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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 Guardian Unlimited: Opposition: Iran Using Laser Enrichment
2 Guardian Unlimited: U.S.-Iran Standoff Stresses Saudi Arabia
3 Guardian Unlimited: IAEA says Congress report on Iran's nuclear 
4 AFP: Iranian president claims US is the nuclear threat
5 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: US seeking pretexts to oppose IRI 
6 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Double standards not tolerable - Soltanieh 
7 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI takes over G-15 presidency 
8 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IAEA rejects US false report over IRI 
9 AFP: Bush warns Iran, scolds UN on Darfur
10 AFP: 'Healthy distrust' as EU ministers discuss Iran's nuclear ambit
11 AFP: EU's Solana upbeat about talks with Iran 
12 AFP: Bush: Iranian 'stalling shouldn't be allowed' 
13 UPI: Analysis: Iran 'may suspend enrichment'
14 Guardian Unlimited: Paranoia in Pyongyang 
15 Hankyoreh: Nuclear envoys from S. Korea, U.S. to meet in New York ne
16 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL] Breathing space   
17 BBC: US and Korea paper over the cracks
18 Asia Times: Korean-US: Swan song for an alliance
19 New York Times: Vow to Restart Korea Atom Talks - 
20 CNN.com - Talks 'still key to N Korea nukes' - 
21 Korea Times: Meeting Kim Dae-jung 
22 AFP: North Korea warns of breakdown in inter-Korean ties 
23 UPI: N. Korea blasts South over U.S. summit
24 RIA Novosti: Russia does not share U.S. unilateral methods - Lavrov
25 AFP: US-Russia agreement on disposal of weapons-grade plutonium -
26 [NYTr] 5 Former Soviet Republics Give Up Nukes - Bush Objects!
27 AFP: EU presidency seeks to renew Middle East peace process - 
28 UPI: Russia ratifies treaty against nukes
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
29 US: [NukeNet] Nuke plant contractor accused of coverup
30 US: WMAR-TV/DT: Constellation lays off 80 nuclear plant workers in M
31 US: heraldsun.com: Group to host safety briefing 
32 US: NRC: NRC Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste to Meet in Rockvill
33 US: Beacon Journal: Agency alleges cover-up at plant
34 Reuters: Hitachi now sees loss on turbine repairs, HDDs
35 US: NRC: NRC Terminates Construction Permits for Unfinished Bellefon
36 US: Platts: Senators warn plan could distract NRC from licensing rea
37 Telugu Portal: Thermal corporation looking for nuclear power site 
38 Telugu Portal: India nuclear pact 'a big deal' for US -
39 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Coalition criticizes VY 'uprate' testing
40 US: NRC: In the Matter of Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov; Order Prohibiting
41 US: NRC: Notice of Renewal of Facility Operating License No. R-110; 
42 US: NRC: Draft Regulatory Guide and Associated Standard Review Plan:
43 AFP: Japan's Hitachi faces heavy losses due to nuclear turbine probl
44 US: TomPaine.com: Nuclear Deficits
45 US: Vermont Guardian: Mums the word
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
46 US: Dallas Morning News: Stolen truck containing hazardous materials
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
47 US: [NYTr] Glow, River, Glow: Rad Leaks at Hanford
48 [NYTr] DU's lethal legacy in the Middle East
49 JCN: Hayakawa and JAEA Launch Nuclear Radiation-resistant Rubber
50 US: IEER: Tritium Memo
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
51 US: St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Plan for radioactive soil draws protest
52 US: Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Western U.S. in midst of uranium boo
53 US: Bradenton Herald: Retail construction in Tallevast gets initial 
54 US: ForUm: Ukraine has set a place for nuclear waste disposal
55 US: Deseret News: Thank Bishop for PFS denial
56 reviewjournal.com: Yucca arguments debated
57 US: Olympian: Residents vexed by groundwater pollution west of Spoka
58 US: Morris Daily Herald: Exelon to resume discharges of tritium
59 US: AU ABC: Pepinnini sees strong interest in uranium ventures. 
60 US: UPI: Analysis: Nuclear waste debate gets looks
61 Times and star: Concerns over nuke waste dumping 
62 Times and Star: Start date for building recycling plant
63 Times and Star: US group bids for BNG
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
64 Hanford News: Hanford vit plant hits work milestone
65 New Mexico Business Weekly: Sandia Labs broadens its horizons - 
66 Albuquerque Tribune: White Sands may host bunker-buster bomb test
67 CounterPunch: Jeffrey St. Clair: Glow, River, Glow
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 Guardian Unlimited: Opposition: Iran Using Laser Enrichment
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Friday September 15, 2006 1:31 AM

AP Photo VIE108 

By EDITH M. LEDERER 

Associated Press Writer 

NEW YORK (AP) - Iran has secretly revived a program to enrich
uranium using laser technology, reportedly with favorable
results, an Iranian opposition figure said Thursday citing
information from members of the resistance inside the country. 

Alireza Jafarzadeh said information about the laser enrichment
program at Lashkar Ab'ad, about 15 miles northwest of Tehran,
came from the same sources that led to his revelation in May
2003 that Iran had a clandestine nuclear program. 

There was no independent confirmation of the latest information
and Iran's U.N. Mission called the allegation ``baseless and
unfounded.'' 

Jafarzadeh, who heads the Washington-based Strategic Policy
Consulting think tank, is credited with having aired Iranian
military secrets in the past. But U.S. officials considered some
of his past assertions inaccurate. 

Jafarzadeh urged the International Atomic Energy Agency to
immediately send U.N. nuclear inspectors to Lashkar Ab'ad and
demand access to all areas, including a new 5,000-square foot
hall in a large garden where he said secret laser enrichment
activities are being conducted. 

``We've only now been sent a copy of this report,'' said IAEA
spokeswoman Melissa Fleming, ``and like all information that we
receive, we must take the time to check it against all our
information in order to decide whether it is worth following
up.'' 

The U.N. has demanded Iran halt uranium enrichment. 

Jafarzadeh said there are two ways to separate uranium isotopes
and isolate U235 which can be enriched. The most common way is
using centrifuges while laser technology is an experimental
method, he said. 

Jafarzadeh said Iran's decision to revive its laser enrichment
program, which is still at experimental levels, shows Iran wants
``to use every possibility that is available to them to rush to
the bomb.'' 

The laser enrichment is being conducted under the guise of a
front company called Paya Partov whose board is chaired by Reza
Aqazadeh, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran,
Jafarzadeh said. Its advisers include Iran's leading experts on
laser enrichment, he said. 

Contrary to Iran's claim that it is complying with its
obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,
Jafarzadeh said, ``once again the information indicates that
this is absolutely not the case.'' 

``The information I've gotten from my sources today suggests
that Iran is heavily involved in laser enrichment program,
something Iran has told the IAEA that they have abandoned,'' he
told a news conference. 

Jafarzadeh has worked for the political wing of the Mujahedin
Khalq, an Iranian opposition group that Washington and the
European Union list as a terrorist organization. 

Iran's U.N. Mission countered in a statement, saying: ``It is
also a well-known fact that at any stage that the international
community is witnessing a step forward in the Iranian peaceful
nuclear program, this terrorist group and collaborator of Saddam
Hussein tries its best to hamper the progress.'' 

The reference to the deposed Iraqi leader stems from Saddam
allowing the Mujahedin Khalq to operate bases in Iraq. 

Jafarzadeh said laser technology is an experimental method of
separating uranium that can be enriched from that which cannot,
a process that normally is done using centrifuges. 

Jafarzadeh said Iran's decision to revive its laser enrichment
program, which is still ``at experimental levels shows that Iran
want ``to use every possibility that is available to them to
rush to the bomb.'' 	 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 2 Guardian Unlimited: U.S.-Iran Standoff Stresses Saudi Arabia
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Friday September 15, 2006 11:31 AM

By DONNA ABU-NASR 

Associated Press Writer 

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - America's standoff with Iran is a
source of much stress here - with Saudi Arabia worried about
Iran's nuclear intentions but also fearful of the prospect of
strong U.S. action. 

Although the kingdom opposes any attempt by Tehran to develop
nuclear weapons, it fears military action against Iran would be
devastating for the Gulf region. 

Analysts say that if attacked, Iran would retaliate against U.S.
interests in the region, and Saudi Arabia's oil installations
across the Gulf are the biggest and most important. 

The kingdom is the world's largest oil producer and any
disruption in its exports would seriously affect supplies to the
United States and cause oil prices to soar. 

Saudi Arabia also believes a U.S. attack on Iran would damage
the region's economy and exacerbate tensions over Islamic
militant terrorism and the sectarian violence in Iraq. 

``Saudi Arabia doesn't want to make an enemy out of Iran for
America's sake,'' said Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi who hosts a
talk show at Dubai TV. ``Iran is a neighbor and geography is
more permanent than political stands.'' 

Khaled al-Maeena, editor of the English-language Arab News
daily, said a stiff stance by Saudi Arabia over the nuclear
impasse would only further radicalize Iran. 

Publicly, the kingdom says it believes Iran's nuclear activities
are peaceful, as Tehran insists. Iran has sent several envoys on
both open and secret trips to reassure Saudi leaders that its
nuclear activities are not directed against the kingdom or the
Gulf, according to Western diplomats and analysts. 

Western nations suspect Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons. In a
January interview, Foreign Minister Prince Saud made clear Saudi
Arabia would oppose any such ambitions. 

In return for its understanding on the nuclear issue, Saudi
Arabia hopes for Iranian understanding in Iraq, where Tehran has
great influence over the majority Shiites, al-Shirian said.
Saudi Arabia - eager for stability in neighboring Iraq - wants
Sunnis to have a greater say in the country they ruled under
Saddam Hussein. 

Some Saudis, however, are skeptical of Iran's reassurances. 

``You can't trust anyone sitting with you over dinner with a
pistol on the table,'' said Abdul-Rahman al-Rashed, a Saudi who
heads the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV. ``There's a view here that
Iran ... has only one target: Saudi Arabia and the rest of the
Gulf.'' 

The recent fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed
Hezbollah militia in Lebanon only worsened tensions between the
Middle East's two powerhouses. 

Saudi Arabia, which has considerable influence in Lebanon,
publicly criticized Hezbollah for provoking Israel's devastating
bombardment of Lebanon by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers in
July. 

The relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia has long been
uneasy, especially after the fiery spiritual leader Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini deposed Iran's shah in 1979 and established an
Islamic republic. 

The Islamic revolution in mostly Shiite Iran alarmed the Sunni
Muslim Saudi leadership, which feared it would be next to fall. 

Saudi Arabia sided with Baghdad in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war,
and Riyadh and Tehran were openly hostile to each other at the
height of the conflict. 

Iran frequently called on Muslims to overthrow the Saudi ruling
family, seize its oil wealth and strip it of its role as
guardian of Islamic holy places. The kingdom accused Tehran of
trying to undermine its security, and Saudi officials denounced
the Iranian regime as a ``group of terrorists.'' 

Iran attacked merchant ships in the Gulf, many of them owned by
or trading with Saudi Arabia. The kingdom broke off relations
with Iran in 1988, a few months after Iranian pilgrims rioted in
the Saudi holy Muslim city of Mecca. 

But distrust between the two countries eased after Khomeini's
death in 1989, and diplomatic relations were restored shortly
after the 1991 Gulf War. 

Saudi King Abdullah worked hard to mend ties even before he
became monarch last year. 

Al-Shirian recounted an incident a few years ago in which a
cleric in Saudi's strict Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam denounced
Shiites during a sermon in the holy city of Medina while former
Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani prayed there. Abdullah,
then crown prince, offered his apologies to Rafsanjani and
detained the cleric, al-Shirian said. 

For now, the kingdom is likely to maintain its cautious position
in the nuclear standoff as it works to keep overall ties stable. 

``There is extremism in some religious stands,'' al-Shirian
said. ``But they don't necessarily reflect the political
stands,'' al-Shirian said. 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 3 Guardian Unlimited: IAEA says Congress report on Iran's nuclear 
capacity is erroneous and misleading
 
Dan Glaister in Los Angeles

Friday September 15, 2006 The Guardian             

The International Atomic Energy Agency's headquarters in Vienna.
Photograph: AFP
   
 The UN's nuclear watchdog has attacked the US Congress for what
it termed an "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated" report
on Iran's nuclear programme.

In a letter to the Republican chairman of the House of
Representatives' intelligence committee, a senior director of
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the report
was "incorrect" in its assessment that Iran had made
weapons-grade uranium at a site inspected by the agency.
Instead, the letter said, the facility had produced only small
amounts of uranium, which were below the level necessary for
weapons.
                                                                                        Article continues
The letter, leaked to the Washington Post, also criticised the 
report for making the "outrageous and dishonest" claim that a 
senior inspector was removed "for concluding that the purpose of 
Iran's nuclear programme is to construct weapons".

While the IAEA noted five major errors in the report,
intelligence officials told the Washington Post that it
contained a dozen assertions that were either wrong or
impossible to substantiate.

The House report, under the chairmanship of the Michigan
Republican Peter Hoekstra, was released on August 23. It was not
voted on or discussed by the full bipartisan committee but it
was reviewed by the office of John Negroponte, the director of
national intelligence, before being released by Republican
members of the committee.

Jane Harman, the Democrat vice-chairwoman of the committee, told
colleagues in an email that the report "took a number of
analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire -
and the intelligence community's assessments as more certain -
than they are."

The report, titled Recognising Iran as a Strategic Threat, was
written by Fredrick Fleitz, a CIA operative on secondment to the
US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton. Mr Fleitz and Mr Bolton
were involved in constructing the arguments in favour of the
March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Mr Fleitz is writing a report about
North Korea for Mr Hoekstra's committee.

The row over the Iran report is reminiscent of the disputes
between the IAEA, its chief Mohamed ElBaradei and the Bush
administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. "This is
like pre-war Iraq all over again," David Albright, a former
nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based
Institute for Science and International Security, told the Post.

Relations between the White House and the IAEA almost collapsed
when the agency revealed that the administration had based some
of its claims about Iraq's alleged WMD programme on forged
documents. The White House subsequently led an unsuccessful
campaign to prevent Mr ElBaradei's re-election last year.

The IAEA took "strong exception" to the report's assertion that
Mr ElBaradei had removed an agency inspector, Chris Charlier,
for breaking an "unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials
from telling the whole truth about the Iranian nuclear
programme". He was removed at the behest of the Iran's chief
nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, the letter says, under the
terms of Tehran's agreement to allow inspectors into the
country. The letter points out that this is routine and that
Iran has accepted the presence of more than 200 IAEA inspectors.
Mr Charlier remains head of the IAEA's Iran sanctions section.
 
[UP] 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 4 AFP: Iranian president claims US is the nuclear threat

 Fri Sep 15, 5:56 PM ET 		 	 

HAVANA (AFP) - Iran" /> 's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed 
the United States was the real nuclear threat and reiterated his 
insistence Tehran's nuclear atomic program had peaceful aims. 

 "Why should people live under the nuclear threat of the United
States?" he asked at a summit of the 118-strong Non-Aligned
Movement in Havana. 

"What is the UN Security Council waiting for to react to those
threats?" 

He urged his counterparts to help "counter attempts to prevent
Iran from developing its peaceful nuclear activity." 

The United States is pushing for sanctions against Iran to force
Tehran to stop producing enriched uranium, which can be used
both for atomic energy and nuclear weapons. 

Ahmedinejad said Iran had clearly demonstrated US accusations
were unfounded and insisted that the United States, "knows our
country has fully collaborated with the International Atomic
Energy Agency" /> , which declared we were not in violation of
its norms." 

He also called for a thorough reform of the Security Council and
suggested the United States and Britain had no place on the
Council. 

"The United States, with their arrogance and power, and Britain,
how can those countries be represented and have a veto right?"
he asked in his address to the more than 55 heads of state and
government gathered for two days of talks in Havana. 

He claimed Washington used the Council "as a basis for imposing
its policies." 

"The Security Council with the presence of the superpowers, the
United States and Britain, has never promoted security in the
world," he said. 

He said that for decades the Council had failed to protect the
rights of the Palestinian people, and had done nothing for 30
days to end the recent Israeli "aggression" on Lebanon. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 5 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: US seeking pretexts to oppose IRI 

  2006/09/15   

Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel said in Bishkek on
Thursday that America keeps seeking pretexts to oppose Iran and
that its current excuse is the country's nuclear issue. 

He made the remarks while speaking to reporters at a joint press
conference with his Kyrgyz counterpart Marat Sultanov. 

"The America has recently admitted that its double standards on
Iran's access to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is
justifiable, which shows that its opposition is a mere pretext,"
he said. 

Turning to several bills on use of nuclear energy for peaceful
purposes, which have so far been ratified by Majlis, he said
that Iran's parliament has underlined the nation's inalienable
right to such a right. 

"Iran has declared its stance and readiness to hold a debate on
its nuclear issue, but the American officials try to avoid it,"
he added. 

For his part, addressing reporters, Sultanov urged the need for
increasing trade exchange between the two countries and said
that the favorable potentials of both sides should be used to
upgrade mutual relations in the sector. 

Turning to the fact that in the first half of the current year
trade exchanges between Iran and Kyrgyzstan rose two folds
compared to that of the past year, he said that this proves the
growing trend of bilateral relations in the field. 

The Kyrgyz speaker said that his country's parliament will
support any type of economic cooperation with Iran. 

mk   

  Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran 
Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. 
E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir     
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 6 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Double standards not tolerable - Soltanieh 

  2006/09/15   
  
IRI's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Ali-Asghar Soltanieh said the international community is
carefully monitoring the developments in this historical
juncture.
 
He made the remark while addressing the IAEA board of governors
at the board's meeting on Thursday.
 
"In this regard, the serious concern is not the nuclear issue of
IRI but the deprivation of an NPT member state of its
inalienable right to nuclear technology and energy for peaceful
purposes. This is an unprecedented move and model which may
apply to other countries in future," he said.
 
He noted that the world is witnessing harsh measures against an
NPT member, while another party which is not even a member to
NPT, namely the Zionist regime, is free from any inspection and
is not being questioned by the board of governors.
 
"It is even being rewarded for rejecting NPT and non-compliance
with over 25 resolutions of the United Nations Security Council
as well as the IAEA general conference. This double standard and
discrimination cannot be tolerated any more," said the official.
 
Soltanieh said the other serious concern is the credibility and
integrity of the IAEA as the sole legal and technical competent
international authority for nuclear inspection, which has been
jeopardized by the involvement of the United Nations Security
Council in the issue.
 
"In conclusion we expect the IAEA member states to use this
unique opportunity to pursue the following course of actions at
this historical juncture. Return the nuclear dossier of IRI, in
full, to the IAEA's framework, where it actually should be
examined. Encourage the countries involved in the case to take
IRI's response to the above-mentioned package into their serious
consideration," he added.
 
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     
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 7 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IRI takes over G-15 presidency 

  2006/09/15   
  
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said in Cuba Thursday that
the G-15 could play an influential role at regional and global
economic and political arenas due to its strong potential.
 
Ahmadinejad's remarks came during an address to the meeting of
18 developing countries (G-15) which was held in parallel to the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) gathering on Thursday.
 
As Algeria's rotating chairmanship ended, Iran took the group's
new rotating presidency.
 
In his address to the leaders and heads of state of 18
developing countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America,
Ahmadinejad said, "Iran opposes any form of unilateralism and
supports a multi-polar world." 

He expressed Tehran's readiness to have a friendly cooperation
with other countries on the basis of massive and effective
economic cooperation.
 
Referring to the G-15 member states' large natural resources and
their strong capabilities, the President regretted that the
group has not found its proper status yet at the regional and
international arenas.
 
Unfortunately, added President Ahmadinejad, "some countries are
putting obstacles" in the way of technological and scientific
progress in order to keep developing countries dependent and
"exert political pressure." 

Ahmadinejad promised as the new chairman of the G-15, Iran would
make all necessary efforts to promote the group's status and
help it achieve its goals.
 
mk   

  Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran 
Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. 
E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir     
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 8 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: IAEA rejects US false report over IRI 

  2006/09/15   
  
    
  11:52:33 Þ.Ù 
International Atomic Energy Agency, (IAEA) criticized a false
report by American congress for over the Islamic Republic of
Iran's nuclear peaceful program, Aljezeera TV network reported
Thursday.
 
IRI's Ambassador to IAEA, Aliasghar Soltaniyeh said that America
is trying to poison the positive environment of talks between
Iran and Europe through baseless allegations. 

The IAEA has announced several times that there has not been any
deviation in Iran's nuclear activities. 

mk   

  
  Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran 
Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. 
E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir     
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 9 AFP: Bush warns Iran, scolds UN on Darfur

 by Olivier Knox Fri Sep 15, 6:41 PM ET 		 	 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush" /> said he would 
push his hard line on Iran" /> next week at the United Nations" 
/> , and scolded the world body for its inaction on Sudan's 
violence-wracked Darfur region. 

 Bush, who will address the UN General Assembly in New York on
Tuesday, said he liked UN chief Kofi Annan" /> personally but
warned that that many Americans were wary of the United Nations
and that he agreed when it came to Sudan. 

"I'm frustrated with the United Nations in regards to Darfur,"
the US president said in a wide-ranging 58-minute press
conference in the White House Rose Garden. "The United Nations
hasn't acted." 

The UN Security Council last month approved the deployment of a
20,000 UN force in Darfur to replace an African Union force,
whose mandate runs out on September 30. But the Sudanese
government has refused to give its blessing. 

"I'd like to see more robust United Nations action. What you'll
hear is, 'Well, the government of Sudan must invite the United
Nations in for us to act.' Well, there are other alternatives,
like passing a resolution saying, 'We're coming in with a UN
force in order to save lives,'" he suggested. 

Amid European optimism that talks with Iran are making progress
towards defusing the standoff over its nuclear weapons, Bush
warned US partners not to take pressure off Tehran, which he
suggested was playing for time. 

"My concern is that, you know, they'll stall; they'll try to
wait us out," he said. "So part of my objective in New York is
to remind people that's stalling shouldn't be allowed." 

Asked whether he would consider meeting with Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the UN sidelines, Bush replied sternly:
"No, I'm not going to meet with him." 

"I have made it clear to the Iranian regime that we will sit
down with the Iranians once they verifiably suspend their
enrichment program, and I meant what I said," the US president
said. 

Bush denied that there was now a civil war in Iraq" /> , where
nearly 2,700 US troops have been killed and many more wounded,
and rejected a US intelligence report of a dire picture of
al-Anbar province. 

US generals and Iraqi leaders "just don't agree with the
hypothesis it is a civil war," he said, adding that "this
business about 'al-Anbar is lost' is just not the case. That's
not what our commanders think." 

That was a direct response to a recent US Marines intelligence
assessment that reportedly declared prospects for securing Anbar
"dim" and warned "there is almost nothing the US military can
do" to improve the situation. 

The president's comments came with less than two months before
November 7 legislative elections, at a time when many of his
Republicans fear the unpopular war in Iraq could cost them
dearly at the polls. 

Bush used his opening statement to mount a forceful defense of
some controversial strategies in the global war on terrorism,
including warrantless wiretapping of Americans, secret CIA" />
prisons, military tribunals for terrorism suspects, and harsh
interrogation tactics some call torture. 

Bush warned the US Congress that "time is running out" for
lawmakers to pass legislation safeguarding such practices, which
he called vital to saving US lives and preventing attacks like
the September 11, 2001 strikes. 

He grew visibly annoyed when asked whether former US secretary
of state Colin Powell" /> was right to warn that "the world is
beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against
terrorism." 

"It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison
between the behavior of the United States of America and the
action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and
children," said Bush. 

On another front, he rejected charges that his administration
has not done enough to catch Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin
Laden" /> as an "urban myth" fueled by political ambitions. 

"We have been on the hunt, and we'll stay on the hunt until we
bring him to justice," said Bush. 

But he acknowledged telling a conservative journalist earlier
this week that he would not send "thousands of troops" into the
remote region of the Pakistan border with Afghanistan" /> ,
where bin Laden is thought to be hiding. 

"If he is in Pakistan," said Bush, "Pakistan's a sovereign
nation. In order for us to send thousands of troops into a
sovereign nation, we've got to be invited by the government of
Pakistan." 	 		 			
					 						Recommend It: 						Not at All 						Somewhat
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
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 10 AFP: 'Healthy distrust' as EU ministers discuss Iran's nuclear ambitions 

 Fri Sep 15, 6:24 AM ET 		 	 

BRUSSELS (AFP) - Iran" /> 's stance over its nuclear ambitions 
should be taken with a healthy dose of mistrust, Dutch Foreign 
Minister Ben Bot has warned, ahead of a day of talks with his 24 
EU counterparts. 

 Iran and the Middle East peace process were at the top of the
agenda Friday as the foreign ministers gathered for their talks
in Brussels, despite the cancellation of a key EU-Iran meeting
the previous day. 

"I think healthy distrust is the best recipe here," Bot told
reporters. 

The bloc is maintaining its line of "dialogue and firmness" on
the nuclear issue although the planned meeting between EU
foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Iranian negotiator Ali
Larijani was scrapped, Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean
Asselborn said. 

"Nothing is lost," he added as he arrived for the meeting. 

"To talk of sanctions (against Iran) is easy but it's not the
solution, we must persuade the Iranians to renew the dialogue
with us," he said. 

The EU foreign ministers were to be briefed over lunch by Solana
on his contacts with Larijani which he described as
"constructive" after the two men met in Vienna last weekend. 

The pair had been due to meet again on Thursday, but those talks
were postponed without a new date announced and with no
explanation. 

The United States acknowledged Thursday that it will face tough
resistance from some of its key allies as it presses for UN
sanctions against Iran over its suspect nuclear program. 

Iran's refusal to comply with UN demands that it suspend uranium
enrichment activities some fear could produce nuclear weapons is
set to feature high on the agenda when world leaders gather in
New York next week for the UN General Assembly. 

US officials have for weeks been expressing strong confidence
that the permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China,
France, Russia and the United States -- will swiftly reach
agreement on political and economic sanctions designed to force
Tehran to abandon its enrichment program. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 11 AFP: EU's Solana upbeat about talks with Iran 

 by Catherine Triomphe Fri Sep 15, 2:22 PM ET 		 	 

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The European Union" /> European Union's foreign 
policy chief hailed Tehran's unprecedented level of engagement in 
the bid to settle the international row over Iran" /> Iran's 
nuclear weapons program. 

 "We are really making progress," Javier Solana told journalists
after discussing Iran's atomic ambitions with EU foreign
ministers. 

"Never before have we had a level of engagement and a level of
discussion of issues that are as difficult as we are having
now," he added. 

His optimism appeared at odds with United States efforts to
impose sanctions on Tehran within weeks for failing to suspend
its nuclear program, which Washington and others fear is aimed
at developing nuclear bombs. Tehran denies the claim, saying its
sole aim is to create a civilian nuclear power system. 

Iran, along with the Middle East peace process, was at the top
of the agenda when the EU foreign ministers gathered for a day
of talks here, despite the cancellation of a key EU-Iran meeting
the previous day. 

The 25-nation bloc is maintaining its line of "dialogue and
firmness" on the nuclear issue although the planned meeting
between Solana and Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani was scrapped,
Luxembourg's foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, said. 

The postponed meeting will take place in the coming days,
according to a senior nuclear official in Tehran. 

Solana confirmed the meeting would take place soon but said no
new date had been fixed. 

And he urged for the momentum created by his talks with Larijani
at the weekend in Vienna to be maintained. 

"Of course I cannot guarantee that will be the case," he added. 

Asked why the midweek meeting was cancelled, the EU's foreign
affairs supremo hinted at rifts within the Iranian camp. 

Solana is negotiating with the Iranians in the name of six major
powers -- the five permanent members of the United Nations" />
United NationsSecurity Council plus Germany -- to encourage
Tehran to accept political and economic incentives in return for
suspending sensitive nuclear work or else risk UN sanctions. 

