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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 ICH: This is how US will attack Iran
2 I.A.E.A. EXPOSES US COMMITTEE'S LIES ON IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAMS
3 [NYTr] Iran Has No Nuclear Arms Program: Chavez
4 [NYTr] Iran Defends Peaceful Nuclear Program
5 Guardian Unlimited: US warns banks against Iranian nuclear firms
6 Reuters: Bush faces doubts at U.N. over Iran, Iraq policy
7 IRNA: UN nuclear watchdog starts 50th general conference 
8 BBC: Chirac urges no sanctions on Iran
9 AFP: Chirac urges more talks with Iran without threat of UN sanction
10 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Algeria decries West double standard 
11 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Negotiation, only solution - Elham 
12 AFP: UN nuclear chief still hopeful negotiation can work on Iran -
13 AFP: Iran warns it will cut cooperation with UN nuclear inspectors -
14 Guardian Unlimited: French Leader Proposes Iran Compromise
15 AFP: Iran warns it will cut cooperation with UN nuclear inspectors -
16 AFP: France makes concession on nuclear talks; Iran keeps tough line
17 AFP: Iran negotiator's absence raises doubts about talks 
18 AFP: In turnaround, US sees two-track approach to Iran nuclear crisi
19 UPI: Iran calls for new relationship with U.K.
20 UPI: Bush, Ahmadinejad to square off at U.N.
21 UPI: Iran: Enrichment halt a 'misunderstanding'
22 Guardian Unlimited: Iran on Agenda at IAEA Conference
23 Korea Herald: [NEWS FOCUS] Six-party talks dying or dead?   
24 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: [EDITORIALS] Six parties must try harder
25 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: New ideas' failing to stir North Korea
26 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: N.Korea Insists no Deal Until U.S. Lifts 
27 Korea Times: 6-Way Statement Marks Anniversary Without Fanfare 
28 AFP: New push to bring NKorea back to nuclear talks
29 UPI: Analysis: North Korea progress unlikely
30 UPI: Lack of sanctions spur NorKor defiance
31 Guardian Unlimited: Japan Cabinet to OK N. Korea Sanctions
32 US: Environment Unlimited: Climate change | The denial industry
33 US: ENN: U.S. Missing Renewable Energy Opportunities
34 DOE: U.S. and Russia Sign Liability Protocol
35 US: PR: Berkley Legislation Seeks to Spur U.S. Energy Independence 
36 US: Guardian Unlimited: Bush to Head to U.N. With Host of Issues
37 UPI: U.S., Russia sign nuke legal agreement
38 [NukeNet] Scotland: Rally against nuclear bomb replacement
39 [NYTr] S.Africa Chairs IAEA Conference
40 The Hindu: Nuke deal will sail through by year-end: Talbott 
41 Xinhua: China to build 5 more research institutes   
42 IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency - General Session
43 Guardian Unlimited: Bush Arrives at UN With Policy Problems
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
44 ThinkSpain: Further nuclear plant closure announced
45 US: islandpacket.com: Nuclear power viable alternative 
46 US: Platts: NRC agrees to TVA request to cancel Bellefonte-1, -2 per
47 US: Concord Monitor: No nukes? I'm not as sure as I was     
48 US: NRC: Florida Power and Light Company; Notice of Consideration of
49 US: NRC: RIN 3150-AH66
50 US: NRC: Notice of Availability of Environmental Assessment and Find
51 The Australian: New power plants 'unnecessary' 
52 Daily News: Joint statement in support of nuclear energy for peacefu
53 US: Raw Story: Nearly 30 new US nuclear plants planned, official say
54 US: UCS: New Report: Long Shutdowns Prove Nuclear Power More Dangero
55 AngolaPress: Multisectoral Delegation At Atomic Energy Assembly
56 UPI: U.S. companies push Indian nuke deal
57 News & Star: THORP SHUT UNTIL 2007
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
58 US: Day cares' evacuation plans still unsettled
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
59 US: USNews.com: Inside Washington: Some in House suspicious of
60 US: Philadelphia Inquirer: N.J. considers a radioactive waste dump
61 BBC: Boss warns of new Dounreay issues
62 Nevada Appeal: Yucca repository: dead or alive?
63 reviewjournal.com: No Yucca nightmares for ex-energy chief
64 Bellona: British-funded nuke storage container built at Sevmash 
65 reviewjournal.com: Yucca project auditor ignored
66 US: University Journal: BLM denies nuke haul
67 US: Hattiesburg American: Decision on salt dome site delayed
68 People's Daily: IAEA to monitor S. Korea's spent fuel rod storage 
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
69 Tri-City Herald: DOE reconsiders 300 Area demolition 
70 Hanford News: CH2M Hill Hanford receives awards
71 Hanford News: Hanford tank, vit manager sent to D.C.
72 lamonitor.com: The Online News Source for Los Alamos
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 ICH: This is how US will attack Iran
 
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 19:17:09 -0500 (CDT)

X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu
X-Spam-Class: HAM

"The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool." : Stephen
King

= Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who
have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that
they cannot separately plunder a third: Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's
Dictionary

= There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so
strange." : Daniel Webster

= "False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the
soul with evil." : Socrates

= To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man,
could he see you now, ask why?: W. H. Auden: "Epitaph for an Unknown
Soldier"

=== Read this newsletter online http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

RSS FEED http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/rssfeed.xml

News Syndication

You can include the headlines from this newsletter on your own
website free of charge
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/syndicate.htm

=== Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's War? As Many
As 250,000 http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11674.htm

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged)
In Bush's War 2684

http://icasualties.org/oif/

The War in Iraq Costs $315,575,076,978

See the cost in your community
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182

===

This is how US will attack Iran

By Yitzhak Benhorin

It will take a few days, with thousands of sorties, satellite and
laser-guided bombs will be aimed at targets  1,500 already planned
by Pentagon  and will try to infiltrate armed concrete, under which
some of nuclear sites are hidden. Meanwhile, Washington launches
diplomatic blitz in attempt to promote sanctions on Tehran
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15010.htm

=== Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder-A Glimpse Into Israeli Collective
Psychosis

By Gilad Atzmon

The Israelis somehow fail to read the message on the wall. Rather
than looking at the mirror and spotting out their obvious faults
that have already matured into severe moral bankruptcy, the Israelis
prefer total submission to the materialist fantasy of Nuclear
Judeocide.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15015.htm

=== War Criminal at Bay

By Paul Craig Roberts

President George Bush, betrayed by the neoconservatives whom he
elevated to power and by his Attorney General, Torture Gonzales who
gave him wrong legal advice, is locked in a desperate struggle with
the Republican Congress to save himself from war crimes charges at
the expense of Americas reputation and our soldiers fate.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15009.htm

=== What if they gave a War?

By Charles Sullivan

We must think beyond geopolitical borders, beyond political parties;
past the familiar labels of liberal and conservative. Working class
conservatives and working class liberals alike are exploited by
those in power. We must set aside the petty differences that keep
us apart and seek common ground to defeat our common enemycorporate
Plutocracy.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15016.htm

=== Ending the Dollar's Tyranny

By Mike Whitney

The dominance of the greenback has created a global empire which
is controlled by a small group of corporatists and autocrats who
depend on bullying and brute force to maintain their supremacy. The
only way to restore the republic is to topple the empire, dislodge
the dollar from its lofty perch, and even the playing field with
the other currencies.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15014.htm

=== Iraq: At least 69 killed in ongoing U.S. occupation:

Fourteen bodies, tortured and with bullet holes in the head, were
found in different districts of Baghdad on Monday, a Ministry of
Interior source said.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO840395.htm

=== Bullets and Bodies In Baghdad :

As I was walking back outside, gunfire erupted all around us. It
turns out the Ministry of Health FPS had gotten into a firefight
with nearby FPS officers from the Ministry of Electricity
http://snipurl.com/wmc4

=== 4 Canadian Occupation Force Soldiers among 17 Killed In
Afghanistan:

A suicide bomber on a bicycle killed four Canadian occupation troops
and wounded at least 27 civilians in southern Afghanistan on Monday,
while two other blasts in the capital and in the western part of
the country killed a total of 13 Afghans, officials said.

http://snipurl.com/wmc5

=== NATO Faces Growing Hurdle As Call for Troops Falls Short:

Alliance Casualties Hit 5-Year High in Occupied Afghanistan.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15013.htm

=== Painful Deception In Palestine:

To avoid death by strangulation and malnutrition, the Palestinians
must practice diplomatic submission and subservience to Israel-American
positions.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/18/painful_deception_in_palestine.php

=== Daniel Gavron : The great escape :

Two peoples inhabit this land, we have lived here in the past, and
we will continue to live here in the future. We have to work out
some way of living together. We have to work out a formula for
sharing our territory. We have to establish a means of cooperating
to preserve our environment. We have to find a way to govern our
population.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/763276.html

=== Israeli Military Intelligence knew about Hezbollah kidnap plans:

Military Intelligence had clear information about an impending
kidnap attempt by Hezbollah shortly before the Lebanese group carried
out its cross-border raid on July 12, according to an internal
inquiry conducted by the Israel Defense Forces.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15007.htm

=== Deadly harvest: The Lebanese fields sown with cluster bombs :

Lebanese villagers must risk death in fields 'flooded' with more
than a million Israeli cluster bombs - or leave crops to rot
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1616665.ece

=== Hezbollah rejects Bush's call to disarm:

"We are being asked to disarm so that Lebanon remains defenceless.
Our force is protecting Lebanon," Sheikh Nasrallah said in a televised
debate on Wednesday. "The core of the problem is that the United
States and Israel want to disarm Hezbollah."

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1282918,00050004.htm

=== War pimp alert:

Only a "few months" before a nuclear Iran: Israeli FM :

Livni said the world "cannot afford" for Iran to have nuclear
weapons.

http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=323424&sid=WOR

=== In a replay of Iraq, a battle is brewing over intelligence on
Iran:

Several former U.S. defense officials who maintain close ties to
the Pentagon say they've been told that plans for airstrikes - if
Bush deems them necessary - are being updated.

http://snipurl.com/wmcd

=== Chirac: Iran should not be referred to Security Council during
talks :

I think that Iran is a great nation and that we can find solutions
through dialogue.

http://snipurl.com/wmcf

=== A Date With a "Dangerous" Mind:

EXCLUSIVE: Face to face with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man
whose swaggeris stirring fears of warwith the U.S.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15011.htm

=== Car bomb, gunfight in Somalia kills 11:

A car bomb killed five people and wounded several others outside
parliament in Somalia's provincial capital Baidoa on Monday in an
assassination attempt on President Abdullahi Yusuf.

http://snipurl.com/wmci

=== In case you missed it:

U.S. accused of covert Somolia ops:

A British newspaper Sunday said the United States was conducting
illegal mercenary operations to support the U.N.-backed interim
government in Somalia.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060910-110944-6549r

=== Ortega Gets 15-Point Edge in Nicaragua:

Former head of state Daniel Ortega is the clear frontrunner in
Nicaraguas presidential election, according to a poll by Zogby
International and the University of Miami School of Communication.

http://snipurl.com/wmcn

=== Chavez Could Get New Term in Venezuela:

Hugo Chavez maintains a high level of support in Venezuela, according
to a poll by Datanalisis. 58 per cent of respondents would vote for
the incumbent head of state in this years election http://snipurl.com/wmco

=== Karen Armstrong: We cannot afford to maintain these ancient
prejudices against Islam :

The Pope's remarks were dangerous, and will convince many more
Muslims that the west is incurably Islamophobic
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15012.htm

===

4 Minute Video: Peace Train by Yusuf Islam  (Cat Stevens)

Anti war message from Yusuf Islam
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15018.htm

=== UK accused of Guantanamo collusion :

More than 100 senior doctors today accused the government of colluding
in war crimes by refusing to give medical aid to British residents
detained at Guantanamo Bay.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1875367,00.html

=== Attorney general warns US on torture bill :

The attorney general warned the US at the weekend that its bill to
try to limit its obligations under the Geneva convention while
interrogating and trying detainees risked international condemnation.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,1874783,00.html

=== Paul Krugman: King of Pain :

Why is Mr. Bush so determined to engage in torture?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15017.htm

=== When the truth is a stranger to fiction :

Did Monica Lewinsky cause the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United
States? Anyone who watched The Path to 9/11, the ABC two-parter
about the events leading up to September 11, might be forgiven for
thinking so.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1874584,00.html

=== The 13 most corrupt members of Congress

In the following report, CREW documents the unethical activities
of thirteen Members of Congress: 10 House Members and three Senators.

http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/09/17/the-13-most-corrupt-members-of-congress/

Major State Union Switches To Lamont:

One of the state's largest labor unions has dropped its endorsement
of U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and switched its support to
Democratic primary winner Ned Lamont.

http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-lamont0918.artsep18,0,7835676.story

=== Jump ship or pink slip for some realtors :

Now that the glory days of the most recent U.S. housing market are
over, its deterioration is taking a toll on employees who profited
from its record-breaking five-year run.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060918/bs_nm/economy_brokers_dc

=== Sick but Insured? Think Again :

Lawsuits accuse insurance companies of retroactively dumping families
that rack up large bills. Firms defend their policies, but the state
is investigating.

http://ktla.trb.com/news/la-fi-revoke17sep17,0,6255507.story?coll=ktla-news-1

=== Congress Considering Strip Searching Students:

Imagine an America in which school officials could strip search
every student in their school based on the unsubstantiated tip that
one of them might have a joint. Congress is voting on a bill Tuesday
or Wednesday that could make these police state tactics more common.

http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/091806stripsearch.cfm

===

Peace & Joy Tom Feeley === Liberty can not be preserved without
general knowledge among people." (August 1765) John Adams

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 2 I.A.E.A. EXPOSES US COMMITTEE'S LIES ON IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAMS
 
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 23:11:29 -0500 (CDT)

X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu
X-Spam-Class: HAM

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/sep2006/iran-s19.shtml

World Socialist Web Site    --  19 September 2006
 	By Peter Symonds

Four years ago, President George Bush appeared before the UN General 
Assembly and demanded that the UN rubberstamp a war against Iraq that was 
based on flagrant lies about Saddam Hussein's so-called weapons of mass 
destruction. Today, as Bush goes to the UN to demand tough action against 
Iran, American claims that Tehran has a nuclear weapons program have been 
exposed as fabrications.

The UN's nuclear supervisory body -- the International Atomic Energy 
Agency (IAEA)last week issued a stinging rebuttal of the "erroneous, 
misleading and unsubstantiated information"  contained in a US 
congressional report entitled "Recognising Iran as a Strategic Threat: An 
Intelligence Challenge for the United States" released on August 23.

The report from Republican-led House Intelligence Committee (HIC) was 
nothing but a crude propaganda exercise designed to justify the Bush 
administration's preparations for punitive action against Iran. Its main 
purpose was to call on US spy agencies to exert greater efforts to fill 
the "intelligence gaps", particularly on Iran's weapons programs -- in 
other words, to manufacture new lies to justify economic sanctions and 
war.

The lack of substantive evidence against Tehran did not stop the report 
from categorically asserting that Iran was seeking to produce nuclear 
weapons, and chemical and biological weapons as well. It is the same modus 
operandi as 2003 when US Vice President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary 
Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon neo-conservatives doctored the so-called 
evidence about WMDs to provide a pretext for the criminal US-led invasion 
of Iraq.

Not surprisingly, the IAEA reacted most strongly to the report's attack on 
the integrity of its own monitoring of Iran's nuclear programs.  Its 
letter took "strong exception" to the "incorrect and misleading statement" 
that IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei withdrew weapons inspector 
Christopher Charlier from Iran "for allegedly raising concerns about 
Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program and concluding that the 
purpose of Iran's nuclear program is to construct nuclear weapons".

The IAEA branded as "outrageous and dishonest" the report's suggestion 
that Charlier might have been removed for "not having adhered to an 
unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth 
about the Iranian nuclear program". As the letter pointed out, Iran, not 
ElBaradei, had initiated Charlier's recall and, in doing so, had acted 
within its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The report's reference to Charlier was not accidental. He became a minor 
celebrity in extreme right-wing circles in the US -- that is, among those 
pushing most vigorously for war against Iran -- when he gave an interview 
to the German newspaper Welt am Sontag in July suggesting that Tehran was 
operating a clandestine weapons program. Like those who seized on his 
comments, however, Charlier offered no facts to support his claims.

The IAEA letter also took issue with glaring factual errors contained in 
the report's short section entitled "Evidence for an Iranian nuclear 
weapons program".  It drew attention to a grossly misleading caption 
placed under a photograph of Iran's enrichment facility at Natanz, which 
read:  "Iran is currently enriching to weapons grade using a 164-machine 
centrifuge cascade."

As the IAEA pointed out, the claim is simply false. The small cascade at 
the Natanz enrichment plant, which is subject to IAEA inspections, 
including camera monitoring, has to date only enriched uranium to the 
level of 3.6 percent -- that is, to the level required for Tehran's stated 
aim of producing nuclear fuel.  As the letter caustically pointed out, 
this hardly qualifies as "weapons grade", which is generally recognised to 
be 90 percent enriched or higher.

Even assuming that Tehran was seeking to build a nuclear bomb, an article 
published in July/August issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 
estimated that 1,500-1,800 centrifuges operating without interruption for 
a year would be required to produce enough highly enriched uranium to 
provide the basis for a crude atomic device. While Iran has plans to 
expand its Natanz facility, the latest IAEA report revealed that plans 
were behind schedule and a second 164-machine cascade was not up and 
running in August.

A spokesman for the congressional committee, Jamal Ware, attempted to 
brush aside the criticism, declaring that the report only claimed that 
"Iran is working to develop the capability to enrich uranium to weapons 
grade, not that they have done so". The caption was not a mistake, 
however.  If Tehran is not "currently enriching to weapons-grade", but is 
years away from having such a capacity, then Iran lacks the basic 
ingredient for an atomic weapon and the case that it poses an imminent 
nuclear threat falls apart.

The IAEA letter noted a similar deliberate distortion in the report's 
declaration that Iran had "covertly produced" the radioactive isotope 
polonium-210 (Po-210), highlighting its potential use as a neutron source 
for a nuclear weapon.  The IAEA pointed out that the term "covertly"  is 
misleading as "the production of Po-210 is not required to be reported" 
under the terms of the NPT agreement signed with Iran. The only evidence 
for the US claim came from IAEA reports of small-scale experiments, 
conducted between 1989 and 1993, which were apparently unsuccessful and 
discontinued.

A rerun of Iraq

The IAEA letter only highlighted the most obvious falsifications about 
Iran's nuclear programs, but the remainder of the congressional report is 
riddled with unsubstantiated allegations or outright lies, largely 
recycled from US officials or the "American intelligence community". The 
Washington Post, which first reported the IAEA letter last week, 
cautiously noted: "Privately, several intelligence officials said the 
committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either 
demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate."

The congressional report was largely drawn up by Fredrick Fleitz, a former 
CIA operative known for his hard-line views on Iran, who worked for John 
Bolton, currently the US ambassador to the UN, when he was the State 
Department's top official on arms proliferation. Then, as now, Bolton was 
notorious for his aggressive demands for action against the so-called 
"axis of evil" -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- with Fleitz presumably 
helping to concoct the "evidence".

As David Albright, a former nuclear inspector, told the Washington Post: 
"This is like prewar Iraq all over again. You have an Iranian nuclear 
threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a 
report that trashes the inspectors." Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the 
Bush administration repeatedly denigrated the failure of UN weapons 
inspectors in Iraq to uncover any WMDs.

In February 2003, less than a month before the US launched its assault, 
the chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohammed ElBaradei presented 
reports to the UN Security Council declaring that no evidence had been 
found of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in Iraq -- effectively 
puncturing the case for war made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

IAEA director ElBaradei was particularly categorical, declaring: "We have 
to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related 
activities in Iraq."  "He also played a key role in exposing the 
fraudulent claims, first made by the British government, that Iraq had 
attempted to purchase significant quantities of uranium from Niger. 
ElBaradei told the UN in March 2003 that the documents offered as proof 
were crude forgeries, yet Bush's officials continued to maintain that Iraq 
was trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

Following the occupation, US teams scoured Iraq for months, but found 
neither weapons of mass destruction nor any evidence of WMD programs. To 
deflect attention from its own responsibility for the lies, the Bush 
administration blamed the CIA and other spy agencies for an "intelligence 
failure".  At the same time, Washington continued its underground campaign 
against ElBaradei, culminating in a failed attempt last year to replace 
him with an IAEA director more amenable to US interests.

As in the case of Iraq, the Bush administration's accusations against Iran 
have nothing to do with any "strategic threat" to the US. Even if it 
managed to acquire a few crude atomic bombs, Tehran would be no match for 
the US military and its massive nuclear arsenal. The allegation that Iran 
is building nuclear weapons is simply the pretext for manufacturing a 
climate of fear and war hysteria as home, while pressing ahead with an 
agenda of "regime change" in Iran. Despite the deepening military 
disasters confronting the US-led occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 
Bush administration is determined to press ahead with its ambitions to 
assert American domination over the resource-rich regions of the Middle 
East and Central Asia.

There is growing frustration in Washington with the UN's failure to impose 
sanctions on Iran. The White House bullied the European powers, Russia and 
China into setting an August 31 deadline for Tehran to freeze all uranium 
enrichment programs. Iran, however, insisted on its rights under the NPT 
to carry out all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium 
enrichment, and denounced the UN resolution as illegal.  The US push for 
punitive measures is meeting continued resistance from its European and 
Asian rivals, all of which have substantial economic interests in Iran.

Speaking last Friday about his UN speech today, President Bush declared: 
"My concern is that they'll [Iran] stall, they'll try to wait us out. So 
part of my objective in New York is to remind people that stalling should 
not be allowed -- we need to move the process."

Bush's impatience is not driven by any objective assessment of Iran's 
nuclear programs, but his administration's pressing political agenda. 
Confronting an uphill battle in mid-term congressional polls in November, 
and the end of the second presidential term just over two years away, the 
White House senses that it is running out of time. Far from pulling back, 
the Bush administration is lurching towards another reckless military 
adventure against Iran.

One sure sign that the Bush administration is intensifying its campaign 
for "regime change" in Tehran is the establishment of units in the US 
State Department and Pentagon dedicated to undermining the Iranian 
government.  In February, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requested an 
additional $75 million to support Iranian exile groups and political 
opposition inside Iran. A new Iranian Affairs office has been established 
under the supervision of Vice President Cheney's daughter, Elizabeth 
Cheney.

What is less well known is that the Pentagon has established the Iranian 
equivalent of the notorious Office of Special Plans (OSP), which was 
responsible for concocting the lies about Iraq's WMDs, based on the claims 
of exiles such as convicted embezzler Ahmed Chalabi. The Los Angeles Times 
revealed the existence of the new office, known as the Directorate for 
Iran, in May. According to the newspaper, the Iranian Directorate has six 
personnel, is based in the same area as the OSP and includes OSP veterans 
among its staff and larger body of advisers, including its former head 
Abram Shulsky.
*****************************************************************
 3 [NYTr] Iran Has No Nuclear Arms Program: Chavez
 
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:13:04 -0500 (CDT)

X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu
X-Spam-Class: HAM-VERY-WHITELIST

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Bloomberg News - Sep 17, 2006
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aHDAkFZsoNfM&refer=latin_america

Hugo Chavez Says Iran Has No Nuclear Arms Program

By Peter Wilson

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Iran isn't
developing a nuclear arms program and warned the U.S. not to attack the
Middle Eastern country.

"Iran isn't making a nuclear bomb," Chavez said in a televised address with
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by his side. "Iran is developing a
peaceful nuclear program. If the U.S. attacks Iran, they will regret it for
centuries." Chavez didn't say how Venezuela would respond.

Chavez, 52, reiterated his country's support for Iran's right to develop
nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Chavez and Ahmadinejad, pronounced
ah-ma-deen-ah-ZHAD, are in the midst of a 30-hour summit in Caracas, the
Venezuelan capital.

The United Nations Security Council, in a July 31 resolution, ordered Iran
to halt uranium enrichment, a process that can be used for nuclear power or
to make bombs. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported a month later
that Iran hadn't stopped its work, triggering talks between the U.S., U.K.,
France, Russia, China and Germany on possible penalties, including economic
sanctions.

"Who has the nuclear arsenals are the U.S. and its allies," Chavez said.
"They should destroy their nuclear arsensals as an example."

Chavez and Ahmadinejad plan to have a press conference tomorrow, when they
will conclude talks before both leave for New York to address the U.N.
General Assembly. Chavez has repeatedly accused the U.S. of seeking to
overthrow or assassinate him, while U.S. officials have labeled the former
army officer as a destabilizing force in the region.

"The U.S. empire is in decline," said Chavez, noting that his country's
socialist revolution has much in common with Iran's revolution that began in
1979.

Economic Fund

Venezuela and Iran also created a $2 billion fund to finance joint ventures
in oil, natural gas, petrochemicals, cement, housing and automobiles, Chavez
said.

Each country will contribute $1 billion, with most of the investments
pinpointed for the South American country, Chavez said.

"Venezuela will be a power in the continent," he said.

Earlier, Chavez said the two countries will spend $1.5 billion on a
petrochemical plant in the South American country.

The plant, which will be located in the eastern city of Guiria, will have
initial production of 1.6 million tons of petrochemicals, Chavez said.

Production

Production will start in 2010, and the plant will use natural gas from
off-shore fields, Chavez said. Iran's National Petrochemical Co. and
Venezuela's state petrochemical company Pequiven SA will have equal shares
in the plant, Chavez said. He didn't specify whether the new fund would be
used to finance the project.

Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, has been slow to develop
its petrochemicals industry. The country, which has Latin America's largest
gas reserves, is seeking to more than double its petrochemicals production
by 2012.
       
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 4 [NYTr] Iran Defends Peaceful Nuclear Program
 
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:38:44 -0500 (CDT)

X-Sender-Host-Name: chumbly.math.missouri.edu
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Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Prensa Latina, Havana
http://www.plenglish.com

Iran Defends Peaceful Nuclear Program

Vienna, Sep 18 (Prensa Latina) Iran again ratified the peaceful character
of its nuclear program and rejected the decision issued by the Board of
Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency to submit the matter to
the UN Security Council on Monday.

Iranian vice president and maximum representative of the IAEA in the
Islamic Republic, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, considered that the IAEA Board
violates its own laws by submitting the case to the UN, as it does not have
sufficient legal basis nor the legal right to do so, which is a dangerous
precedent, he said.

In his speech at the 50th IAEA General Conference, Aghazadeh declared there
is no way that the nuclear program boosted by his country can represent a
threat to the world.

After three years of detailed revisions by the IAEA no legal evidence of a
possible use of the atomic energy for prohibited aims was found he pointed
out, and said he was unsatisfied by the Board4s attempts to turn voluntary
Teheran agreements with the AIEA into obligations.

The function of the AIEA is to guarantee and assure that member states have
the possibility to employ nuclear energy for peaceful ends, he reminded.

The official asserted they remain willing to be flexible with the
negotiators and look favorably on continuing discussions with the five
permanent members of the Security Council (China, France, Great Britain,
Russia and the US, plus Germany) as proposed in June.

hr/ccs/isn/to
       
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*****************************************************************
 5 Guardian Unlimited: US warns banks against Iranian nuclear firms
 
Larry Elliott in Singapore
Monday September 18, 2006
 		 
The US has warned western banks of the risks of doing business 
with Iranian companies allegedly trafficking in weapons of mass 
destruction as it steps up diplomatic pressure on Tehran's 
nuclear programme.

Henry Paulson, the US treasury secretary, said he had evidence of 
links between reputable banks and more then 30 bogus companies 
acting as fronts to import the materials into Iran needed to make 
nuclear weapons.

In a veiled hint that financial institutions would face penalties 
if they continued to do business with companies channelling the 
technology for weapons of mass destruction to Iran, Mr Paulson 
said financial organisations needed to be educated to the risks.

The US has already called on the UN to impose sanctions unless 
Iran stops enriching uranium - a key step in making nuclear 
weapons - and over the past 10 days has started to target the 
flow of finance from the west.

"As I got more deeply involved and looked at the intelligence, I
saw the extent of the network that Iran employs to procure
weapons of mass destruction," Mr Paulson said.

"There's a broad network of front companies ... more than 30
companies where we have seen evidence of a reasonable number of
banks that have been involved."

Mr Paulson added that the banks needed to be careful about the
sort of companies they did business with. "These front companies
are not called Nuclear Acquisition Corp or Weapons Production
Corp. These are mundane-sounding businesses that do mainly legal
activities but in addition have these untoward and illicit
activities."

This month Washington imposed a ban on US bank transactions with
Iran's Bank Saderat, insisting that Tehran is channelling funds
to terrorists through the state-owned bank. The Iranian
government has said it may mount a legal challenge to the move
or accelerate a shift of its oil revenues out of dollar assets
and into other currencies.

Asked whether this was a "harbinger" for a wider crackdown on
the Iranian banking system, Mr Paulson said: "I don't want to
predict. We have evidence that Bank Saderat was involved in
terrorism and we sanctioned them."

Japan and some of the European members of the G7 were more
cautious about confronting Iran, and the communique released at
the end of Saturday's meeting did not mention the country by
name. It said the G7 agreed to step up its fight against
"terrorist and illicit financing by addressing global financial
vulnerabilities, particularly those associated with
jurisdictions that have failed to recognise international
standards".

Mr Paulson, who ran Goldman Sachs before moving to the US
Treasury this year, said: "In my former job, if there was a risk
like that, I would have liked someone to explain it to me.

"It would be quite easy for a financial institution to
inadvertently facilitate the kinds of activities they wouldn't
want to facilitate."

Last week Daniel Glaser, the US Treasury's deputy assistant
secretary for terror finance, said: "Our goal is to make it
harder, costlier and riskier to raise funds and move the funds
through the international financial system."
 

[UP] 

Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 6 Reuters: Bush faces doubts at U.N. over Iran, Iraq policy

Tuesday September 19, 8:26 AM
 
     Photo: Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush faced growing
international skepticism over his policies for Iran and Iraq as
he arrived in New York on Monday to try to rally support at a
U.N. General Assembly session. 

Bush addresses world leaders at a time when his administration
is confronted by an array of foreign policy woes and at home by
a Democratic challenge to wrest control of Congress from his
fellow Republicans in November's election. 

