuclear plants to release some tritium either to the river or the air, officials said. However, the leaks detailed in the TVA letter were not permitted releases. Stephen Smith with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy said the leaks are "very serious." "The industry does not take it as seriously as it needs to," Smith said. ___ Information from: Chattanooga Times Free Press, http://www.timesfreepress.com Copyright 2006, Associated Press. All rights 2006 - Knoxville News Sentinel ***************************************************************** 71 AP Wire: Paducah plant cleanup contractor criticized for safety problems 08/27/2006 | Associated Press PADUCAH, Ky. - The U.S. Department of Energy criticized the lead nuclear cleanup contractor for the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant for a series of safety problems. An Aug. 16 letter from the DOE indicated Paducah Remediation Services may lose some of the few million dollars it stands to earn in performance fees if corrective actions aren't taken immediately. "There have been a number of minor accidents, but the Department of Energy does see them as a potential trend, and we do as well," Paducah Remediation Services President Mike Spry said. "We're trying to nip it in the bud before we have major incidents." PRS took over as the plant's cleanup contractor April 24 under a $192 million contract. The company has since had "a significant number of industrial and radiological safety incidents," Loretta Parsons, contracting officer for the Energy Department's Lexington project office, wrote in the letter. "These safety incidents include multiple forklift accidents, near-miss events, radiological control violations and first aids," the letter said. Paducah Remediation Services is evaluating its management team and conducting safety training, Spry said. He wouldn't say how much PRS expects to earn in performance fees, except to say the amount was "a few million." "The best way for DOE to track our performance and get it where we want it to be is the fee mechanism," he said. "Obviously we're responding to that because we don't want to see our fees reduced." The safety problems have forced employees to stop work at least three times, Parsons wrote. The DOE also questioned how well workers respond to safety problems. Spry said there have been no serious injuries and only a few in which workers needed treatment. He said one violation of radiation-control requirements was fairly serious and remains under investigation. The Energy Department hired PRS in an effort to reduce costs. Immediately upon takeover, PRS slashed 150 of 550 jobs, spurring rumors that the firm had underbid the cost of its work. Information from: The Paducah Sun, http://www.paducahsun.com ***************************************************************** 72 SF New Mexican: LANL Climate Study: Scientist talks about his work By | The New Mexican August 26, 2006 The argument over whether the planet is warming is pretty much settled. The past few decades have been warmer than any period within at least the past four centuries. -- MATTHEW HECHT Matthew Hecht grew up in Portland, Ore., studied physics at the Colorado College and became interested in climate research while engaged in Ph.D. research in elementary particle physics at the University of Colorado. Hes now working on the Climate, Ocean and Sea Ice Modeling project (www.climate. lanl.gov) in the Computing, Computational and Statistical Sciences Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The New Mexican caught up with Hecht this summer to get the latest on climate change, sea ice and some little known computer modeling under way at LANL. Question: What is the Climate, Ocean and Sea Ice Modeling project? Answer: The project comprises around a dozen scientists developing and using our Parallel Ocean Program and the Los Alamos Sea Ice Model. We began in 1991 as an effort to rewrite a computer model of ocean circulation to operate efficiently on parallel supercomputers. Other improvements soon followed, and the ocean-modeling program is now well established, with the model being used to simulate the circulation of the oceans in as much detail as we can. The oceanic-modeling program also is part of a model helping scientists explore natural- and humancaused climate change. Our sea-ice model is the most commonly used one in the field. Sea ice floating on the ocean is an important and delicate part of the climate system. Important because the amount of heat the planet absorbs from the sun depends on how much of the planet is ice covered, which reflects sunlight back to space. Delicate, in that sea ice easily melts back, or sometimes grows extensively, both in models and in the real world. Question: For the lay person, what is climate change and how does it relate to global warming and change? Answer: It is sometimes said that weather is what you get and climate is what you expect. If the climate is changing, then our expectations of what our weather will be have changed. If weve come to expect warmer weather, then climate change would be considered global warming. This doesnt imply anything about the cause of global warming. I think of global change as more broadly encompassing environmental change. Depletion of stratospheric ozone due to man-made chlorofluorocarbons is an issue of humans causing global environmental change, with larger impacts over the polar regions. Ozone has some implications for climate change, but the larger issue is the role of stratospheric ozone in absorbing biologically damaging ultraviolet light. Question: Why would global warming be occurring? Answer: We now burn fossil fuels on such a scale that weve changed the composition of the atmosphere. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by about 35 percent, and is higher than at any point in the recent geological record. We have to go back a few million years to find comparable levels. Were taught in school that plants consume carbon dioxide. Some of that carbon has been stored away in deposits of coal, oil and natural gas. The abrupt rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the result of burning these fossil fuels on a modern industrial scale, releasing carbon that had been stored away over millions of years. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. It allows sunlight to come in, but it tends to hold heat in. It absorbs the infrared radiation emitted from the surface of the Earth, keeping some of that heat from radiating to space. Question: How does your groups modeling work help clarify climate change? Answer: Our most direct contribution is through participation in the Community Climate System Model. Supported by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, CCSM is one of three major climate-modeling programs in the United States. CCSM consists of five computer programs running simultaneously: atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and land vegetation all bound together by the fifth program, the flux coupler. The coupler determines the influence of one part of the climate system on another, such as the rate at which heat passes between atmosphere and ocean. The international climateresearch community has produced assessment reports within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with the fourth assessment due out in 2007. CCSM will be well represented in the report, having contributed more years of simulation than any other project. Question: Why does it take so many models to answer questions about climate change and global warming? Answer: It