He did not comment on information circulating in diplomatic
circles that Larijani proposed in Vienna that Iran suspend
uranium enrichment for two months in return for an end to UN
Security Council deliberations on the subject. 

Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot, attending the Brussels talks,
sounded more sceptical than Solana on the Iran issue. 

"I think healthy distrust is the best recipe here," Bot told
reporters. 

The United States acknowledged on Thursday that it will face
tough resistance from some of its key allies in pressing for UN
sanctions against Iran. 

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack predicted the
process of trying to hammer out a sanctions package with the
other Security Council members "would take weeks." 

This is a far less ambitious timetable than put forward earlier
by US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who said a deal
would be reached in September. 

But McCormack continued to express confidence that Washington's
allies would ultimately back the sanctions foreshadowed in their
earlier UN resolution. 

Solana downplayed any difference in stance with Washington,
stressing that he represented both the US and the EU on the
matter as representative for the six major powers. 

Iran's refusal to comply with UN demands is set to feature high
on the agenda when world leaders gather in New York next week
for the UN General Assembly. 

US officials have for weeks been expressing strong confidence
that the permanent Security Council members -- Britain, China,
France, Russia and the United States -- will swiftly reach
agreement on political and economic sanctions designed to force
Tehran to abandon its uranium enrichment programme. 

But the EU is maintaining its line of "dialogue and firmness" on
the nuclear issue, Luxembourg's Asselborn said. 

"To talk of sanctions (against Iran) is easy but it's not the
solution. We must persuade the Iranians to renew the dialogue
with us," he said. 	 		 			

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 12 AFP: Bush: Iranian 'stalling shouldn't be allowed' 

 Fri Sep 15, 12:08 PM ET 		 	 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush" /> President 
George W. Bushhas said that he would use a United Nations" /> 
United Nationsmeeting next week to make clear to Iran" /> 
Iranthat it should not try to "stall" negotiations over its 
nuclear programs. 
    
 "Part of my objective in New York is to remind people that
stalling shouldn't be allowed," Bush said at a press conference
Friday days before he heads to UN headquarters and two months
before key US legislative elections. 

"In other words, we need to move the process, and they (the
Iranians) need to understand we're firm in our commitment and
that if they try to drag their feet or, you know, get us to look
the other way, that we won't do that," he said. 

"We are firmly committed in our desire to send a common signal
to the Iranian regime," over what the West fears is a nuclear
weapons program, the US president said. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 13 UPI: Analysis: Iran 'may suspend enrichment'
     
United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 

        9/15/2006 2:36:00 PM -0400

 By HANNAH K. STRANGE UPI Correspondent

LONDON, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- Iran has told the European Union it
will consider suspending its uranium enrichment activities to
allow for formal negotiations over its nuclear programs, the
French government confirmed Friday. EU foreign policy chief
Javier Solana said talks were "really making progress," but his
assessment is at odds with that of the United States, which
earlier dismissed the "alleged Iranian offer." 

"Iran... has accepted to talk about the question of suspension.
That for us is a positive development," Government Spokesman
Jean-Baptiste Mattei told a Paris news briefing. 

"Like you, I see that there are a number of rumblings which are
interesting, notably the fact that Iran has apparently accepted
to discuss the question of suspension," he added. 

The developments were announced following a Vienna meeting
between Solana and Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani
last weekend. Speaking to journalists after briefing EU foreign
ministers in Brussels Friday, Solana said: "I think I can say
honestly that we're making progress. It doesn't mean that
everything has been solved. That would be an exaggeration, but
we are really making progress." 

His officials and Iranian officials were meeting every day to
try and resolve outstanding issues, he added. 

Earlier, German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier told
reporters at the meeting that the Solana-Larijani talks had
apparently started Iran on "a process of intensive political
thinking" which could result in new moves from Tehran. 

Iran failed to comply with an Aug. 31 U.N. Security Council
deadline to suspend its enrichment program, a precondition set
by France, Britain, Germany, Russia, the United States and China
for negotiations on a package of economic and other incentives
aimed at persuading the Islamic Republic to abandon its
production of nuclear fuel. 

Tehran insists its nuclear programs are for peaceful energy
purposes only, but the United States and some other Western
nations have accused it of trying to develop a nuclear weapon. 

It is understood that a two-month suspension is being discussed,
but that Iran is reluctant to implement it before the
commencement of talks. 

However Solana indicated that such reticence could be overcome.
"We will not start negotiating formally with activity on
enrichment. That is understood by the Iranians," he said. 

Solana's optimism contrasts with the skepticism of the United
States, which fears Iran is simply stalling in order to ward off
Security Council sanctions. 

U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey Tuesday brushed
aside reports of "some alleged Iranian offer." 

"There's been no change in the Iranian position, meaning they
have not agreed to suspend uranium enrichment activities for any
length of time that I'm aware of," he said. 

The sharply differing approaches to the dispute were also
evident at a meeting of the 35-nation board of the International
Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna Tuesday. Diplomats from the
six-nation alliance abandoned attempts to issue a united
condemnation of Iran's stance after failing to agree on language
-- China and Russia reportedly refused to back the tough
rhetoric advocated by the United States, while Germany is also
understood to have harbored reservations. 

The depth of the split was reflected in the separate statements
delivered by the United States and Europe. While the latter
urged Iran to come to the table, Washington insisted it was time
to punish the Islamic Republic with sanctions. 

"We continue to extend an open hand to Iran," the European
statement said. If Iran agreed to temporarily halt enrichment,
it added, "we will ask to suspend action in the Security
Council." 

The three nations said that the meetings between Solana and
Larijani had "helped clarify some misunderstandings." 

"We support these ongoing efforts aimed at convincing Iran to
comply with its international obligations, while paving the way
for a diplomatic solution," the statement said 

But the U.S. chief delegate to the IAEA, Gregory L. Schulte,
accused Iran of "a history of deception, lack of transparency,
provocative behavior and disregard for its international
obligations." 

"The time has come for the Security Council to back
international diplomacy with international sanctions," he
insisted. 

Referring to Iran's reported willingness to consider a
suspension, Schulte continued: "We are interested in more than
words. We are interested in action." 

The United States intends to push for sanctions at a special
session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week. But
China and Russia, both Security Council veto-holders with
interests in Iran's oil and nuclear industries respectively,
have insisted repeatedly they will not endorse such a move. 

Meanwhile European nations are reluctant to commit to any course
of action that could ultimately lead to the use of force, which
would be impossible to sell politically. In the wake of the
Iraqi WMD affair, Europeans are deeply skeptical of the motives
and trustworthiness of the U.S. administration in matters of
foreign affairs. Such suspicions have only been compounded by
the IAEA's condemnation this week of a U.S. report on Iran as
"outrageous and dishonest." 

Even if Iran agrees to suspend enrichment, questions
nevertheless remain as to whether the six nation alliance can
agree on an incentive package that Tehran would find acceptable.
Iran has requested assurances on its security, which the United
States has so far resisted. 

Therefore, though Iran may be close to meeting the enrichment
demand, the cracks in the six nation alliance mean a resolution
to the dispute is as distant as ever.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 14 Guardian Unlimited: Paranoia in Pyongyang 

Comment is free

Simon Tisdall Friday September 15, 2006 The Guardian             

North Korea's political paranoia spilled into the open this week
when the isolated regime accused the US of plotting a nuclear
strike. The state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said a
"sub-critical" underground nuclear test in Nevada last month was
part of Washington's efforts to develop new nuclear weapons.
"The US is perfecting a nuclear war plan after listing our and
other countries as targets for its pre-emptive nuclear attack,"
it said.

An American assault is not remotely on the cards. But North
Korea's clamour reflects more than its leadership's persecution
complex. In Seoul the claim was read as possible evidence that
the North is preparing to justify an imminent nuclear test of
its own. South Korean officials have said Pyongyang could
conduct a test, or repeat July's destabilising Sea of Japan
missile launches, at any time. Not coincidentally, President Roh
Moo-hyun was in Washington yesterday arguing for a more
"flexible" US line.

Pyongyang escaped binding sanctions, proposed by Japan, after
the July launches when China diluted a condemnatory UN
resolution. But it failed in its apparent aim of scaring the US
into relaxing financial sanctions or offering improved,
Iran-style incentives for good behaviour. Now analysts suggest
it may be about to try again.

The US says it would view a North Korean nuclear test as "very
provocative", while the reaction in Japan, the only country to
experience atom bomb attacks, could be explosive. But with the
six-party nuclear talks deadlocked for almost a year, and
differences in approach evident between the US, South Korea,
Japan and China, the mechanisms for avoiding another
confrontation are lacking.

"The key has got be some kind of bilateral deal between North
Korea and the US that everyone else can buy into," said
Christopher Hughes, a regional expert at the University of
Warwick. "An agreement with the US is what the North Koreans
have always wanted. The US is searching for a way to reach them
while stopping Japan overplaying its hand."

But Machiavellian manoeuvring by Pyongyang, diplomatic
divergences and distrust continue to bedevil such efforts. When
Christopher Hill, the US chief negotiator, proposed a one-on-one
meeting with his North Korean counterpart last week he was
reportedly rebuffed. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-il, North Korea's
leader, is rumoured to be on the point of visiting China for
consultations. Japanese officials play down the crisis while
admitting that "favourable signs" from North Korea are lacking.

A senior diplomat said the likely appointment this month of a
conservative, Shinzo Abe, to replace Junichiro Koizumi as
Japan's prime minister would not change Tokyo's approach. "We
will maintain our current policy of dialogue and pressure. We
want talks to resume. We also want full implementation of UN
resolution 1695 [that requires countries to halt WMD or
missile-related technology transfers to North Korea]," the
diplomat said. Reports yesterday suggested Japan may impose
financial sanctions later this month, which North Korea says
would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

Describing Mr Abe as a "neonationalist, more hawkish than Mr
Koizumi", Dr Hughes predicted a tougher Japanese line on nuclear
weapons and on the dispute over Japanese abducted by North
Korea. Speaking yesterday, Mr Abe called for a more "assertive"
international role for Japan. But after fierce Sino-Japanese
frictions during the Koizumi era, Mr Abe would also face
pressure to improve relations with China, Dr Hughes said. So
partly to maintain his credibility with the right "he will
probably still be tempted to bash North Korea quite hard". And
that could be seen as provocation by the paranoiacs of
Pyongyang. 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006. Registered 
in England and Wales. No. 908396 Registered office: 164 
Deansgate, Manchester M60 2RR
*****************************************************************
 15 Hankyoreh: Nuclear envoys from S. Korea, U.S. to meet in New York next week
           
South Korea's chief nuclear envoy Chun Yung-woo will meet with 
his U.S. counterpart in New York next week to discuss detailed 
ways of persuading North Korea back to the six-way talks on its 
nuclear program, a government official said.
 
"Chun is scheduled to leave for New York next Tuesday, and meet 
with Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill on Thursday ," 
the official said, on condition of anonymity.
 
The Chun-Hill meeting follows up on an agreement at the 
just-ended summit between the leaders of the two countries in 
Washington.
 
On Thursday, President Roh Moo-hyun and President George W. Bush 
agreed to a "common and broad approach" for the resumption of the 
long-stalled multilateral negotiations to end the North's nuclear 
weapons program. 


Both leaders refused to go into details, saying that 
working-level consultations are still under way.
 
Roh's chief security advisor, Song Min-soon, later told the media 
that the two countries' lead delegates to the nuclear talks will 
meet next week.
 
Chun also plans to have a three-way meeting with Hill and Japan's 
nuclear envoy Kenichiro Sasae next weekend in New York, the 
official said.
 
Asked why New York was chosen as the venue, he cited the United 
Nations General Assembly meeting under way there, which will draw 
foreign ministers from member states. 

Seoul, Sept. 15 (Yonhap News)
 
© 2006 The Hankyoreh Media Company. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 16 Korea Herald: [EDITORIAL] Breathing space   
        
No new ideas on how to bring North Korea back to the stalled
six-party nuclear talks came out of a summit President Roh
Moo-hyun had with U.S. President George W. Bush. Nor did the two
leaders voice any differences on the issue serious enough to
threaten bilateral relations.

 Instead, the two leaders reaffirmed that Seoul and Washington
will seek a peaceful solution to the North Korean nuclear
threat. They also agreed the two sides will consult on specific
steps to be taken to restart the six-party talks.

 The agreement was no small achievement for South Korea, given
an earlier U.S. proposal to take tougher sanctions against
Pyongyang, which test-fired missiles, counterfeited U.S.
currency and is developing nuclear weapons.

 But the accord does not necessarily mean that South Korea and
the United States have completely ironed out their different
views on how to deal with the North Koreans. It has provided
nothing but breathing space, given that the differences may
surface any time.

 Bush said North Korea will benefit from dismantling its nuclear
weapons program. But it goes without saying that a peaceful
solution will also serve the best interests of all other parties
to the nuclear talks. That is why they have to strive to salvage
the moribund six-party talks and prevent North Korea from
conducting a nuclear test and declaring itself a nuclear weapons
state.

 No country other than China, North Korea's last major ally, can
play a more effective role in this regard. It is urged to push
all the levers it has in its possession to draw North Korea back
to the nuclear talks as soon as possible. 

For its part, the United States would do well to consider
engaging North Korea alone, which wishes to have direct talks
with Washington on financial sanctions.

2006.09.16
*****************************************************************
 17 BBC: US and Korea paper over the cracks
 
Last Updated: Friday, 15 September 2006
 
By Jonathan Beale BBC News, Washington   

[South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun with US President George 
Bush in the White House on Thursday]                           

The two leaders did their best not to let the differences show

When their brief media appearance together ended, President
George Bush turned to President Roh Moo-hyun and muttered: "Good
job!" 

Perhaps the remark showed relief that the two had managed to
sweep their differences under the carpet. 

Ahead of their White House meeting there were plenty of signs
that the relationship was under strain. 

The United States and South Korea's half century-old close
relationship had even been likened to going through the early
stages of a bitter divorce. 

President Roh himself had acknowledged that people in both
countries were "quite concerned" about the state of relations.
But somehow they managed to paper over the cracks. 

Carrot v stick 

The most obvious challenge was how to deal with North Korea. 

Seoul has been engaging with its communist neighbour -
increasing trade and aid. 

Some observers believe t mixed message has allowed Kim Jong-il 
the room to make mischief

But Washington has adopted the harsher policy of confrontation,
to stop North Korea from developing its nuclear weapons
programme. 

Some observers believe that mixed message has allowed North
Korean leader Kim Jong-il the room to make mischief. In July he
defied the world by test-firing a long-range missile which in
theory could reach the US mainland. 

In the end the missile disintegrated soon after take-off. 

But now, with North Korea threatening to carry out a nuclear
test, the two leaders have a more united message. 

Both restated their commitment to the stalled six-party talks. 

President Bush said that Kim Jong-il's continuing boycott of the
talks had "strengthened the alliance" of the US, South Korea,
China, Russia and Japan to "resolve this issue peacefully" -
that last word, at least, a reassurance to his South Korean
ally. 

Their real problem though is that North Korea shows little sign
that it is ready to return to the negotiating table. 

And Seoul and Washington still appear at odds over whether Kim
Jong-il should be given a carrot or a stick. 

Breathing space 

Differences also remain over the command of joint wartime forces
in South Korea. 

[US soldiers at Yongsan base in South Korea]                            

The US's sizeable military presence in S Korea is another touchy 
subject

President Roh would like to see the command handed over to South
Korea. 

But many in Washington and even in South Korea believe it would
send the wrong signal to Pyongyang if the US transferred command
or withdrew many of its 30,000 troops stationed in the country. 

President Bush kicked the issue into touch by saying that
"decisions about the placement of our troops and the size of our
troops will be made in consultation with the Korean government". 

Both gave the other some breathing space without resolving the
issue. 

So reports of the death of the US and South Korean alliance were
greatly exaggerated. 

But there is still plenty to bicker over in the years ahead. 		
*****************************************************************
 18 Asia Times: Korean-US: Swan song for an alliance
 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		
By Sung-Yoon Lee 

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's summit with President
George W Bush on Thursday is likely to go down in the annals of 
US-South Korea relations as an epoch-making event, but not quite 
in the way one might think. It may be the swan song of the 
US-South Korea alliance. 

Summits between world leaders at times define an era, as the 
indelible images of Franklin D Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and 
Josef Stalin seated together in a row in Yalta in 1945 (and in 
Tehran in 1943) remind us more than 60 years after the event. 

At other times summit handshakes can open up a new era, as did
US president Richard Nixon's with Mao Zedong in 1972. In most
instances, however, meetings between world leaders tend to be -
all the more when all is well in the bilateral relationship -
pleasant but in essence prosaic affairs. Out of the public
smiles, the toasts, and the overflowing bonhomie routinely come
less-than-momentous pronouncements by the two sides such as
"reaffirmation of the alliance". 

On its face, Roh's meeting with Bush was a routine, even
forgettable exercise in ordinary summit diplomacy. The two men
had already enjoyed five cordial if unmemorable meetings since
Roh's inauguration in 2003, and neither side issued a
press-stopping communique out of the scheduled hour-long
conversation followed by an obligatory luncheon. 

Nonetheless, Roh's visit may inadvertently prove to be a
defining moment for the US-South Korea alliance, presaging its
sunset, for beneath the public smiles and handshakes between the
two leaders and optimistic-sounding but inscrutable
pronouncements, such as seeking a "joint comprehensive approach"
to restarting the six-party talks, unmistakably flowed an
undercurrent of unfriendly distrust. 

The alliance has proved to be one of the most successful and
durable in the world. But today Roh wishes to destroy its
time-tested dynamics by wresting away from the United States
wartime operational control of the two countries' armed forces,
the result of which will be the complete and virtually
irreversible dismantlement of the US-ROK (Republic of Korea)
Combined Forces Command. 

This will set the stage, at the cost of broader US interests in
Northeast Asia and to the detriment of South Korea's security,
for the withdrawal of US troops from Korea. With an inter-Korean
summit pageantry of his own in mind, Roh has been offering North
Korean leader Kim Jong-il unconditional gifts throughout his
presidency: massive shipments of rice, fertilizer, and other
blandishments. Now it looks as if Roh is preparing to give the
Northern dictator the ultimate gift of evicting US troops from
Korean territory. 

President Roh believes he has little to lose by insisting on the
transfer of wartime operational control, which he pointedly
defined recently as the "essence of sovereignty for any nation".
A refusal would mean to Roh's supporters and an emotional South
Korean public - for whom the Northern threat has become a mere
abstraction - reaffirmation of US imperialism and bellicosity,
perhaps even "proof" of long-held suspicions that the United
States secretly wishes to draw South Korea into a costly war
with the North. 

A US consent would chalk up a milestone in Roh's oft-proclaimed
"self-reliant" foreign and defense policies, with the added
bonus of pleasing the North Korean regime by achieving on its
behalf one of its oldest and most important policy objectives.
Roh could peddle each scenario at home for political gains in
the time leading up to the South Korean presidential election in
December 2007. 

Strains in the alliance are not unprecedented. The United States
has long viewed South Korean leaders with skepticism when it
came to such matters as political liberalism in the country or
overzealousness on the part of Seoul's anti-North Korea policy.
Fear of being entrapped by South Korea into fighting a second
Korean War remained very much on the minds of US leaders
throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and even into the 1970s. 

On the other hand, despite misgivings, successive US presidents
in the end put up with Syngman Rhee's illiberal policies and
belligerence toward the North in the 1950s, Park Chung-hee's
coup d'etat in 1961 and iron-fisted rule for the next 18 years,
and, in more recent years, even Kim Dae-jung's hopelessly pious
courtship of the North Korean dictatorship. These South Korean
leaders were not perceived to be willfully challenging the vital
national interests of the United States. 

President Roh has proved to be different from his predecessors.
During his three and a half years in office, Roh has followed
through on his words with actions. True to his rhetoric, "So
what if I am anti-US?" or "Yes, my anti-US stance has been good
to me," Roh has unflinchingly and systematically aided the enemy
of the United States - and incontrovertibly the main enemy of
the US Forces in Korea (USFK) - the totalitarian North Korean
state that is bent on increasing its arsenal of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). 

Roh's offering to the North Korean regime of food, cash and
material is financing its buildup of WMD, with which the North
in turn threatens the the USFK, whose very purpose is to protect
Roh's South Korea from the North. Such a convoluted reality is
comprehensible only in the theater of the absurd. In the real
world of international politics - especially in light of
America's overarching post-September 11, 2001, policy of
fighting a "war on terror" and preventing the proliferation of
WMD - it is simply an unacceptable situation. 

At no other time in the history of the bilateral relationship
has a South Korean president with such audacity, and with such
success, manipulated for political gains anti-American
sentiments at home. It has been proved over the past few years
that a direct correlation exists between President Roh's anti-US
remarks and a spike in his approval ratings. While resistance or
hostility toward the United States was certainly not confined to
South Korea under President Roh, that the head of a key ally is
directly challenging vital US national interest is certainly a
highly unusual development. 

At the unceremonious meeting with Roh yesterday, during which
both leaders wore a weary look, President Bush gritted his teeth
and did his best to keep up the pretense that all was well. To
his credit, Bush avoided an open row, concealed the open fissure
in the alliance, and avoided an explicit endorsement or
rejection of any South Korean-proposed roadmap for the
dismantlement of the US-ROK Combined Forces Command. 

Keeping in mind that the issue is a potential trap for
instigating anti-US demonstrations leading up to South Korea's
presidential election in December next year, Bush simply intoned
that the matter should not become "a political issue". Bush even
deftly took a page out of the communist playbook of a
"hardliner/softliner" smokescreen, and simply told his guest
that South Korea should take up the matter with Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld. 

South Korean political spinners and optimists on both sides of
the Pacific will accentuate the common grounds that the two
nations share, such as the intention to jump-start the six-party
talks on North Korea's nuclear program, concluding a free-trade
agreement, and South Korea's support in Iraq. They may have only
the best intentions in mind, but to ignore the ringing of the
death knell is to echo Dr Pangloss's pontification to Candide on
the futility of saving Jacques as he is washed overboard in the
Bay of Lisbon: "The Bay of Lisbon had been formed expressly for
Jacques to drown in." 

To turn a blind eye to the state of the US-ROK alliance in its
present last breath is tantamount to musing, "The North Korean
nuclear crisis had been formed expressly to test the US-ROK
alliance. We should just ignore it and sail on." In other words,
it bears no real-life relevance to the crux of the problem,
which is that the alliance is predicated on the common threat of
North Korea. 

President Roh has come to Washington and gone, and the
dismantling of the alliance structure will proceed as planned in
the near term. 

Short on conviviality, solidarity or a meaningfully shared
vision for the future, the meeting's sole significance will lie
in its marking of the end of an era. Unless the South Korean
people are able to persuade Roh to change course abruptly or
vote into office in December 2007 a new leader with a far
greater appreciation for the alliance and the integrity not to
scuttle it for short-term political gain, the meeting on
Thursday between Bush and Roh will be remembered as the
definitive punctuation mark to a long and once special bilateral
relationship. 

Dr Sung-Yoon Lee is associate in research at the Korea
Institute, Harvard University, and a former professor at the
Fletcher School, Tufts University. 

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
																	 .)   															 														
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Online Ltd. Head Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook 
St., Kowloon, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:                                                                                                                
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110                                                                                          
*****************************************************************
 19 New York Times: Vow to Restart Korea Atom Talks - 

By BRIAN KNOWLTON International Herald

TribunePublished: September 15, 2006                     

WASHINGTON -- The United States and South Korea recommitted
themselves Thursday to restarting the stalled six-party talks on
the North Korean nuclear program, but a meeting between the
American and South Korean presidents apparently produced little
else. 

President George W. Bush, taking questions alongside President
Roh Moo Hyun, said that the North should understand that there
is still "clearly a better way forward" if it were to end a
nuclear program that analysts say has produced six to eight
nuclear weapons. 

Added Roh, "We are working very hard on restarting the six-party
talks." He told a reporter it was premature to suggest the talks
might fail. 

Bush said that the refusal of the North's leader, Kim Jong Il,
to cooperate had "really strengthened an alliance of five
nations who are determined to solve this issue peacefully but
recognize a threat" from the North Korean program. 

Bush's talk of a strengthened alliance aside, his relationship
with Roh long ago turned frosty. 

The American president is determined to squeeze the North with
every financial sanction possible until it gives up its nuclear
capacity and other illicit activities, or, some believe, until
it collapses. Roh, pursuing a more conciliatory strategy,
insists the only course is to coax the country out of its
isolation. 

In the weeks leading to the visit, Bush's aides had used a
United Nations Security Councilresolution, passed unanimously
after North Korea defiantly test-fired seven missiles in early
July, to prepare a list of banks it can press to cut ties with
North Korea. 

Roh has played down the missile launching as an
attention-grabbing temper tantrum by the North Koreans, and he
has resumed South Korean aid and investment to the country, in
hopes of preventing what his country fears would turn into
collapse or confrontation. 

Bush's aides had acknowledged that the gap with the Roh
government had grown so much in recent months - "as wide as the
Sea of Japan," one senior official said - that it would be
almost impossible to hide. 

The treatment accorded Roh contrasted sharply with the warm
embrace extended in June to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumiof
Japan. Koizumi got long meetings, a glittering dinner and a trip
to Graceland, the onetime mansion of Elvis Presley; Roh got an
hour in the Oval Office and a quick lunch. 

The strains in the alliance are so great that Mitchell Reiss,
director of policy planning at the State Department during part
of Bush's first term, wrote in an op-ed column in the Los
Angeles Times on Wednesday that the two leaders "should agree to
disagree on North Korea and move onward" rather than let the
issue erode the foundations of the alliance. 

Bush has a polite but distant relationship with Roh; their body
language Thursday appeared to bear that out. By agreement, no
joint statement was issued. 

Current and former White House aides said Bush believes Roh is
wedded to a doomed policy of appeasement toward a country that
runs prison camps and threatens its neighbors. Roh appears to
view Bush's approach as a dangerous failure. 

Speaking on Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Roh said
he was "quite aware" of the American concerns. But he said that
"the very fundamental basis of this alliance will not change." 

Roh authorized 3,000 troops for Iraq. But he was widely
criticized for the decision at home, where distrust of
Washington now runs deep. 

Further complicating Thursday's meetings was growing speculation
that North Korea may be preparing to conduct its first
underground nuclear test. 

A reporter asked the two presidents about negotiations for South
Korea to retake wartime command of its troops from the U.S.
forces stationed there since the Korean War. Control in
peacetime was transferred back in 1994. Control in wartime has
become a vexed issue. Conservatives say the handover should wait
until the North Korea nuclear issue is resolved. 

The presidents said negotiations were continuing. 
David E. Sanger of The New York Times contributed reporting.

Copyright 2006 
*****************************************************************
 20 CNN.com - Talks 'still key to N Korea nukes' - 

Sep 14, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. President George W. Bush and South
Korean President Roh Moo-hyun have reaffirmed their desire to
draw North Korea back into talks about its nuclear weapons
program, playing down their differences over exactly how to deal
with Pyongyang.

"We are at the working level of consulting very closely on this
issue, but we have not yet reached a conclusion, and this issue
is very complex," Roh told reporters in the Oval Office after a
meeting with Bush.

Since North Korea began boycotting the disarmament talks in
November, the reclusive country has sparked fears around the
world as reports circulated that it may be preparing to test a
nuclear bomb.

North Korea also defied international warnings and test-launched
seven missiles in July.

Some observers have suggested that mixed messages from
Washington and Seoul on how to solve the crisis have allowed
Pyongyang to augment its nuclear arsenal. The Bush
administration favors a hard-line approach, refusing to talk to
the North outside of six-nation talks. Roh, on the other hand,
has tried to engage Kim Jong Il's communist government.