His speech on Tuesday to the 192-nation General Assembly will
focus on his vision for Middle East democracy, a source of doubt
in many world capitals given unrelenting violence in Iraq three
years after a U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein. 

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a frequent critic of Bush's
approach in Iraq, said there was "grave danger" of civil war and
the breakdown of the Iraqi state if trends persist. 

Bush also will use his diplomatic agenda to try to shore up
opposition to Iran's nuclear ambitions after it ignored an Aug.
31 U.N. deadline for suspending uranium enrichment. 

Washington is pressing major powers to begin readying sanctions
against Iran if there is no progress soon. 

Russia and China are hesitant to support such penalties, and in
a sign of European misgivings French President Jacques Chirac,
set to meet Bush on Tuesday, said talks should be pursued since
U.N. sanctions have never worked well. 

"I do not believe in solutions that do not involve ... dialogue
taken to its limits," Chirac told a radio station. 

The White House has ruled out any meeting between Bush and
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an outspoken foe of
Washington who also addresses the General Assembly on Tuesday. 

Ahmadinejad, whose offer to debate Bush at the U.N. had been
dismissed by U.S. officials as a diversionary tactic, was
expected to insist Iran had a right to develop nuclear
technology for civilian power generation. Washington says
Tehran's program is cover for building nuclear weapons. 

U.S. officials cautioned against expecting a breakthrough from
Bush's U.N. efforts. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice planned
meetings on Tuesday with other key players on Iran. 

FOCUS ON ADVANCING DEMOCRACY 

Bush's speech was to highlight his "freedom agenda" for the
Middle East, a strategy Washington's foes in the region see as a
pretext for bullying countries it opposes. 

"He will talk about it at the U.N. as a struggle between the
forces of extremism and the forces of moderation," White House
national security adviser Stephen Hadley said. 

But Bush's comments will also be a reminder of the foreign
policy challenges he faces. U.S. forces remain bogged down in
Iraq, a war increasingly unpopular with Americans, as Baghdad's
nascent government struggles with bloody sectarian strife. 

Lebanon's fragile coalition government, once hailed by Bush as a
success story, was weakened by the Israel-Hizbollah war. 

Critics say Bush's democracy campaign backfired in the
Palestinian territories, where the Islamist group Hamas won
elections and is now under U.S.-led diplomatic isolation. 

The Bush administration's tough treatment of foreign terrorism
suspects has hurt America's image abroad. 

Bush meets Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on Tuesday. He holds
talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday amid
U.S. opposition to emerging guidelines for a unity government
with Hamas. He met on Monday with leaders of Malaysia, El
Salvador, Honduras and Tanzania. 

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland in New York and Tabassum
Zakaria in Washington)          

Copyright � 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 7 IRNA: UN nuclear watchdog starts 50th general conference 

Vienna, Sept 18, IRNA

IAEA-Conference-Nuclear 

The 50th annual general conference of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) opened in Vienna Monday morning.

 Nuclear experts and high-ranking delegations from 140 countries
are participating in the conference to discuss proposals aimed
at guaranteeing supply of nuclear fuel to states.

 The participants are also to exchange views on fuel for nuclear
reactors while reducing the danger nuclear weapons proliferation.

 IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said he intends to create
confidence in the international community that every country
which has goodwill in the use of peaceful nuclear energy and is
committed to the Non-Proliferation Treaty would have access to
nuclear fuel.

 He added that this would not oblige states to give up their
rights based on NPT regulations.

 The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (IAEO),
Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh, is scheduled to deliver a speech at the
conference today.

*****************************************************************
 8 BBC: Chirac urges no sanctions on Iran
 
Last Updated: Monday, 18 September 2006
 
[Jacques Chirac]                                

Mr Chirac said he had never seen sanctions being effective                                                          

French President Jacques Chirac has said referring Iran to the UN 
Security Council is not the best way to resolve a crisis over its 
nuclear programme. 

"I don't believe in a solution without dialogue," Mr Chirac told 
Europe-1 radio, urging countries to remove the threat of 
sanctions against Iran. 

The US is leading calls for sanctions to be imposed on Iran if it 
refuses to suspend uranium enrichment. 

Iran denies US accusations that it is trying to build nuclear 
weapons. 

Tehran maintains that its nuclear programme is solely for power 
generation. 

	

	
                                                        I think 
that Iran is a gre nation and that we can find solutions through 
dialogue President Jacques Chirac        

         The US is pressing for sanctions against Iran, but some 
European countries are hesitant to do so, preferring to offer 
Iran incentives to halt enrichment. 

The BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Paris says that after the relative 
success of French international diplomacy during the recent 
crisis in Lebanon, Mr Chirac appears keen to continue to offer 
the world French leadership on Iran as well, another country with 
which France has long historical ties. 

'Sanctions ineffective' 

Mr Chirac said that he believed that there was still potential 
for fruitful dialogue between Iran and the six nations currently 
involved in the Iran nuclear issue - the US, UK, France, Germany, 
Russia and China. 

"I am not pessimistic," he said. "I think that Iran is a great 
nation and that we can find solutions through dialogue." 

Mr Chirac said he had never noticed that sanctions had been 
effective, although he said that he was not ruling out using them 
if necessary. 

	 		

			
                                                        [Iranian 
leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tours the Natanz nuclear plant (file 
photo)]                             Iran has ignored all calls to 
suspend its enrichment programme                                                                

                                 Instead he suggested that the 
way forward was for negotiations to begin without any 
preconditions and for each side to make concessions once they are 
under way. 

"We must, on the one hand, together, Iran and the six countries, 
meet and set an agenda for negotiations then start negotiations," 
Mr Chirac said. "Then, during these negotiations I suggest that 
the six renounce seizing the UN Security Council and Iran 
renounces uranium enrichment." 

This is the first time that a European leader has made clear that 
Iran's suspension of uranium enrichment is not a precondition for 
opening talks, but could come during the negotiations, our 
correspondent says. 

Bush agenda 

Iran has ruled out accepting any preconditions for talks and 
dismissed calls to suspend uranium enrichment, ignoring a 31 
August UN Security Council deadline to do so. 

Meanwhile the head of the UN's nuclear agency, the International 
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has called for Iran and the six 
world powers to begin talks as soon as possible. 

	 		

			
                                                        [Mohamed 
ElBaradei]                             The IAEA chief has added 
his own call for dialogue                                                           

                                 Speaking at the opening of the 
IAEA's annual conference in Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei said talks 
could "address the international community's concerns about the 
peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme, while on the other 
hand addressing Iran's economic, political and security 
concerns". 

Mr ElBaradei said he remained hopeful that such talks would 
create the conditions to "engage in a long-overdue negotiation 
that aims to achieve a comprehensive settlement". 

Meanwhile, Mr Chirac was preparing to go to New York, joining 
other world leaders for the UN General Assembly. 

Iran's nuclear ambitions are expected to be a key topic of 
discussion at the meeting, along with the situation in the Middle 
East, especially Iraq. 

US President George Bush is due to address the 192-nation 
assembly on Tuesday, where he is expected to further outline his 
vision for fostering democracy in the Middle East and the role 
the international community should play in the region. 
*****************************************************************
 9 AFP: Chirac urges more talks with Iran without threat of UN sanctions
     
 by Marc Burleigh Mon Sep 18, 8:09 AM ET 		 	 

PARIS (AFP) - French President Jacques Chirac" /> has urged more 
nuclear talks with Iran" /> during which it would not be referred 
to the UN Security Council -- setting the scene for another 
possible clash with the United States, which is pushing for 
sanctions. 

Chirac argued that more negotiations should take place with
Iran, free of the threat of sanctions. 

"During that negotiation, I propose that on the one hand the six
refrain from referring the issue to the Security Council and
that Iran renounce during the negotiation the enrichment of
uranium," he told Europe 1 radio. 

The six nations holding talks with Tehran are the five permanent
members of the Security Council plus Germany. 

It was the first time a European leader has clearly stated that
the suspension of uranium enrichment is not a "precondition" for
opening talks on the nuclear dossier. 

Chirac indicated that the suspension should come during rather
than before negotiations. 

"We can find solutions via dialogue," said Chirac, who was later
to head to New York for the UN's General Assembly due to start
Tuesday. 

There he was to meet US President George W. Bush" /> , who has
been espousing a harder line against Iran, America's arch-enemy
for the past three decades. 

Both men were to address the assembly on Tuesday -- as was
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was also to attend. 

Bush last week warned US allies not to get too caught up in
talking with Tehran, which Washington suspects is trying to
build a nuclear arsenal under cover of an energy production
programme. 

"My concern is that, you know, they'll stall; they'll try to
wait us out," Bush said. "So part of my objective in New York is
to remind people that's stalling shouldn't be allowed." 

The United States would like to see the Security Council
threaten sanctions on Iran, including economic measures and
travel bans. 

But veto-wielding members China, Russia -- and now France -- are
openly balking. 

Chirac, in his interview, said he was "never a supporter of
sanctions" but added this "did not mean that we must not have
sanctions -- which if it comes to it must be moderate and
well-adapted." 

He said "nothing is planned" in terms of meeting Ahmadinejad in
New York, explaining that "the conditions are not in place for a
personal dialogue, given the Iranian president's comments
concerning a country in the region." That was in reference to
Ahmadinejad's hostile remarks concerning Israel" /> . 

Bush has explicitly ruled out any meeting with Ahmadinejad. 

The Iranian president, for his part, said on the weekend during
a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Cuba that the United States was
the real nuclear threat in the world. 

"What is the UN Security Council waiting for to react to those
threats?" he asked, urging other countries to help "counter
attempts to prevent Iran from developing its peaceful nuclear
activity." 

In Vienna, at the headquarters of the International Atomic
Energy Agency" /> , UN nuclear chief Mohammed ElBaradei said he
remained "hopeful" Iran and world powers would be able to hold
negotiations over Tehran's atomic ambitions. 

He noted, however, Iran's failure to meet an August 31 deadline
imposed by the UN Security Council to suspend uranium enrichment
activities. 

That suspension had been a precondition to talks with six world
powers on a package of trade and other benefits for Iran. 	 		
			
Copyright � 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 10 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Algeria decries West double standard 

2006/09/18   
  
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika Sunday condemned the
West's double standards in dealing with the Iran nuclear issue.
 
In remarks made during an interview with the Algerian state news
agency in Havana, Cuba, on the sidelines of the two-day
Non-Aligned Movement Summit, Bouteflika called on Non-Aligned
countries to condemn the West's biased approach to the issue.
 
He also rejected what he called the West's manipulation of the
Security Council through its hyprocritical warnings against
allowing Iran produce nuclear energy, and asked independent
countries to end the practice of applying double standards on
issues.
 
Bouteflika said Non-Aligned states were fully supportive of
global efforts to ban proliferation of nuclear weapons,
including atomic weapons testing, which indicate their
collective will to safeguard the world against the use or threat
of use of weapons of mass destruction.
 
He said that most of the world's countries, including members of
the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization of the Islamic
Conference, as well as independent-minded politicians and
scholars worldwide support Iran's right to peaceful production
of nuclear energy.
 
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     
*****************************************************************
 11 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Negotiation, only solution - Elham 

  2006/09/18   
  
The Government Spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Elham, said Tehran has
announced in its proposals to the 5+1 Group that all the issues
could be settled down through negotiation and in the framework
of logic, wisdom, international law and the world's recognized
principles.
 
In his weekly press conference on Monday, Elham said there is
good horizen for the negotiations and the issue could be settled
down without any precondition.
 
He said the idea of suspension of enrichment by Iran for a
limited time was misunderstood and Tehran had not made any
decision over the issue yet.   


  Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran 
Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. 
E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir     


*****************************************************************
 12 AFP: UN nuclear chief still hopeful negotiation can work on Iran -
    
 by Michael Adler Mon Sep 18, 8:18 AM ET 		 	 

VIENNA (AFP) - UN nuclear chief Mohammed ElBaradei says he 
remains "hopeful" Iran" /> Iranand world powers will be able to 
move towards "long-overdue" negotiations over Tehran's atomic 
ambitions. 

ElBarade's comments in Vienna came as French President Jacques 
Chirac in Paris urged world powers not to refer Iran to the UN 
Security Council for possible sanctions over fears the Islamic 
Republic seeks nuclear weapons." />

Related information on President Jacques Chirac">President 
Jacques Chirac in Paris urged world powers not to refer Iran to 
the UN Security Council for possible sanctions over fears the 
Islamic Republic seeks nuclear weapons. 

Chirac at the same time called on Iran to give up uranium 
enrichment, the process which makes fuel for civilian nuclear 
reactors but also atom bomb material. 

ElBaradei said: "I remain hopeful that . . . through the ongoing 
dialogue between Iran and its European and other partners, the 
conditions will be created to engage in a long-overdue 
negotiation that aims to achieve a comprehensive settlement," in 
opening the 50th annual general conference of the watchdog 
International Atomic Energy Agency" /> International Atomic 
Energy Agency. 

The negotiations will involve six world powers and Iran, 

ElBaradei said he hoped the negotiations would "address the
international community's concerns about the peaceful nature of
Iran's nuclear program while on the other hand addressing Iran's
economic, political and security concerns." 

ElBaradei noted that he had already reported to the Security
Council that Iran had not met an August 31 UN deadline to
suspend "its enrichment related activities." 

This suspension was also a condition to talks with the six world
powers on a package of trade and other benefits for Iran. 

Chirac said: "First we have to find an agenda for negotiation,
then engage the negotiation and during that negotiation I
propose that on the one hand the six refrain from referring the
issue to the Security Council and that Iran renounce during the
negotiation the enrichment of uranium," Chirac said. 

EU foreign policy representative Javier Solana and Iranian top
nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani are pursuing a last-ditch effort
to strike a nuclear deal that will lead to negotiations instead
of sanctions. 

The six nations running talks with Tehran are the five permanent
members of the Security Council -- Britain, China, France,
Russia and the United States -- plus Germany. 

It was the first time a European leader has clearly stated that
the suspension of uranium enrichment is not a "precondition" for
opening talks on the nuclear dossier. 

Chirac indicated that the suspension should come during rather
than before negotiations. 

The IAEA's week-long conference is expected to focus on Iran, an
Arab push to denounce Israel" /> Israel's allegedly possession
of atomic weapons, and how to guarantee reactor fuel supply but
keep bomb know-how from spreading. 

The gathering of the IAEA's 140 nations includes a three-day
seminar on finding a way for nations to get nuclear reactor
fuel, but not to acquire the technology to make atom bombs. 

In Germany, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has
proposed setting up uranium enrichment centres under UN control
to end nuclear disputes like the one over Iran, the daily
Handelsblatt said in an advance extract of its Monday edition. 

Steinmeier said such centres could be used by several nations
and placed under control of the watchdog IAEA. 

"Interested countries like Iran could in this way obtain nuclear
fuel for civilian use under strict control," Steinmeier said. 

"It could be financed by countries that claim the right to buy
nuclear fuel," he added. 

Steinmeier said the IAEA had the right to build and run such a
fuel bank. 

Both the United States and Russia have announced their
willingness to make nuclear material available for a fuel bank. 

US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman" /> Samuel Bodman, former US
senator Sam Nunn and Russian atomic agency director Sergei
Kirienko will attend the nuclear fuel forum, as well as the
conference. Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh is
coming to the conference. 	 		 			

Copyright � 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 13 AFP: Iran warns it will cut cooperation with UN nuclear inspectors -
    
 by Michael Adler Mon Sep 18, 9:55 AM ET 		 	 

VIENNA (AFP) - Iran" /> Iranhas warned it will cut cooperation 
with UN nuclear inspectors if the UN Security Council acted 
against it but said negotiations could still work in the crisis 
over Tehran's atomic ambitions. 

 There should "be no doubt that any hostile action by the UN
Security Council would lead to limitation of cooperation with
the (International Atomic Energy) agency," Iranian Vice
President Gholamreza Aghazadeh told a general conference in
Vienna of the IAEA's 140 nations. 

The United States is pushing for sanctions against Iran for
failing to heed an August 31 Security Council deadline to
suspend uranium enrichment, which makes fuel for civilian
nuclear reactors but also can produce atom bomb material. 

Aghazadeh, who is head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency,
warned that a "unilateral approach" at the United Nations" />
United Nations, "aggressively pursued by one or two states, is
bound to cause loss and damage to all." 

But he said Iran "believes that an agreement is accessible
through negotiations, relying on good faith, political will and
flexibility." 

Iran was "prepared for negotiations and political compromise,"
Aghazadeh said. 

His comments came shortly after IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei
opened a week-long conference of the watchdog agency, whose
inspectors monitor compliance with international nuclear
safeguards, by saying he remained "hopeful" that Iran and world
powers could move towards "long-overdue" negotiations. 

French President Jacques Chirac" /> President Jacques Chirachad
earlier in Paris urged world powers not to refer Iran to the
Security Council for possible sanctions over fears the Islamic
Republic seeks nuclear weapons. 

ElBaradei said he hoped negotiations, which would eventually
involve six world powers and Iran, would "address the
international community's concerns about the peaceful nature of
Iran's nuclear program while on the other hand addressing Iran's
economic, political and security concerns." 

Chirac said: "First we have to find an agenda for negotiation,
then engage the negotiation and during that negotiation I
propose that on the one hand the six refrain from referring the
issue to the Security Council and that Iran renounce during the
negotiation the enrichment of uranium," Chirac said. 

Suspending uranium enrichment ahead of talks is a formal
condition of the six world powers, the five permanent Security
Council members Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United
States plus Germany, for negotiations on a package of trade and
other benefits for Iran. 

EU foreign policy representative Javier Solana and Iranian top
nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani are pursuing a last-ditch effort
to strike a nuclear deal that will lead to negotiations instead
of sanctions. 

It was the first time a European leader has clearly stated that
the suspension of uranium enrichment is not a "precondition" for
opening talks with Iran. 

Chirac indicated that the suspension should come during rather
than before negotiations. 

The IAEA conference, the 50th such annual gathering since the
agency was created in 1957, is expected to focus on Iran, an
Arab push to denounce Israel" /> Israel's allegedly possession
of atomic weapons, and how to guarantee reactor fuel supply but
keep bomb know-how from spreading. 

US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman" /> Samuel Bodmantold the
conference: "We all agree that an international framework for an
assured fuel supply is critical to meeting the world's energy
needs and advancing our non-proliferation goals." 

But Aghazadeh said: "During the past three decades, this topic
has been frequently discussed. However, no concrete and tangible
result was ever arrived at." 

He said Iran must, on behalf of developing countries, fight
against "restriction or prohibition of member states to exercise
their inalienable rights to develop and pursure peaceful nuclear
activities." 	 		 			

Copyright � 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 14 Guardian Unlimited: French Leader Proposes Iran Compromise
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Monday September 18, 2006 8:46 PM

AP Photo VIE111 

By ELAINE GANLEY 

Associated Press Writer 

PARIS (AP) - President Jacques Chirac proposed a compromise
Monday to kickstart talks between Iran and the international
community, suggesting the threat of U.N. sanctions be suspended
in exchange for Tehran halting its uranium enrichment program. 

``I don't believe in a solution without dialogue,'' Chirac said
in an interview with Europe-1 radio. He suggested the
international community suspend the threat of U.N. sanctions and
that Iran, in turn, suspend enrichment while the two sides talk. 

``I am not pessimistic,'' Chirac said. ``I think that Iran is a
great nation, an old culture, an old civilization, and that we
can find solutions through dialogue.'' 

Upbeat about the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program,
Chirac said in the wide-ranging radio interview that he was
pessimistic about the outcomes in Iraq and Sudan's war-ravaged
Darfur region. 

Chirac spoke before leaving for New York to attend the annual
U.N. General Assembly, which opens Tuesday. 

Asked about Iran, the French president noted that ``Iran for
years developed a clandestine nuclear program.'' However, ``I am
never favorable to sanctions'' and, should they be unavoidable,
they should be ``moderate and adapted,'' he said. 

In Vienna, Iranian Vice President Reza Aghazadeh said his
country was ``ready for negotiations and political compromise.''
However, he coupled that remark with a warning that ``any
hostile action by the U.N. Security Council would lead to
limitation of cooperation'' with the International Atomic Energy
Agency. 

The IAEA's inspectors are trying to determine whether Tehran is
using its nuclear program to make weapons, as the United States
and other countries fear. Iran assures it is for civilian use. 

At an IAEA conference, where Aghazadeh spoke, nations called on
Iran to freeze enrichment in accordance with a Security Council
demand. The U.N. Security Council has passed a resolution
providing for possible economic and diplomatic sanctions against
Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment. 

Chirac suggested Iran and the six nations involved in the issue
- France, Germany, Britain, Russia, China and the United States
- set an agenda for talks, then move ahead, with both sides
removing the burden of threats. 

``We must, on the one hand, together, Iran and the six
countries, meet and set an agenda, then start negotiations.
Then, during these negotiations, I suggest that the six renounce
referring (Iran to) the U.N. Security Council and that Iran
renounce uranium enrichment during negotiations,'' Chirac said. 

European and U.N. officials said Monday that senior EU and
Iranian negotiators planned to meet in New York later this week
to try to establish enough common ground to spark negotiations. 

The French president said he has no plans to meet with Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while in New York, saying he
``deplores'' the anti-Israeli remarks of the Iranian leader.
Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be ``wiped off the map.'' 

``I have very clearly stated that ... the conditions for a
personal dialogue have not been fulfilled,'' Chirac said. 

The United States and Britain have backed moving quickly to
sanctions if Iran does not comply with demands that it cease its
enrichment program. 

Russia and China have appeared most hesitant to call for
sanctions, while French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy
said earlier this month that a ``gradual approach'' was needed. 

Chirac, responding to questions on other international issues,
said: 

- On Iraq: ``I am not sure we can ever really get out of this,
in any case as long as there is no known goal for Iraqis
concerning the departure of foreign troops.'' Asked by CNN, in a
separate interview, whether France would help the United States
in Iraq, Chirac said, ``If the United States and President Bush
... asks me any question on this topic, well of course I will
welcome anything he asks and I will answer him.'' 

- On Darfur: Chirac urged Sudan to accept the deployment of U.N.
peacekeepers. He told CNN he foresaw ``millions'' more displaced
persons and ``possibly even hundreds of thousands'' more dead as
the rainy season ends. 

- On Lebanon, Chirac said the U.N. peacekeeping resolution for
Lebanon must be carried out ``without reservations'' so the
government can regain control of its territory. He suggested
there is a place for Hezbollah - but in politics, not as an
armed militia. 

- On French-U.S. ties, Chirac said he has very good relations
with Bush, but added, ``In our relations we can only be equals.
It cannot be a relationship of submission.'' 

--- 

Associated Press Writer George Jahn contributed to this story
from Vienna, Austria. 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 15 AFP: Iran warns it will cut cooperation with UN nuclear inspectors -
     
[Gholamreza Aghazadeh]   

VIENNA (AFP) - Iran has warned it will cut cooperation with UN
nuclear inspectors if the UN Security Council acted against it
but said negotiations could still work in the crisis over
Tehran's atomic ambitions.

There should "be no doubt that any hostile action by the UN
Security Council would lead to limitation of cooperation with
the (International Atomic Energy) agency," Iranian Vice
President Gholamreza Aghazadeh told a general conference in
Vienna of the IAEA's 140 nations.

The United (Advertisement)
[Click Here] [ src=]  States is pushing for sanctions against
Iran for failing to heed an August 31 Security Council deadline
to suspend uranium enrichment, which makes fuel for civilian
nuclear reactors but also can produce atom bomb material.

Aghazadeh, who is head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency,
warned that a "unilateral approach" at the United Nations,
"aggressively pursued by one or two states, is bound to cause
loss and damage to all."

But he said Iran "believes that an agreement is accessible
through negotiations, relying on good faith, political will and
flexibility."

Iran was "prepared for negotiations and political compromise,"
Aghazadeh said.

His comments came shortly after IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei
opened a week-long conference of the watchdog agency, whose
inspectors monitor compliance with international nuclear
safeguards, by saying he remained "hopeful" that Iran and world
powers could move towards "long-overdue" negotiations.

French President Jacques Chirac had earlier in Paris urged world
powers not to refer Iran to the Security Council for possible
sanctions over fears the Islamic Republic seeks nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei said he hoped negotiations, which would eventually
involve six world powers and Iran, would "address the
international community's concerns about the peaceful nature of
Iran's nuclear program while on the other hand addressing Iran's
economic, political and security concerns."

Chirac said: "First we have to find an agenda for negotiation,
then engage the negotiation and during that negotiation I
propose that on the one hand the six refrain from referring the
issue to the Security Council and that Iran renounce during the
negotiation the enrichment of uranium," Chirac said.

Suspending uranium enrichment ahead of talks is a formal
condition of the six world powers, the five permanent Security
Council members Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United
States plus Germany, for negotiations on a package of trade and
other benefits for Iran.

EU foreign policy representative Javier Solana and Iranian top
nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani are pursuing a last-ditch effort
to strike a nuclear deal that will lead to negotiations instead
of sanctions.

It was the first time a European leader has clearly stated that
the suspension of uranium enrichment is not a "precondition" for
opening talks with Iran.

Chirac indicated that the suspension should come during rather
than before negotiations.

The IAEA conference, the 50th such annual gathering since the
agency was created in 1957, is expected to focus on Iran, an
Arab push to denounce Israel's allegedly possession of atomic
weapons, and how to guarantee reactor fuel supply but keep bomb
know-how from spreading.

US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told the conference: "We all
agree that an international framework for an assured fuel supply
is critical to meeting the world's energy needs and advancing
our non-proliferation goals."

But Aghazadeh said: "During the past three decades, this topic
has been frequently discussed. However, no concrete and tangible
result was ever arrived at."

He said Iran must, on behalf of developing countries, fight
against "restriction or prohibition of member states to exercise
their inalienable rights to develop and pursure peaceful nuclear
activities." 

Copyright � 2006 Yahoo! UK Limited. All rights reserved.
AFP

*****************************************************************
 16 AFP: France makes concession on nuclear talks; Iran keeps tough line
    
 by Michael Adler Mon Sep 18, 2:40 PM ET 		 	 

VIENNA (AFP) - France has offered Iran" /> Irana key concession 
towards nuclear talks, while Tehran warned it would cut 
cooperation with UN nuclear inspectors in the event of punitive 
action by the UN Security Council. 

 French President Jacques Chirac" /> President Jacques
Chiracsaid in Paris that world powers should be ready to talk
with Iran without threatening sanctions, even if Tehran fails to
halt uranium enrichment ahead of the negotiations. 

"I propose that on the one hand the six refrain from referring
the issue to the Security Council and that Iran renounce during
the negotiation the enrichment of uranium," Chirac told Europe 1
radio. 

The six nations offering Iran talks on a package of trade and
other incentives are the five permanent members of the Security
Council -- Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United
States -- plus Germany. 

It was the first time a leader of one of the six has said the
suspension of uranium enrichment could be done during, and not
as a precondition, for talks. 

Chirac spoke prior to his departure for the UN General Assembly
in New York, where he will meet with US President George W.
Bush" /> President George W. Bushwhose administration is pushing
a much harder line on Iran. 

The United States, which charges Tehran with hiding work on the
development of nuclear weapons, wants the UN Security Council to
impose sanctions. 

Chirac's new stance also jarred with that of the European Union"
/> European Unionwhich said in a statement Monday that
suspending enrichment activities was "no longer a voluntary
confidence-building measure but an international obligation" for
Iran. 

It does bring France more in line with two other veto-wielding
permanent Security Council members -- China and Russia -- who
have also balked at the prospect of sanctions. 

An EU diplomat told AFP that Chirac's comments severely
undermined the three-nation group leading EU negotiations on
Iran, which includes France itself, along with Britain and
Germany. 

"It weakens our position, that is clear," the diplomat said on
condition of anonymity. 

At the annual conference of the UN watchdog International Atomic
Energy Agency" /> International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) in
Vienna, Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh warned
Monday that Tehran would retaliate to any sanctions by blocking
cooperation with the agency's nuclear inspectors. 

There should "be no doubt that any hostile action by the UN
Security Council would lead to limitation of cooperation," said
Aghazadeh, who is head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency. 

A unilateral approach at the United Nations" /> United Nations,
"aggressively pursued by one or two states, is bound to cause
loss and damage to all," he added. 

Iran, Aghazadeh said, still believed a way out of the crisis
could be found through negotiations, "relying on good faith,
political will and flexibility". 

He also stressed that Iran was fighting on behalf of other
developing countries against any attempt to restrict their
"inalienable rights" to develop and pursure peaceful nuclear
activities. 

IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei opened the week-long conference of
the watchdog agency, whose inspectors monitor compliance with
international nuclear safeguards, by saying he remained
"hopeful" that Iran and world powers could move towards
"long-overdue" negotiations. 

EU foreign policy representative Javier Solana and Iranian top
nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani are pursuing a last-ditch effort
to save talks on a nuclear deal. 

The IAEA conference, the 50th such annual gathering since the
agency was created in 1957, is to include three-days of talks on
how to guarantee reactor fuel supply but curb the proliferation
of nuclear weapons technology. 

"We all agree that an international framework for an assured
fuel supply is critical to meeting the world's energy needs and
advancing our non-proliferation goals," said US Energy Secretary
Samuel Bodman" /> Samuel Bodman. 	 		 			

Copyright � 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 17 AFP: Iran negotiator's absence raises doubts about talks 

 By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent Mon Sep 18, 7:11 PM
ET 		 	 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran" /> 's chief nuclear negotiator has 
not come to New York this week as expected, raising doubts about 
talks on Tehran's nuclear ambitions, U.S. envoy to the United 
Nations" /> John Bolton said on Monday. 

"The discussions with Iran appear to have come to a stop -- in
the sense that Mr (Ali) Larijani, whom we expected in New York,
is not here," Bolton told reporters. 

The United States, which gave Larijani a visa for the trip, has
repeatedly delayed pushing for U.N. sanctions on Iran while
Larijani held preliminary talks with European Union" /> foreign
policy chief Javier Solana. But Bolton said time was running
out. 

Solana said on Friday that a planned meeting last week had been
postponed because Larijani needed more time to build consensus
in his own country if he was to give a positive answer. 