wouldnt if we always knew the best way in which to solve any problem, but we dont. We try to use diverse approaches to gauge the uncertainty in our results. If we get two different estimates of a quantity and cant prove that one estimate is better, then we must consider the answer to be somewhat uncertain. Different models yield different estimates of the rate at which warming occurs with increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This provides much of the basis for estimating high and low limits on the rate of warming. Question: When do climate scientists believe the last major climate shift occurred and to what do they attribute those changes? Answer: Our climate in the past few million years has consisted of ice ages punctuated by shorter warm interludes. We are living in one of those warm interludes. The last ice age peaked around 21,000 years ago. As glaciers retreated, there were sudden plunges back into cold conditions around 12,700 years ago, and then again 8,200 years ago. So you could point to 20,000 years or 8,200 years as the last major shift, depending on your definition of major. The cold plunge 8,200 years ago was probably caused by an influx of fresh water into the North Atlantic and subsequent disruption of global ocean circulation. Fresh water would have come from huge lakes that formed as the ice sheets melted. If one includes the current period along with the historical record, most climate scientists would say that the most recent major climate shift has just begun, with the shift to a warmer climate. Question: What kinds of environmental impacts are scientists linking to the current climate change? Answer: Concerns include changes in growing season, shifts of habitat and range, ocean acidification, loss of sea ice in the Arctic and regional changes in rainfall. There is intense debate within the scientific community over the question of whether hurricane intensity has increased, and will continue to increase, as a consequence of global warming. Another concern is with loss of ice from the great ice sheets. In the northern hemisphere, Greenland holds much of our ice. Recent reports suggest that the Greenland ice sheet is melting. The southern hemisphere has lost ice from western Antarctica, where the base of the ice is near or below sea level, though not in eastern Antarctica, which is higher and colder. Melting ice sheets may have contributed to the observed 20th-century sea-level rise. This contribution is expected to accelerate in the 21st century. The climate system has tipping points. The planet goes beyond a certain point and an ice age begins. A hundred thousand years later, an event occurs which pushes us past another tipping point and glaciers retreat. Its possible that weve changed enough that another ice age wont occur any time soon. We really dont know enough yet to say, and even if we did there are arguments in favor of postponing the next ice age. What were more concerned about is going past a tipping point where we lose a large fraction of the Greenland ice sheet and perhaps a comparable amount of ice from West Antarctica. This could cause a sea-level rise of 10 to 20 feet. Maps of the coastline of Florida under this sort of sea-level rise show the likely impact of such an extreme change. Question: Where are we at in the global-warming debate? Answer: The argument over whether the planet is warming is pretty much settled. The past few decades have been warmer than any period within at least the past four centuries. It had been argued that satellite-based measurements of temperatures around the world disagreed with land-based measurements and the results of climate models. Satellite-based instruments have tremendously wide coverage, looking down on most of the globe, but the instruments were intended for short-term weather prediction. Long-term trends associated with global warming are difficult to extract. Subtle and very slight errors were found in the original analysis of the satellite record, and it has been conceded that the satellite record is consistent with other measurements. I say pretty much settled because the climate record gets murkier as you look further back. Is this period warmer than any of the past thousand years, or since the rise of human civilization? The longer-term record is subject to debate. There is vigorous debate about how much of the warming might be associated with natural cycles. Greater understanding of the regional impacts of global warming is important, and many questions of regional impact are still unsettled. Question: What are the biggest misconceptions about climate change and global warming? Answer: The biggest misconception about global warming is whether it even exists, whether the planet as a whole has warmed. It has. Not far behind is the misconception that the recent warming could be entirely due to natural climate variability. A decade or two ago you would have found considerable division of opinion in the scientific community on this question, but with years of additional warming and advances in climate science, it is no longer a plausible argument. There has been an intense effort to mislead the public on this point, an effort mounted by some parts of the energy industry that can truly be characterized as propaganda. Our burning of fossil fuels and the associated release of carbon dioxide is responsible for much of the recent warming. Question: Is New Mexicos current drought related to global warming? If climate change, like drought, has happened in the past, what makes this one any different? Answer: We know from treering records that severe drought visits the Southwest about twice a century on average. The last episode of severe drought was in the 1950s, so theres nothing unusual about the timing of this drought, and its severity is not exceptional either. What has been somewhat exceptional is the impact of the drought. Part of the severity appears to be due to the unusually warm temperatures experienced throughout the drought. Question: In a world of climate change and warming climates, what kind of jobs would you tell the next generation to look for? Answer: I would encourage people to learn about global warming, and to go beyond the problem, to also learn about possible solutions. Robert Socolow of Princeton draws a line in the sand at doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide above the pre-industrial level. This is challenging, but achievable. We should be talking about how to do that. People argue that its hopeless, that energy demands and population growth make the prevention of extreme climate change impossible. Its clear, however, that there is much we could be doing now with little or no sacrifice. Its a challenge of historical proportions. I believe we can meet the challenge if we move on from the debate over whether or not there is a problem to the debate over what comprises an effective and achievable response. This can only be done with strong leadership from the United States, owing to our high energy usage, our position of world leadership in politics and technology and our extensive coal reserves. Question: What are a couple of good sources, local or otherwise, that people can turn to to support change or make changes? Answer: Your own annual release of carbon dioxide can be estimated using one of several calculators available on the Internet. A simple calculator can be found at www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/. ©2006, Santa Fe New Mexican, all rights reserved. Opinions ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************