Bush said the North Korean leader's refusal to come back to the
six-party talks had strengthened the alliance of the United
States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia -- the nations
facing North Korea in the suspended negotiations.

"If he were to verifiably get rid of his weapons programs, there
is clearly a better way forward," Bush said. "And that is the
message we've been sending to the North Korean government
through the six-party talks."

Roh echoed that. He said the countries were working hard to
restart the talks. 

"This is not the appropriate time to think about the possibility
of a failure of the six-party process," he said through an
interpreter.

When asked about further sanctions that might be imposed on
North Korea, Roh said that while his government did not call
such actions sanctions -- "we do not want to hurt the
inter-Korean relations" -- South Korea has suspended rice and
fertilizer aid to North Korea, "and this is, in fact, similar to
sanctions in its effect."

Asked to describe the incentive for getting North Korea back to
the stalled talks, Bush said: "The incentive is for Kim Jong Il
to understand there is a better way to improve the lives of his
people than being isolated -- that stability in the region is in
his interests."

Roh and Bush also discussed Seoul's desire to retake from the
United States wartime command of its troops. They also dealt
with the reshuffling of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.

Bush said the United States "is committed to the security of the
Korean Peninsula. Decisions about the placement of our troops
and the size of our troops will be made in consultation with the
South Korean government."

"We agreed that this is not a political issue," Roh said. "This
is an issue that will be discussed through the working-level
talks."

The leaders also talked about an ambitious U.S.-South Korean
free trade proposal which, if successful, would be the largest
for the United States since 1993. Roh, however, faces intense
pressure from South Korean farm and labor groups that fear the
agreement would cost jobs.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Thursday that both Bush and
Roh were hoping for a successful trade agreement.

Bush also said that Roh "strongly advocated the need for there
to be a visa waiver for the people of South Korea. I assured him
we will work together to see if we can't get this issue resolved
as quickly as possible."

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 21 Korea Times: Meeting Kim Dae-jung 

Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Opinion   

By Sandip Kumar Mishra

 The issue of North Korea¡¯s nuclear weapon program is looking
more complicated with reports that the North is going for a
nuclear test. After the tests of seven missiles by North Korea
in the first week of July, the reports seem to be a grave matter
of concern for not only the U.S. and neighboring countries but
for South Korea too. 

A recent editorial in the Chosun Ilbo said the Korean government
was seemingly complacent on the matter and asked it to take
quick measures to counter the threat from Pyongyang. It seems
that inter-Korean relations are at a critical point and the
policy of engagement toward North Korea is going through its
last phase. There is speculation that the Roh Moo-hyun
government, which has been consistently providing unconditional
support to North Korea, is even thinking of getting stricter
with the North. 

However, when I met with the former president of Korea and noble
laureate Kim Dae Jung last week I found that the things are not
as bad as they are being portrayed. During our talk for around
one and half hours, I too felt the undiminished hope for a
peaceful and united Korean peninsula still alive. During the
conversation, DJ mentioned the fundamental change, which has
been taken place in inter-Korean relations _ that is the
building of mutual trust. 

Why blame the present government alone for the complacency. If
you take a walk on the streets of Seoul, you realize that even
the general public in Korea does not feel very threatened by the
recent North Korean missile tests. One elderly Korean man told
me that the recent tests by Pyongyang had in no way changed the
threat level to South Korea. North Korea had already possessed
Rodong- I and II and they have the capability to reach any place
on the peninsula. So, the recent tests are basically a threat
for Japan and the U.S. rather than South Korea he said. I
thought about his claim, which is partially true. If we take out
the issue of missile proliferation, it looks like a reasonable
stand.

 However after looking at this kind of understanding on the
basis of former President Kim Dae Jung¡¯s assertion that
something very fundamental has changed in inter-Korean
relations, we can see that this position has been possible in
South Korea today only because of the establishment of trust
between the two Koreas through the engagement policy of South
Korea. 

DJ was very sure about the improvement of inter-Korean relations
in future too. He said that whatever the results of the next
presidential election, growing trust would not be halted. In the
same vein, he was very optimistic that his visit to North Korea
would be realized soon. It is important to note that his visit
to North Korea has been postponed twice, first because of local
elections in May and then because of the issue of missile tests. 

Another important thing, which I noticed in DJ¡¯s approach, was
his great faith in the judgment of the people. He emphasized
that it was not only his personal efforts, which led to
engagement policy with North Korea. It was basically the mandate
of Korean people and their aspirations, which were reflected in
the engagement policy with North Korea. All the credit for the
engagement policy goes to the people of Korea. Similarly, his
hope for the continuity of the engagement policy is also based
on his ultimate trust in the people who, at least in the back of
their minds, are happy that they have been interacting more and
more with North Korea. More than 87,000 South Koreans visited
North Korea in 2005 alone. 

Going beyond the mechanism of inter-state interactions, he has
great trust in building social level interactions across the
border. DJ said that all the South Korean help to North Korea,
in the form of fertilizer and rice is being labeled as being
from South Korea in order to reach out to the North Korean
people and to develop cordial relations that were badly damaged
by propaganda warfare. 

Pushing North Korea into a corner is not farsighted policy in
dealing with Pyongyang _ somehow we have to engage the country.
Finally, when I asked about his evaluation of the ``Sunshine¡¯¡¯
or engagement policy toward North Korea, DJ responded that the
policy has been more than successful. However, he added that
basically, inter-Korean relations have also been linked with the
U.S. and North Korea relations. If inter-Korean relations have
not fulfilled our expectations to date, it is not because of the
failure of the engagement policy but because of problems on the
U.S.-North Korea front.

 After the meeting on my way home, I thought about the great
Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. When he started his journey as a
freedom fighter in India, he prescribed a peaceful, principled
and nonviolent movement against British colonialism. In the
beginning, other Indian leaders did not believe that they could
fight a mighty colonial empire in this manner and the Gandhian
strategy was considered to be utopian. History proved Gandhi
right. His approach was the most important factor in forcing
colonial Britain to retreat. I hope that DJ¡¯s aspirations will
be realized soon and that we come to understand that this
approach is not utopian, but the most feasible way to achieve a
unified, strong and democratic Korea.

 The author teaches at the Department of East Asian Studies,
University of Delhi, India, and has come to Seoul on a Korea
Foundation Fellowship. 

sandipmishra10@gmail.com 09-15-2006 21:13         
*****************************************************************
 22 AFP: North Korea warns of breakdown in inter-Korean ties 

 Fri Sep 15, 3:49 AM ET 		 	 

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea" /> North Koreahas warned that 
relations with South Korea" /> South Koreaare heading towards an 
"irreversible breakdown", accusing Seoul of joining international 
pressure to force sanctions on the reclusive state. 

 "South Korea is blindly following outside forces taking a
hostile policy against the DPRK (the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea) to the detriment of inter-Korean ties," said
Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Korean
Workers Party. 

The newspaper accused Seoul of "chiming in with outside forces
seeking to impose sanctions against us" in breach of a 2000
inter-Korean declaration for peace and reconciliation. 

"Its cooperation with outside forces is driving inter-Korean
relations toward an irreversible breakdown," the daily said in
an editorial published on Friday. 

The reaction came one day after South Korea and the United
States held a summit in Washington where the two countries
recommitted themselves to six-party talks aimed at defusing the
North Korea nuclear crisis. 

US President George W. Bush" /> President George W. Bushand his
South Korean counterpart Roh Moo-Hyun" /> Roh Moo-Hyundownplayed
differences on ending the crisis and instead recommitted
themselves to restarting the talks which stalled 10 months ago. 

The United States and South Korea have been split on efforts to
end the nuclear impasse since North Korea walked out of the
talks in reaction to US financial sanctions against it. 

Washington wants to step up financial and other sanctions on
North Korea while South Korea is aiming to continue aid and
investment to its neighbour to woo it away from isolation. 

South Korea has been pressing the United States to show greater
flexibility in efforts to restart the talks which also include
Russia, China and Japan. 

Roh said in Washington on Thursday that ministers would be
"consulting closely" to try to restart the talks but he did not
reveal any steps that had been agreed upon to break the current
impasse. 

During talks last September, the impoverished North agreed in
principle to give up its nuclear weapons program but boycotted
the talks two months later to protest US sanctions on a
Macau-based bank accused of laundering and counterfeiting money
for the North. 

The North Korean issue intensified in July after the Stalinist
state test-fired seven missiles, sparking condemnation from the
UN Security Council which imposed sanctions related to the
missile programme. 

A US news report has said the North may now be preparing a
nuclear test. It declared itself a nuclear-armed state in
February last year but is not known to have tested an atomic
weapon. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 23 UPI: N. Korea blasts South over U.S. summit
     
United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 

        9/15/2006 6:57:00 AM -0400

PYONGYANG, North Korea, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- North Korea Friday
accused South Korea of joining forces with the United States to
pressure the communist country. 

The North's state-run newspaper also warned that it would freeze
ties with the South, which could upset the fragile cross-border
reconciliation. 

"South Korea is blindly following outside forces, taking a
hostile policy against the DPRK (North Korea) to the detriment
of inter-Korean ties," said Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the
North's ruling Workers' Party. 

"Its cooperation with outside forces is driving inter-Korean
relations toward an irreversible breakdown," said the daily's
editorial, carried by the North's official Central News Agency. 

The criticism comes after South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun
met his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush on Thursday in
Washington, and discussed how best to respond to the North's
nuclear threats. 

In the summit, Roh expressed concern that U.S.-led financial
sanctions on the North may jeopardize the multilateral talks on
its nuclear ambitions, calling for patience to resolve the
standoff. 

Roh has pushed for reconciliation with the North, but has frozen
food and fertilizer aid to the impoverished country in the wake
of Pyongyang's missile launches in July. 

On Friday, the North's Committee for the Peaceful Unification of
the Fatherland also said South Korea and the United States were
preparing for a military attack on the North. 

"Under such conditions, what it means is too clear that hostile
forces in the South's military are striving to build up their
military forces and introduce and develop new weapons," it said.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 24 RIA Novosti: Russia does not share U.S. unilateral methods - Lavrov
 
15/ 09/ 2006                                  

MOSCOW, September 15 (RIA Novosti) - Russia does not share the
unilateral military methods of the United States, the Russian
foreign minister said Friday. 

"This is not a secret. We do not agree with the U.S. on
everything, and we do not share their unilateral military
methods. We say this openly to our American partners," Sergei
Lavrov said. 

He said Russia was trying to take into account the experience of
"unilateral relations in the past" in current relations with the
U.S. 

Lavrov said Russia and the U.S. should act together not only to
combat terrorism but also to resolve existing conflicts. 

He also said cooperation with the U.S. in the sphere of nuclear
weapons storage was maintained "strictly on a parity basis." 


© 2005 RIA Novosti   
*****************************************************************
 25 AFP: US-Russia agreement on disposal of weapons-grade plutonium -
    
 Fri Sep 15, 5:29 PM ET 		 	 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States and Russia signed an 
agreement converting tonnes of excess weapons-grade plutonium 
into material unsuitable for use in nuclear arms by terrorists or 
rogue states, officials said. 

 The State Department called the protocol "a key step to enable 
cooperation between the two countries" in the fight against 
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. 

The deal with lead to conversion by the US and Russia of 34
tonnes each of weapon-grade plutonium "into forms unusable for
weapons by terrorists or others", State Department spokesman
Sean McCormack said. 

The plutonium represents enough fissile material to make more
than 16,000 nuclear weapons," he said. 

"The signing of this protocol also has significant benefits for
other cooperative programs between the United States and
Russia," he said, adding that bilaeral discussions were
continuing on an array of other non-proliferation and security
issues. 

The protocol was signed a day after a meeting here of the
US-Russia Counterterrorism Working Group, created six years ago
by then US president Clinton and Russian President Vladimir
Putin" /> Vladimir Putin. 

A State Department official said the group has successfully
cooperated on a broad range of counterterrorism issues in the
past, including bioterrorism and exchange of terrorism threat
information. 

	 		 			
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 26 [NYTr] 5 Former Soviet Republics Give Up Nukes - Bush Objects!
 
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 20:14:29 -0400 (EDT)

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One World - Sep 14, 2006
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/139251/1/4536

Five Former Soviet Republics Give Up Nukes

By Aaron Glantz

The Bush Administration is objecting to a groundbreaking treaty that set up
a nuclear weapon-free zone in Central Asia. 

Under the treaty signed Friday, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan committed themselves not to produce, buy, or
allow the deployment of nuclear weapons on their soil. 

But the United States, along with Britain and France, refused to attend the
signing ceremony in the Kazakh capital, Almaty, citing a 1992 treaty that
Russia signed with four of the five nations that Moscow claims could allow
missiles to be deployed in the region. 

In a fresh statement issued Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan warned
that "other international treaties could take precedence over the provisions
of this treaty, and thus obviate the central objective of creating a zone
free of nuclear weapons." 

Arms control groups believe the Bush administration is being disingenuous. 

"The reason that many of us suspect the U.S. is opposed to this is more
fundamental," the independent Arms Control Association's Daryl G. Kimball
told OneWorld. "This is a very strategic region. The U.S. is reticent to
give up the option of deploying nuclear weapons in this region in the
future." 

In May, the journal Foreign Policy named Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan one of
the six most important U.S. military bases in the world. The base was
originally established as a hub for multinational operations following the
September 11th attacks five years ago. 

"In addition to its proximity to Afghanistan," the Foreign Policy article
stated, "Manas is located near the immense energy reserves of the Caspian
Basin, as well as the Russian and Chinese frontiers." 

According to Jackie Cabasso, who heads up the Western States Legal
Foundation in Oakland, California, "the United states had drawn up a battle
plan for the potential use of nuclear weapons in Iraq and the Untied States
has been involved in planning potential nuclear use scenarios for Iran." 

"The United States is now involved in a massive program to overhaul its
nuclear arsenal," she added. "In fact they're working to replace every
nuclear warhead and all of the existing delivery systems in the arsenal to
ensure prompt precision global strike capabilities. So the United States is
openly using the threatened use of nuclear weapons around the world." 

David Krieger of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation added that members of the
Bush administration "like to talk about expanding the use of nuclear weapons
and talk about the 'preventive use' of nuclear weapons [but seem] to be
negative toward a group of countries trying to create a ban on nuclear
weapons within their territory." 

By contrast, arms control experts argue, former Soviet republics in Central
Asia have every reason to want to rid themselves of their nuclear legacy. 

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union used a facility at Semipalatinsk in
Kazakhstan to test new nuclear weapons. Between 1949 and 1989 almost 500
nuclear explosions were carried out there, equaling the explosive power of
20,000 Hiroshima bombs. 

According to the country's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, those explosions
caused irreparable damage to the health of more than 1.5 million Kazakh
citizens, blighted lives, and rendered vast stretches of land useless for
generations. 

Western States Legal Foundation's Cabasso told OneWorld the central Asian
nation has one of the strongest anti-nuclear movements in the world. 

She described a visit to Kazakhstan, made in 1990 shortly after the fall of
the Soviet Union. 

"It was amazing," Cabasso said. "When we flew from Moscow to the capital
Almaty, there were people on the run-way in traditional costumes holding
signs like 'Let the Generals Build Their Summer Houses on the Nuclear Test
Site.'" 

Cabasso said the movement for a nuclear free Central Asia began with a poet
and member of the Soviet Duma named Olzhas Suleimenov. In 1989, after
discovering that some of the underground nuclear tests had leaked radiation
into the atmosphere, he went on television and called for a mass meeting at
the writers' union hall. Over 5,000 people showed up the next day. 

"They organized on a massive scale," Cabasso said. "Ten thousand copper
miners went out on strike, there were billboards at the airport. Imagine if
you had anti-nuclear demonstrations going on during half-time at the Super
Bowl. They were calling for a peaceful non-nuclear transition to the 21st
century back in 1990 and now they have completed that transition in a way." 

The treaty between Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and
Turkmenistan created the first nuclear-weapons free zone in the Northern
Hemisphere. Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific,
Southeast Asia, and Africa have already pledged to remain nuclear free. 

Copyright OneWorld
       
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*****************************************************************
 27 AFP: EU presidency seeks to renew Middle East peace process - 

 Fri Sep 15, 6:07 AM ET                          

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The European Union" /> should welcome the 
setting up of a new Palestinian government of national unity as 
an opportunity to renew the Middle East peace process, the EU's 
Finnish presidency has said. 

 "We have a new Palestinian government, we have a new situation
and we should use it to get back to the peace process," said
Erkki Tuomioja, foreign minister of Finland whose country
currently holds the rotating EU presidency, on Friday. 

He was speaking ahead of a day of meetings with his 24 EU
counterparts in Brussels to focus on Iran" /> 's nuclear
ambitions and the Mideast peace process. 

The unity government including the ruling Hamas Islamist
movement and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas's Fatah" /> party
has not yet been set up but all the signs in Brussels were that
the EU nations are ready to accept it as a reason to renew
political and aid links with the Palestinian Authority" /> . 

"The formation of a Palestinian government of national unity
which takes into account the objectives of the international
community would constitute a major evolution," French Foreign
Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told reporters after a meeting in
the West Bank" /> with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas on
Thursday. 

Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas is trying to form a coalition
government with Hamas. 

The West froze direct aid to the Palestinian government after
Hamas took office in March, demanding that the radical Islamist
movement renounce violence, recognize Israel" /> and agree to
abide by past peace agreements. 

"Our principles have always been principles of dialogue and
talking to each other, and I think we shall reconsider our
position in view of the national dialogue," Austrian Foreign
Minister Ursula Plassnik said ahead of the meeting. 

"I think the time has come to enlarge the dialogue and to make
our principals clear to all parties." 

Washington however remains urged its European allies not to rush
into lifting the restrictions as it remains skeptical in the
absence of details on the policies of the new unity government
and the role of Hamas. 

"At this point, we don't see any qualitative change in the
situation vis-a-vis the Palestinian Authority and its policies,"
said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Thursday. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 28 UPI: Russia ratifies treaty against nukes
     
 United Press International - NewsTrack - 

        9/15/2006 6:40:00 PM -0400
 
MOSCOW, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- Russia's parliament Friday ratified a
global treaty aimed at preventing nuclear terrorism, reported
MosNews. 

One year ago, President Vladimir Putin became the first leader
to sign the pact. 

"Ratification of this document answers to the interests of
Russia and the entire international community," Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov said. 

Lavrov said five countries have ratified the treaty, which has
been signed by 107 countries. The treaty will not go into force
until 22 nations ratify it, MosNews said.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
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 29 [NukeNet] Nuke plant contractor accused of coverup
 
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 16:41:20 -0700

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NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_FirstEngergy_Nuclear_Contractor.html

Thursday, September 14, 2006 · Last updated 8:12 a.m. PT

Nuke plant contractor accused of coverup

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PITTSBURGH -- A contractor at FirstEnergy Corp.'s Beaver Valley nuclear
power plant failed to do required reviews on a repair project and tried to
cover it up, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says.

An engineer with consulting firm Demark Inc. had knowingly signed
paperwork on June 1, 2005, that said 25 required reviews were done on a
project the preceded plans to replace a nuclear reactor vessel head, but
only two or three reviews were actually completed, according to an NRC
report that followed a yearlong investigation.

The reviews are important because they are supposed to evaluate how well
the replacement reactor head will work with existing safety controls, said
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan.

"The safety significance of this was low because it was caught in June
2005 and the head wasn't installed until early this year," Sheehan said.
"But we care because this is a major component replacement and we need to
make sure it won't adversely affect any of the other major safety
systems."

Sheehan said the NRC was not aware of any similar cases involved Joliet,
Ill.-based Demark.

The cover-up was caught when a clerk at the plant noticed that supporting
documentation for the reviews was missing, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
reported Thursday.

The Demark engineer, whose name was not released, was fired and
FirstEnergy's engineers completed the reviews, said Todd Schneider, a
spokesman for Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy.

Demark President Mark Inserra said FirstEnergy had recommended the
engineer. "Why he did what he did, we don't know." Inserra said.

The NRC informed FirstEnergy last month that "escalated enforcement
action" was under consideration related to Beaver Valley. It expects to
resolve the issue through a mediator at the Institute on Conflict
Resolution at Cornell University, who will preside over a hearing later
this month, the newspaper reported.

FirstEnergy also ran the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio, where
reactor head corrosion and a coverup led to more than $33 million in
fines.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Tori Woodard is a dear friend of mine who now lives in China.  She just got 
back from a 30-day trip through Mongolia.  The following quote is from an 
email to me after visiting a temple -

"After we look at some particularly frightening gods, Muugii asks me
what my religion is. I shrug and say I don't have one. Her response
surprises me:  "Then you're free!"

Mongolians understand freedom."

Molly Johnson
6290 Hawk Ridge Place
San Miguel, CA  93451
Cell: 805 296-0524

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*****************************************************************
 30 WMAR-TV/DT: Constellation lays off 80 nuclear plant workers in Md., N.Y. 

ABC2 Baltimore

BALTIMORE - Thirty employees of the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant
in southern Maryland lost their jobs today as the plant's owner,
Constellation Energy Group, completed a restructuring of its
three nuclear facilities. 

A spokeswoman for Baltimore-based Constellation says the company
also laid off 20 employees at the Nine Mile Point Nuclear
Station in Scriba, New York, and 30 workers at the R-E Ginna
Nuclear Power Plant in Ontario, New York, were laid off in
April. The layoffs weren't a surprise after the yearlong
restructuring, and in each case, the total was reduced because
some workers retired or took other jobs. 

Employees will receive two weeks' pay, plus a severance package
and job placement services. Some can apply for other jobs at the
plants. 

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)   

  
*****************************************************************
 31 heraldsun.com: Group to host safety briefing 

Durham, Chapel Hill and the Research Triangle Region                            
 				     			 			
Sep 14, 2006 :                  9:12 pm ET                      

PITTSBORO -- The environmental group NC WARN will host a briefing 
for elected officials and the public regarding concerns about 
federal fire safety regulations at the Shearon Harris Nuclear 
Plant. 

The briefing will be held next Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Central 
Carolina Community College multi-purpose room. Speakers will 
include nuclear safety engineer David Lochbaum of the Union of 
Concerned Scientists, Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information 
&Resource Service and John Runkle, attorney for NC WARN. 

For more information, visit www.ncwarn.org or call 416-5077. 






*****************************************************************
 32 NRC: NRC Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste to Meet in Rockville, Maryland, Sept. 18-21
 
News Release - 2006-11 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office 
of Public Affairs     Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 
20555-0001     E-mail: opa@nrc.gov No. 06-111     September 14, 
2006   

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on
Nuclear Waste (ACNW) will meet Sept. 18-21 in Rockville, Md., to
hold a working group meeting on using monitoring to build model
confidence on waste management issues, which will include
discussions on the role of models and monitoring in licensing,
and evaluating radionuclide releases and ground water
contamination. Among other items, the committee members will
also be briefed on the public comments received on two tunnel
fire studies and how these comments will be addressed in the
final versions of the two reports. 

The committee reports to and advises the Commission on all
aspects of nuclear waste management. 

The session on Monday will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday's
working group meeting will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Wednesday's working group meeting will run from 8:30 a.m. to
4:30, and Thursday's meeting will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The meeting will be held in Room T-2B3 of the agency's Two White
Flint North Building, at 11545 Rockville Pike. 

Anyone requiring the use of video teleconferencing to observe
the meeting should contact Theron Brown, at 301-415-8066 to
ensure availability. 

A complete agenda will be available on the NRC's Web site at
this address:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/acnw/agenda/2006/.
Individuals interested in making statements or those seeking
more information should contact Antonio Dias at 301-415-6805.   



  


 	Last revised Friday, September 15, 2006 	   
*****************************************************************
 33 Beacon Journal: Agency alleges cover-up at plant

09/15/2006 | 

FirstEnergy contractor faked report, NRC says

 Beacon Journal staff report 

A contractor at FirstEnergy Corp.'s Beaver Valley, Pa., nuclear
power plant failed to do required reviews on a repair project
and tried to cover it up, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
says. 

FirstEnergy's employees caught the error well before a new
reactor vessel head was installed at the plant, proof that the
Akron-based company's internal controls are working, spokesman
Todd Schneider said. 

``The situation is entirely different than what happened at
Davis-Besse,'' Schneider said. ``This issue doesn't impact the
safety or the integrity of work performed at Beaver Valley.'' 

FirstEnergy instituted new processes aimed at increasing safety
awareness after officials found corrosion on a reactor head at
its Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Port Clinton. A
cover-up led to more than $33 million in fines. 

In the Beaver Valley situation, the error was made by an
engineer with consulting firm Demark Inc. The engineer knowingly
signed paperwork on June 1, 2005, that said 25 required reviews
were done on a project that preceded plans to replace the
reactor vessel head. Only two or three reviews were actually
completed, according to an NRC report that followed a yearlong
investigation. 

The reviews are important because they are supposed to evaluate
how well the replacement reactor head will work with existing
safety controls, said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan. 

``The safety significance of this was low because it was caught
in June 2005 and the head wasn't installed until early this
year,'' Sheehan said. ``But we care because this is a major
component replacement, and we need to make sure it won't
adversely affect any of the other major safety systems.'' 

The installation was completed in February. 

Sheehan said the NRC was not aware of any similar cases
involving Demark, based in Joliet, Ill. 

A FirstEnergy employee informed the NRC of the error, Sheehan
said. 

FirstEnergy told Demark that the engineer, whose name was not
released, was no longer needed, and FirstEnergy's engineers
completed the reviews, Schneider said. 

Demark President Mark Inserra told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
that FirstEnergy recommended the engineer. ``Why he did what he
did, we don't know,'' Inserra told the newspaper. 

Schneider said he did not know whether FirstEnergy recommended
the engineer or whether he had previously worked for
FirstEnergy. Demark continued to do work at the Beaver Valley
plant, Schneider said. 

The NRC informed First-Energy last month that ``escalated
enforcement action'' was under consideration related to Beaver
Valley. 

It expects to resolve the issue through a mediator from the
Institute on Conflict Resolution at Cornell University, who will
preside over a hearing this month. 

*****************************************************************
 34 Reuters: Hitachi now sees loss on turbine repairs, HDDs

Friday September 15, 7:19 PM
 
 TOKYO, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Japan's Hitachi Ltd. said on Friday
it now expected a loss instead of a profit this business year,
due to costs to fix turbines it supplied to two utility
companies and growing losses on hard disk drives. 

Hitachi President Kazuo Furukawa apologized for the problems
with the Hitachi-designed turbines, and said the company would
foot the full cost for inspections and repairs, estimated at
roughly 38 billion yen ($323 million). 

"We judged that the most likely cause of the trouble was turbine
design," he said. 

Hitachi said it now expected a group net loss of 55 billion yen
for the year to March instead of the profit of 55 billion yen it
had previously projected. The previous forecast was in line with
the consensus estimate in a poll of 15 analysts by Reuters
Estimates. 

But Furukawa said he could not comment on whether Hitachi would
cover utility companies' losses from the shutdowns, saying that
the inspections into the turbine failures were not complete and
the utilities companies had not filed for damages yet. 

One of Chubu Electric Power Co.'s nuclear power units
automatically shut down in June because of turbine vibrations,
causing Japan's third-biggest utility to halve its profit
forecast for the business year. 

An inspection of a unit of another Japanese utility, Hokuriku
Electric Power Co. , revealed in August cracks in all three
Hitachi-made turbines. 

The downward revision was announced during late afternoon stock
market trade, causing Hitachi's shares to tumble 3.07 percent to
close at a six-week low of 694 yen. 

Hitachi's profit forecast was also hit by falls in the price of
hard disk drives, with the company forecasting a 40 billion yen
loss in HDDs in fiscal 2006, instead of a loss of 8 billion yen. 

The HDD business would go into the black in fiscal 2007,
Furukawa said. Hitachi had earlier said it would turn around its
HDD business in the fiscal second half, along with its two other
loss-making segments, display and flat-panel TVs. 