The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China
have offered to negotiate with Iran on a package of economic and
political inducements if Tehran verifiably suspends uranium
enrichment, which the major powers believe is intended for
nuclear weapons development. 

Iran insists its nuclear activities are only to produce
electricity to meet burgeoning energy needs. It also insists
that it has a legal right to enrich uranium. 

An EU official told Reuters no meeting between Solana and
Larijani has been scheduled for this week so far, adding that EU
and Iranian officials have been in daily contact. 

President George W. Bush" /> , who has accused Iran of stalling
for time so it can advance its nuclear program, is expected to
discuss Iran in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly on
Tuesday morning. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an
anti-western hard-liner, is to address the assembly on Tuesday
night. 

Major power foreign ministers will discuss next step toward Iran
at a meeting on Tuesday evening. 

The U.N. Security Council" /> demanded that Iran halt uranium
enrichment by August 31 but Tehran ignored the deadline and
Bolton said the United States intends to press for sanctions. 

Some Western diplomats view Ahmadinejad and Larijani as
competitors within the Iranian leadership, regarding the
negotiator as more pragmatic. One diplomat suggested Larijani
may be waiting for the president to leave before he arrives. 

"Our assessment is that Larijani genuinely wants to try and get
some form of uranium suspension in place and get the
negotiations going" but it is questionable whether that can be
achieved given the apparent factionalism in Tehran on the
nuclear issue, a European diplomat said. 

Copyright � 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 18 AFP: In turnaround, US sees two-track approach to Iran nuclear crisis
     
 Mon Sep 18, 1:59 PM ET 		 	 

NEW YORK (AFP) - The United States, faced with a growing 
reluctance among its allies to impose sanctions on Iran" /> , 
showed a new readiness to accept a two-pronged approach in their 
bid to end Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons program. 

 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" /> , in New York Monday
for the UN General Assembly, said the United States was
continuing to press for a UN Security Council resolution
imposing sanctions on Iran over its refusal to stop enriching
uranium. 

Rice has insisted the sanctions are an essential first response
to Iran's refusal to heed an earlier Security Council resolution
that gave Tehran until August 31 to freeze its enrichment
program -- which can produce fuel for nuclear power generation
but also provide the material for atomic weapons. 

But the Americans softened their approach Monday after French
President Jacques Chirac" /> broke ranks and called for
continued negotiations with Iran prior to taking any steps
towards sanctions. 

It was the first time a European leader has clearly stated that
suspending uranium enrichment was not a precondition for opening
negotiations on the nuclear dossier -- a stance fiercely
defended until now by the United States. 

Friday, US President George W. Bush" /> assailed similar
suggestions that Tehran be given more time and said he would be
seeking to convince fellow leaders on the sidelines of the
General Assembly this week that "stalling shouldn't be allowed." 

But when asked Monday about ongoing European efforts to
negotiate with Iran, Rice declined to repeat her boss's hardline
stance, saying only that discussions were continuing with the
four other permanent members of the Security Council plus
Germany. 

"We have a meeting of the P5-plus-1 tomorrow night and we will
talk about it," she said. 

Her spokesman, Sean McCormack, went further in acknowledging the
existence of a two-track approach where the US pursues its
campaign for sanctions in parallel with the European negotiating
effort. 

"It's a strategy to try to do everything possible to convince
Iran to take a positive pathway," he said. 

Rice discussed the Iran issue Monday with Foreign Minister Li
Zhaoxing of China, which has been among the most reticent allies
on the sanctions issue. 

Bush is scheduled to meet here with Chirac on Tuesday ahead of
Rice's evening meeting with her counterparts from Britain,
China, France, Germany and Russia, known as the P5-plus-1, as
well as Italy's foreign minister. 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will also be in New York,
although Bush and Chirac both ruled out meeting the hardline
leader. 

Copyright � 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 19 UPI: Iran calls for new relationship with U.K.
     
United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 

        9/18/2006 12:49:00 PM -0400

LONDON, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Iran Monday called for a new
relationship with Britain, saying its influence in the Middle
East meant it must be engaged with rather than threatened. 

"We are now at a new beginning," Iran's new ambassador to
Britain, Rasoul Movahedian, was quoted as saying by the
Independent newspaper. "The world has been changed, the region
has been changed, and it is time for us to think of a new
modality of our relationship. There are grounds of common
interest for both Iran and Great Britain to work together." 

Britain is one of six countries attempting to negotiate a
solution to the dispute over Iran's nuclear programs, which
Tehran insists are for energy purposes only but which the United
States and Israel say are aimed at producing nuclear weapons. 

Speaking on the eve of a United Nations General Assembly
session, when the nuclear issue is expected to be discussed,
Mohavedian said Britain and the United States needed Iran's
cooperation in Afghanistan and Iraq, where Tehran has
considerable influence. 

Israel's failure to inflict tangible damage on the
Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah during the recent 34-day
conflict should be a warning to U.S. President George W. Bush,
he said, who has threatened to use force against Iran to prevent
it producing a nuclear bomb. 

"I will not deny that the situation in Lebanon has partly
affected the mentality of Western leaders. They have realized
that Iran is not in a position where they can impose anything
upon it. We are able to defend ourselves, to defend our
country," he said. 

"Iran is already a nuclear state," Mohavedian continued. "It's
up to the Western countries to realize our rights and position,
and to deal with it in a mutually beneficial way."

� Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 20 UPI: Bush, Ahmadinejad to square off at U.N.

United Press International - NewsTrack - 

9/18/2006 1:08:00 PM -0400
 
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Harsh words are expected at
the annual U.N. meeting of heads of state including U.S.
President George Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

While the two men are scheduled to speak hours apart Tuesday at
the United Nations, Bush has indicated his message will be
"stalling shouldn't be allowed" on Iran's controversial nuclear
progress, USA Today reported Monday. 

Bush is pressing for sanctions because Iran refused to meet an
Aug. 31 U.N. Security Council deadline to halt uranium
enrichment. 

However, Ahmadinejad's approach was more difficult to predict,
the newspaper said. The hard-line Islamist has vowed the country
will continue to exercise its sovereign right to enrich uranium
for the generation of electricity, but last week in Senegal, he
said Iran was "ready for new conditions" on the nuclear issue,
but did not elaborate. 

Last month, Ahmadinejad challenged Bush to a debate but the
offer was rejected as a publicity stunt and distraction from the
nuclear issue.

� Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 21 UPI: Iran: Enrichment halt a 'misunderstanding'

United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 

9/18/2006 11:21:00 AM -0400

TEHRAN, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Iran denied it was considering
suspending uranium enrichment for a limited period of time,
saying the idea was misunderstood by the West. 

Government spokesman Ghulam Hussein Elham told a weekly press
conference in Tehran Monday "Iran has not reached a decision in
that regard yet and the whole issue (about enrichment
suspension) was a misunderstanding." 

Tehran has ignored an Aug. 31 deadline served by the
international community to suspend uranium enrichment or face
possible U.N. sanctions. 

Iran insists its controversial nuclear program is for civilian
energy use but Western powers, especially the United States,
suspect it may be used for building nuclear weapons. 

Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told European
Union Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana at recent talks in
Brussels that Tehran is willing to discuss its nuclear program
and uranium enrichment-related activities. 

But the five permanent members of the Security Council -- the
United States, France, Britain, Russia and China -- in addition
to Germany, have set enrichment suspension as a precondition to
restarting nuclear talks. 

Elham reiterated Iran's rejection of preconditioned talks on its
controversial nuclear program, saying, "Talks must be without
preconditions... No result can be achieved under threats and
conditions."

� Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 22 Guardian Unlimited: Iran on Agenda at IAEA Conference
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Monday September 18, 2006 10:01 AM

By GEORGE JAHN 

Associated Press Writer 

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The United States, Russia and other
nations will focus on ways to reduce the threat of nuclear
proliferation at this week's International Atomic Energy Agency
conference, yet some of the proposed remedies could indirectly
hasten the arms race. 

The dangers of uranium enrichment have come into sharp focus
over the past three years through the international nuclear
standoff with Iran, which has defied a U.N. Security Council
demand that it freeze enrichment because it can create the
atomic bomb. 

Iran argues it has a right to enrichment under the
Nonproliferation Treaty and says it wants it only for its other
purpose - generating energy. 

Delegates at the 140-nation conference starting Monday also are
expected to pass a resolution urging North Korea to return to
six-nation talks meant to persuade it to give up its nuclear
weapons program. 

Fears that indigenous enrichment programs could be misused for
weapons have led to the start of attempts to create ``global
fuel banks,'' which would guarantee supplies of energy-capable
enriched uranium without the need for home-run enrichment
programs. 

``This is an either-or situation,'' IAEA official Tariq Rauf
said ahead of the conference. ``If we don't make it work, then
we must prepare to live in a world where dozens of countries
have the capability and key ingredients to make nuclear
weapons.'' 

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he backed
the idea of a multilateral uranium enrichment plant for
developing countries to guard against proliferation. 

A multilateral agreement was needed to ``prevent developments in
other developing countries similar to those in Iran and
strengthen nonproliferation,'' Steinmeier said in an interview
to appear in Monday's Handelsblatt newspaper. 

``There must be international delivery guarantees for nuclear
fuel,'' Steinmeier said. ``That could replace the wish for one's
own uranium enrichment plants.'' 

He said a shared enrichment plant could be built on an
``extraterritorial'' plot with a status similar to that of the
U.N. headquarters in New York. The program could be placed under
the auspices of the IAEA and subjected to its export controls,
he said. 

Yet some of the proposals could backfire. 

Because the U.S. plan would require a commitment from
participating nations that they would renounce domestic
enrichment plans, more countries have come forward in recent
months to announce they would develop their own enrichment
capabilities. Proposals from Russia also would restrict
participants' capabilities to enrich domestically. 

``It's kind of a 'we don't want to miss the boat' mentality,''
said a U.N. official who demanded anonymity for discussing
confidential internal IAEA affairs. ``There are fears among some
nations that they could be left out if a particular system is
adopted and they don't have the ways to enrich.'' 

Already, Argentina and South Africa have announced they plan to
revive their enrichment activities, while Australia plans to
start from scratch. 

While no one suggests they are looking for a weapons program,
their examples could embolden any number of other nations -
Ukraine and Kazakhstan are also said to be considering such a
move. 

While not formally on the agenda, Iran also will figure into
discussions on other issues as well. 

The United States, Israel and their allies are concerned that
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's report calling for all Middle
East nations to accept IAEA controls on their nuclear facilities
singles out Israel without mentioning Tehran's defiance both of
the agency and the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear
program. 

A draft resolution made available to The Associated Press and
drawn up by Arab states notes ``with serious concern that Israel
remains the only state in the Middle East'' that has not
ratified the Nonproliferation Treaty. 

While at past conferences Arab nations have dropped insistence
on voting on such a resolution, high passions in the wake of the
Lebanon conflict could force confrontation this time, pitting
Israel and its backers against supporters of the Arab camp. 

Even though the conference has no decision-making power, forcing
a vote at the meeting - which makes decisions by consensus -
could increase tensions and set a precedent at future
gatherings. 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 23 Korea Herald: [NEWS FOCUS] Six-party talks dying or dead?   
        
No progress a year after joint declaration on way forward
 
By Lee Joo-hee 

It is a year to the day since delegates to the fourth round of
the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions hammered
out their first joint declaration in Beijing. 

It was by far the most notable accomplishment by the members -
the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia - in
their efforts to denuclearize North Korea diplomatically and
peacefully. 

But nothing has happened since then. 

"Everything that we agreed in the Joint Statement of principles
can be discussed only after the six-party talks resume," Lee
Yong-joon, Seoul's deputy chief nuclear negotiator told The
Korea Herald. 

"Discussing a peace regime on the Korean peninsula and any other
issues included in the Joint Statement can only begin on the
agreement from all parties," said Lee, the director-general of
the Foreign Ministry's task force on the North Korean nuclear
crisis. 

The follow-up negotiations never got started, however, as North
Korea boycotted the talks in November citing sanctions imposed
by the United States. The talks have been on hold for 10 months
now. 

The prolonged suspension has also left Seoul and Washington at
odds. 

Some blames Washington's hostile policy towards the North for
aggravating the situation, while others point their finger at
Seoul's engagement policy for failing to give a good nudge to
the reclusive state to respond to international calls for a
resumption. 

Most recently, the presidents of South Korea and the United
States agreed to "comprehensively" seek for ways to solve the
crisis. It remains to be seen whether their accord results in
any substantial progress. 

On a broader note, for South Korea it is crucial to maintain the
multilateral discussion framework that will be the only
practical tool to sustain the agreed principles. 

It is in fact, all South Korea can offer for the time being,
experts say. 

"What Seoul can do at the moment is to voice our suggestions,
mediate between the United States and China, and maintain at
least a minimum level of inter-Korean relations," said Hong
Soon-jick, a researcher at Hyundai Research Institute. 

A possible turning point could be the United States General
Election on Nov. 7. 

It is clear that North Korea is holding its breath for the time
being to see if the balance of power shifts in Washington. 

"Depending on the outcome of the election, it could add weight
to voices within Washington that the current harsh policy
towards the North may just be giving more time for the North to
develop its nuclear weapons," Hong said. 

"If such voices do become louder, it could perhaps bring another
change to the situation." 

The Joint Statement in a total of six articles spelled out from
A to Z the principles that would be required when starting
full-fledged negotiations to dismantle North Korea's nuclear
activities in return for incentives. 

But as they were broad and general, written in highly diplomatic
terms, follow-up talks were expected to be even harder. 

The accepted reason that North Korea bolted from the talks was
the U.S. Treasury Department's financial moves against North
Korea's alleged money counterfeiting and money laundering
activities in September, just before the signing of the Joint
Statement. 

Washington banned American banks from dealing with Banco Delta
Asia in Macau for allegedly helping with North Korea's illicit
activities. 

The ban eventually led BDA to freeze its North Korean accounts
worth $24 million. 

Similar measures are spreading across the world now, according
to U.S. officials. 

Reacting to the "sanctions," North Korea in turn used its
"missile card" by test-firing seven ballistic missiles into the
East Sea on July 5. 

But that gamble failed to budge a hawkish Washington, which
continues prepare powerful measures that would further isolate
the North. 

North Korea, with an equal display of stubborn behavior,
released another statement last weekend through Kim Yong-nam,
president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly. 

"Our country will never return to the talks under U.S.
sanctions," Kim said at the Nonaligned Movement summit in Havana

on Saturday. 
South Korea's Foreign Ministry consequently appears pessimistic
there will be any resumption of the six-party talks anytime
soon. 

For the United States, taking harsh measures against North
Korea's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is part of
its flagship foreign policy. 

North Korea, meanwhile, could be truly determined to become a
nuclear state, or could be waiting for better terms in order to
find a face-saving way to exit its ambitious military programs. 

In a report released to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 19
Joint Statement, the ministry said yesterday, "North Korea
believes that the United States' financial measures are part of
its hostile policy and that it is impossible to return to the
talks unless the problem with BDA is solved. To the North, the
BDA issue is a political issue directly linked to the Sept. 19
Joint Statement." 

China, which takes credit for creating the six-party talks
framework, remains keen to restart the talks, and is currently
making every effort to persuade the North to return to the
table, according to the ministry. 

Japan, which is eager to ramp up its alliance with the United
States, is committed to the comprehensive and common
implementation of the Sept. 19 Joint Statement, it said. 

Russia is also in support of resuming the talks, and believes
that bilateral talks between the United States and North Korea
would be an effective solution. 

In the Joint Statement, the six parties agreed that the goal of
the six-party talks "is the verifiable denuclearization of the
Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner." 

They said the North was "committed to abandoning all nuclear
weapons and exiting nuclear programs and returning at an early
date to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
and to IAEA safeguards." 

In return, the parties agreed that the North had the right to
peaceful use of nuclear energy and agreed to discuss "at an
appropriate time" the subject of the provision of a light water
reactor. 

Among other incentives were normalization of bilateral ties with
the communist regime, and the promotion of economic cooperation
in the fields of energy, trade, and investment. 

South Korea, for its part, offered to provide 2 million
kilowatts of electric power. 

(angiely@heraldm.com) 

2006.09.19
*****************************************************************
 24 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: [EDITORIALS] Six parties must try harder
   
  One year ago from Tuesday, the two Koreas, China, Japan,
Russia and the United States signed a joint statement confirming
the North's commitment to abandon its nuclear programs. Since
the joint statement, not much progress has been made on the
North Korean nuclear situation. The next round of six-party
talks to discuss the implementation of the joint statement has
been put on hold indefinitely with North Korea dropping out to
protest the United States' sanctions against Pyongyang's illegal
financial transactions abroad. It is a terrible pity that the
joint statement could become totally obsolete with the United
Nations Security Council adopting a resolution led by the United
States and Japan condemning North Korea's July 5 missile tests.

Washington and Tokyo are imposing tougher sanctions against
North Korea and are urging others to follow in their footsteps
based on the UN Security Council resolution. So far, the North
Koreans have only reacted by declaring their intention to
continue with nuclear testing. 

What's fortunate is that all participants of the six-party talks
agree that the multilateral talks are useful and need to be
continued. Last week, President Roh Moo-hyun and U.S.
counterpart George W. Bush met in Washington, agreed to work
together to resolve the North Korean nuclear situation and
recommitted themselves to six-party talks. Details of exactly
how the two allies will go about defusing the North Korean
nuclear crisis have yet to be announced and it is even unclear
whether the United States will follow South Korea's proposal of
a "comprehensive common measure." 

Northeast Asia is a politically sensitive region where the
interests of several superpowers are intertwined. The scramble
among the superpowers to gain the political leadership of the
region is aimed at the 21st century but still leaving traces of
Cold War order and practices. The situation on the Korean
Peninsula still holds the precarious danger of a large-scale
military breakout. The six parties must provide a realistic
measure to rekindle the fast-disappearing momentum of the
six-party talks. Tougher sanctions against Pyongyang from the
United States and Japan will only provoke a more stubborn and
hard-line stance from the North Koreans, which will in turn lead
to a regional instability that South Korea, China and Russia
cannot afford to see happen. 

North Korea should also face the fact that brinksmanship tactics
such as missile testing and nuclear development programs will
not save their regime from its present crisis. Seoul's one-sided
policy of tolerance towards North Korea is doing nothing to
resolve the nuclear crisis and is only compromising our position
on the international stage. The six parties must own up to their
lack of efforts over the past year and step up to formulate a
realistic plan to implement a stable peace in Northeast Asia.   
	  
  2006.09.17       

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*****************************************************************
 25 INSIDE JoongAng Daily: New ideas' failing to stir North Korea

September 19, 2006 KST 12:29 (GMT+9)                                             
	   		 	   	   		 	   	   		 	   	   		 	   	 	 
  September 18, 2006 �� The latest call from the U.S. and South
Korean presidents for North Korea to return to the six-nation
nuclear disarmament talks was speedily rejected by the communist
nation's head of state over the weekend. 

Kim Yong-nam, the second-ranking man in Pyongyang's official
hierarchy, told the Non-Aligned Movement summit meeting in
Havana on Saturday that North Korea would not return to the
talks until Washington removes its sanctions against his country.

 Mr. Kim said sternly, "There is absolutely no justification to
urge North Korea to go back to negotiations unconditionally. Our
country will never return to negotiations under U.S. sanctions."

 He also reiterated the North's long-time argument that it
needed nuclear weapons for self-defense. "We had no choice but
to possess nuclear arms to deter [the United States]," he said. 

On Friday, U.S. President George W. Bush and South Korea's
President Roh Moo-hyun again called on Pyongyang to return to
the six-party talks, deadlocked for about a year. The meeting
also resulted in a vague promise of a "broad and common
approach" toward getting Pyongyang back to the table. 

Chun Young-woo, Seoul's representative at the nuclear talks,
will visit Washington this week to meet with his counterpart,
Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state for Asia and
Pacific affairs. 

Next week, officials from Seoul, Tokyo and Washington will meet
to discuss the so-called "broad and common approach." 

A South Korean government official, who did not want to be
identified, was pessimistic about the chances of any of the new
approaches to North Korean recalcitrance working. 

"The North appears to have made up its mind that it will not
talk with the Bush administration even if it has to go through
extreme hardships," the Korean official said. "The fate of the
��broad and common approach' is gloomy."

 While Seoul struggled to play peacemaker between Pyongyang on
the one hand and Washington and Tokyo on the other, more
sanctions were being drawn up in the United States and Japan. 

Shinzo Abe, Japan's cabinet secretary, said more financial
sanctions against the North will be discussed on Tuesday. After
the North's missile launches in July, Japan banned a North
Korean ship from entering its ports. 

Tokyo also plans to require companies and individuals suspected
of being involved in North Korea's weapons development to obtain
permission to send foreign remittances from Japanese bank
accounts, a move that some observers said would freeze a large
portion of North Korea's foreign assets.

 The United States has urged the international community to join
efforts to isolate the North financially. On Saturday, finance
heads from the Group of Seven industrialized economies
"discussed the need to take action to disrupt terrorist and
illicit finance related to specific threats from North Korea and
Iran," U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said. 

The U.S. move toward additional sanctions will only increase the
possibility of a North Korean nuclear test, said Donald Gregg, a
former U.S. ambassador to Korea and a critic of Bush
administration diplomacy toward North Korea. 

by Lee Chun-hee, Ser Myo-ja myoja@joongang.co.kr>   
	  
   
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*****************************************************************
 26 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: N.Korea Insists no Deal Until U.S. Lifts Sanctions 
 
  Home> National/Politics    Updated Sep.18,2006 07:37 KST   

The head of North Korea��s parliament has repeated Pyongyang
will not return to six-party talks on its nuclear program unless
the U.S. lifts sanctions against it. The remarks were made by
Kim Yong-nam, the president of North Korea's Supreme People's
Assembly, on Friday during the Summit of the Non-Aligned
Movement, which brought together Washington��s bitterest critics
in Havana, Cuba. Kim also blasted the U.S. as a threat to world
peace. 

"The United States, far from complying with the six-party
commission's agreements, has continued to impose unilateral
sanctions, bringing the talks to a standstill and dragging the
situation to an unpredictable point," Kim said. North Korea "has
been left with no other option but to possess nuclear weapons as
a self-defensive deterrent." 

They were the first remarks from a top North Korean official
after President Roh Moo-hyun and U.S. President George W. Bush
in a meeting a day earlier urged the North to return to the
six-party talks. They suggest the North takes a dim view of the
"common and broad approach" the U.S. and South Korea agreed to
take to bring the reclusive country back to the negotiating
table. 

(englishnews@chosun.com ) 

*****************************************************************
 27 Korea Times: 6-Way Statement Marks Anniversary Without Fanfare 

Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Nation   

By Park Song-wu Staff Reporter

 The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said yesterday that
North Korea thinks the U.S. financial restrictions against
Pyongyang are ``hostile policies'' politically linked to the
joint statement issued in Beijing exactly one year ago.

 In a statement, which the ministry issued to mark the first
anniversary, it said North Korea's stance is not to return to
the six-party talks unless it can retrieve the $24 million
frozen in Banco Delta Asia (BDA), a bank in Macau. 

But the ministry said Pyongyang apparently is willing to
implement the Sept. 19 statement as it has frequently mentioned
it would do so. 

As a way to induce the North to come back, President Roh
Moo-hyun and his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush agreed in
Washington last week that they will take a ``common and broad
approach.'' 

The contents of the approach is not yet determined as all
concerned parties need to discuss what North Korea will be given
and what it needs to do _ a repeat of the tiresome work that has
been stalled since December. 

But only a day after the summit in Washington, a bad omen came
from Havana, where Kim Yong-nam, the North's No. 2 leader,
attended the Non-Aligned Movement summit. 

He said that the North will not return to the six-party talks
and that his country has been left with no other option but to
possess nuclear weapons as a defensive deterrent. 

But a North Korean expert in Seoul said on condition of
anonymity that he thinks Kim had just read a statement that was
prepared before his departure to Havana, meaning that his speech
text did not reflect the result of the Seoul-Washington summit.

 One year has passed since the six countries _ the two Koreas,
the United States, China, Russia and Japan _ announced the joint
statement in Beijing on how to resolve North Korea's nuclear
weapons program.

 But the denuclearization dialogue has been in limbo over the
last 10 months, since North Korea declared in December it would
not to return to the negotiating table, citing what it calls the
U.S. financial sanctions. 

The United States blacklisted the BDA as a financial institute
of ``primary money laundering concern'' for its suspicious
activities surrounding Pyongyang��s alleged circulation of
counterfeit U.S. bills. 

The U.S. action, which Washington calls a law-enforcement
measure, led BDA to freeze $24 million in the North's accounts.
Subsequently, many private banks cut their transactions with
Pyongyang. 

In January, Credit Suisse, Switzerland's second largest bank,
said it decided not to take on any more business with North
Korea, but current ties to it would continue. 

Korea Exchange Bank in Seoul cut its relations with BDA the next
month. 

North Korea has insisted that it cannot come back to the
six-party talks ``under the cap of U.S. sanctions.'' But the
U.S. pressure has gained more power as time goes by. Whenever
the North opens accounts in other East Asian countries, such as
Vietnam, the United States always tracks it down. 

Late last month, the North's Foreign Ministry spokesman
criticized the United States for pressuring banks in East Asia
to stop transacting with Pyongyang and tracing North Korean
accounts in around 10 countries, including Mongolia and Russia. 

On Sept. 8, Stuart Levey, the U.S. Treasury Department's
undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in
an interview that around 20 financial institutions in countries
such as China, Japan, Vietnam, Mongolia and Singapore have
stopped transactions with North Korea. 

He also claimed that the North would soon be totally isolated
from the international financial sector. 

As the North's communist allies, such as Vietnam and China, are
joining hands with the United States, Pyongyang's sense of
crisis has apparently become stronger. 

A source who has deep knowledge about North Korea's trade
situation said even diplomats' suitcases are filled with U.S.
dollars because no more financial institutions in foreign
countries want to open accounts for Pyongyang. 

The North has repeatedly said it would think about returning to
the six-party talks in return for receiving the money frozen in
BDA. But Pyongyang might have lost more than $2 billion in
opportunity costs over the past 10 months, North Korea experts
said. 

If the North agreed to freeze its nuclear programs, it could get
500,000 tons of oil worth $200 million on a yearly basis. South
Korea's provision of electricity would be worth $1 billion. 

The North did not receive $900 million worth of rice and $40
million worth of fertilizer because of its test-firing of
missiles in July. 

This is too much for the North to lose only to get back $24
million, North Korea experts said. 

im@koreatimes.co.kr 09-18-2006 20:02         
  
*****************************************************************
 28 AFP: New push to bring NKorea back to nuclear talks

 by Jun Kwanwoo Sun Sep 17, 11:56 PM ET 		 	 

SEOUL (AFP) - A new effort to revive multinational talks on North 
Korea" /> 's nuclear disarmament is due to start this week, but 
hopes of saving the breakthrough accord reached on September 19 
last year are fading. 

's proposal to utilize patience one more time to give it a last 
chance." 

South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun" /> and US President George 
W. Bush" /> recommitted themselves to try to restart the dialogue 
at their summit in Washington on Thursday. 

But Roh's security advisor Suh Choo-Suk has acknowledged it will 
be an "extremely difficult task." 

Last September the United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia 
and Japan signed what was seen as a landmark accord on ending the 
North's nuclear arms programme -- an issue which brought the US 
and North Korea close to war in 1994. 

In return the North was to receive energy and economic aid, 
eventual diplomatic benefits and security guarantees. 

But the jubilation was short-lived. Just two month later North 
Korea boycotted the talks to protest at US sanctions on a Macau 
bank which allegedly helped it pass counterfeit US dollars and 
launder funds. 

Tensions rose with the North's defiant missile tests in July,
which sparked condemnation and missile-related sanctions from
the UN Security Council. 

Media reports say the North, which declared in February 2005 it
had built nuclear weapons, may also be planning an atomic
weapons test. 

Neither Washington nor Pyongyang have shown any sign of
yielding. 

Washington says its financial sanctions are unrelated to the
six-party forum and the North should return to dialogue
unconditionally. 

"Our country will never return to the talks under US sanctions,"
North Korea's number two Kim Yong Nam told the Non-Aligned
Movement summit in Havana on Saturday. 

South Korea's top nuclear envoy Chun Yung-Woo and his US
counterpart Christopher Hill will meet in New York this week to
follow up on the presidential summit, security advisor Suh has
said. 

The meeting will be followed by a meeting between Chun, Hill and
their Japanese counterpart next week. 

Despite the apparent summit harmony, the policy gap between
Seoul and Washington -- said by one US senior official to be "as
wide as the Sea of Japan" -- is complicating diplomatic efforts. 

Some analysts believe Washington is close to giving up on the
six-party process and announcing new bilateral sanctions. South
Korea aims to continue aid to, and investment in, its neighbor
to woo it out of isolation. 

Two senior US experts on Korea said in an opinion piece in the
Washington Post this month that Washington would be making a
"grave mistake" in imposing new sanctions. 

Donald Gregg and Don Oberdorfer said this may only push Kim
Jong-Il's regime to attempt more tests, possibly including
nuclear weapons, and ignite serious political and military
tensions in the region. 

"Why, at such a time, choose sanctions, a policy option whose
historical record is overwhelmingly one of failure?" they wrote. 

"One possible reason is that sanctions give vent to the visceral
hostility that senior Bush administration officials feel toward
North Korea." 

The State Department disputed the argument as wrongfully blaming
the United States for provocation by another state. 	 		 			

Copyright � 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The
*****************************************************************
 29 UPI: Analysis: North Korea progress unlikely
     
United Press International - Intl. Intelligence - 

9/18/2006 2:51:00 PM -0400                                                                                                                       

 By MICHAEL MARSHALL Editor In Chief

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- While U.S. President George Bush
was meeting President Roh, his South Korean counterpart, last
week in Washington, North Korean officials were preparing to
attend the summit meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement of nations
which was held in Havana, Cuba over the weekend. There they were
able to make friendly with such strong critics of U.S. foreign
policy as President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. At the same time they argued, to a
sympathetic audience, that they had the right to a civilian
nuclear energy program, and the need for a nuclear weapons
program to deter a perceived U.S. threat. 

North Korea has always been a difficult country to read and to
deal with. Senior Chinese military officers told one American
scholar that the North Koreans were "stubborn and irrational." 

Nevertheless, Chinese diplomats and many American policy
analysts believed a window of opportunity existed up until last
year to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program
in a verifiable manner in return for political recognition by
the U.S. and security guarantees. 

In 2002 North Korea admitted that it had a highly enriched
uranium program and had resumed reprocessing plutonium for use
in nuclear weapons. This effectively spelled the end of the 1994
Agreed Framework between North Korea and the Clinton
administration. In August 2003 China, Japan, the two Koreas,
Russia, and the United States met in Beijing to explore a
diplomatic solution to North Korea's nuclear weapons program,
launching a process known as the Six Party talks. 

The high point in the talks was reached on Sept. 19, 2005, when
both the U.S. and North Korea signed on to an agreement on
principles for settling the North Korean nuclear issue. No
sooner was the agreement signed, however, than it was torpedoed
by mutual and contradictory "clarifications" of its meaning from
both sides. These made it clear that the agreement, which could
have been the basis of detailed negotiations on how to implement
it, was going nowhere. 

For North Korea's foreign ministry this was a disaster.
Government bureaucracies rank low on the North Korean totem
pole, below the party, the military, and at the top the Dear
Leader himself, Kim Jong-il. Tellingly Kim's took as his first
position of power after his father, Kim Il-sung died, the
chairmanship of the National Defense Commission. 

The job of the foreign ministry was to secure political
recognition and security through diplomacy and when they failed
to deliver they were harshly criticized by the military
establishment. One South Korean who has met with high level
North Korean military officials said he observed a major
shouting match between military leaders and government
officials. 

The North Korean test launch of seven missiles on July 4 this
year, including a Taepodong 2 with the potential to reach the
U.S., was probably in part a response to this situation. South
Korean analysts describe it either as Kim offering some red meat
to his angry and frustrated generals, or as him trying to get
out ahead of them. There are reports that Kim was seriously
considering a nuclear test last July before being dissuaded. 

Despite this things may now be settling down although not moving
forward. South Korean observers with contacts in the north
report that the leadership there does not believe there is the
will in the White House to reach a settlement. They now expect
any diplomatic initiatives to be blocked and so have no interest
in returning to the Six Party talks. Instead they will wait to
see what the next administration brings. 

This is not an encouraging picture but if this analysis is
correct there is one positive. North Korea would be unlikely to
conduct a nuclear test while playing a waiting game unless
further goaded by the extension of sanctions against North Korea
that some in the administration are advocating. 

The U.S. and South Korea continue to pursue very different
approaches to North Korea. The U.S. sees North Korea in terms of
a security and nonproliferation threat that has to be dealt with
before any of North Korea's issues are addressed. South Korea
seeks to transform the north gradually over time through a
policy of engagement. This is symbolized by the Kaesong
industrial complex in North Korea, an hour's drive from Seoul,
where South Korean capital, management and technology combine
with North Korean labor to produce a range of modern goods. 

Recently there have been fears that these differences would
drive a wedge into the 60-year U.S.-South Korean alliance. Last
week's summit represented a determined attempt by both sides to
pull back, play down differences and stress the ongoing
importance of the alliance. They spoke jointly of reviving the
Six Party process and bringing North Korea back to the table. 

It is certainly better than squabbling in public but the harsh
reality is that most observers consider the Six Party talks
dead. Expanded sanctions, if implemented, would certainly not
induce the North Koreans to return. At a conference last week on
North Korea, cosponsored by the Brookings institute and the
Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, several speakers
pointed out that waiting until the next administration for
further progress would have a cost. North Korea's nuclear
weapons program would be more firmly entrenched and the price
for them ending it would be that much higher.

� Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 30 UPI: Lack of sanctions spur NorKor defiance
     
United Press International - Security &Terrorism - 

9/18/2006 11:46:00 AM -0400

TOKYO, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- North Korea continues to boycott
six-party negotiations over its nuclear weapons program because
its not yet starving, a former Japanese diplomat said. 

Katsunari Suzuki, the former point man for Tokyo-Pyongyang
relations, made the comment in an interview published Monday in
The Japan Times. 

"Kim Jong Ils administration has yet to starve (owing to
economic assistance by China and South Korea)," he said. "That
explains why North Korea doesn't show up at the six-party
talks." 

Publication of the interview came on the one-year anniversary
mark of Pyongyang's boycott of the talks with Japan, the United
States, Russia, South Korea and China over ending its nuclear
programs. 

The United States and Japan want hard-hitting international
proscriptions imposed but China and South Korea - fearing the
consequences of a North Korean economic collapse -- are opposed
and have been helping the North with some aid, including badly
needed humanitarian aid. 

In July, in an act of defiance, North Korea tested more than a
half-dozen ballistic missiles, including some theoretically
capable of hitting Japan and one theoretically capable of
hitting the western United States. 

"North Korea's nuclear weapons and its development of
(ballistic) missiles (to deliver them) have been the biggest
threat to Japan," Suzuki said. "We should deal with these
matters as priority matter." 

Imposing sanctions, he said, was a "reasonable" course of
action. 

North Korean intransigence and the perceived threat it poses to
Japan has helped spur Japanese cooperation with the United
States on ballistic missile defense.

� Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
			 			
*****************************************************************
 31 Guardian Unlimited: Japan Cabinet to OK N. Korea Sanctions
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Monday September 18, 2006 6:46 PM

By MARI YAMAGUCHI 

Associated Press Writer 

TOKYO (AP) - Japan's Cabinet will approve a new set of financial
sanctions against North Korea on Tuesday in response to the
communist nation's missile firing in July, a top government
official said. 

The sanctions - called for in a U.N. Security Council resolution
that denounced the missile launches - would ban withdrawals of
money and overseas remittances by groups and individuals
suspected of links to North Korean weapons programs. 

``As it has become obvious that the problem cannot be resolved
only through dialogue, pressure is unavoidable,'' Chief Cabinet
Secretary Shinzo Abe said Monday on NTV network. ``In order to
get them to change their behavior, we cannot help but apply the
pressure.'' 

The planned sanctions include measures targeting 12 groups and
an individual that officials say have links to North Korea's
weapons development programs, according to Japanese media
reports. 

Tokyo stepped up trade restrictions on North Korea in July
following Pyongyang's test-firing of seven missiles, including
one long-range rocket, into the waters between Japan and the
Korean Peninsula. The launches drew international condemnation. 

Communist North Korea's moribund economy is heavily dependent on
cash infusions from a large community of sympathetic ethnic
Koreans in Japan. 

Japan and North Korea have no diplomatic relations, but the two
have maintained limited economic ties. Following the latest
sanctions, trade between the two plunged nearly 40 percent, the
government recently announced. 

The United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea have
tried to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear program at
six-party negotiations that have been on hold since November
2005 because North Korea refuses to attend until Washington
lifts financial restrictions. 

Abe said Monday it was also necessary to increase pressure on
North Korea over its past abductions of Japanese citizens.
Pyongyang, which has admitted kidnapping Japanese citizens in
the 1970s and 80s to train as spies, allowed five of them to
return home but said others were dead. 

Many Japanese believe the missing are alive. 

Abe, the nationalist leading the race to replace outgoing Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi, said he planned to create a new
Cabinet post in charge of the abduction issue if he wins. 
		 	 	   

*****************************************************************
 32 Environment Unlimited: Climate change | The denial industry
 
The oil giant ExxonMobil gives money to scores of organisations
that claim the science on global warming is inconclusive - which
it isn't. It's a strategy that has set back action on climate
change by a decade, and it involves the same people who insist
that passive smoking is harmless, reveals George Monbiot in the
first of three extracts from his new book 

Tuesday September 19, 2006
The Guardian 		 

ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable corporation. Its sales
now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money
from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from
efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits,
ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs
to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it
must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which
maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes
Aids. So what's its strategy?

The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's 
official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money 
from the company or work closely with those that have. These 
organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the 
science is contradictory, the scientists are split, 
environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if 
governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be 
endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings 
these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The 
findings they welcome are labelled "sound science".

Among the organisations that have been funded by Exxon are such
well-known websites and lobby groups as TechCentralStation, the
Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Some of those on the
list have names that make them look like grassroots citizens'
organisations or academic bodies: the Centre for the Study of
Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, for example. One or two of
them, such as the Congress of Racial Equality, are citizens'
organisations or academic bodies, but the line they take on
climate change is very much like that of the other sponsored
groups. While all these groups are based in America, their
publications are read and cited, and their staff are interviewed
and quoted, all over the world.

By funding a large number of organisations, Exxon helps to
create the impression that doubt about climate change is
widespread. For those who do not understand that scientific
findings cannot be trusted if they have not appeared in
peer-reviewed journals, the names of these institutes help to
suggest that serious researchers are challenging the consensus.

This is not to claim that all the science these groups champion
is bogus. On the whole, they use selection, not invention. They
will find one contradictory study - such as the discovery of
tropospheric cooling, which, in a garbled form, has been used by
Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday - and promote it
relentlessly. They will continue to do so long after it has been
disproved by further work. So, for example, John Christy, the
author of the troposphere paper, admitted in August 2005 that
his figures were incorrect, yet his initial findings are still
being circulated and championed by many of these groups, as a
quick internet search will show you.

But they do not stop there. The chairman of a group called the
Science and Environmental Policy Project is Frederick Seitz.
Seitz is a physicist who in the 1960s was president of the US
National Academy of Sciences. In 1998, he wrote a document,
known as the Oregon Petition, which has been cited by almost
every journalist who claims that climate change is a myth.

The document reads as follows: "We urge the United States
government to reject the global warming agreement that was
written in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, and any other similar
proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm
the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology,
and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no
convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon
dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will,
in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the
Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.
Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that
increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial
effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the
Earth."

Anyone with a degree was entitled to sign it. It was attached to
a letter written by Seitz, entitled Research Review of Global
Warming Evidence. The lead author of the "review" that followed
Seitz's letter is a Christian fundamentalist called Arthur B
Robinson. He is not a professional climate scientist. It was
co-published by Robinson's organisation - the Oregon Institute
of Science and Medicine - and an outfit called the George C
Marshall Institute, which has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil
since 1998. The other authors were Robinson's 22-year-old son
and two employees of the George C Marshall Institute. The
chairman of the George C Marshall Institute was Frederick Seitz.

The paper maintained that: "We are living in an increasingly
lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon
dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more
plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed.
This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial
Revolution."

It was printed in the font and format of the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences: the journal of the organisation of
which Seitz - as he had just reminded his correspondents - was
once president.

Soon after the petition was published, the National Academy of
Sciences released this statement: "The NAS Council would like to
make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the
National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
or in any other peer-reviewed journal. The petition does not
reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy."

But it was too late. Seitz, the Oregon Institute and the George
C Marshall Institute had already circulated tens of thousands of
copies, and the petition had established a major presence on the
internet. Some 17,000 graduates signed it, the majority of whom
had no background in climate science. It has been repeatedly
cited - by global-warming sceptics such as David Bellamy,
Melanie Phillips and others - as a petition by climate
scientists. It is promoted by the Exxon-sponsored sites as
evidence that there is no scientific consensus on climate change.

All this is now well known to climate scientists and
environmentalists. But what I have discovered while researching
this issue is that the corporate funding of lobby groups denying
that manmade climate change is taking place was initiated not by
Exxon, or by any other firm directly involved in the fossil fuel
industry. It was started by the tobacco company Philip Morris.

In December 1992, the US Environmental Protection Agency
published a 500-page report called Respiratory Health Effects of
Passive Smoking. It found that "the widespread exposure to
environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in the United States presents
a serious and substantial public health impact. In adults: ETS
is a human lung carcinogen, responsible for approximately 3,000
lung cancer deaths annually in US non-smokers. In children: ETS
exposure is causally associated with an increased risk of lower
respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia.
This report estimates that 150,000 to 300,000 cases annually in
infants and young children up to 18 months of age are
attributable to ETS."

Had it not been for the settlement of a major class action
against the tobacco companies in the US, we would never have
been able to see what happened next. But in 1998 they were
forced to publish their internal documents and post them on the
internet.

Within two months of its publication, Philip Morris, the world's
biggest tobacco firm, had devised a strategy for dealing with
the passive-smoking report. In February 1993 Ellen Merlo, its
senior vice-president of corporate affairs, sent a letter to
William I Campbell, Philip Morris's chief executive officer and
president, explaining her intentions: "Our overriding objective
is to discredit the EPA report ... Concurrently, it is our
objective to prevent states and cities, as well as businesses,
from passive-smoking bans."

To this end, she had hired a public relations company called
APCO. She had attached the advice it had given her. APCO warned
that: "No matter how strong the arguments, industry spokespeople
are, in and of themselves, not always credible or appropriate
messengers."

So the fight against a ban on passive smoking had to be
associated with other people and other issues. Philip Morris,
APCO said, needed to create the impression of a "grassroots"
movement - one that had been formed spontaneously by concerned
citizens to fight "overregulation". It should portray the danger
of tobacco smoke as just one "unfounded fear" among others, such
as concerns about pesticides and cellphones. APCO proposed to
set up "a national coalition intended to educate the media,
public officials and the public about the dangers of 'junk
science'. Coalition will address credibility of government's
scientific studies, risk-assessment techniques and misuse of tax
dollars ... Upon formation of Coalition, key leaders will begin
media outreach, eg editorial board tours, opinion articles, and
brief elected officials in selected states."

APCO would found the coalition, write its mission statements,
and "prepare and place opinion articles in key markets". For
this it required $150,000 for its own fees and $75,000 for the
coalition's costs.

By May 1993, as another memo from APCO to Philip Morris shows,
the fake citizens' group had a name: the Advancement of Sound
Science Coalition. It was important, further letters stated, "to
ensure that TASSC has a diverse group of contributors"; to "link
the tobacco issue with other more 'politically correct'
products"; and to associate scientific studies that cast smoking
in a bad light with "broader questions about government research
and regulations" - such as "global warming", "nuclear waste
disposal" and "biotechnology". APCO would engage in the
"intensive recruitment of high-profile representatives from
business and industry, scientists, public officials, and other
individuals interested in promoting the use of sound science".

By September 1993, APCO had produced a "Plan for the Public
Launching of TASSC". The media launch would not take place in
"Washington, DC or the top media markets of the country. Rather,
we suggest creating a series of aggressive, decentralised
launches in several targeted local and regional markets across
the country. This approach ... avoids cynical reporters from
major media: less reviewing/challenging of TASSC messages."

The media coverage, the public relations company hoped, would
enable TASSC to "establish an image of a national grassroots
coalition". In case the media asked hostile questions, APCO
circulated a sheet of answers, drafted by Philip Morris. The
first question was:

"Isn't it true that Philip Morris created TASSC to act as a
front group for it?

"A: No, not at all. As a large corporation, PM belongs to many
national, regional, and state business, public policy, and
legislative organisations. PM has contributed to TASSC, as we
have with various groups and corporations across the country."

There are clear similarities between the language used and the
approaches adopted by Philip Morris and by the organisations
funded by Exxon. The two lobbies use the same terms, which
appear to have been invented by Philip Morris's consultants.
"Junk science" meant peer-reviewed studies showing that smoking
was linked to cancer and other diseases. "Sound science" meant
studies sponsored by the tobacco industry suggesting that the
link was inconclusive. Both lobbies recognised that their best
chance of avoiding regulation was to challenge the scientific
consensus. As a memo from the tobacco company Brown and
Williamson noted, "Doubt is our product since it is the best
means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the
mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing
a controversy." Both industries also sought to distance
themselves from their own campaigns, creating the impression
that they were spontaneous movements of professionals or
ordinary citizens: the "grassroots".

But the connection goes further than that. TASSC, the
"coalition" created by Philip Morris, was the first and most
important of the corporate-funded organisations denying that
climate change is taking place. It has done more damage to the
campaign to halt it than any other body.

TASSC did as its founders at APCO suggested, and sought funding
from other sources. Between 2000 and 2002 it received $30,000
from Exxon. The website it has financed - JunkScience.com- has
been the main entrepot for almost every kind of climate-change
denial that has found its way into the mainstream press. It
equates environmentalists with Nazis, communists and terrorists.
It flings at us the accusations that could justifably be
levelled against itself: the website claims, for example, that
it is campaigning against "faulty scientific data and analysis
used to advance special and, often, hidden agendas". I have lost
count of the number of correspondents who, while questioning
manmade global warming, have pointed me there.

The man who runs it is called Steve Milloy. In 1992, he started
working for APCO - Philip Morris's consultants. While there, he
set up the JunkScience site. In March 1997, the documents show,
he was appointed TASSC's executive director. By 1998, as he
explained in a memo to TASSC board members, his JunkScience
website was was being funded by TASSC. Both he and the
"coalition" continued to receive money from Philip Morris. An
internal document dated February 1998 reveals that TASSC took
$200,000 from the tobacco company in 1997. Philip Morris's 2001
budget document records a payment to Steven Milloy of $90,000.
Altria, Philip Morris's parent company, admits that Milloy was
under contract to the tobacco firm until at least the end of
2005.

He has done well. You can find his name attached to letters and
articles seeking to discredit passive-smoking studies all over
the internet and in the academic databases. He has even managed
to reach the British Medical Journal: I found a letter from him
there which claimed that the studies it had reported "do not
bear out the hypothesis that maternal smoking/ passive smoking
increases cancer risk among infants". TASSC paid him $126,000 in
2004 for 15 hours' work a week. Two other organisations are
registered at his address: the Free Enterprise Education
Institute and the Free Enterprise Action Institute. They have
received $10,000 and $50,000 respectively from Exxon. The
secretary of the Free Enterprise Action Institute is Thomas
Borelli. Borelli was the Philip Morris executive who oversaw the
payments to TASSC.

Milloy also writes a weekly Junk Science column for the Fox News
website. Without declaring his interests, he has used this
column to pour scorn on studies documenting the medical effects
of second-hand tobacco smoke and showing that climate change is
taking place. Even after Fox News was told about the money he
had been receiving from Philip Morris and Exxon, it continued to
employ him, without informing its readers about his interests.

TASSC's headed notepaper names an advisory board of eight
people. Three of them are listed by Exxonsecrets.org as working
for organisations taking money from Exxon. One of them is
Frederick Seitz, the man who wrote the Oregon Petition, and who
chairs the Science and Environmental Policy Project. In 1979,
Seitz became a permanent consultant to the tobacco company RJ
Reynolds. He worked for the firm until at least 1987, for an
annual fee of $65,000. He was in charge of deciding which
medical research projects the company should fund, and handed
out millions of dollars a year to American universities. The
purpose of this funding, a memo from the chairman of RJ Reynolds
shows, was to "refute the criticisms against cigarettes". An
undated note in the Philip Morris archive shows that it was
planning a "Seitz symposium" with the help of TASSC, in which
Frederick Seitz would speak to "40-60 regulators".

The president of Seitz's Science and Environmental Policy
Project is a maverick environmental scientist called S Fred
Singer. He has spent the past few years refuting evidence for
manmade climate change. It was he, for example, who published
the misleading claim that most of the world's glaciers are
advancing, which landed David Bellamy in so much trouble when he
repeated it last year. He also had connections with the tobacco
industry. In March 1993, APCO sent a memo to Ellen Merlo, the
vice-president of Philip Morris, who had just commissioned it to
fight the Environmental Protection Agency: "As you know, we have
been working with Dr Fred Singer and Dr Dwight Lee, who have
authored articles on junk science and indoor air quality (IAQ)
respectively ..."

Singer's article, entitled Junk Science at the EPA, claimed that
"the latest 'crisis' - environmental tobacco smoke - has been
widely criticised as the most shocking distortion of scientific
evidence yet". He alleged that the Environmental Protection
Agency had had to "rig the numbers" in its report on passive
smoking. This was the report that Philip Morris and APCO had set
out to discredit a month before Singer wrote his article.

I have no evidence that Fred Singer or his organisation have
taken money from Philip Morris. But many of the other bodies
that have been sponsored by Exxon and have sought to repudiate
climate change were also funded by the tobacco company. Among
them are some of the world's best-known "thinktanks": the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the
Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Frontiers of
Freedom Institute, the Reason Foundation and the Independent
Institute, as well as George Mason University's Law and
Economics Centre. I can't help wondering whether there is any
aspect of conservative thought in the United States that has not
been formed and funded by the corporations.

Until I came across this material, I believed that the
accusations, the insults and the taunts such people had slung at
us environmentalists were personal: that they really did hate
us, and had found someone who would pay to help them express
those feelings. Now I realise that they have simply transferred
their skills.

While they have been most effective in the United States, the
impacts of the climate-change deniers sponsored by Exxon and
Philip Morris have been felt all over the world. I have seen
their arguments endlessly repeated in Australia, Canada, India,
Russia and the UK. By dominating the media debate on climate
change during seven or eight critical years in which urgent
international talks should have been taking place, by constantly
seeding doubt about the science just as it should have been most
persuasive, they have justified the money their sponsors have
spent on them many times over. It is fair to say that the
professional denial industry has delayed effective global action
on climate change by years, just as it helped to delay action
against the tobacco companies.

� This is an edited extract from Heat, by George Monbiot,
published by Allen Lane. To order a copy for �16.99 with free UK
p (rrp �17.99), go to Guardian.co.uk/bookshopor call 0870 836
0875. 

Useful links
IPCC
UN framework convention on climate change

[UP] 

Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 33 ENN: U.S. Missing Renewable Energy Opportunities
     
Environment News Service (ENS)
 
WASHINGTON, DC, September 18, 2006 (ENS) - Renewable energy
technologies are fast becoming economically competitive with
fossil fuels, but U.S. federal policy is hampering development
of the nation's abundant renewable energy resources, according
to a report released Monday by U.S. researchers. 

The federal government continues to pour subsidies into oil,
gas, coal, and nuclear energy, the report said, and has failed
to aggressively shift energy policy to encourage rapid
development of renewable energy sources. 

Renewable energy sources provide only about 6 percent of total
U.S. energy. 

Of the nation's total renewable energy production, 90 percent
comes from hydroelectric and biomass. Geothermal comprises 6
percent of U.S. renewable energy, with wind making up 2 percent
and solar, 1 percent. 

"With oil prices soaring, the security risks of petroleum
dependence growing, and the environmental costs of today's fuels
becoming more apparent, the country faces compelling reasons to
put these technologies to use on a larger scale," said the
report, which was authored by researchers from the Worldwatch
Institute, an environmental research group, and the Center for
American Progress, a liberal think tank. 

The report notes that a quarter of U.S. land area has winds
powerful enough to generate electricity as cheaply as natural
gas and coal. In addition, the solar resources of just seven
southwest states could provide 10 times the current electric
generating capacity. 

U.S. renewable energy policies over the past two decades "have
been an ever-changing patchwork," the report said, and "abrupt
changes in direction at the state and federal levels have
deterred investors and led dozens of companies into bankruptcy."
[shark] Renewable energy advocates frequently tout America's
prairie lands as the "Saudi Arabia" of wind(Photo courtesy
Eugene Water and Electric Board) This means the nation has not
taken full advantage of global trends, which see dynamic growth
in renewable energy production driving down costs and spurring
rapid advances in technologies. 

Annual global investment in "new" renewable energy has risen
almost six fold since 1995, with cumulative investment over this
period nearly $180 billion. 

In the past six years, global wind energy generation has more
than tripled and solar cell production has risen six-fold. In
addition, production of fuel ethanol from crops has more than
doubled since 2000 and biodiesel production has expanded nearly
four-fold. 

But the United States has not kept up with the strong growth in
renewables over the past decade and its market share has fallen
steadily. 

Germany and Spain have taken the lead in wind power, the report
said, and Japan and Germany are leading in solar technology. The
U.S. share of global production of solar cells slipped from 44
percent in 1996 to 9 percent in 2005. Brazil is the world's
largest producer of biofuels, and China has surged ahead in
small hydro and solar water heating. 

"Time is growing short for the United States to get back in the
game and compete for what could be some of the largest new
markets of the next few decades," the report said. 

Although the federal government has recently boosted biofuel
production and extended tax credits for other renewables, the
investments still trail similar federal supports for fossil
fuels. 

The 2005 energy bill included $4.5 billion in tax credits for
renewable energy and energy efficiency, but earmarked $6.9
billion for fossil fuels and nuclear power. 

The report calls for the federal government to establish a
long-term framework for investments and tax credits in renewable
energy - current tax credits for wind, solar and geothermal
energy development are renewed annually and can be hindered by
the legislative process. 

It recommends new pricing strategies to make renewable energy
more attractive to electricity buyers, further efforts to boost
energy efficiency as well as reductions in subsidies for fossil
fuels. 

The federal government should continue to use its massive
purchasing power to build larger markets for renewable energy
and should set a long-term targets for renewable energy use,
along the lines of the goal to get 25 percent of its energy from
renewables by 2025. [solar] The southwestern United States has
areas ripe to harness the solar energy. Photo courtesy) "Today's
energy system has been shaped by government subsidies and
regulatory support," the report said. "The key to a bright
American energy future and a new wave of economic activity and
innovation is a robust partnership between government and the
private sector - providing incentives to jumpstart the new
energy industries while minimizing the cost to American
taxpayers." 

The authors noted that states are increasingly taking the lead
on renewable energy issues. 

All but four U.S. states now have incentives in place to promote
renewable energy. More than a dozen have enacted new renewable
energy laws in the past few years, and four states strengthened
their targets in 2005. 

California gets 31 percent of its electricity from renewable
resources - 12 percent of this comes from non-hydro sources such
as wind and geothermal energy. 

The United States led the world in wind energy installations in
2005 and Texas now has the country's largest collection of wind
generators.   

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2006. All Rights
Reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 34 DOE: U.S. and Russia Sign Liability Protocol
 
  September 15, 2006
 
Nonproliferation Program Will Eliminate Enough Plutonium For
16,000 Nuclear Weapons 

WASHINGTON, DC  Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman praised
todays signing of a liability agreement between the United
States and the Russian Federation that clears a legal hurdle for
an important nonproliferation program administered by the
Department of Energys National Nuclear Security Administration
(NNSA). 

Under Secretary of State Robert Joseph and Russian Deputy
Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak signed the agreement in
Washington, on behalf of their two governments.  The United
States and Russia successfully completed negotiations of the
protocol in 2005, and the Russian government recently completed
its formal process approving it for signature. 

This agreement demonstrates that both countries continue to be
committed to this important nonproliferation program, which will
dispose of enough weapons-grade plutonium for more than 16,000
nuclear weapons, Secretary Bodman said.  Its an important
part of the Bush administrations effort to keep nuclear
material out of the hands of terrorists. 

The plutonium disposition program aims to eliminate a total of
68 metric tons (about 150,000 pounds) of surplus weapon-grade
plutonium in the United States and in Russia, and stems from a
2000 nonproliferation agreement between the two countries.  Both
countries will dispose of their plutonium by converting it to
mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for use in nuclear reactors.  Once the
MOX fuel is irradiated, the plutonium has been converted into a
form that cannot be used for nuclear weapons. 

Signing this protocol with our Russian partners formally
resolves the issue of what liability framework would apply for
cooperation between the two countries to eliminate this
dangerous material from Russian and U.S. stocks, said NNSA
Administrator Linton F. Brooks.  We continue to work with the
Russian Federation on the next steps in implementing the
plutonium disposition agreement. 

NNSA is nearing completion of site preparation activities for
construction of a Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the
Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina.  The agency is
awaiting completion of the appropriations act for fiscal year
2007 before proceeding with construction. 

Established by Congress in 2000, NNSA is a semi-autonomous
agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for
enhancing national security through the military application of
nuclear science.  NNSA maintains and enhances the safety,
security, reliability and performance of the U.S. nuclear
weapons stockpile without nuclear testing; works to reduce
global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the
U.S. Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and
responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and
abroad.  Visit http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/for more information. 

Media contact(s): Bryan Wilkes, (202) 586-7371 Craig Stevens, 
(202) 586-4940     [ ]   

  U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | 
Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403
*****************************************************************
 35 PR: Berkley Legislation Seeks to Spur U.S. Energy Independence 
 
Congresswoman Shelley Berkley - Legislation: Press Releases 2005

FREE Act Targets Expansion of Renewable Energy, Offers
Conservation Incentives    

(Las Vegas-- August 14, 2006) On a tour of one of the Valleys
most energy efficient buildings, Congresswoman Shelley Berkley
(D-NV) today called for action on the FREE Act, new legislation
she has introduced which seeks to promote American energy
independence, while eliminating subsidies for more nuclear power
and tax breaks for oil and gas producers at a time of record
profits. 

Promoting the greater use and development of renewable power
resources and alternative fuels will increase Americas energy
independence.  Nevada families want a cleaner environment and
freedom from soaring energy prices, but our nation is locked
into policies that hurt consumers and threaten our national
security, said Berkley. 

The Berkley bill, H.R. 5926, eliminates billions of dollars in
costly taxpayer subsidies to oil and gas producers and the
nuclear energy industry and channels those federal resources
into renewable energy development and production.  Berkley
discussed her bill on during a tour of architecture firm Tate
Snyder Kimseys Las Vegas headquarters. The firms building is the
first in Nevada to be awarded Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design certification by the U.S. Green Energy
Council.    

The FREE Act cuts wasteful tax breaks to oil and gas producers
and nuclear operators and invests those dollars in clean,
renewable resources that will promote energy independence. 
Funding new nuclear power plants will only increase pressure to
dump nuclear waste in Nevada.  My goal is to eliminate the need
for more nuclear energy by increasing the amount of power we
generate using sun, wind, geothermal and other renewable
sources.  A strong national renewable portfolio standard, like
the RPS we already have in Nevada, will spur more alternative
energy production and fuel the market for new technologies that
can cut pollution and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, said
Berkley. 

Americans want more fuel efficient cars and trucks and
increasing gas mileage standards will force automakers to give
drivers more choices that will save them money at the pump and
help fight global warming. 

Increasing gas mileage standards in Americas cars and trucks
will mean more choices for drivers who want to save at the pump
and cut global warming emissions at the same time, said Berkley.
 Each gallon of gas that a Las Vegas driver saves is money that
stays in his or her pocket and it has the added benefit of
reducing pollution and conserving oil.  Higher gas mileage
standards are long overdue and it is time we put Americas
families ahead of car company profits, Berkley said.     