Displays would post gains in the October-March period as
planned, but flat TVs would not show a profit until the
January-March quarter, when overseas sales should push the
segment into the black, Furukawa said. 

But the problem goes beyond turbine problems and poor hard disk
performance, according to Masaki Iso, chief investment officer
at Yasuda Asset Management. 

Hitachi, a sprawling electronic group with more than 355,000
group employees, "is too big, has too many fingers in too many
pies and doesn't seem to have clear overall strategy," he said.
"The real problem is that they don't have a convincing business
portfolio." 

Hitachi said it would pay a first-half dividend of 3 yen, down
from 5.50 a year earlier. 

Rival Toshiba Corp on Friday raised its interim dividend to 4.50
yen from 3 yen a year earlier. 

The Nihon Keizai business daily earlier reported that Mitsubishi
Electric Corp. would likely raise its half-year dividend to 4
yen from 3 yen. ($1=117.63 yen) (Additional reporting by Edwina
Gibbs)     

Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 35 NRC: NRC Terminates Construction Permits for Unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plants
 
News Release - 2006-11 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office 
of Public Affairs     Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 
20555-0001     E-mail: No. 06-112     September 15, 2006   

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the Tennessee
Valley Authoritys request to terminate the construction permits
for the unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant, Units 1 and 2. TVA
requested the termination in a letter dated April 6. 

The NRC granted the construction permits for Bellefonte, a
dual-unit pressurized water reactor plant, in 1974. By 1988,
when TVA deferred completion of the plant, Unit 1 was
approximately 88 percent complete, and Unit 2 was approximately
58 percent complete. An NRC inspection in 1992 determined there
was no nuclear fuel on the site. The Bellefonte site is located
on approximately 1,600 acres adjacent to the Tennessee River
near Hollywood, Ala. 

The NRC recently published its environmental assessment on the
termination, with a finding of no significant impacts, in the
Federal Register. As part of its findings, the agency concluded
that terminating the construction permits and the TVAs limited
site redress activities would not have a significant effect on
the quality of the environment. 

During the NRCs review, TVA stated it intends to continue using
existing environmental permits at the site, as well as maintain
major plant components such as water intake and discharge
facilities, cooling towers and transmission switchyards. TVA
indicated the existing containment, turbine and auxiliary
buildings would be left in place, while unnecessary structures
such as warehouses would be disassembled, abandoned or
demolished. TVA also indicated it would continue conducting
periodic site inspections to ensure none of the equipment or
materials are causing environmental or health problems.   



  


 	Last revised Friday, September 15, 2006 	   
*****************************************************************
 36 Platts: Senators warn plan could distract NRC from licensing reactors
 
Washington (Platts)--14Sep2006
 
Senior Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works 
Committee warned Thursday that New Mexico Republican Senator Pete 
Domenici's plan to authorize more than 30 interim storage sites 
for spent nuclear fuel could distract the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission from processing a wave of applications for nuclear 
reactors.

     It also would distract the Department of Energy from 
preparing an application for permanent storage at Yucca Mountain 
in Nevada, they added. 

     Senator James Inhofe, the committee chairman, and Senator 
George Voinovich, the chairman of the Clean Air, Climate Change 
and Nuclear Safety subcommittee, said they were further concerned 
that licensing requirements arising from the Bush 
administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership will strain 
NRC's resources. 

     Their comments came as Nuclear Energy Institute President 
Frank "Skip" Bowman told the subcommittee that 12 utility 
companies plan to file 19 applications with NRC for 30 reactors. 

     "These provisions require a lot from NRC in a short time," 
Voinovich said at a subcommittee hearing on the commission. "This 
committee has worked very hard to give NRC the resources and 
reforms needed so that it can efficiently review new reactor 
applications. But now I am afraid that these waste proposals have 
the potential to move us backwards and could end the nuclear 
renaissance before it begins." 

     As for DOE, the Ohio Republican said GNEP and the 
interim-storage proposal, which Domenici included in the Senate 
fiscal 2007 energy and water development appropriations bill, 
"could take the focus away from Yucca Mountain, delaying or 
ending that important project." 

     Inhofe agreed. "We need to open Yucca Mountain as quickly as 
possible," the Oklahoma Republican said. "Though I find the 
interim storage option intriguing, I am concerned about the 
impact on our resources of shifting the debate from long-term 
storage to interim storage. I believe that this must be fully 
debated on the Senate floor and not attached to an omnibus 
appropriations bill."

     Both Inhofe and Voinovich said they doubted that DOE could 
meet a provision in the appropriations bill that would require 
the department to submit applications for more than 30 interim 
storage sites within 300 days of enactment of the legislation. 

     Similarly, they said NRC likely would be unable to review 
the applications within 32 months, as stipulated in the funding 
bill.

     Edward Sproat, director of DOE's Office of Civilian 
Radioactive Waste Management, appeared to concur, telling the 
subcommittee that the interim-storage requirement would be "very 
difficult to perform" and "highly distracting" for his office as 
it attempts to meet a recent DOE commitment to submit a license 
application for the Yucca Mountain repository to NRC by June 30, 
2008.

     Luis Reyes, NRC's executive director for operations, said 
the commission has "neither the monetary resources nor the 
necessary employee resources" to support the reviews of interim 
storage sites envisioned in the appropriations bill. Reyes also 
called the bill's timetable for reviewing the applications "very 
short and likely not achievable." 

     Reyes estimated that reviewing more than 30 applications for 
interim storage would cost NRC $300 million and require it to 
hire more than 200 employees. The estimate for added funding is 
equivalent to 40% of the commission's $742-million budget in 
fiscal 2006.

     The fate of Domenici's proposal will be determined when the 
Senate and House meet to reconcile their separate energy and 
water development bills or, alternatively, negotiate an omnibus 
funding bill covering DOE and other agencies. With time running 
out for enactment of legislation this year, Congress is 
considered likely to combine funding for a number of agencies in 
one bill.

     NEI's Bowman told the subcommittee that the nuclear industry 
supports the idea of interim storage while the government pursues 
the permanent repository in Nevada, but would prefer that such 
storage be limited to "one or two" sites where spent fuel 
recycling and reprocessing facilities also could be installed at 
some point. 

     Domenici, who chairs both the Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee and the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water 
Development, said earlier this month he intended to introduce a 
"Fix Yucca" bill, although the senator acknowledged there was not 
enough time for the Senate to approve it this year.

Copyright © 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved [The McGraw-Hill 
Companies]       
*****************************************************************
 37 Telugu Portal: Thermal corporation looking for nuclear power site 

www.teluguportal.net

Posted by adminon 2006/9/15 9:08:04
 			  
New Delhi, Sep 15 (IANS) State-run NTPC Ltd is looking at sites
in coastal states including Tamil Nadu for its proposed nuclear
power project, company Chairman and Managing Director T.
Sankaralingam said here Friday.

Last week Tamil Nadu had offered National Thermal Power
Corporation (NTPC) land for establishing a 2,000 MW nuclear
power plant, south of Chennai near Koodankulam. The Nuclear
Power Corporation of India Ltd is also setting up a power plant
with Russian collaboration here.

"We are looking at probable sites in Tamil Nadu and other
coastal states where land is available in not very densely
populated areas," Sankaralingam told media on the sidelines of a
conference organised by the India Energy Forum.

The company has already sought the government approval for its
foray into nuclear power generation. The thermal power major has
over the last few years ventured into hydropower generation also.

"We are planning to commission 8,000 MW through hydropower by
2017," he said.

The sixth largest thermal power generation company in the world
is targeting to become a 50,000 MW power generation company by
2012 and 75,000 MW by 2017, the NTPC chief added.

The NTPC has already placed orders for 14,000 MW equipment to
meet the target of adding 22,000 MW capacity in 2007-12 and the
order for balance 8,000 MW equipment would be done by 2007 end.

The company has meanwhile decided to put on hold plans for
adding additional gas-based generation capacity till it has
firmed up long-term supply commitments at competitive rates.

To meet its current shortfall of gas, which is affecting
capacity utilisation in five of its gas-based plants,
Sankaralingam said: "We are in the tendering process for 35,000
tonnes or 2.5 million standard cubic metres per day (mscmd)
liquefied natural gas (LNG) to bridge the supply gap for three
months."   		 		
                          
© 2006 TeluguPortal.Net

*****************************************************************
 38 Telugu Portal: India nuclear pact 'a big deal' for US -
               
Posted by on 2006/9/15 3:31:22
 			  
Washington, Sep 15 (IANS) The nuclear agreement with India is "a
big deal" in the United States' foreign policy towards South
Asia and the Bush administration is hopeful that the US Senate
will clear it this month despite its tight schedule, says a
senior US official.

The US is also quite hopeful that the Nuclear Suppliers' Group
(NSG) will agree to make an exception in the case of India, said
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher in a talk Thursday,
describing the support extended by Brazil and South Africa, both
NSG members, as a positive sign.

To this end, Washington had been pretty active explaining the
virtues of the India-US nuclear deal and how it was equally safe
for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT), he said in the
talk at The Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced
International Studies. India too was making efforts to bring
around what it once considered perpetrators of nuclear apartheid.

South Asia held a critical place in US foreign policy with
bringing economic prosperity to the region as one of its four
key elements, and the India-US nuclear agreement is a big deal
in that matrix, said Boucher, the Assistant Secretary of State
for South and Central Asian Affairs.

The other key elements of Washington's policy for the region
are: fight terrorism; ensure success of moderate, democratic
society; and enhance regional cooperation.

Boucher said India had of late suffered a series of terrorist
attacks from Mumbai to Malegaon and the US was trying hard to
stop this infliction on India.

A major effort was on in Pakistan to fight terrorism with a lot
of success in efforts to curb Al Qaeda. Islamabad had also now
turned its attention on Taliban with President Pervez Musharraf
showing real determination, he said.

Pakistan's recent peace deal with tribal leaders in North
Waziristan, he hoped, would have a positive impact on its
efforts to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Musharraf, in
Boucher's view, was also crucial to building a moderate,
democratic and Muslim society in Pakistan.

India and Pakistan had shown statesmanship in improving their
relations over the last couple of years, but the July 11 Mumbai
blasts had led to a kind of hiatus in these efforts, Boucher
said, hoping they would find a way to resume negotiations,
particularly on a tough issue like Kashmir.

--By Arun Kumar   		 		

© 2006 TeluguPortal.Net | | | | 
*****************************************************************
 39 Brattleboro Reformer: Coalition criticizes VY 'uprate' testing

By ANDY ROSEN, Reformer Staff  

Friday, September 15 NEWFANE -- The New England Coalition took
aim at Vermont Yankee's 20 percent power boost Thursday,
criticizing the testing methods the plant used as it increased
its power. 

The controversial "uprate" was completed this spring. Still,
it's being challenged by the nuclear watchdog group before the
federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. 

The board, a quasi-judicial arm of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, could overturn the approval for the uprate or impose
additional requirements on the plant. The board has now finished
gathering evidence, and will rule within the next several
months. 

On Thursday, the ASLB closed out a two-day hearing, which
considered the coalition's objections that the plant hasn't done
enough to make sure it can safely shut down from its new power
level in an emergency. 

The coalition is calling for "full transient testing," which
would see the plant completely cut power. 

But officials from Entergy, the company that owns the plant, and
the NRC staff, which approved the uprate, believe that testing
would be costly and place undue wear and tear on the plant. 

Dr. Joram Hopenfeld, the coalition's expert witness, testified
Thursday that other testing that the plant performed in advance
of the uprate, which included computer modeling, didn't give a
clear view of how the equipment would react in an emergency. 

"We have done something to the plant which reduces the margin of
safety," he said. "The value of doing the test would be to meet
the regulations." 

Under NRC rules, every plant that completes an "extended power
uprate" like Vermont Yankee, is supposed to conduct the full
transient testing. But out of about 16 plants that have been
approved for such boosts, none has completed the testing. 

Instead, they've been granted exemptions by the NRC. The
coalition is arguing that the test should be conducted at
Vermont Yankee. 

NRC Engineer Zena Abdullahi told the ASLB early in the day that
the uprate had reduced Vermont Yankee's ability to vent if it
has to shut its steam lines and cut power. 

Prior to the uprate, the plant could vent nearly all of the
steam that's in the lines after an emergency valve closure, she
said, but that number's been reduced to about 60 percent. 

Still, Abdullahi said, Vermont Yankee remains well within its
margin of safety. She said full transient testing isn't
necessary because it doesn't test components that were modified
for the uprate. 

Components, including water pumps that cool the reactor, were
tested thoroughly, she said. 

NRC witnesses maintained that industry experience, along with
the testing that was conducted and computer modeling, proved to
them that Vermont Yankee will be able to safely shut down if it
has to. 

Still, Hopenfeld took issue with the statement that computer
modeling can predict how the plant will respond to a full
shutdown. He said the computer code that Vermont Yankee used may
predict pressure changes, but won't be effective in predicting
vibrations, which could hurt the plant. 

He said it would be wise to see if the plant can shut down
safely by testing, rather than waiting for an emergency to
collect data. 

A former mariner, Hopenfeld said in his days at sea, the crew
used to lower lifeboats into the water to make sure they were
working correctly. 

"Each time you lower the lifeboats, you stress the cables," he
said. "But I've never heard a captain say 'Let's not do that. If
there's a fire on the boat, we'll get them down anyway.'" 

Andy Rosen can be reached at or (802) 254-2311, ext 275. 

New England Newspapers, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 40 NRC: In the Matter of Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov; Order Prohibiting 
 
                        FR Doc E6-15309 
[Federal Register: September 15, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 179)] 
[Notices] [Page 54528-54529] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr15se06-81]                         
 
Involvement in NRC-Licensed Activities (Effective Immediately) I 
Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov was employed as a Senior Reactor Operator 
at the Reed College Reactor (the facility). Reed College (the 
licensee) is the holder of License No. R-112 issued by the U.S. 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or Commission) pursuant to 
Part 50 of Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) 
on July 2, 1968, for the facility. The license authorizes the 
operation of the facility in accordance with the conditions 
specified therein. The facility is located on the licensee's site 
in Portland, Oregon.
 
II On May 31, 2005, an inspection of licensed activities was 
initiated at the licensee's facility in response to allegations 
received at the NRC Headquarters on May 19, 2005, that Mr. 
Nicholas A. Chaimov had engaged in deliberate misconduct. 
Specifically, it was alleged that Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov had 
deliberately removed a jumper on the control rod drive circuit of 
the reactor without the licensee's authorization or approval. 
Removal of that jumper prevented the shim rod from being 
withdrawn, so that the reactor could not be taken to the critical 
startup condition. That jumper had been properly installed, in 
accordance with the Reed College Reactor Safety Analysis Report 
(SAR), until Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov deliberately removed it. The 
allegation was unresolved by the inspection and was subsequently 
referred to the NRC Office of Investigations (OI). OI completed 
its investigation and substantiated that on May 10, 2005, Mr. 
Nicholas A. Chaimov deliberately removed a jumper on the control 
rod drive circuit of the reactor without the licensee's 
authorization or approval.
 
Although this unauthorized facility modification did not 
adversely impact reactor safety nor was the health and safety of 
the public affected because the facility's startup checklist 
detected a malfunction in the rod control system and the problem 
was corrected by the licensee before operation was allowed, 
conduct of this nature by an individual raises serious doubt as 
to whether the individual can be relied upon to comply with NRC 
requirements.
 
III Based on the information obtained during the OI 
investigation, the NRC concludes that Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov, an 
employee of the licensee, made changes to the facility so that it 
was not as described in the SAR. These changes caused the 
licensee to be in violation of 10 CFR 50.59, ``Changes, test, and 
experiments.'' It was further found that Mr. Chaimov's actions 
were willful such that he had engaged in deliberate misconduct in 
violation of 10 CFR 50.5, ``Deliberate misconduct.'' The NRC must 
be able to rely on the licensee and its employees to comply with 
NRC requirements in all material respects. Mr. Nicholas A. 
Chaimov's action has raised serious doubt as to whether he can be 
relied upon to comply with NRC requirements.
 
Consequently, I lack the requisite reasonable assurance that 
licensed activities can be conducted in compliance with the 
Commission's requirements and that the health and safety of the 
public will be protected if Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov is permitted 
at this time to be involved in NRC-licensed activities. 
Therefore, the public's health, safety, and interest require that 
Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov be prohibited from any involvement in 
NRC-licensed activities for a period of three years from the date 
of this Order. Furthermore, pursuant to 10 CFR 2.202, ``Orders,'' 
the NRC finds that the significance of Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov's 
conduct described above is such that the public's health, safety, 
and interest require that this Order be immediately effective.
 
IV Accordingly, pursuant to Sections 104c, 161b, 161i, 161o, 182 
and 186 of
 
[[Page 54529]] the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, and the 
Commission's regulations in 10 CFR 2.202, 10 CFR 50.5, and 10 CFR 
150.20, it is hereby ordered, effective immediately, that: 1. Mr. 
Nicholas A. Chaimov is prohibited for three years from the date 
of this Order from engaging in NRC-licensed activities. NRC- 
licensed activities are those activities that are conducted 
pursuant to a specific or general license issued by the NRC, 
including, but not limited to, those activities of Agreement 
State licensees conducted pursuant to the authority granted by 10 
CFR 150.20. 2. If Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov is currently involved 
with another licensee in NRC-licensed activities, he must 
immediately cease those activities, and inform the NRC of the 
name, address, and telephone number of that licensee, and provide 
a copy of this Order to that licensee.
 
The Director, Office of Enforcement, may, in writing, relax or 
rescind any of the above conditions upon demonstration by Mr.
 
Nicholas A. Chaimov of good cause. V In accordance with 10 CFR 
2.202, Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov must, and any other person 
adversely affected by this Order may, submit an answer to this 
Order, and may request a hearing on this Order, within 20 days of 
the date of this Order. Where good cause is shown, consideration 
will be given to extending the time to request a hearing. A 
request for extension of time must be made in writing to the 
Director, Office of Enforcement, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, Washington, DC 20555, and include a statement of good 
cause for the extension. The answer may consent to this Order. 
Unless the answer consents to this Order, the answer shall, in 
writing and under oath or affirmation, specifically admit or deny 
each allegation or charge made in this Order and shall set forth 
the matters of fact and law on which Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov or 
other person adversely affected relies and the reasons as to why 
the Order should not have been issued. Any answer or request for 
a hearing shall be submitted to the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission, Attn: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff, 
Washington, DC 20555. Copies also shall be sent to the Director, 
Office of Enforcement, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
Washington, DC 20555, the Assistant General Counsel for Materials 
Litigation and Enforcement at the same address, and Mr. Nicholas 
A. Chaimov, if the answer or hearing request is by a person other 
than Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov. Because of continuing disruptions 
in delivery of mail to United States Government offices, it is 
requested that answers and requests for hearing be transmitted to 
the Secretary of the Commission either by means of facsimile 
transmission to 301-415-1101 or by e-mail to

 
hearingdocket@nrc.gov and also to the Office of the General 
Counsel either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-3725 
or by e-mail to OGCMailCenter@nrc.gov. If a person other than the 
licensee requests a hearing, that person shall set forth with 
particularity the manner in which his interest is adversely 
affected by this Order and shall address the criteria set forth 
in 10 CFR 2.309(d). If a hearing is requested by Mr. Nicholas A. 
Chaimov or a person whose interest is adversely affected, the 
Commission will issue an Order designating the time and place of 
any hearing. If a hearing is held, the issue to be considered at 
such hearing shall be whether this Order should be sustained.
 
Pursuant to 10 CFR 2.202(c)(2)(i), Mr. Nicholas A. Chaimov may, 
in addition to demanding a hearing, at the time the answer is 
filed or sooner, move the Presiding Officer to set aside the 
immediate effectiveness of the Order on the ground that the 
Order, including the need for immediate effectiveness, is not 
based on adequate evidence but on mere suspicion, unfounded 
allegations, or error.
 
In the absence of any request for hearing, or written approval of 
an extension of time in which to request a hearing, the 
provisions specified in Section IV above shall be final 20 days 
from the date of this Order without further order or proceedings. 
If an extension of time for requesting a hearing has been 
approved, the provisions specified in Section IV shall be final 
when the extension expires if a hearing request has not been 
received. An answer or a request for hearing shall not stay the 
immediate effectiveness of this order.
 
Dated this 12th day of September 2006.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Martin J. Virgilio, Deputy Executive Director for Materials, 
Research, State, and Compliance Programs, Office of the Executive 
Director for Operations.
 
[FR Doc. E6-15309 Filed 9-14-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 41 NRC: Notice of Renewal of Facility Operating License No. R-110; Idaho 
 
                        FR Doc E6-15310 
[Federal Register: September 15, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 179)] 
[Notices] [Page 54529-54530] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr15se06-82]                         
 
State University AGN-201M Research Reactor The U.S. Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission (the Commission) has issued Amendment No. 6 
to Facility Operating License No. R-110 for the Idaho State 
University (the licensee), which renews the license for operation 
of the Idaho State University AGN-201M Research Reactor Facility 
located at the Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho.
 
The facility is a research reactor that has been operating at a 
power level not in excess of 5 watts (thermal). The renewed 
Facility Operating License No. R-110 will expire twenty years 
from its date of issuance.
 
The amended license complies with the standards and requirements 
of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (the Act), and the 
Commission's rules and regulations. The Commission has made 
appropriate findings as required by the Act and the Commission's 
regulations in 10 CFR Chapter I. Those findings are set forth in 
the license amendment. Opportunity for hearing was afforded in 
the notice of the proposed issuance of this renewal in the 
Federal Register on January 8, 1996 (61 FR 563). No request for a 
hearing or petition for leave to intervene was filed following 
notice of the proposed action.
 
Continued operation of the reactor will not require alteration of 
buildings or structures, will not lead to significant changes in 
effluents released from the facility to the environment, will not 
increase the probability or consequences of accidents, and will 
not involve any unresolved issues concerning alternative uses of 
available resources. Based on the foregoing and on the 
Environmental Assessment, the Commission concludes that renewal 
of the license will not result in any significant environmental 
impacts.
 
The Commission has prepared a ``Safety Evaluation Report Related 
to the Renewal of the Operating License for the Research Reactor 
at Idaho State University'' for the renewal of Facility Operating 
License No. R- 110 and has, based on that evaluation, concluded 
that the facility can continue to be operated by the licensee 
without endangering the health and safety of the public.
 
The Commission also prepared an Environmental Assessment which 
was published in the Federal Register on April 9, 2004, (69 FR 
18988) for the
 
[[Page 54530]] renewal of Facility Operating License No. R-110 
and has concluded that this action will not have a significant 
effect on the quality of the human environment.
 
For further details with respect to this action, see: (1) The 
application for amendment dated November 21, 1995, as 
supplemented on January 31, 2003 and July 10, 2003, (2) Amendment 
No. 6 to Facility Operating License No. R-110; (3) the related 
Safety Evaluation Report and (4) the Environmental Assessment 
dated March 30, 2004.
 
Documents may be examined, and/or copied for a fee, at the NRC's 
Public Document Room, located at One White Flint North, 11555 
Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. The NRC 
maintains an Agencywide Documents Access and Management System 
(ADAMS), which provides text and image files of NRC's public 
documents. Documents related to this license renewal dated on or 
after November 24, 1999, may be accessed through the NRC's Public 
Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at http://www.nrc.gov. If 
you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems in 
accessing the documents located in ADAMS, contact the NRC Public 
Document Room (PDR) Reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415- 
4737 or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, 
this 14th day of August 2006.
 
For the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Brian E. Thomas, 
Chief, Research and Test Reactors Branch, Division of Policy and 
Rulemaking, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
 
[FR Doc. E6-15310 Filed 9-14-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 42 NRC: Draft Regulatory Guide and Associated Standard Review Plan: 
 
                        FR Doc E6-15311 
[Federal Register: September 15, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 179)] 
[Notices] [Page 54530-54531] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr15se06-83]                         
 
Issuance, Availability The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
(NRC) has issued for public comment a draft proposed revision of 
an existing guide in the agency's Regulatory Guide Series. This 
series has been developed to describe and make available to the 
public such information as methods that are acceptable to the NRC 
staff for implementing specific parts of the agency's 
regulations, techniques that the staff uses in evaluating 
specific problems or postulated accidents, and data that the 
staff needs in its review of applications for permits and 
licenses.
 
This draft Revision 1 of Regulatory Guide 1.200, ``An Approach 
for Determining the Technical Adequacy of Probabilistic Risk 
Assessment Results for Risk-Informed Activities,'' is temporarily 
identified as Draft Regulatory Guide DG-1161, which should be 
mentioned in all related correspondence. Like its predecessors, 
this proposed revision describes one acceptable approach for 
determining whether the quality of a probabilistic risk 
assessment (PRA), in total or the parts that are used to support 
an application, is sufficient to provide confidence in the 
results, such that the PRA can be used in regulatory decision- 
making for light-water reactors. Specifically, Draft Regulatory 
Guide DG-1161 provides guidance in four areas: (1) A minimal set 
of functional requirements of a technically acceptable PRA.
 
(2) The NRC's position on PRA consensus standards and industry 
PRA program documents.
 
(3) Demonstration that the PRA (in total or specific parts) used 
in regulatory applications is of sufficient technical adequacy.
 
(4) Documentation to support a regulatory submittal.
 
This guidance is intended to be consistent with the NRC's PRA 
Policy Statement, entitled ``Use of Probabilistic Risk Assessment 
Methods in Nuclear Activities: Final Policy Statement,'' which 
the NRC published in the Federal Register on August 16, 1995 (60 
FR 42622) to encourage use of PRA in all regulatory matters. That 
Policy Statement states that `` * * * the use of PRA technology 
should be increased to the extent supported by the 
state-of-the-art in PRA methods and data and in a manner that 
complements the NRC's deterministic approach.'' Since that time, 
many uses have been implemented or undertaken, including 
modification of the NRC's reactor safety inspection program and 
initiation of work to modify reactor safety regulations. 
Consequently, confidence in the information derived from a PRA is 
an important issue, in that the accuracy of the technical content 
must be sufficient to justify the specific results and insights 
that are used to support the decision under consideration.
 
Draft Regulatory Guide DG-1161 is also intended to be consistent 
with the more detailed, guidance in Regulatory Guide 1.174, ``An 
Approach for Using Probabilistic Risk Assessment in Risk-Informed 
Decisions on Plant-Specific Changes to the Licensing Basis,'' 
which the NRC issued in November 2002. In addition, Draft 
Regulatory Guide DG- 1161 is intended to reflect and endorse 
(with certain objections) the following guidance provided by the 
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Nuclear 
Energy Institute (NEI): ASME RA-S-2002, ``Standard for 
Probabilistic Risk Assessment for Nuclear Power Plant 
Applications,'' dated April 5, 2002.
 
ASME RA-Sa-2003, ``Standard for Probabilistic Risk Assessment for 
Nuclear Power Plant Applications,'' Addendum A to ASME RA-S-2002, 
dated December 5, 2003.
 
ASME RA-Sb-2005, ``Standard for Probabilistic Risk Assessment for 
Nuclear Power Plant Applications,'' Addendum B to ASME RA-S-2002, 
dated December 30, 2005.
 
NEI-00-02, ``Probabilistic Risk Assessment Peer Review Process 
Guidance,'' Revision A3, dated March 20, 2000, with its 
supplemental guidance on industry self-assessment, dated August 
16, 2002, and Revision 1, dated May 19, 2006.
 
NEI-05-04, ``Process for Performing Follow-on PRA Peer Reviews 
Using the ASME PRA Standard,'' dated January 2005.
 
When used in support of an application, this regulatory guide 
will obviate the need for an in-depth review of the base PRA by 
NRC reviewers, allowing them to focus their review on key 
assumptions and areas identified by peer reviewers as being of 
concern and relevant to the application. Consequently, this guide 
will provide for a more focused and consistent review process. In 
this regulatory guide, as in RG 1.174, the quality of a PRA 
analysis used to support an application is measured in terms of 
its appropriateness with respect to scope, level of detail, and 
technical acceptability.
 
This regulatory guide was issued for trial use in February of 
2004, and five trial applications were conducted. This revision 
incorporates lessons learned from those pilot applications. In 
addition, the appendices to this regulatory guide have been 
revised to address the changes made in the professional society 
PRA standards and industry PRA guidance documents.
 
To accompany Draft Regulatory Guide DG-1161, the NRC is issuing 
proposed Revision 2 of Section 19.1, ``Determining the Technical 
Adequacy of Probabilistic Risk Assessment Results for 
Risk-Informed Activities,'' of NUREG-0800, ``Standard Review Plan 
for the Review of Safety Analysis Reports for Nuclear Power 
Plants'' (SRP). This SRP complements Draft
 
[[Page 54531]] Regulatory Guide DG-1161, in that the NRC staff 
will use its guidance to ensure more focused and consistent 
review of PRAs as a basis for regulatory decision-making for 
light-water reactors.
 
The NRC intends to update Regulatory Guide 1.200 and its 
associated SRP Section 19.1, and to develop an additional 
appendix or revise an existing appendix (as required), to set 
forth the staff's position when a new or revised PRA standard or 
industry program is published.
 
The NRC staff is soliciting comments on Draft Regulatory Guide 
DG- 1161, as well as draft Revision 2 of SRP Section 19.1. Please 
mention the relevant document identifiers (DG-1161 and/or SRP 
19.1) in the subject line of your comments; comments may be 
accompanied by relevant information or supporting data. Comments 
submitted in writing or in electronic form will be made available 
to the public in their entirety through the NRC's Agencywide 
Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS). Personal 
information will not be removed from your comments. You may 
submit comments by any of the following methods.
 
Mail comments to: Rules and Directives Branch, Office of 
Administration, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, 
DC 20555-0001.
 
E-mail comments to: NRCREP@nrc.gov. You may also submit comments 
via the NRC's rulemaking Web site at http://ruleforum.llnl.gov. 
Address questions about our rulemaking Web site to Carol A. 
Gallagher (301) 415-5905; e-mail CAG@nrc.gov. Hand-deliver 
comments to: Rules and Directives Branch, Office of 
Administration, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 11555 
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, between 7:30 a.m. and 
4:15 p.m. on Federal workdays.
 
Fax comments to: Rules and Directives Branch, Office of 
Administration, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at (301) 
415-5144.
 
Requests for technical information about Draft Regulatory Guide 
DG- 1161 and/or draft Revision 2 of SRP Section 19.1 may be 
directed to Ms. Mary T. Drouin, at (301) 415-6675 or MXD@nrc.gov. 
Comments would be most helpful if received by October 14, 2006. 
Comments received after that date will be considered if it is 
practical to do so, but the NRC is able to ensure consideration 
only for comments received on or before this date. Although a 
time limit is given, comments and suggestions in connection with 
items for inclusion in guides currently being developed or 
improvements in all published guides are encouraged at any time.
 
Electronic copies of Draft Regulatory Guide DG-1161 are available 
through the NRC's public Web site under Draft Regulatory Guides 
in the Regulatory Guides document collection of the NRC's 
Electronic Reading Room at 
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/. Similarly, 
electronic copies of draft Revision 2 of SRP Section 19.1 are 
available at 
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/docs4comment 
.html. Electronic copies of the two documents are also available 
in ADAMS at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html, under 
Accession ML062480134 and ML062510220, respectively.
 
In addition, Draft Regulatory Guide DG-1161, draft Revision 2 of 
SRP Section 19.1, and other related publicly available documents, 
including public comments received, can be viewed electronically 
on computers in the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR), which is 
located at 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The PDR 
reproduction contractor will make copies of documents for a fee. 
The PDR's mailing address is USNRC PDR, Washington, DC 
20555-0001. The PDR can also be reached by telephone at (301) 
415-4737 or (800) 397-4205, by fax at (301) 415-3548, and by 
e-mail to PDR@nrc.gov. Please note that the NRC does not intend 
to distribute printed copies of either Draft Regulatory Guide 
DG-1161 or draft Revision 2 of SRP Section 19.1, unless 
specifically requested on an individual basis with adequate 
justification. Such requests for single copies of draft or final 
guides (which may be reproduced) or for placement on an automatic 
distribution list for single copies of future draft guides in 
specific divisions should be made in writing to the U.S. Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, Attention: 
Reproduction and Distribution Services Section; by e-mail to

 
DISTRIBUTION@nrc.gov; or by fax to (301) 415-2289. Telephone 
requests cannot be accommodated.
 
Regulatory guides are not copyrighted, and Commission approval is 
not required to reproduce them.
 
(5 U.S.C. 552(a)) Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 8th day of 
September 2006.
 
For the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Farouk Eltawila, 
Director, Division of Risk Assessment and Special Projects, 
Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research.
 
[FR Doc. E6-15311 Filed 9-14-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 43 AFP: Japan's Hitachi faces heavy losses due to nuclear turbine problems - 

 Fri Sep 15, 7:25 AM ET 		 	 

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese electronics giant Hitachi says it will be 
deeply in the red this year because it has had to pay for repairs 
to damaged turbines which it supplied to nuclear power plants. 

Hitachi Ltd. said it now expected a year to March 2007 net loss
of 55 billion yen (470 million dollars) in a turn of fortune
also blamed on a decline in prices of hard disk drives and slack
sales of air conditioners and DVD recorders. 

The company had forecast in April a net profit of 55 billion
dollars for the business year, up from a profit of 37.3 billion
yen for the year to March 2006. 

Hitachi said in a statement it also revised downward its pre-tax
profit forecast to 160 billion yen from 280 billion yen. A year
earlier, it earned a pre-tax profit of 274.8 billion yen. 

Sales are now forecast at 9.74 trillion yen, up three percent
from the preceding business year and almost unchanged from an
earlier estimate of 9.70 trillion yen. 

The company booked a one-off charge in the April-Septemer period
to pay for repairs to faulty turbines it supplied to two nuclear
power stations operated by Chubu Electric Power and Hokuriku
Electric Power, the statement said. 

The one-off charge will also cover increased construction costs
for a 790-megawatt thermal power plant project in the United
States, it said. 

"The mid-term operating profit in the company's power and
industrial systems segment dipped by 75 billion yen from the
earlier estimate. About half of the loss can be attributed to
the turbine repairs," a Hitachi spokesman said. 

The statement said chairman Etsuhiko Shoyama and president Kazuo
Furukawa had accepted a 30 percent pay cut for the three months
from October to take responsibility for the turn of events. 

The company's other executives will see their monthly wages cut
by 15 percent for three months. 

The statement added that the president would head a task force
to "ascertain the cause of the (turbine) incident and implement
counter-measures." 

It added that cost-cutting efforts and development of new
products would be promoted in the DVD and hard-disk drive
divisions. 

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 44 TomPaine.com: Nuclear Deficits
              
Peter Bradford and Kurt Gottfried

September 15, 2006

Peter Bradford is a former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. Kurt Gottfried is professor of physics
emeritus at Cornell University. They are vice-chair and chair
respectively of the Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists. 

Now, finally, there is mounting recognition that the worldwide
quest for economic growth and the energy needed to fuel it are
on a collision course with nature. 

Whatever one may have thought about nuclear power in the past,
the rising climate change threat is such that all options for
dealing with it must be examined in light of this urgency. But
even then, nuclear power does not deserve the favored place that
Washington is conferring on it among the options available to
reduce carbon dioxide emissions. 

How big a part of the solutions pie could nuclear power be? Its
potential contribution to reducing climate change is limited.
The risks of accidents, terrorism and nuclear proliferation
could undermine expansion efforts, and make nuclear power an
unreliable option for the future. Waste issues remain unresolved
and pose political problems for U.S. expansion. Common sense
dictates support for the quickest, safest, and most cost
effective measures, and nuclear power does not fit that bill. 

A widely noted examination of this question by Princeton
professors Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala (summarized in the
September 2006 issue of <em>Scientific American</em>) shows that
to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions in 50 years requires
substantial reductions starting promptly. Therefore,
technologies that already exist and can be rapidly expanded
should be given the highest near-term prioritywind energy, for
instance. 

The study introduces the useful concept of a wedge, defined as
any measure that would, over the next 50 years, lead to a global
reduction of 25 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions
relative to business as usual. The number of wedges that will be
required to avoid dangerous climate change will depend on many
factors. Under optimistic assumptions, some seven wedges will be
needed; this number could increase significantly under less
optimistic assumptions. 

The study provides a list of measures from technologies to
public policy initiatives that exist today and could be scaled
up to become one or more wedges. In brief, energy efficiency and
conservation comprise four wedges, alternatives to
gasoline-powered transportation accounts for another four, and
increasing natural sinks provides two wedges. Generating
electricity in less carbon intensive ways contributes five
wedges. Of the latter, at most just one wedge would be
contributed by a world-wide tripling of nuclear power. 

However, safety and security risks could hobble growth
potential. We know from both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island
that nuclear power is never more vulnerable to serious accidents
than when safety procedures are under pressure to yield faster
and cheaper results. This syndrome is rampant in todays
Washington, where the new chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission has just promised further cutbacks to licensing
reviews and hearings that have already been eviscerated. 

A serious reactor accident (or successful terrorist attack)
would inevitably hobble the expansion of nuclear power (as did
both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island). Hence the ability of
nuclear power to provide a wedge is held hostage to the
industrys worst performers, while pressure to take shortcuts is
higher than ever. 

And while the world may tolerate very infrequent reactor
accidents, it will not tolerate an expansion of nuclear power
that substantially increases the likelihood that a nuclear
weapon will again destroy a city. Tripling nuclear power around
the world under the present regime of international safeguards
would carry that risk. The Iranian nuclear power program, for
instance, provides cover for a program that has brought that
country closer to having nuclear weapons. 

With increased nuclear power also comes nuclear waste. While the
problem of disposing of nuclear wastes canfrom a technical and
a safety standpointprobably be postponed for decades by a
well-conceived program of dry cask storage, the political
challenge of tripling nuclear generating capacity without an
actual disposal plan is another matter. The CEO of Exelon, a
U.S. utility often mentioned as being likely to build a new
unit, says that he will not do so until he can look the public
in the eye and say, 'If we build a plant, here's where the waste
will go.' 

Finally, no nuclear plant has ever been built through a process
that was both transparent and open to competition from all
potential power sources. Private investors have shown no
willingness to put money into nuclear plants in which they must
bear the risk of the power being too expensive. To overcome
nuclear powers ongoing incompatibility with these principles of
democracy and capitalism, the Bush administration and Congress
in 2005 assembled a package of subsidies sufficient to halve the
cost that the first few units must recover in the marketplace,
thereby making these units competitive with new gas and coal
plants, though not with many forms of energy efficiency. This
package of subsidies is disproportionate to anything being
offered to energy efficiency or to renewable energy despite
their far more promising near-term potential in the wedge
hierarchy. 

But even if these subsidies and licensing shortcuts produce what
their proponents hope, they will prove only that the government
can compel the taxpayers to build nuclear plants. The actual
costs, operating performance, and competitive position of
nuclear power will not be known until the new plants have come
on line and operated for a while. Even if all goes far better
than past U.S. nuclear construction history would suggest, these
first few units will not be a basis for a major upturn in
industry fortunes for nearly two decades. 

A wiser approach to both climate change and nuclear power would
set the necessary emission targets and assure that they are
reflected in fuel prices through a mandatory carbon
cap-and-trade program or revenue neutral carbon tax. Under such
a framework, subsidies to individual technologies would be less
critical and could be directed in proportion to each
technologys potential to reduce rapidly global warming
emissions (and oil dependence). 

Simple prudence and common sense argue in favor of a go-slow
approach to nuclear power until we have an international
safeguards system genuinely commensurate with the inherent
proliferation risks. The U.S. nuclear regulatory process must
also be redirected away from its propensity to act as an
industry cheerleader, through more statesmanlike presidential
appointments and stronger Congressional oversight. Until we have
solid evidence that the other carbon-free and carbon-neutral
technologies cannot meet the climate challenge, a rush to a
major nuclear expansion would be an expensive and divisive
impediment to the formation of sound energy and climate
policies. 

Formed in 1969, the Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading
science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a
safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and
citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and
secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate
practices, and consumer choices.  										 										 					
                              
TomPaine.com.]    										  [ /]    									 									
 										  [ /]    									 									
*****************************************************************
 45 Vermont Guardian: Mums the word

Posted September 15, 2006 

Southern Vermonters often claim there would be no uprate or
license extension if Vermont Yankee (VY) was on the Winooski
River in VIP-rich Chittenden County, instead of the southeastern
most corner of our fair state, where the VIPs are farmers and
cows, neither of whom pay much for lobbyists. 

Given the sensitivity of the Douglas administration, the Vermont
congressional delegation, and the attorney general to the
potential environmental effects of the International Paper (IP)
tire burn, and the relative silence of those same players on the
hazards of radioactive waste, southern Vermonters might have a
point. 

For many state and federal officials around the country, 9/11
was an epiphany in regard to security at the nations 103
sitting-duck commercial nuclear reactors. The industry says it
has invested heavily in new safeguards (what those are exactly
they cannot say  for, well, security reasons) and that security
at these plants is robust. 

But now Entergy, the nations second largest nuclear reactor
operator and the owner of Vermont Yankee, has tacitly
acknowledged that that has not been the case. Entergy has begun
training in-house forces at several of its plants to replace
Wackenhut, the private, anti-union firm that guards most of the
nations nuclear reactors, in part because of Wackenhuts contract
with the nuclear industrys trade group and lobbying arm, the
Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), to train and manage the
adversary teams used in security drills at the plants  including
those guarded by Wackenhut itself. 

This odd NEI-Wackenhut relationship has been no secret. It is
disconcerting, first because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) requires the industry itself to orchestrate the tests of
its own security systems, a situation one editorial writer
referred to as a frightful excursion into privatized homeland
security. Many elected officials have called this situation the
red herring that it is. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-CT, chairman
of the House Subcommittee on National Security, said it raised
legitimate concerns about the integrity of mandatory security
exercises. And Rep. Ed Markey, D-MA, compared it to a take-home
exam. 

The Government Accountability Office determined that the NRC was
not establishing the [adversary] force in a manner that provides
confidence that the force will be independent and highly
trained, and will endeavor to find weaknesses in the facilities
security. 

Even the NRCs inspector general reported in May that it was not
possible to guarantee complete separation between the Wackenhut
security guard forces and the Wackenhut mock adversary force
members. 

However, Wackenhut forces continue to guard VY, and Vermonts
elected officials have not said a word, just as they have been
mournfully silent on many other aspects of the operation and
future of this aging plant. 

If theyre lacking a script, Vermont leaders could look south for
clues. Massachusetts has been far more rigorous in its demands
on nuclear operators and federal regulators. For example, after
a 9th Circuit appeals court ruled that the NRC must consider the
storage of spent fuel in the relicensing process of a California
reactor, Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly wasted
no time in seeking to apply that decision to the Pilgrim
reactor. Reilly estimated that a fire resulting from damage to
the spent fuel pool would cause up to $500 billion in damages
and ultimately result in 24,000 cancer cases. 

Three months ago, Reilly filed a petition asking the NRC to
require reactor owners to provide an environmental impact
statement on the potential catastrophe caused by an accident or
attack on the spent fuel pool. Last month, he went a step
further, seeking to halt the Pilgrim relicensing process until
the NRC acts on his motion. 

Reilly is showing considerable leadership on this issue; he is
also doing his job. By contrast, Vermont officials have once
again failed to speak up. Instead, they have assumed their
business-friendly fallback position  a silence that suggests
that nuclear power is a business like any other, and that for
our state to be business-friendly Vermont should ignore the
safeguards that public officials elsewhere recognize are
important. 

An accident or attack at Vermont Yankee would make the IP tire
burn  or, for that matter, the aesthetics of wind turbines  look
like a walk in the park. A VY incident has the potential to
decimate Vermonts business climate and wipe out our lucrative
tourism and ski industry. 

The travesty is that Vermont officials laissez faire approach
is, in itself, a business liability. Its not enough to use
Vermonts picture-perfect quality of life as a sales pitch; state
officials must show they mean business when it comes to
protecting this state  every corner of it. 

We need demonstrable leadership on this issue, a la
Massachusetts, not the see-no-evil attitude we are getting from
our leaders. 

Northern Vermont: PO Box 335, Winooski, VT 05404 Southern 
Vermont: 139 Main Street, Suite 702, Brattleboro, VT 05301 
Contact: 802.861.4880 (ph) | 802.861.6388 (fax) | 877.231.5382 
(toll-free)

 ©2005 Vermont Guardian | 

Visit us: www.vermontguardian.com
 This document can be located online:
www.vermontguardian.com/commentary/092006/Sept15Editorial.shtml 
*****************************************************************
 46 Dallas Morning News: Stolen truck containing hazardous materials found

| News for Dallas, Texas | Garland News
 
12:05 PM CDT on Friday, September 15, 2006 

From Staff Reports 

A truck containing hazardous materials stolen in Garland was
found abandoned on Friday morning. 

The Texas Department of State Health Services and an employee of
Bonded Inspections, the company that owns the truck that was
stolen Thursday with Iridium 192, a potentially dangerous
radioactive material, contained in a radiography camera on
board, have confirmed that the truck and the camera were
recovered intact. 

In a release issued this morning, state health officials said
the radioactive material had not been disturbed and radiation
levels around the truck were normal. 

Police said the white 2001 Ford F-350 was taken Wednesday
morning from the Sunlight Food Mart at 1935 S. Jupiter Road. The
truck was found Friday in an industrial area on Sanden Drive in
East Dallas near the border with the city of Garland. 

Garland police Lt. Scot Bunch had said the truck was carrying a
camera designed to be lowered into holes to inspect foundations
and other structures. The photographic equipment contained
material described as 95 curies of Iridium 192, which is very
radioactive. 

The truck driver pulled into the gas station and went inside to
ask the attendant to turn on the pump, and then saw someone
driving away in his truck on southbound Jupiter Road. He was
unable to describe the suspect. 

Anyone with additional information should call the Garland
Police Department at 972-485-4840 or the investigating officer
at 972-205-2060. This text is invisible on the page, but this
text is affected by the invisible item's flow. This text is
invisible on the page, but this text is affected by the
invisible item's flow. More headlines... 

Stolen truck containing hazardous materials found 

Police seek truck carrying radioactive material 

© 2006 The Dallas Morning News Co. 	 	   
*****************************************************************
 47 [NYTr] Glow, River, Glow: Rad Leaks at Hanford
 
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 15:45:33 -0500 (CDT)

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Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Counterpunch - Sep 15, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair09152006.html

Glow, River, Glow

Radioactive Leaks and Plumbers at Hanford

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

The outback of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington State
is called the T-Farm, a rolling expanse of high desert sloping toward the
last untamed reaches of the Columbia River. The T stands for tanks, huge
single-hulled containers buried some fifty feet beneath basalt volcanic
rock and sand holding the lethal detritus of Hanford's fifty-year run as
the nation's H-bomb factory.

Those tanks had an expected lifespan of 35 years; the radioactive gumbo
inside them has a half-life of 250,000 years. Dozens of those tanks have
now started to corrode and leak, releasing the most toxic material on
earth, plutonium and uranium-contaminated sludge and liquid, on an
inexorable path toward the Columbia, the world's most productive salmon
fishery and the source of irrigation water for the farms and orchards of
the Inland Empire, centered on Spokane in eastern Washington.

Internal documents from the Department of Energy and various private
contractors working at Hanford reveal that at least one million gallons of
radioactive sludge has already leaked out of at least 67 different tanks.
Those tanks and others continue to leak and that the leaks are getting much
larger.

One internal report shows the results from a borehole drilled into the
ground between two of Hanford's largest tanks. Using gamma spectrometry,
geologists detected a fifty-fold increase in contamination between 1996 and
2002. The leak from those tanks, and perhaps an underground pipeline, was
described as "insignificant" a decade ago. Six years later that radioactive
dribble had swelled up into a "continuous plume" of highly radioactive
Cesium-137.

Obviously, there's been a major radioactive breach from those tanks. But to
date the Department of Energy has refused to publicly report the incident,
even though it was reported by their own geologists.

A few hundred yards away, a tank called TY-102, the third largest tank at
Hanford, is also leaking. Radioactive water is draining out of this
single-hulled container and a broken subsurface pipe into what geologists
call the "vadose zone", the stratum of subsurface soil just above the water
table. In an internal 1998 report, the Grand Junction Office of the DOE
detected significant contamination 42 to 52 feet below the surface and
concluded in a memo to Hanford managers that the "high levels of gamma
radiation" came from "a subsurface source" of Cesium-137, which likely
resulted from leakage from tank TY-102".

This alarming report was swiftly buried by Hanford officials. So too was
the evidence of leakage at tanks TY-103 and TY-106. Instead, the DOE
publicly declared that portion of the tank farm to be "controlled, clean
and stable".

No surprises here. The long-standing strategy of the DOE has been to
conceal any evidence of radioactive leaking at Hanford, a policy that was
excoriated in a 1980 internal review by the department's Inspector General,
which concluded that "Hanford's existing waste management policies and
practices have themselves sufficed to keep publicity about possible tank
leaks to a minimum."

Needless to say, the Reagan years didn't augure a new forthrightness from
the people who run Hanford. Seven years and several congressional hearings
after the Inspector General's report was released, bureaucratic cover-up
and public denial were still the DOE's operational reflex to any disturbing
data bubbling up out of Hanford's boreholes. By 1987, Hanford officials had
learned an important lesson in the art of concealment. The easiest way to
avoid bad press and public hostility was to simply stop monitoring sites
that seemed the most likely to produce unpleasant information.

It is now clear that the tanks began leaking as early as 1956, only a few
years after the Atomic Energy Commission began pumping the poisonous sludge
into the giant subterranean containers. It is also clear that the federal
government covered up evidence of those leaks since the moment it learned
of them.

How many tanks are leaking? How far has the contamination spread? The DOE
isn't talking. It isn't even looking for answers. But geologists estimated
that the faster migrating contaminants, such as uranium, will move from the
groundwater beneath Hanford's central plateau to the Columbia in something
around 25 years. That means that the first traces of radiated water could
have started seeping into the Columbia in 2001.

This reckless strategy persists. In a document called "Official
Characterization Plan of Hanford" -essentially a kind of 3-D map of
contamination at the site the DOEchose not to include Cobalt-60, a highly
radioactive material that is present at deep levels across the tank farm.
In addition, the Hanford plan fails to mention the fact that its own
surveys have shown large amounts of Cesium-137 and Cobalt-60 forming
radioactive pools in the geological stratum called the plio-pleistocene
unit, the last barrier between Hanford's soils and water table.

If the DOE remains locked onto this courseit will never acknowledge or even
investigate the potentially lethal flow of radioactivity toward the great
river of the West. That's because the managers of Hanford say they will
only research potential leaks if they detect a level of contamination
several times higher than that ever recorded at Hanford a standard clearly
designed to shield them from ever having to pursue any subsurface leak
investigation or publicly admit the existence of such leaks.

To help Hanford's managers avoid ever discovering such embarrassing leaks,
the site plan calls for them to drill the penetrometer holes, through which
contamination is measured, only to a depth of 40 feet  or two feet above
the bottom of the tanks, guaranteeing that they will avoid picking up any
radioactive traces from the region of the most dangerous contamination.

There's a reason the Hanford managers want the public to believe that most
of the contamination at the site is limited to the surface terrain.
Theoretically, the topsoil can be scooped up and, with large government
contracts, transferred to a more secure site or zapped into a glass-like
substance through the big vitrification center now under construction.
There's no way to de-contaminate groundwater or the Columbia River. Their
only hope for containment is to contain the issue politically by plumbing
the leaks from whistleblowers.

There's no question that the subsurface leakage is serious, extensive and
dangerous. The internal survey of Hanford by the Grand Junction Office
detected high levels of C-137 deeper than 100 feet below the surface  and
60 feet deeper than the current plan calls for probing. That report
concluded that both C-137 and CO-60 had "reached groundwater in this area
of the tank farm".

Consider this: C-137 is a slow traveling contaminant. How far have faster
moving radioactive materials, such as uranium, spread? No one knows. No one
is even looking.

The DOE and Hanford's contractors want to close down the C Quadrant of the
tank farm and declare it cleaned up, even though more than 10 per cent of
the waste at that site remains in tanks with documented leaks. There is
mounting evidence that a plume of Tritium-contaminated sludge has recently
penetrated the groundwater there as well.

John Brodeur is one of the nation's top environmental engineers and a
world-class geologist. In 1997, after a whistleblower at Hanford disclosed
evidence that the groundwater beneath the central plateau had been
contaminated by plumes of radioactivity, Hazel O'Leary commissioned Brodeur
to investigate how far the contamination had spread. It proved to be a
nearly impossible assignment since the DOE and its contractors had taken
extreme measures to conceal the data or avoid collecting it entirely.

Now, nearly ten years later, Brodeur has once again been asked to assess
the situation at one of the most contaminated sites on earth, this time for
the environmental group Heart of the Northwest. His conclusions are
disturbing.

"There remains much that we don't know about the subsurface contamination
plumes at Hanford," says John Brodeur. "The only way to solve this dilemma
is to identify what we don't know up front and get it out on the table for
discussion. This is difficult to do in the chilling work environment where
bad data are commonplace, lies of omission are standard practice and people
loose their jobs because they disagreed with some of the long-held
institutional myths at Hanford."

[Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green
to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Corruption
and Profiteering from the War on Terror. He can be reached at:
sitka@comcast.net.]
       
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 48 [NYTr] DU's lethal legacy in the Middle East
 
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 19:48:07 -0400 (EDT)

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Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
sent by Dave Muller (southnews) - Sep 14, 2006

... Israel's invasion of Lebanon, bombardment of Palestine the depleted 
uranium (DU) weapons used, are so lethal, that Israel, as well as the 
region, now has the soil in which they plant, the water they drink, the 
air they breathe, poisoned for a potential four and a half billion 
years. With the use and release of other lethal toxins, so is genetic 
damage to haunt future generations : 'until the sun goes out.' Israel's 
actions have set the region's yet to be conceived, on potential self 
destruct. It is only needed to view pictures of Iraq's congenital birth 
deformities after the use of depleted uranium (DU) weaponry there in the 
1991 war.

-------------------------------

http://arbuthnot4iraq.blogspot.com/

The Middle East: Lethal Legacy

by Felicity Arbuthnot

September 13, 2006

   'You do not die because you are created or because you have a body, 
    you die because you are the future.'
        -Samih al-Qasim, Palestinian poet, from 'Victims of a Map',
        an anthology of Arab poetry.

As the list of countries America is to 'liberate' grows, the dollar 
plummets and millions of them are pledged to the Iyad Allawis and Ahmed 
Chalabis (let's be blunt here, traitors) from Venezuela to Iran, Bolivia 
to Syria ('no country too small, too poor, too far away, not to be a 
threat, a threat to the American way of life' - William Blum : 'Rogue 
State') it has to be wondered (again) as all spins out of control into a 
madness that threatens the very planet, life on earth, how history (if 
we have one) will record the politics of the insane asylum, since 11th 
September 2001.