A summary of provisions included in the FREE or Freedom through
Renewable Energy Expansion act is provided below. 
Summary of the FREE Act
 Freedom through Renewable Energy Expansion 

Repeal nuclear subsidies:  Repeals three provisions in the
Energy Policy Act of 2005 regarding the nuclear industry, saving
about $3.5 billion:  
  + Repeals the authorization of $1.25 billion for the
Department of Energy to build a nuclear reactor to generate both
electricity and hydrogen. 
  + Repeals the authorization for cost-overrun support of up to
$2 billion total for up to six new nuclear power plants. 
  + Repeals the extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) to
Advanced Nuclear Facilities. 

Repeal oil and gas tax breaks:  Repeals the following provisions
in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 regarding the oil and gas
industry, saving about $2.6 billion: 
  + Repeals the election to expense certain refineries, a tax
break to refineries that allows them to expense 50 percent of
the cost of upgrading an existing refinery or building a new
one. 
  + Repeals the treatment of natural gas lines as 15-year
properties, which allows the cost of natural gas distribution
lines to be recovered over 15 years instead of 20 years, as it
was before passage of the Energy Policy Act. 
  + Repeals the treatment of natural gas gathering lines as
7-year properties, which allows the cost of natural gas
gathering lines to be recovered over 7 years instead of 15, as
it was before passage of the Energy Policy Act.  
  + Repeals the rule change in the Energy Policy Act that
re-defined independent producers as oil and gas producers that
produce 75,000 barrels a day or less, as opposed to the 50,000
per day definition that was used prior to the Acts passage. 
Independent producers are eligible for certain tax breaks that
larger oil and gas producers cannot receive.  This provision
decreases the number of oil and gas producers eligible for tax
breaks.    

Repeal other oil and gas subsidies:  Repeals the following
provisions in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 regarding the oil
and gas industry, saving about $6.8 billion:   
  + Repeals royalty relief to oil companies for producing in
marginal wells.  
  + Repeals royalty relief to gas companies for drilling in deep
wells in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico. 
  + Repeals royalty relief for deep water production. 
  + Repeals the authorization for an inventory and analysis of
oil and natural gas resources beneath all of the waters of the
Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).  
  + Repeals the authorization to expedite oil and gas leases and
permit applications for land drilling.  
  + Repeals the authorization for a research and development
program intended to advance oil and gas production.      
  + Repeals the authorization for a research and development
program on production capacity of marginal wells. 
  + Repeals the authorization for a research and development
program into ultra-deepwater and unconventional natural gas
exploration and development.  
  + Repeals the suspension of royalty payments for certain
drilling off the shore of Alaska.  
  + Repeals the provision suspension royalty payments for
certain drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.   
       

Suspend royalty relief:  Repeals provisions in federal law that
exempt oil and gas companies from paying royalties or reduced
fees for drilling on public lands, saving $5.8 billion.     

Raise average fuel economy standards to 33 mpg by 2015:  Directs
the Secretary of Transportation to prescribe corporate average
fuel economy (CAFE) standards for passenger automobiles
manufactured after 2008 that ensure that the CAFE achieved by
automobiles manufactured after 2015 is at least 33 miles per
gallon.  

Extend renewable electricity Production Tax Credit (PTC) for
five years:  Extends for five years (until January 1, 2012) the
renewable electricity production tax credit (PTC) for the
following facilities: wind, closed-loop biomass, open-loop
biomass, geothermal, small irrigation power, landfill gas, and
trash combustion. 

Extend and modify the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar,
fuel cell and geothermal properties:  Extends the current
2-year, 30 percent investment tax credit (ITC) for solar
equipment until January 1, 2016, reverting back to 10 percent
after 10 years.  Extends the ITC for eligible fuel cell
properties until December 31, 2015.  Extends the ITC for
geothermal properties until January 1, 2016, and increases the
credit from 10 percent to 30 percent to match the solar credit,
reverting back to 10 percent after 10 years.  

Extend the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for residential energy
efficient properties:  Extends until December 31, 2007, the
current 2-year, 30 percent investment tax credit (ITC) for
residential solar and fuel cell equipment that was enacted in
the Energy Policy Act of 2005.  

Create a small wind Investment Tax Credit (ITC):  Creates a
10-year, 30 percent investment tax credit that covers small wind
systems used to power homes, farms and small businesses that
generate 100 kilowatts of energy or less.  The credit would
revert to 10 percent in 2016.  

Fund geothermal research:  Provides $32.5 million to the
Secretary of Energy to fund geothermal research.  

Create a 20 percent Federal Renewable Portfolio Standard:  Each
electric utility that sells electricity to electric consumers
shall obtain a percentage of the base amount of electricity it
sells to electric consumers in any calendar year from new
renewable energy or existing renewable energy. The percentage
obtained in a calendar year shall not be less than 5 percent by
2007, 8 percent by 2009, 11 percent by 2011, 15 percent by 2013,
and 20 percent by 2015 and thereafter.  This provision will also
establish a renewable energy credit trading program to permit an
electric utility that does not meet the standard to do so by
purchasing renewable energy credits.  

Strengthen the federal energy purchase requirement:  Amend the
Energy Policy Act of 2005 to require the federal government to
consume during any fiscal year no less than 5 percent of its
energy from renewable energy sources by 2007, 11 percent by
2011, and no less than 20 percent by 2015.  

Create a school renewable energy grant program:  Direct the
Secretary of Energy to establish a program to make grants to
local schools and school districts to promote and facilitate the
use of renewable energy sources in school facilities.  
# # #   


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 36 Guardian Unlimited: Bush to Head to U.N. With Host of Issues
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Monday September 18, 2006 8:31 AM

AP Photo MDMC103 

By NEDRA PICKLER 

Associated Press Writer 

WASHINGTON (AP) - The spotlight returns to Iraq and other
problem areas of the Middle East as President Bush heads to the
United Nations to address a host of global issues facing his
administration. 

The president's three-day trip includes bilateral meetings with
six foreign leaders, including the presidents of Iraq and the
Palestinian Authority, and a speech to the U.N. General Assembly
that will focus on his vision for the Middle East. 

The three days of diplomacy come as the president prepares for a
busy political schedule. Bush, who lately has been trying to
turn the election-year debate away from the unpopular war in
Iraq and toward a broader war on terrorism, plans to spend much
of the next seven weeks campaigning for fellow Republicans. 

And he isn't leaving politics behind while he's in New York:
Monday night he headlines a fundraiser for the Republican
National Committee at the Manhattan home of billionaire
financier Henry Kravis. 

At the United Nations, Bush will try to highlight his goal of
spreading democracy. To that end, Bush was to spend his first
day meeting with leaders of Malaysia, a democracy with a
moderate Islamic government; El Salvador and Honduras, two
Central American nations that have moved from military
dictatorships to democracies; and the emerging African democracy
of Tanzania. 

More closely watched will be meetings Tuesday and Wednesday,
beginning with French President Jacques Chirac, the only other
member of the coalition of nations working with the U.S. to stop
Iran's nuclear ambitions. 

Iran has accelerated its nuclear program and defied U.N.
demands, and the U.S. had hoped to have a resolution to apply
sanctions on the government by this week's meeting.
Administration officials say they don't expect Bush to deliver a
breakthrough with other leaders absent, but they say sanctions
should come soon. 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also planned to be at the
U.N., but last week Bush ruled out any discussions with him
until Iran suspends nuclear enrichment. Bush's aides said
lower-level officials also will not make any contacts with the
Iranians. 

On Tuesday afternoon, Bush is scheduled to meet with Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani to discuss Iraq's progress toward
democracy amid continuing violence. Nearly 200 people have been
killed in attacks or tortured and dumped in rivers and on
Baghdad streets since Wednesday, and politicians are arguing
over a proposal to transform Iraq into a federate state. 

Bush said last week that he was disappointed the number of U.S.
troops in Iraq was climbing rather than falling. He said hopes
for troop withdrawals were dashed by the spike in violence in
Baghdad. 

Polls show the war is unpopular among Americans, and Republicans
worry it could cost them votes in November's elections. Bush has
been trying to shift the focus to the broader war on terror in
recent weeks, introducing legislation that has sparked debate on
Capitol Hill about how to treat terrorism suspects. 

Before he heads back to Washington on Wednesday, Bush plans to
meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is struggling
to get the militant Hamas to soften its anti-Israel ideology.
The U.S. and other nations have halted aid to the Palestinian
government until Hamas agrees to renounce violence, recognize
Israel and accept past peace agreements. Hamas caved in to
pressure last week and announced it would form a coalition
government with Abbas' more moderate Fatah Party. 

But coalition talks have stalled over U.S. demands that the
unity government recognize Israel. Palestinian officials said
Abbas will appeal to Bush to support a coalition that doesn't
fully meet international demands for a changed stance on Israel.
They said he would warn that failure to work out a unity
government could lead to a Palestinian civil war. 

Bush aides said he would discuss ways for the global community
to help the Palestinians, Iraq and Lebanon. 

^--- 

On the Net: 

http://www.whitehouse.gov 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 37 UPI: U.S., Russia sign nuke legal agreement
     
 United Press International - Security &Terrorism - 

9/18/2006 12:37:00 PM -0400

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- The United States and Russia have
signed a legal agreement to open the way for new cooperation on
nuclear non-proliferation. 

U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman Friday welcomed the
signing of the agreement to safely dispose of larger quantities
of Russian plutonium. "This agreement demonstrates that both
countries continue to be committed to this important
non-proliferation program, which will dispose of enough
weapons-grade plutonium for more than 16,000 nuclear weapons,"
he said. "It's an important part of the Bush administration's
effort to keep nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists 

The U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security
Administration said Friday in a statement that the new
U.S.-Russian liability agreement removed a legal hurdle for the
plutonium disposal program. 

"Signing this protocol with our Russian partners formally
resolves the issue of what liability framework would apply for
cooperation between the two countries to eliminate this
dangerous material from Russian and U.S. stocks," said NNSA
Administrator Linton F. Brooks. "We continue to work with the
Russian Federation on the next steps in implementing the
plutonium disposition agreement 

The NNSA said that the plutonium disposal program was designed
to remove 68 metric tons, or 150,000 pounds, of surplus
weapon-grade plutonium in the United States and Russia. "Both
countries will dispose of their plutonium by converting it to
mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for use in nuclear reactors," the NNSA
statement said. "Once the MOX fuel is irradiated, the plutonium
has been converted into a form that cannot be used for nuclear
weapons." 

The NNSA also said it was preparing to build a Mixed Oxide Fuel
Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River in Aiken, South
Carolina.

� Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 38 [NukeNet] Scotland: Rally against nuclear bomb replacement
 
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:33:55 -0700

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NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)

<http://www.sundayherald.com/58023>http://www.sundayherald.com/58023
Sunday Herald - 17 September 2006
Rally against nuclear bomb replacement
By James Hamilton


----------
Anti-Trident campaigners, taking part in an awareness-raising peace trek, 
rallied in Glasgow yesterday and called on the government to �bin the bomb�.

The Long Walk for Peace began on Thursday with anti-nuclear protesters 
setting off from the Faslane naval base on the Clyde. The group, including 
church and union leaders, is walking 85 miles to the Scottish parliament, 
where ministers will be asked to oppose any plans to replace the UK�s 
Trident missiles.

Activists reached Glasgow on Friday evening and held a rally involving 
several hundred people in the city�s George Square yesterday. Speakers at 
the gathering included anti-war campaigner Rose Gentle, whose soldier son 
Gordon was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, Scottish Socialist Party 
leader Colin Fox and SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon.

She called for the nuclear deterrent to be scrapped, saying there was no 
rational argument for spending taxpayers� money on new nuclear weapons. She 
said: �Nuclear weapons are a scar on Scotland and a threat to world peace.

�We should be ashamed to have them sited on our shores. Yet Scotland�s 
First Minister has repeatedly failed to say whether he backs the 
replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system.�

Money devoted to Trident would be better spent on changing Scotland for 
good, she argued.

At First Minister�s Questions on Thursday, Jack McConnell said he had told 
MSPs earlier this year that the question of Trident replacement required 
serious debate and not a �knee-jerk reaction� from the Nationalists.

l Powerplay: page 38


----------

Copyright � 2006 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088
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 39 [NYTr] S.Africa Chairs IAEA Conference
 
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:38:47 -0500 (CDT)

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Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Prensa Latina, Havana
http://www.plenglish.com

S.Africa Chairs IAEA Conference

Johannesburg, Sep 18 (Prensa Latina) South Africa is presiding over the
general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) kicked
off Monday in Vienna, Austria.

The week-long conference, chaired by South African Special Representative
on Disarmament Abdul Samad Minty, is discussing the safety and security of
nuclear material and facilities, as well as the threat of nuclear
terrorism, reported BuaNews agency.

The conference will also debate measures to strengthen technical
co-operation in nuclear power generation and other areas of human
development, sources revealed.

South African authorities commented the country was committed to IAEA
objectives in terms of furthering the development and applications of
nuclear technology towards peace, health and prosperity.

sus/dig
       
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 40 The Hindu: Nuke deal will sail through by year-end: Talbott 

Tuesday, September 19, 2006 : 0300 Hrs
 
New Delhi, Sept. 19 (PTI): The civil nuclear deal will "sail
through" the Congressional process by the year-end, former US
Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said yesterday but
cautioned that China may raise questions over the agreement in
the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). 

A key interlocutor with India in the strategic dialogue during
the Clinton administration, Talbott, however, said the Bush
Government would have got a "better" agreement covering fissile
material control if it had bargained properly. 

"Relax, everything is going to be fine. The deal will sail
through the Congressional process by the year-end," he said
during an interaction here, noting that it had strong bipartisan
support, including that of Democrat leader Hillary Clinton. 

He said it was his "guess" that when the Indo-US nuclear deal
comes up before NSG, China would ask why an exception is being
made with regard to India and not to the country it is close
with, an apparent reference to Pakistan. 

The answer is clear that it is because Pakistan has an
"extremely lousy record" with regard to non-proliferation,
Talbott said, adding the US is talking to the Chinese to sort
out that problem. 

Talbott, who had been engaged in strategic dialogue with then
External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, said the pact had
initially been sought by the Clinton administration and that
ground for the nuclear deal with India had been laid during the
previous BJP-led government. 

The Clinton administration had laid five benchmarks for the
agreement -- CTBT, export control, nuclear restraint, Fissile
Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) and progress in Indo-Pak
relations but could not conclude the deal. 

Copyright � 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of
*****************************************************************
 41 Xinhua: China to build 5 more research institutes   
    
  www.chinaview.cn 2006-09-18 04:02:53   

    BEIJING, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Academy of
Sciences (CAS) will establish five more research institutes
together with the governments of five cities by 2010 to bolster
the country's scientific creativity, especially in new and
high-tech sectors, sources with the CAS said Sunday. 

    The five new institutes will be located in the coastal or
economically booming cities of Yantai, Qingdao, Suzhou, Shenzhen
and Xiamen. They mainly cover coastal sustainable development,
bioenergy, nanoscience, urban environment, and other advanced
technologies. 

    The CAS boasts scientific research prowess in Beijing and
Shanghai and the country's western parts. Now it is improving
regional scientific deployment by setting up the research
institutes in the eastern and southern areas. 

    The establishment of the new institutes will push forward
the country's reform of scientific system and boost the nation's
overall capability of scientific innovation, said Lu Yongxiang,
president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

    The Outline of the National Program for Long-and Medium-Term
Scientific and Technological Development, issued by the State
Council earlier this year, demands that by 2020 the spending on
research and development reach 2.5 percent of the country's
gross domestic product. 

    The outline calls for additional spending in 16 key areas,
including software and semiconductors, telecommunications,
nuclear power, genetically modified crops and space exploration.
In 2005, China devoted about 1.23 percent of its GDP to research
and development. Enditem   

  Editor: Mu Xuequan   

*****************************************************************
 42 IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency - General Session
 
Thank you Director General ElBaradei. 

Congratulations to Mr. Abdul Samad Minty on your election as
President of this, the 50th IAEA General Conference. 

President George W. Bush sends a letter wishing us a productive
conference. 

Let me draw from his message: 

"My Administration has announced a bold new proposal called the
Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. We will work with countries
to meet their growing energy needs, dispose of waste safely,
advance nonproliferation, and keep nuclear technology out of the
hands of terrorist networks and terrorist states. 

"We will encourage reliable access to nuclear fuel for countries
that agree to forego uranium enrichment and reprocessing
activities. Together, we can ensure that cheap, safe, and clean
nuclear energy and its benefits are enjoyed by all who are in
compliance with their nonproliferation obligations." 

Let me take this opportunity to highlight some of our recent
nonproliferation successes. 

Through close cooperation between Russia and the U.S., we have
strengthened the security for hundreds of metric tons of
weapons-usable materials in Russia and we are on track to finish
that work by the end of 2008. We have down-blended more than 250
metric tons of Russian highly enriched uranium and sold it as
commercial fuel. And we continue with plans to eliminate surplus
U.S. and Russian plutonium. 

To build on these efforts, the United States and Russia recently
announced a new Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism.
This initiative provides the means to prevent terrorists and
their sponsors from acquiring nuclear weapons, the most serious
threat facing the world today. 

The initiative builds on UN Security Council Resolution 1540,
the recently amended Convention on the Physical Protection of
Nuclear Materials and Facilities, the Additional Protocol, and
related instruments. We urge full implementation of these
measures to control proliferation and to secure the safe
expansion of nuclear energy use worldwide. 

In addition, through President Bush's Global Threat Reduction
Initiative, we recently partnered with Russia and the IAEA to
secure and return highly enriched uranium and other at-risk
materials from Serbia, Bulgaria, Libya, Uzbekistan, Latvia, the
Czech Republic, Poland, and elsewhere. 

These materials would have been enough to arm nine nuclear
weapons and numerous "dirty bombs." This should spur us to
redouble our efforts to secure nuclear and radiological
material, and further expand our cooperative work in nuclear
non-proliferation. 

But the immense power contained in just a few pounds of enriched
uranium can also produce an incredible amount of clean and
abundant energy. Like many powerful forces man has harnessed
throughout history, such as the flow of a great river, or the
spark of an open flame - nuclear power can be turned to chaos
and destruction or it can be employed to immeasurable benefit. 

We are all familiar with the projections for greatly increased
demand for energy of all types around the world. In particular,
on my visit to Iraq earlier this summer I saw for myself how
critical electricity is to trade and commerce, education, even
healthcare. 

The world still relies primarily on coal, natural gas, and oil
to generate electrical power. But nuclear energy provides a host
of benefits fossil fuels cannot match. 

I believe that nuclear power will increasingly become the
electricity-generator of choice if we act wisely and decisively
today. 

To realize the full benefits of nuclear power, four basic
conditions must be met: 

First, nuclear power must be cost-competitive. Our Congress has
enacted legislation providing financing, tax, insurance, and
licensing incentives for utilities to construct new facilities
in the United States. Some 27 new reactors - the first since
1978 - are now in various stages of planning and design. 

Second, nuclear waste and spent fuel must be responsibly
managed. Our Department is pushing aggressively to open the
Yucca Mountain Repository by 2017. We also welcome progress of
other nations, such as Sweden and Finland, that are pursuing
geologic repositories. 

Third, nuclear power must be safe. The nuclear safety record
over the last twenty years has been outstanding. Simply put, it
must stay this way. 

And fourth, we must maintain the firmest safeguards over nuclear
materials. Expansion of nuclear power must not result in
additional states acquiring nuclear weapons. 

We can achieve these goals, but it will not be easy. 

To guide our efforts over the coming years, the United States
has proposed the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or "GNEP",
announced by President Bush in January. 

GNEP will complement the proposal announced earlier this year by
President Putin to establish international nuclear fuel service
centers, starting with one in Russia. 

Both of these plans, as well as ideas put forward by the IAEA,
share the same goal: to facilitate the global expansion of
nuclear power to meet growing energy demands, limit carbon
emissions, and reduce proliferation dangers. 

The avenue that the United States has proposed, in the form of
GNEP, is to develop and deploy advanced technologies for
recycling spent nuclear fuel that do not result in separated
plutonium. 

Our aim is to work with others in developing advanced,
proliferation resistant nuclear power reactors appropriate for
the power grids and needs of developing economies. 

Most critically, we hope to work with partners among both
nuclear supplier and recipient states to provide reliable fuel
services on a competitive basis worldwide, by assuring the
supply and return of spent fuel for recycling to nations that
agree not to pursue enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. 

Whatever the difference between the various proposals for the
future of nuclear power, they are minor compared to what they
have in common: 

We all agree that an international framework for an assured fuel
supply is critical to meeting the world's energy needs and
advancing our nonproliferation goals. That is why we welcome the
Director General's special event on "Assurances of Supply and
Nonproliferation" beginning tomorrow. 

Former United States President Ronald Reagan was fond of saying,
"There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care
who gets the credit." 

That is the approach we hope to take. 

The United States intends to work with the IAEA and all other
willing partners to create a framework for reliable fuel
guarantees at fair market rates and for the storage, transport,
and processing of spent fuel. 

We would also work with the IAEA to promote dialogue between
suppliers and recipients, foster acceptance of technological
advances, and help countries build the skills necessary to use
nuclear energy effectively. 

We seek mutually beneficial agreements with other like-minded
nations-both large and small-that share our vision of
responsible, expanded use of nuclear energy. 

During the Cold War, smaller nation's often found their energy
supply held hostage to the tactical maneuvering of larger
powers. 

Unfortunately, we continue to see some of this even today. 

An assured fuel supply - whether brokered by the IAEA or
supplier states - would considerably increase the energy
independence, and thus political and strategic independence, of
all nations, particularly smaller ones. 

An important first step is the proposed multilateral mechanism
for reliable supply introduced to the IAEA Board of Governors by
the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany,
and the Netherlands. 

We urge the quick adoption of this mechanism. 

Of course, there are still obstacles to the safe expansion of
nuclear power. The defiance and violations of Iran and North
Korea, and risks of catastrophic nuclear terror, must be
addressed. 

But despite these persistent challenges we are making good
progress on nonproliferation, such as the developments in
securing and returning Russian-origin HEU that I mentioned
earlier. 

Cooperation with Russia has improved the security of our nations
and the world. Yet we cannot stop there. All states must act
decisively and responsibly to prevent proliferation and thwart
terrorists bent on nuclear or radiological violence. 

In the fifty years since the IAEA was founded, the world has
seen great progress in the expansion of peaceful nuclear power,
while also keeping the nuclear peace. But in my view, this was
simply a prelude to the next fifty years, which I believe will
be the real "Nuclear Age." 

Through continued progress in science and technology, we can
further improve the safety and security of nuclear reactors,
while also solving the challenge of waste disposal. 

But only through a genuine global partnership ... one that
benefits the world's economies and the environment ... and one
that limits proliferation risks... will we realize the Atoms for
Peace vision that this organization was founded to pursue. 


Thank you. 

Source: U.S. Department of Energy 

judythpiazza@gmail.com
 Copyright � 2006, NewsBlaze, Daily News
 International Atomic Energy Agency - General Session'>   _   _ 

Copyright � 2004-2006 NewsBlaze LLC
*****************************************************************
 43 Guardian Unlimited: Bush Arrives at UN With Policy Problems
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Monday September 18, 2006 11:16 PM

AP Photo NYGH112 

By DEB RIECHMANN 

Associated Press Writer 

NEW YORK (AP) - President Bush faced disagreement Monday over
how to confront Iran's nuclear ambitions and skepticism about
his approach to Iraq and the Middle East as world leaders
gathered for the U.N. General Assembly meeting. 

Still, Bush was upbeat, focusing on his push for democratic
change and first lady Laura Bush's call for governments to
embrace literacy programs to improve lives. 

``We don't believe freedom belongs only to the United States of
America,'' Bush said at the White House Conference on Global
Literacy hosted by his wife. ``We believe that liberty is
universal in its applications. We also believe strongly that as
the world becomes more free, we'll see peace.'' 

Bush arrived in New York to attend the 61st session of the world
body with policy problems at home and abroad that have narrowed
his room to maneuver on the international stage. 

The U.S.-led war in Iraq is in its fourth year with no end to
bloody sectarian violence in sight. International support is
dwindling for imposing sanctions against Iran for defying U.N.
demands that it halt certain nuclear work. The repressive
Taliban regime toppled in Afghanistan is showing new signs of
resilience. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues and
Lebanon's government has, so far, proved too weak to rein in the
Islamic militant group Hezbollah. 

At home, Bush's approval rating, while experiencing a recent
uptick, stands at just 40 percent. Americans are growing weary
of the war. The White House is in a showdown with Senate
Republicans over the interrogation and trying of terror
suspects. And elections that will determine which party controls
Congress are seven weeks away. 

The president's so-called freedom agenda is the theme of his
speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. He will focus on
democratic reforms in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon and
elsewhere in the Middle East. He'll seek to quell skepticism
about U.S. motives in the Middle East by working to avoid the
impression that he wants to see a U.S.-style democracy imposed
on any nation. 

In his speech, Bush is expected to say that while military and
law enforcement actions are needed to curb terrorism, the
ultimate weapons are freedom and opportunity. He is to note two
type of states in the Middle East - those with an absence of
freedom and weak ones with fragile democracies, such as Iraq and
Lebanon. 

``I think the president sees this ... as a struggle between the
forces of extremism and the forces of moderation in the Middle
East,'' National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said,
previewing Bush's speech. ``And it's really a crucial time.'' 

The president also is expected to firmly denounce Iran and
Syria, two nations that Bush says are working to thwart freedom
in the region. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also
planned to be at the United Nations, but Bush had no intention
of talking with him. 

On Tuesday, Bush will meet with French President Jacques Chirac,
the only other member of the coalition of nations working with
the U.S. to try to stop Iran from doing work that could lead to
a nuclear weapon. 

Chirac, who is balking at the U.S. drive to sanction Iran for
defying U.N. sanctions, proposed a compromise Monday to
kickstart talks between Iran and the international community.
Chirac suggested that the threat of U.N. sanctions be suspended
if Tehran puts a freeze on its uranium enrichment work. 

``I am not pessimistic,'' Chirac said. ``I think that Iran is a
great nation, an old culture, an old civilization, and that we
can find solutions through dialogue.'' 

On Tuesday, Bush also meets with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani
and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Annan has been critical
of the U.S.-led war in Iraq; Bush, on the other hand, says
Americans are frustrated that the international body has been
slow to reform. 

Bush was attending a Republican National Committee reception
Monday evening at the Manhattan home of Henry Kravis. He spent
the day with leaders from Malaysia, a democracy with a moderate
Islamic government; El Salvador and Honduras, two Central
American nations that have moved from military dictatorships to
democracies; and the emerging African democracy of Tanzania. 

Bush, who in 2003 warned that the United Nations could fade into
history as an ``ineffective debating society,'' now finds the
United States relying more on the United Nations to help resolve
problem in Iran, Lebanon, North Korea, Sudan and other global
hotspots. On Wednesday, the president will meet with Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas. 

Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
*****************************************************************
 44 ThinkSpain: Further nuclear plant closure announced

Acccording to a report in yesterday's El Pais, the government is
set to announce the closure of the Garo�a nuclear power plant in
the province of Burgos. 

The article explains that by closing the plant that opened at
the start of the 70s, the government is fulfilling nuclear
pledges made in its election manifesto. 

To this end, the government wants to bring forward plans to
construct a nuclear waste storage facility, although it has not
been confirmed where this will be located. 

Other measures include the closure of all nuclear plants that
have been in operation for more than 40 years, and a reform of
the law that regulates the Nuclear Safety Commission. 

News of the decision about the Garo�a plant comes within months
of the closure of the Zorita plant in Guadalajara.   
  
Monday, September 18, 2006   

  Latest Castilla-Leon News   
   
  � 2003-2006 Think Web Content, S.L. - All rights reserved   
*****************************************************************
 45 islandpacket.com: Nuclear power viable alternative 

Hilton Head Island - Bluffton, SC 		

Monday, September 18, 2006                       

The Island Packet missed a splendid opportunity to help solve
the greenhouse gas problem in the Sept. 5 column by Ms. Kathleen
Parker. The column is correct in pointing out we need more
electric generating plants, and the new ones should produce
lowered or no greenhouse gases. The problem is the column did
not include nuclear power plants that produce electrical energy
and only spent fuel with no greenhouse emissions. 

Coal-fired electric generating plants produce carbon dioxide
from the burning of the carbon in coal. There is no alternative
to the carbon dioxide if coal, oil or natural gas is used. The
only way we now know to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions is
to extract it from the stack gasses to make "seltzer water" for
storage in old salt mines in Louisiana. The question is how long
will the seltzer water keep its fizz? 

Nuclear electrical power generating plants emit no carbon
dioxide or other gases. The only output is electric energy and
spent fuel. Yucca Mountain has been designated the storage
location for all of the spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
There is a problem of long time safety, similar to the seltzer
water problem from coal-fired plants. There is a good solution:
Build 105 nuclear power generating plants and continue storing
the spent fuel at the nuclear power plants instead of Yucca
Mountain. The spent fuel can be recycled into new fuel when the
political situations in Iran and North Korea are solved. 

Alexander D. Kline 

Bluffton 

� The Island Packet,
*****************************************************************
 46 Platts: NRC agrees to TVA request to cancel Bellefonte-1, -2 permits
 
Washington (Platts)--15Sep2006
 
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a Tennessee Valley
Authority request to terminate construction permits for
Bellefonte-1 and -2,
two unfinished reactors in Alabama, the agency said Friday. 

     TVA sought to withdraw the permits, which NRC granted in 
1974, so the site could be considered for possible other uses. In 
1988, TVA deferred completion of Bellefonte. Unit 1 is 88% 
complete and unit 2 is 58% complete.

     TVA is involved in industry consortium NuStart Energy's 
project to develop a combined construction permit-operating 
license application for two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at 
Bellefonte.

Copyright � 2006 - Platts, All Rights Reserved



 [The McGraw-Hill Companies]       
*****************************************************************
 47 Concord Monitor: No nukes? I'm not as sure as I was     

 Concord Monitor and New Hampshire Patriot P.O. Box 1177 Concord 
NH 03302 603-224-5301

By RALPH JIMENEZ 

Monitor staff
 			 		 
 September 17. 2006 10:00AM 

Thirty years ago, I was one of the many people who worked to 
prevent the construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant. A 
few months ago, I ran into a friend from those days and happened 
to mention that the threat posed by global warming had made me 
reconsider my opposition to nuclear power. He was horrified. But 
I am now on the fence. 