Consider this. An allied nation based on the displacement of people 
across the globe, their homes stolen, their Biblical and Mohammedan 
land, heritage, nurtured, tilled, revered, was donated (by western 
governments) to a people who had suffered an historic horror: the 
Holocaust, to which we now, rightly, have a memorial day. Yet in 
Israel's invasion of Lebanon, bombardment of Palestine the depleted 
uranium (DU) weapons used, are so lethal, that Israel, as well as the 
region, now has the soil in which they plant, the water they drink, the 
air they breathe, poisoned for a potential four and a half billion 
years. With the use and release of other lethal toxins, so is genetic 
damage to haunt future generations : 'until the sun goes out.' Israel's 
actions have set the region's yet to be conceived, on potential self 
destruct. It is only needed to view pictures of Iraq's congenital birth 
deformities after the use of depleted uranium (DU) weaponry there in the 
1991 war - and those of the children conceived by returning US and UK 
soldiers, to look humanity's annihilation in the face. The bombs rushed 
to Israel (via the UK) were also DU, designated unanimously, a weapon of 
mass destruction by three UN sub-committees. 'Depleted' uranium is a 
misnoma. Uranium weapons are a product of the nuclear fuel cycle, thus 
contain all the lethal radioisotopes which should be stored in a high 
level nuclear waste facility, not disposed of over populations. 'Nuclear 
waste with fins on', is how one expert describes DU missiles. Saddam 
Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction which Prime Minister 
Blair assured Britain: 'could be launched in forty five minutes', but 
Britain, the US and Israel do - and did.

Dr Doug Rokke was Pentagon Advisor on the clean up of the 1991 war in 
Kuwait and southern Iraq and principal author of the US Army manuals on 
disposal of DU and other myriad toxics (including chemical and 
biological weaponry residue) released by bombing and destruction. His 
time spent in the region with a team of one hundred was at huge cost. 
Their months there resulted in half dying of the radiation-related and 
toxicity-related diseases they were trying to prevent; those who 
survived are all chronically ill (including Dr Rokke) with the exception 
of the one operative who insisted on wearing full radiological 
protective clothing, in spite of the searing heat. The clean up was 
abandoned, the task impossible and the expense prohibitive. Cancers in 
Iraq have risen up to tenfold and birth deformities, some believed never 
before recorded, stalk Iraq's future generations. Kuwait and northern 
Saudi Arabia are known to be affected, but statistics from America's 
allies are hard to come by.

Rokke has written a detailed paper ('Required Actions In Lebanon and 
Israel') advising on actions which should be taken by Lebanon, Israel 
and Palestine, to protect their people, though contamination will spread 
on the wind, he warns 'for hundreds of kilometres'. Syria, Jordan, 
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the region are all likely victims of the recent 
invasion, as they, with Kuwait doubtlessly were in the thirteen years of 
(and ongoing) bombing of Iraq. In context, the UK based Low Level 
Radiation Campaign (www.llrc.org.uk) measured a nine-fold rise in 
uranium in the air in London six days after the start of the 2003 
bombing of Iraq. 'Hazardous materials have and will cause air, water and 
soil contamination and may be re-suspended and travel great distances ... 
throughout the region...' states Rokke.

Further, additional contaminants may include : phosphorous, mercury, 
napalm, nitro-glycerine, ammonium nitrate and a host of other life 
threatening and genetically altering poisons. With numerous reports 
also, of 'new chemical and biological weapons' having been used in 
Lebanon and Gaza and the additional lethal cocktail of toxic substances 
released by bombing of oil, industrial and chemical installations. Paola 
Manduca, Professor of Genetics at the University of Genoa, is so alarmed 
that she is covening a team of international experts of all relevant 
disciplines, to travel to the region at their own expense, to offer 
their scientific and analytical skills. 'Every destroyed building and 
destroyed equipment will be contaminated with uranium' says Rokke, 
adding: 'the operational risk of clearance is equivalent to that found 
in combat.' As UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expresses his 'concern' 
to Iran's leaders over their legitimate development of nuclear power, it 
would be interesting to know if bleated his 'concern' in Tel Aviv a few 
days ago about their illegitimate use.

The 1977 Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Convention, Article 35, 
states that is prohibited to employ methods and means of warfare which 
are intended, or may be expected to cause widespread, long term and 
severe contamination to the environment. Article 55 states: 'Care should 
be taken in warfare to protect the natural environment against 
widespread, Long term and severe damage (prohibiting) means of warfare 
which are intended or may be expected, to cause such damage ... and 
thereby prejudice the health and survival of the population.... attacks 
against the natural environment by way of reprisals are prohibited.' 
Whilst Saddam (like it or not, still Iraq's legitimate President, say a 
raft of international law experts) stands trial in a kangaroo court, 
three rogue states have thrown international law books out of the window 
and committed crimes of historically unprecedented enormity.

Given the extraordinary speed with which all factions of Lebanese 
society have mobilised to survey, then clear countless tons of rubble, 
Rokke's instructions have a tragic irony, as roads clog with hundreds of 
trucks, loaded with the debris of homes, businesses and the remains of 
all that was the industrial lifeblood of civil society. 'Cannibalisation 
of (damaged) equipment must be forbidden; soils, damaged building 
materials, asphalt should not be reused. Transported materials should 
follow procedure for radioactive waste ... should not be locally 
disposed of in burial sites, by submersion, incineration or destruction 
on site.'

'Exact location and nature of disposed materials should be noted.' Given 
that Lebanon and Palestine are blockaded, captive states, as Iraq was 
during the embargo years (now simply a vast US concentration camp) 
Lebanon and Palestine have little option but to do as Iraq did : to 
innovate, rebuild from the radioactive rubble, cannibalise every viable 
part from equipment and breathe in lethal air as they construct, drink 
contaminated water, eat contaminated food. Children and those with 
medical conditions 'are at great risk' concludes Rokke. In Israel too. A 
silent holocaust across the region.

Read more from Felicity Arbuthnot on her website: 
http://arbuthnot4iraq.blogspot.com/
       
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 49 JCN: Hayakawa and JAEA Launch Nuclear Radiation-resistant Rubber

Japan Corporate News Network

Tokyo, Sept 15, 2006 (JCN) - Hayakawa Rubber Co., Ltd. and the 
Japan Atomic Energy Agency today launched a superior nuclear 
radiation-resistant rubber that can be used for many purposes.

The rubber was made by adding additives to EPDM copolymers such 
as ethylene, propylene and dien to form a highly durable rubber 
material that can maintain its elastic function with a radiation 
absorption dose of over 9MGy. 

Feasibility tests of the rubber as a connector seal for proton 
accelerator cooling water-pipe and as an airproof seal for vacuum 
apparati are currently underway. 


  By Aki Tsukioka, JCN Staff Writer  


Copyright © 2006 JCN. All rights reserved. A division of Japan
Corporate News Network KK.

© 2001-2006 The Japan Corporate News Network (JCN) K.K.  
*****************************************************************
 50 IEER: Tritium Memo
 
Presentation to the Rocky Mountain Low-Level Radioactive Waste
Board on Disposal of Depleted Uranium from the National
Enrichment Facility

 Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D.

 13 September 2006 

Mr. Chairman and members of the Board, thank you very much for
this opportunity to present my analysis of the issues relating
to disposal of large amounts of depleted uranium generated by
uranium enrichment plants in general, and, in particular, the
disposal of the DU that the National Enrichment Facility (NEF)
is expected to generate over its operating life. 

In the proceeding relating to the application of Louisiana
Energy Services (LES) to build and operate the National
Enrichment Facility in New Mexico, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission issued an order on October 19, 2005 (CLI-05-20) that
raised fundamental issues regarding the classification and
disposal of DU. (I was an expert witness for the interveners in
the proceeding.1) Those issues are still outstanding, despite
the fact the Atomic Safety Licensing Board granted a license to
LES to construct and operate the NEF. This process has led to a
situation where the DU from the NEF is without a clear
categorization in the waste classification scheme of 10 CFR
61.55, and without a clear path to disposal. This is because
during the LES license proceeding neither the NRC Staff nor LES
made an assessment of the environmental impact of the disposal
of DU from the NEF in a low-level waste facility. At the same
time DU from the NEF was not located within the classification
scheme of 10 CFR 61.55 so as to clarify the type of low level
waste facility (Class A, B, C, or Greater-than-Class-C) it would
require for its disposal. 

This raises the possibility that there may be no suitable
low-level waste facility in which to dispose of the DU from the
NEF - and indeed, our analysis shows that shallow land burial is
an unsuitable way to dispose it of. Hence, the export of this
waste for disposal outside New Mexico - the operating assumption
throughout the LES license proceeding - faces significant
hurdles that cry out for your attention and more generally the
attention of the people of New Mexico and potentially the other
two members of the Rocky Mountain Compact. That is why I
particularly appreciate that you decided to hear the results of
our research on this issue. 

Let me explain. Prior to the October 19, 2005 Order, the
Commission had already determined that DU was low-level waste.
This definition simply follows upon the residual catch all
definition of low-level waste in regulations; it corresponds to
paragraph J of the Rules of the Rocky Mountain Low-Level
Radioactive Waste Board. But the category of waste within that
definition and the manner of its disposal remained to be
decided. Specifically, its place within the scheme developed
under the low-level waste disposal rule, 10 CFR 61.55 remains to
be decided. 

In its October 19, 2005 ruling, the Commission stated the DU was
Class A low-level waste under 10 CFR 61.55(a)(6), but attached
caveats to that conclusion that are central to the issue of
classification of DU from enrichment plants in general and to
the question of the environmental impacts of disposal of DU from
LES in particular. 

The Commission's Order noted that in issuing the final 10 CFR
61.55 rule, DU from enrichment plants had been explicitly
excluded. Specifically, the environmental impacts of disposal of
the large amounts of DU generated by enrichment plants were not
examined in the Final EIS for that rule and therefore currently
have no coverage under the National Environmental Policy Act
(NEPA). Hence, the Commission ordered the NRC staff to conduct a
separate proceeding, apart from the LES license proceeding, to
determine the class to which large amounts of DU from enrichment
plants belong: 

The Commission is aware that in creating the § 61.55 waste
classification tables, the NRC considered depleted uranium, but
apparently examined only specific kinds of depleted uranium
waste streams - "the types of uranium-bearing waste being
typically disposed of by NRC licensees" at the time. The NRC
concluded that those waste streams posed an insufficient hazard
to warrant establishing a concentration limit for depleted
uranium in the waste classification tables. Perhaps the same
conclusion would have been drawn had the Part 61 rulemaking
explicitly analyzed the uranium enrichment waste stream. But as
Part 61's FEIS indicates, no such analysis was done. Therefore,
the Commission directs the NRC staff, outside of this
adjudication, to consider whether the quantities of depleted
uranium at issue in the waste stream from uranium enrichment
facilities warrant amending section 61.55(a)(6) or the section
61.55(a) waste classification tables.2 

It is plain that an a priori assumption that DU from enrichment
plants is Class A low-level waste under 10 CFR 61.55(a)(6) is
contrary to the Commission's order until the NRC staff considers
the issue separately from the LES license. That proceeding has
not yet been conducted. Hence DU from enrichment plants,
including the DU that will be generated by LES, has no
classification within the scheme of 10 CFR 61.55, even though it
is in the broad category of low-level waste. 

This lack of a classification for DU from enrichment plants is
no mere technical formality. Throughout the licensing
proceeding, LES based its technical strategy and its cost
estimate of disposal on shallow land burial. Specifically, LES
suggested that it could dispose of its DU at one of two sites -
the Waste Control Specialists site in Texas, just east of the
NEF site in New Mexico, and the Envirocare site3 near Clive,
Utah. However, neither LES nor the NRC staff did any calculation
of the environmental impact of disposing of more than 100
million kilograms of DU from the NEF at either site. This is the
second aspect of the LES license proceeding that is problematic
because it was in contravention of the Commission's October 19,
2005 Order, cited above. While rejecting the idea that the
classification of DU from enrichment be decided in the LES
proceeding ("The NRC has long prohibited the use of adjudicatory
proceedings to challenge the terms of regulations.") it went on
to require the estimation of the environmental impact of DU
disposal by shallow land burial in the LES proceeding,
independent of how the generic classification issue might be
decided: 

Despite section 61.55(a), we are permitting the NIRS/PC waste
impacts contention to go forward because a formal waste
classification finding is not necessary to resolve the disposal
impacts contention, which at bottom goes to whether the impacts
of near-surface disposal have been adequately estimated or
assessed for NEPA purposes. 

We close with a word of caution. An NRC "impacts" analysis does
not require a fullscale site-specific review, an inquiry in the
purview of the responsible licensing agency, such as an
Agreement State. NEPA also does not call for certainty or
precision, but an estimate of anticipated (not unduly
speculative) impacts. An assessment of the estimated impacts at
one or more representative or reference sites can be sufficient.
In this type of analysis, the impacts for a range of potential
facilities or locations having common site or design features
can be bounded. The LES facility will generate large new
quantities of depleted uranium for disposal, and therefore it is
appropriate for the NRC in its impacts analysis to assess
whether the impacts of disposing of the LES depleted uranium are
expected to be small, moderate, or otherwise.4 

Neither the NRC staff nor LES conducted an actual assessment of
any kind to estimate the environmental impacts of shallow land
disposal of DU to be generated by the NEF. In fact, the
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research was the only
party to the LES proceeding to have conducted such an analysis.
Before describing the results of our analysis, which was
officially presented to the Licensing Board during the
proceedings, in which I was an expert witness for the
interveners (the Nuclear Information and Resource Service and
Public Citizen), let me describe what the LES and the NRC Staff
did rely on. 

First, the NRC Staff rejected the Waste Control Specialists
(WCS) site in Texas as providing a plausible disposal option,
since WCS did not (and, to date, still does not) possess a
license to dispose of low-level radioactive waste. Further, our
analysis of the WCS license application turned up errors that
indicated that the company appears unqualified even to receive
uranium waste, much less manage it and dispose of it.5 

There were two critical elements to the argument that DU from
the NEF could be disposed of at the Envirocare site. The first,
relied on by both LES and the NRC Staff, was that the Division
of Radiation Control (DRC) in Utah had assured them that DU
could be disposed of safely at Envirocare site based on the
existing license for that site. Thus both the NRC Staff and LES
relied on the word of the Utah DRC rather than their own
estimates, which were required by the Commission's October 19,
2005 Order, as quoted above. The basis for this reliance was
that Utah is an agreement state and therefore is responsible for
assuring the safety of the disposal at sites under its purview. 

There are several problems with this argument. First, the
Envirocare site is licensed only to dispose of Class A low-level
radioactive waste. However, as noted above, in its October 19,
2005 Order, the Commission explicitly excluded matters relating
to the general classification of DU from enrichment plants from
the LES licensing proceeding. It required that calculations of
environmental impact be done for the LES proceeding. The Utah
DRC has done no calculations or estimates specific to large
amounts of depleted uranium from enrichment plants. Hence, in
effect, the NRC Staff and the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board
(ASLB) of the NRC chose to rely on pre-existing estimates of
disposal of waste that did not include explicit consideration of
DU from enrichment plants. This is, in my view, in contravention
of the explicit requirement of CLI-05-20, quoted above. 

In regard to the specific question of the environmental impacts
of disposal of DU from the NEF at the Envirocare site, the NRC
staff stated that they were going to rely on environmental
assessments done as part of the licensing of that site for
low-level waste disposal. Specifically, the NRC Staff stated
that they were relying on the following 1990 report: D. Baird,
M.K. Bollenbacher, E.S. Murphy, R. Shuman, and P.B. Klein,
Evaluation of the Potential Public Health Impacts Associated
with Radioactive Waste Disposal at a Site Near Clive, Utah,
Rogers and Associates Engineering Corporation, June 1990
(RAE-9004/2-1), which I will call the "Baird et al. report" for
brevity. In response to a question from interveners' counsel,
Lindsay Lovejoy, an NRC expert testified that he considered this
report scientifically sound. 

It is far from that. As I testified then, and as I will show
here, this report contains many scientifically absurd results in
its estimates of the allowable concentrations of some
radionuclides in Utah soil. My testimony stands unrefuted in the
record; that silence on the part of LES and the NRC Staff speaks
very loudly indeed. Table 1 shows why. For one scenario, the
report estimated that the allowable concentration per gram of
soil of U-238 and of Th-232 would be greater than the weight of
the Earth. Similar problem results were obtained for
plutonium239 and plutonium-242. 

Table 1: Some of the Scientifically Absurd Results in the Baird
et al. report 


       "Allowable" conc. pCi/gm. (Intruder/explorer scenario)  	
 Allowable conc.: gm radionuclide/gm soil  	  Comment   
  Uranium-238  	  5.2E+37  	  1.5E+32  	  Allowable
concentration is about 25,000 times the weight of the Earth   
  Thorium-232  	  5.1E+37  	  4.6E+32  	  Allowable
concentration is about 75,000 times the weight of the Earth   
  Plutonium-239  	  9.5E+37  	  1.5E+27  	  Much more than than
100,000 trillion times the Pu-239 ever made   
  Plutonium-242  	  7.1E+37  	  1.1E+27  	  About 100 million
trillion times the Pu-242 ever made   

Source: Columns 1 and 2 are from Baird et al. 1990, op. cit., p.
5-13. Column 3 is calculated from column 2 using the specific
activities of the radionuclides in question (about 0.34
microcuries per gram for U-238, 0.11 microcuries per gram for
Th-232, 0.063 Ci/gram for Pu-239, and 4 millicuries per gram for
Pu-242). 

Evidently, soil concentration per gram of any substance cannot
exceed more than one gram of that substance. That is physically
impossible. In the above examples (which are not the only ones
of this kind in the report), the "allowable" soil concentration
exceeds one gram by large margins. It exceeds the weight of the
Earth for U-238 and Th-232 and exceeds by huge margins the
amounts of the two plutonium isotopes ever created on Earth.
Despite the evidence I offered about that, the Baird et al.
report contained physically impossible results, the NRC Staff
did not withdraw its reliance on it. 

There was evidently a problem of quality in producing and
publishing the Baird et al. report. It is astonishing that a
report with such egregious errors was used in the licensing of
the Envirocare site. That is not to say that all the
calculations or results in the report are wrong. Some may not
be. But it is evident that many of them are wrong and even
impossible. This report is clearly an unsuitable basis for
establishing the environmental impact of disposal of DU, which,
after all, consists primarily of U-238, one of the radionuclides
in Table 1 above. 

In summary, the record of the licensing proceeding as well as
the license for the Envirocare site in Utah clearly shows that: 


  + There is currently no NEPA analysis that covers disposal of
the large amounts of DU generated by enrichment plants in
facilities permitted to dispose of low-level waste. 
  + Neither the NRC Staff nor LES did any radiation dose
estimates for shallow land disposal of DU in this case. 
  + The proceeding that is needed to determine whether or not
the default classification of DU as Class A waste under 10 CFR
61.55(a)(6) applies to DU from enrichment plants, and if not
where in the scheme of 61.55 it belongs, has not yet been
conducted. This means that DU from the NEF is not covered by the
Class A classification under any part of 10 CFR 61.55, which
only applies to the much smaller amounts of DU that were
considered when it was finalized. 
  + The Envirocare site only has a license for disposing of
Class A low-level waste. 
  + The Utah DRC did not do any calculations specific to the
disposal of DU from the NEF. 
  + The basic technical document that the NRC Staff relied on
for determining the suitability of the Envirocare site for
disposal of DU from the NEF contains egregious errors regarding
allowable concentrations in soil of some radionuclides,
including for uranium-238, the main constituent of DU. It has
evidently not been well checked for the quality of its analysis
and results. 

Might one anticipate that, were the NRC Staff to conduct the
process asked of it by the Commission that DU from enrichment
plants would be determined to be Class A waste? I cannot say
what the NRC Staff will conclude, but I can assert that no
reasonable analysis could come to such a conclusion, provided
the waste disposal rules for LLW in 10 CFR 61 Part C are not
greatly altered. As you know, those rules require that the
maximum dose from low-level waste disposal be limited to 25
millirem, without a time limit. In effect the dose limit must be
met at the time of peak dose. The lack of a time limit in the
rule was reaffirmed by one of the members of the ASLB during the
LES proceeding. This is a critical public safeguard for future
generations when it concerns long-lived radionuclides like
uranium-238, thorium-232, thorium-230, and plutonium-239. 

DU disposal impacts 

Let me now present our analysis of the impacts of shallow land
DU disposal. We used the ResRad model developed by Argonne
National Laboratory to perform the computations. The Institute
for Energy and Environmental Research reports contain the
details of the parameters we used, to enable independent
verification of our results. Their correctness was not
challenged during the LES license proceeding. 

Table 2 is taken from IEER's February 2005 report. It contains a
number of analyses of disposal of the DU from the NEF at various
types of sites - ranging from wet with high radionuclide
mobility and moderate erosion to dry with low radionuclide
mobility and low erosion. 

In all cases, the maximum dose was estimated to be well over 100
rem at peak times between about 9,800 years and 17,400 years.
The reason for this result is that for wet sites and high
radionuclide mobility, groundwater becomes contaminated; for dry
sites with low radionuclide mobility, the cover erodes away and
the external gamma radiation from radium-226 becomes very high.
This range of calculations covers the types of conditions that
would occur at the Envirocare site. The uncovering of the waste
would take longer if the disposal were deeper, but even in the
case of disposal at significantly larger depths than the 7.6
meters assumed in our calculations, such as the 12.3 meters
proposed for the WCS site, erosion and exposure of the waste
would ultimately prevail at all shallow burial sites. 

The fact that the peak doses are three to four orders of
magnitude higher (leaving aside the question of organ dose, in
which case the exceedances would be even higher in some
scenarios) means that it is highly unlikely that any shallow
land burial could meet the dose criteria of 10 CFR 61 Part C.
Hence, our conclusion that DU in the quantities produced by
enrichment plants should be disposed of in deep geologic
disposal in a manner similar to the disposal of transuranic
waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New
Mexico. Further scientific foundation for this conclusion lies
in the fact that the DU consists of alpha-emitting, long lived
actinides, whose dosimetric characteristics per unit
radioactivity are broadly similar to the main constituents of
TRU waste. This is readily seen in Table 3. 

All of the above points indicate a classification of Greater
than Class C waste for DU from enrichment plants, including that
from NEF. 

The Utah DRC has dealt with the problem of high peak doses by
assuming it away. It assumes that no one will intrude upon the
site or live there at any time in the future. While it is
reasonable to assume that the scarce and saline groundwater at
the site poses hurdles for human settlement, these have not been
insuperable in other dry areas, as witness the development of
Las Vegas. Further, the external doses at a dry site where
radionuclides migrate only slowly are so large, that the 10 CFR
61 dose limit would be violated in a few hours. The Baird et al.
report notes that prior to the construction and operation of the
low-level waste facility there, the environs of the site were
used for "grazing of sheep, jackrabbit hunting, and occasional
recreation vehicle driving."6 Such activities would be
sufficient to violate the dose limits around the time of peak
dose. Thus, NRC Staff ignored parts of the very document it
relied on for its determination that the use of the Envirocare
was a plausible strategy for disposal of DU from the NEF. 

The general results that we obtained for shallow land burial of
DU have also been obtained by others. The NRC itself considered
shallow land burial unsuitable for DU in the 1994 LES license
proceeding. In that case the NRC calculation was for a wet site.
The DOE has also come to the same general conclusion in its own
environmental analysis. More details are provided in the two
IEER reports I have given you, where we analyzed dry as well as
wet sites.7 

DU from the NEF is low-level waste within the scheme of waste
classification under present law, but it has no place as yet
within the scheme of 10 CFR 61.55. It is well within the realm
of possibility that DU in the large amounts to be generated by
the NEF will be officially determined to be unsuitable for
shallow land burial. 

Table 2: Summary of our ResRad dose calculations for shallow
earth disposal of DU3O8 powder under a variety of assumptions
for an arid climate. The annual doses for the uranium isotopes
as shown include the contribution from their respective decay
products as well. It is important to note that the doses are
given in rem per year as opposed to mrem per year. (All numbers
have been rounded)8 



  Scenario  	  U-238 Dose  	  U-235 Dose  	  U-234 Dose  	 
Total Peak Dose
 (rem per year)  	  Time at Peak Dose
(years after emplacement)   
  higher Kd (clay)
 low effective moisture
 low erosion  	  88  	  47  	  200  	  336  	  17,412   
  higher Kd (clay)
 moderate effective moisture
 low erosion  	  78  	  42  	  185  	  306  	  17,412   
  higher Kd (clay)
 low effective moisture
 moderate erosion  	  72  	  30  	  109  	  210  	  9,807   
  higher Kd (clay)
 moderate effective moisture
 moderate erosion	    67  	  28  	  104  	  199  	  9,807   					
     
  lower Kd (sand)
 low effective moisture
 low erosion  	  32  	  26  	  121  	  179  	  17,403   
  lower Kd (sand)
 moderate effective moisture
 low erosion  	  658  	  14  	  124  	  795  	  13,433   
  lower Kd (sand)
 low effective moisture
 moderate erosion	    38.4  	  21  	  81  	  141  	  9,807   
  lower Kd (sand)
 moderate effective moisture
 moderate erosion	    658  	  14  	  124  	  795  	  13,433   

Notes:
 -	The Kd values used for the uranium and its decay products
were taken from the ResRad data collection manual for the
indicated soil type. All other soil parameters not set to
default values remained at the values appropriate to clay.9 
-	low effective moisture = rain of 0.178 m/yr and an
evaotransportation coefficient of 0.9
 -	moderate effective moisture = rain of 0.356 m/yr and an
evaotransportation coefficient of 0.7
 -	low erosion = 0.0005 m/yr
 moderate erosion = 0.001 m/yr 

Table 3: Comparison of mortality per Bq and mortality per gm of
depleted uranium oxide at secular equilibrium to that of
plutonium-239 contained in TRU waste at 100 nCi per gram10 


      Mortality per Bq for tap water  	  Mortality per Bq for
Dietary  	  Ratio of mortality per Bq to Pu, tap water  	  Ratio
of mortality per Bq to Pu, food  	  Mortality ratio, adjusted
for specific activity per gm, tap water (see note)  	  Mortality
ratio, adjusted for specific activity per gm, food (see note)  
						 
  Uranium-238  	  1.13E-09  	  1.51E-09  	  0.40  	  0.42  	 
1.34	    1.41   
  Uranium-234  	  1.24E-09  	  1.66E-09  	  0.44  	  0.46  	 
1.48  	  1.55   
  Thorium-230  	  1.67E-09  	  2.16E-09  	  0.59	    0.60  	 
1.99	    2.05   
  Radium-226	    7.17E-09  	  9.56E-09  	  2.52  	  2.63  	 
8.53  	  8.93   
  total mortality ratio at secular equilibrium  	  	      	   
3.93	    4.11	    13.34  	  13.94   						 
  Plutonium-239  	  2.85E-09  	  3.63E-09    	                  
  			 

Note: The source for the drinking water and dietary mortality
ratios is EPA Federal Guidance Report 13.11 The two right most
columns show the ratio of the mortality coefficients for uranium
and its daughter products versus plutonium-239 after adjusting
by 340/100 to account for the greater specific activity of bulk
DU3O8 relative to that of the transuranic elements at the
threshold of TRU waste. 

The issue of DU classification is likely to get more complex as
time goes on. Investigations done at the Armed Forces
Radiobiology Research Institute after the 1991 Gulf War indicate
that uranium may be toxic in a number of ways in addition to its
carcinogenicity. Animal experiments at relatively high doses
indicate that uranium may be 

Mutagenic
 Cytotoxic
 Tumorigenic
 Teratogenic
 and Neurotoxic, including in a manner analogous to exposure to
lead.12 

Further, the research indicates that the alpha particles emitted
by uranium may act synergistically with the heavy metal
toxicity. Some effects increase with increasing uranium
enrichment. This makes uranium rather like a radioactive form of
lead and rather different than, say, plutonium-239. The much
higher specific activity of plutonium means that the radiation
damage becomes very high before there is appreciable heavy metal
toxicity. With uranium (especially depleted, natural, and low
enriched uranium), the specific activity is low enough that
appreciable radiation damage and heavy metal toxicity seem to be
in the same general range of exposure. The implications of the
animal research for human beings are unclear. This is because it
is difficult to extrapolate the animal experiment results of
non-cancer effects at high doses to low-dose human exposure. 