I didn't oppose the Seabrook plant because I believed a
catastrophic nuclear accident would claim thousands of lives or
render the Seacoast uninhabitable. Scientist friends who worked
with and lived with nuclear reactors convinced me that the odds
of that happening were extremely low. I objected to it because
nuclear power is cheap only because it is heavily subsidized by
taxpayers, Public Service Co. was in way over its head, and no
safe way existed to store radioactive waste for millennia. 

Most of those problems remain unsolved. If nuclear plants were
economically viable without subsidies, the private sector would
have built them. Nowhere in the world has it done so. Nor is
there yet a safe home for the nuclear waste that, in the 1980s,
the government wanted to bury beneath the granite in Hillsboro. 

I loathe the thought of a return to an emphasis on nuclear
energy for a new reason as well: An expansion of nuclear power
could lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and access to
radioactive material by terrorists. 

Yet I worry that our profound energy profligacy may have made
more nuclear power a necessity. 

The world's climate is changing fast. James Lovelock, a
scientist, first posed the Gaia theory, which says that the
Earth behaves like a living organism that struggles to regulate
itself. He refuses to call what is happening "global warming."
The term has a warm and 

fuzzy feel that leads to complacency. Lovelock calls what's
going on "global heating." If it continues, life on Earth will
change for the worse socially, politically, geographically and
environmentally and do so in a big way for thousands of years. 

If Lovelock were alone in his beliefs, I could write him off as
an alarmist. But he has plenty of company among scientists. In
addition, Jared Diamond, the environmentalist and author of
Collapse, Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth
Catalog,andPatrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, have
joined the parade. They have no love for nuclear power either,
but the threat it poses pales compared with that posed by rapid
climate change. 

It would be comforting to believe that conservation, along with
solar, wind and wave power and other alternative energy sources,
could produce enough electricity fast enough to slow global
warming. I'm not optimistic. The political will to test that
theory does not exist, and it won't be mustered quickly enough
on a national, let alone a global scale, to make a difference. 

Very few people care enough about melting Arctic ice and
drowning polar bears to trade in their gas guzzlers for
fuel-efficient cars. And hundreds of coal-burning plants, some
relatively clean, most comparatively filthy, are under
construction or on the planet's drawing boards. 

At some point, the climate will reach a point beyond which
reversal will take eons. Although I'm not going to start
carrying a sign that says, "It's later than you think," it might
be. 

Even a massive and rapid program to construct thousands of
nuclear power plants won't eliminate the problem. Fossil fuels
will continue to be burned for transportation, heat, electricity
and land-clearing for agriculture. But building nuclear plants
could buy a little time. 

The United States blew its opportunity to lead on the issue long
ago. Despite an energy crisis and an increasing reliance on
imported oil, it failed to institute serious fuel efficiency
standards and other conservation measures or finance a massive
campaign to find clean sources of renewable energy. 

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to see any more nukes built.
But I'm no longer ready to reject the idea out of hand. 		 		 		
   
Material posted to this site retains copyright. See the User's
Guide for details. Concord Monitor Online, P.O. Box 1177,
Concord NH 03302
 Phone: 603-224-5301 | E-mail: cmwebmaster@concordmonitor.com[
*****************************************************************
 48 NRC: Florida Power and Light Company; Notice of Consideration of 
 
                        FR Doc E6-15415 
[Federal Register: September 18, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 180)] 
[Notices] [Page 54691-54692] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr18se06-115]                         
 
Issuance of Amendment to Facility Operating License, Proposed No 
Significant Hazards Consideration Determination, and Opportunity 
for a Hearing The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the 
Commission) is considering issuance of an amendment to Facility 
Operating License No. DPR-31, issued to Florida Power and Light 
Company (the licensee), for operation of the Turkey Point Nuclear 
Plant, Unit 3, located in Miami- Dade County, Florida.
 
The proposed amendment would revise Technical Specifications 
(TSs) \3/4\.1.3.1, \3/4\.1.3.2, \3/4\.1.3.5, and \3/4\.1.3.6 to 
allow the use of an alternate method of determining rod position 
for the control rod M-6, which has an inoperable rod position 
indicator (RPI), until repairs can be conducted but no later than 
the next outage, which is scheduled for fall 2007.
 
The proposed amendment also includes administrative changes to 
remove the existing notes regarding the RPI of the Unit 4 Rod 
F-8. The RPI system for F-8 was repaired during Unit 4 refueling 
operations in 2005; thus, the associated TS revisions are no 
longer in effect.
 
The reason for the exigency is the unanticipated failure of the 
Turkey Point Unit 3 Analog RPI for control rod M-6 in Control Rod 
Bank C. Additionally, there is a concern that exercising the 
movable incore detectors every 8 hours (90 times per month) to 
comply with the compensatory actions required by the current 
Action Statement a.
 
of TS 3.1.3.2 will result in excessive wear. Before issuance of 
the proposed license amendment, the Commission will have made 
findings required by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended 
(the Act) and the Commission's regulations.
 
Pursuant to Title 10, Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR), 
Section 50.91(a)(6) for amendments to be granted under exigent 
circumstances, the NRC staff must determine that the amendment 
request involves no significant hazards consideration. Under the 
Commission's regulations in 10 CFR 50.92, this means that 
operation of the facility in accordance with the proposed 
amendment would not (1) involve a significant increase in the 
probability or consequences of an accident previously evaluated; 
or (2) create the possibility of a new or different kind of 
accident from any accident previously evaluated; or (3) involve a 
significant reduction in a margin of safety. As required by 10 
CFR 50.91(a), the licensee has provided its analysis of the issue 
of no significant hazards consideration, which is presented 
below: 1. Will operation of the facility in accordance with this 
proposed change involve a significant increase in the probability 
or consequences of an accident previously evaluated? No. The 
proposed change provides an alternative method for verifying rod 
position of one control rod. The proposed change meets the intent 
of the current specification in that it ensures verification of 
position of the control rod once every eight (8) hours. The 
proposed change provides only an alternative method of monitoring 
control rod position and does not change the assumption or 
results of any previously evaluated accident.
 
Therefore, operation of the facility in accordance with the 
proposed amendment would not involve a significant increase in 
the probability or consequences of an accident previously 
evaluated.
 
2. Will operation of the facility in accordance with this 
proposed change create the possibility of a new or different kind 
of accident from any accident previously evaluated? No. As 
described above, the proposed change provides only an alternative 
method of determining the position of one control rod. No new 
accident initiators are introduced by the proposed alternative 
manner of performing rod position verification. The proposed 
change does not affect the reactor protection system or the 
reactor control system. Hence, no new failure modes are created 
that would cause a new or different kind of accident from any 
accident previously evaluated.
 
Therefore, operation of the facility in accordance with the 
proposed amendments would not create the possibility of a new or 
different kind of accident from any accident previously 
evaluated.
 
3. Will operation of the facility in accordance with this 
proposed change involve a Significant reduction in a margin of 
safety? No. The bases of Specification 3.1.3.2 state that the 
operability of the rod position indicators is required to 
determine control rod positions and thereby ensure compliance 
with the control rod alignment and insertion limits. The proposed 
change does not alter the requirement to determine rod position 
but provides an alternative method for determining the position 
of the affected rod. As a result, the initial conditions of the 
accident analysis are preserved and the consequences of 
previously analyzed accidents are unaffected.
 
Therefore, operation of the facility in accordance with the 
proposed amendments would not involve a significant reduction in 
the margin of safety.
 
The NRC staff has reviewed the licensee's analysis and, based on 
this review, it appears that the three standards of 10 CFR 
50.92(c) are satisfied. Therefore, the NRC staff proposes to 
determine that the amendment request involves no significant 
hazards consideration.
 
The Commission is seeking public comments on this proposed 
determination. Any comments received within 14 days after the 
date of publication of this notice will be considered in making 
any final determination.
 
Normally, the Commission will not issue the amendment until the 
expiration of the 14-day notice period. However, should 
circumstances change during the notice period, such that failure 
to act in a timely way would result, for example, in derating or 
shutdown of the facility, the Commission may issue the license 
amendment before the expiration of the 14-day notice period, 
provided that its final determination is that the amendment 
involves no significant hazards consideration. The final 
determination will consider all public and State comments 
received. Should the Commission take this action, it will publish 
in the Federal Register a notice of issuance. The Commission 
expects that the need to take this action will occur very 
infrequently.
 
Written comments may be submitted by mail to the Chief, 
Rulemaking, Directives, and Editing Branch, Division of 
Administrative Services, Office of Administration, U.S. Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, and should cite 
the publication date and page number of this Federal Register 
notice. Written comments may also be delivered to Room 6D59, Two 
White Flint North, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland, 
from 7:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Federal workdays. 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 filing of requests for hearing and petitions for leave to 
intervene is discussed below. Within 60 days after the date of 
publication of this notice, the licensee may file a request for a 
hearing with respect to issuance of the amendment to the subject 
facility operating license and any person whose interest may be 
affected by this proceeding and who wishes to participate as a 
party in the proceeding
 
[[Page 54692]] must file a written request for a hearing and a 
petition for leave to intervene. Requests for a hearing and a 
petition for leave to intervene shall be filed in accordance with 
the Commission's ``Rules of Practice for Domestic Licensing 
Proceedings'' in 10 CFR Part 2.
 
Interested persons should consult a current copy of 10 CFR 2.309, 
which is available at the Commission's PDR, located at One White 
Flint North, Public File Area 01F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first 
floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly available records will be 
accessible from the Agencywide Documents Access and Management 
System's (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet 
at the NRC Web site, http://www.nrc.gov/ 
reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/. If a request for a hearing or 
petition for leave to intervene is filed by the above date, the 
Commission or a presiding officer designated by the Commission or 
by the Chief Administrative Judge of the Atomic Safety and 
Licensing Board Panel, will rule on the request and/or petition; 
and the Secretary or the Chief Administrative Judge of the Atomic 
Safety and Licensing Board will issue a notice of a hearing or an 
appropriate order.
 
As required by 10 CFR 2.309, a petition for leave to intervene 
shall set forth with particularity the interest of the petitioner 
in the proceeding, and how that interest may be affected by the 
results of the proceeding. The petition should specifically 
explain the reasons why intervention should be permitted with 
particular reference to the following general requirements: (1) 
The name, address and telephone number of the requestor or 
petitioner; (2) the nature of the requestor's/petitioner's right 
under the Act to be made a party to the proceeding; (3) the 
nature and extent of the requestor's/petitioner's property, 
financial, or other interest in the proceeding; and (4) the 
possible effect of any decision or order which may be entered in 
the proceeding on the requestor's/petitioner's interest. The 
petition must also identify the specific contentions which the 
petitioner/requestor seeks to have litigated at the proceeding.
 
Each contention must consist of a specific statement of the issue 
of law or fact to be raised or controverted. In addition, the 
petitioner/requestor shall provide a brief explanation of the 
bases for the contention and a concise statement of the alleged 
facts or expert opinion which support the contention and on which 
the petitioner intends to rely in proving the contention at the 
hearing. The petitioner/requestor must also provide references to 
those specific sources and documents of which the 
petitioner/requestor is aware and on which the 
petitioner/requestor intends to rely to establish those facts or 
expert opinion. The petitioner/requestor must provide sufficient 
information to show that a genuine dispute exists with the 
applicant on a material issue of law or fact. Contentions shall 
be limited to matters within the scope of the amendment under 
consideration.
 
The contention must be one which, if proven, would entitle the 
petitioner/ requestor to relief. A petitioner/requestor who fails 
to satisfy these requirements with respect to at least one 
contention will not be permitted to participate as a party.
 
Those permitted to intervene become parties to the proceeding, 
subject to any limitations in the order granting leave to 
intervene, and have the opportunity to participate fully in the 
conduct of the hearing.
 
If a hearing is requested, the Commission will make a final 
determination on the issue of no significant hazards 
consideration. The final determination will serve to decide when 
the hearing is held. If the final determination is that the 
amendment request involves no significant hazards consideration, 
the Commission may issue the amendment and make it immediately 
effective, notwithstanding the request for a hearing. Any hearing 
held would take place after issuance of the amendment. If the 
final determination is that the amendment request involves a 
significant hazards consideration, any hearing held would take 
place before the issuance of any amendment.
 
Nontimely requests and/or petitions and contentions will not be 
entertained absent a determination by the Commission or the 
presiding officer of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that 
the petition, request and/or the contentions should be granted 
based on a balancing of the factors specified in 10 CFR 
2.309(a)(1)(i)-(viii). A request for a hearing or a petition for 
leave to intervene must be filed by: (1) First class mail 
addressed to the Office of the Secretary of the Commission, U.S. 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, 
Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff; (2) courier, 
express mail, and expedited delivery services: Office of the 
Secretary, Sixteenth Floor, One White Flint North, 11555 
Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland, 20852, Attention: Rulemaking 
and Adjudications Staff; (3) e-mail addressed to the Office of 
the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
HEARINGDOCKET@NRC.GOV; or (4) facsimile transmission addressed to 
the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 
Washington, DC, Attention: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff at 
(301) 415-1101, verification number is (301) 415-1966. A copy of 
the request for hearing and petition for leave to intervene 
should also be sent to the Office of the General Counsel, U.S. 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, and it 
is requested that copies be transmitted either by means of 
facsimile transmission to 301-415-3725 or by e-mail to

 
OGCMailCenter@nrc.gov. A copy of the request for hearing and 
petition for leave to intervene should also be sent to M.S. Ross, 
Managing Attorney, Florida Power & Light Company, P.O. Box 14000, 
Juno Beach, FL 33408-0420, attorney for the licensee.
 
For further details with respect to this action, see the 
application for amendment dated September 8, 2006, which is 
available for public inspection at the Commission's Public 
Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, Public 
File Area O1 F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, 
Maryland. Publicly available records will be accessible 
electronically from the Agencywide Documents Access and 
Management System's (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the 
Internet at the NRC Web site 
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Persons who do not have 
access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the 
documents located in ADAMS, should contact the NRC PDR Reference 
staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415- 4737, or by e-mail 
to pdr@nrc.gov. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 11th day of 
September 2006.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Douglas V. Pickett, Project Manager, Plant Licensing Branch II-2, 
Division of Operating Reactor Licensing, Office of Nuclear 
Reactor Regulation.
 
[FR Doc. E6-15415 Filed 9-15-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 49 NRC: RIN 3150-AH66
 
                        FR Doc E6-15420 
[Federal Register: September 18, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 180)] 
[Rules and Regulations] [Page 54570-54572] From the Federal 
Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] 
[DOCID:fr18se06-3]                         
 
Charges for Reproducing Records AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission.
 
ACTION: Final rule.
 
SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is revising its 
charges for copying publicly available documents by the copy 
service at the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR). The revised 
charges for copying publicly available documents are listed in 
Sec.  9.35 Duplication fees. This document is necessary to inform 
the public of these changes to the NRC's regulations.
 
 
DATES: Effective Date: October 18, 2006.
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Anna McGowan, Chief, Technical 
Information Center Section, Office of Information Services, 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, 
301-415-7204, or 1- 800-397-4209 (toll-free).
 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The NRC is revising its charges for 
copying publicly available documents by the copy service at the 
NRC's PDR. The PDR retains a copy service to reproduce for a fee 
publicly available documents, regardless of format. Since the 
NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) 
was
 
[[Page 54571]] implemented in November 2000, making recently 
released documents available in full text online, there has been 
a significant reduction in the volume of documents being 
reproduced. The total volume of pages copied has decreased from 
over 1,600,000 in FY2000 to 529,600 in FY2003 and 321,000 pages 
in FY2004. Because the copy service contract is at no cost to the 
government, the contractor must provide all supplies and 
equipment. Due to this reduction in the total volume of pages 
copied, the copying fees charged by the NRC's contractor have 
changed.
 
The NRC believes that the revised prices, which were the result 
of a competitive solicitation process, are reasonable and in line 
with the prices charged by other Federal agencies.
 
The contractor is able to accept orders from the PDR reference 
staff via telephone (301-415-4737), fax (301-415-3548), standard 
mail, or e-mail (pdr@nrc.gov), and from requesters in the PDR 
Reading Room located at NRC Headquarters, One White Flint North, 
11555 Rockville Pike, Room O-1F23, Rockville, Maryland.
 
The ADAMS retrieval system provides text and image files of NRC's 
public documents. The documents may be accessed through the NRC's 
Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet 
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. If you do not have 
access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the 
documents located in ADAMS, contact the NRC's PDR reference staff 
at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. The 
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires each federal agency 
covered by the Act to promulgate regulations, pursuant to notice 
and receipt of public comment, specifying the schedule of fees 
applicable to processing requests for agency records. 5 U.S.C. 
552(a)(4)(A)(i). The Commission published a proposed rule 
containing a schedule of fees for public comment on August 6, 
1987 (52 FR 29196). The Commission received six comments on the 
proposed rule (52 FR 49351; December 31, 1987). All six comments 
were addressed in the final rule establishing the fee schedule 
(52 FR 49351-54; December 31, 1987).
 
The revisions to the copying charges contained in this amendment 
are not intended to affect any rights under the FOIA. As 
explained above, the revisions are necessary to update the 
Commission's procedures to reflect current copying charges, which 
have changed due to the reduction in the volume of documents 
being reproduced.
 
The NRC believes that the revised fees, which were the result of 
a competitive solicitation process, represent reasonable standard 
charges for document duplication.
 
Because this amendment deals solely with agency practice and 
procedure, the NRC has determined that the notice and comment 
provisions under the Administrative Procedure Act do not apply 
under 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(A). Environmental Impact: Categorical 
Exclusion The NRC has determined that this final rule is the type 
of action described in categorical exclusion 10 CFR 51.22(c)(1) 
and (2). Therefore, neither an environmental impact statement nor 
an environmental assessment has been prepared for this final 
rule.
 
Paperwork Reduction Act Statement This final rule does not 
contain a new or amended information collection requirement 
subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501 et 
seq.). Existing requirements were approved by the Office of 
Management and Budget, approval number 3150-0043.
 
Public Protection Notification If a means used to impose an 
information collection does not display a currently valid OMB 
control number, the NRC may not conduct or sponsor, and a person 
is not required to respond to, the information collection.
 
Regulatory Analysis A regulatory analysis has not been prepared 
for this final rule because the final rule makes only minor 
conforming changes to the regulations that reference Section 202 
of the Energy Reorganization Act and minor changes to other 
regulations.
 
Backfit Analysis The NRC has determined that these amendments do 
not involve any provisions which would impose backfits as defined 
in 10 CFR 50.109(a)(1); therefore a backfit analysis is not 
necessary. Congressional Review Act In accordance with the 
Congressional Review Act, the NRC has determined that this action 
is not a major rule and has verified this determination with the 
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of OMB.
 
List of Subjects in 10 CFR Part 9 Criminal penalties, Freedom of 
information, Privacy, Reporting and record keeping requirements, 
the Sunshine Act.
 
0 For the reasons set out in the preamble and under the authority 
of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, the Energy 
Reorganization Act of 1974, as amended, and 5 U.S.C. 552 and 553, 
the NRC is adopting the following amendments to 10 CFR part 9.
 
PART 9--PUBLIC RECORDS 0 1. The authority citation for part 9 
continues to read as follows: Authority: Sec. 161, 68 Stat. 948, 
as amended (42 U.S.C. 2201); sec. 201, 88 Stat. 1242, as amended 
(42 U.S.C. 5841); sec. 1704, 112 Stat. 2750 (44 U.S.C. 3504 
note). Subpart A also issued 5 U.S.C. 552; 31 U.S.C. 9701; Pub. 
L. 99- 570.
 
Subpart B is also issued under 5 U.S.C. 552a. Subpart C is also 
issued under 5 U.S.C. 552b. 0 2. Section 9.35 is amended by 
removing paragraph (a)(2), redesignating paragraphs (a)(3), 
(a)(4), and (a)(5), as (a)(2), (a)(3), and (a)(4), respectively, 
and revising paragraph (a)(1) to read as follows: Sec.  9.35  
Duplication fees. (a)(1) The charges by the duplicating service 
contractor for the duplication of records made available under 
Sec.  9.21 at the NRC Public Document Room (PDR), One White Flint 
North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Room O-1F23, Rockville, Maryland, 
may be found on the NRC's Web site at 
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/pdr/copy-service.html or by calling 
the PDR at 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, by e-mail

 
pdr@nrc.gov and are as follows: (i) Paper-to-paper reproduction 
is $0.30 per page for standard size (up to and including 11 x 14 
reduced). Pages 11 x 17 are $0.30 per page. Pages larger than 11 
x 17, including engineering drawings, are $1.50 per square foot. 
(ii) Pages larger than 11 x 17 are $1.50 per square foot.
 
(iii) Microfiche-to-paper reproduction is $0.30 per page. 
Aperture card blowback to paper is $3.00 per square foot. (iv) 
Microfiche card duplication is $5.00 per card; CD-ROM duplication 
is $10.00 each. (v) The charges for Electronic Full Text (EFT) 
(ADAMS documents) copying are as follows: (A) Electronic Full 
Text (EFT) copying of ADAMS documents to paper (applies to 
images, OCR TIFF, and PDF text) is $0.30 per page. (B) EFT 
copying of ADAMS documents to CD-ROM is $5.00 per CD plus $0.15 
per page. (C) CD-ROM-to-paper reproduction is $0.30 per page.
 
[[Page 54572]] (vi) Priority rates (rush processing) are as 
follows: (A) The priority rate offered for standard size 
paper-to-paper reproduction is $0.35, microfiche-to-paper 
reproduction is $0.40, EFT copying of ADAMS documents to paper 
and CD-ROM-to-paper production is $0.35 per page. (B) The 
priority rate for aperture cards is $3.50 per square foot. The 
priority rate for copying EFT to CD-ROM is $6.00 per CD-ROM plus 
$0.20 per page. (vii) Facsimile charges are $1.00 per page for 
local calls; $2.00 per page for U.S. long distance calls, and 
$6.00 per page for foreign long distance calls, plus the regular 
per page copying charge.
 
* * * * * Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 4th day of September 
2006.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Luis A. Reyes, Executive Director for Operations.
 
[FR Doc. E6-15420 Filed 9-15-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 50 NRC: Notice of Availability of Environmental Assessment and Finding
 
                        FR Doc E6-15421 
[Federal Register: September 18, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 180)] 
[Notices] [Page 54693-54694] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr18se06-116] [[Page 
54693]]
 
of No Significant Impact for License Amendment to Byproduct 
Materials License No. 06-07522-01, for Termination of the License 
and Unrestricted Release of United Technologies Corporation's 
Facility in East Hartford, CT AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission.
 
ACTION: Issuance of Environmental Assessment and Finding of No 
Significant Impact for License Amendment.
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Bryan A. Parker, Health 
Physicist, Commercial and R Branch, Division of Nuclear Materials 
Safety, Region I, 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, 
Pennsylvania 19406; telephone 404-562-4728; fax number 
610-337-5269; or by e-mail: .
 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: I. Introduction The U.S. Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission (NRC) is considering the issuance of a 
license amendment to Byproduct Materials License No. 06- 
07522-01. This license is held by United Technologies Corporation 
(the Licensee) for its United Technologies Research Center 
located at 411 Silver Lane, East Hartford, Connecticut (the 
Facility). Issuance of the amendment would authorize release of 
the Facility for unrestricted use and termination of the NRC 
license. The Licensee requested this action in a letter dated 
September 15, 2004. The license authorized use of licensed 
materials at other United Technologies Corporation facilities and 
temporary job sites anywhere in the United States where the NRC 
maintains jurisdiction; however, all use of unsealed radioactive 
materials under the license occurred at the East Hartford 
Facility. The NRC has prepared an Environmental Assessment (EA) 
in support of this proposed action in accordance with the 
requirements of Title 10, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Part 
51 (10 CFR Part 51). Based on the EA, the NRC has concluded that 
a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) is appropriate with 
respect to the proposed action. The amendment will be issued to 
the Licensee following the publication of this FONSI and EA in 
the Federal Register.
 
II. Environmental Assessment Identification of Proposed Action 
The proposed action would approve the Licensee's September 15, 
2004, license amendment request, resulting in release of the 
Facility for unrestricted use and termination of the NRC license. 
License No. 06-07522-01 was issued in 1961, pursuant to 10 CFR 
Part 30, and has been amended periodically since that time. This 
license authorized the Licensee to use unsealed byproduct 
material for purposes of conducting research and development 
activities on laboratory bench tops and in hoods. No outdoor 
areas were affected by the use of licensed materials.
 
The Facility was built over the period of the 1940s to 1980s in 
an industrial area. The affected areas consist of laboratory 
space in three buildings totaling approximately 13,500 square 
feet.
 
In June 2002, the Licensee ceased licensed activities and 
initiated a survey and decontamination of the Facility. Based on 
the Licensee's historical knowledge of the site and the 
conditions of the Facility, the Licensee determined that only 
routine decontamination activities, in accordance with its 
NRC-approved operating radiation safety procedures, were 
required. The Licensee was not required to submit a 
decommissioning plan to the NRC because worker cleanup activities 
and procedures are consistent with those approved for routine 
operations. The Licensee conducted surveys of the Facility and 
provided information to the NRC to demonstrate that it meets the 
criteria in Subpart E of 10 CFR Part 20 for unrestricted release 
and license termination.
 
Need for the Proposed Action The Licensee has ceased conducting 
licensed activities at the Facility, and seeks the unrestricted 
use of its Facility and the termination of the NRC materials 
license. Termination of its license would end the Licensee's 
obligation to pay annual license fees to the NRC for this 
license.
 
Environmental Impacts of the Proposed Action The historical 
review of licensed activities conducted at the Facility shows 
that such activities involved use of a number of radionuclides 
with half-lives greater than 120 days. Prior to performing the 
final status survey, the Licensee conducted decontamination 
activities, as necessary, in the areas of the Facility affected 
by these radionuclides.
 
The Licensee conducted a final status survey in July 2002, with 
some followup surveys in March 2003. These surveys covered 
several rooms and areas within Buildings D, G, and H of the 
Facility.
 
The final status survey report was attached to the Licensee's 
amendment request dated September 15, 2004. The Licensee elected 
to demonstrate compliance with the radiological criteria for 
unrestricted release as specified in 10 CFR 20.1402 by using the 
screening approach described in NUREG-1757, ``Consolidated NMSS 
Decommissioning Guidance,'' Volume 2. The Licensee used the 
radionuclide-specific derived concentration guideline levels 
(DCGLS), developed there by the NRC, which comply with the dose 
criterion in 10 CFR 20.1402. These DCGLs define the maximum 
amount of residual radioactivity on building surfaces, equipment, 
and materials, and in soils, that will satisfy the NRC 
requirements in Subpart E of 10 CFR Part 20 for unrestricted 
release. The Licensee's final status survey results were below 
these DCGLs and are in compliance with the As Low As Reasonably 
Achievable (ALARA) requirement of 10 CFR 20.1402. The NRC thus 
finds that the Licensee's final status survey results are 
acceptable.
 
Based on its review, the staff has determined that the affected 
environment and any environmental impacts associated with the 
proposed action are bounded by the impacts evaluated by the 
``Generic Environmental Impact Statement in Support of Rulemaking 
on Radiological Criteria for License Termination of NRC-Licensed 
Nuclear Facilities'' (NUREG-1496) Volumes 1-3 (ML042310492, 
ML042320379, and ML042330385). The staff finds there were no 
significant environmental impacts from the use of radioactive 
material at the Facility. The NRC staff reviewed the docket file 
records and the final status survey report to identify any 
non-radiological hazards that may have impacted the environment 
surrounding the Facility. No such hazards or impacts to the 
environment were identified. The NRC has identified no other 
radiological or non- radiological activities in the area that 
could result in cumulative environmental impacts.
 
The NRC staff finds that the proposed release of the Facility for 
unrestricted use and the termination of the NRC materials license 
is in compliance with 10 CFR 20.1402. Based on its review, the 
staff considered the impact of the residual radioactivity at the 
Facility and concluded that the proposed action will not have a 
significant effect on the quality of the human environment.
 
 
[[Page 54694]] Environmental Impacts of the Alternatives to the 
Proposed Action Due to the largely administrative nature of the 
proposed action, its environmental impacts are small. Therefore, 
the only alternative the staff considered is the no-action 
alternative, under which the staff would leave things as they are 
by simply denying the amendment request. This no-action 
alternative is not feasible because it conflicts with 10 CFR 
30.36(d), requiring that decommissioning of byproduct material 
facilities be completed and approved by the NRC after licensed 
activities cease. The NRC's analysis of the Licensee's final 
status survey data confirmed that the Facility meets the 
requirements of 10 CFR 20.1402 for unrestricted release and 
license termination. Additionally, denying the amendment request 
would result in no change in current environmental impacts. The 
environmental impacts of the proposed action and the no-action 
alternative are therefore similar, and the no-action alternative 
is accordingly not further considered.
 
Conclusion The NRC staff has concluded that the proposed action 
is consistent with the NRC's unrestricted release criteria 
specified in 10 CFR 20.1402. Because the proposed action will not 
significantly impact the quality of the human environment, the 
NRC staff concludes that the proposed action is the preferred 
alternative.
 
Agencies and Persons Consulted NRC provided a draft of this 
Environmental Assessment to the State of Connecticut's Department 
of Environmental Protection for review on June 12, 2006. On 
August 18, 2006, the State of Connecticut's Department of 
Environmental Protection responded by electronic mail. The State 
agreed with the conclusions of the EA, and otherwise had no 
comments.
 
The NRC staff has determined that the proposed action is of a 
procedural nature, and will not affect listed species or critical 
habitat. Therefore, no further consultation is required under 
Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act. The NRC staff has also 
determined that the proposed action is not the type of activity 
that has the potential to cause effects on historic properties. 
Therefore, no further consultation is required under Section 106 
of the National Historic Preservation Act.
 