I would like to note that the ASLB excluded all of my testimony
regarding possible future stricter regulation of DU, even though
it was linked to the question of whether the costs of DU
disposal might go up in the future. 

The research at Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
has shown that it would be unsafe to dispose of DU in shallow
land burial and that deep geologic disposal in ceramic form
(after deconversion to uranium dioxide) is the most appropriate
method of waste management. Such management and disposal applied
to the DU from the NEF would likely cost about $3 billion or
more - that is about four times more than the decommissioning
financial guarantee given to the State of New Mexico by LES. 

In its ruling granting the license, the ASLB found fault with
fundamental aspects of the LES cost estimate for private DU
deconversion and disposal. The Commission review of the matter
affirmed those findings. LES had stated that its primary
strategy would be to rely on private deconversion and disposal.
It still insists that it will go that route, although there is
no approved cost basis for it. 

In granting the license, the ASLB proceeded on the assumption
that the DOE cost estimate provided to LES would suffice because
the DOE was obligated to assume charge of the waste under the
USEC Privatization Act. That has settled none of the issues
relating to the classification and environmental impact of
disposal of large amounts of DU from the NEF. It has not settled
the issue of how reliably DOE actually has executed its legal
commitments for spent fuel under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
My testimony in that regard was also excluded. 

As a final problem, the license granted to LES allows possession
of transuranic radionuclides (like plutonium-239) as well as
fission products like technetium-99 in trace amounts present in
recycled uranium "as a consequence of the historical feed" of
such uranium "at other facilities." The "other facilities" are
not defined; no upper limit is set on the trace amounts. The
problem of the environmental impacts of disposing of DU
contaminated with transuranic radionuclides and fission products
was not examined at all during the license proceedings. 

You are faced with an unprecedented challenge created by the
precipitous issuance of the license to LES. No compact Board has
so far been forced to deal with issues of disposal or export in
the face of fundamental unresolved waste classification issues.
This will be considerably complicated if the NEF actually
receives recycled uranium contaminated with plutonium,
neptunium-237 and/or fission products. 


Endnotes: 

1. The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research produced
two reports in that case: Arjun Makhijani and Brice Smith, Costs
and Risks of Management and Disposal of Depleted Uranium from
the National Enrichment Facility Proposed to be Built in Lea
County New Mexico by LES, Institute for Energy and Environmental
Research, Takoma Park, Maryland, November 24, 2004, redacted
version published in February 2005 (hereafter Makhijani and
Smith 2005) and Arjun Makhijani and Brice Smith, Update to Costs
and Risks of Management and Disposal of Depleted Uranium from
the National Enrichment Facility Proposed to be Built in Lea
County New Mexico by LES, Institute for Energy and Environmental
Research, Takoma Park, Maryland, July 5, 2005, redacted version
published August 10, 2005 (hereafter Makhijani and Smith 2005a). 

2. NRC Memorandum and Order, CLI-05-20, October 19, 2005, p. 17. 

3. Envirocare is now named EnergySolutions. The old name is
retained here for convenience, since it is referred to that way
in the reports prepared by IEER on the NEF. 

4. NRC Memorandum and Order, CLI-05-20, October 19, 2005, p. 18.
Emphasis in the original. 

5. Makhijani and Smith 2005a. 

6. Baird et al. 1990, pp. 4-4 and 4-5. 

7. Makhijani and Smith 2005 and Makhijani and Smith 2005 a. 

8. Source for Table 2: Makhijani and Smith 2005. 

9. ResRad data collection manual p. 110-111 

10. Source for the Table 3: Makhijani and Smith 2005. 

11. FGR 13 1997 p. 102-103 

12. This research is summarized in Makhijani and Smith 2005,
from which this list is taken. 

Available at EggheadBooks: (IEER Press and RDR Books, 2006) 

Comments to ieer at ieer.org Takoma Park, Maryland, USA 

September 13, 2006 
*****************************************************************
 51 St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Plan for radioactive soil draws protests

SEPTEMBER 15, 2006 
                                
St POST-DISPATCH 09/14/2006 
BRIDGETON
 
Tons of radioactive, contaminated soil that were illegally
dumped at a landfill in Bridgeton more than three decades ago
may someday get a more fitting burial.
 
But the location of that final resting place has touched off a
fierce public debate.
 
Many of the 100 people who packed a public meeting at Bridgeton
City Council Chambers on Thursday night voiced objections to a
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposal to leave the
tainted soil where it is - at the old West Lake Landfill on St.
Charles Rock Road - and protect it with a cover of crushed
concrete and clay. 

The Missouri Coalition for the Environment says it has gathered
hundreds of signatures on a petition calling for the soil to be
dug up from the federal Superfund site and taken somewhere else.
The Bridgeton City Council passed a resolution this summer
demanding that the wastes be removed.
 
"What should we do about these Cold War nuclear weapon wastes?"
said Kay Drey, an anti-nuclear activist from University City.
"Unless and until the wastes are removed, they will continue to
migrate into groundwater used for farming, and into the
(Missouri) river."
 
Dan Wall, remedial project manager for the EPA's Superfund
Division in Kansas City, Kan., said the agency had extended the
comment period through Oct. 14 to accommodate Thursday's public
meeting.
 
The EPA proposal calls for bringing in additional fill material,
grading the two contaminated sites and covering them with rubble
and rock to limit erosion. Records show it would cost $22
million, compared with $76 million to partially remove the
tainted soil.
 
The radiological waste at West Lake landfill can be traced back
to Cold War-era uranium processing at Mallinckrodt Chemical
Works in St. Louis.
 
Another company, later taken over by Cotter Corp., obtained
8,700 tons of leached barium sulfate residues from the
processing.
 
Cotter hired B&K Construction Co. to haul the wastes to another
of its facilities, but the hauler also dumped some of the waste
product, containing 7 tons of uranium, mixed with 39,000 tons of
soil at the West Lake Landfill in 1973. Landfill operators were
told the dirt was "clean fill," according to federal reports,
and they used it as intermediate cover for the trash that was
dumped at West Lake.
 
Today, the two sections of landfill where that soil was spread,
totaling more than 40 acres, are fenced off and overgrown with
grass, shrubs and trees. Yellow signs warn anyone who approaches
that this is a "radiation area."
 
The Missouri Coalition for the Environment warns that the
radioactive contaminants sit in the Missouri River flood plain,
and the river is a source of drinking water to the region.
 
But Rick Walker, operations manager for the Bridgeton Landfill
Authority, said river flooding in 1993 and 1995 never reached
the radioactive fill. He said the threat posed by the
radiological fill was overstated.
 
"It was in the soil. They used it for cover," Walker said.
"That's what everybody has got a picture of. They've got a
picture of people out there with barrels, you know, with nuclear
waste in these barrels. And that's not what's here."
 
The Bridgeton landfill is owned by Allied Waste of Scottsdale,
Ariz. The Archdiocese of St. Louis previously owned part of the
site - including the radiological sites - after it was willed to
it by the one-time owners of the West Lake Quarry and Material
Co., Vertice and Catherine Cruse.
 
After purchasing the assets of Laidlaw Waste Systems - including
the Bridgeton landfill - Allied became one of three potentially
responsible parties, along with the U.S. Department of Energy
and Cotter.
 
Another section of landfill was used for municipal trash until
it was closed last year to coincide with the opening of the new
Lambert Field runway, Walker said. The site is still used as a
trash transfer station.
 
Walker said Allied supported the EPA's proposal.
 
"It's not our decision," he said. "We will follow their decision
whatever it is."
 
But he added that the cost differential between covering the
tainted soil and excavating it would be considerably more than
the $54 million quoted in federal reports. [spacer] Top of page
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 52 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Western U.S. in midst of uranium boom

[seattlepi.com]     

[AP BUSINESS WIRE] 

Friday, September 15, 2006 · Last updated 1:29 p.m. PT 

By PAUL FOY ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

TICABOO, Utah -- The last U.S. uranium mill ever built, in this
parched landscape near Lake Powell, shut down almost as quickly
as it started operating as nuclear power fell into disfavor
about two decades ago. 		

Keith Larsen, chief executive for U.S. Energy Corp., picked up
the mill 10 years later for practically nothing, banking it for
better days. His patience paid off, making Larsen's company one
of the few already taking profits out of a new uranium boom. 		

Larsen's mothballed mill, once a liability, became a $90 million
asset with mining claims - the deal he made to sell the package
to Toronto-based SXR Uranium One Inc. by the end of the year. 		

Suddenly, nuclear power is back in demand as a relatively cheap,
reliable and emissions-free solution to the world's insatiable
demand for energy. Even some leading environmentalists have
endorsed nuclear power as an antidote to global warming. More
than 50 nuclear plants are planned or under construction in a
dozen countries, according to U.S. and international nuclear
agencies. 		

The nuclear comeback has reinvigorated a Western mining industry
that, during the 1950s and again in the 1970s, was the stuff of
legends. Uranium claims - which grant an exclusive right to mine
a piece of federal land - were bought and sold like stock. 		

The successive booms made millionaires and losers and overnight
towns. It also left some environmental damage, including a huge
pile of radioactive uranium tailings the government has promised
to move from a bank of the Colorado River near Moab, Utah. 		

 [advertising] Today's boom doesn't have people running around
with Geiger counters. For the most part, the West's uranium
deposits are known, mapped and claimed. 		

"It's nothing like it used to be," said Moab Mayor David
Sakrison, whose town has been transformed into a recreational
playground. "It's a different community. We're more tourist
oriented. A lot of the people who lived here in the 1970s have
moved away. It's a new cast of characters." 		

The first Western uranium boom answered a call in 1948 for
domestic uranium stockpiles for atomic bombs. By the 1970s,
demand from nuclear power plants was picking up, until the
partial meltdown of a Three Mile Island reactor in 1979 signaled
a shift in public acceptance. 		

The Ticaboo mill here opened in 1982 just in time to watch the
bottom fall out of the uranium market. Utilities were canceling
orders for new nuclear plants. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster in
Russia further tarnished nuclear power. 		

Two decades later, the spot price for milled uranium yellowcake
has jumped sharply to $52 a pound after bottoming out at $7 in
2001. Higher prices have motivated thousands to snatch up
expired uranium claims and wildcatters to sink test drills in
places where it's a good bet. 		

"If you find one of those ore bodies, it's a valuable asset,"
said geologist Richard Dorman, exploration manager for British
Columbia-based Universal Uranium Ltd. 		

Dorman started a second round of drilling this month on a
largely unexplored side of fabled Lisbon Valley near Moab, about
314 miles south of Salt Lake City. 		

Over forty years, more than 80 million pounds of uranium ore
were taken from Lisbon Valley. The area was the setting of a
Hollywood movie that chronicled the rags-to-riches story of
Charlie Steen, a geologist who launched Utah's first uranium
rush with the discovery July 6, 1952, of one of the richest ore
bodies mined in the United States. 		

Dorman is certain the fault that created Lisbon Valley hides a
continuation of that ore body. Another British Columbia
exploration company, Mesa Uranium, says it's closing in on the
same uranium-speckled sandstone deposits. 		

Not far away, International Uranium Corp. operates the only
working U.S. uranium mill, near Blanding, Utah, which has been
surviving for years on "alternate feeds," processing
contaminated soil or radioactive ore from others trying to get
rid of it. 		

Ron Hochstein, president and chief executive officer, says the
company plans to resume mining uranium ore at a dozen locations
in northern Arizona. 		

Uranium production has a future again, though the nation hasn't
solved the disposal problem for spent fuel rods, said John D.
Parkyn, chairman and chief executive of Private Fuel Storage, a
group of nuclear-power utilities blocked by federal authorities
from opening a temporary repository at an American Indian
reservation in Utah's west desert. 		

A more permanent repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, not
scheduled to open until 2017 - 19 years late - may never open,
he says, adding, "Presidents come and go, and some of them
slowed it down." 		

That hasn't stopped utilities from making plans to open or add
nuclear plants, however. 		

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says U.S. utilities are
looking at building as many as 27 reactors, and it just licensed
a $1.5 billion uranium enrichment plant near Eunice, N.M., where
a groundbreaking was held Aug. 29. 		

Louisiana Energy Services, a subsidiary of Urenco Ltd., is
building the first U.S. installation that will use modern
centrifuge technology. USEC, formerly the United States
Enrichment Corporation and an arm of the federal government
until 1998, operates a gaseous diffusion plant in Paducah,
Kentucky, where pumps and filters separate lighter uranium atoms
from heavier atoms in a slower, more power-intensive process. 		

The nation's 103 operating nuclear power plants already are
operating on dwindling stockpiles of uranium - some of it
converted from Russian bombs - while energy-hungry China and
India are rushing to build their own nuclear power plants. 		

Larsen sees no let up in the world demand for uranium fuel, even
as his company leaves behind a large part of the business for
molybdenum prospects in Colorado. U.S. Energy Corp. will keep a
small royalty in the Ticaboo mill, take about 5 percent of SXR's
stock and hold onto a uranium deposit in Wyoming. 		

It also will keep a small royalty on Wyoming's Sweetwater
uranium mill, on standby for years. Mining multinational Rio
Tinto is selling that mill to SXR, which plans to open the
Sweetwater and Ticaboo mills by 2010. 		

In New Mexico, Strathmore Minerals Corp. is looking at opening a
third mill and making use of its extensive uranium claims there.
		

Uranium concentrate is in short supply, with world consumption
of 180 million pounds outpacing annual production of 100 million
pounds, according to industry and government estimates. For now,
the difference is being made up by dwindling stockpiles - and
the shortage is expected to get worse as new plants come on
line. 		

"Bottom line, we'll probably have five new nuclear plants in the
U.S. by 2015," Larsen said. "Now we're in a pinch. It's
emergency time. We don't have enough energy." 		

U.S. utilities looking at building or adding reactors are being
motivated partly by the escalating cost of natural gas, and
partly by fears the government may tax coal-fired plants for the
carbon emissions they release into the air. 		

Outside of the United States, the Nuclear Energy Institute says
27 nuclear plants are under construction in 11 other countries,
adding to the world's 442 nuclear plants. 		

The uranium boom has met only tepid resistance here from the
environmental movement. The Southern Utah Wilderness says the
largely worked-over uranium deposits fall outside vast areas of
redrock canyons it has proposed for wilderness protection. 		

Federal policy, meanwhile, is changing to expedite development
of nuclear power. 		

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is streamlining licensing and
operating approvals for a standardized - and vastly improved -
new generation of reactors. The Energy Act of 2005 offered loan
guarantees, production tax credits and partial reimbursement
against regulatory delays for builders of nuclear plants. 		

Larsen, 47, recalls when the federal government dumped its
uranium stocks on the market, depressing the price of uranium
yellowcake in the early 1980s. Even though the price has
rebounded to $52, Larsen said it can move a lot higher. 		

By his measure, the price can double again and still make
uranium as economical as coal for producing electricity. 		

"Our nation needs nuclear power," Larsen said. "It's the
cleanest, the cheapest and it's advanced so much we're not going
to have another Chernobyl. Three Mile Island is still in
operation, and it's one of the most efficient plants in the U.S.
The new designs have vastly improved since the 1970s." 	

Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 
(206) 448-8000
 
Home Delivery: (206) 464-2121 or (800) 542-0820
*****************************************************************
 53 Bradenton Herald: Retail construction in Tallevast gets initial OK

09/15/2006 | 

 DUANE MARSTELLER Herald Staff Writer 

MANATEE - Development plans at the U.S. 301/Tallevast Road
intersection advanced Thursday despite Tallevast residents'
objections and pleas to wait. 

The Manatee County Planning Commission endorsed Covered Bridge
Holdings II LLC's plans for 16,808 square feet of retail space
at the intersection's northwest corner. The board also
recommended county commissioners rezone 28.9 acres the developer
also owns immediately north of the retail site from agriculture
to light manufacturing. 

Both parcels are part of The Forum, a proposed 37-acre light
manufacturing and industrial park. 

The board voted 6-1 on the retail parcel, and 5-2 on the
rezoning. Planning Commissioner Steve Belack dissented both
times, agreeing with Tallevast residents who urged the board to
wait until a plume of industrial contamination beneath their
community was fully defined. 

"This is an issue that hasn't been put to bed," he said. "It's
much more serious than some people allude to." 

Richard Bedford, the board's chairman, joined Belack in opposing
the rezoning because there weren't accompanying plans detailing
what would be built there. 

Their objections meant little to the more than a dozen Tallevast
residents sitting in the audience. Outside the meeting room,
they lambasted the board's decisions as the latest examples of
their community's concerns not being heard. 

"We are tired of being put on the back burner," said Laura Ward,
president of FOCUS, a residents advocacy group. 

"We know why: Because we're a black community," added Wanda
Washington, the group's vice president. 

Residents have been distrustful of county government since
zoning changes in the mid-1980s. Mistrust deepened when they
learned in 2003 that local and state officials knew for three
years about industrial pollution beneath the century-old
community but never told residents. The pollution has been
traced to a former beryllium plant. 

Lockheed Martin Corp., which owned the plant site when the
pollution was discovered in 2000 and is thus responsible for
remediation, says it has defined the plume's boundaries and is
ready to start cleanup. The Department of Environmental
Protection overseeing the process has yet to agree. Residents
disagree with Lockheed's conclusions on the plume size, citing
three independent experts who contend the vertical extent of the
plume has not been fully explored nor has Lockheed explained how
groundwater is moving through the area or adequately
investigated the potential threat of vapors from the
contamination. 

Until those issues are settled, the county should wait before
approving any development in the area lest it spread
contamination, residents said. 

"There's still a lot of things not known," Washington told the
board. "We still don't know the risks involved." 

Although contamination has been found beneath part of the
developer's property, county and state environmental officials
said it's deep enough that surface development won't disturb it. 

But planning board members were uncomfortable with a proposal to
eventually convert a monitoring well on the northern parcel to
an irrigation well. They recommended the county not allow any
wells on the property to draw drinking or irrigation water. 

Residents also said The Forum, if approved and built, will
further worsen traffic through their community. 

Brenda Pinkney said she won't allow her two children to walk to
a corner convenience store because of heavy industrial-related
traffic on Tallevast Road, especially the narrow portion between
U.S. 301 and 15th Street East. 

"Traffic is horrendous," she said. "What's going to happen when
you add more traffic to all that's going on now?" 

A traffic study showed the project won't overburden the road,
said county planners and Stephen Thompson, the developer's
attorney. 

A preliminary site plan showed a bank, a gas station and
fast-food restaurant on the retail site, but what actually is to
be built there hasn't been determined, Thompson said. 

Both items are expected to come before county commissioners for
final approval Oct. 5. Ward said residents plan to be there to
object again. 

Duane Marsteller, transportation and growth/development
reporter, can be reached at 745-7080, ext. 2630, or at . 

• Recommended the county approve a preliminary site plan for
Prospect Point, a proposed 38-lot single-family subdivision at
3515 63rd Ave. E. The vote was 6-1, with Mary Sheppard
dissenting because of concerns about floodways being filled and
developed. 

• Recommended approval of a preliminary site plan for The
Landings at Parkview, a 372-unit single-family project proposed
at the northwest corner of S.R. 64 and Cypress Creek Boulevard.
The site plan also includes a 105,660-square-foot automobile
dealership. The vote was 5-2, with Sheppard and Marilyn Stasica
dissenting because the project is in an evacuation zone and has
limited access roads. 

• Continued to Oct. 12 a public hearing on Schroeder-Manatee
Ranch's proposed Northwest Sector development of regional
impact. Plans call for 4,446 homes and 305,000 square feet of
office and retail space on 1,518 acres between S.R. 64, S.R. 70,
Lakewood Ranch Boulevard and Lorraine Road. 

• Continued to Oct. 12 a public hearing on The Wellingtons, a
63-lot single-family subdivision proposed at 7505 121st Ave. E.,
Parrish. 

• Continued to Oct. 12 a public hearing on Oakwood Apartments, a
91-unit complex planned for 6720 15th St. E. near Bradenton. 

• Continued to Oct. 12 a public hearing on Monteux at Villages
of Avignon, a proposed 228-home project at the northeast corner
of 29th Street East and 24th Avenue East near Palmetto. 
*****************************************************************
 54 ForUm: Ukraine has set a place for nuclear waste disposal
 
  [ForUm]     

  News / 15 September 2006 | 17:11   

Ukrainian experts have set a place for construction of the 
nuclear waste storage. It is Buryakovka village in Chernobyl 
zone, several kilometres far from Ukraine-Belarus border. 

The object is scheduled to be ready by 2010. In accordance with 
informal statistic, there are over 500 unauthorised disposals in 
Ukraine.   

Ukraine pays Russia $60-80 million for the nuclear-waste 
disposals. The domestic one will help to reduce such expenses and 
dependence form Russia. As Energoatom informed before, American 
company is expected to build it.   Earlier, in December, 2005 the 
President of Ukraine opined that the new plant for disposal and 
processing of nuclear-waste would make a profit in the amount of 
$80 annually. 

According to “Energy Strategy of Ukraine up to 2030,” the main
target is creation of domestic peaceful atom closed cycle – from
the extraction to the utilisation of nuclear-waste. 

Belarus stands for removal of any nuclear objects far from its
borders. Lithuania was forced to take into account Belarusian
demands and constructed the nuclear-waste disposal right next to
Ingalinskaya NPP.   
  [Âåðñèÿ äëÿ ïå÷àòè] [Îòïðàâèòü ññûëêó äðóãó]   

   Comments klapa (17:50 | 15 September,2006) 

Having been in the nucleau power industry here in the US for 6 
years - I think to just be choosing a site now and to expect it 
to be ready by 2010 is rather unrealistic. It is a big step in 
the right direction though - not only the saving of what is being 
paid Russia now - but also the closed cycle utilizes the waste as 
fuel. Many people in the US don't know that to this very day, all 
waste is still stored at the plants in the spent fuel pools. 
Shame on US.

Ukraine2006 (18:18 | 15 September,2006) The real question is
what will the quaility and standards of environmental protection
be like? Are we likely to see Ukraine become Europe's nuclear
dumping ground. Out of sight out of mind. I hope the
international agencies will be monitoring and funding worlds
best practice. klapa (18:22 | 15 September,2006) Ukraine2006 -
many think that Ukraine nuclear program is not good because of
Chernobyl. 

This is not the case. Ukraine - and Russia - know what they are 
doing. Many changes in procedure and retrofit of the inherently 
unstable RBMK reactors have been made since the accident. Did you 
know - the reactor complex outside of Zaporozhia is the largest 
in Europe? Also this complex has the much safer VVER type 
reactors. 

 All rights are reserved by © LTD. Inter-Media, ForUm 2001-2006 
*****************************************************************
 55 Deseret News: Thank Bishop for PFS denial
 
[deseretnews.com] 

Friday, September 15, 2006                               

Rep. Rob Bishop deserves much of the credit for the Bureau of 
Land Management's recent decision denying Private Fuel Storage a 
right-of-way to access its planned nuclear waste disposal site in 
Skull Valley. The BLM denied this application principally because 
the proposed right-of-way would have passed through the Cedar 
Mountains Wilderness Area.

       It was Rep. Bishop's commitment, resolve and effectiveness 
that obtained this protection for the Cedar Mountains. Pushing 
that legislation through Congress was no small feat. Hats off to 
Rep. Bishop.

 David Garbett
 Sandy
 			  		 		   
© 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company           [ /]                                                   


*****************************************************************
 56 reviewjournal.com: Yucca arguments debated
 
  Sep. 15, 2006

Judges question state's challenge to regulation          

By STEVE TETREAULT<br>STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
	
WASHINGTON -- Attorneys who ventured to federal court Thursday to 
argue Nevada's challenge to a government nuclear waste rule were 
told by two judges that the state did not appear to have a strong 
case. 

"There are so many ways to dispose of this right now, I don't 
know right now just which way," Judge Harry T. Edwards said 
during a half- hour session at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 
District of Columbia Circuit. 

Judge A. Raymond Randolph also questioned the state's position.
Judge Janice Rogers Brown, the third member of the panel that
will decide the case, was silent during the arguments. 

The judges' questioning of the government's attorney was tame by
comparison. 

Joseph Egan, Nevada's lead attorney on nuclear waste matters,
said afterward that he would not read into the judges' comments.
"I've learned not to begin guessing on a court's ruling based on
oral arguments," Egan said, since judges sometimes adopt
challenging and contrary positions for sake of testing out
litigants. 

A decision is expected within several months. 

At issue was a Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulation called
the "waste confidence rule." Established in 1984 and updated
twice, it determined that a repository for used nuclear fuel
would be available by 2025, and that nuclear plants in the
meantime would not have to conduct detailed environmental
studies of how their waste would be managed. 

But with Yucca Mountain as the only repository site being
developed with seemingly any chance of being ready by 2025,
Nevada charged that the waste confidence rule prejudges its
approval before the state has a chance to fight it during NRC
license hearings. 

"Our interest is in a full and fair hearing, and we face the
danger that we won't get that," Nevada lawyer Marty Malsch told
the judges. 

"There is no way the 2025 date could be met unless it was
assumed the NRC approved Yucca Mountain," Malsch said. "It has a
huge impact as long as it is in effect." 

Nevada wants to force the NRC to reopen the regulation and
remove the 2025 date, in effect decoupling it from the Yucca
project, attorneys said. 

But Edwards said it can hardly be known who will be at the NRC
in six years or later when Yucca Mountain licensing may come to
a head, or what circumstances could change between now and then.
	   
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2006
 Stephens Media GroupPrivacy Statement
*****************************************************************
 57 Olympian: Residents vexed by groundwater pollution west of Spokane - 

- Olympia, Washington
 
Today is Friday, September 15, 2006             

The Associated Press 

SPOKANE - Deep Creek area residents have pressed government
officials to step up the effort to determine the source of
groundwater pollution around two Cold War-era missile sites. 

In a forum with state and federal health and environmental
officials Thursday night at the Deep Creek Grange, Rick
Williams, whose well tested at 15 times the "maximum contaminant
level" for the toxic solvent trichloroethylene, or TCE, said
historical studies are "unacceptable."

He was referring to an abridged Environmental Protection Agency
report, released Wednesday, which covered interviews with former
Air Force personnel and longtime area residents, a brief review
of military archives and inquiries with Spokane County officials.

Fairchild Defense Nike Battery 87, two surface-to-air missile
sites four miles apart just north of U.S. Highway 2 and west of
Deep Creek, was decommissioned in the early 1960s. TCE, widely
used as a degreaser in missile operations, was detected in a
nearby well in October 2004.

Since then EPA investigators have found the solvent in six
private wells and four monitoring wells in a study area around
two sites. Low levels of perchlorate, a salt used in rocket
fuel, have been detected in 60 private wells and four monitoring
wells, and N-nitrosodimethylamine, or NDMA, a rocket fuel
igniter, was found in 33 private wells.

EPA officials have written that none of the contamination found
to date constitutes an immediate health threat to area
residents, including a number of Hutterite farmers whose
Anabaptist religious traditions are similar to those of the
Mennonites and have a communal lifestyle.

Williams said his wife Sally learned of the contamination while
undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.

"We have to rely on EPA or the Army Corps (of Engineers) to
investigate this," Williams said. "They need to be held
accountable."

EPA District 10 spokesman Tony Brown said the agency is not done
and is still "doing everything it can to find the source of the
contamination," adding that residents have been kept informed
"every step of the way."

"We can't speak for the Corps of Engineers," Brown said.

Impatience with the pace of the effort also was expressed at the
forum by Kristina Savestinas, an aide to Rep. Cathy McMorris,
R-Wash., who cited a letter from the congresswoman to Dave Roden
at the corps' office in Seattle on Sept. 7.

McMorris wrote that because of EPA findings indicating the
missile sites might be the source of pollution, "it is vitally
important to get to the bottom of this issue so the land owners
in the area have the answers they deserve."