III. Finding of No Significant Impact The NRC staff has prepared 
this EA in support of the proposed action. On the basis of this 
EA, the NRC finds that there are no significant environmental 
impacts from the proposed action, and that preparation of an 
environmental impact statement is not warranted. Accordingly, the 
NRC has determined that a Finding of No Significant Impact is 
appropriate.
 
IV. Further Information Documents related to this action, 
including the application for license amendment and supporting 
documentation, are available electronically at the NRC's 
Electronic Reading Room at .
 
From this site, you can access the NRC's Agencywide Document 
Access and Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and 
image files of NRC's public documents. The documents related to 
this action are listed below, along with their ADAMS accession 
numbers (as applicable): 1. NRC License No. 06-07522-01 
inspection and licensing records.
 
2. License Termination Request with attached NRC Form 314 dated 
September 15, 2004 and Final Radiological Status Report for 
United Technologies Corporation, 411 Silver Lane, East Hartford, 
Connecticut, dated June 18, 2004 [ADAMS Accession No. 
ML042670211]. 3. Letter of Additional Information to Support 
Final Status Survey, dated November 3, 2005 [ADAMS Accession No. 
ML053250520]. 4. Letter of Additional Information to Support 
Final Status Survey, dated December 6, 2005 [ADAMS Accession No. 
ML053560247]. 5. NUREG-1757, ``Consolidated NMSS Decommissioning 
Guidance;'' 6. Title 10 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 20, 
Subpart E, ``Radiological Criteria for License Termination;'' 7. 
Title 10, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 51, ``Environmental 
Protection Regulations for Domestic Licensing and Related 
Regulatory Functions;'' 8. NUREG-1496, ``Generic Environmental 
Impact Statement in Support of Rulemaking on Radiological 
Criteria for License Termination of NRC- Licensed Nuclear 
Facilities.'' 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 . These documents may also be 
viewed electronically on the public computers located at the 
NRC's PDR, O 1 F21, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, 
Rockville, MD 20852. The PDR reproduction contractor will copy 
documents for a fee.
 
Dated at King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, this 6th day of September 
2006.
 
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
James P. Dwyer, Chief, Commercial R Branch, Division of Nuclear 
Materials Safety, Region I.
 
[FR Doc. E6-15421 Filed 9-15-06; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 51 The Australian: New power plants 'unnecessary' 

This story is from our news.com.aunetwork Source: AAP 
New power plants 'unnecessary'

 September 18, 2006 

AUSTRALIA could cut greenhouse emissions by 30 per cent by 2030 
if it delayed building new power plants, an environmental group 
said today.

The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWFN) released a report today
which says energy saving technologies would reduce the need for
new power plants and bring about massive greenhouse
improvements. 

"The report shows we can postpone the need for new power
stations by up to a decade using existing energy efficiency
measures," WWFN energy policy officer James Duggie said. 

"Climate change experts around the world agree that greenhouse
gas emissions must be reduced by 60 per cent by 2050 in order to
avoid the most damaging effects of climate change." 

Prime Minister John Howard raised the prospect of nuclear
fuelled power stations when he was in the US in May, because
they emit far less greenhouse gas than coal powered stations. 

But Mr Duggie says it's possible to postpone any form of new
power plant for another decade. 

"The sooner we take the cost-effective energy efficient measures
outlined in the report ... the more confident we can be that the
process of reducing emissions is as smooth as possible and
future shocks to the economy can be avoided," Mr Duggie said. 

[&raquo;] Print Friendly Version [&raquo;] Email this story 

Privacy Terms � The Australian 
*****************************************************************
 52 Daily News: Joint statement in support of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes

eluniversal.com
 
Caracas, Monday September 18 , 2006
    
Venezuelan President Hugo Ch�vez and his Iranian counterpart
Mahmud Ahmadinejad issued a joint declaration whereby they
advocated the role of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) "in defense of fair oil prices." Again, they
vowed to work for a multi-polar world and democratization of
international organizations, such as the United Nations (UN). 

The presidents reasserted "the right of all the peoples in the
globe to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and
peoples' development." 

The rulers agreed on the need to maximize the Non-Aligned
Movement, or NAM; as a forum for cooperation and in furtherance
of southern countries in the international arena, "to express
with a single voice and have a higher profile." 

Ch�vez and Ahmadinejad "refused strenuously the unilateral
stance and aggression as a means for dispute settlement in the
international system." 

Copyright @ Diario El Universal C.A. 2005    
*****************************************************************
 53 Raw Story: Nearly 30 new US nuclear plants planned, official says
 
Deutsche Presse Agentur

 Published: Monday September 18, 2006 

Washington- US utilities plan to build nearly 30 new nuclear
power plants over the next decade, and the first firm
announcement is likely by early 2008, a US official said Monday.
President George W Bush is pushing nuclear power as a major
alternative to US dependence on imported oil, part of a global
rebound for the technology since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. 

In addition to new plants, half of existing US electricity
reactors are expected to have their licences renewed for 20
years, US Senator Pete Domenici told a hearing in Washington. 

"US utilities are developing the detailed plans to build a new
generation of nuclear power plants," US Assistant Secretary of
Energy Dennis Spurgeon told the Senate hearing, which is
considering funding for US government civilian nuclear energy
programmes. 

"Almost 30 new nuclear power plants are in the planning process
for construction beginning over the next decade," Spurgeon said. 

Overall, 130 nuclear power plants are under construction or
planned around the world, including in China, India and Russia,
Spurgeon said. 

Experts told the hearing that the US should move ahead with
plans for a national nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in the
western state of Nevada to replace storage sites for spent
nuclear fuel currently scattered around the country. 

The underground storage site, under discussion since the late
1970s, is slated to open in 2017 at the earliest. 

Bush has sought to speed progress on Yucca Mountain. He also has
authorized research into new nuclear reprocessing technologies. 

The United States abandoned reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the
1970s because it produces material that could be used in nuclear
weapons. But scientists believe new technologies could allow
reprocessing of nuclear waste without producing plutonium. 

Spurgeon said the US Energy Department has put out feelers to US
and foreign companies that offer nuclear fuel recycling
technology and was "very encouraged" by the initial response.
 
� 2006 DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agenteur
*****************************************************************
 54 UCS: New Report: Long Shutdowns Prove Nuclear Power More Dangerous
and Expensive than Necessary

September 18, 2006

Neglect of Safety Costs Ratepayers, Stockholders $82 Billion 

WASHINGTON, DC, Sept. 18A new report by the Union of Concerned
Scientists (UCS) shows that severe problems have caused U.S.
nuclear reactors to shut down 51 times for a year or longer.
More than 70 percent of those outages were caused by
programmatic breakdowns that led to cumulative, systemic
degradation of reactor components. Basically, the owner's
failure to find and fix problems caused safety margins to
deteriorate to levels so low that reactor operations could not
continue. The study finds that the year-plus outages resulting
from this poor management and ineffective regulatory oversight
have cost ratepayers and stockholders nearly $82 billion in lost
revenue. 

"Nuclear power is clearly not safe enough when so many reactors
have to be shut down for a year or more," said David Lochbaum,
author of the new report and director of the Nuclear Safety
Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission tolerated unsafe conditions until they
became too serious to ignore. Regulators must address the safety
problems in the current generation of nuclear plants before
allowing utilities to build new ones." 

The UCS report, Walking a Nuclear Tightrope: Unlearned Lessons
of Year-plus Reactor Outages, is the first study to analyze
every U.S. nuclear power outage lasting a year or longer.
According to the study, 36 of the 51 year-plus outages were
caused by "excessive tolerance" by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) of plant owners who did not identify problems
early enough or address them effectively. Twenty-two percent
were necessitated by the replacement and repair of large
components, while eight percent were the result of events that
caused extensive damage to the plants. Year-plus outages account
for nearly 135 reactor years (or 3.4 reactor lifetimes) of
downtime at nuclear power plants. 

"A one-in-three chance of incurring a year-plus outage was not
supposed to be part of the bargain when these plants were built
and licensed," said Lochbaum. "Some proponents of nuclear power
have justified all these safety problems by arguing that no U.S.
nuclear plant has experienced a meltdown since 1979. That's as
fallacious as arguing that the levees protecting New Orleans
were fully adequate prior to Hurricane Katrina by pointing to
the absence of similar disasters between 1980 and 2004." 

Federal regulations require nuclear plant owners to have quality
assurance (QA) programs that find and fix problems promptly. But
the recurring theme of year-plus outages has been inadequate QA
programs. An accompanying theme has been the NRC either being
unaware of the QA program deficiencies or knowing but not
requiring improvements. 

"In the weeks and months leading up to the start of a year-plus
outage, the people living nearby face an unnecessarily high risk
of an accident that could release radiation," said Lochbaum.
"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must undergo fundamental
change or it will only be a matter of time before additional
reactors will suffer through year-plus outagesor worse, a
nuclear accident." 

The report includes six recommendations to protect public
safety. Among them, UCS calls on the NRC to follow federal
regulations to identify and fix problems in a timely manner. The
NRC must also alert plant owners about non-hardware problems and
expand its oversight efforts when programmatic breakdowns are
identified. 

  Reporters: Join our notification listto receive breaking news
from UCS.

For general media inquiries, please call our press office at
202-331-5420.

Press Contacts:

 ERIC YOUNG
Press Secretary 202-331-5439 eyoung@ucsusa.org 

EMILY ROBINSON Press Secretary 202-331-5427 erobinson@ucsusa.org 

AARON HUERTAS
Assistant Press Secretary 202-331-5458 ahuertas@ucsusa.org

RICH HAYES Media Director 202-331-5437
rhayes@ucsusa.org

� Union of Concerned Scientists 
*****************************************************************
 55 AngolaPress: Multisectoral Delegation At Atomic Energy Assembly

Luanda - Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - 4:41:12 AM    

Luanda, 09/18 - A multisectoral delegation led by the minister
of Science and Technology, Joao Baptista Ngandajina, will
participate at the General Assembly of the Agency of Atomic
Energy (AIEA) on September 22, 2006, in Vienna (Austria), Angop
learned.

 The delegation comprises officers of the Ministries of Science
and Technology, Foreign Affairs, the National Institutes of
Veterinary Researching, Fishing and the National Centre of
Oncology.

 The annual meeting will discuss the contributions for the
Technical Fund for Co-operation, Agency`s salary budget and its
budget, nuclear security, protection against terrorism, measures
to reinforce co-operation, AIEA`s budget and programme.

 AIEA was set up in 1957 with the participation of the former
Soviet Union, with the goal of backing scientific studies and
promotion of peaceful use of nuclear energy and discouraging its
use for international cooperation.   

  � 1996-2003 Angop. All rights reserved.   

*****************************************************************
 56 UPI: U.S. companies push Indian nuke deal

United Press International - Security &Terrorism - 

9/18/2006 11:53:00 AM -0400

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Many major U.S. businesses are
lobbying the United States Senate to approve the Bush
administration's nuclear pact with India. 

The companies are arguing that approving the nuclear deal would
lead to major business opportunities for both U.S. and Indian
companies. 

Dawn reported on Sept. 16 that the United States-India Business
Council and the Coalition for Partnership are sending a joint
letter to all 100 United States senators, lobbying them not to
forgo the opportunity to "strengthen the growing partnership
between the world's oldest and the world's largest democracies." 

Private concerns see an economic bonanza in the nuclear deal,
which could also help open the door for U.S. access to some of
India's $15 billion upgrading of its armed forces. The Russian
Federation is currently the largest supplier of Indian arms
imports. 

The Senate letter contains the signatures of five leading
business associations, 28 companies, nine Indian-American
organizations and 22 foreign-policy experts. 

The lobbyists have also lined up former government officials to
support their effort. Former Defense secretary William S. Cohen
and three former ambassadors to India -- Frank G. Wisner, Thomas
R. Pickering and Richard Celeste -- have endorsed the letter.

� Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
*****************************************************************
 57 News & Star: THORP SHUT UNTIL 2007

Published on 18/09/2006

By Andrea Thompson
 
SELLAFIELD’S troubled Thorp reprocessing plant will NOT re-open 
this year because there is still too much to do following a 
massive radioactive leak which closed it 17 months ago.
 
The news is a further blow for the £1.8bn flagship plant, which 
was closed when 83,000 litres of highly radioactive liquor leaked 
from a fractured pipe last April. It went undetected for nine 
months.
 
Site operator British Nuclear Group, which has been fined 
£2million for failing to meet high quality safety and 
environmental requirements – and still faces an unlimited crown 
court fine for the incident – had hoped to restart Thorp this 
summer.
 
But after failing to meet that target, it said an autumn restart 
was more likely. 

BNG has now announced that it will not be in a position to 
re-open Thorp until next year.
 
Workers were told the news on Friday.
 
A BNG spokeswoman said: “British Nuclear Group is carrying out
final preparations to get Thorp operational again. 

“The plant can only re-start once all of the necessary
permissions have been obtained from the Nuclear Installations
Inspectorate (NII) and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
(NDA).
 
“While all necessary improvements to the plant will be
completed by the end of September, it is now clear that the
process of closing out the NII recommendations and related work
will take some time. 

“BNG and the NII are seeking to complete this work as quickly
as possible but it is likely that this will run until the end of
December, leading to a restart in early 2007.” 

Since the leak from a fractured pipe within the Feed
Clarification Cell, BNG has been giving Thorp staff training in
“behaviour and technical matters” and a new CCTV camera has
been installed. 

Shadow trade secretary David Willets said at the time the leak
was discovered, on April 19, 2005, that it was a failure
“worthy of Homer Simpson” – the inept nuclear plant worker
from TV cartoon series The Simpsons. 

BNG has admitted three charges brought by the Health and Safety
Executive and faces an unlimited fine.
 
The spokeswoman added: “We deeply regret the incident, which
clearly should not have happened and are determined to do
everything necessary to ensure that nothing similar can ever
happen again.
 
“The safety of our employees, local communities and the
environment remains our number one priority. At no time did this
incident pose any actual or potential threat from a health,
safety or environment perspective.”
 
The NDA said today that despite the further delay, it still
considers Thorp viable for a re-start.
 
A spokesman said: “We always place safety as the absolute
priority. We understand that the NII must have the time it needs
to complete its assessments and determine whether the plant is
safe to re-start.
 
“Any final decision to restart Thorp will be made by the NDA.
The plant’s date to re-start has always been tentative given
that this was a major incident.”
 
AThompson@cngroup.co.uk
*****************************************************************
 58 Day cares' evacuation plans still unsettled
 
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:34:17 -0700

DAUPHIN COUNTY

Thursday, September 14, 2006

BY GARRY LENTON
Of The Patriot-News

Dauphin County's commissioners want assurance that day care 
centers within 10 miles of Three Mile Island can be evacuated if 
there's trouble at the nuclear power plant.

But they don't want the county to take on additional 
responsibility for providing transportation for children inday 
care, because they don't have the buses.

"Every transportation resource [the county has] is committed 
right now," Commissioner Nick DiFrancesco said.

Providing transportation should be the responsibility of the day 
care owners, he said.

The comment raises more questions about how children and others 
in institutional settings near the nuclear plant would be 
evacuated in a nuclear emergency such as the one that happened 
March 28, 1979.

"I have huge concerns," said Terry Casey, executive director of 
the Pennsylvania Day Care Association. "I pray we never have to 
face this, because clearly we are not ready as a community or as 
an industry."

Federal nuclear plant licensing regulations require the county to 
have a radiological emergency plan for how it would respond to a 
serious incident at TMI. The plan must address how people who 
cannot leave on their own, such as nursing home residents, 
prisoners and school children, would be taken to safety.

Dauphin County recently made minor changes to its plan, and when 
the changes came before the board for approval yesterday, 
Commissioner George Hartwick asked if day care centers were 
included.

The plan lists the phone numbers of licensed day care providers 
but does not address how they would be evacuated, said Stephen 
Shaver, director of the county Emergency Management Agency.

Questions about evacuation of day care centers and nursery 
schools have been debated in the midstate for nearly four years.

Three Mile Island Alert, the Harrisburg-based nuclear watchdog 
group, has filed complaints with the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Pennsylvania 
Emergency Management Agency and Gov. Ed Rendell's office alleging 
that the day cares are not protected.

Epstein argues that NRC licensing requirements make local 
officials responsible for providing transportation and a 
relocation sites for the children. State and federal officials 
argue that the responsibility lies with the day care operators.

DiFrancesco agreed with the latter position, at least on 
practical grounds.

But the Pennsylvania Day Care Association's Casey said officials 
are failing to acknow ledge that few day care centers can provide 
their own transportation. Few have adequate vehicles, including 
large centers with up to 60 infants who are dropped off and 
picked up by their parents or guardians, she said.

"We do not have the resources to do that," she said. "So, is the 
county telling us 'tough luck'? I can't accept that," she said.

Emergency Management Agency Director Shaver acknowledged that the 
county's transportation resources are stretched. "We and other 
counties could call upon the same resources in an emergency and 
it is something that is being looked at," he said.

Epstein said DiFrancesco's comments confirm the results of a 
survey of day care centers conducted last year by the EFMR 
Monitoring Group.

The survey of 73 state-licensed centers in Dauphin, Cumberland, 
Lancaster and York counties, found that 87 percent did not know 
who would provide transportation for their children.

EFMR Monitoring Group is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group run by 
Epstein that monitors radiation levels around TMI.

"The NRC and FEMA are content that there are reasonable 
assurances that transportation will magically appear during a 
disaster," Epstein said. "We're asking for proof ... of 
assistance for our most vulnerable populations. It's clear there 
is a gap between what they need and what they have."

Epstein said the region needs to convene a summit to resolve the 
problem.

Casey agreed that a meeting between industry and government 
agencies might help resolve the problem.

"There's still time to reach out and come to a plan," she said.

GARRY LENTON: 255-8264 or glenton@patriot-news.com

�2006 The Patriot-News � 2006 PennLive.com All Rights Reserved.  
*****************************************************************
 59 USNews.com: Inside Washington: Some in House suspicious of
Senate nuclear waste bill

Some in House suspicious of Senate nuclear waste bill
 
By Bret Schulte 

Posted 9/14/06 

Legislators in both chambers are saying they want to give
nuclear power a new boost in the American energy market, but
rival legislation on what to do with rapidly accruing nuclear
waste has left some members of the House questioning the
intentions of their counterparts in the Senate. 

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are
expressing opposition to a Senate bill that would open interim
storage sites for nuclear waste across the country while
Nevada's Yucca Mountain repository continues to be derailed by
poor planning, cost overruns, and fierce opposition by Nevadans,
including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Many House leaders
suspect the Senate proposal is meant to further undercut the
project. 

"We should not allow pursuit of interim storage to block Yucca
Mountain," said Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat and
ranking member of the subcommittee on energy and air quality, in
a hearing yesterday. House members say that in order for nuclear
power to expand, a permanent home for nuclear waste is
necessary. Rep. Gene Green, a Texas Democrat, tells U.S. News
that the Senate bill, which would devote money and agency
oversight to interim storage sites, is a masked attempt to kill
the Yucca Mountain project for good. 

"If you can't kill it straight up, you can kill it by taking
away resources," Green said. "I know if I opposed Yucca
Mountain, I would be very creative, and this looks like a very
creative way to delay and divert resources from Yucca Mountain." 
  
*****************************************************************
 60 Philadelphia Inquirer: N.J. considers a radioactive waste dump

09/18/2006 | 

 By Sam Wood Inquirer Staff Writer 

Over the last half-century, a South Jersey specialty metal
manufacturer has dumped radioactive waste into a pile outside
its Gloucester County factory. 

The pile now stands four stories high and sprawls over six
acres. 

By the end of this year, Shieldalloy Metallurgical Corp. says it
will move to Brazil for cheaper raw materials and labor. 

It wants to leave its pile behind in tiny Newfield Borough, a
town of 1,600 on the Cumberland County border best known for its
Matchbox Toy Museum. Moving the radioactive pile, Shieldalloy
says, would cost so much it would bankrupt the company and leave
taxpayers stuck with the cleanup bill. 

The federal government is considering Shieldalloy's plan, which
would create New Jersey's first radioactive dump. 

"That's nothing more than sweeping it under the rug," Newfield
Mayor Rick Westergaard said. "I want to see it gone." 

Newfield and neighboring Vineland and Franklin Township have
passed resolutions formally protesting Shieldalloy's proposal.
Earlier this month, the Gloucester County freeholders also
formally objected to the plan. 

"It's not acceptable for Shieldalloy to walk away and leave
anything behind," said Freeholder Director Stephen M. Sweeney,
who also is a state senator. "We're going to work with the town
to try to force the company to do what's responsible and clean
it up." 

Shieldalloy has produced metal alloys and other specialty
materials used for steel, aluminum and titanium on a 67-acre
site - 10 percent of the borough's land - since 1953. An
elementary school is located several blocks away. 

The company is a division of Metallurg Holdings Inc., which is
held by an affiliate of venture capital firm Safeguard
Scientific Inc., of Wayne. 

Shieldalloy's primary product is ferroniobium, an additive that
makes steel strong enough for jet turbines. The metal also is
used in mobile phones and other electronic equipment. 

The process of smelting ore to refine the ferroniobium also
creates radioactive slag, a harder-than-granite waste that
ranges from the size of a gumball to a small car. Shieldalloy
has dumped all the slag into a pile, which soars 35 feet and
consumes six acres of the company's back lot. 

Shieldalloy proposes to leave the slag where it is, cover it
with soil and grass, build a fence around it, and set aside $5
million to manage it until the year 3010. 

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates
radioactive waste, is reviewing Shieldalloy's proposal. The
commission may schedule public hearings and order an
environmental impact statement before approving or rejecting the
plan. 

At issue is whether the 50,000-ton slag pile is safe. 

"The material is basically innocuous," said David R. Smith, who
has served as the environmental manager of the Shieldalloy site
for 18 years. "Is it dangerous? Only if you throw it hard enough
at somebody it is." 

The NRC agrees. 

"There is no danger to public health and safety from the site,"
asserted NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci. 

The state Department of Environmental Protection disagrees. 

"No amount of radiation is completely safe, and you want to
limit your exposure from any source," said Jill Lipoti, the DEP
director of environmental safety and health. "I would say
Shieldalloy might be disingenuous by saying that it's
innocuous." 

The ore that Shieldalloy uses, called polychlore, naturally
contains the radioactive elements uranium and thorium. After
smelting - a process in which the ore is melted - the slag
remains radioactive. 

The slag pile sits on unprotected sandy soil. The groundwater in
the area, according to the DEP, is contaminated with radium,
which causes cancer and other disorders. 

For reasons unrelated to the radioactive waste, the Shieldalloy
property was classified in 1983 as a federal Superfund toxic
site. 

Groundwater and soil were found to be contaminated with
hexavalent chromium, a highly toxic, water-soluble metal that
was the object of Erin Brockovich's environmental crusade later
told in the movie. 

The groundwater cleanup - which has been under way for more than
two decades - will take an additional seven to eight years,
according to Shieldalloy's environmental engineer. 

Shieldalloy spokesman Michael Turner said the company had three
options for the slag pile: fencing and capping it, hauling it to
a dump for low-level radioactive waste in Utah, or abandoning
it. 

The Utah cleanup would cost $58 million, which Turner said
"would put significant financial strain on the company's ability
to continue without filing for bankruptcy." 

Bankruptcy would leave the state and federal governments holding
the slag and paying for its cleanup. 

"To even threaten bankruptcy is a form of toxic blackmail," said
Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. "It's not
even a thinly veiled threat. They're saying if you force us to
clean up, even though they're responsible, the taxpayers will
get stuck with the bill." 

Contact staff writer Sam Wood at 856-779-3838 or
samwood@phillynews.com. 
*****************************************************************
 61 BBC: Boss warns of new Dounreay issues
 
Last Updated: Monday, 18 September 2006
 
[Beach testing for radioactive particles ] 
                                
Radioactive particles have been traced in the sea and the shore                                                           

Dounreay's boss has warned that new problems at the site may be 
uncovered as workers enter parts of the complex where no-one has 
set foot for 50 years. 

The former centre of nuclear fast reactor research in Caithness 
is being decommissioned at a cost of �2.9bn. 

Norman Harrison, acting chief operating officer, said the 
problems will stem from old practices at the site. 

He delivered his warning during a speech at the annual 
prize-giving of the North Highland College in Thurso. 

Mr Harrison praised the role played by workers in the clean-up of 
Dounreay. 

Metallic fragments 

However, he said the legacies left behind have given staff 
difficult problems to deal with and was in doubt more will be 
uncovered as they go further into the site. 

The college's new role in training engineers and scientists will 
help in tackling these issues, said Mr Harrison. 

Dounreay has been dogged by the discoveries of radioactive 
particles on the shore near the site. 

The metallic fragments of reprocessed reactor fuel are linked to 
a rogue historic discharge from the plant.                                                       



*****************************************************************
 62 Nevada Appeal: Yucca repository: dead or alive?

Opinion
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
September 18, 2006     				 				
                                                                                 
By Guy W. Farmer

 Depending upon whom you listen to, the proposed Yucca Mountain
nuclear waste repository is still viable, or it�s on life
support. Personally, I side with Senate Minority Leader Harry
Reid (D-Nev.) and Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn on this one: The
highly toxic federal project is more dead than alive and no
amount of lobbying by the powerful Nuclear Energy Institute is
likely to revive it. 

The nuclear energy lobby, which throws money around like it�s
going out of style, fired the latest shot in the ongoing Yucca
Mountain War last week with an op-ed piece by Institute lobbyist
Marvin Fertel, who assured us that �the repository will open and
it will be safe.� Oh sure, and the moon is made of Swiss cheese.

�There is no question that the Yucca Mountain project has
experienced some challenges,� (like falsified e-mails between
scientists), Fertel acknowledged; �however, work to facilitate
its opening is ongoing.� But just barely. I�m betting the
repository, originally scheduled to open by 2010, will never
open and that the U.S. Energy Department (DOE) will be forced to
find some other way to dispose of nearly 80,000 tons of deadly
nuclear waste, or to seriously consider other alternatives such
as reprocessing. 

Fertel used the insulting bribery argument that Nevadans should
embrace the Yucca Mountain project (although 70 percent of us
oppose it) because we�ll be showered with federal largesse. �By
opposing the repository at every turn, the state�s chief
executive (Guinn) is risking enormous economic opportunity for
the state ...� Fertel wrote. His argument reminds me of how
ex-President Clinton�s apologists tried to excuse his serial
philandering by claiming that his female accusers surfaced only
after someone dragged $100 bills through trailer parks. Please!
We�re not that stupid, or venal. 

In August, Gov. Guinn wrote that �Yucca Mountain finally, and
deservedly, appears to be headed toward the trash bin of
history� and called the fatally flawed project �the latest in a
long series of DOE boondoggles ... based on bad science, bad law
and bad public policy.� The governor noted that Congress is
finally shifting its focus from Yucca Mountain �to the concept
of interim storage, either at existing reactor locations (there
are none in Nevada) or at regional �consolidation and
preparation� facilities.� And Senate Energy Committee Chairman
Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) said the project should be put on the
�back burner.� I agree but it shouldn�t be put on the back
burner; it should be killed once and for all, and be given a
decent burial (no pun intended).

As Gov. Guinn observed in his recent op-ed piece, �Nevadans can
be justifiably proud of how the state has pulled together to
bring this dangerous, ill-advised and unnecessary project to a
standstill ... It has been Nevada�s strong and unyielding
opposition over the past two decades that has prevented an
out-of-control federal bureaucracy from making a mistake of
unprecedented proportions.� You tell �em, Governor!

Nevada politicians of every political persuasion � Democrats and
Republicans, liberals and conservatives alike � joined together
to fight the nuclear waste project shortly after Congress passed
the so-called �Screw Nevada Bill� in 1987, designating Yucca
Mountain as the only site in the nation to be studied as the
future toxic dump site. �Thanks but no thanks,� Nevada�s elected
representatives replied. �Put it somewhere else, preferably in a
state that generates nuclear waste.� 

Fortunately, Nevada has much more political clout in Washington
today than it did 20 years ago and the election of Gov. Guinn
1998 and the elevation of Sen. Reid to Minority Leader in 2004
energized the bipartisan opposition to Yucca Mountain. By now,
I�m confident that the Yucca Mountain dump will never open as
long as Harry Reid and John Ensign remain in the Senate. I�d
also note that GOP gubernatorial candidate, Congressman Jim
Gibbons, strongly opposes the project but I don�t know where
Democratic candidate Dina Titus stands on this important issue.

President Bush betrayed Nevada in 2002 when he sided with his
nuclear energy industry friends (and campaign contributors) by
approving the Yucca Mountain dump despite promising two years
earlier that he would base his decision on �sound science.� But
Yucca Mountain has never been about sound science; instead, it�s
always been about politics and keeping big campaign contributors
happy. So highly paid nuclear energy lobbyist Marvin Fertel is
blowing smoke when he tells us how safe the toxic waste dump
will be. Remember that he lives all the way across the country
in Washington, D.C. 

In 1987, politicians could get away with supporting the troubled
project on grounds that �Nevada is a desert and no one lives
there.� They can�t use that line these days, however, because
Nevada is now a key swing state in national elections and nearby
Las Vegas is the fastest-growing city in the nation. Meanwhile,
today�s politicians have learned that Las Vegas casino moguls
also contribute to political campaigns.

Late last year, the new director of DOE�s Yucca Mountain
project, Edward �Ward� Sproat, said the country should move
toward the recycling of nuclear waste and away from the burial
of such waste. His statement came after Congress slashed the
project�s annual appropriation from $577 million to $450
million, a 22 percent budget cut (Bush had requested $650
million). So it�s apparent that Yucca Mountain is on life
support no matter what kind of propaganda the powerful nuclear
energy lobby tries to sell us here in the Silver State. We
aren�t buying, and never will. 

� Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S.
diplomat, resides in Carson City.

All contents � Copyright 2006 nevadaappeal.com
Nevada Appeal - 580 Mallory Way - Carson City, NV 89701                         
*****************************************************************
 63 reviewjournal.com: No Yucca nightmares for ex-energy chief
 
Sep. 18, 2006

New Mexico governor among first Democratic candidates visiting 
since Nevada's caucus change     

By MOLLY BALL REVIEW-JOURNAL
	
Nevada gubernatorial candidate Dina Titus, left, stands with New 
Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson during a Democratic fundraiser last 
week at Dona Maria Tamales Restaurant on Las Vegas Boulevard. 
Photo by Ralph Fountain. 