McMorris has yet to receive a reply, and "a week is sufficient
time," Savestinas said.

The corps, responsible for cleaning up former military sites,
has determined there is insufficient evidence to pinpoint the
source of the pollution. Corps officials have noted that TCE was
commonly used as a degreaser in civilian as well as military
operations the 1950s and '60s assert that the other two
chemicals also could have come from other sources.

According to a report by an EPA contractor that was released
Wednesday, testing to date indicates the TCE contamination may
have come from a different source from that of the perchlorate
and NDMA.

Next year EPA will begin sampling wells around other missile
sites in the area, including one near Medical Lake, said Calvin
Terada, an emergency response coordinator. 							 			 							 	
							 						 							 				 				 				 
Do you want The Olympian to keep you in mind when we canvass the
community for opinions? 


©2006 The Olympian 		 	 
*****************************************************************
 58 Morris Daily Herald: Exelon to resume discharges of tritium

The Greater Grundy County Area                        

Email Us at: news@morrisdailyherald.com                              
     	
  9/15/2006 4:42:00 PM

Discharges allowed under NRC license
 
By Jo Ann Hustis Herald Reporter
 
LISLE - Braidwood Generating Station at Braceville will resume
emptying tritiated water into the Kankakee River in a couple
weeks, a federal spokesman noted today.

The resumption is under the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, following leakage of several million gallons of
tritiated wastewater into the groundwater at and near the
station since 1996.

Several test releases have been conducted via the blowdown pipe,
which discharges the tritiated water into the river, the NRC
said.

NRC Region 3 spokesman Viktoria Mitlyng said today the agency is
basically satisfied with the plans by Braidwood Station owner
Exelon Nuclear to operate the blowdown pipe, and with how the
tritium detection program is working.

"Our inspectors studied the detection system, the blowdown line,
vacuum breaker wells, and the radiation effluent monitoring
program, which was not adequate and led to very significant
leaks not being addressed by the utility," Mitlyng said.

Tritium is a naturally occurring isotope of hydrogen that emits
a very low level of radiation, and is found in more-concentrated
levels in water used in nuclear generating stations.

Braidwood Station owner Exelon Nuclear did not release word of
the tritium spillage until December of last year. 

The NRC went on record soon after, saying the incidents did not
jeopardize public health and safety. 

Mitlyng said the test releases to the blowdown pipe was part of
the move to resume regular radioactive releases into the river
under federal guidelines.

"We're talking about regular releases allowed under the
utility's operating license," she said. 

"However, the utility has committed to certain changes to make
sure the situation with the spills does not occur again. And to
that end, they took a number of steps as outlined in their
letter to the NRC and in our letter to them as well."

These include installation of a humidity detection system the
length of the 4.5-mile blowdown pipe to detect any changes in
function.

"The detection system is so sensitive it detects an increase in
humidity in the air due to weather conditions," said Mitlyng.
"When increased humidity is detected, alarms go off in the
control room, and Exelon personnel immediately go out to inspect
the source."

Exelon also committed to visually inspect the blowdown pipe by
walking its perimeter weekly.

Additionally, special leakproof barriers were installed at the
vacuum breakers in the blowdown pipe, preventing any leakage of
water outside the line.

"With those three changes, it is extremely unlikely the utility
will have unexpected spillage that led to thousands of gallons
of tritiated water just dumped in the ground," Mitlyng said.

NRC Regional Administrator James Caldwell noted in a Sept. 7
letter to the utility the five changes include operating the
blowdown line at positive pressures, removing all but three
vacuum breaker values from operation, and installing impermeable
membrane in the vacuum breaker valve vaults in the ground.

Also, installation of the continuous moisture detection system,
and construction of several groundwater monitoring wells along
the blowdown line, the letter added in part.

"We also reviewed your procedures on the integrated response to
radioactive leaks and spills implemented in response to ... the
historical leaks from the vacuum breaker valves," Caldwell noted
in the letter.

"These procedures provide added assurance that any leakage will
be adequately resolved and assessed."

Exelon is ultimately responsible for complying with the
requirements related to liquid radioactive discharges, such a
tritium-laced water, into the environment, the NRC noted.

   Morris Daily Herald • 1804 N. Division St. • Morris, Illinois 
60450 (815) 942-3221 • (800) 215-9778
*****************************************************************
 59 AU ABC: Pepinnini sees strong interest in uranium ventures. 

15/09/2006. ABC News Online
 	
A company which has signed an agreement with a Chinese
corporation to develop a uranium mine in South Australia says
there are many overseas companies keen to invest in Australian
uranium.

 As part of its deal with the Sinosteel Corporation, Pepinnini
plans to develop deposits in the state's north-east.

 The project will require South Australia's Labor Government to
grant a uranium mining lease.

 Pepinnini's managing director, Norman Kennedy, says there are
signs that will happen.

 "They're certainly encouraging exploration," he said.

 "We don't see any reason why they wouldn't encourage mining if
it's a viable project that's valuable to the state. 

"I'm very, very confident that the Labor Party policy will
change, there's already strong indications of that."

 Mr Kennedy says he has been approached by several international
companies looking to tap into the deposits.

 "We did have serious bids on the table from a number of Chinese
companies plus other Asian countries and Europe and some
Australian people," he said.

 "It's becoming very competitive. 

"I think people are getting very concerned about where they're
going to be able to get their supply of uranium for their power
stations."

 The federal Labor Party is reconsidering its "three mines"
policy on uranium. 

*****************************************************************
 60 UPI: Analysis: Nuclear waste debate gets looks
     
  United Press International - Energy - 

        9/15/2006 1:43:00 PM -0400

 By BEN LANDO UPI Energy Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- Washington was debating this week
how to address the U.S. nuclear waste issue as permanent storage
plans were criticized and a short-term storage strategy was both
promoted and panned, while the nuclear industry waits to build
more plants. 

Reactors at the 103 U.S. civilian nuclear plants churn out about
2,000 metric tons of highly radioactive byproduct a year while
about 54,000 metric tons are cooling or being stored now. The
waste has been waiting for a geological repository in Nevada to
open, now eight years after its deadline. 

In 1954 Congress took over the responsibility of waste from
commercial nuclear plants with the goal of storing it until it
becomes safe -- tens of thousands of years. 

While the idea first was that two repositories, in either side
of the country, would be ideal, Congress, absent completed
scientific study (still ongoing) and without federal nuclear
regulator approval, decided in 2002 that the only place to store
the waste is deep inside Yucca Mountain, nearly 100 miles
northwest of Las Vegas. 

Congress held four separate hearings on various aspects of the
nuclear waste debate this week, while the nuclear industry lobby
urged it to fast-track a Yucca solution and the Senate's leading
nuclear energy proponent said he's given up on legislation this
session but plans to unveil the ultimate compromise after
January. 

While the approach Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., favors, tacked
onto an appropriations bill, would clear both current plants of
their waste holdings and a path for new nuclear plants, it isn't
getting the best reception. 

Domenici calls for interim storage sites throughout the country
to hold all current and future nuclear waste until a permanent
site is ready -- an obligation of government set in the Nuclear
Waste Policy Act of 1982 and something necessary for the nuclear
industry to move forward on new projects (transportation issues
notwithstanding since how to get the waste where is an as of yet
unresolved problem). 

But 10 state attorneys general sent a letter this week to
Domenici and provision co-author, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.,
voicing complaints it would violate local jurisdiction of land
and environmental laws, among others. (In a move unrelated to
the legislation but fully connected to the debate, the Interior
Department last week shot down an interim storage site in Utah
over doubts of a permanent repository being completed). 

And many members at a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on
Energy and Air Quality hearing Wednesday rallied around a
promise that interim storage would never be approved by them,
questioning if interim storage would take away from Yucca. 

The pro-nuclear Nuclear Energy Institute is in favor of a
mixed-bag approach that is Yucca-heavy, but any debate is good
debate, spokesman Steve Kerekes told United Press International. 

"We're quite pleased that the issue is before congress, that
there are hearings and people are talking about solutions to the
used fuel challenges that confront the country." 

The NEI purchased two-weeks worth of ads in major Beltway
newspapers pushing a "Fix Yucca Mountain" agenda as both a
responsibility of the government and one that will reduce the
"uncertainty" surrounding new nuclear projects. 

"A lot of people are looking at waste as the thing that is going
to make or break the expansion prospects in the United States
over the next decade or so, and so they're focusing on it," said
John Holdren, director of Harvard University's Science,
Technology and Public Policy program. 

Holdren, co-chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy,
said "it is conceivable that Yucca Mountain will never go,"
which means if there's no interim, off-site storage, the waste
will stay at the plants. 

"That's the one problem that has to be solved if nuclear energy
is going to play a bigger role is waste." 

Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog Project at the
anti-nuclear group Nuclear Information and Resource Service,
said any talk of new nuclear plants is putting the cart before
the horse. 

"The first step in responsibly managing nuclear waste problem is
to stop generating it," Gunter said. "If I was a plumber looking
to fix your toilet, the first thing you have to do is stop using
it." 

While federal approval is necessary for any new nuclear plants,
money may be the key decider between a Yucca-only or
interim-also plan. 

At the House hearing Wednesday, both Luis Reyes, U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission's executive director for operations, and
Edward Sproat, director of the U.S. Energy Department's Office
of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said they'd need more
funding to simultaneously work on and approve interim storage
and Yucca Mountain. 

Sproat said the department will issue a funding scheme for Yucca
by November, to match its timeline for an application to the NRC
by 2008 and opening by 2017, which he said was just "the best
achievable, not most probable" schedule. 

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
*****************************************************************
 61 Times and star: Concerns over nuke waste dumping 

workington lake district

Published on 15/09/2006

DEAN Parish Council voiced concern over plans to dispose
of low-level radioactive waste at Lillyhall.
 
The proposals were discussed at last weekâ€™s parish council
meeting. 

They involve dumping waste from Sellafield, and the council is
to invite a representative of the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency
to attend a public meeting next month and explain the proposals
in more detail.
 
* Councillors heard that the notice board at Deanscales had been
struck by a vehicle and two supporting posts destroyed. They
would be replaced at a cost of Â£65.
 
* The noticeboard at Pardshaw had collapsed and members
suggested that a site near to the hostel at Pardshaw Hall might
be more suitable.
 
* The implications of restoring Eaglesfield Green back to a pond
are to be considered.
 


*****************************************************************
 62 Times and Star: Start date for building recycling plant

workington lake district

Published on 15/09/2006

CONSTRUCTION work is due to start in January on the new metal 
recycling facility which will create 30 high-quality jobs at 
Lillyhall.
 
Studsvik UK, who supply specialist services to the nuclear 
industry, are waiting for planning permission to go ahead with 
the plant.
 
If permission is granted by the Environment Agency and Cumbria 
County Council, six months of construction work will begin and 
Srudsvik will invite tenders from the local supply chain.
 
The plant will decontaminate radioactive steel and scrap metal 
from Sellafield and other nuclear sites. It will be sold and 
re-used and the process will reduce the amount of scrap which is 
dumped at the low-level repository at Drigg.
 
Interviews for staff, who will earn more than Â£25,000 per year,
will begin in January if the plant is given the go-ahead.
 
*****************************************************************
 63 Times and Star: US group bids for BNG

workington lake district

Published on 15/09/2006

BRITISH Nuclear Fuels has confirmed that US engineering giant 
Fluor has made an offer of up to Â£400 million for the whole of 
Sellafield operator British Nuclear Group (BNG).
 
The BNFL board is considering the offer and is discussing it with 
the government and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
 
The news follows a decision by BNFL to break up BNG and sell the 
business off piecemeal, rather than as a whole as originally 
intended.
 
The governmentâ€™s u-turn was branded a â€œrecipe for disasterâ€ 
by Britainâ€™s biggest nuclear union, Prospect, and BNGâ€™s 
8,500-strong Sellafield workforce, who had been told the company 
would be sold as a whole and they would all transfer to one new 
employer.
 
Fluor wants to buy BNG as a whole and senior Fluor executives 
have secured a meeting with Tony Blairâ€™s industry adviser, 
Geoffrey Norris, to discuss the matter.
 
A spokesman for the American firm said: â€œFluorâ€™s offer 
recognises that BNG as a whole is worth far more than its 
individual parts.â€
 
Although the BNFL board is running the sell-off, it is government 
ministers who will ultimately give approval.
*****************************************************************
 64 Hanford News: Hanford vit plant hits work milestone
 
This story was published Friday, September 15th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

Bechtel National has reached a construction milestone on the
$12.2 billion vitrification plant at Hanford, finishing the
pouring of the last foundation for the plant's main buildings. 

The most recent work was completing the final 155-cubic yard
concrete placement for the Analytical Laboratory's steel-laced
foundation. 

Foundation work had already been completed on the other
buildings that will handle radioactive waste at the Waste
Treatment Plant - the High Level Waste Facility, the Low
Activity Waste Facility and the Pretreatment Facility. 

The Analytical Laboratory is the smallest of those buildings,
but still has a footprint the size of a football field and will
stand four stories high. 

Construction crews placed nearly 13,000 cubic yards of concrete,
enough to fill 1,300 concrete trucks, for the five-foot thick
foundation and its underground infrastructure. 

The laboratory will collect nearly 10,000 waste samples each
year it operates to come up with the correct "recipe" for each
batch of glass made. 

The vitrification plant is being built to turn much of 53
million gallons of radioactive waste into a stable glass form
for disposal. The waste, now held in underground tanks, is left
from the past production of plutonium at the Hanford nuclear
reservation for the nation's nuclear weapons program. 

Once the best glass recipe for each batch is identified, glass
formers and the waste will be fed into the High Level Waste and
Low Activity Waste facilities to produce glass expected to
isolate the waste from the environment for thousands of years. 

"We began work on the laboratory nearly two years ago and have
made good progress," Bill Elkins, project director for Bechtel
National, said in a statement. "We anticipate erecting
structural steel later this fall." 

Engineering, procurement and construction on the Analytical
Laboratory is 29 percent complete, according to the Department
of Energy. Work is 57 percent complete at the Low Activity Waste
Facility, 37 percent complete at the High Level Waste Facility
and 36 percent complete at the Pretreatment Facility. 

Construction work is on hold on the Pretreatment and High Level
Waste Facility while some issues are resolved. Those include
completing a new earthquake study for the plant site and
resolving some other technical issues. 

Design work continues, however, and construction is planned to
resume in about a year. 

Besides working on construction of the Analytical Laboratory,
Bechtel National also is continuing construction on the Low
Activity Waste Facility and dozens of support buildings and
underground infrastructure.

© 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 65 New Mexico Business Weekly: Sandia Labs broadens its horizons - 

New Mexico Business Weekly - 2:59 PM MDT Thursdayby NMBW Staff
 
Sandia Labs has greatly broadened its focus to embrace the 
technology and engineering needs of today's post-cold-war, 
post-9/11 world, said Tom Hunter, Sandia's president and 
laboratory director, in a forum today with Albuquerque media. 

Upgrading and maintaining the country's nuclear stockpile remains 
a top priority, but the lab is also spearheading research to 
improve homeland security, Hunter said. In addition, Sandia is 
strengthening its partnerships with universities and industry to 
market emerging technology and train the next generation of 
scientists. 

"Our role in the national science and technology scene is
undergoing dramatic changes," Hunter said. 

The lab will rely much more on the development of advanced
microsystems machinery, nanotechnology, and computer modeling
for all its work, thanks to construction of a $500 million
microsystems engineering complex, a National Infrastructure
Simulation and Analysis Center, and a new Center for Integrated
Nanotechnologies that Sandia is operating in partnership with ,
Hunter said. 

"We'll use the microsystems and nanotechnology facilities to
create a lot more small, smart things," he said. 

Examples of micro devices emerging from the lab include tiny
wafers that function as optic sensors on satellites to protect
them from the sun, and a hand-held sensor device that sniffs out
toxic agents in fluids almost instantaneously. 

"Microsystems engineering has allowed us to, basically, put a
lab on a chip," said John Stichman, executive vice president and
deputy lab director, at the forum. "Previously, we needed a
whole laboratory to analyze the contents of a fluid the way this
tiny sensor can do it." 

The lab is also partnering with universities to conduct research
and make sure academia is turning out well-trained graduates to
meet the science needs of the future, Hunter said. In fact,
Sandia hosted a forum with deans and vice presidents from 15
different universities in June to discuss joint programs and
projects. 

"We're working very closely with the universities," Hunter said.
"Virtually every week I'm talking with university
representatives to strengthen our partnerships." 

The lab is working particularly closely with New Mexico
universities to create career paths for local up-and-coming
scientists, Stichman said. 

"About one-third of the 276 people we hired so far this year are
from New Mexico, and about 22 percent of the lab's technical
staff is from here," Stichman said. 

Sandia's budget for the new fiscal year will be $2.1 billion, or
about $19 million more than the current fiscal year, Hunter
said. 

The lab now employs about a total of 12,500 people, including
8,700 regular employees plus contract labor. About 11,000
employees are in New Mexico and the rest in California and other
places, Hunter said. 

© 2006 American City Business Journals, Inc. and its licensors.
*****************************************************************
 66 Albuquerque Tribune: White Sands may host bunker-buster bomb test

By Sue Vorenberg (Contact)
Thursday, September 14, 2006                    

White Sands Missile Range is on a short list of places that the
Defense Threat Reduction Agency will consider for new
bunker-buster bomb test, said a spokesman for Sen. Pete
Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican. 

The bomb, dubbed Divine Strake, will have 700 tons of ammonium
nitrate and fuel oil equal to about 560 tons of TNT. 

A "strake" is a piece of hull planking on a ship. 

The goal of the test, planned since 2002, is to predict damage
to deep underground facilities. 

The blast will happen on ground over a test tunnel so scientists
can determine how much underground shock it causes, said Irene
Smith, an agency spokeswoman. 

The bomb will not use any nuclear components. Any actual weapon
developed with data from the test should not be nuclear, said
Chris Gallegos, the Domenici spokesman. 

"They're not even supposed to be studying nuclear
bunker-busters," Gallegos said. "This would be a conventional
weapon." 

Local environmental groups aren't so sure about that, said Greg
Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, an
anti-nuclear weapons group. 

"This is a test to develop and demonstrate a low-yield, nuclear,
Earth-penetrating weapon," Mello said. "This is a weapon the
U.S. does not need and it will send a very dangerous signal to
the world." 

In 2005, Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy and Water
Development Appropriations Subcommittee, led a Senate group that
removed funding from the 2006 budget for nuclear bunker-buster
tests, Gallegos said. 

The idea was that agency should focus more on conventional
bunker-buster-type weapons, such as this one, Gallegos said. 

But Mello is worried that the upcoming test could eventually
pave the way for a nuclear bunker-buster. 

"All they need is for the president to say `make it,' " Mello
said. 

The experiment was originally slated for the Nevada Test Site
earlier this year. 

In May, the Nevada Site Office and National Nuclear Security
Administration delayed the test because of environmental
concerns, Smith said. 

"That action was based on NNSA/NSO's decision to clarify and
provide further information on the impacts, if any, of
background radiation on the Divine Strake site," Smith said in
an e-mail. 

The agency has been investigating the environmental concerns and
is still considering conducting the test in Nevada as well as
"other possible sites," Smith said. 

"The earliest the experiment could be conducted would be several
months into calendar year 2007," she said. 

White Sands hasn't conducted above-ground explosives tests like
this one since the early 1990s, when the agency built the Large
Blast-Thermal Simulator on the site, said Jim Eckles, a
spokesman. 

The simulator is an underground tunnel that scientists can use
to re-create the shock waves and heat of a nuclear blast without
radiation, Eckles said. 

The biggest test blast at White Sands when it was testing
above-ground explosives was in the mid-1980s. It consisted of
4,700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil - about seven times
larger than the Divine Strake test, Eckles said. 

Ammonium nitrate is readily available as fertilizer. A mixture
of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil was used in the Oklahoma City
bombing in 1995, he said. 

DTRA has conducted tests at White Sands "for decades," Eckles
added. 

Mello said he's not overly concerned about ground contamination,
but he is concerned about air quality issues that could arise
with a new above-ground test in New Mexico. 

White Sands might not have the proper permits to conduct the
test, as regulations might have changed since the 1990s, he
added. 

"To me, it remains an open question," Mello said. 

Smith referred the question to Eckles at White Sands, but Eckles
isn't sure about air quality permits either. 

It is too soon to tell because DTRA hasn't reached a final
decision on where and if it will conduct the experiment, he
said. 

"I doubt if our environmental office would have an answer
without seeing proposed details of the test," Eckles said. 		 		
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*****************************************************************
 67 CounterPunch: Jeffrey St. Clair: Glow, River, Glow

September 15, 2006 

Radioactive Leaks and Plumbers at Hanford
 
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR 

The outback of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern
Washington State is called the T-Farm, a rolling expanse of high
desert sloping toward the last untamed reaches of the Columbia
River. The T stands for tanks, huge single-hulled containers
buried some fifty feet beneath basalt volcanic rock and sand
holding the lethal detritus of Hanford's fifty-year run as the
nation's H-bomb factory. 

Those tanks had an expected lifespan of 35 years; the
radioactive gumbo inside them has a half-life of 250,000 years.
Dozens of those tanks have now started to corrode and leak,
releasing the most toxic material on earth, plutonium and
uranium-contaminated sludge and liquid, on an inexorable path
toward the Columbia, the world's most productive salmon fishery
and the source of irrigation water for the farms and orchards of
the Inland Empire, centered on Spokane in eastern Washington. 

Internal documents from the Department of Energy and various
private contractors working at Hanford reveal that at least one
million gallons of radioactive sludge has already leaked out of
at least 67 different tanks. Those tanks and others continue to
leak and that the leaks are getting much larger. 

One internal report shows the results from a borehole drilled
into the ground between two of Hanford's largest tanks. Using
gamma spectrometry, geologists detected a fifty-fold increase in
contamination between 1996 and 2002. The leak from those tanks,
and perhaps an underground pipeline, was described as
"insignificant" a decade ago. Six years later that radioactive
dribble had swelled up into a "continuous plume" of highly
radioactive Cesium-137. 

Obviously, there's been a major radioactive breach from those
tanks. But to date the Department of Energy has refused to
publicly report the incident, even though it was reported by
their own geologists. 

A few hundred yards away, a tank called TY-102, the third
largest tank at Hanford, is also leaking. Radioactive water is
draining out of this single-hulled container and a broken
subsurface pipe into what geologists call the "vadose zone", the
stratum of subsurface soil just above the water table. In an
internal 1998 report, the Grand Junction Office of the DOE
detected significant contamination 42 to 52 feet below the
surface and concluded in a memo to Hanford managers that the
"high levels of gamma radiation" came from "a subsurface source"
of Cesium-137, which likely resulted from leakage from tank
TY-102". 

This alarming report was swiftly buried by Hanford officials. So
too was the evidence of leakage at tanks TY-103 and TY-106.
Instead, the DOE publicly declared that portion of the tank farm
to be "controlled, clean and stable". 

No surprises here. The long-standing strategy of the DOE has
been to conceal any evidence of radioactive leaking at Hanford,
a policy that was excoriated in a 1980 internal review by the
department's Inspector General, which concluded that "Hanford's
existing waste management policies and practices have themselves
sufficed to keep publicity about possible tank leaks to a
minimum." 

Needless to say, the Reagan years didn't augure a new
forthrightness from the people who run Hanford. Seven years and
several congressional hearings after the Inspector General's
report was released, bureaucratic cover-up and public denial
were still the DOE's operational reflex to any disturbing data
bubbling up out of Hanford's boreholes. By 1987, Hanford
officials had learned an important lesson in the art of
concealment. The easiest way to avoid bad press and public
hostility was to simply stop monitoring sites that seemed the
most likely to produce unpleasant information. 

It is now clear that the tanks began leaking as early as 1956,
only a few years after the Atomic Energy Commission began
pumping the poisonous sludge into the giant subterranean
containers. It is also clear that the federal government covered
up evidence of those leaks since the moment it learned of them. 

How many tanks are leaking? How far has the contamination
spread? The DOE isn't talking. It isn't even looking for
answers. But geologists estimated that the faster migrating
contaminants, such as uranium, will move from the groundwater
beneath Hanford's central plateau to the Columbia in something
around 25 years. That means that the first traces of radiated
water could have started seeping into the Columbia in 2001. 

This reckless strategy persists. In a document called "Official
Characterization Plan of Hanford" -essentially a kind of 3-D map
of contamination at the site ­the DOEchose not to include
Cobalt-60, a highly radioactive material that is present at deep
levels across the tank farm. In addition, the Hanford plan fails
to mention the fact that its own surveys have shown large
amounts of Cesium-137 and Cobalt-60 forming radioactive pools in
the geological stratum called the plio-pleistocene unit, the
last barrier between Hanford's soils and water table. 

If the DOE remains locked onto this courseit will never
acknowledge or even investigate the potentially lethal flow of
radioactivity toward the great river of the West. That's because
the managers of Hanford say they will only research potential
leaks if they detect a level of contamination several times
higher than that ever recorded at Hanford ­a standard clearly
designed to shield them from ever having to pursue any
subsurface leak investigation or publicly admit the existence of
such leaks. 

To help Hanford's managers avoid ever discovering such
embarrassing leaks, the site plan calls for them to drill the
penetrometer holes, through which contamination is measured,
only to a depth of 40 feet ­ or two feet above the bottom of the
tanks, guaranteeing that they will avoid picking up any
radioactive traces from the region of the most dangerous
contamination. 

There's a reason the Hanford managers want the public to believe
that most of the contamination at the site is limited to the
surface terrain. Theoretically, the topsoil can be scooped up
and, with large government contracts, transferred to a more
secure site or zapped into a glass-like substance through the
big vitrification center now under construction. There's no way
to de-contaminate groundwater or the Columbia River. Their only
hope for containment is to contain the issue politically by
plumbing the leaks from whistleblowers. 

There's no question that the subsurface leakage is serious,
extensive and dangerous. The internal survey of Hanford by the
Grand Junction Office detected high levels of C-137 deeper than
100 feet below the surface ­ and 60 feet deeper than the current
plan calls for probing. That report concluded that both C-137
and CO-60 had "reached groundwater in this area of the tank
farm". 

Consider this: C-137 is a slow traveling contaminant. How far
have faster moving radioactive materials, such as uranium,
spread? No one knows. No one is even looking. 

The DOE and Hanford's contractors want to close down the C
Quadrant of the tank farm and declare it cleaned up, even though
more than 10 per cent of the waste at that site remains in tanks
with documented leaks. There is mounting evidence that a plume
of Tritium-contaminated sludge has recently penetrated the
groundwater there as well. 

John Brodeur is one of the nation's top environmental engineers
and a world-class geologist. In 1997, after a whistleblower at
Hanford disclosed evidence that the groundwater beneath the
central plateau had been contaminated by plumes of
radioactivity, Hazel O'Leary commissioned Brodeur to investigate
how far the contamination had spread. It proved to be a nearly
impossible assignment since the DOE and its contractors had
taken extreme measures to conceal the data or avoid collecting
it entirely. 

Now, nearly ten years later, Brodeur has once again been asked
to assess the situation at one of the most contaminated sites on
earth, this time for the environmental group Heart of the
Northwest. His conclusions are disturbing. 

"There remains much that we don't know about the subsurface
contamination plumes at Hanford," says John Brodeur. "The only
way to solve this dilemma is to identify what we don't know up
front and get it out on the table for discussion. This is
difficult to do in the chilling work environment where bad data
are commonplace, lies of omission are standard practice and
people loose their jobs because they disagreed with some of the
long-held institutional myths at Hanford." 

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been
      Brown So Long It
Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature
      and
Grand
      Theft Pentagon: Tales of Corruption and
Profiteering from the
      War on Terror. He can be reached
at: sitka@comcast.net. 

    
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