Jimmy Carter waves to a crowd last week at Freedom Park, where 
the former president filled in at a campaign rally for his ailing 
son, Jack, who is running for the U.S. Senate. Photo by Craig L. 
Moran. 

If there's any two-word phrase that makes many Nevadans shudder, 
it's "energy secretary." 

That's why some were wondering whether New Mexico Gov. Bill
Richardson would have a hard time when he came to stump in the
Silver State last week. Richardson, a Democrat considered a
possible presidential contender, was energy secretary under
President Clinton for two years. 

With Nevada the new site of an early 2008 Democratic caucus, 
potential candidates, who've already started to stream through 
town, know they'll be asked about their stance on the proposed 
nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, administered by the 
federal Energy Department. 

The Yucca project didn't start under Richardson, but it didn't 
stop, either. But Richardson in an interview said he acted to 
stall the project, which he said he has always opposed. 

"I'm the one who made sure it didn't happen during my tenure," he 
said. "I basically stated that, because of the water issue and 
other deficiencies, it shouldn't happen. My record is good on 
that. I ordered an investigation into the effort to speed it up." 

Richardson added jocularly, "No, you can get me on a lot of
things, but you can't get me on that." Asked what he could be
gotten on, he replied, "Nothing." 

CARTER FILLS IN FOR CARTER 

Also headlining in Las Vegas last week was former President
Jimmy Carter, who flew in to attend to his ailing son, U.S.
Senate challenger Jack Carter. The former president filled in
for the Democratic candidate at some campaign events. 

In the years since he left office, Jimmy Carter has become a
renowned international diplomat, earning the Nobel Peace Prize
in 2002. 

In an interview last week, the peacemaker was asked what he
would do about two of the stickiest international situations,
the war in Iraq and Israel's recent altercation with Hezbollah
in Lebanon. 

Carter said he would "get the government in Iraq to ask us to
leave in a certain period of time, I would say maximum within a
year, and have them handle their own problem. Then I would
convene a global conference of people possibly crucial to the
future of Iraq -- the Arab states, the (European Union), Japan
and others -- and say, 'What can we do to give these people what
they haven't had in five years?' 

"They still don't have electricity. They still don't have
sewage. They still don't have running water. The schools are not
functioning. The whole place is a disaster. A lot of the
violence in Iraq, I believe, is because of the animosity created
by American troops being there." 

Carter also was strongly critical of American policy on Israel
and again recommended convening a summit. 

"The main thing we need to do is get the United States
reinvolved in the process," he said. "This is the first time
since Israel became a nation that our country is not avidly
trying to bring Israel and her neighbors together in a peace
effort. There is no effort at all now being made, and there has
not been a single international conference between Israel and
her neighbors in the last five years with the United States
acting as a broker." 

Asked whether that approach constituted negotiating with
terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, the Palestinian
group that won a majority in recent elections, Carter said, "You
have to negotiate with the people that are causing the problem.
As a matter of fact, yes, we need to negotiate with the
Palestinian Authority and the PLO (Palestinian Liberation
Organization). 

"The PLO is not controlled by Hamas or anyone else," he added.
"The United States has still not been willing to let the PLO
under Mahmoud Abbas negotiate with Israel for five years. You
can't just keep subjecting an entire people, the Palestinians,
and not permitting them to have an honest broker or opportunity
for peace and justice and expect the violence to decrease." 

President Carter will be back next week to campaign for his son. 

REID LEADS IN NEWS RELEASES 

For the first seven months of this year, Senate Democratic
Leader Harry Reid of Nevada cranked out 488 news releases, more
than any other senator, according to National Journal. 

Reid's closest competitor was Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who
issued 435 news releases on her Web site, including 28 in one
day. 

Clinton and three other senators who cracked the top 10 are
running for re-election this year. 

Figures were not available on Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., but he
was not listed among the top 10, which included five Democrats
and five Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist,
R-Tenn., ranked seventh with 308. 

Overall, the Senate produced 13,069 news releases, or an average
of 131 per senator. 

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said it makes sense Reid would send
more news releases than other senators because of his leadership
position. 

"Senator Reid will continue to send news releases as he deems
necessary to communicate with Nevada residents and promote
Democratic priorities in the Senate," Summers said. 

Summers is one of Reid's nine communications staffers. 

TREASURER HOPEFUL HAS IDEAS 

Kate Marshall, Democratic nominee for state treasurer, has
unveiled a seven-point plan she said would improve the
treasurer's office. 

Marshall said she would implement electronic money transfers,
replacing the state's current method of transporting cash by
armored car; try to negotiate lower service fees with credit
card companies, which she said cost the state $3 million a year
for the Department of Motor Vehicles alone; use online auctions
to sell off the state's unclaimed property; improve the
Unclaimed Properties Division's Web site, which she said is
cumbersome; review all the office's contracts and agreements to
see what could be done more cost effectively; and use unclaimed
assets to issue bonds that would be used for academic research
grants. 

Marshall also said she would work with the Legislature to ensure
the Millennium Scholarship is protected. 

The last item is particularly politicized. 

Marshall said she believes applicants for the scholarship should
provide Social Security numbers, viewed as a way to keep it out
of the hands of illegal immigrants. Current Treasurer Brian
Krolicki, a Republican, proposed such a change unsuccessfully. 

Marshall also said she would consider raising the required
grade-point average or instituting a means test to further limit
recipients of the scholarship, which many believe is causing
high-school grade inflation that lets less-qualified students
get a free ride. 

ADULT FILM STAR PARTIES ON 

Remember Melody Damayo? Also known as Mimi Miyagi, the former
adult film star ran for Nevada governor as a Republican. 

Damayo managed to parlay her dubious celebrity into plenty of
headlines but just 1 percent of the vote, a total of 1,651 votes
statewide. 

Damayo said she was a Republican because she believed in, among
other things, "freedom to party." So perhaps it shouldn't be too
surprising that she's switched to a party that's perhaps the
most pro-freedom. 

According to Clark County election records, Damayo is now a
registered Libertarian. 

Stephens Washington Bureau writer Tony Batt contributed to this
report. Contact political reporter Molly Ball at 387-2919 or
MBall@reviewjournal.com. 	   

Copyright � Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2006
*****************************************************************
 64 Bellona: British-funded nuke storage container built at Sevmash 

Bellona, 15/09-2006 

Sevemash plant in Russia’s Northwest city of Severodvinsk has
produced its first TUK-120 spent nuclear fuel (SNF) storage
container in a project financed by the British government, the
Barents Observer reported. Sevmash is located in the Arkhangelsk
Region. 


The containers were ordered by the Murmansk Shipping Company,
Sevmash press chief Mikhail Starozhilov said, adding the testing
of the container is already complete. 

The TUK-20 containers are made for storage of SNF, which can not
be converted by available reprocessing technologies. The Lotta
nuclear service ship, docked outside Murmansk, contains a large
amount of the dangerous spent fuel. 

Reloading the waste from the Lotta will require 50 of the
special metallic-ore-concrete TUK-120 containers, the Barents
Observer said. 

Experts say the containers can solve the problem of storage of
the unreclaimable nuclear fuel for the next 50 years.

 Print Notify a friend Copyright © Bellona -- Reprint and
copying is recommended if source is stated ﻿ Support Bellona's
work for the environment - Phone +47 23 23 46 00 | E-MAIL:
info@bellona.no 
*****************************************************************
 65 reviewjournal.com: Yucca project auditor ignored
 
Sep. 18, 2006

2002 complaints went nowhere     

By KEITH ROGERS<br>REVIEW-JOURNAL
	
In 2003, Kristi Hodges, an auditor for a Yucca Mountain Project 
contractor, displays copies of the complaint binders she sent to 
the Department of Energy inspector general's office in 2002. 

Review-Journal file photo

Three years before e-mails revealed that federal geologists
discussed falsifying documents at the Yucca Mountain nuclear
waste project, a worker alerted the Department of Energy
inspector general's office to what she described as similar
quality assurance problems stemming from corruption in
management. 

The bulk of the complaint was sent in early 2002 in five Federal
Express mailings from Kristi Hodges, a lead auditor for the
project's quality assurance contractor. She lodged her initial
complaint to the inspector general's hot line in writing on Oct.
15, 2001. 

She wrote hundreds of pages in those six mailings about
certification documents that were falsified and suppressed and
about supervisors who were wrongfully fired or transferred. But
the IG's office never publicly acknowledged the matter until the
agency responded last month to a Freedom of Information Act
appeal by the Review-Journal. 

An official said the inspector general's office decided not to
investigate the complaint and instead referred it to the agency
that was the subject of the complaint. 

After reviewing the 146-page response, Hodges said the handling
of her complaint is akin to "sending the fox to investigate the
hen house." 

"They could never investigate themselves. They quashed it all,"
she said in one of several recent interviews. 

Hodges said she was assured by an IG representative in February
2002 that the information in her complaint would not be shared
with the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management because
some of its managers were subject to the complaint and would
have a conflict of interest if they reviewed it. 

The waste management office oversees the Yucca Mountain Project. 

Hodges said that promise was broken and she blamed the IG's
office for making her a "target for retribution." 

"What I was identifying was absolute corruption in the
(employee) concerns program, the management of the project and
its continual attacks and retaliation on the quality assurance
organization that was identifying deficiencies one right after
another," Hodges said Thursday. 

"I wanted somebody who was independent to look at this, and they
sent it back to somebody who knew darn well where it came from,"
she said. 

A comparison of the inspector general's Freedom of Information
Act response with documents previously obtained by the
Review-Journal from other sources shows much of the information
from Hodges' six-binder complaint was out of sequence and left
ambiguous. 

The heavily redacted documents came four years after the
Review-Journal's initial request was filed in June 2002. The
documents were delivered Aug. 17, about a week after Hodges gave
notice she was leaving the project, and about the same time the
assistant inspector general who answered the appeal, Alfred K.
Walter, retired. 

"It may be totally unrelated but it's curious," Hodges said. 

Hodges said she was infuriated by the IG's handling of her
complaint. A spokeswoman for the IG's headquarters office,
Marilyn Richardson, acknowledged that a "two or three page"
summary of the complaint was referred to the Office of Civilian
Radioactive Waste Management, which took no action on it. 

The summary didn't disclose Hodges' identity, Richardson said.
But Hodges said her anonymity was compromised. 

"Maybe they didn't put my name in writing, but you know doggone
well they talked to each other. The question is, 'Why would they
send it back there?' It's word games." 

Richardson said the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste
Management never sent a response back to the inspector general's
office regarding Hodges' complaint. 

She said the lag in providing Hodges' documents that were sought
four years ago under the Review-Journal's Freedom of Information
Act request was a matter of priorities and heavy workload in the
inspector general's office. 

"At the time ... we had a substantial caseload. Basically we
prioritized it and put it in the queue to process it because we
had a significant backlog of cases pending," Richardson said
Thursday. 

In 2003, an inspector general spokeswoman had assured the
Review-Journal that the request would be processed "as
expeditiously as possible." 

Richardson's comments came two days after the director of the
Yucca Mountain Project, Ward Sproat, said the effort to complete
a licensing application for entombing the nation's highly
radioactive waste and used fuel in the ridge, 100 miles
northwest of Las Vegas, "suffers from a quality problem in terms
of the culture and people and how they view their
responsibilities for quality." 

The effort was rocked last year with the disclosure that
hydrologists working for the U.S. Geological Survey swapped
e-mails suggesting that quality assurance documentation had been
falsified. The documentation is needed to support scientific
studies on climate and water infiltration to pass a licensing
review. 

Sproat told staff members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
which will review the license application, that the quality
mind-set problem "is broader than the narrow pocket of the
USGS," a point similar to those made four years ago in Hodges'
complaint that was never investigated. 

In her unredacted complaint, Hodges told the inspector general
that two former quality assurance leaders who uncovered problems
in the program, Jim Mattimoe and Robert Clark, had been removed. 

They had revealed deficiencies in computer modeling, software
and data that afflicted the project as scientists raced to meet
deadlines. In the rush, some of the so-called "technical
products" -- the models and analyses on which the scientists'
conclusions hinge -- were flawed because they lacked defensible
evidence that data were collected by qualified personnel using
appropriate equipment. 

Clark, the project's former director of quality assurance, urged
that corrective measures be taken, but he was transferred and
told to "take one for the project." 

Mattimoe, formerly the manager of a contractor staff that
audited the project's science and engineering, was fired in 2001
after he made allegations of wrongdoing and corruption to Lake
Barrett. At the time, Barrett was in charge of the Office of
Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. 

"Since the removal of the QA Leaders (Mattimoe and Clark) there
has been an ongoing battle to reduce the independent oversight,"
Hodges wrote in her fourth mailing. 

In the same mailing, she noted that "Mr. Mattimoe has been
terminated without cause, after presenting evidence of
wrongdoing" by a program manager. 

Mattimoe later filed a wrongful termination complaint against
Navarro Research and Engineering that resulted in Labor
Department officials ordering Navarro to reinstate him, expunge
his personnel file and reimburse him for his costs. 

Hodges said steps could have been taken years ago to resolve the
Yucca Mountain Project's quality issues, and millions of dollars
in settlement costs and attorney fees could have been avoided,
had the inspector general pursued her complaint. 

The Department of Energy's office of inspector general needs to
be investigated, she said. "They showed their lack of
independence. ... This (the inspector general process) doesn't
work. This is the problem with government. There is no
independence." 	   

Copyright � Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2006
*****************************************************************
 66 University Journal: BLM denies nuke haul

SAMANTHA ARNOLD

 Issue date: 9/18/06 Section: News                              

Bureau of Land Management has denied Private Fuel Storage the
right to transport high-level nuclear waste to Skull Valley,
according to a Sept. 7 press release.

Because the Skull Valley site is so close to the Utah Test and
Training Range, the transportation and storage of nuclear waste
"would have put Utahns on a collision course with a
catastrophe," said Sen. Orrin Hatch in the press release. 

The entire Utah delegation has been working toward the
restriction of nuclear waste being brought into Utah for years,
according to the press release. 

The press release also reported that in an effort led by
Congressman Rob Bishop in December 2005, the Utah congressional
delegation passed legislation that blocked the attempts to build
a rail spur on federal lands near the Goshute reservation. This
helped prevent the nuclear waste storage facility from being
built. 

In 2002, Sen. Bob Bennett received a letter from Energy
Secretary Spence Abraham saying that federal funds would not be
used to facilitate PFS and that PFS was not part of the national
spent nuclear fuel storage strategy, according to the press
release. 

That year, Bennett and Hatch worked to get a commitment from
nearly every CEO in the nuclear industry to not use the PFS site
past the licensing phase as long as Yucca Mountain was still
being used, according to the press release.

Mike Empey, Southern Utah field representative for Congressman
Jim Matheson, who has been involved with the attempts to
prohibit nuclear waste transportation in Utah since his election
in 2000, said the congressman feels relieved at the news that
federal officials refused to sign off on the PFS storage plan. 

"He is very, very hopeful that this is the end of it," he said.

Hatch's press release also reported that although there is still
talk that the PFS plan may have a comeback, Hatch said that
speculation was "hogwash." 

Now that there is no lease for PFS to store the fuel or no
permission to transport it, "PFS is left without a leg to stand
on," he said in his press release. 			 			 		 		 			 			 				
					 				 				Continued... 				 			 		 		 		 Page 1 of 2 next >
		 		 		 		 		
� 2006 University Journal 

*****************************************************************
 67 Hattiesburg American: Decision on salt dome site delayed

www.hattiesburgamerican.com - Hattiesburg, Miss.
 
 By Nikki Davis Maute 

RICHTON - A decision by the Department of Energy on which salt 
dome site will be used to expand the nation's Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve has been delayed.

The decision on which of the five sites under consideration would 
be selected was due in early August but has been pushed back to 
the end of September, said David Johnson, DOE project manager for 
the Richton salt dome site.

The site that is selected will be developed to hold 160 million
barrels of petroleum. 

"We are still hoping, but we've not heard anything," Mayor Jimmy
White said.

White said area residents overwhelmingly support using the salt
dome site, located off Mississippi 42 just outside the city's
limits, to hold the nation's petroleum reserves.

Under the nation's Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Department of
Energy was to select a site from among the five in the running
by August.

The other sites being considered are: Bruinsburg salt dome near
the Mississippi River just south of Vicksburg, Chacahoula and
Clovelly in Lafourche Parish, La., and Stratton Ridge in
Brazoria County, Texas.

"We had not finished the work at the Bruinsburg site, which
caused the delay," Johnson said.

The Richton dome, a 1,500-acre site, was studied in the late
1970s as a possible storage site for nuclear waste and again in
the early 1990s as a petroleum storage site.

Emergency crude oil is stored in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
in salt caverns. The caverns offer the best security and are the
most affordable means of storage, costing up to 10 times less
than above-ground tanks and 20 times less than hard rock mines,
Johnson said. 

Originally published September 18, 2006 Print this article    
*****************************************************************
 68 People's Daily: IAEA to monitor S. Korea's spent fuel rod storage 
with unmanned cameras
 
UPDATED: 17:45, September 18, 2006   

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has started to use
unmanned cameras to monitor South Korea's spent reactor fuel rod
storage process instead of sending observers, South Korean
government said Monday.

 According to the Ministry of Science and Technology of South 
Korea, the cameras began to operate on Sept. 1 over the Wolseong 
Nuclear Power Plant in North Gyeongsang Province. The Wolseong 
plant operates four pressurized heavy water reactors. 

"The move could save money for the IAEA since it will no longer
have to send an observer here," a ministry official said.

 The change is also convenient for the Korea Hydro &Nuclear
Power Co., which is responsible for running all South Korean
nuclear power plants, the official said.

 The spent fuel rods can be used to make atomic weapons. 

In the past, the IAEA regularly sent an observer to South Korea
for up to a year to monitor the storage process.

Source: Xinhua

  Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved   
*****************************************************************
 69 Tri-City Herald: DOE reconsiders 300 Area demolition 

Published Monday, September 18th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

Facing sticker shock over the cost of replacing buildings used
by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at Hanford, the
Department of Energy is reconsidering its plan to tear down all
the Hanford buildings just north of Richland. 

No decision has been made. 

Starting in World War II the 300 Area was used to fabricate
uranium to be irradiated in Hanford reactors and to conduct
research. Almost 1,000 national laboratory workers continue to
use laboratory space and offices in 18 buildings in the area
just north of Richland. 

As part of plans to clean up the nuclear reservation -- where
plutonium was made for the nation's nuclear weapons program --
DOE must clean up the 300 Area and a plume of uranium in the
ground water beneath it. 

Its plan has been to tear down all of about 200 buildings, then
excavate contaminated soil under and around them. Workers also
would dig up sewer and water pipes that cross-contaminated areas
or have contributed to the spread of contamination. 

Lab workers are supposed to be out of the buildings by the end
of 2010, so all the buildings could come down by the end of 2012
under an aggressive cleanup schedule for Hanford's Columbia
River Corridor. 

Three privately funded replacement buildings are planned, plus a
325,000-square-foot Physical Sciences Facility to be paid for by
DOE and the Department of Homeland Security. 

By the end of 2005, DOE had approved proceeding with the design
of the Physical Sciences Facility and set a target cost of $224
million with a completion date of February 2011. 

But as architects began to work on the project, it became clear
the budget was unrealistic to replace capabilities lost in the
300 Area, and the building could not be completed by early 2011. 

As an alternative, DOE is looking at retaining as many as four
buildings in the 300 Area to supplement what could be
scaled-back plans for the Physical Sciences Facility. 

"To keep some 300 Area buildings may give the lab the most
flexibility," said Megan Barnett, a DOE spokeswoman in
Washington. "The important point is to stay inside the cost
range and schedule." 

DOE is in the early stages of evaluating whether retaining some
300 Area buildings could be an option, she said. 

The agency is determining whether keeping the buildings would be
safe and whether cleanup momentum in the 300 Area can be
maintained, she said. 

In the past, DOE has said all buildings must come down as part
of cleanup because of contamination beneath the site and the
contamination in or near utility piping. 

Now DOE has told the city of Richland that it's studying
retaining the 331 Building, a three-story reinforced concrete
structure built in the 1970s with 115,127 square feet of space.
It includes laboratories on the first and third floors with a
mechanical service floor on the second. A three-story office
wing on the west end of the building has 60 offices and a
two-story office addition was added in 1996. 

It also has a river water feed for an aquatics lab and an
emergency generator. 

The second building it's considering keeping is the Radiological
Calibrations Laboratory, with 37,025 square feet for offices and
laboratories. 

The third building contains many hot cells and glove boxes for
working with radiological materials. 

It's also considering keeping a shop building constructed in
1980 with 22,048 square feet of space for fabrication shops and
offices. It has four ancillary structures for materials storage
and a paint shop. 

For the buildings to continue to be used, replacement utilities
would be needed. 

If all or some of those buildings could be retained, a smaller
Physical Sciences building would be built as a radiological
facility immediately north of Horn Rapids Road. Some of the $224
million budgeted for the project could be used for upgrades to
the 300 Area buildings. 

The Environmental Protection Agency, the regulator for much of
the cleanup of the 300 Area, says the plan to retain a few 300
Area buildings could work. 

"I think the cleanup schedule can proceed mostly on track if
they aggressively pursue relocation of the utilities so that we
can clean up the rest of the 300 Area," said Nick Ceto, EPA
Hanford project manager. 

EPA understands the budgetary issues and the importance of
laboratory facilities to DOE, the national lab and the
community, he said. 

The Port of Benton and the city of Richland had earlier asked
that some of the 300 Area buildings be retained to increase
interest among businesses in locating there once cleanup is
finished. New utilities could make the area more attractive as
an industrial area, said Pam Larsen, Richland's Hanford analyst
and the executive director of the Hanford Communities. 

Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., who has pushed for federal funding
to make sure PNNL has the facilities it needs to continue its
national security and other science research, "is actively
engaged with the project," said his spokeswoman, Jessica
Gleason. 

"Congressman Hastings is committed to ensuring a long-term home
is secured for the 1,000 scientists working in the 300 Area,"
she said. 

Responsibility for paying for the Physical Sciences Facility is
divided among the Office of Homeland Security, with 25 percent
of the cost, and two DOE offices, the Office of Science, with 44
percent of the cost, and the National Nuclear Security
Administration, with 25 percent of the cost. 

However, the administration's proposed budget included no money
for the project from the Office of Science for fiscal year 2007
and $7.9 million from the National Nuclear Security
Administration. Hastings succeeded in getting $17 million added
to the budget request in the House version of the Hanford
budget. 

� 2006 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 70 Hanford News: CH2M Hill Hanford receives awards
 
This story was published Saturday, September 16th, 2006 

By the Herald staff 

CH2M Hill Hanford Group has received three awards for safety
achievements at the Department of Energy Volunteer Protection
Program, or VPP, annual conference. 

Greggory Doss, the cochairman of the Waste Feed Operations VPP
team and a Hanford Atomic Metal Trade Council safety
representative, was given the Contractor Champion's Award for
his leadership in the VPP safety program. 

Owen Berglund, of the CH2M Hill Radiological Control department,
received the Community Outreach Award for his work on the
Hanford Health and Safety Expo. 

The Analytical Technical Services 222-S Laboratory received a
Superior Star Award. 

� 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.


*****************************************************************
 71 Hanford News: Hanford tank, vit manager sent to D.C.
 
This story was published Saturday, September 16th, 2006 

By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer 

The Department of Energy manager for Hanford's tank farms and
vitrification plant is moving to another newly created DOE job
in Washington, D.C. 

Roy Schepens will stay on as interim manager of the Office of
River Protection until a replacement is found. He has been
responsible for work at the $12.2 billion vitrification plant
under construction and the tank farms where 53 million gallons
of radioactive waste awaits processing for permanent disposal. 

Under his management, troubles at the vitrification plant have
continued. But he also had major successes, including completing
the difficult work to remove millions of gallons of radioactive
liquid from leak-prone, aging underground tanks. 

Schepens lasted longer in the position, which oversees what DOE
calls its most complex environmental cleanup project in the
nation, than his two predecessors. 

In 1999, the Office of River Protection was created and Hanford
work divided between that office and the Richland Operations
Office. 

Dick French, the first manager, lasted a little more than a
year. He was replaced after he and DOE headquarters officials
argued over how the vitrification plant contract should be set
up. 

Former plant contractor BNFL had submitted a $15.2 billion
estimate for the work, relying on expensive private financing,
up from an original estimate of $6.9 billion, and had been
removed from the job. After French was released, DOE essentially
adopted his plan for structuring the contract proposal for
BNFL's replacement. 

French's replacement, Harry Boston, lasted until June 2002. DOE
announced that he would be moving to a position at DOE
headquarters, but Boston took another job instead. 

Before the job change, Boston said that what was then estimated
to be a $4 billion plant no longer relying on private financing
would cost an extra $500 million. Former Energy Secretary Jessie
Roberson said that figure was unacceptable. 

Schepens was brought in to manage the project in June 2002. 

The cost continued to increase until it hit $12.2 billion this
month. Part of the increase was for an expansion of the plant
design so it could treat more waste. 

But there also were many problems that added to its cost. They
included technical problems in the first-of-a-kind plant to turn
millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste into a stable
glass form for permanent disposal. A new earthquake study showed
the design standard might be inadequate in a severe earthquake. 

The cost of steel rose significantly from the time the cost was
estimated, and contractor Bechtel National was not able to find
suppliers experienced in meeting strict nuclear safety
standards, since no major nuclear plant had been built in the
U.S. for decades. Management of the project by DOE and Bechtel
National also was criticized by Congress, which reduced funding,
further driving up the plant's final cost. 

Among Schepens' major successes as manager was getting all the
liquid radioactive waste out of Hanford's 149 oldest, leak-prone
underground tanks. While solids still remain in most of the
tanks, pumping out the liquid waste has dramatically reduced the
risk of leaks. 

It's work that Jay Manning, director of the Washington State
Department of Ecology, once said he questioned would ever be
done. 

There also has been significant progress on the vitrification
plant under Schepens. Work was completed recently on the
foundations for the four main buildings at the plant that will
handle radioactive waste. Overall, design is about 70 percent
complete and construction is about 30 percent complete. 

In Schepens' new job, he will report to Charlie Anderson,
principal deputy assistant energy secretary for environmental
management, as senior adviser on nuclear materials management. 

Among Schepens' tasks is likely to be working on a plan to
consolidate the nation's weapons grade plutonium at one
location, likely at DOE's Savannah River, S.C., site. That
includes plutonium left at Hanford that is delaying cleanup and
increasing security costs. 

Before taking the Hanford job, Schepens was assistant manager of
materials and facilities stabilization at Savannah River. His
experience building a vitrification glassification complex there
was a major reason for his transfer to Hanford. 

Staff at the Office of River Protection learned Friday that
Schepens would be leaving, said DOE spokesman Erik Olds.
Schepens was out of town Friday and could not be reached for
comment. 

DOE has hired the Owens Group to conduct a search for a new
manager. The job posting calls for construction industry
experience and a four-year college degree. It notes the manager
is responsible for overseeing a project that requires about $1
billion each year. 

� 2006 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 72 lamonitor.com: The Online News Source for Los Alamos

EID proposes fine of more than $795,000 for delay in chromium
report

ROGER SNODGRASS roger@lamonitor.comMonitor Assistant Editor 
State regulators propose to fine Los Alamos National Laboratory
$795,620 for delinquency in reporting chromium contamination in
a groundwater monitoring well.

The fines were levied because LANL failed to report excessive
chromium levels found in monitoring samples in 2004 and 2005.
The notice includes an offer to negotiate a settlement on the
fine. 

The presence of the contaminant in the regional aquifer below
Mortandad Canyon was reported to NMED on Dec. 23, 2005, and
later found to be a form of chromium that is harmful to human
health, known as hexavalent chromium.

The most recent public report indicated that the contaminant was
more than four times the federal standard and more than eight
times the state drinking water standard. 
New Mexico Environment Secretary Ron Curry cited the Order on
Consent, signed in March 2005 between the state and the
laboratory and its managers, as the basis for the penalty.

"Reporting requirements were included in the historic clean-up
order so citizens would be aware of pollution and we could get a
head start on cleaning it up," Curry said in an announcement
Friday. "NMED has had a good experience so far with the lab's
new manager. I hope they use this enforcement action as an
opportunity to show how they will interact with the state on
similar issues in the future." 
LANL's Communications Office Director Jeff Berger said in a
prepared statement Friday that the laboratory took the matter
seriously and has taken a number of steps to improve its
responsiveness since the new contract began on June 1.

"For the past several months, senior lab officials have met with
senior environmental department officials to ensure our
understanding of environmental issues," he said.

Among the steps that have been taken was an informal early
notification process for all groundwater findings.

"Everything gets reported as soon as we see it," Berger said.
"There's no analysis, no study about where something might have
come from, or whether there any trends or other attributes."

An example was the report in early July of a detection of trace
amounts of the organic chemical, 1,4-dioxane, in perched
groundwater below Mortandad Canyon.

The laboratory has also conducted a full review of groundwater
data for the last five years to make sure that nothing had been
overlooked, Berger said.

In compliance with an order from NMED, the lab expects to have a
new sentry well to provide advance warning if the contamination
is approaching the drinking water supply at the nearest Los
Alamos County drinking water well, PM-3.

"Meanwhile, there are no current indications that PM-3 has been
affected by chromium," Berger said.

The NMED announcement affirmed that regularly monitored drinking
water supplies have not shown any contamination above the state
standards.

Naturally occurring chromium in the Pajarito Plateau is 3 parts
per billion, but the NMED announcement said hexavalent chromium
is not naturally occurring.

The chemical was used as a rust inhibitor in cooling towers,
among other things. A 1969 memo uncovered by the Los Alamos
Historical Document and Retrieval Project, recorded that in Los
Alamos Canyon hexavalent chromium "is being discharged
continuously in the effluent water."

This is the second fine issued under the formal consent order
that governs the environmental cleanup program at the
laboratory. The last one was on July 12, when a settlement was
reached for wrongfully dumping debris containing hazardous waste
in the county municipal landfill. In that case, a proposed fine
of $125,000 was settled for $89,000.   

  � 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.   
    
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material is distributed without profit or payment to those who 
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for 
non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more 
information go to: 
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